Note [63] page 18. The pains of love were a frequent theme with Bembo, and are elaborately set forth in his Gli Asolani. Quite untranslatable into English, his play upon the words amore (love) and amaro (bitter) is at least as old as Plautus’s Trinummus.

Note [64] page 22. Ippolito d'Este, (born 1479; died 1520), was the third son of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara (see note [203]) and Eleanora of Aragon (see note 399). At the instance of his maternal aunt Beatrice’s husband, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (see note [395]), he was given the rich archbishopric of Strigonio, to which was attached the primacy of that country, and made the journey thither as a mere boy. In 1493 Alexander VI made him a cardinal. Soon after the death of his sister Beatrice, her husband Duke Ludovico Sforza of Milan gave him the vacant archbishopric of that city, and the same year (1497) he exchanged the Hungarian primacy, with its burdensome requirement of foreign residence, for the bishopric of Agria in Crete. In 1502 he was made Archbishop of Capua in the kingdom of Naples, but bestowed the revenues of the see upon his widowed and impoverished aunt, the ex-Queen of Hungary, and a little later was made Bishop of Ferrara,—all before reaching the age of twenty-four years. He was also Bishop of Modena and Abbot of Pomposa. During his brother’s reign at Ferrara, the young cardinal took an active part in public affairs, several times governing in the duke’s absence, and showing brilliant capacities for military command. After the accession of Leo X, he resided chiefly at Rome, where he was always a conspicuous figure and carefully guarded his brother’s interests. He was a friend and protector of Leonardo da Vinci, and maintained Ariosto in his service from 1503 to 1517. A prelate only in name, regarding his many ecclesiastical offices merely as a source of wealth, he united the faults and vices to the grace and culture of his time.

Note [65] page 26. Berto was probably one of the many buffoons about the papal court in the time of Julius II and Leo X. He is again mentioned in the text (page 128) for his powers of mimicry, etc.

MATTHIAS CORVINUS OF HUNGARY
1443-1490

Much enlarged from a cast, courteously furnished by the Austrian authorities, of an anonymous medal in the Imperial Museum at Vienna (Armand’s Les Médailleurs Italiens, ii, 82, no. 9). See note 395.

Note [66] page 26. This “brave lady” is by some identified as the famous Caterina Sforza, a natural daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, who by the last of her three husbands became the mother of the even more famous condottiere Giovanni de' Medici delle Bande Nere. She was born in 1462, and died in 1509 after a life of singular vicissitudes. For an extraordinary story of her courage, see Dennistoun’s “Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,” i, 292.

The “one whom I will not name at present” is supposed to have been a certain brave soldier of fortune, Gaspar Sanseverino, who is often mentioned as “Captain Fracassa,” and was a brother of the Galeazzo Sanseverino who appears a little later in The Courtier (see page [34] and note [72]).

Note [67] page 28. The philosopher in question has been variously identified as Democritus and Empedocles.

Note [68] page 30. In Charles V's romantic plan for deciding by single combat his rivalry with Francis I, Castiglione was selected as his second, but declined to violate diplomatic proprieties by accepting the offer,—being at the time papal envoy at Charles’s court.