Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 18

[Footnote 349: See _Revival of Learning_, p. 375.]

[Footnote 350: Rinaldo Corso, quoted by Tiraboschi.]

Fabrizio, the father of Vittoria Colonna, was Grand Constable of Naples. He married Agnesina di Montefeltro, daughter of Duke Federigo of Urbino. Their child Vittoria was born at Marino, a feud of the Colonna family, in the year 1490. At the age of four she was betrothed to Ferrante Francesco D'Avalos, a boy of the same age, the only son of the Marchese di Pescara. His father died while he was still a child: and in their nineteenth year the affianced couple were married at Ischia, the residence of the house of D'Avalos. The splendor of two princely families alike distinguished in the annals of Spanish and Italian history and ill.u.s.trious by their military honors, conferred unusual l.u.s.ter upon this marriage. It was, moreover, on the bride's side at least, a love-match. Vittoria was beautiful and cultivated; the young Marquis of Pescara chivalrous and brave. She was tenderly attached to him, and he had not as yet revealed the darker side of his mixed character. Yet their happiness proved of very short duration. In 1512 he was wounded and made prisoner at the battle of Ravenna; and though he returned to his wife for a short interval, his duties again called him to the field of war in Lombardy in 1515. Vittoria never saw him after this date; and before his death the honor of her hero was tarnished by one of the darkest deeds of treason recorded in Italian history. Acting as general for the Spanish emperor, the Marquis entered Milan immediately after the battle of Pavia in 1525. He there and then began his intrigues with Girolamo Morone, Grand Chancellor of Francesco Sforza's duchy. Morone had formed a plan for reinstating his master in Milan by the help of an Italian coalition. With the view of securing the Marquis of Pescara, by which bold stroke he would have paralyzed the Spanish military power, Morone offered the young general the crown of Naples, if he would consent to join the league. D'Avalos turned a not unwilling ear to these proposals; but while the plot was hatching, he saw good reason to doubt of its success, and determined to clear himself with Charles V. by revealing the conspiracy.

Accordingly, he made his lieutenant, Antonio de Leyva, a.s.sist at a privy conference between Morone and himself. Concealed behind the arras, this Spanish officer heard enough to be able afterwards to deliver direct testimony against the conspirators, while the Marquis averred that he had led them on designedly to this end. It may be difficult to estimate the precise amount of Pescara's guilt. But whether he was deceiving Morone from the first, or whether, as seems more probable, he entered the negotiation resolved to side with Charles or with the League as best might suit his purpose, there can be no doubt that he played an odious part in this transaction. He did not long survive the treason; for his const.i.tution had been ruined by wounds received at Pavia. It was also rumored that Charles accelerated his death by poison. He died on November 25, 1525, execrated by the Italians, and handed down by their historians too perpetual infamy.

Something of national jealousy mingled undoubtedly in their resentment. D'Avalos was a Spaniard, and made no concealment of his contempt for the Italian character. Finally, it must be admitted that if he really was acting throughout in his master's interest, his betrayal of Morone was but a bold stroke of policy which Machiavelli might have approved. The game was a dangerous one; but it was thoroughly consistent with statecraft as then understood.[351]

[Footnote 351: See _Ricordi Inediti di Gerolamo Morone_, pubblicati dal C. Tullio Dandolo, Milano, 1855.]

No suspicion of her husband's guilt seems to have crossed Vittoria Colonna's mind. Though left so young a widow, beautiful and ill.u.s.trious by her high rank and education, she determined to consecrate her whole life to his memory and to religion. She survived him two-and-twenty years, which were spent partly in retirement at Ischia, partly in convents at Orvieto and Viterbo, partly in a semi-monastic seclusion at Rome. While still a girl and during her husband's absence in the field, she had amused her leisure with study.

This now became her chief resource in the hours she spared from pious exercises. There was no man of great name in the world of letters who did not set his pride on being thought her friend. The collections of letters and poems belonging to that period abound in allusions to her genius, her holiness, and her great beauty. But her chief a.s.sociates were the group of earnest thinkers who felt the influences of the Reformation without ceasing to be children of the Church. With Vittoria Colonna's name are inseparably connected those of Gasparo Contarini, Reginald Pole, Giovanni Morone, Jacopo Sadoleto, Marcantonio Flamminio, Pietro Carnesecchi, and Fra Bernardino Ochino.

The last of these avowed his Lutheran principles; and Carnesecchi was burned for heresy; but Vittoria never adopted Protestantism in any of its dogmatic aspects. She remained an orthodox Catholic to the last, although it seems tolerably certain that she was by no means ignorant of the new doctrines nor unsympathetic to their spirit.[352] Her att.i.tude was probably the same as that of many Italians who, before the opening of the Council of Trent, desired a reformation from within the Church. To bring it back to purer morals and an evangelical sincerity of faith, was their aim. Like Savonarola, they shrank from heresy, and failed to comprehend that a radical renovation of religion was inseparable, in the changed conditions of modern thought, from a metamorphosis of dogma and a new freedom accorded to the individual conscience. While the Teutonic world struck boldly for the liberation of the reason, the Italians dreamed of an impossible harmony between Catholicism and philosophy. Their compromises led to ethical hypocrisies and to that dogmatic despotism which was confirmed by the Tridentine Council.

[Footnote 352: The most recent investigations tend rather to confirm the tradition of Vittoria's Lutheran leanings. See Giuseppe Campori's _Vittoria Colonna_ (Modena, 1878), and the fine article upon it by Ernesto Masi in the _Ra.s.segna Settima.n.a.le_, January 29, 1879. Karl Benrath's _Ueber die Quellen der italienischen Reformationsgeschichte_ (Bonn, 1876) is a valuable contribution to the history of Lutheran opinion in the South.]

A pleasant glimpse into Vittoria's life at Rome is given by the Portuguese artist, Francesco d'Olanda, who visited her about the year 1548. "Madonna Vittoria Colonna," he says, "Marchioness of Pescara and sister to the Lord Antonio Colonna, is one of the most excellent and famous women of Europe,--that is, of the whole civilized world. Not less chaste than beautiful, learned in Latin literature and full of genius, she possesses all the qualities and virtues that are praiseworthy in woman. After the death of her hero husband, she now leads a modest and retired life. Tired with the splendor and grandeur of her former state, she gives her whole affections to Christ and to serious studies. To the poor she is beneficent, and is a model of true Catholic devotion." He then proceeds to describe a conversation held with her, in which Michelangelo Buonarroti took a part.[353]

[Footnote 353: The whole doc.u.ment may be seen in the _Archivio Storico_, nuov. ser. tom. v. part 2, p. 139, or in Grimm's Life of Michelangelo.]

Vittoria Colonna's _Rime_ consist for the most part of sonnets on the death of her husband, and on sacred and moral subjects. Penetrated by genuine feeling and almost wholly free from literary affectation, they have that dignity and sweetness which belongs to the spontaneous utterance of a n.o.ble heart. Like the poets of an earlier and simpler age, Vittoria listens to the voice of Love, and when he speaks, records the thoughts dictated by his inspiration.[354] That the object of her lifelong regret was unworthy of her, does not offend our sense of fitness.[355] It is manifest that her own feeling for the Marquis of Pescara, _il mio bel sole, mio lume eterno_, as she loves to call him with pathetic iteration of the chosen metaphor, had satisfied her unsuspecting nature.[356] Death consecrates her husband for Vittoria, as death canonized Laura for Petrarch. He has become divine, and her sole desire is to rejoin him in a world where parting is impossible.[357] The blending of the hero with the saint, of earthly fame with everlasting glory, in this half Christian half Pagan apotheosis, is characteristic of the Renaissance. Michelangelo strikes the same note in the _Capitolo_ upon his father's death: "Or sei tu del morir morto e fatto divo." It is said that, in her first grief, Vittoria thought of suicide as the means of escaping from this world.

But she triumphed over the temptation, and in Bembo's words proved herself _vincitrice di se stessa_. We seem to trace the anguish of that struggle in a sonnet which may possibly have suggested Bembo's phrase.[358]

[Footnote 354: The first lines of the introductory sonnet are strictly true:

Scrivo sol per sfogar l'interna doglia, Di che si pasce il cor, ch'altro non vole, E non per giunger lume al mio bel sole, Che lasci in terra si onorata spoglia.]

[Footnote 355: The last biographer of Vittoria Colonna, G. Campori, has shown that her husband was by no means faithful to his marriage vows.]

[Footnote 356: The close of the twenty-second sonnet is touching by reason of its allusion to the past. Vittoria had no children.

Sterili i corpi fur, l'alme feconde, Che il suo valor lasci raggio si chiaro, Che sara lume ancor del nome mio.

Se d'altre grazie mi fu il ciel avaro, E se il mio caro ben morte m'asconde, Pur con lui vivo; ed e quanto disio.]

[Footnote 357: See, for instance, _Rime Varie_, Sonetto li. and lxxi.

xc.]

[Footnote 358: It is No. 31 of the _Rime Varie_ (Florence, Barbera, 1860).]

The religious sonnets are distinguished in general by the same simplicity and sincerity of style.[359] While Vittoria proves herself a Catholic by her invocation of Madonna and S. Francis,[360] it is to the cross of Christ that she turns with the deepest outgoings of pious feeling.[361] Her cry is for lively faith, for evangelical purity of conviction. There is nothing in these meditations that a Christian of any communion may not read with profit, as the heartfelt utterances of a soul athirst for G.o.d and nourished on the study of the Gospel.

[Footnote 359: The introductory Sonnet has, however, these ugly _concetti_:

I santi chiodi ormai sian le mie penne, E puro inchiostro il prezioso sangue; Purgata carta il sacro corpo esangue, S ch'io scriva nel cor quel ch'ei sostenne.]

[Footnote 360: _Rime Sacre_, 119, 120, 86, 87.]

[Footnote 361: _Ibid._ 75, 80, 81.]

The memory of Vittoria Colonna is inseparable from that of Michelangelo Buonarroti, who was her intimate companion during the closing years of her life. Of that famous friendship this is not the place to speak at length. It may be enough to report Condivi's words about Michelangelo's grief when he had lost her. "I remember having heard him say that nothing caused him so much sorrow as that, when he went to visit her upon her pa.s.sage from this life, he had not kissed her forehead and face, even as he kissed her hand. Her death left him oftentimes astonied and, as it were, deprived of reason." Some of Michelangelo's best sonnets were composed for Vittoria Colonna in her lifetime. Others record his sorrow for her loss. Those again which give expression to his religious feelings, are animated by her spirit of genuine piety. It is clear that her influence affected him profoundly.

To include any notice of Michelangelo's poetry in a chapter devoted to the purists, may seem paradoxical.[362] His verses are remarkable for the imperfection of their style, and the rugged elevation of their thoughts. With the school of Bembo he has nothing in common except that Platonism which the versifiers of the time affected as a fashion, but which had a real meaning for his creative genius. In the second half of the sixteenth century Michelangelo's sonnets upon the divine idea, lifting the soul by contemplation to her heavenly home, reach our ears like utterances from some other and far distant age. Both in form and in spirit they are alien to the _cinque cento_. Yet the precisians of the time admired these uncouth verses for the philosophic depth of thought they found in them. Benedetto Varchi composed a learned treatise on the sonnet "Non ha l'ottimo artista"; and when the poems were printed, Mario Guidicci delivered two lectures on them before the Florentine Academy.[363]

[Footnote 362: For a brief account of Michelangelo's _Rime_, see _Fine Arts_, Appendix ii.; also the introduction to my translation of the sonnets, _The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella_, Smith and Elder, 1878.]

[Footnote 363: Varchi's and Guidicci's _Lezioni_ will be found in Guasti's edition of the _Rime_.]

There is no sort of impropriety in placing Bernardo Ta.s.so and Giangiorgio Trissino upon the list of literary purists. The biographies of these two men, more interesting for the share they took in public life than for their poetical achievements, shall close a chapter which has been, almost of necessity, rambling. Bernardo Ta.s.so was a member of the n.o.ble and ancient Bergamasque family Dei Ta.s.si.[364] He was born at Venice in 1493. Left an orphan in his early childhood, an uncle on his father's side, the Bishop of Recanati, took charge of him. But this good man was murdered in 1520, at the time when Bernardo had just begun a brilliant career in the University of Padua. The loss of his father and his uncle threw the young student on the world, and he was glad to take service as secretary with the Count Guido Rangone. At this epoch the Rangoni stood high among the first n.o.bility of Italy, and Count Guido was Captain-General of the Church.

He employed Bernardo in a mission to Paris in 1528, on the occasion of Ercole d'Este's marriage to Renee, daughter of Louis XII. Ta.s.so went to France as servant of the Rangoni. He returned to Italy in the employment of the Estensi. But he did not long remain at the Court of Ferrara. About the year 1532, we find him with Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, whom he accompanied in 1535 on the expedition to Tunis. It cannot have been much later than this date that he married the beautiful Porzia de' Rossi, who was the mother of his ill.u.s.trious son, Torquato. But though this marriage was in all respects a happy one, in none more fortunate than in the birth of Italy's fourth sovran poet, Bernardo was not destined to lead a life of tranquil domesticity. His master, whom he followed whithersoever military service called him, fell out of favor with the Spanish Court in 1547.

Maddened by the injustice of his treatment, the Prince deserted from Charles V. to his rival, Francis, was declared a rebel and deprived of his vast domains. Bernardo resolved to share his fortunes, and in return for this act of loyalty, found himself involved in the ruin of the Sanseverini. Henceforth he lived a wandering life, away from Porzia and his family, and ill-contented with the pittance which his patron could afford. In 1556, at Duke Guidubaldo's invitation, he joined the Court of Urbino; and again in 1563 he entered the service of the Duke of Mantua. He died in 1569 at Ostiglia.

[Footnote 364: I use the Life prefixed by G. Campori to his _Lettere Inedite di Bernardo Ta.s.so_ (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1869).]

It will be seen from this brief sketch that Bernardo Ta.s.so spent his life in mixed employments, as courtier, diplomatist, and military secretary. His career was a.n.a.logous to that of many n.o.bly-born Italians, for whom there existed no sphere outside the service of a prince. Yet he found time, amid his journeys, campaigns and miscellaneous Court duties, to practice literature. The seven books of his collected poems--sonnets, odes and epithalamial hymns--placed him among the foremost lyrists of the century; while his letters displayed the merits which were usual in that species of composition. Had this been all, he would have deserved honorable mention by the side of Caro, on a somewhat lower level than Bembo. But he was also ambitious of giving a new kind of epic to Italian literature. With this view, he versified the Spanish romance of Amadis of Gaul in octave stanzas. The _Amadigi_ is a chivalrous poem in the style of the _Orlando_, but without the irony of Ariosto.[365] It cannot be reckoned a success; for though written with fertile fancy and a flowing vein, its prolixity is tedious. Ta.s.so lacked the art of sustaining his reader's attention. His attempt to treat the ideal of feudalism seriously, without the faith and freshness of the chivalrous epoch, deprived his work of that peculiar charm which belongs to the Italian romantic epic. While still in MS., he submitted his poem to literary friends, and read it at the Court of Urbino. The acclamation it received from men whose literary principles coincided with his own, raised Ta.s.so's expectations high. He imagined that the world would welcome _Amadigi_ as a masterpiece, combining the interest of _Orlando_ with the dignity and purity of a cla.s.sic. When it appeared, however, the public received it coldly, and on this occasion the verdict of the people was indubitably right. Another mortification awaited the author. He had dedicated his epic to Philip II. and filled its cantos with adulation of the Spanish race. But the king took no notice of the gift; and two years after the publication of _Amadigi_, it appeared that Ta.s.so's agents at the Spanish Court had not taken the trouble to present him with a copy.[366]

[Footnote 365: The _Amadigi_ was printed by Giolito at Venice in 1560 under the author's own supervision. The book is a splendid specimen of florid typography.]

[Footnote 366: Besides the _Amadigi_, Bernardo Ta.s.so composed a second narrative poem, the _Floridante_, which his son, Torquato, retouched and published at Mantua in 1587.]

Bernardo Ta.s.so is the representative of a cla.s.s which was common in Renaissance Italy, when courtiers and men of affairs devoted their leisure to study and composed poetry upon scholastic principles. His epic failed precisely through the qualities for which he prized it.

Less the product of inspiration than pedantic choice, it bore the taint of languor and unpardonable dullness. Giangiorgio Trissino, in the circ.u.mstances of his life no less than in the nature of his literary work, bears a striking resemblance to the author of the _Amadigi_. The main difference between the two men is that Trissino adopted by preference the career of diplomacy into which poverty drove Ta.s.so.[367] He was born at Vicenza in 1478 of wealthy and n.o.ble ancestors, from whom he inherited vast estates. His mother was Cecilia, of the Bevilacqua family. During his boyhood Trissino enjoyed fewer opportunities of study than usually fell to the lot of young Italian n.o.bles. He spent his time in active exercises; and it was only in 1506 that he began his education in earnest. At this date he had been married nine years, and had already lost his wife, the mother of two surviving children, Francesco and Giulio.[368]

[Footnote 367: _Giangiorgio Trissino_, by Bernardo Morsolin (Vicenza, 1878), is a copious biography and careful study of this poet's times.]

[Footnote 368: Francesco died in 1514.]

Trissino's inclination toward literature induced him to settle at Milan, where he became a pupil of the veteran Demetrius Chalcondylas.

He cultivated the society of learned men, collected MSS., and devoted himself to the study of Greek philosophy. From the first, he showed the decided partiality for erudition which was destined to rule his future career. But scholars at that epoch, even though they might be men of princely fortune, had little chance of uninterrupted leisure.

Trissino's estates gave him for a while as much trouble as poverty had brought on Ta.s.so. Vicenza was allotted to the Empire in 1509; and afterwards, when the city gave itself to the Venetian Republic, Trissino's adherence to Maximilian's party cost him some months of exile in Germany and the temporary confiscation of his property.

Between 1510 and 1514, after his return from Germany, but before he made his peace with Venice, Trissino visited Ferrara, Florence and Rome. These years determined his life as a man of letters. The tragedy of _Sofonisba_, which was written before 1515, won for its author a place among the foremost poets of the time.[369] The same period decided his future as a courtier. Leo X. sent him on a mission to Bavaria, and upon his return procured his pardon from the Republic of S. Mark. There is not much to be gained by following the intricate details of Trissino's public career. After Leo's death, he was employed by Clement VII. and Paul III. He a.s.sisted at the coronation of Charles V., and on this occasion was made Knight and Count.

Gradually he a.s.sumed the style of a finished courtier; and though he never took pay from his Papal or princely masters, no poet carried the art of adulation further.[370]

[Footnote 369: See above, pp. 126-128.]

[Footnote 370: See Morsolin, _op. cit._, p. 360, for Trissino's own emphatic statement that his services had been unpaid. _Ibid._ p. 344, for a list of the personages he complimented.]

This self-subjection to the annoyances and indignities of Court-life is all the more remarkable because Trissino continued to live like a great n.o.ble. When he traveled, he was followed by a retinue of servants. A chaplain attended him for the celebration of Ma.s.s. His litter was furnished with silver plate, and with all the conveniences of a magnificent household. His own cook went before, with couriers, to prepare his table; and the equipage included a train of sumpter-mules and serving-men in livery.[371] At home, in his palace at Vicenza or among his numerous villas, he showed no less magnificence. Upon the building of one country-house at Cricoli, which he designed himself and surrounded with the loveliest Italian gardens, enormous sums were spent; and when the structure was completed, he opened it to n.o.ble friends, who lived with him at large and formed an Academy called after him La Trissiniana.[372] Trissino was, moreover, a diligent student and a lover of solitude. He spent many years of his life upon the island of Murano, in a villa secluded from the world, and open to none but a few guests of similar tastes.[373] Yet in spite of the advantages which fortune gave him, in spite of his studious habits, he could not resist the attraction which Courts at that epoch exercised over men of birth and breeding throughout Europe. He was for ever returning to Rome, although he expressed the deepest horror for the corruptions of that sinful city.[374] No sooner had he established himself in quiet among the woods and streams of the Vicentine lowlands or upon the breast of the Venetian lagoons, than the hankering to shine before a Prince came over him, and he resumed his march to Ferrara, or made his bow once more in the Vatican.

[Footnote 371: _Ibid._ p. 323.]

[Footnote 372: _Ibid._ pp. 219-235.]

[Footnote 373: _Ibid._ p. 301.]

[Footnote 374: _Op. cit._ p. 366.]

The end of Trissino's life was troubled by a quarrel with his son Giulio, in which it is difficult to decide whether the father or the son was more to blame. Some years after the death of his first wife, he married a cousin, Bianca Trissino, by whom he had another son, Ciro. Giulio was sickly, and had taken to the ecclesiastical career.

His father's preference for Ciro was decided, and he openly expressed it. That Bianca was not entirely responsible for the ensuing quarrel, is certain from the fact that Trissino separated from this second wife in 1535. But it appears that Giulio opened hostilities by behaving with brutal rudeness to his stepmother. Trissino refused to receive him, and cut off his allowance. Giulio then went to law with his father. A hollow peace was patched up, and, after Bianca's death in 1540, Giulio was appointed steward of the family estates. His management of Trissino's property led to new disputes, and new acts of violence. On one occasion the son broke into his father's palace at Vicenza, and tried to turn him by armed force into the streets upon a bitter night of Christmas. Meanwhile fresh lawsuits were on foot, and Giulio's cause triumphed in the courts of Venice, whither the case had been removed on appeal from Vicenza. Infuriated by what he deemed a maladministration of justice, the old poet hurled sonnets and invectives against both cities, execrating their infamy in the strongest verse he ever penned.[375] But he could not gain redress against the son he hated. At the age of seventy-two, in the midst of these private troubles, Trissino undertook his last journey to Rome.

There he died in 1550, and was buried near John Lascaris in the church of S. Agata in Suburra.