The Renaissance has been called an intellectual bacchanalia, and when we examine the features of the bacchantes they become distorted like those of the suitors in Homer, who anticipated their fall; for this society, this Church, these cities and states--in fine, this culture in its entirety--toppled over into the abyss which was yawning for it.

The reflection that men like Copernicus, Michael Angelo, and Bramante, Alexander VI and Caesar Borgia could live in Rome at one and the same time is well nigh overpowering.
Did Lucretia ever see the youthful artist, subsequently the friend of the noble lady, Vittoria Colonna, whose portrait he painted?
We know not; but there is no reason to doubt that she did.

The curiosity of the artist and of the man would have induced Michael Angelo to endeavor to gain a glimpse of the most charming woman in Rome.

Although only a beginner, he was already recognized as an artist of great talent.

As he had just been taken up by Gallo the Roman and Cardinal La Grolaye, it is altogether probable that he would have been the subject also of Lucretia's curiosity.
Affected by the recent tragedies in the house of Borgia--for example, the murder of the Duke of Gandia--Michael Angelo was engaged upon the great work which was the first to attract the attention of the city, the Pieta, which Cardinal La Grolaye had commissioned him to paint.