[923] Inferno, ix. 61; Purgat. viii. 19.
[924] Poesie Satiriche, ed. Milan, p. 70 sqq. Dating from the end of the fourteenth century.
[925] The latter e.g. in the Venatio of the Cardinal Adriano da Corneto (Strasburg, 1512; often printed). Ascanio Sforza is there supposed to find consolation for the fall of his house in the pleasures of the chase. See above, p. 261.
[926] More properly 1454. See Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, chap. 29.
[927] For other French festivals, see e.g. Juvénal des Ursins (Paris, 1614), ad. a. 1389 (entrance of Queen Isabella); John de Troyes, ad. a. 1461) (often printed) (entrance of Louis XI.). Here, too, we meet with living statues, machines for raising bodies, and so forth; but the whole is confused and disconnected, and the allegories are mostly unintelligible. The festivals at Lisbon in 1452, held at the departure of the Infanta Eleonora, the bride of the Emperor Frederick III., lasted several days and were remarkable for their magnificence. See Freher-Struve, Rer. German. Script. ii. fol. 51—the report of Nic. Lauckmann.
[928] A great advantage for those poets and artists who knew how to use it.
[929] Comp. Bartol. Gambia, Notizie intorno alle Opere di Feo Belcari, Milano, 1808; and especially the introduction to the work, Le Rappresentazioni di Feo Belcari ed altre di lui Poesie, Firenze, 1833. As a parallel, see the introduction of the bibliophile Jacob to his edition of Pathelin (Paris, 1859).
[930] It is true that a Mystery at Siena on the subject of the Massacre of the Innocents closed with a scene in which the disconsolate mothers seized one another by the hair. Della Valle, Lettere Sanesi, iii. p. 53. It was one of the chief aims of Feo Belcari (d. 1484), of whom we have spoken, to free the Mysteries from these monstrosities.
[931] Franco Sacchetti, nov. 72.
[932] Vasari, iii. 232 sqq.: Vita di Brunellesco; v. 36 sqq.: Vita del Cecca. Comp. v. 32, Vita di Don Bartolommeo.