The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

On reading the Italian authors of that period attentively, we are astounded at the keenness and accuracy with which outward features are seized, and at the completeness with which personal appearance in general is described.[775 - On Filippo Villani, see p. 330.] Even to-day the Italians, and especially the Romans, have the art of sketching a man’s picture in a couple of words. This rapid apprehension of what is characteristic is an essential condition for detecting and representing the beautiful. In poetry, it is true, circumstantial description may be a fault, not a merit, since a single feature, suggested by deep passion or insight, will often awaken in the reader a far more powerful impression of the figure described. Dante gives us nowhere a more splendid idea of his Beatrice than where he only describes the influence which goes forth from her upon all around. But here we have not to treat particularly of poetry, which follows its own laws and pursues its own ends, but rather of the general capacity to paint in words real or imaginary forms.

In this Boccaccio is a master—not in the ‘Decameron,’ where the character of the tales forbids lengthy description, but in the romances, where he is free to take his time. In his ‘Ameto’[776 - Parnasso teatrale, Lipsia, 1829. Introd. p. vii.] he describes a blonde and a brunette much as an artist a hundred years later would have painted them—for here, too, culture long precedes art. In the account of the brunette—or, strictly speaking, of the less blonde of the two—there are touches which deserve to be called classical. In the words ‘la spaziosa testa e distesa’ lies the feeling for grander forms, which go beyond a graceful prettiness; the eyebrows with him no longer resemble two bows, as in the Byzantine ideal, but a single wavy line; the nose seems to have been meant to be aquiline;[777 - The reading is here evidently corrupt. The passage is as follows (Ameto, Venezia, 1856, p. 54): ‘Del mezo de’ quali non camuso naso in linea diretta discende, quanto ad aquilineo non essere dimanda il dovere.’] the broad, full breast, the arms of moderate length, the effect of the beautiful hand, as it lies on the purple mantle—all both foretells the sense of beauty of a coming time, and unconsciously approaches to that of classical antiquity. In other descriptions Boccaccio mentions a flat (not mediævally rounded) brow, a long, earnest, brown eye, and round, not hollowed neck, as well as—in a very modern tone—the ‘little feet’ and the ‘two roguish eyes’ of a black-haired nymph.[778 - ‘Due occhi ladri nel loro movimento.’ The whole work is rich in such descriptions.]

Whether the fifteenth century has left any written account of its ideal of beauty, I am not able to say. The works of the painters and sculptors do not render such an account as unnecessary as might appear at first sight, since possibly, as opposed to their realism, a more ideal type might have been favoured and preserved by the writers.[779 - The charming book of songs by Giusto dei Conti, La bella Mano (best ed. Florence, 1715), does not tell us as many details of this famous hand of his beloved as Boccaccio in a dozen passages of the Ameto of the hands of his nymphs.] In the sixteenth century Firenzuola came forward with his remarkable work on female beauty.[780 - ‘Della bellezza delle donne,’ in the first vol. of the Opere di Firenzuola, Milano, 1802. For his view of bodily beauty as a sign of beauty of soul, comp. vol. ii. pp. 48 to 52, in the ‘ragionamenti’ prefixed to his novels. Among the many who maintain this doctrine, partly in the style of the ancients, we may quote one, Castiglione, Il Cortigiana, l. iv. fol. 176.] We must clearly distinguish in it what he had learned from old authors or from artists, such as the fixing of proportions according to the length of the head, and certain abstract conceptions. What remains, is his own genuine observation, illustrated with examples of women and girls from Prato. As his little work is a kind of lecture, delivered before the women of this city—that is to say, before very severe critics—he must have kept pretty closely to the truth. His principle is avowedly that of Zeuxis and of Lucian—to piece together an ideal beauty out of a number of beautiful parts. He defines the shades of colour which occur in the hair and skin, and gives to the ‘biondo’ the preference, as the most beautiful colour for the hair,[781 - This was a universal opinion, not only the professional opinion of painters. See below.] understanding by it a soft yellow, inclining to brown. He requires that the hair should be thick, long, and locky; the forehead serene, and twice as broad as high; the skin bright and clear (candida), but not of a dead white (bianchezza); the eyebrows dark, silky, most strongly marked in the middle, and shading off towards the ears and the nose; the white of the eye faintly touched with blue, the iris not actually black, though all the poets praise ‘occhi neri’ as a gift of Venus, despite that even goddesses were known for their eyes of heavenly blue, and that soft, joyous, brown eyes were admired by everybody. The eye itself should be large and full, and brought well forward; the lids white, and marked with almost invisible tiny red veins; the lashes neither too long, nor too thick, nor too dark. The hollow round the eye should have the same colour as the cheek.[782 - This may be an opportunity for a word on the eyes of Lucrezia Borgia, taken from the distichs of a Ferrarese court-poet, Ercole Strozza (Strozzii Poetae, fol. 85-88). The power of her glance is described in a manner only explicable in an artistic age, and which would not now be permitted. Sometimes it turns the beholder to fire, sometimes to stone. He who looks long at the sun, becomes blind; he who beheld Medusa, became a stone; but he who looks at the countenance of Lucrezia‘Fit primo intuitu cæcus et inde lapis.’Even the marble Cupid sleeping in her halls is said to have been petrified by her gaze:‘Lumine Borgiado saxificatur Amor.’Critics may dispute, if they please, whether the so-called Eros of Praxiteles or that of Michelangelo is meant, since she was the possessor of both.And the same glance appeared to another poet, Marcello Filosseno, only mild and lofty, ‘mansueto e altero’ (Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, vii. p. 306).Comparisons with ideal figures of antiquity occur (p. 30 (#x4_x_4_i41)). Of a boy ten years old we read in the Orlandino (ii. str. 47), ‘ed ha capo romano.’ Referring to the fact that the appearance of the temples can be altogether changed by the arrangement of the hair, Firenzuola makes a comical attack on the overcrowding of the hair with flowers, which causes the head to ‘look like a pot of pinks or a quarter of goat on the spit.’ He is, as a rule, thoroughly at home in caricature.] The ear, neither too large nor too small, firmly and neatly fitted on, should show a stronger colour in the winding than in the even parts, with an edge of the transparent ruddiness of the pomegranate. The temples must be white and even, and for the most perfect beauty ought not to be too narrow. The red should grow deeper as the cheek gets rounder. The nose, which chiefly determines the value of the profile, must recede gently and uniformly in the direction of the eyes; where the cartilage ceases, there may be a slight elevation, but not so marked as to make the nose aquiline, which is not pleasing in women; the lower part must be less strongly coloured than the ears, but not of a chilly whiteness, and the middle partition above the lips lightly tinted with red. The mouth, our author would have rather small, and neither projecting to a point, nor quite flat, with the lips not too thin, and fitting neatly together; an accidental opening, that is, when the woman is neither speaking nor laughing, should not display more than six upper teeth. As delicacies of detail, he mentions a dimple in the upper lip, a certain fulness of the under lip, and a tempting smile in the left corner of the mouth—and so on. The teeth should not be too small, regular, well marked off from one another, and of the colour of ivory; and the gums must not be too dark or even like red velvet. The chin is to be round, neither pointed nor curved outwards, and growing slightly red as it rises; its glory is the dimple. The neck should be white and round and rather long than short, with the hollow and the Adam’s apple but faintly marked; and the skin at every movement must show pleasing lines. The shoulders he desires broad, and in the breadth of the bosom sees the first condition of its beauty. No bone may be visible upon it, its fall and swell must be gentle and gradual, its colour ‘candidissimo.’ The leg should be long and not too hard in the lower parts, but still not without flesh on the shin, which must be provided with white, full calves. He likes the foot small, but not bony, the instep (it seems) high, and the colour white as alabaster. The arms are to be white, and in the upper parts tinted with red; in their consistence fleshy and muscular, but still soft as those of Pallas, when she stood before the shepherd on Mount Ida—in a word, ripe, fresh, and firm. The hand should be white, especially towards the wrist, but large and plump, feeling soft as silk, the rosy palm marked with a few, but distinct and not intricate lines; the elevations in it should be not too great, the space between thumb and forefinger brightly coloured and without wrinkles, the fingers long, delicate, and scarcely at all thinner towards the tips, with nails clear, even, not too long nor too square, and cut so as to show a white margin about the breadth of a knife’s back.

Æsthetic principles of a general character occupy a very subordinate place to these particulars. The ultimate principles of beauty, according to which the eye judges ‘senza appello,’ are for Firenzuola a secret, as he frankly confesses; and his definitions of ‘Leggiadria,’ ‘Grazia,’ ‘Vaghezza,’ ‘Venustà,’ ‘Aria,’ ‘Maestà,’ are partly, as has been remarked, philological, and partly vain attempts to utter the unutterable. Laughter he prettily defines, probably following some old author, as a radiance of the soul.

The literature of all countries can, at the close of the Middle Ages, show single attempts to lay down theoretic principles of beauty;[783 - For the ideal of the ‘Minnesänger,’ see Falke, Die deutsche Trachten- und Modenwelt, i. pp. 85 sqq.] but no other work can be compared to that of Firenzuola. Brantome, who came a good half-century later, is a bungling critic by his side, because governed by lasciviousness and not by a sense of beauty.

CHAPTER VIII.

DESCRIPTIONS OF LIFE IN MOVEMENT

AMONG the new discoveries made with regard to man, we must reckon, in conclusion, the interest taken in descriptions of the daily course of human life.

The comical and satirical literature of the Middle Ages could not dispense with pictures of every-day events. But it is another thing, when the Italians of the Renaissance dwelt on this picture for its own sake—for its inherent interest—and because it forms part of that great, universal life of the world whose magic breath they felt everywhere around them. Instead of and together with the satirical comedy, which wanders through houses, villages, and streets, seeking food for its derision in parson, peasant, and burgher, we now see in literature the beginnings of a true genre, long before it found any expression in painting. That genre and satire are often met with in union, does not prevent them from being wholly different things.

How much of earthly business must Dante have watched with attentive interest, before he was able to make us see with our own eyes all that happened in his spiritual world.[784 - On the accuracy of his sense of form, p. 290.] The famous pictures of the busy movement in the arsenal at Venice, of the blind men laid side by side before the church door,[785 - Inferno, xxi. 7; Purgat. xiii. 61.] and the like, are by no means the only instances of this kind: for the art, in which he is a master, of expressing the inmost soul by the outward gesture, cannot exist without a close and incessant study of human life.

The poets who followed rarely came near him in this respect, and the novelists were forbidden by the first laws of their literary style to linger over details. Their prefaces and narratives might be as long as they pleased, but what we understand by genre was outside their province. The taste for this class of description was not fully awakened till the time of the revival of antiquity.

And here we are again met by the man who had a heart for everything—Æneas Sylvius. Not only natural beauty, not only that which has an antiquarian or a geographical interest, finds a place in his descriptions (p. 248 (#x10_x_10_i33); ii. p. 28), but any living scene of daily life.[786 - We must not take it too seriously, if we read (in Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 310) that he kept at his court a sort of buffoon, the Florentine Greco, ‘hominem certe cujusvis mores, naturam, linguam cum maximo omnium qui audiebant risu facile exprimentem.’] Among the numerous passages in his memoirs in which scenes are described which hardly one of his contemporaries would have thought worth a line of notice, we will here only mention the boat-race on the Lake of Bolsena.[787 - Pii. II. Comment. viii. p. 391.] We are not able to detect from what old letter-writer or story-teller the impulse was derived to which we owe such life-like pictures. Indeed, the whole spiritual communion between antiquity and the Renaissance is full of delicacy and of mystery.

To this class belong those descriptive Latin poems of which we have already spoken (p. 262 (#x10_x_10_i54))—hunting-scenes, journeys, ceremonies, and so forth. In Italian we also find something of the same kind, as, for example, the descriptions of the famous Medicean tournament by Politian and Luca Pulci.[788 - Two tournaments must be distinguished, Lorenzo’s in 1468 and Guiliano’s in 1475 (a third in 1481?). See Reumont, L. M. i. 264 sqq. 361, 267, note 1; ii. 55, 67, and the works there quoted, which settle the old dispute on these points. The first tournament is treated in the poem of Luca Pulci, ed. Ciriffo Calvaneo di Luca Pulci Gentilhuomo Fiorentino, con la Giostra del Magnifico Lorenzo de’ Medici. Florence, 1572, pp. 75, 91; the second in an unfinished poem of Ang. Poliziano, best ed. Carducci, Le Stanze, l’Orfeo e le Rime di M. A. P. Florence, 1863. The description of Politian breaks off at the setting out of Guiliano for the tournament. Pulci gives a detailed account of the combatants and the manner of fighting. The description of Lorenzo is particularly good (p. 82 (#x6_x_6_i8)).] The true epic poets, Luigi Pulci, Bojardo, and Ariosto, are carried on more rapidly by the stream of their narrative; yet in all of them we must recognise the lightness and precision of their descriptive touch, as one of the chief elements of their greatness. Franco Sacchetti amuses himself with repeating the short speeches of a troop of pretty women caught in the woods by a shower of rain.[789 - This so-called ‘Caccia’ is printed in the Commentary to Castiglione’s Eclogue from a Roman MS. Lettere del conte B. Castiglione, ed. Pierantonio Lerassi (Padua, 1771), ii. p. 269.]

Other scenes of moving life are to be looked for in the military historians (p. 99 (#x6_x_6_i28)). In a lengthy poem,[790 - See the Serventese of Giannozzo of Florence, in Trucchi, Poesie italiane inedite, ii. p. 99. The words are many of them quite unintelligible, borrowed really or apparently from the languages of the foreign mercenaries. Macchiavelli’s description of Florence during the plague of 1527 belongs, to certain extent, to this class of works. It is a series of living, speaking pictures of a frightful calamity.] dating from an earlier period, we find a faithful picture of a combat of mercenary soldiers in the fourteenth century, chiefly in the shape of the orders, cries of battle, and dialogue with which it is accompanied.

But the most remarkable productions of this kind are the realistic descriptions of country life, which are found most abundantly in Lorenzo Magnifico and the poets of his circle.

Since the time of Petrarch,[791 - According to Boccaccio (Vita di Dante, p. 77), Dante was the author of two eclogues, probably written in Latin. They are addressed to Joh. de Virgiliis. Comp. Fraticelli, Opp. min. di Dante, i. 417. Petrarch’s bucolic poem in P. Carmina minora, ed. Bossetti, i. Comp. L. Geiger, Petr. 120-122 and 270, note 6, especially A. Hortis, Scritti inediti di F. P. Triest, 1874.] an unreal and conventional style of bucolic poetry had been in vogue, which, whether written in Latin or Italian, was essentially a copy of Virgil. Parallel to this, we find the pastoral novel of Boccaccio (p. 259 (#x10_x_10_i51)) and other works of the same kind down to the ‘Arcadia’ of Sannazaro, and later still, the pastoral comedy of Tasso and Guarini. They are works whose style, whether poetry or prose, is admirably finished and perfect, but in which pastoral life is only an ideal dress for sentiments which belong to a wholly different sphere of culture.[792 - Boccaccio gives in his Ameto (above, p. 344) a kind of mythical Decameron, and sometimes fails ludicrously to keep up the character. One of his nymphs is a good Catholic, and prelates shoot glances of unholy love at her in Rome. Another marries. In the Ninfale fiesolano the nymph Mensola, who finds herself pregnant, takes counsel of an ‘old and wise nymph.’]

But by the side of all this there appeared in Italian poetry, towards the close of the fifteenth century, signs of a more realistic treatment of rustic life. This was not possible out of Italy; for here only did the peasant, whether labourer or proprietor, possess human dignity, personal freedom, and the right of settlement, hard as his lot might sometimes be in other respects.[793 - In general the prosperity of the Italian peasants was greater then than that of the peasantry anywhere else in Europe. Comp. Sacchetti, nov. 88 and 222; L. Pulci in the Beca da Dicamano (Villari, Macchiavelli, i. 198, note 2).] The difference between town and country is far from being so marked here as in northern countries. Many of the smaller towns are peopled almost exclusively by peasants who, on coming home at nightfall from their work, are transformed into townsfolk. The masons of Como wandered over nearly all Italy; the child Giotto was free to leave his sheep and join a guild at Florence; everywhere there was a human stream flowing from the country into the cities, and some mountain populations seemed born to supply this current.[794 - ‘Nullum est hominum genus aptius urbi,’ says Battista Mantovano (Ecl. viii.) of the inhabitants of the Monte Baldo and the Val. Cassina, who could turn their hands to anything. Some country populations, as is well known, have even now privileges with regard to certain occupations in the great cities.] It is true that the pride and local conceit supplied poets and novelists with abundant motives for making game of the ‘villano,’[795 - Perhaps one of the strongest passages, Orlandino, cap. v. str. 54-58. The tranquil and unlearned Vesp. Bisticci says (Comm. sulla vita di Giov. Manetti, p. 96): ‘Sono due ispezie di uomini difficili a supportare per la loro ignoranza; l’una sono i servi, la seconda i contadini.’] and what they left undone was taken charge of by the comic improvisers (p. 320 (#x12_x_12_i52) sqq.). But nowhere do we find a trace of that brutal and contemptuous class-hatred against the ‘vilains’ which inspired the aristocratic poets of Provence, and often, too, the French chroniclers. On the contrary,[796 - In Lombardy, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the nobles did not shrink from dancing, wrestling, leaping, and racing with the peasants. Il Cortigiano, l. ii. fol. 54. A. Pandolfini (L. B. Alberti) in the Trattato del governo della famiglia, p. 86, is an instance of a land-owner who consoles himself for the greed and fraud of his peasant tenantry with the reflection that he is thereby taught to bear and deal with his fellow-creatures.] Italian authors of every sort gladly recognise and accentuate what is great or remarkable in the life of the peasant. Gioviano Pontano mentions with admiration instances of the fortitude of the savage inhabitants of the Abruzzi;[797 - Jovian. Pontan. De fortitudine, lib. ii.] in the biographical collections and in the novelists we meet with the figure of the heroic peasant-maiden[798 - The famous peasant-woman of the Valtellina—Bona Lombarda, wife of the Condottiere Pietro Brunoro—is known to us from Jacobus Bergomensis and from Porcellius, in Murat. xxv. col. 43.] who hazards her life to defend her family and her honour.[799 - On the condition of the Italian peasantry in general, and especially of the details of that condition in several provinces, we are unable to particularise more fully. The proportions between freehold and leasehold property, and the burdens laid on each in comparison with those borne at the present time, must be gathered from special works which we have not had the opportunity of consulting. In stormy times the country people were apt to have appalling relapses into savagery (Arch. Stor. xvi. i. pp. 451 sqq., ad. a. 1440; Corio, fol. 259; Annales Foroliv. in Murat. xxii. col. 227, though nothing in the shape of a general peasants’ war occurred. The rising near Piacenza in 1462 was of some importance and interest. Comp. Corio, Storia di Milano, fol. 409; Annales Placent. in Murat. xx. col. 907; Sismondi, x. p. 138. See below, part vi. cap. 1.]

Such conditions made the poetical treatment of country-life possible. The first instance we shall mention is that of Battista Mantovano, whose eclogues, once much read and still worth reading, appeared among his earliest works about 1480. They are a mixture of real and conventional rusticity, but the former tends to prevail. They represent the mode of thought of a well-meaning village clergyman, not without a certain leaning to liberal ideas. As Carmelite monk, the writer may have had occasion to mix freely with the peasantry.[800 - F. Bapt. Mantuani Bucolica seu Adolescentia in decem Eclogas divisa; often printed, e.g. Strasburg, 1504. The date of composition is indicated by the preface, written in 1498, from which it also appears that the ninth and tenth eclogues were added later. In the heading to the tenth are the words, ‘post religionis ingressum;’ in that of the seventh, ‘cum jam autor ad religionem aspiraret.’ The eclogues by no means deal exclusively with peasant life; in fact, only two of them do so—the sixth, ‘disceptatione rusticorum et civium,’ in which the writer sides with the rustics; and the eighth, ‘de rusticorum religione.’ The others speak of love, of the relations between poets and wealthy men, of conversion to religion, and of the manners of the Roman court.]

But it is with a power of a wholly different kind that Lorenzo Magnifico transports himself into the peasant’s world His ‘Nencia di Barberino’[801 - Poesie di Lorenzo Magnifico, i. p. 37 sqq. The remarkable poems belonging to the period of the German ‘Minnesänger,’ which bear the name of Neithard von Reuenthal, only depict peasant life in so far as the knight chooses to mix with it for his amusement. The peasants reply to the ridicule of Reuenthal in songs of their own. Comp. Karl Schroder, Die höfische Dorfpoesie des deutschen Mittelalters in Rich. Gosche, Jahrb. für Literaturgesch. 1 vol. Berlin, 1875, pp. 45-98, esp. 75 sqq.] reads like a crowd of genuine extracts from the popular songs of the Florentine country, fused into a great stream of octaves. The objectivity of the writer is such that we are in doubt whether the speaker—the young peasant Vallera, who declares his love to Nencia—awakens his sympathy or ridicule. The deliberate contrast to the conventional eclogue is unmistakable. Lorenzo surrenders himself purposely to the realism of simple, rough country-life, and yet his work makes upon us the impression of true poetry.

The ‘Beca da Dicomano’ of Luigi Pulci[802 - Poesie di Lor. Magn. ii. 149.] is an admitted counterpart to the ‘Nencia’ of Lorenzo. But the deeper purpose is wanting. The ‘Beca’ is written not so much from the inward need to give a picture of popular life, as from the desire to win the approbation of the educated Florentine world by a successful poem. Hence the greater and more deliberate coarseness of the scenes, and the indecent jokes. Nevertheless, the point of view of the rustic lover is admirably maintained.

Third in this company of poets comes Angelo Poliziano, with his ‘Rusticus’[803 - In the Deliciae poetar. ital., and in the works of Politian. First separate ed. Florence, 1493. The didactic poem of Rucellai, Le Api, first printed 1519, and La coltivazione, Paris, 1546, contain something of the same kind.] in Latin hexameters. Keeping clear of all imitation of Virgil’s Georgics, he describes the year of the Tuscan peasant, beginning with the late autumn, when the countryman gets ready his new plough and prepares the seed for the winter. The picture of the meadows in spring is full and beautiful, and the ‘Summer’ has fine passages; but the vintage-feast in autumn is one of the gems of modern Latin poetry. Politian wrote poems in Italian as well as Latin, from which we may infer that in Lorenzo’s circle it was possible to give a realistic picture of the passionate life of the lower classes. His gipsy’s love-song[804 - Poesie di Lor. Magnifico, ii. 75.] is one of the earliest products of that wholly modern tendency to put oneself with poetic consciousness into the position of another class. This had probably been attempted for ages with a view to satire,[805 - The imitation of different dialects and of the manners of different districts spring from the same tendency. Comp. p. 155.] and the opportunity for it was offered in Florence at every carnival by the songs of the maskers. But the sympathetic understanding of the feelings of another class was new; and with it the ‘Nencia’ and this ‘Canzone zingaresca’ mark a new starting-point in the history of poetry.

Here, too, we must briefly indicate how culture prepared the way for artistic development. From the time of the ‘Nencia,’ a period of eighty years elapses to the rustic genre-painting of Jacopo Bassano and his school.

In the next part of this work we shall show how differences of birth had lost their significance in Italy. Much of this was doubtless owing to the fact that men and man were here first thoroughly and profoundly understood. This one single result of the Renaissance is enough to fill us with everlasting thankfulness. The logical notion of humanity was old enough—but here the notion became a fact.

The loftiest conceptions on this subject were uttered by Pico della Mirandola in his speech on the dignity of man,[806 - Jo. Pici oratio de hominis dignitate. The passage is as follows: ‘Statuit tandem optimus opifex ut cui dari nihil proprium poterat commune esset quidquid privatum singulis fuerat. Igitur hominem accepit indiscretae opus imaginis atque in mundi posito meditullio sic est allocutus; Nec certam sedem, nec propriam faciem, nec munus ullum peculiare tibi dedimus, O Adam, ut quam sedem, quam faciem, quae munera tute optaveris, ea pro voto pro tua sententia habeas et possideas. Definita caeteris natura inter praescriptas a nobis leges coercetur, tu nullis augustiis coercitus pro tuo arbitrio, in cujus manus te posui, tibi illam praefinies. Medium te mundi posui ut circumspiceres inde commodius quidquid est in mundo. Nec te caelestem neque terrenum, neque mortalem neque immortalem fecimus, ut tui ipsius quasi arbitrarius honorariusque plastes et fictor in quam malueris tute formam effingas. Poteris in inferiora quae sunt bruta degenerare, poteris in superiora quae sunt divina ex tui animi sententia regenerari. O summam dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis felicitatem. Cui datum id habere quod optat, id esse quod velit. Bruta simulatque nascuntur id secum afferunt, ut ait Lucilius, e bulga matris quod possessura sunt; supremi spiritus aut ab initio aut paulo mox id fuerunt quod sunt futuri in perpetuas aeternitates. Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitæ germina indidit pater; quæ quisque excoluerit illa adolescent et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia, planta fiet, si sensualia, obbrutescet, si rationalia, coeleste evadet animal, si intellectualia, angelus erit et dei filius, et si nulla creaturarum sorte contentus in unitatis centrum suae se receperit, unus cum deo spiritus factus in solitaria patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus omnibus antestabit.’The speech first appears in the commentationes of Jo. Picus without any special title; the heading ‘de hominis dignitate’ was added later. It is not altogether suitable, since a great part of the discourse is devoted to the defence of the peculiar philosophy of Pico, and the praise of, the Jewish Cabbalah. On Pico, see above, p. 202 sqq.; and below; part. vi. chap. 4. More than two hundred years before, Brunetto Latini (Tesoro, lib. i. cap. 13, ed. Chabaille, p. 20) had said: ‘Toutes choses dou ciel en aval sont faites pour l’ome; mais li hom at faiz pour lui meisme.’ The words seemed to a contemporary to have too much human pride in them, and he added: ‘e por Dieu amer et servir et por avoir la joie pardurable.’] which may justly be called one of the noblest bequests of that great age. God, he tells us, made man at the close of the creation, to know the laws of the universe, to love its beauty, to admire its greatness. He bound him to no fixed place, to no prescribed form of work, and by no iron necessity, but gave him freedom to will and to move. ‘I have set thee,’ says the Creator to Adam, ‘in the midst of the world, that thou mayst the more easily behold and see all that is therein. I created thee a being neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal only, that thou mightest be free to shape and to overcome thyself. Thou mayst sink into a beast, and be born anew to the divine likeness. The brutes bring from their mother’s body what they will carry with them as long as they live; the higher spirits are from the beginning, or soon after,[807 - An allusion to the fall of Lucifer and his followers.] what they will be for ever. To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on thine own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal life.’

PART V.

SOCIETY AND FESTIVALS

CHAPTER I.

THE EQUALISATION OF CLASSES

EVERY period of civilisation, which forms a complete and consistent whole, manifests itself not only in political life, in religion, art, and science, but also sets its characteristic stamp on social life. Thus the Middle Ages had their courtly and aristocratic manners and etiquette, differing but little in the various countries of Europe, as well as their peculiar forms of middle-class life.

Italian customs at the time of the Renaissance offer in these respects the sharpest contrast to mediævalism. The foundation on which they rest is wholly different. Social intercourse in its highest and most perfect form now ignored all distinctions of caste, and was based simply on the existence of an educated class as we now understand the word. Birth and origin were without influence, unless combined with leisure and inherited wealth. Yet this assertion must not be taken in an absolute and unqualified sense, since mediæval distinctions still sometimes made themselves felt to a greater or less degree, if only as a means of maintaining equality with the aristocratic pretensions of the less advanced countries of Europe. But the main current of the time went steadily towards the fusion of classes in the modern sense of the phrase.

The fact was of vital importance that, from certainly the twelfth century onwards, the nobles and the burghers dwelt together within the walls of the cities.[808 - The habit among the Piedmontese nobility of living in their castles in the country struck the other Italians as exceptional. Bandello, parte ii. nov. 7 (?).] The interests and pleasures of both classes were thus identified, and the feudal lord learned to look at society from another point of view than that of his mountain-castle. The Church, too, in Italy never suffered itself, as in northern countries, to be used as a means of providing for the younger sons of noble families. Bishoprics, abbacies, and canonries were often given from the most unworthy motives, but still not according to the pedigrees of the applicants; and if the bishops in Italy were more numerous, poorer, and, as a rule, destitute of all sovereign rights, they still lived in the cities where their cathedrals stood, and formed, together with their chapters, an important element in the cultivated society of the place. In the age of despots and absolute princes which followed, the nobility in most of the cities had the motives and the leisure to give themselves up to a private life (p. 131 (#x7_x_7_i30)) free from political danger and adorned with all that was elegant and enjoyable, but at the same time hardly distinguishable from that of the wealthy burgher. And after the time of Dante, when the new poetry and literature were in the hands of all Italy,[809 - This was the case long before printing. A large number of manuscripts, and among them the best, belonged to Florentine artisans. If it had not been for Savonarola’s great bonfire, many more of them would be left.] when to this was added the revival of ancient culture and the new interest in man as such, when the successful Condottiere became a prince, and not only good birth, but legitimate birth, ceased to be indispensable for a throne (p. 21 (#x4_x_4_i33)), it might well seem that the age of equality had dawned, and the belief in nobility vanished for ever.

From a theoretical point of view, when the appeal was made to antiquity, the conception of nobility could be both justified and condemned from Aristotle alone. Dante, for example,[810 - Dante, De monarchia, l. ii. cap. 3.] adapts from the Aristotelian definition, ‘Nobility rests on excellence and inherited wealth,’ his own saying, ‘Nobility rests on personal excellence or on that of predecessors.’ But elsewhere he is not satisfied with this conclusion. He blames himself,[811 - Paradiso, xvi. at the beginning.] because even in Paradise, while talking with his ancestor Cacciaguida, he made mention of his noble origin, which is but as a mantle from which time is ever cutting something away, unless we ourselves add daily fresh worth to it. And in the ‘Convito’[812 - Dante, Convito, nearly the whole Trattato, iv., and elsewhere. Brunetto Latini says (Il tesoro, lib. i. p. ii. cap. 50, ed. Chabaille, p. 343): ‘De ce (la vertu) nasqui premierement la nobleté de gentil gent, non pas de ses ancêtres;’ and he warns men (lib. ii. p. ii. cap. 196, p. 440) that they may lose true nobility by bad actions. Similarly Petrarch, de rem. utr. fort. lib. i. dial. xvii.: ‘Verus nobilis non nascitur, sed fit.’] he disconnects ‘nobile’ and ‘nobiltà’ from every condition of birth, and identifies the idea with the capacity for moral and intellectual eminence, laying a special stress on high culture by calling ‘nobiltà’ the sister of ‘filosofia.’

And as time went on, the greater the influence of humanism on the Italian mind, the firmer and more widespread became the conviction that birth decides nothing as to the goodness or badness of a man. In the fifteenth century this was the prevailing opinion. Poggio, in his dialogue ‘On nobility,’[813 - Poggi Opera, Dial. de nobilitate. Aristotle’s view is expressly combatted by B. Platina, De vera nobilitate.] agrees with his interlocutors—Niccolò Niccoli, and Lorenzo Medici, brother of the great Cosimo—that there is no other nobility than that of personal merit. The keenest shafts of his ridicule are directed against much of what vulgar prejudice thinks indispensable to an aristocratic life. ‘A man is all the farther removed from true nobility, the longer his forefathers have plied the trade of brigands. The taste for hawking and hunting savours no more of nobility than the nests and lairs of the hunted creatures of spikenard. The cultivation of the soil, as practised by the ancients, would be much nobler than this senseless wandering through the hills and woods, by which men make themselves liker to the brutes than to the reasonable creatures. It may serve well enough as a recreation, but not as the business of a lifetime.’ The life of the English and French chivalry in the country or in the woody fastnesses seems to him thoroughly ignoble, and worst of all the doings of the robber-knights of Germany. Lorenzo here begins to take the part of the nobility, but not—which is characteristic—appealing to any natural sentiment in its favour, but because Aristotle in the fifth book of the ‘Politics’ recognises the nobility as existent, and defines it as resting on excellence and inherited wealth. To this Niccoli retorts that Aristotle gives this not as his own conviction, but as the popular impression; in his ‘Ethics,’ where he speaks as he thinks, he calls him noble who strives after that which is truly good. Lorenzo urges upon him vainly that the Greek word for nobility means good birth; Niccoli thinks the Roman word ‘nobilis’ (i.e. remarkable) a better one, since it makes nobility depend on a man’s deeds.[814 - This contempt of noble birth is common among the humanists. See the severe passages in Æn. Sylvius, Opera, pp. 84 (Hist. bohem. cap. 2) and 640. (Stories of Lucretia and Euryalus.)] Together with these discussions, we find a sketch of the condition of the nobles in various parts of Italy. In Naples they will not work, and busy themselves neither with their own estates nor with trade and commerce, which they hold to be discreditable; they either loiter at home or ride about on horseback.[815 - This is the case in the capital itself. See Bandello, parte ii. nov. 7; Joviani Pontani Antonius, where the decline of energy in the nobility is dated from the coming of the Aragonese dynasty.] The Roman nobility also despise trade, but farm their own property; the cultivation of the land even opens the way to a title;[816 - Throughout Italy it was universal that the owner of large landed property stood on an equality with the nobles. It is only flattery when J. A. Campanus adds to the statement of Pius II. (Commentarii, p. 1), that as a boy he had helped his poor parents in their rustic labours, the further assertion that he only did so for his amusement, and that this was the custom of the young nobles (Voigt, ii. 339).] ‘it is a respectable but boorish nobility.’ In Lombardy the nobles live upon the rent of their inherited estates; descent and the abstinence from any regular calling constitute nobility.[817 - For an estimate of the nobility in North Italy, Bandello, with his repeated rebukes of mésalliances, is of importance (parte i. nov. 4, 26; parte iii. nov. 60). For the participation of the nobles in the games of the peasants, see above.] In Venice, the ‘nobili,’ the ruling caste, were all merchants. Similarly in Genoa the nobles and non-nobles were alike merchants and sailors, and only separated by their birth; some few of the former, it is true, still lurked as brigands in their mountain-castles. In Florence a part of the old nobility had devoted themselves to trade; another, and certainly by far the smaller part, enjoyed the satisfaction of their titles, and spent their time, either in nothing at all, or else in hunting and hawking.[818 - The severe judgment of Macchiavelli, Discorsi, i. 55, refers only to those of the nobility who still retained feudal rights, and who were thoroughly idle and politically mischievous. Agrippa of Nettesheim, who owes his most remarkable ideas chiefly to his life in Italy, has a chapter on the nobility and princes (De Incert. et Vanit. Scient. cap, 80), the bitterness of which exceeds anything to be met with elsewhere, and is due to the social ferment then prevailing in the North. A passage at p. 213 is as follows: ‘Si … nobilitatis primordia requiramus, comperiemus hanc nefaria perfidia et crudelitate partam, si ingressum spectemus, reperiemus hanc mercenaria militia et latrociniis auctam. Nobilitas revera nihil aliud est quam robusta improbitas atque dignitas non nisi scelere quaesita benedictio et hereditas pessimorom quorumcunque filiorum.’ In giving the history of the nobility he makes a passing reference to Italy (p. 227 (#x9_x_9_i47)).]

The decisive fact was, that nearly everywhere in Italy, even those who might be disposed to pride themselves on their birth could not make good the claims against the power of culture and of wealth, and that their privileges in politics and at court were not sufficient to encourage any strong feeling of caste. Venice offers only an apparent exception to this rule, for there the ‘nobili’ led the same life as their fellow-citizens, and were distinguished by few honorary privileges. The case was certainly different at Naples, which the strict isolation and the ostentatious vanity of its nobility excluded, above all other causes, from the spiritual movement of the Renaissance. The traditions of mediæval Lombardy and Normandy, and the French aristocratic influences which followed, all tended in this direction; and the Aragonese government, which was established by the middle of the fifteenth century, completed the work, and accomplished in Naples what followed a hundred years later in the rest of Italy—a social transformation in obedience to Spanish ideas, of which the chief features were the contempt for work and the passion for titles. The effect of this new influence was evident, even in the smaller towns, before the year 1500. We hear complaints from La Cava that the place had been proverbially rich, as long at it was filled with masons and weavers; whilst now, since instead of looms and trowels nothing but spurs, stirrups and gilded belts was to be seen, since everybody was trying to become Doctor of Laws or of Medicine, Notary, Officer or Knight, the most intolerable poverty prevailed.[819 - Massuccio, nov. 19 (ed. Settembrini, Nap. 1874, p. 220). The first ed. of the novels appeared in 1476.] In Florence an analogous change appears to have taken place by the time of Cosimo, the first Grand Duke; he is thanked for adopting the young people, who now despise trade and commerce, as knights of his order of St. Stephen.[820 - Jacopo Pitti to Cosimo I., Archiv. Stor. iv. ii. p. 99. In North Italy the Spanish rule brought about the same results. Bandello, parte ii. nov. 40, dates from this period.] This goes straight in the teeth of the good old Florentine custom,[821 - When, in the fifteenth century, Vespasiano Fiorentino (pp. 518, 632) implies that the rich should not try to increase their inherited fortune, but should spend their whole annual income, this can only, in the mouth of a Florentine, refer to the great landowners.] by which fathers left property to their children on the condition that they should have some occupation (p. 79 (#x6_x_6_i5)). But a mania for title of a curious and ludicrous sort sometimes crossed and thwarted, especially among the Florentines, the levelling influence of art and culture. This was the passion for knighthood, which became one of the most striking follies of the day, at a time when the dignity itself had lost every shadow of significance.

‘A few years ago,’ writes Franco Sacchetti,[822 - Franco Sacchetti, nov. 153. Comp. nov. 82 and 150.] towards the end of the fourteenth century, ‘everybody saw how all the work-people down to the bakers, how all the wool-carders, usurers, money-changers and blackguards of all descriptions, became knights. Why should an official need knighthood when he goes to preside over some little provincial town? What has this title to do with any ordinary bread-winning pursuit? How art thou sunken, unhappy dignity! Of all the long list of knightly duties, what single one do these knights of ours discharge? I wished to speak of these things that the reader might see that knighthood is dead.[823 - ‘Che la cavalleria è morta.’] And as we have gone so far as to confer the honour upon dead men, why not upon figures of wood and stone, and why not upon an ox?’ The stories which Sacchetti tells by way of illustration speak plainly enough. There we read how Bernabò Visconti knighted the victor in a drunken brawl, and then did the same derisively to the vanquished; how German knights with their decorated helmets and devices were ridiculed—and more of the same kind. At a later period Poggio[824 - Poggius, De Nobilitate, fol. 27. See above, p. 19. Ænea Silvio (Hist. Fried. III. ed. Kollar, p. 294) finds fault with the readiness with which Frederick conferred knighthood in Italy.] makes merry over the many knights of his day without a horse and without military training. Those who wished to assert the privilege of the order, and ride out with lance and colours, found in Florence that they might have to face the government as well as the jokers.[825 - Vasari, iii. 49, and note. Vita di Dello. The city of Florence claimed the right of conferring knighthood. On the ceremonies of this kind in 1378 and 1389, see Reumont, Lorenzo, ii. 444 sqq.]

On considering the matter more closely, we shall find that this belated chivalry, independent of all nobility of birth, though partly the fruit of an insane passion for title, had nevertheless another and a better side. Tournaments had not yet ceased to be practised, and no one could take part in them who was not a knight. But the combat in the lists, and especially the difficult and perilous tilting with the lance, offered a favourable opportunity for the display of strength, skill, and courage, which no one, whatever might be his origin, would willingly neglect in an age which laid such stress on personal merit.[826 - Senarega, De Reb. Gen. in Murat. xxiv. col. 525. At a wedding of Joh. Adurnus with Leonora di Sanseverino, ‘certamina equestria in Sarzano edita sunt … proposita et data victoribus praemia. Ludi multiformes in palatio celebrati a quibus tanquam a re nova pendebat plebs et integros dies illis spectantibus impendebat.’ Politian writes to Joh. Picus of the cavalry exercise of his pupils (Aug. Pol. Epist. lib. xii. ep. 6): ‘Tu tamen a me solos fieri poetas aut oratores putas, at ego non minus facio bellatores.’ Ortensio Landi in the Commentario, fol. 180, tells of a duel between two soldiers at Correggio with a fatal result, reminding one of the old gladiatorial combats. The writer, whose imagination is generally active, gives us here the impression of truthfulness. The passages quoted show that knighthood was not absolutely necessary for these public contests.]

It was in vain that from the time of Petrarch downwards the tournament was denounced as a dangerous folly. No one was converted by the pathetic appeal of the poet: ‘In what book do we read that Scipio and Cæsar were skilled at the joust?’[827 - Petrarch, Epist. Senil. xi. 13, to Ugo of Este. Another passage in the Epist. Famil. lib. v. ep. 6, Dec. 1st, 1343, describes the disgust he felt at seeing a knight fall at a tournament in Naples. For legal prescriptions as to the tournament at Naples, see Fracassetti’s Italian translation of Petrarch’s letters, Florence, 1864, ii. p. 34. L. B. Alberti also points out the danger, uselessness, and expense of tournaments. Della Famiglia, Op. Volg. ii. 229.] The practice became more and more popular in Florence. Every honest citizen came to consider his tournament—now, no doubt, less dangerous than formerly—as a fashionable sport. Franco Sacchetti[828 - Nov. 64. With reference to this practice, it is said expressly in the Orlandino (ii. str. 7), of a tournament under Charlemagne: ‘Here they were no cooks and scullions, but kings, dukes, and marquises, who fought.’] has left us a ludicrous picture of one of these holiday cavaliers—a notary seventy years old. He rides out on horseback to Peretola, where the tournament was cheap, on a jade hired from a dyer. A thistle is stuck by some wag under the tail of the steed, who takes fright, runs away, and carries the helmeted rider, bruised and shaken, back into the city. The inevitable conclusion of the story is a severe curtain-lecture from the wife, who is not a little enraged at these break-neck follies of her husband.[829 - This is one of the oldest parodies of the tournament. Sixty years passed before Jacques Cœur, the burgher-minister of finance under Charles VII., gave a tournament of donkeys in the courtyard of his palace at Bourges (about 1450). The most brilliant of all these parodies—the second canto of the Orlandino just quoted—was not published till 1526.]

It may be mentioned in conclusion that a passionate interest in this sport was displayed by the Medici, as if they wished to show—private citizens as they were, without noble blood in their veins—that the society which surrounded them was in no respects inferior to a Court.[830 - Comp. the poetry, already quoted, of Politian and Luca Pulci (p. 349 (#x13_x_13_i30), note 3). Further, Paul. Jov., Vita Leonis X. l. i.; Macchiavelli, Storie Fiorent., l. vii.; Paul. Jov. Elog., speaking of Pietro de’ Medici, who neglected his public duties for these amusements, and of Franc. Borbonius, who lost his life in them; Vasari, ix. 219, Vita di Granacci. In the Morgante of Pulci, written under the eyes of Lorenzo, the knights are comical in their language and actions, but their blows are sturdy and scientific. Bojardo, too, writes for those who understand the tournament and the art of war. Comp. p. 323. In earlier Florentine history we read of a tournament in honour of the king of France, c. 1380, in Leon. Aret., Hist. Flor. lib. xi. ed. Argent, p. 222. The tournaments at Ferrara in 1464 are mentioned in the Diario Ferrar. in Murat. xxiv. col. 208; at Venice, see Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 153 sqq.; at Bologna in 1470 and after, see Bursellis, Annal. Bonon. Muratori xxiii. col. 898, 903, 906, 908, 911, where it is curious to note the odd mixture of sentimentalism attaching to the celebration of Roman triumphs; ‘ut antiquitas Romana renovata videretur,’ we read in one place. Frederick of Urbino (p. 44 (#x5_x_5_i5) sqq.) lost his right eye at a tournament ‘ab ictu lanceae.’ On the tournament as held at that time in northern countries, see Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, passim, and especially cap. 8, 9, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, &c.] Even under Cosimo (1459), and afterwards under the elder Pietro, brilliant tournaments were held at Florence. The younger Pietro neglected the duties of government for these amusements, and would never suffer himself to be painted except clad in armour. The same practice prevailed at the Court of Alexander VI., and when the Cardinal Ascanio Sforza asked the Turkish Prince Djem (pp. 109, 115) how he liked the spectacle, the barbarian replied with much discretion that such combats in his country only took place among slaves, since then, in the case of accident, nobody was the worse for it. The oriental was unconsciously in accord with the old Romans in condemning the manners of the Middle Ages.

Apart, however, from this particular prop of knighthood, we find here and there in Italy, for example at Ferrara (p. 46 (#x5_x_5_i6) sqq.), orders of court service, whose members had a right to the title.

But, great as were individual ambitions and the vanities of nobles and knights, it remains a fact that the Italian nobility took its place in the centre of social life, and not at the extremity. We find it habitually mixing with other classes on a footing of perfect equality, and seeking its natural allies in culture and intelligence. It is true that for the courtier a certain rank of nobility was required,[831 - Bald. Castiglione. Il Cortigiano, l. i. fol. 18.] but this exigence is expressly declared to be caused by a prejudice rooted in the public mind—‘per l’oppenion universale’—and never was held to imply the belief that the personal worth of one who was not of noble blood was in any degree lessened thereby, nor did it follow from this rule that the prince was limited to the nobility for his society. It was meant simply that the perfect man—the true courtier—should not be wanting in any conceivable advantage, and therefore not in this. If in all the relations of life he was specially bound to maintain a dignified and reserved demeanour, the reason was not found in the blood which flowed in his veins, but in the perfection of manner which was demanded from him. We are here in the presence of a modern distinction, based on culture and on wealth, but on the latter solely because it enables men to devote their life to the former, and effectually to promote its interests and advancement.

CHAPTER II.

THE OUTWARD REFINEMENT OF LIFE

BUT in proportion as distinctions of birth ceased to confer any special privilege, was the individual himself compelled to make the most of his personal qualities, and society to find its worth and charm in itself. The demeanour of individuals, and all the higher forms of social intercourse, became ends pursued with a deliberate and artistic purpose.

Even the outward appearance of men and women and the habits of daily life were more perfect, more beautiful, and more polished than among the other nations of Europe. The dwellings of the upper classes fall rather within the province of the history of art; but we may note how far the castle and the city mansion in Italy surpassed in comfort, order, and harmony the dwellings of the northern noble. The style of dress varied so continually that it is impossible to make any complete comparison with the fashions of other countries, all the more because since the close of the fifteenth century imitations of the latter were frequent. The costumes of the time, as given us by the Italian painters, are the most convenient and the most pleasing to the eye which were then to be found in Europe; but we cannot be sure if they represent the prevalent fashion, or if they are faithfully reproduced by the artist. It is nevertheless beyond a doubt that nowhere was so much importance attached to dress as in Italy. The people was, and is, vain; and even serious men among it looked on a handsome and becoming costume as an element in the perfection of the individual. At Florence, indeed, there was a brief period, when dress was a purely personal matter, and every man set the fashion for himself (p. 130 (#x7_x_7_i29), note 1), and till far into the sixteenth century there were exceptional people who still had the courage to do so;[832 - Paul. Jovii, Elogia, sub tit. Petrus Gravina, Alex. Achillinus, Balth. Castellio, &c. pp. 138 sqq. 112 sqq. 143 sqq.] and the majority at all events showed themselves capable of varying the fashion according to their individual tastes. It is a symptom of decline when Giovanni della Casa warns his readers not to be singular or to depart from existing fashions.[833 - Casa, Il Galateo, p. 78.] Our own age, which, in men’s dress at any rate, treats uniformity as the supreme law, gives up by so doing far more than it is itself aware of. But it saves itself much time, and this, according to our notions of business, outweighs all other disadvantages.

In Venice[834 - See on this point the Venetian books of fashions, and Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 150 sqq. The bridal dress at the betrothal—white, with the hair falling freely on the shoulders—is that of Titian’s Flora. The ‘Proveditori alle pompe’ at Venice established 1514. Extracts from their decisions in Armand Baschet, Souvenirs d’une Mission, Paris, 1857. Prohibition of gold-embroidered garments in Venice, 1481, which had formerly been worn even by the bakers’ wives; they were now to be decorated ‘gemmis unionibus,’ so that ‘frugalissimus ornatus’ cost 4,000 gold florins. M. Ant. Sabellici, Epist. lib. iii. (to M. Anto. Barbavarus).] and Florence at the time of the Renaissance there were rules and regulations prescribing the dress of the men and restraining the luxury of the women. Where the fashions were less free, as in Naples, the moralists confess with regret that no difference can be observed between noble and burgher.[835 - Jovian. Pontan. De Principe: ‘Utinam autem non eo impudentiae perventum esset, ut inter mercatorem et patricium nullum sit in vestitu ceteroque ornatu discrimen. Sed haec tanta licentia reprehendi potest, coerceri non potest, quanquam mutari vestes sic quotidie videamus, ut quas quarto ante mense in deliciis habebamus, nunc repudiemus et tanquam veteramenta abjiciamus. Quodque tolerari vix potest, nullum fere vestimenti genus probatur, quod e Galliis non fuerit adductum, in quibus levia pleraque in pretio sunt, tametsi nostri persaepe homines modum illis et quasi formulam quandam praescribant.’] They further deplore the rapid changes of fashion, and—if we rightly understand their words—the senseless idolatry of whatever comes from France, though in many cases the fashions which were received back from the French were originally Italian. It does not further concern us, how far these frequent changes, and the adoption of French and Spanish ways,[836 - See e.g. the Diario Ferrarese, in Murat. xxiv. col. 297, 320, 376, sqq., in which the last German fashions are spoken of; the chronicler says, ‘Che pareno buffoni tali portatori.’] contributed to the national passion for external display; but we find in them additional evidence of the rapid movement of life in Italy in the decades before and after the year 1500. The occupation of different parts of Italy by foreigners caused the inhabitants not only to adopt foreign fashions, but sometimes to abandon all luxury in matters of dress. Such a change in public feeling at Milan is recorded by Landi. But the differences, he tells us, in costume continued to exist, Naples distinguishing itself by splendour, and Florence, to the eye of the writer, by absurdity.[837 - This interesting passage from a very rare work may be here quoted. See above, p. 83 note 1. The historical event referred to is the conquest of Milan by Antonio Leiva, the general of Charles V., in 1522. ‘Olim splendidissime vestiebant Mediolanenses. Sed postquam Carolus Cæsar in eam urbem tetram et monstruosam Bestiam immisit, it a consumpti et exhausti sunt, ut vestimentorum splendorem omnium maxime oderint, et quemadmodum ante illa durissima Antoniana tempora nihil aliud fere cogitabant quam de mutandis vestibus, nunc alia cogitant ac in mente versant. Non potuit tamen illa Leviana rabies tantum perdere, neque illa in exhausta depraedandi libidine tantum expilare, quin a re familiari adhuc belle parati fiant atque ita vestiant quemadmodum decere existimant. Et certe nisi illa Antonii Levae studia egregios quosdam imitatores invenisset, meo quidem judicio, nulli cederent. Neapolitani nimium exercent in vestitu sumptus. Genuensium vestitum perelegantem judico neque sagati sunt neque togati. Ferme oblitus eram Venetorum. Ii togati omnes. Decet quidem ille habitus adulta aetate homines, juvenes vero (si quid ego judico) minime utuntur panno quem ipsi vulgo Venetum appellant, ita probe confecto ut perpetuo durare existimes, saepissime vero eas vestes gestant nepotes, quas olim tritavi gestarunt. Noctu autem dum scortantur ac potant, Hispanicis palliolis utuntur. Ferrarienses ac Mantuani nihil tam diligenter curant, quam ut pileos habeant aureis quibusdam frustillis adornatos, atque nutanti capite incedunt seque quovis honore dignos existimant, Lucenses neque superbo, neque abjecto vestitu. Florentinorum habitus mihi quidem ridiculus videtur. Reliquos omitto, ne nimius sim.’ Ugolinus Verinus, ‘de illustratione urbis Florentiae’ says of the simplicity of the good old time:‘Non externis advecta BritannisLana erat in pretio, non concha aut coccus in usu.’]

We may note in particular the efforts of the women to alter their appearance by all the means which the toilette could afford. In no country of Europe since the fall of the Roman empire was so much trouble taken to modify the face, the colour of skin and the growth of the hair, as in Italy at this time.[838 - Comp. the passages on the same subject in Falke, Die deutsche Trachten- und Modenwelt, Leipzig, 1858.] All tended to the formation of a conventional type, at the cost of the most striking and transparent deceptions. Leaving out of account costume in general, which in the fourteenth century[839 - On the Florentine women, see the chief references in Giov. Villani, x. 10 and 150 (Regulations as to dress and their repeal); Matteo Villani, i. 4 (Extravagant living in consequence of the plague). In the celebrated edict on fashions of the year 1330, embroidered figures only were allowed on the dresses of women, to the exclusion of those which were painted (dipinto). What was the nature of these decorations appears doubtful. There is a list of the arts of the toilette practised by women in Boccaccio, De Cas. Vir. Ill. lib. i. cap. 18, ‘in mulieres.’] was in the highest degree varied in colour and loaded with ornament, and at a later period assumed a character of more harmonious richness, we here limit ourselves more particularly to the toilette in the narrower sense.

No sort of ornament was more in use than false hair, often made of white or yellow silk.[840 - Those of real hair were called ‘capelli morti.’ Wigs were also worn by men, as by Giannozzo Manetti, Vesp. Bist. Commentario, p. 103; so at least we explain this somewhat obscure passage. For an instance of false teeth made of ivory, and worn, though only for the sake of clear articulation, by an Italian prelate, see Anshelm, Berner Chronik, iv. p. 30 (1508). Ivory teeth in Boccaccio, l. c.: ‘Dentes casu sublatos reformare ebore fuscatos pigmentis gemmisque in albedinem revocare pristinam.’] The law denounced and forbade it in vain, till some preacher of repentance touched the worldly minds of the wearers. Then was seen, in the middle of the public square, a lofty pyre (talamo), on which, beside lutes, dice-boxes, masks, magical charms, song-books, and other vanities, lay masses of false hair,[841 - Infessura, in Eccard, Scriptores, ii. col. 1874: Allegretto, in Murat. xxiii. col. 823. For the writers on Savonarola, see below.] which the purging fires soon turned into a heap of ashes. The ideal colour sought for both in natural and artificial hair, was blond. And as the sun was supposed to have the power of making the hair of this colour,[842 - Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 152: ‘Capelli biondissimi per forza di sole.’ Comp. p. 89, and the rare works quoted by Yriarte, ‘Vie d’un Patricien de Venise’ (1874), p. 56.] many ladies would pass their whole time in the open air on sunshiny days.[843 - As was the case in Germany too. Poesie satiriche, p. 119. From the satire of Bern. Giambullari, ‘Per prendere moglie’ (pp. 107-126), we can form a conception of the chemistry of the toilette, which was founded largely on superstition and magic.] Dyes and other mixtures were also used freely for the same purpose. Besides all these, we meet with an endless list of beautifying waters, plasters, and paints for every single part of the face—even for the teeth and eyelids—of which in our day we can form no conception. The ridicule of the poets,[844 - The poets spared no pains to show the ugliness, danger, and absurdity of these practices. Comp. Ariosto, Sat. iii. 202 sqq.; Aretino, Il Marescalco, atto ii. scena 5; and several passages in the Ragionamenti; Giambullari, l. c. Phil. Beroald. sen. Garmina. Also Filelfo in his Satires (Venice, 1502, iv. 2-5 sqq.).] the invectives of the preachers, and the experience of the baneful effects of these cosmetics on the skin, were powerless to hinder women from giving their faces an unnatural form and colour. It is possible that the frequent and splendid representations of Mysteries,[845 - Cennino Cennini, Trattato della Pittura, gives in cap. 161 a recipe for painting the face, evidently for the purpose of mysteries or masquerades, since, in cap. 162, he solemnly warns his readers against the general use of cosmetics and the like, which was peculiarly common, as he tells us (p. 146 (#x7_x_7_i57) sqq.), in Tuscany.] at which hundreds of people appeared painted and masked, helped to further this practice in daily life. It is certain that it was widely spread, and that the countrywomen vied in this respect with their sisters in the towns.[846 - Comp. La Nencia di Barberino, str. 20 and 40. The lover promises to bring his beloved cosmetics from the town (see on this poem of Lorenzo dei Medici, above, p. 101).] It was vain to preach that such decorations were the mark of the courtesan; the most honourable matrons, who all the year round never touched paint, used it nevertheless on holidays when they showed themselves in public.[847 - Agnolo Pandolfini, Trattato della Governo della Famiglia, p. 118. He condemns this practice most energetically.] But whether we look on this bad habit as a remnant of barbarism, to which the painting of savages is a parallel, or as a consequence of the desire for perfect youthful beauty in features and in colour, as the art and complexity of the toilette would lead us to think—in either case there was no lack of good advice on the part of the men.

The use of perfumes, too, went beyond all reasonable limits. They were applied to everything with which human beings came into contact. At festivals even the mules were treated with scents and ointments,[848 - Tristan. Caracciolo, in Murat. xxii. col. 87. Bandello, parte ii. nov. 47.] Pietro Aretino thanks Cosimo I. for a perfumed roll of money.[849 - Cap. i. to Cosimo: “Quei cento scudi nuovi e profumati che l’altro di mi mandaste a donare.” Some objects which date from that period have not yet lost their odour.]

The Italians of that day lived in the belief that they were more cleanly than other nations. There are in fact general reasons which speak rather for than against this claim. Cleanliness is indispensable to our modern notion of social perfection, which was developed in Italy earlier than elsewhere. That the Italians were one of the richest of existing peoples, is another presumption in their favour. Proof, either for or against these pretensions, can of course never be forthcoming, and if the question were one of priority in establishing rules of cleanliness, the chivalrous poetry of the Middle Ages is perhaps in advance of anything that Italy can produce. It is nevertheless certain that the singular neatness and cleanliness of some distinguished representatives of the Renaissance, especially in their behaviour at meals, was noticed expressly,[850 - Vespasiano Fiorent. p. 453, in the life of Donato Acciajuoli, and p. 625, in the life of Niccoli. See above, vol. i. p. 303 sqq.] and that ‘German’ was the synonym in Italy for all that is filthy.[851 - Giraldi, Hecatommithi, Introduz. nov. 6. A few notices on the Germans in Italy may not here be out of place. On the fear of German invasion, see p. 91, note 2; on Germans as copyists and printers, p. 193 sqq. and the notes; on the ridicule of Hadrian VI. as a German, p. 227 and notes. The Italians were in general ill-disposed to the Germans, and showed their ill-will by ridicule. Boccaccio (Decam. viii. 1) says: ‘Un Tedesco in soldo prò della persona è assai leale a coloro ne’ cui servigi si mattea; il che rade volte suole de’ Tedeschi avenire.’ The tale is given as an instance of German cunning. The Italian humanists are full of attacks on the German barbarians, and especially those who, like Poggio, had seen Germany. Comp. Voigt, Wiederbelebung, 374 sqq.; Geiger, Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Italien Zeit des Humanismus in Zeitschrift für deutsche Culturgeschichte, 1875, pp. 104-124; see also Janssen, Gesch. der deutschen Volkes, i. 262. One of the chief opponents of the Germans was Joh. Ant. Campanus. See his works, ed. Mencken, who delivered a discourse ‘De Campani odio in Germanos.’ The hatred of the Germans was strengthened by the conduct of Hadrian VI., and still more by the conduct of the troops at the sack of Rome (Gregorovius, viii. 548, note). Bandello III. nov. 30, chooses the German as the type of the dirty and foolish man (see iii. 51, for another German). When an Italian wishes to praise a German he says, as Petrus Alcyonius in the dedication to his dialogue De Exilio, to Nicolaus Schomberg, p. 9: ‘Itaque etsi in Misnensi clarissima Germaniæ provincia illustribus natalibus ortus es, tamen in Italiae luce cognosceris.’ Unqualified praise is rare, e.g. of German women at the time of Marius, Cortigiano, iii. cap. 33.It must be added that the Italians of the Renaissance, like the Greeks of antiquity, were filled with aversion for all barbarians. Boccaccio, De claris Mulieribus, in the article ‘Carmenta,’ speaks of ‘German barbarism, French savagery, English craft, and Spanish coarseness.’] The dirty habits which Massimiliano Sforza picked up in the course of his German education, and the notice they attracted on his return to Italy, are recorded by Giovio.[852 - Paul. Jov. Elogia, p. 289, who, however, makes no mention of the German education. Maximilian could not be induced, even by celebrated women, to change his underclothing.] It is at the same time very curious that, at least in the fifteenth century, the inns and hotels were left chiefly in the hands of Germans,[853 - Æneas Sylvius (Vitae Paparum, ap. Murat. iii. ii. col. 880) says, in speaking of Baccano: ‘Pauca sunt mapalia, eaque hospitia faciunt Theutonici; hoc hominum genus totam fere Italiam hospitalem facit; ubi non repereris hos, neque diversorium quaeras.’] who probably, however, made their profit mostly out of the pilgrims journeying to Rome. Yet the statements on this point may refer rather to the country districts, since it is notorious that in the great cities Italian hotels held the first place.[854 - Franco Sacchetti, Nov. 21. Padua, about the year 1450, boasted of a great inn—the ‘Ox’—like a palace, containing stabling for two hundred horses. Michele Savonarola, in Mur. xxiv. col. 1175. At Florence, outside the Porta San Gallo, there was one of the largest and most splendid inns then known, but which served, it seems, only as a place of amusement for the people of the city. Varchi, Stor. Fior. iii. p. 86. At the time of Alexander VI. the best inn at Rome was kept by a German. See the remarkable notices taken from the MS. of Burcardus in Gregorovius, vii. 361, note 2. Comp. ibid. p. 93, notes 2 and 3.] The want of decent inns in the country may also be explained by the general insecurity of life and property.

To the first half of the sixteenth century belongs the manual of politeness which Giovanni della Casa, a Florentine by birth, published under the title ‘Il Galateo.’ Not only cleanliness in the strict sense of the word, but the dropping of all the tricks and habits which we consider unbecoming, is here prescribed with the same unfailing tact with which the moralist discerns the highest ethical truths. In the literature of other countries the same lessons are taught, though less systematically, by the indirect influence of repulsive descriptions.[855 - Comp. e.g. the passages in Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, in the Colloquies of Erasmus, in the Latin poem of Grobianus, &c., and poems on behaviour at table, where, besides descriptions of bad habits, rules are given for good behaviour. For one of these, see C. Weller, Deutsche Gedichte der Jahrhunderts, Tübingen, 1875.]