"Un Signor di Correggio
Con alto stil par che cantando scriva."
Niccolo had come to Milan in Beatrice's bridal train, and remained there ever since, highly valued and beloved by Lodovico and all the ducal family, riding in jousts and tournaments, going on foreign missions, and composing songs and eclogues for that young duchess whose death was one day to inspire some of his most touching verses. But the Marchesa Isabella was the true goddess of his adoration, the mistress to whom his heart and lyre alike were pledged, who was for him, not only "la mia patrona e signora," but "la prima donna del mondo," "the first lady in all the world." For her he translated Breton legends and Provençal romances; for her he set Virgil and Petrarch to music; for her fair sake, old and stiff as advancing years have made him, he is ready to break a lance or join once more in the dance. At Christmas-time, in the last days of 1491, the impatient Marchesana had written to remind him that she had never yet received the eclogue which he had promised to send her at her brother Alfonso's wedding, and refused to be put off with any other verses, saying that his poems pleased her more than those of any living bard. When in later years she found that Niccolo was inclined to transfer his allegiance to her sister-in-law, Lucrezia Borgia, she was sorely affronted, and after his death entered into a long contention for the possession of the book of poems which he had left behind.
There were many other poets of Beatrice's court whose names were famous in their day, but have long ago been forgotten, and whose works have passed into oblivion with all that vanished world. There was Lancino di Corte, or, as he preferred to style himself, Lancinus Curtius, the writer of Latin epigrams; and Antonio di Fregoso, the noble Genoese youth who, like Niccolo, won Calmeta and Ariosto's praises, and whose poetic disputes with Lancinus were a feature of Cecilia Gallerani's entertainments; and Baldassare Taccone of Alessandria; and Pietro Lazzarone of the Valtellina. There was Galeotto del Carretto, the Montferrat poet and historian, who left his home at Casale to compose plays and sonnets for Beatrice, and who, like Niccolo da Correggio, was one of Isabella's favourite correspondents, and sent her eclogues and strambotti to sing to the lute. When Beatrice died he had just finished a comedy dedicated to this princess, which he afterwards sent to Isabella, begging her to accept it both for his sake and that of the lamented Madonna Duchessa sorella, who had taken pleasure in reading his effusions. And there was another Tuscan poet, Antonio Cammelli of Pistoia, who composed a whole volume of sonnets dedicated to "that most invincible Prince, the light and splendour of the world, Lodovico Moro." These sonnets are of great interest, less on account of their poetic merit than because of the fidelity with which they commemorate political events. The invasion of the French, the conquest of Naples, the battle of Fornovo, the peace of Vercelli, the proclamation of Lodovico as Duke of Milan, his coronation fêtes at Milan and Pavia, are all carefully recorded. Nor does the series end here; in another sonnet the poet takes up the note of warning, and bids Lodovico beware of the new King of France and, ceasing to dally with Fortune, prepare to defend his fair duchy. The next time Pistoia took up his pen, it was to wail over the duke's fall and the ruin of Italy, and to hurl curses on the head of the false servants who had betrayed their trust and yielded up the Castello to their master's foes. This, at least, may be said to Pistoia's credit—he did not forget his generous patron in the days of adversity; and when Pamfilo Sasso, the Modena bard who had basked in the sunshine of the Moro's favour, assailed the fallen duke in his verses, Pistoia rose up in defence of his old master, and fiercely rebuked the cowardly poet.
"I send you," wrote Calmeta to the Marchioness of Mantua in 1502, in a letter enclosing Pistoia's verses, "an invective against Sasso for certain sonnets and epigrams which he printed at Bologna against our Duke Lodovico Sforza, and which some people say that I wrote. It was never my habit to attack others, but if I had wasted a little ink in defending so illustrious a prince, I hardly think I should deserve much blame."[26]
Before the coming of Beatrice there had been no theatre in Milan, but Lodovico had done his best to encourage dramatic art. As early as 1484, he had written to the Duke of Ferrara, asking him to lend him a Bolognese actor, Albergati by name, who was also a skilled mechanic, to give sacred representations during Holy Week in Milan. The presence of Duke Ercole's daughter naturally gave a fresh impulse to the growth of dramatic art, and after Lodovico's visit to Ferrara in 1493, a theatre was erected in Milan. Courtiers and poets vied with each other in the production of plays and masques at each successive Christmas or Carnival. In 1493, Niccolo da Correggio wrote a pastoral entitled Mopsa e Daphne, which was performed at court that Carnival, and which he afterwards sent to Isabella, promising to explain its allegorical meaning at their next meeting. Another time, Gaspare Visconti composed the masque with the chorus of Turks, to which we have already alluded, for representation before the duke and duchess. On one occasion a piece called La Fatica was acted at the house of Antonio Maria Sanseverino, whose wife, Margherita of Carpi, was the sister of Elizabeth Gonzaga's beloved companion, Emilia Pia, and herself a learned and cultivated princess. On another a representation described as La Pazienza was given before the court, in honour of a visit which Cardinal Federigo Sanseverino paid to Milan.
Music, as Calmeta tells us, was another art that flourished in an especial manner at the Milanese court. Both Lodovico and his wife were passionately fond of music, and the delicious melodies that daily resounded through their palace halls were the theme alike of chronicler and poet. When first Lorenzo de Medici had sent Leonardo to his friend's court to charm the Moro's ears with the surpassing sweetness of his playing, he had brought with him a well-known musician and maker of instruments, Atalante Migliorotti, who stood high in Lodovico's favour, and spent much of his time at Milan. We find Isabella d'Este writing to her friend, Niccolo da Correggio, in 1493, begging him to procure her the loan of a silver lyre, given him by Atalante, that she may learn to play this instrument; and in the following year the marchioness herself stood godmother to the Florentine musician's infant daughter, who was called Isabella after her illustrious sponsor. And in 1492 we find Lodovico writing to thank Francesco Gonzaga for allowing a certain Narcisso, who was in the Marquis of Mantua's service, to visit Milan, and saying what exquisite pleasure this singer's voice has afforded him. The following summer, Isabella, in her turn, begged her sister to allow her favourite violinist, Jacopo di San Secondo, to spend a few weeks at Mantua; and on the 7th of July Beatrice wrote to desire his return. "Since you are back at Mantua, I think you will not want Jacopo di San Secondo much longer, and beg you to send him back to Pavia as soon as possible, since his music will be a pleasure to my husband, who is suffering from a slight attack of fever." This Jacopo was a famous violin-player of his day, who had settled at the Moro's court, and who after Lodovico's fall left Milan for Rome, where he became the friend of Raphael and Castiglione, and is said to have served as model for the laurel-crowned Apollo of the Parnassus, in the Vatican Stanze. Another of Beatrice's favourite singers was Angelo Testagrossa, a beautiful youth who sang, we are told, like a seraph, and who, after the death of this princess, accepted Isabella's pressing invitation to Mantua, where he composed songs and gave her lessons on the lute. Testagrossa is said to have sung in the Spanish style, which was much in vogue at Milan, where a Spaniard named Pedro Maria was director of the palace concerts, and is frequently mentioned in Bellincioni's poems. The priest Franchino Gaffuri, as already stated, occupied the first chair of music ever founded in Italy. Besides this master's works on music, another treatise on harmony, composed by a priest named Florentio, and dedicated to Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, is preserved in the Trivulzian Library, with a fine miniature of Leonardo playing the lyre as frontispiece.
Both the Flemish priest Cordier, with the wonderful tenor voice, and the accomplished master Cristoforo Romano were, as we know, among the chosen singers who accompanied Beatrice on her travels. And there was one more gifted artist, who, like Atalante Migliorotti, was both a skilled musician and a mechanic, and whose whole life was devoted to the construction of musical instruments of the choicest quality, Lorenzo Gusnasco of Pavia. It was Lodovico Moro who first discovered the rare talents of this "master of organs," as he was styled by his contemporaries, and it was for Beatrice's use that he began to make those wonderful clavichords and lutes and viols that made his name famous throughout Italy. In his hands the manufacture of musical instruments was carried to the highest pitch of excellence. He grudged no labour and spared no pains to make his work perfect. The choicest ebony and ivory, the most precious woods and delicate strings were sought out by him; the best scholars supplied him with Greek and Latin epigrams to be inscribed upon his organs and clavichords. In his opinion both material and shape were of the utmost importance, because, as he wrote to Isabella d'Este, "beauty of form is everything," "perche ne la forma sta il tuto." The work of this gifted maker naturally acquired a rare value in the eyes of his contemporaries. Sabba da Castiglione and Teseo Albonese praise him as the man who, above all others, has learnt the secret of combining lovely melodies with beauteous form, just as a divine soul is enshrined in a fair body. Painters and scholars alike took delight in Lorenzo's company. He was the intimate friend of Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna, of Pietro Bembo and Aldo Manuzio, of Leonardo and Isabella d'Este. It was in these festive days, in the Castello of Pavia, that Lorenzo da Pavia first met both the great Florentine and the accomplished princess who set so high a store on his friendship. For more than twenty years Isabella corresponded regularly with this gifted artist, and employed him not only to make organs and lutes for her, but to buy antiques and cameos, Murano glass and tapestry, choice pictures and rare books. Whether she wished for a fantasia, or Holy Family from the hand of Gian Bellini, or a choice edition of Dante or Petrarch from the press of Aldo Manuzio, it was to Messer Lorenzo that the request was addressed. In 1494, the Pavian master moved to Venice, where he found it easier to procure materials for his trade, and was able to carry on his work on a larger scale. By this time his fame had spread far and wide through Italy. He made an organ for Matthias Corvinus, the King of Hungary, and another which he himself took to Rome for Pope Leo X. But his relations with Duchess Beatrice were not interrupted by this change of abode. In that same year he made her that clavichord which Isabella describes as the best and most beautiful which she had ever seen, and which she never ceased to covet until, after her sister's death and Lodovico's fall, she obtained possession of the precious instrument.
It was at Venice, in the early spring of 1500, that Leonardo da Vinci once more met this master, whom he had formerly known so well at Pavia and Milan. There the two artists who had lived together for many years in the Moro's service conversed sadly of the terrible catastrophe which had overwhelmed their old master in sudden and inevitable ruin, and mourned over the disastrous fate which had plunged the fair Milanese into confusion and misery. Then, as they looked back on the happy days of their former life, and talked of their old companions, the painter brought out a drawing which Lorenzo immediately recognized as the portrait of Isabella d'Este, the illustrious princess, who was proud to call herself their friend.
"Leonardo," he wrote the next day to the Marchesana, "is here in Venice, and has shown me a portrait of your Highness, which is as natural and lifelike as possible."[27] This drawing, which the princess describes in a letter to the painter as being ni carbone and not in colours, is now one of the treasures of the Louvre, and has an inestimable value, both as the work of Leonardo and as a genuine portrait of the most brilliant lady of the Renaissance.