The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (23 page)

Felice’s mother, Lucrezia, knew the difficulties of producing a son, as nine years separated Felice from her younger brother, Gian Domenico. Bernardino and the community of Recanati might have said prayers and made offerings on Lucrezia’s behalf at the Casa Santa, and the De Cupis would have believed that this would have contributed to the arrival of Gian Domenico in
1492
. With her own success in mind, Lucrezia might have counselled her daughter to visit Loreto, pray to the Virgin and ask her to make sure that Felice was indeed carrying a boy. The Virgin Mary, after all, had miraculously conceived a son within those very stone walls, which had been borne on the wings of angels to Italy. Later in the sixteenth century, Loreto became popular as a pilgrimage site with women from the Medici family who were equally anxious for a son. Giovanna d’Austria, the wife of Duke Francesco, endowed money, paintings and wall hangings to the church at Loreto. When she gave birth to Filippo, a special Mass was sung at the church to celebrate his arrival.

It was perhaps Felice herself who established the fashion among elite women for visiting Loreto for this specific purpose, because her own prayers were indeed answered. On
17
May
1512
, ‘Signor Francesco was born...one hour before dawn.’
⁵

chapter 2

Childbirth and its Aftermath

Felice gave birth at Bracciano, where she had stayed for the previous month. Labour was a perilous event that could easily claim a woman’s life, as it would that of Felice’s counterpart, Lucrezia Borgia, in
1519
. The parturient woman had recourse to prayers to Margaret, the patron saint of painless delivery. Other talismanic tricks to prevent a miscarriage included carrying diamonds – Felice had an abundance in her possession – or an aquiline stone, a mineral whose hollow core containing small loose pieces resembles a womb containing a child. She could also place a coriander seed beneath her during labour to ensure a fast delivery.
¹

After the birth of her baby, the time Felice could spend with her son was almost non-existent. She was not present at his baptism because custom dictated the christening had to take place almost immediately after a child’s birth, while the mother was still confined to her bed. If a child died before officially entering the Christian church, his soul could enter only into limbo, not into the kingdom of heaven. The future of a newborn of this time was so uncertain that immediate baptism was an imperative.

The birth of Francesco is recorded in Felice’s account book. An account book seems a strange place to record the birth of a son and heir, but an explanation for the entry is provided by the subsequent record, for
20
May: ‘Hieronyma, wet nurse (
balia
) of Bracciano, began her service. We have Catherina as wet nurse number two.’ Catherine was a reserve in case of problems arising with Hieronyma’s milk. The employment of the wet nurses needed to be accounted for in order to justify the expenditure in this list of receipts. The wet nurse did not stay with Felice. Instead, she took the newborn Francesco away from Bracciano. Only a few days after the child’s birth, Felice’s account book notes, ‘The Signora gave funds to the husband of Hieronyma, the
balia
, for their journey from Bracciano to Vicovaro.’ Felice, anxious that her newborn child should have the best start in life, had undoubtedly carefully vetted the candidates who would nurse her son. Qualities in the
balia
that she would have looked for would be the recommended age of between thirty-two and thirty-five, as the milk of younger women was believed to be weak; strength, and good-sized breasts, which should be not too large and, of course, have no sores on the nipples. Ideally, the
balia
should have given birth to a boy, as her milk would thus be stronger, and its consistency would have been checked to make sure it was pure and white.
²

Hieronyma and her husband took Francesco with them to Vicovaro, the other main Orsini estate. The castle of Vicovaro, located to the south of Rome, had been in Orsini possession ever since Celestine III granted it to his nephew Orso. It was quite remote, the surrounding terrain more mountainous and inaccessible than that surrounding Bracciano. Traditionally, children from the Bracciano Orsini clan spent their early years in this isolated rural setting where plague was less of a threat. Plague was the disease every parent feared, and the reason why the children of the elite often lived so far from an urban parental home, with its attendant danger of disease.

Until the Orsini children were a little older, Vicovaro was the only world they knew. They were looked after by their
balia
, who, even after the children were too old to be breastfed, would stay on to take care of them. In
1520
, when Francesco was eight years old, his
balia
was still on the Orsini payroll. They also learned to ride and, when they were a little older, they would have a tutor for academic lessons. Felice made regular visits to Vicovaro, and spent a few months of every year there with the children, but it was never her primary residence. After giving birth to Francesco, she spent a month at Bracciano, observing the traditional postpartum period of confinement. By
17
June she had returned to Rome and was busy petitioning her father to let her betroth her daughter Julia to Alfonso d’Este’s son.

One effect of having another woman nurse her child was that Felice was fertile again almost immediately. Four years had passed between the birth of her last child and the birth of Francesco. However, five months after Francesco’s birth, she was pregnant again, and on
7
July,
1513
, ‘Signor Girolamo was born on Friday, at half-past eight.’ Despite her long-distance parenting, the children seemed to be Felice’s responsibility rather than their father’s. She authorized the
balia’s
salary and included her among her personal staff. It was Felice who named her children and the names she gave them were associated with della Rovere men. Her daughter, Julia, was called after her own father, while Francesco was given the original name of Felice’s great-uncle, Pope Sixtus IV. The name also recalled the then pre-canonization Francesco di Paola, the founder of the Minims at Trinità dei Monti, with whom Felice was very familiar. Francesco was believed to help pregnant women give birth to healthy sons; Louisa of Savoy, who had prayed with Francesco di Paola, named her son, the future Francis I of France, after him. Felice’s account book records that after the birth of her son she paid for a Mass served in the Blessed Francesco’s honour. Girolamo acquired his name from the della Rovere cardinal for whom her stepfather had worked when Felice was a little girl.

About a year after Girolamo’s birth came Felice’s fourth and final child, a girl she named Clarice. The choice of the names for all her children is significant. None of the names of her first three children had any connection with the Orsini family; they were named after her father, great-uncle and cousin. The only one to bear an Orsini name was the last and Felice did not name her to please the immediate Orsini family. Clarice was named after Clarice Orsini, the mother of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici. Cardinal Giovanni was Julius’s successor as pope in
1513
, taking the name of Leo X. In the aftermath of her father’s death, Felice busied herself courting Leo’s favour, knowing his protection and promotion would be yet another weapon in her personal arsenal. Naming her daughter after his mother was one component in Felice’s courtship of the new pope.

chapter 3

The Pope’ s Daughter Becomes the Pope’s Friend

Giovanni de’ Medici was born in
1475
, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and Clarice Orsini. He was the Medici family’s first cardinal, elected in
1488
at the age of thirteen, after his father had placed unrelenting pressure on Pope Innocent VIII. Julius had favoured him, recognizing his useful connections to the Florentine banking families as well as to France, and had placed him in several important positions, including that of papal legate to Bologna. Good natured and unfailingly cheerful, Giovanni de’ Medici was popular with his fellow clerics. His election as pope at the conclave following Julius’s death was approved by the great majority of cardinals. The new Leonine pope was only thirty-eight, exceptionally young for a pontiff, and he was expected to have a lengthy reign.

Leo was completely different in character from his predecessor. Neither irascible nor bellicose, he was instead a corpulent sybarite and hedonist with, among other ailments, severe gout. His sexual proclivities meant he did not fill the Vatican with female prostitutes as Alexander VI had done but there were still lavish entertainments populated by freaks and fools. He also collected an increasingly exotic menagerie of animals, including Hanno the elephant, who became a favourite at the papal court. Leo did not ascend the papal throne with the same vision of a new Rome as Julius. Leo was a Medici, and Florence, not Rome, was his city and it had first call on his allegiance. None the less, as a Medici, he brought an exceptionally cultivated and courtly background with him. His first love was not theology but the arts, particularly literature and music, and he did not hesitate to continue Julius’s schemes to build New St Peter’s. Leo’s obsession with Raphael, both on artistic grounds and on an unreciprocated personal level, was such that the artist and his workshop became even more firmly entrenched at the Vatican. When Bramante died in
1514
, it was Raphael whom Leo appointed as the new architect of St Peter’s, despite the painter’s lack of architectural experience and much to the disgust of Michelangelo, who had hoped the position would be his.

Leo, as Cardinal Giovanni, had been present at Felice’s wedding to Gian Giordano, earning a frown from Paris de Grassis for wearing a purple hat instead of the standard red one. His position at Julius’s court had strengthened his bond with Felice. She had written to him early in her marriage, reminding him of the love they bore each other as she solicited his support for Gian Giordano’s uncle Bartolomeo. Leo did have some attachment to the Orsini family. He had loaned Gian Giordano money to help him repair Monte Giordano, and he made Gian Giordano’s son-in-law, the
condottiere
Renzo da Ceri, captain of the papal army. But he appeared to regard Felice as a separate entity from the family into which she had married. He shared the attitude of the curia and the humanists towards Felice, that she was Julius’s living legacy, and as such was to be revered and admired. More to the point, she was an economic force in her own right, a businesswoman with whom it was in Leo’s interests to be on good terms.

On
29
July
1515
, the Florentine ambassador to Rome, Balar di Piscia, wrote to Leo’s nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici back in Florence, ‘His Holiness is sending me to Vicovaro to Madonna Felice, to discuss a purchase of
6000
to
8000
rubbios
of grain to be sent back here to Rome. He understands that is what she has.’ The implication was that Felice was selling a large portion of her grain reserves to the Pope.
¹
Felice even loaned money to Leo’s family, advancing
2000
ducats to his brother Giuliano, Duke of Nemours.

For Leo, a woman granting him favours rather than expecting or demanding something of him was an anomaly. The Florentine Bartolomeo Cerretani commented on the nature of the women in Leo’s life at court: ‘There were his three sisters with their children there, and his sister-in-law, that is the mother of Lorenzo, and all were waiting to ask for and to procure the incomes from benefices and cardinals’ hats.
²
Cerretani concluded it was demands such as these that reduced Leo’s papacy from wealth to poverty. There was a fierce rivalry between these women as they vied for the Pope’s affection and generosity. They became unpopular at the Roman court in a way that Felice never was. The worst of them, indisputably, was the greedy and grasping Alfonsina Orsini, Duke Lorenzo’s mother. Although she was Gian Giordano’s cousin, she and Felice always kept their distance.

Felice drew attention to the difference between herself and the women of the new papal
famigilia
by extending further favours to Leo. What pleased the pope the most was helping him to indulge in the pastime he loved most of all – the hunt.

chapter 4

The Pope Goes Hunting

Leo had spent some of his youth in France, where he had developed a taste for the chase, the pre-eminent courtly activity of the north. The hunt was rarely limited to a single day, with just a few horses and dogs. Instead, a litany of servants,
cacciatori
and
falconieri
was employed, and the event could extend over several days, complete with lavish banquets and overnight stays at the hunting lodge.