Renaissance in Italy Volume IV Part 29

[461] See _Fine Arts_, p. 183.

[462] See _Revival of Learning_, pp. 215 _et seq._; _Fine Arts_, pp.

183 _et seq._

[463] It is right to say here that considerable portions of Southern Italy, the Marches of Ancona and Romagna, Piedmont and Liguria, remained outside the Renaissance movement at this period.

[464] See _Age of the Despots_, pp. 277, 520, 542; _Revival of Learning_, pp. 314-323; _Fine Arts_, pp. 263, 387. See also _Sketches and Studies in Italy_, Article on Florence and the Medici.

[465] _Op. Lat._ p. 423.

[466] _Poesie di Lorenzo de' Medici_ (Firenze, Barbera, 1859), pp.

10-19.

[467] _Ibid._ pp. 24-34. Notice especially the verdict on Cino and Dante, p. 33.

[468] Read for instance No. xii. in the edition cited above, "Vidi madonna sopra un fresco rio;" No. xviii., "Con pa.s.si sparti," etc.; No. xlvii., "Belle fresche e purpuree viole."

[469] _Ibid._ p. 97.

[470] "Tolsi donna ... ovvero mi fu data," from the _Ricordi_ printed in the Appendix to Roscoe's _Life_.

[471] "Innamoramento," _Poesie_, pp. 58-62. Compare "Selve d'Amore,"

_ib._ pp. 172-174.

[472] _Poesie_, pp. 206-213.

[473] _Ibid._ p. 236.

[474] _Poesie_, pp. 190-194, 200-204.

[475] See the peroration to _Ambra_, in the _Sylvae_; Poliziano, _Prose Volgari e Poesie Latine_, etc. (Firenze, 1867), p. 365: Et nos ergo illi, etc.

[476] _Poesie_, p. 238.

[477] _Ibid._ p. 239.

[478] _Poesie_, p. 294.

[479] If anything had to be quoted from _I Beoni_, I should select the episode of Adovardo and his humorous discourse on thirst, cap. ii.

_ib._ p. 299. For a loathsome parody of Dante see cap. v. _ib._ p.

315.

[480] The date is 1489.

[481] Especially "O Dio, o sommo bene," and "Poi ch'io gustai, Gesu;"

_ib._ pp. 444, 447. Likewise "Vieni a me;" _ib._ p. 449.

[482] Guicciardini, in his _Storia Fiorentina_ (_Op. Ined._ vol. iii.

88), writes of Lorenzo: "Fu libidinoso, e tutto venereo e constante negli amori suoi, che duravano parecchi anni; la quale cosa, a giudicio di molti, gli indebol tanto il corpo, che lo fece morire, si pu dire, giovane." Then, after describing his night-adventures outside Florence, he proceeds: "Cosa pazza a considerare che uno di tanta grandezza, riputazione e prudenza, di eta di anni quaranta, fussi s preso di una dama non bella e gia piena di anni, che si conducessi a fare cose, che sarebbono state disoneste a ogni fanciullo."

[483] _Canzone per andare in maschera, facte da piu persone._ No place or date or printer's name; but probably issued in the lifetime of Lorenzo from Mongiani's press. There is a similar woodcut on the t.i.tle-page of the _Canzone a Ballo_, Firenze, 1568. It represents the angle of the Medicean Palace in the Via Larga, girls dancing in a ring upon the street, one with a wreath and thyrsus kneeling, another presenting Lorenzo with a book.

[484] _Ist. Fior._ viii.; _Stor. Fior._ ix.

[485] _Trattato circa il Reggimento e Governo della Citta di Firenze_ (Florence, 1847), ii. 2.

[486] _Tutti i Trionfi, Carri, etc._, Firenze, 1559. See the edition dated Cosmopoli, 1750.

[487] In this place should be noticed a sinister Carnival Song, by an unknown author, which belongs, I think, to the period of Savonarola's democracy. It is called _Trionfo del Vaglio_, or "Triumph of the Sieve" (_Cant. Carn._ p. 33):

To the Sieve, to the Sieve, to the Sieve, Ho, all ye folk, descend!

With groans your bosoms rend!

And find in this our Sieve Wrath, anguish, travail, doom for all who live!

To winnow, sift and purge, full well we know, And grind your souls like corn: Ye who our puissance scorn, Come ye to trial, ho!

For we will prove and show How fares the man who enters in our Sieve.

Send us no groats nor scrannel seed nor rye, But good fat ears of grain, Which shall endure our strain, And be of st.u.r.dy stuff.

Torment full stern and rough Abides for him who resteth in our Sieve.

Who comes into this Sieve, who issues thence, Hath tears and sighs, and mourns: But the Sieve ever turns, And gathers vehemence.

Ye who feel sin's offence, Shun ye the rage, the peril of our Sieve.

A thousand times the day, our Sieve is crowned; A thousand times 'tis drained: Let the Sieve once be strained, And, grain by grain, around Ye shall behold the ground Covered with folk, cast from the boltering Sieve.

Ye who are not well-grained and strong to bear, Abide ye not this fate!

Penitence comes too late!

Seek ye some milder doom!

Nay, better were the tomb Than to endure the torment of our Sieve!

[488] Life of Piero di Cosimo.

[489] Life of Pontormo.

[490] _Revival of Learning_, pp. 345-357, 452-465.

[491] Carducci, Preface to his edition of _Le Stanze, L'Orfeo e Le Rime di Messer Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano_ (Firenze, 1863), p. xxiii.

[492] This poem must have been written between 1476, the date of Simonetta's death, and 1478, the date of Giuliano's murder, when Poliziano was about twenty-four. Chronology prevents us from regarding it as the work of a boy of fourteen, as Roscoe thought, or of sixteen, as Hallam concluded.

[493] His Latin elegies on Simonetta and on Albiera degli Albizzi, and those Greek epigrams which Scaliger preferred to the Latin verses of his maturity, had been already written.

[494] From _Le Stanze_, i. 7, we learn that he interrupted the translation of the _Iliad_ in order to begin this poem in Italian. He never took it up again. It remains a n.o.ble torso, the most splendid extant version of a Greek poem in Latin by a modern hand.

[495] By a strange coincidence this was the anniversary of his love, Simonetta's, death in 1476. The close connection between her untimely end--celebrated by Lorenzo de' Medici in his earlier _Rime_, by Poliziano in his Latin Elegy and again in the _Giostra_--and the renascence of Italian poetry, makes her portrait by Botticelli della Francesca in the Pitti interesting.

[496] I must refer my readers to the original, and to the translations published by me in _Sketches and Studies in Italy_, pp. 217-224. The description of Simonetta in the meadow (_Giostra_, i. 43 and following) might be compared to a Florentine Idyll by Benozzo Gozzoli; the birth of Venus from the waves (i. 99-107) is a blending of Botticelli's _Venus_ in the Uffizzi with his _Primavera_ in the Belle Arti; the picture of Venus in the lap of Mars (i. 122-124) might be compared to work by Piero di Cosimo, or, since poetry embraces many suggestions, to paintings from the schools of Venice. The metamorphoses of Jupiter (i. 104-107) remind us of Giulio Romano. The episode of Ariadne and the Bacchic revel (i. 110-112) is in the style of Mantegna's engravings. All these pa.s.sages will be found translated by me in the book above quoted.

[497] I believe the _Favola di Orfeo_, first published in 1494, and republished from time to time up to the year 1776, was the original play acted at Mantua before the Cardinal Gonzaga. It is not divided into acts, and has the usual "Annunziatore della Festa," of the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_. The _Orphei Tragaedia_, published by the Padre Ireneo Aff at Venice in 1776, from two MSS. collated by him, may be regarded as a subsequent recension of his own work made by Poliziano.

It is divided into five acts, and is far richer in lyrical pa.s.sages.

Carducci prints both in his excellent edition of Poliziano's Italian poems. I may refer English readers to my own translation of the _Orfeo_ and the note upon its text, _Studies and Sketches in Italy_, pp. 226-242, 429, 430.

[498] The popularity of Poliziano's poems is proved by the frequency of their editions. The _Orfeo_ and the _Stanze_ were printed together or separately twenty-two times between 1494 and 1541, thirteen times between 1541 and 1653. A redaction of the _Orfeo_ in octave stanzas was published at Florence in 1558 for the use of the common people. It was ent.i.tled _La Historia e Favola d'Orfeo alla dolce lira_. This narrative version of Poliziano's play is still reprinted from time to time for the Tuscan _contadini_. Carducci cites an edition of Prato, 1860.