The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (9 page)

There was also inducement for Felice to accept the match. The Medici secretary, Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, reported from Rome, ‘The daughter of the Pope, Madonna Felice, is to be married to the Lord of Piombino with those conditions that Pope Alexander wished to place upon the [marriage] of Madonna Lucrezia. That is to say that the said Lord will make a priest of the son that he already has and if Madonna Felice should bear a male child he will inherit the state, and if the Lord dies without children the estate shall go to the said lady who can dispose of it as she pleases.’
8
Effectively to disinherit a son from a first marriage so that a son from a second could inherit was not necessarily abnormal in contemporary

marital politics. The second part, that should there be no children Felice would receive Piombino, was much more unusual. Furthermore, Bibbiena remarked that she could dispose of the estate as ‘she’ pleased. He gives Felice an autonomy rare for a woman of this time, indicating her instinct to protect herself and her interests.

Less than a month after Bibbiena’s report, however, the Piombino match was off. A Venetian in Rome wrote home in March noting that Julius had sent an emissary to France ‘to arrange a marriage between the Pope’s daughter with the son of the Duke of Lorraine’.
⁹
Perhaps Julius decided he would benefit more from a French liaison, with its international implications, than from the provincial Piombino match. The Duke of Lorraine, René d’Anjou, was an old political ally of Julius, and a marriage between their children would further cement this relationship.

However, Felice herself might have voiced the opinion that the Piombino marriage was not to her liking. If it was in Julius’s interests to hold out for something better, then certainly the same was true for Felice. After meeting Jacopo Appiano, she perhaps felt that the potential prize of Piombino would not compensate her fully for however many years of matrimony she might have to endure. The Vatican officials and bureaucrats who were constant visitors to her stepfather’s house chattered and gossiped and probably told her, directly or indirectly, all she needed to know about Jacopo Appiano. Of great interest to her was that he had been passed over as a husband for Lucrezia Borgia. Felice might not have paid a great deal of attention to Lucrezia Borgia while she was herself only a cardinal’s daughter. However, what Lucrezia had been given was now a benchmark for what Felice wanted for herself. The notion of settling for a Borgia reject was not something she would have been able to tolerate.

Nor did anything come of Felice’s potential Lorraine marriage, although whether interest waned on the bride’s or groom’s side is not known. Shortly after the French union was broached, Felice sailed back to Savona for a brief period. Her return is the first indication that Julius did see his daughter as more than material for the marriage market, for when she went back, he had her act as an agent of good will between himself and the Savonese mercantile community. They were evidently anxious to hear that they would receive favourable treatment in Rome now that there was a pope who was one of their own. Julius’s uncle Sixtus had seen himself as specifically Savonese; inscriptions emblazoned across the Vatican Palace from his reign read ‘Sixtus IV Saonensis’. Julius was not quite so parochial in his outlook. He preferred to identify himself by way of his province, Liguria, which meant he could exploit a connection with the more powerful and wealthy city of Genoa. None the less, he had no desire to alienate his native city’s business people and was ready to take advantage of the good relations his daughter had established in Savona. Before she departed again for Rome, Felice, awaiting a boat from Genoa, wrote once more to the Savonese
commune
, assuring them that the ‘Pope holds you dearly in his heart and loves the city more than any man has ever loved his
patria
’.
¹⁰

This stay in Savona provided Felice with a period of respite from the ongoing campaign to find her a husband. It also allowed her to perform in a role that was instinctively hers. Ironically, she was a natural cardinal
nipote
, she loved mediation and diplomacy, and particularly enjoyed helping those weaker than herself. Julius was described as ‘always on the alert to shield the humblest of his subjects from oppression’, and in this respect, as in others, Felice was her father’s daughter, taking time to deal with small grievances in the midst of major crises.
¹¹
Like her father, Felice did not shy away from conflict with her peers, but it gave her pleasure to feel that she had the power to smooth any ruffled feathers in the town to which she had arrived, as an outsider, a decade earlier.

Felice’s period of respite from the matrimonial carousel was, however, brief. At the end of May, Julius summoned his daughter back to Rome, this time in the company of her aunt Luchina.

chapter 3

The della Rovere Women in Rome

On
31
May
1504
, the Venetian ambassador at the Vatican court, Antonio Giustiniani, reported on the arrival of Julius’s sister Luchina in Rome. She was expected there soon, ‘in the company of Madonna Felice, daughter of the Pope, for whom galleys set sail several days ago to fetch from Savona’.
¹
He reported their arrival at the port of Ostia on
8
June and noted that the following day they would make their formal entrance into Rome. Their entrance was still discreet, however, with few onlookers for ‘the plague is making great progress, and there are few places in the city that are not infected...the Pope is inclined to leave Rome, although it has not been determined where he shall go’.
²

Despite the threat of disease, Julius did not move from Rome, and a few days later he hosted a celebratory event for the arrival of his female relatives. ‘These ladies,’ the Venetian ambassador wrote, ‘the daughter and sister of the Pope, in the company of the Prefectress have gone
publicly
[his emphasis] to the Pope’s Castle attended by many courtiers from the family of the Pope and other Cardinals, and they enjoyed themselves until late in the evening with His Holiness.’
3
The Venetian ambassador took pains to imply there was a hint of scandal attached to Julius carousing with the women. Julius would not have hosted such an event for his daughter alone; even in the company of her

aunt her ‘public’ entrance warranted underscoring in Giustiniani’s missive. None the less, that Luchina was there did dilute the impact of Felice’s presence. Moreover, the festivities took place at ‘the Pope’s Castle’, Castel Sant’ Angelo, the Castle of the Holy Angel. This vast circular structure, originally the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, was converted into a fortified, moated castle in the Middle Ages, its name changed to remove its association with the pagan past. It stood at the foot of the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, the bridge over the Tiber leading to the Vatican Hill. It was close to the Vatican Palace, to which it was connected by a secret passageway, yet was recognized as a separate building. Julius could thus entertain his female relations in splendid fashion, but outside the ecclesiastical complex itself, thus maintaining Church decorum.

To maintain decorum while catering to family needs became Julius’s first priority as the patron engineer of Vatican Palace additions. His recent predecessors, from Nicholas V onwards, had all made renovations and amendments to the palace structure, but the palace was still a disharmonious collection of medieval buildings, assembled one on top of the other on the Vatican Hill. Julius would have the man best described as his ‘partner in design’, the architect Donato Bramante, make numerous improvements to his papal residence.
⁴
Bramante was originally from Urbino, but had worked for many years at the Sforza court in Milan. He and Julius shared a similar vision of Rome. Both were enamoured of the idea of returning the golden age of ancient Rome to the Julian city. The first task Julius gave Bramante, in the spring of
1504
, was to make the Villa Belvedere more easily accessible. The villa was built in the
1480
s by Innocent VIII, the Ligurian pope Julius had so closely assisted, and was described by those that visited it as ‘a most exquisite and delightful place’.
⁵
Located north of the Vatican Palace on the Mons San Egidio, it became Julius’s favourite site for family entertainments. Like Castel Sant’ Angelo, the villa was close to the Vatican Palace proper, yet was not actually part of it. Julius could host dinners and dances that his female relations could attend, and not fear comparison with Alexander VI, who had no compunction about staging parties in the palace itself with Lucrezia or mistresses and courtesans present. Julius had Bramante design the Cortile del Belvedere, defined by two corridors extending from the palace across a deep valley to the villa. The villa was three hundred metres away from the palace, across difficult terrain, a challenge the ageing Pope and his architect would overcome. This was only one phase of Julius’s plans for the Cortile del Belvedere. Bramante also added a courtyard and garden for the Pope’s growing collection of antique sculpture, which included the famous
Laocoön
, the
Belvedere Torso
, and
Apollo Belvedere
.
6

It was at an event at the Villa Belvedere that indications of Felice’s discomfort among her female della Rovere relatives became apparent. While Felice had established herself as a figure of sufficient substance to mollify the people of Savona, her relationship with these women was more complex. Throughout her life, she contrived to have little to do with them. Her lack of ease when with them was described in a letter written on
11
July
1504
by Emilia Pia. Emilia Pia was lady-in-waiting to Elizabetta Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, and she was writing to Elizabetta’s sister-in-law, Isabella d’Este, the Marchesa of Mantua. Emilia is reporting a meal given by Julius in honour of his female relatives at the Villa Belvedere:

And then Madame the Prefectress [Felice’s aunt Giovanna da Montefeltro della Rovere] entered with Madonna Costanza her daughter and the two married nieces of His Holiness. The first, Madonna Sista, married to the nephew of the Cardinal of San Giorgio, Signor Galeazzo Riario...she wore a dress of gold brocade covered with slashed crimson silk and a mantle of gold taffeta. The second niece, called Madonna Lucretia, married to a nephew of the Cardinal of Naples, who is the son of the Duke of Ariano, wore a dress of black and gold silk with pearls at her neck and jewels on her head of not much worth; and these two are the nieces of the Pope, the daughters of a sister of His Holiness, called Madonna Luchina. And Madonna Costanza preceded all, with a yellow dress covered in slashed white pendant trimmings and a headdress of diamonds of some worth, believed to have been given her by the Pope. Madonna Felice did not appear at all, as she was feeling ill.
⁷

At such significant events as this dinner at the Villa Belvedere, one that the Pope was giving in honour of his female relatives, one of those relatives would have to be on the brink of death to fail to attend. The obviousness of Felice’s absence was noticed, and remarked on by the sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued Emilia Pia. The inference is that she deliberately chose to stay away. Although Felice was the Pope’s daughter, and Rome was her city, precedence on this occasion went to his niece Costanza, causing Felice irritation, if not downright humiliation. Felice was already a known quantity at Italy’s courts. Emilia Pia did not have to describe who she was to Isabella. She did, however, have to explain the identity of Felice’s Savonese aunt and cousins, suggesting that they had lived in obscurity until the time of Julius’s election as pope. Felice could not countenance the possibility of being thought of only as their equal, or even their inferior, when she was quite certain that she ranked above them.

Another reason Felice preferred not to attend this event is quite understandable for a young woman. She would have been made to feel underdressed. It is clear from Emilia Pia’s description that the women were arrayed in their finest gowns of lavishly slashed and decorated silks of golds, scarlets and yellows, adorned with jewels. Felice was a widow, so she would wear black widow’s weeds. Such garments gave the widow who was the regent of a family a sense of personal control; they declared her power and sexual unavailability. Felice, however, was not a powerful matriarch. On this occasion all that her widow’s habit would have done would be to make her appear drab amidst the adornment of the other young women.

But Julius had not brought Felice back to Rome simply so that she could avoid social interaction with her cousins. Three days after the party at the Villa Belvedere there was a report that he was seeking to consolidate relations with the powerful Roman baronial family the Colonna. This he thought to effect ‘through a marriage with Madonna Felice, daughter of the Pope, with Signor Marcantonio Colonna’.
⁸
This occasion was the first on which Julius considered a Roman marriage for Felice. Two further possibilities, in the autumn of
1504
, were with sons of Ercole d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara. The first was with his youngest son Ferrante, whom Julius proposed should be given the cities of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The plan to unite Ferrante and the twenty-one-year-old Felice did not proceed any further. An alternative proposal was that Ercole’s second son, Ippolito, be divested of his cardinalship, betrothed to Felice, and made heir to the d’Este dukedom. This would have deprived Ercole’s oldest son, Alfonso, from his inheritance – a situation Julius would have preferred, as Alfonso was a friend to Venice, a city currently hostile to the papacy.
⁹