Chapter 26 II Confidence - 6

Thoughts of death surrounded him, getting darker day by day.He and Vasari said: "There is not a thought that does not cause death in my heart." Book of June 22, 1555. Death seemed to him the only happiness in life: "When my past reappears before my eyes--which I meet all the time--oh world of falsehoods, I recognize the falsities and faults of human beings. Believe your flattery, believe you He who has the illusory happiness of life is preparing his soul for pain and sorrow. He who has experienced it knows well that you often promise peace and welfare that you do not have and you will never have. Therefore the most unfortunate people are detained in the world. The longest person; the shorter the life, the easier it is to return to the kingdom of heaven..." Volume 109, thirty-two.

"It was long years that brought about the end of my life, O world, I know your joys late. You promise a peace that you do not have, you promise a rest that dies before birth... I know by experience , speaking from experience: the one who dies followed by life is the only lucky one who is favored by the kingdom of heaven." Poems Volume 109 Thirty-fourth. His nephew Leonardo celebrated the birth of his child, and Michelangelo severely reprimanded him: "This extravagance displeases me. One should not laugh when the whole world is crying. For one's Celebrating birth is the act of a man without sense. Reserve your joy and vent it at the death of a man who has lived fully." To Vasari in April 1554, it reads "A In April 554 I don't know what day it will be."

The following year, when his nephew's second child died shortly after birth, he wrote to congratulate him. Nature, which his passion and intellectual genius had neglected, became a comforter in his later years.Although he had spent many years in the country, he had always neglected nature.Landscape occupies very little place in his work; it has only a few brief indications, as in the Sistine frescoes.In this respect Michaelis and his contemporaries - Raphael, Titian, Perugino, Francia, Leonardo - are completely different.He despised the landscape paintings of Flemish artists, which were very fashionable then.In September, 1556, when Rome was threatened by the troops of the Archduke Albert of Spain, he fled the capital, passed through Spolete, and stayed there for five weeks.Among the oak and olive groves, he was intoxicated by the high and clear colors of autumn.He was recalled to Rome at the end of the 10th and left very shocked. —He wrote to Vasari: "Most of me has remained there; because only in the woods can true peace be found."

Returning to Rome, the eighty-two-year-old composes a poem of the pastoral, of the beauty of natural life, in which he accuses the city of deceit; this is his last poem, and it is full of youthful Vigorous. But in nature, as in art and love, he seeks God, and he draws nearer to him every day.He always has faith.Although he was not deceived in the slightest by priests, monks, and believers of both sexes, and sometimes ridiculed them, in 1548 Leonardo wanted to join Lorette's pilgrimage team, but Michelangelo stopped him and advised him to continue. It is good to use this money as a charity. "Because, give money to the priests, and God knows how they will use it!" (April 7, 1548) Piombo wanted to paint a monk in the monastery of St. Peter in Montorio, and Michelangelo thought this The monks are going to ruin everything: "The monks have lost such a vast world; so it is not surprising that they have lost such a small church." When Michelangelo was about to marry his nephew, a female believer Go to him, preach to him, and persuade him to marry a godly woman for Leonardo.Michelle wrote in the letter: "I replied to her, saying that she had better go weaving or spinning, and don't play tricks in front of people, and treat holy things as business." (July 1549 19) but he seems never to have had doubts in his faith.When his father and brothers were sick or dying, his first thought was always to have them take communion.It is mentioned in the letter to Bonarotto on November 23, 1516, for the illness of his father, and in January, 1548, to Leonardo on the death of his brother Giovan Simone.His faith in prayer was boundless; "he believed prayer above all medicine-stones"; to Leonardo, April 25, 1549.He ascribes to the efficacy of prayer all the good fortune that befell him, and all the evil that did not befall him.In solitude he had fanaticism of mystical adoration. One of these incidents is preserved for us by "chance": contemporary records describe him as a Sistine hero's fanatical countenance, alone, late at night, praying in his garden in Rome, suffering Eyes fixed on the nebulous sky.Fra Benedetto has well documented the incident.

It is not true that his faith is indifferent to the liturgy of the Virgin and Apostles.He devoted the last twenty years to the building of St. Peter the Apostle, and his last work (unfinished because of his death) was a statue of St. Peter, if he were a Protestant. It was nothing more than a joke.Nor should we forget that he made several pilgrimage; ——But it must also be said that it is the same as all great Christs. His life and death are with Christians forever.In 1512 he wrote to his father: "I lived a life of poverty with Christ"; when he was dying, he asked people to remind him of the sufferings of Christ.Since his friendship with Victoria—especially since her death—this belief has grown stronger and stronger.From then on, he devoted almost all his art to the passion and glory of praising Christ. His later sculptures, such as the cross, martyrdom, and crucifixion, were all the same.At the same time, his poems are also immersed in a mystical mood.He denied art and threw himself into the arms of the martyrs on the cross: "My life, on the treacherous sea, has been crossed by a broken boat to the other shore, where everyone will have the next sentence for the pious and the profane works. Judgment. Therefore, I have made art an idol, a princely ardent fantasy, and today I admit how much error it contains, and I clearly see that all people desire for his misery. Thoughts of love , thoughts of vain pleasures, what are they when I am near the death of both? Love, I am sure, the rest is only a threat. Neither painting nor sculpture can soothe my soul .It has turned to divine love, which awaits us on the cross with open arms!" Poems, vol. 147.But in this old heart, the purest flowers inspired by faith and pain, above all divine compassion.This man whom the enemy calls covetous, these rumors were spread by Laretin and Bandinelli.The source of this kind of lies is sometimes because Michelangelo is very serious about money matters.In fact, he is very careless; he does not keep accounts; he does not know how much his whole fortune is, and he gives away in abundance.His family has been using his money.To his friends and servants, he often gave such precious gifts as only the emperor can bestow.Most of his works were given away rather than sold; his work for St. Peter was entirely dutiful.No one condemned the love of money more severely than he, who wrote to his brother: "The love of money is a great sin." Vasari defended Mie, and gave his life to the works of friends or believers They recited it all together and said, "I don't understand how people can treat this person who randomly gives away works worth several thousand gold coins as a greedy person."In my life I have never ceased to do favors to the unfortunate poor, whether I know them or not.Not only to his old servant and to his father's servant,--to an old servant named Mona Margherita, whom he took in after his brother's death, and whose death caused him great grief, "as if dead his own sister"; letter to brother Giovan Simone, 1533; letter to Leonardo, November 1540.To a carpenter who built a pedestal for the Sistine Chapel, he helped pay for his daughter's marriage... Vasari records. —showing his touching sincerity, and his constant giving to the poor, especially the shy ones.He loves to make his nephews and nieces participate in his charity, to move them, and he makes them do it for him, but keeps him secret: for he wants his mercy to be kept secret.To Leonardo in 1547: "I think you are too inattentive to charity." August 1547: "You write to give this woman four ducats, for the love of God, This makes me happy." March 29, 1549: "Beware, you should give to those in need, and not for the love of God for the sake of friendship. Don't say money source." "He loved to do good in actuality, not in appearance," Condive recorded.With a delicate affection he thought especially of poor girls: he managed to secretly bestow on them a small dowry which would enable them to marry or enter a convent.He wrote to his nephew: "Try to get acquainted with a man in need, who has a daughter to marry or send to a seminary. (I'm talking about those who have no money and no face to tell.) Give people the money I send you, but in secret; and don't let yourself be deceived..." Letter to Leonardo, August 1547.

Furthermore, he wrote: "Tell me, do you know any other noble people who are in financial difficulties? Especially those with older daughters. I am glad to do my best for them. For the salvation of my soul." 1550 Letter to Leonardo, December 20.