IT would occupy a full chapter were we to trace the history of what Julius II. meant to have been his tomb, from the chisel of Michael Angelo Buonarroti; yet the subject is too illustrative of that Pontiff's grandiose spirit, and of the artist's unfulfilled aspirations, as well as too intimately connected with the ducal house of Urbino, to be overlooked. The work was commissioned by Julius himself, who, early in his pontificate, called Buonarroti from Florence to execute a resting-place for his ashes, which, in the words of Vasari, should "surpass in beauty and grandeur, in imposing ornament and elaborate sculpture, all antique and imperial sepulchres." The vast size and colossal proportions of the first design were worthy of artist and patron, and cannot be at all estimated from the curtailed and aimless substitute which now challenges our criticism. Yet there was exaggeration in the ideas as well as the forms; the allegories were far-fetched, the adulation fulsome, and the intention obscure. Such at least is the impression left by the descriptions of Vasari and Condivi. Without attempting to reconcile these with the sketch engraved in the Milanese edition of the former author [1811], it is enough to say that the original plan was an isolated parallelogram, with about ten statues and seven caryatides on each faÇade, and a sarcophagus aloft for the Pope's body, the estimate for all which seems to have been 10,000 ducats, augmented by his executors to 16,000. Its destined site was St. Peter's, and its utter disproportion in style and extent to that time-worn basilicon appears to have suggested to the indomitable Pontiff the vast idea of reconstructing the metropolitan church of Christendom. This more engrossing undertaking absorbed much of the enterprise and materials destined for the tomb, so the latter remained unfinished at the death of Julius, who barely survived the completion of those Sistine frescoes to which he had transferred the sculptor's reluctant labours. A new and reduced contract having been made by his executors for its completion, Buonarroti resumed it with the preference due to a favourite work; but he sought in vain for leisure to proceed with it on the accession of Leo X., who, by a strange misapplication of his powers, sent him to work the marble quarries of Pietra Santa. Indeed, the executors failed to obtain implement of his undertaking under either of the Medicean popes, alienated as these were from the della Rovere, and intent upon otherwise employing the genius of their gifted countryman.

At length Francesco Maria I. took up the forgotten memorial of his uncle, whose over-ambition of monumental honours had meanwhile led to a total oversight of his place of sepulture. As early as 1525, we find the Duke addressing complaints and threats to Buonarroti, whom he charged with idleness, after receiving prepayment of his stipulated price, unaware apparently that he had been overborne by higher authority, and thus compelled to employ himself on commissions less germane to his feelings and tastes. A misunderstanding in regard to the sums so advanced further complicated this unfortunate affair, which was throughout fraught with disappointment and annoyance to Michael Angelo. It slept on till 1532, when a further modification was made of the plan to a single faÇade whereon six statues were to be placed; but amid competing calls upon his "fearless and furious" chisel or pencil, little progress was made in the next ten years. Irritated by continual exercise of the papal control, such as his independent spirit could ill brook, fretting at the uncongenial labours often thrust upon him, and galled by repeated allegations against his gratitude and his integrity, Buonarroti turned his eyes to Urbino, as a home where his genius would be appreciated without sacrificing his freedom of action, and took steps to retire thither and redeem his pledge to the Duke. But in Paul III. he had a yet more exacting task-master, from whom there was no escape, and in November, 1541, Cardinal Ascanio Parisani wrote to Duke Guidobaldo that the Pope having commissioned the sculptor to paint the Last Judgment, which would occupy his undivided attention during several years, to the exclusion of the monument, he had to propose, at the instance of his Holiness, a new arrangement, whereby the statues for its reduced design, so far as not already finished by Michael Angelo, were committed to other artists, working upon his models and under his eye. Yielding gracefully to the necessity of the case, the Duke wrote the following letter.[225]

Under this final alteration of his contract, Michael Angelo forthwith assigned to Raffaele da Montelupo the execution of his designs for a Madonna with a Child in her arms, and for a prophet and a sibyl seated, at the price of 400 scudi; employing at the same time two decorative stonecutters upon the ornamental details of the faÇade, at a cost of 800 more. The statues from his own hand were to be Moses, and two caryatides holding captives, who had been introduced into the first plan, as allegorical of the cities in Romagna subdued by Julius. But, finding these too large for the reduced design, he proposed to substitute for them two other figures from his chisel, already far advanced, and which he would entrust to be finished by others at a cost of 200 scudi, his Moses being destined to stand between them. All this is stated by him in a petition to the Pope of 20th July, 1542. The two substituted statues were finished by Buonarroti, and, in the documents printed by Gaye, are named by him Active and Contemplative Life. This, however, is a free interpretation of the allegory, the figures being, according to Vasari, Leah and Rachel. The recumbent Pope was the wretched work of one Maso di Bosco or Boscoli; and the prophet and sibyl by Montelupo are said to have greatly dissatisfied Michael Angelo. The two rejected caryatide prisoners found their way to Paris in the time of Francis I., and remain in the Louvre; another similar is in the great hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, at Florence; and some grandiose, half-blocked ideas, still to be seen here and there, whose rough power identifies them with Michael Angelo, may have belonged to his original plan. About the beginning of 1545, forty years after it had been undertaken, the work was placed in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, of which Julius had been Cardinal-presbyter. Though meant as his tomb, it is but his monument; for the bones of that imperious high priest have found a fitter resting-place in the grandest of Christian fanes, his own creation, and best memorial. Few works of art have occasioned greater variety of opinion. In his Lectures, Fuseli has exposed several of his defects, and the impression it most frequently leaves upon the spectator is thus aptly expressed by him in an Italian letter to the translator of Webb on the Beautiful:—

"In the Moses, Michael Angelo has sacrificed beauty to anatomical science, and to his favourite passion for the terrible and the gigantic. If it be true that he looked at the arm of the famous Ludovisi satyr, he probably, also, studied the head, in order to transfer its character to the Moses, since both of them resemble that of an old he-goat. There is, notwithstanding, in the figure a quality of monstrous grandeur which cannot be denied to Buonarroti, and which, like a thunder-storm, presaged the bright days of Raffaele."

This monument must ever be regarded as but the epitome of a grand design, curtailed without scale or measurement, deformed by colossal portions from the original in combination with dwarfish details of its pigmy substitute, marred by incomplete allegories, and eked out by supposititious figures. Yet few will leave the spot without another glance at the tremendous Moses, nor will any connoisseur avert his gaze until the awful majesty of that one statue has eclipsed the petty incongruities of its location. It is among those rare creations of man's mind which, rising above the standard of human forms and human sympathies, demand a loftier test. The pervading sentiment alone challenges our intellectual regard, and bespeaks our verdict; yet with playful prodigality, the artist has lavished an ivory finish upon its details, without detracting from the sublime character of the irate lawgiver.[226]

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Although this work is the only link directly connecting Michael Angelo with the ducal house of Urbino, we may be allowed a passing tribute to that genius which has hammered huge rocks into colossal compositions, and embodied themes the most difficult in forms the most daring. Of the simple element of beauty we, indeed, find in him few traces. Gentleness and pathos had no place either in his wayward spirit or in his works.[*227] Discarding the beau-ideal aimed at in antique sculpture, where movement was restrained by the observance of form, and passion modified to the measure of fair proportion, he either startled by impossible postures, gnarled limbs, and sturdy deformity, or, in the words of Fuseli, "perplexed the limbs of grandeur with the minute ramifications of anatomy." Hence, when tried by the rules of art, many of his creations are found wanting; when submitted to the standard of pure taste, their faults become glaring. In straining to shake off the trammels of manner, he often fell into mannerism the most infelicitous; and the impression too commonly left on the spectator is that of energy wasted and talent misapplied. But his mind was of that lofty cast which, soaring above common themes, and spurning conventional restrictions, substituted power for beauty, and challenged our wonder rather than our approbation. Awed by the sublimity of his ideas, we overlook their inadequate development, until, descending to details, we impugn the unfinished sketch, and half-chiselled marble, painfully reminded that superhuman gifts are often marred by very ordinary weaknesses.

No one, perhaps, fully aware of Michael Angelo's celebrity, ever looked for the first time upon one of his principal works without a shade of disappointment. Inventions appealing to the intellect without sympathy from the feelings,—attitudes struggling with difficulty rather than aiming at elegance,—muscular masses, rugged as the blocks from which they are rudely hewn; such things surpass the comprehension of superficial observers, and disenchant common minds. Yet there is a spell around all of them which arrests the most careless, and recalls the most disappointed, and the longer they are examined, especially by persons of cultivated understanding, the more certain will be the final tribute to their transcendent qualities, the more unreserved the avowal that their author stands out among the foremost geniuses whom the world has seen. Feebleness or insipidity had no place in his conceptions, and no individual ever left the impress of his vigorous mind upon so many various arts. He was a poet of no mean pretensions. His architecture is as successful as bold. It is difficult to say whether his frescoes or his sculptures are the more admirable. Even his oil paintings are worthy of more notice than they have met with; and, the few ascertained specimens display a mastery of finish little to be looked for from their wayward and impetuous author, and develop in their execution, as well as in their design, an extraordinary pictorial science. The trite assertion that he never painted but three easel pictures seems fully negatived by the mechanical perfection which, notwithstanding a certain languor of colouring and flatness of surface, these exhibit, and which must have been gained by extensive practice. In his house, even a miniature on parchment is shown as his work; and not a few tiny productions in bronze and ivory bear the stamp of his invention, if not of his hand. These were probably labours of those early days when, with equal verity and shrewdness the Gonfaloniere Soderini recommended him to the Roman court as "a fine young man, unequalled in his art throughout Italy, or perhaps the world. He will do anything for good words and caresses; indeed, he must be treated with affection and favour, in which case he will perform things to astonish all beholders."[228] In the sacristy of S. Lorenzo, at Florence, these anticipations were amply realised on the monuments of two of the Medici, with whom an earlier portion of these pages has made us acquainted. These works were, however, no labour of love to the sculptor, whose sympathies had been alien to that race from the days when Pietro ceased to walk in the ways of his fathers. Accordingly, their greatest fault is, that the artist absorbs our interest almost to the exclusion of the personages commemorated, to whom the allegorical compositions appear to have no reference. It is, indeed, only their portraits that recall the purpose of the monuments. That of the elegant and gentle Giuliano awakens no association that might not be suggested by the statue of some nameless warrior of the classic age. More appropriate is the bearing of Lorenzo, the usurper of Urbino. The stern gloom that broods over his casque, and shadows his repulsive features, scowling upon the world from whose sympathies he seems a voluntary alien, is an enduring index of his unamiable character. But it is in the Sistine chapel that Buonarroti sits pre-eminent. Who that stands beneath its grand frescoes can doubt the daring, the originality, and grasp of his genius, who triumphantly called into existence forms and movements before which ordinary minds shrink into pigmy dimensions? Yet, who that observes the rapid decline of the Michael-Angelesque school into mannered contortion and extravagant caricature, can question its mischievous influence, or the danger of opening up such fields to uninspired labourers? On both sides of the Alps, its followers or imitators, mistaking extravagance for energy, manner for power, and servilely substituting exceptional attitudes for the sublimity of nature and the dignity of repose, have copied his design without imbibing his spirit, and have embodied feeble conceptions in preposterous forms.

Freely have we spoken of a name to whom all honour is due, whose failings may be noted as a warning, without diminishing our respect for his manifold attainments. Our readers may appreciate his success as a poet through Mr. Glassford's felicitous version of a sonnet worthy the noblest of art's disciples.[*229]

"Now my fair bark through life's tempestuous flood Is steered, and full in view that port is seen, Where all must answer what their course has been, And every work be tried, if bad or good. Now do those lofty dreams, my fancy's brood, Which made of Art an idol and a queen, Melt into air; and now I feel, how keen! That what I needed most I most withstood. Ye fabled joys, ye tales of empty love, What are ye now, if twofold death be nigh? The first is certain, and the last I dread. Ah! what does Sculpture, what does Painting prove, When we have seen the Cross, and fixed our eye On Him whose arms of love were there outspread!"

The home patronage of the della Rovere dukes was, however, by no means limited to their subjects, and Titian[*230] enjoyed high favour from the first two sovereigns of that dynasty. The coronation of Charles V., in 1532, having attracted to Bologna a concourse of distinguished persons, Titian, then in his fifty-fifth year, was honoured by an imperial invitation to join the throng. The monarch, himself reputed no mean craftsman, delighted to pass what time he could snatch from business, in conversing with the painter, and observing his progress, till one day, having picked up a fallen pencil, he returned it, saying, "Titian deserves to be waited on by an Emperor." The Duke of Urbino, who may have known the Venetian in his native city, was among the sovereigns and cardinals whose commissions on that occasion contended for preference, and but a short time, probably, elapsed ere his own and his consort's portraits were produced,[*231] although Vasari and Ridolfi have erroneously fixed their date in 1543, five years after Francesco Maria's death.

Few of Titian's likenesses have been more lauded than the Duke's, both as regards truth and execution; but we shall quote only the testimony of Aretino, who knew well the painter and his subject. "In gazing upon it, I called Nature to witness, making her confess that Art was positively metamorphosed into herself; and to this, each wrinkle, each hair, each spot bears testimony, whilst the colouring not only exhibits vigour of person, but displays manliness of mind. The vermilion hue of that velvet drapery behind him is reflected in the lustrous armour he wears. How fine the effect of his casquet-plumes, reproduced on the burnished cuirass of the mighty general! Even his batons of command are perfect nature, chiefly that of his own adventure, thus budding on the faith of his renown, which began to shed its glories in the war which humbled his private foe. Who would assert that the truncheons confided to him by the Church, Venice, and Florence, were not of silver?"[232] In Aretino's letter were enclosed two sonnets on the portrait and its companion; they will be found in the Appendix, No. XI., together with one in which Bernardo Tasso appeals to Titian for a likeness of his lady-love. Aretino's lines regarding the Duke may be thus literally rendered:—

"Fear on the crowd from either eyebrow falls; Fire in his glance, and pride upon his front, The spacious seat of honour and resolve. Beneath that bust of steel, with arm prepared, Burns valour, prompt all peril to repel, From sacred Italy, that on his worth relies."

The other sonnet, descriptive of Leonora's likeness, alludes to the master's harmonious tints as figuring varied charms met in her character, such as humility of disposition, decorum in dress and manners, sustained by a dignified expression. In her features, beauty united with modesty, a rare combination; and grace was enthroned on her eyebrows. Prudence presided over her becoming silence, and other excellent qualities marvellously adorned her forehead. Nor are these praises exaggerated. Those who attentively observe this portrait in the Uffizi Gallery will readily acknowledge that, although, perhaps, more elaborated in its details than any other from the master's hand, his pencil never attained greater breadth, nor embodied high art in more severe character.[233]

The connection thus formed by Titian with the house of Urbino was maintained after the accession of Duke Guidobaldo, through whom Paul III. invited him to Bologna in 1543, where he painted that Pontiff with his wonted success. About the same time the Duke commissioned from him a likeness of himself, which was finished two years later. The misfortune sustained by its disappearance may be appreciated from the words of Aretino, who, writing to Guidobaldo, says, "For he has so embodied in his colours the very air you breathe, that in the same attitude as you at this instant appear to others at Vicenza, we now behold you in Venice, where we circle, bow, and pay court to you, just as do your suite who are in waiting upon you there." Vecellio lived among men whose talents, and fame, and forms, and dress deserved commemoration; and to such he did justice, for painter and sitters were worthy of each other, conferring a mutual and enduring illustration. His pencil, and those of his followers, were singularly happy in preserving individual character, although wanting in ideality and intense expression. But their great excellence displayed itself in the representation of voluptuous scenes, adapted alike to their glowing tints and the taste of their countrymen.

In 1545, Titian repaired to Rome, at the request of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, visiting Urbino[*234] on the way, and receiving several commissions which he could not stay to execute. Setting forward on his journey, he was conducted by Guidobaldo in person to Pesaro, and thence by an escort to Rome. The impression left upon the painter in this passage is thus described to the Duke, by his friend Aretino:—"Titian writes me, 'Worship the Lord Guidobaldo, gossip!—worship him, I say, gossip! for no princely bounty can compare with his.' And these exclamations are his grateful acknowledgment of the mounted escort of seven attendants which your Excellency provided for him, with good company, and all paid; over and above the ease wherewith, amid caresses, honours, and gifts, you made him feel quite at home. I was, indeed, melted by the account he gave me of your marvellous efforts to benefit, honour, and welcome him." We have, to the like purpose, the less exceptionable testimony of Bembo, who, on the 10th of October, wrote to Girolamo Querini: "I must add that your old friend Maestro Tiziano is here, who represents himself as much beholden to you.... The Lord Duke of Urbino has treated him with exceeding kindness, retaining him about his person, and bringing him as far as Pesaro, and thence forwarding him thither, well mounted and attended, for all which he acknowledges himself under great obligations."

Vasari mentions, as executed by Titian for the court of Urbino, portraits of Popes Sixtus IV., Julius II., and Paul III.; of Charles V., Francis I., Sultan Solyman, and the Cardinal of Lorraine. I have not succeeded in tracing any of these with certainty, but two half-lengths of beautiful women, added to the list by Ticozzi, may probably be the Flora[*235] now in the Uffizi Gallery, and the Bella in the Pitti Palace: their features exhibit considerable analogy with each other, and with the former of two pictures we are now to describe. In the last number of the Appendix we shall rectify various errors regarding Titian's two celebrated Venuses in the Tribune at Florence. One of them, painted for Guidobaldo II., has no proper right to that title, being correctly called in the old Urbino inventories, "a naked woman lying." She is stretched at full length along a bed, on which is a linen sheet, with a green curtain above. A tiny spaniel crouches at her feet, and two waiting-maids are searching in a chest near an open balcony, for garments wherewith to veil her all-exposed charms. The languor of her eye, the listless attitudes into which her limbs have dropped, personify voluptuousness, and express a mind quietly gloating over the past. A certain harmony and warmth of tone, fused throughout the vast surface of delicate flesh-tints and snowy linen, over which broad daylight streams without shadow, are worthy of our highest admiration; and the relief given to the figure, with little aid from the chiaroscuro, is probably unrivalled. The companion picture, which was not, however, executed for Urbino, represents an equally nude figure on a couch of purple damask, near a balcony opening upon a distant landscape. The boy of love, archly toying upon her bosom, decides the subject to be Venus; and her glowing eye-ball expresses the ardour that thrills through her veins. The full and solid flesh is true to those developed forms which, still characterising the women about Treviso, formed the standard of female perfection in Titian's studio; and although the skill with which they undulate, softened by chiaroscuro, demands all praise, there may yet be some who, dissenting from such an ideal of beauty, wish this mortal mould had been refined into the symmetry of that "perfect goddess-ship" which close by "loves in stone." Having thus noticed these nudities, it may be well to add, that the shameless Aretino, while boasting of his own unrestrained debaucheries, bears testimony to the purity of Titian's morals, and the habitual control under which his passions were maintained.

As an antidote, perhaps, to so sensual a production, Titian sent to Urbino, with his Venus, a picture offering the utmost contrast in sentiment and artistic treatment. It was the first of those Magdalens,[*236] frequently repeated by him with slight variations, of whom not a few school copies may be seen passing for originals. Ridolfi tells us that he caught the idea from an antique sculpture, transforming it into a penitent daughter of sin. Yet he has treated it according to those ideas of female beauty which it was the peculiar province of the Venetian school to develop, and which in Italy have passed into the proverbial phrase of un bel pezzo di carne, meaning a buxom dame. To borrow the words of Ticozzi, "he has represented a noble lady, who, while yet in her prime, had abandoned the delights and delicacies of her station. With due regard to her past position, he has lavished upon her the beauties of form and complexion; her repentance he has characterised with the most devoted expression of which art is capable." The ascetic sentiment prevailing in this work is well adapted to the sympathies of the Roman Church, among whose followers it has ever been more a favourite than with Protestant amateurs.

Our notice of Titian in connection with the court of Urbino, may be closed by a letter, which, in the servile phrase of this century, ventures thus to dun Guidobaldo for payment of a picture sent him five months before:—

In one of his visits to Venice, about 1559, Guidobaldo, chancing to enter a church of the Crociferi, where a youth was engaged in copying the St. Laurence of Titian, he entered into conversation with him, and subsequently returned more than once to observe his progress. On one of these occasions, while the Duke was hearing mass at a neighbouring altar, the young artist seized the opportunity to sketch his likeness, which was shown him by an attendant. Pleased with its success, and with the painter's manners, he invited him to enter his service. The object of this casual patronage proved not unworthy of it. He was Jacopo Palma the younger, a name already known to art; for his grandfather, who bore it, had distinguished himself among the scholars of Giorgione and Titian; and his aunt, Violante, was mistress and favourite model of the latter. Palma Giovane, then in his sixteenth year, accompanied the Duke to Pesaro, where he employed his pencil in copying works of Raffaele and Titian. The only anecdote preserved of his residence in the court of Urbino proves that he continued to enjoy his patron's favour; for, in a dispute with the house-steward as to his luncheon, the latter was ordered to treat the youth with more consideration. In order to obtain for him every advantage, the Duke sent him to the charge of his brother, Cardinal della Rovere, at Rome. After there diligently studying antique marbles, with the works of Michael Angelo and those of Polidoro di Caravaggio, Palma, at twenty-four, returned to Venice. On his way, he paid a visit of thanks to Guidobaldo, and by his works removed certain unfavourable impressions made by unfriendly detractors in his absence. Of those which he may have executed for this court, no account has reached us, beyond a notice that Francesco Maria II. paid him, at Venice, 1591, 86 scudi for a Madonna and a St. Francis, which do not, however, appear in the wardrobe inventories. He painted for the metropolitan cathedral at Urbino the Discovery of the Holy Cross, a picture praised by Lanzi beyond its merits; and for Pesaro, a S. Ubaldo, and the Annunciation.

Another Venetian, patronised by Guidobaldo, was Gianbattista Franco, surnamed il Semolei, who was brought to Urbino on a recommendation of Girolamo Genga, in order to paint the choir of the cathedral. He there treated the favourite Umbrian theme of the Coronation of the Madonna in a manner utterly at variance with the old feeling, taking as his prototype the Judgment of Michael Angelo, of whom he was a devoted and assiduous imitator. This work having been destroyed by the fall of the roof in 1789, we shall content ourselves with the description of Vasari, who had seen it, and whose leaning must have been favourable to a work produced under such influence. "And so, in imitation of Buonarroti's Judgment, he represented in the sky the glorification of the saints, scattered on clouds over the roof, with a whole choir of angels around our Lady, in the act of ascending to heaven, where Christ waited to crown her, whilst a number of patriarchs, prophets, sibyls, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and maidens, in varied groups and attitudes, manifested their joy at the arrival of the glorious Virgin. This subject might have afforded to Battista an excellent opportunity of proving his ability, had he adopted a better plan, not only in the practical management of his fresco, but in conducting his entire theme with more judicious arrangement. But in this work he fell into his usual system, constantly repeating the same faces, figures, draperies, and extremities. The colouring was likewise utterly destitute of beauty, and everything was strained and puny. Hence the work, when finished, greatly disappointed the Duke, Genga, and every one, much having been expected from his known capacity for design." Several easel pictures of his, in the sacristy of the Duomo, are weak in composition and poor in colour; but one of St. Peter and St. Paul, before the Madonna and Child, is an exceedingly grandiose production, in the Buonarroti style. We shall have further occasion to speak of this artist in our next chapter. He was born about 1498, and lived to the age of sixty-three; but aware of his deficiencies as a painter, he betook himself in a great measure to engraving, for which his accuracy as a draftsman well qualified him.

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In absence of native sculptors of eminence, the plastic art never was much cherished in our duchy, and few commissions were given, except for decorative or monumental purposes. The festive arches on Duchess Vittoria's marriage were probably designed by Tiziano Aspetti, a bronzist of Upper Italy. Her husband having acquired a Leda by Bartolomeo Ammanati of Florence, he was called to Urbino, to construct a memorial for Francesco Maria I. It does not, however, appear to have been successful, and being quite disproportioned to the little octangular church of Sta. Chiara, of which it occupied the centre, it was removed after the Devolution, and probably destroyed. Sebastiano Becivenni of Mercatello, was celebrated as a decorative sculptor, and his dexterity is attested by two pulpits in the duomo at Arezzo, dated 1563. In 1581, Francesco Maria II. commissioned two small statues from John of Bologna, and in the following year his minister at Rome wrote, proposing to send him a miniature painter from thence, at a monthly salary of ten golden scudi, besides board and travelling expenses. Late in life, he had his own and his father's portraits executed in mosaic by Luigi Gaetano at Venice. The statue of Duke Federigo, which we have already mentioned as modelled by Baroccio, was executed for this Duke by Girolamo Campagna of Venice, and one of his grandfather, attired as a Roman warrior, leaning on his baton of command, and resting upon a stump, was the work of Giovanni Bandini of Florence, an eminent scholar of Bandinelli. After his sovereignty had virtually passed from the bereaved Duke, he disposed of this memorial of its brighter days in a touching letter to the Doge of Venice, which finely illustrates the resignation beautifully exemplified in all the correspondence of his latter years:—

The statue now stands in the court of the Doge's ducal palace, thus inscribed: "To Francesco Maria I., Duke of Urbino, leader of the armies of this Republic; erected at Pesaro, and recommended to the affectionate care of Venice by Francesco Maria II., when bereaved of progeny." The original inscription ran thus: "To Francesco Maria, an eminent general, leader of the armies of the holy Romish Church, the Florentine republic, the Venetian state, and the princes of the League against the Turks, and of his own troops; the conqueror, subduer, and sustainer of potentates at home and abroad; his grandson, Duke Francesco Maria II. had this erected."

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