Of LUDOVICO ODASIO it is unnecessary to add anything to what
we have already had occasion to say.[69] FRANCESCO VENTURINI
of Urbino is reputed the first after the revival who wrote a complete
Latin grammar. It was dedicated to Count Ottaviano Ubaldini, and
was printed at Florence in 1482, and again in his native town by
Henry of Cologne, in 1493-4.[70] Among his pupils he is said to have
numbered both Raffaele and Michael Angelo.[*71] Besides BERNI
DA GUBBIO, whose Diary has been edited in the Scriptores of
Muratori, there were several annotators of events in their native
duchy, whose prose writings remain in the Vatican Library, and have
supplied us with useful information; but they were not historians,
and it is unnecessary to bring them forth from their obscurity. Of
one name, however, we may make an exception.
[Footnote 69: See vol. I., p. 297. His oration on the death of
Federigo is No. 1233 of the Vat. Urb. MSS.]
[Footnote 70: Maestro Arrigo, of Cologne, _alias_ Heinrich v. Coln,
had then a press at Urbino. The typographic art had been introduced
there about 1481, and at Cagli five years earlier by Roberto da Fano
and Bernardino da Bergamo.]
[Footnote *71: Francesco da Urbino, who was certainly Michelangelo's
schoolmaster, does not seem to be the same as his friend Francesco
Urbino, so touchingly spoken of in the following letter from
Michelangelo to Vasari:--
"Messer Giorgio, Dear Friend,--Although I write but badly,
yet will I say a few words in reply to yours. You know that
Urbino is dead, for which I owe the greatest thanks to God;
at the same time my loss is heavy and sorrow infinite. The
grace is this, that while Urbino living kept me alive, in
dying he has taught me to die not unwillingly but rather
with a desire for death. I had him with me twenty-six
years, and always found him faithful and true. Now that I
had made him rich and thought to keep him on the staff and
rest of my old age he has departed, and the only hope left
me is that of seeing him again in Paradise, and of this God
has given a sign in his most happy death. Even more than
dying, it grieved him to leave me alive in this treacherous
world, with so many troubles; the better part of me went
with him, nothing is left to me but endless sorrow. I
commend myself to you....
"Your MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI, in Rome.
"The 23 day of February, 1556."
See Le Lettere, No. CDLXXV., p. 539, in Brit. Museum, and
HOLROYD, _Michael Angelo_ (Duckworth, 1903), p. 255.
It was this Urbino's brother who was Raphael's well-known pupil, _Il
Fattore_. Cf. also HOLROYD, _op. cit._, pp. 273 and 314.]
* * * * *
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