symbol; she was the
perfection for which he had always striven--and he despaired of his art.

Thy beauty it befell in yonder spheres:
A symbol of salvation, bright'ning heaven
Th' Eternal Artist sent it down to earth;
If it diminish, years succeeding years,
My love will lend it but a greater worth.
Age cannot fade the beauty God has given.

And the conviction that only the idea of eternal beauty has any value,
and that all earthly things are as nothing before it, became stronger
and more tormenting. One instance from many:

As heat from fire, from loveliness divine
The mind that worships what recalls the sun,
From whence she sprang, can be divided never.

(_Transl._ by J.A. SYMONDS.)

In the same way he realised the futility of earthly love compared to
metaphysical love:

The one love soars, the other downward tends,
The soul lights this while that the senses stir.

And:

The highest beauty only I desire.

It is extraordinary, however, that even this ecstatic adorer vaguely
suspected that he himself might be the creator of the beauty which he
saw in his mistress. In a sonnet he asks Cupid whether her beauty
really exists, or whether it is a delusion of his senses, and he
receives the reply:

The beauty thou discernest all is hers;
But grows in radiance as it soars on high.

(J.A. SYMONDS.)

It is indescribably tragic to watch Michelangelo slowly despairing of
his own genius and art, and becoming more and more dominated by the
thought of the futility of all earthly things and all earthly beauty.
The religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, the _forma
universale_ became his last refuge. After Vittoria's death Michelangelo
said to Condivi: "I have only one regret and that is that I never kissed
Vittoria's brow or lips when she lay dying." More and more he brooded on
sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion. The beloved mistress had
become the sole herald of eternal truths. Melancholy and mourning took
possession of his soul with an iron grip; he could conceive of only one
happiness, death closely following on birth. But the thought of death
again was seized and symbolised with the old artistic passion:

And cleansed by fire, I shall live for ever.

And as the flames are soaring to the sky,
I, changed and purified, shall soar to heave