But to-day Vittoria Colonna is known best as the friend of Michelangelo, to whom she was a polar star, an inspiration, an everlasting joy. “Without wings, I fly with your wings; by your genius I am raised toward the skies,” he writes. “In your soul my thought is born; my words are in your mind.” It was the perfect sympathy of finely attuned spirits, the divine friendship that exists only between men and women who live at an altitude far above the things of sense. The age was full of talk about Platonic love. A few reached it, and they were of the spiritual elect; but they did not talk much about it. To this solitary artist, who dwelt on lonely heights, the divining and sympathetic spirit of a thoughtful woman was a revelation. He wrote sonnets to her, sometimes calm and philosophical, sometimes fiery and passionate. He also sent her poems and sketches for criticism. The tact with which she drew out the best in this colossal man is shown by a conversation in the softly lighted Chapel of San Silvestro, as recorded by an artist who was present. She had been listening to a private exposition of St. Paul, but when Michelangelo came in, she delicately turned the conversation upon the subject nearest his heart, on which it was not easy to lead him to talk. Both were apart from the spirit of an age that was fast tearing down the few ethical standards it had, and virtually taking for its motto the most dangerous of fallacies, “Art for art’s sake.” “True painting is only an image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony,” said the master. And the lady, in her turn, spoke, until the tears fell, of the divine message of art that “leads to piety, to glory, to greatness.” They discussed, too, her project of building a convent on the spot where Nero had watched the burning of Rome, that “virtuous women might efface the memory of so wicked a man.” No shadow ever rested on this friendship. Michelangelo was past sixty and Vittoria was not far from forty-seven when they met. There is no trace of tender sentiment in their brief correspondence, though a deep and abiding friendship is apparent. Once she playfully writes him to curtail his letters lest they interfere with his duties at St. Peter’s and keep her from the Chapel of St. Catherine, “so that one would fail in duty to the sisters of Christ and the other to his Vicar.” She said that those who knew only his works were ignorant of the best part of the man. When she lay dead before him he kissed her hand reverently, and went out in inconsolable grief to regret the rest of his life that he had not dared to leave a kiss on the pure forehead.