The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

846

Comp. La Nencia di Barberino, str. 20 and 40. The lover promises to bring his beloved cosmetics from the town (see on this poem of Lorenzo dei Medici, above, p. 101).

847

Agnolo Pandolfini, Trattato della Governo della Famiglia, p. 118. He condemns this practice most energetically.

848

Tristan. Caracciolo, in Murat. xxii. col. 87. Bandello, parte ii. nov. 47.

849

Cap. i. to Cosimo: “Quei cento scudi nuovi e profumati che l’altro di mi mandaste a donare.” Some objects which date from that period have not yet lost their odour.

850

Vespasiano Fiorent. p. 453, in the life of Donato Acciajuoli, and p. 625, in the life of Niccoli. See above, vol. i. p. 303 sqq.

851

Giraldi, Hecatommithi, Introduz. nov. 6. A few notices on the Germans in Italy may not here be out of place. On the fear of German invasion, see p. 91, note 2; on Germans as copyists and printers, p. 193 sqq. and the notes; on the ridicule of Hadrian VI. as a German, p. 227 and notes. The Italians were in general ill-disposed to the Germans, and showed their ill-will by ridicule. Boccaccio (Decam. viii. 1) says: ‘Un Tedesco in soldo prò della persona è assai leale a coloro ne’ cui servigi si mattea; il che rade volte suole de’ Tedeschi avenire.’ The tale is given as an instance of German cunning. The Italian humanists are full of attacks on the German barbarians, and especially those who, like Poggio, had seen Germany. Comp. Voigt, Wiederbelebung, 374 sqq.; Geiger, Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Italien Zeit des Humanismus in Zeitschrift für deutsche Culturgeschichte, 1875, pp. 104-124; see also Janssen, Gesch. der deutschen Volkes, i. 262. One of the chief opponents of the Germans was Joh. Ant. Campanus. See his works, ed. Mencken, who delivered a discourse ‘De Campani odio in Germanos.’ The hatred of the Germans was strengthened by the conduct of Hadrian VI., and still more by the conduct of the troops at the sack of Rome (Gregorovius, viii. 548, note). Bandello III. nov. 30, chooses the German as the type of the dirty and foolish man (see iii. 51, for another German). When an Italian wishes to praise a German he says, as Petrus Alcyonius in the dedication to his dialogue De Exilio, to Nicolaus Schomberg, p. 9: ‘Itaque etsi in Misnensi clarissima Germaniæ provincia illustribus natalibus ortus es, tamen in Italiae luce cognosceris.’ Unqualified praise is rare, e.g. of German women at the time of Marius, Cortigiano, iii. cap. 33.

It must be added that the Italians of the Renaissance, like the Greeks of antiquity, were filled with aversion for all barbarians. Boccaccio, De claris Mulieribus, in the article ‘Carmenta,’ speaks of ‘German barbarism, French savagery, English craft, and Spanish coarseness.’

852

Paul. Jov. Elogia, p. 289, who, however, makes no mention of the German education. Maximilian could not be induced, even by celebrated women, to change his underclothing.

853

Æneas Sylvius (Vitae Paparum, ap. Murat. iii. ii. col. 880) says, in speaking of Baccano: ‘Pauca sunt mapalia, eaque hospitia faciunt Theutonici; hoc hominum genus totam fere Italiam hospitalem facit; ubi non repereris hos, neque diversorium quaeras.’

854

Franco Sacchetti, Nov. 21. Padua, about the year 1450, boasted of a great inn—the ‘Ox’—like a palace, containing stabling for two hundred horses. Michele Savonarola, in Mur. xxiv. col. 1175. At Florence, outside the Porta San Gallo, there was one of the largest and most splendid inns then known, but which served, it seems, only as a place of amusement for the people of the city. Varchi, Stor. Fior. iii. p. 86. At the time of Alexander VI. the best inn at Rome was kept by a German. See the remarkable notices taken from the MS. of Burcardus in Gregorovius, vii. 361, note 2. Comp. ibid. p. 93, notes 2 and 3.

855

Comp. e.g. the passages in Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, in the Colloquies of Erasmus, in the Latin poem of Grobianus, &c., and poems on behaviour at table, where, besides descriptions of bad habits, rules are given for good behaviour. For one of these, see C. Weller, Deutsche Gedichte der Jahrhunderts, Tübingen, 1875.

856

The diminution of the ‘burla’ is evident from the instances in the Cortigiano, l. ii. fol. 96. The Florence practical jokes kept their ground tenaciously. See, for evidence, the tales of Lasca (Ant. Franc. Grazini, b. 1503, d. 1582), which appeared at Florence in 1750.

857

For Milan, see Bandello, parte i. nov. 9. There were more than sixty carriages with four, and numberless others with two, horses, many of them carved and richly gilt and with silken tops. Comp. ibid. nov. 4. Ariosto, Sat. iii. 127.

858

Bandello, parte i. nov. 3, iii. 42, iv. 25.

859

De Vulgari Eloquio, ed. Corbinelli, Parisiis, 1577. According to Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 77, it was written shortly before his death. He mentions in the Convito the rapid and striking changes which took place during his lifetime in the Italian language.

860

See on this subject the investigations of Lionardo Aretino (Epist. ed. Mehus. ii. 62 sqq. lib. vi. 10) and Poggio (Historiae disceptativae convivales tres, in the Opp. fol. 14 sqq.), whether in earlier times the language of the people and of scholars was the same. Lionardo maintains the negative; Poggio expressly maintains the affirmative against his predecessor. See also the detailed argument of L. B. Alberti in the introduction to Della Famiglia, book iii., on the necessity of Italian for social intercourse.

861

The gradual progress which this dialect made in literature and social intercourse could be tabulated without difficulty by a native scholar. It could be shown to what extent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the various dialects kept their places, wholly or partly, in correspondence, in official documents, in historical works, and in literature generally. The relations between the dialects and a more or less impure Latin, which served as the official language, would also be discussed. The modes of speech and pronunciation in the different cities of Italy are noticed in Landi, Forcianae Quaestiones, fol. 7 a. Of the former he says: ‘Hetrusci vero quanquam caeteris excellant, effugere tamen non possunt, quin et ipsi ridiculi sint, aut saltem quin se mutuo lacerent;’ as regards pronunciation, the Sienese, Lucchese, and Florentines are specially praised; but of the Florentines it is said: ‘Plus (jucunditatis) haberet si voces non ingurgitaret aut non ita palato lingua jungeretur.’

862

It is so felt to be by Dante, De Vulgari Eloquio.

863

Tuscan, it is true, was read and written long before this in Piedmont—but very little reading and writing was done at all.

864

The place, too, of the dialect in the usage of daily life was clearly understood. Gioviano Pontano ventured especially to warn the prince of Naples against the use of it (Jov. Pontan. De Principe). The last Bourbons were notoriously less scrupulous in this respect. For the way in which a Milanese Cardinal, who wished to retain his native dialect in Rome was ridiculed, see Bandello, parte ii. nov. 31.

865

Bald. Castiglione, Il Cortigiano, l. i. fol. 27 sqq. Throughout the dialogue we are able to gather the personal opinion of the writer. The opposition to Petrarch and Boccaccio is very curious (Dante is not once mentioned). We read that Politian, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and others were also Tuscans, and as worthy of imitation as they, ‘e forse di non minor dottrina e guidizio.’

866

There was a limit, however, to this. The satirists introduce bits of Spanish, and Folengo (under the pseudonym Limerno Pitocco, in his Orlandino) of French, but only by way of ridicule. It is an exceptional fact that a street in Milan, which at the time of the French (1500 to 1512, 1515 to 1522) was called Rue Belle, now bears the name Rugabella. The long Spanish rule has left almost no traces on the language, and but rarely the name of some governor in streets and public buildings. It was not till the eighteenth century that, together with French modes of thought, many French words and phrases found their way into Italian. The purism of our century is still busy in removing them.

867

Firenzuola, Opera, i. in the preface to the discourse on female beauty, and ii. in the Ragionamenti which precede the novels.

868

Bandello, parte i. Proemio, and nov. 1 and 2. Another Lombard, the before-mentioned Teofilo Folengo in his Orlandino, treats the whole matter with ridicule.

869

Such a congress appears to have been held at Bologna at the end of 1531 under the presidency of Bembo. See the letter of Claud. Tolomai, in Firenzuola, Opere, vol. ii. append. p. 231 sqq. But this was not so much a matter of purism, but rather the old quarrel between Lombards and Tuscans.

870

Luigi Cornaro complains about 1550 (at the beginning of his Trattato della Vita Sobria) that latterly Spanish ceremonies and compliments, Lutheranism and gluttony had been gaining ground in Italy. With moderation in respect to the entertainment offered to guests, the freedom and ease of social intercourse disappeared.

871

Vasari, xii. p. 9 and 11, Vita di Rustici. For the School for Scandal of needy artists, see xi. 216 sqq., Vita d’Aristotile. Macchiavelli’s Capitoli for a circle of pleasure-seekers (Opere minori, p. 407) are a ludicrous caricature of these social statutes. The well-known description of the evening meeting of artists in Rome in Benvenuto Cellini, i. cap. 30 is incomparable.

872

Which must have been taken about 10 or 11 o’clock. See Bandello, parte ii. nov. 10.

873

Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. p. 309, calls the ladies ‘alquante ministre di Venere.’

874

Biographical information and some of her letters in A. v. Reumont’s Briefe heiliger und gottesfürchtiger Italiener. Freiburg (1877) p. 22 sqq.

875

Important passages: parte i. nov. 1, 3, 21, 30, 44; ii. 10, 34, 55; iii. 17, &c.

876

Comp. Lorenzo Magn. dei Med., Poesie, i. 204 (the Symposium); 291 (the Hawking-Party). Roscoe, Vita di Lorenzo, iii. p. 140, and append. 17 to 19.

877

The title ‘Simposio’ is inaccurate; it should be called, ‘The return from the Vintage.’ Lorenzo, in a parody of Dante’s Hell, gives an amusing account of his meeting in the Via Faenza all his good friends coming back from the country more or less tipsy. There is a most comical picture in the eighth chapter of Piovanno Arlotto, who sets out in search of his lost thirst, armed with dry meat, a herring, a piece of cheese, a sausage, and four sardines, ‘e tutte si cocevan nel sudore.’

878

On Cosimo Ruccellai as centre of this circle at the beginning of the sixteenth century, see Macchiavelli, Arte della Guerra, l. i.

879

Il Cortigiano, l. ii. fol. 53. See above pp. 121, 139.

880

Caelius Calcagninus (Opere, p. 514) describes the education of a young Italian of position about the year 1506, in the funeral speech on Antonio Costabili: first, ‘artes liberales et ingenuae disciplinae; tum adolescentia in iis exercitationibus acta, quæ ad rem militarem corpus et animum praemuniunt. Nunc gymnastae (i.e. the teachers of gymnastics) operam dare, luctari, excurrere, natare, equitare, venari, aucupari, ad palum et apud lanistam ictus inferre aut declinare, caesim punctimve hostem ferire, hastam vibrare, sub armis hyemen juxta et aestatem traducere, lanceis occursare, veri ac communis Martis simulacra imitari.’ Cardanus (De prop. Vita, c. 7) names among his gymnastic exercises the springing on to a wooden horse. Comp. Rabelais, Gargantua, i. 23, 24, for education in general, and 35 for gymnastic art. Even for the philologists, Marsilius Ficinus (Epist. iv. 171 Galeotto) requires gymnastics, and Maffeo Vegio (De Puerorum Educatione, lib. iii. c. 5) for boys.

881

Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 172 sqq. They are said to have arisen through the rowing out to the Lido, where the practice with the crossbow took place. The great regatta on the feast of St. Paul was prescribed by law from 1315 onwards. In early times there was much riding in Venice, before the streets were paved and the level wooden bridges turned into arched stone ones. Petrarch (Epist. Seniles, iv. 4) describes a brilliant tournament held in 1364 on the square of St. Mark, and the Doge Steno, about the year 1400, had as fine a stable as any prince in Italy. But riding in the neighbourhood of the square was prohibited as a rule after the year 1291. At a later time the Venetians naturally had the name of bad riders. See Ariosto, Sat. v. 208.

882

See on this subject: Ueber den Einfluss der Renaissance auf die Entwickelung der Musik, by Bernhard Loos, Basel, 1875, which, however, hardly offers for this period more than is given here. On Dante’s position with regard to music, and on the music to Petrarch’s and Boccaccio’s poems, see Trucchi, Poesie Ital. inedite, ii. p. 139. See also Poesie Musicali dei Secoli XIV., XV. e XVI. tratte da vari codici per cura di Antonio Cappelli, Bologna, 1868. For the theorists of the fourteenth century, Filippo Villani, Vite, p. 46, and Scardeonius, De urb. Pativ. antiq. in Graev. Thesaur, vi. iii. col. 297. A full account of the music at the court of Frederick of Urbino, is to be found in Vespes. Fior. p. 122. For the children’s chapel (ten children 6 to 8 years old whom F. had educated in his house, and who were taught singing), at the court of Hercules I., see Diario Ferrarese, in Murat. xxiv. col. 359. Out of Italy it was still hardly allowable for persons of consequence to be musicians; at the Flemish court of the young Charles V. a serious dispute took place on the subject. See Hubert. Leod. De Vita Frid. II. Palat. l. iii. Henry VIII. of England is an exception, and also the German Emperor Maximilian, who favoured music as well as all other arts. Joh. Cuspinian, in his life of the Emperor, calls him ‘Musices singularis amator’ and adds, ‘Quod vel hinc maxime patet, quod nostra aetate musicorum principes omnes, in omni genere musices omnibusque instrumentis in ejus curia, veluti in fertilissimo agro succreverant. Scriberem catalogum musicorum quos novi, nisi magnitudinem operis vererer.’ In consequence of this, music was much cultivated at the University of Vienna. The presence of the musical young Duke Francesco Sforza of Milan contributed to this result. See Aschbach, Gesch. der Wiener Universität (1877), vol. ii. 79 sqq.

A remarkable and comprehensive passage on music is to be found, where we should not expect it, in the Maccaroneide, Phant. xx. It is a comic description of a quartette, from which we see that Spanish and French songs were often sung, that music already had its enemies (1520), and that the chapel of Leo X. and the still earlier composer, Josquin des Près, whose principal works are mentioned, were the chief subjects of enthusiasm in the musical world of that time. The same writer (Folengo) displays in his Orlandino (iii. 23 &c.), published under the name Limerno Pitocco, a musical fanaticism of a thoroughly modern sort.

Barth. Facius, De Vir. Ill. p. 12, praises Leonardus Justinianus as a composer, who produced love-songs in his youth, and religious pieces in his old age. J. A. Campanus (Epist. i. 4, ed. Mencken) extols the musician Zacarus at Teramo and says of him, ‘Inventa pro oraculis habentur.’ Thomas of Forli ‘musicien du pape’ in Burchardi Diarium, ed. Leibnitz, pp. 62 sqq.

883

Leonis Vita anonyma, in Roscoe, ed. Bossi, xii. p. 171. May he not be the violinist in the Palazzo Sciarra? A certain Giovan Maria da Corneto is praised in the Orlandino (Milan, 1584, iii. 27).

884

Lomazzo, Trattato dell’Arte della Pittura, &c. p. 347. The text, however, does not bear out the last statement, which perhaps rests on a misunderstanding of the final sentence, ‘Et insieme vi si possono gratiosamente rappresentar convitti et simili abbellimenti, che il pittore leggendo i poeti e gli historici può trovare copiosamente et anco essendo ingenioso et ricco d’invenzione può per se stesso imaginare?’ Speaking of the lyre, he mentions Lionardo da Vinci and Alfonso (Duke?) of Ferrara. The author includes in his work all the celebrities of the age, among them several Jews. The most complete list of the famous musicians of the sixteenth century, divided into an earlier and a later generation, is to be found in Rabelais, in the ‘New Prologue’ to the fourth book. A virtuoso, the blind Francesco of Florence (d. 1390), was crowned at Venice with a wreath of laurel by the King of Cyprus.

885

Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 138. The same people naturally collected books of music. Sansovino’s words are, ‘è vera cosa che la musica ha la sua propria sede in questa città.’

886

The ‘Academia de’ Filarmonici’ at Verona is mentioned by Vasari, xi. 133, in the life of Sanmichele. Lorenzo Magnifico was in 1480 already the centre of a School of Harmony consisting of fifteen members, among them the famous organist and organ-builder Squarcialupi. See Delecluze, Florence et ses Vicissitudes, vol. ii. p. 256, and Reumont, L. d. M. i. 177 sqq., ii. 471-473. Marsilio Ficino took part in these exercises and gives in his letters (Epist. i. 73, iii. 52, v. 15) remarkable rules as to music. Lorenzo seems to have transmitted his passion for music to his son Leo X. His eldest son Pietro was also musical.

887

Il Cortigiano, fol. 56, comp. fol. 41.

888

Quatro viole da arco’—a high and, except in Italy, rare achievement for amateurs.

889

Bandello, parte i. nov. 26. The song of Antonio Bologna in the House of Ippolita Bentivoglio. Comp. iii. 26. In these delicate days, this would be called a profanation of the holiest feelings. (Comp. the last song of Britannicus, Tacit. Annal. xiii. 15.) Recitations accompanied by the lute or ‘viola’ are not easy to distinguish, in the accounts left us, from singing properly so-called.

890

Scardeonius, l. c.

891

For biographies of women, see above, p. 147 and note 1. Comp. the excellent work of Attilio Hortis: Le Donne Famose, descritte da Giovanni Boccacci. Trieste, 1877.

892

E.g. in Castiglione, Il Cortigiano. In the same strain Francesco Barbaro, De Re Uxoria; Poggio, An Seni sit Uxor ducenda, in which much evil is said of women; the ridicule of Codro Urceo, especially his remarkable discourse, An Uxor sit ducenda (Opera, 1506, fol. xviii.-xxi.), and the sarcasms of many of the epigrammatists. Marcellus Palingenius, (vol. i. 304) recommends celibacy in various passages, lib. iv. 275 sqq., v. 466-585; as a means of subduing disobedient wives he recommends to married people,

Italian writers on the woman’s side are Benedetto da Cesena, De Honore Mulierum, Venice, 1500, Dardano, La defesa della Donna, Ven. 1554, Per Donne Romane. ed. Manfredi, Bol. 1575. The defence of, or attack on, women, supported by instances of famous or infamous women down to the time of the writer, was also treated by the Jews, partly in Italian and partly in Hebrew; and in connection with an earlier Jewish literature dating from the thirteenth century, we may mention Abr. Sarteano and Eliah Gennazzano, the latter of whom defended the former against the attacks of Abigdor (for their MS. poems about year 1500, comp. Steinschneider, Hebr. Bibliogr. vi. 48).

893

Addressed to Annibale Maleguccio, sometimes numbered as the 5th or the 6th.

894

When the Hungarian Queen Beatrice, a Neapolitan princess, came to Vienna in 1485, she was addressed in Latin, and ‘arrexit diligentissime aures domina regina saepe, cum placide audierat, subridendo.’ Aschbach, o. c. vol. ii. 10 note.

895

The share taken by women in the plastic arts was insignificant. The learned Isotta Nogarola deserves a word of mention. On her intercourse with Guarino, see Rosmini, ii. 67 sqq.; with Pius II. see Voigt, iii. 515 sqq.

896

It is from this point of view that we must judge of the life of Allessandra de’ Bardi in Vespasiano Fiorentino (Mai, Spicileg. rom. i. p. 593 sqq.) The author, by the way, is a great ‘laudator temporis acti,’ and it must not be forgotten that nearly a hundred years before what he calls the good old time, Boccaccio wrote the Decameron. On the culture and education of the Italian women of that day, comp. the numerous facts quoted in Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia. There is a catalogue of the books possessed by Lucrezia in 1502 and 3 (Gregorovius, ed. 3, i. 310, ii. 167), which may be considered characteristic of the Italian women of the period. We there find a Breviary; a little book with the seven psalms and some prayers; a parchment book with gold miniature, called De Coppelle alla Spagnola; the printed letters of Catherine of Siena; the printed epistles and gospels in Italian; a religious book in Spanish; a MS. collection of Spanish odes, with the proverbs of Domenico Lopez; a printed book, called Aquila Volante; the Mirror of Faith printed in Italian; an Italian printed book called The Supplement of Chronicles; a printed Dante, with commentary; an Italian book on philosophy; the legends of the saints in Italian; an old book De Ventura; a Donatus; a Life of Christ in Spanish; a MS. Petrarch, on duodecimo parchment. A second catalogue of the year 1516 contains no secular books whatever.

897

Ant. Galateo, Epist. 3, to the young Bona Sforza, the future wife of Sigismund of Poland: ‘Incipe aliquid de viro sapere, quoniam ad imperandum viris nata es.... Ita fac, ut sapientibus viris placeas, ut te prudentes et graves viri admirentur, et vulgi et muliercularum studia et judicia despicias,’ &c. A remarkable letter in other respects also (Mai. Spicileg. Rom. viii. p. 532).

898

She is so called in the Chron. Venetum, in Muratori, xxiv. col. 121 sqq. (in the account of her heroic defence, ibid. col. 121 she is called a virago). Comp. Infessura in Eccard, Scriptt. ii. col. 1981, and Arch. Stor. append. ii. p. 250, and Gregorovius, vii. 437 note 1.

899

Contemporary historians speak of her more than womanly intellect and eloquence. Comp. Ranke’s Filippo Strozzi, in Historisch-biographische Studien, p. 371 note 2.

900