[*227] No? Consider then the Pietà of S. Pietro in Vaticano, the unfinished Pietà of S. Maria del Fiore. All that Dennistoun says of Michelangelo is full of misunderstanding. For instance, he never "startles" though he may terrify one. It would be ridiculous to defend him. His work is beautiful, with the beauty of the mountains in which he alone has found the spirit of man. His figures, half unveiled from the living rock, are like some terrible indictment of the world he lived in: an indictment of himself too, perhaps, of his contempt for things as they are; it is in a sort of rage at its uselessness that he leaves them unfinished. In him the spirit of man has stammered the syllables of eternity, and in its agony of longing or sorrow has failed to speak only the word love. All things particular to the individual, all that is small or of little account, that endures but for a moment, he has purged away, so that life itself may make, as it were, an immortal gesticulation almost monstrous in its passionate intensity—a shadow seen on the mountains, a mirage on the snow.
[228] See Gaye, Carteggio, II., 83-109, sub anno 1506.
[*229] Cf. J.A. Symonds, The Sonnets of Michelangelo.
[*230] For Titian, consult Gronau, Titian (Duckworth, 1904). By far the best handbook on the painter.
[*231] As before stated, the first works that Titian painted for Francesco Maria were a portrait of Hannibal, a Nativity, a figure of our Lord. The Duke writes him concerning them in 1533 as follows (cf. Gronau, op. cit., p. 91):—
"Dearest Friend,—
"You know through our envoy how much we wish for pictures ... and the longer we have to wait the more eager we are to have them ... and so we beg you to satisfy us as soon as possible. Finish at least one of the pictures, that we may rejoice in something by your hand."
The portraits were begun in 1536, in which year (October) Aretino wrote a sonnet on that of the Duke. They were finished early in 1538. Of the earlier pictures, the figure of Christ is probably that in the Pitti Gallery (228); the others apparently have perished.
In 1536 the Duke wrote again asking for a Resurrection for the Duchess, and begging Titian to finish the "picture of a woman in a blue dress as beautifully as possible." This latter is probably the Bella of the Pitti Gallery (18), which some have thought to be Eleonora Gonzaga, Francesco Maria's wife. She was then forty-three years old, and her portrait was painted at this time by the same master (Uffizi, 599) as a companion for that of the Duke (Uffizi, 605).
Duke Guidobaldo, while yet but Duke of Camerino, had sat to Titian, and had bought from him the picture of a "Nude Woman" (Gronau, op. cit., p. 95). In March, 1538, he sent a messenger to Venice, who was instructed not to leave the city without them. He got one, but the other had not been delivered in May of that year. The Duke wrote to him to beware lest it passed elsewhere, "for I am resolved to mortgage a part of my property if I cannot obtain it in any other way." This picture was probably the Venus of the Tribune (Uffizi, 1117) who is so like the Bella. Now if we are right in supposing the pictures alluded to in the letters—the lady in the blue dress and the nude woman—are the pictures we know (which came from Urbino), it seems obvious that they cannot have been portraits of the Duchess. And, again, we have the Duchess's portrait painted at this time, in which we see a woman of forty-three, which was in truth her age.