Wrong is done, and the strong-handed doer of it admired, the moral sense is blunted by the cowardly worship of success, and might takes from right the suffrages of the feeble, in the nineteenth as in the sixteenth century. But the contemplation of the total absence from such a mind as that of Vittoria Colonna, of all recognition of a right and a wrong in such matters, furnishes highly instructive evidence of the reality of the moral progress mankind has achieved.
CHAPTER VIII.
Return to Rome.—Her great reputation.—Friendship with Michael Angelo.—Medal of this period.—Removal to Orvieto.—Visit from Luca Contile.—Her determination not to quit the Church.—Francesco d'Olanda.—His record of conversations with Vittoria.—Vittoria at Viterbo.—Influence of Cardinal Pole on her mind.—Last return to Rome.—Her death.
Vittoria arrived in Rome from Ferrara in all probability about the end of the year 1537. She was now in the zenith of her reputation. The learned and elegant Bembo[198] writes of her, that he considered her poetical judgment as sound and authoritative as that of the greatest masters of the art of song. Guidiccioni, the poetical Bishop of Fossombrone, and one of Paul III.'s ablest diplomatists, declares[199] that the ancient glory of Tuscany had altogether passed into Latium in her person; and sends her sonnets of his own, with earnest entreaties that she will point out the faults of them. Veronica Gambara, herself a poetess, of merit perhaps not inferior to that of Vittoria, professed herself her most ardent admirer, and engaged Rinaldo Corso to write the commentary on her poems, which he executed as we have seen. Bernardo Tasso made her the subject of several of his poems. Giovio dedicated to her his life of Pescara, and Cardinal Pompeo Colonna his book on "The Praises of Women;" and Contarini paid her the far more remarkable compliment of dedicating to her his work "On Free Will."
Paul III. was, as Muratori says,[200] by no means well disposed towards the Colonna family. Yet Vittoria must have had influence with the haughty and severe old Farnese. For both Bembo, and Fregoso, the Bishop of Naples, have taken occasion to acknowledge that they owed their promotion to the purple in great measure to her.
But the most noteworthy event of this period of Vittoria's life, was the commencement of her acquaintance with Michael Angelo Buonarroti.[201] That great man was then in his 63rd year, while the poetess was in her 47th. The acquaintanceship grew rapidly into a close and durable friendship, which lasted during the remainder of Vittoria's life. It was a friendship eminently honourable to both of them. Michael Angelo was a man whose influence on his age was felt and acknowledged, while he was yet living and exercising it, to a degree rarely observable even in the case of the greatest minds. He had, at the time in question, already reached the zenith of his fame, although he lived to witness and enjoy it for another quarter of a century. He was a man formed by nature, and already habituated by the social position his contemporaries had accorded to him, to mould men—not to be moulded by them—not a smooth or pliable man; rugged rather, self-relying, self-concentrated, and, though full of kindness for those who needed kindness, almost a stern man; no courtier, though accustomed to the society of courts; and apt to consider courtier-like courtesies and habitudes as impertinent impediments to the requirements of his high calling, to be repressed rather than condescended to. Yet the strong and kingly nature of this high-souled old man was moulded into new form by contact with that of the comparatively youthful poetess.
FRIENDSHIP WITH MICHAEL ANGELO.