Oliver de la Marche, to whom we owe the description of
the scene (Memoires, ch. 29), appeared costumed as 'The Church,' in a
tower on the back of an elephant, and sang a long elegy on the victory
of the unbelievers.
But although the allegorical element in the poetry, the art, and the
festivals of Italy is superior both in good taste and in unity of
conception to what we find in other countries, yet it is not in these
qualities that it is most characteristic and unique. The decisive point
of superiority lay rather in the fact that, besides the
personifications of abstract qualities, historical rep- resentatives of
them were introduced in great number--that both poetry and plastic art
were accustomed to represent famous men and women. The 'Divine Comedy,'
the 'Trionfi' of Petrarch, the 'Amorosa Visione' of Boccaccio--all of
them works constructed on this principle--and the great diffusion of
culture which took place under the influence of antiquity, had made the
nation familiar with this historical element. These figures now
appeared at festivals, either individualized, as definite masks, or in
groups, as characteristic attendants on some leading allegorical
figure. The art of grouping and composition was thus learnt in Italy at
a time when the most splendid exhibitions in other countries were made
up of unintelligible symbolism or unmeaning puerilities.
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