CHARLES VIII OF FRANCE
1470-1498

Reduced from Alinari’s photograph (no. 2749) of the anonymous bronze bust in the National Museum at Florence. See note [388].

Note [187] page 121. Bibbiena’s reputation as a wit was well established, while Canossa seems also to have deserved the same epithet, if we may judge from a story that has been preserved of him. The count had at Rome a fine collection of silver plate, including a flagon with a lid in the form of a tiger. A friend having borrowed this flagon and kept it for two months, returned it only on demand and with the request that the count lend him a certain salt-cellar, which had a crab for a cover. Ludovico sent word that if the tiger, which is the swiftest of beasts, had been two months coming home, the crab, being slower than all others, would by the same rule be absent for years, and that on this account he was unwilling to let it go.

Note [188] page 122. The allusion is of course to Bibbiena’s early baldness.

Note [189] page 122. Cardinal Galeotto della Rovere, (born about 1477; died 1508), was the favourite nephew of Julius II, being a son of the pope’s sister Luchina by her first husband Gianfrancesco Franciotti, a patrician of Lucca. Like all his mother’s other children, he was adopted as of the della Rovere name. Having been made Bishop of Lucca, he was created a cardinal on his uncle’s election as pope, appointed pontifical vice-chancellor, and soon given a great number of benefices. Generous and amiable, and a patron of artists and authors, he was much beloved at the court of Urbino, as is shown by several documents, among which is a letter by Emilia Pia mentioning two sonnets of his, in one of which (written the day before his last illness) he foretold his early death.

Note [190] page 123. Giacomo Sansecondo, a noted musician who flourished between the years 1493 and 1522 at the courts of Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, Urbino and Rome, where he attained a wide celebrity in the pontificate of Leo X. He seems to have ended his days in adversity, in some degree relieved by his friend Castiglione, whose letters contain several affectionate mentions of him.

Note [191] page 124. Democritus, (flor. 400 B.C.), was the atomistic philosopher of Abdera in Thrace. He possessed an ample fortune, and his cheerful disposition led him to look on the bright and humourous side of things, a fact taken by later writers to mean that he laughed at the follies of mankind.

Note [192] page 125. The phrase ‘served her in love’ and the conventional relation that it denoted, were drawn from mediæval life and literature north of the Alps, and with some changes survived in Italy during the Renaissance, until the cavalier servente became in the 18th century a recognized institution. Attendance upon the lady at church was a characteristic feature of the cavalier’s service.

Note [193] page 126. Pius III, Francesco Todeschini, (born 1439; died 1503), was a native of Siena and a nephew of the illustrious Æneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II). The suddenness of his predecessor Alexander VI's death took the sacred college by surprise, and they unanimously elected their weakest member as pope. His short pontificate of twenty-six days was filled with disturbances, and he was believed to have died from poison.

Note [194] page 126. Antonio Agnello, (died after 1527), belonged to one of the most noted families of Mantua, and seems to have been the son of Giulio Agnello and Margarita Crema. Besides being an able man of affairs (employed by the Palæologus rulers of Montferrat), he was a graceful poet, and became the friend of Bembo and Castiglione.