[168]

"Qui giace l'Aretino, poeta Tosco, Che d'ognun disse male fuorchè di Christo, Scusandosi col dir—'Non lo conosco.'" "Qui giace Francescon, poeta pessimo, Che disse mal d'ognun fuorchè del asino, Scusandosi col dir—che egli era prossimo."

[*169] For the life of Vittoria Colonna, see Campori, Vittoria Colonna in Atti e Mem. della Dep. di St. Pat. dell'Emilia, N.S., vol. III., (Modena, 1878). Luzio, V.C., in Rivista St. Mantovana (1885), vol. I., p. 1 et seq. On her mother, Agnese di Montefeltro, cf. Casini-Tordi, in Giornale Vittoria Colonna, vol. I., No. 10. On her poems, cf. Mazzone, V.C. e il suo Canzoniere (1900). She was born at Marino in 1492. She was married 27th December, 1509, in Ischia, to Ferrante d'Avalos Marchese di Pescara. Miss Maud Jerrold has published recently (Dent, 1907) a work in English on Vittoria Colonna which should be excellent.

[*170] See, on this subject, Rodocanacchi, V.C. et la Réforme en Italie (Versailles, 1892), and Tacchi-Venturi, V.C. fautrice della riforma cattolica (Roma, 1901).

[*171] For her relations with Michelangelo, see Raczynski, Les Arts en Portugal (Paris, 1846, pp. 1-78).

[*172] For her writings, see Ferrero e Muller, Il Carteggio di Vittoria Colonna (Torino, 1859), with the supplement (1892) of Tordi, who has also published (Pistoia, 1900) Il codice delle rime di V.C. app. a Margh. d'Angoulême, and some unpublished Sonetti (Roma, 1891).

[*173] Cf. Pasolini, I Genitori di T. Tasso (Roma, 1895).

[*174] He went in 1528 to Paris on behalf of Conte Guido.

[*175] Cf. Capasso, Il Tasso e la sua famiglia a Sorrento (Napoli, 1866).

[176] On the 11th of March, 1544; Bernardo was born the 11th November, 1493.

[*177] 1547.

[*178] For the life of Torquato Tasso, see Solerti, in three volumes (Torino, 1895). The first contains the Vita; the second, Lettere inedite e disperse di T.T. e di diversi; the third, Documenti e appendici. See d'Ancona's review in Rass. Bibl. Lett. Ital., vol. IV., p. 7 et seq. The most complete modern edition of his works is Rosini's, in 33 vols., 8vo. (Pisa), and of the Rime, that of Solerti, in 3 vols. (Bologna, 1898-99).

[179] Byron's Lament of Tasso.

[*180] See on the Rinaldo, Proto, Sul Rinaldo di T.T. (Napoli, 1895).

[*181] Cf. d'Ovidio, Di una antica testimonianza circa la controversia della Crusca con Tasso (Napoli, 1894) and Vivaldi, La più grande polemica del Cinquecento (Catanzaro Caliò, 1895). Solerti reviewed this last in Giornale Stor. d. Lett. Ital., vol. XXVII., p. 426.

[*182] It was in September, 1576. Tasso had in July thought himself insulted by Ercole Fucci and his brother Maddalò; he boxed Ercole's ears. Then, in September, they met him and assaulted him. There was no duel. Only Solerti has found out the truth.

[*183] He was placed under restraint in S. Francesco, in Ferrara, in fact.

[*184] On the whole subject of Tasso's madness, see Corradi, Le Infermità di T.T. in Memorie dell'Istit. Lombardo (1880), vol. XIV.; Roncoroni, Genio e Pazzia in T.T. (Torino, 1896); and Gaudenzi, Studio Psicopatol. sopra T.T. (Vercelli, 1898); and Solerti, op. cit., supra.

[185] At p. 303 above.

[*186] On the Court of Ferrara, cf. Campori e Solerti, Luigi, Lucrezia e Leonora d'Este (Torino, 1888), and Solerti, Ferrara e la Corte estense nella secunda meta del sec. XVI. (Città di Castello, 1899).

[*187] Cf. d'Ovidio, Il carattere, gli amori e le sventure di T.T. in Studi Critici (Napoli, 1879); see also Campori e Solerti, op. cit., supra, p. 229, note *1.

[188]

"Liete danze vegg'io, che per me sono Funebri pompe ed un istessa face Nell'altrui nozze, e nel mio rogo è accesa."

[189] "Lascia Imeneo Parnasso, e qui descende."

[*190] Cf. Mazzoni, preface to his edition of Rinaldo e l'Aminta (Firenze, Sansoni, 1884).

[191] "La man ch'avolta in odorate spoglie:" and—"Non son sì vaghi i fiori onde la natura."

[192] At pp. 153, 154 above.

[193] Glassford, p. 203.

[194] The letter is taken from an old transcript, No. 430, of the Oliveriana MSS., p. 210, but it has been printed at vol. IX., p. 104, of the Venetian edition of Tasso's works.

[195] With that constitutional coldness we have seen in his life, the Duke spares but one line of his Diary to notice Torquato's death.

[*196] Cf. d'Ancona, T.T. ed Ant. Costantini in Varietà Storiche e Letter. (Milano, 1883), vol. I., p. 75 et seq.

[*197] This, of course, is nonsense. Leopardi, at any rate, was yet to come, and in our own day we have heard the eager and noble voice of Carducci in verse that, it might seem, is not less great than Tasso's and far more in touch with life.

[*198] For Guarini, consult Rossi, B. Guarini ed il Pastor Fido (Torino, 1886). See also Campori, in Giorn. St. d. Lett. Ital., vol. VIII., p. 425, etc.

[199] Oliveriana MSS. 375, vol. XV. 104. The poem was his Pastor Fido, of which the twentieth edition, with the author's note, appeared at Venice in 1602.

[*200] I do not understand what this means. The "Byzantine period" was not the starting point of anything, but rather a decadence; and how can anything be the starting point of something "stationary"? Christian art comes to us in the first centuries as absolutely dependent on Roman pagan work. It did not contrive a new force of expression, but very happily used the old. For the history of art is continuous, and in Byzantine work we see merely a decadence, not something new. The Renaissance in painting is based on Roman art of pagan times in the work of the Cosmati and the Cavallini, from whom in all probability Giotto learned all he could learn. It is the same with sculpture. Niccolò Pisano is a pupil of the ancients, a native of Apulia. The northern influence came later.

[*201] Yes? In Duccio's work, for instance. But the hand of man cannot achieve anything finer than the work of these early men—than the Annunciation of Simone Martini, for instance. That they preferred a decorative convention to a realistic does not accuse them of incompetence. Dennistoun would have said that the Japanese could not draw. It was not that "the hand failed to realise the aims of the mind," but that the mind saw things from a standpoint different from ours. It is easy to talk of the "truths of nature." What are the truths of nature? It is a question of appearance, of a manner of seeing, of an attitude of mind, of soul, toward nature and toward itself. Simone Martini was as great an artist, in the true sense of the word, as Raphael, in his own convention. Raphael's convention is still ours, but we are already passing out of it. Is it not so?

[*202] Yes; an age of realism. It is as though one preferred a Roman work of the best period to a Greek work of the fifth century B.C. What came was the tyranny of the body, without the old excuse, for we no longer believed in the body; we no longer believed in anything but unreality. It is not that the earlier men were "right" and the later "wrong," but that both are equally right and wrong where right and wrong do not count since only beauty may decide. Dennistoun speaks as he does because he could not possibly have spoken otherwise. He is wrong not so much in what he asserts as in what he denies.

[*203] Here, again, I do not understand. How can an artist's ideas exceed his means of expression?—I do not say his power of expression. What means of expression did Dante lack that Milton enjoyed, or Sophocles? In what was Donatello poorer than Michelangelo or Niccolò Pisano than either? Giotto had the same means of expression as Apelles or Leonardo, for the work he undertook, and before a new means of expression was invented, he could not have conceived the use of it.

[*204] Their aim was perhaps rather the realistic imitation of life than the expression of it.

[*205] They never sufficed.

[*206] Too strong. Michelangelo was always master of the weapons he used, however destructive they may have been to his disciples.

[*207] Nothing is dangerous to genius, not even mediocrity.

[*208] This term applies to the science of medicine, not to æsthetic.

[*209] Titian can be seen to advantage only in Madrid, Paris, Vienna, or London. In Venice he is almost absent.

[*210] After all, Dennistoun is on the side of the angels—though a little unctuously.

[*211] One of the sad days. Cf. vol. II., p. 95, note *1.

[*212] An undue sense of right seems to have led Dennistoun to the brink of an absurd precipice. Why should not the orgy or crime of a worthless man, make as good a picture as the orgy or crime [or the good deeds either, for that matter] of the worthy man? Poetry surely would seem to confound him here.

[*213] Art does not desire more than nature, but more than an imitation of nature. The artist should create life, not imitate it.

[*214] Francesco Maria may have called, but Titian did not come to Urbino. The first commission he had from the Duke was in 1532, when he was asked to paint as good a portrait of Hannibal as he could and a picture of the Nativity. They were delivered in 1534. The Duke wanted then a portrait of the Duchess, and asked Titian to paint it on his way to Naples. This journey, however, never took place. If Titian had any sittings, it was at Murano during the Duke and Duchess's sojourn there in the autumn of 1537.

[*215] I know nothing of this oratory, and cannot find it.

[216] See p. 49.

[217] He left some valuable works in the upper valley of the Metauro, now almost destroyed. Such are his Prophets and Sybils in ten lunettes round the Corpus Domini at Urbania, with two Nativities in the same church, one in fresco, the other on canvas. An altar-piece, in the church of the Servites at S. Angelo in Vado, is very inferior to his Madonna and Saints in S. Francesco of Cagli. Some frescoes at Gubbio, lauded by Lanzi, and dated 1546, are among his best works.

[218] Vol. III., p. 444.

[219] Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 816, f. 64-72.

[220] In referring to the Annals of the Artists of Spain, it is a sincere pleasure to bear my feeble testimony to the merits of that excellent work. It is replete with information new to the English reader, and is enriched by apt and copious illustrations selected from a wide range of literature and æsthetics.

[221] In reference to appropriate lights, Baroccio entirely condemns the use of stained glass, as darkening the interior, and injuring, by coloured rays, the effect of paintings. Zuccaro, however, recommends the introduction of a tinted armorial bearing, surrounded by a wreath of fruits and flowers, as likely to mellow without obscuring the chapel.

[222] Lettere Pittoriche, vii., p. 513.

[223] Vol. II.

[224] Carteggio, III., pp. 529-35. This medallion is now removed from the library door to the first landing-place of the great stair. It may have been by the medallist, Clemente of Urbino, mentioned in vol. II.

[225] There is a copy of it in the Magliabechiana Library, class viii., No. 1392, to which Gaye has from other sources supplied the date of 6th March, 1542. Carteggio, II., 289-309. From him, Ciampi, Vasari, and Condivi, we have condensed the very confused details respecting the monument of Julius which have come down to us.

[226] A favourite workman of Buonarroti, often met with under the patronymic Urbino, was Francesco Amadori di Colonello, of Castel Durante, who lived with him from 1530 to 1536. See Gualandi, Nuovo Raccolta di Lettere sulla Pittura, I., 48-52.

[*227] No? Consider then the Pietà of S. Pietro in Vaticano, the unfinished Pietà of S. Maria del Fiore. All that Dennistoun says of Michelangelo is full of misunderstanding. For instance, he never "startles" though he may terrify one. It would be ridiculous to defend him. His work is beautiful, with the beauty of the mountains in which he alone has found the spirit of man. His figures, half unveiled from the living rock, are like some terrible indictment of the world he lived in: an indictment of himself too, perhaps, of his contempt for things as they are; it is in a sort of rage at its uselessness that he leaves them unfinished. In him the spirit of man has stammered the syllables of eternity, and in its agony of longing or sorrow has failed to speak only the word love. All things particular to the individual, all that is small or of little account, that endures but for a moment, he has purged away, so that life itself may make, as it were, an immortal gesticulation almost monstrous in its passionate intensity—a shadow seen on the mountains, a mirage on the snow.

[228] See Gaye, Carteggio, II., 83-109, sub anno 1506.

[*229] Cf. J.A. Symonds, The Sonnets of Michelangelo.

[*230] For Titian, consult Gronau, Titian (Duckworth, 1904). By far the best handbook on the painter.

[*231] As before stated, the first works that Titian painted for Francesco Maria were a portrait of Hannibal, a Nativity, a figure of our Lord. The Duke writes him concerning them in 1533 as follows (cf. Gronau, op. cit., p. 91):—

The portraits were begun in 1536, in which year (October) Aretino wrote a sonnet on that of the Duke. They were finished early in 1538. Of the earlier pictures, the figure of Christ is probably that in the Pitti Gallery (228); the others apparently have perished.

In 1536 the Duke wrote again asking for a Resurrection for the Duchess, and begging Titian to finish the "picture of a woman in a blue dress as beautifully as possible." This latter is probably the Bella of the Pitti Gallery (18), which some have thought to be Eleonora Gonzaga, Francesco Maria's wife. She was then forty-three years old, and her portrait was painted at this time by the same master (Uffizi, 599) as a companion for that of the Duke (Uffizi, 605).

Duke Guidobaldo, while yet but Duke of Camerino, had sat to Titian, and had bought from him the picture of a "Nude Woman" (Gronau, op. cit., p. 95). In March, 1538, he sent a messenger to Venice, who was instructed not to leave the city without them. He got one, but the other had not been delivered in May of that year. The Duke wrote to him to beware lest it passed elsewhere, "for I am resolved to mortgage a part of my property if I cannot obtain it in any other way." This picture was probably the Venus of the Tribune (Uffizi, 1117) who is so like the Bella. Now if we are right in supposing the pictures alluded to in the letters—the lady in the blue dress and the nude woman—are the pictures we know (which came from Urbino), it seems obvious that they cannot have been portraits of the Duchess. And, again, we have the Duchess's portrait painted at this time, in which we see a woman of forty-three, which was in truth her age.

In June, 1539, Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino now, received three portraits, of the Emperor, the King of France, and the Turkish Sultan, from Titian. Vasari speaks of them, but they have been lost. In 1542-44 he painted a banner for the Brotherhood of Corpus Domini at Urbino—the Resurrection and the Last Supper. The pictures were shortly afterwards framed, and are now in the Urbino Gallery (10). Then in November, 1546, Duchess Giulia Varana of Urbino writes impatiently to Titian, sending at the same time some sleeves he had asked for, and hoping that he will not delay longer to finish "our portraits" (Gronau, op. cit., p. 99). And letters of Aretino in 1545 confirm the fact that Titian was painting portraits of the Duke and Duchess. Then in February, 1547, one of the courtiers of Urbino sent Titian a dress of the Duchess, adding that "a handsomer one would have been sent if he had not wished for one of crimson or pink velvet"; a damask one was sent of the desired colour. The portrait by Titian in the State Apartments of the Pitti Palace, discovered only a few years ago, is said to be of Catherine de' Medici, by Tintoretto. It is, however, certainly Titian's (Gronau, op. cit., p. 100), and is probably the missing portrait of the Duchess Giulia. It is unfinished, and the dress is of rose colour. It is one of his finest portraits.

There were two portraits at least of Guidobaldo by Titian, one of 1538 and one of 1545; one of these is said to have been in Florence in the seventeenth century. Gronau suggests that the "Young Englishman" of the Pitti Gallery (92), the finest portrait even Titian ever painted, may be one of them. But I cannot persuade myself that that figure is other than English. Yet if it be, it might well companion the Bella.

In 1545 Titian, on his way to Rome, travelled by Ferrara and Pesaro, where Guidobaldo, who had accompanied him, entertained him and made him many presents, sending a company of horse with him to Rome. There follows an interval of twenty years, in which their friendship seems not altogether to have been forgotten. Then between 1564 and 1567 Titian painted several pictures for Guidobaldo, among them a "Christ" and a "Madonna"; in 1573 he apparently had another commission. It is impossible to say what these pictures may have been.

[232] The style of Aretino was often rugged, wayward, and unintelligible, like his character. He seems to imagine that, of the three batons placed behind the Duke, one, bearing acorns and oak leaves, alludes to his successful campaigns on his own account, for recovery of his states. Lettere Pittoriche, I., App. No. 29. The force of colour peculiar to this, above all Titian's works, cannot be fully given by the burin, especially not by the mezza macchia style in which it has been engraved for this volume. Our frontispiece, though accurate as a likeness, is accordingly among the least effective illustrations in our work. No other original portrait of the Duke has fallen under my observation; and if the slight youthful figure introduced by Raffaele into the Disputa and School of Athens really was meant for him, no resemblance can be traced in it.

[233] The zebellino on the Duchess's knee was the fashionable bag or reticule of that day, made of an entire sable-skin, the animal's head, richly jewelled, forming its clasp. Giulia della Rovere d'Este commissioned such a one from a jeweller at Bologna in 1555, and paid him forty-six dollars to account.

[*234] Apparently he only went to Pesaro. Cf. note *2, p. 390.

[*235] It seems unlikely that the Flora was ever in Urbino. At any rate, in the seventeenth century it was in the collection of the Spanish ambassador at Amsterdam (cf. Gronau, op. cit., p. 289).

[*236] Pitti Gallery, No. 67. We know nothing of this picture save that it must have been painted about 1530-35, and that Vasari saw it in the Guardaroba of the Palace of Urbino.

[237] Carteggio d'Artisti, vol. III., 540.

[238] We have had frequent occasion to notice the encouragement given at Urbino to the exact sciences, and the consequent success of those arts most depending upon them. Thus the Baroccio family were celebrated for the accuracy of their mathematical instruments and timepieces, while watchmaking attracted great attention from all the della Rovere dukes. Their family portraits very generally exhibit a table-clock of some eccentric form, and their gifts to princes and royal personages were often chronometers made in their state. One of these, sent to Pius V., exhibited the planetary movements and other complex revolutions of the solar system; another, worn by his Holiness in a ring, marked the hours by gently pricking his finger. In 1535, Francesco Maria I. presented to Charles V., at Naples, a ring wherein a watch struck the hours; and many similar notices occur in the correspondence of his grandson, the last Duke. Guidobaldo II. was especially fond of such mechanical curiosities. Having received from one Giovan Giorgio Capobianco of Vicenza, the Praxiteles of tiny chiselling, a ring which held a watch, whereupon were engraved the signs of the zodiac, with a figure that pointed to and struck the hours—he interfered to save the artist's life, when condemned to death for an assassination at Venice. In gratitude for this favour, the latter made for the Duchess a silver chessboard contained in a cherry-stone; nor should we omit to add that he displayed the same ingenuity on a wider field as an architect and engineer. So, too, Filippo Santacroce, of Urbino, and his sons, are celebrated by Count Cicognara for their minute carvings on gems, ivory, and nuts.

[239] The subject has since met with more attention, but no other work has been expressly dedicated to it. We may refer to Vasari, Lanzi, and Gaye, passim; Ricci, Notizie delle Belle Arti in Gubbio; Kunstblatt, No. 51; Montanari, Lettera interno ad alcune Majoliche dipinte nella collezione Massa in Giornale Arcadico di Roma, XXXVII., 333; Brongniart, Traité des Arts Ceramiques; Marryat, History of Pottery and Porcelain. It is both an advantage and a pleasure to refer readers unacquainted with this interesting art, to the charming and accurate representations of azulejo, Robbian ware, and majolica, given in the last of these works. It is greatly to be desired that Mr. Marryat may, in continuation of his subject, and with access to English collections unknown to me, supply much information which this slight sketch cannot include.

[240] We enter not upon the contested question of the origin of these productions; wherever made, they prove the taste of those who owned and appreciated them. Besides, the ruder varieties were certainly indigenous to Central Italy from an early period. Neither need we trace the analogy between majolica and enamel. The latter was not unknown to the ancients, though brought by them to no ornamental perfection. During the dark ages, it was used as an accessory of metal sculpture for many purposes of religious art, and was even introduced into large works, such as bronze doors. The splendid reliquary at Orvieto, enamelled on silver at Siena by Ugolino Vieri in 1338, as well as the paliotti of Florence and Pistoja executed in that and the following centuries, show to what perfection this art had attained, ere the painting of porcelain was practised in Italy.

[*241] For all that concerns the Della Robbia, cf. Maud Cruttwell, Luca and Andrea della Robbia and their School (Dent, 1904).

[*242] The finest collection of Italian majolica in the world is probably that in Pesaro in the possession of the Municipality.

[243] Archiv. Dipl. Urbinate at Florence [1845].

[244] Gaye, Carteggio, I., p. 304. He was probably Roberto Malatesta, who served the Florentines in 1479, and died 1482; so Gaye's date of 1490 seems erroneous.

[245] See vol. II.

[246] In 1845, the Canon Staccoli at Urbino showed me a plate equally feeble in design and colour, signed F.M. Doiz Fiamengo fecit, a proof that it was no despised production of the time.

[247] The rules of syntax are in these often overstepped, and conjecture left to eke out the sense. My reading is literal, of basta la fe del povere sevedore, which is intelligible, and rhymes, as is not the case with basta la fede, e 'l povere se vedo, the version of Passeri. This author tells us of a certain coy or mischievous Philomela who pierced her lover's present with holes and made of it a mouse-trap! Also of an exquisite Gubbian plate, portraying the Daniella Diva, who displays a wounded heart with the legend Oimè! "Ah me." A drug-bottle in Mr. Marryat's collection, and engraved in his work, has the portrait of a lady whose squint is given to the life.

[248] In order to finish our notice of mottoes, a few others may be here added. 11. Massa collection; a female portrait, on whose breast are the arms of Montefeltro: Viva, Viva il Duca di Urbino. 12. Rome, Kestner Museum; another female portrait: Ibit ad geminos lucida fama pollo (?). 13. Kestner Museum and that at the Hague; St. Thomas probing the Saviour's wound: Beati qui non viderunt et crediderunt, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 14. Spoleto, Tordelli collection; a beautiful female resisting a crowd of armed soldiery: 1540. Italia mesta sottosopra volta, como pei venti in mare le torbid'onde, ch'or da una parte et hor da l'altra volta. "1540. Dejected Italy, tossed like the wind-lashed waves, turning now hither now thither." 15. Rome,—satire on the sack of Rome; a warrior in antique armour strikes with a two-handed sword at a naked woman stretched in a lascivious posture, behind whom five others tremblingly await their fate: it is inscribed behind, 1534. Roma lasciva dal buon Carlo quinto partita a mezza. Fra Xanto a. da Rovigo, Urbino. "Rome, the wanton, cut up by the good Charles V.; by Brother Xante of Rovigo, at Urbino." This plate, glowing with iridescence, contradicts Passeri's opinion (already quoted) that stanniferous glaze was never practised in the Urbino workshops, as does the tile introduced three pages below. 16. Rome; a grandly draped female, sitting in desolation over a dead child: Fiorenzo mesta i morti figlii piange, "Disconsolate Florence weeps for her lifeless offspring," in the plague visitation of 1538. Though with the most brilliant ruby and gold lustre I ever saw, it has in blue the cipher X, probably also of Xante in Urbino.

[249] A magnificent pair of triangular fonts in the same collection brought at the sale 168l.

[250] The ancestors of Giorgio Vasari were surnamed from their occupation of vase-makers (vasari), at Arezzo. The Ginori establishment near Florence is comparatively modern.

[251] Pungileoni quotes a demand made in 1683 of 50 scudi (about 11l.) for a plate reputed to have been painted by Raffaele; this, at thrice the present money value, would give 32l. as its price.

[252] Sanuto Diarii MSS. Bib. Marciana, xlv. f. 132.

[253] This letter, though inaccurate in several details, the author writing at a distance from the events, affords curious evidence of the consternation generally occasioned by the sack of Rome.

[254] Vat. Ottob. MSS. No. 2607.