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How often has this intermediate land been fought over by Montefeltro and Brancaleoni, by Borgia and Malatesta, by Medici and Della Rovere! Its contadini are robust men, almost statuesque in build, and beautiful of feature. No wonder that the Princes of Urbino, with such materials to draw from, sold their service and their troops to Florence, Rome, S. Mark, and Milan.
In this circle were to be found, among others, Bernardo Bibbiena, the patron of Berni, of whom Raphael has left us a portrait which is now in the Pitti Palace; Giuliano de' Medici, whose marble statue by Michael Angelo may still be seen in San Lorenzo at Florence; Cardinal Pietro Bembo, who had in his youth fallen a victim to the charms of Lucrezia Borgia when she first went to Ferrara; Emilia Pia, the wife of Antonio da Montefeltro, who is described as "a lady of so lively wit and judgment, that she seems to govern the whole company"; and last, but far from least, Baldassare Castiglione, that model courtier and fine wit, who has left a picture of Urbino in his celebrated book Il Cortegiano, which was long known in Italy as Il Libro d'Oro.
Piero never painted anything that was not distinguished and liquid, and here he gives us of his best: portraits of Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and Battista, his second Duchess, with classical scenes behind them. Piero della Francesca has ever been one of my favourite painters, and here he is wholly a joy.
"They are no more than that you relinquish your claim to Monna Valentina, and that you find consolation as I think his Highness of Urbino has himself suggested in the Lord Guidobaldo's younger niece." Before he could reply Guidobaldo was urging him, in a low voice to accept the terms. "What else is there for you?" Montefeltro ended pregnantly.
At last, before a vase and a dish that stood modestly at the very farthest end of the deal bench, the duke gave a sudden exclamation of delight, and Signor Benedetto grew crimson with pleasure and surprise, and Giovanni Sanzio pressed a little nearer and tried to see over the shoulders of the gentlemen of the court, feeling sure that something rare and beautiful must have called forth that cry of wonder from the Lord of Montefeltro, and having seen at a glance that for his poor friend Luca there was no sort of hope.
They do not, however, give us so extraordinary an impression of the strength and keenness of Dante's powers of observation as many a passage in the Divine Comedy in which Ravenna and the rude and fierce world of the Romagna of that day live for ever. It is in answer to the inquiries of the great Guido of Montefeltro that Dante speaks of Romagna in the Inferno.
His face was pale, and there were dark circles round his eyes, and lines of pain about his strong mouth. He sat up at her advent, and setting his book upon the table beside him, he listened to her angry complaints. At first, the courtly Montefeltro inclined to anger upon learning of the roughness with which Gian Maria had borne himself. But presently he smiled.
The ruined, deserted, degraded Palazzo Ducale reminds us of the advent of the despots. It has been stripped of all its tarsia-work and sculpture. Only here and there a Fe. D., with the cupping-glass of Federigo di Montefeltro, remains to show that Gubbio once became the fairest fief of the Urbino duchy.
Throughout the palace we notice emblems appropriate to the Houses of Montefeltro and Della Rovere: their arms, three golden bends upon a field of azure: the Imperial eagle, granted when Montefeltro was made a fief of the Empire: the Garter of England, worn by the Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo: the ermine of Naples: the ventosa, or cupping-glass, adopted for a private badge by Frederick: the golden oak-tree on an azure field of Della Rovere: the palm-tree, bent beneath a block of stone, with its accompanying motto, Inclinata Resurgam: the cypher, FE DX. Profile medallions of Federigo and Guidobaldo, wrought in the lowest possible relief, adorn the staircases.
"Enough," said Virgil; "I trouble thee no more." The soul of Guido di Montefeltro, overhearing the great Mantuan speak in a Lombard dialect, asked him news of the state of things in Romagna; and then told him how he had lost his chance of paradise, by thinking Pope Boniface could at once absolve him from his sins, and use them for his purposes. He was going to heaven, he said, by the help of St.
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