Note 51 — Chapter IV
Frederick Street translation
See in the edition of Michelangelo's poems by Carl Frey, "Die Dichtungen des Michelangelo Buonarroti," Berlin, 1897, the sonnets, CIX, LXXVI, XLV, etc.
Vasari tells us that Michelangelo made a life-size drawing of Cavalieri, the only portrait which he ever made, for he had a horror of copying a living person unless they were of incomparable beauty.
He adds that he made him beautiful presents, "many astonishing drawings, a Ganymede carried to Heaven by the eagle of Zeus, a Tityos with the vulture feeding on his heart, the fall of Phaeton and the chariot of the Sun into the Po, and a Bacchanale of children—all works of the rarest beauty and of such perfection that their like has never been seen."