It was an age full of horrors, when the noblest blood of illustrious
Hellenism rose up to face a background of battles, orgies, and pulpit
harangues. It was not only a period in which Lorenzo de' Medici, in
disguise and at the head of a bacchanalian troop tore through the
streets of Florence; Benvenuto Cellini stabbed his enemies at the
street corners; Pope Leo at a cardinal's supper presented a sacrifice
of doves to the Goddess of Love upon a white marble altar, and
offered to his favourite, Raphael, a cardinal's hat in payment of his
bills--but a time also when Savonarola preached the loftiest
asceticism; Rabelais, in the midst of his obscene rhapsodies, created
the wonderful idyl of l'Abbaye de Telesme; Fra Angelico on his knees
painted his picture of Christ, and the triumphal procession of an
emperor ended in a monastery!
A time full of enigmas! and among the many enigmas which lived in it,
was one of a sad, silent monk, of whom his cloister-brethren asserted
that he once had led a very dissolute life, but now was the most
absorbed _devote_.
And whilst King Francis, at variance with himself and the world, tried
to maintain, even to the end, the appearance of ostentatious levity,
and to win fresh renown as a patron of art, and to console himself for
his lost self-respect with the flatteries of the Duchess d'Etampes,
this monk devoted every single hour which remained to him, after the
barest satisfaction of his physical needs, and the fulfilment of
his religious duties, to one and the same work,--a sweet girl's
head,--which he, with his slender, effeminate, courtier's hand, formed
out of wax after a death mask, and ever again re-formed, and could
never finish to his own satisfaction. Discouraged, disappointed, he
destroyed each day the work of the preceding until finally, in the very
last year of his life he became more tranquil, and then under his
never-weary hands arose an exquisite maiden's head with a sweet,
thoughtful expression of face,--the little head bent forward as if
listening to a great joy, yet weighed down by the presentiment of a
terrible pain!
And he worked at the head on his knees, like Fra Angelico at his
ecstatic pictures of saints, and he coloured it most beautifully--but
still, not as if it were the head of a living maiden, but as of one who
had died in the freshness of youth. When he succeeded, he smiled and
closed his eyes for ever.