COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO

To which of the Italian lakes should the palm of beauty be accorded?

This question may not unfrequently have moved the idle minds of

travellers, wandering through that loveliest region from Orta to

Garda--from little Orta, with her gemlike island, rosy granite crags,

and chestnut-covered swards above the Colma; to Garda, bluest of all

waters, surveyed in majestic length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione,

a silvery sleeping haze of hill and cloud and heaven and clear waves

bathed in modulated azure. And between these extreme points what

varied lovelinesses lie in broad Maggiore, winding Como, Varese with

the laughing face upturned to heaven, Lugano overshadowed by the

crested crags of Monte Generoso, and Iseo far withdrawn among the

rocky Alps! He who loves immense space, cloud shadows slowly sailing

over purple slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped

mountains, breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sunlight, will choose

Maggiore. But scarcely has he cast his vote for this, the Juno of the

divine rivals, when he remembers the triple lovelinesses of the

Larian Aphrodite, disclosed in all their placid grace from Villa

Serbelloni;--the green blue of the waters, clear as glass, opaque

through depth; the _millefleurs_ roses clambering into cypresses

by Cadenabbia; the laburnums hanging their yellow clusters from the

clefts of Sasso Eancio; the oleander arcades of Varenna; the wild

white limestone crags of San Martiuo, which he has climbed to feast

his eyes with the perspective, magical, serene, Lionardesquely

perfect, of the distant gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris

is yet doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of sterner,

solitary Lake Iseo--the Pallas of the three. She offers her own

attractions. The sublimity of Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and

all the lowland like Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above the

plain of common life, has charms to tempt heroic lovers. Nor can

Varese be neglected. In some picturesque respects, Varese is the most

perfect of the lakes. Those long lines of swelling hills that lead

into the level, yield an infinite series of placid foregrounds,

pleasant to the eye by contrast with the dominant snow-summits, from

Monte Viso to Monte Leone: the sky is limitless to southward; the low

horizons are broken by bell-towers and farmhouses; while armaments of

clouds are ever rolling in the interval of Alps and plain.

Of a truth, to decide which is the queen of the Italian lakes, is but

an _infinita quæstio_; and the mere raising of it is folly. Still

each lover of the beautiful may give his vote; and mine, like that of

shepherd Paris, is already given to the Larian goddess. Words fail

in attempting to set forth charms which have to be enjoyed, or can at

best but lightly be touched with most consummate tact, even as great

poets have already touched on Como Lake--from Virgil with his 'Lari

maxume,' to Tennyson and the Italian Manzoni. The threshold of the

shrine is, however, less consecrated ground; and the Cathedral of Como

may form a vestibule to the temple where silence is more golden than

the speech of a describer.

The Cathedral of Como is perhaps the most perfect building in Italy

for illustrating the fusion of Gothic and Renaissance styles, both of

a good type and exquisite in their sobriety. The Gothic ends with the

nave. The noble transepts and the choir, each terminating in a rounded

tribune of the same dimensions, are carried out in a simple and

decorous Bramantesque manner. The transition from the one style to the

other is managed so felicitously, and the sympathies between them are

so well developed, that there is no discord. What we here call

Gothic, is conceived in a truly southern spirit, without fantastic

efflorescence or imaginative complexity of multiplied parts; while

the Renaissance manner, as applied by Tommaso Rodari, has not yet

stiffened into the lifeless neo-Latinism of the later _cinquecento_:

it is still distinguished by delicate inventiveness, and beautiful

subordination of decorative detail to architectural effect. Under

these happy conditions we feel that the Gothic of the nave, with its

superior severity and sombreness, dilates into the lucid harmonies of

choir and transepts like a flower unfolding. In the one the mind is

tuned to inner meditation and religious awe; in the other the

worshipper passes into a temple of the clear explicit faith--as an

initiated neophyte might be received into the meaning of the

mysteries.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire the district of Como seems

to have maintained more vividly than the rest of Northern Italy some

memory of classic art. _Magistri Comacini_ is a title frequently

inscribed upon deeds and charters of the earlier middle ages, as

synonymous with sculptors and architects. This fact may help to

account for the purity and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a

race in which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had

never been wholly interrupted. To Tommaso Rodari and his brothers,

Bernardino and Jacopo, the world owes this sympathetic fusion of the

Gothic and the Bramantesque styles; and theirs too is the sculpture

with which the Duomo is so richly decorated. They were natives of

Maroggia, a village near Mendrisio, beneath the crests of Monte

Generoso, close to Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out

into the world between the years 1300 and 1500. Indeed the name of

Campionesi would probably have been given to the Rodari, had they left

their native province for service in Eastern Lombardy. The body of the

Duomo had been finished when Tommaso Rodari was appointed master of

the fabric in 1487. To complete the work by the addition of a tribune

was his duty. He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, after the

fashion of those times, for criticism in his _bottega_; and

the usual difference of opinion arose among the citizens of Como

concerning its merits. Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed Il Gobbo, was

called in to advise. It may be remembered that when Michelangelo first

placed his Pietà in S. Peter's, rumour gave it to this celebrated

Lombard sculptor, and the Florentine was constrained to set his own

signature upon the marble. The same Solaro carved the monument of

Beatrice Sforza in the Certosa of Pavia. He was indeed in all

points competent to criticise or to confirm the design of his

fellow-craftsman. Il Gobbo disapproved of the proportions chosen by

Rodari, and ordered a new model to be made; but after much discussion,

and some concessions on the part of Rodari, who is said to have

increased the number of the windows and lightened the orders of his

model, the work was finally entrusted to the master of Maroggia.

Not less creditable than the general design of the tribune is

the sculpture executed by the brothers. The north side door is a

master-work of early Renaissance chiselling, combining mixed Christian

and classical motives with a wealth of floral ornament. Inside, over

the same door, is a procession of children seeming to represent the

Triumph of Bacchus, with perhaps some Christian symbolism. Opposite,

above the south door, is a frieze of fighting Tritons--horsed sea

deities pounding one another with bunches of fish and splashing the

water, in Mantegna's spirit. The doorways of the façade are decorated

with the same rare workmanship; and the canopies, supported by naked

fauns and slender twisted figures, under which the two Plinies are

seated, may be reckoned among the supreme achievements of delicate

Renaissance sculpture. The Plinies are not like the work of the same

master. They are older, stiffer, and more Gothic. The chief interest

attaching to them is that they are habited and seated after the

fashion of Humanists. This consecration of the two Pagan saints beside

the portals of the Christian temple is truly characteristic of

the fifteenth century in Italy. Beneath, are little basreliefs

representing scenes from their respective lives, in the style of

carved predellas on the altars of saints.

The whole church is peopled with detached statues, among which a

Sebastian in the Chapel of the Madonna must be mentioned as singularly

beautiful. It is a finely modelled figure, with the full life and

exuberant adolescence of Venetian inspiration. A peculiar feature of

the external architecture is the series of Atlantes, bearing on their

shoulders urns, heads of lions, and other devices, and standing on

brackets round the upper cornice just below the roof. They are of all

sorts; young and old, male and female; classically nude, and boldly

outlined. These water-conduits, the work of Bernardo Bianco and

Francesco Rusca, illustrate the departure of the earlier Renaissance

from the Gothic style. They are gargoyles; but they have lost the

grotesque element. At the same time the sculptor, while discarding

Gothic tradition, has not betaken himself yet to a servile imitation

of the antique. He has used invention, and substituted for grinning

dragons' heads something wild and bizarre of his own in harmony with

classic taste.

The pictures in the chapels, chiefly by Luini and Ferrari--an idyllic

Nativity, with faun-like shepherds and choirs of angels--a sumptuous

adoration of the Magi--a jewelled Sposalizio with abundance of golden

hair flowing over draperies of green and crimson--will interest

those who are as yet unfamiliar with Lombard painting. Yet their

architectural setting, perhaps, is superior to their intrinsic merit

as works of art; and their chief value consists in adding rare dim

flakes of colour to the cool light of the lovely church. More curious,

because less easily matched, is the gilded woodwork above the altar of

S. Abondio, attributed to a German carver, but executed for the

most part in the purest Luinesque manner. The pose of the enthroned

Madonna, the type and gesture of S. Catherine, and the treatment of

the Pietà above, are thoroughly Lombard, showing how Luini's ideal of

beauty could be expressed in carving. Some of the choicest figures in

the Monastero Maggiore at Milan seem to have descended from the walls

and stepped into their tabernacles on this altar. Yet the style is not

maintained consistently. In the reliefs illustrating the life of S.

Abondio we miss Luini's childlike grace, and find instead a something

that reminds us of Donatello--a seeking after the classical in dress,

carriage, and grouping of accessory figures. It may have been that the

carver, recognising Luini's defective composition, and finding nothing

in that master's manner adapted to the spirit of relief, had the good

taste to render what was Luinesquely lovely in his female figures, and

to fall back on a severer model for his basreliefs.

The building-fund for the Duomo was raised in Como and its districts.

Boxes were placed in all the churches to receive the alms of those who

wished to aid the work. The clergy begged in Lent, and preached the

duty of contributing on special days. Presents of lime and bricks

and other materials were thankfully received. Bishops, canons, and

municipal magistrates were expected to make costly gifts on taking

office. Notaries, under penalty of paying 100 soldi if they neglected

their engagement, were obliged to persuade testators, _cum bonis

modis dulciter_, to inscribe the Duomo on their wills. Fines for

various offences were voted to the building by the city. Each new

burgher paid a certain sum; while guilds and farmers of the taxes

bought monopolies and privileges at the price of yearly subsidies.

A lottery was finally established for the benefit of the fabric.

Of course each payment to the good work carried with it spiritual

privileges; and so willingly did the people respond to the call of the

Church, that during the sixteenth century the sums subscribed amounted

to 200,000 golden crowns. Among the most munificent donators are

mentioned the Marchese Giacomo Gallio, who bequeathed 290,000 lire,

and a Benzi, who gave 10,000 ducats.

While the people of Como were thus straining every nerve to complete

a pious work, which at the same time is one of the most perfect

masterpieces of Italian art, their lovely lake was turned into a

pirate's stronghold, and its green waves stained with slaughter of

conflicting navies. So curious is this episode in the history of the

Larian lake that it is worth while to treat of it at some length.

Moreover, the lives of few captains of adventure offer matter more

rich in picturesque details and more illustrative of their times than

that of Gian Giacomo de' Medici, the Larian corsair, long known and

still remembered as Il Medeghino. He was born in Milan in 1498, at

the beginning of that darkest and most disastrous period of Italian

history, when the old fabric of social and political existence went to

ruin under the impact of conflicting foreign armies. He lived on until

the year 1555, witnessing and taking part in the dismemberment of the

Milanese Duchy, playing a game of hazard at high stakes for his own

profit with the two last Sforzas, the Empire, the French, and the

Swiss. At the beginning of the century, while he was still a youth,

the rich valley of the Valtelline, with Bormio and Chiavenna, had

been assigned to the Grisons. The Swiss Cantons at the same time had

possessed themselves of Lugano and Bellinzona. By these two acts of

robbery the mountaineers tore a portion of its fairest territory from

the Duchy; and whoever ruled in Milan, whether a Sforza, or a Spanish

viceroy, or a French general, was impatient to recover the lost jewel

of the ducal crown. So much has to be premised, because the scene of

our hero's romantic adventures was laid upon the borderland between

the Duchy and the Cantons. Intriguing at one time with the Duke of

Milan, at another with his foes the French or Spaniards, Il Medeghino

found free scope for his peculiar genius in a guerilla warfare,

carried on with the avowed purpose of restoring the Valtelline to

Milan. To steer a plain course through that chaos of politics, in

which the modern student, aided by the calm clear lights of history

and meditation, cannot find a clue, was of course impossible for an

adventurer whose one aim was to gratify his passions and exalt himself

at the expense of others. It is therefore of little use to seek

motives of statecraft or of patriotism in the conduct of Il Medeghino.

He was a man shaped according to Machiavelli's standard of political

morality--self-reliant, using craft and force with cold indifference

to moral ends, bent only upon wringing for himself the largest share

of this world's power for men who, like himself, identified virtue

with unflinching and immitigable egotism.

Il Medeghino's father was Bernardo de' Medici, a Lombard, who neither

claimed nor could have proved cousinship with the great Medicean

family of Florence. His mother was Cecilia Serbelloni. The boy was

educated in the fashionable humanistic studies, nourishing his young

imagination with the tales of Roman heroes. The first exploit by which

he proved his _virtù_, was the murder of a man he hated, at the

age of sixteen. This 'virile act of vengeance,' as it was called,

brought him into trouble, and forced him to choose the congenial

profession of arms. At a time when violence and vigour passed for

manliness, a spirited assassination formed the best of introductions

to the captains of mixed mercenary troops. Il Medeghino rose in

favour with his generals, helped to reinstate Francesco Sforza in his

capital, and, returning himself to Milan, inflicted severe vengeance

on the enemies who had driven him to exile. It was his ambition, at

this early period of his life, to be made governor of the Castle of

Musso, on the Lake of Como. While fighting in the neighbourhood, he

had observed the unrivalled capacities for defence presented by its

site; and some pre-vision of his future destinies now urged him to

acquire it, as the basis for the free marauding life he planned. The

headland of Musso lies about halfway between Gravedona and Menaggio,

on the right shore of the Lake of Como. Planted on a pedestal of

rock, and surmounted by a sheer cliff, there then stood a very ancient

tower, commanding this promontory on the side of the land. Between it

and the water the Visconti, in more recent days, had built a square

fort; and the headland had been further strengthened by the addition

of connecting walls and bastions pierced for cannon. Combining

precipitous cliffs, strong towers, and easy access from the lake

below, this fortress of Musso was exactly the fit station for a

pirate. So long as he kept the command of the lake, he had little

to fear from land attacks, and had a splendid basis for aggressive

operations. Il Medeghino made his request to the Duke of Milan; but

the foxlike Sforza would not grant him a plain answer. At length he

hinted that if his suitor chose to rid him of a troublesome subject,

the noble and popular Astore Visconti, he should receive Musso

for payment. Crimes of bloodshed and treason sat lightly on the

adventurer's conscience. In a short time he compassed the young

Visconti's death, and claimed his reward. The Duke despatched him

thereupon to Musso, with open letters to the governor, commanding him

to yield the castle to the bearer. Private advice, also entrusted to

Il Medeghino, bade the governor, on the contrary, cut the bearer's

throat. The young man, who had the sense to read the Duke's letter,

destroyed the secret document, and presented the other, or, as one

version of the story goes, forged a ducal order in his own favour.[12]

At any rate, the castle was placed in his hands; and affecting to know

nothing of the Duke's intended treachery, Il Medeghino took possession

of it as a trusted servant of the ducal crown.

As soon as he was settled in his castle, the freebooter devoted all

his energies to rendering it still more impregnable by strengthening

the walls and breaking the cliffs into more horrid precipices. In this

work he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso

rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an asylum for the ruffians and

outlaws of neighbouring provinces. It is even said that his sisters,

Clarina and Margherita, rendered efficient aid with manual labour. The

mention of Clarina's name justifies a parenthetical side-glance at Il

Medeghino's pedigree, which will serve to illustrate the exceptional

conditions of Italian society during this age. She was married to

the Count Giberto Borromeo, and became the mother of the pious Carlo

Borromeo, whose shrine is still adored at Milan in the Duomo. Il

Medeghino's brother, Giovan Angelo, rose to the Papacy, assuming the

title of Pius IV. Thus this murderous marauder was the brother of a

Pope and the uncle of a Saint; and these three persons of one family

embraced the various degrees and typified the several characters which

flourished with peculiar lustre in Renaissance Italy--the captain of

adventure soaked in blood, the churchman unrivalled for intrigue, and

the saint aflame with holiest enthusiasm. Il Medeghino was short of

stature, but well made and powerful; broad-chested; with a penetrating

voice and winning countenance. He dressed simply, like one of his own

soldiers; slept but little; was insensible to carnal pleasure; and

though he knew how to win the affection of his men by jovial speech,

he maintained strict discipline in his little army. In all points he

was an ideal bandit chief, never happy unless fighting or planning

campaigns, inflexible of purpose, bold and cunning in the execution of

his schemes, cruel to his enemies, generous to his followers,

sacrificing all considerations, human and divine, to the one aim of

his life, self-aggrandisement by force and intrigue. He knew well how

to make himself both feared and respected. One instance of his dealing

will suffice. A gentleman of Bellano, Polidoro Boldoni, in return to

his advances, coldly replied that he cared for neither amity nor

relationship with thieves and robbers; whereupon Il Medeghino

extirpated his family, almost to a man.

Soon after his settlement in Musso, Il Medeghino, wishing to secure

the gratitude of the Duke, his master, began war with the Grisons.

From Coire, from the Engadine, and from Davos, the Alpine pikemen were

now pouring down to swell the troops of Francis I.; and their road lay

through the Lake of Como. Il Medeghino burned all the boats upon the

lake, except those which he took into his own service, and thus made

himself master of the water passage. He then swept the 'length of

lordly Lario' from Colico to Lecco, harrying the villages upon

the shore, and cutting off the bands of journeying Switzers at his

pleasure. Not content with this guerilla, he made a descent upon

the territory of the Trepievi, and pushed far up towards Chiavenna,

forcing the Grisons to recall their troops from the Milanese. These

acts of prowess convinced the Duke that he had found a strong ally

in the pirate chief. When Francis I. continued his attacks upon the

Duchy, and the Grisons still adhered to their French paymaster, the

Sforza formally invested Gian Giacomo de' Medici with the perpetual

governorship of Musso, the Lake of Como, and as much as he could wrest

from the Grisons above the lake. Furnished now with a just title for

his depredations, Il Medeghino undertook the siege of Chiavenna. That

town is the key to the valleys of the Splügen and Bregaglia. Strongly

fortified and well situated for defence, the burghers of the Grisons

well knew that upon its possession depended their power in the Italian

valleys. To take it by assault was impossible, Il Medeghino used

craft, entered the castle, and soon had the city at his disposition.

Nor did he lose time in sweeping Val Bregaglia. The news of this

conquest recalled the Switzers from the Duchy; and as they hurried

homeward just before the battle of Pavia, it may be affirmed that Gian

Giacomo de' Medici was instrumental in the defeat and capture of the

French King. The mountaineers had no great difficulty in dislodging

their pirate enemy from Chiavenna, the Valtelline, and Val Bregaglia.

But he retained his hold on the Trepievi, occupied the Valsassina,

took Porlezza, and established himself still more strongly in Musso as

the corsair monarch of the lake.

The tyranny of the Sforzas in Milan was fast going to pieces between

France and Spain; and in 1526 the Marquis of Pescara occupied the

capital in the name of Charles V. The Duke, meanwhile, remained a

prisoner in his Castello. Il Medeghino was now without a master; for

he refused to acknowledge the Spaniards, preferring to watch events

and build his own power on the ruins of the dukedom. At the head of

4,000 men, recruited from the lakes and neighbouring valleys, he

swept the country far and wide, and occupied the rich champaign of the

Brianza. He was now lord of the lakes of Como and Lugano, and absolute

in Lecco and the adjoining valleys. The town of Como itself alone

belonged to the Spaniards; and even Como was blockaded by the navy of

the corsair. Il Medeghino had a force of seven big ships, with three

sails and forty-eight oars, bristling with guns and carrying marines.

His flagship was a large brigantine, manned by picked rowers, from

the mast of which floated the red banner with the golden palle of the

Medicean arms. Besides these larger vessels, he commanded a flotilla

of countless small boats. It is clear that to reckon with him was a

necessity. If he could not be put down with force, he might be bought

over by concessions. The Spaniards adopted the second course, and Il

Medeghino, judging that the cause of the Sforza family was desperate,

determined in 1528 to attach himself to the Empire. Charles V.

invested him with the Castle of Musso and the larger part of Como

Lake, including the town of Lecco. He now assumed the titles of

Marquis of Musso and Count of Lecco: and in order to prove his

sovereignty before the world, he coined money with his own name and

devices.

It will be observed that Gian Giacomo de' Medici had hitherto acted

with a single-hearted view to his own interests. At the age of thirty

he had raised himself from nothing to a principality, which, though

petty, might compare with many of some name in Italy--with Carpi, for

example, or Mirandola, or Camerino. Nor did he mean to remain quiet

in the prime of life. He regarded Como Lake as the mere basis for more

arduous undertakings. Therefore, when the whirligig of events restored

Francesco Sforza to his duchy in 1529, Il Medeghino refused to obey

his old lord. Pretending to move under the Duke's orders, but really

acting for himself alone, he proceeded to attack his ancient

enemies, the Grisons. By fraud and force he worked his way into

their territory, seized Morbegno, and overran the Valtelline. He

was destined, however, to receive a serious check. Twelve thousand

Switzers rose against him on the one hand, on the other the Duke of

Milan sent a force by land and water to subdue his rebel subject,

while Alessandro Gonzaga marched upon his castles in the Brianza. He

was thus assailed by formidable forces from three quarters, converging

upon the Lake of Como, and driving him to his chosen element, the

water. Hastily quitting the Valtelline, he fell back to the Castle of

Mandello on the lake, collected his navy, and engaged the ducal ships

in a battle off Menaggio. In this battle he was worsted. But he did

not lose his courage. From Bellagio, from Varenna, from Bellano he

drove forth his enemies, rolled the cannon of the Switzers into the

lake, regained Lecco, defeated the troops of Alessandro Gonzaga, and

took the Duke of Mantua prisoner. Had he but held Como, it is probable

that he might have obtained such terms at this time as would have

consolidated his tyranny. The town of Como, however, now belonged

to the Duke of Milan, and formed an excellent basis for operations

against the pirate. Overmatched, with an exhausted treasury and broken

forces, Il Medeghino was at last compelled to give in. Yet he retired

with all the honours of war. In exchange for Musso and the lake, the

Duke agreed to give him 35,000 golden crowns, together with the feud

and marquisate of Marignano. A free pardon was promised not only

to himself and his brothers, but to all his followers; and the Duke

further undertook to transport his artillery and munitions of war at

his own expense to Marignano. Having concluded this treaty under the

auspices of Charles V. and his lieutenant, Il Medeghino, in March

1532, set sail from Musso, and turned his back upon the lake for

ever. The Switzers immediately destroyed the towers, forts, walls, and

bastions of the Musso promontory, leaving in the midst of their ruins

the little chapel of S. Eufemia.

Gian Giacomo de' Medici, henceforth known to Europe as the Marquis

of Marignano, now took service under Spain; and through the favour

of Anton de Leyva, Viceroy for the Duchy, rose to the rank of

Field Marshal. When the Marquis del Vasto succeeded to the Spanish

governorship of Milan in 1536, he determined to gratify an old grudge

against the ex-pirate, and, having invited him to a banquet, made him

prisoner. II Medeghino was not, however, destined to languish in a

dungeon. Princes and kings interested themselves in his fate. He

was released, and journeyed to the court of Charles V. in Spain.

The Emperor received him kindly, and employed him first in the Low

Countries, where he helped to repress the burghers of Ghent, and at

the siege of Landrecy commanded the Spanish artillery against other

Italian captains of adventure: for, Italy being now dismembered and

enslaved, her sons sought foreign service where they found best pay

and widest scope for martial science. Afterwards the Medici ruled

Bohemia as Spanish Viceroy; and then, as general of the league formed

by the Duke of Florence, the Emperor, and the Pope to repress the

liberties of Tuscany, distinguished himself in that cruel war of

extermination, which turned the fair Contado of Siena into a poisonous

Maremma. To the last Il Medeghino preserved the instincts and the

passions of a brigand chief. It was at this time that, acting for the

Grand Duke of Tuscany, he first claimed open kinship with the Medici

of Florence. Heralds and genealogists produced a pedigree, which

seemed to authorise this pretension; he was recognised, together with

his brother, Pius IV., as an offshoot of the great house which had

already given Dukes to Florence, Kings to France, and two Popes to

the Christian world. In the midst of all this foreign service he never

forgot his old dream of conquering the Valtelline; and in 1547 he

made proposals to the Emperor for a new campaign against the Grisons.

Charles V. did not choose to engage in a war, the profits of which

would have been inconsiderable for the master of half the civilised

world, and which might have proved troublesome by stirring up the

tameless Switzers. Il Medeghino was obliged to abandon a project

cherished from the earliest dawn of his adventurous manhood.

When Gian Giacomo died in 1555, his brother Battista succeeded to his

claims upon Lecco and the Trepievi. His monument, magnificent with

five bronze figures, the masterpiece of Leone Lioni, from Menaggio,

Michelangelesque in style, and of consummate workmanship, still adorns

the Duomo of Milan. It stands close by the door that leads to the

roof. This mausoleum, erected to the memory of Gian Giacomo and

his brother Gabrio, is said to have cost 7800 golden crowns. On the

occasion of the pirate's funeral the Senate of Milan put on mourning,

and the whole city followed the great robber, the hero of Renaissance

_virtù_, to the grave.

Between the Cathedral of Como and the corsair Medeghino there is but

a slight link. Yet so extraordinary were the social circumstances of

Renaissance Italy, that almost at every turn, on her seaboard, in her

cities, from her hill-tops, we are compelled to blend our admiration

for the loveliest and purest works of art amid the choicest scenes

of nature with memories of execrable crimes and lawless characters.

Sometimes, as at Perugia, the _nexus_ is but local. At others,

one single figure, like that of Cellini, unites both points of view in

a romance of unparalleled dramatic vividness. Or, again, beneath

the vaults of the Certosa, near Pavia, a masterpiece of the serenest

beauty carries our thoughts perforce back to the hideous cruelties

and snake-like frauds of its despotic founder. This is the excuse

for combining two such diverse subjects in one study.

* * * * *

_BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI_

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,

vapour-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 airspace 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 splendour live here side by side. Grand Renaissance

portals grinning with Satyr masks are flanked by tawdry frescoes

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, basreliefs, pilasters, statuettes, encrusted on the fanciful

domed shrine. Upon the façade 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 labours. Italian

craftsmen of the _quattrocento_ were not averse to setting

thus together, in one framework, 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 labour, 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 epitomised

in twelve of the sixteen basreliefs. The remaining four show Hercules

wrestling with Antæus, taming the Nemean lion, extirpating the Hydra,

and bending to his will the bull of Crete. Labour, 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 basreliefs far-fetched; yet, such as

it is, it agrees with the spirit of Humanism, bent ever on harmonising

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

_improvvisatore_ 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 50,000 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 _cinquecento_ frieze,

for instance--and much of the low relief work--especially the

Crucifixion with its characteristic episodes of the fainting Maries

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 cheek bones 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, idealise the hero of romance--if

Michelangelo'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 Pùho 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, Pùho 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,

Pùho 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 Pùho 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 enrol 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 armour. 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 Pùho

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 800 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 Provoditore of the Republic. He

now took a commission from Filippo Maria Visconti, who received him at

Milan with great honour, 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 bodyguard 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 honour 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 1500 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 S. Mark elected him General-in-Chief of

their armies, with the fullest powers, and with a stipend of 100,000

florins. For nearly twenty-one years, until the day of his death, in

1475, Colleoni held this honourable 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 Bâton of S. 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 S. 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 S.

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

splendour to maintain and to defend the Majesty, the Loyalty, and the

Principles of this Empire. Neither provoking, not 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 favourite 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. Honours 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 René

of Anjou, by special patent, authorised 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 René, the honour 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 good 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 S. Chiara, the other to S. 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

3000 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 S. 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 S. 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 recognised 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 a piece 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 coloured 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 favourite

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 frescoes, 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 honour, 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 armour, and gave to each of his servants a complete

livery of red and white, his colours. Among the frescoes 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 S. Mark

his heir-in-chief, after properly providing for his daughters and his

numerous foundations. The Venetians received under this testament a

sum of 100,000 ducats, together with all arrears of pay due to him,

and 10,000 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 S. Mark. This, however, involved some difficulty; for the

proud Republic had never accorded a similar honour, 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 S. 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 loth 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

splendour 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 dishonourable dealings, and Carmagnola to the

scaffold by questionable practice against his masters.

* * * * *

_CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX_

Few people visit Crema. It is a little country town of Lombardy,

between Cremona and Treviglio, with no historic memories but very

misty ones belonging to the days of the Visconti dynasty. On every

side around the city walls stretch smiling vineyards and rich meadows,

where the elms are married to the mulberry-trees by long festoons of

foliage hiding purple grapes, where the sunflowers droop their heavy

golden heads among tall stems of millet and gigantic maize, and here

and there a rice-crop ripens in the marshy loam. In vintage time

the carts, drawn by their white oxen, come creaking townward in

the evening, laden with blue bunches. Down the long straight roads,

between rows of poplars, they creep on; and on the shafts beneath

the pyramid of fruit lie contadini stained with lees of wine. Far off

across that 'waveless sea' of Lombardy, which has been the battlefield

of countless generations, rise the dim grey Alps, or else pearled

domes of thunder-clouds in gleaming masses over some tall solitary

tower. Such backgrounds, full of peace, suggestive of almost infinite

distance, and dignified with colours of incomparable depth and

breadth, the Venetian painters loved. No landscape in Europe is more

wonderful than this--thrice wonderful in the vastness of its arching

heavens, in the stillness of its level plain, and in the bulwark of

huge crested mountains, reared afar like bastions against the northern

sky. The little town is all alive in this September weather. At every

corner of the street, under rustling abeles and thick-foliaged planes,

at the doors of palaces and in the yards of inns, men, naked from the

thighs downward, are treading the red must into vats and tuns; while

their mild-eyed oxen lie beneath them in the road, peaceably chewing

the cud between one journey to the vineyard and another. It must not

be imagined that the scene of Alma Tadema's 'Roman Vintage,' or what

we fondly picture to our fancy of the Athenian Lenaea, is repeated in

the streets of Crema. This modern treading of the wine-press is a

very prosaic affair. The town reeks with a sour smell of old casks and

crushed grape-skins, and the men and women at work bear no resemblance

whatever to Bacchus and his crew. Yet even as it is, the Lombard

vintage, beneath floods of sunlight and a pure blue sky, is beautiful;

and he who would fain make acquaintance with Crema, should time his

entry into the old town, if possible, on some still golden afternoon

of autumn. It is then, if ever, that he will learn to love the glowing

brickwork of its churches and the quaint terra-cotta traceries that

form its chief artistic charm.

How the unique brick architecture of the Lombard cities took its

origin--whether from the precepts of Byzantine aliens in the earliest

middle ages, or from the native instincts of a mixed race composed of

Gallic, Ligurian, Roman, and Teutonic elements, under the leadership

of Longobardic rulers--is a question for antiquarians to decide.

There can, however, be no doubt that the monuments of the Lombard

style, as they now exist, are no less genuinely local, no less

characteristic of the country they adorn, no less indigenous to the

soil they sprang from, than the Attic colonnades of Mnesicles and

Ictinus. What the marble quarries of Pentelicus were to the Athenian

builders, the clay beneath their feet was to those Lombard craftsmen.

From it they fashioned structures as enduring, towers as majestic, and

cathedral aisles as solemn, as were ever wrought from chiselled stone.

There is a true sympathy between those buildings and the Lombard

landscape, which by itself might suffice to prove the originality

of their almost unknown architects. The rich colour of the baked

clay--finely modulated from a purplish red, through russet, crimson,

pink, and orange, to pale yellow and dull grey--harmonises with the

brilliant greenery of Lombard vegetation and with the deep azure

of the distant Alpine range. Reared aloft above the flat expanse of

plain, those square _torroni_, tapering into octagons and

crowned with slender cones, break the long sweeping lines and

infinite horizons with a contrast that affords relief, and yields a

resting-place to tired eyes; while, far away, seen haply from some

bridge above Ticino, or some high-built palace loggia, they gleam like

columns of pale rosy fire against the front of mustering storm-clouds

blue with rain. In that happy orchard of Italy, a pergola of vines

in leaf, a clump of green acacias, and a campanile soaring above its

church roof, brought into chance combination with the reaches of the

plain and the dim mountain range, make up a picture eloquent in its

suggestive beauty.

Those ancient builders wrought cunningly with their material. The

bricks are fashioned and fixed to last for all time. Exposed to the

icy winds of a Lombard winter, to the fierce fire of a Lombard summer,

and to the moist vapours of a Lombard autumn; neglected by unheeding

generations; with flowers clustering in their crannies, and birds

nesting in their eaves, and mason-bees filling the delicate network of

their traceries--they still present angles as sharp as when they were

but finished, and joints as nice as when the mortar dried in the first

months of their building. This immunity from age and injury they owe

partly to the imperishable nature of baked clay; partly to the care of

the artists who selected and mingled the right sorts of earth, burned

them with scrupulous attention, and fitted them together with a

patience born of loving service. Each member of the edifice was

designed with a view to its ultimate place. The proper curve was

ascertained for cylindrical columns and for rounded arches. Larger

bricks were moulded for the supporting walls, and lesser pieces were

adapted to the airy vaults and lanterns. In the brickfield and the

kiln the whole church was planned and wrought out in its details,

before the hands that made a unity of all these scattered elements

were set to the work of raising it in air. When they came to put the

puzzle together, they laid each brick against its neighbour, filling

up the almost imperceptible interstices with liquid cement composed

of quicklime and fine sand in water. After five centuries the seams

between the layers of bricks that make the bell-tower of S. Gottardo

at Milan, yield no point of vantage to the penknife or the chisel.

Nor was it in their welding of the bricks alone that these craftsmen

showed their science. They were wont to enrich the surface with

marble, sparingly but effectively employed--as in those slender

detached columns, which add such beauty to the octagon of S. Gottardo,

or in the string-courses of strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the

church fronts of Pavia. They called to their aid the _mandorlato_

of Verona, supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant

lions, inserting polished slabs on their façades, and building huge

sarcophagi into their cloister alleys. Between terra-cotta and this

marble of Verona there exists a deep and delicate affinity. It took

the name of _mandorlato_, I suppose, from a resemblance to almond

blossoms. But it is far from having the simple beauty of a single hue.

Like all noble veined stones, it passes by a series of modulations and

gradations through a gamut of associated rather than contrasted tints.

Not the pink of the almond blossom only, but the creamy whiteness of

the almond kernel, and the dull yellow of the almond nut may be found

in it; and yet these colours are so blent and blurred to all-pervading

mellowness, that nowhere is there any shock of contrast or violence of

a preponderating tone. The veins which run in labyrinths of crossing,

curving, and contorted lines all over its smooth surface add, no

doubt, to this effect of unity. The polish, lastly, which it takes,

makes the _mandorlato_ shine like a smile upon the sober face

of the brickwork: for, serviceable as terra-cotta is for nearly all

artistic purposes, it cannot reflect light or gain the illumination

which comes from surface brightness.

What the clay can do almost better than any crystalline material, may

be seen in the mouldings so characteristic of Lombard architecture.

Geometrical patterns of the rarest and most fanciful device; scrolls

of acanthus foliage, and traceries of tendrils; Cupids swinging in

festoons of vines; angels joining hands in dance, with fluttering

skirts and windy hair, and mouths that symbol singing; grave faces of

old men and beautiful profiles of maidens leaning from medallions;

wide-winged genii filling the spandrils of cloister arches, and

cherubs clustered in the rondure of rose-windows--ornaments like

these, wrought from the plastic clay, and adapted with true taste to

the requirements of the architecture, are familiar to every one who

has studied the church front of Crema, the cloisters of the Certosa,

the courts of the Ospedale Maggiore at Milan, or the public palace of

Cremona.

If the _mandorlato_ gives a smile to those majestic Lombard

buildings, the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life

and movement. The thought of the artist in its first freshness

and vivacity is felt in them. They have all the spontaneity of

improvisation, the seductive melody of unpremeditated music.

Moulding the supple earth with 'hand obedient to the brain,' the

_plasticatore_ has impressed his most fugitive dreams of beauty

on it without effort; and what it cost him but a few fatigueless

hours to fashion, the steady heat of the furnace has gifted with

imperishable life. Such work, no doubt, has the defects of its

qualities. As there are few difficulties to overcome, it suffers

from a fatal facility--_nec pluteum coedit nec demorsos sapit

ungues_. It is therefore apt to be unequal, touching at times the

highest point of inspiration, as in the angels of Guccio at Perugia,

and sinking not unfrequently into the commonplace of easygoing

triviality, as in the common floral traceries of Milanese windows.

But it is never laboured, never pedantic, never dulled by the painful

effort to subdue an obstinate material to the artist's will. If marble

is required to develop the strength of the few supreme sculptors,

terra-cotta saves intact the fancies of a crowd of lesser men.

When we reflect that all the force, solemnity, and beauty of the

Lombard buildings was evoked from clay, we learn from them this

lesson: that the thought of man needs neither precious material nor

yet stubborn substance for the production of enduring masterpieces.

The red earth was enough for God when He made man in His own image;

and mud dried in the sun suffices for the artist, who is next to God

in his creative faculty--since _non merita nome di creatore se

non Iddio ed il poeta_. After all, what is more everlasting than

terra-cotta? The hobnails of the boys who ran across the brickfields

in the Roman town of Silchester, may still be seen, mingled with

the impress of the feet of dogs and hoofs of goats, in the tiles

discovered there. Such traces might serve as a metaphor for the

footfall of artistic genius, when the form-giver has stamped his

thought upon the moist clay, and fire has made that imprint permanent.

Of all these Lombard edifices, none is more beautiful than the

Cathedral of Crema, with its delicately finished campanile, built

of choicely tinted yellow bricks, and ending in a lantern of the

gracefullest, most airily capricious fancy. This bell-tower does not

display the gigantic force of Cremona's famous torrazzo, shooting

396 feet into blue ether from the city square; nor can it rival the

octagon of S. Gottardo for warmth of hue. Yet it has a character of

elegance, combined with boldness of invention, that justifies the

citizens of Crema in their pride. It is unique; and he who has not

seen it does not know the whole resources of the Lombard style. The

façade of the Cathedral displays that peculiar blending of Byzantine

or Romanesque round arches with Gothic details in the windows,

and with the acute angle of the central pitch, which forms the

characteristic quality of the late _trecento_ Lombard manner. In

its combination of purity and richness it corresponds to the best age

of decorated work in English Gothic. What, however, strikes a Northern

observer is the strange detachment of this elaborate façade from the

main structure of the church. Like a frontispiece cut out of cardboard

and pierced with ornamental openings, it shoots far above the low

roof of the nave; so that at night the moon, rising above the southern

aisle, shines through its topmost window, and casts the shadow of

its tracery upon the pavement of the square. This is a constructive

blemish to which the Italians in no part of the peninsula were

sensitive. They seem to have regarded their church fronts as

independent of the edifice, capable of separate treatment, and worthy

in themselves of being made the subject of decorative skill.

In the so-called Santuario of Crema--a circular church dedicated to

S. Maria della Croce, outside the walls--the Lombard style has been

adapted to the manner of the Mid-Renaissance. This church was raised

in the last years of the fifteenth century by Gian Battista Battagli,

an architect of Lodi, who followed the pure rules of taste, bequeathed

to North Italian builders by Bramante. The beauty of the edifice

is due entirely to its tranquil dignity and harmony of parts, the

lightness of its circling loggia, and the just proportion maintained

between the central structure and the four projecting porticoes. The

sharp angles of these vestibules afford a contrast to the simplicity

of the main building, while their clustered cupolas assist the general

effect of roundness aimed at by the architect. Such a church as

this proves how much may be achieved by the happy distribution of

architectural masses. It was the triumph of the best Renaissance style

to attain lucidity of treatment, and to produce beauty by geometrical

proportion. When Leo Battista Alberti complained to his friend, Matteo

di Bastia, that a slight alteration of the curves in his design for

S. Francesco at Rimini would 'spoil his music,' _ciò che tu muti

discorda tutta quella musica_, this is what he meant. The melody

of lines and the harmony of parts made a symphony to his eyes no less

agreeable than a concert of tuned lutes and voices to his ears; and to

this concord he was so sensitive that any deviation was a discord.

After visiting the churches of Crema and sauntering about the streets

awhile, there is nothing left to do but to take refuge in the old

Albergo del Pozzo. This is one of those queer Italian inns, which

carry you away at once into a scene of Goldoni. It is part of some

palace, where nobles housed their _bravi_ in the sixteenth

century, and which the lesser people of to-day have turned into a

dozen habitations. Its great stone staircase leads to a saloon upon

which the various bedchambers open; and round its courtyard runs an

open balcony, and from the court grows up a fig-tree poking ripe fruit

against a bedroom window. Oleanders in tubs and red salvias in pots,

and kitchen herbs in boxes, flourish on the pavement, where the ostler

comes to wash his carriages, and where the barber shaves the poodle of

the house. Visitors to the Albergo del Pozzo are invariably asked if

they have seen the Museo; and when they answer in the negative, they

are conducted with some ceremony to a large room on the ground-floor

of the inn, looking out upon the courtyard and the fig-tree. It was

here that I gained the acquaintance of Signor Folcioni, and became

possessor of an object that has made the memory of Crema doubly

interesting to me ever since.

When we entered the Museo, we found a little old man, gentle, grave,

and unobtrusive, varnishing the ugly portrait of some Signor of the

_cinquecento_. Round the walls hung pictures, of mediocre value,

in dingy frames; but all of them bore sounding titles. Titians,

Lionardos, Guido Renis, and Luinis, looked down and waited for a

purchaser. In truth this museum was a _bric-à-brac_ shop of a

sort that is common enough in Italy, where treasures of old lace,

glass, armour, furniture, and tapestry, may still be met with. Signor

Folcioni began by pointing out the merits of his pictures; and after

making due allowance for his zeal as amateur and dealer, it was

possible to join in some of his eulogiums. A would-be Titian, for

instance, bought in Verona from a noble house in ruins, showed

Venetian wealth of colour in its gemmy greens and lucid crimsons

shining from a background deep and glowing. Then he led us to a

walnut-wood bureau of late Renaissance work, profusely carved with

nymphs and Cupids, and armed men, among festoons of fruits embossed

in high relief. Deeply drilled worm-holes set a seal of antiquity upon

the blooming faces and luxuriant garlandslike the touch of Time who

'delves the parallels in beauty's brow.' On the shelves of an ebony

cabinet close by he showed us a row of cups cut out of rock-crystal

and mounted in gilt silver, with heaps of engraved gems, old

snuff-boxes, coins, medals, sprays of coral, and all the indescribable

lumber that one age flings aside as worthless for the next to pick

up from the dust-heap and regard as precious. Surely the genius of

culture in our century might be compared to a chiffonnier of Paris,

who, when the night has fallen, goes into the streets, bag on back

and lantern in hand, to rake up the waifs and strays a day of whirling

life has left him.

The next curiosity was an ivory carving of S. Anthony preaching to the

fishes, so fine and small you held it on your palm, and used a lens

to look at it. Yet there stood the Santo gesticulating, and there

were the fishes in rows--the little fishes first, and then the

middle-sized, and last of all the great big fishes almost out at sea,

with their heads above the water and their mouths wide open, just as

the _Fioretti di San Francesco_ describes them. After this

came some original drawings of doubtful interest, and then a case of

fifty-two _nielli_. These were of unquestionable value; for has

not Cicognara engraved them on a page of his classic monograph?

The thin silver plates, over which once passed the burin of Maso

Finiguerra, cutting lines finer than hairs, and setting here a shadow

in dull acid-eaten grey, and there a high light of exquisite polish,

were far more delicate than any proofs impressed from them. These

frail masterpieces of Florentine art--the first beginnings of line

engraving--we held in our hands while Signor Folcioni read out

Cicognara's commentary in a slow impressive voice, breaking off now

and then to point at the originals before us.

The sun had set, and the room was almost dark, when he laid his book

down, and said: 'I have not much left to show--yet stay! Here are

still some little things of interest.' He then opened the door

into his bedroom, and took down from a nail above his bed a

wooden Crucifix. Few things have fascinated me more than this

Crucifix--produced without parade, half negligently, from the dregs of

his collection by a dealer in old curiosities at Crema. The cross was,

or is--for it is lying on the table now before me--twenty-one inches

in length, made of strong wood, covered with coarse yellow parchment,

and shod at the four ends with brass. The Christ is roughly hewn in

reddish wood, coloured scarlet, where the blood streams from the five

wounds. Over the head an oval medallion, nailed into the cross, serves

as framework to a miniature of the Madonna, softly smiling with a

Correggiesque simper. The whole Crucifix is not a work of art, but

such as may be found in every convent. Its date cannot be earlier than

the beginning of the eighteenth century. As I held it in my hand, I

thought--perhaps this has been carried to the bedside of the sick

and dying; preachers have brandished it from the pulpit over

conscience-stricken congregations; monks have knelt before it on the

brick floor of their cells, and novices have kissed it in the vain

desire to drown their yearnings after the relinquished world; perhaps

it has attended criminals to the scaffold, and heard the secrets

of repentant murderers; but why should it be shown me as a thing of

rarity? These thoughts passed through my mind, while Signor Folcioni

quietly remarked: 'I bought this Cross from the Frati when their

convent was dissolved in Crema.' Then he bade me turn it round, and

showed a little steel knob fixed into the back between the arms. This

was a spring. He pressed it, and the upper and lower parts of the

cross came asunder; and holding the top like a handle, I drew out as

from a scabbard a sharp steel blade, concealed in the thickness of the

wood, behind the very body of the agonising Christ. What had been a

crucifix became a deadly poniard in my grasp, and the rust upon it in

the twilight looked like blood. 'I have often wondered,' said Signor

Folcioni, 'that the Frati cared to sell me this.'

There is no need to raise the question of the genuineness of this

strange relic, though I confess to having had my doubts about it,

or to wonder for what nefarious purposes the impious weapon was

designed--whether the blade was inserted by some rascal monk who never

told the tale, or whether it was used on secret service by the

friars. On its surface the infernal engine carries a dark certainty of

treason, sacrilege, and violence. Yet it would be wrong to incriminate

the Order of S. Francis by any suspicion, and idle to seek the actual

history of this mysterious weapon. A writer of fiction could indeed

produce some dark tale in the style of De Stendhal's 'Nouvelles,' and

christen it 'The Crucifix of Crema.' And how delighted would Webster

have been if he had chanced to hear of such a sword-sheath! He might

have placed it in the hands of Bosola for the keener torment of his

Duchess. Flamineo might have used it; or the disguised friars, who

made the deathbed of Bracciano hideous, might have plunged it in the

Duke's heart after mocking his eyes with the figure of the suffering

Christ. To imagine such an instrument of moral terror mingled with

material violence, lay within the scope of Webster's sinister and

powerful genius. But unless he had seen it with his eyes, what poet

would have ventured to devise the thing and display it even in the

dumb show of a tragedy? Fact is more wonderful than romance. No

apocalypse of Antichrist matches what is told of Roderigo Borgia; and

the crucifix of Crema exceeds the sombre fantasy of Webster.

Whatever may be the truth about this cross, it has at any rate the

value of a symbol or a metaphor. The idea which it materialises, the

historical events of which it is a sign, may well arrest attention. A

sword concealed in the crucifix--what emblem brings more forcibly

to mind than this that two-edged glaive of persecution which Dominic

unsheathed to mow down the populations of Provence and to make Spain

destitute of men? Looking upon the crucifix of Crema, we may seem

to see pestilence-stricken multitudes of Moors and Jews dying on the

coasts of Africa and Italy. The Spaniards enter Mexico; and this is

the cross they carry in their hands. They take possession of Peru; and

while the gentle people of the Incas come to kiss the bleeding brows

of Christ, they plunge this dagger in their sides. What, again, was

the temporal power of the Papacy but a sword embedded in a cross?

Each Papa Rè, when he ascended the Holy Chair, was forced to take the

crucifix of Crema and to bear it till his death. A long procession of

war-loving Pontiffs, levying armies and paying captains with the pence

of S. Peter, in order to keep by arms the lands they had acquired by

fraud, defiles before our eyes. First goes the terrible Sixtus IV.,

who died of grief when news was brought him that the Italian princes

had made peace. He it was who sanctioned the conspiracy to murder

the Medici in church, at the moment of the elevation of the Host.

The brigands hired to do this work refused at the last moment. The

sacrilege appalled them. 'Then,' says the chronicler, 'was found a

priest, who, being used to churches, had no scruple.' The poignard

this priest carried was this crucifix of Crema. After Sixtus came the

blood-stained Borgia; and after him Julius II., whom the Romans

in triumphal songs proclaimed a second Mars, and who turned, as

Michelangelo expressed it, the chalices of Rome into swords and helms.

Leo X., who dismembered Italy for his brother and nephew; and Clement

VII., who broke the neck of Florence and delivered the Eternal City to

the spoiler, follow. Of the antinomy between the Vicariate of Christ

and an earthly kingdom, incarnated by these and other Holy Fathers,

what symbol could be found more fitting than a dagger with a crucifix

for case and covering?

It is not easy to think or write of these matters without rhetoric.

When I laid my head upon my pillow that night in the Albergo del Pozzo

at Crema, it was full of such thoughts; and when at last sleep came,

it brought with it a dream begotten doubtless by the perturbation of

my fancy. For I thought that a brown Franciscan, with hollow cheeks,

and eyes aflame beneath his heavy cowl, sat by my bedside, and, as he

raised the crucifix in his lean quivering hands, whispered a tale of

deadly passion and of dastardly revenge. His confession carried me

away to a convent garden of Palermo; and there was love in the story,

and hate that is stronger than love, and, for the ending of the whole

matter, remorse which dies not even in the grave. Each new possessor

of the crucifix of Crema, he told me, was forced to hear from him in

dreams his dreadful history. But, since it was a dream and nothing

more, why should I repeat it? I have wandered far enough already

from the vintage and the sunny churches of the little Lombard town.

* * * * *

_CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE_

I

It was a gala night. The opera-house of Milan was one blaze of light

and colour. Royalty in field-marshal's uniform and diamonds, attended

by decorated generals and radiant ladies of the court, occupied the

great box opposite the stage. The tiers from pit to gallery were

filled with brilliantly dressed women. From the third row, where we

were fortunately placed, the curves of that most beautiful of theatres

presented to my gaze a series of retreating and approaching lines,

composed of noble faces, waving feathers, sparkling jewels, sculptured

shoulders, uniforms, robes of costly stuffs and every conceivable

bright colour. Light poured from the huge lustre in the centre of the

roof, ran along the crimson velvet cushions of the boxes, and flashed

upon the gilded frame of the proscenium--satyrs and acanthus scrolls

carved in the manner of a century ago. Pit and orchestra scarcely

contained the crowd of men who stood in lively conversation, their

backs turned to the stage, their lorgnettes raised from time to time

to sweep the boxes. This surging sea of faces and sober costumes

enhanced by contrast the glitter, variety, and luminous tranquillity

of the theatre above it.

No one took much thought of the coming spectacle, till the conductor's

rap was heard upon his desk, and the orchestra broke into the overture

to Mozart's _Nozze_. Before they were half through, it was clear

that we should not enjoy that evening the delight of perfect music

added to the enchantment of so brilliant a scene. The execution of the

overture was not exactly bad. But it lacked absolute precision, the

complete subordination of all details to the whole. In rendering

German music Italians often fail through want of discipline, or

through imperfect sympathy with a style they will not take the pains

to master. Nor, when the curtain lifted and the play began, was the

vocalisation found in all parts satisfactory. The Contessa had a

meagre _mezza voce_. Susanna, though she did not sing false,

hovered on the verge of discords, owing to the weakness of an organ

which had to be strained in order to make any effect on that enormous

stage. On the other hand, the part of Almaviva was played with

dramatic fire, and Figaro showed a truly Southern sense of comic

fun. The scenes were splendidly mounted, and something of a princely

grandeur--the largeness of a noble train of life--was added to the

drama by the vast proportions of the theatre. It was a performance

which, in spite of drawbacks, yielded pleasure.

And yet it might have left me frigid but for the artist who played

Cherubino. This was no other than Pauline Lucca, in the prime of youth

and petulance. From her first appearance to the last note she sang,

she occupied the stage. The opera seemed to have been written for her.

The mediocrity of the troupe threw her commanding merits--the richness

of her voice, the purity of her intonation, her vivid conception of

character, her indescribable brusquerie of movement and emotion--into

that relief which a sapphire gains from a setting of pearls. I can see

her now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, as she stood there

singing in blue doublet and white mantle, with the slouched Spanish

hat and plume of ostrich feathers, a tiny rapier at her side, and blue

rosettes upon her white silk shoes! The _Nozze di Figaro_ was

followed by a Ballo. This had for its theme the favourite legend of

a female devil sent from the infernal regions to ruin a young man.

Instead of performing the part assigned her, Satanella falls in love

with the hero, sacrifices herself, and is claimed at last by the

powers of goodness. _Quia multum amavit_, her lost soul is saved.

If the opera left much to be desired, the Ballo was perfection. That

vast stage of the Scala Theatre had almost overwhelmed the actors

of the play. Now, thrown open to its inmost depths, crowded with

glittering moving figures, it became a fairyland of fantastic

loveliness. Italians possess the art of interpreting a serious

dramatic action by pantomime. A Ballo with them is no mere affair of

dancing--fine dresses, evolutions performed by brigades of pink-legged

women with a fixed smile on their faces. It takes the rank of high

expressive art. And the motive of this Ballo was consistently worked

out in an intelligible sequence of well-ordered scenes. To moralise

upon its meaning would be out of place. It had a conflict of passions,

a rhythmical progression of emotions, a tragic climax in the triumph

of good over evil.