The Fall of the House of Borgia

by E R Chamberlin

  Alexander much preferred the living arts to the static, singing and dancing being his favorites. Nevertheless, he was sufficiently sensitive to contemporary currents to try his hand at architecture, commissioning permanent work on the Vatican palace. The previous fifty years' work on the palace had progressed spasmodically, stopping or starting according to the aesthetic appreciation of the reigning pope and the state of his treasury. Sixtus had built the Sistine Chapel, a gaunt forbidding building ideally suited to its primary purpose of providing a secure place for conclaves, but which added little of architectural beauty. His successor, Innocent, had ignored the main block altogether and built himself a beautiful little summer palace, called the Belvedere, at a distant point in the garden. Now Alexander took a hand, erecting the structure called the Torre Borgia. His architectural contribution was little more attractive than Sixtus's for, externally, the Torre Borgia was simply a massive tower built as much for defense as for the enlargement of the existing accommodation. But internally the two ground-floor rooms became part of a glowing jewel of early Renaissance art. The rooms adjoined three existing chambers in the old palace which Alexander had obviously long had his eye upon as possible private quarters, should he ever become pope. Almost immediately after his coronation he commissioned Pinturicchio to decorate the rooms in the shortest possible time. Pinturicchio worked speedily. The plaster on the new rooms of the Torre Borgia could hardly have been dry when he began work on them, because he finished the whole work in a little over two years after Alexander's accession. The speed betokened his own skill in organizing the elaborate work and Alexander's burning impatience for quarters that would bear his own imprint.

  Fashion rather than artistic sensitivity probably led Alexander to choose Pinturicchio, for at thirty-eight the wizened little man with the big head had emerged from the ranks of the anonymous and was now much in demand among the wealthy, more conservative Roman patrons. There was something rather old-fashioned about his style, as though he lacked the confidence to plunge headlong into the exciting new world unfolding around him—a defect in the eyes of the intelligentsia but a trait which rather appealed to someone like Alexander with his own undeveloped and provincial tastes. "Deaf and undersized, mean in person and appearance," a contemporary dismissed Pinturicchio. He also had the bad luck to be married to a shrew and altogether passed as a figure of fun among the swaggering gallants of Rome. But it was this same wizened, hesitant, henpecked little man who explored the buried past and brought back, at considerable physical danger, a lost art of the classical city. Over the past half-century cautious and thoroughly haphazard excavations had revealed that beneath the ground-level of the present city there lay another Rome: the halls and chambers of the imperial Caesars, wrapped in darkness now, choked with rubbish, dank, populated only by giant rats, but bearing upon the walls the fantastic decorations wrought by men dead fifteen hundred years. The early excavators were searching for salable treasure, either in the form of the fabled gold of the equally legendary emperors, or the more prosaic marble statuary which could now fetch a high price due to the prevailing passion for all things classical. Pinturicchio sought and brought back less tangible treasures. Later searchers were to leave dramatic accounts of the excitement and dangers of this subterranean exploration— the encounters in the dark with bats and rats; the long, wriggling, scrambling journey through choked passages; their sense of awe on gaining some vast chamber whose dimensions their feeble lights were unable to disclose. Pinturicchio had no gift for language. He spoke with his brush and his brush traced onto the new walls of Rome the designs he had seen on the walls of buried Romes, "designs which are called by the ignorant 'grotesques' because they were found in certain subterranean caverns [grotte] in Rome, the said caverns having been in ancient times bathhouses, studies and the like,"25 Benvenuto Cellini later explained condescendingly. Rome was ever agog for novelty and the fantastic creations with which Pinturicchio enlivened his formal studies earned the attention of the great and eventually his supreme opportunity. Unwittingly, the work he executed for Alexander was to add substantially to the Borgia legend, wrapping yet another layer of mystery around the family.

  Pinturicchio's murals in the Borgia Apartments, as the five chambers became known, were predominantly religious in subject, each of the chambers being devoted to a single theme. The Seven Joyful Mysteries of the Virgin were depicted in the place of honor, the first chamber that a visitor entered from the Hall of the Popes. Here, too, was the great Resurrection in which the kneeling Alexander admires a Redeemer emerging triumphantly from the tomb. Pinturicchio placed the pope in a relatively insignificant position, tucked away in a lower corner which the eye at first passes over. The artist was, as customary, working closely by instructions and, in this instance, actually under the eye of his patron. Alexander posed on the spot for the portrait, heaving his huge body to the top of the artist's flimsy scaffolding, kneeling or sitting patiently high up in the cold, new room that smelled of wet paint and new plaster. It could therefore only have been at Alexander's express desire that, in the mural, he should have been placed in pious obscurity below his Savior. The face, however, shows no such humility, and only with difficulty can it be linked genealogically with the remote, ascetic face of his Uncle Calixtus. Plump, self-confident, self-satisfied, the mouth full-lipped and sensual beneath the enormous nose, Alexander regards his God not as an equal but, perhaps, as a junior partner might a senior—conscious of a gap in status but not overwhelmed by the knowledge. In that portrait Pinturicchio touched greatness, reflecting precisely the character of a man untouched by self-doubt and its product, conscience.

  The themes for three of the four other chambers were also conventional enough. Murals here were dedicated to The Seven Arts, The Apostles, and The Sibylis and were clearly the work of a competent painter fulfilling a straightforward commission. But in the chamber which led directly from the Room of the Seven Mysteries the unassuming little artist embodied a mystery which would give a wholly unlooked-for quality to his work, turning a common enough religious painting into an enduring enigma. In this room he seems to have gathered his confidence up and, in one great swirling act of creation, transmuted into his own idiom the essence of those long-buried murals before which he had stood entranced candle in hand. The chamber was later called the Room of the Saints after the seven great murals he painted, depicting seven legends of the saints. But it might better have been called the Shrine of the Bull, for on the ceiling and in the wall spaces between the painting of the legends, the Borgia emblem was repeated hundreds of times—not the benevolent ox of the coronation procession, however, but the sacrificial bull of the god Osiris.

  Pope and painter met briefly on common and curious ground. It was in precisely this fantastical representation that Pinturicchio excelled and thus reflected faithfully that trait of non-realism which lay behind Alexander's matter- of-fact facade. It was a common Renaissance conceit to give a pagan coloring even to Christian symbols and the kind of scholar who saw nothing odd in describing Christ as Apollo would see nothing strange in identifying the family symbol of Christ's current vicar with the symbol of one of the greatest of pagan gods. But to the more sober, more conventional Christians, it seemed as though the occupant of Peter's chair was already falling victim to its occupational hazard, giving more weapons to the enemy of the Borgia.

  Six of the seven legends which Pinturicchio illustrated in this beautiful little chamber were unexceptional enough, but around the seventh legend—that depicting St. Catherine disputing before the pagan Emperor Maximinius—a mystery developed overshadowing even that of the Osiris bull. The overt story depicted was of Catherine of Alexandria disputing the philosophers of the emperor in theological debate, impressing him so greatly that he cut off her opponents' heads. Alexander may have approved the subject, either because of the coincidence between his pontificial name and that of the saint's city or, as the uncharitable suggested, because Catherine was also the patron saint of bastards. Wh
atever the reason, Pinturicchio gave undue prominence to the painting. The scene he shows is straightforward enough although he follows the usual custom of putting classical figures in contemporary dress and also includes in the background a triumphal arch similar to those erected for Alexander's coronation. The saint stands before the throned emperor, ticking off her debating points on her fingers, and behind each of the two main figures are others which represent the philosophers and courtiers of Maximinius. For nearly five centuries controversy has centered on the two central figures of emperor and saint and, on the right, the mounted horseman and the boy and girl standing in front of a bearded Oriental. These five figures are firmly claimed to be the daughter, sons, and daughter- in-law of Alexander—and the claim has been as vigorously refuted.

  Lucrezia Borgia was only thirteen or fourteen years old when Pinturicchio was working in the Apartments, whereas the model he used for St. Catherine seems to be a mature woman. At about this period Lucrezia was described as being "of middle height and graceful in form. Her face is rather long, the nose well-cut, the hair golden. Her mouth is rather large, with brilliantly white teeth, her neck is slender and fair, the bust admirably well-proportioned."26 The description could apply closely enough to the figure of St. Catherine in the fresco, in particular to the relatively uncommon golden hair and the long, slender neck. In addition, a little over a year after the mural was painted Lucrezia obtained a divorce from her first husband on the grounds of his non-consummation of the marriage. Given Alexander's legalistic mind it is highly unlikely that his canon lawyers would have cited, as grounds for the divorce, the husband's inability to consummate if the wife was obviously immature. The probability is that Lucrezia achieved maturity earlier than was common, and there is therefore no inherent improbability in seeing in St. Catherine "whose lips seem to part for sighs rather than words," the beloved daughter of Alexander Borgia.

  The identification of the three sons, Cesare, Juan, and Joffre with the emperor, the mounted horseman and the boy respectively, raises additional problems whose tentative solution in turn raises more. On the grounds of age alone the identifications seem unlikely. Juan could not possibly have been more than seventeen years old when the mural was painted, whereas the horseman identified as him is clearly a man at least in his thirties. Similarly the figure identified as Joffre has the face of a mature man, and Joffre was no more than twelve years old at the time. Cesare was about eighteen years old, whereas the emperor in the mural is at least ten years older. There is an additional problem here in that the bearded face resembles very closely the reasonably authentic portraits of Cesare in his maturity. Hence, the observer regarding the supposed portraits of Alexander's son is forced to the conclusion that they can be accepted as genuine only if it is assumed that the faces were repainted years later when one of the supposed subjects, Juan, was dead.

  But to reject the portraits as genuine is to raise the insoluble problem as to why Alexander, who doted upon his children, did not instruct the artist to include their portraits with his own among the decorations of what was virtually the family home. Pinturicchio did indeed paint a series of family portraits in the Castel Sant' Angelo. But by that curious irony which seems to attend all Borgia affairs, these portraits—the only authentic ones of the Borgia children—were the only ones destined to disappear.

  Time was to add an additional element of mystery, and contribute further to the legend, of the Borgia portraits. Despite the high quality of Pinturicchio's work, despite the size and importance of the rooms themselves, the Borgia Apartments fell into a centuries-long neglect after Alexander's death. That neglect supposedly arose from the evil reputation they had acquired. Giuliano della Rovere, who succeeded his hated enemy as pope, vigorously declined to live in the same quarters. But thereafter their unpopularity was caused by the fact that, as more buildings were added to the Vatican complex, the Apartments became dark, unfashionable and inconvenient. Neglect produced obscurity and obscurity inevitably produced legends. Among them was that invented by the Florentine writer Giorgio Vasari who, writing fifty years after Pinturicchio and his patron had died, stated confidently that one of the murals showed Alexander adoring his mistress, Giulia Farnese, thinly disguised as the Madonna. Yet the only mural portrait of the pope shows him unequivocally adoring the risen Christ. And over the centuries after Vasari's own death, those richly glowing murals disappeared almost entirely from public view behind clumsy partitions and cupboards. They were brought back to light in the nineteenth century, but by then the Disputation of St. Catherine was an enigma and the Borgia name encrusted with legend.

  Some ten minutes' walk from the Vatican Palace rose the enormous cylindrical mass known as the Holy Angel Castle. The Emperor Hadrian had erected it as a family tomb nearly fourteen hundred years earlier, but he built too well for his purpose, since the tomb was almost custom- made as a fortress. Not content, it seems, with the existing seven hills of Rome, Hadrian determined to build an eighth as sepulchre. That vast drum, rearing up directly from the bank of the Tiber, resembled a circular hillock, for the platform on its top circus was laid out by the emperor as a garden, complete with pine trees. It commanded the major bridge over the Tiber, and from that convenient garden suspended in the sky, missiles could be hurled outward—or into the heart of the city itself. Romans made use of that fact very rapidly and the Holy Angel entered upon its long and bloody history as the major castle of Rome.

  Only the most determined of cave dwellers would have wanted to live in the main sepulchral chamber, situated in the heart of the drum and reached by way of a winding, ascending passage. Air vents pierced into this passage for the convenience of funeral corteges, but there was no other source of lighting whatsoever and the sepulchral chamber itself was in darkness. Rising from the surface of the drum, however, was a tower designed to support the enormous monument of Hadrian. Within the tower were more chambers intended for the dead but capable of being transformed for the living, as it was relatively easy to pierce windows through the walls of the tower. This was done sometime before the tenth century, and the monument entered upon its second phase as a fortress-palace. By now its origins were forgotten. Legend had it that the Archangel Michael had appeared on the tower, sheathing his sword as a sign that a current epidemic of plague was ending. Gratefully the Romans erected a statue of the archangel on the tower in place of the long-vanished monument of Hadrian, and the structure was ever after known as the Castel Sant' Angelo.

  Rome was so fragmented that it was impossible to say he who held Sant' Angelo held Rome. Nevertheless, it was certainly true that whoever was installed in Sant' Angelo could defy Rome as long as he pleased, provided he was well stocked with food. Sant' Angelo was impregnable. There were bigger castles in Europe; there were also castles which were impregnable because of their inaccessible site. But no other military structure in Europe combined impregnability with close proximity to a vital area. There was only one tiny entrance, set down at the very base and leading directly into a narrow tunnel, so that any hope of battering an entrance was utterly impracticable. An assault tower could perhaps be set against the drum, but the continuous curve meant that contact could be made only along a very limited area. The advent of cannon had little impact on Sant' Angelo. A prolonged cannonade would doubtless make life unpleasant for anyone in the tower or elsewhere on the surface of the drum; but in such an emergency it was easy enough to descend to the main sepulchral chamber and there await the end of the bombardment. The only possible way to get at the vulnerable interior was to demolish the thousands of tons of stone that protected it on all sides, but there was probably not sufficient gunpowder in Europe to hurl the number of cannon balls needed to do the job.

  Sant' Angelo had passed into and out of the hands of the papacy, depending on the ebb and flow of papal power in the city, until two centuries before Borgia when the then occupant of the castle, an Orsini, became pope, and thereafter Sant' Angelo remained as the main defense of the Vatican. Successive pope
s had tinkered with it, adding a few low buildings atop the drum and strengthening the outer defenses; but not even such great builders as Nicholas and Sixtus seemed to have grasped its full potential. Alexander, during his long years as a cardinal, must have occasionally idled away an hour planning what he would do with Sant' Angelo should he ever have the chance, for within a few weeks, possibly even days, of his election he was discussing a major project for the ancient building with the Florentine architect Antonio San Gallo. At about the same time that Pinturicchio began work on the Borgia Apartments, San Gallo brought in his army of masons and laborers who were to convert the vast, battered hulk of an emperor's tomb into a pope's elegant castle.

  Alexander had two main aims in mind: He wanted to exploit the full military potential of the structure in terms of modern theories of siegecraft, and he also wanted a home. Rome had been relatively quiet the past few years; certainly no external enemy had battered at the city gates within living memory. But the time would indubitably come again when perhaps his very life would depend upon his ability to put stone between himself and the mouths of cannon, and he had no intention of roughing it in the gaunt, haunted caverns of Sant' Angelo while his enemies luxuriated in the Vatican. San Gallo was therefore working not only as a military engineer but as domestic architect in partnership with Pinturicchio.