CHAPTER V 



FERRARA 



Cosimo CosiMO TuRA is represented in the National Gallery by 



i4S^?)-i495 ^ '^^- J^^ome in the Desert. Here there is an owl with a 

 frog in its claws. If this is anything more than an 

 observed fact, perhaps we may credit the owl with the 

 benevolent intention of obtaining a little quiet for the 

 Saint's meditations. Charles Dickens, describing the 

 noise made by the Italian frogs after nightfall, says, 

 '* One would think that scores upon scores of women 

 in pattens were going up and down a wet stone pave- 

 ment without a moment's cessation." It would be 

 difficult to meditate through that.^ 



To the modern mind the frog does not suggest the 

 thought of irresponsible gaiety, but in Physiologus it is 

 a type of those who snatch at the fleeting pleasures of 

 this world. 



^ The Cardinals assembled at the Congress of Mantua under Pius II., in 

 1459, made no attempt to do so. They complained bitterly at being kept 

 in a place where " the wine was poor, the food scarce, and nothing could be 

 heard save the croaking of the frogs." — Creighton, History of the Papacy, 

 1897, vol. iii. p. 219. See also Horace, Satires, i. 5, 14 ; and Dante, hiferno, 

 xxxii. 30. 



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