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At the end of his fourth Novella, having related the life of the Contessa di Cellant, Bandello says: 'And so the poor woman was beheaded; such was the end of her unbridled desires; and he who would fain see her painted to the life, let him go to the Church of the Monistero Maggiore, and there will he behold her portrait. The Contessa di Cellant was the only child of a rich usurer who lived at Casal Monferrato.
Rather than prolong this list, I will tell a story which drew me one day past the Public Gardens to the metropolitan Church of Venice, San Pietro di Castello. The novella is related by Bandello. It has, as will be noticed, points of similarity to that of "Romeo and Juliet."
Of course Shakespeare was true to the life in making them all die miserably. Besides, it was so they died in the novel of Matteo Bandello, from which the poet indirectly took his plot. Under the circumstances no other climax was practicable; and yet it was sad business.
Translator, was the author of The Tragicall Historie of Romeus and Juliett, from which Shakespeare probably took the story of his Romeo and Juliet. Though indirectly translated, through a French version, from the Italian of Bandello, it is so much altered and amplified as almost to rank as an original work. The only fact known regarding him is his death by shipwreck when crossing to France.
It is true that when we speak of the bourgeois spirit of the novella on the one hand, and the 'ideal' pastoral on the other, it is well to remember that the author of the Decameron also wrote the first modern pastoral romance; that the century and country which saw the publication of the Arcadia, the Aminta, and the Pastor fido, also welcomed the work of Fortini, Giraldi, and Bandello; and that to Margaret of Navarre, the imitator of Sannazzaro and patroness of Marot, we are likewise indebted for the Heptameron.
More than once, in a spirit of mischievous malice, she was tempted to bid the good ladies lay aside their Baedekers and Murrays, and increase their knowledge of the Italian character and language by study of the Novelle of Bandello, or of certain merry tales to be found in the pages of the Decameron. She had copies of both works in her traveling-bag.
What passed that day on the grand square of Antwerp is thus related by Matthew Bandello, Bishop of Agen, who lived at that period, and who wrote from the testimony of an eye-witness: * "Upon the appointed day, Simon Turchi was enclosed in the same chair and driven on a wagon through the streets of Antwerp, the good priest accompanying him and exhorting him.
Were it only to lay a token of gratitude at the feet of my cicerone, I would fain add your illustrious name to those of Porcia, of San-Severino, of Pareto, of di Negro, and of Belgiojoso, who will represent in this "Human Comedy" the close and constant alliance between Italy and France, to which Bandello did honor in the same way in the sixteenth century Bandello, the bishop and author of some strange tales indeed, who left us the splendid collection of romances whence Shakespeare derived many of his plots and even complete characters, word for word.
The thing seems scarcely credible. Yet Bandello lived in Milan while the Church of St. Maurizio was being painted; nor does he show the slightest sign of disgust at the discord between the Contessa's life and her artistic presentation in the person of a royal martyr.
A friend of the house, Delio, 'told the story up to this point to Scipione Atellano, and added that he would make it the subject of a novel, as he was sure that Antonio would be murdered. The manner in which this took place, almost under the eyes of both Delio and Atellano, is movingly described by Bandello.
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