Such was the indifference with which Michael Angelo, when near the end of his days, regarded his works.
Since the death of Vittoria no great affection brightened up his life. Love had fled.
Fiamma d'amor nel cor non m' è rimasa;
Se 'l maggior caccia sempre il minor duolo,
Di penne l' aim' ho ben tarpat' et rasa.[1]
He had lost his brothers and his best friends. Luigi del Riccio had died in 1546, Sebastiano del Piombo in 1547, his brother Giovan Simone in 1548. He had never been in very close relations with his youngest brother, Sigismondo, who died in 1555. His familiar and crabbed affection he had centred on his orphan niece and nephew, the children of Buonarroto, the brother whom he loved the most. The girl's name was Cecca (Francesca), the boy's Leonardo. Michael Angelo placed Cecca in a convent, gave her a trousseau, paid for her board and lodging, and, when she married,[2] gave her one of his possessions as a dowry.[3] He personally looked after the education of Leonardo, who was nine years of age at the death of his father. A long correspondence, which often recalls that
- ↑ "The flame of love remains not in my heart. The worst evil (old age) always drives away the lesser. I have clipped the wings of the soul" ("Poems," lxxxi, about 1550). However, a few poems, which appear to date from his extreme old age, show that the flame had not died down so low as he thought, and that "old burnt wood," as he expressed it, sometimes caught fire again. (See Appendix, xxi. "Poems," cx. and cxix.)
- ↑ She married Michele di Niccolo Guicciardini in 1538.
- ↑ A property at Pozzolatico.
Angelo's permission to repair it. Michael Angelo consented, and Calcagni put the group together again. But he died and the work remained unfinished.
