The Sack of Rome, 1527 (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 26) 0691252238, 9780691252230

Citation preview

The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts DELIVERED AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C.

1952 1953 1954 1955 1956

Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry by Jacques Maritain The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form by Kenneth Clar\ The Art of Sculpture by Herbert Read Painting and Reality by Etienne Gilson Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation by E. H. Gombrich 1957 The Eternal Present: I. The Beginnings of Art. II. The Beginnings of Architecture by S. Giedion 1958 Nicolas Poussin by Anthony Blunt 1959 Of Divers Arts by Nauru Gabo 1960 Horace Walpole by Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis 1961 Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins by Andre Grabar 1962 Blake and Tradition by Kathleen Raine 1963 The Portrait in the Renaissance by John Pope-Hennessy 1964 On Quality in Art by Ja\ob Rosenberg 1965 The Origins of Romanticism by Isaiah Berlin 1966 Visionary and Dreamer: Two Poetic Painters, Samuel Palmer and Edward Burne-Jones by David Cecil 1967 Mnemosyne: The Parallel between Literature and the Visual Arts by Mario Praz 1968 Imaginative Literature and Painting by Stephen Spender 1969 Art as a Mode of Knowledge by /. Bronows\i 1970 A History of Building Types by Nikplaus Pevsner 1971 Giorgio Vasari: The Man and the Book by T.S.R. Boase 1972 Leonardo da Vinci by Ludwig H. Heydenreich 1973 The Use and Abuse of Art by Jacques Barzun 1974 Nineteenth-century Sculpture Reconsidered by H. W. Janson 1975 Music in Europe in the Year 1776 by H. C. Robbins Landon 1976 Aspects of Classical Art by Peter von Blanc\enhagen 1977 The Sack of Rome, 1527 by Andre Chastel 1978 The Rare Art Traditions by Joseph Alsop 1979 Cezanne in America by John Rewald 1980 Principles of Design in Ancient and Medieval Architecture by Peter Kilson 1981 Pulladio in Britain by John Harris

BOLLINGEN SERIES XXXV • 26

The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts

have been delivered annually since 1952 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, with the goal of bringing “the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts.” As publication was always an essential part of the vision for the Mellon Lectures, a relationship was established between the National Gallery and the Bollingen Foundation for a series of books based on the talks. The first book in the series was published in 1953, and since 1967 all lectures have been published by Princeton University Press as part of the Bollingen Series. Now, for the first time, all the books in the series are available in one or more formats, including paperback and e-book, making many volumes that have long been out of print accessible to future generations of readers. This edition is supported by a gift in memory of Charles Scribner, Jr., former trustee and president of Princeton University Press. The Press is grateful to the Scribner family for their formative and enduring support, and for their commitment to preserving the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts for posterity. Images in this edition may have been altered in size and color from their appearance in the original print editions to make this book available in accessible formats.

ANDRE CHASTEL

THE SACK OF ROME, 1527 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY BETH ARCHER

THE A. W. MELLON

LECTURES

IN THE FINE ARTS,

1977

THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON,

D.C.

BOLLINGEN

SERIES XXXV " 2 6

PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Copyright © 1983 by the Trustees of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey This is the twenty-sixth volume of the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, which are delivered annually at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The volumes of lectures constitute Number XXXV in Bollingen Series, sponsored by Bollingen Foundation Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data will be found on the last printed page of this book

New paperback printing 2023 ISBN (paper) 978-0-691-25223-0 ISBN (ebook) 978-0-691-25224-7

CONTENTS List of Illustrations List of Maps Photographic Sources

ix xv xvii

INTRODUCTION

3

I. MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

22

The March on Rome Rome's Defenses The Sack The Pageant of August 4 Imago Urbis

25 29 31 35 41

I I . ROME — BABYLON

49

The Hall of Constantine The Antichrist-Pope Prognostics and the Antichrist

50 67 78 91

I I I . URBIS DIREPTIO

Works of Art Relics The Prestige of the Mercenaries

97 100 108

IV. POLEMICS : ITALIANS AND BARBARIANS

H5

Ghibelline Esoterica The End of Italy The Despair of Men of Letters The Intervention of Erasmus Adrian VI Archaeology and Paganization

115 119 123 129 136 140

CONTENTS

VII

V. THE

CLEMENTINE

149

STYLE

The Changing of the Guard Engraving

154 X

59

Rosso's Dead Christ

163

Parmigianino's Madonna The Misfortunes The Venetian Refuge

VI. PAPAL REDRESS, IMPERIAL

The Pontiff's Beard Medals and Coins The Cycle of Saint Michael The Last Judgment The Emperor in Rome EPILOGUE

166 169

178 TRIUMPH

179 184 189 191

199 207 2l6

NOTES

239

BIBLIOGRAPHY

289

Sources Written before 1600 Modern Works INDEX

CONTENTS

289 296 313

VIII

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS INTRODUCTION

1 Alessandro Strozzi, map of Rome, 1474. Florence, Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana, Cod. Redi 77, fols. viiv-vnir 2 Sebastiano del Piombo, Clement VII in His Youth. Naples, Museo Nazionale 3 Perino del Vaga, detail from the frescoes of Clement VIFs bath. Rome, Castel Sant'Angelo 4 School of Raphael, Joshua Stopping the Sun, with grotesque decorations. Logge, Vatican 5 Hans Burgkmair, frontispiece of Iohannis Stamler, Dyalogus de diversarum gencium sectis et mundi religionibus, Augsburg, 1508

2 11 13 14 16

CHAPTER I

6 Anonymous French, Constable Charles de Bourbon at Agnadel, second decade of the sixteenth century. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale 7 Vorstermann, after Titian, Portrait of Constable Charles de Bourbon, with the motto "Omnis salus in ferro est." Copper engraving 8 Present-day view of a portion of the ramparts, Castel Sant'Angelo 9 Nicolas Beatrizet, after Giotto, La Navicella, 1559. Copper engraving 10 Anonymous, Saint Peter's "Navicula" about to Capsize. Woodcut in Joseph Griipeck, Speculum naturalis, 1508 11 Erhard Schon, The Battle of the Evangelists and the Papists, 1528. Woodcut 12 Anonymous Flemish, view of Rome with scenes of the sack of 1527. Panel 64.5 x 29 cm. Coll. Destombes, Paris 13 Fra Jacopo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo, view of Rome, 1490. Woodcut 14 Jerome Cock, after Martin van Heemskerck, The Death of Bourbon. Copper engraving in Divi Caroli V Imp. opt max victoriae, 1555 15 Jerome Cock, after Martin van Heemskerck, Lansquenets in Front of Castel Sant'Angelo. Copper engraving in Divi Caroli . . . 1555 16 Martin van Heemskerck, Lansquenets in Front of Castel Sant'Angelo. Drawing, Kunsthalle, Hamburg LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

27 27 33 38 39 40 42 43 46 46 47 IX

17 C. Boel, after Antonio Tempesta, Bourbon Sends His Troops to Attac\ Home. Copper engraving

48

CHAPTER II

18a Anonymous, The Exhibition of the Veronica to Pilgrims. Woodcut in Mirabilia Romae, ca. 1475; facsimile ed., Weimar, 1904 18b Anonymous, The Escutcheons of Rome and Sextus IV, and the Veronica. Woodcut in Mirabilia Romae 19 Anonymous, History of Romulus and Remus. Woodcut in Mirabilia Romae 20 Giulio Romano, Sala di Costantino, facing the Adlocutio. Vatican 21 Giulio Romano, Leo X. Sala di Costantino, Vatican 22 Giulio Romano, Leo I (Clement VII as a young man?). Sala di Costantino, Vatican 23 Giulio Romano, Urban I (Clement VII in old age?). Sala di Costantino, Vatican 24 Raphael, Heliodorus Driven from the Temple, detail. Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican 25 Raphael, The Mass at Bolsena, detail. Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican 26 Raphael and Giulio Romano, The Meeting of Saint Leo and Attila, detail. Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican 27 Raphael, The Liberation of Saint Peter, detail. Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican 28 Giulio Romano, The Battle of Ponte Milvio. Sala di Costantino, Vatican 29 Giulio Romano, The Baptism of Constantine. Sala di Costantino, Vatican 30 Giulio Romano, Constantine s Donation of Rome. Sala di Costantino, Vatican 31 Giulio Romano, Constantine s Donation of Rome, detail offig.30 32 Adventus pontificalis. Stucco relief, north wall, Sala di Costantino, Vatican 33 Anonymous, Adventus pontificalis. Church of the Quattro Santi Coronati, Rome 34 Mon\ with Scythe and Rose. Woodcut in A. Osiander and H. Sachs, Wunderliche Weissagung, Nuremberg, 1527 35 Georg Pencz, Children of the Planet Jupiter. Woodcut 36 Hans Holbein, The Pope. Woodcut in Images of Death, 1526 37a Lucas Cranach, Kissing of the Pope's Foot. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi, Wittenberg, 1521 X

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

49 49 50 51 51 52 53 54 54 55 55 58 60 62 63 64 65 66 68 69 70

37b Lucas Cranach, Christ Washing Disciples' Feet. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi 38a Lucas Cranach, The Power of the Pope. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi 38b Lucas Cranach, Christ Rejecting the Crown. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi 39 Lucas Cranach, The Temple a Lair of Thieves. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi 40a Lucas Cranach, The Pope Descends into Hell. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi 40b Lucas Cranach, Tournament at the Belvedere. Woodcut in Passio nal Ch risti und An tich risti 41a Lucas Cranach, The Whore of Babylon Wearing the Triple Crown. In the September Testament, Wittenberg, 1522 41b Lucas Cranach, The Destruction of Babylon. In the September Testament 42 Anonymous, view of Rome, detail. Woodcut in Hartmann Schedel, Weltchroni\, Nuremberg, 1493 43 Lucas Cranach, The Judgment of Babylon. In the September Testament 44a Hans Holbein, The Great Whore of Babylon. In the Thomas Wolff Bible, Basel, 1523 44b Hans Holbein, The Judgment of Babylon. In the Thomas Wolff Bible 44c Hans Holbein, The Destruction of Babylon. In the Thomas Wolff Bible 45 Albrecht Diirer, Saint Peter's "Navicella" and the Antichrist. Woodcut in Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, Basel, 1494 46 Mon\ in a White -Cowl with the Devil in His Hood. Woodcut in Johannes Lichtenberger, Prognostication Mainz, 1492. Copy with handwritten inscription, Staats- und Universitatsbibliotek, Hamburg 47 The Emperor Enters Rome. From Johannes Lichtenberger, Prognosticatio, edition from Wittenberg, 1526 48 Frontispiece of J. Carion, Prognostication Leipzig, 1521 49 Erhard Schon, The Melancholic Pope. Adapted from H . Sachs, Die vier wunderlichen Eygenschafft und Wiirhung des Weins, Nuremberg, 1528 50 Hans Baldung-Grien, frontispiece of Ulrich von Hutten, Gesprach Buchlin, Strasbourg, 1521 51 Frontispiece of An die Versammlung gemayner Bawerschafft, Nuremberg, 1525 52 Baldassare Peruzzi, title page of S. Fanti, Triompho di Fortuna, Venice, 1527 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

70 J1 71 71 72 72 73 73 74 75 77 77 77 80

81 82 83 84 84 85 89 XI

53 Baldassare Peruzzi, preliminary sketch for title page of S. Fanti, Triompho di Fortuna. Christ Church, Oxford

89

CHAPTER III

54 Graffito found on a wall of the Villa Lante, Rome 55a Graffito on Raphael's Triumph of the Holy Sacrament. Sala della Segnatura, Vatican 55b Tracing of graffito in fig. 55a 56 Tracing of graffito of 1527 on the dado of the Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican 57 Fragment from the border of a tapestry by Raphael, with the crest of the constable of Montmorency, Vatican 58 The reliquary of the Veronica in St. Peter's. After Pauli de Angelis, Descriptio Vaticanae basilicae veteris et novae, Rome, 1646 59 Hans Burgkmair, Machine Operated by Maximilian's Lansquenets. Plate in The Triumphal Procession of Maximilian, 1526 60 Urs Graf, Standard-Bearer and His Valet, 1516. Drawing, Kupferstichkabinett, Basel 61 Urs Graf, Standard-Bearer, 1527. Woodcut, Kupferstichkabinett, Basel 62 Urs Graf, The Recruitment of Mercenaries, ca. 1523. Drawing, Kupferstichkabinett, Basel 63 The Master of Petrarch (Hans Weiditz?), The Gaming and Irreverent Lansquenets, 1517-22. Woodcut from Petrarch, De remediis utrisque fortunae, Augsburg, 1532 64 Melchior Feselen, The Siege of Rome by Porsenna. Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich

91 92 92 93 97 106 109 no 111 112 113 114

CHAPTER IV

65 The Comet of 152J. Woodcut in Conrad Lycosthenes, Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon, Basel, 1557 66 After Polidoro da Carvaggio, Horatio Codes. Copper engraving, facade decoration 67 After Polidoro da Caravaggio, Perseus Petrifying His Enemies. Drawing, Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris 68 After Polidoro da Caravaggio, Trophy. Drawing, Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris 69 Frontispiece in Die gottliche Mu'hle, broadsheet, 1521 70 Jean Duvet, Adrian VI. Copper engraving 71a Baldassare Peruzzi, design for the Tomb of Adrian VI in Rome. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 71b Baldassare Peruzzi and Michelangelo da Siena, Tomb of Adrian VI. S. Maria dell'Anima, Rome XII

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

116 127 128 129 130 137 140 141

72 Baldassare Peruzzi and Michelangelo da Siena, Tomb of Adrian VI, detail 73 Giovanni da Udine, entrance to Villa Madama, Rome 74 Giovanni da Udine, detail of stucco decorations, Villa Madama, Rome 75 Fabio Calvo, map of Rome, in Antiquae Urbis Romae cum regionibus simulacrum, Rome, 1527

142 144 145 146

CHAPTER v

76 Clement VIFs motto, Candor illesus. Woodcut in Paolo Giovio, Dialogo dell'imprese militari e amorose, Rome, 1555 77 School of Giulio Romano, The Device of Clement VII, Written, Sculpted, and Painted by the Arts. Sala di Costantino, Vatican 78 Perino del Vaga, The Visitation. Pucci Chapel, Trinita dei Monti, Rome 79 Polidoro da Caravaggio, sketch for decorations of a facade in Rome. Biblioteca Reale, Turin 80 Baccio Bandinelli, Martyrdom of Saint Laurence. Sketch, Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris 81a Jacopo Caraglio, after Rosso, Apollo. Copper engraving 81b Jacopo Caraglio, after Rosso, Saturn and Philyra. Copper engraving 82a Rosso Fiorentino, Dead Christ with Angels. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 82b Rosso Fiorentino, The Marriage of the Virgin. S. Lorenzo, Florence 82c Parmigianino, The Marriage of the Virgin, sketch. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York 83 Parmigianino, Madonna with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Jerome. National Gallery, London 84 Correggio, Madonna with Saint Sebastian. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden 85 Sebastiano del Piombo, Jesus Bearing the Cross. The Prado, Madrid 86 Rosso Fiorentino, Pieta. S. Sepolcro, Orfanelle 87 Polidoro da Caravaggio, Calvary, Capodimonte, Naples 88 Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli, after Parmigianino, Allegorical Portrait of Charles V. Cook Gallery, Richmond 89 Parmigianino, Madonna of the Rose. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

149 150 156 158 161 162 162 164 165 164 168 168 173 175 176 177 177

CHAPTER VI

90 Robert Peril, Standard-Bearers in the Coronation Procession of Charles V, 1530. Woodcut, Albertina, Vienna LIST

OF

ILLUSTRATIONS

182 XIII

91a Nicolas Hogenberg, Charles V and Clement VII in the Coronation Procession of Charles V, 1530. Copper engraving 91b Nicolas Hogenberg, The Holy Sacrament in the Coronation Procession of Charles V, 1530. Copper engraving 92 Sebastiano del Piombo, Clement VII. Pinacoteca, Parma 93 Cellini, Ecce homo. Design for double ducat, minted under Clement VII, from Bonannus, Numismata Pontificum romanorum, Rome, 1699 94 Cellini, Clauduntur belli portae. Design for medal for Clement VII, from Bonannus, Numismata ... 95 Cellini, Justitia ex Deo. Design for medal for Clement VII, from Bonannus, Numismata . . . 96 Cellini, Misit D. Ang. suum et liberavit me. Design for medal for Clement VII, from Bonannus, Numismata . . . 97 Baccio Bandinelli, The Archangel Saint Michael, for Castel Sant'Angelo. Drawing, Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris 98 Lorenzetto Lotti and Paolo Romano, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Entrance to the Ponte Sant'Angelo, Rome 99 Anonymous, Apparition of the Archangel Michael above Hadrian s Mausoleum. Chateauvillain Chapel, Trinita dei Monti, Rome 100 Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, detail. Sistine Chapel, Vatican 101 Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, detail. Sistine Chapel, Vatican 102 Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, detail. Sistine Chapel, Vatican 103 Attributed to Lafrery, Ponte Sant'Angelo with Ornamental Statues. Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museum (Dahlem), Berlin 104 Frontispiece by Christoph Scheurl, Einrit Keyser Carlen in die alten \eyserlichen Haubstatt Rome den 5 Aprilin, 1536, Nuremberg, 1536 105 Anonymous, Charles V Kissing the Foot of Paul III in Rome, 1538. Stucco bas-relief, Casa Crivelli, Rome

183 183 186 190 190 191 191 192 193 197 203 204 204 212 213 214

EPILOGUE

106 Martin van Heemskerck, Charles V Holding Sway over the Pope and Kings. Copper engraving, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 107 Agostino Veneziano, Baccio Bandinelli s "Academy" in Rome, 1531. Copper engraving 108a Baccio Bandinelli, design for a papal tomb. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence XIV

LIST OF I L L U S T R A T I O N S

220 223 226

108b Baccio Bandinelli and Nanni di Baccio Bigio, Tomb of Clement VII. S. Maria sopra Minerva, Rome 229 109 Baccio Bandinelli, statue (formerly in the Palazzo Vecchio) and unfinished tomb of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Piazza S. Lorenzo, Florence 230 n o Giorgio Vasari, Coronation of Charles V in Bologna. Hall of Clement VII, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 232 i n Giorgio Vasari, Clement VII and Charles V. Hall of Clement VII, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 233 112 Giorgio Vasari, Clement VIVs Return to Rome. Hall of Clement VII, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 234 113 Philip Galle, after Johann Stradan, Giovanni delle Bande Nere Emerging from Castel Sant'Angelo in 1526. Copper engraving, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris 235 114 Giorgio Vasari, Fortune with the Sail. Hall of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 236 115 Attributed to Carlo Portelli, Portrait of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, detail. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Putnam Dana McMillan Fund 236

LIST OF MAPS 1 The principal points of the seizure and occupation of Rome (residential area of the city is shaded; numbers 1, 2, and 3 show the three successive assaults) 2 The entrance of Charles V into Rome (residential area of the city is shaded)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

28 211

XV

PHOTOGRAPHIC SOURCES Albertina: 90 Alinari: 3, 82b, 84, 89, 92, 109 Jorg P. Anders: 103 Anderson: 22, 28, 30, 32, 71b, 72, 73, 74, 108b Anderson-Giraudon: 2, 4, 24, 25, 27, 88, 100, 101,102 Archivio Fotografico Gallerie e Musei Vaticani: 20, 21, 23, 29, 31, 54, 55a, 55b> 56> 57> 77 Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris: 6, 7, 9, 14, 15, 17, 35, 36, 37a, 37b, 38a, 38b, 39,40a, 40b, 43, 47, 48, 49, 52, 65, 70, 75, 81a, 81b, 91a, 91b, 93, 94, 95, 96, 106, 113 Brogi-Giraudon: 26, n o , i n , 112, 114 Andre Chastel 18,98 Chomon-Perino: 79 Christ Church, Oxford: 53 College de France, Paris: 1, 5, 10, n , 13,18a, 18b, 19, 34, 41a, 41b, 42, 44a, 44b, 44c, 45, 50, 51, 58, 59, 63, 69, 76,104,105,107 Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale, Rome: 99 Kunsthalle, Hamburg: 16 Kupferstichkabinett des Kunstmuseums, Basel: 60, 61, 62 Francesco Miani, Institute Centrale per il Catologo e la Documentazione, Rome: 33, 78 Minneapolis Institute of Art: 115 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: 82a Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence: 108a National Gallery, London: 83 Pierpont Morgan Library, New York: 82c Prado, Madrid: 85 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: 71a Oscar Savio: 66 Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici, Naples: 87 Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich: 64 Staats- und Universitatsbibliotek, Hamburg: 46 Andre Venhard: 12

PHOTOGRAPHIC SOURCES

XVII

THE SACK OF ROME, 1527

1 Alessandro Strozzi, map of Rome, 1474. Florence, Biblioteca MediceoLaurenziana, Cod. Redi 77, fols. viiv-vinr

INTRODUCTION overwhelmed by Rome on his arrival at the end of 1545, communicated his enthusiasm to Aretino. In a now famous letter, friendly and ironic at the same time, Aretino replied: "If you are sorry that the urge to move to Rome which has now seized you did not take hold of you twenty years ago, I can well understand it. But if you are amazed by the way Rome appears to you today, how would you have reacted seeing it as it was when I left it?" 1 The city that Titian found so fascinating under Paul III, had he but known it under Clement VII! Aretino left Rome in 1525. His last months there had been far from serene because of the scandal over his Sonnetti lussuriosia, his quarrel with the Datary Giberti, and the brawl in which he almost lost his life. Nonetheless, Aretino clung to his cherished memories of "Clementine" Rome, which had vanished in the spring of 1527. Permanently settled in Venice, as happy and active as he could be, the flagello del principi ("scourge of princes") knew that the once fabulous Rome of his youth had already been forgotten. The catastrophe of 1527 struck a city in which artists were flourishing and artworks were proliferating. Shortly after that momentous date, Vasari had frequent occasion in his biographies to speak of the effects of the sack on the careers of the artists. What strikes us first is his way of presenting the subject, as in his life of Perino del Vaga: "In 1527 disaster fell upon Rome; the city was sacked, many artists fled, many artworks were destroyed or carried away."2 Vasari's remarks are in themselves enough to indicate that the political and military events of 1527 resulted in a dispersal—it has even been rightly termed a "diaspora"—of the major artists of the day. This is a phenomenon worth stressing, for only recently has it received serious consideration.3 Its significance lies in the fact that there were many new developments in the Rome of 1525: in the field of painting alone an original style had begun to emerge, marked by subtlety, grace, and sophistication, which Aretino and many others remembered with nostalgia. Perhaps what was lost through this historical accident deserves closer attention. TITIAN,

a

I Sonnetti lussuriosi, a collection of erotic poems by Aretino, had been indecorously illustrated by Giulio Romano. See ch. 5, p. 159 (translator's note, hereafter T.N.). INTRODUCTION

2

On a broader level, Jacob Burckhardt saw, with his usual clarity, the disruptive power of the event and perceived the long-term effects on the future: "A singular feature," he wrote over a century ago, "was to emerge from the devastation of Rome, namely, a spiritual and secular renewal."4 The trauma of 1527 caused such an upheaval that the only hope of restoration was with fresh perspectives. By creating the need for the Council (convoked in 1536 and held in Trent after 1545) and the Catholic Reform movement, the sack had generated the process that in the long run led Italy and the Church from the High Renaissance to the Baroque. This viewpoint is not a mistaken one, though it leaves out too many factors, but it is not ours. It omits one stage, that of the circumstances and immediate repercussions of the fall of Rome, from which we have much to learn. The problem, in fact, is not the Baroque but Mannerism, as Giuliano Briganti rightly noticed in 1945.5 Roman culture took a new turn around 1525. The sack encouraged the growth of a style that "ceased being the exclusive property of Florence, Siena, or Rome." The artists in question are none other than Parmigianino, Rosso, Polidoro, Peruzzi, and Perino del Vaga. The sudden changes caused by the events of May 1527 led to the "Europeanization" of Mannerism,6 which had already been in the making. The catastrophe merely hastened it. Abbot Lanzi had earlier noted something of this kind.7 The intellectual climate of Rome in 1525 owed its excitement to an extraordinary convergence of talent, to a frenzy that was intensified by the meeting of individuals and ambition, to the fervor of a culture that had become self-assured, and to an unusual freedom of speech and behavior (one has only to read the relevant chapters in Cellini8). This is precisely what revolted so many observers, tourists, and foreign residents both lay and clerical. Clement may well have been a pontiff of great dignity. It was nevertheless under his reign that criticism of Roman corruption had reached a point of no return. Critiques of this kind go way back, and can even be considered traditional within the Christian world.9 Where the vast machinery of the Curia was concerned, the administration of the Church's centralized monarchy always ran the risk of deceiving, irritating, or scandalizing observers. Many people saw the recent developments in the Vatican's military and territorial policies as dangerous and senseless. Leo X and Clement VII had inherited the perilous and preoccupying situation of their day from Julius II, who created it. The respect due the pontiff was inevitably mixed with the admiration or suspicion inspired by his performance as chief INTRODUCTION

of the Roman state. Erasmus, ironical and disturbed on his return from Italy, wrote The Praise of Folly (1511). If the world struck him as irrational, the Church was largely responsible for it. The general appearance of the city surely pleased him, and he spoke of it later with a degree of fondness, though very differently from Aretino. Already then, the germ of his thinking, later expressed in his Ciceronianus of 1528, was that Rome with its passion for stylishness and ancient pomp was nothing more than a den of paganism.10 The notion became increasingly widespread that to be a good Christian it was better to stay away from Rome. One wonders to what degree Luther's brief stay in 1508 with the Augustinians of Santa Maria del Popolo fostered in him the rebellion that erupted in 1517, whose fearful aftershock reverberated throughout the reign of Clement VII.11 Whatever the case, no one on the other side of the Alps ever spoke more irascibly or more contemptuously about the Holy City than he. Needless to say, neither Luther nor Erasmus could see or understand everything that was going on. But they did see and understand enough to dissociate themselves forever from la vita romana, not only because of the way the affairs of Christendom were being conducted, but far more sweepingly, because of the continuous, and in their eyes disgusting, mishmash of sacred and profane, a mixture of ancient models and Christian customs. In Rome itself, an ongoing self-criticism was provided by the popular Pasquinate1 and the vitriolic pamphlets often emanating from highly placed persons, such as the capitoli of Berni who was secretary to the Datary Giberti from 1524 to 1532.12 Aretino learned a lot from them. During the Renaissance, satire was excessively violent and often became ferocious, as it did during the reign of Adrian VI.13 Such verbal abuse was part and parcel of Roman customs, but it fostered the impression that the Holy City was the scene of not very edifying local squabbles. Rome, seen or imagined from afar, increasingly the object of unmitigated global denunciations amplified by an eschatological perspective, was now blamed by a part of Christendom for the crisis in Europe and the disorder of the Church. There was far less awareness of the efforts regularly made to combat doctrinal or moral abuses, moral laxity within the h

Pasquinate were satiric works, so called because they were traditionally pasted up on the statue of a gladiator, playfully named Pasquino by the local inhabitants, on April 25. Aretino and other famous writers of the sixteenth century participated in the festival of Pasquino, which developed into the political and curial satire of Rome. T.N. INTRODUCTION

S

priesthood, and the like. The Lateran Council of 1513, for example, undertook a number of initiatives in that direction.14 Rightly or wrongly, the feeling was that no initiative could amount to anything, nor would it suffice in any case. Rome was the hub of a singularly cosmopolitan world. The ecclesiastic administration required an enormous staff, and more than ever before, international problems—which ever since the French descent in 1494 almost always affected Italy—were negotiated in Rome.15 In addition, during favorable periods such as the reigns of Julius II, Leo X, and Clement VII, cultural trends took on such importance that the eyes of the world turned to Rome. The close relationship, and perhaps even the intermingling, of politics, religion, and culture had always been characteristic of the city. For the Christian world, and even the pagan empire, this was, has always been, and still is the fascination and uniqueness of Rome. It is this symbol of unparalleled richness that made Dante aspire to being "senza fine cive/Di quella Roma onde Cristo e Romano" ("an eternal citizen/of that Rome where Christ is Roman"). 10 The severity with which Egidio da Viterbo addressed the Curia under Julius II has been rightly stressed. This vicar-general of the Augustinians sounds at times as acerbic as that other Augustinian monk he might have known in Rome. But Egidio saw no contradiction between the criticism of Roman mores and the need for ever-growing authority within the Holy See, or between the nostalgia for simplicity and the necessity for pomp. He encouraged Leo X to proceed with the gigantic undertaking of a new St. Peter's, which indicates among other things that he approved of the campaigns to sell indulgences in order to raise capital funds, without suspecting the catastrophe they would unleash.17 Ceremonial opulence and monumental splendor were the inescapable destiny of papal Rome. Looking merely at guidebooks, one sees at once that already then, pious tourism blended the mirabilia of Christianity and antiquity into a joint celebration of this city above all cities.18 This constant amalgam, these mingled histories, made Rome irresistibly appealing to intellectuals, poets, and artists, as well as to throngs of pilgrims and true believers. From a general standpoint, the capital was assuredly endowed with divine immunity; this was even proclaimed with certainty, as will be seen, in the most famous of Roman decorations.19 The notion of italianita periodically came to mind in times of hardship and war. It was just as readily forgotten during the rivalries that repeatedly flared up among the peninsula's great and small states. But it was a notion indivisible from romanita, which INTRODUCTION

then took on a richly emotional tonality. As F. Chabod has justly pointed out, language in full "literary" flowering, culture in full expansion, art in full maturity, played an important and even unusual role in this notion, which survived political failures without, alas, being able to compensate for them.20 In this connection, no "nation" has ever been more aware of its potential, its impotence, or its misfortunes than Rome. History may well be like geology: deep stratifications and configurations are not easily seen. Nonetheless, "the study of earthquakes or tremors is the most effective means we have for learning about the inside of our planet, within which these phenomena occur."21 Perhaps by analogy, the examination of certain great catastrophes is an effective means for uncovering those forces within the overall upheaval of a society that had once assured its relative cohesiveness, and for identifying among the instinctive reactions of fear, grief, and shame impulses that are rarely perceptible. Their crude reality is revealed in the conflict between social groups and the lust for possessions common to any collectivity. It would be naive, however, to believe that these factors alone explain everything. Before, during, and after a great collective tragedy, irrepressible gusts of fantasy are released, like waves of suffocating heat during a conflagration. In the convulsions of cruelty and terror that take place,22 the modalities of this fantasy emerge in all their power and all their potential for growth. In this sense, the sack of Rome has been revelatory. The events of 1527, the circumstances and development of the sack, have been the subject of countless works. The essentials were assembled in the old Roman chronicle by Gregorovius (1859-1872), and supplemented by L. von Pastor's vast historical narrative (18861907) and Schultz's index (1894). From then on, little more than a few additions and details appeared until the publication of some recent works that warrant comment.23 J. Hook (1972) wanted to contribute more clarity and accuracy to the historical account and patiently unraveled the threads of unnumerable diplomatic, military, and religious schemes.24 We are very grateful for this careful reconstruction of the comings and goings, incidents, probable statistical data, and roles played by the various characters. But we were constantly obliged to go back to primary sources because Hook's quest was not the same as ours. Even the sequence of events coincides only accidentally with our concerns. Our investigation follows a different line, which we believe to be justified by the fact that the interrelationship of factors is largely obscure and puzzling. That unINTRODUCTION

usual succession of dissensions, hysterias, failures, unprecedented riots and disorders is too fraught with irrationality and chance to be disregarded; on the contrary, that is what is intriguing. It is not a pretty picture, but at times one must look carefully at the random path of violence and the questionable behavior of its victims. Circumstances such as those of 1527 make the individual heavily dependent on the "collective psyche." This exceptional set of circumstances confronts us with that grouping of reflexes, prejudices, mental blocks, and wish fulfillment, classified today under the rubric of "mentality." An attempt had to be made to find what lay at the heart of a dreadful tragedy that numbered very many villains and very few heroes. Before we proceeded any farther it seemed important to approach that mystifying period of the Renaissance with the help of ideas and expressions contemporary to it. We have tried to rediscover its language. With growing satisfaction we saw that our research into specific aspects of the event disclosed as many little-known aspects of art history: to begin with, the role and specific weight, to borrow an expression, of the images in the propaganda war that preceded the onslaught of Constable Charles de Bourbon and his lansquenets; second, the importance of those objects of gold, reliquaries, and artworks that were so valuable as loot; and finally, the highly inconsistent behavior and destiny of the artists who were swept away by the turbulence. On this subject we find that the traditional account is missing a great deal of complementary material. A more recent and highly readable study of sixteenth-century Rome discusses the ability of the disorderly and cosmopolitan society around the Curia to surmount its many contradictions, or at least to live with them.25 We found in this work—vividly described but not interpreted—the urban and social landscape that we had had to reconstruct in order to arrive at an analysis of that fateful year, 1527. The thesis corresponds to what is generally accepted. If one considers the anarchic behavior of the Roman people, the discord and instability of the Curia, and the constant discrepancy between prestige and reality, one is less surprised by the collapse of Rome and the horrors of the sack.26 The disaster seems to fit into the continuum of history, so that any deeper examination of that episode seems unnecessary. It left an undeniable void for some time, but was not regarded as having marked a significant break with the past. In the textbooks, the year 1527 became a convenient reference for marking historical periods, nothing more.27 We are inclined to side with the view expressed nearly a century INTRODUCTION

ago by a great scholar of Rome: "This calamitous event can be said to have sundered the course of Roman life, breaking traditions and customs, while at the same time the Counter-Reformation profoundly altered ways of thinking."28 This is why Gnoli, perhaps exaggerating this particular aspect, thought that the earlier "literary" Pasquinate were followed by a different attitude, a different usage, more acerbic and less subtle.29 Generally speaking, one or more serious consequences arising from the events of 1527 and the succeeding years can be seen in all areas—diplomacy, religion, politics, culture, urban life, art. In this unparalleled humiliation of city, papacy, and italianita, disaster revealed to Italians and to the world, not only the tensions of this contradictory and somewhat artificial society that composed the papal city, but also the virtual absence of "national spirit" in the peninsula, something that has often puzzled historians of Italy. In attempting to isolate each of the crystallizing factors, we have seen a line of cleavage form, too extensive and too marked not to be interpreted as a powerful trend, a crucial period for Rome and the entire Italian world. This book was born of the need to answer the questions raised by this problem. We wondered, in short, if it was not fair to apply to the city itself the striking remark made by Sebastiano del Piombo who, years after, hesitant about returning to work for Pope Clement, wrote to Michelangelo: "It seems to me I am still not the Bastiano I was before the sack."30 But how does one account for such an upheaval? Within the simplifications of the "sociological" or overall approach—which is one of the ways of simplifying things—the historical accident is not taken seriously enough. The "fortuitous" act or event, like the notion of fate, does not impress the historian until it is given meaning and dimension by the collective conscience. This holds true for the sack of Rome. The decline that within a few short years plunged the capital of Christendom into an abyss was caused by an accumulation of circumstances; the precise details were unforeseeable, but one can clearly see the irreparable consequences of each small mistake. On November 19, 1523, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, a prelate of unimpeachable dignity, was elected to the papacy with considerable difficulty (fig. 2). What was wanted was an enlightened prince, a diplomat, to succeed the brief pontificate of the Dutchman, Adrian VI (January 1522-September 1523), whose austerity and desire for reform were received with general unpopularity. Such a pope was found in the nephew of Lorenzo the Magnificent. His election, however, meant the loss of Cardinal Farnese, a Roman, who might INTRODUCTION

have been far more capable of confronting the gathering dangers than the scintillating Clement. In 1534, Farnese was called upon to repair the damage. Ten years earlier he might well have avoided the pitfalls that ensnared Clement's Florentine subtlety. Under Leo X, a number of new factors had arisen that demanded great adeptness on the part of papal power: the Florentine invasion of commerce, banks, and services that were to become Medici fiefs and to augment under Clement;31 the accession of singularly ambitious young princes—Francis of Angouleme in France, and Charles of Hapsburg in Spain and Flanders—who, competing with the equally youthful Henry VIII of England, were clearly embarking on formidable enterprises; the vehemently challenging protest on October 31, 1517, of an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, who openly denounced the moral crisis and the abuses in Rome resulting from the sale of indulgences. Under Clement the situation grew worse on all sides: in Rome the factions were in such a state of unrest that in September 1526 the Colonnas, in collusion with imperial agents, went so far as to attack and devastate the Vatican; Romans betrayed their pontiff.32 Through an absurd piece of bad luck, Francis I let himself be defeated and captured at Pavia in early 1525, leaving the way open for Charles V in Italy. Charles, however, far away and plodding, continued to negotiate: many letters passed between the pope and the emperor. In the meantime, Francis persuaded Clement to join the League of Cognac against the emperor in May 1526—a counterpart to the Holy Alliance of 1512 against the French. This provoked a rift whose consequences, badly calculated on both sides, were to be the powerful army haphazardly organized by Charles in northern Italy in 1526, and its slow descent down the peninsula. Incredibly enough, that army consisted of Lutheran mercenaries. For in less than ten years, the anti-Roman movement had transformed the moral climate of Germany and achieved an intensity that seemed to many humanists and Christians a rebirth. Was Rome truly the land of the anti-Christ, the land branded, in an image older than Christendom, with the name of Babylon, the capital of evil? During the first third of the sixteenth century, movements of faith and religious revival cropped up which should not be overlooked.33 Only a biased view of the policies of "worldly" Leo X and "political" Clement VII can prevent one from appreciating the exact position of the two pontiffs in what might be called a "Catholic pre-Reformation," if one eliminates from this term any notion of an initial relationship with the Lutheran rebellion.34 By 10

INTRODUCTION

2 Sebastiano del Piombo, Clement VII in His Youth. Naples, Museo Nazionale

their criticism of the Curia and the clergy, fervent groups contributed to the storm gathering in Rome, which in the long run made people receptive to "alarmist" prophecies. Needless to say, the motivation of these groups was purely religious. The New Observers, for example, who sought to restore Franciscan simplicity with INTRODUCTION

II

hooded robes of monk's cloth and long beards, were supported by the duchess of Camerino, a niece of Clement VII. She had sponsored the meetings between Matteo da Bascio, a young priest from Montefalcone, with the pope during the Jubilee Year of 1525. In July 1528, the bull Religionis zelus granted the new group the right to monastic life. In 1529 these beginnings were validated by a general chapter of canons.35 No less characteristic of the new religiosity was the development of the Oratorio dell'amor divino into a congregation whose leaders were the bishop of Chieti, Gian Pietro Carafa, and Gaetano da Thiene. To say that the group was primarily concerned with the dignity and sacred commitment of the clergy is no distortion of its orientation.36 Their devotion to Saint Jerome is interesting because they were as—if not more—concerned with Jerome the ascetic, the obsessed penitent, as with Jerome the masterful interpreter of Scripture. They stressed the inner life and the beauty of metaphysical love in a completely emotional and fervent cult of the Eucharist (a cult that was to evolve into the institution of the "forty-hour adoration").37 A few members of this group were relatives of Clement and of his datary, Giberti. The encouragement given these young priests —indifferent to problems of the day and even considering them beneficial—was such that in an exalted climate of hope and piety one of them wrote in January 1527: "Christ is now feared and revered more than ever in Rome: the proud are humbled, the righteous praise God."38 Such a remark would have astounded Erasmus or Luther. This religious optimism was totally shattered four months later by the imperial army and its sacrilegious mercenaries.39 The presence of all this religious fervor in no way vitiates the spicy evidence found in Aretino or in Delicado's ha Lozana andal usa of Rome's dolce vita during the same period. However, the all too familiar contrast between the corruption of Rome and the purity of non-Italian reformers is one of the oversimplifications we would do well to forget. Certain rigorists may have been scandalized by the new developments in painting and sculpture, the importance attached to them in Rome, and the use made of ancient models and pagan myths (fig. 3). But the reaction of artists who came down from northern lands in ever great numbers was quite different. Rome enchanted them. In the works patronized by the princes of the Church, those artists found a balance between the sacred and the profane that could only strike them as a marvelous inspiration. Raphael's later works are extremely significant in this regard. In 1516, Raphael pro12

INTRODUCTION

duced for Cardinal Bibbiena's apartments the most archaeological version—that is, the most faithful rendering of the ancient model— of a decoration in the grotesque style (fig. 4), with not a trace of Christian thought: the Venus cycle in the Stufetta, and the Apollo cycle in the Loggetta. But the following year, for the decoration of the papal rooms, the master had a change of view and turned to the Bible, while retaining the same ornamental elements. The figured motifs of the thirteen bays, all taken from the Old Testament, are placed among an astonishing variety of decorative forms, in a style totally inspired by antiquity (fig. 4). It was a great event and a highly successful one. The new Bible "served as a constant model until the end of the nineteenth century," and corresponded to "the INTRODUCTION

3 Perino del Vaga, detail from the frescoes of Clement VII's bath. Rome, Castel Sant'Angelo

4 School of Raphael, Joshua Stopping the Sun, with grotesque decorations. Logge, Vatican

renewal of Christian studies favored by Leo X at the end of his papacy."40 There is no doubt that Raphael's Bible was as much relied upon to defend the Christian faith as were the religious poems of Sannazaro.41 It was regarded as one of the normal and necessary means open to the Church. Today there is a tendency to be surprised that in a climate as troubled and as unstable as that of Italy after 1494 culture could have held so great a place and that art could have enjoyed so many advantages. No analysis, neither sociological nor any other, has managed so far to explain this situation, except perhaps for that of Jacob Burckhardt, whose concepts are so general that his is more of an intelligent description than an analysis.42 Viewing "the state as INTRODUCTION

a work of art," Burckhardt tried to demonstrate the extraordinary "formalism" of Renaissance institutions (fig. 5), which survived in part because of the way they were perceived: their image within the collective consciousness was more important than their function. This is confirmed by the apparent ease with which revolutions and depositions were undertaken. Pompeo Colonna thought he could overthrow Clement and have himself elected pope. The politics of Charles V seem to demonstrate that the empire—a vacuous notion, so factitious that historians believed it was no longer to be taken seriously—proved better suited than the papacy to fulfill the designs of Providence.43 Despite all its unrest, "sixteenth-century Europe simplified itself by returning to the medieval model of empire and papacy."44 If the highly energetic and crafty diplomacy of the ruling monarchs betrays any ideological bent or particular shading—often illusory—during the period that extends from the election of Charles of Hapsburg as emperor to the end of his reign as Charles V (roughly 1520 to 1540-50), it is largely because of the powerful revival of "the myth of empire" confronted with a challenged, shaken, but tenacious papal reality. A turbulent political world dominated by the rivalry between empire and papacy—two kinds of power that historians have tended to underestimate in their concern with the "modernity" of the sixteenth century—may be hard for us to grasp. We are in the presence of complex notions whose very complexity is often irreconcilable with the demands of action. The distance between what these "symbolic forms" associated with authority express and the reality of power was so great that the players in the diplomatic and even in the military game could harbor fatal delusions. Actions that might have been successful in a different distribution of roles turned out to be catastrophic. There was as much devastation, death, disgrace, failure, waste, and impotence on the side of the victors as on that of the vanquished. Could all the leading actors have realized what kind of web had been spun around Rome? Few examples in history offer better evidence of how political protagonists can precipitate the very disasters or events they fear most, and how readily they camouflage the calamitous effects of their acts once they are out of danger. One is less struck by the atrocities or treacheries of the period than by the pitiful subterfuges or false illusions. No one thought to exonerate Clement VII or forgive him his failure: "Noi ruinammo tutti vituperosamente d'una ruina poco men che prevista," Paolo Giovo coldly remarked ("we all shamefully plunged into a disaster that was hardly unforeseen").45 And out of the entire history of this period, INTRODUCTION

15

5 Hans Burgkmair, frontispiece of Iohannis Stamler, Dyalogus de diversarum gencium sectis et mundi feligionibus, Augsburg, 1508

related by one of Clement's warmest defenders, Guicciardini, was born an unremitting bitterness.40 As for Charles V, it took all the subtleties of a strategy woven of silence, ruse, and strength for him to achieve his goal less than ten years after the sack with his dramatic entrance into Rome. There is no doubt about the moral collapse that took place. Does it appear in the art of the time ? This is the inevitable question and a delicate one. We have tried to follow two major lines of investigation in this work. The first is the concatenation of chance events, which cannot fail to lead to a more general perspective of history. An extraordinary wealth of documents and memoirs reveals a series of occurrences which included so many accidents and mistakes that even today, no longer gripped by the anguishing news of 1527, we find it hard to think of so great an accumulation of mishaps as anything but an act of fate. Some kind of underlying determinism seems to control this sequence of fortuitous events. It is for this reason that we felt obliged to stress the revelatory obsessions which, through 16

INTRODUCTION

astrologic or prophetic calculations, constitute noteworthy mental blocks and deviations. There are cases in which the modalities of the imagination become the stuff of historical moments. The events themselves—meetings between people, troop movements, and so on—ultimately converge on the same catastrophic path, making it difficult for the historian to replace in their proper perspective the hesitations and doubts that were the very mark of the situation. Without realizing it, there is a predisposition to the "fatalistic" version of this all too spectacular period of the Renaissance. When discussing an irresistible impulse, one discards alternatives and loses sight of the uncertainties, lost opportunities, or contrary impulses that might have arisen. We have therefore directed all our attention to the maze of contradictions and ambiguities through which we have the good fortune to be led by a masterful guide, Guicciardini. We have had to consider that little-known historical reality—a prolonged moment of confusion. It is remarkable indeed that in April, at the very moment when auguries and prophecies were pouring in, Clement, trusting the word of the viceroy, Lannoy, demobilized the papal troops that were his only effective defense. This can be termed a mental lapse, bad judgment, or mistaken information.47 This also suggests the impulse to run away, which propels the victim toward the very thing he wants to escape. Evidently, we can reach no conclusion, lacking competence as well as information. It is enough for us to bring the historical investigation back to its outstanding ambiguities. In this connection, we have done everything we could to collect and relate to one another graphic or literary documents, whether major or minor— prints, decorations, details—that record the situation in images or symbols. There was little representation of the events themselves but, on the other hand, rather good examples of their consequences. We would hope not to be misunderstood. This study, like the fine work by our much lamented friend, Millard Meiss,48 is intended to serve art history, but also to be a history of art that does not leave history as history untouched. We would like to upset the certainty regarding "syntheses" just a bit. The episode in question would not seem to be a propitious choice, since its only pictorial quality is the loosing of brute force. However, the event that rent and dismembered a city like Rome, and an institution like the Church, is precisely what reveals the extremely anomalous quality of society: it is not enough to limit oneself to a political analysis of intentions. A socioeconomic investigation of the circumstances, ambitions, and various groups related to the sack can only lead one to view it as hardINTRODUCTION

17

ly more than an episode of secondary importance. But such is not the case if we follow the path traced by manifestations of the popular imagination, by cultural reverberations, forms, and symbols. This line of investigation seemed promising because of the abundance and particular nature of the literature that grew out of the event. In fact, we have the impression of witnessing the birth of journalism with the appearance of novellas (storie), scandal sheets, and more or less fanciful commentaries. The giudizio was a short report of an event that was instantly printed and sold in sheets on the public squares. Around 1527, these improvised newspapers enjoyed great success. An ambassador's dispatch mentions their sale on the Rialto in 1528.49 Some of Aretino's letters, printed on unbound sheets to assure their rapid dissemination, were giudizi, or the beginnings of newspaper articles. During the period of the sack, these "special editions" flourished everywhere, and that was precisely when that master journalist discovered his vocation. His giudizi and pronostici, in great demand in high places, were quite simply buflfoonish predictions, undisguised parodies of astrologic pronosticationes, accompanied by a readily discernible commentary of the current situation. The whole enterprise was under the aegis of Pasquino, whose ribaldry and acerbity, consecrated by an old Roman tradition, sanctioned the waspishness of the pamphleteer.50 In Aretino's eyes, as in Pasquino's, there were either fools, like those who believed in astrologers, or scoundrels, like the astrologers themselves, "whose most innocuous lie was the prediction of the flood."51 Here is how Aretino, taking into account the position of heaven and sun, predicted at the end of 1526 the coming year: "The air will be on the verge of pollution from the infected feet and foul breath of the Germans reeling with Italian wine." A few years later in La Cortegiana, Aretino, laughing at his memories, introduced the vender of stone who calls out the "headlines" of the day: "News, news, wonderful news—the Turks at war in Hungary, the sermons of Brother Martin, the Council, news, news, events in England, the procession of the pope and the emperor, the circumcision of the Voievods,0 the sack of Rome, the siege of Florence, the meeting in Marseille and its results, news, news."52 It is in the midst of these unequally sensational bulletins that the episode of 1527 must be situated. The fact that it coincides with the first manifestations of what can already be termed journalism is yet another reason to consider the reactions expressed throughout the variegated literature dating from the sack.53 c

High officials in Poland and the Balkans. T.N. INTRODUCTION

The sack of Rome was not the first case of atrocities inflicted on an illustrious city. History records a goodly number of them, among which are the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans, and the entrance of Alaric's Goths into Rome.54 A few episodes of recent wars were fresh in the memory at the time of the sack: the pillage of Vicenza by German mercenaries during the League of Cambrai (1509), the sack of Brescia by the Franco-Germans (1512), and that of Prato by the Spaniards (1513).55 The arrival of the imperial army in the capital of Christendom after an interminable descent the length of the peninsula, with anxiety running high because of dreadful predictions, false reports, and all sorts of premonitions, was more than just a particularly unpleasant military event. We have therefore thought it useful to explore the background of a sacrilegious attack that involved the reactions of the common people as well as intellectuals, and to probe insofar as possible the depth of a trauma affecting individuals as well as groups, on which the assembled documents shed new light. One of our few predecessors, Professor Friedrich Hartt, recognized the gravity of this traumatic experience when commenting on the tension between power structures and the individual brought about by such dramatic situations.56 Our conclusions are quite different, but the problem is more or less the same. Despite all our efforts, this study has probably not attained the degree of precision and rigor that we hoped for. Each chapter attempts to open up a fresh perspective. Our intention was to throw light simultaneously on the role played by chance and on the force of symbols; in other words, to illumine the deterioration, instability, uncertainty, and risk to which human action becomes vulnerable as it becomes more daring, and the interplay between representations of such action before, during, and after times of crisis. We hope to have demonstrated that these two factors are interrelated: images constantly intruding on the action, while the event continues to be projected on the imagination. Historical narrative can and should continuously improve. Our project was not to accumulate details for their own sake, or even to sketch episodes more sharply, but rather to indicate the anomalies and omissions in the "historical discourse." The daily uncertainties of life and the steady impact of symbols are fundamental traits of any historic experience that is fully grasped only during moments of turmoil and disorder. This study was thus inspired by a challenge, or rather by the temptation to invade the territory of historians using unconventional, and perhaps inadequate, weapons that might be called flares. INTRODUCTION

19

We have examined almost exclusively what is generally discarded. Art history cannot devote itself merely to the recreation of artistic "events," whose sequence constitutes, at the same time as it discloses, the shell—composed of fictions and emotional responses—which contains the whole of human experience, the whole of life. As we have tried to show elsewhere,57 only an analysis of works and forms can provide a thorough exploration of what may be termed individual and collective fantasy—the realm of symbols. This study therefore aims at relating facts, phenomena, and artworks that are not usually linked together—which may be its only merit. This orientation has led to a juxtaposition of extremely cursory narratives along with a presentation of drawings, prints, and paintings, whose analysis cannot possibly be exhaustive. As a result, there is something discursive and, in many ways, hasty about the very rhythm of the chapters. We run the risk of satisfying no one, but we shall at least have tried to shed some light on the passions, and their specific developments, that are the fabric of life. The questions discussed here were the subject of a course offered at the College de France in 1971-1972. The principal findings were presented at a lecture in Rome on April 13, 1973, as part of a "Congress of the Guillaume Bude Association." When I was honored with an invitation to deliver the A. W. Mellon Lectures at the National Museum in Washington, in the spring of 1977, I saw an opportunity for a more ambitious study, which has been considerably expanded for publication. Independent research undertaken by Dr. Armand Brulhart, consisting of a notizario—an index of every possible document, source, and publication on the sack of Rome—was kindly placed at my disposal by the author. I had originally hoped to have that critical bibliography appear in an appendix. I am grateful to Dr. Brulhart for a large number of references. Since the completion of this manuscript, two historical studies have appeared—M. L. Lenzi, // Sacco di Roma del 1527, Rome, 1978, and E. A. Chamberlain, The Sac\ of Rome, London, 1979— which continue the narration of military and political events. I wish to express my gratitude to the many people who kept me informed of work or research in progress, who generously replied to my questions, looked for or verified documents, obtained books or articles, and provided photographs. I am particularly indebted to: in Rome, Dr. Redig de Campos, Dr. W. Lotz, and Olivier Michel; in Florence, Elio Gabbuggiani, the mayor of Florence, who 20

INTRODUCTION

kindly allowed the Hall of Clement VII in the Palazzo Vecchio to be photographed, and Dr. Galluzzi; in Paris, Mme Bauermeister (Bibliotheque Nationale) and M. Destombes; in Geneva, Alain Dufour and P. Fraenkel. The bibliography and index were compiled by my assistant A. M. Lecoq, who also edited the final draft of the French manuscript and checked the corrections, for which I am deeply grateful. It is also my pleasure to express my deepest thanks to Beth Archer for her translation into English of a text that may sometimes have been rather difficult. I greatly appreciated the care of Princeton University Press.

INTRODUCTION

21

I. MISERA CAPUT MUNDI Triste estaba el Padre santo Lleno de angustia y de pena En Sant Angel, su castillo, De pechos sobre una almena, La cabeza sin tiara, De sudor y polvo llena Viendo a la reina del mundo En poder de gente ajena.

Sad was the Holy Father Filled with anguish and pain In Sant'Angelo, his castle, High up in a turret, Without the tiara on his head, Covered with sweat and dust, Seeing the queen of the world In the power of foreigners.

This is the opening stanza of a Spanish romance that was sung in the streets of Valladolid and Valencia after Rome was taken.1 Even more disrespectful were the stanzas that mocked Saint Peter's leaking navicula. During the summer months of that "terrible year" and even in later years, Christendom resounded with refrains of this kind.2 Obviously, not everyone indulged in the insolence enjoyed by the followers of Charles V. In Italy a goodly collection of a type of dirge known as lamento di Roma has survived, all of them cries of anguish, imprecations against fate, appeals to Romulus and to the glory of the ancient world: Mi chiamo Roma capomondi Misera, che del tutto fui signora3 My name is Rome, capital of the world, Woe is me, who was mistress of all. Misera Italia, a che condotta sei, Suggetta al nome che piu fiate hai vinto; La gloria, il pregio e quel vigore e estinto Che gia dato ti fu da'sommi Dei.4 Unhappy Italy, how demeaned you are Subjugated by the one you often vanquished; Wiped out is the glory, the prestige, the strength That once was given by the highest gods.

A short anonymous Latin poem evokes, in rapid dialogue taken from the Gospels, the passion of Clement, patterned after that of Christ, with no apparent irony.5 There is a motet by Costanzo Festa, a member of the papal chapel since 1517, which is in fact a musical 22

I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

setting of Psalm 79 on the destruction of Jerusalem, Deus venerunt gentes in hereditatem tuam . . . : Oh God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. The destruction, corpses, and blood vividly evoked by the biblical poem could easily be applied to the horrors of 1527. The refrain of the antiphony, "Help us, O God of our salvation," added a note of entreaty.6 In descriptions of the sack by witnesses, the same biblical terms were unconsciously repeated, underlining the unparalleled audacity of such a sacrilege. More surprising, but highly revealing in its style, is a madrigal published in a 1530 collection, Madrigali di diversi musici, which is set to a famous melody by Philippe Verdelot; it is a kind of coded pastoral: Trist'Amarilli mia: donq'e pur vero Che di Titiro tuo si stranamente Vada la grege errante e li dolente Lassi '1 bel Tevere e Vaticano altiero.7 Poor Amaryllis, it is thus true indeed That theflockof your Tityrus Wanders away so strangely and sadly he Leaves the beautiful Tiber and mighty Vatican. What is meant is that the forsaken Church bewails its situation: the pope has abandoned Rome. It is therefore the winter of 152728 during which Clement VII, having "escaped" from Castel Sant'Angelo, was residing in Orvieto while awaiting the total evacuation of the city to which he would not return until October. Aretino, at the request of Archbishop Cornaro, wrote a Canzone on Roma coda mundia per gratia de li Spagnoli et dei Tedeschi. . . , which exudes indignation, or at least appears to: II di sexto di maggio, ohime l'orrendo Giorno infelice, paventoso e crudo Che fa scrivendo sbigotir gl'inchiostri. In mezzo al fuoco e drento al ferro nudo, In preda al temerario ardir tremendo D'Alemagna e di Spagna, a gli occhi nostri a

A pun on Rome's traditional epithet of capital of the world, caput mundi {caput, head; coda, tail). T.N. I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

23

In man di cani e di spietati mostri Del universo la diletta donna Trovasi inerme di consigli e d'armi.8 The sixth day of May, alas, horrendous Day, ill-fated, frightening, brutal, That makes the pen tremble while writing, In the midst of fire and faced with the bare blade, Prey to the colossal audacity Of Germany and Spain, before our eyes In the hands of dogs and impious monsters The adored Lady of the Universe Found herself bereft of counsel and weapons. There is an abundant store of these lamenti: their relative sameness expresses a popular feeling. The accusing tone that protests this odious fate will appear later among poets like Ariosto.9 We know less about the triumphal songs of German troops and peoples won over to Lutheran ideas; only a few scraps have come down. On a poster, in German, printed in Venice in May 1527—Neu Zeytunge von Rom—one finds for example a paean evoking the ghastly woman of the Apocalypse, the Whore of Babylon: Sie ist gefallen, gefallen die grosse Stadt Darin die rothe Hure lang gesessen hat Mit ihren Kelch der Graulichkeit.10 She has fallen, fallen that great city In which the Red Whore long resided With her cup of abomination. Notable events have always had their popular expressions. But in the case of the capture and sack of Rome in May 1527, the press makes it possible to follow closely the reactions of public opinion within the Christian world. For more than thirty years, the Italian wars had seen the spread of posters bearing "canards," sensational reports generally untrue, called Vlugblatter, which played a new role in public life.11 One of the very first benefits of printing was, in fact, the faster and wider spread of news, thanks to the increased number of news bulletins. The statistics speak for themselves: if any single event was sensational at the time, the number of pamphlets and posters, followed by brief accounts, hastily printed in a number of languages, amply demonstrates that it was the event of May 1527 which marked the fall of Rome, caput mundi, into the hands of imperial troops. The horrendous and staggering details of the sack 24

I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

naturally provided excellent copy for the first products of sensational journalism.12

The March on Rome In the spring of 1527, the participants who were engaged in European politics found themselves prisoners of a strange and baffling situation. The exercitus caesareus, the imperial army, had been placed under the command of Charles de Bourbon (fig. 6), Francis Ys greatest enemy. However, Bourbon's march across central Italy had nothing to do with that war. The daring exploit that was to become the march on Rome was not yet inevitable. The new quarrel between Church and Empire did not necessarily involve any such action, nor was it ruled out: official instructions did not prohibit it. It was rather through a kind of internal acceleration and chance collapse that the circumstances of the conflict between Clement VII and Charles V themselves turned this affair into the makings of a catastrophe.13 It is hard to imagine a grimmer, more confining situation. The brutal defeat of the French at Pavia on February 24, 1525, had ushered in an era of anxiety and distress: events unfolded in a setting of exaggerated threats, omens, and ghastly predictions. From within his court in Spain, the emperor seemed to be holding the reins of the entire situation. Would it not have been wise to acknowledge this by means of the pact urged by the Curia's "imperialist" faction ? The two powers, however, soon found themselves in opposition. On a question of principle, the conflict became overt with the publication of the papal brief of June 23, 1526, restating the indefeasible rights of the pontiff, and the emperor's reply to it of September 17, 1526, known as the "Memoir of Grenada." It states that the pope's language is un-Christian: it must be corrected by the emperor and revised by the Council—which represented as serious an affront as could be imagined. This pamphlet, which set the tone of imperial policy, was printed the following spring in Alcala, and reprinted during the summer in Mayence and Antwerp under the title—one can see why—Pro divo Carolo apologetici libro duo}^ There was no other recourse but to begin plotting a war to liberate Italy from Spanish and German domination, comparable to the one successfully waged fifteen years earlier by Julius II against the barbarians of his day, the French under Louis XII. What came to be called the League of Cognac—the site where the treaty was I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

25

signed on May 22, 1526, by Clement and Francis I, who had just been released—consolidated that decision. The event was duly celebrated in Italy.15 Under difficult conditions troops were deployed throughout northern Italy. The armies on either side were so diverse they were hard to amalgamate. The exercitus caesareus slowly assembled under Charles de Bourbon (fig. 7). The army of the League regrouped Venetian contingents who were counting on being reinforced by the French, but Lautrec, an old Italian hand who could have been the man of the day, did not cross the Susa Pass until the beginning of August 1527.16 The only general capable of leading the papal forces was a Medici and Clement's cousin, Giovanni delle Bande Nere. He was mortally wounded on November 28, 1526, during a battle intended to prevent Frundsberg's lansquenets, who were descending through the Alps and Brescia toward Mantua, from joining forces with Charles de Bourbon, who was coming down from Milan.17 The death of the Gran Diavolo was the first stroke of fate. One wonders about the outcome of a campaign that would have pitted Bourbon against Giovanni, the lansquenets against the Bande Nere. This fatal accident allowed the imperial forces to unite, though not without problems of supplies and bad weather. Bourbon was considerably helped by Alphonso d'Este, with whom he was on the best of terms, and to whom he was particularly indebted for the pontoon bridge of boats18 that enabled his armies to cross the Panaro and enter the papal states.19 Italy was becoming familiar with a new type of soldiery—the lansquenets, with their billowing costumes, their lances, their feathers, not unlike the Swiss Guard. Their brutality in the field even surpassed that of the French. The imperial army consisted of three major groups, who were constantly squabbling. There was first a host of ten thousand lansquenets, led by that blustering giant Frundsberg, all of them Lutherans. They had come from Germany to abolish papal power, spiritual as well as temporal. A handsome captain of twenty-five, the Prince of Orange, commanded the cavalry. The second group, a Spanish contingent of tercieros who had come by way of Genoa, was new on the Italian field. Five to six thousand strong, they had come to humble the prince of the Church who had dared oppose their emperor. Ever since the sack of Prato in 1513, their arrogance and cruelty had become notorious. And finally, there were Italian irregulars led by captains of adventure such as Fabrizio Maramaldo, but also such well-born gentlemen as Marc'Antonio Colonna, and Ferrante Gonzaga, the son of Isabella 26

I. MISERA CAPUT

MUNDI

•^tftlfKLu^ini^u

V

\

d'Este. These troops lived entirely on pillage and extortion. Bourbon did not have enough money to pay out the promised wages.20 Following an incredible sequence of deceptions, delays and betrayals, attributable to the allies' concern with their own interests before establishing a common strategy, the road to Rome at the start of 1527 lay more or less open to the turbulent and motley throng. They bargained, they schemed, all the while creeping farther south. Substantial bounties had been obtained from the cities they spared, such as Bologna and Florence. But, as the troop movement clearly shows, Bourbon could only hold the lansquenets and Spaniards in check by promising the booty of Rome. Pillage, the normal objective of mercenaries, in this case held a phenomenal attraction. Bourbon was a clever gambler. Lacking both an organized supply line and artillery, he knew that his army could not sustain a proper siege. In Rome, Clement, barely recovered from his near escape at the hands of the Colonnas, sought an agreement with the viceroy, LanI . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

27

6 (at left) Anonymous French, Constable Charles de Bourbon at Agnadel, second decade of the sixteenth century. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale 7 (above) Vorstermann, after Titian, Portrait of Constable Charles de Bourbon, with the motto "Omnis salus in ferro est." Copper engraving

Porta Aurelia

^

S. Pancrazio

Map i The principal points of the seizure and occupation of Rome (residential area of the city is shaded; numbers i, 2, and 3 show the three successive assaults)

noy, who arrived in Rome on March twenty-fifth under torrential rains, regarded by everyone as a bad omen.21 Trusting him, or pretending to, the pope signed the pact which was to keep the army away at the price of a heavy indemnity. Bourbon was informed. Gold was to preclude the war. Clement discharged his mercenaries who only a few weeks earlier had brilliantly defended Frosinone— less than 100 kilometers south of Rome—against the viceroy's Spanish troops.22 Naturally, Bourbon did not respect the pact. Cutting across Romagna, he crossed the Apennines. By the end of April he was advancing along the Tiber toward the caput mundi. Without intervening, the army of the League followed safely behind the imperial army, whose pace suddenly accelerated. On the fifth of May, a Sunday, the imperials, taking the right bank of the Tiber, arrived at the north and west gates of the city, and took positions around the Borgo. On Monday the sixth, in the thick fog of early dawn, the assault began (map 1). 28

I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

Rome's Defenses As it was in the Middle Ages, Rome has remained a cosmopolitan city. We are fortunate to have the census that was taken during the winter of 1526-27, which provides an accurate picture of Roman citizenry on the eve of the disaster that would change everything.23 Rome held a little more than 53,000 permanent residents. They were grouped within rioni or districts of the city's center, which resulted over centuries in the alienation of the hill communities and the peripheral zone enclosed within the ancient Aurelian walls, still sound today.24 However, the population was not prepared to react energetically. Nearly one-fourth was not even Italian and barely a sixth was of Roman origin. "Romans are only a minority in the city, which is a haven for all nationalities and a communal abode for the entire world," we are told in memoirs of that fateful year.20 This being the case, the inaccurate news bulletins and disturbing predictions of the preceding months could only exacerbate the disunity and disarray of that motley populace of clerics and merchants. Many Romans, what is more, hoped more or less openly for the arrival of the imperial army—some out of hostility toward a pontiff who had become unpopular because of taxation and adverse propaganda; others out of alliance with the Colonnas, who turned the palace of the Santissimi Apostoli and the baths of Diocletian into forts, where they had their headquarters. Their communiques had become more urgent. Alberini would later write: "To Bourbon it looked like a difficult undertaking, but the Colonnas offered him many reasons to prove that it was easier and more feasible just as planned."20 It was the fourth of May. The French commander was in Ronciglione. He quickened his pace. In Rome a militia was armed at the last moment amid panic and confusion; it was placed under Guido Rangoni. The imperials appeared on the west, the defense placed itself at the walls of the Borgo. In the nick of time Castel Sant'Angelo, which was to play such an extraordinary role in the entire drama, was made ready. Cellini, if he can be believed, was placed in charge.27 Rome at the time had remained unchanged. None of the great roads existed. The via Giulia was hardly more than laid out, since the projects for the Palazzo Tribunale, designed by Bramante, and the Apostolic Chancellery, which were to have marked the purpose of the road and established its importance, had been abandoned under Leo X. The only passable routes from east to west crossed I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

29

the Campo de' Fiori on one side, around which many buildings had sprung up because of the Chancellery, and on the other side the Piazza Navona near the zone being developed by the Florentines in the Ponte district and further north. The Medici were entrenched in the S. Eustachio district. Giuliano da Sangallo, at Leo's request, had designed a great palace leading into the Piazza Navona through a portico. But Clement did not continue his cousin's architectural projects, nor did he have the time to make any significant urban changes. Rome's defense system dated back to Aurelian who, around 270, erected the wall surrounding Hadrian's mausoleum, and to Pope Leo IV who, around 850, encircled St. Peter's and the Vatican with the fortifications that bear his name. Castel Sant'Angelo (fig. 8) is mentioned for the first time in a chronicle about the procession to consecrate this Borgo leonino. The name refers to the apparition of the archangel Michael to Gregory I in 590, and to one of the miracles favoring the city of Saint Peter that abound in the annals of Rome.28 The mausoleum, which became the key fortress of the Roman defense system, took on even greater importance after the constructions of the fifteenth century: the erection of walls under Nicolas V and the strengthening of the castle-fortress under Alexander VI. The Borgo, a papal city, was connected with the ancient city by the bridge of Sant'Angelo over which loomed the enormous fortress. The city was therefore reasonably defensible. The Borgo was protected by Castel Sant'Angelo, which was not wanting in artillery. In any case, the Tiber was not an easily traversible moat. And even if incursions were to take place, the city itself, clogged by narrow alleys and twisting streets, was only too propitious for street fighting, as reported fifty years earlier by King Ferrante to Sixtus IV and related by Infessura.29 The population felt completely secure. Everyone was sure that after two or three days of waiting around at the foot of the walls, what with the army of the League on its way, according to Guido Rangoni's horsemen, the imperial army, already in a state of latent upheaval, would probably mutiny and disperse, pillaging the countryside and leaving behind a few stubborn hangers-on.30 The success of the imperial army marked the total and overwhelming failure of Italian strategy, based for more than a century on cunning and temporizing. Faithful to the tradition, Francesco Maria della Rovere had tried it. It failed. On May 6 the bulk of the League's troops was still in Cortona. They did not reach the outskirts of Rome until the twenty-first. Clement 30

I. MISERA CAPUT

MUNDI

bargained for time. Should the city be surrounded, locking the imperials in with their victims? It would seem no one even gave it a thought. On June 2 there was a general retreat. Guicciardini would claim that this lamentable performance was caused "per tradimento e per paura" (by betrayal and fear).31

The Sack The stroke of luck that once again favored the imperials was the morning fog—a veritable godsend—that long after daybreak shrouded the quarters of S. Onofrio and S. Spirito, where the attack was taking place.32 Castel Sant'Angelo's useless artillery remained silent. The Spaniards tried to scale the walls near the Porta Torrione as did the lansquenets the bastion of S. Spirito. Which contingent was first to set foot in Rome is a point much debated among historians.33 As though to underline the fateful, utterly singular nature of the action, its initiator, the great commander who had led the imperial army on forced marches to reach the Holy City, was mortally wounded just outside the Porta Torrione as he was leading a second assault wave after the first had failed.34 A tradition that bases itself on authenticated conversations between Bourbon and the humanist Cornelius Agrippa has it that Agrippa predicted to him "the walls of Rome will fall under the first assault," omitting, however, that Bourbon would fall with them.35 That extraordinary figure thus had a legendary beginning, but if his legend did not evolve, it was doubtless because of the dreadful memory left by the sack of Rome. Bourbon might well have altered its course through some unexpected personal initiative. In nineteenth-century Rome, the bogeyman Barbone was still capable of frightening children.36 It was raining. The Spaniards redoubled their efforts and finally scaled the wall at the corner of the Porta Torrione, while the lansquenets did the same at S. Spirito. The fog continued to impede the view of the cannoneers. Heavy combat was taking place in the Borgo. The Swiss Guard held fast near the obelisk, whose knob still bears gunshot traces.37 The stone inscription on the via dei Penitenzieri evokes the memory of the goldsmith Bernardino Passeri, who fell after snatching a banner from the assailants.38 They were now at the gates of St. Peter's. The pope continued to pray in his chapel, "unable," wrote Cellini, "to believe that they would enter." The pope fled in haste. He had no sooner left with fourteen cardinals than the I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

31

imperials entered the Vatican. It is easy to imagine how close he came to being captured or even killed. What happened was that Clement was able to steal into the long corridor on top of the fortified wall. Paolo Giovio relates how he covered the pontiff with his own purple bishop's cloak to prevent Clement from being recognized in his white garments.39 Cardinals, ambassadors, the Curia personnel, all poured into Castel Sant'Angelo. When the portcullis was lowered, there were nearly three thousand people inside the fortress. On the upper platform stood the two sculptors in charge of artillery: "We were there," wrote Raffaello da Montelupo in his memoirs, "watching everything as though at a festival."40 The fog finally lifted and the cannons could have been fired, but the Borgo had already been captured. Under artillery fire, the troops would not have held out, but they had already veered off toward Trastevere, which was easily occupied during the course of the day. The imperials then shifted their efforts to the Ponte S. Sisto which, one is stupified to discover, was neither destroyed in advance nor protected.41 A group of cavalry tried in vain to stop the advance. There was no longer any way of holding off the invader; panic had set in. There was not a single incident of street fighting. The lines were drawn in the following manner: the Spaniards held Piazza Navona, the lansquenets held the Campo de' Fiori, Ferrante Gonzaga's Italian detachment stood before Castel Sant'Angelo.42 The signal for looting had already been given. From the heights of the papal fortress, Cellini looked out: "Night had fallen, the enemy was within Rome. We at the castle, and above all I who have always enjoyed new things, watched this unbelievable spectacle."43 And so, that bewildering day ended with Castel Sant'Angelo facing a city abandoned to the most unbridled violence. The imperial army thus repeated thirty-three years afterward the "descent" of the French in 1494. However, the arrival of Charles VIII and his formidable army had amounted to a mere parade. When they appeared in the city, Alexander VI dashed off to Castel Sant'Angelo and escaped with a fright.44 The French target was Naples, not Rome. This time the army of that remote emperor, who was not in command and often lapsed into strange silences, fell upon the city under circumstances that were almost too favorable, which makes it hard to determine motivations involved or parties responsible. This conquest may have been desired by many political figures, but none believed in its likelihood. The aura, the religious prestige, of the city seemed to everyone but Lutherans to protect it from destruction. Everyone was carried away far beyond normal 32

I . MISERA CAPUT

MUNDI

i

8 Present-day view of a portion of the ramparts, Castel Sant'Angelo

expectations. The city did not have to endure a siege, but it did fall prey to sustained, atrocious pillage that was thorough yet disorganized, given the absence of a powerful commander.45 Philibert de Chalon, Prince of Orange, succeeded Bourbon as commander, but his authority was constantly thwarted.46 Because at first the individual contingents operated in different ways, they often found, in their rivalry, that they were looting a previously plundered victim. We shall return later to particular aspects of these aggressions. I. MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

33

Ransom, taglie, became so systematic a practice that it resulted in a unique transfer of gold and wealth. An attack on Castel Sant'Angelo was inconceivable. Philibert had trenches dug north of the fortress to forestall the eventual arrival of the League's troops. Within the walls there were too many refugees, but there was no lack of food or weapons. Morale, however, was low. Discussions between the princes of the Church continued, as did negotiations. The emperor, somewhat belatedly impressed by the news, saw the hand of God in that unexpected victory.47 What political action to follow it with was not clear. Charles's prolonged hesitation proved fatal to the city. The absurd situation of a pope encircled in that fortified mass of stone, familiar to the entire Christian world, by enemy troops dragged on indecisively. The Lutheran lansquenets agitated for his deposition.48 Of all the possibilities open to the emperor, the simplest was to call a Council, as advised by Mercurio Gattinara: "tamquam in pseudopontificem, scandolosum, incorrigibilem ac universum christianae religionis perturbantem" ("against that scandalous, incorrigible false pontiff who is disturbing the entire Christian religion"). This amounted to deposing the pope.49 No one dared. Charles was not of the same temper as Bourbon or the troops. And what was more, it was not easy to declare that the pope, vanquished and humbled, was disturbing the order of Christendom. The first result of the news was a revolution in Florence, incited by a violent revival of anti-Medici feeling. Just when Rome—daunted, deserted, almost drained—would be proving for years to come the triumph of imperial might and the ineptitude of Italian military resistance, Florence, through a stunning and truly desperate uprising—which was not too difficult—repulsed Medici authority while preparing—this was truly bold—to defy imperial authority.50 This new situation could only force Clement, himself a Medici, to seek sooner or later the support of the emperor, who was defying him in Rome. If Florence was rediscovering the climate of republicanism, which netted her Michelangelo's enthusiastic support, Rome besieged by one disaster after another, watched her people, her patrimony, and her prestige fall into ruin. Consultations were held to find a way out of this difficult and awkward situation. On June 5 an agreement was reached between Clement and the leaders of the imperial army. The pope and thirteen cardinals would remain in the castle, where an imperial garrison was to be stationed, until all the fortresses of the papal states had surrendered and reparations had been paid. 34

I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

All through the summer the troops ran amok while they themselves were bedeviled by famine and pestilence. Pompeo Colonna returned to Rome, saw that "cadaver of a city," and tearfully came to a reconciliation with Clement.51 On November 28, the hostages, guarded by Spanish troops, escaped under rather amusing conditions : they climbed through the chimney, wore disguises, and so on. Cardinal Giovanni del Monte, the future Julius III, was among them.52 Finally, at the beginning of December, Clement managed to escape to Orvieto, and once within that fortified papal city, he recovered some semblance of authority. It was not until February 1528 that the army finally evacuated Rome. The imperials, laden with gold and loot, descended on Naples. Aside from endemic malaria, a type of plague53 raged in Rome, which was slowly reoccupied by its inhabitants after a year of chaos and ransacking. Clement did not return until October. Despite its resounding echoes throughout the Christian world and its lasting symbolic value, the capture of Rome in no way resolved the military situation. It was so poor for the imperials in 1528 that, for want of anything better, the commanders decided to return to the idea of holding two solid bases, Milan and Naples. An auxiliary army, commanded by Brunswick, intent on consolidating the center of Lombardy, met with serious resistance in Lodi, defended by Gian-Paolo Sforza, and returned to Germany.54 The French were finally on the way. Lautrec's army, accompanied by Italian contingents from the Bande Nere led by Orazio Baglioni, arrived outside of Naples. The impression that the army of the League had come for its moment of revenge seemed all the likelier, since Doria's fleet was blocking the harbor.55 The skillful defense of the Spanish, the crippling epidemic, Doria's sudden defection, and the retreat of the attackers to Aversa definitively turned the tide in favor of the imperials, who now had only Florence to worry about.

The Pageant of August 4 Two opposing types of historical accounts and pamphlets quite naturally emerge from the great wealth of extant documents. On the imperial side we have the Flugblatter, such as the Warhafftige und \urze Berichtung of June 21, which announce Bourbon's death, the pope's punishment, and the lansquenets's cry of "Vivat Luther Papa." The Latin version, Direptio expugnatae urbis romae ab exercitu caroli quinti 152J, was not published until much later, but I. MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

35

it continued to be read well into the seventeenth century.56 This Direptio, which stresses the deserved punishment of the papal city, was published in 1623 along with one of Aretino's racy dialogues between courtesans. This association may seem strange, but it confirms the sensational tone that was bound to creep into later evocations of the horrors of 1527: anecdotes about prostitutes, rapes, and orgies, gleefully purloined by ribald writers like Brantome.57 In this domain no one has surpassed the author of La Lozana andalusa (The Saucy Andalusian), who ends his description of Roman debauchery with a letter in which, "after seeing the destruction of Rome and the great plague that followed, [he] gave thanks to God for allowing [him] to witness the punishment God unleashed, and rightfully, on such a great people."58 In the other camp, the most typical document is perhaps the pamphlet entitled In urbis Romae excidia deploratio (Paris 1528) dedicated to Louise de Savoie, and dated "ex urbis cadavere tertio cal. Decembris," which is a historical indictment of the abominations of the sack. The exercitus caesareus surpassed the worst "greed, insolence, perfidy, lewdness, and cruelty" ever seen in any country at any time. "Relics spat upon, churches burned, nuns raped, matrons debauched, young people enslaved," that is what the Roman people was subjected to.59 This statement of accusation was to be repeated by the French on more than one occasion. Another of these pamphlets, Historia expugnatae et direptae urbis Romae per exercitum Caroli V Imp. by Cesar Grolier, was first published in 1637. Numerous memoirs and narratives appeared subsequently corroborating and supplementing these always informative, if not always reliable, eyewitness accounts.60 The arrival of the news from Rome initially met with what seems to be embarrassed silence in official Spanish circles. But some measure of its psychological impact can be gleaned from two bitter and impassioned texts, dating from the end of 1527 and the beginning of 1528, which set the tone for the inevitable debate over the justifiability of the sack. Charles abstained from comment. His counselors therefore took it upon themselves to speak for him. Alfonso de Valdes, the emperor's own secretary, drafted the Dialogo de las cosas ocurridas en Roma, which justifies the sack of Rome as "providential" intervention. All responsibility falls to the pontiff who, instead of incarnating the evangelical spirit, acted like a reckless head of state. However dreadful the horrors reported, they can hardly suffice to expiate the abominations of that corrupt city: "Every single horror of the sack is a precise, necessary, and providential 36

I . MISERA CAPUT

MUNDI

punishment for each of the iniquities that soiled Rome." This is the interpretation, give or take a subtlety, that the imperial side would continue to hold.61 But Valdes's Dialogo was not immediately publicized, for not everyone agreed with it. The emperor himself was undecided because of the violent protest made by the papal nuncio whom Charles respected highly, and who was none other than Baldassare Castiglione, author of // Cortegiano?2 Castiglione's rebuttal is a biting indictment, with noble indignation. He calls the tendentious explanations of the Dialogo a moral and intellectual affront that puts the finishing touches on the bloody humiliations of the sack. None of the weaknesses, corruptions, or iniquities of modern Rome are denied. To this Castiglione merely replied that the degradation of the Roman See cannot justify such an unparalleled attack or condone such a sacrilege. He elevates the drama to a level on which it ceases to be a political happenstance. He would accept the global denunciation of a debased society, but he places the institution, its symbols, and its tradition above its unworthy servants. He pays homage to Rome's unique position which no Christian nation has the right to abuse, and points out that under no circumstances can Rome, hallowed by the Church and by history, be subjected to unspeakable indignities under the pretext of reform. One can imagine that remonstrances of this gravity, coming from a distinguished gentleman, a caballero, esteemed moreover by Charles, only added to the emperor's embarrassment. He subsequently indicated his eagerness to erase all memory of the sack. Rome's defeat had serious repercussions in England. In somewhat the same tone as Castiglione, Thomas More inserted into his Dialogue concernynge Heresyes, published in 1528, a lengthy passage on the horrors perpetrated by "those uplandish Lutherans."63 The affairs of the land seemed to be dominated by Henry VIII's difficulties in obtaining a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, or put differently, by his passion for Anne Boleyn. This, among other things, led Cardinal Wolsey to favor an alliance against the emperor and to seek the support of the pope. Rome's collapse and Clement's captivity could not have been more inopportune, but at least the circumstances allowed Wolsey to offer his services as vicar-general, and to revive old ambitions that dated from the Conclave of 1523.64 For all these reasons England protested, threatened, and demanded the pope's release, and even ridiculed the imperial army: during a banquet, Wolsey had someone recite Terence's Phormio.65 Wolsey was dispatched to France to sign treaties of alliance against the emI . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

37

9 Nicolas Beatrizet, after Giotto, La Navicella, 1559. Copper engraving

peror; the signing took place in Amiens on August 18. Wolsey arrived in full regalia and was lavishly received. It was then that the great concern of the time was made public in France, in a manner common to the Renaissance—a series of tableaux vivants, which mimed and symbolized the event. This pageant, or "sort of display piece," was held less than three months after the sack. Cardinal Jean de Lorraine met Wolsey at Calais. On July 22 the legate arrived in Boulogne. There is an account left by a contemporary British traveler, Edward Hall: At the gate was made a pageant in the which was a nun called Holy Church and three Spaniards and three Almaynes had her violated and a Cardinal her rescued and set her up of new again. Another pageant was a Cardinal giving a pax to the king of England and the French king in token of peace. I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

|£Caput terduni quo autofc rumor ifle cxortus fidcdicetnamcula petr>rJebeat iftis annis ad multos periculorunr copulps concuti: 8C propc naufragan ? ccclcfiafticfc^ multifariam conturbari.

IC RVMOR SCILICET NAVICVLA PETRIDE*

beatijs tcmponbusad multaspenculorumlyrtesconcu* it: ecclcfiafticiqj multifana conturbari: non elk hodie: nee nudiuftcrcius exortus:fedplunbus iam annis ora morta* lium occupat. dcniqj ncc lfta hora: quicqua crebnus cum pubhcisttum pnuatis hominu couentib?:6C a pucris 8C fey ihoc U iuw VV^VAMJ M -»•«. .• vie plurcs etiam ecdefiac a fundamento dcijci. Scd opcrcprecium cft:autorcm lfhus vancinij indagarc. Vcrum idipfum eft: homics probi fimpliccs tenvdeg lntclligcntia prcditi: multa pomint futu> ra diuma rcudationc pcrcipc:quae hincindc diflcminare folenttvt vd raa*

io Anonymous, Saint Peter's "Navicula" about to Capsize. Woodcut in Joseph Griinpeck, Speculum naturalis, 1508

Another pageant was the Pope lying under and the Emperor sitting in his majesty and a Cardinal pulled down the Emperor and set up the Pope.66

The route followed was thus lined with these tableaux, which were anything but abstruse: three times, a cardinal, identified by everyone, saved the nun called Holy Church, brought France and England together, and overthrew the emperor, who was riding roughshod over the pope. As expected of such a spectacle, the pageant contained a program intended to remind the distinguished visitor of the role he was to play. It is likely, however, that the cardinal was not too observant, for he wrote to the king that his mule was "driven to such malyncoly by the noise of the gunshots," that it was as much as he could do to remain astride it. But he did I . MISERA CAPUT

MUNDI

39

ii Erhard Schon, The

Battle of the Evangelists and the Papists, 1528. Woodcut

get the point that it was all about "the universal peace and the restitucion of the Pope and the Holy See apostolic to their primitive dignity."67 Similar festivities took place at Abbeville. The most outstanding display was left for Amiens where the king himself awaited the cardinal on August 4. There were five "theatres," that is, tableaux vivants, constituting a political analysis and demonstration through symbols. Not a single engraving or a drawing of the event has been found, but there is a contemporary description supplemented by the minutes of the city council, which paid for the spectacle. The first tableau showed a temple whose two walls, France and England, were missing a stone, lapis angularis, in order to be joined together. One could guess who held that stone. In the second pageant, Nebuchadnezzar's idol lay crushed by a miraculous stone that put an end to war. This stone was once again Wolsey. The third tableau was the navicula Petri bouncing on the waves.68 Saint Peter was calling for help. Two figures, one wearing the insignia of France and the other of England, were raising their swords. Behind all this was the representation of a city, curiously indicated as Rome or Jerusalem in the text. There is also an inscription threatening the princes who attack Christ's dwelling—Christiferam domum69—with divine wrath. The fourth tableau represented two allegories: the Holy Church and Peace are reconciled by a red angel—Wolsey. And last, a strange spectacle in which Athena, thanks to Wolsey, leads the world to a saturnia regna^ a golden age. Sydney Anglo, who has pointed out this series of tableaux, quotes Edward Hall's ironic conclusions: "When wise men saw this pageant they smiled 40

I . MISERA CAPUT

MUNDI

and said, 'Well can the French king flatter, for hard it were for one Cardinal to subdue him that has pulled down the master of all Cardinals.5" Like that gentleman, we too sense the artificiality of the spectacle. But it is fascinating to see how the Roman calamity, as a result of the rapid dissemination of pamphlets, was finally translated into symbolic images. There is nothing more familiar than the navicula Petri, that mosaic placed by Giotto in the facade of St. Peter's, referred to by everyone and made familiar by innumerable paintings and drawings (figs. 9, 10). The drama of 1527, promulgated by everything that can be called a written press, was also translated almost immediately into living images, and those images were allegorical figures.

Imago Urbis Were it not for what we believe to be a conscious or unconscious repression of the sack and its perpetrator, Charles de Bourbon, one would be hard put to understand why not a single contemporary engraving or painting of the event has come to light. It would have been easy, for example, to make use of the battle of allegorical animals that Maurice Sceve later described in a lovely though obscure dizain: Le cerf volant aux abois de l'Autruche Hors de son gite eperdu s'envola; Sur le plus haut de l'Europe il se juche, Cuidant trouver surete et repos la, Lieu sacre et saint, lequel il viola Par main a tous profanement notoire .. .70 The flying buck [Charles de Bourbon] summoned by the Ostrich [Charles V] Hastened from his lost lair [Bourbon's confiscated land in France]; He came to roost on the highest point of Europe [Rome] In that sacred and holy place which he violated By means of a hand notoriously profane [the lansquenets] . . .

The engraving by Schon (fig. 11), dated 1528, figuring in a long border the struggle between the papists and the reformers—in the manner of a battle between drawn armies—is very likely an echo of the events in Rome. The theme of a conflict, expressed by the I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

41

12 Anonymous Flemish, view of Rome with scenes of the sack of 1527. Panel 64.5 x 29 cm. Coll. Destombes, Paris

struggle of two opposing principles, dominated the vast development of popular engraving during the Reformation. In Schon's engraving the subject is military; lansquenets can be seen/ 1 the focus is on the battle. Nothing, however, indicates that it is Bourbon's army. In a print by the same artist, also dating from 1528, which will be discussed in a later chapter, a mercenary is about to strike a pope. But there is no way of identifying either of them. To our knowledge, there is no contemporary representation of the sack of Rome, nor was there any until long after.72 A privately owned panel has been brought to our attention, bearing the factitious signature of Breughel, which shows a panorama of Rome in which references to Borbo and caput mundi identify the scene (fig. 12). The view is from the east. The topography of the city is 42

I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

13 Fra Jacopo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo, view of Rome, 1490. Woodcut

loo

I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

43

specified by means of small inscriptions—often as not, erroneous. Tiny scenes of violence and military installations have been inserted to evoke the sack of 1527.73 In any event, this is only a minor reworking of models that appeared at the end of the fifteenth century, the most famous of which was the supplementum chronicarum orbis by Jacopo Foresti di Bergamo (fig. 13).74 In these views of Rome—which were not superseded until 1550 partly because of the events of 1527—one can clearly distinguish on the right the quarter of the Borgo nuovo with the massive fortifications of Castel Sant'Angelo, the pyramid known as Romulus's tomb, the square and staircase of St. Peter's, and the Belvedere. In the central area, the most densely populated, loci christiani are mixed in with pagan monuments which comprise the traditional landmarks of the imago urbis. These old "views" bear no trace of the changes accomplished under the Borgia pope: the crenelation of Castel Sant'Angelo and the long corridor built along the wall leading to the Vatican (1492-94); the great tower, the Torrione, erected in front of the castle to guard the bridge (1445). The angel commemorating the vision of Gregory the Great that surmounted the fortress had been struck by lightning in 1497 and was not yet replaced. Around 1505-6 Julius II had added the Loggetta, which runs along the apartments constructed on the upper floors. The meta Romuli had been destroyed in 1499, and a characteristic addition to the urban landscape, as of 1507, had been Bramante's enormous pillars constructed on the emplacement of the choir of the first St. Peter's. These various changes evidently could not appear on the map of 1490 or the panoramas based on it.75 The same holds true for the small panel mentioned above. A view of Rome during the five or ten years following the sack would be invaluable for locating the damage mentioned in the Flugblatter, and in particular the fires. But instead, it is as though there had been a refusal in Italy to portray the event, a kind of instinctive censorship. When it became necessary to commemorate the great achievements of the empire—the coronation of 1530 in Bologna, the arrival of the emperor in Rome in 1536, the peaceable agreements concluded through the diplomacy of Paul III—there was no question of depicting the conquest and pillage of the Eternal City, but merely of celebrating the meeting between the pope and the emperor.76 This was not the case in imperial lands. Around 1530, battle scenes inspired by Greek and Roman history were very fashionable. Since the troops depicted by Burgkmair and Feselein wear modern 44

I . MISERA CAPUT

MUNDI

uniforms and carry modern weapons, one might see in those works an indirect allusion to the Italian campaigns.77 Explicit references, however, did not come until later. One of Charles V's painter-historiographers, Jan Cornelius Vermeyen, designed the Tunis cycle, which quickly became famous when made into tapestries.78 A group of pictures that may have been cartoons for tapestries were catalogued at the end of the last century, but it has been impossible to trace them.79 The group apparently included Pavia, "captio Regis Fra.," 1525; the sack, "Roma capta," 1527; La Goulette,6 "Taunetum expugnatum," 1535. One can just imagine how these cartoons must have looked, filled with military details against a topographic background. The repertory of imperial battles was considerably enriched around 1540, but the great Battle by Schiavone, and the facade painted by Girolamo da Carpi, were still focused on Tunis.80 Somewhat belatedly, at the time of the emperor's melancholic decline, there was finally a great series of engravings, published by Jerome Cock, based on drawings by Heemskerck. They appeared in 1555 under the general title of Divi Caroli V Imp. opt. max. victoriae.81 Twelve plates illustrate the victories of the emperor over France, the German princes, and the Turks, and his subsequent mastery over all the continents. The most astonishing plate shows the emperor as master of kings. Two plates are devoted to the events of 1527: the death of Bourbon, which suggests a military victory, and the siege of Castel Sant'Angelo, which suggests a political victory following the capture and surrender of Clement. These plates show us how thirty years later, at a time when imperial domination had become unshakable, the rather embarrassing episode of 1527 was finally portrayed. This is a fine piece of work, done by someone who knew Rome well. Heemskerck lived and worked there from 1532 to 1535, perhaps even until 1536.82 The first engraving bears the title Borbone occiso, Romana in moenia miles Caesareus ruit, et miserandam diripit urbem? which refers to both the attack by the hero and his death (fig. 14). However, the sheet has to be inverted in order for the view to be accurate. The distant view should, in fact, show St. Peter's on the left, where the tympanum of the new basilica is clearly indicated, and on the right, the turn in the Tiber and Castel Sant'Angelo. Against a realistic background there is a symbolic figuration: the hero is dressed in the style of an ancient dux; he died during the attack on b

Port on the canal that leads from Tunis to the sea. T.N. Bourbon having been killed, the imperial army stormed the ramparts and sacked the poor city. G

I. MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

45

14 Jerome Cock, after Martin van Heemskerck, The Death of Bourbon. Copper engraving in Divi Caroli V Imp. opt max victoriae, 1555

15 Jerome Cock, after Martin van Heemskerck, Lansquenets in Front of Cast el Sant'Angelo. Copper engraving in Divi Caroli . . . 1555

the Porta Torrione, clearly suggested by the enormous fortified tower prominently placed in the picture. Imperial propaganda remained faithful to Bourbon's memory. Of the other engraving (fig. 15), with the legend capta urbe, Adriani praecelsa in mole tenetur obsessus Clemens, multo tandem aere redemptus? there is a drawing in Hamburg (fig. 16). In this ^ When the city was occupied, Clement was besieged in Hadrian's great fortress and was finally freed on payment of heavy ransom. I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

case, the drawing is inverted and the engraving is correct.83 One sees on the side of the statue of Saint Peter, at the left, the Vatican basilica with its bell tower, the Loggias, and even the battlements of the Belvedere; in front, the enormous fortress, and the massive tower of Alexander VI blocking the bridge. The wall is studded with Clement VII's escutcheon: the Medici balls. The pope is seen at the Loggia. One is reminded of the Spanish song . . . "Sad was the Holy Father/ . . . In Sant'Angelo his castle." Troops are guarding the entrance on the city side, cannons and crossbows are aimed at the fortress, and two huge lansquenets with their heavy swords standing on the right evoke the mighty Frundsberg and his mercenaries. There is one detail, however, that arrests the attention: Heemskerck's admirable use of the two immense statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. In fact, as can easily be ascertained from views of Rome of 1490, at the eastern end of the Ponte Sant'Angelo there were two small chapels, built after one of those accidents that sometimes bereave pilgrims: the bridge collapsed in 1450. Ferrante Gonzaga's troops holding that sector in 1527 used the two chapels as cover. On the pope's return to Rome, they were I. MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

47

16 Martin van Heemskerck, Lansquenets in Front of Cast el Sant'Angelo. Drawing, Kunsthalle, Hamburg

17 C. Boel, after Antonio Tempesta, Bourbon Sends His Troops to Attac\ Rome. Copper engraving

destroyed and replaced by the two statues (the spirit in which they were constructed will be discussed further on). 84 When Heemskerck came to Rome in 1532 he saw them in place. He made use of them to introduce a symbolic dimension into a scene that ran the risk of being awkward and painful. While a herald approaches bearing a message for Clement, Saint Peter, wrathfully clutching his huge keys, turns his head toward the enormous lansquenet standard-bearer who seems indeed to be hailing him insolently. The incredible situation of June 1527 was thus summarized in these two silent dialogues: that of the herald with the pope, and the one between the lansquenet and Saint Peter. The pope looks invulnerable, Peter is incensed. The proper order of things emerges through this drama.85

48

I . MISERA CAPUT MUNDI

II. ROME-BABYLON guides of Rome that began to proliferate toward the end of the fifteenth century included for the benefit of pilgrims a list of the "stations" or sanctuaries that provided indulgences when visited, as well as the hallowed sites of Christian history where relics commemorated heroes of the faith. Also mentioned are secular mirabilia such as the horseman of the Lateran, the statues of the horse tamers at the Quirinale, and Caesar's obelisk in the Vatican.1 On a woodcut incunabulum produced for the Jubilee Year of 1475—during the reign of Pope Sixtus IV—the pope's crest appears on the last page along with the stemma of Rome, both of them surmounted by the miraculous cloth known as the Veronica (fig. 18a, b). 2 Held by angels, this relic—harking back to the legend of the road to Calvary, but not specifically mentioned in Rome before the twelfth century—had become one of the purposes of the visit to Roman sites. It furnished pilgrims with the confirmation of the indulgences they had earned from their meritorious journey. The solemn viewing of this relic thus symbolized the accomplishment of the pilgrimage. This cloth, widely known throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a great source of indulgences, had become the emblem of Roma Christiana. In the incunabulum referred to, the image of the Veronica is followed by an evocation of the origins of Rome: Romulus's mother is seen praying, and the twins are suckled by the she-wolf (fig. 19). A little farther on, in an ornamental letter, we see St. Sylvester, the pope who baptized Constantine, the first Christian emperor. In this way the history of the world was condensed into a few striking images. The Augustinian monk Luther may have used a guidebook of this kind during his visit in 15 n, 3 and so may Erasmus during his stay in 1506, from which he brought back The Praise of Folly and which he recalled in Ciceronianus.4 These two themes of religion and politics summarized the double prestige of Rome. In the polemics of the sixteenth century, they were denounced with increasing vehemence as the superstition of relics and the illegitimacy of the temporal power of the popes. THE PRINTED

II.

ROME — BABYLON

49

18a Anonymous, The Exhibition of the Veronica to Pilgrims. Woodcut in Mirabilia Romae, ca. 1475; facsimile ed., Weimar, 1904

18b Anonymous, The Eschutcheons of Rome and Sextus IV, and the Veronica. Woodcut in Mirabilia Romae

The Hall of Constantine

19 Anonymous, History of Romulus and Remus. Woodcut in Mirabilia Romae

Toward the end of 1523 or the beginning of 1524, one of Clement VIFs first official acts was to order the completion of the Hall of Constantine, then called the Hall of the Pontiffs because of the eight heads of popes that were to frame the storie (fig. 20). This was the last and grandest of the four Stanze begun under Julius II : the Segnatura in 1508; Eliodoro, begun in 1512 and continued under Leo X; Vlncendio in 1514; and finally Costantino beginning in 1517.5 This series of decorations concluded with the room adjoining the Hall of Constantine, with which it shared a similar history.6 As has long been noted, each of these decorations contains topical allusions in the portraits of the popes (figs. 21-23). Contemporary history is vivified at the same time that the permanence of the institution is stressed.7 There is little more famous or, in a way, more familiar than these Stanze, yet it is worth examining the intricacies of a "doctrine" that regained all of its immediacy during Clement's papacy. The Hall of Heliodorus serves both as an illustration of the unique protection enjoyed by the Church of Rome, and as an authentic chronicle of the challenges to which it was subjected in 1511 and 1512: the pressure of Louis XII's troops in central Italy, and the Council of Pisa called by the king of France for the end of 1511.8 The decoration of the hall, as has been rightly pointed out, expresses the confidence of the Holy See, which had responded to these threats with the anti-French Holy Alliance (1511) and the convocation of the Lateran Council in July 1511. The scenes on the ceiling evoke God's protection of the chosen people.9 The storie begin with two episodes admirably chosen for the power of their message, and wonderfully eloquent. Heliodorus Driven from the Temple demonstrates the ingenious device of deeply recessed "dramatic" perspective used to present the High Priest Onias praying in the background, Julius II enthroned on the left, and on the right, the sacrilegious Heliodorus trampled by angels and the heavenly horseman (fig. 24). The sacred treasures of the Temple cannot be pillaged by unbelievers. The allusion to the foreign threat to Rome's inheritance was surely transparent, but most important here is the exalted defense of the papal politics then in force. The same idea is probably to be understood in the Mass of Bolsena, whose setting of "Roman" architecture encompasses the miracle that led to the feast of Corpus Christi. By bringing the person of the pope to the altar where the miracle is taking place, the mural

5°

II.

ROME — BABYLON

20 Giulio Romano, Sala di Costantino, facing the Adlocutio. Vatican

proclaims the unique position of Peter's successor in matters of faith. And by giving him Julius's features, the painting precludes any discussion of this pope's authority. The inefficacy of the schismatic Council assembled in Pisa is thereby indirectly but clearly proclaimed. These two storie, which elucidate the "program" of the second Stanza, seem indeed to have been the first completed. The portrait of Julius that is pointedly introduced into each of the storie imbues them with the quality of a manifesto, all the more indisputable in that the pope in the picture is the Pontifex barbatus who stood up to the crisis (fig. 25).10 Julius does not appear in the other two storie. They were completed under Leo X, which explains his presence in the Expulsion of Attila: the pope, mounted on the traditional white horse, advances between Saints Peter and Paul (fig. 26), who terrify the I I . ROME — BABYLON

51

21 Giulio Romano, Leo X. Sala di Costantino, Vatican

22 Giulio Romano, Leo I (Clement VII as a young man?). Sala di Costantino, Vatican

barbarian invader. There was never any doubt about the transparent allusion to the rout of French troops after the battle of Ravenna, in which Leo took part.11 The idea for this scene, like the program of the entire Stanza, dates from Julius's pontificate, but he died in February 1513 and the composition underwent major changes.12 The same may not be true of The Liberation of Saint Peter (fig. 27). The admirable chiaroscuro of the scene denotes a concern with "luminism" and an assimilation of the techniques of Venetian painting that marks a new period for Raphael. The angel's rescue of the apostle bears no reference to any personal event in the lives of Julius 52

II.

ROME — BABYLON

23 Giulio Romano, Urban I (Clement VII in old age?). Sala di Costantino, Vatican

or Leo, but it does illustrate the theme of the Stanza: supernatural protection. There is agreement on the subject among all critics. The fresco must nonetheless be understood as a homage to the achievements of the titular of San Pietro in Vincoli, the site of his unfinished tomb.a This scene was to have great importance for the reign of Clement VII and its symbols.13 The so-called "doctrine" of the Stanze had been formulated under a Julius II envisioned the grandest tomb ever constructed, but Michelangelo encountered so many difficulties with the commission that it was never completed. Julius was buried in St. Peter's and lies there with no memorial at all. T.N.

II.

ROME — BABYLON

53

24 Raphael, Heliodorus Driven from the Temple, detail. Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican

25 Raphael, The Mass at Bolsena, detail. Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican 54

I I . ROME — BABYLON

Leo in the Sala dell'Incendio. The very existence of the Church is portrayed as a continuing miracle, but with precise consequences within the political order. The new Stanza reaffirms the preeminence of the papacy over the princes, but with less ingenuity than the Stanza d'Eliodoro. Here, everything centers around an evocation of the deeds of Leo III (the oath of justification, the coronation of Charlemagne) and Leo IV (the victory at Ostia, the miracle of the fire in the Borgo), with the implication that the prestige of those eighth- and ninth-century popes was transmitted to their homonymous successor. Leo's portrait is repeated in each case, but it was seen fit to explicate this point on the zoccolo (the plinth) where six sovereigns appear—in imitation gilded bronze below six historical episodes—whom Vasari calls "benefactors of the Church": Countess Mathilda, Pepin, Charlemagne, Ferdinand of Castille, and Godefroy de Bouillon. The sixth is Lothair, identified by the inscription: Lotharius imp. Pontificae libertatis assertor. These same concerns were just as pertinent at the time of Clement VII, if not more so, since the problems of Clement's papacy seemed a repetition of the those involved in the crisis of 1510-14, with a few clifferII. ROME — BABYLON

55

26 (at left) Raphael and Giulio Romano, The Meeting of Saint Leo and Attila, detail. Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican 27 (above) Raphael, The Liberation of Saint Peter, detail. Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican

ences: the threat of external domination now came from the imperial army, the exercitus caesareus, rather than the French army, and divine protection no longer manifested itself in miracles. If the political problems of the time were readily understandable in the Stanze, then the Hall of Constantine raises a particular problem. The chronology and execution of the decorations have been the subject of much animated discussion.14 The idea for this fourth room dates from the papacy of Leo X (who died on December i, 1521) and owes its overall plan to Raphael (who died in April 1520). Giulio Romano took over the work during the summer of 1520.15 The question is whether those heavy thrones and overpowering Virtues had already been planned for this room. Whatever the case, their execution bears the stamp of Giulio's powerful style and, if one may call it that, his brute force, which is quite well suited to the theme of papal "monarchy." Work came to a halt precisely between the death of Leo X and the accession of Clement VII in November 1523, in other words, during the reign of the Netherlander Adrian VI, who had been the tutor of Charles V when the young prince came to Louvain to study. Adrian was an austere, reforming pontiff who did not conceal his antipathy, or for that matter his aversion, to those Vatican decorations. Work on the fourth Stanza was stopped and confusion reigned in Raphael's studio. This unpleasant interlude lasted only twenty months. Between the close of 1523 and the autumn of 1524, when Giulio left for Mantua, the decoration was finally completed. The emblems, appropriately distributed among the murals, indicate for the most part under which pontiff each one was painted. The complete array of Leo X's emblems, which can be seen in the Stanza dell'Incendio, with the mottos semper, suave, and glovis? can be seen again in the Hall of Constantine in the upper bands of two of the false tapestries—the Apparition of the Cross and the Battle. On the others is an emblem associated with Clement VII— a crystal ball struck by the sun's rays, bearing the motto candor illaesus ("unblemished whiteness"), an admirable subtlety. It is combined with three feathers above the Baptism and stands alone above the Donation.1* This important reference has its counterpart in the motif of the caryatids placed above the six pontiffs enthroned in the niches. On three of the walls these figures bear Leo X's motto jugum suave. On the fourth, the entrance wall where one sees the h

Glovis—a backward reading of sivolg, or volgersi, to turn oneself, reflecting the Medici obession with rebirth and renewal. T.N. 56

I I . ROME — BABYLON

Donation, the figures have become Apollo and Diana with the crystal ball and a little enactment of candor illaesus, repeated in the embrasure of the east window. In view of these references, it seems reasonable to conclude that the wall of the Donation dates entirely from the period when work was resumed under Clement, after the Baptism was completed, which would have been during the same period. Between the eight pontiffs framed by Virtues, four scenes portray, with almost aggresive forcefulness, rarely depicted historical episodes. To begin with, Constantine's act and triumph: The Allocution to the Soldiers and the Vision of the Cross, and The Battle of Ponte Milvio (fig. 28). The other two storie depict the role of Pope Sylvester I in relation to the emperor: The Baptism of Constantine (fig. 29) and Constantine's Donation of Rome to St. Sylvester. Everything in them is Roman: in the first two, the landscapes, and in the second, the buildings—the Lateran and St. Peter's. When the elements in this graphic brief are assembled, they reveal—after the lengthy defense of the divine nature of the institution and the primacy of the spiritual over the temporal—the most authoritarian assertion ever made of the legitimacy of pontifical claims: (a) with regard to the emperor, here represented by Constantine; and (b) to the City of Rome and the State of Saint Peter. These two specific points, though perhaps inadequately stressed until now, were the hotly disputed questions of the time. The admonition contained within that hall is what was so vehemently negated in 1527.17 To make this demonstration and reminder of basic principles even more topical, portraits of the two Medici popes were placed in this hall, which served as the antechamber of the papal apartments. The figures under the canopy were certainly part of the original program and were intended to summarize the line of popes from Saint Peter to Saint Sylvester, the pope who baptized Constantine.18 Leo X is indisputably identified, thanks to a famous chalk drawing by Giulio Romano.19 As to Clement, he appears rather unusually in two versions: beardless, as he was before the sack, and bearded, as he was portrayed by Sebastiano del Piombo around 1532.

Archaeology plays a sizable role in these historical reconstructions.20 It reveals a general effect of fragmentation and terribilita that is far removed from the manner of Raphael, even in the somber and dramatic Transfiguration. Ancient motifs, taken from reliefs on triumphal arches and Trajan's column, appear in the views of Rome: in the Allocution, the bridge over the Tiber with the statues II. ROME — BABYLON

57

28 Giulio Romano, The Battle of Ponte Milvio. Sala di Costantino, Vatican

silhouetted, the reconstructed mausoleum, the pyramid of Romulus's tomb; on the right side of the Battle, the meandering line of Monte Mario to the left of Ponte Milvio. If the dwarf donning his cap in the right-hand corner of the Allocution—identified as Ippolito de' Medici's jester—establishes a relationship with the viewer, there is nothing of this kind in the Battle which, on the contrary, keeps the viewer at a distance. The two interior scenes—the Baptism set in the Lateran and the Donation (fig. 30) in the first St. Peter's— II.

ROME — BABYLON

bring the viewer into contact by means of a number of admonitores in modern dress (fig. 31) to make sure that the currency of the scene is understood.21 It is curious though not abnormal that these familiar architectural structures should have been slightly simplified in order to provide these two ceremonies with a strong framework of columns.22 The victor of Ponte Milvio appears twice in a reverential pose, once before the pontiff, who baptizes him, and again before the bishop of I I . ROME — BABYLON

59

29 Giulio Romano, The Baptism of Constantine. Sala di Costantino, Vatican

Rome, who accepts his donation, with the manifest approval of the Roman people. What is interesting here is not only the reaffirmation of papal doctrine but also the monumental style of the presentation, with its studied selection of allegorical figures grouped in pairs on either side of the niches. This is one of the very first appearances of those personifications that would become indispensible to classical art: rhetorical formulas translated into images intended to enhance the supreme dignity of the institution, which exceeds by far that of its titulars. Yet at the same time, this staggering display of virtues transforms them into heroes. The panels of the dado are done in medallions, in keeping with the device used by Raphael in the Segnatura under the Parnassus. 60

II.

ROME — BABYLON

The illustrations are not particularly explicit, except for two quadri in the embrasures which were engraved by Bartoli (n.d.) and Montagnani (1834). They have been seen by some as an evocation of Saint Gregory writing his homilies and other edifying works, and by others as the violent movement of a sculptor smashing pagan idols. If these two scenes relate to the theme of the public and official establishment of Christianity, then the choice of Saint Gregory is somewhat surprising, in view of his having lived three centuries after the historical theme of the Stanza; one can thus understand that these panels were attributed to the period of Gregory XIII, which in fact would be more suitable.23 The Roman Church could not have been honored more insistently or more solemnly. But this insistence implies a polemical intent, a calculated refutation of the antipapist themes that alternately raised the empire or the Council above the pope.24 Is there a very specific allusion to contemporary history in the Hall of Constantine? The question arises when one learns that Leo's project did not originally include the two scenes of the Baptism and the Donation. When Raphael died in April 1520, "Sebastiano pictore in Roma," the future Sebastiano del Piombo, made every effort to obtain the commission for the Stanza, which Raphael's pupils were claiming, but which fell instead to Giulio Romano. Needing Michelangelo's support, Sebastiano urged him to intercede in his behalf and apparently presented the situation in a more favorable light than was actually the case. Sebastiano was subsequently invited to present his program for the future Stanza on September 6 and 7, based on what the pope himself had specified: the apparition of the Cross, a battle, then "a presentation of prisoners" to the emperor, and on the other wall, "preparations for the fire intended to heat the blood of little children."25 This choice was not particularly felicitous. The last scene was taken from the account of St. Sylvester's Day, December 31, in The Golden Legend,0 which tells how the emperor, stricken with leprosy, had to be cured by a bath of blood, which he then refused out of pity for the victims. This act of self-sacrifice earned him his vision of Saints Peter and Paul, his meeting with Saint Sylvester, and his baptism. The other two scenes were surely supposed to emphasize the power and grandeur of the empire. The c Translated into English by William Caxton, a fifteenth-century English printer, from a contemporary French version of the thirteenth-century Lives of the Saints, in Latin, by Jacob of Voragine. T.N.

II.

ROME — BABYLON

6l

30 Giulio Romano, Constan tines Donation of Rome. Sala di Costantino, Vatican

subject matter was quite different when the program was finally reworked under Clement VII. The Baptism, which is an improvement over the Blood Bath, must have been painted during the campaign of 1520-21, since the inscription on the right reads Clemens VII Pont. max. a Leone X coeptum consumavit MDXXIIII, and the emblems of both appear. Under the Donation nothing of the kind: the theme only emerges at the very last in the proud inscription Ecclesiae dos a Constantino tributa, on the right-hand column. The program may therefore have been altered in extremis. The two principal scenes have at times been deemed so inappropriate that they were con62

I I . ROME — BABYLON

31 Giulio Romano, Constantine's Donation of Rome, detail of fig. 30

sidered an astonishing proof of political unrealism.26 My own conclusion is that this was, on the contrary, quite deliberate. We know today that Constantine's baptism by Sylvester is a legend which first appeared in the fifth century, just as the donation of Rome was not mentioned before the period of Stephen II in the eighth century. Lorenzo Valla and later Erasmus examined the texts and pointed out the mistake.27 However, Valla's radical critique of the Donation, written around 1440 in the pamphlet De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, was not published during the fifteenth century. Its arguments were nonetheless well known and the appearance in 1478 and 1480 of legendary accounts of Sylvester's II.

ROME — BABYLON

32 Adventus pontificalis. Stucco relief, north wall, Sala di Costantino, Vatican

life indicate an instinctive rebuttal of this new derogation by Roman circles. If Valla's pamphlet corresponds to a critical attitude toward temporal power, it was in no way a declaration of war by the author against .the papacy itself,28 nor was it any more so when it was published in 1506. It suddenly became belligerent in the hands of U. von Hutten, who published it in 1518 and 1519. When the 1506 text was reprinted in 1520, it carried a straightforward denunciation of political authority that was intended to complement Luther's denunciation of religious authority. In the anti-Roman agitation of the third decade, a Czech author found the ultimate substantiation of this dual attack on papal power by going so far as to deny that Saint Peter had ever come to Rome. This was too much; not even Lutherans received the work with favor.29 Hutten's attack now made it impossible to be satisfied with Constantine's act. The earlier program had to be updated on that point, and in 1523 the great polemic was launched.30 The reply did not come by way of speeches, at least not yet, but by way of frescoes. In the eyes of the Vatican, the presumed relationship between Constantine and Sylvester was the symbolic illustration of a divine and incontrovertible institution that confirms the gift of Rome to the pope, and the supremacy of Rome's vicar over the emperor. As proved by inscriptions and numerous details, much ingenuity went into stating these two points unambiguously.31 For, as will be remembered, this hall, placed at the entrance to the papal apartments, was destined to hold official meetings with the Sacred College of Cardinals and the diplomatic corps. 64

II.

ROME — BABYLON

33 Anonymous, Adventus pontificalis. Church of the Quattro Santi Coronati, Rome

Let us consider, for example, the curious insertion of two stucco reliefs on the north wall. One of them represents the adventus pontificalis (fig. 32), the solemn entrance of the pope into Rome on a white horse: equo imperiale cappa purpurea et aliis regalibis insignibus ornatus, according to the formula in a twelfth-century text.32 The relief evokes a scene that could only be found in the church of the Quattro Santi Coronati in Rome, and that dates from the quarrel over Investitures (fig. 33).33 The historical reference is II.

ROME — BABYLON

34 Mon\ with Scythe and Rose. Woodcut in A. Osiander and H. Sachs, Wunderliche Weissagung, Nuremberg, 1527

perfectly clear, and everyone in the climate of the 1520s understood the meaning of those representations. A Joachimite^ pamphlet, Vaticinia de summis pontificibus, was then circulating along with other collections of prophecies. This work, reprinted in 1525, interpreted symbolic portraits of popes past and future.34 The pope appears on a white horse, predicting great misfortunes for the Church. But it is most striking that these same themes, these same images, were also an integral part of the relentless denunciations of Roman authority by German reformers, whose movement was now in full swing. The second edition of the Vaticinia had been dedicated to Clement, but another edition, printed by Hans Sachs in Nuremberg in the spring of 1527, was put out by a Lutheran minister, Andreas Osiander. His commentary interprets the symbols as the end of the papacy. There is, for example, a figure with a scythe and a rose (fig. 34). Osiander sees this as designating Luther himself, which Luther warmly approved, at least with regard to the scythe; less so the rose.35 The doctrine of the Vatican was now the target of a new form of polemic. As has often been observed, the anti-Roman position was ^Joachim de Floris, a twelfth-century Cistercian monk, predicted a new spiritual age that would make the hierarchy of the Church unnecessary. Dante placed him in the Paradiso. T.N.

66

II.

ROME — BABYLON

expressed through images: caricatures and satirical figures converted the masses to Lutheran ideas. This was the first fruit of the new media that made possible the limitless reproduction of texts and images. Printing and engraving, a mere half-century old, rapidly and decisively transformed the thinking of northern Christendom.36 What may not have been adequately noted before is that this entire enterprise restated the primary theses of Roman doctrine, but in reverse: the dogma of the City's providential nature was implacably represented as Rome/Babylon, and the divine institution of papal authority as the Antichrist-Pope. This radical opposition now had new means at its disposal.

The Antichrist-Pope Around 1520, any allusion to the pope of Rome, any representation of his person or position, took a hostile, aggressive, and insolent tone north of the Alps. Papal symbolism and Roman ritual became suspect and sinful. Aldegrever shows Superbia crowned with the papal tiara. The kissing of the foot, an ancient rite made familiar by countless images,37 was denounced by Luther and depicted almost obsessively in prints. In the series "Planetary Children," Georg Pencz made this the focal point of the plate illustrating—under the sign of Jupiter—the principle of earthly power (fig. 35). There was no trace of this in the Florentine plate that had served as his model. In the macabre series on the universality of death, Holbein and Aldegrever chose for the section on the pope, a scene in which the enthroned pontiffs foot is respectfully kissed by a prince (fig. 36) .38 In Cranach's Passional, this theme provides a deliberate contrast with the Washing of Feet in the Gospels (figs. 37a, 37b). The great innovation in the field of illustrated pamphlets was doubtless the Passional Christi und Antichristi, published by Grunenberg toward the middle of 1521. It has been assumed that the work appeared shortly after the Diet of Worms was held. Melanchthon and the jurist Johann Schwertfeger were so determined to turn the publication into an effective weapon that they marshalled biblical quotations against the decretals. A Latin edition appeared: Antithesis figurata Vitae Christi et Antichristi. But the one that really counted was the German edition intended for the vast lay public. The second edition replaced engraving no. 11—Christ and Peter in the forest—with the Crucifixion. Copies with the woodcuts were forwarded to Erfurt and Strasbourg, and widely distributed.39 II. ROME — BABYLON

67

35 Georg Pencz, Children of the Planet Jupiter. Woodcut

In this connection, Cranach's meeting with Luther proved to be very important: he became the portraitist of the reformists. The Passional was the most original and most influential pamphlet ever devised; in Luther's words, "ein besonders fiir Leien gutes Buch" ("a singularly good book for laymen"). With its rudimentary sym68

I I . ROME — BABYLON

36 Hans Holbein, The Pope. Woodcut in

Images of Death, 1526

bolism, it became the perfect popular message, and there was no chance of its being misunderstood. Its success was so resounding that in 1536, Cranach painted the Ascension into Heaven and the Descent into Hell, with which the pamphlet ends, in the great hall of Torgau castle.40 In 1520, in response to his excommunication, Luther published a commentary on the "Bull of the Antichrist," immediately followed by a pamphlet, de Captivitate babilonica Ecclesiae. The conflict between the Augustinian monk and the pope had not yet aroused much interest outside of clerical circles. In the years to follow, it would awaken a widespread popular fervor and incite a revolt of incalculable consequences, helped especially by the Passional Christi und Antichristi. This pamphlet consisted of thirteen facing illustrations of Good and Evil—Christ of the Gospels and the pope—accompanied by a simple commentary in German taken from the Scriptures.41 Lucas Cranach found key images to support the argument that the pope in Rome had subverted evangelical doctrine. I I . ROME — BABYLON

69

37a Lucas Cranach, Kissing of the Pope's Foot. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi, Wittenberg, 1521 37b (at right) Lucas Cranach, Christ Washing Disciples' Feet. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi

The pope wields temporal power, whereas Christ refuses the crown (figs. 38a, 38b); the temple is a thieves' den (fig. 39); and while the Son of God rises to Heaven, the Beast and its false pontiff go to Hell (fig. 40a). We have here a total and almost word for word refutation of the doctrine of the Vatican Stanze. The Antichristpope looks like Leo X, and allusions to the Roman court are precise and well chosen: the image of the tournament at the Belvedere, for example (fig. 40b), associates the pope with military aristocracy, whereas Christ lived among the humble. The correspondence is so precise that one images Cranach and Luther replying—this time on a popular level—to Raphael's demonstration. During the twenty months of Adrian VTs reign, the Passional could hardly have remained unknown in Rome. In view of this, the completion of the Hall of Constantine in 1524, with its affirmation of the legitimacy of temporal power and its triumphant insistence on the virtues of the pontiffs, can and must be considered Rome's doctrinal reply. All the objections raised over centuries against the institution of the papacy were collected, condensed, and circulated in a small portable volume consisting entirely of illustrations. This was only the first step in a campaign that would become amplified into the war of 70

II.

ROME — BABYLON

38a (at left) Lucas Cranach, The Power of the Pope. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi 38b (above) Lucas Cranach, Christ Rejecting the Crown. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi

39 Lucas Cranach, The Temple a Lair of Thieves. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi II.

ROME — BABYLON

71

40a Lucas Cranach, The Pope Descends into Hell. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi 40b (at right) Lucas Cranach, Tournament at the Belvedere. Woodcut in Passional Christi und Antichristi

images. However, the satire was not all: along with the prints generated by this polemic were posters inspired by the Apocalypse. These gave rise to the idea of an imminent world catastrophe, and revealed an obsession with portents and prophetic visions of every kind. The atmosphere became increasingly tense under this barrage of celestial signs and horrifying predictions. Eschatological ideas mounted, swelled, incorporated old themes and, apparently, made an impression on everyone.42 The first stage is easy to establish. In the fall of 1522 the German bible, Luther's September Testament, appeared in Wittenberg.43 Only the Apocalypse is illustrated, and all twenty-one plates, the work of Cranach and his studio, are made topical: in plate 1, horsemen and soldiers bear antipapist allusions; in plate 11, the monster attacking the two witnesses wears the tiara; in plate 16, the Beast on the throne wears the tiara, as does the Great Whore in plate 17 (fig. 41a). These attacks were so explicit that they offended the Duke of Saxony. In December, a new edition eliminated the incongruous triple crown. But the essentials had been stated in another way, though still in images: in plate 14 (fig. 41b), the destruction of Babylon is the subject of an entire plate, contrary to Diirer's 72

II.

ROME — BABYLON

corresponding print in which the razing of the accursed city by celestial fire is only marginal to the scene. Cranach set it apart, and one can see why: the panorama of the condemned city is a direct transposition of Hartmann Schedel's imago Romae of 1493, referred to earlier (fig. 42) ,44 This was how the countermyth of Rome/Babylon came into being. And in this entirely new use of mass media, the primary target was papal Rome, on the one hand the institution, and on the other the city itself, the imago, which stands as its symbol. The articles of the denunciation are simple and are repeated with a vehemence as frightening as it is monotonous: city of corruption inhabited by the devil; city of the false religion ruled by the Antichrist; in short, city of evil associated with the monstrous city of the Apocalypse and, like it, destined to be destroyed by divine action so that the true religion may emerge (fig. 43). There is no longer any question of the usual anticlerical themes in the polemics of such I I . ROME — BABYLON

73

41a {at left) Lucas Cranach, The Whore of Babylon Wearing the Triple Crown. In the September Testament, Wittenberg, 1522 41b {above) Lucas Cranach, The Destruction of Babylon. In the September Testament

42 Anonymous, view of Rome, detail. Woodcut in Hartmann Schedel, Weltchroni\, Nuremberg, 1493

moralist clerics as Petrarch or Erasmus, or in the vicious attacks of such Northern heresiarchs as Wycliflf e. There is now a global denunciation in which traditional censure dissolves into an almost metaphysical loathing, an immediate horror inspired by the image.45 During this phase the intervention of artists was important, if not capital. However, the case of Hans Holbein is quite different from Cranach.46 Holbein was associated with a number of Lutheran publications. For Luther's translation of the Old Testament, published by Thomas Wolff in Basel at the end of 1523, he did a series of woodcuts based on the Wittenberg model (figs. 44a-44c). However, as has been clearly shown, this intervention was purely professional and in no way signifies partisanship. There are two prints, however, that suggest an indisputable involvement in the anti-Roman campaign. In Christ the True Light, which appears in a calendar for the year 1527 printed by Johann Copp in Zurich, the abyss on the right awaits Plato, Aristotle, the scholastics, and the pope, while 74

I I . ROME — BABYLON

43 Lucas Cranach, The Judgment of Babylon. In the September Testament

the true believers move toward Christ. The symmetry of the composition reduces everything to the level of the Protestant polemic. The other print, The Sale of Indulgences, is a virulent caricature showing on the left the Lord's pardon, and on the right the unholy trafficking presided over by the pope. The embossed escutcheons shown in the setting clearly indicate that Clement VII is the pope in question. It has been thought that both these prints might have been made on the occasion of a Disputatio, the first possibly for Farel in March 1524. These would therefore be commissioned works, which would give us an idea of the turn the polemic was taking, but not Holbein's state of mind. The famous colored woodcut of Hercules Germanicus, of which there is only one copy, seems at the very least to be a staunch testimonial to the artist's admiration for Luther. And yet, this may be no more than circumstantial evidence. At most, Holbein could have made the preliminary drawing, for the print has none of the quality of his draftsmanship. FurII. ROME — BABYLON

75

thermore, it was for friends of Erasmus, not of the great Reformer, that the image of the man whom the masses looked upon as a German Hercules—with the pope dangling from his nose—was made as a rather ironic statement.47 The desanctification of Rome could only be achieved by means that might be called a "diabolization," which is a sanctification in reverse. The whole of Christendom had been gravitating around that city, the goal of the many pilgrimages that had spread the imago urbis throughout the Western world. As that monumental cycle in the Vatican ceremoniously reaffirmed, the city was thought by everyone to benefit from a historically privileged position. Far from declining, this notion of Roma aeterna was nourished in papal 76

II.

ROME — BABYLON

circles by all kinds of scholarly speculations.48 According to the works of Egidio da Viterbo, Rome is the Holy City in which human history is fulfilled: Peter's death, Constantine's conversion, the renewal taking place under Julius II and Leo X.49 Like Luther, Egidio was an Augustinian monk. They may well have met during the visit to Rome in 1510-1511 that had so disgusted Luther. He remembered that Egidio had been denouncing the abuses and irregularities of the papal court. True. But Egidio was attacking the wrongdoings of the Roman entourage and complaining about "that Babylon" because he was anticipating a spiritual renewal which would make Rome the new Jerusalem. In the eyes of this theologian, who synthesizes one whole aspect of the theological thinking under II.

ROME — BABYLON

77

44a (far left) Hans Holbein, The Great Whore of Babylon. In the Thomas Wolff Bible, Basel, 1523 44b (center) Hans Holbein, The Judgment of Babylon. In the Thomas Wolff Bible 44c (right) Hans Holbein, The Destruction of Babylon. In the Thomas Wolff Bible

Julius II and Leo X, Christianity brings together the Hebrew and pagan heritages. The Church used the site, the buildings, and even the symbols that it had replaced: Janus, the god of Rome, carries keys like Saint Peter. A vocation of this kind necessarily entails grandeur and monumentality. The institution needed to be reformed, morals had to be purified, but the exercise of the divine cult, like the prestige of Rome, demands some measure of opulence in the liturgy and splendor in the setting. Egidio therefore encouraged Leo X to continue the colossal enterprise of the new St. Peter's. He endorsed the campaigns to sell indulgences for the much-needed funds, without imagining the kind of revolt this would unleash, or rather crystallize, in Germany. Far from diminishing, the reasons for friction and irreconcilability multiplied from year to year. The very forces that urged Roman humanists to glorify the providential nature of Catholicism led those who rejected it to be scandalized by the sumptuous manifestations, the commitment to ceremony, and the inclination to paganism that were on daily display. The antagonism ran so deep that it declared itself in two utterly opposing modes of graphic discourse : on the one side, the tradition of monumental Mediterranean painting at the height of its powers; and on the other, the direct, popular, and quickly produced art of Northern printmaking, which for the first time in history became a major force in cultural and religious life.50 Rome did not make use of the right weapons, the modern media; there could be no hope of victory. In a letter to Albert of Brandenburg in 1525, Luther reveals he is aware of the importance of polemical images. Twenty years later, in his ferocious treatise Wider der Papstum zu Rom vom Teufel bestifft, he wrote his famous line: "I published these pictures and these images, each of which represents an entire volume that still remains to be written against the pope and his kingdom. Oh, how the sow will wallow in her filth!"51

Prognostics and the Antichrist The Reform, which became quickly aware of its national power and historic responsibility, was a composite of aspirations and rebellions whose organization no one could foresee. Three groups rallied around Luther's polemical dynamism: intellectuals—heirs of the humanistic critics of religious institutions; anti-Roman Germanists—concerned about the autonomy and dignity of the German 78

I I . ROME — BABYLON

nation; and popular preachers—interpreters of social discontent. No sooner were these groups united than they began to separate and quarrel as early as 1525. However, among the common views that could reunite them, the one they shared most deeply—along with an aspiration to a purer and more "primitive" condition of Christian life—was a highly dramatic anticipation of catastrophe.52 As Calvin would later say, with discernible contempt for the fantastic and superstitious vision associated with this great eschatological myth, nothing was more widespread or more commonplace— and equally shared by theologians and the populace—than the belief in the coming of the Antichrist: "In papatu nihil magis celebre ac tritum est quam futuri Antichristi adventus."53 In fifteenth-century Germany, the fable of the anti-Messiah was given wide currency by two elements of popular imagery: the theatre and prints. Playing on the anti-Semitism of the masses, well-staged mystery plays conjured up a frightening anti-Christian conspiracy that on occasion brought laughs at the expense of the benighted high clergy, but often ended with the less comical prediction of the coming of Enoch and Elijah. The satire of "Fools" alternated with religious anxiety; the two joined forces in such curious miniatures and woodcuts as "The Ship of Fools" (fig. 45).54 On the eve of the sack, Italy was rife with superstitious calculations and obsessions. Any slightly unusual event was seen as "a sign."55 Politics, collective dreams, symbols, were in constant interaction. In 1496, a bizarre monster was found in Roman waters, immediately named "Papstesel" ("pope's donkey") by enemies of the pope. In 1522, another monster appeared in Saxony, part calf, part monk. Melanchthon and Luther promptly published an exegesis of these extraordinary phenomena, all of which evidently pointed to the imminent end of papism and monkery.56 A. Warburg, F. Saxl, and more recently J. Baltrusaitis have admirably demonstrated that during the Renaissance there was a sudden interest in teratology —the study of monstrosities—and a mania for omens. This concern with portents intensified rather remarkably around 1525. Portenta and omina inspire the fantastic images in Polydorus Virgilio's collection, de Prodigiis, of 1526.57 In an atmosphere of indefinable events and disquieting omens, one can measure the degree of anxiety and general confusion by the magnitude and diversity of the many predictions. The sudden incursion of eschatology is undeniable;58 there was apparently no other way to express universal anguish. If any single feature is symptomatic of the period, it is the mixture of calculation and II. ROME — BABYLON

79

45 Albrecht Durer, Saint Peter's "Navicella" and the Antichrist. Woodcut in Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff, Basel, 1494

resignation brought about by the reigning obsession with astrology.59 Each year, predictions of dire events, catastrophes, or rectifications that would affect the future of Christianity rapidly followed one after the other. No sooner was a prediction outdated than it was replaced by another one with a different political slant. The venerable science of the skies, with its ancient images and Arabic formulas, nourished a fatalistic mentality that was only checked by opportunism and forgetfulness. Certain investigations were potentially dangerous. The polemic over the doctrine of great conjunctions, led by Abu Masar, was a threat to the solidity of the faith because, for both the conjunctionists and the author of the Summa judicialis de accidentibus mundi, great ruptures herald changes of power and religion, determined by astral cycles.60 A fundamental investigation was subsequently undertaken by physical scientists and natural historians within Italy. 80

II.

ROME — BABYLON

The predictions were so numerous, so intertwined, so contradictory, that one can only call it a state of collective madness, in which each individual tried to develop a prophecy that would outdo the others. These prognostics were made known by means of pamphlets and brochures, most often illustrated. And in this area there were as many in Italy as in Germany, each culture rivaling the other in "scientific" activity. In some cases the prediction is so close to the actual sequence of events that one is forced to question the authenticity of the text, that is, whether the date was not falsified. A Prognosticon by an Italian astrologer, Torquato—the first known edition dates from 1534 in Latin, and 1535 in German—was presented as a message to the king of Hungary, Mathias I Corvin, and dated 1480. It forecasts the German schism, the defeat at Pavia, the sack of Rome, which are to pave the way for the purification of the Church and the triumph of the Empire over France and the Turks. One can only surmise that this was a post eventum prediction.61 All of them claimed to have the authority of an ancient text, a forgotten doctrine, an earlier astrologer. This abstruse literature laid claim to the whole history of prophesy associated with mystical movements, and sought support in the authority of a few widely respected figures. The revival of interest in Joachim de Floris is the most striking proof thereof.62 Egidio da Viterbo based his views on Joachim's symbolic perspectives, as did the Reformers on their side. Aby Warburg brought to light some years ago the marvelous story of the conjunction that was to take place in November 1484 between Jupiter and Saturn in Scorpio, which is supposed to signify no less than a change of religion.63 Italian and German sages gave much attention to this question before, and especially after the fateful date on which nothing special happened. An astrologer by the name of Lichtenberger published a pronosticatio in 1488 that investigated the consequences of the conjunction (fig. 46). As though by chance, it was reprinted in 1526 and 1528. In chapter 33 there is talk of the appearance of a false prophet. In Luther's circle all eyes were fixed on the great Reformer's date of birth: October 22, 1484.64 His horoscope was naturally the subject of the day. Someone added a reference to it on a copy of the Pronosticatio. That explained everything. And chapter 35 reads, "The emperor enters Rome and terror reigns; the Romans, laymen, and clerics, flee into the woods, but many are massacred" (fig. 47). There was no end to the predictions of catastrophes: floods, hail of fire, havoc-wreaking disasters that would cause full-scale panic. I I . ROME — BABYLON

46 Mon\ in a White Cowl with the Devil in His Hood. Woodcut in Johannes Lichtenberger, Prognostic catio, Mainz, 1492. Copy with handwritten inscription, Staats- und Universitatsbibliotek, Hamburg

47 The Emperor Enters Rome. From Johannes Lichtenberger, Prognostication edition from Wittenberg, 1526

Fifty-six authors and one hundred thirty-three pamphlets devoted to forecasts and astrological calculations have been counted for the decade 1520-1530. Two obsessions that recur constantly are the end of the world and the destruction of Rome and the papacy. In }. Carion's Pronosticatio of 1521 an explicit drawing shows the emperor (the Sun), the peasantry (Saturn), the pope (Jupiter), and the knight (Mars) in such an alarming position that Warburg commented : "Without the text one might think that the sack of Rome was already being depicted" (fig. 48).65 In the series "The Four Temperaments" (1528), freely patterned after a work of Hans Sachs, E. Schon chose the pope as his unlikely model to demonstrate the various effects of drunkenness. The satiric vein is evident: the plate of the melancholic temperament, like Carion's frontispiece, shows a cavalryman attacking a pope (fig. 49).66 Nothing is more expressive of anti-Roman violence, both Germanic and Lutheran, 82

II.

ROME — BABYLON

48 Frontispiece of J. Carion, Prognostication Leipzig, 1521

than the frontispiece of Gesprdch Biichlin by Ulrich von Hutten, appearing in Strasbourg in 1521,67 which depicts antipapist wrath in an assault by lansquenets against a throng of cardinals, theologians, and pontiffs (fig. 50). In the upper band, Christ brandishes the arrow of vengeance while David proffers a tablet bearing the inscription: exaltare qui judicas terram, redde retribut(um) superbis. In the same vein, the title page of an anonymous pamphlet in support of the peasants, published in Nuremberg in 1525 under the title An die Versammlung gemayner Bawerschafft (fig. 51), shows the pope's fall brought about by the wheel of Fortune, near which "die Bawersman gut Christen" with their pikes are seen battling the almost defeated "Romanisten und Sophisten."68 And so, while the doctrine espoused by the Medici popes—which in fact was the traditional position of the Church—declared the inviolability of the papal city, everything conspired to make the I I . ROME — BABYLON

lcid?6 pon Duttcn«

\erltaxem meditabitur ktturmeum. Oi'wi

Pen umpcndum eft tin/

& %

eft.

49 Erhard Schon, The Melancholic Pope. Adapted from H. Sachs, Die vier wunderlichen Eygenschafft und Wiirhung des Weins, Nuremberg, 1528

50 Hans Baldung-Grien, frontispiece of Ulrich von Hutten, Gesprlich Biichlin, Strasbourg, 1521

humiliation of the Holy See and the destruction of the Eternal City a necessary disaster. The collective subconscious in Italy as well as in Germany was stirred up by the popular belief in portents and celestial omens: it viewed the attack on Rome as symptomatic of Christianity's ultimate crisis. For Lutherans, from a religious viewII.

ROME — BABYLON

3 n Die vcrfamlutig gmuyiicr -fca wcr< fd^afft fo in ^od>tewf^cr Hatiott/tmb wj anbe « r oit/mtt ctttp^tttng *>if mifjWit crtifianbC .?c, 00 jr ttttpfoimg 6iihd>cir obct r npUltcbcr f\c f l l f t l vnb n?ae ftebcr (D6ct^tr

^ieifl bee (Slocfr4&t0 fiutt

51 Frontispiece of An die Versam mlung gem ay n er Bawerschafft, Nuremberg, 1525

point, the symbolic sack of Rome became indispensable to the renewal of Christian faith. The fears and vague stirrings came to a head in the tension following 1525. Imperial policy, like the pope's, entered into a fatal stage of development in which the details were surprising, but the fundaI I . ROME — BABYLON

mental ideas remained consistent with the thinking of Charles's entourage: the pope, minister of human souls, had to be subordinated to the emperor, administrator of the world. The old Ghibelline precept, from Dante's time, had returned with astonishing force. Poetic forecasts were celebrating it when Ariosto, for example, wrote Astolpho's famous prophecy in his Canto XV: Del sangue d'Austria e d'Aragon io veggio nascer sul Reno alia sinistra riva un principe, al valor del qual pareggio nessun valor . . . From the blood of Austria and Aragon, I see born on the left bank of the Rhine a prince, whose virtue has no equal.. .a A chivalric, aristocratic and epic trend, spread by military conceit and the traditional symbols of power, took hold of an entire generation in Spain and in France. Behind this fever were chimeric images and limitless ambitions. The possession of Rome was one of them. However, it was not a group of chivalrous knights but a motley crew of adventurers who, in the name of the emperor, seized Rome in the spring of 1527 while everyone went on predicting it and none of the interested parties believed it. Those who kept a cool head in the midst of so much confusion were rare indeed. Political decisions were made with adversaries, collaborators, or allies, whose disturbed and disturbing imagination could change the course of action at any moment. Guicciardini, who knew more about it than anyone, could not refrain from remarking ironically on this subject: "The counselors of princes would be put to too hard a test if they were obliged to take into account not only human arguments and considerations but also the opinions of astrologers, the prognostics of spirits, or the prophesies of monks."69 But of what value was this lucid observation, from someone who saw everything fail, compared with the obsessions and portents that led Spanish historians to conclude that the sack "a causa mas que material" ("had more than material causes") ?70 As evidence of the growing number of increasingly explicit supernatural signs, an anonymous Spanish witness reported the series of events that occurred on each of the Holy Thursdays during the papacy since 1524: the first, nothing; the second, the altar cloth a Charles was born in Ghent, thus in lands to the west (the left bank) of the Rhine. T.N.

86

I I . ROME — BABYLON

burned; the third, the tabernacle of the Holy Sacrament fell during the mass; the fourth, a loco, a madman, got up and insulted the pope.71 Much has been made of the public displays and crank behavior of an itinerant street preacher, nicknamed Brandano, who harassed Clement. On Holy Thursday, April 18, 1527, during the papal blessing from the balcony of St. Peter's, he appeared naked near the statue of Saint Paul and cried out: "Bastard, sodomite, because of your sins Rome will be destroyed. Confess and mend your ways. If you do not believe this, wait and see in two weeks time." On Easter Sunday he was back, proclaiming in the Campo de' Fiori, "Rome, make amends. What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah will happen to you."72 Like all itinerant preachers, he carried a cross and a skull. He became so annoying that he was jailed until the imperials arrived and released him. Incidents like these have always accompanied great collective anxieties. Such outbursts expressed the same kind of hysteria, brought on by the onslaught of prophetic announcements, that had appeared in Florence earlier. "It had reached such a point," wrote the Tuscan historian Varchi, "that not only monks from pulpits but even ordinary Romans went around the public squares proclaiming in loud threatening tones not only the ruination of Italy but the end of the world. And there were people who, convinced that the present situation could not get worse, said that Pope Clement was the Antichrist."73 A perfect example of autohypnosis. It was in these very terms that Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga announced the news in his letters: "One can safely say now that our Father in heaven wants to scourge Christianity . . ." (Rome, May 7); "There is every reason to suspect that from day to day new suffering and devastation will occur, and that the whole world will go to ruin and be annihilated. One can be well assured that God has drawn the sword of justice and spilled the cup of his ire on humankind" (Ostia, May 16) .74 The fall of Rome inescapably signified the start of the complete upheaval of the world. At the close of 1526, Aretino published in Mantua a booklet of predictions for the year 1527 which, in addition to vitriolic attacks on Rome and the papal court, contained, it would seem, an actual premonition of the sack of Rome.75 At the beginning of 1527 a pamphlet appeared in Venice entitled Triompho di Fortuna, which permitted one to look into the future by means of dice and squares that referred back to each other so that a series of predictions could be obtained by adding them together. The engraved title page is rightly attributed to B. Peruzzi (fig. 52).76 In Oxford there is a I I . ROME — BABYLON

87

JRIOMPHO D FOR VNA DI SIGISMON [ FERRARESE

II.

ROME — BABYLON

52 (facing page) Baldassare Peruzzi, title page of S. Fanti, Triompho di Fortuna, Venice, 1527 53 Baldassare Peruzzi, preliminary sketch for title page of S. Fanti, Triompho di Fortuna. Christ Church, Oxford

preliminary drawing with certain variants—the Pantheon and the building known as the Horologium of Augustus in S. Lorenzo in Lucina—which confirm that it was somewhat modified in order to make clear the allusions to the city of Rome (fig. 53). Dice and astrology correspond to the purpose of the book. The famous clock refers to horoscopes or birth dates. The globe of the universe turns out to be vulnerable to the contradictory pull of good and evil, in the guise of an angel and a demon who turn the great handle in I I . ROME — BABYLON

89

opposite directions. Seated above it, the Roman pontiff appears without his throne in a curiously precarious condition, framed by two allegorical figures. One is instantly reminded of the glorious, dominating pontiffs depicted three years earlier between pairs of Virtues in the Hall of Constantine, who seemed so inviolable. The intention seems explicit: to prefigure in those opening months of 1527 a singularly difficult time. This graphic prognostic returned to one of the oldest iconographic motifs in Western culture and adapted it to the critical situation of papal power. A capricious goddess is no more responsible for turning the wheel of fortune than the hand of Providence. In keeping with the general evolution of such symbolic scenarios, the scene is now dramatized by the contradictory action of two supernatural forces and an individuation of the indicted power, whose two virtues seem to imply that it still has a few means available for altering the course of events.77 All is not yet lost, the angel may yet win out. The substitution of the globe for the wheel of Fortune is obligatory in an astrological treatise, which deals with the planets: the line of the zodiac crosses the orb like a bandoleer.78 This complicated equilibrium, or better still, this confusion between astral fatality, supernatural forces, and human action—prayer or decision—describes the seriousness of the situation in Rome. The imminence of the drama can be gleaned from the strangeness of the image.

90

I I . ROME — BABYLON

III. URBIS DIREPTIO A DI DE MAGIO 7527 fo la presa de Roma. This inscription was found on the south wall of the salon in the Villa Lante, the former residence of Baldassare Turini on the Janiculum (fig. 54) / Occupied by the imperial army from the very outset, this is one of the spots on the hill from which a marvelous view— once the fog lifted—could be had of the victorious troops advancing through the streets. Other inscriptions made by dagger point were found in equally significant places. But before commenting on them, we should mention that several commanders of the imperial army left memoirs. They had taken part in events too extraordinary to be left unrecorded. One of them recounted in a single page what the lansquenet occupation of 1527 had been like: On the sixth of May we took Rome by storm, killed 6,000 men, plundered the houses, carried off what we found in churches and elsewhere, and finally set fire to a good portion of the town. A strange life indeed! We tore up, destroyed the deeds of copyists, the records, letters, and documents of the Curia. The pope fled to Castel Sant'Angelo with his bodyguard, the cardinals, bishops, Romans, and members of the Curia who had escaped the massacre. For three weeks we lay siege until, forced by hunger, he had to surrender the castle. Four Spanish commanders, one of whom was a nobleman, the abbot of Najera, and an imperial secretary, were delegated by the Prince of Orange to receive the castle. This was done. Inside, we found Pope Clement with twelve cardinals in a storeroom. The pope had to sign the surrender treaty that the secretary read to him. They all bemoaned themselves piteously and wept a lot. Here we are, all of us, rich. Less than two months after we occupied Rome 5,000 of our men had died of the plague, for the corpses remained unburied. In July, half dead, we left the city for the Marches to find cleaner air. . . . In September, back in Rome, we pillaged the city more thoroughly and found great hidden treasures. We remained billeted there for another six months.2

This says a great deal in few words. It tells us about three successive stages of occupation and pillage. First, there was the great week that began on May 6 and surely seemed "strange" viewed retrospectively: houses destroyed, churches pillaged, church documents forever lost. Then the duration of the siege, the surrender, III.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

91

54 Graffito found on a wall of the Villa Lante, Rome

55a Graffito on Raphael's Triumph of the Holy Sacrament. Sala della Segnatura, Vatican

55b Tracing of graffito in fig- 55a

the war indemnity, all summarized by "they wept a lot; all of us are rich." Last, after the epidemic that forced them to evacuate the city, their return in September, which meant six months of methodical spoliation interrupted only by violent internecine quarrels between the national armies and their leaders. This calendar of events explains many things. Given that situation of total anarchy— rival groups coming and going, desertions, disorders, trafficking— the occupation must have seemed endless until the troops finally left in February 1528.3 At that time, according to Guicciardini, the exercitus caesareus numbered about five thousand Germans, four thousand Spaniards, twenty-five hundred Italians, or about half of its forces in 1527. The others ? Killed by the plague or oflf in search of adventure.4 The Vatican was occupied by Frundsberg's Lutheran lansquenets. What confirms this is a group of graffiti recently uncovered during restorations of the Raphael Stanze.5 In the Disputation, one can see near the center, on the right, an inscription scratched by a dagger, V.K. Imp, (figs. 55a, 55b), and almost effaced, Martinus Lutherus. In the group of the Decretals the nose of the then Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, later Clement VII, has been slashed by a lance. There were doubtless other defacements, but they have been eliminated by 92

III.

URBIS DIREPTIO

subsequent restorations. The remaining traces are enough to remind us that the imperial army was motivated by a crusading antipapist spirit. In the Stanza d'Eliodoro, on the painted dado, is another V.K. Imp., and clearly visible, Got hab dy sela Borbons ("God keep Bourbon's soul"), followed by a name, Dietwart, and a date, May— which briefly sums up everything (fig. 56). To my knowledge, nothing has been found in the Hall of Constantine, which surprises me. The enemies of the pope's temporal powers could certainly have found enough there to keep them busy. But their concerns were elsewhere, as will be seen. Two questions remain on the subject of the Stanze. One has come to our attention in connection with Titian's stay in Rome in 1545. A Venetian writer in 1567 recounted the following anecdote: Titian recently told me that when Rome was sacked by Bourbon's soldiers, a few Germans who were occupying the pope's palace heedlessly built a fire in one of Raphael's Stanze and a few of the heads were damaged by the smoke, unless it was by their blows. The pope, distressed after their departure by the thought of leaving those beautiful heads, defaced, had them restored by Sebastiano. During his stay in Rome, Titian went one day to the Stanze accompanied by Sebastiano, determined to examine those paintings by Raphael, which he had never seen, with all his visual and mental concentration. Standing before the wall on which Sebastiano had made the restorations, Titian asked him who the ignorant upstart was who had daubed those faces. He did not know that Sebastiano had restored them and was only noticing the enormous difference between the heads.6

Even allowing for a touch of malice on Titian's part toward a disciple of Michelangelo, the anecdote must be true, but later restorations of the frescoes make it hard to ascertain the veracity. What is important about this is that smoke caused the damage, which suggests an improvised grate or a fireplace (there was one in the Stanza delllncendio) in which combustibles were burned.7 This detail sheds light on another more serious matter—vandalism —and relates to marquetry cabinets that had been built around the Segnatura (originally intended as a library), designed by fra Giovanni di Verona and Gian Barili.8 They have disappeared. It has often been said that they were damaged during the sack; this was recently disputed,9 but the foregoing story makes it seem likely. The present monochromes under the frescoes were done by Perino del Vaga. They were painted under Paul III, therefore after 1534, when a fireplace was transferred to the Stanza from a neighboring III.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

93

56 Tracing of graffito of 1527 on the dado of the Stanza d'Eliodoro, Vatican

room; this did indeed take place in 1541. All this begins to make more sense if the marquetry work, badly damaged, had to be redone or replaced. In 1527 doors and windows were burned in Rome; wooden plinths, even with intarsia, could feed a fire during a winter of occupation. Another victim of the military occupation—this one a total loss— was the stained-glass windows. The Vatican, and particularly the floor where the Stanze are, had just been fitted, under Julius II and Leo X, with windows made by the French glassmaker Guillaume de Marcillat.10 All the windows were smashed so as to get at the leading around them, which could be used in the making of musket shot. Cellini protected the castle with his canons by preventing all approach. He was very proud of what he called "a diabolical exercise." Time passed, however, and the artilleryman resumed his craft of goldsmith and minter. Clement was forced to pay an enormous war indemnity and it was necessary to melt precious pieces from the treasury. According to Cellini, "The pope and one of his servants, Cavalierino, brought me jeweled tiaras from the Apostolic Chamber. The pope commanded me to remove the jewels from their mountings, which I did. Each stone was wrapped in a piece of paper and sewn into the lining of the pope's clothing and Cavalierino's. The remaining gold, about 200 pounds, was left me with the order to melt it down."11 This was how the pope managed to pay the fantastic sum of 70,000 gold ducats required by the treaty of surrender of June 5. It was necessary to coin still more pieces of gold and silver to pay the colossal tribute required to get the troops to leave. The summer of 1527 saw the most unbelievable conditions—the city totally stripped, virtually without food, the inhabitants held by force and used as servants, the threat of plague hanging over them because the fountains had been destroyed—while the pope and high dignitaries desperately tried to borrow still more money in Naples or elsewhere, or to coin more. In the meantime, each house had been ransacked and plundered, each palace searched, its inhabitants taxed. For a few days there was one exception—palazzo Colonna, held by personal enemies of the pope, where Isabella d'Este found refuge. Many stricken people were sheltered there, including prominent figures known to be sympathic to the emperor. Nevertheless, everybody had to pay taxes over and over again, and worse still, to each new contingent. The great scheme of the pillagers was to extort money or precious 94

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

objects easily converted into money.12 The strength of the army, the shrewdness of commanders whose appetites had been whetted by the march on Rome, the coincidence that the capital of Christianity was a commercial and banking center, all combined to make the exploitation of the vanquished a systematic enterprise that appears to be quite exceptional. This system of taxation, or taglie, made it possible, by means of horrible threats and equally horrible atrocities, to obtain sums that varied with the rank and wealth of each member of the Curia, each dignitary, each citizen. Historical chronicles furnish some particulars about the victims, and in a few cases the beneficiaries. And so we discover that Cardinal Ponzetti paid 20,000 gold crowns, and Cardinal Enkevoirt handed over 40,000 to the German commander Oddone. The cardinal of Santa Maria in via Lata, Alessandro Cesarino, contracted to pay 35,000 gold crowns on behalf of the more than two hundred people sheltered in his palace; this document or instrumentum, dated May 10, still exists with the receipts. It was often necessary to borrow. One turned to moneychangers or usurers to make the discharging payment; notarized documents of this kind have survived in great number.13 Most of the jailing and maltreatment was intended to produce gold, jewelry, and precious stones. During all those weeks there was little else going on in the city besides quick sales, deals, promissory notes, etc., which made the sack one of the most impressive financial enterprises ever recorded, at least in terms of the monies and precious objects that changed hands. It was a monumental bloodletting of wealth. And with that hemorrhage flowed works of art. Information is not lacking about the extraordinary markets that were set up in the Campo de' Fiori, the Borgo, and Ponte Sisto. According to an eyewitness, the notary Gualderonico, "everything that had been stolen during the sack was sold there: robes embroidered with gold thread, silks, velvets, bolts of wool and linen, rings, jewels, pearls; the Germans had sacks filled with objects for sale and everything was sold at a big marketplace. Then the pillaging began anew."14 Rodriguez-Villa published an identical eyewitness story, coming from a Spanish soldier: "Since those who stole them know nothing of their value, furs and precious stones worth a hundred ducats go for two ducats. Tapestries and furnishings, beautiful clothing, everything has become virtually worthless. I saw twelve pieces of tapestry worked with gold, and a magnificent silk alhombra, sold for four hundred fifty ducats the whole lot."15 Jean Cave's account provides a vivid description of the departing lansquenets covered with gold chains and rings, laden with clothing I I I . URBIS DIREPTIO

95

and fabric, vases, jewels, sacks filled with ducats and precious things, which they made their captives carry in a scene reminiscent of Trajan's Column.16 On February 19, 1528, it was learned in Rome that just off Ostia, Filippo Doria had captured twelve Spanish vessels bound for Naples carrying more than one hundred and fifty cases of objects taken during the sack.17 Two factors warrant closer attention. Artworks quickly entered into that enormous contest of greed, particularly those with obvious negotiable value. And very quickly, trafficking grew out of the confusion. Although we are, alas, unable to reconstruct the details, we can more or less make out the nature. These transactions naturally involved libraries as well; some were devastated, others sold.18 The Vatican library, founded by Sixtus IV, was especially damaged; a brief of 1529 mentions its depletion (diminutionem).19 The loss of libraries was more painful to humanists than was anything else. Through the destruction of books their attention was focused on the catastrophe, and that was basically all they dwelt on. Erasmus, for example, in a letter to Sadoleto in which he expresses concern for the safety of scholars, sees in the pillage of his friend's library an act of barbarity worthy of Scythians.20 On the reformist side, Melanchthon's reaction was identical. Rome's calamity is hardly mentioned except with regard to the sole disaster preoccupying humanists: the destruction of the sources of knowledge.21 It is this horrendous event that scandalized the thinkers who saw Rome as the paradise of learning. Erasmus speaks of nothing else when—in his letter of 1529 concerning the sack—he nostalgically remembers his visit of 1509. As to the precious works in the sanctuaries, the conquerors' hasty looting necessarily induced all manner of sacrilegious acts—in addition to the desecration of relics—which in oral and written reports naturally assumed an importance not easily minimized. In fact, if the sack of Rome was the occasion for the methodical spoliation of the city's treasures, it simultaneously took on another dimension—that of a vast profanation. When Guicciardini spoke of "la piu mesta, la piu spaventevole, la piu vergognosa tragedia" ("the most sorrowful, most frightening, most shameful tragedy"), he was thinking of the political humiliations and degradations as much as the extortions. And he bitterly estimated their toll.22 To a large number of Christians, however, the news of the more or less gratuitous impieties committed during those weeks made the sack look like a heinous offense to the traditional home of the faith. 96

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

Works of Art The most memorable accident that took place during the sack was the death of Constable Charles de Bourbon. The most astonishing piece of fraudulence was the theft of the papal tapestries. Woven ten years before from Raphael's cartoons, they were intended to be used on state occasions in the Sistine Chapel. It was precisely there —with the "splendid and most beautiful tapestries of His Holiness/' to quote a Venetian report of May 1527—that Bourbon's funeral was held.23 As was sarcastically observed long after, "it was probably the last time that the complete series was hung according to Raphael's own plan and wishes."24 The vicissitudes of those famous works made for one of the more fantastically involved episodes to come out of the vast store of that period. Isabella d'Este happened to be in Rome when the disaster occurred, and provided refuge for many a victim in the Palazzo Colonna where she was staying. Her son Ferrante, Marchese di Mantova and one of the imperial commanders, had his hand in all kinds of shady deals. In view of the fact that the tapestries were immensely valuable and were going to be separated, Isabella sent 500 crowns to Ferrante with instructions to buy them, in order, she said, to return them one day to the pope—on reimbursement, of course. Two panels, The Conversion of Saul and Paul Preaching at Athens', were sent off on a vessel containing Isabella's personal belongings. The cargo was captured by pirates. Because they were said to be Genoese, Isabella submitted a claim for her property to Andrea Doria, but achieved nothing. Unflattering remarks about her began to circulate. She was forced to protest against the accusations of a certain Benedetto Centurione, insisting that the two tapestries had been acquired for the sole purpose of being returned to the pope. In any case, Isabella never found them.25 In 1528, they appeared in a Venetian collection. Twenty-five years later, they were bought in Constantinople by Constable Henri de Montmorency and offered to the Vatican in 1554 (fig. 57). This detail is expressly noted in an inventory of the following year.26 Other panels surfaced in Naples. That was where a goodly number of artworks and relics sold by soldiers reappeared. In the fall of 1532 negotiations were begun for four of the hangings and a fragment that had been brought back from Naples. Some of them had lost their borders. Even when all of them were returned, the tapestries were never replaced in their original position before 1527, III.

URBIS DIREPTIO

97

57 Fragment from the border of a tapestry by Raphael, with the crest of the constable of Montmorency, Vatican

for on the rear wall ever since 1541 Michelangelo's immense fresco precluded any other decoration. Such vicissitudes show what could happen to famous artworks in that turbulent period, but we are still left without any adequate idea of the missing treasure. Some thirty fragments of tapestries, largely border sections, were found in the Vatican bearing Clement's stemma. The vertical friezes are extremely interesting with respect to the development of decorative forms in Rome.27 They may be the remains of the missing hangings, or fragments of others woven during the reign of the second Medici pope. An apostolic brief of July 22, 1531 states: "In the recent pillage of the city, Joannes Barsena, a soldier of the imperial army, stole from the chapel of our bedchamber a painting of the Pieta with the Holy Virgin in the center and beautiful pious paintings on movable side panels: on one, Saint Anne holding her daughter the Virgin, and on the other, Saint Margaret." This refers to a Flemish triptych intended for a chapel, of a rather common formula: a central panel of the Roger van der Weyden type, with shutters like those by Gerard David.28 It was a modest work that Cardinal de' Medici doubtless acquired during his trip to Flanders with his cousin Leo X. What is interesting is the ultimate fate of the triptych. The looter had carried his booty off to Sardinia, but finally handed it over to the Augustinians of Cagliari. They brought it to the cathedral where, once identified, Clement decided to leave it, with the proviso, explicitly stated in the brief, that each year it be shown to the faithful on Assumption Day honorifice ac devote ("with honor and devotion"). As will be seen, the restitution of stolen relics in consequence of a guilt crisis became fairly common after 1528. There was much talk of vandalized antiquities: "There were even cases of vandalism against marble and ancient statues," Paolo Giovio stated.29 Rumor had it that even the Laocoon was broken. It is hard to know how much of this was exaggeration born of fear.30 But we do have an idea of the conniving that went on. The Gonzagas were involved in all sorts of schemes. One of Ferrante Gonzaga's fellow commanders of the Italian brigade was Fabrizio Maramaldo, a prime example of the captain of adventure. This Maramaldo was on the best of terms with the marchese di Mantova, who wrote him an amusing and revealing letter: There are two honorable gentlemen here who are great friends of mine. Your Lordship knows one of them personally and the other by reputation. Both of them consider you generous, likable, and quick to 98

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

please those who deserve it. Both of them seek a favor from you and to that end have requested me to recommend them. One is Marmirolo, the other Te. They would like to have some pieces of ancient art: heads, legs, busts, or complete statues of bronze or marble. Since they know that you hold Rome at your mercy, they would appreciate the favor of your generosity with regard to these things which neither you nor your soldiers care about, for you are interested in another kind of loot. And so, my dear Fabrizio, do not fail to oblige my two friends so that they do not lose the good opinion they have of you. Otherwise, I know for sure, they will say worse things about Fabrizio Maramaldo than were ever said about the world's greatest pirates. Make it possible for me to defend your honor. Marchese di Mantova31 This rather remarkable letter is dated May 22. Ferrante Gonzaga was asking his adventurer friend to secure antiquities for his own

collection, Marmirolo and Te being his two villas. We are, alas, totally without particulars. Isabella's son was not terribly fussy about the provenance of the pieces.32 Ancient sculptures, far too heavy to move, created problems of transportation. But fragments and heads, small bronzes and medallions, were easily managed. It would be interesting to know what was in those cases shipped out in February 1528 and captured by the Genoese near Ostia. We know that ecclesiastic collectors had reason to be worried. A caustic passage by Ciacconius describes the anguish of one of Rome's principal collectors, Cardinal Cesi: "After the terrible tragedy that befell the city, when they were locked inside Hadrian's fortress, uncertain about what was going on and in desperate personal straits, nothing mattered more to him than to make sure his ancient inscriptions and paintings did not disappear in the hands of soldiers who could easily take them and carry them away."33 There were two outstanding archaeological giardini under the reigns of Leo X and Clement VII: Cardinal Cesarini's and the one belonging to the Massimi family. The first, located near S. Pietro in Vincoli, already existed in 1500, if one can trust an epigram preserved by Schrader, and an inscription from the eighth year of Alexander VFs reign.34 A certain number of pieces—columns of cipollino, eighteen heads of philosophers—were mentioned in various texts, and there is always Aldovrandi's catalogue. But these references are too late to allow for an idea of the collection at the time of the sack, or to specify the possible losses. The wealthy Massimi family was especially hard hit. Domenico, the head of the family, was killed and the palace on the via Papalis presso la valle was I I I . URBIS DIREPTIO

99

destroyed. The collection of antiquities, known through an admiring description dating from about 1512, was pillaged, and that is all the information there is.35 Following an agreement between the three sons in 1532, the eldest, Piero, had a new palace built by Baldassare Peruzzi. This was the origin of the present-day Palazzo alle Colonne, where the missing marbles were unfortunately not found.86 Cardinal del Monte's palace in the Campo de' Fiori was similarly pillaged, though he was an avowed Ghibelline, as were the palaces of other pro-imperial dignitaries, such as Cardinals Enkevoirt and Cesarini, all residing in the rione of S. Eustachio. For a few days, they were protected by Spanish soldiers, but demands for booty and fear of the lansquenets forced them to flee, and the palaces were turned upside down.37 The antiquities were kept in the courtyard. Were they destroyed, carried off, surrendered, or, as is more likely, simply left intact by the force of events ? It is a mystery. A Latin epigram preserved in a Vatican collection makes one wonder about Cardinal della Valle's statues: Why marvel, visitor, that these mute gods Hold their breath beneath the stone here ? On the enemy's arrival, fear petrified them, And despite the Vale's shelter, the marbles tremble yet.38 This archaeological garden was in the rione of S. Eustachio. It is known through an engraving by Jerome Cock, very probably based on a drawing by Heemskerck.39 The cardinal died in 1534; the installation of his collection was far from complete on his death. It was his nephew, Camillo Capranica, who finished installing the collection, made famous by Aldovrandi's catalogue. It is therefore hard to determine whether the palace and the antiquities suffered from the imperial occupation. The cortile, in any case, was well stocked with fragments, some of which have at times been identified in the Flemish print. And if that dates back to a sketch of 1533 or 1534, it would seem that the damage was not serious.

Relics According to the terms of the capitulation of June 5, which anticipated the payment of 400,000 ducats in reparations, a clause stated that the pope would lift "all censure, excommunication, punishments, or interdicts that [commanders and soldiers] might have incurred for acts committed previously against His Holiness and 100

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

the apostolic See." This signified a plenary absolution for the acts perpetrated during the sack. The situation dragged on all summer, but it would seem that a bull was prepared at the beginning of September, known in only one copy, which confirmed the pope's pardon of the victors.40 A letter from Perez, the emperor's secretary, communicated this good news to the emperor on September 2. One can understand the concern felt by the leaders of the imperial army. But these conciliatory gestures that were first announced, and then declared, by Clement did nothing to prevent more plunder and were overlooked in the immense confusion of the end of the year. The list of pillaged and desecrated churches is long but fairly inaccurate. Much work yet remains to verify and complete the fragmented and episodic information. It is nonetheless certain that whoever was even vaguely allied with the emperor's adversaries, such as the French faction, was treated with particular harshness. However little we know about the first church of S. Luigi dei Francesi, we do know that the tempio tondo, with its great medallions sculpted in travertine and so admired by Vasari, was left unfinished in 1527, the date its artist, Jean de Chennevieres, died.41 And we also know that Trinita dei Monti, the headquarters for French propaganda, was the target of a punitive expedition because of the convent's link with the French side.42 This was a very nasty affair, which we shall have occasion to discuss later. The victims of irreparable loss were the gold and silver liturgical objects, precious reliquaries, and the like, with which Roman churches abounded: They looked for papal bulls, letters, and accounts in the monasteries and convents so as to burn them and tear them. Their shreds replaced straw in houses and stables for the donkeys and horses. In all the churches—St. Peter's, St. Paul's, S. Lorenzo's, and even the little ones—chalices, chausables, monstrances, and ornaments were taken; not finding the Veronica, the looters took other relics.

This appears in a German booklet, Die Warhafftige und \urze Berichtung . . . {The True and Brief Account . . .), written by one of Frundsberg's soldiers, a Tyrolean perhaps, and published during the summer or fall of 1527, presumably to inform the peasants turned lansquenets of the victory.43 Two items are of capital importance: the assault of the pope's city was a kind of inverse pilgrimage for a large portion of the imperial army or, to put it differently, an act of calculated profanation analogous to the traditional patterns of worship that had brought the faithful to Rome by the thousands. III.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

IOI

The legitimacy of papal authority expressed itself through sealed papal bulls; the amounts received in payment for indulgences were recorded in account books. What was thrown on the manure heap, ground to dust, and scattered were the accounts of Peter's pence and the archives of royal revenues. The invaders also went after historical mementos like Constantine's cross of gold and the tiara of Nicolas V, which were never found again.44 Liturgical vessels— chalices, patens, and so on—disappeared from sacristies along with relics, those objects of veneration in priceless containers familiar to all pilgrims.45 In our opinion, the sack of Rome culminated in a fury that was unleashed against the objects traditionally associated in the popular mind with worship. Every account stresses the horror of this aspect. One of them relates that "the imperial soldiers took the heads of Saint John, Saint Peter and Saint Paul; they stole the gold and silver casing and threw the heads into the street to play ball with them; all the relics of saints that they found were turned into objects of amusement."46 The heads of the apostles were clearly of special veneration: Saint John's in the church of S. Silvestro, Peter's and Paul's in the Lateran, and Andrew's in St. Peter's, where it had been placed in a marble reliquary from the time of Pius II. Along with these went the fragments from the True Cross, the blade of the lance which Sultan Bazajet had ceremoniously handed over to Innocent VIII, and of course, the Sudario, the Veronica. There were hundreds of others as well.47 All of Christendom believing in the religious significance of these relics trembled for the Veronica. As mentioned above, this was the relic of all relics; its popularity among pilgrims had made it the palladium of the Holy City.48 When Charles VIII arrived in Rome in 1494, the pope, unsure of the king's intentions, fled to Castel Sant'Angelo taking with him the Veronica and the relics of Peter and Paul.49 In 1527, Clement VII did not have time to place them in safekeeping. The most dreadful rumors began to circulate about them, and diplomatic dispatches spoke of the matter. It is debatable whether Saint Peter's tomb was desecrated or not. A letter from an apostolic scribe, a canon in Speyer, dated June 17, mentions "the profanation of all the churches, the execution of several people on the altar of St. Peter's, the forcing of the funereal urn or tomb that contained the remains of Saints Peter and Paul, and even the profanation of relics." It is not known whether this entire sacrilege took place, but it was persistently rumored.50 The Sancta Sanctorum chapel in the Lateran, the goal of a par102

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

ticularly solemn pilgrimage, contained a celebrated and jealously guarded treasure.51 A relic of double significance, the heads of Peter and Paul had been placed at the main altar of the nearby basilica by Urban VI on his return from Avignon. Other mementos were still being shown to the throng of worshipers under Leo X. An official report sent to the emperor stated that the sanctuary "held in greater veneration than any other" had been pillaged. It was thought that the cranium placed under the altar had been spared, in view of the complicated lock with its numerous keys. The reliquaries in the walls and those on the altar were naturally broken and emptied. The one holding the Holy Cross, dating from Paul II, was placed on holy days on the altar of the Sistine Chapel. It disappeared in May and was also found later on. Clement had the wood placed inside a crystal cross, which was kept in the sacristy.52 Panvinio, who talked about a kind of inventory set up under Leo X, did not conceal the fact that it was hard to catalogue the losses because the pieces themselves were all mixed up: "Area cum multis reliquiis, multae sine nomine reliquiae, capsulae, arculae et pyxides" ("a coffer with many relics, many of the relics, sheaths, containers, and boxes without names").53 The missing pieces were taken at the time of the sack, or destroyed by time, unless the appropriations were made by the papal administration itself to extract gold. Since the reliquaries were carried away, the objects they contained could be found quite far from Rome. A large cross of chased silver, after a fairly common fifteenth-century model, was thus found, according to tradition, and is today preserved, at Poggio Mirteto.54 The relic known as the Circumcision, stolen by a lansquenet from the Sancta Sanctorum of the Lateran, reappeared in Calcata, in Latium. Replaced in an elegant reliquary, under circumstances impossible to reconstruct, it afforded the little collegiate church a plenary indulgence when Pope Sixtus V came to visit in 1585. The original gold work clearly disappeared, but the new reliquary, with its two silver angels holding the container, may recapture the style of the original.55 A recent exhibition has made it possible to determine how little remains: the sack of Rome virtually wiped out the Church's treasure of gold and silver, which is why we know so little about the craft in central Italy. It would seem that within a very short time, rumors began flying about miraculous interventions to stop the sacrileges. Whatever the case may have been, subsequent literature referred to this frequently.56 Holy images were said to have manifested their distress.57 The history of relics can hardly be banal. The task of recuperating the III.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

IO3

precious remains, to which Clement set himself in October 1527, was accomplished in record time.58 Once the imperial army finally evacuated Rome in 1528, some Spanish officers—out of conscience or obedience to a higher authority—undertook to collect the relics and return them to Rome. Commander Julio de Castillo is mentioned with regard to this in a document from the Vatican archives: Instrumentum relationis reliquiarum a militibus Borboni ab urbe extractis [sic] ("Affidavit of the return of relics taken by Bourbon's troops").59 The pieces recovered in Rome and abroad were assembled in San Marco and on November 26, 1528, a solemn procession brought them to the Vatican. The importance of this act of restoration was commented on: "Among the many holy relics stolen from Roman churches and carried off to the kingdom of Naples by that ferocious army, a large number was recuperated and brought back to Rome."60 The document referred to above, the Instrumentum, contains hundreds of items that leave one wondering how and by whom they could have been identified, each thing more improbable than the last: a piece of fabric on which there is a trace of the Virgin's milk, bones of martyrs, and so on.61 Everything points to redoubled efforts during those months to find those relics at any cost, in a recrudescence of superstition that reveals a greater attachment than ever to these minutiae of the faith. At the same time, news began to circulate that the large relics had been miraculously preserved. The first reports may have exaggerated the sensationalism of the details. A letter from a "messer Urbano" to the duchessa d'Urbino, and reproduced in Sanuto, states: "The holy relics have been scattered. The Veronica was stolen; it was passed from hand to hand in all the taverns of Rome without a word of protest; a German stuck the lance that struck Christ on a pick and ran through the Borgo mockingly."62 This may have been shock journalism. It provoked sharp and somewhat embarrassed replies from Valdes and outraged protests from Castiglione. Little by little there was a reversal, and one of the eyewitnesses of the sack, Alberini, a survivor of those tragic weeks, wrote in his memoirs composed, it is true, very much later: "The Veronica, the head of Saint Andrew at St. Peter's, those of the apostles Peter and Paul at San Giovanni in Laterano, and the miraculous effigy of the Savior in the Sancta Sanctorum . . . could not have been desecrated by those infamous hands." It was said that the sacrilegious mercenaries who demolished the IO4

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

tabernacle containing the relics in the Lateran were frightened by strange sounds and fled.63 All these traditions were recorded in documents quoted by the archaeologist-archivist of St. Peter's, Jacopo Grimaldi, in the work he published in 1621, which marks the end of this bizarre affair. The new St. Peter's had just been completed. It should not be forgotten that the chief basilica of Christendom had remained unfinished and, as it were, gutted for the better part of a half century. At the time of the sack, continuous reconstruction had created an unbelievable mess in the chapels, tombs, and reliquaries. It is therefore not surprising if there was some confusion during the lootings and the reparations as well. After the completion of the cupola by Michelangelo, followed by the nave and facade by Maderna, there was a solemn transfer of the artworks, and particularly the relics recovered over more than a century, which had been awaiting their permanent placement. Grimaldi's work, Instrumenta autentica translationum sanctorum corporum et sacrarum reliquiarum e veteri in novam basilicam, was the final document on the great relics. It announced the prodigious setting by Bernini, completed a few years after, with its four major relics each explicated by a spectacular statue: Saint Longinus by Bernini for the Lance, Saint Andrew by Duquesnoy for the head (which in 1964 was returned to Patras from whence it had come in the fifteenth century, in homage to the Greek Orthodox Church), Saint Veronica by Francesco Michi for the Sudario (fig. 58), and Saint Helena by Andrea Bolgi for the Wood of the True Cross. Calvin's Traite des reliques had long since appeared and the rupture long declared on this point between the Catholic world and Reformed Christianity of the North. With the new St. Peter's, Rome tried to redress one of the profanations most deeply felt in 1527. It was a magnificent restoration but it did not abolish the sacrilege. There had been a kind of tidal wave against relics and images, not only in Luther's Saxony and Calvin's Switzerland, but also in the England of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. Erasmus and Thomas More had warned against "the charlatanism of certain beliefs in bones and saints." But in November 1538, ten years after the procession of restitution under Clement VII, when Henry VIII had Thomas Beckett removed from the calendar and the shrine at Canterbury destroyed, the significance of the change in attitude became apparent to all. The sack of Rome offered the iconoclasts of Christendom proof that divine protection did not extend to images, a proof all III.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

IO5

58 The reliquary of the Veronica in St. Peter's. After Pauli de Angelis, Descriptio Vaticanae basilicae veteris et novae, Rome, 1646

the more salient since the images in question were the most venerated in the Christian world; they were the prototypes of the relics.64 A great deal of ancient art was fated to disappear forever, for the gold and precious stones of the reliquaries, once desanctified, became public property. Not only were the precious objects refashioned, and their religious significance obliterated, but art itself changed in meaning and content, which may be a consequence of the sack of Rome. This event was seen throughout Christendom as a colossal profanation. In a letter sent from Portofino to the nuncio in England, dated June 27, Sanga wrote: What Goths, what Vandals, what Turks were ever like this army of the emperor in the sacrilege they have committed? Volumes would be needed to describe but one of their misdeeds. They strewed on the ground the sacred body of Christ, took away the cup, and trod under foot the relics of the saints to spoil their ornaments. No church or monastery was spared. They violated nuns amid the cries of their mothers, burnt the most magnificent buildings, turned churches into stables, made use of crucifixes and other images as marks for their harquebuses. It is no longer Rome but Rome's grave. They dressed I06

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

the old wooden crucifix revered by all the nations which stood on one of the seven altars of St. Peter's in the uniform of a lansquenet. Saint Peter and Saint Paul, who have lain so many years buried under the altar of St. Peter's never suffered such indignities, even from those who made them martyrs.65 And a letter from Vincenzo da Treviso, dated June 15, states: "Non c'e Christo per le chiese che non habia cento e duxento costelade" ("there is not a Christ in the churches that does not have one or two hundred lance wounds").66 There were other episodes as well. At the entrance to the bridge, where Heemskerck placed his standard-bearers, there were periodic outbursts of insults and mockeries. The Historia direptionis describes what may well be the supreme parody: "One of them, more noticeable for the majesty of his bearing and his height, donned pontifical robes, placed the triple crown on his head, wrapped himself in the most precious stoles and vestments, and had himself mounted on a magnificent horse with all the pomp of a papal procession. A number of others were dressed in episcopal vestments, some with mitres and purple cloaks." This masquerade immediately brings to mind the solemn entrance of the pope on a white horse seen in the relief in the Hall of Constantine. The very symbolism of pontifical power is demolished by this parody. The mock procession stopped in front of Castel Sant'Angelo, vowed fidelity to Caesar, called for the abolition of pontifical pomp, and demanded that Clement hand over the sails and oars of the Navicella to Luther. The mob then cried, "Vivat Lutherus pontifex!"67 And all this, the Historia stresses, took place right under Clement VII's eyes. The whole outward ceremonial of the papacy, and with it even the dignity of the liturgy, was degraded and desecrated. The crisis over ritual, already serious throughout the Christian world, could only be made worse by these pantomimes. Captain Schertlin von Burtenbach could not restrain his distress and wrote in his diary: "Oh Lord! What remains of the Church and the Christian religion, if so dreadful a victory could have taken place that we, Christians, devastated the capital of our religion! How the Turks, pagans, and Jews must have rejoiced!"68 Long after this, Bernini's son, Domenico Bernini, returned to this subject in his four-volume study Historia di tutte le Eresie, published in Rome in the early eighteenth century. For him, the events of 1527 are part of a vast anti-Roman revolt: "Our losses in Italy were the major factors in the triumph of heretics in Germany." Domenico drew from memoirs then unpublished, such as ArmelIII.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

IO7

lini's diary, and published sources of Church history. He summarized the thinking of older authors. As a general rule, priests and prelates were badly treated. The more they were suspected of high office in the hierarchy, the higher their taxes. And to force them into paying, the mercenaries rivaled each other in malicious schemes, which have been related by all the historians, although we have no way of distinguishing truth from fiction. Cardinal Cajetano, for example, Luther's adversary, was abused, ridiculed, and dragged through the streets with his hands tied, like Ponzetti, who was, however, an old imperialist, "eighty years old and more dead than alive." Cardinal Numalio, general of the Franciscans, was given a mock burial and carried in a coffin all the way to the Aracoeli.69 There was also the feast of the ass, hung with priestly ornaments, to which an old priest refused to give communion on the pain of death.70 All this happened before the first, and spurious departure during the summer. Whether hostile or not to the Holy Father, to the Roman Curia, or to Italians, the authors of accounts of the sack often stressed, as in the case of a Spanish report, the strange void that had suddenly been created in the capital of Christianity: "One no longer hears bells, not a church is open, mass is no longer held. . . . One does not know what to say, or with what to compare it, except to the destruction of Jerusalem. I do not believe there has ever been anything like this."71 However, the same text adds, this outrageous, scandalous event contains an important moral. The city of Rome was the abode of all kinds of vices. "All this did not happen by chance, but through divine justice. For there were more than ample warnings." The augury of catastrophe signified that it was a punishment from heaven. The terrible silence that hung over the dead city at the end of 1527 and 1528 was thus heavy with meaning.

The Prestige of the Mercenaries Something that had never been seen before was that international melee, that ferocious onslaught of Spaniards and Germans, and that long agony of Roman citizens—themselves of diverse origins—in a chaotic city held by soldiers of fortune, all of whom were completely different in dress, language, and behavior. This caused a lasting hatred between Spaniards and Germans,72 but with interesting differences: "Mali fuere Germani, pejores Itali, Hispani vero pessimi," wrote the Augustinian prior Kilian Leib ("the Germans IO8

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

were bad, the Italians worse, and the Spanish the very worst").73 This estimation was qualified in the "Direptio . . .": "The fury of the Spaniards was more intense and more terrifying whereas that of the Germans was more beastly in the torments they inflicted on priests."74 It is doubtless because of this persistent rumor, presumably well founded, that the Franciscan general, Francesco Quifiones, spoke of "Luther's captains," and called on the emperor, according to Navagero, to disarm his troops so as not to deserve this title himself.75 The heretical lansquenets were blamed for all the looting and sacrilege, but to our knowledge, no image has come down to illustrate their exploits. Italians have periodically exalted their commanders of war. The great condottieri provided a splendid theme for painters and sculptors, as well as for poets. The only great figures to emerge from the tumult of 1527 were Giovanni delle Bande Nere—celebrated in III.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

IO9

59 Hans Burgkmair, Machine Operated by Maximilian's Lansquenets. Plate in The Triumphal Procession of Maximilian, 1526

60 Urs Graf, Standard-Bearer and His Valet, 1516. Drawing, Kupferstichkabinett, Basel

Florence after 1540 by Bandinelli's76 statues—and Charles de Bourbon—whose final resting place underwent various changes.77 The rather exceptional character of that period stems from the fact that, from a military viewpoint, everything was dominated by the arrivals and departures of the dreaded lansquenets. 110

I I I . URBIS

DIREPTIO

Every period has known its particular type of scoundrel, adventurer, or good-for-nothing, endowed with a curious and debatable prestige. After 1525, this individual was the lansquenet—Landshjiecht, miles provincialis—the rival of the Swiss on the mercenary market (fig. 59). The interest inspired by these fearsome hirelings can be seen in the drawings of Swiss painters, particularly Nicolas Manuel and Urs Graf (figs. 60, 61).78 In a sketch by the latter, apparently drawn from life, a French recruiting officer tries to interest a Swiss next to whom a lansquenet is seated; death, on the left, and madness on the right, frame the scene (fig. 62). Nothing like this existed in Italy, and even less in Rome. The superb wood-

61 Urs Graf, StandardBear er, 1527. Woodcut, Kupferstichkabinett, Basel III.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

III

62 Urs Graf, The Recruitment of Mercenaries, ca. 1523. Drawing, Kupferstichkabinett, Basel

cuts by Weiditz, "The Master of Petrarch/' though slightly earlier than the events, quite remarkably prefigure the scenes of violence, pillage, and sacrilege (fig. 63).79 In Italy, since illustrative printmaking did not go in for genre scenes, and prints on current events scarcely existed, it is hardly possible to imagine who might have initiated such a thing. However, there may be contemporary allusions in certain altar paintings, such as the Deposition by a painter from the Marche, Vincenzo Pagani.80 This composition, lacking finesse and originality, is dominated by Golgotha. Roman soldiers and turbaned orientals were traditionally placed at the foot of the crosses to suggest those who, historically or symbolically, crucified and continue to crucify Christ. Ottomans were seen as infidels, the incarnation of evil. Roman soldiers were commonly associated with contemporary warriors. In Pagani's work, it is possible to identify a detachment of lansquenets in the troop that sets off, standard flying, for the city of Jerusalem at the foot of the hill. 112

III.

URBIS

DIREPTIO

The sack of Rome could have been represented indirectly by making the troops look modern, or by some anecdotic reference (fig. 64). Frundsberg's soldiers might have been recognized by the clothing. But such evidence is rare. Its very absence is interesting, in that it reminds us that, unlike photography, art was not expected to record the present. When it does single out a figure or an episode, a transposition takes place within customary frameworks. Or else, as will be seen in Clement's reactions, it occurs on an unexpected level of religious projection.81 It is naturally impossible to reconstruct the fate of many of the soldiers in the exercitus caesareus, but, as one can imagine, a certain number of them experienced, if not remorse, then at least the injunctions of confessors who inclined them toward contrition. This was the case for Clement's triptych in Sardinia and the Spanish captain Julio de Castillo, who devoted himself to recovering the stolen relics. Everybody knew that much gold had been extorted and many works carried off contemptuously. The scruples of the I I I . URBIS DIREPTIO

63 The Master of Petrarch (HansWeiditz?), TA