Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/414

362 he says: "She felt the greatest affection for me and I not less for her. Death has robbed me of a dear friend." And he told Condivi how much he regretted that when he took leave of her as she lay dying, he had only kissed her hand and not her forehead. The religious feelings which his intercourse with her had deepened, found expression in those drawings of Crucified Christs and Pietàs which are still to be seen in many collections. The great picture which he had in his mind at the time was never painted, but his idea was partly realised in the unfinished marble Pietà behind the high altar in the Duomo of Florence, which he originally intended for his own tomb. And the pathetic sonnet which he sent to Vasari when he was past eighty is the last and most sublime expression of the tired soul turning back to God.

The correspondence of the aged master with his nephew Leonardo gives us many interesting details about his last years. His tone is often querulous and irritable, but he is full of concern for his nephew's happiness. He improved the old family house in the Via Ghibellina—now the Museo Buonarroti—and was very anxious that his race should not die out. Art he had always said was the only wife he needed, and the works he left behind him would be his children. "Woe to Ghiberti if he had not made the gates of San Giovanni. His children soon squandered his