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
Sæcula per omnia
Quascunque lustrans oras,
Tantum possunt Camoenæ.
'Look here on Virtue that knows nought of Death! Lancinus Curtius
shall live through all the centuries, and visit every shore of earth.
Such power have the Muses.' The timeworn 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.