Angelo may be said to have loved her with all the pent-up forces of his heart.  None of his works display a predilection for girlish beauty, and it is probable that her intellectual distinction and mature womanhood touched him even more than if she had been younger.  When they were together in Rome they met frequently for conversation on the themes of art and piety they both held dear.  Of these discourses a charming record has been preserved to us by the painter Francis of Holland.[343] When they were separated they exchanged poems and wrote letters, some of which remain.  On the death of Vittoria, in 1547, the light of life seemed to be extinguished for our sculptor.  It is said that he waited by her bed-side, and kissed her hand when she was dying.  The sonnets he afterwards composed show that his soul followed her to heaven.

Another friend whom Michael Angelo found in this last stage of life, and whom he loved with only less warmth than Vittoria, was a young Roman of perfect beauty and of winning manners.  Tommaso Cavalieri must be mentioned next to the Marchioness of Pescara as the being who bound this greatest soul a captive.[344] Both Cavalieri and Vittoria are said to have been painted by him, and these are the only two portraits he is reported to have executed.  It may here be remarked that nothing is more characteristic of his genius than the determination to see through nature, to pass beyond the actual to the abstract, and to use reality only as a stepping-stone to the ideal.  This artistic Platonism was the source both of his greatness and his mannerism.  As men choose to follow Blake or Ruskin, they may praise or blame him; yet, blame and praise pronounced on such a matter with regard to such a man are equally impertinent and insignificant.  It is enough for the critic to note with reverence that thus and thus the spirit that was in him worked and moved.

When we read the sonnets addressed to Vittoria Colonna and Cavalieri, we find something inexpressibly pathetic in this pure and fervent worship of beauty, when the artist with a soul still young had reached the limit of the years of man.  Here and there we trace in them an echo of his youth.  The Platonic dialogues he heard while yet a young man at the suppers of Lorenzo, reappear converted to the very substance of his thought and style.  At the same time Savonarola resumes ascendency over his mind; and when he turns to Florence, it is of Dante that he speaks.

At last the moment came when this strong solitary spirit, much suffering and much loving, had to render its account.  It appears from a letter written to Lionardo Buonarroti on February 15, 1564, that his old servant Antonio del Francese, the successor of Urbino in his household, together with Tommaso Cavalieri and Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra, attended him in his last illness.  On the 18th of that month, having bequeathed his soul to God, his body to the earth, and his worldly goods to his kinsfolk, praying them on their death-bed to think upon Christ’s passion, he breathed his last.  His corpse was transported to Florence, and buried in the church of S. Croce, with great pomp and honour, by the Duke, the city, and the Florentine Academy.