lady, for this fault I cry,
And wiser still I grow remembering it.
Yea, will I see what folly 't were to think
That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven,
Could e'er be paid by work so frail as mine!
To nothingness my art and talent sink;
He fails who from his mental stores hath given
A thousandfold to match one gift divine."

As a gift to Vittoria Colonna, Michael Angelo designed an episode from
the Passion of our Lord, which Condivi describes as "a naked Christ at
the moment when, taken from the cross, our Lord would have fallen at the
feet of His most holy mother if two angels did not support Him in their
arms. She sits below the cross with a face full of tears and sorrow,
lifting both her widespread arms to heaven while on the stem of the tree
above is written this legend: '_Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa._'
The cross is of the same kind as that which was carried by the White
Friars at the time of the plague of 1348, and afterward deposited in the
Church of Santa Croce at Florence."

In presenting this cross to her he wrote:--

"Lady Marchioness, being myself in Rome, I thought it hardly
fitting to give the Crucified Christ to Messer Tommaso, and to make
him an intermediary between your ladyship and me, especially
because it has been my earnest wish to perform more for you than
for any one I ever knew upon the world. But absorbing occupations,
which still engage me, have prevented my informing your ladyship of
this. Moreover, knowing that you know love needs no taskmaster, and
that he who loves doth not sleep, I thought the less of using
go-betweens. And though I seemed to have forgotten, I was doing
what I did not talk about, in order to effect a thing that was not
looked for, my purpose has been spoiled. He sins who faith like
this so soon forgets."

[Illustration: VITTORIA COLONNA, GALLERIA BUONARROTI, FLORENCE
_Page 312_]

In reply Vittoria Colonna wrote:--

"Unique Master Angelo and my most singular friend: I have received
your letter and examined the crucifix which truly hath crucified in
my memory every other picture I ever saw. Nowhere could one find
another figure of our Lord so well executed, so living, and so
exquisitely finished. I cannot express in words how subtly and
marvellously it is designed. Wherefore I am resolved to take the
work as