The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (17 page)

This highly unusual father–daughter transaction is emblematic of the complex relationship between Julius and Felice. On some levels, he treated her poorly, and he would continue to do so until he died. On others, he could almost be described as a progressive parent. As much as he adored her, Alexander VI never gave Lucrezia large sums of money of her own; her dowry passed into her husbands’ hands, and she had a good deal of difficulty extracting any for herself. Yet Julius, who distanced himself on so many occasions from his daughter, gave her a financial autonomy rare among women of her time.

What did Felice do with her money? It served as a nest egg for her and alleviated some of her anxiety about what might become of her should her time with the Orsini prove brief. But she did not put it in a bank or purchase an annuity, as was common for women of her day. Instead, she invested it in a way that shows she had paid attention to what Bracciano meant to the Orsini. Like Bracciano, her investment was practical and lucrative as well as spectacular and symbolic. Felice della Rovere, Bracciano’s new
Signora
, bought a castle of her very own.

chapter 5

The Castello of Palo

Felice had been an Orsini family member for two and a half years when she became a property-owner in her own right. In that time, the twenty-sixyear-old had experienced life amidst a baronial family at first hand. If she was not particularly impressed by individual Orsini family members, she had come to recognize the benefits of life as a landed noble. Through negotiations such as those she had undertaken for Dianora Orsini, she saw the wealth and power that came with access to and control of agricultural produce; these were new and useful lessons for a woman raised within an urban world. Owning a castle, with a surrounding estate stretching out for miles around, was like possessing a small kingdom, of which its owner was the ruler. Money was made in the most direct of ways, through the sale of produce grown on the land. It was not necessarily an easy investment and there was the responsibility of maintenance, of care and protection of the building, its lands and workers, but these were challenges Felice enjoyed. When, in late
1508
, the opportunity came for her to buy the seafront castle of Palo, a few miles to the north-west of Rome, from Gian Giordano’s cousin Giulio Orsini, she immediately took advantage of it. The purchase was in itself a bold and audacious act for a woman. Few women of Felice’s time owned property in their own name and if they did, they had normally received it from a father as part of a dowry, and it would become fully theirs only when they became widows. So, as a married female property-owner, Felice della Rovere was a decided anomaly.

Given how indelibly their property was tied up with the identity of the Roman barons, why would Giulio Orsini wish to part with his castle? Like many of the Orsini men, Giulio Orsini had earned his living as a
condottiere
. His years of service stretched back to the
1480
s, when he had worked for the Medici family. The castle Giulio owned at Palo was of particular usefulness and importance. Built in
1367
, it was typical of the fortified strongholds of its day and served as a useful depository and point of exchange for all kinds of goods, including weapons shipped down the coast, primarily from Tuscan ports.
¹
However, like Gian Giordano, Giulio had suffered under Borgia rule. His estates and their revenues were confiscated by Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia and they had personally occupied the castle for a time. Giulio Orsini was thus considerably impoverished by the time of the reign of Pope Julius. From Giulio’s point of view, the idea of selling Palo to Felice might have been somewhat unorthodox, given that she was a woman, but the sale had definite advantages. It provided him with a substantial sum of ready cash –
9000
ducats – and with the purchaser being his relative’s wife, it might seem as if Palo was not actually going out of the family. Giulio perhaps even believed that his son Mario might eventually see its return. Felice, however, viewed Palo in an entirely different light. Once the property was hers, as far as she was concerned, it bore no relation to the Orsini family whatsoever.

In January
1509
, a series of notarial acts took place ‘in Rome, at Monte Giordano, in the
Camera Magna
of the palace’. This location, the most important room in Monte Giordano, indicates the seriousness of the transactions. Giulio Orsini was present, as was the Orsini lawyer, Prospero di Aquasparta. On
16
January the first meeting held was to confirm the ‘sale of the castle situated at Palo with its land holding, done by Prospero di Aquasparta, in the name of Giulio Orsini, in favour of Donna Felice Orsini della Rovere for the price of
9000
golden ducats, of which
8
,
060
is payable now, and the remaining
940
ducats she promises to pay by the end of sixteen months’.
²
Three days later, a ‘receipt and quittance’ was made up between Giulio and Felice in which Giulio ‘confirms that he has received in hand, and in cash,
8
,
600
ducats for the sale of Palo made by Prospero di Aquasparta, my procurator, to the Illustrious Madonna Felice Rovere Ursino’.
³

For Felice, Palo was a practical acquisition, but it was also a property endowed with prestige and replete with symbolic relevance for its new owner. Palo allowed Felice to express her multi-faceted identity, as della Rovere daughter, as Bracciano bride, as the woman who was ‘dedicated to letters and antiquities’, as well as in her burgeoning role as entrepreneur and businesswoman.

The castle itself dated back to
1367
, but its site was among the oldest developments in the history of Italian civilization. Not even the antiquity-obsessed Isabella d’Este could claim she owned anything with such ancient resonance. The Etruscan scholar George Dennis wrote of the site in
1848
, ‘Palo is well-known to travellers as the halfway house between Rome and Civitavecchia; but few bear in mind that the post-house, the ruined fortress, and the fishers’ huts on the beach represent the Alsium of antiquity – one of the most hoary towns of Italy, founded or occupied by the Pelasgi – ages before the arrival of the Etruscans on these shores.’
4

Its name, the first century
ad
poet Silius Italicus speculated, derived from Argive Halesus, the son of Agamemnon. In Etruscan times, Alsium had been a major harbour and, in the days of ancient Rome, a popular holiday resort for the wealthy. The Roman general Pompey had a villa there, as did Pliny the Younger’s mother-in-law, which she had bought from his guardian, Rufus Verginius, who called it ‘the nesting place of his old age’. Several emperors also vacationed here, including Antoninus, whose villa was praised for its location, ‘surrounded by hills, and looking out on to the sea’. Destroyed in the gothic invasions, the site was resettled in the early Middle Ages, its new name, Palo, believed to derive from the
palludi
, the marshy terrain, on which it was situated. While Palo might not have been as resonant a name as Alsium, for Felice it allowed her another link with antiquity. Another first century
ad
poet, Pollio Felice, had been famous for his seafront villa in the south. Built onto a promontory at Sorrento, this site was one that later attracted the attention of Giovanna, the fifteenth-century Aragonese Queen of Naples. In a Renaissance world delighting in word and name play, Pollio Felice and Palo Felice would provide amusement, reinforcing the idea that it was Felice’s destiny to own such a place. The seafront site itself provided further opportunities for Felice’s self-expression and self-assertion. As a della Rovere family member, she would

feel that the sea played its part in her identity. As a teenager, she had vowed, as she told Baldessar Castiglione, to throw herself into the sea rather than let herself be taken by the Borgia. She had sailed many times up and down the coast that she could now see from her castle’s windows. Looking out over the sea from what was now her own property, Felice could recall herself as a young girl taken from her family in Rome to the safety of Savona, the della Rovere home town. No great future had been planned for the cardinal’s daughter. Seeing that castle from the ship she could never have imagined that it would one day be hers. A realization of the heights to which she had now ascended made her new possession all the sweeter.

Palo’s location allowed Felice the opportunity to make a further connection with her father. Julius, mockingly called a ‘boatman’ by Erasmus in
Julius Exclusus
, was a great nautical enthusiast. He maintained a large fleet of galleons at the Roman port of Ostia, the town of which he had once been bishop. At the time of Felice’s acquisition of Palo, he was in the process of building a harbour at Civitavecchia, for which in
1510
Bramante designed a large fortress. Palo was exactly halfway between Ostia and Civitavecchia. Julius undoubtedly approved of his daughter’s purchase, because it added to della Rovere control of the Roman water.

Although Felice might not have been aware of it, her mother’s bloodline could also be traced to this area. The Normanni had once owned property at Castrum di Martignano, located by Lake Martignano, a few miles from Palo. In the twelfth century, the Normanni had owned a castle there, inherited in
1270
by Constanza, the widow of Pandolfo Normanni, who had sold it to family members Giovanni and Stefano.
⁵
In yet another sense, Felice was returning to her roots. Whether she was aware of this particularly intimate connection or not, Felice understood that possession of Palo allowed her to position herself in her own right within Rome’s baronial history. Palo’s illustrious past as Alsium allowed her a relationship with the ancient world. The fourteenth-century castle gave her a substantial stake in Rome’s medieval past. Felice did not need to invent a venerable Roman ancestry for herself – her mother had already provided her with one – but few could argue that her ownership of the castle cemented her position.

chapter 6

The Entrepreneur

Personal prestige, the augmentation of an identity, a relationship with the ancient world – these were all desirable accoutrements for the Renaissance noblewoman. They were not, however, Felice’s primary reason for acquiring Palo. She wanted it to make her money. Private income was her primary safeguard against Gian Giordano dying before she could give birth to an Orsini son and heir. The shoreline of Palo might have been marshy, but the land set back from Palo was exceptionally fertile, the soil almost black. The castle came with substantial acreage, partly dense forest and partly wheatfields.

The importance of wheat to the Roman economy cannot be overstated. Bread was the city’s primary staple and many of the city’s workers received part of their wages in bread. Insufficient quantities of grain were grown in the Roman
campagna
and, in order to feed its citizens adequately, merchants imported large amounts from elsewhere in Italy. Anyone who played a part in the bringing of grain to Rome had some stake in the city’s finances, and with that came a role in the city’s politics.

The revenue from the sale of Palo’s grain was Felice’s own. It made her a wealthy woman in her own right, independent of her husband or her father. She also exploited her newly acquired assets to gain further access to the Vatican Palace, and established a business partnership, which would flourish for more than a decade, with the most powerful secular figure within the Vatican, Giuliano Leno. Giuliano Leno came from a family very much like the de Cupis, whose members were bureaucrats and city officials.
¹
The Leno family had long-standing ties with cardinals from the della Rovere family. They also married into another bourgeois Roman family, the del Bufalo; Felice’s half-sister Francesca de Cupis was married to Angelo del Bufalo. Leno became the general contractor for the Vatican Palace. No substance, from building material for New St Peter’s to firewood or foodstuffs, entered the Vatican without a licence from him. He had worked for Julius when he was still Cardinal Giuliano, overseeing the building of the cardinal’s palace at San Pietro in Vincoli. The new purchase made by the Pope’s daughter interested him greatly, and he looked to profit from it as well. Felice needed somebody who could help her sell her produce in Rome. She wanted to operate independently of the markets controlled by the major Roman families, including the Orsini. Giuliano Leno could supply Felice with what she needed and he made a contract with her to broker the sale of Palo’s harvest in Rome.

Felice, together with Leno, directed much of Palo’s yield directly into the Vatican Palace. Thus Felice came to supply a portion of her father’s – the Holy Father’s – daily bread and his cardinals came to realize that Felice was a financial force in her own right. With this new position came further power and influence for Felice at the papal court, power and influence that could outlast her father’s reign.

Giuliano Leno was not the only Vatican official Felice employed in helping her broker the sale of her grain. Nor did all of it go to Rome. A surviving account book from
1511
shows how she exploited Palo’s seafront location, her old ties with Savona, and a good relationship with high-ranking Orsini servants. The agents in charge of selling this part of her harvest were Giovanni Paolo, the castellan of Bracciano, and ‘Maestro Biasso, captain of the galley of His Holiness’. Felice della Rovere, who recognized the importance of befriending servants, may have become acquainted with Captain Biasso on her journeys from Rome to Savona. Now, some years later, she persuaded him, doubtless with suitable financial reward, to ship grain to locations that were easily accessible from Palo. He would have used a ship from the papal fleet, something he could have done only with the Pope’s blessing, which suggests that Julius endorsed his daughter’s business activities. Thanks to his assistance, Felice’s customers came to include residents of the island of Elba, about sixty kilometres north-west of Palo.