an abandoned corpse at the feet of his most holy Mother, if two angels did not support him in their arms.  She sits below the cross with a face full of tears and sorrow, lifting both her widespread arms to heaven, while on the stem of the tree above is written this legend, ’Non vi si pensa quanto sangue costa.’  The cross is of the same kind as that which was carried in procession by the White Friars at the time of the plague of 1348, and afterwards deposited in the Church of S. Croce at Florence.  He also made, for love of her, the design of a Jesus Christ upon the cross, not with the aspect of one dead, as is the common wont, but in a divine attitude, with face raised to the Father, seeming to exclaim, ‘Eli!  Eli!’ In this drawing the body does not appear to fall, like an abandoned corpse, but as though in life to writhe and quiver with the agony it feels.”

Of these two designs we have several more or less satisfactory mementoes.  The Pieta was engraved by Giulio Bonasoni and Tudius Bononiensis (date 1546), exactly as Condivi describes it.  The Crucifixion survives in a great number of pencil-drawings, together with one or two pictures painted by men like Venusti, and many early engravings of the drawings.  One sketch in the Taylor Museum at Oxford is generally supposed to represent the original designed for Vittoria.

II

What remains of the correspondence between Michelangelo and the Marchioness opens with a letter referring to their interchange of sonnets and drawings.  It is dated Rome, 1545.  Vittoria had evidently sent him poems, and he wishes to make her a return in kind:  “I desired, lady, before I accepted the things which your ladyship has often expressed the will to give me—­I desired to produce something for you with my own hand, in order to be as little as possible unworthy of this kindness.  I have now come to recognise that the grace of God is not to be bought, and that to keep it waiting is a grievous sin.  Therefore I acknowledge my error, and willingly accept your favours.  When I possess them, not indeed because I shall have them in my house, but for that I myself shall dwell in them, the place will seem to encircle me with Paradise.  For which felicity I shall remain ever more obliged to your ladyship than I am already, if that is possible.

“The bearer of this letter will be Urbino, who lives in my service.  Your ladyship may inform him when you would like me to come and see the head you promised to show me.”

This letter is written under the autograph copy of a sonnet which must have been sent with it, since it expresses the same thought in its opening quatrain.  My translation of the poem runs thus: 

  Seeking at least to be not all unfit
     For thy sublime and-boundless courtesy,
     My lowly thoughts at first were fain to try
     What they could yield for grace so infinite. 
  But now I know my unassisted wit