LUIGIA DE' MEDICI.
The study of literary history offers an extraordinary charm, when it tends to raise the veil, frequently thrown by inattention and forgetfulness, over noble and graceful forms, which deserved to excite the interest, or even to receive the active thanks of posterity. At such moments, we find the mysterious sources of inspiration admired, through a long period, for their fulness and sincerity: we go back to the forgotten or falsely interpreted causes of celebrated actions, of classic writings, of resolutions, whose renown rang through many ages; the vagueness of poetic pictures gives place to positive forms; and that which appeared but a brilliant phantom is sometimes transformed into a living reality.
Among the glorious titles which have borne the name of Michel Angelo Buonarotti to so high a pitch of celebrity, the least popular is that derived from the composition of his poetical works. The best judges, however, regard these productions not only with profound esteem, but yet more often with an ardent admiration. Michel Angelo lived during the golden age of the Lingua Toscana. Among the poets who filled the interval between the publication of the Orlando and that of the Aminta—first, in order of date, of the chefs-d'o[eu]vres of Torquato—not one has raised himself above, nor, perhaps, to the level, of Buonarotti. In the study of his writings, we recognise all the essential characteristics of his genius, as revealed to the world in his marbles, frescos, and the edifices erected by his hand. It is a copious poetry—masculine and vigorous—fed with high thoughts—serious and severe in the expression. Berni wrote truly of it to Fra Sebastiano—"Ei dice cose: voi dite parole!" The poet exists always in entire possession of himself: enthusiasm elevates, carries him away, but seduces him never. We admire in his mind a constitution firm, healthful, and fertile—a constant equilibrium of passion, will, and conception—often of fervency—nowhere of delirium. The qualities necessary to the artist do no harm to those which make the thinker and good citizen—every where, as in the literary laws of ancient Greece, consonance, sophrosyne, moderation. Michel Angelo, amid the passions and illusions of his time, knew how to hold the helm of "that precious bark, which singing sailed."[50] Sincere and humble Christian, with a leaning to the austere, he succeeded in keeping himself free from all superstition; declared republican, he avoided all popular fanaticism, and bore, even during the siege of Florence, the honourable hostility of the Arrabiati; admirer of Savonarola, he combated the sickly exaggerations of the esprit piagnone, and remained faithful to the worship of art; and last, guest of Leo X., favourite sculptor of Julius II., he never suffered himself to be seduced by the Pagan intoxication of the Renaissance; from his early youth, the frame, in which he was destined to form so many sublime conceptions, was irrevocably determined.
But, in the poetical works of Michel Angelo, as in his works of sculpture and design, there is a side of grace and delicacy; the fire of a masculine and profound tenderness circulates, so to speak, in all the members of this marvellous body. Angelo's regularity of morals was never altered by doubts; it acquired, even at an early period, the externals of a rigid austerity. But had he, in his youthful years, experienced the power of a real love? We have nothing to reply to those who, after an attentive perusal of his writings, see in them nothing more than a jeu-d'esprit produced by a vain fantasy. But to those who think, with us, that truth and force of expression suppose reality and depth of sentiment—to those who discover the burning traces of a passion which has conquered the heart, and imprinted a new direction on the thoughts of the writer, in the precious metal of this classical versification, we propose to follow us for a few moments. We shall seek whatever historical vestiges have been left of the object of this affection, as durable as sincere: we shall afterwards examine the manner in which Michel Angelo has expressed it in his rhyme; what order of philosophical and religious ideas developed themselves in his mind, in intimate connexion with the ardour that penetrated his heart; whatever influences, in short, which a love, whose object quitted this life so early, appears to have exercised upon the whole duration of a career prolonged, with so great eclat, for more than sixty years afterwards.[51]
The smallest acquaintance with the character of Michel Angelo would lead to the belief that, according to the expression of his epoch, he could "have fixed his heart nowhere but in a lofty sphere. The conjectures which have been formed bore reference to the house of the first citizen of Florence and of Italy, at the period of Angelo's entrance on his career, to the family of the grandson of Cosmo Pater Patriæ," of the man to whom the disinterested voice of foreigners and of posterity has confirmed all that his contemporaries attributed to him, in the great work of the Italian Renaissance—scientific, literary, artistic even—namely, the chief and most brilliant honour.
Lorenzo the Magnificent, born in 1450, married Clarice Orsini in 1468. There were born from this alliance, besides the children who died in the cradle, three sons and four daughters. In 1492, Pietro succeeded to the offices and dignity of his father, and lost them in 1494; Giovanni mounted the Pontifical throne, and became the illustrious Leo X.; Giuliano died Duke of Nemours and "prince du gouvernement" of Florence. Of the four daughters, Maddalena became the wife of Francesco Cybo, Count dell Anguillara, Lucrezia married Giacopo Salviati; and Contessina, Piero Ridolfi. Luigia was the youngest, according to certain authorities; Count Pompeo Litta, however, in his Illustri Famiglie Italiane, places her in order of birth immediately after Maddalena. Whichever it may be, Clarice Orsini dying in 1488, Lorenzo contracted no other alliance, and, at the end of four years, followed his wife to the tomb. We have no means of determining the age Luigia had reached at the time of this melancholy event; but, as her marriage was then talked of, we cannot give her less than from fifteen to sixteen years. Michel Angelo, born the 6th March 1475,[52] wanted a month of his seventeenth year when he lost the generous protector of his early youth.
It was in 1490 that Angelo first went to live in the house of the Magnificent Lorenzo. Apprenticed, the 1st April 1488, to the "master of painting," Domenico di Tommasso del Ghirlandajo, he astonished the grave and learned artist by his rapid progress and fire of imagination. Ghirlandajo, finding his disposition more decided for sculpture than for the pencil, hastened to recommend him to Lorenzo, who, in his gardens, situated near the convent of Saint Mark, was exerting himself to create a school capable of restoring to Florence the glorious days of the Ghiberti and the Donatello. It was no easy task for the prince of the Florentine government to buy the child of genius from the timorous avarice of his father, Lodovico Buonarotti.[53] At length, an office in the financial administration of the state, conferred upon the father, and a provision of five ducats monthly settled on the son, but of which it was agreed that Lodovico should derive the profit, conquered the scruples of the old citizen; and Michel Angelo, adopted as it were, among the children of Lorenzo, was enabled, at his own pleasure, to divide his hours between the practice of his favourite art, and the lessons that Pietro, Giovanni, and Giuliano received at "the Platonic Academy," of which the illustrious Politiano was director.
This society, of which Lorenzo was the soul as well as the founder,[54] reckoned among its members certain individuals, whose names are still held in respect by posterity; and many others who, less distinguished or less fortunate, exercised, nevertheless, a useful influence on the regeneration of good studies, and the diffusion of the knowledge that may be derived from the works of antiquity. Among the former, the first rank was unanimously given to Politiano, Pico della Mirandola, Leon-Battista Alberti, and Marsilio Ficino. Lorenzo required that his sons should be present at the learned discourses of the academy. Michel Angelo listened to them in company with Pietro, and Cardinal Giovanni, and received most flattering consideration from Politiano. The subtilties of Grecian metaphysics, and the technical language of logic, discouraged Buonarotti's clear and free understanding; but the sublimity of conception, and majesty of expression of the Attic Bee, met with marvellous affinities in the disposition of the young Florentine. These studies developed in Michel Angelo, the poetical genius of which he has left admirable proofs in his marbles, his cartoons, and his writings.
It was not only the affectionate interest of Lorenzo, the intimacy with his sons, and the generous cares of Politiano, in the house of the Medici, which aided the progress, and inflamed the energy of Michel Angelo. At this same time, more profound lessons were repeated in an austere pulpit, not far from the delicious gardens of Valfondo. Girolamo Savonarola, the celebrated dominican of Saint Mark, was at the zenith of his reputation; and his influence over the people of Florence, without directly thwarting that of Lorenzo, began, nevertheless, to counterbalance it. Michel Angelo, says the most exact of his biographers, (Vasari, Vite dei Pittori,) read "with great veneration" the works written by the enthusiastic and eloquent monk. From him he learned to seek in the Holy Scriptures for the pure and direct source of the highest inspiration; and, during his whole life, Buonarotti had constantly in his hand the sacred volume, and the Divina Comedia of Dante, which he regarded as a commentary at once philosophical, theological, and, above all, poetical upon the former. An ardent love of art confined within due bounds the effect which Savonarola's exhortations produced upon the true and serious soul of the young sculptor; he neither followed the Dominican in his fanatical hostility to the artistic and literary Renaissance, then displaying all the riches of its spring, nor in the political aberrations which Savonarola, after the death of Lorenzo, had the misfortune to display in the public squares of Florence, and even in the heart of her councils.
In the midst of a life so full and already fruitful, which the approach of a glory almost unequalled illuminated by a few precursive rays, Michel Angelo appears to have opened his heart to the sentiment of a love as true and elevated as the other emotions which swayed his soul, and directed his faculties: Luigia de' Medici seems to have been its object. It is, as already remarked, in the poetical compositions, forming the first part of Angelo's collection, that we must endeavour to find the imperishable memorials of this tenderness, to which the illusions even of early youth appear to have never lent, for a single moment, any hope of the union with which it might have been crowned. Michel Angelo's timid pride combined with his respect and gratitude to interdict to him all designation, even indirect, of the woman to whom his affections were bound by a chain whose embrace death alone could have relaxed. We shall see in the poetry of Buonarotti none of the artifice made use of by Petrarch to render the name of Laura intelligible, which Camoëns afterwards employed to celebrate Donna Caterina, and from which, still later, the unhappy Torquato regretted, with much bitterness, to have wandered, when, in the intoxication of his illusions, he traced the fatal name of Eleonora.