It must not be forgotten that some of these authors soon found their way into northern countries by means of Latin translations.And without Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo and his all-important work, we should perhaps to this day have no history of Northern art, or of the art of modern Europe, at all.
Among the biographers of North Italy in the fifteenth century, Bartolommeo Fazio of Spezia holds a high rank.Platina, born in the territory of Cremona, gives us, in his 'Life of Paul II,' examples of biographical caricatures.The description of the last Visconti, written by Piercandido Decembrio--an enlarged imitation of Suetonius--is of special importance.Sismondi regrets that so much trouble has been spent on so unworthy an object, but the author would hardly have been equal to deal with a greater man, while he was thoroughly competent to describe the mixed nature of Filippo Maria, and in and through it to represent with accuracy the conditions, the forms, and the consequences of this particular kind of despotism.The picture of the fifteenth century would be incomplete without this unique biography, which is characteristic down to its minutest details.Milan afterwards possessed, in the historian Corio, an excellent portrait-painter; and after him came Paolo Giovio of Como, whose larger biographies and shorter 'Elogia' have achieved a world-wide reputation, and become models for subsequent writers in all countries.It is easy to prove by a hundred passages how superficial and even dishonest he was; nor from a man like him can any high and serious purpose be expected.But the breath of the age moves in his pages, and his Leo, his Alfonso, his Pompeo Colonna, live and act before us with such perfect truth and reality, that we seem admitted to the deepest recesses of their nature.
Among Neapolitan writers, Tristano Caracciolo, so far as we are able to judge, holds indisputably the first place in this respect, although his purpose was not strictly biographical.In the figures which he brings before us, guilt and destiny are wondrously mingled.He is a kind of unconscious tragedian.That genuine tragedy which then found no place on the stage, 'swept by' in the palace, the street, and the public square.The 'Words and Deeds of Alfonso the Great,' written by Antonio Panormita during the lifetime of the king, are remarkable as one of the first of such collections of anecdotes and of wise and witty sayings.