Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
While the simpler prostitutes- cortigiane di candela - practised in
brothels, these Roman hetaerae lived in their own homes, entertained
lavishly, read and wrote poetry, sang and played music, and joined
in educated conversation; some collected pictures and statuary, rare
editions and the latest books; some maintained literary salons. To
keep up with the humanists many of them took classical names- Camilla,
Polyxena, Penthesilea, Faustina, Imperia, Tullia. One scandalous
wit, in the pontificate of Alexander VI, wrote a series of epigrams
beginning with a number in praise of the Virgin or the saints, and
then, without a blush, continuing with several in honor of the
distinguished courtesans of his time. `052036 When one such,
Faustina Mancina, died, half of Rome mourned her, and Michelangelo was
one of many who wrote sonnets to her memory. `052037
The most renowned of these cortigiane oneste was Imperia de
Cugnatis. Made rich by her patron Agostino Chigi, she adorned her home
with luxurious furniture and choice art, and gathered about her a bevy
of scholars, artists, poets, and churchmen; even the pious Sadoleto
sang her praise. `052038 Probably it was Imperia whom Raphael took
as his model for the Sappho of his Parnassus. She died in the flower
of her beauty at the age of twenty-six (1511), and received
honorable burial in the church of San Gregorio, with a marble tomb
engraved in the finest lapidary style; and half a hundred poets
lamented her in classic elegies. `052039 (Her daughter killed
herself rather than submit to seduction.) `052040 Almost as renowned
was Tullia d'Aragona, illegitimate daughter of the Cardinal of Aragon.
Admired for her golden hair 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. She sings impromptu all kinds of airs and
motets.... There is not one lady in Ferrara, not even Vittoria Colonna
the Duchess of Pescara, who can stand comparison with Tullia. `052041
-
Moretto da Brescia painted a bewitching portrait of her, looking
as innocent as a novice nun. She made the mistake of outliving her
charms; she died in a wretched hut near the Tiber; and her total
belongings, at auction, brought a dozen crowns ($150?). But in all her
poverty she had kept her lute and harpsichord to the last. She left
also a book that she had composed On the Infinity of Perfect
Love. `052042
Doubtless that title reflected the Renaissance fashion of talking
and writing about Platonic love. If a woman could not commit
adultery she might at least allow herself to arouse in a man a kind of
poetic gallantry that made her the object of verses, courtesies, and
dedications. The devotions of the troubadours, the Vita Nuova of
Dante, and Plato's discourses on spiritual love had begotten in a
few circles a fine sentiment of adoration toward woman- usually
another man's wife. Most people paid no attention to the idea,
preferring their love in a frankly sensual form; they might write
sonnets, but their goal was coitus; and hardly once in a hundred
cases, despite the novelists, did they marry the object of their love.
For marriage was an affair of property, and property could not be
made dependent upon the passing whims of physical desire. Betrothals
were arranged by family councils, and most young people accepted
without effectual protest the mates so assigned to them. Girls could
be betrothed at the age of three, though marriage had to be delayed
till twelve. In the fifteenth century a daughter unmarried at
fifteen was a family disgrace; in the sixteenth century the age of
disgrace was deferred to seventeen, to allow time for higher
education. `052043 Men, who enjoyed all the privileges and
facilities of promiscuity, could be lured into marriage only by brides
bringing substantial dowries. In Savonarola's day there were many
marriageable girls who, for lack of dowries, had failed to find a
husband. Florence established a kind of state dowry insurance-
Monte delle fanciulle, or fund of the maidens- from which marriage
portions were given to girls that had paid small yearly
premiums. `052044 In Siena there were so many bachelors that the
laws had to inflict legal disabilities upon them; in Lucca a decree of
1454 debarred from public office all unmarried men between twenty
and fifty. "The times are not favorable to matrimony," wrote
Alessandra Strozzi in 1455. `052045 Raphael painted half a hundred
Madonnas, but would not take a wife; and this was the one thing in
which Michelangelo agreed with him. Weddings themselves consumed
enormous sums; Leonardo Bruni complained that his matrimonium had
squandered his patrimonium. `052046 Kings and queens, princes and
princesses spent half a million dollars on a wedding while famine
raged among the people. `052047 When Alfonso the Magnificent of Naples
married, he set up tables for 30,000 diners on the shores of the
Bay. Lovelier was the reception that Urbino gave to Duke Guidobaldo
when he brought from Mantua his bride Elisabetta Gonzaga: ranged on
a hill slope stood the ladies of the city, beautifully dressed; before
them their children carried olive branches; mounted choristers, in
graceful formation, sang a cantata that had been composed for the
occasion; and an especially comely matron, impersonating a goddess,
offered the new Duchess the loyalty and affection of the
people. `052048
After marriage the woman usually kept her own name; so Lorenzo's
wife continued to be called Donna Clarice Orsini; sometimes,
however, the wife might add her husband's name to her own- Maria
Salviati de' Medici. In the medieval theory of marriage it was
expected that love would develop between man and wife through the
varied partnerships of marriage in joy and sorrow, prosperity and
adversity; and apparently the expectation was fulfilled in the
majority of cases. No love of youth for maiden could be deeper or
truer than that of Vittoria Colonna for the Marquis of Pescara, to
whom she had been engaged from the age of four; no loyalty could
have been greater than that of Elisabetta Gonzaga, accompanying her
crippled husband through all his misfortunes and exiles, and
faithful to his memory till her death.
Nevertheless adultery was rampant. `052049 Since most marriages
among the upper classes were diplomatic unions of economic or
political interests, many husbands felt warranted in having a
mistress; and the wife, though she might mourn, usually closed her
eyes- or her lips- to the offense. Among the middle classes some men
assumed that adultery was a legitimate diversion; Machiavelli and
his friends seem to have thought nothing of exchanging notes about
their infidelities. When, in such cases, the wife avenged herself by
imitation, the husband was as like as not to ignore it, and wear his
horns with grace. `052050 But the influx of Spaniards into Italy,
via Naples and Alexander VI and Charles V, brought the Spanish
"point of honor" into Italian life, and in the sixteenth century the
husband felt called upon to punish his wife's adultery with death,
while preserving his pristine privileges unimpaired. The husband might
desert his wife and still prosper; the deserted wife had no remedy
except to reclaim her dowry, return to her relatives, and live a
lonely life; she was not allowed to marry again. She might enter a
convent, but it would expect a donation of her dowry. `052051 In
general, in the Latin countries, adultery is condoned as a
substitute for divorce.
IV. RENAISSANCE MAN
-
The combination of intellectual enfranchisement and moral release
produced "the man of the Renaissance." He was not typical enough to
merit that title; there were a dozen types of man in that age as in
any other; he was merely the most interesting, perhaps because he
was exceptional. The Renaissance peasant was what peasants have always
been until machinery made agriculture an industry. The Italian
proletaire of 1500 was like those of Rome under the Caesars or
Mussolini; occupation makes the man. The Renaissance businessman was
like his past and present peers. The Renaissance priest, however,
was different from the medieval or modern priest; he believed less and
enjoyed more; he could make love and war. Amid these types was an
arresting mutation, a sport of the species and the time, the kind of
man we think of when we recall the Renaissance, a type unique in
history, except that Alcibiades, seeing him, would have felt reborn.
The qualities of this type revolved about two foci: intellectual and
moral audacity. A mind sharp, alert, versatile, open to every
impression and idea, sensitive to beauty, eager for fame. It was a
recklessly individualistic spirit, set on developing all its potential
capacities; a proud spirit, scorning Christian humility, despising
weakness and timidity, defying conventions, morals, tabus, popes,
even, occasionally, God. In the city such a man might lead a turbulent
faction; in the state, an army; in the Church he would gather a
hundred benefices under his cassock, and use his wealth to climb to
power. In art he was no longer an artisan working anonymously with
others on a collective enterprise, as in the Middle Ages; he was "a
single and separate person," who stamped his character upon his works,
signed his name to his paintings, even, now and then, carved it on his
statues, like Michelangelo on the Pieta. Whatever his
achievements, this "Renaissance man" was always in motion and
discontent, fretting at limits, longing to be a "universal man"-
bold in conception, decisive in deed, eloquent in speech, skilled in
art, acquainted with literature and philosophy, at home with women
in the palace and with soldiers in the camp.
His immorality was part of his individualism. His goal being the
successful expression of his personality, and his environment imposing
upon him no standards of restraint either from the example of the
clergy or from the terror of a supernatural creed, he allowed
himself any means to his ends, and any pleasure on the way. None the
less he had his own virtues. He was a realist, and seldom talked
nonsense except to a reluctant woman. He had good manners when he
was not killing, and even then he preferred to kill with grace. He had
energy, force of character, direction and unity of will; he accepted
the old Roman conception of virtue as manliness, but added to it skill
and intelligence. He was not needlessly cruel, and he excelled the
Romans in his capacity for pity. He was vain, but that was part of his
sense of beauty and form. His appreciation of the beautiful in woman
and nature, in art and crime, was a mainspring of the Renaissance.
He replaced the moral with the esthetic sense; if his type had
multiplied and prevailed, an irresponsible aristocracy of taste
would have supplanted the aristocracies of birth or wealth.
But, again, he was only one of many kinds of Renaissance man. How
different was the idealistic Pico, with his belief in the moral
perfectibility of mankind- or the grim Savonarola, blind to beauty and
absorbed in righteousness- or the gentle gracious Raphael,
scattering beauty about him with an open hand- or the demonic
Michelangelo, haunted with the Last Judgment long before he painted
it- or the melodious Politian, who thought there would be pity even in
hell- or the honest Vittorino da Feltre, so successfully binding
Zeno to Christ- or the second Giuliano de' Medici, so kindly just that
his brother the Pope considered him unfit for government! We perceive,
after every effort to abbreviate and formulate, that there was no "man
of the Renaissance." There were men, agreeing only in one thing:
that life had never been lived so intensely before. The Middle Ages
had said- or had pretended to say- No to life; the Renaissance, with
all its heart and soul and might, said Yes.
V. RENAISSANCE WOMAN
-
The emergence of woman was one of the brightest phases of the
period. Her status in European history has usually risen with
wealth, though Periclean Greece, too near the Orient, was an
exception. When hunger is no longer feared, the male quest turns to
sex; and if man still despoils himself for gold, it is to lay it at
a woman's feet, or before the children she has given him. If she
resists him he idealizes her. Usually she has the good sense to resist
him, and to make him pay dearly for the boons whose contemplated
splendor swells has veins. If, moreover, she adds graces of mind and
character to her body's charms, she gives man the highest satisfaction
he can find this side of glory; and in return he raises her to an
almost queenly dominance in his life.
We must not imagine that this was the pleasant role of the average
woman in the Renaissance; it fell to a fortunate few, while the far
greater number put off their bridal robes to carry domestic burdens
and family headaches to their graves. Hear San Bernardino on the
proper time for beating a wife:
-
And I say to you men, never beat your wives while they are great
with child, for therein would lie great peril. I say not that you
should never beat them; but choose your time.... I know men who have
more regard for a hen that lays a fresh egg daily than for their own
wives. Sometimes the hen will break a pot or a cup, but the man will
not beat her, for fear of losing the egg that is her fruit. How
stark mad, then, are many that cannot suffer a word from their own
lady who bears such fair fruit! For if she speak a word more than he
thinks fit, forthwith he seizes a staff and begins to chastise her;
and the hen, which cackles all day without ceasing, you suffer
patiently for her egg's sake. `052052
-
A girl of good family was carefully trained for success in getting
and keeping a prosperous mate; this was the major subject of her
curriculum. Till a few weeks before marriage she was kept in
relative seclusion in a convent or in the home, and received from
her tutors or nuns an education as thorough as that which came to
all but the scholars among the men of her class. Usually she learned
some Latin, and became distantly acquainted with the leading figures
of Greek and Roman history, literature, and philosophy. She
practised some form of music, and sometimes played at sculpture or
painting. A few women became scholars, and publicly debated problems
of philosophy with men, like the learned Cassandra Fedeli of Venice;
but this was highly exceptional. Several women wrote good verse,
like Costanza Varano, Veronica Gambara, and Vittoria Colonna. But
the educated woman of the Renaissance retained her femininity, her
Christianity, and its moral code; and this gave her a union of culture
and character that made her irresistible to the higher Renaissance
man.
For the lettered men of that age felt her attractiveness
intensely, even to writing and reading books that analyzed her
charms in scholarly detail. Agnolo Firenzuola, a Vallombrosan monk,
composed a dialogue Sopra la bellezza delle donne, on the beauty
of women, and carried off this difficult subject with a skill and
erudition hardly becoming a monk. Beauty itself he defines after Plato
and Aristotle as "an orderly concord, a harmony inscrutably
resulting from the composition, union, and commission of divers
members, each of which shall itself be well proportioned and in a
certain sense beautiful, but which, before they combine to make one
body, shall be different and discrepant among themselves." `052053
He proceeds to examine with finesse every part of the feminine
frame, laying down the standard of beauty for each. The hair should be
thick, long, and blonde- a soft yellow nearing brown; the skin
bright and clear, but not pale white; the eyes dark, large, and
full, with touches of blue in a white iris; the nose must not be
aquiline, for that is especially disconcerting in a woman; the mouth
should be small, but the lips full; the chin round and dimpled; the
neck round and rather long- but let not Adam's apple show; the
shoulders should be broad, the bosom full- with a gentle fall and
swell; the hands white and plump and soft; the legs long, the feet
small. `052054 We perceive that Firenzuola had spent much time
contemplating his subject, and had discovered an admirable new topic
for philosophy.
Not content with these gifts, Renaissance woman, like any other,
dyed her hair- almost always to blonde- and added false locks to
fill it out; peasant women, having spent their beauty, cut off their
tresses and hung them out for sale. `052055 Perfumes were a mania in
sixteenth-century Italy: hair, hats, shirts, stockings, gloves, shoes,
all had to be scented; Aretino thanks Duke Cosimo for perfuming the
roll of money he had sent him; "some objects that date from that
period have not yet lost their odor." `052056 A well-to-do woman's
dressing table was a wilderness of cosmetics, usually in fancy
containers of ivory, silver, or gold. Rouge was applied not only to
the face but to the breasts, which in the larger cities were left
mostly bare. `052057 Various preparations were used to remove
blemishes, to polish the fingernails, to render the skin soft and
smooth. Flowers were placed in the hair and on the dress. Pearls,
diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, agates, amethysts, beryls,
topazes, or garnets adorned the fingers in rings, the arms in
bracelets, the head in tiaras, and (after 1525) the ears in
earrings; besides which jewelry might be studded into the headgear,
the dress, the shoes, and the fan.
Feminine dress, if we may judge from the portraits, was rich, heavy,
and uncomfortable. Velvets, silks, and furs hung in massive folds from
the shoulders or- when the shoulders were bare- from fastenings over
the breasts. Dresses were bound with a girdle at the waist, and
swept the floor behind the feet. The shoes of the well-to-do woman
were high of both sole and heel, to protect her feet from the filth of
the streets; nevertheless the upper portion was often of delicate
brocade. Handkerchiefs were now in use in the upper classes; they were
made of fine linen, often striped with gold thread or fringed with
lace. Petticoats and lingerie were trimmed with lace and embroidered
with silk. Sometimes the dress reached up around the neck in a ruff
stiffened with metal ribs, and occasionally rising above the head. The
headdress of the women took a hundred forms: turbans, tiaras,
kerchiefs or veils bound with pearls, hoods stiffly shaped with
wire, caps like a boy's or a forester's.... Frenchmen visiting
Mantua were delightfully shocked to find the Marchioness Isabella
wearing a fancy cap with jeweled feathers, and, beneath, shoulders and
bosom bare almost to the nipples. `052058 Preachers complained about
the amount of female bosom that invited the male eye. Now and then the
flair for nudity went out of bounds, and Sacchetti observed of some
women that if they took off their shoes they would be naked. `052059
Most women imprisoned themselves in corsets that could be tightened by
turning a key, so that Petrarch pitied "their bellies so cruelly
squeezed that they suffer as much pain from vanity as the martyrs
suffered for religion." `052060
Armed with all these weapons, the Renaissance woman of the upper
classes raised her sex out of medieval bondage and monastic contempt
to be almost the equal of man. She conversed on equal terms with him
about literature and philosophy; she governed states with wisdom, like
Isabella, or with all-too-masculine force, like Caterina Sforza;
sometimes, clad in armor, she followed her mate to the battlefield,
and bettered the instruction of his violence. She refused to leave the
room when rough stories came up; she had a good stomach, and could
hear realistic language without losing her modesty or her charm. The
Italian Renaissance is rich in women who made a high place for
themselves by their intelligence or their virtue: Bianca Maria
Visconti who, in the absence of her husband Francesco Sforza, governed
Milan so capably that he used to say he had more confidence in her
than in his whole army, and who at the same time was known for her
"piety, compassion, charity, and beauty of person"; `052061 or
Emilia Pio, whose husband died in her youth, but who so cherished
his memory that she was never known, through all her remaining
years, to encourage the attentions of any man; or Lucrezia Tornabuoni,
mother and molder of Lorenzo the Magnificent; or Elisabetta Gonzaga,
or Beatrice d'Este, or the maligned and gentle Lucrezia Borgia; or the
Caterina Cornaro who made Asolo a school for poets, artists, and
gentlemen; or Veronica Gambara, the poetess and salonniere of
Correggio; or Vittoria Colonna, the untouched goddess of Michelangelo.
Vittoria recaptured, without proud display, all the quiet virtue
of a Roman heroine of the Republic, and combined with it the noblest
features of Christianity. She had distinguished ancestry: her father
was Fabrizio Colonna, grand constable of the Kingdom of Naples; her
mother, Agnese da Montefeltro, was a daughter of Federigo, the
scholarly Duke of Urbino. Betrothed in childhood to Ferrante Francesco
d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, she married him at nineteen (1509);
and the love that united them before and after marriage was a finer
poem that any of the sonnets that they exchanged during his campaigns.
At the battle of Ravenna (1512) he was wounded almost to death, and
was taken prisoner; he took advantage of his captivity to compose A
Book of Loves, which he dedicated to his wife. Meanwhile he had
carried on a liaison with one of Isabella d'Este's maids of
honor. `052062 After his release he returned to Vittoria briefly, then
sallied forth on one campaign after another, so that she seldom saw
him again. He led the forces of Charles V at Pavia (1525), and won a
decisive victory. Offered the crown of Naples if he would join a
conspiracy against the Emperor, he thought it over for a while, then
revealed the plot to Charles. When he died (November, 1525) he had not
seen his wife for three years. Ignorant of, or ignoring, his
infidelities, she spent her twenty-two years of widowhood in works
of charity, piety, and devotion to his memory. When she was urged to
marry again she replied: "My husband Ferdinand, who to you seems dead,
is not dead to me." `052063 She lived in quiet retirement at Ischia,
then in convents at Orvieto and Viterbo, then in semiconventual
privacy in Rome. There, while herself remaining apparently orthodox,
she befriended several Italians who sympathized with the
Reformation. For a time she was placed under the surveillance of the
Inquisition, and to be her friend was to risk indictment for heresy.
Michelangelo took the risk, and developed for her an intense spiritual
affection that never dared go beyond poetry.
The educated women of the Renaissance emancipated themselves without
any propaganda of emancipation, purely by their intelligence,
character, and tact, and by the heightened sensitivity of men to their
tangible and intangible charms. They influenced their time in every
field: in politics by their ability to govern states for their
absent husbands; in morals by their combination of freedom, good
manners, and piety; in art by developing a matronly beauty which