The religious portion of the great artist's nature had scarcely shaped out for itself any more defined and substantial form of expression than a worship of the beautiful in spirit as well as in matter. By Vittoria he was made a devout Christian. The change is strongly marked in his poetry; and in several passages of the poems, four or five in number, addressed to her, he attributes it entirely to her influence.[202]
Some silly stuff has been written by very silly writers, by way of imparting the "interesting" character of a belle passion, more or less platonic, to this friendship between the sexagenarian artist and the immaculate Colonna. No argument is necessary to indicate the utter absurdity of an idea which implies a thorough ignorance of the persons in question, of the circumstances of their friendship, and of all that remains on record of what passed between them. Mr. Harford, whose "Life of Michael Angelo" has been already quoted, was permitted, he says, to hear read the letters from Vittoria to her friend, which are preserved in that collection of papers and memorials of the great artist, which forms the most treasured possession of his descendants;[203] and he gives the following account of them:[204]
"They are five in number; and there is a sixth, addressed by her to a friend, which relates to Michael Angelo. Two of these letters refer in very grateful terms to the fine drawings he had been making for her, and to which she alludes with admiration. Another glances with deep interest at the devout sentiments of a sonnet, which it appears he had sent for her perusal.... Another tells him in playful terms that his duties as architect of St. Peter's, and her own to the youthful inmates of the convent of St. Catherine at Viterbo, admit not of their frequently exchanging letters. This must have been written just a year before her death, which occurred in 1547. Michael Angelo became architect of St. Peter's in 1546. These letters are written with the most perfect ease, in a firm, strong hand; but there is not a syllable in any of them approaching to tenderness."
The period of Vittoria's stay in Rome on this occasion must have been a pleasant one. The acknowledged leader of the best and most intellectual society in that city; surrounded by a company of gifted and high-minded men, bound to her and to each other by that most intimate and ennobling of all ties, the common profession of a higher, nobler, purer theory of life than that which prevailed around them, and a common membership of what might almost be called a select church within a church, whose principles and teaching its disciples hoped to see rapidly spreading and beneficially triumphant; dividing her time between her religious duties, her literary occupations, and conversation with well-loved and well-understood friends;—Vittoria can hardly have been still tormented by temptations to commit suicide. Yet in a medal struck in her honour at this period of her life, the last of the series engraved for Visconti's edition of her works, the reverse represents a phœnix on her funeral pile gazing on the sun, while the flames are rising around her. The obverse has a bust of the poetess, showing the features a good deal changed in the course of the six or seven years which had elapsed since the execution of that silly Pyramus and Thisbe medal mentioned in a previous chapter, though still regular and well formed. The tendency to fatness and to a comfortable-looking double chin is considerably increased. She wears a singularly unbecoming head-dress of plaited linen, sitting close to and covering the entire head, with long pendants at the sides falling over the shoulders.
THE COLONNA AT WAR.
These pleasant Roman days were, however, destined to be of brief duration. They were cut short, strange as the statement may seem, by the imposition of an increased tax upon salt. For when Paul III. resorted, in 1539, to that always odious and cruel means of pillaging his people, Ascanio Colonna maintained that, by virtue of some ancient privilege, the new tax could not be levied on his estates. The pontifical tax-gatherers imprisoned certain of his vassals for refusing to pay; whereupon Ascanio assembled his retainers, made a raid into the Campagna, and drove off a large number of cattle.[205] The Pope lost no time in gathering an army of ten thousand men, and "war was declared" between the sovereign and the Colonna. The varying fortunes of this "war" have been narrated in detail by more than one historian.[206] Much mischief was done, and a great deal of misery occasioned by both the contending parties. But at length the forces of the Sovereign got the better of those of his vassal, and the principal fortresses of the Colonna were taken, and their fortifications ordered to be razed.
It was in consequence of these misfortunes, and of that remarkable "solidarity" which, as has been before observed, united in those days the members of a family in their fortunes and reverses, that Vittoria quitted Rome, probably towards the end of 1540, and retired to Orvieto. But the loss of their brightest ornament was a misfortune which the higher circles of Roman society could not submit to patiently. Many of the most influential personages at Paul III.'s court visited the celebrated exile at Orvieto, and succeeded ere long in obtaining her return to Rome after a very short absence.[207] And we accordingly find her again in the eternal city in the August of 1541.
There is a letter written by Luca Contile,[208] the Sienese historian, dramatist and poet, in which he speaks of a visit he had paid to Vittoria in Rome in that month. She asked him, he writes, for news of Fra Bernardino (Ochino), and on his replying that he had left behind him at Milan the highest reputation for virtue and holiness, she answered, "God grant that he so persevere!"
WOULD NEVER QUIT THE CHURCH.