WOODEN CHOIRSTALLS, OFTEN richly carved and decorated with intarsia, were almost ubiquitous in Venetian churches in the fifteenth century; indeed, some churches had two sets. To the pilgrim Canon Pietro Casola visiting the city in 1494, it seemed that almost every parish church had a set of beautiful choirstalls. Documents record twenty-one sets of stalls dating from the quattrocento, but the apostolic visitation of 1581 reveals that of the 105 churches surveyed (which excluded all female convents as well as a few other churches), only the parish church of S. Paternian lacked stalls of any kind. Most were classed as ‘decent’, but a considerable number were called ‘honorifica’: the stalls in the parish church of S. Maria Nova, for example, were described as ‘sedilia honorifica et egregie laborata ex nuce’.

DURING HIS LIFETIME Michelangelo relied heavily on influential friends and acquaintances who, through their connections and recommendations, helped to advance the artist’s career. Arguably the most important in this respect was the prominent Florentine banking family the Salviati. Extensive evidence for the artist’s relations with them survives in his Carteggio, notably from the period he worked for the Medici at S. Lorenzo when Jacopo Salviati offered Michelangelo his friendship and assistance in managing the enormous projects of the façade, the New Sacristy and the Laurentian Library. A letter published by Michael Hirst in this Magazine shows that members of the family must have had dealings with him even earlier in the sixteenth century. From that letter, written by Francesco Alidosi to Alamanno Salviati, we learn that early in the spring of 1505 Alamanno had recommended Michelangelo to Pope Julius II in the most laudatory terms: ‘for the testimony [Alamanno] gave of the aforesaid Michelangelo, Julius remained content and at ease’; no other guarantors were needed to convince him of Michelangelo’s skills. Some days later we encounter the artist in papal employ, receiving a salary disbursed to him by the Salviati bank.