a new road from Castel Sant’Angelo to the Vatican, which the pope named Via Alessandrina (now Borgo Nuovo).
Alexander VI also commissioned repairs to several churches in Rome, including San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, the church favoured by the Spanish colony in the city; as a cardinal he had spent a considerable sum on an elaborate marble relief of the Virgin and child for the high altar in Santa Maria del Popolo, with the Borgia bulls prominently on display on shields held by putti (now in the sacristy of the church).Most memorably, he also paid for a magnificent gilded ceiling for the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, his financial contribution marked, once again, by liberal quantities of Borgia bulls; the gold, it was said, was the first to have come from the mines of Peru and had been presented to the pope by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
The most famous work of art from Alexander VI’s pontificate, however, was the Pietà by Michelangelo Buonarotti, commissionednot by him but by the ambassador of the king of France. Michelangelo had arrived in Rome from Florence on June 25, 1496, to work under the patronage of Cardinal Raffaello Riario, who had spent 200 ducats on a life-size sleeping cupid by the sculptor under the impression that it was a work by one of the famous sculptors of antiquity.
Soon after his arrival in the city, ‘a broad field in which a man may demonstrate his worth,’ as he described it, Michelangelo called upon Cardinal Riario in his grand palace, built, it was rumoured, with the money he had made gambling with Franceschetto Cibò, the son of Innocent VIII. The cardinal asked the sculptor if he could produce some ‘beautiful work’ for his collection: ‘I replied that I might be able to make such splendid works as he possessed in his palace,’ Michelangelo recorded, ‘but we would see what I could do; so we have bought a piece of marble for a life-size figure, and I shall start work on it next Monday.’
The result of this commission was the plump and drunken Bacchus that can now be seen in the Bargello in Florence. The subject and the treatment evidently did not please the cardinal, who, it seems, rejected it, and it was later to be seen among the antique pieces in the garden of Jacopo Galli, Michelangelo’s banker.
Michelangelo, however, soon found another patron in the French Cardinal Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas, who commissioned the Pietà for his tomb in the French royal chapel in St Peter’s, dedicated to St Petronilla, and provided him with a letter of recommendation to the officials of the small republican city-state of Lucca, through which the sculptor would have to pass on his way to the white marble quarries of Carrara: ‘We have recently agreed with master Michelangelo di Ludovico, Florentine sculptor and bearerof this letter, that he make for us a marble tombstone, namely a clothed Virgin Mary with the dead Christ naked in her arms, to place in a certain altar which we intend to found in St Peter’s in Rome,’ ran the letter, explaining that Michelangelo ‘was presently repairing to those parts to excavate and transport here the marbles necessary for such a work and we beg your lordships . . . to extend to him every help and favour in this matter.’
The finished Pietà , described as ‘the most important artistic commission of the age,’ and now to be seen in St Peter’s, was being admired by a group of visitors from Lombardy, so the story goes, when Michelangelo happened to be passing by. He heard one of the group explain to the others proudly that the fine work was by ‘our Gobbo of Milan.’ Michelangelo said nothing, but later he returned to St Peter’s in the middle of the night and, by the light of a lamp, carved his name on the band that runs diagonally between the Virgin’s breasts.
Proud as he was of this work, Michelangelo, the ‘ statuario fiorentino ,’ was not happy in the Rome of Pope Alexander VI, which he described as violent and materialistic,
Alexander VI also commissioned repairs to several churches in Rome, including San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, the church favoured by the Spanish colony in the city; as a cardinal he had spent a considerable sum on an elaborate marble relief of the Virgin and child for the high altar in Santa Maria del Popolo, with the Borgia bulls prominently on display on shields held by putti (now in the sacristy of the church).Most memorably, he also paid for a magnificent gilded ceiling for the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, his financial contribution marked, once again, by liberal quantities of Borgia bulls; the gold, it was said, was the first to have come from the mines of Peru and had been presented to the pope by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
The most famous work of art from Alexander VI’s pontificate, however, was the Pietà by Michelangelo Buonarotti, commissionednot by him but by the ambassador of the king of France. Michelangelo had arrived in Rome from Florence on June 25, 1496, to work under the patronage of Cardinal Raffaello Riario, who had spent 200 ducats on a life-size sleeping cupid by the sculptor under the impression that it was a work by one of the famous sculptors of antiquity.
Soon after his arrival in the city, ‘a broad field in which a man may demonstrate his worth,’ as he described it, Michelangelo called upon Cardinal Riario in his grand palace, built, it was rumoured, with the money he had made gambling with Franceschetto Cibò, the son of Innocent VIII. The cardinal asked the sculptor if he could produce some ‘beautiful work’ for his collection: ‘I replied that I might be able to make such splendid works as he possessed in his palace,’ Michelangelo recorded, ‘but we would see what I could do; so we have bought a piece of marble for a life-size figure, and I shall start work on it next Monday.’
The result of this commission was the plump and drunken Bacchus that can now be seen in the Bargello in Florence. The subject and the treatment evidently did not please the cardinal, who, it seems, rejected it, and it was later to be seen among the antique pieces in the garden of Jacopo Galli, Michelangelo’s banker.
Michelangelo, however, soon found another patron in the French Cardinal Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas, who commissioned the Pietà for his tomb in the French royal chapel in St Peter’s, dedicated to St Petronilla, and provided him with a letter of recommendation to the officials of the small republican city-state of Lucca, through which the sculptor would have to pass on his way to the white marble quarries of Carrara: ‘We have recently agreed with master Michelangelo di Ludovico, Florentine sculptor and bearerof this letter, that he make for us a marble tombstone, namely a clothed Virgin Mary with the dead Christ naked in her arms, to place in a certain altar which we intend to found in St Peter’s in Rome,’ ran the letter, explaining that Michelangelo ‘was presently repairing to those parts to excavate and transport here the marbles necessary for such a work and we beg your lordships . . . to extend to him every help and favour in this matter.’
The finished Pietà , described as ‘the most important artistic commission of the age,’ and now to be seen in St Peter’s, was being admired by a group of visitors from Lombardy, so the story goes, when Michelangelo happened to be passing by. He heard one of the group explain to the others proudly that the fine work was by ‘our Gobbo of Milan.’ Michelangelo said nothing, but later he returned to St Peter’s in the middle of the night and, by the light of a lamp, carved his name on the band that runs diagonally between the Virgin’s breasts.
Proud as he was of this work, Michelangelo, the ‘ statuario fiorentino ,’ was not happy in the Rome of Pope Alexander VI, which he described as violent and materialistic,
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