For Instance, The Piece I Saw
Represented Was The Story Of Alcestis And Was Entitled La Scesa D'Ercole
Nell Inferno, To Redeem The Wife Of Admetus.
Hercules, before he commences
this undertaking, wishes to hire a valet for the journey, has an interview
with Girolamo, and engages him.
Hercules speaks in blank verse and in a
phrase, full of sesquipedalia verba, demands his country and lineage.
Girolamo replies in the Piedmontese dialect and with a strong nasal accent:
"De mi pais, de Piemong." Girolamo, however, though he professes to be as
brave as Mars himself has a great repugnance to accompanying his master to
the shades below, or to the "casa del diavolo," as he calls it; and while
Hercules fights with Cerberus, he shakes and trembles all over, as he does
likewise when he meets Madonna Morte.
All this is very absurd and ridiculous, but it is impossible not to laugh
and be amused at it. An anecdote is related of the flesh and blood
Girolamo, that he had a very pretty wife, who took it into her head one day
to elope with a French officer; and that to revenge himself he dramatized
the event and produced it on his own theatre under the title of Colombina
scampata coll'uffiziale, having filled the piece with severe satire and
sarcastic remarks against women in general and Colombina in particular.
The atelier of the famous artist in mosaic Rafaelli is well worth
inspecting; and here I had an opportunity of beholding a copy in mosaic and
nearly finished of the celebrated picture of Leonardo da Vinci representing
the Caena Domini.
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