The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. Jacob Burckhardt

415 he closely studied those of all other parts of Italy, and was the first to know and describe accurately the remains which abounded in the districts for miles around the capital.416 It is true that, both as priest and cosmographer, he is interested alike in classical and Christian monuments and in the marvels of nature. Or was he doing violence to himself when he wrote that Nola was more highly honoured by the memory of St. Paulinus than by all its classical reminiscences and by the heroic struggle of Marcellus? Not, indeed, that his faith in relics was assumed; but his mind was evidently rather disposed to an inquiring interest in nature and antiquity, to a zeal for monumental works, to a keen and delicate observation of human life. In the last years of his Papacy, afflicted with the gout and yet in the most cheerful mood, he was borne in his litter over hill and dale to Tusculum, Alba, Tibur, Ostia, Falerii, and Ocriculum, and whatever he saw he noted down. He followed the line of the Roman roads and aqueducts, and tried to fix the boundaries of the old tribes who dwelt round the city. On an excursion to Tivoli with the great Federigo of Urbino the time was happily spent in talk on the military system of the ancients, and particularly on the Trojan war. Even on his journey to the Congress of Mantua (1459) he searched, though unsuccessfully, for the labyrinth of Clusium mentioned by Pliny, and visited the so-called villa of Virgil on the Mincio. That such a Pope should demand a classical Latin style from his abbreviators, is no more than might be expected. It was he who, in the war with Naples, granted an amnesty to the men of Arpinum, as countrymen of Cicero and Marius, after whom many of them were named. It was to him alone, as both judge and patron, that Blondus could dedicate his ‘Roma Triumphans,’ the first great attempt at a complete exposition of Roman antiquity.417

      Nor was the enthusiasm for the classical past of Italy confined at this period to the capital. Boccaccio418 had already called the vast ruins of Baiæ ‘old walls, yet new for modern spirits;’ and since this time they were held to be the most interesting sight near Naples. Collections of antiquities of all sorts now became common. Ciriaco of Ancona (d. 1457), who explained (1433) the Roman monuments to the Emperor Sigismund, travelled, not only through Italy, but through other countries of the old world, Hellas, and the islands of the Archipelago, and even parts of Asia and Africa, and brought back with him countless inscriptions and sketches. When asked why he took all this trouble, he replied, ‘To wake the dead.’419 The histories of the various cities of Italy had from the earliest times laid claim to some true or imagined connection with Rome, had alleged some settlement or colonisation which started from the capital;420 and the obliging manufacturers of pedigrees seem constantly to have derived various families from the oldest and most famous blood of Rome. So highly was the distinction valued, that men clung to it even in the light of the dawning criticism of the fifteenth century. When Pius II. was at Viterbo421 he said frankly to the Roman deputies who begged him to return, ‘Rome is as much at home as Siena, for my House, the Piccolomini, came in early times from the capital to Siena, as is proved by the constant use of the names Æneas and Sylvius in my family.’ He would probably have had no objection to be held a descendant of the Julii. Paul II., a Barbo of Venice, found his vanity flattered by deducing his House, notwithstanding an adverse pedigree, according to which it came from Germany, from the Roman Ahenobarbus, who led a colony to Parma, and whose successors were driven by party conflicts to migrate to Venice.422 That the Massimi claimed descent from Q. Fabius Maximus, and the Cornaro from the Cornelii, cannot surprise us. On the other hand, it is a strikingly exceptional fact for the sixteenth century that the novellist Bandello tried to connect his blood with a noble family of Ostrogoths (i. nov. 23).

      To return to Rome. The inhabitants, ‘who then called themselves Romans,’ accepted greedily the homage which was offered them by the rest of Italy. Under Paul II., Sixtus IV., and Alexander VI. magnificent processions formed part of the Carnival, representing the scene most attractive to the imagination of the time—the triumph of the Roman Imperator. The sentiment of the people expressed itself naturally in this shape and others like it. In this mood of public feeling, a report arose, that on April 15, 1485, the corpse of a young Roman lady of the classical period—wonderfully beautiful and in perfect preservation—had been discovered.423 Some Lombard masons digging out an ancient tomb on an estate of the convent of Santa Maria Novella, on the Appian Way beyond the Cæcilia Metella, were said to have found a marble sarcophagus with the inscription, ‘Julia, daughter of Claudius.’ On this basis the following story was built. The Lombards disappeared with the jewels and treasure which were found with the corpse in the sarcophagus. The body had been coated with an antiseptic essence, and was as fresh and flexible as that of a girl of fifteen the hour after death. It was said that she still kept the colours of life, with eyes and mouth half open. She was taken to the palace of the ‘Conservatori’ on the Capitol; and then a pilgrimage to see her began. Among the crowd were many who came to paint her; ‘for she was more beautiful than can be said or written, and, were it said or written, it would not be believed by those who had not seen her.’ By the order of Innocent VIII. she was secretly buried one night outside the Pincian Gate; the empty sarcophagus remained in the court of the ‘Conservatori.’ Probably a coloured mask of wax or some other material was modelled in the classical style on the face of the corpse, with which the gilded hair of which we read would harmonise admirably. The touching point in the story is not the fact itself, but the firm belief that an ancient body, which was now thought to be at last really before men’s eyes, must of necessity be far more beautiful than anything of modern date.

      Meanwhile the material knowledge of old Rome was increased by excavations. Under Alexander VI. the so-called ‘Grotesques,’ that is, the mural decorations of the ancients, were discovered, and the Apollo of the Belvedere was found at Porto d’Anzo. Under Julius II. followed the memorable discoveries of the Laöcoon, of the Venus of the Vatican, of the Torso, of the Cleopatra.424 The palaces of the nobles and the cardinals began to be filled with ancient statues and fragments. Raphael undertook for Leo X. that ideal restoration of the whole ancient city which his celebrated letter (1518 or 1519) speaks of.425 After a bitter complaint over the devastations which had not even then ceased, and which had been particularly frequent under Julius II., he beseeches the Pope to protect the few relics which were left to testify to the power and greatness of that divine soul of antiquity whose memory was inspiration to all who were capable of higher things. He then goes on with penetrating judgment to lay the foundations of a comparative history of art, and concludes by giving the definition of an architectural survey which has been accepted since his time; he requires the ground plan, section, and elevation separately of every building that remained. How archæology devoted itself after his day to the study of the venerated city and grew into a special science, and how the Vitruvian Academy at all events proposed to itself great aims,426 cannot here be related. Let us rather pause at the days of Leo X., under whom the enjoyment of antiquity combined with all other pleasures to give to Roman life a unique stamp and consecration.427 The Vatican resounded with song and music, and their echoes were heard through the city as a call to joy and gladness, though Leo did not succeed thereby in banishing care and pain from his own life, and his deliberate calculation to prolong his days by cheerfulness was frustrated by an early death.428 The Rome of Leo, as described by Paolo Giovio, forms a picture too splendid to turn away from, unmistakable as are also its darker aspects—the slavery of those who were struggling to rise; the secret misery of the prelates, who, notwithstanding heavy debts, were forced to live in a style befitting their rank; the system of literary patronage, which drove men to be parasites or adventurers; and, lastly, the scandalous maladministration of the finances of the state.429 Yet the same Ariosto who knew and ridiculed all this so well, gives in the sixth satire a longing picture of his expected intercourse with the accomplished poets who would conduct him through the city of

416

What follows is from Jo. Ant. Campanus, Vita Pii II., in Muratori, iii. ii. col. 980 sqq. Pii II. Commentarii, pp. 48, 72 sqq., 206, 248 sqq., 501, and elsewhere.

417

First dated edition, Brixen, 1482.

418

Boccaccio, Fiammetta, cap. 5. Opere, ed. Montier, vi. 91.

419

His work, Cyriaci Anconitani Itinerarium, ed. Mehus, Florence, 1742. Comp. Leandro Alberti, Descriz. di tutta l’Italia, fol. 285.

420

Two instances out of many: the fabulous origin of Milan in Manipulus (Murat. xl. col. 552), and that of Florence in Gio. Villani (who here, as elsewhere, enlarges on the forged chronicle of Ricardo Malespini), according to which Florence, being loyally Roman in its sentiments, is always in the right against the anti-Roman rebellious Fiesole (i. 9, 38, 41; ii. 2). Dante, Inf. xv. 76.

421

Commentarii, p. 206, in the fourth book.

422

Mich. Cannesius, Vita Pauli II., in Murat. iii. ii. col. 993. Towards even Nero, son of Domitius Ahenobarbus, the author will not be impolite, on account of his connection with the Pope. He only says of him, ‘De quo verum Scriptores multa ac diversa commemorant.’ The family of Plato in Milan went still farther, and nattered itself on its descent from the great Athenian. Filelfo in a wedding speech, and in an encomium on the jurist Teodoro Plato, ventured to make this assertion; and a Giovanantonio Plato put the inscription on a portrait in relief carved by him in 1478 (in the court of the Pal. Magenta at Milan): ‘Platonem suum, a quo originem et ingenium refert.’

423

See on this point, Nangiporto, in Murat. iii. ii. col. 1094; Infessura, in Eccard, Scriptores, ii. col. 1951; Matarazzo, in the Arch. Stor. xvi. ii. p. 180. Nangiporto, however, admits that it was no longer possible to decide whether the corpse was male or female.

424

As early as Julius II. excavations were made in the hope of finding statues. Vasari, xi. p. 302, V. di Gio. da Udine. Comp. Gregorovius, viii. 186.

425

The letter was first attributed to Castiglione, Lettere di Negozi del Conte Bald. Castiglione, Padua, 1736 and 1769, but proved to be from the hand of Raphael by Daniele Francesconi in 1799. It is printed from a Munich MS. in Passavant, Leben Raphael’s, iii. p. 44. Comp. Gruyer Raphael et l’Antiquité, 1864, i. 435-457.

426

Lettere Pittoriche, ii. 1, Tolomei to Landi, 14 Nov., 1542.

427

He tried ‘curis animique doloribus quacunque ratione aditum intercludere;’ music and lively conversation charmed him, and he hoped by their means to live longer. Leonis X. Vita Anonyma, in Roscoe, ed. Bossi, xii. p. 169.

428

This point is referred to in the Satires of Ariosto. See the first (‘Perc’ ho molto,’ &c.), and the fourth ‘Poiche, Annibale’).

429

Ranke, Päpste, i. 408 sqq. ‘Lettere dei Principi, p. 107. Letter of Negri, September 1, 1522 … ‘tutti questi cortigiani esausti da Papa Leone e falliti.’ They avenged themselves after the death of Leo by satirical verses and inscriptions.