THE LURE OF OLD ROME
ANTINOUS
Brother, 't is vain to hide
That thou dost know of things mysterious,
Immortal, starry; such alone could thus
Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinned in aught
Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught
A Paphian dove upon a message sent?
Thy doubtful bow against some deer herd bent
Sacred to Dian? Haply thou hast seen
Her naked limbs among the alders green
And that, alas is death.
KEATS.
It is impossible to saunter even so aimlessly as we have done through
the villas of the cardinals of the Renaissance and not feel the potency
of the charm by which their builders were enthralled, "the glamour of
the world antique."
We may struggle against the spell, telling ourselves that the scope and
limits of the present volume will not permit of a glance at the villas
of ancient Rome, but they insidiously steal upon us through those of the
Renaissance. Particularly is this true of the Villa d'Este and the Villa
Albani, magic gateways both leading directly into that earlier, and only
real, Rome.
For, though separated by the gulf of many centuries from the villa of
the Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli, they are virtually ante-chambers to that
once magnificent palace.
We might turn from the attractive vista which they reveal but for an
alluring phantom which can never be disassociated from those imperial
ruins, a face whose beauty and pathos draws us on irresistibly to solve
the mystery of its gentle sadness.
Who, that has stood before the matchless relief of Antinous in the villa
Albani, does not agree with the assertion, that "it is no shadow of sin
which gives the pure brow its gravity, and that whatever may be the
burden which bows the beautiful head, he bears it with a noble
resignation which proves him superior to his suffering and unsullied by
his doom."
[Illustration: Antinous
Bas-relief found at Hadrian's Villa, now in the Villa Albani]
In the general resurrection of ancient masterpieces which took place
during the Renaissance only one, the Apollo Belvedere, commanded wider
admiration as a type of manly beauty. But the Apollo is a theatrical
manifestation of the popular conception of god-like perfection, while
Antinous makes appeals directly to the heart through his very humanity.
One hundred and thirty-six of his portrait statues, busts, and reliefs
have come down to us, and as many engraved gems and coins bearing
varying interpretations of his familiar and unmistakable personality; so
that it is common to speak of the Antinous type as the last ideal
creation of ancient art. And yet we are assured on the highest authority
that Antinous really lived, and that there is historical foundation for
the authenticity of these portraits.
"He has a distinct individuality always recognisable," says Gregorovius.
"In every case we see a face bowed down, full of melancholy beauty, with
deep-set eyes, slightly arched eyebrows, and abundant curls falling over
the forehead. It is the beautiful expression of a nature which combined
the Greek and the Asiatic characteristics only slightly idealised. We
read the fate of Antinous in this sorrowful figure, for the artists knew
of the death of sacrifice to which he dedicated himself, and this
mysterious sadness would attract the observer even if he could not give
the name to the statue."
But history only whets our curiosity, for ancient writers are neglectful
or tantalisingly bald in their allusions to Antinous. We are told only
that he was the favourite of Hadrian, the most magnificent and
enlightened of all the Roman emperors, who loved the gentle Bithynian
youth so extravagantly that he made him his inseparable companion and
even contemplated him as his successor; that during the fateful Egyptian
journey an oracle announced that the Emperor must shortly die unless a
voluntary victim could be found to take upon himself the doom with which
he was threatened; and that Antinous unhesitatingly laid down his life
for his patron. "Greater love hath no man than this," and Hadrian's
ostentatious lamentation, and even his deification of his friend, seems
puerile in comparison with the devotion of Antinous.
No modern author has developed this alluring theme in a satisfactory
manner. Ebers in his novel _The Emperor_, is inadequate. He laboriously
loads its pages with his carefully verified material, but his
imagination is wingless, the result far from convincing.
[Illustration: Ruins of a Gallery of Statues in Hadrian's Villa
From an etching by Piranesi]
One poet there was, he whose lines head this chapter, endowed with the
inspiration to divine, and the power to worthily reveal the secret of
the sadness in that haunting face, to which sculptors alone have done
full justice. There are hints scattered through his poems that
startlingly supplement the vague clues which now tantalise and baffle as
we trace the story of Antinous in Hadrian's villa.
For where history and literature fail us archaeology supplies its
circumstantial evidence, and if we scan, through the crystal lenses of
uncoloured truth, the stage where the drama which we seek was enacted we
shall see the sculptured semblances of the vanished actors, and be able
to surmise in part the lost book of the play.
The ruins of the great pleasure-palace, where the Emperor and his
favourite resided during the opening scenes of their history, now lie
bleak and bare, exposed to the burning sun and the wandering winds,
despoiled even of the vines and flowers with which nature has striven to
hide the ravages of man. We must go back to their excavation in the
early part of the sixteenth century if we would study the tell-tale
_mise-en-scene_.
It was Pirro Ligorio who in 1538 made for Cardinal Ippolito d'Este II.
the first systematic exploration and authoritative map of Hadrian's
villa. A Neapolitan by birth, but called to Rome by his friend Pope Paul
IV. (Caraffa), Ligorio, upon his arrival was associated with the aged
Michael Angelo in the building of St. Peter's.
With the arrogance of youth he quarrelled with the great master and did
not hesitate to speak of him openly as a dotard who had outlived his
usefulness and should yield his place to a younger genius. Paul IV. had
the wisdom to retain Michael Angelo in his important post, and the tact
to take the sting from Ligorio's removal by giving him the commission
for the casino in the Vatican Gardens which (as it was not finished
until the pontificate of Pius IV.) was destined to bear the name of the
Villa Pia.
Learned authorities have endeavoured to find the original of Ligorio's
masterpiece in some ancient building, whereas the perfect adaptability
of its plan to new requirements proves that it could never have been
produced earlier than the Renaissance. It has been well epitomised as
the "day-dream of an artist who has saturated his mind with the past."
[Illustration: Antinous as Bacchus, in the Museum of the Vatican
Permission of Alinari.]
In the profusion of joyous mythological deities which give the facade of
the Casino the richness of decoration of a jewel-casket, nymphs and
graces dance, Pan flutes, and marine monsters frolic with all the
abandon of classical feeling, and it is in the ornamental details, not
in the conception of the ensemble, that we detect the influence of the
Villa of Hadrian. When the papal villa was approaching completion,
Ligorio attracted the attention of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este II. (the
patron of Tasso) a connoisseur and dilettante in all the arts, who
wisely entrusted to the young architect the construction of his famous
villa at Tivoli.
The Cardinal had the right to quarry materials from the neighbouring
ruins, and among the first of the great discoveries which Ligorio
records is that of a statue of Antinous. It depicted the youth under the
attributes of Bacchus, and was possibly a replica of the beautiful
statue found later at Praeneste and now in the Sala Rotonda of the
Vatican.
From the hour that it was carried in triumph to the terraces of Villa
d'Este, Ligorio and his patron as well, were taken captive by a new
enthusiasm, for a lucky chance had guided the excavators to the most
richly ornamented of all the apartments in the Emperor's wonderful
palace--the heavy-folded curtain of Time had rolled upward disclosing
the scene of the happiest hours in the short life of Antinous.
An exquisite circular palazzita lay before them, islanded by a
marble-lined canal five metres broad from an encircling portico, whose
roof was supported by forty Corinthian columns of precious _giallo
antico_. Noting the important part played by water in this construction,
the canal fed by fountains, whose pipes and mechanism plainly showed
within the statues which ornamented the rotunda, Ligorio hastily
concluded that this was the Emperor's natatorium or swimming pool. But
the feminine elegance of the fairy-like suite of apartments, to which
the canal served as a moat; the presence of drawbridges worked from the
centre, thus cutting off or affording communication with the colonnade
at the will of the occupant, and evidences that the canal itself was a
_nympheum_ or aquatic garden, among whose rose-coloured lotus blossoms
white swans glided, flamingoes darted, and tall clusters of papyrus
screened the porticoes from the gaze of passers, favoured the conclusion
that this pavilion of all delight was designed for some beautiful woman
royally beloved. The frieze of loves, mounted upon hippocampi
imitating the games of the circus, which Ligorio copied in the vestibule
of the Villa Pia formed a part of the decoration lavished here.
[Illustration: _Alinari_
Villa Pia in the Garden of the Vatican
Pirro Ligorio, architect]
The conspicuous situation of the palazzita between the basilica and the
imperial apartments, to which its encircling colonnade served as a
corridor of communication, indicated that the lady was not a favourite
of low degree, to be hidden away in some Rosalind's bower of the immense
labyrinthine palace, while the most valuable statues in the entire
villa, such as the replica of the Cnidian Venus by Praxiteles, the Eros
bending the bow, by the same master, made this temple of love and Venus
a fitting pavilion for an empress. Such it may well have been, for here
was found the sculptured portrait of Faustina, the wife of Antoninus
Pius, Hadrian's successor, who resided in the villa both before and
after the death of Antinous.
She was the beautiful mother of a more beautiful daughter of the same
name, an empress in her turn, and both branded by a historian of the
time as infamous.
Swinburne's apostrophe in _Ave Faustina Imperatrix_ applies equally to
the portrait bust of mother or daughter:
"Your throat,
Strong, heavy, throwing out the face,
And hard, bright chin
And shameful, scornful lips that grace
Their shame, Faustine."
But it is possible that Swinburne was too hasty in accepting ancient
gossip, and that both the Faustinas were maligned. "Modern scholarship,"
says Monsieur Victor Duruy, "argues for their rehabilitation, and
chiefly because the husbands of each, good and wise men both, have left
such unequivocal testimony of their respect."
"To the gods," wrote Marcus Aurelius of the younger Faustina, "I am
indebted that I have such a wife, so obedient, so affectionate, and so
simple."
And after the death of his wife (Faustina the elder) Antoninus Pius
cried in his grief: "O God, I would rather live with her in a desert
than without her in this palace."
In this enchanting palazzita the younger Faustina may have passed her
childhood, while the scholarly boy, Marcus Aurelius, her cousin,
listened to the disquisitions of the philosophers as they discussed
great problems with the Emperor.
[Illustration: _Alinari_
Villa Pia, Vatican
The Rotondo--Pirro Ligorio, architect]
Hadrian loved the lad, and for his absolute truthfulness nicknamed him
Verissimus, making him a knight at the age of six. He was the comrade of
Antinous, and as they passed to and fro together through colonnaded
rotonda they must have often noted the young mother (she was sixteen
when married) and her bewitching child, waving white hands from across
the lily-padded moat.
Here, then, are certain of the actors, as well as our _mise-en-scene_,
and Marcus Aurelius, in his _Meditations_, has himself given us a hint
as to the drama. "Forget not," he writes, "that in times gone by
everything has already happened just as it is happening. Place before
thine eyes whole dramas with the same endings, the same scenes, just as
thou knowest them by thine own experience, or from earlier
history--such, for example, as the whole Court of Hadrian."
If with these instructions we remember Marcus Aurelius's still more
significant words, "Even in a palace life may be well led," each of us
can according to his own fancy divine the secret which Antinous kept so
well.
Had Ligorio given to literature the sympathetic imagination which he
displayed in his art it might have been worthily revealed. For ten years
he explored with the most intense enthusiasm the interminable
apartments which were to prove an inexhaustible mine of art for modern
museums, and whose bibliography would fill a library. Then in 1572 his
munificent patron died, and the work suddenly came to an end.
For two centuries the Villa of Hadrian lay neglected until new
discoveries revived popular interest, and a young German scholar was
called to superintend the building and installation of the last of the
great villas erected in Rome by a member of its hierarchical
aristocracy.
There exists such striking parallelism in the history of the Villa
d'Este and the Villa Albani, and on such identical lines was the work
carried on that it would almost seem that, the duration of human life
not being sufficient to complete it, Cardinal Ippolito and Pirro Ligorio
were granted reincarnation for another fifty years in Cardinal Albani
and his friend Winckelmann.
[Illustration: Eros Bending the Bow
Capitoline Museum]
[Illustration: Faun of Praxiteles
Capitoline Museum]
Notwithstanding the many masterpieces secured by Cardinal d'Este it was
known from ancient records that the greatest treasures of the Villa
Hadriana had escaped his eager search, having been so securely hidden on
the invasion of the Goths, that they evaded as well all other
plunderers. But early in the eighteenth century Gavin Hamilton,
commissioned to secure antiques for the British Museum, drained an
extensive marsh called the Pantello and found it to be the depository in
which Belisarius had secreted the missing statues on the approach of
Totila.[10] From this hiding-place there emerged between 1730 and 1780,
the _Antinous_ of the museum of the Capitol and the relief of the Villa
Albani together with the _Resting Faun_ of Praxiteles which so
captivated the imagination of Hawthorne, and many another famous work of
art now the glory of some far distant museum.
Fortunately for Italy, England found a contesting bidder in Cardinal
Albani, and the majority of the statues found in the Pantello were
purchased by him. At the same time the magnificent collection of
Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, was offered at public sale by the degenerate
spendthrift who inherited it, and sixty of the finest statues were
secured for Villa Albani and rejoined their old companions.
Winckelmann gloated over their beauty, for he united the artist's
appreciation to the connoisseurship of the archaeologist. What solicitude
for its appropriate setting, only surpassed by that of Hadrian himself,
did he bestow on the placing of each individual statue, and with what
exultation he records its arrival.
"The Cardinal has brought from Tivoli on a _carro_ drawn by sixteen
bullocks a female river deity of colossal size well preserved" (and
still to be seen reclining on the margin of a reservoir). To the relief
of _Antinous_ Winckelmann gave the place of honour which it now
occupies. Let us read his own record of the esteem in which he held it.
"The glory and the crown of sculpture in this age _as well as in all
ages_" he does not hesitate to assert, "are two likenesses of Antinous."
One of them, in the Albani villa, is in relief, the other is a colossal
head in the Mondragone villa.
"The former disinterred from Hadrian's villa is," says Winckelmann,
"only a fragment of an entire figure which probably stood on a chariot.
For the right hand, which is empty, is in a position that leads me to
conclude that it must have held the reins. In this work therefore would
have been represented the deification of Antinous as we know that
figures so honoured were placed upon cars to signify their translation
to the gods.
[Illustration: Villa Albani]
[Illustration: Casino, Villa Albani
_Alinari_]
[Illustration: _Alinari_
Candelabrum from Hadrian's Villa
Museum of the Vatican]
[Illustration: _Alinari_
Candelabrum from Hadrian's Villa
Museum of the Vatican]
"The colossal head in the Mondragone villa (now in the Louvre) I
hold it no heresy to say is, next to the Vatican Apollo and the Laocoon,
the most beautiful work which has come down to us."
The two friends lived a charmed life more in the past than in the Rome
of their own day until the spree was rudely broken by Winckelmann's
tragic death at the hands of a vulgar robber, and the grey-haired
cardinal wandered alone among his cherished marbles. Many of these he
donated to the Capitoline Museum and to the Vatican, but the relief of
Antinous he held among his most cherished possessions. It would have
broken the good man's heart to have known that these statues were doomed
to wander far from the home which he had provided for them. The French
took possession of Italy, and the masterpieces of the Villa Albani
formed only a fraction of the wholesale robberies which for a time
enriched the museum of the Louvre.
On the fall of Napoleon the Pope chose the sculptor Canova as his envoy
to negotiate with the allies for the return of the art treasures of
Italy. Canova was successful, for he pleaded from a full heart; but
although he secured the restitution of the two hundred and ninety-four
statues which Napoleon had taken from the Villa Albani, Cardinal
Giuseppe Albani, an unworthy successor of the great collector, sold all
but one in order to avoid the cost of their return transportation. The
poor peripatetic philosophers, emperors, empresses, gods, and goddesses
trooped on like uneasy ghosts, not a few of them finding shelter in the
Glyptothek at Munich.
The one piece of sculpture reserved from this fate of expatriation, and
reinstated in triumph in its old position in the salon at the left of
the main gallery of the villa, it is hardly necessary to state, was the
relief of _Antinous_. Here it remains and lures us, according to our
bent, to study or to dream of the life which its original so
passionately lived, and instinctively we search for some statue of a
woman of equal charm to link with it in our dreams.
Ebers thought he had found it in the loveliest of the nine muses which
Ligorio discovered in the theatre of Hadrian's villa. In 1689 Velasquez
was sent to Rome to acquire them for Philip V. Eight of them may still
be seen in the Museum of Madrid, but the ninth muse, Urania, from which
the d'Estes could not then be induced to part, is now in the Sala delle
Muse of the Vatican. This is the Urania which Ebers imagines to have
been carved by the young Alexandrine sculptor, Pollux, from the Selene
whom we are told Antinous vainly loved.
The face is very winsome and the romance might satisfy us, but for a
portrait-statue of a genuine Selene, found by Ligorio near the palazzita
and now in the casino of the Villa Albani.
[Illustration: _Alinari_
Urania
Museum of the Vatican]
It is catalogued as _Iris Descending_, but mistakenly, says Monsieur
Guzman, for Iris was invariably represented with wings, and this
graceful figure is wingless, a torch in hand, and floating downward so
gently that her motion scarcely agitates her soft drapery. Authorities
are now agreed that the lovely figure represents Selene, the
moon-goddess, who, enamoured with Endymion, kept tryst with him in his
dreams, and a beautiful "Sleeping Youth" was actually discovered beneath
the descending Selene, thus completing the composition and verifying the
assumption as to its subject. That the recumbent youth was not at once
recognised as intended to represent Endymion is due to the inability of
the scientific mind to grasp more than one idea at a time, for the
features bore so marked a resemblance to those of Antoninus Pius that
it was rightly considered a portrait of that Emperor in his youth. Only
recently have archaeologists accepted the title, _Antoninus Pius as
Endymion_ and it seems probable that the Selene of Villa Albani
portrayed the Empress Faustina, and that this group was a tribute of the
Emperor's to his beautiful wife, his "Diva Faustina," who stooped to him
like the moon-goddess from the sky. Is it not equally possible that he
caused the symbols of Selene to be cut upon her signet that she might
use it in her intimate correspondence, that the charm of this wonderful
woman was associated in his mind with the magic of moonlight, gentle,
love-compelling, and pure? Such a testimonial does in fact exist in a
medal struck by the command of Antoninus Pius after the death of the
Empress, representing Faustina bearing two torches, but returning to
heaven, and depriving him of the light which had illumined their wedded
life; and lest there should be any doubt that the deity typified in this
apotheosis is Selene the Emperor caused the words _Luna lucifera_ to be
engraved beneath the name of Faustina.
The myth of the love of the lady-moon has nowhere been so exquisitely
rendered as in the _Endymion_ of Keats, and his description of the
descent of Selene applies well to the moon-maiden of the Villa Albani:
"I raised
My sight right upward, but it was quite daz'd
By a bright something sailing down apace,
Making me quickly veil my eyes and face.
. . . . . . .
Her locks were simply gordianed up and braided
Leaving in naked comeliness unshaded
Her pearl round ears, white neck, and orbed brow.
. . . I see her hovering feet
More bluely veined, more whitely sweet
Than those of sea-born Venus when she rose
From out her cradle shell. The wind out-blows
Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion,
'Tis blue and over-spangled with a million
Of little eyes, as though thou wert to shed
Over the darkest lushest blue-bell bed
Handfuls of daisies."[11]
Faustina may have known Antinous before her marriage, while Hadrian
still hoped to make him his successor, ere the clamours of the people
forced him to make the wiser choice. Had Antinous been so favoured, is
there any doubt whether Faustina would not have inclined to him instead
of to the good man with the serious, anxious face, who was more than
twice her age when he became her husband?
The statues of Antinous fully realise Keats's ideal of Endymion.
"His youth was fully blown
Shining like Ganymede to manhood grown,
A smile was on his countenance; he seemed
To common lookers-on like one who dreamed
Of idleness in groves Elysian
But there were some who feelingly could scan
A lurking trouble in his nether lip.
Then would they sigh, 'Ah! well-a-day
Why should our young Endymion pine away?'"
We know not on what authority Ebers links the name of Antinous,
Endymion-like, with that of Selene. Was there some missive sealed by a
moon-beam torch, or addressed to the lady moon which went astray and set
the gossip of the Court crackling like a flame in dry grass? Or was it
merely his aspiration for the throne of the Caesars which was signified
by the common expression, "he longed for the moon," and not a love
hopeless, but beyond his power to conquer for the unattainable Selene,
which saddened his young life so deeply, and determined him to throw it
away when the occasion seemed to demand the sacrifice.
Both research and fancy will lead you far, for it was in Egypt that the
most dramatic part of the story was enacted, and that Antinous,
believing that in so doing he saved Hadrian's life, launched forth upon
the Nile during a terrific tempest, and standing erect in the unguided
canoe sought a voluntary death in the storm-lashed waters.
The Emperor's grief was wildly extravagant. He gave the beautiful body a
king's burial in a tomb flanked by obelisks and guarded by a sphinx; and
he built about it a magnificent city which he called Antinopolis, a city
which exists to this day though no man lives within its desolate
columned streets.
But the deserted city has been identified in the ruins called by the
Egyptians, Antinoe. Its hippodrome, and theatres, and temple tomb have
all been mapped by archaeologists, and its Arch of Triumph, of Roman
bricks faced with white marble, its long colonnades of Corinthian
columns, and its melancholy waving palms have been photographed by
troops of unreflecting tourists.
While erecting memorials to his friend, Hadrian was not unmindful of his
own sepulchral monument, the present castle of St. Angelo. It served as
a mausoleum for the imperial family. The ashes of Faustina (to whose
memory her husband erected the beautiful temple bearing her name) were
placed here, their urn guarded by two bronze peacocks, the emblems of an
empress.
These peacocks with the pineapple, which crowned the summit of the tomb,
now ornament the Court of the Belvedere of the Vatican, in whose
galleries may be found some of the statues with which Hadrian decorated
the upper colonnade of the mausoleum, and which were wrenched from their
pedestals and toppled upon the heads of the Goths when Totila besieged
Rome.
Gregorovius in his scholarly biography of Hadrian thus sums up his
achievements and estimates his character:
"He ruled the empire like a noble Roman, with prudence and strength. He
enjoyed life with the joy of the ancients. He travelled throughout the
world and found it worth the trouble. He restored it and embellished it
with new beauty. He was lavish on a great scale."
We certainly do not know what he thought of his whole life at the end of
it. He might have agreed with the estimate of Marcus Aurelius: "All that
belongs to the soul is a dream and a delusion; life is a struggle and a
wandering among strangers, and fame after death is forgetfulness."
That he had some vague belief in the immortality of the soul the
well-known poem written shortly before his death certainly shows:
"Animula, vagula, blandula;
Hospes, comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abibis in loca;
Pallidula, rigida, nudula,
Nec ut soles dabis jocos?"
"Celestial spirit, evanescent fay,
Supernal guest and sharer of my might,
Wherefore and whither dost thou fly away,
Exquisite phantom, nude and ghostly white,
Never with me again to flit and play,
Never with me to play?"
Reluctantly, after all our search, we find that archaeology, while it
tells us much of Hadrian, leaves Antinous still a mystery.
The forsaken pleasure palace is silent and empty save for ghosts of the
imagination. We see the imperial barges glide up the Nile as in a
pageant, but it is all a wordless pantomime, though the beautiful
immortal figure stands.
"Still there where he a thousand years hath stood
And watched, with gaze intent, the ages' flood
His graceful limbs reflecting, then as now
His lotus crown the sadness on his brow,
And races new in line unending glide
Along in shells upon the flowing tide;
But aye as they approach and look on him
Athwart their joy there falls a sorrow dim,
The citherns cease that rang as they drew nigh,
On glowing lips the jests and kisses die.
And, lo! the heart is seized by infinite woe,
With arms outstretched they gaze as on they go--
'O waken, boy! O waken from thy dream!
Say what thou seest below the ages stream,
Tell us, is life's enigma known to thee?
Give us thy own fair immortality!'
But ere he from his revery wakens they
Have with the river drifted far away."
[Illustration: View through the Key-hole of the Gate of the Villa of the
Knights of Malta]
[Illustration]
L'ENVOI
A keyhole glimpse at Rome they show
'Twixt cypresses, a stately row,
Where all who pass are free to see
The villa of the Priory.
Here belted knights, with cross on breast,
In days of old were wont to rest,
And 'neath the ilex hedges tall
Oft paced the subtle Cardinal,
His robe upon the pavement cool
Mantling like some ensanguined pool.
St. Peter's keys, traditions tell,
Open the gates of Heaven and Hell.
O'er many a villa gate they 're shown,
With triple crown carved deep in stone.
If, then, you crave a fuller view
Than keyhole glimpses give to you,
Unlock and enter. You shall know
A Heaven of art, a Hell of woe.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] His magnificent villa of Caprarola and the still more entrancing
villa of Lante are linked with legends of Giulio Farnese and Vittoria
Accoramboni in the author's _Romance of Italian Villas_, which with the
_Romance of the Renaissance Chateaux_ will be found supplementary to the
present volume.
[2] From _The Italian Rhapsody_, by permission of Mr. Robert Underwood
Johnson.
[3] Translated by E. Frere Champney.
[4] A song composed by Lorenzo de' Medici. "How lovely is our youth, and
yet how fast it flies! Those who wish for joy must snatch it now. Trust
not to to-morrow; seize it now, seize it now!"
[5] The earliest cards were not inscribed with hearts, diamonds, clubs,
and spades, but with swords, money, clubs, and cups. The same emblems
are still used on the Spanish playing-cards.
[6] The French historians call him Richart de Cornouailles, the Italians
Ricciardo.
[7] A _stornello a fiore_ consists generally of a couplet beginning with
an invocation to a flower, as:
Fior di limone!
Limone e agro e non si puoi mangiare
Ma son piu agre le pene d'amore.
Fior di granato!
Se li sospiri mie fossere fuocco,
Tutto il mondo sarebbe buciato.
See also the _stornelli_ in Browning's _Fra Lippo Lippi_ of two of which
Richard's are variants.
[8] Palliano or Pagliano, for the name is variously spelled.
[9] John Addington Symonds further relates in what strange ways fate
fulfilled this prediction. "Disaster fell on each of the five brothers.
The first of them, Ottavio, was killed by a cannon-ball at sea in
honorable combat with the Turk. Another, Girolamo, who sought refuge in
France, was shot down in an ambuscade while pursuing his amours with a
gentle lady. A third, Alessandro, died under arms before Paris in the
troops of General Farnese. A fourth, Luca, was imprisoned at Rome for
his share of the step-mother's murder, but was released on the plea that
he had avenged the wounded honour of his race. He died, however,
poisoned by his own brother Marcantoni in 1599. Marcantoni was arrested
on suspicion and imprisoned in Torre di Nona, where he confessed his
guilt. He was shortly afterward beheaded on the little square before the
bridge of St. Angelo."
[10] Hamilton was aided in his work by Piranesi whose engravings record
the state of the ruins at this time.
[11] The same figure is depicted in the frescoes of Pompeii, and here
the deep blue of an Italian night glittering with stars gives the added
touch of colour.