VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 401

thrust down into Hell by Penance, from the presence of Purity and Fortitude.¹ Spenser, who has been so often noticed as furnishing the exactly intermediate type of conception between the mediæval and the Renaissance, indeed represents Cupid under the ancient from of a beautiful winged god, and riding on a lion, but still no plaything of the Graces, but full of terror:

“With that the darts which his right hand did straine

Full dreadfully he shooke, that all did quake,

And clapt on hye his coloured wingës twaine,

That all his many it afraide did make.”²

His many, that is to say, his company;³ and observe what a company it is. Before him go Fancy, Desire, Doubt, Danger, Fear, Fallacious Hope, Dissemblance, Suspicion, Grief, Fury, Displeasure, Despite, and Cruelty. After him, Reproach, Repentance, Shame:

“Unquiet Care, and fond Unthriftyhead,

Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead,

Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyalty,

Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread

Of heavenly vengeance; faint Infirmity,

Vile poverty, and lastly Death with infamy.”⁴

Compare these two pictures of Cupid with the Love-god of the Renaissance,⁵ as he is represented to this day, confused with angels, in every faded form of ornament and allegory, in our furniture, our literature, and our minds.

§ 87. Second side. Gluttony. A woman in a turban, with a jewelled cup in her right hand. In her left, the clawed limb of a bird, which she is gnawing. Inscribed “GULA SINE ORDINE SUM.”

¹ [The reference is to the fresco of “Sancta Castitas” in the Lower Church of Assisi.]

² [Book iii. canto xii. 23.]

³ [See the preface to Ruskin’s book on birds, Love’s Meinie, where the word is explained.]

⁴ [Book iii. canto xii. 25.]

⁵ [See, for instance, the description of the Cupids by Albani given in Ruskin’s Inaugural Address at the Cambridge School of Art (1858), § 18.]

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