ANIMAL LIFE IN ITALIAN PAINTING 



represented in the streets and squares of the Italian 

 cities. They are frequently described by contemporary 

 writers, and we know a good deal about their method 

 and management. An interesting account is given in 

 Muratori of an earlier pageant of the year 1336 which 

 was performed on the feast of the Epiphany in Milan. ^ 

 It describes how the whole story of the Wise Men was 

 dramatised, and how in their magnificent retinue were 

 "men leading along apes and baboons and all kinds of 

 outlandish beasts." 



At the feast of St. John in Florence in 1454 the 

 whole scripture history was set out in processions and 

 interludes, lasting sixteen hours. As time went on 

 they took naturally the colour of Renaissance thought, 

 becoming mixed with pagan subjects. Thus in Perugia 

 in 1444, Eugenius IV. was entertained by a representa- 

 tion of the story of the Minotaur, the tragedy of 

 Iphigeneia, the Nativity, and the Ascension.^ 



This picture, and many of its class, owes a good 



* ReriDH Italicarum Scriptores (Milan, 1728), tom. xii., col. 1017. Quoted 

 in Baldwin Brown, The Ft7ie Arts, 1891, p. jy. 



- Salimbene gives us a vivid glimpse of a thirteenth-century scene. 

 Looking into a courtyard at Pisa, where he was begging with a certain lay- 

 brother, he heard music and saw under a spreading vine youths and 

 maidens beautifully dressed, with viols and lutes in their hands. " There 

 also were many leopards and other beasts from beyond the seas, whereon 

 we gazed long and gladly, as men love to see strange and fair sights." — 

 Quoted in Coulton, From St. Francis to Dante, p. 45. 



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