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The Venetian Marc Antonio Michieli, who saw this picture in Taddeo Contarini's house at Venice in 1525, describes it as "a profile portrait of the head and bust of Madonna, daughter of Signor Lodovico of Milan," after which he adds, "married to the Emperor Maximilian ... by the hand of ... Milanese."
For Contarini's silken beard hardly concealed a weak and feminine mouth, with lips too red and too curving for a man, and his soft brown eyes had an unmanly tendency to look away while he was speaking.
With her small white hand she jestingly pretended to box his huge ears. "You would be well paid if I refused to go with you," she said with a low laugh. "But I should like to know why you have decided so suddenly. What is the matter? What is to become of all our plans, and of Contarini's marriage? Tell me quickly!" "I have had a visit from an officer of the Ten to-day," he said.
It seemed to Zorzi that a hundred hands seized him in the dark; by the arms, by the legs, by the body, by the head. He knew that resistance was worse than useless. There were hands at his throat, too. "Let us do nothing hastily," said Contarini's voice, close beside him. "We must find out what he knows first. We can make him speak, I daresay."
He knew that Contarini's mouth would be open, as he must be half suffocated and gasping for breath. In an instant the iron pear had slipped between his teeth and had opened its relentless leaves, obedient to the screw. "Take the pillow away," said Aristarchi quietly. "We can say good-bye to your old acquaintance now, but he will have to content himself with nodding his head in a friendly way."
To one like myself flight would certainly avail little; but, with a Proveditore for your father, you may arrange matters if you only take time before you become their prisoner. Quick, then, to the palazzo! Don't you see old Contarini's head stuck out of his window? He is telling them you are not there.
Every device was resorted to that could lend novelty to the scenes; in Carlo Noci's Cintia the heroine returns home disguised as a boy to find her lover courting another nymph; in Francesco Contarini's Finta Fiammetta , on the other hand, the plot turns on the courtship of Delfide by her lover Celindo in girl's attire; while in Orazio Serono's Fida Armilla we have the annual human sacrifice to a monstrous serpent all of which later became familiar themes in pastoral drama and romance.
Meanwhile the story of Contarini's mishap had spread in Venice like wildfire, and before noon there was hardly one of all his many relations and friends who had not heard it.
Jacopo was now perfectly helpless, but he was not yet dumb. Aristarchi had brought his tools with him, in the bosom of his doublet. Kneeling on Contarini's shoulders he took out a small iron instrument, shaped exactly like a pear, but which by a screw, placed where the stem would be, could be made to open out in four parts that spread like the petals of a flower.
The latter, always for his dignity's sake, had pretended to refuse, and had then secretly arranged the matter for Jacopo, as has been seen, without old Contarini's knowledge. Marietta leaned back under the cool, dark 'felse, and her hands lay idly in her lap.
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