The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (13 page)

The bridegroom her father now proposed, Gian Giordano Orsini, might not have been a Mantuan or a Ferrarese duke, but he offered attractions of his own. He was the leader of one of Rome’s two most powerful families. Marriage to Gian Giordano would assure Felice’s place in Rome. As wife of the Orsini Lord, Felice could stay in Rome; there was no threat of relegation to a small Tuscan port town, or to France, or to southern Italy, or to a ramshackle palace in Genoa. Instead, she would acquire increased status in the city of her birth, elevated to a position not contingent on the vagaries of her father’s recognition.

‘I have decided to write’, wrote Francesco Sansovino in
1565
, ‘of the illustrious deeds of the Orsini family, who are the most noble among all others, not only in Rome, but throughout Italy, filled with honourable merit, as much for their military deeds as their civil ones, and who, for a long time now, have done many things worthy of eternal memory.’
⁴
Sansovino’s story of the Orsini family is a long one. As he promises, it is filled with daring military exploits, which firmly fix the family’s presence on the international political stage over the course of several centuries. The Orsini were old Roman aristocracy. Many of Rome’s new elite were obliged to invent their roots, often claiming a lineage older than Rome itself to inflate themselves. The Sienese banker Agostino Chigi, who by the early sixteenth century was the wealthiest man in Italy, fashioned a lineage for himself dating back to the Etruscans. Pope Alexander VI claimed he was descended from the Egyptian Pharaohs. The Orsini had no need of such devices. Everyone in Rome knew that their solid baronial roots could be traced back as far as the twelfth century, which endowed them with a five-hundred-year history on a par with that of the Neapolitan kings and longer than that of the d’Este, Gonzaga or Sforza families. The Normanni, Felice’s mother’s family, were equally venerable, but they no longer had the wealth and power of the Orsini.

The family name Orsini was derived from Cardinal Orso Boveschi, nephew to Pope Celestine III, who was elected in
1191
. Orso established a powerful curial dynasty, with attendant financial benefits.
⁵
The family bought vast tracts of land in the Roman
campagna
, giving them a substantial stake in Rome’s food supply, as well as control of the roads approaching Rome. In the city itself, they possessed numerous houses and palaces, but had two particularly important residences. One, a palace that came to be known as Palazzo dell’Orologio because of its clock tower, was embedded into the fabric of the ancient Theatre of Pompey, located next to Rome’s most important market, Campo dei Fiori. The other, which came to be known as Monte Giordano, was less than a quarter of a mile away, just by the bend in the Tiber river. It was built upon a
monte
, a small hill now believed to been built up of discarded amphora from ancient Rome, unloaded from docks on the water over time. The character of the palace was that of
insediamento
, a fortified stronghold, rather like a walled village, containing various palaces and residences belonging to a number of family members.
⁶
Here Lucrezia Borgia spent some of her childhood, as at the time her father was having an affair with Giulia Farnese, the wife of Orso Orsini, and he placed his daughter in the care of his mistress. Monte Giordano’s main entrance was on Via Papalis, the papal processional street. Felice herself regularly passed Monte Giordano at its rear, on the Via dei Coronari, as she made her way from Piazza Navona to the Vatican. The Orsini dominated that district of Rome, and Felice had seen at first hand their importance to the city.

In
1277
, the Orsini acquired a pope of their own when Gian Gaetano Orsini became Nicholas III. Nicholas concentrated on developing the Vatican Palace as a papal seat of residence. The traditional papal palace was attached to Rome’s cathedral, St John the Lateran, several miles away on the other side of the Tiber river. However Nicholas sought to inflate the importance of the Vatican as it was located no more than half a mile from the Orsini terrain of Monte Giordano. In so doing, he expanded and consolidated the power of his family until it essentially ruled that part of Rome between the Tiber river and the Campus Martius. Being close to Rome’s major source of water, the area was the most highly populated in the city.

For the next two hundred years the Orsini family continued to grow, until it comprised twenty-nine distinct branches. The most important line was that of the Bracciano Orsini – to which Felice’s future bridegroom belonged – named for the huge estate they controlled to the north of Rome. They occupied castles in the Roman
campagna
and individual
palazzi
protected by the walls of Monte Giordano, or in the fabric of the Theatre of Pompey.
⁷
The sheer number of the Orsini, backed by financial power, made the family troublesome, if not downright dangerous, for the papacy. The Orsini’s bitter enemy was the other hugely powerful Roman family, the Colonna, and the fighting between them had been one of the justifications for the papal capital being moved from Rome to Avignon.

When the papacy did return to Rome, under the helm of the Colonna pope, Martin V, Cardinal Giordano Orsini immediately took advantage of these newly peaceful times to attempt to create a different atmosphere in his titular home. Cardinal Giordano wanted to bring Florence’s new humanist culture to Rome. He collected an impressive library of ancient writings, which he wished housed in a fitting setting. He augmented, embellished and modernized his palace, commissioning architects to use the latest
all’antica
architectural language in its building. This style had originated in Rome, but had not been used in the city for many centuries, although it was visible in the column capitals in Monte Giordano’s courtyard. He also hired the Florentine painter Masolino, the associate of Masaccio, to paint a vast fresco cycle picturing the lives of famous men.
⁸
Biblical and classical heroes adorned the walls of the palace’s
sala grande
. The room impressed Giovanni Rucellai, the Florentine banker who believed so firmly in architectural magnificence that he hired Alberti to design his family palace and adjacent chapel and believed building to be as important as fathering children. On his visit to Rome for the Jubilee of
1450
, he made note of ‘Monte Giordano where the Cardinal Orsini lives, where there is a most beautiful room decorated with well-executed figures, and with certain windows which have alabaster in place of glass’.
⁹
This use of alabaster allowed a golden, glowing light to filter into the room. Cardinal Giordano’s
sala
became a theatrical
salon
; Rome’s humanists would meet there, dressed up in ancient costume to conduct discussions appropriate to the intellectual ambience of this palatial environment.

The peace between the Orsini and Colonna was an uneasy one and fighting broke out again towards the end of the century. In
1482
the Colonna ransacked Monte Giordano, and they returned again in
1485
to attempt to burn the Orsini stronghold to the ground. Although most of the structural fabric of the palace was saved, Cardinal Giordano’s spectacular fresco cycle, among the most significant paintings in fifteenth-century Rome, was destroyed.

For Pope Julius II, the threat of ongoing conflict between these families was disturbing. How could he continue the quest for a magnificent new Rome if the Orsini and Colonna still insisted on acting out their feudal disputes in the city’s streets? How could he build his glorious new creations when there was the constant risk of fire? What would happen to the ecclesiastical economy if pilgrims shunned a city made dangerous and violent by the barons who were supposed to be leading it? Julius needed a truce between the two sides, and he needed a means of controlling them. His sympathies inclined towards the Orsini, who had traditionally been
guelphs

– supporters of the papacy – while the Colonna were
ghibellines
and supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor. Furthermore, he shared a common enemy with the Orsini: the Borgia. Pope Alexander VI and his son Cesare, having forged an alliance with the Colonna, had systematically waged war on the Orsini, whom they saw as a threat to their supremacy in Rome. They had attacked and confiscated much Orsini property, which had been returned to the family by Julius when he became pope. None the less, Julius did not want to appear to favour the Orsini too openly, as this would only further antagonize the Colonna and provoke disturbances.

Julius’s solution was to bind both families to him with matrimonial ties. He had once considered having Felice marry the young head of the Colonna family, Marcantonio. Now, he offered him his twenty-one-yearold niece Lucrezia, the daughter of his sister Luchina, dissolving her now less politically useful marriage to Alberto Carafa of Naples. The newly proposed husband for Felice, Gian Giordano, was head of the Orsini of Bracciano.

chapter 8

Gian Giordano

Francesco Sansovino provides the following summary of Gian Giordano Orsini: ‘His Imperial Majesty (the Holy Roman Emperor) always honoured Gian Giordano. This hero who for his incomparable fortune and valour, and for the stable reputation of his paternal state was a prince of the house of Orsini, not only revered by the Emperor and by Ferdinand, King of Naples, who gave him for his wife the lady Maria d’Aragona his daughter, but by all of Rome.’
1
Born in the
1560
s, so about twenty years older than Felice, Gian Giordano was recently widowed. He had married his first wife, Maria d’Aragona of Naples, the illegitimate daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon, in
1487
, when Felice was four years old. Maria died in
1504
, but not before she had borne him three children: two girls, Francesca and Carlotta, and a boy, Napoleone, born in
1501
. Gian Giordano’s profession, like that of his father, Gentile Virginio, and numerous Orsini ancestors, was that of
condottiere
. The
condottiere
was a contracted soldier of fortune, who hired himself and troops, often recruited in the medieval feudal manner from the villains on his estate, to the highest bidder.
²
In Gian Giordano’s case, that highest bidder was France. The Orsini
condottiere
became a loyal Francophile, organizing public displays in Rome to celebrate French military victories – sometimes of an incendiary nature.

To commemorate the outcome of the battle of Marignano in
1515
, Gian Giordano set alight an entire block of houses he owned near Monte Giordano. Small wonder then, that some, such as Felice’s younger cousin Francesco Maria della Rovere, would later describe him as ‘pubblico pazzo’ (‘plainly mad’).
³
France, with its emphasis on the chivalric past, was perhaps a place more in keeping with the sympathies of this soldier for hire than his own native country. Francesco Sansovino describes how ‘in France, he was singled out at court. King Louis XII marvelled at the greatness of this illustrious baron. When the King lost
20
,
000
ducats to him at cards, Gian Giordano performed a most royal act, for he spent the money on a superb and noble palace at Blois, where the court assembled. This building is still called the palace of Gian Giordano, and all say that the Orsini chose not to spend French money anywhere but France.’
4

Gian Giordano had been favoured by the French, but he also had good reason to be grateful to Julius II. He had suffered especially under Borgia rule. Alexander VI had poisoned his father Gentile Virginio in
1496
and confiscated his lands. Not only did Julius return them; he engineered the downfall of Alexander’s son Cesare, which could only give Gian Giordano considerable satisfaction. For Gian Giordano, taking Felice in marriage assured him continued papal support, and that was his prime motivation in making her his wife. The Italian nobility freely acknowledged that Gian Giordano was ‘moved to take a bastard of the house (of della Rovere), the daughter of a pope, to comply with his needs at the time’.
⁵

Maria d’Aragona had borne him three children, so he was not in need of an heir. Felice, with her difficult reputation preceding her, was hardly the most enticing marriage prospect. Nor was Julius prepared to provide a lavish dowry, so Gian Giordano had no great financial incentive. He was to project a carefully studied casual attitude to his bride on the occasion of their wedding. Julius did exact some revenge on Felice for her attitude towards the potential husbands he had put before her. Her dowry was
15
,
000
ducats, less than half the
40
,
000
Julius had declared he would offer Roberto Sanseverino although Gian Giordano agreed to settle a further
5,000
on Felice. On
26
May
1506
a meeting took place, notarized by the Orsini lawyer, Prospero d’Aquasparta, described as ‘an act of procurement by Gian Giordano Orsini to allow Bernardino de Cupis di Montefalco, and Paolo and Giacomo Oricellai to extract the dowry of the lady Felice della Rovere from the Reverend Lord Cardinal of San Pietro in Vincola [Galeotto Franciotto della Rovere], Vice Chancellor and the Illustrious Lord Prefect of the city [Julius’s brother, Giovanni]. This act has taken place in Rome in Monte Giordano.’
⁶
This agreement was immediately followed by a second transaction, a ‘declaration by Giacomo Rucellai, the procurator of Gian Giordano Oricellai, that he has received from the Cardinal of San Pietro in Vincola and from the Lord Prefect
15
,
000
ducats as a part of the
20
,
000
for their sister, and wife of Gian Giordano, Madonna Felice della Rovere, which will serve for the recovery of Marcellino in Monteverdi, [next to the Janiculum Hill in Rome] and Monte della Spagna at Tivoli.
⁷
These were estates Gian Giordano had lost during the Borgia pontificate.