DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.36839#0072
52 COUNT BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE
to invite a few of the young Cardinals and their
friends to supper at the Vatican, and, after playing a
game at chess or cards, to spend the rest of the evening
in music and singing. The palace halls rang far into
the night with the exquisite strains of viols and lutes,
while the Pope himself, with closed eyes and head
thrown back, listened, rapt in a trance of delight,
beating time with his hand and singing the tune softly/
Soon after Leo X.'s accession, Leonardos triend,
Lorenzo da Pavia, was employed to make him one
of his finest organs, and brought it to the Vatican
himself. And Castiglione mentions the alabaster
organ which was sent to Leo X. from Naples, and
was said to be the best and most beautiful ever
known/ Another wonderful organ, the work of a
Brixen master whose instruments had a world-wide
reputation, had been ordered by the Cardinal of
Aragon on his travels, and presented by him to the
Pope. This, as the Ferrarese envoy Paolucci told his
master, was the instrument whose delicious melodies
charmed the ears of the listeners at the performance
of Ariosto s ' Suppositi' on the last day of the carnival.
The entertainment was given by Cardinal Cibo in the
Casteir Sant' Angelo, and the scenery, representing
a street and piazza in Ferrara, was painted by Raphael
himself.
Castiglione arrived in Rome too late to witness
this memorable representation, but his letters to
Mantua, especially those which he addressed to the
Marchesana, abound in descriptions of the splendid
entertainments and the feasts of art and music in which
the Pope and his court revelled. He tells her of the
1 Cesareo in 'N. Antologia,' 1898, p. 283; Roscoe, 'Leo X./
appendix, p. 306; Fabronius, 'Vita Leonis/ 206.
2 'Esenzioni,' 58.
to invite a few of the young Cardinals and their
friends to supper at the Vatican, and, after playing a
game at chess or cards, to spend the rest of the evening
in music and singing. The palace halls rang far into
the night with the exquisite strains of viols and lutes,
while the Pope himself, with closed eyes and head
thrown back, listened, rapt in a trance of delight,
beating time with his hand and singing the tune softly/
Soon after Leo X.'s accession, Leonardos triend,
Lorenzo da Pavia, was employed to make him one
of his finest organs, and brought it to the Vatican
himself. And Castiglione mentions the alabaster
organ which was sent to Leo X. from Naples, and
was said to be the best and most beautiful ever
known/ Another wonderful organ, the work of a
Brixen master whose instruments had a world-wide
reputation, had been ordered by the Cardinal of
Aragon on his travels, and presented by him to the
Pope. This, as the Ferrarese envoy Paolucci told his
master, was the instrument whose delicious melodies
charmed the ears of the listeners at the performance
of Ariosto s ' Suppositi' on the last day of the carnival.
The entertainment was given by Cardinal Cibo in the
Casteir Sant' Angelo, and the scenery, representing
a street and piazza in Ferrara, was painted by Raphael
himself.
Castiglione arrived in Rome too late to witness
this memorable representation, but his letters to
Mantua, especially those which he addressed to the
Marchesana, abound in descriptions of the splendid
entertainments and the feasts of art and music in which
the Pope and his court revelled. He tells her of the
1 Cesareo in 'N. Antologia,' 1898, p. 283; Roscoe, 'Leo X./
appendix, p. 306; Fabronius, 'Vita Leonis/ 206.
2 'Esenzioni,' 58.