"There is one God in heaven and the Moro upon earth."
CHAPTER XII
Beatrice d'Este as a patron of learning and poetry—Vincenzo Calmeta, her secretary—Serafino d'Aquila—Rivalry of Lombard and Tuscan poets—Gaspare Visconti's works—Poetic jousts with Bramante—Niccolo di Correggio and other poets—Dramatic art and music at the court of Milan—Gaffuri and Testagrossa—Lorenzo Gusnasco of Pavia.
1492
Lodovico Moro, as we have seen, was justly extolled by his contemporaries as the most illustrious Mecænas of his age. As Abbé Tiraboschi, the learned historian of Italian literature, wrote ninety years ago, "If we consider the immense number of learned men who flocked to his court from all parts of Italy in the certainty of receiving great honours and rich rewards; if, again, we remember how many famous architects and painters he invited to Milan, and how many noble buildings he raised, how he built and endowed the magnificent University of Pavia, and opened schools of every kind of science in Milan; if besides all this we read the splendid eulogies and dedicatory epistles addressed to him by scholars of every nationality, we feel inclined to pronounce him the best prince that ever lived." And in Beatrice d'Este, Lodovico possessed a wife admirably adapted to share his aims and preside over his court. Both her birth and education fitted her for the position which she now occupied. Her youth and beauty lent a new lustre to the court, her quick intelligence and cultured tastes led her to appreciate the society of poets and scholars. The natural love of splendour, which she shared with the Moro, went hand-in-hand with artistic invention. Her rich clothes and jewels were distinguished by their refinement and rare workmanship. The fashions which she introduced were marked by their elegance and beauty. She took especial delight in music and poetry, and gave signs of a fine and discriminating literary judgment. And like Lodovico, she knew not only how to attract men of genius, but how to retain them in her service. Where, again, asks Castiglione, who had known her in her brightest days at Milan, shall we find a woman of intellect as remarkable as Duchess Beatrice? And her own secretary, the writer known as "l'elegantissimo Calmeta" in the cultured circles of Mantua and Urbino, has told us how much men of letters owed to her sympathy and help. In the life of his friend, Serafino Aquilano, written seven years after Beatrice's death, when the Milanese was a French province and the Moro a captive at Loches, Calmeta recalls the brilliant days of his old life at Lodovico's court, and speaks thus of his lost mistress:—
"This duke had for his most dear wife Beatrice d'Este, daughter of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, who, coming to Milan in the flower of her opening youth, was endowed with so rare an intellect, so much grace and affability, and was so remarkable for her generosity and goodness that she may justly be compared with the noblest women of antiquity. This duchess devoted her time to the highest objects. Her court was composed of men of talent and distinction, most of whom were poets and musicians, who were expected to compose new eclogues, comedies, or tragedies, and arrange new spectacles and representations every month. In her leisure hours she generally employed a certain Antonio Grifo"—a well-known student and commentator of Dante—"or some equally gifted man, to read the Divina Commedia, or the works of other Italian poets, aloud to her. And it was no small relaxation of mind for Lodovico Sforza, when he was able to escape from the cares and business of state, to come and listen to these readings in his wife's rooms. And among the illustrious men whose presence adorned the court of the duchess there were three high-born cavaliers, renowned for many talents, but above all for their poetic gifts—Niccolo da Correggio, Gaspare Visconti, and Antonio di Campo Fregoso, together with many others, one of whom was myself, Vincenzo Calmeta, who for some years held the post of secretary to that glorious and excellent lady. And besides those I have named there was Benedetto da Cingoli, called Piceno, and many other youths of no small promise, who daily offered her the first fruits of their genius. Nor was Duchess Beatrice content with rewarding and honouring the poets of her own court. On the contrary, she sent to all parts of Italy to inquire for the compositions of elegant poets, and placed their books as sacred and divine things on the shelves of her cabinet of study, and praised and rewarded each writer according to his merit. In this manner, poetry and literature in the vulgar tongue, which had degenerated and sunk into forgetfulness after the days of Petrarch and Boccaccio, has been restored to its former dignity, first by the protection of Lorenzo de' Medici, and then by the influence of this rare lady, and others like her, who are still living at the present time. But when Duchess Beatrice died everything fell into ruin. That court, which had been a joyous Paradise, became a dark and gloomy Inferno, and poets and artists were forced to seek another road."
Calmeta himself was a prolific writer both of verse and prose, whose translation of Ovid's Ars amandi, dedicated to Lodovico Moro, was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, and whom Castiglione introduces among the speakers of his Cortigiano. Like his friends Niccolo da Correggio and Gaspare Visconti, Beatrice's secretary was a fervent admirer of Petrarch, and wrote an elaborate commentary on the Canzone, "Mai non vo' più cantar como io solea," which he dedicated to Isabella d'Este and sent her with a letter expressing his conviction that no one before him had ever fully understood this profound and subtle poem. Another of Beatrice's protégés was Serafino, the famous improvisatore of Aquila in the Abruzzi, a short and ugly little man, whom Cardinal Bibbiena once laughingly compared to a carpet-bag (valigia)! But in spite of his dwarfed stature and elfish appearance, Serafino sang his own strambotti and eclogues so well, and had so fascinating a way of accompanying himself on the lute, that the Este and Gonzaga ladies all entreated him for new verses, and literally wrangled over the man himself! Like Calmeta and many others, however, after spending some time at the courts of Mantua and Urbino, he came to Milan, and devoted his talents to the service of Duchess Beatrice until her death, after which he went his way sadly, and sought shelter in his old haunts. Most of his time after this was spent with the good Duchess Elizabeth at Urbino, where the Milanese refugees found a warm welcome, and where Serafino was caressed and fêted by all the great ladies in turn, until a premature death closed his career, and he died in Rome in 1500, lamented in prose and verse by the most cultured spirits of the age.
While Beatrice encouraged these foreign poets to settle at Milan, Lodovico invited the Tuscans Bellincioni and Antonio Cammelli, surnamed Pistoia, to his court, in the hope of refining and polishing the rude Lombard diction. The priest Tanzio, writing after Bellincioni's death in 1492, remarks that this influence had already borne fruit, and that the sonnet, which was practically unknown in Milan before Bellincioni's coming, was now diligently cultivated there. But, not unnaturally, a bitter rivalry sprung up between the Lombard and the Tuscan poets, and a fierce poetic warfare was exchanged between them. Bellincioni's suspicious and quarrelsome nature is revealed in his letters to his patron, in which he is always complaining of the envious detractors whose wicked tongues are employed in backbiting him day and night. His own character was by no means free from the same imputations; and the Ferrarese poet, Tebaldeo, the friend of Raphael and Castiglione, composed a witty epitaph, in which he warns passers-by to avoid the last resting-place of this singer, who had made so many enemies in life, lest he turn in his grave and bite them. Bellincioni's bitterest foe was a certain Bergamasque poet, Guidotto Prestinari, who wrote many odes and songs in honour of Beatrice, and represented the old Lombard school. On one occasion this misguided person even dared to attack Leonardo, and wrote a sonnet in which he jeers at the great painter for spending his time in hunting for curious worms and insects on the hills of Bergamo, when he visited his friends of the Melzi family. Leonardo scorned to take any notice of these petty insults, but in his letter to the councillors of Piacenza we see the contempt which he had for Lombard artists—"those rude and ignorant workmen," as he calls them, "who boast they will get letters of recommendation from Signora Lodovico or his Commissioner of Works, Messer Ambrogio Ferrari, when not one of them is fit to undertake the task." And certain epigrams in the Windsor Sketchbook are plainly directed against the false and venal science of the astrologer Ambrogio da Rosate, whose name is given in the margin, and show how cordial was Leonardo's hatred of the duke's all-powerful favourite.