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

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO.

So Bianca and her husband had to keep themselves close prisoners in the little house in the square of St. Mark. She had found out by this time, that he was no Salviati, but a poor clerk, now without a clerkship. And he had found out, that he had calculated amiss on those six thousand crowns, which Bianca inherited from her mother, and which, according to the Venetian law–records, had been to him the maiden's chief attraction. For the Republic declared them to be confiscated! A state of things not calculated, it may be feared, to conduce to that mutual affection, which must have been so necessary to make their misfortunes, and imprisonment in the little "tugurio," endurable.

But while they were thus courting obscurity the story of their flight was making much noise in Italy. The abduction of a Venetian noble's heiress was a serious thing. All Venice felt the insult; and the reward for Bonaventuri's head was published in every city. It thus came to pass, that Francesco, Duke Cosmo's eldest son, the heir apparent to the throne of Tuscany, heard the story, and, at the same time, that the fugitives were then in Florence. And as rumour was also saying extraordinary things of Bianca's beauty, he conceived a strong desire to see the heroine of the story.

All the contemporary writers speak much of this same beauty and fascination; but it must be admitted, that the portraits and medals, which remain to show us what she really was, do not by any means confirm their praises. It is true, that these representations of her show her to us at a later period of her life, and that the coarse strongly marked features may well have been less repulsive at sixteen. Montaigne, in the course of his tour in Italy, saw her at the Tuscan court, and has written that she was "handsome, according to the taste of the Italians, having a cheerful and plump face, considerable stoutness of person, and a bosom such as they admire." This description of her face tallies very well with the portraits, and specially with a medal which must have been struck in her later years. It is a face well calculated to express jovial, convivial cheerfulness, but coarse, vulgar, and insolent in the extreme. And to this must be added, hair, which only a courtier's flattery could term "auburn," and an ungracefully stout person. This, however, as Montaigne hints, is not in Italy thought as incompatible with beauty as on this side of the Alps; and hair, that we should term decidedly red, is often much admired among the Italians.

A MEDICEAN TRAGEDY.

Francesco was at the time of Bianca's arrival in Florence, in his twenty–third year, and, as far as can be judged from the reports of the contemporary writers, had up to that time distinguished himself rather as a reader and student than in any less creditable way. The Court of Cosmo, however, was by no means a favourable school for the education of his children. Some of the scenes recorded by contemporary writers as having been witnessed there are of a nature wholly irreproducible here. And in the last year before that of Bianca's arrival at Florence, the year 1562, had occurred one of those horrible domestic tragedies, which seem to have been a peculiar specialty of the Medicean race.

Cosmo's two sons, Giovanni and Garzia, the former nineteen and a cardinal of two years' standing, and the latter fifteen years of age, were hunting together near Leghorn. Some dispute arose respecting the sport, on which the younger brother gave the elder a mortal wound with his rapier. Giovanni died at Leghorn. Garzia presented himself before his father to implore his pardon for the crime; and was killed by a similar wound from his father's sword, as he knelt at his feet! Of course other and unexceptionably legitimate causes were found and published to account for both deaths. All which the respectable classes pretended to believe; but jotted down their own notions of the matter in "ricordi," destined to be safely buried in the family muniment rooms; but destined also to infallible resurrection at the summons of inevitable Dryasdust. While the unrespectable classes noted to each other under their breath, that the bodies of the two princes had not been exposed to the public view, as was the often inconvenient custom with regard to dead highnesses; and muttered their conclusions accordingly. The mother of the two princes, Eleonora di Toledo, died of grief as was supposed, and as might well be, in the same year.

Shortly afterwards the more consolable father, having given in marriage to a scion of the noble family of Panciatici his mistress, Eleonora degli Albizzi, whom her noble father had sold to him, asked another noble father of Florence for his daughter, the beautiful Camilla Martelli, to be her successor. The honour was of course gratefully accepted by the proud patrician, and Camilla Martelli became the mother of Virginia de' Medici in 1568. But soon afterwards the lady began to be troubled with scruples of conscience, and consulted his Holiness, Pius V., upon the subject, who counselled patience! meaning that she should wait and see whether the sovereign might not be induced to marry her. And accordingly as it happened, that state reasons made it desirable for Cosmo to conciliate the pontiff, he decided on gaining his heart entirely by marrying "La Martelli" in 1570, and by giving up to the Church his subject Carnesecchi, to be burned as a heretic.

The other members of the family at the time of Bianca's arrival in Florence, were Ferdinando, the second surviving son of the grand duke, who at the age of fourteen had just been made a cardinal, and who was generally at Rome; Pietro, a third son, aged nine; and Isabella, Cosmo's daughter, who had been married to Paolo Giordano Orsini in 1553. She was, we are told, the life and brightest ornament of the Tuscan court. She had refused to follow her husband to Rome; and as Cosmo had supported her in her refusal, so far as manifesting his wish that she should continue to reside in Florence, Orsini had left her there, while he remained in his own city, and rarely or never troubled his wife, who had no love for him, with his presence.

CASINO OF ST. MARK.