"I have often heard him speak about love; and others who have listened to him on this subject will bear me out in saying that the only love of which he spoke was the kind which is spoken of in Plato's works. For my part I do not know what Plato says, but one thing I, who have lived with him so long and so intimately, can assert, that I have never heard any but the purest words issue from his mouth."
He was one of the most abstemious of men. He literally thought nothing about creature comforts. Often he would take a piece of bread in his hand while at his work and that would be all during the course of a long day. His meals were likely to be irregular, and he paid very little attention to them. As for his sleep, he was noted even among the strenuous livers of his time for his ability to work without sleep and for the small amount that he took. When he was deeply interested in some work he would lie down in his clothes, and after a few hours get up to work again. The surprise is that he should [{49}] have lived to the age of nearly ninety under such living conditions, but work never kills, and if the original vitality is extensive men live on to the limit of existence much better by consuming their energy than by allowing it to react within them, as it so often does. Some repentant expressions of his had been taken to indicate, be it said by modern writers, never by his contemporaries, that he was of a passionate nature and had given rein to his impulses in youth. Except these words of repentance, however, which are rather conventional in his time and indicate a falling below ideals rather than actual serious faults, we have absolutely no evidence. On the other hand, we have some expressions of his which indicate how much difficulty he found in curbing his passions in youth and how glad he is that he used the effort, since it saved him from regrets in after life.
The thought of death was a favorite one with him, and he seems frequently to have dwelt on it and to have considered that there was no thought that was better for a man. Not only did it prove chastening, but above all it helped a man to eliminate the quest of the trivial and the merely selfish in life. He held the thought of death as the only consideration that makes us know ourselves and saves us from becoming a prey to kindred, friends or masters, to ambition, and to the other vices and sins which rob a man of himself. That was his main purpose in life, to live it for accomplishment and not merely for the trifles which easily satisfy so many men. Whenever he was tempted to permit himself to derogate from his highest aims in life for the sake of the distinction of the moment, the thought of death was sobering, and the time when the darkness cometh and no man can labor brought him back to his best work, no matter what the difficulties might be in doing it.
Angelo's relation to religion is all the more interesting because it is often said that the great men of the Renaissance, because of their profound study of pagan antiquity, had become touched with paganism. There is not a trace of this in Michelangelo, however, and surely he must be considered as the typical great man of the Renaissance. All his life he had thought of his relation to his Creator and of the necessity for accomplishing work, not for himself alone nor for selfish [{50}] purposes, but with great aims that would be worthy of the talents that had been given him. Once, when he was having great difficulties because of opposition to his plans and interference with designs that he felt must be carried out, he said to Pope Paul III, "Holy Father, you see what I gain; if these fatigues which I endure do not benefit my soul I lose both time and labor." The Pope, with whom Michelangelo was a great favorite and who loved above all his sincere, straightforward simplicity and his deep feeling of religion, laid his hands paternally on the great artist's shoulders and said, "Have no doubt. You are benefiting both soul and body."
Toward the end of his life his mind became more and more occupied with religious thoughts, and there was a charmingly simple piety that he cultivated. This had been expressed often before in his great works of art, both paintings and sculptures, and still more clearly in his sonnets. Some seem to think that an artist, because of his occupation, may express beautiful thoughts on religious subjects, even though he does not feel them. Somehow it is supposed to be the artist's business to work himself into such moods and then express them, as if it were possible to express greatly in art, what one does not really feel. Most people, however, seem to think that formal expression in words must mean more in such matters, and for them Michelangelo's sonnets will doubtless be proofs of his absolute sincerity in religious matters. Towards the end of his life most of his poetry is deeply religious in character. He sent two sonnets to Vasari when he was about seventy-five, as he told the biographer "that you may see where I keep my thoughts." A more lofty expression of Christian humility and the spirit of prayerfulness has perhaps never been made. One of them, because it expresses his recognition of the fact that the trifles of the world had carried even him away, that fascinatio nugacitatis quae obscurat bona of the Scriptures, is worth quoting as a summation of his religious life and feelings:
"The fables of the world have filched away
The time I had for thinking upon God;
His grace lies buried 'neath oblivion's sod,
Whence springs an evil crop of sins alway.
What makes another wise, leads me astray,
Slow to discern the bad path I have trod:
Hope fades, but still desire ascends that God
May free from self-love, my sure decay.
Shorten half-way my road to heaven from earth!
Dear Lord, I cannot even half-way rise
Unless Thou help me on this pilgrimage.
Teach me to hate the world so little worth.
And all the lovely things I clasp and prize.
That endless life, ere death, may be my wage."
Angelo's last work in sculpture was a group very like his first great religious group, the "Pietà." It consisted of the Blessed Virgin with the dead Christ and two other figures. Only the "Christ" was ever finished. His intention was that this group should be placed on an altar over his tomb, but his wish was never fulfilled. The circumstances of his work at it are interesting. Like many an old man, he often found himself wakeful at night and needed something to occupy his thoughts. When he arose this way he used to work in solitude and silence at these figures with loving recollection and care and with the thought that it would be his monument after death. He had come to look upon death rather as a friend than an enemy, saying once that "life, which had been given to us without our asking, had wonderful possibilities of good in it, and death, which came unsummoned from the same Providential hand, could surely not prove less full of blessing."
Towards sunset on the eighteenth of February, 1564, Michelangelo turned to his friends and said, "I give my soul to God, my body to the earth and my worldly possessions to my nearest of kin, charging them through life to remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ." In making a will some years before, he left as alternative heir the Church, on condition that the "income was to be given for the love of God to the modest poor."
While Leonardo da Vinci was indeed a universal genius well deserving of the high title, it must not be forgotten that the age in which he lived was the age of Michelangelo. The "divine master," his compatriot artists have loved to call him ever since his own day. It is probable that he must be [{52}] conceded to have carried human nature as far in its power of expression of the beauty and truth of life as any man that ever lived. The divine in human nature nowhere shines out so conspicuously as in Michelangelo's achievements. There was no form of art, no mode of expression, no field of thought in which he did not excel. It must be confessed that his thoughts were often too high and too deep for human nature's limitations, and that he did not always succeed in completing his work in such a way as he himself would have wished, and above all such as would have made it thoroughly comprehensible to ordinary mortals. His works give us a better idea of human nature's possibilities, yet Vittoria Colonna, who knew him so well, declared that those who admire Michelangelo's works admire but the smallest part of him. She had come to realize how much more there was in him than even his works made manifest. Often the artist is a disappointment after his works. Michelangelo's personality made one disappointed with his works as if there should be much more in them.