Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

bed of death, almost at his last gasp, wrote thus: "I will not complain of the malignity of fortune, because I do not choose to speak of the ingratitude of men, who have succeeded in dragging me to the tomb of a mendicant." And even Dante, for many years, went begging from door to door, and procured, crust by crust, the bitter bread of his life; he who, with his superhuman verse, had aroused Italy from her slumbers, and breathed into her a new and nobler soul; he who, in his youth, had drawn his sword in the sacred cause of his country's liberty, thus wiping out the shame of that Flaccus, who, throwing down his shield, deserted the standard of the great Brutus, that he might be drunken with Falernium at the table of the bloody Augustus. He was the more unhappy, that his longing after the paternal roof was unspeakable; and he was not permitted to behold again the towers of his native city, nor to embrace the tombs of his ancestors; and the last beam of light which fell upon his eyes, was not a beam of his native sky. So that Michel Angelo, in one of the two superb sonnets which he consecrated to Dante's memory, said, in a most noble strain, flowing from the heart,

Questi discese ai regni del fallire

E l'alte porte il ciel non gli contese
i!
Cui la patria le sue negò d' aprire.
Ingrata patria, e della sua fortuna
A suo danno nutrice.

Dante cannot be relished without understanding the mysterious profundity of his thoughts; and it is the greatest glory of the father of Italian poetry, that the finest and the most daring spirits of his native land have all been his most enthusiastic admirers. Of these, one of the chiefest was, doubtless, the illustrious Alfieri, who caught from Alighieri the lofty and robust colour of his style, and dared to say, " that more is to be learnt from the faults of Dante than from the beauties of others." That Michel Angelo had penetrated more than any other man into the inward spirit of those things, which had, perhaps, as Dante himself expresses it, been inspired by heaven, all his compositions, both in poetry and the arts, shew. For what is Dante's Paradise, but a most sublime and true representation of Platonic love? Beatrice is the inimitable archetype of the most holy and the most perfect beauty, who, by the

Io non mi voglio dolere della malignità della fortuna per non dire della ingratitudine degli uomini, la quale ha più voluto aver la vittoria di condurmi alla sepoltura mendico.

great potency of her look and smile, (which, in human beauty, are the parts on which nature bestows her most perfect work,) leads her lover onwards from heaven to heaven, discloses to him the wonders and the mysteries of each, makes clear to him. the harmony of every blessed sphere; and the brightness of her eyes, and the celestial graces of her lips, increasing at every ascent, the enamoured poet is at length made capable of fixing his eyes on the centre of that eternal radiance in which is hidden "The love that moves the sun and all the stars.*" Buonarroti, if we mistake not, shadowed forth this most sublime meaning of Alighieri in the following sonnet, which is, perhaps, the most beautiful of all his poetical compositions:

"La forza d'un bel volto al ciel mi sprona
Che altro in terra non è che mi diletti
E vivo ascendo tra gli spirti eletti

Grazia che ad un nomo mortal raro si dona.
Sì ben col suo fattor l'opra consuona

[blocks in formation]

:

The fine arts and poetry have always been found in company, and have always nourished each other; " and painting especially," we give the words of Michel Angelo, "has the greatest resemblance to poetry; whence, of many, oftentimes the one has been called mute poetry, the other, speaking painting; and in which the close friendship we continually see painters and poets united, (like that between Giotto and Dante, or that between Petrarch and Simon of Siena,) is not a light proof of this same alliance or sisterhood of the arts; likewise, also, that many poets have been endowed with the art of painting, as, for example, Cratinus, a comic poet, and Dante himself, and some of our own times. And this companionship arises, not only from the need which the one often has of the other, but from the union which naturally subsists between them—that is, that each is an imitation of nature." It is no wonder, therefore, that Buonarroti, who was called the Dante

L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.

of painters, drew from poetry, and, indeed, from the Divina Commedia, some of his most sublime representations, whether in painting or in sculpture. Not to speak of the great picture of the Day of Judgment, in which his daring pencil has impressed upon the countenances the terrible colours of the poet, depicting those miserable and naked spirits, who, hurled by eternal justice on the accursed banks of Acheron,

"God and their parents blasphem'd,

The human kind, the place, the time, and seed
That did engender them and give them birth."*

We will only mention the two famous statues of the Sepulchre of Julius the Second, the one of which, representing a woman of perfect beauty, signifies contemplative life; and the other, who holds in one hand a mirror, and in the other a garland of flowers, is the symbol of active life; which idea, the great sculptor took from one of the most beautiful passages of the Purgatorio. But the work in which Michel Angelo truly shewed that his mind was, so to speak, an emanation from that of Dante, is the one which is so unlike the productions of all other painters, that we may truly say, he was inspired to execute it; viz. of our Lady in the Passion, looking at her son with dry eyes; the expression of which is far removed from all mourning or sorrow; thus imaging the true and philosophical meaning of that sublime prayer in the last canto of the Paradiso,

"O virgin mother, daughter of thy son!

Created beings all in lowliness

Surpassing, as in height above them all."+

The poems of this extraordinary genius, which have come down to us, (for many have unfortunately been lost,) are not all amatory; some may rather be called sacred, in which he seems to have endeavoured to follow in the steps of his loftyminded lady. In all, however, the pale light of sadness breaks through, and utter discontent with mortal things. And this not only in his poems, but even on the canvas and in marble. In the awful statue of Night is sculptured the deep quiet of one who sleeps, together with the grief and melancholy of one

Bestemmiando Dio e i lor parenti

L'umana specie, il luogo, il tempo, il seme,
Di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti.

+ Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio,

Umile ed alta più che creatura, &c.

who has just lost some beloved and honoured object, and the cause of this melancholy are set forth by Michel Angelo himself in four most beautiful lines, which he puts into the mouth of Night, in reply to other very beautiful lines, written in praise of this admirable statue :

"Piacemi il sonno, e più l' esser di sasso
Mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura
gran ventura

Non veder non sentire è

Però non mi svegliar, deh parla basso."

And, indeed, the times in which he wrote these verses were such as to wring the heart of any truly good citizen; for he saw his own Florence besieged by the wicked arms of the Medici (against which his genius, turned to the fortifying of the town, vainly strove,) and her liberties prostrate; so that he reproved his nephew Leonardo for having celebrated the birth of a son with excessive pomp, saying, " That a man ought not to smile, when all those around him weep; and that we ought not to show that joy when a child is born, which ought to be reserved for the death of one who has lived well."

Thus having toiled through the rugged road of life, and having, at length, reached that age in which the spirit, weary of the pains and of the pleasures of life, begins to hold willing converse with the grave; his lady had already abandoned this earth, and left him bereft of the light of her eyes, nor did aught remain to him, except to visit the places which had witnessed his joys or his sorrows, and to sit, solitary and thoughtful, on the stone which had been touched by her garments.

"Quì ritorno soventi, e quì m'assido
Nè per le pene men che pei contenti
Dov' io fui primo preso, onoro il loco.
De' passati miei casi or piango or rido,

Come, amor, tu mi mostri e mi rammenti
Dolce o crudo il principio del mio foco."

At length he was visited by one of those bitter calamities which affectionate spirits, however lofty they may be, can least resist. Buonarroti had neither wife nor children, so that, with great love and watchfulness, he had brought up a young man named Urbino, who now fell sick and died; and so tenderly did he love him, that, aged as he was, he nursed him through his whole illness, and slept continually in his clothes, that he might be ready to wait upon him. When, therefore, after Urbino's death, Vasari wrote to comfort him, Buonarroti replied in these moving words :

VOL. XIII. PART II.

[ocr errors]

T

"Messer Giorgio, my dear Friend,

"I can ill write: yet in answer to your letter I will say somewhat. You know how that Urbino is dead, the which is at once an exceeding grace of God shewn to me, and, withal, a most heavy loss and infinite grief. The grace is this-that whereas, whilst alive, he was the stay of my life, dying, he has taught me how to die, not with any lothness, but rather with much desire of death. I have had him with me for twenty-six years, and I ever found him of a most rare and faithful nature; and now that I had made him rich, and that I looked to him as the staff and solace of my age, he has departed from me, and left me nothing, save the hope of seeing him again in Paradise. And of this, God hath showed me a clear sign in his most happy death, for much more did it grieve him to leave me in this traitorous world with so many and heavy troubles, than to die; and yet he hath hardly left me, for the better part of me is gone with him, nor doth any thing remain, but my exceeding misery."

And thus death was now become his sole desire, nor did any thought arise in his mind, of which that was not a part; and his soul, anxiously soaring towards that heaven from which it descended, could no longer be appeased by the wonted seductions of painting and sculpture.

"Nè pinger nè scolpir fia più che queeti

L'anima volta a quel amor divino

Che aperse a prender noi in croce le braccia."

He had now reached his eightieth year in Rome, and would have wished to return to Florence, and to die among his own people. But his affection towards the great fabric of St. Peter's kept him chained to that place; for he saw clearly that the changing will of the powerful, and the malignity of the presumptuous, and the snarling of the envious, who ill endured his greatness, threatened the future existence of this stupendous structure, which was then slowly rising from its vast foundations; wherefore, to those who persuaded him to return to Florence, he constantly replied thus: "Know, of a certain, that I would fain lay these feeble bones by the side of my father's, as you pray me to do; but, by going hence, I should be the cause of the ruin of the building of St. Peter's, which would be a great shame, and a most especial sin." Religion, which had always been his companion and gentle comforter, not only often inspired him with his most divine conceptions, but assisted him to overcome the obstacles which blind ignorance, and envy, and malignity, opposed to the perfecting of the monuments which he wished to raise to the immortal glory of God. At eighty years of age and upwards, the sacred fire of poetry was not extinct in his breast, but still burned therein with a most bright and beautiful flame. We would fain here

« EdellinenJatka »