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Updated: June 25, 2025
It may suffice here to mention Bartolommeo Colleoni, Angelo Poliziano, and Pontano, all of whom owed their start in life to the murder of their respective fathers by assassins; to Varchi and Filelfo, whose lives were attempted by cut-throats; to Cellini, Perugino, Masaccio, Berni, in each of whose biographies poison and the knife play their parts.
The name of this great master is variously written Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, or Omodeo, or degli Amadei, or de' Madeo, or a Madeo pointing possibly to the town Madeo as his native place. Through a long life he worked upon the fabric of the Milanese Duomo, the Certosa of Pavia, and the Chapel of Colleoni at Bergamo.
Free jurisdiction and lordship over each one of our soldiers, except in cases of treason, we hereby commit to you." After the ceremony of his reception, Colleoni was conducted with no less pomp to his lodgings, and the next ten days were spent in festivities of all sorts. The commandership-in-chief of the Venetian forces was perhaps the highest military post in Italy.
First, the statue of Gattamelata, a Venetian general, by Donatello. The original is in Padua. Then there is the figure of Bartolommeo Colleoni. The original is in Venice. It is by Verrocchio and Leopardi. These equestrians radiate authority. There is more action in them than in any cowboy hordes I have ever beheld zipping across the screen.
On Wednesday next I shall be yours, and all alone with you in your casino in Venice; let me know whether you will be at the usual hour near the statue of the hero Colleoni. In case you should be prevented, name any other day."
If Busti's Lancinus Curtius be the portrait of a humanist, careworn with study, burdened by the laurel leaves that were so dry and dusty if Gaston de Foix in the Brera, smiling at death and beautiful in the cropped bloom of youth, idealise the hero of romance if Michelangelo's Penseroso translate in marble the dark broodings of a despot's soul if Della Porta's Julia Farnese be the Roman courtesan magnificently throned in nonchalance at a Pope's footstool if Verocchio's Colleoni on his horse at Venice impersonate the pomp and circumstance of scientific war surely this Medea exhales the flower-like graces, the sweet sanctities of human life, that even in that turbid age were found among high-bred Italian ladies.
While immersed in the dreary records of crimes, treasons, cruelties, and base ambitions, which constitute the bulk of fifteenth-century Italian history, it is refreshing to meet with a character so frank and manly, so simply pious and comparatively free from stain, as Colleoni.
Starting anywhere near the Molo, this means that the route will be by the Rio del Palazzo, under the Ponte di Paglia and the Bridge of Sighs, between the Doges' Palace and the prison; up the winding Rio di S. Maria Formosa, and then into the Rio dei Mendicanti with a glimpse of the superb Colleoni statue and SS. Giovanni e Paoli and the lions on the Scuola of S. Mark; under the bridge with a pretty Madonna on it; and so up the Rio dei Mendicanti, passing on the left a wineyard with two graceful round arches in it and then a pleasant garden with a pergola, and then a busy squero with men always at work on gondolas new or old.
Upon Gattamelata's death at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the most important of the generals who had fought with Caldora in the March. The lordships of Romano in the Bergamasque and of Covo and Antegnate in the Cremonese had been assigned to him; and he was in a position to make independent engagements with princes. What distinguished him as a general, was a combination of caution with audacity.
His greatest work of all is the bronze equestrian statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni in Venice, the finest thing of its kind in the world, and so glorious and exciting indeed that every city should have a cast of it in a conspicuous position just for the good of the people. It was while at work upon this that Verrocchio died, at the age of fifty-three.
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