Chapter III: The Transition (3)

In Alberti, moreover, we study the best type of the Italian intellect as it was molded, on emergence from the middle ages, by those double influences of humanism and fine art which determined the Renaissance. Though his genius was rather artistic than scientific, all problems of nature and of man attracted him; and he dealt freely with them in the spirit of true modern curiosity. His method shows no trace either of mystical theology or of crooked scholasticism. He surveyed the world with a meditative but observant glance, avoiding the deeper questions of ontology, and depicting what he noticed with the realism of a painter. This powerful pictorial faculty made his sketches from contemporary life--the description of the gambler in the _Deiciarchia_; the portrait of the sage in the _Teogenio_; the domestic colloquies of Giannozzo with his wife in the _Famiglia_; the interior of a coquette's chamber in the _Amiria_--surprising for sincerity and fullness. As a writer, he has the same merit that we recognize in Masaccio and Ghirlandajo among the fresco-painters of that age. But Alberti's touch is more sympathetic, his humanity more loving.

He was not eminent as a metaphysician. From Plato he only borrowed something of his literary art, and something of ethical elevation, leaving to Ficino the mysticism which then passed for Platonic science. His ideal of the virtuous man is a Florence burgher, honorable but keen in business, open to culture of all kinds, untainted by the cynicism that marred Cosimo de' Medici, lacking the licentious traits of the _Novelle_. Alberti's Padre di Famiglia might have stepped from the walls of the Riccardi Chapel or the Choir of S. Maria Novella, in his grave red _lucco_, with the cold and powerful features. The life praised above all others by Alberti is the life of a meditative student, withdrawn from State affairs, and corresponding with men of a like tranquil nature. This ideal was realized by Sannazzaro in his Mergellina, by Ficino at Montevecchio, by Pico at Querceto. Just as his science and his philosophy were aesthetic, so were his religion and his morality. He conformed to the ceremonies of the Catholic Church. But the religious sentiment had already become in him rational rather than emotional, and less a condition of the conscience than of the artistic sensibility. Honor in men, honesty in women, moved his admiration because they are comely. The splendor of the stars, the loveliness of earth, raised him in thought to the supreme source of beauty. Whatever the genius of man brings to perfection of grace, he called divine, realizing for the first time the piety that finds God in the human spirit.[270]

The harmonious lines and the vast spaces of the Florentine Duomo thrilled him like music, merging the charm of art in the high worship of a cultivated nature. "This temple," he writes in a passage that might be quoted as the quintessential exposition of his mind,[271] "has in it both grace and majesty, and I delight to notice that union of slender elegance with full and vigorous solidity, which shows that while every member is designed to please, the whole is built for perpetuity. Inside these aisles there is the climate of eternal spring--wind, frost, and rime without; a quiet and mild air within--the blaze of summer on the square; delicious coolness here. Above all things I delight in feeling the sweetness of those voices busied at the sacrifice, and in the sacred rites our classic ancestors called mysteries. All other modes and kinds of singing weary with reiteration; only religious music never palls. I know not how others are affected; but for myself, those hymns and psalms of the Church produce on me the very effect for which they were designed, soothing all disturbance of the soul, and inspiring a certain ineffable languor full of reverence toward God. What heart of man is so rude as not to be softened when he hears the rhythmic rise and fall of those voices, complete and true, in cadences so sweet and flexible? I assure you that I never listen in these mysteries and funeral ceremonies to the Greek words which call on God for aid against our human wretchedness, without weeping. Then, too, I ponder what power music brings with it to soften us and soothe."

It would be difficult with greater spontaneity and truth to delineate the emotions stirred in an artistic nature by the services of a cathedral. It is the language, however, not of a devout Christian, but one who, long before Goethe, had realized the Goethesque ideal of "living with fixed purpose in the Whole, the Good, the Beautiful."

Alberti both in his width of genius and in his limitations--in his all-embracing curiosity and aptitude for knowledge, his sensitiveness to every charm, his strong practical bias, the realism of his pictures, the objectivity of his style, his indifference to theology and metaphysic, the largeness of his love for all things that have grace, the substitution of aesthetical for moral standards, the purity of his taste, the tranquillity and urbanity of his spirit, his Stoic-Epicurean acceptance of the world where man may be content to dwell and build himself a home of beauty--was a true representative of his age. What attracts us in the bronze-work of Ghiberti, in the bass-reliefs of Della Robbia, in Rossellino's sleeping Cardinal di Portogallo, in Ghirlandajo's portraits and the airy space of Masaccio's backgrounds, in the lives of Ficino and Pomponio Leto, in the dome of Brunelleschi, in the stanzas of Poliziano, arrives at consciousness in Alberti, pervades his writing, and finds unique expression in the fragment of his Latin biography. Yet we must not measure the age of Cosimo de' Medici and Roderigo Borgia by the standard of Alberti. He presents the spirit of the fifteenth century at its very best. Philosophical and artistic sympathy compensate in his religion for that period's lack of pious faith. Its political degradation assumes in him the shape of a fastidious retirement from vulgar strife. Its lawlessness, caprice, and violence are regulated by the motto "Nothing overmuch" which forms the keystone of his ethics. Its realism is tempered by his love for man and beast and tree--that love which made him weep when he beheld the summer fields and labors of the husbandman. Its sensuality finds no place in his harmonious nature. Many defects of the century are visible enough in Alberti; but what redeemed Italy from corruption and rendered her capable of great and brilliant work amid the chaos of States ruining in infidelity and vice--that free energy of the intellect, open to all influences, inventive of ideas, creative of beauty, which ennobled her Renaissance--burned in him with mild and tranquil radiance.

This is perhaps the fittest place to notice a remarkable book, which, though it cannot be reckoned among the masterpieces of Italian literature, is too important in its bearing on the history of the Renaissance to be passed in silence. The _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, or "Poliphil's Strife of Love in a Dream," was written by Francesco Colonna, a Dominican monk, at Treviso in 1467.[272] There is some reason to conjecture that he composed it first in Latin;[273] but when it appeared in print in 1499, it had already assumed the garb of a strange maccaronic style, blending the euphuisms of affected rhetoric with phrases culled from humanistic pedantry. The base of the language professes to be Italian; but it is an Italian Latinized in all its elements, and interlarded with scraps of Greek and Hebrew. The following description of the Dawn, with which the book opens, serve as a specimen of its peculiar dialect[274]:

Phoebo in quel hora manando, che la fronte di Matuta Leucothea
candidava, fora gia dalle Oceane unde, le volubile rote
sospese non dimonstrava. Ma sedulo cum gli sui volucri
caballi, Pyroo primo, & Eoo al quanto apparendo, ad dipingere
le lycophe quadrige della figliola di vermigliante rose,
velocissimo inseguentila, non dimorava. Et coruscante gia
sopra le cerulee & inquiete undule, le sue irradiante come
crispulavano. Dal quale adventicio in quel puncto occidua
davase la non cornuta Cynthia, solicitando gli dui caballi del
vehiculo suo cum il Mulo, lo uno candido & laltro fusco,
trahenti ad lultimo Horizonta discriminante gli Hemisperii
pervenuta, & dalla pervia stella ari centare el di, fugata
cedeva. In quel tempo quando che gli Rhiphaei monti erano
placidi, ne cum tanta rigidecia piu lalgente & frigorifico
Euro cum el laterale flando quassabondo el mandava gli teneri
ramuli, & ad inquietare gli mobili scirpi & pontuti iunci &
debili Cypiri, & advexare gli plichevoli vimini & agitare gli
lenti salici, & proclinare la fragile abiete sotto gli corni
di Tauro lascivianti. Quanta n el hyberno tempo spirare solea.
Similmente el iactabondo Orione cessando di persequire
lachrymoso, lornato humero Taurino delle sete sorore.

Whether Francesco Colonna prepared the redaction from which this paragraph is quoted, admits of doubt. A scholar, Leonardo Crasso of Verona, defrayed the cost of the edition. Manutius Aldus printed the volume and its pages were adorned with precious wood-cuts, the work of more than one anonymous master of the Lombardo-Venetian school.[275] It was dedicated to Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino.

For the student of Italian literature in its transition from the middle age to the Renaissance, the _Hypnerotomachia_ has special and many-sided interest. It shows that outside Florence, where the pure Italian idiom was too vigorous to be suppressed, humanistic fashion had so far taken possession of the literary fancy as to threaten the very existence of the mother tongue. But, more than this, it represents that epoch of transition in its fourfold intellectual craving after the beauty of antiquity, the treasures of erudition, the multiplied delights of art, and the liberty of nature. These cravings are allegorized in a romance of love, which blends medieval mysticism with modern sensuousness. Like the style, the matter of the book is maccaronic, parti-colored and confused; but the passion which controls so many elements is genuine and simple. The spirit of the earlier Renaissance reflects itself, as in a mirror, in the Dream of Poliphil. So essentially is it the product of a transitional moment that when the first enthusiasm for its euphuistic pedantry and aesthetical rapture had subsided, the key to its most obvious meaning was lost. In the preface to the fourth French edition (1600), Beroald de Verville hinted that the volume held deep alchemistic secrets for those who could discover them. After this distortion the book passed into not altogether unmerited oblivion. It had done its work for the past age. It now remains an invaluable monument for those who would fain reconstruct the century which gave it birth.

The _Hypnerotomachia_ professes to relate its author's love for Polia, a nun, his search after her, and their union, at the close of sundry trials and adventures, in the realm of Venus. Poliphil dreams that he finds himself in a wild wood, where he is assailed by monstrous beasts, and suffers great distress of mind. He prays to Diespiter, and comes forthwith into a pleasant valley, through which he wanders in the hope of finding Polia. At the outset of his journey he meets five damsels, Aphea, Offressia, Orassia, Achoe, Geussia, who conduct him to their queen, Eleuterilyda.[276] She understands his quest, and assigns the maidens, Logistica and Thelemia, to be his guides into the palace of Telosia. They journey together and arrive at the abode of Dame Telosia, which has three gates severally inscribed in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin characters with legends, the meaning whereof is God's Glory, Mother of Love, and Worldly Glory. Poliphil enters the first door, and finds the place within but little to his liking. Then he tries the third, and is no better pleased. Lastly he gains admittance to the demesne of Love's Mother, where he is content to Stay. Lovely and lascivious maidens greet him kindly; and while he surrenders to their invitation, one of his attendants, Logistica, takes her flight. He is left with his beloved Thelemia to enjoy the pleasures of this enchanting region.

Thus far the allegory is not hard to read. Poliphil, or the lover of Polia, escapes from the perils of the forest where his earlier life was passed, by petition to the Father of Gods and Men. He places himself in the hands of the five senses, who conduct him to freewill. Freewill appoints for his further guidance reason and inclination, who are to lead him to the final choice of lives. When he arrives at the point where this choice has to be made, he perceives that God, the world, and beauty, who is mother of love, compete for his willing service. He rejects religion and ambition; and no sooner has his preference for love and beauty been avowed, than the reasoning faculty deserts him, and he is abandoned to inclination.

While Poliphil is dallying with the nymphs of pleasure and his own wanton will, he is suddenly abandoned by these companions, and pursues his journey alone.[277] Before long, however, he becomes aware of a maiden, exceedingly fair to look upon, who carries in her hand a lighted torch. With her for guide, he passes through many pleasant places, arriving finally at the temple of Venus Physizoe. This maiden, though as yet he cannot recognize her, is the Polia he seeks, and on their way together he feels the influences of her love-compelling beauty. They enter the chapel of Venus, and are graciously received by the prioress who guards that sanctuary. Mystical rites of initiation and consecration are performed. Polia lays down her torch, and is discovered by her lover. Then they are wedded by grace of the abiding goddess; and having undergone the ceremony of spousal, they resume their wanderings together. They pass through a desolate city of tombs and ruins, named Polyandrion, where are the sepulchers and epitaphs of lovers. Here, too, they witness the pangs of souls tormented for their crimes against the deity of Love. Afterwards they reach a great water, where Cupid's barge comes sailing by, and takes them to the island of Cythera. It is a level land of gardens, groves and labyrinths, adorned with theaters and baths, and watered by a mystic font of Venus. Near the Tomb of Adonis in this demesne of Love, Polia and Poliphil sit down to rest among the nymphs, and Polia relates the story of their early passion.

It is here, if anywhere, that we come across reality in this romance. Polia tells how the town of Treviso was founded, and of what illustrious lineage she came, and how she vowed herself to the service of Diana when the plague was raging in the city. In Dian's temple Poliphil first saw her, and fainted at the sight, and she, made cruel by the memory of her vows, left him upon the temple-floor for dead. But when she returned home, a vision of women punished for their hard heart smote her conscience; and her old nurse, an adept in the ways of love, counseled her to seek the Prioress of Venus, and confess, and enter into reconcilement with her lover. What the nurse advised, Polia did, and in the temple of Venus she met Poliphil. He, while his body lay entranced upon the floor of Dian's church, had visited the heavens in spirit and obtained grace from Venus and Cupid. Therefore, the twain were now of one accord, and ready to be joined in bonds of natural affection. At the end of Polia's story, the nymphs leave both lovers to enjoy their new-found happiness. But here the power of sleep is spent, and Poliphil, awakened by the song of swallows, starts from dreams with "Farewell, my Polia!" upon his lips.

Such is the frail and slender basis of romance, corresponding, in the details of Polia's narrative, to an ordinary _novella_, upon which the bulky edifice of the _Hypnerotomachia_ is built. This love-story, while it gives form to the book, is clearly not the author's main motive. What really concerns him most deeply is the handling of artistic themes, which, though introduced by way of digressions, occupy by far the larger portion of his work. The _Hypnerotomachia_ is an encyclopaedia of curious learning, a treasure-house of aesthetical descriptions and discussions, vividly reflecting the two ruling enthusiasms of the earlier Renaissance for scholarship and art. Minute details of inexhaustible variety, bringing before our imagination the architecture, sculpture, and painting of the fifteenth century, its gardens, palaces and temples, its processions, triumphs and ceremonial shows, its delight in costly jewels, furniture, embroidery and banquets, its profound feeling for the beauty of women, and its admiration for the goodliness of athletic manhood, are massed together with bewildering profusion. Not one of the technical arts which flourished in the dawn of the Renaissance but finds due celebration here; and the whole is penetrated with that fervent reverence for antiquity which inspired the humanists. Yet the _Hypnerotomachia_, though sometimes tedious, is never frigid. With the precision of a treatise and the minuteness of an inventory, it combines the ardor of impassioned feeling, the rapture of anticipation, the artist's blending with the lover's ecstasy. It is a dithyramb of the imagination, inflamed by no Oriental lust of mere magnificence, but by the fine sense of what is beautiful in form, rare in material, just in proportion, exquisite in workmanship.

Whether the _Hypnerotomachia_ exercised a powerful influence over the productions of the Italian genius, can be doubted. But that it presents an epitome or figured abstract of the Renaissance in its earlier luxuriance, is unmistakable. Reading it, we wander through the collections of Paul II., rich with jewels, _intagli_, cameos and coins; we enter Amadeo's chapels, Filarete's palaces, Bramante's peristyles and _loggie_; we pace the gardens of the Brenta and the Sforza's deer-parks at Pavia; we watch Lorenzo's Florentine _trionfi_ and Pietro Riario's festivals in Rome; Giorgione's _fetes champetres_ are set for us in framework of the choicest fruits and flowers; we hear Ciriac of Ancona discoursing on his epigraphs and broken marbles; before our eyes, as in a gallery, are ranged the bass-reliefs of Donatello wrought in bronze, Mantegna's triumphs, Signorelli's arabesques, the terra-cotta of the Lombard and the stucco of the Roman schools, the carved-work of Alberti's church at Rimini, the _tarsiatura_ of Fra Giovanni da Verona's choir-stalls, doorways from Milanese and chimneys from Urbino palaces, Vatican tapestries and trellis-work of beaten iron from Prato--all that the Renaissance in its bloom produced, is here depicted with the wealth and warmth of fancy doting on anticipated beauties.

Of the author, Francesco Colonna, very little is known, except that he was born in 1433 at Venice, that he attached himself to Ermolao Barbaro, spent a portion of his manhood in the Dominican cloister of S. Niccolo at Treviso, and died at Venice in 1527. Whether the love-tale of the _Hypnerotomachia_ had a basis of reality, or whether we ought to regard it wholly from the point of view of allegory, cannot be decided now. It is, however, probable that a substratum of experience underlay the vast mass of superimposed erudition and enthusiastic reverie. The references to Polia's name and race; her epitaph appended to the first edition; the details of her narrative, which somewhat break the continuity of style and introduce a biographical element into the romance; the very structure of the allegory which assigns so large a part in life to sensuous instinct--all these points seem to prove that Poliphil was moved by memory of what had really happened, no less than by the desire to express a certain mood of feeling and belief. Such mingling of actual emotion with ideal passion in a work of imagination, dedicated to a woman who is also an emblem, was consistent with the practice of medieval poets. Polia belongs, under altered circumstances, to the same class as Beatrice. The hypothesis that, whoever she may have been, she had become for her lover a metaphor of antique beauty, is sufficiently attractive and plausible. If we adopt this theory, we must interpret the dark wood where Poliphil first found himself, to mean the anarchy of Gothic art; while his emancipation through the senses and Thelemia characterizes the spirit in which the Italians achieved the Revival. The extraordinary care lavished upon details, interrupting the course of the romance and withdrawing our sympathy from Polia, meet from this point of view with justification. Veiling his enthusiasm for the renascent past beneath the fiction of a novel, Francesco Colonna invests the lady of his intellectual choice, the handmaid of Aphrodite, evoked from the sepulcher where arts and sciences lie buried, with rich Renaissance trappings of elaborate device. Beneath those exuberant arabesques, within that labyrinth of technically perfect details, suave outlines, delicate contours devoid of content, a real woman would be lost. But if Polia be not merely a woman, if she be, as her name [Greek: polia] seems to indicate, at the same time the vision of resurgent classic beauty, then the setting which her lover has contrived is adequate to the influences which inspired him. The multiform and labored frame-work of his picture acquires a meaning from the spirit of the goddess whom he worships, and the presiding genius of his age dwells in a shrine, each point of which is brilliant with the splendor which that spirit radiates.

It is, therefore, as an allegory of the Renaissance, conscious of its destiny and strongest aspirations in the person of an almost nameless monk, that we should read the _Hypnerotomachia_. Still, even so, the mark of indecision, which rests upon the many twy-formed masterpieces of this century, is here discernible. Francesco Colonna has one foot in the middle ages, another planted on the firm ground of the modern era. He wavers between the psychological realism of romance and the philosophical idealism of allegory. Polia is both too much and too little of a woman. At one time her personality seems as distinct as that of any heroine of fiction; at another we lose sight of her in the mist of symbolism. Granting, again, that she is a metaphor, she lends herself to more than one conception. She is both an emblem of passion, sanctified by nature, and liberated from the bondage of asceticism, and also an emblem of ideal beauty, recovered from the past, and worshiped by a scholar-artist.

This confusion of motives and uncertainty of aim, while it detracts from the artistic value of the _Hypnerotomachia_, enhances its historical importance. In form, the book has to be classed with the Visions of the middle ages--the Divine Comedy, the _Amorosa Visione_, and the _Quadriregio_. But though the form is medieval, the inspiration of this prose-poem is quite other. We have seen already how Francesco Colonna, traveling in search of Polia, prayed to Jupiter, and how the senses and freewill guided him to the satisfaction of his deepest self in the service of Beauty. It is in the temple of Venus Physizoe (Venus the procreative source of life in Nature) that he meets with his love and is wedded to her in the bonds of mutual desire.[278] Christianity is wholly, we might say systematically, ignored. The ascetic standpoint of the middle age is abandoned for another, antagonistic to its ruling impulses. A new creed, a new cult, are introduced. Polia, whether we regard her as the poet's mistress or as the spirit of antiquity which has enamored him, is won by worship paid to deities of natural appetite. In its essence, then, the _Hypnerotomachia_ corresponds to the most fruitful instinct of the Renaissance--to that striving after emancipation which restored humanity to its heritage in the realms of sense and reason. Old ideals, exhausted and devoid of vital force, are exchanged for fresh and beautiful reality. The spirituality of the past, which has become consumptive and ineffectively lapse of time and long familiarity, yields to vigorous animalism. The cloister is quitted for the world, religious for artistic ecstasy, celestial for earthly paradise, scholasticism for humane studies, the ascetic for the hedonistic rule of conduct. Criticised according to its deeper meaning, the _Hypnerotomachia_ is the poem of which Valla's _De Voluptate_ was the argument, of which Lorenzo de' Medici's life was the realization, and the life of Aretino the caricature. If it assumes the form of a vision, reminding us thereby that the author was born upon the confines of the middle ages and the modern era, it deals with the vision in no Dantesque spirit, but with the geniality of Apuleius. Allegory is but a transparent veil, to make the nudity of natural impulse fascinating. As in Boccaccio, so here the hymn of _il talento_, simple appetite, is sung; but the fusion of artistic and humanistic enthusiasms with this ground-motive adds peculiar quality, distinctive of the later age which gave it birth.

The secret of its charm, which, indeed, it shares with earlier Renaissance art in general, is that this yearning after freedom has been felt with rapture, but not fully satisfied. The season of repletion and satiety is distant. Venus Physizoe appears to Francesco Colonna radiant above all powers of heaven or earth, because he is a monk and may not serve her. Had he his whole will, she might have been for him Venus Volgivaga, and he the author of another _Puttana Errante_. Nor has she yet assumed the earnest mask of science. This element of unassuaged desire, indulged in longings and outgoings of the fancy, this recognition of man's highest good and happiness in nature by one who has forsworn allegiance to the laws of nature, adds warmth to his emotion and penetrates his pictures with a kind of passion. The arts and scholarship, which divide the empire of his soul with beauty, have no less attraction of romance than love itself. Nor are they separated in his mind from nature. Nature and antiquity, knowledge and desire, the reverence for abstract beauty and the instincts of a lover are fused in one enthusiasm. Thus Francesco Colonna makes us understand how Italy used both art and erudition as instruments in the liberation of human energies. For the thinkers and actors of that period, antiquity and the plastic arts were aids to the recovery of a paradise from which man had been exiled. They could not dissociate the conception of nature from studies which revealed their human dignity and freedom, or from arts whereby they expressed their vivid sense of beauty. The work they thus inaugurated, had afterwards to be continued by the scientific faculties.

One word may finally be said about the peculiar delicacy of this book. The _Hypnerotomachia_ is no less an apotheosis of natural appetite than the _Amorosa Visione_. But it is more sentimental and imaginative, because its author had not Boccaccio's crude experience. It anticipates the art of the great age--the art of Cellini and Giulio Romano, goldsmith-sculptors and palace-builders; but it is more refined and passionate, because its author enjoyed those beauties of consummate craft in reverie instead of practice. It interprets the enthusiasm of Ciriac and Poggio, discoverers of manuscripts, decipherers of epigraphs; but it is more _naif_ and graceful than their work of erudition, because its author dealt freely with his learning and subordinated scholarship to fancy. In short the _Hypnerotomachia_ is a foreshadowing of the Renaissance in its prime--the spirit of the age foreseen in dreams, embodied in imagination, purged of material alloy, and freed from the encumbrances of actuality.

FOOTNOTES:

[130] I may refer to the _Age of the Despots_, 2nd edition, pp. 58-65, for a brief review of the circumstances under which the Nation defined itself against the Church and the Empire--the ecclesiastical and feudal or chivalrous principles--during the Wars of Investiture and Independence. In Carducci's essay _Dello Svolgimento delta Letteratura nazionale_ will be found an eloquent and succinct exposition of the views I have attempted to express in these paragraphs.

[131] _Revival of Learning._

[132] It is not quite exact, though convenient, to identify Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio severally with the religious, chivalrous and national principles of which I have been speaking. Petrarch stands midway. With Dante he shares the chivalrous, with Boccaccio the humanistic side of the national element. Though Boccaccio anticipates in his work the literature of the Renaissance, yet Petrarch was certainly not less influential as an authority in style. Ariosto represents the fusion of both sections of the national element in literature--Italian is distinguished from Tuscan.

[133] See _Age of the Despots_, chap. 2.

[134] See above, p. 138. All that is known about Sacchetti's life may be found in the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, prefixed to Silvestri's edition of the _Novelle_.

[135] For Sacchetti's conception of a citizen's duty, proving him a son of Italy's heroic age, see the sonnet _Amar la patria_, in Monsignor Bottari's Discourse above mentioned.

[136] See the Sonnet _Pien di quell'acqua_ written to Boccaccio on his entering the Certosa at Naples.

[137] Here too he mentions a translation of the _Decameron_ into English.

[138] This should also be the place to mention the _Novelle_ of Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca. They have lately been re-edited by Professor d'Ancona, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1871. They are short tales, historical and moral, drawn from miscellaneous medieval sources, and resembling the _Novellino_ in type. Two of them (_Novelle_ ix. and x., _ed. cit._ pp. 62-74) are interesting as forming part of the Legend of Dante the Poet.

[139] For example, the first Novel of the fourth day is the story which Shakspere dramatized in _The Merchant of Venice_, and forms, as every one can see, the authentic source of that comedy.

[140] It must be remarked that the text of _Il Pecorone_ underwent Domenichi's revision in the sixteenth century, which may account for a certain flatness.

[141] See Carducci, _Cantilene e Ballate, Strambotti e Madrigali nei Secoli xiii e xiv_, Pisa, Nistri, 1871. Pp. 176-205 contain a reprint of these lyrics. Carducci's work _Intorno ad alcune Rime_, Imola, 1876, may be consulted at pp. 54 _et seq._ for the origin, wide diffusion, and several species of the popular dance-song.

[142] _Cantilene, etc._ pp. 196, 199, 204.

[143] _Cantilene, etc._ p. 211.

[144] _Cantilene, etc._ p. 220.

[145] _Ibid._ p. 219. Compare _Passando con pensier_ in the _Rime di Messer Cino e d'altri_ (Barbera), p. 563.

[146] _Ibid._ p. 233.

[147] _Ibid._ p. 231.

[148] _Ibid._ p. 214 and note. The popularity of this dance-poem is further proved by a pious parody written to be sung to the same air with it: "O vaghe di Gesu, o verginelle." See _Laudi Spirituali_ (Firenze, Molini, 1863), p. 105.

[149] _Ibid._ pp. 217, 218.

[150] See _ibid._ pp. 252-256, 259, 263.

[151] It is enough to mention _Exit diluculo_, _Vere dulci mediante_, _AEstivali sub fervore_.

[152] I must briefly refer to Carducci's Essay on "Musica e Poesia nel mondo elegante italiano del secolo xiv," in his _Studi Letterari_, Livorno, Vigo, 1874, and to my own translations from some of the there published Madrigals in _Sketches and Studies in Italy_, pp. 214-216.

[153] Carducci, _Cantilene_, pp. 265-296.

[154] _Op. cit._ p. 298.

[155] _Op. cit._ p. 301.

[156] _Op. cit._ p. 300.

[157] It may be worth mentioning that Soldanieri and Donati as well as Sacchetti belonged to the old nobility of Florence, the Grandi celebrated by name in Dante's _Paradiso_.

[158] See Trucchi's _Poesie Inedite_, and the _Rime Antiche Toscane_, cited above, for copious collections of these poets.

[159] This can be seen in Carducci's _Cantilene_, pp. 115, 116, 150, and in his _Studi Letterari_, pp. 374-446.

[160] _O pellegrina Italia._ _Rime di Cino e d'altri_ (Barbera), p. 318. I shall quote from this excellent edition of Carducci, as being most accessible to general readers. The _Sermintese_ or _Serventese_, it may be parenthetically said, was a form of satirical and occasional lyric adapted from the Provencal _Sirvente_.

[161] _Cino_, etc. p. 342.

[162] _Ibid._ p. 334.

[163] _Cino, etc._ p. 548.

[164] _Ibid._ p. 586.

[165] _Cino, etc._ p. 391.

[166] _Ibid._ pp. 199, 200.

[167] _Ibid._ pp. 384, 389.

[168] _Cino, etc._ pp. 202, 211, 573, 390.

[169] _Ibid._ pp. 504, 535, 498.

[170] In the Discourse of Monsignor Giov. Bottari, Section vi., printed before Sacchetti's _Novelle_.

[171] _Cino, etc._ pp. 445-474, 258-263.

[172] Navone's edition (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1880), p. 56. The date of this sonnet must be about 1315. We have to choose between placing Folgore in that century or assigning the sonnet to some anonymous author. See Appendix II. for translations.

[173] _Cino, etc._ pp. 174-195, 420-441.

[174] _Ibid._ p. 418.

[175] _Ibid._ p. 197, 198.

[176] He was the author of the Ghibelline _Canzoni_ quoted above.

[177] It was composed about 1360. I have seen two editions of this poem, _Opera di Faccio degli uberti Fiorentino, Chiamato Ditta Mundi, Volgare_. Impresso in Venetia per Christoforo di Pensa da Mondelo. Adi iiii. Setembrio MCCCCCI. The second is a version modernized in its orthography: _Il Dittamondo_, Milano, Silvestri, 1826. My quotations will be made from the second of these editions, which has the advantage of a more intelligible text.

[178] Lib. i., cap. 2. Cp. Fazio's Ode on Rome, above, p. 160.

[179] Lib. iii. cap. 9.

[180] _Libro chiamato Quatriregio del Decorso de la Vita Humana in Terza Rima_, Impresso in Venetia del MCCCCCXI a di primo di Decembrio. There is, I believe, a last century Foligno reprint of the _Quadriregio_; but I have not seen it.

[181] "Regno di Dio Cupido," "Regno di Sathan," "Regno delli Vitii," "Regno della Dea Minerva e di Virtu."

[182] Lib. i. cap. 1.

[183] Lib. ii. cap. 2.

[184] Lib. ii. cap. 7.

[185] See _Ficini Epistolae_, 1495, folio 17. If possible, I will insert some further notice of Palmieri's poem in an Appendix.

[186] See Vasari (Lemonnier, 1849), vol. v. p. 115, and note. This work by Botticelli is now in England.

[187] I may refer curious readers to two _Lamenti_ of Pre Agostino, condemned to the cage or _Chebba_ at Venice for blasphemy. They are given at length by Mutinelli, _Annali Urbani di Venezia_, pp. 352-356.

[188] For instance, "Un Miracolo di S.M. Maddalena," in D'Ancona's _Sacre Rappr._ vol. i. p. 397.

[189] It would be an interesting study to trace the vicissitudes of _terza rima_ from the _Paradiso_ of Dante, through the _Quadriregio_ and _Dittamondo_, to Lorenzo de' Medici's _Beoni_ and La Casa's _Capitolo del Forno_. In addition to what I have observed above, it occurs to me to mention the semi-popular _terza rima_ poems in Alberti's _Accademia Coronaria_ (Bonucci's edition of Alberti, vol. i. pp. clxxv. _et seq._) and Boiardo's comedy of _Timone_. Both illustrate the didactic use of the meter.

[190] _Le Lettere di S. Caterina da Siena_, Firenze, Barbera, 1860. Edited and furnished with a copious commentary by Niccolo Tommaseo. Four volumes.

[191] _Op. cit._ vol. iv. pp. 5-12.

[192] See for example, the passages from Graziani's _Chronicle of Perugia_ quoted by me in Appendix IV. to _Age of the Despots_.

[193] See _Alcune Lettere familiari del Sec. xiv_, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1868. This collection contains letters by Lemmo Balducci (1333-1389), Filippo dell'Antella (_circa_ 1398), Dora del Bene, Lanfredino Lanfredini (born about 1345), Coluccio Salutati (1330-1406), Giorgio Scali (died 1381), and Marchionne Stefani (died 1385).

[194] Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, _Lettere di una Gentildonna Fiorentina del secolo xv_, Firenze, Sansoni, 1877.

[195] See _Revival of Learning_, chap. 4, and _Age of the Despots_, chap. 5.

[196] _Istorie Fiorentine scritte da Giov. Cavalcanti_, 2 vols. Firenze, 1838.

[197] Besides Muratori's great collection and the _Archivio Storico_, the Chronicles of Lombard, Umbrian, and Tuscan towns have been separately printed too voluminously for mention in a note.

[198] _L'Historia di Milano volgarmente scritta dall'eccellentissimo oratore M. Bernardino Corio_, in Vinegia, per Giovan. Maria Bonelli, MDLIIII. "Cronaca della Citta di Perugia dal 1492 al 1503 di Francesco Matarazzo detto Maturanzio," _Archivio Storico Italiano_, vol. xvi. par. ii. Of Corio's History I have made frequent use in the _Age of the Despots_. It is a book that repays frequent and attentive reperusals. Those students who desire to gain familiarity at first hand with Renaissance cannot be directed to a purer source.

[199] In _Studies in Italy and Greece_, article "Perugia," I have dealt more at large with Matarazzo's Chronicle than space admits of here.

[200] _Il Novellino di Masuccio Salernitano._ Edited by Luigi Settembrini. Napoli, Morano, 1874.

[201] Introduction to Part iii. _op. cit._ p. 239. "Cognoscerai i lasciati vestigi del vetusto satiro Giovenale, e del famoso commendato poeta Boccaccio, l'ornatissimo idioma e stile del quale ti hai sempre ingegnato de imitare."

[202] For an instance of Masuccio's feudal feeling, take this. A knight kills a licentious friar--"alquanto pentito per avere le sue possenti braccia con la morte di un Fra Minore contaminato" (_op. cit._ p. 13). It emerges in his description of the Order of the Ermine (_ibid._ p. 240). It is curious to compare this with his strong censure of the point of honor (pp. 388, 389) in a story which has the same blunt sense as Ariosto's episode of Giocondo. The Italian here prevails over the noble.

[203] See especially _Nov._ xi. and xxxviii.

[204] _Nov._ ii. iii. v. xi. xviii. xxix.

[205] _Nov._ xxxi.--Masuccio's peculiar animosity against the clergy may be illustrated by comparing his story of the friar who persuaded the nun that she was chosen by the Holy Ghost (_Nov._ ii.) with Boccaccio's tale of the Angel Gabriel. See, too, the scene in the convent (_Nov._ vi.), the comedy of S. Bernardino's sermon (_Nov._ xvi.), the love-adventures of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia.

[206] For example, _Nov._ vii. xiii. v.

[207] _Op. cit._ pp. 292, 282, 391, 379.

[208] _Nov._ i. and xxviii. The second of these stories is dedicated to Francesco of Aragon, who, born in 1461, could not have been more than fifteen when this frightful tale of lust and blood was sent him. Nothing paints the manners of the time better than this fact.

[209] See _op. cit._ pp. 28, 68, 89, 141, 256, 273, 275, 380, 341, 343.

[210] For specimens of his invective read pp. 517, 273, 84, 275, 55, 65, 534. I have collected some of these passages, bearing on the clergy, in a note to p. 458 of my _Age of the Despots_, 2nd edition. No wonder that Masuccio's book was put upon the Index!

[211] _Nov._ xxvii, xxxiii. xxxv. xxxvii. xlviii.

[212] See _Revival of Learning_, pp. 341-344, for some account of Alberti's life and place among the humanists; _Fine Arts_, p. 74, for his skill as an architect.

[213] Sacchetti, we have seen, called himself _uomo discolo_; Ser Giovanni proclaimed himself a _pecorone_; Masuccio had the culture of a nobleman; Corio and Matarazzo, if we are right in identifying the latter with Francesco Maturanzio, were both men of considerable erudition.

[214] The most charming monument of Alberti's memory is the Life by an anonymous writer, published in Muratori and reprinted in Bonucci's edition, vol. i. Bonucci conjectures, without any substantial reason, that it was composed by Alberti himself.

[215] For the _Camera Optica_, _Reticolo de' dipintori_, and _Bolide Albertiana_, see the Preface (pp. lxv.-lxix.) to Anicio Bonucci's edition of the _Opere Volgari di L.B. Alberti_, Firenze, 1843, five vols. All references will be made to this comprehensive but uncritical collection. Hubert Janitschek's edition of the Treatises on Art should be consulted for its introduction and carefully prepared text--Vienna, 1877, in the _Quellenschriften fuer Kunstgeschichte_.

[216] The sentence of banishment was first removed in 1428; but the rights of burghership were only restored to the Alberti in 1434. Leo Battista finished the Treatise on Painting at Florence, Sept. 7, 1435 (see Janitschek, _op. cit._ p. iii.), and dedicated it to Brunelleschi, July 17, 1436. From that dedication it would seem that he had only recently returned.

[217] A passage in the _Della Tranquillita dell'Animo_ (_Op. Volg._ i. 35), shows how Alberti had lived into the conception of cosmopolitan citizenship. It may be compared with another in the _Teogenio_ (_op. cit._ iii. 194) wher he argues that love for one's country, even without residence in it, satisfies the definition of a citizen.

[218] _Op. cit._ ii. 215-221.

[219] Such phrases as _i nostri maggiori patrizii in Roma_ (i. 37), _la quasi dovuta a noi per le nostre virtu da tutte le genti riverenzia e obbedienzia_ (ii. 218), _nostri ottimi passati Itali debellarono e sotto averono tutte le genti_ (ii. 9), might be culled in plenty. Alberti shows how deep was the Latin idealism of the Renaissance, and how impossible it would have been for the Italians to found their national self-consciousness on aught but a recovery of the past.

[220] Especially the fine passage beginning, "Quello imperio maraviglioso senza termini, quel dominio di tutte le genti acquistato con _nostri latini auspici_, ottenuto colla _nostra industria_, amplificato con _nostre armi latine_" (ii. 8); and the apostrophe, "E tu, Italia nobilissima, capo e arce di tutto l'universo mondo" (_ib._ 13).

[221] An example of servile submission to classical authority might be chosen from Alberti's discourse on Friendship (_Famiglia_, lib. iv. _op. cit._ ii. 415), where he adduces Sylla and Mark Antony in contradiction to his general doctrine that only upright conversation among friends can lead to mutual profit.

[222] Alberti's loss of training in the vernacular is noticed by his anonymous biographer (_op. cit._ i. xciv.). It will be observed by students of his writings that he does not speak of _la nostra italiana_ but _la nostra toscana_ (ii. 221). Again (iv. 12) _in lingua toscana_ is the phrase used in his dedication of the Essay on Painting to Brunelleschi.

[223] The anonymous biographer says: "Scripsit praeterea et affinium suorum gratia, ut linguae latinae ignaris prodesset, patrio sermone annum ante trigesimum aetatis suae etruscos libros, primum, secundum, ac tertium de Familia, quos Romae die nonagesimo quam inchoarat, absolvit; sed inelimatos et asperos neque usquequaquam etruscos ... post annos tres, quam primos ediderat, quartum librum ingratis protulit" (_op. cit._ i. xciv. c.). It appears from a reference in Book ii. (_op. cit._ ii. xxviii.) that the Treatise was still in process of composition after 1438; and there are strong reasons for believing that Book iii., as it is now numbered, was written separately and after the rest of the dialogue.

[224] Note especially the passage in Book iii., _op. cit._ ii. 256, _et seq._

[225] There is, I think, good reason to believe the testimony of the anonymous biographer, who says this Treatise was written before Alberti's thirtieth year; and if he returned to Florence in 1434, we must take the date of his birth about 1404. The scene of the _Tranquillita dell'Animo_ is laid in the Duomo at Florence; we may therefore believe it to have been a later work, and its allusions to the _Famiglia_ are, in my opinion, trustworthy.

[226] The pedigree prefixed to the Dialogue in Bonucci's edition would help the student in his task. I will here cite the principal passages of importance I have noticed. In volume ii. p. 102, we find a list of the Alberti remarkable for literary, scientific, artistic, and ecclesiastical distinctions. On p. 124 we read of their dispersion over the Levant, Greece, Spain, France, England, Belgium, Germany, and the chief Italian towns. Their misfortunes in exile are touchingly alluded to with a sobriety of phrase that dignifies the grief it veils, in the noble passage beginning with p. 256. Their ancient splendor in the tournaments and games of Florence, when the people seemed to have eyes only for men of the Alberti blood, is described on p. 228; their palaces and country houses on p. 279. A list of the knights, generals, and great lawyers of the Casa Alberti is given at p. 346. The honesty of their commercial dealings and their reputation for probity form the themes of a valuable digression, pp. 204-206, where we learn the extent of their trade and the magnitude of their contributions to the State-expenses. On p. 210 there is a statement that this house alone imported from Flanders enough wool to supply the cloth-trade, not only of Florence, but also of the larger part of Tuscany. The losses of a great commercial family are reckoned on p. 357; while p. 400 supplies the story of one vast loan of 80,000 golden florins advanced by Ricciardo degli Alberti to Pope John. The friendship of Piero degli Alberti contracted with Filippo Maria Visconti and King Ladislaus of Naples is described in the autobiographical discourse introduced at pp. 386-399. This episode is very precious for explaining the relation between Italian princes and the merchants who resided at their courts. Their servant Buto, p. 375, should not be omitted from the picture; nor should the autobiographical narrative given by Giannozzo of his relation to his wife (pp. 320-328) be neglected, since this carries us into the very center of a Florentine home. The moral tone, the political feeling, and the domestic habits of the house in general must be studied in the description of the Casa, Bottega, and Villa, the discourses on education, and the discussion of public and domestic duties. The commercial aristocracy of Florence lives before us in this Treatise. We learn from it to know exactly what the men who sustained the liberties of Italy against the tyrants of Milan thought and felt, at a period of history when the old fabric of medieval ideas had broken down, but when the new Italy of the Renaissance had not yet been fully formed. If, in addition to the _Trattato della Famiglia_, the letters addressed by Alessandra Macinghi degli Strozzi to her children in exile be included in such a study, a vivid picture might be formed of the domestic life of a Florentine family.[A] These letters were written from Florence to sons of the Casa Strozzi at Naples, Bruges, and elsewhere between the years 1447 and 1465. They contain minute information about expenditure, taxation, dress, marriages, friendships, and all the public and personal relations of a noble Florentine family. Much, moreover, can be gathered from them concerning the footing of the members of the circle in exile. The private _ricordi_ of heads of families, portions of which have been already published from the archives of the Medici and Strozzi, if more fully investigated, would complete this interesting picture in many of its important details.

[A] _Lettere di una Gentildonna fiorentina_, Firenze,
Sansoni, 1877.

[227] Notice the discussion of wet-nurses, the physical and moral evils likely to ensue from an improper choice of the nurse (_op. cit._ ii. 52-56).

[228] These topics of _Amicizia_, as the virtue on which society is based, are further discussed in a separate little dialogue, _La Cena di Famiglia_ (_op. cit._ vol. i.).

[229] _Age of the Despots_, pp. 239-243.

[230] In stating the question, and in all that concerns the MS. authority upon which a judgment must be formed, I am greatly indebted to the kindness of Signor Virginio Cortesi, who has placed at my disposal his unpublished Essay on the _Governo della Famiglia di Agnolo Pandolfini_. As the title of his work shows, he is a believer in Pandolfini's authorship.

[231] I use this word according to its present connotation. But such literary plagiarism was both more common and less disgraceful in the fifteenth century. Alberti himself incorporated passages of the _Fiammetta_ in his _Deifira_, and Jacopo Nardi in his _Storia Fiorentina_ appropriated the whole of Buonaccorsi's Diaries (1498-1512) with slight alterations and a singularly brief allusion to their author.

[232] Such information, as will be seen, is both vague and meager. The MSS. of the _Governo_ in particular do not seem to have been accurately investigated, and are insufficiently described even by Cortesi. Yet this problem, like that of the Malespini and Compagni Chronicles, cannot be set at rest without a detailed comparison of all existing codices.

[233] The anonymous biographer expressly states that the fourth book was written later than the other three, and dedicated to the one Alberti who took any interest in the previous portion of the work. This, together with the isolation and more perfect diction of Book iii. is strong presumption in favor of its having been an afterthought.

[234] The _Oeconomicus_ of Xenophon served as common material for the _Economico_ and the _Governo_, whatever we may think about the authorship of these two essays. Many parallel passages in Palmieri's _Vita Civile_ can be referred to the same source. To what extent Alberti knew Greek is not ascertained; but even in the bad Latin translations of that age a flavor so peculiar as that of Xenophon's style could not have escaped his fine sense.

[235] See _Op. Volg._ vol. i. pp. lxxxvi.-lxxxviii.

[236] _Op. Volg._ ii. p. 223.

[237] _Op. Volg._ i. 10.

[238] It should, however, be added that Vespasiano alludes to Pandolfini's habits of study and composition after his retirement to Signa. Yet he does not cite the _Governo_.

[239] It is clear that all this reasoning upon internal evidence can be turned to the advantage of both sides in the dispute. The question will have finally to be settled on external grounds (comparison of MSS.), combined with a wise use of such arguments from style as have already been cited.

[240] Anyhow, and whatever may have been the source of Alberti's _Economico_, the whole scene describing exile and winding up with the tirade against a political career, is a very noble piece of writing. If space sufficed, it might be quoted as the finest specimen of Alberti's eloquence. See _Op. Volg._ v. pp. 256-266.

[241] See _Op. Volg._ Preface to vol. v.

[242] It is greatly to be desired that Signor Cortesi should print this _Studio Critico_ and, if possible, append to it an account of the MSS. on which Pandolfini's claims to be considered the original author rest.

[243] _Op. Volg._ vol. iii. The meaning of the title appears on p. 132, where the word _Iciarco_ is defined _Supremo uomo e primario principe della famiglia sua_. It is a compound of [Greek: oikos] and [Greek: arche].

[244] See pp. 24, 28, 88, and the fine humanistic passage on p. 47, which reads like an expansion of Dante's _Fatti non foste per viver come bruti_ in Ulysses' speech to his comrades.

[245] _Op. Volg._ vol. i.

[246] He calls it _il nostro tempio massimo_ and speaks of _il culto divino_, pp. 7-9.

[247] _Op. Volg._ vol. iii.

[248] _Ibid._ p. 160. This enables us to fix the date within certain limits. Niccolo III. of Este died 1441. Lionello died 1450. Alberti speaks of the essay as having been already some time in circulation. It must therefore have been written before 1440.

[249] Like Boccaccio, Alberti is fond of bad Greek etymologies. Perhaps we may translate these names, "the God-born" and "the little pupil." In the same dialogue Tichipedio seems to be "the youth of fortune."

[250] See _Revival of Learning_, p. 339.

[251] _Op. Volg._ iii. 179.

[252] _Ibid._ p. 186.

[253] _Op. Volg._ vol. ii. pp. 320-322.

[254] _Il Santo._ Probably S. John.

[255] Alberti in a Letter of Condolement to a friend (_Op. Volg._ v. 357) chooses examples from the Bible. Yet the tone of that most strictly pious of his writings is rather Theistic than Christian.

[256] _Op. Volg._ vol. iv. See, too, Janitschek's edition cited above.

[257] Bonucci believes it was composed in Italian. Janitschek gives reasons for the contrary theory (_op. cit._ p. iii.).

[258] _Op. Volg._ vols. iii. and v.

[259] Passages in the plays of our own dramatists warn us to be careful how we answer in the negative. But here are some specimens of Amiria's recipes (_op. cit._ v. 282). "Radice di cocomeri spolverizzata, bollita in orina, usata piu di, lieva dal viso panni e rughe. Giovavi sangue di tauro stillato a ogni macula, sterco di colombe in aceto ... insieme a sterco di cervio ... lumache lunghe ... sterco di fanciullo ... sangue d'anguille." All these things are recommended, upon one page, for spots on the skin. I can find nothing parallel in the very curious toilet book called _Gli Ornamenti delle Dame, scritti per M. Giov. Marinelli_, Venetia, Valgrisio, 1574.

[260] _Op. Volg._ vol. iii. 367; vol. i. 191, 215.

[261] _Op. Volg._ v. 233.

[262] _Op. Volg._ i. 236.

[263] I may refer to the Latin song against marriage, _Sit Deo gloria_ (Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age_, pp. 179-187), for an epitome of clerical virulence and vileness on this topic.

[264] _Op. Volg._ iii. 274.

[265] _Op. Volg._ v. 352.

[266] _Ibid._ pp. 355-359, 367-372.

[267] For example the lines beginning "Sospetto e cure." _Ibid._ p. 368.

[268] _Op. Volg._ i. lxv. He was not alone in this experiment. Barbarous Italian Sapphics and Hexameters are to be found in the _Accademia Coronaria_ on Friendship, of which more in the next chapter.

[269] _De Re AEdificatoria_, Florence, 1485. This preface is a letter addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici.

[270] "Quicquid ingenio esset hominum cum quadam effectum elegantia, id prope divinum dicebat," says the anonymous biographer. This sentence is the motto of humanism as elaborated by the artistic sense. Its discord with the religion of the middle ages is apparent.

[271] _Op. Volg._ i. 8.

[272] This we learn from the last words of the first edition, "Tarvisii cum decorissimis Poliae amore lorulis distineretur misellus Poliphilus MCCCCLVII." The author's name is given in the initial letters to the thirty-eight chapters of the book.

[273] For this and other points about the _Hypnerotomachia_ see Ilg's treatise _Ueber der Kunsthistorischen Werth der Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, Wien, Braunmueller, 1872.