brother, in 1454, and became a student. But soon devoting himself to arms, he attended his father in many campaigns, and especially in the fatal one of Ferrara. A cloud, however, came over his military renown at the battle of the Taro in 1495, where he misconducted himself under the banner of St. Mark. He married Emilia, youngest daughter of Marco Pio of Carpi, and died childless soon after 1500. His wife was the chief ornament of Urbino when its court was the model of intellectual refinement, and she will often be noticed in after portions of this work. Her charming social qualities are celebrated in prose and verse by Castiglione, and she is called by Bembo a magnanimous and prudent lady, remarkable for wisdom as for warm affection. The Duchess Elisabetta, whose friend and companion she had been, alike during the bright days of wedlock and the blight of widowhood, bequeathed to her in 1527 the liferent of Poggio d'Inverno, and appointed her an executrix of her will. Her portrait from a medal will be found in our second volume.
3 Bernardino, who died at Castel Durante, 1458.
4 Gentile, a celebrated beauty, who married Agostino Fregoso of Genoa, and had the Montefeltrian fief of Sta. Agatha. Their sons, Ottaviano and Federigo Fregoso, will figure in our twenty-first chapter, and attained the respective dignities of Doge of Genoa and Cardinal. Ottaviano's posterity were Marquises of Sta. Agatha in the seventeenth century.
BOOK THIRD
OF GUIDOBALDO DI MONTEFELTRO,
THIRD DUKE OF URBINO
CHAPTER XIII
The early promise of Duke Guidobaldo I.—Count Girolamo Riario assassinated—The Duke’s marriage—Comparative quiet of Italy.
In the life of Duke Federigo we have seen personal merit accompanied by a remarkable continuance of good fortune. The mystery of his birth was no bar to his enjoying unquestioned a sovereignty to which he could not have established any clear right. The popular outbreak which had cut off his predecessor shook not the stability of his dynasty. To the fief he thus peaceably acquired he added important territories by marriage and purchase. He transmitted to a hopeful son an important and flourishing state, and with it the highest title compatible with his station, obtained by his personal merits. Among competitors and opponents of great military renown he was ever conspicuous, and almost uniformly victorious. In an age when letters and arts began their rivalry with arms he retained, as the Maecenas of a cultivated court, the fame he had gained as a successful general. The biographers of Guidobaldo*215 have justly ascribed to him no inferior merit, while they have strongly contrasted the persecutions of fortune which he endured; and they have established the probability that, with equal years and equal advantages, his memory might have not been less glorious than that of his father. Those portents attending the Prince's birth, to which a miraculous character was assigned by the gratitude or superstition of the people, have been mentioned in a preceding chapter. It took place at Gubbio on the 17th or 24th of January, 1472, and on the 2nd of February he was baptized Guido Ubaldo Girolamo Vincenzo;*216 the first pair of these names, given in memory of the old counts of Urbino, and of the patron saint of that city, was commonly used by him in its contracted form Guidobaldo. The court of his father, ever attractive to eminent men, was soon after visited by the venerable Cardinal Bessarion, who, after being twice within a vote or two of the triple tiara, was returning from his last diplomatic mission to England a few months before his death. Federigo availed himself of this opportunity to obtain for the infant the rite of confirmation, though but three months' old. In two months more, the condition with which Battista had accompanied her prayers for a male heir was fatally fulfilled,217 and Guidobaldo was deprived of a mother's care long ere he could be sensible of the sad bereavement.
Gio. Sanzi, pinx. L. Ceroni, sculp.
GUIDOBALDO I.
From a picture in the Colonna Gallery in Rome
Almost from his cradle the Prince was remarkable for a sweet and docile temper, as well as for uncommon promise. We are gravely assured by his preceptor that, while other infants had scarcely learned to satisfy their instinctive need of sustenance, he could express his wants; while they were trying to speak he was mastering his rudiments; and these, with similar proofs of precocity, which we shall presently cite, are asserted with the most solemn asseverations of their literal truth. Fully aware of the importance of early directing so prompt a genius, his father engaged, as the guide of his youthful studies, Ludovico Odasio of Padua, an accomplished gentleman, as well as a distinguished scholar, whom he ever treated with the attention due to his own merits, as well as to the importance of his charge. The after life of his pupil, and the language used by Odasio in his funeral eulogy,*218 bear ample testimony to the careful and satisfactory tuition which the Prince imbibed, and the benefit he reaped from his instructions. Nor were these ungratefully received by the latter, who, on attaining majority, bestowed upon his preceptor the countship of Isola Forsara, near Gubbio, which his descendants continued to enjoy during many generations.
The Paduan sage describes his charge as a fit model of those infantine Cupids whom painters delight to introduce in their pictures of the Queen of Love. Nor were his dispositions less engaging; gentle and just to all, generous but prudent beyond his years. Neglecting the childish toys suitable to his age, his whole mind was concentrated on his studies and on manly sports, occasioning in many those anxious fears that so generally attend the premature development of early talent. Such was the genius committed to the care of Odasio, who seems to have rendered it ample justice. Besides his native tongue, Guidobaldo rapidly acquired the Latin language, and although Greek was then a comparatively rare accomplishment, he so thoroughly mastered its difficulties as to write it with freedom and Attic grace. Possessing great powers of application, his reading included all the best classical authors. The poets were his delight in boyhood, but by degrees he attached himself more to the severer studies of philosophy and ethics. Nor was his attention limited to abstract literature. Geography engaged in turn his versatile talents, accompanied with practical information as to the inhabitants by whom various countries were peopled, their manners, their political relations, and the character of their respective governments. But what his preceptor considered as the great aim of a princely education was the development of his powers of eloquence, and an extensive acquaintance with history; to these, therefore, he drew Guidobaldo's attention with entire success. In detailing to us these interesting particulars, Odasio takes little credit for the progress of his pupil, whose quick apprehension rendered his duty that of a companion and observer rather than of a teacher. His powers of memory were especially remarkable, and by judicious and habitual exercise were extended with advancing manhood. He is said to have possessed that rarest gift, of never forgetting anything he wished to recollect, and to have repeated with perfect accuracy successive pages which he had read only once, some ten or fifteen years before.
His insatiable thirst for knowledge did not prevent his perfecting himself in every healthful and manly exercise. Precocious in his amusements as in his talents, he devoted to these the play-time which other children pass with noisy toys, and whilst they listened to nursery tales, he hung upon the recital of heroic deeds, or the stirring narratives of glorious war. To the boyish sports of ball and dancing quickly succeeded gymnastic and military games, which were followed with an enthusiasm, and accompanied by exposure to fatigue and cold, that appear to have fatally affected his constitution. Thus he grew up, adorned by the accomplishments, endowed with the courage, and skilled in the martial exercises which formed a perfect knight when the standard of chivalry was high. Nor were the graces of person wanting to this phœnix of his age. Count Castiglione describes him as represented in our engraving, of fair complexion and hair; of singularly handsome features, in which a severe style was chastened by gentle expression; of a person and limbs the model of manly beauty.
* * * * *
The death