But the conviction that all true perfection was centred only in
her, now faced his art and threw its terrible shadow over it.
"Michelangelo conceived love in the Platonic sense," wrote his friend
and biographer, Condivi; but this is only a part of the truth. In the
heart of Michelangelo there took place the tremendous reconciliation
between the Greek cult of beauty and the religion of the beyond; he
blended the finest blossom of Hellenism with the profoundest spirit of
Christianity; he sublimated Plato and Dante into a higher intuition; the
_eroico furore_ of his contemporary, Giordano, had found an embodiment.
The two great rays which illuminated his life: the perfect earthly
beauty to which destiny had called him, and the boundless religious
longing, the last fundamental force of his soul, converged in the
glorified woman. Vittoria appeared to him as the solution of the
world-discord, a solution which he had no right to expect, a miracle.
She was the greatest experience of his great life, an experience which
almost broke him.
Pages:
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360