*Cf. Madiai, Diario, in Arch. cit., vol. cit., p. 455.
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"Me circum limus niger et deformis arundo Cocyti, tardaque palus, inamabilis unda, Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coercet." Virg. Georg. iv. 478. |
[58] What are we to make of the words of Fregoso (as preserved by Bembo)—an archbishop who, in describing to the Pope his uncle's death, mentions his partaking of the last sacraments from the Bishop of Fossombrone, in these terms, "Quiquidem Deos illi superos atque manes placavit"? Such idioms will not bear retranslation. The expression employed by Castiglione, though tinged with the cold formality of classicism, is less startling: "Ut ungeretur more sanctæ matris ecclesiæ rogavit." But a pagan taint may often be sadly traced upon the devotion of this age. In the first volume of Vaissieux's Archivio Storico d'Italia, the last hours of a convict, condemned at Florence in 1500, are thus narrated by an eye-witness:—Pietro Paolo Boscoli, a political reformer of the school of Savonarola, thirsted in his dying moments after the living waters of evangelical truth, and sought some better solace than the cold formalities of an ordinary viaticum. Refusing to be shriven by any but a friar of St. Mark's, he adjured an attendant friend to aid in getting Brutus out of his head, in order that he might make a Christian end. Nor was this heterodoxy exclusively Italian. Cervantes, in a recently recovered fragment, El Buscapié, says, "I dislike to see the graceful and pious language befitting the Christian muse mingled with the profane phraseology of heathenism. Who can be otherwise than displeased to find the name of God, of the Holy Virgin, and of the Prophets, in conjunction with those of Apollo and Daphne, Pan and Syrinx, Jupiter and Europa, Vulcan, Cupid, Venus, and Mars?"—Bentley's Mag., XXIV., p. 203.
[*59] He died, says the anonymous author of the Diario cited above [(note *], [p. 80]), between the fourth and fifth hour of the night, that is, between 10.30 and 11.30 p.m., and it was Tuesday. The news came to Urbino on the 10th, so, according to the Anonimo, he died on the 9th.
[*60] Capilupi, whom Isabella d'Este had sent to Urbino, describes in a long letter the mourning and grief he found there. It is too long to quote. Cf. Luzio and Renier, Mantova e Urbino (Torino, 1893), p. 185.
[61] Bibl. Magliab. Class. viii., No. 68, p. 132.
[62] "Itaque multas sæpè feminas vidi, audivi etiàm esse plures, quæ certarum omninò virtutum, optimarum quidem illarum atque clarissimarum, sed tamèn perpaucarum splendore illustrarentur: in quâ verò omnes collectæ conjunctæque virtutes conspicerentur, hæc una extitit, cujus omninò parem atque similem aut etiam inferiorem paulò, non modò non vidi ullam, sed ea ubi esset etiàm ne audivi quidem."—Bembo de Guidobaldo.
[63] The Italian name for those public establishments, at which small sums are lent on pledges under government superintendence. The Duchess is said to have introduced them at Urbino, and to have founded there an academy, which rose to considerable celebrity among similar weeds of literature that long flourished and still vegetate in Italy.
[*64] The secret is not far to seek, but it was inexplicably hidden from men in Dennistoun's day. The continuity of life and of art the most sensitive expression of life, is understood and acknowledged by too few among us; but that there is an historical continuity in art as in life would be easy to prove, since no part can be adequately grasped or explained save in relation to the whole. Of course, as Renan admitted, history has its sad days, but all are, as it were, a part of the year which would be incomplete and inexplicable without them. Thus there is no gulf fixed between the art of Greece and the art of the Middle Age or the Renaissance; each is an inevitable part of the whole, and the later was what it was because of the old. Burckhardt, one of the greatest students of our time, seems to have understood this also with his usual happiness. M. Auguste Gerard tells us in his notice of the life of its author, which serves as a Preface to the French edition of Le Cicerone, that "Burckhardt en vrai disciple de la Renaissance considérait l'Italie comme un tout continu; et dans l'histoire de l'art de même que dans l'énumération des œuvres, il ne séparait pas l'Italie antique de l'Italie moderne. La section du Cicerone qui était dédiée à l'architecture commençait aux temples de Paestum pour finir aux villas Napolitaines et Génoises des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles." In that idea lies the future of all criticism.