CHAPTER XXV
Poetry under the Montefeltri--Sonnets--The Filelfi--Giovanni Sanzi--Porcellio Pandonio--Angelo Galli--Federigo Veterani--Urbani Urbinate--Antonio Rustico--Naldio--Improvisatori--Bernardo Accolti--Serafino d'Aquila--Agostino Staccoli--Early comedies--_La Calandra_--Corruption of morals--Social position of women.
Were the lettered court of Duke Federigo to be judged by its minstrels, a harsh sentence might perhaps be awarded. Nor would this be quite fair. Their cold and common-place ideas, their rude and vapid verses, are indeed far beneath the standard of our fastidious age, and scarcely repay those who decipher them in venerable parchments. Yet have we ample evidence of their superiority to many poetasters of Italy, who then emulated Virgil's hexameters, or abused the facilities of their vernacular versification; and it is just the fact of these laureates of Urbino so long surviving the countless rhymers of other principalities, that proves the discriminating patronage of a sovereign, who attached to his court the best writers of his time. Nor must we fail to remember that the now prominent blemishes of their works were then their most admired qualities. The classical sympathies which we usually leave in schools and colleges, or which, when carried prominently about us in the busy world are stigmatised as a pedantic and ungraceful encumbrance, were then in high fashion. They were indispensable to the man of liberal education as his sword and buckler to the soldier; they were adopted among the conventional elements of all literature, poetry, and taste. A standard being thus set up so antipathic to the ideas of our practical age, we are called upon, before proceeding to judgment, to divest ourselves of prejudices which may in their turn become the marvel and ridicule of our posterity.
The inherent defects of that minstrelsy,
"Whose melody gave ease to Petrarch's wounds,"
have been aptly set forth by Roscoe, but he appears to overlook its special adaptation for the Italian tongue. Limited to one theme, which it is required to exhaust in a fixed number of lines, and fettered by the frequent and stated recurrence of a few rhymes, no language less copious and pliant can be woven into a sonnet, without occasionally betraying, in bald, formal, or rugged versification, the torture to which it has been subjected. Again, the constraint and mannerism which often deform this metrical composition in other idioms are here its safeguard from a mellifluous but insipid verbiage, so often fatal to the lyrics of Italy: on a poetry habitually turgid and redundant, terseness is thus absolutely imposed.
With these few words of apology for doggerel hexameters and indifferent sonnets, we shall shortly pass in review some of those who thus wooed the muses in the Montefeltrian court.
* * * * *
Among the most widely known names of this age was FRANCESCO FILELFO, whose venal pen often wantoned in biting lampoons, whose sickening vanity was obtruded in the most repulsive egotism, and whose vagrant habits strangely combined assiduous study with lax morals. In most respects he anticipated the bad notoriety acquired a century later by Pietro Aretino, and like him alternately fawned upon and flagellated princely patrons of literature. Were his life to be written, it would be difficult to extract truth by balancing his own self-vaunting letters against the scurrilous philippics of his untiring enemy Poggio Bracciolini. But we are fortunately spared this task, and may refer to Tiraboschi, Roscoe, and Shepherd for illustrations of his restless existence and fractious temper.[82] In both these respects GIAN MARIA,[*83] the son, seems to have resembled Francesco the father, whilst he even exceeded him in the number and variety of his compositions. He sought audiences in many cities of Italy and Provence for his prelections in grammar and philosophy, as well as for his improvisations of Latin or Italian verse; and among the numerous patrons he thus courted was the good King René, who bestowed on him the laurel crown, a guerdon which his rude numbers ill-deserved at the hands of that graceful troubadour. Tiraboschi makes no allusion to his intercourse with Duke Federigo, whereof we know little beyond two works which he inscribed to that Prince, and which remain unedited in the Vatican Urbino Library. The former of these, dated at Modena in 1464, was corrected by the author, "doctor in arts and both faculties of law, knight, and poet laureat," he being then in his thirty-eighth year. It is numbered 702, and contains about two thousand five hundred Latin hexameters and pentameters, entitled _Martiados_, an obvious imitation of his father's _Sfortiados_. The theme is thus set forth in a dedication to the Duke of Urbino:--
"Primus et in Martem quæ sint pia fata Tonantis, Et manibus nati monstra parenta refert; At liber et bellis laudatque et honore secundus, Et gestis magnum rebus in orbe Ducem."
[Footnote 82: TIRABOSCHI, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, VI., ii., p. 317-30; SHEPHERD'S _Life of Poggio Bracciolini_, _passim_; ROSCOE'S _Lorenzo de' Medici_, ch. i.]
[Footnote *83: Cf. FLAMINI, _Versi inediti da G.M. Filelfo_ (Livorno, 1892, per nozze).]
The very moderate anticipations raised by this proemium, which we leave in its rugged original, are not surpassed in the context, dull and common-place as it is in sentiment, prosaic and unpolished in style. Losing sight of his avowed object of keeping apart the deeds of Mars, the ancient divinity, from those of Federigo, his living type, in order to illustrate the parallel which it is his plan to draw between them, he strangely jumbles both; and, following the new-born classicism of the day, he has crammed his rough verses with nearly every name that heathen mythology, history, or geography can muster, in senseless and jarring confusion. With a view to exalt his hero as a second Hercules, he enumerates a series of labours and achievements from his childhood, when he sprang from bed and strangled a snake that had frightened all his attendants. This is followed by a farrago of allegorical struggles, combats, and triumphs over temptations or evil principles, anticipating somewhat the idea of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, but with this important difference, that the motives, arms, and aids are all borrowed from pagan mythology. So entirely is Federigo lost among the gods and demigods who crowd the stage, that his character or actions are seldom brought on the foreground at all, and never with sufficient idiosyncracy to avail for the development of either. Finally, we find him deified in Olympus, and the epic closes with an empty bravado that none ever more worthily emulated Alcides.
The other MS. of Gian Maria Filelfo which demands a passing note is No. 804 of the same library, and is dated seven years later than the _Martiados_. It contains some six thousand Italian verses, consisting for the most part of minor poems on a variety of subjects; the volume is dedicated to Federigo, but many of the _Canzoni morali_ are inscribed to distinguished personages, not omitting the Duke's rancorous foe Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, to whose vanity such incense could not have been unpalatable. In treating of religious topics, the author, for the time, and by an effort, lays aside the pagan strain which prevails in his other lays, and though generally selecting the sonnet or _terza rima_, he thus affects to disclaim all rivalry with their mighty masters:--
"To these rude rhymes, alas, nor Petrarch's style Is given, nor the good Dante's pungent file."
Yet there is considerable ambition in the rhythm, and although prolix, like other contemporary compositions, and inflated by superabundant episodes, it is not devoid of occasional poetic feeling. In the dedicatory address he thus speaks of his volume:--
"De! dunque Signor mio, per tua merciede Con lieta fronte schorri esto libretto, Il qual sotto il tuo titolo honor chiede. Forse leggiendol' ne fia alcun dilecto, Per esser di molte herbe uno orticciuolo, Quantunque el vi sia dentro erro e diffecto: Pur che 'l non sia di tutto il vano orciuolo Col qual l'aqua si tira, da le donne Che feciono ai mariti si gran duolo. Ogni casa non è posta in colonne; Ognuno esser non può Dante o Patrarcha; Ognun non porta pretiose gonne. Ma spesse volte piccoletta barcha Arriva in luoco, ove andando s'anniegha Tal grossa nave che molto è men charcha. De! s'al huom val quanto il Signor più priegha, China la fronte altiera a questa scorza, Ch'in questo mio arbor del pieta non niegha. Et come il navichare hor poggia, hor orza, Hor pope avvien, secondo i venti e l'onde Cosi convien ch'in vario error mi torza. Hor la mia voglia la ragion confonde, Hor l'appetito impera, hor vivo in doglia, Hor lieto, hor desioso, et non so donde. Qual l'autunno ogni verde arbor spoglia, Inverno asciugha, e primavera inverde, Tal varia e nostra externa et mental voglia. Ma tristo chiunque indarno il tempo perde, Ch'è peggio ch'esser rozzo e senza lima, Però che chi non è mai non riverde. De! leggi, Signor mio, la vulghar ryma, Et sia ti un modo da cacciar la noia, Quando di gran facciende hai maggior stima."
As we shall give a place in our Appendix to Giovanni Sanzi's judgment upon the painters of his day, we may here insert Filelfo's sonnet to Gentile Bellini.
"Bellin! s'io t'hebbi mai fitto nel cuore, Se mai chognobbi it tuo preclaro ingiegno, Hor confess'io che sei fra gli altri degno, D'haver qual hebbe Apelle ogni alto honore. Veduta ho l'opra tua col suo cholore, La venustà col suo sguardo benegno, Ogni suo movimento et nobil segno Che ben demonstri il tuo gientil valore. Gientile! io t'ero affectionato assai, Parendomi la tua virtu più rara Che soglia esser l'ucciel che è solo al mondo; Ne pingier sa chi da te non impara, Che gloria a quegli antiqui hormai tolta hai, In chi questa arte postha ogni suo pondo. Forsse che troppo habondo A te che non ti churi di tue lode, Ma diciendone assai l'alma mia ghode."
When compared with contemporary efforts, these specimens, and others which it would be easy to add, deserve a better fate than the neglect to which, in common with most of their author's works, they have been consigned; nor do they bear out the imputation of careless haste, alleged by Tiraboschi as the prevailing error of his very numerous and various productions. The paucity of these which have issued from the press may, however, be taken as confirming that judgment, as well as the suppression of his narrative of the campaign of Finale in 1447, after it had been printed by Muratori for his Scriptores. But poetry may be accounted his forte,--a somewhat remarkable circumstance, considering the unrivalled reputation he established as an _improvisatore_ of verses on any number not exceeding one hundred themes suddenly proposed, as such facility has rarely been conjoined with true poetic fire.
It were to be desired that we knew more of his intercourse with Duke Federigo. In one of his dedicatory epistles, after alluding to the likelihood of that prince reading the work, he, in a vein of fulsome compliment and impudent conceit, complains of neglect from friends, and hints at a visit to Urbino. It is difficult to glean facts from the vague common-places of such letters; but in 1468 he thanks his patron for retaining at his court Demetrio Castreno, a learned Greek fugitive from Constantinople. Equally mannered and cold are his flattery and his condolence, on the death of Countess Battista in 1472. Next year he writes that, having begun a commentary on Federigo's life, and completed two books, he had been induced to submit them to the Duke of Milan, from whom he never could recover the manuscript.
* * * * *
Another _protégé_ of Duke Federigo was PORCELLIO PANDONIO, of Naples,[*84] whose pen was ever at command of the readiest patron, as historiographer or laureate. From his partiality to the designations of bard and secretary to Alfonso of Naples, it would seem that he chiefly rested his fame on his poetical compositions. From this judgment Muratori differs, protesting that in historical narrative none excelled his ease and elegance of diction.[85] Abject classicism, in thought and style, was then a common weakness of the learned; and however correctly Porcellio may have caught the Latin phraseology, it is difficult to get over the jarring effect of an idiom and nomenclature foreign to the times and incidents which it is his object vividly to portray. In his printed work, on the campaigns of 1451-2, between Venice and Milan, he uniformly disguises Sforza and Piccinino, their respective commanders, as Scipio and Hannibal, under which _noms de guerre_ it requires a constant effort to recognise mediæval warriors, or to recollect that we are considering events dating some two thousand years after those who really bore them had been committed to the dust. The same affectation, common to many authors of his day, mars his unpublished writings which we have had occasion to examine in the Vatican Urbino Library, and their authority is greatly impaired by what Muratori well calls "prodigality of praise" to his heroes, that is, to his generous patrons. In a beautifully elaborated MS. (No. 373) he has collected, under the title of Epigrams, nearly fifty effusions in honour of our Duke and Duchess, and of members of their family or court, a favourite theme being the love-inspired longings of Battista for her lord's return from the wars. In the same volume is his Feltria, an epic composed at Rome about 1472, and narrating Federigo's campaigns, from that of 1460-1, under the banner of Pius II., by whose command Porcellio undertook to sing his general's prowess in three thousand Virgilian verses. Its merits may be fairly appreciated from extracts already given,[86] and from this allusion to the state of Italy at the outbreak of the war:--
"Jamque erat Ausoniæ populos pax alta per omnes, Et tranquilla quies: jam nulli Martis ad aras Collucent ignes; jam victima nulla cadebat. Dantur thura Jovi; fumabat oliva Minervæ: Sus erat in pretio, Cereris aptissima sacris, Pampineique dei caper, et qui vitibus amens Officit, atque merum ante aras cum sanguine fundit."
[Footnote *84: Porcellio Napolitano was the laureate and secretary of Alphonso I. of Aragon and of Naples, and later the secretary and familiar of Sigismondo Malatesta. Porcellio seems to have hated Basinio, another court poet, whose works, with a long commentary, have been published (BATTAGLINI, _Basinii, Parmensis Poetæ Opera Præstantiora_ (Rimini, 1794)). Basinio seems to have proved before the Court of Rimini that Porcellio was ignorant of Greek. "One can be a fine Latin poet without knowing Greek," he answered in a rage, but truly enough. Basinio, however, asserted that not only Virgil and all the great poets and prose writers knew Greek, but showed that while that language was forgotten Italy was plunged in darkness. But enough of such absurdities, which have besides nothing to do with Urbino or even Dennistoun's history of it.]
[Footnote 85: Nearly all we know of him will be found in the Scriptores, XX., 67, and XXV., 1.]
[Footnote 86: See vol. I., pp. 209-11. Portions of the same poem are contained in Nos. 709 and 710 of the Urbino Library, the former corrected by the author, the latter in his autograph. Some of his minor lyrics were published at Paris in 1549, along with those of two other minstrels who sang the praises of the Malatesta.]
Such were the foreign poets who frequented Duke Federigo's court. Its native bards left few works meriting particular notice, with one interesting exception. We have elsewhere to discuss Giovanni Sanzi or Santi,[*87] of Urbino, his merits as a painter, and the celebrity reflected on him from the eminence of his son, the unequalled Raffaele. Here we shall speak of his epic on that Duke's life, of which we have made frequent use in our first volume, and which demands attention on account of its excellence, as well as from the intimate connection with our subject of its author and theme.
[Footnote *87: On Giovanni Santi, see CAMPORI, _Notizie e docum. per la vita di Giov. Santi e di Raffaello Santi da Urbino_ (Modena, 1870); GUERRINI, _Elogio Stor. di Giov. Santi_ (Urbino, 1822); SCHMARZOW, _Giovanni Santi der Vater Raffaels_, in _Kunstchronik_ (Leipsig), An. XXIII., No. 27; SCHMARZOW, _Giovanni Santi_ in _Vierteljahrsschrift für Kultur und Lett. der Renaissance_ (Leipsig), vol. II., Nos. 2-4. Cf. also CROWE & CAVALCASELLE, _History of Painting in Italy_, vol. III.]
This poem, having remained unedited in the Vatican arcana, long escaped the literary historians of the Peninsula, but it has been recently quoted by two writers, Pungileone and Passavant, the former of whom had not seen it.[88] Although, in his dedication to Duke Guidobaldo, composed after 1490, the author accounts for his becoming a painter, as we shall see in