A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

It was very shortly after he had concluded the arrangements for Catherine's future marriage, that, fired with this right royal ambition, Galeazzo determined on a festal journey to Florence, Lucca, Pisa, and so home by Genoa. Lorenzo, "the Magnificent," was sovereign in all save name at Florence, and now he was to be shown that Milan's Duke could advance a better claim to so proud a title. The Duchess Bona accompanied him. And from the provision of no less than twelve litters, it may be concluded that the other female members of his family, and doubtless Catherine among them, were of the party. These litters are called by a contemporary writer,[47] carts—"caretti"—but he adds that they were carried on mules over the mountains. The carts were covered with awnings of cloth of gold, embroidered with the ducal arms; and the "mattresses and feather beds" which were laid in the bottoms of them, were some of cloth of gold, some of silver, and some of crimson satin.

All the great feudatories who held of the Duke, and all the members of his council, each followed by several splendidly dressed servants, attended him. All the members of the ducal household were clothed in velvet. Forty footmen were decorated with golden collars, and other forty with embroidery. The Duke's grooms were dressed in silk, ornamented with silver. There were fifty led horses, with housings of cloth of gold, and gilt stirrups; an hundred men-at-arms, "each dressed as if he were a captain;" five hundred foot soldiers, all picked men; an hundred mules, covered with cloth of gold; and fifty magnificently caparisoned pages. Two thousand other horses, and two hundred more mules, all covered with rich damask, carried the baggage of the multitudinous host. Five hundred couples of hounds, with huntsmen and falcons and falconers in proportion, together with trumpeters, players, mimes, and musicians, made part of the monstrous cortège.[48]

Let the reader picture to himself this gilded and velvet covered army, slowly wending in long slender file, glistening dazzlingly in the southern sun, but grievously tormented under their ponderously magnificent trappings by the same, as they laboured over the steep and sinuous Apennine paths, by which alone they could reach mountain-girt Florence. For only a difficult bridle-path then crossed those mountains, over which the traveller now rolls in his carriage between Modena and Florence. Let him imagine, too, the camp of the brilliant, but wayworn host, pitched for the night amid the shelter of a chestnut? forest, in the midst of those wild hills, where even now, and much less then, there is neither town nor village capable of housing a tithe of such a multitude. And further, while amusing his fancy with such gorgeous and picturesque imaginings, let him not forget, that every yard of this cloth-of-gold, and richly-tinted velvet, represented the value of some horny palm's hard labour, the sweat of some weary brow, wrung from the wronged labourer by the most cruel and lawless severities of extortion.

READING ROMAN HISTORY.

But while the Duke and his Court were startling the world with the glories of this unprecedented cavalcade, making awe-struck peasants wonder, emulous peers envy, and angels weep, there were three young nobles, who had remained at home at Milan, engaged in reading "certain passages of Roman history" with their schoolmaster, one Cola Montano. Their names were Giovanni Andrea Lampugnano, Girolamo Olgiato, and Carlo Visconti; and, I dare say, descendants of theirs, whether under those names or others, may yet be found in the fair city of Milan; and perhaps they may be equally fond of reading the Roman history,—an occupation, it might be supposed, as innocent, though not so fatiguing, as riding over the Apennines in a suit of cloth of gold. Yet the reverend and right-minded historian,[49] who mentions the circumstance, speaks of their occupation with much disgust and indignation. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps "certain passages of Roman history" are not wholesome reading for the subjects of splendid princes.

For the present, however, we will let Galeazzo ride on in his glory, and the young gentlemen pursue their story-fed meditations in tranquillity at Milan.

The Duke arrived at Florence on the 13th of March, and was magnificently received by the magnificent Lorenzo, who entertained him and his family in his own house, while the enormous body of his retainers and followers were lodged and fed at the cost of the city. The Florentine historian, Ammirato,[50] after having enumerated all the particulars of the pomp detailed above, goes on in the true spirit of the old Italian city-patriotism to maintain, that Galeazzo, "for all that, young and proud, and the minion of Fortune, as he was, found himself obliged to admit that all his splendour was outdone by the magnificence of Lorenzo," inasmuch as the precious treasures of the Medici were far more admirable from the artistic excellence of the workmanship, than from the mere value of the material. "He could not but confess," continues the partisan of the Italian Athens, "that art had a higher value than mere costliness, as being attainable only by more arduous labour, and with greater difficulty; while he declared, that in all Italy he had not seen so great a number of paintings by the first masters, of gems, beautiful vases, statues ancient and modern, bronzes, medals, and rare books, as he now saw collected in the palace of the Medici;—treasures which he should esteem cheaply purchased by any quantity of silver or gold."

Florence did all she could for the amusement of her princely guests. But as it was in time of Lent, she could not, as she did twelve years previously, when Galeazzo had visited the city as a boy, show him a "hunt," as the historian calls it,[51] of wolves, boars, lions, and a giraffe, on the Piazza of Santa Croce! To be "like the time," it was necessary that the dissipations should be of an ecclesiastical character. So the gallant company were treated to a representation of the Annunciation in the church of St. Felice, to the Ascension in the church of the Carmine, and to the descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles, at the church of the Santo Spirito.[52] The souls of the Lombards, says Ammirato, were filled with admiration of the wonderful artifices and ingenuity displayed on this occasion. And all passed off with the greatest éclat, save that the church of Santo Spirito was burned to the ground by the forked tongues of fire.

EFFECTS OF A DUCAL VISIT.

This little accident was the only circumstance, that tended, says the historian, to mingle some flavour of bitterness with the general rejoicing. But the graver citizens of the republic complained that the brilliant Duke, when he started two days after this disaster on his return to his own states, full of compliments and admiration at his hospitable reception, left behind him among the young Florentine nobles a taste for profusion and display, which was a far greater evil than the enormous expense to which the city had been put, including the cost of rebuilding their burned church.