Reduced from Braun’s photograph (no. 43.161) of a part of the double portrait once owned by Bembo and now in the Doria Gallery at Rome. Although by some critics regarded as an old copy, the picture is affirmed by both Morelli and Berenson to be the work of Raphael (1483-1520), probably painted in April 1516.
“Of the same sort also seems to be what Lorenzo de’ Medici said to a dull buffoon: ‘You would not make me laugh if you tickled me.’ And in like fashion he answered another simpleton who had found him abed very late one morning, and who had reproved him for sleeping so late, saying: ‘I have already been at the New Market and the Old, then outside the San Gallo gate and around the walls for exercise, and have done a thousand things besides; and you are still asleep?’ Then Lorenzo said: ‘What I dreamed in one hour is worth more than what you accomplished in four.’
71.—“It is also fine when in a retort we censure something without apparently meaning to censure it. For instance, the Marquess Federico of Mantua,[[263]] father to our lady Duchess, being at table with many gentlemen, one of them said after eating an entire bowl of stew: ‘Pardon me, my lord Marquess;’ and so saying he began to gulp down the broth that remained. Then the Marquess said quickly: ‘Ask pardon rather of the swine, for you do me no wrong at all.’
“Again, to censure a tyrant who was falsely reputed to be generous, messer Niccolò Leonico[[264]] said: ‘Think what generosity rules him, for he gives away not his own things only, but other men’s as well!’
72.—“Another very pretty form of pleasantry is that which consists in a kind of innuendo, when we say one thing and tacitly imply another. Of course I do not mean another thing of a completely different kind, like calling a dwarf gigantic and a negro white or a very ugly man handsome, for the difference is too obvious,—although even these sometimes cause laughter; but I mean when with stern and serious air we humourously say something in jest which is not our real thought. For instance, when a gentleman told a palpable lie to messer Agostino Foglietta[[265]] and affirmed it stoutly on seeing that he had much difficulty in believing it, messer Agostino said at last: ‘Fair sir, if I may ever hope to receive kindness from you, do me the favour to be content even if I do not believe anything you say.’ But as the other repeated, and under oath, that it was the truth, he finally said: ‘Since you will have it so, I will believe it for your sake, for indeed I would do even a greater thing than this for you.’
“Don Giovanni di Cardona[[266]] said something nearly of this sort about a man who wished to leave Rome: ‘To my thinking the fellow is ill advised, for he is so great a rascal that by staying on at Rome he might in time become a cardinal.’ Of this sort also is what was said by Alfonso Santacroce,[[267]] who had shortly before suffered some outrage from the Cardinal of Pavia.[[268]] While strolling with several gentlemen near the place of public execution outside Bologna, he saw a man who had recently been hanged, and turning towards the body with a thoughtful air, he said loud enough for everyone to hear him: ‘Happy thou, who hast naught to do with the Cardinal of Pavia.’
73.—“And this sort of pleasantry which is tinged with irony seems very becoming to great men, because it is dignified and sharp, and can be used in jocose as well as in serious matters. Hence many ancients (and those among the most esteemed) have used it, like Cato and Scipio Africanus the Younger; but above all men, the philosopher Socrates is said to have excelled in it. And in our own times King Alfonso I of Aragon,[[269]] who, being about to eat one morning, took off the many precious rings that he had on his fingers, in order not to wet them in washing his hands, and so gave them to the first person he happened on, almost without looking to see who it was. This servant supposed that the king had taken no notice who received them, and by reason of weightier cares would easily forget them altogether; and in this he was the more confirmed, seeing that the king did not ask for them again; and as he saw days, weeks and months pass without hearing a word about them, he thought he was surely safe. Accordingly, nearly a year after this had happened, he presented himself again one morning as the king was about to eat, and held out his hand to receive the rings; whereupon the king bent close to his ear and said to him: ‘Let the first ones suffice thee, because these will do for someone else.’ You see how biting, clever and dignified the sally was, and how truly worthy the exalted spirit of an Alexander.
OTTAVIANO UBALDINI
Died 1498
Enlarged from Braun’s photograph (no. 19.553) of the painting, “Astronomy,” by Melozzo degli Ambrosi da Forli (1438-1494). The picture, of which this head is a detail, was one of a series of panels painted to decorate Duke Federico di Montefeltro’s library in the palace of Urbino, but is now in the Royal Museum at Berlin. For iconographical identification, see Schmarzow’s Melozzo da Forli, ein Beitrag zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte Italiens im XV Jahrhundert (Berlin: 1886), p. 84.