The Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome: From the Pontificate of Julius II to that of Paul III

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1906 - 340 pages

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Page 215 - He for his part, loved her so, that I remember to have heard him say that he regretted nothing except that when he went to visit her upon the moment of her passage from this life, he did not kiss her forehead or her face, as he did kiss her hand. Her death was the cause that oftentimes he dwelt astonied, thinking of it, even as a man bereft of sense.
Page 215 - In particular, he greatly loved the Marchioness of Pescara, of whose divine spirit he was enamoured, being in return dearly beloved by her. He still preserves many of her letters, breathing honourable and most tender affection, and such as were wont to issue from a heart like hers. He also wrote to her a great number of sonnets, full of wit and sweet longing. She frequently removed from Viterbo and other places, whither she had gone for solace or to pass the summer, and came to Rome with...
Page 62 - ... and sparkling eyes, her generosity and carelessness with money, her grace of carriage and charm of conversation, she was received in Naples, Rome, Florence, and Ferrara like a visiting princess. The Mantuan ambassador at Ferrara described her entry in an undiplomatic letter to Isabella d'Este (1537): I have to record the arrival among us of a gentle lady, so modest in behavior, so fascinating in manners, that we cannot help considering her something divine.
Page 73 - ... in this, as in so many other matters of urban administration, it was under Augustus that an abundant supply was first procured and maintained by an excellent system of management. Frontinus, to whose work de Aqueductibus we owe almost all that we know about the Roman water-supply, tells us that for four hundred and .forty-one years after the foundation of the city the Romans contented themselves with such water as they could get from the Tiber, from wells, and from natural springs, and adds that...
Page 90 - Caetani no longer exists,1 but the front of the church is still covered with the records of floods, of which I quote one instance : " In the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and thirty, the seventh of the pontificate of Pope Clement VII, on the eighth day of October, the flood reached this line, and the whole city would have perished if the Blessed Virgin had not made the waters recede.
Page 227 - Aquila, testamentary executors and recipients of the last wishes of Raphael, have raised this memorial to his affianced wife, Maria, daughter of Antonio of Bibbiena, whom death deprived of a happy marriage," etc. As regards the second and truest love of Raphael, the accounts given by his early biographers rest more on tradition than on facts. We only know the girl to have been dinal Bibbiena his commission for the cartoons of the tapestries.
Page 215 - Anna, according to the provision of her will ; but such was the cowardly fear which seized all those who had been associated with the deceased lady, lest the Inquisition should involve them in the disgrace with which her memory was threatened, that the coffin was abandoned in a corner of the chapel, without any display of those impressive ceremonies with which the Catholic Church is wont to i Translation of Christopher Hare, The Most fUu»triota Ladies of the Italian Renavaance, p.
Page 144 - Ange , qui étoit plus sincère que les grands artistes ne sont ordinairement, avoit prié instamment la comtesse Isabelle, après qu'il lui eut fait présent de son Cupidon, et qu'il eut vu l'autre, qu'on ne montrât l'ancien que le dernier, afin que les connoisseurs pussent juger en les voyant, de combien, en ces sortes d'ouvrages, les anciens l'emportent sur les modernes.
Page 45 - If we except a few churches which by accident have been spared the heinous transformations of the seventeenth century, a few baronial towers not yet whitewashed or turned into tenements, and a few private houses which have not yet fallen into the hands of speculators, Rome offers no connecting link between the classic and the modern age.

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