It has been 3 years since Paul had asked me to supervise the construction of St. Peter’s. i have sent a letter to the bishop of Cecena telling of my troubles.
Monsignor , I’m entrusting myself to your Lordship and I pray you to help me and give me some advice, as His Grace has done many times, even if I was not worthy of it. After Paul died, some soldiers remained there to protect and to watch over the materials for the architecture and the construction of St. Peter’s, risking their lives, without any salary for three months; as they are needy, they made me understand that, if I do not pay them, they shall abandon the construction of St. Peter’s and this would cause damages worth thousands of scudi. I don’t have any money for them and I don’t want this scandal to happen, so I’m begging your Lordship, for St. Peter’s sake, to advice me and to forgive me for my excessive presumptuousness. Your servant Michelangelo
I have met my muse, my Ganymede. I am now, forevermore, an armed Knight’s captive and slave confessed (XXXI) . These words shall be my title I am no longer Michelagniolo the artist, I am Michelagniolo the page. My humility overwhelms me and I will forever be exposed, in the presence of God, on the Last Judgment gripped in Saint Bartholomew’s hand. My expression will outreach Biago’s hand and he and his demons shall be there to witness it, for I am the world corrupt and doomed to my fate for my idolatrous ways.
Why should I seek to ease intense desire?
With still more tears and windy words of grief,
When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
To souls whom love hath robed around with fire.
Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
When all must die? Nay death beyond belief
Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
Since in my sum of woes all joys expirel
Therefore because I cannot shun the blow
I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
Gliding between her gladness and her woe?
If only chains and bands can make me blest,
No marvel if alone and bare I go
An armed Knight’s cantive and slave confessed
This poem to my dear Knight, When first Love sent our souls from God above, he fashioned me to see thee as thou art- Pure light; and thus I find God’s counterpart (Xxviii). Thus, doomed form birth
