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This mention of the name of D'Avalos, the master of many legions and of many cannons as well, to a man who had written a Treatise on the management of Artillery, and devised certain engines and instruments for the management of the same, was indeed a clever cast, and the fly was tempting enough to attract even so shy a fish as Niccolo Tartaglia.
He ends with a request that Cardan will accept four copies of the engines aforesaid, two for himself and two for the Marchese d'Avalos.
My own little pearl of price, so true as God is in the Holy Sacrament, an if the Prince find you with the Lord Duke d'Andria, he will kill both the twain of you. You will be a dead woman; and ah! me, what will become of me?" The Nurse spake on in this wise and besought her mistress long and sore; but Doña Maria d'Avalos did send her away without deigning so much as one word of answer.
Near Romagnano, on the banks of the Sesia, the retreat was hotly pressed by the imperial army, the command of which had been ultimately given by Charles V. to the Constable de Bourbon, with whom were associated the Viceroy of Naples, Charles de Lannoy, and Ferdinand d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, the most able amongst the Neapolitan officers.
If we are to accept the tradition that this Allegory, or quasi-allegorical portrait-piece, giving a fanciful embodiment to the pleasures of martial domination, of conjugal love, of well-earned peace and plenty, represents d'Avalos, his consort Mary of Arragon, and their family and a comparison with the well-authenticated portrait of Del Vasto in the Allocution of Madrid does not carry with it entire conviction we must perforce place the Louvre picture some ten years later than do Crowe and Cavalcaselle.
But the conception is a novel and magnificent one, contrasting instructively in its weightiness and majesty with the more naïve and pathetic renderings of an earlier time. The Education of Cupid, popularly but erroneously known as The Three Graces is one of the pearls of the Borghese Gallery. It is clearly built in essentials on the master's own d'Avalos Allegory, painted many years before.
Alfonso d'Avalos, Cardan's friend and patron, was at this time the Governor of Milan. D'Avalos was a man of science, as well as a soldier, and Cardan had already sent to him a copy of Tartaglia's treatise on Artillery, deeming that a work of this kind would not fail to interest him.
Elisabetta found this beautiful child already betrothed to Ferrante d'Avalos, son of Marquis Alfonso of Pescara; Ferdinand II of Naples having brought about the betrothal of the two children as early as 1495 for the purpose of winning over the Colonna, the retainers of the house of Aragon.
De Vita Propria, ch. xl. p. 138. De Vita Propria, ch. xli. p. 153. Opera, tom. i. p. 671. He cites the names of former Governors of Milan and other patrons, many of them harsh men, and not one as kind and beneficent as the Duca di Sessa; to wit Antonio Leva, Cardinal Caracio, Alfonso d'Avalos, Ferrante Gonzaga, the Cardinal of Trent, and the Duca d'Alba.
The eminent biographers of Titian connect the picture with the return of d'Avalos from the campaign against the Turks, undertaken by him in the autumn of 1532, under the leadership of Croy, at the behest of his imperial master. They hazard the surmise that the picture, though painted after Alfonso's return, symbolises his departure for the wars, "consoled by Victory, Love, and Hymen."
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