The only other instance in which the translator has suppressed any part of the text is in line 10 of page 212, where the Italian word ignuda is not rendered.
ELEANORA OF ARAGON
DUCHESS OF FERRARA
1450-1493
Reduced from a photograph, kindly furnished by M. Gustave Dreyfus, of an anonymous bas-relief in his collection at Paris. The sculptor may possibly have been Sperandio di Bartolommeo de’ Savelli (1425?-1500?). See note [399].
Note [412] page 214. The event occurred in 1501, six years before the date of the Courtier dialogues.
Note [413] page 214. The Volturno flows through Capua.
Note [414] page 214. Gazuolo or Gazzuolo is now the name of an Italian commune, containing less than 5,000 inhabitants, and situated eleven miles west of Mantua.
Note [415] page 214. The Oglio is a river of Lombardy about 135 miles long; it traverses the Lake of Iseo, and joins the Po some ten miles south-west of Mantua.
Note [416] page 214. In two earlier MS. versions of The Courtier, the passage ‘Now from this ... even her name is unknown’ reads: “Then messer Pietro Bembo said: ‘In truth, if I knew this noble peasant girl’s name, I would compose an epitaph for her.’ ‘Do not stop for that,’ said messer Cesare; ‘her name is Maddalena Biga, and if the Bishop’s death had not occurred, that bank of the Oglio’” etc.
With slight variations this story is narrated as fact in a letter of Matteo Bandello (1480-1562), from whose tales Shakspere took plots for his plays. The letter gives the poor girl’s name as Giulia and that of the Bishop of Mantua as Ludovico Gonzaga, and relates that, as it was unlawful to bury her remains in consecrated soil, he caused them to be deposited in the piazza, intending to place them in a bronze sarcophagus mounted on a marble column. The letter also affirms that the ravisher was one of the bishop’s valets.