Page:Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua, 1474-1539 volume 1 (1905).djvu/17

Rh Venice and Milan in their most triumphant hour, when the glowing hues of Titian and Giorgione's frescoes, of Leonardo and Gian Bellini's paintings, were fresh upon the walls. She visited the famous palace of Urbino in the days of the good Duke Guidobaldo, when young Raphael was painting his first pictures, and Bembo and Castiglione sat at the feet of the gentle Duchess Elisabetta. She came to Florence when Leonardo and Michelangelo were working side by side at their cartoons in the Council Hall, and she was the guest of Leo X., and saw the wonders of the Sistina and of Raphael's Stanze, before the fair halls of the Vatican had been defaced by barbarian invaders.

Many and sad were the changes that she witnessed in the course of her long life. She saw the first "invasion of the stranger, and all Italy in flame and fire," as her own Ferrara poet sang in words of passionate lament. She saw Naples torn from the house of Aragon, the fair Milanese, where the Moro and Beatrice had reigned in their pride, lost in a single day. She saw Urbino conquered twice over and her own kith and kin driven into exile, first by the treacherous Borgia, then by a Medici Pope, who was bound to the reigning house by the closest ties of friendship and gratitude. And in 1527, she was herself an unwilling witness of the nameless horrors that attended the siege and sack of Rome. Three years later, she was present at the Emperor Charles V.'s coronation at Bologna, and took an active part in the splendid ceremonies that marked the loss of Italian independence and the close of this great period. But to the last Isabella retained the same delight in beauty, the same keen sense of