Part 19

Never does he write a word that can be referred to the difference of rank existing between them, to the splendour which had surrounded the cradle even of the daughter of the great citizen whom all Italy seems to have made the arbiter of her political combinations. Michel Angelo speaks only of the touching beauty of her who has subjugated him by "that serene grace, certain mark of the nobility and purity of a soul in perfect harmony with its Creator;" (_Sonnetto 3, et passim_ in the first part.) Never does he give us to understand that his love received the least encouragement. It has been thought, however, that Luigia had detected the attachment of the youth whose genius had as yet been attested by no great work, and that she rewarded it by the tenderest friendship. It is certain that, in a transport of gratitude, Angelo wrote the beautiful verse--

"Unico spirto, e da me solo inteso!"

(_Sonnetto_ 16.)

and that, in another _morceau_, he thanks "those beautiful eyes which lend him their sweet light, the genius that raises his own to heaven, the support that steadies his tottering steps,"

"Veggio co'bei vostri occhi un dolce lume." ...

--(_Sonnetto_ 12.)

But, checking himself immediately in these half-revelations, the poet, on the contrary, multiplies the complaints torn from him by the coldness and apparent indifference of her whose beauty he celebrates, whom he can render immortal. See more particularly Sonnet 21--

"Perchè d'ogni mia speme il verde è spento."

He exclaims even that he has rarely enjoyed the presence on which his happiness depends:--"You know neither custom nor opportunity have served my affection: it is very rarely that my eyes kindle themselves at the fire which burns in yours, guarded by a reserve to which desire scarcely dares to approach--

----'gli occhi vostri Circonscritti ov' appena il desir vola.'

A single look has made my destiny, and I have seen you, to say truly, but once."--(_Madrigale_ 5.)

It has been said that the "divine hand" of Michel Angelo painted the portrait of Luigia de' Medici. This is the name given, in reality, during the last century, to the head of a young female, "handsome rather than really beautiful," writes father Della Valle--a work in which Buonarotti's drawing was said to be recognised, with a softer and more lively colouring than obtains in the other pictures from his easel. Angelo's repugnance to paint portraits is one of the best established traits of his character. But he sculptured several--among those positively known are that of Julius II., lost in the chateau of Ferrara, and another of Gabriel Faërne, preserved in the Museum Capitolinum. We know, besides, that he consented to paint the portrait of the noble and witty Messer Tomasso de' Cavalieri, (see _Vasari_,) of the natural size; but that was a rare favour. "For," said he, "I abhor the obligation to copy that which, in nature, is not of infinite beauty." In another place, sonnet nineteen, addressing the object of his tenderness, Michel Angelo reminds her, that works of art are endowed, so to say, with eternal life and youth. "Perhaps," he adds, (_Sonnetto_ 19 ,) "I shall be able to prolong thy life and mine beyond the tomb, by employing, if thou wilt, colour, or marble, if thou preferest, to fix the lines of our features and the resemblance of our affection!"

Again he writes--"While I paint her features, why cannot I convey to her face the pallor which disfigures mine, and which comes from her cruelty to me?"--(_Madrigale_ 24.) But in some others of Angelo's poems, mention is made of a statue, or more probably of a bust, on which the young artist worked with an impassioned mixture of zeal and faint-heartedness.

"I fear," he says, "to draw from the marble, instead of her image, that of my features worn, and void of grace."--(_Madrigale 22._ ) And when he drew near the term of his labour--"Behold," he exclaims, "an animated stone, which, a thousand years hence, will seem to breathe! What, then, ought heaven to do for her, its own work, while the portrait only is mine; for her whom the whole world, and not myself alone, regard as a goddess rather than a mortal? Nevertheless the stone remains, while she is about to depart."--(_Madrigale 39._)

It was probably on this occasion that Michel Angelo wrote those charming, and mysterious verses, whose sense it is otherwise difficult to determine:-

"Qui risi e piansi, e con doglia infinita, Da questo sasso vidi far partita Colei ch 'a me mi tolse, e non mi volse." (_Sonnetto 29._)

The bust of Luigia de' Medici, if it really came from the hands of Angelo, has shared the fate of many other _chefs-d'oeuvres_, of which his contemporaries appear to have spoken with such great enthusiasm, only to increase our regret; while the most diligent researches have led to no recovery since their disappearance, caused by the disasters that visited Florence, and by the culpable negligence which, throughout the whole of Italy, followed the period of which Buonarotti was the principal ornament.

If it be to the affection of Luigia de' Medici that Angelo's nineteenth sonnet[55] really refers, we are led to the belief that this lofty soul, temperate in its own hopes, yet imbued with a generous ambition, had suffered itself, for a moment, to be carried away by the illusion of a permanent happiness; but a blow, as terrible as unforeseen, scattered these thoughts. The "Magnificent" Lorenzo, scarcely in his forty-second year, sunk at his seat of Careggi, under a short illness, but of which he foresaw the inevitable term with great resignation from the earliest moment. With Lorenzo de' Medici descended to the tomb all that was yet bright in the glory of his family--all that was real in the prosperity of Florence--all that was assured in the fortune, or attractive in the labours of the young Buonarotti, then only seventeen years of age.

Of the three sons left by Lorenzo, not one was capable of replacing him. The Cardinal Giovanni had a cultivated mind, engaging manners, and vast ambition; but, overwhelmed already, in spite of his youth,[56] with the weight of his benefices and ecclesiastical dignities, he pursued, at the Papal Court, the high fortune of which he then foresaw the accomplishment. Giuliano, born in 1478, was as yet little more than a child, in whom appeared the germ of amiable and even generous qualities, spoiled by pride, the hereditary vice of his house. With regard to Pietro, the new prince of the government--for he succeeded without opposition to the ill-defined and conventional, rather than regularly constituted authority which his ancestors and his father had left in his possession--he evinced only incapacity, presumption, improvidence, and foolish vanity. Aged twenty-one, he had already espoused Alfonsina Orsini, and drew a false security from an alliance in which he hoped for the support of one of the most warlike and powerful families of southern Italy. Michel Angelo felt the necessity of quitting the abode of the Medici, where Pietro, of too vulgar a mind to appreciate the artist's character, displayed a soul mean enough to make him feel the bitterness of protection. He returned to the paternal home; and although he continued to show a marked attachment for the legitimate interests of the Medici, and was even again sometimes employed--but not in important matters--by the younger members of the family, the separation was final, and the republican convictions of the young artist developed themselves, after that time, at full liberty. Angelo's poetical collection proves to us how cruelly his removal, from the house where Lorenzo had entertained him with the most agreeable hospitality, affected his heart. In future it must become a stranger, at least in looks and conversation, to her whom he loved with an inquiet fervour.

"How, separated from you, shall I ever have the power to guide my life, if I can not, at parting, implore your assistance?

* * * * *

Lest absence condemn my loyal devotion to forgetfulness, in remembrance of my long affliction, take, Signora, take in pledge a heart which hereafter belongs no more to me."--(_Madrigale 11._ )

And in another place:

"He who departs from you has no more hope of light: where you are not, there is no more heaven."--(_Madrigale 9._ )

The hour approached, however, when, according to the usage of the country, and the relations of her family, Luigia's lot should be decided. Various projects of alliance were discussed. The choice hesitated between two brothers, descended from Giovanni de' Medici, a branch from the dominant house, and of that which took the name of its individual ancestor, Lorenzo. The latter, brother of Cosmo, Pater Patriæ, had, by Ginevra Cavalcanti Piero Francesco, to whom his wife, Landomia Acciajuoli, brought two sons, Lorenzo and Giovanni. Both had arrived at the age of maturity, and were reckoned among the most considerable citizens of Florence. The marriage, however, did not take place. It is said that Luigia herself prevented its conclusion, until a misunderstanding, caused by some opposition of interests, had definitely separated Pietro from the two brothers, more especially from Giovanni, upon whom the reigning prince appears principally to have reckoned. Others, however, have supposed that the obstacles to the proposed union arose only on the part of Giovanni and his brother, who, in fact, followed the principal citizens in the opposition, then planned, against Pietro's unskilful administration. And last, it has been asserted, that Luigia was betrothed to Giovanni, but died before the time fixed for the marriage. Among these opinions, Litta appears to incline to the second; Roscoe adopts the last. However it may be, it is only certain that, alone of all Lorenzo's daughters, Luigia left the paternal house but to exchange it for the repose of the tomb.

According to the historians, she died a few days before the catastrophe which overturned Pietro's government, and condemned all the descendants of Cosmo l'Antico to an exile of sixteen years. It was consequently late in the autumn of 1494 that Luigia departed this life. Amid the passionate prejudices which prepared, and the convulsions which followed, the Florentine revolution, the extinction of the beauteous light excited no sensation.

Michel Angelo was not at that moment in Florence. Politiano's death seems to have broken the last ties that attached him to the obligations contracted in his early youth. His penetrating intelligence warned him of the coming fall of the Medici. He neither wished to renounce his ancient attachments, nor to give them the predominance over the duties of a citizen, to a free state, which it was of the highest importance to wean from a blind and dangerous course. In this painful alternative, Michel Angelo determined to withdraw for a time. He went first to Venice, and afterwards to Bologna, where the warm reception of the Aldrovandi kept him during an entire year, and even longer.

According to all appearance, on quitting Florence, Buonarotti was aware of Luigia's declining health; and his poetry shows us the courageous artist sinking under the burden of his melancholy presentiments:--

"Be sure, O eyes, that the time is past, that the hour approaches which will close the passage to your regards, even to your tears. Remain, in pity to me, remain open while this divine maiden deigns yet to dwell on this earth. But when the heaven shall open to receive these unique and pure beauties ..., when she shall ascend to the abode of glorified and happy souls, then close; I bid you farewell."--(_Madrigale 40._ )

It was while at Venice, at least so it is believed, that Michel Angelo learned the death of Luigia de' Medici. An expression of profound sadness and manly resignation pervades the poems which escaped from his oppressed soul, already familiarized with grief: he knew "that death and love are the two wings which bear man from earth to heaven."

... "chi ama, qual chi muore, Non ha da gire al ciel dal mondo altr'ale."

(Sonnetto: _Dall' aspra piaga._)

There are, in Angelo's collection, four compositions which may be regarded as dedicated to the memory of Luigia de Medici; first, the sonnet.--"Spirto ben nato," ... in which the poet deplores "the cruel law which has not spared tenderness, compassion, mercy--treasures so rare, united to so much of beauty and fidelity; then the Sonnets 27, 28, and 30, where Michel Angelo, as though emboldened by the irreparable calamity which had befallen him, raises the veil under which the circumstances and the illusions of his love had hitherto been shrouded, for every one, and almost for himself. Now he exclaims:--"Oh, fallacious hopes! where shall I now seek thee--liberated soul? Earth has received thy beauteous form, and Heaven thy holy thoughts!--(_Sonnetto 27._).... This _first love_, which fixed my wandering affections, now overwhelms my exhausted soul with an insupportable weight.--(_Sonnetto 28._) ... Yes, the brightness of the flame, which nourished while consuming my heart, is taken from me by heaven; but one teeming spark remains to me, and I would wish to be reduced to ashes only after shining in my turn." The sense of the latter triplet is very enigmatical; it is here interpreted in accordance with the known character of the poet, and the direction which he delayed not to give to his faculties. From this moment Angelo, devoted to the threefold worship of God, art, and his country, constantly refused to think of other ties. He had, he remarked, "espoused the affectionate fantasy which makes of Art a monarch, an idol; "my children," he added, "will be the works that I shall leave behind me." More than thirty years were to elapse, ere in this heart, yet youthful at the approach of age, another woman, and she the first of her era, (Vittoria Colonna,) occupied in part the place left vacant by Luigia de' Medici.

It is to these few imperfect indications, conjectures, and fugitive glimpses, to which the most perspicacious care has not always succeeded in giving a positive consistency, that all our knowledge is reduced of one of the purest and most amiable forms presented by the historical and poetical gallery of Florence, during what is named her _golden age_. But what destiny was more worthy than that of Luigia de' Medici to excite a generous envy? Orphan from her birth, her life experienced that alone which elevates and purifies: hope, grief, and love. No vulgar cares abased her thoughts; no bitter experience withered her heart; death, in compassion, spared her the spectacle of the reverses of her family, and participation in the guilty successes which followed those disasters. Delicate and stainless flower, she closed on the eve of the storm that would have bathed her in tears and blood! The only evidence remaining to us of her is poetry of a fame almost divine--of a purity almost religious; and this young maiden, of whom no mention has come down to us, in addressing herself to our imagination, borrows the accents of the most extraordinary genius possessed by a generation hitherto unequalled in achievements of the mind. The place of sepulture of Luigia de' Medici is unknown; her remains were most probably deposited, without monumental inscription, in the vaults of San Lorenzo, the _gentilizia_ church of her house. Among the epitaphs composed by Angelo, without attempting to indicate for whom, there is one whose application to Luigia de' Medici would be apt and touching. It may be thus translated:--"To earth the dust, to heaven the soul, have been returned by death. To him who yet loves me, dead, I have bequeathed the thought of my beauty and my glory, that he may perpetuate in marble the beautiful mask which I have left."

The editors of Michel Angelo have assumed that this admirable composition, as well as those which accompany it under the same title, were written for a certain Francesco Bracci. The expression "chi _morta_ ancor m' ama" is sufficient to refute this singular supposition.

We shall now attempt to give some idea of the poetical compositions from which we have not yet quoted, and which we conjecture to have been similarly inspired in Michel Angelo by his love for Luigia de' Medici. We incline to consider as belonging to the earliest poetic age of the great artist, to the epoch of the first and only real love experienced by him, all the pieces forming the first part of his work, commencing with the celebrated sonnet--

"Non ha l'ottimo artista," * * *

and ending with the thirtieth--

"Qual meraviglia è se vicino al fuoco." * * *

in addition, the sonnet, three _madrigali_, (pieces without division of stanzas or couplets,) and one _canzone_, which the editors have placed at the head of the collection, entitled by them--"Componimenti men gravi e giocosi." The commencement of a new era in Angelo's thoughts and poetic style appears to us marked by the composition of the two admirable pieces which he dedicated to the memory of Dante Alighieri:--

"Dal mondo scese ai ciechi abissi;" * * *

and

"Quanto dime si dee non si può dire."

Michel Angelo _petitioned_ but once: this was that Leo X. would grant the ashes of Dante to Florence, where the artist "offered to give a becoming burial to the divine poet, in an honourable place in the city."--(Condivi, _Vita di Michel Angelo_.)

Previously a stranger to the sentiments of love, the young artist at first wonders and fears at their violence:

"Who, then, has lifted me by main force above myself? How can it be that I am no longer my own? And what is the unknown power which, nearer then myself, influences me; which has more control over me; passes into my soul by the eyes; increases there without limit, and overflows my whole being?"--_Madrigali_, 3, 4.

Soon, however, he no longer doubts upon the character of this intoxication; he feels that he loves; he traces in sport the most graceful and animated picture of her who has captivated his heart! But this pure and ardent soul speedily becomes alarmed at the profound agitation in which it sees itself plunged; desires to go back to the cause, to recognise its origin, and measure its danger. Michel Angelo recognises, in conjunction with the danger, a sublime reward reserved for him who shall know how to merit it.

"The evil which I ought to shun, and the good to which I aspire, are united and hidden in thee, noble and divine beauty! * * * Love, beauty, fortune, or rigour of destiny, it is not you that I can reproach for my sufferings; for in her heart she bears at once compassion and death! Woe to me if my feeble genius succeed only, while consuming itself, in obtaining death from it!"[57]

Yes, dangerous and often fatal is that passion which seems to choose its favourite victims among hearts the most generous--intelligence the most ample:

"Very few are the men who raise themselves to the heaven; to him who lives in the fire of love, and drinks of its poison, (for to love is one of life's fatal conditions,) if grace transport him not towards supreme and incorruptible beauties--if all his desires learn not to direct themselves thither--Ah! what miseries overwhelm the condition of lover!"--(_Sonnet_ 10.)

But this declaration has not been applied to all passionate and deep affections:

"No, it is not always a mortal and impious fault to burn with an immense love for a perfect beauty, if this love afterwards leave the heart so softened that the arrows of divine beauty may penetrate it."

"Love wakens the soul, and lends it

wings for its sublime flight: often its ardour is the first step by which, discontented with earth, the soul remounts towards her Creator."--(_Sonnet_ 8.)

Transported with this thought, in which he feels the passion to which he has yielded at once transforming and tranquillising itself, Michel Angelo gives to it in his verses the most eloquent and most ingenious developments.

"No, it is not a mortal thing which my eyes perceived, when in them was reflected, for the first time, the light of thine; but in thy look, my soul, inquiet, because it mounts towards its object without repose, has conceived the hope of finding her peace."

"She ascends, stretching her wings towards the abode from whence she descended! The beauty which charms the eyes calls to her on her flight; but, finding her weak and fugitive, she passes onwards to the universal form, the divine archetype."

This expression, and many others dispersed throughout the collection, show that he had profited more than he cared to acknowledge by the discourses of the Platonic Academy.

"Yes, I perceive it; that which must die can offer no repose to the wise man. * * * That which kills the soul is not love; it is the unbridled disorder of the senses. Love can render our souls perfect here below, and yet more in heaven!"--(_Sonnet_ 2.)

And fruther on:

"From the stars most near to the empyrean, descends sometimes a brightness which attracts our desires towards them: it is that which is called love!"--(_Mad._ 8.)

But this celestial route demands extraordinary efforts on the part of him who aspires to travel it:

"How rash and how unworthy are the understandings, which bring down to the level of the senses this beauty whose approaches aid the true intelligence to remount to the skies. But feeble eyes cannot go from the mortal to the divine;[58] never will they raise themselves to that throne, where, without the grace from on high, it is a vain thought to think of rising."

Michel Angelo believed that he recognised these characteristics, as rare as sublime, in the love which pervaded his own heart.

"The life of my love is not the all in my heart. * * This affection turns to that point where no earthly weakness, no guilty thought, could exist."

"Love, when my soul left the presence of her Creator, made of her a pure eye, of thee a splendour, and my ardent desire finds it every hour in that which must, alas! one day die of thee."

"Like as heat and fire, so is the Beautiful inseparable from the Eternal. * * * I see Paradise in thy eyes, and so return there where I loved thee before this life,[59] I recur every hour to consume myself under thy looks."--(_Sonnet_ 6.)

He writes elsewhere, with a singular mixture of affectionate ardour and metaphysical boldness,--

"I know not if this is, in thee, the prolific light from its Supreme Author which my soul feels, or if from the mysterious treasures of her memory some other beauty, earlier perceived, shines with thy aspect in my heart."[60]

"Or if the brilliant ray of _thy former existence_ is reflected in my soul, leaving behind this kind of painful joy, which perhaps, at this moment, is the cause of the tears I shed;"

"But after all, that which I feel, and see, which guides me, is not with me, is not in me, * * sometimes I imagine that thou aidest me to distinguish it." * * * * (_Sonnet_ 7.)

It is easy to conjecture the danger of this inclination to metaphysical speculation for an ardent and subtile genius, which, even in its works of art, has left the proof of a constant disposition towards an obscure mysticism or a sombre austerity. Michel Angelo was enabled to avoid these two dangers, on one or the other of which he would have seen his genius wrecked, by the noble confidence which he ever maintained in "the two beacons of his navigation," tenderness of heart, and pure worship of beauty.

Thus, we shall see with what outpouring he proclaims the necessity, for the human soul, to attach itself strongly to some generous love: