Why did he love the Marchioness of Pescara! For her beauty? No. For her wit? No. He loved her because he loved her: there is no more to be said. He asked nothing of her. She was the woman of his heart; to her he dedicated all the fibres of his being. He saw with her eyes, acted by her inspiration, “no longer conscious of aught but the memory of her.” And he was happy, and unhappy. What energy of expression there is in his sonnets when his vigour bursts out in passionate laments! But for the most part this vigour seems itself to yield to respect and enthusiasm. A genuine patrician, sweet and unaffected, the marchioness understood with wonderful intuition the man who was addressing her, and proved what in such a case a woman may do with a man. Condivi, who had seen her correspondence, described it as full of a grave and profoundly moving love; the fragments which have come down to us indicate a thousand little tendernesses: “Our friendship is stable, and our affection very sure; it is tied with a Christian knot.” And here is the address outside a letter: “To my more than magnificent and more than very dear Messer Michelangelo Buonarotti.” It was the same with their talks together; love only served to give their conversation an elevated tone. A certain François de Hollande, who happened one day to be in their company, has preserved some characteristic fragments of their conversation. The marchioness was formulating quite a scheme of splendid idealism: “Painting,” she said, “better than any other means, enables us to see the humility of the saints, the constancy of the martyrs, the purity of the virgins, the beauty of the angels, the love and charity with which the seraphim burn; it raises and transports mind and soul beyond the stars, and leads us to contemplate the eternal sovereignty of God.... If we desire to see for ourselves a man renowned for his deeds, painting shows us him to the life. It brings before our eyes the image of a beauty far removed from our experience, and Pliny held this to be a service of priceless value. The widow in her affliction finds solace in gazing every day upon her husband’s picture; young orphans owe to painting the happiness of recognising, when they have come to man’s estate, the features of a beloved father.” Is not this true love, to love the beautiful, the object of love to so many besides ourselves? Is not this the enchanting joy dreamed of by Anne of France, so sweet for a woman, and lifting a man “beyond the stars”? But this love is terribly individual and exclusive!