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THERE are no two people who see with the same kind of vision. It is for this reason that, though twenty lives of the six women chosen for this book had been written previously, there would still, it seems to me, be room for a twenty-first. For though the facts might remain identical, there is no possible reiteration of another mind’s exact outlook. Hence I have not scrupled to add these six character studies to the many volumes similar in scope and subject.

The book is called “Queens of the Renaissance,” but Catherine of Siena lived before the Renaissance surged into being, and Anne of Brittany, though her two husbands brought its spirit into France, had not herself a hint of its lovely, penetrating eagerness. They are included because they help, nevertheless, to create continuity and coherence of impression, and the six leading, as they do naturally, one to the other, convey, in the mass, some co-ordinated notion of the Renaissance spirit.

The main object, perhaps, in writing at all lies in the intrinsic interest of any real life lived before us. For every existence is a parti pris towards existence; every character is a personal opinion upon the value of character, feeling, virtue, many things. No personality repeats another, no human drama renews just the same intricate complications of other dramas. In every life and in every person there is some element of uniqueness, some touch of speciality. Because of this even the dullest individuality becomes quickening in biography. It has, if no more, the pathos of its dulness, the didactic warnings of its refusals, the surprise of its individualizing blunders.

All the following lives convey inevitably and unconsciously some statement concerning the opportunity offered by existence. To one, it seemed a place for an ecstasy of joy, success, gratification; to another, a great educational establishment for the soul; to a third, an admirable groundwork for practical domestic arrangements and routine; to Renée of Ferrara, a bewildering, weary accumulation of difficulties and distress; to her more charming relative, an enigma shadowed always by the still greater and grimmer enigma of mortality. And lastly, for the strange, elusive Lucrezia, it is difficult to conceive what it must have meant at all, unless a sequence of circumstances never, under any conditions, to be dwelt upon in their annihilating entirety, but just to be taken piecemeal day by day, reduced and simplified by the littleness of separate hours and moments.

In a book of this kind, where the intention is mainly concerned with character, and for which the reading was inevitably full of bypaths and excursions, a complete bibliography would merely fill many pages, while seeming to a great extent to touch but remotely upon the ladies referred to, but among recent authors a deep debt of gratitude for information received is due to the following: Jacob Burckhardt, Julia Cartwright, Augusta Drane, Ferdinand Gregorovius, R. Luzio, E. Renier, E. Rodoconarchi, and J. Addington Symonds.

Finally, in reference to the portraits included in the life of Beatrice D’Este, a brief statement is necessary. For not only that of Bianca, wife of Giangaleazzo, but also those of Il Moro’s two mistresses, Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli, are regrettably dubious. The picture of Bianca, however, by Ambrogio da Predis, is more than likely genuinely that of Bianca, though some writers still regard it as a likeness of Beatrice herself. It is to be wished that it were; her prettiness then would have been incontestable and delicious. But in reality there is no hope. One has but to look at the other known portraits of Beatrice to see that her face was podgy, or nearly so, and that her charm came entirely and illusively from personal intelligence. It evaporated the moment one came to fix her appearance in sculpture or on canvas. Nature had not really done much for her. There was no outline, no striking feature, no ravishing freshness of colouring. On a stupid woman Beatrice’s face would have been absolutely ugly. But she, through sheer “aliveness,” sheer buoyant trickery of expression, conveyed in actuality the equivalent of prettiness. But it was all unconscious conjuring—in reality Beatrice was a plain woman, with sufficient delightfulness to seem a pretty one, while the portrait of Bianca is unmistakably and lovingly good-looking.

As regards the portraits, again, of Il Moro’s two mistresses, Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli, there is no absolute certainty. The portrait facing page 6 in the life of Beatrice has been recently discovered in the collection of the Right Hon. the Earl of Roden, and in an article published by the Burlington Magazine it has been tentatively looked upon as that of Lucrezia Crivelli. This does not, however, appear probable, because Lucrezia, at the time of Il Moro’s infatuation, was a young girl, and the picture by Ambrogio da Predis is certainly that of a woman, and a woman, moreover, whose experiences have brought her perilously near the verge of cynicism.

At the same time, the portrait is not only beyond doubt that of a woman loved by Il Moro, but was presumably painted while his affection for her still continued, as not only are the little heart-shaped ornaments holding together the webs of her net thought to represent Il Moro’s badge of a mulberry-leaf, but painted exquisitely in a space of ⅜ by ⅝ inch upon the plaque at the waistbelt is a Moor’s head, another of Ludovico’s badges, while the letters L. O. are placed on either side of it, and the two Sforza S. S. at the back. A discarded mistress, if Ambrogio—one of Il Moro’s court painters—had painted her at all, would have had the discretion not to wear symbols obviously intended only for one beloved at that moment.

There seems—speculatively—every reason to suppose that the picture represents Cecilia Gallerani, who was already beyond the charm of youth before Ludovico reluctantly discarded her, and whom he not only cared for very greatly, but for quite a number of years. Cecilia Gallerani, besides, to strengthen the supposition, was an exceptionally intellectual woman, and the portrait in the possession of the Earl of Roden expresses above everything to an almost disheartened intelligence. To think deeply while in the position of any man’s mistress must leave embittering traces, and Cecilia became famous less even for physical attractions than because her mind was so intensely rich and receptive.

The other two—the pictures of “La Belle Ferronière” and the “Woman with the Weasel,”—by Leonardo da Vinci, have both a contested identity. But since the first is now almost universally looked upon as being the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli, the second must surely represent her also. For in both there is the same beautiful oval, the same youth, the same unfathomable eyes and gentle deceit of expression. Both, besides, represent to perfection the kind of beautiful girl likely to have drawn Ludovico into passionate admiration. He was no longer young when he cared for Lucrezia, and if Leonardo’s paintings are really portraits of her, she was like some emblematical figure of perfect youthfulness—unique and unrepeatable.

M. B. R.