“When divine Art conceives a form and face,
She bids the craftsman for his first essay
To shape a simple model in mere clay:
This is the earliest birth of Art’s embrace.
From the live marble in the second place
His mallet brings into the light of day
A thing so beautiful that who can say
When time shall conquer that immortal grace?
Thus my own model I was born to be—
The model of that nobler self, whereto
Schooled by your pity, lady, I shall grow.
Each overplus and each deficiency
You will make good. What penance then is due
For my fierce heat, chastened and taught by you?”
The correspondence between Vittoria and Michael Angelo was undated, and all that now remains is fragmentary.
The great artist, writing to his nephew, Sionardo, in 1554, says:—
“Messer Giovan Francisco Fattucci asked me about a month ago if I possessed any writings of the marchioness. I have a little book bound in parchment which she gave me some ten years ago. It has one hundred and three sonnets, not counting another forty she afterward sent on paper from Viterbo. I had these bound into the same book, and at that time I used to lend them about to many persons so that they are all of them now in print. In addition to these poems I have many letters which she wrote from Orvieto and Viterbo. These, then, are the writings I possess of the marchioness.”
In Rome, 1545, Michael Angelo thus writes to Vittoria:—
“I desired, lady, before I accepted the things which your ladyship has often expressed the will to give me—I desired to produce something for you with my own hand in order to be as little as possible unworthy of this kindness. I have now come to recognize that the grace of God is not to be bought, and that to keep it waiting is a grievous sin. Therefore I acknowledge my error and willingly accept your favors. When I possess them—not, indeed, because I shall have them in my house, but for that I myself shall dwell in them—the place will seem to encircle me with paradise. For which felicity I shall remain ever more obliged to your ladyship than I am already, if that is possible.
“The bearer of this letter will be Urbino, who lives in my service. Your ladyship may inform him when you would like me to come and see the head you promised to show me.”
With this letter Michael Angelo sent to Vittoria a sonnet which, in the translation made by John Addington Symonds, is as follows:—
“Seeking at least to be not all unfit
For thy sublime and boundless courtesy,
My lowly thoughts at first were fain to try
What they could yield for grace so infinite.
But now I know my unassisted wit
Is all too weak to make me soar so high,
For pardon, lady, for this fault I cry,
And wiser still I grow remembering it.
Yea, will I see what folly ’t were to think
That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven,
Could e’er be paid by work so frail as mine!
To nothingness my art and talent sink;
He fails who from his mental stores hath given
A thousandfold to match one gift divine.”
As a gift to Vittoria Colonna, Michael Angelo designed an episode from the Passion of our Lord, which Condivi describes as “a naked Christ at the moment when, taken from the cross, our Lord would have fallen at the feet of His most holy mother if two angels did not support Him in their arms. She sits below the cross with a face full of tears and sorrow, lifting both her widespread arms to heaven while on the stem of the tree above is written this legend: ‘Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa.’ The cross is of the same kind as that which was carried by the White Friars at the time of the plague of 1348, and afterward deposited in the Church of Santa Croce at Florence.”