Michelangelo was also a capable poet and responded in kind to Colonna. However, his primary tools for expressing a lively faith to others was by means of drawing and sculpture. Several drawings were his reciprocating gift to Colonna, as well as some sonnets.
Colonna’s sonnets are explicitly christological, with particular emphasis on Christ crucified and the paschal mystery. Colonna’s sonnets to Michelangelo apply the salve of the benefits of the Crucified Christ to his struggles and doubts. In the sonnet below, Michelangelo expresses to Colonna his struggle to have a lively faith. He opens himself to her as a “blank page” for her to work upon, as his mentor and guide to faith in Christ.
Ora in su l’uno, ora in su l’altro piede
variando, cerco della mia salute.
Fra ‘l vitio e la virtute
l’alma confuse mi travaglia e stanca,
come chi ‘l ciel non vede,
che per ogni sentier si perde e manca.
Ond’io la carta bianca
convien ch’a pietà mostri,
che qual di me si voglia tal ne scriva:
ch’a ogni muover d’anca,
in fra’ grandi error nostril
mie picciol resto più quaggiù non viva;
e ‘l ver di sé mi priva,
nè so se minor grado in ciel si tiene
l’umil pechato che ‘l superchio bene.[1]
Now on the one foot and now on the other,
shifting back and forth, I search for my salvation.
Between virtue and vice,
my bewildered soul distresses and wearies me;
I’m like one who can’t see heaven,
who gets lost on every path and misses his goal.
So I must offer my blank page
to your mercy,
so that you may write what you wish of me:
that with every step,
among our grave mortal sins
the little that’s left me ceases to dwell down here;
I am deprived of truth,
nor do I know whether humbled sin
holds a lower rank in heaven than sheer good.[2]
Michelangelo has inscribed this sonnet to Colonna on a letter he has written to her in regard to the drawing of the Crucifixion he was preparing to gift to her. We will look at this drawing further below. Brundin makes the following comment on the poem:
The poem’s closing statement is surprisingly bold, despite being clothed in an expression of doubt, constituting an assertion of the fact that Christ’s sacrifice has bought pardon for us all, humble sinners included, so that ‘superchio bene’ can even be considered ‘superfluo’ and unnecessary for salvation. The mood is strongly evangelical, reflecting the sweet, forgiving Christ of evangelical texts such as the Beneficio di Cristo and the same intimately loving and understanding Christ to whom Colonna appeals in her own verses.[3]
The christology of Colonna is expressed throughout her sonnets to Michelangelo. It is this christology that is helping to form the artistic expression of Michelangelo and will be expressed in his gift of drawings to Colonna, the Crucifixion and the Pietà. At the centre is the crucified Christ and his benefits. The greatest benefit being expressed at the end of the sonnet in Johannine sacramental language of tasting the resurrection by sitting down at table with the Lord, being served by him; gifted his very own flesh and blood.
(2. S1:5 (1538), fol. 2r) [4]
Con la croce a gran passi ir vorrei dietro
Al Signor per angusto erto sentiero,
Sì ch’io in parte scorgessi il lume vero
Ch’altro che ’l senso aperse al fedel Pietro;E se tanta mercede or non impetro
Non è ch’ei non si mostri almo e sincero,
Ma comprender non so con l’occhio intero
Ogni umana speranza esser di vetro.Che s’io lo cor umil puro e mendico
Appresentassi a la divina mensa,
Ove con dolci e ordinate temperL’Angel di Dio, nostro fidato amico,
Se stesso in cibo per amor dispensa,
Ne sarei forse un dì sazia per sempre.
I long to stride behind my Lord
bearing his cross along the steep and narrow path,[5]
and thus make out in part the one true light,
which opened more than just the eyes of faithful Peter;[6]and if I am not now granted so great a reward
it is not because God is ungenerous or insincere,
but because I fail to understand completely
that all human hope is as fragile as glass.[7]If I were to present my humble heart
in purest supplication before the divine table,[8]
where with sweet and orderly constitutionthe angel of God, our trusted friend,
offers himself through his love to be our food,[9]
one day my appetite may perhaps be forever satiated.[10]
Brundin has the following comment on the sonnet:[11]
As in the first sonnet, the corporeal element of this poem is pronounced. The poet longs to drag herself bodily behind Christ and suffer with him in order to have her eyes opened to the true light. This element is then taken to far greater mystical heights in the final two tercets: where in the first sonnet the poet vows to use Christ’s body and blood as her poetic tools, here she imagines arriving at the divine table and being fed of his body directly to provide her spiritual sustenance, an image used by Dante in the Paradiso (and it should be remembered that Michelangelo himself was also intensely inspired by Dante, and knew his works intimately, thus the reference here would have been clear to him).[12]
The sixth sonnet gifted to Michelangelo by Colanna is a fine expression of the keygmatic dimension infusing her writings; it is dialogical in approach, inviting a response of faith to the approach of the merciful Christ opening his heart and arms to embrace, forgive and raise up the sinner, to restore us to the “eternal Father”. It serves as a hermeneutical key to interpreting the reciprocal gift of the drawing of the Crucifixion that Michelangelo makes to Colanna.
(6. S1: 83 (1539), fol. 4r)[13]
Se quanto è inferma e da sé vil con sano
Occhio mirasse l’uom nostra natura,
Ch’al crescer e scemar de la misura
Prescritta al corpo altri s’adopra invano,
De le bisogne sue l’ingegno umano
Al Padre eterno con la mente pura,
Che veste i gigli et degli augelli ha cura,
Porrebbe lieto ogni pensiero in mano.
Ché se tutto il ben vero ha in se raccolto
Lui brami e ami, e prenda solo a sdegno
Volger le luci altrove un gentil core;
Col lato aperto su dal santo legno
Ne chiama sempre, pieno il petto e ’l volto
D’infinita pieta, d’immenso amore.
If man were to look with a clear vision upon
the sickly and vile state of human nature,
instead of striving, as some do in vain, against
the waxing and waning of our prescribed time on earth,
the human spirit would, with a pure intention,
gratefully surrender every thought
of its own gain to our eternal Father,
who alone clothes the lilies and feeds the birds.[14]
If he has gathered within himself all truth and virtue,
then a gentle heart[15] must love him and burn for him alone,[16]
and disdain to direct its gaze elsewhere;
wounded in one side, he calls eternally
down from the holy cross, his breast and his face
charged with infinite pity and unending love.[17]
The drawing is held by the British museum.[18]
Brundin notes the following about the Crucifixion:
Michelangelo’s drawings for Colonna, in their choice of subject matter and mode of representation, closely correspond to the evangelically inspired spiritual impulses that inform Colonna’s writing. The Crucifixion, completed some time in 1540, depicts a Christus triumphans undefeated and imbued upon the cross with a new and divine life, suggesting that Michelangelo was looking back to traditions of early Christian art in order to rediscover the simplicity and directness of earlier worship.
Ascanio Condivi, in his description of the work in his 1553 biography of Michelangelo, emphasises Christ’s vital power and energy: “Out of love for her he also did a drawing of Jesus Christ on the cross, not in death as is commonly depicted, but in a divine pose with his face lifted up to the Father, as if he were saying: ‘Heli, heli’; and his body does not droop abandoned in death, but as if given life by its bitter torment it comes to and begins to writhe.”[19]
The strength and twisting, upward impulse of Christ’s body in the drawing seem intended to inspire not the pity and grief of medieval lamentations but the jubilant taking up of arms of the militant evangelical, who is inspired to join the battle for true faith by the example of Christ’s indefatigable courage.[20]
Michelangelo, Colonna Pietà, 1538-1544, black chalk on cardboard, 11.4 x 7.4 in, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA.
In Michelangelo’s Pietà drawing gifted to Colonna, the mother of Jesus has the same upward gaze, with arms lifted in prayer enlivened by faith, to the eternal Father. The drawing is a stark contrast to the Vatican Pietà sculpture of a young Michelangelo. The intervening 40 years has seen Michelangelo being formed, nurtured and enlivened in his faith. The drawing is accentuated by viewing through the lens of sonnet 42 of the gift manuscript of Colonna:
(42. S1:108 (1546), fol. 22r)[21]
Vergine e madre, il tuo figlio sul petto
Stringesti morto, ma il fido pensero
Scorgea la gloria e ’l bel trionfo altero
Ch’ei riportava d’ogni spirto eletto.
L’aspre sue piaghe e il dolce umile aspetto
T’accendeva il tormento acerbo e fero,
Poi la vittoria grande e l’onor vero
Portava a l’alma nuovo alto diletto.
E so che in quella umanità sentisti
Che Dio non la lasciava, anzi avea cura
Di ritornarla gloriosa e viva;
Ma perché vera madre il partoristi,
Credo che insino a la tua sepoltura
Di madre avesti il cor d’ogni ben priva.
Virgin and mother, you clasped your dead son
upon your breast, but in your faithful mind
you saw the glory and the holy victory
that he brought to every elected soul.
His bitter wounds and sweet humble countenance
increased your harsh and potent torment,
but the great triumph of true honor
brought to your soul a new and pure delight.
I know you saw that God
had not left his soul in that mortal body, but rather
would be certain to resurrect it into glorious life;
yet because you bore him as a human mother,
I believe that from that moment until death
your maternal heart was robbed of any joy.[22]
Brundin notes the following:
Michelangelo’s drawing of the Pietà for Colonna portrays the same refusal to accept defeat, this time in the upraised arms of the Virgin Mary who clasps Christ between her legs. Her gesture is ambiguous, intermingling both the self-abandonment of profound mourning and jubilation at the final realisation of mankind’s salvation, and her powerful position supporting the body of Christ indicates her role as mankind’s role model and intermediary, embodying the pure faith that we must seek to imitate.[23]
As Michelangelo is approaching death, having outlived Colonna by 17 years, he gifts a sonnet to Giorgio Vasari. Reflecting on the course of his life, Michelangelo makes a profession of lively faith: despite having vainly worshipped false gods in his earthly art, he now trusts in the loving, outstretched arms of the Crucified:
To Giorgio Vasari [1564]: ON THE BRINK OF DEATH[24]
Giunto è già ‘l corso della vita mia,
Con tempestoso mar per fragil barca,
Al comun porto, ov’ a render si varca
Conto e ragion d’ ogn’ opra Trista e pia.Onde l’affettuosa fantasia,
Che l’ arte mi fece idol’ e monarca,
Conosco or ben quant’ era d’ error carca,
E quel ch’ a mal suo grado ogn’ uom desia.Gli amorosi pensier, già vani e lieti,
Che fieno or, s’ a duo morte m’ avvicino?
D’ una so ‘l certo, e l’ altra mi minaccia.Nè pinger nè scolpir fia più che quieti
L’ anima volta a quell’ Amor divino
Ch’ aperse, a prender noi, in croce le braccia.
Now hath my life across a stormy sea
Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all
Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall
Of good and evil for eternity.Now know I well how that fond phantasy
Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall
Of earthly art, is vain; how criminal
Is that which all men seek unwillingly.Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed.
What are they when the double death is nigh?
The one I know for sure, the other dread.Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
My soul that turns to His great love on high,
Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.
- Brundin, Abigail. Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation: (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700), pp. 74-75. Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. ↑
- Ibid., footnote 29 on p. 101 ↑
- Brundin, Abigail. Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation: (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700) (p. 76). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. ↑
- Brundin, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 56, 58. ↑
- In Mt 16:24, Christ calls upon his followers to take up their crosses with him, a gesture clearly mirrored by the poet here. This second sonnet confirms the manuscript’s general Christocentric emphasis. The “narrow path” derives from Mt 7:14: “How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!” ↑
- See Mt 16:13–20, in which Christ asks his disciples to identify him, and Simon Peter alone answers, “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.” This knowledge, Christ tells Peter, has been granted by heaven, and in reward Peter will be given the keys to the kingdom of heaven, which is thus “opened” for him, as the poet states, along with his eyes. ↑
- The reference to the fragility of human hope can be read as a subtle reference to the Protestant doctrine of sola fide. Because salvation cannot be earned, the good Christian must let go of the hope of achieving it himself and trust implicitly in the judgment of God, a task that the poet admits to finding difficult to achieve. ↑
- The “divine table” derives from Lk 22:29–30: “And I dispose to you, as my father hath disposed to me, a kingdom; That you may eat and drink at my table, in my kingdom: and may sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Dante employs the same imagery in Paradiso 24. ↑
- Jn 6:54: “Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say unto you: except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” ↑
- Brundin, Sonnets for Michelangelo, pp. 57, 59. ↑
- Brundin, Abigail. Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation: (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700), pp. 84-85. Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. ↑
- Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, XXIV, 1–3. The relevant passage reads as follows: ‘O sodalizio eletto alla gran cena / del benedetto Agnello, il qual vi ciba / sì, che la vostra voglia è sempre piena’. The biblical source is John 6, in which Christ offers his flesh to the disciples as the bread of life.Brundin, Abigail. Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation: (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700) (p. 101). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. ↑
- Brundin, Sonnet to Michelangelo, pp. 60 – 61. ↑
- The references to the lilies and the birds are drawn once again from the New Testament, specifically Mt 6:28–29, “Consider the lilies of the field . . .” (which also occurs in Lk 12:27), and Mt 6:26, “Behold the fowls of the air . . .” (also in Lk 12:24). ↑
- The gentle heart, “cor gentil,” is frequently evoked in Stilnovist and Petrarchan poetry. Here the poet is clearly revising the tradition by alluding to a heart that loves only Christ, rather than an earthly muse. ↑
- In the writings of the Spanish mystic Juan de Valdés, faith is depicted as a fire that gives off heat, the good works that the true Christian will carry out despite himself and without any regard for “earning” salvation. See Juan de Valdés, Two Catechisms, 2d ed, trans. William B. and Carol D. Jones. Ed. José C. Nieto (Lawrence, KS: Coronado, 1993), 186–91. ↑
- The image of Christ calling down from the cross to his followers is one that is used to great effect in the Beneficio di Cristo. In that text, Christ calls out using the words of Mt 11:28, delivered by Christ after the commissioning of the disciples: “Come unto me, all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” See Mantova, Il Beneficio di Cristo, 19 and Abigail Brundin, “Vittoria Colonna and the Poetry of Reform,” Italian Studies 57 (2002): 61–74, at 64. Such imagery illustrates clearly the reformist notion of a loving and forgiving Christ with whom the Christian can develop an intimate relationship. It seems significant that Michelangelo employs similar imagery in his poetry, for example, in ‘Giunto è già ‘l corso della vita mia’ (‘The voyage of my life at last has reached’): ‘that divine love/ that opened his arms on the cross to take us in” (Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Poetry of Michelangelo, ed. and trans. James M. Saslow [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991], 476). Juan de Valdés (Alfabeto cristiano, ed. Benedetto Croce [Bari: Laterza, 1938], 20) and Bernardino Ochino (cited in Paolo Simoncelli, Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento: Questione religiosa e nicodemismo politico [Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1979], 94) both explore the notion of the peace that is conferred upon the human soul by the contemplation of Christ crucified. For a fuller discussion, see Rinaldina Russell, “L’ultima meditazione di Vittoria Colonna e l’ ‘Ecclesia Viterbiensis’,” La Parola del Testo: Semestrale di filologia e letteratura italiana e comparata dal medioevo al rinascimento 4 (2000): 151– 66. ↑
- The following link works as of 22/11/2018: www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?partid=1&assetid=102061001&objectid=716064 ↑
- Footnote 36, p. 101: ‘Fece anco per per amor di lei un disegno d’un Gesù Cristo in croce, non in sembianza di morto, come comunemente s’usa, ma in atto divino, col volto levato al Padre, e par che dica: “Heli, heli”; dove si vede quel corpo, non come morto abbandonato cascare, ma come vivo per l’acerbo supplizio risentirsi e scontorcersi’: Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo. La vita raccolta dal suo discepolo Ascanio Condivi, ed. by Paolo d’Ancona (Milan: L. F. Cogliati del Dr. Guido Martinelli, 1928), p. 188. ↑
- Brundin, Sonnet to Michelangelo, pp. 76-77. ↑
- Brundin, Sonnet to Michelangelo, pp. 88-91. ↑
- This sonnet deals with Virgin’s conflicting states of mind at moment of Christ’s death, her mother’s grief and her simultaneous thanksgiving at the salvation of humankind that he has enacted. This is a subject explored in some detail in other works by Colonna, most notably in her prose meditation, the Pianto della Marchesa di Pescara sopra la passione di Cristo. It is also a conflict reflected powerfully in Michelangelo’s gift drawing of the Pietà made for Colonna at around the same time as this manuscript gift, in 1540. See Nagel, “Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna”; and Brundin, “Vittoria Colonna and the Virgin Mary.” It is interesting to note that the sonnet closes with the insistence upon Mary’s humanity (line 12), rather than her divinity, in line with reformist rethinking of the role of the mother of Christ. ↑
- Brundin, Abigail. Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation: (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700), p. 77. Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. ↑
- Symonds, John Addington: The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti, London, Smith, Elder & Co (second edition) 1904, p. 73. ↑