The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (25 page)

Among the expenses for such festivities are some more gruesome outgoings, reminders of the constant presence of violence in the daily life of Renaissance Italy. In June
1514
, Felice paid
140
ducats for ‘the murder of Tolfia di Caroli, the homicide at Castelnuovo’. Although no other details are provided of this event, dealing with killings was an inevitable part of life as a feudal lord or lady, and one with which Felice was to become much more familiar. On this occasion, the
140
ducats was offered as compensation to Tolfia’s relatives, the equivalent of a lifetime’s wages of which his family would now be deprived. Felice also began to attend to other matters of Orsini estate business. She dealt with requests for assistance in obtaining justice, payments for labour and servants’ wages as well as keeping account of household activities. She performed these tasks while her husband was away and to an increasing extent even while he was in residence.

Felice also embarked on some more ambitious projects for the Orsini at Bracciano. One was to oversee repairs and renovation work on the castle, which had been left unattended over the years by Gian Giordano, who had invested more time and money on his French palace at Blois. Between January and April
1511
, Felice hired a team of painters, led by a man variously described as ‘il Mastro Depinctor’ (the master painter), ‘il depinctor da Viterbo’ (the painter from Viterbo), or by his given name as ‘Mastro Pasturea, depinctor’. He received a monthly wage varying between
10
and
11
ducats, and he brought with him to Bracciano assistants from the nearby city of Viterbo. A great contrast to the Vatican’s glamorous celebrity artists, these local artisans were hired to replenish the decorative paintwork on ceilings and beams, and brighten up the now forty-year-old frescos painted for Gentile Virginio by Antoniazzo Romano. Felice also brought in carpenters and woodworkers to make repairs to doors and windows. Such activity on her part at Bracciano indicates that she had begun to pay greater attention to her immediate surroundings. She had started to feel that the castle was her home.

The painters and carpenters hired to make these repairs were sufficiently skilled to do good, solid work but there was no requirement for them to be creative. In
1511
, however, Felice brought in a much more sophisticated design team to create the first public fountain in Bracciano.

chapter 7

Bracciano’s
fonte

When Italian women commissioned public buildings, they were often attracted to projects involving water.
¹
There is apparently no particular reason for this but perhaps they were more conscious of its domestic benefits than were their male counterparts. In the first century
bc
, Phile of Priene paid for a cistern and water pipes for her city and Modia Quinta built an aqueduct. In the fifteenth century, Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici rebuilt the public baths at Bagno a Morbo in Tuscany. Felice della Rovere’s own commitment to personal cleanliness was such that she had a private bathroom: one room of the castle is described in an inventory as ‘where the Signora bathes’. Its contents included ‘a pair of fire irons, a bath made of wood’, a low seat (presumably for the maidservant assisting her) and a bench.
²
The bathroom was located next to ‘the old kitchen’, which might not have been in use, but which would still have had a large fireplace, convenient for heating up large amounts of water.

The residents of Bracciano were fortunate in that they, unlike the Romans, had a very large supply of fresh water in the form of their lake. The enclosed area around the castle also contained a well. There was no easily accessible water source beyond Bracciano’s walls and the shores of the lake, but at the starting point of the road to Rome there was a spring. A fountain fed by the spring would be ideal for thirsty travellers and for those who lived beyond the walls of the castle.

The inscription running across the frieze at the top of the fountain, ‘Pro Pubblicatis Commoditatis’ (‘For the public convenience’), emphasizes that the fountain was designed to promote social well-being. Water spouts out from taps set into large rosettes, one of the Orsini insignia. A long rectangular basin collects the water, making it easy for horses to drink, and, divided into three parts, it facilitates the washing of clothes.

While Gian Giordano undoubtedly approved the fountain’s installation, he was often absent from Bracciano in
1511
, and does not seem to have demonstrated a great interest in the embellishment of his property. Felice was much more active in this capacity, and interested in ingratiating herself with the community whose ruler she was fast becoming in her husband’s stead. The choice of the Orsini rose might not seem to be one in keeping with the woman who promoted herself as a della Rovere. However, here it was in Felice’s interest to identify herself as Orsini Signora. The gift was not only practical; it was an object designed to add grace and beauty to the little town. As an act of patronage, it is in many ways a scaled-down version of Felice’s father’s activity in Rome.

The architecture of the fountain is as modern and up to date as anything that could be found in Rome in
1511
. Many residents of Bracciano, who had never travelled to Rome, had never seen architecture the like of their new fountain. It was a simple but elegant classical design, similar to the orginal Trevi fountain in Rome designed by Leon Battista Alberti in
1453
. Originally plastered white, concealing its brickwork, the Bracciano fountain was banded with Doric pilasters, from which the waterspouts protrude. The somewhat attenuated pilasters most closely resemble those at the Villa Chigi (now Villa Farnesina) built concurrently with this fountain by the architect and painter Baldessare Peruzzi for Agostino Chigi. On a number of occasions, Chigi, the wealthiest man in Italy, had loaned Julius II substantial sums of money. Julius devised a means of getting out of the payment of the loans by officially adopting Chigi. This act technically made Agostino and Felice brother and sister, and although they were not especially close they did share some business interests. In
1510
, Chigi asked for Felice’s help in finding lodging for a prelate, Antonio da Comopriora, and in
1513
her adopted brother signed the lease at the Orsini palace at Campo dei Fiori on behalf of a Sienese compatriot, Cardinal Francesco Saraceni.
³
In loaning Peruzzi to Felice, he was helping her achieve her desire to bring a little piece of modern Rome to fortified, medieval Bracciano. The artist had always had close connections to her family: one of Peruzzi’s first Roman commissions had been from Felice’s stepfather, Bernardino, at the church of San Onofrio. Nor would this be the last time in his life Peruzzi worked for Felice.

chapter 8

Weaving

Slowly but surely, such acts as commissioning a fountain helped Felice della Rovere consolidate her position at the Bracciano titular estate. By
1513
, she had a special staff of her own, described in her account book as ‘
li salariati
[the salaried] of the Illustrious Signora’. They were separate and autonomous from the other Bracciano servants. Some would travel with her as she moved from Rome to the countryside and back again; others would stay behind to act as her eyes and ears in her absence. Her salaried employees included Hieronyma, the
balia
, and her husband Philipetto, the
balio
, who looked after the children in Vicovaro. Felice also had a personal chaplain, Don Matteo, as well as
mulatieri
(mule-drivers) and
staffieri
(footmen). Apart from Hieronyma, the only woman directly employed by Felice at this time was a personal maid, Violante di Sanframondo. Servants were still predominantly male in Renaissance Italy. This record from
1513
is also the first time the name Statio, described as her
cancelliero
(chancellor or private secretary) appears. Statio, who managed a great many of Felice’s personal affairs, was to become an enormously important figure in her life.

Also included among Felice’s
salariati
for
1513
is ‘
lo fregaro
’ (‘the embroiderer’) and ‘Maestro Nicolo Todesco, tapeziero’ (‘Master Nicholas the German, tapestry-weaver’). In
1514
, a fellow weaver from Germany, Gregorio Todesco, joined Nicolo in Felice’s pay, along with ‘Gilio di Brusela’ (‘Giles of Brussels’). Europe’s best tapestry-weavers were from northern Europe. Felice’s hiring of three northerners to make new tapestries for Bracciano is an indication of her desire for work of the finest quality. Tapestry was the art form that interested her most. Later in the sixteenth century Michelangelo would dismiss Flemish art as work suitable only for young girls, friars or nuns. It was too busy for his taste with details of landscape, animals or flowers. Flemish art did not engage with the serious subjects of narrative art, of the kind he had painted on the Sistine ceiling. Although he directed his derision at Flemish painters, he recognized that the far greater threat they posed to the art of Italy was their inherent ability as weavers. Every real connoisseur, including Julius, Felice’s father, and Leo, her friend, recognized the superior ability of the northern tapestry-makers. Leo commissioned Raphael to make cartoons for the magnificent set of tapestries that he had added to the decoration of the Sistine chapel, but it was weavers from Brussels who provided the final woven product.

Felice knew that her father recognized the value of tapestry. He had given her a set of soft furnishings, comprising ‘
13
silk hangings for a room,
6
large carpets,
4
small carpets,
15
drapes,
4
brocaded cushions and
3
cushions of purple velvet and brocade’.
¹
The silk made the hangings relatively light. Felice could take them anywhere with her and immediately make a room comfortable and luxurious for herself.

Tapestry hangings on the walls were an absolute essential in a castle such as Bracciano in winter. On high ground, with winds blowing off the lake, its rooms were draughty, and the woven fabric provided protection from the cold. The previous Orsini lords, perhaps during their expeditions to France, had acquired many grand tapestries depicting such scenes as
The Story of King Solomon
and
The Life of Saint Anthony
. However, these were now old and worn; not only were they shabby, they were also less effective as insulation.

If the tapestries Felice’s three weavers made are those cited in an inventory of the contents of Bracciano made in
1518
, then they produced a series of thirteen silk hangings of landscapes with exotic and mythical beasts. One featured ‘a fountain with a griffin and a dragon’; others depicted a centaur and a dragon, a centaur and a leopard, and a centaur and a lion. That the same kind of design, perhaps the specialty of Nicolo Tedesco and his team, was repeated over and over again meant that the weavers could produce more work in a relatively short amount of time.

Felice was especially fond of these tapestries. In an inventory of Bracciano from late in
1519
, taken at a time when she was absent from the castle, the centaur-themed hangings are not included, suggesting she had taken them with her while she was away. She certainly appreciated the worth of the art of weaving fabulous images in silk and wool. After Gian Giordano’s death, Felice sent a missive to the King of France, in which she informed him that she was prepared to relinquish to him Gian Giordano’s palace at Blois, but that she wished to ‘recover and remove its tapestries and all other movable goods’.
²
A palace in France was of little use to Felice. Its upkeep was costly; she had no intention of going there, and extracting rent from French nobles would prove difficult. But the palace was evidently furnished with fine tapestries, and those she was determined to have returned to her.

chapter 9

Personal Reckoning

As Orsini Signora, Felice created a more harmonious environment out of the castle of Bracciano. She cultivated the loyalty of the townspeople and acquired a body of faithful servants. None the less, she still had her personal contingency plan in case things went wrong and she had to leave the Orsini household on Gian Giordano’s death. The most critical issue for her was that her own property, her
beni mobili et immobili
, movable and immovable goods, be recognized as separate and autonomous from the rest of the Orsini estate. In October
1516
she took it on herself to compile an inventory of her personal belongings.

Felice’s inventory reveals her carefully crafted strategy for personal survival. If life with the Orsini did not work out for her, she was still, independently, extremely wealthy. As the inventory began, she had ‘brought
20
,
000
ducats into the home of Gian Giordano Orsini as her dowry’.
¹
The usufruct, the interest, on the use of this sum was now
6
,
150
ducats. Added to this cash was her own personal property. The value of Palo was calculated at
9000
ducats and she had paid Gian Giordano
10
,
800
for the palace and land on the Pincian Hill. She was due
4
,
200
ducats from grain she had sold to the Vatican, and she also operated a private bank. She had lent
2000
ducats to Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours, and another
2000
to her cousin, Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino. She had loaned a further
2000
ducats to Giuliano Leno for his daughter’s dowry. She had also lent out smaller sums:
140
ducats had gone to Portia Savelli, the widow of the Orsini Duke of Anguillara, with whom Felice had some degree of rapport. In all, between her dowry and these cash loans, Felice della Rovere was worth
56
,
440
ducats, which could be translated into tens of millions of pounds in today’s values.