Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/509

 year he was appointed Captain General of the Church, but failing health prevented his actual service, and he soon died of fever at Florence, not without suspicion of poison at the hands of his nephew Lorenzo. Several of his sonnets have survived, and are said to show no mean poetic faculty. Apart, however, from his appearance as an interlocutor in and in Bembo's Prose, his memory is best preserved by Michelangelo's famous tomb at Florence.

Note 10, page 2. "", better known by the name of his birthplace , (born 1470; died 1520), was of humble parentage. His elder brother Pietro was secretary to Lorenzo de' Medici, and secured his admission to the Magnifico's household, where he shared the education of the young Giovanni and became a devoted friend of that future pope. Following the Medici into exile, he travelled about Europe with Giovanni and attended Giuliano to Urbino, where he received the warm welcome always accorded there to such as combined learning with courtly manners. By the Duke of Urbino he seems to have been so commended to the favour of Julius II, that he was able to aid Michelangelo in securing part payment for the Sistine Chapel frescoes, of which payment, however, he accepted five per cent, as a gift from the painter. At the death of Julius, he was secretary to his friend Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, and in that capacity had access to the conclave, where his adroitness was largely helpful in effecting his patron's election as pope. Leo at once made him Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico and loaded him with lucrative offices. During the Medicean usurpation of the Duchy of Urbino, he showed no gratitude for the kindness enjoyed by him at that court. He became very rich, and was a liberal patron of authors and artists. Raphael devised to him the house of the architect Bramante, which the painter had bought for a sum equivalent to about £6,000, and which was afterwards demolished in extending the piazza in front of St. Peter's. Besides a large number of his letters, for the most part unpublished, we have his play, Calandra, founded upon the Menœchmi of Plautus and once esteemed as the earliest Italian prose comedy. Although he was bald, and although his friend Raphael's portrait hardly justifies the epithet, he was known as the "Bel Bernardo." A contemporary MS. in the Vatican describes him as "a facetious character, with no mean powers of ridicule, and much tact in promoting jocular conversation by his wit and well-timed jests. He was a great favourite with certain cardinals, whose chief pursuit was pleasure and the chase, for he thoroughly knew all their habits and fancies, and was even aware of whatever vicious propensities they had. He likewise possessed a singular pliancy for flattery, and for obsequiously accommodating himself to their whims, stooping patiently to be the butt of insulting and abusive jokes, and shrinking from nothing that could render him acceptable to them. He also had much readiness in council, and was perfectly able seasonably to qualify his wit with wisdom, or to dissemble with singular cunning." On the other hand, Bembo wrote of him to their friend Federico Fregoso: "The days seem years until I see him, and enjoy