Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.
It is pleasant to know that these last years were also the happiest and calmest. Though he had lost his faithful friend and servant Urbino; though his father had died, an old man, and his brothers had passed away before him one by one, his nephew Lionardo had married in Florence, and begotten a son called Michael Angelo. Thus he had the satisfaction of hoping that his name would endure and flourish, as indeed it has done almost to this very day in Florence. What consolation this thought must have brought him, is clear to those who have studied his correspondence and observed the tender care and continual anxiety he had for his kinsmen.[[335]] Wealth now belonged to him: but he had never cared for money; and he continued to live like a poor man, dressing soberly and eating sparely, often taking but one meal in the day, and that of bread and wine.[[336]] He slept little, and rose by night to work upon his statues, wearing a cap with a candle stuck in front of it, that he might see where to drive the chisel home. During his whole life he had been solitary, partly by preference, partly by devotion to his art, and partly because he kept men at a distance by his manner.[[337]] Not that Michael Angelo was sour or haughty; but he spoke his mind out very plainly, had no tolerance for fools, and was apt to fly into passions.[[338]] Time had now softened his temper and removed all causes of discouragement. He had survived every rival, and the world was convinced of his supremacy. Princes courted him; the Count of Canossa was proud to claim him for a kinsman; strangers, when they visited Rome, were eager to behold in him its greatest living wonder.[[339]] His old age was the serene and splendid evening of a toilsome day. But better than all this, he now enjoyed both love and friendship.
If Michael Angelo could ever have been handsome is more than doubtful. Early in his youth the quarrelsome and vain Torrigiani broke his nose with a blow of the fist, when they were drawing from Masaccio's frescoes in the Carmine together.[[340]] Thenceforth the artist's soul looked forth from a sad face, with small grey eyes, flat nostrils, and rugged weight of jutting brows. Good care was thus taken that light love should not trifle with the man who was destined to be the prophet of his age in art. Like Beethoven, he united a loving nature, sensitive to beauty and desirous of affection, with a rude exterior. He seemed incapable of attaching himself to any merely mortal object, and wedded the ideal. In that century of intrigue and amour, we hear of nothing to imply that Michael Angelo was a lover till he reached the age of sixty. How he may have loved in the earlier periods of his life, whereof no record now remains, can only be guessed from the tenderness and passion outpoured in the poems of his latter years. That his morality was pure and his converse without stain, is emphatically witnessed by both Vasari and Condivi.[[341]] But that his emotion was intense, and that to beauty in all its human forms he was throughout his life a slave, we have his own sonnets to prove.
In the year 1534 he first became acquainted with the noble lady Vittoria, daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, and widow of the Marquis of Pescara. She was then aged forty-four, and had nine years survived the loss of a husband she never ceased to idolise.[[342]] Living in retirement in Rome, she employed her leisure with philosophy and poetry. Artists and men of letters were admitted to her society. Among the subjects she had most at heart was the reform of the Church and the restoration of religion to its evangelical purity. Between her and Michael Angelo a tender affection sprang up based upon the sympathy of ardent and high-seeking natures. If love be the right name for this exalted and yet fervid attachment, Michael Angelo may be said to have loved her with all the pent-up forces of his heart. None of his works display a predilection for girlish beauty, and it is probable that her intellectual distinction and mature womanhood touched him even more than if she had been younger. When they were together in Rome they met frequently for conversation on the themes of art and piety they both held dear. Of these discourses a charming record has been preserved to us by the painter Francis of Holland.[[343]] When they were separated they exchanged poems and wrote letters, some of which remain. On the death of Vittoria, in 1547, the light of life seemed to be extinguished for our sculptor. It is said that he waited by her bed-side, and kissed her hand when she was dying. The sonnets he afterwards composed show that his soul followed her to heaven.
Another friend whom Michael Angelo found in this last stage of life, and whom he loved with only less warmth than Vittoria, was a young Roman of perfect beauty and of winning manners. Tommaso Cavalieri must be mentioned next to the Marchioness of Pescara as the being who bound this greatest soul a captive.[[344]] Both Cavalieri and Vittoria are said to have been painted by him, and these are the only two portraits he is reported to have executed. It may here be remarked that nothing is more characteristic of his genius than the determination to see through nature, to pass beyond the actual to the abstract, and to use reality only as a stepping-stone to the ideal. This artistic Platonism was the source both of his greatness and his mannerism. As men choose to follow Blake or Ruskin, they may praise or blame him; yet, blame and praise pronounced on such a matter with regard to such a man are equally impertinent and insignificant. It is enough for the critic to note with reverence that thus and thus the spirit that was in him worked and moved.
When we read the sonnets addressed to Vittoria Colonna and Cavalieri, we find something inexpressibly pathetic in this pure and fervent worship of beauty, when the artist with a soul still young had reached the limit of the years of man. Here and there we trace in them an echo of his youth. The Platonic dialogues he heard while yet a young man at the suppers of Lorenzo, reappear converted to the very substance of his thought and style. At the same time Savonarola resumes ascendency over his mind; and when he turns to Florence, it is of Dante that he speaks.
At last the moment came when this strong solitary spirit, much suffering and much loving, had to render its account. It appears from a letter written to Lionardo Buonarroti on February 15, 1564, that his old servant Antonio del Francese, the successor of Urbino in his household, together with Tommaso Cavalieri and Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra, attended him in his last illness. On the 18th of that month, having bequeathed his soul to God, his body to the earth, and his worldly goods to his kinsfolk, praying them on their death-bed to think upon Christ's passion, he breathed his last. His corpse was transported to Florence, and buried in the church of S. Croce, with great pomp and honour, by the Duke, the city, and the Florentine Academy.
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