Part 68

Note 72 page 34. GALEAZZO SANSEVERINO was one of the twelve stalwart sons of Roberto Sanseverino, a brave condottiere who aided to place Ludovico Sforza in power at Milan, rebelled against that prince, and was slain while fighting for the Venetians in 1486. Galeazzo entered the service of Ludovico, whose favour had been attracted by his personal charm, literary accomplishments and rare skill in knightly exercises. When he married his patron’s natural daughter Bianca, in 1489, Leonardo da Vinci arranged the jousts held in honour of the wedding. Thenceforth he adopted the names Visconti and Sforza, and was treated as a member of the ducal family. In 1496, at the head of the Milanese forces, he besieged the Duke of Orleans (afterwards Louis XII) at Novara, but in 1500 he was captured by the French, and after the final downfall of Ludovico (to whom he seems to have remained creditably loyal) he entered the service of Louis XII, who made him Grand Equerry in 1506. The duties of his office included the superintendence of all the royal stables and of an academy for the martial education of young men of noble family. For a further account of his interesting life, and especially of his friendship with Isabella d'Este, see Mrs. Henry Ady’s recent volume, “Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan.”

Note 73 page 35. The word sprezzatura (rendered “nonchalance”) could hardly have been new to Castiglione’s contemporaries, at least in its primary meaning of disprizement or contempt. He may, however, have been among the first to use it (as here and elsewhere in THE COURTIER) in its modified sense of unconcern or nonchalance. Compare Herrick’s ‘wild civility’ in “Art above Nature” and “Delight in Disorder.”

Note 74 page 37. Naturally Venice could hardly be a place well suited for horsemanship; its citizens’ awkward riding was a favourite subject of ridicule in the 16th century.

Note 75 page 37. The incident is supposed to have occurred on the occasion of a visit paid by Apelles to Rhodes not long after the death (323 B.C.) of Alexander the Great, whom he had accompanied into Asia Minor. Apelles was eager to meet Protogenes, and on landing in Rhodes went at once to the painter’s house. Protogenes was absent, but a large panel stood ready for painting. Apelles took a pencil and drew an exceedingly fine coloured line, by which Protogenes on his return immediately recognized who his visitor had been, and in turn drew a finer line of another colour upon or within the first line. When Apelles saw this line, he added a third line still further subdividing the one drawn by Protogenes. Later the panel was carried to Rome, where it long excited wondering admiration in the Palace of the Cæsars, with which it was finally destroyed by fire. Apelles was the first to stimulate appreciation of the merits of Protogenes by buying several of the latter’s works at enormous prices: he maintained however that he excelled Protogenes in knowing when to cease elaborating his paintings.

Note 76 page 37. The play upon words here is untranslatable into English. The Italian tavola stands equally well for a dining-table and for the tablet or panel upon which pictures were painted.

Note 77 page 40. ‘As those who speak [are present] before those who speak’ is a literal translation of the accepted reading of this passage. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that the earliest translator (Boscan) ventures to deviate from the letter of the Italian text for the sake of rendering what surely must have been the author’s meaning: como los que hablan á aquellos con quien hablan, i.e. “as those who speak [are present] before those with whom they speak.”

Note 78 page 41. Although the dialect of Bergamo was (and still is) ridiculed as rude and harsh, it possessed a copious popular literature.

Note 79 page 41. FRANCESCO PETRARCA or PETRARCH, (born 1304; died 1374), belonged to a family that was banished from Florence at the same time with Dante, whom he remembered seeing in his childhood. He was the first Italian of his time to appreciate the value of public libraries, to collect coins and inscriptions as sources of accurate historical information, and to urge the preservation of ancient monuments. Had he never written a line of verse, he would still be venerated as the apostle of scholarship, as the chief originator of humanistic impulses based upon what Symonds describes as “a new and vital perception of the dignity of man considered as a rational being apart from theological determinations, and ... the further perception that classic literature alone displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual and moral freedom.”

Note 80 page 41. In an age when grammatical and rhetorical treatises, in the modern sense of the word, hardly existed, it was natural that the study of classic models should take the form of imitation.

Note 81 page 42. It will be remembered that Giuliano de' Medici was a native Tuscan.

Note 82 page 43. This Tuscan triumvirate was called “the three Florentine crowns:” Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Note 83 page 44. EVANDER was a mythical son of Hermes, supposed to have founded a colony on the Tiber before the Trojan War. TURNUS was a legendary king of an Italian tribe, who was slain by Æneas.

Note 84 page 44. The Salian priests were attached to the worship of Mars Gradivus. On the occasion of their annual festival, they went in procession through Rome, carrying the sacred shields of which they were custodians and which they beat in accompaniment to dance and song. The words of their chaunts are said to have become unintelligible even to themselves, and appear to have set forth a kind of theogony in praise of all the celestial deities (excepting Venus), and especially of one Mamurius Veturius, who is by some regarded as identical with Mars.

Note 85 page 44. MARCUS ANTONIUS (143-87 B.C.) and LICINIUS CRASSUS (140-91 B.C.), the two most famous orators of early Rome, were regarded by Cicero as having been the first to rival their Greek predecessors. QUINTUS HORTENSIUS HORTALUS (114-50 B.C.), the great advocate of the aristocratic party at Rome, yielded the palm of oratory only to CICERO (106-43 B.C.). MARCUS PORCIUS CATO (234-149 B.C.), a Roman soldier, author and reforming statesman, sought to restore the ancient purity and simplicity of the earlier republic. QUINTUS ENNIUS (239-169 B.C.), a Roman epic poet and annalist, imparted to the language and literature of his nation much of the impulse that affected their growth for centuries. VIRGIL was born 70 B.C., and died 19 B.C.

Note 86 page 44. HORACE was born 65 B.C., and died 8 B.C. PLAUTUS died 184 B.C.

Note 87 page 44. SERGIUS SULPICIUS GALBA was Roman Consul 144 B.C.; Cicero praised his oratory, but found it more old-fashioned than that of Lælius (flor. 200 B.C.) and Scipio Africanus the Younger (died 129 B.C.).

Note 88 page 46. In his Prose, Bembo says that courtly Italian, especially during the pontificate of the Spaniard, Alexander VI (1492-1503), was full of Spanish expressions,—an assertion amply confirmed by contemporary letters, which are rich also in Gallicisms.

Note 89 page 46. The Spanish primor has failed to win Italian citizenship. Aventurare has become naturalized in Italy; as also have acertare (in the sense, however, of to assure, to make certain, to verify), ripassare (to repass, to repeat, to rebuff), rimproccio or rimprovero, and attilato or attillato, which is recognizable in the Spanish atildado. Creato (Spanish criado) is now replaced by creatura in the sense mentioned in the text; in Sicily creato is used to mean servant.

Note 90 page 47. The reference here is of course to the Attic, Doric, Ionic and Æolic dialects.

Note 91 page 47. TITUS LIVIUS was born at Padua 59 B.C., and died there 17 A.D. Of the one hundred and forty-two books of his History (which covered the period from the founding of Rome in 750 B.C. down to 9 B.C., and upon which he spent forty years of his life), only thirty-five have survived, together with an anonymous summary of the whole.

Note 92 page 48. Of the four forms here condemned by Castiglione as corrupt, three (Campidoglio, Girolamo, and padrone) have become firmly established in Italian. Campidoglio had been used by Petrarch (Trionfo d'Amore, i, 14),—an “old” but certainly not an “ignorant” Tuscan.

Note 93 page 49. Oscan was a pre-Roman language spoken by the Opici, an Italian tribe inhabiting the Campanian coast. Much of the mist that shrouded it for centuries has now been dispelled by the epigraphists. Both Dante and Petrarch were great lovers of Provençal, with which in Castiglione’s time his friend Federico Fregoso was familiar.

Note 94 page 50. BIDON was a native of Asti, and one of the most famous choristers in the service of Leo X.

ANDREA MANTEGNA 1431-1506 ]

Enlarged from a part of Alinari’s photograph (no. 18657) of the bronze relief, surmounting Mantegna’s tomb in the Church of Sant'Andrea at Mantua, variously attributed to Bartolommeo di Virgilio Melioli (1448-1514), to Giovanni Marco Cavalli (born 1450), and, with less reason, to Sperandio di Bartolommeo de' Savelli (1425?-1500?).

Note 95 page 50. MARCHETTO CARA, a native of Verona, entered the service of the Gonzagas in 1495 and lived nearly thirty years at Mantua, where he was made a citizen by the Marquess Federico. He frequented also the court of Urbino, and is known to have been sent by the Marchioness Isabella to relieve the tedium of her friend and sister-in-law the Duchess Elisabetta’s exile at Venice in 1503. In his time he was among the most prolific and successful composers of profane music, especially of ballads and madrigals, and a number of his popular pieces have been preserved.

Note 96 page 50. LEONARDO DA VINCI, (born 1452; died 1519), was the natural son of a notary, Pietro Antonio, of the village of Vinci, situated about fourteen miles east of Florence. He studied some three years with Donatello’s pupil Verocchio at Florence. Meeting small pecuniary success there, he removed to Milan about 1483 and entered the service of Duke Ludovico Sforza, who is said to have paid him the equivalent of £4000 a year while painting the “Last Supper,” and for whom he completed in 1493 the model of a colossal equestrian statue of Duke Francesco Sforza, never executed in permanent form. He was employed by Cesare Borgia as military engineer, and in that capacity visited Urbino in July 1502. His famous portrait known as the “Monna Lisa” or “La Gioconda,” upon which he worked at times for four years, was finished about 1504 and afterwards sold by him to Francis I. In 1507, he had been appointed painter to Louis XII, but did not visit France until 1516. On the election of Leo X in 1513, he journeyed to Rome in the company and service of Giuliano de' Medici, who paid him a monthly stipend of £66. Although he was received with favour by the new pope and lodged in the Vatican, his stay in Rome was artistically unprolific, his interest at the time being chiefly confined to chemistry and physics, and nature attracting him more than antiquities, of which he spoke as “this old rubbish” (queste anticaglie). Three years before his death he was visited at Amboise in France by Cardinal Ludovico of Aragon, who is mentioned later in THE COURTIER (p. 159), and whose secretary left an interesting account of an interview with him, describing the painter as then disabled by paralysis of the hand.

Note 97 page 50. ANDREA MANTEGNA, (born 1431; died 1506), was a native of Vicenza and probably of humble origin. When a mere child he became the pupil and adopted son of the noted painter and instructor, Francesco Squarcione of Padua, and was soon enrolled in the painters’ guild of that city. In 1449 he began painting for the d'Este at Ferrara, and between 1453 and 1459 he married Niccolosa, a daughter of Squarcione’s rival Giacopo Bellini, and sister of the more famous brothers Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. He painted also at Verona, and about 1460 entered the service of the Gonzagas at Mantua, where the remainder of his life was chiefly spent, although he worked for Pope Innocent VIII at Rome about the year 1488, before which date he was knighted by the Marquess of Mantua. By one writer he is affirmed to have cast the fine bust which ornaments his tomb at Mantua, and which is said once to have had diamond eyes. He is known to have understood bronze casting, and besides the brush and the engraver’s burin, he handled modelling tools, while a sonnet of his has been preserved. Although praised by Vasari as kindly and in every way estimable, he is shown by contemporary letters to have been rather irritable and litigious in private life. Albert Dürer tells us that one of the keenest disappointments of his life was occasioned by the great painter’s death before he was able to make an intended journey to Mantua for the purpose of visiting Mantegna.