III

All students of Michelangelo’s biography are well acquainted with the Dialogues on Painting, composed by the Portuguese miniature artist, Francis of Holland.  Written in the quaint style of the sixteenth century, which curiously blent actual circumstance and fact with the author’s speculation, these essays present a vivid picture of Buonarroti’s conferences with Vittoria Colonna and her friends.  The dialogues are divided into four parts, three of which profess to give a detailed account of three several Sunday conversations in the Convent of S. Silvestro on Monte Cavallo.  After describing the objects which brought him to Rome, Francis says:  “Above all, Michelangelo inspired me with such esteem, that when I met him in the palace of the Pope or on the streets, I could not make my mind up to leave him until the stars forced us to retire.”  Indeed, it would seem from his frank admissions in another place that the Portuguese painter had become a little too attentive to the famous old man, and that Buonarroti “did all he could to shun his company, seeing that when they once came together, they could not separate.”  It happened one Sunday that Francis paid a visit to his friend Lattanzio Tolomei, who had gone abroad, leaving a message that he would be found in the Church of S. Silvestro, where he was hoping to hear a lecture by Brother Ambrose of Siena on the Epistles of S. Paul, in company with the Marchioness.  Accordingly he repaired to this place, and was graciously received by the noble lady.  She courteously remarked that he would probably enjoy a conversation with Michelangelo more than a sermon from Brother Ambrose, and after an interval of compliments a servant was sent to find him.  It chanced that Buonarroti was walking with the man whom Francis of Holland calls “his old friend and colour-grinder,” Urbino, in the direction of the Thermae.  So the lackey, having the good chance to meet him, brought him at once to the convent.  The Marchioness made him sit between her and Messer Tolomei, while Francis took up his position at a little distance.  The conversation then began, but Vittoria Colonna had to use the tact for which she was celebrated before she could engage the wary old man on a serious treatment of his own art.

He opened his discourse by defending painters against the common charge of being “eccentric in their habits, difficult to deal with, and unbearable; whereas, on the contrary, they are really most humane.”  Common people do not consider, he remarked, that really zealous artists are bound to abstain from the idle trivialities and current compliments of society, not because they are haughty or intolerant by nature, but because their art imperiously claims the whole of their energies.  “When such a man shall have the same leisure as you enjoy, then I see no objection to your putting him to death if he does not observe your rules of etiquette and ceremony.