Note 3. A village in the Sabina, north of Tivoli. Giov. Battista
Savelli, of a great Roman house, was a captain of cavalry in the Papal
service after 1530. In 1540 he entered the service of Duke Cosimo, and
died in 1553.
Note 4. This sculptor was Antonio Solosmeo of Settignano. The monument
erected to Piero de’ Medici (drowned in the Garigliano, 1504) at Monte
Cassino is by no means a brilliant piece of Florentine art. Piero was
the exiled son of Lorenzo the Magnificent; and the Medici, when they
regained their principality, erected this monument to his memory,
employing Antonio da San Gallo, Francesco da San Gallo and a Neapolitan,
Matteo de’ Quaranta. The work was begun in 1532. Solosmeo appears from
this passage in Cellini to have taken the execution of it over.
LXVIII
WHEN Solosmeo had inspected his affairs at Monte Cassino, we resumed our
journey; and having come within a mile of Naples, we were met by an
innkeeper, who invited us to his house, and said he had been at Florence
many years with Carlo Ginori; [1] adding, that if we put up at his inn,
he would treat us most kindly, for the reason that we both were
Florentines. We told him frequently that we did not want to go to him.
However, he kept passing, sometimes in front and sometimes behind,
perpetually repeating that he would have us stop at his hostelry. When
this began to bore me, I asked if he could tell me anything about a
certain Sicilian woman called Beatrice, who had a beautiful daughter
named Angelica, and both were courtesans. Taking it into his head that I
was jeering him, he cried out: “God send mischief to all courtesans and
such as favour them!” Then he set spurs to his horse, and made off as
though he was resolved to leave us. I felt some pleasure at having rid
myself in so fair a manner of that ass of an innkeeper; and yet I was
rather the loser than the gainer; for the great love I bore Angelica had
come back to my mind, and while I was conversing, not without some
lover’s sighs, upon this subject with Solosmeo, we saw the man returning
to us at a gallop. When he drew up, he said: “Two or perhaps three days
ago a woman and a girl came back to a house in my neighbourhood; they
had the names you mentioned, but whether they are Sicilians I cannot
say.” I answered: “Such power over me has that name of Angelica, that I
am now determined to put up at your inn.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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