of Luther and Valla—and many others in their wake—is apparent in The History of Italy, which Francesco Guicciardini wrote in Florence in the 1530s but which was only posthumously published in 1561. A digression on the history of the papacy, based on facts and critical observations and not on religious tenets, was omitted from all Italian editions up to 1621. A section of it may explain why and, at the same time, give an impression of the critical mood concerning the papacy in the sixteenth century:
Raised to secular power, little by little forgetting about the salvation of souls and divine precepts, and turning all their thoughts to worldly greatness, and no longer using their spiritual authority except as an instrument and minister of temporal power, [the popes] began to appear rather more like secular princes than popes. Their concern and endeavors began to be no longer the sanctity of life or the propagation of religion, no longer zeal and charity toward their neighbors, but armies and wars against Christians, managing their sacrifices with bloody hands and thoughts; they began to accumulate treasures, to make new laws, to invent new tricks, new cunning devices in order to gather money from every side; for this purpose, to use their spiritual arms without respect; for this end, to shamelessly sell sacred and profane things. The great wealth spreading amongst them and throughout their court was followed by pomp, luxury, dishonest customs, lust and abominable pleasures: no concern about their successors, no thought of the perpetual majesty of the pontificate, but instead, an ambitious and pestiferous desire to exalt their children, nephews and kindred, not only to immoderate riches but to principalities, to kingdoms; no longer distributing dignities and emoluments among deserving and virtuous men, but almost always either selling them for the highest price or wasting them on persons opportunistically moved by ambition, avarice, or shameful love of pleasure.
And for all these misdeeds, reverence for the papacy has been utterly lost in the hearts of men.30
Guicciardini’s critical judgment reveals the difficult position of the papacy. A century’s stay in Avignon had seriously eroded the solid papal bulwark. The councils of Pisa and Constance had seemed to signal the beginning of a badly needed renovation, but it was ultimately only a patchwork. Then Luther began to undermine the papacy’s theological foundations, while the belated impact of Valla’s writings began to destabilize its historical basis. If the popes wanted their bulwark to endure, they had to react. But it took them years to recognize the seriousness of Luther’s impact and how much it reflected the general feelings of unhappiness with continuing abuses in the church. At the same time, they failed to notice the underlying desire for independence and individuality. They expected these stirrings to fade, as so many earlier attempts at reform had died away, and assumed that the commotion caused by Valla’s writings could be curbed by simply denying his conclusions and restating the church’s authoritative and exclusively correct version of history. Without recognizing that the landscape around their bulwark had been developed, that new strongholds had been erected and the winds were blowing from different directions, the popes kept pointing to the original floor plans and construction drawings, as if these would be a safeguard against any form of deterioration and justify their stubborn refusal to adapt. All the arguments that had been developed through the centuries to assert the primacy of the papacy and its plenitude of power, its superiority over the emperor and every secular ruler, were simply reiterated over and over again. No new arguments were developed, and reality was considered an irritating detail that was disturbing the established and undeniable truth.
In the following chapters, we will look at how these centuries-old claims underlie the historical cycles that were painted in the Vatican and other buildings within the orbit of papal influence. History, as we will see, was used to demonstrate the undeniable self-evidence of the plenitude of papal power. At the same time, it was the undisputable presupposition of the pope’s plenary authority that determined how history was perceived and interpreted.
2
THE POPE AND THE KING
Alexander VI and Charles VIII of France
I
In 1536, Johann Fichard of Frankfurt, traveling through Italy, obtained permission to visit Castel Sant’Angelo (fig. 20).1 This enormous building on the right bank of the Tiber was originally built as the mausoleum of the Roman emperor Hadrian (117–38), but had long been used as a papal stronghold. For this reason, it was heavily guarded and normally closed to visitors. In his diary, Fichard carefully recorded all the things in the castle he deemed noteworthy. One of them was a loggia with paintings, in a little garden next to the entrance tower: “Next to the lowest part of the castle, near the entrance of the first doors, is a garden which is most lovely, but not too large. There one sees two sculpted sphinxes, a male and a female one, with the usual appearance. In this garden, there is also a loggia, which has been decorated with old paintings showing Alexander VI, when he was paid homage with the kiss on the foot by—I guess—Charles IV.”2 Both the garden and the loggia were lost in 1628, when Pope Urban VIII decided to demolish the large entrance tower next to them.3 By then, the circumstances in Rome had become so safe that the entrance tower had lost the defensive function for which it was originally constructed in 1495. Pope Alexander VI had planned this tower to block the road on the right bank of the Tiber, making the castle accessible only via the bridge over the Tiber (figs. 21, 22). Thus, the whole area around Castel Sant’Angelo, including all the traffic over the river, could be controlled by papal troops. This was of great strategic importance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the threat of a Turkish invasion was constantly felt. Above the gateway of the entrance tower, Pope Alexander had his sculpted coat of arms prominently displayed (fig. 21).
The garden and loggia that Fichard saw were situated on the north side of the entrance tower. An engraving by Bartolomeo Faletti from some sixty years later (1557) gives a clear impression (fig. 23). Fichard must have crossed the bridge, entered the tower, gone down a staircase, and turned right. There he found himself in the loggia with three arches, overlooking the little garden surrounded by a wall. This loggia faced north, which made it a very convenient place to spend warm summer days. Its floor was paved with majolica tiles adorned with bulls, flames, and crowns with rays—the heraldic motifs of the Borgia family, from which Pope Alexander descended.4 Its walls were decorated with fresco paintings, which were lost during the demolition of 1628. Fortunately, in 1568 Giorgio Vasari had made a detailed description in his well-known Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, which provides some additional information to Fichard’s short mention: “In the Castello di S. Angelo he [Bernardino Pintoricchio] painted a vast number of rooms with grotesques; and in the Great Tower, in the garden below, he painted stories of Pope Alexander, with portraits of the Catholic Queen, Isabella; Niccolò Orsini, Count of Pittigliano; Gianjacomo Trivulzi, and many other relatives and friends of the said pope, in particular Cesare Borgia and his brother and sisters, with many talented men of those times.” This text occurs in the life of Bernardino Pintoricchio (ca. 1452–1513), a painter from Umbria who dominated the artistic scene in Rome between ca. 1480 and 1500.5 From several entries and records in the papal account books it appears that Pintoricchio executed the paintings in 1495 and 1496, and that Pope Alexander VI was extremely pleased with them. On October 29, 1497, however, lightning hit the powder magazine of the castle, causing so much damage that Pintoricchio was asked to restore his paintings. On February 5, 1498, he was rewarded with an exemption from grain taxes for a period of twenty-nine years.6
We will never know exactly what Pintoricchio’s paintings looked
