The religious portion of the great artist's nature had scarcely shaped out for itself any more defined and substantial form of expression than a worship of the beautiful in spirit as well as in matter. By Vittoria he was made a devout Christian. The change is strongly marked in his poetry; and in several passages of the poems, four or five in number, addressed to her, he attributes it entirely to her influence.[202] Some silly stuff has been written by very silly writers, by way of imparting the "interesting" character of a _belle passion_, more or less platonic, to this friendship between the sexagenarian artist and the immaculate Colonna. No argument is necessary to indicate the utter absurdity of an idea which implies a thorough ignorance of the persons in question, of the circumstances of their friendship, and of all that remains on record of what passed between them. Mr. Harford, whose "Life of Michael Angelo" has been already quoted, was permitted, he says, to hear read the letters from Vittoria to her friend, which are preserved in that collection of papers and memorials of the great artist, which forms the most treasured possession of his descendants;[203] and he gives the following account of them:[204] "They are five in number; and there is a sixth, addressed by her to a friend, which relates to Michael Angelo. Two of these letters refer in very grateful terms to the fine drawings he had been making for her, and to which she alludes with admiration. Another glances with deep interest at the devout sentiments of a sonnet, which it appears he had sent for her perusal.... Another tells him in playful terms that his duties as architect of St. Peter's, and her own to the youthful inmates of the convent of St. Catherine at Viterbo, admit not of their frequently exchanging letters. This must have been written just a year before her death, which occurred in 1547. Michael Angelo became architect of St. Peter's in 1546. These letters are written with the most perfect ease, in a firm, strong hand; but there is not a syllable in any of them approaching to tenderness."