In the Sculpture Gallery of the Brera is preserved a fair white marble
tomb, carved by that excellent Lombard sculptor Agostino Busti. The
epitaph runs as follows:
En Virtutem Mortis nesciam.
Vivet Lancinus Curtius
Saecula per omnia
Quascunque lustrans oras,
Tantum possunt Camoenae.
"Look here on Virtue that knows naught of Death! Lancinus Curtius shall
live through all the centuries, and visit every shore on earth. Such
power have the Muses." The time-worn poet reclines, as though sleeping
or resting, ready to be waked; his head is covered with flowing hair,
and crowned with laurel; it leans upon his left hand. On either side of
his couch stand cupids or genii with torches turned to earth. Above is a
group of the three Graces, flanked by winged Pegasi. Higher up are
throned two Victories with palms, and at the top a naked Fame. We need
not ask who was Lancinus Curtius. He is forgotten, and his virtue has
not saved him from oblivion; though he strove in his lifetime, _pro
virili parte_, for the palm that Busti carved upon his grave. Yet his
monument teaches in short compass a deep lesson; and his epitaph sums up
the dream which lured the men of Italy in the Renaissance to their doom.
We see before us sculptured in this marble the ideal of the humanistic
poet-scholar's life: Love, Grace, the Muse, and Nakedness, and Glory.
There is not a single intrusive thought derived from Christianity. The
end for which the man lived was pagan. His hope was earthly fame. Yet
his name survives, if this indeed be a survival, not in those winged
verses which were to carry him abroad across the earth, but in the
marble of a cunning craftsman, scanned now and then by a wandering
scholar's eye in the half-darkness of a vault.