The Duchess of Trajetto

  CHAPTER VIII.

  THE DUCHESS AND THE PAINTER.

  After the steed is stolen, we shut the stable-door; and the Duchess, whonow felt very cowardly after dark, set a regular watch on thebattlements, whose orders were that he should wind his horn every hour,as he paced his rounds, that she might be certified he was on the alert.The prolonged, wailing note of this horn, piercing the solemn stillnessof night, had something infinitely melancholy in it, and often woke herwith a start; but then she had the satisfaction of thinking all wassafe, and soon yielded herself again to soft repose. Her maids, of whomshe had as many as the Duchess in Don Quixote, were much more timorousthan she was, and yielded a good deal to their fears, thinking it ratherpretty and interesting to start and shriek on the smallest alarm, tillthey were scolded out of it by the Mother of the maids. This importantfunctionary, whose name, like that of Giulia's nurse, was Caterina, butwho bore the dignified prefix of Donna, was of Spanish birth, starchedand stiff as Leslie's duenna. In the feudal times, when the sons ofknights and nobles took service in the household of some brother nobleor knight, and performed the various duties of page and squire, theirsisters in like manner attended on the said noble's lady, somewhat inthe capacity of maids of honour, under the strict surveillance of theMother of the maids, who initiated them into all feminine crafts andhandiworks, as well as into the decorums and duties of life. That theDuchess's household comprised many of these girls, we know from herwill, leaving them marriage portions, generally with the addition of abed and bedding. Doubtless there was some Altesidora among them,accustomed to wear the old Duenna's heart out with her mischief and fun;but, on the whole, Donna Caterina's rule was popular. Obedience, thegrand principle of peace and order, once enforced, she exercised novexatious petty tyrannies.

  On the first rumour of Barbarossa's invasion, Donna Caterina had sweptoff all these young people into the cellar, and there locked them andherself in, while Caterina, the nurse, devoted herself to securing thejewels and plate, which she did with complete success.

  Sebastian del Piombo made many studies of the Duchess before he couldplease himself; and the irresolution with which captious cavillers havechosen to charge him was indicated in the deliberation with which hepoised and valued the merits of each before his final decision was made.But deliberation is a very different thing from vacillation; and evenirresolution is as often an evidence of a great mind before the ultimatechoice, as it is of a little one after it. Plenty of illustrations willoccur to you, without any impertinent suggestions.

  After sketching her, then, as a nymph, an angel, a goddess, he chose thesimplest of his studies: one that represented her as

  "A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; But yet an angel, too, and bright With something of celestial light:"

  and then, to it he set _con furore_, grasping palette and brushes asJove might his thunder-bolts, and painting up his study with consummateart and science, often in dead silence only broken by "A little more tothe right."

  As for the Duchess, when she was off duty, that is, when Sebastian wasgetting his picture together, and bringing the separate parts well upat the same time--as nature creates her works--she would dabble a littlein the arts herself, and pore over a few inches of paper, working as iffor her bread; with now and then a modest appeal,--"Is this altogetherill-done? Is this a trifle better? Just put in a touch or two."

  O, delightful art of painting! Who can pursue you and not be happy?Those artists who have known envy, jealousy, and malice, have not lovedyou for yourself, but for ends far below you; for you are infinitelycalming! The true painter knows no rivalry but with nature, no masterbut truth, no mistress but purity, no reward but success. As Garibaldi,king of men, said last year, "When God puts you in the way of doing agood thing, _do it_, and hold your tongue."

  "Do you think," said Giulia, one day, "I might become a good painter,if I gave my mind to it?"

  "Certainly, if you gave your mind to it. But you never will! You are toorich to be a good painter. A certain degree of excellence you mayattain, that will embellish your life and charm your leisure; but, tobecome really _great_, one must attack painting like any mechanicaltrade, and apply to it like an apprentice, not merely when the fancyinclines, but at all times, willing or unwilling."

  "Ah, that would never suit me," said the Duchess. "But, supposing Icould leap over the apprenticeship, and become at once a great artistlike Michael Angelo, I might have underlings to do all the rough workfor me, and only do what was pleasant."

  "That is not Michael Angelo's way at all," said Sebastian. "He grindshis own colours, I promise you, and lays his own palette, as I myselfdo when at leisure. One thinks out many profitable thoughts at suchtimes. And no one can prepare our colours to please us as we canourselves. Though many of the early stages of sculpture are executedfrom the clay model by rule and plummet, yet I assure you Michael Angelotrusts it to no inferior workman, but does it himself. He is a greatman! a truly great man! And one of his great achievements has been tosweep away the gold and purple backgrounds and other puerilities of thedark ages."

  Sebastian little thought art would ever make a _retrograde progress_ topre-Raffaelitism. _Do_ we then, after all, move in a circle?

  In a month, the picture was finished. It was curious that Giulia shouldhave sat for it, at Ippolito's request, and for Ippolito; but we knowthat she did. Affo supposes that she could not in courtesy refuse him,after his coming so chivalrously to her succour. You may see the picturenow, at the National Gallery. The Duchess and the painter had quite afriendly parting; and she engaged him, at his earliest leisure, to painther a portrait of himself.

  When the Cardinal saw the picture, it gave him a strange mixture ofpleasure and pain.

  "You have doubtless had a pleasant month," said he, moodily. "I wish youhad been Ippolito and I Sebastian."

  And when he found that Sebastian had promised Giulia his own picture, hebegged him to introduce _his_ portrait into it--which he did.

  "Ippolito had, at all events," says one of his chroniclers, "someloveable and estimable qualities, and most of the historians have agood word for him."[9] Doubtless this was owing to the genuine love ofletters which made the Medici the idols of the literati. Endowed byClement the Seventh with immense wealth, he was, says Roscoe, "thepatron, the companion, and the rival of all the poets, musicians, andwits of his time. Without territories and without subjects, Ippolitomaintained at Bologna a court far more splendid than that of any Italianpotentate. His associates and attendants, all of whom could boast ofsome peculiar merit or distinction which had entitled them to hisnotice, generally formed a body of about three hundred persons. Shockedat his profusion, which only the revenues of the church were competentto supply, Clement the Seventh is said to have engaged the _maestro dicasa_ of Ippolito to remonstrate with him on his conduct, and to requestthat he would dismiss some of his attendants as unnecessary to him.'No,' replied Ippolito, 'I do not retain them at my court because I haveoccasion for their services, but because they have occasion for mine.'"An answer worthy of a Medici, "His translation of the Eneid into Italianblank verse is considered one of the happiest efforts of the language,and has been frequently reprinted. Amongst the collections of Italianpoetry, also, may be found some pieces of his composition, which docredit to his talents."[10]

  [9] T. A. Trollope.

  [10] Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici. Some of his pieces may be found in Crescembini, Della volgare Poesia, ii. 11.

  One morning, when it was discovered that many valuable statues in Romehad been broken and defaced during the night, the Pope was so incensedat it that he gave orders that whoever had committed the outrage, unlessit should prove to be Cardinal Ippolito, should be hanged. This looks asif he were not quite sure that Ippolito might not be the culprit.However, the offender proved to be Lorenzino de' Medici; and it requiredall Ippolito's influence with the Pope to get him off.

  A Cardinal who could even be suspected by a Pope of playi
ng such a prankmust have been a sorry sort of a churchman; and though we read of "hisfrank, chivalrous nature," it would be vain indeed to look for anythinglike spirituality in a Medici. When Giulia asked him for something tosupply the vague longings of her heart for a higher happiness than thisworld could give, he was quite at sea, and could direct her to nothingbut ascetic observances and the sacrifice of all her possessions to thechurch, whose coffers he so recklessly emptied. Yet he had a naturecapable of better things; but it could not shake itself free from thetrammels of earth. When he looked at Giulia's picture he thought,"There, is a woman who might have made me happy." Perhaps he eventhought, "There is a woman who might have made me good;" but when a manthinks this and makes no effort to become one whit better than he is, hemight just as well spare himself the reflection.

  Of course there were many versions of the story of Barbarossa's attemptto capture the Duchess. Affo, the family annalist, summons all hissesquipedalian vocabulary to dignify the occurrence with such eloquenceas this--"Quali fosseri gli affetti del suo delicatissimo animo in cotalfuga, degno argomento di poema! e di storia, giovera per interrompimentodi questo basso mio stile, di alzarsi a tanto incapace," &c., &c. AndMuzio Giustinapolitano indited an eclogue on the subject, beginning--

  "Muse! quali antri o qual riposte selve Vi teneano in quel punto? e tu, Minerva! Qual sacri studj? E qual nuova vaghezza Il dolce Amor?" &c., &c.

  "What were you all about, ye muses, goddesses, and you, you little godof love," &c., that you did not fly to the rescue of this adorable lady?and so forth.

  It was not only declared that Barbarossa had been despatched by theSultan, who desired to enumerate her among the beauties of his harem,but that she had flung herself out of window, in her chemise, and fledbarefooted to the mountains, where she fell into the hands of somecondottieri, who, recognising her, respectfully conducted her back toher castle. Giulia was very angry when these stories reached her, whichshe was the last, however, to hear of; and when it was learnt that shewas contradicting them with warmth, another and worse story wascirculated, that she had had a Moorish slave assassinated for havingtold the truth; in proof of which, his dead body had been cast ashorewith his tongue cut out. When Giulia begged her kinsmen to refute thesecalumnies, they only pooh-poohed them, which greatly enraged her; andshe was heard to exclaim, "What a world this is!" which, after all, wasnot a very original observation.

  Extremely weary of herself and of things in general, she one morninglanguidly opened a letter from her cousin, the Marchioness of Pescara,with very little expectation of its affording her much interest oramusement.

  "Vittoria is always a flight above me," she mentally said. "I never was,and never shall be, one of your grand intellectual ladies."

  This was said with that species of contempt with which too many of usimply, "Your grand intellectual ladies are great stupids, afterall"--but are they so? Have they not often the best of it, even in thisworld? Appreciation and applause that we real stupids would be very gladof, fall to the share of the working bees that make the honey, and havenot some of them, at any rate, as fair a hope as any of us, of a goodplace in the world to come?

  Thus wrote "the divine Vittoria," as she was frequently called--not inthe sense of her being a doctor of divinity, but addicted to divinethings:--

  "There is now among us a man who is producing an extraordinary sensation--Fra Bernardino Ochino, a Capuchin, who comes in the spirit and with the power of Savonarola. Another valuable addition to our Christian circle is Signor Juan de Valdes, the new Governor of San Giacomo, and twin-brother of the Emperor's Latin secretary. How I wish you were among us! We have a very pleasant little society here, quite apart from those worldlings whose company you and I have forsworn, our chief delight being to interchange thoughts and feelings, cultivate our minds, and elevate our souls. When the hot weather comes, I shall return to Ischia. Farewell."

  "Thy Vittoria."

  "Truly," exclaimed the Duchess, "to be at Naples would be ten thousandtimes better than to remain here, where the malaria certainly affectsme; and I am sure my dear Duke would have said so, were it only for fearof Barbarossa."

  So she gave the word of command, to the immense joy of her ladies, and,after a prodigious bustle of preparation, she started with quite alittle army of retainers--six ladies of honour in sky-blue damask, sixgrooms in chocolate and blue, her maggior-domo in starched ruff and blackvelvet, and a competent number of men armed to the teeth. She performedthe journey, no very long one, in a horse-litter, curtained with blueand silver, and piled with blue satin mattresses; and when she wished tochange her position she mounted her white palfrey.