daughter of Ferdinand I of Naples and Isabelle de Clermont. In 1476 she
married Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary. On his death in 1490, she
married Ladislas II of Bohemia, who for a time prevented the succession
of Matthias’s natural son John. However the youth attained the Hungarian
throne with the aid of the Emperor Maximilian; whereupon Beatrice was
repudiated by Ladislas and her marriage was annulled by Alexander VI. In
1501 she returned to Italy, resided at Ischia and died childless. Like
her elder sister, the Duchess Eleanora of Ferrara (see note 399), she
was a woman of cultivation and taste, and in spite of her political
intrigues, she is praised for having done much to strengthen the
intellectual bonds between Italy and Hungary, to which country she
invited Italian poets, scholars and artists.
Note 395 page 204. MATTHIAS CORVINUS, (born 1443; died 1490), was the
son of the famous Hungarian general János Hunyadi, and in 1458 was
proclaimed King of Hungary by the soldiers whom his father had so often
led to victory. His life was a nearly continuous series of great
enterprises, among the most noted of which were his campaigns against
the Turks and his siege and capture (1485) of Vienna, where he
thereafter resided chiefly and died. By no means the least part of his
fame was won by the ardour with which he advanced the cause of science,
art and letters in his country, and bestowed upon his people not only an
enlightened code of laws but also the benefits of Renaissance culture.
He introduced printing into Hungary, and was the founder of a
magnificent public library at Buda Pest, containing fifty thousand
volumes, for the most part MSS. which he caused to be copied in Italy
and the East.
Note 396 page 204. ISABELLA OF ARAGON, (born 1470; died 1524), was the
daughter of Alfonso II of Naples and Ippolita Maria, daughter of the
first Sforza duke of Milan. In 1489 she made a splendid entry into Milan
as the bride of her own cousin Giangaleazzo Sforza, whose rights as duke
were gradually usurped by his uncle Ludovico il Moro. This usurpation
has been regarded as partly due to the ambition of Ludovico’s young
wife, Beatrice d’Este (see note 398), who could not endure the
precedence rightfully belonging to Isabella. As has been seen, it was to
protect himself against the wrath of Isabella’s father and grandfather,
that Ludovico invited Charles VIII into Italy as his ally. When Charles
reached Pavia, he had to endure the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn
cousin Giangaleazzo (they were sisters’ sons) in prison, and to hear the
piteous pleadings of the beautiful Isabella, who fell at his feet and
besought him to have mercy on her husband. Her appeal was withstood, and
Ludovico of course had no scruple in setting aside the rights of her
infant children. Fresh trials awaited her in her native country, to
which she returned in 1500, and from which her family had been expelled.
Note 397 page 204. ISABELLA D’ESTE, (born 1474; died 1539), was the
oldest child of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara and Eleanora of Aragon. Having
had Mario Equicola as preceptor, she married the Marquess Gianfrancesco
Gonzaga (see note 446) in 1490, her early betrothal to whom prevented
her from becoming the wife of Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan, who
soon afterwards married her sister Beatrice. At Mantua she continued her
literary and artistic training, and her court became one of the
brightest and most active centres of Italian culture. The chief poets
and painters of the time laboured for her or were her friends. Being for
years in her husband’s service, Castiglione knew her closely, maintained
a frequent exchange of letters with her, and is only one of many who
praise her beauty, her intellect, and her moral qualities; she may be
regarded as the most splendid incarnation of the Renaissance ideal of
woman. Her long friendship with her sister-in-law, “My lady Duchess,”
has been already mentioned. Some interesting details have survived as to
her manner of ordering a picture. Having chosen a subject, she had it
set forth in writing by some humanist of her court. These specifications
were then given to the painter chosen for the purpose, and he was
furnished with minute directions as to the placing of the figures and
the distribution of light, and required to make a preliminary sketch. As
the painting was often intended for a specific space, she took great
care to secure the exact dimensions desired, by providing two pieces of
ribbon to show the precise height and breadth of the picture. Isabella’s
brilliant career, and especially her close relations with the chief men
of her day and her weighty influence upon contemporary politics, are the
subject of many scholarly volumes and interesting articles written
jointly by Alessandro Luzio of Mantua and Rodolfo Renier of Turin.
[Illustration:
ISABELLA OF ARAGON
DUCHESS OF MILAN
1470-1524
]
Enlarged from a negative, specially made by Alinari through the courtesy
of Professor I. B. Supino, of a medal, in the National Museum at
Florence, by Giancristoforo Romano (1465?-1512). See Armand’s _Les
Médailleurs Italiens_, ii, 54, no. 1.
Note 398 page 204. BEATRICE D’ESTE, (born 1475; died 1497), married
Ludovico Sforza, Duke Regent of Milan, in the same year (1491) in which
his niece Anna Sforza married Beatrice’s brother Alfonso, the future
husband of Lucrezia Borgia. Younger, apparently less beautiful, and
certainly less accomplished than her sister Isabella, Beatrice
encouraged her husband’s patronage of art and letters, and took part in
his turbid political schemes. It will perhaps never be determined
precisely to what extent she was responsible for his treatment of his
young nephew and of the latter’s wife (see note 396), and for the
disasters to Italy that ensued, but she is known to have exercised a
great ascendency over her husband’s mind, and he is said to have spent
at her tomb the last night before his final capture and downfall. After
the expulsion of the French from Italy in 1512, her sons Maximilian and
Francesco Maria successively held the duchy for a time, until it passed
into the hands of Spain in 1535. For an account of her life, the reader
is referred to Mrs. Henry Ady’s recently published “Beatrice d’Este,
Duchess of Milan; a Study of the Renaissance,” which owes much to the
labours of Luzio and Renier.
Note 399 page 205. ELEANORA OF ARAGON, (born 1450; died 1493), was the
elder sister of the Beatrice who married Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. A
projected union with Ludovico Sforza (who afterwards married her
daughter) having been abandoned, she became in 1473 the wife of Duke
Ercole I of Ferrara, and bore him two daughters and four sons. Other
contemporary accounts confirm the praise bestowed upon her by
Castiglione, and show her to have been a woman of rare merit, manly
courage and enlightened culture. Fond of music, and herself a player
upon the harp, she seems to have been a discriminating patroness of art
and letters, and at the same time to have taken an active share in the
serious cares of government, especially when her husband was absent or
disabled. A pleasant glimpse of her character is gained from a letter
written by her to the duke’s treasurer on behalf of a certain Neapolitan
engineer, who had rendered important services but had fallen ill and was
in want. “You will see what this poor man’s needs are. You know with
what devotion he has served us, nor are you ignorant who sent him to
us,—a circumstance worthy of consideration. It would ill become us so to
treat him in his sickness as to give him cause for complaint against us.
You must know what his pay is. See, then, what can be done, and arrange
for helping him.” She did not live to witness the downfall of her family
in Naples.
Note 400 page 205. ISABELLA DEL BALZO, (died 1533), was a daughter of
the Prince of Altamura, and the wife of Federico III of Naples (see note
401). When her husband lost his crown in 1501, she (together with the
faithful Sannazaro) accompanied him to France, and shared his exile
there until his death in 1504. Being, by the terms of a treaty between
Louis XII and Ferdinand the Catholic, compelled to leave France, she and
her four children took refuge, first with her sister Antonia at
Gazzuolo, and then at Ferrara, where she was kindly treated and
maintained by her husband’s nephew Duke Alfonso d’Este. Here she spent
the last twenty-five years of her life, but at times in such poverty
that when Julius II placed Ferrara under the ban of the Church, she
obtained special permission to have religious services performed in her
house, on the plea that she had not the means wherewith to leave the
city.
Note 401 page 205. FEDERICO III, (born 1452; died 1504), was a son of
Ferdinand I of Naples, a younger brother of Alfonso II, and an uncle of
his immediate predecessor, Ferdinand II. Having taken part in the weak
resistance offered to Charles VIII’s invasion of Naples in 1494, he
became king on the early death of his nephew in October 1496, and seems
to have tried to keep aloof from the turbulent schemes in which
Alexander VI sought to involve him. After another vain attempt to
withstand the invasion of Louis XII, and having been shamefully betrayed
by the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand the Catholic, to both of whom he
had appealed for aid, he retired with his wife and children to the
island of Ischia (which furnished refuge at the same time to his widowed
sister Beatrice, ex-Queen of Hungary, and to his widowed niece Isabella,
ex-Duchess of Milan), ceded his crown to Louis XII in exchange for
30,000 ducats and the Countship of Maine, and spent the last three years
of his life in France.
Note 402 page 205. Federico’s eldest son Ferdinand, DUKE OF CALABRIA,
was besieged in Taranto during the Franco-Spanish invasion which
resulted in his father’s downfall. On a sworn promise to set him free,
he surrendered to the Great Captain (see note 239), but was
treacherously detained and sent as a prisoner to Spain, where he was
treated by Ferdinand the Catholic with almost royal honours. He
continued to reside in Spain, and on the death of his mother in 1533, he
was joined at Valencia by his two sisters.
Note 403 page 205. The reference here is probably to the siege of Pisa
by the Florentines in 1499, which was finally abandoned owing in part at
least to the bravery of the Pisan women. Castiglione himself was the
author of some Latin verses celebrating an incident of the siege.
[Illustration:
FEDERICO III OF NAPLES
1452-1504
]
Enlarged from a cast, courteously furnished by Professor I. B. Supino,
of an anonymous medal in the National Museum at Florence. See
Armand’s _Les Médailleurs Italiens_, ii, 59.
Note 404 page 205. TOMYRIS was in fact queen of the Massagetæ, who were
a nomadic people allied to the Scythians and dwelt north-east of the
Caspian Sea. Herodotus relates that Cyrus the Great sent her an offer of
marriage, and on being refused, invaded her kingdom and captured her
son, but was finally defeated and slain, 529 B.C. The ARTEMISIA referred
to in the text is probably not the Queen of Halicarnassus (who fought on
the Persian side at Salamis in 480 B.C.), but rather the sister-consort
and successor of King Mausolus of Caria, a state on the western coast of
Asia Minor. On her husband’s death in 352 B.C., she reigned two years
until she pined away for grief. The monument, Mausoleum, erected by her
to his memory at Halicarnassus, was regarded as one of the seven wonders
of the world—the others being: the Egyptian pyramids, the temple of
Artemis at Ephesus, the walls and hanging gardens of Babylon, Phidias’s
statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Colossus at Rhodes, and the lighthouse at
Alexandria. ZENOBIA, an Arab by birth, was the second wife of Odenathus,
King of Palmyra, which lay to the east of Syria. On the death of her
husband, about 266 A.D., she acted as regent for her sons and seems to
have shown great talent for war as well as for the arts of wise
administration; but in her effort to extend her sway over the entire
East, she was defeated by the Emperor Aurelian, and adorned his triumph
in golden chains at Rome. She was allowed to spend the remainder of her
life in dignified retirement at Tibur (Tivoli). SEMIRAMIS was the
legendary daughter of the Syrian goddess Derketo, and with her husband
Ninus was regarded as the founder of Nineveh. On his death she assumed
the government of Assyria, built the city of Babylon and its wonderful
gardens, conquered Egypt, etc. To her the Greeks ascribed nearly
everything marvellous in the East. Her name appears in inscriptions as
that of the consort of an Assyrian ruler who reigned 811-782 B.C.
CLEOPATRA, (69-30 B.C.), was directly descended in the eighth generation
from Ptolemy I, the most noted of Alexander the Great’s generals and the
founder of the Egyptian dynasty that ended with her life. Her
establishment as sole ruler, to the exclusion of her two brothers, was
due to the favour of Julius Cæsar, who is said to have acknowledged the
paternity of her son Cæsarion, ultimately put to death by order of
Augustus. Her love of literature, and the refinement of her luxury, show
her to have been no mere voluptuary.
Note 405 page 206. SARDANAPALUS,—Assurbanipal, the Asnapper of the Old
Testament,—ruled over Assyria from 668 to 626 B.C., and was the last
monarch of the empire reputed to have been founded by Ninus and
Semiramis. His name became a by-word for effeminate luxury, but in
recent times the discovery and study of the larger part of the tablets
composing his library, prove him to have been a vigorous king and an
intelligent patron of art and literature.
Note 406 page 207. In his life of Alexander, Plutarch extols the
magnanimity with which the youthful monarch treated the captive mother,
wife and two daughters, of Darius, the last King of Persia, whom he had
utterly defeated in the battle of Arbela, 331 B.C. In furtherance of his
plan of uniting his European and Asiatic subjects into one people,
Alexander afterwards married Bersine, the elder of Darius’s two
daughters.
Note 407 page 208. This incident is narrated in Valerius Maximus’s
“Memorable Sayings and Doings” as having occurred in the first Spanish
campaign of Scipio Africanus Maximus, 210 B.C., when that commander was
in his twenty-fourth year.
Note 408 page 208. This story of the Platonist philosopher Xenocrates
(396-314 B.C.) is derived from the same source last cited. His teaching
was characterized by the loftiest morality, and included a declaration
that it comes to the same thing whether we cast longing eyes, or set our
feet, upon the property of others. The ‘very beautiful woman’ of the
text is variously mentioned as Phryne and Laïs, rival _hetairai_ said to
have served as models to the painter Apelles.
Note 409 page 208. Cicero’s version of this anecdote (_De Officiis_, i,
40) mentions Sophocles as the ‘someone’ rebuked by Pericles.
Note 410 page 210. The Italians still say:
_Donna pregata, nega;
E disprezzata, prega._
Note 411 page 213. The present translator prefers not to offer an
English version of the following passage, but to reprint it, line for
line, from the Aldine folio of 1528:
si che questo piu tosto un stratogema militare dir si
poria, che pura continentia: auenga anchora che la fama di questo non
sia molto sincera: perche alcuni scrittori d’authorità affermano questa
giouane esser stata da Scipione goduta in amorose delicie: ma di quello
che ui dico io, dubbio alcuno non è. Disse il Phrigio, Douete ha
uerlo trouato ne gli euangelii. Io stesso l’ho ueduto rispose M. Ces. &
però n’ho molto maggior certezza, che non potete hauer, ne uoi, ne altri
che Alcibiade si leuasse dal letto di Socrate non altrimēti, che si facciano
i figlioli dal letto de i padri: che pur strano loco, e tempo era il let
to, & la notte, per contemplar quella pura bellezza: laqual si dice che amaua
Socrate senza alcun desiderio dishonesto, massimamente amādo
piu la bellezza dell’animo, che del corpo: ma ne i fanciulli & nò ne i
uecchi, anchor che siano piu sauii: & certo non si potea gia trouar miglior
exempio, per laudar la continentia de glihomini, che quello di
Xenocrate: che essendo uersato ne gli studii, astretto, & obligato dalla
profession sua, che è la philosophia, laquale consiste ne i boni costumi,
& non nelle parole, uecchio, exhausto del uigor naturale, nō potendo,
ne mostrando segno di potere, s’astenne da una femina publica: laquale
per questo nome solo potea uenirgli à fastidio: piu crederei che fosse sta
to continente, se qualche segno de risentirsi hauesse dimostrato, & in tal
termine usato la continentia: ouero astenutosi da quello, che i uecchi
piu desiderano che —le battaglie di Venere, cioè dal uino: ma per comprobar
ben la continentia senile, scriuesi che di questo era pieno, & gra
ue: & qual cosa dir si po piu aliena della continentia d’un uecchio: che
la ebrietà? & se lo astenerse dalle cose ueneree in quella pigra, & fredda
età merita tanta laude, quanta ne deue meritar in una tenera giouane,
come quelle due di chi dianzi u’ho detto? dellequali l’una imponēdo
durissime leggi à tutti i sensi suoi, non solamente à gliocchi negaua la
sua luce, ma toglieua al core quei pensieri, che soli lungamēti erano sta
ti dulcissimo cibo per tenerlo in uita. l’altra ardente innamorata ritrouādosi
tante volte sola nelle braccia di quello, che piu assai, che tutto’l
resto del mondo amaua, contra se stessa, & contra colui, che piu, che se
stessa le era caro, combattendo uincea quello ardente desiderio che spes
so ha uinto, & uince tanti sauii homini. Nō ui pare hora S. Gasp. che
douessino i scrittori uergognarsi di far memoria di Xenocrate in questo
caso? & chiamarlo per continente? che chi potesse sapere, io metterei
pegno che esso tutta quella notte sino al giorno sequēte ad hora di desinare
dormi come morto sepulto nel uino: ne mai per stropicciar che
gli facesse quella femina, potè aprir gliocchi, come se fusse stato all’opia
to. Quiui risero tutti glihomini & donne: & la S. Emil. pur ridēdo Ve
ramente disse S. Gasp. se ui pensate un poco meglio credo che trouarete
anchor qualche altro bello exempio di continentia simile à questo.
Rispose M. Ces. Nō ui par Signora, che bello exempio di continentia
sia quell’altro che egli ha allegato di Pericle? Marauigliomi ben chel
non habbia anchor ricordato la continētia, & quel bel detto, che si scri
ue di colui, à chi una donna domādò troppo gran prezzo per una not
te, & esso le rispose, che non compraua cosi caro il pentirsi. Rideasi tut
ta uia & M. Ces. hauendo alquanto tacciuto ... disse:
The only other instance in which the translator has suppressed any part
of the text is in line 10 of page 212, where the Italian word _ignuda_
is not rendered.
[Illustration:
ELEANORA OF ARAGON
DUCHESS OF FERRARA
1450-1493
]
Reduced from a photograph, kindly furnished by M. Gustave Dreyfus, of an
anonymous bas-relief in his collection at Paris. The sculptor may
possibly have been Sperandio di Bartolommeo de’ Savelli
(1425?-1500?). See note 399.
Note 412 page 214. The event occurred in 1501, six years before the date
of the Courtier dialogues.
Note 413 page 214. The Volturno flows through Capua.
Note 414 page 214. Gazuolo or Gazzuolo is now the name of an Italian
commune, containing less than 5,000 inhabitants, and situated eleven
miles west of Mantua.
Note 415 page 214. The Oglio is a river of Lombardy about 135 miles
long; it traverses the Lake of Iseo, and joins the Po some ten miles
south-west of Mantua.
Note 416 page 214. In two earlier MS. versions of THE COURTIER, the
passage ‘Now from this ... even her name is unknown’ reads: “Then messer
Pietro Bembo said: ‘In truth, if I knew this noble peasant girl’s name,
I would compose an epitaph for her.’ ‘Do not stop for that,’ said messer
Cesare; ‘her name is Maddalena Biga, and if the Bishop’s death had not
occurred, that bank of the Oglio’” etc.
With slight variations this story is narrated as fact in a letter of
Matteo Bandello (1480-1562), from whose tales Shakspere took plots for
his plays. The letter gives the poor girl’s name as Giulia and that of
the Bishop of Mantua as Ludovico Gonzaga, and relates that, as it was
unlawful to bury her remains in consecrated soil, he caused them to be
deposited in the piazza, intending to place them in a bronze sarcophagus
mounted on a marble column. The letter also affirms that the ravisher
was one of the bishop’s valets.
Note 417 page 215. This was Ludovico Gonzaga, (born 1458; died 1511), a
son of the Marquess Ludovico of Mantua and Barbara of Brandenburg, and a
younger brother of “my lady Duchess’s” father. Made BISHOP OF MANTUA in
1483, he continued to hold that office until his death, and appears from
various contemporary documents to have been a liberal and wise prince.
The last years of his life were spent at Gazzuolo, which he made a
centre of culture, art and learning. His brother Gianfrancesco was
husband of the Antonia del Balzo mentioned above, note 400. For
particulars regarding him, see an article by Rossi in the _Giornale
Storico della Letteratura Italiana_, xiii, 305.
Note 418 page 215. The basilica of St. Sebastian, on the Appian Way,
dates from the 4th century, was built over the most famous of the
catacombs, and enjoyed an exceptional veneration during the Middle Ages.
The saint was a young military tribune born in Gaul, suffered martyrdom
under Diocletian about the year 288, and was buried in the catacombs of
Callistus. St. George and he were the favourite saints of chivalry, and
may be regarded as the martial Castor and Pollux of Christian myth.
Note 419 page 216. FELICE DELLA ROVERE, (died about 1536), was a natural
daughter of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (afterwards Julius II) and a
certain Lucrezia, the wife of Bernardo de Cuppis (or Coppi) da
Montefolco; thus “my lord Prefect” of THE COURTIER was her own cousin.
In 1506 she became the second wife of the elderly and eccentric
Giangiordano Orsini, and the ancestress of the Dukes of Bracciano. Her
name often occurs in contemporary documents, not only on account of her
lofty position but because of her love of art and letters. Both
Castiglione and Giancristoforo Romano were her friends. The incident
mentioned in the text seems not to be referred to elsewhere. Savona, a
seaport on the western Riviera, is near the birthplace of Felice’s
great-uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, who was the founder of the della Rovere
family.
Note 420 page 216. Duke Guidobaldo’s impotence is said to have given
rise to the project of a divorce for his duchess.
Note 421 page 218. The reference here is to Ovid’s _Ars Amandi_, which
enjoyed an extraordinary reputation during the Renaissance, and from
which this passage is largely derived.
Note 422 page 220. The LAURA to whom Petrarch consecrated no less than
three hundred and eighteen sonnets, is usually regarded as identical
with Laure, the daughter of a certain knight of Avignon, Audibert de
Noves. If this identification be correct, she was born in 1308, married
Hughes de Sade in 1325, became the mother of eleven children, and died
in 1348. In 1533 Francis I caused her reputed tomb to be opened, and
found in it a small box which contained a medal bearing a woman’s
profile, and a parchment on which was a sonnet signed by Petrarch.
Note 423 page 220. The so-called “Song of Solomon” is now thought to be
the work of a period later than Solomon’s and to contain no mystic
meaning.
Note 424 page 222. In the old romance, “Amadis of Gaul,” Isola Ferma is
an enchanted island, with a garden at the entrance to which stands an
arch surmounted by the statue of a man holding a trumpet to his mouth.
Whenever an unfaithful lover attempts to pass, the trumpet emits a
dreadful sound with fire and smoke, and drives the culprit back; while
it welcomes all true lovers with sweetest music.
Note 425 page 228. Here again the reference is of course to “my lady
Duchess.”
Note 426 page 235. The _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, first published by
Aldus in 1499, was written by Francesco Colonna, a Dominican friar of
Venice, who died an old man in 1527. The book is rare, and is said to be
an allegorical romance full of lascivious erudition, and written in a
pedantically affected mixture of Italian, Latin, and Venetian _patois_.
Note 427 page 237. _Ars Amandi_, i, 597-602.
Note 428 page 237. _Ars Amandi_, i, 569-72.
NOTES TO THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE COURTIER
Note 429 page 243. Gaspar Pallavicino died in 1511, at the age of
twenty-five.
Note 430 page 243. Cesare Gonzaga died in 1512, at about the age of
thirty-seven. See note 43.
Note 431 page 244. Federico Fregoso was named Archbishop of Salerno in
1507, very soon after the date of the Courtier dialogues; see note 41.
Ludovico da Canossa became Bishop of Bayeux in 1520; see note 44.
Ottaviano Fregoso became Doge of Genoa in 1513; see note 11.
Bibbiena was made cardinal, and Bembo was appointed papal secretary, in
1513; see notes 10 and 42.