in the performance of justice, in acts as well as words. His master of the household having obtained large supplies for the palace from a certain tradesman, who had also many courtly creditors, and could not get paid, the latter was obliged to have recourse to the Duke, who said, 'Summon me at law.' The man was retiring with a shrug of his shoulders, when his lord told him not to be daunted, but to do what he had desired, and it would turn out for his advantage and that of the town. On his replying that no tipstaff could be found to hazard it, Federigo sent an order to one to do whatever this merchant might require for the ends of justice. Accordingly, as the Sovereign issued from the palace with his retinue, the tipstaff stood forward, and cited him to appear next day before the podestà, on the complaint of such-a-one. Whereupon he, looking round, called for the master of his household, and said, in presence of the court, 'Hear you what this man says? Now give such instructions as shall save me from having to appear from day to day before this or that tribunal.' And thus, not only was the man paid, but his will was made clear to all—that those who owed should pay, without wronging their creditors.
THE CONTESSA PALMA OF URBINO
After the portrait by Piero della Francesca in the National Gallery
"It having been represented to him that the fashion of going armed gave daily occasion for brawls and tumults, he made the podestà put forth a proclamation that no one should carry any weapon, and took care to be passing with his court when the crier was publishing it. Stopping to listen, he turned:—'Our podestà must have some good reason for this order, and that being so, it is right he should be obeyed.' He then, unbuckling his sword, gave it to one of his suite to be taken home; whereupon all the others did the same. Thus by his example he maintained more prompt and perfect justice than others could effect by sentences, bail-bonds, imprisonments, tortures, or the halter; … and it was just when he made least show of power that he was most a sovereign. One Nicolò da Cagli, an old and distinguished soldier in his service, having lost a suit, went to Fossombrone to lodge an appeal with Federigo, and, finding that he was hunting in the park, followed him, without ever considering that the time and place were ill adapted for such a purpose. At the moment when he put his petition into his sovereign's hand, a hart went by with the hounds in full cry. The Count spurred after them, and in the hurry of the moment dropped the petition, which Nicolò taking as a personal slight, he retired in great dudgeon, and went about abusing him roundly, as unjust, ungrateful, and haughty. Federigo hearing of this, ordered the commissary of Cagli to send the veteran to Urbino, who hesitated to obey the summons, dreading punishment of his rashness. In reliance, however, on his master's leniency, and his own merits, he set out, and found the Count at breakfast in the great audience chamber. It was customary while at his meals, for those who had the entrée to fall back on each side, leaving the entrance clear, so that he saw Nicolò come in: and when he had done eating, he called and thus addressed him:—'I hear that you go about speaking much ill of me, and as I am not aware of having ever offended you, I desire to know what you have been saying, and of what you complain.' At first he turned it off with some excuse, but on being pressed for an explanation, he recounted what had occurred in the park; and that, considering his long and zealous service, his sacrifices and wounds, it appeared to him a slight, and virtually a cut direct, to run after a wild beast when he came in search of justice; that having in consequence let slip the opportunity of appealing, and so, irretrievably lost a cause of much importance, he had in irritation given too great licence to his tongue. Whereupon, Federigo, turning to the bystanders, said, 'Now see what obligations I am under to my subjects, who not only peril their lives in my service, but also teach me how to govern my state!' and continued thus to the litigant, 'Friend Nicolò! you are quite right; and since you have suffered from my fault, I shall make it up to you.' He then ordered the commissary of Cagli to pay him down the value of the house, and all his travelling expenses, although the fault was clearly his for not bringing his appeal at a fitter time. Again, during one severe winter, the monks at S. Bernardino,*205 being snowed up, and without any stores, rang their bells for assistance; the alarm reaching Urbino, Federigo called out the people, and went at their head to cut a way and carry provisions to the good friars."
These extracts, illustrating the true spirit of a paternal government, amply account for the esteem in which the Duke of Urbino was held by contemporaries, and for his fame which still survives in Italy, although partially obscured north of the Alps by Sismondi's indifference to whatever merit emerged among the petty sovereigns of that fair land. Immensely superior to most of them in intellectual refinement and in personal worth, he may be regarded as, in military tactics, the type of his age, and was sought for and rewarded accordingly. He served as captain-general under three pontiffs, two kings of Naples, and two dukes of Milan. He repeatedly bore the baton of Florence, and refused that of Venice. He was engaged by several of the recurring Italian leagues as their leader in the field. From the popes he earned his dukedom, and the royal guerdons of the Rose, the Hat, and the Sword. Henry VII of England*206 sent him the Garter; Ferdinand of Naples conferred on him the Ermine. In fine, Marcilio Ficino, a philosopher as well as a courtier, cited him as the ideal of a perfect man and a wise prince.
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Federigo's dying requests were, that his nephew and confidential friend Ottaviano Ubaldini should charge himself with the care of his youthful heir, and that his body should be interred by that of his father in the parish church of S. Donato, a short distance eastward from Urbino. The funeral, though celebrated with
"Those rites which custom doth impose,"
was more remarkable for the heartfelt grief which attested the calamity fallen upon his people. His funeral oration, pronounced by Odasio, whom we shall afterwards find performing the like sad office to his son, is preserved in the Vatican, and has furnished us with some traits of his character. His body, duly embalmed, was enclosed in a marble sarcophagus in the new church of the Zoccolantines, which he left unfinished, close to that of S. Donato.*207 Thirty years after his death, it was laid open by his grandson, Duke Francesco Maria, who reverently plucked a few hairs from his manly breast.208 The tomb, thus strangely violated, remained open, and Baldi, who wrote in 1603, describes the corpse as still perfect, except a slight injury to the nose, and resembling a wooden figure, fleshless, and covered with white skin. It was attired after the fashion of Italy, in a gala dress of crimson satin and scarlet, with a sword by its side. Muzio tells us that he too had seen the body half a century before, when it was visited by Duke Guidobaldo II. and many of his people.
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We may here notice six likenesses still preserving to us the form and fashion of that body, with which his people's posterity thus strangely held converse, beginning with, I. the portraits of Federigo and his consort, painted in tempera by Piero della Francesca, now in the Uffizi gallery at Florence, which we reproduce. The individuality belonging alike to the features and the costumes could scarcely be doubted, even had we not historical authority for the Count's broken nose, and that of Giovanni Sanzi for Battista's "grave and modest eye," already more particularly mentioned at page 218.*209 The clear tone and enamel finish are admirable, notwithstanding a thick varnish, with which old tempera pictures are invariably dabbled, under the recent management of the Florence gallery. The panels are painted on both sides, the subjects on the reverse being triumphs of the two sovereigns in a style of mythological allegory then in fashion. On a car drawn by two milk-white steeds with docked tails, driven by Cupid, Federigo sits on a curule chair, in full armour, pointing forward with his truncheon, and holding a helmet on his knee, whilst a winged Victory, standing behind, crowns him with a garland. On the front of the car ride four female figures, one of whom, representing Force, has in her arms a broken Corinthian column; another, emblematic of Prudence, is placed in the centre of the group, holding a mirror in her hand; her face, bright with youthful hope, looks in advance to the future, and the profile or mask of a bearded and wrinkled old man, affixed to the back of her Janus head, contemplates the past with matured experience; a metaphor closely followed by Raffaele for his Jurisprudence in the Stanza della Segnatura. Justice is introduced with her scales and two-edged sword; and the fourth figure is scarcely seen. The distant country, in this as in the others of these pictures, shows that their author was unable to apply to landscape the excellence in linear perspective displayed