Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/145

 every wind that blows, so much so that for many days afterwards I should not know in what world I was moving."

If he were thus overcome by beauty of thoughts, words or sounds, how much more so must he have been by bodily beauty!

To this great creator of admirable forms, and who at the same time was a great believer, a beautiful body was divine—a beautiful body was God Himself appearing under the veil of the flesh. Like Moses before the Burning Bush, he trembled on approaching. The object of his adoration was to him truly an idol, as he himself said. He threw himself at its feet; and this voluntary humiliation of a great man, which was painful to the noble Cavalieri himself, was all the more strange because the idol with the beautiful face was often a vulgar and despicable being like Febo di Poggio. But Michael Angelo saw nothing of this … Did he really see nothing? He had no desire to see anything; he was completing in his heart the statue he had rough-hewn.

The earliest of these ideal lovers, of these living dreams, was Gherardo Perini, whose acquainance with the sculptor dates from about 1522.