Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal 9789048544561

Citation preview

Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal

Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Dr. Allison Levy, an art historian, has written and/or edited three scholarly books, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Getty Research Institute, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library of Harvard University, the Whiting Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. www.allisonlevy.com.

Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal

Edited by Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

Amsterdam University Press

This publication has been made possible by a grant from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research.

Cover illustration: Scipione Pulzone, Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, 1580, oil on canvas, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (© Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide/Mrs Mary Overton Gift Fund 1998) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout 978 94 6372 551 4 isbn 978 90 4854 456 1 e-isbn doi 10.5117/9789463725514 nur 685 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2021 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

This book is dedicated to the memory of two people. First, we would like to remember especially Professor Clare Robertson, who was integrally involved in the genesis of this volume and was to have written a preface for it. Much of the scholarship that follows draws on Clare’s pioneering work on the cardinalate. Her friendship and scholarly generosity inspired the editors and many of the contributors. Secondly, Piers Brooke would have smiled at the serendipity that brought about this project.



Table of Contents

Illustrations

9

Abbreviations

15

Acknowledgements

17

Introduction: Cardinals and their Images 1. Portraying the Princes of the Church

21

2. The Early Modern Cardinal

43

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

An Historical Appraisal Miles Pattenden

Part I – Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome 3. Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth-Century Florence

69

4. Dead Ringers: Cardinals and their Effigies, 1400–1520

91

Brian Jeffrey Maxson

Carol M. Richardson

Part II – Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome 5. The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice: The Case of the Grimani Family and Some Thoughts on the Correr MS Morosini Grimani 270

117

6. Role Playing: Cardinals in Historical Action in Leandro Bassano’s Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216 and the War of the Interdict

149

Sarah Ferrari

Alessandra Pattanaro

8

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

Part III – Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods 7. Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules

181

8. Portraits as Symbols: Cardinals’ Portraits in the Roman and Local Collections of Some Counter-Reformation Cardinals

201

9. Portraits as a Sign of Possession: Cardinals and their Protectorships in Early Modern Rome

231

Philippa Jackson

Thomas-Leo True

Arnold Witte

Part IV – Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal 10. Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 261 Irene Brooke

11. Two Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museumsand their Related Versions

285

12. Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint: Managing the Devotional Medals of San Carlo Borromeo

319

Danielle Carrabino

Minou Schraven

Conclusion: Cardinal Portraits beyond Italy 13. Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate

343

Index

371

Piers Baker-Bates

Illustrations Colour Plates Plate 1

Plate 2 Plate 3

Plate 4 Plate 5 Plate 6 Plate 7 Plate 8

Plate 9

Plate 10

Bastiano di Niccolò, Matteo and Bartolomeo Torelli, historiated initial and border with Angelo Acciaiuoli’s portrait from the cardinal’s missal, 1402-1405, MS 30, Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum (© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). Titian, Cardinal Pietro Bembo, c. 1540, oil on canvas, Washington, DC, The National Gallery of Art (© National Gallery of Art, Washington). Unknown artist (Palma il Giovane?), Double Portrait of Cardinals Domenico and Marino Grimani, late sixteenth century, oil on canvas, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia (© Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia). Raphael, Meeting of Leo I with Attila, 1514, fresco, Vatican City, Musei Vaticani (© Scala). Leandro Bassano, Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, 1607-1608, oil on canvas, Venice, Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Sacristy (© Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini—Matteo de Fina). Detail of Leandro Bassano, Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, 1607-1608 (© Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini—Matteo de Fina). Cristoforo Roncalli (Pomarancio), Cardinal Antonio Maria Gallo, 1616, Loreto, Palazzo Apostolico (© Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Loreto) Unknown artist, Portrait of Cardinal Francesco Barberini Senior as Cardinal Protector, seventeenth century, oil on canvas, Minerva Auctions, May 2017 (© courtesy of Minerva Auctions—Gruppo Finarte). Taddeo Zuccaro and workshop, Investiture of Orazio Farnese as Prefect of Rome by Paul III, 1562-1563, fresco, Caprarola, Palazzo Farnese (© akg-images; by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo – Palazzo Farnese Caprarola). Scipione Pulzone, Michele Bonelli, called ‘Cardinal Alessandrino’,1586, oil on canvas, Cambridge, MA, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum (© President and Fellows of Harvard College).

10

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

Plate 11 Plate 12

The Healing of Paola Giustina Casati, 1610, oil on canvas, Milan, Duomo (© Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano). El Greco, Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara, c. 1600, oil on canvas, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, bequest of Mrs H. O. Havemeyer).

Figures Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2

Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4 Fig. 1.5 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2

Fig. 4.1

Sebastiano del Piombo, Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, His Secretary, and Two Geographers, 1516, oil on canvas, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art (© National Gallery of Art, Washington). 27 Leonardo Parasole, Effigies cum insignibus nominibus, cognominibus, patria, titulis et nuncupationes reverendissimorum […] Cardinalium nunc viventium, 1593, hand-coloured woodcut, London, The British Museum (© The Trustees of the British Museum).29 Francesco Francia, Cardinal Francesco degli Alidosi, 1505-1511, bronze, New York, Metropolitan Museum (© Metropolitan 31 Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehmann Collection, 1975). Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, 1632, marble, Rome, Galleria Borghese (© Galleria Borghese). 34 Unknown artist, Cardinal Reginald Pole, 1540s, oil on canvas, St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum (© The State Hermitage Museum, photo by Leonard Kheifets). 35 Bicci di Lorenzo, Confirmation of Santa Maria Nuova, c. 1424-1425 or 1440, detached fresco, Florence, Ospedale di Santa 70 Maria Nuova (© Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY). Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, Arrival of Pope Eugenius IV at Santa Maria del Fiore for its Consecration Ceremony, c. 1470, illumination, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. f.1.56, fol. 7v (© Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali 71 e per il Turismo). View of fifteenth-century cardinals’ effigies in the Grotte Vaticane including, first left, Berardo Eruli, second left, Pietro Fonseca, third right, Ardicino della Porta Junior, first right, Ardicino della Porta Senior (© Carol M. Richardson). 94

Illustrations 

Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5

Fig. 5.6

Fig. 5.7

Fig. 5.8

Ardicino della Porta Senior, effigy, Grotte Vaticane (© Carol M. Richardson).100 Ardicino della Porta Junior, effigy, Grotte Vaticane (© Carol M. Richardson).100 Ardicino della Porta Junior, detail of upper part of effigy, Grotte Vaticane (© Carol M. Richardson). 101 Funerary monument to Cardinal Alain Coetivy, detail, Rome, Santa Prassede (© Conway Library, Courtauld Institute). 107 Titian and workshop (?), Girolamo and Cardinal Marco Corner Investing Marco, Abbot of Carrara, with his Benefice, c. 1525, oil on canvas, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art (© Natio125 nal Gallery of Art, Washington). Unknown artist (after Lorenzo Lotto?), Portrait of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, 1520s-1540s, oil on canvas, London, Schorr Collection (© Schorr Collection). 127 Jacopo Tintoretto, Portrait of Giovanni Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia, 1560s, oil on canvas, London, Schorr Collection (© Schorr Collection). 130 Unknown artist (Baldassarre d’Anna?), Portrait of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, c. 1627, pen and ink drawing with wash, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 19, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo 136 Correr (© Biblioteca del Museo Correr). Unknown artist (Baldassarre d’Anna?), Recovery of the Christian Standard by Nicolò Grimani, c. 1627, pen and ink drawing with wash, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, MS Morosini 138 Grimani 270, fol. 19 (© Biblioteca del Museo Correr). Unknown artist (Baldassarre d’Anna?), Pope Urban II adding the Red Cross to the Grimani Coat of Arms, c. 1627, pen and ink drawing with wash, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Ms. Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 44 (© Biblioteca del Museo Correr).139 Baldassarre d’Anna (attributed), Recovery of the Christian Standard by Nicolò Grimani, 1620s-1630s, oil on canvas, Padua, Convento della Basilica di Sant’Antonio (© Centro Studi Antoniani).140 Baldassarre d’Anna (attributed), Pope Urban II adding the Red Cross to the Grimani Coat of Arms, 1620s-1630s, oil on canvas, Padua, Convento della Basilica di Sant’Antonio (© Centro Studi Antoniani). 141

11

12

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5

Fig. 6.6

Fig. 6.7 Fig. 6.8

Fig. 6.9 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3

Leandro Bassano, Portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Dolfin, 1604, oil on canvas, Padua, Musei Civici (© Padua, Musei Civici—Giuliano Ghiraldini). 158 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Portrait of Agostino Valier, 1629, marble, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia (in deposit at Ca d’Oro) (© Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia). 160 Thierry Bellange, François Cardinal de Joyeuse, early seventeenth century Pau, Musée National du Château de Pau 162 (© RMN–Grand Palais (Château de Pau)/René-Gabriel Ojéda). Leandro Bassano, sketch for Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, 1607-1608, art market (© Fondazione 163 Federico Zeri). Petrus Aldobrandinus (in Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, Effigies cum insignibus, nominibus, cognominibus, patria, titulis et nuncupationes Reverendissimorum Dominorum S.R.E. Cardinalium nunc viventium) (© The Trustees of the British Museum). 164 Thierry Bellange, Jacques Davy du Perron, early seventeenth century, lead pencil and red chalk with gold highlights on parchment, Pau, Musée National du Château de Pau (© RMN– 167 Grand Palais (Château de Pau)/René-Gabriel Ojéda). Rubens, Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, 1604-1605, oil on canvas, Mamiano di Traversetolo, Collezione Magnani Rocca (© Fondazione Magnani Rocca). 168 Carolus Emanuel […] car. Pius (in Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, Effigies cum insignibus, nominibus, cognominibus, patria, titulis et nuncupationes Reverendissimorum Domino170 rum S.R.E. Cardinalium nunc viventium) (© Alamy). Ottavio Leoni, Portrait of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, oil on canvas, Ajaccio, Musée Fesch (© RMN-Grand Palais (Palais Fesch, Musée des Beaux-Arts)). 172 Pisanello, Mule, Paris, Musée du Louvre (© RMN–Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Michéle Bellot). 184 Detail of Robert Péril, Cavalcata at the Coronation of Charles V in Bologna, 1530, woodcut, colourised with handwritten annotations, Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum (© akg-images/ Erich Lessing). 190 Detail of Robert Péril, Cavalcata at the Coronation of Charles V in Bologna, woodcut, colourised with handwritten annotations, Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum (© akg-images/Erich Lessing).191

Illustrations 

Fig. 7.4

Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2 Fig. 9.1

Fig. 9.2 Fig. 9.3 Fig. 9.4 Fig. 10.1

Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3

Fig. 10.4 Fig. 10.5

Anonymous Italian School 17th Cent, Cardinal Francesco Angelo Rapacciolo (d.1657) Fleeing on a Mule, under a shower of Turnips, 1643, pen and ink, New York, The Morgan Library and Museum (© The Morgan Library and Museum, III, 69). 195 Funerary monument to Cardinal Mariano Pierbenedetti, Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore (© Nicholas True). 215 Funerary monument to Cardinal Francesco Alciati, Rome, Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (© Martina Caruso). 216 Albert Clouet after Carlo Cesio, frontispiece of Effigies, nomina et cognomina S.D.N. Alexandri papae VII et RR. DD. S.R.E. Cardd. nunc viuentium, Rome, 1660 (© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).233 Gérard Audran after Cyro Ferri, frontispiece of Effigies nomina et cognomina S.D.N. Innocentii PP XI. et RR.DD.S.R.E Cardd. nunc viventium, Rome, 1667-69 (© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). 234 Cover of a presentation copy of the rules of St Susanna, Fondo Varia 30, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome (© Arnold Witte). 242 Johann Martin Bernigeroth, Portrait of Cardinal Vincenzo Gotti, engraving, London, British Museum (© The Trustees of 245 the British Museum). Taddeo Zuccaro and workshop, Paul III Nominating Cardinals, 1562-1563, fresco, Caprarola, Palazzo Farnese (© by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo – Palazzo Farnese Caprarola). 268 Danese Cattaneo, portrait medal of Cardinal Pietro Bembo, c. 1547, bronze, Washington, DC, The National Gallery of Art (© National Gallery of Art, Washington). 269 Taddeo Zuccaro and workshop, Paul III Receiving Charles V after his Victory at Tunis in 1535, 1562-1563, fresco, Caprarola, Palazzo Farnese (© by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo – Palazzo Farnese Caprarola).270 Danese Cattaneo, Cardinal Pietro Bembo, 1547-1548, marble bust, Padua, Basilica of San Antonio (© Giuliano Ghiraldini). 271 Valerio Zuccato after a design by Titian, Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo, 1542, mosaic, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello (© by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo – Museo Nazionale del Bargello).273

13

14 

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2

Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4 Fig. 11.5

Fig. 11.6 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3 Fig. 12.4

Fig. 13.1 Fig. 13.2 Fig. 13.3 Fig. 13.4

Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Ricci, 1569, oil on canvas, Cambridge, MA, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum (© President and Fellows of Harvard College). 291 Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Ricci, oil on panel, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini (© Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica–Biblioteca Hertziana Max Planck per la Storia dell’Arte/Enrico Fontolan). 294 Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Cardinal Michele Bonelli (also known as Cardinal Alessandrino), 1572, oil on canvas, Gaeta, 298 Museo Diocesano (© Museo Diocesano, Gaeta). X-radiograph of Fig. 11.3 (© Museo Diocesano, Gaeta). 303 Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Giacomo Savelli, 1576, oil on canvas, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Corsini (© Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica-Biblioteca Hertziana Max Planck per la Storia dell’Arte/Enrico Fontolan). 304 Scipione Pulzone, Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, 1576, oil on copper, London, Courtauld Gallery of Art (© Courtauld Gallery of Art). 306 Giovanni Antonio de’ Rossi (signed), portrait medal of Carlo Borromeo, 1563, silver, Vienna, Münzkabinett (© Vienna, KHM–Museumsverband).322 Anonymous portrait medal of Carlo Borromeo, c. 1580, bronze, London, British Museum (© The Trustees of the British Museum).323 Fede Galizia, Portrait of Federico Zuccari, 1604, oil on canvas, Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi (© Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi). 328 Devotional medal of Carlo Borromeo (Domenico Pellegrini?), silver, Milan, Castello Sforzesco, Gabinetto Numismatico e Medagliere (© Milan, Castello Sforzesco, Gabinetto Numismatico e Medagliere). 329 Funerary Monument to Cardinal Francisco de Toledo, Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore (© Chris Siwicki). 355 Giambologna, Cardinal Rodrigo de Castro Osorio, Monforte de 357 Lemos, Colegiata de la Antigua (© Piers Baker-Bates). Unknown artist, Francisco de Reinoso, Palencia, Convento de Augustinas Recoletas (© Piers Baker-Bates). 360 Unknown artist, Cardinal Francisco de Ávila, Ávila, Cathedral (© Piers Baker-Bates). 361

Abbreviations b. busta c. cartella cap. caput col./s. column/s n.d. no date fasc. fascicolo/i fol./s. folio/s L&P Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic MS manuscript off. office prot. protocollo scudo/i sc. scr. scritture sez. sezione AGPPO AGS AMP APUG ASF ASR ASS ASSC ASV ASVR AVCA BAV BL BMC BNCVEII L&P

Archivio Gallo Pantoli Piletti, Osimo Archivo General de Simancas Archivio Mediceo del Principato, Florence Archivio Storico della Pontificia Università Gregoriana Archivio di Stato di Firenze Archivio di Stato di Roma Archivio di Stato di Siena Archivio di Stato di Macerata, sezione di Camerino Archivio di Stato di Venezia Archivio Storico del Vicariato di Roma, Rome Archivum Venerabilis Colleggii Anglorum de Urbe, Rome Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana British Library, London Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Venice Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emmanuele II, Rome Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–1547, ed. John S. Brewer and others, 21 vols. (London, 1862–1932)

Acknowledgements This project has been several years in the making and the editors are grateful to all the authors for their hard work in seeing it to completion, despite the challenges presented by a global pandemic. The anonymous reader of the original manuscript must be thanked for their careful consideration of and detailed comments on each essay. All of us involved in the project have benefitted over its gestation from conversations with many colleagues who are too numerous to include here. As noted in the dedication a great debt is owed to the late Clare Robertson. Special mention must also be made of Paul Joannides, Guido Rebecchini, and Patricia Lee Rubin, who provided particular support at crucial moments. Last but in no way least, the editors would like to thank Amsterdam University Press for all their hard work and invaluable assistance in helping to complete the volume at a particularly difficult time. Of particular note are the series editor, Allison Levey, and our commissioning editor, Erika Gaffney, whose patience knows no bounds. Finally, we are grateful to the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research whose generous grant enabled the publication of this volume.

1.

Portraying the Princes of the Church Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke Abstract This chapter gives a brief overview of the place of cardinal portraits within early modern portraiture as a whole. It explores how certain typologies specific to cardinals evolved in different media over the period. It also considers how these images carried unique meanings and functions that depended on the particular office and duties of the cardinal. Keywords: cardinals; popes; portraiture; Renaissance; Counter-Reformation

The visual legacy of early modern cardinals constitutes a vast and extremely rich body of artworks – many of superb quality – in a variety of media. Despite the wealth of images of cardinals and the clear relevance of these works to a variety of disciplines, there is no comprehensive study dedicated to the subject of cardinal portraits: existing scholarship consists of a handful of articles and an exhibition, which primarily approach the topic from a formal perspective.1 The late Clare Robertson, to whom this volume is dedicated, highlighted this in her chapter on the subject in the recent Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, asserting that cardinal portraits form ‘a significant subset’ of early modern portraiture, and noting the limited scholarship on the topic.2 It is the aim of the essays in the present volume to investigate portraits of cardinals as a distinct category within early modern portraiture and as a specif ic art historical phenomenon. Examining in what ways the production, collection, and status of such portraits were influenced by a set of identities, experiences, values, and interests unique to cardinals as a group, the following We are indebted to Paul Joannides, Carol M. Richardson, and Patricia Lee Rubin for reading drafts of this essay and providing many helpful comments and corrections. 1 Notably Kempers, ‘Canonical Portrait’, 2001; Tittoni and Petrucci, eds., La porpora romana, 2006; Tostmann ‘Sebastiano del Piombos Bildnis’, 2011. 2 Robertson, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, 2020, p. 557.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch01

22 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

essays complement the scholarship on the history of cardinals undertaken in the Companion volume. While the chronological parameters of our inquiry are slightly more restricted, running from the accession of Martin V in 1420 until the death of Innocent X in 1655, we also employ the term ‘early modern’ to characterize the period, primarily for its flexibility and convenience.3 In these years, around 675 men from a wide range of socio-economic and geographic backgrounds – although predominantly from the Italian peninsula – passed through the Sacred College. The likenesses of many of them were constructed, either of their own volition or at the request of others; in many cases more than one portrait was executed and in more than one medium. Acknowledging the diversity of such images, the essays in this volume investigate intersections of meaning, function, and visual semantics that arise from the shared historical reality of cardinals in this period. Inevitably, the methodologies of many authors in this volume draw upon the vast body of art historical literature addressing the topic of portraiture. Despite the subordinate status assigned to the genre by art theorists in the period, portraiture’s fundamental role within the visual arts in early modern Europe has long been recognized, although there remain avenues of inquiry and methods of interpretation that have yet to be pursued. Since Jacob Burckhardt’s influential study of Renaissance culture, interpretations of early modern portraits have often hinged on a perceived reawakening of awareness of the ‘individual’; portraits have been read to reflect a new interest in what Pope-Hennessy termed ‘the cult of the personality’. 4 Stephen Greenblatt’s seminal study on Renaissance self-fashioning has led to recognition of the crucial role played by portraiture in the construction of identity.5 The diverse meanings and functions that portraits could assume – donor, commemorative, propagandistic, exemplary, votive – have been explored by scholars, as has the contemporary rhetoric, based on classical sources and taken up by Alberti, surrounding portraiture’s ostensible function of ‘making the absent present’, together with its qualitative value in being ‘lifelike’.6 The role of portraits within early modern collections has also been examined. Paolo Giovio established a model for collecting series of portraits of illustrious men (uomini famosi), images

3 Only Arnold Witte’s essay extends beyond this date range. 4 Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1892; see also Pope-Hennessy, Portrait, 1966, and Burke, ‘Renaissance, Individualism’, 1995. 5 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1984. 6 Several studies and exhibitions in recent decades have investigated many of these same issues. See Brilliant, Portraiture, 1991; Woodall, ed., Portraiture, 1997; Mann and Syson, Image of the Individual, 1998; Cranston, Poetics of Portraiture, 2000; Syson, Renaissance Faces, 2008; Christiansen and Weppelmann, eds., Renaissance Portrait, 2012.

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

which more often prioritized social roles than accurate likeness.7 These became a component not only of princely and noble collections but also of those formed by scholars, merchants, and clerics, including of course cardinals, who also often featured among the worthies on display.8 Portraits of cardinals naturally functioned in ways similar to other categories of portraiture. And yet as material objects, cardinal portraits were clearly embedded with meanings specific to the class of individuals represented. On account of their dress, cardinals are in fact among the most recognizable public figures portrayed in the visual arts of the early modern period.9 While many representations of cardinals can be identified, countless others remain anonymous, but still carry a message relating to the authority – both spiritual and secular – of the pope and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, cardinal portraits often assumed special functions relating specifically to the duties and offices of the rank. And yet, given that cardinals in this period represented a diversity of nationalities, social status, as well as political and theological outlooks, the significance, values, and uses of their portraits could vary widely depending on the individual – or individuals – portrayed and the context. The current volume seeks to address this range of issues specific to cardinal portraits in four thematic sections. The first section, ‘Individuality and Identity: Florence and Rome’, examines specific types of cardinal images in relation to questions of individual likeness and collective identity, while the second section, ‘Divided Loyalties: Venice and Rome’, explores how the often conflicted political allegiances of cardinals could be manifested in their imagery. The diverse roles fulfilled by cardinals’ images within different types of collections, as well as questions relating to wealth and ritualistic display, are examined in ‘Collecting and Display: Portraits and Worldly Goods’. The fourth section, ‘Post-Tridentine Piety: The Devout Cardinal’, examines how the portraiture of cardinals was impacted by the shifting religious climate of the years around and after Trent. The final chapter, which forms a conclusion to the volume, examines the issue of cardinal portraits beyond Italy, considering the case of Spanish cardinals. The topics addressed in these sections comprise some of the crucial elements that shaped the various ‘cultures’ in which cardinal portraits were produced and received by both contemporary and later viewers. 7 Burke, ‘Renaissance, Individualism’, 1995, p. 395. 8 Klinger, Portrait Collection, 1991, and Klinger, ‘Images of Identity’, 1998; see also Thomas-Leo True’s essay in this volume. For cardinals as collectors in general, see Hollingsworth and Richardson, eds., Possessions of a Cardinal, 2010; Chambers, Renaissance Cardinal, 1992; Chambers, Renaissance Cardinals, 1997; Feigenbaum, Display of Art, 2014, and Baker-Bates et al., ‘Cardinals as Patrons of the Visual Arts’, 2020. 9 Richardson, ‘Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, 2020.

23

24 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

Identifying the Cardinal Over the course of the sixteenth century, as the number of cardinals – and their portraits – increased exponentially, a typology for painted portraits, related to papal portraiture, gradually evolved. However, portraits of cardinals appear in a variety of media with some regularity from the early fourteenth century. Some of the earliest extant portraits of a cardinal in any medium were executed by Giotto, the artist credited by Vasari with initiating a renewal in the arts that involved ‘introducing the drawing from nature of living persons’.10 This mimetic quality of portraiture was consistently discussed by early modern writers on art and defined as its critical value. However, Giotto’s portraits of Cardinal Giacomo Gaetano Stefaneschi who appears as a donor in the triptych that he commissioned from the artist for old St. Peter’s (c.1330, Pinacoteca Vaticana), are to the modern eye very generalized.11 Indeed, in terms of physiognomy, Stefaneschi does not appear so different to the famous donor portrait of Enrico Scrovegni that Giotto included in the Arena Chapel in Padua. This introduces questions of value relating to individualized likeness versus idealization or type which run throughout ecclesiastical portraiture in the period covered in this volume.12 In the case of Giotto’s portraits of Cardinal Stefaneschi, it is only because we are informed about the historical personage that we can identify him as a cardinal. While his pontifical of dalmatic and mitre shown on the front of the triptych indicate that he is a churchman of high rank, he does not wear the scarlet choir dress that make early modern cardinals immediately recognizable.13 Although, cardinals were not consistently portrayed wearing this until the sixteenth century, when their dress is outlined in Paolo Cortesi’s De Cardinalatu, from an early point cardinals were depicted in at least one of what became their canonical apparel, usually accompanied by the red galero, or wide-brimmed hat.14 These were reserved for cardinals by Innocent IV at the Council of Lyon in 1245, and several fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscript illuminations include members of the papal entourage identifiable as cardinals through their red hats. 10 Vasari, Le vite, 1881, pp. 373–374; Rubin, ‘Understanding Renaissance Portraiture’, 2012, p. 3. 11 Ibid. See also Steinke, ‘Giotto und Physiognomik’, 1996; Seiler, ‘Giotto als Erfinder des Porträts’, 2002. 12 Jacobus, ‘Propria Figura’, 2017. For a discussion of the issue see Brian Jeffrey Maxson’s and Carol M. Richardson’s essays in this volume. 13 Although the date of the Stefaneschi altarpiece is much debated, it seems highly likely to have been executed after the cardinal’s nomination in 1295. See Gardner, ‘Stefaneschi Altarpiece’, 1974, pp. 57–103. St. Peter here wears a red cloak emaphsizing his role as the first pope. In conversation, Carol Richardson has observed that the fact that Stefaneschi is depicted holding a model of the altarpiece places a corporal emphasis on the liturgical aspect of his gift. 14 See Richardson, ‘Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, 2020.

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

A late fourteenth-century manuscript of the Decretals of Boniface VIII, now in the British Library, and the early fifteenth-century Très Riches Heures du duc du Berry (Chantilly, Musée Condé) both include images of generalized figures surrounding the pope; the men are recognizable as cardinals from their red galeri and serve to reinforce the identity and authority of the pontiff.15 Besides such collective, anonymous representations, there are also early portrait illuminations of individual cardinals, including Stefaneschi himself, who are identifiable through their coat of arms and red choir dress.16 An early fifteenth-century example occurs on the first folio of the Missal of Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum), datable to 1405 (Plate 1).17 Produced in Florence nearly a century after the Stefaneschi altarpiece, the portrait of Acciaiuoli is still very idealized and his dress remains a fundamental marker of his identity. While the galero, shown in all these examples, served primarily as a symbol of the office – replaced by the biretta in later representations – the fundamental purpose of the red choir dress was to designate the cardinals’ relationship to the pope, signifying their combined role as ‘the head and members of the papal body’.18 Nevertheless, dress has not always led to accurate identifications; there is much debate as to whether Van Eyck’s portrait now in the Kusthistorisches Museum, Vienna – usually taken as one of the earliest extant examples of an independent portrait of a cardinal – does in fact portray Cardinal Niccolò Albergati.19 Sometimes cardinals deliberately chose not to be represented in their red choir dress. In the 1530s there is the famous case of Ippolito de’ Medici – always a reluctant cardinal – who was portrayed by Titian in an extravagant Hungarian hunting costume (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) and may have also been depicted by Sebastiano del Piombo, both in secular dress and armour in paintings now in private collections.20 Cardinals occasionally might be represented in domestic attire considered acceptable for their office, rather than in choir dress, although this was rare following 15 BL add MS 23923, and Musée Condé, Chantilly, MS 65, fol. 197r; for further discussion of anonymous representations of cardinals in illuminations, see Brian Jeffrey Maxson’s essay in this volume, esp. Fig. 3.2. 16 Stefaneschi is portrayed in his red choir dress in the Vatican Codex of St. George; see Gardner, ‘Stefaneschi Altarpiece’, 1974, p. 69. 17 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 30; for a recent discussion of the manuscript, see Kerr-Di-Carlo, ‘Making the Cardinal’s Missal’, 2017. 18 Richardson, ‘Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, 2020, p. 535. As Richardson explains, red was historically the colour of the popes. 19 Hunter, ‘Who Is Jan van Eyck’s “Cardinal Nicolo Albergati”’, 1993. 20 Scarpa, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Ippolito de’ Medici’, 2006; Rebecchini, Un altro Lorenzo, 2010, pp. 160–163; Baker-Bates, ‘Technical Experimentation’, 2020. Ippolito appears in his red choir dress in a double portrait with Marco Bracci now in the National Gallery, London, tentatively attributed to Girolamo da Carpi, though the likeness in this seems to be based on Titian’s portrait; see Mancini and Penny, National Gallery Catalogues, vol. 3: Bologna and Ferrara, pp. 286–295.

25

26 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

the convocation of the Council of Trent in 1545. In cases like Pier Francesco Foschi’s portrait of Antonio Pucci (Corsini Gallery, Florence), the sitter’s identity as a cardinal appears not to have been prioritized. While such images certainly represent members of the Sacred College, they open up the category of cardinal portraits, as they do not explicitly communicate their sitters’ status as ‘princes of the church’, emphasizing instead other aspects of their identity – in Pucci’s case his wealth and learning. Sometimes cardinals might also be represented in the dress of their order or of a specific office, as in the case of Antonio Pucci’s uncle, Lorenzo, who is shown in a portrait by Parmigianino (ex-Abercorn collection) as the Major Penitentiary, one of the most prestigious offices in the Curia, which he held from 1520–1529. Images such as these reflect the multilayered identities of cardinals in the period.21

Pictorial Portraits: Evolution of a Genre and Type In the early sixteenth century, Raphael’s portrait of Julius II now in the National Gallery, London, supplied a fundamental model for cardinal portraiture.22 The iconographic derivation of cardinal portraits from a papal model created a visual reference that reflected their official relationship, like their dress.23 However, cardinals seem to have enjoyed a slightly greater degree of iconographic flexibility than popes, and in the second decade of the sixteenth century, both Raphael and Sebastiano del Piombo experimented with compositional solutions that would provide prototypes for artists working in Rome and throughout Europe for the next century.24 The iconography of Raphael’s portrait of Julius II is reflected in images of cardinals produced by him and his workshop: a portrait of an unidentified cardinal now in the Prado, Madrid, and that of Cardinal Bibbiena (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) show their subjects seated at bust length, angled toward the picture plane at 45 degrees.25 Following these examples, cardinals would, for the next two centuries, most often appear seated, with varying degrees of their stature included. However, an important precedent was also set by the three-quarter-length, standing portrait of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples), which is often attributed 21 Pilliod, ‘In Tempore Poenitentiae’, 1988; Hirst, ‘Portrait of Lorenzo Pucci’, 2000. 22 For Raphael’s portrait of Julius II, which refers back to Justus of Ghent’s portrait of Sixtus IV; see Partridge and Starn, Renaissance Likeness, 1980, and Chapman et al., Raphael, 2004, pp. 272–275. For its legacy see Mansour, ‘Prince and Pontiff’, 2008, pp. 209–229. 23 Woodall, ed., Portraiture, 1997, p. 2. 24 Kempers, ‘Canonical Portrait’, 2001; Petrucci, ‘Tipologie della ritrattistica cardinalizia’, 2006; Robertson, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, 2020, pp. 559–565. 25 For both of these portraits, see Henry and Joannides, Late Raphael, pp. 265–268, with bibliography. These authors identify the Prado cardinal as Francesco Alidosi whose portrait medal is discussed below.

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

Fig. 1.1 Sebastiano del Piombo, Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, His Secretary, and Two Geographers, 1516, oil on canvas, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art (© National Gallery of Art, Washington).

to Raphael, though it may have been executed by a member of his workshop.26 Cardinal Farnese, the future Paul III, is positioned before a window with a view onto an idyllic landscape, a variant on the dark green or grey-black backgrounds which characterize the other portraits. Sebastiano’s group portrait of Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, his Secretary, and Two Geographers (Washington, DC, National Gallery; Fig. 1.1) further expanded the iconographic possibilities for cardinal portraiture, incorporating additional figures and props to emphasize his rank.27 A few decades later, in Venice, Titian played a leading role in developing such models further, executing his bust-length portrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo (Washington, DC; Plate 2), which communicates the sitter’s status, character, and intellectual prowess through a penetrating gaze and rhetorical gesture.28 Titian’s meticulous 26 Leone de Castris, ‘Raffaello Sanzio, Ritratto del cardinal Alessandro Farnese’, 1995, pp. 168–169. 27 Tostmann, ‘Sebastiano del Piombos Bildnis’, 2011, pp. 311–348. 28 See Peter Humfrey’s entry on the National Gallery website: www.nga.gov/collection/art-objectpage.41638.html#entry (accessed May 2020).

27

28 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

attention to the texture and detail of the cardinal’s shimmering silk mozzetta set an important example for the next generation of painters who, following the conclusion of the Council of Trent, fully exploited the canonical type. This now fulfilled the requirements of the new religious climate in presenting a consistent image of the cardinal as a noble and dignified proponent of Catholic orthodoxy. Indeed, the established formats for cardinal portraiture accorded perfectly with Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti’s insistence, in his Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane of 1582, that ‘portraits of persons of rank and dignity […] must ensure that [the sitters] are depicted with the gravity and decorum appropriate to their status […] most especially ecclesiastics’.29 As ‘heirs in waiting’ to the papal throne, cardinals’ in particular were required through their imagery to communicate ecclesiastical authority and unity. With a marked increase in demand in the years during and after Trent, every major artist active at Rome produced one or more cardinal portraits. Scipione Pulzone was particularly successful at reinterpreting the established formula. In his numerous portraits, which often exist in multiple versions, cardinals are generally shown either at half or three-quarter length, often seated, though occasionally standing. They are inevitably clothed in their official red choir dress, usually holding a letter, alluding to their duties and office, or a small book, suggesting their learning and piety. Sometimes accompanied by secondary figures, Scipione’s cardinals are frequently distinguished by lavish fabrics and intricate accessories.30 In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries there emerged a popular genre of of printed cardinal portraits known as the Effigies cardinalium nunc viventum. Ottavio Leoni, known for his ritratti di macchia, or portrait sketches executed from memory, helped to disseminate cardinals’ images through his collaboration on the 1608 Effigies, a series of 77 engraved cardinal portraits, published under the auspices of Paul V and based on likenesses taken by Leoni.31 This project was an important precedent for the De Rossi printers’ highly successful and long-running collection of engraved cardinal portraits, the Libro de’ Ritratti degli Eminentissimi Signori Cardinali, dall’anno MDCLVIII, which, at its conclusion in 1863, contained 831 images of past and present members of the Sacred College.32 Such collections were inspired by compilations of cardinals’ biographies, which had begun to appear towards the end of the sixteenth century and which often included likenesses of 29 Paleotti, Discorso, 1582, cap. xx, p. 340. 30 See Danielle Carrabino’s essay in this volume. 31 Tittoni and Petrucci, eds., La porpora romana, 2006, p. 25, and nos. 14, 18, and 20; Primarosa, ‘Ottavio Leoni’, 2013, pp. 55–72; Primarosa, ‘Fermare il modello’, 2014. Many of the portraits that appear in the Effigies were used in at least one manuscript compendium that included biographies: Mucanzio’s Cardinalium nunc viventium Elogia, complied in 1615 (ASV, Fondo Borghese, ser. IV, 201); for this work, see Cavero de Carondelet, ‘El viaje a Roma de Luis de Oviedo’, 2020. 32 See Tozzi, ‘Libro de’ ritratti’, 2006, and Arnold Witte’s essay in this volume.

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

Fig. 1.2 Leonardo Parasole, Effigies cum insignibus nominibus, cognominibus, patria, titulis et nuncupationes reverendissimorum […] Cardinalium nunc viventium, 1593, hand-coloured woodcut, London, The British Museum (© The Trustees of the British Museum).

29

30 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

their subjects; a notable example is the volume by the Spanish Dominican, Alfonso Chacón, or Ciacconius, first published in Rome in 1601.33 The wider popularity of and demand for images of cardinals is demonstrated by a large woodcut (nearly A1 in size) containing small portraits of all living cardinals, engraved by Leonardo Parasole and printed by Paolo Blado (Fig. 1.2). Organized in horizontal rows according to nominating pope and clerical ranking, each portrait was carved by Parasole on an individual block, so that the image could be regularly updated by the woodcutter and printer, with new cardinals added and the deceased removed.34 In an example of this woodcut dating to 1593, now in the British Museum, the cardinals’ scarlet attire has been hand-coloured, again revealing the importance of their unifying attribute. Finally, alongside independent portraits, cardinals could also be shown together in groups, as demonstrated in the early manuscript illuminations discussed above, reflecting the collective nature of their status. Portraits of cardinals also began to be incorporated into large-scale, painted historical narratives decorating the interiors of public and private buildings, both in and outside of Rome. In such images, cardinals often seem to be ‘role playing’ in scenes celebrating their papal or familial patrons, such as the well-known fresco in the Vatican by Melozzo da Forli of Sixtus IV Appointing Platina, where the two papal nephews stand behind the pope.35 This image underscores the dynastic ambitions of the pope, and indeed such group portraits frequently reflect the nepotistic set of relations that characterized the papacy in the period.36 However, larger scenes incorporating many figures of cardinals often reflect broader networks operating within the Sacred College. In many such cases individual cardinals’ names have been forgotten. It is occasionally possible to rediscover their identities through pictorial and historical evidence.37 Such identifications often shed light on the political alliances or theological sympathies of certain factions within the Curia at a given moment.

Cardinals and Sculpture As with other categories of portraiture, cardinals’ portraits were also executed in a variety of sculpted forms. While painted or illuminated portraits were often high-status products intended for an elite audience, the production of medallic portraits, like engravings, ensured a wide dissemination of cardinals’ images. 33 Chacón, Vitae et res gestae, 1601. 34 Bury, Print in Italy, 2002, pp. 156–157. 35 Clark, Melozzo da Forlí, 1990, pp. 21–41; see also Philippa Jackson’s essay in this volume. 36 For the case of Venetian cardinals, who tended to come only from certain families, see Sarah Ferrari in this volume. 37 See the essays by Alessandra Pattanaro and Irene Brooke in this volume.

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

Fig. 1.3 Francesco Francia, Cardinal Francesco degli Alidosi, 1505-1511, bronze, New York, Metropolitan Museum (© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehmann Collection, 1975).

These were usually executed by goldsmiths within the papal mint to celebrate an individual’s elevation to the cardinalate; however, wealthy cardinals might also memorialize specific events by commissioning finer specimens, like that of Cardinal Francesco degli Alidosi, whose portrait medal attributed to Francesco Francia, probably commemorated his appointment as papal legate to Bologna in 1508 (Fig. 1.3).38 Close to and rapidly promoted by Julius II, Alidosi followed the pope’s lead in exploiting the portrait medal’s potential as a propagandistic tool, at once glorifying the church and self.39 The reverse of Alidosi’s medal, showing Jupiter brandishing thunderbolts in his eagle-drawn cart above the god’s star signs, Sagittarius and Pisces, claims a favourable astrological prognostication for the cardinal’s career. Such overtly pagan imagery was rare on cardinals’ medals, which usually feature Christian or allegorical symbols. 40 In the fervid religious climate 38 Warren, ‘Francesco Francia’, 1999, pp. 217–218; Pollard, Renaissance Medals, 1987, p. 226, no. 211; for Alidosi, see De Caro, ‘Alidosi, Francesco’, 1960. 39 For Julius II’s medals, see Weiss, ‘Medals of Pope Julius II’, 1965, and Fishburne, ‘Casting an Ecclesiastical Prince’, 2014. 40 Although a complete study of cardinals’ medals is lacking in the scholarship, a useful table of cardinal medals in the British Museum, and their reverse imagery, can be found in Hendrickson, ‘Bronze Portrait

31

32 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

after Trent, posthumous medals bearing images of cardinals deemed particularly holy, like Carlo Borromeo, could become venerated items and even assume agency as miracle-performing objects. 41 The posthumous image and ‘memoria’ of a cardinal was frequently fashioned through a sculpted effigy or portrait on a funerary monument.42 In fifteenth-century Rome, several cardinals were memorialized through recumbent effigies placed on top of sarcophagi within vertical, wall-mounted monuments of a type established by non-native sculptors like Andrea Bregno. 43 Employing a triumphalist, all’antica vocabulary, such works more often communicate the cardinal’s identity through an epigraph, coat of arms, or symbols of his office, rather than a specific likeness or even dress. Occasionally, however, a more individualized portrait might be included within a relief decorating the monument, as in the case of Cardinal Pietro Riario’s tomb in Santissimi XII Apostoli. The much more elaborate early sixteenth-century monuments of Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Girolamo Basso della Rovere, designed by Andrea Sansovino in Santa Maria del Popolo, follow the triumphal arch, wall-mounted model, but turn the reclining effigy of the dead cardinal on his side, with head supported by his elbow; Panofsky identified this pose occurring first in Spanish tombs, though ultimately it harks back to Etruscan models.44 Although the outward-facing effigy allowed for a more complete rendering of physiognomic details, the cardinals are still depicted deceased, with idealized features.45 Wearing pontificals rather than choir dress, as was typical, the cardinals’ status is designated by the form of the monument, as well as by the galero crowning their coats of arms. The similarity in type and ornamentation of these two tombs further asserts a shared social and political network.46 In the years following the Council of Trent (1545–1563), wall-mounted, architectonic monuments more often incorporated a portrait bust rather than a recumbent effigy, showing the cardinal still alive and in his red mozzetta, though often with head bare. In many portraits of this kind, such as those of Cardinal Francisco de Toledo (Fig. 13.1) and Cardinal Mariano Pierbenedetti in Santa Maria Maggiore Medal’, 2017. 41 See Minou Schraven’s essay in this volume. 42 For a discussion of cardinals’ tombs and their important role in establishing ‘memoria’ see Zitzlperger, ‘Cardinals’ Tombs’, 2020; for the distinction between effigies and portraits, see Lavin, ‘On the Sources and Meaning of the Renaissance Portrait Bust’, 1970, pp. 211–212, and Luchs, ‘Verrocchio and the Bust of Albiera degli Albizzi’, 2012, p. 83. 43 For cardinals’ tombs in Rome see Richardson, Reclaiming Rome, 2009, and the same author’s essay in this volume, as well as Zitzlsperger, ‘Cardinals’ Tombs’, 2020, and Ruggero, ‘Magnificenza cardinalizia’, 2006; for Bregno’s Roman oeuvres, see Caglioti, ‘Sui primi tempi romani’, 1997. 44 Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 1964, pp. 81–82. See Piers Baker-Bates’s essay in this volume. 45 Richardson, ‘Andrea Sansovino’, 2018; Langer, ‘Maniera Moderna’, 2019. 46 Zitzlperger, ‘Cardinals’ Tombs’, 2020, p. 595.

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

(Fig. 8.2), the colour of the cardinal’s mozzetta, and hence his status, is articulated through the use of porphyry which brilliantly contrasts with a white marble head. 47 The use of polychrome marble on these tombs echoes that of the much more elaborate monument of their patron, Sixtus V, located in the same basilica and linking the memoria of cardinals and pope. Such costly sculpted busts could be substituted by painted images on hard stone, like Domenichino’s portrait of Girolamo Agucchi, which crowns the cardinal’s monument in San Pietro in Vincoli; here Domenichino recycled the official portrait of Agucchi that he had executed while the cardinal was still alive. 48 This ‘lifelike’ portrait, characterized by the cardinal’s intense, penetrating gaze, is a fitting culmination to a tomb which, positioned within Agucchi’s titular church, promotes his secular memory, recording a network of patronal and familial ties. 49 Finally, although sculpted portraits of cardinals are most often found on funerary monuments, independent sculpted busts depicting living cardinals began to come into favour especially in the seventeenth century.50 Related to sixteenth-century papal models like Gugliemo della Porta’s c.1546 marble bust of Paul III (Naples, Museo di Capodimonte), the iconography of such portraits again underscores the cardinal’s relationship to the pope and his place within the hierarchy the church.51 In early seventeenth-century Rome, Bernini revolutionized this type of portrait with his famous bust of Scipione Borghese (Rome, Galleria Borghese; Fig. 1.4). In this work the artist captures physiognomic details precisely and creates a likeness so lifelike that critics have, since its execution, remarked on the fact that the sitter appears to be ‘speaking’.52 This bust would in turn influence Bernini’s later papal portraiture, a genre which he transformed by replacing the pope’s cope with the mozzetta; in doing so Bernini was following the tradition of painted portraits established by Raphael’s Julius II, which, as observed, formed the fundamental basis for the typology of cardinal portraits.53 47 Ruggero, ‘Magnificenza cardinalizia’, 2007, pp. 45–46; see the essays of Thomas-Leo True and Piers Baker-Bates in this volume. 48 Spear, Domenichino, 1982, p. 137, no. 14. 49 The execution of the tomb was overseen by the cardinal’s younger brother who was a protector of the artist and had promoted his interests with the cardinal; see Ginzburg Carignani, ‘Domenichino e Giovanni Battista Agucchi’, 1996. 50 For the general development of independent portrait busts in the fifteenth and sixteenth century see Lavin, ‘On the Sources and Meaning of the Renaissance Portrait Bust’, 1970; Schuyler, Florentine Busts, 1976; and Martin, Alessandro Vittoria. 51 See Gramberg, ‘Gugliemo dalla Portas Grabmal für Paul III’, 1984, and Caldwell, ‘Knowing Likeness’, 2018. 52 Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1955, p. 194, no. 31; Coliva, ‘Scipione Borghese’, 1998; Zitzlsperger, ‘Der Papst’, 2001; Bacchi and Hess, ‘Creating a New Likeness’, 2008, p. 20. 53 Bacchi and Hess, ‘Creating a New Likeness’, pp. 34–36.

33

34 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

Fig. 1.4 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, 1632, marble, Rome, Galleria Borghese (© Galleria Borghese).

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

Fig. 1.5 Unknown artist, Cardinal Reginald Pole, 1540s, oil on canvas, St Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum (© The State Hermitage Museum, photo by Leonard Kheifets).

Individual versus Collective Identity In examples as spectacular as Bernini’s portraits of Cardinal Borghese, the relationship between sitter and artist inevitably obtrudes. As with all types of portraiture, such outstanding works assume heightened worth through the fame of the artist, as well as the prestige of the sitter, and have therefore garnered

35

36 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

the most scholarly attention.54 The fascination with historical personalities has frequently led to the neglect of portraits in which either the sitter or artist, or both, are unknown. There survive numerous cardinal portraits, many of superb quality, of which this is true. Two elevated examples are the portraits of Cardinal Reginald Pole in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Fig. 1.5) and of Cardinal Marcello Cervini in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. Both men were important members of the Sacred College, but the painters of their imposing portraits can no longer be named with certainty.55 Even less studied are numerous images in which neither cardinal nor artist can now be identified. Especially after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), a flood of cardinal images, often of low quality and across all media, were produced; the value of these rested not on any intrinsic artistic worth but on the inherent importance and status of the cardinal within the Catholic Church. Despite the scholarly neglect of such works in the literature (both art historical and historical), clearly these images circulated widely. They therefore provide crucial visual evidence that testifies to the diverse roles that cardinals and their images could assume, functionally in terms of their office and duties, and propagandistically in terms of ideology.56 Richard Brilliant has observed that ‘portraits make value judgments not just about the specific individual portrayed but about the general worth of individuals as a category’.57 This assertion certainly applies to cardinal portraits as a subgenre within portraiture. The breadth and frequency of cardinal portraits clearly reveal the societal estimation of cardinals as a category of individuals. Thus, this volume considers both the development of the individual cardinal portrait and the significance of visual representations of the collective identity comprised by the Curia. This shift of emphasis indeed reflects the larger history of the Sacred College, as explored by Miles Pattenden in the following chapter.

54 For this phenomenon see Woodall, ed., Portraiture, 1997. 55 The stunning portrait of Cardinal Pole has over the years been attributed to almost every major Roman artist of the first half of the sixteenth century; for a summary of attributions see Hirst, Sebastiano del Piombo, 1981, pp.120–121; for the attribution to Perino del Vaga see Romani, ‘Piero Buonaccorsi, detto Perino del Vaga, Ritratto del cardinale Reginald Pole’, 2005. 56 See Arnold Witte’s contribution to this volume. 57 Brilliant, Portraiture, 1991.

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

Bibliography Bacchi, Andrea and Catherine Hess, ‘Creating a New Likeness’, in Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Sculpture, ed. by Andrea Bacchi, Catherine Hess, and Jennifer Montagu (Los Angeles/Ottawa: J. Paul Getty Museum/National Gallery of Canada, 2008), pp. 1–44. Baker-Bates, Piers, ‘Technical Experimentation in the Art of Sebastiano del Piombo: Some Further Thoughts’, Colnaghi Studies Journal 6 (2020): 86–97. Baker-Bates, Piers, Mary Hollingsworth, and Arnold Witte, ‘Cardinals as Patrons of the Visual Arts’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 511–534. Bolton, Andrew, ed., Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018). Brilliant, Richard, Portraiture (London: Reaktion, 1991). Burckhardt, Jacob, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. by S.G.C. Middlemore (London: Swan, Sonnenschein, & Co., 1892). Burke, Peter, ‘The Renaissance, Individualism, and the Portrait’, History of European Ideas 21.3 (1995): 393–400. Bury, Michael, The Print in Italy, 1550–1600 (London: British Museum Press, 2001). Caglioti, Francesco, ‘Sui primi tempi romani d’Andrea Bregno: un progetto per il cardinale camerlengo Alvise Trevisan e un San Michele Arcangelo per il cardinale Juan de Carvajal’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 41.3 (1997): 213–253. Caldwell, Dorigen, ‘A Knowing Likeness: Artists and Letterati at the Farnese Court in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Rome’, in Et Amicorum: Essays on Renaissance Humanism and Philosophy in Honour of Jill Kraye, ed. by Anthony Ossa-Richardson and Margret Meserve (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018), pp. 159–176. Cavero de Carondelet, Cloe, ‘El viaje a Roma de Luis de Oviedo’, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 45 (2020): 55–79. Chacón, Alfonso, Vitae et res gestae pontificum romanorum et S.R.E cardinalium an initio nascentis ecclesiae usque ad Clementem IX P.O.M. (Rome: Stephanus Paulinus, 1601). Chambers, David, A Renaissance Cardinal and his Worldly Problems: The Will and Inventory of Francesco Gonzaga (1444–1483) (London: Warburg Institute, 1992). ———, Renaissance Cardinals and their Worldly Problems (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997). Chapman, Hugo, Tom Henry, and Carol Plazzotta, Raphael: From Urbino to Rome (London: National Gallery, 2004). Christiansen, Keith and Stefan Weppelmann, eds., The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012). Coliva, Anna, ‘Scipione Borghese’, in Bernini scultore: la nascità del baroco in Casa Borghese, ed. by Anna Coliva and Sebastian Schütze (Rome: Edizione de Luca, 1998), pp. 276–289. Clark, Nicholas, Melozzo da Forlí pictor papalis (London: Sotheby’s Publications, 1990). Cranston, Jodi, The Poetics of Portraiture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

37

38 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

De Caro, Gaspare, ‘Alidosi, Francesco’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 2 (Rome: Treccani, 1960), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/alidosi-francesco-detto-il-cardinal-dipavia_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Feigenbaum, Gail, ed., Display of Art in the Roman Palace (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2014). Fishburne, James, ‘Casting an Ecclesiastical Prince: Portrait Medals of Pope Julius II’, PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 2014. Ginzburg Carignani, Silvia, ‘Domenichino e Giovanni Battista Agucchi’, in Domenichino, 1581–1641, ed. by Richard Spear and Giovanna Grumo (Milan: Electa, 1996), pp. 121–137. Gardner, Julius, ‘The Stefaneschi Altarpiece: A Reconsideration’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974): 57-103. Gramberg, Werner, ‘Gugliemo dalla Portas Grabmal für Paul III: Farnese in San Pietro in Vaticano’, Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 21 (1984): 253–364. Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984). Hendrickson, Emilee Barrow, ‘The Bronze Portrait Medal of Cardinal Andrea della Valle’, MA diss., University of Alabama, 2017. Henry, Tom and Paul Joannides, Late Raphael (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2012). Hirst, Michael, ‘A Portrait of Lorenzo Pucci by Parmigianino’, Apollo 151.460 (2000): 43–47. Hirst, Sebastiano del Piombo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). Hollingsworth, Mary and Carol M. Richardson, eds., The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2020). Hunter, John, ‘Who Is Jan van Eyck’s “Cardinal Nicolo Albergati”’, Art Bulletin 75.2 (1993): 207–218. Jacobus, Laura, ‘“Propria Figura”: The Advent of Facsimile Portraiture in Italian Art’, Art Bulletin 99.2 (2017): 72–101. Kempers, Bram, ‘The Canonical Portrait of a Cardinal: Bandinello Sauli, Raphael and Sebastiano del Piombo’, in I cardinali della Santa Romana Chiesa: collezionisti e mecenati, ed. by Marco Gallo (Rome: Shakespeare and Company, 2001), pp. 6–21. Kerr-Di-Carlo, Éowyn, ‘Making the Cardinal’s Missal: Looking Anew at the Circle of Lorenzo Monaco and the Illuminators of Fitzwilliam MS 30’, in Manuscripts in the Making: Art and Science, vol. 1, ed. by Stella Panaytova and Paola Ricciardi (London/Turnhout: Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2017), pp. 87–95. Klinger, Linda Susan, ‘Images of Identity: The Portrait Collections of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century’, in The Image of the Individual Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. by Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson (London: British Museum Press, 1998). ———, ‘The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio’, PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1991. Langer, Lara, ‘The Maniera Moderna of Andrea Sansovino’s Cardinal Tombs at Santa Maria del Popolo’, Sculpture Journal 28 (2019): 75–102.

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

Lavin, Irving, ‘On the Sources and Meaning of the Renaissance Portrait Bust’, Art Quarterly 33 (1970): 207–226. Leone de Castris, Pierluigi, ‘Raffaello Sanzio: ritratto del cardinal Alessandro Farnese, futuro papa Paolo III’, in I Farnese: arte e collezionismo, ed. by Lucia Fornari Schianchi (Milan: Mondadori Elects, 1995), pp. 168–169. Luchs, Alison, ‘Verrocchio and the Bust of Albiera degli Albizzi: Portraits, Poetry and Commemoration’, Artibus et Historiae 33.66 (2012): 75–98. Mancini, Giorgia and Nicholas Penny, The National Gallery Catalogues, vol. 3: Bologna and Ferrara (London: The National Gallery, 2016). Mann, Nicholas and Luke Syson, eds., The Image of the Individual Portraits in the Renaissance (London: British Museum Press, 1998). Mansour, Opher, ‘Prince and Pontiff: Secular and Sacred Authority in Papal State Portraiture between Raphael’s Julius II and the Portraits of Pius V and Clement VIII’, in Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome, ed. by Michael Bury and Jill Burke (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 209–229. Martin, Thomas, Alessandro Vittoria and the Portrait Bust in Renaissance Venice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Mucanzio, Giovanni Battista, Cardinalium nunc viventium Elogia, 1615, ASV, Fondo Borghese, ser. IV, 201. Paleotti, Gabriele, Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane (1582), in Accademia della Crusca, ed., Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento [online resource], Fondazione Memofonte, http://memofonte.accademiadellacrusca.org/pdf/5.pdf (accessed May 2020). Panofsky, Erwin, Tomb Sculpture: Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini, ed. by H.W. Janson (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964). Partridge, Loren and Randolph Starn, A Renaissance Likeness: Art and Culture in Raphael’s Julius II (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980) Petrucci, Francesco, ‘Tipologie della ritrattistica cardinalizia tra ’500 e ’600’, in La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento, ed. by Francesco Petrucci and Maria Elisa Titton (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2006), pp. 19–30. Pilliod, Elizabeth, ‘“In Tempore Poenitentiae”: Pierfrancesco Foschi’s Portrait of Cardinal Antonio Pucci’, Burlington Magazine 130 (1988), pp. 679–687. Pollard, J. Graham, Italian Medals (Washington, DC: National Gallery, 1987) Primarosa, Yuri, ‘Fermare il modello in posa con la matita, il bulino, il pennello: il cardinal Erminio Valenti nei ritratti di Ottavio Leoni’, Bollettino della Diputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria, 111.1–2 (2014): 963–979. ———, ‘Ottavio Leoni portraitiste de Paul V et du Collège des cardinaux Borghèse’, in Ottavio Leoni (1578–1630): les portraits de Berlin, ed. by Francesco Solinas (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2013), pp. 55–72. Pope-Hennessy, John, The Portrait in the Renaissance (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966). Rebecchini, Guido, ‘Un altro Lorenzo’: Ippolito de’ Medici tra Firenze e Roma (Venice: Marsilio, 2010).

39

40 

Piers Baker-Bates and Irene Brooke

Richardson, Carol M., ‘The Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 535–556. ———, Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2009). ———, ‘Reputation, Patronage and Opportunism: Andrea Sansovino Arrives in Rome’, Sculpture Journal 27.2 (2018): 177–192. Robertson, Clare, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 557–580. Romani, Vittoria, ‘Piero Buonaccorsi, detto Perino del Vaga, Ritratto del ardinale Reginald Pole’, in Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, ed. by Pina Ragionieri (Florence: Mandragora, 2005), pp. 114–117. Patricia Lee, ‘Understanding Renaissance Portraiture’, in The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini, ed. by Keith Christiansen and Stefan Weppelmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012), pp. 2–25. Ruggero, Cristina, ‘Magnificenza cardinalizia nella ritrattistica funebre’, in La porpora romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2006), pp. 41–52. Scarpa, Tiziano, ‘Ritratto del Cardinale Ippolito de’ Medici’, Tiziano e il ritratto di corte da Raffaello ai Carracci (Milan: Electa, 2006), pp.118–119. Schuyler, Jane, Florentine Busts: Sculpted Portraiture in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Garland), 1976. Seiler, Peter, ‘Giotto als Erfinder des Porträts’, in Das Portrat von der Erfindung des Porträts, ed. by Martin Büchsel and Peter Schnidt (Mainz am Rhein: P. von Zabern, 2003), pp. 153–172. Spear, Richard E., Domenichino, 2 vols. (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1982). Steinke, Hubert, ‘Giotto und Physiognomik’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 59.4 (1996): 523–547. Syson, Luke, ed., Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian (London: National Gallery, 2008) Tittoni, Maria Elisa and Francesco Petrucci, eds., La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento (Rome: Gangemi, 2006). Tostmann, Oliver, ‘Sebastiano del Piombos Bildnis Bendinello Saulis und das Kardinalsporträt im frühen Cinquecento’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 3 (2011): 311–348. Tozzi, Simonetta, ‘Libro de’ ritratti degli eminentissimi signori cardinali … Ritratti incisi dei cardinali al Museo di Roma’, in La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento, ed. by Francesco Petrucci and Maria Elisa Titton (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2006), pp. 31–39. Vasari, Giorgio, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (1568), ed. by Gaetano Milanesi, vol. 1 (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1881).

Portraying the Princes of the Church 

Warren, Jeremy, ‘Francesco Francia and the Art of Renaissance Sculpture in Bologna’, Burlington Magazine 141 (1999): 216–225. Weiss, Roberto, ‘The Medals of Pope Julius II’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28.163–182 (1965): 163–182. Wittkower, Rudolf, Gian Lorenzo Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque (London: Phaidon Press, 1955). Woodall, Joanna, ed., Portraiture: Facing the Subject (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). Zitzlsperger, Philipp, ‘Cardinals’ Tombs’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 581–599. ———, ‘Der Papst und sein Kardinal oder: Staatsporträt und Krisenmanagment im barocken Rom’, Zeitschrift fur Künstgeschichte 64.4 (2001): 547–561.

About the Authors Piers Baker-Bates is a Visiting Research Associate at the Open University. He has published extensively on Sebastiano del Piombo and the cultural relations between Italy and Spain in the sixteenth century, including his monographic study Sebastiano del Piombo and the World of Spanish Rome. Irene Brooke is an Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute and editor of the Colnaghi Studies Journal. She has published articles on Cardinal Pietro Bembo’s patronage and collecting strategies, as well as on the work and career of the engraver, Giulio Campagnola.

41

2.

The Early Modern Cardinal An Historical Appraisal Miles Pattenden Abstract This chapter sets out the historical context to the cardinal as a subject of portraiture. It engages recent historiography to explain how the cardinal’s function and role in the Roman Curia, including his relationship to the pope, developed from the f ifteenth century onwards, and how this was reflected in the range of men who occupied the cardinal’s office. The Sacred College changed substantially over these centuries, with its proud ‘princes of the Church’ giving way to an altogether humbler breed of Counter-Reformation cleric. Naturally, this affected both how cardinals depicted themselves and how they and others used their depictions. Keywords: cardinals; popes’ portraiture; Renaissance; Counter-Reformation

‘The Cardinal’ is among the most visual archetypes in European history. His rich red robes and ostentatious headgear betoken the leadership which the pope vests in him; his airs of primordial authority and sacerdotal noblesse instinctively draw the eye. Even an art historical layman can identify a cardinal immediately from the cut and colour of his cloth: scarlet, crimson, carmine, vermilion, ruby – even, as in the famous bespectacled portrait of Fernando Niño de Guevara (Plate 12), rosé – the shade of red matters not, for the association of iconography and office is so strong. Cardinals thus, ironically, would seem to enjoy a more straightforward visual identity than the popes whom they faithfully served – the pope’s costume, by contrast, manifesting itself in rather more variable shades and emblematic designs than those available to his mere electors. Yet the single factor of colour has come to be so meaningful with the cardinal that it can feel as if almost the only filter through which to glimpse him. To delve deeper into who cardinals were, and why they mattered, we have to push past this primary association to interrogate

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch02

44

Miles Pattenden

the somewhat broader palette with which this extraordinarily varied group of individuals put a gloss on their lives. Over 1,200 men became cardinals between 1417 and the end of the eighteenth century and many discharged their roles and responsibilities as porporati quite differently. A cardinal’s core duties in this period may have been to serve as a papal elector and counsellor, but many cardinals were also pastors or politicians, inquisitors or diplomats, saints, sinners, bureaucrats, and patrons of the arts. Some cardinals even became kings; a majority were involved in governing the wider Church in other ways, for example as protectors of orders, confraternities, crowns, and nations. The complexity of the roles which cardinals adopted, and the sheer range of identities which might flow from them, therefore make cardinals important figures of study not just for ecclesiastical historians but also for scholars of culture, politics, and society at large. The cardinal’s positional versatility helped in particular to ensure that he and his peers became the subjects of a large body of portraiture, which thus now needs to be interpreted and set in context. The remaining essays in the present volume do this for a specific case or cases, in relation to a particular image, cardinal, or portrayer of cardinals. This chapter enhances their approach by doing something different: it sets those discussions in context with an overview of the cardinal as a phenomenon. How the concept of a cardinal developed, what issues it raised within the early modern Church (and society), and what implications that had for the cardinal’s portraiture in the wide variety of forms which it took are thus questions which inform discussion in the pages below.

THe Development of the Cardinal What then is a cardinal? The question has never been all that easy to answer. And, indeed, one reason that we seem to recognize cardinals more for how they look than for what they do is that their precise function within the Church – including the range of powers and responsibilities which flow from it – has been the subject of intense debate and complex evolution for hundreds of years, including well into the early modern period. The word ‘cardinal’ does not appear in the early Church’s lexicon, emerging only at some point towards the middle of the first millennium. Leo IX (1049–1054) postulated that cardinals were the hinges (cardines) on which the great door of the ecclesia universalis swung. But Leo did not specify in detail what that meant in practice.1

1

Kuttner, ‘Cardinalis’, 1945, p. 176.

The Early Modern Cardinal 

Leo’s cardinals were simply those clergy who assisted him in performing his episcopal duties around Rome, and they consisted of three kinds: deacons, priests, and bishops. Cardinal-deacons distributed papal alms in each of the city’s districts (rioni), but cardinal-priests deputized for the pontiff in its great basilicae, while cardinal-bishops each held title to one of the seven suburbicarian dioceses subordinated to the pope’s own (Ostia, Albano, Frascati, Palestrina, Sabina, Silva Candida, and Velletri). Only in 1059, when Nicholas II elevated these three orders of clerics to the august position of papal electors, was a process by which they came together into one ‘College’ truly set in motion. The term ‘Sacred College’ was first used to signify the cardinals as collective only at the Council of Rheims in 1148.2 And yet the relationship of these three orders to each other, and to the pope himself, remained unclear even then. Only in 1179, for instance, did Alexander III effectively combine them into a single body, when he established that all individual cardinals would hold equal status when it came to the crucial duty of choosing his successor.3 The question of what further rights cardinals’ involvement in the election conferred on them individually remained a matter of canonical conjecture throughout the remaining Middle Ages. 4 In practical terms a particular cardinal’s capacity to vote certainly gave him a wide opening to construct a patronage network with himself at the centre. But did the cardinal’s role in choosing the pope also give him his own legal authority within the Church independent of the pope’s? There were those who argued that it did, at least as expressed at a corporate level. The matter was of no little significance since many cardinals aspired explicitly to the idea that their College formed a sort of ‘senate of the Church’ which could supervise the pope and perhaps even constrain him. In 1378 a group of cardinals actually put this to the test when they repudiated Urban VI’s election and withdrew to Avignon to elect a replacement.5 The Great Schism which followed lasted for nearly 40 years. Early modernity was thus a time in which the role of the cardinal was closely contested – something reflected in the wide variety of contexts in which the cardinal came to be visualized – but it was also the moment when that cardinalatial role came to be defined far more closely than hitherto. The Great Schism had pitted the cardinals’ rights against the pope’s – to the benefit only of conciliarism, a rival constitutional theory for the Church to papalism that posited the Church to be a congregation of the faithful governed not by the pope but by a council of its senior 2 Molien, ‘Sacré College’, 1924–1935, p. 990. 3 On the history of the cardinals’ voting rights in the papal election, see Colomer and McLean, ‘Electing Popes’, 1998, and Pattenden, Electing the Pope, 2017, pp. 56–67. 4 On debates about the cardinals’ status vis-à-vis the pope, see Pattenden, Electing the Pope, 2017, pp. 13–14, 21–22; and, in greater detail, Robinson, Papacy, 1990, pp. 33–120. 5 On the Western Schism and its causes see Weiß’s recent survey of historiographical debate on this, ‘Luxury and Extravagancy at the Papal Court’, 2009.

45

46

Miles Pattenden

members. Papal fortunes, and therefore by extension those of the cardinals, were at a low ebb when the Council of Constance (1414–1418) dissolved the then three extant papal obediences and reinstituted a new unified papacy under Martin V. Yet the fifteenth century saw a series of decisive developments in both cardinals’ prominence and standing which paved the way for their later celebrity. The pope’s return to Rome in 1420 unleashed new opportunities for ambitious men of letters and would-be administrators to prove their mettle in his service. At the same time, new elites (both within Italy and beyond) wanted access to the Church’s wider wealth to aid their social advancement: they too invested in cardinals’ hats as a form of papal association – with the result that the College became more dynamic (in the sense of a higher turnover of personnel) and better connected: it was now linked to structures which distributed power locally through secular society. Many of the new f ifteenth-century cardinals saw themselves as veritable ecclesiastical ‘princes’ who had a duty to exhibit, depict, and even flaunt their magnificenza.6 Jean Jouffroy (c.1412–1473), a Burgundian French cardinal, certainly held so, arguing with no apparent irony that cardinals simply must deserve great wealth because of their heavy responsibilities.7 Other theorists of the cardinalate – most notably Paolo Cortesi – concurred in more general terms. Cortesi’s text regrettably still languishes only in its original sixteenth-century edition, a sign of the lack of attention given to study of the cardinal’s office rather than the specific men who occupied it.8 Nevertheless, Cortesi recommended that all cardinals should enjoy an income of 12,000 ducats per annum. Tellingly, Cortesi also divided his treatise De Cardinalatu into three books centred on each of the cardinal’s distinct spheres of activity as Homo Ethicus et Contemplativus, Oeconomicus, and Politicus. Few contemporaries dissented – though the humanist cardinal, Iacopo Ammannati Piccolomini (1422–1479), perhaps came closest: he wrote a letter to his young colleague Francesco Gonzaga exhorting him to make himself learned in law, theology, and history, but never to indulge in unnecessary pomp nor ornamentation.9 Yet even Ammannati seems to have viewed the College as fundamentally that same venerable ‘senate’ admired by other theorists for its collective experience and wisdom, and 6 The concept of magnificence ultimately goes back to Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 4.2, 1122a 23. Magnificence in this period has been widely studied, for instance Fraser Jenkins, ‘Cosimo de’ Medici’s Patronage of Architecture’, 1970; Burke, Fabrication of Louis XIV, 1992; Keay, Magnificent Monarch, 2008; Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, 2009; Griffey, Henrietta Maria, 2015. On other aspects of the cardinal’s magnificenza besides portraiture, see D’Amico and Weil-Garris, ‘Renaissance Cardinal’s Ideal Palace’, 1980; Oberli, Magnificentia Principis, 1999, pp. 21–39; the essays included in Hollingsworth and Richardson, eds., Possessions of a Cardinal, 2010; and Schirg, ‘Cortese’s Ideal Cardinal?’, 2017. 7 Märtl, Kardinal Jean Jouffroy, 1996, pp. 194–207. 8 Cortesi, De Cardinalatu, 1510; Chambers, ‘Treatises on the Ideal Cardinal’, 2020. 9 Ammannati, Lettere 1444–1479, 1997, pp. 190–202, no. 363; see also Pellegrini, ‘Da Iacopo Ammannati Piccolomini a Paolo Cortesi’, 1998.

The Early Modern Cardinal 

its sanction to speak truth unto the pope, guiding his decision-making. If we had more portraits of members from the mid-fifteenth-century College, that is doubtless how they would be depicted, for it is how the cardinals of this era choreographed themselves within ritual spaces such as the conclave when they performed a solemn ceremony: signing electoral capitulations by which they promised to limit their power over the College in the event of their own election as pope. Massimo Firpo once wrote of ‘the Cardinal’ as one of a small body of ‘Renaissance Characters’ – alongside ‘the Prince’, ‘Condottiere’, ‘Courtier’, ‘Philosopher’, ‘Merchant’, ‘Artist’, ‘Woman’, and ‘Native’ – as a personality which had ‘animated this decisive moment in the genesis of the modern mind’.10 Fifteenth-century cardinals nevertheless still faced an uphill battle to realize the ideal form they had constructed for themselves in practice and to assert their ambitions vis-à-vis the pope’s. The basic problem went back to Constance, which had set a worrying precedent for cardinals when the Council’s delegates had sat alongside them to elect Martin V. Without their exclusive right to choose the pope what status and power could cardinals have? But how could they hope to retain that right if they confronted the pope, as their fourteenth-century predecessors had done to Urban VI, and caused another schism? Fifteenth-century popes recognized the bind in which their cardinals now found themselves and saw little reason to honour any commitments made to them. They used the papacy’s growing resources, and the burgeoning demand for red hats, to overwhelm dissenters within the College by sheer force of numbers. The size of the College thus rose steadily throughout this period, from a low of just 16 in 1439 to a high of 76 in 1565.11 Naturally, this proved a boon for those who made their living painting cardinals’ likenesses, but the cardinals themselves were collectively disaffected by this development. They objected regularly, with Ludovico Trevisan’s outburst to Pius II telling, if not characteristic: ‘I am ashamed to sit in this place which every man thinks due him […] [for] You have named a number whom I would not have as servants in my kitchen or stable.’12 Emily O’Brien, not unreasonably, sees this as part of a ‘crisis of the fifteenth-century papacy’ which threatened to bring down the entire intellectual scaffolding that popes relied on to prop up their authority.13 Later cardinals continued to criticize every major new promotion in similar terms: for instance, when Sixtus V announced the creation of new cardinals in 1588 the existing ones expressed such discontent that, allegedly, he could hardly 10 Firpo, ‘Cardinal’, 1991. 11 Pellegrini, ‘Il Sacro Collegio Cardinalizio’, 2013, p. 322. 12 Meserve and Simonetta, eds., Pius II: Commentaries, 2007, pp. 229–230. 13 O’Brien, Commentaries of Pope Pius II, 2015.

47

48

Miles Pattenden

make himself heard above their braying.14 Money was a factor in such squabbles, of course. In 1500, most cardinals derived a majority of their income from grants from the Apostolic Treasury – grants which added up to around 10 per cent of papal income and were shared equally but were nevertheless still not sizeable enough to support the lifestyle to which many cardinals aspired.15 Some cardinals increasingly supplemented their core collegiate income with sums derived from benef ices, which Barbara Hallman has shown could be quite large. Hallman estimated that cardinals received 305,000 ducats from this source in 1523 – but the fact that cardinals could not easily discharge the duties attached to their benef ice(s) increasingly brought the College into disrepute and attracted opprobrium in the fevered times of the 1520s and 1530s.16 Many cardinals throughout the century thus remained surprisingly poor and most lived day-to-day on vast lines of credit.17

Cardinals in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Historians of the College in the sixteenth century have reached a consensus that this period witnessed the slow extinction of any ‘senatorial’ or ‘princely’ status cardinals might have had before (with a concomitant impact on how cardinals sought to depict themselves and be visualized). Paolo Prodi, who remains the most notable scholar to write on this subject, argued in his Sovrano pontefice that the impulse to reform lay behind this: Adrian VI (1522–1523) and most subsequent popes pursued policies to subordinate the Sacred College entirely to their authority – they hoped to refashion it into something less open to criticism from local churches.18 Other scholars, notably Marco Pellegrini and Jennifer DeSilva, have seen the rise of popes’ imperial and absolutist pretensions as an equally important factor, with crucial developments occurring during Alexander VI’s and Julius II’s ‘regal’ pontificates.19 Maria Teresa Fattori, in a work of detailed archival reconstruction, has shown just how far this process had progressed by the pontificate of Clement VIII: Clement was 14 Pastor, History of the Popes, 1891–1953, vol. 4, p. 410; vol. 5, p. 534; vol. 6, pp. 220–222; vol. 9, pp. 141 and 201–202; vol. 21, pp. 239–241. 15 Antonovics, ‘Late Fifteenth-Century Division Register’, 1967, pp. 95–96; on cardinals’ f inancial problems, see also Chambers, ‘Economic Predicament of Renaissance Cardinals’, 1966; Chambers, Renaissance Cardinal and his Worldly Goods, 1997, pp. 37–49; and Chambers, ‘Renaissance Cardinalate: From Paolo Cortesi’s De cardinalatu to the Present’, 2010; Byatt, ‘Cardinals’ Property and Income’, 2020. 16 Hallman, Italian Cardinals, 1985, p. 64. 17 Chambers, ‘Economic Predicament of Renaissance Cardinals’, 1966, pp. 305–308. 18 Prodi, Papal Prince, 1987, pp. 80–91. 19 DeSilva, ‘Senators or Courtiers’, 2008; Pellegrini, ‘Turning-point in the History of the Factional System’, 2002; Pellegrini, ‘Das Kardinalkolleg von Sixtus IV’, 2011; Pellegrini, ‘Il Sacro Collegio Cardinalizio’, 2013.

The Early Modern Cardinal 

said to dominate the College so utterly that, in the words of the Venetian ambassador Paolo Paruta, the cardinals openly ‘lamented their loss of every authority. [and] of almost every liberty’.20 Clement, like Sixtus V before him, certainly used a range of controlling behaviours, including financial sanctions and threats of violence, to silence dissent and to reshape the role of his subordinates. Developments such as these could have powerful political impacts – but they did not always impact on how, or how often, cardinals were depicted, in part because the College was never truly rendered voiceless or unimportant at all. Cardinals lost some corporate power but their individual agency hardly suffered the same fate (an observation with further implications for their portraiture in the seventeenth century).21 Antonio Menniti Ippolito has made the point that popes who innovated in order to centralize power in their own hands often found that their actions ended up dispersing it across the papal Curia in ways they had not anticipated. One effect of this was to create space for particular cardinals to establish themselves as powerful players in major congregations, and the Curia’s long history was thus generally one of ‘discontinuous continuity’, in which institutions created by one pope were later adapted by his successors’ cardinals for quite different purposes (or else subjected to processes of creative destruction).22 Late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cardinals were not so inconsequential after all, and, by a variety of means, wanted to show the world that this was the case. ‘Reform’ in the mid-sixteenth century also played an important role in changing the cardinal’s role – and, after Trent, many cardinals adjusted their aspirations and images to a whole series of new realities, both ideological and political. Hubert Jedin, who thought the cardinals got more religious on the whole, wrote of a ‘clericalization of the Sacred College’.23 Atis Antonovics, who has published a briefer assessment in English, stresses a similar re-profiling of the College’s membership over this time.24 Cardinals of this generation, and the one that followed, were certainly more pious than those who went before them – they included such illustrious names as the future saints Michele Ghislieri (Pius V), Carlo Borromeo, Roberto Bellarmine; the venerable Cesare Baronio; other distinguished reforming bishops like Gabriele Paleotti and Federico Borromeo; the inquisitors Giovanni Fachinetti and Giulio Antonio Santori; and the future reforming pope Gregory XV, Alessandro Ludovisi. These prelates were also, arguably, a more ‘moral’ group: far fewer admitted to such sins as fathering illegitimate children than their late fifteenth- or early 20 Paruta, in Alberì, Relazioni, 1839–1863, vol. 4, pp. 413–414; Fattori, Clemente VIII e il Sacro Collegio, 2004. 21 Pattenden, Electing the Pope, 2017, pp. 209–210. 22 Menniti Ippolito, Il governo dei papi, 2007, p. 19. 23 Jedin, ‘Analekten zur Reformtätigkeit’, 1935, p. 125. 24 Antonovics, ‘Counter-Reformation Cardinals’, 1972.

49

50

Miles Pattenden

sixteenth-century predecessors.25 Church historians who now recorded their roles as part of the endeavour of ‘sacred history’ certainly saw them as such.26 This reversion to the cardinal as a figure of righteousness had important effects on both Curia and Church, giving a powerful push to various devout initiatives of various kinds. Treatises on the ‘ideal’ cardinal proliferated. Moreover, unlike earlier Renaissance texts, these new tracts depicted cardinals as functionaries and servants who needed to exemplify holiness and prudence. The Jesuit Girolamo Piatti’s De cardinalis dignitate et officio, published in 1602, typifies this: it calls specific attention to the moral characteristics a holder of this office now needed – not just prudence, but also fortitude, restraint, and erudition (especially in oratory).27 Of course, we can push a narrative of the College’s spiritual regeneration too far: the fact that Carlo Borromeo was later among the most devout of cardinals does not, for instance, obscure the fact that he was first promoted as a callow youth of eighteen. In fact, such ‘underage’ cardinals were as well represented within the College in the century after 1550 as they were in the one before.28 Yet, something surely changed, if not in how all cardinals behaved then at least in terms of the norms that were established for their behaviour. Cardinals were in general depicted differently, as a culture of post-Tridentine piety emerged within the College’s membership, competing – and co-existing – with those earlier developments like Italianization and the evolution of those patron–client networks. Scholars who study the College’s changing demography in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have also noted other patterns, not least one of oligarchic consolidation within the Italian group, which intensified after 1500 (and especially after 1600) in several important ways and reshaped the networks and factions around which curial politics was built.29 Christoph Weber, whose work ranks alongside that of Barbara McClung Hallman and Maria Antonietta Visceglia as the most important in this respect, has noted the growing intensity of social connections and relational ties which increasingly bound much of the College’s membership together.30 Seventy per cent of cardinals from this period were Italian but 114 of 25 Weber, Senatus Divinus, 1996, pp. 36–43. 26 Key works here include Chacón, Vitae, et res gestae pontificum romanorum et S.R.E. Cardinalium, 1601, and its various continuations; Palazzi, Fasti Cardinalium, 1703; and Cardella, Memorie storiche de’ cardinali, 1792–1797. See Pattenden and Witte, ‘Early Modern Historiography of Early Modern Cardinals’, 2020. 27 Piatti, De cardinalis dignitate, 1602, pp. 57, 70, 77, 85, 130. 28 DeSilva, ‘Politics and Dynasty: Underage Cardinals’, 2017, p. 90. 29 Visceglia, ‘Factions in the Sacred College’, 2002; Emich, Bürokratie und Nepotismus, 2001; Reinhard, ed., Römische Mikropolitik unter Papst Paul V. Borghese, 2004; Pattenden, Electing the Pope, 2017, pp. 195–204. Eubel et al., eds., Hierarchia Catholica, 1898–, is also an important reference work for reconstructing the College’s composition from the fifteenth century onwards. 30 Weber, Senatus Divinus, 1996; Hallman, Italian Cardinals, 1985; Visceglia, ‘Social Background and Education of Cardinals’, 2020; Broderick, ‘Sacred College of Cardinals’, 1987, pp. 43–47; Reinhard, ‘Struttura e significato del sacro collegio’, 1988; DeSilva, ‘Red Hat Strategies’, 2011.

The Early Modern Cardinal 

them (9.9 per cent) – a truly striking number – were direct descendants of one or more of the Renaissance popes who acknowledged children (Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, Julius II, Paul III, Pius IV, Gregory XIII).31 Ten cardinals promoted in these centuries had members of the College for both maternal and paternal uncles and another thirteen also entered it after one of their relatives had married into the papal family.32 A small number of important families, including the Caetani, Carafa, Colonna, d’Este, Farnese, Gonzaga, Medici, Orsini, and Savelli dominated overall. These developments in themselves may go some way to explaining why so many cardinals acquired or inherited portraits of each other – the subject of Thomas-Leo True’s chapter – and why they maintained them within broader collections. Portrait collections were a way of visualizing – and making manifest – the ever more complex nexus of links within the Sacred College and between its leading members and the wider Italian aristocracy. Certainly, the narrowing of the College’s profile by the eighteenth century was such that, of the 56 cardinals who took part in the conclave of 1721, an astonishing 40 were related to former popes.33 And the College’s Italianization in due course reshaped how the Curia worked – and presented how it worked – in dramatic ways. Not least it meant that most cardinals arrived in office increasingly bound together by a shared training, outlook, and life experience. Italianization also incentivized cardinals in new ways: in particular to propagate, project, and extend wide-reaching client networks among the extended kin they often shared beyond Rome, who may or may not have also been hoping to climb up the curial cursus honorum. Renata Ago, Wolfgang Reinhard, and Maria Antonietta Visceglia have all studied how such networks operated.34 Indeed, Reinhard and Birgit Emich have also both gone still further to show how they developed their own idiosyncratic rhythms and ritualized forms of interaction within the patron–client nexus.35 These networks often made questions of place within Italy, and local and regional identities, as important to cardinals as grand ecclesiological concerns. Notoriously, they also did something else: they allowed Italian elites to dominate papal elections so completely that no non-Italian was elected to the office from 1523 until 1978.36 Later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cardinals, in spite of – or perhaps because of – such concerns, also assumed a much wider range of duties than earlier generations had taken on before: they had to personify the interests of a diverse 31 Weber, Senatus Divinus, 1996, pp. 243–246. 32 Ibid., pp. 88–90, 97–99. 33 Ibid., p. 124. 34 Visceglia, ‘Factions in the Sacred College’, 2002, p. 116; Ago, Carriere e clientele nella Roma barocca, 1990; Reinhard, ‘Makropolitik und Mikropolitik’, 2008. 35 Reinhard, ‘Papal Power and Family Strategy’, 1991; Emich, Bürokratie und Nepotismus, 2001. 36 On the profiles and identities of popes, see Reinhard, ‘Herkunft und Karriere der Päpste’, 1976.

51

52

Miles Pattenden

and growing range of groups and individuals at the papal court. Odoardo Farnese (1573–1626), for instance, held a large number of protectorships during his career, including of the luoghi pii (holy places), of the Roman brotherhoods of the Orazione e Morte, Santa Maria del Carmine, and San Girolamo della Carità, of the Casa degli Orfanelli, and of the Carthusian, Capuchin, and Camoldoese orders. Arnold Witte has argued that Farnese took his obligations to all these organizations within the Church most seriously, not only leaving them money or precious objects in his will but also visualizing them symbolically in the Camerino degli Eremiti whose decoration he commissioned from Giovanni Lanfranco in 1616.37 Yet some cardinals concentrated on collecting memberships of the Congregations – special ecclesiastical commissions which scrutinized or executed papal policy on the pontiff’s behalf which Sixtus V formalized in 1588.38 Maria Antonietta Visceglia has explained this as driven by each cardinal’s need to maximize his decision-making presence to fulfil obligations to nephews and clients (and thus maintain his own status and prestige).39 In all cases, the more memberships a cardinal had the stronger his motivation to circulate his image and the more vehicles by which he would be able to do so as he sought to put himself and his clients ahead.

Cardinals’ Portraits Portraits fit into this story because the changes described above – what we might loosely term the advent of post-Tridentine piety, of Italian identities, and of bureaucratic patron–client networks – all had major impacts on how cardinals understood their role and how they and others wished to represent it. No doubt that is why the editors of this volume structure three of the book’s sections around those subjects as principal themes. But cardinals also evolved in other ways at this time as well (which explains the choices of further themes): for instance, the cardinal’s role as collector was a natural concomitant to his position as patron (and both have certainly been well studied). 40 Moreover, the cardinal was a figure with multiple, often divided, loyalties. 37 Witte, Artful Hermitage, 2008, pp. 178–80. 38 Sixtus V, ‘Immensa aeterni Dei’, 22 January 1588, in Tomassetti et al., eds., Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificum, 1857–1872, vol. 8, pp. 985–99. 39 Visceglia, ‘Factions in the Sacred College’, 2002, p. 116. 40 On cardinals and collecting, see Periti, ‘La quadreria romana del Cardinale Alberoni’, 1993; Beaven, ‘Cardinal Camillo Massimi (1620–1677) as a Collector of Landscape Paintings’, 2003; Olzewski, Inventory of Paintings of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, 2004; Lorizzo, La collezione del cardinale Ascanio Filomarino, 2006; Rangoni Gàl, Fra’ Desiderio Scaglia, 2008; Gáldy, ‘Lost in Antiquities’, 2010; Beaven, Ardent Patron, 2010; Cappelletti, ‘Eye on the Main Chance’, 2014; Beaven and Lloyd, ‘Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni

The Early Modern Cardinal 

Many cardinals – at times a majority – were born within the Papal States; served the pope’s government, spiritual and temporal; and died in his service. Yet the number of other cardinals, still hailing from other parts of Italy or Europe, remained substantial – in spite of Italianization. Such men could be official ‘Crown Cardinals’, nominated by one or more Catholic princes, or they might be servants to their second master in a subtler fashion: as holders of protection of the crown or nation at the papal court, co-ordinators of its political faction in the conclave, or simply extended scions of prominent nobility or the royal house. 41 All such cardinals faced inevitable questions about how they wanted to represent themselves: which loyalties and identities they should prioritize in which contexts, how they might combine them appropriately in a given representation, who should have access to, or be able to display, their portrait, where they should locate their tombs, etc. No answer to any of these questions was ever permanently fixed (for even a tomb could be moved, as Carol M. Richardson’s essay shows). Hundreds of portraits of cardinals survive from the early modern period – indeed, cardinals are surely among the era’s most depicted figures, to the point that their portraiture could even be said to constitute its own subgenre. Moreover, both Renaissance and Baroque cardinals are known from a much wider variety of images than just such formal facsimiles. They feature as subjects of sculpted busts, effigies on tombs, likenesses on medals and miniatures; some even appear in frescos and on ceilings, alone and in groups. Printed books contain their fair share of cardinals’ visages too. Henri Albi’s Eloges historiques des cardinaux illustres (1644) is a particularly fine example of this. Unusually, its subjects are inked out onto the page in two colours: black and red. 42 The sheer quantity of visual representation of cardinals attests to two things: the technological advances of the age – which made mass production of illustrations of dignitaries possible for the first time – and also the constant contestation of the cardinal’s role, described above. Nearly every image of a cardinal was purposeful: it proposed a way that members of the College should be seen, either as individuals or in the collective. Many of these images were created with direct or indirect input from a cardinal himself – they were part of a discourse of self-fashioning and the creation of identity which was taking on added significance as the Catholic Altieri’, 2016 and 2019; and several recent overviews, including Beaven, ‘Elite Patronage and Collecting’, 2019; Baker-Bates et al., ‘Cardinals as Patrons of the Visual Arts’, 2020; Pattenden, ‘Cardinals and the Non-Christian World’, 2020, pp. 378–379, 385; on the relationship between patronage and collecting, see (for instance) Gundersheimer, ‘Patronage in the Renaissance’, 1981, pp. 21–22; Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art, 1993. 41 On ‘Crown Cardinals’, see Broderick, ‘Sacred College of Cardinals’, 1987, pp. 48–60; Tusor, ‘Prolegomena zur Frage des Kronkardinalats’, 2003. 42 Albi, Eloges historiques des cardinaux illustres, 1644.

53

54

Miles Pattenden

Church itself underwent profound intellectual, administrative, and cultural transformations. 43 Yet other images had cardinals simply as subjects – sometimes even incidental ones – and these can be just as revealing of how others perceived them and, perhaps, even of the success with which cardinals’ efforts at self-fashioning were met. Of course, many portraits of cardinals are also great works of technical merit and importance to the evolving history of aesthetic tastes and deserve to be studied on those terms as well. How we tease out the multiple levels on which we might like to engage with all cardinals’ portraits, and how we should reconcile their value to ecclesiastical historians and to art historians, should be preoccupying themes in our scholarship; they certainly require dialogue between practitioners of both disciplines if they are to be realized to full effect. The scholarly literature on images of cardinals is naturally large and wellestablished from an art historical perspective. Indeed, a broad body of scholarship acknowledges already how the College’s shifting status and the cardinals’ multiplying range of new identities impacted both on how cardinals represented themselves and also on how others portrayed them. Carol M. Richardson’s book Reclaiming Rome was a landmark for the study of the fifteenth-century College which examined how cardinals comported themselves visually through their dress and at their sites of official status; it built on a growing interest in Rome as a centre of Renaissance culture, even before the great gilded generation of artists and literati of the early 1500s arrived. Scholarship on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been more plentiful in numeric terms, but also narrower – with a primary focus on the activities of individual cardinals rather than of the College as a collective. Nevertheless, studies such as Clare Robertson on Alessandro Farnese, Zygmunt Waźbiński on Francesco del Monte, Lisa Beaven on Camillo Massimo, and the various shorter studies in Hollingsworth and Hollingsworth and Richardson’s edited volume, the Possessions of a Cardinal, all situate their subject’s role in commissioning art in the larger context of cardinals’ constant competition for social and political status, inside Rome and beyond it. 44 Other scholars – notably Maria Antonietta Visceglia, for ceremonial and etiquette, and Patricia Waddy and others, for cardinals’ palaces – have pursued similar inquiries in relation to specific themes and areas. 45 Formal portraiture may not 43 On self-fashioning, see Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1980; and in the context of the papal court, see in particular Burke, ‘Sacred Rulers, Royal Priests: Rituals of the Early Modern Popes’, 1987; Fosi, ‘Court and City in the Ceremony of the Possesso’, 2002; Pattenden, Electing the Pope, 2017, pp. 188–195. 44 Robertson, Il Gran Cardinale, 1992; Waźbiński, Il cardinale Francesco Maria del Monte, vol. 1: Mecenate di artisti, consigliere di politici e di sovrani, 1994; Beaven, Ardent Patron, 2010. 45 Visceglia, ‘Etichetta cardinalizia in età barocca’, 2018; Visceglia, La città rituale: Roma e le sue cerimonie in età moderna, 2002; D’Amico and Weil-Garris, ‘Renaissance Cardinal’s Ideal Palace’, 1980; Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 1990; Schirg, ‘Cortese’s Ideal Cardinal?’ 2017.

The Early Modern Cardinal 

have been central to these endeavours but there has been some discussion of how to interpret images of cardinals – types, poses, costume, attributes, social and political functions, etc. Francesco Petrucci and Maria Elisa Tittoni have been at the forefront of discussion of portraits in particular: they curated an exhibition at Palazzo Braschi in 2006–2007 and have published a catalogue with commentary alongside it. 46 Nevertheless, Petrucci and Tittoni took change across time as their theme and we might perhaps query whether that is too broad to allow us to cogitate sufficiently on characteristics specific to the early modern period. The interaction of religious and dynastic considerations for the cardinalatial ideal would be one such characteristic; the tension between the need to disseminate images widely and the need to produce them to a quality that met Tridentine aesthetic expectations was another. Clare Robertson contributed a valuable chapter to the Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal which sets out some of the particular issues surrounding our interpretation of cardinals’ portraits at this time: it also engaged the evolving symbolism within them, and technical aspects of their style and production. 47 Nevertheless, more can always be said, not least because how an individual cleric negotiated the constraints on him with respect to fashioning his own image was always highly variable, depending as it did on both changing political and theological conditions and personal preferences and skill.

Problems of Method and Interpretation The essays in this volume further Robertson’s work in several important respects, not least via the questions about method and perception they engage in their specific case studies. The first, and most obvious, of these questions (from the perspective of method) is what exactly constitutes a cardinal’s portrait? It might seem simple to say that it should be understood to be a depiction of the cardinal’s physical likeness, but that definition only invites further questions. Must the cardinal be recognizable as a cardinal for that to hold? Shearer West writes in her book Portraiture that ‘portraits can be placed on a continuum between the specificity of likeness and the generality of type’, and this is surely as true of cardinals’ portraits as of those of any other group. 48 So when was a cardinal’s portrait a representation of a cardinal and when was it a portrait of the individual? Of course, the individual cardinal had other means of asserting his identity besides images of his countenance – for 46 Petrucci and Tittoni, eds., La porpora romana, 2006. 47 Robertson, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, 2020. 48 West, Portraiture, 2012, p. 21. See also, Brilliant, Portraiture, 1991.

55

56

Miles Pattenden

instance, his device or coat of arms (which was nearly always applied to any of a cardinal’s artistic or architectural commissions). 49 Piers Baker-Bates’ essay shows the difficulties in disentangling the cardinal’s two identities in practice in the portraiture of the College’s Iberian members. Irene Brooke’s essay, on the other hand, draws our attention to quite a different dilemma: the degree to which a man’s promotion to the College could obliterate his alternative identities on a visual level: if this could happen to so celebrated a letterato (literary scholar) as Pietro Bembo, then it could happen to anyone. Yet our opening presumption that there was, indeed, a particular cardinal’s ‘uniform’ which was instantly identifiable to contemporaries is not always borne out by the evidence. Minou Schraven’s excavation of the varied images of Carlo Borromeo evinces this rather neatly. And indeed, our sense of the fixed nature of the cardinal’s iconography is probably rather overdone, for Carol Richardson has written elsewhere of how even the Cardinal’s wardrobe was always a constantly evolving collection of outfits, the precise significance of each was both changeable and subjective.50 Fashions changed, which meant that the significance of the symbols of the cardinalate had to be affirmed regularly and repeatedly. Our conception of the cardinal may well thus still owe rather too much to a few supremely talented artists whose depictions have become rightly iconic – something of which Danielle Carrabino’s essay on Scipione Pulzone reminds us. The methodological problem of defining cardinals’ portraiture seems to me to be foundational within this collection of essays. Not all portraits of cardinals were grand or formal state portraits of the kind that usually get attention in discussions of papal portraiture (or even like the famous Double Portrait of the Cardinals Domenico and Marino Grimani which Sarah Ferrari discusses in her chapter).51 Why not even treat the cardinal’s own body as itself a canvas on which a living portrait was constantly presented and refined for the public? Recent work on curial and papal funerals has fruitfully pursued such a line, demonstrating (for instance) how bodies could be reimagined as highly visible props within the sacred rituals, and might even be replaced by wax effigies if too putrefied to serve that solemn purpose.52 But this question of intent too obviously also invites debate, for motivations for painting cardinals’ portraits were obviously as varied as they were for papal portraits, if not more so. Some portraits were intended to signify a cardinal’s presence, others his

49 There are few studies of cardinals’ coats of arms: Sicari, Stemmi Cardinalizi, reproduces the images in Palazzi, Fasti Cardinalium; Drös, ‘Alles unter einem Hut’, 2006, and a few others discuss the emblems of a particular cardinal. 50 Richardson, ‘Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, 2020. 51 See, for instance, Mansour, ‘Prince and Pontiff’, 2008. 52 Paravicini-Bagliani, Pope’s Body, 2000, pp. 114–149; Buttay, ‘La mort du pape’, 2003.

The Early Modern Cardinal 

ownership, still more to emphasize his political networks or to promote his cult or legacy, or his family’s aggrandizement. Representations of a cardinal’s physical body could be useful for all or any of these objectives – but, of course, other images could symbolize or substitute his identity or authority with equal – or even surpassing – clarity. The galero, which cardinals rarely if ever actually wore in our period, remained their most recognizable material symbol. However, the cardinal’s coat of arms, often displayed within an image of the galero, between its tassels, also signified much about both his public and private identity. In the still semiliterate world of early modern Italy such images could develop powerful associations – indeed, we always need to read any physical likeness in a much wider context replete with such signs and symbols. Apropos of this, Arnold Witte reminds us in his chapter how many cardinals’ portraits, even when identifiable as depictions of particular cardinals, still primarily served the same sort of ritualistic function that we might well associate with less complex or less prestigious genres of image: they symbolized a cardinal’s legitimizing presence and should therefore be read accordingly. Minou Schraven alerts us to a further important variable: an image’s portability. Were portraits designed to remain in situ or were they for circulation? If they were to be circulated, then how widely? Sarah Ferrari’s discussion of the images of Grimani cardinals in the MS Morosini Grimani 270 suggests they could sometimes be for only very limited private consumption. So how then did such considerations affect design or iconography? All these essays in fact repeatedly underline the presence of practical problems of production (and reproduction) of cardinals’ portraits: it would be fascinating to understand the economics of this particular industry as it related to all these varied outputs. The essays in this book not only raise questions of method relating to how we study cardinals’ portraits, but engage important questions of interpretation as well. The first of such questions, which would seem to frame Alessandra Pattanaro’s essay, are about how we identify the subjects within each image and what importance we accord to their identification. Simply being able to state which cardinal or cardinals a given image represents may or may not be useful knowledge. It depends, for one thing, on an understanding of context and of the motives behind the image’s production (on the part of painter or patron). Per Sarah Ferrari: how did visual memorialization of the Grimani cardinals bolster the family’s status within Venice? What specifically do they add to the portraits of other family members accorded Venetian honours such as the dogeship? Thomas-Leo True’s research into inventories of portraits shows clearly the pitfalls we might fall into assuming the reasons why cardinals owned or displayed images of one colleague or predecessor but not another. We might think questions of identity and identification only secondary where the portrait of the cardinal is clearly

57

58

Miles Pattenden

generic and his presence in the overall visual schema emblematic; indeed, Piers Baker-Bates believes many Iberian cardinals’ portraits of the era to be, essentially, of this ilk, and Brian Maxson accepts the same for many fifteenth-century Florentine examples. Yet cases such as Leandro’s Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, which Pattanaro studies, show that matters were rarely so simple: this historical scene, created over three centuries after the events it visualizes, was still an opportunity for both contemporary commentary and for the surreptitious inclusion of the College’s current members. What we gain from being able to point to particular figures on the canvas, and from being able to identify their likeness with that of contemporary cardinals, is still debatable. In such cases, an artist may have been making a political point (at the behest of his patron or otherwise), or he may simply have been showcasing his talent or reusing a likeness he had already perfected in another context elsewhere. Danielle Carrabino’s essay underlines how Scipione Pulzone, for all his contemporary fame, is not well-studied – and the same is true of many other masters of this particular genre. But even where we are reasonably certain that the choice of particular cardinals’ faces was freighted with particular meaning, we still have to coax that meaning out. Whether such depictions are critical or celebratory is always a matter for interpretation, which needs to be argued closely with reference to a plausible narrative of events. Questions about how to understand the symbols that accompany cardinals in their portraits are also just as important as identifying the cardinals themselves, as several of the other essays in this collection show. Few cardinals appeared on canvas without props to busy or bejewel their countenance. Many cardinals’ portraits contain documents, the presence of which surely emphasized the cardinal’s learning – and which documents they were could take on further significance, including by referring to the pope who had created him. Most also record other emblematic trappings of office: his ring, a kerchief, his biretta and mozzetta, etc. It is surely tempting to see the cardinals’ mules, which Philippa Jackson rides as the subject for her essay, as a further such accessory which drew attention to both the cardinal’s own onerous responsibilities to Mother Church and also his exalted but holy celibacy. Questions of audience still matter here every bit as much as they do with how we interpret the cardinal’s own image. The finest and most thought through portraits – typically those most freighted with symbolism – were seen only by the happy few who could gaze on them inside the relevant palazzo. By contrast, those which enjoyed the widest circulation – hanging from the walls of confraternal buildings, staring out from the pages of seventeenth-century books, or on the obverse of commemorative medals – were far cruder in this, as in all other, respects. Minou Schraven identifies the considerable challenges of depicting Carlo Borromeo’s holiness in such images, including navigating the tension between making him

The Early Modern Cardinal 

recognizable and ensuring his medals had enough commercial appeal to be successful. Moreover, the need to generate and distribute images of the saint as quickly as possible – especially in the 1590s in the context of Clement VIII’s rising scepticism towards the beati moderni – complicated this further. And what those who owned these medals made of how they conveyed Borromeo’s holiness is also pertinent. Did they understand the saint’s holiness or the miraculous properties of the medal in the same way as those who had produced it? Did either group really understand such commemorative portraits in the same way as they would have done other categories of sacramentalia like an agnus dei or a set of rosary beads?

Conclusion All this seems to have come a long way from my initial discussion of what cardinals were and how we can vary our colouration of them. But this essay has provided a background to the fuller contributions later in this volume which elaborate on the questions set out above and, in so doing, establish credible perspectives on cardinals’ portraiture as a whole. The chapters which follow in particular – and in my view – help move our discussion of early modern ecclesiastical art from a longstanding focus on prestige pieces to a view ‘in the round’ that accounts for context and places such pieces within the more substantial, vibrant, and ever expanding material milieu. The scholars whose work follows mine here show, in sum, the constant processes of change and adaption in how such images were created and used; they also show how their symbols were internalized and reimagined. Trent neither terminated nor caused any of this, but the spread of its strictures (or, at least its ideals) provided the stimulus for new waves of the depiction of cardinals which built on, but simultaneously transformed, older models and forms. One final theme which emerges from these essays – and one on which I wish to end this discussion – is that of durability: how long cardinals or those depicting them expected their portraits to last. Both Arnold Witte’s and Carol M. Richardson’s essays explain how portraits could become refugees, wrenched out of their contexts, relocated, or recycled – and also how this process of repurposing has been as important to the survival of particular images as the original intentions of those responsible for producing them. Some portraits, which exist only in inventories (like lost books), have survived their own destruction as paperwork in the archives. Piers Baker-Bates and Brian Maxson both show how the cardinals’ multiple identities – both sacred and secular, local and universal – could abet this process: more than the members of other elites, cardinals could be straightforwardly reinvented or reclaimed for new purposes, even in death. This versatility was surely an important factor in the ongoing production and circulation of their images throughout our period, and of

59

60

Miles Pattenden

the reappearance of old collegiate faces alongside the new. The cardinal’s image has endured, above all, because it can speak in so many ways to so many different people. The many shades of red thus reflect the cardinal’s disparate identities – but with an expert lens we can capture their distinct outlines and their blurry entanglements throughout the (art) history of the early modern Catholic Church.

Bibliography Ago, Renata, Carriere e clientele nella Roma barocca (Rome: Laterza, 1990). Alberì, Eugenio, Relazioni degli ambasciatori Veneti al senato, 2nd ser., 5 vols. (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 1839–1863). Albi, Henri, Eloges historiques des cardinaux illustres, françois et étrangers mis en parallele (Paris: Anthoine de Cay, 1644). Ammannati, Iacopo, Iacopo Ammannati Piccolomini: Lettere 1444–1479, ed. by Paolo Cherubini, vol. 2 (Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali a Ambientali, Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistic, 1997). Antonovics, A.V., ‘Counter-Reformation Cardinals: 1534–90’, European Studies Review 2 (1972): 301–328. ———, ‘A Late Fifteenth-Century Division Register of the College of Cardinals’, Papers of the British School at Rome 35 (1967): 87–101. Baker-Bates, Piers, Mary Hollingsworth, and Arnold Witte, ‘Cardinals as Patrons of the Visual Arts’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), 511–534. Beaven, Lisa, An Ardent Patron: Camillo Massimi and his Antiquarian and Artistic Circles (London: Paul Holberton, 2010). ———, ‘Cardinal Camillo Massimi (1620–1677) as a Collector of Landscape Paintings: The Evidence of the 1677 Inventory’, Journal of the History of Collections 15 (2003): 19–30. ———, ‘Elite Patronage and Collecting’, in A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492–1692, ed. by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 387–411. Beaven, Lisa and Karen Lloyd, ‘Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni Altieri and his Picture Collection in the Palazzo Altieri: The Evidence of the 1698 Death Inventory’, Journal for the History of Collections 28 (2016): 175–190; and 31 (2019): 1–16. Brilliant, Richard, Portraiture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). Broderick, John, ‘The Sacred College of Cardinals: Size and Geographical Composition (1099–1986)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 25 (1987): 7–71. Burke, Peter, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). ———, ‘Sacred Rulers, Royal Priests: Rituals of the Early Modern Popes’, in The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 168–182.

The Early Modern Cardinal 

Buttay, Florence, ‘La mort du pape entre Renaissance et Contre-Réforme: les transformations de l’image du Souverain Pontife et ses implications (fin XVe–fin XVIe siècle)’, Revue Historique 625 (2003): 67–94. Byatt, Lucinda, ‘Cardinals’ Property and Income’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 276–293. Cappelletti, Francesca, ‘An Eye on the Main Chance: Cardinals, Cardinal-Nephews, and Aristocratic Collectors, in Display of Art in the Roman Palace, 1550–1750, ed. by Gail Feigenbaum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2014), pp. 77–88. Cardella, Lorenzo, Memorie storiche de’ cardinali della Santa Romana Chiesa, 9 vols. (Rome: Stamperia Pagliarini, 1792–1797). Chacón, Alfonso, Vitae, et res gestae pontificum romanorum et S.R.E. cardinalium, 4 vols. (Rome: Stephanus Paulinus, 1601). Chambers, David S., ‘The Economic Predicament of Renaissance Cardinals’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3 (1966): 287–313. ———, A Renaissance Cardinal and his Worldly Goods: The Will and Inventory of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, 1444–1483 (London: Warburg Institute, 1992). ———, ‘The Renaissance Cardinalate: From Paolo Cortesi’s De Cardinalatu to the Present’, in The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol Richardson (College Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), pp. 17–24. ———, ‘Treatises on the Ideal Cardinal’, in The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 453–469. Colomer, Josep and Iain McLean, ‘Electing Popes: Approval Balloting and Qualified-Majority Rule’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (1998): 1–22. Cortesi, Paolo, De cardinalatu libri tres (Castro Cortesio: Symeon Nardi Senensis, 1510). D’Amico, John F. and Kathleen Weil-Garris, ‘The Renaissance Cardinal’s Ideal Palace: A Chapter from Cortesi’s “De Cardinalatu”’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 35 (1980): 45–123. DeSilva, Jennifer Mara, ‘Red Hat Strategies: Elevating Cardinals, 1471–1549’, in Early Modern Rome, 1341–1667, ed. by Portia Prebys (Ferrara: Edisai, 2011), pp. 729–741. ———, ‘Politics and Dynasty: Underage Cardinals in the Catholic Church, 1420–1605’, Royal Studies Journal 4 (2017): 81–102. ———, ‘Senators or Courtiers: Negotiating Models for the College of Cardinals under Julius II and Leo X’, Renaissance Studies 22 (2008): 154–173. Drös, Albrecht, ‘Alles unter einem Hut: die Wappen Albrechts von Brandenburg’, in Der Kardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg: Renaissancefürst und Mäzen, ed. by Andreas Tacke et al., 2 vols. (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2006), vol. 2, pp. 29–49. Emich, Birgit, Bürokratie und Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605–1621): Studien zur frühneuzeitlichen Mikropolitik in Rom (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2001).

61

62

Miles Pattenden

Eubel, Konrad et al., eds, Hierarchia Catholica medii et recentoris aevi, 9 vols. (Regensberg: Sumptibus et Typis Librariae Regensbergianae, 1898–1968). Fattori, Maria Teresa, Clemente VIII e il Sacro Collegio: meccanismi istituzionali ed accentramento di governo (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2004). Firpo, Massimo, ‘The Cardinal’, in Renaissance Characters, ed. by Eugenio Garin, trans. by Lydia Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 46–97. Fosi, Irene, ‘Court and City in the Ceremony of the Possesso in the Sixteenth Century’, in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700, ed. by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 31–52. Fraser Jenkins, A.D., ‘Cosimo de’ Medici’s Patronage of Architecture and the Theory of Magnificence’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970): 162–170. Gáldy, Andrea, ‘Lost in Antiquities: Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici’, in The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol Richardson (College Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 153–165. Goldthwaite, Richard, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Griffey, Erin, On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). Gundersheimer, Werner L., ‘Patronage in the Renaissance: An Exploratory Approach’, in Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. by Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 3–23. Hallman, Barbara McClung, Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property, 1492–1563 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Hollingsworth, Mary and Carol Richardson, eds., The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700 (College Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010). Jedin, Hubert, ‘Analekten zur Reformtätigkeit der Päpste Julius’ III. und Pauls IV.’, Römische Quartalschrift 43 (1935): 87–156. Keay, Anna, The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power (London: Bloomsbury, 2008). Kuttner, Stephan, ‘Cardinalis: The History of a Canonical Concept’, Traditio 3 (1945): 129–214. Lorizzo, Loredana, La collezione del Cardinale Ascanio Filomarino: pittura, scultura e mercato dell’arte tra Roma e Napoli nel Seicento (Naples: Electa Napoli, 2006) Mansour, Opher, ‘Prince and Pontiff: Secular and Spiritual Authority in Papal State Portraiture between Raphael’s Julius II and the Portraits of Pius V and Clement VIII’, in Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome, ed. by Jill Burke and Michael Bury (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 209–229. Märtl, Claudia, Kardinal Jean Jouffroy (d. 1473) (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1996).

The Early Modern Cardinal 

Menniti Ippolito, Antonio, Il governo dei papi nell’età moderna: carriere, gerarchie, organizzazzione curiale (Rome: Viella, 2007). Meserve, Margaret and Marcello Simonetta, eds., Pius II: Commentaries, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003–2007). Molien, Auguste, ‘Sacré College’, in Dictionnaire de droit canonique, ed. by Antoine Villein and Étienne Magnin, 7 vols. (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1924–1935), vol. 3, pp. 990–1000. Oberli, Matthias, ‘Magnificentia Principis’: das Mäzenatentum des Prinzen und Kardinals Maurizio von Savoyen (1593–1657) (Weimar: VDG, 1999). O’Brien, Emily, The Commentaries of Pope Pius II (1458–1464) and the Crisis of the FifteenthCentury Papacy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). Olzewski, Edward J., The Inventory of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004). Palazzi, Giovanni, Fasti Cardinalium omnium sanctae romanae Ecclesiae, 5 vols. (Venice: Gaspar Bencardi, 1703) Paravicini-Bagliani, Agostino, The Pope’s Body, trans. by David Petersen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Pastor, Ludwig von, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages: Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and Other Original Sources, trans. by Ralph Francis Kerr, 40 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1891–1953). Pattenden, Miles, ‘Cardinals and the Non-Christian World’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 375–392. ———, Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Pattenden, Miles and Arnold Witte, ‘The Early Modern Historiography of Early Modern Cardinals’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 435–352. Pellegrini, Marco, ‘Da Iacopo Ammannati Piccolomini a Paolo Cortesi: lineamenti dell’ethos cardinalizia in età rinascimentale’, Roma nel Rinascimento (1998): 23–44. ———, ‘Das Kardinalkolleg von Sixtus IV bis Alexander VI (1471–1503)’, in Geschichte des Kardinalats im Mittelalter, ed. by Jürgen Dendorfer and Ralf Lützelschwab (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2011), pp. 399–446. ———, ‘Il Sacro Collegio Cardinalizio tra Rinascimento e Controriforma: orientamenti tematici e bibliograf ici’, in Geschichte des Kardinalats im Mittelalter, ed. by Jürgen Dendorfer and Ralf Lützelschwab (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2011), pp. 321–356. ———, ‘A Turning-Point in the History of the Factional System in the Sacred College: The Power of Pope and Cardinals in the Age of Alexander VI’, in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700, ed. by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 8–30.

63

64

Miles Pattenden

Periti, Giancarla, ‘La quadreria romana del Cardinale Alberoni: contributo per la storia della sua formazione’, in Alessandro Albani patrono delle arti: architettura, pittura e collezionismo nella Roma del ’700, ed. by Elisa Debendetti (Rome: Bonsignori, 1993), pp. 227–247. Petrucci, Francesco and Maria Elisa Tittoni, eds., La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento (Rome: Gangemi, 2006). Piatti, Girolamo, De cardinalis dignitate et officio (Rome: Gulielmum Facciottum, 1602). Prodi, Paolo, The Papal Prince, One Body and Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, trans. by Susan Haskins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Rangoni Gàl, Fiorenza, Fra’ Desiderio Scaglia, cardinale di Cremona: un collezionista inquisitor nella Roma del Seicento (Gravedona: Still Grafix Edizioni, 2008). Reinhard, Wolfgang, ‘Herkunft und Karriere der Päpste, 1417–1963: Beiträge zu einer historischen Soziologie der römischen Kurie’, Mededelingen van het Nederlands Institute te Rome 38 (1976): 87–108. ———, ‘Makropolitik und Mikropolitik in den Außenbeziehungen Roms unter Papst Paul V. Borghese’, in Die Außenbeziehungen der römischen Kurie unter Paul V. Borghese (1605–1621), ed. by Alexander Koller (Tübingen: De Gruyter, 2008), pp. 67–81. ———, ‘Papal Power and Family Strategy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, ed. by Ronald Asch and Adolf Birke (London: German Historical Institute, 1991), pp. 329–356. ———, ed., Römische Mikropolitik unter Papst Paul V. Borghese (1605–1621) zwischen Spanien, Neapel, Mailand und Genua (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004). ———, ‘Struttura e significato del sacro collegio tra la fine del XV e la fine del XVI secolo’, in Città italiane del Cinquecento tra Riforma e Controriforma: atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Lucca, 1983 (Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1988), pp. 257–265. Richardson, Carol, ‘The Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 535–556. Robertson, Clare, Il Gran Cardinale: Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). ———, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 557–580. Robinson, I.S., The Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Schirg, Bernhard, ‘Cortese’s Ideal Cardinal? Praising Art, Splendour and Magnificence in Bernardino de Carvajal’s Roman Residence’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 80 (2017): 61–82. Sharpe, Kevin, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

The Early Modern Cardinal 

Sicari, Giovanni, Stemmi Cardinalizi (Secoli XV–XVII) (Rome: Alma Roma, 1996). Tomassetti, Luigi et al. (eds.), Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificum Taurinensis editio (Turin: Franco & Dalmazzo, 1857–1872). Tusor, Péter, ‘Prolegomena zur Frage des Kronkardinalats’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 41 (2003): 51–72. Visceglia, Maria Antonietta, ‘Etichetta cardinalizia in età barocca’, in La Roma dei papi, ed. by Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Rome: Viella, 2018), pp. 43–72. ———, ‘Factions in the Sacred College in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700, ed. by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 99–131. ———, La città rituale: Roma e le sue cerimonie in età moderna (Rome: Viella, 2002). ———, ‘The Social Background and Education of Cardinals’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 245–259. Waddy, Patricia, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use of the Art of the Plan (Boston: MIT Press, 1990). Waźbiński, Zygmunt, Il Cardinale Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1626), vol. 1: Mecenate di artisti, consigliere di politici e di sovrani (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994). Weber, Christoph, Senatus Divinus: verborgene Strukturen im Kadinalskollegium der frühen Neuzeit (1500–1800) (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996). Weiß, Stefan, ‘Luxury and Extravagancy at the Papal Court in Avignon and the Outbreak of the Western Schism’, in A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378–1417), ed. by Jöelle Rollo-Koster and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 67–88. West, Shearer, Portraiture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Witte, Arnold, The Artful Hermitage: The Palazzetto Farnese as a Counter-Reformation Diaeta (Rome: Bretschneider, 2008).

About the Author Miles Pattenden is Senior Research Fellow in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University. His books include Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450–1700 (Oxford, 2017) and he is co-editor of the Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal (Brill, 2020).

65

3.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth-Century Florence Brian Jeffrey Maxson

Abstract Although the city of Florence lacked a cardinal for most of the fifteenth century, the city was not lacking in cardinal portraits during the same period. This chapter examines two visual portraits of cardinals by Bicci di Lorenzo and Francesco di Antonio del Chierico alongside written portraits found in a diary by Bartolommeo di Michele del Corazza and the Lives of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The chapter argues that specific contexts can help explain the choices made by artists and authors to provide or shun idiosyncratic details in their works. Keywords: Florence; cardinal portraiture; Quattrocento; Bicci di Lorenzo; Francesco del Chierico; Vespasiano da Bisticci

The introduction and prominence of portraiture has long been associated with Italian Renaissance painting and the so-called ‘awakening’ of the individual.1 In the traditional narrative, the painter Masaccio played a prominent role through his portraits of men in his lost Sagra painting and his contributions to the Brancacci Chapel, both for the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Masaccio’s approach contrasted with that of his contemporary Bicci di Lorenzo, active during the same years and in the decades following, who maintained the more traditional emphasis upon more generic types. Bicci’s figures differ from each other, but the differences bore little relationship to the physical appearances of the individuals as I would like to thank Nicholas Scott Baker, Piers Baker-Bates, Irene Brooke, Pablo González Tornel, as well as Tracey and Phillip Crum for their help and feedback on this article. 1 Pope-Hennessy, Portrait, 1966, pp. 3–7. The scholarship on portraits since Pope-Hennessy is vast. For a start, see Christiansen and Wepelmann, Renaissance Portrait, 2012; Burke, ‘Renaissance’, 1995; Woodall, ed., Portraiture, 1997; Simons, ‘Giovanna’, 2011–2012, with bibliography; Simons, ‘Profile’, 1987; and the introduction and other essays in this volume.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch03

70 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

Fig. 3.1 Bicci di Lorenzo, Confirmation of Santa Maria Nuova, c. 1424-1425 or 1440, detached fresco, Florence, Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova (© Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY).

they were or had been. Instead, the emphasis was on group identity, and, for those inclined, the identification of specific individuals was possible from their garments, accessories, and placement in historical events, rather than their idiosyncratic physical characteristics.2 The differing treatment of portraits of cardinals in both visual and literary sources from fifteenth-century Florence suggests that portraiture functioned differently depending on the contexts of the painter or writer. This chapter examines several visual and literary examples to highlight ways that portraiture, whether painted or written, served context-specific purposes. In one example, Bicci di Lorenzo’s Confirmation of Santa Maria Nuova depicted the pope and cardinals as an ecclesiastical group without idiosyncratic individual characteristics (Fig. 3.1). For Bicci, the presence of the church officials as a group enabled him to emphasize the solemnity and importance of the depicted occasion. Similarly, in Francesco di Antonio del Chierico’s illumination of a scene from the consecration of the Florentine cathedral, the presence of the pope and cardinals alongside Florentine 2 Bicci and Masaccio have been paired and/or juxtaposed several times in the scholarship. For example, see Pope-Hennessy, Portrait, 1966, pp. 4–5; Lee, Ugly Renaissance, 2013, p. 199; Eckstein, Painted Glories, 2014, pp. 45–47; Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

Fig. 3.2 Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, Arrival of Pope Eugenius IV at Santa Maria del Fiore for its Consecration Ceremony, c. 1470, illumination, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. fol. 1.56, c.7v (© Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo).

71

72 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

elites added the necessary importance to a critical scene from the building’s history (Fig. 3.2). What was important were the types of offices present and their high rank, rather than the specific identity of each person depicted. By contrast, other literary and visual works surviving from fifteenth-century Florence emphasized unique characteristics in visual portraits. In many such renditions, visual portraits could demarcate the patron’s status to onlookers by showing them amidst other high-status individuals. In a similar way, the individualized, literary portraits of cardinals within Vespasiano da’ Bisticci’s Lives enabled Vespasiano to show readers his own success, status, and connections. In Vepasiano’s case, the emphasis was less on physical idiosyncrasies, and more upon anecdotes or personality traits particular to a person. For Vespasiano and others, connections to specific individuals were tools for accruing capital. For others, like Francesco del Chierico or Bicci di Lorenzo, group gravitas was enough to pursue the same ends.

Portraits and Cardinals in Fifteenth-Century Florence By 1420 portraiture already had a long history in Florence, even if an individualized depiction of a Florentine cardinal has not been located prior to the early sixteenth century. By the end of the thirteenth century at the latest recognizable likenesses of condemned criminals were painted on public buildings and painted likenesses of both Brunetto Latini and Dante may have appeared in the Palace of the Podestà.3 By the fifteenth century examples of portraits abounded. In frescoes, patricians were painted into multiple narratives showing historical events, with Massaccio’s lost Sagra fresco serving as an innovative example. 4 Florentine works fit within far-ranging cultural trends, and by the 1440s portraits were appearing in cities and courts across the Italian peninsula and beyond. Busts in emulation of classical models began showing some degree of likeness by mid-century, while medals and single portraits also followed.5 In terms of cardinals, one early example is Jan Van Eyck’s portrait of, probably, Niccolò Albergati, while Mantegna also painted cardinal portraits from the 1450s.6 In historical and biographical works, portraits – here defined as an author’s attempt to apply idiosyncratic characteristics to a specific 3 Edgerton, Pictures, 1985, pp. 59–90; Santagata, Dante, 2016, pp. 5–7; Filosa, Florentine Conspiracy, forthcoming; see also Nethersole, Art and Violence, 2018. 4 Pope-Hennessy, Portrait, 1966, pp. 4ff. On the possible portrait of Dante in the Bargello, see Gombrich, ‘Giotto’s Portrait’, 1986; for further leads on portraiture, see Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, esp. pp. 253 and 67–68. 5 For coins and busts, see Pope-Hennessy, Portrait, 1966, pp. 64ff. 6 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, p. 128; Pope-Hennessy, Portrait, 1966, pp. 3–63; see also the introduction to this volume.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

individual – were also well established in fifteenth-century Florence. Historical texts had long characterized individual actors, and humanists embraced the tradition of writing individualized biographies. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio, for example, tried their hand at writing and collecting numerous short biographies into a single work, and fifteenth-century writers continued to add to the genre.7 One major incentive behind fifteenth-century visual portraits was the cultural expression of social and political status and alliances with other powerful individuals, families, and groups. Even prior to the development of individual portraiture, Florentine patricians were making use of the visual arts to express their alliances. For example, the walls of the Palazzo Davanzati are still covered with fourteenth-century decorations showing the coats of arms of families joined by marriage.8 Even earlier, the Florentine commune declared its Guelph and other loyalties by emblazoning the facade of the Palazzo della Signoria with the coats of arms of allies.9 By the early fifteenth century at the latest, the genre of humanist dialogues could link, through literature, purported friendships and enmities. In those texts, authors professed to recount real conversations between actual people, thus permanently tying together the people described.10 Similarly, in art by the 1420s the depiction of realistic likenesses of individuals reinforced the piety of patrons, even as it also projected their wealth to onlookers. Moreover, as with humanist dialogues, the depiction of powerful contemporaries was not only a striking representation of the social groups with whom the patron wished to express similar status, but also a semi-permanent protestation of political and social bonds for all current and future viewers. It was a bold statement in a society so keen to avoid commitments and maintain ostentatious ambiguity.11 Yet, despite the abundance of portraiture across genres and media, no painted portraits of cardinals in Florence seem to have survived – if ever any existed – from the fifteenth century. Only a handful of sculpted likenesses of cardinals from the same period survive in Florence, with some famous examples including Donatello’s tomb of Giovanni Cossa (the deposed Pope John XXIII who was awarded a cardinalate before this death) and the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal in San Miniato by Antonio Rossellino.12 Part of the reason for their relative absence undoubtedly 7 On humanist biographies, see, for example, P. Baker, Italian Renaissance Humanism, 2015; P. Baker, Portraying the Prince, 2016; Ianziti, Writing History, 2012. 8 On the Palazzo Davanzati, see Lindow, Renaissance Palace, 2007, p. 166; Berti, Il museo, 1972; Turpin, ‘Objectifying the Domestic Interior’, 2013. 9 Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 1995, pp. 17–18; on links between portraiture and coats of arms, see Belting, Anthropology of Images, 2011, pp. 62–83. 10 On the network implications of humanist dialogues, see Maxson, Humanist World, 2014, pp. 21–22. 11 Weissman, ‘Importance’, 1989; more recently, see N. Baker, ‘Discursive Republicanism’, 2014. 12 The scholarship on both these works and their artists is vast. As a start, see McHam, ‘Donatello’s Tomb’, 1989; Janson, Sculpture, 1963, pp. 59–65, esp. 63–64; Poeschke, Donatello, 1993, pp. 386–387;

73

74 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

lies in the small number of fifteenth-century Florentine cardinals. Between the end of the Great Schism and the selection of Giovanni de’ Medici in 1489, Florence had one cardinal.13 In 1439, Pope Eugenius IV rewarded the Florentines for hosting the Council of Florence by elevating the bishop Alberto Alberti to the cardinalate. Alberti has never been the subject of a modern study, nor does he seem to have left a major mark on Renaissance culture. He concluded the peace between René of Anjou and Alfonso of Aragon over Naples in 1442 and died in 1444. He was buried in the Alberti family tomb in Santa Croce, where his tomb attributes to him crusading exploits that Francesco Condulmer had actually completed.14 After Alberti’s death, Florentines unsuccessfully lobbied for other candidates to become cardinals. The problems continued even after Giovanni de’ Medici’s selection. Following that red hat in 1489, another Florentine was not selected for almost fifteen years, when Francesco Soderini, the brother of Piero, Standard Bearer for Life, was elevated in 1503.15 Despite the lack of a Florentine cardinal, ample opportunity existed for the creation of cardinal portraits in Florence, especially during the first half of the fifteenth century. From 1418 until 1420 Pope Martin V resided in apartments in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella. Pope Martin departed Florence in anger in 1420 over Florentine support for his enemy Braccio Fortebracci, and famously used his Orsini family connections to begin re-establishing the papacy in Rome.16 After Pope Martin V’s death, the Venetian Pope Eugenius IV struggled to maintain power in the restless eternal city. In 1434 he fled Rome in disguise and took up residence in Florence, again in Santa Maria Novella. He was present in the city until travelling north in 1437, but returned two years later in early 1439 and stayed another three years.17 In 1442 political tensions between the papacy and the Florentines again pushed a pope from their walls.18 The two surviving visual sources that began this chapter document the presence of the papal court under Martin V or Eugenius IV: Bicci di Lorenzo’s Consecration of Santa Maria Nuova (an event which occurred in 1420; Fig. 3.1) and a later manuscript illumination by Francesco Pope-Hennessy, Donatello, Sculptor, 1993, pp. 73–77 and 328; Hartt and others, Chapel, 1964; Apfelstadt, ‘Bishop’, 2000; Richardson, Reclaiming Rome, 2009, pp. 458–461. 13 See the comments in Lowe, Church and Politics, 1993, p. 40; see also Chambers, ‘Cardinal’, 2015, p. 205. One figure, Antonio Casini, was a canon for the Florentine church of San Lorenzo and became a cardinal; see De Angelis, ‘I canonici’, 2009, p. 110. However, Casini was from Siena; see Brandmüler, ‘Antonio Casini’, 1978. Donato de’ Medici has also been called a cardinal in the scholarship; see Barbieri, ‘Francesco d’Antonio del Chierico’, 1997. However, Donato died as a bishop. 14 D’Addario, ‘Alberto Alberti’, 1960. 15 Lowe, Church and Politics, 1993, pp. 39–41. 16 On Martin V, see Partner, Papal State, 1958; McCahill, Reviving, 2013, with further leads. 17 On Eugenius IV, see, Boschetto, Società, 2012; Gill, Eugenius IV, 1961; Gill, Council of Florence, 1959. 18 On this conflict, see Maxson, ‘Certame Coronario as Performative Ritual’, 2016.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

del Chierico of the consecration of Santa Maria del Fiore in 1436 (Fig. 3.2). In short, beyond the city’s identity as a papal champion, the repeated presence of the papal court in Florence meant that cardinals were relatively common in Florence during the first half of the fifteenth century.

Cardinals and Portraits in Bicci di Lorenzo and Francesco del Chierico Both Bicci di Lorenzo and Francesco del Chierico emphasized the importance of the presence of cardinals as a collective, rather than attempting real or feigned individualized portraits of churchmen. In 1424–1425 or possibly as late as 1440, Bicci di Lorenzo depicted in fresco the consecration of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova that had occurred on 9 September 1420 (Fig. 3.1).19 Bicci di Lorenzo was the son of another Florentine painter, Lorenzo di Bicci, and the two men have long and often been confused in the historiography. Bicci was probably born c.1370 and began his career c.1390. He married Benedetta di Amato Amati, and by 1427 he, she, their four children, and Benedetta’s mother shared a house somewhere around San Frediano, a neighbourhood in the Oltrarno quarter of the city near the Porta Pisana. Archival evidence points to artistic commissions in and around Florence from around 1420 until the mid-1440s. He was buried in May 1452 in Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.20 The frescoed image depicted, on the facade of the hospital, a key event of ritualized proceedings that stretched over more than a week.21 Pope Martin V had been residing in Florence since his departure from the Council of Constance in 1418. As it became clear that the pope was leaving for Rome, plans were set on 1 September for the papal consecration of the church of Santa Maria Novella, where he was residing.22 A little over a week later Pope Martin prepared to leave the city and eight Florentine patricians were appointed to accompany him. Early on 9 September, Antonio Correr, the Cardinal of Bologna, formally consecrated the hospital. Later that day, accompanied by his Florentine escort, Pope Martin confirmed the consecration. He then departed the city. Consecration ceremonies

19 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, pp. 45 and 253; for a different depiction of cardinals in fresco, see Alessandra Pattanaro’s and Irene Brooke’s contributions to this volume. 20 For a brief biography of Bicci di Lorenzo, see Walsh, ‘Fresco Paintings’, 1979, pp. 6–15; for further leads on Bicci, see Frosinini, ‘Il passaggio’, 1986; Frosinini, ‘Gli esordi’, 1990; Scantamburlo, ‘Nuovi documenti’, 2002. 21 Henderson, Renaissance Hospital, 2006, p. 117. 22 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, p. 48.

75

76 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

featured elaborate rituals attended by members of the church itself as well as the broader citizenry and even foreign visitors.23 Bicci’s fresco depicts the climax of the ritualized proceedings.24 On 8 September, after attending a mass in the newly consecrated church of Santa Maria Novella, the pope went out to the piazza and blessed the people. The next morning the Florentine delegation and the Signoria arrived at Santa Maria Novella to escort the pope. The procession moved through various churches before ‘they turned and went to Sant’Egidio. There, the Holy Father dismounted, and confirmed that which the Cardinal of Bologna had consecrated, and he performed the same ceremonies that he had done at Santa Maria Novella. He declared a dispensation for eight days.’25 It is this moment that is depicted in Bicci’s fresco: The viewer’s gaze is drawn to the homage paid the pope by the hospital’s rector. Directly behind the pope, the Florentine delegation kneels, while between the pope and the church are many members of various religious orders and offices, including many cardinals. More Florentines fill the scene in the margins of the painting. After this moment depicted by Bicci, the procession continued through town to the porta romana, which was completely open.26 Bicci’s Confirmation fits into a broader context of frescoes depicting consecration ceremonies in early fifteenth-century Florence. The most famous event was that for Santa Maria del Carmine, of which Masaccio painted an influential depiction.27 In one modern reconstruction of this lost image, the urban space in front of the church dominates the scene. A crowd of people attend, but the ceremonial participants are dwarfed by the piazza, its surrounding buildings, and the church itself.28 Vasari 23 Ibid., pp. 44–45. Pastor, History, 1899, vol. 1, p. 214, states that Pope Martin V left Florence on 9 September 1420, and arrived in Rome on the 28th; Guasti, Commissioni, 1873, vol. 1, p. 310. I have been unable to locate the diplomatic commission for these eight diplomats. The records of Rinaldo degli Albizzi state simply ‘A di 9 di settembre 1420 andai ambasciadore, con 9 cavagli, alle spese fatte per lo mazieri de’ Signori, insieme con messer Lorenzo Ridolfi, messer Matteo Castellani, messer Palla degli Strozi, tutti cavalieri, cioè furono messer Carlo Federighi dottore, Ioanni di Bicci de’ Medici, Filippo Giugni e Gherardo Canigiani. Fummo mandati tutti e otto da’ Signori e Collegi per far compagnia a papa Martino quinto. Andamo con lui insino a’ confini di Siena, di là da Staggia. E tornamo tutti a di 12 di settembre 1420.’ 24 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, p. 48. 25 Del Corazza, ‘Diario Fiorentino’, 1894, p. 272; the Italian is ‘volsono e andarono a Santa Maria Nova in Santo Gilio. E ivi il Santo Padre scavalc’ò, e confermò quello che aveva consagrato il Cardinale di bologna, e fece quelle cerimonie che aveva fatte a Santa Maria Novella, e lascióvi il perdono otto di. Poi rimontato a cavallo […]’. 26 Ibid., pp. 272–273. 27 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, p. 43; cf. Pope-Hennessy, Portrait, 1966, pp. 4–5. 28 Eckstein, Painted Glories, 2014, pp. 44–51, with possible reconstruction of the image on p. 50; cf. the comments of Henderson on Bicci’s fresco at Henderson, Renaissance Hospital, 2006, p. xxviii. On this work more generally, see the further leads in Eckstein, Painted Glories, 2014, pp. 221–222, as well as Savelli, La Sagra, 1998; Gilbert, ‘Drawings’, 1969; Chiarini, ‘Una citazione’, 1962; Strehlke, ‘Brancacci Style’, 2007;

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

claimed that Masaccio had painted multiple figures from life, even as his comments are impossible to verify. Regardless, the emphasis of the painting is on the majesty and size of the church consecrated: the individuals present bear witness to the climax of the holy ritual. Thus, like Bicci’s fresco, the Sagra commemorated the holy ritual of the church itself and was an image under which individuals passed as they entered the holy space. In his fresco Bicci depicted several groups, with specific individuals identifiable to historians. However, as Megan Holmes has noted, these individuals are known through contextual information rather than any attempted depiction of iconic likeness, despite Vasari’s claim that Bicci painted the pope and cardinals ‘di naturale’.29 The pope depicted has generic features, but his clothing identifies him as the pope, and the event identifies him as Martin V. Similarly, the Florentine patricians behind the pope are also identifiable because of their garments, while the historical context reveals the possible identities of each figure – Lorenzo Ridolfi, Matteo Castellani, Palla di Nofri Strozzi, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, Carlo Federighi, Gherardo Canigiani, Filippo Giugni, and Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici.30 Determining who is who is impossible, even when we have a likely portrait of Palla di Nofri Strozzi in Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi from possibly the same period. We know that the man kissing the pope’s hand is the hospital’s rector, Michele di Frustino da Panzano. We also know that cardinal behind him is Antonio Correr, who is given a position of prominence in the visualized ritual and in the depiction itself.31 But his physical characteristics are virtually interchangeable with the other cardinals in the image. For Bicci the depiction of cardinals in the image, and of other figures, depended upon group identities rather individualized portraits that documented specific features of those represented. It was intended, in other words, to reveal explicitly the ‘collective body’, while leaving viewers to infer the identities behind the ‘natural body of the living person’.32 Individuals are identifiable by their dress and attributes, even as viewers may not have been able to recognize particular likenesses of individuals in the work.33 Gilbert, ‘Michangelo’s Drawings’, 1948, which offers further leads into the debates of associating specific drawings with Masaccio’s lost fresco. 29 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, pp. 40 and 253; for an argument more willing to accept Bicci’s individuals as possible portraits, see Strehlke, ‘Brancacci Style’, 2007, pp. 107–108 30 Crum, ‘Stepping Out’, 2012, p. 71, n. 34; cf. Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, p. 46. 31 One valuable resource for the identification of cardinals and their titles is the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church [online resource], ed. by Salvador Miranda, https://cardinals.f iu.edu/cardinals.htm (accessed April 2021). 32 Belting, Anthropology of Images, 2011, p. 67. 33 Holmes, Fra Filippo Lippi, 1999, pp. 42–47. For similir issues in different contexts, see Carol M. Richardson’s and Piers Baker-Bates’ contributions to this volume.

77

78 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

Bicci’s focus on groups differs from the written account offered by the Florentine diarist Bartolomeo di Michele del Corazza. In a detailed description of Pope Martin V’s departure from Florence, Bartolomeo repeatedly emphasized the role of specific cardinals in the events described. Even more notably, he concluded his account of Pope Martin’s departure from Florence with a long list of the cardinals who accompanied the pope to Florence, including where and with whom each person lived, each cardinal’s general age, his coat of arms, and even a basic physical description. For example, he wrote ‘Signor di Santa Maria la Nuova, citizen of Bologna, lived in the house of the Martellini of San Frediano. He was a short and old man of around 60 years of age. His name was messer Jacopo, and he was consigliere for the Duke of Milan, and he went about for him. His heraldry was a black lion on a white field.’34 This sort of detail in a chronicle of events allowed Bartolomeo and his descendants, and perhaps also his close friends, to recall the honour afforded specific individuals and families by housing a cardinal, and possibly the specific connections between some Florentine families and powerful outsiders. The emphasis in the chronicle was to commemorate the consecration of holy space, but it was also to record the specific social and political outcomes of these events. Bartolomeo’s attention to specific details combined with the practice of portraiture in visual media by the 1420s suggests that Bicci chose group over individualized portraits, based in part upon the specific context for his work. The choir-book illustration mentioned above by Francesco di Antonio del Chierico also highlights group identity over individual characteristics. Francesco was a frequent associate of Vespasiano da Bisticci and was active as a book illustrator, especially of classical texts, during the 1450s, 60s, 70s, and early 80s.35 Already by 1455 he included at least one portrait in a manuscript illumination, a likeness of then still-living Giannozzo Manetti in profile holding a book, which decorated a copy of the humanist’s Life of Nicholas V.36 In one image within a choir book, executed around 1472, Francesco depicted a group of cardinals flanking Pope Eugenius IV in 1436 (Fig. 3.2).37 The image appeared in a book specifically designed to commemorate the cathedral’s consecration. In the same book, the chant Nuper almos rose flores 34 Del Corazza, ‘Diario Fiorentino’, 1894, p. 274; the Italian is ‘Monsignor di [S. Maria la Nuova], cittadino di Bologna, abitò in casa di […] Martellini da S. Friano: era uomo basso e vecchio, di età d’ anni 60 in circa. Aveva nome messer Iacopo; era consigliere del Duca di Milano, e a lui n’ando. L’arme sua era un lione nero nel campo bianco.’ 35 Crum, ‘Stepping Out’, 2012, p. 66; for further biographical details, see Barbieri, ‘Francesco d’Antonio del Chierico’, 1997; for further leads on Francesco, see Garzelli, ‘Zanobi Strozzi’, 1985; Labriola, ‘Alcune proposte’, 2009, pp. 9–16; Chiodo, ‘Osservazioni’, 2000; Ames-Lewis, ‘Earliest Documented Manuscript’, 1978, p. 390, with plates at 393, 395, 396, and 399; Caleca, ‘Un codicetto’, 1965 – but the literature is vast. On one interesting manuscript by Francesco and its context, see Margolis, ‘Gallic Crowd’, 2014. 36 Garzelli, ‘Zanobi Strozzi’, 1985, p. 238, and the reproduction at p. 247 (plate 3). 37 For this date, see Barbieri, ‘Francesco d’Antonio del Chierico’, 1997.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

(Recently the rose blossoms) appears: this, along with another work, probably written by Guillaume Dufay specifically for the event in 1436. This particular chant included allusions to Pope Eugenius IV and his dedication. For example, the chant states, ‘Now, on the day on Which Gabriel/ Fills you with the eternal word,/ He dedicates to you the Temple.’38 It also alludes to the procession from Santa Maria Novella to the cathedral: ‘A Wooden bridge for the living/ Supported by a wondrous structure/ Carries the Curia on high. It carries the pope, the friars/ The priests and the abbots/ Like the glory of the throne.’39 The inclusion of the chant in the book commemorated the event for later Florentines. Despite the commemorative purpose of a specific historical event, Francesco d’Antonio del Chierico chose to represent group solemnity over individual characteristics in his image. In Francesco’s depiction, easily recognized by their red hats, four cardinals stand to the pope’s left, while a fifth cardinal holds a cross on his right side. Francesco appears to have taken some liberties in his depiction, as Florentine officials intermingle with the pope and cardinals as they prepare to enter the cathedral, in contrast to written eyewitness accounts, which record that members of the church were all positioned together and that representatives of lay governments were grouped separately and came before them in the procession. 40 Moreover, Francesco’s depiction of the cardinals’ attire does not accord with other sources.41 Nevertheless, as in Bicci’s fresco, the event and accessories help historians identify the cardinal holding the cross as Giuliano degli Orsini.42 Also as in Bicci’s fresco, the image was created long after the event itself and the faces are, again, generic. 43 Cardinal Orsini is known by his position in the ceremonies, rather than by means of an attempt to depict an accurate likeness. Francesco’s emphasis on differentiating groups of people while avoiding specific portraits agrees with the literary approach taken by Giannozzo Manetti to describe the same events. In Manetti’s description of the consecration of Santa Maria del Fiore in 1436 the emphasis was likewise on group identities rather than individualized portraits. To introduce his section, Manetti promised to show his readers, not individual participants in the ceremony, but instead to ‘highlight a bit the 38 Tacconi, Cathedral, 2005, pp. 156–158; this translation is by Tacconi, while the original Latin is ‘Nunc et die qua te verbo/ Complet Gabriel eterno/ Tibi templum dedicat.’ The image by Francesco might find partial origins in a bronze panel by Lorenzo Ghiberti for the Baptistery. 39 Ibid., p. 158; the translation is again by Tacconi, with the original Latin ‘Cum pons vivis ligno structus/ Apparatu miro fultus/ Alte portat curiam./ Portat papam portat fratres/ Et pastores et abbates/ Quasi throni gloriam.’ 40 Smith and O’Connor, Building the Kingdom, 2006, pp. 316–319; cf. Crum, ‘Stepping Out’, 2012, p. 66. 41 Smith and O’Connor, Building the Kingdom, 2006, p. 348. 42 For this identif ication, see Tacconi, Cathedral, 2005, p. 156; see also Crum, ‘Stepping Out’, 2012, pp. 66–69. 43 See Crum, ‘Stepping Out’, 2012, p. 68.

79

80 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

pontifical dignitaries in order of rank’. 44 After a lengthy description of the church itself, Manetti turned to the procession. First came the ranks of ‘secular paraders’ followed by the ‘papal dignitaries’. 45 Amid the latter group were lawyers of both civil and canon law, bishops, and other figures. At the end of these, ‘the cardinals of the Roman Church, like Christ’s true apostles, came forward in the place next to last.’46 During the ceremony in the church, three different unnamed cardinals performed actions, but the focus remained on the ceremony, and it is difficult even to identify to which cardinals Manetti is referring from his descriptions. 47 Thus, like Francesco and like Bicci di Lorenzo, Manetti chose to emphasize the status and prestige of a holy space rather than individual actors. These emphases upon the group status of cardinals in both visual and literary culture contrasted with the other, more specific visual and literary depictions in accounts with more personal goals. Beyond Masaccio’s lost Sagra fresco, in other examples Florentine portraits served to offer statements of status, proximity to power, or membership in the ruling regime. In the Brancacci Chapel, for example, members of the Florentine regime intermingle in scenes from the life of St. Peter. Fifteenthcentury viewers faced a visual reminder of the status of the Brancacci family, which included such men among its familiars.48 Somewhat later, in his frescoes in the chapel of Palazzo Medici, Benozzo Gozzoli painted the key members of Cosimo de’ Medici’s regime – those indebted to him, as well as those who viewed the Medici more as allies than patrons – throughout his Adoration of the Magi.49 All viewers, including foreign diplomats, witnessed the dynastic ambitions of the family, its piety, military and diplomatic strengths, and its support at home.50 Finally, later in the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinità, viewers saw first-hand the proximity of the donor’s family to Lorenzo de’ Medici. Lorenzo is flanked by family members, while the keys to the long-term survival of his own family approach Lorenzo and the Sassetti through the floor.51 44 Smith and O’Connor, Building the Kingdom, 2006, p. 309; translation by the editors, the Latin is ‘pontificales deinde dignitates pro magnitudine rerum leviter demonstrabimus.’ 45 Ibid., p. 317; translation by the editors, the Latin is ‘quippe ecclesiasticas dignitates omnes seculares pompe antecedebant.’ 46 Ibid., p. 319; translation by the editors, the Latin is ‘romane insuper ecclesie cardinales velut veri Christi apostoli ultimo pene loco adventabant.’ 47 Ibid., pp. 352–353. 48 Scholars continued to debate the different roles of Masaccio, Masolini, and Filippo Lippi in these portraits. For a start, see Eckstein, Painted Glories, 2014, pp. 104–105 and 201–207; Ahl, ‘Masaccio’, 2002, pp. 153–156. 49 On the likenesses within Gozzoli’s Adoration, see Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, 2000, pp. 315–318; on Gozzoli more generally, see Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, 1996. 50 Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, 1996, pp. 83–85. 51 N. Baker, Fruit, 2013, pp. 15–48. Baker grants, however, less emphasis to individual portraits in the work than I am according here; see also Rubin, Images, 2007, pp. 120–130; Najemy, History, 2006, p. 333.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

Literary Portraits in the Lives of Vespasiano da Bisticci The emphasis on personal goals rather than commemorating holy space also appears in the portraits of cardinals within the Lives of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The bookseller Vespasiano is best known today for his production of books for the Medici family and Federico da Montefeltro. His bookshop located near the Badia and Bargello in Florence became a central meeting point for learned culture in mid fifteenth-century Florence. Socially, Vespasiano was the inferior of many of the people with whom he worked. However, he was close to power through his ties to the Pandolfini family, who lived near Vespasiano’s store, and also to Giannozzo Manetti, whom Vespasiano idolized. Vespasiano famously lamented the advent of printed books, claiming that they were inferior to the handwritten manuscripts more closely associated with his shop. Subsequently, perhaps consequently, Vespasiano retired and took up his pen, writing several surviving works in the vernacular.52 Vespasiano wrote dozens of accounts of the lives of his contemporaries in fifteenthcentury Italy, particularly individuals whom Vespasiano personally knew through the gatherings of learned men in his Florentine bookshop or through his long-distance trade in manuscripts. Lives of well-known figures like Cosimo de’ Medici or Leonardo Bruni appear next to more obscure Florentine patricians like Piero de’ Pazzi and Pandolfo Pandolfini, men who dabbled in humanist learning and lived in Vespasiano’s neighbourhood.53 Also within these lives are accounts of churchmen. In fact, Vespasiano devotes so many pages to cardinals and bishops that one translator bemoaned, after a list of notable personages not appearing in the Lives, ‘These would have better filled the space which Vespasiano has given to a dozen or so insignificant cardinals and bishops.’54 No less than sixteen biographies of cardinals appear in Vespasiano’s Lives. Despite authoring the Lives primarily after his retirement from selling books in the 1480s, the overwhelming majority of Vespasiano’s biographies of cardinals deal with men who accompanied Pope Eugenius IV into Florence in the 1430s and early 1440s, especially for the Council of Ferrara/Florence in 1438/9.55 Vespasiano stressed that he personally knew the cardinals described. In fact, amidst his cardinal biographies he explicitly wrote that he recorded the lives of ‘all those cardinals of whom I have had personal knowledge’.56 For example, Cardinal Antonio Correr 52 On Vespasiano da Bisticci, see De la Mare, ‘Vespasiano da Bisticci’, 1966; Cagni, Vespasiano da Bisticci, 1969; Margolis, ‘Gallic Crowd’, 2014; Baldassarri and Maxson, ‘Giannozzo Manetti’s Oratio’, 2016; Maxson, Humanist World, 2014, with more leads. 53 The most recent critical edition of the Lives is Da Bisticci, Le vite, 1976. 54 Renaissance Princes, 1963, p. 10. 55 Ibid., pp. xiii–xiv. 56 Ibid., 156. In the English translation this comment appears at the end of the short biography of Nicholas of Cusa, which, in that edition, ends the section on cardinals. However, in the most recent Italian edition,

81

82 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

accompanied Pope Eugenius to Florence, with anecdotes. Cardinal Albergati was a chief political agent of Pope Eugenius.57 Cardinal Cesarini left Basel to be with Pope Eugenius.58 Cardinal Capranica likewise came to Florence at Pope Eugenius’s request.59 Cardinal Roverella arrived ‘to Florence in the time of Pope Eugenius’.60 Cardinal Jacopo of Portugal died and was buried in Florence.61 The rare exceptions to this trend were Cardinal Bessarion, whose life focuses mostly on his library; and Cardinal Margheriti of Girona (that is, Joan Margarit i Pau), a frequent diplomat for King Ferdinand of Naples whom Vespasiano claims to be the source for some of the stories that he is reporting.62 Beyond these fuller biographies, Vespasiano also penned seven short paragraphs about seven additional cardinals: three of these men he almost certainly encountered at the Council of Florence in 1439.63 In short, the biographies tie ten of the sixteen cardinals to Pope Eugenius’s time in Florence prior to 1442. This interaction indicates the activity around the busy bookseller’s shop amid the packed city of Florence during the church council. Moreover, it is suggestive of how a bookseller, however famous, came into contact with the princes of the church. Finally, it is a further warning – if further warnings are necessary – that Vespasiano’s Lives, however rich, are at least for these cardinals the result of memories, and memories which were at times around 30 years old by the time of Vespasiano’s telling. As the heyday of the bookshop came to a close, as Vespasiano railed against his new printed competitors, his lives of cardinals suggest his refuge into the glories of the past when the princes of the church crowded his corner store on the modern Via del Proconsolo. The only individual for whom there is uncertainty about a direct, personal connection with Vespasiano is Berardo Eroli, Cardinal of Spoleto. Berardo does not seem to have been in Florence; although he certainly may have travelled through the city on his many trips. He was not a minor figure in mid-fifteen-century politics, this passage appears to transition from the lives of cardinals to those of bishops and archbishops: ‘Avendo infino a qui discritto sotto forma di comentario alcuna cosa degna di memoria di papa Nicola et del re Alfonso, di poi sendo venuto ad alcuni cardinali i quali sono venuti a quella degnità per proprie virtù, ora veremo ad alcuni arcivescovi et vescovi et prima a quegli i quali sono stati abietti al mondo per essere acetti a Dio, come si dimostrerà per l’opere loro’; Da Bisticci, Le vite,1976, vol. 1, p. 221. 57 Da Bisticci, Renaissance Princes, 1963, pp. 119, 21–22, 23–24; Da Bisticci, Le vite, 1976, vol. 1, pp. 120, 26–27, 31–32. 58 Da Bisticci, Renaissance Princes, 1963, p. 126; Da Bisticci, Le vite, 1976, vol. 1, p. 140. 59 Da Bisticci, Renaissance Princes, 1963, p. 133; Da Bisticci, Le vite, 1976, vol. 1, p. 160. 60 Da Bisticci, Renaissance Princes, 1963, p. 141; Da Bisticci, Le vite, 1976, vol. 1, p. 177. 61 Da Bisticci, Renaissance Princes, 1963, pp. 145–146; da Bisticci, Le vite, 1976, vol. 1, pp. 197–199. 62 Da Bisticci, Renaisance Princes, 1963, pp. 137–141 and 46–53; Da Bisticci, Le vite, 1976, vol. 1, pp. 169–175 and 207–221. 63 Da Bisticci, Renaisance Princes, 1963, pp. 153–156; these lives correspond to Da Bisticci, Le vite, 1976, vol. 1, pp. 183–184, 185, 187, 189, 201, 203, and 205–206.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

with one diplomat contending that Pius II did nothing without him.64 He was known to Alamanno Rinuccini in the 1470s, and Rinuccini was familiar with Vespasiano.65 Berardo was tasked by Pius II with overseeing the legal dispute that transpired in Naples after the death of Alfonso in 1458, a topic dear to Vespasiano. He also endowed a library at the cathedral at Narni, and perhaps Vespasiano helped supply books.66 When travelling through Florence en route to somewhere else, Berardo probably worked with Vespasiano on books, and was certainly known to him through the political dispute of 1458, which was a hot topic among visitors to his bookshop.67 Vespasiano stressed the individualized portraits of his subjects to emphasize his familiarity with the powerful men of his age. On the facade of a hospital or in a choir book, the presence of cardinals as a collective body added status to the events depicted. At Santa Maria Nuova or Santa Maria del Fiore, the leaders of the church rubbed elbows with the patricians of the city to bless new buildings. For Vespasiano’s purposes, the anecdotal lives sought to prove just how important and connected he had been – much in the same way as other frescoes in fifteenth-century Florence co-opted images of the powerful to enhance the standing of the image’s patron. Vespasiano repeatedly emphasized his personal interactions with the powerful throughout his Lives; as such the impression of him throughout the biographies is of a man familiar with the leading figures of his age. Vespasiano sought to accrue capital through stressing his personal connections with powerful people, including cardinals, for a full range of audiences. Several dedications of portions of Vespasiano’s Lives survive, and the majority of them aimed to solidify connections between him and his old allies. For example, around 1490 Vespasiano dedicated lives of the Pandolfini family and two learned men – Leonardo Bruni and Ambrogio Traversari – to the powerful bishop of Pistoia Niccolò Pandolfini, whom Vespasiano had known for decades.68 Probably around the same time, Vespasiano dedicated the lives of three members of the Strozzi family to Filippo Strozzi, who was then in Florence but with whom Vespasiano had worked in the book trade in Naples.69 64 Esposito, ‘Berardo Eroli’, 1993. 65 Rinuccini was at the very least instructed to speak with Berardo while a Florentine diplomat in Rome in early 1476; see Aiazzi, Ricordi, 1840, pp. 231–232. On the connections between Rinuccini and Vespasiano, see Cagni, Vespasiano da Bisticci, 1969, passim; Cagni draws his evidence from Rinuccini’s letters, which are in Rinuccini, Lettere, 1953. 66 Esposito, ‘Berardo Eroli’, 1993. 67 On Vespasiano and these politics, see Margolis, ‘Gallic Crowd’, 2014. 68 Cagni, Vespasiano da Bisticci, 1969, pp. 191–195; Da Bisticci, Vite, ed. 1892. Frati, the editor of this edition of the Vite, describes the manuscript tradition in detail from pp. iii–xx. The cardinal lives come down to us via a fifteenth-century copy in Bologna, with autograph corrections by Vespasiano, as well as a sixteenth-century manuscript of the Lives in the Vatican Library. On the manuscript tradition, see also Da Bisticci, Vite, ed. 1859; Cagni, Vespasiano da Bisticci, 1969, pp. 87–95. 69 See Cagni, Vespasiano da Bisticci, 1969, pp. 64, 172–174, and 195–199.

83

84 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

The original dedicatees, if any, of the lives by Vespasiano of the various cardinals are not known: the life of Jacopo, Cardinal of Sant’Eustachio, was dedicated to Jacopo Gianfigliazzi, along with lives of the humanist brothers Piero and Donato Acciaiuoli, with all three presented as moral exemplars.70 Since the lives of cardinals survive in manuscripts along with Vespasiano’s literary project as a whole, concrete conclusions about their intended audience and purpose are not possible, beyond the fact that they clearly illustrated just how connected Vespasiano and his book shop had once been. The emphasis on commemorating the status of holy spaces, the absence of a Florentine cardinal, and the geographical distance from the papal court in Rome in the 1420s, and from the 1440s onwards, shaped the depiction of cardinals in visual and literary sources. Unlike the easily recognizable faces of contemporary Florentine patricians, likenesses of cardinals would have shown foreigners to Florentines. Social, political, and economic networks crossed Europe for well-off Florentines, and families touted their close associations with powerful outsiders by cultivating various types of close bonds and even displaying elements of their allies’ coats of arms. But throughout the fifteenth century the vast majority of Florentines focused their efforts on cultivating internal marital alliances, accessing internal political offices, and constructing internal economic partnerships to do business abroad. It was, in fact, not just portraits of foreign cardinals that are absent from fifteenth-century Florence, but portraits of non-Florentines in general are extremely rare. Lacking cardinals within the Florentine families, it was impossible to argue for proximity to Florentine power through cardinal portraits. By contrast, the presence of cardinals as a group, as in Bicci, Francesco, and Manetti’s depictions added weight to important ecclesiastical scenes – the consecration of buildings gained gravitas. But the presence of individual cardinals did not matter. In a record book, a writer revealed his knowledge of his city through the status of Florentines worthy of hosting a cardinal. In other pieces of writing, Vespasiano da Bisticci also highlighted specific characteristics and stories of individualized biographical portraits of cardinals. The Florentine diarist Bartolomeo and Vespasiano’s Lives were much more similar to the frescoes of Gozzoli and Massacio than they were to the images of Bicci or Francesco. Through individual portraiture of cardinals, Vespasiano appears as the well-connected bookseller, acquaintance, even friend of the powerful in Florence and beyond. For fifteenth-century painters, writers, and patrons, portraiture was a choice about more than style – it was also about what to emphasize in a work of cultural production. 70 Ibid., pp. 203–204. It is not clear when Vespasiano added his lives of cardinals to his project, which was originally to focus exclusively on illustrious Florentines. For example, surviving early manuscripts and their dedications both suggest that at that point all but one of the cardinal lives was not yet present; see ibid., pp. 97–101. Cagni notes that even a list of lives by Vespasiano compiled in the 1600s by Carlo Strozzi still lacked most of the cardinals.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

Bibliography Ahl, Diane Cole, Benozzo Gozzoli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). ———, ‘Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel’, in The Cambridge Companion to Masaccio, ed. by Diane Cole Ahl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 138–157. Aiazzi, Giuseppe, Ricordi storici di Filippo di Cino Rinuccini dal 1282 al 1460 colla continuazione di Alamanno e Neri, suoi figli, fino al 1506, seguiti da altri monumenti inediti di storia patria estratti dai codici originali e preceduti dalla Storia genealogica della loro famiglia (Florence: Stamperia Piatti, 1840). Ames-Lewis, Francis, ‘The Earliest Documented Manuscript Decoration by Francesco d’Antonio del Cherico’, Burlington Magazine 120.903 (1978): 390–393. Apfelstadt, Eric, ‘Bishop and Pawn: New Documents for the Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal at S. Miniato al Monte, Florence’, in Cultural Links between Portugal and Italy in the Renaissance, ed. by Kate J.P. Lowe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 183–223. Baker, Nicholas Scott, ‘Discursive Republicanism in Renaissance Florence: Deliberation and Representation in the Early Sixteenth Century’, Past & Present 225 (2014): 47–77. ———, The Fruit of Liberty: Political Culture in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480–1550 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). Baker, Patrick, Italian Renaissance Humanism in the Mirror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). ———, Portraying the Prince in the Renaissance: The Humanist Depiction of Rulers in Historiographical and Biographical Texts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). Baldassarri, Stefano U. and Brian Jeffrey Maxson, ‘Giannozzo Manetti’s Oratio in funere Iannotii Pandolfini: Art, Humanism and Politics in Fifteenth-Century Florence’, Interpres 34 (2016): 79–142. Barbieri, Costanza, ‘Francesco d’Antonio del Chierico’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani 1997), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-d-antoniodel-chierico_(Dizionario-Biografico)/ . Belting, Hans, An Anthropology of Images (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). Berti, Luciano, Il museo di palazzo Davanzati a Firenze (Milan: Electa, 1972). Boschetto, Luca, Società e cultura a Firenze al tempo del concilio: papa Eugenio IV tra curiali, mercanti e umanisti (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012). Brandmüler, W.W., ‘Casini, Antonio’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani, 1978), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/antonio-casini_res-37332d91-87ea-11dc-8e9d0016357eee51_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Burke, Peter, ‘The Renaissance, Individualism, and the Portrait’, History of European Ideas 31.3 (1995): 393–400. Cagni, Giuseppe M., Vespasiano da Bisticci e il suo epistolario (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969).

85

86 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

Caleca, Antonino, ‘Un codicetto di Francesco d’Antonio del Chierico’, Critica d’Arte 12 (1965): 50–56. Chambers, David S., ‘A Cardinal in Rome: Florentine and Medici Ambitions’, in The Medici: Citizens and Masters, ed. by Robert Black and John E. Law (Florence: Villa I Tatti, 2015), pp. 205–217. Chiarini, Marco, ‘Una citazione dalla ‘Sagra’ di Masaccio nel Ghirlandaio’, Paragone 12.149 (1962): 53–56. Chiodo, Sonia, ‘Osservazioni su due polittici di Bicci di Lorenzo’, Arte Cristiana 88 (2000): 269–280. Christiansen, Keith and Stefan Weppelmann, eds., The Renaissance Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini (New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011). Crum, Roger J., ‘Stepping Out of Brunelleschi’s Shadow: The Consecration of Santa Maria del Fiore as International Statecraft in Medicean Florence’, in Foundation, Dedication and Consecration in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Maarten Delbeke and Minou Schraven (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 59–77. Da Bisticci, Vespasiano, Le vite, 2 vols. (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1976). ———, Renaissance Princes, Popes, and Prelates (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). ———, Vite di uomini illustri del secolo XV (Florence: Barbera, Bianchi e Comp., 1859). ———, Vite di uomini illustri del secolo XV, vol. 1 (Bologna: Romagnoli-dall’Acqua, 1892). D’Addario, Arnaldo, ‘Alberti, Alberto’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani, 1960), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/alberto-alberti_res-eb412d61-87e5-11dc-8e9d0016357eee51_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. De Angelis, Laura, ‘I canonici di San Lorenzo e i loro contrasti con i canonici della cattedrale’, in La repubblica di Firenze fra XIV e XV secolo: istituzioni e lotte politiche nel nascente stato territoriale fiorentino (Florence: Nardini, 2009), pp. 105–114. De la Mare, Albinia Catherine, ‘Vespasiano da Bisticci, Historian and Bookseller’, PhD thesis, University of London, 1966. Del Corazza, Bartolommeo di Michele, ‘Diario Fiorentino’, ed. by G.O. Corazzini, Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. 5, 14 (1894): 233–298. Eckstein, Nicholas, Painted Glories: The Brancacci Chapel in Renaissance Florence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). Edgerton, Samuel Y., Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). Esposito, Anna, ‘Eroli, Berardo’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani, 1993), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/berardo-eroli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Filosa, Elsa, The Florentine Conspiracy of 1360: Political Turmoil in Boccaccio’s Life and Works, forthcoming. Frosinini, Cecilia, ‘Gli esordi del Maestro di Signa: dalla bottega di Bicci di Lorenzo alle prime opere autonome’, Antichità Viva 29.5 (1990): 18–25.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

———, ‘Il passaggio di gestione in una bottega pittorica fiorentina del primo Rinascimento: Lorenzo di Bicci e Bicci di Lorenzo’, Antichità Viva 26.1 (1986): 5–15. Garzelli, Annarosa, ‘Zanobi Strozzi, Francesco di Antonio del Chierico e un raro tema astrologico nel libro d’ore’, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. by Andrea Morrogh and others (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1985), pp. 237–253. Gilbert, Creighton, ‘The Drawings now assoicated with Masaccio’s Sagra’, Storia dell’Arte 1.4 (1969): 260–278. ———, ‘Michangelo’s Drawings after Masaccio’s Sagra’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 34.6 (1948): 389–404. Gill, Joseph, The Council of Florence (London/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1959). ———, Eugenius IV: Pope of Christian Union (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1961). Gombrich, Ernst H., ‘Giotto’s Portrait of Dante?’, in New Light on Old Masters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 11–31. Guasti, Cesare, Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi per il comune di Firenze dal MCCCXCIX al MCCCCXXXIII, 3 vols. (Florence: M. Cellini, 1873). Hartt, Frederick, Gino Corti and Clarence Kennedy, The Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal, 1434–1459, at San Miniato in Florence (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964). Henderson, John, The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Holmes Megan, Fra Filippo Lippi the Carmelite Painter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). Ianziti, Gary, Writing History in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). Janson, H.W., The Sculpture of Donatello (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). Kent, D.V., Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Labriola, Ada, ‘Alcune proposte per Zanobi Strozzi e Francesco di Antonio del Chierico’, Paragone 60.707 (2009): 3–22. Lee, Alexander, The Ugly Renaissance (New York: Doubleday, 2013). Lindow, James R., The Renaissance Palace in Florence: Magnificence and Splendour in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007). Lowe, Kate J.P., Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy: The Life and Career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini (1453–1524) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). McCahill, Elizabeth, Reviving the Eternal City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). McHam, Sarah Blake, ‘Donatello’s Tomb of Pope John XXIII’, in Life and Death in Renaissance Florence, ed. by Marcel Tetel and others (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), pp. 146–173. Margolis, Oren J., ‘The “Gallic Crowd” at the “Aragonese Doors”: Donato Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli Magni and the Workshop of Vespasiano da Bisticci’, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 17.2 (2014): 241–282.

87

88 

Brian Jeffrey Ma xson

Maxson, Brian, ‘The Certame Coronario as Performative Ritual’, in Rituals of Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Edward Muir, ed. by Mark Jurdjevic and Rolf Strom-Olsen (Toronto: CRRS Publications, 2016), pp. 137–163. ———, The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Najemy, John M., A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006). Nethersole, Scott, Art and Violence in Early Renaissance Florence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). Partner, Peter, The Papal State under Martin V: The Administration and Government of the Temporal Power in the Early Fifteenth Century (London: Richard Clay & Co., 1958). Pastor, Ludwig von, The History of the Popes, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1899). Poeschke, Joachim, Donatello and his World (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993). Pope-Hennessy, John, Donatello, Sculptor (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993). ———, The Portrait in the Renaissance (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966). Rinuccini, Alamanno, Lettere ed orazioni (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1953). Rubin, Patricia Lee, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). Rubinstein, Nicolai, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Savelli, Divo, La Sagra di Masaccio (Florence: Pagnini, 1998). Santagata, Marco, Dante, trans. by Richard Dixon (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016). Scantamburlo, Barbara, ‘Nuovi documenti: gli affreschi di Bicci di Lorenzo e Neri di Bicci per l’Opera di Santa Maria Assunta di Massa’, Medioevo e Rinascimento 16 (2002): 207–215. Simons, Patricia, ‘Giovanna and Ginevra: Portraits for the Tornabuoni Family by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli’, I Tatti Studies 14.15 (2011–2012): 103–135. ———, ‘A Profile Portrait of a Renaissance Woman in the National Gallery of Victoria’, Art Bulletin of Victoria 28 (1987): 34–52. Smith, Christine and Joseph F. O’Connor, Building the Kingdom: Giannozzo Manetti on the Material and Spiritual Edifice (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS Press, 2006). Strehlke, Carl Brandon, ‘The Brancacci Style and the Carmine Style’, in The Brancacci Chapel: Form, Function, and Setting, ed. by Nicholas A. Eckstein (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2007), pp. 87–114. Tacconi, Marica, Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of Santa Maria del Fiore (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Turpin, Adriana, ‘Objectifying the Domestic Interior: Domestic Furnishings and the Historical Interpretation of the Italian Renaissance Interior’, in The Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior, 1400–1700, ed. by Erin J. Campbell, Stephanie R. Miller, and Elizabeth Carroll Consavari (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 207–225.

Visual and Verbal Portraits of Cardinals in Fifteenth- Century Florence 

Walsh, Barbara Buhler, ‘The Fresco Paintings of Bicci di Lorenzo’, PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1979. Weissman, Ronald F.E., ‘The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Social Relations, Individualism, and Identity in Renaissance Florence’, in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. by Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F.E. Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), pp. 269–280 Woodall, Joanna, ed., Portraiture: Facing the Subject (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997).

About the Author Brian Jeffrey Maxson is Professor of History at East Tennessee State University. He has published extensively on the culture and politics of the Italian Renaissance. He is the author of The Humanist World of Renaissance Florence and co-editor of Florence in the Early Modern World.

89

4. Dead Ringers Cardinals and their Effigies, 1400–1520 Carol M. Richardson Abstract Cardinals’ tomb monuments are ubiquitous among early modern works of art in Rome. They are so common, in fact, that they are generally overlooked in the scholarship. It has been assumed that their effigies are merely non-specific representations of powerful men, not portraits of particular individuals. This essay explores the problem of portrait likeness in cardinals’ tomb effigies in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and argues that they represent an important category of early modern portraiture. Keywords: tomb monuments; eff igies; funerals; death masks; catafalques; verisimilitude

Cardinals’ tomb monuments in Rome form the most ubiquitous group of their portraits. From the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century these architectural memorials customarily include an eff igy – a full-scale sculpted representation of the cardinal whose tomb it is – lying in state in full choir dress on his bier, just as his body might have been displayed during the long series of funeral liturgies and orations that marked his transition to the next life. Or, at least, that is what we assume these portraits to be. This essay will explore what cardinals’ tomb effigies represent and ask to what extent they can be considered portraits at all. The unique group of portraits included in memorial art raises important questions about the def inition of portraiture in the early modern period, in particular in relation to realism or ‘lifelikeness’, and points more to the signif icance of cardinals as a political and social group than to their individual appearance.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch04

92 

Carol M. Richardson

Effigies Cardinals – and indeed popes – were subject to conventions and strict controls that dictated every detail of their deaths, from the preparation of the last will and testament to the completion of any permanent monument. An important premise of this group of sculpted ‘portraits’ is the interchangeability of the conventions for the preparation for death and burial of popes and cardinals. Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani, for example, points specifically to the fact that the unique ceremonials and funerary customs concerning the death and burial of cardinals were a relatively late development, dating to the end of the Avignon papacy.1 By the early sixteenth century, specific aspects such as the novena, or nine days of masses, were reserved only for popes and cardinals, setting them apart from all other levels of society, secular or ecclesiastic.2 Just as cardinals’ funerals increasingly simulated those of the popes, their permanent commemoration in the form of tomb monuments was similarly connected, not least because it usually fell to the cardinals to immortalize a pope in artistic form, and it was very much in a cardinal’s interest to assert his papal credentials. The monument of Eugenius IV, for example, was commissioned by one of his cardinal-nephews, Francesco Condulmer (d.1453), and erected in St. Peter’s by 1455 during the pontificate of Nicholas V at the top of the north aisle in the papal basilica. Throughout this period, from 1445 until 1464, Pietro Barbo, Eugenius IV’s other cardinal-nephew, was archpriest of the Vatican basilica, so presumably had some sway over what went on within its confines.3 Eugenius IV’s monument was long thought by scholars to be the first tomb of a pope to reflect emerging trends in monumental design, with details taking classical rather than Gothic form, the prototype of the Renaissance curial tomb later perfected by Andrea Bregno. Instead, Eugenius IV’s monument turned out to be a perfect example of the interchangeability of elite fifteenth-century tomb monuments, and of the impermanence of so many of these early modern memorials. For the purpose of this essay, it is the survival of the effigy – possibly the only original part of the whole ensemble – that is most significant. In Old St. Peter’s the north aisle nearest the transept was developed as something of a Venetian zone by the middle of the fifteenth century. Two papal tombs, of Eugenius IV and Paul II, and two altars, to the Virgin and Child and Sts. Peter and Paul, and to St. Mark, were the result of commissions by Venetian cardinals. Eugenius IV’s tomb was in place for just 60 years before it was sacrificed, like the other tombs and altars 1 Paravicini-Bagliani, Pope’s Body, 2000, pp. 158–159; also Herklotz, ‘Sepulcra’ e ‘Monumenta’, 1985; Gardner, Tomb and the Tiara, 1992; Schraven, Festive Funerals, 2014. 2 Dykmans, L’Oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini, 1980. 3 Richardson, ‘Saint Peter’s in the Fifteenth Century’, 2013, pp. 343–347.

Dead Ringers 

in the area, to the building work initiated by Julius II and Donato Bramante in the early 1500s. Parts of the tomb of Eugenius IV were shifted across what remained of the basilica’s Constantinian nave in 1545. Then, in 1605, with the decision to demolish the rest of the original basilica, a new home was required once more. As a result of a fire in 1591, the church of San Salvatore in Lauro near the via Recta and the Tiber was undergoing reconstruction.4 San Salvatore was the obvious home for Eugenius IV’s monument, as it was the Roman base of the Canons Regular of San Giorgio in Alga, a Venetian order which Gabriele Condulmer (Eugenius IV) had helped found in minoribus. The pope’s monument stood in the cloister of San Salvatore until the midnineteenth century, when it was removed to the oratory of the Pio Sodalizio dei Piceni, where it remains today. At some point during its travels, Eugenius IV’s effigy came to be incorporated within the framing elements of another, more modest monument executed much later in the fifteenth century.5 In its present form, the pope’s effigy, wearing a papal tiara, seems incongruous in such a conventional superstructure. There are countless similar examples in Rome of seemingly permanent memorials having remarkably transitory existences, but, as opposed to those of popes, the details for cardinals’ tombs are more difficult to reconstruct as they are often disguised in new settings. Borromini’s remarkable seventeenth-century reworking of the tomb monument of Cardinal Antonio Martinez de Chavez, who died in 1447, preserves only the effigy and a few smaller figures from the original Gothic ensemble. Vivid green- and red-painted stone, and red-breccia marble columns completely replace any fifteenth-century architectural elements to fit better into Borromini’s modernized Lateran basilica.6 Of the many cardinals’ tomb monuments that were displaced by the rebuilding of the papal basilica, it is telling that their effigies were preserved, many of them still lined up inside rooms of the Grotte Vaticane (Fig. 4.1). Set out in rows, it is as though the deceased still wait for their families to commemorate them sufficiently to enable them to move on from the waiting room of Purgatory. Of all the parts of the tomb monument, then, the effigy was the most persistent. It stood most forcefully for the contract between the host institution and the cardinal’s executors and heirs. Essentially a legal relationship as much as a spiritual one, money and property were bequeathed to pay for a chaplain who would ensure the preservation of the individual’s memory through prayers and masses in perpetuity. While the soul of the individual was specifically commemorated and their remembrance regularly reactivated in this way, individual cardinals derived their significance more as members of the larger group that defined them, hence the significance of the choice of site. The commemoration or salvation of a certain 4 Kühlenthal, ‘Zwei Grabmäler’, 1976, pp. 25–29. 5 Ciaccio, ‘Scoltura romana’, 1906. 6 Richardson, Reclaiming Rome, 2009, pp. 351–353.

93

94 

Carol M. Richardson

Fig. 4.1 View of fifteenth-century cardinals’ effigies in the Grotte Vaticane including, first left, Berardo Eruli, second left, Pietro Fonseca, third right, Ardicino della Porta Junior, first right, Ardicino della Porta Senior (© Carol M. Richardson).

individual was of lesser concern in the context of the history or continuity of the institution.7 With space at a premium in Rome’s venerable churches, however, life-size effigies and their considerable frames were vulnerable to ‘reorganization’. An effigy might bear signs that mark it out as a particular person – in the case of Eugenius IV his papal tiara – and, presumably on the original monument, his Condulmer coat of arms, but without the wider associations that derive from its location, it is cast adrift from the anchors of ritual and history. This was why Eugenius IV’s effigy had to be found a new home with at least some specific resonance. But to what extent does the effigy constitute a portrait at all?

Portraits Harrison proposes in his book The Dominion of the Dead that funerals ‘serve to separate the image of the deceased from the corpse to which it remains bound at 7 Binski, Medieval Death, 1996, pp. 102–103.

Dead Ringers 

the moment of demise’.8 Disposal of the rotting cadaver therefore ensures that an eternal image ‘is detached from their remains so that their images may find their place in the afterlife of the imagination’.9 The tomb effigy, then, can be understood as the ‘image assigned to its afterlife’, which for those still living equates to memory, which in turn supports commemoration. But cardinals’ tomb monuments in the early modern period also question these assumptions, which risk imposing particularly modern and Protestant values on the past. As Eamon Duffy pointed out, it was only in the mid-sixteenth-century Protestant prayer book that the dynamic of the funeral decisively shifted from the ‘continuing presence of the dead among the living’ to fulfil the purpose of mere waste disposal.10 Subsequently, Protestant funerary rites ritualized a turning away from the dead and towards the living as the very ‘boundaries of human community have been redrawn’. In England, life-size wooden and wax effigies of kings and queens were used to prompt seemly outpourings of public grief, by substituting the decaying cadaver and thus avoiding inappropriate repugnance.11 This kind of effigy was the fruit of a very temporal concern with the present, much more than it was designed to reintroduce the dead monarch into the wider community of memory that transcends time. In Catholic culture, the sense of sight is particularly close to memory.12 In the papal court, its members, past and present, witnessed to a great deal more than their individual existence. If the deceased were to be forgotten, they suffered a fate of being lost forever in limbo or purgatory. Conversely, the dead can affect the fortunes of the living, an association that can be traced back to the most ancient history.13 To avoid this, regular prayers and masses were commissioned in perpetuity where resources allowed. The image of the individual, or at least some sign of their specific existence, had to be perpetuated. Relatives were often left the honour of commemoration so that they might better fulfil the obligation of the living to remember the dead: memory and memorial are related for a reason.14 As Catherine Bell suggested for rituals such as funerals, A lecture about the power of the ancestors will not inculcate the type of assumptions about ancestral presence that the simple routine of offering incense 8 Harrison, Dominion of the Dead, 2003, p. 147, discussed in Pointon, ‘Deathliness of Things’, 2014, p. 170. 9 Harrison, Dominion of the Dead, 2003, p. 148. 10 Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 1992, p. 475. 11 Woodward, Theatre of Death, 1997, p. 204; for France see Giesey, Royal Funeral Ceremony, 1960. 12 Oexle, ‘Memoria und Memorialbild’, 1984, pp. 386–388; Morganstern, ‘Tomb as Prompter for the Chantry’, 2000. 13 Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, 1971, p. 33; Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory, 1995, p. 114. 14 Bell, Ritual, 1997, p. 137.

95

96 

Carol M. Richardson

at an altar can inculcate. Activities that are so physical, aesthetic, and established appear to play a particularly powerful role in shaping human sensibility and imagination.

Cardinals’ funerary monuments marked the end of a long process of preparation for death and the eternal afterlife which began in the individual’s lifetime with making a will. Officials were appointed to make sure every part of the process from death to commemoration was carried out properly.15 The cardinal was carefully laid out and dressed according to his rank as a deacon, priest, or bishop and displayed until the burial, sometimes for the three days it was believed that it took the soul to leave the body, or, in some cases, as quickly as possible. All this assumes that tomb monuments, and in particular their constituent eff igies, reflect funerals. While the body, or an eff igy, was part of the funeral display for popes and monarchs, I have found no evidence to suggest that any representation of the human likeness of a dead cardinal was incorporated into the novena. These nine days of ritual observance had in fact evolved from the practical necessities of the thirteenth century when to be eligible to vote in a papal election, cardinals were limited to nine days to reach Rome.16 On occasion, the body itself might have remained on display for part of the obsequies, but the more common practice seems to have been the erection of a catafalque, the castrum doloris, or ‘castle of grief’, that temporarily supported the cadaver and subsequently stood in for it.17 This was a draped ephemeral structure that was surrounded by candles and armorial bearings. Whereas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an elaborate process of embalmment ensured that the body could be safely on show for a week or so, by the fifteenth century speedy burial was not unusual, even for popes.18 Ardicino della Porta (junior), who died on 4 February 1493, for example, was buried in St. Peter’s the next evening.19 Nevertheless, when Giacomo Grimaldi inventoried what was left of Constantine’s St. Peter’s at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the burials that had not already been disturbed provided evidence that tomb effigies often represent what 15 Herklotz, ‘Sepulcra’ e ‘Monumenta’, 1985, p. 193. 16 Schraven, ‘Majesty and Mortality’, 2005, p. 144. 17 As ephemeral structures, catafalques do not normally survive. An exception is that of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros who died in 1517 and whose catafalque, described in 2017 as a wooden ‘frame covered with cloth to represent a tomb’, survives in the Mozarabic chapel he commissioned in the Toledo Cathedral: Sánchez Gamero and others, Cisneros Cardenal Eterno, 2001, pp. 43–46. Guillaume d’Estouteville’s castrum doloris was still extant three years after his death in 1486; Gill, ‘Death and the Cardinal’, 2009, p. 356. 18 Richardson, Reclaiming Rome, 2009, pp. 442–444; on papal funerals see Schraven, ‘Majesty and Mortality’, 2005. 19 Richardson, ‘Andrea Sansovino’, 2018, p. 184.

Dead Ringers 

the corpse in the tomb was wearing.20 Were artists on hand during the ceremonies to record the details of what they saw? This is very unlikely, not least because of the considerable delay between burial and memorial, and also of the conceptual gap between likeness and portrait, as will be discussed in the next section. It was the long-established liturgical conventions that set the consistent appearance of cadaver and effigy, not any interest in capturing a specific moment. Although an individual’s wealth and power opened up endless possibilities for commemoration, the same conventions reduced the possibility of extravagance. Ludovico Trevisan, who died in March 1465, was reputed to be among the wealthiest men in Italy.21 A cardinal since Eugenius IV’s pontif icate, Trevisan was widely travelled as commander of the papal forces, a position that enabled him to build a considerable collection of exotic objects from across the Mediterranean.22 Subsequently serving as papal chamberlain, Trevisan was permitted by Paul II to make a will leaving most of his sizeable estate to his two brothers. On his death, however, the pope set aside the will on the pretence of taking the money to help pay for the crusade against the Turks. Paul II purchased some of the cardinal’s collection from Trevisan’s heirs while Sixtus IV used it as guarantee to secure loans from Florentine banks.23 Nevertheless, Trevisan’s household and family were not deprived of any inheritance by the popes: Luigi Scarampo, one of the cardinal’s brothers, renounced his claim to the cardinal’s estate in June 1465 because the heirs had already received more than 2,000 gold florins, and in return was given among other things the cardinal’s house in Florence in the district of Santa Maria Novella. There were limits to the total amounts that cardinals could bequeath to their heirs, because most of their estate would have originally derived from ecclesiastical assignments and benefices. Papal intervention in the distribution of Trevisan’s estate meant that the provision of a monument was left to the Camera Apostolica (the central board of finance in the papal administration). On his death Trevisan was buried in San Lorenzo in Damaso – we know this because his grave was despoiled by one of the basilica’s canons.24 In November 1467 Paolo Romano was paid 50 gold florins for the monument and another 50 for an altar in Sant’Agnese dei Goti.25 This was not a huge sum, similar to the 60 sc. paid in 1485 for the modest monument in San Clemente 20 Grimaldi, S. Pietro in Vaticano, 1972, pp. 212, 255ff. 21 Müntz, Les arts à la cour des papes, pt. 2: Paul II, 1464–1471, 1879, pp. 177–178; Paschini, Lodovico cardinal Camerlengo, 1939, p. 208. 22 Bagemihl, ‘Trevisan Collection’, 1993, pp. 560–561. 23 Bagemihl, ‘Trevisan Collection’, 1993; Fusco, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 2006, pp. 83, 94, 186. 24 Platina, Lives of the Popes, 1888, p. 281. 25 Müntz, Les arts à la cour des papes, 1879, p. 82 (5 November 1467); on the monument, see Paschini, Lodovico Cardinal Camerlengo, 1939, pp. 211–212; Caglioti, ‘Sui primi tempi romani d’Andrea Bregno’, 1997.

97

98 

Carol M. Richardson

to Bishop Brusati, nephew of Cardinal Bartolomeo Roverella, that nevertheless includes an effigy.26 It is not clear what was made for this first Trevisan monument, if anything, as the original basilica of San Lorenzo in Damaso was replaced as part of Raffaele Riario’s new palace and church by the beginning of the sixteenth century. The monument in the north aisle of the church today was installed on 21 March 1505, the 40th anniversary of Trevisan’s death. Where then is the space for portrait likeness in all this?

Likeness The effigy, where it is included, is the part of the monument that should incorporate the portrait but, as Irving Lavin explained in his important 1970 essay on portrait busts, effigium and imago are Latin words denoting portraits of any kind, whether painted or sculpted.27 Conversely, scholars have long been careful to respect the distance between effigies and portraits. John White, for example, describes the likeness of Clement IV (died 1268) – incorporated in the tomb monument in San Francesco, Viterbo, and generally recognized as among the earliest in Italy to include a ‘full salient effigy’ – as ‘modification of a studio pattern in the direction of portraiture’.28 I would argue that this astute remark holds true well into the sixteenth century. While to the modern mind, a portrait denotes likeness, in a pre-photographic era verisimilitude is an unreliable concept, ‘the shadow of a shadow’ as Jeanette Kohl memorably puts it.29 When Poliziano elegized Albiera, a 15-year-old daughter of the Florentine Albizzi clan who died in 1473, he described a bust that ‘returned life to me anew […] restored my form and famous beauty […] my character and conduct by song’.30 Any correspondence between what Albiera may have looked like and her posthumous bust was therefore as much to do with her innate qualities and social charms as her outward appearance. Similarly, orations and eulogies that punctuated a cardinal’s funerary rites and that may have subsequently circulated as texts were obviously more easily disseminated records of his character and achievements than a lump of stone. The permanence promised by the stone memorial signified the longer trajectory of the Church itself. 26 Bertolotti, Artisti lombardi a Roma, 1881, vol. 2, p. 285. 27 Lavin, ‘On the Sources and Meaning of the Renaissance Portrait Bust’, 1970, pp. 211–212; Luchs, ‘Portraits, Poetry and Commemoration’, 2012, p. 83. 28 Moskowitz, Arca di San Domenico, 1993, pp. 38, 61, n. 10; White, Art and Architecture, 1987, pp. 97–99. 29 Kohl, ‘Mimesis’, 2013. 30 Epitaph 65, Poliziano, 1867, pp. 145–147, translated in Luchs, ‘Portraits, Poetry and Commemoration’, 2012, p. 78.

Dead Ringers 

Effigies on cardinals’ tombs incorporate signals of the status that justified the commemoration itself. They can also seem to display the body just after it has breathed its last, in a state of suspended perfection, something that derives from more recent ideas about memorialization.31 Paradoxically, in the early modern period, the specific likeness only drew attention to the surface or vanitas, and therefore the transience of the life of an individual, but any individualization in the larger ritual confines of a church could also tip the balance back in favour of the bigger message.32 Even a painted portrait, which is usually smaller and therefore more intimate than a life-size funeral effigy, represents a great deal more than the accuracy of representational likeness. The display of painted portraits could be more controlled or limited, most often in domestic settings and to more select audiences, but tomb sculpture – in as much as it incorporates portraiture per se – broadens the genre, as it was designed for public display in churches. In both cases, the sitter rarely speaks for him/herself but rather communicates broader ideas about group identity and status, and therefore the individual’s relative position within a hierarchy. The portrait, as such, extended beyond specific physiognomy to heraldry and a costume denoting rank and status. These unique markers of a person’s physical presence combined with the liturgical context of tomb effigies served to subordinate the individual to the institution. Together, these external signs manifested an inner dignity that, in the case of cardinals, derived from the pope. They were the members of the papal body which has the pope as its head. Among the monuments Grimaldi found undisturbed at St. Peter’s were those of the two Ardicino della Porta cardinals, known as senior and junior (Figs. 4.2 and 4.3). Their monuments still stood in the Oratory of St. Thomas attached to the lower (north-west) aisle of Constantine’s St. Peter’s. The elder Ardicino della Porta, a canon lawyer who had served at the Council of Constance, died in 1434. His monument was an ornate Gothic canopy tomb that was, for the period, deliberately archaizing. The effigy represents the cardinal dressed in mitre and the narrow-sleeved dalmatic of a cardinal deacon, his hands appropriately gloveless.33 As well as the clear indication of his status as a cardinal-deacon, the sculpted effigy shows signs of lifelikeness: prominent veins stand out on the back of the hands and creases mark the forehead and jowls But the physiognomy, like the columnar treatment of the body, harks back to much earlier effigies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In contrast, the effigy from the tomb monument of Ardicino della Porta Junior, which originally stood nearby that of his elder relation, suggests a different approach to credible 31 Linkman, Photography and Death, 2011. 32 Binski, Medieval Death, 1996, p. 103. 33 Richardson, Reclaiming Rome, 2009, p. 326.

99

100 

Carol M. Richardson

Fig. 4.2 Ardicino della Porta Senior, effigy, Grotte Vaticane (© Carol M. Richardson).

Fig. 4.3 Ardicino della Porta Junior, effigy, Grotte Vaticane (© Carol M. Richardson).

Dead Ringers 

Fig. 4.4 Ardicino della Porta Junior, detail of upper part of effigy, Grotte Vaticane (© Carol M. Richardson).

likeness. (Fig. 4.4). The sunken cheeks, lopsided face and deep eye sockets evince death’s slackness, while the furrowed brows and loosely closed eyelids and lips capture a sense of life and character only just departed.34 The corpse, dressed in the flowing chasuble and gloves of the cardinal-priest, is pressed by death and gravity into the bier. In both of the Ardicino della Porta effigies, the hands are clasped. As Vico later put it, ‘among all nations, the hand signified power’.35 Even in death, this gesture communicated to the living the virtues of chastity, prayer, and contemplation – of a life lived by means of the intellect rather than manual labour. More than this, a cardinal’s rings represented ‘incardination’ to his titular church in Rome, and/or to his marriage to his diocese if he were a bishop as well.36 His physical presence was therefore far more than representative of a hierarchy: he embodied the continuity of the apostolic succession. The condition in which tomb monuments survive is variable to say the least. Very few tomb monuments for any category in Rome remain unchanged and in their 34 Ibid., pp. 327–331; Richardson, ‘Andrea Sansovino’, 2018. 35 G.B. Vico, Scienza Nuova (1744), par. 1027, in Burke, ‘Presentation of Self’, 1987, p. 155; Filipczak, ‘Poses and Passions’, 2004, pp. 83–86. 36 Richardson, Reclaiming Rome, 2009, p. 106.

101

102 

Carol M. Richardson

original locations: only two of those I have come across from the second half of the fifteenth century do not seem to have been moved: the monuments of Cardinals Bartolomeo Roverella in San Clemente and Alain Coetivy in Santa Prassede. These two monuments hint at what was likely an important signal they transmitted within their settings. While both are relatively tucked away in their own chapel spaces, that of Coetivy in a small coffered chapel adjacent to the Chapel of the Column of the Flagellation in Santa Prassede, and Roverella at the threshold of his Chapel of St. John the Baptist in San Clemente, both effigies are positioned in such a way that the upper parts of their sculpted cadavers are visible across the space of the main nave. This is too far to discern sculptural details, but the visibility of the heads nevertheless communicate individuality: somebody significant enough to be singled out in the church’s sacred confines. Although we know very little about the original location of many tomb monuments, the majority seem to have positioned the effigy above eye level, making direct scrutiny of the cardinal’s visage impossible. In many cases, such as those of Cardinal Roverella in San Clemente and Ardicino della Porta Junior in St. Peter’s, the effigy was tilted slightly towards the viewer as an aid to visibility (Fig. 4.3). Even then, with the exception of imperial noses and gravely furrowed brows, specifics are less obvious than the costume that denoted dignity and rank.37

Death Masks Of the period around 1300, Julian Gardner argues that portraits, as such, were only made of living persons: therefore ‘we must abandon the notion of the death mask and regard the assumption of a “portrait” quality in tomb effigies rather as a compliment to the creative talent of their sculptor rather than as an objective judgement’.38 Death masks, as Marcia Pointon has observed, are a very niche object for art historians. They are most often discussed in the context of art history either as mechanical or as intellectual pursuits and in relation to the history of photography, which fixes them to a definition of realism or naturalism as ‘accurate’ imprint.39 The effigy of Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) surmounting the bronze monument designed by the Pollaiuolo brothers, for example, has little to do with other painted representations of the pope made when he was alive, but was nevertheless admired for its lifelike qualities.40 The effectiveness of this ‘portrait’ derives from the forceful 37 Nodelman, ‘How to Read a Roman Portrait’, 1975; Brilliant, Portraiture, 1991, pp. 40–43; Little, Set in Stone, 2006; Dale, ‘Romanesque Sculpted Portraits’, 2007, p. 102. 38 Gardner, Tomb and the Tiara, 1992, p. 175. 39 Pointon, ‘Deathliness of Things’, 2014, p. 170. 40 Wright, Pollaiuolo Brothers, 2005, p. 362.

Dead Ringers 

profile with its deep expressive wrinkles that stand for both life experience and death’s decay, as well as just enough of a lack of symmetry to seem more ‘real’. This was the same approach the Pollaiuolo brothers took for the double tomb portrait of Innocent VIII. Here the pope’s sagging features, yet strong jawline and nose, could very well derive from a death mask. These tomb effigies contrast with portraits of the living popes in frescoes and on medals, retrospectively underlining the vanity of earthly existence. Such bronze effigies are relatively rare in early modern Rome, especially for cardinals. An important exception is that for Pietro Foscari, the Cardinal of Venice, who died in 1485 and was buried in Santa Maria del Popolo. Like the papal tomb effigies by the Pollaiuolo brothers, which the cardinal’s heirs were deliberately imitating, Foscari’s effigy arguably derives its spare – one might call it Gothic – linearity as much from the bronze-casting technique as from a concern with mirrorlike accuracy. 41 This model probably then inspired the bronze monument for Cardinal Giovanni Battista Zen, who died in 1501, installed by 1521 in his chapel in San Marco in Venice, which is similarly severe. Mid-fifteenth-century cardinals’ effigies in stone, such as that of Berardo Eroli or Ardicino della Porta Senior (Fig. 4.2) from the old St. Peter’s, hark back to solid Gothic monuments of the preceding century such as Adam Easton’s in Santa Prassede. Such correspondences between the portrait of a living (or at least recently alive) person and generally more idealized images of saints and venerated individuals worked in reverse in the earlier periods: Thomas Dale points to the deliberate ‘typecasting’ that blurred the boundaries between reliquary busts and portraits of rulers to put greater emphasis on the immortality of their legacy, and of their continuing presence in the memory of living institutions.42 Monuments produced in the second half of the fifteenth century are suggestive of a wider variety of approaches to tomb portraiture, possibly the result of the participation of Lombard and Tuscan artists who brought their varied approaches to Rome’s art market. By the early sixteenth century idealized classical types promoted by Florentine artists like Andrea Sansovino were more prevalent as an eternal future-proof image trumped any suggestion of mortality: the effigies of the two monuments included in Bramante’s choir chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, of Ascanio Sforza and Girolamo Basso della Rovere, are almost mirror images, a reassertion of the precedence of type over individuality. 43 The notion that what we assume are portraits are in actual fact merely lifelike and not likenesses or portraits at all is further supported by Shelley Zuraw’s observation 41 Foscari, ‘Il cardinale veneziano’, 2000; the effect of different media on portraiture is signalled for further research in Rudolph and others, ‘FACES’, 2017, p. 286. 42 Dale, ‘Romanesque Sculpted Portraits’, 2007, p. 101. 43 Ibid.; Richardson, ‘Andrea Sansovino’, 2018; Langer, ‘Maniera Moderna’, 2019.

103

104 

Carol M. Richardson

that two later fifteenth-century tomb monuments share the same visage, suggesting a lack of contemporary concern with individual likeness as we might understand it today. When Mino da Fiesole was summoned from Florence to Rome to work for the brothers of Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri, the sculptor interrupted the project he already had under way for a monument to Count Hugo of Tuscany, founder of the Badia of Florence, who had died almost five centuries earlier in 1001. The cardinal’s effigy in his titular church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the Florentine count as ‘Mino’s ideal, middle-aged man’. 44 Commissioned before 1471, Zuraw proposes that the effigy was completed before Mino’s departure for Rome in 1473 or 1474. However, since the count’s tomb was only completed in 1481, it is possible that the portrait of Forteguerri was reused for that of the Count of Tuscany. Certainly, the cardinal’s tomb portraits show signs suggestive of a death mask – sunken eye sockets, relaxed musculature, and lopsided features – albeit treated with Mino da Fiesole’s refinement that gave stone the kind of vitality more often seen in bronze. A generous patron in Pistoia and in Rome, the sharing of Niccolò Forteguerri’s features (though we have no way of knowing if they are his features) with the long dead Count Hugo could arguably result in a subtle compliment to both. At the same time, in the absence of modern photography, such a comparison would have been impossible unless there was a death mask or drawings that each monument had in common and that the sculptor carried with him from Rome to Florence. 45 Accurate portrayal is therefore unimportant, but convincing verisimilitude is key to the success of the tomb effigy. In short, ‘lifelikeness’ is much more than skin deep. Other than what can be seen, the evidence of the use of death masks is very rare, and in any case art history has not been very kind to such objects. 46 Florence had been the centre of wax modelling (ceroplastica) from around 1200: in 1496; for example, the Medici family still owed Verrocchio payment for some twenty masks ‘taken from nature’ which were presumably death masks.47 But I would urge caution in relating death masks to – arguably anachronistic – notions of Renaissance ‘realism’.48 Unlike antiquity, when wax imagines were publicly displayed as part of the cult of ancestor worship so that one’s dead family continued to play a part in the present, early modern masks seem to have been more like private objects, stored in

44 Zuraw, ‘Public Commemorative Monument’, 1998; Zuraw, ‘Mino da Fiesole’s Forteguerri Tomb’, 2004, p. 85. 45 Cormack, Painting the Soul, 1997. 46 Pointon, ‘Deathliness of Things’, 2014, p. 171. 47 Schlosser, ‘Geschichte der Porträtbildnerei in Wachs’, 1911; Seymour, Sculpture of Verrocchio, 1971, pp. 174–175; Paoletti, ‘Familiar Objects’, 1998, pp. 87–89; Van der Velden, ‘Medici Votive Images’, 1998. 48 The emphasis on realism in, for example, Schuyler, ‘Death Masks’, 1986, is problematic.

Dead Ringers 

boxes and cupboards in elite households. 49 Unless made less transient in bronze, more public displays of wax casts were given as votive offerings in churches, such as Santissima Annunziata in Florence, which ‘transformed individual images into civic history’; however, these all but disappeared in the eighteenth century, especially after the Leopoldine reforms of 1786 that banned any ex voto from churches, commanding those that remained to be melted down to make candles.50 Aby Warburg read the Florentine votives as evidence of the ‘persistent survival of barbarism’ from ancient Rome, further downgrading these early three-dimensional prints from artwork to superstitious totem.51

Humours Outer appearance reflects inner order as external signs witness to personal virtue. Then the body, the very image (simulacrum) of the mind, catches up this light glowing and bursting forth like rays of the sun. All of its senses and all its members are suffused with it, until its glow is seen in every act, in speech, in appearance, in the way of walking and laughing.52

Thus, Bernard of Clairvaux glossed the Song of Songs to give it institutional as well as personal significance. The early modern understanding of human biology depended on theories of the humours, four bodily substances that, depending on their presence or absence, dictated the individual’s temperament as well as his or her appearance. The humour of the leader or prince is sanguine, or blood-based. The sanguine was ‘the ornament of the body, the pride of humours, the paragon of complexions, the prince of all temperatures, for blood is oil of the lamp of our life’.53 As Opher Mansour explained for later variations on Raphael’s portrait of Julius II adapted for Pius V, the sanguine temperament dictated the tightly drawn, sinuous churchman of action, as political ability and personal disposition are expressed physically

49 On antique parallels see Kohl, ‘Vollkommen ähnlich’, 2012. 50 Paoletti, ‘Familiar Objects’, 1998, p. 88; Warburg, Arte del ritratto, 2004; Dal Forno, La ceroplastica anatomica, 2017, p. 5. 51 Foster and Britt, ‘Aby Warburg’, 1996, p. 18. 52 Bernard of Clairvaux, Super Canticum canticorum sermo, 85.10–11, translated in Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 1994, pp. 110–111; Dale, ‘Romanesque Sculpted Portraits’, 2007, p. 105. 53 Thomas Walkington, Optick Glasse of Humors, 1631, pp. 110–111, quoted in Paster, Humoring the Body, 2004, p. 230.

105

106 

Carol M. Richardson

and are therefore epitomized by the portrait of an individual who is a leader.54 While contemporaries described his predecessor, Pope Pius IV, as ‘forgetful of the interests of others, and given over entirely to his own comfort and satisfaction’, Pius V was an ascetic, ‘of a hot, dry complexion, emaciated, of reddish-white colour, with a long, thin, dry face […] and a very aquiline nose’.55 This description applies as well to cardinals’ portraits such as Titian’s Cardinal Pietro Bembo (Plate 2) of c.1540 in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. That said, as Irene Brooke discusses in her essay in this volume, in Bembo’s case, rhetorical gesture represents a distraction from accurate physical likeness.56 Hotter and drier humours, sanguine and choleric, characterized masters whereas the cooler and wetter humours, melancholic and phlegmatic, belonged to servants (and, of course, women).57 The reds and purples associated with the sanguine temperament, the character of leaders, chimed with the papal colour red, which in practice varied in tone from scarlet to purple.58 The effigy incorporated in the monument to the French cardinal, Alain Coetivy, in Santa Prassede is altogether something else. At some distance from the ideal sanguine leader, his power comes from his sheer bulk, which speaks loudly of a life enjoyed (Fig. 4.5). Coetivy’s solid effigy is a wonderfully characterful rendering complemented by the confident masses typical of Andrea Bregno and his workshop. A corpulent prelate who enjoyed life to the full, Coetivy’s appearance was remarkable enough to be worthy of description in the Commentaries of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II): ‘a tall man with a huge paunch’. Walking along as part of the procession of cardinals that accompanied the relic of the head of St. Andrew from the Milvian bridge to the Vatican proved particularly challenging, as he ‘had difficulty propelling his great bulk’.59 From the point of view of a Sienese pope, the cardinal’s main flaw was his nationality and this dictated how one man viewed the other. Relative to the point of origin of the protagonist, those from more northern, colder parts of the Continent were believed to tend to blockages caused by thickened and cooled humours – phlegm and clotted blood – that made them slow and undisciplined as a result.60 The personality that Andrea Bregno afforded his effigy for Santa Prassede brilliantly epitomizes the timeless specificity that such an artist could impart to his 54 Mansour, ‘Prince and Pontiff’, 2008. 55 Albèri, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 1839–1863, p. 180, in Mansour, ‘Prince and Pontiff’, 2008, pp. 220–221. 56 Burke, ‘Presentation of Self’, 1987, pp. 157–158; see also Irene Brooke’s essay in this volume. 57 Paster, Humoring the Body, 2004, pp. 210–211. 58 Richardson, ‘Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, 2020. 59 Pius II, Commentaries,1936–1957, vol. 32, p. 532. 60 Paster, Humoring the Body, 2004, p. 13; Floyd-Wilson, ‘English Mettle’, 2004, pp. 137–138.

Dead Ringers 

Fig. 4.5 Funerary monument to Cardinal Alain Coetivy, detail, Rome, Santa Prassede (© Conway Library, Courtauld Institute).

subject. The flowing drapes of Coetivy’s elegant chasuble (he was a cardinal-priest) and jewelled mitre sit awkwardly with the effigy’s thickset brow, bulbous nose, double chin, and flabby jowls. These nevertheless combine to give the impression of a remarkably determined and powerful individual. Even then, Coetivy’s representations in text and image fit in their contexts by means of contrast: Pius II’s haughty, greedy cardinal is humbled in a religious procession, while his imposing physical presence in one of Rome’s most venerable titular churches witnesses to the Church’s power and continuity. Alain Coetivy’s fleshy jowls are only to be expected in the effigy of the kind of corpulent and pugnacious individual described by Pius II. Outward appearance is only relevant in as much as it enables a view into the soul, and it is only possible, in the case of artworks, if an artist like Andrea Bregno had sufficient mastery over his materials.61

Conclusion The addition of depth in sculpture (compared with painting) underscores the conflation of likeness with convincingness in three-dimensional effigies. Whether or 61 Woods, ‘Illusion of Life’, 2005, esp. pp. 132–137.

107

108 

Carol M. Richardson

not the portrait is an accurate likeness of an individual is neither here nor there, not least because this is impossible to prove, especially so long after the fact. ‘Convincing’ instead means affective and effective, as the author of the ancient rhetorical treatise Rhetorica ad Herennium wrote: We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. And we shall do so if we establish similitude as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active (imagines agentes) […] [it] will ensure our remembering them more readily.62

Commemoration has long served the purpose of focusing the minds of the living on life’s realities: classical mythological sarcophagi that include specific references to the incumbent, for example, offer ‘analogies, not identifications’ so that ‘the presence of the portrait features of the deceased merely intensifies and particularizes the monument’s message’.63 The ‘reality’ is that of the continued presence of the dead in the community of the living. The life-size, lifelike features of tomb effigies lend them qualities that other kinds of portraits lack. Individuals portrayed may be dead, or at least no longer alive or present, but their incorporation into memorial and ritual spaces ensures their immortality. By means of specific characterization in facial features, carefully observed dress appropriate to strictly codified status, and the public and permanent nature of their display, they literally embody messages about the universal Church. Relatively small parts of much larger sculptural and architectural assemblages, the face is a tiny component of structures that were often substantial enough to strengthen the walls of churches, thereby building the individual incumbent quite literally into the foundations of the church, as successors of Christ the cornerstone. Taken together, cardinals’ tombs witness to the apostolic succession and the persistence of papal Rome. As permanent indications of the personal combined with political ritual that took the form of ephemeral structures and funerary rites, of the religious and secular authority of the Church, of the relationship between an individual incumbent and the institution, cardinals’ tomb monuments in churches work at a visceral level.64 They inculcate assumptions about continuity, permanence, and changelessness that are the bedrock of Roman Catholicism. Or, in Harrison’s memorable words, ‘[t]he dead are our guardians. We give them a future so that they may give us a past’.65 62 Rhetorica ad Herennium, III.22, trans. Yates, Art of Memory, 1966, pp. 9–10. 63 Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory, 1995, pp. 9, 18, 123–125. 64 Bell, Ritual, 1997, pp. 136–137. 65 Harrison, Dominion of the Dead, 2003, p. 158.

Dead Ringers 

Bibliography Bagemihl, Rolf, ‘The Trevisan Collection’, Burlington Magazine 135 (1993): 559–563. Bell, Catherine, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Bertolotti, Antonio, Artisti lombardi a Roma nei secoli XV, XVI e XVII: studi e ricerche negli archivi romani (Milan, 1881; anastatic repr., Sala Bolognese: Forni, 1985). Binski, Paul, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (London: British Museum Press, 1996). Brilliant, Richard, Portraiture (London: Reaktion, 1991). Burke, Peter, ‘The Presentation of Self in the Renaissance Self-Portrait’, in The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 150–167. Caglioti, Francesco, ‘Sui primi tempi romani d’Andrea Bregno: un progetto per il cardinale camerlengo Alvise Trevisan e un San Michele Arcangelo per il cardinale Juan de Carvajal’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 41.3 (1997): 213–253. Ciaccio, Lisetta Motta, ‘Scoltura romana del Rinascimento: primo periodo (sino al pontificato di Pio II)’, L’Arte 9 (1906): 433–441. Cormack, Robin, Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds (London: Reaktion Books, 1997). Dal Forno, Federica, La ceroplastica anatomica e il suo restauro: un nuovo uso della TAC, una possibile attribuzione a G.G. Zumbo (Florence: Nardini Editore, 2017). Dale, Thomas, ‘Romanesque Sculpted Portraits: Convention, Vision, and Real Presence’, in Contemporary Approaches to the Medieval Face, special issue of Gesta 46.2 (2007): 101–119. Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 1992). Dykmans, Marc, L’Oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini, ou, Le cérémonial papal de la première Renaissance, Studi e Testi 1 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1980). Filipczak, Zirka Z., ‘Poses and Passions: Mona Lisa’s “Closely Folded” Hands’, in Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotions, ed. by Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 68–88. Floyd-Wilson, Mary, ‘English Mettle’, in Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotions, ed. by Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pp. 130–146. Foscari, Antonio, ‘Il cardinale veneziano Pietro Foscari e lo scultore senese Giovanni di Stefano in Santa Maria del Popolo a Roma’, Arte Documento 14 (2000): 59–63. Foster, Kurt W. and David Britt, ‘Aby Warburg: His Study of Ritual and Art on Two Continents’, October 77 (1996): 5–24. Fusco, Laurie, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

109

110 

Carol M. Richardson

Gardner, Julian, The Tomb and the Tiara: Curial Tomb Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Giesey, Ralph E., The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva: E. Droz, 1960). Gill, Meredith J., ‘Death and the Cardinal: The Two Bodies of Guillaume d’Estouteville’, Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 347–388. Grimaldi, Giacomo, Descrizione della basilica antica di s. Pietro in Vaticano: Codice Barberini latino 2733, ed. by Reto Niggl, Codices e Vaticanis Selecti 32 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1972). Harrison, Robert Pogue, The Dominion of the Dead (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Herklotz, Ingo, ‘Sepulcra’ e ‘Monumenta’ del medioevo: studi sull’ arte sepolcrale in Italia (Rome: Edizioni Rari Nantes, 1985). Jaeger, C. Stephen, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). Kohl, Jeanette, ‘Notes from the Field: Mimesis’, Art Bulletin 95 (2013): 205–207. ———, ‘“Vollkommen ähnlich”: Der Index als Grundlage des Renaissanceporträts’, in Similitudo: Konzepte der Ähnlichkeit in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. by Martin Gaier, Jeanette Kohl, and Alberto Saviello (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 181–206. Koortbojian, Michael, Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Kühlenthal, Michael, ‘Zwei Grabmäler des früheren Quattrocento in Rom: Kardinal Martinez de Chiavez und Papst Eugen IV’, Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 16 (1976): 17–56. Langer, Lara, ‘The Maniera Moderna of Andrea Sansovino’s Cardinal Tombs at Santa Maria del Popolo’, Sculpture Journal 28 (2019): 75–102. Lavin, Irving, ‘On the Sources and Meaning of the Renaissance Portrait Bust’, Art Quarterly 33 (1970): 207–226; repr. in Looking at Renaissance Sculpture, ed. by Sarah Blake McHam (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 60–78. Linkman, Audrey, Photography and Death (London: Routledge, 2011). Little, Charles T., ed., Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006). Luchs, Alison, ‘Verrocchio and the Bust of Albiera degli Albizzi: Portraits, Poetry and Commemoration’, Artibus et Historiae 33.66 (2012): 75–98. McHam, Sarah Blake, ed., Looking at Renaissance Sculpture (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Mansour, Opher, ‘Prince and Pontiff: Secular and Sacred Authority in Papal State Portraiture between Raphael’s Julius II and the Portraits of Pius V and Clement VIII’, in Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome, ed. by Michael Bury and Jill Burke (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 209–229. Morganstern, Anne McGee, ‘The Tomb as Prompter for the Chantry: Four Examples from Late Medieval England’, Memory and the Medieval Tomb, ed. by Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo with Carol Stamais Pendergast (Farnham: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 81–97.

Dead Ringers 

Moskowitz, Anita Fiderer, Nicola Pisano’s Arca di San Domenico and its Legacy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press/College Art Association, 1993). Müntz, Eugène, Les arts à la cour des papes pendant le XVe et le XVIe siècle: recueil de documents inédits tirés des archives et des bibliothèques romaines, pt. 2: Paul II, 1464–1471, Bibliothèque des Ècoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 9 (Paris: E. Thorin, 1879). Nodelman, Sheldoon, ‘How to Read a Roman Portrait’, Art in America 63 (1975): 27–33. Oexle, Otto Gerhard, ‘Memoria und Memorialbild’, in Memoria: der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter, ed. by Karl Schmid and Joachim Wollasch, Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 48 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1984), pp. 384–440. Paoletti, John T., ‘Familiar Objects: Sculptural Types in the Collections of the Early Medici’, in Looking at Renaissance Sculpture, ed. by Sarah Blake McHam (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 79–110. Paravicini-Bagliani, Agostino, The Pope’s Body, trans. by David S. Peterson (Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press, 2000); orig. publ., Il corpo del Papa (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1994). Paschini, Pio, Lodovico Cardinal Camerlengo (d. 1465) (Rome: Tiberino/Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenaei Lateranensis, 1939). Paster, Gail Kern, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini), The Commentaries of Pius II, trans. by Florence Alden Gragg and Leona Christina Gabel, Smith College Studies in History (Northampton, MA: Department of History of Smith College, 1936–1957), bks. 1–2, vol. 22 (1936–1937); bks. 2–3, vol. 25 (1939–1940); bks. 4–5, vol. 30 (1947); bks. 6–9, vol. 35 (1951); bks. 10–13, vol. 43 (1957). Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi), The Lives of the Popes, from the time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Reign of Sixtus IV: Written originally in Latin and translated into English, trans. by William Benham (London: Griffith, 1888). Pointon, Marcia, ‘Casts, Imprints, and the Deathliness of Things: Artifacts at the Edge’, Art Bulletin 96.2 (2014): 170–195. Richardson, Carol M., ‘The Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 535–556. ———, Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Fifteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2009). ———, ‘Reputation, Patronage and Opportunism: Andrea Sansovino Arrives in Rome’, Sculpture Journal 27.2 (2018): 177–192. ———, ‘Saint Peter’s in the Fifteenth Century: Paul II, the Archpriests and the Case for Continuity’, in Old Saint Peter’s, Rome, ed. by Rosamund McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson, and Joanna Storey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/British School at Rome, 2013), pp. 324–347. Rudolph, Conrad, Amit Roy-Chowdhury, Ramya Srinivasan, and Jeanette Kohl, ‘FACES: Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems – A Feasibility Study of the Application

111

112 

Carol M. Richardson

of Face Recognition Technology to Works of Portrait Art’, Artibus et Historiae 75 (2017): 265–291. Sánchez Gamero, Juan Pedro and others, Cisneros Cardenal Eterno en el V centenario de su muerte/Cisneros the Eternal Cardinal on the 5th Centenary of his Death, Revista Catedral de Toledo 1 (Toledo: Via Sacra, 2017). Schlosser, Julius von, ‘Geschichte der Porträtbildnerei in Wachs’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen der Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 29.3 (1911): 171–258. Schraven, Minou, Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy: The Art and Culture of Conspicuous Commemoration (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). ———, ‘Majesty and Mortality: Attitudes towards the Corpse in Papal Funeral Ceremonies’, in Roman Bodies, ed. by Andrew Hopkins and Maria Wyke (London: British School at Rome, 2005), pp. 143–157. Schuyler, Jane, ‘Death Masks in Quattrocento Florence’, Source: Notes in the History of Art 5 (1986): 1–6. Seymour, Charles, Jr., The Sculpture of Verrocchio (London: Studio Vista, 1971). Toynbee, Jocelyn M.C., Death and Burial in the Roman World (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971). Van der Velden, Hugo, ‘Medici Votive Images and the Scope and Limits of Likeness’, in The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. by Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson (London: British Museum Press, 1998), pp. 126–136. Warburg, Aby, ‘Arte del ritratto e borghesia fiorentina’ (1902), in La rinascita del paganesimo antico e altri scritti (1889–1914), ed. by Maurizio Ghelardi (Turin: Aragno Editore, 2004), pp. 137–141. White, John, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1250–1400, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1987). Woods, Kim W., ‘The Illusion of Life in Fifteenth-Century Sculpture’, in Making Renaissance Art, ed. by Kim W. Woods (London: Yale University Press/Open University, 2005), pp. 102–137. Woodward, Jennifer, The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renaissance England, 1570–1625 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997). Wright, Alison, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2005). Yates, Frances Amelia, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). Zuraw, Shelley E., ‘Mino da Fiesole’s Forteguerri Tomb: A “Florentine” Monument in Rome’, in Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation in the Italian Renaissance City, ed. by Stephen J. Campbell and Stephen J. Milner (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 75–95. ———, ‘The Public Commemorative Monument: Mino da Fiesole’s Tombs in the Florentine Badia’, Art Bulletin 80.3 (1998): 452–477.

Dead Ringers 

About the Author Carol M. Richardson is Professor of Early Modern Art History at the University of Edinburgh. Her research is primarily concerned with the patronage of the papal court in Rome, and with the construction of history as tradition evidenced by art and archaeology.

113

5.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice The Case of the Grimani Family and Some Thoughts on the Correr MS Morosini Grimani 270 Sarah Ferrari Abstract The most powerful Venetian cardinals in the sixteenth century were arguably those stemming from the Grimani family. This chapter presents a detailed analysis of the MS Morosini Grimani 270 in the Biblioteca del Museo Correr in Venice, focusing on drawings that illustrate the appointment of Grimani cardinals, alongside their portraits. The iconographic derivation of these drawings from existing works of art will be explored through comparison with painted portraits and other visual representations of the Grimani cardinals, some previously unidentif ied. The possible function of the included cardinal portraits, and the historical scenes relating to them will be investigated, considering the role of images of cardinals within the dynastic strategies and histories of certain families. Keywords: Venice; cardinals; Grimani; Cornaro; Baldassarre d’Anna

In summer 1463 the Greek Cardinal Bessarion (1408–1472), a humanist from Constantinople, decided to donate the Staurotheca – a precious cross-shaped reliquary containing fragments of the True Cross and of Christ’s seamless coat – to the Scuola Grande della Carità, one of the most important confraternities in Venice, connected with the church of Santa Maria della Carità.1 Bessarion had himself become a member of the Scuola on 29 August of the same year. On 6 July 1472 the guardian grande then in office, Andrea dalla Siega, addressed a letter to the I would like to thank Piers Baker-Bates, Irene Brooke, Zuleika Murat, Alessandra Pattanaro, and Miles Pattenden for their valuable suggestions. I would also like to thank David Lewis for sharing information on the paintings which are part of the Schorr Collection. 1 On this episode see the recent contributions by Lauber, ‘Cultural Exchanges’, 2017 (with bibliography, including a detailed documentary account) and Campbell, ‘Almost another Byzantium’, 2017.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch05

118

Sarah Ferrari

cardinal, describing the solemn public procession that had taken place on Trinity Sunday to welcome the arrival of the munificent gift, which was first exhibited in the Basilica of St. Mark and subsequently transferred to the oratory of the Scuola, where an altar had been specifically installed for its recovery. Shortly afterwards, in November 1472, Bessarion died in Ravenna. A solemn ossequio was celebrated on 6 December, in the church of Santa Maria della Carità, ‘a perpetua memoria’ of the deceased cardinal.2 In the explicit, Bessarion’s soul is invoked, almost ‘portrayed’ while praying for God to watch over all the brethren. This passage immediately recalls the image depicted on a small panel attributed to Gentile Bellini, now held at the National Gallery in London, in which Bessarion appears in profile, alongside two confratelli, kneeling in adoration of the reliquary.3 The painting was probably made as a decorated door panel and was originally part of a tabernacle which contained the reliquary. It was meant for protection, but also to remind viewers of the presence of the object it contained, while at the same time celebrating the generous gift of the cardinal. Besides this panel, the confraternity also commissioned another portrait of Bessarion, which is mentioned by the sources as present in the sala dell’albergo of the Scuola della Carità. Interestingly, this portrait also showed Bessarion ‘without the ornament of the sacred red vestments, but rather in a black hooded cloak, as the Basilian monks are accustomed to wear’.4 In the early sixteenth century this painting was stolen and on 8 March 1540 the Scuola commissioned a copy of it, which has been tentatively identified with the canvas, also attributed to Gentile Bellini, now held at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.5 Even though Bessarion was not Venetian, he had spent long sojourns in the city after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. He had thus established a significant relationship with Venice, which resulted in the donation of his immensely valuable library, especially rich in its collection of Greek manuscripts.6 Bessarion’s intellectual stature is undoubtedly exceptional and led him to be counted among the most illustrious and cultured cardinals of all times.7 The documented presence of his portraits (both originals and copies) in Venice offers an interesting perspective on several questions related to the imagery of cardinals, especially with regard to the fact that Bessarion was not portrayed in the red robes typically associated with 2 Lauber, ‘Cultural Exchanges’, 2017, p. 68. 3 Egg tempera on wood, 102.3 × 37.2 cm, inv. no. NG6590; see Campbell and Chong, Bellini and the East, 2005, no. 7. 4 Albrizzi, Forestiero illuminato, 1722, p. 297. 5 Oil on canvas, 116 × 95 cm, inv. no. 867; see Lauber, ‘Cultural Exchanges’, 2017, p. 69. 6 For this important donation, see Labowsky, Bessarion’s Library, 1979; Monfasani, Bessarion Scholasticus, 2011. 7 For the presence of Bessarion’s portraits in collections dedicated to ‘viri illustres’, see the analysis of the inventory of Rodolfo Pio da Carpi discussed by Thomas-Leo True in this volume.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

this office.8 Whether or not this was a deliberate choice, perhaps determined by the context in which his portraits were originally conceived and displayed, is still unclear. In fact, the role and function of cardinals’ portraits in Venice has not been fully investigated from a broader point of view which takes into account, not only iconographic issues, but also methodological and interpretative questions that are more deeply rooted in the local culture.9 It is well known that the relationship of the Republic with the Roman Curia was historically turbulent,10 and regularly marked by moments of severe conflict, as in 1509 with the disastrous consequences of the League of Cambrai, or in 1606 with the interdict.11 However, the actual impact of this complicated history on the diffusion and eventual reception of cardinals’ portraits in Venice has remained to a great extent unexplored. In light of such considerations, this essay aims to investigate the role and display of cardinals’ portraits in Venice during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, particularly as regards a specific group of families labelled as papalisti on account of their connections with the Roman Curia. The circulation of cardinals’ portraits within this group will be discussed on the basis of documentary and visual sources, some of which are previously unknown or overlooked. Particular attention will be dedicated to the members of the Grimani family from the branch known as ‘di Santa Maria Formosa’, namely Cardinals Domenico (1461–1523) and Marino (c.1488–1546), as well as the Patriarch of Aquileia, Giovanni (1506–1593). Furthermore, the contents of an elegantly decorated manuscript from the early seventeenth century, now held at the Biblioteca del Museo Correr in Venice, will be analysed in depth, as regards the set of illustrations including portraits and narrative scenes in which cardinals play a prominent role.

The ‘Elusive’ Identity of the Venetian Cardinal In his pivotal study on the commissioni of the procurators of St. Mark, David Chambers pointed out the many similarities that procurators shared with cardinals.12 8 This matter is addressed by Irene Brooke and Piers Baker Bates in their introductory chapter to this volume. 9 For a recent overview on the Venetian context, mainly based on iconographic analysis, see Bragaglia Venuti, ‘I volti dei cardinali’, 2014; in general, the recent essay by Robertson, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, 2020. 10 Del Torre, ‘Dalli preti è nata la servitù’, 1997, pp. 131–158; Del Torre, Patrizi e cardinali, 2010. 11 For a general summary on the aspects of religious life in Venice, see Cristellon and Seidel Menchi, Religious Life, 2013, pp. 379–420; on the interdict, see the essay by Alessandra Pattanaro in this volume (with relevant bibliography). 12 Chambers, Merit and Money, 1997, pp. 23–28.

119

120

Sarah Ferrari

Not only were there fireworks, music and other celebrations when a procurator was elected, just as when a Venetian cardinal was appointed,13 but both institutions had undergone a curiously similar evolution in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A few individuals had even managed to graduate from the procuracies to the sacred college.14 In this case most of the successful candidates came from this group of papalisti families.15 In light of such parallels, it would be worth investigating further the possibility that the imagery related to procurators and cardinals might have also developed some common traits, in terms of origin, function and display. It is well known, in fact, that portraits of procurators regularly appeared in their commissioni, lists of statutory obligations that each procurator swore to obey.16 Thus, their image can be – to a certain extent – easily fitted into a distinct iconographic type, despite the fact that procurators, like all Venetian nobles in top positions, did not wear a specific garment to denote their dignity, but were only distinguished by robes of crimson or purplish-red velvet or damask brocade, fur trimmed in winter, with long sleeves.17 For cardinals, who did not have documents of appointment equivalent to those of procurators, it seems more difficult to establish the appropriate context for their portraits. This could be related to some degree to the precariously ambivalent nature of their role. Venetian cardinals were at once patricians of the most serene Republic and princes of the Church, ranking immediately after the pope. As a result, one of the conflicting aspects of their position was the definition of the extent to which they ought to obey the authority of the pope, rather than that of the Republic. This raises many fascinating questions, which have been only partially addressed as regards the imagery of cardinals. For example, did the celebration and memorialization of cardinals respond to the same requirements that applied to other Venetian dignitaries, who might have represented a more ‘genuine’ expression of the values of the Republic – or was it based on different premises and aims?

13 Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, 1581, fols. 107v–108r. 14 This is the case, for instance, of the procurator de ultra Francesco Corner, who according to Sanudo (Diarii, ed. 1879–1902, vol. 54, col. 615) had raised 26,000 scudi to be elevated to cardinalate. 15 Whether or not this depended on their economic status and availability to provide a significant amount of cash in a short time, has yet to be proven, but seems very likely; on the papalisti see Pullan, ‘Occupations and Investments’, 1973, pp. 397–400; Grendler, Roman Inquisition, 1977, pp. 30–31; Tafuri, Venice and the Renaissance, 1989, pp. 112–114; for an overview of their patronage: Hochmann, ‘Les collections’, 2001 (see also below). 16 On the commissioni see the recent comprehensive study by Szépe, Venice Illuminated, 2018. 17 As noted by Chambers, Merit and Money, 1997, p. 26. Cesare Vecellio does not illustrate a procurator, as he surely would have done had they dressed differently from others. He does, however, show an image of a cardinal; on this subject, see Richardson, ‘Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, 2020; for further observations on the iconography of procurators, see Tagliaferro, ‘Procurators on the Threshold’, 2016.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

As previously stated, the appointment of a Venetian cardinal was considered an important event, one which required an appropriate celebration. It was also a wonderful opportunity for the Republic to get a closer understanding of the political ambitions and orientations of the Roman Curia. It seems, in fact, that Venetian cardinals were in some way expected to give further proof of their loyalty, even through acts of espionage. For example, in 1500 Domenico Grimani organized the interception of dispatches sent by Ascanio Sforza from Rome to his brother Ludovico il Moro which were forwarded to Venice; when his father Antonio was accused of treason and imprisoned, he successfully claimed public credit for this service before the Gran Consiglio.18 A series of laws beginning in 1411 had been introduced by the Venetian government to make sure that the papalisti were excluded from all the deliberations of the Gran Consiglio concerning ecclesiastical matters.19 And in 1434 the Council of Ten established that the papalisti could not take part in the election of the Venetian ambassador to Rome.20 The limitations applied to those who had close connections with the Roman Curia, as well as to their families, and continued to be considered vitally important for the well-being of the Republic. In 1588 Leonardo Donà passionately argued in front of the Venetian Senate that the presence of papalisti in the Republic should be limited as much as possible in order to avoid what had happened in Florence, where the close connections of one family with the Roman Curia resulted in the hegemony of the Medici.21 Whether the association with the Roman Curia produced a sort of bias towards Venetian cardinals is, however, not completely clear. Many patricians of course recognized that the presence of one or more of the Venetian cardinals in the Roman Curia was convenient at times when the political dominance of the Republic was put in question. During the years of the War of Cambrai, for example, it was thanks to a Venetian cardinal, once again Domenico Grimani, that Julius II finally negotiated peace with the Republic.22 Furthermore, a presence in the Sacred College, as well as control of the spiritual governance of its citizens, was vital for Venice, as for any other powerful state in Europe. Occasionally, however, it does seem that Venetian cardinals were more easily exposed to some degree of criticism. For instance, when Marino Grimani was appointed cardinal, on 20 February 1528, during a severe famine that had hit the city of Venice, his brother Marco held an extravagant banchetto or 18 Burckhardt, Civilization, 1878, vol. 1, p. 94. 19 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, pp. 64–65; Del Torre, ‘Dalli preti è nata la servitù’, 1997, p. 133. 20 Cozzi, ‘Politica, società e istituzioni’, 1986, p. 247. 21 ‘In una repubblica quanto più sono eminenti li parenti delli ecclesiastici tanto maggior perturbationi si possono temere; et l’essempio s’è veduto in Fiorenza, dove dalli preti è nata la servitù di quella repubblica per li Medici parenti di essi che erano di eminente grado di quella’; Del Torre, ‘Dalli preti è nata la servitù’, 1997, p. 132. 22 Benzoni and Bortolotti, Grimani, Domenico, 2002, pp. 599–609.

121

122

Sarah Ferrari

festin in the procuratorial apartments, prompting Sanudo to remark: ‘every evening in that procuratia since Grimani was named cardinal, there has been dancing, and whoever wants to go can. But it would have been better to give alms.’23 It should be noted that Marino’s appointment, just like that of his predecessor, his uncle Domenico, was the result of a large cash payment. It is not easy to establish how this practice was perceived within Venetian society. Starting from 1443, the election of procurators was also often based on the readiness to make a large voluntary contribution of cash. However, in this case patrician money benefitted the state, rather than the Roman Curia. Thus, such actions were tolerated, if not tacitly welcomed.24 At the same time, it seems that the elevation of a Venetian nobleman to the cardinalate could cause some degree of discontent, even when there was no question of money involved. When the news of the appointment of Gasparo Contarini reached Venice on a Sunday in May 1535, even amid the commotion and excitement that followed, the anti-papalist Alvise Mocenigo, who had often opposed Contarini for his clerical orientations, was heard to call loudly from his seat: ‘These priests have robbed us of our city’s foremost gentleman.’25 More than the use of cash then, it was the actual departure from Venice and the potential risk of estrangement from the Republic that seemed to cause disturbance, possibly because of the bad habits that could arise from a close connection with the Roman Curia. This is clearly stated by Alberto Bolognetti, apostolic nuncio in Poland, in 1581: this is what the experience of Venetian noblemen shows, that once they become cardinals, they are seen with less affection by all the others, as if they had passed over to a different faction that wishes to emulate the Republic.26

The same idea seems to be reflected by the contents of Ruzante’s First Oration (Prima oration), which was delivered to Cardinal Marco Cornaro (1482–1524), the nephew of Queen Caterina Cornaro, on the occasion of his assumption of the bishopric of Padua, in 1521.27 This was indeed an extraordinary event, as it restored 23 Sanudo, Diarii, 1879–1902, vol. 46, 582–583; see also Chambers, Merit and Money, 1997, p. 72. 24 Even a constitutional purist like Sanudo for a long time made no pejorative comments about the competing offers of loans and gifts in cash for the appointment of supernumerary procurators de supra; Chambers, Merit and Money, 1997, p. 72. 25 The passage is quoted from Gleason, Gasparo Contarini, 1993, p. 74. 26 ‘et questo mostra l’esperienza ne’ gentilhuomini stessi di quella città, che, come prima si vestono dell’habito clericale, s’intiepidisce in un certo modo l’affetione di tutti gl’altri verso di loro, come se fossero passati ad una fattione diversa et emula della grandezza della Repubblica’; Stella, Chiesa e stato, 1964, pp. 108–109. 27 Since Cornaro’s official episcopal entrance occurred in 1521, the oration has been universally ascribed to that year. However, in her critical edition, Linda Carroll argues that the final version of the text had already been completed in summer 1518, the same year as Cornaro’s elevation and his visit to the family

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

the important and wealthy diocese of Padua to Venetian hands after several years of papal control.28 In his typically polemical and humorous style, Ruzante takes the opportunity to provide a brief explanation of the word cardinal, or ‘scardinal’ as he says in his own dialect. His definition appears quite revealing of the Venetian more or less serious concerns about the papalisti, and more in general those who enjoyed ecclesiastical benefices and close relations with the Roman Curia. Do you know what scardinal means in our Pavan [Paduan] way of talking? I’ll tell you now, it amounts to saying, scardinal as I will say, a great rich gentleman who gives himself pleasure in this world. And when he dies (because we all die) even though you have not done too much good, you go right along to Paradise and if the door is barred, then you take it off its hinges and you get inside through any path or any hole.29

In his ironic rebuke, Ruzante also refers to some of the cultural preferences that he considers questionable, especially if performed by high dignitaries of the Church, such as cardinals. I would not give alms in the walls with coins as a certain scardinal did, who has already been here in the Pavan, because he didn’t have the heart to spend them, if there were some, isn’t that true? Well, now, how would we spend them? I don’t believe that we would ever spend them on stones for cut statues either or on those pennies that have figures on them that they call merd-alls. If only you could spend them like you spend coins.30

As clarified by modern commentators,31 Ruzante is here referring to the humanistic practice of placing coins or medals in the foundations of the newly built palaces, to leave a tangible memory for the generations to come.32 He is also alluding, in estate in Asolo near Treviso; see Ruzante, La prima oratione, 2009 (1551), pp. 1, 7, 30–35. For a detailed and critical discussion of Carroll’s arguments, see D’Onghia, ‘Per la “Prima oratione”’, 2012. 28 Sanudo, Diarii, 1879–1902, vol. 24, cols. 58, 60, 150. 29 Ruzante, La prima oratione, 2009 (1551), p. 52. The poet is clearly making a mockery of the traditional definition of the word cardinal as postulated by Leo IX (1049–1054); for this definition, see the essay by Miles Pattenden in this volume. 30 Ruzante, La prima oratione, 2009 (1551), p. 92. His language here plays on the assonance between the italian word for medal, medaglia, and the profanity, merda. 31 Padoan, ‘Ruzante e le merdolagie’, 1968 (also for the following observations on the identity of the cardinal mentioned by Ruzante); see also Ruzante, La prima oratione, 2009 (1551), p. 53. 32 The origins of this tradition can be traced back to fourteenth-century Padua and the Carraresi, but in the sixteenth century it became common practice; see Beltramini, ‘Medaglie di fondazione’, 2005, pp. 322–324, no. 74.

123

124

Sarah Ferrari

equally sarcastic tones, to the waste of money perpetrated by these men in the purchase of statues and medals. This is particularly interesting as the cardinal mentioned in the text, who is said to have been recently staying in Padua (Pavan), has been convincingly identified as Domenico Grimani. Since his elevation to cardinalate in 1493, at the age of 32, Domenico had returned to Venice briefly only on the occasion of his father’s trial, in 1501.33 From that point onwards he remained in Rome until October 1517, when he arrived in Padua and stayed for a few months in the palace of Prato della Valle, before moving to Ceneda near Vittorio Veneto.34 Similarly, his colleague and rival, Marco Cornaro, the dedicatee of Ruzante’s oration, had reached the Treviso area in summer 1518.35 This is quite interesting, as it shows that the physical presence of a Venetian cardinal in the territories of the Republic should never be taken too much for granted. Whether or not this had a significant impact on the circumstances in which cardinals’ portraits were commissioned, executed and displayed, remains, however, a more complicated matter.

Images of Cardinals within the Papalisti: Marco Corner and Domenico Grimani One important example that seems particularly appropriate to cite in this context is the puzzling triple portrait of Girolamo and Cardinal Marco Corner Investing Marco, Abbot of Carrara, with his Benefice (Fig. 5.1), which has been alternatively attributed to Titian or to a close follower.36 While it is generally agreed that this painting was meant to celebrate the bestowal of the lucrative abbacy of Carrara on Marco Cornaro (1513–1546), the young nephew of the cardinal, which occurred in May 1519,37 the actual circumstances of its commission and execution remain 33 Padoan, ‘Ruzante e le merdolagie’, 1968, p. 489; see also Benzoni and Bortolotti, Grimani, Domenico, 2002, pp. 599–609. 34 Grimani’s sojourn in Ceneda lasted until April 1520, when he decided to establish his residence in the villa of Noventa Padovana, where he dictated his first will; for a transcription of this document, see Simonelli, ‘Appendice documentaria’, 2014, pp. 468–472. Grimani died in Rome on 27 August 1523. 35 According to Sanudo (Diarii, 1879–1902, vol. 20, col. 446; vol. 25, col. 461), Cornaro arrived in the seaport of Chioggia and since he wanted to avoid the expenses of a visit to Venice or to his new see, he proceeded directly to Asolo. 36 Oil on canvas, 99.8 ×132.1 cm, inv. no. 1960.6.38, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (bequest from the Timken Collection), https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/46062; see the catalogue entry by Peter Humfrey, with relevant bibliography (accessed May 2020). 37 Sanudo, Diarii, 1879–1902, vol. 27, col. 323. The bestowal of the abbacy of Carrara was one of the benefices that Cornaro granted to his younger nephews through a specific legal device named as renuncia cum regressu (see below).

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

Fig. 5.1 Titian and workshop (?), Girolamo and Cardinal Marco Corner Investing Marco, Abbot of Carrara, with his Benefice, c. 1525, oil on canvas, Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art (© National Gallery of Art, Washington).

unclear. It has been suggested, for example, that the portrait of Cardinal Marco Cornaro was based on a medal which on the reverse carries an inscription describing the sitter as Cardinal of San Marco, a title that Cornaro received in January 1524. Although this hypothesis offers a plausible explanation for the stiff execution of the head of the cardinal, which clearly contrasts with other portraits of him executed from life, it is based on the premise that Marco Cornaro could have never sat for a portrait because of his continuing absence from Venice. This conclusion, however, cannot be considered completely accurate. After reaching the Treviso area in June 1518 and slipping into Venice for a secret 20-day visit,38 Cornaro eventually did leave for Rome on 27 September 1518 together with Cardinal Pisani39 and possibly

38 On this occasion he welcomed at his father’s luxurious home Cardinal Innocenzo Cibo, with his Salviati cousin, throwing a lavish party which was attended by other ecclesiastics. Such extraordinary circumstances did not go unnoticed by Sanudo (Diarii, 1879–1902, vol. 26, col. 52): ‘sichè è quatro cardinali, tre in questa terra: Corner, Cibo e Pixani, qual sta a Muran in cha’ Gheruzi, et il Grimani ch’è a Ceneda. For this episode see Ruzante, La prima oratione, 2009 (1551), pp. 23–24. 39 Sanudo, Diarii, 1879–1902, vol. 26, col. 69.

125

126

Sarah Ferrari

remained there until June 1521, 40 when he requested papal permission to leave in order to claim his Paduan bishopric.41 His formal entrance occurred on the day of the Assumption (15 August). On this occasion, Cornaro withdrew to the bishop’s palace and hosted a lavish banquet attended by prelates and Venetian patricians.42 Once his ecclesiastical duties had been fulfilled, he indulged in a variety of relaxing activities, visiting his ‘barco’ (his villa, presumably that in Asolo), as well as Luvigliano and Ferrara, where he took his dogs for a hunt. In late November Cornaro returned to Rome, but he managed to reach the Veneto once again at the end of June 1524, when his father Giorgio, who was at the time in Padua, fell ill. 43 On this occasion, Marco succumbed to a bad fever and died shortly after, on 24 July.44 In light of these circumstances, it seems more plausible to conclude that his portrait was based on a medal because the painting in question was in fact completed after his death. 45 Evidently, however, these considerations leave many questions open: who actually commissioned the painting and why was the bestowal of a benefice that occurred several years before chosen to commemorate the deceased cardinal? The problem lies in the lack of information on the actual purpose of these portraits, the audience for whom they were conceived, and their intended display. 46 The same questions apply to the individual portraits of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, of which at least three examples are known, almost identical in terms of composition: one in the Schorr Collection in London (Fig. 5.2), 47 one in the Royal Collections, 48 and one formerly at St. Wulstan’s, Little Malvern, Worcestershire (known through photographs, present whereabouts unknown). 49 The 40 I would like to thank Piers Baker-Bates for pointing out to me the circumstances surrounding the reception of Sebastiano’s Visitation in Rome in early 1519, when it was placed outside the palace of Cardinal Corner (the painting was in fact a gift from the Venetian cardinal, or more likely from the city of Venice itself, to Queen Claude of France); Baker-Bates, ‘Beyond Rome’, 2013. 41 Sanudo, Diarii, 1879–1902, vol. 30, col. 351. 42 For this episode, which is recalled by the contemporary biographer Bernardino Scardeone, and for the reconstruction of Ruzante’s visit to Padua in 1521, see Ruzante, La prima oratione, 2009 (1551), pp. 30–32. 43 Sanudo, Diarii, 1879–1902, vol. 36, cols. 491–492. 44 Gullino, ‘Corner, Marco’, 1983. 45 One of the problematic aspects of the portraits is the style of the costumes and hair which seems to correspond more closely to the fashion of the second decade. This would suggest that the painting was commissioned and conceived at an earlier date. 46 The provenance of the canvas now in Washington has been traced back to the collection of the Venetian nobleman Andrea Corner, who in 1773 sold 28 paintings to the British consul John Udny, as part of a private transaction. It was then bought by the artist Angelica Kauffman; Wassyng Roworth, ‘Angelica Kauffman’, 2019, pp. 138–139. 47 Oil on canvas 116.8 × 100.3 cm; see Wright, Schorr Collection, 2014, vol. 1, no. 000. 48 Oil on canvas, 97.2 × 76.5 cm; see Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 1972, p. 149, no. 45. 49 Oil on canvas 114.3 × 97.8 cm; see ‘Odds and Ends’, Downside Review (1931): 6–9, referring to the artist as Battista Dossi (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001258063104900349; accessed May 2019). This

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

Fig. 5.2 Unknown artist (after Lorenzo Lotto?), Portrait of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, 1520s-1540s, oil on canvas, London, Schorr Collection (© Schorr Collection).

attribution of these portraits, as well as the definition of their status as originals or copies, is highly debated, although some critical consensus has been reached around the name of Lorenzo Lotto, which nevertheless remains problematic in version bears an inscription with the name of Cardinal Domenico Grimani. The identity of the sitter had been previously suggested on the basis of the comparison with the portrait – head and shoulders only – by Cristofano Altissimo, in the Uffizi.

127

128

Sarah Ferrari

in terms of quality.50 In all three portraits, the cardinal is shown at half length, three-quarters to the right, wearing the garments typically associated with his off ice: the red rochet, mozzetta, and biretta. He seems to be standing or sitting behind a table covered with a rich Oriental carpet, on the side of which is also a liturgical bell. The same compositional scheme appears almost identical in a Portrait of Doge Antonio Grimani (Museo Borgogna, Vercelli),51 suggesting that this might have been a series dedicated to the most illustrious members of the family. These compositions seem to recall the successful formula introduced in Rome by Sebastiano del Piombo and Raphael for portraits of high clerics.52 Scholars have also compared the portraits of Domenico Grimani with the Portrait of the Protonotary Giovanni Zulian, at the National Gallery in London, although the attribution of the latter picture remains uncertain.53 It should be noted that the sitter, Giovanni Zulian, has been identif ied as the member of a distinguished patrician family, reputedly from Aquileia, who is also recorded in 1519 as a canon in Ceneda, both territories closely connected with the Grimani family.54 Whether this might also suggest that the portrait of Cardinal Domenico Grimani was well known in these areas and possibly functioned as a model for portraits of other dignitaries appointed to ecclesiastical off ices has yet to be investigated.55 50 Shearman (The Early Italian Pictures, 1972, p. 149, no. 45), for instance, argued in favour of the attribution to Lotto of the picture now in the Royal Collection, on the basis of the quality visible in the X-rays. Some observations on these portraits are made by Furlan, ‘Domenico, Marino e Giovanni Grimani’, 2014, p. 37. 51 I know this painting from a photograph held at the Fototeca of the Fondazione Zeri, no. 40761 (attributed to an anonymous artist of the sixteenth century), http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/ scheda/opera/42905/Anonimo%20veneziano%20sec.%20XVI%2C%20Ritratto%20del%20doge%20 Antonio%20Grimani (accessed April 2021). 52 For example, Sebastiano’s portraits of Ferry Carondelet with his Secretaries (Madrid, Thyssen Museum), dated c.1511–1512, and Cardinal Bandinello Sauli and Three Companions (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art), dated 1516 (see the introduction to this volume, Fig. 1.1), as well as Raphael’s Inghirami (Florence, Palazzo Pitti) and Pope Leo X with His Nephews (Florence, Uffizi). 53 Shearman, Early Italian Pictures, 1972, p. 149, no. 45; for this painting, see Penny, London, National Gallery, 2004, vol. 1, pp. 261–267. 54 Hill, ‘Protonotary Giuliano’, 1916; for the strategic importance of Ceneda and for its links to the Grimani family, see Gianlorenzo Bruna, ‘I Grimani di Santa Maria Formosa nel ‘500, la questione di Ceneda e Paolo Paruta: riflessi internazionali di una vicenda non solamente locale’, posted on the Academia website, 2019, www.academia.edu/38794329/I_GRIMANI_DI_SANTA_MARIA_FORMOSA_NEL_500_LA_QUESTIONE_DI_CENEDA_E_PAOLO_PARUTA_RIFLESSI_INTERNAZIONALI_DI_UNA_VICENDA_NON_SOLAMENTE_LOCALE (accessed May 2019). 55 The fact that Zulian is mentioned as one of the beneficiaries of the will of Pietro Grimani, the brother of Cardinal Domenico (see Foscari and Tafuri, ‘Sebastiano da Lugano’, 1982, pp. 115–116), and was also a close friend of the banker Agostino Chigi (see Gilbert, Pope, his Banker, 1980, pp. 16–17), as well as a member of the Knights of Jerusalem, could also provide further support for this hypothesis, suggesting a close relationship between Zulian and the Grimani family, but the matter requires further study.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

Cardinals’ Portraits in the Grimani House Problems stem from the fact that there is little information on the provenance of these pictures. The inventory or ‘memoria generale’, drawn up from 1528 after Marino’s elevation to the cardinalate, lists three portraits, one of Doge Antonio Grimani, one of the deceased Cardinal Domenico and one of Marino himself (as a cardinal?), but their identification remains doubtful.56 A portrait of Cardinal Domenico Grimani was still hanging in the family palace in the early nineteenth century.57 This is possibly the same painting recorded by George Vivian of Claverton as a work by Tintoretto. According to Vivian’s notebook,58 there were actually two portraits by Tintoretto in the Grimani palace, one of Domenico and one of another cardinal within the family, whose identity had been forgotten. While the former painting is probably lost,59 the latter was acquired directly from the Grimani palace, around 1827–1828, by Vivian himself, and is now included in the Schorr Collection (Fig. 5.3).60 The sitter has been convincingly identified as Giovanni Grimani by Rodolfo Pallucchini, who first published the painting as an autograph work by Jacopo Tintoretto, suggesting a date in the early 1560s on the basis of stylistic analysis.61 According to this scholar, the portrait belongs to a specific phase of Tintoretto’s oeuvre, when the artist started experimenting with a new compositional scheme, showing the sitter from a three-quarter, diagonal point of view, positioned in an armchair rather than standing in a room. Pallucchini defines this type of portrait as ‘aulico’ (stately) suggesting that Tintoretto was inspired by an authoritative model, Titian’s Portrait of Pope Paul III (1545–1546, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte), but in this case the artist employed a less dramatic – one might even say more intimate – tone.62 Moving from these considerations, Pallucchini further argues that Giovanni Grimani must have specifically asked Tintoretto to be portrayed ‘dressed as a cardinal’, because he was genuinely convinced that his nomination in 56 ‘Una cassa con tre retratti dil serenissimo, del cardinale bone memorie et mio’; see Simonelli, ‘Appendice documentaria’, 2014, pp. 547. The ‘cassa’ in which the portraits are sealed seems to belong to a group of objects and artworks that were left in the house of Marino’s sister, Paola, in Venice and inventoried on 30 September 1531. 57 ‘Un ritratto suo [Domenico] di mano di Tiziano è nella famiglia Grimani a S.M. Formosa’; Cicogna, Delle Inscrizioni veneziane, 1824, vol. 1, p. 190. 58 ‘2 Tintoretto portraits, the one of his ancestor the Patriarch of Acqueleia [sic] who made the collection: and another Cardinal, whose name and title dangles close by on the ancestral Tree I have bought within a few days […]’; Pallucchini, ‘Un nuovo ritratto di Jacopo Tintoretto’, 1983–1984, p. 187, n. 2. 59 I am unable at the moment to establish whether or not this could be the same painting later recorded at Little Malvern, as a work by Jacopo Tintoretto. 60 Oil on canvas, 115 × 102 cm; the painting was first mentioned by Berenson, Italian Pictures, 1957, vol. 1, p. 174. 61 Pallucchini, ‘Un nuovo ritratto di Jacopo Tintoretto’, 1983–1984, pp. 184–187 (with information regarding the provenance). 62 On the Capodimonte portrait, see Zapperi, Tiziano, Paolo III, 1990.

129

130

Sarah Ferrari

Fig. 5.3 Jacopo Tintoretto, Portrait of Giovanni Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia, 1560s, oil on canvas, London, Schorr Collection (© Schorr Collection).

pectore on the occasion of the Consistory of 26 February 1561, would be followed shortly by an official appointment. However, despite being considered an almost certainty, his elevation to cardinalate never actually transpired, due to accusations of heresy that irreparably compromised Grimani’s reputation.63 63 On these accusations see Paschini, ‘Tre illustri prelati’, 1957; Benzoni, ‘Comportamenti e problemi’, 1997; Benzoni and Bortolotti, ‘Grimani, Giovanni’, 2002; Del Col, ‘Le vicende inquisitoriali’, 2008; Firpo and Biferali, Immagini ed eresie, 2016, pp. 370–379.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

More recently, Massimo Firpo has pointed out that, as a patriarch of Aquileia, Giovanni Grimani would have been permitted to wear red garments similar to those of cardinals.64 Thus, he may have asked Tintoretto, his ‘confidentissimo’,65 to play ambiguously with the shades of red in order to create a portrait that celebrated his long-standing role as patriarch of Aquileia while at the same time alluding to his forthcoming (or presumed so) elevation to the cardinalate.66 The question becomes even more fascinating if we consider the political overtones that may be implied in this painting. During the first period of the Council of Trent, under Paul III, the system named as renuncia cum regressu, which had de facto transformed some posts like the Patriarchate of Aquileia into family benefices, became permissible only for cardinals.67 Thus, when Marino died in 1546, the fact that Giovanni, unlike his predecessors, had not been nominated cardinal created an obvious difficulty. This difficulty was addressed directly by Pope Julius III, who granted Giovanni the renuncia, but only with the eventual consent of the cardinals. The illegality of the situation still worried the Venetians, who started pressing hard for Grimani’s promotion. After the election of Pius IV, the Venetian ambassador, Marcantonio da Mula (1506–1572) was involved in the negotiations in favour of Grimani’s promotion to the cardinalate.68 It was Da Mula, in fact, who suggested the temporary solution of the nomination in pectore, but when the pope finally announced the new cardinals, Grimani was not included, while Da Mula himself was surprisingly among them! Venice regarded this as an exceedingly vicious piece of duplicity on the part of the pope and considered Da Mula personally responsible.69 According to Giovanni Lippomano, Da Mula was even formally banned from the territories 64 According to an ancient tradition, red was the colour that symbolized the defence of faith and of the Church ‘usque ad effusionem sanguinis’. Thus, even patriarchs were allowed to dress with a mozzetta that was usually slightly paler and of a more pinkish tone than the crimson red worn by cardinals. They could not, however, wear the biretta (although there are some exceptions, especially in the area of Veneto); see Firpo, ‘Le ambiguità della porpora’, 2010, p. 122. 65 As we know from the correspondence of the apostolic nuncio Bolognetti, dated 1580; see Paul, ‘Bad Colours’, 2015. 66 Firpo, ‘Le ambiguità della porpora’, 2010, pp. 121–122. 67 Thanks to this agreement, an ageing incumbent could resign in favour of a younger relative, who took the office and eventually obtained papal confirmation. The renuncia was first introduced at the time of the War of Cambrai, when Domenico Grimani could renounce the patriarchate to his nephew Marino in 1517, reserving the revenues, the title and, should Marino die first, the regression of the patriarchate to himself. When Domenico died, Marino renounced the patriarchate to a brother Marco in 1529, and not long after the death of Marco in 1545, he acted similarly in favour of Giovanni; see Laven, ‘Causa Grimani’, 1966–1967, p. 187; Grendler, Roman Inquisition, 1977, pp. 32–33. 68 On Da Mula, see Gullino, ‘Da Mula, Marcantonio’, 1986. 69 Like Ermolao Barbaro, Da Mula was censured on the basis of the old fifteenth-century laws that no one in the service of Venice could receive gifts or honours from a foreign government in whose lands he was employed.

131

132

Sarah Ferrari

of the Republic.70 Interestingly, however, at the time of his controversial elevation to cardinalate, Da Mula was also portrayed by Jacopo Tintoretto, just like his ‘competitor’ Grimani. Da Mula has in fact been recognized in a stunning portrait of a cardinal recently published by Alessandro Ballarin, who also reconstructed Da Mula’s exceptional profile, including his artistic interests mostly oriented towards artists working in Rome.71 According to Ballarin, Tintoretto’s Portrait of Cardinal Marcantonio da Mula (private collection) should be dated around 1562–1563, as it was probably executed at the time of the second or third session of the Council of Trent. The cardinal is in fact depicted holding in his right hand a cartouche with an inscription referring to the ‘Concilium Tridenti’. As in the Portrait of Giovanni Grimani, he is sitting in an armchair, positioned diagonally, at a three-quarter point of view. While Grimani’s figure is cut shortly below the knees, and his gaze is directed towards the viewer, Da Mula is depicted full length, with feet resting on the edge of a sort of platform which raises him above the level of the viewer. This solution creates a sort of physical and emotional distance, as the cardinal seems to be sinking into the dark atmosphere of the room, immersed in his own thoughts. As noted by Ballarin, the quality of the execution reaches an unexpected peak, which almost constitutes an unicum in the oeuvre of Tintoretto.72 It could be argued that El Greco had a similar effect in mind when in 1571 he painted his masterpiece, the Portrait of Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine (Zurich, Kunsthaus), incidentally one of the supporters of Grimani’s elevation to the cardinalate.73 Furthermore, the two portraits by Tintoretto seem to share a close reference to Roman models. Alongside the illustrious examples of papal portraiture by Raphael, a useful comparison can be made with the fascinating Portrait of Cardinal Reginald Pole (St. Petersburg, Hermitage; Fig. 1.5), dated around 1543–1545, and variously attributed to Sebastiano del Piombo or (more convincingly) Perino del Vaga.74 Both Grimani and Da Mula shared a deep interest in Pole’s views, and one wonders if they might have had the chance to see one of his portraits.75 Despite the 70 Santarelli, ‘Le relazioni diplomatiche’, 2005. There seems to be no official record, however, of such banishment. 71 Ballarin, Jacopo Tintoretto, 2017. 72 Ibid., p. 24. 73 On portraits of cardinals by El Greco, see the essay by Piers Baker-Bates in this volume. 74 On this beautiful portrait, see Romani, in Ragionieri, ed., Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, 2005, pp. 114–117; Paolucci and others, eds., L’Eterno e il tempo, 2018, pp. 364–365, no. 38; see also the introduction to this volume. 75 As reported by Mayer (Reginald Pole, 2000, p. 425), Lee noted in his monograph a portrait of Pole formerly in Casa Grimani, Venice, and ‘now in private hands’, and thought it ‘possibly a reproduction of the ancient one on panel at Lambeth, though the hair and the beard are darker, or possibly it is another original by the same artist’. To my knowledge, no further investigation has been carried out on this

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

political wrangling of their complicated paths towards the cardinalate, the artistic preferences of Grimani and Da Mula seemed to grow in a common direction, perhaps not without a certain dose of more or less friendly competition, given their evident familiarity with the same artists. Whether similar patterns of emulation emerged within the groups of papalisti is another question which will be addressed in the final part of this essay by examining the contents of a manuscript dedicated to the history of the Grimani family. In this context, in fact, the imagery of cardinals seems to take on new implications, which requires a shift of perspective.

A Family Business? Cardinals in Terms of Social Promotion and Visual Propaganda The MS Morosini Grimani 270 (Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr) consists of 72 pages, many of which are left blank. This might suggest that the original project was conceived to include more portraits and narrative scenes but was never completed. The title page presents decorative elements alluding to military triumphs; at the bottom of the page, the coat of arms of the Grimani family appears in a prominent position beneath an elegantly outlined frame surmounted by the lion of St. Mark, which contains an inscription summarizing the contents of the book and bearing the date 1627. The texts included in the manuscript were extrapolated from other sources which in some cases can be easily identified. For example, the biographical sketch of the founder of the family, ‘Grimoaldo, re di Puglia’, includes a reference to the Life of Pope Donus, composed by Onofrio Panvinio as an appendix to the new edition of Platina’s De vitis pontificum, first published in 1562.76 Panvinio’s text is quoted more or less verbatim, but additional information is provided, seemingly in order to legitimize the family’s allegiance to Rome. This is suggested, for instance, by the reference to a papal privilege, dated 1528 (the same date – coincidentally? – of Marino Grimani’s elevation to cardinalate), possibly preserved in the family archive or at least presented as such.77 This document apparently confirmed the origins of reference and on the possible identification of this portrait. On the importance of the portraits of Pole within the circle of the spirituali, see the essay by Irene Brooke in this volume, and for references in the inventories the essay by Thomas-Leo True. 76 Giovanni probably used one of the later editions that were printed in Venice (1592 and 1594), since his text is not in Latin; this suggests that he might have copied one of the books that were available in the family library, or which could be easily found in Venice. On this source see Bauer, Censorship and Fortuna, 2006. 77 ‘Di più si vede in un privilegio confermato l’anno 1528 dal Senato Romano a parte della casa Grimani che questa famiglia sia originaria da Roma, et che li antichi di quella si trasferirono a Costantinopoli con Constatino imperatore l’anno di Nostro Signore 339’; BMC, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 1.

133

134

Sarah Ferrari

the Grimani family in Constantinople and their subsequent transfer to Rome in the year 339. The supposed links with Rome are also celebrated in a poem by Bernardo Zorzi, dedicated to the procurator Marcantonio Grimani, of whom a portrait and a medal are illustrated on a separate page.78 Also included is an excerpt from Battista Pagliarini’s Cronicae, which comments once again on the ancient origins of the family, here citing a sepulchre located in the cloister of San Michele in Vicenza.79 Other sources which are referred to in the text are more difficult to ascertain. What seems clear is that the author conceived and assembled this manuscript following the tradition of family chronicles or ‘libri di famiglia’, although its exact purpose and its use and accessibility remain difficult to ascertain.80 The emphasis assigned to the historical connection with Rome, however, suggests a specific intention possibly relating to a special strategy of political and social promotion. Even though it is broadly addressed to the celebration of the Grimani lineage, the manuscript has been rarely mentioned in the vast literature dedicated to their patronage. Its contents have been partially analysed with regard to the life of Giovanni, since one of its pages shows a charming portrait of him surrounded by pieces of the famous collection of antiquities which he bequeathed to the Venetian state at his death.81 This image is paired with a brief text summarizing Giovanni’s most important achievements, which notably include a reference to his expected elevation to the cardinalate, although the name of the pope is left blank, perhaps intentionally. Furthermore, Giovanni’s portrait is paired with the image of a medal which on the verso includes the motto ‘Non dabis in aeternum’ alongside a tangle of snakes and a putto blowing against a scale. It has been suggested that this was Giovanni’s personal impresa, alluding to the idea that though insults and lies cause negative effects, they are temporary, while divine Justice lasts eternally.82 No example of this particular medal seems to have survived, thus it might be argued that it was never actually cast. Whether it was simply imagined by the 78 Ibid., fol. 29. 79 Ibid., fol. IV (the first pages are numbered separately). 80 The origins of this tradition in Venice are not easy to determine, as it seems that the production of family books was never particularly successful in Venice and the Veneto, though not completely absent (see for instance the case of the Carraresi); Grubb, Memory and Identity, 1994; Grubb, Family Memoirs from Verona and Vicenza, 2002; Grubb, Family Memoirs from Venice, 2009. Historical memory in Venice consistently emphasized the experience of the patriciate as a whole; thus, Venetians preferred a different type of source, the so-called Caxade chronicles, which offer information on the origins and heraldry of all of the city’s noble clans; Plebani, ‘Leggere e ascoltare’, 2001; Plebani, ‘Vite di donne’, 2001. In Florence, instead, a great number of libri di famiglia were produced and preserved; Ciappelli and Rubin, Art, Memory, and Family, 2000. 81 BMC, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 26; Firpo, ‘Le ambiguità della porpora’, 2005, pp. 862–865. 82 As suggested by Firpo, ‘Le ambiguità della porpora’, 2005, p. 862, who identified the impresa in other contexts, although not precisely in the same form.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

artist or copied after some other visual source is hard to say. The same applies to the portrait of Giovanni, which may have been copied from an as yet unidentified painting or conceived as an ideal portrait, generically resembling the features of the portrayed individual. The latter hypothesis seems the most likely, judging from a broader examination of the included portraits. However, in some cases the artist seems to have based his sketches on specific models, as for instance the images of the two doges, Antonio and Marino Grimani,83 which resemble the series of portraits in the Doge’s Palace,84 or those of the procurators, Marcantonio and Ottaviano Grimani, based on marble busts located in the chapel erected by them in the church of San Sebastiano.85 Alongside numerous portraits of procurators, images of the family cardinals, Domenico and Marino, are included.86 Interestingly, their portraits, particularly that of Domenico (Fig. 5.4), resemble, although in a rather simplified way, the iconographic type discussed above (Fig. 5.2), possibly indicating that they were modelled after the same paintings or perhaps based on common prototypes. Whether this might also suggest that there were several copies or replicas of such portraits hanging in different palaces or venues in Venice has yet to be proven but seems very likely. For instance, it has been suggested that the Double Portrait of Cardinals Domenico and Marino Grimani (Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia), which was recently displayed in the new installation of the Grimani palace of Santa Maria Formosa (Plate 3), was part of a decorative frieze commissioned from Palma il Giovane in the 1570s by the future doge Marino Grimani.87 The work was commissioned for the family palace, named di San Luca, facing the Grand Canal – designed by the architect Michele Sanmicheli.88 This is relevant, as the MS Morosini Grimani 270 predictably assigns great importance to the dogeship of Marino Grimani (1532–1605) through a set of five narrative scenes.89 The triumphal arrival of Dogaressa Morosina Morosini in St. Mark’s square is also ambitiously illustrated on a double page;90 in this case it is evident that the composition is based on earlier models, namely two prints by Giacomo Franco, one 83 BMC, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fols. 28, 34. 84 Romanelli, ‘Ritrattistica dogale’, 1982. 85 BMC, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 29. 86 Ibid., fols. 19, 24. 87 Ferrara and Bergamo Rossi, Domus Grimani, 2019, p. 138, fig. 106. 88 Hochmann, ‘Un fregio di Palma il Giovane’, 2014. The patronage of Marino Grimani deserves more attention, but for reasons of space I will only cite Jacopo Tintoretto’s portrait of him, at the age of 46, as a procurator (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), and his role in the decoration of Oratory of the Crociferi as investigated by Tagliaferro, ‘Procurators on the Threshold’, 2016. 89 BMC, MS Morosini Grimani, fols. 63–66; some of these scenes have been recently discussed by Van Gelder, ‘People’s Prince’, 2018. 90 BMC, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 66.

135

136

Sarah Ferrari

Fig. 5.4 Unknown artist (Baldassarre d’Anna?), Portrait of Cardinal Domenico Grimani, c. 1627, pen and ink drawing with wash, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 19, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr (© Biblioteca del Museo Correr).

dated 1597, showing the bucintoro (the dogal barge), and the other illustrating Scamozzi’s famous teatro del mondo (theatre of the world).91 The way these images are arranged in the manuscripts suggests a parallel with the group of scenes dedicated to Doge 91 Bury, Print in Italy, 2002, no. 122; Wilson, ‘Il bel sesso e l’austero Senato’, 1999, pp. 74–75.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

Antonio Grimani (1434–1523),92 depicting in detail the unfortunate events that followed the Battle of Zonchio (1499), when Antonio was accused of not fulfilling his duties as captain-general of the sea and exiled from Venice.93 These images may be interpreted as a visual exemplum of Antonio’s virtue in facing times of adversity, while at the same time creating a suggestive parallel with the future election of Marino Grimani. Significantly, these scenes are also used to highlight the virtuous role of Antonio’s son, Cardinal Domenico, who is represented as an example of filial piety, as he intercedes with the Republic to clear his father’s reputation. He is also shown as a virtuous patrician as he mediates with Pope Julius II in the presence of several cardinals.94 The elevation to the cardinalate of both Domenico and Marino is also illustrated in two independent scenes, each taking place in an elegant architectural setting in the presence of other cardinals and the pope.95 Domenico is shown receiving the cardinal’s hat directly from the pope, whereas the same does not apply to Marino. This may suggest that the artist who originally conceived these scenes was somehow aware of the different circumstance in which the ceremony took place in Rome. Marino in fact was nominated in pectore by Clement VII on 3 May 1527 (just a few days before the sack).96 As confirmed by a recently discovered document, the ceremony of Marino’s elevation to the cardinalate actually took place in Venice in the basilica of St. Mark, on 7 February 1528. On this occasion Marino received from the patriarch of Venice, Girolamo Querini, a sapphire ring and the red hat which had been brought to Venice by the Roman nobleman Angelo del Bufalo at request of the pope.97 In both cases it is evident that the setting of the narrative scenes, in which cardinals play a prominent role, was clearly conceived to emphasize the links of the Grimani family to Rome. Presumably, the intended implication is that members of the family, despite the attempts of enemies to besmirch their reputation, contributed significantly over a long period of time to the preservation of the political equilibrium of the Venetian Republic. Indeed, this theme is taken up in the representations of the earliest generations of the Grimani, with a pair of narrative scenes illustrating two important victories of their progenitor, Nicolò Grimani, whose portrait is also included (Figs. 5.5 and 5.6).98 The first scene shows his recovery of the Christian standard during the 92 BMC, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fols. 49–58. 93 Zago, ‘Grimani, Antonio’, 2002. 94 BMC, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 57. 95 Ibid., 270, fols. 48, 53. 96 Brunelli, ‘Grimani, Marino’, 2002. 97 Simonelli, ‘Appendice documentaria’, 2014, pp. 540–541, no. 1. Angelo del Bufalo was the brother-in-law of Cardinal Giandomenico de Cipos, also known as the Cardinal of Trani, who would later act as one of the executors of Marino’s will. 98 BMC, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fols. 43–44; for the portrait, fol. 4 (with a long text that seems to have been taken from a chronicle).

137

138

Sarah Ferrari

Fig. 5.5 Unknown artist (Baldassarre d’Anna?), Recovery of the Christian Standard by Nicolò Grimani, c. 1627, pen and ink drawing with wash, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, MS Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 19 (© Biblioteca del Museo Correr).

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

Fig. 5.6 Unknown artist (Baldassarre d’Anna?), Pope Urban II adding the Red Cross to the Grimani Coat of Arms, c. 1627, pen and ink drawing with wash, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, Ms. Morosini Grimani 270, fol. 44 (© Biblioteca del Museo Correr).

139

140

Sarah Ferrari

Fig. 5.7 Baldassarre d’Anna (attributed), Recovery of the Christian Standard by Nicolò Grimani, 1620s-1630s, oil on canvas, Padua, Convento della Basilica di Sant’Antonio (© Centro Studi Antoniani).

siege of Jerusalem, while the second, which includes a group of cardinals, celebrates Pope Urban II’s addition of a red cross to the Grimani coat of arms in recognition the important role played by Nicolò in the army of Godfrey of Bouillon. Not only do these episodes constitute a significant example of how presumably embellished historical narratives were used to authorize a specific familial agenda, but they also prove that the drawings included in this manuscript could be related to paintings on a larger scale. There is in fact a previously unnoticed connection with two canvases representing identical scenes – even including the same Latin inscriptions – now held in the convent of Sant’Antonio in Padua (Figs. 5.7 and 5.8).99 First attributed to Giuseppe Alabardi (also known as Degli Schioppi), an obscure artist whose style is generically defined as ‘tintorettesco’,100 these paintings were later assigned to Baldassarre d’Anna,101 a peculiar and interesting artist who was active in Venice and Dalmatia, and whose style appears close to that of Palma il Giovane.102 It is worth noting that in 1619, Baldassarre d’Anna executed a large canvas representing 99 Recently discussed, though in connection with another drawing, by Meijer, Il disegno veneziano, 2017. p. 36 (as Alabardi). Unfortunately, very little is known about their provenance, as they were donated around 1930–1931 by Conte Nicolò de Claricini, the President of the Veneranda Arca del Santo, who declared that they were bought in Udine, where he had been elected podestà. 100 Lucco, ‘Opere d’arte dal convento antoniano’, 1981, p. 50; Spiazzi, ‘Dipinti del Seicento e del Settecento’, 1984, p. 187. 101 E.M. Dal Pozzolo, in Lorenzoni and Dal Pozzolo Basilica del Santo, 1995, pp. 122–123, nos. 41–42. 102 Probably born around 1560, he is repeatedly mentioned in the fraglia veneziana from the 1590s to 1643 and is said to be a pupil of Leonardo Corona, with whom he collaborated in San Fantin between 1600 and 1605.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

Fig. 5.8 Baldassarre d’Anna (attributed), Pope Urban II adding the Red Cross to the Grimani Coat of Arms, 1620s-1630s, oil on canvas, Padua, Convento della Basilica di Sant’Antonio (© Centro Studi Antoniani).

the Approval of the Venetian Confraternity of the Most Holy Trinity for the Liberation of the Slaves, which was probably commissioned by this local scuola, founded in 1604 and located within the church of Santa Maria Formosa. The church was at the time under the patronage of the Grimani, with the palace of the cardinals’ branch located in this parish. Furthermore, the artist also evidently worked for the Grimani dei Servi, as he executed a now lost Nativity for an altar belonging to this branch of the family in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi.103 This might suggest that the artist had a long-standing relationship with the Grimani family, and thus further corroborate the attribution of these paintings and possibly also of the related drawings in the manuscript.

Conclusion: Origins and Function of the Correr MS Morosini Grimani 270 Finally, it is worth considering briefly the identity of the author and owner of the manuscript, named as Giovanni Grimani.104 On the basis of the contents of the manuscript, which include references to weddings that occurred within the family, it is possible to suggest that he was a member of the branch named as San Boldo, born in 1590 to Pietro di Ottaviano, who held the title of Procuratore di San Marco de Citra. In 1619 103 For this information see Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, 1581, p. 57; Pavon and Cauzzi, Le memorie di un tempio, 1988; Rossi, ‘La chiesa gotica’, 2011/2012, p. 64. 104 A full analysis of this problem will be addressed by the current author in a separate study now under way.

141

142

Sarah Ferrari

he married the daughter of Andrea Vendramin, named Fontana, thus establishing a direct connection between the two families.105 He seems in fact to be the same Giovanni Grimani who assembled an interesting album of drawings, held at the Louvre, which reproduces as a sort of catalogue the paintings belonging to the family collection.106 The exact relationship between these two manuscripts remains a difficult conundrum, but it seems reasonable to suggest that the Giovanni Grimani in question shared a deep interest in the family history, also in its long-standing tradition of patronage and collecting – to which he probably wished to make a contribution in his own right. In this sense, it would be worth investigating further the history of the San Boldo branch, which has until now been considered of relatively scarce importance. With its rich apparatus of illustrations and texts, the MS Morosini Grimani 270 demonstrates in fact how the imagery of cardinals, as that of other dignitaries such as procurators, was well-integrated into the Venetian patriciate’s strategies of social promotion through visual propaganda. The combination of images and texts in the form of chronicles related to the history of the family is a fascinating aspect of Venetian figurative culture that still needs to be fully explored. In this context it seems clear that the function of both written sources and paintings was to obscure the line between myth and history in order to legitimize the links of the Grimani family with Rome and the papacy. The circulation, within the collateral branches of the same family, of portraits and historical paintings depicting cardinals, which were often copied by subsequent generations, demonstrates the significance that these cardinals held across all lines of the family. The chronological frame of this manuscript appears crucial: while suggesting that these portraits and historical scenes might have been conceived as a response, on a smaller scale and in a domestic dimension, to the decorative cycles of the Doge’s Palace, it also highlights the role of the Grimani in terms of both political and artistic prestige, in terms of strengthening the recently re-established peace with Rome and reasserting the status and power of one of the most important families in Venice.

Bibliography Albrizzi, Giovanni Battista, Forestiero illuminato intorno le cose più rare, e curiose, antiche, e moderne della città di Venezia (Venice: Giambattista Albrizzi, 1722). Baker-Bates, Piers, ‘Beyond Rome: Sebastiano del Piombo as a Painter of Diplomatic Gifts’, Renaissance Studies 27 (2013): 51–72. 105 The scholar refers to one of the last pages of the MS Morosini Grimani 270 (fol. 72), which includes a list of marriages within the family; the last one, under the date 1619, is between Zuanne Grimani di Pietro, son of Ottaviano procuratore, and Fontana Vendramin, daughter of Andrea. 106 As suggested by Jestaz, ‘Les collections de peinture’, 2001.

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

Ballarin, Alessandro, Jacopo Tintoretto: ritratto del Cardinale Marcantonio da Mula (Florence: De Stijl Art Publishing, 2017). Bauer, Stefan, The Censorship and Fortuna of Platina’s Lives of the Popes in the Sixteenth Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). Benzoni, Gino, ‘Comportamenti e problemi di comportamento nella Venezia di Giovanni Grimani’, in Lo statuario pubblico della Serenissima, ed. by Irene Favaretto (Venice: Biblos, 1997), pp. 17–37. Beltramini, Guido, ‘Medaglie di fondazione di ville e palazzi di Andrea Palladio’, Andrea Palladio e la villa veneta da Petrarca a Carlo Scarpa (Venezia: Marsilio, 2005). Benzoni, Gino and Luca Bortolotti, ‘Grimani, Giovanni’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 59 (Rome: Treccani, 2002) pp. 613–622, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ giovanni-grimani_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Berenson, Bernard, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, vol. 1 (London: Phaidon, 1957). Boschini, Marco, Carta del navegar pitoresco (1660), ed. by Anna Pallucchini (Venice/Rome: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1966). Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). Bragaglia Venuti, Cristina, ‘I volti dei cardinali veneziani del Cinquecento: forme e storia di una tradizione iconografica’, in I cardinali della Serenissima: arte e committenza tra Venezia e Roma (1523–1605), ed. by Cristina Furlan and Patrizia Tosini (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014), pp. 163–184. Brunelli, Giampiero, ‘Grimani, Marino’, in Dizionario Biograf ico degli Italiani, vol. 59 (Rome: Treccani, 2002), pp. 640–646, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ marino-grimani_res-540ebc10-87ee-11dc-8e9d-0016357eee51_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Burckhardt, Jakob, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co, 1878). Bury, Michael, The Print in Italy, 1550–1600 (London: British Museum Press, 2001). Campbell, Caroline, ‘“Almost another Byzantium”: Gentile Bellini and the Bessarion Reliquary’, in La stauroteca di Bessarione fra Constantinopoli e Venezia, proceedings of a conference, Venice, 17–18 October 2013, ed. by Holger A. Klein, Valeria Poletto, and Peter Schreiner (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Art, 2017), pp. 331–349. Campbell, Caroline and Alan Chong, eds., Bellini and the East (London: National Gallery, 2005). Chambers, David S., ‘Merit and Money: The Procurators of St. Mark and their Commissioni, 1443–1605’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 60 (1997): 23–88. Ciappelli, Giovanni and Patricia Lee Rubin, eds., Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Cicogna, Emmanuele Antonio, Delle Inscrizioni veneziane, vol. 1 (Venice: Orlandelli, 1824).

143

144

Sarah Ferrari

Cozzi, Gaetano, ‘Politica, società e istituzioni’, in La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età moderna: dalla guerra di Chioggia al 1517, ed. by Gaetano Cozzi and Michael Knapton (Turin: UTET, 1986), pp. 3–271. Cristellon, Cecilia and Silvana Seidel Menchi, ‘Religious Life’, in A Companion to Venetian History, 1400–1797, ed. by Eric Dursteler (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), pp. 379–420. Del Col, Andrea, ‘Le vicende inquisitoriali di Giovanni Grimani, patriarca di Aquileia, e la sua lettera sulla doppia predestinazione’, Metodi e Ricerche 27 (2008): 81–100. Del Torre, Giuseppe, ‘Dalli preti è nata la servitù di quella repubblica: ecclesiastici e segreti di stato nella Venezia del ’400’, in Venezia: itinerari per la storia della città (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), pp. 131–158. ———, Patrizi e cardinali: Venezia e le istituzioni ecclesiastiche nella prima età moderna (Milan: Franco Angeli Editore, 2010). D’Onghia, Luca, ‘Per la “Prima Oratione” di Ruzante e per un libro recente (con l’edizione della “Querella contra madonna Trucignicignacola”)’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa: Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 4.2 (2012): 447–483. Ferrara, Daniele and Toto Bergamo Rossi, eds., Domus Grimani 1594–2019: la collezione di sculture classiche a palazzo dopo quattro secoli (Venice: Marsilio, 2019). Firpo. Massimo, ‘Le ambiguità della porpora e i “diavoli” del Sant’Ufficio: identità e storia nei ritratti di Giovanni Grimani’, in Storie di immagini, immagini di storia. Studi di iconografia cinquecentesca (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2010), pp. 119-171. Firpo, Massimo and Fabrizio Biferali, eds., Immagini ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Rome: Editori Laterza, 2016). Foscari, Antonio and Manfredo Tafuri, L’Armonia e i conflitti: la chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna nella Venezia del ’500 (Turin: Einaudi, 1983). ———, ‘Sebastiano da Lugano, i Grimani e Jacopo Sansovino: artisti e committenti nella chiesa di Sant’Antonio di Castello’, Arte Veneta 36 (1982): 100–123. ———, ‘Un progetto irrealizzato di Jacopo Sansovino: il Palazzo di Vettor Grimani sul Canal Grande’, Bollettino del Museo Civico Correr 26 (1981): 71–87. Furlan, Caterina, ‘Domenico, Marino e Giovanni Grimani tra passione per l’antico, gusto del collezionismo e mecenatismo artistico’, in I cardinali della Serenissima: arte e committenza tra Venezia e Roma (1523–1605), ed. by Cristina Furlan and Patrizia Tosini (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014), pp. 31–59. Gilbert, Felix, The Pope, his Banker, and Venice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). Gleason, Elisabeth G., Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome and Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Grendler, Paul F., The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605 (Princeton, NJ: Legacy Library, 1977). Grubb, James S., ed., Family Memoirs from Venice (15th–17th Centuries) (Rome: Viella, 2009). ———, ed., Family Memoirs from Verona and Vicenza (15th–16th centuries) (Rome: Viella, 2002).

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

———, ‘Memory and Identity: Why Venetians Didn’t Keep Ricordanze’, Renaissance Studies 8.4 (1994): 375–387. Gullino, Giuseppe, ‘Corner, Marco’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 29 (Rome: Treccani, 1983), pp. 255–257, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/marco-corner_res-481b873287eb-11dc-8e9d-0016357eee51_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. ———, ‘Da Mula, Marcantonio’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 32 (Rome: Treccani, 2002), pp.  383–387, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/marcantonio-damula_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. ———, ‘Grimani, Marco’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 59 (Rome: Treccani, 2002), pp. 633–639, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/marco-grimani_%28DizionarioBiografico%29/. Hill, George F., ‘The Protonotary Giuliano’, Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 29 (1916): 243–245. Hochmann, Michel, ‘Les collections des familles “papalistes” à Venise et à Rome du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle’, in Geografia del collezionismo, ed. by Olivier Bonfait, Michel Hochmann, and Giuliano Briganti (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2001), pp. 203–223. ———, ‘Un fregio di Palma il Giovane a palazzo Grimani di San Luca’, Artibus et Historiae 70 (2014): 157–170. Humfrey, Peter, ‘The Portrait in Fifteenth-Century Venice’, in The Renaissance Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini, ed. by Keith Christiansen, Patricia Lee Rubin, and Stefan Weppelmann (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 48–63. Jestaz, Bernard, ‘Les collections de peinture à Venise au XVI siècle’, in Geografia del collezionismo: Italia e Francia tra il XVI e il XVIII secolo, ed. by Olivier Bonfait and others (Rome: Ècole Française de Rome, 2001), pp. 185–201. Labowsky, Lotte, Bessarion’s Library and the Biblioteca Marciana: Six Early Inventories (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1979). Lauber, Rosella, ‘Cultural Exchanges in Venice, for an Artistic “Archive of Memory”: New Contributions on Gentile Bellini, Bessarion, and the Scuola Grande della Carità, through Michiel’s Notizia’, in Padua and Venice: Transcultural Exchange in the Early Modern Age, ed. by Brigit Blass-Simmen and Stefan Weppelmann (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 61–77. Laven, Peter J., ‘The Causa Grimani and its Political Overtones’, Journal of Religious History 4 (1966–1967): 184–205. Lorenzoni, Giovanni and Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, eds., Basilica del Santo: dipinti, sculture, tarsie, disegni e modelli (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani/Rome: Edizione de Luca, 1995). Lucco, Mauro, ‘Opere d’arte dal convento antoniano: due parole a mo’ di introduzione’, in S. Antonio 1231–1981: il suo tempo, il suo culto e la sua città, ed. by Giovanni Gorini (Padua: Signum, 1981), pp. 18–83. Mayer, Thomas, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

145

146

Sarah Ferrari

Meijer, Bert W., Il disegno veneziano, 1580–1650: ricostruzioni storico-artistiche (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2017). Monfasani, John, Bessarion Scholasticus: A Study of Cardinal Bessarion’s Latin Library (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012). ‘Morosini Grimani’, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, MS 270. Padoan, Giorgio, ‘Ruzante e le merdolagie di Domenico Grimani’, Lettere Italiane 20 (1968): 485–494. Pagliarini, Battista, Cronicae, ed. by James Grubb (Padua: Antenore, 1990). Pallucchini, Rodolfo, ‘Un nuovo ritratto di Jacopo Tintoretto’, Arte Veneta 37 (1983–1984): 184–187. Paolucci, Antonio and others, eds., L’Eterno e il tempo tra Michelangelo e Caravaggio (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2018). Paschini, Pio, ‘Tre illustri prelati del Rinascimento’, Lateranum 23 (1957): 133–196. Paul, Benjamin, ‘Bad Colours for the Pope: Tintoretto, Giovanni Grimani and the Decoration of the Cappella Gregoriana in New St. Peters’, in Artistic Practices and Cultural Transfer in Early Modern Italy: Essays in Honour of Deborah Howard, ed. by Nebahat Avcioğlu and Allison Sherman (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 29–43. Pavon, Giuliano and Graziella Cauzzi, La memoria di un tempio: li servi di San Marcilian ed il Canal-Marovich in Venezia (Venice: Helvetia, 1988). Penny, Nicholas, The National Gallery, London: The Sixteenth-Century Italian Paintings, vol. 1: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona (London: National Gallery, 2004). Plebani, Tiziana, ‘Leggere e ascoltare le storie delle famiglie veneziane’, in Grado, Venezia, i Gradenigo, ed. by Marino Zorzi and Susy Marcon (Monfalcone: Edizioni della Laguna, 2001), pp. 83–98. ———, ‘Vite di donne nei libri di famiglia veneziani’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 113.1 (2001): 91–106. Pullan, Brian, ‘Occupations and Investments of the Venetian Nobility’, in Renaissance Venice, ed. by John R. Hale (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), pp. 379–408. Ragionieri, Pina, ed., Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo (Florence: Mandragora, 2005). Richardson, Carol M., ‘The Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 535–556. Ridolf i, Carlo, Le Meraviglie dell’arte (1648), ed. by Detlev von Hadeln, 2 vols. (Berlin: Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1914–1924). Robertson, Clare, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 557–580. Romanelli, Giandomenico, ‘Ritrattistica dogale: ombre, immagini e volti’, in I dogi, ed. by Gino Benzoni (Vicenza: Banca Cattolica del Veneto, 1982), pp. 125–161. Rossi, Marco, ‘La chiesa gotica di Santa Maria dei Servi a Venezia: un’indagine storico artistica alla sua fondazione trecentesca al XV secolo’, tesi di laurea,

The Role of Cardinals’ Portraits in Venice 

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, 2011/2012. Ruzante (Angelo Beolco), La prima oratione (1551), ed. and trans. by Linda L. Carroll (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2009). Sansovino, Francesco, Venetia città nobilissima et singolare (Venice: Jacomo Sansovino, 1581). Santarelli, Daniele, ‘Le relazioni diplomatiche fra la Repubblica di Venezia e la Santa Sede negli anni del papato di Paolo IV: prospettive di ricerca’, Studi Storici Luigi Simeoni 55 (2005): 47–69. Sanudo, Marin, Diarii, ed. by Rinaldo Fulin, 58 vols. (Venice: F. Visentini, 1879–1902). Scamozzi, Vincenzo, L’Idea della architettura universale (Venice: V. Scamozzi, 1615). Setton, Kenneth M., The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571, vol. 2: The Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1978). Shearman, John, The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). Simonelli, Fabio, ‘Appendice documentaria’, in I cardinali della Serenissima: arte e committenza tra Venezia e Roma (1523–1605), ed. by Cristina Furlan and Patrizia Tosini (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014), pp. 465–560. Sorbelli, Albano, ed., Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia, vol. 68 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1939). Spiazzi, Anna Maria, ‘Dipinti del Seicento e del Settecento’, in Le pitture del Santo di Padova, ed. by Camillo Semenzato (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1984), pp. 175–194. Stella, Aldo, Chiesa e Stato nelle relazioni dei nunzi pontifici a Venezia: richerche sul giurisdizionalismo veneziano dal XVI al XVIII secolo (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1964). Szépe, Helena, Venice Illuminated: Power and Painting in Renaissance Manuscripts (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2018). Tafuri, Manfredo, Venice and the Renaissance (Boston: MIT Press, 1989). Tagliaferro, Giorgio, ‘Procurators on the Threshold: Sitters and Beholders in Palma Giovane’s Crociferi Entombment’, Artibus et Historiae 37 (2016): 153–176. Van Gelder, Maartje, ‘The People’s Prince: Popular Politics in Early Modern Venice’, Journal of Modern History 90.2 (2018): 249–291. Wassyng Roworth, Wendy, ‘Angelica Kauffman: The Acquisition and Dispersal of an Artists’s Collection, 1782–1825’, in London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, 1780–1820, ed. by Susanna Avery-Quash and Christian Huemer (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2019), pp. 131–144. Wilson, Bronwen, ‘“Il bel sesso e l’austero Senato”: The Coronation of Dogaressa Morosina’, Renaissance Quarterly 52.1 (1999): 73–139. Zago, Roberto, ‘Grimani, Antonio’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 59 (Rome: Treccani, 2002), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/antonio-grimani_res-53a376fc-87ee11dc-8e9d-0016357eee51_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Zapperi, Roberto, Tiziano, Paolo III e i suoi nipoti (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri,1990).

147

148

Sarah Ferrari

About the Author Sarah Ferrari completed her PhD at the University of Padua. She has published on Giorgione’s and Titian’s treatment of landscape, as well as on the history of collecting in Italy and Europe. She is currently collaborating with the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, contributing to the catalogue of the Italian paintings.

6. Role Playing Cardinals in Historical Action in Leandro Bassano’s Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216 and the War of the Interdict Alessandra Pattanaro Abstract Leandro Bassano’s historical narrative painting, Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, produced for the sacristy of the Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, depicts several contemporary cardinals here identified for the first time while accompanying the pope, such as cardinals Giovanni Dolfin and François de Joyeuse beside him. When the painting was executed, Venice was emerging from the diff icult papal interdict of 1606, and it was thanks to the diplomatic negotiations of these two cardinals that the crisis was resolved favourably. Using this painting as a case study, this chapter examines how the representation of specific cardinals in public settings could assume a precise historical and political meaning. Keywords: cardinals; Venice; Santi Giovanni e Paolo; Leandro Bassano; interdict

A recent monograph has greatly expanded our knowledge of the Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, but its important sacristy was inevitably dealt with in a cursory manner.1 With regard to the sacristy, it remains necessary to reconcile a ‘pending account’ with the large canvas illustrating Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216 (Plate 5) by the painter Leandro Bassano (d.1622), second son of Jacopo da Ponte. The iconography of the scene dates back to the Middle Ages, showing Pope Honorius III’s formal approval in 1216 of Domingo di Guzmán’s rule. In the canvas, however, the founder is accompanied by seven Dominican fathers and the ceremony takes place in the presence of eighteen cardinals, who 1

Pavanello, ed., La basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, 2012, pp. 349–369.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch06

150

Alessandra Pattanaro

flank the pope in two groups, with a procession of Swiss guards and the masters of ceremonies. One of them is delivering a dispatch, the contents of which are unclear, but, as this chapter will argue, it could allude to dramatic contemporary events in which members of the order were inevitably involved, namely the interdict placed on Venice by the pope in 1606 and its ultimate revocation a year later. In his description of Bassano’s canvas, Carlo Ridolfi recorded that the painter ‘portrayed from life some Cardinals and Fathers then residing in that convent’.2 The image therefore forms a sort of tableau vivant that has not yet received adequate scholarly attention, especially considering its historical significance in documenting an important episode in the problematic relationship between the preaching fathers, the Venetian government, the papacy, and other European states, such as France and Spain. The canvas contains several portraits of cardinals who played a leading role in the resolution of the so-called ‘War of the Interdict’ of 1606–1607;3 these portraits are in many cases identifiable and play a crucial role in validating the Venetian government’s position within the conflict.

The Historical Background, the Interdict, and the Diplomatic Mediation Following the War of Cyprus and the loss of the island (1573), the Venetian aristocracy went into crisis: the resigned and compliant attitude of i Vecchi (the old nobles) to the foreign policy of the Holy See, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire prompted several younger members of the patriciate, 4 headed by the future Doge Leonardo Donà, along with Niccolò Contarini and Antonio Querini,5 to adopt a political agenda that promoted Venice’s heritage as a free republic. Asserting the sovereignty of the state and embracing the idea of a spiritual renewal of the Church, their central objective was the restoration of the power of the Consiglio dei Dieci (the Council

2 ‘ritrasse dal vivo alcuni Cardinali e Padri allor viventi di quel convento’; Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie, 1648, II, pp. 166–167. 3 This issue was introduced in Pattanaro, ‘Papa Onorio III’, 2012, pp. 361–364, no. 125; for Leandro Bassano’s portraits of Dominicans fathers and his relationship with the Order of the Preachers, see Pattanaro, ‘Per Leandro Bassano’, 2018. 4 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, pp. 193–194, see in particular chapter 5: ‘Venice under the Giovani’, pp. 232–292; Cozzi, ‘Contarini, Nicolò’, 1983, pp. 249–251. 5 On the interdict, in its different stages, see Sarpi, Istoria dell’Interdetto, 2006; Eberhard, Storia delle controversie, 2012; Cappelletti, I Gesuiti e la Repubblica, 1873; De Magistris, Carlo Emanuele I, 1906; Putelli, Il duca Vincenzo I Gonzaga, 1911; Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959; Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, pp. 339–416; Cozzi and Cozzi, Paolo Sarpi, 1984, pp. 15–19; Favarò, Carriere in movimento, 2013, pp. 46–56; on the different kinds of political strategies, see De Vivo, Information and Communication, 2007.

Role Playing 

of Ten), in its original role as arbiter of criminal justice.6 Members of the Consiglio dei Dieci,7 like Contarini, felt undue pressure to appease certain individuals and institutions connected to the papacy; this faction included members of some of the oldest and most powerful Venetian patrician families. In an attempt to constrict the power of the papalisti (nobles with relatives in the Roman Curia), the Venetian Senate approved in January 1604 a law establishing that churches, hospitals, and monasteries could not be founded without the authorization of the senate, on pain of banishment or imprisonment; in May 1605, another law established that any transfer of properties to clergymen was formally forbidden, if not likewise authorized by the senate. In the spring of 1605, Camillo Borghese was elected Pope Paul V. The following December, in response to the Venetian government’s struggle to assert authority over ecclesiastical matters within her domain, he delivered the ‘fatal’ brief, declaring the Venetian extension of civil jurisdiction over clerics and Church property as heretical and anticlerical; he threatened to excommunicate the senate and impose an interdict on the territories of the Republic if the new laws were not withdrawn. Shortly thereafter, on 10 January 1606, Leonardo Donà was elected doge.8 At this time a case arose concerning two convicted clerics, who were tried and sentenced under the Venetian authorities rather than in the ecclesiastical court. This in turn provoked the pope to forbid the clergy from celebrating mass on the Republic’s territories. On 17 April 1606, Paul V assembled the consistory and officially excommunicated the doge and senate, issuing an interdiction on all territories under the Serenissima’s rule.9 Excepting the opposition of two Venetian cardinals, Agostino Valier and Giovanni Dolfin, the action was unanimously approved and went into effect in May. The pontifical document was posted in public places, but the prohibition was – unsurprisingly – opposed by the Venetian government, which itself issued a protesto in return; these circumstances led to the so-called guerra dell’Interdetto (War of the Interdict) or guerra delle Scritture (War of the Scriptures), a diplomatic conflict 6 They demanded that patrician loyalties be ‘committed only to Venice’; Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, p. 246. 7 From 1602 he was also superintendent on clergy decime (‘taxes’) together with Querini; Cozzi, ‘Contarini, Nicolò’, 1983, pp. 247–249. 8 These circumstances are useful for understanding the meaning of Andrea Vicentino’s canvas, which alluded to the ancient foundation of the church by concession and donation of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo (1229–1249). This had to be intended as the preachers’ acknowledgement of the benefits received then from the ducal power, which likely confirms the traditional alliance between the religious community and the state in the first years of the seventeenth century. 9 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, p. 372; some extracts from the pronouncement of Pope Paul V before the cardinals on 17 April 1606 are published in Chambers and Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History, 2001, pp. 225–227.

151

152

Alessandra Pattanaro

between the Roman Curia and the Republic of Venice.10 Contarini and Querini, together with the Doge Leonardo Donà, were blamed for the interdict, though they were defended by the historian Paolo Sarpi, who argued for the illegality of the pontifical excommunication, as well as the superiority of the Venetian Consiglio over the papacy.11

France and the Others When the younger generation of patricians came to power in Venice towards the end of the sixteenth century, France was embroiled in a civil war. Venice, therefore, was not immediately able to form an alliance against Spain and Rome. However, when Henry III died in 1589, Venice recognized an opportunity and supported the excommunicated Henry of Navarre’s claim to the throne of France. A few years later, the Venetian government encouraged the reconciliation of Henry IV and the pope, while also granting the French sovereign Venetian citizenship.12 For Venice, France provided an important Catholic state with which to form an alliance, as opposed to Spain, which remained closely tied to the papacy, especially Pope Paul V.13 At the time of the ‘War of the Interdict’, both the kings of France and Spain, positioned themselves as mediators between the Serenissima and the papacy, the first supporting Venice, the second Rome. Two representatives were sent by these sovereigns to negotiate a resolution to the matter: the ambassadors Canaye de Fresnes, from Henry IV, and Francisco Ruiz di Castro, from Philip III.14 The involvement of these men is recorded in their correspondence and has been thoroughly analysed by historians.15 The French ambassador promoted the idea of a close Franco-Venetian alliance, with a view to furthering France’s interests in Europe; Henry IV’s real aim was ‘to increase his influence both in Venice and Rome and to reduce the influence of Spain’.16 Spain had a similar policy, and the promise of military support to the papacy was based on a conviction that none of the involved parties truly favoured war as a solution. However, after months of intransigence by both Rome and Venice, during the autumn and winter of 1606–1607 an armed conflict became a realistic possibility; 10 Eberhard, Storia delle controversie, 2012, pp. 209–222; Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, pp. 372–374. 11 Sarpi, Istoria dell’Interdetto, 2006. 12 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, pp. 247–248; Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959 p. 49. 13 Cappelletti, I Gesuiti e la Repubblica, 1873, p. 7. 14 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, pp. 405–407. 15 Ambassades et negotiations, 1620; Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959; Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968. 16 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, p. 406.

Role Playing 

at this point France persuaded Venice to accept the mediation of Cardinal François de Joyeuse who arrived in February 1607, ‘representing the French king rather than the Curia’.17 He was accompanied by the learned Cardinal Jacques Davy du Perron, who brilliantly manoeuvred the lifting of the excommunication.18 Among the Italian sovereigns, even Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy 19 and Vincenzo Gonzaga20 also angled for roles in the mediation.

The Interdict and the Religious Orders During the interdict, only the recently founded Theatines and orders established during the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits and Capuchins, remained loyal to the Church of Rome and agreed to align themselves with the pope; the regular clergy, on the other hand, in particular the ancient monastic mendicant orders, such as the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Servites, and Carmelites, continued their ecclesiastical mission in Venice.21 While the new orders left the territories of the Venetian Republic, the established ones did not. The Dominicans, who were deeply rooted in Venice, were protected from repercussions in Rome by inquisitors such as the powerful Cardinal Girolamo Bernerio. Their church in Venice, Santi Giovanni e Paolo, houses so many dogal tombs, it has been designated a‘pantheon della Serenissima’22 and was singled out as a venerated destination for important diplomatic and religious visits. The conventual Dominicans were particularly well integrated and protected by the Venetian government on account of their work as scholars and the prestigious role they often assumed as professors at the University of Padua.23 17 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, p. 413. 18 Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959, p. 49. He had already had an important diplomatic role in the reconciliation of King Henry IV with Rome. 19 De Magistris, Carlo Emanuele I, 1906. His intervention was almost neutralized by France and Spain; Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, pp. 407–408. 20 The Gonzaga had revealed anything but clear intentions, and his intervention was set aside by the pope himself through the cardinal-nephew Scipione Borghese; Putelli, Il duca Vincenzo I Gonzaga, 1911, p. 280. 21 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, 1968, p. 383. 22 Gullino, Un pantheon ducale, 2012, pp. 15–18. 23 After the Council of Trent issued the Decretum de regularibus et monialibus (Resolution on the Regulars and the Monks) in 1564, the Dominican conventuals of Venice had to face the problem of the internal reform of the order, to which the Dominican observants had already adjusted. The visit of the general master Vincenzo Giustiniani under Pope Pius IV in 1565 and the General Chapter held in the presence of the new Pope Pius V, a Dominican observant, in 1569, should have led to a radical change for the Dominican conventuals. The intervention of the Venetian State, however, guaranteed the persistence

153

154

Alessandra Pattanaro

Following the resolution of the conflict, the reintegration of the Jesuits – the order closest to the Roman Curia in Venice and its territories – was the primary concern of Paul V; however, this ultimately failed, and the order was not readmitted until much later.24 Among the many known documents relating to the disagreement between Venice and the Jesuits, the report of the Venetian secretary of state, resident in Milan, is particularly useful when considering the decoration of the sacristy of Santi Giovanni e Paolo: Pope Paul V is greatly inclined to Jesuits, as is his whole house, brothers, women and all, so that in everyone’s home, there are always Jesuits, and these have their own ambitions, in particular to destroy all other Religions, and especially that of St. Dominic […]25

As shall be explored below, Leandro Bassano’s large canvas in the sacristy of the church places the lifting of the interdict within the context of the most famous historical moment of the Dominican order, namely the approval of the order’s rule by the papacy.

The Chronology of the Sacristy In 1600 construction of a new access portal to the sacristy from the left nave of Santi Giovanni e Paolo was begun, with work continuing through 1602–1603, while a gateway was added in 1605.26 The then sacristan, Marcantonio Serafini, had designed the programme of the ceiling telero (large canvas) by Marco Vecellio, depicting a Triumphant Christ Appearing to Sts. Dominic and Francis.27 Another canvas, signed by Andrea Vicentino and inscribed with the date 1606, shows Doge Jacopo Tiepolo Donating to the Dominicans the Land for the Construction of the Basilica, commissioned by Fra Tommaso Capello.28 A further canvas representing the Supper of the two approaches, one aimed at contemplation, the other at action, thus saving the promotion of science and culture by the conventuals; Massimi, La Cena in casa di Levi, 2011, pp. 75–80. 24 The Company of the Jesuits was only readmitted to the Venetian Republic in 1657 under Pope Alessandro VII; Cappelletti, I Gesuiti e la Repubblica, 1873, pp. 277–285; 287–298, nos. i–viii. 25 ‘[The pope is] grandemente inclinato à Gesuiti et così tutta la sua casa, li fratelli, le donne e tutti, in modo che per casa di tutti vi sono sempre Giesuiti, et questi hanno I suoi proprij fini, che è particolarmente di distrugger tutte le altre Religioni, et specialmente quella di San Domenico, et inalzar la sua’; Cappelletti, I gesuiti e la repubblica, 1873, p. 152, no. 88, 24 August 1606. 26 Hochmann, ‘Peintres et commanditaires’, 1992, pp. 293–302. 27 Ridolfi, Le maraviglie, 1648, vol. 2, p. 143; for a recent entry, see Mancini, ‘Sacrestia’, 2012, pp. 346–347, no. 118, p. 352. 28 Ridolfi, Le maraviglie, 1648, vol. 2, p. 145; a historical reason for the subject of the canvas is explained at n. 8.

Role Playing 

of St. Dominic is dated 1612, but was removed after 1758, when two windows were constructed in the wall on which it hung. The canvas was transferred to another location and eventually acquired by Teodoro Correr, who left it to his eponymous museum:29 this work was commissioned by the subsequent sacrista (‘sacristan’), Costanzo Gabrieli, from Leandro Bassano, as indicated by an inscription which can be reconstructed when the original canvas is reinserted between the scenes of Sts. John and Paul, still occupying the original wall in the sacristy. The canvas representing Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216 appears on the north wall, facing the entrance door from the nave. It is perhaps the most spectacular and ‘public’ display of all the works commissioned for the sacristy. No archival documentation survives for this painting, but the attribution to Leandro Bassano was first proposed by Carlo Ridolfi in 1648. Arslan, in his 1960 monograph, supposed an execution in 1606, a date already suggested by Livan (1942), on the basis of the date of the canvas by Andrea Vicentino; this chronology has been unanimously accepted by art historians,30 but it can now be better clarified through a closer analysis of the painting.31 The entire Dominican church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo offers an extraordinary collection of portraits, in particular of illustrious Dominicans, whose identities remain difficult to recognize, despite an abundance of archival documentation providing countless names of clerics who served as abbots, priors (two-year term), bachelors, and sacristans. Unfortunately, individuals often remained in these roles too briefly to allow their identities to be established with any certainty.32 The identification of cardinals is easier, given that their appointments delineate their biographies in a clear way, and their portrayals, albeit heterogeneous in quality, are accompanied by solid iconographic evidence.33 Michel Hochmann rightly noted how the adoption in the sacristy of long walllength teleri representing historical scenes relating to the Dominican order, makes a clear reference to the decoration of the Ducal Palace, where Palma il Giovane, Andrea Vicentino, and Leandro were also engaged by the Serenissima.34 The Meeting of 29 Pattanaro, ‘Papa Onorio III’, 2012, p. 360, no. 123. 30 Livan, Notizie d’arte,1942, pp. 102–103; Arslan, I Bassano, 1960, I, pp. 248, 253, and 272, n. 35; Zava Boccazzi, La Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, 1965, p. 246; Alberton Vinco da Sesso, ‘Dal Ponte, Leandro’, 1968, p. 191; Bassotto Guasso, ‘Leandro Dal Ponte’, 1992, pp. 293, 295; Hochmann, ‘Peintres et commanditaires’, 1992, fig. 48; Manno and Sponza, Basilica dei Santi, 1995, p. 68; Artale, ‘Un bozzetto di Leandro’, 2007, pp. 249–252. 31 Pattanaro, ‘Papa Onorio III’, 2012, p. 364. 32 Pattanaro, ‘Per Leandro Bassano’, 2018. 33 A very useful digital tool is now the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, which provides biographic and historical information, supported by iconographic images; Florida International University Libraries, https://cardinals.fiu.edu/cardinals.htm (accessed April 2021). 34 Hochmann, ‘Peintres et commanditaires’, 1992, p. 300.

155

156

Alessandra Pattanaro

Doge Ziani with Pope Alexander III in the Sala del Consiglio dei dieci, which was left incomplete by Leandro’s brother Francesco (d.1592), is one of the first paintings on which the artist worked in Venice. Described by Ridolfi as a ‘knight of melancholic humour, dedicated to the pleasures of singing and music-making’, who evidently ‘wore rich clothes, with a necklace round his neck, and the insignia of St. Mark’,35 Leandro incorporated his own portrait into the Doge’s Palace canvas (among the high prelates on the right of the pope, beside the final cardinal), as he would do again years later in the telero for Santi Giovanni e Paolo.36 It should be remembered that, in the refectory of this monastery in 1573, an inquisitorial process was brought against Paolo Veronese, accused of heresy for having illustrated the Last Supper in an inappropriate way, leading in turn to the subject’s transformation into The Feast in the House of Levi;37 after this situation, decoration for the walls of the monastery and/or church was carefully deliberated, so as not to raise suspicion among the authorities or public. The episode of the Approval (Honorius III Approving the Rule) was intended to reiterate the Dominicans’ important mission during these critical years of the interdict; the scene presents the Venetian Dominicans hosting a sort of contemporary consistory, convened by a medieval pope – the portrait is certainly not a portrait of the hated Paul V, author of the interdict, but is probably inspired by the ancient iconography of Pope Honorius III, documented in a work by Giuseppe Franchi in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana.38 A comparison with the vast, slightly earlier Dominican cycle in the great cloister of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, where the scene of the approval of the rule was executed by Gregorio Pagani in 1584, helps to elucidate the peculiarities of Leandro’s canvas.39 In episodes of the Supper of St. Dominic, also present in both the Florentine and Venetian cycles, there is a similar iconographic scheme which clearly offered an opportunity to portray the living brothers of the convent. However, Leandro’s painting of the approval is very different to Pagani’s and reveals that in Venice the papal consistory was treated as an ostentatious occasion to celebrate some of the most important contemporary prelates, in particular numerous cardinals. 35 ‘Era il Cavaliere di umor melanconico, ma dedito ai trattenimenti del canto e del suono, e ad altri piaceri […] Vestiva di ricchi panni, con collana al collo, e le insigne di san Marco’; Ridolfi, Le maraviglie, 1648, vol. 2, pp. 169–170. 36 In this painting he also places a cardinal looking at the spectator who seems to recall his father Jacopo’s self-portrait now in Vienna. 37 For a recent accurate discussion of this topic, with a complete bibliography, see Massimi, La Cena in casa di Levi, 2011, in particular for the painting’s inscription and the transformation of the subject, pp. 175–176; Pavanello, ‘L’Ultima Cena’, 2012. 38 Jones, Federico Borromeo, 1997, p. 321, nos. 227, 228. 39 Barbolani di Montauto, ‘Pagani Gregorio’, 2014, p. 231.

Role Playing 

The setting of the famous episode is obviously the papal Curia, with the Swiss guards and even the mace keeper present, as well as figures who perform the papal bureaucratic ritual of the approval of the decretals, documented in the Hierarchia Ecclesiastica series. 40

The Cardinals ‘Invited’ to the Approval of the Rule: Some Identifications How are we to interpret this congregation of cardinals? Ridolfi confirms that in this canvas Leandro ‘ritrasse dal vivo alcuni Cardinali’ (painted some cardinals from life). One, in particular, to the right of the pope, asserts himself, placed in an almost frontal position and directing his gaze towards the viewer, while engaged in conversation with a colleague. He is in fact identifiable, and his identification leads to further revelations: this figure’s features correspond irrefutably to those in the portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Dolf in from the Capodilista Collection of the Musei Civici in Padua (Fig. 6.1). Cardinal Dolfin was about 59 years old when Leandro painted this independent, ‘off icial’ cardinal portrait in 1604. 41 In all likelihood, this is probably the portrait of the cardinal mentioned by Ridolf i in the Life of Leandro. 42 Dolfin was also portrayed at an older age by the young Gian Lorenzo Bernini in a bust for his tomb in San Michele in Isola in Venice, a work executed in collaboration with his father Pietro. 43 The cardinal was born in Venice in 1545, and took his degree in Padua in utroque iure (both canon and civil law). After having held many civic posts for the Serenissima, he was elected ambassador to France, beginning an intense diplomatic career that also took him to Germany and Spain. In 1604 he obtained the bishopric of Vicenza and immediately after received the red hat, becoming the Cardinal di Venetia par excellence. 44

40 Bonanni, La Gerarchia ecclesiastica, 1720, pp. 449–450. 41 Banzato, ‘Un ritratto inedito’, 1983, pp. 107–111; Attardi, ‘Leandro Dal Ponte’, 1991, pp. 218–219, no. 136; Bragaglia Venuti, ‘I volti dei cardinali’, 2014, p. 164, no. 28, fig. 5. 42 Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie, 1648, vol. 2, p. 168. 43 The bust was sculpted shortly before Dolfin’s departure from Rome in 1621, one year before his death; Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1955, p. 183, no. 16, fig. 8; Lavin, ‘Five New Youthful Sculptures’, 1966, fig. 47, p. 238, n. 21, 100, fig. 47. In the wills of 1611 Dolfin already mentions the site where he wants to be buried, a project that evolved over many years (Francescutti, ‘Le sepulture e le “memorie” funebri’, 2014, pp. 222–223, fig. 11–13b) and was still incomplete on 3 February 1620, when the cardinal mentions il deposito che lì si sta costruendo (‘the tomb that is going to be erected’; Simonelli, ‘Appendice documentaria’, 2014, p. 529, no. 20). 44 Benzoni, ‘Dolfin, Giovanni’, 1991, p. 527.

157

158

Alessandra Pattanaro

Fig. 6.1 Leandro Bassano, Portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Dolfin, 1604, oil on canvas, Padua, Musei Civici (© Padua, Musei Civici—Giuliano Ghiraldini).

While he served Pietro Aldobrandini, the nephew of Pope Clement VIII, Dolf in was above all linked to France, from which polity he received a sizeable salary. 45 After the death of Clement VIII, he acted as an intermediary between a faction of cardinals, headed by Pietro Aldobrandini, and the French cardinals, led by 45 Ibid.

Role Playing 

François de Joyeuse; Dolf in established a lasting friendship with both of these men. When Pope Paul V embarked on his policy to constrict the Serenissima’s jurisdiction, it became difficult for Dolfin to be both a ‘bon Venetiano’ and ‘bon Cardinale’. 46 And as mentioned, when in April 1606 the pope excommunicated the Venetian government, Dolf in was one of the two Venetian cardinals to oppose the measure, the other being Agostino Valier, who died only a month later. 47 At that point Giovanni Dolfin became the leading negotiator on the part of Venice. 48 After a year of delicate negotiations, the conflict was finally resolved in April 1607 when Cardinal de Joyeuse took custody of the two priests who had instigated the dispute. 49 Dolf in, both in his capacity as a Venetian cardinal and close friend of Joyeuse, played a fundamental role in the successful outcome of the matter. Given Dolfin’s presence in Leandro’s canvas, it seems very likely that others who were involved in the resolution of the interdict might also be depicted; among those likely to be included are the Venetian Cardinal Agostino Valier, who despite having died early on in the negotiations was very involved at the outset of the issue.50 A white-bearded cardinal in profile on the left bears a marked similarity to Bernini’s portrait of Agostino Valier, now in Ca’ d’Oro in Venice (Fig. 6.2), and can plausibly be identified as the Venetian prelate.51 Discussing Leandro’s most important portraits, Ridolfi provides certain details that have not yet been considered in relation to the Santi Giovanni e Paolo canvas and can in fact help to identify some of the other characters attending the crowded scene of the approval of the rule: Then, when in Venice, the Cardinal of Gioiosa, Don Francesco di Castro, the Cardinals, Don Pedro Aldobrandini and Alessandro da Este, Ferdinand, Duke of Mantua, and Vicenzo his brother Cardinal, & Cardinal Pio wanted to be portrayed by him.52 46 Ibid. 47 Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959, pp. 1–4. 48 Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959, p. 45; De Magistris, Carlo Emanuele I, 1906, p. 494, no. 211, letter of Cardinal de Joyeuse to the Duke of Savoia. 49 De Magistris, Carlo Emanuele I, 1906, pp. 496–500, no. 213. 50 Franzoni, ‘Il cardinal Bernieri’, 1991, pp. 78–80; Firpo, Storie di immagini, 2010, pp. 193–201, figs. 68–70. 51 It was commissioned by the Cardinal Pietro Valier, Agostino’s nephew, for the Valier chapel in Santa Maria delle Grazie, and is now in deposit at the Ca’ d’Oro on loan from the Gallerie dell’Accademia. While Agostino’s bust was made probably from a portrait by Bernini with the help of Andrea Bolgi, when he came to Rome in 1626, Pietro’s bust was taken from the life; Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1955, p. 190, no. 25, fig. 10, 11. 52 ‘Quindi capitando à Venetia il Cardinal di Gioiosa; Don Francesco di Castro; i Cardinali Don Pieiro Aldobrandino & Alessandro da Este, Ferdinando, Duca di Mantova, e Vicenzo il fratello Cardinale, & il Cardinal Pio vollero esser da lui ritratti’; Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie, 1648, vol. 2, p. 167.

159

160

Alessandra Pattanaro

Fig. 6.2 Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Portrait of Agostino Valier, 1629, marble, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia (in deposit at Ca d’Oro) (© Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia).

Role Playing 

Portraits by Leandro of many of the prelates and gentlemen mentioned by Ridolfi have not survived, excepting that of Giovanni Dolfin. However, it seems likely that the large group of cardinals present in the Santi Giovanni e Paolo canvas also included some of the others named by Ridolfi, who had been summoned for diplomatic purposes at the historical moment following the revocation of the interdict. It therefore makes sense to begin further investigation of those depicted in Honorius III Approving the Rule with these figures. It is not difficult to imagine that the Cardinal di Venezia would have given precise indications regarding the figures, besides himself, who ought to be included. Starting with the f igure who is speaking, or better, acting with Dolf in, the reddish-haired cardinal, with beard and sharp elongated nose, of mature but younger appearance than Dolfin, he seems likely to be François de Joyeuse, whose name was Italianized by Ridolfi as Gioiosa. The likeness of this cardinal seems to correspond to a portrait by Thierry Bellange, probably made near the time of the French cardinal’s death in 1615 (Fig. 6.3).53 Joyeuse was born in 1562 and awarded the red hat in 1585. He was perhaps 45 when he briefly came to Venice to settle the dispute in the autumn of 1606; he subsequently returned in February 1607, disembarking in Chioggia and sojourning in the lagoon city for around a month.54 His iconography is also known from a sculpted bust, now in the Palace of Versailles.55 Following the mission’s positive outcome in the spring of 1607, with the revocation of the interdict, he returned to France where in 1610, as a papal legate, he crowned Maria de’ Medici in Saint Denis. The ceremony was depicted by Rubens who portrayed the cardinal in profile.56 If, as I believe, Dolfin and Joyeuse are captured in Honorius III Approving the Rule while negotiating for the revocation of the interdict, the painting can only have been executed following the positive conclusion of the event, with a view to celebrating the two cardinals’ diplomatic success which came about only after 21 April 1607.57 In a sketch that recently appeared on the British art market (Fig. 6.4), the action of the two cardinals is already planned.58 Therefore it is clear that commemorating their diplomatic coup and incorporating it within

53 Pau, Musée National du Château de Pau. On the drawings by Thierry Bellange, see Choné, ‘Jacques Bellange et son fils Henri’, 1990, pp. 71–90; Mirroneau and Menges, Dessins du musée national, 2007. 54 Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959, pp. 46–47. 55 Anonymous French sculptor, Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles, inv. MV2815, marble, height 84 cm: L’Agence Photo, www.photo.rmn.fr/archive/02-007382-2c6nu0g5rh04.html (accessed April 2019); Notice historique, 1839, p. 195, no. 286 (galerie, no. 139). 56 Inv. 1778, 727 × 394 cm, Paris, Musèe du Louvre, Department of Paintings. 57 Pattanaro, ‘Papa Onorio III’, 2012, p. 363. 58 31 × 75.5 cm, Oxford, Brocardo House, Mallams, 3 October 2003; Artale, ‘Un bozzetto di Leandro Bassano’, pp. 249–252, fig. 4.

161

162

Alessandra Pattanaro

Fig. 6.3 Thierry Bellange, François Cardinal de Joyeuse, early seventeenth century Pau, Musée National du Château de Pau (© RMN–Grand Palais (Château de Pau)/René-Gabriel Ojéda).

the most important historical moment of the Dominican order was a priority in the painting’s conception and design. Relying on Ridolfi’s writings, it is possible to try to identify other cardinals, who were collaborators or friends of Dolfin among those that we know Leandro to have portrayed. In particular, the names of ‘Don Pedro Aldobrandini and Alessandro da Este’ stand out. The first, nephew of Clement VIII – the pope who had awarded Dolfin the red hat – was born in 1571, and therefore 36 years old in 1607.

Role Playing 

Fig. 6.4 Leandro Bassano, sketch for Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, 1607-1608, art market (© Fondazione Federico Zeri).

From the time of his elevation, Dolfin maintained a close relationship with Pietro Aldobrandini, defending him when accusations arose that the cardinal-nephew had forced Pope Clement VIII on his deathbed to sign documents illegally.59 Cardinal Aldrobrandini had moved to Ravenna after the election of Paul V,60 but it is known that he volunteered to act as a mediator between the Republic and Holy See in the War of the Interdict, as he was also on good terms with the Jesuits.61 Doge Donà esteemed Aldobrandini as ‘a greatly loved and esteemed person, and everybody was certain of his prudence and affection for the Republic, of which he is even a son, and he will always favour the things of this Domain’.62 Beyond political reasons, a personal affinity between Aldobrandini and Dolfin might have warranted the inclusion of the former’s portrait in Honorius III Approving the Rule. Dolfin mentions Aldobrandini reverently in his will, drawn up on 3 February 1620.63 Cardinal Aldobrandini could, in my opinion, be identified 59 Benzoni, ‘Dolfin, Giovanni’, 1991, pp. 519–532. 60 Fasano Guarini, ‘Aldobrandini, Pietro’, 1960, pp. 113–114; he had received the archbishopric of Ravenna in 1604. 61 Cappelletti, I Gesuiti e la Repubblica, 1873, pp. 150. 62 ‘persona grandemente amata et stimata, et che si era certi, che et per la sua prudenza et per l’affettione sua verso la repubblica della quale egli ancora è figliuolo, favorirà sempre le cose di questo Dominio’; Cappelletti, I Gesuiti e la Repubblica, 1873, pp. 151. 63 For a biography of Pietro Aldobrandini, see Fasano Guarini ‘Aldobrandini, Pietro’, 1960, pp. 107–114. Giovanni Dolfin’s universal heir was Niccolò, the son of his brother Pietro. His wills are transcribed and commented by Simonelli, ‘Appendice documentaria’, 2014, pp. 523–537, and in particular, pp. 530, 535.

163

164

Alessandra Pattanaro

Fig. 6.5 Petrus Aldobrandinus (in Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, Effigies cum insignibus, nominibus, cognominibus, patria, titulis et nuncupationes Reverendissimorum Dominorum S.R.E. Cardinalium nunc viventium) (© The Trustees of the British Museum).

with the second prelate, with dark beard and hair on the other side of the figure of Dolfin. A portrait of Aldobrandini by Ottavio Leoni survives in the Palazzo Aldobrandini in Frascati;64 however, the profile portrait in the series Effigies cum insignibus, nominibus, cognominibus […] Cardinalium nunc viventium offers a better comparison with the suggested cardinal Leandro’s painting (Fig. 6.5). Dolfin’s will might shed further light on the identity of another cardinal from Emilia Romagna, Domenico Ginnasi (1551–1639).65 Together with Aldobrandini, Dolfin mentions Ginnasi as one of ‘suoi signori et promotori principali’ (‘his lords and principal promoters’) and recommends his heirs to both cardinals.66 Even if Ridolfi does not mention the latter among the cardinals portrayed by Leandro, his presence in the canvas seems plausible, though not yet confirmed on the basis of iconographic evidence.67 64 Primarosa, Ottavio Leoni, 2017, pp. 67, 675, no. 20. 65 Ginnasi studied at the University of Bologna, received a doctorate in utroque iure in 1572, and was created cardinal-priest in the consistory of 9 June 1604. He took an interest in the reform of the regular clergy and worked to improve relations between Jesuits and Dominicans after the controversy de auxiliis, was ambassador to Spain between 1600 and 1605, and then he lived in Rome and ceded the bishopric of Manfredonia to his nephew Hannibal; Brunelli, ‘Ginnasi, Domenico’, 2001. 66 Simonelli, ‘Appendice documentaria’, 2014, pp. 530, 535. 67 For a series of images, see ‘Ginnasi Domenico’, Araldica Vatinano, www.araldicavaticana.com/gx033. htm (accessed April 2021).

Role Playing 

The portrait by Leandro of ‘Don Francesco di Castro’, mentioned by Ridolfi, must certainly date to the Spaniard’s time in Venice and seems to have been neglected by historians. Evidence of the image – if not the portrait itself – might be present in Honorius III Approving the Rule in one of the characters occupying either the left or right side, together with the Swiss guards. In August 1606, Don Francisco Ruiz de Castro was appointed extraordinary ambassador to Venice by the King of Spain, and he reached the lagoon on 11 November, accompanied by a band of Spaniards including the Duke of Vietri, Don Ferrante d’Avalos, and many others whose presence was duly noticed.68 He sojourned in the city during the War of the Interdict, assigned with the task of assisting to resolve the crisis in the name of Philip III. The Venetian people welcomed ‘his entry into the Republic with a great rush of citizens and the happiness of the Republic itself’.69 He remained in Venice until 4 May 1607, when the crisis had been resolved, obtaining as thanks from the Serenissima two galleys for his return via Ancona and 3,000 sc.70 Francisco, together with his secretary, Juan de Lezcano, was a patron of the arts and owned paintings by Annibale Carracci and Orazio Borgianni; during his stay in Rome, between 1609 and 1615, he also commissioned at least four portraits from the painter Juan di Gersi. Although an exact correspondence between these portraits and figures in Leandro’s canvas is elusive, he remains a likely candidate for representation, given his prominence on the diplomatic stage at the time.71 Alessandro d’Este was also mentioned in Ridolfi’s list, and, becoming a cardinal in 1599 at the age of 31, would have been 39 years old in 1607. However, he does not seem to have played a role in the life of Dolfin, or in the interdict affair, and it is difficult to propose a candidate in the painting. Among the living cardinals not mentioned by Ridolfi, but very active and fundamental in the final phase of the War of the Interdict was the Frenchman Jacques Davy du Perron (1556–1618). He was consecrated Bishop of Evreux by Cardinal François de Joyeuse in 1595, obtained the red hat in 1604, and was 51 years old in 1607, when he was involved in the interdict issue as a diplomatic representative of Henry IV in Rome.72 When Paul V assembled the consistory to announce the excom68 De Magistris, Carlo Emanuele I, 1906, p. 216; Putelli, Il duca Vincenzo I Gonzaga, 1906, p. 242; Favarò, Carriere in movimento, 2013, pp. 46–56. 69 ‘su entrada a la Republica con gran concorso de pueblo y gusto de la misma Republica’ (the Ambassador Iñigo de Cardenas to Philip III; Favarò, Carriere in movimento, 2013, p. 50). 70 De Magistris, Carlo Emanuele I, 1906, p. 500, no. 213 (letter from Antonio Provana to the Duke of Savoia, 28 April 1907); Favarò, Carriere in movimento, 2013, p. 55. Later he stayed in Rome between 1609 and 1615, to return to Spain the same year. After the death of his wife he became a Benedictine monk with the name of Fra Agostino in 1637; Terzaghi, Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, 2007, p. 35. 71 Enciso Alonso-Muñumer, Nobleza, poder y mecenazgo, 2007, p. 161; Favarò, Carriere in movimento, 2013, p. 67. 72 Du Perron was rewarded with a promotion: towards the middle of 1607, he was assigned to the archbishopric of Sens for having contributed to the restoration of peace between the Holy See and the

165

166

Alessandra Pattanaro

munication of the doge and Senate, and the interdiction of the Venetian territories, Du Perron feigned illness in order to remain impartial and later ‘declined a papal invitation to write against Venice’.73 Around a year later, when Joyeuse returned to Rome from Venice, Cardinal Du Perron embarked on intense negotiations with the pope to resolve the still open question of the readmission of the Jesuits. He wrote a famous letter to Henry IV, dated 5 April 1607, detailing every obstacle posed by Spain to the successful outcome of the conflict and remarking on the conditions of the French ambassador, Cardinal de Joyeuse, and Cardinal Dolfin, who were working tirelessly towards a resolution.74 His appearance, characterized by a long dark beard that extended to his cheeks and cheekbones, is recorded in a portrait at the Museum of Versailles and a drawing by Thierry Bellange (Fig. 6.6);75 Du Perron can perhaps be recognized as the cardinal with similar features and large dark beard, facing the viewer in the centre of the group of cardinals on the left.76 Returning to the preparatory sketch for Honorius III Approving the Rule, it is useful to note that the pope was at first flanked by two elder cardinals and two other clerics (it is impossible to say who these figures might have been, and they were obviously replaced by more relevant characters). In the painting, however, the pope is assisted by two unusually young high priests (Plate 6). One, in profile, still appears beardless, while the second, turned three-quarters to his left with a Venetians, in the place of the great chaplain and to the dignity of Commander of the Order of the Holy Spirit VI (Burigny, Vie du cardinal Duperron, 1783; Cardella, Memorie storiche de’ cardinali, 1793, vol. 4, pp. 100–104). 73 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, p. 372, n. 145. 74 ‘Au sortir du Palais de sa Sanctité, ie returney porter le resultat de mon audience à Monsieur le Cardinal de Joyeuse, & à Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, avec lesquel ie trouvay le Cardinal Delf in. Ce nouvelles les remplirent d’autant de ioje, quei ie les avois laissez pleins de crainte & de pein; & sur ce rapport ils resolurent de faire deslors courir le bruict que l’affaire estoit entierement conclu, af in de faire perdre le courage à ceux qui le voudroient traverser, & s’y opposer, quand ils sçauroient que le Pape seroit tout resolu au contraire’ (Du Perron, Les diverses oeuvres, 1622, lettre au Roy sur l’estat des affairs de Venise, pp. 877–878); ‘[…] Arrivé quei e fus vers Monsieur le Cardinal de Joyeuse & Monsieur l’Ambassador, avec lesquel estoit aussi le Cardinal Delf in, qui sçavoit def ia tout estoit fans-deffus-deffous au Palais, & que l’on y tenoit l’affaire pour entierement rompu, ils furent d’avis que ie retournasse tou court sur me pas, combien qu’il fust deux ou trois heures de nuict […]’ (ibid., p. 880). An Italian translation and commentary of the letter can be found in Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959, pp. 346–356. In Rome, he took part in the meetings of the Congregatio de Auxiliis established by Pope Clement VIII, to end the discussions on grace and freedom between the Molinists and the Dominicans; Burigny, Vie du Cardinal Duperron, 1783; Cardella, Memorie storiche de’ cardinali, 1793, vol.4, pp. 100–104. 75 Musée national du Château de Versailles; Pau, Musée National du Château de Pau; on the drawings by Thierry Bellange, see Choné, ‘Jacques Bellange et son fils Henri’, 1990, pp. 71–90; Mirroneau and Menges, Dessins du musée national, 2007. 76 We don’t know if Du Perron had visited Venice at this time, but the painter could have used one of the many portraits on paper already existing.

Role Playing 

Fig. 6.6 Thierry Bellange, Jacques Davy du Perron, early seventeenth century, lead pencil and red chalk with gold highlights on parchment, Pau, Musée National du Château de Pau (© RMN–Grand Palais (Château de Pau)/René-Gabriel Ojéda).

lowered gaze, shows early traces of facial hair. Two young cardinals, recently elected, may have been chosen to substitute for elder high prelates, perhaps in recognition of specific roles played by their families in the question of the interdict. Among the Italian princes, as we have seen, Carlo Emanuele I of Savoy and Vincenzo Gonzaga had roles as mediators in the question of the interdict and the presence of two young cardinals of these families may have been appropriate in the Honorius III

167

168

Alessandra Pattanaro

Fig. 6.7 Rubens, Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, 1604-1605, oil on canvas, Mamiano di Traversetolo, Collezione Magnani Rocca (© Fondazione Magnani Rocca).

Role Playing 

Approving the Rule.77 Their inclusion in the canvas might be inferred through Ridolfi’s statement that ‘Ferdinando, Duke of Mantua, and Vicenzo his brother Cardinal, and the Cardinal Pio wanted to be portrayed’, although in the case of the Gonzaga brothers, the names and titles provided by the artist’s biographer leave some ambiguity. On 10 December 1607, Paul V elevated to the cardinalate Ferdinando I Gonzaga (1587–1626), second son of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga and Eleonora de’ Medici. A knight of Jerusalem, he was 20 years old when he became cardinal-deacon. Initially, he was a neutral figure between Spain and France, but from 1612 took up an openly pro-French stance and became very close to cardinals Aldobrandini and Pio; his appearance is recorded in a few portraits, such as that by Rubens now in the Fondazione Magnani Rocca in Mamiano di Traversetolo (Fig. 6.7), which is repeated in a large family altarpiece devoted to the Trinity; his likeness bears a resemblance to the cardinal immediately to the left of the pope .78 The Portrait of Ferdinando Gonzaga as a Knight of Malta by Rubens, now in a private Australian collection and dated before 1603, is equally comparable with the young cardinal portrayed in Honorius III Approving the Rule.79 Ferdinando resigned from the cardinalate in 1613 to become Duke of Mantua, following his elder brother’s death. His younger brother, Vincenzo, was nominated cardinal only in 1615; Ridolfi’s statement would thus seem to indicate that Ferdinando was portrayed as ‘duca’, and Vincenzo as ‘cardinale’, though he might have confused the titles of the two brothers. Otherwise the cited portraits by Leandro must have been executed subsequent Honorius III Approving the Rule l and therefore not connected with it. The ‘Cardinal Pio’ mentioned by Ridolfi is certainly Carlo Emanuele Pio of Savoy (1585–1641). The family ties of the Pio with the Savoy had been cemented before the birth of Carlo Emanuele, whose name reflected a functional alliance.80 The presence in Honorius III Approving the Rule of Cardinal Pio would have been well justified: pro-French and close to Pietro Aldobrandini, he was appointed secret attendant to Pope Clement VIII when he arrived in Rome in 1600. In 1604 he was named cardinal at the age of 19, making him around 23 in 1607.81 If we compare the physiognomy of the young prelate beside the cardinal at the pope’s right with extant 77 Maurizio di Savoia (1593–1657), the fourth son of Carlo Emanuele, predestined for an ecclesiastical career, was elected cardinal at the age of 14 on 10 December 1607, but Maurizio reached Rome many years later in 1620; he resigned on the marriage of his nephew in 1642 (Cozzo, ‘Savoia, Maurizio di’, 2018). 78 In June 1608 the Venetian ambassador to Mantua Francesco Morosini declared he had an income of 50,000 ducats; Benzoni, ‘Ferdinando Gonzaga’, 1996, p. 242; on the fragmentary portrait, see Artoni, ‘Dalla bottega all’altare’, 2017, pp. 94–95, fig. 15; Bazzotti, ‘La pala della Trinità di Rubens’, 2017, pp. 101–111. A Portrait of Ferdinando as a Cardinal by an anonymus master is in Bologna, Zambeccari Collection. 79 Morselli, ‘Il fior delle pitture’, 2002, pp. 80–81; Lapenta, Gonzaga, 2002, pp. 173–174, no. 6, fig. 6. 80 His father Enea had renounced the feud of Sassuolo in exchange for compensation and the right to add the name of the Savoy to his own; Ceccarelli, ‘Pio, Carlo Emanuele’, 2015, p. 85. 81 Ibid.

169

170

Alessandra Pattanaro

Fig. 6.8 Carolus Emanuel […] car. Pius (in Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, Effigies cum insignibus, nominibus, cognominibus, patria, titulis et nuncupationes Reverendissimorum Dominorum S.R.E. Cardinalium nunc viventium) (© Alamy).

Role Playing 

portraits of Carlo Emanuele Pio, such as that appearing in the Effigies (Fig. 6.8),82 his identification seems highly plausible. Another prelate, not named by Ridolf i, but who might also number among those depicted for his diplomatic actions in the issue of the interdict, is Scipione Caffarelli Borghese (1576–1633), nephew of Paul V. He was appointed cardinal in 1605 at the age of 29, and in 1607 he was 31 years old.83 After the election of his uncle to the papacy, as a sign of friendship Venice honoured Scipione, then serving as the pope’s secretary of state, by granting him patrician status.84 The position of Cardinal Borghese was always clearly pro-Spanish, and he strongly advocated the return of the Jesuits; but he was also a promoter of a peaceful settlement between Venice and the papacy, as the satisfaction expressed in his letters sent to the Duke of Savoy at the end of the dispute demonstrates.85 Once the interdict crisis was over, his presence among the cardinals attending Honorius III Approving the Rule in the sacristy of the Venetian church might have been intended to demonstrate a conciliatory attitude towards the papacy and to corroborate visually the agreement that had been reached. Scipione’s appearance as a young cardinal is known through a portrait by Ottavio Leoni, in Ajaccio, Musée Fesch (Fig. 6.9).86 His features in this image recall that of a cardinal in profile in the group on the far right in Leandro’s canvas: about 30 years old, this figure has a dark complexion, a large nose, full lips, a thin beard, and goatee. This likeness is also compatible with Scipione’s appearance at the age of 56, with fatter profile, in Bernini’s famous busts of 1632 in the Galleria Borghese (fig. 1.4).87 One might have supposed that the powerful Dominican cardinal, Girolamo Bernerio (1540–1611), nominated to the cardinalate in 1586 and 67 years old in 1607, would have been a likely candidate for inclusion. However, given that he visited Venice before the time of the interdict, in 1596, he may not have been considered instrumental in its resolution and therefore did not warrant representation in Honorius III Approving the Rule. The master general of the Dominican order, Agostino Galamini, should be excluded as a possible candidate, as he became cardinal in 1611, while Jeronimo Xavierre, another Dominican still alive, grand master of the order and cardinal in 1607, never seems to have come to Rome to collect the red hat and died the following year. 82 A portrait of Cardinal Carlo Emanuele Pio attributed to Ottavio Leoni (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, KdZ 17102) must be the model for his portrait in the Effigies; see Primarosa, Ottavio Leoni, 2017, pp. 106, no. 68, figs. 68, 68.I, 68.II; see also ch. 11.3. 83 For his diplomatic actions, see Pirri, L’Interdetto di Venezia, 1959, pp. 338–339. 84 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, p. 347. 85 De Magistris, Carlo Emanuele I, 1906, pp. 474–475, 7 April 1607, no. 199. 86 Primarosa, Ottavio Leoni, 2017, pp. 135–136, no. 27, fig. 53. 87 Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1955, p. 194, no. 31, plates 52, 53, fig. 34.

171

172

Alessandra Pattanaro

Fig. 6.9 Ottavio Leoni, Portrait of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, oil on canvas, Ajaccio, Musée Fesch (© RMNGrand Palais (Palais Fesch, Musée des Beaux-Arts)).

We do not know if the company organized in the Dominican sacristy satisfied all the parties that had been involved in the negotiations. With regard to this question, a letter sent to the Duke of Savoy after the revocation of the interdict supplies important evidence. In this missive, the duke’s ambassador Antonio Provana refers to the Venetian Senate’s decision not to celebrate the lifting of the interdict as a victory, thereby implying that the pope’s decision was made out of obligation to the Venetians. Joyeuse was annoyed by the course of events in the days following the revocation, especially the government’s order to the Canons of the Patriarch that no one should wear the surplice, meet or serve the cardinals, or offer any signs of gratitude for the revocation. The Venetian authorities in turn grew irritated by the fact that the Mass celebrated by Cardinal de Joyeuse in recognition of the successful conclusion was attended by a great number of people; they therefore requested that the cardinal refrain from celebrating other Masses.88 Joyeuse was 88 Cardinal de Joyeuse ‘resta malissimo soddisfatto che questi Signori ordinassero alli Canonici della Patriarcale di questa Città, quando sabbato passato ando a levar l’interdetto, che non solo non si trovassero

Role Playing 

also frustrated by the continuous publications of slanderous theological writings against the Jesuits after the lifting of the interdict,89 as well as by the prohibition to give papal absolution to some ‘disobedient’ priests who continued to celebrate liturgical functions during the interdict.90 Joyeuse had planned to prolong his sojourn, renting a villa near Padua, but in the end decided to leave Venice sooner rather than later.91 The attitude of the Senate had consequences: no clamour was made about the episode silently narrated in the sacristy; no one wondered why so many cardinals had been summoned to Honorius III Approving the Rule in the Venetian sacristy; and, although the evidence of his portrait remains, the historical sources would soon forget Cardinal Dolfin’s presence in the canvas, which offers a visual record of his role as one of the main protagonists in the War of the Interdict. There is no documentary evidence of Dolfin’s involvement in the commission of Honorius III Approving the Rule; the only likely implication is a moderate gesture of gratitude to the Dominican preachers in his wills drawn up in 1610, 1612, and 1620, in which the hospital of Santi Giovanni e Paolo is given a one-time payment of 50 ducats. However, in a codicil to his final will of 1621, every important donation was conveyed to the Camaldolese monks of San Michele in Isola, where the cardinal had planned his funeral monument and was ultimately buried.92 Nevertheless, the portrayal of Dolfin and his fellow diplomatic negotiators in Leandro’s painting attests to the important documentary function that cardinal portraiture could assume, as well as the way in which cardinals’ images could be used at once to appropriate and define historical reality. For the Venetian Dominicans, the opportunity to celebrate their order’s most important historical moment in terms of the recent events surrounding the War of the Interdict provided a means to offer visual proof of their impact and relevance to society over the course of centuries.

vestiti con cotta, non lo incontrassero né lo servissero, ma che nel suo arrivo e mentre diceva Messa vi fossero in Chiesa molte Messe più del solito, et che anco non habbino fatto alcun segno di allegrezza, anzi proibito al popolo di farla per dar da intendere che per obligo sia il Papa condesceso a fare quello che ha fatto’; De Magistris, Carlo Emanuele I, 1906, p. 499, no. 213, letter of Antonio Provana to the Duke of Savoy, 28 April 1607. 89 ‘S’accresce il disgusto al Sig.r Cardinale col vedere che nonostante la conclusione dell’accordo si siano lasciato uscire di questa settimana doi altri libri più maldicenti delli altri [against the Pope and the Jesuits]’; ibid. 90 ‘Il Sig.r Cardinale […], per l’autorità havuta dal papa, ha assolto dieci Sacerdoti […] contuttociò hanno questi Signori fatto intendere […] che sotto pena della vita non assolvessero, pretendendo tuttavia che non siano incorsi in scomunica […]’; ibid., p. 500, no. 213, letter of Antonio Provana to the Duke of Savoia, 28 April 1607. 91 Joyeuse was still in Venice on 19 May 1607; ibid., pp. 511–513, no. 222, letter of the Cardinal Borghese to the Ambassador of Savoy, 19 May 1607. 92 Simonelli, ‘Appendice documentaria’, 2014, pp. 524, 526, 527, 529, 532.

173

174

Alessandra Pattanaro

Bibliography Alberton Vinco da Sesso, Livia, ‘Dal Ponte, Leandro, detto Bassano’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani, 1968), pp. 188–192. Ambassades et negotiations de l’illustrissime et reverendissime Cardinal Du Perron (Paris: Pierre Chaudiere, 1620). Arslan, Edouardo, I Bassano, 2 vols. (Milan: Ceschina, 1960). Artale, Alessandra, ‘Un bozzetto di Leandro Bassano riaffiorato dalla campagna inglese’, in Un’identità: custodi dell’arte e della memoria; studi, interpretazioni, testimonianze in ricordo di Aldo Rizzi, ed. by Giuseppe Maria Pilo, Laura de Rossi, and Isabelle Reale, Arte Documento: Quaderni 12 (Mariano del Friuli: Edizioni della Laguna, 2007), pp. 249–252. Artoni, Paola, ‘Dalla bottega all’altare: le analisi non invasive raccontano la genesi della Pala della Trinità di Rubens’, in La Pala della Trinità di Pieter Paul Rubens, proceedings of a conference, Mantova, 12 October 2016 (Mantua: Universitas Studiorum, 2017), pp. 79–99. Attardi, Luisa, ‘Leandro Dal Ponte […] 136: ritratto di Alvise Corradini’, in Da Bellini a Tintoretto: dipinti dei Musei Civici di Padova dalla metà del Quattrocento ai primi del Seicento, ed. by Alessandro Ballarin and Davide Banzato (Rome: Edizione de Luca, 1991), pp. 218–219, no. 136. Banzato, Davide, ‘Un ritratto inedito di Leandro Bassano’, Bollettino del Museo civico di Padova 72 (1983): 107–111. Barbolani di Montauto, Novella, ‘Pagani, Gregorio’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 80 (Rome: Treccani, 2014), p. 231, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ gregorio-pagani_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Bassotto Guasso, Alessandra, ‘Leandro Dal Ponte: vita ed opere’, L’Illustre Bassanese 15 (1992): 287–296. Bazzotti, Ugo, ‘La pala della Trinità di Rubens: vicende di un risarcimento virtuale’, in La Pala della Trinità di Pieter Paul Rubens, proceedings of a conference, Mantua, 12 October 2016 (Mantua: Universitas Studiorum, 2017), pp. 101–111. Benzoni, Gino, ‘Dolfin, Giovanni’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 40 (Rome: Treccani, 1991), pp. 519–532, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-dolfin_%28DizionarioBiografico%29/. ———, ‘Ferdinando Gonzaga, duca di Mantova e di Monferrato’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 46 (Rome: Treccani, 1996), pp. 242–252, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ ferdinando-gonzaga-duca-di-mantova-e-dei-monferrato_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Bonanni, Filippo, La Gerarchia ecclesiastica considerata nelle vesti sagre, e civili usate da quelli, li quali la compongono […] ( Rome: Stamperia Giorgio Placho, 1720). Bouwsma, William J., Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). Bragaglia Venuti, Cristina, ‘I volti dei cardinali veneziani del Cinquecento: forme e storia di una tradizione iconografica’, in I cardinali della Serenissima: arte e committenza tra

Role Playing 

Venezia e Roma (1523–1605), ed. by Cristina Furlan and Patrizia Tosini (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014), pp. 163–184. Burigny, Jean Lévesque de, Vie du Cardinal Duperron, archevêque de Sens, & grand-aumônier de France (Paris: De Bure Père, 1768). Brunelli, Giampiero, ‘Ginnasi, Domenico’, in Dizionario Biograf ico degli Italiani, vol.  55 (Rome: Treccani, 2001), pp.  23–26, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ domenico-ginnasi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Cappelletti, Giuseppe, I Gesuiti e la Repubblica di Venezia: documenti diplomatici sulle male azioni dei gesuiti contro la Repubblica raccolti per decreto del senato (14 giugno 1606) (Venice: Grimaldo, 1873). Cardella, Lorenzo, Memorie storiche de’ cardinali della Santa Romana Chiesa, 9 vols. (Rome: Stamperia Pagliarini, 1793). Castronovo, Valerio, ‘Borghese Caffarelli, Scipione’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 12 (Rome: Treccani, 1970), pp. 620–624, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ scipione-borghese-caffarelli_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Ceccarelli, Alessia, ‘Pio, Carlo Emanuele’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 84 (Rome: Treccani, 2015), pp. 85–87, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/carlo-emanuelepio_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Chacón, Alfonso, Vitae, et res gestae pontificum romanorum et S.R.E. Cardinalium ab initio nascentis Ecclesiae usque ad Clementem 9.P.O.M. […] (Rome: Philippi et Antonii De Rubeis, 1677). Chambers, David and Brian Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History, 1450–1630 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). Choné, Paulette, ‘Jacques Bellange et son fils Henri: nouveaux documents’, Le Pays Lorrain 71.2 (1990): 71–90. Cozzi, Gaetano, ‘Contarini, Nicolò’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 28 (Rome: Treccani, 1983), pp. 247–255, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/nicolo-contarini_%28DizionarioBiografico%29/. Cozzi, Gaetano and Luisa Cozzi, ‘Paolo Sarpi’, in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 4.3: Il Seicento (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1984), pp. 1–36. Cozzo, Paolo, ‘Savoia, Maurizio di’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 91 (Rome: Treccani, 2018), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/maurizio-di-savoia_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Curti, Rocco, Cronaca della chiesa e del convento dei padri Predicatori dei santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venezia, Venice, Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana, eighteenth century, MS 1305. De Crescenzo, Simona and Alfredo Diotallevi, Le ‘Effigies nomina et cognomina s.r.e. cardinalium’ nella biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Rome: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2008). De Magistris, Carlo, Carlo Emanuele I e la contesa fra la repubblica veneta e Paolo V (1605–1607): documenti, Miscellanea di Storia Veneta, 2nd ser., vol. 10 (Venice: Visentini, 1906). De Vivo, Filippo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford: University Press, 2007).

175

176

Alessandra Pattanaro

Du Perron, Jacques Davy, Les diverses oeuvres de l’illustrissime cardinal Du Perron […] (Paris: Antoine Asteine, 1622). Eberhard, Johann August, Storia delle controversie tra Papa Paolo V e la Repubblica di Venezia (1784), trans. by Hagar Spano, in La teologia politica in discussione, ed. by Sergio Sorrentino and Hagar Spano (Naples: Fridericiana Editrice Universitaria, 2012), pp. 209–222. Enciso Alonso Muñumer, Isable, Nobleza, poder y mecenazgo en tiempo de Felipe III: Napoles y el conde de Lemos (Madrid: Actas Editorial, 2007). Fasano Guarini, Elena, ‘Aldobrandini, Pietro’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 2 (Rome: Treccani, 1960), pp. 107–114, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/pietro-aldobrandini_(Dizionario-Biograf ico)/#:~:text=ALDOBRANDINI%2C%20Pietro.,guida%20 diretta%20di%20Filippo%20Neri.. Favarò, Valentina, Carriere in movimento: Francisco Ruiz de Castro e la monarchia di Filippo III (Palermo: Mediterranea, 2013). Firpo, Massimo, Storie di immagini, immagini di storia: studi di iconografia cinquecentesca, Storia e Letteratura: Raccolta di Studi e Testi 262 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2010). Francescutti, Elisabetta and Francesca Frucco, ‘Le sepulture e le “memorie” funebri a Venezia e nel dominio di terraferma’, in I cardinali della Serenissima: arte e committenza tra Venezia e Roma (1523–1605), ed. by Cristina Furlan and Patrizia Tosini (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014), pp. 211–241. Franzoni, Claudio, ‘Il cardinal Bernieri a Venezia e un ritratto di Arminio Zuccato’, Prospettiva 63 (1991): 78–80. Furlan, Cristina and Patrizia Tosini, eds., I cardinali della Serenissima: arte e committenza tra Venezia e Roma (1523–1605) (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014). Gallo, Marco, Orazio Borgianni pittore romano (1574–1616) e Francisco de Castro, conte di Castro (Rome: UNI, 1997). Giordano, Silvana, ‘Paolo V, papa’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 81 (Rome: Treccani, 2014), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/papa-paolo-v_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Gullino, Giuseppe, ‘Un pantheon ducale’, in La Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo: pantheon della Serenissima, ed. by Giuseppe Pavanello (Venice: Marcianum Press, in collaboration with Fondazione Giorgio Cini Onlus, 2012), pp. 15–18. Hochmann, Michel, ‘Peintres et commanditaires à Venise (1540–1628)’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 155 (1992): 293–302. Hollingsworth, Mary, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte, eds., A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019). Jones, Pamela M., Federico Borromeo and the l’Ambrosiana: Art Patronage and the Reform in Seventeenth-Century Milan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Italian ed. (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1997). Lapenta, Stefania, Gonzaga: la celeste Galleria; le raccolte, ed. by R. Morselli (Milan: Skira, 2002).

Role Playing 

Lavin, Irving, ‘Five New Youthful Sculptures by Gianlorenzo Bernini and a Revised Chronology of his Early Works’, Art Bulletin 50.3 (1968): 223–248. Livan, Lina, ed., Notizie d’arte tratte dai notatori e dagli annali di N.H. Pietro Gradenigo (Venice: La Reale Deuptazione Editrice, 1942). Mancini, Vincenzo, ‘Sacrestia’, in La Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo: pantheon della Serenissima, ed. by Giuseppe Pavanello (Venice: Marcianum Press, in collaboration with Fondazione Giorgio Cini Onlus, 2012), pp. 346–351. ———, ‘Strategie abitative dei cardinali nella Venezia cinquecentesca e nella terraferma veneta’, in I cardinali della Serenissima: arte e committenza tra Venezia e Roma (1523–1605), ed. by Cristina Furlan and Patrizia Tosini (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014), pp. 185–209. Manno, Antonio and Sandro Sponza, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo: arte e decorazione, Venezia dal Museo alla Città 11 (Venice: Marsilio, 1995). Massimi, M. Elena, La Cena in casa di Levi di Paolo Veronese: il processo riaperto (Venice: Marsilio, 2011). Mirroneau, Paul and Claude Menges, Dessins du musée national du château de Pau (Paris: Reaunion des Musées Nationaux, 2007). Moretti, Lino, Per una monografia sulla basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Quaderni della Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici di Venezia 20 (Venice: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, 1996). Morselli, Raffaella, ‘Il fior delle pitture … dei primi Pittori del mondo’, in Gonzaga: la celeste Galleria; le raccolte, ed. by Raffaella Morselli (Milan: Skira, 2002), pp. 41–87. Parrino, Domenico Antonio, Del teatro eroico, e politico de’ governi de’ Vicerè di Napoli, bk. 3 (Naples: Del Parrino e del Mutii, 1692). Pattanaro, Alessandra, ‘Papa Onorio III approva la regola dei domenicani’, in La basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo: pantheon della Serenissima, ed. by Giuseppe Pavanello (Venice: Marcianum Press, in collaboration with Fondazione Giorgio Cini Onlus, 2012), pp. 361–364. ———, ‘Per Leandro Bassano e i domenicani veneziani: un bilancio e un nuovo ritratto’, Arte Veneta 75 (2018): 78–103. Pavanello, Giuseppe, ed., La basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo: pantheon della Serenissima (Venice: Marcianum Press, in collaboration with Fondazione Giorgio Cini Onlus, 2012). ———, ‘L’Ultima Cena (Convito in casa di Levi) di Paolo Veronese’, in La basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo: pantheon della Serenissima, ed. by Giuseppe Pavanello (Venice: Marcianum Press, in collaboration with Fondazione Giorgio Cini Onlus, 2012), pp. 490–491. Pirri, Pietro, L’Interdetto di Venezia del 1606 e i gesuiti: silloge di documenti con introduzione (Rome: Institutum Historicum, 1959). Primarosa, Yuri, Ottavio Leoni (1578–1630): eccellente miniator di ritratti; catalogo ragionato dei disegni e dei dipinti (Rome: Ugo Bozzi editore, 2017). Putelli, Raffaello, ‘Il duca Vincenzo I Gonzaga e l’interdetto di Paolo V a Venezia’, Nuovo Archivio Veneto, n.s., 11.21–22 (1911): 5–280.

177

178

Alessandra Pattanaro

Ridolfi, Carlo, Le Maraviglie dell’arte: overo le vite de gl’illustri pittori veneti, e dello stato, 2 vols. (Venice: Giovan Battista Sgava, 1648). Sarpi, Paolo, Istoria dell’Interdetto, ed. by Corrado Pin (Conselve: Think ADV, 2006). Simonelli, Fabio, ‘Appendice documentaria’, in I cardinali della Serenissima: arte e committenza tra Venezia e Roma (1523–1605), ed. by Caterina Furlan and Patrizia Tosini (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2014), pp. 465–560. Terzaghi, Maria Cristina, Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci Guido Reni tra le ricevute del banco Herrera & Costa (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschnaeider, 2007). Urbani, U., Emortuale fratrum Conventui SS. Jo e Pauli ab anno 1500 usque 1739, ovvero Catalogo di tutti li Religiosi, così Sacerdoti, come Chierici, e Conversi defonti nel Convento di SS. Gio. e Paolo di Venetia: in qual tempo, di qual età, ed infermità siano morti: con li loro gradi, dignità, officii et c. dall’Anno 1500, Venice, Biblioteca Museo Correr, cod. Cicogna 822. Wittkower, Rudolf, Gian Lorenzo Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque (London: Phaidon Press, 1955). Zava Boccazzi, Franca, La Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venezia (Venezia: F. Ongania, 1965).

About the Author Alessandra Pattanaro is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Padua. She has published extensively on Ferrarese artists including Garofalo, the Dossi, and Girolamo da Carpi. She has also worked on Venetian painting in the context of Tridentine Iconography and recently published ‘Per Leandro Bassano e i domenicani: un bilancio e un nuovo ritratto’ (Arte Veneta, 2018).

7.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules Philippa Jackson

Abstract Renaissance cardinals proclaimed their status in various ways. When riding, particularly when accompanying the pope or royalty, cardinals preferred to ride on a mule. This essay examines the social, legal, and ceremonial issues surrounding cardinals’ use of mules as a sign of humility, while they simultaneously spent large sums on obtaining and equipping these animals. The grand ceremonial tack for formal processions was essential to the cohesive image that the Sacred College tried to project in public ritual. The examination of images of cardinals on mules, historical accounts in diaries and letters, as well as entries in account books, indicates the importance of the dual image of humility and magnificence portrayed by pontifical mules. Keywords: pontifical mules; Catholic ritual; cardinals; Charles V; Cardinal Wolsey

Ritual Mules Renaissance cardinals proclaimed their social and religious status in myriad ways, particularly by their dress, their palaces, and their participation in public ceremonies. Processions were of great importance: when riding on formal occasions, especially when accompanying the pope or royalty, a Renaissance cardinal’s preference was invariably to ride on a grandly attired mule. Their use of mules has not been the subject of detailed research despite an interest in rituals surrounding cardinals’ processions from the contemporary accounts of papal masters of ceremonies to modern studies of urban ritual.1 This clerical grandeur occurred despite longI would like to thank Piers Baker-Bates, Irene Brooke, Kate Lowe, Nicoletta Marcelli, Kathleen Wren Christian, Johannes Röll, and especially Sarah Duncan and the members of MULAS for their help with this article. 1 Burchard, Liber Notarum, 1910; Cancellieri, Storia de’ solenni possessi, 1802; Cruciani, Teatro nel Rinascimento, 1983; Kalous, ‘Through the Gates and the Streets of the City’, 2017; Fosi, ‘Court and City in the Ceremony of the Possesso’, 2002; Nuti, ‘Re-moulding the City: The Roman Possessi’, 2015.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch07

182

Philippa Jack son

standing criticisms of elegant horse trappings such as that by Bernard of Clairvaux in 1127 in a letter to Henry Sanglier on the conduct and office of bishops.2 A mule is the sterile offspring of a female horse (mare) and a male donkey (jack), ideally combining the elegance, colour, and larger size of its mother with the stoutness and strength of its father. A simple animal, far less imposing than a horse. Yet the desire to combine humility and honour and to signal their exalted status led Renaissance cardinals to spend large sums of money on obtaining, maintaining, and in particular equipping these sturdy steeds. Their equestrian ornamentation included saddles, elaborate bridles, and finely wrought trappings, often covered in crimson velvet, sometimes adorned with elaborate silk tassels and expensive gilded studs. Saddlecloths and saddle covers could be decorated with elaborate embroidery and on occasion their owner’s coats of arms. An examination of a selection of images, historical accounts, and documentary evidence, gives credence to the importance of the mule in creating the complex combination of religious humility and princely magnificence portrayed by Renaissance cardinals.3 The images of these mules with their elite owners also projected a group portrait to the populace, a unified public image of the Sacred College of Cardinals, the princely senators of the Church.

Packmules and Transport Mules Mules were the most common beasts of burden and the major means of land transport of goods in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. As they were larger than donkeys but had strong muscles enabling them to carry heavy burdens, they were used for the transport not only of heavy loads such as grain and wood, but all other types of merchandise including precious objects such as paintings. 4 The problem of transporting larger antiquities was acute, as is made clear in a letter of 22 March 1526 from Francesco Gonzaga in Rome to Marquess Federico Gonzaga regarding the choice of antiques to be given by Giulio Romano to the marquess. The choice seems to have been dictated by those items which were easily transportable: ‘those things that are carried by mules […] the truth is that the most beautiful items are so large that it will be impossible to send them other

2 Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 2014, pp. 222–223. 3 Ertl, Pompa sacra, 2010. 4 See the letter of Nino Sernini to Ferrante Gonzaga about the concerns over transporting Sebastiano del Piombo’s Pietà from Rome to Spain in Baker-Bates, ‘Painting “Little Less than Eternal”’, 2017, p. 82. The use of mules for transport in antiquity continued in later periods; see Furlotti, Antiquities in Motion, 2019, p. 221.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

than by water’.5 In the case of smaller objects such as paintings these could be sent overland: on 1 January 1521 Baldassare Castiglione wrote ‘I have sent my mule to Mantua with a painting of Our Lady, another picture and a small marble figure’.6 Mules were useful for transporting all types of personal luggage. Ambassadors were routinely provided with them along with clothes, servants, and horses – and for giving a safe ride to those wearing elaborate and heavy clothing, in particular clerics and women. The different types of ‘transport mules’ can clearly be seen from Francesco Filelfo’s letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1472: he states that he had asked Count Federico of Montefeltro for help in the provision of horses as well as three mules with panniers and four pack mules.7 The importance of these animals in ferrying goods and in trade relationships can also be seen in the vast diplomatic correspondence of Italian city states. Renaissance governments and powerful individuals were often asked to intercede for the return of mules and the goods they carried, which had been, or so it was commonly claimed, unlawfully detained by foreign individuals or governments.8 When a churchman’s mules were involved, powerful clerics were often requested to intervene with secular authorities in order to ensure their safe retrieval. On 13 November 1491, the government of Siena received a letter from Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini complaining not only about ecclesiastical taxation, but also the confiscation of the Bishop of Pienza’s mule.9 The latter was clearly returned immediately as the bishop’s letter of thanks to the Sienese authorities appears in the archival record just three days later.10

Pontifical Mules Although this practical use of mules is a subject worthy of further investigation, this article will consider instead those privileged enough to carry the pope or cardinals, 5 Luzio ‘Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma’, 1908, p. 368: ‘quelle cose, che sono portatile per mulli […] vero è che le cose più belle sono tante grande, che impossibile saria mandarle altramente che per aqua’. 6 ‘Ho inviato el mio mulo a Mantua con un quadro de una Nostra Donna, et un’altro quadro et una figuretta di marmo’; Shearman, Raphael, 2003, vol. 1, p. 668; for mule transportation of Raphael’s portrait of Leo X and two cardinals, see pp. 797–798. 7 Filelfo, Corrispondenza, I, 2019; I would like to thank Nicoletta Marcelli for drawing my attention to this letter. 8 See the Ten of Balia of Florence’s letter of 2 September 1497 to the Balia of Siena about Antonio de Monte Lupo, whose two mules were taken from him at the Camollia gate as well as two others belonging to Giovanni da Prato and Baccio di Lorenzo da Prato; ASS, Balia, 559, 25. 9 ASS, Balia, 548, 21, 13 November 1491. 10 Ibid., 22, 16 November 1491.

183

184

Philippa Jack son

Fig. 7.1 Pisanello, Mule, Paris, Musée du Louvre (© RMN–Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Michéle Bellot).

the aptly named ‘pontifical mules’. (Fig. 7.1) The association of popes and cardinals with these animals was long-standing by the time of the Renaissance, although the origins for this are less clear. The Old Testament makes various allusions to them, in particular in references to King David and his son Solomon riding on mules.11 In the New Testament, Christ famously entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, an animal often associated or confused with a mule, an event recorded in celebrations on Palm Sunday. The pope, Christ’s vicar on earth, commonly rode on a white mule, notably during the possesso, the ceremonial procession when the pope took formal possession of his episcopal church in Rome, the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, shortly after attaining the papal tiara.12 Mules were also used by papal legates, who represented the pope outside Rome, for formal diplomatic entries, as occurred in 1449 when Girolamo Lando entered Wrocław. The correspondence relating to the return of this mule to Rome by a clerical friend of the legate indicates that it had a particular value far beyond that of a simple beast of burden.13 Mules used for such 11 Kings 1:33, 1:38. 12 Fosi, ‘Court and City in the Ceremony of the Possesso’, 2002, 13 Kalous, ‘Through the Gates and the Streets of the City’, 2017.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

processional display were costly and seen as suitable gifts by and for high-ranking individuals: on 16 February 1526, the Queen Regent of France, Louise of Savoy, wrote a letter about the need to thank Cardinal Wolsey, King Henry VIII’s chief courtier and adviser, for his diplomatic endeavours. She wrote that she had sent four mules over from France, two each, as a gift to the King of England and to the cardinal.14 This present was, of course, particularly appreciated by Wolsey who wrote in high praise of the animals to the British ambassadors in France, John Taylor and Sir Thomas Cheyne, requesting them to thank the Queen Regent on both his and the king’s behalf. His fulsome letter describes the mules of the king as ‘fair, goodly and well trained beasts’ and their tack as rich and very fashionable; his own two animals were equally impressive, worthy of being sent to the pope.15 Fashion in the attiring of mules is, without further research, rather difficult to analyse, but it is clear that when making such prestigious gifts, a mule’s saddle, bridle, and other items of decoration, its ‘ceremonial tack’, were a vital component.

The Possesso and Formal Entries Both horses and mules are discussed in connection with the participation of cardinals in the possesso of Pope Julius II, an event which took place on 5 December 1503.16 The ceremony involved a public procession through the streets of Rome where for the first time the general populace greeted their new spiritual ruler. The combative new pope had strong views on the ceremonies of both his coronation and his possesso and decreed in relation to the cardinals who accompanied him to the Lateran ‘that the saddle covers of the horses and mules of the cardinals should be of white taffeta’.17 The increasing importance of the latter in honourable transportation applied to other precious religious objects as well. The master of ceremonies, Johannes Burchard, criticized the Romans who took part in Pope Julius’s possesso: not only were they badly dressed but worse still they had carried the Eucharist ‘from St. Peter’s without a mule’, a blatant sign of a lack of respect.18 Pope Leo X’s possesso, held on 11 April 1513, was even more magnif icent than that of his predecessor, in keeping with the Medici family interest in

14 L&P, vol. 4.1, no. 1982. 15 Ibid., no. 2197. 16 Cancellieri, Storia de’ solenni possessi, 1802, pp. 55–60, esp. p. 56; Burchard, Liber Notarum, 1910, vol. 2, pp. 308–309; Fosi, ‘Court and City in the Ceremony of the Possesso’, 2002, p. 40. 17 ‘quod coperte equorum et mularum cardinalium sint de taffeta albo’; Burchard, Liber Notarum, 1910, vol. 2, p. 412; Cancellieri, Storia de’ solenni possessi, 1802, p. 56. 18 ‘de Sancto Petro sine mula’; Burchard, Liber Notarum, 1910, vol. 2, p. 419.

185

186

Philippa Jack son

extravagant display, although the pope himself chose to ride a white horse.19 A detailed discussion of the importance of mules and their appearance occurs in connection with this possesso where Burchard discussed why mules should be adorned with white fabric, in reply to a question as to which was a preferable mount for the cardinals during the ritual, a horse or a mule. 20 The latter was deemed preferable by the master of ceremonies but he stated that in earlier times horses rather than mules had been used, and this seems to be borne out by earlier documents: the colour white for use by cardinals in procession on horseback was referred to much earlier in the late thirteenth-century ordinal of Pope Gregory X which states ‘whosoever cardinal and prelate should ride a horse covered in white fabric’. 21 The increasing concern for ritual at the papal court can be seen particularly from the Liber Caeremoniarum of Agostino Patrizi Piccolomini of 1488, which was f irst published with a dedication to Leo X by Cristoforo Marcello in 1516. 22 There are many references to horses and processions particularly in the f irst book, section 12, which begins with the Ordo quomodo Papa equitat in pontificalibus (the rules governing how the pope should ride in pontif ical dress). The Medici magnificence shown in that possesso was also clearly notable during the entrance of Pope Leo X into his home city of Florence on 30 November 1515, a moment when his papal position could be used to glorify his family.23 There are various accounts describing the extravagant display of wealth and power reflecting the impact that this event had on contemporaries.24 Francesco Chiericati’s description is very detailed in relation to all aspects of this ceremony and he states that the papal entry began with ‘80 pontifical mules attired with red saddlecloths with garlands in the middle with the papal arms’.25 Later on in the procession there were three even more resplendent mules following the white tribute horses all adorned with gold brocade: ‘then 11 white tribute horses followed with saddlecovers and ceremonial tack of brocade and gold embroidery. And then three mules attired in 19 For Leo’s possesso see Cruciani, Teatro nel Rinascimento, 1983, pp. 386–405; Cancellieri, Storia de’ solenni possessi, 1802, pp. 61–84, and for his choice of white horse on which he was captured at the battle of Ravenna, p. 62. 20 Cancellieri, Storia de’ solenni possessi, 1802, pp. 61–62. 21 Van Dijk and Hazelden Walker, Ordinal of the Papal Court, 1975, p. 543; ‘quilibet cardinalis et prelatus equitat equum coopertum panno albo’. 22 Dykmans, L’Oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini, 1980–1982. 23 See the classic study of John Shearman, ‘Florentine “Entrata” of Leo X’, 1975; see also Ingendaay Rodio, ‘La Visita a Firenze’, 1991; Ciseri, L’Ingresso trionfale, 1990; Ciseri, ‘Con tanto grandissimo e trionfante onore’, 2013. 24 Shearman, ‘Florentine “Entrata” of Leo X’, 1975, p. 136, n. 2. 25 Ibid., p. 150: ‘prima .lxxx. mulli del papa con le coperte rosate con li festoni in mezo con l’arma del papa’.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

similar fashion’.26 The main focus of the whole event was of course the Medici pope: Chiericati, who was an apostolic notary and a curial insider, noted that he rode into the city mounted on a mule while bestowing blessings on the populace.27 This magnificent event was recorded many decades later in the decoration of the Room of Leo X in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence by Giorgio Vasari.28 Leo X’s attention to his status and love of display are well known. It extended to the clothing of his mules from the earliest part of his reign, which can be seen from a payment recorded in his personal account book on 20 July 1513 for nine mule blankets in red cloth embroidered with the papal coats of arms, which cost the considerable sum of 54 ducats.29

Mules: Clerical Law and Custom The most precise instructions regarding clerical attire prior to the Renaissance (including provisions for riding) appears in Canon 16 of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which decreed that the clergy should wear garments closed in the front and free from extravagance.30 It was also declared that clerics should not have bridles, saddles, breastplates, or spurs that were gilded or displayed any other superfluous ornamentation. Apart from clerical legislation and orders, various writers commented on what was suitable ecclesiastical attire and transport, which altered over the centuries. Martino Garati of Lodi writing about cardinal attire in the mid-fifteenth century stated that, excepting papal legates or those with special dispensation, cardinals were forbidden to wear white or red clothing or gold spurs, which were a papal prerogative.31 Pius II in his Commentaries wrote about criticisms of the clergy for their ostentation and luxury, which included resentment of their riding on the fattest mules.32 By the early sixteenth century, however, crimson was the dominant colour for cardinals’ attire and pontifical mules were ubiquitous in cardinals’ stables. The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517) made very little concrete progress on reforming the church, but provisions were passed in the ninth session which 26 Ibid.: ‘Seguiano poi .ix. Achinee bianche, con le coperte, et fornimenti soi di Broccato et recamate d’oro. Et poi tre mulle guarniti gli medemo modo’. 27 Ibid., p. 152. Leo had also ridden a mule for his first formal entry into the city of Florence as a cardinal in 1492; Ciseri, ‘10 marzo 1492’, 2013, p. 99. 28 Cecchi, ‘Leone X a Firenze’, 2013 pp. 251–257. 29 Rogers Mariotti, ‘Selections from a Ledger of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici’, 2001–2002, p. 119. 30 Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 2014, p. 37. 31 C. Richardson, Reclaiming Rome, 2009, p. 122. 32 Ibid.

187

188

Philippa Jack son

included an attempt to prevent sumptuous display by members of the clergy with the bull Supernae dispositionis arbitrio (5 May 1514).33 Clerics holding benef ices and those in holy orders were clearly instructed not to pay special attention to their hair and beards, nor to possess mules or horses with trappings and ornaments of velvet or silk. Simple cloth or leather was to be used for their animals. The reality, of course, was that mules were a perfect way for cardinals to portray their would-be humble status to the ordinary public viewer, while simultaneously providing a most ostentatious and steady form of transport. Their saddles and bridles were normally covered with red velvet (a colour in keeping with the crimson hats of cardinals), with elaborate gilded embellishments. This is clearly shown in images of cardinals on mules, most spectacularly in the fresco in the Room of Heliodorus in the Vatican palace (Plate 4). The fresco depicting the meeting of Attila with Pope Leo the Great contains on the left an image of the pope, whose physiognomy reflects that of the contemporaneous Pope Leo X .34 He is portrayed in grand vestments wearing a papal tiara, seated on a large white horse, accompanied by two cardinals, both in formal robes wearing their red hats, and riding their mules, both of which are festooned with red velvet and gilded ceremonial tack. Two walls of this room were frescoed earlier by Raphael under the pontif icate of Pope Julius II, and the artist sketched various previous plans including one of the pope on his sedia gestatoria,but it appears that Leo X requested alterations to the composition.35 The white horse, according to the master of ceremonies, Paris de Grassis, was the one upon which Leo X had been taken prisoner after the Battle of Ravenna in 1512, a horse which the pope wanted to ride during his possesso on 11 April 1513.36 The ceremonial tack of the two mules shown in the fresco was as magnif icent as that of the pope’s horse37.

The Mule as Symbol of the College of Cardinals The symbol of a cardinal was often that of his galero, his wide-brimmed red hat with tassels, yet the Renaissance period saw the use of the mule too, not only as an individual symbol, but more importantly as representative of the authority of the whole College of Cardinals. This is particularly shown by various processions 33 Tanner, ed., Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta,1990, 1, pp. 614–625. 34 Di Teodoro, ‘I ritratti di papa Leone X’, 2013, pp. 207–209. 35 Zuccari, ‘Raffaello e I suoi allievi’, 2016, vol. 1, p. 83. 36 Rubello, ‘Leone X (1513–1521)’, 2013, p. 172. 37 The cardinals have been tentatively identified as Sigismondo Gonzaga and Alfonso Petrucci: Nesselrath, Raphaël et Pinturicchio, 2012, pp. 181–182.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

related to Charles V’s coronation in Bologna in 1530, specifically the many entries into the city by the emperor and his entourage, the papal court, and other visiting princes and noblemen. On 4 November 1529, Charles V arrived at Bologna to a formal welcome by both city dignitaries and the papal court. Twenty-two cardinals rode out to greet him ‘wearing large red cloaks, with red hats on their heads, and mounted on mules harnessed and covered in crimson as was their custom’.38 On 20 November 1529, Federico Gonzaga, with many courtiers entered the city and, ‘in order to make his entrance more decorous, his entourage led well-harnessed mules and carriers of cardinals’ hats, as was the custom in such circumstances’.39 The procession on the day of the imperial coronation itself, 24 February 1530, was even grander, and animals played an important part: ‘The Sacred College of Cardinals rode on superb mules richly adorned with red caparisons and gold lace, while they themselves wore great purple cloaks with crimson hats with long tassels’. 40 The emperor’s aunt, Margaret of Austria, commissioned two pictorial records of this procession, one was a series of etchings by Nikolaus von Hogenberg and another a sequence of 24 woodcuts by Robert Péril, which survives in just one copy. 41 The Péril depiction shows that the cardinals rode their well-appointed mules, dressed in heavy crimson robes wearing their cardinals’ hats. The mules have ceremonial tack in red, green, and blue with gilded roundels on their headpieces (Fig. 7.2). There is also an image of these hats carried aloft by clerics all riding pontifical mules, clearly representing to the populace the power of the church by the combination of both the hats they were carrying and the mules they were riding. 42 Without even the actual person himself, the double symbol of the red hat and the mule signified the cardinals’ special status (Fig. 7.3). It is interesting that this type of procession continued throughout the century, as noted by Michel de Montaigne in 1591 in his account of a procession of Pope Gregory XIII. There were 25 horses with ‘caparisons and saddle-cloths in cloth of gold’ and 12 mules ‘similarly caparisoned’ all led by grooms, followed by 4 horsemen 38 ‘questi indossarono le cappe magne rosse, e portarono rossi cappelli in testa, stando sopra mule bardate e coperte di cremisino, com’è del costume loro’; Giordani, Cronaca della venuta e dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pontefice, 1842, p. 21. 39 Ibid., p. 41: ‘Per rendere più decorosa la entrata di lui, que’famigliri condussero seco ben bardate le mule, ed i porttori de’capelli Cardinalizi, siccome era di costume in siffatte circostanze’. 40 Ibid., p. 132: ‘Il sacro Collegio de’Cardinali […]. cavalcava sopra superbe mule, riccamente adorne di gualdrappe rosse con trine d’oro, ed essi erano apparati delle cappe magne purpuree, con capelli a lunghi fiocchi di color cremesino.’ 41 Schimmelpfennig, ‘Two Coronations of Charles V’, 2002, p. 144. 42 The use of a separate mule from the one he was riding and a cardinal’s hat as symbols of his power was made by Cardinal Wolsey when he met the King of France on 1 June 1520 at Ardres; see G. Richardson, ‘King, the Cardinal-Legate and the Field of Cloth of Gold’, 2017, p. 150.

189

190

Philippa Jack son

Fig. 7.2 Detail of Robert Péril, Cavalcata at the Coronation of Charles V in Bologna, 1530, woodcut, colourised with handwritten annotations, Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum (© akg-images/Erich Lessing).

carrying red hats on red velvet covered staffs with gilded handles, followed by the pope on his mule and all the cardinals similarly mounted with their long robes, hooked up by a cord to their mules’ bridles. 43 Although cardinals were particularly associated with mules, bishops and other clerics also rode them, as did, on occasion, lay monarchs. 44 Stazio Gadio reported to the Marquess of Mantua in October 1515 that the King of France had gone to hear Mass at a Franciscan friary outside Vigevano on a mule embellished with cloth of gold cut through with black velvet, while the king himself wore an outfit of silver and gold cloth. 45 In 1530, when Charles V was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope in Bologna, both his retinue and the papal court remained in the city for many months. One interesting chronicle account refers to visits by the emperor to the churches of Bologna mounted on a mule with an ivory saddle.46 The church 43 See Montaigne, Complete Works, 2003, p. 1173, quoted in Duncan, ‘Italian Renaissance Court Stable’, 2013, p. 56 – whom I thank for this reference. 44 The post-mortem inventory of Bishop Gentile Becchi, reveals he possessed eleven of them: ‘xi mule con tucti loro fornimenti’; ASF, Notarile ante-cosimiano, 16638. On this important cleric who was tutor to Lorenzo de’ Medici, see Marcelli, Gentile Becchi, 2015. 45 ‘Montato il re sopra una mula guarnita d’uno fornimento di tela d’oro col veluto negro tagliato sopra, bello veramente, e Sua Maestà vestita d’uno vestimento de tela d’argento et panno d’oro rizo’; Tamalio, Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I, 1994, p. 92. 46 Giordani, Cronaca della venuta e dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pontefice, 1842, p. 166.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

Fig. 7.3 Detail of Robert Péril, Cavalcata at the Coronation of Charles V in Bologna, woodcut, colourised with handwritten annotations, Antwerp, Plantin Moretus Museum (© akg-images/Erich Lessing).

visits are significant as there was clearly a message of religious devotion that both the French and Spanish kings wished to convey on these occasions in their choice of a mule over a horse. The use of pontifical mules could also be particularly important for clerics in major secular court ritual, a way to stand out from other lay courtiers. In 1520, when Cardinal Wolsey attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold in France with King Henry VIII, his mule was elaborately described. It was adorned with crimson velvet, a special bridle, and decorated with elaborate studs, buckles and a saddle with

191

192

Philippa Jack son

stirrups of gold. 47 A painting of this event in the Royal Collection shows Cardinal Wolsey, attending the festivities mounted on his mule, accompanying his master, King Henry VIII, astride a large grey. Wolsey, as well as being the most important courtier and adviser of the English king, was very conscious of displaying and enhancing his clerical standing. It is perhaps for this reason that he sought both clothing and a suitable mule from one of his most important contacts in Rome during the mid-1520s. Girolamo Ghinucci, Bishop of Worcester and Auditor of the Apostolic Chamber, returned to the city on 31 October 1525 to replace John Clerk, Bishop of Bath, as the King of England’s representative. One of the first matters the Bishop of Worcester attended to was that of providing Wolsey with items he required. In a letter of 7 November 1525, Ghinucci reported to Wolsey that he had already sent his own mule to him, but promised to send another shortly which would please the cardinal. 48

Value and Ornamentation of Pontifical Mules The importance of these animals for cardinals and the papal stables can be seen from documentary evidence. The account books of the apostolic chamber reveal not only the costs of purchase and upkeep, but also the expenses of the ornamentation of these pampered beasts. On 24 January 1505, over 120 florins were paid to the silk merchant Pietro Busdrago for the equipping of two mules for Pope Julius II, and in March 1507 the papal saddlemaker, Maestro Fernando, received 39 ducats for saddles and bridles for both the papal mules and horses. 49 A few years later, on 6 April 1509, Fernando received the large sum of 13 gold ducats for a special ornate saddle for the pope’s black mule.50 Later on that year, in September 1509, Pietro Busdrago provided 40 embroidered red saddle covers with the arms and insignia of the pope for the mules of the apostolic palace.51 Not all mules were as expensive as those of the pope, but the question of costs and valuation is a complicated one. Their value may have been based on colour, breeding, or training, or a combination of all three, as well as the intrinsic and aesthetic costs of their ceremonial tack. The papal accounts under Pope Leo X record 50 ducats paid for a mule to Ercole Rangoni in 1513.52 In 1524, during the reign of 47 See the description of 11 June 1520: L&P, vol. 3.1, no. 869; his galero was carried before him: G. Richardson, Field, 2013, p. 102. 48 L&P, vol. 4.1, no. 1750. 49 ASVR, Cam. Ap., Int. et Exit., 537, fol. 116v. 50 Ibid., 546, fol. 131v. 51 Ibid., fol. 182r. 52 ASVR, Arm. XXXVII, 27, fol. 698r.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

Clement VII, a much larger sum of 75 gold ducats was paid out, which was recorded as being for a pontifical mule with its red saddle cover and ceremonial tack.53 These costly steeds were clearly greatly esteemed and were also the subject of reports and enthusiastic description: on 1 February 1525, Zanobio Bigliotti wrote from Rome to his patron, Cardinal Salviati, updating him on the latest news. A pair of mules had arrived from Sicily, and Bigliotti described the dark pontifical one as being ‘the most beautiful that exists in all of Rome’.54 When Cardinal Giovanni Ricci was in Spain in 1535 purchasing mules for the papal stables, he bought one which was stated to be the most beautiful in all of Spain for the princely sum of 300 ducats.55 The status of mules can also be seen in the fact that they were often given affectionate names by their owners. Cardinal Ippolito d’Este’s accounts show his winnings from gambling; this included gaining a mule from Luigi Alamanni which the cardinal promptly renamed ‘Alamana’.56 It is noticeable that despite the famed Gonzaga love of horses, on his death in 1483 Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga’s household contained 14 mules and 11 horses, a very modest stable for someone of his rank.57 The mules had names such as Liarda, Alfana, Malatesta, and Pelegrino.58 This small stable contrasts particularly with that of 54 horses, including mules, which he owned in May 1462, a number more appropriate to a cleric of his rank.59 Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este’s stables in terms of staff and livestock were extensive, and many mules accompanied him on his travels.60 The decoration and outfits for the cardinal’s entourage included embroidered coats of arms on his luggage.61 The accounts of Cardinal Raffaele Riario show payments to various mule handlers, particularly to Antonio da Milano and an individual named simply as il Moro, the Moor; these payments included food as well as tack. In mid-September 1515, possibly related to planning for the grand ceremonial trips of the papal court that year to Florence and Bologna, 45 gold ducats were paid out for a chestnut mule.62 The accounts show both payments for pack mules and pontifical ones, the latter

53 ASR, Camerale, I, 1491, fol. 65v: ‘per una mulla pontifichalle e per uno fornimento di rosato e una coperta di rosato’. 54 ‘la più bella che sia a Roma’; ASF, Carte Strozziane, I, 154, 7. 55 Martin, ‘Un grand bâtisseur de la Renaissance: le cardinal Giovanni Ricci’, 1974, p. 254. 56 Hollingsworth, Cardinal’s Hat, 2004, p. 207. 57 Chambers, Renaissance Cardinal and his Worldly Goods, 1992, p. 108. 58 Ibid., pp. 185–186. 59 Chambers, ‘Housing Problems of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga’, 1976, p. 23, n. 10: ‘cinquanta quatro cavalli over bestie, computando le mule e muli’. 60 Hollingsworth, Cardinal’s Hat, 2004, pp, 36–38, 73, 75. 61 Ibid., p. 176. 62 ASF, Eredità Lemmo Balducci, 57, fol. 223v.

193

194

Philippa Jack son

sums also including the costs of decorative ceremonial tack.63 Expenses for the animal trips for the transport of luggage are also very useful in understanding the journeys of the cardinal or his possessions. Mule trains needed to be transported between residences, thus in 1517 il Moro was paid for bringing thirteen mules from Ostia to Rome.64 The account books of Cardinal Francesco Armellini Medici, who followed Riario as the chamberlain of the Apostolic Chamber, also contain many references to mules as well as payments for their ceremonial tack. He maintained a very large stable full of horses and mules.65 His household accounts show that a mule was sold for 24 ducats to Maestro Bartolomeo di Santo Angelo in February 1519, and that on 17 October 1520 ceremonial tack was purchased which included a red saddlecloth for the cardinal’s mule.66 Even where there are no detailed accounts of mule expenses, inventories of the belongings of Renaissance cardinals show a large number of saddle covers and other decorative elements used for pontifical mules, such as the post-mortem inventory of Cardinal Francesco Soderini compiled in May 1523.67 Renaissance cardinals were not the exclusive riders of mules. Some other clergy, such as Bishop Gentile Becchi of Urbino, maintained large numbers of them. They were also ridden by those of lower social rank for various public occasions, as can be seen by the image by Christoph Weiditz of a black drummer astride a mule for the entrance of the emperor of 1529.68 Women used them for formal entries as they were far easier to control than horses, particularly in the confusion of grand processions on leaving or arriving in a city. When Pope Alexander VI’s daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, arrived in Ferrara in early 1502 to marry Alfonso d’Este, she attempted to make her entrance mounted on a gray horse which was so frightened by the ritual gun salutes that it reared and threw her. She then sensibly mounted a mule provided by her fatherin-law.69 Thus attempts to create a grand impression with mules in procession in the streets did not always succeed as animals were often frightened into misbehaving and damage could occur, with death and accidents being common. In 1451, a stampeding mule, upset by huge crowds of pilgrims, led to 200 dead at the Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome.70 The strong association of mules with cardinals and the occasional mishaps

63 Ibid., 76, fol. 152v, 28 May 1516: ‘per fattura di uno fornimento doratura e altre cose per la mula di sua S. Reverendissima’. 64 Ibid., fol. 208v. 65 Lowe, ‘Questions of Income and Expenditure’, 1987, p. 186. 66 ASR, Camerale I, Appendice 15, fols. 6r, 111r: ‘per uno fornimento e coperta di rosato pontificale per la mula de lo cardinale […]’. 67 Lowe, ‘Francesco Soderini’, 1985, app. 5, pp. 361, 363, 366. 68 Lowe, ‘Stereotyping of Black Africans’, 2005, p. 38, fig. 7. 69 Tissoni Benvenuto, ‘L’arrivo di Lucrezia a Ferrara’, 2006, p. 16. 70 Infessura, Diario, 1890, p. 49.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

Fig. 7.4 Anonymous Italian School 17th Cent, Cardinal Francesco Angelo Rapacciolo (d.1657) Fleeing on a Mule, under a shower of Turnips, 1643, pen and ink, New York, The Morgan Library and Museum (© The Morgan Library and Museum, III, 69).

later led to satirical images such as the seventeenth-century drawing of Cardinal Rapcciolo being pounded by turnips as he left Rome (Fig. 7.4).71 The use of the mule by Renaissance cardinals in the cultivation of their image transformed a simple beast of burden into a triumphant show of wealth and privilege. Mules, whether ridden personally or used by their retinue, became associated with the cardinals’ public identity and elite status, particularly emphasizing the cohesion and authority of the Church. The number of mules in Rome must have been extensive, as can clearly be seen in a letter relating to the theft of 80 animals, partly belonging to the pope and partly to cardinals, in Rome in February 1497.72 Although these animals were clearly regarded as crucial to conveying the honour and authority of the most important of clerics, some plans went severely awry. During the visit of Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, the papal legate to England in 1518, Cardinal Wolsey sent 12 mules carrying red chests to join the procession of the legate into London, presumably to add prestige to the legate’s grand entrance into the city as the visitor had only brought 8 mules with him. The chronicler reports that when the mules arrived at Cheapside, one of them broke free and caused such a commotion that the chests fell off revealing ‘olde Hosen, 71 Rice, ‘Cardinal Rapaccioli and the Turnip-sellers of Rome’, 2009, pp. 53–69. 72 Schinner, Korrespondenz und Akten, 1920–1925, vol. 1, p. 11.

195

196

Philippa Jack son

broken Shoen, old clothes and roasted Fleshe, peces of Breade, Egges and muche vile baggage’.73 Nevertheless the fact that Wolsey felt the need to send mules to be part of the retinue indicates how necessary they were regarded in portraying a cardinal’s status during the early modern period. There has as yet been no co-ordinated census of images of cardinals and their mules. An examination of private villa decoration, such as the Parnassus fresco in Giovio’s villa showing Cardinals Bembo and Sadoleto or the image of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese astride a mule in Caprarola, manuscript illuminations, chronicles, altarpieces, and paintings should widen the consciousness and corpus of such depictions as well as further demonstrate the importance of this humble animal to the image of the highest figures of the Church.74

Bibliography Baker-Bates, Piers, ‘A Painting “Little Less than Eternal”’, in Michelangelo & Sebastiano, ed. by Matthias Wivel (London: National Gallery Co., 2017), pp. 75–85. Burchard, Johann, Liber notarum ab anno MCCCCLXXXIII usque ad annum MDVI, ed. by E. Celani, 2 vols. (Città di Castello: Tipi della Casa Editrice S. Lapi, 1910). Cancellieri, Francesco, Storia de’ solenni possessi de’ sommi pontefici detti anticamente processi o processioni dopo la loro coronazione dalla Basilica Vaticana alla Lateranense dedicata alla Santità di N.S. Pio VII P.O.M. (Rome: Luigi Lazzarini stampatore della R.C.A., 1802). Cecchi, Alessandro, ‘Leone X a Firenze: il papa e il suo seguito nella decorazione vasariana in Palazzo Vecchio’, in Nello splendore mediceo: Papa Leone X e Firenze, ed. by Nicoletta Baldini and Monica Bietti (Florence: Sillabe, 2013), pp. 251–257. Chambers, David S., ‘The Economic Predicament of Renaissance Cardinals’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3 (1966): 289–313. ———, ‘The Housing Problems of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 39 (1976): 21–58. ———, A Renaissance Cardinal and his Worldly Goods: The Will and Inventory of Francesco Gonzaga (1444–1483) (London: Warburg Institute, 1992). Ciseri, Ilaria, ‘10 marzo 1492: cerimonie e feste per la prima entrata a Firenze del Cardinale Giovanni de’ Medici’, in Nello splendore mediceo: papa Leone X e Firenze, ed. by Nicoletta Baldini and Monica Bietti (Florence: Sillabe, 2013), pp. 97–101. ———, ‘“Con tanto grandissimo e trionfante onore”: immagini dall’ingresso fiorentino di papa Leone X nel 1515’, in Nello splendore mediceo: Papa Leone X e Firenze, ed. by Nicoletta Baldini and Monica Bietti (Florence: Sillabe, 2013), pp. 237–250. 73 Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, 1809, pp. 592–593. 74 For further reference to Giovio’s fresco of Bembo and Sadoleto see Irene Brooke’s article in this volume.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

———, l’Ingresso trionfale di Leone X in Firenze nel 1515 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1990). Cruciani, Fabrizio, Teatro nel Rinascimento: Roma 1450–1550 (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1983). Di Teodoro, Francesco Paolo, ‘I ritratti di papa Leone X “pacis ac charitatis amator”’, in Nello splendore mediceo: Papa Leone X e Firenze, ed. by Nicoletta Baldini and Monica Bietti (Florence: Sillabe, 2013), pp. 205–233. Duncan, Sarah G., ‘The Italian Renaissance Court Stable’, PhD thesis, Queen Mary College, University of London, 2013. Dykmans, Marc L’oeuvre de Patrizi Piccolomini ou le cérémonial papal de la première renaissance, 2 vols. (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1980–1982). Ertl, Thomas, ed., Pompa sacra: lusso e cultura materiale alla corte papale nel basso medioevo (1420–1527) (Rome: Istituto Storico Germanico, 2010). Filelfo, Francesco, Corrispondenza, vol. 1: Lettere volgari, ed. by Nicoletta Marcelli (Florence: SISMEL/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2019). Fosi, Irene, ‘Court and City in the Ceremony of the Possesso in the Sixteenth Century’, in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700, ed. by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 31–52. Furlotti, Barbara, Antiquities in Motion: From Excavation Sites to Renaissance Collections (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2019). Giordani, Gaetano, Cronaca della venuta e dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pontefice Clemente VII per la coronazione di Carlo V imperatore, celebrato l’anno 1530, cronaca con note, documenti ed incisioni (Bologna: Fonderia e Tip. Gov.-Alla Volpe, 1842). Hall, Edward, Hall’s Chronicle; containing the History of England during the Reign of Henry the Fourth, and the Succeeding Monarchs, to the end of the Reign of Henry VIII in which are Particularly Described the Manners and Customs of those Periods Carefully Collated with the Editions of 1548 and 1550 (London: J. Johnson [etc.], 1809). Hollingsworth, Mary, The Cardinal’s Hat: Money, Ambition and Housekeeping in a Renaissance Court (London: Profile, 2004). Infessura, Stefano, Diario della città di Roma di Stefano Infessura scribasenato (Rome: Forzani e Co., 1890). Ingendaay Rodio, Marina, ‘La visita a Firenze di Leone X nel 1515 ed il capitolo della chiesa di San Lorenzo’, Studi di Storia dell’Arte 2 (1991): 271–294. Kalous, Antonin, ‘Through the Gates and the Streets of the City: Cardinals and their Processions in Rome in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’, in Ritualizing the City: Collective Performances as Aspects of Urban Construction from Constantine to Mao, ed. by Ivan Foletti and Adrien Palladino (Rome: Viella, 2017), pp. 29–44. Lowe, Katherine J.P., ‘The Stereotyping of Black African in Renaissance Europe’, in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, ed. by Thomas F. Earle and Katherine J.P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 17–47. ———, ‘Francesco Soderini (1453–1524): Florentine Patrician and Cardinal’, PhD thesis, Warburg Institute, 1985.

197

198

Philippa Jack son

———, ‘Questions of Income and Expenditure in Renaissance Rome: A Case Study of Cardinal Francesco Armellini’, in The Church and Wealth, ed. by W.J. Sheils and Diana Wood, Studies in Church History 24 (Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer, 1987), pp. 175–188. Luzio, Alessandro, ‘Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma’, Archivio Storico Lombardo 4.10 (1908): 5–107, 361–425. Marcelli, Nicoletta, Gentile Becchi: il poeta, il vescovo, l’uomo (Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2015). Martin, Jean-Marie, ‘Un grand bâtisseur de la Renaissance: le cardinal Giovanni Ricci de Montepulciano (1497–1574)’, Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome: Moyen-Age, Temps Modernes 86.1 (1974): 251–275. Miller, Maureen C., Clothing the Clergy. Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200 (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 2014). Montaigne, Michel de, The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journals, Letters, trans. by D.M. Frame (London: Everyman’s Library, 2003). Minnich, Nelson H., ‘The Last Two Councils of the Catholic Reformation: The Influence of Lateran V on Trent’, in Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J., ed. by Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), pp. 3–25. Nesselrath, Arnold, Raphaël et Pinturicchio: les grands décors des appartements du pape au Vatican (Paris: Hazan, 2012). Nuti, Lucia, ‘Re-moulding the City: The Roman possessi in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century’, in Ceremonial Entries in Early Modern Europe: The Iconography of Power, ed. by James R. Mulryne and others (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 113–134. Reiss, Sheryl E., ‘Adrian VI, Clement VII and Art’, in The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture, ed. by Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 339–362. Rice, Louise, ‘Cardinal Rapaccioli and the Turnip-sellers of Rome: A Satire on the War of Castro by Baccio del Banco’, Master Drawings 47.1 (2009): 53–69. Richardson, Carol M., Reclaiming Rome: Cardinals in the Fifteenth Century (London/Boston: Brill, 2009). Richardson, Glenn, The Field of the Cloth of Gold (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2013). ———, ‘The King, the Cardinal-Legate and the Field of Cloth of Gold’, Royal Studies Journal 4 (2017): 141–160. Rogers Mariotti, Josephine, ‘Selections from a Ledger of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici’, Nuovi Studi 9 (2001–2002): 103–146. Rubello, Noemi, ‘Leone X (1513–1521): il pontificato di un papa prudente’, in Nello splendore mediceo: Papa Leone X e Firenze, ed. by Nicoletta Baldini and Monica Bietti (Florence: Sillabe, 2013), pp. 171–181.

Renaissance Cardinals and Pontifical Mules 

Schimmelpfennig, Bernard, ‘The Two Coronations of Charles V at Bologna, 1530’, in Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance, ed. by James R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring (Aldershot/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 137–152. Schinner, Matthäus, Korrespondenz und Akten zur Geschichte des Kardinals Matthäus Schinner, ed. by A. Büchi, 2 vols. (Basel: Geering, 1920–1925). Shearman, John, ‘The Florentine “Entrata” of Leo X, 1515’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 38 (1975): 136–154. ———, Raphael in Early Modern Sources, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Tamalio, Raffaele, Federico Gonzaga alla corte di Francesco I di Francia nel carteggio privato con Mantova (1515–1517) (Paris: Champion, 1994). Tanner, Norman P., ed., Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta: Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (London: Sheed & Ward/Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990). Tissoni Benvenuto, Antonia, ‘L’Arrivo di Lucrezia a Ferrara’, in Lucrezia Borgia: storia e mito, ed. by Michele Bordin and Paolo Trovato (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2006), pp. 3–22. Van Dijk, Stephen J.P. and Joan Hazelden Walker, The Ordinal of the Papal Court from Innocent III to Boniface VIII and Related Documents (Fribourg: University Press, 1975). Zuccari, Alessandro, ‘Raffaello e I suoi allievi interpreti di temi medicei’, in Leone X: finanza, mecenatismo, cultura; atti del Convegno Internazionale, Roma, 2–4 novembre 2015, ed. by Flavio Cantatore and others, vol. 1 (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2016), pp. 75–100.

About the Author Philippa Jackson is a cultural historian of cardinals and Renaissance Siena and holds a PhD from the Warburg Institute. Her interdisciplinary approach ranges from funeral ritual and sumptuary laws to artistic and literary patronage, from diplomacy to post-mortem affairs, especially of the artist Raphael. The Renaissance Sienese diaspora in Rome, England, and Spain are the main focus of her research.

199

8. Portraits as Symbols Cardinals’ Portraits in the Roman and Local Collections of Some Counter-Reformation Cardinals Thomas-Leo True Abstract Unpublished post-mortem cardinals’ inventories report a myriad of low-value cardinals’ portraits hanging in cardinals’ palaces in the late sixteenth century. Why, and how, did prelates select or acquire cardinals’ portraits? Portraits will be studied as a material trace of devotional affinities of Counter-Reformation cardinals and their socio-political networks. Examination of the role of such portraits sometimes reveals surprising professional and spiritual paragons that cardinals held before them. The values of portraits reported in inventories also pose tantalizing questions regarding a cardinal’s persona as a commodity. This essay also examines how such portraits were acquired, considering giftgiving practices of portraits among Vatican circles and the market for images of cardinals. Keywords: cardinals; collecting; Counter-Reformation

This essay examines the extent to which cardinals owned portraits of other cardinals, and their reasons for investment or non-investment in this genre. Cardinals’ portraits have not been surveyed in the context of their collection and display within a cardinal’s home, even if, in this situation, the objects acquired special significance from the relationship between the portrait’s subject and its owner. Surrounding cardinals in their private world, these portraits had an emblematic value that could be dynamic, as cardinals laboured, conscious of the careers of colleagues and predecessors, to fulfil their expected princely role, to explore their faith, to get ahead in the Sacred College and advance their family, or to align themselves with theological debate and political division.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch08

202

Thomas-Leo True

Inventories of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cardinals report 1-, 2-, or 3-sc. cardinals’ portraits hanging on the walls of their Roman palaces.1 This essay examines newly discovered probate inventories alongside those found and published by other scholars. These sources are problematic since, at times, they capture only vestiges of broader collections, divided across several family properties, which were often amassed by successive generations. Nor can lists of possessions alone determine whether portraits were commissioned, gifted, or inherited. Nonetheless, this data enables us to identify patterns regarding whose portraits were collected and how they were grouped, and to explore the motivations for this little-studied consumer behaviour. The existence of this collecting practice among cardinals indicates that circulation, exchange, collection, and display of cardinals’ portraits was a constitutive component of their political and spiritual lives. The active role of cardinals’ portraits is considered here in terms of their function as professional and spiritual exemplars, in political dialogue and patronage lines, and in gift-giving culture.

Viri Illustres In the collections of prominent families, including those of popes, cardinals’ portraits were acquired or commissioned as a subset of the genre of viri illustres (illustrious men).2 Cardinal Francesco del Monte (1549–1626, cardinal 1588), although one of the most noted collectors of his day with a wide range of non-sacred paintings and objects, seems to have invested little in formal portrait painting for display. There was a portrait of himself by Scipione Pulzone and a limited number of portraits of monarchs and Italian princes, including the cardinal and later Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609, cardinal 1563–1588), with whom he was on very close terms, as patron and friend.3 What he did have, however, was a vast collection – regrettably unspecified – of ‘277 paintings […] of various popes, emperors, cardinals and dukes, as well as other illustrious men with a few women’.4 Ottavio 1 See Feigenbaum and Freddolini, eds., Display of Art in the Roman Palace, 2014. 2 On the Renaissance revival of the ancient Roman trope of exemplary literature (viri illustres or uomini famosi) and its influence on the commissioning or collection of groups of portraits of carefully selected outstanding men from the distant or recent past, see Joost-Gaugier, ‘Poggio and Visual Tradition’, 1985. 3 Inventory of Bishop Alessandro del Monte, 1628 (ASR, 30 Notai Capitolini, 28, 143bis, fols. 384r–403v), in Waźbiński, Il cardinale Francesco Maria del Monte, 1994, vol. 2, pp. 583–600; on Scipione, see Acconci and Zuccari, eds., Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma, 2013, and Dern, Scipione Pulzone (ca. 1546–1598), 2003; see also Danielle Carrabino’s essay in this volume. 4 ‘doicento settanta sette quadri […] di diversi Papi, Imperatori, Cardinali, e Duchi, et altri huomini illustri con alcune Donne’; Appendix, no. 16, inventory 21 February 1627, at fol. 576r, published by Frommel,

Portraits as Symbols 

Leoni (1578–1630) was among the artists he used to form this collection of famous examples, which was emulated, or inspired, by Del Monte’s friend and patron, Ferdinando de’ Medici, whose huge collection included a group of 186 portraits of viri illustres, including all the popes after the Great Schism except Eugenius IV and Pius II.5 Ferdinando also held portraits of eight earlier popes, who do not seem to have had any unifying rationale.6 Medici’s collection of portraits of cardinals – all long dead – were part of this much larger collection of worthies – monarchs, popes, clerics, family members, humanists, condottieri and soldiers, poets, theologians, Muslim potentates, and jurists. Similar collections of viri illustres are attested, for example, in inventories of the Altemps family, who also employed Leoni, and of Cardinal Federico Borromeo.7 That distinguished clerics could play a part in collections of portraits of famous men is thus undoubted, but this does not in itself show any propensity to their exclusive display.

Self, Family, Homeland, Patron Cardinals’ portraits in the collections of cardinals predominantly reflected the prelate’s own progression in life or their obeisance to early patrons in order to display and memorialize family credentials. Red hats displayed in the portrait collection of Carlo Emanuele Pio seniore di Savoia (1585–1641, cardinal 1604) at his palace at Rione Monti primarily documented his own professional success, while the occurrence of a portrait of Pietro Aldobrandini expressed obligation to the family that appointed him cardinal at a young age.8 Reflecting his own curriculum vitae, the collection of Maffeo Barberini, future Urban VIII, included portraits of ‘Caravaggios Frühwerk und der Kardinal Francesco del Monte’, 1971, pp, 5–52, and summarized in Waźbiński, Il Cardinale Francesco Maria del Monte, 1994, vol. 1, pp. 198–202; vol. 2, pp. 575–582. 5 Appendix, no. 4, inventory 1588, ASF, Guardaroba Medicea, 79, fols. 187r–188r, published in Barocchi and Gaeta, Collezionismo mediceo Cosimo I, Francesco I e il Cardinale Ferdinando, 1993. There is unlikely to be any significance in the omissions – Eugenius IV was pro-Florentine and resided there many years as pope; for further discussion, see Brian Jeffrey Maxson’s contribution in this volume. On the patronage of Ferdinando de’ Medici, see Butters, ‘Contrasting Priorities’, 2009. 6 Alexander III (1159–1181), Alexander IV (1254–1261), Urban IV (1261–1264), Innocent V (1276), Boniface VIII (1294–1303), Benedict XI (1303–1304), John XXII (1316–1334), and Clement VI (1342–52). 7 Sani, La fatica virtuosa di Ottavio Leoni, 2005; Terzaghi, Caravaggio: Mecenati e Pittori, 2010, for examples of Leoni’s portraits of cardinals and bibliography. Baglione, Le vite, 1995, underlines Leoni’s pre-eminence as a portraitist in drawings of the famous, including ‘Cardinali’. The model for these was Giovio’s collection, of which Borromeo commissioned copies, as did several others including Cosimo de’ Medici; see Klinger, ‘Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio’, 1997, and De Vecchi, ‘Il Museo Gioviano e le verae imagines’, 1977. 8 Appendix, no. 20, inventory 1641, in Getty Provenance Index; see also Cappelletti and Testa, ‘Ricerche documentarie’, 1990, pp. 85–92.

203

204

Thomas-Leo True

him ‘quando era secolare’ (170), ‘quando era Chierico di Cam[er]a’ (a position he held from 1598 to 1606; 111), and three portraits as cardinal (46, 91), tracing his rise to the top of the Church.9 Family promotion accounted for numerous cardinals’ portraits in Barberini’s palace, which also included two of other members of the family.10 In many other cases, there is limited evidence of the collection of images of cardinals outside their own family. The only cardinal’s portraits in the guardarroba of Cardinal Antonio Maria Salviati (1537–1602, cardinal 1583) – for example, in inventories of 1612 and 1634 – were of Cardinal Giovanni Salviati (1490–1553) and a Cardinal of San Clemente, who was in all probability Cardinal Carlo Conti, titular of San Clemente in 1612, and from the same family as Salviati’s mother.11 Additional motivations shaped the Barberini collection. Place, as well as power, might be celebrated. Maffeo, who was born in Florence into a successful mercantile family, also enjoyed images of cardinals who shared a Florentine origin, reflecting perhaps the psychology of an outsider family leaning on Tuscan networks to establish a visible foothold in Rome. Just as an opulent Barberini chapel was commissioned for Sant’Andrea della Valle on the Via Papalis close by those of prominent Florentines, including the Strozzi, Rucellai, and Ginetti, so too were Florentine connections conspicuous in his display of cardinals’ portraits. Maffeo’s collection housed portraits of Cardinal Nicolò Ardinghelli, Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci, all members of prominent Florentine families, as well as a Cardinal Corsini, whose genealogy led back to Florence too. Except for his Salviati portraits, which may have come from Palazzo Salviati, where Barberini lived for a time as a cardinal, other prelates featured in this rich collection of cardinals’ portraits celebrate patronage ties.12 Those of the cardinal-nephews, Pietro Aldobrandini and Scipione Borghese, are classic patron portraits, and, while the Facchinetti pope (Innocent IX) was not a Florentine, Cardinal Facchinetti often presided over the Apostolic Signatura of which Maffeo Barberini was referendarius (referendy) from 1589. The enormous collection of Benedetto Giustiniani (1554–1621, cardinal 1586), one of the wealthiest cardinals of his day, contained portraits celebrating self, family, patrons, and political allegiance. Among family portraits reported are one of Cardinal Vincenzo Giustiniani seniore (14) and three of Cardinal Benedetto himself (122–124). Perhaps for reasons of propriety, all his own portraits were in a 9 Appendix, no. 14, inventory 22 September 1623, in Getty Provenance Index; see Lavin, SeventeenthCentury Barberini Documents, 1975, pp. 65–71. 10 On the political-propagandistic motivations of Barberini’s artistic display, see Beldon Scott, Images of Nepotism, 1991. 11 Appendix, no. 11, inventory 18 October 1612, in Getty Provenance Index; see also Della Pergola, ‘Gli inventari Salviati’, 1960, pp. 194–198, and Hurtubise, Une Famille-témoin: les Salviati, 1985, p. 527. 12 They were there in 1608, Lavin, ‘On the Sources and Meaning’, 1998, p. 64.

Portraits as Symbols 

guardarobba in 1621. His collection included the Emperor Charles V (251), but one of his grandson, Philip III of Spain (128) was not displayed. Here, organization of portraits may reflect political concerns: Giustiniani was notably unsympathetic to the Spanish interest. There were four seated portraits of unnamed popes (10).13 In addition, there were two of Pius V (20), one displayed in a ‘Galleria’, and one of Gregory XIII (130), not apparently displayed. Sixtus V (79) was, however, hung in a room near the loggietta. In the inventory of 1600, Sixtus was explicitly described in this portrait as ‘benefattore del Signor Cardinal Giustiniano’.14 This explains the reason for his display and articulates the most common motivation for the acquisition and exhibition of cardinals’ portraits in the cardinal’s home. Of cardinals in Giustianiani’s collection there were f ive portraits of Carlo Borromeo; one (174) in the cardinal’s studio, two (209, 254) in his bedroom; one (58) displayed in a room with other spiritual reformers venerated in the CounterReformation 15 and one other (125) in store. Another great family spiritual, the Patriarch Lorenzo Giustiniani (198), hung in Benedetto’s bedroom. Cardinal Bessarion, who had a Greek connection, as also did the Giustiniani family, is present (126), although in store in the guardarobba in 1621.16 Of contemporaries there are only Cardinal Montalto17 and Cardinal Aldobrandini18. Both these no doubt respect the cardinal-nephews. Giustiniani was a supporter of Montalto’s faction. However, neither of these appears to have been displayed in 1621; their power was past. The summary here, then, is of limited display, with Sixtus V as patron marking an exception and Borromeo honoured as the exemplary cardinal of notable spiritual eminence. Those blessed with patronage ties to popes and kings would draw attention to these affinities. The inventory of a collection of paintings on chiefly religious themes belonging to Cardinal Michele Bonelli (1541–1598, cardinal 1566), great nephew of Pius V, documents many papal portraits that are mostly ascribed minimal valuations.19 Among these was, inevitably, a portrait of his great uncle, the pope, commissioned from Giulio della Croce in 1572, and one by Scipione of Bonelli 13 Appendix, no. 9, 30 March 1621. See Danesi Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani, vol. 1: Inventari I, 2003, pp. 95–203 (numbers in brackets refer to numbers in Danesi Squarzina). 14 Ibid., pp. 5–32, ‘Entrata della Guardarobba’ of Cardinale Benedetto Giustiniani (1600), item 55, p. 19. 15 Ibid., items 59–66: Bishop Alessandro Sauli (1534–1592), superior of the Barnabiti, Francesco Xavier, SJ (1506–1552; Beato 1619 – two portraits); Filippo Benizzi (1233–1285), reformer of the Servites, Amedeo IX of Savoy, Ignatius Loyola, SJ. For Borromeo’s portraits see Minou Schraven’s essay in this volume. 16 Portraits of Bessarion are also attested in the collections of Cardinal Federico Borromeo and Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici. 17 Danesi Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani, vol. 1: Inventari I, 2003, item 57, p. 19. 18 Ibid., item 58, p. 19. 19 On the patronage of Bonelli, see Cola, Palazzo Valentini a Roma, 2012.

205

206

Thomas-Leo True

himself.20 The inventory also lists a limited number of portraits of contemporary champions and benefactors instrumental to Bonelli’s professional success. To advertise his prestigious political allegiances, Bonelli engaged one of the most celebrated portraitists of the day, commissioning from Scipione in 1594 a picture of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose Grand Ducal title Bonelli had been involved in securing in 1570. At the same time, the cardinal, who was in receipt of a 3,000 sc. Spanish pension, also asked Pulzone to paint the King of Spain and his son. In fact, there were no fewer than five portraits of members of the Spanish royal family.

The Case of the Diplomat The survival of the inventory of the collection of a master diplomat enables one to address the active function of portraiture within the diplomatic practice of early modern cardinals. The Roman palace of Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio (1579–1644, cardinal 1621), a papal nuncio with ‘angelic morals, a sweet nature, noble thoughts, prudent, wise, experienced, witty, ingenious’, contained portraits that were deposits of an intensely political, ceremonial and symbolic life.21 Bentivoglio, as his patronage of Anthony van Dyck’s celebrated masterpiece demonstrates, was attuned to the expressive symbolism of portraiture. A collection of around 40 paintings, including portraits of Archduke Albert (16) and Isabella (17), the King of France and his wife (15), and Marie de Medici, the contentious Queen Mother (19).22 At the courts of Brussels and Paris, the visibility of these portraits around the cardinal might once have consolidated political confidences and supported him in the execution of his duties. Back in Rome, Bentivoglio hung these portraits together in the prima guardarobba to recall a successful career in diplomatic service. But, the skilled nuncio’s scheme for the display of these ‘diplomatic portraits’, transplanted out of the delicate context of the courts of the Habsburg Netherlands (1607–1615) and France (1616–1621) to a Roman audience, might also hint at privately held views of the monarchs whom he made his trade navigating. For example, if the display of portraits projected the direction of diplomatic strategy, then sequestering portraits of the King of France and his brother (26) into pokier storage (guardarobbetta) might reflect cooler relations and diminished pride in the association? Mind-reading from inventories is not time well spent, but in the highly suggestive world of diplomacy, such ordering of pictures was significant. The topographical 20 For further discussion see the contribution of Danielle Carrabino to this volume. 21 Letter to Giuseppe Zongo Ondedei of September 1641 quoted from Alsteens and Eaker, Van Dyck, 2016, p. 90. 22 Appendix, no. 22, inventory 24 January 1645, in Getty Provenance Index; see also Rebecchini, ‘Il collezionismo a Ferrara,’ 2005.

Portraits as Symbols 

inventory of the Bentivoglio palace is more conclusive in demonstrating distinctions drawn between different categories of political peer, and how these were imprinted on the organizational scheme for display. For example, while all benefitted the cardinal’s career, portraits of distant monarchs were assembled separately from papal patrons. Portraits of the Borghese honoured the family with whom Bentivoglio regularly corresponded, for whom he was diplomatic representative, and to whom he remained loyal in conclaves even after the death of Paul V, and whose clientelist ties to the Bentivoglio had enabled both families to exercise power in Ferrara. In the display, Paul V (4) and Scipione Borghese (5), the only cardinal’s portrait noted in the inventory, were paired in a more privileged and intimate location in the third room facing the street, where Bentivoglio slept. Thus, the placing of portraits in the home of the nuncio could express association, even rift, memory, or ongoing political affinity.

The Portrait as Gift While Bonelli’s portraits of Spanish royalty were procured by commission, some portraits in the collections of cardinals may have been given, exchanged or circulated as gifts, although evidence is slight.23 Portraits were an active component in the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs. Arnold Witte, for example, has explored the production and gift of cardinals’ portraits as a stamp of their protectorship over confraternities or religious orders.24 Propriety in matters of gift-giving did not dictate that portraits be directed only to institutions where a cardinal had official links. A donation could also recall a cardinal’s special devotion to a church outside his jurisdiction. The 1621 will of Giulio Berti, the former guardarobba of Cardinal Antonio Maria Gallo, includes a portrait of the cardinal that Berti himself owned (by gift?). As an intimate over many years, Berti knew first-hand the private passions of the prelate and left the portrait to the sacristy of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, where his patron Gallo had opted for burial.25 While the existence of patronage gifting, or the commissioning of paintings of patrons, may be evidenced or inferred, there is little evidence of ‘horizontal’ gifting, of a culture of exchanges between cardinals as equals, as in the twentiethcentury practice of statesmen exchanging and displaying photographs of each other. Any such exchange, or display, of portraits among cardinals would be a social 23 On gifting and the role of the exchange of objects in shaping dynamic relations, see Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court, 2018. 24 For further discussion see the contribution of Arnold Witte to this volume. 25 From Berti’s will of 24 May 1621: ‘Item lasso alla sacrestia d’Araceli il retratto della bo: mem: dell’Illustrissimo e Reverendissimo Cardinale Gallo con le cornice […]’; ASR, Segr. e Canc. della RCA, 1255, fols. 300r–301v, 319r (C. Bonellus).

207

208

Thomas-Leo True

and political act, conferring prestige, recognizing friendship and obligation and cementing reciprocal duty.26 Might a full and systematic study of portrait collections add to what we already know of the political networks and close social relations among Counter-Reformation cardinals that are reported in the Avvisi and elsewhere?

A Band of Brothers One socio-political network can be traced in the meaningful arrangement of eleven cardinals’ portraits on display at the palace of Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi (1500–1564, cardinal 1536) in Campo Marzio.27 Cultivated and courtly, Rodolfo studied under Aldus Manutius as a young man, and from there is an obvious connection to his portrait of Cardinal Bessarion (6), who left his library to Venice and was one of the progenitors of Greek studies in Venice. Indeed, Venetian and humanist themes link many of the cardinals portrayed in the palace of Pio da Carpi: Cardinal Gaspare Contarini (33) and Cardinal Pietro Bembo (34) were both Venetian and came out of this humanist orbit. Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto (37) was another humanist scholar, often depicted with Bembo – both were papal secretaries. Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro (38) was also a commanding classical scholar. Cardinal Gregorio Cortese (35) was an eminent scholar, too, and had been an Abbot in Venice and a close associate of Contarini and Bembo. In his loggia, clearly hung together for a purpose, were portraits of a circle of cardinals, all creature of Paul III, who remained on good terms: Pio da Carpi (appointed 1536); Sadoleto, Pole, and Aleandro (in the same consistory as Pio, 1536); John Fisher and Contarini (1535); Bembo (1538); Cortese (1542), and Cardinal ‘Visco’ (Miguel da Silva, Bishop of Viseu, a Portuguese who also had some connection with Venice – appointed cardinal in pectore in 1539, openly in 1541). This ensemble of portraits in the mould of a humanist’s collection of illustrious figures communicates a sense of a band of brothers, which is both unusual and sentimental, and celebrates the crystallization of collegial bonds formed by their shared spiritual teachings and reform agenda. Irene Brooke has convincingly pursued one interpretation for their collective display, identifying the recurrence of the grouping of portraits of this cluster of spirituali around Bembo’s as an affirmation of the evangelical spirituality and conciliatory approach to reform that they shared.28

26 On networking as an identity process, see McLean, Art of the Network, 2007. 27 Appendix, no. 1, inventory 2 May 1564, in Getty Provenance Index; see also Franzoni et al., Gli inventari, 2002, pp. 57–86. 28 For further discussion see the contribution of Irene Brooke to this volume.

Portraits as Symbols 

Rodolfo’s collection is exceptional for the prominence of portraits of contemporary cardinals on an equal professional footing. In the main, subjects depicted were of a higher status than the displayer or committente. Mentorship or collaboration with equals were rarely boasted of in this form of display, it was rather brushing with royal, papal, or saintly celebrity that was prized.

Spiritual and Professional Exemplars Drawing on classical writing – and in particular Pliny the Elder – moralists and theoreticians of the Counter-Reformation stressed that, since the commemorative act of portraiture inevitably claims honour for its sitter, the subject must be a worthy moral exemplar.29 It has been shown how cardinals’ portraits were symbols of family, loyalty, place or patronage, or testimony to power hierarchies in the Sacred College, but their elective display also encodes the devotional affinities of the owner, whom he aspired to emulate, and how he perceived the role of cardinal. Treatises informing the correct conduct of cardinals are well studied, but less so is the role of portraits, which reveal the professional and spiritual paragons that cardinals held before them. Thus, one of the few portraits of prelates that Bonelli possessed was of the Venetian Patriarch Lorenzo Giustiniani (1381–1456), who, along with the future Eugenius IV, founded in Venice in 1404 a movement for spiritual renewal, the Canonici Regolari di San Giorgio in Alga, an order regularized in 1568 by Pius V. Such a man was an exemplar, and in many ways a precursor, of the spiritual reformers of more recent times. Portraits of Carlo Borromeo, vested as bishop or cardinal, were those displayed most widely as a spiritual model. Giustiniani, as seen above, owned no less than five copies and Paolo Sfondrato (1560–1618, cardinal 1590) left three portraits of Borromeo from Palazzo Capodiferro to Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.30 Borromeo is an overwhelming presence, appearing in ten of the eighteen collections surveyed after 1600. For every colleague and successor, he stood as a living or recent exemplar of what it was to be a virtuous prelate and pastor, but also providing a vibrant point of reference in times of reform. Several cardinals’ portraits are reported in the collection of worthies in the inventory of Ferdinando de’ Medici, drawn up towards the end of his time as cardinal. However, they do not include even recently living figures – the last to die was Pole, who died 29 Paleotti, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, 1582, p. 183; Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte, 1585, pp. 430–432; Ottonelli and Da Cortona, Trattato della pittura e scultura, uso, et abuso loro, 1652, pp. 96ff.; see Cavazzini, ‘On Painted Portraiture’, 2015–2016, p. 230. 30 Appendix, no. 12, inventory 19 February 1618, in Getty Provenance Index.

209

210

Thomas-Leo True

in 1558, five years before the 14-year-old Ferdinando became cardinal. The selection of portraits demonstrates the wide potentiality of the cardinal as exemplar. Some of these models are towering and ubiquitous, while others, such as Pompeo Colonna (1479–1532), whose family were great enemies of the Medici and who was present at the Sack of Rome, are more unexpected (although he is said to have helped hostages).31 The collection includes, firstly, representations of family: Ippolito de’ Medici (1511–1535) and place in Florence; Angelo Acciauoli (1349–1408), a Florentine noble and an agile politician who narrowly missed the papacy; Luca Manzoli (1331–1411), a Tuscan in the Order of Humiliati, briefly Bishop of Fiesole; an influential Tuscan Dominican, Niccolo (Albertini) da Prato (c. 1250–1321), and Giovanni Vitelleschi, Archbishop of Florence (1435–1437), who was known as the Cardinal of Florence.32 Secondly, the manly and martial ideals of the Renaissance cardinal are expressed through portraits of soldiers: Vitelleschi, a famous condottiere for Eugenius IV; Giuliano Cesarini (1398–1444), who died leading the Crusade of Varna against the Turks, and Pierre d’Aubuisson (1423–1503, cardinal 1489), Grand Master of the Knights of Malta (1470–1503), who repelled the Turks at the siege of Rhodes in 1480 and became a Christian hero.33 Thirdly, there were pre-eminent humanists including Bembo and Sadoleto (who were both secretaries to the Medici Pope Leo X) and, of course, Bessarion. Fourthly, there are model theologians representing the cause of church unity: Cesarini, who was head of the commission negotiating for the unity of the whole Christian church at the Council of Ferrara–Florence (1437–1439), displayed with his counterpart Bessarion, the great Greek humanist, who came with the Orthodox delegation to Council of Ferrara–Florence and converted to Catholicism; and Reginald Pole (1500–1558), like Cardinal John Fisher before him, a champion of Catholicism in Reformation England. Fifth are politicians and nobles, such as Ascanio Sforza (1455–1505), the worldly and influential brother of the Duke of Milan, and with him Pompeo Colonna. Sixth are the deeply religious, including Niccolo da Prato and Luca. Indeed, together Ferdinando’s collection embraces many of the aspects of a Renaissance cardinal, both admirable and less so.34

31 Baker-Bates, ‘A Portrait of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna’, 2008. 32 Listed as ‘Luca’. There were two Cardinals Luca between 1300 and 1600. The likelier is Luca Manzoli (1331–1411), who was Bishop of Fiesole (1408–1409). He was buried in Ognissanti, Florence. The other was a more obscure Marchigian cardinal from Camerino, Luca Rodulfucci (after 1389). 33 Listed as ‘Fra Pietro’. 34 On the two identities of Ferdinando as Cardinal and Grand Duke, see Butters, ‘Contrasting Priorities’, 2009.

Portraits as Symbols 

Three New Inventories from a Circle of Marchigian Cardinals The cardinals addressed so far, and their collections, are well known, yet at the opposite end of the spectrum three newly discovered inventories enable the study of the collecting practices of cardinals of more restricted wealth. The inventories relate to the possessions of Decio Azzolini, Antonio Maria Gallo, and Mariano Pierbenedetti, who were powerful, yet provincial, cardinals from the Marche.35 All appointed cardinal by their compatriot pope-patron, Sixtus V, such men formed the ballast of the ‘Montalto faction’ in the post-Sistine Sacred College, marshalled by Sixtus’s grand-nephew Alessandro Peretti di Montalto (1571–1623, cardinal 1585).36 The possessions of Cardinal Montalto, therefore, provide a control for studying the patronage concerns of a circle of cardinals, who offer a point of comparison to those of the charmed aristocratic elite. Montalto was a prolific collector. Inventories show that he possessed, as one would expect, portraits of himself (52) and Sixtus V (78), which were left to his nephew along with a portrait of Carlo Borromeo (100) and 23 other Counter-Reformation spiritual leaders.37 Inventoried with his main possessions were portraits of Clement VIII (1) and, inevitably, Carlo Borromeo (3). The 1655 inventory of the Peretti fidecommissum shows a portrait of Sixtus with two unnamed cardinals (11), matching profile portraits of Sixtus and Cardinal Montalto (37, 38), ten others of Sixtus (151, 166, 366, 398, 399, 440, 492, 494, 558, 712) and five more of the cardinal (133, 291, 439, 479, 724). There are portraits of other members of the family, but it is not possible to say if they were commissioned by Alessandro or his nephew, Cardinal Francesco. In addition, there were three portraits of Pius V (70, 493, 727), two of Paul V (33, 713) and one of Gregory XV (540). Ferdinando de’ Medici, as Grand Duke (488), was the only non-Peretti cardinal, apart from Borromeo, either held or displayed. Again, contemporaries are a notable absence, in preference to the obvious display of the greatness of Sixtus and the Peretti, and the saintly example of Carlo Borromeo to whom Sixtus’s family could claim distant kinship.38 The first unpublished inventory documents the guardarobba of the short-lived Cardinal Decio Azzolini of Fermo (1549–1587), Sixtus’s cherished personal secretary, and the first outside the Peretti family to whom the pope awarded the honour 35 They were part of a larger circle of Marchigian cardinals analysed in True, ‘Power and Place’, 2013. 36 The literature on the patronage of Sixtus is vast, particularly from the time of the 400th anniversary of his papacy, notably Fagiolo and Madonna, eds., Sisto V, vol. 1: Roma e Lazio, 1992, and Madonna, eds., Roma di Sisto V: le arti e la cultura, 1993. 37 Appendix, no. 17, inventories, 1629, 6 August 1629, 3 May 1655; relevant extracts in Granata, Le passioni virtuose, 2012, pp. 219–273. 38 On 20 March 1589, Marcantonio Colonna (after 1595), nephew of Carlo Borromeo, married Sixtus’s great niece Orsina Damasceni-Peretti.

211

212

Thomas-Leo True

of cardinal.39 Azzolini left 25 pictures of both secular and religious subjects. No portraits of family or colleagues are recorded, although there is 1 portrait of Decio himself as cardinal, and as many as 4 of Pope Pius V, in whose reign the young priest came to Rome in the circle of Cardinal Acquaviva. Azzolini’s early death, less than two years after acquiring the red hat, denied him the opportunity to engage broadly in the collecting practices under study. Nonetheless, the abundance of images of Pius in relation to the composition of the rest collection (16 per cent) reflects Azzolini’s enduring loyalty to his spiritual guide. This quality of loyalty was noted and extolled by Sixtus V, who wrote of him: ‘You never left my side’. 40 A second body of newly recovered evidence relates to the possessions amassed by another ‘new’ cardinal from the Marche and creatura of Sixtus V, Antonio Maria Gallo of Osimo (1553–1620). This includes the inventory post-mortem of the guardarobba in his Roman palace, with a room-by-room inventory, and a catalogue of possessions from the Gallo family residence at Osimo. Two preliminary observations are necessary as a caveat that Gallo’s Roman guardarobba inventory may fall short of a total reconstruction of his painting collection. Firstly, the Roman inventory notes many items, including paintings, tapestries, carpets, and silver, that had been sent to embellish the episcopal palace at Velletri, which Gallo used as Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and Velletri. Secondly, Gallo died abruptly only five weeks after purchasing a large palace in Rome, to which his goods were still being moved.41 Two paintings by Pomarancio were having new frames gilded, and others – in transit or at Velletri – may have evaded the notary’s eye. This caveat aside, Gallo’s collection, with his guardarobba containing 26 pictures listed as being in Rome, was on a comparable scale to that of Azzolini. All images had religious themes, except for a handful of portraits, most of those of recent, or recently canonized, religious figures, and clearly selected as good exemplars. There are two portraits of Sixtus, one piccolo and one grande, as well as one grande of Cardinal Montalto. One may imagine the grandi to be a pair. There is also a portrait of Carlo Borromeo. 42 Strikingly, again, no image of any other contemporary is recorded, even of his family, but the use of portraits to display affinity to the Peretti is clear. Perplexingly, more paintings are listed in the room-by-room inventory. Some of them tally; some do not. Yet this form of inventory enables one to deduce the signif icance of these portraits to Gallo and how he oriented his activities in 39 Appendix, no. 2, inventory n.d. 40 ‘nec unquam a latere Nostro discedebas’; cited in True, ‘Power and Place’, 2013, p. 177. 41 Gallo left an outstanding debt of 107 sc. to ‘Pietro et compagni, fachini’ (ASR, Notai A.C., 154, fol. 693r). AGPPO, c. 865, contains bills and obligations outstanding at the cardinal’s death. These include several bills from labourers working on moving pictures and other goods to the new palace from his previous rented property. 42 Appendix, no. 13, inventory 2–4 April 1620, at fols. 568v–570r.

Portraits as Symbols 

relation to his portraits from where, and in what company, they were hung. 43 The topographical inventory shows that the small portrait of Sixtus, intimate in both scale and location, was placed in the second stanza adjacent to the room where the cardinal died. Cardinal Borromeo hung with Filippo Neri in the third stanza. The large portraits of Sixtus and Montalto enjoyed pride of place and a wider audience, placed on view in the fifth stanza, described as a galleria. Although Gallo will have known all four men, Sixtus and Montalto – his two Marchigian patrons – were displayed separately from Borromeo and Neri, men who embodied Church reform. By coupling these protagonists of the Borromean and Oratorian reforming circles, the pre-eminent arms of Counter-Reformation renewal, Gallo honoured both halves of the reform agenda that guided him as an enthusiastic agent of the Church’s countermeasures. 44 Portraits of Borromeo and Neri were widespread, yet Gallo will have felt a strong personal affinity to these two men, whose example impacted on the execution of his ecclesiastical duties. Gallo, who was supportive of new orders, was head of the Sacred Congregation for Rites when it put the final relation to the pope in May 1615 for Neri’s beatification. 45 Borromeo’s visitations in Milan created a paradigm for Gallo, as Bishop of Osimo, who, like many reform-minded bishops, responded with emulous zeal, conducting pastoral visits, ramping up the convocation of synods, and publishing recommendations that set stricter standards for the diocese. 46 Borromeo’s influence on these measures is unequivocal. One example issuing from philological analysis shows how Gallo’s codified instructions on the production and worship of images in Osimo (On Holy Images, 1594) aped the central text of the Acts of the Church of Milan (issued in 1582 and reprinted many times).47 There are, of course, a myriad of connections that can be drawn between the careers of the portrait’s subject and its owner, but swift ruminations of several such resonances emphasize that the display of exemplars like Borromeo or Neri represented more than ingrained collecting habits or wide diffusion of their images, but enshrined meaningful parallelisms that demonstrate the dynamic symbolic potential of the cardinal’s portrait in the cardinal’s home. A similar pattern is evident at Palazzo Gallo in Osimo, which was lavishly frescoed by Pomarancio. The painting collection once again displayed familial 43 Appendix, no. 13, inventory 9 April–25 May 1620; notice of the gilding of the Pomarancio paintings comes from Francucci, ‘Un episodio di committenza sistina’, 2005, pp. 160–161. 44 On the two interconnected reforming groups around Borromeo and Neri, see Mansour, ‘Censure and Censorship’, 2013, pp. 140–141. 45 Bacchi, Vita, 1636, p. 284. 46 Gallo summoned ten synods. 47 Gallo, De Sacris imaginibus, 1594; on the influence of Borromeo on Gallo, see True, ‘Power and Place’, 2013, p. 32.

213

214

Thomas-Leo True

and patronage prestige amid predominantly spiritual subjects. Although there are no portraits of him listed in his Roman palace, the cardinal, whose imperious portrait by Pomarancio is now in the Palazzo Apostolico at Loreto, was not shy of sitting by the easel (Plate 7). In the anteroom to the new chamber in the corner of Palazzo Gallo – which was assigned for the cardinal’s use – was a full-length portrait of Gallo, together with a portrait of the lady of the house, Lidia Leopardi, wife of Gallo’s nephew Alessandro. In Pomarancio’s gallery was a second portrait of Gallo. Perhaps the cardinal, who displayed portraits of himself in Osimo, but exhibited no family portraits at his residence in Rome, showed sensitivity to a Roman etiquette which murmured that having one’s own portrait on display was not quite the done thing. To display power in the place of one’s origin was a separate matter; after all, such eminence honoured the small town. A portrait of Sixtus was displayed in the salone, together with that of Gallo, and the arms of Cardinal Montalto are emblazoned on the main stair. 48 Once again, the theme of family loyalty to the Peretti is displayed. Gallo made Cardinal Montalto his principal executor, saying that from there his good fortune had come and urging his family never to forget it.49 The inventory of a third Sistine cardinal, Mariano Pierbenedetti of Camerino (1538–1611), is the most comprehensive discovered during this research. Pierbenedetti, a client of Sixtus from a noble family of Camerino, went to Rome in the 1550s and, as a relatively late vocation, studied at the Jesuit College from 1563. He became a bishop in 1577, being consecrated by the then Cardinal Peretti. After his accession as pope, Sixtus appointed him Governor of Rome and vice-camerlengo of the Church in 1585 and cardinal in 1589, soon after he returned from escorting Camilla Peretti to Loreto. In 1591–1592, he was one of three cardinals named to lead the administration of the church and continued as a prominent member of the Sacred College, practical, irascible and an opponent of the Spanish interest. Pierbenedetti was not a noted patron of the visual arts. Setting aside small devotional objects on paper, his inventory post-mortem in Rome has 72 paintings. Only three are given a value of over 7 sc. – an Assumption of the Virgin with the Apostles (596), valued at 30 sc., a St. Catherine (544) at 15 sc., and a David and Goliath (539) at 8 sc., which is noted as being painted on both sides of the same panel and likely to be a copy of the painting of the same subject by Daniele da Volterra now

48 The display of pope-patron alongside protégé recurs in the collections of Sistine cardinals, e.g. the pairing of Sixtus and Cardinal Mattei, both identically framed and placed behind red curtains; Cavazzini, ‘On Painted Portraiture’, 2015–2016, p. 232. 49 For example, his will of 1615 – ASR, Segretari et Cancellieri della R.C.A., 1255, fol. 280r (C. Bonellus; 15 December 1615): ‘Et acciò che le sopradette cose siano meglio exeguite, supplico instantissimamente l’Illustrissimo Signor Cardinal Montalto dal quale riconosco il mio ben essere, come doverà far sempre la Casa mia.’ The same words were repeated in his last will of 1617.

Portraits as Symbols 

Fig. 8.1 Funerary monument to Cardinal Mariano Pierbenedetti, Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore (© Nicholas True).

in the Louvre.50 The limited non-religious subjects are all portraits. They include 5 family portraits – 2 of his curial uncle, Giovanni Battista (527, 589), 2 of his parents (504, 505) and 1 of his brother, Alessandro (509). There is a portrait of Gregory XIII (529), 2 of Sixtus V (506, 528), and 2 of the pope’s sister, Camilla Peretti (530, 629).51 Pierbenedetti’s last act before being elected cardinal was to escort Camilla Peretti to Loreto. Could one of these portraits have been a gift to recognize Mariano’s friendship? Pierbenedetti had portraits of six cardinals. These were Francesco Alciati (1522–80, Fig. 8.1; 503), Domenico Capranica (1400–1458; 510), Fisher (555), Carlo Borromeo (556), Montalto (532), and a ‘Cardinal Priore’ of uncertain identification (513).52 The most 50 Appendix, no. 10, inventory 7 April 1611. I hope to publish this in a wider study of Pierbenedetti. Twenty-two of the paintings are worth 1 sc. or less, 38 between 1 and 3 sc. The numbers are those in the original valuation. I am grateful to Clare Robertson for the Louvre observation. 51 On the importance of Camilla to Peretti family patronage, see Dennis, ‘Camilla Peretti’, 2012. 52 Recent cardinals who were also Grand Prior in Rome of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta were Bernardo Salviati (Gran Priore di Roma 1525–1568, cardinal 1561), Michele Bonelli (Gran Priore di Roma 1568–1598, cardinal 1566), and Silvestro Aldobrandini (Gran Priore di Roma 1598–1612, cardinal 1603).

215

216

Thomas-Leo True

Fig. 8.2 Funerary monument to Cardinal Francesco Alciati, Rome, Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (© Martina Caruso).

valuable – if one can call it that – of the cardinal portraits is that of Cardinal Montalto (5 sc.). Those of Carlo Borromeo and of his close associate Alciati are described as large and valued at 3 sc. Capranica’s is worth 2 sc.; Fisher’s, just 1.50. Fisher imparts the odour of sanctity as a martyr for the unity of the Church. Pierbenedetti will have known Borromeo (after 1584) as well as his teacher and spokesperson, Alciati (after 1580). Together with Capranica, founder of the eponymous Collegio, they were surely hung by Pierbenedetti for reasons of their pious example and earnest reform. The example of these leaders in canon law and Church reform must have guided Pierbenedetti as he shaped his own reputation as an effective reformist. Alciati’s record in church governance and the administration of justice anticipate Pierbenedetti’s achievements as Governor of Rome. Pierbenedetti was one of four cardinals appointed to lead the Rome visitation of Clement VIII (1592–1596). Each visitor was issued with a copy of Borromeo’s Acta Ecclesia Mediolanensis to guide them.53 Possession of a portrait of the Milanese bishop might also function as a spiritual spur. The inventory recalls that Pierbenedetti owned a belt of Carlo Borromeo (350), further material evidence for his personal devotion to the saint. The anomaly is a portrait of Cardinal Montalto (1571–1623), a living contemporary. Pierbenedetti was part of Montalto’s Sistine faction. In his case, too, this portrait, 53 Mansour, ‘Censure and Censorship’, 2013, pp. 136–160.

Portraits as Symbols 

the two of Sixtus and the two of Camilla Peretti must be inferred to reflect loyalty to Peretti support and patronage. In his will, Pierbenedetti asked to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore near Sixtus’s funerary chapel (Fig. 8.1). He left Montalto as his principal executor with a request that he and the Peretti family should always be the protectors of the Pierbenedetti.54 In his palace at Muccia in the Marche, which was visited by Clement VIII in 1598, Pierbenedetti had 23 paintings.55 It is no surprise to find that three were of Clement VIII, which no doubt gratified His Holiness. Again, there were no secular subjects, except portraits. In addition to Clement, there were portraits of Paul III, Gregory XIII and, unsurprisingly, of Sixtus V and Camilla Peretti. Of the family there was one of his uncle, Giovanni Battista, and one of himself as bishop, painted between 1577 and 1589. There was just one portrait of a cardinal, ‘Cardinale Giustiniani’. It is uncertain if this was Vincenzo, who died in 1582, or Pierbenedetti’s contemporary, Benedetto, whom he chose as one of his executors. If the latter, it is a comparatively rare example of a display of affinity. If not, then, again, we see patrons and family. In each case, these newly discovered inventories affirm the importance of family, of vertical patronage links, and of spiritual example as the key motives for ownership and display of the portraits of prelates.

Conclusion Further research may show that analysis of the circulation, gifting, exchange, collection, and display of cardinal’s portraits by cardinals offers another way forward for considering dynamic social relations in the Sacred College. This approach uncovers axes among individuals who have not been previously explored, which can form the basis for future art historical study. For example, the materials, setting, and cut of the beard in the funerary monuments of Pierbenedetti and Alciati (Figs. 8.1 and 8.2) appear less coincidental in the knowledge that Pierbenedetti, admiring Alciati as exemplar, had his portrait hanging in his palace. From this patchwork of data certain conclusions can be securely extracted on which type of cardinals engaged in this collecting practice, why they acquired cardinals’ portraits, and whose portraits were most popular. There is a sense, often honoured in the breach as we have seen, that it was unseemly (in Rome, if not the 54 ASR, 30 Notai Capitolini, 21, 79, 1r–5v, 12r–14v (F. Grilli): ‘volo ut corpus meum deponatur in ecclesia Sanctae Mariae Maioris ante capellam fabricatam per fel: me: Sistum Quintum. [2r] […] in primis Ill mus et Reverendissimus D. Alexander Perettus Cardinalis de Montealto nuncupatus cui commendo meos nepotes et descendentes ab eis et familiam suam ipsumque rogo ut ipsorum protector et defensor esse dignetur […] [14r]’. 55 Appendix, no. 13, ASSC, Not. Cam., 4952, carta sciolta, pp. 10–11 (24 March 1612; B. Lilli).

217

218

Thomas-Leo True

periphery) to display one’s own portrait, although those of forbears were acceptable. Personal portraits are nonetheless quite often displayed. There was a strong trend to display portraits of benefactors and patrons. They were commissioned or given as gifts, not laterally between equals, but to underline the patron–client relationship. Prestigious personalities displayed drew attention to political affinities and former glories and, if portraits could embody professional accomplishments, so did the ‘Due Ritratti di due Cardinali da Este’ (Two portraits of two Este cardinals) – inherited from Lucrezia d’Este in Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini’s collection at Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati – celebrate his role in absorbing the Este lands into the Papal States?56 Portraits of spiritual examples and wider virtuous models from past cardinals were also acceptable, with images of Carlo Borromeo – as cardinal or bishop – indisputably commanding the field in later Counter-Reformation Rome.57 Fisher’s portrait appears more than once, reminding us of the vitality even of an overseas exemplar who was a testimony to fortitude and faith. Some cardinals seem not to have participated in this behaviour. In a prodigious 1608 inventory of Cardinal Ascanio Colonna – comprising over 120 pages describing rooms shimmering with velvet and satin – only one portrait of a cardinal is specified, and that, as one might expect, was of Pompeo Colonna (1479–1532; 391).58 Perhaps, it was cardinals more deeply engaged with reformist agendas, from the spirituali to Borromean circles, who displayed cardinals’ portraits as exemplars. Even after this initial investigation, while a practice of gifting patron portraits existed, we can dismiss any widespread habit in the Sacred College of the exchange of portraits between friends or equals as found in the modern world. The collection of Rodolfo Pio da Carpi is an exception, offering an insight into an affective affinity that sustained a circle of reforming cardinals in the mid-Cinquecento. Yet portraits of certain contemporary and near-contemporary cardinals were collected and displayed, for reasons of family, patronage, place, or spiritual example. These choices may, as data is more systematically collected, shed additional light on social and political relations at the highest level of the Church. 56 Appendix, no. 6, inventory 1603, in Getty Provenance Index. The idea of cardinals displaying Este objects as booty is suggested by Pierbenedetti’s collection, which included nine tapestries brought from Ferrara and valued at 300 sc. on his walls (415, 416). 57 For further discussion of the production, circulation, and veneration of portraits of Carlo Borromeo, see the contribution of Minou Schraven to this volume. 58 Appendix, no. 8, inventory 19 May 1608, to my knowledge unpublished. There is also a reference to ‘tredici quadri di retratti diversi’ (268). Kings and popes feature (including of course, Martin V Colonna; 396) and two of Marcantonio Colonna, the victor of Lepanto (390). The loyalty to Spain is pronounced with portraits of Philip II, ‘Re Filippo morto’ (398), Philip III, ‘Filippo vivente’ (401), and ‘Retratti no. 16 in tela, in piede, cioe 12 dame Spagnole, et le 4 Regine di Spagna gia’ (491).

Portraits as Symbols 

Appendix 1. Rodolfo Pio da Carpi (1500–1564, cardinal 1536) 2 May 1564 Valuation of Rodolfo’s pictures at his palace in Campo Marzio: 6 Cardinal Bessarion 7 sc. Saletta della anticaglie 33 Cardinal Gasparo Contarini 6 sc. Loggia 34 Cardinal Pietro Bembo 8.30 sc. Loggia 35 Cardinal Gregorio Cortese 10.10 sc. Loggia 36 Cardinal John Fisher (‘Ruffen d’Inghilterra’) 6.30 sc. Loggia 37 Cardinal Giacomo Sadoleto 7.70 sc. Loggia 38 Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro (‘Brindisi’) 4.50 sc. Loggia 39 Cardinal Reginald Pole (‘Polo d’Inghilterra’) 10.50 sc. Loggia 52 Cardinal Francisco Jimenez 3.20 sc. Torre nella loggia di sopra 61 Cardinal Miguel da Silva (‘Visco’) 1.20 sc. Camera di Gio. Guardaroba 62 Cardinal Miguel da Silva (‘Visco’) 1.60 sc. Camera di Gio. Guardaroba Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (Archivio Falcò Pio, 526, fasc. 3) 2. Decio Azzolino (1549–1587, cardinal 1585) n.d. (copied on 3 April 1590) Inventory of Decio’s goods, taken for Capt. Felice Azzolino and the Reverenda Camera, presented by guardaroba, Gabriele Cansacco, undated: 21r Cardinal Azzolino (‘un ritratto del Sigr Carde in tela assai vecchio’) Biblioteca Comunale Planettiana, Jesi, Archivio Azzolino, b. 27/1, fasc. ‘s.d. Inventario del guardaroba del Sig. Cardinale’ 3. Michele Bonelli (1541–1598, cardinal 1566) 14 July 1593 Inventory of paintings of Michele on transfer of guardarobba – numbers are assigned by Maria Celeste Cola, in Cola, Palazzo Valentini a Roma, 2012, pp. 187–188: 15 Cardinal Bonelli (by Scipione Pulzone) Archivio Storico Capitolino (Archivio Urbano, sez. I, vol. 379 (notaio Gratianus, Franciscus), fols. 362v–) 4. Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609, cardinal 1563–1588) 1588 Cardinals included in a collection of 186 viri illustres in an inventory taken around the time Ferdinando ceased to be cardinal – references are to folios of the original document: 187r Cardinal Niccolo da Prato

219

220

Thomas-Leo True

187r Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli 187r Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi 187r Cardinal Bessarion 187r Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini 187r Cardinal Pierre d’Aubuisson 187r Cardinal Fra Luca Manzoli 187r Cardinal Ascanio Sforza 187r Cardinal Pompeo Colonna 187r Cardinal Ippolito de’Medici 187r Cardinal Giacomo Sadoleto 187r Cardinal Pietro Bembo 187r Cardinal Reginald Pole Archivio di Stato, Firenze (ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 79, fol. 187r) 5. Girolamo Mattei (1547–1603, cardinal 1586) 1603 Inventory post-mortem of Girolamo’s possessions drawn up in Rome: 12 Cardinal Girolamo Mattei (‘Ritratto di SS. Ill.mo quando era giovanetto’) Archivio Antici-Mattei, Recanati (mazzo 31) 6. Pietro Aldobrandini (1571–1621, cardinal 1593) 1603 Inventory of Pietro’s possessions at Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati, partially inherited from Lucrezia d’Este at the end of the sixteenth century: 140 Cardinal Girolamo Vidoni (‘mons. Vidoni’) 144 Cardinal Giovanni Aldobrandini 201 ‘Due Ritratti di due Cardinali da Este’ 217 ‘Ritratto Car[dina]le putto’ (by Agnolo Bronzino) Archivio Aldobrandini, Frascati 7. Silvestro Aldobrandini (1587–1612, cardinal 1603) 1606 Inventory under the rubric ‘1606 inventario di tutte le mie robbe’ from a book entitled ‘Aldobrandini, inventario dal 1606 al 1638’ drawn up by an unspecified member of the Aldobrandini, hypothesized to be Silvestro. 7 San Carlo Borromeo (‘Un San Carlo che nelle mani tiene il Crocefisso contemplandolo […]’) 27 Cardinal Scipione Borghese (‘Ritratto del sig.r Card.le Borghese senza mani’) 28 Cardinal Stefano Pignatelli? (‘Ritratto del sig.r Card.le Pignattelli qual tiene in mano un memoriale’)

Portraits as Symbols 

Archivio Doria Pamphilj, Rome (Fondo Aldobrandini, b. 30, fols. 1–15) 8. Ascanio Colonna (1560–1608, cardinal 1586) 19 May 1608 Inventory of Ascanio’s possessions in part of the Palazzo Colonna, which he inhabited, drawn up for Marcantonio Colonna, ‘dictae hereditatis creditor’, and the administrators of Ascanio’s estate, which he had willed to the Lateran chapter: 391 Cardinal Pompeo Colonna (‘un quadro del Cardinal Pompeo in piede’) Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, Notai A.C., 1023 (Atti 1608, 2nd vol.) (notaio Blancus, Petrus), fols. 667r–733r) 9. Benedetto Giustiniani (1554–1621, cardinal 1586) 1600–1611 Entries to the guardarobba of Cardinal Giustiniani – numbers are those assigned by Silvia Danesi Squarzina, in Danesi Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani, vol. 1: Inventari I, 2003, pp. 1–59: 57 Cardinal Montalto 58 Cardinal Aldobrandini 59 Cardinal Bessarion (‘grande’) 60 San Carlo Borromeo (‘grande’) 61 Cardinal Vincenzo Giustiniani (‘grande’) 62 Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (‘grande’) 98 Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (‘naturale a sedere’) (by Caravaggio) 105 San Carlo Borromeo praying before the cross (by Lanfranco) Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, Fondo Giustiniani, b. 15, vol. 14A, pt. IV) 30 March 1621 Inventory post-mortem of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani prepared for his brother, Vincenzo – numbers are those assigned by Silvia Danesi Squarzina, in Danesi Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani, 2003, vol. 1, pp. 75–205: 14 Cardinal Vincenzo Giustiniani 58 San Carlo Borromeo 122 Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (by Caravaggio) 123 Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (‘grande’) 124 Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (‘grande’) 125 San Carlo Borromeo (by Lanfranco) 126 Cardinal Bessarion 174 San Carlo Borromeo holding the cross in his hands 209 San Carlo Borromeo (‘in stampa’) 254 San Carlo Borromeo (‘in stampa rosso nel modo che sta in sepoltura’)

221

222

Thomas-Leo True

Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, Notai A.C., 1302 (notaio Buratti, Rainaldo), fols. 1343r–1419r 10. Mariano Pierbenedetti (1538–1611, cardinal 1589) 7 April 1611 Inventory post-mortem of Mariano’s possessions in his palace in Campo Marzio supplied to his executors by Martino Fabri, guardarobba, with valuations for each item: 503 Cardinal Alciati (‘un quadro grande del Illmo Sr Cardinale Alciati’) 3 sc. 510 Cardinal Capranica 2 sc. 513 Uncertain Cardinal (‘Illustrissimo D. Cardinale Priore’) 0.80 sc. 532 Cardinal Montalto 5 sc. 555 Cardinal Fisher (‘Beato Cardinale Gio: Fiscerio Martire senza cornice’) 1.50 sc. 556 San Carlo Borromeo (‘grande di San Carlo Borromeo senza cornice’) 3 sc. Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, 30 Not. Cap., off. 21 (Francesco Grilli), vol. 79, fols. 470r, 481r–505r) Inventory post-mortem of Mariano’s possessions in his palaces in Muccia and Camerino, undertaken for his heir, Mariano Pierbenedetti, and the administrators of the Cardinal’s estate – not numbered, references are to page numbers in the volume: Palace in Muccia 8r Cardinal Pierbenedetti (‘un quadro del Cardinale quando era Vescovo’) 8r Cardinal Giustiniani 8r Sr Gio: Francesco Aldobrandino Note. Gio: Francesco Aldobrandini is more likely to be the soldier, G-F. Aldobrandini (1545–1601), than Cardinal G-F. Biandrate Aldobrandini (1545–1605, cardinal 1596), although the Cardinal often served in the Marche and preceded Pierbenedetti as Governor of Rome. It is listed after a portrait of the soldier Duke of Parma. Biandrate assumed the Aldobrandini name in 1596. But the possibility exists and is therefore noted. Palace in Camerino 8v No portraits, except one of Sixtus V Archivio di Stato di Macerata, sezione di Camerino (ASSC, Not. Cam., 5274, fols. 5r–9v (notaio Bernardino Lilli) 11. Antonio Maria Salviati (1537–1602, cardinal 1583) 18 October 1612 Inventory of Antonio Maria’s guardarobba drawn up in Rome 17 Cardinal Carlo Conti (?) (‘Ritratto del Cardinale S. Clemente’) Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome (Fondo Borghese, vol. 4375, fols. 7–9)

Portraits as Symbols 

June 1634 Inventory of Antonio Maria’s guardarobba drawn up in Rome: 14 Cardinal Giovanni Salviati Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome (Fondo Borghese, vol. 4376) 12. Paolo Sfondrato (1560–1618, cardinal 1590) 19 February 1618 Inventory post-mortem of Paolo’s possessions from Palazzo Capodiferro left to Santa Cecilia in Trastevere: 4 San Carlo Borromeo 12 San Carlo Borromeo 18 Cardinal Paolo Sfondrato with St. Cecilia and saints (‘S. Cecilia, e cinque altri Santi con il S. Car.le inginocchioni’) 58 San Carlo Borromeo (‘S. Carlo con un crocefisso’) 71 Cardinal Francesco Sfondrato Archivio Storico Capitolino, Rome (ASC, 30 Not. Cap. (notaio Imbarca, Giovanni Battista), sez. 1, vol. 412, fols. 150r–202v) 13. Antonio Maria Gallo (1553–1620, cardinal 1586) 2–4 April 1620 Inventory post-mortem of Gallo’s possessions in newly bought palace in Rome (now comprised inside Palazzo Besso), prepared for his heirs by Giulio Berti, guardarobba – items not numbered, references are to folios of the original document: 569v San Carlo Borromeo (‘grande con cornice dorato con San Carlo Borromeo’) 570r Cardinal Montalto (‘grande col retratto do Montealto con cornice’) Archivio di Stato, Roma (ASR, Notai A.C., vol. 154 (notaio Amadeus, Dominicus), fols. 565r–577v, 580r–590r) 9 April–25 May 1620 Room-by-room inventory of the palace, prepared for testamentary heir, Pier Stefano Gallo – items not numbered, references are to folios of the original document: 679v San Carlo Borromeo, terza stanza 680v Cardinal Montalto (‘quadro di Monte Alto con sua cornice’), quinta stanza Galleria Archivio di Stato, Roma (ASR, Notai A.C., vol. 154, (notaio Amadeus, Dominicus), fols. 670r–692v, 699r–712v) Note. Clearly the same two paintings, recorded in two ways.

223

224

Thomas-Leo True

26–29 May 1620 Inventory post-mortem of Gallo’s possessions in Palazzo Gallo in Osimo and in his local landholdings, prepared for heirs, Alessandro and Pier Stefano – references to page numbers in the document cited: 2 Cardinal Gallo (‘ritratto’), galleria 3 Cardinal Gallo (‘del Sigr Cardinale in piedi’), camera alla cantonata di S. Francesco Archivio Gallo Pantoli Piletti, Osimo, c. 748 (transcript of the original) 14. Maffeo Barberini (1568–1644, cardinal 1606, pope 1623) 22 September 1623 Inventory drawn up a few days after Maffeo’s election to the papacy of his possessions from properties in Vicolo ‘detto della Grotta’, via dei Giubbonari and Castel Gandolfo, bequeathed to his brother Carlo: 2 Cardinal Egidio Albornoz y Carrillo 18 Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici 31 Cardinal Antonio Barberini, senior 46 Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (Urban VIII) (by Innocenzo Tacconi) 64a Cardinal Fra Bernardo Salviati 64b Cardinal Giovanni Salviati 64c Cardinal Antonio Maria Salviati 65 Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci (‘Testa del Card.l Pucci’) 66 Cardinal Nicolò Ardinghelli (‘Testa del Card.l Ardinghelli’) 67 Cardinal Giovanni Antonio Fachinetti (Innocent IX) (‘Testa del Card.l S.ti Quattro, che fu’ Papa Innoce.o’) 68 Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (Urban VIII) (‘Testa del Card.l Barberino’) 76 ‘Due ritratti del Card.l Aldobrandino’ 83 ‘Ritratto del Card.l Corsini’ 91 Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (Urban VIII) (by Lionello Spada) (‘Doi ritratti del S.r Cardinale Barberini’) 107 San Carlo Borromeo 112 Cardinal Francesco Barberini 123 Cardinal Scipione Borghese Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, Notai A.C., vol. 26 (notaio Rosciolus, Crisantes), fol. 69) 15. Desiderio Scaglia (1567–1639, cardinal 1621) 15 March 1626 Inventory of Desiderio’s possessions from his palace in rione Campitelli, bequeathed to his nephew, Deodato: 33 Cardinal Scipione Borghese 35 Cardinal Desiderio Scaglia

Portraits as Symbols 

Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, Notai A.C., vol. 2975 (notaio Floridus, Sanctes), fols. 520–527) 16. Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1626, cardinal 1588) 21 February 1627 Inventory of del Monte’s possesions prepared for his second heir, Alessandro del Monte, the first heir Uguccione having died in September 1626 – references are given to folios of the original document: 574v San Carlo Borromeo 576r Cardinal Egidio Colonna 576r 277 quadri senza cornice di Palmi quattro l’uno di diversi Papi, Imperatori, Cardinali, e Duchi e altri huomini Illustri, con alcune Donne 577r Cardinal del Monte (by Scipione Pulzone) 582v Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici (‘quando era Cardinale’) Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, 30 Not. Cap., off. 28 (notaio Vespignanus, Paulus), fols. 574r–609v) 17. Alessandro Peretti Montalto (1571–1629, cardinal 1585) 1629 Inventory post-mortem of Montalto’s possessions bequeathed to his nephew, Francesco, later cardinal – numbers are those given by Belinda Granata, in Granata, Le passioni virtuose, 2012: 52 Cardinal Montalto (by Lanfranco) (‘quadro piccolo di ritratto del signor Card. Peretti in Rame mano di Gio: Lanfrancho’) 100 San Carlo Borromeo Archivio di Stato, Roma (ASR, Notai A.C., 3107 (notaio Fontia, Domenicus), fols. 177r– 178v, 205r–v – the relevant extracts in Granata, Le passioni virtuose, 2012, pp. 219–223) 6 August 1629 Inventory post-mortem of Montalto’s possessions in his Palazzo in the Borgo Vecchio, prepared for his nephew, Michele Peretti – numbers are those in Granata, Le passioni virtuose, 2012: 3 San Carlo Borromeo Archivio di Stato, Roma (ASR, Notai A.C., 3106 (notaio Fontia, Domenicus), fol. 526r – extracts in Granata, Le passioni virtuose, 2012, pp. 223–231) 3 May 1655 Inventory of possessions in the Peretti Montalto fideicommissum, prepared at the death of Cardinal Francesco Montalto – numbers are those in Granata, Le passioni virtuose, 2012:

225

226

Thomas-Leo True

11 Uncertain cardinals (‘le figure di Papa Sisto e due Cardinali attorno’) 38 Cardinal Montalto (‘Prospettiva […] di Alessandro Cardinale Montalto’) 133 Cardinal Montalto (‘ritratto a mezza f igura […] del Cardinale Alessandro Montalto’) 291 Cardinal Montalto (‘quadro dà testa con il ritratto del Cardinale Alessandro’) 334 San Carlo Borromeo adoring the cross 385 San Carlo Borromeo with hands to his breast holding the cross 439 Cardinal Montalto, seated 479 Cardinal Montalto (‘in piedi, coll’officio sopra la tavola, con panno verde e gelsomini’) 488 Cardinal Ferdinando de’Medici (probably portrayed as ‘primo Gran Duca di Toscana’) 724 Cardinal Montalto Archivio Storico Capitolino, Rome (Archivio Urbano, Fidecommissi e Primogeniture, sez. V, prot. 4, fasc. 69 – extracts in Granata, Le passioni virtuose, 2012, pp. 231–273) 18. Ludovico Ludovisi (1595–1632, cardinal 1621) 28 January 1633 Inventory of possessions from the Ludovisi vigna at Porta Pinciana: 120 Gregory XV and Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi (by Domenichino) (‘Ritratto della s. mem. di Greg.o XVo a sedere con il Sigre Cardle Ludovisi appresso, in piedi’) 122c Ferdinand Cardinal Infante of Spain (‘Ritratto in piedi del Cardle Infante’) 188 Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi (by Pietro Fiorentino) 285 Cardinal Cesare Baronio 286 Cardinal Robert Bellarmine Archivio Vaticano, Rome (Archivio Boncompagni-Ludovisi, Braccio IX, prot. 325, no. I, 1633) 19. Lorenzo Magalotti (1584–1637, cardinal 1624) 14 October 1637 Inventory of Lorenzo’s possessions drawn up in Rome: 41 Unknown cardinal 43 Cardinal Lorenzo Magalotti 48 Cardinal Ludovico (?) Ludovisi (‘Retratto del Sig.re Card.le Ludovisio’) 52 Cardinal Scipione Borghese 57 Cardinal Francesco (?) Barberini (‘Retratto del S.re Card.le Barberini’) 66 Cardinal Lorenzo Magalotti Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, Notai A.C., vol. 3155 (notaio Fontia, Domenicus), fols. 1035r–1036v, 1074) 20. Carlo Emanuele Pio senior di Savoia (1585–1641, Cardinal 1604)

Portraits as Symbols 

1641 Inventory post-mortem of Carlo Emmanuele’s possessions from his palace in rione Monti: 71 Unknown cardinal (‘Ritratto di Card.le senza berretta’) 214 Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini 216 Cardinal Pio di Savoia (‘Card.le a sedere di Casa Pia con barbone, et un Crocifisso nella mano’) 217 Cardinal Pio di Savoia (‘Card.le della casa in piedi con barba lunga, e berretta in testa’) 218 Cardinal Pio di Savoia (‘Card.le della casa Pia senza berretta’) 219 Cardinal Pio di Savoia (‘Card.le della casa Pia senza berretta con viso guasto’) 220 Unknown cardinal (‘Testa di Card.le giovine assai con berretta in testa’) 264 San Carlo Borromeo (‘San Carlo inginocchioni’) Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (Archivio Pio-Falcò) 21. Benedetto Ubaldi (1588–1644, cardinal 1633) 17 December 1644 Inventory post-mortem of Benedetto’s possessions left to Antonio Monaldi drawn up in Rome: 71 San Carlo Borromeo (‘San Carlo adorante il Crocifisso’) 81 Cardinal Antonio Barberini senior (?) (‘Ritratto del Signor Cardinale Barberino’) 82 Cardinal Antonio Barberini senior 83 Cardinal Giulio della Rovere 88 Cardinal Federico Baldeschi (‘Ritratto di Mons.r Baldeschi’) Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, 30 Not. Cap., off. 1 (notaio Ricci, Antonio), vol. 177, fols. 794–837) 22. Guido Bentivoglio (1579–1644, cardinal 1621) 24 January 1645 Inventory post-mortem of Guido’s possessions left to his nephew, Cornelio, drawn up in Rome: 5 Cardinal Scipione Borghese Archivio di Stato, Rome (ASR, 30 Not. Cap., off.15 (notaio Salvatori, Thomas), vol. 181, fols. 267–300)

227

228

Thomas-Leo True

Bibliography Acconci, Alessandra and Alessandro Zuccari, eds., Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013). Alsteens, Stijn and Adam Eaker, eds., Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 2016). Bacchi, Pietro Giacomo, Vita di San Filippo Neri (1636). Baker-Bates, Piers, ‘A Portrait of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, Rival and Imitator of the Papal Caesars’, Papers of the British School at Rome 76 (2008): 183–199, 356. Baglione, Giovanni, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano Ottavo nel 1642, ed. by Jacob Hess and Herwath Röttgen (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1995). Butters, Suzanne B., ‘Contrasting Priorities: Ferdinando de’ Medici, Cardinal and Grand Duke’, in The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M. Richardson (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). Cappelletti, Francesca and Laura Testa, ‘Ricerche documentarie sul San Giovanni Battista dei Musei Capitolini e sul San Giovanni Battista della Galleria Doria-Pamphilj’, in Identificazione di un Caravaggio, ed. by Giampaolo Correale (Venice: Marsilio, 1990), pp. 85–92. Cavazzini, Patrizia, ‘On Painted Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Rome: Theory, Practice and Appreciation’, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 42 (2015–2016): 227–242. Clark, Leah, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Cola, Maria Celeste, Palazzo Valentini a Roma: la committenza Zambeccari, Boncompagni, Bonelli tra Cinquecento e Settecento (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2012). Danesi Squarzina, Silvia, La collezione Giustiniani, 3 vols. (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 2003). Della Pergola, Paola, ‘Gli inventari Salviati’, Arte Antica e Moderna 11 (April–June/July– September 1960): 193–200, 308–321. Dennis, Kimberly, ‘Camilla Peretti, Sixtus V, and the Construction of Peretti Family Identity in Counter-Reformation Rome’, Sixteenth Century Journal 43 (spring 2012): 71–101. Dern, Alexandra, Scipione Pulzone (ca. 1546–1598) (Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank Für Geisteswissenschaften, 2003). Fagiolo, Marcello and Maria Luisa Madonna, eds., Sisto V: vol. 1: Roma e il Lazio, atti del VI Corso Internazionale di Alta Cultura (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato/ Libreria dello Stato, 1992), Feigenbaum, Gail and Francesco Freddolini, eds., Display of Art in the Roman Palace, 1550–1750 (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2014). Francucci, Massimo, ‘Un episodio di committenza sistina per le Marche: il Cardinal Antonio Maria Gallo (1553–1620)’, tesi di laurea, University of Bologna, 2005. Franzoni, Claudio, Giorgia Mancini, Tania Previdi and Manuela Rossi, eds., Gli inventari dell’eredità del Cardinale Rodolfo Pio da Carpi (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2002).

Portraits as Symbols 

Frommel, Christoph Luitpold, ‘Caravaggios Frühwerk und der Kardinal Francesco del Monte’, Storia dell’Arte 9.10 (1971): 5–52. Gallo, Antonio Maria, De Sacris imaginibus, pictorumque licentia coercenda (Osimo, 1594). Granata, Belinda, Le passioni virtuose: Collezionismo e committenze artistiche a Roma del Cardinale Alessandro Peretti Montalto (1571–1623) (Rome: Campisano, 2012). Hurtubise, Pierre, Une Famille-témoin: les Salviati, Studi e Testi 309 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1985). Joost-Gaugier, Christiane, ‘Poggio and Visual Tradition: “Uomini Famosi” in Classical Literary Description’, Artibus et Historiae 6.12 (1985): 57–74. Klinger, Linda S., ‘The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio’, PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1997. Lavin, Irving, ‘On the Sources and Meaning of the Renaissance Portrait Bust’, Art Quarterly 33 (1970): 207–226; repr. in Looking at Renaissance Sculpture, ed. by Sarah Blake McHam (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 60–78. Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art (New York: New York Unversity Press, 1975). Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura (Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1585). McLean, Paul D., The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2007). Madonna, Maria Luisa, ed. Roma di Sisto V: le arti e la cultura (Roma: Edizione de Luca, 1993). Mansour, Opher, ‘Censure and Censorship in Rome, c. 1600: The Visitation of Clement VIII and the Visual Arts’, in The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation Church, ed. by Marcia Hall and Tracy Cooper (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 136–160. Ottonelli Giandomenico and Pietro (Berrettini) Da Cortona, Trattato della pittura e scultura, uso, et abuso loro (Florence, 1652). Paleotti, Gabriele, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane (Bologna, 1582). Rebecchini, Guido, ‘Il collezionismo a Ferrara in età barocca: il caso della famiglia Bentivoglio fra realtà padana e modelli romani’, in Cultura nell’età delle Legazioni, atti del convegno, Ferrara 20–22 March 2003, ed. by F. Cazzola and R. Varese (Florence: Le Lettere, 2005), pp. 329–352. Sani, Bernardina, La fatica virtuosa di Ottavio Leoni (Turin/New York: Umberto Allemandi, 2005). Scott, John Beldon, Images of Nepotism: The Painted Ceilings of Palazzo Barberini (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). Terzaghi, Maria Cristina, Caravaggio: Mecenati e Pittori (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2010). True, Thomas-Leo, ‘Power and Place: the Marchigian Cardinals of Pope Sixtus V’, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. Waźbiński, Zygmunt, Il Cardinale Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1626), 2 vols. (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994).

229

230

Thomas-Leo True

About the Author Thomas-Leo True completed his PhD at Cambridge University and was until 2018 Assistant Director of the British School at Rome. His research focuses on the patronage of Marchigian cardinals, who will form the subject of his forthcoming monograph. He was co-editor of and contributor to Roma e gli artisti stranieri, published in 2018.

9. Portraits as a Sign of Possession Cardinals and their Protectorships in Early Modern Rome Arnold Witte Abstract Cardinals’ portraits were not only intended for private residences and painted by famous artists, but were also produced in multiple copies of variable quality that still can be found on the art market. In these paintings, often based on portrait prints, likeness or artistic merit were not the most important criteria. Inventories show that most of these copies were actually made for religious institutions, such as orders and confraternities, of which these cardinals were appointed protector. This essay deals with the question of how and when these portraits were obtained and where they were displayed; by means of this spatial contextualization, it explains the legal function of these portraits within these institutions. Keywords: cardinal protectors; portrait prints; copies; Catholic Church; Counter-Reformation

And apart from that, in Rome still many churches, colleges, monasteries and other religious organizations have their cardinal protectors, who have full jurisdiction in all lawsuits, both civil and criminal, religious and profane, for which they can assign the judges, also in the case of appeal […]1

After the Council of Trent, the tasks and functions of cardinals were not so much redefined as recalibrated and restructured, and in the process of negotiation within

1 De Luca, Il Dottor volgare, 1673, pt. 15: ‘Et in oltre, vi è ancora in Roma un gran numero di chiese, e di Colleggi, e di monasterij, e di altri luoghi pij, liquali hanno i Cardinali protettori, con la piena giurisdizione in tutte le cause, civili, e criminali, cosi spirituali, come profane, per lo che deputano i giudici, anche nell’altre istanze in grado dell’appellazione ò del ricorso […]’.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch09

232

Arnold Witte

and beyond the papal Curia, this led to an increasing visibility of porporati.2 This development also affected the function of portraits, and is first of all visible in the production of portrait prints. The idea for this seems already to have been formulated in the 1570s by Alfonso Chacón, the first compiler of a complete set of cardinals’ biographies; in 1628, Andrea Brogiotti published a set of woodcut portraits of Urban VIII, along with all living cardinals; and in 1657, De Rossi turned this one-off concept into an ongoing series of cardinals’ portraits, starting from the College of Cardinals under Alexander VII (Figs. 9.1 and 9.2).3 This practice was continued by his successors until the late eighteenth century. As a result, the iconography of the cardinal’s portrait print, consisting of a bust length depiction showing the sitter with a mozzetta (the shoulder-length mantle) and biretta (the square, ridged cap), became standardized. At the same time, a production of paintings started that followed largely the same visual format. Since it has recently been supposed that cardinals’ portraits showed a large variety of compositional schemes in the early modern period, this raises the question of what this particular production of almost identical painted portraits conveyed to the contemporary beholder, and for what context these were made. 4 This article deals in particular with cardinals’ portraits in the context of confraternities and, to a lesser extent, religious orders. Protectorships of religious brotherhoods became a common feature after the return of the papal court to Rome in 1420, and their importance increased from the mid-fifteenth century onwards, when the individuals nominated to that position came exclusively from the rank of cardinals. Protectorships had existed within religious orders since the thirteenth century; St. Francis had introduced this function in 1223 in his organization to secure a form of supervision during periods of his absence, but also to guarantee support within the Curia, where the Franciscan order was still considered an intrusion within the existing ecclesiastical structure.5 During the Avignonese exile, many religious organizations followed the Franciscan example, and by 1420, it had become customary for most orders to be affiliated with a member of the 2 For the position of cardinals after the Tridentine Council, see Jedin, ‘Vorschläge und Entwürfe’, 1966. 3 Chacón, Vitae et gesta, 1601; Herklotz, ‘Alfonso Chacón’, 2007, pp. 120–124; Brogiotti, Sanctissimi D.N. Urbani VIII, 1628; for De Rossi’s series of printed portraits, see Tozzi, ‘Libro de’ ritratti’, 2006, and De Crescenzo and Diotallevi, Le ‘Effigies nomina et cognomina s.r.e. cardinalium’, 2008, pp. 11–20. The Indice delle stampe intagliate, 1729, pp. 99–104, gives the entire set as published until that time. 4 Petrucci and Titton, eds., La porpora romana, 2006. 5 Da Siena, Il cardinale protettore, 1940. Other types of protectorships existed in the early modern period, especially that of the ‘national protectors’, for which see Wodka, Zur Geschichte, 1938, and Marceau, ‘Cardinal Protectors and National Interests’, 2020. In this context, portraits functioned differently since their juridical position was dependent to a greater extent on the country they represented at the papal court.

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

Fig. 9.1 Albert Clouet after Carlo Cesio, frontispiece of Effigies, nomina et cognomina S.D.N. Alexandri papae VII et RR. DD. S.R.E. Cardd. nunc viuentium, Rome, 1660 (© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

233

234

Arnold Witte

Fig. 9.2 Gérard Audran after Cyro Ferri, frontispiece of Effigies nomina et cognomina S.D.N. Innocentii PP XI. et RR.DD.S.R.E Cardd. nunc viventium, Rome, 1667-69 (© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

College of Cardinals.6 These appointments were generally for life, but if a cardinal was absent from the Curia for a long period, a co-protector could be appointed to handle affairs during his absence.7 Cardinal protectors fulfilled three functions: those of gubernator, protector, and corrector.8 As such, they were meant to keep an eye on the religious institution as external governors; they provided access to the pope and the ecclesiastical bureaucracy for obtaining favours or privileges; and they were to ensure that these organizations were orthodox in their faith. After the Council of Trent, this final role developed into the central one: the cardinal became more explicitly part of a system of ecclesiastical control and was responsible for religious discipline.9 Although first intended as predominantly spiritual oversight, it soon extended also into the realms of governance and finances. A complex relationship of interdependence between religious institutions and these ‘princes of the Church’ developed as a result. It was in this context that the production of standardized portraits found a particular raison d’être.

Originals and Copies The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw an increasing production of painted portraits in general, but especially of cardinals. Certain artists, such as Ottavio Leoni, Scipione Pulzone, and Ferdinand Voet, were sought out by many prelates to have their likenesses painted, and became specialists in the genre.10 Even painters predominantly working in other genres, such as Domenichino, Guido Reni, Pietro da Cortona, and Carlo Maratta, occasionally produced portraits of cardinals, if they were of a sufficiently elevated status. Such works were, as one can assume from the quality of the still extant paintings and the inventories of early modern palaces, meant for conspicuous places in private palaces, connoting (through the painter’s fame) social standing for both the cardinal and his larger family network.11 Also the production of painted copies increased notably in this period, as we can deduce from the great number of examples on the present-day art market and still extant in many ecclesiastical buildings. These were mainly produced 6 Andenna, ‘Il cardinale protettore’, 2013, and Witte, ‘Cardinal protectors’, 2020, with extensive references. 7 Faber, Scipione Borghese, 2005, pp. 446–447. 8 This definition comes from the Franciscan Rule of 1223; see Witte, ‘Cardinal Protectors’, 2020, p. 126. 9 Black, Italian Confraternities, 1989, pp. 58–68. 10 Petrucci, ‘Tipologie della ritrattistica cardinalizia’, 2006; Vannugli, ‘Scipione Pulzone ritrattista’, 2013; and Primarosa, Ottavio Leoni, 2017, passim; see also Robertson, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, 2020, for the tradition of high-quality cardinal’s portraits from the Cinquecento onwards. 11 Norlander, Claiming Rome, 2003, pp. 171–266, and Spear and Sohm, Painting for Profit, 2010, pp. 91–94.

235

236

Arnold Witte

by mediocre or even poor artists, and often for dealers. An interesting case of this can be found in the papers of the art merchant, Pellegrino Peri, who was active in Rome during the latter half of the seventeenth century. For example, on 25 October 1673, he received 11 sc. from Cardinal Girolamo Gastaldi (elevated only two months earlier to the cardinalate) for a copy of a portrait of the prelate, ‘made at his commission, with a sand-gilded frame’.12 The relatively low price of the painting (elsewhere in his account book, 3 scudi and 50 baiocchi were related to the same painting)13 suggests we might not be dealing with an original here, or at least not with something that aspired to count as a work of art.14 Peri in general sold many copies after portraits, especially of cardinals and popes. These might have been modelled on originals by painters mentioned above such as Ferdinand Voet and Giovan Battista Gaulli, but more probably copied the prints made by De Rossi, which were far easier to access. Indeed, the Vatican Library owns quite a few painted portraits that were made after the De Rossi prints and illustrate the relationship between the two media.15 In any case, there existed a lively market for this kind of product.16 This raises questions regarding the kind of contexts for which these portraits were intended, and what their meaning or significance was for the contemporary viewer. Thus far, art historical literature on portraits as a genre has mainly focused on the philosophical issue of likeness, iconographical development, and formal typologies, and most recently its ceremonial and symbolic, especially social, functions.17 These approaches are often based on contemporary artistic discourse in which the portrait is mostly considered to be of low artistic standing and unworthy of famous painters – although they would make an exception for important patrons, in which case the subject ‘ennobled’ the painting, which, as Burke called it, represented a ‘theatre of status’.18 This should thus not be applied only to the sitter, but also to the artist. Specific literature on state portraits has also looked at historical and

12 Lorizzo, Pellegrino Peri, 2010, p. 34: ‘fatto fare di suo ordine con cornice dorata ed arenata’; for Cardinal Girolamo Gastaldi, see Marsili, ‘Gastaldi, Girolamo’, 1999. 13 Ibid., p. 177; see also Cavazzini, Painting as Business, 2008, pp. 31–34 and 120, and Guerzoni, Apollo & Vulcan, 2011, pp. 127–129. 14 The issue of copies and the monetary and artistic value between the seventeenth century and the present day is an important one that only recently has become a topic of research (there are 100 baiocchi in 1 scudo); see for example Mazzarelli, Dipingere in copia, 2018, and Bellavitis, Making Copies, 2018. 15 De Crescenzo and Diotallevi, Le ‘Effigies nomina et cognomina s.r.e. cardinalium’, 2008, pp. 21–22. 16 Ibid., p. 66. 17 The literature on this subject is vast; examples are Burke, ‘Presentation of Self’, 1989, and Krems and Ruby, eds., Das Porträt, 2016. 18 Cavazzini, ‘On Painted Portraiture’, 2015–2016, and Burke, ‘Presentation of Self’, 1989, p. 150.

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

political meanings and the moral and ideological concepts that these portraits were intended to visualize.19 Also the cardinal’s painted likeness was not merely a visual presentation of an individual person, as is often assumed on the basis of the literature in the tradition of Burckhardt.20 First, the individual is a construction, as Stephen Greenblatt has upheld; power structures determine this process to a high degree.21 In the context of cardinals, Jennifer Mara DeSilva has described how this is a group identity, constituted by ceremonies and rituals through which the candidate is taken up in a new structure, and in fact gives up (part of) his former identity in order to assume a new one.22 Therefore, painted portraits of cardinals during the early modern period cannot be seen as mere expressions of individual self-awareness and self-promotion, but were extensions of their rank, status, and institutional roles. The fact that the increasing production of cardinals’ portraits from the sixteenth century onwards is accompanied by a standardization of the visual format needs to be regarded in the context of a collective approach to Church authority. The particular issue of copies after such portraits – be they of secular or ecclesiastical rulers, and located in far less conspicuous contexts – has been ignored altogether in art historical studies, due to their limited artistic quality and the resulting loss of many of these objects. Brotherhoods and religious orders, which had many relations with cardinals, offer a wealth of other kinds of material – especially archival sources – that help us to reconstruct the demand side of this market of copies, revealing where these were located and what meaning these portraits conveyed.

Legal Issues and Portraiture During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the legal position of cardinals with respect to brotherhoods and confraternities underwent some changes that are particularly relevant to the issue of portraiture. The Tridentine Council indirectly furthered this development since effective supervision, either of spiritual or other matters, ultimately depended on formal authority. Even prior to 1545, changes had started to occur in the governance of religious institutions tending toward greater involvement of cardinal protectors in daily affairs; this had been possible since the nomination of cardinal protectors of religious orders – which was formalized in 19 Woods-Marsden, ‘Per una tipologia del ritratto’, 1993, and Bonfait et al., eds., Les portraits du pouvoir, 2003. 20 Burckhardt, Civilization, 1944, 81–82; see also Burke, ‘Presentation of Self’, 1989, p. 151, and the introduction to this volume. 21 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1980, pp. 1–8. 22 DeSilva, ‘Rituals of the Cardinalate’, 2020, p. 43.

237

238

Arnold Witte

papal bulls – often included rather ample jurisdictions and authorities.23 Cardinals interfered in person or by means of representatives during general chapters and might change decisions regarding monastic rules and the election of generals and other functionaries.24 Archival documents also reveal that they played an instrumental role in arbitrating internal affairs and handling requests for exemptions and transferral to other monasteries – without consulting the order’s general. In sum, the cardinal protector could act as the ultimate court of appeal in many issues pertaining to the order as a whole and its individual members. A similar development can be seen in the relations between cardinals and brotherhoods. Some confraternities had allowed their cardinal protectors full jurisdiction in their governance from the 1540s onwards, and this was reinforced and furthered by popes after 1563.25 For example, in 1572 Pius V awarded Cardinal Alessandro Farnese the right to act as judge in all legal affairs pertaining to the archconfraternity of the Santissima Annunziata in Rome, whether they concerned cases of civil or criminal law.26 In the 1580s, Cardinal Caetani saw his rights expanded as cardinal protector of the English Crown and of the Venerable English College in Rome, providing him with the authority to appoint priests to the British mission, and granting him full jurisdiction over the colleges in Rome, Spain, and Belgium where English Catholics were educated for the priesthood.27 In the 1630s, rights acquired by individual cardinals were accumulated, it seems, by the Barberini nipoti – Francesco (senior; Plate 8) above all, who became protector of an enormous array of religious institutions – giving them nearly unrestrained power in all legal cases in which these sodalities were involved.28 Although these ‘causes’ were mostly delegated to other judges appointed by the cardinal, it did mean that a protector’s 23 Andenna, ‘Il cardinale protettore’, 2013, pp. 252–260. 24 Forte, Cardinal-Protector, 1959, pp. 28–32, and Faber, ‘Meglio la tirranide o l’indifferenza?’, 2005. The legal competence of cardinals to scrutinize and approve the rules of religious orders goes back to the thirteenth century – see Sägmüller, Die Thätigkeit und Stellung, 1896, pp. 51–53. 25 Faber, Scipione Borghese, 2005 pp. 422–423. 26 Tomassetti, ed., Bullarum diplomatum, 1862, p. 962: ‘Cum, sicut accepimus, confraternitas’. For Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, see Robertson, Il Gran Cardinale, 1992. 27 AVCA, scr. 20/24/1–9: protector’s faculties; for Cardinal Enrico Caetani, see De Caro, ‘Caetani, Enrico’, 1973. My thanks go to Maurice Whitehead of the Venerable English College for his kind assistance in my archival research. 28 Indications of this usurping of all these singular powers can be found in the 1637 print version of the 1572 bull, Jurisdictio et facultates S.R.E. Cardinalis Protectoris, & Iudicis Causarum Archiconfraternitatis Annunciationis B. MARIAE Virginis de Urbe, in ASR, Arciconfr. SS. Annunziata, b. 243, printed while Francesco Barberini was protector of the Annunziata, but never distributed; and in ASR, Confraternita vergini S. Caterina della Rosa, Decreti registri 10, Decretor: Congregationis Ste. Caterina de Rosa, 1628–1634, fol. 74r, where Ludovico Ludovisi’s jurisdiction over the juridical affairs of S. Caterina della Rosa was explained, and further on, where Barberini takes over after 1632. See also Giannini, ‘Politica curiale’, 2005, pp. 278–281, for the concentration of power within Barberini circles.

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

jurisdiction became equal to that of a bishop, invading the legal space far beyond the walls of the institution of which he was protector. Precisely because there existed no general regulations in canon law with respect to cardinal protectors and their jurisdiction, the interpretation of legal limitations depended on ‘the talent of the cardinal’.29 Especially protectorships of sodalities led, according to De Luca (as cited at the start of this chapter) to a situation in which they had full jurisdiction in all legal matters and ‘everything depended on the circumstances of the case and the cases themselves’.30 This logically led to abuse and conflicting interests. Within the College of Cardinals itself, problems could arise in the case of causes between sodalities, which would involve several cardinal protectors, but also when the legal proceedings involved dicasteries of the papal government headed again by other cardinals. Most other civil courts in Rome could also adjudicate. For example, the 1659 Statuti del venerabile archiospedale di San Giacomo in Augusta proclaimed that ‘the said cardinal protector will have the faculty to be informed about, and reinstate all causes with any court, even that of the cardinal vicar, chamberlain, the judges of the Capitol and the Rota, both the pending and closed cases, which in any way concern the hospital, its church and its officials, ministers and servants; and he can assign one or more judges according to necessity, depending on the case or the wishes of the contending parties.’31 During the early modern period, painted likenesses of cardinals thus signalled not so much the individual persona, but important juridical issues; these portraits should be considered ‘authorative presences’. This role was already assigned to portraits of emperors in the late Roman Empire; the fourth-century Bishop Severian of Gabala mentioned that the portrait of the Roman Emperor needed to be present in court rooms and public markets in order to grant the necessary legal status to decisions.32 We find this still reflected in Gabriele Paleotti’s remark on depictions of rulers: ‘It is well known that Christian rulers, placed by God in that rank as animate laws and instruments of divine justice and wisdom for the government of peoples, uphold two persons at the same time, one public and the other private.’33 This statement was just as applicable to cardinals, who as ‘Christian Senators’ were co-responsible 29 De Luca, Il Cardinale, 1680 p. 166–167: ‘il genio del cardinale’; for the absence of juridical rules regarding this function, see Melata, De cardinali, 1902. 30 De Luca, Il Cardinale, 1680, p. 169. 31 Statuti del venerabile Archiospedale di San Giacomo, 1659, pp. 9–10: ‘hà facoltà detto Cardinale Protettore di conoscer, e riassumer da qualsivoglia Tribunale, anco del A.C. Vicario Cardinale, Camerlengo, Campidoglio, e Rota tutte le Cause così Civili, come Criminali, e miste tanto attive, quanto passive, che in qualsivoglia modo concernono l’interesse dell’Hospidale, Chiesa suoi Offitiali, Ministri, e Servitori, e di deputar uno, ò più Giudici secondo il bisogno delle cause, ò instanze delle Parti.’ 32 Reinle, Das stellvertretende Bildnis, 1984, p. 67; see also Belting, Bild und Kult, 1991, pp. 118–122, for the legal and ceremonial uses of imperial portraits in late antiquity. 33 Paleotti, Discourse, 2012, p. 195.

239

240

Arnold Witte

(or held themselves as such) with the reigning pope for the spiritual and temporal government of the Church, including legal issues.34 This also expressed itself in the cardinal’s dress – specifically the rocchetto (surplice), worn by higher prelates in Rome and the judges of the various papal courts, as well as bishops and canons with certain jurisdictional privileges.35 It was an important element in ceremonies since, for example, cardinals had to cover their rocchetto with a mantelletta in the presence of the pope in order to convey the latter’s higher status in the Church’s legal, ceremonial, and administrative hierarchy. The showing or hiding of the rocchetto was also an important element in the sequence of events of a possesso – a ceremony that consolidated the juridical relation between a cardinal and the institution of which he had been appointed protector, such as an order or brotherhood.36 This ‘web of jurisdictions’, to use an expression coined by Laurie Nussdorfer, that resulted from the pretences of cardinals in the legal system of Rome became a thorn in the eye of Pope Innocent XII, who in 1694 abolished the unlimited cardinalitial powers with the bull, Christifidelium.37 This document essentially delegated all juridical powers previously acquired by cardinals to various curial authorities. As a result, portraits of cardinal protectors no longer carried legal overtones, but they did maintain part of their symbolic function, albeit in a different way. Since some clerics were solicited by a great many sodalities and/or religious orders, they could not be present at general chapters, meetings, or ceremonial and liturgical events, usually sending delegates or representatives (often secretaries or courtiers, who could also be members of the confraternity in question) to act on their behalf.38 On another level, the portrait still referred to a legal context, but now illustrating that a representative was acting on behalf of the porporato. Even after 1694, when cardinals no longer had direct legal power, their indirect influence of course still counted in the socio-political context. Therefore, in order to express visually the relation of the cardinal to the institution, a portrait would function as a stand-in and reminder to the community of his dedication to their cause. For external beholders, such portraits still signified the issue of status; they conveyed prestige to the organization in question if the cardinal was especially 34 This involvement of cardinals in legal courts as delegated judges and legal advisors to the pope developed during the Middle Ages; see Sägmüller, Die Thätigkeit und Stellung, 1896, pp. 21–31, and Maleczek, ‘Die Kardinäle von 1143 bis 1216’, 2011, pp. 137–139. 35 Lunadoro, Relatione della Corte di Roma, 1689, passim; and Moroni, Dizionario, 1840–1878, vol. 58, pp. 70–76; see also Richardson, ‘Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, 2020, and with respect to the papal use of the same garments, Mansour, ‘Prince and Pontiff’, 2008, pp. 213–215. 36 Witte, ‘Cardinals and their Titular Churches’, 2020. 37 Da Siena, Il cardinale protettore, 1940, pp. 107–109; Giannini, ‘Politica curiale’, 2005, pp. 298–290; Faber, Scipione Borghese, 2005, pp. 433–435; for the ‘web of jurisdictions’, specifically in conjunction with the clerical authorities, see Nussdorfer, Civic Politics, 1992, pp. 45–50. 38 Faber, Scipione Borghese, 2005, pp. 449–450, and Fuligatti, Vita,1624, pp. 233–244.

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

important in social and/or political terms, and vice versa, it lent additional status to the cardinal if the order or sodality was particularly important in the Roman or international context. Therefore, portraits remained indispensable for both parties even when protectors had been excluded from the ‘web of jurisdictions’.

Ceremonial Portraits and Portraits as ‘Gifts’ How were these painted likenesses acquired by the various religious organizations? It was most often in the context of the possesso that the portrait of the cardinal protector was donated, as part of an exchange of gifts that communicated the acknowledgement of authority. After a formal entry of the cardinal into the space of the sodality or order, the celebration of Mass, a blessing of the community, and a visit of the cardinal to the premises of the institution, the rules of the brotherhood or order would be handed over to the cardinal in a specially copied calfbound manuscript with the coat of arms of the cardinal embossed in gold on its cover as a sign of jurisdiction. A rare example of such a volume that is still preserved was probably made for Cardinal Carlo Barberini when he assumed his protectorship of the monastery of Santa Susanna in Rome in 1693 (Fig. 9.3).39 These rules habitually contained a passage with a description of the function of the cardinal protector, which was confirmed by the papal bull read aloud during the ceremony of the possesso. A portrait given by the cardinal to the sodality would ideally reciprocate this gift. Regulations of brotherhoods rarely mentioned the possesso itself, and it is even more seldom that reference is found to the gift exchange; only the 1731 rules of the brotherhood of the Santissimo Crocefisso in San Marcello in Rome explicitly refer to it. The text mentioned that ‘After the said possesso, the coat of arms of the Eminentissimo needs to be raised immediately above the main entrance to our oratory, and the cardinal needs to be requested to condescend and give us a portrait of himself, for it to be always on display in the said oratory.’40 By that time, the donation of a portrait must have already been standard practice, as we find references to this exchange in the descriptions of possesso ceremonies of an earlier date. In 1706, for example, when Cardinal Fabrizio Paolucci took possession of his protectorship over the monastery and brotherhood of Santa Susanna, it was reported that the morning before the ceremony he sent, among other gifts, ‘also 39 For Cardinal Carlo Barberini, see Merola, ‘Barberini, Carlo’, 1964, pp. 170–171. 40 Statuti dell’Arciconfraternita del SS. Crocefisso, 1731, p. 10: ‘Dato il detto possesso, si dovra subito alzar l’Arma del detto Eminentissimo sopra la Porta maggiore del nostro Oratorio, e supplicare l’Eminenza Sua a degnarsi dare un Suo ritratto, per dover sempre star esposto in detto Oratorio.’

241

242

Arnold Witte

Fig. 9.3 Cover of a presentation copy of the rules of St Susanna, Fondo Varia 30, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome (© Arnold Witte).

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

[…] his portrait in a gilded frame that was hung in front of the clausura, opposite the door’. 41 It had become such a regular practice that the cardinal could actually anticipate the request. In an even later description of the ceremonial possesso of the Venerable English College in Rome, in 1773, it was prescribed that the cardinal would be received, after a first entry into the church of the college, into the ‘Cappella della Congregazione’, or internal chapel, where he would be seated on a ‘chair with baldachin, canopy, and the portrait of the most eminent protector, which was prepared for this occasion’; in his presence the bull of his appointment as protector of the English Crown and of the College itself would be read aloud. 42 It meant that in this case, the portrait would have to have been delivered to the institution prior to the ceremony itself. Moreover, the direct and visual juxtaposition of the cardinal and his portrait in the context of the possesso underlined the fact that the painted likeness and his real presence had similar importance. An example that had taken place outside of Rome, but within the Papal States, illustrates how the portrait could symbolically take the place of the real person during the possesso. When, in August 1713, Cardinal Ottoboni had accepted the position as protector of the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna, its members staged a festive ceremony comparable to that of a possesso on 13 November of that year. Since the cardinal could not be present, a painted portrait (which might have been obtained from a Bolognese dealer in paintings, similar to Peri in Rome) under a baldachin represented the prelate during the liturgy, and poems and musical compositions were dedicated to his painted likeness. 43 There are, however, indications that in some cases it was not the cardinal himself who donated the portrait: for example, the brotherhood of Santi Giovanni Evangelista e Petronio of the Bolognesi in Rome welcomed its new protector in 1740 and paid the painter Giacomo Recalcati for the ‘restoration of five portraits of the aforementioned, and for having painted anew two old ones formerly unknown, and for having painted the portrait of the most eminent [Cardinal] Gotti, 41 BNCVEII, Fondi Minori ‘Varia’ 30, fol. 100v: ‘anco in dono il suo Ritratto con cornice dorata che fu posto davanti alla Clausura dirempetto alla Porta’; for Cardinal Fabrizio Paolucci, see Menniti Ippolito, ‘Paolucci, Fabrizio’, 2014, pp. 202–203. 42 AVCA, scr. 25/2/16: ‘Sedia con Baldacchino, Dossello, e Ritratto dell’Emo. Protettore, a tale effetto preparata’. 43 Archive of the Accademia Filarmonica, Bologna, libro II dei Verbali, p. 36, ‘Verbale del 16 novembre 1713’; cf. con il foglio Bologna, 21 November 1713. See the article by Luigi Verdi, ‘I Cardinali protettori e i rapporti con la chiesa nella stoira dell’Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna’, in Tomoquarto [online resource], Centro Studi di Musica Sacra, www.tomoquarto.it/notizie/argomenti/i-cardinali-protettorie-i-rapporti-con-la-chiesa-nella-stor/. This instance of a use of a portrait in ceremony has an interesting, non-legal parallel in sixteenth-century Venice; see Van Kessel, Lives of Paintings, pp. 181–221; for Cardinal Ottoboni, see Matitti, ‘Ottoboni, Pietro’, 2013, pp. 837–841.

243

244

Arnold Witte

[our] protector […]’. 44 In this case, the painter was commissioned to retouch the portraits of popes (all of them of Bolognese origin) and also supply the painting of the cardinal protector who had just taken office. Vincenzo Gotti was a Dominican friar of patrician origin who continued to live a sober and austere life even after his elevation to the cardinalate. 45 It is therefore possible that he had no portrait that could be copied, and Giacomo Recalcati thus made a new one, most probably after a print taken from the De Rossi series (Fig. 9.4). There is far less consistent documentary evidence on how the portraits of cardinals as protectors of religious orders were dealt with. It is clear that also in that context, a possesso was usually staged, but descriptions of such events have not been published thus far, and rules and regulations provide no insight into this ceremony. Neither are there indications about the exchange of gifts and the donation of portraits. However, archival material, especially inventories, make clear that also in this context, portraits of protectors were a standard item in the furnishings of monastic buildings.

Inventories The descriptions of painted portraits of cardinal protectors in historical inventories attest to their ubiquity, even though in most cases the paintings themselves have been lost – save for a few examples in still existing religious institutions. One has to be careful in deducing a general development from these inventories, which are moreover unequally divided over chronological periods – the majority of the Roman inventories consulted for this article date to the eighteenth century, and sometimes even the nineteenth. Only a few institutional archives contain inventories of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Yet, they all contain references to painted likenesses of cardinal protectors and, on the basis of the material consulted, it seems that there were two main ways of dealing with the portraits of protectors. Either the religious institution had a portrait only of the actual cardinal protector on display, substituted upon his death with that of his successor; or they kept all portraits and thus created over time a historical series. It can be assumed that during the eighteenth century, the creation and/or display of an entire series gained importance, substituting historical legitimation for legal significance. What is also clear is that confraternities and religious orders almost invariably had the image of the cardinal protector combined with that of the reigning pope, thus underlining 44 ASVR, Arciconfraternita dei Bolognesi, 1740: ‘accomodatura di cinque ritratti de sud.ti, et avervi dipinti due altri di nuovo de li vecchi non si conoscevano, e dipinto il ritratto dell’Em.mo Gotti protettore […]’. 45 Moroni, Dizionario, 1840–1878, vol. 31, pp. 302–303.

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

Fig. 9.4 Johann Martin Bernigeroth, Portrait of Cardinal Vincenzo Gotti, engraving, London, British Museum (© The Trustees of the British Museum).

245

246

Arnold Witte

the apex of ecclesiastical authority on which they depended, and to which they subjected themselves. On the basis of my research, the earliest reference to the presence of portraits of cardinal protectors occurs in the case of the hospital and confraternity of San Giacomo degli Incurabili, which owned a number of portraits documenting both the actual and previous cardinal protectors. In the description of the premises of the hospital of 1620, the ‘Sala della Congregazione’, or the room where the board meetings took place, contained paintings depicting cardinals Salviati, Aldobrandini, and ‘Aracoeli’ (Cardinal Agostino Galamini), 46 as well as six portraits of popes. 47 In 1621, after Salviati’s death, Odoardo Farnese became cardinal protector, and at that moment his portrait was added to the series which remained on display in its entirety in the boardroom. 48 Many inventories of brotherhoods’ premises date from the second half of the eighteenth century, and also in these we find references to portraits of cardinal protectors. For example, in the 1748 inventory of the church of the Madonna del Pianto, which belonged to the homonymous brotherhood, mention is made of a ‘Portrait of Benedict XIV/ Another one of Cardinal Guadagni, vice chancellor and our protector’. 49 In the following inventory of 1793, the walls of the sacristy were described as decorated with ‘On the right hand side the portrait of the reigning Pontiff of c. three palmi with/ an antique frame filleted in gold./ On the left hand side, a similar one representing the most eminent cardinal Vicar protector of our venerable congregation’.50 The confraternity that managed the convent of Santa Caterina della Rosa ai Funari also had cardinal protectors from the late sixteenth century onwards, but the archival documentation only provides names starting from the mid-eighteenth century. The first documents the acceptance of Cardinal Joaquín Fernández de Portocarrero of the protectorship over the archconfraternity and the monastery in 1743, but no mention is made of a portrait. The earliest extant inventories were drawn up in the early nineteenth century. These, however, provide clear indications of the presence of portraits of cardinal protectors; in 1849, the location of the 46 Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica, 1935, p. 12. 47 ASR, Osped. S. Giacomo, 299, inventory 1620: ‘Un quadro con la cornice grande con il Ritratto dell’Ill. mo S. Cardin.l Salviati/ Un altro simile con il Ritratto dell’Ill/mo sr. Card.l Ald.b.no/ Un altro simile con il Ritratto dell’Ill.mo Sr. Card.l Aracel./ Quadri di diversi Papi n.o 6’. 48 Ibid., entry of 1 August 1621: ‘Un Ritratto dell’Ill.mo Sr. Card. Farnese con cornici nella sala della Cong. ne’; on Odoardo Farnese, see Witte, Artful Hermitage, 2008. 49 ASR, Madonna del Pianto, M.41: ‘Ritratto di Benedetto XIV/ Altro del Sig. Card.e Guadagni Vic. Can. Sig.le e nostro Protettore.’ 50 Ibid.: ‘A destra il ritratto del Regnante Pontefice di Palmi tre circa con/ cornice all’antica filettata d’oro./ A sinistra altro simile rappresentante l’Emo Sig. Cardinal Vicario Protettore della Nostra Ven.e Congregazione.’

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

portrait was at the entrance, and thus directed at all who entered the complex: ‘At the entrance/ on the walls/ three paintings in oil with frames, two of which are gilded, and one with a black frame, representing a pope, a cardinal and a saint’.51 Even though the pope and the cardinal were not specified (which was due to the fact that the inventory was made by Revolutionaries unfamiliar with the premises), the combination of subjects makes clear that these must have been the portraits of the reigning pope, the cardinal protector, and an image of St. Catherine. Even a less prestigious confraternity such as that of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami (also functioning as the guild of carpenters) had the portrait of its cardinal protector combined with that of the reigning pope. The inventory of 1807 describes how the vestiario, through which all members passed on their way towards its oratory, contained ‘Two paintings on canvas of 4 palmi, representing Pope Pius VI and the cardinal protector’.52 In 1855, these had been substituted for ‘Two paintings in oil, life-size busts, one of Pius IX and the other of the most eminent Spinola, with gilded frames’.53 In other words, in these cases only the current cardinal protector and pope were on display, and since no other space contained portraits of earlier cardinals or popes according to these inventories, one can assume that these paintings had been physically removed from the premises. In the case of religious orders, the tradition seems to have been similar. According to the 1766 inventory of the church and monastery of San Martino ai Monti, which was the main church of the Calced Carmelite order in Rome, the sacristy contained three portraits: one of the reigning pope, a second of the present cardinal protector, and a third of the titular cardinal of the church: ‘there are three more paintings with frames; one represents the reigning Pontiff, another Cardinal Stoppani, and the third depicts Cardinal Lante’. In addition, portraits of other cardinals – such as Giuseppe Maria Tomasi di Lampedusa and Giovanni Antonio Guadagni, both former titular cardinals of the church, and the latter also a Carmelite – were on display in the sacristy, together with a whole set of 51 portraits of popes, cardinals, and generals of the order.54 In the complex of the Augustinians at Sant’Agostino, 51 ASR, Confrat. Vergini S. Caterina della Rosa, b. 66 fasc. 82: ‘All’ingresso della Porta/ […] Alle pareti/ Tre quadri dipinti ad olio con cornici due di essi dorati a buono, di una con cornice nera rappresentanti un Pontefice, un Cardinale, ed un Santo’. 52 ASVR, San Giuseppe dei Falegnami, inventory 1807: ‘Due quadri in tela di p[al]mi 4 rappresentanti il Pontefice Pio VI ed il Card.le Protettore’; for the spatial context of the ‘vestiario’, which was probably the passage located between the street and the oratory, see Barchiesi, ‘San Giuseppe dei Falegnami e Carcere Mamertino’, 1995, p. 11. 53 ASVR, San Giuseppe dei Falegnami, inventory 1855, item no. 415: ‘Due quadri ad Olio Busti al Naturale, l’uno di Pio IX, l’altro dell’Em.o Spinola con cornice dorata.’ 54 ASR, Carmelitani Calzati in S. Martino ai Monti, 13, Inventario della Chiesa, Convento di S. Martino a Monti fatto in Maggio 1766 essendo Priore il Mto. R.ndo Maes. Espnle Lodovico Centospiche: ‘Altri quadri mezzani n.5 Uno rappresentante il V. Card. Tomasi, altro il Ven. P. Angelo, altro il Servo di Dio Card.

247

248

Arnold Witte

the portrait of their cardinal protector was not on public display in the sacristy. In a set of consecutive inventories drawn up between 1658 and the late 1670s, the presence of portraits of cardinals Giovanni Battista Pallotta, Lorenzo Imperiali, and Giovanni Battista Altieri in the ‘Sala’ of the prior indicate that, first of all, these were directed towards the Augustinian community; moreover, the portraits of deceased protectors were not immediately discarded.55 It is clear, however, that portraits were moved at some point. In 1666, the ‘room occupied by the servant’ of the subprior, contained a portrait of Cardinal Antonio Sauli, who had been protector of the order in the 1620s.56 In other words, the new location of these portraits indicated a change in status and juridical function; they acquired a historical significance instead.

Sacre Stimmate di San Francesco A most interesting example of the way portraits of cardinal protectors were dealt with occurs in the case of the confraternity of the Sacre Stimmate di San Francesco. Thanks to its rich archival material it is possible to trace with some accuracy the way these paintings were handled. This sodality, which had its impressive church and ample confraternity spaces next to the present Largo di Torre Argentina, was one of the more prestigious lay organizations in Rome if one looks at the social standing of its members, the importance of its cardinal protectors, and its Italian network of affiliated confraternities.57 In fact, it seems as if this was one of the first brotherhoods that presented the possesso of a new cardinal protector as a public event with pomp and circumstance, thus setting the tone for all other brotherhoods in Rome. In 1633, Cardinal Francesco Barberini (senior) accepted the position as cardinal protector of the Santissime Stimmate: the description of this occasion shows a sizeable investment of time and money, and through this, the importance attached by the brotherhood to the cardinal’s involvement. Likewise, Barberini enhanced his status by associating himself in public with this organization in the context of an extended network of relations between his family and the brotherhood.58 Guadagni […]. Altri tre quadri vi sono con Cornici Uno rappresenta il Regnante Sommo Pontefice; altro il Sig.r Card. Stoppani, ed il Terzo il sig. Card. Lante./ Altri Quadri quasi consimili n. 51 di diversi Pontefici, Cardinali, e generali dell’Ordine.’ 55 ASR, Agostiniani in S. Agostino, 38, Inventario delle Robbe del Conv.to e Sagrestia del 1658, fols. 42r, 57r, 97v, 100r; for the positions of these cardinals as protectors of the Augustinian order, see Da S. Claudia, Lustri storiali, 1700, pp. 459 and 506. 56 ASR, Agostiniani in S. Agostino, 38, Inventario delle Robbe del Conv.to e Sagrestia del 1658, fol. 54r. 57 Serra, ‘Sacre Stimmate’, 2012, pp. 314–334, Augruso, Sacre Stimmate, 2011, and Russo de Caro, ‘Libro dei Fratelli’, 1989. 58 Matteucci, ‘La solenne investitura’, 1969. The original text of this description is in BAV Barb.Lat.2984 and in ASVR, Arciconfr. SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco, 87; for the numerous links between the archconfraternity

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

Probably on the basis of this first possesso, a standard ceremony was developed, and the 1669 and 1711 manuals for the rituals to be enacted in the brotherhood prescribed the possesso in great detail, down to the dress of all the participants (and with particular attention to the visibility or concealment of the rocchetto at certain moments during the event).59 Also a later possesso of 1795, by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Caprara, was minutely recorded in an archival document, down to the inscription on the painting representing St. Francis, which was given to the cardinal to commemorate the ritual of the possesso.60 The brotherhood also attached great value to its illustrious cardinal protectors – of which three were Barberini cardinals, covering most of the seventeenth century – and this eventually led to a series of portraits.61 Consecutive inventories document these paintings, but initially not all displayed together. An early eighteenth-century inventory listing the possessions of the brotherhood without reference to the precise locations, but according to type of object, describes ‘Paintings/ Two portraits of Pope Clement X, and of the eminent Cardinal Francesco Barberini/ Two portraits in gilded frames, of the pope, the other of the protector’.62 Obviously, the former two were portraits of deceased persons – Francesco Barberini Senior had died in 1679, so he was no longer indicated as protector, but his portrait had of course been kept, just as that of Clement X. The latter two portraits were of the present pope and cardinal protector, though their names were not included in the inventory. The fact that these two were in gilded frames distinguished them from the portraits of former protectors. The following inventory, drawn up not much later, listed among the paintings the following: ‘Two portraits, one of Pope Clement X and the other of the most eminent Cardinal Francesco Barberini/ Two portraits, one of Pope Clement XI and the other of the eminent Cardinal Pignatelli protector’.63 The first two portraits were those already mentioned in the prior inventory. In 1722, the inventory of the Robbe diverse lists ‘A portrait of pope Clement X/ Another of Innocent XIII’ and ‘Two paintings representing the protector and the co-protector’, the first of whom

and various members of the Barberini family, see Serra, ‘Sacre Stimmate’, 2012, p. 333. 59 Rituale della venerabile Arciconfraternita delle Sagre Stimmate del Padre S. Francesco di Roma, 1669, p. 198–200, and in the edition of 1711, pp. 79–81. 60 ASVR, Arciconfr. SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco, 87. 61 After the death of Carlo Barberini in 1705, the archconfraternity asked Francesco Barberini (junior) to become the new protector, but he did not accept the honour; see ASVR, Arciconfr. SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco, 87. 62 Ibid., 241: ‘Quadri/ Doi Ritratti sono di Papa Clemente X.mo, e l’altro del Em.mo Cardi.le Franc.o Barberini/ Doi ritratti in cornice dorati, uno del Papa, e l’altro del Protettore’. 63 Ibid.: ‘Due ritratti uno di Papa Clemente X, e l’altro dell’Em.mo Card. Fran.co Barberini/ Due ritratti uno di Papa Clemente XIo, e l’altro dell’Em.mo Pignatelli Protett.re’.

249

250

Arnold Witte

was Cardinal Francesco Pignatelli.64 Now, the location was indicated as the sacristy of the church, not the oratory. The latter detail is important, as the sacristy was a more public space, accessible to outsiders who had dealings with the brotherhood.65 Over time, this list of portraits of popes and cardinal protectors extended, as the brotherhood probably kept all or most paintings – but they were not yet on display as a series. The 1725 Inventario di chiesa mentions ‘[o]ne portrait of Pope Clement X, another one of Clement XI, another one of Clement XII, one of Pope Innocent XIII, and one of Benedict XIII’, as well as ‘[t]wo paintings depicting the protector and the co-protector’ – all in the sacristy.66 The same inventory lists the portrait of Cardinal Barberini (which might have been either Francesco senior or Carlo) in the ‘stanziola de Paliotti’, which was probably a storage room on the second floor. Inventories from 1723 to the end of the century repeat the same order, always mentioning the current protectors and popes in the sacristy, and other paintings (of which frequently the subject or sitter is not mentioned) dispersed in the rest of the building.67 Only the 1885 inventory describes that in the ‘room before the door to the wardrobe’ – probably on the second floor, close to the oratory – an entire set of portraits had been brought together: ‘Fifteen portraits of pontiffs enrolled as members [of our brotherhood] painted on canvas with painted wooden frames, being: Clement VIII Aldobrandini anno 1603; Paul V Borghese anno 1621; Alexander VII Chigi anno 1667; Clement IX Rospigliosi anno 1669; Clement X Altieri anno 1676; Clement XI Albani anno 1721; Benedict XIII Conti anno 1724; Innocent XIII Orsini anno 1730; Clement XII Corsini anno 1740; Benedict XIV Lambertini anno 1758; […]’68 This list contained almost all popes, and proceeded until the reigning Pio IX. This same inventory also lists, separately, ‘Twenty paintings with decorated frames, of the cardinal protectors’, located in the ‘Room before the refectory’, presumably a space on the second floor where also the oratory was located: ‘1. 64 Ibid.: ‘Un ritratto di Papa Clem. X/ Altro di Innocenzo XIII’ and ‘Due Quadri rappresentante il Protettore et il comprotettore’; for Pignatelli as cardinal protector of the Santissime Stimmate, see Notizie, 1722, p. 153. 65 For a plan of the premises, see Augruso, Sacre Stimmate, 2011, figs. 2 and 3; the sacristy was located behind the apse of the church, the oratory was located directly above it on the second floor. 66 ASVR, Arciconfr. SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco, 241: ‘Un ritratto di Papa Clem. X, altro di P. Clem. XI, altro di Papa Clem. XII, altro di Papa Inn. XIII, altro di nro S. Bened. XIII’ and ‘Due Quadri rappresentanti il Prott.re e comprott.re’. 67 See the various inventories in ASVR, Arciconfr. SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco, 241. 68 ASVR, Arciconfr. SS. Stimmate di S. Francesco, 252, Inventario di tutti gli oggetti che appartengono alla Ven. Arciconfraternita delle SS. Stimmate, 30 July 1885, fol. 21: ‘camera innanzi il cancello del vestiario’; ‘Quindici quadri di Pontefici ascritte come Fratelli dipinti in tela con cornice di legno verniciato cioè: Clemente VIII Aldobrandini anno 1603; Paolo V Borghese anno 1621; Alessandro VII Chigi anno 1667; Clemente IX Rospigliosi anno 1669; Clemente X Altieri anno 1676; Clemente XI Albani anno 1721; Benedetto XIII Conti anno 1724; Innocenzo XIII Orsini anno 1730; Clemente XII Corsini anno 1740; Benedetto XIV Lambertini anno 1758; Clemente XIII Rezzonico anno 1769; Clemente XIV Ganganelli anno 1774 […]’.

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

Alexander S.R.E. Card. Damasceni Peretti Montaltus Primus Protector Anno 1593; 2. Franciscus S.R.E. Card. Barberini Secundus Protector Anno 1633; 3. Carolus S.R.E. Card. Barberini Tertius Protector Anno 1680; 4. Franciscus S.R.E. Cardin. Pignatelli Quartus Protector Anno 1703; 5. Franciscus S.R.E. Card. Barberini Quintus Protector Anno 1735; 6. Carolus S.R.E. Card. Colonna Sextus Protector Anno 1739; 7. Annibal S.R.E. Card. Albani Septimus Protector Anno 1739; 8. Joachim S.R.E. Card. Portocarrero Octabus Protector Anno 1748; 9. Antonius S.R.E. Card. Erba-Odeschalchi Nonus Protector Anno 1761; 10. Andreas S.R.E. Card. Corsini Decimus Protector Anno 1762; 11. Joannes S.R.E. Card. Caprara Undecimus Protector Anno 1800’, continuing this list of names until 1885.69 One wonders if the easy recognizability of these portraits was enhanced by inscriptions on the paintings, given the exact names, dates, and accurate sequence, as well as the fact that all names were Latinized in this list.

Surviving Copies Almost none of the portraits given in the inventory of the Santissime Stimmate di San Francesco have survived; in the present premises of the confraternity (dissolved around 2015) ten portraits are preserved, both of popes and of cardinals. Most of these date to the nineteenth century, and some are of cardinals who were never protectors of the archconfraternity – namely Cardinals Spinola (possibly Giovanni Battista or Giorgio), Giuseppe Sala, and Gabriele Ferretti. These paintings might have originated in other confraternities and been relocated by the Roman diocese to this building; or the cardinals might have been, just as the popes whose portraits were listed in the nineteenth-century inventory, members of the confraternity (and therefore not mentioned in the inventory as part of the series of protectors). In any case, there are no visual indications of a relation between these three cardinals and the Santissime Stimmate di San Francesco, or indications of other confraternities to which these portraits belonged. On the other hand, likenesses of cardinal protectors before 1800, as mentioned in the 1885 inventory, can no longer be traced in the building of the former brotherhood. The surviving paintings are of scarce artistic value but are interesting from the point of view of the standardized composition. All are bust length in format, either with the sitter turning towards the left or right, and clearly with the cardinalitial mozzetta and a glimpse of the rocchetto. Most portraits contain little to no indication of the identity of the sitter – no escutcheons or names on the painting or on the frame. Only four cardinals have a letter or a piece of paper in their hand, carrying their name, which allows for identification: these are Feretti, Sala, Spinola, and 69 Ibid., p. 21: ‘Camera avanti il Refettorio/ Venti quadri con cornici verniciate dei Cardinali Protettori’.

251

252

Arnold Witte

Cardinal Camillo di Pietro, the last of whom was indeed cardinal protector of the confraternity, though in the second half of the nineteenth century. The standard composition of these portraits agrees with the kind of production noted above. The painter did not need to have a real portrait nearby (let alone the sitter in person) to produce this painting; a print was a more than sufficient model for this kind of likeness.

Conclusion Documentary evidence indicates that there must have been a lavish production of cardinals’ portraits in the early modern period. But not all of these can be classed by modern standards as works of art (as understood by Belting, meant for aesthetic appreciation and subject to the rules of art),70 and they were certainly not intended for private palaces of the cardinal, his family, or his network of private clients. Instead, a large part of the demand for these came from the religious institutions to which these cardinals were related as protectors. They needed portraits that would showcase their institutional affiliation and thus their position in the Roman ambiente, rather than depictions of individuals seeking to distinguish themselves as patrons of art. As underscored, these paintings were highly standardized; they were not copied from originals by famous artists, but manufactured after prints that represented cardinals in the same format. Series of cardinal portraits printed by publishers like De Rossi, from the early seventeenth until the end of the eighteenth century, supplied models for the many mediocre painters who produced large quantities of copies for these institutions. Therefore, if we consider composition and iconography, the analysis above leads to a reconsideration of Francesco Petrucci’s assumption that cardinals had more options as to how they were depicted, and thus less prone to confirm one visual stereotype.71 This might have been the case in the production of portraits for the private residence, but the majority of such paintings were intended for more public venues such as monasteries and brotherhoods. Here, the various ceremonial functions of the portraits, and especially the important juridical meaning of these images led to a highly standardized kind of image underlining the collective identity of cardinals rather than their individual likenesses. Also the context in which these images were displayed makes clear that we are dealing here with state portraits that carried overtones of formal authority. They were located either at the entrance to buildings of religious institutions, thereby 70 Belting, Bild und Kult, 1991, pp. 511 and 523–525. 71 Petrucci, ‘Tipologie della ritrattistica cardinalizia’, 2006, p. 19.

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

projecting messages of powerful connections, or they were located in the boardrooms or spaces where decisions were taken, as a ‘guarantee’ of ecclesiastical approval. This agrees with the tendency to remove the portraits that had lost their political value – after the death of the prelate – and replace them with those of their successors. It was also for this reason that quality, or even likeness, was of lesser importance. The mass production of copies catered to a large market for images intended to manifest power relations, and all visitors to Rome must have been confronted with the faces of these ‘princes of the church’ in any building they visited. Finally, as archconfraternities stood at the apex of a large number of affiliated brotherhoods for which the protector was also responsible, not the paintings but the prints after which they were produced were probably on display in other Italian towns as well in the premises of affiliated sodalities, thus explaining the large market for these even cheaper products. Apart from the artistic medium, the main difference between the two lay in the way the painted portraits were obtained in the Roman context, as gifts indicating the institutional and juridical protection of the cardinal, but in all other respects they were the same – as signs of possession.

Bibliography Andenna, Cristina, ‘Il cardinale protettore: centro subalterno del potere papale e intermediario della comunicazione con gli ordini religiosi’, in Die Ordnung der Kommunikation und die Kommunikation der Ordnungen, ed. by Gordon Blenneman, Klaus Herbers, and Gert Melville, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2013), pp. 229–260. Augruso, Maria Concetta, Sacre stimmate di San Francesco a Roma: l’arciconfraternita e la chiesa nella prima metà del Settecento (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Capuccini, 2011). Barchiesi, Sofia, ‘San Giuseppe dei Falegnami e Carcere Mamertino’, Roma Sacra. Guida alle chiese della città eterna 1/3 (1995): 8-11. Bellavitis, Maddalena, ed., Making Copies in European Art 1400–1600: Shifting Tastes, Modes of Transmission, and Changing Contexts (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Belting, Hans, Bild und Kult: eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich: Beck, 1991). Black, Christopher F., Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Bonfait, Olivier, Brigitte Marin and Anne-Lise Desmas, eds., Les portraits du pouvoir: lectures du portrait du pouvoir entre art et histoire (Paris: Somogy, 2003). Brogiotti, Andrea, Sanctissimi D.N. Urbani VIII ac illustrissimorum, & reverendissimorum DD. S.R.E. cardinalium nunc viventium effigies insignia (Rome: Typis Vaticanis, 1628). Burckhardt, Jacob, The Civilization of the Renaissance (London: Allen & Unwin/New York: Oxford University Press, 1944).

253

254

Arnold Witte

Burke, Peter, ‘The Presentation of Self in the Renaissance Portrait’, in The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 150–167. Cavazzini, Patrizia, ‘On Painted Portraiture in Seventeenth-Century Rome: Theory, Practice and Appreciation’, Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 42 (2015–2016): 228–242. ———, Painting as Business in Early Seventeenth-Century Rome (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008). Chacón, Alfonso, Vitae et gesta summorum pontificum a Christo domino vsque ad Clementem viii. necnon S.R.E. cardinalium cum eorundem insignibus, 2 vols. (Rome: Stephanus Paulinus, 1601). Da S. Claudia, Giovanni Bartolomeo, Lustri storiali de Scalzi Agostiniani eremiti della Congregazione d’Italia, e Germania (Milan, 1700). Da Siena, Bernardino, Il cardinale protettore negli istituti religiosi specialmente negli Ordini Francescani (Florence: Industria Tipografica Fiorentina, 1940). De Caro, Gaspare, ‘Caetani, Enrico’ in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 16 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1973), pp. 148–155. De Crescenzo, Simona and Alfredo Diotallevi, Le ‘effigies nomina et cognomina S.R.E. Cardinalium’ nella biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2008). De Luca, Giovanni Battista, Il cardinale della S.R. Chiesa pratico di Gio: Battista de Luca Nell’ozio Tusculano della Primavera dell’anno 1675; con alcuni squarci della relazione della Corte circa le Congregazioni, e le Cariche Cardinalizie (Rome, 1680). ———, Il dottor volgare (Rome, 1673). DeSilva, Jennifer Mara, ‘The Rituals of the Cardinalate: Creation and Abdication’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 40–57. Eubel, Konrad, Hierarchia Catholica medii et recentioris aevi, vol. 4. (Munich: Monasterii Sumptibus et typis librariae Regensbergianae, 1935). Faber, Martin, ‘Meglio la tirranide o l’indifferenza? I Cardinali protettori degli Olivetani (1591–1631)’, Quaderni Storici 40 (2005): 389–411. ———, Scipione Borghese als Kardinalprotektor: Studien zur römischen Mikropolitik in der frühen Neuzeit (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2005). Forte, Stephen, The Cardinal-Protector of the Dominican Order (Rome: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 1959). Fuligatti, Giacomo, Vita del Cardinale Roberto Bellarmino della compagnia di Giesù (Rome: Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1624). Giannini, Massimo Carlo, ‘Politica curiale e mondo dei regolari: per una storia dei cardinali prottettori nel Seicento’, Cheiron 43–44 (2005): 241–302. Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

Guerzoni, Guido, Apollo & Vulcan: The Art Markets in Italy, 1400–1700 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011) Herklotz, Ingo, ‘Alfonso Chacón e le gallerie dei ritratti nell’età della controriforma’, in Arte e committenza nel Lazio nell’età di Cesare Baronio, ed. by Patrizia Tosini (Rome: Gangemi, 2007), pp. 111–142. Indice delle stampe intagliate in Roma a bulino, e in aqua forte, esistenti nella Stamperia di Lorenzo Filippo de’ Rossi (Rome, 1729). Jedin, Hubert, ‘Vorschläge und Entwürfe zur Kardinalsreform’, Kirche des Glaubens, Kirche der Geschichte, vol. 2 (Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 1966), pp. 118–148. Krems, Eva-Bettina and Sigrid Ruby, eds., Das Porträt als kulturelle Praxis (Berlin/Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2016). Lorizzo, Loredana, Pellegrino Peri: il mercato dell’arte nella Roma Barocca (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2010). Lunadoro, Girolamo, Relatione della Corte di Roma, e de’ riti da osservarsi in essa, e de’ suoi magistrati, & officii, con la loro distinta giurisdittione (Rome, 1689). Maleczek, Werner, ‘Die Kardinäle von 1143 bis 1216: exklusive Papstwähler und erste Agenten der päpstlichen plenitudo potestas’, in Geschichte des Kardinalats im Mittelalter, ed. by Jürgen Dendorfer and Ralf Lützelschwab (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2011), pp. 95–154. Mansour, Opher, ‘Prince and Pontiff: Secular and Spiritual Authority in Papal State Portraiture between Raphael’s Julius II and the Portraits of Pius V and Clement VIII’, in Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome, ed. by Jill Burke and Michael Bury (Aldershot/ Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 209–229. Marceau, Bertrand, ‘Cardinal Protectors and National Interests’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), 198–210. Marsili, Marcella, ‘Gastaldi, Girolamo’ in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 52 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1999), pp. 532–533, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ girolamo-gastaldi_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Matitti, Flavia, ‘Ottoboni, Pietro’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 79 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2013), pp. 837–841, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ pietro-ottoboni_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Matteucci, Gualberto, ‘La solenne investitura del card: Barberini a protettore dell’Arciconfraternita delle Stimmate in Roma (1633)’, Miscellanea Francescana 68 (1969): 128–166. Mazzarelli, Carla, Dipingere in copia: da Roma all’Europa, 1750–1870 (Rome: Campisano, 2018). Melata, Benedetto, De cardinali protectore (Rome: Analectorum Editorem, 1902). Menniti Ippolito, Antonio, ‘Paolucci, Fabrizio’ in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 81 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2014), pp. 202–203, www.treccani.it/ enciclopedia/fabrizio-paolucci_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Merola, Alberto, ‘Barberini, Carlo’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 6 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1964), pp. 170–171, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/

255

256

Arnold Witte

carlo-barberini_res-2efbef66-87e7-11dc-8e9d-0016357eee51_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Moroni, Gaetano, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastico, 103 vols. (Venice: Tipografia Emiliana, 1840–1878). Norlander, Sabrina, Claiming Rome: Portraiture and Social Identity in the Eighteenth Century (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2003). Notizie per l’anno (Rome, 1722). Nussdorfer, Laurie, Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). Paleotti, Gabriele, Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images, trans. by William McCuaig (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2012) Petrucci, Francesco, ‘Tipologie della ritrattistica cardinalizia tra ’500 e ’600’, in La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento, ed. by Francesco Petrucci and Maria Elisa Titton (Rome: Gangemi, 2006), pp. 19–30. Petrucci, Francesco and Maria Elisa Titton, eds., La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento (Rome: Gangemi, 2006). Primarosa, Yuri, Ottavio Leoni (1578–1630): eccellente miniator di ritratti; catalogo ragionato dei disegni e dei dipinti (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, 2017). Reinle, Adolf, Das stellvertretende Bildnis: Plastiken und Gemälde von der Antike bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Zürich/Munich: Artemis, 1984). Richardson, Carol, ‘The Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 535–556. Rituale della venerabile Arciconfraternita delle Sagre Stimmate del Padre S. Francesco di Roma (Rome, 1669). Rituale della venerabile Arciconfraternita delle Sagre Stimmate del Padre S. Francesco di Roma (Rome, 1711). Robertson, Clare, Il Gran Cardinale: Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 1992). ———, ‘Portraits of Early Modern Cardinals’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 557–580. Russo de Caro, Erina, ‘Libro dei fratelli della venerabile Arciconfraternita delle Sac: stimmate di s. Francesco’, Strenna dei Romanisti 50 (1989): 501–506. Sägmüller, Johannes Baptist, Die Thätigkeit und Stellung der Cardinäle bis Papst Bonifaz VIII (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1896). Serra, Alessandro, ‘Le “Sacre Stimmate de Santo Francesco”: una confraternita e un culto nella Roma di Cinque–Seicento’, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 48.2 (2012): 305–352. Spear, Richard and Philipp Sohm, Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of SeventeenthCentury Italian Painters (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2010).

Portraits as a Sign of Possession 

Statuti del venerabile Archiospedale di San Giacomo in Augusta nominato dell’Incurabili di Roma (Rome, 1659). Statuti dell’Arciconfraternita del SS. Crocifisso in S. Marcello di Roma (Rome, 1731). Tomassetti, Luigi, ed., Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificum, vol. 7 (Turin, 1862). Tozzi, Simonetta, ‘Libro de’ ritratti degli eminentissimi signori cardinali … Ritratti incisi dei cardinali al Museo di Roma’, in La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento, ed. by Francesco Petrucci and Maria Elisa Titton (Rome: Gangemi, 2006), pp. 31–39. Van Kessel, Elsje, The Lives of Paintings: Presence, Agency and Likeness in Venetian Art of the Sixteenth Century (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017). Vannugli, Antonio, ‘Scipione Pulzone ritrattista: traccia per un catalogo ragionato’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi, 2013), pp. 25–63. Witte, Arnold, The Artful Hermitage: The Palazzetto Farnese as a Counter-Reformation ‘Diaeta’ (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2008). ———, ‘Cardinal Protectors of Religious Institutions’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 124–143. ———, ‘Cardinals and their Titular Churches’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 334–350. Wodka, Josef, Zur Geschichte der nationalen Protektorate der Kardinäle an der römischen Kurie (Innsbruck/Leipzig: Rauch 1938). Woods-Marsden, Joanna, ‘Per una tipologia del ritratto di stato nel Rinascimento italiano’, in Il ritratto e la memoria – materiali, ed. by Augusto Gentili, Philippe Morel, and Claudia Cieri Via, vol. 3 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1993), pp. 31–62.

About the Author Arnold Witte is Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and was Head of Art History at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome between 2015 and 2020. He has published on ecclesiastical patronage in Baroque Rome and on Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, and is co-editor of the Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal (Brill, 2020).

257

10. Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent Irene Brooke

Abstract Despite being primarily famous as a poet and literary theorist, Pietro Bembo’s visual legacy is dominated by images of him as an aged cardinal. The majority of these images of Cardinal Bembo were produced posthumously, and several representations occur in group portraits including cardinals affiliated with Paul III’s programme of ecclesiastical reform; many of these individuals were Bembo’s closest friends at the papal court. Exploring the important place that Bembo assumed within the Roman Curia during his cardinalate, and his association with the group known as the spirituali, this essay will consider how cardinal portraiture could be used to articulate visually a particular agenda of church reform. Keywords: Pietro Bembo; Jacopo Sadoleto; Reginald Pole; Council of Trent; Caprarola

In 1543, Anton Francesco Doni visited Paolo Giovio’s villa in Como. He subsequently wrote a letter to Pietro Bembo’s godson, Agostino Landi, which included an ekphrastic description of a fresco in the villa depicting Mount Parnassus.1 Unlike Raphael’s famous version, Giovio’s Parnassus did not include ancient poets, and, with the exception of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, all the literary figures depicted were contemporaries. Central among them it is hardly surprising to find Pietro Bembo himself. By this stage Bembo’s status as a writer and literary I am grateful to Jennifer Fletcher, Guido Rebecchini, and Patricia Lee Rubin for reading earlier versions of this essay. Their corrections and suggestions have been invaluable. I am also greatly indebted to Antonio Mazzotta for his help securing images. 1 The visit is recorded in two letters, one dated 20 July 1543 to Agostino Landi and a burlesque version of the letter to Jacopo Tintoretto, or alternatively to Lodovico Domenichi; both are reprinted in Maffei, Pitture del Doni, 2004, app.1, pp. 313–321. For Giovio’s villa, see also Klinger, Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio, 1997, pp. 65–95, and De Vecchi, ‘Il Museo Gioviano e le verae imagines’, 1977, pp. 87–96.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch10

262

Irene Brooke

figure was canonical, almost to the point of deification among his followers. His name was often preceded by the epithet ‘il divino’, used also in reference to other cultural giants like Michelangelo.2 Bembo had figured prominently in several poetic descriptions of Parnassus, including those composed by Lodovico Dolce and Pietro Aretino. Yet his appearance in Giovio’s fresco is novel in that, rather than an Apollo-like, resplendent figure, Doni specifies that Bembo is ‘vestito da cardinale’ (dressed as a cardinal), paired with his old friend from the court of Leo X, Jacopo Sadoleto, riding mules in the custom of churchmen.3 This visual pairing of Sadoleto and Bembo was to gain a certain currency, recurring in other fresco cycles, and evokes a particular moment in Pauline Rome in the years surrounding the convocation of the Council of Trent in 1545. Whether or not Bembo and Sadoleto’s portraits in Giovio’s fresco were based on the likenesses in the historian’s museum is unknown. 4 In fact, there were several portraits of Cardinal Bembo executed in these years, many of which were copied and developed lasting visual legacies, including those associated with Titian: his famous autograph portrait now in Washington, DC (Plate 2) and another, now in Naples, possibly executed by the artist’s son Orazio in Rome in 1545.5 Although the latter picture is in a ruinous state, both present the sitter dignified and idealized in established cardinal portrait formats. In both paintings Bembo’s right hand features prominently – gesturing rhetorically in the Washington picture and showing off his cardinal’s ring in the other – despite the fact that the author had mutilated his right index finger in a youthful tiff, and his biographer, Lodovico Beccadelli, notes that this injury impeded him throughout his life.6 Nonetheless, Bembo was never shy about having his likeness captured. Several pre-cardinalate portraits, painted and 2 For an overview of Bembo’s literary pursuits, see Dionisotti, Scritti sul Bembo, 2002; for Bembo’s role in the area of the visual arts, see Gasparotto and Beltramini, eds., Pietro Bembo, 2013, and Brooke, ‘Pietro Bembo’, 2011; and for a recent discussion of the use of ‘divino’ in relation to cotemporary cultural figures, see Waddington, Titian’s Aretino, 2018, pp. 50–54. 3 For other literary and visual representations of Bembo on Parnassus, see Brooke, ‘Pietro Bembo’, 2011, pp. 215–221; for mules in cardinal imagery, see Philippa Jackson’s essay in this volume. 4 Giovio requested Bembo’s portrait in 1539; see Bembo, Lettere, 1987–1993, vol. 4, no. 1993; for Giovio’s portrait of Bembo, now in the Museo Civico di Como, inv. no. 164, see Klinger, Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio, 1997, p. 28, no. 51. 5 For the Washington portrait, see most recently Grosso in Gasparotto and Beltramini, eds., Pietro Bembo, 2013, pp. 368–369, no. 6.1, and the entry by Peter Humfrey on the National Gallery website: www. nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.41638.html#entry (accessed July 2019); for the Naples portrait see Wethey, Titian, 1971, vol. 2, p. 83, no. 16; Utili, ‘Ritratto di Pietro Bembo’, 2006, pp. 172–173, no. 38; for Bembo’s iconography in relation to these portraits, see Coggiola, ‘L’Iconografia di M. Pietro Bembo’, 1914–1915, pp. 501–514; Gasparotto, ‘La Barba di Pietro Bembo’, 1996, and Brooke, ‘Pietro Bembo’, 2011, pp. 221–238. 6 See Beccadelli, ‘Vita del Cardinale Pietro Bembo’, 1967, p. 226; for a discussion of the evolution of the ‘canonical’ cardinal portrait type, see Kempers, ‘Canonical Portrait’, 2001, and Petrucci, ‘Tipologie della ritrattistica cardinalizia’, 2006.

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

medallic, are documented, yet few appear to have survived, the only undisputed ones being a medal executed by Valerio Belli in 1532 and a recently emerged panel from the workshop of Lucas Cranach.7 Bembo’s iconography, however, was undoubtedly defined by the multitude of images showing him as an aged cardinal. That his ascent to the rank of cardinal should be celebrated through portraits is not surprising. What is striking is the sheer quantity of extant portraits of Cardinal Bembo.8 Another interesting feature of these portraits is that they often seem to have been displayed with images of certain other cardinals who, like Sadoleto, were also elevated by Paul III and were close to Bembo at the papal court. For instance, in the inventory of the collection of fellow cardinal, Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, Bembo’s portrait is grouped with those of several cardinals appointed by Paul, including Reginald Pole, Gasparo Contarini, Sadoleto, Girolamo Aleandro, Gregorio Cortese, and the ill-fated John Fisher.9 Similarly, in Vasari’s description of portraits in the Sala delle carte geografiche in Palazzo Vecchio, Bembo is listed immediately after Sadoleto among a collection of cardinals including Contarini and Pole.10 Complementing the frequent grouping of such portraits in collections are a number of extant or documented representations of these cardinals sharing pictorial space. In several cases, these portraits of Bembo have not previously been noticed. I will argue that these visual groupings of Cardinal Bembo and his friends recall a moment in Pauline Rome when considerable sway was still held by the faction in the Curia close to Pole and members of the group referred to as the spirituali.11 Individuals 7 For these works, see most recently Gasparotto and Beltramini, eds., Pietro Bembo, 2013, nos. 5.1–5.4, pp. 324–325. 8 For a discussion of the quantity and signif icance of individual portraits of Cardinal Bembo, see Brooke, ‘Pietro Bembo’, 2011, pp. 221–238. 9 See Mancini, ‘Una collezione romana del 1564: i dipinti del cardinale Rodolfo da Carpi’, 2002, p. 57, and Franzoni and others, Gli inventari, 2002, pp. 57–86. It is noteworthy that several portraits of the cardinals in question have been associated with Sebastiano del Piombo, who also had many connections with members of the spirituali, including the noblewomen Vittoria Colonna and Giulia Gonzaga, whose portraits he painted. His relationship with Michelangelo is of course well-known; see Wivel, Michelangelo and Sebastiano, 2017; see also Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, 1997; Ragionieri, Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo, 2005; Forcellino, Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna e gli ‘spirituali’, 2009; and for further discussion of Cardinal Pio da Carpi’s collection, see Thomas-Leo True’s essay in this volume. 10 The index is reprinted in Barocchi and Bertela, Collezionismo Mediceo, 2002, vol. 5, I.1, pp. 222–231; see also, Allegri and Cecchi, eds., Palazzo Vecchio, 1980, pp. 303–312. The portraits are arranged in categories with their location around the maps specified. It is notable that Bembo is placed with the cardinali, rather than with the letterati or poeti. 11 While scholars have challenged the extent to which individuals associated with ‘evangelism’ formed a cohesive group in opposition to the ‘intransigents’, for the purposes of this essay, the term spirituali will be used to refer to those close to Pole and his circle. For the various positions, see Gleason, ‘On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Italian Evangelism’, 1978, and Peyronel Rambaldi, ‘Ancora sull’evangelismo italiano’, 1982; for the spirituali and their Christocentric piety, see especially Fragnito, ‘Gli “Spirituali”’, 1972; Simoncelli, Il caso di Reginald Pole, 1977, and by the same author, Evangelismo italiano, 1979; Firpo,

263

264

Irene Brooke

within this group espoused an evangelical spirituality that was associated with charismatic religious figures, Juan de Valdés and his Italian disciple, Bernardino Ochino, both of whose teachings were ultimately condemned by the Inquisition.12 Yet in the 1540s, many followers of these men were connected to Pole and a group of cardinals who advocated a conciliatory, moderate approach to reform. Ultimately, they were not only unsuccessful, but many of their ideas and surviving proponents came under attack by the Inquisition; this in turn led to the production of images which operated on both a nostalgic and defensive level.13

Bembo Cardinale Bembo’s ascent to the cardinalate at the age of seventy satisfied a long-term ambition, the apex in his career path as a chierico/letterato (literary scholar and cleric).14 When Paul III took the papal throne in 1534, cognizant of the need for reform and hoping to resolve the Lutheran problem, he turned to men who were respected throughout Europe for their learning and literary achievements.15 Because of the secular nature of Bembo’s earlier lifestyle and literary works, his elevation to the College of Cardinals was opposed by those aligned with the so-called ‘intransigents’, led by Gian Pietro Carafa, who declared that the Curia had no need for poets; Bembo was also criticized by radical anti-papalists like Celio Secondo Curione, who called for Bembo to ‘leave his Asolani verses and poetics and embrace sacred letters, emulating his colleague, Sadoleto’, an interesting recommendation in light of the regular visual pairing of these two.16 Although such criticisms present Bembo as simply a vernacular poet, recent studies on the spirituali have shown that the academic environment of Padua in the 1520s and 1530s played an important role in the evolution of their beliefs and approach to reform.17 At Tra alumbrados, 1990, and by the same author, Valdesiani, 2013; see also Nagel, Michelangelo, 2000, and Mayer, Reginald Pole, 2000. 12 See Firpo, Juan de Valdes, 2016. For a discussion of Ochino’s relationship with members of Pole’s circle, see Campi, Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna, 1994, and Pagano, Nuovi Documenti, 1989; and for Bembo’s enthusiasm for Ochino’s preaching, see the discussion below. 13 See Cantimori, Eretici italiani, 1939, and Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience, 1972, pp. 220–250. 14 Dionisotti, ‘Chierici e laici’, 1967, and Fragnito, In museo e in villa, 1988, pp. 13–14; for further discussion, see Brooke, ‘Pietro Bembo’, 2011, pp. 228–236. 15 For Paul’s creation of cardinals, see Vercruysse, ‘Die Kardinäle’, 2000, and p. 61, especially, for the elevation of Bembo, where the official consistory notice of his elevation is quoted; here Bembo is declared to be ‘virum doctrina et eloquentia nostrae aetatis facile principem’; and for the topos of Paul III as a promoter of learned, worthy men in contemporary literary and visual sources, and the pope’s own propagandistic use of this imagery, see Rebecchini, Rome of Paul III, 2020. 16 Vercruysse, ‘Die Kardinäle’, 2000, p. 62; Firpo, ‘Pietro Bembo cardinale’, 2013, p. 163; for Celio Secondo Curione, see Curione, Pasquillus extaticus, 2018, ed. Cordibella and Prandi, p. x. 17 See Firpo, Juan de Valdes, 2016, pp. 69–71; Grendler, ‘Gasparo Contarini’, 2006.

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

this time Bembo was the dominant literary figure in the city, which was the centre of Italian Erasmianism.18 A diffusion of reformist ideas resulted from the large number of Germans who came to study in Padua, which incidentally may explain the Cranach workshop portrait of Bembo. In 1531 a worried cleric wrote ‘Padua is so infected, that there is no learned man in the city who is not a Lutheran’.19 During his long Paduan sojourn, Bembo forged friendships from afar with reform-minded Germans like Reuchlin and Sabinus, both close relatives of Melanchthon.20 Indeed with regard to Bembo’s elevation to the cardinalate, Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro wrote that his promotion would be ‘very celebrated in all nations north of the Alps, and especially in Germany’.21 That Bembo himself, while still in Padua, was exploring a more evangelical spirituality is suggested by his cultivation of friendships with individuals associated with the spirituali, in particular the noblewomen Giulia Gonzaga and Vittoria Colonna.22 In both cases these friendships were sealed with a gift of Bembo’s likeness – probably the medal executed by Valerio Belli in 1532 – and portraiture clearly played an important role within this group.23 In 1540 when Bembo returned to Rome as a cardinal, his allegiances were wellestablished, and he naturally fell in with his old friends Contarini, Sadoleto, and Pole, whose elevations preceded his own.24 His correspondence and library also reveal that Bembo’s investigations of spiritual matters paralleled those of his friends. This is apparent in his enthusiasm for the teachings of Bernardino Ochino. Writing to Vittoria Colonna from Venice in 1539, he declared, ‘I spoke with father Bernardino […] to whom I opened the whole of my heart and thoughts, as if I had opened them before 18 For Erasmus’ influence on reform in Italy, see Seidel Mench, Erasmo in Italia, 1987. 19 Quoted in Brown, Italy and the Reformation, 1933, p. 116; see also Firpo, Juan de Valdes, 2016, p. 70. 20 See Danzi, La biblioteca, 2006, pp. 99–100, and nos. 92 and 108, pp. 246–249, 264–265 (Reuchlin); ibid, pp. 217–218, no. 68, and Bembo, Lettere, 1987–1993, vol. 3, no. 1680 and 4, no. 2430 (Sabinus). 21 Writing to Cardinal Farnese, ‘Io le giuro che tal promotione sarà di molto edif icatione in tutte le nationi ultramontane et presertim questa di Germania’; quoted in Vercruysse, ‘Die Kardinäle’, 2000, p. 62. 22 See Simoncelli, ‘Bembo and l’evangelismo’, 1978; Dionisotti, ‘Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna’, 2002, pp. 116–140, and Ferino-Pagden, Vittoria Colonna, 1997, pp. 150–154; see also Campi, Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna, 1994; for Giulia Gonzaga, see Russell, Giulia Gonzaga, 2006, and Peyronel Rambaldi, Una gentildonna, 2012. 23 Giulia’s relations with Bembo are attested by her request for his portrait in 1531; see Bembo, Lettere, 1987–1993, vol. 4, nos. 1262, 1626. A year later Vittoria Colonna also requested a portrait in return for hers, see ibid., nos. 1399, 1418, 1471, 1495, 1501. These requests demonstrate the important role assumed by portraiture within this circle. As observed both women were painted around this time by Sebastiano del Piombo, although it is not known if Bembo’s portrait of Colonna was by this artist, nor whether Giulia Gonzaga sent a portrait in return for his; for a study of the role of art in the gift culture of this circle, see Nagel, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, 1997. 24 After Regensburg, the theological positions of Contarini and Pole appear to have drifted apart. However, the notion of a rift between them has tended to be exaggerated; see Gleason, Gasparo Contarini, 1993, pp. 274–275, 292–298, and Mayer, Reginald Pole, 2000, pp. 103–133, esp. 124–131.

265

266

Irene Brooke

Christ.’25 Furthermore, the inventory of Bembo’s Roman library demonstrates his active involvement with the theological questions at the centre of church reform. Among works associated with the spirituali, he possessed his friend Marcantonio Flaminio’s commentary on the Psalms, which was prohibited by Paul IV.26 And in 1545 he still had a manuscript edition of three works by another old friend, Pier Paolo Vergerio, despite the latter having been called before the Venetian Inquisition in late 1544.27 Bembo also possessed a handwritten copy of the apology of Aonio Paleario, who had been charged with heresy in 1542.28 Bembo’s proximity to heterodox ideas is testified by the number of his familiars who became targets of the Inquisition, most conspicuously Vittore Soranzo, who was a member of his Roman household and appointed in 1544 as his coadjutor of the bishopric of Bergamo.29 A few years after Bembo’s death, Soranzo was sentenced by the Inquisition; by this stage the religious climate in Rome had fundamentally shifted.30

Farnese Cycles Prior to the death of Paul III, however, hope remained for those seeking an irenic solution to the spiritual conflicts that afflicted the church. The confidence still placed in the policies of Pole and his fellow cardinal reformers is articulated in Giorgio Vasari’s 1546 fresco depicting Paul III Distributing Benefices in the Sala dei Cento Giorni in the Cancelleria. Among the portraits included in the fresco are Michelangelo on the far left, and Bembo, Pole, and Sadoleto prominently placed above the papal throne.31 Although designed by fellow humanist Paolo Giovio, the selection of depicted cardinals must have been sanctioned by the patron, the pope’s grandson and vice-chancellor, Alessandro Farnese.32 Writing to Cardinal Farnese, 25 Bembo, Lettere, 1987–1993, vol. 4, p. 178; see also the discussions of Siomoncelli, ‘Bembo e l’evangelismo’, 1978, and Firpo, Pietro Bembo cardinale, 2013, pp. 164–166. 26 Danzi, La biblioteca, pp. 146–148, no. 21. 27 Ibid., pp. 309–310, no. 165. 28 Ibid., pp. 310–311, no. 166; for the works in his library that ended up on the list of prohibited books or were associated with individuals who fell foul of the Inquisition, see p. 133–138, no. 13; pp. 165–167, no. 37; pp. 172–173, no. 41; pp. 173–176, no. 42; pp. 176–179, no. 43. Bembo’s study of Hebraic culture and investigation of Kabbalah is also apparent from the works in his library; see in particular, pp. 204–213, nos. 61–65, and the Hebrew texts, pp. 230–267, nos. 75–112. 29 See Firpo, Vittore Soranzo, 2006, pp. 215–303, 421, passim. Another individual who had been a member of Bembo’s household and was subsequently tried was Apollonio Merenda, also an associate of Giulia Gonzaga; see Russell, Giulia Gonzaga, 2006, pp. 116–118. 30 For Soranzo’s trial, see Firpo, Vittore Soranzo, 2006. 31 Vasari also claims that Gasparo Contarini is portayed in the fresco, although it is difficult to identify which figure he might be. 32 For an analysis of the decorative programme of the room, see Robertson, ‘Paolo Giovio and the Invenzioni for the Sala dei Cento Giorni’, 1985, and Robertson, Il Gran Cardinale, 1992, pp. 57–69. The

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

Giovio highlights the inclusion of the three cardinals above the pope, describing them facetiously as ‘not eunuchs’.33 This description has been understood as a typically ironic Giovian allusion to the men’s intellectual virility, a suggestion corroborated by Giovio’s own placement in their midst.34 Despite the setbacks encountered by members of this coalition of cardinals at the Diet of Regensburg and subsequently at the opening session of Trent, their prominent inclusion in this important fresco cycle, which expressed the dynastic and political aspirations of the Farnese family, must indicate their continued influence at the papal court.35 Of all three cardinals, Bembo assumes the most signif icant position, directly above the pope, holding the papal throne with his left hand in a gesture almost resembling a caress. Although ultimately Paul III outlived Bembo, when the fresco was painted there was much speculation about the aged pope’s successor. Already, shortly after his elevation, a pasquinade prophesized that Bembo would become ‘il secondo papa Piero’.36 A few years later, in a letter to his nephew, Bembo himself alluded to rumours circulating about his possible succession to the throne.37 Later, Giovanni Della Casa, in his biography of Bembo, claimed that he was widely predicted to succeed the pope.38 And, in the 1548 posthumous edition of Bembo’s Rime, Annibale Caro observes in the dedicatory letter that, had Bembo lived, he might have become the superior of the work’s dedicatee, Alessandro Farnese.39 The still powerful position of the cardinals depicted in Vasari’s fresco is proved by the fact that Reginald Pole, the only one to survive Paul, did very nearly succeed him – losing by only one vote. 40 fresco was also described by Doni; see Maffei, Pitture del Doni, 2004, pp. 305–312, and the discussion in Agosti, Paolo Giovio, 2010, pp. 133–136. 33 Ibid., pp. 129–132. 34 Ibid., p. 132. 35 Contarini was dead by the time Vasari painted his fresco, but surviving correspondence demonstrates that Bembo was his closest advocate while he was at Regensburg and reveals the difficulties he faced there. Pole was present at the first session of Trent as one of the presidents of the Council; he left early, ostensibly on account of illness, but it was also speculated that he wished to avoid having to sign the decree on justification. See Mayer, Reginald Pole, 2000, pp. 148–160. For the continued influence of these men in the Curia see the discussions of Bowd, Reform before the Reformation, 2002, pp. 219–220; Gleason, Gasparo Contarini, 1993, pp. 294–298, and Mayer, Reginald Pole, 2000, pp. 122–133. 36 Maruccio and others, eds, Pasquinate romane, 1983, vol. 1, p. 444, discussed in Simoncelli, ‘Bembo and l’evangelismo’, 1978, and Firpo, ‘Bembo Cardinale’, 2013, p. 163. 37 Bembo, Lettere, 1987–1993, vol. 4, no. 2406, where Bembo, writing in 1544 to his nephew Giovanni Matteo Bembo, addresses various rumours that he would succeed the pope. 38 Della Casa, Petri Cardinalis Bembi vita, 1761, p. 75R. Regardless of whether Bembo’s election had any serious political viability, it did seem to be a matter of discussion. 39 Caro dedication in Bembo, Rime, 1548, no pag. 40 See Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience, 1972, pp. 226–228.

267

268

Irene Brooke

Fig. 10.1 Taddeo Zuccaro and workshop, Paul III Nominating Cardinals, 1562-1563, fresco, Caprarola, Palazzo Farnese (© by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo – Palazzo Farnese Caprarola).

Whether or not the vice-chancellor would have actually supported a Bembo papacy, the representation of Cardinal Bembo in Vasari’s fresco and Caro’s dedication of the Rime are indicative of the close relationship between Bembo and Paul III’s family. The exchange of benefices between Bembo and Cardinal Farnese to facilitate the hereditary transfer of these to heirs speaks to these strong ties.41 Given this relationship, it is not surprising to find Bembo included in the fresco cycle commissioned by Alessandro Farnese of Taddeo Zuccaro and his workshop for his villa at Caprarola. 41 For the exchange of benefices between Bembo and Cardinal Farnese, see Lettere, 1987–1993, vol. 4, nos. 1775, 1779, 1782, 1783, and 1785.

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

Fig. 10.2 Danese Cattaneo, portrait medal of Cardinal Pietro Bembo, c. 1547, bronze, Washington, DC, The National Gallery of Art (© National Gallery of Art, Washington).

It has not to my knowledge been noted that Bembo is plainly depicted in a scene, which, similar to that in the Cancelleria, celebrates Paul’s elevation of worthy men to the cardinalate (Fig. 10.1).42 Bembo’s portrait appears at the left edge of the fresco and corresponds to several posthumous representations, in a variety of media, that derive in a general way from Danese Cattaneo’s memorial medal (Fig. 10.2). The inscription below the scene celebrates the fact that four of the cardinals elevated by Paul III became popes themselves; as a result it has generally been assumed that foreground portraits represent the future Julius III, Marcellus II, Paul IV, and Pius IV.43 Yet, the two most 42 For the Zuccaro workshop’s decoration of Caprarola see Robertson, Il Gran Cardinale, 1992, pp. 88–129; Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari, 1998, pp. 156–226 (202–204, for the scene of Paul III Nominating Cardinals). 43 Ibid., pp. 202 and 224, n. 158. The inscription reads ‘PAVLVS III PONTIFEX MAXIMUS/ COLLEGIUM CARDINALIUM COOPTATIS/ VIRIS CLARISSIMIS IN HIS QVATOR/ IN PONTIFICATVM PERPETVA SERIE/ SVCCESSVRIS ILLVSTRAT’. Vasari, Le Vite, 1881, p. 114, mentions portraits of Julius III (Giovan Maria Ciocchi del Monte), Marcello Cervini (Marcellus II), Paul IV (Gian Pietro Carafa), and Pius IV (Giovanni Angelo Medici).

269

270

Irene Brooke

Fig. 10.3 Taddeo Zuccaro and workshop, Paul III Receiving Charles V after his Victory at Tunis in 1535, 1562-1563, fresco, Caprarola, Palazzo Farnese (© by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo – Palazzo Farnese Caprarola).

obvious portraits in this group do not correspond to the likenesses of any of these men but rather to Bembo and his old friend Sadoleto, once again underscoring the regular visual pairing of these two, as well as Bembo’s close affiliation with the Farnese.44 It is possible to suggest two further representations of Bembo within the decorative cycle at Caprarola. One of these similarly occurs in the so-called Anticamera del Concilio, among the scenes representing the deeds of Paul III. In the depiction of Paul 44 Sadoleto appears in the centre of the scene, above and between the figures probably representing Julius III and Marcellus II. His likeness appears to be based on the portrait now attributed to Jacopino del Conte in the Hermitage Museum, inv. ГЭ-7159, from which the portrait in Giovio’s collection was derived. The figure positioned between Bembo and Sadoleto appears to be Gasparo Contarini, his short beard and square jaw also corresponding to his portrait in Giovio’s collection. In both cases, the same portraits provided models for the images of these cardinals in the group portrait now in Salerno discussed below, that of Sadoleto evidently deriving from a full-length version of Jacopino’s portrait, showing Sadoleto seated and holding a scroll inscribed with the title of his famous work ‘Hortensius’, which was copied by Bartolomeo Cancellieri and is preserved in the Vatican collections.

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

Fig. 10.4 Danese Cattaneo, Cardinal Pietro Bembo, 1547-1548, marble bust, Padua, Basilica of San Antonio (© Giuliano Ghiraldini).

III Receiving Charles V after his Victory at Tunis in 1535 (Fig. 10.3), the cardinal directly above the emperor, in profile with a long flowing white beard, and without a birretta, recalls several posthumous depictions of Bembo, including the marble bust carved by Danese Cattaneo for the writer’s Paduan monument (Fig. 10.4).45 Directly across from 45 For a discussion of this fresco, see Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari, 1998, p. 199, and Jong, Power and the Glorification, 2013, p. 99. This likeness bears a strong resemblance to a portrait which must be Bembo reproduced in Panini’s panting of the Gallery of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, now in the

271

272

Irene Brooke

this cardinal, the figure completing the circular group surrounding the pope might also represent Sadoleto. In 1535, neither Bembo nor Sadoleto had yet been elevated by Paul, however, chronological accuracy within scenes does not seem to have been a priority in the conception of the programme, probably devised by Onofrio Panvinio with the assistance of Annibale Caro and Fulvio Orsini in these frescoes.46 A concern with procuring accurate likenesses of individuals included in the programme is, however, demonstrated in several letters from Cardinal Farnese to Panvinio in Rome requesting that portraits be acquired from individuals close to those who were to be depicted.47 Another possible portrayal of Bembo at Caprarola occurs in the Fasti Farnesiani. In the fresco showing the Investiture of Orazio Farnese as Prefect of Rome by Paul III (Plate 9) four cardinals are depicted on the left of the scene, seated behind a parapet in two rows. Loren Partridge tentatively identified these men as Francesco Sfondrati, Sadoleto, Pole, and Morone. 48 While the first two identifications are plausible for Wadsworth Athenaeum (inv. 1948.478). The inventory and printed catalogue of the collection mention a painting on panel of Cardinal Bembo by Giorgio Vasari; see Morselli and Vodret, Ritratto di una collezione, 2005, pp. 313 and 342, no. 463. If a painting by Vasari was the source for the portrait, it seems odd that Vasari would not have singled it out in his description of the scene; Vasari, Le Vite,1881, p. 114. The portrait recorded in Panini’s image relates to the engraved portrait of Bembo included in Andres Thevet’s Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres, 1584, bk. 6, p. 517; for Cattaneo’s bust of Bembo, see Rossi, La poesia scolpita, 1995, pp. 41–43. 46 See Partridge, ‘Divinity and Dynasty’, 1978. The programme’s flexible approach to chronology is demonstrated by the scene depicting the Investiture of Orazio Farnese as Prefect of Rome, discussed below. The inscription identifying the scene records the date of the event as 1538. In fact, Orazio was not made prefect until 1547. It was Ottavio Farnese who was appointed to this post in 1538. Ottavio’s likeness, copied from Titian’s portrait of Paul III and his Grandsons, appears beside the pope, and Partridge has observed that the scene represents a compression of historical events. 47 For example, Cardinal Farnese requested that Panvinio secure portraits of Cardinal Vitelli from his father, of Cardinal de Guise from Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, and of Ferdinand I and Maximillian II from the imperial ambassador; letters quoted in Partridge, ‘Divinity and Dynasty’, 1978, p. 496, nn. 4 and 5. Given Vasari’s depiction of Bembo in the Cancelleria, it seems probable that the Farnese were already in possession of portraits of Bembo; the 1644 inventory of Palazzo Farnese lists two portraits of Cardinal Bembo; see Jestaz, ed., L’Inventaire du palais, 1994, p.171, no. 4326, and p. 175, no. 4371. The first is described as a ‘quadretto’ on panel, while the second is attributed to Titian and probably the same picture that is attributed to a ‘scolare di Tiziano’ in Fulvio Orsini’s collection; see Nolhac, ‘Une galerie de peinture au XVIe siècle’, 1884, p. 175, no. 52, and Hochmann, ‘Les dessins et les peintures de Fulvio Orsini’, 1993. This is usually identified as the picture tentatively attributed to Orazio Vecellio now in Naples; see Spinosa, Musei e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, 1995, pp. 64–65, and Pommier and others, eds., Titien, 2006, pp. 172–173, no. 38. 48 Partridge, ‘Divinity and Dynasty’, 1978, p. 510, n. 73; Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari, 1998, p. 185. Vasari identifies the cardinals as ‘il cardinal di Parigi (Giovanni Bellè), Viseo, Morone, Badia, Trento (Madruzzo), Sfondrato e Ardinghelli’; Vasari, Le Vite, 1881, p. 113. It is clear that Vasari’s identifications are not always correct, and here he seems to have added two cardinals (although Partridge tentatively identifies the figure in white with his back turned towards the viewer as Marcello Cervini, this seems unlikely given that he was one of the cardinals named by Paul IV to become pope and therefore, if a portrait was intended, he would no doubt be in his cardinal’s vestments and more visible).

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

Fig. 10.5 Valerio Zuccato after a design by Titian, Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo, 1542, mosaic, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello (© by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo – Museo Nazionale del Bargello).

the men in the back row, the two figures positioned in front, immediately behind the parapet, bear little relation to surviving portraits. Given the observed regular pairing of Sadoleto and Bembo, as well as the figures’ physiognomic traits, an identification with these latter men seems more likely. The portrait on the front-right side of the group most closely resembles the likeness of Bembo in the mosaic of 1542, executed by the Venetian Valerio Zuccato after a design by Titian (Fig. 10.5), which

273

274

Irene Brooke

was noted by Vasari and probably in the collection of the Medici at an early stage. 49 Here Cardinal Bembo is shown holding a vast bible displaying the first verse of Genesis, a reminder of his new status as revered churchman rather than love poet. The iconography of the fresco cycle at Caprarola has been demonstrated to be a carefully crafted celebration of the Farnese family’s ecclesiastic and dynastic triumphs, offering an assertion of their prominent political status and making a claim for Cardinal Alessandro as rightful heir to the papal throne. Nevertheless, there is also a nostalgic element to the imagery in its harkening back to the pontificate of Paul III, when the patron, as the pope’s grandson and vice-chancellor, occupied the most powerful position in the Curia and was supported by learned and influential men. This nostalgia resonates with the description of a fresco cycle that decorated the Dalmatian villa of Lodovico Beccadelli and similarly included several figures who had been prominent at the court of Paul III.50

Una Compagnia Mirabile Beccadelli was a cultured cleric, close to Bembo and his associates. He was secretary to Cardinal Gasparo Contarini and subsequently appointed secretary to the Council of Trent, where he accompanied Pole in 1545.51 Titian’s portrait of Beccadelli, now in the Uffizi, portrays him as the Bishop of Ravello in a format that had become standard in cardinal portraiture, and the image may project the sitter’s aspiration to attain the red hat himself. Similar to the Titian workshop portrait of Bembo, now in Naples, Beccadelli is seated and turned at a slight angle to the picture plane. He holds an inscribed sheet of paper memorializing his post as papal legate to Venice with the date 1552.52 Just a few years later, when Carafa, leader of the ‘intransigents’, was elected Paul IV, Beccadelli lost all illusions of following the chierico/letterato career path exemplified by Bembo.53 At that point several surviving friends associated with the spirituali came under attack, and Beccadelli himself was in his own words ‘relegated to the ends of the earth’, assigned to the bishopric of Ragusa.54 49 Vasari, Le Vite, 1881, p. 476 and n. 3. For the mosaic see most recently Villa, Tiziano, 2013, p. 182, no. 23, with bibliography. 50 For a discussion of this fresco, see Fragnito, In museo e in villa, 1988, pp. 51–52 and 65–66, and Aksamija, ‘Between Humanism and the Counter-Reformation’, 2004, pp. 99–139. 51 For Beccadelli’s career, see, in addition to Fragnito, In museo e in villa, 1988, and by the same author, Memoria individuale, 1978; Alberigo, ‘Beccadelli, Lodovico’, 1965; Dall’Olio, ‘Lodovico Beccadelli’, 2010, and Trška, ‘Bisogna di un buon regola’, 2018. 52 Wethey, Titian, 1971, vol. 2, p. 81, no. 13. 53 Fragnito, In museo e in villa, 1988, pp. 44–50. 54 Ibid., p. 33.

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

In 1559, in a letter to Bembo’s executor, Carlo Gualteruzzi, Beccadelli described the fresco that Pellegrino Brocardo was then executing at his villa retreat on the island of Šipan.55 The cycle depicted what he called a ‘compagnia mirabile’, including, so far, the figures of Contarini, Bembo, Fracastoro, Sannazaro, Navagero, with a view of Venice nearby, and also Michelangelo who appears ‘alive and almost speaking’.56 In the final section of the fresco Beccadelli planned to include Pole and Sadoleto. In order to finish this, he requested that Gualteruzzi send a schizzo (sketch), with the portraits of these men.57 Beccadelli’s description of the decorative campaign at his villa is interesting on many levels and demonstrates how likenesses circulated through drawings, as well as how models might be recycled and disseminated. Recalling earlier depictions of Parnassus including contemporary literary f igures, the fresco illustrates the agency assigned to portraiture within friendships in this group, while also reflecting Beccadelli’s experience of a transitional moment within church reform.58 Far removed from the suspicions of Church authorities, Beccadelli’s fresco provided, as he put it ‘molta consolatione’, reminding him of a time, place, and way of thinking that was no longer viable. During his exile in Ragusa, Beccadelli began work on a literary defence of his old friends, Cardinals Pole, Contarini, and Bembo. His biographies of these men have been described as a new kind of hagiography, intended to counter the suspicion and persecution that their memories suffered in the years after their deaths.59 Elsewhere I have explored the idea that the multitude of posthumous, iconlike profile portraits of Cardinal Bembo constitute a visual counterpart to Beccadelli’s written apology for his hero, disseminating an image of the writer as a devout, pious ‘prince of the church’.60 A little studied group portrait, including from right to left Pole, Bembo, Contarini, Francesco Sfondrati, Sadoleto, and Girolamo Aleandro, now in the Archbishop’s Palace in Salerno, might be interpreted in a 55 The fresco, which seems to have formed a frieze around the principle room on the piano nobile of the villa, is now only partially visible in the surviving ruins of the edifice; see Aksamija, ‘Between Humanism and the Counter-Reformation’, 2004, pp. 99–139. 56 Ibid., pp. 51–52 and p. 63, n. 125. 57 Ibid. The letter requesting the sketch reads: ‘Et perch’a questa tela mancano anchora alcune braccia da tesserae per compirla, vorrei che mi faceste havere il schizzo, se si potrà, del nostro Ill.mo Polo et di Mons.r Sadoletto, accio ch’in queste parti, ov’è il suo nome celebrato, sia anco venerate l’effigie con questi altri suoi colleghi.’ The original letter is in Biblioteca Estense, Modena, Autografoteca Campori, Ludovico Beccadelli, n. 52. 58 For a discussion of agency in Venetian portraiture see Van Kessel, Lives of Paintings, 2017, 59 See Fragnito, Memoria individuale, 1978, pp. 9–22 and 117–168. 60 Brooke, ‘Pietro Bembo’, 2011, pp. 228–236, also addressed in a paper entitled ‘Pietro Bembo’s Iconography Reconsidered’ delivered at the symposium, Beyond the Frame: Portraits and Personal Experience in Renaissance Europe c. 1400–1650, the Courtauld Institute, 28 April 2012.

275

276

Irene Brooke

similar way.61 While it is difficult to date the picture, a similar image, including the same figures in the same order, is listed in the inventory of Cardinal Francesco Barberini compiled between 1626–1631.62 Even without the inscriptions above the figures, uncovered during the restoration of the painting, the likenesses of the cardinals are immediately recognizable, all relating to extant examples of what in some cases may be classified as the respective cardinal’s official portrait type.63 In the case of Bembo, it is interesting that the likeness derives from Titian’s Washington portrait, given that the 1545 studio portrait had a more diffuse visual legacy.64 Like the many profile portraits of Bembo, this group portrait is of less value for its artistic qualities than for being an interesting visual document of a specific moment in Church history. All the cardinals represented were elevated by Paul III and played an integral part in matters of reform during his papacy. All, except Sfondrati and Aleandro, promoted a moderate approach and were linked to the spirituali. While the inclusion of the latter two cardinals might seem at first unusual given their connections with the Roman Inquisition, their elevation by Paul was originally motivated by their familiarity with northern countries and their outstanding erudition.65 The image seems most likely to have been commissioned by someone close to the court of Paul III, a hypothesis supported by the artist’s evident access to official portraits. The description of the similar painting in the Barberini inventory may indicate that the work remained in Rome, although its current presence in 61 First published in Dal Prà, ed., I Madruzzo e l’Europa, 1993, pp. 126–129, no. 53, and subsequently by Marranzi, Il cardinale Girolamo Seripando, 1994, p. 13, n. 27, and pp. 207–217, and Lupo in Pancheri and Primerano, L’Uomo del concilio, 2009, pp. 246–247, no. 43, where Sadoleto is consistently misidentified as Seripando and Bembo as Stanislaus Hosius. Grosso in Gasparrotto and Beltramini, eds., Pietro Bembo, 2013, p. 368, no. 6.1, correctly identifies the figure of Bembo. 62 ‘Sei cardinali, cioè Brundisino, Sadoleto, Sfonderato, Contarino, Bembo e Polo’, listed in Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s inventory, compiled between 10 December 1626 and 15 November 1631, at Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, p. 85, no. 254; see the Getty Provenance Index at https://piprod.getty.edu/ starweb/pi/servlet.starweb?path=pi/pi.web (accessed March 2018). 63 For the 1993 restoration of the painting see Marranzi, Il cardinale Girolamo Seripando,1994, pp. 213–215. 64 Titian’s Washington portrait of Bembo coincidently ended up in the Barberini collection; however, the picture does not seem to have been acquired by Cardinal Barberini before at least 1636; for a full account of the picture’s provenance see Peter Humfrey’s entry on Titian’s portrait of Bembo on the National Gallery of Art website, www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.41638.html (accessed March 2018), as well as the issues raised by Grosso in Gasparotto and Beltramini, eds., Pietro Bembo, 2013, p. 368, no. 6.1. 65 For the career of Cardinal Sfondrati, see Giannini, ‘Sfondrati, Francesco’, 2018; for Aleandro’s involvement with church reform see Saponaro, Il cardinale Girolamo Aleandro, 1954. Aleandro, like Sadoleto and Pole, formed part of the commission led by Gasparo Contarini and appointed by Paul III in 1536 to review the abuses of the Church; they produced the famous report known as the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia; see Aubert, Il ‘Consilium de emendanda ccclesia’, 2008. It is also worth noting that most of the men portrayed here were members of the Compagnia del Corpo di Cristo, an important confraternity during the reign of Paul III. See Balzarotti, ‘Una nota su Pietro Bembo’, 2016.

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

Salerno might also suggest that it is another version of the same picture. The picture has been linked, probably rightly, to Cardinal Giorolamo Seripando, archbishop of the diocese from 1553, although his identification with one of the sitters is no longer viable.66 Seripando was an advocate of church reform and closely associated with members the spirituali, especially Giulia Gonzaga, who came under the suspicion of the Inquistion.67 His ownership of a group portrait including Cardinals Bembo, Contarini, Pole, and Sadoleto would not be surprising, given his affiliations and apparent theological leanings. Although Cardinals Aleandro and Sfondrati, whose sympathies lay on the side of a canonical and juridical reform rather than spiritual and theological renewal, might at first seem at odds with the other sitters, such a juxtaposition would not have struck Seripando as incongruous; the latter was in fact admired by and close to individuals traditionally classed as ‘intransigents’, like Marcello Cervini, whom Seripando served as a theological adviser during the first session of the Council of Trent.68 From a visual perspective, it should be remembered that a portrait of Aleandro was also grouped with Bembo, Sadoleto, and Contarini in Rodolfo Pio da Carpi’s collection. It has been observed that Aleandro praised Bembo on his elevation to the cardinalate, and on Aleandro’s death Bembo lamented that he was a ‘most learned and valent man. [His death] is a great blow to our College and this sacred faith.’69 Seripando’s group portrait therefore illustrates the complexity and ambiguities of alliances and positions on reform within the Curia in the 1540s, demonstrating that the delineations drawn by historians between factions in these years were not in fact always so clearly defined.

Conclusion: Beyond Rome While Bembo and his fellow cardinal friends were all men of letters, there is no question that Bembo’s status in literary matters was unique. His myriad posthumous portrayals as a cardinal in part reflect this authoritative position, and representations occur in contexts not primarily related to his cardinalate. 66 For Seripando’s career, see Jedin, Girolamo Seripando, 1937; Marranzi, Il cardinale Girolamo Seripando, 1994, (esp. 69–105, for his archbishopric), and Cestaro, Geronimo Seripando, 1997. 67 See Russell, ‘Dangerous Friendships’, 2018, esp. p. 251, where there is a good discussion of the diversity of theological positions espoused by members of the spirituali and Seripando’s negotiation of the diverse elements within this group and the Curia. 68 See Fragnito, ‘Evangelismo e intransigenti’, 1989, and Hudon, Marcello Cervini, 1992, who presents a more nuanced picture of Cervini and his concern for reform, challenging the narrow historigraphical categories espoused by many Italian scholars. 69 See note 21 above, and Bembo, Lettere, 1987–1993, vol. 4, no. 2310.

277

278

Irene Brooke

In Vasari’s Entrata of Leo X in Palazzo Vecchio, Cardinal Bembo, in minoribus, is again paired with Sadoleto, despite their birette having reverted to black, referring back to a moment in 1515 when the men served the Medici pope as secretaries.70 More broadly, they are placed here within the context of other literary figures in a fresco that glorif ies and justif ies Medici supremacy in Florence. In three other, as yet unstudied cases, Bembo appears in canvases executed in the late sixteenth-century redecoration of Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Cardinal Bembo’s distinctive three-quarter profile and long, abundant beard appear in Federico Zuccaro’s Submission of Barbarossa to Pope Alexander III, Andrea Vicentino’s Doge Sebastiano Ziani Receiving the Blessed Ring from Alexander III, and Marco Vecellio’s Clement VII Meeting Charles V at Bologna.71 The first representation is explicable as Titian’s original canvas of the scene apparently included a portrait of Bembo, and the last is justified by the fact that Bembo was in fact present in Bologna in 1529, even if not yet a cardinal. While the reasoning behind the inclusion of Bembo in Vicentino’s canvas is not altogether clear, it should be noted that on the opposite side to Bembo, the pope gestures to a figure who is clearly Lorenzo Giustiniani, the first Patriarch of Aquilea; it may be that the individuals positioned in close proximity to the pope represent important Venetian ecclesiastics.72 In all three canvases in the Doge’s Palace, the reappropriation of Cardinal Bembo, Venice’s most distinguished writer cum churchman, fits within an iconographic programme asserting the Venetian state’s primary and independent role in ecclesiastical matters.73 Bembo’s positioning in Vicentino’s and Vecellio’s canvases, beside the pope, is surely significant. What distinguishes the representations of Bembo and his friends produced in the years following the initial convocation of Trent is that they illustrate the writer’s latter-day important position as a ‘prince of the church’ and his role in the reform movement, a chapter that has often been overshadowed 70 Recorded by Vasari, Ragionamenti di Palazzo Vecchio, 2007, p. 149; for a discussion of Vasari’s composition of this text, see Tinagli, ‘Claiming a Place in History: Giorgio Vasari’s Ragionamenti and the Primacy of the Medici’, 2001; for contemporary descriptions of the event, see Shearman, ‘Florentine entrata of Leo X, 1515’, 1975, and Ciseri, L’Ingresso trionfale di Leone X in Firenze nel 1515, 1990. In this instance Vasari’s portrait is based on Cristofano d’Altissimo’s copy of the portrait in Giovio’s collection; see Gli Uffizi: catalogo generale, 1979, p. 611, no. Ic60; see also Klinger, Portrait Collection, 1997, p. 28, no. 51, where the author quotes a letter of 1553 in which Altissimo reports that he has nearly finished the portrait of Bembo. 71 For Vicentino and Zuccaro’s canvases, which are in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, see Wolters, Storia e politica, 1987, pp. 174–177, and for Marco Vecellio’s canvas, p. 246. Lodovico Dolce identifies portraits of Bembo, Sannazaro, and Navagero in the Submission of Barbarossa by Titian; Roskill, Dolce’s Aretino, 1968, pp. 124–125. 72 Ibid., p. 174. The figure immediately to the pope’s left, above Giustiniani, wearing a black biretta, may be Giovanni Grimani, Patriarch of Aquilea, who failed to be elevated to the cardinalate on account of accusations of heterodoxy. On this subject, see Sarah Ferrari’s essay in this volume. 73 The particular power struggle between the Venetian state and the papacy in these years culminated in the Interdict of 1606. See the essay of Alessandra Pattanaro in this volume. I am grateful to this scholar for bringing Bembo’s representation in Vecellio’s canvas to my attention.

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

by his rank as ‘doctrina et eloquentia princeps’ (prince of literary doctrine and eloquence).74 More generally, in terms of the typology of the cardinal portrait, the images of Bembo and his friends examined here demonstrate how a particular political or ideological agenda of the church could assume visual form through the representation of her princes.

Bibliography Acidini Luchinat, Cristina, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari: fratelli pittori del Cinquecento (Milan/ Rome: Jandi Sapi, 1998). Agosti, Barbara, Paolo Giovio: uno storico lombardo nella cultura artistica del Cinquecento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2010). Aksamija, Nadja, ‘Between Humanism and the Counter-Reformation: Villa and Villeggiatura in Renaissance Ragua’, PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2004. Alberigo, Giuseppe, ‘Beccadelli, Lodovico’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 7 (Rome: Trecanni, 1965), pp. 407–413, www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ludovico-beccadelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Allegri, Ettore and Alessandro Cecchi, eds., Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici: guida storica (Florence: SPES, 1980). Aubert, Alberto, Il ‘Consilium de emendanda ecclesia’, riforma della chiesa e propaganda religiosa nel Cinquecento (Goiânia: Philos, 2008). Balzarotti, Valentina, ‘Una nota su Pietro Bembo e la Compagnia del Corpo di Cristo’, Bolletino d’Arte 30 (2016): 81–84. Barocchi, Paola and Giovanni Gaeta Bertela, Collezionismo Mediceo: Da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 1540–1621, 2 vols. (Florence: Studio per Edizione Scelte, 2002). Beccadelli, Lodovico, ‘Vita di Pietro Bembo cardinale’, in Monumenti di varia letteratura tratti dai manoscritti di monsignor Lodovico Becadelli, arcivescovo di Ragusa (Westmead, Farnborough Hants.: Gregg Press International, 1967). Bembo, Pietro, Lettere, ed. by Ernesto Travi, 4 vols. (Bologna: Commissione per testi di lingua, 1987–1993). ———, Rime (Rome: Valerio Dorico et Luigi Fratelli, 1548). Bowd, Stephen, Reform before the Reformation: Vincenzo Querini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Brooke, Irene, ‘Pietro Bembo and the Visual Arts’, PhD thesis, Courtauld Institute, 2011. Brown, George K.B, Italy and the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1933). Campi, Emidio, Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna: un dialogo artistico-teologico ispirato da Bernardino Ochino, altri saggi di storia della Riforma (Torino: Claudiana, 1994). 74 See note 15 above.

279

280

Irene Brooke

Cantimori, Delio, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1939). Cestaro, Antonio, Geronimo Seripando e la chiesa del suo tempo: nel V centenario della nascita; atti del convegno di Salerno, 14–16 ottobre 1994 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997). Ciseri, Ilaria, L’Ingresso trionfale di Leone X in Firenze nel 1515 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1990). Coggiola, Giulio, ‘Per l’iconografia di Pietro Bembo’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 74.2 (1914–1915): 473–516. Curione, Celio Secondo, ‘Pasquillus extaticus’ e ‘Pasquino in estasi’: edizione storico-critica commentate, ed. by Giovanni Cordibella and Stefano Prandi (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2018). Dal Prà, Laura, ed., I Madruzzo e l’Europa 1539–1658: i principi vescovi tra Papato e Impero (Milan: Charta, 1993). Dall’Olio, Guido, ‘Lodovico Beccadelli’, Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, vol. 1 (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), pp. 165–166. Danzi, Massimo, La biblioteca di Pietro Bembo (Geneva: Droz, 2005). De Jong, Jan L., The Power and the Glorification: Papal Pretensions and the Art of Propaganda in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013). De Vecchi, Pier Luigi, ‘Il Museo Gioviano e le Verae imagines’, in Omaggio a Tiziano: la cultura artistica Milanese nell’età di Carlo V (Milan: Electa, 1977), pp. 87–93. Della Casa, Giovanni, Petri Cardinalis Bembi vita, in Rime, e prose di M. Giovanni della Casa: in questa ristampa di molto accresciute, e ricorrette (Naples: N. Naso, 1761). Dionisotti, Carlo, ‘Chierici e laici’, in Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1967), pp. 55–88. ———, Scritti sul Bembo (Turin: Einaudi, 2002). Doni, Anton Francesco, Pitture, del Doni: Academico pellegrino, ed. by Sonia Maffei (Naples: Stanza delle Scritture, 2004). Fenlon, Dermot, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: University Press, 1972). Ferino-Pagden, Sylvia and Agostino Attanasio, eds., Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos (Milan: Skira Editore, 1997). Firpo, Massimo, Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016). ———, ‘Pietro Bembo cardinale’, in Valdesiani e spirituali: studi sul Cinquecento religioso italiano (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2013), pp. 159-171. ———, Tra alumbrados e ‘spirituali’: studi su Juan de Valdés e il valdesianesimo nella crisi religiosa del ’500 italiano (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1990). ———, Vittore Soranzo vescovo ed eretico: riforma della chiesa e Inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Rome: Laterza, 2006). Forcellino, Maria, Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna e gli ‘spirituali’: religiosità e vita artistica a Roma negli anni quaranta (Roma: Viella, 2009).

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

Fragnito, Gigliola, ‘Appunti e documenti: gli “Spirituali” e la fuga di Bernardino Ochino’, Rivista Storica Italiana 84 (1972): 777–813. ———, ‘Evangelismo e intransigenti nei diff icili equilibri del pontif icato farnesiano’, Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 25.1 (1989): 20–47. ———, In museo e in villa: saggi sul Rinascimento perduto (Venice: Arsenale, 1988). ———, Memoria individuale e costruzione biografica: Beccadelli, Della Casa, Vettori alle origini di un mito (Urbino: Argalìa, 1978). Franzoni, Claudio and others, Gli inventari dell’eredità del Cardinale Rodolfo Pio da Carpi (Pisa: ETS, 2002). Gasparotto, Davide and Guido Beltramini, eds., Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento (Venice: Marsilio, 2013). Giannini, Massimo Carlo, ‘Sfondrati, Francesco’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 92 (Rome: Trecanni, 2018), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francescosfondrati_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Giovio, Paolo, Scritti d’arte: lessico ed ecfrasi, ed. by Sonia Maffei (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1999). Gleason, Elizabeth, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome and Reform (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). ———, ‘On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Evangelism: Scholarship 1953–1978’, Sixteenth Century Journal 9 (1978): 3–25. Gli Uffizi: catalogo generale (Florence: Centro Di, 1979). Grendler, Paul F., ‘Gasparo Contarini and the University of Padua’, in Heresy, Culture, and Religion, ed. by Donald K. Delph, Michelle M. Fontaine, and John Jeffries Martin (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2006), pp. 135–148. Hochmann, Michel, ‘Les dessins et les peintures de Fulvio Orsini et la collection Farnèse’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 105.1 (1993): 49–91. Hudon, William V., Marcello Cervini and Ecclesiastical Government in Tridentine Italy (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992). Jedin, Hubert, Girolamo Seripando: sein Leben und Denken im Geisteskampf des 16. Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (Würzburg: Rita-Verlag,1937). Jestaz, Bertrand, ed., L’Inventaire du Palais et des propriétés Farnèse à Rome en 1644 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1994). Kempers, Bram, ‘The Canonical Portrait of a Cardinal: Bandinello Sauli, Raphael and Sebastiano del Piombo’, in I cardinali di Santa Romana Chiesa: collezionisti e mecenati, ed. by Marco Gallo (Roma: Associazione Culturale Shakespeare and Company 2, 2001), pp. 6–21. Klinger, Linda S., ‘The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio’, PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1997. Mancini, Giorgia, ‘Una collezione romana del 1564: i dipinti del Cardinale Rodolfo da Carpi nell’ “Inventarium picturarum” compilato da Daniele da Volterra’, Paragone 51.643 (2003): 37–59.

281

282

Irene Brooke

Marranzi, Alfredo, Il Cardinale Girolamo Seripando: arcivescovo di Salerno, legato pontificio al concilio di Trento (Salerno: Elea,1994). Maruccio, Valerio, Antonio Marzo, and Angelo Romano, eds., Pasquinate romane del Cinquecento (Rome: Salerno, 1983). Mayer, Thomas, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Morselli, Raffaella and Rossella Vodret, Ritratto di una collezione: Panini e la galleria del Cardinale Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (Milan: Skira, 2005). Nagel, Alexander, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’, Art Bulletin 79.4 (1997): 647–668. ———, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge Universtiy Press, 2000). Nolhac, Pierre, ‘Une galerie de peinture au 16e siècle: les collections de Fulvio Orsini’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 2.29 (1884): 427-436. Pagano, Sergio, Nuovi documenti su Vittoria Colonna e Reginald Pole (Vatican City: Archivio Vaticano, 1989). Pancheri, Roberto and Domenica Primerano, eds., L’Uomo del concilio: il Cardinale Giovanni Morone tra Roma e Trento nell’età di Michelangelo (Trent: Tipografia Editrice Temi, 2009). Partridge, Loren, ‘Divinity and Dynasty: Perfect History in the Room of Farnese Deeds’, Art Bulletin 60 (1978): 494–530. Petrucci, Francesco, ‘Tipologie della ritrattistica cardinalizia tra ’500 e ’600’, in La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento, ed. by Francesco Petrucci and Maria Elisa Titton (Rome: Gangemi, 2006), pp. 19–30. Peyronel Rambaldi, Susanna, ‘Ancora sull’evangelismo italiano: categoria o invenzione storiografica?’, Società e Storia 18 (1982): 935–967. ———, Una gentildonna, irrequieta: Giulia Gonzaga fra reti familiari e relazioni eterodosse (Rome: Viella, 2012). Ragionieri, Pina, ed., Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo (Florence: Mandragora, 2005). Rebecchini, Guido, The Rome of Paul III (1534–1549): Art, Ritual and Urban Renewal (London/ Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2020). Robertson, Clare, Il Gran Cardinale: Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts (New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 1992). ———, ‘Paolo Giovio and the Invenzioni for the Sala dei Cento Giorni’, in Atti del convegno Paolo Giovio: il Rinascimento e la memoria (Como: Presso la Società a Villa Gallia, 1985), pp. 225–237. Roskill, Mark W., Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968). Rossi, Massimiliano, La poesia scolpita: Danese Cataneo nella Venezia del Cinquecento (Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 1995). Russell, Camilla, ‘Dangerous Friendships: Girolamo Seripando, Giulia Gonzaga and the Spirituali in Tridentine Italy’, in The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe

Group Portraits of Cardinal Bembo and his Friends in the Wake of Trent 

and Beyond (1545–1700), vol. 1: Between Trent, Rome and Wittenberg, ed. by Wim François and Violet Soen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), pp. 249–276. ———, Giulia Gonzaga and the Religious Controversies of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). Saponaro. Francesco, Il Cardinale Girolamo: Aleandro contributo del cardinale brindisino nella lotta al protestantesimo e preparazione del Concilio di Trento alla riforma della chiesa e difesa del papato (Padua: Presbyterium, 1954). Seidel Mench, Silvana, Erasmo in Italia (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987). Shearman, John, ‘The Florentine entrata of Leo X, 1515’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 38 (1975): 136–154. Simoncelli, Paolo, ‘Bembo and l’evangelismo italiano’, Critica Storica 15 (1978): 1–63. ———, Evangelismo italiano del Cinquecento: questione religiosa e nicodemismo politico (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1979). ———, Il caso di Reginald Pole, eresia e santità nelle polemiche religiose del Cinquecento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1977). Spinosa, Nicola, ed., La collezione Farnese: i dipinti lombardi, liguri veneti, toscani, umbri, romani, fiamminghi; altre scuole; fasti Farnesiani/Museo e Gallerie Nazionale di Capodimonte (Naples: Electa, 1995). Thevet, Andres, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins, et payens: recueilliz de leurs tableavx, livres, médalles antiques, et modernes (Paris: I. Keruert et Guillaume Chaudiere, 1584). Tinagli, Paola, ‘Claiming a Place in History; Giorgio Vasari’s Ragionamenti and the Primacy of the Medici’, in Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, ed. by Konrad Eisenbichler (Farnham: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 63–76. Trška, Tanja, ‘Bisogna di un buon regola: Lodovico Beccadelli and Conicliar Discipline in Renaissance Ragusa’, in The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond, ed. by Wim François and Violet Soen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), pp. 153–172. Utili, Marco, ‘Ritratto di Pietro Bembo’, in Titien, le pouvoir en face, ed. by Edouard Pommier and others (Milian: Skira, 2006). (Milan: Electa, 1995). Van Kessel, Elsje, The Lives of Paintings: Presence, Agency, and Likeness in Venetian Art of the Sixteenth Century (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017). Vasari, Giorgio, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (1568), ed. by Gaetano Milanesi, vol. 7 (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1881). ———, Ragionamenti di Palazzo Vecchio, ed. by Roland Le Mollé (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2007). Vercruysse, Jos E., ‘Die Kardinäle von Paul IIII’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 38 (2000): 41–96. Villa, Giovanni Maria, Tiziano (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2013). Waddington, Raymond, Titian’s Aretino: A Contextual Study of All the Portraits (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2018).

283

284

Irene Brooke

Wethey, Harold, The Paintings of Titian: Complete Edition, 3 vols. (London: Phaidon, 1971). Wivel, Matthias, ed., Michelangelo and Sebastiano (London/New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Wolters, Wolfgang, Storia e politica nei dipinti di palazzo Ducale: aspetti dell’ autocelebrazione dell Repubblica di Venezia nel Cinquecento (Venice: Arsenale, 1987).

About the Author Irene Brooke is an Associate Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute and editor of the Colnaghi Studies Journal. She has published articles on Cardinal Pietro Bembo’s patronage and collecting strategies, as well as on the work and career of the engraver, Giulio Campagnola.

11. Two Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museumsand their Related Versions Danielle Carrabino

Abstract Since the sixteenth century, Scipione Pulzone’s portraiture has been admired for its psychological intensity, exquisite attention to detail, and illusionistic settings. Throughout his career, Scipione painted at least six cardinals. These paintings exist in multiple versions, yet the issue of how Scipione went about creating them has remained little examined. This study focuses on the portraits of Cardinals Giovanni Ricci and Michele Bonelli (both housed in the Harvard Art Museums), and their related versions to contend with Scipione’s artistic practice. It considers the function of these and other multiple cardinal portraits by Scipione with regard to their collection and display. It also draws attention to the central role of portraits of cardinals and Scipione’s lasting contribution to this genre. Keywords: Scipione Pulzone; cardinals; portraits; copies; Counter-Reformation

Scipione Pulzone da Gaeta was hailed by his contemporaries as the undisputed leading portraitist in Rome. In his Riposo of 1584, Raffaello Borghini wrote that Scipione was ‘excellent at making portraits from life, so much so they that they appear alive’.1 Giovanni Baglione also noted that Scipione was particularly gifted in painting portraits, which he described as ‘so lifelike and [painted] with such diligence, that all the hairs could be counted, and especially the draperies […] seemed truer than their originals’.2 Similarly, Giulio Mancini in his Considerazioni sulla 1 ‘molto eccellente nel fare i ritratti di naturale, e talmente sono da lui condotti, che paion vivi’; Borghini, Il riposo, 2013, p. 233. 2 ‘e sì vivi li faceva, e con tal diligenza, che vi si sarieno contati fin tutti i capelli, in particolare li drappi, che in quelli ritraeva, parevano del loro originale più veri, e davano mirabil gusto’; Baglione, Le vite, 2013, p. 235.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch11

286

Danielle Carrabino

pittura (1617–1621) claimed that Scipione’s portraits were so perfect that he did not leave out even the smallest aspect of nature.3 For the discerning Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, one of the artist’s sitters, Scipione surpassed all other living portraitists.4 According to these and other critics, Scipione painted many illustrious sitters in Rome, including members of the nobility, popes, secular rulers, and ‘all of the Cardinal Princes of the Roman Court’.5 Among these many portraits, a great number represent cardinals, and these exist in multiple versions. Borghini notes that Scipione’s portraits are too numerous to list, but he does single out those of cardinals Farnese, Granvelle, and Medici.6 Scipione’s reputation extended beyond the borders of Rome to the courts of Naples and Florence, where he was invited to work, but also to Venice, Sicily, and Spain, where he sent his paintings. His influence was international in scope and lasted well after his death. Although Scipione was widely celebrated in his own time, he has attracted relatively little attention from modern scholars. The first monographic study of the artist’s work was published by Federico Zeri in 1957 but focused on Scipione’s religious painting, largely overlooking the portraits.7 Zeri grappled with where to situate Scipione, an artist working during the Counter-Reformation who does not sit comfortably in either the Renaissance or the Baroque eras. More recently, Scipione studies have gained momentum with Alexandra Dern’s catalogue raisonné of 2003, the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work at the Museo Diocesano in Gaeta in 2013, and Alessandro Zuccari’s edited volume on the artist.8 Together with the growing literature dedicated to cardinals and their role in early modern Europe,9 3 ‘nel ritratto fu eminente e nel finire usò gran pacienza, quale, nel condurre a perfettione le sue opere, non lasciò cosa minima che sia nel naturale che non esprimesse’; Mancini, in Petrucci, Pittura di ritratto a Roma, 2008, p. 3. 4 In a letter of 10 February 1578, the Spanish ambassador, Juan de Zúñiga, wrote to King Philip II of Spain: ‘Granvela aprueva mucho a Hieronimo Monciano para hazer design y a Marcello [Venusti] para dar colores y para retrettar al natural a un Scipion de Gaeta y tambien dize, que es muy buen official todo lo de pinzel un Pierre de Argeum, que esta en Borgoña’ (‘the cardinal approves much of Girolamo Muziano as a draughtsman, and Marcello Venusti as a painter, and to render portraits from life, Scipione Pulzone da Gaeta’); Leone de Castris, ‘Le cardinal Granvelle et Scipione Pulzone’, 1996, p. 175. 5 ‘Fece squisitamente il ritratto del Pontefice Gregorio XIII, preso dal vivo con maestria. E quelli di tutti li Principi Cardinali della Corte Romana, e d’altri Principi secolari, e Principesse, e specialmente di tutte le nobili dame di Roma, sì, che gran creditò acquistossi e non si diceva altro al suo tempo, che de gli eccellenti ritratti di Scipione Gaetano’; Baglione, Le vite, 2013, p. 235. See also Pacheco, El arte de la pinctura, 2012, p. 236, and De Dominici, Vite dei pittori scultori e architetti napoletani, 2013, p. 238. 6 Borghini, Il Riposo, 2013, p. 233. 7 Zeri, Pittura e Controriforma, 1957. 8 Dern, Scipione Pulzone, 2003; Acconci and Zuccari, eds., Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, 2013, and Zuccari, Scipione Pulzone e il suo tempo, 2015. 9 See Hollingsworth and Richardson, eds., Possessions of a Cardinal, 2010, and Hollingsworth et al., eds, Companion, 2020.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

a clearer picture has been formed both of Scipione as the favoured portraitist of later sixteenth-century cardinals and of the function and display of these paintings in the hands of their owners. Cardinals commissioned portraits for dynastic reasons as well as to communicate the power of their office, often either on the occasion of their investiture or in commemoration of an important diplomatic accomplishment. Portraits of cardinals proliferated after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), and Scipione eventually specialized in this genre. Little is known about Scipione’s workshop and how he managed the production of so many portraits of cardinals alongside his numerous other commissions. Although documents and technical evidence have taught us more about Scipione, his patrons, and his oeuvre, much remains to be discovered about the artist’s working practices. Specifically, what was the impetus behind the additional versions of cardinal portraits? How were they carried out and to what extent were assistants involved? How were they disseminated and displayed? In addition to his attention to detail and ability to capture his sitters’ likenesses faithfully, what was it about Scipione’s portraits in particular that so appealed to his patrons and viewers? This study aims to offer some answers through a consideration of primary source material, close visual analysis, and technical evidence. Two portraits of cardinals by Scipione, those of Giovanni Ricci and Michele Bonelli, are now in the Harvard Art Museums and offer a point of departure. These two paintings span nearly two decades of Scipione’s artistic activity and provide representative examples of the types of portraits Scipione repeatedly created with only a few exceptions: the bust- and three-quarter-length seated portrait. An in-depth examination of these works sheds light on other paintings by Scipione, making it possible to draw conclusions about this artist’s working practices, the characteristics of his style, and how he contributed to the conventions of portraiture in his own time and beyond.

Scipione’s Early Beginnings and Training Although the exact date of Scipione’s birth is uncertain, he was born in the town of Gaeta around 1540–1542. We have no evidence of his early training, but he presumably left his hometown as a young man in search of a career as an artist in Rome, where he is recorded paying tax in 1562.10 There Scipione was a pupil of the Florentine artist Jacopino del Conte (1510–1598), who ran a workshop in Rome from about 1538.11 Also known for his portraits, Jacopino painted popes, high-ranking 10 Donò, ‘Scipione da Gaeta’, 1996, p. 8, and Cola, Palazzo Valentini a Roma, 2012, p. 175, n. 12. 11 Baglione, Le Vite, 2013 (1642), p. 235.

287

288

Danielle Carrabino

papal and military officials, members of the Roman nobility, and perhaps most notably, Michelangelo Buonarotti (1534).12 Jacopino also painted members of the Colonna family and probably introduced Scipione to them; in 1568 Scipione began receiving payments from the Colonna who became lifelong patrons of the artist.13 Like Jacopino, Scipione began his career in Rome painting portraits. Although we know little about Scipione’s artistic formation, we may assume that he adopted some of his working practices from his master, who in turn had been trained by Andrea del Sarto in Florence. Giorgio Vasari, who also studied with Andrea, noted in his Lives that the master asked his assistants to copy a single painting as many as four times.14 Andrea employed cartoons and modelli in his workshop so that his assistants could carry out commissions quickly. His workshop ran so efficiently that it was still in business a full decade after his death. However, Jacopino’s formation under Andrea may have been overstated, as he probably spent very little time in his workshop.15 We have no evidence that Jacopino or Scipione used similar methods of transferring designs in their respective workshops, but they both created a remarkable number of portraits in numerous variant versions that often recycle poses, perhaps suggesting that Jacopino passed down some of his working practices to Scipione.16 Portraits of cardinals by both Scipione and Jacopino are part of an established tradition codified by the previous generation of artists working in Rome.17 Oft cited prototypes are Raphael’s Cardinal Bibbiena (c.1516), Sebastiano del Piombo’s portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Salviati (c.1531), and Cardinal Pietro Bembo by Titian (c.1540; see Plate 2), to name only a few.18 While portraits of popes and heads of state were often full length, these cardinal portraits are in bust- and three-quarter lengths. The cardinals in these paintings are portrayed seated and dressed in their finest regalia. As in papal portraits, cardinals are often shown holding in one or both hands objects including books, letters, the edge of the chair, or gloves. In almost every example, the cardinal is positioned at a slight angle to the picture plane and looks directly out at the viewer. As explored further below, Scipione retained many of these conventions, but also added new features that would soon come to define the norm for cardinal portraiture. 12 Donati, Ritratto e figura nel manierismo a Roma, 2010, p. 150; for the portrait of Michelangelo in the Chaix d’Est-ange collection in Paris, see Cheney, ‘Notes on Jacopino del Conte’, 1970, p. 38. 13 Scipione also received a monthly stipend and board from the Colonna through June 1571; Amendola, ‘Cronologia e fonti’, 2013, p. 194. 14 Vasari, in Donati, Ritratto e figura nel manierismo a Roma, 2010 (1568), p. 119. 15 Zeri, ‘Salviati e Jacopino del Conte’, 1948, p. 181. 16 Pace, ‘Osservazioni sull’attività giovanile del Conte’, 1972, pp. 220–221. 17 For Jacopino’s portraits of cardinals, see Alloisi, Personaggi e interpreti, 2001; Petrucci, Pittura di ritratto a Roma, 2008, and Donati, Ritratto e figura nel manierismo a Roma, 2010; for a history of cardinal portraiture, see Kempers, ‘Canonical Portrait’, 2001, and Tittoni and Petrucci eds., La Porpora Romana, 2006; see also the introduction to this volume. 18 For Titian’s portrait of Bembo, see Irene Brooke in this volume.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

In 1567, Scipione was listed among the members of the Accademia of San Luca, indicating he was an independent artist.19 This year also coincides with the earliest recorded payments to the artist for portraits.20 Although Scipione’s standing as an artist was established by this point, Jacopino continued to be extremely influential, even vital to his student’s early career. Numerous commissions for portraits soon followed, including one of Pope Pius V Ghislieri (c.1570).21 This portrait secured the artist’s status as official court portraitist. To arrive at such a lucrative commission so early in his career, Scipione must have had help. In addition to training Scipione, Jacopino may have also introduced him to cardinals and other future clients in Rome besides the Colonna. It is this close network of patrons that helped to establish Scipione as the preferred portraitist in both lay and ecclesiastic circles, surpassing even his own master. By the mid-1570s, Scipione had so many commissions that he called on Jacopino to assist him.22 This is significant for two reasons: first, it provides documentary evidence suggesting that Scipione may not have worked alone and his paintings might have been executed by multiple hands; second, it demonstrates the high demand for portraits at the time. Scipione’s success as the leading portraitist in Rome had much to do with being in the right place at the right time. The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church’s response to it at the Council of Trent had altered the religious climate in Europe.23 When Martin Luther attacked the pope in his ‘95 Theses’, the entire hierarchy of the Church was also at stake. In direct response to Luther and his followers, popes began to address issues such as the granting of indulgences.24 Post-Tridentine popes also encouraged cardinals to conduct modest lives and redirect what they would spend on their courts toward the patronage of art and architecture in service of the Church.25 At the same time, cardinals followed the pope’s lead and sought to reassert their authority as Church leaders. Their status as ‘apostles’ to 19 Donò, ‘Scipione da Gaeta’, 1996, p. 9, n. 7, and subsequently in Redín Michaus, ‘Due testamenti e altri documenti’, 2002, p. 77. 20 Amendola, ‘Cronologia e fonti’, 2013, p. 193. 21 Among the versions of this painting that still exist are those in the Galleria Colonna in Rome, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and in the Palazzo Arcivescovile of Olomone; Dolz, ‘Ritratto di Pio V’, 2013, p. 303, and Nicolai, ‘Ritratti di Pio V Ghislieri’, 2013, p. 255. 22 This is recorded in a letter from 11 February 1576 from Curia chamberlain Hortensio Cyriach to William V, Duke of Bavaria, who wished to commission a series of portraits from Scipione; Dern, Scipione Pulzone, 2003, pp. 33–34. 23 For the Catholic response to the Reformation, see Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, 1957 and O’Malley, Trent and all That, 2000. See also Jones, The Counter Reformation, 1995 and Mullett, The Catholic Reformation, 1999. 24 Pope Pius V outlawed indulgences with the Etsi Dominici gregis bull of 1567; Schirrmacher, Indulgences, 2012, p. 43. 25 Fragnito, ‘Cardinals’ Courts’, 1993, p. 33, and Perin, ‘Pio V e il collegio cardinalizio’, 2004, p. 107.

289

290

Danielle Carrabino

the Christlike role played by the pope necessitated an official public image, which required wide dissemination.26 Family ambitions were passed down from popes to their cardinal nephews to create a sense of legitimacy to the papal seat, which was made explicit in portraiture. Hence there was a new demand for cardinal portraits. Perhaps in direct response to this need, Scipione’s portraits effectively communicated a sense of the importance and power of their sitters. With their haunting lifelikeness, Scipione’s portraits simulated a real presence, as noted by his biographers.27 It also relates to the curious episode of Scipione’s portrait of Bianca Cappello that had such a presence, it was treated like a real person.28 This feature of Scipione’s portraiture as being extremely lifelike may have been the key to his success.

The Harvard Portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Ricci: A Lifelike Presence Among Scipione’s earliest commissions is the Harvard Art Museums’ portrait of Giovanni Ricci (1497–1574) from 1569, often considered to be the painter’s first cardinal portrait.29 This half-bust portrait portrays the cardinal dressed in the uniform of his office, a brilliant scarlet mozzetta, white collar, and on his head, a bright red biretta (Fig. 11.1).30 The moirée patterned silk, white beard, and tiny skin tag below the left eye are painted with striking naturalism, evoking Baglione’s praise of this artist’s superior ability to paint drapery and his precise attention to detail. The impenetrable gaze of Cardinal Ricci is arresting. The individualized features of aged skin lend him a sense of authority, while accurately portraying his age of 72 years old. Furthermore, the cardinal’s character is captured in this portrait which is at once intimate in its proximity to the viewer and distanced through the painted ledge. Its inscription, ‘Io Riccius Card. Politianus’ not only clearly identifies the name and place of origin of the cardinal from Montepulciano (nicknamed Cardinal Montepulciano), but also identifies the cardinal by his name, Io[annes]. An additional inscription located just above the cardinal’s left proper shoulder (as opposed to the viewer’s left) records a signature and date: ‘Scipio facie[bat] An Dm 1569’. Nothing more is known of its commission or why the cardinal wished to be depicted at this particular moment. 26 Petrucci, Pittura di ritratto a Roma, 2008, p. 55. 27 The idea that cardinal portraits could stand in for the physical presence of the sitter is explored further by Arnold Witte in this volume. 28 Van Kessel, Lives of Paintings, 2017, esp. p. 184ff. 29 Federico Zeri and Alexandra Dern both open their books with this painting; Zeri, Pittura e Controriforma, 1957, and Dern, Scipione Pulzone, 2003; for the biography of Giovanni Ricci with bibliography, see Jedin, ‘Kardinal Giovanni Ricci (1497–1574)’, 1949, and Fragnito, ‘Ricci, Giovanni’, 2016. 30 For cardinals’ dress, see Richardson, ‘Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, 2020, pp. 535–556.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

Fig. 11.1 Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Ricci, 1569, oil on canvas, Cambridge, MA, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum (© President and Fellows of Harvard College).

Cardinal Giovanni Ricci has been characterized as ‘a major figure in papal finance, administration, and diplomacy for some three decades in the mid-sixteenth century’.31 Born in the Tuscan town of Chiusi, Giovanni Ricci grew up in the nearby town of Montepulciano. Ricci rose from modest beginnings and had a rudimentary education, both of which set him apart from the cardinals who hailed from 31 Andres, Villa Medici in Rome, 1976, p. 68.

291

292

Danielle Carrabino

prominent families and had humanist educations.32 As a young man of fifteen, Ricci travelled, under the protection of the Montepulciano nobleman Tarugio Tarugi to Rome, where he was soon well-positioned for an ecclesiastic career. In Rome, Ricci benefitted from the papacy of two Tuscan popes, Leo X and Clement VII de’ Medici, finding support in Tuscan cardinals and others who would later prove to be important contacts. Ricci first resided with Cardinal Antonio Maria Ciocchi del Monte as his maestro di casa (majordomo) and later, he was the treasurer to the cardinal’s uncle, Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, the future Pope Julius III (1550–1555). Ricci later acted as major-domo to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, the future Pope Paul III (1534–1549). Ricci became active in the Apostolic Camera, demonstrating his talents in administration and managing finances.33 Eventually, he became a cardinal under Pope Julius III in 1552 and carried out diplomatic missions as papal nuncio to Spain and Portugal. Ricci’s early connections set the foundations for his ecclesiastic career despite of his lack of training in theology. Perhaps to compensate for this deficiency, as archbishop of Pisa he founded a Collegio in 1567 to house eight students from Montepulciano.34 The portrait of Ricci portrays him as an aged man and marks the culmination of a long and distinguished career. Ricci served seven popes and was generally well-liked. However, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo blocked him from ascending to the papacy during the 1565 conclave because he had fathered a son. As Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga noted, ‘Montepulciano could have been pope if Borromeo so wished, but he abhors him like the plague.’35 Scipione’s portrait of Ricci soon followed this failed attempt to achieve the papacy. Only a few years later, Ricci helped to finance the Christian fleet that defeated the Turks at Lepanto. Perhaps this portrait served to gain favour with his opposers and garner support for this important mission. As discussed below, like other cardinals during this time, Ricci seems to have considered the victory at Lepanto among his greatest accomplishments. A painting of the battle hung in the gran salone of the cardinal’s newly constructed villa (now the Villa Medici),36 and interestingly, it would eventually become part of the collection of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga in the eighteenth century.37 The portrait also coincides with Ricci’s purchase and renovation of the villa on the Pincian hill. Alongside the other important artistic 32 Spanish ambassador Luis de Requesens noted that Ricci was not educated (‘no tiene ningunas letras’) – as cited in Deswarte-Rosa, ‘Le cardinal Giovanni Ricci’, 1991, p. 112, n. 4. 33 De Jong, ‘Important Patron’, 1992, p. 135. 34 Deswarte-Rosa, ‘Le cardinal Giovanni Ricci’, 1991, p. 114. 35 Andres, Villa Medici in Rome, 1976, p. 70, n. 147. 36 Ibid., p. 165, n. 335. 37 For the provenance of this painting, see Dern, Scipione Pulzone, 2003, pp. 91–93. Andres, Villa Medici in Rome, 1976, p. 68.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

commissions for which Ricci is remembered, including his funerary chapel in San Pietro in Montorio,38 the decoration of his Vatican apartments, his extensive collection of antiquities, and a fresco cycle in his palazzo on the Via Giulia, his villa is perhaps his most significant.39 As perhaps the first cardinal to employ Scipione, Ricci understood the delicate balance required of an official portrait to represent the dual role of the cardinal. On the one hand, it needed to represent the new responsibilities of Church fathers as decreed by the Council of Trent, but also to stress the import of the office. In short, Scipione succeeded in creating the ideal image of the post-Tridentine cardinal.

Additional Versions of the Ricci Portrait The Harvard Ricci portrait is widely considered the first of as many as five painted versions of Cardinal Ricci, all attributed to Scipione.40 Perhaps it was painted from life and later served as a model for other portraits of the cardinal. These various portraits range from bust- to three-quarter-length and were likely created as gifts for family members or political supporters.41 At first glance, the Harvard portrait appears to be identical to the version on panel in the Barberini collection (Fig. 11.2). The dimensions of these two paintings are almost the same: 66.7 × 51. 4 cm and 64.5 × 49.8 cm, respectively. In fact, most bust-length portraits of cardinals by Scipione average 55 × 70 cm. The measurements of individual features of the two faces are either very close or, in some cases, identical. 42 Ricci’s head is turned at precisely the same angle, and he wears the same stern expression and clothing. Such exactitude might suggest that Scipione or his assistants employed a technique for transferring the original disegno (design or drawing) to create later versions. 38 De Jong, ‘Important Patron’, 1992, p. 136. 39 Andres, Villa Medici in Rome, 1976, and Deswarte-Rosa, ‘Le cardinal Giovanni Ricci’, 1991, pp. 110–169. 40 Dern, Scipione Pulzone, 2003, pp. 91–93. 41 For more on portraits of cardinals as gifts, see Thomas-Leo True in this volume. 42 I am thankful to Chiara Merucci who measured the Barberini panel. The two paintings shared the same measurements of the width of the mouth, the width of the nose, the distance nostril to nostril, the height of the proper left eye from eyebrow to the lower edge of the ‘bag’ of the eye, the height of proper right eye from the top of the brow to the lower edge of the eye bag, the width of the proper right eye, the distance between top of the forehead from the lower edge of the hat to the lowest part of the beard. Almost exact dimensions, differing only by a centimetre or less, were recorded in both paintings from the top of the proper right shoulder to the right edge of the painting, from the bottom of the mozzetta to the top of the hat, from the proper right edge of the face to the top of the proper left ear, from the top of the hat to the edge of the beard or first button to the height of the proper left ear, the length from eye to eye, the height of the top of the bridge of the nose to the bottom of the mouth, and the width of proper left eye.

293

294

Danielle Carrabino

Fig. 11.2 Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Ricci, oil on panel, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini (© Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica–Biblioteca Hertziana Max Planck per la Storia dell’Arte/Enrico Fontolan).

However, when examined more carefully, small differences begin to emerge. The folds and patterns in the drapery are not identical, and the beards appear to have a slightly different texture. These subtle changes may also be observed in Scipione’s

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

other cardinal portraits that exist in multiple versions, namely those of Cardinals Savelli, Granvelle, and Medici which will be discussed below. As we shall see, other differences between Scipione’s multiple versions of cardinal portraits include the backgrounds and objects held by the sitter, even though the faces often appear to be derived from a common prototype. A larger portrait in the Massimo-Ricci collection in Rome shows the cardinal in three-quarter length, seated and holding a letter. 43 Presumably, each of these portraits was destined for different settings and therefore varied accordingly in size and support. The function and intended locations of these paintings also likely had a bearing on the extent to which Scipione was involved in their production. Of the three extant Ricci portraits, the Massimo-Ricci version is of lesser quality.44 Furthermore, Scipione often included his signature and the date of the portrait on the letters held by his sitters, but in this case, this information is absent. Instead, the existing text records his foundation of the Collegio Ricci: ‘Ill.mo ac R.mo Jo. Riccio / card.li Politiano fund.ri/ Collegio Nri’. 45 The letter provides a clue to the painting’s original place of display to honour its benefactor. In spite of its large size, the audience for this painting was likely not as important to Ricci, and therefore a variant of the original, perhaps painted by an assistant, could suffice. In addition to what can be observed with the naked eye, more information lies beneath the surfaces of these paintings. Although both the Harvard and Barberini pictures contain few pentimenti, the X-radiographs of these canvases further reveal subtle differences in the way they were created. An area of reserve around the beard and head is visible only in the X-radiograph of the Harvard version.46 Artists often left such areas temporarily unfinished as they continued to work out their composition, allowing for the possibility of adding more detail at a later stage. This feature does not appear in the Barberini panel, suggesting that it was based on the 43 Zuccari believes this painting to be a good workshop copy. Zuccari, ‘Anacronismi e modernità’, 2015, p. 9. According to a tesi di laurea (akin to a master’s thesis) by Augusto Donò (1984), the Massimo-Ricci version of the Ricci portrait was in Rome in the Casa Marchesa Ricci in Piazza de’ Ricci, where Roberto Longhi saw it in 1973. This does not appear to be the same painting Alexandra Dern identif ies in the Ricci-Paracciani collection, also in Rome. For the most recent examination of this painting, see De Marchi, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Giovanni Ricci’, 2013. 44 I did not have the opportunity to study this painting in person, nor do I have any information about its current condition or if any technical analysis has been carried out. I rely here on the most recent catalogue entry by Andrea G. De Marchi, who suspects that Scipione must have employed help in creating the two Roman versions of this portrait; De Marchi, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Giovanni Ricci’, 2013. 45 Ibid., p. 247. 46 I am indebted to Kate Smith, Conservator of Paintings and Head of Paintings Lab, and Anne Schaffer, Paintings Conservation Fellow, in the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums for conducting the technical analysis of the two Harvard portraits and for discussing the results with me at great length. I also would like to acknowledge Chiara Merucci from the Laboratorio di Restauro at Palazzo Barberini, Gallerie Nazionali d’Arte Antica di Roma for sharing technical information on the Barberini Ricci portrait.

295

296

Danielle Carrabino

Harvard prototype. There is no technical evidence to prove that Scipione or his workshop assistants employed tracing techniques or cartoons. Rather, the small differences that are consistent across these multiple versions suggest that each was created individually, either by Scipione or in collaboration with his assistants. As already observed, Scipione had trouble meeting his deadlines and called on Jacopino to help him carry out his commissions. At that time, Scipione was working for the Colonna, Boncompagni, and Medici families.47 While Scipione was highly praised for his meticulous paintings, he was also described as notoriously slow and extremely busy. A letter of 17 April 1580, from the ambassador of Urbino, Baldo Falcucci, to Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere, praises Scipione as ‘pittor eccellentissimo’ (‘most excellent painter’) but also reports that one must wait a long time for him and pay a high price.48 A subsequent letter between these two men notes that Scipione was too busy to accept a new apprentice into his workshop. 49 Indeed, during the two years that elapsed between the time of the first and second letters (1580–1582), Scipione was simultaneously working on at least four commissions: the portraits of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici (discussed below), Virginio Orsini, and Marcantonio Colonna, as well as two paintings for the latter that would be sent to Sicily, a Way to Cavalry (later sent to Spain) and a Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. At least one of these, the Colonna portrait, would not be delivered on time.50 Yet, if Scipione was producing his cardinal portraits by himself, then he may have been working rather quickly. Another illuminating piece of information that emerges from these letters is that Scipione ran a workshop in Rome. How it was organized, however, and the names of the artists he employed have yet to come to light. It would have been standard practice at the time for any artist to begin a portrait with a study drawn from life: this could be copied by workshop assistants to create subsequent versions.51 In order to paint drapery and other props, a model could have stood in to replace the sitter. Alternatively, Scipione himself could have painted multiple versions of his own portraits. This second hypothesis might be substantiated by a letter in which Scipione agrees to paint two copies of his portrait of Marcantonio Colonna: one for his wife, Princess Felice Orsini Colonna, and the other for his sister, Geronima, in Naples. In Scipione’s own words: ‘I supplied that one and I made a copy similar 47 Amendola, ‘Cronologia e fonti’, 2013, p. 201. 48 ‘Scipion da Gaeta è pittor eccellentissimo, ma dovendosi valer dell’opera sua bisogna pensar di non esser serviti, se non con longhezza di tempo et come spesa grossissima, facendosi pagar la riputatione’; Amendola, ‘Cronologia e fonti’, 2013, p. 202. 49 Ibid., p. 204. 50 In a letter from May 1575, Nicolò Pisacane communicates to Marcantonio Colonna that Scipione will not be able to deliver the painting until September; Amendola, ‘Cronologia e fonti’, 2013, pp. 198–200. 51 Vannugli, ‘Scipione Pulzone ritrattista’, 2013, p. 30.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

to it for Lady Gironima’.52 It is important to note here that Scipione implies that he painted both versions of this portrait, and that the second version or copia for Geronima is not exact, but similar, perhaps explaining the subtle differences among his portraits. Specifically, at least one viewer, Paolo Gallo, described two paintings of this recently deceased sitter as appearing so realistic ‘that upon seeing them one must weep, because they make it appear as if he were alive’;53 the implication is that there was little difference in their quality even though one was a second version based on the original. At this point, it seems entirely possible that Scipione painted both the originals and subsequent versions of the Ricci portrait and other paintings, if not entirely, at least in part.

The Gaeta Portrait of Cardinal Michele Bonelli: The Portrayal of an Office Following the portrait of Cardinal Ricci, the next commission to Scipione for a cardinal portrait came from Cardinal Michele Bonelli (1541–1598), and is today housed in the Museo Diocesano in Gaeta (Fig. 11.3).54 The Bonelli portrait is similar to the large-scale portrait of Ricci and others of a similar format, in which the cardinal is seated nearly in full length, all averaging about 130 × 100 cm in size. When Scipione painted this portrait in 1572, Bonelli was living next door to the painter in the Palazzo Colonna at Santi Apostoli in Rome.55 The two might have met either through their common ties to the Colonna family or thanks to Scipione’s aforementioned portrait of 1570 of Bonelli’s great uncle, Pope Pius V Ghislieri.56 In fact, this portrait of the pope, shown in full length, seated, holding a letter and a book, and facing toward the right, may have inspired the portrait of Bonelli, who is also seated (though not in full length), holds a letter, and faces to the left. As discussed below, Bonelli possibly intended his portrait to be a pendant to that of his papal uncle. Born in Bosco Maregno, near Alessandria, Bonelli was therefore known as Cardinal ‘Alessandrino’. He was named after Antonio Ghislieri, his mother’s uncle, who 52 ‘ho fornito quell proprio et ho fatto la copia simile a quello per la Signora Don[n]a Gironima’; Amendola, ‘Cronologia e fonti’, 2013, p. 207. 53 ‘che in vederli bisogna piangere, perché par che sia vivo’; ibid., p. 212. 54 For the biography of Michele Bonelli with bibliography, see Prosperi, ‘Bonelli, Michele’, 1969. For more on Bonelli, see Thomas-Leo True in this volume. 55 Redín Michaus, ‘Due testamenti e altri documenti’, 2002, p. 79. 56 The portrait of Pius V was not recorded in the inventory of Marcantonio Colonna of 1586, compiled soon after his death, and therefore could not have been commissioned by Colonna. However, it does appear in a later Colonna inventory of 1636; Nicolai, ‘Ritratti di Pio V Ghislieri’, 2013, p. 255.

297

298

Danielle Carrabino

Fig. 11.3 Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Cardinal Michele Bonelli (also known as Cardinal Alessandrino), 1572, oil on canvas, Gaeta, Museo Diocesano (© Museo Diocesano, Gaeta).

later took the name Michele when he joined the Dominican order. Following in the footsteps of his great uncle, Michele also became a Dominican monk in 1560. After Ghislieri rose to the papacy in 1566, he named Bonelli a cardinal, giving him the titular church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.57 Despite this nepotistic appointment, 57 See Witte, ‘Cardinals and their Titular Churches’, 2020.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

Pius V was among the popes who most rigorously enforced the reform of the Catholic Church according to the Council of Trent, and his great nephew followed suit. For example, Cardinal Bonelli wore his Dominican habit as a sign of his humility and carried out religious art and architectural commissions, as recommended by the pope.58 Consequently, Bonelli’s red biretta remains the only sartorial marker of his office in the portrait. At the same time, Bonelli was aware of his social status as a cardinal and great nephew to the pope. By the time this portrait was painted, Bonelli had carried out several urban projects, both in Rome and in his native Bosco and its environs.59 His high-ranking position is communicated through his pose and the setting of the painting. One arm rests on the opulent leather and gold-studded chair, while the other is on a table covered in red cloth, with a large reliquary on top. In his right hand, he holds a letter which identifies him to the viewer, along with the name of the painter (‘All. Ill.mo Rmo Card. Alessandrino aetatis suae XXX Scipio faciebat’). The reliquary also bears an inscription indicating the date of the painting as created in the seventh year of the papacy of Pius V Ghislieri, or 1572 (‘ECCE. A. DEI. QUI. T. PIUS. V. PON. M. A. VII.’). This exquisite reliquary crafted in crystal, ivory, and ebony, also bears the ox of the Bonelli family crest and, in the centre, the Agnus Dei. This object occupies a prominent position in the painting, and Scipione clearly took pains to render it in extreme detail. As Benedetta Montevecchi has convincingly argued, the artist’s ability to paint luxury items is one of the features of his work for which he was celebrated.60 Such accoutrements had been typical of cardinal portraits since the early sixteenth century and were often included to highlight certain aspects of the office of the cardinal or his character. This particular object deserves further attention as it may offer clues about the motivation for the portrait and the character of its sitter. In the months prior to the date of the portrait, Bonelli had definitively returned to Rome from his diplomatic mission to France, Portugal, and Spain, where he served as papal legate. Bonelli assisted in the Holy League against the Turks, organized by Pope Pius V to take control of the eastern Mediterranean from the Ottomans.61 The portrait therefore marks an important moment in the life of the cardinal, while also drawing attention to his familial connection to the pope. Given Bonelli’s recent fight against the Turks, the reliquary is a strong reminder of the supremacy of the Catholic Church, and the value it placed on relics in post-Tridentine Europe. The object physically resembles a monstrance, with the Agnus Dei alluding to the 58 Perin, ‘Pio V e il collegio cardinalizio’, 2004, p. 110. 59 The Via Alessandrina and Via Bonella, commissioned by Bonelli and constructed in Rome between 1566 and 1570, were both named in his honour; Perin, ‘Pio V e il collegio cardinalizio’, 2004, p. 111. 60 Montevecchi, ‘Arti rare’, 2012. 61 Ibid., p. 197.

299

300

Danielle Carrabino

Eucharist. The thirteenth session of the Council of Trent, dedicated entirely to the Eucharist, had upheld the Catholic Church’s belief that the body of Christ is present in the Eucharist; a point denied by Protestant leaders such as Ulrich Zwingli.62 It is reminiscent of other such reliquaries manufactured in a style known as alla Spagnola (in the Spanish style), fashionable in European courts where Bonelli had spent time.63 The reliquary thus becomes symbolic of the cardinal himself. It not only echoes the colours of Bonelli’s Dominican black and white habit, but it also makes explicit the connection to his diplomatic mission in Spain and his dedication to defending the Church.

The Harvard Portrait of Cardinal Bonelli: A Display of Power Fourteen years after the Gaeta portrait, Bonelli commissioned a second version from the artist, today in the Harvard Art Museums (Plate 10). According to the letter that Bonelli holds in his hand, Scipione painted this portrait in 1586 (‘All. Ill.mo et R.mo Sig.or Il. So. Card. Alessandrino Scipione Gaetanus Facie […] 1586’), even though the sitter shows no visible signs of ageing since the earlier portrait. The later painting was likely commissioned for display in the cardinal’s palazzo at Santi Apostoli, as cited in the Bonelli inventory of 1593.64 The cardinal soon parted with the painting, as it no longer appears in his inventory of 1598, the year of his death.65 It later resurfaces in the possession of Cardinal Girolamo Bernerio in 1611, together with a portrait of Bonelli’s uncle, Pope Pius V.66 As noted earlier, these two paintings may have been conceived as pendants. Both subjects are posed seated at half length and would have faced each other at opposite angles. These two paintings are described as being by the hand of Scipione, with similar dimensions and frames. The pairing of these two portraits, which visually mirror each other, would have underscored the familial bond between these two men and their dynastic ambitions. The provenance of the paintings records the way in which cardinal portraits were circulated, displayed, and made to function. The paintings are likely to have entered the Bernerio collection in 1607, when Bonelli oversaw the wedding of his niece Flavia Torelli to Bernerio’s nephew and heir, Girolamo. Thus, the two paintings of the pope and his great nephew were probably 62 O’Malley, Trent, 2013, pp. 130, 147. 63 Montevecchi, ‘Arti rare’, 2012, p. 198. 64 Cola, Palazzo Valentini a Roma, 2012, p. 187; for more information on the painting’s provenance, see Cola, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Michele Bonelli’, 2013, pp. 257–258. 65 Cola, Palazzo Valentini a Roma, 2012, p. 65. 66 Schütze, ‘Devotion und Repräsentation’, 1999, p. 255 and p. 262, nn. 49, 51; Cola, Palazzo Valentini a Roma, 2012, p. 70.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

presented as diplomatic gifts from one cardinal to the other in order to reinforce the new relationship between their families. The paintings were kept together as pendants when they passed by inheritance to Monsignore Clemente Merlini to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who recorded them in 1642.67 It is interesting to note that the paintings passed from cardinal to cardinal and remained in the possession of noble families that each included ecclesiastic members. Assuming they were displayed together, these portraits would have celebrated the privileged relationship between a pope and his cardinal-nephew and upheld the continuation of a familial dynasty within the Church. Other versions of the Cardinal Bonelli portrait are also mentioned in inventories of prominent families, including the Farnese, further demonstrating the dissemination of these portraits as images of power.68

The Painted Curtain in Scipione’s Portrait of Cardinal Bonelli The two paintings of Bonelli in Gaeta and Harvard belong to a category of portraiture known as the ritratto da parata (ceremonial portrait).69 Such paintings include rich details to delight the eye and to communicate the importance of the sitter. Simply put, these paintings were intended to be admired by viewers, presumed guests of the cardinal, who were almost certainly of comparable status and intellectual sophistication. Despite the markedly different states of conservation of the two Bonelli portraits, these paintings are nearly identical. The main difference between them lies in their mise en scène. The Harvard painting does not contain the table with the reliquary, but in an equal display of artistic ostentation a swath of red cloth is draped over what appears to be a painting within the painting. While the curtain does not appear in the first portrait of Bonelli, the later painting created for his palazzo certainly would have delighted the cardinal and his guests. Both the reliquary and the curtain in the Bonelli portraits draw attention to this artist’s illusionistic skills that set him apart from other portraitists, while also customizing these paintings to their respective contexts. The Harvard painting is one of the first of many examples of portraits by Scipione that feature fictive curtains. We know from the 1593 inventory of the Bonelli collection that the Harvard portrait itself was originally covered by a red curtain.70 67 Cola, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Michele Bonelli’, 2013, p. 158, as in Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents, 1975, p. 29 doc. 245a. 68 Bertini, La galleria del duca di Parma, 1987, p. 263, n. 665. 69 Cola, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Michele Bonelli’, 2013, p. 257. 70 ‘Quadro uno del ritratto del Cardinale Alessandrino per mano di maestro Scipione gaetano con cornice di noce cortina di cremisino con frangie di seta et oro cordoni dui et dui fiochi di seta et oro n. 1 [Scipione Pulzone detto il Gaetano]’; Cola, Palazzo Valentini a Roma, 2012, pp. 70, 187.

301

302

Danielle Carrabino

As an indication of the special status of this painting, the curtain would have been pulled back for viewing to dramatic effect and echoed by the painted curtain.71 This feature would later become a hallmark of Scipione’s portraiture, and draws attention to his ability to paint with extreme naturalism. As we have already seen, the ability of this artist to paint images that seemed ‘real’ was a topos in the writing of his contemporaries. In the margins of Baglione’s biography of the artist, Giovan Pietro Bellori wrote that he had to touch paintings by Scipione to make sure the images depicted were not real.72 To the educated viewer, this trompe l’oeil effect would have called to mind the competition between the ancient painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius as recounted in the Natural History by Pliny the Elder. This story was a touchstone for Renaissance painters who sought to emulate the ancients and engage in similar rivalry. As the story goes, Parrhasius challenged Zeuxis to a painting competition. Zeuxis created a painting of grapes that was so realistic, it attracted birds that pecked at it. Meanwhile, Parrhasius painted a curtain which Zeuxis ordered to be pulled back to reveal the work of his rival, leading him to recognize his mistake and admit defeat. By including realistic curtains draped on paintings within his paintings, Scipione aligned himself with the ancient artist, declaring himself the ‘new Parrhasius’. These curtains also pose the question to the viewer of whether what they are seeing is reality or a painted illusion, underscoring the virtuosity of the artist. When the proverbial curtain of the painted layer is pulled back, X-radiographs reveal that the Harvard Bonelli portrait contains very few pentimenti and not much revelatory technical information. This is perhaps not surprising, as it is known to be the later version of the painting. The Gaeta painting, however, tells quite a different story. When examined in both raking light and in X-radiographs, the painting reveals evidence that a smaller rectangular area was cut out of the larger painting, perhaps to create a bust-length portrait (Fig. 11.4).73 This unfortunate intervention remains undocumented, and it is not known when, how, or why it occurred. It is interesting to note that the dimensions of this smaller area within the larger painting are approximately 73.2 × 60.5 cm.74 When compared to other bust-length canvases by Scipione, such as the Harvard Ricci painting (66.7 × 51.4 cm) and the Corsini’s Cardinal Giacomo Savelli portrait (68 × 51 cm), all of these works appear 71 For more on painted curtains, see Hills, Renaissance Image Unveiled, 2010, pp. 9 and 36–37; for the ‘furtive viewing’ involved in paintings with painted curtains by Titian, see Hills, Veiled Presence, 2018, pp. 189–193. 72 Montevecchi, ‘Arti rare’, 2012, p. 191. 73 I would like to acknowledge Lino Sorabella of the Museo Diocesano in Gaeta for granting me access to the museum to study the portrait of Bonelli. 74 I am grateful to Chris Martone for assisting me in calculating these dimensions based on the ratio of the smaller rectangular area to the larger picture plane.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

Fig. 11.4 X-radiograph of Fig. 11.3 (© Museo Diocesano, Gaeta).

to conform to roughly similar dimensions (Fig. 11.5). These bust-length portraits seemed to have been in high demand, as nearly all of the larger seated paintings by Scipione also exist in bust form and in multiple examples.75 Alternatively, the 75 Vannugli, ‘Scipione Pulzone ritrattista’, 2013, p. 43; for the Harvard portrait, see Schütze, ‘Devotion und Repräsentation’, 1999, p. 255.

303

304

Danielle Carrabino

Fig. 11.5 Scipione Pulzone, Portrait of Giacomo Savelli, 1576, oil on canvas, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Corsini (© Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica-Biblioteca Hertziana Max Planck per la Storia dell’Arte/Enrico Fontolan).

smaller painting may have been easier to sell on the market at a later time in the painting’s history. The provenance of this painting is unclear and does not offer any additional explanation as to the various contexts in which it was displayed. We may never know why the attempt to create a smaller portrait of Bonelli from the Gaeta painting failed, but the canvas was eventually reconstituted, much to the detriment of the painted surface.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

The Art of Self-Fashioning: Scipione’s Portraits of Cardinals Granvelle, Savelli, and Medici Other portraits of cardinals by Scipione that exist in multiple versions include (but are not limited to) the portraits of Cardinals Giacomo Savelli (1523–1587), Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517–1586), and Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609, Figs. 11.5, 11.6, and cover). A brief examination of these paintings, with reference to the above discussion of the Ricci and Bonelli portraits, reveals a similar strategy employed in Scipione’s other cardinal portraits to establish patterns within his working practices. We must take into account that Scipione was producing multiple paintings of the same sitter alongside his many other commissions. Whether the many versions of cardinal portraits make the case that Scipione must have required assistance, or that he was exceptionally prolific, remains to be determined. This particular group of cardinal portraits also reveals similarities among the sitters, which may help explain their reason for choosing Scipione as their portraitist. As observed by Pierluigi Leone de Castris, the artist appears to be the point in common among the primary protagonists of the anti-Turkish alliance that led to the victory of Lepanto, namely Don Juan of Austria and Marcantonio Colonna.76 Besides living in the same place and time, Scipione’s cardinals were also each noted for the role they played in reforming the Church. Additionally, Ricci, Bonelli, Granvelle, Savelli, and Medici were all experienced diplomats with close ties to Spain. This point of commonality may help to explain their selection of Scipione as their portraitist, as well as their requirement of portraits for use as diplomatic gifts. In each case, these cardinals all had a need to prove their legitimacy as cardinals in the eyes of the pope and others, either because of their noble families or the dubious acts they had committed. The portrait thus served as a way to establish their public identity as pious and exemplary Church leaders in the eyes of the viewer. The portrait of Cardinal Granvelle is known in at least two versions: one in the Musée du Temps, Besanҫon, and the other in the Courtauld Gallery of Art in London (Fig. 11.6).77 In the Courtauld version, the bareheaded cardinal holds a book with his left hand parallel to the picture plane, revealing a ring on his index finger, and a painted blue curtain is draped across the upper right corner. The portrait presents the image of a man who is resolute, learned, pious, and sophisticated – characteristics for which Granvelle is still remembered. 76 Leone de Castris, ‘Le cardinal Granvelle et Scipione Pulzone’, 1996, p. 183. 77 According to Pierluigi Leone de Castris, the Courtauld painting dates to the last year of Granvelle’s position as viceroy of Naples, while he believes the Besançon picture was painted in the same year or just after; Leone de Castris, ‘Le cardinal Granvelle et Scipione Pulzone’, 1996, p. 176. Instead Pierre Curie believes the Besançon painting is the first version; Curie, ‘Portraits intemporels’, 2017, p. 83.

305

306

Danielle Carrabino

Fig. 11.6 Scipione Pulzone, Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, 1576, oil on copper, London, Courtauld Gallery of Art (© Courtauld Gallery of Art).

Granvelle was born at the crossroads of Italy, France, Spain, Flanders, Germany, and Switzerland, in Franche-Comté near Besançon.78 Following in the footsteps of his father Nicolas, Antoine spent his career serving the Spanish monarchy. He received 78 Ibid., p. 88.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

a humanist education and soon occupied prestigious positions in both the Church and in the Habsburg administration as a diplomat. In 1561, Pope Pius IV made him a cardinal. Like Ricci and Bonelli, Granvelle played a part in preparations for the Battle at Lepanto. He represented King Philip II of Spain in the Holy League against the Turks and worked to position the king’s half-brother, Don Juan, as admiral of the Christian fleet.79 Perhaps to reward Granvelle for his diplomatic efforts in helping to secure the victory at Lepanto, the king named him viceroy of Naples – a post that he held from 1571 to 1575. It is precisely during this period that Scipione painted the Courtauld portrait of Granvelle. Perhaps Granvelle needed a new public portrait of himself to accompany his new office. The cardinal may have summoned Scipione from Rome to paint his portrait or may have found him already working in Naples for Don Juan of Austria.80 We know from Baglione’s biography of Scipione that Don Juan invited the artist to Naples soon after his victory at Lepanto in order to have him paint his portrait, which he intended to send to his sister Margaret of Austria, as stated in a letter from 26 June 1573.81 The Courtauld portrait, dated 1576, could also have been painted in Rome since the cardinal was already residing there by then. In either case, it coincides with two of the cardinal’s greatest achievements: the victory at Lepanto and his subsequent viceregency. By now, it will not be surprising to find that the two Granvelle portraits by Scipione are not identical. Both are painted in oil on copper, a support that lent itself particularly well to Scipione’s love of detail, crisp lines, and verisimilitude.82 The Courtauld picture is signed and dated (‘Scipio Caietanus faciebat a.n D.ni 1576’) and is slightly larger in size (81.7 × 61.6 vs. 73 × 56 cm).83 The two differ in their backgrounds, handling of drapery, and the position of the sitter’s hands. The Besançon painting has a darker background, the cardinal holds his book up closer to his body, and he has a much fuller beard. Pierre Curie surmised that these many differences do not indicate a copyist but an artist taking creative liberties, whether a workshop assistant or Scipione himself.84 Even though the Besançon version seems to be of a slightly lesser quality (perhaps due to its state of conservation), it is important to note it was recorded in the Granvelle palace in an inventory of 1607 and has remained in the same town ever since, and is therefore considered 79 Haan, ‘Antoine de Granvelle, l’âme d’un empire’, 2017, p. 39. 80 Curie, ‘Portraits intemporels’, 2017, p. 82. 81 Baglione, Le Vite, 2013, p. 235; for the letter, see Leone de Castris, ‘Le cardinal Granvelle et Scipione Pulzone’, 1996, p. 183. 82 Bowron, ‘Brief History of European Oil Paintings on Copper’, 1999, p. 23. 83 The Courtauld painting was the subject of an informative technical study; Higgs and Noelle, Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, 2014. 84 Curie, ‘Portraits intemporels’, 2017, p. 81.

307

308

Danielle Carrabino

autograph.85 Similar to the Bonelli portrait, it was likely commissioned directly by the cardinal from Scipione and captures the likeness as well as the character of the cardinal; or at least how he wished the world to see him. Granvelle was highly cultivated and amassed one of the greatest collections of art in late sixteenth-century Europe. Approximately 60 portraits of him were painted throughout his life by the most sought after artists of his day, including Titian, Anthonis Mor, and Willem Key.86 Theorist and artist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo called the portrait of Granvelle Scipione’s finest: ‘we see all the most beautiful aspects of nature, as rendered in the dignity of his face, which exudes magnificence’.87 It is therefore highly unlikely that Granvelle would have settled for a second-rate copy by an artist other than Scipione himself. Perhaps in the same year that Scipione painted Granvelle, he painted another cardinal portrait believed by many scholars to represent Cardinal Giacomo Savelli in at least two versions (Fig. 11.5).88 Similar to the two three-quarter-length Ricci portraits discussed above, the Palazzo Corsini painting corresponds to the same the formula of the cardinal set against a neutral background in his official dress, body turned at a slight angle, and staring out at the viewer. No record of a commission or payments for his two portraits survive; this has led to debate among scholars regarding the identity of the cardinal and the dates of the paintings. Most scholars now agree that the sitter is Giacomo Savelli (1523–1588), rather than Silvio Savelli (1550–1599), based on the mention of four portraits of ‘Savelli’ in the inventories of both Giacomo Savelli and the Corsini family, and the absence of such mention in the inventory of Silvio.89 The Corsini picture is said to date to 1576 to coincide with the cardinal’s time as Vicar General of Rome (1560–1587) under Pope Gregory XIII, who, with Pius V, was a staunch reformer. Regardless of the identity of the sitter, two bust-length portraits of the same cardinal – one on copper in the National Gallery, London, and a smaller version on canvas in the Corsini Collection – present the cardinal in varying formats and sizes (94.3 × 71.8 vs. 51 × 68 cm). In the London version, the cardinal is seated, his arms resting on a chair, and the image is cropped just below his waist. It is difficult to determine which is the earlier of the two versions, or if both were created after a lost original.90 It is noteworthy that the 85 Castan (1886), in Nicolaci, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle’, 2013, p. 276. 86 Mucciarelli-Régnier, ‘Portraits d’un prélat’, 2017. 87 ‘vediamo tutto il più bello della natura, come la dignità del volt in quello, ed in questo la magnificenza’; Lomazzo, Trattato dell’arte, 1844, pp. 374–375. 88 Mazzetti di Pietralata, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Giacomo Savelli’, 2013, pp. 279–280. 89 Sivigliano Alloisi argues for Silvio Savelli as the identity of the sitter. Alloisi, Personaggi e interpreti, 2001, p. 68; for a series of drawings of cardinals, including Silvio, see Bonaccorsi and De Crescenzo, ‘Note ai ritratti di cardinali’, 2006, pp. 62–63, fig. 58. 90 Dern, Scipione Pulzone, 2003, p. 169.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

Corsini version, showing only the head and shoulders of the cardinal, is strikingly similar in format and size to the Harvard Ricci portrait. Unlike the other examples, these two portraits appear to correspond almost exactly in terms of their facial features, drapery, and even the beards. Could this be the hand of a single copyist or of Scipione himself? Savelli was born in Rome to the noble Savelli and Bentivoglio families, which included several important military leaders.91 He was named a cardinal by his cousin, Pope Paul III Farnese in 1539. Among his many titles and offices, Savelli served as the deacon of several churches and acted as papal legate for Pope Julius III. Under Pope Pius V Ghislieri, he was Vicar General of Rome and became Camerlengo of the Sacred College of Cardinals. Following the Council of Trent, Savelli aided in reforming the Church by seeking to restore a sense of morality. Perhaps he is best remembered for forbidding Roman Jews to visit places of Christian worship.92 Also in strict adherence to the recommendations of the Council of Trent, Savelli commissioned several works of religious art, employing the leading artists of the day. In the 1580s, he commissioned Giacomo della Porta to decorate the chapel in the left transept of the church of the Gesù to house his tomb and that of his father. This extravagant chapel, dedicated to the Crucifixion but never realized, would have included coloured marble walls, columns, paintings, gilded stucco decoration, and a gilded life-sized crucifix for the altarpiece.93 Savelli died before the chapel was complete, but it was the site of his lavish funeral. On the date of his death, his body was accompanied to the Gesù by a household of 200 people and three weeks later, 31 cardinals attended his funeral.94 The funeral, comparable in extravagance to that of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, demonstrated that Savelli was among the wealthiest cardinals living in Rome at the time.95 Similar to Scipione’s portrait of Cardinal Ricci, the official image of Savelli balances his steely gaze with his sumptuous scarlet mozzetta to portray the two aspects of his office. A later cardinal portrait on canvas of Ferdinando de’ Medici in the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (signed and dated 1580, 185 × 119.3 cm) represents the cardinal seated in a similar format to the two Bonelli paintings (cover image). The Medici portrait, however, is distinctive from other cardinal portraits and in several ways is more akin to papal portraits. It places the cardinal at a greater distance 91 Curti, ‘I Savelli “cadetti”’, 2017, p. 147. 92 Blum, ‘Vasari on the Jews’, 2013, p. 563. 93 Amendola, ‘Orsini e Savelli in dialogo’, 2017, p. 13. 94 Schraven, Festive Funerals, 2014, p. 171. 95 In her chapter dedicated to the funeral of Alessandro Farnese, Schraven refers to an avviso that recorded the funeral of Cardinal Savelli as the most expensive in Rome at the time. See Schraven, Festive Funerals, 2014, p. 171, nn. 55 and 56.

309

310

Danielle Carrabino

from the viewer, is in full length, and shows the cardinal seated at a table covered in red velvet in the act of writing. Perhaps the cardinal was in his scrittoio (study), a favourite retreat of his.96 As a member of the Medici family, Ferdinando himself was unlike other cardinals in that he had political aspirations both within the Church and beyond.97 He hoped to place himself in the lineage of the great Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII, and to bring ecclesiastical glory back to his family. Ferdinando was the fifth son born to Cosimo I and Eleonora of Toledo de’ Medici. His three brothers Francesco, Giovanni, and Garzia gave Ferdinando little hope of ever ascending to the head of the family. Upon his birth, Cosimo’s astrologer predicted Ferdinando would one day replace his father – a prophecy that Cosimo chose to keep secret.98 The eldest Medici son, Francesco, was therefore groomed to continue the Medici dynasty, while Giovanni entered an ecclesiastic career as a cardinal. When Giovanni, Garzia, and their mother unexpectedly died of fever in 1562, Ferdinando resumed his studies with a view to replacing his brother Giovanni as the family’s cardinal. This was largely orchestrated by Cosimo, who was awaiting the papal conferral of his title of Grand Duke of Tuscany. By 1563, Pope Pius IV named Ferdinando a cardinal at the age of only 14, despite protests from church leaders who wished to adhere to the recommendations of the Council of Trent that such high offices be awarded on the basis of morality and intellectual ability rather than noble blood.99 Cardinal Bonelli was opposed to Ferdinando’s nomination and that of other members of noble families becoming cardinals at such a young age, including Ercole Gonzaga and Luigi d’Este.100 Like Ricci, Ferdinando had not reached a high level of education or taken religious vows, but he had access to Medici tutors and supporters in Rome, such as Ricci himself. In a letter of 10 January 1563,101 from the Grand Duke Cosimo to Ricci, we learn that Cardinal Ricci was like a father to Ferdinando, helping him to find a home and more importantly, ensuring that he would become a cardinal.102 By the time Scipione painted his portrait in 1580, Ferdinando had proven himself as a cardinal. He had secured strong ties to Spain and a year later he would be named protector of Spain.103 Around this time, he also carried out several acts of charity and acted 96 Andres, Villa Medici in Rome, 1976, p. 246. 97 For a recent examination of Ferdinando’s ‘contrasting priorities’, see Butters, ‘Contrasting Priorities’, 2009, pp. 185–225. 98 Butters, ‘Le cardinal Ferdinand de Médicis’, 1991, p. 195. 99 Caldwell, ‘Between Council and Court’, 2004, p. 140. According to Stefano Calonacci, the Council of Trent determined that cardinals had to be 30 years old. Furthermore, Carlo Borromeo lied that Ferdinando was 16, when he was in fact 13; Calonaci, ‘Ferdinando dei Medici’, 1996, p. 647. 100 Calonaci, ‘Ferdinando dei Medici’, 1996, p. 641. 101 For the published letter, see Jedin, ‘Kardinal Giovanni Ricci (1497–1574)’, 1949, p. 334, n. 57. 102 Nova, ‘Occasio pars virtutis’, 1980, p. 49, n. 5. 103 Witte, ‘Cardinals and their Titular Churches’, 2020.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

as a patron of art.104 Perhaps he is best remembered for purchasing Cardinal Ricci’s aforementioned villa on the Pincian hill in 1576 where he undertook renovations and decorations, as well as expanding the property, turning it into one of the most enviable residences in Rome. As noted by Suzanne Butters, Ferdinando behaved more like a prince than a cardinal.105 The portrait represents Ferdinando’s dual roles as cardinal and Medici prince, which he held simultaneously from 1587 to 1589. A smaller bust-length version of this portrait is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and appears to have been derived from this larger painting. The Adelaide picture, probably the first version, also contains the drape in the upper left corner of the canvas. This portrait was one of many that Scipione provided to the Medici family and is the subject of a description by Giovanni Baglione: ‘[Scipione] was so accurate, that in the portrait of Ferdinando de’ Medici, then cardinal, one could see inside the small pupil of the eyes the reflection of the glass windows of the room and other things worthy of wonder […]’.106 This passage recalls a similar observation of Baglione, perhaps borrowed from earlier biographers, when describing Caravaggio’s Lute Player, in which the vase of flowers contains a reflection of the window and other objects in the room. The biographer used these and other paintings as examples of the apex of naturalistic painting, praising the artists’ minute attention to detail. Scipione turned his attention to providing portraits for members of the nobility, including Ferdinando de’ Medici (now, Grand Duke of Tuscany) and his wife Christina of Lorraine, both painted in 1590.107 This and other portraits by Scipione set a new bar to which artists would aspire in the art of painted portraiture.

Conclusion Scipione continued to paint portraits until the end of his life, even alongside more lucrative commissions for large-scale public altarpieces. As much as Scipione excelled as a religious painter and diligently upheld the recommendations to artists first proposed at the Council of Trent, his portraits of cardinals encapsulate his most 104 Butters, ‘Le cardinal Ferdinand de Médicis’, 1991, p. 194; for Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici as a patron of art, see Butters, ‘Magnifico, non senza eccesso’, 1999. 105 Butters, ‘Le cardinal Ferdinand de Médicis’, 1991, p. 192. 106 ‘Fu egli tanto accurato, che nel ritratto di Ferdinando allora Cardinal de’ Medici vedeasi in fin dentro alla piccola pupilla de gli occhi il riflesso delle finestre vetriate della camera, e altre cose degne come di meraviglia […]’; Baglione, Le Vite, 2013, p. 235. 107 For Ferdinando de’ Medici, see Goldenberg Stoppato, ‘Ritratto di Ferdinando de’ Medici’, 2013, pp. 353–354; for Christina of Lorraine, see Goldenberg Stoppato, ‘Ritratto di Cristina di Lorena’, 2013, pp. 357–359.

311

312

Danielle Carrabino

important contributions to early modern painting. We may deduce two main reasons why Scipione excelled in portraiture and why he continued to attract such distinguished patrons, especially cardinals, throughout his career. First, Scipione was fortunate to live at a time and place where public image was indicative of one’s social status. This artist aided cardinals and others who occupied privileged positions to construct their identity for public consumption. The portraits of cardinals in particular are a window onto not only the men behind the scarlet robes, but the ideals of the institution they represented at a time when those same ideals were being questioned. Secondly, Scipione’s portraits strike a delicate balance of naturalism and artifice that was praised during his lifetime and beyond. His love of detail, opulence, and exacting naturalism captured the likeness of the sitter, in both body and soul. To borrow from Borghini’s description of this portraitist, Scipione created paintings that evoked a sense of wonder. He was, in a word, maraviglioso (wonderful).108 Scipione’s ability to produce cardinal portraits quickly (contrary to what his contemporaries said of him) and in great numbers necessitated a technique that will only be understood with further technical research.109 While the question of his working practices has come into better focus, there is still no firm evidence allowing us to comprehend fully how Scipione managed his workshop and to what extent it was involved in the production of his portraits. As we have seen, there is good reason to believe that this artist likely produced secondary versions of his own paintings himself, perhaps depending on the status of his patron. In other cases, it appears he was more willing to rely on his assistants for help, especially if the context in which his paintings would be displayed was not particularly distinctive. Cardinal portraits by Scipione were originally created for the individual cardinal, his family, and his supporters, but eventually they transcended their original function as they passed through many important collections to become status symbols in their own right.

Bibliography Acconci, Alessandra and Alessandro Zuccari, eds., Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013). Alloisi, Sivigliano, Personaggi e interpreti: ritratti della collezione Corsini (Rome: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività e Storici di Roma e Lazio, 2001). 108 Borghini, Il Riposo, 2013, p. 233. 109 It is my understanding that technical studies of Scipione’s paintings are already under way at museums which house his paintings, including the National Gallery in London, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

Amendola, Adriano, ‘Cronologia e fonti archivistiche per la biografia di Scipione Pulzone’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 193–231. ———, ‘Orsini e Savelli in dialogo tra assonanze e dissonanze’, in Gli Orsini e Savelli nella Roma dei papi: arte e mecenatismo di antichi casati dal feudo alle corti barocche europee, ed. by Cecilia Mazzetti di Pietralta and Adriano Amendola (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017), pp. 13–15. Andres, Glenn M., The Villa Medici in Rome, vol. 1 (New York/London: Garland Publishing, 1976). Baglione, Giovanni, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti, dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino ai tempi di papa Urbano VIII nel 1642 (1642), in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 235–236. Bertini, Giuseppe, La galleria del duca di Parma: storia di una collezione (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1987). Blum, Gerd, ‘Vasari on the Jews: Christian Canon, Conversion, and the “Moses” of Michelangelo’, Art Bulletin 95 (2013): 557–577. Bonaccorsi, Paola and Simona De Crescenzo, ‘Note ai ritratti di cardinali’, in Gli antichi disegni della Pinacoteca Zelantea, secoli XVI–XVII, ed. by Simonetta Propseri Valenti Rodinò (Acireale: Accademia di Scienze, Lettere e Belle Arti degli Zelanti e dei Dafnici, 2006), pp. 50–71. Borghini, Raffaello, Il Riposo (1584), in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), p. 233. Bowron, Edgar Peters, ‘Brief History of European Oil Paintings on Copper’, in Copper as Canvas, ed. by Michael Komanecky (New York: Oxford University, 1999), p. 23. Butters, Suzanne B., ‘Contrasting Priorities: Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Cardinal and Grand Duke’, in The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M. Richardson (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), pp. 185–225. ———, ‘Le Cardinal Ferdinand de Médicis’, in La villa Médicis, ed. by André Chastel (Rome: Académie de France à Rome/École Francaise de Rome, 1991), pp. 170–196. ———, ‘“Magnifico, non senza eccesso”: riflessioni sul mecenatismo del Cardinale Ferdinando de’ Medici’, in Villa Medici: il sogno di un cardinale: collezioni e artisti di Ferdinando de’ Medici, ed. by Michel Hochmann (Rome: Edizioni de Luca, 1999), pp. 22–45. Caldwell, Dorigen, ‘Between Council and Court: Aspects of Medici Patronage in Rome during the Pontif icate of Pius V’, in Il tempo di Pio V, Pio V nel Tempo, ed. by Fulvio Cervini and Carla Enrica Spantigati (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), pp. 135–163. Calonaci, Stefano, ‘Ferdinando dei Medici: la formazione di un cardinal principe (1563–72)’, Archivio Storico Italiano 154 (1996): 635–690. Cheney, Liliana, ‘Notes on Jacopino del Conte’, Art Bulletin 52 (1970): 32–40.

313

314

Danielle Carrabino

Cola, Maria Celeste, Palazzo Valentini a Roma: la committenza Zambeccari, Boncompagni, Bonelli tra Cinquecento e Settecento (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2012). Cola, Maria Celeste, ‘Ritratto del Cardinale Michele Bonelli’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 257–258 Curie, Pierre, ‘Portraits intemporels: les deux Granvelle de Pulzone’, in Antoine de Granvelle: l’éminence pourpre; images d’un homme de pouvoir de la Renaissance, ed. by Laurence Reibel and Lisa Mucciarelli-Régnier (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017), pp. 81–89 Curti, Francesca, ‘I Savelli “cadetti”: le dimore al Quirinale e a Montecitorio e gli interessi artistici del ramo di Rignano e dei Palombara’, in Gli Orsini e Savelli nella Roma dei papi: arte e mecenatismo di antichi casati dal feudo alle corti barocche europee, ed. by Cecilia Mazzetti di Pietralta and Adriano Amendola (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017), pp. 147–165. De Dominici, Bernardo, Vite dei pittori scultori e architetti napoletani (1743), in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 237–239. De Jong, Jan L., ‘An Important Patron and an Unknown Artist: Giovanni Ricci, Ponsio Jacquio, and the Decoration of the Palazzo Ricci-Sacchetti in Rome’, Art Bulletin 74 (1992): 135–156. De Marchi, Andrea G., ‘Ritratto del Cardinale Giovanni Ricci’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 247–248. Dern, Alexandra, Scipione Pulzone (ca. 1546–1598) (Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank Für Geisteswissenschaften, 2003). Deswarte-Rosa, Sylvie, ‘Le cardinal Giovanni Ricci de Montepulciano in villa Médicis’, in La villa Médicis, ed. by André Chastel (Rome: Académie de France à Rome/École Francaise de Rome, 1991), pp. 110–169. Dolz, Michele, ‘Ritratto di Pio V: novità nel catalogo di Scipione Pulzone’, Arte Cristinana 101.874–879 (2013): 303–305. Donati, Andrea, Ritratto e figura nel manierismo a Roma: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Jacopino del Conte, Daniele Ricciarelli (San Marino: Asset Banca, 2010). Donò, Augusto, ‘Scipione da Gaeta (1545–1598): il pittore della Madonna della Divina Providenza’, Barnabiti Studi 13 (1996): 7–132. Fragnito, Gigliola, ‘Cardinals’ Courts in Sixteenth-Century Rome’, Journal of Modern History 65 (1993): 26–56. ———, ‘Ricci, Giovanni’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 87 (Rome: Treccani, 2016), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-ricci_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Goldenberg Stoppato, Lisa, ‘Ritratto di Cristina di Lorena’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 357–359.

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

———, ‘Ritratto di Ferdinando de’ Medici’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 353–354. Haan, Bertrand, ‘Antoine de Granvelle, l’âme d’un empire’, in Antoine de Granvelle: l’éminence pourpre; images d’un homme de pouvoir de la Renaissance, ed. by Laurence Reibel and Lisa Mucciarelli-Régnier (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017), pp. 33–43. Higgs, Sally and Alexander J. Noelle, ‘Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle’ by Scipione Pulzone: A Comprehensive Report Based on Conservation and Art Historical Analysis’, The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum: Conservation and Art Historical Analysis, spring–summer 2014, https://assets.courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2015/11/31142022/2014-Portrait-of-Cardinal-Antoine-Perrenot-de-Granvelle. pdf (April 2021). Hills, Paul, Renaissance Image Unveiled (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2010). Hills, Paul, Veiled Presence, (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2018). Hollingsworth, Mary and Carol M. Richardson, eds., The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010). Hollingsworth, Mary, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte, eds., A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020). Jedin, Hubert, ‘Kardinal Giovanni Ricci (1497–1574)’, Lateranum 15 (1949): 269–358. ———, A History of the Council of Trent: Hubert Jedin, trans. by Ernest Graf (London: T. Nelson, 1957). Jones, Martin D.W., The Counter Reformation: Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Kempers, Bram, ‘The Canonical Portrait of a Cardinal: Bandinello Sauli, Raphael and Sebastiano del Piombo’, in I cardinali della Santa Romana Chiesa: collezionisti e mecenati, ed. by Marco Gallo (Rome: Shakespeare and Company, 2001), pp. 6–21. Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art (New York: New York Unversity Press, 1975). Leone de Castris, Pierluigi, ‘Le cardinal Granvelle et Scipione Pulzone’, in Les Granvelles et l’Italie au XVIe siècle: le mécénat d’une famille, ed. by Jacqueline Brunet and Gennaro Toscano (Besançon: Cêtre, 1996), pp. 175–188. Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo, Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scultura ed architettura, vol. 2 (Rome: Presso-Saverio Del Monte, 1844). Mazzetti di Pietralata, Cecilia, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Giacomo Savelli’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 279–280. Montevecchi, Benedetta, ‘“Arti rare” nella pittura di Scipione Pulzone’, in Scipione Pulzone e il suo tempo, ed. by Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2012), pp. 191–199. Mucciarelli-Régnier, Lisa, ‘Portraits d’un prélat’, in Antoine de Granvelle: l’eminence pourpre, ed. by Laurence Reibel and Lisa Mucciarelli-Régnier (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017).

315

316

Danielle Carrabino

Michael E. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (London and New York: Routledge, 1999). Nicolaci, Michele, ‘Ritratto del cardinale Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 275–276. Nicolai, Fausto, ‘Ritratto di Pio V Ghislieri’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), p. 255. Nova, Alesssandro, ‘Occasio pars virtutis: considerazioni sugli affreschi di Francesco Salviati per il cardinale Ricci’, Paragone 31 (1980): 29–63. O’Malley, John W., Trent and all That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). ———, Trent: What Happened at the Council (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013). Pace, Valentino, ‘Osservazioni sull’attività giovanile di Jacopino del Conte’, Bolletino d’Arte 57 (1972): 220–222. Pacheco, Francisco, El arte de la pinctura (1638), in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), p. 236. Perin, Antonella, ‘Pio V e il collegio cardinalizio: committenze e progetti tra lo Stato Pontif icio e la Lombardia storia’, in Il tempo di Pio V, Pio V nel Tempo, ed. by Fulvio Cervini and Carla Enrica Spantigati (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), pp. 105–134. Petrucci, Francesco, Pittura di ritratto a Roma: il Seicento (Rome: Andreina & Valneo Budai e Editori, 2008). Prosperi, Adriano, ‘Bonelli, Michele’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 11 (Rome: Treccani, 1969), www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/michele-bonelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Redín Michaus, Gonzalo, ‘Due testamenti e altri documenti di Scipione Pulzone’, Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 78 (2002): 77–86. Richardson, Carol M., ‘The Cardinal’s Wardrobe’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 535–556. Schraven, Minou, Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy: The Art and Culture of Conspicuous Commemoration (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). Schütze, Sebastian, ‘Devotion und Repräsentation im Heiligen Jahr 1600: die Cappella di S. Giacinto in S. Sabina und ihr Auftraggeber Kardinal Girolamo Bernerio’, in Der Maler Federico Zuccari: ein römischer Virtuoso von europäischem Ruhm, ed. by Detlef Heikamp and Matthias Winner (Munich: Hirmer, 1999), pp. 231–264. Schirrmacher, Thomas, Indulgences: A History of Theology and Reality of Indulgences and Purgatory (Bonn: Culture and Science Publishing, 2012). Tittoni, Maria Eliza and Francesco Petrucci, eds., La Porpora Romana: ritrattistica cardinalizia a Roma dal Rinascimento al Novecento (Rome: Gangemi, 2006).

T wo Cardinal Portraits by Scipione Pulzone in the Harvard Art Museums 

Van Kessel, Elsje, The Lives of Paintings: Presence, Agency and Likeness in Venetian Art of the Sixteenth Century (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017). Vannugli, Antonio, ‘Scipione Pulzone ritrattista: Traccia per un catalogo ragionato’, in Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee, ed. by Alessandra Acconci and Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013), pp. 25–63. Witte, Arnold, ‘Cardinals and their Titular Churches’, in A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2020), pp. 333–350. Zeri, Federico, Pittura e Controriforma: l’arte senza tempo di Scipione da Gaeta (Rome: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1957). ———, ‘Salviati e Jacopino del Conte’, Proporzioni 2 (1948): 180–183. Zuccari Alessandro, ‘Anacronismi e modernità nell’arte di Scipione Pulzone’, in Scipione Pulzone e il suo tempo, ed. by Alessandro Zuccari (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2015), pp. 7–37. ———, ed., Scipione Pulzone e il suo tempo (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2015).

About the Author Danielle Carrabino is Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Smith College Museum of Art. Her recent publications include a chapter in Space, Place, and Motion: Locating Confraternities in the Late Medieval and Early Modern City, ed. Diana Bullen Presciutti (Brill, 2017) , and a chapter in Representing Infirmity: Diseased Bodies in Renaissance Italy, eds. John Henderson, Fredrika Jacobs, and Jonathan K. Nelson (Routledge, 2021)..

317

12. Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint Managing the Devotional Medals of San Carlo Borromeo Minou Schraven

Abstract The canonization of Carlo Borromeo in November 1610 caused an unprecedented demand for his portraits, from large-scale altarpieces to modest paintings and engravings for domestic use. This chapter will focus on the production and circulation of the devotional medals of San Carlo, the many miracle-working properties attributed to them, and the way church authorities sought to control the craze for these medals by granting (and subsequently annulling) indulgences associated with them. Keywords: Carlo Borromeo; Counter-Reformation; devotional objects; canonization

For many, Carlo Borromeo is the quintessential post-Tridentine cardinal-bishop, a true role model for dignitaries of the reformed Catholic Church in Europe and beyond.1 During the turbulent decades following the Council of Trent, he stood out for his exemplary devotion, austerity, and commitment to reform, first at the papal court and then in his archdiocese of Milan. Soon after his death in 1584, miracles started to be reported at his tomb, and in November 1610 he was the first of his generation to make it to sainthood. But as the research of Simon Ditchfield and Ruth Noyes has shown, his canonization process was far from untroubled. Church authorities in Rome and Milan visibly struggled to find a response to the rapidly

1 The bibliography on Carlo Borromeo is vast and has its origins in the early modern period with the biographies of Bascapè, Giussano, and Grattarola. For an introduction to early modern Milan: Gamberini, Companion, 2014. For a recent overview of Borromeo studies, see the theme issue of Studia Borromaica, 2011: Carlo Borromeo e il cattolicesimo dell’età moderna: nascita e fortuna di un modello di santità.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch12

320

Minou Schraven

growing cults of Carlo and other beati moderni. As long as these men and women had not been officially canonized, their cults bordered dangerously on idolatry.2 Against the background of this complicated canonization process, this chapter looks into the production, circulation, and veneration of portraits of Carlo Borromeo. Whereas surprisingly few portraits were produced during Carlo’s lifetime, a veritable portrait industry would emerge after his death in 1584. What did these painted, printed, and sculpted portraits look like? What was their role in the emerging cult of this beato moderno? Special attention will be given to the devotional medals of Carlo Borromeo. How did church authorities and those promoting his cause for sainthood manage the demand for these highly coveted items, both before and after Carlo’s canonization in November 1610?

Cardinal and Archbishop: Between Rome and Milan Born into an aristocratic family, Carlo Borromeo was predestined for an ecclesiastical career from early on, receiving the tonsure at the age of 7. In 1559, his maternal uncle, Giovanni Angelo Medici, was elected to the papacy, assuming the name of Pius IV. Just 22 years old, Carlo was called to Rome as the new pope’s cardinal-nephew. According to his biographer and close friend Pietro Giovanni Giussano, Borromeo went through a spiritual transformation, adopting the austere and penitent lifestyle for which he would become famous.3 The impact on the papal court was not lost, as noted by Venetian envoy Giacomo Sanudo: At the Curia, they live very simply, for want of means […] but perhaps no less on account of the good example of Cardinal Borromeo […]. No cardinal or courtier can any longer count on favours if he does not live, either in reality or at least in appearance, as he does. 4

With help from reform-minded ecclesiastics, Carlo reopened the Council of Trent for its third and final session (1562–1563). The following year, Carlo was appointed archbishop of Milan, the largest ecclesiastical province in Italy at the time, with about 800,000 souls. Given that the territory stretched well into parts of presentday Switzerland, Calvinist heresies were always dangerously close.5 In line with the teachings of Trent, Carlo took up residence in Milan. As there had been no 2 Ditchfield, ‘Coping with the “Beati Moderni”’, 2010; Noyes, Peter Paul Rubens, 2018. 3 Giussano, Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, 1610, pp. 20–21. 4 From the ‘Relazione di Roma 1565’ from Sanudo, as cited in Schraven, ‘Religious Festival Culture after Trent’, 2014, p. 146. 5 Gamberini, Companion, 2014; Po-Chia, World of Catholic Renewal, 1998, pp. 166–121.

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

resident archbishop for about 80 years, there was much to be done. Assisted by local religious orders, mainly the Barnabites and Oblates, Carlo embarked on an ambitious programme based on pastoral care and education, turning Milan into a laboratory of post–Tridentine reform.6 To engage the clergy of the vast archdiocese in his reforms, Carlo regularly organized provincial synods in Milan. Purposefully coinciding with translatio ceremonies (involving the movement of relics) of local martyrs and bishop saints, these religious spectacles attracted many thousands of pilgrims, instilling the citizens and clergy of Milan with religious fervour and pride.7 With this uncompromising religious activism, Borromeo deeply antagonized Philip II of Spain and his viceroys, the secular rulers of Milan. During the Holy Year of 1575, Carlo Borromeo took on a very public role, washing the feet of pilgrims in his titular church of Santa Prassede, and was often seen heading the procession of the Sette Chiese, the seven pilgramage basilicas in Rome. The following year, when Milan was hit by a devastating plague, Carlo’s involvement with the suffering population further contributed to his status of an alter Christus.8 In the final years of his life, Carlo undertook multiple pilgrimages to the Holy Shroud in Turin and the Sacro Monte of Varallo. While being a beacon of hope and salvation for the masses, he set an example for reform-minded bishops in Bologna, Florence, and Perugia.9 Like his fellow beati moderni Ignatius of Loyola and Filippo Neri, Carlo Borromeo was reluctant to commission portraits of himself; early biographers, such as Giussano and Bascapè, took this as a sign of modesty.10 In this respect, it is indeed telling that the best-known portrait of Carlo Borromeo, now in the Ambrosiana, was painted some fifteen years after his death, in 1600. Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Carlo’s nephew and successor, judged it to be ‘by far the best likeness’ of his uncle.11 Despite Carlo’s reluctance to have his portrait done, a handful of drawings survive from his lifetime.12 Moreover, there were some very fine portrait medals 6 De Boer, Conquest of the Soul, 2001. 7 Schraven, ‘Religious Festival Culture after Trent’, 2014, pp. 127–140. 8 For the iconography of San Carlo and the Holy Nail, see Jones, ‘Andrea Commodi’s “S. Carlo”’, 2008. 9 For the adaptation of Borromeo’s translatio-ceremonies in Bologna, Florence, and Rome, see Schraven, ‘Religious Festival Culture after Trent’, 2014, pp. 127–140; for Perugia and the initiatives of Bishop Napoleone Comitoli, see Rihouet, Art Moves, 2017, pp. 227–250. 10 Giussano, Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, 1610, p. 461: ‘Già havendo detto […] in quanta veneratione siano tenute le imagini di S. Carlo […] non senza proposito, poichè Dio Nostro Signore ha operato grandissimi miracoli per mezo di tal imagini […] con tutto che esse imagini si vedano dissimili assai dal naturale, non essendo arrivato alcuno a rappresentarlo naturalmente, per non haversi egli lasciato ritrar mai’ (emphasis mine). 11 Gerken, Entstehung und Funktion, 2015, pp. 70–71; Burzer, San Carlo Borromeo, 2011, p. 32, attributed to Giovanni Ambrogio Figino, the portrait with inv. no. 109 was painted for Federico Borromeo. 12 See Gerken, Entstehung und Funktion, 2015, and Frangi, ‘Tra “vero ritratto”’, 2011, for the few portraits that were painted during Carlo’s lifetime. Among the drawings are those by Figino, now at the British Museum, inv. nos. 1896,1215.5 and 1896,1215.4.

321

322

Minou Schraven

Fig. 12.1 Giovanni Antonio de’ Rossi (signed), portrait medal of Carlo Borromeo, 1563, silver, Vienna, Münzkabinett (© Vienna, KHM–Museumsverband).

made of him during his early years in Rome, such as the medal signed by Giovanni Antonio de’ Rossi, now at the Münzkabinett of Vienna (Fig. 12.1).13 The obverse presents Carlo as a young cardinal with a beard and full head of hair, the tonsure just visible. Identifying him as ‘Carlo Borromeo from Milan, cardinal-priest of the Holy Roman Church, in his 25th year’, the medal can be dated to the year 1563, when Carlo became cardinal-priest. The medal’s reverse shows a personification of the city of Rome, standing on top of captives and spoils, while handing over a laurel crown to Cardinal Carlo, backed by two clerics.14 A somewhat later portrait medal of a beardless Cardinal Borromeo would enjoy an immense fortune for centuries to come (Fig. 12.2).15 Frequently reissued as uniface, with just Carlo’s portrait, the medal was an important prototype for posthumous portraits in profile, such as the one in the Ambrosiana. In its original conception, the medal’s reverse shows a lamb placed on an altar, gazing upwards at rays emanating 13 Schulz, ‘Der Heiligen Karl Borromäus’, 1984, p. 65. 14 The legend of the obverse is ‘CAROLUS BORROMEUS MEDIO[lanensis] S[acrae] R[omanae] E[cclesiae] AN[no] AG[ente] XXV’. The reverse reads ‘S.P.Q.R. CIVI OPTIME MERITO’. We can only speculate about the occasion of this commission; if it stands in connection to the conferral of Roman honorary citizenship to Carlo in July 1561, it would be two years late. Another early portrait medal of gilded bronze is kept at the Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, inv. no. 1822 5925. The uniface oval portrait medal represents the young cardinal, again fully bearded, and identifies him both as cardinal and archbishop – a title he received in May 1564. 15 Schulz, ‘Der Heiligen Karl Borromäus’, 1984, p. 66, fig. 1.3. The inscription would be adjusted to the status of Borromeo: there exist medals of this type that identify him plainly as ‘CAR[olus] BORROMEUS CARD[inalis] ARCHIEP[iscopus] MEDI[olani]’: some have the letter B of B[eatus] crammed in, meaning that they were issued after 1602; and there are medals with the letter S of S[anctus], dating therefore from after November 1610.

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

Fig. 12.2 Anonymous portrait medal of Carlo Borromeo, c. 1580, bronze, London, British Museum (© The Trustees of the British Museum).

from heaven. The inscription reads ‘SOLA GAUDET HUMILITATE DEUS’ (‘God only rejoices in humility’): a clear reference to ‘Humilitas’, the single word that Carlo had adopted as his device in 1565.16 All in all, the few surviving portraits made during his lifetime stand in stark contrast to the avalanche of portraits that were produced after his death.

Milan: The Cult Surrounding Carlo’s Tomb and Portraits After a life of self-mortification in the public eye, Carlo Borromeo died on the evening of 3 November 1584. Following his own instructions, he was buried in a simple, unadorned floor grave in Milan Cathedral. Accounts of his autopsy – a sure indicator of sainthood – were in huge demand.17 All of a sudden, portraits of the deceased archbishop were seen all across the archdiocese. Giussano and others reported that every household or shop seemed to have its own image of Carlo Borromeo.18 Carlo’s personal secretary Carlo Maria Bascapè stated he had never witnessed a similar demand for anyone’s portraits, be they a saint, a man 16 Jones, ‘Court of Humility’, 2010. The word Humilitas written in Gothic letters and topped with a crown had been among the elements of the Borromeo coat of arms, along with the unicorn and the Borromean rings. 17 Siraisi, ‘Signs and Evidence’, 2001; Bouley, Pious Postmortems, 2017, p. 54. 18 Giussano, Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, 1610, pp. 379–380: ‘Della qual intensa affettione manifesti testimoni le imagini et i ritratti di lui, che si videro sparsi in un tratto doppo sua morte per tutte le parti di questa grande città e dominio di Milano, non restandovi casa nè bottega alcuna in cui non si vedesse l’imagine di questo Santo.’ In the testimony of Giralomo Castano, personal servant of Carlo Borromeo and canon of the Cathedral of Milan: ‘Di questo beato si veggono quasi per tutte le case ritratti et imagini et quadri

323

324

Minou Schraven

of learning, or a ruler.19 The demand was not limited to the local population of Milan; across Europe, rulers were anxious to lay their hands on a portrait of Carlo Borromeo. Just a few months after Carlo’s death, a visitor from Lucerne reported: The painters in Milan can hardly keep up with the huge demand for portraits – both large and small – of the late Cardinal Borromeo that are commissioned by kings and lords and sent to them. Both the Holy Roman Emperor [Rudolph II, d.1612], and the Duke [Wilhelm V] of Bavaria have already received one; the King of Spain [Philip II] has ordered a full-length, life-size portrait.20

Soon after Carlo’s death, the first miraculous healings and exorcisms started to be reported at his tomb, and devotees started to leave vast numbers of sculpted and painted votive gifts for graces and favours received.21 By the year 1600, thousands of devotees came to pray at Carlo’s tomb every day. Grattarola gives a vivid account of what the cult site looked like in this period: Witnessing the piety and extraordinary devotion displayed by all those venerating the holy tomb, one’s heart became soft and tender; as some came barefoot, some in a sackcloth, others dressed as pilgrims or bearing other signs of penitence. They kissed the floor with devotion, they made their rosaries touch the holy tomb, all the while displaying signs of intense piety, accompanied by sighs and tears.22

The church authorities in Milan started a formal inquiry into the life and miracles of the deceased cardinal: the first step towards canonization. From that point, all miracles attributed to intercession of the late cardinal were diligently recorded. Besides those occurring at his tomb, miracles were also reported elsewhere, often in grandi sono tenuti et venerati come ritratti et imagini di santi’; as cited in Burzer, San Carlo Borromeo, 2009, p. 30. 19 Bascapè, Della vita e fatti, 1614, pp. 844–846: ‘Io non credo che sia mai accaduto a persona alcuna per santità o dottrina o potenza alcuna […] che di lei in tanto numero ritratti si facessero, et così avidamente si desiderassero.’ 20 ‘Die maler habend hie genug ze schaffen deß Hrn. Cardinalis Borromaei säligen abcontrafettung ze machen, dan vil fürsten und herren die bestellend und beschickend groß und klein […]. Dem keiser und herzogen in Peyern ist es auch zugschikt worden. Der König uß Hispanien laßt eine ganze contrafettung Machen siner gestalt mit lenge und größe wie er gewesen [ist] by leben’, in the words of Renward Cysat from Lüzern during a visit to Milan in January 1585; as cited in Burzer, San Carlo Borromeo, 2009, p. 30. 21 Grattarola, Successi maravigliosi, 1614, pp. 14–15, for a description of the ex-votos left at Carlo’s grave. 22 Ibid., p. 14: ‘Chi vedeva poi la pietà, che mostrava ogn’uno, e la singular divotione nel venerare il santo sepolcro, si sentiva tutto di dentro intenerir il cuore, imperciochè chi vi veniva scalzo, chi in habito di sacco, chi vestito da pellegrino, e chi con altri segni di gran penitenza. Baciavano spesso la terra per devotione, facevano toccare le corone al santo sepolcro, e davano altri segni d’interno e straordinario affetto di pietà.’

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

connection with portraits of the cardinal. Giussano reports the miraculous saving of two Jesuit missionaries from Milan, Alfonso Vagnone and Giovanni Battista Porro, who almost perished when the boat they were travelling on was caught in a terrible storm. Devout to Carlo, the Jesuit fathers had brought portraits and relics of his clothing on their journey. When the situation looked truly desperate, the missionaries took them out and bravely recommended their souls to Carlo. The storm instantly quieted and all were saved.23 Besides recounting the miracle-working agency of Carlo’s portraits, the story is also telling for the global distribution of the devotion to San Carlo. Whereas Vagnone and Porro were heading with their portraits to Jesuit missions in the Far East, devotional medals of Carlo Borromeo have also been found in missions across the Americas.24 Few, if any, of these mass-produced likenesses of Carlo Borromeo survive, however, to our day. For an idea of what the portraits may have looked like, we can turn to the so-called quadroni di San Carlo, the large canvases that still decorate the Cathedral of Milan on Carlo Borromeo’s feast day in November. Commissioned by the Fabbrica del Duomo, the first set centres on scenes of Carlo’s life; the second, commissioned in view of the canonization in 1610, on his miracles.25 One of these depicts the miraculous healing of Paola Giustina Casati, a bedridden nun living at the convent of San Maurizio in Milan (Plate 11). Although she had access to be best medical care through her father, a prominent doctor, nothing seemed to alleviate her pains. As word spread about a series of miraculous healings in a nearby convent, all attributed to a portrait of Carlo Borromeo, Paola Giustina received permission to obtain his portrait for her personal devotion. In his Vita di San Carlo Borromeo, Giussano reports how just a week after securing the portrait, Paola Giustina was miraculously cured. On 24 June 1601, she was assisted back to her cell, having attended Mass, confessed, and having performed an act of charity. The moment the nun lay her head against the devotional image of Carlo Borromeo, she was cured, to the joy of the entire convent.26 The miracle-working portrait of Carlo as 23 Giussano, Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, 1610, p. 662: ‘I quali padri [Alfonso Vagnone Piemontese and Giovanni Battista Porro from Milan] havevano particolar divotione a S. Carlo, et portavano con essi loro alcuni ritratti di lui, e reliquie de’ suoi vestimenti.’ Alfonso Vagnone (1568–1640) went on a mission in China, while Giovanni Battista Porro was active in Japan. Giussano recounts that the miracle occurred in the Gulf of Marseille, when the two men were travelling from Italy to Lisbon. This must have been in 1602 or early 1603, as we know that Vagnone set sail from Lisbon to Macao in April 1603; for the formation of Vagnone in the Brera College, see Falato, Alfonso Vagnone’s Tongyou Jiaoyu, 2020, pp. 19–20. 24 Deagan, Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies, 2002, pp. 43–46, for shipments and finds of devotional medals in Florida and the Caribbean. Riordan, ‘To Excite the Devotion’, 2015, cites devotional medals of Carlo Borromeo found during archaeological excavations in the Jesuit missions in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, from the seventeenth century. 25 Burzer, San Carlo Borromeo, 2009, pp. 73–112, for a discussion of the quadroni. 26 Giussano, Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, 1610, pp. 676–677.

325

326

Minou Schraven

it is depicted on the quadrone must have been convincing and recognizable to a contemporary audience, both for its size and its style. To show the European dimension of the cult of Borromeo, the quadroni included two miraculous healings that occurred in Niepołomice, near Cracow. In November 1604, a portrait of Carlo Borromeo supposedly cured first a local countess, Anna Miśkowiec Branicki, from a painful affliction in her hands, and then the noblewoman Marina Ferraro. The miracle-working portrait had been given to Anna by an Italian servant, upon his return from Bologna. An official investigation into the matter conducted by the papal nuncio in Poland brought to light six more miraculous healings connected to this portrait, including that of the King of Poland, Sigismund III of Wasa. Given the high profile of the beneficiaries, these Cracow healings would play an important part in Carlo’s canonization process.27 Meanwhile in Milan, guardians at Carlo’s tomb had kept record of the miracles attributed to his intercession: by 1606, they numbered 720.28 In the same period, devotees had left behind some 1,440 painted and 8,019 silver ex-votos for graces received.29 Given this abundance of miracles and graces, one would think that the canonization of Carlo Borromeo would have been a rather straightforward matter, but that was not the case.

The Issue of the Beati Moderni Among the most contested issues of the Reformation, the cults of saints, relics, and indulgences remained far from resolved during the sixteenth century.30 An important step had been taken in 1588 with the institution of the Congregation of Rites, entrusted with the task of bringing all aspects of the Catholic liturgy, including canonizations, into line with post-Tridentine teachings. That same year, Pope Sixtus V elevated a rather obscure Spanish friar, Diego di Alcalà, to sainthood: the first canonization in 65 years. But in the following decades, surprisingly few candidates would follow suit.31 This is not to say that no progress was being made. The aim was a universal liturgical calendar on which only vetted saints would have a place. To establish 27 Ibid., pp. 683–687. The portrait was a gift from Felice Riaria, an aristocratic nun in the monastery of Corpus Domini in Bologna. There is a quadrone about the healing of Anna Miśkowiec Branicki, and another one about Marina Ferraro. 28 Giannini, ‘Carlo Borromeo da arcivescovo’, 2017, p. 31, citing Turchini, La fabbrica di un santo, 1984. 29 Giussano, Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, 1610, p. 116, estimates the value of these votive gifts to have been 38,620 gold scudi. 30 Po-Chia, World of Catholic Renewal, 1998; Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity, and History, 1995; Ditchfield, ‘Coping with the “Beati Moderni”’, 2010; Copeland, ‘Saints, Devotion and Canonization’, 2012. 31 Ditchfield, ‘Coping with the “Beati Moderni”’, 2010, p. 416, points out that in this canonization-void period, the cults of some fourteen locally venerated saints received papal approval, among them Margherita of Savoy, Colomba da Rieti (both in 1566), and Simonino of Trent (1588).

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

whether cults had a sound historical basis, clerics were mining archives and archaeological evidence across Italy and beyond.32 This painstaking process was complicated enough for saints who had been venerated for centuries. But what to do with cults of far more recent origin, such as those of Ignatius of Loyola, Carlo Borromeo, Felice da Cantalice, and Filippo Neri?33 The burgeoning cults of these beati moderni were monitored with the utmost suspicion. And given that guidelines and procedures were being negotiated, navigating the road to canonization was a most tricky affair.34 Initially, Pope Clement VIII had been quite responsive to the case of the beati moderni: as a student, he had been a follower of Filippo Neri. But he did not take it lightly when his supreme authority in these matters was compromised. So, when he found out that there had been a solemn translatio of Filippo Neri’s body without papal permission, Clement was furious. The causa of Filippo Neri was instantly put on hold, just as that of Carlo Borromeo. Six months later, in November 1602, the pope instituted a new council, the Congregazione dei Beati, to deal specifically with the delicate issue of the beati moderni.35 Shortly before Clement’s death in 1605, the cause of Neri and Borromeo were reopened. Expectations ran high when Cardinal Camillo Borghese was elected pope later that year. But just a few months into his reign, Paul V proved to be just as cautious as his predecessor, wary to extend any favours that he might regret later. Eventually, only two saints would be canonized during the long Borghese pontificate: in May 1608, the Roman mystic Francesca Romana (d.1440), and on 1 November 1610, Carlo Borromeo, the first beato moderno to become a saint.36 The long process of moving Carlo’s canonization past the bureaucratic hurdles of the Curia was documented by Marco Aurelio Grattarola in his voluminous Successi Maravigliosi della veneratione di S. Carlo. As provost of the Oblates in Milan, Grattarola had taken part in several embassies of Milanese delegates to press for Carlo’s cause in Rome.37 Meanwhile, Cardinal Federico Borromeo also took on an ever more active role. To build a network of support, he started dispatching 32 Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity, and History, 1995. 33 Ditchfield, ‘Coping with the “Beati Moderni”’, 2010; Noyes, Peter Paul Rubens, 2017. 34 Carlo’s close friend Bascapè struggled for years to get Borromeo’s biography past Roman censorship – in the end, he published it in 1592 in Bavaria; Bascapè, De Vita et Rebus Gestis, 1592; Giannini, ‘Carlo Borromeo da arcivescovo’, 2017. 35 Giannini, ‘Carlo Borromeo da arcivescovo’, 2017; Noyes, Peter Paul Rubens, 2017. 36 Ditchfield, ‘Coping with the “Beati Moderni”’, 2010, rightly points out that Paul V elevated several men and women to the state of beato, by now the necessary intermediate stage preceding canonical sainthood. Some of these beati would not be canonized for decades, such as Stanislas Kostka (d.1568) and Luigi Gonzaga (d.1591), elevated to sainthood only in 1726; for Filippo Neri, things moved considerably more quickly (beatified in 1615, canonized in 1622). 37 On Grattarola, see Pagani, ‘Marco Aurelio Grattarola’, 2011.

327

328

Minou Schraven

Fig. 12.3 Fede Galizia, Portrait of Federico Zuccari, 1604, oil on canvas, Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi (© Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi).

small relics of Carlo’s bones and clothes to high-ranking officials at the courts in Madrid and Turin.38 Likewise, he sent portrait medals of his uncle to friends and relations. In 1603, he gave ‘a gold chain and an emerald ring’ to the Roman painter and academician Federico Zuccari, who had just completed a fresco cycle 38 Pisoni, ‘Reliquie e diplomazia’, 2011. Perhaps the Jesuit missionaries we encountered earlier had received the small samples of Carlo’s clothing from Federico Borromeo.

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

Fig. 12.4 Devotional medal of Carlo Borromeo (Domenico Pellegrini?), silver, Milan, Castello Sforzesco, Gabinetto Numismatico e Medagliere (© Milan, Castello Sforzesco, Gabinetto Numismatico e Medagliere).

in the Collegio Borromeo in Pavia. Zuccari chose to wear this very gold chain in the portrait that is now in the Uffizi Galleries (Fig. 12.3). Attached to the chain, we see several gold (or gilded) portrait medals of persons and institutions that were important to Zuccari; among them is a medal of Carlo Borromeo of the type that we discussed earlier (Fig. 12.2).39 In 1607 and 1608, Federico Borromeo commissioned nearly 80 silver medals with Carlo’s portrait by renowned medallist Gaspare Mola to distribute as gifts. 40 He also commissioned some very fine silver devotional medals with Carlo’s portrait and the motto ‘Humilitas’ on the reverse (Fig. 12.4). The delicate loophole of this medal consists of three interlaced circles, a Borromean emblem. 41

39 Zuccari’s gold chain also sports the Venetian lion of San Marco and a gilded portrait medal of Philip II of Spain, for whom Zuccari had worked in the Escorial. The latter medal can be identified with a portrait medal by Giampaolo Poggini (d.1582), made on the occasion of the discovery of the West Indies in 1580; the Teylers Museum in Haarlem holds a gilded specimen in its collection, inv.nr. TMNK 255, diameter 38.8 mm. 40 Barbieri, ‘A proposito delle medaglie’, 2017; one gold specimen of this medal was sent to the painter Jan Brueghel in Flanders. 41 Ibid., for examples from the early seventeenth up to the nineteenth century, albeit with a cruder loophole. As Barbieri suggests, the original design may well have been by Domenico Pellegrini.

329

330

Minou Schraven

Besides these high-end portrait medals, Federico also distributed immense quantities of mass-produced devotional medals. 42 As is evident from Barbieri’s survey of the archiepiscopal archives, Federico sometimes ordered as many as three batches a year from various medal makers or coronari in Milan. The medals would be distributed during parish visits, and to the pupils of the Scuole della dottrina Cristiana and the Giovani della Madonna.43 Likewise, Federico gave large numbers of devotional medals to missionary preachers active in the mountainous areas of his archdiocese, where they could then distribute them. 44

Carlo-Mania in Rome The combined efforts of the Oblates, Federico Borromeo, and the city of Milan eventually resulted in the canonization of Carlo Borromeo on 1 November 1610 – the first beato moderno to make it to sainthood. The city of Milan proudly provided the sumptuous liturgical vestments for the ceremonies in St. Peter’s, plus eleven large processional standards embroidered with portraits of the new saint. 45 Following directives from Rome, the standards depicted Carlo as a cardinal, not as the uncompromising archbishop who had antagonized the Habsburg and church authorities in Rome. Moreover, the Milanese delegation commissioned portraits of Carlo Borromeo dressed as cardinal to distribute as gifts: full-length portraits for the pope and his nephews; smaller portraits for the members of the College of Cardinals, ambassadors, and princes present at the canonization ceremonies. 46 As was usual practice, Pope Paul V granted a plenary indulgence in honour of the canonization in St. Peter’s. In addition, he granted generous indulgences for the anniversary of Carlo’s death a few days later, on 4 November. One of these indulgences was sent by express courier to the cathedral in Milan, the other was

42 Pisoni, ‘Reliquie e diplomazia’, 2011; Giannoni, ‘Carlo Borromeo da arcivescovo’, 2017. 43 Rivola, Vita di Federico Borromeo, 1656, p. 275: ‘Uditi finalmente alcuni brievi discorsi di alcuni di loro [i giovani], [Federico] diede a tutti di propria mano una bella medaglia grande d’argento, nell’una parte della quale effigiata era la Beata Vergine col suo Figliuolo fra le braccia […], e nell’altra impressi si vedevano i vivi ritratti di Sant’Ambrosio e del Beato Carlo.’ 44 Ibid., pp. 245–248 and 324, for missions in 1608 to Valle di San Martino, Pieve di Biasca, Val di Ghirone: ‘col dono d’alcune medaglie, e col benedirgli di nuovo, [Federico] si credette d’haver all’acceso loro desiderio ed alla loro curiosità.’ 45 Casale, Arte per le canonizzazioni, 2011. 46 Grattarola, Successi maravigliosi, 1614, p. 174: ‘Fu determinato dalla Congregatione dei Sacri Riti che si dovesse dipingere il Beato Carlo vestito da cardinale, e non da Vescovo, nei stendardi, e nei ritratti suoi. Mettemmo in opera un pittore, il quale fece molti ritratti, che si donarono al Papa, al Collegio dei Cardinali, alli ambasciatori de’ Prencipi, et a molti altri prelati e persone di quella Corte.’

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

given to the national church of the Lombards in Rome, Sant’Ambrogio al Corso. 47 This church became the epicentre of Carlo’s cult in Rome. 48 Soon enough, miracles began to be reported in Sant’Ambrogio, especially at the newly instituted altar of San Carlo. In his Successi Maravigliosi, Grattarola cites many miracles, among them the exorcism of a certain Priscilla. Her husband had taken her to the chapel, as the demon himself had told him that ‘she would only be liberated through San Carlo in Rome’. 49 Others testified that the new saint had appeared to them in a vision, urging them to visit his chapel in Sant’Ambrogio in Rome. This had happened to a certain Giulio Napoletano, who suffered from rheumatism. After San Carlo had appeared to him, he immediately set out for Rome, attended Mass in Sant’Ambrogio, and made a full recovery.50 Lorenzo from Borgo San Pietro was cured from paralysis after praying in front of the miracle-working image.51 Even the oil of the lamps of this chapel was believed to have strong healing powers. Rubbing the oil on the bellies of pregnant mothers ensured speedy deliveries of healthy babies.52 The new altar of San Carlo soon attracted so many devotees that, in Grattarola’s words, ‘the devotion to the saint in Sant’Ambrogio nearly outdid that in Milan’.53 To 47 Ibid., p. 280. 48 Ibid., p. 463: ‘Indulgenza plenaria et remissione di tutti li peccati concessa dalla Santità di Papa Paolo V alla Chiesa di S. Ambrogio della Natione Lombarda di Roma, per ciascun giorno fra l’Ottava della Festa di San Carlo. Havendo la Santità di N.S. Papa Paolo V per suo breve spedito sotto li 3 di Novembre 1610 concesso l’Indulgenza plenaria […] a tutti li fedeli Christiani dell’uno et altro sesso quali veramente pentiti, confessati e communicati, divotamente visiteranno la Chiesa di S. Ambrogio della natione lombarda di Roma, et in essa, nella Festa di esso S. Carlo, dalli primi vesperi infino al tramontar del sole di detta Festa, et ivi divotamente pregaranno il Signor Iddio per la concordia delli Prencipi Christiani, estirpatione dell’heresie, et per l’essaltatione della Santa Madre Chiesa.’ 49 Grattarola, Successi maravigliosi, 1614, p. 543: ‘si lasciò intendere il Demonio, che [Priscilla moglie del Signor Gabinio Defini] non si saria liberata se non per mezo di S. Carlo in Roma. Ve la condusse adunque il marito, & mentre ella era essorcizata innanzi alla Sua Capella in Santo Ambrogio, si partirono da lei tutti i spiriti.’ 50 Ibid.: ‘e non giovandogli quei rimedij […], gli venne in visione S. Carlo una notte, il quale gli disse; “Giulio levati, và a Roma, & visita la mia chiesa, che sarai sano.” Ubbedì egli al divino oracolo, e per strada sentì gran miglioramento; giunto poi nella Chiesa di SS. Ambrogio e Carlo, sentendovi Messa, fu perfettamente sanato.’ 51 Ibid., p. 544: ‘[Lorenzo] non trovando rimedio per sanarsi, ricorrè all’intercessione di S. Carlo, & andando il giorno 11 d’agosto 1611 a cavallo a Santo Ambrosio, si mise in oratione davanti la miracolosa imagine d’esso Santo […] e poscia levossi in piedi sano & libero dalle sue infermità alla presenza di molte persone.’ 52 Ibid., pp. 542–554, for a long list of miracles that occurred in the Chapel of San Carlo in Rome. 53 Ibid., p. 361: ‘vi dedicarono anche un’altare subito fatta la canonizatione, con una bella Imagine dell’istesso Santo sopra; dove incontanente cominciò il popolo a pigliar divotione e offerirvi voti e doni […] et perchè Iddio […] vi operava chiari miracoli, andò crescendo in guisa la divotione et il concorso di tutta Roma e degl’altri paesi dello Stato della Chiesa, che si è fatto quasi maggiore di quello del Duomo di Milano, ove riposa il corpo istesso del Santo.’

331

332

Minou Schraven

accommodate these numbers, the existing church was enlarged and rededicated to Sant’Ambrogio and Carlo: the first stone of the new structure was laid on 29 January 1612.54 A few weeks later, on 26 February 1612, construction started on yet another major church in Rome dedicated to the new saint: San Carlo ai Catinari, the first Barnabite church outside of Milan.55 On top of that, smaller chapels and altars continued to be dedicated to San Carlo across Rome, both in already existing churches and on street corners.

Devotional Medals of San Carlo and their Indulgences As the devotion to San Carlo became ever more intense, there was a huge demand for images bearing his likeness. Every household or shop in Rome now had its portrait of San Carlo, be it just a cheap engraving.56 In a letter of March 1612, Antonio Seneca, Bishop of Anagni, stated that the coronari, or medal makers, in Rome could hardly keep up with the demand for devotional medals of San Carlo, that were sought after by the entire world.57 Devotees attached them to their rosaries, or would wear them close on their bodies, even around their necks.58 Grattarola connected this craze to two very generous indulgences given by the pope to devotional objects related to San Carlo: one of them had been entitled to Cardinal Federico Borromeo, the other to the procurators of the canonization in Milan.59 A transcript of this indulgence is preserved in the archive of the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome.60 In some 54 Ibid., p. 398. 55 Jones, ‘Andrea Commodi’s “San Carlo”’, 2008. 56 Grattarola, Successi maravigliosi, 1614, p. 351, citing a letter written by Papirio Bartoli from Rome, 20 August 1611: ‘Per la canonizzatione di questo santo [Carlo Borromeo] et per la sua divotione, si sono arricchiti molti pittori et stampatori di figure e di ritratti di detto Santo; perchè oltre non c’è persona in Roma che non tenghi il suo ritratto, almeno in carta, nelle sue stanze.’ 57 Ibid., pp. 348–349: ‘Non poteano lavorarne tante con l’effigie di San Carlo quei fabri, che bastassero a sodisfare alla divotione et al fervore di tutte le nationi, che cercavano d’haverne per mandarle in ogni parte della Christianità.’ 58 Ibid., p. 349: ‘Alle quali medaglie del Santo presero i popoli sì gran devotione, che ogn’uno ne voleva avere almeno una adosso; et in alcune terre della Marca d’Ancona, in luogo di metterle nella corona, le portavano scoperte appese al collo per segno di somma devotione verso il Santo.’ 59 Ibid., p. 349: ‘Per causa di due indulgenze di medaglie, che s’ottennero da Sua Santità molto ample, una a instanza del Signor Cardinal Borromeo, et l’altra a instanza delli Procuratori della canonizatione, furono benedette tanta quantità di corone, imagini, e medaglie, che quasi se ne vuotarono tutte le botteghe di quella città, et di medaglie particolarmente.’ 60 Rome, APUG, MS 3274, fols. 63r–66v: ‘Indulgenze et Grazie concesse dalla Santita di N. Signore Papa Paolo V alle corone, rosarij, medaglie, croci et imagini, benedette ad istanza dell’Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo Signor Card. Boromeo Arcivescovo di Milano, in occasione della Canonizzatione di Santo Carlo Card. Boromeo il dì 18 di novembre 1610.’

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

eighteen articles, the document lists the indulgences and graces bestowed upon anyone in possession of blessed beads, rosaries, medals, crucifixes, and devotional images of San Carlo: Our Holy Father grants to every person, male or female, who carries one of the above mentioned objects or who venerates one of the said devotional images during the Office of Our Lord or that of the Madonna, or the eighth part of a Rosary, or attends Mass, or preaches, or observes abstinence […], gains for each of these things the remission of a third of the penance for his sins; and if that person has confessed and is truly contrite, a full indulgence and remission of all sins.61

Towards the very end, the document makes explicit reference to the newly instituted cult of San Carlo: indulgences may be obtained when praying at his tomb, when attending Mass in a church dedicated to him,62 and at the anniversary of his death.63 Owners of the blessed items are permitted to lend them to third parties; and in the unfortunate event that a bead or medal should break or get lost, it is allowed to be substituted.64 By this point, indulgences had been around for centuries. Initially, they had been granted for dangerous works of piety, such as the fight against the Moors in Spain (1063), or engagement in the Crusades. From the later Middle Ages onwards, indulgences started to be attached to pilgrimage sites and specific feast days. Pardons and indulgences could also be linked to new devotional practices, prayers, devotional images, or rosary beads.65 The wide appeal for indulgences and pardons made it a most lucrative business, fuelling reformers with horror and indignation.66

61 Ibid., no. 1: ‘Concede la Santità di Nostro Signore a ciascheduna persona dell’uno et altro sesso che portando qualsivoglia delle cose sopradette o facendo honore ad alcune di dette immagini durante l’Officio del Signore o della Madonna, o la ottava parte del Rosario, o sente una Messa, o predica, o diguna […], guadagni per ciascheduna dette cose sopraddette la remissione della terza parte della pena delli suoi peccati, et essendo confessato et contrito, indulgenza plenaria et remissione di tutti li suoi peccati.’ 62 Ibid., no. 12: ‘Chi havendo seco una delle sopraddette cose farà oratione al sepolcro di S. Carlo, o sentirà messa o farà oratione in qualche chiesa dedicata a San Carlo o avanti alcuno Altare o imagine del medesimo Santo conseguisca tutte l’indulgenze et gratie, che guadagnerà visitando S. Giacomo di Galizia.’ 63 Ibid., no. 14: ‘Item chi confessato et contrito il dì di San Carlo, dirà 3 Pater Noster et 5 Ave Maria per honore della passione di X.o Nostro Signore, obtienerà indulgenza plenaria et remissione di tutti li suoi peccati.’ 64 Ibid., no. 18: ‘Per guadagnare, basti havere qualsivolgia delle cose dette benedette proprie o prestate, et se alcuna di queste si perdesse o rompesse, se ne possi mettere una altra non benedetta in cambio, quale habbi la medesima indulgenza et vaglino per tutto il mondo alli X.ni dell’uno et altro sesso.’ 65 Swanson, ‘Praying for Pardon’, 2006, particularly pp. 236–237, about bead pardons; Tingle, Indulgences after Luther, 2015, esp. ch. 5: ‘Places, Objects and Salvation: The Materiality of Pardons’. 66 Swanson, ‘Praying for Pardon’, 2006.

333

334

Minou Schraven

As the post-Tridentine Church heavily banked on lay devotion, demand for indulgenced objects steadily increased.67 Popes were blessing ever larger numbers of devotional objects, such as medals, rosaries, and beads, which were then distributed among pilgrims, missionaries, and participants in the Santissima Comunione Generale, a major post-Tridentine congregation for lay spirituality.68 There was even a market for printed lists of indulgences attached to devotional objects that the pope ‘blesses daily’, or ‘during masses on Sun- and Feast days’.69 As the first anniversary of Carlo’s canonization approached in 1611, local church authorities all across Italy organized processions and celebrations: ideal occasions for the distribution of these highly coveted indulgenced medals.70 Bishop Andrea Perbenedetti took some 2000 blessed medals of San Carlo to his bishopric in Venosa to distribute them among the faithful. Likewise, Abbot Giovanni Antonio Meo had brought medals of San Carlo for distribution at the celebrations in Francavilla Fontana in Puglia, but so many people had turned up that he had to barricade himself inside a house first.71 In the following years, indulgenced medals of San Carlo remained hugely coveted objects. People were continuously pressing to obtain indulgenced medals, either for themselves or to distribute within their networks. In November 1613, Cardinal Federico Borromeo’s agent wrote to him from Rome: Not a week, or even a day, goes by without someone pressing me urgently for blessed medals with the effigy of this saint [San Carlo], or for any fragment of a relic; so could Your Lordship please send me some.72 67 Van Deusen, Embodying the Sacred, 2018, for the devotion to blessed beads in Peru. 68 Approved by Gregory XIII in 1584, the Congregation of the SS. Comunione Generale was part of the urban mission strategy of the Jesuits. 69 Indulgenze concesse da Nostro Signore Sisto Papa Quinto alle corone, grani, croci, & medaglie che alla giornata si benedicono da Sua Santità, 1586; Indulgenze che il S.mo Padre Clemente Papa VIII concede alle corone, grani, croci & medaglie che la Santità Sua benedice giornalmente, 1592; Indulgenze che il Sant.mo Domino et Sig. N. Clemente VIII concede alle corone, croci, & medaglie che la Santità Sua benedice i giorni festivi, & le domeniche alla messa, 1594 and 1596. 70 ‘Et a quei che hanno la medaglia benedetta di Santo Carlo, se il dì della festa si confesseranno, e communicheranno, con dire 5 Pater Noster e 5 Ave Marie ad honore della SS. Passione di Gesù Cristo, acquisteranno indulgenza plenaria e rimessione di tutti i peccati’; as cited in Viscardi, ‘Andrea Perbenedetti’, 1986, p. 1201. 71 Grattarola, Successi maravigliosi, 1614, pp. 390–391, letter dated 19 November 1611 from G.A. Mei to Abbot M.A. Forleo: ‘Quanto poi alle medaglie che portai, non posso con lingua esprimere il concorso della gente che sono venuti et non mancano di venire a domandarne, con tanta devotione, che sono rimasto fuori di me […] che è stato bisogno star nascosto in casa […] Però le ho dispensate io e l’hanno ricevute con tanta divotione che si sono inginocchiati e quelle baciate; anzi che molti piangevano di divotione.’ 72 Ibid., p. 519, citing a letter from Papirio Bartoli, from Rome, 9 November 1613: ‘Non c’è settimana, per non dir giorno, che non mi si facci grandissima instanza per medaglie della beneditione et improntata di detto Santo, & per qualche particella di reliquie, et però V.S. di gratia me ne mandi.’

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

A year earlier, Antonio Seneca complained to Grattarola that Cardinal Federico Borromeo had not been forthcoming in sending him relics and medals, and that he would now try his luck with the Congregation.73 Grattarola himself had provided a transcript of the indulgence for a Spanish courier, who was planning to send great quantities of medals of San Carlo to the Indies.74 Indulgenced medals were indeed a precious gift. When Cardinal Capponi left for Bologna in 1615, Paul V gave him blessed rosaries and medals of San Carlo.75 In 1618, the grand-ducal court of Florence passed on ‘indulgences of San Carlo’ to the relatives of Cosimo II’s wife, Maria Maddalena of Austria, in Paris.76

Give and Take As we have seen earlier, Paul V did not promote any new saints to the altars after Carlo Borromeo. But in March 1622, his successor Gregory XV canonized as many as five saints in a single ceremony in St. Peter’s: the medieval farmer St. Isidore (d.1130) and four beati moderni: Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, Filippo Neri, and Teresa d’Ávila.77 For this fivefold canonization, there was a huge production of images ranging from large processional banners to smaller devotional prints and medals; the most typical type of the latter represented the five saints with St. Isidore in the centre. These devotional medals received indulgences very similar to those of San Carlo, making them highly coveted objects. During the Jubilee of 1625, poet and academician Gianfranco Maia Materdona wrote to a friend in Tivoli: I send you for your personal benefit alone three rosaries of Our Lord: one of alabaster, one of ebony, one of rose wood. In addition, I am sending you 25 medals blessed by Our Lord the Pope [Urban VIII] on my supplication. The rosaries are 73 Ibid., pp. 348–349, citing the letter of 24 March 1612: ‘Io non posso resistere alle dimande d’haver qualche reliquia; ne scrissi al Signor Cardinale, & me ne mandò così poche, che quasi non servono; aspetto che la Congregatione me ne mandi, & delle più qualificate.’ 74 Ibid., p. 349: ‘E toccò a me [Grattarola] far havere una copia delle Indulgenze a un Corriero Spagnuolo, il quale ne conduceva quantità in Ispagna per mandarle nelle Indie, come egli mi disse.’ 75 AMP, vol. 4028, fol. 660, Avviso di Roma, dated 13 September 1615: ‘Il Cardinale Capponi, sendo stato a Frascati a pigliar l’ultima licenza da N.S. [Paul V], che gli concesse la beneditione di S. Carlo alle sue corone et medaglie, mercordì mattina partì di qua per la sua ligatione di Bologna.’ 76 AMP, vol. 4866, fol. 575, letter from Andrea Cioli in Florence to Matteo Bartolini Baldelli in Paris, dated 11 August 1618: ‘Le mando una copia della indulgentia concessa da Sua Santità [Paul V] alle corone, rosarii, croci, medaglie et immagini benedette nella benedizione di S. Carlo, acciò per parte di Madama Ser.ma [Maria Magdalena of Austria] V.S. la dia alla Ser.ma sorella di S.A. la Monaca.’ 77 Jones, ‘Celebrating New Saints’, 2019.

335

336

Minou Schraven

endowed with the Indulgence of San Carlo, and the medals with the Indulgence of the five recently canonized saints.78

That same year, at times 80,000 to 100,000 blessed medals of the five saints were distributed during mass communions in St. Peter’s; moreover, all 564,237 pilgrims staying that year at Santissima Trinità received one.79 In the following years, the canonization process would become even more regulated. The new directives of 1625–1627 introduced, among other things, an obligatory waiting period of 50 years after the death of a candidate.80 Because of these stringent regulations, no canonizations were performed between 1630 and 1658. Meanwhile, indulgences granted previously to the medals of San Carlo and other saints were restricted. A decree of Alexander VII in 1657 explicitly targeted the medals of San Carlo and those of the five saints. The indulgences could no longer be transmitted to third persons, and broken or lost beads or medals could no longer be substituted.81 But the very fact that they were mentioned explicitly, means that the appeal of the blessed medals of San Carlo was still far from diminished. Having taken first Milan and then Rome by storm, the cult of Carlo Borromeo – promoted through his blessed devotional medals – was by now firmly established in Italy, Europe, and beyond.

Bibliography Barbieri, Lara Maria Rosa, ‘A proposito delle medaglie “d’ordine del Signor Cardinale”: Federico Borromeo committente per San Carlo’, Rassegna di Studi e Notizie Castello Sforzesco 39 (2017): 249–266. Bascapè, Carlo Maria, De Vita et Rebus Gestis Caroli S.R.E. Cardinalis, Tituli S. Praxedis Archiepiscopi Mediolani Libri Septem (Ingolstadt, 1592). Bascapè, Carlo Maria, Della vita e fatti di San Carlo cardinale di s. Prassede et arcivescovo di Milano (Bologna, 1614). Bouley, Bradford A., Pious Postmortems. Anatomy, Sanctity and the Catholic Church in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). 78 Lettere di buone feste proposte e risposte, 1644, p. 229, ‘Lettere del Gianfranco Maia Materdona da Roma 1625 al Sign. NN. a Tivoli’: ‘Vi mando solo per Vostro profitto tre corone del Signore: l’una di alabastro, l’altra di ebano, la terza di radici di rose. Di più vi mando vinticinque medaglie benedette da N.S., a mia preghiera. Le corone hanno l’Indulgenza di S. Carlo, e le medaglie quelle de’ 5 Santi canonizati di fresco.’ 79 Lea, History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences, 1896, p. 519. 80 Copeland, ‘Saints, Devotion, and Canonisation’, 2012. 81 Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, per. est. 18/8. 256, Declaratio et decretum, 1657: ‘quaecumque coronae, rosaria, grana, calculi, cruces, numismata, medalliae vulgo nuncupata, & sacrae imagines, sive sint S. Caroli Boromaei, sive quinque sanctorum a fel. Recor. Gregorio XV in sanctorum numerum relatorum.’

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

Burzer, Katja, San Carlo Borromeo: Konstruktion und Inszenierung eines Heiligenbildes in Spannungsfeld zwischen Mailand und Rom (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2011). Casale, Vittorio, L’Arte per le canonizzazioni: l’attività artistica intorno alle canonizzazioni e alle beatificazioni del Seicento (Turin: Allemandi, 2011). Copeland, Clare, ‘Saints, Devotion and Canonisation in Early Modern Italy’, History Compass 10.3 (2012): 260–269. De Boer, Wietse, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline and Public Order in CounterReformation Milan (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Deagan, Kathleen, Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500–1800, vol. 2: Portable Personal Possessions (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002). Dechiaratione et decreto dalla Santità di N.S. Clemente VIII sopra l’Indulgenze, che tanto da Sua Santità, quanto da suoi Predecessori sono state fin’hora concesse, & per l’avenire si concederanno alle Corone, Grani, Crocette, & Imagini, o Medaglie benedette (Rome, 9 January 1597). Declaratio et decretum Sanctissimi D.N. Alexandri Papae VII super indulgentiis, quae tam a Sanctititate Sua, quam ab eius praedecessoribus, coronis, rosariis, granis, calculis, crucibus, numismatibus, medaliis vulgo nuncupatis, & sacris imaginibus benedictis, hactenus concessae sunt, & in posterum a Sanctitate sua concedentur (Rome, 6 February 1657). Di Filippo, Claudia, ‘The Reformation and the Catholic Revival in the Borromeo’s Age’, in A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Milan: The Distinctive Features of an Italian State, ed. by Andrea Gamberini (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 93–117. Ditchfield, Simon, ‘Carlo Borromeo in the Construction of Roman Catholicism as a World Religion’, Carlo Borromeo e il cattolicesimo dell’età moderna: nascita e fortuna di un modello di santità, special issue of Studia Borromaica 25 (2011): 3–24. ———, ‘Coping with the “Beati Moderni”: Canonization Procedures in the Aftermath of the Council of Trent’, in Ite Inflammate Omnia: Selected Historical Papers from Conferences Held at Loyola and Rome in 2006, ed. by Thomas M. McCoog (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 2010), pp. 413–439. ———, Liturgy, Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the Preservation of the Particular (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Falato, Giulia, Alfonso Vagnone’s ‘Tongyou Jiaoyu’ (On the Education of Children, c. 1632) (Leiden: Brill, 2020). Frangi, Francesco, ‘Tra “vero ritratto” e fervore devozionale: riflessioni sull’iconografia di S. Carlo in Lombardia nel tardo Cinquecento e nel primo Seicento’, in Carlo Borromeo e il cattolicesimo dell’età moderna: nascita e fortuna di un modello di santità, special issue of Studia Borromaica 25 (2011): 211–254. Gamberini, Andrea, ed., A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Milan: The Distinctive Features of an Italian State (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

337

338

Minou Schraven

Gerken, Claudia, Entstehung und Funktion von Heiligenbildern in nachtridentinischen Italien (1588–1622) (Petersberg: Imhof, 2015). Giannini, Massimo Carlo, ‘Carlo Borromeo da arcivescovo di Milano a santo della monarchia’, Chronica Nova 43 (2017): 19–52. Giussano, Pietro Giovanni, Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, prete cardinale del titolo di Santa Prassede Arcivescovo di Milano (Rome: Stamperia Camera Apostolica, 1610). Gotor, Miguel, I beati del papa: santità, inquisizione e obbedienza in età moderna (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002). Grattarola, Marco Aurelio, Successi maravigliosi della veneratione di S. Carlo (Milan, 1614). Jones, Pamela M., ‘Andrea Commodi’s “S. Carlo Borromeo Venerating the Holy Nail” (ca. 1621–22) in S. Carlo ai Catinari’, in Altarpieces and their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 137–200. ———, ‘Celebrating New Saints in Rome and across the Globe’, in A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492–1692, ed. by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 148–167. ———, ‘The Court of Humility. Carlo Borromeo and the Ritual of Reform’, in The Possessions of a Cardinal: Politics, Piety and Art, 1450–1700, ed. by Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M. Richardson (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 166–185. ———, Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana: Art Patronage and Reform in SeventeenthCentury Milan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Lanzeni, Laura, ‘Portrait of Fede Galizia’, in Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, ed. by Andrea Bayer (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), p. 183. Lea, Henry Charles, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1896). Noyes, Ruth S., Peter Paul Rubens and the Counter-Reformation Crisis of the Beati Moderni (London: Routledge, 2018). Pagani, Fabrizio, ‘Marco Aurelio Grattarola e la canonizzazione di Carlo Borromeo’, Carlo Borromeo e il cattolicesimo dell’età moderna: nascita e fortuna di un modello di santità, special issue of Studia Borromaica 25 (2011): 73–100. Pisoni, Carlo Alessandro, ‘Reliquie e diplomazia: documenti per San Carlo Borromeo dalle raccolte archivistiche e librarie dell’Isola Bella’, Carlo Borromeo e il cattolicesimo dell’età moderna: nascita e fortuna di un modello di santità, special issue of Studia Borromaica 25 (2011): 111–134. Po-Chia, Ronnie, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Rihouet, Pascale, Art Moves: The Material Culture of Processions in Renaissance Perugia (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). Riordan, Timothy, ‘“To Excite the Devotion of the Catholics”: The Use and Meaning of Catholic Religious Medals in the Colonial Period’, Historical Archaeology 49.4 (2015): 71–86.

Miracle-Working Portraits of a Cardinal Saint 

Rivola, Francesco, Vita di Federico Borromeo, cardinale del Titolo di S. Maria degli Angeli, ed arcivescovo di Milano (Milan, 1656). Schraven, Minou, ‘Religious Festival Culture after Trent: From Rome to Borromeo’s Milan, and Back Again’, in Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy: The Art and Culture of Conspicuous Commemoration (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 115–158. Schulz, Karl, ‘Der Heilige Karl Borromäus auf Münzen und Medaillen des Wiener Münzkabinetts’, Numismatische Zeitschrift 98 (1984): 63–83. Shaffern, Robert W., ‘The Medieval Theology of Indulgences’, in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by Robert N. Swanson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 11–36. Siraisi, Nancy, ‘Signs and Evidence: Autopsy and Sanctity in Late Sixteenth-Century Italy’, in Medicine and the Italian Universities, 1250–1600, ed. by Nancy Siraisi (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 356–380. Swanson, Robert N., ‘Praying for Pardon: Devotional Indulgences in Late Medieval England’, in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by Robert N. Swanson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 215–240. Tingle, Elizabeth C., Indulgences after Luther: Pardons in Counter-Reformation France (London: Pickering & Chattoo, 2015). Turchini, Angelo, La Fabbrica di un santo: il processo di canonizzazione di Carlo Borromeo e la Contrariforma (Monferrato: Marietti, 1984). Van Deusen, Nancy E., Embodying the Sacred: Women Mystics in Seventeenth-Century Lima (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018). Viscardi, Giuseppe Maria, ‘Andrea Perbenedetti: vescovo borromaico nel mezzogiorno secentesco’, in San Carlo e il suo tempo: atti del Convegno Internazionale nel IV centenario della morte (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1986).

About the Author Minou Schraven specializes in early modern Italian art with a focus on festival culture, processions, and the ritual and ceremonial use of portrait medals and coins. A lecturer at Amsterdam University College and Research Fellow at the Amsterdam Centre for Religious History at Vrije Universiteit, she currently works on the project “Blessed and Indulgenced Objects in Early Modern Catholic Worlds”, with a special interest in blessed rosary beads and Agni Dei.

339

13. Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate Piers Baker-Bates

Abstract The role played by cardinal portraits in Spain in the sixteenth century has not been much discussed, in part because there are few surviving examples, and many of these are still hard of access. Furthermore, Spanish cardinals formed a minority in the Roman Curia, even in the years of Spanish predominance in Europe after the Council of Trent. Extant portraits of Spanish cardinals are most common in Spain, where, as with images of ecclesiastics of lesser rank, they tended to form an integral part of a funerary complex or other commemorative setting. Alongside their tomb, the ecclesiastic left his portrait as an eternal memory of himself in the pious foundation he had established, where he is often represented in the very act of devotion. Keywords: cardinals; Spain; Council of Trent

El Greco’s striking portrait of Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara, Archbishop of Seville and Inquisitor General of Spain, painted around 1600 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is well known (Plate 12). What is not often acknowledged is its comparative rarity; in comparison with the number of images that survive in all media depicting Italian cardinals both before and after the Council of Trent, there are relatively few portraits of their Spanish counterparts in any medium. Niño de Guevara’s image is indeed almost a unicum. The Spanish kingdoms had historically endured a considerable numerical disadvantage within the cardinalate compared with Italy, and even France.1 Even so, the continuing relative absence of cardinal portraiture from Spain in the first half of the sixteenth century is striking. 1

Broderick, ‘Sacred College of Cardinals’, 1987.

Baker-Bates, P. and I. Brooke (eds.), Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021 doi 10.5117/9789463725514_ch13

344

Piers Baker-Bates

By the sixteenth century the Spanish crown exercised an ever-increasing degree of control over the church and the Spanish monarch, among the other expressions of that power, took a direct and close interest in the appointment of cardinals.2 The Venetian ambassador at Rome, Lorenzo Priuli, wrote in his dispatch to the Senate of 1586 that he had heard directly from the Spanish ambassador that Philip II: ‘being aware how much damage a Spanish cardinal who was not his dependent could do to him, besought the pope in an official dispatch that he should never choose a Spaniard who had not been named by him, and rather than that he would be pleased if none was created’.3 As a result, the vast majority of Spanish-born cardinals were drawn from a small pool of aristocratic families and held a limited range of episcopal offices upon appointment; often for such men a cardinal’s hat was but one more honour among a portfolio of other family office holding. This essay, which forms a conclusion to our volume, sets out to move the debate around the cardinal portrait beyond Italy as well as beyond questions of identity. It therefore explores further some of the issues raised earlier in the volume in relation to Italy through a number of case studies and approaches. I intend to show the different uses that cardinal portraits assumed in Spain where being a cardinal was only one among a number of prelatial roles that prominent ecclesiastics occupied, the majority serving also as archbishops and bishops of major sees. Indeed, as I will argue, such images perhaps should not even be distinguished as a separate category of portraits as, what can be applied to cardinals applies equally to all ranks of the Spanish ecclesiastical hierarchy. Often too these images, in all media, played an important role in constructing a ‘cultural memory’ of the pious works of the deceased.

Portraiture and Identities Before analyzing the reasons behind this absence of cardinal portraiture in greater depth, there are two basic questions that need to be addressed. First that of portraiture in Spain more generally; and, secondly that of Spanish identity itself. As to the first, there persists a historical lack of interest in individual portraiture in Spain. Scholarship on Renaissance portraiture in particular often presents lacunae where the Spanish material is concerned, and much work still needs to be done in this field. It is traditionally held that in Spain portraiture began to emerge as an 2 Borromeo, ‘Crown and the Church’, 2006; Fernández, ‘Des Créatures’, 2013. 3 Albèri, Relazioni, 1857, vol. 2.4, p. 327: ‘che conosce quanto danno gli può fare un cardinale spagnuolo che non dipenda da lui, far fare officio per ordinario col Pontefice che non elegga mai spagnuolo se non è nominato da lui, e più presto si contenta che non ne sia fatto alcuno’.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

independent genre only over the course of the sixteenth century – much later than it had in Italy or the Netherlands – and was at first confined almost exclusively to members of the ruling Habsburg dynasty or their closest confidants. 4 Furthermore, the artists involved were often foreigners, from either Italy or the northern Netherlands. In the first half of the century, these men, like Titian, usually remained working in their own countries, producing works of art for export. Artists of a later generation, such as Anthonis Mor and Sofonisba Anguissola, made the actual move to Spain, either temporarily or permanently.5 Niño de Guevara’s portrait is typical in that – like the few other surviving individual painted portraits of Spanish cardinals from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries – it was painted in Spain itself but by an artistic transplant, El Greco, who played an important role in establishing portraiture as a genre in the Iberian peninsula.6 Although I shall consider such painted portraits first, my argument will not be confined to painting alone, as Spanish ecclesiastics, particularly after Trent, were represented across all media. There is also a typological difference in ecclesiastical portraiture between Italy and Spain; Spanish cardinals are often portrayed in action, role playing, whereas portraits of their Italian counterparts tend to be more passive. The second question is how to identify a cardinal as specifically Spanish, given the Spanish monarchy’s imperial reach; it is therefore necessary first to define what precisely I will mean by Spanish in the context of this essay. While a recognizable Spanish faction within the Sacred College coalesced after the accession of Philip II, the concept of a Spanish identity per se at Rome remained fluid in these years.7 Within the one faction, there were the internal subdivisions, principally between Castilians and Aragonese, let alone those involving the subjects of a yet wider monarchy, such as the Neapolitans, and later the Portuguese. Particularly in the period during and immediately after the Council of Trent, a number of cardinals born outside the Iberian Peninsula nonetheless remained technically subjects of the Spanish crown, especially many among the Italians or Flemings. Others were allied to it more loosely, because of either familial loyalty or the hope of pecuniary gain. For example, in a letter of 18 March 1561, the Venetian ambassador in Madrid describes the considerable promotion the previous February of eighteen cardinals by Pius IV, of whom twelve were ‘dependenti’ of His Majesty.8 In fact, only one of 4 Falomir, ‘Los órigenes’, 2004; Ruiz Gómez, ‘La creación’, 2006. 5 Campbell, Renaissance Portraits, 1990, pp. 234–246; Checa, Tiziano, 1994; Woodall, Anthonis Mor, 2007; Ruiz Gómez, Tale of Two Women Painters, 2019; Cole, Sofonisba’s Lesson, 2019. 6 Álvarez Lopera, ‘Portraits’, 2004. 7 Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 2001, pp. 132–141; Visceglia, ‘International Politics’, 2002, pp. 109–114; Pattenden, ‘Rome as a “Spanish Avignon”?’, 2015; Baker-Bates, ‘Establishing Spanish Cultural Identities’, 2018; González Tornel, ‘Forging an Image’, 2018. 8 Archivo di Stato di Venezia, Spagna, 4, fol. 205r.

345

346

Piers Baker-Bates

these twelve men, Francisco Pacheco de Toledo, had been born in what is now Spain; the rest were either Italians or Flemings. In any case, Pacheco was often an object of suspicion to his fellow Spaniards in Rome.9 In contrast the Burgundian, Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, created cardinal in the same promotion, was the head of the Spanish faction in Rome for many years. Granvelle’s manifold activities as patron formed the subject of an important recent exhibition held at his native Besançon, where it was made clear that he curated his image in all media.10 Portraits of Granvelle survive from throughout his ecclesiastical career. For example, two portraits of him were painted when he was in minoribus, as Bishop of Arras, around 1548: the one by Titian and the other by Anthonis Mor.11 Images of Granvelle as cardinal survive in at least three autograph portraits from the life, some fifteen years apart and painted tellingly by both a Fleming and an Italian. These are by Willem Key, datable to between 1561 and 1564, and two by Scipione Pulzone, one of which – that in the Courtauld collection (Fig. 11.6) – is signed, and dated 1576.12 Granvelle’s likeness also appears in at least 25 medals of varying size and format, 8 of them as cardinal, including a number of silver medals commemorating his red hat, which were cast in 1561 by the Antwerp sculptor, Jacob Jonghelinck – one among many artists whose career he had promoted.13 Compared to contemporaries of all nationalities, Granvelle’s example stands out, and the contrast with Spanish-born cardinals becomes all the more striking, as few of the latter ever took such a pronounced interest in their ecclesiastical image. Francisco Pacheco de Toledo, not only Bishop of Burgos but also Cardinal Protector of Spain, was one of the most powerful cardinals of mid-century, serving in the role between 1561 until his recall in 1574. His likeness, however, is only known from one anonymous medal, now in the Bargello, in the style of Pastorino, that was cast in 1569.14 For the purposes of this essay, I shall be confining myself to the following geographical and temporal boundaries: portrait images of cardinals like Pacheco 9 Visceglia, ‘International Politics’, 2017, pp. 67–69. 10 Reibel and Mucciarelli-Régnier, Antoine de Granvelle, 2017, pp. 54–89. 11 Curie, ‘Quelques Portraits’, 1996, pp. 159–174; Rowlands, Collections, 1996, pp. 167–178; Woodall, Anthonis Mor, 2007, pp. 137ff. and 157–160. 12 Curie, ‘Quelques portraits’, 1996, p. 170; Leone de Castris, ‘La cardinal Granvelle’, 1996; Jonckheere, Willem Key, 2011, pp. 104–106; Acconci and Zuccari, eds., Scipione Pulzone, 2013, pp. 274–277; Reibel and Mucciarelli-Régnier, eds., Antoine de Granvelle, 2017, pp. 190–194; see Danielle Carrabino’s essay in this volume. 13 Van Durme, El Cardenal, pp. 293–294; Smolderen, Jacques Jonghelinck, 1996, pp. 242–248; Pollard, Renaissance Medals, vol. 2: France, Germany, The Netherlands, and England, 2007, pp. 766–767; Reibel and Mucciarelli-Régnier, eds., Antoine de Granvelle, 2017, pp. 195–197. 14 Pollard, Medaglie Italiane, 1985, vol. 2, p. 718; Toderi and Vannel, eds., Le Medaglie Italiane, 2000, vol. 2, p. 819.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

who were both born on the Iberian Peninsula and who were active roughly between the accession of Clement VII in 1523 and the death of Paul V in 1621. These cardinals were relatively few in number but form a distinct grouping. Furthermore, almost all of the men who will be under discussion were Castilian by birth; there were only ever a handful of Aragonese cardinals in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and almost without exception all of these men were related to the two Borgia popes.15 Even at the height of Spain’s sixteenth-century power, Castile continued to enjoy a relatively small number of cardinals. After the accession of Clement VII in 1523 until the end of the century, there were never more than five at any one time, apart from a brief moment in the mid-1530s when there were six. Furthermore, there were no longer any Portuguese cardinals during the period of Spanish rule of this country between 1580 and 1640. On account of the paucity of portraits of Spanish cardinals, images of other high-ranking ecclesiastics will be included here, as these all conform to a mode of representation that illustrates the ideal Spanish Tridentine prelate; there were many more Spanish clerics of lesser rank, but these still have comparatively few portraits.

Portraits in Paint Applying these criteria, even before Trent, it is hard to think of a single portrait of a cardinal from the Iberian peninsula that delineates individual features, apart from the occasional donor portrait. This is exemplified in two images from the fifteenth century, which depict the Castilian aristocrat, Pedro González de Mendoza, who became cardinal in 1473 and died in 1495. The first, on panel, is likely to have been painted by a Hispano-Flemish artist known as Juan Rodríguez de Segovia; it probably formed part of a retable that the cardinal commissioned around the 1480s for the convent of San Francisco in his native Guadalajara.16 Of particular note is the cardinal’s pose, kneeling before a prie-dieu, with lesser ecclesiastics clustered behind, and holding his attributes of episcopal office – a format to which we shall return. The second image, executed some ten to fifteen years later, is the apse semi-dome fresco painted most likely by Antoniazzo Romano for Cardinal Mendoza’s Roman titular of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme after Mendoza’s death. In the centre, the figure kneeling before St. Helena and the True Cross is Cardinal Mendoza himself, although there has been debate as to whether this kneeling donor represents Mendoza or his secretary and successor

15 Pellegrini, ‘Il Profilo’, 2001. 16 Bosch, Art, Liturgy and Legend, 2000, pp. 111–114.

347

348

Piers Baker-Bates

as titular cardinal, Cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal, who carried out the work.17 In both their choice of artist and location these two images also demonstrate how Spanish cardinals’ divided loyalties – between Rome and Spain – could dictate their patronage. I have only been able to identify a handful of instances of a Spanish cardinal having his independent portrait painted by an Italian artist in Italy. Bernardino de Carvajal is one, but he is an exception, as he spent the majority of his career in Italy – the bulk of it in Rome – and became a major patron of the arts and letters there entirely on a par with his Italian contemporaries.18 There are therefore a number of portraits surviving of Carvajal in a wide variety of media, including the portrait by the Milanese, Bernardino de’Conti, now in Berlin. To underline just how unusual Carvajal was, even his famous and powerful contemporary, the Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros – who became cardinal in 1507 and died in 1517 – seems to have had his likeness captured within his lifetime only rarely.19 There appears to be little change in this trend after Trent, although the situation is fluid and new evidence is still emerging. A successor to Francisco Pacheco as Cardinal Protector, Cardinal Pedro de Deza, was elevated in 1578 and resided in Rome for 22 years continuously until his death as one of the most influential and richest cardinals there.20 Nonetheless there is only the one surviving image that records his features, included in the woodcut of 1593 by Leonardo Parasole (Fig. 1.2).21 This lack of individual portraiture could be attributed to a shortage of available artists in Spain, but Deza had spent most of his cardinalate at Rome. Since our broader subject is the portrayal of the ideal Spanish Tridentine prelate, let us also consider the portraits of a cardinal manqué, Juan de Ribera. Ribera, Archbishop of Valencia, was appointed in 1568, aged only 36, and remained in post until his death in 1611. His devout life and his manifold pious works there led Pius V to describe Ribera in the document appointing him patriarch as: ‘lumen totius Hispaniae’ (light of all Spain). Nonetheless he never became cardinal and was only canonized as late as 1960.22 Many Spanish ecclesiastics spent their careers entirely within Spain in a single diocese, especially in the years after Trent, when episcopal 17 Gill, ‘Antoniazzo Romano’, 1995; Gardner von Teuffel, ‘New Light’, 2001; Pereda, ‘Pedro González de Mendoza’, 2009. 18 The bibliography on Carvajal as patron is extensive, e.g. Cantatore, ‘Un committente spagnolo’, 2001; see most recently, Freiberg, Bramante’s Tempietto, 2014; Marías, ‘Los clientes’, 2017, pp. 129ff.; Schirg, ‘Cortese’s Ideal Cardinal?’, 2017. 19 González Ramos, La pintura complutense, 2007, pp. 42–46, 121–133, and 218–236. 20 Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 2001, pp. 136–137 21 Bury, Print in Italy, 2001, pp.155–157; see also the introduction to this volume. 22 In a document that was reprinted in Jiménez, Vida, 1798, p. 43.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

residency was actively encouraged not only by the pope, but also by the king. Still, and unusually for such an important see and impressive personality, Ribera was neither promoted further nor yet made a cardinal. His episcopal activities were never uncontroversial, especially his ongoing harsh treatment of the Moriscos before their eventual expulsion in 1609.23 Unusually, Ribera has two contrasting portraits that date from the beginning and end of his ecclesiastical career. Both of these are by artists whose careers he supported: Luis de Morales and Juan Sariñena, respectively. Morales is seen as the paradigmatic artist of the Spanish sixteenth century, but it is perhaps telling that he painted almost no portraits. This particular portrait, however, is one of no less than three that Morales painted of the young Ribera, when Bishop of Badajoz between 1564 and 1567. Now in the Prado, the portrait was assumed to depict St. Ignatius Loyola, until it was correctly reidentified only in 1945.24 Furthermore, Ribera’s image has very recently been proven to be only one wing of a diptych and would originally have faced a painting of St. John the Baptist also by Morales. 25 Restoration has further revealed that Ribera’s hands were once clasped in prayer before the devout image, thus increasing his engagement with it. Such devotional portrait diptychs with an image of the patron on one wing were derived in the f irst instance from Flemish examples and were not uncommon in Spain. An early example is that by Michel Sittow, with the ambassador, Diego de Guevara, also facing a Virgin and Child, painted some 50 years earlier.26 From the end of Ribera’s career, there is the portrait by Juan Sariñena; this shows the Patriarch in his old age, although still recognizably the same man. It was painted in 1612, the year after his death, and was modelled on a portrait by the same artist executed about f ive years earlier – such post-mortem portraits were not unusual.27 Once again, the pious prelate is caught in the act of devotion, kneeling with hands clasped before a monstrance containing the Holy Sacrament and demonstrably in the act of prayer, with the words issuing from his mouth ‘Tu es Sacerdos’, taken from Psalm 110. This powerful combination of text and image is a not uncommon feature of Spanish devotional portraiture of the early seventeenth century. Albeit he was never made cardinal, I have discussed Ribera’s case at some length as it provides the lineaments for the argument that follows. 23 Ehlers, Between Christians and Moriscos, 2006; Fiume, La cacciata, 2014. 24 Robres and Castell, ‘El Divino Morales’, 1945, pp. 44–47. 25 Ruiz Gómez, Divine Morales, 2015, pp. 200–204. 26 Hand and Koppel, eds., Michel Sittow, 2018, pp. 78–83. 27 Benito Domenech, Juan Sariñena, 2007, pp. 170–171.

349

350

Piers Baker-Bates

Portraits in Paint: The Role of El Greco Perhaps the single most emblematic and discussed painted portrait of an actual Spanish cardinal post-Trent is the image with which this essay began (Plate 12). This portrait has finally been conclusively identified as Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara, and was painted around the spring of 1600 in Toledo by El Greco.28 José Álvarez Lopera has called it El Greco’s ‘only state portrait’, while Richard Kagan argued that ‘the artist’s success in Toledo […] depended primarily upon his skills as a portraitist.’29 For all that Niño de Guevara appears to conform to a recognizable type, it should be emphasized again that this is in a number of ways an unusual portrait of a Spanish cardinal. In the first place, the sitter was still alive and secondly the image largely conforms to the tradition of the passive Italian cardinal portrait type that El Greco knew both from his Roman years and from his experience of Titian, as opposed to the often more dynamic portraits of Spanish prelates, such as those of Juan de Ribera. As has been long discussed, the work clearly exhibits the influence of Titian’s portraits of Pope Paul III, now at the Museo di Capodimonte.30 In El Greco’s painting, Niño de Guevara is seated in a chair, half turned to the viewer, cast in the traditional pose of the Italian cardinal portrait – a visual reference that would have been obvious to the work’s privileged audience. The silk brocade behind Cardinal Guevara is, however, notably Spanish, and it replaces the neutral green backgrounds favoured by Italian artists. What is more immediately striking though is that it is among the first portraits to depict an important individual wearing their spectacles, which although a sign of bodily weakness was also a symbol of erudition and wealth.31 Above all, the portrait displays a psychological acuity that is unusual in images of Spanish cardinals and indeed is not particularly flattering to the sitter who seems almost belittled by his grand surroundings and rich dress. The portrait was commissioned, not by the cardinal himself, but by his nephew, Pedro Laso de la Vega, the first Conde de los Arcos, who was both a patron of El Greco and also an eager collector of family portraits.32 It has recently been speculated that this portrait could have been intended to be placed above the cardinal’s tomb in Toledo’s Hieronymite convent of San Pablo, where a copy was recorded in the early twentieth century.33 El Greco’s other cardinal portrait depicts Cardinal Juan Pardo de Tavera, Archbishop of Toledo, who had died in 1545. This work is more emblematic of the genre 28 Marías, El Greco, 2013, pp. 248–249; Liedtke, ‘Three Paintings’, 2015, pp. 18–25. 29 Álvarez Lopera, ‘The Portraits’, 2004, p. 133; Kagan, ‘El Greco’s Portraits’, 2010, p. 60. 30 Most recently Liedtke, ‘Three Paintings’, 2015, p. 22. 31 Scholz-Hänsel, ‘Spectacles of the Grand Inquisitor’, 1995; Hanley, ‘Optical Symbolism’, 2009. 32 Kagan ‘Count of Los Arcos’, 1992, p.154; Liedtke, ‘Three Paintings’, 2015, pp. 20–22. 33 Cossío, El Greco, 1908, pp. 423–424.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

in Spain, post-mortem portraits being a well-established category of image. Two portraits of Tavera’s uncle, Diego Deza y Tavera, Archbishop of Seville, who died in 1523, were painted by Francisco de Zurbarán as late as 1631 for the prior’s cell and library of the Colegio de Santo Tomás, which was founded by the archbishop in his see in 1517.34 His nephew, Archbishop of Toledo from 1534, had also founded an ecclesiastical institution in his archdiocese, the eponymous hospital de Tavera. El Greco’s portrait was painted in 1609 and was intended by the then administrator of the hospital, Pedro Salazar de Mendoza, to adorn his own chapel within the church there. According to his will, he left the portrait to the hospital: ‘to be placed where everyone may enjoy it’.35 Salazar de Mendoza had already written the Chrónica del Cardenal Juan de Tavera in 1603, in which ironically he specifically describes Cardinal Tavera’s aversion to being portrayed, which had become something of a topos in ecclesiastical portraiture.36 Here, the author writes how the cardinal: ‘shows as well his great modesty by not allowing himself to be portrayed […] The portrait which is placed in the chapter of his church and others which are in the hospital, were made after his death, under the instructions or by the hand of the same Berruguete’.37 In El Greco’s portrait of Tavera, the cardinal’s features had to be formed on the lines of the ideal Tridentine intellectual prelate, as devised by the artist himself, and there are few props. As the Chrónica states, the likeness here was based directly on a wax copy of the death mask taken by Alonso Berruguete (which still survives in the hospital today) for the effigy on the cardinal’s tomb – the sculptor’s last work.38 This model undoubtedly explains Tavera’s particularly skullike appearance in El Greco’s portrait. These circumstances also represent a curious reversal of the normative practice whereby it was a portrait that usually formed the basis for the likeness on a funerary monument, which will be discussed in relation to cardinals’ tomb effigies. There is a third iteration of the cardinal portrait by El Greco. Gaspar de Quiroga was a successor to Tavera, first as Archbishop of Toledo from 1577 and cardinal from 1578; he was, however, also an important patron of art in his own right. Alongside several other contemporaries, Quiroga’s likeness is apparently to be found in El 34 Delenda, Francisco de Zurbarán, vol. 2: Conjuntos y el Obrador, 2010, pp. 100–101; Lorite Cruz, ‘Fray Diego de Deza’, 2014. 35 ‘para que se ponga donde todos gocendel’; the will is selectively quoted in Kagan, ‘Pedro de Salazar de Mendoza’, 1984, p. 86. 36 Portús, ‘Retrato, humildad y santidad’, 1999. 37 Salazar de Mendoza, Chronico, 1603: ‘mostró también su mucha modestia en que no consintió retratar […] El retrato que se puso en el cabildo de su iglesia y otros que hay en el hospital, se hicieron después que murió, por orden o mano del mesmo Berruguete’. 38 Gaya Nuño, Alonso Berruguete, 1944, pp. 27–31; Arias Martínez, Alonso Berruguete, 2011, pp. 195–203; Vázquez, ‘Final Commission’, 2019, pp. 168–174.

351

352

Piers Baker-Bates

Greco’s most famous work, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, painted between 1586 and 1588.39 His features are imposed on those of St. Augustine, who is placed at the centre of the lower register of figures, holding the body of the deceased count at the head. This inclusion of well-known contemporaries brought the popular local legend into the present day. Quiroga is also unusual in apparently commissioning a portrait from an artist trained in Italy to celebrate his elevation; for our argument, it is interesting that Quiroga’s commission of his portrait from El Greco represents a particular request, albeit it is not known for which location it was intended. Both artist and sitter have recently been discussed in an article by Cloe Cavero. 40 According to Cavero’s convincing thesis, this portrait, which is now in the Prado, depicts Quiroga and would have been painted in Venice by a disciple of Tintoretto – who was both almost the official portraitist of the Venetian cardinalate in these years as well as a favourite with Spanish patrons – to mark the Spaniard’s ascension to the cardinalate. 41 Here the newly created cardinal assumes the typical Italian pose and although slumped in his chair, looks fiercely at the viewer.

Seriality Unlike Guevara and Quiroga, the majority of extant, independent portraits of Spanish cardinals were included within series of bishops and archbishops displayed in prominent locations within each diocese. This was a particularly Spanish trend – not all of those depicted were necessarily cardinals, and there is little to distinguish the cardinals among their number – and many were painted post-mortem. This inclusion in series is perhaps a reflection of a renewed emphasis upon the episcopal office, one that stresses the collective and focuses on the apostolic succession rather than the individual portrayed. There has been little research done on these series as a whole, but such episcopal galleries can be found in all dioceses throughout the Iberian world, not only in Spain itself but also in her former New World empire. Portraits are either individual canvases placed in a series or else frescoed upon the wall, in some cases painted by well-known artists, in others by anonymous artisans; most were usually the result of a commission by the canons. Within Spain itself, the series at Toledo – including images of all three of the cardinals discussed above – is an excellent example that is often cited. Here many 39 Marías, El Greco, 2013, p. 177; Cavero de Carondelet, ‘Las relaciones artísticas’, 2016, p. 12. 40 Cavero de Carondelet, ‘Las relaciones artísticas’, 2016. 41 Checa, Tiziano, 1994, pp. 224–231 and 277–288; Falomir, ‘Tintoretto’, 2007, pp. 159–167; see Sarah Ferrari’s essay in this volume.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

of the artists’ names are still recorded, and they form part of a larger ongoing series of archbishops placed high in the chapter house of the cathedral. They were described vividly by the humanist priest, Blas Ortiz, in 1549 as follows: ‘Above which are the portraits of the previous archbishops, so perfectly painted that for those seeing them unexpectedly they would judge them rather alive than painted’. 42 The original commission for the entire cycle of chapter house frescoes had been given by Cardinal Cisneros to Juan de Borgoña, who worked on them between 1508 and 1511, recording the archbishops up to Cisneros himself. This is the only portrait that is known to have been made within his lifetime. 43 Among those who were portrayed beneath at a later date are Cardinal Quiroga, whose individual portraits by the local artist, Luis de Velasco, have already been discussed. 44 A further example of an individual portrait in this same series portrays Quiroga’s eventual successor as Archbishop of Toledo and cardinal from 1599, Bernardo Sandoval y Rojas. This is a documented work by Luis Tristán, who received payment for the portrait on 15 March 1619 (the year after the cardinal’s death). The contract specifies the portrait was ‘to be placed in the Chapterhouse with those of the prelates of this holy church’.45 This canonical image of Sandoval y Rojas was derived from portraits of the cardinal as kneeling donor in a number of images of saints by Tristán that were made while he was still alive, such as that of St. Bernard, the cardinal’s saintly protector, or St. Dominic. 46 A recently discovered, seemingly unique portrait of a Spanish cardinal painted in Rome by a Roman artist should be placed within this same lineage, albeit in a Roman context, like that discussed in Arnold Witte’s essay in this volume. This is the portrait by Ottavio Leoni, painted in 1609, representing Antonio Zapata who had been made cardinal in 1604.47 It once formed part of a similar series of portraits of distinguished benefactors placed in the chapter house of the then recently refounded, but now demolished, convent of Sant’Urbano ai Pantani. Zapata lived in Rome during the majority of his time as a cardinal, and while Leoni portrayed at one time or another most of the cardinals then in Rome, these included few Spaniards. It seems probable therefore that Zapata’s portrait can be entirely connected to his official role. 42 Gonzálvez Ruiz and Pereda, La catedral de Toledo, 1999, p. 220: ‘Sobre las quales están los retratos de los arzobispos pasados, tan perfectamente pintados, que el que las mirare de improvisso antes los juzgara vivos que pintados’. 43 Mateo Gómez, ‘La pintura toledana’, 2000; Mateo Gómez, Juan de Borgoña, 2004, pp. 87–89. 44 Mateo Gómez and López-Yarto Elizalde, Pintura toledana, 2003, pp. 286 and 308–309. 45 Pérez Sánchez and Navarrete Prieto, Luis Tristán, 2001, p. 246; document reprinted, pp. 292–293: ‘para ponerle en el cabildo en el número de los perlados de esta santa yglesia’. 46 Pérez Sánchez and Navarrete Prieto, Luis Tristán, 2001, pp. 227–228. 47 Primarosa, Ottavio Leoni, 2017, p. 688; for Leoni as a portraitist of cardinals, see the introduction to this volume.

353

354

Piers Baker-Bates

Effigies Given this relative lack of painted portraits, it is worth considering what other works of material culture that could be considered as cardinal portraits were produced in Spain in these years? The use of painted portraiture as a memorial has already been mentioned in the case of cardinals Niño de Guevara and Tavera, and a number of further striking likenesses of Spanish cardinals, both before and after Trent, can be found instead on their tomb effigies – a phenomenon that has already been discussed for Rome by Carol M. Richardson earlier in this volume. The tomb of Cardinal Cisneros at Alcalá de Henares, begun in 1519 by Domenico Fancelli and completed by Bartolomé Ordóñez, is an excellent example, from which archetype is derived that of Cardinal Tavera at Toledo by Berruguete already mentioned. 48 A direct model on the Cisneros tomb is specified in the contract for that for Cardinal Tavera. 49 Both cardinals had died in Spain, but it was rare, even if a Spanish cardinal died in Rome, for him to be buried there: the bodies of almost all Spanish cardinals, regardless of where they had died, were brought back. The first Jesuit cardinal, Francisco de Toledo, who died in 1596 is one notable exception; he was buried in the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in a tomb commissioned by the canons at his express wish (Fig. 13.1). This consists of an upright structure with an architectonic surround containing an epitaph on black marble that is topped by a bust in a niche, which was taken from the cardinal’s death mask. Before eighteenth-century renovations, this tomb originally occupied a far more prominent location in the basilica than it does now; in the central nave, the slight twist in the bust would have made it seem as if the deceased cardinal was looking towards the high altar. Toledo, however, was from a comparatively humble background and had been based in Rome for almost his entire career; he had no particular roots in Spain.50 In Spain, tombs also developed differently from Italian examples; and a type that had increased in popularity from the fifteenth century onward showed the deceased fully ‘activated’, to use the words of Erwin Panofsky.51 Here they are not recumbent, or even leaning on one elbow, but kneeling, and facing an elaborate, usually sculpted altarpiece – often, although not invariably, the work of the same sculptor – as well as the Sacrament tabernacle.52 For example, the instructions to the sculptor, Juan Bazcardo, for the tomb of Don Pedro González del Castillo, Archbishop Elect of Granada, in the church of La Redonda, Logroño, specify minutely 48 Lenaghan, Arrival, 1993, vol. 1, pp. 399–404; Migliaccio, ‘Precisiones’, 2004, pp. 383–384. 49 Arias Martínez, Alonso Berruguete, 2011, pp. 201–203. 50 Ostrow, ‘Francisco de Toledo’, 1983, pp. 86–96; Butters, ‘Uses and Abuses’, 2007, pp. 280–291. 51 Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, 1964, pp. 86–91. 52 Woods, ‘Activation of the Image’, 2016.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

Fig. 13.1 Funerary Monument to Cardinal Francisco de Toledo, Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore (© Chris Siwicki).

355

356

Piers Baker-Bates

the pose and orientation of the kneeling wooden statue on his tomb. Accordingly, the effigy of the archbishop, ‘which should be upon his knees, hands clasped, head uncovered and looking at the Most Holy Sacrament, ensuring that the sculpture has a delicate movement but with the greatest gravity and decency possible’.53 Perhaps the most spectacular example of this type of tomb in Spain was, however, sculpted by a Florentine, Giambologna, arguably the most famous sculptor throughout Europe by 1600. It depicts the kneeling figure of Cardinal Rodrigo Castro de Osorio – Archbishop of Seville since 1581 and elevated in 1583 – in the presbytery of the Jesuit college that he founded in his native Monforte de Lemos in Galicia (Fig. 13.2). In May 1598, a letter from Francesco Gucciardini to Duke Ferdinando I of Florence describes how the cardinal has sent to Giambologna a valuable gold chain worth 240 ducats.54 The previous month, the cardinal had first seen this kneeling bronze image of himself sculpted by Giambologna. He was evidently more than satisfied with the sculptor’s ‘exquisite care’, and his will further describes specifically the Giambologna sculpture as ‘a bronze statue in my likeness’.55 Artist and patron may have met in person as Castro had passed through Florence and Pisa in 1588–1589. Nonetheless, according to Francisco Pacheco, the artist and priest, Pablo de Céspedes, executed a clay model of the cardinal’s head to be sent to Giambologna: Céspedes ‘made of him a famous clay head, in order that it should be made of bronze in Florence by Giambologna, and placed upon his tomb; of which I have a version in wax’.56 Pacheco knew all this, as both he and Céspedes had formed an intimate part of the cardinal’s erudite household, and it is on Pacheco’s wax copy of this head that the presumed illustration of the cardinal in the Libro de Retratos was based; indeed, Castro Osorio’s is the only cardinal portrait that is included in Pacheco’s entire volume.57 The final placing of Giambologna’s sculpture reveals how powerful ecclesiastics such as Cardinal Castro chose to be remembered through their place and type of burial, which have since formed enduring repositories of their cultural memory. Almost always these contain a lifelike image of the deceased in some form, as in the case of the presumed copy of Niño de Guevara’s portrait installed above the 53 Document reproduced in Ramírez Martínez and Sainz Ripa, El Miguel Ángel, 1977, p. 193: ‘El qual a de estar yncado de rrodillas, las manos juntas, descubierta la cavessa y mirando al Sanctíssimo Sacramento, procurando que la causa tenga un movimento muy suabe con la mayor gravedad y desencia que se pueda’. 54 Document published in Goldberg, ‘Artistic Relations’, 1996, p. 532; Helmstutler di Dio and Rosario Coppel, Sculpture Collections, 2013, p. 143. 55 Document published in Cotarelo Valledor, El Cardenal, 1945, pp. 326–342 (327): ‘una estatua de bronce a mi semejanza’. 56 Pacheco, Libro, 1983, pp. 63 and 266: ‘hizo del una famosa cabeza de Escultura del barro, para que se vaciase de bronce en Florencia, por mano de Juan de Bolonia, y se pusiese en su sepulcro; la cual yo tengo de cera’. 57 Pacheco, Libro, 1983, p. 209.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

Fig. 13.2 Giambologna, Cardinal Rodrigo de Castro Osorio, Monforte de Lemos, Colegiata de la Antigua (© Piers Baker-Bates).

357

358

Piers Baker-Bates

Inquisitor’s tomb in Toledo. Located in the remote Monforte de Lemos, nevertheless here too Cardinal Castro Osorio’s memory lives on in perpetuity. Castro had showed an ongoing interest in his own memorialization, but other examples were only commissioned after the prelate in question’s death. In the collegiate church of San Pedro, Lerma, is the bronze statue of Castro’s predecessor as Archbishop of Seville, Cristóbal Rojas Sandoval, uncle of the Duke of Lerma; this archbishop died in 1580, but his nephew only commissioned the tomb in the early 1600s.58 Reverting to this idea of the activation of the effigy when ordering these tomb sculptures, the patron held no conception of them as works of art per se. That creativity was subordinate to the spiritual setting and function of these works is evident in Cardinal Rodrigo de Castro’s tomb; both the foundation document and his will specified for two similar niches to face each other across the presbytery – almost as if it were in the form of a devotional diptych.59 In one niche, the kneeling effigy of the cardinal – somewhat out of scale – was to be placed facing towards the other, with his cardinal’s hat hanging above. In the opposite niche is placed what is described in the will as a faithful copy, even down to the size, ‘taken from life’, of the Virgen de la Antigua that had previously been kept in the cardinal’s oratory in Seville. This image of the Virgin, still venerated in the Cathedral of Seville, had acted as patron of the city since the reconquest in 1248, when she had appeared to St. Ferdinand, King of Castile, as a guarantor of his victory. The cardinal’s will describes his ‘particular devotion’ to this Virgin; and his body was placed in her chapel in Seville Cathedral before it began the long journey to Monforte. Castro’s case also presents the culmination of trends that had developed in Spanish tomb sculpture through the course of the sixteenth century. Twenty years earlier, in December 1576, the elaborate tomb of an earlier Inquisitor General and Archbishop of Seville, Fernando de Valdés y Salas, intended for his native Salas outside Oviedo, was commissioned from Pompeo Leoni, although it was not completed until well into the next decade.60 The influence of the Inquisitor General, or of his heirs, is demonstrated in their employment of Philip II’s preferred sculptor; Leoni increasingly rarely worked outside the immediate royal ambit and often delegated projects to a range of assistants.61 Valdés had died in 1568, nonetheless the contract insisted upon a lifelike representation. Ironically, Leoni would have met Valdés in person many years earlier in 1557 when the sculptor, accused of Lutheranism, was called before the Tribunal of the Inquisition over which Valdés then presided.62 58 Banner, Religious Patronage, 2009, pp. 80–81 and 148; pp. 132–133. 59 Cotarelo Valledor, El Cardenal, 1945. 60 The relevant documents were f irst published in Plon, Les maîtres italiens, 1887, pp. 328–331 and 394–415. 61 Helmstutler di Dio, Leone Leoni, 2011; Coppel, ‘Portrait of a Knight’, 2013. 62 Bustamante García, ‘El Santo Oficio de Valladolid y los artistas’, 1995, pp. 456–458.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

In the tomb at Salas the performativity of the complex sculptural programme of the tomb is increased by three other figures clustered around the effigy of the Inquisitor – who appear at first most unusual. Nonetheless, they recall the acolytes seen in the portrait of Pedro González de Mendoza; furthermore, in the contract their roles are minutely detailed: deacon, subdeacon, and acolyte.63 The three arch-episcopal attributes that each should bear are also specified: the mitre, the ring, and the book. Salas’s successor as Inquisitor General was Diego de Espinosa, who was briefly cardinal between 1568 and his death in 1572, and whose own – less elaborate – tomb for his native Martín Muñoz de las Posadas, outside Segovia, was also the work of Leoni.64 A portrait of Espinosa by Alonso Sánchez Coello is recorded in the inventories of Philip III among those taken to Valladolid and may have served as the model for this post-mortem tomb sculpture.65

Death and Devotion Finally, in order to find further examples of the trends that have been identified in images of Spanish cardinals across all media, it is necessary to place these within a wider context of the role of ecclesiastical portraiture in the Spanish Church, where there are several other striking examples of the phenomena that have been discussed above. Portraits of cardinals and of other ecclesiastics can indeed often be interchangeable. For example, a noteworthy assembly survives in the former Augustinian convent of Santa María de la Expectación in Palencia. Here a pair of portraits were commissioned by the native cleric and founder of the convent, Francisco de Reinoso, who resided in Rome between 1562 and 1573. Having been appointed major-domo to his patron, now Pope Pius V, in 1566, he returned to Spain after the pope’s death, and eventually became Bishop of Córdoba in 159766. On account of both his patron’s untimely demise and opposition within Spain, Reinoso’s career never attained the heights of the cardinalate, but he was successful enough while in Italy to commission works from a number of artists, including Titian.67 On either side of the presbytery of the convent, which he founded at Palencia, are two very damaged kneeling portraits of considerable size, each bearing inscriptions beneath them. They show Reinoso himself, dressed in the habit of a camarero 63 Plon, Les maîtres italiens, 1887. 64 Ibid., pp. 331–334 and 394–415; Cano de Gardoqui García, ‘Memoria familiar’, 2007; Cano de Gardoqui García, ‘Patrocinio artístico’, 2008. 65 Kusche, Retratos y retratadores, 2003, p. 455. 66 Piers Baker-Bates, ‘All Roads lead to Rome: the Transcultural Career of Francesco de Reynoso’, Renaissance Studies, forthcoming 2022. 67 AGS Estado, legajo 1506, 115.

359

360

Piers Baker-Bates

Fig. 13.3 Unknown artist, Francisco de Reinoso, Palencia, Convento de Augustinas Recoletas (© Piers Baker-Bates).

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

Fig. 13.4 Unknown artist, Cardinal Francisco de Ávila, Ávila, Cathedral (© Piers Baker-Bates).

361

362

Piers Baker-Bates

pontificio, papal chamerlain (Fig. 13.3), and Pius V, the pope under whom his career had flourished. They have recently been attributed to Scipione Pulzone although this attribution remains uncertain, as does their date.68 Antonio de Fuenmayor’s Vida y hechos de Pio V, published in 1595, was dedicated to Reinoso, and the two commissions may be related.69 Both figures are placed to face the high altar, kneeling in prayer – a highly unusual pose for the pope. There are many portraits of Pius V, and while the likeness here resembles others, elsewhere he is shown seated and blessing rather than in this intense attitude of prayer. Another paradigmatic arrangement for a pair of portraits can be found in the chapter house of Ávila Cathedral, otherwise called the Capilla del Cardenal. Before the altar, in their tomb niches and facing each other are portraits of the remarkably unknown cardinal, Francisco de Ávila (Fig.13.4), of whom this is the only extant image. Opposite him is his relative, Garcíbañez de Mújica y Bracamonte. The tombs of both men, according to the inscription on that of the cardinal, were the work of his brother and the dean of the Cathedral, Diego de Bracamonte, but whether he commissioned the portraits too is unclear. The two are certainly different; the portrait of Ávila, who was made cardinal in 1596 and died in 1606, is a low-quality work that follows the format typical of cardinal portraits in the period. That of Garcíbañez is much finer and has sometimes been attributed to El Greco. A final exemplary case is that of Pedro González del Castillo a well-connected ecclesiastic who, like Francisco de Reinoso, divided his career between Rome and Spain. González del Castillo has already been mentioned as having commissioned this kneeling, sculptured effigy of himself for his tomb in Logroño. The sculpture is based on a full-length portrait that he had also left to the church, that was commissioned from Juan Pantoja de la Cruz in Madrid when he had just become canónigo magistral of the cathedral of Cuenca aged 34, in 1597.70 This is an unusual commission for the time, because of its grandeur – the full-length format was usually reserved for members of the royal family. González del Castillo evidently had a taste for the visual arts and here his kneeling tomb effigy originally faced a Crucifixion, often called Spain’s only Michelangelo, although an attribution to Marcello Venusti is more plausible. Furthermore, according to the bishop’s post-mortem inventory: Item an original image by Michelangelo painted on panel with a Crucifix and Christ alive with Our Lady and St. John to the sides and the Magdalene at the foot of the Cross and two angels on high within an ebony frame which is to be 68 Cabeza, ‘Facción y mecenazgo’, 2014. 69 Fuenmayor, Vida y hechos, 1595; Pattenden, ‘Antonio de Fuenmayor’s Life’, 2018. 70 Ramírez Martínez and Sainz Ripa, El Miguel Ángel, 1977, pp. 109–110; Kusche, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, 2007, p. 93.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

placed at the head of our tomb behind or on high, in such a manner that it can be seen from without.71

As in life, so in death the pious prelate was to be found kneeling before the sacred image he had most revered.

Conclusion When it comes to discussing the imagery of cardinals and other high-ranking ecclesiastics in Spain pre- and post-Trent, it may, in fact, be best to move away from the idea of independent portraiture. When they were commissioned, their portraits were not so much of the men themselves as an idealized representation of the sacred offices that they held – of which the cardinalate was only one and, in a Spanish context, perhaps not even the most significant. Often too, such portraits did not exist as independent entities in their own right but played a role within a much larger whole, such as a tomb complex or a gallery of portraits of bishops. They were frequently executed post-mortem, indeed many years after the event, by private or institutional heirs. One might go so far as to say that the term ‘cardinal portrait’, as it is used in the title of this volume is in fact redundant for the Spain of Philip II and III. Nonetheless, in terms of the volume as a whole, this essay forms a fitting conclusion as it shows the range and diversity that the cardinal portrait per se had developed by the end of the sixteenth century. A volume that began in fourteenthcentury Florence ends in Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The collective body of unidentified cardinals who served as symbols of status and papal authority in Francesco di Antonio del Chierico’s fifteenth-century illumination may seem to have little in common with the desire for cultural memory and ecclesiastical hauteur that motivated the various depictions of Spanish cardinals; and these in turn function in a very different way to the splendid celebrations of individual and family identity that characterize so many independent portraits of cardinals produced in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. Such differences, however, are skin deep and reflect both varying approaches to and expectations of portraiture in different times and places, as well as institutional changes within the cardinalate over the early modern period. To this day, in all his representations 71 Ramírez Martínez and Sainz Ripa, El Miguel Ángel, 1977, p. 163: ‘Yten una ymajen de Micael Angel original de tabla y de un crucifixo y Cristo bivo con Nuestra Señora y San Juan a los lados y la Madalena al pie de la cruz y dos Angeles en lo alto a los dos lados del Christo con guarnición de ébano que se a de poner en il testero de nuestro sepulcro detrás de nuestro buelto en lo alto, de manera que se bea desde fuera’.

363

364

Piers Baker-Bates

throughout Europe and the world, the cardinal, with his crimson regalia, persists as a constant figure asserting the enduring legacy of the Church and the validity of papal succession.72

Bibliography Acconci, Alessandra and Alessandro Zuccari, eds., Scipione Pulzone: da Gaeta a Roma alle corti europee (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2013). Albèri, Eugenio, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 15 vols. (Florence: Tipografia all’Insegna di Clio, 1839–1863). Álvarez Lopera, José, ‘The Portraits of El Greco’, in The Spanish Portrait: From El Greco to Picasso (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2004), pp. 120–139. Arias Martínez, Manuel, Alonso Berruguete: Promoteo de la escultura (Palencia: Diputación de Palencia, 2011). Baker-Bates, Piers, ‘Establishing Spanish Cultural Identities at Rome (1516–1598)’, Hispanic Research Journal 19.5 (2018): 461–480. Banner, Lisa A., The Religious Patronage of the Duke of Lerma, 1598–1621 (Farnham/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009). Benito Domenech, Fernando, Juan Sariñena (1545–1619): pintor de la Contrarreforma en Valencia (Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 2007). Bolton, Andrew, ed., Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018). Borromeo, Agostino, ‘The Crown and the Church in Spanish Italy in the Reigns of Philip II and Philip III’, in Spain in Italy Politics, Society and Religion 1500–1700, ed. by Thomas Dandelet and John Marino (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 517–554. Bosch, Lynette M.F., Art, Liturgy and Legend in Renaissance Toledo: The Mendoza and the Iglesia Primada (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). Broderick, John F., ‘The Sacred College of Cardinals: Size and Geographical Composition (1099–1986)’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 25 (1987): 7–71. Bury, Michael, The Print in Italy 1550–1620 (London: British Museum Press). Bustamante García, Agustín, ‘El Santo Of icio de Valladolid y los artistas’, Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueología 61 (1995): 455–468. Butters, Suzanne B., ‘The Uses and Abuses of Gifts in the World of Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609)’, I Tatti Studies 11 (2007): 243–354. Cabeza, Antonio, ‘Facción y mecenazgo en la Roma de Felipe II: una red castellana en la corte pontificia’, in I rapporti tra Roma e Madrid nei secoli XVI e XVII: arte diplomazia e politica, ed. by Alessandra Anselmi (Rome: Gangemi, 2014). 72 See Bolton, Heavenly Bodies, 2018.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

Campbell, Lorne, Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait Painting in the 14th, 15th, 16th Centuries (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1990). Cano de Gardoqui García, José Luis ‘Memoria familiar del Cardenal Diego de Espinosa’, Estudios Segovianos Boletin de la Real Academia de Historia y Arte de San Quirce 50.107 (2007): 115–140. ———, ‘Patrocinio artístico segoviano del Cardenal Diego de Espinosa’, Estudios Segovianos Boletin de la Real Academia de Historia y Arte de San Quirce 51.108 (2008): 253–285. Cantatore, Flavia, ‘Un committente spagnolo nella Roma di Alessandro VI: Bernardino Carvajal’, in Roma di fronte all’Europa al tempo di Alessandro VI, ed. by M. Chiabò, S. Maddalo, M. Miglio, and A.M. Oliva, 3 vols. (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2001), vol. 3, pp. 861–871. Cavero de Carondelet, Cloe, ‘Las relaciones artísticas del cardenal Quiroga con Italia: un retrato veneciano en las colecciones del Museo del Prado’, Boletín del Museo del Prado 34.52 (2016): 10–16. Checa, Fernando, Tiziano y la monarquia hispanica (Madrid: Nerea, 1994). Cole, Michael W., Sofonisba’s Lesson: A Renaissance Artist and her Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). Coppel, Rosario, ‘Portrait of a Knight of the Order of Alcántara or Calatrava’, in Leone and Pompeo Leoni: Faith and Fame, ed. by Rosario Coppel (Madrid: Coll & Cortés, 2013), pp. 115–149. Cossío, Manuel B., El Greco (Madrid: Victoriano Suárez, 1908). Cotarelo Valledor, Armando, El Cardenal Don Rodrigo de Castro y su fundación en Monforte de Lemos (Madrid: Editorial Magistero Español, 1945). Curie, Pierre, ‘Quelques portraits du cardinal de Granvelle’, in Les Granvelle et l’Italie au XVI siècle: le mécénat d’une famille (Besançon: Cêtre, 1996), pp. 159–174. Dandelet, Thomas James, Spanish Rome, 1500–1700 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2001). Delenda, Odile, Francisco de Zurbarán, vol. 2: los Conjuntos y el Obrador (Madrid: Fundación Arte Hispánico, 2010). Ehlers, Benjamin, Between Christians and Moriscos: Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in Valencia, 1568–1614 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) Falomir, Miguel, ‘The Origin of Portrait Painting in Spain: From the Absence of Specialists to the Large Workshop’, The Spanish Portrait: From El Greco to Picasso (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2004), pp. 68–83. ———, ‘Tintoretto and Spain: From El Greco to Velázquez’, in Tintoretto, ed. by Miguel Falomir (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007), pp. 159–177. Fernández, Ignasi, ‘“Des créatures de Votre Majesté”: choix et contrôle des évêques par Philippe II dans les couronnes de Castille et d’Aragon (1556–1598)’, in Les clercs et les princes: doctrines et pratiques de l’autorité ecclésiastique à l’époque moderne, ed. by Patrick Arabeyre and Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudement (Paris: École des Chartes, 2013), pp. 105–118.

365

366

Piers Baker-Bates

Fiume, Giovanna, La cacciata dei moriscos e la beatificazione di Juan de Ribera (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2014). Freiberg, Jack, Bramante’s Tempietto, the Roman Renaissance, and the Spanish Crown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Fuenmayor, Antonio de, Vida y hechos de Pio V Pontifice romano (Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1595). Gardner von Teuffel, Christa, ‘New Light on the Cross Pedro González de Mendoza and Antoniazzo Romano in Sta Croce in Gerusalemme Rome’, in Coming about … Festschrift for John Shearman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2001), pp. 49–55. Gaya Nuño, Juan Antonio, Alonso Berruguete en Toledo (Barcelona: Editorial Juventud, 1944). Gill, Meredith J., ‘Antoniazzo Romano and the Recovery of Jerusalem in Late FifteenthCentury Rome’, Storia dell’Arte 83 (1995): 28–47. Goldberg, Edward L., ‘Artistic Relations between the Medici and the Spanish Courts, 1587–1621’, Burlington Magazine 138.1115 (1996): 105–114; and 138.1121 (1996): 529–540. González Ramos, Roberto, La pintura complutense del siglo XVI: artífices, artesanos y clients en la Alcalá de Henares del quinientos (Alcalá de Henares: Fundación Colegio del Rey, 2007). Gonzálvez Ruiz, Ramón and Felipe Pereda, ed., La catedral de Toledo, 1549: según el Dr. Blas Ortiz; descripcion graphica y elegantissima de la S. Iglesia de Toledo (Madrid: Antonio Pareja, 1999). González Tornel, Pablo, ‘Forging an Image for the Spanish Monarchy in Seventeenth-Century Rome: Habsburg Religiosity and Visual Propaganda’, Hispanic Research Journal, Visual Arts Issue 19.5 (2018): 481–499. Hand, John Oliver and Greta Koppel, eds., Michel Sittow Estonian Painter at the Courts of Renaissance Europe (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2018). Hanley, Stephen, ‘Optical Symbolism as Optical Description: A Case Study of Canon van der Paele’s Spectacles’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art [online journal] 1.1 (2009), https://jhna.org/articles/optical-symbolism-optical-description-case-studycanon-van-der-paeles-spectacles/. Helmstutler di Dio, Kelley, Leone Leoni and the Status of the Artist at the end of the Renaissance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). Helmstutler di Dio, Kelley and Rosario Coppel, eds., Sculpture Collections in Early Modern Spain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Jiménez, Juan, Vida del beato Juan de Ribera (Valencia: Joseph Estevan, 1798). Jonckheere, Konrad, Willem Key (1516–1568) Portrait of a Humanist Painter, trans. by Katy Kist and Jennifer Kilian (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Kagan, Richard L., ‘The Count of Los Arcos as Patron and Collector of El Greco’, Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte 4 (1992): 151–159. ———, ‘El Greco’s Portraits Reconsidered’, Art in Spain and the Hispanic World: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Brown, ed. by Sarah Schroth (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2010), pp. 58–68.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

———, ‘Pedro de Salazar de Mendoza as Collector, Scholar and Patron of El Greco’, in El Greco: Italy and Spain Studies in the History of Art, vol. 13, ed. by Jonathan Brown and José Manuel Pita Andrade (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1984), pp. 85–93. Kusche, Maria, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz y sus seguidores: B. González, R. de Villandrando y A. López Polanco (Madrid: Fundación Arte Hispánico, 2007). ———, Retratos y retratadores Alonso Sánchez Coello y sus competidores Sofonisba Anguissola, Jorge de la Rúa y Rolán Moys (Madrid: Fundación de Apoyo a la Historia del Arte Hispánico, 2003). Lenaghan, Patrick, ‘The Arrival of the Italian Renaissance in Spain: The Tombs by Domenico Fancelli and Bartolomé Ordóñez’, 3 vols., PhD thesis, New York University, 1993. Leone de Castris, Pierluigi, ‘Le Cardinal Granvelle et Scipione Pulzone’, in Les Granvelle et l’Italie au XVI siècle: le mécénat d’une famille (Besançon: Cêtre, 1996), pp. 175–188. Liedtke, Walter, ‘Three Paintings by El Greco’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 50 (2015): 13–41. Lorite Cruz, Pablo Jesús, ‘Fray Diego de Deza, Inquisidor de Castilla pintado por Francisco de Zurbarán’, in XV Jornadas de Historia en Llerena: ‘La Inquisición’ (Llerena: Sociedad Extremeña de Historia, 2014), pp. 149–161. Marías, Fernando, El Greco Life and Work – A New History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013). ———, ‘Los clientes del Tempietto: historia, intenciones y significados’, in Il Tempietto di Bramante nel monastero di San Pietro in Montorio, ed. by Flavia Cantatore (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2017), pp. 111–152. Mateo Gómez, Isabel, Juan de Borgoña (Madrid: Fundación de Apoyo a la Historia del Arte Hispánico, 2004). ———, ‘La pintura toledana en Tiempos de Carlos V’, Carlos V y las artes: promoción artistica y familia imperial, ed. by María José Redondo Cantera and M. Adelaida Zalama (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León and Universidad de Valladolid, 2000), pp. 235–254. Mateo Gómez, Isabel and Amelia López-Yarto Elizalde, Pintura toledana de la segunda mitad del siglo XVI (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2003). Migliaccio, Luciano, ‘Precisiones sobre la actividad de Bartolomé Ordóñez en Italia’, El modelo italiano en las artes plásticas de la península Ibérica durante el Renacimiento, ed. by María José Redondo Cantera (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2004), pp. 377–392. Ostrow, Steven, ‘Francisco de Toledo at Santa Maria Maggiore: A New Work by Giacomo della Porta and Egidio della Riviera’, Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 21 (1983): 86–96. Pacheco, Francisco, Libro de descripcion de verdaderos retratos de ilustres y memorables varones (Seville: Previsión Española, 1983). Panofsky, Erwin, Tomb Sculpture: Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini, ed. by H.W Janson (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964). Pattenden, Miles, ‘Antonio de Fuenmayor’s Life of Pius V: A Pope in Early Modern Spanish Historiography’, Renaissance Studies 32.2 (2018): 183–200.

367

368

Piers Baker-Bates

———, ‘Rome as a “Spanish Avignon”? The Spanish Faction and the Monarchy of Philip II’, in The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Images of Iberia, ed. by Piers Baker-Bates and Miles Pattenden (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 65–84. Pellegrini, Marco, ‘Profilo politico-istituzionale del cardinalato nell’età di Alessandro VI: persistenze e novità’, in Roma di fronte all’Europa al tempo di Alessandro VI, ed. by M. Chiabò, S. Maddalo, M. Miglio, and A.M. Oliva, 3 vols. (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2001), vol. 1, pp. 177–217. Pereda, Felipe, ‘Pedro González de Mendoza, de Toledo a Roma: el patronazgo de Santa Croce in Gerusalemme; entre la arqueología y la filología’, in Les cardinaux de la Renaissance et la modernité artistique (Lille: Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion/Centre de Gestion de l’Édition Scientifique, Université Charles-de-Gaulle, 2009), pp. 217–238. Pérez Sánchez, Alfonso E. and Benito Navarrete Prieto, Luis Tristán: h. 1585–1624 (Madrid: Real Fundación de Toledo/Fundación BBVA, 2001). Plon, Eugene, Les maîtres italiens au service de la maison d’Autriche: Leone Leoni sculpteur de Charles Quint et Pompeo Leoni sculpteur de Philip II (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1887). Pollard, John Graham, Medaglie italiane del Rinascimento nel Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 3 vols. (Florence: Studio per edizioni scelte, 1985). ———, Renaissance Medals, vol. 2: France, Germany, The Netherlands, and England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Portús, Javier, ‘Retrato, humildad y santidad en el Siglo de Oro’, Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares 54.1 (1999): 169–188. Primarosa, Yuri, Ottavio Leoni (1578–1630): eccellente miniator di ritratti; catalogo ragionato dei disegni e dei dipinti (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017) Ramírez Martínez, José M. and Eliseo Sainz Ripa, El Miguel Ángel de la Redonda: el obispo don Pedro González de Castillo y su legado artístico (Logroño: Gonzalo de Berceo, 1977). Reibel, Laurence and Lisa Mucciarelli-Régnier, ed., Antoine de Granvelle: l’éminence pourpre; images d’un homme de pouvoir de la Renaissance (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2017). Robres, Ramón and Vicente Castell, ‘El Divino Morales, pintor de cámara del Beato Juan de Ribera en Badajoz: bosquejo de un nuevo capítulo de su vida’, Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura 21 (1945): 36-48. Rowlands, Eliot W., The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Italian Paintings, 1300–1800 (Kansas City: Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, 1996). Ruiz Gómez, Leticia, ed., The Divine Morales (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2015). ———, ‘La creación del retrato español en el siglo XVI’, in El retrato español en el Prado: del Greco a Goya, ed. by Leticia Ruiz-Gómez (Madrid: Museo Nacional de Prado, 2006), pp. 37–43. ———, ed., A Tale of Two Women Painters: Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana, (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2019). Salazar de Mendoza, Pedro de, Chronico de el Cardenal Don Iuan Tavera (Toledo, 1603).

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate 

Schirg, Bernhard, ‘Cortese’s Ideal Cardinal? Praising Art, Splendour and Magnificence in Bernardino de Carvajal’s Roman Residence’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 80 (2017): 61–82. Scholz-Hänsel, Michael, ‘The Spectacles of the Grand Inquisitor: Counter-Revolutionary Aspects in the Work of El Greco and Humanistic Ideas in the Thinking of Spanish Inquisitors’, in El Greco of Crete: Proceedings of the International Symposium, Iraklion, Crete, 1–5 September 1990 (Iraklion: Municipality of Iraklion, 1995), pp. 295–307. Smolderen, Luc, Jacques Jonghelinck: sculpteur, médailleur et graveur de sceaux (1530–1606) (Louvain-la-Neuve: Département d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art, Séminaire de Numismatique Marcel Hoc, 1996). Toderi, Giuseppe and Fiorenza Vannel, eds., Le medaglie italiane del XVI secolo, 2 vols. (Florence: Polistampa, 2000). Van Durme, M., El Cardenal Granvela (1517–1586): imperio y revolución bajo Carlos V y Felipe II (Barcelona: Editorial Tiede, 1957). Vázquez, Julia M., ‘A Final Commission and Death’, in Alonso Berruguete: First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain, ed. by C.D. Dickerson III and Mark Mcdonald (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 156–175. Visceglia, Maria Antonietta, ‘Factions in the Sacred College in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700, ed. by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 99–131. ———, ‘International Politics, Factions and Parties in the Roman Curia during the late 16th Century’, in A Europe of Courts, a Europe of Factions: Political Groups at Early Modern Centres of Power (1550–1700), ed. by Rubén González Cuerva and Alexander Koller (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 64–87. Woodall, Joanna, Anthonis Mor: Art and Authority (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2007). Woods, Kim, ‘The Activation of the Image: Expatriate Carvers and Kneeling Effigies in late Gothic Spain’, Sculpture Journal 26.1 (2017): 11–24.

About the Author Piers Baker-Bates is a Visiting Research Associate at the Open University. He has published extensively on Sebastiano del Piombo and the cultural relations between Italy and Spain in the sixteenth century, including his monographic study Sebastiano del Piombo and the World of Spanish Rome.

369

Index Page numbers in italics refer to figures. The plates can be found in the colour sections. Acciaiuoli, Cardinal Angelo 25, 210, 220; pl. 1 Acciaiuoli, Piero and Donato 84 Adrian VI, Pope 48 Agucchi, Cardinal Girolamo 33 Albergati, Cardinal Niccolò 25, 72, 82 Alberti, Cardinal Alberto 74 Albertini da Prato, Niccolo 210, 219 Albi, Henri, Eloges historiques des cardinaux illustres 53 Albizzi, Rinaldo degli 76n23, 77 Albornoz y Carrillo, Cardinal Egidio 224 Alciati, Cardinal Francesco 215–17, 216, 222 Aldobrandini, Cardinal Giovanni 220 Aldobrandini, Cardinal Pietro 158–59, 162–64, 169 collection of 218, 220 portraits of 163–64, 164, 203–05, 221, 224, 227, 246 Aldobrandini, Cardinal Silvestro 215n52, 220–21 Aldobrandini, Francesco (G–F) (soldier) 222 Aleandro, Cardinal Girolamo 265 portraits of 208, 219, 263, 275–77 ‘Alessandrino’, Cardinal see Bonelli, Cardinal Michele Alexander III, Pope 45, 156, 203n6, 278 Alexander IV, Pope 203n6 Alexander VI, Pope 48, 51 Alexander VII, Pope 250, 336 Alidosi, Cardinal Francesco degli 26n25, 31, 31 Altieri, Cardinal Giovanni Battista 248 Altissimo, Cristofano 127n49, 278n70 Aquileia 11, 128, 131 Aragon, cardinals from 345, 347 Ardicino della Porta Junior, Cardinal 94, 96, 99–102, 100–01 Ardicino della Porta Senior, Cardinal 94, 99, 100, 101 Ardinghelli, Cardinal Nicolò 204, 224 Armellini Medici, Cardinal Francesco 194 art commissions see patronage Aubuisson, Cardinal Pierre d’ (Grand Master of the Knights of Malta) 210, 220 Augustines 153 Ávila Cathedral 361, 362 Ávila, Francisco de 361, 362 Azzolini, Cardinal Decio 211–12, 219 Baglione, Giovanni 285, 290, 302, 307, 311 Baldassarre d’Anna 140–41 Approval of the Venetian Confraternity… 140–41 Domenico Grimani 135, 136 Recovery of the Christian Standard by Nicolò Grimani 137–140, 138, 140 Urban II adding the Red Cross to the Grimani Coat of Arms 137–140, 139, 141

Baldeschi, Cardinal Federico 227 Barberini (senior), Cardinal Antonio 224, 227 Barberini (senior), Cardinal Francesco 238 collection of 276 portraits of 112, 226, 248–50; pl. 8 Barberini family 204, 249, 250; see also under individual names Barberini, Cardinal Carlo 224, 241, 250 Barberini, Cardinal Maffeo (later Pope Urban VIII) 335 collection of 203–04 portraits of 224 Barbo, Cardinal Pietro 92 Baronio, Cardinal Cesare 49, 226 Bassano, Francesco 156 Bassano, Leandro 156 Giovanni Dolfin 157, 158 Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216 (painting and preparatory sketch) 58, 149–50, 154–55, 157, 159–164, 163, 165–71; pl. 4, pl. 5 Meeting of Doge Ziani with Pope Alexander III 156 Supper of St Dominic 154–56 Basso della Rovere, Cardinal Girolamo 32, 103 Bastiano di Niccolò, Missal of Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli 25; pl. 1 Bazcardo, Juan 354–56 beati moderni 59, 320–21, 326–27, 335 Beccadelli, Lodovico 274–75 Becchi, Gentile, Bishop of Urbino 194 Bellange, Thierry François Cardinal de Joyeuse 161, 162 Jacques Du Perron David 166, 167 Bellarmine, Cardinal Roberto 49, 226 Belli, Valerio 263, 265 Bellini, Gentile 118 Bellori, Giovan Pietro 302 Bembo, Cardinal Pietro: and Farnese family, relationship with 268–69 as a literary figure 56, 261–62, 264–65 medal portraits of 263, 265, 269, 269 portrait busts of 271, 271 portrait groups, appearance within 196, 261–62, 266–74, 275–78, 268, 270; pl. 9 portraits of (solo) 27–28, 106, 208, 210, 219–20, 262–63, 273–74, 273, 276, 278; pl. 2 Rime 267–68 Benedict XI, Pope 203n6 Benedict XIII, Pope 250 Benedict XIV, Pope 246, 250 Benedictines/Benedictine order 153 Bentivoglio, Cardinal Guido 205–07

372 

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

Bernard of Clairvaux 105, 182 Bernerio, Cardinal Girolamo 171, 300–01 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo Agostino Valier, portrait bust of 159, 160 Giovanni Dolfin, portrait bust for tomb of 157 Scipione Borghese 33, 34 Berruguete, Alonso 351, 354 Berti, Giulio 207, 223 Bessarion, Cardinal 82, 117–18, 205 portraits of 210, 219–21 Bibbiena, Cardinal 26, 288 Bicci di Lorenzo 69–70 Confirmation of Santa Maria Nuova 70, 70, 74–78 Bigliotti, Zanobio 193 biretta 25, 58, 128, 131n64, 232, 278, 290, 299 Bologna 31, 278, 321, 326n27 Accademia Filarmonica 243 Charles V’s coronation in (1530) 189, 190–91, 190–91 Bolognetti, Alberto 122 Boncompagni family 296 Bonelli, Cardinal Michele 297–99, 305, 310 collections of 205–06, 209, 219 portraits of 205–06, 219, 287, 297, 298, 300–04, 303; pl. 10 Boniface VIII, Pope 25, 203n6 Borghese family 207; see also under individual names Borghese, Camillo see Paul V, Pope Borghese, Cardinal Scipione 153n20 portraits of 33, 34, 171, 172, 204, 207, 220, 224, 226–27 Borghini, Raffaello, Il Riposo 285–86, 312 Borgia, Lucrezia 194 Borgoña, Juan de 353 Borromeo, Cardinal Carlo (San Carlo) 49–50, 56, 213, 292, 320–21 canonization of 319–20, 324, 326–28, 330 cult of 320, 323–27, 331–33, 336 death and burial 323–24 devotional medals of 58–59, 320–23, 322–23, 325, 327–30, 328–29, 332–35 portraits of 205, 209, 211–13, 215–16, 218, 220–27, 320–21, 323–24 Borromeo, Cardinal Federico 49, 321, 327–30, 332, 334–35 collections of 203 Borromini, Francesco 93 Brancacci family 80 Branicki, Anna Miśkowiec 326 Bregno, Andrea 32, 92, 102, 106–07 Brocardo, Pellegrino 275 Brogiotti, Andrea 232 Bronzino, Agnolo 220 Bruni, Leonardo 81, 83 Burchard, Johannes 185–86 Caetani family 51, 238 Caetani, Cardinal 238

Calvinism 320; see also Reformation, the Camera Apostolica 97 Camillo di Pietro, Cardinal 252 Campeggio, Cardinal Lorenzo 195 Canigiani, Gherardo 77 canonization 319–20, 324, 326–27, 330–31, 335–36 Capello, Fra Tommaso 154 Capranica, Cardinal Dominico 82, 215–16, 222 Caprara, Cardinal Giovanni Battista 249 Caprarola, Palazzo Farnese, frescoes at 196, 268–74, 268, 270; pl. 9 Capuchins/Capuchin order 153 Carafa family 51; see also under individual names Carafa, Cardinal Gian Pietro (later Pope Paul IV) 264, 266, 269, 272n48, 274 Caravaggio 221 cardinal-bishops 45, 319; see also under individual names cardinal-deacons 45, 99, 169; see also under individual names cardinal-priests 45, 101, 107, 322; see also under individual names cardinalate/cardinals: and art commissions/patronage 24, 54, 207, 292 biographies of 28–30, 81–82, 84 and ceremonies 45, 47, 92, 96, 137; see also processions, ceremonial and collective/group identity 25, 36, 69–72, 75, 77–80, 84, 182, 195–96, 237, 252, 352, 363; see also ‘Sacred College’ duties/roles of 44–45, 49–52, 55, 230–31, 235, 312, 363 ecclesiastical authority of 28, 239–41, 244–46; see also protectorships and identity 26, 53, 57–58, 312 and the pope, relationship to 25, 28, 33, 45–47, 99, 289–90, 299, 312 as portrait collectors 22–23, 51, 201–03 social and political networks 30, 32, 50–51, 57, 84, 204, 208, 248 symbols of office 23–25, 30, 32, 43, 57, 58, 189; see also clothing/dress see also under individual names Carlo Emanuele of Savoia (Carlo Emanuele I) 153, 167 Carmelites 153, 247 Caro, Annibale 267–68, 272 Casati, Paola Giustina 325; pl. 11 Castellani, Matteo 77 Castile, cardinals from 345, 347 Castro de Osorio, Cardinal Rodrigo, Archbishop of Seville 356–58, 357 Castro, Don Francisco Ruiz de 152, 159, 165 catafalques 96 Catholic Church, the 23, 28, 33, 36, 53–54, 299–300, 320; see also Council of Trent Catholicism see Catholic Church, the; Roman Catholicism

373

Index 

Cattaneo, Danese 269, 269, 271, 271 Ceneda 124, 128 ceremonies 47, 137, 149–50, 161, 181, 237, 240, 243 canonization 330, 335 consecration 75–77, 79–80 funerary 92, 96–97 translatio 321 see also possesso, the; processions, ceremonial; ritual/rituals ceroplastica see wax modelling/casts Cervini, Cardinal Marcello (later Pope Marcellus II) 36, 269, 270n44, 272n48, 277 Cesarini, Cardinal Giuliano 82, 210, 220 Céspedes, Pablo de 356 Chacón, Alfonso (Ciacconius) 29–30, 232 Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine 132 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 205, 270–71, 270, 278 coronation (1530) 189, 190–91, 190–91 Chavez, Cardinal Antonio Martinez de 93 Chiericati, Francesco 186–87 Chigi, Agostino 128n55 choir dress see clothing/dress Ciacconius see Chacón, Alfonso Cibo, Cardinal Innocenzo 125n38 Ciocchi del Monte, Cardinal Giovan Maria see Julius III, Pope Cisneros, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de (later Archbishop of Toledo) 96n17, 353 portraits of 219, 348 tomb of 354 classical styles (sculpture) 72, 92, 103, 108 Clement IV, Pope 98 Clement IX, Pope 250 Clement VI, Pope 203n6 Clement VII, Pope 137, 192–93, 292, 310, 347 portraits of 278 Clement VIII, Pope 48–49, 59, 158, 162–63, 169, 216–17, 327 portraits of 211, 217, 250 Clement X, Pope 249–50 Clement XI, Pope 249–50 Clement XII, Pope 250 clothing/dress (cardinals’) 24–26, 56, 128, 129–31, 137, 290, 299, 309 ceremonial 186–89, 240 and identity 30, 77, 79, 120 secular/domestic 25–26 symbolism of 25, 32, 57–58, 102, 240 and tomb effigies, depictions on 32, 91, 96–97, 99, 102 coats of arms 25, 32, 56, 57, 94, 182, 186–87, 193, 214, 241, 242 Coello, Alonso Sánchez 359 Coetivy, Cardinal Alain funerary monument 102, 106–07, 107 collections/collecting (portraits) 22–23, 51, 201–07, 215–16, 219–27, 243–51, 352, 363; see also patronage; prints/printing; and under individual names

Colonna family 51, 288, 296; see also under individual names Colonna, Cardinal Ascanio 218, 220–21 Colonna, Cardinal Egidio 225 Colonna, Geronima 296–97 Colonna, Marcantonio 211 n.38, 218n58, 221, 296–97n56, 305 Colonna, Pompeo 210, 218, 220–21 Colonna, Vittoria 263n9, 265 commemoration 93, 95, 97–98, 108, 126; see also tomb/funerary monuments Como, Paolo Giovio’s villa at 196, 261–62 conciliarism 45–46 Condulmer, Cardinal Francesco 92 Condulmer, Gabriele see Eugenius IV, Pope Constance, Council of (1414–1418) 46–47 Contarini, Cardinal Gasparo 122, 265, 274, 276n65 portraits of 208, 219, 263, 266n29, 267n35, 270n44, 275–76 Contarini, Niccolò 150–52 Conte, Jacopino del 270n44, 287–89, 296 Conti, Bernardino de’ 348 copying/tracing techniques 288, 293, 296; see also prints/printing (portrait series) Cornaro, Cardinal Marco 122–26, 125 Corner, Andrea 126n46 Corner, Francesco 120n14 Corner, Marco 124, 125 Correr, Cardinal Antonio 75–77, 81–82 Correr, Teodoro 155 Corsini family 204, 308 Cortese, Cardinal Gregorio 208, 219, 263 Cortesi, Paolo, De Cardinalatu 24, 46 Cossa, Giovanni see John XXIII, Pope Council of Trent: and art patronage 289–90, 309 and cardinals, changing role of 49–50, 230–31, 235 and the Catholic Church, reform of 49, 59, 131, 289, 293, 299–300, 309–10, 319–21, 348–49 first sitting of, attendees at (1545) 267n35, 274, 277 and religious orders 153n23, 237–38 and visual culture, impact on 25–26, 28, 32, 36, 59, 262, 278–79, 343, 345, 354, 363 Counter-Reformation, the 205, 209, 211, 213, 289–90; see also Council of Trent Cranach, Lucas 263, 265 ‘Crown Cardinals’ 53 Cruz, Juan Pantoja de la 362 cults 57, 320, 323–27, 333; see also beati moderni; indulgences; and under Borromeo, Cardinal Carlo (San Carlo) Curia, the 30, 36, 49, 156–57, 277; see also papalisti Curione, Celio Secondo 264 Da Mula, Marcantonio 131 portraits of 132–33 Daniele da Volterra 214–15

374 

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

De Guise, Cardinal 272n47 De Rossi (printers) 232, 236, 244, 245, 252 Libro de’ Ritratti degli Eminentissimi Signori Cardinali (series) 28, 232, 233–34 death see funerals; tomb/funerary monuments death masks 102–05, 351, 354 Decretals of Boniface VIII (manuscript) 25 Del Corazza, Bartolommeo di Michele 78, 84 Del Monte, Cardinal Francesco 54, 202–03, 225 Della Casa, Giovanni 267 Della Rovere, Cardinal Giulio 227 devotional objects/portraits 209, 332–35, 349, 358 see also Borromeo, Cardinal Carlo (San Carlo) medals, portrait; relics Deza y Tavera, Diego, Archbishop of Seville 351 Deza, Cardinal Pedro de 29, 348 Diego di Alcalà 326 display 181–82, 188, 205–07 and cardinal portraits collections 201, 205, 208–09, 212–13, 217–18, 244–51, 252–53, 263 and status 182, 188–89, 192, 195–96, 209–10, 212, 215–16, 237, 240–48, 252–53 see also portraiture public displays of; processions, ceremonial Dolfin, Cardinal Giovanni 157–59, 162–66 portraits of 157, 158, 159, 161, 173 Domenichino 33, 226, 235 Dominicans/Dominican order 153–56, 162, 173 Don Juan of Austria 305, 307 Donà, Leonardo 121, 150–52, 163 Donatello 73 Dossi, Battista 126n49 drawings 104, 195, 275, 293; see also ‘Morosini Grimani’ (manuscript) Du Perron, Cardinal Jacques Davy 153, 165–66, 167 Effigies cardinalium nunc viventum 28, 164, 164, 170, 171 effigies (tomb/funerary) 91–94, 96–97, 99, 102–03, 362 bronze 102–03 and commemoration 93, 95, 108 and likeness 98–104, 351; see also death masks poses of 32, 53, 94, 101, 354–56, 358 stone 103–04 wood and wax 95 El Greco 350–52, 362 Burial of the Count of Orgaz, The 352 Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine 132 Fernando Niño de Guevara 343, 345, 350; pl. 12 Garcíbañez de Mújica y Bracamonte 362 Juan Pardo de Tavera, Archbishop of Toledo 350–51 elections: ambassadors 121 cardinals 74, 122, 137 papal 45–47, 51, 96; see also possesso, the procurators 120, 122 Eroli, Cardinal Berardo 82–83, 94, 103 Espinosa, Cardinal Diego de 359

d’Este family 51, 218, 220; see also under individual names d’Este, Alessandro 159, 162, 165 d’Este, Cardinal Ippolito 193 d’Este, Cardinal Ippolito II 193 Eugenius IV, Pope (earlier Cardinal Gabriele Condulmer) 71, 74, 78–79, 81–82 tomb monument (Old St. Peter’s, Rome) 92–94 Facchinetti, Cardinal Giovanni Antonio see Innocent IX, Pope Fancelli, Domenico 354 Farnese family 51, 268, 272n47, 274; see also under individual names Farnese, Cardinal Alessandro (grandson of Paul III) 238, 267, 274 as patron of art 54, 266–68, 274; see also Caprarola, Palazzo Farnese portraits of 196 Farnese, Cardinal Alessandro (later Pope Paul III) see Paul III, Pope Farnese, Cardinal Odoardo 52, 246 Farnese, Orazio 272–74; pl. 9 Farnese, Ottavio 272n46 Federighi, Carlo 77 Felice da Cantalice 327 Ferdinand, Cardinal Infante of Spain 226 Fernàndez de Portocarrero, Cardinal Joaquín 246 Ferraro, Marina 326 Filelfo, Frencesco 183 Fisher, Cardinal John 208, 215–16, 218, 219, 222, 263 Flaminio, Marcantonio 266 Florence, Council of (1439) 81–82 Florence 72–75, 104–05, 186–87, 204, 278 Palazzo Medici 80 Palazzo Vecchio 187, 263, 278 Santa Croce 74 Santa Maria del Carmine (Brancacci Chapel) 69, 76–77, 80 Santa Maria del Fiore 70–72, 71, 79–80 Santa Maria Novella 74–76, 156 Santa Trinità (Sassetti Chapel) 80–81 Vespasiano da Bisticci’s bookstore 81–83 Fonseca, Cardinal Pietro 94 Forteguerri, Cardinal Niccolò 104 Foscari, Cardinal Pietro 103 Foschi, Pier Francesco 26 France, and Venetian Republic, relationship with 152–53, 165–66 Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, Arrival of Pope Eugenius IV at Santa Maria del Fiore for its Consecration Ceremony 70–72, 71, 74–75, 78–79 Francia, Francesco, Francesco degli Alidosi 31, 31 Franciscans/Franciscan order 153, 232 Francisco de Toledo, Cardinal 32–33, 354, 355 Franco, Giacomo 135–36 Fuenmayor, Antonio de, Vida y hechos de Pio V 362 funerals 92, 94–96, 108; see also tomb/funerary monuments

375

Index 

Gabrieli, Costanzo 155 Galamini, Cardinal Agostino 171, 246 galeri 24–25, 57, 79, 188–89 Galizia, Fede 328 Gallo, Cardinal Antonio Maria 207 collections of 211, 212–14, 223–24 portraits of 214, 224; pl. 7 Garati of Lodi, Martino 187 Gastaldi, Cardinal Girolamo 236 Ghinucci, Girolamo, Bishop of Worcester 192 Ghislieri, Cardinal Michele see Pius V, Pope Giambologna 356 Gianfigliazzi, Jacopo 84 gifts devotional objects as 118, 324, 326, 329–30, 335 mules as 184–85 portraits as 202, 207–08, 218, 241–43, 265, 293, 300–301, 305, 330 Ginnasi, Cardinal Domenico 164 Giotto 24 Giovio, Paolo 266–67 collection of 203n7, 278n70 Como villa of 196, 261–62 Giugni, Filippo 77 Giussano, Pietro Giovanni 320–21, 323, 325 Giustiniani family 153n23, 204–05, 209, 217, 221–22 Giustiniani, Cardinal Benedetto 204–05, 217, 221 Giustiniani, Lorenzo (first Patriarch of Aquilea) 205, 209, 278 Gonzaga family 51; see also under individual names Gonzaga, Cardinal Ferdinando (later Duke of Mantua) 159, 168, 169 Gonzaga, Cardinal Francesco 193 Gonzaga, Cardinal Silvio Valenti 271n45, 292 Gonzaga, Cardinal Vincenzo 153, 167, 169 Gonzaga, Federico 182, 189 Gonzaga, Giulia 265, 266n29, 277 Gonzaga, Luigi 327n36 González de Mendoza, Cardinal Pedro 347–48, 359 González del Castillo, Don Pedro, Archbishop Elect of Granada 354–56, 362–63 Gothic style (funerary monuments) 92–93, 99, 103 Gotti, Cardinal Vincenzo 243–44, 245 Gozzoli, Benozzo 80 Granvelle, Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de 286, 305–07, 346 collections of 307–08, 346 portraits of 305, 306, 307–08, 346 Grattarola, Marco Aurelio, Successi Maravigliosi 324, 327, 331–32, 335 Great Schism, The 45 Gregory X, Pope 186 Gregory XIII, Pope 51, 189–90, 308 portraits of 205, 217 Gregory XV, Pope (earlier Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi) 49, 335 portraits of 211, 226 Grimaldi, Giacomo 96

Grimani family 57, 119, 141–42 coat of arms 133, 139, 140, 141 portraits of 134–35, 136; see also under individual names and Rome, allegiance to 121, 124, 133–34, 137, 142 Venetian palace of 129, 132n75 see also ‘Morosini Grimani’ (manuscript) Grimani, Cardinal Domenico 119, 121–22, 124, 131n67, 137 portraits of 124, 126–29, 127, 135, 136; pl. 3 Grimani, Cardinal Marino 119, 121–22, 131, 135–37 portraits of 129, 135; pl. 3 Grimani, Antonio, Doge of Venice 128, 137 portraits of 129, 135 Grimani, Giovanni (named author of ‘Morosini Grimani’) 133n76, 141–42 Grimani, Giovanni, Patriarch of Aquilea 119, 131 portraits of 129–35, 130, 278n72 Grimani, Marcantonio 134–35 Grimani, Marco 121–22, 131n67 Grimani, Marino, Doge of Venice 135–37 Grimani, Nicolò 137–40, 138–40 Grimani, Ottaviano 135 Grimani, Pietro 128n55 Guadagni, Cardinal Giovanni Antonio 246 Guevara, Diego de 349 hats 188–89, 190–91 as symbol of office 232, 278, 290, 299 see also biretta; galeri Henry IV, King of France 152, 165–66 Henry VIII, King of England 191–92 Honorius III, Pope 149, 156; pl. 4, pl. 5 horse trappings see ornamentation, equestrian horses 185–86, 188, 194; see also ornamentation, equestrian Hugo of Tuscany, Count 104 humanism 46, 73, 81, 123, 208 humours, the 105–06 idealization: in cardinals’ roles 50, 55, 312, 363 in portraiture 24–25, 32, 103, 262, 363 identity 22, 26, 305 collective/group 23, 36, 69–72, 77–80, 83–84, 99, 195, 237, 252, 363 individual 23, 25, 32, 82–83, 156, 290, 363 and portraiture 22, 26, 53, 55–58, 305, 312, 363 Ignatius of Loyola 321, 327, 335 Imperiali, Cardinal Lorenzo 248 indulgences 289–90, 299, 309, 330–31, 332–36 Innocent IV, Pope 24 Innocent IX, Pope (earlier Cardinal Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti) 49, 204, 224 Innocent V, Pope 203n6 Innocent VIII, Pope 51, 103 Innocent XII, Pope Christifidelium 240 Innocent XIII, Pope 249–50

376 

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

Inquisition, the 264, 266, 276 Interdict, the (1606–1607) 150–54, 159, 161, 163, 165–66, 171–73, 278n73 Isidore, Saint 335 Jacopo of Portugal, Cardinal of Sant’Eustachio 82, 84 Jesuits/Jesuit order 153–54, 166, 171, 173, 325, 354 John XXII, Pope 203n6 John XXIII, Pope (Giovanni Cossa) 73 Jonghelinck, Jacob 346 Jouffroy, Jean 46 Joyeuse, Cardinal François de 153, 159, 161, 162, 165–66, 172–73 Juan di Gersi 165 Julius II, Pope 31, 48, 51, 121, 137, 188, 192 possesso of 185 Raphael’s portrait of 26, 33, 105 Julius III, Pope (earlier Cardinal Giovan Maria Ciocchi del Monte) 131, 269, 292, 309 Kauffman, Angelica 126n46 Key, Willem 308, 346 Kostka, Stanislas 327n36 Leo I, Pope (Leo the Great) 188; pl. 6 Leo IX, Pope 44–45, 123n29 Leo X, Pope 186–88, 192, 278, 292, 310 possesso of 185–86, 188 Leoni, Ottavio 202–03, 235 Antonio Zapata, portrait of 353 Carlo Emanuele Pio, portrait of 171n82 Effigies… 28, 164, 164, 170, 171 Pietro Aldobrandini, portrait of 164 Scipione Borghese, portrait of 171, 172 Leoni, Pompeo 358 Leopoldine reforms (1786) 105 Lepanto, Battle at (1571) 292, 305, 307 Lerma, San Pedro church 358 ‘lifelikeness’ 22, 33, 99, 103–04, 108, 297 likeness, individualization of 24, 32, 55, 57–58, 70, 72–73, 77, 83, 102, 104, 107–08, 290, 305; see also ‘lifelikeness’ Logroño, La Redonda church 354–56, 362 López de Carvajal, Cardinal Bernardino 348 Lotto, Lorenzo 127, 128n50 Louise of Savoy, Queen Regent of France 185 Ludovisi, Alessandro see Gregory XV, Pope Ludovisi, Cardinal Ludovico 226, 238n28 Luis Tristán 353 Lutheranism 264–65, 289, 358 Magalotti, Cardinal Lorenzo 226 Mancini, Giulio Considerazioni sulla pittura 285–86 Manetti, Giannozzo 78–81 manuscript illuminations/illustrations 25, 53, 70–72; pl. 1; see also Morosini Grimani 270 Manzoli, Luca 210, 220

Marcellus II, Pope (earlier Cardinal Marcello Cervini) see Marcello Cervini, Cardinal Margheriti, Cardinal (Joan Margarit i Pau) 82 Martin V, Pope 46–47, 74–75, 77–78 Masaccio: Brancacci Chapel frescoes 69 Sagra 69, 72, 76–77 mass production (of portraits) 53, 58–59, 253, 325, 330; see also prints/printing Massimo, Camillo 54 Mattei, Cardinal Girolamo 220 Maurizio di Savoia 169n77 medals, portrait 30–32, 53, 72, 322 as indulgences 332–36 and mass production/distribution 58–59, 325, 330 see also under individual names Medici family 51, 80–81, 185–86, 278, 310–11 as art patrons 296, 311 collections of 274 see also Clement VII, Pope; and under individual names Medici, Cardinal Ferdinando de’ (later Grand Duke of Tuscany) 310–11 and art patronage 311 collections of 202–03, 205n16, 209–10, 219–20, 311 portraits of 204, 211, 224, 225, 226, 296, 305, 309–11 Medici, Cosimo I de’ 80–81, 203n6, 310 Medici, Francesco 310 Medici, Giovanni Angelo see Pius IV, Pope Medici, Giovanni di Bicci de’ 77 Medici, Ippolito de’ 25, 210, 220 Medici, Lorenzo de’ 80, 183 Medici, Marie de 205 Melozzo da Forli, Sixtus IV Appointing Platina 30 memory/memorialization 95, 99, 358; see also commemoration; tomb/funerary monuments Merenda, Apollonio 266n29 Michelangelo 266, 275, 288, 362 Milan Cathedral 323–24, 330 quadroni di San Carlo 325–26; pl. 11 Milan 213, 320–21, 323–24 Mino da Fiesole 104 miracles/miracle-working 324–26, 331; see also cults Mocenigo, Alvise 122 Mola, Gaspare 329 Monforte de Lemos, Jesuit college 356–58, 357 Montaigne, Michel de 189–90 Montalto, Cardinal see Sixtus V, Pope Montalto, Cardinal Alessandro Peretti see Peretti di Montalto, Cardinal Alessandro Montefeltro, Federico da 81, 183 Mor, Anthonis 346 Morales, Luis de 349 ‘Morosini Grimani’ (manuscript) 57, 133–40, 136, 138–39, 141–42

377

Index 

mozzetta 58, 128, 131n64, 232, 290, 309 Mújica y Bracamonte, Garcíbañez de 362 mules 181–83, 192–94 as diplomatic gifts 184–85 equestrian ornamentation of 182, 186–88, 191–94 and monarchs, used by 190–91 pontifical 183–87, 189, 191–96, 262 and processional display 184–90, 194–95 Neri, Filippo 213, 321, 327, 335 networks familial 33, 51, 204, 235, 248, 299–301 patronage 33, 45, 50–52, 211, 218, 289 socio-political 30, 32, 50–51, 57, 84, 204, 208, 248 Niepołomice, Poland 326 Niño de Guevara, Cardinal Fernando 345, 358; pl. 12 novena 92, 95 Ochino, Bernardino 264–65 Ordóñez, Bartolomé 354 ornamentation, equestrian 182, 185–94 Orsini family 51; see also under individual names Orsini, Cardinal Giuliano degli 79 Orsini, Fulvio 272 Orsini, Virginio 296 Osimo, Palazzo Gallo 213–14 Pacheco de Toledo, Cardinal Francisco, Bishop of Burgos 346, 356 Padua 122–24, 264–65 Pagani, Gregorio 156 Pagliarini, Battista, Cronicae 134 Paleario, Aonio 266 Palencia, convent of Santa María de la Expectación 359, 360 Paleotti, Cardinal Gabriele 28, 49 Palla di Nofri Strozzi 77 Pallotta, Cardinal Giovanni Battista 248 Palma il Giovane 135, 155 Double Portrait of Cardinals Domenico and Marino Grimani 135, pl. 3 Pandolfini family 81, 83 Panini, Giovanni Paolo, Gallery of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga 271n45 Panvinio, Onofrio 272 Life of Pope Donus 131 Paolucci, Cardinal Fabrizio 241–42 papacy, the 25, 45, 92, 99 and authority 23, 48–49, 244–46, 363 dominant families in 51 portrait traditions of 26, 288 power structures within 30, 33, 45, 48–49 see also Curia, the; and elections papal papalisti families (Venice) 119, 120, 121, 123, 133, 151; see also under individual family names Parasole, Leonardo, Effigies cum insinibus, nominibus, cognominibus… 29–30, 164, 164, 170, 348

patriarchate/patriarchs 119, 131, 137; see also under individual names patronage and cardinals’ portrait collections 204–07, 213–14, 216–18 and networks 33, 45, 50–52, 211, 218, 289–90 and status, reflection of 54, 72–73, 92–93, 207, 289, 299, 309 Paul II, Pope 92, 97 Paul III, Pope (earlier Cardinal Alessandro Farnese) 51, 131, 208, 274, 292 cardinals appointed by 263–64, 276, 309; see also under individual names portraits of 26–27, 266–67, 268–72, 268, 270, 350; pl. 9 Paul IV, Pope (earlier Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa) see Carafa, Cardinal Gian Pietro Paul V, Pope (earlier Cardinal Camillo Borghese) 152, 165–66, 169, 327, 330, 335 and the interdict 151, 154, 156, 159 portraits of 207, 211, 250 Pazzi, Piero de’ 81 Peretti di Montalto, Cardinal Alessandro (Sixtus’s grand-nephew) 211 collections of/inventory 211, 225–26 portraits of 205, 211–17, 221–23, 226 Peretti family 214, 217, 225; see also under individual names Peretti, Camilla 214–15, 217 Peretti, Michele 225 Peri, Pellegrino 236 Péril, Robert, Cavalcata at the Coronation of Charles V in Bologna 189, 190–91 Perino del Vaga 36n55 Reginald Pole 132 Philip II, King of Spain 321, 324, 344 portraits of 206, 329n39 Philip III, King of Spain 152, 359 portraits of 205–06 Piatti, Girolamo, De cardinalis dignitate et officio 50 Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius (later Pope Pius II) 83 Commentaries 106–07, 187 Piccolomini, Agostino Patrizi, Liber Caeremoniarum 186 Piccolomini, Cardinal Iacopo Ammannati 46–47 Pierbenedetti, Cardinal Mariano 214–15 collections of 211, 214–17, 222 funerary monument to 32–33, 215 portraits of 215, 217, 222 Pignatelli, Cardinal Francesco 249–50 Pignatelli, Cardinal Stefano 220 Pio da Carpi, Cardinal Rodolfo portraits of 208 portrait collection of 208–09, 218–19, 222, 263, 277 Pio of Savoy, Carlo Emanuele, Cardinal 169–71, 170 collections of 203, 226–27 portraits of 203, 227

378 

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

Pisanello, Mule 184 Pius II, Pope (earlier Cardinal Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini) see Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius Pius IV, Pope (earlier Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Medici) 131, 153n23, 307, 310, 320 cardinals promoted under 345–46 descendants of 51, 106 portraits of 269 Pius IX, Pope 250 Pius V, Pope (earlier Cardinal Michele Ghislieri) 49, 105–06, 153n23, 209, 238, 298–99, 309, 348, 360 portraits of 205–06, 211–12, 289, 297, 300–01, 362 Pius VI, Pope 247 Pius XI, Pope 247 Pliny the Elder 209, 302 Poggini, Giampaolo 329n39 Poland 326 Pole, Cardinal Reginald 35, 36, 132, 209–10, 265, 267, 274 portraits of 132, 208, 210, 219–20, 263, 266–67, 272–73, 275–76 Pollaiuolo brothers 102–03 Pomarancio (Cristoforo Roncalli) 213–14 Antonio Maria Gallo 214; pl. 7 pope, the see papacy, the; and under individual names popes, portraits of 203, 244–47, 249–50, 290 compositional formats of 26, 128, 132, 288, 309–10 see also viri illustres; and under individual names porphyry 33, 93 Porro, Giovanni Battista 325 Porta, Giacomo della 309 portrait busts 32–33, 53, 72, 271, 271; see also under individual names portrait compositions, design formulae for: cardinals 26–30, 33, 99, 251–52, 262, 274, 288, 302–04, 308, 350 popes 26, 128, 132, 288, 309–10 royalty 362 portraiture 22–25, 55, 57–59, 99, 232, 235–36, 301 circulation/portability of 57–58, 142, 202, 207–08, 275, 328–30, 334–35 copying/copies of 135, 142, 202, 203n6, 232, 235–36, 251–53, 288, 290, 293–97, 310 devotional 209, 332–35, 349; see also medals, portrait ecclesiastical/juridical status, as reflection of 26–28, 99, 237, 239–41, 252, 343–45, 359, 363 group 30, 36, 69–72, 75, 77–80, 83–84, 149–50, 155, 157 idealization in 24–25, 32, 103, 262, 363 and identity, construction of 22, 26, 53, 55–58, 305, 312, 363; see also likeness, individualization of and likeness 24, 57–58, 72–73, 98–103; see also ‘lifelikeness’

posthumous 32, 99, 126, 320–24, 349, 351, 363; see also tomb/funerary monuments public displays of 30, 58–59, 72, 95, 99, 104–05, 202, 205, 244, 246–47, 252–53 private displays of 30, 57, 99, 104–05, 202, 235 social status/roles, as reflection of 23, 73, 80, 99, 102, 240–41, 277, 299, 312 symbolism, use of 32, 57–58, 299–300 see also portrait compositions, design formulae for Portugal, cardinals from 82, 208, 345, 347 possesso, the 184–86, 240–44, 249 prints/printing (portrait series) 22–23, 28–30, 164, 171, 219–27, 232, 236, 244, 252, 348 see also collections/collecting Priuli, Lorenzo 344 processions, ceremonial 181, 184–90, 194; see also possesso, the procurators 119–20, 122 protectorships (cardinal) 52, 232–35, 237–41, 244, 246, 248 Protestantism 95, 300; see also Calvinism; Lutheranism; Reformation, the Provana, Antonio 172 Pucci, Cardinal Antonio 26 Pucci, Cardinal Lorenzo 204 Pulzone, Scipione 205–06, 235, 287–89 Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, portraits of (incl. copies) 305, 306, 307–08, 346 Francesco del Monte, portraits of 202, 225 Giovanni Ricci, portraits of (incl. copies) 287, 290–96, 291, 294, 295–96, 308 Giacomo Savelli, portraits of (incl. copies) 302– 04, 304, 308–09 Michele Bonelli, portraits of (incl. copies) 205– 06, 219, 287, 297, 298, 300–01, 302–04, 303; pl. 10 painting skills/style 28, 285–88, 290, 299, 302, 307, 311–12 Virgin of the Immaculate Conception 296 Way to Cavalry 296 working practices 295–96, 312 Querini, Antonio 150, 151n7, 152 Querini, Girolamo, patriarch of Venice 137 Quiroga, Cardinal Gaspar de 351–52, 353 Rapacciolo, Cardinal Francesco Angelo 195, 195 Raphael 128, 132 Alessandro Farnese, portrait of 26–27 Cardinal Bibbiena 288 Julius II, portrait of 26, 33, 105 Meeting of Leo I with Attila pl. 6 Recalcati, Giacomo 243–44 red (colour) 128, 131, 187–88 Reformation, the 289, 326; see also Calvinism; Lutheranism; Protestantism Reinoso, Francisco de, Bishop of Córdoba 359–62, 360

379

Index 

relics 299, 321, 325, 326, 328, 335 religious orders 153–56, 162, 166, 171, 173, 247, 325, 354; see also protectorships (cardinal) renuncia cum regressu 124n37, 131 Rheims, Council of (1148) 45 Riario, Cardinal Pietro 32 Riario, Cardinal Raffaele 193–94 Ribera, Juan de, Archbishop of Valencia 348–49 Ricci, Cardinal Giovanni 193, 291–93, 305, 310–11 portraits of 287, 290–96, 291, 294, 302, 308–09 Ridolfi, Carlo 155, 157, 159, 162, 165, 169 Ridolfi, Lorenzo 77 rings 58, 101, 137 Rinuccini, Alamanno 83 ritratto da parata 301 ritual/rituals 77, 157, 181, 186, 191, 237, 249 funerary 92, 94–96, 108 see also possesso, the; and processions, ceremonial rocchetto (surplice) 128, 172, 240, 249, 251 Rodríguez de Segovia, Juan 347 Roman Catholicism 108, 210; see also Catholic Church, the Romana, Francesca 327 Romano, Antoniazzo 347 Romano, Paolo 97 Rome 54 Gesù church 309 Grotte Vaticane (Old St. Peter’s) 93, 94, 99, 100–01 Madonna del Pianto, church of 246 Old St. Peter’s 24, 92–93, 94, 96–97, 99, 100–01, 102–03, 330 Pio Sodalizio dei Piceni 93 San Clemente 97–98, 102, 204 San Giacomo degli Incurabili 246 San Giovanni in Laterano 184 San Giuseppe dei Falegnami 247 San Lorenzo in Damaso 97–98 San Martino ai Monti 247 San Pietro in Vincoli 33 San Salvatore in Lauro 93 Santa Caterina della Rosa ai Funari, convent of 238n28, 246 Santa Cecilia in Trastevere 104, 209, 223 Sant’Agostino 247–48 Santa Maria del Popolo 32, 103 Santa Maria Maggiore 32–33, 215, 217, 354, 355 Sant’Ambrogio al Corso 331–32 Santa Prassede 102, 106–07, 107, 321 Santa Susanna monastery 241–42, 243 Santi Giovanni Evangelista e Petronio of the Bolognesi 243–44 Santissime Stimmate di San Francesco 248–51 Santissimo Crocefisso, San Marcello 241 Santissimi XII Apostoli 32 Sant’Urbano ai Pantani, convent of 353 Vatican palace 188; pl. 6 Roncalli, Cristoforo see Pomorancio

Rossellino, Antonio 73 Rossi, Giovanni Antonio de’ Carlo Borromeo, portrait medal of 322, 322 Roverella, Cardinal Bartolomeo 82, 102 Rubens, Peter Paul, Ferdinando Gonzaga 168, 169 Ruzante, First Oration 122–24 Sacred College of Cardinals, the: history and reform 36, 45–52, 54 networks within 22, 30, 50–51, 209, 211 pope’s position within 48–49 public image of 182, 188–89 Spanish presence in 345 Venetian presence in 120–21 see also protectorships (cardinal) saddlecloths/saddle covers see ornamentation, equestrian Sadoleto, Cardinal Jacopo 208, 264–65 portrait groups, appearance within 196, 262, 266, 268, 270, 270, 272–73, 275–78; pl. 9 portraits of (solo) 208, 210, 219–20, 263 saints/sainthood 326–27, 335 Sala, Cardinal Gabriele Ferretti 251 Sala, Cardinal Giuseppe 251 Salazar de Mendoza, Pedro 351 Salviati, Cardinal Antonio Maria portraits of 224 portrait collection of 204, 222–23 Salviati, Cardinal Fra Bernardo portraits of 224 Salviati, Cardinal Giovanni 204 portraits of 223–24, 288 San Carlo see Borromeo, Cardinal Carlo (San Carlo) Sandoval, Cardinal Cristóbal Rojas, Archbishop of Seville 358 Sandoval y Rojas, Cardinal Bernardo (later Archbishop of Toledo) 353 Sansovino, Andrea 32, 103 Santori, Giulio Antonio 49 Sanudo, Giacomo 320 Sanudo, Marin 120n14, 122, 125n38 Sariñena, Juan 349 Sarto, Andrea del 288 Sauli, Cardinal Antonio 248 Sauli, Cardinal Bandinello 27, 27 Savelli, Cardinal Giacomo 308–09 collections of 308 portraits of 302–05, 304, 308–09 Savelli family 51; see also under individual names Scaglia, Cardinal Desiderio 224–25 Scarampo, Luigi 97 sculpture see effigies; portrait busts Sebastiano del Piombo 26, 128 Bandinello Sauli, his Secretary, and Two Geographers 27, 27 Giovanni Salviati, portrait of 288 Ippolito de’ Medici, portrait of 25 Reginald Pole 132 Visitation 126n40

380 

PORTR AIT CULTURES OF THE EARLY MODERN CARDINAL

Seneca, Antonio, Bishop of Anagni 332 Serafini, Marcantonio 154 Seripando, Cardinal Giorolamo 277 Servites 153 Seville Cathedral 358 Sfondrati, Cardinal Francesco 277 portraits of 223, 272–73, 275–76 Sfondrato, Cardinal Paolo 209, 223 Sforza, Cardinal Ascanio 121, 272n47 funerary monument (Santa Maria del Popolo) 32, 103 portraits of 210, 220 Silva, Miguel da, Bishop of Viseu see ‘Visco’, Cardinal Sittow, Michel 349 Sixtus IV, Pope 97 portraits of 26n22, 30, 102–03 Sixtus V, Pope (earlier Cardinal Montalto) 47–48, 52, 211–12, 214, 326 monument to (Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome) 33 portraits of 205, 211–14, 217, 222 Soderini, Cardinal Francesco 74, 194 Soranzo, Vittore 266 Spain cardinals from 343–44; see also under individual names ecclesiastical hierarchy 344–45, 352 portraiture traditions 344–45, 359–63 and Spanish identity 345–46 tomb sculpture 358–59 and Venetian Republic, relationship with 152–53, 165, 171 Spinola, Cardinal 247, 251 spirituali 263–64, 274, 276–77 Staurotheca 117–18 Stefaneschi, Cardinal Giacomo Gaetano 24–25 stone: tomb effigies/memorials 98, 103–04 painted/painting on 33, 93 Strozzi, Filippo 83 surplice see rocchetto Tavera, Cardinal Juan Pardo de, Archbishop of Toledo: portrait of 350–51 tomb of 351, 354 technology, developments in 53; see also mass production (of portraits) temperaments, the see humours, the Teresa d’Ávila, Saint 335 Theatines 153 Tintoretto, Jacopo 352 Giovanni Grimani 129–33, 130 Marcantonio da Mula 132–33 Titian Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, portrait of 346 Girolamo and Cardinal Marco Corner Investing Marco, Abbot of Carrara, with His Benefice 124–26, 125

Ippolito de’ Medici, portrait of 25 Lodovico Beccadelli, portrait of 274 Paul III, portraits of 129, 272n46, 350 Pietro Bembo, portraits of 27–28, 106, 262, 273–74, 276, 288; pl. 2 Todeschini Piccolomini, Cardinal Francesco 183 Toledo Cathedral 96n17, 352–53 tomb/funerary monuments 32–33, 96 classical styles 92, 103 Gothic styles 92–93, 99, 103 papal 92–93 settings of 93, 102, 217, 356–58 Spanish styles 354–56, 358–59, 362–63 Venetian commissions 92–93 see also effigies (tomb/funerary) Torelli, Bartolomeo, Missal of Cardinal Angelo Acciaiuoli 25; pl. 1 Traversari, Ambrogio 83 Très Riches Heures du duc du Berry (manuscript) 25 Trevisan, Cardinal Ludovico 97–98 Ubaldi, Cardinal Benedetto 227 Udney, John 126n46 uomini famosi see viri illustres Urban II, Pope 139, 140, 141 Urban IV, Pope 203n6 Urban VI, Pope 45 Urban VIII, Pope see Barberini, Cardinal Maffeo Vagnone, Alfronso 325 Valdés y Salas, Fernando de, Archbishop of Seville tomb of 358 Valdés, Juan de 264 Valier, Cardinal Agostino 159, 160 Van Eyck, Jan 25, 72 Vasari, Giorgio 24, 76–77, 263, 269n43, 272n48, 274, 288 Entrata of Leo X (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence) 187, 278 Paul III Distributing Benefices (Cancelleria, Rome) 266–67 Pietro Bembo, portrait of 272n45 Vatican palace, the see under Rome Vecellio, Cesare 120n17 Vecellio, Marco Clement VII Meeting Charles V at Bologna 278 Triumphant Christ Appearing to Sts. Dominic and Francis 154 Vecellio, Orazio 272n47 Vega, Pedro Laso de la 350 Velasco, Luis de 353 Venetian Republic 120–24, 150–52, 278 Consiglio dei Dieci 150–51 and France, relationship with 152–53, 165–66 and the Interdict (1606–1607) 150–54, 159, 161, 163, 165–66, 171–73, 278n73 religious orders of 153–54 and Roman Curia, relationship with 119, 121, 151–52 and Spain, relationship with 152–53, 165, 171

381

Index 

Venice: Casa Grimani 129, 132n75 Palazzo Ducale 135, 142, 155–56, 278 San Marco 103 San Michele in Isola 157, 173 San Sebastiano 135 Santa Maria della Carità 117–18 Santa Maria Formosa 141 Santi Giovanni e Paolo 149, 153–56, 173 Scuola Grande della Carità 117–18 Venusti, Marcello 362 Vergerio, Pier Paolo 266 Veronese, Paolo 156 Vespasiano da’ Bisticci 81, 83 Lives 72, 81–84 Vicentino, Andrea 151n8, 154–55, 278 Vidoni, Cardinal Girolamo 220 viri illustres 22–23, 202–03 ‘Visco’, Cardinal (Miguel da Silva, Bishop of Viseu) 208, 219 Vitelleschi, Giovanni, Archbishop of Florence (Cardinal of Florence) 210, 220 Vitelli, Cardinal 272n47 Vivian of Claverton, George 129 wax modelling/casts 95, 104–05 Weiditz, Christoph 194

white (colour) 186, 188 Wolsey, Cardinal 185, 189n42, 191–92, 195–96 Xavier, Francis 335 Xavierre, Cardinal Jeronimo 171 Zapata, Cardinal Antonio 353 Zen, Cardinal Giovanni Battista 103 Zorzi, Bernardo 134 Zuccaro, Federico 278, 328–29, 328 Zuccaro, Taddeo Investiture of Orazio Farnese as prefect of Rome by Paul III (Palazzo Farnese, Caprarola) 272–74; pl. 9 Paul III Nominating Cardinals (Palazzo Farnese, Caprarola) 268–70, 268 Paul III Receiving Charles V after his Victory at Tunis in 1535 (Palazzo Farnese, Caprarola) 270–72, 270 Pietro Bembo, mosaic portrait of (after Titian) 273–74, 273 Zuccato, Valerio, Pietro Bembo (mosaic portrait after Titian) 273–74, 273 Zulian, Giovanni 128 Zurbarán, Francisco de 351

Plate 1 Bastiano di Niccolò, Matteo and Bartolomeo Torelli, historiated initial and border with Angelo Acciaiuoli’s portrait from the cardinal’s missal, 1402-1405, MS. 30, Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum (© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).

Plate 2 Titian, Cardinal Pietro Bembo, c. 1540, oil on canvas, Washington, DC, The National Gallery of Art (© National Gallery of Art, Washington).

Plate 3 Unknown artist (Palma il Giovane?), Double Portrait of Cardinals Domenico and Marino Grimani, late sixteenth century, oil on canvas, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia (© Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia).

Plate 4 Raphael, Meeting of Leo I with Attila, 1514, fresco, Vatican City, Musei Vaticani (© Scala).

Plate 5 Leandro Bassano, Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, 1607-1608, oil on canvas, Venice, Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Sacristy (© Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini—Matteo de Fina).

Plate 6 Detail of Leandro Bassano, Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Dominic in 1216, 1607-1608, (© Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini—Matteo de Fina).

Plate 7 Cristoforo Roncalli (Pomarancio), Cardinal Antonio Maria Gallo, 1616, Loreto, Palazzo Apostolico (© Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Loreto)

Plate 8 Unknown artist, Portrait of Cardinal Francesco Barberini Senior as Cardinal Protector, seventeenth century, oil on canvas, Minerva Auctions, May 2017 (© courtesy of Minerva Auctions—Gruppo Finarte).

Plate 9 Taddeo Zuccaro and workshop, Investiture of Orazio Farnese as Prefect of Rome by Paul III, 1562-1563, fresco, Caprarola, Palazzo Farnese (© akg-images; by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo – Palazzo Farnese Caprarola).

Plate 10 Scipione Pulzone, Michele Bonelli, called ‘Cardinal Alessandrino’, 1586, oil on canvas, Cambridge, MA, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum (© President and Fellows of Harvard College).

Plate 11 The Healing of Paola Giustina Casati, 1610, oil on canvas, Milan, Duomo (© Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano).

Plate 12 El Greco, Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara, c. 1600, oil on canvas, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, bequest of Mrs H. O. Havemeyer).