I have elsewhere recorded my disagreement with Signer Guasti and Signer Gotti, and my reasons for thinking that Vaichi and Michelangelo the younger were right in assuming that the sonnets addressed to Tommaso de' Cavalieri (especially xxx, xxxi, lii) expressed the poet's admiration for masculine beauty.

The pun in the last line, Resto prigion d'un Cavalier armato, seems to me to decide the matter, though Signor Guasti and Signor Gotti both will have it that a woman must have been intended.

Gotti, following that indication, asserts that Michelangelo began his operations at Monte Altissimo in July 1517; but Milanesi afterwards changed his opinion, and assigned it to the year 1519.

I am of opinion that, unassisted by further evidence, the Ricordo, in spite of its date, will not bear out Gotti's view that Michelangelo sought Venice on a privy mission at the end of August 1529.

Signer Gotti quotes a Papal brief, issued on the 18th of September 1537, in which the history of the Tomb of Julius up to date is set forth, and Michelangelo's obligations toward the princes of Urbino are recited.

His biographer, Aurelio Gotti, moved by the same anxiety as Michelangelo the younger and Guasti, adopted the extraordinary theory that they were really directed to Vittoria Colonna, and were meant to be shown to her by the common friend of both, Cavalieri.

Gotti finds the language strained and unnatural.

Gotti published two plans of the cupola, which were made for him, he says, from accurate measurements of the model taken by Cavaliere Cesare Castelli, Lieut.-Col. of Engineers.

Two of her letters are printed by Gotti, and deserve to be studied for the power of their style and the elevation of their sentiments.

p. 333, and Gotti's Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti, vol.

[304] Gotti, pp.

" [309] Gotti, p. 42.

Aurelio Gotti's Vita di Michel Agnolo, and Anton Springer's Michael Agnolo in Rome, deserve to be consulted on this passage in the painter's biography.

See Gotti, p. 307, or Archivio Buonarroti, p. 535.

" See the letters of Cosimo de' Medici, Gotti, pp.

See also the letters to Cavalieri, quoted by Gotti, pp. 231, 232, 234.

It is surely strained criticism to conjecture, as Gotti has done, that these epistles were meant for Vittoria, though written to Cavalieri.

Taken together with the sonnets and the letter of Bartolommeo Angiolini (Gotti, p. 233), they seem to me to prove only Michael Angelo's warm love for this young man.

Nor do I think that the doubts expressed by Guasti about the intention of the sonnets, or Gotti's curious theory that the letters, though addressed to Cavalieri, were meant for Vittoria Colonna,[430] are much more honourable to Michael Angelo's reputation than the garbling process whereby the verses were rendered unintelligible in the edition of 1623.

See Gotti's Life, p. 48, and Giannotti's works (Firenze, Le Monnier, 1850), quoted by Gotti, pp. 249-257.

See Appendix to Gotti's Life, No. 25.

See Gotti's Life, p. 256.

See also Gotti, p. 249, for Michael Angelo's remarks upon the latter.

[430] Gotti's Life, pp.

Now, when Anina Gotti fell off the cliffs, it was a miracle she didn't break her neck; but, when she rolled over into the sea, it was a much greater she wasn't drowned!"