[FOOTNOTES:]
[1] We may compare with Venice what is known about the ancient Hellenic city of Sybaris. Sybaris and Ravenna were the Greek and Roman Venice of antiquity.
[2] His first wife was a daughter of the great general of the Venetians against Francesco Sforza. Whether Sigismondo murdered her, as Sansovino seems to imply in his Famiglie Illustri, or whether he only repudiated her after her father's execution on the Piazza di San Marco, admits of doubt. About the question of Sigismondo's marriage with Isotta there is also some uncertainty. At any rate she had been some time his mistress before she became his wife.
[3] For the place occupied in the evolution of Italian scholarship by this Greek sage, see my 'Revival of Learning,' Renaissance in Italy, part 2.
[4] The account of this church given by Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pii Secundi, Comment., ii. 92) deserves quotation: 'Ædificavit tamen nobile templum Arimini in honorem divi Francisci, verum ita gentilibus operibus implevit, ut non tam Christianorum quam infidelium dæmones adorantium templum esse videatur.'
[5] Almost all the facts of Alberti's life are to be found in the Latin biography included in Muratori. It has been conjectured, and not without plausibility, by the last editor of Alberti's complete works, Bonucci, that this Latin life was penned by Alberti himself.
[6] There is in reality no doubt or problem about this Saint Clair. She was born in 1275, and joined the Augustinian Sisterhood, dying young, in 1308, as Abbess of her convent. Continual and impassioned meditation on the Passion of our Lord impressed her heart with the signs of His suffering which have been described above. I owe this note to the kindness of an anonymous correspondent, whom I here thank.
[7] The balance of probability leans against Isabella in this affair. At the licentious court of the Medici she lived with unpardonable freedom. Troilo Orsini was himself assassinated in Paris by Bracciano's orders a few years afterwards.
[8] I have amplified and corrected this chronicle by the light of Professor Gnoli's monograph, Vittoria Accoramboni, published by Le Monnier at Florence in 1870.
[9] In dealing with Webster's tragedy, I have adhered to his use and spelling of names.
[10] The fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin upon the semi-dome of S. Giovanni is the work of a copyist, Cesare Aretusi. But part of the original fresco, which was removed in 1684, exists in a good state of preservation at the end of the long gallery of the library.
[11] See the chapter on Euripides in my Studies of Greek Poets, First Series, for a further development of this view of artistic evolution.
[12] I find that this story is common in the country round Canossa. It is mentioned by Professor A. Ferretti in his monograph entitled Canossa, Studi e Ricerche, Reggio, 1876, a work to which I am indebted, and which will repay careful study.
[13] Charles claimed under the will of René of Anjou, who in turn claimed under the will of Joan II.
[14] For an estimate of Cosimo's services to art and literature, his collection of libraries, his great buildings, his generosity to scholars, and his promotion of Greek studies, I may refer to my Renaissance in Italy: 'The Revival of Learning,' chap. iv.
[15] Giottino had painted the Duke of Athens, in like manner, on the same walls.
[16] See Archivio Storico.
[17] The order of rhymes runs thus: a, b, b, a, a, b, b, a, c, d, c, d, c, d; or in the terzets, c, d, e, c, d, e, or c, d, e, d, c, e, and so forth.
[18] It has extraordinary interest for the student of our literary development, inasmuch as it is full of experiments in metres, which have never thriven on English soil. Not to mention the attempt to write in asclepiads and other classical rhythms, we might point to Sidney's terza rima, poems with sdrucciolo or treble rhymes. This peculiar and painful form he borrowed from Ariosto and Sanazzaro; but even in Italian it cannot be handled without sacrifice of variety, without impeding the metrical movement and marring the sense.
[19] The stately structure of the Prothalamion and Epithalamion is a rebuilding of the Italian Canzone. His Eclogues, with their allegories, repeat the manner of Petrarch's minor Latin poems.
[20] Marlowe makes Gaveston talk of 'Italian masques.' At the same time, in the prologue to Tamburlaine, he shows that he was conscious of the new and nobler direction followed by the drama in England.
[21] This sentence requires some qualification. In his Poesia Popolare Italiana, 1878, Professor d'Ancona prints a Pisan, a Venetian, and two Lombard versions of our Border ballad 'Where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son,' so close in general type and minor details to the English, German, Swedish, and Finnish versions of this Volkslied as to suggest a very ancient community of origin. It remains as yet, however, an isolated fact in the history of Italian popular poetry.
[22] Canti Popolari Toscani, raccolti e annotati da Giuseppe Tigri. Volume unico. Firenze: G. Barbèra, 1869.
[23] This is a description of the Tuscan rispetto. In Sicily the stanza generally consists of eight lines rhyming alternately throughout, while in the North of Italy it is normally a simple quatrain. The same poetical material assumes in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy these diverge but associated forms.
[24] This song, called Ciure (Sicilian for fiore) in Sicily, is said by Signor Pitré to be in disrepute there. He once asked an old dame of Palermo to repeat him some of these ditties. Her answer was, 'You must get them from light women; I do not know any. They sing them in bad houses and prisons, where, God be praised, I have never been.' In Tuscany there does not appear to be so marked a distinction between the flower song and the rispetto.
[25] Much light has lately been thrown on the popular poetry of Italy; and it appears that contemporary improvisatori trust more to their richly stocked memories and to their power of recombination than to original or novel inspiration. It is in Sicily that the vein of truly creative lyric utterance is said to flow most freely and most copiously at the present time.
[26] 'Remember me, fair one, to the scrivener. I do not know him or who he is, but he seems to me a sovereign poet, so cunning is he in his use of verse.'
[27] It must be remarked that Tigri draws a strong contrast in this respect between the songs of the mountain districts which he has printed and those of the towns, and that Pitrè, in his edition of Sicilian Volkslieder, expressly alludes to the coarseness of a whole class which he had omitted. The MSS. of Sicilian and Tuscan songs, dating from the fifteenth century and earlier, yield a fair proportion of decidedly obscene compositions. Yet the fact stated above is integrally correct. When acclimatised in the large towns, the rustic Muse not unfrequently assumes a garb of grossness. At home, among the fields and on the mountains, she remains chaste and romantic.
In a rispetto, of which I subjoin a translation, sung by a poor lad to a mistress of higher rank, love itself is pleaded as the sign of a gentle soul:—
My state is poor: I am not meet
To court so nobly born a love;
For poverty hath tied my feet,
Trying to climb too far above.
Yet am I gentle, loving thee;
Nor need thou shun my poverty.[29] When the Cherubina, of whom mention has been made above, was asked by Signor Tigri to dictate some of her rispetti, she answered, 'O signore! ne dico tanti quando li canto! . . . ma ora . . . bisognerebbe averli tutti in visione; se no, proprio non vengono.'
[30] I need hardly guard myself against being supposed to mean that the form of Ballata in question was the only one of its kind in Italy.
[31] See my Sketches in Italy and Greece, p. 114.
[32] The originals will be found in Carducci's Studi Letterari, p. 273 et seq. I have preserved their rhyming structure.
[33] Stanza XLIII. All references are made to Carducci's excellent edition, Le Stanze, l'Orfeo e le Rime di Messer Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano. Firenze: G. Barbéra. 1863.