Chapter LI…

Chapter LI

Torquato Tasso--His insanity--Theories of Dr. Verga and Mr. Wilde--His connection with Urbino--His intercourse with the Princess of Este--His portraits--His letter to the Duke of Urbino--His confinement--His death--His poetry--Battista Guarini.

Our passing notice of Italian song would be incomplete without the name of Italy's favourite bard, even had TASSO[*178] found no hospitality at Urbino, no sympathy from its Duchess Lucrezia. Yet what shall we say of one whose loves and woes have filled many volumes,--whose life, character, and motives, after baffling biographers, and puzzling moralists, are still matter rather of controversy than of history, of speculation than of fact. That he was imbued with true genius, with its failings as well as its powers, is fixed by the unanimous verdict of posterity. That his misfortunes have tended greatly to enhance the sympathising veneration which hangs around his name, may be quoted in proof of the eternal justice of Providence. The rolls of Parnassus may exhibit names more gifted, the annals of human suffering are inscribed with greater calamities and deeper griefs, but in no other case, perhaps, have talents and trials been more mingled together on an equally prominent stage. His supposed persecutor was elevated enough to command the world's gaze, and upon him there accordingly has been heaped the blame of a wretchedness in a great measure self-imposed, and inseparable from a morbid and diseased temperament. The complaints of the poet have been embodied in notes alternately of wailing and of fire, by a poet of a nation whom he would have deemed barbarous.[179] The charge which history has recorded against Tasso is to this purpose. That, whilst a retainer of Alfonso II. of Ferrara, his heart was enslaved by that Duke's sister, Princess Leonora d'Este, and that his passion was ill-concealed in the verses it inspired. That Alfonso having suspected the audacious fault, harshly visited it with a series of persecutions, and finally shut him up for seven years in bedlam as a lunatic.

[Footnote *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).]

[Footnote 179: BYRON'S Lament of Tasso.]

From infancy he manifested decided symptoms of "a genius to madness near allied." Indifferent to toys, he seemed exempt from the emotions and the tastes of childhood. Precocious in all mental powers, he spoke intelligibly at six months, knew Greek and wrote verses at seven years, and at eighteen published the Rinaldo, a sustained and applauded epic.[*180] The reverses of his early days on which we have already dwelt in our notice of his father, the premature loss of his mother, the injudicious liberty of thought and action allowed him by Bernardo, and the rough criticisms to which his writings were subjected ere his character and knowledge of mankind were developed--all these tinged deeper the gloom of his constitutional sadness, and formed a training the most fatal to one of innately morbid sensibilities. The results were obvious. Bald before his time, his digestion enervated, subject to faintings and fevers intermittent or delirious, his health at thirty was ruined, his nerves and brain shattered. The natural consequence of his precocity was an overweening pride in his accomplishments, which rendered him jealous, touchy, and quarrelsome; and though destined from youth to wander in search of given bread, nature had neither granted him the humble resignation required for such a lot, nor imbued him with a daring spirit to rise above it. Men who live in courts must be prepared to encounter intrigues; those who publish poetry should lay their account with unsparing strictures; and the smaller the court, or the more prominent their poetic merits, so much the greater need have they of forbearance and philosophy. But Tasso possessed neither; and the jealousies of Pigna and Guarini, the malice of the della Crusca critics, stung him to the quick.[*181] A slight or fancied affront, which he met with from one of the courtiers of Ferrara, though avenged by a duel, brought his symptoms to a head.[*182] From that moment, when in his thirty-third year, we find him a victim to the restlessness, suspicions, fears, sad forebodings, and hopeless misery, which afflict lipemaniacs.

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

[Footnote *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.]

[Footnote *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.]

Under such sinister influences the crisis speedily arrived. Whilst seated in the Duchess of Urbino's apartment, in her mother's palace, he rushed with his dagger on an attendant who chanced to enter. This, whether a premeditated assault, or an idle hallucination, seems to have been the ground on which he was, by order of Alfonso, placed under restraint; but when the paroxysm was passed, he was reconducted to the Duke's presence with ample assurances of pardon. The iron had, however, entered into his soul, and the idea that he was in disgrace, owing to the malicious backbiting of foes real or imaginary, could not be driven from his mind. He retired from their supposed persecutions to a Franciscan convent,[*183] but, finding in its quiet no peace for his troubled spirit, he fled in disguise from these illusions, and, led perhaps by the bright memory of his early days, arrived on the sunny shores of Sorrento, where he sought a refuge with his married sister. But alas! the charms of that radiant land shed no gladsome influence on his soul. Ere a few months passed, he returned to Ferrara, in hopes of proving to the Duke that the crimes and the frenzy, of which he believed himself accused, were equally calumnies. In the festive and kindly reception with which he was greeted, the wayward poet found new grounds for jealousy, imagining a plot to be formed against his literary fame, by plunging him in a round of dissipation, whilst "others" (meaning his patron) should reap the glory and profits due to his creative genius. That conduct so provoking should have brought upon him real slights, in addition to his imagined wrongs, can scarcely be doubted; and, wounded at heart, he again had recourse to flight, wandering aimlessly by Mantua, Padua, and Venice, to Pesaro, the refuge of his happier youth. We shall elsewhere introduce the letter which he there addressed to the Duke of Urbino; though it obtained him a compassionate welcome, his new host naturally counselled his return to the home of his adoption, as the place where he was most certain to be cared for. But in a fresh access of disease, he escaped from such suggestions, and obeyed them not until after he had visited Turin, disguised by poverty and filth.

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

If these views of Tasso's malady[*184] are as conformable to truth as they appear to be with the representations of his biographers, the time seems to have been now fully arrived for his seclusion, as a measure of justice to himself and of security to others. It is quite another question how far the treatment he met with at Sant'Anna was that best suited to his symptoms. Had he lived in times when the pathology of mind was more fully understood, and more ably managed, his genius might, by timely care, have been saved from a miserable wreck; but his brain surely then required such aid as medical science could afford. If this be granted, the defence of Duke Alfonso is complete, whatever might have been the discipline resorted to in the hospital. Yet it may be well to remember, from the testimony of the poor maniac, as well as of others, that the delusions which for years had haunted him, regarding wrongs supposed to have been received from that sovereign and his courtiers, had given bitterness to his words, and pungency to his pen, little in accordance with the fulsome language of his age, or the haughty temper of his patron; that if the poet was a victim of imaginary affronts, the Duke had met at his hands with real insults. But even were Alfonso's motives not those of unmixed kindness, the necessity of seclusion for Tasso cannot be affected by any such consideration, nor by the consequent aggravation of his malady from defective skill.

[Footnote *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.]

An admission of Tasso's mental alienation was made by his intimate friend Manso, and has been repeated by various writers; yet other biographers, anxious to relieve their hero from the reproach of madness, have essayed to screen him by charges of cruelty against the Duke of Ferrara. Whilst Verga's theory appears to place the poet's malady upon its proper footing, and, by implication, to absolve his patron, that author goes a step further, and maintains that the oldest and best informed authorities bear out a belief in the uniform and considerate kindness of Alfonso towards his wayward laureate, and prove that the allegations of Torquato's insanity having been but the pretext of a stern tyrant, bent on punishing the presumption of an unworthy aspirant to his sister's love, were piquant additions of after writers. We shall presently have a few words to add in regard to this entanglement; meanwhile, let us see the conclusion drawn by Dr. Verga, from his able argument. "We may, therefore, infer that the Duke shut up Tasso in Sant'Anna, neither as a punishment for ambitious love, or unguarded and offensive expressions, nor as an obstacle to his conferring the illustration of his genius on rival courts, but simply because he saw that the poet's melancholy rendered him beside himself, dependent upon skilful treatment, and perhaps dangerous to others. I repeat, in the name of common sense, that his madness was the sole cause of his seclusion, not the effect of it, as some would persuade us."

* * * * *

Although we have passed rapidly over those circumstances that impart to Tasso's life its romantic and mysterious interest, we must detail somewhat more fully the various links connecting the thread of his chequered existence with the ducal house of Urbino. The arrival of his father, Bernardo, at the court of Pesaro, in 1556, has been already mentioned[185]; and six months later he was joined by Torquato, then completing his thirteenth year, who was permitted to share the education of the hereditary Prince, and to mingle occasionally with the accomplished circle at the Imperiale, until Bernardo carried him to Venice, in 1559. On a mind of such premature powers these opportunities were not wasted, and the remembrance of them cheered many an after hour of despondency. The homeless position and unsettled habits of his father, whose wanderings he generally accompanied, interfered somewhat with his education, which was then directed to the law, as his future profession. But whilst supposed to be engrossed by canonists and civilians, the youth was secretly devoting his hours of study to the muses. Fearing to avow these derelictions to his father, he imparted his boyish efforts to Duke Guidobaldo, who showed them to Bernardo in 1562, when the latter came to offer him a printed copy of his Amadigi. It was not, however, for two years more that the paternal sanction was obtained for publishing the Rinaldo, a dedication of which is said to have been declined by the Duke, perhaps from a fastidiousness which ere long he had to regret. Encouraged by the unlooked-for success of this poem, written by him in ten months at the university of Padua, Torquato began his great epic, of which he had already selected the theme. Whilst pursuing his studies at Bologna, in 1563, he is believed to have transcribed the first sketch of it, under the title of "Il Gierusalem," which is now No. 413 of the Urbino Library at the Vatican. It is preceded by a short notice of the subject, and consists of a hundred and sixteen stanzas, eventually incorporated into the three opening cantos of the poem; but its variations from the printed version are so extensive, that it has been given entire in the collected works, published at Venice, in twelve vols. 4to, 1735. The dedication was this time accepted by Guidobaldo.

[Footnote 185: At p. 303 above.]

At twenty-one, he first saw the court of Ferrara,[*186] which, in honour of his marriage with the Archduchess Barbara, the magnificent Alfonso was then rendering

"The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy."

[Footnote *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).]

It was in these festive scenes that the bard made acquaintance with the Princess Lucrezia. Among the portraits in the Palace of Courtesy, whither Rinaldo was conducted, and which, by an ingenious turn of flattery, are made to represent those personages whom Tasso was most disposed to conciliate, were those of Duke Guidobaldo and his son, with their respective consorts. The passage may be thus literally rendered:--

"He of expression stern and brow severe, His mien ennobled by a royal state, The great Francesco Maria's son, is here, In peace superior, in the field his mate; Beneath whose prudent sway, no peril ere Urbino's favoured duchy shall await, While o'er her happy vales, and golden plains, A joyous and enduring summer reigns.

"Such is the sire to whom our planet owes Yon youthful gallant, with expression bright, Second to none, a terror to his foes, A wary leader though a dauntless knight: On him the weight of thousand wars repose, A thousand armies guiding to the fight. Whoe'er is doomed to immortality Shrined in men's hearts and mouths, HE may not die.

"Turn your admiring gaze to yonder side On all that heaven of loveliness can yield, Elsewhere unmatched within Sol's circuit wide, From whose bright beams no beauty lies concealed; The ducal crown and robe can scarcely hide The regal bearing on that brow revealed: Vittoria she, from great Farnese traced, Courteous and gentle, generous and chaste.

"Lucrezia d'Este is yon other fair, Whose dazzling tresses seem a treasure given For guileless love therewith to weave a snare And toils, purveyed by Him who rules in heaven. Say, do Minerva and the Muses share Praise and disparagement in portions even,-- Praise, since she them to imitate is fain; Blame, that their rivalry with her is vain?

"These dames, in charms and chastity compeers, And proudly rich in every virtue rare"--

Such compliments from a poet of promising fame could not be indifferent to one taught to prize genius as almost the equal of rank; nor were they the less acceptable to a lady of thirty-one, that their author had barely attained manhood. She received him with her sweetest smile, and presented him to her father the Duke, and to her sister Leonora, in terms which secured him a most flattering reception. Love and chivalry were fashions of the day, cultivated in common by all who strove to shine in the brilliant atmosphere of Ferrara, and the genius of Torquato lent itself gracefully to both. In many phases of Italian literature, it has been difficult for posterity to decide whether the fervour of amorous poetry was kindled by successful passion, or fanned by affected sentiment. The like mystery overhangs the love-notes which Tasso warbled in these palace-bowers. That his aspirations were not free from pedantry is proved by their, on one occasion, selecting the form of a public disputation, after the most approved scholastic models, wherein, during three days, he maintained against all comers, a series of abstract propositions regarding love and its developments. And though such singular exhibitions may sometimes have been suggested by deeper feelings, or accepted as the incense of the heart, they were doubtless in other cases but tournaments of gallantry, in which the name of some fair lady was adopted, to inspire the combatants to a victory extending not beyond the lists. Equally platonic might have been such love-tissued lyrics as our minstrel ever and anon dedicated to the sister Princesses, without any scandal, and probably without compromise of their purity. One of these, in supposed allusion to the favoured sister, having been specially excepted from the sentence of posthumous destruction pronounced upon many of his fugitive pieces by the poet when about to take a journey, must have ranked high in his estimation, and is thus translated by Glassford:--

"Now that my charmer breathes another air In woods and fields, how barbarous to remain In this deserted place, where grief, and pain, And darkness dwell, a region of despair! Nothing is joyful here, and nothing fair: Love grows a boor, and with the rustic train Now feeds his flock, and now in sultry plain Handles the scythe, or guides the pondrous share. O, happy wood! O smiling banks and gay, Where every beast, and every plant and stone, Have learned the use of generous customs mild. What shall not yield to her whose eyes alone Can, as they lend or take their light away, Polish the groves, and make the town a wild."

During the four years which glided by in this charmed existence, the youthful bard appears to have remained faithful to his first friend Lucrezia; and it was not until her marriage to the Prince of Urbino in 1571, that the superior charms of her younger and more sedate sister effected for her that alleged conquest of his heart, which long-continued assertions have almost established as a truth.

It would be interesting could we fix the comparative encouragement which the bard enjoyed from the sisters, and ascertain the amount of favour severally vouchsafed him; on this much contested but conjectural ground we shall not, however, enter.[*187] Love-making, which is frequently a science rather than a passion, becomes almost invariably so where its flame is habitually fed by poetry or pedantry, and such were naturally the loves of Tasso in the atmosphere of a court whose polish was heightened by these accomplishments. The siren-notes of Italian song draw their melody from epithets calculated to soothe the ear even when they reach not the heart, and seldom afford evidence as to which of these organs they are meant to fascinate. This uncertainty gives life to a tribe of commentators, and has originated volumes of idle speculation as to the material existence of Laura and Beatrice, the platonic or passionate intercourse of Torquato with the Princesses of Este. The language of sonnets and canzoni is equally suited to express or to feign, to indicate or to veil, heartfelt homage; and those of Tasso thus are capable of whatever interpretation best accords with the temperament or the theory of his critics. Such, for example, are the tributes of his muse on the marriage of Lucrezia, wherein, however, a suspicion of somewhat undue tenderness might attach to such lines as--

"Sad as a mourning convoy seems to me Your merry dances, and your Hymen's torch Will to my funeral pile a flame supply."[188]

[Footnote *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.]

[Footnote 188:

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

In a canzone of the same date, he makes that god descend from Parnassus to preside at her nuptials[189]; but the deity seems to have turned a deaf ear to this tuneful invocation, and we have elsewhere seen that no favour of his crowned the inauspicious union.

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

On his return from France in 1572, Tasso was, by intercession of the Princesses, received at Ferrara as a salaried courtier; and in the following spring, his pastoral drama, the Aminta,[*190] was performed at the palace. Anxious to witness a representation elsewhere so universally applauded, the Princess of Urbino invited him to Pesaro, where he recited his poem in presence of the old Duke, who hailed in him the honoured son of his former protégé. From thence he accompanied Francesco Maria and his consort to their villeggiatura at Castel Durante, and it was then, perhaps, that their domestic peace was most endangered by the poet. The field-sports and manly exercises which attracted the Prince to that secluded spot had no charm for Lucrezia, long accustomed to a life of artificial splendour; and whilst he passed his days in the far-spreading forests, she was exposed to the temptations of ennui, added to the perils of opportunity. It is, therefore, not surprising that a warmer tone pervades the componimenti addressed to the Princess in this retirement. Two sonnets, in particular, sing, in cadences of sweetest harmony, her hand imparting perfume to the scented glove, that enviously veiled, from her minstrel's greedy eyes, a whiteness before which the snow would blush, and her bosom, the garden of love, the paradise of the poet, its ripened charms surpassing the budding beauties of early spring.[191]

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

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

To write amatory verses on a lady of appearance as matronly as her years, required singular tact; but Tasso boldly met the difficulties of his theme. In another sonnet, excelled by nothing in the whole range of passionate song, after seeking for a parallel to her "unripe" youth in the opening rosebud, or in the unearthly beauty of the early dawn, that gilds the mountains and scatters pearls along the plain, he avows the flower to be most attractive when its leaves have unfolded their odours, just as the mid-day sun outshines its morning lustre. The same delicacy of allusion was needful in regard to both the princesses, of whom Leonora appears to have had the advantage in looks more than in age, for she was but a year younger than her married sister. We again avail ourselves of Mr. Glassford's paraphrase, in order to present it to such readers as are not acquainted with the charming original.

"We saw thee in thy yet unripened green, Like folded rose, whose damask leaf unspread To the warm sun, still in its virgin bed Retires and blushes in the bud unseen. Or rather--for such earthly type is mean-- Like to Aurora, who with earthly red Pearls the plain and gilds the mountain head, Kindling with smiles the dewy sky serene. Nor is thy riper year in aught less fair; No youthful beauty in her choice attire Can so engage, or equal charms display. Thus sweetest is the flower when to the air Unbosomed; thus the sun's meridian fire Exceeds the lustre of its morning ray."

But these seductions did not divert Torquato from the loftier theme which engaged his muse. Far from the gaieties and the squabbles of Ferrara, he drew a fresher inspiration from glorious nature, and among the delightful descriptions suggested by the scenery around Castel Durante are generally numbered those of the gardens of Armida. Whatever may have been the true footing on which the poet's devotion was received by the Princess, and whatever the secret cause of her domestic misunderstandings, her husband never showed, on this or any future occasion, jealousy of his early playmate; and in 1574 Tasso returned to Ferrara, laden with compliments and presents from the august circle at Pesaro, including a jewel of price from the Princess, which his necessities afterwards obliged him to dispose of.

Lucrezia had become Duchess of Urbino in 1574, and her separation from the Duke took place three years later, in circumstances of which we have elsewhere spoken.[192] Released from ties in which affection had never any part, she sought in her brother's palace distractions more suited to her lively temperament, and renewed her intimacy with its silver-tongued laureate. Among the reasons which incline us to believe that this connection was chiefly sought upon her side, is the desire which Tasso about this time manifested of exchanging the protection of the d'Este for a residence at Rome. His intention was not realised, for his visit to the Eternal City did not extend beyond a month, and before the close of 1575 he was at Florence.

[Footnote 192: At pp. 153, 154 above.]

On returning to Ferrara in January, 1576, a new tie was created to the reigning family, by his appointment as its historiographer, on the death of Pigna. This was the turning point of his existence, whence the symptoms of mental disease gradually and fatally advanced until June, 1577, when, after that outbreak of insanity in presence of the Duchess of Urbino, to which we have already alluded, he was interdicted by Alfonso from corresponding with her. This command she observed, but Leonora occasionally consoled him by letters during his flight to Naples, of which we have spoken in tracing the progress of his lipemania. It was in the autumn of 1578 that he arrived at Pesaro, after his second flight; and, in this melodious but unfinished canzone, bespoke shelter under the mighty oak [della Rovere] watered by the Metauro:--

"TO THE RIVER METAURO.

"O thou illustrious child Of mighty Apennine, humble though you lie, In story brighter than thy silver tide; O stranger fleet and wild, To this thy friendly and protecting side, Well pleased, for safety and repose I fly. The lofty OAK, with mantling branches wide, Bathed by thy stream, and from thy cisterns fed, Shadowing the mountains and the seas between,-- Embower me with its screen! Inviolate screen, and hospitably spread, Thy cool recesses undisturbed and sweet Shroud me in deepest covert, thick entwined, So hid from blind and cruel fortune; blind, But not for me, whom still she sees to meet, Though far by hill or valley I should stray, Or in the lonely way Have passed at midnight, and with noiseless feet; And by this bleeding side well understood, Her aim unerring, as her shaft is good.

"Since first I breathed this air, Ah me! since first I met the glorious light, Which never to these eyes unclouded shone, I was her fatal care, Chosen to be her mark and her despite; Nor yet those early hurts by time outgrown. Well to that spirit pure my words are known, Beside whose sainted tomb my cradle stood. Might they have laid me in the peaceful ground When I received the wound! Me from my mother's bosom fortune rude Tore while a child: O yet I feel those last Kisses and burning tears upon my cheek, With sighs remembered; still I hear that weak And ardent prayer, caught by the rising blast, Then parted ever; no more face to face Folded in strict embrace And held by close and loving arms so fast, Ah! but like Ilus or Camilla hied, With steps unequal, by my father's side.

"In banishment I grew And rigid want, instructed by our strange Disastrous flight to shed untimely tears, Nor childhood's pleasure knew; But bitterness to me of chance and change Brought immature the bitterness of years. Despoiled and bare, his feeble age appears Before me still. Alas! and is my store Of griefs become so scanty, that my own Are not enough to moan? That others than myself I must deplore? But seldom, though I bid, will come the sigh, Or from these wells the gushing water spring, In measure suited to my suffering. Dear father; now my witness from the sky, Whom sick thou knowest how I moaned, and dead Poured on thy grave and bed My ardent heart; thee, in thy mansions high All bliss beseems, and unalloyed with pain; Only for me the sighs and tears remain."[193]

[Footnote 193: GLASSFORD, p. 203.]

The morbid feeling and heart-stricken melancholy which, in the language of Gibbon, "disordered his reason without clouding his genius," and which thus exaggerated the trials of his early life, gave way to another train of thought in the following letter, addressed by him, about the same time, to Duke Francesco Maria, which we insert as the most satisfactory record left us of the friendship and protection bestowed on him by that Prince.

"TASSO TO THE DUKE OF URBINO.

"If any action of mine has tended to confirm the rumour of my insanity, it surely was my directing my steps after my flight otherwise than to the court of your Excellency. For certainly I could not have repaired elsewhere without some degree of danger, or at all events some indignity and inconvenience; nor could I hope to find in any other quarter more acquaintance with my real position, nor greater courtesy, knowing no prince more generous, more efficiently compassionate to my misfortunes, or more prompt in the protection of my innocence. Hence, to pass by an asylum near and secure, as well as suitable and honourable, in order to make my way, without comfort, or, at all events, with little credit, to a distant and less safe place, was, if not a sign of folly, at least a proof of impudence and stupidity. Notwithstanding all this, unlike other men who blush and repent when made aware of a blunder, I derive from my ill advised step pleasure and comfort rather than shame and regret, because, being conducted, not where I desired, but whither I ought to go, and having there found the haven which I had supposed far off, across the high seas, I clearly perceive that my steps have been guided by wisdom from on high. And it must be much more pleasing to me to have been brought hither by divine Providence than by human prudence, seeing how much the more infallible guide is the latter to the best appointed end. And although, had I come here in reliance on being received under your Excellency's protection, it would have afforded me much satisfaction to find my hopes realised, and your courtesy equal to my anticipations; yet my gratification is certainly, and beyond comparison, greater, seeing that you have not only anticipated, but overmatched, my desires, and that you have at once equalled and exceeded my expectations. I say exceeded them, because upon the obliging demonstrations of affection and pity which you have shown me, and on your promise to undertake my protection, I found rather an assurance than a hope of safety, peace, and honour. Enough, indeed more than enough, for me, is that which you have promised. Were I to doubt as to the rest, or look forward with such every-day hope as one is apt to entertain regarding uncertain prospects, I should discredit your Excellency's affection, judgment, authority, and power, and I should prove myself unworthy, not only of what you are about to perform, but of what you have already done in my favour. Thus, be assured that I live not only securely, but happily, under your protection. On this account my regrets are less at being so fiercely and iniquitously buffeted and beaten down by fortune, than is my satisfaction at being raised again by the arm of your Excellency; and were there no other way to lead me to you, and to place me in the shadow of your favour, but this most hard and rugged one, with its toils and persecutions, still I should delight to arrive by it; and I account as not only endurable, but as joyful and well-timed, those pangs which brought me to be yours, as it was ever my wish to be, even in my days of less adversity. It is for this reason I dare to appropriate these famous words of Themistocles, 'I were undone, did I not rush upon my ruin.'

"I shall now pass by the long and melancholy tale of my wrongs as indeed superfluous, since the little that your Excellency has heard of my mishaps has sufficed to move your magnanimous heart to extend me aid. Nor shall I try to awaken in your soul any compassion beyond what it voluntarily fostered, without artifice of mine; for I rejoice that in this noble and courteous act my exertions have no part, all being your own, and springing from the greatness and compassion of your individual mind. Most gladly should I thank your Excellency for what you have done, and will do, in my behalf, could I invent words and terms fit for such thanks; but what can I, or what should I say to you? To you I neither can nor ought to use such phrases as servants employ to their masters, benefited to their benefactors, favoured to those who confer obligations, because, as my misery was incomparable and unprecedented, so it would become me to invent expressions signifying how much I owe to your Excellency who rescues me from it. I shall, therefore, say, that since, thanks to you, I emerge from a condition so low, so disgraced, so wretched, and so reduced in reputation and in the opinion of mankind, who looked upon me as virtually dead, I seem to have received a new health from you, by reason whereof I acknowledge your Excellency, not only as a prince and benefactor to whom I owe much, but it may almost be permitted me to add, as a creator, and I seem to say but little in avowing myself your most obliged and highly favoured servant, if I add not creature.[194] Such, accordingly, I shall formally avow myself, and in that light I pray you for the future to regard me, and to contrive that I am regarded by others, taking entire possession of me and of my free will, which I fully submit to your sway. And this I should do with all my affairs, were it in my power; but some of them are not at my own disposal, or they should be placed at that of him to whom I have surrendered myself. And herewith humbly I kiss your hands, assuring you that these words have been engraven by me on my heart, ere they were traced upon this sheet."

[Footnote 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.]

The expectations which dictated this touching letter were amply realised. After a reception of singular kindness, the good Duke recommended medical advice for Tasso's now obvious malady; and an issue prescribed for his arm was dressed by the Princess Lavinia della Rovere, whose sedulous care was rewarded in a madrigal. By such solace his restlessness, however, prevented him from long profiting. After reaching Ferrara some months later, his mania broke out in more threatening symptoms, and, on the 21st February, 1579, he was consigned to the hospital of Sant'Anna.

From the sadder scenes and secrets of his life it were useless to raise the veil. Even the year after he entered it, Montaigne, a shrewd and unbiased witness, whose testimony may countervail much hearsay and conjecture, found him in "most pitiable state, surviving himself, neglectful of his person and works." Seven years had worn away in pitiable isolation, when a violent fever nearly closed his darkened existence, after which, whether from an abatement of his phrenetic symptoms, or in the hope of contributing to his physical restoration, Alfonso sanctioned his liberation, at the request of Prince Vincenzo of Mantua, the supposed assassin of our Admirable Crichton, who undertook the watchful care which his case required. Princess Leonora died in 1581, and, on various subsequent occasions, Duchess Lucrezia interfered with little success in his behalf, but, from the time of his leaving the hospital, his intercourse with her family was at an end. He had written from thence several letters to the Duke of Urbino, and, after his convalescence, addressed to him a rambling discourse on his real and imaginary grievances, which shows a mind still shaken, if not unhinged. But, though the kind feelings of his early playmate underwent no change, Tasso returned not to Urbino during many after wanderings, fearing perhaps to revisit, in circumstances so altered, the scenes of his brighter days.[195] The nine remaining years of his life were, on the whole, less afflicted; for, though ever restless in body, and often haunted by imaginary evils and visions, he enjoyed intervals of comparative serenity, especially in his beloved Bay of Naples, and at the house of his kind friend and biographer Manso, of which, half a century later, John Milton was the honoured guest.

[Footnote 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.]

His death partook of the melancholy shade that had overhung his career. Declining a new invitation from Duke Francesco Maria, in 1594, he brought to Rome all that mental and bodily sufferings had left him of broken health and blighted genius, to receive the honours of a laurel crown; and, in the monastery of S. Onofrio, he awaited the issue of arrangements which the warning voice of exhausted nature told him were made in vain. From thence he addressed to his friend Constantini[*196] the following touching farewell:--"What shall my Antonio say, when he hears the death of his Tasso? Nor, in my opinion, will the news be long delayed; for I feel my end to be at hand, having found no remedy for this troublesome malady, which, added to my many habitual ailments, is evidently sweeping me away like an impetuous and irresistible torrent. To say nothing of the world's ingratitude, which would prove its triumph by consigning me in penury to the tomb, the time is now past for speaking of my inveterate fortune; yet, when I think of the glory which this age will derive from my writings, in despite of all opposition, I cannot be left entirely unrequited. I have had myself brought to this convent of S. Onofrio, not only because the air is commended by the faculty more than that of any other part of Rome, but also, to begin as it were from this elevated spot, and in the conversation of these holy fathers, my celestial intercourse. Pray to God in my behalf, and rest assured that, as I have ever loved and respected you in this life, I shall do the like towards you in a better, as is the part of true and unfeigned affection; and to the Divine grace I commend you and myself. From Rome, at S. Onofrio."

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

Tasso's mind was habitually under devotional influences, which grew upon him as he experienced the delusive results of his early ambition, the emptiness of success, and the bitterness of failure. Religion was in him a deeply rooted sentiment; it soothed long hours of suffering, cheered the decline of life, and brightened those hopes for which the laurel crown had lost its charm. Gazing from the convent garden over a scene of all others the most inspiring to the poet, the most solemn to the moralist, he caught the seeds of malaria fever. His springs of life were already dried up by twenty long years of suffering, and, after a few days of peaceful and resigned preparation for a change that to him had no terrors, his spirit was released from its shattered tenement. He died on the 25th April, 1595, wept by many warmly attached and pitying friends, and lamented by the citizens, who lost in his death the spectacle of his coronation, to which they had long looked forward with an anxiety unusual even among the fête-loving populace of Rome.

Tasso's was a life of painful contrasts and of blighted hopes. The prospects of his childhood, bright as the sky which witnessed his birth, were quickly shadowed by a storm of tropical violence. The courtly favour that met his manhood proved baneful as a siren's smiles. The greenest garland that Italy could offer to her favourite minstrel was reserved until his brow was clammy with the dews of death. The honours lavished on his funeral have been grudged to his tomb. His resplendent genius was linked to the saddest and most humbling of human afflictions. The fame for which he felt more than a poet's thirst, and which he challenged as his due, was withheld by envy until no trumpet-note could reach his dull cold ear. But time, the avenger, has rendered him tardy justice, and Torquato is the popular bard of Italy, whilst the cumbrous pedantry of his della Crusca impugners is consigned to contemptuous oblivion.

Of works so universally known as those of Tasso it would be presumptuous to offer new analyses, and superfluous to encumber our pages with trite criticism. The edition of them by Rosini extends to thirty quarto volumes, a startling testimony to the copiousness of his commentators, as well as to his own wonderful fertility. His pen ranged over a wide field both in prose and verse,--the former including essays--moral, literary, and political,--dialogues, and letters; the latter touching upon themes sacred, heroic, romantic, sylvan, pastoral, and lyric. It is, however, as an epic poet that he has gained a niche in Parnassus, and the admiration of posterity. No rivalry could arise with Dante, in whose Vision the things of time are strangely interwoven with revelations of eternity; and his muse is of a nobler caste, though less touching character, than that of the bard of Arqua. But it is otherwise with the fourth great name of Italian minstrelsy, and no one discusses the merits of Tasso without keeping those of Ariosto in view. This, however, arises from habit rather than necessity. The latter name was dragged forward by the della Crusca Academicians as a stalking-horse to mask the malice of their attacks upon the later of Ferrara's two laureates, whose successive appearance on that stage alone induced a contrast for which their respective works were by no means adapted. The comparison thus forced upon the world has been declined by Tiraboschi, who, in the exercise of a sounder criticism, has assigned to each his peculiar excellence. Bearing in mind that the Orlando is intrinsically a romantic poem, whilst the Jerusalem is composed upon the epic model, there can be but little technical analogy between them, and the beauties of the one would become blemishes in the other. The striking and unlooked-for episodes of the former, running ever into extravagance and burlesque, must have outraged the grave unities required in the latter, and have proved more serious faults than any which the jaundiced optics of the academicians were able to discover. But perhaps Tasso's greatest triumph over his jealous detractors has been the continued preference of his earlier and greater work to his continuation of the same theme, in which he studied to profit by their criticisms. Many Italians, among whom the romantic school took its origin and maintained its influence, have preferred Ariosto, whilst transalpine critics have more generally given their suffrages to the poem of Tasso, as more regular in its plan, and better preserving the elevation and the unities observed by the best classic models.

It has been the boast of some minstrels to mould the temper of the age to the tone of their poetry. Tasso chose a less hazardous aim, and, seizing in his great epic upon a theme at once the most fertile and the most popular, gained the sympathies of all. The Crescent, once more in the ascendant, had swept the Mediterranean, overrun Greece, and threatened Vienna. The spirit of the crusades revived. The often-mooted movement of all Christendom in the holy cause was at length carried into effect, and victory crowned the Cross at the great naval conflict of Lepanto. But alas! his was the last great name in Italian poetry;[*197] and thenceforward genius fled from the land of song, or bowed unresisting before an all-prevailing mediocrity. Morbid repetition, redundant verbiage, far-fetched figures,--all those faults for which its liquid language afforded such fatal facilities, sprang up in rank deformity, and smothered generous inspiration. The academies sent out their many songsters, who poured forth notes artfully sweet, but rarely thrilling; and already

"Their once-loved minstrels scarce may claim The transient mention of a dubious name."

[Footnote *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.]

Nor did they merit a better fate; for their conceptions were extravagant, their imagery redundant, their execution alternately glaring and languid. Unnatural contrasts, startling conceits, ill compensated in them for vigorous diction and the stamp of genius. Yet the lyric muse was not utterly extinct, and from time to time its warblings may yet be heard in the orange groves and laurel bosquets of that bright land.

* * * * *

Guarini's is another name shared between Ferrara and Urbino.[*198] He was born at the former city in 1537, of a family already possessing claims upon literary distinction during three generations, his great-grandfather having been Guarini of Verona. In conformity with the custom of employing men of learning upon diplomatic missions, he served Duke Alfonso II. at various courts, until, in 1575, he undeservedly lost his favour by the failure of a quixotic negotiation, having for its object to place the crown of Poland upon his brows. During the seclusion which followed, he wrote the Pastor Fido, a pastoral drama of more complex incident than had been hitherto produced, and whose refined polish and seductive strains, though misapplied upon a factitious style, long retained their popularity. It was composed in avowed emulation of Tasso's Aminta, and he carried the rivalry into ducal saloons, and even ladies' boudoirs, with the results naturally to be looked for among the peppery tribe of poets. But when Torquato's hour of darkness arrived, Guarini proved himself a generous opponent, and, in the edition of 1581, he did his utmost to rescue the cantos of Gerusalemme from the adulteration of unfriendly pens. When his country's subjugation had followed upon his patron's death, he was fain to seek other service with the Medici; and soon thereafter the Duke of Urbino wrote to Abbé Brunetti, his envoy at Venice, in the following terms: "We shall with much pleasure look over the pastoral which the Cavaliere Guarino has reprinted with notes and engravings, for we greatly esteem his meritorious works, and are aware how much we are indebted to his affection and courtesy. You will therefore thank him in our name for his remembrance of us."[199] This presentation copy procured the author a substantial reward in the following letter to Brunetti, dated some weeks later.

[Footnote *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.]

[Footnote 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.]

"Most magnificent and most reverend,

"In consequence of deaths and other circumstances, we find ourselves so ill provided with persons of such quality as was Albergato, that we must find some one as soon as may be. And recollecting the Cavaliere Guarino, who was known and entertained by us many years ago, we should be well pleased could we have him, provided his health be equal to his duties, not indeed for long journeys, but for attending upon our person, and accompanying us both in the carriage and on horseback, advising and conversing with us in all times and occasions. And we believe, if due means be adopted, this affair might be arranged to our mutual satisfaction, as we remember that, when lately quitting Tuscany, he seemed, from what he wrote to us, not averse to the idea of betaking himself hither, and in our answer we in no way discouraged the plan. We have, however, chosen to impart the matter to you, that you may manage it in whatever way you consider most proper for appearances; and should you think it well, we have no objection to your even going in person to Padua, on some other pretext. As to terms, we believe that the Cavaliere's modesty, and our partiality towards him, would readily bring everything to an issue; but you will give it all due consideration, answering separately this our letter, with whatever occurs to you on the subject. And so health to you. From Castel Durante, the 10th of June, 1602. Yours,

"FRAN'co. M'a. DUCA D'URB."

The following letter, from Guarini to his sister, proves that the arrangement was completed to the satisfaction of both parties; and an entry in the Duke's Diary shows that, notwithstanding a desire to return home, his departure from that court did not take place until July, 1604.

"My Sister,

"I should like to get home, for I have great need and wish to be there, but am so well treated here, and have so many honours paid me, and so many caresses, that I cannot. I must tell you that all my expenses and those of my servants are paid, so that I have not a farthing in the world to spend for anything I want, and orders given to let me have all I ask; besides which, they give me 300 scudi of yearly pension, which, with the expense of furnished house and maintenance, amounts to above 600 scudi a year. See, then, if I can leave this. Our Lord God give you every happiness. From Pesaro, the 23rd of February, 1603.

"Your most loving brother,

"BATTISTA GUARINI."

A letter from him condoling with the Duchess of Urbino on the death of her sister Leonora has been printed in Black's Life of Tasso, II., 451, but this brief notice may suffice to close the literary annals of our mountain principality.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter LII

The decline of Italian art: its causes and results--Artists of Urbino--Girolamo della Genga, and his son Bartolomeo--Other architects and engineers.

The zenith of Italian art, especially of Italian painting, was attained between 1490 and 1520. That brief span, scarcely a generation of human life, not only embraced the entire artistic life of Raffaele and witnessed the finest efforts of Leonardo, Luini, Bellini, Giorgione, Francia, Ghirlandaio, Fra Bartolomeo, Sodoma, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Spagna, and Salerno; it also ripened the earlier and better fruits of Buonarroti's genius, of del Sarto's too quickly degenerate palette, and of Titian's

"Pencil pregnant with celestial hues."

It saw the metropolitan St. Peter's commenced, the Stanze and Logge well advanced; it assembled in the Vatican halls the noblest band of painters ever united by one scholarship. That bright spot, the Pausilippo of our pictorial journey, has been passed. Our onward way lies through dreary days of progressive degeneracy, often fitfully illuminated by its reflected lights, but more rarely gladdened by gleams of original genius, or efforts of self-forgetting zeal.

In reviewing the history of painting, its stages of progress will be readily distinguished. The Byzantine period may be regarded as its starting point of stationary conventionalism.[*200] This was followed by an age of sentiment, when earnest thought gradually ameliorated penury of invention, and supplied intensity to expression. To it succeeded an epoch of effort, the hand failing to realise the aims of mind,[*201] the eye awaking to truths of nature, but bewildered by their hidden meanings. Next came the age of mastery;[*202] one of difficulties surmounted and doubts made clear. But the summit when attained was speedily quitted; the period of facility was too soon one of decline. In the words of Fuseli, painters then "uniformly agreed to lose the subject in the medium." Mechanism became the great object, copiousness a prized merit, until mediocrity sought refuge in a multitude of figures, or fell back upon theatrical artifice. The close of the fifteenth century was indeed a cycle of rapid progression, opening many new channels for the efforts of mind, and it was in Italy that this expansion was primarily felt. The ultramontane invention of printing was then eagerly adopted; the cultivation of revived philosophy, and the convulsions consequent upon foreign inroads, introduced elements of change into the Peninsular mind as well as its politics. In nothing was this movement more felt than in the fine arts. During early times, the ideas of artists exceeded their means of expression.[*203] Yet their works, even when trammelled by fetters, partly of limited skill, but more of traditionary mannerism, are often fit exponents of simple thoughts, while the coincidence between the conception and style renders solecisms of execution less startling. The forms may be timid or stiff, but they are always careful and earnest. But now a further range has been given to individual fancy. The choice and conception of the theme, its character and composition, were alike freed from conventional trammels, and became subjective (in the German sense) rather than objective. Religion and its ritual remained the same, the hero-worship of saints continued among its prominent features, art still furnished aids to devotion. But, as books became abundant and readers multiplied, pictures were no longer the written language of holy things for the multitude. The high mission of Christian art had been fulfilled; its limners, less impressed with their themes, thought more of themselves; they appealed rather to the judgment than to the feelings. They aimed at imitating nature to the life more than at embodying transcendental abstractions.[*204] We have already seen how the devotional inspirations of early painting, which Beato Angelico's pencil had mellowed into loveliness, attained, under the guidance of Raffaele, to consummate beauty of form. But the impulse that had forced pictorial art to its culminating point allowed it no rest, and the descending path was too quickly entered. The speculative minds of its creators and its admirers craved for novelty, for fresh themes and further powers. Elevation of sentiment or purity of design no longer sufficed,[*205] and with the competition which ensued for the guidance of public taste, there sprang up many solecisms to degrade it. Much that was in itself valuable was exaggerated into deformity. The knowledge of anatomy which enabled Michael Angelo to embody the terrible, that element of invention which he was the first fully to develop, also tempted him to combinations outraging nature and harmony;[*206] and his style has transmitted to our own day an influence dangerous to genius,[*207] fatal to mediocrity. Less permanent, because less healthful,[*208] was the opposite quality, introduced by Correggio, whose grace, founded upon artifice, degenerated under Parmegianino and Baroccio into meretricious affectation. A third ingredient, not so perilous and more pleasing, was brought to perfection in Venice, where alone can be appreciated the golden tints of Titian[*209] and the silvery harmony of Veronese. It is indeed remarkable that all the schools most celebrated for colouring have arisen in maritime localities, and been deficient in accurate design.

[Footnote *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.]

[Footnote *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?]

[Footnote *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.]

[Footnote *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.]

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

[Footnote *205: They never sufficed.]

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

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

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

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

In a preceding portion of this work we have alluded to the innovations of naturalism in painting, by men who introduced perspective, created chiaroscuro, cultivated design, and mastered nude action. Through their example, it not only extended a predominating influence over pictorial treatment, but quickly obtained that place as a canon of artistic criticism which it has since continued commonly to hold. It may seem rash to impugn a principle so universally adopted; and if perfection in art really depends upon an accurate imitation of nature, it would be folly to gainsay it. But the principle may be carried too far; and if we are to allow to art a nobler mission,--if we recognise in painting and sculpture a language wherein gifted men can embody, develop, and elaborately adorn the conceptions of beauty and sublimity, or it may be the sallies of humour and the scintillations of wit that flit across the fancy--a key whereby they can impart to their fellows, and transmit to all ages and nations, their emanations of genius, their poetic flashes, their benevolent sympathies, their devotional aspirations,--then surely a higher standard should be applied to what are often ranked as merely imitative arts, and are tested by their supposed fidelity as transcripts of external objects.[*210]

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

Such views will to many seem visionary and strange heresies. Yet they are truths by which painting reached its golden era, and which, even in its decline, have been largely drawn upon. Under Louis XIV., a vile epoch of a faulty school,[*211] allegory triumphed over reality, and the best feelings of humanity were forced into masquerade. But what shall we think of the taste which admits such solecisms against nature, whilst objecting to the conventionalities practised by the early Christian masters, and adopted by the purists of our own day? What, indeed, is art but a tissue of conventionalities, even when the imitation of external objects is its aim? Upon what laws of nature are regulated the gradations of aerial perspective, or the receding or flattened surfaces of basso-relievo? Does not the landscape painter, in modifying the tones of his colouring, remember that his mimic scenes are to be enclosed in gilt frames, an appendage for which Providence has made no provision in the real ones? But to such imitations art neither is nor ought to be confined. As the language of genius, it expresses loftier themes, and none but kindred spirits can fitly judge of its style, or set bounds to its range. The rustic who spells through Burns or Bloomfield would pause upon Paradise Lost, and throw down Hamlet in despair; whilst, to the presbyterian who ornaments his walls with Knox's portrait, or the Battle of Bothwell-brig, the Last Judgment would seem unintelligible, the Transfiguration blasphemous, the Judgment of Paris a flagrant indecency. In like manner, those who have neither imbibed the spirit of the Roman ritual, nor studied the forms of Christian art, may fully appreciate the dishevelled goddesses of Rubens, or the golden sunsets of Claude,--the glowing tints of Titian, or the transparent finish of Teniers; but let them understand ere they sneer at those sacred paintings which for successive ages have confirmed the faith of the unlettered, elevated their hopes, and inspired their prayerful ejaculations.

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

When the Christian mythology, which had supplied art with subjects derived from inspired writ or venerated tradition, was supplanted by an idolatry of nature content to feed spiritual longings with common forms copied without due selection from daily life, men no longer painted what religion taught them to believe, but what their senses offered for imitation, modified by their own unrestrained fancies. Painting thus became an accessory of luxurious life, and its productions were regarded somewhat as furniture, indicating the taste rather than the devotion of patrons and artists. These accordingly followed a wider latitude of topics and treatment. In proportion as devotional subjects fell out of use, a demand arose for mythological fable and allegory. Profane history, individual adventure or portraiture, supplied matter pleasing to vanity, profitable to adulation. But while the objects of painting became less elevated, its mechanism gained importance; it became ostentatious in sentiment, ambitious in execution. The aim of professors, the standard of connoisseurs, declined from the ideal to the palpable. A fresh field for exertion was thus opened up. Schools attained celebrity from their successful treatment of technical difficulties. Michael Angelo attracted pupils by his power in design; Titian by his mastery in colour; Correggio by his management of light; while the eclectic masters of Bologna vainly aspired to perfection by nicely adjusting their borrowed plumes; and the tenebristi of Naples sought, by impenetrable shadows, to startle rather than to please. A demand for domestic decoration led to further exercise of ingenuity. Landscapes, first improved by the Venetian masters as accessories, became a new province of art; and transcripts from nature in her scenes of beauty were succeeded by the clang of battles, the inanities of still life, the orgies or crimes of worthless men.[*212] In architecture and in sculpture, the departure was scarcely less remarkable from the pure style and simple forms of the fifteenth century: a free introduction of costly materials and elaborate decoration deteriorated taste, without compensating for the absence of ideal beauty. The masters of this, which we may distinguish as the "newest" manner, must accordingly be tried by a new standard. Those of the silver and golden ages, Angelico and Raffaele, sought a simple or vigorous development of deep feeling; the Giordani and Caravaggii, men of brass and iron, whose technical capacity outstripped their ideas, aspired not beyond effect. Effect is, therefore, the self-chosen test to which artists of the decline should be subjected, though it may detect in them false taste and vulgar deformity. Under their guidance, energy was substituted for grandeur, bustle for dramatic action; while flickering lights and fluttering draperies ill replaced the solidity and stateliness of earlier men. Art thus, like literature, became copious rather than captivating. Ambitious attempts were not wanting, but the effort to produce them was ever palpable. Ingenuity over-taxed gave birth to bewildering allegories, affected postures, startling contrasts, exaggerated colouring, meretricious graces. Nature was invoked to stand godmother to the progeny, but she disavowed them as spurious.

[Footnote *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.]

The rapid decline of art when imitation of nature became more strictly its object, has led to scepticism in some quarters as to the expediency of adopting such a guide. Until human ingenuity shall attain the means of embodying and preserving perfect copies of external objects, it would be presumptuous to decide how far such copies realise that standard of beauty which high art demands. The daguerreotype and kalotype, which give the nearest known approach to such a result, are far from solving the question in accordance with naturalist views; for, on their metallic plates and porous paper, a beautiful woman is, in general, coarsely caricatured; whilst a bust of her, or a bas-relief, always retains the grace of the sculptured original, and a chalk drawing is exquisitely reproduced. Were it enough to depict with perfect precision the forms and incidents reflected on the retina, a painter would be little more than a mechanic, in whom original genius might be almost dispensed with. But, though he will treasure in his portfolios a judicious selection of such impressions as he can daily gather from actual life, these, however nearly they may approach to nature and truth, are only materials of future creations. For high art,--and of such alone would we speak whilst Italy is our theme,--something more than mere nature was undoubtedly required;[*213] yet her guidance became indispensable after the revolution in taste and feeling which dismissed mediæval traditions and types. So various, however, are the freaks of individual fancy, so fantastic the vagaries of reason uncontrolled by authority, that the new path was beset by new pitfalls. The mediocrity of early masters found a refuge in mean but inoffensive commonplace; that of their successors, mistaking freedom and novelty for original genius, revelled in extravagant creations. The acute agonies, physical and moral, which sadly consummated the Atonement for man, were figured by the former in limbs wasted as by prolonged disease, stiffened as by a lingering death: the deep affliction of the Madonna Addolorata over the Saviour's body assumed in their hands an expression of such grief as knew not the relief of tears. But the artists of the "new manner" gave to crucifixions anatomical accuracy developed in spasmodic writhings, and bespoke sympathy for the mother of Christ by convulsive weepings, with perchance the accessory of a pocket-handkerchief! In pictures of this class, corporeal sufferings were rendered with horrible truth, muscular energy was substituted for mental woe. Living in times which needed fresh subjects as well as added powers, these painters laid aside such themes as treated of the mysteries of faith, the legends of primitive times, but especially such as, demanding spiritualised feelings in the author and the spectators, were uncongenial to both. To a contemplative religion, untroubled by sectarian movements, had succeeded a church militant, armed by bigotry, and struggling for existence. The revived Catholicism of Caraffa and Ghislieri required art of a character as gloomy as itself, and commissioned works wherein the terrors of the Inquisition replaced the promises of the Gospel, earthly martyrdoms supplanted celestial hopes, and pure faith was clouded by priestcraft. Henceforward, religious representations were reserved chiefly for church decorations, and even there they assumed an historical character, as in the miracles of our Lord, or the acts of his apostles. Alexander VI. had decorated the pontifical palace with incidents from the Gospel; but those which Paul III. and his successors selected for the Sala Regia commemorate the triumphs of an aggressive church in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the naval action of Lepanto. Michael Angelo, in depicting the Last Judgment, the chief glory of that pontificate, introduced Charon as a prominent personage; and, with inconsistency, if possible, more glaring, Poussin has painted Moses, the type of Christ, watched in infancy by a river-god, in classical allusion to his preservation from the perils of the Nile.

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

Whilst we have thus had to consider the prevalent imitation of external objects as an element tending to the corruption of purist feeling, it unquestionably enlarged the scope and stimulated the mechanism of painting. Such was the naturalism by which Raffaele, Michael Angelo, and Titian developed the comparatively feeble and stunted efforts of their predecessors into forms ennobling nature, and redolent of intelligence. But, in studying these palpable qualities, the more subtle ingredients of spirit and feeling were often overlooked; indeed, most of the creators of the new style outlived it, and saw it supplanted by a yet newer and far more degrading naturalism, which, with few bright intervals, has continued to cramp and pervert the manner of their successors. Such were and are those painters who, on the strength of their sketches from the life, and their studies of landscape and architecture, or with the plea of occasionally introducing portraits into sacred or historical compositions, proclaim themselves followers of nature, whilst their works outrage or caricature her. There may be great anatomical accuracy, and much truth in the separate heads, combined with inventions the most unreal, movements the most constrained, mannered attitudes, draperies meagre or overloaded, and a general substitution of mean conceptions for pleasing realities. The elaborate finish invariably found in the early masters was either bestowed upon accessories in themselves trifling, but stamping an extraordinary verity upon their works, or, as in the Sienese or Venetian schools, it was lavished upon gorgeous costumes illustrative of national manners. But similar details in later pictures are justly considered to remove them in some degree from the category of artistic performances to that of mere decoration, and are despised by those who, aiming at breadth of effect, sometimes adopt the most hopeless of all affectations, that of slovenly superficiality. Whence then this difference? and why should jewels and embroidery, that seem beautiful in Crivelli's saints or Dello's pageants, be vulgar gewgaws on recent canvasses? Merely because, in the former, all is minutely worked, but all is subsidiary to the general sentiment, whilst, in the latter, the absence of a simply pervading expression leaves each individual detail crudely prominent; because the ancient masters made everything subservient to that one overruling feeling of the picture, which, in most modern works, is totally wanting.

* * * * *

The Dukes della Rovere of Urbino had hereditary duties as patrons of art. Popes Sixtus IV. and Julius II., the founders of their family, had munificently encouraged it; the antecedent princes of Montefeltro had been its generous and discriminating friends. If the later dynasty fell short of these examples, they were not without excuse. Though the divine Raffaele parted his mantle among many pupils, no shred of it fell to his native duchy. Francesco Maria I., on succeeding to that state, found in it no lack of churches, palaces, or pictures, and little native genius meriting support; so he was content to call Titian from Venice to portray himself and his Duchess.[*214] His two successors were less devoted to arms, and more liberal to arts. They numbered among their subjects Baroccio and the Zuccari, who once more gave a pictorial name to Urbino, and they judiciously divided their commissions between these natives and foreign painters.

[Footnote *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.]

In a former portion of this work it was our endeavour to interweave the artistic notices which we had to offer in connection with Urbino, into a rapid sketch of Christian painting in Umbria. Resuming the subject, it will no longer be possible thus to generalise our views, for the time had arrived when each aspirant selected his own course to the temple of Fame; and in glancing at the various paths which chance or fancy suggested to them, our readers must be prepared for occasional repetitions. The ground, in itself less interesting, is more beaten; and though none of the competitors approximated the elevation gained by Raffaele, their numbers may be considered as some compensation for their comparative mediocrity. Lazzari, in his Dictionary of Artists belonging to his native duchy, has enumerated, under the Feltrian dukes, five painters, one sculptor, one architect, and one military engineer; while under the Princes della Rovere, these numbers are increased to twenty painters, eight architects, and sixteen military engineers. Of sculptors, during the latter period, there is no account; but along with eighteen followers of mechanical arts connected with the higher branches, we find workers in bronze, stucco, wood-carving, engravers, and makers of watches and mathematical instruments, besides two potters and three painters of majolica. It would be not less irksome than useless to follow all this catalogue, but we shall endeavour to throw together whatever is generally interesting of art in Urbino, during the sixteenth century, whether by native painters, or foreigners employed by the dukes; concluding with a chapter on minor arts, especially that of majolica, or earthenware, for which the duchy was long celebrated.

* * * * *

Our catalogue of artists under the della Rovere dynasty may be fittingly commenced with a name not unknown to their predecessors, the Feltrian dukes. GIROLAMO DELLA GENGA was born at Urbino, in 1476, of respectable parents, who destined him for the woollen trade, by which the wealth of Florence had, in a great measure, been gained. But the bent of his youthful mind was decidedly towards design, and his pencil so interfered with his proper business, that, after much vain opposition, his friends yielded, and sent him, at fifteen, to the studio of Luca Signorelli. It was the mission of this able painter to engraft upon the devotional traditions of Umbrian art, imbibed from Pietro della Francesca, a novel energy of thought and pencil; and Girolamo had the advantage of aiding him upon those wonderful compositions in the duomo of Orvieto, which Michael Angelo scrupled not to imitate in his Last Judgment, as well as warmly to commend. After attending his master during the execution of other commissions, he passed into the school of Perugino, where he found his precocious countryman, the young Raffaele. There he remained for three years, devoting himself chiefly to perspective, and thence repaired to Florence to complete his education. At Siena he was largely employed, along with Signorelli, by Pandolfo Petrucci; returning from whence to Urbino, he formed an enduring intimacy with Timoteo della Vite. They wrought together upon a chapel in the cathedral, which no longer exists; but the works there assigned to Genga were chiefly scenic and decorative, from his acknowledged superiority in architectural perspective; and for these, the various festive amusements then in fashion, such as pastoral dramas, triumphal processions, cavalry trappings, and temporary arches, occasioned in that gay capital a perpetual demand, during the latter days of Guidobaldo I., and the first years of his successor. His invention was especially called into play to welcome Duchess Leonora to her states, and to supply scenery for the representation of Bibbiena's La Calandra in 1513. These apparently mechanical performances were not, however, irreconcileable with excellence and fame in the higher branches of art; and it was whilst thus engaged that, during a short visit to Rome, he painted, for the oratory of Sta. Caterina of Siena in the Via Giulia, an altar-piece of the Resurrection, justly considered his chef-d'oeuvre.[*215] The figure of Christ, soaring upwards amid sprawling angels, somewhat anticipates Raffaele's Transfiguration, but with a copious infusion of Michael Angelesque feeling. The latter influence predominates in the violent attitudes and excited action of the guards, four of whom, suddenly aroused by the supernatural event, are rushing about without aim or self-possession; yet, the movement of one who awakens a still slumbering comrade is extremely natural. The Marys, approaching from the other side of the picture, recall Timoteo's manner. The colour, concealed however under an accumulation of dirt, is of a solid quality, and the chiaroscuri are skilfully managed, while the inscription, Girolamo Genga Urbinas facieb., satisfactorily secures its authenticity.

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

In 1497, Guidobaldo had granted to the Counts della Genga an exemption from taxes, for which Girolamo showed his gratitude by sharing the exile of Francesco Maria, when deprived by the tyrannical usurpation of Leo X. He retired with his family to Cesena, where, as at Forlì and other places in Romagna, he executed various church pictures of merit; of these, the Baptism of Christ, the Conversion of St. Augustine, and one representing the Almighty, with the Madonna, and the Doctors of the Church, have found their way to the Brera, at Milan. On the Duke's restoration, he was appointed his architect and engineer, and thereafter discontinued painting, devoting himself almost entirely to his new duties. Among the churches which he built, were those of the Zoccolantines at Urbino and Sinigaglia, but it was chiefly on the ducal palaces that he was employed. Of these, the first committed to him was the Imperiale villa, already mentioned.[216] Vasari describes it as a "very beautiful and well-contrived fabric, full of chambers, colonnades, courts, balconies, fountains, and delightful gardens, which every prince passing that way goes to see; and which Paul III. visited, with his court, when on his way to Bologna, and was quite pleased with all he saw." It would seem from his account that the most important ameliorations made by Genga upon that long-neglected residence, were the tower and internal decorations. The former remains, of handsome proportions; but its chief merit is said, by the Tuscan biographer, to have consisted in the management of a concealed wooden stair, reaching the summit in thirteen flights of steps, one hundred and twenty feet in all. In 1543, Bembo wrote to Leonora,--"I have visited your Excellency's Imperiale with much pleasure, both because I greatly wished to see it, and because it seems to me constructed with more intelligence and true artistic science, as well as with more antique fashions and finely contrived conceits, than any modern building I have seen. I heartily congratulate your Ladyship upon it, for certainly my gossip Genga is a great and gifted architect, far surpassing all my anticipations." The frescoes, illustrating his employer's life, were distributed by him to several foreign artificers, the duchy not boasting any painter of talent since the recent death of his friend Timoteo Vite. Among these was his pupil Francesco Minzocchi of Forlì, who, living on the limits of the old manner and the new, succeeded in uniting many excellences of both; yet, his works at Padua, Venice, Forlì, and Loreto, though highly creditable, scarcely merit the exaggerated praise bestowed on some of them by Vasari. That biographer's oversight, and his own modesty, have, on the other hand, done scrimp justice to Raffaele del Colle, whose attractive pencil is scarcely appreciated, notwithstanding Lanzi's eulogy. A pupil of the incomparable Sanzio, and of Giulio Romano, he preserved a healthy style amid prevailing deterioration; and many of his pictures still adorn the churches of Central Italy.[217] Contemporary with these was Angelo Bronzino, who maintained at Florence, during an age of general feebleness, the reputation transmitted by Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo. The grace of a Cupid, which he painted upon a corbel at the Imperiale, gained for him the patronage of Prince Guidobaldo, who employed him in small productions more congenial to his genius, including his portrait, and a harpsichord cover, both of them greatly admired, but now lost. The landscape ornaments in the villa were entrusted to the brothers Dossi, of Ferrara, or rather perhaps to Giovanbattista, the younger, and less able of them; but so total was their failure, that they were immediately thrown down, and replaced by others from Genga's designs. More successful in that light style were the portions committed to Camillo of Mantua, whose rural decorations are praised by Vasari and Lanzi.

[Footnote 216: See p. 49.]

[Footnote 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.]

We have thus far chiefly followed Vasari's authority, reconciling, as best we might, inconsistencies and errors, the result of his imperfect acquaintance with the locality. The paintings he describes at the Imperiale were probably part of Duchess Leonora's labour of love, to welcome her lord's return from his long campaigns. But the condition to which they are reduced, by time and unworthy degradation of the building, renders it impossible now to form an opinion of the various hands that have wrought upon them, or to discover their respective merits and subjects. The roofs of two saloons are occupied by small historical compositions, from the actions of Francesco Maria; but these are irrecoverably defaced. Two of them, ascribed to Bronzino, are said to have represented the Duke haranguing the band of adventurers whom he collected in Lombardy, for the invasion of his duchy in 1517; and his reception by the Venetian senate in 1523, as their captain-general. The ornaments of the remaining rooms are merely decorative.

Additions were made by Francesco Maria to his other residences at Urbino, Pesaro, and Castel Durante; on all of which, and Gradara, Genga seems to have been employed. Him also he entrusted to build a casino, within the walls of Pesaro, called the Barchetto, in which a ruin was imitated, with a spiral stair commended by Vasari: this house was subsequently assigned by Duke Guidobaldo to Bernardo Tasso, as a home to himself and his son Torquato; and part of it is now occupied by a gardener. Another work of Girolamo was the reparation of the fortress at Pesaro, which, however, he undertook merely in obedience to his sovereign, military architecture being little to his taste. In acknowledgment of these services, he had, in 1528, a grant of Castel d'Elce, with its feudal immunities, afterwards confirmed by Guidobaldo II. Some years later, he remodelled the episcopal palace at Mantua, and began an imposing church to St. John the Baptist at Pesaro, which was completed by his son. Among his minor efforts in the immediate service of the ducal family may be mentioned funeral decorations for Francesco Maria, and a monument to him, erected by Bartolomeo Ammanati of Florence, in Sta. Chiara of Urbino, but long ago removed. Enriched and honoured, he spent his declining years in leisure, and died in 1551. Vasari thus testifies to his exemplary character:--"Girolamo was an excellent and honest man, of whom no evil was ever heard. He was not only a painter, sculptor, and architect, but also a good musician, an excellent and most amusing talker, and was full of courtesy and affection to his relations and friends." Among his numerous pupils, Baldassare Lancia, of Urbino, was distinguished as a military engineer, whilst Bartolomeo his second son, Bellucci of San Marino his son-in-law, and Federigo Baroccio his nephew, all ably maintained his artistic reputation. In the person of Leo XII., one of his family has recently attained the highest station offered to the ambition of the Roman Catholic world.

* * * * *

BARTOLOMEO DELLA GENGA was born at Cesena in 1518, during his father Girolamo's emigration, and was sent to Florence at eighteen to study design in its various branches, under Vasari and Ammanati. At twenty-one he returned to his father, who, seeing his talent lie towards architecture, advised him to acquaint himself at Rome with the best models. His first commission on returning home was to prepare festive arches for Duchess Vittoria's reception after her marriage. He then accompanied Guidobaldo to Lombardy, as his military engineer, and, by examining the celebrated fortresses in that country, added greatly to his professional experience. He at this time refused very eligible appointments from the King of Bohemia, and subsequently from Genoa, wishing to dedicate his services to his own sovereign. Accordingly, on his father's death, he became ducal architect, and built large additions to the palaces of Urbino and Pesaro, especially the wing of the former, facing S. Domenico. He also erected a number of churches in the duchy, and prepared plans for a harbour at Pesaro, which were not carried into effect. Having attended the Duke to Rome in 1553, he gave some hints to Julius III. for the new fortifications of Borgo S. Spirito.

His reputation being thus established, the Order of Malta selected him to superintend the new defences proposed for their island, and in 1557 sent two knights on a mission to obtain the Duke of Urbino's sanction of Genga's engagement. During two months Guidobaldo resisted all importunities, and they at length succeeded only through a Capuchin friar, who, possessing his ear, represented the work as one in which all Christendom was interested. On Bartolomeo's arrival, he had but time to prepare a series of plans for civil and military architecture, when he was cut off by fever consequent upon exposure in the burning heat, having scarcely completed his fortieth year. Of this family also was SIMONE GENGA, who, after fortifying many Tuscan strongholds, carried his engineering talents to Gratz, in Austria. From Stephen, King of Poland, he had, in 1587, a monthly salary of 76 dollars, besides allowances for four servants and as many horses, whilst completing the defences of Varadino. Other architects of Urbino are mentioned by the Marchese Ricci as leaving structures in La Marca, such as LATTANZIO VENTURI, who, in 1581, built the communal palace at Macerata, with an allowance of 30 scudi for his plan, and 40 more for overseeing its execution. Six years later, he completed the façade of Loreto church, in the charge of which he was succeeded by his son Venturo. His countryman, LUDOVICO CARDUCCI, having accompanied him to Macerata, was employed on various ecclesiastical edifices there, his designs for which were submitted for approval to the Duke of Urbino. From Venturo Venturi the superintendence of Loreto devolved, about 1614, upon GIOVANNI BRANCA, of S. Angelo in Vado, who died there in 1645, aged seventy-four. His Manual of Architecture had passed through six editions previous to the present century.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter LIII

Taddeo Zuccaro--Federigo Zuccaro--Their pupils--Federigo Baroccio and his pupils--Claudio Ridolfi--Painters of Gubbio.

It was just after the fatal sack of Rome had dispersed the goodly company of painters, who, reared by Raffaele, and linked together by the recollection of his genius and his winning qualities, gave promise of long maintaining in the Christian capital that manner which he had brought to perfection,--that there was born to Ottaviano Zuccaro, or Zucchero, an indifferent artist of S. Angelo in Vado, a son destined to revive the pictorial reputation of Urbino. TADDEO ZUCCARO saw the light in 1529, and, while yet a boy, perceiving little hope of excellence under such instruction as Umbria could then afford, or of remedying the poverty of his paternal fireside, he boldly sought a wider field of improvement and enterprise, and at fourteen found his way to Rome. The hardships which he there underwent are touchingly described by Vasari. Aided by no friendly hand, his education was neglected, and he was driven to menial labour for the support of a precarious existence. Wandering from one studio to another, he earned a crust of bread by colour-grinding; and, unable to afford light for his evening studies, he spent the moonlight nights in drawing, till sleep surprised him beneath some portico. Under this hard life his health gave way, whilst his spirit remained indomitable, and he sought rest and renewed vigour in his native mountain air. But his thirst for improvement was not stayed by these sufferings. On his return to Rome with recruited energies, he was received into the studio of Jacopone Bertucci of Faenza, a follower of Raffaele, whose few independent works entitle him to more honourable mention than has been afforded him by Vasari or Lanzi, and who united the tasteful design of that master with somewhat of Lombard feeling. Taddeo subsequently aided one Daniello di Por, who carried to Rome much of the Parmese manner, imitating Correggio and Parmegianino. At eighteen he executed on his own account, on the exterior of the Mattei Palace, a series of nine events in the life of Camillus, which attracted general admiration, and established his popularity as a historical painter. These, and several other works in fresco done soon after, have been destroyed.

His rising reputation having reached Urbino, Guidobaldo II. summoned him there, when about fifteen, to undertake the exterior decorations of a chapel in the cathedral, which had been painted by Battista Franco, and soon after carried him on his tour of inspection of the Venetian terra-firma fortresses. On his return, he was established in the palace at Pesaro, where he painted the Duke's portrait and some other cabinet pictures. Two years thus passed away without his being able to commence the chapel, although the designs for it were well advanced; and being dissatisfied with this loss of time, he availed himself of his sovereign's absence at Rome to follow him thither. Orders now crowded upon him, for no contemporary painter was better qualified to supply those slight and rapidly executed works then in fashion for the external and internal decoration of Roman palaces and villas. Most of these have perished; but somewhat superior in character were the incidents in the Passion, painted in 1556, in the Church of Consolation under the Capitol. They are still in good preservation, but though cleverly conceived and carefully executed, these merits scarcely compensate for the exaggerated mannerism of their sprawling attitudes and solid draperies, whilst their violent emotions are anything but devotional. From this time his brother Federigo was associated in most of his labours, and the speed with which their commissions were finished brought them easy gains, and gave satisfaction in an age when taste had sadly degenerated. An arrangement, whereby Taddeo agreed to accompany the Duke of Guise to France, with a salary of 600 scudi, was interrupted by the Duke's death; but soon after our artist had a more important commission, from Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, to paint in his palace of Caprarola, near Viterbo, the heroic actions of his family. This was precisely the class of subject for which the manner and ideas of the Zuccari were most adapted, and the results were highly satisfactory. Accordingly, these paintings, engraved by Prenner in 1748, remain a standard of that style of palatial decoration. Taddeo's allowance was 200 scudi a year, for which he undertook to prepare all the cartoons, and to superintend their execution by his brother and other young artists. Among those whom he was thus enabled to bring forward, several, including Baroccio, were his seniors, a natural consequence of the good fortune which brought him early into repute as a clever head-master of the contract work then in vogue. His mural paintings in the Sala Regia of the Vatican, and his sacred subjects in the chapel of S. Marcello there, were also undertakings of considerable extent, sharing his attention with Caprarola during the latter years of his life. His last work was the Assumption of the Madonna in the Trinità del Monte, upon which death surprised him in 1566, and his dust reposes in the Pantheon, near that of his more illustrious countryman Raffaele, like whom, he died on the day his thirty-seventh year was completed.

His brother FEDERIGO, fourteen years his junior, was brought to Rome in 1550, and committed to his charge. The advantage of an associate on whom he could rely was immense to one whose works were, even from youth, in a great measure, executed by others; and fraternal affection, cemented by a similarity of tastes and pursuits, grew up into an identity of character and habits which extended to their respective works, and enabled the younger Zuccaro satisfactorily to terminate the commissions which Taddeo left unfinished. Precocity was a characteristic of both; and the only interruption to their harmony arose from the latter having retouched some frescoes done by Federigo, when but eighteen years old, outside of a house in Rome. The quarrel having become serious, a compromise was effected by mutual friends, on an understanding that the designs, but not the finished works of the youth, should be submitted to his brother's correction. During his residence in Rome, Federigo was, however, chiefly employed on those mural paintings which we have already mentioned as undertaken by Taddeo; and when about twenty-two, he spent a considerable time in Venice, painting, on his own account, in the Grimani Palace, whilst his contemporaries were still busy with their preliminary studies. There was even a proposal to assign to him the façade of the great council hall, but jealousy among the native artists prevented this taking effect. He was, however, consoled by the friendship of Palladio, who engaged him to decorate a large temporary theatre, and whom he subsequently accompanied on a tour through Friuli and Lombardy. Thence he visited Florence, in time to take part in the festive decorations which welcomed Joanna of Austria to her new capital, and, after a visit to his family, arrived at Rome early in 1566. It was about this time he painted for Duke Guidobaldo the Liberation of St. Peter from prison, now in the Pitti Gallery, a picture of no great intrinsic merit, though dexterous in effect; and now, too, Verdizotti of Venice complimented his early promise in this elegant sonnet, wherein the "tree of Jove" means the oak, the badge of Urbino and its dukes.

"Ecco! del glorioso arbor di Giove Un giovinetto ramo uscir sì altero, Ch'a speme di bei frutti ogni pensiero Desta al fiorir de le sue frondi nove. In lui tai gratie il ciel benigno piove, Che simili in altrui poch'altre spero; Gratie, per cui virtù gli apre il sentiero Ad ogni honor, che meraviglia move. E già le cime dei più culti allori L'inchinan' grate, e lieto augurio danno D'eterno pregio ai suoi giorni migliori. Alhor l'amate ghiande illustri andranno Di sì fin or, ch'al par de' suoi splendori Gli alti raggi del sole ombre saranno."

His brother's premature death made him heir of his fame and fortune: the latter he speedily increased, but the former he was scarcely adequate to sustain. Yet the dexterity by which he mastered, and the rapidity wherewith, by numerous assistants, he completed works of great extent, not only obtained him the commissions which Taddeo left imperfect, but secured him a preference for all undertakings of that description in Rome. It was upon this principle that he was called to Florence, to terminate the cupola of the cathedral; yet for the abortive effect of this vast composition, which has more than once narrowly escaped whitewash, Federigo is scarcely to be held responsible. The irretrievably hopeless attempt of filling suitably so immense an expanse with a figure composition, had been begun by a better artist than himself, and the blame of so gross a blunder must lie with Vasari. Don Vincenzo Borghini suggested the theme--Paradise allegorically treated in eight compartments, in seven of which are set forth the seven mysteries of our Lord's passion, while the eighth celebrates the triumph of the Romish church. The chief interest of this colossal performance lies in its monstrous compass; containing, it is said, three hundred figures, some of them thirty feet high. Returned to Rome, he was employed by Gregory XIII. on the roof of the Pauline chapel, whose walls had been decorated by Michael Angelo. The favours which fortune thus showered upon him soothed not the petulance of an irritable temper; and the bitter satire wherewith he caricatured some supposed enemies in a picture of Calumny, obliged him precipitately to quit the Holy City. This was a congenial subject, which he often treated. Once it was done for the Orsini of Bracciano; another of large size is noted in Pelli's catalogue of the Urbino pictures; and there is a small one in the gallery of the Uffizi. There are some curious particulars in Gaye's Carteggio of the annoyance to which this sally subjected him.[218] In 1581, he was held to bail for 500 scudi, to answer a charge of slander which it was hoped might be founded upon the testimony of his three assistants, who were imprisoned until they should supply a key to the suspected personalities. On this emergency he sought protection from the influence of his sovereign, and of the Grand Duke Francesco I. of Florence, by whose mediation he made his peace, and returned to Rome at Easter 1583. The Duke of Urbino's application was not disinterested, being anxious to secure Federigo's services for a chapel he was then building at Loreto, dedicated to the Madonna dell'Annunziata, regarding his frescoes in which we shall presently have some observations to offer. It is unnecessary to follow his several journeys to foreign courts and distant countries, whence he returned honoured and enriched. In 1574, after his flight from Rome, he passed through Paris, Flanders, and Holland, to England, where he probably remained for some time, painting portraits; but his works there do not seem to have been ascertained, or examined with much criticism. Several are loosely mentioned by Walpole, and his annotator Dalloway, one of which, representing Queen Elizabeth's gigantic porter, is said by Stirling to bear date 1580. His chalk drawings of her and Leicester, engraved by Rogers, can scarcely be the same mentioned by Borghini as executed in 1575.

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

On his return to Rome, Olivarez, ambassador from Philip II., whose overtures to Paul Veronese had been unsuccessful, proposed that he should proceed to Madrid. There he arrived in January, 1586, and, after being received with great splendour, was immediately named king's painter, with 2000 dollars of pension, and an apartment in the Escurial. From that palace he, on the 29th of May, wrote a letter descriptive of his first works, which merits notice as showing his opinion, and that of the age, on the fitting tone and treatment to be followed in high religious art. "My apartment contains excellent rooms, besides saloon and study, where his Majesty frequently deigns to come and see me work, loading me with favours. I observe you desire now to hear something as to what I have done or am about. There are four large pictures, for two altars of the relics, opening and closing like organ-doors, to be painted on both sides. They are dedicated to the Annunciation and to St. Jerome; and I have treated them thus:--On opening the former is seen our Lady, somewhat startled and confused by the angel's entrance, while on the outer side I have made her assenting to the salutation in the words, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord.' The exterior of St. Jerome is penitent; not as he is usually made, simply repenting, but having that faith and hope in God without which neither abstinence nor remorse can avail, together with the love, charity, and filial awe, that ought ever to connect us with God and our neighbour. And these I fancy as grouped together in idea before the saint; so I have set in front of him a cross, with Christ in the last agony, in order to inspire him with increased contrition, and at the foot thereof the three theological virtues among clouds. On the interior of the two doors, I have depicted St. Jerome, as a doctor of the church, writing: and as companion to the idealised penitence without, I thought fit to introduce the means and aims of study, so that the saint, though writing, is in a contemplative ecstasy, attended by three angels. Two of them, typifying perseverance and love of study (without which no science can be learned, no fruit obtained), hold his book and ink-horn; the third stands at his ear, suggesting thoughts and sentences, and pointing out, on the other door, the entire subject he is writing about: I intended this one for the guardian angel, or for that intelligence and thought, whereby all is contrived and composed; and I endeavoured to represent him as incorporeal, transparent and spiritual, a style little used on account of its difficulty. On that other door, I embodied the whole theme which St. Jerome, the most holy divine and doctor, is inditing, as to the Saviour's passion and man's redemption, dwelling specially on the considerations that induced the Father Almighty to send his only begotten Son into the world, to redeem mankind by his great sufferings. I imagine Charity as appearing in his vision, and saying 'It was I who moved God, and made Christ descend on earth'; to express which symbolically, a saint-like matron presses one hand on her breast, and indicates with the other a dead Christ borne by angels through the air. But what most pleases his Majesty and all beholders, being of peculiar mystic meaning and charming effect, is the three little Cupids who, at the feet of Charity, disport themselves with St. Jerome's lion, which comes forward most opportunely, his ferocity so tamed by these children, that he lets them pat, handle, and ride upon him, licking and fondling them the while, a clear proof that our God is not a God of anger and vengeance, but of love, peace, charity, and grace. During this winter I made all the designs and cartoons for these subjects, and have already coloured and entirely completed the first Annunciation, and the St. Jerome writing; at present I have in hand the Charity; and all, thank God, is to his Majesty's taste. This done, his Majesty wishes me to commence the retavola of the high altar [for the Escurial], where there will be eight great pictures in oil, those others being on panel."[219]

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

In this second commission our painter was less fortunate. The eight pieces represented St. Laurence's Martyrdom, five events in the life of Christ, the Descent of Tongues, and the Assumption. As they rapidly advanced, aided by several youths who had accompanied Federigo from Italy, he observed with anxiety the courtiers' cold or contemptuous silence; and, desiring to test his patron's feelings, he presented the Nativity to Philip with the arrogant exclamation, "Here, Sire, is all that painting can accomplish, a picture that may be viewed closely or from a distance." After long gazing on the canvas, his Majesty asked if those things in the basket were meant for eggs. So paltry a criticism says little for the monarch's connoisseurship, and the mortified artist was consoled by seeing his work placed on its destined altar. Mr. Stirling informs us that, upon this failure, he was set to paint six frescoes in the Escurial cloister, which gave as little satisfaction. In order to test his complaints of his assistants, he was then desired to execute the Conception without their aid, but with no better result. After his departure, several portions of his retavola were dismissed from the high altar, and most of his frescoes were defaced; but notwithstanding these repeated disgusts, and the moderate success of two other altar-pieces mentioned by Conca, Zuccaro remained for nearly three years in Spain, and was finally dismissed with gifts and pensions exceeding the remuneration stipulated for his services. The solution of his disappointment is simple. The artistic genius of Italy was greatly exhausted: that of Spain was a virgin soil promising many golden harvests.[220]

[Footnote 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.]

Some letters of Federigo Zuccaro in the Oliveriana Library further illustrate the turn of thought which influenced religious art in the end of the sixteenth century. He had been employed in 1583 by Francesco Maria II. to decorate a chapel in the church of Loreto; it was dedicated to the Madonna, and the theme prescribed for his frescoes was her life. The altar-picture by Baroccio represented the Annunciation; and the scenes selected for mural paintings were her marriage, visitation, death, assumption, and coronation. Of these the first three belonged to a class of dramatic compositions adapted to the prevailing taste, while the others partook of the Umbrian influence which still lingered around that shrine. The subsidiary ornaments being of course under the direction of Zuccaro, he felt puzzled how to fill up certain spaces offered by the architectural arrangement, and wrote to the Duke. After consulting the chief theological authorities among the hierarchy of Loreto what would best develop the "humble and mystic" sentiment which it was his object to sustain, the artist suggested that figures emblematic of glory and perpetuity should support the Coronation of the Madonna, as expressing the inherent attributes of that subject. In like manner he proposed to accompany her Death with Faith, Hope, and the Fear of God, the best supports of a death-bed; whilst the Assumption was to have Charity on one hand, Perseverance on the other, and above Joy, the fruit of these virtues and the foretaste of glory. As accompaniments for the Annunciation, he submitted that there should be two prophets or sibyls, the instruments through whom the incarnation of the Word was predicted. Giotto or Fra Angelico would have chosen the prophets of the Old Testament; Michael Angelo would have preferred pagan sibyls; Perugino or Raffaele might have invoked them both; Zuccaro, painting at Loreto, thought either equally appropriate appendages to his allegorical creations.[221] Yet Federigo was not altogether blinded to the barbarous tendency of the taste around him. In writing of Milan, he says that the painters there had in his day "wofully diverged from the beautiful simplicity and arrangement of those living early in the century; and that the Proccaccini, especially Giulio Cesare, introduced a set of scoffing heads, and certain angels so debauched looking, and devoid of all reverence in the presence of God and the Madonna, that I know not how they are tolerated, unless it be that they are excused for the sake of many other commendable parts."[222]

[Footnote 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.]

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

Of the large number of important works he executed in Venice, Milan, Pavia, Turin, and other towns of Upper Italy, we shall not attempt a catalogue, nor of his many frescoes in the Roman palaces and churches. We cannot, however, pass by an altar-picture still in the Church of Sta. Caterina in his native town, which was carried to Paris by the French plunderers. It represents Peter, Francis, and other saints, presenting to the Madonna the Zuccaro family, consisting of two men, a woman, and seven children--probably Taddeo, himself, his wife and offspring; and it is inscribed "Federigo Zuccaro dedicates this monument of his affection to the intercessors of his family and birthplace, 1603." Besides the interest attaching to the portraits, it is a satisfactory specimen of his usual manner. A work of his brother, connected with the history of the duchy, has been described in a previous volume.[223]

[Footnote 223: Vol. II.]

Academical instruction is considered as favourable only to mediocrity by many who maintain that genius must be cramped by the fetters of uncongenial routine, or by the prescribed duties of a conventional curriculum. The Academy of St. Luke was, however, founded under Gregory XIII., and Federigo Zuccaro was, in 1593, elected its first president, an honour appreciated far beyond the favour of princes or the decoration of knighthood. After inauguration, he was conducted by a crowd of artists to the palace he had built for himself on the Pincian Hill, at that corner otherwise consecrated by the residences of Claude, Salvator Rosa, and Nicolò Poussin. Here he afterwards held meetings of the Academy, where he read his discourses; and by will he left to it that house, failing of his natural heirs. His death occurred in 1608, at Ancona, at the age of sixty-six; but the clause of remainder in favour of the Academy has never become effectual, the palace in the Via Sistina being still possessed by his descendants. It is well known as the Casa Bertoldy, and may be regarded as the cradle of the modern German school of painting. The frescoes on which Overbeck, Cornelius, Schnorr, and Veit first essayed that elevated and pure style which has regenerated European taste, there attract many an admirer, little aware that the basement rooms, abandoned to menial uses, contain some of the latest efforts of cinque-cento decoration that have fair pretensions to merit. The richest of them has its vaulted roof studded with allegorical delineations of the arts, sciences, and virtues, painting being justly pre-eminent in a painter's house. The lunettes of another are crowded by portraits of the Zuccari, extending over four generations, and numbering twenty-one heads, true to nature. The third, which was Federigo's nuptial chamber, exhibits the ceremony of his marriage, around which are figures of Chastity, Continence, Concord, and Felicity, in the fashion of an age when genius had been replaced by ingenuity, grandeur by dexterous execution.

The infirmity of Federigo's temper, to which we have already alluded, may account for his unworthy treatment of Vasari. In the marginal notes upon his copy of the Vite de' Pittori, now in the Royal Library at Paris, as well as in an original work which we are about to mention, he takes every opportunity of sneering ungenerously at one whose biography of his brother, and whose allusions to himself are conceived in kind and flattering terms. Although his Idea de' Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti, printed in the year of his death, is supposed to be but a compend of his lectures at St. Luke's, he is believed to have intended it as a triumph over Vasari's justly popular writings. In this, however, he signally failed; it has the mysticism of philosophy without its spirit, while its pedantic subtleties are puerile rather than profound. This, and his Lamento della Pittura, are books of great rarity, but in no way merit a reprint. A mannerist with pen and pencil, the conceits of the former equal the allegories of the latter; nature and feeling are alien to both.

Although the Zuccari were little identified by their works with their native state, and obtained less of the ducal patronage than their contemporary Baroccio, their names have reflected much lustre upon Urbino. Yet the space which they occupied in the public view was owing to the smiles of propitious fortune,--to a happy facility of executing without exertion whatever commissions were offered,--to a certain magnificence and liberality in their manner of life,--and, in the case of Federigo, to an overweening vanity, rather than to any positive artistic excellence. Their reputation has accordingly waned, as the remembrance of such incidental qualities waxed faint, and as a distant posterity applied to them that only sure test, the merit of their works. Nor were these the only advantages of their position. An analogy has been deduced between Taddeo and the immortal Raffaele, not from any supposed resemblance of their pencils or genius, but because both were natives of the same state, both painted extensively in fresco at Rome, both died when "exactly thirty-seven," and both were buried in the same corner of the Pantheon. Federigo, on the other hand, was, like Titian, invited to courts, decorated and enriched by monarchs; like Raffaele and Michael Angelo, he was an architect and a sculptor as well as a painter; like Vasari, he aimed at a literary reputation. The works of the brothers display a marked similarity, a natural result of their long painting together; yet deterioration became perceptible as their distance from the golden age increased, and the younger may be distinguished by a pervading inferiority of taste and design, but especially by a growing mannerism and laxity in his conceptions, and by the overcrowding of his subjects. To balance these deficiencies, his person was attractive, his general attainments were far more comprehensive, and a longer life was granted for the enjoyment of his fortune and the extension of his fame, than fell to the lot of Taddeo. The failing mainly attributable to both was absence of style. Their inventions were often flimsy, and their compositions, deficient in unity and dignity, are often little more than figure groups.

* * * * *

A necessary consequence of the low style of art which the Zuccari adopted was that, notwithstanding the number of assistants whom they constantly employed, their school neither attained to considerable repute among their contemporaries, nor put forth many pupils of note; offering in this respect a marked contrast to that of their countryman Baroccio, whose pleasing manner attracted a host of admirers and imitators. Two natives of Pesaro, however, possess a certain reputation in the semi-mechanical church decorations then largely produced. They were Nicolò Trometta, generally called NICOLÒ DA PESARO, and GIAN GIACOMO PANDOLFI, the latter of whom was the earliest instructor of Simon Cantarini da Pesaro. The various works which these and other Zuccaristi have left in the duchy are quite unworthy of special description, and we may dismiss them with the mention of CAVALIERE DOMENICO CRESTI DA PASSIGNANO, whose chief title to fame is reflected from that of his pupils TIARINI and LUDOVICO CARACCI. Among the painters less known to fame were BIAGIO and GIROLAMO D'URBINO, both of whom were employed in the Escurial; the former left Spain along with Federigo Zuccaro, in 1588; the latter wrought under Pelegrino Tibaldi. Ottovevenius, after spending seven years with Federigo, carried his influence beyond the Alps, and eventually numbered Rubens among his scholars.

Among the artists who repaired to Urbino at the summons of Duke Federigo, for the construction of his palace, was Ambrogio Barocci, or Baroccio, a Milanese sculptor, who established himself there, and, after long labouring on its plastic decorations, founded a family singularly distinguished in the higher branches of mechanical and pictorial art. His two daughters were married to Girolamo and Nicolò della Genga, and his great-grandson Federigo, upon whose biography we must dwell at some length, had an elder brother Simone, who after studying the exact sciences under Federigo Comandino, became the best mathematical instrument maker that had hitherto been seen. His cousins, the Cavaliere Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Maria, were not less famous in watchmaking, an art successfully patronised by the Dukes delle Rovere, which we shall mention in our fifty-fifth chapter. FEDERIGO BAROCCIO was born in 1528, and initiated into the rudiments of design by his father, who practised engraving and modelling. His early efforts having been approved by his grand-uncle Girolamo Genga, he was placed under the tuition of Battista Franco of Venice, an indifferent painter, much employed in the majolica shops at Urbino, whose taste for designing from antique sculpture directed his pupil's attention to those effects of chiaroscuro which distinguished his matured style. After assiduous labours in this way, he repaired to Pesaro, then his sovereigns' residence, where were placed their accumulated treasures of art. There he observed the works of Raffaele and Titian, under the guidance of Genga, who carefully advanced his artistic education, especially in perspective. At twenty he went to Rome, anxious to see the triumphs of his great countryman, which he forthwith set himself to study. Several anecdotes are told of his modesty, which kept him in the background until chance obtained for his drawings a passing compliment from Michael Angelo, and the warm sympathy and encouragement of Giovanni da Udine, delighted to find in the youth a countryman as well as an admirer of his former master. After imbibing inspiration from these healthful fountains, he returned home, and executed some church paintings. But the casual arrival of one who brought some cartoons and crayon drawings from Parma gave a new turn to his ideas. Forgetting the grandeur of Buonarroti and the pure beauty of Raffaele, he aimed at those meretricious graces which have borrowed from the dexterity of Parmegianino, and the luscious pencil of Correggio, a fascination unsupported by their intrinsic merits, and pregnant with mischief to art. To him, however, belongs the credit of introducing into Lower Italy a harmonious application of light and shade, to which his early lamp studies from sculpture may have conduced.

Returning to Rome in 1560, he found Federigo Zuccaro in the ascendant, and from him received a hint as to the tendency of this manner, which it would have been well that he had adopted. Having, at the request of Federigo, painted two children on a frieze, with a fusion of colour very rarely effected in fresco, the latter, considering this to be overdone, retraced the outlines with a brush, imparting to them that force which was wanting to the work. Baroccio took the reproof in good part, but profited not by it. During his first visit he had become known to Cardinal Giulio della Rovere, by whose influence, probably, he procured employment at the Vatican and Belvidere, in company with Zuccaro. With the decline of their art, the good feeling of the painters' fraternity waned, and the kindly sympathies of that glorious band, whom Raffaele had imbued with a portion of his amiable nature, no longer animated their successors. Those who saw in Baroccio one who would have raised the standard of taste from the abandonment which immediately succeeded the dispersion of that noble school, instead of seconding his efforts poisoned him at a banquet. He survived the potion, but four years of pain and feeble health elapsed ere he could return to his labours. When his system had in some degree resumed its vigour among his mountain breezes, he was called to Perugia to paint for its cathedral the Deposition from the Cross, a work which, far from exhibiting any prostration of power, greatly surpassed his previous efforts. No scriptural theme offers greater technical difficulties, or demands a larger share of those grand and energetic qualities in which Baroccio was usually deficient. It is, therefore, one of his most remarkable efforts, as regards its own qualities, and the circumstances under which it was produced. It occupied him during three years, and was followed by the Absolution of St. Francis, for the Franciscans of Urbino, on which he laboured in their convent for above twice that period. In consideration of their poverty, he charged but a hundred golden scudi for the work, to which they gratefully added as many florins.

It is not our intention to give a catalogue of even his more important productions, although a large proportion of them were executed for the decoration of his native state, which his patriotism induced him to prefer to the splendid offers made him by foreign monarchs. Among those commissioned by his sovereign was the Calling of St. Andrew, finished in 1584, and presented to Philip II., that saint being patron of the Spanish order of the Golden Fleece. It was about the same time that Duke Francesco Maria dedicated to the Madonna del Annunziata, a chapel in the church of Loreto, which we have already mentioned as decorated in fresco by Federigo Zuccaro. Its altar-picture was committed to Baroccio, the subject naturally being the Annunciation. This was in all respects a labour of love, the theme being in perfect unison with his dulcet manner, and it was accordingly considered by himself his chef-d'oeuvre, a merit which, in the opinion of many, is shared by his Deposition, and, in that of Simon da Pesaro, by his Santa Michelina. Modern connoisseurs may decide between the first and last of those three great works, as they hang side by side in the Vatican Gallery, the former of them, and the Deposition, having been returned from Paris. The Annunciation is certainly a very favourable and pleasing specimen of the Baroccesque manner, but an eye versed in the criticism of sacred art must demur to the judgment of Bellori, who found maiden humility in the Virgin, a celestial air in the angel, and spiritual character in the tinting. The principal figure is the portrait of a young lady of the Compagnoni of Macerata, whose features are equally devoid of purity and of noble expression; the colouring, though delicately beautiful in itself, is meretricious in effect, transmuting flesh into roses; and the whole sentiment of the picture is anything but devotional. On the other hand, it is distinguished above a majority of his important works by unity of composition, although, like most productions of his age, the action is exaggerated and the details mannered. A copy in mosaic was sent to replace this favourite effort, which was often reproduced by the master and his pupils. A repetition of it was presented by Francesco Maria to the court of Spain, and another, left unfinished, remains at Gubbio. The Santa Michelina, protectress of Pesaro, was painted for the church of S. Francesco there, and exhibits a striking deviation from this artist's wonted style. A single figure kneeling on Mount Calvary in ecstatic contemplation, amid the war of convulsed elements, admitted of no paltry prettiness, and could scarcely fail to attain grandeur. There is, accordingly, in the breadth of composition, and in the prevalent low neutral tone, an approach to severe art, inducing us to overlook the fluttering draperies and girlish forms that belong to the master.

Rome possesses by a better title three other pictures deserving the notice of those who desire to appreciate Baroccio. The Presentation of the Madonna (1594), and the Visitation, adorn the Chiesa Nuova, where the latter is said to have often inspired S. Filippo Neri's devotions; the Institution of the Sacrament according to the Romish rite, in the church of the Minerva, was a present from the Duke of Urbino to Clement VIII., who conferred upon the painter a gold chain. It is related that, in the original sketch, Satan was introduced, whispering treason into the ear of Judas, but was afterwards omitted, in deference to his Holiness's opinion, that the Devil ought not to be represented as "so much at ease in the Saviour's presence." On occasion of the same Pontiff's visit to Urbino, in 1598, he received from his host a golden vase for holy water, beautifully chased, with a painting by Baroccio at the bottom, wherein the infant Christ, seated on the clouds, gives the benediction with one hand, and supports the globe with the other. This charming miniature so delighted the Pope, that he had it removed from the benitier, and affixed to his daily office book.

The Cathedral of Urbino contains the latest of his great church pictures, representing the Last Supper, as well as the St. Sebastian, one of his early works, and it is interesting to contrast their respective styles. The St. Sebastian was commissioned for 100 florins in 1557, whilst the inspirations of Rome still hovered over his palette, and imparted vigour to his already Correggesque manner. This hackneyed and generally harrowing subject is treated with pleasing novelty, the group consisting of the saint, a graceful figure bound to a fig-tree, an imperious judge who has condemned him, and a brawny archer who carries the sentence into effect, whilst the Madonna and Child appear on high to support the martyr's faith and hope. In the Cenacolo, the fair promise of that able production is sadly abandoned: all those great qualities of his predecessors, which he began by happily imitating, are there replaced by extravagance, and even harmony is absent from his multifarious tints. Of his innumerable minor works we cannot pause to take note, and he scarcely ever painted in fresco. It is remarkable that, although his manner was, even in its defects, well suited to the voluptuous character of mythological fable, and to many a scene of mundane grandeur, he limited himself to sacred representations, almost the only exception being portraits. Of the latter, his most successful is Duke Francesco Maria, in rich armour, as he returned from the fight of Lepanto; it has been deservedly honoured with a place in the Tribune at Florence, and an equally beautiful repetition adorns the Camuccini collection at Rome.

The amount of his labours is inconceivable, considering the constant sufferings which he is represented to have undergone, from an almost total destruction of digestion, and habitual sleeplessness, consequent upon having been poisoned at thirty-two years of age. The large pictures we have mentioned are but few of those which he produced, yet no artist was more painstaking. Bellori assures us that he always prepared two cartoons and two coloured sketches, drawing exclusively from the life, and made many studies of drapery, separately perfecting his chiaroscuros from figures repeatedly modelled by his own hands, ere he transferred them to his paper. Such conscientious diligence could scarcely have been looked for in an artist whose works owe little to their outline, and may appear unnecessary to those who imitate his fusion only as a trick to mask defective design. This peculiar quality of his colouring was likewise matter of unwearied application, and he endeavoured to facilitate its results by an artificial scale, corresponding to notes in music, as a test for the gradation of his "tuneful" tints.

The merits of Baroccio consist in much variety and novelty of conception, in skilful management of his lights, and in the dexterous blending of strongly contrasted tints into a harmonious whole. The Correggesque tone of his pictures admirably conformed to the soft and gentle turn of his character; but whilst his design is more exact, and his foreshortenings are more true, he wants the breadth of Correggio; though his lights are more silvery and superficially lucent, his chiaroscuro neither attains to the force nor the depth of his prototype. The peculiar beauty at which he constantly aimed degenerates into a deformity; the almost cloying sweetness of his faces produces in the spectator a surfeit, inducing a desire for simpler fare. His figures are often deficient in self-possession, his colouring in verity, his compositions in solidity and repose. In a word, Baroccio shared the usual fate of eclectic painters, who, distrusting their own resources, seek to make up a manner from the combined excellences of their predecessors. Striving to engraft the grace of the Parmese upon the design of the Roman school, he fell into a flimsy mannerism, which, in straining after meretricious charms, departs from dignity and devotional feeling.

The days were nearly over when genius loved to master several branches of art; and it would have been better had our painter limited his labours to the palette, and to spirited etchings from his own compositions. At the command, however, of his sovereign, he, in 1603, undertook to supply designs for a long-contemplated statue of Duke Federigo; and Gaye gives us several of his letters regarding the difficulties of this commission, which baffled him for six months. His great aim was to retain the peculiar character of the head, without rendering prominent the unseemly defect in the eye and nose,--an object hitherto effected by portraying the old warrior only in profile. He worked chiefly from the bas-relief over the library door in the palace, and that at the church of S. Giovanni.[224] The execution of his design was committed to Girolamo Campagna at Venice, a sculptor of note, who cannot justly be held accountable for this poor and awkward performance. It was placed, in 1606, on the palace stairs at Urbino, where it remains.

[Footnote 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.]

But for the misfortune of his broken health, Baroccio would have been as happy as his estimable character deserved. He was fortunate in his temper, in his extended reputation, in his easy circumstances, in his multiplied orders, and in his many scholars. His infirmities prevented him from accepting flattering invitations to the courts of Austria, Spain, and Tuscany, but the friendship of his own sovereign never failed him. Having fitted up in his house at Urbino a sort of exhibition room for his works, it was repeatedly visited by Francesco Maria, whose Diary not only mentions this, but notes his death and that of his brother Simone, "an excellent maker of compasses." On the 1st of October, 1612, is this entry: "Federigo Baroccio of Urbino died, aged seventy-seven, an excellent painter, whose eye and hand served him as well as in his youth." His real age seems to have been eighty-four, and there can be no doubt that he retained his faculties, painting without spectacles, until struck at the last by apoplexy, a remarkable triumph of mind over protracted bodily infirmities. Yet the deterioration of his later works, which may still be seen at Urbino and Pesaro, sadly belies the Duke's tribute to his green old age. A list of many of those which he executed for that kind patron will be found in the last number of our Appendix. At his funeral in S. Francesco, a church standard, painted by himself, with a Crucifixion, was placed at the foot of his bier: the tablet inscribed to his memory has been excluded in rebuilding the nave, but remains in the adjoining corridor.

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The popularity of Baroccio, both personally and as a painter, recruited to his studio many young artists, eager to enter the path which he had successfully trodden. But the faults of his style were of a sort which imitation was sure to exaggerate, and the absence of solid qualities in the master prevented the felicitous development of such talent as nature had granted to his pupils. We accordingly search in vain among his many scholars for a single name of eminence; and we might pass over the Baroccisti without further notice, but that a considerable proportion of them claim a passing word as natives of the duchy. ANTONIO VIVIANI, son of a baker at Urbino, was a favourite of his master, though probably not his nephew, as supposed by Lanzi. In early life, his productions imitated those of Baroccio with great success, as may be seen at Fano and in various parts of the duchy, but on proceeding to Rome his style rapidly deteriorated. Emulating the flimsy and faulty manner of the Cavaliere d'Arpino, by which high art was then fatally degraded, he painted against time in the Vatican and Lateran palaces, as well as on many altar commissions. These, when compared with other contemporary trash, obtained a degree of applause which sounder criticism is compelled to withhold from il Sordo, the nickname by which their author was generally known. But he sacrificed his art without improving his fortune; and an old age, passed in poverty, was closed in disappointment and want. His brother Ludovico, "wicked, graceless, and disobedient, unworthy the name of son," had from his father's will five farthings in lieu of his patrimony, and his career maintained the prestige of this sad outset, both in his character and works.

ALESSANDRO VITALE, born at Urbino in 1580, so completely caught the amenity of his instructor's manner, as to be employed during his advanced years to copy many of his works, which, with a few finishing touches, passed as originals. ANTONIO CIMATORIO, alias il Visacci or the Ugly, was chiefly employed on festive and scenic decorations, aided by GIULIO CESARE BEGNI of Pesaro: the latter went afterwards to Venice, and, devoting himself to better things, left not a few good pictures in the March of Treviso. GIORGIO PINCHI of Castel Durante, and ANDREA LILLIO of Ancona, both approached the Baroccesque manner with considerable success, and shared the labours of il Sordo on the pontifical frescoes in Rome. Among those who carried the same style to a distance, may be named ANTONIO ANTONIANO of Urbino, who, after aiding Baroccio with his great picture of the Crucifixion, was sent by him with it to Genoa, and there settled. GIOVANNI and FRANCESCO, two brothers of Urbino, and probably offsets of this school, emigrated to Spain, and painted in the Escurial, under the patronage of Philip II. FILIPPO BELLINI, a native of the same city, though a pupil of Baroccio, adopted a more vigorous manner, but his works are scarcely met with out of Umbria. To this catalogue it is enough to add the names of Francesco Baldelli, Lorenzo Vagnarelli, Ventura Marza, Cesare Maggieri, Bertuzzi, and Porino, all born in the duchy; and those of Bandiera and the Pellegrini of Perugia, the Malpiedi of La Marca, and the Cavaliere Francesco Vanni of Siena, the latter of whom, though not among his scholars, so thoroughly adopted the peculiarities of Baroccio, as to be perhaps the happiest of his imitators. TERENZIO TERENZI of Urbino, known by the soubriquet of Rondinello, earned a dishonourable reputation by his successful imitations of the older masters, which he passed off as originals; and having fallen into merited disgrace with his kind patron, the Cardinal of Montalto, in consequence of pawning upon him one of his forgeries as a Raffaele, he died of vexation in the first years of the seventeenth century, aged thirty-five.

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CLAUDIO RIDOLFI, though born in Verona in 1560, may be considered a subject of Urbino. His family was noble, but not rich, so adopting painting as a profession, he studied its principles under Paul Veronese, at Venice. But the temptations to idleness which beset him at home so interfered with success that he resolved to escape from them. On his way to Rome he stayed some time at Urbino with Baroccio, in whose glittering style he lost somewhat of the better manner of his early master. But his journey to the "mother of arts and arms" was interrupted by more powerful fascinations; for he married a noble lady of Urbino, and settled at Corinaldo, some miles above Sinigaglia, attracted by the beauty of its site, and fain to enjoy, in provincial retirement, exemption from the jealousies and struggles which often beset artists in a city life, where tact or fortune are apt to confer a success denied to merit. Though he returned for a time to his native city, and painted many excellent works in it, and in the principal towns of the Venetian state, the charms of Corinaldo and his wife's influence induced him to spend there the greater part of a long life. He died in 1644, aged, according to his namesake Carlo Ridolfi, eighty-four, or to Ticozzi, seventy years. To the glowing tints of the Lombard school he eventually added the merit of more accurate design; but his principal excellences were a chastened composition, and a close attention to the proprieties of costume, as contributing to a proper intelligence of the subject. A vast number of his productions are scattered over Umbria and La Marca, and there issued from his studio not a few pupils of provincial eminence, most of whom tended considerably towards the Baroccesque manner. Of those belonging to Urbino the most conspicuous was BENEDETTO MARINI, who, though scarcely known at home, produced many important works in Lombardy, and excelled in the management of crowded compositions, such as his immense Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, painted at Piacenza in 1625. Patanazzi and Urbinelli belong to a less distinguished category, and though Girolamo Cialderi is ranked with them by Lanzi, he seems referable to a subsequent period.

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Gubbio continued in the sixteenth century to maintain a school which, though acquiring little more than a provincial reputation, was not without merit. BENEDETTO NUCCI was born there about 1520, and, imbibing from Raffaelino del Colle certain inspirations of the golden age, left in his native town many respectable church pictures. He died in 1587, having seen his son Virgilio escape from his studio to place himself under Daniel di Volterra at Rome. Among his pupils, but of ever progressive mediocrity, were FELICE DAMIANO and CESARE DI GIUSEPPE ANDREOLI, the latter an offset of a family whose eminence in the art of majolica will be mentioned in our fifty-fifth chapter.

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Chapter LIV

Foreign artists patronised by the dukes Della Rovere--The tomb of Julius II. by Michael Angelo--Character and influence of his genius--Titian's works for Urbino--Palma Giovane--Il Semolei--Sculptors at Urbino.

It would occupy a full chapter were we to trace the history of what Julius II. meant to have been his tomb, from the chisel of Michael Angelo Buonarroti; yet the subject is too illustrative of that Pontiff's grandiose spirit, and of the artist's unfulfilled aspirations, as well as too intimately connected with the ducal house of Urbino, to be overlooked. The work was commissioned by Julius himself, who, early in his pontificate, called Buonarroti from Florence to execute a resting-place for his ashes, which, in the words of Vasari, should "surpass in beauty and grandeur, in imposing ornament and elaborate sculpture, all antique and imperial sepulchres." The vast size and colossal proportions of the first design were worthy of artist and patron, and cannot be at all estimated from the curtailed and aimless substitute which now challenges our criticism. Yet there was exaggeration in the ideas as well as the forms; the allegories were far-fetched, the adulation fulsome, and the intention obscure. Such at least is the impression left by the descriptions of Vasari and Condivi. Without attempting to reconcile these with the sketch engraved in the Milanese edition of the former author [1811], it is enough to say that the original plan was an isolated parallelogram, with about ten statues and seven caryatides on each façade, and a sarcophagus aloft for the Pope's body, the estimate for all which seems to have been 10,000 ducats, augmented by his executors to 16,000. Its destined site was St. Peter's, and its utter disproportion in style and extent to that time-worn basilicon appears to have suggested to the indomitable Pontiff the vast idea of reconstructing the metropolitan church of Christendom. This more engrossing undertaking absorbed much of the enterprise and materials destined for the tomb, so the latter remained unfinished at the death of Julius, who barely survived the completion of those Sistine frescoes to which he had transferred the sculptor's reluctant labours. A new and reduced contract having been made by his executors for its completion, Buonarroti resumed it with the preference due to a favourite work; but he sought in vain for leisure to proceed with it on the accession of Leo X., who, by a strange misapplication of his powers, sent him to work the marble quarries of Pietra Santa. Indeed, the executors failed to obtain implement of his undertaking under either of the Medicean popes, alienated as these were from the della Rovere, and intent upon otherwise employing the genius of their gifted countryman.

At length Francesco Maria I. took up the forgotten memorial of his uncle, whose over-ambition of monumental honours had meanwhile led to a total oversight of his place of sepulture. As early as 1525, we find the Duke addressing complaints and threats to Buonarroti, whom he charged with idleness, after receiving prepayment of his stipulated price, unaware apparently that he had been overborne by higher authority, and thus compelled to employ himself on commissions less germane to his feelings and tastes. A misunderstanding in regard to the sums so advanced further complicated this unfortunate affair, which was throughout fraught with disappointment and annoyance to Michael Angelo. It slept on till 1532, when a further modification was made of the plan to a single façade whereon six statues were to be placed; but amid competing calls upon his "fearless and furious" chisel or pencil, little progress was made in the next ten years. Irritated by continual exercise of the papal control, such as his independent spirit could ill brook, fretting at the uncongenial labours often thrust upon him, and galled by repeated allegations against his gratitude and his integrity, Buonarroti turned his eyes to Urbino, as a home where his genius would be appreciated without sacrificing his freedom of action, and took steps to retire thither and redeem his pledge to the Duke. But in Paul III. he had a yet more exacting task-master, from whom there was no escape, and in November, 1541, Cardinal Ascanio Parisani wrote to Duke Guidobaldo that the Pope having commissioned the sculptor to paint the Last Judgment, which would occupy his undivided attention during several years, to the exclusion of the monument, he had to propose, at the instance of his Holiness, a new arrangement, whereby the statues for its reduced design, so far as not already finished by Michael Angelo, were committed to other artists, working upon his models and under his eye. Yielding gracefully to the necessity of the case, the Duke wrote the following letter.[225]

[Footnote 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.]

"Most excellent Messer Michelangiolo,

"His Holiness having deigned to [inform] me of his urgent desire to avail himself for some time of your labours, in painting and decorating the new chapel he is making in the Apostolic Palace, and I, esteeming and gratefully acknowledging all service and satisfaction given to his holiness as bestowed on myself, in order that you may more freely give your mind to that matter, am perfectly content that you place on the tomb of my uncle of blessed memory, Pope Julius, those three statues already terminated entirely by your hand, the Moses included. And in order, as nearly as possible, to perfect the whole in terms of our last stipulations, which, as I am informed, you are anxious and ready to do, [I consent] that you commit the execution of the other three statues to some good and esteemed master, but after your own designs and under your superintendence; relying confidently, from your good-will to his sacred memory and to my house, that you will bring the work to a satisfactory issue, and so contrive that it shall be deemed most laudable, and in all respects worthy of you. Such a result will fully satisfy me; and I again beseech you to see to this, as conferring on me a special obligation; offering myself at all times [ready] for all your commands and pleasure."

Under this final alteration of his contract, Michael Angelo forthwith assigned to Raffaele da Montelupo the execution of his designs for a Madonna with a Child in her arms, and for a prophet and a sibyl seated, at the price of 400 scudi; employing at the same time two decorative stonecutters upon the ornamental details of the façade, at a cost of 800 more. The statues from his own hand were to be Moses, and two caryatides holding captives, who had been introduced into the first plan, as allegorical of the cities in Romagna subdued by Julius. But, finding these too large for the reduced design, he proposed to substitute for them two other figures from his chisel, already far advanced, and which he would entrust to be finished by others at a cost of 200 scudi, his Moses being destined to stand between them. All this is stated by him in a petition to the Pope of 20th July, 1542. The two substituted statues were finished by Buonarroti, and, in the documents printed by Gaye, are named by him Active and Contemplative Life. This, however, is a free interpretation of the allegory, the figures being, according to Vasari, Leah and Rachel. The recumbent Pope was the wretched work of one Maso di Bosco or Boscoli; and the prophet and sibyl by Montelupo are said to have greatly dissatisfied Michael Angelo. The two rejected caryatide prisoners found their way to Paris in the time of Francis I., and remain in the Louvre; another similar is in the great hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, at Florence; and some grandiose, half-blocked ideas, still to be seen here and there, whose rough power identifies them with Michael Angelo, may have belonged to his original plan. About the beginning of 1545, forty years after it had been undertaken, the work was placed in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, of which Julius had been Cardinal-presbyter. Though meant as his tomb, it is but his monument; for the bones of that imperious high priest have found a fitter resting-place in the grandest of Christian fanes, his own creation, and best memorial. Few works of art have occasioned greater variety of opinion. In his Lectures, Fuseli has exposed several of his defects, and the impression it most frequently leaves upon the spectator is thus aptly expressed by him in an Italian letter to the translator of Webb on the Beautiful:--

"In the Moses, Michael Angelo has sacrificed beauty to anatomical science, and to his favourite passion for the terrible and the gigantic. If it be true that he looked at the arm of the famous Ludovisi satyr, he probably, also, studied the head, in order to transfer its character to the Moses, since both of them resemble that of an old he-goat. There is, notwithstanding, in the figure a quality of monstrous grandeur which cannot be denied to Buonarroti, and which, like a thunder-storm, presaged the bright days of Raffaele."

This monument must ever be regarded as but the epitome of a grand design, curtailed without scale or measurement, deformed by colossal portions from the original in combination with dwarfish details of its pigmy substitute, marred by incomplete allegories, and eked out by supposititious figures. Yet few will leave the spot without another glance at the tremendous Moses, nor will any connoisseur avert his gaze until the awful majesty of that one statue has eclipsed the petty incongruities of its location. It is among those rare creations of man's mind which, rising above the standard of human forms and human sympathies, demand a loftier test. The pervading sentiment alone challenges our intellectual regard, and bespeaks our verdict; yet with playful prodigality, the artist has lavished an ivory finish upon its details, without detracting from the sublime character of the irate lawgiver.[226]

[Footnote 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.]

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Although this work is the only link directly connecting Michael Angelo with the ducal house of Urbino, we may be allowed a passing tribute to that genius which has hammered huge rocks into colossal compositions, and embodied themes the most difficult in forms the most daring. Of the simple element of beauty we, indeed, find in him few traces. Gentleness and pathos had no place either in his wayward spirit or in his works.[*227] Discarding the beau-ideal aimed at in antique sculpture, where movement was restrained by the observance of form, and passion modified to the measure of fair proportion, he either startled by impossible postures, gnarled limbs, and sturdy deformity, or, in the words of Fuseli, "perplexed the limbs of grandeur with the minute ramifications of anatomy." Hence, when tried by the rules of art, many of his creations are found wanting; when submitted to the standard of pure taste, their faults become glaring. In straining to shake off the trammels of manner, he often fell into mannerism the most infelicitous; and the impression too commonly left on the spectator is that of energy wasted and talent misapplied. But his mind was of that lofty cast which, soaring above common themes, and spurning conventional restrictions, substituted power for beauty, and challenged our wonder rather than our approbation. Awed by the sublimity of his ideas, we overlook their inadequate development, until, descending to details, we impugn the unfinished sketch, and half-chiselled marble, painfully reminded that superhuman gifts are often marred by very ordinary weaknesses.

[Footnote *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.]

No one, perhaps, fully aware of Michael Angelo's celebrity, ever looked for the first time upon one of his principal works without a shade of disappointment. Inventions appealing to the intellect without sympathy from the feelings,--attitudes struggling with difficulty rather than aiming at elegance,--muscular masses, rugged as the blocks from which they are rudely hewn; such things surpass the comprehension of superficial observers, and disenchant common minds. Yet there is a spell around all of them which arrests the most careless, and recalls the most disappointed, and the longer they are examined, especially by persons of cultivated understanding, the more certain will be the final tribute to their transcendent qualities, the more unreserved the avowal that their author stands out among the foremost geniuses whom the world has seen. Feebleness or insipidity had no place in his conceptions, and no individual ever left the impress of his vigorous mind upon so many various arts. He was a poet of no mean pretensions. His architecture is as successful as bold. It is difficult to say whether his frescoes or his sculptures are the more admirable. Even his oil paintings are worthy of more notice than they have met with; and, the few ascertained specimens display a mastery of finish little to be looked for from their wayward and impetuous author, and develop in their execution, as well as in their design, an extraordinary pictorial science. The trite assertion that he never painted but three easel pictures seems fully negatived by the mechanical perfection which, notwithstanding a certain languor of colouring and flatness of surface, these exhibit, and which must have been gained by extensive practice. In his house, even a miniature on parchment is shown as his work; and not a few tiny productions in bronze and ivory bear the stamp of his invention, if not of his hand. These were probably labours of those early days when, with equal verity and shrewdness the Gonfaloniere Soderini recommended him to the Roman court as "a fine young man, unequalled in his art throughout Italy, or perhaps the world. He will do anything for good words and caresses; indeed, he must be treated with affection and favour, in which case he will perform things to astonish all beholders."[228] In the sacristy of S. Lorenzo, at Florence, these anticipations were amply realised on the monuments of two of the Medici, with whom an earlier portion of these pages has made us acquainted. These works were, however, no labour of love to the sculptor, whose sympathies had been alien to that race from the days when Pietro ceased to walk in the ways of his fathers. Accordingly, their greatest fault is, that the artist absorbs our interest almost to the exclusion of the personages commemorated, to whom the allegorical compositions appear to have no reference. It is, indeed, only their portraits that recall the purpose of the monuments. That of the elegant and gentle Giuliano awakens no association that might not be suggested by the statue of some nameless warrior of the classic age. More appropriate is the bearing of Lorenzo, the usurper of Urbino. The stern gloom that broods over his casque, and shadows his repulsive features, scowling upon the world from whose sympathies he seems a voluntary alien, is an enduring index of his unamiable character. But it is in the Sistine chapel that Buonarroti sits pre-eminent. Who that stands beneath its grand frescoes can doubt the daring, the originality, and grasp of his genius, who triumphantly called into existence forms and movements before which ordinary minds shrink into pigmy dimensions? Yet, who that observes the rapid decline of the Michael-Angelesque school into mannered contortion and extravagant caricature, can question its mischievous influence, or the danger of opening up such fields to uninspired labourers? On both sides of the Alps, its followers or imitators, mistaking extravagance for energy, manner for power, and servilely substituting exceptional attitudes for the sublimity of nature and the dignity of repose, have copied his design without imbibing his spirit, and have embodied feeble conceptions in preposterous forms.

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

Freely have we spoken of a name to whom all honour is due, whose failings may be noted as a warning, without diminishing our respect for his manifold attainments. Our readers may appreciate his success as a poet through Mr. Glassford's felicitous version of a sonnet worthy the noblest of art's disciples.[*229]

[Footnote *229: Cf. J.A. SYMONDS, The Sonnets of Michelangelo.]

"Now my fair bark through life's tempestuous flood Is steered, and full in view that port is seen, Where all must answer what their course has been, And every work be tried, if bad or good. Now do those lofty dreams, my fancy's brood, Which made of ART an idol and a queen, Melt into air; and now I feel, how keen! That what I needed most I most withstood. Ye fabled joys, ye tales of empty love, What are ye now, if twofold death be nigh? The first is certain, and the last I dread. Ah! what does Sculpture, what does Painting prove, When we have seen the Cross, and fixed our eye On Him whose arms of love were there outspread!"

The home patronage of the della Rovere dukes was, however, by no means limited to their subjects, and TITIAN[*230] enjoyed high favour from the first two sovereigns of that dynasty. The coronation of Charles V., in 1532, having attracted to Bologna a concourse of distinguished persons, Titian, then in his fifty-fifth year, was honoured by an imperial invitation to join the throng. The monarch, himself reputed no mean craftsman, delighted to pass what time he could snatch from business, in conversing with the painter, and observing his progress, till one day, having picked up a fallen pencil, he returned it, saying, "Titian deserves to be waited on by an Emperor." The Duke of Urbino, who may have known the Venetian in his native city, was among the sovereigns and cardinals whose commissions on that occasion contended for preference, and but a short time, probably, elapsed ere his own and his consort's portraits were produced,[*231] although Vasari and Ridolfi have erroneously fixed their date in 1543, five years after Francesco Maria's death.

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

[Footnote *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):--

"Dearest Friend,--

"You know through our envoy how much we wish for pictures ... and the longer we have to wait the more eager we are to have them ... and so we beg you to satisfy us as soon as possible. Finish at least one of the pictures, that we may rejoice in something by your hand."

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.]

Few of Titian's likenesses have been more lauded than the Duke's, both as regards truth and execution; but we shall quote only the testimony of Aretino, who knew well the painter and his subject. "In gazing upon it, I called Nature to witness, making her confess that Art was positively metamorphosed into herself; and to this, each wrinkle, each hair, each spot bears testimony, whilst the colouring not only exhibits vigour of person, but displays manliness of mind. The vermilion hue of that velvet drapery behind him is reflected in the lustrous armour he wears. How fine the effect of his casquet-plumes, reproduced on the burnished cuirass of the mighty general! Even his batons of command are perfect nature, chiefly that of his own adventure, thus budding on the faith of his renown, which began to shed its glories in the war which humbled his private foe. Who would assert that the truncheons confided to him by the Church, Venice, and Florence, were not of silver?"[232] In Aretino's letter were enclosed two sonnets on the portrait and its companion; they will be found in the Appendix, No. XI., together with one in which Bernardo Tasso appeals to Titian for a likeness of his lady-love. Aretino's lines regarding the Duke may be thus literally rendered:--

"Fear on the crowd from either eyebrow falls; Fire in his glance, and pride upon his front, The spacious seat of honour and resolve. Beneath that bust of steel, with arm prepared, Burns valour, prompt all peril to repel, From sacred Italy, that on his worth relies."

[Footnote 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.]

The other sonnet, descriptive of Leonora's likeness, alludes to the master's harmonious tints as figuring varied charms met in her character, such as humility of disposition, decorum in dress and manners, sustained by a dignified expression. In her features, beauty united with modesty, a rare combination; and grace was enthroned on her eyebrows. Prudence presided over her becoming silence, and other excellent qualities marvellously adorned her forehead. Nor are these praises exaggerated. Those who attentively observe this portrait in the Uffizi Gallery will readily acknowledge that, although, perhaps, more elaborated in its details than any other from the master's hand, his pencil never attained greater breadth, nor embodied high art in more severe character.[233]

[Footnote 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.]

The connection thus formed by Titian with the house of Urbino was maintained after the accession of Duke Guidobaldo, through whom Paul III. invited him to Bologna in 1543, where he painted that Pontiff with his wonted success. About the same time the Duke commissioned from him a likeness of himself, which was finished two years later. The misfortune sustained by its disappearance may be appreciated from the words of Aretino, who, writing to Guidobaldo, says, "For he has so embodied in his colours the very air you breathe, that in the same attitude as you at this instant appear to others at Vicenza, we now behold you in Venice, where we circle, bow, and pay court to you, just as do your suite who are in waiting upon you there." Vecellio lived among men whose talents, and fame, and forms, and dress deserved commemoration; and to such he did justice, for painter and sitters were worthy of each other, conferring a mutual and enduring illustration. His pencil, and those of his followers, were singularly happy in preserving individual character, although wanting in ideality and intense expression. But their great excellence displayed itself in the representation of voluptuous scenes, adapted alike to their glowing tints and the taste of their countrymen.

In 1545, Titian repaired to Rome, at the request of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, visiting Urbino[*234] on the way, and receiving several commissions which he could not stay to execute. Setting forward on his journey, he was conducted by Guidobaldo in person to Pesaro, and thence by an escort to Rome. The impression left upon the painter in this passage is thus described to the Duke, by his friend Aretino:--"Titian writes me, 'Worship the Lord Guidobaldo, gossip!--worship him, I say, gossip! for no princely bounty can compare with his.' And these exclamations are his grateful acknowledgment of the mounted escort of seven attendants which your Excellency provided for him, with good company, and all paid; over and above the ease wherewith, amid caresses, honours, and gifts, you made him feel quite at home. I was, indeed, melted by the account he gave me of your marvellous efforts to benefit, honour, and welcome him." We have, to the like purpose, the less exceptionable testimony of Bembo, who, on the 10th of October, wrote to Girolamo Querini: "I must add that your old friend Maestro Tiziano is here, who represents himself as much beholden to you.... The Lord Duke of Urbino has treated him with exceeding kindness, retaining him about his person, and bringing him as far as Pesaro, and thence forwarding him thither, well mounted and attended, for all which he acknowledges himself under great obligations."

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

Vasari mentions, as executed by Titian for the court of Urbino, portraits of Popes Sixtus IV., Julius II., and Paul III.; of Charles V., Francis I., Sultan Solyman, and the Cardinal of Lorraine. I have not succeeded in tracing any of these with certainty, but two half-lengths of beautiful women, added to the list by Ticozzi, may probably be the Flora[*235] now in the Uffizi Gallery, and the Bella in the Pitti Palace: their features exhibit considerable analogy with each other, and with the former of two pictures we are now to describe. In the last number of the Appendix we shall rectify various errors regarding Titian's two celebrated Venuses in the Tribune at Florence. One of them, painted for Guidobaldo II., has no proper right to that title, being correctly called in the old Urbino inventories, "a naked woman lying." She is stretched at full length along a bed, on which is a linen sheet, with a green curtain above. A tiny spaniel crouches at her feet, and two waiting-maids are searching in a chest near an open balcony, for garments wherewith to veil her all-exposed charms. The languor of her eye, the listless attitudes into which her limbs have dropped, personify voluptuousness, and express a mind quietly gloating over the past. A certain harmony and warmth of tone, fused throughout the vast surface of delicate flesh-tints and snowy linen, over which broad daylight streams without shadow, are worthy of our highest admiration; and the relief given to the figure, with little aid from the chiaroscuro, is probably unrivalled. The companion picture, which was not, however, executed for Urbino, represents an equally nude figure on a couch of purple damask, near a balcony opening upon a distant landscape. The boy of love, archly toying upon her bosom, decides the subject to be Venus; and her glowing eye-ball expresses the ardour that thrills through her veins. The full and solid flesh is true to those developed forms which, still characterising the women about Treviso, formed the standard of female perfection in Titian's studio; and although the skill with which they undulate, softened by chiaroscuro, demands all praise, there may yet be some who, dissenting from such an ideal of beauty, wish this mortal mould had been refined into the symmetry of that "perfect goddess-ship" which close by "loves in stone." Having thus noticed these nudities, it may be well to add, that the shameless Aretino, while boasting of his own unrestrained debaucheries, bears testimony to the purity of Titian's morals, and the habitual control under which his passions were maintained.

[Footnote *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).]

As an antidote, perhaps, to so sensual a production, Titian sent to Urbino, with his Venus, a picture offering the utmost contrast in sentiment and artistic treatment. It was the first of those Magdalens,[*236] frequently repeated by him with slight variations, of whom not a few school copies may be seen passing for originals. Ridolfi tells us that he caught the idea from an antique sculpture, transforming it into a penitent daughter of sin. Yet he has treated it according to those ideas of female beauty which it was the peculiar province of the Venetian school to develop, and which in Italy have passed into the proverbial phrase of un bel pezzo di carne, meaning a buxom dame. To borrow the words of Ticozzi, "he has represented a noble lady, who, while yet in her prime, had abandoned the delights and delicacies of her station. With due regard to her past position, he has lavished upon her the beauties of form and complexion; her repentance he has characterised with the most devoted expression of which art is capable." The ascetic sentiment prevailing in this work is well adapted to the sympathies of the Roman Church, among whose followers it has ever been more a favourite than with Protestant amateurs.

[Footnote *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.]

Our notice of Titian in connection with the court of Urbino, may be closed by a letter, which, in the servile phrase of this century, ventures thus to dun Guidobaldo for payment of a picture sent him five months before:--

"To the most illustrious and most excellent Lord, the Lord Duke of Urbino.

"Most illustrious and most excellent Lord,

"Very many days have now passed since your most illustrious Excellency desired that I should be advised how your [servant] Agatone ought to have remunerated me for the picture which I sent to your most illustrious Excellency. Which he not having done, although six months are nearly elapsed since the 10th of March, but having only put me off with words, I have chosen to take the step of informing your illustrious Excellency by these lines, that your boundless liberality may aid my necessity, though I admit that I may thereby appear wanting in modesty. I know that your illustrious Excellency, occupied by important affairs, cannot have your mind distracted by such trifles, yet I consider it my duty respectfully to let you know my difficulty; and beseeching you to retain me in your wonted favour, I humbly kiss your most distinguished hands. From Venice, the 27th of October, 1567. Your most illustrious Excellency's most humble servant,

"TITIANO VECELLIO."

In one of his visits to Venice, about 1559, Guidobaldo, chancing to enter a church of the Crociferi, where a youth was engaged in copying the St. Laurence of Titian, he entered into conversation with him, and subsequently returned more than once to observe his progress. On one of these occasions, while the Duke was hearing mass at a neighbouring altar, the young artist seized the opportunity to sketch his likeness, which was shown him by an attendant. Pleased with its success, and with the painter's manners, he invited him to enter his service. The object of this casual patronage proved not unworthy of it. He was JACOPO PALMA the younger, a name already known to art; for his grandfather, who bore it, had distinguished himself among the scholars of Giorgione and Titian; and his aunt, Violante, was mistress and favourite model of the latter. Palma Giovane, then in his sixteenth year, accompanied the Duke to Pesaro, where he employed his pencil in copying works of Raffaele and Titian. The only anecdote preserved of his residence in the court of Urbino proves that he continued to enjoy his patron's favour; for, in a dispute with the house-steward as to his luncheon, the latter was ordered to treat the youth with more consideration. In order to obtain for him every advantage, the Duke sent him to the charge of his brother, Cardinal della Rovere, at Rome. After there diligently studying antique marbles, with the works of Michael Angelo and those of Polidoro di Caravaggio, Palma, at twenty-four, returned to Venice. On his way, he paid a visit of thanks to Guidobaldo, and by his works removed certain unfavourable impressions made by unfriendly detractors in his absence. Of those which he may have executed for this court, no account has reached us, beyond a notice that Francesco Maria II. paid him, at Venice, 1591, 86 scudi for a Madonna and a St. Francis, which do not, however, appear in the wardrobe inventories. He painted for the metropolitan cathedral at Urbino the Discovery of the Holy Cross, a picture praised by Lanzi beyond its merits; and for Pesaro, a S. Ubaldo, and the Annunciation.

Another Venetian, patronised by Guidobaldo, was GIANBATTISTA FRANCO, surnamed il Semolei, who was brought to Urbino on a recommendation of Girolamo Genga, in order to paint the choir of the cathedral. He there treated the favourite Umbrian theme of the Coronation of the Madonna in a manner utterly at variance with the old feeling, taking as his prototype the Judgment of Michael Angelo, of whom he was a devoted and assiduous imitator. This work having been destroyed by the fall of the roof in 1789, we shall content ourselves with the description of Vasari, who had seen it, and whose leaning must have been favourable to a work produced under such influence. "And so, in imitation of Buonarroti's Judgment, he represented in the sky the glorification of the saints, scattered on clouds over the roof, with a whole choir of angels around our Lady, in the act of ascending to heaven, where Christ waited to crown her, whilst a number of patriarchs, prophets, sibyls, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and maidens, in varied groups and attitudes, manifested their joy at the arrival of the glorious Virgin. This subject might have afforded to Battista an excellent opportunity of proving his ability, had he adopted a better plan, not only in the practical management of his fresco, but in conducting his entire theme with more judicious arrangement. But in this work he fell into his usual system, constantly repeating the same faces, figures, draperies, and extremities. The colouring was likewise utterly destitute of beauty, and everything was strained and puny. Hence the work, when finished, greatly disappointed the Duke, Genga, and every one, much having been expected from his known capacity for design." Several easel pictures of his, in the sacristy of the Duomo, are weak in composition and poor in colour; but one of St. Peter and St. Paul, before the Madonna and Child, is an exceedingly grandiose production, in the Buonarroti style. We shall have further occasion to speak of this artist in our next chapter. He was born about 1498, and lived to the age of sixty-three; but aware of his deficiencies as a painter, he betook himself in a great measure to engraving, for which his accuracy as a draftsman well qualified him.

* * * * *

In absence of native sculptors of eminence, the plastic art never was much cherished in our duchy, and few commissions were given, except for decorative or monumental purposes. The festive arches on Duchess Vittoria's marriage were probably designed by Tiziano Aspetti, a bronzist of Upper Italy. Her husband having acquired a Leda by Bartolomeo Ammanati of Florence, he was called to Urbino, to construct a memorial for Francesco Maria I. It does not, however, appear to have been successful, and being quite disproportioned to the little octangular church of Sta. Chiara, of which it occupied the centre, it was removed after the Devolution, and probably destroyed. SEBASTIANO BECIVENNI of Mercatello, was celebrated as a decorative sculptor, and his dexterity is attested by two pulpits in the duomo at Arezzo, dated 1563. In 1581, Francesco Maria II. commissioned two small statues from John of Bologna, and in the following year his minister at Rome wrote, proposing to send him a miniature painter from thence, at a monthly salary of ten golden scudi, besides board and travelling expenses. Late in life, he had his own and his father's portraits executed in mosaic by Luigi Gaetano at Venice. The statue of Duke Federigo, which we have already mentioned as modelled by Baroccio, was executed for this Duke by Girolamo Campagna of Venice, and one of his grandfather, attired as a Roman warrior, leaning on his baton of command, and resting upon a stump, was the work of Giovanni Bandini of Florence, an eminent scholar of Bandinelli. After his sovereignty had virtually passed from the bereaved Duke, he disposed of this memorial of its brighter days in a touching letter to the Doge of Venice, which finely illustrates the resignation beautifully exemplified in all the correspondence of his latter years:--

"Most serene Prince,

"My grandfather, the Lord Duke Francesco Maria, was during life honoured by your serene state with such high authority and dignities, that, even after his decease, its esteem and favour have ever been specially exhibited towards his posterity and race; in these, now about to close in my person, your Highness will lose a line of supporters whose services are well known to you. Yet, being unwilling that these good offices should pass entirely from memory, I have resolved to present to the serene Republic and your Highness, the statue which I erected in testimony of dutiful respect to my said grandfather; for nowhere can it be more fittingly placed than in your renowned city. I therefore herewith send it to you, and with the more pleasure from knowing that your state will gladly receive the portrait of one who so faithfully served it, and who, though no longer able to do so directly, will, virtually and by example, demonstrate how your Republic ought to be served. It will, at all events, afford irrefragable evidence of his attachment to that cause for which he would have desired longer life, and will prove a sure token of my unbounded devotion to your Highness, which, indeed, I cannot more fittingly demonstrate: beseeching, however, that your Highness will regard this act as a solemn testimony of the old and continued love of my house for your distinguished state, which God preserve as long as my unbounded wishes; and so I kiss your Highness's hands with devoted affection.

"Your Highness's most devoted son and servant,

"FRANCESCO MARIA DELLA ROVERE, DUKE.[237]

"From Castel Durante, this ..., 1625."

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

The statue now stands in the court of the Doge's ducal palace, thus inscribed: "To Francesco Maria I., Duke of Urbino, leader of the armies of this Republic; erected at Pesaro, and recommended to the affectionate care of Venice by Francesco Maria II., when bereaved of progeny." The original inscription ran thus: "To Francesco Maria, an eminent general, leader of the armies of the holy Romish Church, the Florentine republic, the Venetian state, and the princes of the League against the Turks, and of his own troops; the conqueror, subduer, and sustainer of potentates at home and abroad; his grandson, Duke Francesco Maria II. had this erected."

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