The great endowments he thus admirably developed were united with a disposition represented as nearly perfect, at all events as exempted from the failings most perilous to princes. The bad passions which opportunity and indulgence have, in all ages, rendered peculiarly fatal to those whose will is law, were almost strangers to his breast. Prone to no vicious indulgences, he was ever kind and considerate, as well as just and clement. He may, in short, be regarded as that rarest of all characters, an unselfish despot,—despot as regarded the possession of absolute power, but not so in its use. The nobility had nothing to dread from his jealousy or his licentiousness; the citizens were spared oppressive imposts; the poor looked up to him as a sympathising protector. In short, we may pronounce him a magnanimous, a most accomplished, and, so far as erring man is permitted to judge, a blameless prince.
Nor was the impression left upon the public mind by the glories of Urbino under Guidobaldo of a transient character. Mocenigo, Venetian envoy at the court of his grand-nephew, thus speaks of him above sixty years after his death:—"Disabled by broken health from active pursuits, he fell upon the project of forming a most brilliant court, filled with eminent men of every profession; and by rendering himself generally popular, with the co-operation of his Duchess, who emulated him in welcoming and entertaining persons of talent, he brought around him a greater number of fine spirits than any sovereign had hitherto been able to attract, and, indeed, gave to all other princes in the world the model and example of an admirably regulated court."
Alinari
S. MARTIN AND S. THOMAS WITH GUIDOBALDO, DUKE OF URBINO, AND BISHOP ARRIVABENI
After the picture by Timoteo Viti in the Duomo of Urbino
The remaining years of the widowed Duchess were in strict accordance with a picture sketched of her by Bernardo Tasso, in the Amadigi:—