The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (40 page)

The tomb in which Felice’s father had lain was always envisaged as temporary. The Warrior Pope of Rome’s golden age had, only a year after his election as pontiff, begun to plan his final resting place. The aim was, in the words of Vasari, ‘to surpass every ancient and imperial sepulchre’. In
1505
, Julius had invited Michelangelo to design a tomb that would be no less monumental than the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. For Michelangelo, too, this was an opportunity to outdo the ancients. He conceived a free-standing chamber, embellished with monumental sculpted figures, to be placed in the choir in the church of St Peter’s, which had been designed in the fifteenth century by Rossellino and completed later by Bramante. However, Julius was distracted by other projects, in particular by Bramante’s design for New St Peter’s, and froze the funding for his tomb. Angered, Michelangelo quarrelled with the Pope and departed for Florence. In
1508
he accepted Julius’s invitation to return to Rome to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But the earlier project was still close to his heart: the composition of his Sistine ceiling, laterally banded with heroic figures of the prophets, the sibyls and the
ignudi
, the naked heroes of the Golden Age, is derived from his first conception of Julius’s tomb.

The Julian tomb was to become Michelangelo’s
bête noire
. In
1513
, a year after Julius’s death, the artist signed a contract with the representatives of the heirs to Julius’s estate to continue work on the monument. Although she was included among the Pope’s heirs, Felice was not among those listed in this document. The extent of her activities in the political and business world notwithstanding, her gender prevented her from signing this legal document. Instead, the signatures were those of her cousins, Nicolò and Francesco Maria della Rovere. Felice did, however, negotiate on her own behalf with Michelangelo, and it was at this time that she acquired his cartoons from the Sistine Chapel for the frescos decorating her own chapel at Trinità dei Monti.

Despite the new contract, relatively little work was produced during this period by Michelangelo towards Felice’s father’s tomb, and the design was radically modified from the artist’s earlier grandiose vision. Among the few sculptures for the project Michelangelo did manage to complete at this time was the figure of Moses, which would eventually become the tomb’s centrepiece. Michelangelo had a new master, Pope Leo X. When Leo confiscated Francesco Maria’s land and titles, he also assumed the right to employ Michelangelo. This made it possible for the Medici pope to send Michelangelo back to Florence to work for his family on their church at San Lorenzo. Although he had mixed feelings about his new employment, Michelangelo remained there throughout the
1520
s. On the one hand he was excited to be given the opportunity to complete one of the great churches of his native town. However, his designs for the façade of San Lorenzo were never realized and the church remains without a façade to this day. He would also claim that he had been ‘tearfully wrested’ from working on Julius’s tomb, and he was undoubtedly upset at his removal from Rome, and thus from his ultimate ambition, to be the architect of New St Peter’s. He was not to achieve this ambition until
1546
when he was appointed architect on the death of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger.

In Rome, with Julius’s temporary tomb desecrated, the need for a memorial to commemorate him became imperative, both from a practical and a symbolic standpoint. If Rome were to be renewed, then the patron of Rome’s most recent golden age had to be honoured in a fitting manner. Given the extent of the physical and emotional damage that the Spanish had wreaked on Felice, it was appropriate that she seek to mend this rent the Iberians had made in the fabric of her family history.

In December
1531
, Felice, accompanied by representatives of the Duke of Urbino, went in person to Pope Clement VII to discuss the completion of the Julian tomb. Clement, mindful of the damage done to the prestige of the papacy by the Spanish desecration, was prepared to listen to their petition. Serving as Michelangelo’s representative at this meeting was the painter Sebastiano del Piombo, who wrote a report of the proceedings to the artist in Florence. Sebastiano was himself anxious to convince Michelangelo that completing the tomb would be the right thing to do. He was careful to inform Michelangelo that ‘La Signora Felice’ had been present at these negotiations, and he encouraged Michelangelo to agree to return to the project. ‘You should see the happiness of the Signora Felice,’ Sebastiano wrote of the reaction of the daughter of Pope Julius at the thought the tomb might yet be completed.
²

Securing Michelangelo’s commitment to complete the Julian tomb was not easy. There was the matter of money – Michelangelo claimed that the
8000
scudi
Francesco Maria della Rovere had paid him following Julius’s death was not enough. In the end, he and Francesco Maria agreed to scale down the design for the tomb. Its intended site was changed to San Pietro in Vincoli, Julius’s titular church when he was a cardinal. Clement had to grant his permission for Michelangelo to return to the work. The Medici Pope was reluctant to release Michelangelo from Florence, where he was now working on the chapel attached to San Lorenzo. But with an understanding that Michelangelo would direct others to do the actual work, thereby freeing him to continue at San Lorenzo, Clement was more agreeable. On
20
April
1532
, a new contract was drawn up between Julius’s heirs and Michelangelo. The signing took place at the Vatican Palace; Clement was present, and so was Felice.

To what extent Felice’s involvement in the proceedings was the spur to Michelangelo’s agreement to complete the tomb cannot be determined. However, at the very least, she personified Rome’s past golden age. She was, after all, the Warrior Pope’s direct descendant and his only child. It might then be more than coincidence that, following Felice’s intervention, the only statues to be completed personally by Michelangelo were the figures of the two Old Testament women, Rachel and Leah. These women, within the framework of the tomb, were deemed to represent respectively the contemplative life and the active life. The human scale and appearance of the sculpted women is radically different from the Amazonian goddesses adorning the Sistine ceiling and the Medici family tombs. Real women posed as the models for these figures. It has been suggested that Vittoria Colonna, who corresponded on spiritual matters with Michelangelo, might have been his inspiration for Rachel.
³
Yet given that this is Julius II’s tomb, a much more appropriate and compelling identification for Rachel is another female friend of Michelangelo, Felice della Rovere, the Pope’s own daughter.
⁴
Michelangelo’s Rachel is clothed in a hooded robe, veiled in a way redolent of the kinds of widow’s weeds Felice would have worn. She gazes upwards, a heavenward glance appropriate to the contemplative life. Yet she is also looking up to the top of the tomb, where a sculpted figure of the pontiff reclines. Rachel’s gaze is as much filial as celestial.

One might also see traces of Felice in the figure of Leah, who represents the active life. If Rachel is a daughter, then Leah is a mother, ‘an incarnation of abundance and fertility, the solidity of her heavy matronly body...increased by the river of folds tumbling down from her girdle to the ground’.
⁵
Felice’s own fertility had ensured a Julian line. And if she was
patrona et gubernatrix
, giving birth to four children undeniably made her
matrix
as well. Rachel’s gaze looks to the past, to Felice’s father; Leah’s body embodies the future, a future created by Felice herself.

It was the future that had become Felice’s most pressing concern. Through the renovation of family palaces and Michelangelo’s continuation of his work on her father’s tomb, she had made remarkable progress towards repairing her family’s heritage. Her family’s future, however, still demanded her close attention.

chapter 11

Clarice

Felice della Rovere shared many of her father’s characteristics: his insurmountable stubbornness, intense tenacity and focused single-mindedness. Yet she came to differ from him in one great respect. Julius, like all men of his age, saw his legacy as a memorializing of self. To that end, he had commissioned all those towering buildings at the Vatican Palace emblazoned with his name. While she was younger, Felice had fashioned herself in his image. She had acquired a castle and palace of her own, a chapel decorated with Michelangelo designs, and she had left money for nearly every church in Rome to say Mass for her when she died. But as she grew older, she began to define her legacy in terms of her identity as a mother.

Felice’s daily life, the necessary and perpetual attention to the affairs of the estate, would suggest that motherhood was not always a high priority for her. She might not have spent every part of every year with her children, but she was a constant presence in their lives. The Vicovaro servants sent her frequent reports on their well-being. ‘The children are healthy, learning, studious, cheerful and virtuous, and hoping for your happy return,’ one letter from Alessandro at Vicovaro reads.
¹
The children themselves also sent her letters, some written in careful hands clearly produced in a daily lesson; one sent by Julia, Francesco and Girolamo in
1520
is typical: ‘Mater Optima. We are very well and hoping to learn the same of you.’
²
Felice also kept her children on a very tight budget and did not spoil or over-indulge them in any way. Julia had to write to her for extra clothing, or for fabric to make garments. Nor did Felice always respond to their requests on first asking, as Francesco and Girolamo made clear in a letter of
1524
: ‘Illustrious Mother. We have told you over and over again that the velvet on our saddles is no good anymore because it is so old, so please, for our love, will you help us to have it repaired.’
³
By
1530
, Felice’s major concern was to see her children settled. She wanted her daughter Clarice married and her sons, Girolamo and Francesco, ready and able to take over the running of the Orsini estate.

Felice had placed on hold the matter of a husband for Clarice after the Sack of Rome. In the months prior to the Sack, she had entered into negotiations with the Farnese family to secure Ranuccio, the son of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, for the fourteen-year-old Clarice. Several members of the Orsini family were actually in favour of this alliance and the match would have been a shrewd investment; Alessandro Farnese was widely tipped to become the next pope. In
1534
, he did indeed ascend the papal throne as Paul III. Felice’s efforts came to nothing, however, the turmoil of Rome putting paid to her plans.

After the Sack, with Rome still a wasteland and the political and economic climate so unstable, Felice had no desire to marry Clarice into any family with ecclesiastical or Roman ties. She was also anxious about her daughter’s personal safety. She felt Rome was still too volatile a place for a young girl, and she was particularly afraid of any action Napoleone might take against her. Following Napoleone’s enforced removal by papal troops from Bracciano in
1529
, Felice had received a warning from a servant: ‘Napoleone is melancholic and disordered, and wishes now for the matters with your ladyship to be remedied not only with property but with blood itself. There was also the possibility that Napoleone ’
4
would take Clarice hostage. If she were to be raped by one of his allies, the man could legally demand and be given the right to marry her, the same fate Felice had feared could have befallen Francesca Maria’s niece Bartolomea if she had remained with Felice. Napoleone knew that Clarice was Felice’s weakness; this was the reason he had once proposed that he be allowed a voice in determining her future. Consequently, in order to protect her, when Felice returned to Rome she left Clarice at Pesaro, at the della Rovere court run by the gluttonous and spendthrift Marco Vegerio. Clarice was still there in
1530
.

Clarice was the most engaging and the most intelligent of Felice’s children. She was her uncle Gian Domenico’s favourite, his
bambolina
(‘little baby doll’). She took matters of education far more seriously than her siblings. When, as children, the others wrote to Felice from Vicovaro, they usually asked for things for themselves, Julia for clothing, the boys for saddles. Clarice, at eleven, wrote to her mother, ‘We are all well, healthy and strong. We continue to do our lessons, and I beg of your ladyship to recommend me to the Reverend Monsignor [Gian Domenico] and to my Madonna Lucrezia, and Madonna Francesca and M. Angelo and M. Christofano, and I beg of you, if for love of me, you would have a cloak made for Father Menico [a priest at Vicovaro].’
5
At Fossombrone, when Felice had attempted to find a teacher in Latin and Greek, the tutor was intended not only for Girolamo but also for Clarice. Clarice was far more concerned with her lessons than was her brother, whose ambition was to become a
condottiere
, and who disdained formal education. While Girolamo writes his letters in a next to indecipherable, almost illiterate, scrawl, Clarice writes in a clear and elegant hand. Her mother continued to pay for a tutor for her while she was resident in Pesaro. In addition Clarice had a music teacher there, Fra Francesco, who later travelled to Rome, with a letter of presentation for Felice from Clarice. ‘Fra Francesco’, she wrote, ‘is a worthy man and has taught me how to play. He is coming to Rome, so please could you give him some money, for I do not have a penny.’
⁶