and also on
account of the fiendish traits by which it is characterized, will always
constitute one of the greatest psychologic problems in the history of
civilization.

All virtues, all crimes, all forces were set in motion by a feverish
yearning for immaterial pleasures, beauty, power, and immortality. The
Renaissance has been called an intellectual bacchanalia, and when we
examine the features of the bacchantes they become distorted like those
of the suitors in Homer, who anticipated their fall; for this society,
this Church, these cities and states--in fine, this culture in its
entirety--toppled over into the abyss which was yawning for it. The
reflection that men like Copernicus, Michael Angelo, and Bramante,
Alexander VI and Caesar Borgia could live in Rome at one and the same
time is well nigh overpowering.

Did Lucretia ever see the youthful artist, subsequently the friend of
the noble lady, Vittoria Colonna, whose portrait he painted? We know
not; but there is no reason to doubt that she did. The curiosity of the
artist and of the man would have induced Michael Angelo to endeavor to
gain a glimpse of the most charming woman in Rome. Although only a
beginner, he was already recognized as an artist of great talent. As he
had just been taken up by Gallo the Roman and Cardinal La Grolaye, it is
altogether probable that he would have been the subject also of
Lucretia's curiosity.

Affected by the recent tragedies in the house of Borgia--for example,
the murder of the Duke of Gandia--Michael Angelo was engaged upon the
great work which was the first to attract the attention of the city, the
Pieta, which Cardinal La Grolaye had commissioned him to paint. This
work he completed in 1499, about the time the great Bramante came to
Rome. The group should be studied with the epoch of the Borgias for
background; the Pieta rises supreme in ethical significance, and in the
moral darkness about her she seems a pure sacrificial fire lighted by a
great and earnest spirit in the dishonored realm of the Church. Lucretia
stood before the Pieta, and the masterpiece must have affected this
unhappy daughter of a sinful pope more powerfully than the words of her
confessor or than the admonitions of the abbesses of S. Sisto.

FOOTNOTES:

[69] Manuscript in the Vatican, No. 5205.

[70] Collocutores itinerantes Tuscus et Remus, Romae in Campo Florae,
1497.

[71] See the author's essay, Das Archiv der Notare des Capitols in Rom,