i. 36.

[1157] See Pistolesi, Il Museo Vaticano descritto ed illustrato (Roma,
1838) vol. viii. 97. There are three paintings, of which the first
represents "the King of France sitting in parliament, and approving and
ordering that the death of Gaspard Coligny, Grand Admiral of France, and
declared to be head of the Huguenots, be registered." "The mischance of
Coligny is delineated in the following picture in a spacious square, among
many heads of streets (capistrade) and facades of temples. The admiral,
clothed in the French costume of that period, is carried in the arms of
several military men; although lifeless (estinto, read rather, _faint_),
he still preserves in his countenance threatening and terrible looks." The
third is the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day itself, in which the
beholder scarcely knows which to admire most, the artistic skill of the
painter, or his success in bringing into a narrow compass so many of the
most revolting incidents of the tragedy--the murder of men in the streets,
the butchery of helpless and unoffending women, the throwing of Coligny's
remains from the window of his room, etc. Dr. Henry White gives a sketch
of this painting, taken from De Potter's Lettres de Pie V. Of the fresco
representing the wounding of Coligny there is an engraving in Pistolesi,
_ubi supra_, vol. viii. plate 84. By an odd mistake, both the text and the
index to the plates, make this belong to the reconciliation of Frederick
Barbarossa and the pontificate of Alexander III.--on what grounds it is
hard to imagine. The character of the wound of the person borne in the
arms of his companions, indicated by _the loss of two fingers of his right
hand_, from which the blood is seen to be dropping, leaves no doubt that
he is the Admiral Coligny. Unfortunately, Pistolesi's splendid work is
disfigured by other blunders, or typographical errors, equally gross. In
describing other paintings of the same Sala Regia (pp. 95, 96), he
assigns, or is made by the types to assign, various events in the quarrel
of Barbarossa and Adrian IV. and Alexander III., to the years 1554, 1555,
1577, etc.

[1158] Ferralz to Charles IX., Rome, Sept. 11, 1572, _apud_ North British
Review, Oct., 1869, p. 31.

[1159] Prospero Count Arco to the emperor, Rome, Nov. 15, 1572, _ubi
supra_.

[1160] "Il pontefice, e universalmente tutta d'Italia grandemente se ne
rallegro, facendo pardonare cotale effetto al Re e alla Reina, che molte
cose avevano