The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

A significant proof of the wide-spread interest in natural history is found in the zeal which showed itself at an early period for the collection and comparative study of plants and animals. Italy claims to be the first creator of botanical gardens, though possibly they may have served a chiefly practical end, and the claim to priority may be itself disputed.[664 - Italians also laid out botanical gardens in foreign countries, e.g. Angelo, of Florence, a contemporary of Petrarch, in Prag. Friedjung: Carl IV. p. 311, note 4.] It is of far greater importance that princes and wealthy men in laying out their pleasure-gardens, instinctively made a point of collecting the greatest possible number of different plants in all their species and varieties. Thus in the fifteenth century the noble grounds of the Medicean Villa Careggi appear from the descriptions we have of them to have been almost a botanical garden,[665 - Alexandri Braccii descriptio horti Laurentii Med., printed as Appendix No. 58 to Roscoe’s Life of Lorenzo. Also to be found in the Appendices to Fabroni’s Laurentius.] with countless specimens of different trees and shrubs. Of the same kind was a villa of the Cardinal Triulzio, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the Roman Campagna towards Tivoli,[666 - Mondanarii Villa, printed in the Poemata aliquot insignia illustr. poetar. recent.] with hedges made up of various species of roses, with trees of every description—the fruit-trees especially showing an astonishing variety—with twenty different sorts of vines and a large kitchen-garden. This is evidently something very different from the score or two of familiar medicinal plants, which were to be found in the garden of any castle or monastery in Western Europe. Along with a careful cultivation of fruit for the purposes of the table, we find an interest in the plant for its own sake, on account of the pleasure it gives to the eye. We learn from the history of art at how late a period this passion for botanical collections was laid aside, and gave place to what was considered the picturesque style of landscape-gardening.

The collections, too, of foreign animals not only gratified curiosity, but served also the higher purposes of observation. The facility of transport from the southern and eastern harbours of the Mediterranean and the mildness of the Italian climate, made it practicable to buy the largest animals of the south, or to accept them as presents from the Sultans.[667 - On the zoological garden at Palermo under Henry VI., see Otto de S. Blasio ad a. 1194. That of Henry I. of England in the park of Woodstock (Guliel. Malmes. p. 638) contained lions, leopards, camels, and a porcupine, all gifts of foreign princes.] The cities and princes were especially anxious to keep live lions, even when the lion was not, as in Florence, the emblem of the state.[668 - As such he was called, whether painted or carved in stone, ‘Marzocco.’ At Pisa eagles were kept. See the commentators on Dante, Inf. xxxiii. 22. The falcon in Boccaccio, Decam. v. 9. See for the whole subject: Due trattati del governo e delle infermità degli uccelli, testi di lingua inediti. Rome, 1864. They are works of the fourteenth century, possibly translated from the Persian.] The lions’ den was generally in or near the government palace, as in Perugia and Florence; in Rome, it lay on the slope of the Capitol. The beasts sometimes served as executioners of political judgments,[669 - See the extract from Ægid. Viterb. in Papencordt, Gesch. der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, p. 367, note, with an incident of the year 1328. Combats of wild animals among themselves and with dogs served to amuse the people on great occasions. At the reception of Pius II. and of Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Florence, in 1459, in an enclosed space on the Piazza della Signoria, bulls, horses, boars, dogs, lions, and a giraffe were turned out together, but the lions lay down and refused to attack the other animals. Comp. Ricordi di Firenze, Rer. Ital. script. ex Florent. codd. tom. ii. col. 741. A different account in Vita Pii II. Murat. iii. ii. col. 976. A second giraffe was presented to Lorenzo the Magnificent by the Mameluke Sultan Kaytbey. Comp. Paul. Jov. Vita Leonis X. l. i. In Lorenzo’s menagerie one magnificent lion was especially famous, and his destruction by the other lions was reckoned a presage of the death of his owner.] and no doubt, apart from this, they kept alive a certain terror in the popular mind. Their condition was also held to be ominous of good or evil. Their fertility, especially, was considered a sign of public prosperity, and no less a man than Giovanni Villani thought it worth recording that he was present at the delivery of a lioness.[670 - Gio. Villani, x. 185, xi. 66. Matteo Villani, iii. 90, v. 68. It was a bad omen if the lions fought, and worse still if they killed one another. Com. Varchi, Stor. fiorent. iii. p. 143. Matt. V. devotes the first of the two chapters quoted to prove (1) that lions were born in Italy, and (2) that they came into the world alive.] The cubs were often given to allied states and princes, or to Condottieri, as a reward of valour.[671 - Cron. di Perugia, Arch. Stor. xvi. ii. p. 77, year 1497. A pair of lions once escaped from Perugia; ibid. xvi. i. p. 382, year 1434. Florence, for example, sent to King Wladislaw of Poland (May, 1406), a pair of lions ut utriusque sexus animalia ad procreandos catulos haberetis. The accompanying statement is amusing in a diplomatic document: ‘Sunt equidem hi leones Florentini, et satis quantum natura promittere potuit mansueti, depositâ feritate, quam insitam habent, hique in Gætulorum regionibus nascuntur et Indorum, in quibus multitudo dictorum animalium evalescit, sicuti prohibent naturales. Et cum leonum complexio sit frigoribus inimica, quod natura sagax ostendit, natura in regionibus aestu ferventibus generantur, necessarium est, quod vostra serenitas, si dictorum animalium vitam et sobolis propagationem, ut remur, desiderat, faciat provideri, quod in locis calidis educentur et maneant. Conveniunt nempe cum regia majestate leones quoniam leo græce latine rex dicitur. Sicut enim rex dignitate potentia, magnanimitate ceteros homines antecellit, sic leonis generositas et vigor imperterritus animalia cuncta praesit. Et sicut rex, sic leo adversus imbecilles et timidos clementissimum se ostendit, et adversus inquietos et tumidos terribilem se offert animadversione justissima.’ (Cod. epistolaris sæculi. Mon. med. ævi hist. res gestas Poloniæ illustr. Krakau, 1876, p. 25.)] In addition to the lions, the Florentines began very early to keep leopards, for which a special keeper was appointed.[672 - Gage, Carteggio, i. p. 422, year 1291. The Visconti used trained leopards for hunting hares, which were started by little dogs. See v. Kobel, Wildanger, p. 247, where later instances of hunting with leopards are mentioned.] Borso[673 - Strozzii poetae, p. 146: De leone Borsii Ducis. The lion spares the hare and the small dog, imitating (so says the poet) his master. Comp. the words fol. 188, ‘et inclusis condita septa feris,’ and fol. 193, an epigram of fourteen lines, ‘in leporarii ingressu quam maximi;’ see ibid. for the hunting-park.] of Ferrara used to set his lions to fight with bulls, bears, and wild boars.

By the end of the fifteenth century, however, true menageries (serragli), now reckoned part of the suitable appointments of a court, were kept by many of the princes. ‘It belongs to the position of the great,’ says Matarazzo,[674 - Cron. di Perugia, l. c. xvi. ii. p. 199. Something of the same kind is to be found in Petrarch, De remed. utriusque fortunae, but less clearly expressed. Here Gaudium, in the conversation with Ratio, boasts of owning monkeys and ‘ludicra animalia.’] ‘to keep horses, dogs, mules, falcons, and other birds, court-jesters, singers, and foreign animals.’ The menagerie at Naples, in the time of Ferrante and others, contained a giraffe and a zebra, presented, it seems, by the ruler of Bagdad.[675 - Jovian. Pontan. De magnificentia. In the zoological garden of the Cardinal of Aquileja, at Albano, there were, in 1463, peacocks and Indian fowls and Syrian goats with long ears. Pii II. Comment. l. xi. p. 562 sqq.] Filippo Maria Visconti possessed not only horses which cost him each 500 or 1,000 pieces of gold, and valuable English dogs, but a number of leopards brought from all parts of the East; the expense of his hunting-birds which were collected from the countries of Northern Europe, amounted to 3,000 pieces of gold a month.[676 - Decembrio, ap. Muratori, xx. col. 1012.] ‘The Cremonese say that the Emperor Frederick II. brought an elephant into their city, sent him from India by Prester John,’ we read in Brunetto Latini; Petrarch records the dying out of the elephants in Italy.[677 - Brunetti Latini, Tesor. (ed. Chabaille, Paris, 1863), lib. i. In Petrarch’s time there were no elephants in Italy. ‘Itaque et in Italia avorum memoria unum Frederico Romanorum principi fuisse et nunc Egyptio tyranno nonnisi unicum esse fama est.’ De rem. utr. fort. i. 60.] King Emanuel the Great of Portugal knew well what he was about when he presented Leo X. with an elephant and a rhinoceros.[678 - The details which are most amusing, in Paul. Jov. Elogia, on Tristanus Acunius. On the porcupines and ostriches in the Pal. Strozzi, see Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. chap. 11. Lorenzo the Magnificent received a giraffe from Egypt through some merchants, Baluz. Miscell. iv. 416. The elephant sent to Leo was greatly bewailed by the people when it died, its portrait was painted, and verses on it were written by the younger Beroaldus.] It was under such circumstances that the foundations of a scientific zoology and botany were laid.

A practical fruit of these zoological studies was the establishment of studs, of which the Mantuan, under Francesco Gonzaga, was esteemed the first in Europe.[679 - Comp. Paul. Jov. Elogia, p. 234, speaking of Francesco Gonzaga. For the luxury at Milan in this respect, see Bandello, Parte II. Nov. 3 and 8. In the narrative poems we also sometimes hear the opinion of a judge of horses. Comp. Pulci, Morgante, xv. 105 sqq.] All interest in, and knowledge of the different breeds of horses is as old, no doubt, as riding itself, and the crossing of the European with the Asiatic must have been common from the time of the crusades. In Italy, a special inducement to perfect the breed was offered by the prizes at the horse-races held in every considerable town in the peninsula. In the Mantuan stables were found the infallible winners in these contests, as well as the best military chargers, and the horses best suited by their stately appearance for presents to great people. Gonzaga kept stallions and mares from Spain, Ireland, Africa, Thrace, and Cilicia, and for the sake of the last he cultivated the friendship of the Sultan. All possible experiments were here tried, in order to produce the most perfect animals.

Even human menageries were not wanting. The famous Cardinal Ippolito Medici,[680 - Paul. Jov. Elogia, speaking of Hipp. Medices.] bastard of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, kept at his strange court a troop of barbarians who talked no less than twenty different languages, and who were all of them perfect specimens of their races. Among them were incomparable voltigeurs of the best blood of the North African Moors, Tartar bowmen, Negro wrestlers, Indian divers, and Turks, who generally accompanied the Cardinal on his hunting expeditions. When he was overtaken by an early death (1535), this motley band carried the corpse on their shoulders from Itri to Rome, and mingled with the general mourning for the open-handed Cardinal their medley of tongues and violent gesticulations.[681 - At this point a few notices on slavery in Italy at the time of the Renaissance will not be out of place. A short, but important, passage in Jovian. Pontan. De obedientia, l. iii. cap. i.: ‘An homo, cum liber natura sit, domino parere debeat?’ In North Italy there were no slaves. Elsewhere, even Christians, as well as Circassians and Bulgarians, were bought from the Turks, and made to serve till they had earned their ransom. The negroes, on the contrary, remained slaves; but it was not permitted, at least in the kingdom of Naples, to emasculate them. The word ‘moro’ signifies any dark-skinned man; the negro was called ‘moro nero.’—Fabroni, Cosmos, Adn. 110: Document on the sale of a female Circassian slave (1427); Adn. 141: List of the female slaves of Cosimo.—Nantiporto, Murat. iii. ii. col. 1106: Innocent VIII. received 100 Moors as a present from Ferdinand the Catholic, and gave them to cardinals and other great men (1488).—Marsuccio, Novelle, 14: sale of slaves; do. 24 and 25: negro slaves who also (for the benefit of their owner?) work as ‘facchini,’ and gain the love of the women; do. 48 Moors from Tunis caught by Catalans and sold at Pisa.—Gaye, Carteggio, i. 360: manumission and reward of a negro slave in a Florentine will (1490).—Paul. Jov. Elogia, sub Franc. Sfortia; Porzio, Congiura, iii. 195; and Comines, Charles VIII. chap. 18: negroes as gaolers and executioners of the House of Aragon in Naples.—Paul. Jov. Elogia, sub Galeatio: negroes as followers of the prince on his excursions.—Æneæ Sylvii, Opera, p. 456: a negro slave as a musician.—Paul. Jov. De piscibus, cap 3: a (free?) negro as diver and swimming-master at Genoa.—Alex. Benedictus, De Carolo VIII. in Eccard, Scriptores, ii. col. 1608: a negro (Æthiops) as superior officer at Venice, according to which we are justified in thinking of Othello as a negro.—Bandello, Parte III. Nov. 21: when a slave at Genoa deserved punishment he was sold away to Iviza, one of the Balearic isles, to carry salt.The foregoing remarks, although they make no claim to completeness, may be allowed to stand as they are in the new edition, on account of the excellent selection of instances they contain, and because they have not met with sufficient notice in the works upon the subject. Latterly a good deal has been written on the slave-trade in Italy. The very curious book of Filippo Zamboni: Gli Ezzelini, Dante e gli Schiavi, ossia Roma e la Schiavitù personale domestica. Con documenti inediti. Seconda edizione aumentata (Vienna, 1870), does not contain what the title promises, but gives, p. 241 sqq., valuable information on the slave-trade; p. 270, a remarkable document on the buying and selling of a female slave; p. 282, a list of various slaves (with the place were they were bought and sold, their home, age, and price) in the thirteenth and three following centuries. A treatise by Wattenbach: Sklavenhandel im Mittelalter (Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, 1874, pp. 37-40) refers only in part to Italy: Clement V. decides in 1309 that the Venetian prisoners should be made slaves of; in 1501, after the capture of Capua, many Capuan women were sold at Rome for a low price. In the Monum. historica Slavorum meridionalium, ed. Vinc. Macusceo, tom. i. Warsaw, 1874, we read at p. 199 a decision (Ancona, 1458) that the ‘Greci, Turci, Tartari, Sarraceni, Bossinenses, Burgari vel Albanenses,’ should be and always remain slaves, unless their masters freed them by a legal document. Egnatius, Exempl. ill. vir. Ven. fol. 246 a, praises Venice on the ground that ‘servorum Venetis ipsis nullum unquam usum extitisse;’ but, on the other hand, comp. Zamboni, p. 223, and especially Vincenzo Lazari: ‘Del traffico e delle condizioni degli schiavi, in Venezia nel tempo di mezzo,’ in Miscellanea di Stor. Ital. Torino, 1862, vol. i. 463-501.]

These scattered notices of the relations of the Italians to natural science, and their interest in the wealth and variety of the products of nature, are only fragments of a great subject. No one is more conscious than the author of the defects in his knowledge on this point. Of the multitude of special works in which the subject is adequately treated, even the names are but imperfectly known to him.

CHAPTER III.

THE DISCOVERY OF NATURAL BEAUTY

BUT, outside the sphere of scientific investigation, there is another way to draw near to nature. The Italians are the first among modern peoples by whom the outward world was seen and felt as something beautiful.[682 - It is hardly necessary to refer the reader to the famous chapters on this subject in Humboldt’s Kosmos.]

The power to do so is always the result of a long and complicated development, and its origin is not easily detected, since a dim feeling of this kind may exist long before it shows itself in poetry and painting, and thereby becomes conscious of itself. Among the ancients, for example, art and poetry had gone through the whole circle of human interests, before they turned to the representation of nature, and even then the latter filled always a limited and subordinate place. And yet, from the time of Homer downwards, the powerful impression made by nature upon man is shown by countless verses and chance expressions. The Germanic races, which founded their states on the ruins of the Roman Empire, were thoroughly and specially fitted to understand the spirit of natural scenery; and though Christianity compelled them for a while to see in the springs and mountains, in the lakes and woods, which they had till then revered, the working of evil demons, yet this transitional conception was soon outgrown. By the year 1200, at the height of the Middle Ages, a genuine, hearty enjoyment of the external world was again in existence, and found lively expression in the minstrelsy of different nations,[683 - See on this subject the observations of Wilhelm Grimm, quoted by Humboldt in the work referred to.] which gives evidence of the sympathy felt with all the simple phenomena of nature—spring with its flowers, the green fields and the woods. But these pictures are all foreground without perspective. Even the crusaders, who travelled so far and saw so much, are not recognisable as such in these poems. The epic poetry, which describes armour and costumes so fully, does not attempt more than a sketch of outward nature; and even the great Wolfram von Eschenbach scarcely anywhere gives us an adequate picture of the scene on which his heroes move. From these poems it would never be guessed that their noble authors in all countries inhabited or visited lofty castles, commanding distant prospects. Even in the Latin poems of the wandering clerks (p. 174 (#x8_x_8_i29)), we find no traces of a distant view—of landscape properly so called—but what lies near is sometimes described with a glow and splendour which none of the knightly minstrels can surpass. What picture of the Grove of Love can equal that of the Italian poet—for such we take him to be—of the twelfth century?

‘Immortalis fieret
Ibi manens homo;
Arbor ibi quaelibet
Suo gaudet pomo;
Viae myrrha, cinnamo
Fragrant, et amomo—
Conjectari poterat
Dominus ex domo,’[684 - Carmina Burana, p. 162, De Phyllide et Flora, str. 66.] etc.

To the Italian mind, at all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. Saint Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly bodies and the four elements.

But the unmistakable proofs of a deepening effect of nature on the human spirit begin with Dante. Not only does he awaken in us by a few vigorous lines the sense of the morning airs and the trembling light on the distant ocean, or of the grandeur of the storm-beaten forest, but he makes the ascent of lofty peaks, with the only possible object of enjoying the view[685 - It would be hard to say what else he had to do at the top of the Bismantova in the province of Reggio, Purgat. iv. 26. The precision with which he brings before us all the parts of his supernatural world shows a remarkable sense of form and space. That there was a belief in the existence of hidden treasures on the tops of mountains, and that such spots were regarded with superstitious terror, may be clearly inferred from the Chron. Novaliciense, ii. 5, in Pertz, Script. vii., and Monum. hist. patriae, Script. iii.]—the first man, perhaps, since the days of antiquity who did so. In Boccaccio we can do little more than infer how country scenery affected him;[686 - Besides the description of Baiæ in the Fiammetta, of the grove in the Ameto, etc., a passage in the De genealogia deorum, xiv. 11, is of importance, where he enumerates a number of rural beauties—trees, meadows, brooks, flocks and herds, cottages, etc.—and adds that these things ‘animum mulcent;’ their effect is ‘mentem in se colligere.’] yet his pastoral romances show his imagination to have been filled with it. But the significance of nature for a receptive spirit is fully and clearly displayed by Petrarch—one of the first truly modern men. That clear soul—who first collected from the literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of the sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his ‘Ansichten der Natur,’ achieved the noblest masterpiece of description—Alexander von Humboldt, has not done full justice to Petrarch; and, following in the steps of the great reaper, we may still hope to glean a few ears of interest and value.

Petrarch was not only a distinguished geographer—the first map of Italy is said to have been drawn by his direction[687 - Flavio Biondo, Italia Illustrata (ed. Basil), p. 352 sqq. Comp. Epist. Var. ed. Fracass. (lat.) iii. 476. On Petrarch’s plan of writing a great geographical work, see the proofs given by Attilio Hortis, Accenni alle Scienze Naturali nelle Opere di G. Boccacci, Trieste, 1877, p. 45 sqq.]—and not only a reproducer of the sayings of the ancients,[688 - Although he is fond of referring to them: e.g. De vita solitaria (Opera, ed. Basil, 1581), esp. p. 241, where he quotes the description of a vine-arbour from St. Augustine.] but felt himself the influence of natural beauty. The enjoyment of nature is, for him, the favourite accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the two that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that he from time to time fled from the world and from his age.[689 - Epist. famil. vii. 4. ‘Interea utinam scire posses, quanta, cum voluptate solivagus et liber, inter montes et nemora, inter fontes et flumina, inter libros et maximorum hominum ingenia respiro, quamque me in ea, quae ante sunt, cum Apostolo extendens et praeterita oblivisci nitor et praesentia non videre.’ Comp. vi. 3, o. c. 316 sqq. esp. 334 sqq. Comp. L. Geiger: Petrarca, p. 75, note 5, and p. 269.] We should do him wrong by inferring from his weak and undeveloped power of describing natural scenery that he did not feel it deeply. His picture, for instance, of the lovely Gulf of Spezzia and Porto Venere, which he inserts at the end of the sixth book of the ‘Africa,’ for the reason that none of the ancients or moderns had sung of it,[690 - ‘Jacuit sine carmine sacro.’ Comp. Itinerar. Syriacum, Opp. p. 558.] is no more than a simple enumeration, but the descriptions in letters to his friends of Rome, Naples, and other Italian cities in which he willingly lingered, are picturesque and worthy of the subject. Petrarch is also conscious of the beauty of rock scenery, and is perfectly able to distinguish the picturesqueness from the utility of nature.[691 - He distinguishes in the Itinerar. Syr. p. 357, on the Riviera di Levante: ‘colles asperitate gratissima et mira fertilitate conspicuos.’ On the port of Gaeta, see his De remediis utriusque fortunae, i. 54.] During his stay among the woods of Reggio, the sudden sight of an impressive landscape so affected him that he resumed a poem which he had long laid aside.[692 - Letter to Posterity: ‘Subito loco specie percussus.’ Descriptions of great natural events: A Storm at Naples, 1343: Epp. fam. i. 263 sqq.; An Earthquake at Basel, 1355, Epp. seniles, lib. x. 2, and De rem. utr. fort. ii. 91.] But the deepest impression of all was made upon him by the ascent of Mont Ventoux, near Avignon.[693 - Epist. fam. ed. Fracassetti, i. 193 sqq.] An indefinable longing for a distant panorama grew stronger and stronger in him, till at length the accidental sight of a passage in Livy, where King Philip, the enemy of Rome, ascends the Hæmus, decided him. He thought that what was not blamed in a grey-headed monarch, might be well excused in a young man of private station. The ascent of a mountain for its own sake was unheard of, and there could be no thought of the companionship of friends or acquaintances. Petrarch took with him only his younger brother and two country people from the last place where he halted. At the foot of the mountain an old herdsman besought him to turn back, saying that he himself had attempted to climb it fifty years before, and had brought home nothing but repentance, broken bones, and torn clothes, and that neither before nor after had anyone ventured to do the same. Nevertheless, they struggled forward and upward, till the clouds lay beneath their feet, and at last they reached the top. A description of the view from the summit would be looked for in vain, not because the poet was insensible to it, but, on the contrary, because the impression was too over-whelming. His whole past life, with all its follies, rose before his mind; he remembered that ten years ago that day he had quitted Bologna a young man, and turned a longing gaze towards his native country; he opened a book which then was his constant companion, the ‘Confessions of St. Augustine,’ and his eye fell on the passage in the tenth chapter, ‘and men go forth, and admire lofty mountains and broad seas, and roaring torrents, and the ocean, and the course of the stars, and forget their own selves while doing so.’ His brother, to whom he read these words, could not understand why he closed the book and said no more.

Some decades later, about 1360, Fazio degli Uberti describes in his rhyming geography[694 - Il Dittamondo, iii. cap. 9.] (p. 178 (#x8_x_8_i34)), the wide panorama from the mountains of Auvergne, with the interest, it is true, of the geographer and antiquarian only, but still showing clearly that he himself had seen it. He must, however, have ascended far higher peaks, since he is familiar with facts which only occur at a height of 10,000 feet or more above the sea—mountain-sickness and its accompaniments—of which his imaginary comrade Solinus tries to cure him with a sponge dipped in an essence. The ascents of Parnassus and Olympus,[695 - Dittamondo, iii. cap. 21, iv. cap. 4. Papencordt, Gesch. der Stadt Rom, says that the Emperor Charles IV. had a strong taste for beautiful scenery, and quotes on this point Pelzel, Carl IV. p. 456. (The two other passages, which he quotes, do not say the same.) It is possible that the Emperor took this fancy from intercourse with the humanists (see above, pp. 141-2). For the interest taken by Charles in natural science see H. Friedjung, op. cit. p. 224, note 1.] of which he speaks, are perhaps only fictions.

In the fifteenth century, the great masters of the Flemish school, Hubert and Johann van Eyck, suddenly lifted the veil from nature. Their landscapes are not merely the fruit of an endeavour to reflect the real world in art, but have, even if expressed conventionally, a certain poetical meaning—in short, a soul. Their influence on the whole art of the West is undeniable, and extended to the landscape-painting of the Italians, but without preventing the characteristic interest of the Italian eye for nature from finding its own expression.

On this point, as in the scientific description of nature, Æneas Sylvius is again one of the most weighty voices of his time. Even if we grant the justice of all that has been said against his character, we must nevertheless admit that in few other men was the picture of the age and its culture so fully reflected, and that few came nearer to the normal type of the men of the early Renaissance. It may be added parenthetically, that even in respect to his moral character he will not be fairly judged, if we listen solely to the complaints of the German Church, which his fickleness helped to baulk of the Council it so ardently desired.[696 - We may also compare Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 310: ‘Homo fuit (Pius II.) verus, integer, apertus; nil habuit ficti, nil simulati’—an enemy of hypocrisy and superstition, courageous and consistent. See Voigt, ii. 261 sqq. and iii. 724. He does not, however, give an analysis of the character of Pius.]

He here claims our attention as the first who not only enjoyed the magnificence of the Italian landscape, but described it with enthusiasm down to its minutest details. The ecclesiastical State and the south of Tuscany—his native home—he knew thoroughly, and after he became pope he spent his leisure during the favourable season chiefly in excursions to the country. Then at last the gouty man was rich enough to have himself carried in a litter through the mountains and valleys; and when we compare his enjoyments with those of the popes who succeeded him, Pius, whose chief delight was in nature, antiquity, and simple, but noble, architecture, appears almost a saint. In the elegant and flowing Latin of his ‘Commentaries’ he freely tells us of his happiness.[697 - The most important passages are the following: Pii II. P. M. Commentarii, l. iv. p. 183; spring in his native country; l. v. p. 251; summer residence at Tivoli; l. vi. p. 306: the meal at the spring of Vicovaro; l. viii. p. 378: the neighbourhood of Viterbo; p. 387: the mountain monastery of St. Martin; p. 388: the Lake of Bolsena; l. ix. p. 396: a splendid description of Monte Amiata; l. x. p. 483: the situation of Monte Oliveto; p. 497: the view from Todi; l. xi. p. 554: Ostia and Porto; p. 562: description of the Alban Hills; l. xii. p. 609: Frascati and Grottaferrata; comp. 568-571.]

His eye seems as keen and practised as that of any modern observer. He enjoys with rapture the panoramic splendour of the view from the summit of the Alban Hills—from the Monte Cavo—whence he could see the shores of St. Peter from Terracina and the promontory of Circe as far as Monte Argentaro, and the wide expanse of country round about, with the ruined cities of the past, and with the mountain-chains of central Italy beyond; and then his eye would turn to the green woods in the hollows beneath and the mountain-lakes among them. He feels the beauty of the position of Todi, crowning the vineyards and olive-clad slopes, looking down upon distant woods and upon the valley of the Tiber, where towns and castles rise above the winding river. The lovely hills about Siena, with villas and monasteries on every height, are his own home, and his descriptions of them are touched with a peculiar feeling. Single picturesque glimpses charm him too, like the little promontory of Capo di Monte that stretches out into the Lake of Bolsena. ‘Rocky steps,’ we read, ‘shaded by vines, descend to the water’s edge, where the evergreen oaks stand between the cliffs, alive with the song of thrushes.’ On the path round the Lake of Nemi, beneath the chestnuts and fruit-trees, he feels that here, if anywhere, a poet’s soul must awake—here in the hiding-place of Diana! He often held consistories or received ambassadors under huge old chestnut-trees, or beneath the olives on the green sward by some gurgling spring. A view like that of a narrowing gorge, with a bridge arched boldly over it, awakens at once his artistic sense. Even the smallest details give him delight through something beautiful, or perfect, or characteristic in them—the blue fields of waving flax, the yellow gorse which covers the hills, even tangled thickets, or single trees, or springs, which seem to him like wonders of nature.

The height of his enthusiasm for natural beauty was reached during his stay on Monte Amiata, in the summer of 1462, when plague and heat made the lowlands uninhabitable. Half-way up the mountain, in the old Lombard monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court took up their quarters. There, between the chestnuts which clothe the steep declivity, the eye may wander over all southern Tuscany, with the towers of Siena in the distance. The ascent of the highest peak he left to his companions, who were joined by the Venetian envoy; they found at the top two vast blocks of stone one upon the other—perhaps the sacrificial altar of a pre-historical people—and fancied that in the far distance they saw Corsica and Sardinia[698 - So we must suppose it to have been written, not Sicily.] rising above the sea. In the cool air of the hills, among the old oaks and chestnuts, on the green meadows where there were no thorns to wound the feet, and no snakes or insects to hurt or to annoy, the pope passed days of unclouded happiness. For the ‘Segnatura,’ which took place on certain days of the week, he selected on each occasion some new shady retreat[699 - He calls himself, with an allusion to his name: ‘Silvarum amator et varia videndi cupidus.’] ‘novas in convallibus fontes et novas inveniens umbras, quæ dubiam facerent electionem.’ At such times the dogs would perhaps start a great stag from his lair, who, after defending himself a while with hoofs and antlers, would fly at last up the mountain. In the evening the pope was accustomed to sit before the monastery on the spot from which the whole valley of the Paglia was visible, holding lively conversations with the cardinals. The courtiers, who ventured down from the heights on their hunting expeditions, found the heat below intolerable, and the scorched plains like a very hell, while the monastery, with its cool, shady woods, seemed like an abode of the blessed.

All this is genuine modern enjoyment, not a reflection of antiquity. As surely as the ancients themselves felt in the same manner, so surely, nevertheless, were the scanty expressions of the writers whom Pius knew insufficient to awaken in him such enthusiasm.[700 - On Leonbattista Alberti’s feeling for landscapes see above, p. 136 sqq. Alberti, a younger contemporary of Æneas Silvius (Trattato del Governo della Famiglia, p. 90; see above, p. 132, note 1), is delighted when in the country with ‘the bushy hills,’ ‘the fair plains and rushing waters.’ Mention may here be made of a little work Ætna, by P. Bembus, first published at Venice, 1495, and often printed since, in which, among much that is rambling and prolix, there are remarkable geographical descriptions and notices of landscapes.]

The second great age of Italian poetry, which now followed at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, as well as the Latin poetry of the same period, is rich in proofs of the powerful effect of nature on the human mind. The first glance at the lyric poets of that time will suffice to convince us. Elaborate descriptions, it is true, of natural scenery, are very rare, for the reason that, in this energetic age, the novels and the lyric or epic poetry had something else to deal with. Bojardo and Ariosto paint nature vigorously, but as briefly as possible, and with no effort to appeal by their descriptions to the feelings of the reader,[701 - A most elaborate picture of this kind in Ariosto; his sixth canto is all foreground.] which they endeavour to reach solely by their narrative and characters. Letter-writers and the authors of philosophical dialogues are, in fact, better evidence of the growing love of nature than the poets. The novelist Bandello, for example, observes rigorously the rules of his department of literature; he gives us in his novels themselves not a word more than is necessary on the natural scenery amid which the action of his tales takes place,[702 - He deals differently with his architectural framework, and in this modern decorative art can learn something from him even now.] but in the dedications which always precede them we meet with charming descriptions of nature as the setting for his dialogues and social pictures. Among letter-writers, Aretino[703 - Lettere Pittoriche, iii. 36, to Titian, May, 1544.] unfortunately must be named as the first who has fully painted in words the splendid effect of light and shadow in an Italian sunset.

We sometimes find the feeling of the poets, also, attaching itself with tenderness to graceful scenes of country life. Tito Strozza, about the year 1480, describes in a Latin elegy[704 - Strozzii Poetae, in the Erotica, l. vi. fol. 183; in the poem: ‘Hortatur se ipse, ut ad amicam properet.’] the dwelling of his mistress. We are shown an old ivy-clad house, half hidden in trees, and adorned with weather-stained frescoes of the saints, and near it a chapel, much damaged by the violence of the river Po, which flowed hard by; not far off, the priest ploughs his few barren roods with borrowed cattle. This is no reminiscence of the Roman elegists, but true modern sentiment; and the parallel to it—a sincere, unartificial description of country life in general—will be found at the end of this part of our work.

It may be objected that the German painters at the beginning of the sixteenth century succeed in representing with perfect mastery these scenes of country life, as, for instance, Albrecht Dürer, in his engraving of the Prodigal Son.[705 - Comp. Thausing: Dürer, Leipzig, 1876, p. 166.] But it is one thing if a painter, brought up in a school of realism, introduces such scenes, and quite another thing if a poet, accustomed to an ideal or mythological framework, is driven by inward impulse into realism. Besides which, priority in point of time is here, as in the descriptions of country life, on the side of the Italian poets.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DISCOVERY OF MAN. SPIRITUAL DESCRIPTION IN POETRY

TO the discovery of the outward world the Renaissance added a still greater achievement, by first discerning and bringing to light the full, whole nature of man.[706 - These striking expressions are taken from the seventh volume of Michelet’s Histoire de France (Introd.).]

This period, as we have seen, first gave the highest development to individuality, and then led the individual to the most zealous and thorough study of himself in all forms and under all conditions. Indeed, the development of personality is essentially involved in the recognition of it in oneself and in others. Between these two great processes our narrative has placed the influence of ancient literature, because the mode of conceiving and representing both the individual and human nature in general was defined and coloured by that influence. But the power of conception and representation lay in the age and in the people.

The facts which we shall quote in evidence of our thesis will be few in number. Here, if anywhere in the course of this discussion, the author is conscious that he is treading on the perilous ground of conjecture, and that what seems to him a clear, if delicate and gradual, transition in the intellectual movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, may not be equally plain to others. The gradual awakening of the soul of a people is a phenomenon which may produce a different impression on each spectator. Time will judge which impression is the most faithful.

Happily the study of the intellectual side of human nature began, not with the search after a theoretical psychology—for that, Aristotle still sufficed—but with the endeavour to observe and to describe. The indispensable ballast of theory was limited to the popular doctrine of the four temperaments, in its then habitual union with the belief in the influence of the planets. Such conceptions may remain ineradicable in the minds of individuals, without hindering the general progress of the age. It certainly makes on us a singular impression, when we meet them at a time when human nature in its deepest essence and in all its characteristic expressions was not only known by exact observation, but represented by an immortal poetry and art. It sounds almost ludicrous when an otherwise competent observer considers Clement VII. to be of a melancholy temperament, but defers his judgment to that of the physicians, who declare the pope of a sanguine-choleric nature;[707 - Tomm. Gar, Relaz. della Corte di Roma, i. pp. 278 and 279. In the Rel. of Soriano, year 1533.] or when we read that the same Gaston de Foix, the victor of Ravenna, whom Giorgione painted and Bambaja carved, and whom all the historians describe, had the saturnine temperament.[708 - Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. p. 295 sqq. The word ‘saturnico’ means ‘unhappy’ as well as ‘bringing misfortune.’ For the influence of the planets on human character in general, see Corn. Agrippa, De occulta philosophia, c. 52.] No doubt those who use these expressions mean something by them; but the terms in which they tell us their meaning are strangely out of date in the Italy of the sixteenth century.

As examples of the free delineation of the human spirit, we shall first speak of the great poets of the fourteenth century.

If we were to collect the pearls from the courtly and knightly poetry of all the countries of the West during the two preceding centuries, we should have a mass of wonderful divinations and single pictures of the inward life, which at first sight would seem to rival the poetry of the Italians. Leaving lyrical poetry out of account, Godfrey of Strasburg gives us, in ‘Tristram and Isolt,’ a representation of human passion, some features of which are immortal. But these pearls lie scattered in the ocean of artificial convention, and they are altogether something very different from a complete objective picture of the inward man and his spiritual wealth.

Italy, too, in the thirteenth century had, through the ‘Trovatori,’ its share in the poetry of the courts and of chivalry. To them is mainly due the ‘Canzone,’ whose construction is as difficult and artificial as that of the songs of any northern minstrel. Their subject and mode of thought represents simply the conventional tone of the courts, be the poet a burgher or a scholar.

But two new paths at length showed themselves, along which Italian poetry could advance to another and a characteristic future. They are not the less important for being concerned only with the formal and external side of the art.

To the same Brunetto Latini—the teacher of Dante—who, in his ‘Canzoni,’ adopts the customary manner of the ‘Trovatori,’ we owe the first-known ‘Versi Sciolti,’ or blank hendecasyllabic verses,[709 - See Trucchi, Poesie Italiane inedite, i. p 165 sqq.] and in his apparent absence of form, a true and genuine passion suddenly showed itself. The same voluntary renunciation of outward effect, through confidence in the power of the inward conception, can be observed some years later in fresco-painting, and later still in painting of all kinds, which began to cease to rely on colour for its effect, using simply a lighter or darker shade. For an age which laid so much stress on artificial form in poetry, these verses of Brunetto mark the beginning of a new epoch.[710 - Blank verse became at a later time the usual form for dramatic compositions. Trissino, in the dedication of his Sofonisba to Leo X., expressed the hope that the Pope would recognise this style for what it was—as better, nobler, and less easy than it looked. Roscoe, Leone X., ed. Bossi, viii. 174.]

About the same time, or even in the first half of the thirteenth century, one of the many strictly-balanced forms of metre, in which Europe was then so fruitful, became a normal and recognised form in Italy—the sonnet. The order of rhymes and even the number of the lines varied for a whole century,[711 - Comp. e.g. the striking forms adopted by Dante, Vita Nuova, ed. Witte, p. 13 sqq., 16 sqq. Each has twenty irregular lines; in the first, one rhyme occurs eight times.] till Petrarch fixed them permanently. In this form all higher lyrical or meditative subjects, and at a later time subjects of every possible description, were treated, and the madrigals, the sestine, and even the ‘Canzoni’ were reduced to a subordinate place. Later Italian writers complain, half jestingly, half resentfully, of this inevitable mould, this Procrustean bed, to which they were compelled to make their thoughts and feelings fit. Others were, and still are, quite satisfied with this particular form of verse, which they freely use to express any personal reminiscence or idle sing-song without necessity or serious purpose. For which reason there are many more bad or insignificant sonnets than good ones.

Nevertheless, the sonnet must be held to have been an unspeakable blessing for Italian poetry. The clearness and beauty of its structure, the invitation it gave to elevate the thought in the second and more rapidly moving half, and the ease with which it could be learned by heart, made it valued even by the greatest masters. In fact, they would not have kept it in use down to our own century, had they not been penetrated with a sense of its singular worth. These masters could have given us the same thoughts in other and wholly different forms. But when once they had made the sonnet the normal type of lyrical poetry, many other writers of great, if not the highest, gifts, who otherwise would have lost themselves in a sea of diffusiveness, were forced to concentrate their feelings. The sonnet became for Italian literature a condenser of thoughts and emotions such as was possessed by the poetry of no other modern people.

Thus the world of Italian sentiment comes before us in a series of pictures, clear, concise, and most effective in their brevity. Had other nations possessed a form of expression of the same kind, we should perhaps have known more of their inward life; we might have had a number of pictures of inward and outward situations—reflexions of the national character and temper—and should not be dependent for such knowledge on the so-called lyrical poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who can hardly ever be read with any serious enjoyment. In Italy we can trace an undoubted progress from the time when the sonnet came into existence. In the second half of the thirteenth century the ‘Trovatori della transizione,’ as they have been recently named,[712 - Trucchi, op. cit. i. 181 sqq.] mark the passage from the Troubadours to the poets—that is, to those who wrote under the influence of antiquity. The simplicity and strength of their feeling, the vigorous delineation of fact, the precise expression and rounding off of their sonnets and other poems, herald the coming of a Dante. Some political sonnets of the Guelphs and Ghibellines (1260-1270) have about them the ring of his passion, and others remind us of his sweetest lyrical notes.

Of his own theoretical view of the sonnet, we are unfortunately ignorant, since the last books of his work, ‘De vulgari eloquio,’ in which he proposed to treat of ballads and sonnets, either remained unwritten or have been lost. But, as a matter of fact, he has left us in his Sonnets and ‘Canzoni,’ a treasure of inward experience. And in what a framework he has set them! The prose of the ‘Vita Nuova,’ in which he gives an account of the origin of each poem, is as wonderful as the verses themselves, and forms with them a uniform whole, inspired with the deepest glow of passion. With unflinching frankness and sincerity he lays bare every shade of his joy and his sorrow, and moulds it resolutely into the strictest forms of art. Reading attentively these Sonnets and ‘Canzoni,’ and the marvellous fragments of the diary of his youth which lie between them, we fancy that throughout the Middle Ages the poets have been purposely fleeing from themselves, and that he was the first to seek his own soul. Before his time we meet with many an artistic verse; but he is the first artist in the full sense of the word—the first who consciously cast immortal matter into an immortal form. Subjective feeling has here a full objective truth and greatness, and most of it is so set forth that all ages and peoples can make it their own.[713 - These were the ‘Canzoni’ and Sonnets which every blacksmith and donkey-driver sang and parodied—which made Dante not a little angry. (Comp. Franco Sachetti, Nov. 114, 115.) So quickly did these poems find their way among the people.] Where he writes in a thoroughly objective spirit, and lets the force of his sentiment be guessed at only by some outward fact, as in the magnificent sonnets ‘Tanto gentile,’ etc., and ‘Vedi perfettamente,’ etc., he seems to feel the need of excusing himself.[714 - Vita Nuova, ed. Witte, pp. 81, 82 sqq. ‘Deh peregrini,’ ibid. 116.] The most beautiful of these poems really belongs to this class—the ‘Deh peregrini che pensosi andate.’

Even apart from the ‘Divine Comedy,’ Dante would have marked by these youthful poems the boundary between mediævalism and modern times. The human spirit had taken a mighty step towards the consciousness of its own secret life.

The revelations in this matter which are contained in the ‘Divine Comedy’ itself are simply immeasurable; and it would be necessary to go through the whole poem, one canto after another, in order to do justice to its value from this point of view. Happily we have no need to do this, as it has long been a daily food of all the countries of the West. Its plan, and the ideas on which it is based, belong to the Middle Ages, and appeal to our interest only historically; but it is nevertheless the beginning of all modern poetry, through the power and richness shown in the description of human nature in every shape and attitude.[715 - For Dante’s psychology, the beginning of Purg. iv. is one of the most important passages. See also the parts of the Convito bearing on the subject.]

From this time forwards poetry may have experienced unequal fortunes, and may show, for half a century together, a so-called relapse. But its nobler and more vital principle was saved for ever; and whenever in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and in the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, an original mind devotes himself to it, he represents a more advanced stage than any poet out of Italy, given—what is certainly not always easy to settle satisfactorily—an equality of natural gifts to start with.

Here, as in other things, in Italy, culture—to which poetry belongs—precedes the plastic arts and, in fact, gives them their chief impulse. More than a century elapsed before the spiritual element in painting and sculpture attained a power of expression in any way analogous to that of the ‘Divine Comedy.’ How far the same rule holds good for the artistic development of other nations,[716 - The portraits of the school of Van Eyck would prove the contrary for the North. They remained for a long period far in advance of all descriptions in words.] and of what importance the whole question may be, does not concern us here. For Italian civilisation it is of decisive weight.

The position to be assigned to Petrarch in this respect must be settled by the many readers of the poet. Those who come to him in the spirit of a cross-examiner, and busy themselves in detecting the contradictions between the poet and the man, his infidelities in love, and the other weak sides of his character, may perhaps, after sufficient effort, end by losing all taste for his poetry. In place, then, of artistic enjoyment, we may acquire a knowledge of the man in his ‘totality.’ What a pity that Petrarch’s letters from Avignon contain so little gossip to take hold of, and that the letters of his acquaintances and of the friends of these acquaintances have either been lost or never existed! Instead of Heaven being thanked when we are not forced to enquire how and through what struggles a poet has rescued something immortal from his own poor life and lot, a biography has been stitched together for Petrarch out of these so-called ‘remains,’ which reads like an indictment. But the poet may take comfort. If the printing and editing of the correspondence of celebrated people goes on for another half-century as it has begun in England and Germany, he will have illustrious company enough sitting with him on the stool of repentance.

Without shutting our eyes to much that is forced and artificial in his poetry, where the writer is merely imitating himself and singing on in the old strain, we cannot fail to admire the marvellous abundance of pictures of the inmost soul—descriptions of moments of joy and sorrow which must have been thoroughly his own, since no one before him gives us anything of the kind, and on which his significance rests for his country and for the world. His verse is not in all places equally transparent; by the side of his most beautiful thoughts, stand at times some allegorical conceit, or some sophistical trick of logic, altogether foreign to our present taste. But the balance is on the side of excellence.

Boccaccio, too, in his imperfectly-known Sonnets,[717 - Printed in the sixteenth volume of his Opere Volgari. See M. Landau, Giov. Boccaccio (Stuttg. 1877), pp. 36-40; he lays special stress on B.’s dependence on Dante and Petrarch.] succeeds sometimes in giving a most powerful and effective picture of his feeling. The return to a spot consecrated by love (Son. 22), the melancholy of spring (Son. 33), the sadness of the poet who feels himself growing old (Son. 65), are admirably treated by him. And in the ‘Ameto’ he has described the ennobling and transfiguring power of love in a manner which would hardly be expected from the author of the ‘Decamerone.’[718 - In the song of the shepherd Teogape, after the feast of Venus, Opp. ed. Montier, vol. xv. 2. p. 67 sqq. Comp. Landau, 58-64; on the Fiammetta, see Landau, 96-105.] In the ‘Fiammetta’ we have another great and minutely-painted picture of the human soul, full of the keenest observation, though executed with anything but uniform power, and in parts marred by the passion for high-sounding language and by an unlucky mixture of mythological allusions and learned quotations. The ‘Fiammetta,’ if we are not mistaken, is a sort of feminine counterpart to the ‘Vita Nuova’ of Dante, or at any rate owes its origin to it.