The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere
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Authors: Caroline P. Murphy
Tags: #Social Sciences, #Women's Studies, #History, #Renaissance, #Catholicism, #16th Century, #Italy
The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere
CAROLINE P. MURPHY
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2005 by Caroline P. Murphy
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All Rights Reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available ISBN-13: 978-0-19-518268-2 ISBN-10: 0-19-518268-5
In Memory of John Shearman
3 The della Rovere Women in Rome
6 The Education of Felice della Rovere
8 Felice and the Queen of France
9 Madonna Felice is Everything
12 Felice, Michelangelo and the Pincian Hill
2 Childbirth and its Aftermath
3 The Pope’s Daughter Becomes the Pope’s Friend
10 A Slave to the House of Orsini
15 Dowries and the Great Queen
VIEW OF ROME – SIXTEENTH CENTURY
a
Palazzo de Cupis on Piazza Navona. Felice’s childhood home
b
Palazzo Sforza Cesarini. Known in Felice’s day as Cancelleria Vecchia, where she married Gian Giordano Orsini
c
Monte Giordano. Fortress-like home to the Orsini family
d
Palazzo dell’Orologio. Orsini palace built into ancient theatre of Pompey on market square of Campo dei Fiore
e
Palazzo dei Dodici Apostoli. Built by Felice’s father, her hiding place during the Sack of Rome
f
Saint Peter’s and the Vatican Palace
g
Villa Belvedere
h
Chuch of Trinità dei Monti, where Felice had a chapel, and adjacent site of her palace
i
Church of San Onofrio. Patronised by Felice’s step-father, Bernardino de Cupis
j
Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima. Church of the German nation
k
Santa Maria del Popolo. Della Rovere family church, where Felice is buried
l
Via Alessandrina. Main street from St Peter’s to Castel Sant’Angelo
m
Via dei Banchi Nuova. Commercial Street near Monte Giordano
n
Via Giulia, commissioned by Julius II
o
Church of San Giovanni Battista degli Genovesi and
p
Church of San Francesco a Ripa, marking district in Trastevere where Felice’s father probably met her mother
q
Ponte Sant’Angelo
r
Castel Sant’Angelo
s
Ponte Sisto
t
Trevi Fountain
u
Pantheon
v
Colosseum
The name of this book’s protagonist, Felice means lucky or fortunate. The word applies as much to the author, as it does to the heroine. I am immensely fortunate in all the help I have received from so many people.
It was my husband, Henry Dietrich Fernández who found Felice for me and encouraged me to write this book. Any number of ideas within are his, for which he is both credited and un-credited, and he has spent countless hours, at any time of the day or night talking about Felice, her friends and associates, making them into living people.
At the University of California, Riverside, I owe a great deal to my research assistant, Catherine de Luca, who not only retrieved, but also discovered documents in the Orsini Archive at UCLA, and who has provided equally valued service in Florence. My departmental colleague Steven
F. Ostrow is the one who first saw Felice in the Mass of Bolsena and Conrad Rudolph first alerted me to Felice’s ancestor, Jacopa Normanni. UCR’s Academic Senate research fund provided financial support for the project
In
2001–2
, I went for a year to Italy, where I was supported by a John Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence. I would like to thank everyone at I Tatti who made a contribution in some way to this book, including Andrew and Jacalyn Blume, Kurt Barstow, Christopher Hughes, Suzanne Cusick, Katherine Gill, Marilena Falzerano Cirillo, Deanna Schemek, Geraldine Albers, Allen Grieco, Paul Hills, Lawrence Jenkens and Michael Rocke, Bruce Edelstein and Jonathan Nelson. I Tatti’s director, Joseph Connors, will recognize that I have appropriated his idea about Guidobaldo Della Rovere, Clarice Orsini and Titian’s Venus of Urbino.
Others who have also helped in different ways include Bruce Boucher, Evelyn Welch, Olwen Hufton, Sara Matthews Grieco, Carolyn Valone, Sheryl Reiss, Gillian Malpass, Silvia Evangelisti, Sabine Eiche, Kathleen Wren Christiansen, Sinead O’Flynn, Piers Baker Bates, Robin Bledsoe and Jacqueline Marie Musacchio. I am also grateful to the staff of the many libraries and archives I consulted, including those of the Library of Congress, Harvard University, UCLA Special Collections, Villa I Tatti, The Biblioteca Vallicelliana, the Archivio Storico Capitolino of Rome and the Archivio di Stato of Rome, Florence and Mantua
Ruth Harris introduced me to my agent, Gill Coleridge, who has helped so much to bring this book into being; practically, emotionally and intellectually. Thanks also go to my US agent Melanie Jackson and to Lucy Luck.
At Faber, I have been extremely felicitous to have had Julian Loose as an editor, because he taught me so much about the art of biography and storytelling, and this would be a very different book without his input. Thanks also go to everybody at Faber who have helped in its production, including Henry Volans and Nick Lowndes, and to my copy-editor, Jill Burrows.
Thank you also to Peter Ginna and Furaha Norton at Oxford University Press.
It grieves me, however, that the person who gave in an overwhelming way to this book is not here to see its publication. Professor John Shear-man died suddenly in August last year, but in
2000
he bequeathed me the detailed notes he had compiled over the years on Felice, on my promise that ‘I would take them seriously’, and I have consulted them until the very last moment of this book’s completion. He helped me obtain the fellowships I needed to finish my research, and it made me very proud when he asked me to be included among his students at his retirement party in Florence. I always intended that the book would be his, but I never expected to have to dedicate it to his memory. But it is to his memory, with affection and gratitude, that I dedicate
The Pope’s Daughter
.
Casa all’Arco Cenci Tavani, Rome, July,
2004
Author’s Note
For the sake of readability in English, quoted translations are not always literal ones from Latin and Italian, but have been adapted to facilitate greater reader comprehension. Efforts have been made to standardize Renaissance spelling, often anything but standard. Any errors are my own.
In the left-hand corner of
The Mass of Bolsena
, part of the fresco cycle Raphael painted in
1512
in the Vatican Palace apartments of Pope Julius II, an attractive young woman stands out from those surrounding her. Her companions’ hands frame her face and direct the viewer’s eye towards her. She is the only individual in her group to be dressed in black – unusual for a young woman of the time. Equally striking is the alertness and intelligence of her gaze, as she looks across the painting to the figure of Pope Julius II, who is depicted receiving Holy Communion. A sharp-eyed viewer might notice that the Pope and the engaging young woman share a physiognomy: sloping forehead, nose and chin. But what few could possibly know is that this figure is an image of Pope Julius II’s only daughter, Felice della Rovere, who became the most powerful woman in Rome of her day.
The story of Felice della Rovere lies at the heart of Rome, embedded deep within the fabric of the city, and she is still to be found there. Felice is present at the Piazza Navona, where the palace in which she spent her earliest years still stands. She exists in the narrow medieval streets of Governo Vecchio and the Via de’ Banchi, down which she rode her mule. There are the fifteenth-century palaces of Sforza Cesarini, the old Palazzo della Cancelleria, where she got married, and Monte Giordano, where she spent much of her adult life. The eighteenth-century Spanish Steps lead to the Pincian Hill, the site of a villa and a church she loved. We can cross, as she did, the Ponte Sant’Angelo, and enter into the region of the Vatican, the fortress of Castel Sant’Angelo, where she attended parties, and the Vatican Palace itself, where Felice visited her father, and where her image still remains. Other buildings that contain her belong to the seventeenth century, and include the Oratory designed by the architect Borromini, home today to the Archivio Capitolino, which houses her official papers and the thousands of letters she wrote and received.