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The remodelling of the library of the Castello di Pavia was another important work which was carried out in the year 1492, by Tristano Calco the historian and kinsman of the chief secretary, under the eye of Lodovico himself, while he and Beatrice spent the summer at Pavia.
He granted liberal pensions to Bernardino Corio and Tristano Calco, "the Milanese Livy," who continued the history of the Visconti begun by the Alessandria professor and addressed letters in his own hand to the private owners of valuable manuscripts, requesting the loan of works that would assist these writers of Lombard history, "in order that a perpetual memory of the great deeds done by our ancestors may be preserved for future generations."
The same Platina and Giovio, whose great histories we only read because and so far as we must, suddenly come forward as masters in the biographical style. We have already spoken of Tristano Caracciolo, of the biographical works of Fazio and of the Venetian topography of Sabellico, and others will be mentioned in the sequel.
The English called him Drousiano, but his real name was Drousiano Martinelli, the same who, with his brother Tristano, visited the court of Philip II, and there is no reason to suppose that he was either the first or the last of his countrymen who tried to carry off English gold from merry London. The typical Italian masks are quite well known to the authors of that period.
Among Neapolitan writers, Tristano Caracciolo, so far as we are able to judge, holds indisputably the first place in this respect, although his purpose was not strictly biographical. In the figures which he brings before us, guilt and destiny are wondrously mingled. He is a kind of unconscious tragedian.
The inhabited part of the building was reached by a spiral staircase enclosed by a tower. A balcony connected with the principal room enabled me to read an inscription cut in a stone of the tower: 'Tristano Disclaris, 1615. But for this record left by the founder, his name would probably have passed, long ago, out of the memory of men.
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