The life at Urbino, with its literary flavor, its refined manners,
its serious conversations, and its Platonic dreams, took another tone
at Ferrara. This court was gayer, but hardly less noted as a center
of culture. No one chronicled its conversations, but the fame of its
poets illuminated it. Boiardo lived and wrote and administered affairs
in the magnificent old castle whose four towers frown to-day in lonely
grandeur over the silent and grass-grown streets of the once lively
city; Ariosto immortalized the women “as fair as good, and as learned
as they were fair,” who gathered artists, men of letters, statesmen,
cardinals, and philosophers within its tapestried walls; and the
genius of Tasso still sheds over it a melancholy splendor strangely
contrasting with the tragedy that left so dark a cloud on the last days
of its glory.
The Duke Hercules I did a wise thing for the brilliancy of his reign
when he chose for his wife the learned and accomplished Leonora of
Aragon, who had grown up in the intellectual atmosphere of her royal
father’s court at Naples. She was a versatile princess, a lover of art,
a patron of letters, and an able, efficient woman, who gave equal care
to the fostering of talent and the practical interests of her people.
The art of gold and silver metal work, on which she was an authority,
reached great perfection under her patronage, and she gave her personal
supervision to the skilled embroiderers whom she brought from elsewhere
to stimulate the native artists. When her husband was absent he left
the government in her charge. Nothing shows more clearly the masterful
ability of these Italian princesses than the wisdom and facility with
which they managed public affairs, and the confidence reposed in them.
In this model republic of the twentieth century, who would think of
intrusting matters of State to the wife of president or governor in
any emergency whatever? Let us admit that women are not trained here
for such responsibilities, even if they cared to assume them; but why
treat us to a homily on their natural incapacity for affairs of State,
in the face of innumerable examples in the past that prove the contrary?
And these women lost neither their charm nor their essentially feminine
qualities. Certainly there was no wiser mother than this same Duchess
Leonora. Her daughters had the best of masters, and were versed in all
the knowledge of the day, as well as in the lighter accomplishments.
They were schooled also in the duties of their high position, and were
never permitted to neglect their serious studies for amusement. While
they were busy with their tapestries some man of letters recited or
read to them. Perhaps it was Boiardo, perhaps another of the literary
stars of the court. The untiring mother had her reward in the fame and
virtuous character of these children. One of them, the beautiful and
gifted Isabella d’Este, had a brilliant career as the Marchioness of
Mantua, and her scarcely less fascinating sister Beatrice carried the
tastes of her own youth to the more splendid but corrupt court of the
Sforzas at Milan.
The enlightened duchess, who seems to have been as kind as she was
capable, did not escape calumny, as few did in that age of license; but
she has a blessed immortality in the glowing lines of Ariosto, who
paid an eloquent tribute to her talents and virtues at her death. The
court of Ferrara never lost the lettered tone which she gave it, though
its fashions of living and thinking changed from time to time.
One cannot quote her son’s wife, the fair-haired Lucrezia Borgia, as a
model princess, though in later years she partly redeemed the faults of
her past by her kindness to the poor, her intelligent patronage of art
and letters, and her devotion as wife and mother. It is not likely that
she was as black as she has been painted, or, as has been suggested by
later historians, Ariosto, with all his courtier love for paying pretty
compliments to women, especially princesses, would hardly have dared to
put her on a level with the Roman Lucretia in “charms and chastity,”
in a country where satire was merciless and scandal many-tongued. In
her tragical youth she was possibly more sinned against than sinning.
With a father who was the embodiment of all the vices, and brothers as
powerful as they were infamous, one can readily imagine that she had
little choice in her manner of life. It was quite in the interest of
this terrible trio that her three husbands were disposed of in one way
or another, and it was equally in their interest that the widowed Duke
Alfonso was virtually forced to marry her, though evidently against
his inclination. The wishes of a Holy Father with unlimited power
were compelling. And so it happened that this beautiful, clever, and
much-talked-of woman went to Ferrara with a flourish of trumpets, as
became a pope’s daughter. She was only twenty-five, though she had seen
tragedies enough to color a lifetime. On her way she visited Urbino
with her two thousand attendants,--princesses were costly guests in
those days,--and the good Duchess Elisabetta, by command of this wicked
and grasping Holy Father, who had designs on her own domains that might
be furthered by her absence, went with the much heralded bride to take
part in the magnificent wedding festivities. There was little in the
entry of this brilliant but very much clouded Lucrezia on her white
jennet, resplendent in satin and gold and flashing jewels, to suggest
the beauty and desirableness of “plain living and high thinking.”
To be sure, she had university dons to support her canopy, and all
the learning of Ferrara in her train; but it was a fashion of these
princesses to honor scholars. Then there were comedies of Plautus to
give the occasion a classic flavor, besides music, dancing, medieval
combats, Moorish interludes, and more barbaric amusements for the
multitude. The splendors of dress, the wealth of velvets, brocades,
gold, and gems, were all duly chronicled by the society reporter of the
time, and the descriptions of modern court balls seem modest and tame
in comparison. The good Duchess Leonora had been sleeping in her tomb
with the other princesses many a year, duly labeled by Ariosto. But
the pure-souled Isabella d’Este was there with a new and regal costume
for every scene, and no doubt various misgivings about her imposing
sister-in-law which she thought best to say nothing about.
This dangerous Lucrezia, however, had her serious moments. After the
pageants were over, she took out of her traveling-case the Dante and
Petrarch she had brought for her daily reading, also some histories,
with her manual of devotion. She had, too, her literary circle of
poets, savants, men of letters, prelates, cardinals, and clever women
who spoke in Latin and wrote Greek quite naturally and as a matter of
course. They talked of manners, art, and philosophy, as at Urbino, but
perhaps not quite so seriously; they talked also of love, spiritual and
otherwise. The inevitable Bembo was there for a time, and afterward
wrote Platonic letters about literature to the friend of his soul,
which she answered with insight and discrimination as well as matronly
discretion. These letters were preserved, with a lock of her golden
hair.
There is little trace of the early Lucrezia in her later years. No more
worldly vanities. She prayed a great deal, and spent her evenings in
working beautiful designs in embroidery with the ladies of her court.
“Her husband and his subjects all loved her for her gracious manners
and her piety,” we are told. She was not old when she died,--two or
three years past forty,--leaving an inconsolable husband and several
children. In a letter of condolence the Doge of Venice gives great
praise to her devotion and her fine qualities of character. The most
distinguished prelates of the day pay a tribute to her many virtues.
The experiences of her life, which were dark enough at its beginning
and too surely not blameless, are wrapped in a mystery so deep that we
cannot fairly judge them to-day.
If the court of Ferrara was gay, literary, artistic, with more or less
of a dilettante tone under Lucrezia, it took quite another color in
the reign of her daughter-in-law, the serious and thoughtful Renée.
This princess had more solid qualities of intellect, but less beauty
and less charm. “She was good and clever, with a mind the best and
most acute possible,” says Brantôme. Her father was Louis XII, and
her mother Anne of Bretagne, whose talent and independent spirit she
inherited. She had Protestant tendencies, and brought strange guests
to these stately halls and haunts of poets. Calvin was among them. He
was young then, and came under the name of Charles d’Espeville--which
was much safer for an arch-heretic. With him came Clément Marot, a
poet and a heretic of milder type, who shone brilliantly at the court
of the clever Marguerite of Navarre. The stern moralist and ascetic
reformer was no friend to women, except as convenient appendages, and
these were apt to be troublesome unless kept in their lowly place. He
looked upon their government as “a deviation from the original and
proper order of nature, to be ranked no less than slavery among the
punishments consequent upon the fall of man.” In this case he evidently
found the punishment rather pleasant, as he stayed many months in
a court where the power of women was very much _en évidence_,
though it fell under an eclipse because of him. Perhaps he modified
his opinions for the moment in so stimulating an atmosphere. While he
never fails to denounce the “inferior sex” in plain terms, he is kind
enough to make discreet exceptions as to women in high places, who were
not made of common clay. It was certainly inconvenient for the duke to
have a wife with convictions, who persisted in compromising him with
the higher powers; but what would have become of the superior Calvin,
with the door closed upon him and the Inquisition on his track, if
this incapable being had been superintending the cook and the maids
or working patterns in embroidery, as she plainly ought to have been,
instead of courageously and with clear foresight despatching some
trustworthy friends to liberate the reverend suspect from his dangerous
and uncomfortable surveillance, and send him on his way to a freer air?
There was much talk on free will and election, as well as of sinners
in power, and the need of grace and reformation, when Vittoria Colonna
came, a little later, to enjoy the liberty of thought and literary
discussion for which this court was famous, also to forward the
interest of her friend, the eloquent Fra Bernardino, who wished to
found here a Capuchin convent. It was quite safe to sit on the grass or
in the gardens during the long summer evenings, listening to a Greek
play, and talking about the respective merits of Homer and Petrarch,
who had been dead a long time, or the genius of Ariosto, who had just
closed his eyes after charming his age and saying so many agreeable
things about its women. But it was not so safe to reflect on wicked
popes, or call in question whatever dogma they might choose to present
to a credulous world. The Duchess Renée was made sadly conscious of
this fact, as was her gifted protégée, Olympia Morata. Her mind had a
mystical quality, and the germs of a more spiritual faith had taken
root there. But her amiable husband applied the screw as he was told.
To have one’s children taken away and to be confined in a remote
corner of one’s castle was too much to bear, and a suspiciously sudden
conversion under good orthodox ministrations was the result, with
convenient mental reservations to serve until the duke died and the
lady was safely back in France with her royal kin and the protecting
sympathy of her heretical friend, the gifted and powerful Marguerite of
many-sided fame.
But in the meantime the literary talks went on, led by her brilliant
daughters, who contented themselves with topics that were less
explosive. Tasso said that Lucrezia and Leonora d’Este were “so well
versed in affairs of State and literature that no one could listen to
their conversation without amazement.” Here, as elsewhere, they talked
a great deal about matters of sentiment. Tasso held a controversy at
the academy on “Fifty Points of Love.” One of them was a question
whether men or women love the more constantly and intensely. Orsini
Cavaletti, a lady of distinction in literature and philosophy, claimed
the palm for her own sex, and came off with equal if not superior
honors before a learned and brilliant audience. What the other points
were I do not know. The amount of energy expended on such trivial
themes was curiously illustrated a few years before by Isotta Nogarola,
a lady of Verona, who discussed with learned men the question as
to whether Adam or Eve was the more guilty, and wrote a defense of
Eve which must have created more than a ripple of interest, as it
was printed a century afterward. This champion of justice was not a
reformer nor an _emancipée_, but a woman of rank and a friend of
popes, who had the courage to come to the rescue of her sex from the
denunciations of ages. Doubtless the discussion was largely a play of
wit and an exercise in analysis that applied itself to small things,
since it was not safe to attack great ones.
But our unfortunate poet did not confine himself to theory, and love
proved a more disastrous subject for him than did religion for some of
his friends. It was to this same brilliant Leonora, whom he lauded to
the skies, that Tasso dared lift his eyes in too familiar or ambitious
a fashion before he was shut out of the world seven years as a madman.
Whatever the facts of this tragical romance may have been, we know that
the lady died at forty-five, in the odor of sanctity and unmarried,
while her gayer but equally clever sister became the wife of the last
Duke of Urbino, whom she found so dull and tiresome that she returned
after three years to her brother’s court, where the livelier tastes
were more to her liking. But its glories had already paled and its
stars had mostly set. Tasso was the last.
The traveler of to-day looks with curious eye on the faded splendors of
the grim old castle, and speculates idly upon the tragedies that have
been acted within its silent walls. But he goes away to the poor little
cell at the hospital of St. Anna and drops a tear over the fate of the
poet who ate his heart out there. Time brings strange reparations, but
they are always too late.
V
In the days when they were talking of men, women, and manners at
Urbino, and the brilliant Bembo was writing high-flown letters about
literature and celestial love to Lucrezia Borgia, or discoursing upon
the same themes, in the intervals of many graver ones, at Ferrara, and
Alexander VI was making the society of Rome as wicked as he knew how,
which was very wicked indeed, Isabella d’Este, wife of the Marquis
of Mantua, was the central figure of one of the most charming and
intellectual courts in Italy. This “noble-minded Isabel,” of whom
Ariosto says,
I know not well if she more fair
May be entitled, or more chaste and sage,
carried with her to the banks of the Mincio, already made classic as
the birthplace of Vergil, the literary tastes which had been nurtured
in the scholarly air of Ferrara. We have seen her developing as a child
under the care of the wise Leonora. At six she astonished the envoy
sent to arrange her betrothal, by her precocious intelligence, engaging
conversation, and graceful manners. It was a kindly fate that led her
to the court of the Gonzagas, which was famous for the learning and
culture of its women.
Of all the princesses who shed such luster on this period she had,
perhaps, the most personal distinction. To the wisdom and force of
her mother she added more esprit and a warmer temperament. In tact,
dignity, learning, and the virtues of a well-poised character, she did
not surpass her husband’s sister, the much-loved Duchess Elisabetta of
Urbino, but she seems to have had more native brilliancy of intellect.
Living from 1474 to 1525, she was brought into familiar contact with
the most famous men and women of the golden age of the Renaissance,
and played an important part in many of its stormy crises, but, under
all conditions, one is impressed with her strong individuality, her
versatility, her intrepid spirit, and her unfailing charm. She combined
the tenderness of a woman with the mental vigor of a man. Fair, witty,
gracious, and a noted beauty, she was equally at home discussing art
and literature with the masters, and grave political problems with
popes and kings, arranging fêtes, ordering a picture, selecting a
brocade, or playing with a child.
The old and imposing palace of Mantua to this day shows traces of the
taste and generosity of its most distinguished mistress. She filled it
with rare books, exquisite tapestries, and curios of all sorts, chosen
with the discrimination of a connoisseur. Its walls were decorated with
the masterpieces of Correggio, Mantegna, Perugino, and other great
artists whom she was proud to call her friends. Chief among those in
whose conversation she delighted were Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, who
immortalized her. A living portrait by the latter is still one of the
treasures of the Louvre. Her keen critical taste was quick to divine
intrinsic values, and she was always on the alert for fresh talent to
add to the glories of her little court. It was not rich, and we find
her troubled at the prospect of entertaining her sister’s magnificent
husband, Lodovico Sforza, who proposed to visit her with a retinue of a
thousand or so. But her money went freely for everything pertaining to
matters of intellect and taste. She sent her agents in all directions,
even to the far East, and a new-found statue, a rare bit of tapestry,
or a precious mosaic was an event of joy. Her own teeming imagination
was full of pictures, and she liked to suggest themes to artists, which
were not always easy to put into living form. But her sympathetic and
intelligent enthusiasm was in itself an inspiration.
This critical, art-loving Isabella, however, was more than a
dilettante. Her heart went out to every form of suffering. Running over
with kindness, and always ready to help the needy and deserving, her
sympathies sometimes got the better of her judgment, and more than once
she had to regret enlisting her friends in the cause of the unworthy.
This generous quality was a part of her rich temperament. With her
intellectual tastes, and the many cares and responsibilities of her
position, she was no grave and cold Minerva. We find her everywhere
entering into the sports and gaieties of her age with the zest of a
woman abounding in spirit, vitality, and the joy of life. When she went
to see her sister at Milan, she rode, danced, hunted, made impromptu
verses, dazzled her friends with flashes of wit, and fascinated
old and young alike with her winning, lively ways. Her powerful
brother-in-law was always glad to consult her on serious questions of
State, as well as on his vast plans for making a beautiful and artistic
city. The things that were shaping themselves in the minds of great
artists appealed to her ardent imagination. “This is the school of
the _master_ and of those who _know_, the home of art and
understanding,” she wrote from there.
Her letters to her family are always full of vivacity, clear and to
the point, but glowing with affection. The friendships she inspired
were devoted, even passionate. “It seems as if I had lost not only
a tenderly loved sister, but a part of myself,” wrote the Duchess
Elisabetta, after one of her visits. “I long to write to you every
hour.... If I could clearly express to you my grief, I am sure it would
have so much force that compassion would bring you back.” In such a
spirit these women wrote to one another. The Latin race is effusive,
and the art of expression, which is its supreme gift, no doubt often
ran ahead of the feeling or the thought; but these familiar letters
bear the stamp of sincerity and help us to know the manner of woman
that wrote them.
This noble lady of so many gifts and graces was born to lead and not
to follow. She could take the affairs of government on occasion, and
was amply fitted to rule firmly and wisely. Her first aim was to
win the love of her people, which, she says, is of “more value to a
State than all its fortresses, treasures, and men-at-arms.” When her
husband had matters to settle that required delicate diplomacy, he
sent her on a special embassy to the Vatican, where the Pope loaded
her with honors and had Bibbiena’s new comedy, “Calandra,” played for
her entertainment. A helpful wife was this queen of the Renaissance,
and no one knew it better than her husband, whose profession was war,
which often led him far from the court she had made so famous. Perhaps
she had a trace of pardonable vanity. She deferred a visit to Venice
because she did not care to have her modest train brought into so close
a contrast with the imposing splendors of the “little sister” whom she
loved but did not attempt to rival on her own ground. The glories she
most sought were of the intellect and not to be bought with money.
The distinctive quality she impressed upon her court was an artistic
one. Its art treasures were of the choicest, and the best plays,
classical or modern, were brought out there. Music was her passion. She
sang well herself, also played the lute and viol. In the days before
Palestrina had opened a new world of harmony, she maintained one of the
finest orchestras in Italy. No gifted musician ever appealed to her
in vain. But there was no field of thought in her time which she did
not explore. If her knowledge was not profound, it was wide, and she
looked at things largely from a human point of view, not superficially,
but sympathetically. She applied her intelligence and her talents not
only to the advancement of the fine arts, to the cultivation of the
best in literature, to the interests of her people, but to the art of
living with due regard for one’s duties and responsibilities to the
future as well as to the present. If Vittoria Colonna represents the
highest thought of her age as applied to things spiritual and literary,
Isabella d’Este is a living example of its finest mundane side. No one
better illustrates the power and the penetrating fragrance of a strong
and vivid personality. It is a type that has many imitators, but such a
gift, which is an assemblage of many gifts, cannot be copied.
A court dominated by so rare a spirit, and attracting all the
refinement, talent, and intelligence of a brilliant age, could not be
otherwise than luminous. We have no record of its conversations, but
we know that its standards were high, and that the best passports of
admission there were achievements of the intellect. Rank no doubt had
its place, and manners were indispensable, but to genius and learning
much was forgiven. Purely material splendors had small weight. Some
of its princes had left traditions of culture, but it was a woman of
intellect, force, independence, and charm who gathered these into a
society that proved a center of light which shone brightly on after
generations.