Whether the fifteenth century has left any written account of its ideal

of beauty, I am not able to say. The works of the painters and sculptors

do not render such an account as unnecessary as might appear at first

sight, since possibly, as opposed to their realism, a more ideal type

might have been favoured and preserved by the writers.[778] In the

sixteenth century Firenzuola came forward with his remarkable work on

female beauty.[779] We must clearly distinguish in it what he had

learned from old authors or from artists, such as the fixing of

proportions according to the length of the head, and certain abstract

conceptions. What remains, is his own genuine observation, illustrated

with examples of women and girls from Prato. As his little work is a

kind of lecture, delivered before the women of this city--that is to

say, before very severe critics--he must have kept pretty closely to the

truth. His principle is avowedly that of Zeuxis and of Lucian--to piece

together an ideal beauty out of a number of beautiful parts. He defines

the shades of colour which occur in the hair and skin, and gives to the

‘biondo’ the preference, as the most beautiful colour for the hair,[780]

understanding by it a soft yellow, inclining to brown. He requires that

the hair should be thick, long, and locky; the forehead serene, and

twice as broad as high; the skin bright and clear (candida), but not of

a dead white (bianchezza); the eyebrows dark, silky, most strongly

marked in the middle, and shading off towards the ears and the nose; the

white of the eye faintly touched with blue, the iris not actually black,

though all the poets praise ‘occhi neri’ as a gift of Venus, despite

that even goddesses were known for their eyes of heavenly blue, and that

soft, joyous, brown eyes were admired by everybody. The eye itself

should be large and full, and brought well forward; the lids white, and

marked with almost invisible tiny red veins; the lashes neither too

long, nor too thick, nor too dark. The hollow round the eye should have

the same colour as the cheek.[781] The ear, neither too large nor too

small, firmly and neatly fitted on, should show a stronger colour in the

winding than in the even parts, with an edge of the transparent

ruddiness of the pomegranate. The temples must be white and even, and

for the most perfect beauty ought not to be too narrow. The red should

grow deeper as the cheek gets rounder. The nose, which chiefly

determines the value of the profile, must recede gently and uniformly in

the direction of the eyes; where the cartilage ceases, there may be a

slight elevation, but not so marked as to make the nose aquiline, which

is not pleasing in women; the lower part must be less strongly coloured

than the ears, but not of a chilly whiteness, and the middle partition

above the lips lightly tinted with red. The mouth, our author would have

rather small, and neither projecting to a point, nor quite flat, with

the lips not too thin, and fitting neatly together; an accidental

opening, that is, when the woman is neither speaking nor laughing,

should not display more than six upper teeth. As delicacies of detail,

he mentions a dimple in the upper lip, a certain fulness of the under

lip, and a tempting smile in the left corner of the mouth--and so on.

The teeth should not be too small, regular, well marked off from one

another, and of the colour of ivory; and the gums must not be too dark

or even like red velvet. The chin is to be round, neither pointed nor

curved outwards, and growing slightly red as it rises; its glory is the

dimple. The neck should be white and round and rather long than short,

with the hollow and the Adam’s apple but faintly marked; and the skin at

every movement must show pleasing lines. The shoulders he desires broad,

and in the breadth of the bosom sees the first condition of its beauty.

No bone may be visible upon it, its fall and swell must be gentle and

gradual, its colour ‘candidissimo.’ The leg should be long and not too

hard in the lower parts, but still not without flesh on the shin, which

must be provided with white, full calves. He likes the foot small, but

not bony, the instep (it seems) high, and the colour white as alabaster.

The arms are to be white, and in the upper parts tinted with red; in

their consistence fleshy and muscular, but still soft as those of

Pallas, when she stood before the shepherd on Mount Ida--in a word,

ripe, fresh, and firm. The hand should be white, especially towards the

wrist, but large and plump, feeling soft as silk, the rosy palm marked

with a few, but distinct and not intricate lines; the elevations in it

should be not too great, the space between thumb and forefinger brightly

coloured and without wrinkles, the fingers long, delicate, and scarcely

at all thinner towards the tips, with nails clear, even, not too long

nor too square, and cut so as to show a white margin about the breadth

of a knife’s back.

Æsthetic principles of a general character occupy a very subordinate

place to these particulars. The ultimate principles of beauty, according

to which the eye judges ‘senza appello,’ are for Firenzuola a secret, as

he frankly confesses; and his definitions of ‘Leggiadria,’ ‘Grazia,’

‘Vaghezza,’ ‘Venustà,’ ‘Aria,’ ‘Maestà,’ are partly, as has been

remarked, philological, and partly vain attempts to utter the

unutterable. Laughter he prettily defines, probably following some old

author, as a radiance of the soul.

The literature of all countries can, at the close of the Middle Ages,

show single attempts to lay down theoretic principles of beauty;[782]

but no other work can be compared to that of Firenzuola. Brantome, who

came a good half-century later, is a bungling critic by his side,

because governed by lasciviousness and not by a sense of beauty.

CHAPTER VIII.

DESCRIPTIONS OF LIFE IN MOVEMENT.

Among the new discoveries made with regard to man, we must reckon, in

conclusion, the interest taken in descriptions of the daily course of

human life.

The comical and satirical literature of the Middle Ages could not

dispense with pictures of every-day events. But it is another thing,

when the Italians of the Renaissance dwelt on this picture for its own

sake--for its inherent interest--and because it forms part of that

great, universal life of the world whose magic breath they felt

everywhere around them. Instead of and together with the satirical

comedy, which wanders through houses, villages, and streets, seeking

food for its derision in parson, peasant, and burgher, we now see in

literature the beginnings of a true _genre_, long before it found any

expression in painting. That _genre_ and satire are often met with in

union, does not prevent them from being wholly different things.

How much of earthly business must Dante have watched with attentive

interest, before he was able to make us see with our own eyes all that

happened in his spiritual world.[783] The famous pictures of the busy

movement in the arsenal at Venice, of the blind men laid side by side

before the church door,[784] and the like, are by no means the only

instances of this kind: for the art, in which he is a master, of

expressing the inmost soul by the outward gesture, cannot exist without

a close and incessant study of human life.

The poets who followed rarely came near him in this respect, and the

novelists were forbidden by the first laws of their literary style to

linger over details. Their prefaces and narratives might be as long as

they pleased, but what we understand by _genre_ was outside their

province. The taste for this class of description was not fully awakened

till the time of the revival of antiquity.

And here we are again met by the man who had a heart for

everything--Æneas Sylvius. Not only natural beauty, not only that which

has an antiquarian or a geographical interest, finds a place in his

descriptions (p. 248; ii. p. 28), but any living scene of daily

life.[785] Among the numerous passages in his memoirs in which scenes

are described which hardly one of his contemporaries would have thought

worth a line of notice, we will here only mention the boat-race on the

Lake of Bolsena.[786] We are not able to detect from what old

letter-writer or story-teller the impulse was derived to which we owe

such life-like pictures. Indeed, the whole spiritual communion between

antiquity and the Renaissance is full of delicacy and of mystery.

To this class belong those descriptive Latin poems of which we have

already spoken (p. 262)--hunting-scenes, journeys, ceremonies, and so

forth. In Italian we also find something of the same kind, as, for

example, the descriptions of the famous Medicean tournament by Politian

and Luca Pulci.[787] The true epic poets, Luigi Pulci, Bojardo, and

Ariosto, are carried on more rapidly by the stream of their narrative;

yet in all of them we must recognise the lightness and precision of

their descriptive touch, as one of the chief elements of their

greatness. Franco Sacchetti amuses himself with repeating the short

speeches of a troop of pretty women caught in the woods by a shower of

rain.[788]

Other scenes of moving life are to be looked for in the military

historians (p. 99). In a lengthy poem,[789] dating from an earlier

period, we find a faithful picture of a combat of mercenary soldiers in

the fourteenth century, chiefly in the shape of the orders, cries of

battle, and dialogue with which it is accompanied.

But the most remarkable productions of this kind are the realistic

descriptions of country life, which are found most abundantly in Lorenzo

Magnifico and the poets of his circle.

Since the time of Petrarch,[790] an unreal and conventional style of

bucolic poetry had been in vogue, which, whether written in Latin or

Italian, was essentially a copy of Virgil. Parallel to this, we find the

pastoral novel of Boccaccio (p. 259) and other works of the same kind

down to the ‘Arcadia’ of Sannazaro, and later still, the pastoral comedy

of Tasso and Guarini. They are works whose style, whether poetry or

prose, is admirably finished and perfect, but in which pastoral life is

only an ideal dress for sentiments which belong to a wholly different

sphere of culture.[791]

But by the side of all this there appeared in Italian poetry, towards

the close of the fifteenth century, signs of a more realistic treatment

of rustic life. This was not possible out of Italy; for here only did

the peasant, whether labourer or proprietor, possess human dignity,

personal freedom, and the right of settlement, hard as his lot might

sometimes be in other respects.[792] The difference between town and

country is far from being so marked here as in northern countries. Many

of the smaller towns are peopled almost exclusively by peasants who, on

coming home at nightfall from their work, are transformed into

townsfolk. The masons of Como wandered over nearly all Italy; the child

Giotto was free to leave his sheep and join a guild at Florence;

everywhere there was a human stream flowing from the country into the

cities, and some mountain populations seemed born to supply this

current.[793] It is true that the pride and local conceit supplied poets

and novelists with abundant motives for making game of the

‘villano,’[794] and what they left undone was taken charge of by the

comic improvisers (p. 320 sqq.). But nowhere do we find a trace of that

brutal and contemptuous class-hatred against the ‘vilains’ which

inspired the aristocratic poets of Provence, and often, too, the French

chroniclers. On the contrary,[795] Italian authors of every sort gladly

recognise and accentuate what is great or remarkable in the life of the

peasant. Gioviano Pontano mentions with admiration instances of the

fortitude of the savage inhabitants of the Abruzzi;[796] in the

biographical collections and in the novelists we meet with the figure of

the heroic peasant-maiden[797] who hazards her life to defend her family

and her honour.[798]

Such conditions made the poetical treatment of country-life possible.

The first instance we shall mention is that of Battista Mantovano, whose

eclogues, once much read and still worth reading, appeared among his

earliest works about 1480. They are a mixture of real and conventional

rusticity, but the former tends to prevail. They represent the mode of

thought of a well-meaning village clergyman, not without a certain

leaning to liberal ideas. As Carmelite monk, the writer may have had

occasion to mix freely with the peasantry.[799]

But it is with a power of a wholly different kind that Lorenzo

Magnifico transports himself into the peasant’s world His ‘Nencia di

Barberino’[800] reads like a crowd of genuine extracts from the popular

songs of the Florentine country, fused into a great stream of octaves.

The objectivity of the writer is such that we are in doubt whether the

speaker--the young peasant Vallera, who declares his love to

Nencia--awakens his sympathy or ridicule. The deliberate contrast to the

conventional eclogue is unmistakable. Lorenzo surrenders himself

purposely to the realism of simple, rough country-life, and yet his work

makes upon us the impression of true poetry.

The ‘Beca da Dicomano’ of Luigi Pulci[801] is an admitted counterpart to

the ‘Nencia’ of Lorenzo. But the deeper purpose is wanting. The ‘Beca’

is written not so much from the inward need to give a picture of popular

life, as from the desire to win the approbation of the educated

Florentine world by a successful poem. Hence the greater and more

deliberate coarseness of the scenes, and the indecent jokes.

Nevertheless, the point of view of the rustic lover is admirably

maintained.

Third in this company of poets comes Angelo Poliziano, with his

‘Rusticus’[802] in Latin hexameters. Keeping clear of all imitation of

Virgil’s Georgics, he describes the year of the Tuscan peasant,

beginning with the late autumn, when the countryman gets ready his new

plough and prepares the seed for the winter. The picture of the meadows

in spring is full and beautiful, and the ‘Summer’ has fine passages; but

the vintage-feast in autumn is one of the gems of modern Latin poetry.

Politian wrote poems in Italian as well as Latin, from which we may

infer that in Lorenzo’s circle it was possible to give a realistic

picture of the passionate life of the lower classes. His gipsy’s

love-song[803] is one of the earliest products of that wholly modern

tendency to put oneself with poetic consciousness into the position of

another class. This had probably been attempted for ages with a view to

satire,[804] and the opportunity for it was offered in Florence at every

carnival by the songs of the maskers. But the sympathetic understanding

of the feelings of another class was new; and with it the ‘Nencia’ and

this ‘Canzone zingaresca’ mark a new starting-point in the history of

poetry.

Here, too, we must briefly indicate how culture prepared the way for

artistic development. From the time of the ‘Nencia,’ a period of eighty

years elapses to the rustic genre-painting of Jacopo Bassano and his

school.

In the next part of this work we shall show how differences of birth had

lost their significance in Italy. Much of this was doubtless owing to

the fact that men and man were here first thoroughly and profoundly

understood. This one single result of the Renaissance is enough to fill

us with everlasting thankfulness. The logical notion of humanity was old

enough--but here the notion became a fact.

The loftiest conceptions on this subject were uttered by Pico della

Mirandola in his speech on the dignity of man,[805] which may justly be

called one of the noblest bequests of that great age. God, he tells us,

made man at the close of the creation, to know the laws of the universe,

to love its beauty, to admire its greatness. He bound him to no fixed

place, to no prescribed form of work, and by no iron necessity, but gave

him freedom to will and to move. ‘I have set thee,’ says the Creator to

Adam, ‘in the midst of the world, that thou mayst the more easily behold

and see all that is therein. I created thee a being neither heavenly nor

earthly, neither mortal nor immortal only, that thou mightest be free to

shape and to overcome thyself. Thou mayst sink into a beast, and be born

anew to the divine likeness. The brutes bring from their mother’s body

what they will carry with them as long as they live; the higher spirits

are from the beginning, or soon after,[806] what they will be for ever.

To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on thine own

free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal life.’

_PART V._

SOCIETY AND FESTIVALS.

CHAPTER I.

THE EQUALISATION OF CLASSES.

Every period of civilisation, which forms a complete and consistent

whole, manifests itself not only in political life, in religion, art,

and science, but also sets its characteristic stamp on social life. Thus

the Middle Ages had their courtly and aristocratic manners and

etiquette, differing but little in the various countries of Europe, as

well as their peculiar forms of middle-class life.

Italian customs at the time of the Renaissance offer in these respects

the sharpest contrast to mediævalism. The foundation on which they rest

is wholly different. Social intercourse in its highest and most perfect

form now ignored all distinctions of caste, and was based simply on the

existence of an educated class as we now understand the word. Birth and

origin were without influence, unless combined with leisure and

inherited wealth. Yet this assertion must not be taken in an absolute

and unqualified sense, since mediæval distinctions still sometimes made

themselves felt to a greater or less degree, if only as a means of

maintaining equality with the aristocratic pretensions of the less

advanced countries of Europe. But the main current of the time went

steadily towards the fusion of classes in the modern sense of the

phrase.

The fact was of vital importance that, from certainly the twelfth

century onwards, the nobles and the burghers dwelt together within the

walls of the cities.[807] The interests and pleasures of both classes

were thus identified, and the feudal lord learned to look at society

from another point of view than that of his mountain-castle. The

Church, too, in Italy never suffered itself, as in northern countries,

to be used as a means of providing for the younger sons of noble

families. Bishoprics, abbacies, and canonries were often given from the

most unworthy motives, but still not according to the pedigrees of the

applicants; and if the bishops in Italy were more numerous, poorer, and,

as a rule, destitute of all sovereign rights, they still lived in the

cities where their cathedrals stood, and formed, together with their

chapters, an important element in the cultivated society of the place.

In the age of despots and absolute princes which followed, the nobility

in most of the cities had the motives and the leisure to give themselves

up to a private life (p. 131) free from political danger and adorned

with all that was elegant and enjoyable, but at the same time hardly

distinguishable from that of the wealthy burgher. And after the time of

Dante, when the new poetry and literature were in the hands of all

Italy,[808] when to this was added the revival of ancient culture and

the new interest in man as such, when the successful Condottiere became

a prince, and not only good birth, but legitimate birth, ceased to be

indispensable for a throne (p. 21), it might well seem that the age of

equality had dawned, and the belief in nobility vanished for ever.

From a theoretical point of view, when the appeal was made to antiquity,

the conception of nobility could be both justified and condemned from

Aristotle alone. Dante, for example,[809] adapts from the Aristotelian

definition, ‘Nobility rests on excellence and inherited wealth,’ his own

saying, ‘Nobility rests on personal excellence or on that of

predecessors.’ But elsewhere he is not satisfied with this conclusion.

He blames himself,[810] because even in Paradise, while talking with his

ancestor Cacciaguida, he made mention of his noble origin, which is but

as a mantle from which time is ever cutting something away, unless we

ourselves add daily fresh worth to it. And in the ‘Convito’[811] he

disconnects ‘nobile’ and ‘nobiltà’ from every condition of birth, and

identifies the idea with the capacity for moral and intellectual

eminence, laying a special stress on high culture by calling ‘nobiltà’

the sister of ‘filosofia.’

And as time went on, the greater the influence of humanism on the

Italian mind, the firmer and more widespread became the conviction that

birth decides nothing as to the goodness or badness of a man. In the

fifteenth century this was the prevailing opinion. Poggio, in his

dialogue ‘On nobility,’[812] agrees with his interlocutors--Niccolò

Niccoli, and Lorenzo Medici, brother of the great Cosimo--that there is

no other nobility than that of personal merit. The keenest shafts of his

ridicule are directed against much of what vulgar prejudice thinks

indispensable to an aristocratic life. ‘A man is all the farther removed

from true nobility, the longer his forefathers have plied the trade of

brigands. The taste for hawking and hunting savours no more of nobility

than the nests and lairs of the hunted creatures of spikenard. The

cultivation of the soil, as practised by the ancients, would be much

nobler than this senseless wandering through the hills and woods, by

which men make themselves liker to the brutes than to the reasonable

creatures. It may serve well enough as a recreation, but not as the

business of a lifetime.’ The life of the English and French chivalry in

the country or in the woody fastnesses seems to him thoroughly ignoble,

and worst of all the doings of the robber-knights of Germany. Lorenzo

here begins to take the part of the nobility, but not--which is

characteristic--appealing to any natural sentiment in its favour, but

because Aristotle in the fifth book of the ‘Politics’ recognises the

nobility as existent, and defines it as resting on excellence and

inherited wealth. To this Niccoli retorts that Aristotle gives this not

as his own conviction, but as the popular impression; in his ‘Ethics,’

where he speaks as he thinks, he calls him noble who strives after that

which is truly good. Lorenzo urges upon him vainly that the Greek word

for nobility means good birth; Niccoli thinks the Roman word ‘nobilis’

(_i.e._ remarkable) a better one, since it makes nobility depend on a

man’s deeds.[813] Together with these discussions, we find a sketch of

the condition of the nobles in various parts of Italy. In Naples they

will not work, and busy themselves neither with their own estates nor

with trade and commerce, which they hold to be discreditable; they

either loiter at home or ride about on horseback.[814] The Roman

nobility also despise trade, but farm their own property; the

cultivation of the land even opens the way to a title;[815] ‘it is a

respectable but boorish nobility.’ In Lombardy the nobles live upon the

rent of their inherited estates; descent and the abstinence from any

regular calling constitute nobility.[816] In Venice, the ‘nobili,’ the

ruling caste, were all merchants. Similarly in Genoa the nobles and

non-nobles were alike merchants and sailors, and only separated by their

birth; some few of the former, it is true, still lurked as brigands in

their mountain-castles. In Florence a part of the old nobility had

devoted themselves to trade; another, and certainly by far the smaller

part, enjoyed the satisfaction of their titles, and spent their time,

either in nothing at all, or else in hunting and hawking.[817]

The decisive fact was, that nearly everywhere in Italy, even those who

might be disposed to pride themselves on their birth could not make good

the claims against the power of culture and of wealth, and that their

privileges in politics and at court were not sufficient to encourage any

strong feeling of caste. Venice offers only an apparent exception to

this rule, for there the ‘nobili’ led the same life as their

fellow-citizens, and were distinguished by few honorary privileges. The

case was certainly different at Naples, which the strict isolation and

the ostentatious vanity of its nobility excluded, above all other

causes, from the spiritual movement of the Renaissance. The traditions

of mediæval Lombardy and Normandy, and the French aristocratic

influences which followed, all tended in this direction; and the

Aragonese government, which was established by the middle of the

fifteenth century, completed the work, and accomplished in Naples what

followed a hundred years later in the rest of Italy--a social

transformation in obedience to Spanish ideas, of which the chief

features were the contempt for work and the passion for titles. The

effect of this new influence was evident, even in the smaller towns,

before the year 1500. We hear complaints from La Cava that the place had

been proverbially rich, as long at it was filled with masons and

weavers; whilst now, since instead of looms and trowels nothing but

spurs, stirrups and gilded belts was to be seen, since everybody was

trying to become Doctor of Laws or of Medicine, Notary, Officer or

Knight, the most intolerable poverty prevailed.[818] In Florence an

analogous change appears to have taken place by the time of Cosimo, the

first Grand Duke; he is thanked for adopting the young people, who now

despise trade and commerce, as knights of his order of St. Stephen.[819]

This goes straight in the teeth of the good old Florentine custom,[820]

by which fathers left property to their children on the condition that

they should have some occupation (p. 79). But a mania for title of a

curious and ludicrous sort sometimes crossed and thwarted, especially

among the Florentines, the levelling influence of art and culture. This

was the passion for knighthood, which became one of the most striking

follies of the day, at a time when the dignity itself had lost every

shadow of significance.

‘A few years ago,’ writes Franco Sacchetti,[821] towards the end of the

fourteenth century, ‘everybody saw how all the work-people down to the

bakers, how all the wool-carders, usurers, money-changers and

blackguards of all descriptions, became knights. Why should an official

need knighthood when he goes to preside over some little provincial

town? What has this title to do with any ordinary bread-winning pursuit?

How art thou sunken, unhappy dignity! Of all the long list of knightly

duties, what single one do these knights of ours discharge? I wished to

speak of these things that the reader might see that knighthood is

dead.[822] And as we have gone so far as to confer the honour upon dead

men, why not upon figures of wood and stone, and why not upon an ox?’

The stories which Sacchetti tells by way of illustration speak plainly

enough. There we read how Bernabò Visconti knighted the victor in a

drunken brawl, and then did the same derisively to the vanquished; how

German knights with their decorated helmets and devices were

ridiculed--and more of the same kind. At a later period Poggio[823]

makes merry over the many knights of his day without a horse and

without military training. Those who wished to assert the privilege of

the order, and ride out with lance and colours, found in Florence that

they might have to face the government as well as the jokers.[824]

On considering the matter more closely, we shall find that this belated

chivalry, independent of all nobility of birth, though partly the fruit

of an insane passion for title, had nevertheless another and a better

side. Tournaments had not yet ceased to be practised, and no one could

take part in them who was not a knight. But the combat in the lists, and

especially the difficult and perilous tilting with the lance, offered a

favourable opportunity for the display of strength, skill, and courage,

which no one, whatever might be his origin, would willingly neglect in

an age which laid such stress on personal merit.[825]

It was in vain that from the time of Petrarch downwards the tournament

was denounced as a dangerous folly. No one was converted by the pathetic

appeal of the poet: ‘In what book do we read that Scipio and Cæsar were

skilled at the joust?’[826] The practice became more and more popular

in Florence. Every honest citizen came to consider his tournament--now,

no doubt, less dangerous than formerly--as a fashionable sport. Franco

Sacchetti[827] has left us a ludicrous picture of one of these holiday

cavaliers--a notary seventy years old. He rides out on horseback to

Peretola, where the tournament was cheap, on a jade hired from a dyer. A

thistle is stuck by some wag under the tail of the steed, who takes

fright, runs away, and carries the helmeted rider, bruised and shaken,

back into the city. The inevitable conclusion of the story is a severe

curtain-lecture from the wife, who is not a little enraged at these

break-neck follies of her husband.[828]

It may be mentioned in conclusion that a passionate interest in this

sport was displayed by the Medici, as if they wished to show--private

citizens as they were, without noble blood in their veins--that the

society which surrounded them was in no respects inferior to a

Court.[829] Even under Cosimo (1459), and afterwards under the elder

Pietro, brilliant tournaments were held at Florence. The younger Pietro

neglected the duties of government for these amusements, and would never

suffer himself to be painted except clad in armour. The same practice

prevailed at the Court of Alexander VI., and when the Cardinal Ascanio

Sforza asked the Turkish Prince Djem (pp. 109, 115) how he liked the

spectacle, the barbarian replied with much discretion that such combats

in his country only took place among slaves, since then, in the case of

accident, nobody was the worse for it. The oriental was unconsciously in

accord with the old Romans in condemning the manners of the Middle Ages.

Apart, however, from this particular prop of knighthood, we find here

and there in Italy, for example at Ferrara (p. 46 sqq.), orders of court

service, whose members had a right to the title.

* * * * *

But, great as were individual ambitions and the vanities of nobles and

knights, it remains a fact that the Italian nobility took its place in

the centre of social life, and not at the extremity. We find it

habitually mixing with other classes on a footing of perfect equality,

and seeking its natural allies in culture and intelligence. It is true

that for the courtier a certain rank of nobility was required,[830] but

this exigence is expressly declared to be caused by a prejudice rooted

in the public mind--‘per l’oppenion universale’--and never was held to

imply the belief that the personal worth of one who was not of noble

blood was in any degree lessened thereby, nor did it follow from this

rule that the prince was limited to the nobility for his society. It was

meant simply that the perfect man--the true courtier--should not be

wanting in any conceivable advantage, and therefore not in this. If in

all the relations of life he was specially bound to maintain a

dignified and reserved demeanour, the reason was not found in the blood

which flowed in his veins, but in the perfection of manner which was

demanded from him. We are here in the presence of a modern distinction,

based on culture and on wealth, but on the latter solely because it

enables men to devote their life to the former, and effectually to

promote its interests and advancement.

CHAPTER II.

THE OUTWARD REFINEMENT OF LIFE.

But in proportion as distinctions of birth ceased to confer any special

privilege, was the individual himself compelled to make the most of his

personal qualities, and society to find its worth and charm in itself.

The demeanour of individuals, and all the higher forms of social

intercourse, became ends pursued with a deliberate and artistic purpose.

Even the outward appearance of men and women and the habits of daily

life were more perfect, more beautiful, and more polished than among the

other nations of Europe. The dwellings of the upper classes fall rather

within the province of the history of art; but we may note how far the

castle and the city mansion in Italy surpassed in comfort, order, and

harmony the dwellings of the northern noble. The style of dress varied

so continually that it is impossible to make any complete comparison

with the fashions of other countries, all the more because since the

close of the fifteenth century imitations of the latter were frequent.

The costumes of the time, as given us by the Italian painters, are the

most convenient and the most pleasing to the eye which were then to be

found in Europe; but we cannot be sure if they represent the prevalent

fashion, or if they are faithfully reproduced by the artist. It is

nevertheless beyond a doubt that nowhere was so much importance attached

to dress as in Italy. The people was, and is, vain; and even serious men

among it looked on a handsome and becoming costume as an element in the

perfection of the individual. At Florence, indeed, there was a brief

period, when dress was a purely personal matter, and every man set the

fashion for himself (p. 130, note 1), and till far into the sixteenth

century there were exceptional people who still had the courage to do

so;[831] and the majority at all events showed themselves capable of

varying the fashion according to their individual tastes. It is a

symptom of decline when Giovanni della Casa warns his readers not to be

singular or to depart from existing fashions.[832] Our own age, which,

in men’s dress at any rate, treats uniformity as the supreme law, gives

up by so doing far more than it is itself aware of. But it saves itself

much time, and this, according to our notions of business, outweighs all

other disadvantages.

In Venice[833] and Florence at the time of the Renaissance there were

rules and regulations prescribing the dress of the men and restraining

the luxury of the women. Where the fashions were less free, as in

Naples, the moralists confess with regret that no difference can be

observed between noble and burgher.[834] They further deplore the rapid

changes of fashion, and--if we rightly understand their words--the

senseless idolatry of whatever comes from France, though in many cases

the fashions which were received back from the French were originally

Italian. It does not further concern us, how far these frequent changes,

and the adoption of French and Spanish ways,[835] contributed to the

national passion for external display; but we find in them additional

evidence of the rapid movement of life in Italy in the decades before

and after the year 1500. The occupation of different parts of Italy by

foreigners caused the inhabitants not only to adopt foreign fashions,

but sometimes to abandon all luxury in matters of dress. Such a change

in public feeling at Milan is recorded by Landi. But the differences, he

tells us, in costume continued to exist, Naples distinguishing itself by

splendour, and Florence, to the eye of the writer, by absurdity.[836]

We may note in particular the efforts of the women to alter their

appearance by all the means which the toilette could afford. In no

country of Europe since the fall of the Roman empire was so much trouble

taken to modify the face, the colour of skin and the growth of the

hair, as in Italy at this time.[837] All tended to the formation of a

conventional type, at the cost of the most striking and transparent

deceptions. Leaving out of account costume in general, which in the

fourteenth century[838] was in the highest degree varied in colour and

loaded with ornament, and at a later period assumed a character of more

harmonious richness, we here limit ourselves more particularly to the

toilette in the narrower sense.

No sort of ornament was more in use than false hair, often made of white

or yellow silk.[839] The law denounced and forbade it in vain, till some

preacher of repentance touched the worldly minds of the wearers. Then

was seen, in the middle of the public square, a lofty pyre (talamo), on

which, beside lutes, dice-boxes, masks, magical charms, song-books, and

other vanities, lay masses of false hair,[840] which the purging fires

soon turned into a heap of ashes. The ideal colour sought for both in

natural and artificial hair, was blond. And as the sun was supposed to

have the power of making the hair of this colour,[841] many ladies would

pass their whole time in the open air on sunshiny days.[842] Dyes and

other mixtures were also used freely for the same purpose. Besides all

these, we meet with an endless list of beautifying waters, plasters, and

paints for every single part of the face--even for the teeth and

eyelids--of which in our day we can form no conception. The ridicule of

the poets,[843] the invectives of the preachers, and the experience of

the baneful effects of these cosmetics on the skin, were powerless to

hinder women from giving their faces an unnatural form and colour. It is

possible that the frequent and splendid representations of

Mysteries,[844] at which hundreds of people appeared painted and masked,

helped to further this practice in daily life. It is certain that it was

widely spread, and that the countrywomen vied in this respect with their

sisters in the towns.[845] It was vain to preach that such decorations

were the mark of the courtesan; the most honourable matrons, who all the

year round never touched paint, used it nevertheless on holidays when

they showed themselves in public.[846] But whether we look on this bad

habit as a remnant of barbarism, to which the painting of savages is a

parallel, or as a consequence of the desire for perfect youthful beauty

in features and in colour, as the art and complexity of the toilette

would lead us to think--in either case there was no lack of good advice

on the part of the men.

The use of perfumes, too, went beyond all reasonable limits. They were

applied to everything with which human beings came into contact. At

festivals even the mules were treated with scents and ointments,[847]

Pietro Aretino thanks Cosimo I. for a perfumed roll of money.[848]

The Italians of that day lived in the belief that they were more cleanly

than other nations. There are in fact general reasons which speak rather

for than against this claim. Cleanliness is indispensable to our modern

notion of social perfection, which was developed in Italy earlier than

elsewhere. That the Italians were one of the richest of existing

peoples, is another presumption in their favour. Proof, either for or

against these pretensions, can of course never be forthcoming, and if

the question were one of priority in establishing rules of cleanliness,

the chivalrous poetry of the Middle Ages is perhaps in advance of

anything that Italy can produce. It is nevertheless certain that the

singular neatness and cleanliness of some distinguished representatives

of the Renaissance, especially in their behaviour at meals, was noticed

expressly,[849] and that ‘German’ was the synonym in Italy for all that

is filthy.[850] The dirty habits which Massimiliano Sforza picked up in

the course of his German education, and the notice they attracted on his

return to Italy, are recorded by Giovio.[851] It is at the same time

very curious that, at least in the fifteenth century, the inns and

hotels were left chiefly in the hands of Germans,[852] who probably,

however, made their profit mostly out of the pilgrims journeying to

Rome. Yet the statements on this point may refer rather to the country

districts, since it is notorious that in the great cities Italian hotels

held the first place.[853] The want of decent inns in the country may

also be explained by the general insecurity of life and property.

To the first half of the sixteenth century belongs the manual of

politeness which Giovanni della Casa, a Florentine by birth, published

under the title ‘Il Galateo.’ Not only cleanliness in the strict sense

of the word, but the dropping of all the tricks and habits which we

consider unbecoming, is here prescribed with the same unfailing tact

with which the moralist discerns the highest ethical truths. In the

literature of other countries the same lessons are taught, though less

systematically, by the indirect influence of repulsive descriptions.[854]

In other respects also, the ‘Galateo’ is a graceful and intelligent

guide to good manners--a school of tact and delicacy. Even now it may be

read with no small profit by people of all classes, and the politeness

of European nations is not likely to outgrow its precepts. So far as

tact is an affair of the heart, it has been inborn in some men from the

dawn of civilization, and acquired through force of will by others; but

the Italian first recognised it as a universal social duty and a mark of

culture and education. And Italy itself had altered much in the course

of two centuries. We feel at their close that the time for practical

jokes between friends and acquaintances--for ‘burle’ and ‘beffe’ (p. 155

sqq.)--was over in good society,[855] that the people had emerged from

the walls of the cities and had learned a cosmopolitan politeness and

consideration. We shall speak later on of the intercourse of society in

the narrower sense.

Outward life, indeed, in the fifteenth and the early part of the

sixteenth centuries was polished and ennobled as among no other people

in the world. A countless number of those small things and great things

which combine to make up what we mean by comfort, we know to have first

appeared in Italy. In the well-paved streets of the Italian cities,[856]

driving was universal, while elsewhere in Europe walking or riding was

the customs, and at all events no one drove for amusement. We read in

the novelists of soft, elastic beds, of costly carpets and bedroom

furniture, of which we hear nothing in other countries.[857] We often

hear especially of the abundance and beauty of the linen. Much of all

this is drawn within the sphere of art. We note with admiration the

thousand ways in which art ennobles luxury, not only adorning the

massive sideboard or the light brackets with noble vases and clothing

the walls with the moving splendour of tapestry, and covering the

toilet-table with numberless graceful trifles, but absorbing whole

branches of mechanical work--especially carpentering--into its province.

All western Europe, as soon as its wealth enabled it to do so, set to

work in the same way at the close of the Middle Ages. But its efforts

produced either childish and fantastic toy-work, or were bound by the

chains of a narrow and purely Gothic art, while the Renaissance moved

freely, entering into the spirit of every task it undertook and working

for a far larger circle of patrons and admirers than the northern

artist. The rapid victory of Italian decorative art over northern in the

course of the sixteenth century is due partly to this fact, though

partly the result of wider and more general causes.

CHAPTER III.

LANGUAGE AS THE BASIS OF SOCIAL INTERCOURSE.

The higher forms of social intercourse, which here meet us as a work of

art--as a conscious product and one of the highest products of national

life--have no more important foundation and condition than language.

In the most flourishing period of the Middle Ages, the nobility of

Western Europe had sought to establish a ‘courtly’ speech for social

intercourse as well as for poetry. In Italy, too, where the dialects

differed so greatly from one another, we find in the thirteenth century

a so-called ‘Curiale,’ which was common to the courts and to the poets.

It is of decisive importance for Italy that the attempt was there

seriously and deliberately made to turn this into the language of

literature and society. The introduction to the ‘Cento Novelle Antiche,’

which were put into their present shape before 1300, avow this object

openly. Language is here considered apart from its uses in poetry; its

highest function is clear, simple, intelligent utterance in short

speeches, epigrams, and answers. This faculty was admired in Italy, as

nowhere else but among the Greeks and Arabians: ‘how many in the course

of a long life have scarcely produced a single “bel parlare.”’

But the matter was rendered more difficult by the diversity of the

aspects under which it was considered. The writings of Dante transport

us into the midst of the struggle. His work on ‘the Italian

language’[858] is not only of the utmost importance for the subject

itself, but is also the first complete treatise on any modern language.

His method and results belong to the history of linguistic science, in

which they will always hold a high place. We must here content

ourselves with the remark that long before the appearance of this book

the subject must have been one of daily and pressing importance, that

the various dialects of Italy had long been the objects of eager study

and dispute, and that the birth of the one classical language was not

accomplished without many throes.[859]

Nothing certainly contributed so much to this end as the great poem of

Dante. The Tuscan dialect became the basis of the new national

speech.[860] If this assertion may seem to some to go too far, as

foreigners we may be excused, in a matter on which much difference of

opinion prevails, for following the general belief.

Literature and poetry probably lost more than they gained by the

contentious purism which was long prevalent in Italy, and which marred

the freshness and vigour of many an able writer. Others, again, who felt

themselves masters of this magnificent language, were tempted to rely

upon its harmony and flow, apart from the thought which it expressed. A

very insignificant melody, played upon such an instrument, can produce a

very great effect. But however this may be, it is certain that socially

the language had great value. It was, as it were, the crown of a noble

and dignified behaviour, and compelled the gentleman, both in his

ordinary bearing and in exceptional moments to observe external

propriety. No doubt this classical garment, like the language of Attic

society, served to drape much that was foul and malicious; but it was

also the adequate expression of all that is noblest and most refined.

But politically and nationally it was of supreme importance, serving as

an ideal home for the educated classes in all the states of the divided

peninsula.[861] Nor was it the special property of the nobles or of any

one class, but the poorest and humblest might learn it if they would.

Even now--and perhaps more than ever--in those parts of Italy where, as

a rule, the most unintelligible dialect prevails, the stranger is often

astonished at hearing pure and well-spoken Italian from the mouths of

peasants or artisans, and looks in vain for anything analogous in France

or in Germany, where even the educated classes retain traces of a

provincial speech. There are certainly a larger number of people able to

read in Italy than we should be led to expect from the condition of many

parts of the country--as for instance, the States of the Church--in

other respects; but what is of more importance is the general and

undisputed respect for pure language and pronunciation as something

precious and sacred. One part of the country after another came to adopt

the classical dialect officially. Venice, Milan, and Naples did so at

the noontime of Italian literature, and partly through its influences.

It was not till the present century that Piedmont became of its own free

will a genuine Italian province by sharing in this chief treasure of the

people--pure speech.[862] The dialects were from the beginning of the

sixteenth century purposely left to deal with a certain class of

subjects, serious as well as comic,[863] and the style which was thus

developed proved equal to all its tasks. Among other nations a conscious

separation of this kind did not occur till a much later period.

The opinion of educated people as to the social value of language, is

fully set forth in the ‘Cortigiano.’[864] There were then persons, at

the beginning of the sixteenth century, who purposely kept to the

antiquated expressions of Dante and the other Tuscan writers of his

time, simply because they were old. Our author forbids the use of them

altogether in speech, and is unwilling to permit them even in writing,

which he considers a form of speech. Upon this follows the admission

that the best style of speech is that which most resembles good writing.

We can clearly recognise the author’s feeling that people who have

anything of importance to say must shape their own speech, and that

language is something flexible and changing because it is something

living. It is allowable to make use of any expression, however ornate,

as long as it is used by the people; nor are non-Tuscan words, or even

French and Spanish words forbidden, if custom has once applied them to

definite purposes.[865] Thus care and intelligence will produce a

language, which, if not the pure old Tuscan, is still Italian, rich in

flowers and fruit like a well-kept garden. It belongs to the

completeness of the ‘Cortigiano’ that his wit, his polished manners, and

his poetry, must be clothed in this perfect dress.

When style and language had once become the property of a living

society, all the efforts of purists and archaists failed to secure their

end. Tuscany itself was rich in writers and talkers of the first order,

who ignored and ridiculed these endeavours. Ridicule in abundance

awaited the foreign scholar who explained to the Tuscans how little they

understood their own language.[866] The life and influence of a writer

like Macchiavelli was enough to sweep away all these cobwebs. His

vigorous thoughts, his clear and simple mode of expression wore a form

which had any merit but that of the ‘Trecentisti.’ And on the other hand

there were too many North Italians, Romans, and Neapolitans, who were

thankful if the demand for purity of style in literature and

conversation was not pressed too far. They repudiated, indeed, the forms

and idioms of their dialect; and Bandello, with what a foreigner might

suspect to be false modesty, is never tired of declaring: ‘I have no

style; I do not write like a Florentine, but like a barbarian; I am not

ambitious of giving new graces to my language; I am a Lombard, and from

the Ligurian border into the bargain.’[867] But the claims of the

purists were most successfully met by the express renunciation of the

higher qualities of style, and the adoption of a vigorous, popular

language in their stead. Few could hope to rival Pietro Bembo who,

though born in Venice, nevertheless wrote the purest Tuscan, which to

him was a foreign language, or the Neapolitan Sannazaro, who did the

same. But the essential point was that language, whether spoken or

written, was held to be an object of respect. As long as this feeling

was prevalent, the fanaticism of the purists--their linguistic

congresses and the rest of it[868]--did little harm. Their bad influence

was not felt till much later, when the original power of Italian

literature relaxed, and yielded to other and far worse influences. At

last it became possible for the Accademia della Crusca to treat Italian

like a dead language. But this association proved so helpless that it

could not even hinder the invasion of Gallicism in the eighteenth

century.

* * * * *

This language--loved, tended, and trained to every use--now served as

the basis of social intercourse. In northern countries, the nobles and

the princes passed their leisure either in solitude, or in hunting,

fighting, drinking, and the like; the burghers in games and bodily

exercises, with a mixture of literary or festive amusement. In Italy

there existed a neutral ground, where people of every origin, if they

had the needful talent and culture, spent their time in conversation and

the polished interchange of jest and earnest. As eating and drinking

formed a small part of such entertainments,[869] it was not difficult to

keep at a distance those who sought society for these objects. If we are

to take the writers of dialogues literally, the loftiest problems of

human existence were not excluded from the conversation of thinking men,

and the production of noble thoughts was not, as was commonly the case

in the North, the work of solitude, but of society. But we must here

limit ourselves to the less serious side of social intercourse--to the

side which existed only for the sake of amusement.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HIGHER FORMS OF SOCIETY.

This society, at all events at the beginning of the sixteenth century,

was a matter of art; and had, and rested on, tacit or avowed rules of

good sense and propriety, which are the exact reverse of all mere

etiquette. In less polished circles, where society took the form of a

permanent corporation, we meet with a system of formal rules and a

prescribed mode of entrance, as was the case with those wild sets of

Florentine artists of whom Vasari tells us that they were capable of

giving representations of the best comedies of the day.[870] In the

easier intercourse of society it was not unusual to select some

distinguished lady as president, whose word was law for the evening.

Everybody knows the introduction to Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron,’ and looks

on the presidency of Pampinea as a graceful fiction. That it was so in

this particular case is a matter of course; but the fiction was

nevertheless based on a practice which often occurred in reality.

Firenzuola, who nearly two centuries later (1523) prefaces his

collection of tales in a similar manner, with express reference to

Boccaccio, comes assuredly nearer to the truth when he puts into the

mouth of the queen of the society a formal speech on the mode of

spending the hours during the stay which the company proposed to make in

the country. The day was to begin with a stroll among the hills passed

in philosophical talk; then followed breakfast,[871] with music and

singing, after which came the recitation, in some cool, shady spot, of

a new poem, the subject of which had been given the night before; in the

evening the whole party walked to a spring of water where they all sat

down and each one told a tale; last of all came supper and lively

conversation ‘of such a kind that the women might listen to it without

shame and the men might not seem to be speaking under the influence of

wine.’ Bandello, in the introductions and dedications to single novels,

does not give us, it is true, such inaugural discourses as this, since

the circles before which the stories are told are represented as already

formed; but he gives us to understand in other ways how rich, how

manifold, and how charming the conditions of society must have been.

Some readers may be of opinion that no good was to be got from a world

which was willing to be amused by such immoral literature. It would be

juster to wonder at the secure foundations of a society which,

notwithstanding these tales, still observed the rules of order and

decency, and which knew how to vary such pastimes with serious and solid

discussion. The need of noble forms of social intercourse was felt to be

stronger than all others. To convince ourselves of it, we are not

obliged to take as our standard the idealised society which Castiglione

depicts as discussing the loftiest sentiments and aims of human life at

the court of Guidobaldo of Urbino, and Pietro Bembo at the castle of

Asolo. The society described by Bandello, with all the frivolities which

may be laid to its charge, enables us to form the best notion of the

easy and polished dignity, of the urbane kindliness, of the intellectual

freedom, of the wit and the graceful dilettantism which distinguished

these circles. A significant proof of the value of such circles lies in

the fact that the women who were the centres of them could become famous

and illustrious without in any way compromising their reputation. Among

the patronesses of Bandello, for example, Isabella Gonzaga (born an

Este, p. 44) was talked of unfavourably not through any fault of her

own, but on account of the too free-lived young ladies who filled her

court.[872] Giulia Gonzaga Colonna, Ippolita Sforza married to a

Bentivoglio, Bianca Rangona, Cecilia Gallerana, Camilla Scarampa, and

others were either altogether irreproachable, or their social fame threw

into the shade whatever they may have done amiss. The most famous woman

of Italia, Vittoria Colonna[873] (b. 1490, d. 1547), the friend of

Castiglione and Michelangelo, enjoyed the reputation of a saint. It is

hard to give such a picture of the unconstrained intercourse of these

circles in the city, at the baths, or in the country, as will furnish

literal proof of the superiority of Italy in this respect over the rest

of Europe. But let us read Bandello,[874] and then ask ourselves if

anything of the same kind would have been then possible, say, in France,

before this kind of society was there introduced by people like himself.

No doubt the supreme achievements of the human mind were then produced

independently of the helps of the drawing-room. Yet it would be unjust

to rate the influence of the latter on art and poetry too low, if only

for the reason that society helped to shape that which existed in no

other country--a widespread interest in artistic production and an

intelligent and critical public opinion. And apart from this, society of

the kind we have described was in itself a natural flower of that life

and culture which then was purely Italian, and which since then has

extended to the rest of Europe.

In Florence society was powerfully affected by literature and politics.

Lorenzo the Magnificent was supreme over his circle, not, as we might be

led to believe, through the princely position which he occupied, but

rather through the wonderful tact he displayed in giving perfect freedom

of action to the many and varied natures which surrounded him.[875] We

see how gently he dealt with his great tutor Politian, and how the

sovereignty of the poet and scholar was reconciled, though not without

difficulty, with the inevitable reserve prescribed by the approaching

change in the position of the house of Medici and by consideration for

the sensitiveness of the wife. In return for the treatment he received,

Politian became the herald and the living symbol of Medicean glory.

Lorenzo, after the fashion of a true Medici, delighted in giving an

outward and artistic expression to his social amusements. In his

brilliant improvisation--the Hawking Party--he gives us a humorous

description of his comrades, and in the Symposium a burlesque of them,

but in both cases in such a manner that we clearly feel his capacity for

more serious companionship.[876] Of this intercourse his correspondence

and the records of his literary and philosophical conversation give

ample proof. Some of the social unions which were afterwards formed in

Florence were in part political clubs, though not without a certain

poetical and philosophical character also. Of this kind was the

so-called Platonic Academy which met after Lorenzo’s death in the

gardens of the Ruccellai.[877]

At the courts of the princes, society naturally depended on the

character of the ruler. After the beginning of the sixteenth century

they became few in number, and these few soon lost their importance.

Rome, however, possessed in the unique court of Leo X. a society to

which the history of the world offers no parallel.

CHAPTER V.

THE PERFECT MAN OF SOCIETY.

It was for this society--or rather for his own sake--that the

‘Cortigiano,’ as described to us by Castiglione, educated himself. He

was the ideal man of society, and was regarded by the civilisation of

that age as its choicest flower; and the court existed for him far

rather than he for the court. Indeed, such a man would have been out of

place at any court, since he himself possessed all the gifts and the

bearing of an accomplished ruler, and because his calm supremacy in all

things, both outward and spiritual, implied a too independent nature.

The inner impulse which inspired him was directed, though our author

does not acknowledge the fact, not to the service of the prince, but to

his own perfection. One instance will make this clear.[878] In time of

war the courtier refuses even useful and perilous tasks, if they are not

beautiful and dignified in themselves, such as for instance the capture

of a herd of cattle; what urges him to take part in war is not duty, but

‘l’onore.’ The moral relation to the prince, as prescribed in the fourth

book, is singularly free and independent. The theory of well-bred

love-making, set forth in the third book, is full of delicate

psychological observation, which perhaps would be more in place in a

treatise on human nature generally; and the magnificent praise of ideal

love, which occurs at the end of the fourth book, and which rises to a

lyrical elevation of feeling, has no connection whatever with the

special object of the work. Yet here, as in the ‘Asolani’ of Bembo, the

culture of the time shows itself in the delicacy with which this

sentiment is represented and analysed. It is true that these writers are

not in all cases to be taken literally; but that the discourses they

give us were actually frequent in good society, cannot be doubted, and

that it was no affectation, but genuine passion, which appeared in this

dress, we shall see further on.

Among outward accomplishments, the so-called knightly exercises were

expected in thorough perfection from the courtier, and besides these

much that could only exist at courts highly organised and based on

personal emulation, such as were not to be found out of Italy. Other

points obviously rest on an abstract notion of individual perfection.

The courtier must be at home in all noble sports, among them running,

leaping, swimming, and wrestling; he must, above all things, be a good

dancer and, as a matter of course, an accomplished rider. He must be

master of several languages; at all events of Latin and Italian; he must

be familiar with literature and have some knowledge of the fine arts. In

music a certain practical skill was expected of him, which he was bound,

nevertheless, to keep as secret as possible. All this is not to be taken

too seriously, except what relates to the use of arms. The mutual

interaction of these gifts and accomplishments results in the perfect

man, in whom no one quality usurps the place of the rest.

So much is certain, that in the sixteenth century the Italians had all

Europe for their pupils both theoretically and practically in every

noble bodily exercise and in the habits and manners of good society.

Their instructions and their illustrated books on riding, fencing, and

dancing served as the model to other countries. Gymnastics as an art,

apart both from military training and from mere amusement, was probably

first taught by Vittorino da Feltre (p. 213) and after his time became

essential to a complete education.[879] The important fact is that they

were taught systematically, though what exercises were most in favour,

and whether they resembled those now in use, we are unable to say. But

we may infer, not only from the general character of the people, but

from positive evidence which has been left for us, that not only

strength and skill, but grace of movement was one of the main objects of

physical training. It is enough to remind the reader of the great

Frederick of Urbino (p. 44) directing the evening games of the young

people committed to his care.

The games and contests of the popular classes did not differ essentially

from those which prevailed elsewhere in Europe. In the maritime cities

boat-racing was among the number, and the Venetian regattas were famous

at an early period.[880] The classical game of Italy was and is the

ball; and this was probably played at the time of the Renaissance with

more zeal and brilliancy than elsewhere. But on this point no distinct

evidence is forthcoming.

* * * * *

A few words on music will not be out of place in this part of our

work.[881] Musical composition down to the year 1500 was chiefly in the

hands of the Flemish school, whose originality and artistic dexterity

were greatly admired. Side by side with this, there nevertheless existed

an Italian school, which probably stood nearer to our present taste.

Half a century later came Palestrina, whose genius still works

powerfully among us. We learn among other facts that he was a great

innovator; but whether he or others took the decisive part in shaping

the musical language of the modern world lies beyond the judgment of the

unprofessional critic. Leaving on one side the history of musical

composition, we shall confine ourselves to the position which music held

in the social life of the day.

A fact most characteristic of the Renaissance and of Italy is the

specialisation of the orchestra, the search for new instruments and

modes of sound, and, in close connection with this tendency, the

formation of a class of ‘virtuosi,’ who devoted their whole attention to

particular instruments or particular branches of music.

Of the more complex instruments, which were perfected and widely

diffused at a very early period, we find not only the organ, but a

corresponding string-instrument, the ‘gravicembalo’ or ‘clavicembalo.’

Fragments of these, dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century,

have come down to our own days, adorned with paintings from the hands of

the greatest masters. Among other instruments the first place was held

by the violin, which even then conferred great celebrity on the

successful player. At the court of Leo X., who, when cardinal, had

filled his house with singers and musicians, and who enjoyed the

reputation of a critic and performer, the Jew Giovan Maria and Jacopo

Sansecondo were among the most famous. The former received from Leo the

title of count and a small town;[882] the latter has been taken to be

the Apollo in the Parnassus of Raphael. In the course of the sixteenth

century, celebrities in every branch of music appeared in abundance, and

Lomazzo (about the year 1580) names the then most distinguished masters

of the art of singing, of the organ, the lute, the lyre, the ‘viola da

gamba,’ the harp, the cithern, the horn, and the trumpet, and wishes

that their portraits might be painted on the instruments

themselves.[883] Such many-sided comparative criticism would have been

impossible anywhere but in Italy, although the same instruments were to

be found in other countries.

The number and variety of these instruments is shown by the fact that

collections of them were now made from curiosity. In Venice, which was

one of the most musical cities of Italy,[884] there were several such

collections, and when a sufficient number of performers happened to be

on the spot, a concert was at once improvised. In one of these museums

there were a large number of instruments, made after ancient pictures

and descriptions, but we are not told if anybody could play them, or how

they sounded. It must not be forgotten that such instruments were often

beautifully decorated, and could be arranged in a manner pleasing to the

eye. We thus meet with them in collections of other rarities and works

of art.

The players, apart from the professional performers, were either single

amateurs, or whole orchestras of them, organised into a corporate

Academy.[885] Many artists in other branches were at home in music, and

often masters of the art. People of position were averse to

wind-instruments, for the same reason[886] which made them distasteful

to Alcibiades and Pallas Athene. In good society singing, either alone

or accompanied with the violin, was usual; but quartettes of

string-instruments were also common,[887] and the ‘clavicembalo’ was

liked on account of its varied effects. In singing the solo only was

permitted, ‘for a single voice is heard, enjoyed, and judged far

better.’ In other words, as singing, notwithstanding all conventional

modesty, is an exhibition of the individual man of society, it is better

that each should be seen and heard separately. The tender feelings

produced in the fair listeners are taken for granted, and elderly people

are therefore recommended to abstain from such forms of art, even though

they excel in them. It was held important that the effect of the song

should be enhanced by the impression made on the sight. We hear nothing

however of the treatment in these circles of musical composition as an

independent branch of art. On the other hand it happened sometimes that

the subject of the song was some terrible event which had befallen the

singer himself.[888]

This dilettantism, which pervaded the middle as well as the upper

classes, was in Italy both more widely spread and more genuinely

artistic than in any other country of Europe. Wherever we meet with a

description of social intercourse, there music and singing are always

and expressly mentioned. Hundreds of portraits show us men and women,

often several together, playing or holding some musical instrument, and

the angelic concerts represented in the ecclesiastical pictures prove

how familiar the painters were with the living effects of music. We read

of the lute-player Antonio Rota, at Padua (d. 1549), who became a rich

man by his lessons, and published a handbook to the practice of the

lute.[889]

At a time when there was no opera to concentrate and monopolise musical

talent, this general cultivation of the art must have been something

wonderfully varied, intelligent, and original. It is another question

how much we should find to satisfy us in these forms of music, could

they now be reproduced for us.

CHAPTER VI.

THE POSITION OF WOMEN.

To understand the higher forms of social intercourse at this period, we

must keep before our minds the fact that women stood on a footing of

perfect equality with men.[890] We must not suffer ourselves to be

misled by the sophistical and often malicious talk about the assumed

inferiority of the female sex, which we meet with now and then in the

dialogues of this time,[891] nor by such satires as the third of

Ariosto,[892] who treats woman as a dangerous grown-up child, whom a man

must learn how to manage, in spite of the great gulf between them.

There is, indeed, a certain amount of truth in what he says. Just

because the educated woman was on a level with the man, that communion

of mind and heart which comes from the sense of mutual dependence and

completion, could not be developed in marriage at this time, as it has

been developed later in the cultivated society of the North.

The education given to women in the upper classes was essentially the

same as that given to men. The Italian, at the time of the Renaissance,

felt no scruple in putting sons and daughters alike under the same

course of literary and even philological instruction (p. 222). Indeed,

looking at this ancient culture as the chief treasure of life, he was

glad that his girls should have a share in it. We have seen what

perfection was attained by the daughters of princely houses in writing

and speaking Latin (p. 234).[893] Many others must at least have been

able to read it, in order to follow the conversation of the day, which

turned largely on classical subjects. An active interest was taken by

many in Italian poetry, in which, whether prepared or improvised, a

large number of Italian women, from the time of the Venetian Cassandra

Fedele onwards (about the close of the fifteenth century), made

themselves famous.[894] One, indeed, Vittoria Colonna, may be called

immortal. If any proof were needed of the assertion made above, it would

be found in the manly tone of this poetry. Even the love-sonnets and

religious poems are so precise and definite in their character, and so

far removed from the tender twilight of sentiment, and from all the

dilettantism which we commonly find in the poetry of women, that we

should not hesitate to attribute them to male authors, if we had not

clear external evidence to prove the contrary.

For, with education, the individuality of women in the upper classes

was developed in the same way as that of men. Till the time of the

Reformation, the personality of women out of Italy, even of the highest

rank, comes forward but little. Exceptions like Isabella of Bavaria,

Margaret of Anjou, and Isabella of Castille, are the forced result of

very unusual circumstances. In Italy, throughout the whole of the

fifteenth century, the wives of the rulers, and still more those of the

Condottieri, have nearly all a distinct, recognisable personality, and

take their share of notoriety and glory. To these came gradually to be

added a crowd of famous women of the most varied kind (i. p. 147, note

1); among them those whose distinction consisted in the fact that their

beauty, disposition, education, virtue, and piety, combined to render

them harmonious human beings.[895] There was no question of ‘woman’s

rights’ or female emancipation, simply because the thing itself was a

matter of course. The educated woman, no less than the man, strove

naturally after a characteristic and complete individuality. The same

intellectual and emotional development which perfected the man, was

demanded for the perfection of the woman. Active literary work,

nevertheless, was not expected from her, and if she were a poet, some

powerful utterance of feeling, rather than the confidences of the novel

or the diary, was looked for. These women had no thought of the

public;[896] their function was to influence distinguished men, and to

moderate male impulse and caprice.

The highest praise which could then be given to the great Italian women

was that they had the mind and the courage of men. We have only to

observe the thoroughly manly bearing of most of the women in the heroic

poems, especially those of Bojardo and Ariosto, to convince ourselves

that we have before us the ideal of the time. The title ‘virago,’ which

is an equivocal compliment in the present day, then implied nothing but

praise. It was borne in all its glory by Caterina Sforza, wife and

afterwards widow of Giroloma Riario, whose hereditary possession, Forli,

she gallantly defended first against his murderers, and then against

Cæsar Borgia. Though finally vanquished, she retained the admiration of

her countrymen and the title ‘prima donna d’Italia.’[897] This heroic

vein can be detected in many of the women of the Renaissance, though

none found the same opportunity of showing their heroism to the world.

In Isabella Gonzaga this type is clearly recognisable, and not less in

Clarice, of the House of Medici, the wife of Filippo Strozzi.[898]

Women of this stamp could listen to novels like those of Bandello,

without social intercourse suffering from it. The ruling genius of

society was not, as now, womanhood, or the respect for certain

presuppositions, mysteries, and susceptibilities, but the consciousness

of energy, of beauty, and of a social state full of danger and

opportunity. And for this reason we find, side by side with the most

measured and polished social forms, something our age would call

immodesty,[899] forgetting that by which it was corrected and

counterbalanced--the powerful characters of the women who were exposed

to it.

That in all the dialogues and treatises together we can find no absolute

evidence on these points is only natural, however freely the nature of

love and the position and capacities of women were discussed.

What seems to have been wanting in this society were the young

girls,[900] who, even when not brought up in the monasteries, were still

carefully kept away from it. It is not easy to say whether their absence

was the cause of the greater freedom of conversation, or whether they

were removed on account of it.

Even the intercourse with courtesans seems to have assumed a more

elevated character, reminding us of the position of the Hetairae in

Classical Athens. The famous Roman courtesan Imperia was a woman of

intelligence and culture, had learned from a certain Domenico

Campana the art of making sonnets, and was not without musical

accomplishments.[901] The beautiful Isabella de Luna, of Spanish

extraction, who was reckoned amusing company, seems to have been an odd

compound of a kind heart with a shockingly foul tongue, which latter

sometimes brought her into trouble.[902] At Milan, Bandello knew the

majestic Caterina di San Celso,[903] who played and sang and recited

superbly. It is clear from all we read on the subject that the

distinguished people who visited these women, and from time to time

lived with them, demanded from them a considerable degree of

intelligence and instruction, and that the famous courtesans were

treated with no slight respect and consideration. Even when relations

with them were broken off, their good opinion was still desired,[904]

which shows that departed passion had left permanent traces behind. But

on the whole this intellectual intercourse is not worth mentioning by

the side of that sanctioned by the recognised forms of social life, and

the traces which it has left in poetry and literature are for the most

part of a scandalous nature. We may well be astonished that among the

6,800 persons of this class, who were to be found in Rome in

1490[905]--that is, before the appearance of syphilis--scarcely a

single woman seems to have been remarkable for any higher gifts. These

whom we have mentioned all belong to the period which immediately

followed. The mode of life, the morals and the philosophy of the public

women, who with all their sensuality and greed were not always incapable

of deeper passions, as well as the hypocrisy and devilish malice shown

by some in their later years, are best set forth by Giraldi, in the

novels which form the introduction to the ‘Hecatommithi.’ Pietro

Aretino, in his ‘Ragionamenti,’ gives us rather a picture of his own

depraved character than of this unhappy class of women as they really

were.

The mistresses of the princes, as has already been pointed out (p. 53),

were sung by poets and painted by artists, and in consequence have been

personally familiar to their contemporaries and to posterity. We hardly

know more than the name of Alice Perrers and of Clara Dettin, the

mistress of Frederick the Victorious, and of Agnes Sorel have only a

half-legendary story. With the monarchs of the age of the

Renaissance--Francis I. and Henry II.--the case is different.

CHAPTER VII.

DOMESTIC ECONOMY.

After treating of the intercourse of society, let us glance for a moment

at the domestic life of this period. We are commonly disposed to look on

the family life of the Italians at this time as hopelessly ruined by the

national immorality, and this side of the question will be more fully

discussed in the sequel. For the moment we must content ourselves with

pointing out that conjugal infidelity has by no means so disastrous an

influence on family life in Italy as in the North, so long at least as

certain limits are not overstepped.

The domestic life of the Middle Ages was a product of popular morals, or

if we prefer to put it otherwise, a result of the inborn tendencies of

national life, modified by the varied circumstances which affected them.

Chivalry at the time of its splendour left domestic economy untouched.

The knight wandered from court to court, and from one battle-field to

another. His homage was given systematically to some other woman than

his own wife, and things went how they might at home in the castle.[906]

The spirit of the Renaissance first brought order into domestic life,

treating it as a work of deliberate contrivance. Intelligent economical

views (p. 77), and a rational style of domestic architecture served to

promote this end. But the chief cause of the change was the thoughtful

study of all questions relating to social intercourse, to education, to

domestic service and organisation.

The most precious document on this subject is the treatise on the

management of the home by Agnolo Pandolfini (L. B. Alberti).[907] He

represents a father speaking to his grown-up sons, and initiating them

into his method of administration. We are introduced into a large and

wealthy household, which if governed with moderation and reasonable

economy, promises happiness and prosperity for generations to come. A

considerable landed estate, whose produce furnishes the table of the

house, and serves as the basis of the family fortune, is combined with

some industrial pursuit, such as the weaving of wool or silk. The

dwelling is solid and the food good. All that has to do with the plan

and arrangement of the house is great, durable, and costly, but the

daily life within it is as simple as possible. All other expenses, from

the largest in which the family honour is at stake, down to the

pocket-money of the younger sons, stand to one another in a rational,

not a conventional relation. Nothing is considered of so much importance

as education, which the head of the house gives not only to the

children, but to the whole household. He first develops his wife from a

shy girl, brought up in careful seclusion, to the true woman of the

house, capable of commanding and guiding the servants. The sons are

brought up without any undue severity,[908] carefully watched and

counselled, and controlled ‘rather by authority than by force.’ And

finally the servants are chosen and treated on such principles that

they gladly and faithfully hold by the family.

One feature of this book must be referred to, which is by no means

peculiar to it, but which it treats with special warmth--the love of the

educated Italian for country life.[909] In northern countries the nobles

lived in the country in their castles, and the monks of the higher

orders in their well-guarded monasteries, while the wealthiest burghers

dwelt from one year’s end to another in the cities. But in Italy, so far

as the neighbourhood of certain towns at all events was concerned,[910]

the security of life and property was so great, and the passion for a

country residence was so strong, that men were willing to risk a loss in

time of war. Thus arose the villa, the country-house of the well-to-do

citizen. This precious inheritance of the old Roman world was thus

revived, as soon as the wealth and culture of the people were

sufficiently advanced.

One author finds at his villa a peace and happiness, for an account of

which the reader must hear him speak himself: ‘While every other

possession causes work and danger, fear and disappointment, the villa

brings a great and honourable advantage; the villa is always true and

kind; if you dwell in it at the right time and with love, it will not

only satisfy you, but add reward to reward. In spring the green trees

and the song of the birds will make you joyful and hopeful; in autumn a

moderate exertion will bring forth fruit a hundredfold; all through the

year melancholy will be banished from you. The villa is the spot where

good and honest men love to congregate. Nothing secret, nothing

treacherous, is done here; all see all; here is no need of judges or

witnesses, for all are kindly and peaceably disposed one to another.

Hasten hither, and fly away from the pride of the rich, and the

dishonour of the bad. O blessed life in the villa, O unknown fortune!’

The economical side of the matter is that one and the same property

must, if possible, contain everything--corn, wine, oil, pasture-land and

woods, and that in such cases the property was paid for well, since

nothing needed then to be got from the market. But the higher enjoyment

derived from the villa is shown by some words of the introduction:

‘Round about Florence lie many villas in a transparent atmosphere, amid

cheerful scenery, and with a splendid view; there is little fog, and no

injurious winds; all is good, and the water pure and healthy. Of the

numerous buildings many are like palaces, many like castles, costly and

beautiful to behold.’ He is speaking of those unrivalled villas, of

which the greater number were sacrificed, though vainly, by the

Florentines themselves in the defence of their city in the year

1529.[911]

In these villas, as in those on the Brenta, on the Lombard hills, at

Posilippo and on the Vomero, social life assumed a freer and more rural

character than in the palaces within the city. We meet with charming

descriptions of the intercourse of the guests, the hunting-parties, and

all the open-air pursuits and amusements.[912] But the noblest

achievements of poetry and thought are sometimes also dated from these

scenes of rural peace.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FESTIVALS.

It is by no arbitrary choice that in discussing the social life of this

period, we are led to treat of the processions and shows which formed

part of the popular festivals.[913] The artistic power of which the

Italians of the Renaissance gave proof on such occasions,[914] was

attained only by means of that free intercourse of all classes which

formed the basis of Italian society. In Northern Europe the monasteries,

the courts, and the burghers had their special feasts and shows as in

Italy; but in the one case the form and substance of these displays

differed according to the class which took part in them, in the other an

art and culture common to the whole nation stamped them with both a

higher and a more popular character. The decorative architecture, which

served to aid in these festivals, deserves a chapter to itself in the

history of art, although our imagination can only form a picture of it

from the descriptions which have been left to us. We are here more

especially concerned with the festival as a higher phase in the life of

the people, in which its religious, moral, and poetical ideas took

visible shape. The Italian festivals in their best form mark the point

of transition from real life into the world of art.

The two chief forms of festal display were originally here, as elsewhere

in the West, the Mystery, or the dramatisation of sacred history and

legend, and the Procession, the motive and character of which was also

purely ecclesiastical.

The performances of the Mysteries in Italy were from the first more

frequent and splendid than elsewhere, and were most favourably affected

by the progress of poetry and of the other arts. In the course of time

not only did the farce and the secular drama branch off from the

Mystery, as in other countries of Europe, but the pantomime also, with

its accompaniments of singing and dancing, the effect of which depended

on the richness and beauty of the spectacle.

The Procession, in the broad, level, and well-paved streets of the

Italian cities,[915] was soon developed into the ‘Trionfo,’ or train of

masked figures on foot and in chariots, the ecclesiastical character of

which gradually gave way to the secular. The processions at the Carnival

and at the feast of Corpus Christi[916] were alike in the pomp and

brilliancy with which they were conducted, and set the pattern

afterwards followed by the royal or princely progresses. Other nations

were willing to spend vast sums of money on these shows, but in Italy

alone do we find an artistic method of treatment which arranged the

procession as a harmonious and significative whole.

What is left of these festivals is but a poor remnant of what once

existed. Both religious and secular displays of this kind have abandoned

the dramatic element--the costumes--partly from dread of ridicule, and

partly because the cultivated classes, who formerly gave their whole

energies to these things, have for several reasons lost their interest

in them. Even at the Carnival, the great processions of masks are out of

fashion. What still remains, such as the costumes adopted in imitation

of certain religious confraternities, or even the brilliant festival of

Santa Rosalia at Palermo, shows clearly how far the higher culture of

the country has withdrawn from such interests.

* * * * *

The festivals did not reach their full development till after the

decisive victory of the modern spirit in the fifteenth century,[917]

unless perhaps Florence was here, as in other things, in advance of the

rest of Italy. In Florence, the several quarters of the city were, in

early times, organized with a view to such exhibitions, which demanded

no small expenditure of artistic effort. Of this kind was the

representation of Hell, with a scaffold and boats in the Arno, on the

1st of May, 1304, when the Ponte alla Carraja broke down under the

weight of the spectators.[918] That at a later time Florentines used to

travel through Italy as directors of festivals (festaiuoli), shows that

the art was early perfected at home.[919]

In setting forth the chief points of superiority in the Italian

festivals over those of other countries, the first that we shall have to

remark is the developed sense of individual characteristics, in other

words, the capacity to invent a given mask, and to act the part with

dramatic propriety. Painters and sculptors not merely did their part

towards the decoration of the place where the festival was held, but

helped in getting up the characters themselves, and prescribed the

dress, the paints (p. 373), and the other ornaments to be used. The

second fact to be pointed out is the universal familiarity of the people

with the poetical basis of the show. The Mysteries, indeed, were equally

well understood all over Europe, since the biblical story and the

legends of the saints were the common property of Christendom; but in

all other respects the advantage was on the side of Italy. For the

recitations, whether of religious or secular heroes, she possessed a

lyrical poetry so rich and harmonious that none could resist its

charm.[920] The majority, too, of the spectators--at least in the

cities--understood the meaning of mythological figures, and could guess

without much difficulty at the allegorical and historical, which were

drawn from sources familiar to the mass of Italians.

This point needs to be more fully discussed. The Middle Ages were

essentially the ages of allegory. Theology and philosophy treated their

categories as independent beings,[921] and poetry and art had but little

to add, in order to give them personality. Here all the countries of the

West were on the same level. Their world of ideas was rich enough in

types and figures, but when these were put into concrete shape, the

costume and attributes were likely to be unintelligible and unsuited to

the popular taste. This, even in Italy, was often the case, and not only

so during the whole period of the Renaissance, but down to a still later

time. To produce the confusion, it was enough if a predicate of the

allegorical figures was wrongly translated by an attribute. Even Dante

is not wholly free from such errors,[922] and, indeed, he prides himself

on the obscurity of his allegories in general.[923] Petrarch, in his

‘Trionfi,’ attempts to give clear, if short, descriptions of at all

events the figures of Love, of Chastity, of Death, and of Fame. Others

again load their allegories with inappropriate attributes. In the

Satires of Vinciguerra,[924] for example, Envy is depicted with rough,

iron teeth, Gluttony as biting its own lips, and with a shock of tangled

hair, the latter probably to show its indifference to all that is not

meat and drink. We cannot here discuss the bad influence of these

misunderstandings on the plastic arts. They, like poetry, might think

themselves fortunate if allegory could be expressed by a mythological

figure--by a figure which antiquity saved from absurdity--if Mars might

stand for war, and Diana[925] for the love of the chase.

Nevertheless art and poetry had better allegories than these to offer,

and we may assume with regard to such figures of this kind as appeared

in the Italian festivals, that the public required them to be clearly

and vividly characteristic, since its previous training had fitted it to

be a competent critic. Elsewhere, particularly at the Burgundian court,

the most inexpressive figures, and even mere symbols, were allowed to

pass, since to understand, or to seem to understand them, was a part of

aristocratic breeding. On the occasion of the famous ‘Oath of the

Pheasant’ in the year 1453,[926] the beautiful young horsewoman, who

appears as ‘Queen of Pleasure,’ is the only pleasing allegory. The huge

dishes, with automatic or even living figures within them, are either

mere curiosities or are intended to convey some clumsy moral lesson. A

naked female statue guarding a live lion was supposed to represent

Constantinople and its future saviour, the Duke of Burgundy. The rest,

with the exception of a Pantomime--Jason in Colchis--seems either too

recondite to be understood or to have no sense at all. Olivier himself,

to whom we owe the description of the scene, appeared costumed as ‘The

Church,’ in a tower on the back of an elephant, and sang a long elegy on

the victory of the unbelievers.[927]

But although the allegorical element in the poetry, the art, and the

festivals of Italy is superior both in good taste and in unity of

conception to what we find in other countries, yet it is not in these

qualities that it is most characteristic and unique. The decisive point

of superiority[928] lay rather in the fact, that besides the

personifications of abstract qualities, historical representatives of

them were introduced in great number--that both poetry and plastic art

were accustomed to represent famous men and women. The ‘Divine Comedy,’

the ‘Trionfi’ of Petrarch, the ‘Amorosa Visione’ of Boccaccio--all of

them works constructed on this principle--and the great diffusion of

culture which took place under the influence of antiquity, had made the

nation familiar with this historical element. These figures now appeared

at festivals, either individualised, as definite masks, or in groups, as

characteristic attendants on some leading allegorical figure. The art of

grouping and composition was thus learnt in Italy at a time when the

most splendid exhibitions in other countries were made up of

unintelligible symbolism or unmeaning puerilities.

Let us begin with that kind of festival which is perhaps the oldest of

all--the Mysteries.[929] They resembled in their main features those

performed in the rest of Europe. In the public squares, in the churches,

and in the cloisters extensive scaffolds were constructed, the upper

story of which served as a Paradise to open and shut at will, and the

ground-floor often as a Hell, while between the two lay the stage

properly so called, representing the scene of all the earthly events of

the drama. In Italy, as elsewhere, the biblical or legendary play often

began with an introductory dialogue between Apostles, Prophets, Sibyls,

Virtues, and Fathers of the Church, and sometimes ended with a dance. As

a matter of course the half-comic ‘Intermezzi’ of secondary characters

were not wanting in Italy, yet this feature was hardly so broadly marked

as in northern countries.[930] The artificial means by which figures

were made to rise and float in the air--one of the chief delights of

these representations--were probably much better understood in Italy

than elsewhere; and at Florence in the fourteenth century the hitches

in these performances were a stock subject of ridicule.[931] Soon after

Brunellesco invented for the Feast of the Annunciation in the Piazza San

Felice a marvellous apparatus consisting of a heavenly globe surrounded

by two circles of angels, out of which Gabriel flew down in a machine

shaped like an almond. Cecca, too, devised the mechanism for such

displays.[932] The spiritual corporations or the quarters of the city

which undertook the charge and in part the performance of these plays

spared, at all events in the larger towns, no trouble and expense to

render them as perfect and artistic as possible. The same was no doubt

the case at the great court festivals, when Mysteries were acted as well

as pantomimes and secular dramas. The court of Pietro Riario (p. 106),

and that of Ferrara were assuredly not wanting in all that human

invention could produce.[933] When we picture to ourselves the

theatrical talent and the splendid costumes of the actors, the scenes

constructed in the style of the architecture of the period, and hung

with garlands and tapestry, and in the background the noble buildings of

an Italian piazza, or the slender columns of some great courtyard or

cloister, the effect is one of great brilliance. But just as the secular

drama suffered from this passion for display, so the higher poetical

development of the Mystery was arrested by the same cause. In the texts

which are left we find for the most part the poorest dramatic

groundwork, relieved now and then by a fine lyrical or rhetorical

passage, but no trace of the grand symbolic enthusiasm which

distinguishes the ‘Autos Sagramentales’ of Calderon.

In the smaller towns, where the scenic display was less, the effect of

these spiritual plays on the character of the spectators may have been

greater. We read[934] that one of the great preachers of repentance of

whom more will be said later on, Roberto da Lecce, closed his Lenten

sermons during the plague of 1448, at Perugia, with a representation of

the Passion. The piece followed the New Testament closely. The actors

were few, but the whole people wept aloud. It is true that on such

occasions emotional stimulants were resorted to which were borrowed from

the crudest realism. We are reminded of the pictures of Matteo da Siena,

or of the groups of clay-figures by Guido Mazzoni, when we read that the

actor who took the part of Christ appeared covered with wales and

apparently sweating blood, and even bleeding from a wound in the

side.[935]

The special occasions on which these mysteries were performed, apart

from the great festivals of the Church, from princely weddings, and the

like, were of various kinds. When, for example, S. Bernardino of Siena

was canonised by the Pope (1450), a sort of dramatic imitation of the

ceremony took place (rappresentazione), probably on the great square of

his native city, and for two days there was feasting with meat and drink

for all comers.[936] We are told that a learned monk celebrated his

promotion to the degree of Doctor of Theology, by giving a

representation of the legend about the patron saint of the city.[937]

Charles VIII. had scarcely entered Italy before he was welcomed at Turin

by the widowed Duchess Bianca of Savoy with a sort of half-religious

pantomime,[938] in which a pastoral scene first symbolised the Law of

Nature, and then a procession of patriarchs the Law of Grace.

Afterwards followed the story of Lancelot of the Lake, and that ‘of

Athens.’ And no sooner had the King reached Chieri, than he was received

with another pantomime, in which a woman in childbed was shown,

surrounded by distinguished visitors.

If any church festival was held by universal consent to call for

exceptional efforts, it was the feast of Corpus Christi, which in Spain

(p. 413) gave rise to a special class of poetry. We possess a splendid

description of the manner in which that feast was celebrated at Viterbo

by Pius II. in 1482.[939] The procession itself, which advanced from a

vast and gorgeous tent in front of S. Francesco along the main street to

the Cathedral, was the least part of the ceremony. The cardinals and

wealthy prelates had divided the whole distance into parts, over which

they severally presided, and which they decorated with curtains,

tapestry, and garlands.[940] Each of them had also erected a stage of

his own, on which, as the procession passed by, short historical and

allegorical scenes were represented. It is not clear from the account

whether all the characters were living beings or some merely draped

figures;[941] the expense was certainly very great. There was a

suffering Christ amid singing cherubs, the Last Supper with a figure of

St. Thomas Aquinas, the combat between the Archangel Michael and the

devils, fountains of wine and orchestras of angels, the grave of Christ

with all the scene of the Resurrection, and finally, on the square

before the Cathedral, the tomb of the Virgin. It opened after High Mass

and the benediction, and the Mother of God ascended singing to Paradise,

where she was crowned by her Son, and led into the presence of the

Eternal Father.

Among these representations in the public street, that given by the

Cardinal Vice-Chancellor Roderigo Borgia, afterwards Pope Alexander VI.,

was remarkable for its splendour and obscure symbolism.[942] It offers

an early instance of the fondness for salvos of artillery[943] which was

characteristic of the house of Borgia.

The account is briefer which Pius II. gives us of the procession held

the same year in Rome on the arrival of the skull of St. Andrew from

Greece. There, too, Roderigo Borgia distinguished himself by his

magnificence; but this festival had a more secular character than the

other, as, besides the customary choirs of angels, other masks were

exhibited, as well as ‘strong men,’ who seemed to have performed various

feats of muscular prowess.

* * * * *

Such representations as were wholly or chiefly secular in their

character were arranged, especially at the more important princely

courts, mainly with a view to splendid and striking scenic effects. The

subjects were mythological or allegorical, and the interpretation

commonly lay on the surface. Extravagancies, indeed, were not

wanting--gigantic animals from which a crowd of masked figures suddenly

emerged, as at Siena[944] in the year 1465, when at a public reception a

ballet of twelve persons came out of a golden wolf; living table

ornaments, not always, however, showing the tasteless exaggeration of

the Burgundian Court (p. 182)--and the like. Most of them showed some

artistic or poetical feeling. The mixture of pantomime and the drama at

the Court of Ferrara has been already referred to in the treating of

poetry (p. 318). The entertainments given in 1473 by the Cardinal Pietro

Riario at Rome when Leonora of Aragon, the destined bride of Prince

Hercules of Ferrara, was passing through the city, were famous far

beyond the limits of Italy.[945] The plays acted were mysteries on some

ecclesiastical subject, the pantomimes on the contrary, were

mythological. There were represented Orpheus with the beasts, Perseus

and Andromeda, Ceres drawn by dragons, Bacchus and Ariadne by panthers,

and finally the education of Achilles. Then followed a ballet of the

famous lovers of ancient times, with a troop of nymphs, which was

interrupted by an attack of predatory centaurs, who in their turn were

vanquished and put to flight by Hercules. The fact, in itself a trifle,

may be mentioned, as characteristic of the taste of the time, that the

human beings who at all the festivals appeared as statues in niches or

on pillars and triumphal arches, and then showed themselves to be alive

by singing or speaking, wore their natural complexion and a natural

costume, and thus the sense of incongruity was removed; while in the

house of Riario there was exhibited a living child, gilt from head to

foot, who showered water round him from a spring.[946]

Brilliant pantomimes of the same kind were given at Bologna, at the

marriage of Annibale Bentivoglio with Lucrezia of Este.[947] Instead of

the orchestra, choral songs were sung, while the fairest of Diana’s

nymphs flew over to the Juno Pronuba, and while Venus walked with a

lion--which in this case was a disguised man--among a troop of savages.

The decorations were a faithful representation of a forest. At Venice,

in 1491, the princesses of the house of Este[948] were met and welcomed

by the Bucentaur, and entertained by boat-races and a splendid

pantomime, called ‘Meleager,’ in the court of the ducal palace. At Milan

Lionardo da Vinci[949] directed the festivals of the Duke and of some

leading citizens. One of his machines, which must have rivalled that of

Brunellesco (p. 411), represented the heavenly bodies with all their

movements on a colossal scale. Whenever a planet approached Isabella,

the bride of the young Duke, the divinity whose name it bore stepped

forth from the globe,[950] and sang some verses written by the

court-poet Bellincioni (1489). At another festival (1493) the model of

the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza appeared with other objects

under a triumphal arch on the square before the castle. We read in

Vasari of the ingenious automata which Lionardo invented to welcome the

French kings as masters of Milan. Even in the smaller cities great

efforts were sometimes made on these occasions. When Duke Borso came in

1453 to Reggio[951] to receive the homage of the city, he was met at

the door by a great machine, on which S. Prospero, the patron saint of

the town, appeared to float, shaded by a baldachino held by angels,

while below him was a revolving disc with eight singing cherubs, two of

whom received from the saint the sceptre and keys of the city, which

they then delivered to the Duke, while saints and angels held forth in

his praise. A chariot drawn by concealed horses now advanced, bearing an

empty throne, behind which stood a figure of Justice attended by a

genius. At the corners of the chariot sat four grey-headed lawgivers,

encircled by angels with banners; by its side rode standard-bearers in

complete armour. It need hardly be added that the goddess and the genius

did not suffer the Duke to pass by without an address. A second car,

drawn by an unicorn, bore a Caritas with a burning torch; between the

two came the classical spectacle of a car in the form of a ship, moved

by men concealed within it. The whole procession now advanced before the

Duke. In front of the Church of S. Pietro, a halt was again made. The

saint, attended by two angels, descended in an aureole from the façade,

placed a wreath of laurel on the head of the Duke, and then floated back

to his former position.[952] The clergy provided another allegory of a

purely religious kind. Idolatry and Faith stood on two lofty pillars,

and after Faith, represented by a beautiful girl, had uttered her

welcome, the other column fell to pieces with the lay figure upon it.

Further on, Borso was met by Cæsar with seven beautiful women, who were

presented to him as the seven Virtues which he was exhorted to pursue.

At last the Cathedral was reached, but after the service the Duke again

took his seat on a lofty golden throne, and a second time received the

homage of some of the masks already mentioned. To conclude all, three

angels flew down from an adjacent building, and, amid songs of joy,

delivered to him branches of palm, as symbols of peace.

* * * * *

Let us now give a glance at those festivals the chief feature of which

was the procession itself.

There is no doubt that from an early period of the Middle Ages the

religious processions gave rise to the use of masks. Little angels

accompanied the sacrament or the sacred pictures and reliques on their

way through the streets; or characters in the Passion--such as Christ

with the cross, the thieves and the soldiers, or the faithful

women--were represented for public edification. But the great feasts of

the Church were from an early time accompanied by a civic procession,

and the naïveté of the Middle Ages found nothing unfitting in the many

secular elements which it contained. We may mention especially the naval

car (_carrus navalis_), which had been inherited from pagan times,[953]

and which, as an instance already quoted shows, was admissible at

festivals of very various kinds, and has permanently left its name on

one of them in particular--the Carnival. Such ships, decorated with all

possible splendour, delighted the eyes of spectators long after the

original meaning of them was forgotten. When Isabella of England met her

bridegroom, the Emperor Frederick II., at Cologne, she was met by a

number of such chariots, drawn by invisible horses, and filled with a

crowd of priests who welcomed her with music and singing.

But the religious processions were not only mingled with secular

accessories of all kinds, but were often replaced by processions of

clerical masks. Their origin is perhaps to be found in the parties of

actors who wound their way through the streets of the city to the place

where they were about to act the mystery; but it is possible that at an

early period the clerical procession may have constituted itself as a

distinct species. Dante[954] describes the ‘Trionfo’ of Beatrice, with

the twenty-four Elders of the Apocalypse, with the four mystical Beasts,

with the three Christian and four Cardinal Virtues, and with Saint Luke,

Saint Paul, and other Apostles, in a way which almost forces us to

conclude that such processions actually occurred before his time. We

are chiefly led to this conclusion by the chariot in which Beatrice

drives, and which in the miraculous forest of the vision would have been

unnecessary or rather out of place. It is possible, on the other hand,

that Dante looked on the chariot as a symbol of victory and triumph, and

that his poem rather served to give rise to these processions, the form

of which was borrowed from the triumph of the Roman Emperors. However

this may be, poetry and theology continued to make free use of the

symbol. Savonarola[955] in his ‘Triumph of the Cross’ represents Christ

on a Chariot of Victory, above his head the shining sphere of the

Trinity, in his left hand the Cross, in his right the Old and New

Testaments; below him the Virgin Mary; on both sides the Martyrs and

Doctors of the Church with open books; behind him all the multitude of

the saved; and in the distance the countless host of his

enemies--emperors, princes, philosophers, heretics--all vanquished,

their idols broken, and their books burned. A great picture of Titian,

which is known only as a woodcut, has a good deal in common with this

description. The ninth and tenth of Sabellico’s (p. 62) thirteen Elegies

on the Mother of God contain a minute account of her triumph, richly

adorned with allegories, and especially interesting from that

matter-of-fact air which also characterises the realistic painting of

the fifteenth century.

Nevertheless, the secular ‘Trionfi’ were far more frequent than the

religious. They were modelled on the procession of the Roman Imperator,

as it was known from the old reliefs and from the writings of ancient

authors.[956] The historical conceptions then prevalent in Italy, with

which these shows were closely connected, have been already discussed

(p. 139).

We now and then read of the actual triumphal entrance of a victorious

general, which was organised as far as possible on the ancient pattern,

even against the will of the hero himself. Francesco Sforza had the

courage (1450) to refuse the triumphal chariot which had been prepared

for his return to Milan, on the ground that such things were monarchical

superstitions.[957] Alfonso the Great, on his entrance into Naples

(1443), declined the wreath of laurel,[958] which Napoleon did not

disdain to wear at his coronation in Notre-Dame. For the rest, Alfonso’s

procession, which passed by a breach in the wall through the city to the

cathedral, was a strange mixture of antique, allegorical, and purely

comic elements. The car, drawn by four white horses, on which he sat

enthroned, was lofty and covered with gilding; twenty patricians carried

the poles of the canopy of cloth of gold which shaded his head. The part

of the procession which the Florentines then present in Naples had

undertaken was composed of elegant young cavaliers, skilfully

brandishing their lances, of a chariot with the figure of Fortune, and

of seven Virtues on horseback. The goddess herself,[959] in accordance

with the inexorable logic of allegory to which even the painters at that

time conformed, wore hair only on the front part of her head, while the

back part was bald, and the genius who sat on the lower steps of the

car, and who symbolised the fugitive character of fortune, had his feet

immersed (?) in a basin of water. Then followed, equipped by the same

Florentines, a troop of horsemen in the costumes of various nations,

dressed as foreign princes and nobles, and then, crowned with laurel and

standing above a revolving globe, a Julius Cæsar,[960] who explained to

the king in Italian verse the meaning of the allegories, and then took

his place in the procession. Sixty Florentines, all in purple and

scarlet, closed this splendid display of what their home could achieve.

Then a band of Catalans advanced on foot, with lay figures of horses

fastened on to them before and behind, and engaged in a mock combat with

a body of Turks, as though in derision of the Florentine sentimentalism.

Last of all came a gigantic tower, the door of which was guarded by an

angel with a drawn sword; on it stood four Virtues, who each addressed

the king with a song. The rest of the show had nothing specially

characteristic about it.

At the entrance of Louis XII. into Milan in the year 1507[961] we find,

besides the inevitable chariot with Virtues, a living group representing

Jupiter, Mars, and a figure of Italy caught in a net. After which came a

car laden with trophies, and so forth.

And when there were in reality no triumphs to celebrate, the poets found

a compensation for themselves and their patrons. Petrarch and Boccaccio

had described the representation of every sort of fame as attendants

each of an allegorical figure (p. 409); the celebrities of past ages

were now made attendants of the prince. The poetess Cleofe Gabrielli of

Gubbio paid this honour to Borso of Ferrara.[962] She gave him seven

queens--the seven liberal arts--as his handmaids, with whom he mounted a

chariot; further, a crowd of heroes, distinguished by names written on

their foreheads; then followed all the famous poets; and after them the

gods driving in their chariots. There is, in fact, at this time simply

no end to the mythological and allegorical charioteering, and the most

important work of art of Borso’s time--the frescoes in the Palazzo

Schifanoja--shows us a whole frieze filled with these motives.[963]

Raphael, when he had to paint the Camera della Segnatura, found this

mode of artistic thought completely vulgarised and worn out. The new and

final consecration which he gave to it will remain a wonder to all ages.

The triumphal processions, strictly speaking, of victorious generals,

formed the exception. But all the festive processions, whether they

celebrated any special event or were mainly held for their own sakes,

assumed more or less the character and nearly always the name of a

‘Trionfo.’ It is a wonder that funerals were not also treated in the

same way.[964]

It was the practice, both at the Carnival and on other occasions, to

represent the triumphs of ancient Roman commanders, such as that of

Paulus Æmilius under Lorenzo the Magnificent at Florence, and that of

Camillus on the visit of Leo X. Both were conducted by the painter

Francesco Gronacci.[965] In Rome, the first complete exhibition of this

kind was the triumph of Augustus after the victory over Cleopatra,[966]

under Paul II., where, besides the comic and mythological masks, which,

as a matter of fact, were not wanting in the ancient triumphs, all the

other requisites were to be found--kings in chains, tablets with decrees

of the senate and people, a senate clothed in the ancient costume,

praetors, aediles, and quaestors, four chariots filled with singing

masks, and, doubtless, cars laden with trophies. Other processions

rather aimed at setting forth, in a general way, the universal empire of

ancient Rome; and in answer to the very real danger which threatened

Europe from the side of the Turks, a cavalcade of camels bearing masks

representing Ottoman prisoners, appeared before the people. Later, at

the Carnival of the year 1500, Cæsar Borgia, with a bold allusion to

himself, celebrated the triumph of Julius Cæsar, with a procession of

eleven magnificent chariots,[967] doubtless to the scandal of the

pilgrims who had come for the Jubilee (vol. i. p. 116). Two ‘Trionfi,’

famous for their taste and beauty, were given by rival companies in

Florence, on the election of Leo X. to the Papacy.[968] One of them

represented the three Ages of Man, the other the four Ages of the World,

ingeniously set forth in five scenes of Roman history, and in two

allegories of the golden age of Saturn and of its final return. The

imagination displayed in the adornment of the chariots, when the great

Florentine artists undertook the work, made the scene so impressive that

such representations became in time a permanent element in the popular

life. Hitherto the subject cities had been satisfied merely to present

their symbolical gifts--costly stuffs and wax-candles--on the day when

they annually did homage. The guild of merchants now built ten chariots,

to which others were afterwards to be added, not so much to carry as to

symbolise the tribute, and Andrea del Sarto, who painted some of them,

no doubt did his work to perfection.[969] These cars, whether used to

hold tribute or trophies, now formed a part of all such celebrations,

even when there was not much money to be laid out. The Sienese

announced, in 1477, the alliance between Ferrante and Sixtus IV., with

which they themselves were associated, by driving a chariot round the

city, with ‘one clad as the goddess of peace standing on a hauberk and

other arms.’[970]

At the Venetian festivals the processions, not on land but on water,

were marvellous in their fantastic splendour. The sailing of the

Bucentaur to meet the Princess of Ferrara in the year 1491 (p. 136)

seems to have been something belonging to fairyland.[971] Countless

vessels with garlands and hangings, filled with the richly-dressed youth

of the city, moved in front; genii with attributes symbolising the

various gods, floated on machines hung in the air; below stood others

grouped as tritons and nymphs; the air was filled with music, sweet

odours, and the fluttering of embroidered banners. The Bucentaur was

followed by such a crowd of boats of every sort that for a mile all

round (_octo stadia_) the water could not be seen. With regard to the

rest of the festivities, besides the pantomime mentioned above, we may

notice as something new, a boat-race of fifty powerful girls. In the

sixteenth century,[972] the nobility were divided into corporations with

a view to these festivals, whose most noteworthy feature was some

extraordinary machine placed on a ship. So, for instance, in the year

1541, at the festival of the ‘Sempiterni,’ a round ‘universe’ floated

along the Grand Canal, and a splendid ball was given inside it. The

Carnival, too, in this city was famous for its dances, processions, and

exhibitions of every kind. The Square of St. Mark was found to give

space enough not only for tournaments (p. 390), but for ‘Trionfi,’

similar to those common on the mainland. At a festival held on the

conclusion of peace,[973] the pious brotherhoods (‘scuole’) took each

its part in the procession. There, among golden chandeliers with red

candles, among crowds of musicians and winged boys with golden bowls and

horns of plenty, was seen a car on which Noah and David sat together

enthroned; then came Abigail, leading a camel laden with treasures, and

a second car with a group of political figures--Italy sitting between

Venice and Liguria, the two last with their coats of arms, the former

with a stork, the symbol of unity--and on a raised step three female

symbolical figures with the arms of the allied princes. This was

followed by a great globe with the constellations, as it seems, round

it. The princes themselves, or rather their bodily representatives,

appeared on other chariots with their servants and their coats of arms,

if we have rightly interpreted our author.[974] There was also music at

these and all other similar processions.

The Carnival, properly so called, apart from these great triumphal

marches, had nowhere, perhaps, in the fifteenth century, so varied a

character as in Rome.[975] There were races of every kind--of horses,

asses, buffalos, old men, young men, Jews, and so on. Paul II.

entertained the people in crowds before the Palazzo di Venezia, in which

he lived. The games in the Piazza Navona, which had probably never

altogether ceased since the classical times, were remarkable for their

warlike splendour. We read of a sham fight of cavalry, and a review of

all the citizens in arms. The greatest freedom existed with regard to

the use of masks, which were sometimes allowed for several months

together.[976] Sixtus IV. ventured, in the most populous part of the

city--at the Campofiore and near the Banchi--to make his way through

crowds of masks, though he declined to receive them as visitors in the

Vatican. Under Innocent VIII., a discreditable usage, which had already

appeared among the Cardinals, attained its height. In the Carnival of

1491, they sent one another chariots full of splendid masks, of singers,

and of buffoons, chanting scandalous verses. They were accompanied by

men on horseback.[977] Apart from the Carnival, the Romans seem to have

been the first to discover the effect of a great procession by

torchlight. When Pius II. came back from the Congress of Mantua in

1459,[978] the people waited on him with a squadron of horsemen bearing

torches, who rode in shining circles before his palace. Sixtus IV.,

however, thought it better to decline a nocturnal visit of the people,

who proposed to wait on him with torches and olive-branches.[979]

But the Florentine Carnival surpassed the Roman in a certain class of

processions, which have left their mark even in literature.[980] Among a

crowd of masks on foot and on horseback appeared some huge, fantastic

chariot, and upon it an allegorical figure or group of figures with the

proper accompaniments, such as Jealousy with four spectacled faces on

one head; the four temperaments (p. 309) with the planets belonging to

them; the three Fates; Prudence enthroned above Hope and Fear, which lay

bound before her; the four Elements, Ages, Winds, Seasons, and so on; as

well as the famous chariot of Death with the coffins, which presently

opened. Sometimes we meet with a splendid scene from classical

mythology--Bacchus and Ariadne, Paris and Helen, and others. Or else a

chorus of figures forming some single class or category, as the beggars,

the hunters and nymphs, the lost souls, who in their lifetime were

hard-hearted women, the hermits, the astrologers, the vagabonds, the

devils, the sellers of various kinds of wares, and even on one occasion

‘il popolo,’ the people as such, who all reviled one another in their

songs. The songs, which still remain and have been collected, give the

explanation of the masquerade sometimes in a pathetic, sometimes in a

humorous, and sometimes in an excessively indecent tone. Some of the

worst in this respect are attributed to Lorenzo the Magnificent,

probably because the real author did not venture to declare himself.

However this may be, we must certainly ascribe to him the beautiful song

which accompanied the masque of Bacchus and Ariadne, whose refrain still

echoes to us from the fifteenth century, like a regretful presentiment

of the brief splendour of the Renaissance itself:--

‘Quanto è bella giovinezza,

Che si fugge tuttavia!

Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:

Di doman non c’è certezza.’