The study of literary history offers an extraordinary charm, when it
tends to raise the veil, frequently thrown by inattention and
forgetfulness, over noble and graceful forms, which deserved to excite
the interest, or even to receive the active thanks of posterity. At such
moments, we find the mysterious sources of inspiration admired, through
a long period, for their fulness and sincerity: we go back to the
forgotten or falsely interpreted causes of celebrated actions, of
classic writings, of resolutions, whose renown rang through many ages;
the vagueness of poetic pictures gives place to positive forms; and that
which appeared but a brilliant phantom is sometimes transformed into a
living reality.
Among the glorious titles which have borne the name of Michel Angelo
Buonarotti to so high a pitch of celebrity, the least popular is that
derived from the composition of his poetical works. The best judges,
however, regard these productions not only with profound esteem, but yet
more often with an ardent admiration. Michel Angelo lived during the
_golden age_ of the Lingua Toscana. Among the poets who filled the
interval between the publication of the _Orlando_ and that of the
_Aminta_--first, in order of date, of the _chefs-d'o[eu]vres_ of
Torquato--not one has raised himself above, nor, perhaps, to the level,
of Buonarotti. In the study of his writings, we recognise all the
essential characteristics of his genius, as revealed to the world in his
marbles, frescos, and the edifices erected by his hand. It is a copious
poetry--masculine and vigorous--fed with high thoughts--serious and
severe in the expression. Berni wrote truly of it to Fra Sebastiano--"Ei
dice cose: voi dite parole!" The poet exists always in entire possession
of himself: enthusiasm elevates, carries him away, but seduces him
never. We admire in his mind a constitution firm, healthful, and
fertile--a constant equilibrium of passion, will, and conception--often
of fervency--nowhere of delirium. The qualities necessary to the artist
do no harm to those which make the thinker and good citizen--every
where, as in the literary laws of ancient Greece, consonance,
_sophrosyne_, moderation. Michel Angelo, amid the passions and illusions
of his time, knew how to hold the helm of "that precious bark, which
singing sailed."[50] Sincere and humble Christian, with a leaning to the
austere, he succeeded in keeping himself free from all superstition;
declared republican, he avoided all popular fanaticism, and bore, even
during the siege of Florence, the _honourable_ hostility of the
Arrabiati; admirer of Savonarola, he combated the sickly exaggerations
of the _esprit piagnone_, and remained faithful to the worship of art;
and last, guest of Leo X., favourite sculptor of Julius II., he never
suffered himself to be seduced by the Pagan intoxication of the
Renaissance; from his early youth, the frame, in which he was destined
to form so many sublime conceptions, was irrevocably determined.
But, in the poetical works of Michel Angelo, as in his works of
sculpture and design, there is a side of grace and delicacy; the fire of
a masculine and profound tenderness circulates, so to speak, in all the
members of this marvellous body. Angelo's regularity of morals was never
altered by doubts; it acquired, even at an early period, the externals
of a rigid austerity. But had he, in his youthful years, experienced the
power of a real love? We have nothing to reply to those who, after an
attentive perusal of his writings, see in them nothing more than a
_jeu-d'esprit_ produced by a vain fantasy. But to those who think, with
us, that truth and force of expression suppose reality and depth of
sentiment--to those who discover the burning traces of a passion which
has conquered the heart, and imprinted a new direction on the thoughts
of the writer, in the precious metal of this classical versification,
we propose to follow us for a few moments. We shall seek whatever
historical vestiges have been left of the object of this affection, as
durable as sincere: we shall afterwards examine the manner in which
Michel Angelo has expressed it in his rhyme; what order of philosophical
and religious ideas developed themselves in his mind, in intimate
connexion with the ardour that penetrated his heart; whatever
influences, in short, which a love, whose object quitted this life so
early, appears to have exercised upon the whole duration of a career
prolonged, with so great _eclat_, for more than sixty years
afterwards.[51]
The smallest acquaintance with the character of Michel Angelo would lead
to the belief that, according to the expression of his epoch, he could
"have fixed his heart nowhere but in a lofty sphere. The conjectures
which have been formed bore reference to the house of the first citizen
of Florence and of Italy, at the period of Angelo's entrance on his
career, to the family of the grandson of Cosmo Pater Patriae," of the man
to whom the disinterested voice of foreigners and of posterity has
confirmed all that his contemporaries attributed to him, in the great
work of the Italian Renaissance--scientific, literary, artistic
even--namely, the chief and most brilliant honour.
Lorenzo the Magnificent, born in 1450, married Clarice Orsini in 1468.
There were born from this alliance, besides the children who died in the
cradle, three sons and four daughters. In 1492, Pietro succeeded to the
offices and dignity of his father, and lost them in 1494; Giovanni
mounted the Pontifical throne, and became the illustrious Leo X.;
Giuliano died Duke of Nemours and "_prince du gouvernement_" of
Florence. Of the four daughters, Maddalena became the wife of Francesco
Cybo, Count dell Anguillara, Lucrezia married Giacopo Salviati; and
Contessina, Piero Ridolfi. Luigia was the youngest, according to certain
authorities; Count Pompeo Litta, however, in his _Illustri Famiglie
Italiane_, places her in order of birth immediately after Maddalena.
Whichever it may be, Clarice Orsini dying in 1488, Lorenzo contracted no
other alliance, and, at the end of four years, followed his wife to the
tomb. We have no means of determining the age Luigia had reached at the
time of this melancholy event; but, as her marriage was then talked of,
we cannot give her less than from fifteen to sixteen years. Michel
Angelo, born the 6th March 1475,[52] wanted a month of his seventeenth
year when he lost the generous protector of his early youth.
It was in 1490 that Angelo first went to live in the house of the
Magnificent Lorenzo. Apprenticed, the 1st April 1488, to the "master of
painting," Domenico di Tommasso del Ghirlandajo, he astonished the grave
and learned artist by his rapid progress and fire of imagination.
Ghirlandajo, finding his disposition more decided for sculpture than for
the pencil, hastened to recommend him to Lorenzo, who, in his gardens,
situated near the convent of Saint Mark, was exerting himself to create
a school capable of restoring to Florence the glorious days of the
Ghiberti and the Donatello. It was no easy task for the prince of the
Florentine government to buy the child of genius from the timorous
avarice of his father, Lodovico Buonarotti.[53] At length, an office in
the financial administration of the state, conferred upon the father,
and a provision of five ducats monthly settled on the son, but of which
it was agreed that Lodovico should derive the profit, conquered the
scruples of the old citizen; and Michel Angelo, adopted as it were,
among the children of Lorenzo, was enabled, at his own pleasure, to
divide his hours between the practice of his favourite art, and the
lessons that Pietro, Giovanni, and Giuliano received at "the Platonic
Academy," of which the illustrious Politiano was director.
This society, of which Lorenzo was the soul as well as the founder,[54]
reckoned among its members certain individuals, whose names are still
held in respect by posterity; and many others who, less distinguished or
less fortunate, exercised, nevertheless, a useful influence on the
regeneration of good studies, and the diffusion of the knowledge that
may be derived from the works of antiquity. Among the former, the first
rank was unanimously given to Politiano, Pico della Mirandola,
Leon-Battista Alberti, and Marsilio Ficino. Lorenzo required that his
sons should be present at the learned discourses of the academy. Michel
Angelo listened to them in company with Pietro, and Cardinal Giovanni,
and received most flattering consideration from Politiano. The
subtilties of Grecian metaphysics, and the technical language of logic,
discouraged Buonarotti's clear and free understanding; but the sublimity
of conception, and majesty of expression of the Attic Bee, met with
marvellous affinities in the disposition of the young Florentine. These
studies developed in Michel Angelo, the poetical genius of which he has
left admirable proofs in his marbles, his cartoons, and his writings.
It was not only the affectionate interest of Lorenzo, the intimacy with
his sons, and the generous cares of Politiano, in the house of the
Medici, which aided the progress, and inflamed the energy of Michel
Angelo. At this same time, more profound lessons were repeated in an
austere pulpit, not far from the delicious gardens of Valfondo. Girolamo
Savonarola, the celebrated dominican of Saint Mark, was at the zenith of
his reputation; and his influence over the people of Florence, without
directly thwarting that of Lorenzo, began, nevertheless, to
counterbalance it. Michel Angelo, says the most exact of his
biographers, (Vasari, _Vite dei Pittori_,) read "with great veneration"
the works written by the enthusiastic and eloquent monk. From him he
learned to seek in the Holy Scriptures for the pure and direct source of
the highest inspiration; and, during his whole life, Buonarotti had
constantly in his hand the sacred volume, and the _Divina Comedia_ of
Dante, which he regarded as a commentary at once philosophical,
theological, and, above all, poetical upon the former. An ardent love of
art confined within due bounds the effect which Savonarola's
exhortations produced upon the true and serious soul of the young
sculptor; he neither followed the Dominican in his fanatical hostility
to the artistic and literary Renaissance, then displaying all the riches
of its spring, nor in the political aberrations which Savonarola, after
the death of Lorenzo, had the misfortune to display in the public
squares of Florence, and even in the heart of her councils.
In the midst of a life so full and already fruitful, which the approach
of a glory almost unequalled illuminated by a few precursive rays,
Michel Angelo appears to have opened his heart to the sentiment of a
love as true and elevated as the other emotions which swayed his soul,
and directed his faculties: Luigia de' Medici seems to have been its
object. It is, as already remarked, in the poetical compositions,
forming the first part of Angelo's collection, that we must endeavour to
find the imperishable memorials of this tenderness, to which the
illusions even of early youth appear to have never lent, for a single
moment, any hope of the union with which it might have been crowned.
Michel Angelo's timid pride combined with his respect and gratitude to
interdict to him all designation, even indirect, of the woman to whom
his affections were bound by a chain whose embrace death alone could
have relaxed. We shall see in the poetry of Buonarotti none of the
artifice made use of by Petrarch to render the name of _Laura_
intelligible, which Camoens afterwards employed to celebrate Donna
_Caterina_, and from which, still later, the unhappy Torquato regretted,
with much bitterness, to have wandered, when, in the intoxication of his
illusions, he traced the fatal name of _Eleonora_.
"Quando sara che d'_Eleonora mia_
Potro goder in libertade amore."
(_Verse stolen from Tasso and given to the Duke of Ferrara._)
It is but rarely, and with a light touch, that Angelo makes allusion to
the extreme youth of her whom he loves,--
----"il corpo umano
Mal segue poi ... d'un _angelletta_ il volo."--(_Sonnetto_ 15.)