and was relieved when the time came for him to return to Florence. ‘Here they made helmets and swords out of chalices,’ he wrote of Rome at this time.
They sell the blood of Christ by bucketfuls
And cross and thorns are lances and shields
And even Christ all patience loses
But let him come no more to these city streets
For here his blood would flow up to the very stars
Now that in Rome they sell his skin
And they have closed the roads to all goodness.
Alexander VI’s most expensive projects, on which he expended huge sums, were the fortifications that he commissioned in defence of the papal territories. In the Papal States he built and maintained numerous castles and other defences, as well as financing a small fleet of galleys, which were needed to protect the coasts from pirates, and taking the necessary measures to ensure that the roads throughout his territories were kept as clear as possible from brigands. Large sums were also spent on military equipment, particularly on artillery, while many thousands of ducats were expended on crusading funds and subsidies to Venice for fleets deployed against the Turks.
He also spent huge sums of money in the reconstruction of the papal fortress in Rome, Castel Sant’Angelo, giving it a far more imposing external appearance. Originally constructed as a mausoleum for the Emperor Hadrian, it had fallen into disrepair and eventual ruin after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and in the twelfth century, it became a fortress of the Colonna family. Later in the Middle Ages, it had provided builders with a quarry of valuable travertine stone.
The story went that some time in its history the archangel Michael had appeared on top of this vast edifice and was seen to return his sword to its sheath as a sign that an outbreak of the plague in Rome was now over. A statue of the archangel was accordingly erected on the summit of the building where once an immense statue of Hadrian had stood. And when the builders were digging the foundations for the new works, they found a colossal bust of the emperor, which Alexander VI removed to his collection.
This huge castle, the principal defence of the Vatican and St Peter’s, was considered to be impregnable; and soon after hebecame pope, Alexander VI approached Antonio da Sangallo, the Florentine architect, with a commission to transform the interior of the building into a luxurious residence, to which he might retreat in times of trouble. It was only a quarter of a mile or so from the Vatican, and it could be approached in safety from there by a walkway raised above the roofs of the intervening houses.
Pinturicchio decorated the interior as lavishly as he had the Borgia apartments in the Vatican, and this time the Borgia bulls were accompanied by scenes from the life of the pope himself, his achievements, and, of course, his family. One room contained scenes of Alexander VI’s diplomatic triumph over the naive Charles VIII, most of which showed the king submitting in subservient fashion to papal authority, notably his oath of obedience sworn so publicly in the Sala Regia.
So that the pope could hold out in the castle if necessary, Sangallo was instructed to provide it with large storehouses for grain and oil as well as with dungeons for the incarceration of enemies and prisoners. It was in one of these that the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini was to be imprisoned, along with, so he claimed, ‘spiders and many venomous worms.’
They flung me a wretched mattress of coarse hemp [Cellini later wrote], gave me no supper and locked four doors upon me. In three days that rotten mattress soaked up water like a sponge . . . For one hour and a half each day I got a little glimmering of light which penetrated that miserable cavern through a very narrow aperture. Only for so short a space of time could I read; for the rest of the day and night I lived in darkness.
Far above these miserable cells, Sangallo and Pinturicchio created apartments in
They sell the blood of Christ by bucketfuls
And cross and thorns are lances and shields
And even Christ all patience loses
But let him come no more to these city streets
For here his blood would flow up to the very stars
Now that in Rome they sell his skin
And they have closed the roads to all goodness.
Alexander VI’s most expensive projects, on which he expended huge sums, were the fortifications that he commissioned in defence of the papal territories. In the Papal States he built and maintained numerous castles and other defences, as well as financing a small fleet of galleys, which were needed to protect the coasts from pirates, and taking the necessary measures to ensure that the roads throughout his territories were kept as clear as possible from brigands. Large sums were also spent on military equipment, particularly on artillery, while many thousands of ducats were expended on crusading funds and subsidies to Venice for fleets deployed against the Turks.
He also spent huge sums of money in the reconstruction of the papal fortress in Rome, Castel Sant’Angelo, giving it a far more imposing external appearance. Originally constructed as a mausoleum for the Emperor Hadrian, it had fallen into disrepair and eventual ruin after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and in the twelfth century, it became a fortress of the Colonna family. Later in the Middle Ages, it had provided builders with a quarry of valuable travertine stone.
The story went that some time in its history the archangel Michael had appeared on top of this vast edifice and was seen to return his sword to its sheath as a sign that an outbreak of the plague in Rome was now over. A statue of the archangel was accordingly erected on the summit of the building where once an immense statue of Hadrian had stood. And when the builders were digging the foundations for the new works, they found a colossal bust of the emperor, which Alexander VI removed to his collection.
This huge castle, the principal defence of the Vatican and St Peter’s, was considered to be impregnable; and soon after hebecame pope, Alexander VI approached Antonio da Sangallo, the Florentine architect, with a commission to transform the interior of the building into a luxurious residence, to which he might retreat in times of trouble. It was only a quarter of a mile or so from the Vatican, and it could be approached in safety from there by a walkway raised above the roofs of the intervening houses.
Pinturicchio decorated the interior as lavishly as he had the Borgia apartments in the Vatican, and this time the Borgia bulls were accompanied by scenes from the life of the pope himself, his achievements, and, of course, his family. One room contained scenes of Alexander VI’s diplomatic triumph over the naive Charles VIII, most of which showed the king submitting in subservient fashion to papal authority, notably his oath of obedience sworn so publicly in the Sala Regia.
So that the pope could hold out in the castle if necessary, Sangallo was instructed to provide it with large storehouses for grain and oil as well as with dungeons for the incarceration of enemies and prisoners. It was in one of these that the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini was to be imprisoned, along with, so he claimed, ‘spiders and many venomous worms.’
They flung me a wretched mattress of coarse hemp [Cellini later wrote], gave me no supper and locked four doors upon me. In three days that rotten mattress soaked up water like a sponge . . . For one hour and a half each day I got a little glimmering of light which penetrated that miserable cavern through a very narrow aperture. Only for so short a space of time could I read; for the rest of the day and night I lived in darkness.
Far above these miserable cells, Sangallo and Pinturicchio created apartments in
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