"Michael Angelo Buonarotti. Anezzo. (1474-1563.) The three fates. 25 x 32. Original (no. 113) in the Pitti Palace Gallery, Florence. These three sinister looking crones are the three sisters supposed by the ancients to control the thread of human existence. The one holding the distaff is clotho, the presiding fate of births; the one holding the thread between her fingers is lachesis, the controller of the course of human life; the third, ready to cut the thread with the scissors, is atropos, the inevitable. They had places consecrated to them all through Greece, at Sparta, Olympia, Thebes, Corinth, etc."
A Catalogue of Paintings in the Gallery of D.W. Powers, Rochester, N.Y. with Explanations and Sketches of Painters by C.C. Merriman. Rochester, N.Y.: E.R. Andrews, Book and Job Printer, Aqueduct Street, 1877.
