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Another of Michelangelo's buffoon friends was a Florentine celebrity, Piloto, the goldsmith. We know that he took this man with him when he went to Venice in 1530; but Vasari tells no characteristic stories concerning their friendship. It may be remarked that Il Lasca describes Piloto as a "most entertaining and facetious fellow," assigning him the principal part in one of his indecent novels.
Il Lasca recounts what happened: "Pulling the abbot backward with force, he made him tumble down the staircase, and he took good care to fall himself on top of him, and calling out that the frater had been taken mad, he bound his arms and legs with cords... and then taking him, hanging over his shoulders, he carried him to a room near, stretched him on the ground, and left him there in the dark, taking away the key."
The actual words of Il Lasca, who wrote the introduction to the collection of Triumphs and Carnival Songs published in Florence, 1559, are: "Thus they traversed the city, singing to the accompaniment of music arranged for four, eight, twelve or even fifteen voices, supported by various instruments." This would not necessarily mean what musicians call "fifteen real parts."
He caused the triumphs to be carefully prepared by the best artists, the dresses of the masquers to be accurately studied, and their chariots to be adorned with illustrative paintings. Michelangelo's old friend Granacci dedicated his talents to these shows, which also employed the wayward fancy of Piero di Cosimo and Pontormo's power as a colourist. "It was their wont," says Il Lasca, "to go forth after dinner; and often the processions paraded through the streets till three or four hours into the night, with a multitude of masked men on horseback following, richly dressed, exceeding sometimes three hundred in number, and as many on foot with lighted torches. Thus they traversed the city, singing to the accompaniment of music arranged for four, eight, twelve, or even fifteen voices, and supported by various instruments." Lorenzo represented the worst as well as the best qualities of his age. If he knew how to enslave Florence, it was because his own temperament inclined him to share the amusements of the crowd, while his genius enabled him to invest corruption with charm. His friend Poliziano entered with the zest of a poet and a pleasure-seeker into these diversions. He helped Lorenzo to revive the Tuscan Mayday games, and wrote exquisite lyrics to be sung by girls in summer evenings on the public squares. This giant of learning, who filled the lecture-rooms of Florence with Students of all nations, and whose critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history of scholarship, was by nature a versifier, and a versifier of the people. He found nothing' easier than to throw aside his professor's mantle and to improvise ballate for women to chant as they danced their rounds upon the Piazza di S. Trinit
Miss Nora O'Malley will open the show by singing 'Peggy Brady, as only an Irish colleen of her pretensions can." Nora rose, looked toward Jessica, who went at once to the piano to accompany her, and sang the song demanded with a fascinating brogue that always brought forth the applause of her friends. She responded to an encore. Then Anne's turn came, and she recited "Lasca."
The spell of the stage seized her with Tempest's first line, first elegant despairing gesture. It held her through Burlingham and Anstruther's "sketch" of a matrimonial quarrel, through Connemora and Eshwell's "delicious symphonic romanticism" of a lovers' quarrel and making up, through Tempest's recitation of "Lasca," dying to shield her cowboy lover from the hoofs of the stampeded herd.
Here are some purely sailing records worth remembering. A Newfoundland schooner, the Grace Carter, has sailed across to Portugal, sold her fish there, gone to Cadiz for all the salt that she could carry, and then reported back in Newfoundland within the month. A Canadian schooner yacht, the Lasca, has crossed easterly, the harder way, in twelve days from the St Lawrence.
Messer Luigi mio, di noi che fia Che sian restati senza il nostro sole? seems to have taken Michelangelo's fancy. Many good pens in Italy poured forth laments on this occasion. We have verses written by Giovanni Aldobrandini, Carlo Gondi, Fra Paolo del Rosso, and Anton Francesco Grazzini, called Il Lasca. Not the least touching is Luigi's own threnody, which starts upon this note:
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