The name of Malatesta illuminates every step in Rimini. The
fortification that serves to enclose the town, strengthened by
towers of defence and by windows that resemble our modern casements,
is certainly due to them. The celebrated fortress known under the
name of Rocca Malatestiana still commands the city, although it is
now dismantled and converted into a prison, and upon the square,
San Francesco, there rises the Temple of the Malatestas (Tempio
Malatestiano), the purest building, perhaps, of the most beautiful
period of Italian art, upon the pediment of which you read the pompous
inscription: “To Immortal God Sigismond Malatesta, son of Pandolphe.”
[Illustration: ROCCA MALATESTIANA, ITALY.]
In 1294, Malatesta da Verucchio built the castle upon the same site,
and he made of it at once a sumptuous residence and a solid fortress
to which was given the name of Gattolo dei Malatesta. It is from there
that Verucchio dates his will. The great Ghiberti, the sculptor of
the “Gates of Paradise,” tells us, in his _Commentaries_ that
in 1400 he made some enamels for the apartments and that he painted
some frescoes. Alas! nothing of these remains for us. In 1446, comes
Sigismond, son of Pandolphe, the great warrior and conqueror, he who
has been nicknamed Poliorcète, skilful in making fortifications,
pupil and soon the rival of Roberto Valturco, the celebrated author of
the volume of _Re Militari_; he battered down the Gattolo, or,
at least, he changed it from roof to basement at the moment when the
discovery of artillery had changed all the conditions of the attack
and defence of old castles. It was during this transformation that
the frescoes and all the ornamentation, of which Ghiberti speaks,
disappeared. Two superb inscriptions, one Gothic, the other of the
first half of the Fifteenth Century, surmounted by the escutcheon of
the Malatestas with the helmet crowned by elephants’ heads and the
chess-board, are sure guarantees of these serious modifications. In
order that they should be proved with more certainty, Matteo de’ Pasti,
a pensioner of the lord of Rimini, struck, by order of his master, the
superb commemorative medal representing the Rocca Malatestiana. Piero
della Francesca, the great artist to whom we owe the greater number
of the beautiful portraits of the Bentivoglios, the Montefeltros, and
the Malatestas, brings us, in his turn, an unexceptionable proof,--the
day when, in the temple of San Francesco of Rimini, the pantheon of
the Malatesta family, he represents the lord of Rimini kneeling before
Saint Sigismond, and gives the view of the Rocca as a background for
his precious fresco.
So imposing a mass should certainly have triumphed over time, but it
has been disfigured at the pleasure of succeeding generations. Upon the
ground where we walk while regarding the present façade, is dug the
first enclosure, a large moat a hundred feet wide and thirty-five feet
deep, to-day filled up and forming a platform. We find no longer the
six towers, eighty feet high, destroyed by Urbain VIII. (1625), who has
also given his name to the building for more than a century,--Castello
Urbano. Finally, in 1826, the first circuit was razed, and, the moat
having already disappeared, they did away with the drawbridge. It is
nothing more than a prison, through the gratings of which we see the
red caps of the prisoners who come to gaze upon a bit of blue sky.
Another tradition insists that the Malatestas, sons of Verucchio,
lived, during the lifetime of their father, in a dwelling near the old
gate of San Andrea; but the house designated, dating at most from the
last centuries, belonged to the Graziani, and to-day it serves as the
residence for the family of the Ugolini Micheli. One sees how difficult
it is to establish anything even after long inquiry; however, the
conclusion of the historian, Tonini, must also be our own: the cruel
scene must have taken place in Rimini, and probably in the Gattolo
de Santa Colomba, that is to say in the fortress known to-day under
the name of Rocca Malatestiana, a residence greatly disfigured and
modified, where it would be impossible to identify the exact spot of
the murder, but which, according to a number of chronicles, was at the
moment this murder was accomplished, a princely residence, “containing
noble apartments,” with the exterior appearance of a castle.
Since Francesca was born in Ravenna, why has posterity unanimously
designated her under the name of Francesca da Rimini? Logically she
should be Francesca da Ravenna; but she lived in Rimini as the wife
of Giovanni Malatesta, and it was there that she expiated her crime,
or her weakness, by death; it was there that her tomb was made, and
posterity will therefore forever call her by the name of Francesca da
Rimini. Moreover, if we sum up the opinions of the chroniclers and
historians, it is understood by the most of them that the deed was
accomplished in this town, and they doubt it so little that the idea
never occurs to them to support a contrary opinion. Marco Battaglia,
Benvenuto da Imola, Fra Giovanni da Serravalle, and Baldo di Branchi
furnish proofs that might be considered as negative; but if they do not
cite the name of Rimini, it never occurs to them to mention any other
town. As for Jacopo Della Lana, Gradinego and Boccaccio, all three name
the city of the Malatestas, and later, when Silvio Pellico and many
other dramatic poets of other nations will write their dramas, their
poems, or their stories, they will not hesitate to place the scene in
the same city. Count Odoardo Fabri will not do otherwise, and if Lord
Byron had realized the plan he conceived and which he made known to
Murray, his publisher, in the letters which are now in everybody’s
hands, Rimini would still be the scene. Is it necessary to speak of
our compatriot, M. Auguste Thomas, the composer of _Mignon_, who
having written the score of _Francesca da Rimini_, dedicated it to
M. Tonini, the librarian of the Gambalunghiana.
Francesca then is not Francesca da Ravenna, she is and she will ever
remain “Francesca da Rimini.”
She belongs to the history of this town, or if you prefer, to its
legend. It is in vain to turn over the leaves of the archives, you
cannot deprive the city of the Malatestas of its touching picture.
Before formulating our conclusions we will note, merely for the
curiosity of the fact, a singular document taken from a volume printed
in Rimini in 1581, by Simbeni, entitled _Il Vermicello della
seta_, signed under the name Giovanni Andrea Corsucci da Sascorbaro,
and cited by Luigi Tonini:
“A few days ago in the church of Saint Augustin, in Rimini, they found
in a marble sepulchre Paolo Malatesta and Francesca, daughter of Guido
da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, who were put to death by Lancilotto, son
of Malatesta, lord of Rimini, brother of the said Paolo found under
the accomplishment of a dishonest deed, and both miserably killed with
the blows of a poignard, as Petrarch describes in his _Triumph of
Love_. Their clothes were of silk, and, although they had been shut
up in this sepulchre for so many years, they were found in a perfect
state of preservation.”
Upon what document Sascorbaro relies for this statement no one can say;
there was no inscription, no medal and no sign whatever that could
certify to the identity of the skeletons; but the legend was evidently
established, since Boccaccio and the greater number of chroniclers had
said that the two bodies were united in the same tomb. The assertion
of Sascorbaro, deprived of all proofs as it is, has come to confirm
the opinion of the Florentine story-teller. Rimini persists in its
legend, if legend it is; and I also discovered a few days ago, at
Gambalunghiana, the bit of silk tissued with gold, and placed in a
frame upon which the erudite son of Tonini, successor to the historian
of Rimini, does not willingly call to the attention of learned
historians, because history desires authentic proofs; but the common
people view with great pleasure a contemporary relic of Francesca and
Paolo.