"Magnificent Messer Michelangelo--I did not reply earlier to your letter because it was, as one might say, an answer to my last; for I thought that if you and I were to go on writing without intermission according to my obligation and your courtesy, I should have to neglect the Chapel of S. Catherine here, and be absent at the appointed hours for company with my sisterhood, while you would have to leave the Chapel of S. Paul, and be absent from morning through the day from your sweet usual colloquy with painted forms, the which with their natural accents do not speak to you less clearly than the living persons around me speak to me. Thus we should both of us fail in our duty, I to the brides, you to the vicar of Christ. For these reasons, inasmuch as I am well assured of our steadfast friendship and affection, bound by knots of Christian kindness, I do not think it necessary to obtain the proof of your good-will in letters by writing on my side, but rather to await with well-prepared mind some substantial occasion for serving you. Meanwhile I address my prayers to that Lord of whom you spoke to me with so fervent and humble a heart when I left Rome, that when I return thither I may find you with His image renewed and enlivened by true faith in your soul, in like measure as you have painted it with perfect art in my Samaritan.[52] Believe me to remain always yours and your Urbino's."
[Illustration: SKETCH FOR THE TOMB OF JULIUS II
In this way she merely made use of her powers to soothe her friend's spirit and to stimulate him to work. Most of all she relit that light of faith which had never ceased to burn in his soul, although enveloped in a night of doubt and despair. Besides "The Samaritan Woman at the Well," which is spoken of in the letter from Vittoria, Michelangelo made for her a drawing of a descent from the cross with these words of Dante, "Non vi si pensa, quaneo sangue costa," and a tragic crucifixion in which Jesus writhes as he implores Heaven. Perhaps the two admirable drawings of the Resurrection in the Louvre and the British Museum are of this same period.
Vittoria, in sending him, after 1539, her Sonetti Spirituali, also opened before his poetical genius another path to immortality.