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Updated: June 27, 2025
Extinguish the architecture and the sculpture, the poetry and the philosophy of Attica; obliterate from the sum of civilization the names of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli, of Cimabue, Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Michel Angelo, of Brunetto, Ficino, Politian; and how much diminished will be the remainder!
In return, Politian was begged to examine Scala's writings: nowhere would he find a more devout admiration of antiquity. The secretary was ashamed of the age in which he lived, and blushed for it. Some, indeed, there were who wanted to have their own works praised and exalted to a level with the divine monuments of antiquity; but he, Scala, could not oblige them.
"In the first place," said Corinne, "strangers are for the most part acquainted only with our poets of the first rank Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Guarini, Tasso, and Metastasio; whilst we have several others, such as Chiabrera, Guidi, Filicaja, Parini, without reckoning Sannazarius, Politian, &c., who have written in Latin, with as much taste as genius; and all unite in their verses the utmost beauty of colouring and harmony; all, with more or less talent, adorn the wonders of nature and art with the imagery of speech.
The Miscellanea of POLITIAN are not only the result of his studies in the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but of conversations which had passed in those rides which Lorenzo, accompanied by Politian, preferred to the pomp of cavalcades.
Scala was far from being the only friend of this class, and he found several who, if they were not among those thirsty admirers of mediocrity that were glad to be refreshed with his verses in hot weather, were yet quite willing to join him in doing that moral service to Politian.
In return for the treatment he received, Politian became the herald and the living symbol of Medicean glory. Lorenzo, after the fashion of a true Medici, delighted in giving an outward and artistic expression to his social amusements.
Politian and the brothers Pulci admire again the ancient sculptures which are to them as illustrations of their readings, and Lorenzo notes the works of all the students who were destined to contribute to the glory of the many Medicean palaces. How the burly Torrigiano's heart burns within him when the Duke praises his compeer's works!
For the men of the Renaissance, no matter how philosophized and cultured, retained the pleasure in mere incident, which we moderns seem to have given over to children and savages; and Lorenzo, Ficino, and Politian probably listened to the adventures of Luigi Pulci's paladins and giants with much the same interest, and only a little more conscious sense of grotesqueness, with which the crowd in the market listened to Cristofano dell' Altissimo and similar story-tellers.
From the reading of Politian and Lorenzo dei Medici, from the sight of the Psyche of Raphael, the Europa of Veronese, the Ariadne of Tintoret, men like Greene and Dorset learned that revival of a more luscious and pictorial antique which was brought to perfection in Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" and Marlowe's "Sestiad."
They form a series of full-length portraits, sometimes of celebrated contemporaries, as Politian, Marsilio Ficino, and others, but always of flesh-and-blood people, living, moving, and having a being. One almost catches the winged syllogisms as they fly from lip to lip.
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