But even the beauty of Belriguardo was surpassed by the palace of Belvedere which Alfonso I (1505–1534) built on an island in the Po: a flight of marble steps led from the riverside to a grassy court surrounded by low-cut box hedges and graced by a central fountain. An imposing villa with a classical portico and colonnade rose on one side of the court. The marble atrium, decorated with nymphs and cupids, opened into frescoed or tapestried apartments. Beyond the duke’s private rooms was a chapel; beyond this, a sunken garden, containing rare fruit-trees and adorned with still more fountains, led on towards a menagerie filled with ostriches, elephants and other exotic animals, screened finally by woods and orchards sloping to the water’s edge.

The creation of beauty and splendour was looked on in the Renaissance as a noble achievement, worthy of the highest of men’s gifts. It would never have occurred to Ariosto to do other than exalt his patrons for fostering such a high level of creativity. It must indeed have seemed, without undue hyperbole, a ‘new Augustan age’ which they had brought into being. For the magic palaces and enchanted gardens of his narrative it was not necessary for him to indulge in fantasies: he had only to look about him.1

Of the grimmer realities of war, intrigue and conspiracy, Ariosto was well aware. In his attitude to his patrons, which is by no means wholly subservient, there is an interesting element of ambivalence. Sometimes he awards lavish praise, as in the following tribute to Ippolito:

Magnanimous Signor, your every act

With reason I have praised and still I praise,

Though my poor style, alas! the power has lacked

Your glory to its fullest height to raise;

But, of your virtues which applause attract,

To one my tongue most heartfelt tribute pays:

Though many are in audience received,

Their evidence is not at once believed.

When blame against an absent man is laid,

I hear you bring excuses to defend him;

When all accusers all their say have said,

One ear you keep unprejudiced to lend him;

And long before a judgement you have made,

A hearing, face-to-face, you will extend him.

For days and months and years you may defer

Before you find against him, lest you err.2

But Ippolito was not at all the restrained and prudent character he is here represented as being. His rise to ecclesiastical office had been rapid, even for Renaissance times: tonsured at the age of six, at eight he was Apostolic Protonotary, at eleven Archbishop, at fourteen a Cardinal. Since holding ecclesiastical office was for members of princely families a political rather than a priestly function, there was no reason why a cardinalship should place restrictions upon Ippolito’s way of life. Nor did he allow it to do so. An episode in which both he and Alfonso were involved shows the brothers in an unpleasing light. It is related that in 1505, when Ippolito was paying court to Angela Borgia, who had come to Ferrara with her cousin, Lucrezia, on the latter’s marriage to Alfonso, Angela laughingly remarked that his brother Giulio’s eyes were worth more than the Cardinal’s whole person. The next day, while out hunting, Giulio was set upon by a band of assassins who blinded him while Ippolito looked on. The doctors later succeeded in saving the sight of one eye. Giulio’s demand for justice was disregarded, Alfonso merely sentencing Ippolito to nominal banishment. Giulio then conspired with another brother, Ferrante, to kill Alfonso and put Ferrante in his place. When the plot was discovered, Ferrante knelt at Alfonso’s feet to ask forgiveness. Alfonso struck him in the face with a staff, putting out one of his eyes. Both he and Giulio were condemned to death but at the last moment the sentence was commuted to life-imprisonment. In the dungeons below the castle the two half-blinded brothers dragged out their miserable existence, while up above the brilliant life of the court continued. Ferrante died, aged sixty-three, while still imprisoned, but Giulio lived on, to be liberated finally at the age of eighty-one by Alfonso II .

Soon after the conspiracy Ariosto wrote a dramatic eclogue on the subject, for the entertainment of the court. In the Furioso he refers to the event again, as part of the prophecy which the sorceress Melissa makes to Bradamante in Merlin’s cave concerning her descendants. Having seen two spirits about whom Melissa has told her nothing, Bradamante says:

‘I noticed two of grim, foreboding look,

Between Alfonso and Ippolito.

Something concerning them I’d gladly know.’1

Melissa grows pale and bursts out weeping:

‘Ah! victims both, your happiness destroyed

By evil men who, evil plans pursuing,

Brought you, ah, woe is me! to your undoing!’2

The ‘evil men’ are their fellow-conspirators. Of Alfonso and Ippolito, who were guilty of such cruelty and injustice, Melissa says, addressing them directly:

‘O virtuous offspring, worthy of the good

Duke Ercole, let not their fault dismay you!

These wretched reprobates are of your blood!

Compassion then, not justice, here should sway you.’3

A cautious plea for mercy; whereas the praise of both Alfonso and Ippolito by Melissa in earlier stanzas has been fulsome in the extreme. The greatest debt which Ferrara owes to their father, Duke Ercole, is to be seen not in the magnificent improvements he has made to the city, nor in his resistance to the Venetians, nor yet in his alliance with the French king, Charles VIII, by which he spared Ferrara the devastation which other cities suffered, but in the fact that he has fathered two such sons:

‘As deep indebtedness as any State

Will feel towards its prince, Ferrara’s debt

Will ever be to him, not only that,

Removed from marsh and bog, she will be set

In fertile plains, nor that he’ll there create

More amplitude within new walls, nor yet

That temples, palaces to make her fair

He’ll build, and theatres, and many a square,

‘Nor even that against the avid claws

Of the wing-bearing Lion he will stand

Firm and unwavering, nor yet because,

When the French torch sets all the lovely land

Of Italy ablaze, she’ll have no cause

To fear, alone exempt from the demand

For tribute – not for these and not a few

Such benefits her greatest thanks are due,

But for illustrious offspring he’ll beget:

The just Alfonso, Ippolito benign.’1

Concerning Ippolito, Melissa is given even more hyperbolic praise to utter:

‘He on whose reverend head a purple hat

Is poised is the illustrious Cardinal

Ippolito, whom men will designate

Magnanimous, sublime and liberal.

All prose and rhyme would be inadequate

His catalogue of praise to chronicle.’2

On the other hand, here, as elsewhere, it is difficult to be sure exactly what Ariosto’s intentions were in awarding such extravagant encomium. It is not only faint praise which damns.

In view of Ariosto’s care not to offend his patrons, it is remarkable that he should speak out vehemently against the use of artillery. Duke Alfonso is famous in the history of warfare for his use of cannon. He himself designed several pieces of ordnance and superintended their casting, once giving orders for a statue of his enemy Pope Julius II (by Michelangelo) to be melted down and put to more active use.