O con le Grazie elette, e con gli amori.
The Duchess of Ferrara's maid, the beautiful Livia d'Arco, and even her dwarf, are also immortalised in Tasso's verses, who poured forth his courtly gallantry with an exhaustless and splendid prodigality, fitting their praises to his lyre, as if it had never resounded to higher themes.
At a court festival given by the Duke Alphonso, in honour of his beautiful and illustrious visitors, the Countess of Sala appeared with her fine hair wreathed round her head in the form of a coronet, which with her grand style of beauty and majestic deportment, gave her the air of a Juno. The young Countess of Scandiano, on the other hand, enchanted by her Hebe-like graces, her smiles, and the unequalled beauty of a pouting underlip;—nothing was talked of at Ferrara but these braided tresses and this lovely lip; the poets and the young cavaliers were divided into parties on the occasion. Tasso has celebrated both with the same voluptuous elegance of style in which he described his Armida. To the Countess of Scandiano he wrote,
Quel labbro, che le rose han colorito
Molle si sporge, e tumidetto in fuore, &c.
To the Countess of Sala,
Barbara! maraviglia de' tempi nostri.
But the Countess of Scandiano was more especially the object of his public adoration. It was a poetical passion, openly professed; and flattering, as it appears, both to the lady and to her husband, without in any degree implicating either her discretion or that of Tasso. Compare his verses to this young Countess—this peregrina Fenice,[130] as he fancifully styles her, who comes shining forth, not to be consumed, but to consume,—to the profound tenderness, the intense yet mournful feeling of some of the poems composed for the Princess d'Este, about the same time; when he must have daily contrasted the rich bloom, the smiling eyes, and sparkling graces of the youthful Countess, with the fading or faded beauty, the languid form, and pale cheek of his long-loved Leonora. See particularly the Sonnet
Tre gran Donne vid' io, &c.
"Three illustrious ladies did I behold,—I sung them all—one only I loved," &c. And another equally beautiful and significant,
Perchè 'n giovenil volto amor mi mostri
Talor, Donna Real, rose e ligustri
Oblio non pone in me, de' miei trilustri
Affanni, o de miei spesi indarno inchiostri.