THE DUCHESS AND THE PAINTER.
After the steed is stolen, we shut the stable-door; and the Duchess, who
now felt very cowardly after dark, set a regular watch on the
battlements, whose orders were that he should wind his horn every hour,
as he paced his rounds, that she might be certified he was on the alert.
The prolonged, wailing note of this horn, piercing the solemn stillness
of night, had something infinitely melancholy in it, and often woke her
with a start; but then she had the satisfaction of thinking all was
safe, and soon yielded herself again to soft repose. Her maids, of whom
she had as many as the Duchess in Don Quixote, were much more timorous
than she was, and yielded a good deal to their fears, thinking it rather
pretty and interesting to start and shriek on the smallest alarm, till
they were scolded out of it by the Mother of the maids. This important
functionary, whose name, like that of Giulia's nurse, was Caterina, but
who bore the dignified prefix of Donna, was of Spanish birth, starched
and stiff as Leslie's duenna. In the feudal times, when the sons of
knights and nobles took service in the household of some brother noble
or knight, and performed the various duties of page and squire, their
sisters in like manner attended on the said noble's lady, somewhat in
the capacity of maids of honour, under the strict surveillance of the
Mother of the maids, who initiated them into all feminine crafts and
handiworks, as well as into the decorums and duties of life. That the
Duchess's household comprised many of these girls, we know from her
will, leaving them marriage portions, generally with the addition of a
bed and bedding. Doubtless there was some Altesidora among them,
accustomed to wear the old Duenna's heart out with her mischief and fun;
but, on the whole, Donna Caterina's rule was popular. Obedience, the
grand principle of peace and order, once enforced, she exercised no
vexatious petty tyrannies.
On the first rumour of Barbarossa's invasion, Donna Caterina had swept
off all these young people into the cellar, and there locked them and
herself in, while Caterina, the nurse, devoted herself to securing the
jewels and plate, which she did with complete success.
Sebastian del Piombo made many studies of the Duchess before he could
please himself; and the irresolution with which captious cavillers have
chosen to charge him was indicated in the deliberation with which he
poised and valued the merits of each before his final decision was made.
But deliberation is a very different thing from vacillation; and even
irresolution is as often an evidence of a great mind before the ultimate
choice, as it is of a little one after it. Plenty of illustrations will
occur to you, without any impertinent suggestions.
After sketching her, then, as a nymph, an angel, a goddess, he chose the
simplest of his studies: one that represented her as
"A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
But yet an angel, too, and bright
With something of celestial light:"
and then, to it he set _con furore_, grasping palette and brushes as
Jove might his thunder-bolts, and painting up his study with consummate
art and science, often in dead silence only broken by "A little more to
the right."
As for the Duchess, when she was off duty, that is, when Sebastian was
getting his picture together, and bringing the separate parts well up
at the same time--as nature creates her works--she would dabble a little
in the arts herself, and pore over a few inches of paper, working as if
for her bread; with now and then a modest appeal,--"Is this altogether
ill-done? Is this a trifle better? Just put in a touch or two."
O, delightful art of painting! Who can pursue you and not be happy?
Those artists who have known envy, jealousy, and malice, have not loved
you for yourself, but for ends far below you; for you are infinitely
calming! The true painter knows no rivalry but with nature, no master
but truth, no mistress but purity, no reward but success. As Garibaldi,
king of men, said last year, "When God puts you in the way of doing a
good thing, _do it_, and hold your tongue."
"Do you think," said Giulia, one day, "I might become a good painter,
if I gave my mind to it?"
"Certainly, if you gave your mind to it. But you never will! You are too
rich to be a good painter. A certain degree of excellence you may
attain, that will embellish your life and charm your leisure; but, to
become really _great_, one must attack painting like any mechanical
trade, and apply to it like an apprentice, not merely when the fancy
inclines, but at all times, willing or unwilling."
"Ah, that would never suit me," said the Duchess. "But, supposing I
could leap over the apprenticeship, and become at once a great artist
like Michael Angelo, I might have underlings to do all the rough work
for me, and only do what was pleasant."
"That is not Michael Angelo's way at all," said Sebastian. "He grinds
his own colours, I promise you, and lays his own palette, as I myself
do when at leisure. One thinks out many profitable thoughts at such
times. And no one can prepare our colours to please us as we can
ourselves. Though many of the early stages of sculpture are executed
from the clay model by rule and plummet, yet I assure you Michael Angelo
trusts it to no inferior workman, but does it himself. He is a great
man! a truly great man! And one of his great achievements has been to
sweep away the gold and purple backgrounds and other puerilities of the
dark ages."
Sebastian little thought art would ever make a _retrograde progress_ to
pre-Raffaelitism. _Do_ we then, after all, move in a circle?
In a month, the picture was finished. It was curious that Giulia should
have sat for it, at Ippolito's request, and for Ippolito; but we know
that she did. Affo supposes that she could not in courtesy refuse him,
after his coming so chivalrously to her succour. You may see the picture
now, at the National Gallery. The Duchess and the painter had quite a
friendly parting; and she engaged him, at his earliest leisure, to paint
her a portrait of himself.
When the Cardinal saw the picture, it gave him a strange mixture of
pleasure and pain.
"You have doubtless had a pleasant month," said he, moodily. "I wish you
had been Ippolito and I Sebastian."
And when he found that Sebastian had promised Giulia his own picture, he
begged him to introduce _his_ portrait into it--which he did.
"Ippolito had, at all events," says one of his chroniclers, "some
loveable and estimable qualities, and most of the historians have a
good word for him."[9] Doubtless this was owing to the genuine love of
letters which made the Medici the idols of the literati. Endowed by
Clement the Seventh with immense wealth, he was, says Roscoe, "the
patron, the companion, and the rival of all the poets, musicians, and
wits of his time. Without territories and without subjects, Ippolito
maintained at Bologna a court far more splendid than that of any Italian
potentate. His associates and attendants, all of whom could boast of
some peculiar merit or distinction which had entitled them to his
notice, generally formed a body of about three hundred persons. Shocked
at his profusion, which only the revenues of the church were competent
to supply, Clement the Seventh is said to have engaged the _maestro di
casa_ of Ippolito to remonstrate with him on his conduct, and to request
that he would dismiss some of his attendants as unnecessary to him.
'No,' replied Ippolito, 'I do not retain them at my court because I have
occasion for their services, but because they have occasion for mine.'"
An answer worthy of a Medici, "His translation of the Eneid into Italian
blank verse is considered one of the happiest efforts of the language,
and has been frequently reprinted. Amongst the collections of Italian
poetry, also, may be found some pieces of his composition, which do
credit to his talents."[10]
[9] T. A. Trollope.
[10] Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici. Some of his pieces may be
found in Crescembini, Della volgare Poesia, ii. 11.
One morning, when it was discovered that many valuable statues in Rome
had been broken and defaced during the night, the Pope was so incensed
at it that he gave orders that whoever had committed the outrage, unless
it should prove to be Cardinal Ippolito, should be hanged. This looks as
if he were not quite sure that Ippolito might not be the culprit.
However, the offender proved to be Lorenzino de' Medici; and it required
all Ippolito's influence with the Pope to get him off.
A Cardinal who could even be suspected by a Pope of playing such a prank
must have been a sorry sort of a churchman; and though we read of "his
frank, chivalrous nature," it would be vain indeed to look for anything
like spirituality in a Medici. When Giulia asked him for something to
supply the vague longings of her heart for a higher happiness than this
world could give, he was quite at sea, and could direct her to nothing
but ascetic observances and the sacrifice of all her possessions to the
church, whose coffers he so recklessly emptied. Yet he had a nature
capable of better things; but it could not shake itself free from the
trammels of earth. When he looked at Giulia's picture he thought,
"There, is a woman who might have made me happy." Perhaps he even
thought, "There is a woman who might have made me good;" but when a man
thinks this and makes no effort to become one whit better than he is, he
might just as well spare himself the reflection.
Of course there were many versions of the story of Barbarossa's attempt
to capture the Duchess. Affo, the family annalist, summons all his
sesquipedalian vocabulary to dignify the occurrence with such eloquence
as this--"Quali fosseri gli affetti del suo delicatissimo animo in cotal
fuga, degno argomento di poema! e di storia, gioverà per interrompimento
di questo basso mio stile, di alzarsi a tanto incapace," &c., &c. And
Muzio Giustinapolitano indited an eclogue on the subject, beginning--
"Muse! quali antri o qual riposte selve
Vi teneano in quel punto? e tu, Minerva!
Qual sacri studj? E qual nuova vaghezza
Il dolce Amor?" &c., &c.
"What were you all about, ye muses, goddesses, and you, you little god
of love," &c., that you did not fly to the rescue of this adorable lady?
and so forth.
It was not only declared that Barbarossa had been despatched by the
Sultan, who desired to enumerate her among the beauties of his harem,
but that she had flung herself out of window, in her chemise, and fled
barefooted to the mountains, where she fell into the hands of some
condottieri, who, recognising her, respectfully conducted her back to
her castle. Giulia was very angry when these stories reached her, which
she was the last, however, to hear of; and when it was learnt that she
was contradicting them with warmth, another and worse story was
circulated, that she had had a Moorish slave assassinated for having
told the truth; in proof of which, his dead body had been cast ashore
with his tongue cut out. When Giulia begged her kinsmen to refute these
calumnies, they only pooh-poohed them, which greatly enraged her; and
she was heard to exclaim, "What a world this is!" which, after all, was
not a very original observation.
Extremely weary of herself and of things in general, she one morning
languidly opened a letter from her cousin, the Marchioness of Pescara,
with very little expectation of its affording her much interest or
amusement.
"Vittoria is always a flight above me," she mentally said. "I never was,
and never shall be, one of your grand intellectual ladies."
This was said with that species of contempt with which too many of us
imply, "Your grand intellectual ladies are great stupids, after
all"--but are they so? Have they not often the best of it, even in this
world? Appreciation and applause that we real stupids would be very glad
of, fall to the share of the working bees that make the honey, and have
not some of them, at any rate, as fair a hope as any of us, of a good
place in the world to come?
Thus wrote "the divine Vittoria," as she was frequently called--not in
the sense of her being a doctor of divinity, but addicted to divine
things:--
"There is now among us a man who is producing an extraordinary
sensation--Fra Bernardino Ochino, a Capuchin, who comes in the
spirit and with the power of Savonarola. Another valuable addition
to our Christian circle is Signor Juan de Valdés, the new Governor
of San Giacomo, and twin-brother of the Emperor's Latin secretary.
How I wish you were among us! We have a very pleasant little
society here, quite apart from those worldlings whose company you
and I have forsworn, our chief delight being to interchange
thoughts and feelings, cultivate our minds, and elevate our souls.
When the hot weather comes, I shall return to Ischia. Farewell."
"Thy Vittoria."
"Truly," exclaimed the Duchess, "to be at Naples would be ten thousand
times better than to remain here, where the malaria certainly affects
me; and I am sure my dear Duke would have said so, were it only for fear
of Barbarossa."
So she gave the word of command, to the immense joy of her ladies, and,
after a prodigious bustle of preparation, she started with quite a
little army of retainers--six ladies of honour in sky-blue damask, six
grooms in chocolate and blue, her maggior-domo in starched ruff and black
velvet, and a competent number of men armed to the teeth. She performed
the journey, no very long one, in a horse-litter, curtained with blue
and silver, and piled with blue satin mattresses; and when she wished to
change her position she mounted her white palfrey.