f the tragic stories or bloodshed and strife that
darkened their lives, in spite, too, of the low standard of morals and
of the crimes and vices that we are accustomed to associate with
Renaissance princes, there was a rare measure of beauty and goodness, of
culture and refinement, of love of justice and zeal for truth, among
them. As the latest historian of the Papacy, Dr. Pastor, has wisely
remarked, we must take care not to paint the state of morals during the
Italian Renaissance blacker than it really was. Virtue goes quietly on
her way, while vice is noisy and uproarious; the criminal forces
himself upon the public attention, while the honest man does his duty in
silence, and no one hears of him. This is especially the case with the
women of the Renaissance. They had their faults and their weaknesses,
but the great majority among them led pure and irreproachable lives, and
trained their children in the paths of truth and duty. Even Lucrezia
Borgia, although she may not have been altogether immaculate, was not
the foul creature that we once believed. And the more closely we study
these newly discovered documents, the more we become convinced that this
age produced some of the most admirable types of womanhood that the
world has ever seen. When Castiglione painted his ideal woman in the
pages of the "Cortigiano," he had no need to draw on his imagination.
Elizabeth Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, and Isabella d'Este, Marchioness
of Mantua, were both of them women of great intellect and stainless
virtue, whose genuine love of art and letters attracted the choicest
spirits to their court, and exerted the most beneficial influence on the
thought of the day. Isabella, whose vast correspondence with the
foremost painters and scholars of the age has been preserved almost
intact, was probably the most remarkable lady of the Renaissance. The
story of her long and eventful life--a theme of absorbing interest--yet
remains to be written. The present work is devoted to the history of her
younger sister, Beatrice, Duchess of Milan, who, as the wife of Lodovico
Sforza, reigned during six years over the most splendid court of Italy.
The charm of her personality, the important part which she played in
political life at a critical moment of Italian history, her love of
music and poetry, and the fine taste which she inherited, in common with
every princess of the house of Este, all help to make Beatrice
singularly attractive, while the inte