[8] At first in the Strozzi Palace, then bought in 1529 by Francis I and placed at Fontainebleau, it disappeared in the seventeenth century.
[9] I find it impossible to recognise, as Thode does, an allusion to the death of Savonarola in a letter of 1508, when Michelangelo, hearing that his father had been slandered by his brother, writes, "I have not received worse news in ten years." Nothing justifies us in believing that Michelangelo is not merely alluding to other family difficulties.
[10] Sermons on Amos and Zachariah.
[11] See the "Dialogues de la Peinture" of Francis of Holland, who relates the conversations between Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna in Rome in 1538-39.
[12] Beethoven wrote in the same way to Bettina Brentano in 1810: "most men are moved by beauty, but that is not the nature of artists. Artists are fashioned of fire—they do not weep."
[13] Francis of Holland ibid.
[14] Ibid. The passage applies to Flemish painting in general.
[15] "Do you know," said Michelangelo to Condivi, "that chaste women remain much more fresh than those who are not chaste. How much more, therefore, must this be true of the Virgin who never entertained the least immodest thought which might have troubled her body. I would put this even more strongly. I believe that this freshness and flower of youth which she received in a natural manner was preserved for her in a supernatural one, so that the virginity and the eternal purity of the Mother of God could be demonstrated to the world. Such a miracle was not necessary for the Son. Quite the contrary, for if it had to be shown that the Son of God was made incarnate in man and that he had suffered all that men suffer except sin, it was not necessary to make the human disappear behind the divine, but it was better rather to let the human follow its nature in such a way that he should appear to have the age that he really had. Do not be surprised, therefore, if for these reasons I have represented the Very Holy Virgin, the Mother of God, much younger than her years would require and if I have given the Son his real age."
[16] Contract of August 26, 1498, with the French Cardinal, Jean de Groslaye de Villiers, Abbot of S. Denis, Ambassador of Charles VIII, who had ordered it for the chapel of the kings of France (Chapel of S. Petronille) at St. Peter's.
[17] This David was placed in the centre of the court of the Château de Bury and moved in the sixteenth century to the Château de Villeroy near Mennecy from where it afterward disappeared. The figure was life-size, with the head of Goliath at its feet; a pen-and-ink sketch in the Louvre is all that is left of it.