sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation. Towards the end of 1494, the political situation in Florence was calmer. Upon his return to Florence, he found that things in the city had greatly changed. The city, previously under threat from the French, it was no longer in danger as Charles VIII had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola. He returned to the employment of the Medici. During the half year he spent in Florence he worked on two small statues, a child St. John the Baptist and a Sleeping Cupid. Under the Medici Popes Leo X The new Pope Leo X was no stranger to Michelangelo, being no other than his old schoolmate Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Since Leo was a Medici, one of the projects that naturally occurred to him was the decoration of the unfinished front of his family's church, San Lorenzo, in Florence. His predecessor Brunelleschi finished the interior and he had to finish the façade. In fact, Leo X invited several architects to do so and he was not among the first. However, when he made the woodcut in December 1516, in January 1518 he was given Leo's approval. In anticipation of the project, he went out the quarries in Carrara, Italy to excavate granite and he spent two years building the road to it, supervising the extraction, and transporting the marble to Florence. The church facade was actually his first architectural task, and he had no experience of producing the working plans and measurements needed for his project. The blocks of marble used in columns, cornices, and other architectural features were different from the ones he used in his sculptures. The three years he spent in creating drawings and models for the facade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta were specifically for the project. Unfortunately, the project was delayed because of the building of new roads to transport the marble. Pope Leo X wanted to use the marble in quarries at Seravezza. It was an abandoned quarry and therefore had no workers and roads there. His opinion on the subject was ignored and was instructed to move the operation to Seravezza. Because of that, he was unjustly accused of