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The same sentiments inspired the verses in which Galeotto del Carretto, one of the most accomplished poets of Beatrice's court, celebrated Lodovico's improvements in this his favourite country house: "Vigevano, che gia fu gleba vile, Ha fatto adorno, e gli agri a quel contigui Ha coltivati con saper utile, E i steril campi, e al far fructo ambigui Fertili ha facto et abondanti prati, E d'acqua ticinèse tutti irigui."

Bartolommeo Aragazzi, like Ilaria del Carretto at Lucca, like the canopied doges in S. Zanipolo at Venice, like the Acciauoli in the Florentine Certosa, like the Cardinal di Portogallo in Samminiato, is carved for us as he had been in life, but with that life suspended, its fever all smoothed out, its agitations over, its pettinesses dignified by death.

These are the Fonte Gaja on the public square of Siena, now unhappily restored, and the portrait of Ilaria del Carretto on her tomb in the cathedral of Lucca. The latter has long been dear to English students of Italian art through words inimitable for their strength of sympathetic criticism.

There was Galeotto del Carretto, the Montferrat poet and historian, who left his home at Casale to compose plays and sonnets for Beatrice, and who, like Niccolo da Correggio, was one of Isabella's favourite correspondents, and sent her eclogues and strambotti to sing to the lute.

She was eight years old when his daughter Donna Peretta was married in the Vatican to the Marchese Alfonso del Carretto with such magnificent pomp that it set all Rome to talking. Lucretia first became conscious of the position to which she and her brothers might be called by their birth when she learned that her eldest brother, Don Pedro Luis, was a Spanish duke.