ng to decline, Vittoria Colonna came into his life, a semblance
and symbol of divine perfection. The love which took possession of him
transformed his whole life and lifted it into religion. In his
tempestuous soul this first love, coming so late in life, far exceeded
human limits; it became adoration and religious ecstasy. Michelangelo,
who could not tolerate in friendship any other relationship than that of
complete self-surrender and equality, threw himself into the very dust
before his love and debased himself almost to self-destruction.

His book of poems is filled with an unspeakable longing for the
perfection of earthly beauty and for eternity; and his beloved mistress
is the sole symbol of this metaphysical climax. Earthly beauty is but an
imperfect semblance of the divine beauty, the embodiment of which is his
love. We meet all the familiar motives; he is nothing before her; he is
unworthy of existence; he is like the moon receiving her light from the
sun; love has raised him from his base condition and is teaching him the
futility of all he had hitherto valued.

Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to think
That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven
Could ever be paid by work so frail as mine.

(_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.)

And of love he says:

From loftiest stars shoots down a radiance all their own,
Drawing the soul above,
And such, we say, is love.

(_Transl. by_ HARFORD.)

His poems, which would proclaim him a great poet if he were not an even
greater sculptor, breathe an emotion unsurpassed in its intensity. They
reveal to us in an almost unique manner the emotional process which
culminated in the deification of the beloved. If we did not know that
Vittoria Colonna was an historical individual, not much younger than
Michelangelo himself, and (if we are to credit her portrait) a very
plain woman with a large masculine nose, we might be tempted to believe
her to be a mythical personage like Beatrice Portinari, or Margaret in
_Faust_. But the conviction that all true perfection was centred only in
her, now faced his art and threw its terrible shadow over it.

"Michelangelo conceived love in the Platonic sense," wrote his friend
and biographer, Condivi; but this is only a part of the truth. In the
heart of Michelangelo there took place the tremendous reconciliation
between the Greek cult of beauty and the r