I think, capable of demonstration, that the man’s intense devotion to art and study, his solitary habits and constitutional melancholy, caused him to absorb the ordinary instincts and passions of a young man into his aesthetic temperament; and that when, in later life, he began to devote his attention to poetry, he treated love from the point of view of mystical philosophy.  In support of this argument Parlagreco naturally insists upon the famous friendship with Vittoria Colonna, and quotes the Platonising poems commonly attributed to this emotion.  He has omitted to mention, what certainly bears upon the point of Michelangelo’s frigidity, that only one out of the five Buonarroti brothers, sons of Lodovico, married.  Nor does he take into account the fact that Raffaello da Urbino, who was no less devoted and industrious in art and study, retained the liveliest sensibility to female charms.  In other words, the critic appears to neglect that common-sense solution of the problem, which is found in a cold and physically sterile constitution as opposed to one of greater warmth and sensuous activity.

Parlagreco attributes much value to what he calls the religious terrors and remorse of Michelangelo’s old age; says that “his fancy became haunted with doubts and fears; every day discovering fresh sins in the past, inveighing against the very art which made him famous among men, and seeking to propitiate Paradise for his soul by acts of charity to dowerless maidens.”  The sonnets to Vasari and some others are quoted in support of this view.  But the question remains, whether it is not exaggerated to regard pious aspirations, and a sense of human life’s inadequacy at its close, as the signs of nervous malady.  The following passage sums up Parlagreco’s theory in a succession of pregnant sentences.  “An accurate study, based upon his correspondence in connection with the events of the artist’s life and the history of his works, has enabled me to detect in his character a persistent oscillation.  Continual contradictions between great and generous ideas upon the one side, and puerile ideas upon the other; between the will and the word, thought and action; an excessive irritability and the highest degree of susceptibility; constant love for others, great activity in doing good, sudden sympathies, great outbursts of enthusiasm, great fears; at times an unconsciousness with respect to his own actions; a marvellous modesty in the field of art, an unreasonable vanity regarding external appearances:—­these are the diverse manifestations of psychical energy in Buonarroti’s life; all which makes me believe that the mighty artist was affected by a degree of neuropathy bordering closely upon hysterical disease.”  He proceeds to support this general view by several considerations, among which the most remarkable are Michelangelo’s asseverations to friends:  “You will say that I am old and mad to make sonnets, but if people assert that I am on the verge of dotage, I have wished to act up to my character:”  “You will say that I am old and mad; but I answer that there is no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety, than by being mad:”  “As regards the madness they ascribe to me, it does harm to nobody but myself:”  “I enjoyed last evening, because it drew me out of my melancholy and mad humour.”