iunti, 1564. Varchi wrote the "Orazione
funerale."

[127] Letter of October, 1509.

[128] Letter of March, 1548, to Lionardo Buonarroto.

[129] Condivi.

[130] See the _Lezione_ of Benedetto Varchi on the sonnet of
Michelangelo, "Non ha l'ottimo Artista...."

[131]

I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes
When perfect peace in thy fair eyes I found;
But far within, where all is holy ground,
My soul felt love, her comrade of the skies;
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Else should we still to transient love be bound;
But, finding these so false, we pass beyond,
Unto the Love of loves that never dies.
(Translation of J. A. Symonds.)

[132] "_Tutti i componimenti di lui pieni d'amore Socratico, e di
concetti Platonici._"

[133] Xenophon, Memor, Vol. III, p. 10.

[134] He adds: "He who wrote that painting was nobler than sculpture, if
that idea is a sample of his intelligence, then my servant knows more
than he does."

This seems to be directed at Lionardo. See the first chapter of
"Trattato della Pittura."

[135]

The best of artists hath no thought to show
Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include; to break the marble spell
Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
(Translation of J. A. Symonds.)

[136] If it is true that Michelangelo attacked the marble with the
greatest fury, it was only after he had prepared his drawings and his
models with the most minute care. Cellini in his "Trattati dell'
oreficeria" (Florence, 1557) says that for the statues in the Sacristy
of S. Lorenzo he saw him first make models of the same height as the
statue was to be and then draw with charcoal on the marble the general
appearance of his figure. Vasari says almost the same thing in regard to
the four statues of Captives sketched in the block and not yet cut from
it.

[137] The science of design or drawing, said Michelangelo, according to
the Dialogues of Francis of Holland, is the source and the essence of
painting, of sculpture, of architecture and of all kinds of
representation as well as the soul of all the sciences (Third Part of
the "Dialogues sur la Peinture dans la Ville de Rome"). "Sculpture,"
says Francis of Holland, "is clearly bound to drawing; it comes out of
it and at bottom is nothing more than the drawing itself. The great
draughtsman, Michelangelo, said to me