From the new town of commerce to the old town of history upon the hill
the road is carried along a rampart lined with horse-chestnut
trees--clumps of massy foliage and snowy pyramids of bloom expanded in
the rapture of a Southern spring. Each pair of trees between their stems
and arch of intermingling leaves includes a space of plain checkered
with cloud-shadows, melting blue and green in amethystine haze. To right
and left the last spurs of the Alps descend, jutting like promontories,
heaving like islands from the misty breadth below; and here and there
are towers half lost in airy azure, and cities dwarfed to blots, and
silvery lines where rivers flow, and distant, vapor-drowned, dim crests
of Apennines. The city walls above us wave with snapdragons and iris
among fig-trees sprouting from the riven stones. There are terraces
over-rioted with pergolas of vine, and houses shooting forward into
balconies and balustrades, from which a Romeo might launch himself at
daybreak, warned by the lark's song. A sudden angle in the road is
turned, and we pass from air-space and freedom into the old town,
beneath walls of dark-brown masonry, where wild valerians light their
torches of red bloom in immemorial shade. Squalor and splendor live
here side by side. Grand Renaissance portals grinning with satyr masks
are flanked by tawdry frescos shamming stonework, or by doorways where
the withered bush hangs out a promise of bad wine.
The Cappella Colleoni is our destination--that masterpiece of the
sculptor-architect's craft, with its variegated marbles--rosy and white
and creamy yellow and jet-black--in patterns, bass-reliefs, pilasters,
statuettes, incrusted on the fanciful domed shrine. Upon the facade are
mingled, in the true Renaissance spirit of genial acceptance, motives
Christian and Pagan with supreme impartiality. Medallions of emperors
and gods alternate with virtues, angels, and cupids in a maze of
loveliest arabesque; and round the base of the building are told two
stories--the one of Adam from his creation to his fall, the other of
Hercules and his labors. Italian craftsmen of the _quattrocento_ were
not averse to setting thus together, in one frame-work, the myths of our
first parents and Alemena's son; partly, perhaps, because both subjects
gave scope to the free treatment of the nude; but partly, also, we may
venture to surmise, because the heroism of Hellas counterbalanced the
sin of Eden. Here, then, we see how Adam and Eve were made and tempted
and expelled from Paradise and set to labor, how Cain killed Abel, and
Lamech slew a man to his hurt, and Isaac was offered on the mountain.
The tale of human sin and the promise of redemption are epitomized in
twelve of the sixteen bass-reliefs. The remaining four show Hercules
wrestling with Antaeus, taming the Nemean lion, extirpating the Hydra,
and bending to his will the bull of Crete. Labor, appointed for a
punishment to Adam, becomes a title to immortality for the hero. The
dignity of man is reconquered by prowess for the Greek, as it is
repurchased for the Christian by vicarious suffering. Many may think
this interpretation of Amadeo's bass-reliefs far-fetched; yet, such as
it is, it agrees with the spirit of humanism, bent ever on harmonizing
the two great traditions of the past. Of the workmanship little need be
said, except that it is wholly Lombard, distinguished from the similar
work of Della Quercia at Bologna and Siena by a more imperfect feeling
for composition and a lack of monumental gravity, yet graceful, rich in
motives, and instinct with a certain wayward _improvisatore_ charm.
This chapel was built by the great Condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni, to
be the monument of his puissance even in the grave. It had been the
Sacristy of S. Maria Maggiore, which, when the Consiglio della
Misericordia refused it to him for his half-proud, half-pious purpose,
he took and held by force. The structure, of costliest materials, reared
by Gian Antonio Amadeo, cost him fifty thousand golden florins. An
equestrian statue of gilt wood, voted to him by the town of Bergamo,
surmounts his monument inside the chapel. This was the work of two
German masters called Sisto figlio di Enrico Syri da Norimberga and
Leonardo Tedesco. The tomb itself is of marble, executed for the most
part in a Lombard style resembling Amadeo's, but scarcely worthy of his
genius. The whole effect is disappointing. Five figures representing
Mars, Hercules, and three sons-in-law of Colleoni, who surround the
sarcophagus of the buried general, are, indeed, almost grotesque. The
angularity and crumpled draperies of the Milanese manner, when so
exaggerated, produce an impression of caricature. Yet many subordinate
details--a row of _putti_ in a Cinque Cento frieze, for instance--and
much of the low relief work, especially the Crucifixion, with its
characteristic episodes of the fainting Marys and the soldiers casting
dice, are lovely in their unaffected Lombardism.
There is another portrait of Colleoni in a round above the great door,
executed with spirit, though in a _bravura_ style that curiously
anticipates the decline of Italian sculpture. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, with
prominent cheekbones and strong jaws, this animated half-length statue
of the hero bears the stamp of a good likeness, but when or by whom it
was made I do not know.
Far more noteworthy than Colleoni's own monument is that of his daughter
Medea. She died young in 1470, and her father caused her tomb, carved of
Carrara marble, to be placed in the Dominican Church of Basella, which
he had previously founded. It was not until 1842 that this most precious
masterpiece of Antonio Amadeo's skill was transferred to Bergamo. _Hic
jacet Medea virgo._ Her hands are clasped across her breast. A robe of
rich brocade, gathered to the waist and girdled, lies in simple folds
upon the bier. Her throat, exceedingly long and slender, is circled with
a string of pearls. Her face is not beautiful, for the features,
especially the nose, are large and prominent; but it is pure and
expressive of vivid individuality. The hair curls in crisp, short
clusters; and the ear, fine and shaped almost like a Faun's, reveals the
scrupulous fidelity of the sculptor. Italian art has, in truth, nothing
more exquisite than this still-sleeping figure of the girl who, when she
lived, must certainly have been so rare of type and lovable in
personality. If Busti's Lancinus Curtius be the portrait of a humanist,
careworn with study, burdened by the laurel leaves that were so dry and
dusty; if Gaston de Foix in the Brera, smiling at death and beautiful in
the cropped bloom of youth, idealize the hero of romance; if Michael
Angelo's Penseroso translate in marble the dark broodings of a despot's
soul; if Della Porta's Julia Farnese be the Roman courtesan
magnificently throned in nonchalance at a pope's footstool; if
Verocchio's Colleoni on his horse at Venice impersonate the pomp and
circumstance of scientific war--surely this Medea exhales the
flower-like graces, the sweet sanctities of human life, that even in
that turbid age were found among high-bred Italian ladies. Such power
have mighty sculptors, even in our modern world, to make the mute stone
speak in poems and clasp the soul's life of a century in some five or
six transcendent forms.
The Colleoni, or Coglioni, family were of considerable antiquity and
well authenticated nobility in the town of Bergamo. Two lions' heads
conjoined formed one of their canting ensigns; another was borrowed from
the vulgar meaning of their name. Many members of the house held
important office during the three centuries preceding the birth of the
famous general Bartolommeo. He was born in the year 1400 at Solza in the
Bergamasque Contado. His father, Paolo, or Puho as he was commonly
called, was poor and exiled from the city, together with the rest of the
Guelf nobles, by the Visconti. Being a man of daring spirit, and little
inclined to languish in a foreign state as the dependent on some patron,
Puho formed the bold design of seizing the Castle of Trezzo. This he
achieved in 1405 by fraud, and afterwards held it as his own by force.
Partly with the view of establishing himself more firmly in his acquired
lordship, and partly out of family affection, Puho associated four of
his first-cousins in the government of Trezzo. They repaid his kindness
with an act of treason and cruelty only too characteristic of those
times in Italy. One day while he was playing at draughts in a room of
the castle, they assaulted him and killed him, seized his wife and the
boy Bartolommeo, and flung them into prison. The murdered Puho had
another son, Antonio, who escaped and took refuge with Giorgio Benzone,
the tyrant of Crema. After a short time the Colleoni brothers found
means to assassinate him also; therefore Bartolommeo alone, a child of
whom no heed was taken, remained to be his father's avenger. He and his
mother lived together in great indigence at Solza, until the lad felt
strong enough to enter the service of one of the numerous petty Lombard
princes, and to make himself if possible a captain of adventure. His
name alone was a sufficient introduction, and the Duchy of Milan,
dismembered upon the death of Gian Maria Visconti, was in such a state
that all the minor despots were increasing their forces and preparing to
defend by arms the fragments they had seized from the Visconti heritage.
Bartolommeo therefore had no difficulty in recommending himself to
Filippo d'Arcello, sometime general in the pay of the Milanese, but now
the new lord of Piacenza. With this master he remained as page for two
or three years, learning the use of arms, riding, and training himself
in the physical exercises which were indispensable to a young Italian
soldier. Meanwhile Filippo Maria Visconti reacquired his hereditary
dominions; and at the age of twenty, Bartolommeo found it prudent to
seek a patron stronger than D'Arcello. The two great Condottieri, Sforza
Attendolo and Braccio, divided the military glories of Italy at this
period; and any youth who sought to rise in his profession had to enroll
himself under the banners of the one or the other. Bartolommeo chose
Braccio for his master, and was enrolled among his men as a simple
trooper, or _ragazzo_, with no better prospects than he could make for
himself by the help of his talents and his borrowed horse and armor.
Braccio at this time was in Apulia, prosecuting the war of the
Neapolitan Succession disputed between Alfonso of Aragon and Louis of
Anjou under the weak sovereignty of Queen Joan. On which side of a
quarrel a condottiere fought mattered but little, so great was the
confusion of Italian politics, and so complete was the egotism of these
fraudful, violent, and treacherous party leaders. Yet it may be
mentioned that Braccio had espoused Alfonso's cause. Bartolommeo
Colleoni early distinguished himself among the ranks of the Bracceschi.
But he soon perceived that he could better his position by deserting to
another camp. Accordingly he offered his services to Jacopo Caldora, one
of Joan's generals, and received from him a commission of twenty
men-at-arms. It may here be parenthetically said that the rank and pay
of an Italian captain varied with the number of the men he brought into
the field. His title "Condottiere" was derived from the circumstance
that he was said to have received a _Condotta di venti cavalli_, and so
forth. Each _cavallo_ was equal to one mounted man-at-arms and two
attendants, who were also called _ragazzi_. It was his business to
provide the stipulated number of men, to keep them in good discipline,
and to satisfy their just demands. Therefore an Italian army at this
epoch consisted of numerous small armies varying in size, each held
together by personal engagements to a captain, and all dependent on the
will of a general-in-chief, who had made a bargain with some prince or
republic for supplying a fixed contingent of fighting-men. The
_condottiere_ was in other words a contractor or _impresario_,
undertaking to do a certain piece of work for a certain price, and to
furnish the requisite forces for the business in good working order. It
will be readily seen upon this system how important were the personal
qualities of the captain, and what great advantages those condottieri
had who, like the petty princes of Romagna and the March, the
Montefeltri, Ordelaffi, Malatesti, Manfredi, Orsini, and Vitelli, could
rely upon a race of hardy vassals for their recruits.
It is not necessary to follow Colleoni's fortunes in the Regno, at
Aquila, Ancona, and Bologna. He continued in the service of Caldora, who
was now General of the Church, and had his _condotta_ gradually
increased. Meanwhile his cousins, the murderers of his father, began to
dread his rising power, and determined, if possible, to ruin him. He was
not a man to be easily assassinated; so they sent a hired ruffian to
Caldora's camp to say that Bartolommeo had taken his name by fraud, and
that he was himself the real son of Puho Colleoni. Bartolommeo defied
the liar to a duel; and this would have taken place before the army, had
not two witnesses appeared who knew the fathers of both Colleoni and
the _bravo_, and who gave such evidence that the captains of the army
were enabled to ascertain the truth. The impostor was stripped and
drummed out of the camp.
At the conclusion of a peace between the Pope and the Bolognese,
Bartolommeo found himself without occupation. He now offered himself to
the Venetians, and began to fight again under the great Carmagnola
against Filippo Visconti. His engagement allowed him forty men, which,
after the judicial murder of Carmagnola at Venice in 1432, were
increased to eighty. Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was
now his general-in-chief--a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes
to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy. Colleoni spent
the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring
against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service,
until his condotta reached the number of eight hundred men. Upon
Gattamelata's death at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the most important
of the generals who had fought with Caldora in the March. The lordships
of Romano in the Bergamasque, and of Covo and Antegnate in the
Cremonese, had been assigned to him; and he was in a position to make
independent engagements with princes. What distinguished him as a
general was a combination of caution with audacity. He united the
brilliant system of his master Braccio with the more prudent tactics of
the Sforzeschi; and thus, though he often surprised his foes by daring
stratagems and vigorous assaults, he rarely met with any serious check.
He was a captain who could be relied upon for boldly seizing an
advantage, no less than for using a success with discretion. Moreover
he had acquired an almost unique reputation for honesty in dealing with
his masters, and for justice combined with humane indulgence to his men.
His company was popular, and he could always bring capital troops into
the field.
In the year 1443, Colleoni quitted the Venetian service on account of a
quarrel with Gherardo Dandolo, the Proveditore of the Republic. He now
took a commission from Filippo Maria Visconti, who received him at Milan
with great honor, bestowed on him the Castello Adorno at Pavia, and sent
him into the March of Ancona upon a military expedition. Of all Italian
tyrants, this Visconti was the most difficult to serve. Constitutionally
timid, surrounded with a crowd of spies and base informers, shrinking
from the sight of men in the recesses of his palace, and controlling the
complicated affairs of his duchy by means of correspondents and
intelligencers, this last scion of the Milanese despots lived like a
spider in an inscrutable network of suspicion and intrigue. His policy
was one of endless plot and counterplot. He trusted no man; his servants
were paid to act as spies on one another; his body-guard consisted of
mutually hostile mercenaries; his captains in the field were watched and
thwarted by commissioners appointed to check them at the point of
successful ambition or magnificent victory. The historian has a hard
task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand
his motives. Half the duke's time seems to have been spent in
unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and
weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his power
was artificial, that the least breath might blow him back into the
nothingness from which he had arisen on the wrecks of his father's
tyranny, he dreaded the personal eminence of his generals above all
things. His chief object was to establish a system of checks, by means
of which no one whom he employed should at any moment be great enough to
threaten him. The most formidable of these military adventurers,
Francesco Sforza, had been secured by marriage with Bianca Maria
Visconti, his master's only daughter, in 1441; but the duke did not even
trust his son-in-law. The last six years of his life were spent in
scheming to deprive Sforza of his lordships; and the war in the March,
on which he employed Colleoni, had the object of ruining the
principality acquired by this daring captain from Pope Eugenius IV. in
1443.
Colleoni was by no means deficient in those foxlike qualities which were
necessary to save the lion from the toils spread for him by Italian
intriguers. He had already shown that he knew how to push his own
interests, by changing sides and taking service with the highest bidder,
as occasion prompted. Nor, though his character for probity and loyalty
stood exceptionally high among the men of his profession, was he the
slave to any questionable claims of honor or of duty. In that age of
confused politics and extinguished patriotism, there was not indeed much
scope for scrupulous honesty. But Filippo Maria Visconti proved more
than a match for him in craft. While Colleoni was engaged in pacifying
the revolted population of Bologna, the duke yielded to the suggestion
of his parasites at Milan, who whispered that the general was becoming
dangerously powerful. He recalled him, and threw him without trial into
the dungeons of the Forni at Monza. Here Colleoni remained a prisoner
more than a year, until the duke's death, in 1447, when he made his
escape, and profited by the disturbance of the duchy to reacquire his
lordships in the Bergamasque territory. The true motive for his
imprisonment remains still buried in obscure conjecture. Probably it was
not even known to the Visconti, who acted on this, as on so many other
occasions, by a mere spasm of suspicious jealousy, for which he could
have given no account.
From the year 1447 to the year 1455, it is difficult to follow
Colleoni's movements, or to trace his policy. First, we find him
employed by the Milanese Republic, during its brief space of
independence; then he is engaged by the Venetians, with a commission for
fifteen hundred horse; next, he is in the service of Francesco Sforza;
once more in that of the Venetians, and yet again in that of the Duke of
Milan. His biographer relates with pride that, during this period, he
was three times successful against French troops in Piedmont and
Lombardy. It appears that he made short engagements, and changed his
paymasters according to convenience. But all this time he rose in
personal importance, acquired fresh lordships in the Bergamasque, and
accumulated wealth. He reached the highest point of his prosperity in
1455, when the Republic of St. Mark elected him general-in-chief of
their armies, with the fullest powers, and with a stipend of one hundred
thousand florins. For nearly twenty-one years, until the day of his
death, in 1475, Colleoni held this honorable and lucrative office. In
his will he charged the Signory of Venice that they should never again
commit into the hands of a single captain such unlimited control over
their military resources. It was indeed no slight tribute to Colleoni's
reputation for integrity that the jealous republic, which had signified
its sense of Carmagnola's untrustworthiness by capital punishment,
should have left him so long in the undisturbed disposal of their army.
The standard and the baton of St. Mark were conveyed to Colleoni by two
ambassadors, and presented to him at Brescia on June 24, 1455. Three
years later he made a triumphal entry into Venice, and received the same
ensigns of military authority from the hands of the new doge, Pasquale
Malipiero. On this occasion his staff consisted of some two hundred
officers, splendidly armed, and followed by a train of serving-men.
Noblemen from Bergamo, Brescia, and other cities of the Venetian
territory, swelled the cortege. When they embarked on the lagoons, they
found the water covered with boats and gondolas, bearing the population
of Venice in gala attire to greet the illustrious guest with instruments
of music. Three great galleys of the republic, called bucentaurs, issued
from the crowd of smaller craft. On the first was the doge in his state
robes, attended by the government in office, or the Signoria of St.
Mark. On the second were members of the senate and minor magistrates.
The third carried the ambassadors of foreign powers. Colleoni was
received into the first state galley, and placed by the side of the
doge. The oarsmen soon cleared the space between the land and Venice,
passed the small canals, and swept majestically up the Canalozzo among
the plaudits of the crowds assembled on both sides to cheer their
general. Thus they reached the piazzetta, where Colleoni alighted
between the two great pillars, and, conducted by the doge in person,
walked to the Church of St. Mark. Here, after mass had been said, and a
sermon had been preached, kneeling before the high-altar he received the
truncheon from the doge's hands. The words of his commission ran as
follows:
"By authority and decree of this most excellent city of
Venice, of us the prince, and of the senate, you are to be
commander and captain-general of all our forces and armaments
on _terra firma_. Take from our hands this truncheon, with
good augury and fortune, as sign and warrant of your power. Be
it your care and effort, with dignity and splendor to maintain
and to defend the majesty, the loyalty, and the principles of
this empire. Neither provoking, nor yet provoked, unless at
our command, shall you break into open warfare with our
enemies. Free jurisdiction and lordship over each one of our
soldiers, except in cases of treason, we hereby commit to
you."
After the ceremony of his reception, Colleoni was conducted with no less
pomp to his lodgings, and the next ten days were spent in festivities of
all sorts.
The commandership-in-chief of the Venetian forces was perhaps the
highest military post in Italy. It placed Colleoni on the pinnacle of
his profession, and made his camp the favorite school of young soldiers.
Among his pupils or lieutenants we read of Ercole d'Este, the future
Duke of Ferrara; Alessandro Sforza, Lord of Pesaro; Boniface, Marquis of
Montferrat; Cicco and Pino Ordelaffi, Princes of Forli; Astorre
Manfredi, the Lord of Faenza; three Counts of Mirandola; two Princes of
Carpi; Deifobo, the Count of Anguillara; Giovanni Antonio Caldora, Lord
of Jesi in the March; and many others of less name. Honors came thick
upon him. When one of the many ineffectual leagues against the infidel
was formed in 1468, during the pontificate of Paul II., he was named
captain-general for the crusade. Pius II. designed him for the leader
of the expedition he had planned against the impious and savage despot
Sigismondo Malatesta. King Rene of Anjou, by special patent, authorized
him to bear his name and arms, and made him a member of his family. The
Duke of Burgundy, by a similar heraldic fiction, conferred upon him his
name and armorial bearings. This will explain why Colleoni is often
styled "di Andegavia e Borgogna." In the case of Rene, the honor was but
a barren show. But the patent of Charles the Bold had more significance.
In 1473 he entertained the project of employing the great Italian
general against his Swiss foes; nor does it seem reasonable to reject a
statement made by Colleoni's biographer, to the effect that a secret
compact had been drawn up between him and the Duke of Burgundy, for the
conquest and partition of the Duchy of Milan. The Venetians, in whose
service Colleoni still remained, when they became aware of this project,
met it with peaceful but irresistible opposition.
Colleoni had been engaged continually since his earliest boyhood in the
trade of war. It was not therefore possible that he should have gained a
great degree of literary culture. Yet the fashion of the times made it
necessary that a man in his position should seek the society of
scholars. Accordingly his court and camp were crowded with students, in
whose wordy disputations he is said to have delighted. It will be
remembered that his contemporaries, Alfonso the Magnanimous, Francesco
Sforza, Federigo of Urbino, and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, piqued
themselves at least as much upon their patronage of letters as upon
their prowess in the field.
Colleoni's court, like that of Urbino, was a model of manners. As became
a soldier, he was temperate in food and moderate in slumber. It was
recorded of him that he had never sat more than one hour at meat in his
own house, and that he never overslept the sunrise. After dinner he
would converse with his friends, using commonly his native dialect of
Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with stories of adventure, and
now with pithy sayings. In another essential point he resembled his
illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Urbino; for he was sincerely pious
in an age which, however it preserved the decencies of ceremonial
religion, was profoundly corrupt at heart. His principal lordships in
the Bergamasque territory owed to his munificence their fairest churches
and charitable institutions. At Martinengo, for example, he rebuilt and
re-endowed two monasteries, the one dedicated to St. Chiara, the other
to St. Francis. In Bergamo itself he founded an establishment named "La
Pieta," for the good purpose of dowering and marrying poor girls. This
house he endowed with a yearly income of three thousand ducats. The
sulphur baths of Trescorio, at some distance from the city, were
improved and opened to poor patients by a hospital which he provided. At
Rumano he raised a church to St. Peter, and erected buildings of public
utility, which on his death he bequeathed to the society of the
Misericordia in that town. All the places of his jurisdiction owed to
him such benefits as good water, new walls, and irrigation-works. In
addition to these munificent foundations must be mentioned the Basella,
or Monastery of Dominican friars, which he established not far from
Bergamo, upon the river Serio, in memory of his beloved daughter Medea.
Last, not least, was the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, attached to the
Church of S. Maria Maggiore, which he endowed with fitting maintenance
for two priests and deacons.
The one defect acknowledged by his biographer was his partiality for
women. Early in life he married Tisbe, of the noble house of the
Brescian Martinenghi, who bore him one daughter, Caterina, wedded to
Gasparre Martinengo. Two illegitimate daughters, Ursina and Isotta, were
recognized and treated by him as legitimate. The first he gave in
marriage to Gherardo Martinengo, and the second to Jacopo of the same
family. Two other natural children, Doratina and Ricardona, were
mentioned in his will: he left them four thousand ducats apiece for
dowry. Medea, the child of his old age (for she was born to him when he
was sixty), died before her father, and was buried, as we have seen, in
the Chapel of Basella.
Throughout his life he was distinguished for great physical strength and
agility. When he first joined the troop of Braccio, he could race, with
his corselet on, against the swiftest runner of the army; and when he
was stripped, few horses could beat him in speed. Far on into old age he
was in the habit of taking long walks every morning for the sake of
exercise, and delighted in feats of arms and jousting-matches. "He was
tall, straight, and full of flesh, well-proportioned, and excellently
made in all his limbs. His complexion inclined somewhat to brown, but
was colored with sanguine and lively carnation. His eyes were black; in
look and sharpness of light they were vivid, piercing, and terrible. The
outlines of his nose and all his countenance expressed a certain manly
nobleness, combined with goodness and prudence." Such is the portrait
drawn of Colleoni by his biographer and it well accords with the famous
bronze statue of the general at Venice.
Colleoni lived with a magnificence that suited his rank. His favorite
place of abode was Malpaga, a castle built by him at the distance of
about an hour's drive from Bergamo. The place is worth a visit, though
its courts and gates and galleries have now been turned into a monster
farm, and the southern rooms, where Colleoni entertained his guests, are
given over to the silkworms. Half a dozen families, employed upon a vast
estate of the Martinengo family, occupy the still substantial house and
stables. The moat is planted with mulberry-trees; the upper rooms are
used as granaries for golden maize; cows, pigs, and horses litter in the
spacious yard. Yet the walls of the inner court and of the ancient
state-rooms are brilliant with frescos, executed by some good Venetian
hand, which represent the chief events of Colleoni's life--his battles,
his reception by the Signory of Venice, his tournaments and
hawking-parties, and the great series of entertainments with which he
welcomed Christiern of Denmark. This king had made his pilgrimage to
Rome, and was returning westward, when the fame of Colleoni and his
princely state at Malpaga induced him to turn aside and spend some days
as the general's guest. In order to do him honor, Colleoni left his
castle at the king's disposal and established himself with all his staff
and servants in a camp at some distance from Malpaga. The camp was duly
furnished with tents and trenches, stockades, artillery, and all the
other furniture of war. On the king's approach, Colleoni issued with
trumpets blowing and banners flying to greet his guest, gratifying him
thus with a spectacle of the pomp and circumstance of war as carried on
in Italy. The visit was further enlivened by sham fights, feats of arms,
and trials of strength. When it ended, Colleoni presented the king with
one of his own suits of armor, and gave to each of his servants a
complete livery of red and white, his colors. Among the frescos at
Malpaga none are more interesting, and none, thanks to the silkworms
rather than to any other cause, are fortunately in a better state of
preservation, than those which represent this episode in the history of
the castle.
Colleoni died in the year 1475, at the age of seventy-five. Since he
left no male representative, he constituted the Republic of St. Mark his
heir in chief, after properly providing for his daughters and his
numerous foundations. The Venetians received under this testament a sum
of one hundred thousand ducats, together with all arrears of pay due to
him, and ten thousand ducats owed him by the Duke of Ferrara. It set
forth the testator's intention that this money should be employed in
defence of the Christian faith against the Turk. One condition was
attached to the bequest. The legatees were to erect a statue to Colleoni
on the Piazza of St. Mark. This, however, involved some difficulty; for
the proud republic had never accorded a similar honor, nor did they
choose to encumber their splendid square with a monument. They evaded
the condition by assigning the Campo in front of the Scuola di S. Marco,
where also stands the Church of S. Zanipolo, to the purpose. Here
accordingly the finest bronze equestrian statue in Italy, if we except
the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, was reared upon its marble pedestal
by Andrea Verocchio and Alessandro Leopardi.
Colleoni's liberal expenditure of wealth found its reward in the
immortality conferred by art. While the names of Braccio, his master in
the art of war, and of Piccinino, his great adversary, are familiar to
few but professed students, no one who has visited either Bergamo or
Venice can fail to have learned something about the founder of the
Chapel of St. John and the original of Leopardi's bronze. The annals of
sculpture assign to Verocchio, of Florence, the principal share in this
statue: but Verocchio died before it was cast; and even granting that he
designed the model, its execution must be attributed to his
collaborator, the Venetian Leopardi. For my own part, I am loath to
admit that the chief credit of this masterpiece belongs to a man whose
undisputed work at Florence shows but little of its living spirit and
splendor of suggested motion. That the Tuscan science of Verocchio
secured conscientious modelling for man and horse may be assumed; but I
am fain to believe that the concentrated fire which animates them both
is due in no small measure to the handling of his northern
fellow-craftsman.
While immersed in the dreary records of crimes, treasons, cruelties, and
base ambitions, which constitute the bulk of fifteenth-century Italian
history, it is refreshing to meet with a character so frank and manly,
so simply pious and comparatively free from stain, as Colleoni. The only
general of his day who can bear comparison with him for purity of public
life and decency in conduct was Federigo di Montefeltro. Even here, the
comparison redounds to Colleoni's credit; for he, unlike the Duke of
Urbino, rose to eminence by his own exertion in a profession fraught
with peril to men of ambition and energy. Federigo started with a
principality sufficient to satisfy his just desires for power. Nothing
but his own sense of right and prudence restrained Colleoni upon the
path which brought Francesco Sforza to a duchy by dishonorable dealings,
and Carmagnola to the scaffold by questionable practice against his
masters.