[780] This was a universal opinion, not only the professional opinion of painters. See below.
[781] This may be an opportunity for a word on the eyes of Lucrezia Borgia, taken from the distichs of a Ferrarese court-poet, Ercole Strozza (Strozzii Poetae, fol. 85-88). The power of her glance is described in a manner only explicable in an artistic age, and which would not now be permitted. Sometimes it turns the beholder to fire, sometimes to stone. He who looks long at the sun, becomes blind; he who beheld Medusa, became a stone; but he who looks at the countenance of Lucrezia
‘Fit primo intuitu cæcus et inde lapis.’
Even the marble Cupid sleeping in her halls is said to have been petrified by her gaze:
‘Lumine Borgiado saxificatur Amor.’
Critics may dispute, if they please, whether the so-called Eros of Praxiteles or that of Michelangelo is meant, since she was the possessor of both.
And the same glance appeared to another poet, Marcello Filosseno, only mild and lofty, ‘mansueto e altero’ (Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, vii. p. 306).
Comparisons with ideal figures of antiquity occur ([p. 30]). Of a boy ten years old we read in the Orlandino (ii. str. 47), ‘ed ha capo romano.’ Referring to the fact that the appearance of the temples can be altogether changed by the arrangement of the hair, Firenzuola makes a comical attack on the overcrowding of the hair with flowers, which causes the head to ‘look like a pot of pinks or a quarter of goat on the spit.’ He is, as a rule, thoroughly at home in caricature.
[782] For the ideal of the ‘Minnesänger,’ see Falke, Die deutsche Trachten- und Modenwelt, i. pp. 85 sqq.
[783] On the accuracy of his sense of form, p. 290.