Note 248 — Chapter LV

In order to finish our notice of mottoes, a few others may be here added. 11. Massa collection; a female portrait, on whose breast are the arms of Montefeltro: Viva, Viva il Duca di Urbino. 12. Rome, Kestner Museum; another female portrait: Ibit ad geminos lucida fama pollo (?). 13. Kestner Museum and that at the Hague; St. Thomas probing the Saviour's wound: Beati qui non viderunt et crediderunt, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." 14. Spoleto, Tordelli collection; a beautiful female resisting a crowd of armed soldiery: 1540. Italia mesta sottosopra volta, como pei venti in mare le torbid'onde, ch'or da una parte et hor da l'altra volta. "1540. Dejected Italy, tossed like the wind-lashed waves, turning now hither now thither." 15. Rome,—satire on the sack of Rome; a warrior in antique armour strikes with a two-handed sword at a naked woman stretched in a lascivious posture, behind whom five others tremblingly await their fate: it is inscribed behind, 1534. Roma lasciva dal buon Carlo quinto partita a mezza. Fra Xanto a. da Rovigo, Urbino. "Rome, the wanton, cut up by the good Charles V.; by Brother Xante of Rovigo, at Urbino." This plate, glowing with iridescence, contradicts Passeri's opinion (already quoted) that stanniferous glaze was never practised in the Urbino workshops, as does the tile introduced three pages below. 16. Rome; a grandly draped female, sitting in desolation over a dead child: Fiorenzo mesta i morti figlii piange, "Disconsolate Florence weeps for her lifeless offspring," in the plague visitation of 1538. Though with the most brilliant ruby and gold lustre I ever saw, it has in blue the cipher X, probably also of Xante in Urbino.