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A Hitherto Unknown Portrait of a Weil-Known Roman Humanist*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The Sala delle Arti Liberali of the Vatican Borgia apartment has never been the subject of comprehensive research. The sala is one of the private rooms of Alexander VI Borgia which were decorated between 1492 and 1494 by Bernardino Pinturicchio and his school. The frescoes in this particular room, of the allegories of the Liberal Arts, are not by the master himself but were executed by minor Umbrian painters; they have never, therefore, attracted great art-historical attention.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1990
Footnotes
*
This paper is part of a forthcoming monograph on the Borgia apartment. I wish to thank Meredith Gill, Princeton, and Shelley Zuraw, Rome, for helping me with the translation into English.
References
1 The most comprehensive studies on the Borgia apartment were written at the end of the last century: F. Ehrle and H. Stevenson, Cli affreschi del Pinturicchio nell'appartamento Borgia del Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano (Rome, 1897);and E. Steinmann, Pinturicchio (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1898). Among the more recent studies should be mentioned F. Saxl, “The Appartamento Borgia,” in idem, Lectures (London, 1957), 1:174-88; N. R. Parks, “On the Meaning of Pinturicchio's Sala dei Sana,” Art History 2 (1979):2O0-317; J. B. Riess, “Raphael's Stanze and Pinturicchio's Borgia Apartment,” Source 3 (1984):57-67; C. Cieri-Via, “Mito, allegoria e religionenell'appartamento Borgia,” in Learti a Roma da Sisto IVa Giulio //(Rome, 1985), 77-104. All these works, however, pay little attention to the Sala delle Arti Liberali.
2 Already Steinmann, 74, mentioned the extraordinary appearance of this figure, but he did not attempt an identification.
3 See, for example, Antonio Pollaiuolo's tomb of Sixtus IV (Vatican, St. Peter's); Agostino di Duccio's reliefs in the Cappella delle Arti Liberali (Rimini, San Francesco); Sandro Botticelli's frescoes for the Villa Lemmi (Paris, Musée du Louvre).
4 Capella's text was composed between 410 and 439. Capella defines the Liberal Arts as seven female personifications, distinguished by age and attributes and accompanied by famous ancient scholars. The most comprehensive study on the influence of Capella's workisbyj. Kronj Sger, Beriihmte Criechenund Romerals Begleiterder Museenundder Artes Liberates in Bildzyklen des 2.-14. Jahrhunderls, Ph.D. Diss., Marburg, 1973.
5 See W. Liebenwein, Studiolo: Die Entstehung eines Raumtyps und seine Entwickhmg bis um 1660 (Berlin, 1977), 77. Two paintings from this series are still preserved in the National Gallery of London; two other panels, known from early photographs, were destroyed in Berlin in 1944.
6 Compare, for example, the figure of Aristotle on the cassone by Giovanni del Ponte, ca. 1440 (Madrid, Museo del Prado).
7 J. F. D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome (Baltimore and London, 1983), 124; on Ciceronianism, ibid.,123-43, and R- Sabbadini, Storia del ciceronianesimo edialtre questioni litterarie nell'età delle rinascenza (Turin, 1885).
8 D'Amico, 124-25.
9 The late John D'Amico pointed out to me a portrait of Castellesi in the Palazzo del Commune at Tarquinia. There the cardinal (d. 1522) is represented together with other important Tarquinian natives, including Pope Gregory V (d. 999) and Cardinal Vitelleschi (d. 1440). But as these frescoes are dated 1629, they are not a reliable source, particularly since the figures are shown in seventeenth-century costumes.
10 For Castellesi's biography, see D'Amico, 16-19; G. Fragnito, “Castellesi, Adriano,“ in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1978) 21:665-71.
11 It was in Cardinal Castellesi's vineyard that the fatal banquet took place after which the pope fell sick and died. According to the traditional account, the pope erroneously took poison meant to kill the wealthy cardinal, but it is more likely that the pontiff had developed malaria.
12 Fragnito, 665. In 1478 Castellesi cancelled his marriage contract in order to take orders and embark on a clerical career; see D'Amico, 16, n. 52.
13 F. Buonanni, Lagerarchia ecclesiastica (Rome, 1720), 1:472-74; the color is described aspavonazzo or violaceo; the purple coat is “antiquissimus” for the prelates of the church.
14 D'Amico, 171.
15 For Cortesi's biography see D'Amico, 77-80; R. Ricciardi, “Cortesi, Paolo,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1983) 29:766-70.
16 D'Amico, 77; Ricciardi, 766.
17 A description of the first version of the library fresco also mentions a barretta in the librarian's hand: seej. Ruysschaert, “La bibliothèque vaticane dans les premières années dupontificatde Sixte IV,“Archivum Historiae Ponteficiae 24(1986):71-90. (Thedetached fresco is now in the Vatican Pinacoteca.)
18 D'Amico, 77; K. Weil-Garris and idem, The Renaissance Cardinal's Ideal Palace: A Chapter from Cortesi's De Cardinalatu (Rome, 1980), 48.
19 D'Amico, 77; Angelo Poliziano, Epistolae libri XII (Lyon, 1533), lib. VIII, ep. 17 (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Race. gen. classici V, 1031).
20 D'Amico, 78-79; Sabbadini, 34.
21 L. von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters (Freiburg, 1899), 3:523; E. Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (London, 1958), 145, n. 1; D'Amico, 103-05.
22 Paolo Cortesi, De cardinalatu (Castrum Cortesium, 1510), lib. 2, 129 (Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, 69.5.E.8).
23 Michele Ferno, Epistola legationum italicarum, also quoted as Historia nova Alexandri Sexti (Rome, 1493), 3 (Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, Vol. Incu., 1817).
24 The quotation is from G. Farris, Eleganze e teologia net Proœmium in Librum Sententiarum di Paolo Cortesi (Savona, 1972), 30-32.