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But let us read Bandello, and then ask ourselves if anything of the same kind would have been possible, say, in France, before this kind of society was there introduced by people like himself. No doubt the supreme achievements of the human mind were then produced independently of the help of the drawing-room.
'I derive much solace from the pleasures of imagination, Trombin observed, following his own train of thought. 'In me a great romancer has been lost to our age, another Bandello, perhaps a second Boccaccio!
Before I saw titled courtesans I had read Boccaccio and Bandello; above all, I had read Shakespeare. I had dreamed of those beautiful triflers; of those cherubim of hell.
Women of this stamp could listen to novels like those of Bandello, without social intercourse suffering from it. The ruling genius of society was not, as now, womanhood, or the respect for certain presuppositions, mysteries, and susceptibilities, but the consciousness of energy, of beauty, and of a social state full of danger and opportunity.
Bandello was a Dominican and nephew of the General of his order. Folengo was a Benedictine. Bibbiena became a cardinal. Berni received a Canonry in the Cathedral of Florence. Such was the open and acknowledged immorality of the priests in Rome that more than one Papal edict was issued forbidding them to keep houses of bad repute or to act as panders.
Reviewing in our memory the literature and art of the Italian Renaissance, remembering the innumerable impressions of joyous and healthy life with which it has filled us; recalling the bright and thoughtless rhymes of Lorenzo dei Medici, of Politian, of Bern!, and of Ariosto; the sweet and tender poetry of Bembo and Vittoria Colonna and Tasso; the bluff sensuality of novelists like Bandello and Masuccio, the Aristophanesque laughter of the comedy of Bibbiena and of Beolco; seeing in our mind's eye the stately sweet matrons and noble senators of Titian, the virginal saints and madonnas of Raphael, the joyous angels of Correggio; recapitulating rapidly all our impressions of this splendid time of exuberant vitality, of this strong and serene Renaissance, we answer without hesitation, and with only a smile of contempt at our credulous ancestors no.
Giraldi Lomazzo, the Milanese historian of painting, and Bandello, the novelist, supply further details. It appears from all accounts that Lionardo impressed his contemporaries as a singular and most commanding personality. There is a touch of reverence in even the strangest stories, which is wanting in the legend of Piero di Cosimo.
He goes to-day, d the luck! but leaves us hopes of meeting during the summer in Switzerland or thereabouts. He is looking the picture of health and we shall return him to town undamaged. Best of good fortune to Bandello." Burton and Arbuthnot had spent many a delightful hour sitting out on Burton's verandah, smoking, listening to the nightingales, and enjoying sea and landscape.
Before I saw titled courtesans I had read Boccaccio and Bandello; above all, I had read Shakespeare. I had dreamed of those beautiful triflers; of those cherubim of hell.
Yet Bandello lived in Milan while the Church of S. 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. In the Sculpture Gallery of the Brera is preserved a fair white marble tomb, carved by that excellent Lombard sculptor, Agostino Busti. The epitaph runs as follows:
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