Granting the force of these considerations, it must still be admitted

that there remain grave objections to accepting the _Economico_ of

Alberti as the original of these two treatises. In the first place, the

_Governo_ is a masterpiece of Tuscan; and it is far more reasonable to

suppose that the _Economico_ was copied from the _Governo_ with such

alterations as adapted it to the manner of the _Famiglia_, than to

assume that the _Economico_ received a literary rehandling which reduced

it from its more rhetorical to a popular form. The passage from simple

to complex in literature admits of easier explanation than the reverse

process. Moreover, if Alberti admired a racy Tuscan style and could

command it for the _Economico_, why did he not continue to use it in his

subsequent compositions? In the second place, the _Governo_, as it

stands, is suited to what Vespasiano tells us about Agnolo Pandolfini.

He was a scholar trained in the humanities of the earlier Renaissance

and a statesman who retired from public life, disgusted with the times,

to studious leisure at his villa. Now, Giannozzo Alberti, who takes the

chief part in the _Economico_, proclaims himself a man of business,

without learning. Those passages of the _Governo_ which seem

inappropriate to such a character are absent from the _Economico_; but

some of them appear in Alberti's other works, the _Teogenio_ and _Della

Tranquillita_. From this circumstance Signor Cortesi infers that

Alberti, working with Pandolfini's essay before him, made such

alterations as brought the drift of the discourse within the scope of

Giannozzo's acquirements. The advocates of Alberti's authorship are

bound to reverse this theory, and to assume that the author of the

_Governo_ suited the _Economico_ to Pandolfini by infusing a tincture of

scholarship into Giannozzo's speeches.[239]

We have still to ask who could the author of the _Governo_, if it was

not Agnolo Pandolfini, have been? The first answer to this question is:

Alberti himself. The anonymous biographer tells us that he wrote the

first three books at Rome, and that he afterwards made great efforts to

improve his Tuscan style and render it more popular. It is not,

therefore, impossible that he should himself have fitted that portion of

his _Famiglia_ with new characters, omitted the Alberti, and given the

honors of the dialogue to Pandolfini. The treatise, as he first planned

it (according to this hypothesis), has a passionate digression upon the

exile of the Alberti, followed by a declamation against public life and

politicians. To have circulated these passages in an essay intended for

Florentine readers, after Alberti's recall by Cosimo de' Medici, would

have been unwise. Alberti, therefore, may only have retained such

portions of them as could rouse no animosity, revive no painful

reminiscences, and be appropriately placed upon the lips of Pandolfini.

As it stands in the _Governo_, the invective against statecraft is

scarcely in keeping with Pandolfini's character. Though he retired from

public life disgusted and ill at ease, the conclusion that no man should

seek to serve the State except from a strict sense of duty, sounds

strange when spoken by this veteran politician. Taken as the climax to

the history of the wrongs inflicted upon the Alberti, this passage is

dramatically in harmony with Giannozzo's experience.[240] With regard to

the noticeable improvement of style in the _Economico_, we might argue

that after Alberti had enjoyed facilities at Florence of acquiring his

native idiom, he remodeled that section of his earlier work which he

intended for the people. And the same line of argument would account for

the independence of the _Economico_ and its occurrence in separate MSS.

Had Alberti designed what we now call a plagiarism, what need was there

to call attention to it by prefixing an introduction to the third book

of a continuous treatise?

It is not, however, necessary to defend Alberti from the charge of fraud

by suggesting that he was himself the author of the _Governo_. There

existed, as we shall soon see, a class of semi-cultivated scribes at

Florence, whose business consisted in manufacturing literature for the

people. They re-wrote, re-fashioned, condensed, abstracted whatever

seemed to furnish entertainment and instruction for their public. Their

style was close to the vulgar speech and frankly idiomatic. That one of

these men should have made the necessary alterations in the third book

of the _Famiglia_ to remove the recollection of the Alberti exile, and

to prepare it for popular reading, is by no means impossible. The

_Governo_ is shorter and more condensed than the _Economico_. The

rhetorical and dramatic elements are reduced; and the material is

communicated in a style of gnomic pregnancy. If it was modeled upon the

_Economico_ in the way I have suggested, the writer of the abstract was

a man of no common ability, with a very keen sense of language and a

faculty for investing a work of art and fine literature with the

_naivete_ and grace of popular style. He also understood the necessity

of providing his chief interlocutor, Agnolo Pandolfini, with a character

different from that of Giannozzo Alberti; and he had the tact to realize

that character by innumerable touches. Great additional support would be

given to this hypothesis, if we could trust Bonucci's assertion that he

had seen and transcribed a MS. of the _Governo_ adapted with a set of

characters selected from the Pazzi family. It would then seem clear that

the _Governo_ was an essay which every father of a family wished to

possess for the instruction of his household, and to connect with the

past history of his own race. Unluckily, Signor Bonucci, though he

prints this Pazzi _rifacimento_, gives no information as to the source

of the MS. or any hint whereby its existence can be ascertained.[241] We

must, therefore, omit it from our reckoning.

As the case at present stands, it is impossible to form a decisive

opinion regarding the authorship of this famous treatise. The necessary

critical examination of MSS. has not yet been made, and the arguments

used on either side from internal evidence are not conclusive. My own

prepossession is still in favor of Alberti. I may, however, observe that

after reading Signor Cortesi's inedited essay, I perceive the case in

favor of Pandolfini to be far stronger than I had expected.[242]

Space will not permit a full discussion of Alberti's numerous writings;

and yet their bearing on the best opinion of his time is so important

that some notice of them must be taken. Together with the _Famiglia_ we

may class the _Deiciarchia_, or, as it should probably be written, the

_De Iciarchia_.[243] This, like the majority of his moral treatises, is

a dialogue, and its subject is civic virtue. Having formed the ideal

family, he next considers the functions of householders, born to guide

the State. The chief point of the discourse is that no one should be

idle, but that all should labor in some calling worthy of the dignity of

man.[244] This seems a simple doctrine; but it is so inculcated as to

make us remember the Guelf laws of Florence, whereby _scioperati_ were

declared criminals. It must not, however, be supposed that Alberti

confines himself to the development of this single theme. His

_Deiciarchia_ is rather to be regarded as a treatise on the personal

qualities of men to whom the conduct of a commonwealth has been by

accident of birth intrusted.

A second class of Alberti's dialogues discuss the contemplative life. In

the _Famiglia_ and the _Deiciarchia_ man is regarded as a social and

domestic being. In the _Tranquillita dell'Animo_ and the _Teogenio_ the

inner life of the student and the sage comes under treatment. The former

of these dialogues owes much of its interest to the interlocutors and to

the scene where it was laid.[245] Leon Battista Alberti, Niccolo di Veri

dei Medici, and Agnolo Pandolfini meet inside the Florentine Duomo,

which is described in a few words of earnest admiration for its majesty

and strength.[246] These friends begin a conversation, which soon turns

upon the means of preserving the mind in repose and avoiding

perturbations from the passions. The three books are enriched with

copious allusions to Alberti's works and personal habits--his skill as a

musician and a statuary, the gymnastic feats of his youth, and his

efforts to benefit the State by intellectual labor. They form a valuable

supplement to the anonymous biography. The philosophical material is too

immediately borrowed from Cicero and Seneca to be of much importance.

The _Teogenio_ is a more attractive, and, as it seems to me, a riper

work.[247] Of Alberti's ethical discourses I am inclined to rate this

next to the _Famiglia_; nor did the Italian Renaissance produce any

disquisition of the kind more elevated in feeling, finer in temper, or

glowing with an eloquence at once so spontaneous and so dignified. We

have to return to Petrarch to find the same high humanistic passion; and

Alberti's Italian is here more winning than Petrarch's Latin. Had Pico

condescended to the vulgar tongue, he might have produced work of

similar quality; for the essay on the Dignity of Man is written in the

same spirit.

The _Teogenio_ was sent with a letter of dedication to Lionelle d'Este

not long after his father's death.[248] Alberti apologizes for its

Italian style and assures the prince it had been written merely to

console him in his evil fortunes. The speakers are two, Teogenio and

Microtiro.[249] The dialogue opens with a passage on friendship, and a

somewhat labored description of the grove where Teogenio intends to pass

the day. Microtiro has come from the city. His friend, the recluse,

welcomes him to the country with these words: "Ma sediamo, se cosi ti

piace, qui fra questi mirti, in luogo non men delizioso che vostri

teatri e tempi amplissimi e sontuosissimi." This strikes the keynote of

the treatise, the theme of which is the superiority of study in the

country over the distractions of the town. Reading it, we see how

rightly Landino assigned his part to Alberti in the Camaldolese

Discussions.[250] That ideal of rural solitude which the Italian

scholars inherited from their Roman forefathers, receives its earliest

and finest treatment in this dialogue. It is not communion with nature

so much as the companionship of books and the pursuit of study in a

tranquil corner of the Tuscan hills, that Alberti has selected for his

panegyric.[251] "The society of the illustrious dead," he says in one of

the noblest passages of the essay, "can be enjoyed by me at leisure

here; and when I choose to converse with sages, politicians or great

poets, I have but to turn to my bookshelves, and my company is better

than your palaces with all their crowds of flatterers and clients can

afford."[252] After enlarging on the manifold advantages of a student's

life, he concludes the book with a magnificent picture of human frailty,

leading up to a discourse on death.

It is noticeable that Alberti, though frequently approaching the subject

of religion, never dilates upon it, and in no place declares himself a

Christian. His creed is that of the Roman moralists--a belief in the

benignant Maker of the Universe, an intellectual and unsubstantial

theism. We feel this even in that passage of the _Famiglia_ when

Giannozzo and his wife pray in their bed-chamber to God for prosperity

in life and happiness in children.[253] There is not a word about

spiritual blessings, no allusion to Christ or Madonna, though a silver

statue of the Saint with ivory hands and face is standing in his

tabernacle over them[254]--nothing, indeed, to indicate that this grave

Florentine couple, whom we may figure to ourselves like Van Dyck's

merchant and wife in the National Gallery, were not performing sacrifice

and praying to the _Di Lares_ of a Roman household. The Renaissance had

Latinized even the religious sentiments, and the elder faiths of the

middle ages were extinct in the soundest hearts of the epoch.[255]

A third group of Alberti's prose works consists of his essays on the

arts.[256] One of these, the Treatise on Painting, was either written in

Italian or translated by Alberti soon after its composition in

Latin.[257] The Treatises on Perspective, Sculpture, Architecture and

the Orders are supposed to have been rendered by their author from the

Latin; but doubt still rests upon Alberti's share in this translation.

It is not my present business to inquire into the subject-matter of his

artistic essays, but rather to note the fact that Alberti should have

thought it fitting to use Italian for at least the most considerable of

them. We have already seen that his chief motive to composition was

utility and that he recognized the need of bringing the results of

learning within the scope of the unlettered laity. We need not doubt

that this consideration weighed with him when he rehandled the matter of

Vitruvius and Pliny for the use of handicraftsmen. Nothing is more

striking in the whole series than the business-like simplicity of style,

the avoidance of rhetoric, and the adaptation of each section to some

practical end. We have not here to do with aesthetical criticism, but

with the condensed experience of a student and workman. In his

exposition of theory Alberti corresponds to the practice of Florence,

where Ghirlandajo kept a _bottega_ open to all comers, and Michelangelo

began his apprenticeship by grinding colors.

Though the subject of these essays lies beyond the scope of my work, it

is impossible to pass over the dedication to Filippo Brunelleschi, which

is prefixed to the Italian version of the _Pittura_. Alberti begins by

saying that the wonder and sorrow begotten in him by reflecting on the

loss of many noble arts and sciences, had led him to believe that

Nature, wearied and out-worn, had no force left to generate the giant

spirits of her youth. "But when I returned from the long exile in which

we of the Alberti have grown old, to this our mother-city, which exceeds

all others in the beauty of her monuments, I perceived that many living

men, but first of all you, Filippo, and our dearest friend the sculptor

Donatello, and Lorenzo Ghiberti and Luca della Robbia and Masaccio, were

not of less account for genius and noble work than any ancient artist of

great fame." After some remarks upon industry and the advantages of

scientific theory, he proceeds: "Who is there so hard and envious of

temper as not to praise the architect Filippo, when he saw so vast a

structure, raised above the heavens, spacious enough to cover with its

shadow all the Tuscan folks, built without any aid from beams and

scaffoldings, a miracle of art, if I judge rightly, which might in this

age have been deemed impossible, and which even among the ancients was

perhaps unknown, undreamed of?" After this exordium, he commits to

Brunelleschi's care his little book on painting, _quale a tuo nome feci

in lingua toscana_. The interest of this dedication lies not only in the

mention of the five chief _quattrocento_ artists by Alberti, and in the

record of the impression first produced on him by Florence, but also in

the recognition that, great as were the dead arts of antiquity, the

modern arts of Italy could rival them. It is an intuition parallel to

that which induced Alberti to compose the _Famiglia_ in Italian, and

proves that he could endure the blaze of humanism without blindness.

In the fourth group of Alberti's prose-works we come across a new vein

of semi-moral, semi-satirical reflection. These are devoted to love and

matrimony, giving rhetorical expression to the misogynistic side of the

_Novelle_. Alberti professes himself a master in the lore of love. He

knows its symptoms, diagnoses and describes the stages of the malady,

and pretends to intimate acquaintance with the foibles of both sexes.

Yet we seem to feel that his knowledge is rather literary than real,

derived from books and pranked with a scholastic show of borrowed

learning. Two lectures addressed by women to their own sex on the art of

love, take the first place in this series. The one is called

_Ecatomfila_, or the lady of the hundred loves; the other _Amiria_, or

the lady of the myriad.[258] The former tells her female audience what

kind of lover to choose, neither too young nor too old, not too rich nor

yet too handsome; how to keep him, and in what way to make the most of

the precious acquisition. She is comparatively modest, and the sort of

passion she implies may pass for virtuous. Yet her large experience of

men proves she has arrived at wisdom after many trials. Her virtue is a

matter of prudent egoism. Amiria takes a different line. Heliogabalus

might have used her precepts in his _Concio ad Meretrices_. Her

discourse turns upon the subsidiary aids to beauty and the arts of

coquetry. Recipes for hair-dyes, depilatories, eye-lotions,

tooth-powders, soaps, lip-salves, ointments, cosmetics, skin-preservers,

wart-destroyers, pearl-powders, rouges, are followed up with sound

advice about craft, fraud, force, feigned passion, entangling

manoeuvres, crocodile tears, and secrecy in self-indulgence. The

sustained irony of this address, and the minute acquaintance with the

least laudable secrets of an Italian lady's toilet it reveals, place it

upon the list of literary curiosities. Did any human beings ever plaster

their faces with such stuff as Amiria gravely recommends?[259]

The _Deifira_ is a dialogue on the cure of a distempered passion, which

adds but little to Ovid's _Remedium Amoris_; while two short treatises

on marriage only prove that Alberti took the old Simonidean view of

there being at least nine bad women to one good one.[260] His misogyny,

whether real or affected, reaches its climax in an epistle to Paolo

Codagnello, which combines the worst things said by Boccaccio in the

_Corbaccio_ with Lucian's satire on female uncleanliness in the

_Amores_.[261] The tirade appears to be as serious as possible, and,

indeed, Alberti's generalities might be illustrated _ad libitum_ from

the _Novelle_. It is no wonder that women resented his treatment of

them; and one of his most amusing lesser tracts is a dialogue between

himself and a lady called Sofrona, who took him to task for this very

epistle. In answer to her reproaches he is ceremoniously polite. He also

gives her the last word in the argument, not without a stroke of humor.

"It is all very well of you, men of letters, to take our characters

away, so long as we can rule our husbands and make choice of lovers when

and how we choose. All you men run after us; and if you do but see a

pretty girl, you stand as stock still as a statue."[262] After this

fashion runs Sofrona's reply.

Alberti's misogynistic essays remind us how very difficult it is to

understand or explain the tone of popular literature in that century

with regard to women. That the _Novelle_ were written to amuse both

sexes seems clear; and we must imagine that the women who read so much

vituperation of their manners, regarded it as a conventional play with

words. Like Sofrona, they knew their satirists to be fair husbands,

fathers, brothers, and, in the capacity of lovers, ludicrously blind to

their defects. The current abuse of women, in which Petrarch no less

than Alberti and Boccaccio indulged, seems to have been a scholastic

survival of the coarse and ignorant literature of the medieval clergy.

Cloistered monks indulged their taste for obscenity, and indemnified

themselves for self-imposed celibacy, by grossly insulting the mothers

who bore them and the institution they administered as a sacrament.[263]

Their invective tickled the vulgar ear, and passed into popular

literature, where it held its own as a commonplace, not credited with

too much meaning by folk who knew the world.

The pretty story of Ippolito and Leonora, could we believe it to be

Alberti's, might pass for a palinode to these misogynistic

treatises.[264] It is the tale of two Florentine lovers, born in hostile

houses, and brought after a series of misadventures, to the fruition of

honorable love in marriage. The legend must have been very popular.

Besides the prose version, in which the lovers are called Ippolito de'

Buondelmonti and Leonora de' Bardi, we have a poem in _ottava rima_,

where the heroine's name becomes Dianora. A Latin translation of the

same novel was produced by Paolo Cortesi, with the title _Hyppolyti et

Deyanirae Historia_. But since Alberti's authorship has not been clearly

proved, it is more prudent to class both Italian versions among those

anonymous products of popular literature which will form the topic of my

next chapter.

Of Alberti's poems few survive; and these have no great literary value.

Out of the three serious sonnets, one beginning _Io vidi gia seder_

deserves to be studied for a certain rapidity of movement and mystery of

emotion.[265] It might be compared to an allegorical engraving by some

artist of the sixteenth century--Robeta or the Master of the Caduceus.

Two burlesque sonnets in reply to Burchiello have this interest, that

they illustrate a point of literary contact between the people and the

cultivated classes. But, on the whole, the Sestines and the Elegy of

Agiletta must be reckoned Alberti's best performances in verse.[266]

Here his gnomic wisdom finds expression in pregnant, almost epigrammatic

utterances. There are passages in the _Agiletta_, weighty with packed

sentences, which remind an English reader of Bacon's lines on human

life.[267] Still it is the poetry of a man largely gifted, but not born

to be a singer. It may be worth adding to this brief notice of

Alberti's rhymes, that he essayed Latin meters in Italian. The following

elegiac couplet belongs to him[268]:

Questa per estremo miserabile epistola mando

A te che spregi miseramente noi.

It is not worth printing. But it illustrates that endeavor to fuse the

forms of ancient with the material of modern art, which underlay

Alberti's practical experiments in architecture.

It may seem that too much attention has already been given to Alberti

and his works. Yet when we consider his peculiar position in the history

of the Renaissance, when we remember the singular beauty of his

character, and reflect that, first among the humanists of mark, he

deigned to labor for the public and to cultivate his mother tongue, a

certain disproportion in the space allotted him may be excused. What his

immediate successors in the field of erudition thought of him, can be

gathered from a passage in Poliziano's preface to the first edition of

his work on Architecture.[269] "To praise the author is beyond the

narrow limits of a letter, beyond the poor reach of my powers of

eloquence. Nothing, however abstruse in learning, however remote from

the ordinary range of scholarship, was hidden from his genius. One might

question whether he was better fitted for oratory or for poetry, whether

his speech was the more weighty or the more polished." These great

qualities Alberti placed freely at the service of the unlettered laity.

He is therefore the hero of that age which I have called the period of

transition.

In Alberti, moreover, we study the best type of the Italian intellect as

it was molded, on emergence from the middle ages, by those double

influences of humanism and fine art which determined the Renaissance.

Though his genius was rather artistic than scientific, all problems of

nature and of man attracted him; and he dealt freely with them in the

spirit of true modern curiosity. His method shows no trace either of

mystical theology or of crooked scholasticism. He surveyed the world

with a meditative but observant glance, avoiding the deeper questions of

ontology, and depicting what he noticed with the realism of a painter.

This powerful pictorial faculty made his sketches from contemporary

life--the description of the gambler in the _Deiciarchia_; the portrait

of the sage in the _Teogenio_; the domestic colloquies of Giannozzo with

his wife in the _Famiglia_; the interior of a coquette's chamber in the

_Amiria_--surprising for sincerity and fullness. As a writer, he has the

same merit that we recognize in Masaccio and Ghirlandajo among the

fresco-painters of that age. But Alberti's touch is more sympathetic,

his humanity more loving.

He was not eminent as a metaphysician. From Plato he only borrowed

something of his literary art, and something of ethical elevation,

leaving to Ficino the mysticism which then passed for Platonic science.

His ideal of the virtuous man is a Florence burgher, honorable but keen

in business, open to culture of all kinds, untainted by the cynicism

that marred Cosimo de' Medici, lacking the licentious traits of the

_Novelle_. Alberti's Padre di Famiglia might have stepped from the walls

of the Riccardi Chapel or the Choir of S. Maria Novella, in his grave

red _lucco_, with the cold and powerful features. The life praised above

all others by Alberti is the life of a meditative student, withdrawn

from State affairs, and corresponding with men of a like tranquil

nature. This ideal was realized by Sannazzaro in his Mergellina, by

Ficino at Montevecchio, by Pico at Querceto. Just as his science and his

philosophy were aesthetic, so were his religion and his morality. He

conformed to the ceremonies of the Catholic Church. But the religious

sentiment had already become in him rational rather than emotional, and

less a condition of the conscience than of the artistic sensibility.

Honor in men, honesty in women, moved his admiration because they are

comely. The splendor of the stars, the loveliness of earth, raised him

in thought to the supreme source of beauty. Whatever the genius of man

brings to perfection of grace, he called divine, realizing for the first

time the piety that finds God in the human spirit.[270]

The harmonious lines and the vast spaces of the Florentine Duomo

thrilled him like music, merging the charm of art in the high worship of

a cultivated nature. "This temple," he writes in a passage that might be

quoted as the quintessential exposition of his mind,[271] "has in it

both grace and majesty, and I delight to notice that union of slender

elegance with full and vigorous solidity, which shows that while every

member is designed to please, the whole is built for perpetuity. Inside

these aisles there is the climate of eternal spring--wind, frost, and

rime without; a quiet and mild air within--the blaze of summer on the

square; delicious coolness here. Above all things I delight in feeling

the sweetness of those voices busied at the sacrifice, and in the sacred

rites our classic ancestors called mysteries. All other modes and kinds

of singing weary with reiteration; only religious music never palls. I

know not how others are affected; but for myself, those hymns and psalms

of the Church produce on me the very effect for which they were

designed, soothing all disturbance of the soul, and inspiring a certain

ineffable languor full of reverence toward God. What heart of man is so

rude as not to be softened when he hears the rhythmic rise and fall of

those voices, complete and true, in cadences so sweet and flexible? I

assure you that I never listen in these mysteries and funeral ceremonies

to the Greek words which call on God for aid against our human

wretchedness, without weeping. Then, too, I ponder what power music

brings with it to soften us and soothe."

It would be difficult with greater spontaneity and truth to delineate

the emotions stirred in an artistic nature by the services of a

cathedral. It is the language, however, not of a devout Christian, but

one who, long before Goethe, had realized the Goethesque ideal of

"living with fixed purpose in the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful."

Alberti both in his width of genius and in his limitations--in his

all-embracing curiosity and aptitude for knowledge, his sensitiveness to

every charm, his strong practical bias, the realism of his pictures, the

objectivity of his style, his indifference to theology and metaphysic,

the largeness of his love for all things that have grace, the

substitution of aesthetical for moral standards, the purity of his taste,

the tranquillity and urbanity of his spirit, his Stoic-Epicurean

acceptance of the world where man may be content to dwell and build

himself a home of beauty--was a true representative of his age. What

attracts us in the bronze-work of Ghiberti, in the bass-reliefs of Della

Robbia, in Rossellino's sleeping Cardinal di Portogallo, in

Ghirlandajo's portraits and the airy space of Masaccio's backgrounds, in

the lives of Ficino and Pomponio Leto, in the dome of Brunelleschi, in

the stanzas of Poliziano, arrives at consciousness in Alberti, pervades

his writing, and finds unique expression in the fragment of his Latin

biography. Yet we must not measure the age of Cosimo de' Medici and

Roderigo Borgia by the standard of Alberti. He presents the spirit of

the fifteenth century at its very best. Philosophical and artistic

sympathy compensate in his religion for that period's lack of pious

faith. Its political degradation assumes in him the shape of a

fastidious retirement from vulgar strife. Its lawlessness, caprice, and

violence are regulated by the motto "Nothing overmuch" which forms the

keystone of his ethics. Its realism is tempered by his love for man and

beast and tree--that love which made him weep when he beheld the summer

fields and labors of the husbandman. Its sensuality finds no place in

his harmonious nature. Many defects of the century are visible enough in

Alberti; but what redeemed Italy from corruption and rendered her

capable of great and brilliant work amid the chaos of States ruining in

infidelity and vice--that free energy of the intellect, open to all

influences, inventive of ideas, creative of beauty, which ennobled her

Renaissance--burned in him with mild and tranquil radiance.

This is perhaps the fittest place to notice a remarkable book, which,

though it cannot be reckoned among the masterpieces of Italian

literature, is too important in its bearing on the history of the

Renaissance to be passed in silence. The _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, or

"Poliphil's Strife of Love in a Dream," was written by Francesco

Colonna, a Dominican monk, at Treviso in 1467.[272] There is some reason

to conjecture that he composed it first in Latin;[273] but when it

appeared in print in 1499, it had already assumed the garb of a strange

maccaronic style, blending the euphuisms of affected rhetoric with

phrases culled from humanistic pedantry. The base of the language

professes to be Italian; but it is an Italian Latinized in all its

elements, and interlarded with scraps of Greek and Hebrew. The following

description of the Dawn, with which the book opens, serve as a specimen

of its peculiar dialect[274]:

Phoebo in quel hora manando, che la fronte di Matuta Leucothea

candidava, fora gia dalle Oceane unde, le volubile rote

sospese non dimonstrava. Ma sedulo cum gli sui volucri

caballi, Pyroo primo, & Eoo al quanto apparendo, ad dipingere

le lycophe quadrige della figliola di vermigliante rose,

velocissimo inseguentila, non dimorava. Et coruscante gia

sopra le cerulee & inquiete undule, le sue irradiante come

crispulavano. Dal quale adventicio in quel puncto occidua

davase la non cornuta Cynthia, solicitando gli dui caballi del

vehiculo suo cum il Mulo, lo uno candido & laltro fusco,

trahenti ad lultimo Horizonta discriminante gli Hemisperii

pervenuta, & dalla pervia stella ari centare el di, fugata

cedeva. In quel tempo quando che gli Rhiphaei monti erano

placidi, ne cum tanta rigidecia piu lalgente & frigorifico

Euro cum el laterale flando quassabondo el mandava gli teneri

ramuli, & ad inquietare gli mobili scirpi & pontuti iunci &

debili Cypiri, & advexare gli plichevoli vimini & agitare gli

lenti salici, & proclinare la fragile abiete sotto gli corni

di Tauro lascivianti. Quanta n el hyberno tempo spirare solea.

Similmente el iactabondo Orione cessando di persequire

lachrymoso, lornato humero Taurino delle sete sorore.

Whether Francesco Colonna prepared the redaction from which this

paragraph is quoted, admits of doubt. A scholar, Leonardo Crasso of

Verona, defrayed the cost of the edition. Manutius Aldus printed the

volume and its pages were adorned with precious wood-cuts, the work of

more than one anonymous master of the Lombardo-Venetian school.[275] It

was dedicated to Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino.

For the student of Italian literature in its transition from the middle

age to the Renaissance, the _Hypnerotomachia_ has special and many-sided

interest. It shows that outside Florence, where the pure Italian idiom

was too vigorous to be suppressed, humanistic fashion had so far taken

possession of the literary fancy as to threaten the very existence of

the mother tongue. But, more than this, it represents that epoch of

transition in its fourfold intellectual craving after the beauty of

antiquity, the treasures of erudition, the multiplied delights of art,

and the liberty of nature. These cravings are allegorized in a romance

of love, which blends medieval mysticism with modern sensuousness. Like

the style, the matter of the book is maccaronic, parti-colored and

confused; but the passion which controls so many elements is genuine and

simple. The spirit of the earlier Renaissance reflects itself, as in a

mirror, in the Dream of Poliphil. So essentially is it the product of a

transitional moment that when the first enthusiasm for its euphuistic

pedantry and aesthetical rapture had subsided, the key to its most

obvious meaning was lost. In the preface to the fourth French edition

(1600), Beroald de Verville hinted that the volume held deep alchemistic

secrets for those who could discover them. After this distortion the

book passed into not altogether unmerited oblivion. It had done its work

for the past age. It now remains an invaluable monument for those who

would fain reconstruct the century which gave it birth.

The _Hypnerotomachia_ professes to relate its author's love for Polia, a

nun, his search after her, and their union, at the close of sundry

trials and adventures, in the realm of Venus. Poliphil dreams that he

finds himself in a wild wood, where he is assailed by monstrous beasts,

and suffers great distress of mind. He prays to Diespiter, and comes

forthwith into a pleasant valley, through which he wanders in the hope

of finding Polia. At the outset of his journey he meets five damsels,

Aphea, Offressia, Orassia, Achoe, Geussia, who conduct him to their

queen, Eleuterilyda.[276] She understands his quest, and assigns the

maidens, Logistica and Thelemia, to be his guides into the palace of

Telosia. They journey together and arrive at the abode of Dame Telosia,

which has three gates severally inscribed in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin

characters with legends, the meaning whereof is God's Glory, Mother of

Love, and Worldly Glory. Poliphil enters the first door, and finds the

place within but little to his liking. Then he tries the third, and is

no better pleased. Lastly he gains admittance to the demesne of Love's

Mother, where he is content to Stay. Lovely and lascivious maidens greet

him kindly; and while he surrenders to their invitation, one of his

attendants, Logistica, takes her flight. He is left with his beloved

Thelemia to enjoy the pleasures of this enchanting region.

Thus far the allegory is not hard to read. Poliphil, or the lover of

Polia, escapes from the perils of the forest where his earlier life was

passed, by petition to the Father of Gods and Men. He places himself in

the hands of the five senses, who conduct him to freewill. Freewill

appoints for his further guidance reason and inclination, who are to

lead him to the final choice of lives. When he arrives at the point

where this choice has to be made, he perceives that God, the world, and

beauty, who is mother of love, compete for his willing service. He

rejects religion and ambition; and no sooner has his preference for love

and beauty been avowed, than the reasoning faculty deserts him, and he

is abandoned to inclination.

While Poliphil is dallying with the nymphs of pleasure and his own

wanton will, he is suddenly abandoned by these companions, and pursues

his journey alone.[277] Before long, however, he becomes aware of a

maiden, exceedingly fair to look upon, who carries in her hand a lighted

torch. With her for guide, he passes through many pleasant places,

arriving finally at the temple of Venus Physizoe. This maiden, though as

yet he cannot recognize her, is the Polia he seeks, and on their way

together he feels the influences of her love-compelling beauty. They

enter the chapel of Venus, and are graciously received by the prioress

who guards that sanctuary. Mystical rites of initiation and consecration

are performed. Polia lays down her torch, and is discovered by her

lover. Then they are wedded by grace of the abiding goddess; and having

undergone the ceremony of spousal, they resume their wanderings

together. They pass through a desolate city of tombs and ruins, named

Polyandrion, where are the sepulchers and epitaphs of lovers. Here, too,

they witness the pangs of souls tormented for their crimes against the

deity of Love. Afterwards they reach a great water, where Cupid's barge

comes sailing by, and takes them to the island of Cythera. It is a level

land of gardens, groves and labyrinths, adorned with theaters and baths,

and watered by a mystic font of Venus. Near the Tomb of Adonis in this

demesne of Love, Polia and Poliphil sit down to rest among the nymphs,

and Polia relates the story of their early passion.

It is here, if anywhere, that we come across reality in this romance.

Polia tells how the town of Treviso was founded, and of what illustrious

lineage she came, and how she vowed herself to the service of Diana when

the plague was raging in the city. In Dian's temple Poliphil first saw

her, and fainted at the sight, and she, made cruel by the memory of her

vows, left him upon the temple-floor for dead. But when she returned

home, a vision of women punished for their hard heart smote her

conscience; and her old nurse, an adept in the ways of love, counseled

her to seek the Prioress of Venus, and confess, and enter into

reconcilement with her lover. What the nurse advised, Polia did, and in

the temple of Venus she met Poliphil. He, while his body lay entranced

upon the floor of Dian's church, had visited the heavens in spirit and

obtained grace from Venus and Cupid. Therefore, the twain were now of

one accord, and ready to be joined in bonds of natural affection. At the

end of Polia's story, the nymphs leave both lovers to enjoy their

new-found happiness. But here the power of sleep is spent, and Poliphil,

awakened by the song of swallows, starts from dreams with "Farewell, my

Polia!" upon his lips.

Such is the frail and slender basis of romance, corresponding, in the

details of Polia's narrative, to an ordinary _novella_, upon which the

bulky edifice of the _Hypnerotomachia_ is built. This love-story, while

it gives form to the book, is clearly not the author's main motive. What

really concerns him most deeply is the handling of artistic themes,

which, though introduced by way of digressions, occupy by far the

larger portion of his work. The _Hypnerotomachia_ is an encyclopaedia of

curious learning, a treasure-house of aesthetical descriptions and

discussions, vividly reflecting the two ruling enthusiasms of the

earlier Renaissance for scholarship and art. Minute details of

inexhaustible variety, bringing before our imagination the architecture,

sculpture, and painting of the fifteenth century, its gardens, palaces

and temples, its processions, triumphs and ceremonial shows, its delight

in costly jewels, furniture, embroidery and banquets, its profound

feeling for the beauty of women, and its admiration for the goodliness

of athletic manhood, are massed together with bewildering profusion. Not

one of the technical arts which flourished in the dawn of the

Renaissance but finds due celebration here; and the whole is penetrated

with that fervent reverence for antiquity which inspired the humanists.

Yet the _Hypnerotomachia_, though sometimes tedious, is never frigid.

With the precision of a treatise and the minuteness of an inventory, it

combines the ardor of impassioned feeling, the rapture of anticipation,

the artist's blending with the lover's ecstasy. It is a dithyramb of the

imagination, inflamed by no Oriental lust of mere magnificence, but by

the fine sense of what is beautiful in form, rare in material, just in

proportion, exquisite in workmanship.

Whether the _Hypnerotomachia_ exercised a powerful influence over the

productions of the Italian genius, can be doubted. But that it presents

an epitome or figured abstract of the Renaissance in its earlier

luxuriance, is unmistakable. Reading it, we wander through the

collections of Paul II., rich with jewels, _intagli_, cameos and coins;

we enter Amadeo's chapels, Filarete's palaces, Bramante's peristyles and

_loggie_; we pace the gardens of the Brenta and the Sforza's deer-parks

at Pavia; we watch Lorenzo's Florentine _trionfi_ and Pietro Riario's

festivals in Rome; Giorgione's _fetes champetres_ are set for us in

framework of the choicest fruits and flowers; we hear Ciriac of Ancona

discoursing on his epigraphs and broken marbles; before our eyes, as in

a gallery, are ranged the bass-reliefs of Donatello wrought in bronze,

Mantegna's triumphs, Signorelli's arabesques, the terra-cotta of the

Lombard and the stucco of the Roman schools, the carved-work of

Alberti's church at Rimini, the _tarsiatura_ of Fra Giovanni da Verona's

choir-stalls, doorways from Milanese and chimneys from Urbino palaces,

Vatican tapestries and trellis-work of beaten iron from Prato--all that

the Renaissance in its bloom produced, is here depicted with the wealth

and warmth of fancy doting on anticipated beauties.

Of the author, Francesco Colonna, very little is known, except that he

was born in 1433 at Venice, that he attached himself to Ermolao Barbaro,

spent a portion of his manhood in the Dominican cloister of S. Niccolo

at Treviso, and died at Venice in 1527. Whether the love-tale of the

_Hypnerotomachia_ had a basis of reality, or whether we ought to regard

it wholly from the point of view of allegory, cannot be decided now. It

is, however, probable that a substratum of experience underlay the vast

mass of superimposed erudition and enthusiastic reverie. The references

to Polia's name and race; her epitaph appended to the first edition; the

details of her narrative, which somewhat break the continuity of style

and introduce a biographical element into the romance; the very

structure of the allegory which assigns so large a part in life to

sensuous instinct--all these points seem to prove that Poliphil was

moved by memory of what had really happened, no less than by the desire

to express a certain mood of feeling and belief. Such mingling of actual

emotion with ideal passion in a work of imagination, dedicated to a

woman who is also an emblem, was consistent with the practice of

medieval poets. Polia belongs, under altered circumstances, to the same

class as Beatrice. The hypothesis that, whoever she may have been, she

had become for her lover a metaphor of antique beauty, is sufficiently

attractive and plausible. If we adopt this theory, we must interpret the

dark wood where Poliphil first found himself, to mean the anarchy of

Gothic art; while his emancipation through the senses and Thelemia

characterizes the spirit in which the Italians achieved the Revival. The

extraordinary care lavished upon details, interrupting the course of the

romance and withdrawing our sympathy from Polia, meet from this point of

view with justification. Veiling his enthusiasm for the renascent past

beneath the fiction of a novel, Francesco Colonna invests the lady of

his intellectual choice, the handmaid of Aphrodite, evoked from the

sepulcher where arts and sciences lie buried, with rich Renaissance

trappings of elaborate device. Beneath those exuberant arabesques,

within that labyrinth of technically perfect details, suave outlines,

delicate contours devoid of content, a real woman would be lost. But if

Polia be not merely a woman, if she be, as her name [Greek: polia]

seems to indicate, at the same time the vision of resurgent classic

beauty, then the setting which her lover has contrived is adequate to

the influences which inspired him. The multiform and labored frame-work

of his picture acquires a meaning from the spirit of the goddess whom he

worships, and the presiding genius of his age dwells in a shrine, each

point of which is brilliant with the splendor which that spirit

radiates.

It is, therefore, as an allegory of the Renaissance, conscious of its

destiny and strongest aspirations in the person of an almost nameless

monk, that we should read the _Hypnerotomachia_. Still, even so, the

mark of indecision, which rests upon the many twy-formed masterpieces of

this century, is here discernible. Francesco Colonna has one foot in the

middle ages, another planted on the firm ground of the modern era. He

wavers between the psychological realism of romance and the

philosophical idealism of allegory. Polia is both too much and too

little of a woman. At one time her personality seems as distinct as that

of any heroine of fiction; at another we lose sight of her in the mist

of symbolism. Granting, again, that she is a metaphor, she lends herself

to more than one conception. She is both an emblem of passion,

sanctified by nature, and liberated from the bondage of asceticism, and

also an emblem of ideal beauty, recovered from the past, and worshiped

by a scholar-artist.

This confusion of motives and uncertainty of aim, while it detracts from

the artistic value of the _Hypnerotomachia_, enhances its historical

importance. In form, the book has to be classed with the Visions of the

middle ages--the Divine Comedy, the _Amorosa Visione_, and the

_Quadriregio_. But though the form is medieval, the inspiration of this

prose-poem is quite other. We have seen already how Francesco Colonna,

traveling in search of Polia, prayed to Jupiter, and how the senses and

freewill guided him to the satisfaction of his deepest self in the

service of Beauty. It is in the temple of Venus Physizoe (Venus the

procreative source of life in Nature) that he meets with his love and is

wedded to her in the bonds of mutual desire.[278] Christianity is

wholly, we might say systematically, ignored. The ascetic standpoint of

the middle age is abandoned for another, antagonistic to its ruling

impulses. A new creed, a new cult, are introduced. Polia, whether we

regard her as the poet's mistress or as the spirit of antiquity which

has enamored him, is won by worship paid to deities of natural appetite.

In its essence, then, the _Hypnerotomachia_ corresponds to the most

fruitful instinct of the Renaissance--to that striving after

emancipation which restored humanity to its heritage in the realms of

sense and reason. Old ideals, exhausted and devoid of vital force, are

exchanged for fresh and beautiful reality. The spirituality of the past,

which has become consumptive and ineffectively lapse of time and long

familiarity, yields to vigorous animalism. The cloister is quitted for

the world, religious for artistic ecstasy, celestial for earthly

paradise, scholasticism for humane studies, the ascetic for the

hedonistic rule of conduct. Criticised according to its deeper meaning,

the _Hypnerotomachia_ is the poem of which Valla's _De Voluptate_ was

the argument, of which Lorenzo de' Medici's life was the realization,

and the life of Aretino the caricature. If it assumes the form of a

vision, reminding us thereby that the author was born upon the confines

of the middle ages and the modern era, it deals with the vision in no

Dantesque spirit, but with the geniality of Apuleius. Allegory is but a

transparent veil, to make the nudity of natural impulse fascinating. As

in Boccaccio, so here the hymn of _il talento_, simple appetite, is

sung; but the fusion of artistic and humanistic enthusiasms with this

ground-motive adds peculiar quality, distinctive of the later age which

gave it birth.

The secret of its charm, which, indeed, it shares with earlier

Renaissance art in general, is that this yearning after freedom has been

felt with rapture, but not fully satisfied. The season of repletion and

satiety is distant. Venus Physizoe appears to Francesco Colonna radiant

above all powers of heaven or earth, because he is a monk and may not

serve her. Had he his whole will, she might have been for him Venus

Volgivaga, and he the author of another _Puttana Errante_. Nor has she

yet assumed the earnest mask of science. This element of unassuaged

desire, indulged in longings and outgoings of the fancy, this

recognition of man's highest good and happiness in nature by one who has

forsworn allegiance to the laws of nature, adds warmth to his emotion

and penetrates his pictures with a kind of passion. The arts and

scholarship, which divide the empire of his soul with beauty, have no

less attraction of romance than love itself. Nor are they separated in

his mind from nature. Nature and antiquity, knowledge and desire, the

reverence for abstract beauty and the instincts of a lover are fused in

one enthusiasm. Thus Francesco Colonna makes us understand how Italy

used both art and erudition as instruments in the liberation of human

energies. For the thinkers and actors of that period, antiquity and the

plastic arts were aids to the recovery of a paradise from which man had

been exiled. They could not dissociate the conception of nature from

studies which revealed their human dignity and freedom, or from arts

whereby they expressed their vivid sense of beauty. The work they thus

inaugurated, had afterwards to be continued by the scientific faculties.

One word may finally be said about the peculiar delicacy of this book.

The _Hypnerotomachia_ is no less an apotheosis of natural appetite than

the _Amorosa Visione_. But it is more sentimental and imaginative,

because its author had not Boccaccio's crude experience. It anticipates

the art of the great age--the art of Cellini and Giulio Romano,

goldsmith-sculptors and palace-builders; but it is more refined and

passionate, because its author enjoyed those beauties of consummate

craft in reverie instead of practice. It interprets the enthusiasm of

Ciriac and Poggio, discoverers of manuscripts, decipherers of epigraphs;

but it is more _naif_ and graceful than their work of erudition, because

its author dealt freely with his learning and subordinated scholarship

to fancy. In short the _Hypnerotomachia_ is a foreshadowing of the

Renaissance in its prime--the spirit of the age foreseen in dreams,

embodied in imagination, purged of material alloy, and freed from the

encumbrances of actuality.

FOOTNOTES:

[130] I may refer to the _Age of the Despots_, 2nd edition, pp. 58-65,

for a brief review of the circumstances under which the Nation defined

itself against the Church and the Empire--the ecclesiastical and

feudal or chivalrous principles--during the Wars of Investiture and

Independence. In Carducci's essay _Dello Svolgimento delta Letteratura

nazionale_ will be found an eloquent and succinct exposition of the

views I have attempted to express in these paragraphs.

[131] _Revival of Learning._

[132] It is not quite exact, though convenient, to identify Dante,

Petrarch and Boccaccio severally with the religious, chivalrous and

national principles of which I have been speaking. Petrarch stands

midway. With Dante he shares the chivalrous, with Boccaccio the

humanistic side of the national element. Though Boccaccio anticipates

in his work the literature of the Renaissance, yet Petrarch was

certainly not less influential as an authority in style. Ariosto

represents the fusion of both sections of the national element in

literature--Italian is distinguished from Tuscan.

[133] See _Age of the Despots_, chap. 2.

[134] See above, p. 138. All that is known about Sacchetti's life may

be found in the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, prefixed to

Silvestri's edition of the _Novelle_.

[135] For Sacchetti's conception of a citizen's duty, proving him a

son of Italy's heroic age, see the sonnet _Amar la patria_, in

Monsignor Bottari's Discourse above mentioned.

[136] See the Sonnet _Pien di quell'acqua_ written to Boccaccio on his

entering the Certosa at Naples.

[137] Here too he mentions a translation of the _Decameron_ into

English.

[138] This should also be the place to mention the _Novelle_ of

Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca. They have lately been re-edited by

Professor d'Ancona, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1871. They are short tales,

historical and moral, drawn from miscellaneous medieval sources, and

resembling the _Novellino_ in type. Two of them (_Novelle_ ix. and x.,

_ed. cit._ pp. 62-74) are interesting as forming part of the Legend of

Dante the Poet.

[139] For example, the first Novel of the fourth day is the story

which Shakspere dramatized in _The Merchant of Venice_, and forms, as

every one can see, the authentic source of that comedy.

[140] It must be remarked that the text of _Il Pecorone_ underwent

Domenichi's revision in the sixteenth century, which may account for a

certain flatness.

[141] See Carducci, _Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti e Madrigali nei

Secoli xiii e xiv_, Pisa, Nistri, 1871. Pp. 176-205 contain a reprint

of these lyrics. Carducci's work _Intorno ad alcune Rime_, Imola,

1876, may be consulted at pp. 54 _et seq._ for the origin, wide

diffusion, and several species of the popular dance-song.

[142] _Cantilene, etc._ pp. 196, 199, 204.

[143] _Cantilene, etc._ p. 211.

[144] _Cantilene, etc._ p. 220.

[145] _Ibid._ p. 219. Compare _Passando con pensier_ in the _Rime di

Messer Cino e d'altri_ (Barbera), p. 563.

[146] _Ibid._ p. 233.

[147] _Ibid._ p. 231.

[148] _Ibid._ p. 214 and note. The popularity of this dance-poem is

further proved by a pious parody written to be sung to the same air

with it: "O vaghe di Gesu, o verginelle." See _Laudi Spirituali_

(Firenze, Molini, 1863), p. 105.

[149] _Ibid._ pp. 217, 218.

[150] See _ibid._ pp. 252-256, 259, 263.

[151] It is enough to mention _Exit diluculo_, _Vere dulci mediante_,

_AEstivali sub fervore_.

[152] I must briefly refer to Carducci's Essay on "Musica e Poesia nel

mondo elegante italiano del secolo xiv," in his _Studi Letterari_,

Livorno, Vigo, 1874, and to my own translations from some of the there

published Madrigals in _Sketches and Studies in Italy_, pp. 214-216.

[153] Carducci, _Cantilene_, pp. 265-296.

[154] _Op. cit._ p. 298.

[155] _Op. cit._ p. 301.

[156] _Op. cit._ p. 300.

[157] It may be worth mentioning that Soldanieri and Donati as well as

Sacchetti belonged to the old nobility of Florence, the Grandi

celebrated by name in Dante's _Paradiso_.

[158] See Trucchi's _Poesie Inedite_, and the _Rime Antiche Toscane_,

cited above, for copious collections of these poets.

[159] This can be seen in Carducci's _Cantilene_, pp. 115, 116, 150,

and in his _Studi Letterari_, pp. 374-446.

[160] _O pellegrina Italia._ _Rime di Cino e d'altri_ (Barbera), p.

318. I shall quote from this excellent edition of Carducci, as being

most accessible to general readers. The _Sermintese_ or _Serventese_,

it may be parenthetically said, was a form of satirical and occasional

lyric adapted from the Provencal _Sirvente_.

[161] _Cino_, etc. p. 342.

[162] _Ibid._ p. 334.

[163] _Cino, etc._ p. 548.

[164] _Ibid._ p. 586.

[165] _Cino, etc._ p. 391.

[166] _Ibid._ pp. 199, 200.

[167] _Ibid._ pp. 384, 389.

[168] _Cino, etc._ pp. 202, 211, 573, 390.

[169] _Ibid._ pp. 504, 535, 498.

[170] In the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, Section vi.,

printed before Sacchetti's _Novelle_.

[171] _Cino, etc._ pp. 445-474, 258-263.

[172] Navone's edition (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1880), p. 56. The date of

this sonnet must be about 1315. We have to choose between placing

Folgore in that century or assigning the sonnet to some anonymous

author. See Appendix II. for translations.

[173] _Cino, etc._ pp. 174-195, 420-441.

[174] _Ibid._ p. 418.

[175] _Ibid._ p. 197, 198.

[176] He was the author of the Ghibelline _Canzoni_ quoted above.

[177] It was composed about 1360. I have seen two editions of this

poem, _Opera di Faccio degli uberti Fiorentino, Chiamato Ditta Mundi,

Volgare_. Impresso in Venetia per Christoforo di Pensa da Mondelo. Adi

iiii. Setembrio MCCCCCI. The second is a version modernized in its

orthography: _Il Dittamondo_, Milano, Silvestri, 1826. My quotations

will be made from the second of these editions, which has the

advantage of a more intelligible text.

[178] Lib. i., cap. 2. Cp. Fazio's Ode on Rome, above, p. 160.

[179] Lib. iii. cap. 9.

[180] _Libro chiamato Quatriregio del Decorso de la Vita Humana in

Terza Rima_, Impresso in Venetia del MCCCCCXI a di primo di Decembrio.

There is, I believe, a last century Foligno reprint of the

_Quadriregio_; but I have not seen it.

[181] "Regno di Dio Cupido," "Regno di Sathan," "Regno delli Vitii,"

"Regno della Dea Minerva e di Virtu."

[182] Lib. i. cap. 1.

[183] Lib. ii. cap. 2.

[184] Lib. ii. cap. 7.

[185] See _Ficini Epistolae_, 1495, folio 17. If possible, I will

insert some further notice of Palmieri's poem in an Appendix.

[186] See Vasari (Lemonnier, 1849), vol. v. p. 115, and note. This

work by Botticelli is now in England.

[187] I may refer curious readers to two _Lamenti_ of Pre Agostino,

condemned to the cage or _Chebba_ at Venice for blasphemy. They are

given at length by Mutinelli, _Annali Urbani di Venezia_, pp. 352-356.

[188] For instance, "Un Miracolo di S.M. Maddalena," in D'Ancona's

_Sacre Rappr._ vol. i. p. 397.

[189] It would be an interesting study to trace the vicissitudes of

_terza rima_ from the _Paradiso_ of Dante, through the _Quadriregio_

and _Dittamondo_, to Lorenzo de' Medici's _Beoni_ and La Casa's

_Capitolo del Forno_. In addition to what I have observed above, it

occurs to me to mention the semi-popular _terza rima_ poems in

Alberti's _Accademia Coronaria_ (Bonucci's edition of Alberti, vol. i.

pp. clxxv. _et seq._) and Boiardo's comedy of _Timone_. Both

illustrate the didactic use of the meter.

[190] _Le Lettere di S. Caterina da Siena_, Firenze, Barbera, 1860.

Edited and furnished with a copious commentary by Niccolo Tommaseo.

Four volumes.

[191] _Op. cit._ vol. iv. pp. 5-12.

[192] See for example, the passages from Graziani's _Chronicle of

Perugia_ quoted by me in Appendix IV. to _Age of the Despots_.

[193] See _Alcune Lettere familiari del Sec. xiv_, Bologna, Romagnoli,

1868. This collection contains letters by Lemmo Balducci (1333-1389),

Filippo dell'Antella (_circa_ 1398), Dora del Bene, Lanfredino

Lanfredini (born about 1345), Coluccio Salutati (1330-1406), Giorgio

Scali (died 1381), and Marchionne Stefani (died 1385).

[194] Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, _Lettere di una Gentildonna

Fiorentina del secolo xv_, Firenze, Sansoni, 1877.

[195] See _Revival of Learning_, chap. 4, and _Age of the Despots_,

chap. 5.

[196] _Istorie Fiorentine scritte da Giov. Cavalcanti_, 2 vols.

Firenze, 1838.

[197] Besides Muratori's great collection and the _Archivio Storico_,

the Chronicles of Lombard, Umbrian, and Tuscan towns have been

separately printed too voluminously for mention in a note.

[198] _L'Historia di Milano volgarmente scritta dall'eccellentissimo

oratore M. Bernardino Corio_, in Vinegia, per Giovan. Maria Bonelli,

MDLIIII. "Cronaca della Citta di Perugia dal 1492 al 1503 di Francesco

Matarazzo detto Maturanzio," _Archivio Storico Italiano_, vol. xvi.

par. ii. Of Corio's History I have made frequent use in the _Age of

the Despots_. It is a book that repays frequent and attentive

reperusals. Those students who desire to gain familiarity at first

hand with Renaissance cannot be directed to a purer source.

[199] In _Studies in Italy and Greece_, article "Perugia," I have

dealt more at large with Matarazzo's Chronicle than space admits of

here.

[200] _Il Novellino di Masuccio Salernitano._ Edited by Luigi

Settembrini. Napoli, Morano, 1874.

[201] Introduction to Part iii. _op. cit._ p. 239. "Cognoscerai i

lasciati vestigi del vetusto satiro Giovenale, e del famoso commendato

poeta Boccaccio, l'ornatissimo idioma e stile del quale ti hai sempre

ingegnato de imitare."

[202] For an instance of Masuccio's feudal feeling, take this. A

knight kills a licentious friar--"alquanto pentito per avere le sue

possenti braccia con la morte di un Fra Minore contaminato" (_op.

cit._ p. 13). It emerges in his description of the Order of the Ermine

(_ibid._ p. 240). It is curious to compare this with his strong

censure of the point of honor (pp. 388, 389) in a story which has the

same blunt sense as Ariosto's episode of Giocondo. The Italian here

prevails over the noble.

[203] See especially _Nov._ xi. and xxxviii.

[204] _Nov._ ii. iii. v. xi. xviii. xxix.

[205] _Nov._ xxxi.--Masuccio's peculiar animosity against the clergy

may be illustrated by comparing his story of the friar who persuaded

the nun that she was chosen by the Holy Ghost (_Nov._ ii.) with

Boccaccio's tale of the Angel Gabriel. See, too, the scene in the

convent (_Nov._ vi.), the comedy of S. Bernardino's sermon (_Nov._

xvi.), the love-adventures of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia.

[206] For example, _Nov._ vii. xiii. v.

[207] _Op. cit._ pp. 292, 282, 391, 379.

[208] _Nov._ i. and xxviii. The second of these stories is dedicated

to Francesco of Aragon, who, born in 1461, could not have been more

than fifteen when this frightful tale of lust and blood was sent him.

Nothing paints the manners of the time better than this fact.

[209] See _op. cit._ pp. 28, 68, 89, 141, 256, 273, 275, 380, 341,

343.

[210] For specimens of his invective read pp. 517, 273, 84, 275, 55,

65, 534. I have collected some of these passages, bearing on the

clergy, in a note to p. 458 of my _Age of the Despots_, 2nd edition.

No wonder that Masuccio's book was put upon the Index!

[211] _Nov._ xxvii, xxxiii. xxxv. xxxvii. xlviii.

[212] See _Revival of Learning_, pp. 341-344, for some account of

Alberti's life and place among the humanists; _Fine Arts_, p. 74, for

his skill as an architect.

[213] Sacchetti, we have seen, called himself _uomo discolo_; Ser

Giovanni proclaimed himself a _pecorone_; Masuccio had the culture of

a nobleman; Corio and Matarazzo, if we are right in identifying the

latter with Francesco Maturanzio, were both men of considerable

erudition.

[214] The most charming monument of Alberti's memory is the Life by an

anonymous writer, published in Muratori and reprinted in Bonucci's

edition, vol. i. Bonucci conjectures, without any substantial reason,

that it was composed by Alberti himself.

[215] For the _Camera Optica_, _Reticolo de' dipintori_, and _Bolide

Albertiana_, see the Preface (pp. lxv.-lxix.) to Anicio Bonucci's

edition of the _Opere Volgari di L.B. Alberti_, Firenze, 1843, five

vols. All references will be made to this comprehensive but uncritical

collection. Hubert Janitschek's edition of the Treatises on Art should

be consulted for its introduction and carefully prepared text--Vienna,

1877, in the _Quellenschriften fuer Kunstgeschichte_.

[216] The sentence of banishment was first removed in 1428; but the

rights of burghership were only restored to the Alberti in 1434. Leo

Battista finished the Treatise on Painting at Florence, Sept. 7, 1435

(see Janitschek, _op. cit._ p. iii.), and dedicated it to

Brunelleschi, July 17, 1436. From that dedication it would seem that

he had only recently returned.

[217] A passage in the _Della Tranquillita dell'Animo_ (_Op. Volg._ i.

35), shows how Alberti had lived into the conception of cosmopolitan

citizenship. It may be compared with another in the _Teogenio_ (_op.

cit._ iii. 194) wher he argues that love for one's country, even

without residence in it, satisfies the definition of a citizen.

[218] _Op. cit._ ii. 215-221.

[219] Such phrases as _i nostri maggiori patrizii in Roma_ (i. 37),

_la quasi dovuta a noi per le nostre virtu da tutte le genti

riverenzia e obbedienzia_ (ii. 218), _nostri ottimi passati Itali

debellarono e sotto averono tutte le genti_ (ii. 9), might be culled

in plenty. Alberti shows how deep was the Latin idealism of the

Renaissance, and how impossible it would have been for the Italians to

found their national self-consciousness on aught but a recovery of the

past.

[220] Especially the fine passage beginning, "Quello imperio

maraviglioso senza termini, quel dominio di tutte le genti acquistato

con _nostri latini auspici_, ottenuto colla _nostra industria_,

amplificato con _nostre armi latine_" (ii. 8); and the apostrophe, "E

tu, Italia nobilissima, capo e arce di tutto l'universo mondo" (_ib._

13).

[221] An example of servile submission to classical authority might be

chosen from Alberti's discourse on Friendship (_Famiglia_, lib. iv.

_op. cit._ ii. 415), where he adduces Sylla and Mark Antony in

contradiction to his general doctrine that only upright conversation

among friends can lead to mutual profit.

[222] Alberti's loss of training in the vernacular is noticed by his

anonymous biographer (_op. cit._ i. xciv.). It will be observed by

students of his writings that he does not speak of _la nostra

italiana_ but _la nostra toscana_ (ii. 221). Again (iv. 12) _in lingua

toscana_ is the phrase used in his dedication of the Essay on Painting

to Brunelleschi.

[223] The anonymous biographer says: "Scripsit praeterea et affinium

suorum gratia, ut linguae latinae ignaris prodesset, patrio sermone

annum ante trigesimum aetatis suae etruscos libros, primum, secundum, ac

tertium de Familia, quos Romae die nonagesimo quam inchoarat, absolvit;

sed inelimatos et asperos neque usquequaquam etruscos ... post annos

tres, quam primos ediderat, quartum librum ingratis protulit" (_op.

cit._ i. xciv. c.). It appears from a reference in Book ii. (_op.

cit._ ii. xxviii.) that the Treatise was still in process of

composition after 1438; and there are strong reasons for believing

that Book iii., as it is now numbered, was written separately and

after the rest of the dialogue.

[224] Note especially the passage in Book iii., _op. cit._ ii. 256,

_et seq._

[225] There is, I think, good reason to believe the testimony of the

anonymous biographer, who says this Treatise was written before

Alberti's thirtieth year; and if he returned to Florence in 1434, we

must take the date of his birth about 1404. The scene of the

_Tranquillita dell'Animo_ is laid in the Duomo at Florence; we may

therefore believe it to have been a later work, and its allusions to

the _Famiglia_ are, in my opinion, trustworthy.

[226] The pedigree prefixed to the Dialogue in Bonucci's edition would

help the student in his task. I will here cite the principal passages

of importance I have noticed. In volume ii. p. 102, we find a list of

the Alberti remarkable for literary, scientific, artistic, and

ecclesiastical distinctions. On p. 124 we read of their dispersion

over the Levant, Greece, Spain, France, England, Belgium, Germany, and

the chief Italian towns. Their misfortunes in exile are touchingly

alluded to with a sobriety of phrase that dignifies the grief it

veils, in the noble passage beginning with p. 256. Their ancient

splendor in the tournaments and games of Florence, when the people

seemed to have eyes only for men of the Alberti blood, is described on

p. 228; their palaces and country houses on p. 279. A list of the

knights, generals, and great lawyers of the Casa Alberti is given at

p. 346. The honesty of their commercial dealings and their reputation

for probity form the themes of a valuable digression, pp. 204-206,

where we learn the extent of their trade and the magnitude of their

contributions to the State-expenses. On p. 210 there is a statement

that this house alone imported from Flanders enough wool to supply the

cloth-trade, not only of Florence, but also of the larger part of

Tuscany. The losses of a great commercial family are reckoned on p.

357; while p. 400 supplies the story of one vast loan of 80,000 golden

florins advanced by Ricciardo degli Alberti to Pope John. The

friendship of Piero degli Alberti contracted with Filippo Maria

Visconti and King Ladislaus of Naples is described in the

autobiographical discourse introduced at pp. 386-399. This episode is

very precious for explaining the relation between Italian princes and

the merchants who resided at their courts. Their servant Buto, p. 375,

should not be omitted from the picture; nor should the

autobiographical narrative given by Giannozzo of his relation to his

wife (pp. 320-328) be neglected, since this carries us into the very

center of a Florentine home. The moral tone, the political feeling,

and the domestic habits of the house in general must be studied in the

description of the Casa, Bottega, and Villa, the discourses on

education, and the discussion of public and domestic duties. The

commercial aristocracy of Florence lives before us in this Treatise.

We learn from it to know exactly what the men who sustained the

liberties of Italy against the tyrants of Milan thought and felt, at a

period of history when the old fabric of medieval ideas had broken

down, but when the new Italy of the Renaissance had not yet been fully

formed. If, in addition to the _Trattato della Famiglia_, the letters

addressed by Alessandra Macinghi degli Strozzi to her children in

exile be included in such a study, a vivid picture might be formed of

the domestic life of a Florentine family.[A] These letters were

written from Florence to sons of the Casa Strozzi at Naples, Bruges,

and elsewhere between the years 1447 and 1465. They contain minute

information about expenditure, taxation, dress, marriages,

friendships, and all the public and personal relations of a noble

Florentine family. Much, moreover, can be gathered from them

concerning the footing of the members of the circle in exile. The

private _ricordi_ of heads of families, portions of which have been

already published from the archives of the Medici and Strozzi, if more

fully investigated, would complete this interesting picture in many of

its important details.

[A] _Lettere di una Gentildonna fiorentina_, Firenze,

Sansoni, 1877.

[227] Notice the discussion of wet-nurses, the physical and moral

evils likely to ensue from an improper choice of the nurse (_op. cit._

ii. 52-56).

[228] These topics of _Amicizia_, as the virtue on which society is

based, are further discussed in a separate little dialogue, _La Cena

di Famiglia_ (_op. cit._ vol. i.).

[229] _Age of the Despots_, pp. 239-243.

[230] In stating the question, and in all that concerns the MS.

authority upon which a judgment must be formed, I am greatly indebted

to the kindness of Signor Virginio Cortesi, who has placed at my

disposal his unpublished Essay on the _Governo della Famiglia di

Agnolo Pandolfini_. As the title of his work shows, he is a believer

in Pandolfini's authorship.

[231] I use this word according to its present connotation. But such

literary plagiarism was both more common and less disgraceful in the

fifteenth century. Alberti himself incorporated passages of the

_Fiammetta_ in his _Deifira_, and Jacopo Nardi in his _Storia

Fiorentina_ appropriated the whole of Buonaccorsi's Diaries

(1498-1512) with slight alterations and a singularly brief allusion to

their author.

[232] Such information, as will be seen, is both vague and meager. The

MSS. of the _Governo_ in particular do not seem to have been

accurately investigated, and are insufficiently described even by

Cortesi. Yet this problem, like that of the Malespini and Compagni

Chronicles, cannot be set at rest without a detailed comparison of all

existing codices.

[233] The anonymous biographer expressly states that the fourth book

was written later than the other three, and dedicated to the one

Alberti who took any interest in the previous portion of the work.

This, together with the isolation and more perfect diction of Book

iii. is strong presumption in favor of its having been an

afterthought.

[234] The _Oeconomicus_ of Xenophon served as common material for the

_Economico_ and the _Governo_, whatever we may think about the

authorship of these two essays. Many parallel passages in Palmieri's

_Vita Civile_ can be referred to the same source. To what extent

Alberti knew Greek is not ascertained; but even in the bad Latin

translations of that age a flavor so peculiar as that of Xenophon's

style could not have escaped his fine sense.

[235] See _Op. Volg._ vol. i. pp. lxxxvi.-lxxxviii.

[236] _Op. Volg._ ii. p. 223.

[237] _Op. Volg._ i. 10.

[238] It should, however, be added that Vespasiano alludes to

Pandolfini's habits of study and composition after his retirement to

Signa. Yet he does not cite the _Governo_.

[239] It is clear that all this reasoning upon internal evidence can

be turned to the advantage of both sides in the dispute. The question

will have finally to be settled on external grounds (comparison of

MSS.), combined with a wise use of such arguments from style as have

already been cited.

[240] Anyhow, and whatever may have been the source of Alberti's

_Economico_, the whole scene describing exile and winding up with the

tirade against a political career, is a very noble piece of writing.

If space sufficed, it might be quoted as the finest specimen of

Alberti's eloquence. See _Op. Volg._ v. pp. 256-266.

[241] See _Op. Volg._ Preface to vol. v.

[242] It is greatly to be desired that Signor Cortesi should print

this _Studio Critico_ and, if possible, append to it an account of the

MSS. on which Pandolfini's claims to be considered the original author

rest.

[243] _Op. Volg._ vol. iii. The meaning of the title appears on p.

132, where the word _Iciarco_ is defined _Supremo uomo e primario

principe della famiglia sua_. It is a compound of [Greek: oikos] and

[Greek: arche].

[244] See pp. 24, 28, 88, and the fine humanistic passage on p. 47,

which reads like an expansion of Dante's _Fatti non foste per viver

come bruti_ in Ulysses' speech to his comrades.

[245] _Op. Volg._ vol. i.

[246] He calls it _il nostro tempio massimo_ and speaks of _il culto

divino_, pp. 7-9.

[247] _Op. Volg._ vol. iii.

[248] _Ibid._ p. 160. This enables us to fix the date within certain

limits. Niccolo III. of Este died 1441. Lionello died 1450. Alberti

speaks of the essay as having been already some time in circulation.

It must therefore have been written before 1440.

[249] Like Boccaccio, Alberti is fond of bad Greek etymologies.

Perhaps we may translate these names, "the God-born" and "the little

pupil." In the same dialogue Tichipedio seems to be "the youth of

fortune."

[250] See _Revival of Learning_, p. 339.

[251] _Op. Volg._ iii. 179.

[252] _Ibid._ p. 186.

[253] _Op. Volg._ vol. ii. pp. 320-322.

[254] _Il Santo._ Probably S. John.

[255] Alberti in a Letter of Condolement to a friend (_Op. Volg._ v.

357) chooses examples from the Bible. Yet the tone of that most

strictly pious of his writings is rather Theistic than Christian.

[256] _Op. Volg._ vol. iv. See, too, Janitschek's edition cited above.

[257] Bonucci believes it was composed in Italian. Janitschek gives

reasons for the contrary theory (_op. cit._ p. iii.).

[258] _Op. Volg._ vols. iii. and v.

[259] Passages in the plays of our own dramatists warn us to be

careful how we answer in the negative. But here are some specimens of

Amiria's recipes (_op. cit._ v. 282). "Radice di cocomeri

spolverizzata, bollita in orina, usata piu di, lieva dal viso panni e

rughe. Giovavi sangue di tauro stillato a ogni macula, sterco di

colombe in aceto ... insieme a sterco di cervio ... lumache lunghe ...

sterco di fanciullo ... sangue d'anguille." All these things are

recommended, upon one page, for spots on the skin. I can find nothing

parallel in the very curious toilet book called _Gli Ornamenti delle

Dame, scritti per M. Giov. Marinelli_, Venetia, Valgrisio, 1574.

[260] _Op. Volg._ vol. iii. 367; vol. i. 191, 215.

[261] _Op. Volg._ v. 233.

[262] _Op. Volg._ i. 236.

[263] I may refer to the Latin song against marriage, _Sit Deo gloria_

(Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age_, pp. 179-187),

for an epitome of clerical virulence and vileness on this topic.

[264] _Op. Volg._ iii. 274.

[265] _Op. Volg._ v. 352.

[266] _Ibid._ pp. 355-359, 367-372.

[267] For example the lines beginning "Sospetto e cure." _Ibid._ p.

368.

[268] _Op. Volg._ i. lxv. He was not alone in this experiment.

Barbarous Italian Sapphics and Hexameters are to be found in the

_Accademia Coronaria_ on Friendship, of which more in the next

chapter.

[269] _De Re AEdificatoria_, Florence, 1485. This preface is a letter

addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici.

[270] "Quicquid ingenio esset hominum cum quadam effectum elegantia,

id prope divinum dicebat," says the anonymous biographer. This

sentence is the motto of humanism as elaborated by the artistic sense.

Its discord with the religion of the middle ages is apparent.

[271] _Op. Volg._ i. 8.

[272] This we learn from the last words of the first edition,

"Tarvisii cum decorissimis Poliae amore lorulis distineretur misellus

Poliphilus MCCCCLVII." The author's name is given in the initial

letters to the thirty-eight chapters of the book.

[273] For this and other points about the _Hypnerotomachia_ see Ilg's

treatise _Ueber der Kunsthistorischen Werth der Hypnerotomachia

Poliphili_, Wien, Braunmueller, 1872.

[274] It ought, however, to be said that, being the first paragraph of

the whole book, its style is not so free and simple as in more level

passages. Though I do not pretend to understand the meaning clearly, I

subjoin a translation.--"Phoebus advancing at that moment, when the

forehead of Matuta Leucothea whitened, already free from Ocean's

waves, had not yet shown his whirling wheels suspense. But bent with

his swift chargers, Pyrous first and Eous just disclosed to view, on

painting the pale chariot of his daughter with vermeil roses, in most

vehement flight pursuing her, made no delay. And sparkling over the

azure and unquiet wavelets, his light-showering tresses flowed in

curls. Upon whose advent at that point descending to her rest stayed

Cynthia without horns, urging the two steeds of her carriage with the

Mule, the one white and the other dark, drawing toward the furthest

horizon which divides the hemispheres where she had come, and, routed

by the piercing star who lures the day, was yielding. At that time

when the Riphaean mountains were undisturbed, nor with so cold a gust

the rigid and frost-creating east-wind with the side-blast blowing

made the tender branches quake, and tossed the mobile stems and spiked

reeds and yielding grasses, and vexed the pliant tendrils, and shook

the flexible willows, and bent the frail fir-branches 'neath the horns

of Taurus in their wantonness. As in the winter time that wind was

wont to breathe. Likewise the boastful Orion was at the point of

staying to pursue with tears the beauteous Taurine shoulder of the

seven sisters."

[275] When the book was translated into French and republished at

Paris in the sixteenth century, the blocks were imitated, and at a

later epoch it became fashionable to refer them to Raphael. The

mistake was gross. Its only justification is the style adopted by the

French imitators in their rehandling of the illustrations to

Poliphil's soul pleading before Venus. These cuts seem to have felt

the influence of the Farnesina frescoes.

[276] Here is the description of Poliphil's reception by the damsels:

"Respose una lepidula placidamente dicendo. Da mi la mano. Hora si tu

sospite & il bene venuto. Nui al presento siamo cinque sociale comite

come il vedi. Et io me chiamo Aphea. Et questa che porta li buxuli &

gli bianchissimi liuteamini, e nominata Offressia. Et questaltra che

dil splendente speculo (delitie nostre) e gerula, Orassia e il suo

nome. Costei che tene la sonora lyra, e dicta Achoe. Questa ultima,

che questo vaso di pretiosissimo liquore baiula, ha nome Geussia."

[277] A portion of the passage describing this dalliance may be

extracted as a further specimen of the author's style: "Cum lascivi

vulti, et gli pecti procaci, ochii blandienti et nella rosea fronte

micanti e ludibondi. Forme prae-excellente, Habiti incentivi, Moventie

puellare, Risguardi mordenti, Exornato mundissimo. Niuna parte

simulata, ma tutto dalla natura perfecto, cum exquisita politione,

Niente difforme ma tutto harmonia concinnissima, Capi flavi cum le

trece biondissime e crini insolari tante erano bellissime complicate,

cum cordicelle, o vero nextruli di seta e di fili doro intorte, quanto

che in tutto la operatione humana excedevano, circa la testa cum

egregio componimento invilupate e cum achi crinali detente, e la

fronte di cincinni capreoli silvata, cum lascivula inconstantia

praependenti." There is an obvious study of Boccaccesque phrase, with

a no less obvious desire to improve upon its exquisiteness of detail,

masking an incapacity to write connectedly.

[278] The reiteration of sensuous phrases is significant. These

inscriptions, [Greek: panton tokadi, pan dei poiein kata ten autou

phusin, gonos kai euphuia], together with the Triumphs of Priapus and

Cupid, accord with the supremacy of Venus Physizoe.