family of Florence. In this obscure retreat Machiavel composed nearly all his works and his famous Book of the Prince, after putting off his peasant's dress in the evening before entering his closet, and clothing himself in his court dress.". Then," he eloquently says, “I advance into the antique sanctuary of the great men of ancient times; received by them with kindness and benevolence, I feast on that food which alone is made for me, and for which I was born." The Book of the Prince, according to his own acknowledgment, was then especially intended for the use of a new sovereign. In my opinion, however, there has been too general an inclination to regard the maxims of this treatise as those of the age in which it appeared, as our De Thou, who wrote about the end of that same century, and had visited and sojourned in Italy, professes opinions diametrically opposite. Machiavel's writings, his Italian patriotism, and statesmanlike gravity, seem to have so much preoccupied his different biographers, that they have overlooked his real character, which commands little esteem: during the latter years of his life, a part of his works, beginning with the Prince, is only a succession of servile petitions addressed to the Medici bis enemies, by whom he had been stripped of office, tortured, and banished; when nearly fifty, This ankering after untimely pleasures is found in other ancient and illustrious Florentines: Boccaccio mentions Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoja, Dante (Glorn, Iv.); in the Life of the latter, he has the ingenuousness to acknowledge: "Tra cotanta virtù, tra colanta scienza, quanta dimostrato è di sopra, essere stata in questo mirifico poeta, trovò amplissimo luogo la lussuria; e non solamente ne' glovani anni ma ne' maturi; II quale vizio, comechè naturale e comune e quasi necessario sia, nel vero non cbe commendare ma scusare non si può degnamente: ma chi sarà tra' mortali giusto giudice a condemnarlo? Non io." "A critic of sound and impartial judgment, M. Avenel, bas perfectly explained this absence of elevation in Machiavel's character. The three superior articles he has inserted in the Revue encyclopédique (t. XLI. and XLII.) form an excellent epitome of his life and writings, and show him palated by himself. Notwithstanding the regret caused by this sad discord between the soul and the talents, M. Avenel's judginent, different from the common opinion, seems to us very true. Boccaccio's father, a Florentine merchant (mercalor solertissimus), according to Domenico Aretino, with all the cares of business, found leisure to fall in love with a young Parisian; Boccaccio makes no allusion to his mother, whom he appears married, father of five children, without that kind of independence and social separateness which render such errors almost indifferent in the eyes of the world, we see him again at San Casciano, inconstant, licentious, trifling, and prodigal⚫ The twofold aspect under which Machiavel has portrayed himself at San Casciano seems to present the images of two men co-existing in him of the moral man, and the literary man; of his irrational, degraded, vulgar life, and of his noble and vigorous genius. CHAPTER IX. Certaldo-Boccaccio's house and tomb. Certaldo, thirty-five miles from Florence, is a pretty village on a charming hill, with a brook at its foot; this place is immortalised by the origin, residence, and death of Boccaccio, who assumed its name (il Certaldese). He was not born there, as supposed; this creator of Italian prose, this first and most elegant of story-tellers,3 was brought into the world at Paris, the fruit of a tender attachment. There are two Certaldos: the old town, which, however, does not date so far back as Boccaccio's time, was partly burnt by the Neapolitan army after the defeat of the Florentines at Campo du Poggio in 1479; 4 it is on the hill, and never to bave known; perhaps she died at his birth, or in his childhood, and before his father had the time to marry her? Although taken to Florence in his early years, Boccaccio returned to Paris with a -Florentine merchant, with whom his father had placed bim, and there he passed several years, cultivating letters as much as he possibly could. He frequently speaks of the sciences then studied in that city: Rinieri, nobile uomo della nostra città, avendo lungamente studiato a Parigi. non per vender pol la sua scienza a minuto, come molti fanno, ma per sapere la ragion delle cose, e la cagion d' ecse, il che ottimamente sta in gentile uomo" (Giorn.VIII. nov.VII). The ridiculous scholar jilted by his mistress in that novel bad studled there: "Hal veduto," says the latter to her maid, making sport of him, "dove costui è venuto a perdere il senno, che egli ci ba da Parigi recato." This Thomas Diafoirus of the thirteenth century thus begins his declaration : " Madonna, egli è !! vero, che tra l'altre cose, che lo apparai a Parigi, sl fu nigromanzia." 4 Several houses of the ancient Certaldo are still standing; In particular the Pretorio palace, curious for its architecture and coats of arms in clay della Robbia, indicating the familles that bad supplied vicars, an office suppressed by Leopold, something resembling that of prefect in France: ད་ | with the exception of some country houses, seems poor; the lower Certaldo is a new village sprung up within the last thirty years; it is well built, and several roads communicating with the chieftowns in the environs pass through it; the inhabitants, dealers in wood and charcoal as in Boccaccio's time, are still exactly like those be so humorously describes, agiati (at their ease); and the taste for bearing and telling stories continues popular in the country. I am not certain that my memory was not too much occupied with the inimitable imitator of the Certaldese, but it seemed to me that, setting aside the sun, there was some resemblance between the bill of the Tuscan village and the agreeable situation of Château-Thierry. Boccaccio's house, solidly built of brick. with a small tower, the monument of this village, is not, like the residence of bis friend Petrarch at Arquà, relinquished to peasants to be made an object of traffic. distinguished lady of Florence, Signora Carlotta Lanzoni Medici, whom We have already named, and who deserves a place in the book of Illustrious Women, had it repaired in 1823; she has reconstructed the staircase, decorated Boccaccio's chamber with his portrait, a large fresco by Benvenuti, and a bookcase of his works. The small win the church in which Boccaccio was interred, and where his monument is seen (see post), is a part of that which had witnessed the intrepid and burlesque preaching of Fra Cipolla. (Giorn. vi. See the Italian inscription quoted at the end of this chapter. dows are of the time. The furniture is the oldest that could be found at Certaldo, with some imitated from different pictures of that period. The lamp seems the most authentic article of the whole, hardness of the oil proved its antiquity. as it was found in the house and the A well, a bath, and a terrace are shown. which, according to an old tradition, belonged to Boccaccio. The stone which covered his grave for more than four Signora Lanzoni in 1826, and placed centuries, was religiously collected by in this house with an inscription by S. Giordani. Boccaccio made two long visits to Certaldo. The first, from the horror from the revolutions and iniquiyear 1363 to 1365, when he fled with he led that sweet, rural, philosophical tous government of Florence.4 There life he has so well described; 5 there he composed his Latin works, which placed him at the head of mythologists and scholars for two centuries, but which, though unsuspected by him, will conduce tales. Then Fiammetta's lover had for him much less to immortality than his Naples, taken the clerical habit, and, if two years forsaken the libertine life of monstrances, would have renounced his not prevented by Petrarch's wise reinto the fire, such was the ardour of his studies and thrown most of his works Fontaine, and other story-tellers after him, judiciously remarks Ginguené, "have only talen subjects of one sort from Boccaccio, and their choice has been such as strict morality must blame; but besides that, they have deprived themI mean his rich and inexhaustible variety." (Hist. wires of the greatest charm of Boccaccio's work, d'ital. III. 104-5.) The pathetic novels of Bocterio would admit of most affecting imitations: what a depth of interest in stories such as Ghismonda d Guiscardo (Glorn. IV. 1.), of Andrivuola and Gariatto (ld. VI.), of Griselidis, the last and most eresting novel of the Decameron. De claris mulieribus, dedicated by Boccaccio to Andreana Acciajoli, countess of Altavilla. In his letter on exile to Pino de' Rossi, a rich Tarentine, who was unable to endure it. Boccaccio, her citing the examples of Scipio Africanus and Scipio Nasica who went into voluntary exile, to escape the envy of their fellow citizens. adds: "E mlo pleciolo nome e depresso meritasse d' estra gli eccellenti uomini detti di sopra, e tra molt' altri, che fecero il simigliante, nomato, io direi, per quello medesimo avere Firenze lasciata e dimorare a Certaldo; agglugnendovi, che dove la mia povertà lo patisse, tanto lontano me n' andrei, che come la loro iniquità non veggio, così udirla non potessi giammai." 510, secondo il mio proponimento, il quale vi ragionai, sono tornato a Certaldo, e quì ho cominciato con troppa men difficoltà, ch' io non Istimava di polere, a confortar la mia vita; e comincianmi già li grossi panni a piacere e le contadine vivande: ell non veder l'ambizioni, e le spiacevolezze e Il fastidj de nostri cittadini, mi è di tanta consolazione nell' animo, che se lo potessi far senza udirne alcuna cosa, credo che 'l mio riposo crescerebbe assai. In iscambio de' solleciti avvolgimenti e continui de cittadini veggio campi, colli, arbori di verdi fronde e di fiori varj rivestiti, cose semplicemente dalla natura prodotte, dove ne' cittadini sono tutti atti fittizj odo cantare ustgnuoli e gli altri uccelli non con minor diletto, che fusse glà la noja d`udire tutto di gl' Inganni e le dislealtà de' cittadini nostrl. Co' miei libriecluoli quante volte voglia me ne viene senza alcuno impaccio posso liberamente ragionare. E acciocch' io in poche parole conchiuda la qualità della mente mia, vi dico che io mi crederel qui mortale, come lo sono, gustare e sentir della eterna felicità, se Dio m' avesse deto fratello, o nol mi avesse dato." Let. a Pino de' Rossi. kind of hood and gown in which he is enveloped, his features are natural, ex The zeal and the Christian austerity to which they seem to agree with the portrait of Boccaccio's sepulchre formerly stood in the centre of the church of Saint James, still called the Canonica; against the wall close by was the epitaph made by himself and an additional one by his illustrious friend Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of the Seigniory of Florence, one of whose letters the duke of Milan asserted that he feared more than an army of twenty thousand men.1 The podestà of Certaldo, Lattanzio Tedaldi, erected a more magnificent monument to him,ments, now lost, were long preserved by in 1503, on the interior front of the church, which was honourably transferred to a spot facing the pulpit on the construction of an orchestra. Boccaccio is represented half-length, holding on his breast, with both hands, a folio volume on which is written Decameron, a singular book to be placed just facing a preacher, and a proof of liberality on the part of the clergy. Despite the costume of time and the This appellation was used to distinguish the parishes which, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were ceded by bishops to the chapters of cathedrals, that they might take the revenues and have the services performed by canons living in community in the cloister adjoining the church. * The last verse alone of Boccaccio's epitaph, Patria Certaldum, studium fuit alma Poesis, has been thought worthy of quotation ; the verses of Salutati, incorrectly given in most editions, contain an exact analysis of Boccaccio's works, excepting the Decameron, which he did not venture to mention because the author repented of it after his conversion : Inclite cur vates humili sermone locutus In nostrum tempus a primo colligis Adam. the rector of the church, who ten years after accepted a benefice in the upper Val d'Arno. It is stated by tradition that they were still at that epoch an object of curiosity to strangers, who went to the rector's house to see them.4 It is difficult to explain the culpable negligence that allowed the remains of Boccaccio to be lost, when we consider the unceasing popularity, at Certaldo,5 of this eloquent, admirable writer, this Tu celebras claras alto dictamine matres. 3 Fu il poeta di statura alquanto grassa, ma grande, faccia tonda ma col naso sopra le nari un poco depresso: labbri alquanto grossi, nientedimeno belli e ben lineati mento forato che nel suo ridere mostrava bellezza głocondo et allegro aspetto in tutto il suo sermone: in tutto piacevole e umano, e del ragionare assai si dilettava." Villani, Vite d' uomini illustri fiorentini con annot. del C. Giammaria Mazzuchelli, Venezia, 1747, in-4°. 4 A deed of the 31st October, 1825, certified by eight inhabitants of Certaldo and the old servant of the rector, asserts these facts. See the Annotazioni 1 and 1 of the little precise and instructive work entitled Del sepolcro di Mess. Giovanni Boccaccio e di varie sue memorie, esame storico di Giuseppe de' Poveda. Colle, 1827. 5 At the foot of the acclivity is a marble slab bearing this ancient and singular stanza, restored limner, so true, graceful, touching, profound, and mirthful, the perfect impersonation of Tuscan genius. CHAPTER X. Pisa.-Road-Climate.-Duomo.--Buschetto.--Alfar of Saint Blase-Ricci's tomb.-Pulpits.- Saint Agnes, by Andrea del Sarto.-Baptistry.-Expeditious work.-Pulpit by Nicolao Pisano.-Leaning Tower.-Prospect.-Giovanni Pisano. is cited for its mildness in winter. Pisa then revives a little; the grand duke lives there several months, and it is the resort of the weak, delicate, and indisposed, who have sometimes found benefit there. The four principal monuments of Pisa, all standing in one square at the extremity of the town, rich, ornamented, majestic, have an extraordinary aspect; one might call it a part of some deserted Eastern city. The face of the country between Florence and Pisa is studded or rather co-garded vered with towers and battlements in ruins, which recall a scene of warfare and civil discord. Behold the difference between epochs of civilisation and barbarism! the quarrels of Athens and Sparta, of Rome and Carthage are immortal; the violent struggles of the republics of the middle ages are almost lost in obscurity, notwithstanding the labours of erudite historians. The memory of those times of hatred and murder strikingly contrasts with the gentleness, industry, and easy, happy condition of the inhabitants of those same fields. Although Pisa is now little more than a sepulchre, and of the hundred and twenty thousand souls it contained under its consuls, only about twenty thousand remain; although the solitude of the streets is such that some of them have echoes, and that of two foreigners I knew there, the one who wagered they should meet no one in riding round its walls, won; its four grand monuments and university still place it among the capital cities of Italy. Its climate, when not horribly rainy, as I have experienced it with Alfieri: Mezzo dormendo ancor domando: Plove? without changing the character of the Inscription: Viator, ferma II piè, rivolgi il passo A small eminence which belonged to bim is still as the precursor of the revival of The Duomo, of the year 1063, retaste, recalls the great battle gained by the consul of the Pisans, Orlandi, when he triumphantly forced the port of Palermo, and avenged the affronts his country had received from the Saracens. This church, dedicated to the Virgin, is still the most national monument and the most magnificent trophy raised by victory. Buschetto, a great architect and creative mechanical genius," was Italian and not Greek, as some have imagined from falsely interpreting the partly effaced inscription; another Italian, Rainaldo, his colleague and successor, erected the original and stately front: the perpetuity of the art in Italy. The we thus see the antiquity, the splendour, festoons sculptured on the two columns of the principal gate are an exquisite work. The three bronze gates pass for the best and most curious works of the beginning of the twelfth century. The two smaller of these last present, in three compartments, divers Mysteries of the Redeemer, by Giovanni Bologna, Francavilla, Tacca, Mocchi, Giovanni dall' Opera, which Cochin, copied by Lalande, bas criticised as works of the same date, though later by four centuries. On the top of the temple, eastward, behind the cupola (the first ever imagined), was a bronze hippogriff, It was also in the eleventh century that silk was first imported into Italy, having come from India by Constantinople. A contemporary Inscription in verse, preserved In the church, states that ten young maidens raised, by means of machines be invented, weights that a thousand oxen could scarcely move, and which a raft had with great difficulty transported by sea: Quod vix mille boum possent juga juncta movere supposed to be Greek but not of the good epoch; this fabulous emblem was a strange ornament to place on the top of a church, though not unsuited to the general character of an edifice decorated with fragments brought from Greece by Pisan vessels, but not to the extent supposed, and with antiquities from Rome, of which Pisa was a colony. The hippogriff was no longer there in 1834, and I regretted its absence; it has been moved to the Campo Santo under the pretence that it was injured by standing so high, or that it attracted the lightning. The interior receives the religious light suited to these old basilics from a hundred windows of stained glass. The chief works in sculpture are the small altar of Saint Blase, extremely elegant, by Stagi, but the statue appears by Tribolo, his assistant and friend; the tomb of the archbishop of Pisa, Pietro Ricci, over the sacristy door; three bronze statues, by Giovanni Bologna, in the choir; the basso-relievos of the old pulpit, lost through being placed too high and injudiciously adapted as a balustrade to the gallery; over the door of communication between the side galleries, precious works by Giovanni Pisano, son of the great Nicolao,' a faithful follower of his father whom he could never surpass as a sculp-Father is barely so. St. Torpe, a Pisan, tor; the new pulpit, which has one column of pieces of red porphyry joined, and the other of oriental brocatello; these, with the five statues by Giovanni Pisano, were part of the old pulpit which was broken when the Duomo was consumed by fire in 1595. The paintings are in good number and scem remarkable; several are by Andrea del Sarto: a Madonna with an angel, St. John Baptist, and below St. Francis, St. Bartholomew and St. Jerome, is one of his last and best works; his young figures of St. Margaret and St. Catherine passing emblems of pagan divinities. for the prettiest ladies he has drawn; the Virgin has a physiognomy full of serenity and sweetness; his celebrated St. Agnes has been supposed Raphael's by Mengs. This admirable painting reminded me of the ingenious passage of Massillon on this saint, which proves that the writers of the age of Louis XIV. were peculiar in the art of throwing into their gravest discourses ideas closely approaching the comic, without degrading their style. A charming Madonna in the midst of saints; Abel watching his flocks, which has a landscape sufficient for an artist's reputation; Noah's Sacrifice, are excellent works by Sogliani. Abraham's Sacrifice, by Soddoma in his old age, shows skill in the naked parts and a vivid expression in the heads. The Clothing of St. Renier, by Luti, the last painter of the Florentine school, is the most esteemed of the great paintings in this church. The Consecration of the basilic; Christ disputing with the doctors, by Sorri, a Sienese painter of the sixteenth century, recall the perspective and stateliness of Paolo Veronese. God speaking to Moses from the burning bush, by Matteo Rosselli, is one of the fine paintings of the gallery. Moses raising the brazen serpent, by Riminaldi, is of the truest expression; his cupola, as far as one can judge of any thing at such a distance, seems a noble and vigorous composition. The Angels of the altar of that name, by Ventura Salimbeni, a painter of the Sienese school in the sixteenth century, are full of grace: the angel Raphael is perfectly divine, whereas the Eternal See ante, book vit. cb. xxiii. On voit Fimpudence devenue un bon air; Pindécence poussée à un point, qu'elle inspire même du dégoût à ceux à qui elle s'efforce de armed and bearing the banner of the town, by Salvator Rosa, has all his boldness. The baptistry of Pisa, of an elegant, majestic, original style, built in 1152, under the cousulate of Cocco Griffi, is another monument characteristic of the history of architecture: the author, according to the inscription, is Dioti Salvi, of Pisa, perhaps originally of Siena. This baptistry, like that of Florence, is also a kind of museum of fragments and ornaments of antique sculpture, present Its construction, from the beginning, was distinguished by almost prodigious celerity. The chronicles of the time, confirmed by all subsequent authorities, agree in stating that the eight columns and four pilasters of the interior were erected and received the arcades that unite them in the space of fifteen days (from the 1st to the 15th of October, plaire; et le nom de la pudeur consacré à celui de la Vierge illustre que nous honorons, devenu un nom de mép: is et de tisée.” Panegyrique de Ste. Agnès. |
