He had so completely given up all these undertakings that he had wiped them from his memory, or rather his memory had disappeared with them.
"Memory and mind have gone on ahead," he wrote, "to wait for me in the other world."
Michelangelo, worn out and discouraged, returned definitely to Rome on September 23, 1534, and there he remained until his death. He was in a condition of great mental unrest, his heart hungry for love. This was the period of those strange violent and mystical passions for beautiful young men like Gherardo Perini, Febo di Poggio and, most loved of all and most worthily so, Tommaso dei Cavalieri. These attachments, about which most historians have preferred to be silent, were an almost religious delirium of love for the divinity of beauty and hold an important place in the work of Michelangelo. It is to their inspiration that most of his love-poems are due. For a long time this was either not known or a stupid and unfortunate attempt was made to conceal it. Even in 1623 Michelangelo's grandnephew in his first edition of the "Rime" did not dare publish the poems to Tommaso dei Cavalieri with their real titles, but dedicated them to a woman. This error persisted until Cæsare Guasti, in his edition of 1863, re-established the exact text, but nevertheless did not dare admit that Tommaso dei Cavalieri was a real person and forced himself to believe that Vittoria Colonna was concealed under the fictitious name. Mezières in his "L'OEuvre et la Vie de Michelange," published in 1876, repeated this same mistake, which was only finally denounced and corrected by Scheffler and Symonds in 1878.
Tommaso dei Cavalieri, according to Vasari and Varchi, was "a young Roman gentleman, devoted to art and of incomparable personal beauty," whom Michelangelo met in the autumn of 1532. It is in 1533-1534 that this friendship reached its height and inspired his most ardent poems and letters. Cavalieri remained a faithful friend to Michelangelo to his very last hour, at which indeed he was present. He made use of this friendship only for the good of his friend. Not only did he take devoted care of the old man in his last years, but he saw to the carrying out of his wishes while he was alive and after his death. It was he who persuaded him to complete the wooden model of the dome of St. Peter's and who preserved his plans for the construction of the Capitol. Their names would always be associated together even if his beauty had not inspired some of Michelangelo's most perfect sonnets.[51]