From GRAY, Friday 15 February 1754 Printed from MS in Waller Collection

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FROM GRAY 15 FEBRUARY 1754 67 From GRAY, Friday 15 February 1754 Printed from MS in Waller Collection. Dated by HW: Feb. 15, 1754. Address: To the Honourable Horace Walpole Esq. in Arlington Street, London. Postmark: ROYSTON 16 FE. Friday [Feb. 15, 1754], Cambridge. Dear Sir, ISEND you my story,1 that you may not wait longer for it, though it does not at all satisfy me, but I do not know how to make it intelli gible in fewer words.2 Bianca Capello,3 Veneta, adolescenti nupsit nobili Fiorentino/ quem ideo a patres domo expulsum uxor sua opera diu sustentabat, donee Franciscus Mediceus6 M[agnus] Hetruriae Dux, mulieris forma captus earn in aulam perduxit, 1. HW had asked Gray to compose in important facts, such as Bonaventuri's Latin an account of Bianca Cappello, short name and the date of Bianca's marriage to enough to fit in a 'label' at the bottom of Francis I. the frame of her picture by Vasari, which 3. Bianca (1548-87), dau. of Bartolomeo later hung in the Round Drawing Room Cappello by Pellegrina Morosini, m. (1) at SH, and was sold SH xx. 92 (see also (1563) Pietro Bonaventuri; m. (2) (1578) MONTAGU ii. 54). The picture was 'bought Francis I (Francesco de' Medici), Grand out of the Vitelli Palace at Florence by Sir Duke of Tuscany (Samuele Romanin, Horace Mann and sent to Mr Walpole' Storia documentata di Venezia, Venice, ('Des. of SH,' Works ii. 469), and the story 1912-21, vi. 371-87). 'in a cartouche on the frame,' as quoted in 4. Pietro Bonaventuri (d. 1572), not a the 'Description,' is a free English transla nobleman but a clerk in the banking house tion of Gray's Latin. of the Salviati in Venice. See Romanin, op. 2. Gray's source has not been identified. cit. vi. 371-5; Riguccio Galluzzi, Istoria del In Florence, he might have read Bianca's Granducato di Toscana sotto il governo story in a manuscript version. There is della Casa Medici, Florence, 1781, ii. 83-8; hardly an Italian library without a col see also Celio Malespini's novella 'Come lection of fatti tragici, i.e. seventeenth anperuenissd e la Signora Bianca Cappello Gran early eighteenth century manuscript ac Duchessa di Toscana,' Ducento novelle, counts of murder, rape, and incest, concern Venice, 1609, ii. 275b-278a (pt ii, novella ing the Medici, the Farnese, the Cenci, etc. lxxxiv). (see Guglielmo E. Saltini, 'Delia morte di 5. Bartolomeo Cappello, Venetian sena Francesco I de' Medici e di Bianca Cap tor. See Francesco Sansovino, Venetia citta pello,' Archivio storico italiano, 1863, 2d sernobilissima,. Venice, 1581, dedication to xviii pt i. 22). The Yale Library owns sev 'Bianca Cappello de' Medici,' also p. 178a, eral such manuscripts, one of which is 'Is and the appendix ('Cronica Veneto') p. 38a. toria della Signora Bianca Cappello, Gran 6. Francis I (Francesco de' Medici) Duchessa di Toscana, e di Pietro Buona (1541-87), Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1574 venturi suo marito.' Gray probably wrote (Litta, 'Medici di Firenze' table xiii). his account from memory, since he omits .

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