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CASTIGLIONE IN ROME

too we may still find Isabella’s name, repeated at
intervals upon the panelled frieze, and remember
that the peaceful days of her declining years were
spent in these sunny little rooms looking over the
bright waters to Virgil’s birthplace, and the green
meadows through which the Mincio flows to join
the Po.1 The decoration of these new apartments
occupied a large share of Isabella’s time and thoughts
in these years. We find her writing to Rome
and Venice for marbles, asking her agents to send
her antique busts and bas-reliefs, and collecting
works of art with all her old energy. Castiglione, as
usual, was one of her chief assistants, and his letters
from Rome were by no means exclusively devoted to
State affairs. One day he sends her a full account of
the carnival fetes and comedies at the Vatican, cold and
lifeless as he confesses them to have seemed to him
this year; another, he collects the latest and most
scurrilous verses of Pasquino for her benefit, or
tells her how Bandello’s friend, the witty story-teller,
Strascino, has been amusing His Holiness with his
comic recitations, and is promptly desired to send
him to Mantua for the next carnival. At one time
he tells her of a relief which Caradosso, questo mala-
1 Five years ago, a model of Isabella d’Este’s Studio in this
apartment of the Paradiso, designed by the well-known French
writer M. Charles Yriarte,was placed in the Italian Court in the South
Kensington Museum. The decorations of the walls and ceiling are
carefully reproduced, but M. Yriarte was mistaken in supposing
that the fine tempera paintings by Mantegna, Costa and Perugino
ever adorned these Camerini. These pictures were originally exe-
cuted for Isabella’s Studio of the Grotta on the ground floor of the
Corte Vecchia, and remained there, as we know from inventories
and documents published by D’ Arco (Arte e Artefici, ii.), until after
the sack of Mantua in 1630.