The union of Michelangelo and Vittoria was beautiful and noble, based upon the sympathy of ardent and high-feeling natures.  Nevertheless we must remember that when Michelangelo lost his old servant Urbino, his letters and the sonnet written upon that occasion express an even deeper passion of grief.

Love is an all-embracing word, and may well be used to describe this exalted attachment, as also to qualify the great sculptor’s affection for a faithful servant or for a charming friend.  We ought not, however, to distort the truth of biography or to corrupt criticism, from a personal wish to make more out of his feeling than fact and probability warrant.  This is what has been done by all who approached the study of Michelangelo’s life and writings.  Of late years, the determination to see Vittoria Colonna through every line written by him which bears the impress of strong emotion, and to suppress other aspects of his sensibility, has been so deliberate, that I am forced to embark upon a discussion which might otherwise have not been brought so prominently forward.  For the understanding of his character, and for a proper estimate of his poetry, it has become indispensable to do so.

V

Michelangelo’s best friend in Rome was a young nobleman called Tommaso Cavalieri.  Speaking of his numerous allies and acquaintances, Vasari writes:  “Immeasurably more than all the rest, he loved Tommaso dei Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman, for whom, as he was young and devoted to the arts, Michelangelo made many stupendous drawings of superb heads in black and red chalk, wishing him to learn the method of design.  Moreover, he drew for him a Ganymede carried up to heaven by Jove’s eagle, a Tityos with the vulture feeding on his heart, the fall of Phaeton with the sun’s chariot into the river Po, and a Bacchanal of children; all of them things of the rarest quality, and drawings the like of which were never seen.  Michelangelo made a cartoon portrait of Messer Tommaso, life-size, which was the only portrait that he ever drew, since he detested to imitate the living person, unless it was one of incomparable beauty.”  Several of Michelangelo’s sonnets are addressed to Tommaso Cavalieri.  Benedetto Varchi, in his commentary, introduces two of them with these words:  “The first I shall present is one addressed to M. Tommaso Cavalieri, a young Roman of very noble birth, in whom I recognised, while I was sojourning at Rome, not only incomparable physical beauty, but so much elegance of manners, such excellent intelligence, and such graceful behaviour, that he well deserved, and still deserves, to win the more love the better he is known.”  Then Varchi recites the sonnet:—­

  Why should I seek to ease intense desire
  With still more tears and windy words of grief,
  When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
  To souls whom love hath robed around with fire?