Pesaro

“ It would prove no easy thing for me to penetrate unnoticed into the town of Pesaro, much less into the Sforza Court, where for three years I had pursued my Fool’s trade. There was scarce a man, a woman or a child in the entire domains of Giovanni Sforza to whom Boccadoro, the Fool, was not known; and many a villano, who had never noticed the features of the Lord of Pesaro, could have told you the very colour of his jester’s eyes; which, after all, is no strange thing, for—sad reflection!—in a world in which Wisdom may be overlooked, Folly goes never disregarded. ”

“ No men in Europe are more constant in their attachments than the Venetians. Pesaro is the sole proprietor of one of the moat beautiful and magnificent palaces on the Grand Canal at Venice, though he now lives in the outskirts of London, in a small house, not so large as one of the offices of his immense noble palace, where his agent transacts his business. ”

“ A better reason for the sentiment, at any rate, is that such a great house has surely, in the high beauty of its tiers, a refinement of its own. They make one think of colosseums and aqueducts and bridges, and they constitute doubtless, in Venice, the most pardonable specimen of the imitative. I have even a timid kindness for the huge Pesaro, far down the Canal, whose main reproach, more even than the coarseness of its forms, is its swaggering size, its want of consideration for the general picture, which the early examples so reverently respect. ”

“ I gasped in amazement—as well I might, for what interests had Boccadoro, the Fool, in common with Cesare Borgia, Cardinal of Valencia?
“You,” he answered vehemently, “you, Lazzaro Biancomonte of Biancomonte, whose father Costanzo of Pesaro stripped of his domains. The matters in those papers mean the ruin of the Lord of Pesaro. We are all but ripe to strike at him from Rome and when we strike he shall be so disfigured by the blow that all Italy shall hold its sides to laugh at the sorry figure he will cut. ”

“ But, meanwhile, your men are waiting for you; Madonna Paola di Santafior is waiting for you, and—hark!—the bellowing crowd is waiting for you.”
“They wait in vain,” he snarled. “Who cares for them? The Lord of Pesaro am I.”
“Care you, then, nothing for them? Will you have your name written in history as that of a coward who would not lift his sword to strike one blow for honour’s sake ere he was driven out like a beast by the mere sound of voices?” ”

“ The dark heads stand out against the dying sunset, the pallor of the dead is half veiled by the falling night. It is a picture which has the emotional beauty of a scene in nature, and makes a profound impression by its depth and mystery. This same solemnity and gravity temper the brilliant colouring of the great altarpiece painted for the Pesaro family in the Frari. Columns rise like great tree-trunks, light and air play through the clouds seen between them. ”

“ But I am sorely afraid that my days in Pesaro are numbered, that my sands are all but run—at least, for a little while. The conqueror is at our gates, and it would be vain to set against the overwhelming force of his numbers the handful of valiant knights and brave soldiers that to-day opposed and scattered his forerunners. It is my intention to withdraw, now that my honour is safe by what has passed, and that none will dare to say that it was through fear that I fled. ”

“ Had he made the least attempt to carry out his threat, had he but drawn an inch of the steel he fingered, I think I should have slain him with my hands without fear or thought of consequences.
“I have no help for you such as you need,” I answered him. “I am but the Fool of Pesaro. Whoever looked to a Fool for miracles?”
“But here is death,” he almost moaned.
“Lord of Pesaro,” I reminded him, “your mercenaries are under arms by your command, and your knights are joining them. They wait for the fulfilment of your promise to lead them out against the enemy. ”

“ Fortunately for the memory of the Pesaro family it finds a nobler, if no less bombastic expression, in the great Titian altar-piece, the Madonna di Casa Pesaro, in which the Queen of Heaven bends from her throne to beam at its episcopal representative, and St. Francis and St. Anthony grace by their presence the symbols of its victory over the Turk, while St. Peter pauses in his pious lection.
But the dead Doges lie mostly in S. S. Giovanni e Paolo, where their funeral service was performed. It is the very church for Their Sublimities—floods of light, pillared splendour, imposing proportions. ”

“ Pesaro, they want to the eye of the true connoisseur the sentiment and expressive drawing, the exquisite finish and delicacy, the rich colour, and the admirable design of the earlier works produced at the Casa Pirota in Faenza, at Forlì, Castel Durante, Siena, and Caffaggiolo, in the latter years of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries, and by Mo Giorgio at{41} Gubbio, many of which rival in beauty the exquisite miniature illuminations of that palmy period of Italian art. ”

“ Then the Pesaro folk, whose communications with the neighbouring towns are much interrupted by the Lady Catherine's new toll-bars, take it into their heads to retaliate, by seizing every Forlì man who ventures to show his face within their jurisdiction, weighing him publicly on a steel yard by the road-side, and taxing him so much a pound, as if he were hogsflesh or mutton, to the great amusement and scoffing of the cities round about, and the infinite scandal and discomfiture of the men of Forlì. ”

“ It is the subject itself that must be deemed to be of the lower and less interesting order. It necessitates the pompous exhibition of the Virgin and Child, of St. Peter and other attendant saints, united by an invisible bond of sympathy and protection, not to a perpetually renewed crowd of unseen worshippers outside the picture, as in Giorgione's Castelfranco Madonna, but merely to the Pesaro family, so proud in their humility as they kneel in adoration, with Jacopo Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos (Baffo) , at their head. ”

“ And so by the first hour of night Fossombrone was a league or so behind us, and we were advancing briskly towards the sea. Overhead a moon rode at the full in a clear sky, and its light was reflected by the snow, so that we were not discomforted by any darkness. We fell, presently, into a gentler pace, for, after all, there could be no advantage in reaching Pesaro before morning, and as we rode we talked, and I made bold to ask her the cause of her flight from Rome. ”

“ A young Spanish woman in her retinue, Doña Lucretia Lopez, a niece of Juan Lopez, chancellor and afterward cardinal, was married in Pesaro to Gianfrancesco Ardizio, the physician and confidant of Giovanni Sforza.
In the palace there were few kinsmen of her husband besides his younger brother Galeazzo, for the dynasty was not fruitful and was dying out. Even Camilla d'Aragona, Giovanni's stepmother, was not there, for she had left Pesaro for good in 1489, taking up her residence in a castle near Parma.
In summer the beautiful landscape must have afforded the young princess much delight. ”

“ I cried. “What aid was that?”
“You must know, Lazzaro,” said she, “that he comes often to Pesaro from Cesena, being a man in whom the Duke places great trust, and on whom he has bestowed considerable powers. He never fails to lie at the Palace when he comes, and he seems to—to have conceived a regard for me. He is a man of twice my years,” she added hurriedly, “and haply looks upon me as he might upon a daughter.” ”

“ A considerable number of pieces, evidently the work of one able hand, has been variously assigned to the furnaces of Faenza, of Caffaggiolo, and of Pesaro; to the first two from a general similarity in the character of their design. On the other hand, the initials I. P. occurring in large characters on the reverse of some of the pieces were presumed to be those of the words “In Pesaro,” and led to a confusion of them with others really painted at the Lanfranchi works at Pesaro and marked with the same initials but in a smaller form; standing for the signature of the artist, “jiacomo pinsit.” ”

“ Every day brought encouraging intelligence. As the Austrians retreated from the Legations, the cities they left in their rear raised the Sardinian flag, and sent in their adherence to the central Government at Bologna. Up to La Cattolica, a village a few miles to the south of Rimini and the classic Rubicon, the insurrection received no check; but Pesaro, a town on the sea-coast of some importance, about forty miles from Ancona, was unable to declare itself. ”

“ He was grown more splendid than ever in the prosperity that seemed to surround him here at Pesaro, in this Palace that had undergone such changes and been so enriched during the past two years as to go near defying recognition.
When the seneschal had shown me to the quarters he had set apart for me, I made bold to make inquiries concerning Madonna Paola.
“She is in the garden, Illustrious,” answered the seneschal, deeming me, no doubt, a great lord, from the respect which Filippo had indicated should be shown me. “Madonna has the wisdom to seek the little sunshine the year still holds. ”

“ This brave captain took possession of Pesaro in March, 1445; two years later he received the papal investiture of the fief. He was married to Costanza Varano, one of the most beautiful and intellectual women of the Italian Renaissance.
To him she bore Costanzo and also a daughter, Battista, who later, as the wife of Federico of Urbino, won universal admiration by her virtues and talents. The neighboring courts of Pesaro and Urbino were connected by marriage, and they vied with each other in fostering the arts and sciences. ”

“ It was in the year that Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, celebrated his nuptials with the Lady Lucrezia Borgia—three years ago, therefore—that one morning there rode into the courtyard of his castle of Pesazo a tall and lean young man on a tall and lean old horse. He was garbed and harnessed after a fashion that proclaimed him half-knight, half-peasant, and caused the castle lacqueys to eye him with amusement and greet him with derision. Lacqueys are great arbiters of fashion. ”

“ Galeazzo, who had married Ginevra, a daughter of Ercole Bentivoglio, assumed the government of Pesaro. Giovanni's child died August 15, 1512, whereupon Pope Julius II withdrew his support from Galeazzo, and forced the last of the Sforza of Pesaro to enter into an agreement by which, October 30, 1512, he surrendered the castle and domain to Francesco Maria Rovere, who had been Duke of Urbino since the death of Guidobaldo in April, 1508. Pesaro therefore was united with this State. Galeazzo died in Milan in 1515, having made the Duke Maximilian Sforza his heir. ”

“ Indeed, their settlement at Pesaro might have been whilst the duchy of Urbino belonged to the Venetians, and in consideration of the part they took in those wars.
“Theodore Paleologus was born, we may infer from the inscription, at Pesaro. Of his mother we know nothing; his father was called Camillo. The time of his birth is also uncertain; though, from his marriage in 1615, then a widower, we may suppose him to be then about forty, which carries back his birth to 1575. ”

“ I demand a boon. He who for years has suffered the ignominy of the motley is at last revealed to us as a poet of such magnitude of soul and richness of expression that he would not suffer by comparison with the great Bojardo or tim greater Virgil. Let him be stripped for ever of that hideous garb he wears, and let him be treated, hereafter, with the dignity his high gifts deserve. Thus shall the day come when Pesaro will take honour in calling him her son. ”

“ But I heeded him not.
“Fare you well, my Lord of Pesaro,” said I. “See that none penetrates to your closet. Make fast the door.”
“Stay!” he called after me. “Do you hear me? Stay!”
“Others will hear you if you commit this folly,” I called back to him. “Get you to cover.” And so I left him.
Below, in the courtyard, my coming was hailed by a great, enthusiastic clamour. They had all but abandoned hope of seeing the Lord Giovanni, so long had he been about his arming. As they brought forward my charger, I sought with my eyes Madonna Paola. ”

“ In the Duchy of Urbino, Pesaro, Castel-Durante, Urbino, and Gubbio are the leading centres, and absorb a large share of the interest surrounding the pottery of Italy. When the Sforza family acquired the lordship of Pesaro, they instituted pottery works there, and in 1486 and 1508 passed edicts against the importation of earthen-ware into Pesaro. ”

“ She looked at me, her eyes round with inquiry, and a faint smile of uncertainty on her lips.
“Let me confess that your elucidation helps me but little.”
“Ponder it, Madonna,” I urged her. “Substitute Giovanni Sforza for Belshazzar, Cesare Borgia for King Darius, and you have the key to my parable.”
“But is it indeed so? Does danger threaten Pesaro from that quarter?”
“Aye, does it,” I answered, almost impatiently. “The tide of war is surging up, and presently will whelm us utterly. ”

“ I made up my mind to go to Bologna as quickly as possible in order to get a passport, and to return to Pesaro, where I should find my passport from Rome, for I could not make up my mind to lose my trunk, and I did not want to be separated from Therese until the end of her engagement with the manager of the Rimini Theatre. ”