Perhaps Vittoria also inspired the two sublime drawings of the “Resurrection” which are in the Louvre and the British Museum. In that of the Louvre a herculean Christ has furiously thrown back the heavy stone of His tomb. One of His legs is still in the grave, and with raised head and arms he is springing—in an outburst of passion which recalls one of the “Captives” of the Louvre—towards heaven. To return to God! To leave the world, these men, at whom He does not even look, and who crawl at His feet, stupid and terrified! At last, at last to tear oneself away from this life’s vexations! … The drawing in the British Museum possesses greater serenity. Christ has issued from the tomb, and His vigorous body floats in the air, which seems to caress it. With arms crossed, head thrown back and eyes closed in ecstasy, He rises in the light like a ray of the sun.
Thus did Vittoria reopen the world of faith to the art of Michael Angelo. She did still more—she gave free scope to that poetic genius which his love for Cavalieri had awakened.[1] Not only did she enlighten him as
- ↑ It was then that Michael Angelo thought of publishing a collection of his poems. His friends Luigi del Riccio and Donato Giannotti gave him the idea. Up to then he had not attached much importance to what he wrote. Giannotti occupied himself over this publication in 1545. Michael Angelo made a selection of his poems and his friends recopied them. But the death of Riccio in 1546 and that of Vittoria in 1547 diverted him from the idea, which now appeared to him to be a final piece of vanity. His poems were not published during his lifetime, with the exception of a small number, which appeared in the works of Varchi, Giannotti, Vasari, and others. But they passed from hand to hand. The greatest composers—Archadelt, Tromboncino, Consilium, and Costanzo Festa—set them to music. Varchi read and commented upon one of the sonnets in 1546 before the Academy of Florence. He found in it “antique purity and the fulness of the thoughts of Dante.”Michael Angelo was nourished on Dante. “No one understood
