still lost in the unpenetrated realms of the poet's fancy,--
"Atlantis lies beyond the pillars yet!"
_"Here Ischia smiles
O'er liquid miles."_
* * * * *
_High o'er the sea-surge and the sands,
Like a great galleon wrecked and cast
Ashore by storms, thy Castle stands
A mouldering landmark of the Past._
_Upon its terrace-walk, I see
A phantom gliding to and fro;
It is Colonna,--it is she
Who lived and loved so long ago._
LONGFELLOW.
_We are the only two that, face to face,
Do know each other, as God doth know us both.
--O fearless friendship, that held nothing back!
O absolute trust, that yielded every key,
And flung each curtain up, and drew me on
To enter the white temple of thy soul,
So vast, so cold, so waste!--and give thee sense
Of living warmth, of throbbing tenderness,
Of soft dependencies! O faith that made
Thee free to seek the spot where my dead hopes
Have sepulture, and read above the crypt
Deep graven, the tearful legend of my life!
There, gloomed with the memorials of my past,
Thou once for all didst learn what man accepts
Lothly--(how should he else?)--that never woman,
Fashioned a woman,--heart, brain, body, soul,--
Ever twice loved._
"_Vittoria Colonna to Michael Angelo._"
MARGARET J. PRESTON.
IV
A PAGE DE CONTI FROM ISCHIA
"Unto my buried lord I give myself."
* * * * *
Michael Angelo!
A man that all men honor, and the model
That all should follow; one who works and prays,
For work is prayer, and consecrates his life
To the sublime ideal of his art
Till art and life are one.
LONGFELLOW, from "_Michael Angelo; A Fragment_."
In that poetic sail along the Italian coast between Naples and Genoa the
voyager feels that it is
"On no earthly sea with transient roar"
that his bark is floating; that
"Unto no earthly airs he trims his sail,"
as he flits along this coast when violet waves dash against a brilliant
background of sky. Ischia reveals herself through the blue, transparent
air, gleaming with opalescent lights, quivering, fading and flaming
again as the afterglow in the east rivals in its coloring the sunset
splendors of the west. Is there in the air a faint, lingering echo of
the _chant d'amour_ of sirens on the rocky shores? Is Parthenope still
to be descried? Gazing upon Ischia there is a rush of romantic
impressions as if one were transported into ideal regions of song,
before this impression begins to resolve itself into definite
remembrance of fact and incident. Surely some exquisite associations in
the past had enchanted this island in memory and invested it with the
magic light that never was on sea or land. Traditions of beauty; of the
lives of scholar and savant and princes of the church; of a court of
nobility enriched and adorned by prelate and by poet; traditions, too,
of a woman's consecration to an immortal love and the solace of grief by
poetic genius and exalted friendships,--all these seem to cling about
Ischia in a vague, atmospheric way till memory, still groping backward
in the twilight of the richly historic past, suddenly crystallized into
recognition that it was Ischia which was the home of Vittoria Colonna,
the greatest woman poet of the Italian Renaissance. Lines, long since
read, arose like an incantation; and like bars of music, each note of
which vibrated in the air, came this fragment of one of her songs:--
"If in these rude and artless songs of mine
I never take the file in hand, nor try
With curious care and nice, fastidious eye
To deck and polish each uncultured line,
'T is that it makes small merit of my name
To merit praise....
* * * * *
But it must be that heaven's own gracious gift
Which, with its breath, divine, inspires my soul,
Strikes forth these sparks unbidden by my will."
[Illustration: ISCHIA, FROM THE SEA
_Page 282_]
Vittoria Colonna was called the most beautiful and gifted woman of her
time in all Italy. Her life of nearly sixty years (1490-1547) lay
entirely in that period when the apathy of ten centuries was broken,
when the darkness fled before the dawning of a glorious day. New methods
of thought, revised taste in poetry, new discoveries of science, a
nobler progress in criticism, great discoveries, and a lofty and
unprecedented freedom of conviction marked the century between 1450 and
1550, stamping it as the marvellous time which we know as the
Renaissance, "that solemn fifteenth century which can hardly be studied
too much, not merely for its positive results in the things of the
intellect and the imagination, its concrete works of art, its special
and prominent personalities, with their profound aesthetic charm, but for
its general spirit and character, for the ethical qualities of which it
is a consummate type."
It was peculiarly fitting that Italy should take the initiative in
inaugurating this _vita nuova_. Italy had a language and literature and
art. Dante had delivered his solemn message and Petrarca his impassioned
song. Boccaccio had taught the gospel of gladness. Who shall analyze the
secret springs of their inspiration and reveal to what degree Ovid and
Horace and Virgil influenced the later literature? A new solar system
was established by Copernicus. America was discovered. Science entered
on her definite and ceaseless progress, and religion and art became
significant forces in human life. Printing had been invented and the
compass discovered.
Into this time of new forces, when everything was throbbing and
pulsating with life, was Vittoria Colonna born into social prestige and
splendor. Her father, Fabrizio Colonna, and her mother, Agnesina di
Montefeltro, a daughter of the Duke of Urbino, were then domiciled in
the castle of Marino, on the Lago d'Albano, a magnificent palace some
twelve miles from Rome, in which the Duke d'Amalfi (the father of
Fabrizio Colonna) lived, and which is still standing, filled with
memorials and relics of historic interest. Urbino, the seat of the
Montefeltro, is renowned as having been the birthplace of Raphael, who
"Only drank the precious wine of youth,"
but who
"... lives immortal in the hearts of men,
... and the world is fairer
That he lived in it."
The Colonna date back to the eleventh century, and they gave many
princes and cardinals to the country. At the close of the thirteenth
century they were arrayed against Boniface VIII, the Pope, who accused
them of crime, while they disputed the validity of his election to the
holy office. In retaliation, the Pope excommunicated the entire family,
anathematized them as heretics and declared their estates forfeited to
the church. The Colonna, far from being intimidated, commanded three
hundred armed horsemen, attacked the papal palace, which they plundered,
and made him a prisoner,--an incident referred to by Dante in the
"Inferno." The Colonna and the Orsini were also at warfare, and when a
member of the former family was elevated to the papacy under the name of
Martin V, they despoiled property of the Orsini.
Gay excursionists to-day, who fly over the Campagna in their
twentieth-century touring cars to the lovely towns of the Alban hills,
may look down from Castel Gandolfo on the gloomy, mediaeval little town
of Marino, part way up a steep hillside, whose summit is crowned by the
castle once belonging to the Colonna and in which Vittoria passed her
early childhood. "Nothing," in his "Roba di Roma," says Story, "can be
more rich and varied than this magnificent amphitheatre of the Campagna
of Rome, ... sometimes drear, mysterious, and melancholy in desolate
stretches; sometimes rolling like an inland sea whose waves have
suddenly become green with grass, golden with grain, and gracious with
myriads of wild flowers, where scarlet poppies blaze and pink daisies
cover vast meadows and vines shroud the picturesque ruins of antique
villas, aqueducts, and tombs, or drop from mediaeval towers and
fortresses."
Flying in the swift motor-car of the time toward the Alban hills, Marino
may be easily reached in less than an hour from the Porta San Giovanni,
and in the near distance Monte Albani, rising into the cone of Monte
Cavi, is a picture before the eye, while on the lower slopes gleam the
white villages of Albani, Marino, Castel Gandolfo, and Frascati, with
the campanile of a cathedral, a fortress-like ruin, or gardens and olive
orchards clambering up the heights. The Papal town of Rocca di Papa
crowns one summit where once Tarquin's temple to Jupiter stood and on
whose ruins now gleam afar in the Italian sunshine the white walls of
the Passionist convent of Monte Cavi, built by Cardinal York. From this
height Juno gazed upon the great conflict of contending armies, if
Virgil's topography be entitled to authority. And here, through a defile
in the hills, one may look toward Naples, "and then rising abruptly
with sheer limestone cliffs and crevasses, where transparent purple
shadows sleep all day long, towers the grand range of the Sabine
mountains, whose lofty peaks surround the Campagna to the east and north
like a curved amphitheatre.... Again, skirting the Pontine Marshes on
the east, are the Volscian mountains, closing up the Campagna at
Terracina, where they overhang the road and affront the sea with their
great barrier. Following along the Sabine hills, you will see at
intervals the towns of Palestrina and Tivoli, where the Anio tumbles in
foam, and other little mountain towns nestled here and there among the
soft airy hollows, or perched on the cliffs."
In this landscape there are three ruined villages--Colonna, Gallicano,
and Zagarda--perched on their respective hills. The castle of the
Colonna family is now restored and modernized to a degree that leaves
little trace of that former stately grandeur which is transmuted into
modern convenience and comfort.
In this scene of romantic beauty, with the vista of beauty almost
incomparable in any inland view in Italy, Vittoria passed her infancy,
until, at the age of four, her childhood was transplanted to fairy
Ischia. In all this chain of Alban towns, including Marino, Viterbo,
Ariccia, and Rocca di Papa, the great family of the Colonna owned
extensive estates, each crowning some height, while the defiles between
were filled, then as now, with the foam and blossom of riotous greenery.
Then, as now, across the mystic Campagna, the dome of St. Peter's
silhouetted itself against a golden background of western sky.
One needs not to have had privileged access to the sibylline leaves of
the Cumaean soothsayer to recognize that Vittoria Colonna was born under
the star of destiny. Her horoscope seemed to be inextricably entwined
with that of Italy; and the events which created and determined the
conditions of her life and its panoramic series of circumstances were
the events of Italy and of Europe as well--in political aspects and in
the influence on general progress, brought to bear by strong and
prominent individualities whose gifts, genius, or force dominated the
movements of the day.
To her father's change of political allegiance, from the French to the
Spanish side, in the war raging between those countries in 1494,
Vittoria owed all her life in Ischia; and her marriage, and all that
resulted from her becoming a member of the d'Avalos family, was due to
this espousal of a new political faith on the part of Fabrizio Colonna.
To the fact that in 1425 the war with France again broke out was due the
loss of her husband and the conditions that consecrated her life to
poetry, to learning, and that made possible the beautiful and
sympathetic friendship between herself and Michael Angelo. Her life
presents the most forcible illustration of the overruling power on human
life and destiny.
It was the political change of faith on the part of Fabrizio Colonna
that initiated an unforeseen and undreamed-of drama of life for his
infant daughter, the first act of which included the command of the King
of Naples that the little Vittoria should be betrothed to Francesco
d'Avalos, the son of Alphonso, Marchese di Pescara, of Ischia, one of
the nobles who stood nearest to the king in those troubled days.
Francesco was born in the castle on Ischia in 1489, and was one year
older than Vittoria. Fabrizio exchanged his castle at Marino for one in
Naples, which city made him the Grand Constable. The d'Avalos castle in
Ischia had at this time for its chatelaine the Duchessa di Francavilla,
who is said by some authorities to have been the elder sister and by
others to have been the aunt of Francesco. Donna Constanza d'Avalos,
later the Duchessa di Francavilla, had been made the Castellana of the
island for her courage in refusing to capitulate to the French troops
when, after the death of her father, she was left in sole charge of the
d'Avalos estates, and Emperor Charles V elevated her rank to that of
Principessa. The Duchessa was one of the most remarkable women of the
day. She was a classical scholar, and herself a writer, the author of a
book entitled "_Degli Infortuni e Travagli del Mondo_." To the care of
this learned and brilliant woman, a great lady in the social life of the
time, the care of the little Vittoria was committed, and she studied and
played and grew up with Francesco, her future husband. The d'Avalos
family ranked among the highest nobility of the Court of Naples, and the
Principessa reigned as a queen of letters and society in her island
kingdom. It was under her care that the two children, Francesco and
Vittoria, pursued their studies together and acquired every grace of
scholarship and accomplishment of society. The circles which the
Duchessa drew around her included many gentlewomen from Sicily and from
Naples; and "the life at Castel d'Ischia was synonymous with everything
glorious and elegant," recorded Visconti, "and its fame has been
immortalized." Although Francesco (the future Marchese di Pescara) was
born in Italian dominions, yet the d'Avalos family were of Spanish
ancestry and traditions. The musical Castilian was the language of the
household. The race ideals of Spain--the poetic, the impassioned, the
joy in color and movement--pervaded the very atmosphere of Castel
d'Ischia. Vittoria's earliest girlhood revealed her exceptional beauty
and charm, and gave evidence that the gods loved her and had dowered her
with their immortal gifts and genius, which flowered, under the
sympathetic guidance and stimulus of such a woman as the Principessa
(the Duchessa di Francavilla) and the society she drew around her, as
the orange and the myrtle flower under the southern sunshine.
The literature of biography presents no chapter that can rival this in
the idyllic beauty of the lives of those two children on the lovely
island in the violet sea. The perpetual conflicts that were waged in
both Rome and Naples awakened no echoes in this romantic and isolated
spot, whose atmosphere was that of the peace of scholarly pursuits and
lofty thought that is found where the arts and the muses hold their
sway.
But in 1496 came the tragedy of the death of the young king and queen of
Naples; four years later Rome celebrated a jubilee in which Naples took
part, sending a splendid procession as escort to the famous Madonna that
was carried from Naples to Rome and back, working miracles, it is said,
on both journeys, as a Madonna should. A year later Frederick of Naples
and the queen, and two of the king's sisters,--ladies of high
nobility,--came as guests to the castle in Ischia,--royal exiles seeking
shelter. Five years later the new king and queen were welcomed with
gorgeous parade and acclamation. A pier was thrown out over one hundred
feet into the sea; on this a tent of gold was erected, and all the
nobility of Naples, in the richest costumes of velvet and jewels,
thronged to meet the royal guests. Over the sunlit Bay of Naples
resounded the thunder of the guns in military salute and the cheers of
the people. Among the distinguished nobility present, Costanza, Duchessa
and Principessa di Francavilla, was a marked figure with her young
charge, Vittoria Colonna, at her side. She made a deep reverence and
kissed the hand of the king as he passed, as did many of the ladies of
highest rank, and at the fete of that evening Vittoria's beauty charmed
all eyes. Although it was well understood that she had been betrothed
since childhood to Francesco d'Avalos, yet many princes and nobles sued
for her hand and were refused by her father, who was at this time
established magnificently in Naples. Pope Julius II refused the
pleadings of two dukes, both of whom wished to seek Vittoria in
marriage, as he considered the love of the young girl for her betrothed
a matter to be held sacred. Three years later, when Vittoria was
nineteen and Francesco twenty, their marriage was celebrated in Castel
d'Ischia with the richest state and beauty of ceremonial observance. A
few months previous to this time she had returned to her father's
country home in the family castle at Marino, whither both Fabrizio
and Agnese Colonna accompanied their daughter. When the time appointed
for her bridal came, Vittoria was escorted to Ischia by princes, and
dukes, and ladies of honor, and the marriage gifts to the bride included
a chain of rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, linked with gold; a writing
desk of solid gold; wonderful bracelets; costumes of velvets, and
brocades and rich embroideries, and a portion of fourteen thousand
ducats.
[Illustration: LA ROCCA, ISCHIA
_Page 294_]
"The noted pair had not their equals in Italy at this time," writes a
contemporary historian. "Their life in Naples was all magnificence and
festivity, and when they desired to exchange it for the country they
left Naples for Pietralba on Monte Emo, where they assembled pleasant
parties of ladies and gentlemen. Much time was passed in their beloved
Ischia, where the Duchessa, as Castellana, was obliged to receive much
company. And here were found the flower of chivalry and the men most
noted in letters.... They listened to the poets Sanazzaro, il Rota, and
Bernardo Tasso; or they heard the admirable discourses on letters of
Musefico, il Giovio, and il Minturno. It was an agreeable school for the
youthful minds of Vittoria and Pescara. Thus passed in great happiness
the first three years of their married life."
It is not strange that to the young Marchesa di Pescara, Ischia had
become an enchanted island. The scene of her happy childhood, of her
studies, of her first efforts in lyric art, of her stately and
resplendent bridal; the home, too, of her early married life,--it is
little wonder that in after years she translated into song its scenic
loveliness and the thoughts and visions it had inspired.
Again, the ever-recurring war came on, and in the spring of 1512 the
King of Naples conferred the doubtful privilege on the Marchesa di
Pescara of serving as the royal representative. It is said that Vittoria
personally superintended her young husband's outfit,--in horses,
attendants, armor, and other details belonging to a gentleman of rank.
Her father and her uncle, Prospero Colonna, were also among the military
who led Italian troops. In the terrible battle of Ravenna (which was
fought on the Easter Sunday, April 11, of 1512), Pescara was wounded,
taken prisoner, and carried to the fortress of Porta Gobbia. A messenger
was sent to Ischia, where Vittoria lived between her books and the
orange groves; and the twentieth-century cynic of 1907 will smile at the
form in which she expressed her sorrow,--that of a poem of some forty
stanzas, which began:--
"_Eccelso Mio Signor! Questa ti scrivo
Per te narrar tra quante dubbie voglie,
Fra quanti aspri martir, dogliosa io vivo!_"
A translation of this lyric epistle, made in prose, gives it more fully
as follows:--
"Eccelso Mio Signor: I write this to thee to tell thee amid what
bitter anxieties I live.... I believed that so many prayers and
tears, and love without measure, would not have been displeasing to
God.... Thy great valor has shone as in a Hector or an Achilles."
In this letter Vittoria tells him that when the messenger reached her,
she was lying on a point of the island ("_I_, in the _body_, my _mind_
always with _thee_," she says), and that the whole atmosphere had been
to her that day "like a cavern of black fog," and that "the marine gods
seemed to say to Ischia, 'To-day, Vittoria, thou shalt hear of disgrace
from the confines: thou now in health and honor, thou shalt be turned
to grief; but thy father and husband are saved, though taken
prisoners.'"
This presentiment she related to her husband's aunt, the Duchessa
Francavilla, the Castellana of Ischia, who begged her not to think of it
and said, "It would be strange for such a force to be conquered."
Just after this conversation between the youthful Marchesa and the
Duchessa, the messenger arrived. The psychic science of to-day would see
in this occurrence a striking instance of telepathy. In her poetic
epistle to her husband, Vittoria also says:--
"A wife ought to follow her husband at home and abroad; if he
suffers trouble, she suffers; if he is happy, she is; if he dies,
she dies. What happens to one happens to both; equals in life, they
are equals in death. His fate is her fate."
These letters--in keeping with the times--were, on both sides, expressed
in literary rather than in personal form. Pescara, from his captivity,
wrote to her a "Dialogue on Love,"--a manuscript for which Visconti
notes that he has searched in vain.
The Marchesa di Pescara went from Ischia to Naples, after learning of
the misfortunes that had overtaken her husband, in order that she might
be able constantly to receive direct communication regarding his fate. A
few months later the Marchese returned, making the day "brilliant with
joy" to Vittoria, but after a year of happiness he was again called to
service, and the Marchesa returned to her beloved Ischia. She gave
herself to the study of the ancient classics; she wrote poems, and
"considered no time of value but so spent," says Rota. The age was one
of a general revival of learning. Royalty, the Pope, the princes and
nobility were all giving themselves with ardor to this higher culture.
Under Dante the Italian language assumed new perfection. This period was
to Vittoria one of intense stimulus, and it must have had a formative
influence on her gifts and her mental power. Having no children, she
adopted a young cousin of her husband, the Marchese del Vasto, to
educate and to be the heir of their estates. In 1515, Pescara again
returned and the entire island of Ischia was "aflame with bonfires, and
the borders of the beautiful shore bright and warm with lights," in
honor of the event. Of this event, Vittoria wrote:--
"... My beloved returns to us ... his countenance radiant with
piety to God, with deeds born of inward faith."
At a magnificent wedding festival in the d'Avalos family about this
time, it is recorded that the Marchesa di Pescara "wore a robe of
brocaded crimson velvet, with large branches of beaten gold wrought on
it, with a headdress of wrought gold and a girdle of beaten gold around
her waist."
When the coronation of Charles V was to be celebrated at Aix-la-Chapelle
the Marchese di Pescara was appointed ambassador to represent the House
of Aragon on this brilliant occasion, when the new emperor was to be
invested with the crown and the sceptre of Charlemagne. Charles had
decided to journey by sea and to visit Henry VIII on the way, an
arrangement of which Cardinal Wolsey was aware, although he had kept
Henry in ignorance of it, according to those curious mental processes
of his mind where his young monarch was concerned. Shakespeare, in the
play of "King Henry VIII," describes the meeting of the two kings, which
occurred at Canterbury, "at a grand jubilee in honor of the shrine of
Thomas a Becket." One historian thus describes this scene:--