Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 373, November 1846Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 373, November 1846
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
But, checking himself immediately in these half-revelations, the poet,
on the contrary, multiplies the complaints torn from him by the coldness
and apparent indifference of her whose beauty he celebrates, whom he can
render immortal. See more particularly Sonnet 21--
"Perchè d'ogni mia speme il verde è spento."
He exclaims even that he has rarely enjoyed the presence on which his
happiness depends:--"You know neither custom nor opportunity have served
my affection: it is very rarely that my eyes kindle themselves at the
fire which burns in yours, guarded by a reserve to which desire scarcely
dares to approach--
----'gli occhi vostri
Circonscritti ov' appena il desir vola.'
A single look has made my destiny, and I have seen you, to say truly,
but once."--(_Madrigale_ 5.)
It has been said that the "divine hand" of Michel Angelo painted the
portrait of Luigia de' Medici. This is the name given, in reality,
during the last century, to the head of a young female, "handsome rather
than really beautiful," writes father Della Valle--a work in which
Buonarotti's drawing was said to be recognised, with a softer and more
lively colouring than obtains in the other pictures from his easel.
Angelo's repugnance to paint portraits is one of the best established
traits of his character. But he sculptured several--among those
positively known are that of Julius II., lost in the chateau of Ferrara,
and another of Gabriel Faërne, preserved in the Museum Capitolinum. We
know, besides, that he consented to paint the portrait of the noble and
witty Messer Tomasso de' Cavalieri, (see _Vasari_,) of the natural size;
but that was a rare favour. "For," said he, "I abhor the obligation to
copy that which, in nature, is not of infinite beauty." In another
place, sonnet nineteen, addressing the object of his tenderness, Michel
Angelo reminds her, that works of art are endowed, so to say, with
eternal life and youth. "Perhaps," he adds, (_Sonnetto_ 19 ,) "I shall
be able to prolong thy life and mine beyond the tomb, by employing, if
thou wilt, colour, or marble, if thou preferest, to fix the lines of our
features and the resemblance of our affection!"
Again he writes--"While I paint her features, why cannot I convey to her
face the pallor which disfigures mine, and which comes from her cruelty
to me?"--(_Madrigale_ 24.) But in some others of Angelo's poems, mention
is made of a statue, or more probably of a bust, on which the young
artist worked with an impassioned mixture of zeal and
faint-heartedness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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