Part 10 (2/2)

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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 scholars.h.i.+p, 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 s.h.i.+fting owners.h.i.+p 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_

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