Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2

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easily definable complexion of languor, melancholy, and dwindling
vitality to nearly every manifestation of Italian genius in the second
half of the sixteenth century, and which well nigh sterilized that
genius during the two succeeding centuries. In common with the rest of
Europe, and in consequence of an inevitable alteration of their mental
bias, they had lost the blithe spontaneity of the Renaissance. But they
were at the same time suffering from grievous exhaustion, humiliated by
the tyranny of foreign despotism, and terrorized by ecclesiastical
intolerance. In their case, therefore, a sort of moral and intellectual
atrophy becomes gradually more and more perceptible. The clear artistic
sense of rightness and of beauty yields to doubtful taste. The frank
audacity of the Renaissance is superseded by cringing timidity,
lumbering dulness, somnolent and stagnant acquiescence in accepted
formulae. At first the best minds of the nation fret and rebel, and meet
with the dungeon or the stake as the reward of contumacy. In the end
everybody seems to be indifferent, satisfied with vacuity, enamored of
insipidity. The brightest episode in this dreary period is the emergence
of modern music with incomparable sweetness and lucidity.

It must not be supposed that the change which I have adumbrated, passed
rapidly over the Italian spirit. When Paul III. succeeded Clement on the
Papal throne in 1534, some of the giants of the Renaissance still
survived, and much of their great work was yet to be accomplished.
Michelangelo had neither painted the Last Judgment nor planned the
cupola which crowns S. Peter's. Cellini had not cast his Perseus for the
Loggia de'Lanzi, nor had Palladio raised San Giorgio from the sea at
Venice. Pietro Aretino still swaggered in lordly insolence; and though
Machiavelli was dead, the 'silver histories' of Guicciardini remained to
be written. Bandello, Giraldi and Il Lasca had not published their
Novelle, nor had Cecchi given the last touch to Florentine comedy. It
w

John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.

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