Michael Angelo; Fra Sebastiano Del Piombo

MICHAEL ANGELO, not turning round.Who is it?

Wait, for I am out of breathIn climbing your steep stairs.

Ah, my Bastiano,If you went up and down as many stairsAs I do still, and climbed as many ladders,It would be better for you. Pray sit down.Your idle and luxurious way of livingWill one day take your breath away entirely.And you will never find it.

Well, what then?That would be better, in my apprehension,Than falling from a scaffold.

That was nothingIt did not kill me; only lamed me slightly;I am quite well again.

But why, dear Master,Why do you live so high up in your house,When you could live below and have a garden,As I do?

From this window I can lookOn many gardens; o'er the city roofsSee the Campagna and the Alban hills;And all are mine.

Can you sit down in them,On summer afternoons, and play the luteOr sing, or sleep the time away?

I neverSleep in the day-time; scarcely sleep at night.I have not time. Did you meet BenvenutoAs you came up the stair?

He ran against meOn the first landing, going at full speed;Dressed like the Spanish captain in a play,With his long rapier and his short red cloak.Why hurry through the world at such a pace?Life will not be too long.

It is his nature,--A restless spirit, that consumes itselfWith useless agitations. He o'erleapsThe goal he aims at. Patience is a plantThat grows not in all gardens. You are madeOf quite another clay.

And thank God for it.And now, being somewhat rested, I will tell youWhy I have climbed these formidable stairs.I have a friend, Francesco Berni, here,A very charming poet and companion,Who greatly honors you and all your doings,And you must sup with us.

Not I, indeed.I know too well what artists' suppers are.You must excuse me.

I will not excuse you.You need repose from your incessant work;Some recreation, some bright hours of pleasure.

To me, what you and other men call pleasureIs only pain. Work is my recreation,The play of faculty; a delight like thatWhich a bird feels in flying, or a fishIn darting through the water,--nothing more.I cannot go. The Sibylline leaves of lifeGrow precious now, when only few remain.I cannot go.

Berni, perhaps, will readA canto of the Orlando Inamorato.

That is another reason for not going.If aught is tedious and intolerable,It is a poet reading his own verses,

Berni thinks somewhat better of your versesThan you of his. He says that you speak things,And other poets words. So, pray you, come.

If it were now the Improvisatore,Luigia Pulci, whom I used to hearWith Benvenuto, in the streets of Florence,I might be tempted. I was younger thenAnd singing in the open air was pleasant.

There is a Frenchman here, named Rabelais,Once a Franciscan friar, and now a doctor,And secretary to the embassy:A learned man, who speaks all languages,And wittiest of men; who wrote a bookOf the Adventures of Gargantua,So full of strange conceits one roars with laughterAt every page; a jovial boon-companionAnd lover of much wine. He too is coming.

Then you will not want me, who am not witty,And have no sense of mirth, and love not wine.I should be like a dead man at your banquet.Why should I seek this Frenchman, Rabelais?And wherefore go to hear Francesco Berni,When I have Dante Alighieri here.The greatest of all poets?

And the dullest;And only to be read in episodes.His day is past. Petrarca is our poet.

Petrarca is for women and for loversAnd for those soft Abati, who delightTo wander down long garden walks in summer,Tinkling their little sonnets all day long,As lap dogs do their bells.

I love Petrarca.How sweetly of his absent love he singsWhen journeying in the forest of Ardennes!"I seem to hear her, hearing the boughs and breezesAnd leaves and birds lamenting, and the watersMurmuring flee along the verdant herbage."

Enough. It is all seeming, and no being.If you would know how a man speaks in earnest,Read here this passage, where St. Peter thundersIn Paradise against degenerate PopesAnd the corruptions of the church, till allThe heaven about him blushes like a sunset.I beg you to take note of what he saysAbout the Papal seals, for that concernsYour office and yourself.

FRA SEBASTIANO, reading.Is this the passage?"Nor I be made the figure of a sealTo privileges venal and mendacious,Whereat I often redden and flash with fire!"--That is not poetry.

What is it, then?

Vituperation; gall that might have spiritedFrom Aretino's pen.

Name not that man!A profligate, whom your Francesco BerniDescribes as having one foot in the brothelAnd the other in the hospital; who livesBy flattering or maligning, as best servesHis purpose at the time. He writes to meWith easy arrogance of my Last Judgment,In such familiar tone that one would sayThe great event already had occurred,And he was present, and from observationInformed me how the picture should be painted.

What unassuming, unobtrusive menThese critics are! Now, to have AretinoAiming his shafts at you brings back to mindThe Gascon archers in the square of Milan,Shooting their arrows at Duke Sforza's statue,By Leonardo, and the foolish rabbleOf envious Florentines, that at your DavidThrew stones at night. But Aretino praised you.

His praises were ironical. He knowsHow to use words as weapons, and to woundWhile seeming to defend. But look, Bastiano,See how the setting sun lights up that picture!

My portrait of Vittoria Colonna.

It makes her look as she will look hereafter,When she becomes a saint!

A noble woman!

Ah, these old hands can fashion fairer shapesIn marble, and can paint diviner pictures,Since I have known her.

And you like this picture.And yet it is in oil; which you detest.

When that barbarian Jan Van Eyck discoveredThe use of oil in painting, he degradedHis art into a handicraft, and made itSign-painting, merely, for a country innOr wayside wine-shop. 'T is an art for women,Or for such leisurely and idle peopleAs you, Fra Bastiano. Nature paints notIn oils, but frescoes the great dome of heavenWith sunset; and the lovely forms of cloudsAnd flying vapors.

And how soon they fade!Behold yon line of roofs and belfries paintedUpon the golden background of the sky,Like a Byzantine picture, or a portraitOf Cimabue. See how hard the outline,Sharp-cut and clear, not rounded into shadow.Yet that is nature.

She is always right.The picture that approaches sculpture nearestIs the best picture.

Leonardo thinksThe open air too bright. We ought to paintAs if the sun were shining through a mist.'T is easier done in oil than in distemper.

Do not revive again the old dispute;I have an excellent memory for forgetting,But I still feel the hurt. Wounds are not healedBy the unbending of the bow that made them.

So say Petrarca and the ancient proverb.

But that is past. Now I am angry with you,Not that you paint in oils, but that grown fatAnd indolent, you do not paint at all.

Why should I paint? Why should I toil and sweat,Who now am rich enough to live at ease,And take my pleasure?

When Pope Leo died,He who had been so lavish of the wealthHis predecessors left him, who receivedA basket of gold-pieces every morning,Which every night was empty, left behindHardly enough to pay his funeral.

I care for banquets, not for funerals,As did his Holiness. I have forbiddenAll tapers at my burial, and processionOf priests and friars and monks; and have providedThe cost thereof be given to the poor!

You have done wisely, but of that I speak not.Ghiberti left behind him wealth and children;But who to-day would know that he had lived,If he had never made those gates of bronzeIn the old Baptistery,--those gates of bronze,Worthy to be the gates of Paradise.His wealth is scattered to the winds; his childrenAre long since dead; but those celestial gatesSurvive, and keep his name and memory green.

But why should I fatigue myself? I thinkThat all things it is possible to paintHave been already painted; and if not,Why, there are painters in the world at presentWho can accomplish more in two short monthsThan I could in two years; so it is wellThat some one is contented to do nothing,And leave the field to others.

O blasphemer!Not without reason do the people call youSebastian del Piombo, for the leadOf all the Papal bulls is heavy upon you,And wraps you like a shroud.

Misericordia!Sharp is the vinegar of sweet wine, and sharpThe words you speak, because the heart within youIs sweet unto the core.

How changed you areFrom the Sebastiano I once knew,When poor, laborious, emulous to excel,You strove in rivalry with BadassareAnd Raphael Sanzio.

Raphael is dead;He is but dust and ashes in his grave,While I am living and enjoying life,And so am victor. One live Pope is worthA dozen dead ones.

Raphael is not dead;He doth but sleep; for how can he be deadWho lives immortal in the hearts of men?He only drank the precious wine of youth,The outbreak of the grapes, before the vintageWas trodden to bitterness by the feet of men.The gods have given him sleep. We never wereNor could be foes, although our followers,Who are distorted shadows of ourselves,Have striven to make us so; but each one workedUnconsciously upon the other's thought;Both giving and receiving. He perchanceCaught strength from me, and I some greater sweetnessAnd tenderness from his more gentle nature.I have but words of praise and admirationFor his great genius; and the world is fairerThat he lived in it.

We at least are friends;So come with me.

No, no; I am best pleasedWhen I'm not asked to banquets. I have reachedA time of life when daily walks are shortened,And even the houses of our dearest friends,That used to be so near, seem far away.

Then we must sup without you. We shall laughAt those who toil for fame, and make their livesA tedious martyrdom, that they may liveA little longer in the mouths of men!And so, good-night.

Good-night, my Fra Bastiano.

How will men speak of me when I am gone,When all this colorless, sad life is ended,And I am dust? They will remember onlyThe wrinkled forehead, the marred countenance,The rudeness of my speech, and my rough manners,And never dream that underneath them allThere was a woman's heart of tenderness.They will not know the secret of my life,Locked up in silence, or but vaguely hintedIn uncouth rhymes, that may perchance surviveSome little space in memories of men!Each one performs his life-work, and then leaves it;Those that come after him will estimateHis influence on the age in which he lived.