"But she often set off from Viterbo and came to Rome, specially to see Michael Angelo. He was enamoured of her divine spirit, and she amply returned his admiration. He received from her and kept many letters, full of a chaste and very gentle love, and such as that noble soul could write."[1]
"At her request," adds Condivi, "he executed a nude Christ, who, detached from the Cross, would have fallen like a dead body at the feet of his Holy Mother had not two angels supported Him by the arms. Mary is seated under the Cross; her face is marked by tears and suffering; and with open arms she raises her hands heavenwards. On the wood of the Cross we read the words: 'Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa.'[2] For love of Vittoria, Michael Angelo also drew a Christ on the Cross, but not dead, as He is usually represented, but living, with His face turned towards His Father, and crying: 'Eli! Eli!' The body does not willingly abandon itself; it twists and contracts in the last sufferings of death."
- ↑ Condivi. These are not, truth to tell, the letters of Vittoria which have been preserved, and which are doubtless noble but a little cold. We must remember that of the whole of this correspondence we possess but five letters written from Orvieto and Viterbo, and only three from Rome, between 1539 and 1541.
- ↑ This drawing, as M. A. Grenier has shown, inspired the various "Pietà" which Michael Angelo carved later: that of Florence (1550-1555), the Rondanini "Pietà" (1563), and the more recently discovered one of Palestrina (between 1555 and 1560). Connected also with this conception are some drawings in the library at Oxford and the "Entombment" of the National Gallery.See A. Grenier's "Une Pietà inconnue de Michel-Ange à Palestrina," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, March 1907. Reproductions of the various "Pietà" will be found in this article.
