Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/48

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. m. JAN. 21, m

The circumstances attending the discovery of the fresco containing the portrait of Dante and his contemporaries Brunetto Latini, Corso Donati, ana others, are thus related by Signor Bezzi in a letter in the Spectator of 11 May, 1850:

"Mr. Wylde [sic], an American gentleman, re- spected by all that knew him, was then in Florence, engaged in a work on Dante and his times which, un- fortunately, he did not live to complete. Among the materials he had collected for this purpose, there were some papers of the antiquarian Moreni, which he was examining when I called one day (I had then been three or four months in Florence) to read what he had already written, as I was in the habit of doing from time to time. It was then that a foot-note of Moreni's caught his eye, in which the writer lamented that he had spent two years of his life in unceasing and unavailing efforts to recover the portrait of Dante, and the other portions of the fresco of Giotto in the Bargello, mentioned by Vasari; that others before him had been equally anxious and equally unsuccessful ; and that he hoped that better times would come, and that the painting, so interesting both in an artistic and his- torical point of view, would be again sought for and at last recovered. I did not then understand how the efforts of Moreni and others could have been thus unsuccessful: and I thought that with com- mon energy and diligence they might have ascer- tained whether the painting so clearly pointed out by Vasari was, or was not, in existence; several months, however, of wearisome labours in the same pursuit taught me to judge more leniently of the failures of my predecessors. Mr. Wylde put Moreni's note before me, and suggested and urged that being an Italian by birth, though not a Floren- tine, and having lived many years in England and among the English, I had it in my power to bring two modes of influence to bear upon the research ; and that such being the case I ought to undertake it. My thoughts immediately turned to Mr. Kirk- up, an artist who had abandoned his art to devote himself entirely to antiquarian pursuits, with whom I was well acquainted, and who, having lived many years in Florence (1 believe, fifteen), would weigh the value of Moreni's testimony on this matter, and effectually assist me in every way, if I took it in hand. So I called upon him either that same day or the next ; and I found that he, like most other people, had read the passage in Vasari's life of Giotto in which it is explicitly said that the por- trait of Dante had been painted with others in the Palazzo del Podesta, and was to be seen at the time the historian was writing ; but that he had not read, or had not put any confidence in, the note of the Florence edition of Vasari, published in 1832-8, in which it is stated that the Palazzo del Podesta had now become a prison the Bargello ; that the chapel had been turned into a cKttpensa(it was more like a coal-hole where the rags and much of the tilth of the prison were deposited) ; that the walls of this dispensa exhibited nothing but a dirty coating, and that Moreni speaks of the painting in some published work ; the annotator concluding thus : 'It is hoped that some day or other we shall be able to see what there is under the coating of the walls.' "

It would appear that Signor Bezzi's services in the matter were confined to drawing up

memorials to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, which were of no effect until a subscription was raised among the English and American residents in Florence with the object of de- fraying the expense of searching for the fresco, when, his jealousy of foreigners being aroused, the Grand Duke appointed a com- mission to search for the portrait, and pro- vided a sum of money for the purpose which proved more than sufficient.

As an illustration of the manner in which the search was conducted, Mr. Kirkup related that on visiting the Bargello on one occasion he found Signor Marini, the restorer en- trusted with the work of removing the white- wash, on a scaffold supported on putlogs, the ends of which were let into the walls of the chapel. If the portrait of Dante had been in any portion of the walls in which the holes for the putlogs were made, it would have been destroyed as completely as it was destroyed by the art of the restorer after its discovery.

JOHN HEBB.

2, Canonbury Mansions, N.

MR. SIDNEY LEE'S * LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE.'

P. 173. "The irascible Irishman, Capt. MacMorris, is the only representative of his nation who figures in the long list of Shake- speare's dramatis personce" - - The Index (p. 462) repeats this statement. This popular error has frequently appeared in print. Jack Cade (' 2 Henry VI.') was also an Irishman.

P. 197. " Sixpence was the usual price of a new quarto." P. 303. " All the quartos were issued in Shakespeare's day at sixpence each." There is no foundation for these statements, which have often been made in print. The preface to the 1609 edition of 'Troilus and Cressida,' usually relied on to support them, is not exact enough to lead to so wide a conclusion. The "anonymous scribe," who uses inexact and "bombastic" language throughout this preface, says :

"Amongst all there is none more witty then this ; and had I time I would comment upon it, though I know it needs not, for so much as will make you thinke your testerne well bestowed, but for so much worth as ever poore I know to be stuft in it."

Assuming that a testerne was the price at which this particular quarto was issued, and that a testerne in 1609 meant sixpence (as to which much might be said), it cannot be inferred from this preface that sixpence was the usual price of any quarto, or that all the quartos were issued at sixpence. Halliwell- Phillipps (' Outlines,' 1887, vol. ii. pp. 304-5) quotes contemporary records showing that