We realise the great difference between this worship and the worship of Dante.  The latter formed the consciousness of eternity, and became a poet, early in life.  He never doubted the profoundest truth, the metaphysical importance of his love; but in the case of Michelangelo, the love of an old man was the last event in a life consumed by restlessness.  The adoration of this mysogynist was almost an act of despair; not a sweet delivery from doubt, but a source of fresh shocks.  It problematised his whole previous existence and nullified the work of his life.  For before this new experience—­perfection, met in the flesh—­art broke down.  The greatest of sculptors never made an attempt to imprison the beauty which had appeared to his soul in marble or in canvas, deeply convinced that such an achievement was beyond the power of earthly endeavour.

Before Vittoria Michelangelo became deeply conscious of his inmost self; she gave direction to his longing and was its symbol; she was the perfection for which he had always striven—­and he despaired of his art.

     Thy beauty it befell in yonder spheres: 
     A symbol of salvation, bright’ning heaven
     Th’ Eternal Artist sent it down to earth;
     If it diminish, years succeeding years,
     My love will lend it but a greater worth. 
     Age cannot fade the beauty God has given.

And the conviction that only the idea of eternal beauty has any value, and that all earthly things are as nothing before it, became stronger and more tormenting.  One instance from many: 

As heat from fire, from loveliness divine
The mind that worships what recalls the sun,
From whence she sprang, can be divided never.

(Transl. by J.A.  SYMONDS.)

In the same way he realised the futility of earthly love compared to metaphysical love: 

The one love soars, the other downward tends,
The soul lights this while that the senses stir.

And: 

The highest beauty only I desire.

It is extraordinary, however, that even this ecstatic adorer vaguely suspected that he himself might be the creator of the beauty which he saw in his mistress.  In a sonnet he asks Cupid whether her beauty really exists, or whether it is a delusion of his senses, and he receives the reply: 

The beauty thou discernest all is hers;
But grows in radiance as it soars on high.

(J.A.  SYMONDS.)

It is indescribably tragic to watch Michelangelo slowly despairing of his own genius and art, and becoming more and more dominated by the thought of the futility of all earthly things and all earthly beauty.  The religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, the forma universale became his last refuge.  After Vittoria’s death Michelangelo said to Condivi:  “I have only one regret and that is that I never kissed Vittoria’s brow or lips when she lay dying.”  More and more he brooded on sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion.  The beloved mistress had become the sole herald of eternal truths.  Melancholy and mourning took possession of his soul with an iron grip; he could conceive of only one happiness, death closely following on birth.  But the thought of death again was seized and symbolised with the old artistic passion: