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"I was enumerating for my own convenience," he said, "as I frequently do, to see if I cannot discover one new variety. Don Gastone has not yet exhausted acquisition. He has become a numismatist, and ploughed up a populous village the other day in the search for a penny of Charlemagne's, supposed to have been dropped there in passing.
At Duesseldorf, Handel was sure of a warm welcome, for the Elector Johann Wilhelm was a close friend of Steffani, and his wife was a sister of Ferdinand and Gian Gastone de' Medici; he was a man of extravagant tastes, and his opera-house was maintained on the most magnificent scale.
Most of the Flemish pictures were brought here by Anna, the sister of Gian Gastone, and daughter of Cosimo III, when she returned a widow to Florence from the North. The house of Lorraine also continued to enrich the gallery, which did not escape Napoleon's generals.
On the contrary, he thought it so very indifferent, that the singers, he said, must be angels to recommend it." Gian Gastone urged him to come to Italy and hear for himself, intimating "that if he chose to return with him, no conveniences should be wanting." Handel declined the invitation, but resolved to go to Italy as soon as he could do so "on his own bottom."
Great men did as they chose which was to do evil; the most unnatural debauchery obtained; the Grand Prince Gastone ran spoiling about the country, a satyr heading a troop of satyrs. No honest person was safe from ruin. He told me that I had been remarked in Pistoja, and my name and origin guessed at.
The doors are of iron, with lions' heads on the south side and man-headed animals on the other. It opens to the nave, with two pointed arches with an oculus above. In the middle of the side wall, between two sarcophagi of white marble, is that of Allegranza di Rho, second wife of Moschino della Torre and mother of the Patriarch Gastone.
So they pass by, and their descendants follow after them, even to poor, unhappy, learned Gian Gastone, the last of his race. And around them throng the artists; yes, I shall see them all. Angelico will lead me into his cell and show me the meaning of the Resurrection.
By that time Handel had left Hamburg for Italy; he evidently took little interest in the production of these works, neither of which has survived. It was during the run of Almira, says Mainwaring, that Handel made the acquaintance of Prince Gian Gastone de' Medici, son of the Grand Duke Cosmo III of Tuscany.
She died July 23, 1300, and her sarcophagus is the only one of the five in the chapel inscribed. On the front are reliefs, and on the sloping cover her effigy. One of those at her side has a figure of a person in subdeacon's dress, with a key, no doubt Rainaldo della Torre, treasurer to the church and brother of Gastone.
The Government of Tuscany, owing to the dotage of the Grand Duke and the wicked influence of Donna Violante over her brother-in-law, the Grand Prince Gastone, was impotent; there was no police, but indeed a flagrant anarchy abroad, where private malice stalked in the cloak of justice, and the passions of evil men had scope for the utmost indulgence.
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