Note on primary sources

Thank you Claudia Bruce for this comment:

"In thinking about the importance of primary sources and how they help place
an artist or their work into context, I remembered a wonderful biography
that I read several years ago by the historian Sarah Bradford entitled *Cesare
Borgia, His Life and Times*. The author used countless primary sources in
writing the biography, but one event concerning two sculptures by
Michelangelo always stuck in my mind.

The setting: Cesare Borgia (the son of Pope Alexander VI) has expelled
Guidobaldo Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, from his palace and
"systematically" looted his valuable possessions - everything from art to
furniture. The Duke's sister-in-law, Isabella d'Este Gonzaga, (showing more
concern for the art objects than her own exiled relative) writes to Cesare
politely inquiring about two 'antique' statues of Venus and Cupid that she
had admired in her brother-in-law's home. Knowing that "His Excellency"
[Cesare] is not fond of antiques, she wonders if he could possibly send them
to her in Mantua. Cesare replies that they are not antiques but the work of
a new Florentine artist, Michelangelo, and that in fact, they had been a
gift from Cesare to the duke. Isabella writes to her husband after
learning these facts, "The Cupid, for a modern work, has no equal.""