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Updated: May 14, 2025
Fior. lib. i. p. 23, records a saying of Savonarola's, Gigli con gigli dover fiorire, as one of the causes of the obstinate French partiality of the Florentines in 1529. See Varchi, Segni, and Nardi, who agree on these points. That Savonarola believed in his own prophecies there is no doubt.
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.
A more explicit influence on the renaissance belief that the function of poetry is to improve social morality is readily seen in the definitions of poetry which have already been quoted from Lombardus and Varchi, who formulated their definitions of poetry by combining Aristotle's definition of tragedy with his definition of rhetoric.
The two following sonnets, therefore, whenever written, may be taken as expressing his settled feeling about the first and greatest of Italian poets: After this it only remains to quote the celebrated sonnet used by Varchi for his dissertation, the best known of all Michael Angelo's poems.
When it was over, he shrugged his shoulders, wrote his magnificent Apology with a style of adamant upon a plate of steel, and left it for the outlaws of Filippo Strozzi's faction to deal with the crisis he had brought about. For some years he dragged out an ignoble life in obscurity, and died at last, as Varchi puts it, more by his own carelessness than by the watchful animosity of others.
a faculty of finding out whatsoever is accommodated to the imitation of actions, passions, customs, in rhythmical language, for the purpose of correcting the vices of men and causing them to live good and happy lives. The same definition, derived as Spingarn has shown from the same sources, was formulated by Varchi.
'In this way, writes Varchi, 'the Duke had taken such familiarity with Lorenzo, that, not content with making use of him as a ruffian in his dealings with women, whether religious or secular, maidens or wives or widows, noble or plebeian, young or elderly, as it might happen, he applied to him to procure for his pleasure a half-sister of Lorenzo's own mother, a young lady of marvellous beauty, but not less chaste than beautiful, who was the wife of Lionardo Ginori, and lived not far from the back entrance to the palace of the Medici. Lorenzino undertook this odious commission, seeing an opportunity to work his designs against the Duke.
The play of words upon Cavalieri's name in the last line of the first sonnet, the evidence of Varchi, and the indirect witness of Condivi, together with Michael Angelo's own letters, are sufficient in my judgment to warrant the explanation I have given above.
Villari, Life of Savonarola, vol. i. p. 259, may be consulted concerning the further distinction of Benefiziati, Statuali, Aggravezzati, at Florence. See also Varchi, vol. i. pp. 165-70. It must be mentioned that a provision for admitting deserving individuals to citizenship formed part of the Florentine Constitution of 1495. The principle was not, however, recognized at large by the republics.
Benedetto Varchi, in the proemium to a lecture upon one of Michelangelo's poems, speaks of it as "a most sublime sonnet, full of that antique purity and Dantesque gravity." Dante's influence over the great artist's pictorial imagination is strongly marked in the fresco of the Last Judgment, where Charon's boat, and Minos with his twisted tail, are borrowed direct from the Inferno.
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