o" lacked admirable scenic and histrionic features. We
have already seen how skilful the Italian managers and mechanicians of
spectacular sacred plays were in preparing brilliant scenic effects for
their productions. Since the form and general apparatus of the sacred
play were seized by Poliziano for the fashioning of his "Orfeo," it is
altogether probable that he accepted from the earlier creation pregnant
suggestions as to the manner of presentation.

However, as the "Orfeo" was to be given indoors the manner of exhibiting
it had to differ somewhat from that of the open air spectacle. The scale
of the picture had to be reduced and the use of large movement
relinquished. A temporary stage was erected in the great hall of the
Palazzo Gonzaga. A single setting sufficed for the pictorial investiture
of the action. The stage was divided into two parts. One side
represented the Thracian country, with its streams and mountains and its
browsing flocks. The other represented the inferno with Pluto,
Proserpine, and the other personages made familiar by classic
literature. Between the two was a partition and at the rear of the
inferno were the iron gates.[17]

[Footnote 17: "Florentia: Uomini e cose del Quattrocento," by
Isidore del Lungo.]

One easily realizes the vivid potency of the picture when Baccio
Ugolino, as Orpheus, clad in a flowing robe of white, with a fillet
around his head, a "golden" lyre in one hand and the "plectrum" in the
other, appeared at the iron gates, and, striking the strings of the
sweet sounding instrument, assailed the stony hearts of the infernals
with song as chaste and yet as persuasive as that of Gluck himself. It
is no difficult task to conjure up the scene, to see the gorgeously clad
courtiers and ladies bending forward in their seats and hanging upon the
accents of this gifted and accomplished performer of their day.

Of the history of Baccio Ugolino little, if anything, is known. There
was a Ugolino of Orvieto, who flourished about the beginning of the
fifteenth century. He was archpriest of Ferrara, and appears to have
written a theoretical work on music in which he set forth a great deal
of the fundamental matter afterward utilized in the writings of
Tinctoris. But whether this learned man was a member of the same family
as Baccio Ugolino is not known. The fact that he was located at Ferrara
makes it seem likely that he was related to Poliziano's interpreter, who
might thus have