Tars very handsome volume contains biographical sketches of fourteen of
those famous women to whom the earlier and later periods of the Italian Renaissance gave birth. The list includes, of course, Isabella and Beatrice d'Este, central and typical figures of the time, with whose lives and surroundings the public are now tolerably familiar. The same may be said of Lucrezia Borgia, whom Mr. Hare, following Gregorovius, but rather outrunning his leader, treats with sufficient tender- ness. No account of the Renaissance time could be complete without these three figures. They represent all its outward magnificence; its entire absorption in the visible world ; its passion for dress, amusement, gorgeous show; and in the case of the Este sisters, its talent for politics and literature, its devotion to art ; and particularly in Isabella, the profound selfishness of the collecting spirit, which grasped at every precious thing as its rightful prey, no matter whether it belonged to a dear friend or an enemy. And Lucrezia $orgia, if only the helpless victim of her terrible family, will suggest for all time a world where evil was called good, an atmosphere more foggy with wickedness than any ever known in Europe since Christianity was born.
This side of the Renaissance, we fancy, is too much for- gotten by those who write about its splendid figures. It is rather the fashion to ignore their background of frightful moral evil, and to treat them as if their magnificent proceed- ings were guided by any sort of code that would be recog- nised now; as if their stereotyped letters, full of artificial compliment, were sincere; as if they had had the smallest regard for truth and honesty ; as if their lives were barely decent, their religion more than an idolatrous game; as if murder and the rest of the deadly sins were not slight things to them, to be committed without much scruple and condoned without any at all. Of course it is true that religion and morality have by no means always gone hand-in-hand, in other lands and other centuries ; but the Italy of the Borgias and the Sforzas stands alone in the history of Christendom. This was the dark side, which we are sometimes expected to forget for the sake of glorious art, intellectual freedom, philosophic thought, and deep learning. But a fair view must include both sides.
The portraits in Mr. Hare's brilliant gallery illustrate the one as well as the other. He goes back as far as the two Queens Giovanna of Naples, in the very earliest days of the Renaissance, for Giovanna I. began her tragical life seven years after Dante died. The second Giovanna, one of the worst women who ever lived, is treated with great gentleness ; it seems as if her biographer was unwilling to touch upon her sins, and, indeed, the story of her life, fully told, might be hardly fit for general reading. Another notorious lady of a much later date, Bianca Capello, Grand Duchess of Florence, is more frankly allowed to be unworthy of the title of "most illustrious." One of the more romantic and adventurous stories in the book is that of Caterin.a Sforza, Countess of Forli, the illegitimate daughter of Duke Galeazzo of Milan; and a very entertaining chapter deals with the uncomfortable glories of her half-sister, Bianca Maria Sforza, who married the Emperor Maximilian, and made her wedding journey from Milan to Innsbruck in the depth of the winter. After being nearly drowned in a storm on the Lake of Como, she and her suite had to ride on mules across the Stelvio, with no road but a mule-track. Mr. Hare truly observes that even now, with a good road, travellers would hesitate to ride over the Stelvio in the middle of December. It does not seem surprising that one of Bianca's ladies had to be left behind at Gravedona, and that all complained bitterly of "those fearful cruel mountains."
The Empress Bianca, in spite of her high position, may be classed among the sadder figures, the victims of her time. One may say the same in a sense of that queen of romance, Cateiina Cornaro. The delicate sweetness of her portrait by Titian, reproduced as the frontispiece of this book, suggests the singular charm which hangs for ever about the name of the Lady of Asolo. The story of the pathetic rise and fall of "Kate the Queen" is in every way the most attractive Mr.
• 211. Most Illustrious Ladtes of the Italian Renaissance. By Christopher Hare. London; Harper and Brothers. [10s. 6d.]
Hare has found to tell. In her we see the better side of this brilliant time. More strongly still, of course, should this be said of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the noble mother of Lorenzo de' Medici, and of his Roman wife, Clarice Orsini, as well as of that good and charming woman Elisabetta Gonzaga, sister- in-law of Isabella d'Este and wife of Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino, at whose Court the new learning and new manners flowered most purely. For it was under the influence of this "most excellent lady" that Count Baldassare Castiglione wrote his Cortigiano, which was the inspiration of our own Elizabethan poets. We may notice that it was Elisabetta of Urbino whose chief art treasures were begged by the great Isabella from Caesar Borgia when he swept down upon Urbino. And though the MontA3feltii regained their city and palace, those treasures were never restored to them.
Two more ladies remain to be mentioned whose claim to the title of "most illustrious" cannot be disputed, who were, no doubt, the best women of their time, and through whose lives and surroundings the fresh wind of the Reformation was beginning to blow: Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara, the friend of Michelangelo; and Renee of France, Duchess of Ferrara. It is a rather curious reflection that this noble Princess, one of the first of those who favoured the Reformers, and suffered, in consequence, a kind of martyrdom, was the wife of Lucrezia Borgia's eldest son, and her immediate successor as Duchess of Ferrara. Such a fact seems to bring out clearly the extraordinary nature of the time, and this although, from the Italian Renaissance point of view, Lucrezia's life at Ferrara was irreproachable.
And now a few words as to the book in which all these famous ladies are enshrined. It is lively and interesting; it represents a good deal of study, and a fairly clear realisation of the world in which they moved. At the same time, it is not very well written ; the English requires a good deal of polishing. The author has allowed himself—to tell the truth, from internal evidence, and in spite of the masculine name, we feel inclined to write herself—a certain slovenliness in com- position which a little careful reading and editing would easily have removed. The book's real merit makes us resent such weaknesses of style as "must have been," "seems to have," and the like, which are scattered freely over its pages. We do not apologise for offering this criticism to a writer so evidently capable of better things.
THEOLOGY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY.*
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