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And feeling just as Balzac did about Massimilla Doni, that it was a sacrilege that Doris should be "expecting" or even married, I wrote, omitting, however, to tell her why I had suddenly resolved to break silence; I sent her a little note, only a few words, that I was sorry not to have heard of her for so long a time; but though we had been estranged she had not been forgotten; a little commonplace note, relieved perhaps by a touch of wistfulness, of regret.
Reggie, there is a glorious tuft of carnations in that pot in the cloisters. Ask Mamma Doni if we may have them. Ecco take her a lira for the baby. I must have them for the table. And soon the little white-spread breakfast-table, with it rolls and fruit, was aglow with flowers, and a little bunch lay on each plate.
One word, he says, will suffice for the worshippers of the ideal Massimilla Doni was "expecting." How could they break their moulds or their forms to go to the imaginative artists, the mould or the form being the gift of the imaginative artists?
He also made some pictures for Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici; and for Agnolo Doni he painted a picture of Our Lady, which stands on the altar of a chapel in his house a work of extraordinary beauty.
"The Florentine citizen, Angelo Doni," Vasari says, "desired to have some work from his hand as he was his friend; wherefore Michelangelo began a circular painting of Our Lady for him. She is kneeling, and presents the Divine Child to Joseph.
In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune of the Uffizii, Michelangelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as simpler painters had introduced there other products of the earth, birds or flowers; and he has given to that Madonna herself much of the uncouth energy of the older and more primitive "Mighty Mother."
Even some months before his illness he had felt himself drawn to enter the Society of Jesus. But now, all doubts removed, he made a vow in thanksgiving to obey our Lady's command. He went to his confessor, the Jesuit Father Doni, and told him of the vision of the Blessed Virgin and her order to become a Jesuit.
This note is entered in the diary: "January 1, 1881. Faceva i miei doni alla sposa, alla figlia, al mio figlio Stefano. La sposa era felicissima di ricevere la sua cassetta." Roberts Brothers had heard that a new book was in preparation, and they wrote in January, 1881:
The hostility of the Pope to authors who did not agree with his political views has been excited by many others, amongst whom we may mention the learned Pietro Sarpi, born at Venice in 1552. He joined the order of the Servites, who paid particular veneration to the Blessed Virgin, and of that order Sarpi and a satirical writer named Doni were the most distinguished members.
Men infinitely inferior to himself in genius and sense of form, a Perugino, a Francia, a Fra Bartolommeo, an Albertinelli, possessed more of the magic which evokes pictorial beauty. Nevertheless, with all its aridity, rigidity, and almost repulsive hardness of colour, the Doni Madonna ranks among the great pictures of the world.
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