Early biographers and literary historians were inclined to give to Ginevra Lapi all credit for the more serious inspiration which prompted him to write the major part of his amatory verse, and so careful had he been to conceal the facts that it was not until many years after his death that his marriage to Alessandra Strozzi was generally known. Ariosto had been on a visit to Rome in the year 1515, and, on his return, he chanced to stop at Florence, where he intended to spend three or four days during the grand festival which was being held in honor of Saint John the Baptist. Arriving just in time to be present at some social function of importance, the poet there saw for the first time this lady who was to mean so much to him for all the rest of his life. It will be remembered that when Lorenzo de' Medici first met Lucrezia Donati he had been taken to some evening company, much against his will. In the present instance, it was the lady who showed disinclination to go into society, and her recent widowhood gave her good reason for her feeling in the matter; but, won over by the entreaties of her friends, _da preghi vinta_, she finally consented to go. What she wore and how she looked, and how she bore herself, and much more, do we know from Ariosto's glowing lines which were written in commemoration of this event. Her gown was of black, all embroidered with bunches of grapes and grape leaves in purple and gold. Her luxuriant blond hair, the _richissima capellatura bionda_, was gathered in a net behind and, parted in the middle, fell to her shoulders in long curls on either side of her face; and on her forehead, just where the hair was parted, she wore a twig of laurel, cunningly wrought in gold and precious stones.