Rome in the time of the Borgias: has anything really changed?

Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI

One of my favorite things about April, besides the glorious boughs of cascading wisteria to be seen (and smelt) all over Rome, is that it heralds the start of one of my favorite guilty pleasures, television drama, The Borgias. Following the life of the most notorious pope in history, The Borgias chronicles the intrigues, scandal, and corruption of the 15th-century Vatican court, featuring plenty of greed, violence and impermissible sex.

Jeremy Irons stars as Rodrigo Borgia, aka Pope Alexander VI, the epitome of corruption, hypocrisy and debauchery, a part he plays with obvious relish. Yet he is somehow able to turn the papa cattivo (evil pope, as he is remembered) into a lovable bad boy, whom we can’t help rooting for. Although the gaunt and ruggedly handsome Irons may be physically contradictory to the actual historic figure (fat and ugly), he does capture the inner qualities the Borgia pope possessed in abundance: magnetism, sensuality, and undeniable charisma. While critics have claimed that The Borgias dulls in comparison to the (even racier, if possible!) German version, Borgia, I can’t imagine a better cast, or one with more titillating chemistry.

The cast of Showtime's The Borgias

Now, I know April is still two months away, but, for some strange reason, I’ve got that family of miscreants on the mind right now, and I just can’t wait for Season Three to begin! Last night I went back and watched the first episode of Season One, which features the conclave of 1492 and the election of Rodrigo Borgia as pope. I couldn’t help comparing the climate of tension, suspicion and political intrigue depicted in that episode to what is going on right across town, in this, the 21st century.

Scandal! Rumors! (Almost) unprecedented occurrences!

No pope has willingly given up his position since 1294 when Celestine V, who had not even participated in his own election, and who had very reluctantly accepted the tiara, resigned after only five months to return to his life as a hermit. Despite a few hints that Benedict XVI may have dropped over the past few years, everyone was shocked when he announced on 11 February that he would be resigning, effective 28 February. While I won’t comment on my suppositions as to why the pope has chosen to resign (I prefer not to get too political on this blog), from the church’s official line to the most disparaging journalists, and everywhere in between, everyone has an opinion. Rumors are swirling and many of them are not pretty.

The headline in this morning’s La Repubblica read, “Sesso e carriera, i ricatti in Vaticano dietro la rinuncia di Benedetto XVI” (Sex and career: the Vatican extortion behind the resignation of Benedict XVI). With the “Vatileaks” debacle early last year that saw the pope’s butler thrown into a medieval prison, the on-going sex abuse scandals, accusations of money-laundering, and now this, who needs the hi-jinks of Alexander VI, Lucrezia Borgia and Giulia Farnese? We’ve got enough disrepute to rival the Borgia pope himself.

Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI and Lotte Verbeek as Giulia Farnese

Over 500 years have passed from the time of the Borgia pope, but has life in Italy really changed that much? This is a question I have asked myself many times since I moved here and began studying Renaissance Rome and papal history. With the secrecy and intrigue within the Vatican, the rampant corruption on every level of society, a political system that still gives credence to buffoons  like Berlusconi, and a class divide that is turning into an impassable chasm, sometimes I feel it hasn’t changed at all.

Case in point: When a young priest secured the undivided attentions of his delicious teenage sister, Giulia Farnese, for the newly crowned Alexander VI, the grateful pontiff thanked him with a coveted cardinal’s hat (the key to wealth and power in Renaissance Italy). Not surprisingly, Cardinal Farnese became pope himself in his time, although he could never shake the ridiculous circumstances of his rise to power, and was laughingly referred to as Cardinal Petticoat.

This could be likened to the case of the 25-year-old showgirl with (surprise surprise) no political experience, who was nevertheless elected to Italian parliament thanks to her inclusion on the ticket of the president of the region of Lombardia. How did she end up on that ticket? It seems it was “wanted at any cost” by then-premier Berlusconi. Don’t worry, she didn’t serve long; she was eventually indicted for her part in providing him with an underage prostitute.

This is just one example, but parallels between Renaissance Rome and today’s Rome can be drawn with sickening ease. With the parliamentary elections this weekend, it’s looking more and more like nothing is going to be changing in the near future. So I suggest you grab a bowl of popcorn and find a good seat. The new season of The Borgias may not start until April, but with the pope’s resignation and the upcoming conclave, we are about to witness a piece of history, and Showtime’s got nothing on it.

Stay tuned for more posts as I follow the Pope's (nearly) unprecedented resignation and the exciting conclave that will follow!

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

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A Borgia orgy tonight!

Just in case my recent post on the nefarious Borgias has whet your appetite for a little lust, violence and treachery, Italian Renaissance-style, check out this trailer for Season Two of Showtime's The Borgias. It is premiering this April for those of you in the states. If you are in Italy, you'll have to hold out at least a few more decades (we are just now getting Cheers! after all) or, a much more practical solution, just buy the DVD set online (although I believe the entire season has to air before it will be available--the world of modern television is a mystery to me). In case you missed it, Season One was highly entertaining as well and is available at Amazon UK for those of you with European DVD players.

Now, for those of you die-hard Roman history buffs, don't write it off when you see the pan of the 17th century St. Peter's Square--built nearly two centuries after the drama takes place--in one of the trailers. Evidently the same level of attention to historical accuracy wasn't paid to the making of the trailer, but rest assured, no images of the kind are used in the actual series, at least not in the first season.

In my opinion, when watching historical dramas, be they series or films, it's important not to be too much of a stickler. It grates on my nerves when unavoidable mistakes and anachronisms are made, but I do understand that for the purposes of plot development, sometimes facts need to be stretched and the order of events needs to be shaken up a bit. It's not a documentary, after all, and its first aim is to be entertaining. All in all, I found The Borgias to be fascinating and engrossing, particularly due to the brilliant portrayal of Rodrigo Borgia by Jeremy Irons.

Here is another interesting video which expands on the subtitle of the series "The Original Crime Family" with historians discussing how the Borgia family inspired Mario Puzo's epic Godfather trilogy.

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The Borgia Pope, Pinturicchio and La Bella Farnese

In my mind, there's nothing better then some fabulous art, especially when a bit of mystery and scandal are thrown in.That's why I was practically giddy yesterday to be able to see a long-lost work of art with a shocking past.

Portrait of Pope Alexander VI, detail from The Ascension, Pinturicchio

Back in the 1490s, just around the time a pair of Spanish monarchs sent Christopher Columbus off in search of a new route to India, another famous Spaniard was stepping into the most important shoes in Christendom. Most people are at least somewhat familiar with the notorious Borgia family, and their patriarch Rodrigo, Pope Alexander VI, especially thanks to the Showtime series, but just in case you need a refresher, Alexander VI went down in history as the Papa Cattivo (naughty pope) due to his unprecedented unpriestly lifestyle that included mistresses, many children, nepotism, greed, corruption, orgies, murder, and according to some, incest.

His living quarters in the Vatican Palace, the now-called Borgia Apartment, are decorated with frescoes by the great Renaissance painter Pinturicchio (who also painted some of the wall frescoes in the nearby Sistine Chapel).The most famous is probably The Disputation of St. Catherine that features his famously beautiful young daughter Lucrezia posing as the saint and The Ascension, which features the Pope himself.

Disputation of St. Catherine, Pinturicchio, Borgia Apartments, Vatican Museums

But these were not the only portraits the Pope had Pinturicchio slip into his paintings. According to Vasari, the father of art history, "In the palace he also portrayed over the door of one of the living rooms Signora Giulia Farnese in the features of Our Lady and in the same picture the face of Pope Alexander, who is adoring the Madonna," (Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, Penguin Classics, vol. II, translation by George Bull, pg 83).

This might not have been so scandalous if the Giulia Farnese in question hadn't been the Pope's teenage mistress at the time. It was a well-documented fact that the already married Farnese, called La Bella Farnese and known as being the most beautiful woman in Rome at the time, was not only the Pope's official mistress, but had also borne him child. (Some even supposed that their baby daughter Laura, born in 1492--the very year that Borgia became pope--modelled for the Baby Jesus!)

Scandalous indeed. Only one problem: the fresco doesn't exist. At least not in the Borgia Apartments. In fact, in my copy of The Lives of the Artist, in the notes at the back, the editor states that Vasari was clearly mistaken in what he wrote because the work does not exist. Well, as it turns out, it did exist, but was destroyed. 

Nearly 200 years later, during the reign of Pope Alexander VII Chigi (1655-1667) that moralizing pontiff decided a fresco of the "Naughty Pope" adoring his teenage mistress dressed as the Virgin (and possibly their female lovechild) was not only inappropriate for the Vatican, but blasphemous as well. So the fresco was hacked right off the wall. However, it seems that at least a few pieces of the errant work were salvaged by either the Pope himself, or someone in his family, because a small fragment of a fresco depicting an unusually beautiful Christ child held by pair of graceful hands with another hand caressing his foot (eventually dubbed The Baby Jesus of the Hands) was listed as part of the collection of Flavio Chigi, relative of the late Alexander VII Chigi, in 1693, as well as a half-figure fresco of the Madonna. Both works were at the time attributed to Perugino.

Baby Jesus of the Hands, Pinturicchio, Fondazione Guglielmo Giordano

The two fragments were passed down through the Chigi family, on display at the Palazzo Chigi on Via del Corso, by this time correctly attributed to Pinturicchio, until 1912, when Eleonora Chigi married Enrico Incisa della Rochetta and brought the fragments with her, eventually passing them down to their descendant Marchese Giovanni Incisa della Rochetta, who was also an art historian. 

Copy of Pinturicchio's Baby Jesus blessing Pope Alexander VI, Pietro Facchetti, Mantova

In 1940, Marchese Giovanni, travelling in Mantova, happened to see a painting on canvas that looked very familiar to him. It was the work of a 17th century copyist Pietro Facchetti, who had been commissioned by Francesco IV Gonzaga in 1612 to recreate this scandalous work. The Gonzagas were apparently looking for a way to make fun of their rivals, the Farnese. Contemporary chronicler Stefano Infessura reports that Facchetti managed to gain access to the Borgia Apartment in the Vatican by bribing a guard. Even during the papacy of Paul V, the work was considered inappropriate and therefore had been covered by a veil of fabric. Facchetti convinced the guards to uncover the work and eventually painted a copy. When Marchese Giovanni saw Facchetti's work, and carried out some more research of his own, he concluded that his two fragments were part of the long ago destroyed fresco that had once decorated Rodrigo Borgia's own bedroom. Even if the exact likeness of the Christ figure (and possibly the Madonna figure as well, although we do not have the possibility of knowing) wasn't enough to convince him, the portrait of Alexander VI is almost identical to that in the Ascension.

In 2004, the fragment of Baby Jesus of the Hands resurfaced on the antique market and was purchased by the Guglielmo Giordano Foundation. It is on temporary display in the Palazzo Nuovo of the Capitoline Museums free of charge until 5 February, and I urge you to go see it if you have the chance. Besides the exceptional beauty of the work, the story behind it is truly unique. But a question remains: where is the second fragment, that of the face of the Virgin, i.e. Giulia Farnese? It belongs to a private collector who prefers not to be named.

A hypothesized sketch of Pinturicchio's original work with the two fragments indicated.

Below is another Madonna and Child, not long ago attributed to Pinturicchio, on display along side the fresco fragment in this mini-mostra. It is tempera on a wood panel and has nothing to do with the other work, but definitely worth seeing. For more practical information, see my Exhibits on Now page.

Madonna and Child, Pinturicchio, Fondazione Sorgente Group

Photo sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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