A Short History of Italy Part 10

He began life, as most architects did, as a member of the guild of goldsmiths, and learned to model, but he had a bent towards physics and mechanics, and developed naturally into an architect. A great event in his life was a trip to Rome with Donatello; there the two examined all the cla.s.sical remains in the city and in the country round about, taking measurements and learning all they could.

In Florence besides the abbey of Fiesole, built for Cosimo, Brunelleschi built the church of San Lorenzo for Cosimo's father, and he designed and began the lordly Pitti palace across the Arno, but his great achievement was the dome of the cathedral. The cathedral, first begun by Arnolfo di Cambio, had been in charge of a succession of famous architects, and was nearing completion; but the gap at the intersection of the nave and transepts presented a most difficult architectural problem. The diameter of this gap was about one hundred and thirty-five feet, and the height above the ground was about one hundred and forty-five feet. No such span had been vaulted since the building of the Pantheon. A public compet.i.tion for a dome was held in which Brunelleschi took part. After long discussion, for Florence was "a city where every one speaks his mind," and after much consideration, Brunelleschi was chosen architect. His great dome, though no copy of Roman forms, was thoroughly cla.s.sic in its simplicity and its spirit, and is the great achievement of the Early Renaissance in architecture.

Brunelleschi and his fellow architects, no doubt, wished to revive the old Roman art, and did so as far as they could, but their problems were new and their models few, so they were forced, in the main, to follow their own principles of construction and limit their use of Roman forms to ornament and detail. Other famous men seconded Brunelleschi; and Florentine, or at least Tuscan, architects spread the ideas of the new art. To them is really due the foundation of the various schools of Renaissance architecture which sprang up in Milan, Venice, Pavia, Bologna, Rimini, Brescia, Siena, Lucca, Perugia, and in almost every city of Northern Italy.

In sculpture, the puissant Donatello (1386-1466) is the greatest figure. It has been said, that Michelangelo's soul first worked in Donatello's body or that Donatello's soul lived again in Michelangelo.

Donatello was a realist; he shows cla.s.sic influence at times, in technique and in sundry bits of detail, but his instinct was to imitate what he could see and touch. His vigour, his energy and variety produced a profound effect on sculpture and also on painting. His earlier works were statues for the outside of the Campanile and of the church of Orsanmichele, of which the most famous are that known as _Zuccone_, Baldhead, and the splendid St. George. Afterwards he modelled a young David, the first nude bronze since the Romans, and the statue of Gattamelata at Padua, the first equestrian statue since that of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The spectator who examines the collection of Donatello's works in the Bargello is chiefly struck by his intellectual power, and by the immense variety of his style, from the simple outline of the lovely St. Cecilia in low relief, to the pa.s.sionate dramas carved in altars and pulpits.

Donatello was a great friend of Brunelleschi, and Vasari tells this anecdote about them. Donatello modelled a Crucifix for Santa Croce, and thinking he had done something unusually good, asked Brunelleschi what he thought of it. Brunelleschi, with his unswerving artistic rect.i.tude, answered that Donatello had put a peasant on the cross, and not Jesus Christ. Donatello, piqued more than he had antic.i.p.ated, said: "If it were as easy to model as it is to criticise, my Christ would seem to you a Christ and not a peasant; but let's see you take a piece of wood and go and make one." Brunelleschi did so secretly, and when he had at last finished his Crucifix, asked Donatello to come home and dine with him.

They walked to Brunelleschi's house together, stopping at the market to buy eggs, cheese, and other things for the dinner. Then Brunelleschi said, "Donatello, you take these things and go to my house, and I will come after in a minute or two." So Donatello caught them up in his ap.r.o.n, went to Brunelleschi's, opened the door, and saw the Crucifix. He was so dumbfounded that he dropped the dinner on the floor, and when Brunelleschi, coming in, said, "Why, Donatello, what shall we have for dinner?" Donatello answered, "For my part I have had my share to-day. If you want yours, pick it up. No more of that. It is my lot to model peasants, and yours to model Christs."

Donatello was also a great friend of Cosimo's, modelled many things for him, and inspired Cosimo with a taste for collecting antiques. He loved Cosimo so much that he did whatever he wanted, except when it interfered with his personal idiosyncrasies. One day Cosimo gave Donatello, who used to go about in his workman's blouse, a cloak and a fine suit of clothes, the costume of a gentleman. Donatello wore them for a day or two, and then said he could not wear them, they were too fashionable. He was buried, at his own request, near Cosimo, in the church of San Lorenzo, which Brunelleschi had designed, and he had adorned with his sculpture.

Donatello worked in Venice, Mantua, Modena, Ferrara, and Prato, spent several years in Siena, and nine in Padua, and introduced the Renaissance into the sculpture of Northern Italy. He was a man of strong character and poetic spirit, striving in his statues to be true to nature and to the beautiful, to mingle pagan and Christian notions, tradition, and freedom. He and his pupils affected the whole plastic art of Italy.

In painting, Masaccio (1401-28) stands conspicuous, even among many painters of rare gifts. Modern critics call him Giotto reincarnate.

Masaccio is an unflattering nickname for Tommaso, and recalls the only personal trait we know of him. Vasari says: "He was a most absent-minded person and very casual, like a man who has fixed his will and his whole mind on art only, and cares little about himself and less about others.

He never wanted to think in any way about the things or the cares of this world, even of his own clothes, and he never went to get the money due him from his debtors except when he was in extreme need. Instead of Thomas, everybody called him Masaccio; not because he was bad, being good nature itself, but because of his great absent-mindedness.

Nevertheless, he was as affectionate in doing useful and amiable acts for other people as could possibly be wished." This "marvellous boy"

died at the age of twenty-seven, but left an ineffaceable mark on Italian painting. Across the Arno, in the ugly church of Santa Maria del Carmine, is a chapel on the right, in which, mingled with the work of contemporaries and continuers, are Masaccio's frescoes, figures of St.

Peter and St. John, of a shivering boy, and a few others. Leonardo da Vinci said: "After Giotto, the art of painting declined again, because every one imitated the pictures that were already done; thus it went on till Tommaso of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard any one but Nature--the mistress of all masters--weary themselves in vain."[16] In that little chapel, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and scores of the greatest painters of Italy have admired, studied, and copied.

Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio are but the greater names in the fine arts. Well might Leon Battista Alberti, himself a great architect and humanist, on return from exile to his native city, say to Brunelleschi: "I have been accustomed both to wonder and to grieve that so many divine arts and sciences which we see to have abounded in those most highly endowed ancients were now lacking and utterly lost ... but since I have been restored to this our native land that surpa.s.seth all others in her adornment, I have recognized in many but chiefly in thee, Philip [Brunelleschi], and in our near friend Donato [Donatello] the sculptor, and in those others, Nencio [Ghiberti], and Luca [della Robbia], and Masaccio, genius capable for every praiseworthy work, not inferior to that of any ancient and famous master in the arts."[17]

FOOTNOTES:

[16] _Leonardo da Vinci_, Richter.

[17] _Church Building in the Middle Ages_, C. E. Norton, p. 280.

CHAPTER XXV

THE RENAISSANCE (1450-1492)

The last chapter confined itself to the fine arts and omitted the main element, humanism, which gave volume and impetus to the stream, and, though not memorable for conspicuous achievements as the fine arts were, flowed more directly from the cla.s.sic impulse and produced the greatest immediate effect. The humanists played a part a.n.a.logous to that which men of science play in our own time; they devoted themselves heart and soul to the cla.s.sics, as men of science do to Nature. For some time they had had access to the Latin past through Italy, and now they also found their way to the far greater cla.s.sic world of Greece. The one uninterrupted communication with that world was through Constantinople, which, like a long, ill-lighted and ill-repaired corridor, led back to the great pleasure domes of Plato and Homer, and all the wonderland of Greek literature and thought. Aristotle, indeed, had come by way of the Arabs, and had long been a lay Bible, but for the other Greek cla.s.sics the rising humanism of Italy was indebted to Constantinople. The glowing young city of Florence lit its torch at the expiring embers of the imperial city. A few Italians went to Constantinople and learned Greek, then stray Byzantines came to Italy. The doom which hung over Constantinople frightened scholars and drove them westward, and the fall itself (1453) dispersed the last of them. These Greeks brought invaluable ma.n.u.scripts and firmly established h.e.l.lenic culture in the kindred soil of Tuscany. In the list of books in Cosimo's library, there was no mention of any Greek cla.s.sic except Aristotle; but after the immigration of Greek scholars all intellectual Florence went mad over Plato, and Cosimo founded a Platonic Academy. The study of Greek brought with it examination, comparison, criticism; it brought new knowledge; it gave new ideas to all the arts, new impulses to the creative imagination, and general intellectual freedom. Interest in the humanities became so widespread throughout the peninsula that we get a feeling of Italian unity stronger than any we have experienced since the days of Theodoric.

The importance of the humanists, however, was merely as an intellectual leaven. They need not be spoken of apart from the general intellectual movement which expressed itself so much more fully and freely in art than in any other way. That movement kindled enthusiasm from Lombardy to Calabria; and Florence still maintained her primacy. All the other cities of Italy lagged far behind her. We must therefore keep Florence as our paradigm, only remembering that at her heels a score of cities toil and pant in artistic eagerness to make themselves as beautiful and famous as Florence.

There Cosimo, _Pater Patri_, had died in fulness of years and was succeeded by his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, though not immediately, for there was a short-lived Piero in between. Lorenzo took his grandfather's place, became lord of Florence in all but name, and stood the centre of a brilliant group of artists, sculptors, poets, and scholars. His reign, for it must be so called, lasted from 1469 to 1492, a most notable span of time. The mere names of the famous Florentines would fill pages. A few must be mentioned: Benedetto da Maiano, sculptor and architect, who carved the beautiful pulpit in Santa Croce, and drew the designs for the palace-fortress of the Strozzi; Giuliano da San Gallo, sculptor and architect, who made the plans for Lorenzo's villa at Poggio a Caiano; Andrea della Robbia, nephew to Luca, and almost his equal in the tender charm of his blue and white Madonnas; Mino da Fiesole, who made a bust of Lorenzo's father, and carved in marble the sweetness of young mothers; Antonio Rossellino, who wrought the famous tomb for a great Portuguese prelate in the church of San Miniato; Andrea Verrocchio, who painted the Uffizi Annunciation, so beautiful that it was long attributed to Leonardo, modelled the lady _dalle belle mani_ in the Bargello, and the Colleoni at Venice, greatest of equestrian statues; Benozzo Gozzoli, who painted the three generations of Medici in the Riccardi palace, and in the Campo Santo at Pisa the enchanting frescoes which turn the Old Testament into a kind of Arabian Nights; Antonio Pollaiuolo, sculptor and painter, a leader in the new school of realism, and notable for the feeling of movement which he conveys; Filippino Lippi, Lippo Lippi's son, who completed the frescoes in the chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine left unfinished by Masaccio; Botticelli, the greatest of all the Florentine painters, except Leonardo and Michelangelo; Domenico Ghirlandaio, whose frescoes in Santa Maria Novella tell us more about those shrewd, capable, quick-witted Florentines than any historian; Pulci, the poet, who wrote "Morgante Maggiore," a gay epic, which Savonarola thought ought to be burned; Poliziano, great embodiment of culture, who wrote the first lyrical tragedy, and led the way towards the opera; Marsilio Ficino, the philosopher who helped Cosimo found the Platonic Academy; Pico della Mirandola, the charming scholar, whom Machiavelli called "a man almost divine."

Perhaps none of these men were equal to the leaders in the group which surrounded Cosimo, but they are more interesting to us, and touch our sympathy more readily. They are nearer to us. The earlier problems in architecture, sculpture, and painting were more difficult, but they had been successfully solved; and the fresh problems, which confronted the younger generation, though less adventurous, were more refined. The sons have entered into a hard-earned inheritance, and live more freely. They have more spiritual alertness than their fathers though less vigour, more sensitiveness to pa.s.sing moods though less robustness, greater mastery of technique though less genius for principles. Less great themselves, they have created greater works. Benedetto's Palazzo Strozzi is more majestic and splendid than Michelozzo's Palazzo Riccardi; Verrocchio's statue of Colleoni surpa.s.ses Donatello's Gattamelata; Botticelli's poetry is more interesting, at least to the unlearned, than Masaccio's puissant drawing. Nevertheless, the greater intimacy of sympathy and interest which we feel for the later men is not accounted for by their greater command of their crafts. There is some new element less readily discovered. We perceive a change of att.i.tude toward life, a new conception of human existence. The readiest explanation and perhaps the best, if we do not treat it as completely adequate, lies in the new Greek thought (or rather Greek thought as the Florentines understood it), which the humanists contributed to Italian culture; and indeed not so much in Greek thought itself, as in the impulse it gave to a subtler and more complicated conception of life.

Direct Greek influence is most conspicuous in Botticelli. This rare spirit wandered about half in the world of reality which he ill understood and depicted badly, and half in a world of fantasy which he knew better than any other painter. The secret of this world of fantasy, as he discovered, was motion. If a vision tarries, it becomes touched by the blight of familiarity, soiled by the comradeship of life. The fairy spirit of imagination must be ever on the wing. No artist ever let Sweet Fancy loose as Botticelli did in his two great pictures, The Primavera (Spring) and The Birth of Venus. In them this Greek influence finds its fullest direct expression. The glory of dawn, the first unveiled fresh beauty of the world, which the Greeks saw, Botticelli saw also. But besides the childlike joy in pure beauty is another, more complicated, element. Into the rapturous Greek world, beautiful with sensuous charm, the bewildering idea of a moral order presents itself. On the countenance of Venus and in the figure of Primavera there is a wistfulness, as if they had a presentiment that they must leave the rose-strewn ocean and the magic wood in which they found themselves. The consequence is a sadness as of beholding an antagonism between two beautiful things.

The subtler and more complicated conception of life is best expressed by Verrocchio, the other master spirit of this generation, who displays in his paintings and statues the joy he takes in pure beauty, but always adds some other element. The little boy who hugs a dolphin in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio is the incarnation of the grace and happiness of childhood, but he has an impish, Puck-like expression. The young bronze David, who has just conquered Goliath, has an odd, mischievous sprightliness. Both statues intimate a sceptical att.i.tude towards the fine seriousness of life which had marked Puritan Florence of the older days. His painting of the Annunciation shows a magic background, beautiful and mystical, with enchanted cities, rivers, mountains, like the part of Xanadu where Kubla Khan decreed his pleasure dome, or the strange land where La belle Dame sans Merci left her knight-at-arms alone and palely loitering. Subtle thoughts play over his statues and paintings, and he taught his pupil Leonardo that strange and beautiful fascination of face which expresses one knows not what. The earlier simplicity of the _quattrocento_ has pa.s.sed, the artist's att.i.tude to life has become complicated, although the love of beauty for beauty's sake remains abundantly.

The lord of Florence, Lorenzo the Magnificent, the centre and patron of this glittering ring, is the best exponent of the late _quattrocento_ taken as a whole. He touched life on every side, public and private, intellectual and frivolous, religious and cynical, artistic, literary, philosophical. Lorenzo had a striking, indeed a fascinating, personality. His figure was strong and lithe, and his face among a thousand caught the eye. His big jaws, under his lean, furrowed cheeks, were square and grim. His long irregular nose and curving lips gave him a somewhat sardonic expression, but his broad forehead was grave and thoughtful, and "princely counsel" shone in his face. His whole aspect was full of character and dignity. Every one felt his fascination. He was a poet and wrote poems of many kinds, grave and gay, some of which are of acknowledged merit:

Quant' bella giovinezza Che si fugge tuttavia, Chi vuol essere lieto, sia, Di doman non v' certezza.[18]

He was a scholar, and full of the fashionable admiration for Plato, though he probably shared the current confusion between Plato's own thoughts and those of the Alexandrian Neoplatonists. He was a statesman of foresight and shrewdness, and contributed more than any one else to preserve the peace of Italy, by maintaining the balance of power among the greater states. He was also a very charming person, and endeavoured to make life in Florence a happy mixture of mirth and intellectual pleasure; and it must be remembered in appreciation of the general sobriety of his life, that a gifted company of men did all they could to spoil him.

Lorenzo was the most remarkable prince of the _quattrocento_, but there were many others who patronized scholars and artists as generously as he. Alfonso of Aragon, the king who temporarily united the Two Sicilies, was devoted to the humanities. He was wont to hear Terence and Virgil read aloud at dinner, and took Livy with him on his campaigns. But Naples and Sicily had almost no share in the achievements and glory of the Italian Renaissance. Lawless, ignorant, poor, unsuccessful, they responded feebly to the efforts of individuals, who, here and there, strove to emulate the great Florentines. But in the North all the world was mad for art, and its princes led the fashion. Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1422-1482), was the foremost scholar among soldiers and the foremost soldier among scholars; he gathered together a n.o.ble library, now lodged in the Vatican; he built a palace, unmatched in Italy; and collected about him artists of all kinds. Yet Federigo was a soldier by nature as well as by profession, as one may see from the great portrait of him in the Uffizi, painted by Piero della Francesca.

His strong profile, with firm mouth and big, broken, aquiline nose, testifies far more forcibly to his character as a warrior than as a virtuoso. His near neighbour, the tyrant of Pesaro (a little city by the Adriatic coast), Alessandro Sforza, pa.s.sed the intervals between his battles in buying books. Duke Ercole of Ferrara was likewise a patron of art, and adorned his capital as well as his palaces and villas with all sorts of beautiful things. The dukes of Milan were somewhat eclipsed, but only for a time, by their less powerful rivals of Ferrara and Urbino. The old ducal line of the Visconti had died out with Filippo Maria, and Francesco Sforza (husband of Filippo's daughter), who succeeded to the duchy (1450), was busy making good his very defective t.i.tle, and had little time to attend to art or letters. Even he kept humanists in his pay, and continued work on the glorious Certosa of Pavia.

Not only princes but private citizens were lovers and patrons of art. In almost every city of the North--excepting Piedmont--there was some artist of whom the whole city was proud. Nevertheless, throughout the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent Florence continued to be the most intellectual of Italian cities, as she had been for many generations; but on Lorenzo's death the primacy in the arts and in matters of the mind pa.s.sed from Florence to Rome. By a flattering chance that primacy seemed to follow the fortunes of a single family. Under Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo dei Medici, the Renaissance may be said to have made Florence its home; in the later period it found its fullest expression in Rome, and even there took its name, the Age of Leo, from another Medici, Lorenzo's son. It was not to Pope Leo, however, but to his predecessors, that Rome was indebted for preminence. At the summons of the Papacy men of genius went to Rome from all Italy, but chiefly from Florence; and a distinguished Tuscan, almost a Florentine, who went from Florence to Rome at the culmination of a brilliant career, fairly serves as the personification of this intellectual migration. Tommaso Parentucelli, who was born in a little town near Lucca, was educated in Florence and Bologna. He took holy orders early, and, going back to Florence, quickly became intimate with the clever set of humanists who surrounded Cosimo. He was a great student, and won so high a reputation for learning that it was to him Cosimo applied for advice, when he wanted the right books for the library at Fiesole. This collection became famous and was copied both at Rimini and Urbino. Parentucelli was a very capable and attractive man, and embodied in its best form the essence of Florentine humanistic culture. His character, talents, and accomplishments were recognized in the Church; he became bishop, cardinal, and finally Pope, as Nicholas V (1447-55).

At Rome Nicholas showed the well-marked characteristics of the Renaissance. He fostered learning, art, and general culture, not only because of his interest in them, but because he thought that by their means he could overcome that rumbling spirit of reform, which was making trouble in Bohemia and Germany, and that by giving the reformers intellectual interests he could occupy their minds and quell their discontent. He entertained lofty imaginings of a Papacy, resting on learning and culture, housed in a nonpareil city, which should be the acknowledged and admired head of Christendom. He gathered together scholars of all kinds, collected a library of five thousand volumes, and founded the Vatican library. He rebuilt or restored numerous churches and other buildings in Rome, he began the new Vatican palace, and planned a new cathedral in place of the old basilica of St. Peter's, to be the greatest church in Christendom. He brought to Rome architects, painters, goldsmiths, artists, and artisans of all sorts. With him began the brilliant period of the Papacy as a secular power devoted to art and culture, which culminated in what is known as the Age of Leo X.

FOOTNOTES:

[18]

Oh, how beautiful is youth Ever hurrying away, Come, let him who will be gay, In to-morrow there's no truth.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (1494-1537)

We must now leave the great intellectual progress of the Renaissance on its way from its home in Florence to its culmination in Rome, and look over the political condition of the princ.i.p.al divisions of Italy. A complete change comes during this period, that can only be likened to the change wrought by the invasions of the Barbarians in ancient times.

In fact, it is a period of fresh invasions by Barbarians, as the Italians, and not without some justice, still called foreigners. The year 1494 was the fatal date of the first invasion of the French. From that year onward there was a series of invasions of French, Austrians, and Spaniards, until Italy was finally parcelled out according to the pleasure of the invaders. Before that time Italy was in a peaceful and prosperous condition. The famous Florentine historian Guicciardini (1483-1540) thus records the time of his boyhood: "Since the fall of the Roman Empire Italy had never known such great prosperity, nor had experienced so desirable a condition as in the year 1490 and the years just before and after. The country had been brought to profound peace and tranquillity, agriculture spread over the roughest and most sterile hills no less than over the most fertile plains, and Italy, subject to no dominion but her own, abounded in men, merchandise, and wealth. She was embellished to the utmost by the magnificence of many princes, by the splendour of many most n.o.ble and beautiful cities, by the seat and majesty of Religion; she was rich in men most apt in public affairs, and in minds most n.o.ble for all sorts of knowledge. She was industrious and excellent in every art, and, according to the standard of those days, not without military glory."

In these happy years, and in the decades that preceded them, Italian politics was a domestic game between the five princ.i.p.al powers, Papacy, Naples, Florence, Venice, and Milan, who treated one another's border cities as stakes. They made leagues and counter-leagues, waged innumerable little wars, fought bloodless skirmishes, flourished their swords, blew their trumpets, and made a good deal of commotion; but they were all Italians, they all knew the rules of the game, however irregular and complicated those rules might appear to an outsider, and if there were b.l.o.o.d.y heads, they were all in the family. With 1494 came the change. History seemed to turn back a thousand years; the French poured over the Alps from the northwest, the Imperial soldiers of the House of Hapsburg from the northeast, and the Spaniards from their province of Sicily to the south.

_Milan, 1466-1535_

Our chronicle had better begin with the duchy of Milan. There, on the death of Francesco Sforza (1466), his son, Galeazzo Maria, succeeded to the throne. This duke was a typical Italian ruler, brilliant in display, liberal in giving, harsh in taxing, interested in art and scholarship, crafty and cruel in politics, and shamelessly dissolute in private life. Fearful stories of his brutality are told. He was literally insufferable, and was a.s.sa.s.sinated (1476). It is interesting to see the great cla.s.sical influence, which stimulated the arts and the humanities, quickening the spirits of young men and giving an antique l.u.s.tre to murder. The story goes that a schoolmaster of Milan, who had drilled his boys in Plutarch, till Plutarch's world seemed to live again, burst out in his lecture, "Will none among my pupils rise up like Brutus and Ca.s.sius to free his country from this vile yoke and merit eternal renown?" Three of his pupils, stimulated by private wrongs to emulate the cla.s.sical example, murdered the duke in a church. All three were put to death. The last to die was skewered on iron hooks and cut to pieces alive. "I know," he said, "that for my wrongdoings I have deserved these tortures and more besides, could my poor flesh endure them; but as for the n.o.ble act for which I die, that comforts my soul.

Instead of repenting it, were I to live my life ten times again, ten times again to perish in these tortures, none the less would I consecrate all my life's blood, and all my might, to that n.o.ble purpose."

The results of the murder were unimportant. In politics, even more than in the arts, the cla.s.sic impulse only affected details. Lodovico Sforza, nicknamed Il Moro, the late duke's brother, seized the government and supplanted the lawful heir, his young nephew, in every ducal prerogative except the t.i.tle. Lodovico was a brilliant, intellectual man, devoid of moral sense; and for a time flourished in the full sunshine of the opening High Renaissance. He patronized Bramante, he employed familiarly Leonardo da Vinci. But his political talents were suited to the earlier period of domestic Italian politics. Had he lived then, his abilities, inherited from both the Sforzas and Visconti, would have kept him secure on his ducal throne; but he did not understand the larger forces of European politics.

Milan being at odds with Naples, and the other Italian powers as usual either taking part, or biding a more favourable time, Lodovico Sforza thought it would be a brilliant play, in the little Italian game, to use a foreign piece to checkmate Naples. He invited the French king, Charles VIII, who represented the claims of the House of Anjou to the Neapolitan crown, to come into Italy and take possession of his own. Other Italian politicians, with no more knowledge of European politics than Lodovico, joined in the pet.i.tion. Charles VIII, an ugly little man, of scant intelligence, strong in a compact and vigorous kingdom, believing that he could play the part of a Charlemagne, accepted the suggestion with alacrity, got together an admirable army, and crossed the Alps, in the memorable year 1494. He received the respects of Lodovico and swept triumphantly down through Italy. No resistance to speak of was attempted. Florence made a treaty with him, the Pope was delighted to be able to do the like, and Naples watched her king run away and the French march in, with blended indifference and pleasure. This brilliant success, however, was a mere blaze of straw. The powers of Europe took alarm, and while the puny Charles was rioting in Naples, made a league, in which Venice, the Pope, and the double-dealing Sforza joined. Charles hurried north as fast as he could, and barely escaped across the Alps.

But the episode was full of portent for Italy. The Barbarians had once again broken through the barrier which nature had set up to protect Italy; they had rediscovered what a delightful place Italy was; and the second period of Barbarian invasion had begun. We cannot dally over Milan. Sforza's treachery overreached itself. The succeeding King of France, Louis XII, a prince of Orleans, was a grandson of Gian Galeazzo Visconti's eldest daughter, and had as good a legal t.i.tle to the inheritance of the Visconti as his second cousin Lodovico; though in strictness neither t.i.tle had any legal value. Revenge lent strength to Louis's claim. In a few years (1499), the French again descended into the pleasant plains of Lombardy, captured Milan, took Sforza prisoner, and locked him up in a French prison for the rest of his life.

It is useless to follow the shifting ownership of Milan, tossed about in the great struggle between Francis I of France and the Emperor Charles V. The Empire espoused the cause of the Sforza heirs and put them back on the throne. Then France gained the battle of Marignano (1515) and recovered Milan, but the Empire conquered at Pavia (1525), and finally won. The male line of the Sforzas became extinct in 1535; and the dukedom of Milan, though it continued to be a nominal fief of the Empire, was annexed to the Spanish crown by Charles V (who was King of Spain as well as Emperor), and pa.s.sed as a part of the Spanish inheritance to a line of Spanish kings. The Barbarian occupation of Milan was destined to last for three hundred years.

_Florence, 1492-1537_