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A HOLIDAY IN UMBRIA 
 
 WITH AN ACCOUNT OF URBINO AND 
 THE CORTEGIANO OF CASTIGLIONE 
 
 By Sir THOMAS GRAHAM JACKSON, Bt 
 
 R.A.. F.S.A. 
 
 HON. D.C.L. OF oxford; HON. LL.D. OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 HON. FELLOW OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 ASSOCI^ DE l'aCAd6mIE ROYALE 
 
 DE BELGIQUE 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 ^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1917 
 
^\ 
 
 \\\ 
 
 aSv 
 
 
 IN 
 MEMORIAM 
 
 A. M. J. 
 
 CARISSIMAE 
 ITINERUM 
 CONSORTIS 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book is the result of two visits, in 1881 
 and 1888, made in happier days to a part of 
 Italy little known to travelling Britons, but not 
 inferior to any in historical associations and in 
 beauty of nature and art. There are important 
 Roman remains at Rimini, Fano, Ancona, 
 and in the Passo del Furlo, near the scene of 
 Hasdrubal's defeat which saved the Roman 
 State. The architecture of the Middle Ages is 
 represented by the churches of Ancona, Gubbio, 
 and others, and the earlier and most interesting 
 period of the Renaissance by Alberti's work at 
 Rimini, and the ducal palaces of Urbino, 
 Pesaro, and Gubbio. 
 
 The Duchy of Urbino was the birthplace of 
 Raffaelle and Bramante, and the home of the 
 most brilliant and humane court of Italy, if not 
 of Europe. Unlike most Italian princes, who 
 have left behind them a record of treachery 
 and cruelty, the rulers of Urbino deserved and 
 enjoyed the respect and love of their subjects. 
 Castiglione has given us in his Cortegiano a 
 picture of the graceful and refined society at 
 
 387658 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 the Court of Guidobaldo, where he spent the 
 happiest years of his life. His book is now little 
 read, and the brief abstract of it in these pages 
 will, it is hoped, be found interesting. Besides 
 portraying the ideal gentleman as then conceived 
 — a picture in the main not less true for our 
 own day — the Cortegiano throws a valuable light 
 on the views of the society of that time on many 
 other subjects. We find women no longer wor- 
 shipped with the idolatry of chivalry, but criticized 
 with freedom, and their character and capacities 
 variously estimated, praised by some and de- 
 preciated by others. The French are depicted 
 as restless and impetuous, despisers of learning, 
 and caring only for arms. The clergy come in 
 for unlimited satire, far beyond anything in 
 Chaucer or Boccaccio. The jumping Cardinal, 
 the practical joking Cardinal, the lascivious 
 priest pass as a matter of course. There is 
 more malice in the suggestion that such-a-one 
 had he stayed in Rome might have become a 
 Cardinal, he was so wicked ; and that Cardinals 
 are prayed for in church on Good Friday in 
 the collect for heretics and schismatics. Friars 
 are a regular butt for the wit of Bibbiena, but 
 they are denounced by II Magnifico Giuliano de' 
 Medici as cursed mischief-making hypocrites, 
 and this is the only instance in the book where 
 playful satire passes into a bitter mood. 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 There is perhaps no other book that brings 
 the reader so intimately into touch with the 
 living men and women of four hundred years 
 ago. As we read we become of the party our- 
 selves ; we know the several speakers ; we ap- 
 preciate their different views ; we turn to the 
 door when interrupted by the trampling of feet 
 and the blaze of lights which announce the 
 arrival of the youthful Prefetto, and we rise 
 with surprise when daylight peeps through the 
 chinks of the shutters and finds us still in the 
 midst of our pleasant talk. 
 
 The story of the Duchy is usefully collected 
 in Dennistoun^s Dukes of Urbino, but I have 
 referred when I could to the original authorities, 
 and to the archives at Pesaro, Urbino, and 
 Ancona. Sir T. Hoby's translation of the 
 Cortegiano in 1561 has been re-edited with an 
 introduction by Sir W. Raleigh, to which I am 
 much indebted. Other works to which I have 
 referred will be found mentioned in the notes. 
 
 A few of the illustrations are from photo- 
 graphs ; the rest are from my own sketches. 
 
 T. G. J. 
 
 Eagle House, Wimbledon 
 28 August 1 91 6 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Adriatic Shore — San Marino — Rimini — The Italian 
 
 Despots — The Condottieri . . . . i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Pesaro — The Ducal Palace — The Churches — The Villa 
 
 Imperials . . . . . ... 20 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Fano — The Basilica of Vitruvius — Ancona — The Port 
 AND Trajan's Arch — The Churches — The Loggia and 
 Giorgio Orsini . . . . . -32 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Loreto — The Santa Casa and the Pilgrims . . 42 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Urbino — History — The Montefeltrine Dukes — Duke 
 Federigo — The Palace — Luciano da Laurana — Duke 
 GuiDOBALDO I. — The Later Dukes . . -54 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Urbino — The Palace and Churches . . -76 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Count Baldassare Castiglione and the Cortegiano . loo 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 "II Cortegiano" — The Courtier . . . .114 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Urbino;and Castel-Durante . . . . -174 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The Apennines from Urbino to Gubbio — Passo del Furlo 
 
 — Cagli ....... 183 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Gubbio — The Duomo — The Ducal Palace — Palazzo dei 
 
 CoNSOLi — Pretorio ..... 190 
 
 INDEX 203 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PLATE 
 
 FIG. 
 
 Ancona 
 
 . The Port and Trajan's Arch 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 
 I. 
 
 
 
 Loggia dei Mercanti. {Photograph) 
 
 38 
 
 V. 
 
 
 
 Portal of S. Francesco. {Photograph) 
 
 40 
 
 VI. 
 
 
 Castel- 
 
 DURANTE 
 
 I The Ducal Palace .... 
 
 179 
 
 
 10 
 
 FURLO 
 
 Passo del 
 
 184 
 
 XIII. 
 
 
 GUBBIO . 
 
 View of the Town .... 
 
 190 
 
 ... 
 
 II 
 
 
 Interior of the Duomo . 
 
 192 
 
 XIV. 
 
 
 
 Cortile of the Ducal Palace . 
 
 194 
 
 XV. 
 
 
 LORETO 
 
 . Peasant Women .... 
 
 49 
 
 ... 
 
 4 
 
 Pesaro 
 
 Front of the Ducal Palace 
 
 22 
 
 IV. 
 
 
 
 Villa Imperiale, Sketch Plan of Chapel 
 
 29 
 
 ... 
 
 2 
 
 
 „ „ Pavement 
 
 30 
 
 ... 
 
 3 
 
 Rimini 
 
 The Porta Romana. (Photograph) 
 
 6 
 
 II. 
 
 
 
 The Monument of Isotta 
 
 8 
 
 III. 
 
 
 
 Medallion of Sigismondo Pandolfo 
 
 
 
 
 
 Malatesta .... 
 
 19 
 
 ... 
 
 I 
 
 
 From Dennistoun's Dukes of Urbino. 
 
 
 
 
Xll 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PLATE 
 
 FIG. 
 
 Urbino . Arms of the Montefeltrine Dukes . 
 
 53 
 
 ... 
 
 5 
 
 View from near S. Bernardino 
 
 54 
 
 ... 
 
 6 
 
 Portraits of Duke Federigo and his 
 
 
 
 
 Duchess .... 
 
 64 
 
 VII 
 
 
 From Dennistoun, after Pier della Fran- 
 
 
 
 
 cesco. 
 
 
 
 
 View from Road to Pesaro . 
 
 76 
 
 vin. 
 
 
 Ducal Palace, Plan of First Floor . 
 
 84 
 
 ... 
 
 7 
 
 „ „ Section from Piazza 
 
 
 
 
 to Street 
 
 ^% 
 
 ... 
 
 8 
 
 „ „ Porta della Guerra. 
 
 
 
 
 {Photograph) 
 
 86 
 
 IX. 
 
 
 „ „ Chimney-piece, degli 
 
 
 
 
 Angeli . 
 
 88 
 
 X. 
 
 
 „ „ Chimney-piece in 
 
 
 
 
 East Wing . 
 
 93 
 
 ... 
 
 9 
 
 Portrait of Count Baldassare Cas- 
 
 
 
 
 tiglione 
 
 100 
 
 XL 
 
 
 Picture in the House of Giovanni 
 
 
 
 
 Sanzi. {Photograph) 
 
 174 
 
 XIL 
 
 
A HOLIDAY IN UMBRIA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ADRIATIC COAST OF ITALY— RIMINI— THE 
 ITALIAN DESPOTS 
 
 The eastern shores of Italy do not offer to the 
 mere tourist the attractions of the Ligurian 
 Riviera. There is no Monte Carlo where fortunes 
 can be made only to be lost, no Casino for the 
 butterfly of fashion, there are no smart hotels 
 with long bills for luxuries that one could well 
 do without, no gay promenades with gardens and 
 bandstands. The coast is lashed by the wild 
 Adriatic, here casting up mire and dirt, very 
 different from the crystal depths and transcendent 
 azure of the same sea on the rocky Dalmatian 
 shores opposite. It is a rough sea to navigate, 
 as Horace frequently reminds us. Lydia tells 
 her lover he is more passionate than the naughty 
 Adriatic, the poets generally give it a bad name, 
 and after many long journeys upon it, I can testify 
 that it still lives up to its ancient reputation. 
 
 I 
 
2 ' SAN MARINO [Ch. I. 
 
 For those, however, who have no taste for 
 places of fashionable resort, there is no part of 
 Italy that offers more attractions, not only by its 
 historical associations, but by the many interest- 
 ing monuments of art in which it abounds. 
 
 From the lagoons of Venice southward the 
 coast is low and flat, a watery land, intersected 
 by the numerous mouths of the Po and the Adige, 
 whose delta is pushed out well into the sea. The 
 Apennines lie far away, and there is a wide ex- 
 panse of flat country before it reaches the foot of 
 the isolated volcanic mass of the Euganean Hills 
 and Monte Venda, where, in the little village 
 street of Arqua, Petrarch lies in his sarcophagus 
 of red marble. It is not till we have passed 
 Ravenna and her pine-clad shores, and crossed 
 the Rubicon into Umbria that the Apennines 
 again approach the seaboard. Even at Rimini 
 and Pesaro there is still a considerable expanse 
 of low land between the hills and the sea, and it is 
 not till the mighty rock of Ancona is reached that 
 the mountains come actually down to the coast. 
 
 From Rimini, which lies a little way within 
 the Umbrian border, distant views may be had of 
 romantic and strangely shaped mountain masses 
 in the interior, on one of which is seated the tiny 
 republic of San Marino, the home of freedom and 
 autocracy from the days of the fall of the Roman 
 Empire, and now our gallant ally ; for San 
 
Ch. L] SAN MARINO 3 
 
 Marino has entered into the present world's 
 struggle and declared war on Austria, the 
 hereditary foe. The little army of forty men 
 mentioned in Murray's Guide of 1863 had grown 
 to the respectable number of two thousand at the 
 time of Mr. Theodore Bent's visit in 1877,^ and 
 I have no doubt it will give a good account of 
 itself in the present war. 
 
 Of all the many commonwealths that flour- 
 ished in Italy after the fall of the great central 
 power, San Marino alone, with the exception of 
 Venice, did not come under the rule of what the 
 Greeks called a Tyrant, but preserved its com- 
 munal estate throughout the Middle Ages and 
 down to this day. The Dukes of Urbino, within 
 whose Duchy the little commonwealth was en- 
 closed, were its Protectors, and undertook to 
 accord ''all possible aid and favour in the 
 maintenance of its independence and freedom." 
 In return the Republic engaged itself to regard 
 the friends and foes of the Duke as their own, 
 and to pay him due respect as their Protector. 
 
 Proud of their independence, the Sammarinesi 
 addressed the Queen of the Adriatic as ''our very 
 dear sister, the most serene Republic of Venice." 
 The simplicity of their manners is illustrated by 
 the story of a Venetian who carried an appeal to 
 
 ^ A Freak of Freedom^ or the Republic of San Marino^ by J. T. Bent, 
 honorary citizen of the same. 
 
4 RIMINI [Ch. I. 
 
 one of the Captains or Consuls of San Marino, 
 whom he found treading grapes in his vineyard, 
 and was promptly righted, and who afterwards 
 spent months in recovering a debt in the courts 
 at Venice ; whence it passed into a proverb that 
 a simple grape-treader of San Marino is worth 
 far more than ten big-wigs at Venice.^ 
 
 S. Marino, the founder of this little state, 
 was a stonemason from Arbe, an island in the 
 Gulf of Quarnero, of which I have the happiest 
 recollections, who retired to these solitudes at 
 the time of Diocletian's persecution, and founded 
 not the usual monastery but a republic, to be 
 free and independent of all men, as he expressed 
 it in his dying instructions. 
 
 The little capital stands on a volcanic hill of 
 2635 f^^t> ^rid on other scarcely accessible pin- 
 nacles of rock, something like the convents of 
 Meteora in Greece, are perched the little towns of 
 Maiola and San Leo, the last named on the ancient 
 Mons Feretrius, the mediaeval Montefeltro, that 
 gave its name to a county, ruled by a famous 
 family of which we shall have much to say. 
 
 Except for the monuments it contains of 
 Roman and mediaeval greatness, Rimini is a dull 
 uninviting town of rather mean streets, like 
 Ravenna, which also is a shabby town with 
 little general picturesqueness. At one end is 
 
 ^ Bent, op. cit, p. 260. 
 
Ch. I.] RIMINI 5 
 
 the Roman bridge, over which the town is 
 entered by the old Via Emilia, which comes 
 from Piacenza, Parma, and Bologna, and is 
 joined a little way off by the road from Ravenna. 
 At the other end is the Roman arch, by which 
 the road to Rome, the ancient Via Flaminia, 
 leaves it. On the flat sandy shore is a Stabili- 
 mento dei Bagni built on a vast scale and 
 seemingly out of proportion to the old city, 
 which may have its season of gaiety, but at the 
 time of our visit in October was closed, deserted, 
 and melancholy. There is a little harbour, gay 
 with the painted fishing craft of the Adriatic, at 
 the mouth of the river Marecchio, which flows 
 under the arches of the Roman bridge, and this 
 is the most cheerful spot of modern Rimini, 
 otherwise a dull town. 
 
 The bridge of five arches is said to have been 
 begun by Augustus the year before his death, 
 and to have been finished by Tiberius, a.d. 20. 
 From the bridge the Corso Augusto leads in a 
 straight line to the Porta Romana, the Roman 
 arch, which commemorates the gratitude of the 
 Senate and people to Augustus for the restoration 
 of the Via Flaminia, B.C. 27. It is on a grand 
 scale, and the architecture presents many irregu- 
 larities, showing that Classic architects worked 
 with greater liberty than the modern slaves of 
 Vitruvius. Two Corinthian columns flank the 
 
6 RIMINI [Ch. I 
 
 archway and carry an entablature which is broken 
 forward over them. The pediment, however, does 
 not spring from them, but lies back on the wall 
 face, and entirely between these two projections 
 (Plate IL). In the cornice the corona is entirely 
 omitted, and the cymatium runs horizontally along 
 the chord of the tympanum as well as on the raking 
 pediment. The upper part has been added to in 
 the Middle Ages, and is finished with the forked 
 battlements of Italian military science. These 
 alterations and additions have disturbed the 
 dedicatory inscription, which is imperfect and 
 disarranged, but one can still read in curious 
 spelling : 
 
 . . . CELEBERRIMEIS ITALIAE VIEIS . . . LEIS. 
 
 Our visits to this part of Italy were unfor- 
 tunate in the matter of weather, being rather too 
 late in the year. The country at the head of the 
 Adriatic has, I believe, the heaviest rainfall in 
 Europe, and in the late autumn wet weather is 
 prevalent. Travellers would do well to come to 
 these parts in spring or early summer, though in 
 the mountainous interior it is probably never too 
 hot at any time. There is no distinctive costume 
 to be seen till one gets farther down the coast, but 
 the peasants wear a good deal of nice jewellery, 
 of which we bought some in a bric-a-brac shop. 
 An old lady, seeing what we were after, ran home 
 
t'LATE n. 
 
 RIMINI. 
 Porta Romana. 
 
 t To face p. 6. 
 
Ch. L] RIMINI 7 
 
 to get some of her own, and finally sold us a 
 ring off her finger. These diversions served to 
 pass a wet afternoon, and an obliging waiter did 
 the honours of the hotel and showed us behind 
 a shutter in one of the bedrooms a really inter- 
 esting fourteenth-century fresco, which he would 
 have it was a genuine work by Giotto. 
 
 The great interest of Rimini centres upon 
 the DuoMO of S. Francesco, where Sigismondo 
 Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, in 1450 
 employed Leo Battista Alberti to encase a church 
 of ordinary Italian Gothic in the new manner ; 
 for the Renaissance was then carrying everything 
 before it, and Gothic had had its day. Behind 
 Alberti's mask of Classic work may still be seen 
 the Gothic side windows of simple tracery, and 
 in the inside the nave arches are pointed, though 
 the piers on which they rest are panelled and 
 sculptured in the new style. Alberti's work is 
 extremely delicate and refined, and has still about 
 it something of the freedom and individuality 
 of the older Gothic, not yet stiffened into 
 Palladianism. It was never finished, for Sigis- 
 mondo's troubled career ended in misfortune, 
 and his schemes, whether of policy or of art, 
 were doomed to failure. To judge from a medal, 
 on the reverse of which is the representation of 
 the church as it was to have been, Alberti's 
 design included a dome of magnificent propor- 
 
8 RIMINI [Ch. I. 
 
 tions over the crossing, and a fine facade of 
 which only the lower storey and a fragment of 
 the upper are completed. The south flank of the 
 nave, however, is finished, and consists of an 
 arcade of piers and arches, forming a sort of 
 peristyle detached from the main wall ; and in 
 the intercolumniations are the sarcophagi of 
 poets, orators, philosophers, and other eminent 
 men whom Sigismondo had gathered round him, 
 and among whom he intended his own bones to 
 be laid. These, together with the piers them- 
 selves, are raised on a high podium, along the 
 top of which runs a beautifully designed frieze 
 of scrolls, intermixed with shields and badges. 
 The effect of this is extremely good, and had 
 Alberti's design been finished the church would 
 have been one of the finest gems of the early and 
 most interesting period of the Renaissance.^ 
 
 The Duomo goes by the name of Tempio 
 dei Malatesta, and Sigismondo seems to have 
 deliberately given a pagan air to what he did. 
 The little sculptured panels of the piers in the 
 interior might be imitated from Classical intaglios, 
 and have no religious significance. His arms, 
 quartered with the interlaced initials of himself 
 and his mistress — perhaps his wife — Isotta, 
 appear in all parts of the church, together with the 
 
 ^ D'Agincourt devotes plate li. of his Architecture to plans and 
 elevations of the Duomo of Rimini. 
 
?LATE III. 
 
 T. G. J. 
 
 RIMINI. 
 Monument of Isotta. 
 
 [ To face p. 
 
Ch. L] RIMINI 9 
 
 elephants, his crest and supporters. Isotta herself 
 has a monument in a side chapel (Plate III.) 
 J bearing the date 1450, though it appears that 
 - she did not die till twenty years later. The in- 
 scription seems to imply her deification in the 
 Roman fashion. Sigismondo himself died in 
 1468, in his fifty-second year, and lies entombed 
 within the church. 
 
 The family of Malatesta, who became Lords 
 of Rimini in the thirteenth century, came origin- 
 ally from Verrucchio, a grim castle near San 
 Marino, and like that city and San Leo perched on 
 one of the volcanic peaks of the district. Ver- 
 rucchio was the scene of the tragedy of Francesca 
 and Paolo da Rimini in 1288. Dante, describing 
 the state of Romagna to the shade of Guido da 
 Montefeltro, speaks of the elder and younger 
 Malatesta of his time in no favourable terms : 
 
 E'l mastin vecchio, e'l nuovo da Verrucchio, 
 Che fecer di Montagna il mal governo, 
 La, dove soglion, fan de' denti succhio. 
 
 /«/, xxvii.^45. 
 
 Among all the petty princelings who reigned 
 over the cities of Romagna and Central Italy 
 Sigismondo may not have been the worst, but he 
 must be placed very low down in the scale, and 
 none perhaps did more than he to involve that 
 unhappy country in constant strife and misery. 
 In the fifteenth century most of the independent 
 
lo THE ITALIAN DESPOTS [Ch. I. 
 
 commonwealths, great and small, which had arisen 
 in Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and 
 still earlier, and had been strong enough to defy 
 the distant and rarely enforced power of the 
 Empire, had fallen under the rule of some great 
 family ; and democracy, true to Aristotle's cycle, 
 had lapsed into tyranny. There were the Visconti, 
 and after them the Sforza at Milan ; the Medici 
 were slowly but surely strangling liberty at 
 Florence ; the D'Este ruled at Ferrara ; at Verona 
 the dynasty of the Scala had only just expired, 
 and had been succeeded by the Venetian republic ; 
 the Gonzaga possesssed Mantua ; the Vitelli 
 ruled at Citta di Castello ; the Baglioni at 
 Perugia ; the Bentivogli at Bologna ; a cadet of 
 the Malatesta and afterwards a Sforza at Pesaro ; 
 the Varana at Camerino ; and the Montefeltrini 
 at Urbino. 
 
 Italy being included, nominally at all events, 
 in the Empire, most of the Dukes and Counts of 
 these principalities held them as fiefs of the 
 Emperor. Those of La Romagna, which ex- 
 tended from the Duchy of Modena to the Adriatic, 
 and those of Umbria were held as fiefs of the 
 Papacy, which claimed them as part of the Patri- 
 mony of St. Peter. The rights of the Empire 
 gave little trouble, but papal greed was always 
 on the watch to extinguish feudal rights and in- 
 corporate the little principalities into the States 
 
Ch. I.] THE ITALIAN DESPOTS ii 
 
 of the Church, except when the nepotism of Popes 
 like Sixtus iv., Alexander vi., Julius ii., and Leo x. 
 carved out of them petty kingdoms for their own 
 families. 
 
 Each of these little courts vied with its neigh- 
 bours in splendour. The princes lived in a style 
 far beyond all proportion to the natural wealth of 
 their territory or the means of their subjects. 
 "Absolute power," says Sismondi, ** leads to ex- 
 pensive vices," and each petty despot indulged 
 himself as if he had been an emperor. His 
 revenue being unequal to his means of defence, 
 his vanity, and his pleasures, he was driven to 
 various unworthy contrivances to wring from his 
 oppressed people the means of indulging himself. 
 One plan which the tyrants adopted, according to 
 Macchiavelli, was to impose fines for certain things 
 which were not regularly inflicted, but collected 
 suddenly after a period of apparent but carefully 
 calculated negligence, during which they had 
 amounted to a considerable sum. But the way 
 in which most of them increased their income was 
 by stipendiary service. Romagna and La Marca 
 were the great nurseries of the mercenary armies 
 of those times, and the lords of these petty states 
 were trained to arms as a profession and a means 
 of livelihood. Their military qualities gave a 
 disproportionate importance to their diminutive 
 states. There was seldom a war in Central Italy 
 
12 THE ITALIAN DESPOTS [Ch. I. 
 
 when there was not a Malatesta, a D'Este, a 
 Montefeltro, or a Vitelli on one side or the other. 
 Venice drew her best troops from the March and 
 the Romagna, as well as the officers who com- 
 manded them ; and many of the Princes were 
 engaged by a retaining fee not necessarily to fight 
 on her side, but at all events not to serve against 
 her. It was said that from this district '' Captains 
 could be found for all the Princes of the world ; 
 that from thence went forth that company of 
 St. George with which Alberigo of Barbiano had 
 exterminated the foreign mercenaries, and revived 
 the fame of Italian arms. They were the same 
 race and stock of men who had once contributed 
 so much to the establishment of the Roman 
 Empire."^ 
 
 The bands oicondottieri, or mercenary soldiers 
 which each princeling raised for service under 
 whatever state would buy him, brought wealth to 
 his exchequer, but wrought infinite misery to 
 the country. For they paid themselves not only 
 by their legitimate — if it can be called legitimate 
 — warfare, but by marauding attacks on their 
 neighbours and by the sack of the towns that fell 
 into their hands, for pillage was considered the 
 
 1 Ranke, vol. i. book iv. He quotes Lorenzo Priuli, Relazioni a.d. 
 ijS6 : " Lo stato pieno di viveri . . . e d'huomini bellicosi. Pareno 
 tutti questi popoli nati et allevati nella milizia. E molto presto si 
 metteva insieme molta buona gente toccando il tamburro." 
 
 i 
 
Ch. L] the ITALIAN DESPOTS 13 
 
 soldier's privilege. The cynical indifference with 
 which they were ready to take service on either 
 side in any quarrel is almost amusing. It 
 mattered no more to them than it does to a 
 barrister whether he is briefed for plaintiff or 
 defendant. In 1469 we find Federigo da Monte- 
 feltro, Count of Urbino, with the aid of Florence 
 defending his son-in-law Roberto Malatesta, who 
 had proclaimed himself Lord of Rimini on the 
 death of his father Sigismondo, against Pope 
 Paul II. But in 1474 he is fighting for the Pope 
 Sixtus IV. against Florence. Four years later he 
 and his son-in-law Roberto are still for the Pope 
 against Florence, but in the year following 
 Roberto appears as the Florentine General, and 
 defeats the papal forces at Lake Thrasymene. 
 Still more wonderful, in 1482 we find Federigo 
 and Roberto opposed to one another, Federigo 
 being now for Florence and Roberto for the Pope. 
 Naturally these professional soldiers took no 
 interest in the cause they fought for. Their 
 object was not victory, which might have spoilt 
 business, but to take prisoners for ransom. Each 
 hero reflected that very likely he might be fight- 
 ing to-morrow for the side against which he was 
 serving to-day. The battles were often bloodless. 
 Macchiavelli never loses an opportunity of sneer- 
 ing at the mercenaries of that age. He describes 
 the battle of Molinella, which lasted half a day, 
 
14 THE ITALIAN DESPOTS [Ch. I. 
 
 neither side giving way ; yet nobody was killed, 
 and only a few prisoners were taken on either 
 side. This is probably an exaggeration, for some 
 authorities speak of it as a sanguinary affair, but 
 it is a characteristic touch. A still more charac- 
 teristic incident of this battle is recorded by a 
 Milanese writer ; he says that Count Federigo of 
 Urbino, who commanded for the Duke of Milan, 
 towards the end of the conflict meeting Alessandro 
 Sforza, his father-in-law, who was fighting on the 
 other side, exclaimed, '' Oh ! my lord and father, 
 we have already done enough " ; to which Sforza 
 replied, ''This I leave to you to determine"; 
 whereupon both commanders called off their 
 forces.^ When the Duke of Milan threatened to 
 behead Federigo for not having pressed on and 
 won the victory, the Count replied that he defied 
 any one who understood the art of war to say he 
 had not proceeded after the rules of military 
 tactics. Their employers, who naturally wanted 
 to win, cared little for the rules of military tactics, 
 and took a different view from the mercenary 
 soldiers, and Federigo narrowly escaped the 
 Duke's vengeance. When Guidobaldo, the second 
 Duke of Urbino, was besieged in Bibbiena by the 
 Florentines under Vitelli he fell ill, and Vitelli 
 let him go home to his Duchy. The Florentines 
 naturally were indignant, and when Paolo Vitelli 
 
 ^ Corio, cited Dennistoun's Dukes of Urbino^ vol. i. p. 179. 
 
Ch. I.] THE ITALIAN DESPOTS 15 
 
 had made one or two similar mistakes they 
 tortured and killed him. Carmagnola offended 
 the Venetians by similar leniency towards his 
 prisoners, and was punished in the same way.^ 
 But these petty wars, of which it is impossible to 
 keep the details in one's head, or to remember on 
 which side or for what cause each commander 
 was fighting, and which Milton might have called 
 battles of kites and crows more deservedly than 
 those of our Saxon ancestors, though they brought 
 glory and money to the condottieri caused the 
 utmost misery to the unhappy non-combatants, 
 whose lands were ravaged and their homes 
 violated. In 1388 the Florentines reproached 
 Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini for taking to a 
 trade so discreditable to one of his descent, and 
 cautioned him not to meddle with any of their 
 subjects and friends ; upon which he justified 
 himself by saying he had spent 30,000 florins in 
 forming his band, and could not maintain them 
 without making raids on the country around 
 him. 
 
 These numerous little courts, however, found 
 time in the intervals of fighting for more peace- 
 
 ^ He had ordered the release of his prisoners "as was usual," 
 secondo Puso. Manzoni, who wrote a tragedy on the fate of Carmagnola, 
 quotes in his preface Andrea Redusio's explanation of this habit of 
 releasing prisoners : " Egli I'attribuisce al timore che i soldati avevano 
 di veder presto finite le guerre, e di sentirsi gridare dai popoli alia zappa 
 i soldati." 
 
i6 THE ITALIAN DESPOTS [Ch. I. 
 
 ful triumphs. Those of Urbino, Pesaro, Ferrara, 
 and Rimini were among the most brilliant in 
 Europe. They rivalled each other in the encour- 
 agement of art and literature, in the patronage of 
 artists and learned men, and contributed largely 
 to the general advancement of the humanities. 
 Of the part played by the Counts of Urbino we 
 shall speak hereafter. The temple at Rimini, and 
 the associations connected with it, show the share 
 taken by Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in ad- 
 vancing art and encouraging men of letters in his 
 dominions. High mental culture, however, is un- 
 fortunately compatible with the lowest standard of 
 morality. It has been said that '' an Italian prince 
 in those days durst not be a barbarian. A murderer 
 perhaps, stained with the most flagitious crimes, 
 he might be ; but he must seek his absolution in 
 works of magnificence, he must atone for his 
 outrages against public morality by his devotion 
 to the cause of learning and homage to the public 
 taste." ^ The crimes of the Italian despots have 
 become proverbial. Every family had its share 
 of assassinations ; scarcely any man of mark died 
 in his bed without suspicion of poison, whether 
 well founded or not. There were frightful stories 
 of revenges, stopping short of nothing but ex- 
 termination of the hated family. Oliverotto 
 Eufreducci was brought up as an adopted son 
 
 ^ Mariotti, cited Dennistoun, vol. i. p. 182. 
 
Ch. L] THE ITALIAN DESPOTS 17 
 
 by his maternal uncle, Giovanni de Fogliani, 
 Lord of Fermo, who apprenticed him to Vitelli 
 to learn the art of war. Having served with 
 distinction under Cesare Borgia he proposed to 
 visit his uncle and benefactor, and arrived with 
 a hundred horsemen. He was received with 
 honour and entertained at a banquet to which 
 all the notables of Fermo were invited. In the 
 midst of the festivity Oliverotto introduced his 
 hundred men and massacred his uncle and his 
 guests, and made himself Lord of Fermo. His 
 own turn came in 1502, when he was strangled 
 by Cesare Borgia at Sinigaglia, with the two 
 Orsini and Vitelli. Sismondi tells a still more 
 ghastly story. Arcimboldo, Archbishop of Milan 
 and Cardinal, going as legate to Perugia and 
 Umbria, found there a gentleman who, after 
 smashing against a wall the heads of his enemy's 
 children, and strangling their mother who was 
 pregnant, nailed a surviving infant to the door, 
 as gamekeepers do with vermin, and this outrage 
 was not thought in the neighbourhood to be 
 anything remarkable. Sigismondo Malatesta, 
 who surrounded himself with artists and men of 
 letters, and grouped their tombs round his own 
 destined sepulchre at Rimini, married three 
 times. His first wife was a daughter of Car- 
 magnola, whom he repudiated after her father's 
 tragical death. His second wife was Ginevra, 
 
i8 THE ITALIAN DESPOTS [Ch. I. 
 
 daughter of the Marquis of Ferrara, whom he 
 is said to have poisoned. He then married 
 Polissena, daughter of Francesco Sforza, whom 
 he strangled in order to give himself wholly to 
 his mistress Isotta, whose tomb we saw at 
 Rimini, and whose initials, lovingly intertwined 
 with his own, awake our sympathy till we learn 
 the story of blood by which their union was 
 cemented. Isotta seems to have been a woman 
 of talent and conduct, and to have tamed the 
 monster and been faithful to him and influenced 
 him for good. It is doubtful whether they were 
 ever married. She survived Sigismondo, but 
 was dispossessed of the government of Rimini by 
 Roberto Malatesta, one of Sigismondo's bastard 
 sons. The whole of Sigismondo's life was occu- 
 pied in warfare with the Montefeltrini of Urbino. 
 After twenty-four years of strife, at the beginning 
 of which the Malatesta owned the whole coast 
 from Cervia and Cesena to the Fiumicino near 
 Ancona, Sigismondo was left with little more 
 than Rimini, the rest having fallen chiefly to his 
 principal enemies, a Montefeltrino or a Sforza. 
 
 The hatred which the oppressions and 
 cruelties of these petty princes provoked ac- 
 counts in great measure for the rapid success 
 of Cesare Borgia in making himself master of 
 Romagna and Umbria. The princes who were 
 his victims were scarcely less criminal and blood- 
 
Ch. I.] 
 
 THE ITALIAN DESPOTS 
 
 19 
 
 Stained than himself, and his treachery and out- 
 rages were directed against them and not against 
 their people. He was sagacious enough to see 
 that by governing his new subjects well and 
 leniently he would win them to his side. Under 
 his rule justice and public safety were assured, 
 factions were repressed, and all classes were 
 protected and prosperous. Consequently, says 
 Guicciardini, no Romagnole could contemplate 
 without fear the return of his old lord. 
 
 Fig. I. — Medallion of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 PESARO 
 
 The railway from Rimini to Pesaro follows the 
 coast-line, and runs parallel to the old Via 
 Flaminia, which led from Ariminum to Pisaurum, 
 and ran onward to Ancona and Rome. The 
 station at Pesaro is some way from the town, 
 and we rattled through dark gloomy streets till 
 at last we were set down at a cavernous portal 
 which we were told was our inn. By the light 
 of a single lamp, hidden behind a corner of the 
 wall, we entered a great vaulted basement smelling 
 of wine-lees and encumbered with casks. Pick- 
 ing our way over the pavement, foul with litter 
 and cow-dung, we reached the foot of an immense 
 staircase worthy of a giant's castle, ascending 
 which we succeeded with some trouble in finding 
 two peasant women who brought the landlord. 
 Then followed an ugly dispute with a brigand, 
 who had mounted the box of our carriage unin- 
 vited, and refused to go till we had paid him 
 three and a half lire for handling our luggage. I 
 referred the matter to the arbitration of the land- 
 lord, a good easy man who was half afraid of the 
 
Ch. II.] PESARO 21 
 
 rascal, and did not much like the office. How- 
 ever, in the end the demand was abated, and 
 when the man had departed i\it padrone relieved 
 his mind. ''What could I do?" said he. 
 "What you offered him was more than enough. 
 They are all of them birbanti, birbanti, birbanti. 
 They are assassins. The other day one of them 
 drew his knife on a Swiss gentleman, who 
 knocked him down with his stick, and gave him 
 ^ma bella basto7^ata!' 
 
 As soon as our ruffled feelings were calmed, 
 and we had got rid of our importunate driver, 
 who never ceased imploring us to engage him 
 and his carriage to take us to Urbino, we ex- 
 amined our apartments. These too, like the 
 staircase, were on a gigantic scale. The room in 
 which my wife and I were lodged was 45 feet 
 square, and the single candle by which it was 
 illumined projected gigantic shadows of ourselves 
 on a vaulted ceiling at an immense height above 
 us. One might almost as well have slept under 
 the dome of St. Paul's. A friend who was 
 travelling with us was lodged in another princely 
 chamber of the same dimensions. On further 
 acquaintance, however, we became so much 
 attached to the Hotel Zongo as to return to it at 
 the end of our visit to Urbino, and the shy land- 
 lord proved to be a very jovial dog, and was of 
 good service to us in our travels afterwards. 
 
2 2 PESARO [Ch. II. 
 
 Pesaro belonged to a branch of the Malatesta 
 family, who seem to have made it a practice to 
 divide and distribute among themselves their 
 various lordships. In 1444 Pesaro was held by 
 Galeazzo Malatesta, from whom his cousin Sigis- 
 mondo Pandolfo tried to take it ; but he was 
 prevented by Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of 
 Urbino. In 1445 Federigo proposed to Fran- 
 cesco Sforza, afterwards Duke of Milan, to buy 
 out Galeazzo, Federigo acquiring Fossombrone 
 and Sforza taking Pesaro. This was so done, 
 and Francesco established his brother Alessandro 
 at Pesaro, where the Sforza ruled till eventually, 
 in 15 1 2, the fief was included in the Duchy of 
 Urbino. 
 
 On one side of the Piazza is the old Ducal 
 Palace, now the Prefettura (Plate IV.), with an 
 imposing and successful facade in which, though 
 it seems a simple design, there is a good deal 
 of subtle contrivance. The lower storey has an 
 arcade of six arches, all alike except that the one 
 opposite the entrance to the cortile has decorated 
 mouldings. This places a pillar in the middle. 
 To have carried the six divisions up into the 
 upper storey, with a pier in the centre would 
 have been intolerable ; consequently there are 
 five windows only over the six arches, which 
 brings a window with a ringhiera into the 
 middle, and puts it all right. The facade is 
 
u 
 
 < 
 1-1 
 
 C 2 
 < < 
 
 w ;:) 
 
 CL Q 
 
 W 
 
 a: 
 H 
 
Ch. II.] PESARO 23 
 
 finished with a deep and widely projecting cor- 
 nice that throws a fine shadow. The archi- 
 tectural features are in stone, apparently Istrian, 
 and in the upper storey the wall between them is 
 plastered. The interior cortile is plain, but has 
 a good doorway at the far end. The windows 
 bear the initials of Guidobaldo 11., the fourth 
 Duke of Urbino, who reigned from 1538 to 1574. 
 They occur also in other parts of the building. 
 
 G. V. II. V. D. IIII. 
 
 The first floor facing the Piazza is occupied 
 by the Great Hall, which has a splendid ceiling, 
 deeply coffered and painted and gilt. Though it 
 has been touched up by the hand of no less an 
 artist than our worthy host of the Albergo Zongo, 
 as he told me with honest pride, it remains pretty 
 much in its original state, but for a little decay 
 and dirt. Among the emblems in the ceiling is 
 the oak tree, the badge of the Delia Rovere 
 family to which the later Dukes of Urbino be- 
 longed. 
 
 There are several fair doorways of Italian 
 Gothic in the churches, which are not otherwise 
 remarkable.^ The doorway of S. Domenico, a 
 disused church in the Piazza, bears the date 
 1395. In this church was about to be estab- 
 lished, at the time of our visit, a musical con- 
 
 ^ Illustrations of them will be found in Italia Artistica. 
 
24 PESARO [Ch. II. 
 
 servatorio for which money had been left by 
 Rossini, who was a native of Pesaro, and has 
 a statue there to his memory. 
 
 Memories, too, survive at Pesaro of Bernardo 
 and Torquato Tasso. Bernardo came hither 
 about 1556 or 1560 with his son, then twelve or 
 thirteen years old, to try and get a living for 
 himself and help for his ruined master, the Prince 
 of Salerno. Hither again came Torquato after his 
 father's death, to his patroness Lucrezia d'Este, 
 the first wife of Francesco Maria 11., son and 
 heir of Guidobaldo 11., and he followed her to her 
 brother's court at Ferrara when she separated 
 from her husband. Four years later, in 1576, his 
 madness first showed itself. 
 
 The town possesses a splendid collection of 
 the majolica ware of Pesaro, Gubbio, Urbino, 
 and Castel Durante, which can be studied to 
 advantage as well here as anywhere. Pesaro 
 still produces admirable majolica, but it is only 
 a copy of the old fabric, and has no originality. 
 Some of the pieces are deceptively imitated, and 
 might take in the unwary. They have a fine 
 lustre. We went over one of the factories, which 
 was on a very modest scale, with only two or 
 three painters at work. Charming little pieces 
 of pottery, made for use by the peasants in their 
 cottages, can be bought in the markets for a few 
 pence each. 
 
Ch. II.] PESARO 25 
 
 Although the Apennines are still some miles 
 distant, the outskirts of Pesaro are hilly, and the 
 ground much broken. On one summit a little 
 way out of the town is the Villa Imperiale, a 
 palace of the Sforza and afterwards of the Dukes 
 of Urbino. Vasari has much to say about it in 
 his life of Girolamo Genga, a painter and archi- 
 tect of Urbino, and a friend of Raffaelle. Guido- 
 baldo I, employed him in painting caparisons 
 of horses, which were then in fashion, and 
 Francesco Maria i. in making triumphal arches 
 and theatrical apparatus and scenery for his 
 nuptials with Leonora Gonzaga. Thus do the 
 great men of the earth patronize genius, like 
 Piero dei Medici, who set Michelangelo to model 
 a snow man. 
 
 Genga followed Duke Francesco Maria i. into 
 exile during the Medicean usurpation, and painted 
 pictures at Cesena and Forli. On the Duke's re- 
 storation in 1 52 1, Genga was employed to restore 
 the old palace of the Sforza on the hill of the 
 Imperiale, which, says Vasari, '' under the direc- 
 tion and design of Genga was adorned by paint- 
 ings of the history and deeds of the Duke, by 
 Francesco di Forli, Raffaelle dal Borgo, painters 
 of good fame, and by Camillo of Mantua, who 
 had rare ability in doing landscapes and foliage, 
 and among the rest Bronzino of Florence also 
 worked there as a lad. The Dossi of Ferrara 
 3 
 
26 PESARO [Ch. II. 
 
 were also brought thither, and a chamber was 
 allotted to them to paint, but when it was finished 
 the Duke did not like it, and had it thrown down 
 to the ground, and done again by those above 
 named. Genga made there also the tower 120 
 feet high, with thirteen staircases of wood well 
 contrived and hidden in the walls." 
 
 ''The Duke therefore, seeing he had so rare a 
 genius, thought to make at the said place of the 
 Imperiale, near the old palace, another new palace, 
 and so he made that which is now to be seen, 
 which being a very beautiful palace, and well 
 planned, full of chambers, and colonnades, and 
 courts, and loggie, and of fountains and delight- 
 ful gardens. Princes never pass that way without 
 going to see it ; so that it deserved to be visited 
 by Pope Paul iii. when going to Bologna with all 
 his court, who remained entirely satisfied with it." 
 
 Fired with enthusiasm by this description, we 
 started one afternoon to see the wonders of the 
 Imperiale. We left the town by a huge gateway 
 in the fortifications with which Genga surrounded 
 the city, and crossed the little river which forms 
 the port of Pesaro. An exciseman at the gate 
 directed us amiss, and instead of turning up at 
 once to the right we followed the road towards 
 Rimini and had to make a long detour up steep 
 and muddy lanes round the Villa Vittoria, where 
 the unhappy Queen Caroline of England once 
 
Ch. II.J PESARO 27 
 
 resided. From the rising ground we had lovely 
 views inland, where ridge behind ridge of distant 
 Apennines rose in purple and violet hues beyond 
 the level plain at our feet. 
 
 Like most Italian buildings of the kind, the 
 Imperiale has no exterior attractions. The out- 
 side of an Italian villa never seems to have been 
 considered. Where in France or England we 
 should have had quaint gables, turrets, oriels, 
 and high roofs, in Italy you have nothing but a 
 square barrack-like mass, with here and there 
 perhaps a stunted tower, and plain whitened 
 brick walls full of unstopped scaffold-holes. 
 And yet somehow these buildings seem exactly 
 suited to their surroundings, and nothing else 
 would harmonize with the landscape so well. 
 
 The older and newer palaces are easily distin- 
 guished from one another. The older is a quad- 
 rangular building on the brow of the steep hill, 
 while the newer is on the slope above, and only 
 touches the other at an angle, where the two are 
 joined by a bridge. Genga s great tower is at- 
 tached to the older palace, which we entered by 
 an archway with the escutcheon of the Sforza 
 family, and the inscription 
 
 ALEXANDER FORTIA 
 
 MCCCCLXVII 
 
 Inside is a small cortile surrounded by graceful 
 
28 PESARO [Ch. II. 
 
 arcades, and grouped round a marble well in the 
 corner were the farm labourers washing from 
 their legs and feet the blood-red stain of the 
 grapes they had been treading. For the Im- 
 periale is now a farmhouse, in which a few 
 rooms furnished in a homely way are reserved 
 for the owner, Prince Albani of Milan, when he 
 visits his property. The only residents were the 
 farmer and his wife, the latter a pretty country 
 lass who did the honours of the palace very 
 gracefully. 
 
 The ground floor of the older building is 
 quite dismantled and used only for farm pur- 
 poses, but there are some good chimney-pieces 
 still there. A plain staircase leads to the first 
 floor, where in the rooms round the cortile are 
 the mural paintings by Rafifaelle dal Borgo, or 
 del Colle, and others mentioned above. Of 
 these fresco paintings we expected to find 
 remains only, for the guide-books speak of their 
 decay, but we did not find even that, for they 
 had all been lately repainted by Gennari of 
 Pesaro, an artist who was only just dead at the 
 time of our visit. A few of the rooms have 
 decorated ceilings, one of which I drew : it had 
 panels of red and blue alternately, divided by 
 ribs carved with oak leaves painted white and 
 gilt, and bearing on the blue ground the initials 
 F. M. and LE, for Francesco Maria i. and his 
 
Ch. II.J 
 
 PESARO 
 
 29 
 
 wife Leonora. On the red panels were several 
 devices, and among them a representation of 
 the pen still in use in Italy for securing oxen 
 to be shod. 
 
 A bridge leads to the newer palace built by 
 Genga for the Duchess Leonora as' a surprise 
 for her husband on his return from the wars. 
 Her dedication reads thus : 
 
 FR. MARIAE DVCI METAVRENSIVM A BELLIS REDEVNTI 
 LEONORA VXOR ANIMI EIVS CAVSA VILLAM EXAEDIFICAVIT 
 
 The date would be after the Duke's return from 
 exile, on the death of his old enemy Leo x. in 
 1 52 1. In the interval of fifty-four years between 
 the building of the old and the new palace, the 
 early Italian Renais- 
 sance had developed 
 into a more complete 
 imitation of Classic 
 architecture. But 
 though the charm and 
 poetry of the mediae- 
 val styles that still 
 clung to the new 
 mode on its first de- 
 parture had by this time been lost, there is 
 much to admire in Genga's work. The rooms 
 are picturesquely planned ; the chapel when 
 furnished must have been very pretty, and the 
 effect unusual, for the plan is unique (Fig. 2). 
 
 Sketch not to scale. 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 I 
 
30 
 
 PESARO 
 
 [Ch. II. 
 
 The floors are of small unglazed bricks, stamped 
 with geometrical patterns, and laid within bands 
 of white marble (Fig. 3). In some cases the 
 marble bands form a spiral line, and in others a 
 labyrinth. It would have been better had the 
 bricks been glazed. The ceilings of the piano 
 nobile were domed in stone or brick, and the 
 backs of the domes stand up in the oddest way 
 
 through the floors of the 
 rooms above, which were 
 probably used by servants 
 uncomfortably enough. 
 
 This newer palace is 
 quite dismantled, and 
 though weathertight is 
 uninhabitable, even the 
 doors being removed. 
 Being built on the slope 
 of the hill the upper 
 floor opens at the end of 
 the wing on a level with a charming terraced 
 garden, which forms the fourth side of the newer 
 quadrangle. It was full of simple flowers 
 growing in the wildest profusion, of which our 
 guide presented a handful alia Signora. 
 
 A lovely though muddy walk down an um- 
 brageous lane took us by a much shorter way to 
 the city gate. 
 
 Our friendly landlord at the Zongo, at 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
Ch. II.] PESARO 31 
 
 parting, furnished us with notes of recommenda- 
 tion, as a most rispettabile famiglia, to the 
 hotels at Urbino and Fossombrone. These 
 introductions with which Italian innkeepers 
 sometimes furnish you, if you have put yourself 
 on friendly terms with them, as all sensible 
 travellers will do, are of great service in securing 
 attention, and I think moderating charges. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 FANO— ANCONA 
 
 From Pesaro it is a pleasant drive of about an 
 hour along the coast to Fano. On the right are 
 considerable cliffs of loose shale not amounting 
 to rock, and in the distance may be seen the 
 towers of Fano at the water s edge, and beyond 
 them the great mountain behind Ancona. 
 
 Fano, the ancient Fanum Fortunae, which 
 Vitruvius calls Colonia Julia Fanestris, now a 
 quiet country town with humble provision for 
 visitors, was of more consequence in Roman 
 times. It still boasts a Roman arch, erected in 
 honour of Augustus, and it had a basilica built 
 by Vitruvius, of which he gives a description in 
 his fifth book. It was a covered hall 120 feet 
 by 60, with columns round it 50 feet high, four 
 at the end and eight at the side, counting in 
 each case those at the angles ; but the two 
 middle columns of one side were omitted to leave 
 open the front of the temple of Augustus, where 
 was the tribunal in an apse at the far end. Two 
 storeys of porticos 20 feet wide surrounded the 
 
Ch. III.] FANO 33 
 
 central hall, not, however, reaching so high as the 
 columns, but leaving 12 feet like a clerestory in 
 the intercolumniations for light above their lean- 
 to roofs.^ Nothing of this basilica now remains. 
 
 Vitruvius s design for his basilica violates 
 most of his own more formal precepts, and is 
 quite out of all order according to the pedantic 
 rules of the neo-Classic schools of the Renaissance. 
 Viollet le Due wittily observes that "half a 
 century ago Vitruvius would not have obtained 
 for his design for the Fano Basilica any mention 
 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, What do I say ? 
 He would have been excluded from the com- 
 petition ! — sent down to the lowest form to learn 
 Roman architecture from Vignola or Palladio. 
 Not put a complete entablature on the columns ! 
 Surmount their capitals with wood lintels and 
 with timber framing resting on pads ! Back the 
 columns with pilasters ! What heresy ! " ^ 
 
 Fano contains several churches, not of re- 
 markable interest, with good pictures chiefly by 
 later masters. The Palazzo della Ragione, now 
 turned into a theatre, is an interesting build- 
 
 1 "Reliqua spatia inter parastatarum et columnarum trabes, per 
 intercolumnia luminibus sunt relicta." The parastatae are responds 
 attached to the back of the great columns. These were in two heights : 
 the lower, 20 feet high, to carry the floor of the upper porticus, the 
 upper, 18 feet high, to carry its lean-to roof against the column, which 
 leaves 12 feet of the 50-foot column exposed. 
 
 2 V. le Due, Lectures on Architecture^ Part I. p. 150. 
 
34 FANO— ANCONA [Ch. III. 
 
 ing, with a Renaissance campanile, a Gothic 
 arcade of round arches below, and a range of four- 
 light windows under round arches above. The 
 Palazzo del Comune has some excellent windows 
 with traceries of brick and terra-cotta, and a 
 picturesque loggia. 
 
 Passing Sinigaglia, with its grim memories 
 of Cesare Borgia and the massacre of his former 
 confederates, where the guide-books did not 
 promise much to interest us, our next point 
 was Ancona. 
 
 Ancona, an ancient colony of Dorian Greeks 
 from Syracuse, was an independent republic 
 during the Middle Ages, with maritime preten- 
 sions that at one time threatened to rival those 
 of Venice. Its liberties were extinguished in 
 1532, when it fell under the dominion of the 
 Popes. Curved like a bent arm — ayKcov — round 
 its splendid natural harbour, with tier above tier 
 of fine buildings rising as an amphitheatre on 
 the sides of the lofty hills that here reach the 
 coast-line, Ancona has something of the state- 
 liness of Genoa. On the topmost peak stands 
 the ancient Cathedral of S. Ciriaco, full of rude 
 marble screens and balustrades adorned with 
 sculptures of semi-Byzantine art, and preceded 
 by a grand arched portal designed by Margaritone 
 of Arezzo in the thirteenth century. From this 
 summit the eye commands a vast expanse of 
 
Ch. III.] ANCONA 35 
 
 coast-line and blue water ; one almost hopes to 
 catch the faint outline of the distant Velebic 
 mountains that line the coast of Dalmatia : 
 and this prospect, as we viewed it in 1881, first 
 inspired me with the resolution to visit that 
 country, then little known and only imperfectly 
 described. 
 
 The port is bordered by spacious quays, and 
 embraced by hospitable moles. On the land 
 end of the nearest of them stands the Arch of 
 Trajan, the most beautiful of all Roman arches, 
 though robbed of its ancient bronzes. The 
 stately effect of the long flight of steps that lead 
 up to it, and the unusual loftiness of its propor- 
 tion, make it very imposing. The material is 
 white marble ; and time has toned it down to 
 that beautiful apricot yellow which it only attains 
 in a southern clime. (Plate I., Frontispiece.) 
 
 Overshadowed by lofty buildings, which sadly 
 smother it, is the pretty little Church of S. Maria- 
 in-Piazza, which, though built in 12 10, is still in 
 the Romanesque style, with tiers of arcading, 
 Pisan fashion, in its little facade, and other 
 ornaments in the earlier manner. Over the 
 entrance are some rhyming Leonine hexameters, 
 which give the date and the name of the artist 
 Philippus. The poet has ingeniously sur- 
 mounted the difficulty of the Pope's name, for 
 Innocent can no more be got into a hexameter 
 
36 ANCONA [Ch. III. 
 
 line than the little town which Horace passed 
 on his way to Brundusium, quod versu dicere 
 non est — 
 
 Ad matrem Xristi que templo presidet isti 
 Qui legis ingredere veniam pregando merere 
 Cum bis centenus claudisset tempora denus 
 Annus Millenus floreret Papa Serenus 
 Imperiique decus princeps Otto sumeret equus 
 Hec Philippe pie decorasti templa Marie.^ 
 
 Ancona ^possesses a group of buildings by an 
 architect with whose name and work I became 
 familiar on the other side of the Adriatic. 
 Giorgio Orsini, of a Zaratine family that claimed 
 descent from the noble Roman house, was the 
 architect of the eastern part, and the upper part 
 of the rest of the Duomo of Sebenico. He did 
 not live to finish it, but to him must be attributed 
 the marvellous and unique covering of the church 
 by a barrel vault of marble slabs visible both 
 within and without.^ His engagement there was 
 made in 1441 and renewed in 1446, but the work 
 was suspended from 1448 till 1471 for want of 
 funds. In the interval he was actively engaged 
 on the Rector's Palace at Ragusa, at first in 
 concert with Michelozzi and afterwards by him- 
 self, and also at Spalato and Pago. In 1450 we 
 
 ^ Innocent in., Pope, ii 98-1 216 ; Otto iv., Emperor, 1209-18. 
 2 Vide my Dalmatian the Quarnero and Istria^ vol. i. pp. 369, 395, 
 etc., ii. 331, iii. 242. 
 
Ch. III.] ANCONA 37 
 
 find him at Ancona, at Recanati, and at Cittanova 
 in the Marches. 
 
 In the Archives of the Republic, to which the 
 courteous officials allowed me free access, I found 
 a full account of Giorgio's engagement at Ancona, 
 together with the contract between him and the 
 Anziani, or Senators. The Anconitans being 
 very prosperous commercially both by sea and by 
 land, resolved in the year 1443 to build an Ex- 
 change where merchants and citizens could meet 
 conveniently for business. The site chosen was 
 next the house of Dionisio Benincasa and be- 
 tween the High Street and the sea, where till 
 then there had been a precipitous and dangerous 
 place, down which Francesco Bessarion fell and 
 broke his head, of which accident his face bore 
 the marks to his dying day. The ground-floor 
 storey was built and roofed by Giovanni Sodo of 
 Ancona, a very clever architect, who won great 
 praise for his ingenuity in making the beams of 
 several short pieces, there being no room to draw 
 long timbers to the site. In this state the Loggia 
 remained till 1450. 
 
 In that year there arrived in Ancona a famous 
 master mason, ^ Maestro Giorgio of Sebenico, who 
 was engaged on the facade of the house ^ of 
 Dionisio Benincasa next door to the Loggia. It 
 
 1 "Un dignissimo maestro tagliapietra per nome M" Giorgio di 
 Sibinico." 
 
38 ANCONA [Ch. III. 
 
 came into his head that he would like to build 
 the facade of the Loggia, as well for the honour 
 of the thing as for '* cupidity of gain." So he 
 made a design which Dionisio took to the 
 Anziani, who all admired it, but there was no 
 money to carry it out. However, Dionisio and 
 other merchants, anxious for the adornment of 
 the town and the convenience of a place of busi- 
 ness, advanced the money on the security of the 
 Customs, "and so," says the annalist, ''the work 
 was done: adorned with foliage and beautiful 
 figures, with the horse and armed cavalier which 
 is the badge and the true arms of the Anconitans. 
 It was begun, as has been already said, and was 
 finished in 1459." (Plate V.) 
 
 ''This M° Giorgio was he who made the 
 very fine portal of Sco Francesco di le Scale, and 
 who began the portal of S. Agostino ; but he was 
 interrupted by death, and could not finish it, so 
 that the work," says the writer, "still remains 
 imperfect."^ 
 
 Giorgio Orsini died in 1475, and, so far as I 
 can [ascertain, at Sebenico, where he had a house 
 on the doorway of which he carved the bear, the 
 badge of his family, and the mallet and chisels 
 and other implements of his craft.^ 
 
 1 From the MSS. of Lazz. dei Bernabei, written in 1492, and the 
 Cronaca Anconitana di Camillo Albertini^ in the Archivio of Ancona. 
 
 2 Illustrated in my Dalmatian the Quarnero and Istria^ vol. i. p. 406. 
 
' ' t^LATE V 
 
 ANCONA. 
 Loggia dei Mercanti. 
 
 [To /ace p. 38. 
 
Ch. III.] ANCONA 39 
 
 The contract with the Anziani of Ancona is 
 interesting, as it shows that some sort of draw- 
 ing was embodied in the agreement. Giorgio 
 was to have 900 golden ducats, for which at his 
 own risk, danger, and fortune he was to do the 
 work, except that the employers were to provide 
 scaffolding, lime, lead, and bronze, and the stone 
 for filling in between two existing columns. 
 Also he is to make in the fashion shown on his 
 drawing the ''idols," carved life-size, with the 
 horse, great and fine, with the arms of the 
 Comune in the places drawn on the said paper. 
 He was to finish within two years, and to have 
 instalments of 200 ducats at specified stages of 
 the work, and the balance when the whole was 
 passed by the appointed judges. 
 
 Dionisio gives security in a hundred ducats 
 for Giorgio's proper performance of his contract. 
 
 The Loggia dei Mercanti has had the 
 lower storey remodelled in late Classic. The 
 upper storeys, which are Giorgio's work, are in 
 rather a coarse kind of florid Gothic, the details 
 being very poor. The windows have had Gothic 
 tracery which is cut out, and the openings are 
 blocked, and this spoils the design a good deal. 
 There are many features both in the Loggia and 
 in the doorways of S. Francesco and S. Agostino 
 that resemble details at Sebenico, especially a 
 cornice, which is found in all these three build- 
 
40 ANCONA [Ch. III. 
 
 ings, consisting of two tiers of leaves blown as it 
 were in reverse directions.^ 
 
 It is curious that Giorgio's work here in the 
 Loggia, and at S. Francesco (Plate VI.) and 
 S. Agostino, which was finished by another hand 
 after his death, should be so much more Gothic 
 than the work he designed ten years before at 
 Sebenico. The employment of Giorgio on both 
 sides of the Adriatic is only one instance of the 
 connexion between Ancona and Dalmatia during 
 the Middle Ages. The Anconitans shared with 
 their opposite neighbours their jealousy of the 
 growing power of Venice. In 1171, when 
 Manuel tried to re-establish the Roman empire 
 over Italy, he poured his gold into Ancona to 
 secure a convenient entry into the Peninsula, and 
 the Venetians, who regarded the Anconitans as 
 dangerous rivals,^ and ''hated them with a special 
 hatred," sent a powerful fleet and captured five of 
 their galleys. It was to Ancona, and not to 
 Venice, that the men of Spalato applied for a 
 Podesta, in 1239, when they resolved to put the 
 
 1 This cornice at Sebenico I attribute to Antonio di Paolo, the 
 architect who built the nave up to the top of the arcades between 1430 
 and 1 44 1. Giorgio seems to have copied it here in his buildings at 
 Ancona. It was also copied in a chapel of the cathedral at Trail by 
 Alecxi of Durazzo in 1467. The execution both here and at Traii is 
 inferior to that at Sebenico. 
 
 2 " Hoc tempore Anconitani Emanuelis obedientes imperio Venetos 
 ut sibi aemulos coeperunt habere." Dandolo, ix. xv. 17. 
 
Plate VI. 
 
 m 
 
 L 
 
 V^ 
 
 v.^ 
 
 
 AN CON A. 
 Portal of S. Francesco. 
 
 \^To face p. 40. 
 
I 
 
Ch. III.] ANCONA 41 
 
 city under a Latin magistrate, and to govern it 
 on the Latin model. The Anconitans sent them 
 Gargano degli Arsacidi, who led them to victory- 
 over the Almissan pirates. And when Lewis 
 the Great of Hungary attacked Venice in Dal- 
 matia in 1345, Ancona joined him in opposition 
 to her hereditary rival, an alliance which caused 
 the Venetians serious concern. 
 
 Ancona has many charms, in her venerable 
 buildings ; in the steep streets, — half street and 
 half staircase, — with lovely downward peeps of 
 town and harbour ; in the gay market where they 
 gave us so many delicious figs for a penny that 
 we had to cry *' Enough ! " and in the port with 
 its shipping, where, however, there seemed to be 
 less trade than one would have liked to see in 
 the finest harbour on this side of Italy. We 
 visited Ancona twice at an interval of several 
 years, and left it each time with regret. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 LORETO 
 
 We left Ancona early for Loreto, to which place 
 the railway takes you in about three-quarters of 
 an hour. The town stands on high ground, in- 
 land from the railway, presenting an imposing 
 mass of building, partly consisting of the great 
 church and its adjuncts and partly of the huge 
 palace of the Governor. The church has apsidal 
 ends to both choir and transepts, and is finished 
 with a bold machicolated cornice ; and but for its 
 dome it might be mistaken for a mediaeval castle 
 with three large semicircular bastions. Omni- 
 buses and open carriages were waiting in abund- 
 ance at the station, and no sooner did we appear 
 than the drivers opened upon us like a pack of 
 hounds in full cry, each trying to secure us by 
 shouting down his neighbour. Beggars too 
 made the round of the carriages as soon as the 
 passengers were seated, some with bad legs or 
 arms, others with a short quantity of one limb 
 or the other, but there were not so many as I 
 had expected in so holy a place. In the papal 
 time they may have driven a better trade. 
 
Ch. IV.] LOHETO 43 
 
 The object of pilgrimage to Loreto is the 
 Santa Casa, or house of the Holy Family, which 
 it is said angels transported from Nazareth 
 when Acre, the last Christian stronghold in 
 Palestine, fell into Moslem hands. They first 
 deposited it at Tersatto, near Fiume, at the head 
 of the Gulf of Quarnero, where there is still a 
 pilgrimage church to which the people flock in 
 thousands to worship in the place where the 
 Holy House used to be but is no longer. 
 Streams of Croat peasants, men, women, and 
 children, in their picturesque national costume, 
 may be met daily singing hymns as they climb 
 the five hundred steps that lead from Fiume to 
 the sacred enclosure, where by shuffling ungrace- 
 fully on their knees round the empty site of the 
 Santa Casa they have worn a channel in the 
 floor, as the pilgrims have done at Loreto round 
 the actual structure.^ Tersatto, however, did not 
 satisfy the angelic bearers, for after three years 
 and seven months they took the Holy House 
 away and set it on the shore near where it now 
 stands ; and then at a third remove in 1295 placed 
 it on the hill as we see it, on ground as some say 
 belonging to a widow named Laureta, or, accord- 
 ing to others, in a lauretmn or grove of laurels. 
 
 The Abbate Fortis, in the eighteenth century, 
 writes : ''In our day this legend is not believed 
 
 ^ Vide my Dalmatia, the Quarnero and Istria^ vol. iii. p. i66. 
 
44 LORETO [Ch. IV. 
 
 nor maintained even at Rome; but the Croats 
 are two hundred years behind us in these 
 matters." ^ Another Roman Catholic clergyman 
 writing in 1802 says : '' Many men of reflexion in 
 Italy, and indeed within the precincts of Loretto 
 itself, consider this wonderful story as an idle 
 tale, or at best a pious dream. They suppose 
 the holy house to have been a cottage or building 
 long buried in a pathless forest, and unnoticed in 
 a country turned almost into a desert by a suc- 
 cession of civil wars, invasions, and revolutions 
 during the space of ten centuries." ^ In recent 
 years this cult of the Santa Casa was debated at 
 some length in an English magazine, but the 
 apologists did not seem to regard it as more 
 than an aid to devotion, even though the story 
 be untrue — in fact, a pious fraud. How far it is 
 really conducive to piety, so long as it is believed 
 in, it is hard to say, but at all events these holy 
 places gather together a very dubious assembly 
 of beggars and impostors.^ To many, as to 
 Chaucer's company, a pilgrimage serves as an 
 excuse for a holiday, though I saw at Loreto 
 some pilgrims who seemed lost in pious ecstasy. 
 As we climbed the hill the view opened out 
 
 1 Fortis, Viaggio in Dalmazia. 
 
 2 Eustace's Classical Tour through Italy. 
 
 3 The term " Lorette," for women of loose character, seems to refer 
 to the quarter where they lived in Paris, near the Church of Notre-Dame 
 de Lorette. 
 
Ch. IV.] LORETO 45 
 
 magnificently. The country was rich and well 
 cultivated almost beyond anything I had seen in 
 Italy. Below lay the sea, blue and placid ; and 
 the great mountain that divided us from Ancona 
 towered nobly above the landscape. Little towns 
 and castles were perched on surrounding hilltops ; 
 Osimo, the ancient Auximum, where Belisarius 
 narrowly escaped death by an arrow which was 
 intercepted by a faithful soldier ; Castel-Fidardo, 
 where in i860 on i8th September the Sardinians 
 defeated the papal troops under Lamoriciere, and 
 crowned the enterprise by which Garibaldi had 
 set free the kingdom of the Two Sicilies from the 
 Bourbons. 
 
 Inns at Loreto at the time of our visit were 
 very primitive. I do not know whether they are 
 any better now. We went to the one that was 
 recommended as the best, but though we had a 
 good room and clean beds, the rest left much to 
 be desired. There was no regular service, but a 
 peasant woman came in to do the rooms and shake 
 up the bedding, which was stuffed with the leaves 
 of Indian corn, and the practice was to pay her for 
 her attendance with a few pence before she left. 
 
 Outside the sacred precincts is an irregular 
 piazza, with a fountain that discharges water 
 through the mouths of crowing cocks — a com- 
 pliment, I suppose, to Cardinal Galli, whose 
 name appears over the town gate. Entering 
 
46 LORETO [Ch. IV. 
 
 through the Porta Romana, we ascended by a 
 steep incline to the ridge of the hill, where we 
 found ourselves in a narrow street that runs 
 right and left, and in a scene of indescribable 
 bustle. The street was crowded with peasants 
 in the gayest gala costume, the women especially 
 being in a blaze of bright colours. Both sides of 
 the way were lined with shops for the sale of 
 cheap jewellery, toys, copies of the sacred image 
 of the Madonna of Loreto, strings of rosaries, 
 drums, tambourines, artificial flowers, gaudy 
 pictures cheap but holy, together with bright 
 handkerchiefs in long pieces festooned from the 
 ceiling, brilliant woollen caps such as the men 
 wear, and other articles too various to mention, 
 displaying attractions either mundane or de- 
 votional to suit the taste of the pilgrims, each 
 of whom buys something as a memorial of the 
 pilgrimage, which is taken to be blessed by the 
 priest within the walls of the Holy House. 
 Everything was cheap and tawdry, the only 
 pretty things being the corone or rosaries, of 
 which there were millions, and the little cups 
 painted with a rude representation of the sacred 
 image, and made with clay in which was mingled 
 polvere di Santa Casa — dust from the sweepings 
 of the sacred floor. Of these we bought several. 
 The goods overflowed the shops and were spread 
 out on stalls in the street as well. The vendors 
 
Ch. IV.] LORETO 47 
 
 were smartly dressed women, who stood in the 
 doorway and screamed to the passers-by to come 
 and buy — buy — buy ! It was Bunyan's Vanity 
 Fair in real life. 
 
 After running the gauntlet of these impor- 
 tunities, and escaping from this hideous babel 
 and from the importunities of various more or 
 less loathsome beggars, who traded on a well- 
 assorted stock of sores, mutilations, and bodily 
 infirmities which they ruthlessly displayed, we 
 arrived at the Piazza Madonna. The great 
 church faced us ; and the long facade of the 
 Governor's Palace, designed by Bramante, with 
 two orders of arcading, formed the left side of 
 the square. The west front of the church is not 
 remarkable except for its splendid bronze doors 
 by Girolamo Lombardi and his pupils, and 
 Vanvitelli's campanile is ill-designed and ugly ; 
 but on entering the church the scene that met 
 our eyes was overpowering. A long nave of 
 simple Italian arches leads up to the central 
 dome under which stands the Santa Casa, within 
 a splendid marble casing that closes the view. 
 On the steps in front of it were gorgeous eccle- 
 siastics officiating at the altar, but far more 
 gorgeous was the assisting congregation. The 
 women were drilled in regular ranks across the 
 floor from side to side, and the mass of colour 
 they presented outdid the gayest flower-bed. On 
 
48 LORETO [Ch. IV. 
 
 the head they wore brilliant handkerchiefs pinned 
 and turned up somewhat in the Roman fashion. 
 Another such handkerchief over the shoulders 
 was brought loosely round in front over the 
 bosom, showing a white smock of homespun 
 linen at the neck, with elaborately pleated sleeves 
 turned up at the elbow. The skirt of dark striped 
 stuff, generally indigo and crimson, and sometimes 
 entirely red, was very short, and puffed out with 
 immense hoops like crinolines ; the waist was 
 quite high up, almost under the armpits, with 
 short and wide embroidered braces. Woollen 
 stockings and — sad to say — modern high-heeled 
 boots completed their attire. They wore great 
 ropes of coral round their necks, and large 
 gold earrings, some of them of curious and 
 antique design, and on their fingers large rings, 
 formed of convex discs of thin gold, as large 
 almost as an English florin, with filigrana and 
 pearls attached by wires, such as a man at Pesaro 
 had offered us for twenty-five lire (Fig. 4). 
 
 The men were scarcely less splendid than the 
 women. Their hair was cut close, and their ears 
 were adorned with earrings. They wore a waist- 
 coat, or rather a short sleeveless coat of crimson 
 or purple cloth, left unbuttoned to expose the 
 embroidered front and elaborately pleated sleeves 
 of their home-spun linen shirts. To complete 
 their costume they should have worn tmder the 
 
Ch. IV.] LORETO 49 
 
 waistcoat a white smock-frock, reaching below 
 the knee, but we did not see very many of these. 
 The great beauty of the generality of the women, 
 their graceful port, the stately swimming motion 
 which their hooped skirts gave to their gait, and 
 their martial arrangement and movement as in 
 rank behind rank they retired backwards down the 
 whole length of the nave, was most impressive. 
 We had timed our visit luckily, for October 
 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 is the great month for pilgrimage and also for 
 marriages, and there had been several weddings 
 that morning. 
 
 Mass being ended, the whole congregation 
 poured itself into and through the Holy House, 
 which angels had brought hither to convince a 
 sceptical world. It has four doors, two on a side, 
 but only three were open, and at each stood a 
 guard with a drawn sword to keep the struggling 
 throng of devotees in something like order, and 
 
50 LORETO [Ch. IV. 
 
 prevent accidents. Every now and then a priest 
 emerged from one of the doors, his hands full of 
 rosaries, bunches of artificial flowers, and other 
 trinkets which he had blessed within the sacred 
 walls, and now returned to their respective owners 
 to be taken home and treasured as sacred relics. 
 
 After this ceremony there was a Messa 
 Cantata by the choir, which, like the papal 
 choir at Rome, consists of professional male 
 singers, with musici for trebles. We had two 
 chairs placed for us by an official in the best 
 place for hearing, opposite the music gallery. 
 With these gentry a lira or two outweighs all 
 scruples of orthodoxy, and the faithful were 
 unceremoniously pushed out of the way to make 
 room for us. The scene was sufficiently striking, 
 with the densely packed crowd below, the gor- 
 geous priests and their attendants at the altar, 
 and the singers aloft in a gallery between two 
 of the pillars, hanging over the parapet in the 
 intervals of the music, in various attitudes, like 
 the figures in one of Veronese's grand composi- 
 tions. But the music disappointed us. The 
 organ was bad, and everything was sung in an 
 unfeeling fortissimo. Some of the men had good 
 voices, but I heard none like the mysterious 
 soprano who had thrilled me through and through 
 three years before at the Festa of S. Francesco 
 in the dim lower church at Assisi. 
 
Ch. IV.] LORETO 51 
 
 On the day following there was another Messa 
 Cantata in a side chapel, which we went to hear, 
 as the music was to be by Palestrina. We talked 
 to the singers as they stood waiting in the aisle, 
 and they spoke of Palestrina with reverence ; but 
 they sang his music irreverently enough, at full 
 cry, without that delicate feeling of voice for 
 voice that makes good part-singing. 
 
 The Santa Casa stands under the dome in 
 the same way as the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, 
 which no doubt set the pattern for it. But the 
 marble casing which encloses it is so large as to 
 block the view from any of the four arms of the 
 church, and it looks more like a screen than a 
 detached building. It is one of the wonders of the 
 Renaissance, designed by Bramante with exquisite 
 detail, and sculptured by Andrea Contucci, the 
 elder Sansovino, whose work began in 15 13. 
 He was assisted by Girolamo Lombardo, Bandi- 
 nelli, Giovanni da Bologna, and other great 
 artists. Within this superb casing is the Santa 
 Casa itself, a dim chamber with walls of rubble, 
 stone, and brick, black and polished with age and 
 smoke. The air is thick and close, redolent with 
 odours possibly of sanctity, and there are rows of 
 hanging lamps on each side suspended from a 
 vault overhead, the smoke from which does not 
 improve the atmosphere. A splendidly furnished 
 altar with lighted candles stands clear of the east 
 
52 LORETO [Ch. IV, 
 
 wall, leaving a narrow space behind it. High up 
 in a niche at the east end is the holy Madonna, 
 a black image with a smaller black image in its 
 arms, said to have been carved by St. Luke, who 
 has an unenviable and no doubt undeserved 
 reputation for works of this kind. The figure is 
 draped so as to give a pyramidal outline, and is 
 all ablaze with diamonds and precious stones. 
 Below is a recess looking like a fireplace, into which 
 the pilgrims press with an ecstasy of devotion. 
 
 From a cupboard in this inner sanctum the 
 courteous canon who showed us the building 
 produced a rude scodella, or saucer of terra-cotta, 
 said to have been found in the house, and to 
 have been used by the Holy Family. It is set 
 very handsomely in gold, with good handles in 
 the style of Cellini. The canon, in deference to 
 our prejudices, politely dropped the question of 
 its sanctity, and enlarged only on the beauty of the 
 setting, and even entrusted it to my heretical hands. 
 
 The whole adventure interested us very much, 
 and we were well rewarded by our visit. The 
 scene seemed to carry us back into the distant 
 Middle Ages ; to the days which men call either 
 of faith or of credulity and superstition, according 
 to their different ways of looking at them ; but 
 from either point of view far away from the 
 prosaic nineteenth century with its railways, its 
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CHAPTER V 
 
 URBINO 
 
 The Duchy of Urbino lay between the provinces 
 of Romagna and La Marca. Formed by the 
 gradual accretion of one lordship after another, 
 it never exceeded the size of a county in the 
 English Midlands, such as Leicestershire or 
 Warwickshire. Its outline was irregular, but 
 the extreme length from north to south was 
 about fifty-six miles, and the average width about 
 thirty-five. When at its greatest extent, it 
 possessed the seacoast from a little north of 
 Pesaro to beyond Sinigaglia, with the exception 
 of Fano and a small territory round it ; and it 
 reached back to the backbone of the Apennines, 
 and at Gubbio dipped over a little on the other 
 side. In the time of Guidobaldo n., the fourth 
 Duke, it contained seven towns and three hun- 
 dred castles. The lowland country between the 
 
 54 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 55 
 
 mountains and the sea was extremely rich and 
 fertile, so much that the Duchy was able to 
 export corn from Sinigaglia. But the interior 
 was a wild mountainous district of bare hillsides 
 and deep ravines, little adapted for agriculture. 
 The forests which we are told once clothed the 
 Apennines have been destroyed by the fires of 
 shepherds and the teeth of goats, and the hills 
 are now barren and naked, scored by torrential 
 rains and seamed with deep watercourses. It 
 is a rough country, which bred a hardy warlike 
 people, and supplied the condottieri with their 
 best soldiers. And it has a rough climate ; on 
 both our visits we had stormy weather, rain, 
 wind, and cold, and a native of the town of 
 Urbino, which stands high on the hills, described 
 the climate as murderous — im clima 'micidiale. 
 It is curious that this wild highland city should 
 have been the birthplace of the gentlest of 
 painters, Raffaello da Urbino. 
 
 Of all the small principalities — or, as the Greeks 
 would have called them. Tyrannies — in Central 
 Italy that of Urbino is the most interesting, and 
 its history is the most humane. For though the 
 early Lords and Counts seem to have been free- 
 booters like the Malatesta and others around 
 them, the virtues of the Montefeltrine Dukes 
 present an amiable contrast to the crimes of 
 such despots as Sigismondo Malatesta, Filippo 
 
56 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 Maria Visconti, Bernabo Visconti, Galeazzo 
 Maria Sforza, or Cesare Borgia. 
 
 Although the trade of both prince and 
 people was mercenary soldiering, like that of 
 all their neighbours, Urbino was not less 
 distinguished for the cultivation of arts and 
 letters. Italy, says Sismondi, had no inhabit- 
 ants more warlike nor any court more literate 
 and polished. 
 
 The ducal family was descended from 
 Antonio, a petty lord of Monte Coppiolo, near 
 San Leo in the northern part of the Duchy, which 
 stands on the ancient Mons Feretrius, a name 
 Italianized into Montefeltro. He or his son was 
 made Count of Montefeltro by Frederick Bar- 
 barossa in 1154. Their successor Buonconte, 
 after a twenty years' struggle with the people of 
 Urbino, who fought bravely for their liberties, an- 
 nexed that city to his domains. Count Guido da 
 Montefeltro, who died in 1298, whom all lovers 
 of Dante will remember, was famous for his 
 craft rather than for his valour. 
 
 Mentre ch'io forma fui d'ossa e di polpe 
 
 Che la madre mi die, I'opere mie 
 
 Non furon leonine ma di volpe. 
 Gli accorgimenti e la coperte vie 
 
 lo seppi tutte, . . .^ 
 
 He took Forli by a ruse, and gave Boniface viii. 
 
 1 Inferno^ xxvii. 73. 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 57 
 
 the treacherous advice to recover Palestrina from 
 the Colonna by fraud : 
 
 Lunga promessa con I'attender corto 
 Ti fark trionfar nell' alto seggio. 
 
 '* Large promise and short performance would 
 give him the city." 
 
 For this Dante finds him enveloped in a 
 flame in the ottava bolgia of Hell among the 
 deceitful and traitors. Guido had abdicated his 
 countship, as he tells Dante, when he reached 
 the age *'at which each one should furl the 
 sails and gather in the ropes," and had be- 
 come a Franciscan at Assisi in 1294. Thither 
 came Boniface, ''Prince of modern Pharisees," 
 who had been besieging Palestrina in vain, in 
 order to consult the old master of wiles ; and he 
 promised him full absolution for any advice he 
 might give, however unrighteous. ''So at my 
 death," continues Guido, " Francis came to claim 
 me ; but one of the black cherubims said, ' Take 
 him not, do me no wrong ; he has to come down 
 with my rascals, for that he gave the treacherous 
 counsel.' " 
 
 The next Count, his son Federigo, siding 
 with the Ghibellines, was torn to pieces by the 
 people of Urbino in 1322, who had risen in 
 favour of the Guelfs, after which the Counts seem 
 to have been in exile. Guidantonio, Count of 
 5 
 
 L 
 
58 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 Urbino, extended his territory by the submission 
 of Cagli in 1371 and Gubbio in 1384, whence the 
 people had expelled their tyrants, and he conquered 
 Cantiano a little later. The tenth Count, Oddan- 
 tonio, after beginning well, fell under the cor- 
 rupting influence of his neighbour Sigismondo 
 of Rimini, and was murdered by the people 
 whom he had outraged by his crimes. He was 
 succeeded by his half-brother Federigo, a natural 
 son of the ninth Count, who was created Duke 
 of Urbino, and with whom the importance of the 
 family and the Duchy really begins. He bought 
 Fossombrone from the Malatesta of Pesaro in 
 1445, and took several townships from his here- 
 ditary foe Sigismondo of Rimini. The addition 
 of Sinigaglia and Mondavio in 1474, and of 
 Pesaro and its district given to the Delia Rovere 
 Dukes in 1513 by Julius 11., brought the Duchy 
 of Urbino to its final extent. 
 
 Federigo was born in 1422, the reputed son of 
 Count Guidantonio by a girl of Urbino, but there 
 is some uncertainty about the relationship. He 
 was at all events legitimated by Martin v. on 
 December 22, 1424.^ He was educated at Padua 
 under Vittorino da Feltre, a master whose reputa- 
 tion is a credit to that age. [j He had pupils of 
 all classes, taking payment from the rich, 
 but teaching the poor gratis. His was a 
 
 1 Dennistoun, vol. i. p. 58. 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 59 
 
 school of high thinking and plain living, and 
 his moral rule was strict. In 1423 he removed 
 to Venice, where he took pupils of both sexes, 
 in itself a tribute to his goodness and discre- 
 tion in that profligate age. He was afterwards 
 engaged as tutor to the children of the Duke 
 of Mantua, and made it a condition that he 
 should have absolute control of his pupils. 
 Luxurious living and high diet were replaced by 
 frugality and simplicity. Training of the body 
 he considered a necessary complement to that of 
 the mind, and, like ourselves, he valued the ex- 
 ercise of sport more highly than mere gymnastic, 
 which is the German ideal. All swearing, ob- 
 scene language, vulgar joking, and quarrels were 
 severely punished ; personal morality and re- 
 ligious exercises were exacted. With his princely 
 pupils he associated others of inferior degree who 
 were educated together with them. Vespasiano 
 writes that his house was a sanctuary of manners, 
 deeds, and words, and when he died in 1446 he 
 did not leave enough money to pay for his 
 funeral. "] 
 
 His friend Guarini, who had a similar school 
 at Ferrara, has left an equally happy reputation i 
 behind him. His moral character, we are told, \ 
 was equal to his learning.^ "^^ 
 
 As with all the princelings of the day Federigo's 
 
 1 J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy^ ii. 302. 
 
6o URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 profession was that of arms. The regular routine 
 was first to learn the trade under some great 
 captain, and then to raise a force of your own 
 with which to serve any of the greater powers 
 that chose to hire you. Federigo served his 
 apprenticeship under Piccinino, whose little body 
 held a mighty soul, and in 1439 he was ready to 
 defend his possessions against Sigismondo of 
 Rimini, who advanced a claim to them and in- 
 vaded the district of Montefeltro. Sigismondo 
 being checked by Federigo, sent him a challenge 
 to settle their claims by single combat, but when 
 Federigo appeared at the rendezvous no Sigis- 
 mondo was there to meet him. 
 
 For the next twenty-four years Federigo 
 followed the profession of a condottiere, at one 
 time in the service of the Duke of Milan, at 
 another that of the King of Naples, sometimes 
 in the pay of Florence, sometimes Lieutenant- 
 General of the papal forces. Through all the 
 time his own personal struggle with Sigismondo 
 Malatesta went on ; but the final humiliation of 
 that egregious despot in 1463, after twenty-four 
 years of conflict, at last brought to Federigo a 
 period of repose, and time to attend to his 
 domestic affairs. In his conduct of these cam- 
 paigns Federigo seems to have behaved with 
 as much humanity as was consistent with the 
 habits of the age. His troops enjoyed the usual 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 6i 
 
 privileges of these mercenary soldiers, which in- 
 cluded liberty to sack the towns they took, but 
 their leader appears to have shown some regard 
 for the lives of the inhabitants. At the surrender 
 of Fano by the Malatesta under a promise of 
 protection to persons and property, Federigo 
 was urged by the Papal Legate not to keep his 
 word, but to take the opportunity of avenging his 
 injuries on his treacherous foe, who never re- 
 spected such promises himself. In like manner 
 did the Papal Legate Juliano persuade the 
 Hungarian King to break his word with the 
 Infidel at Varna, which he did to his own de- 
 struction. In like manner too, in our own day 
 did the German Minister urge us not to go to 
 war for a scrap of paper. It is to Federigo's 
 credit that he did not listen to this perfidious 
 and infamous suggestion. In an age of treachery 
 and dissimulation he had the enviable distinction 
 of being true to his engagements. The Venetians 
 when they were attacking Ferrara tried to detach 
 him from the League which opposed them, and 
 offered him eighty thousand ducats if he would 
 only stay at home. *' All they asked was that he 
 should consider himself in their pay." When 
 the Venetian Envoy had left the room one of 
 Federigo's suite said: ''A fine thing! eighty 
 thousand ducats and stay at home I " The 
 Duke replied : ** It is a finer thing to keep 
 
62 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 faith, and worth more than all the gold in the 
 world." ^ 
 
 The Duke's constant employment in war as a 
 mercenary brought in large sums of money, and 
 his treasury was so well filled that his subjects 
 were lightly taxed. It was said that the Duke 
 brought in more money than he cost. He was 
 free from the passions that have earned an exe- 
 crable reputation for most of the Italian despots, 
 and his people loved him. When he appeared in 
 public, says his biographer Vespasiano, men and 
 women would kneel at his approach and cry, 
 *' God keep you, my lord ! " and that not from 
 fear but from affection. He was easy of access, 
 and encouraged his subjects to consult him and 
 confide in him. An officer who tried to prevent 
 a suitor from approaching him was severely 
 punished. Baldi says that as he rode or walked 
 about the place he would send for, or himself call 
 to him, citizens or merchants whom he saw, and 
 ask about their families, and if they were building 
 he would encourage them, and himself help them 
 to build well, so that Urbino was as well furnished 
 with commodious houses as any city. This 
 aspect of his character, however, seems to Baldi 
 beneath the dignity of history, though to us it is 
 far more interesting than the petty wars in which 
 he played his part, which may well be forgotten. 
 
 ^ Vespasiano, ed. 1859, p. 88. 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 63 
 
 *'To such details," says Baldi, '*we do not 
 descend, as do some writers over-scrupulous 
 about trifles ; nor shall we tell how he interfered 
 to maintain the poor, to compose quarrels, to 
 secure a pure administration of justice, to protect 
 the honour of families, and to reward those who 
 served him faithfully. Still less do we report 
 his witty jests and pleasant sayings, as these are 
 things altogether trifling and unbecoming the 
 gravity of history, besides which they all or most 
 of them live in the memory and mouths of the 
 people. But, since magnificence is a virtue proper 
 to great princes, we shall touch upon some cir- 
 cumstances regarding the nobleness, the numerical 
 grandeur, and the splendour of his court." 
 
 All writers concur in praising his military 
 talents, in which he was surpassed by no con- 
 temporary captain. *' A Mars in the field," says 
 one writer, **a Minerva in his administration, 
 he was equally feared and loved." Federigo did 
 not forget the lessons he had learned under 
 the virtuous Vittorino. '' His household of five 
 hundred mouths or more," says Vespasiano, was 
 not like a house full of soldiers ; no religious 
 establishment was conducted in so orderly a 
 way. Gambling and swearing were unknown, 
 and singular decorum of language was observed, 
 while numerous noble youths, sent there to learn 
 
 1 Baldi, Vita di Federigo, vol. iii. p. 59. 
 
64 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 good manners and military discipline, were edu- 
 cated under the strict tuition of a gentleman from 
 Lombardy whom the Duke had brought up, and 
 whom they obeyed as if they had been his sons." ^ 
 The courts of these professional soldiers were in 
 fact military colleges, where young noblemen who 
 intended to make arms their profession were enter- 
 tained and regularly trained for military command. 
 In 1472 Federigo lost his wife, the Duchess 
 Battista, daughter of Alessandro Sforza of Pesaro, 
 and, according to Giovanni Sanzi, it was partly 
 for distraction from his sorrow that he began to 
 rebuild his palace at Urbino. It appears, how- 
 ever, that it was really begun long before, either 
 in 1454 or perhaps as far back as 1447.^ Vasari 
 says the palace was built by Francesco di Giorgio 
 of Siena, who was famous as an engineer and 
 especially for warlike machines, of which he 
 painted a frieze with his own hand in the palace at 
 Urbino. Vasari seems, however, to be mistaken, 
 for the real architect was a Dalmatian, Luciano 
 da Laurana, son of Martino of Zara. Giovanni 
 Sanzi, Raffaelle's father, in a long poem on 
 Urbino and its Duke, says : 
 
 e r architetto a tutti gli altri sopra 
 Fu Lucian Lauranna, huomo eccellente 
 Che il nome vive benche morte '1 cuopra. 
 
 ^ Vespasiano, ed. 1859, p. 10 1. 
 
 ^ Calzini, Urbino ed i suoi monumenti. 
 
jO-. 
 
 w 
 
 ° g 
 
 c 2 
 
 ^ o 
 
 2 O 
 o 
 
 '^^ 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 65 
 
 After some trouble I succeeded in identifying 
 Laurana, a name now unknown in Dalmatia, 
 with Vrana, a place some twenty or twenty-five 
 miles south of Zara, where there is a lake with 
 the extensive remains of a castle, once of the 
 Templars, and afterwards of the Hospitallers.^ 
 It is now a heap of ruins, and the town where 
 Luciano was born in 1420 was destroyed during 
 the wars of Turks and Venetians in 1647. The 
 most important building now standing there is a 
 Turkish khan or caravanserai. 
 
 Luciano's work on the palace seems to have 
 begun c. 1465 or 1466. Before then he was in the 
 service of Alessandro Sforza at Pesaro, for in May 
 1465 Ludovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, begs 
 Alessandro to send him Magistro Luciano to 
 give him advice about his buildings. It does not 
 appear, however, that Luciano went to Mantua, 
 for in 1467 we find him at Urbino litigating with 
 Maestro Giorgio of Como, who had not properly 
 performed the work under his contract at the 
 new palace. As the deeds speak of walls and 
 vaults, and not of foundations, the building must 
 by that time have made considerable progress 
 under Luciano's direction. Therefore the patent 
 issued by Duke Federigo in 1468, placing the 
 
 ^ " Urana (Vrana) alias Aurana, sive Laurana Celebris in primis est a 
 Rhodiorum equitum statione." Farlati, Illyr, Sacr.^ Prolog, ii. c. v. § iv. 
 Vide my Dalmatia^ etc., vol. i. 
 
 k 
 
66 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 whole control of the work in Luciano's hands, 
 would seem to be intended to confirm his 
 authority, and not to be his first appointment as 
 architect. 
 
 The patent of Federigo, dated lo June, 
 1468, from Pavia, says that ** having searched 
 everywhere and particularly in Tuscany, where 
 is the fount of architects, and having found no 
 one truly accomplished in that art, and at last 
 having learned first by report and afterwards 
 by experience how well the eminent man Maestro 
 Lutiano, the bearer hereof, is accomplished in 
 that art, and having determined to build in our 
 city of Urbino a habitation fine and worthy, and 
 suitable to the condition and honourable fame 
 of our progenitors, we have elected and deputed 
 the said M° Lutiano to be engineer and head of 
 all the masters who labour on the said work, as 
 well those of building, as the masters of carving 
 stone, and the masters of carpenters and work- 
 men, and of every other person of whatever 
 degree and of whatever craft who may work 
 in the said building." The patent goes on to 
 give '' M° Lutiano" leave to discharge all work- 
 men who do not satisfy him, and to engage 
 others by the week or by the day as he may 
 please, and to do ''everything that pertains to 
 an architect and chief master appointed to a 
 
 ^ Vide Calzini, Urbino ed i suoi nwnuvienti. 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 67 
 
 work, exactly as we ourselves should do were 
 we present."^ 
 
 Luciano seems to have died at Pesaro in 
 1479, when the building was very nearly finished, 
 and what remained to be done was carried on 
 by Baccio Pontelli, who was still living after the 
 death of Federigo in 1482, when the palace was 
 practically complete. If Francesco di Giorgio 
 had anything to do with it, it was probably with 
 the sculptures of military emblems now placed 
 for safety in the inner corridor. Ambrogio 
 Baroccio da Milano was employed for carving 
 the arabesques in which the palace is so rich, 
 and for the sculpture of the chimney-pieces. 
 Gondolo Tedesco is credited with the beautiful 
 though now sadly decayed intarsia in the doors 
 and other furniture. Federigo himself, we are 
 told, was skilled in architecture, and gave many 
 directions during the progress of the work. 
 '' He listened to his architect's opinion," says 
 his biographer, ''and then gave the dimensions 
 and all the rest, and you would think, to hear 
 
 1 Gaye, Carteggio d' Artistic vol. i. p. 214. The original is in 
 the Vatican Library, but there is a copy in the Albani Library at 
 Urbino. Gaye mentions two suits and decisions at law between 
 Luciano Laurana and workmen about the measurement of work. 
 Also a rogito or signed document in September 1483 about Luciano's 
 will. "Cum egregius vir Lucianus q. Martini de Jadia . . . con- 
 diderit testamentum Pisauri ... in quo instituit suam heredem 
 Catharinam d Luciani uxorem, una cum Camilla et Lucretia suis 
 filiabus," etc. etc. Gaye sought in vain for this will at Pesaro. 
 
 I 
 
68 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 him talk, that it was the principal art he had 
 ever practised. He paid the greatest attention 
 to the sculpture of his palace, and employed the 
 best masters of the time, and to hear him talk 
 with a sculptor it seemed that it was his own 
 art, from the way he discoursed about it. Paint- 
 ing too he understood, and not being able to 
 find masters in Italy who know how to paint 
 in oils, he sent to Flanders, and brought a serious 
 master to Urbino, who painted many pictures for 
 him.^ Also from Flanders he brought masters 
 to weave tapestries, and caused them to furnish 
 a hall splendidly with work of gold and silk 
 mixed with yarn. It was marvellous what 
 figures he caused them to make, such as no 
 brush could have equalled. His lordship having 
 so great a knowledge, caused everything to be 
 executed in the very highest degree of art." ^ 
 
 Federigo was succeeded by his son Guido- 
 baldo, a boy ten years old, to whom, strange to 
 say, the league of Naples, Florence, and Milan 
 continued the command which his father held at 
 the time of his death. He was not, however, 
 called upon to act, fortunately for his military 
 reputation, and the engagement was probably of 
 the nature of a retainer. Guidobaldo, though he 
 took part in several campaigns, was not a great 
 
 ^ Justus of Ghent. 
 
 2 Vespasiano da Bisticci, Viie, ed. 1859, p. 93. 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 69 
 
 soldier like his father, but rather a scholar and 
 man of letters, and moreover during the greater 
 part of his life he was a martyr to gout, or some 
 complaint to which that name was given, which 
 incapacitated him for an active life. At the age 
 of sixteen, in 1489 he married Elisabetta Gon- 
 zaga, youngest sister of the Marquis of Mantua. 
 To the beauty and virtues of this lady ample 
 testimony is borne not only by Castiglione, but 
 by all contemporary writers. The Duke's mis- 
 fortunes began with the election of Roderigo 
 Borgia to the papal tiara, as Alexander vi., in V 
 1492, ''the most odious/' says Sismondi, ''the 
 most publicly scandalous, and the most wicked 
 of all miscreants who ever misused sacred 
 authority to outrage and degrade mankind." 
 " His entire occupation, his only thought," 
 says Macchiavelli, "was deception, and he 
 always found victims. Never was there a man 
 with more effrontery in assertion, more ready 
 to add oaths to his promises, or to break them : 
 yet did his deceit ever succeed to his heart's 
 content." The Pope's ambition was to create 
 a kingdom for his son Cesare Borgia, Duke 
 Valentino,^ in Romagna and the Pentapolis, 
 which included Pesaro and Urbino. Cesare 
 occupied Pesaro and Rimini in 1500, and was 
 created Duke of Romagna. In 1502 Duke 
 
 1 He was created Duke of Valentinois by Louis xii. 
 
 I 
 
70 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 Guidobaldo was enjoying himself at supper in 
 the groves at S. Bernardino, the convent of 
 Zoccolanti, a little way out of the town, and 
 was rising from table, when news was brought 
 from Fossombrone that Duke Valentino had a 
 thousand men there, and had as many more from 
 Fano and Sinigaglia in his pay, intent on mis- 
 chief. Guidobaldo, much disturbed, smote his 
 hand on the table and exclaimed that he was 
 betrayed. At Urbino he was met by a messenger 
 from the Commonwealth of San Marino who told 
 him that there was a force at Verrucchio and 
 San Arcangelo; and the Commissary of Cagli sent 
 word that that city was occupied, and that Duke 
 Valentino would be at Urbino the next morn- 
 ing. Guidobaldo assembled the magistrates and 
 notables of Urbino, who advised him, as the city 
 was quite unprepared for defence, to save himself 
 and join the Duchess, who was at Mantua. 
 Gathering hastily some important papers and 
 patents, and some gold and jewels, and escaping 
 by a private door from the palace, he fled towards 
 San Leo, but his way was intercepted. He de- 
 scribes his adventures in a letter to Cardinal 
 Juliano della Rovere, afterwards Julius ii., who 
 had retired from Rome for fear of the Borgias. 
 Dismissing all but three archers, and disguising 
 himself as a peasant, the Duke made for the 
 Venetian territory. A messenger sent from 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 71 
 
 Ravenna to warn him fell into the hands of 
 Valentino, who closed and guarded the passes, 
 but he succeeded with difficulty in reaching 
 Ravenna, after being robbed on the way, and 
 thence by way of Ferrara he escaped to Mantua, 
 the territory of his brother-in-law. '' Further," 
 he concludes, '' I have saved nothing but my life, 
 a doublet, and a shirt." ^ 
 
 Duke Valentino entered Urbino in state, and 
 removed to Forli the plate, tapestry, books, and 
 other treasures he found in the palace, estimated 
 at above 150,000 ducats, equal perhaps to a 
 quarter of a million sterling of our money.^ A 
 rising of the people of Urbino brought Guido- 
 baldo back to head them, and almost without a 
 blow he recovered all but the fortress of S. Agata, 
 for Valentino was in difficulties owing to the 
 defection of the Orsini and Vitellozzo and the 
 other chiefs, whom after a feigned reconciliation 
 he afterwards massacred at Sinigaglia. Guido- 
 baldo had again to fly, and did not recover his 
 Duchy till the death of the Pope and the illness 
 of Cesare, who drank inadvertently the poison 
 prepared for the Cardinal of Corneto.^ The next 
 
 ^ Baldi, Vita di Guidobaldo /., Duca d' Urbino, written in 1615. 
 
 2 Dennistoun, vol. i. p. 394. 
 
 •^ Adrian di Castello, Cardinal of Corneto, was one of the foreign 
 prelates imposed on the English. He was made successively Bishop 
 of Hereford, and of Bath and Wells. The wealth which he had 
 accumulated in England was the motive for his destruction. He was 
 
72 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 Pope, Pius III., died within a month, and the 
 election, in 1503, of Juliano della Rovere, the 
 bitter enemy of the Borgias, as Julius 11., gave the 
 death-blow to the hopes of Cesare, who had to 
 surrender all his conquests. Baldi, in his life 
 of Duke Guidobaldo, describes the interview 
 between him and Cesare, who came to make his 
 submission, and who was received with clemency. 
 The Thucydidean speeches which the writer puts 
 into their mouths are probably quite imaginary. 
 Dennistoun saw a fresco at Cagli by Taddeo 
 Zucchero, representing Cesare on his knees 
 before Guidobaldo, surrendering his spoils. He 
 pleaded excuse on account of his youth, the 
 brutality of his father, and the persuasions of 
 others.^ Cesare retired to Spain, and fell in an 
 obscure skirmish in 1507. 
 
 With the accession of Julius 11. the Duke was 
 secured in his possessions. The Pope's younger 
 brother, Giovanni della Rovere of Sinigaglia, Pre- 
 fect of Rome, had married Giovanna, the Duke s 
 sister, and their son Francesco Maria was adopted 
 by Guidobaldo as heir to the Duchy, his own 
 
 a benefactor to the Church at Bath, and his arms may be seen in the 
 choir vault, and I think on the west front. Godwin tells an amusing 
 story of his hope of the Papacy from the prediction of a witch, that 
 came true of another Adrian. Polydore Vergil was his relation and 
 was indebted to him for his introduction to England. 
 
 ^ Dennistoun, vol. ii. p. 30. Cesare, it is believed, was not thirty 
 years old at his death. 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 73 
 
 marriage being childless. By this marriage and 
 adoption the succession was assured, for other- 
 wise Urbino, being a fief of the Church, would 
 have lapsed to the Pope for want of an heir. 
 This was a danger that constantly threatened 
 those princes who were feudatories of the Church, 
 which was always on the watch to incorporate 
 their dominions into the Papal State and ex- 
 tinguish the fiefs. The independence of Rimini 
 had been threatened in 1469, some thirty years 
 before, when on the death of Sigismondo Pan- 
 dolfo Malatesta without legitimate heirs Pope 
 Paul II. claimed it. Rimini, however, was held 
 against him by Roberto, one of the illegitimate 
 sons, who proclaimed himself Signor. Duke 
 Federigo in alarm wrote to the Duke of Milan : 
 '' I am constrained to believe that the Pontiff 
 and the Venetian Signory intend to occupy 
 Rimini and all Romagna, and eventually Bologna 
 too. Rimini once lost, the rest will speedily 
 follow." The danger was then averted and 
 Roberto established by a league of Milan, Flor- 
 ence, and Naples, and the defeat of the papal 
 forces by Duke Federigo.^ The whole policy of 
 Julius was generally directed to aggrandizing the 
 papal possessions in the same way, when a fief 
 fell vacant ; but in the case of Urbino he connived 
 at the continuance of the Duchy in the person 
 
 ^ Vide TroUope, History of Florence ^ vol. iii. p. 265. 
 
74 URBINO [Ch. V. 
 
 of his nephew, whom he also made Prefect of 
 Rome at the age of eleven years on the death of 
 his father. 
 
 Guidobaldo's return was hailed by his people 
 with joy. Castiglione tells how he was met by 
 children with olive boughs, old men weeping for 
 delight, crowds of men and women of all ages, 
 "nay, the very stones seemed to exult and leap." 
 The usurper's arms, which had been painted over 
 the gates at the cost of from one to four ducats 
 each, by no less an artist than Timoteo della 
 Vite, were defaced and thrown down in a fury 
 of popular resentment. Guidobaldo had the 
 satisfaction of recovering most of the valuables 
 of which the palace had been robbed, including 
 a great part of his father's famous library. 
 
 The later history of Urbino may be told very 
 briefly. Francesco Maria i. spent the greater 
 part of his life in the field. In a fit of passion 
 he stabbed and killed the Cardinal of Pavia, 
 the Papal Legate, who he believed had betrayed 
 him. Having the Pope for his uncle he escaped 
 any serious consequences, but when the Medici 
 came into power by the election of Leo x., his old 
 crime was raked up against him and he was 
 driven from his Duchy. The Pope gave it to 
 his nephew Lorenzo, grandson of Lorenzo the 
 Magnificent; but in 15 19 the new Duke died, 
 the victim of his own licentious excesses, leaving 
 
Ch. v.] URBINO 75 
 
 only a daughter, Catherine, who became Queen 
 of France as wife of Henri ii. On the death of 
 Leo X. in 1521 Francesco Maria recovered his 
 Duchy. The reign of his son, Guidobaldo 11., 
 was not memorable. The last of the Delia 
 Rovere Dukes, Francesco Maria 11., had a son 
 Federigo, who died before him ; the web of 
 papal intrigue was drawn closely round him, 
 and in 1625 he was induced to abdicate, and the 
 Duchy was annexed to the papal dominions, to 
 the great grief of the inhabitants. Urbino 
 became a mere provincial town under a governor, 
 and the library and treasures of the palace were 
 transported to Rome.^ 
 
 ^ The story of the last Duke and the intrigues that led to his 
 abdication has been adopted by the author of John Inglesant for his 
 imaginary Duke of Umbria. But nothing can be less like the real 
 Urbino than his imaginary city. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 URBINO 
 
 Urbino, the ancient Urbinum Metaurense, may 
 now, I believe, be reached by railway. At the 
 time of our visits we had to get there by road 
 either in the diligence from Pesaro, a drive of 
 twenty-three miles, or by carriage from Fano. 
 
 The drive from Pesaro took from five to six 
 hours, the last part of the way being very hilly, 
 and the return journey took about four; for 
 Urbino stands very high, and indeed at the time 
 of our visit was generally in the clouds. The 
 scenery in the lowland district was enchanting. 
 The road follows the river Foglia, with consider- 
 able hills on either side crowned with romantic 
 castles and seductive little towns that made one 
 long to climb up to them. The scenery had 
 something about it that suggested the conven- 
 tional compositions of the Classical school of 
 landscape. The gently curving river, the com- 
 pact rounded trees, generally oaks, which are not 
 very common in Italy; the steep precipitous 
 banks, with village, farm, or mill placed just 
 where the painter would have wanted it had 
 
 he been composing a landscape according to 
 
 76 
 
I>LATK VIII. 
 
 
 T.G.J. 
 
 URBINO. 
 
 {To /ace p. 76. 
 
Ch. VI.] URBINO 77 
 
 Academic rule, reminded one of Claude Lorraine 
 or Richard Wilson. The last hour and a half was 
 occupied by a stiff climb towards Urbino, which is 
 seen high up long before it is reached (Plate VIII.). 
 The situation is romantic and magnificent. 
 
 The drive from Fano, whence we reached 
 Urbino on our second visit, took about seven 
 hours, including a rest on the way. Here a 
 carriage met us on our return from Ancona, but 
 we looked with dismay at the miserable little 
 beasts that were to draw us, though the driver 
 assured us they were '' dtie bravi cavalli; sono 
 piccoli ma sono braviy However, when we got 
 to Fossombrone, towards the end of the flat 
 country, where we were to rest the poor little 
 animals for an hour and a half, the driver was 
 forced to admit they could go no farther, and 
 handed us over to a relation of his who had a 
 fresh pair. This time, though piccoli, they were 
 indeed bravi, and Urbino appeared towering 
 above us long before we expected it. 
 
 Fossombrone, the ancient Forum Sempronii, 
 has a long street with arcades, but is not other- 
 wise interesting. There is a small palace of the 
 Dukes, with a good chimney-piece and a coved 
 wooden ceiling, the whole much dilapidated.^ 
 We lunched in company with a party of Italians, 
 who had come to see the Furlo Pass, which lay 
 
 1 Illustrated by Hofmann, Bauten des Herzog Federigo di Monte 
 feltro, 1905. 
 
78 URBINO [Ch. VI. 
 
 rather out of our route, and had to be reserved 
 for another day, on our way to Gubbio. 
 
 Urbino is entered by a narrow street under 
 the shadow of the enormous mass of Duke 
 Federigo's palace, which rises with wide-spread- 
 ing spur-footed bastions and vast windowless 
 walls, built as we afterwards found as a facing to 
 the natural rock, the real level of the interior 
 being far above our heads. By a malodorous 
 brick stair we reached our inn, which was on the 
 first and upper floors of an ordinary house in 
 the main street, and we presented the introduc- 
 tion from our friend the innkeeper at Pesaro. 
 It was read with great einpressefne^it by an 
 important young gentleman with double glasses 
 on his nose, and his hair in studied neglige, who 
 turned out to be the waiter. The padrone we 
 seldom saw: he passed his time upstairs in practis- 
 ing the violoncello, or rolling out bravura passages 
 in a fine baritone voice that made the walls ring 
 again. Nothing, however, could exceed the almost 
 embarrassing attentions of the waiter, and on 
 leaving we found our bill extremely moderate. 
 
 The town was a queer, rough place, a regular 
 highland fortress. Our street led to a small 
 piazza, whence two streets rose at a steep angle 
 to still greater heights, and other streets pitched 
 sharply down to the gate by which the road 
 leaves for Citta di Castello and Borgo San 
 Sepolcro, or for Arezzo and Florence. Climb- 
 
Ch. VI.] URBINO 79 
 
 ing one of the narrow ascents we reached a 
 desolate piazza, with the rather modern Duomo 
 on one side, and the huge square block of the 
 Palace facing us. Here it is only of a moderate 
 height, and less imposing than when seen from 
 the street below. Indeed, it is said that the top 
 storey is a later addition, and that originally there 
 was only a first floor containing the grand apart- 
 ments above the ground storey.^ The walls are 
 of brick, and full of putlog holes, but there are 
 signs that there was an idea at some time of 
 facing them with stone. The west front that faces 
 you as you enter the town is the only part of the 
 exterior that makes much pretence to an archi- 
 tectural character : two tourelles crowned with a 
 macchicolated cornice and a rather uninteresting 
 spirelet flank a facade in the middle of which is a 
 composition of loggie in several tiers one over 
 another. The design is not very happy. The 
 rest of the building shows great expanses of 
 plain walls full of scaffold-holes, in which are 
 set the windows and doors, many of them with 
 beautiful detail. The interior of the palace, as 
 with most Italian buildings of the kind, is more 
 interesting than the outside. The exquisite 
 decorative sculpture of the doorways, the stair- 
 case, and the lovely chimney-pieces, afford matter 
 for weeks of study. Nothing in that way was 
 ever done to surpass the beautiful arabesques of 
 
 ^ Arnold, Der Herzogliche Palast von Urbino. 
 
8o URBINO— THE PALACE [Ch. VL 
 
 Urbino. They are in the early or what is called 
 the Bramantesque style of the Renaissance, 
 though here at Urbino it can hardly be called 
 Bramantesque, for Luciano preceded Bramante 
 by four-and-twenty years, and Bramante, who 
 was born in the Duchy, in all likelihood was 
 influenced by Luciano's work, which he must 
 have watched in its progress during his youth. 
 
 The famous library of Duke Federigo was 
 lodged in two vaulted chambers near the entrance, 
 of which the inner has a large boss in the middle, 
 bearing the initials F * D, and the imperial 
 eagle quartered in the ducal 'scutcheon, and im- 
 paling the papal insignia, to express the feudal 
 rights of the Church. It is painted and gilt and 
 surrounded by a wreath with flaming rays, from 
 which little tongues of fire radiate as from a 
 centre, and are dotted at regular intervals all 
 over the barrel-vaulted ceiling. It has an odd, 
 but not a bad, effect. 
 
 The formation of a fine library was one of the 
 objects on which these splendid Italian courts 
 deservedly prided themselves. The Laurentian 
 Library at Florence, with its chained books, its fine 
 fittings by Michelangelo, and its grisaille glass 
 by Giovanni da Udine, is well known to most 
 travellers. Sigismondo Malatesta founded a 
 library at Rimini, and his brother, Malatesta 
 Novello, founded one at Cesena in 1452, which 
 he endowed with three hundred gold florins 
 
Ch. VI.] URBINO— THE PALACE 8i 
 
 yearly. It still remains, with its original fittings, 
 one of the most perfect specimens of a mediaeval 
 library. It consists of a long vaulted hall, 133 
 feet 4 inches by 34 feet, divided into three naves by 
 two rows of fluted marble columns. The desks and 
 seats are combined, and the books are chained.^ 
 At Pesaro Alessandro and Costanzo Sforza 
 founded a library which, it was said, rivalled 
 those of Rome or Florence. In forming his 
 library at Urbino, Duke Federigo spared no ex- 
 pense, and his collection was pronounced by his 
 biographer, Vespasiano da Bisticci, to have no 
 equal. After collating the catalogue with those 
 of the Vatican, Florence, S. Marco, Pavia, and 
 Oxford, Vespasiano says that in all but that \ 
 of Urbino he found many authors incompletely 
 represented, and many duplicates. Vespasiano 
 has been called '* the last of mediaeval scribes and 
 the first of modern booksellers. Besides being 
 the agent of Cosimo de' Medici, Nicholas v., and 
 Federigo of Urbino, he supplied the foreign 
 markets by sending MSS. by order to Hungary, 
 Portugal, Germany, and England."^ ^^ 
 
 Federigo was fourteen years in forming his I 
 
 ^ Fide illustration in Care of Books ^ p. 199, by J. W. Clark. The 
 architect Nuzio of Fano has recorded his name in two hexameter lines : 
 
 MATHEVS • NVTIVS • 
 FANENSI EX VRBE • CREATVS • 
 
 DEDAL V^S ALTER • OPVS • 
 TANTVM • DEDVXIT • AD VNGVEM • 
 
 2 J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy ^ vol. ii. pp. 303, etc. 
 
 -t 
 
82 URBINO— THE PALACE [Ch. VI. 
 
 collection. Thirty or forty scribes were constantly 
 employed at Urbino, Florence, or elsewhere in 
 transcribing books for him : not a single printed 
 book would you find in the whole library, for the 
 t Duke would have been ashamed, says Vespasiano, 
 to own one.^ This throws an interesting light on 
 Fthe reception given by a literary connoisseur to 
 Lihe new art which was to revolutionize the world. 
 Here were to be found all the Latin poets, with 
 the best commentaries ; all the works of Cicero 
 and the best prose writers ; there was every 
 known work on history ; there were all the best 
 theologians, and the Bible, '' the best of books," 
 written in two volumes with the richest and most 
 beautiful illustrations, bound in brocade of gold, 
 and lavishly ornamented with silver. There were, 
 further, all the treatises on astrology, geometry, 
 arithmetic, architecture, and military tactics, and 
 a very curious volume with every ancient and 
 modern military engine,,which may perhaps have 
 been one of the books by Francesco di Giorgio 
 of which Vasari speaks.^ There were also all 
 books on painting, sculpture, and music ; the 
 modern Italian poets, Petrarch and the rest ; all 
 the Greek classics, philosophers, and Fathers, 
 with the book of Paradise, lives of the Egyptian 
 
 ^ " I libri tutti sono belli in superlativo grado, tutti iscritti a penna, e 
 non v'e ignuno a stampa, che ne sarebbe vergognato." Vespasiano, 
 ed. 1859, p. 99. 
 
 2 " Disegno anco alcuni libri tutti pieni di cosi fatti instrumenti ; il 
 miglior de'quali h^ il Sig. DucaCosimo de' Medici fra lesue cose piii care." 
 
Ch. VI.] URBtNO— THE PALACE 83 
 
 saints, lives of Barlaam and Josaphat, and a 
 remarkable Psalter in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. 
 Every book was bound in crimson ornamented 
 with silver, *'a rich spectacle," says Vespasiano. 
 The sum spent on the collection was 30,000 
 ducats, but the collection was increased after- 
 wards by succeeding Dukes, and a room seems 
 to have been allotted to printed books, when the 
 prejudice against the new mechanical art had 
 been overcome. The library was transferred to 
 the Vatican when the Duchy was absorbed into 
 the Papal States, and the rooms are now prosaic- , 
 ally filled by the Notarial Archives. ^ l' 
 
 The fittings seem to have been arranged 
 differently from the usual mediaeval plan of 
 placing the cases and seats at right angles to the 
 wall, with a window to each pen or pew. At 
 Urbino, on the contrary, the presses seem to have 
 been arranged along the walls,^ and there were 
 eight of them each containing seven shelves. 
 Baldi mentions two Bibles, one Latin, the other 
 Hebrew, and very old ; and the latter rested on a 
 lectern of brass in the form of an eagle carrying the 
 book with outspread wings. This lectern was a 
 prize from Volterra, and is now in the Cathedral. ^ 
 
 Federigo was not a mere collector, but so far 
 as he had opportunity a student as well. He 
 was a good Latin scholar, an accomplishment 
 
 ^ Baldi, writing in 1587, says : " Le scanzie de' libri sono accostate 
 alle mura, e disposte con molto bell' ordine." 
 
84 URBINO— THE PALACE [Ch. VI. 
 
 which Vespasiano thinks very useful for a great 
 captain who aspires to imitate the deeds of the 
 ancients. He had Aristotle's Ethics and Politics 
 read to him in a Latin translation, and the works 
 of the Fathers, among whom he preferred 
 S. Thomas Aquinas to Scotus. Also the Latin 
 classics, and the translation of Plutarch's lives 
 were read to him, says Vespasiano, on which he 
 commented freely. Of his knowledge of archi- 
 tecture we have spoken above, and he studied 
 arithmetic and geometry with Maestro Pagolo, a 
 German philosopher and astrologer. Music he 
 delighted in, and had musicians of all kinds in 
 his house ; ** trumpets and loud instruments gave 
 him no pleasure, but organs and delicate instru- 
 ments pleased him greatly." 
 
 The palace, as will be seen from the plan 
 (Fig. 7), covers a great deal of ground, for it had 
 to serve a variety of purposes. Castiglione says 
 it was not so much a palace as a city in the form 
 of a palace. Besides being the residence of the 
 Prince and his court, it was also a barrack for 
 the military retainers, and a college of arms for 
 the young nobles who came there to be instructed 
 in the art of war. Room is now found within its 
 walls for the offices of the Sotto-Prefetto of the 
 district, for a prison, for the apartments of the 
 Istituto delle Belle Arti, and for the Academia 
 di Rafifaello, and yet the state-rooms of Federigo^ 
 court are left unoccupied for the delectation of 
 
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 DUCAL PALACE 
 URBINO 
 
 FIRST FLOOR PLAN. 
 
 r Y - tawSuLQlrwS 
 
 I , y . "9 , ^ 
 
 5L 
 
 2QO 
 
 \Al fia^e 84.