Note 10 — Chapter VIII · FROM MILAN TO NAPLES.

Cardinal Gonsalvi was devoted to music and had a sincere attachment to Cimarosa, the greatest Italian composer of his time. “At the commencement of my ministry (secretaryship of state),” he writes in his memoirs, “I experienced two very great afflictions, not to speak of many others. One had no connection with my office: it was the death of my great friend Domenico Cimarosa, the first composer, in my opinion, both for inspiration and science, as Raphael is the first of painters.” In Cardinal Gonsalvi’s will the following passage occurs:—“Fifty masses a year for the repose of the soul of the celebrated maestro Domenico Cimarosa, to be said in the church of the Rotunda on the 11th of January, the anniversary of his death, with the gift of the paoli.” Cimarosa had then been dead upwards of twenty years, but the Cardinal forgot neither him nor his family, as will be seen from the following clauses in the same will:—“To the nun Cimarosa at the convent of the Infant Jesus, one hundred ounces of silver and the snuff-box with the portrait of her father; moreover the annual pension of forty crowns spoken of in the will to be increased to eighty. To Paulina Cimarosa one hundred ounces of silver and all the music of her father with his large portrait, the whole free of carriage to Naples; moreover an annual pension of seventy-two crowns.”