This coach is not the only one. There is another, rather longer and
larger, built for the Duke’s second marriage, in 1599, with the Lady
Margaret. There is also a smaller coach-body built for the Duke John
Frederick, as early as 1527, for his marriage with Sybilla of Cleves.
This small coach was shown this year at the Exhibition of arts at
Munich; the iron loops by which it had been suspended are still on the
body.
[Illustration: PLATE 10. WEDDING COACH OF DUKE OF SAXONY.]
There are also two small Coach bodies, which are to be seen at Verona,
and are shown at the Palace Sarego Allighieri, with the story that they
were used by Dante the poet. This is a fable. Count Gozzadini, in his
recent work on ancient coaches, says that, by the heraldic shield still
on one coach, he finds it was built in 1549, at the marriage of Ginevra,
the last of the race of Dante Allighieri, with Count Marc Antonio di
Sarego. This Coach, as may be seen in Plate 11, is beautifully shaped
and ornamented. Both are but skeleton bodies, and had to be covered to
keep off the sun or rain, with leather, cloth, and silk curtains.
There are curious sumptuary laws cited by Count Gozzadini as enacted
during the sixteenth century in various Italian cities, against the
excessive use of silk, velvet, embroidery, and gilding in the coverings
of coaches and the trappings of horses.
In 1564, Pope Pius IV. exhorted the cardinals and bishops not to ride in
coaches, according to the fashion of the time, but to leave such things
to women, and themselves ride on horseback. Duke Julius of Brunswick
issued an edict in 1588, that his subjects should desist from indolent
riding in coaches, and should return to the useful discipline of riding
on horses.
The use of coaches in Germany, in the sixteenth century, was not less
than in Italy; the current of trade, especially from the East, had for a
long time poured into those two countries towards Holland, enriching all
the cities in its progress, and the rich traders built fine houses, and
churches, and town halls, and would have their coaches handsomely
decorated as well as their houses. Macpherson, in his history of
commerce, says that Antwerp possessed five hundred coaches in 1560, in
the time of Queen Elizabeth. France and England appear to have been
behind the rest of Europe at this period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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