by Luini's magic into a
pure idyll, without the loss of power, without the sacrifice of
edification.

S. Catherine in this incomparable fresco is a portrait, the history of
which so strikingly illustrates the relation of the arts to religion
on the one hand, and to life on the other, in the age of the
Renaissance, that it cannot be omitted. At the end of his fourth
Novella, having related the life of the Contessa di Cellant, Bandello
says: 'And so the poor woman was beheaded; such was the end of her
unbridled desires; and he who would fain see her painted to the life,
let him go to the Church of the Monistero Maggiore, and there will he
behold her portrait.' The Contessa di Cellant was the only child of a
rich usurer who lived at Casal Monferrato. Her mother was a Greek;
and she was a girl of such exquisite beauty, that, in spite of her
low origin, she became the wife of the noble Ermes Visconti in her
sixteenth year. He took her to live with him at Milan, where she
frequented the house of the Bentivogli, but none other. Her husband
told Bandello that he knew her temper better than to let her visit
with the freedom of the Milanese ladies. Upon his death, while she
was little more than twenty, she retired to Casale and led a gay
life among many lovers. One of these, the Count of Cellant in the Val
d'Aosta, became her second husband, conquered by her extraordinary
loveliness. They could not, however, agree together. She left him, and
established herself at Pavia. Rich with her father's wealth and still
of most seductive beauty, she now abandoned herself to a life of
profligacy. Three among her lovers must be named: Ardizzino Valperga,
Count of Masino; Roberto Sanseverino, of the princely Naples family;
and Don Pietro di Cardona, a Sicilian. With each of the two first she
quarrelled, and separately besought each to murder the other. They
were friends and frustrated her plans by communicating them to one
another. The third loved her with the insane passion of a very young
man. What she desired, he promised to do blindly; and she bade him
murder his two predecessors in her favour. At this time she was living
at Milan, where the Duke of Bourbon was acting as viceroy for the
Emperor. Don Pietro took twenty-five armed men of his household, and
waylaid the Count of Masino, as he was returning with his brother and
eight or nine servants, late one night from supper. Both the brothers
and the greater part of their suite were kille