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Bellincioni and a dozen other poets celebrated her name and recorded her words and actions in verse; learned scholars and commentators read Dante to her when she cared to listen. Niccolo da Correggio not only wrote sonnets and canzoni for her to sing but invented new patterns for her gowns; and Cristoforo Romano laid down the sculptor's chisel to play the lyre or viol for her pleasure.
She had had sonnets and canzoni addressed to her since she was twelve; but then she had two elder sisters and only one brother a monk! This made a vast difference. The upshot was that when Cino met the two ladies at the charmed spot of yesterday's encounter he uncovered before them and stood with folded hands, as if at his prayers.
The whole future of Italian poetry hung on his not continuing in the same style, but even Petrarch relied more on his Latin poetry than on the Sonnets and 'Canzoni, and Ariosto himself was desired by some to write his poem in Latin.
Hence towards the beginning of the sixteenth century they adapted the more comprehensive forms of Italian poetry, Ottave Terzine, Canzoni, Sonetti; and the Castilian language, the proudest daughter of the Latin, was then first enabled to display her whole power in dignity, beautiful boldness, and splendour of imagery.
Gaspare found animated supporters in his friends Calmeta and Niccolo da Correggio, who was himself an enthusiastic admirer of Petrarch, and on one occasion journeyed twenty-five miles from Correggio over the worst roads in the world to see the remote village of Rosena, where the Tuscan poet had composed some of his finest canzoni. On the other hand, Bramante had the duke and duchess on his side.
He understood Greek excellently, spoke French, and wrote Latin and Italian wonderfully. He composed Tragedies, and excelled also in lyrical Canzoni, in which he praised heroes and discountenanced all vice, particularly in one set of seven made against the seven capital sins. He was well-bred, courteous, a favourite with our Princes, or uncorrupted manners, and most religious.
There was a great revival of sonneteering in Italy in the 16th century, and a number of Wiat's poems were adaptations of the sonnets and canzoni of Petrarch and later poets. Others were imitations of Horace's satires and epistles. Surrey introduced the Italian blank verse into English in his translation of two books of the Aeneid.
Music and dancing were taught them almost from infancy. They learnt to play the viol and lute, and sang canzoni and sonnets to the accompaniment of these instruments. Beatrice, we know, was passionately fond of music. She employed the great Pavian Lorenzo Gusnasco to make her clavichords and viols of the finest order, and like her father, she never travelled without her favourite singers.
Interwoven with all this are stately canzoni, and dainty sonnets full of quaint conceits, like that wherein Jacopo da Lentino sings Of his Lady in Heaven: I have it in my heart to serve God so That into Paradise I shall repair The holy place through the which everywhere I have heard say that joy and solace flow.
Then there was the blind poet Francesco Bello, the author of the "Mambriano," that heroic poem on the favourite Carlovingian legend; Andrea Cossa of Naples, who sang his own rime and strambotti to the music of the lute; Niccolo da Correggio, called by Isabella d'Este and Sabba da Castiglione "the most accomplished gentleman of the age, the foremost man in all Italy, in the art of poetry and in courtesy," who devoted his muse to the service of gentle ladies, and composed canzoni and capitoli or set Petrarch's sonnets to music for Isabella and Beatrice's pleasure.
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