The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (10 page)

Had such a marriage to Ippolito d’Este taken place, Felice would have deposed Lucrezia Borgia, Alfonso d’Este’s wife, as duchess-in-waiting, and become Duchess of Ferrara herself. It is difficult to imagine that such a future would not have appealed to Felice. It was all too evident how different Lucrezia’s relationship with her father Alexander was from her own, and hard for Felice not to feel envious of her. Lucrezia had lived close to the Vatican Palace in the Palace of Santa Maria in Portico. Alexander adored his daughter so much he had stipulated in the contracts of her first two marriages that she was not to move from Rome during the first year of her married life, as he could not bear her departure. Ceremonies and entertainments were held in the Vatican Palace exclusively in Lucrezia’s honour. In other words, unlike Felice, Lucrezia was not sent back to the Borgia home town when her presence was not required in Rome. She was not met discreetly at sea, or welcomed publicly into Rome only if in the company of other female relatives. Admittedly no one accused Felice of an incestuous relationship with her father and brother, as they did Lucrezia with Alexander and Cesare Borgia. Nor were there any rumours of Felice bearing an illegitimate child, as Lucrezia was believed to have done. None the less, it would have taken a hugely suppressed ego not to feel the sting of being treated so differently from one’s predecessor by one’s father, and such self-abasement was not in Felice’s nature.

Yet Julius’s brusque treatment of his daughter served only to define further Felice’s personality at this critical juncture in her life. Lucrezia Borgia, indulged and adored from childhood, was marked by a passivity that rendered her incapable of making any protest when her brother Cesare killed her beloved second husband, Alfonso of Naples. Nor did it help Lucrezia at the d’Este court, where many were hostile to her and her father-in-law withheld her dowry funds from her. By contrast, Felice della Rovere’s alienation from her della Rovere relations contributed to her fearlessness, which was quite astonishing in a woman of her time. This character trait revealed itself most distinctly in the incidents surrounding her proposed marriage to Roberto di Sanseverino, the prince of the southern city of Salerno.

chapter 4

The Prince of Salerno

The tales of Felice’s five previous potential suitors – Piombino, Lorraine, the Colonna and d’Este sons – are somewhat fragmented. Their names appear in correspondence emanating from the Vatican Palace, but then references to these potential matches disappear, leaving only speculation as to why the matches were abandoned. However the affair of the Sanseverino Prince is very well documented. The negotiations to marry him to Felice lasted over the course of several months, from December
1504
to February
1505
.

Roberto was the son of Antonello di Sanseverino, who at one point had numbered among the most powerful of the Neapolitan barons. Roberto also had a della Rovere connection through his mother, Costanza da Montefeltro. Costanza, daughter and sister to the Dukes of Urbino, Federico and Guidobaldo, was also sister to Julius’s younger brother Giovanni’s wife, Giovanna. There was a long-standing accord between Julius and Antonello, who had spent many years in political alliance when Julius was still a cardinal. Rumours spread that were Roberto to become Julius’s sonin-law, he might become the most favoured of his relations, his secular
nipote
, rather as his own cousin Girolamo Riario had been to Sixtus IV. That Julius did indeed have some personal investment in Roberto is suggested by the fact that the Sanseverino Prince came to the marriage bargaining table with some serious personal problems. In a failed rebellion, which Julius as Cardinal Giuliano had encouraged, against the King of Naples, Roberto’s father Antonello had been forced into exile and stripped of his estates.
¹
As the discussions of a marriage with Felice progressed, Roberto was a prince in name only.

One of the preconditions of the match was that Julius would negotiate the return of Roberto’s estates with King Frederic of Naples. In addition, recounted the Venetian ambassador, on good authority from the Cardinal of Naples, ‘His Holiness has promised to provide, as a dowry,
40
,
000
ducats from the bank of San Giorgio in Genoa and a house in that same city valued at
10
,
000
ducats. Five thousand ducats will come in the form of silver, jewels and clothing for the lady and, for a yearly living expense,
6000
a year, four to the prince, and two to the lady. However, His Most Reverend Cardinal has informed me that the Pope has no capital at the Bank of San Giorgio right now, and the house is not worth that much because it is old, abandoned and miserable.’
2
The match was not regarded enthusiastically by the extended Montefeltro clan. Guidobaldo, the Duke of Urbino, paralysed by gout and rendered impotent by syphilis, felt that Roberto was attempting to usurp his own position with the Pope. He claimed that Roberto held private audiences with Julius in order to tell him that Guidobaldo was ‘weak and crippled and what the Pope needs is a man of action, and other words about his own virility’.
³
Another not in favour of the union was Ferrante Colonna. Married to yet another Montefeltro sister, Agnese, he had hopes that his line might inherit the Duchy of Urbino when the childless Guidobaldo died. Such a possibility would become less than likely if Roberto di Sanseverino became the candidate sponsored by the Pope to become the Urbino heir. But no one was more vocally opposed to the marriage than Felice herself. The first indication of her resistance comes in a letter of
28
January
1505
, from the Venetian ambassador. He remarked that although the Prince of Salerno might claim the negotiations were concluded, the Cardinal of Naples had told him that there were ‘difficulties in bringing it about as the lady [Felice] has contested it, which she has simply done by saying no, and that she has not shown respect towards her father, who has wished for the union’. Less than two weeks later, on
10
February, the Venetian had much more specific information about Felice’s objections:

Finding myself today with the Duke of Urbino, His Excellency apprised me of the fact that the marriage of Madonna Felice with the Prince is in difficulty and the cause is the lady, who does not want it to take place, citing his poverty and also because it is said that he has another woman. The Duke believes the whole affair is in disarray as the difficulties are great, because, he says, this woman has let her words be heard and now they have reached the ears of the Prince. Even if the objections of the state [of Naples] were to cease, the lady would not wish to enter into his hands due to her fear of having an unhappy life with him. The Duke then accused the lady of instability, stating that many times the Pope, even when he was a cardinal, had wished her to marry. But she has remained a widow, and has always found reasons to be opposed to the men proposed, saying that she prefers to be left to depend upon her own resources. However, now the Pope is disposed to give her away to anyone, and to send her away from Rome, so as not to have to behold this shameful creature in front of his own eyes.
⁴

In a world of diplomatic correspondence where information is usually conveyed in oblique and subtle forms, the words spoken by Felice and the Duke of Urbino are quite startling in their directness. Felice, who had clearly done her own research into the Prince’s suitability to become her husband, stated categorically why she was refusing Roberto di Sanseverino: he had no money and he had a mistress. She was not enthusiastic about a life of penury, the prospect of living in a rundown palace in Genoa and her husband’s attention directed towards another woman. She was evidently sceptical of her father’s promises to persuade the King of Naples to return Roberto’s lands to him. She perhaps also feared that Julius would be unsuccessful in his negotiations with these Aragonese princes or that, once the marriage contract was signed, he would become occupied with other matters. Even if they had not spent a great deal of time together over the course of her life, Felice had taken pains to know her father’s methods of doing business, some of which she emulated. She had seen for herself or heard tales of where and when he might be inconsistent or go back on his word, not least at the moment when he was elected pope. So Felice did not entirely trust her father, and felt he did not have her personal interests at heart when it came to choosing a husband for her.

She was not afraid to stand up to Julius. Julius might have personified
terribilità
, and encouraged those facing him to feel fearful in his presence. But Felice stood apart from her contemporaries when dealing with her father. She shared his stubbornness and tenacity, and she refused to be cowed by his demands and wishes.

Guidobaldo da Montefeltro’s comments about Felice are equally enlightening. His claim that she was ‘unstable’ reflects perhaps more on him than on her. Women of Renaissance Italy did not, as a rule, defy their fathers. They tended to defy their fathers even less when they were illegitimate, marginalized by society and thus grateful for any provision their fathers might make for them. Felice’s outspokenness and her fearlessness shocked Guidobaldo. Even if he did not want this particular marriage to take place, he had seen his three sisters accept their chosen husbands without protest, and saw such behaviour as a woman’s duty. To his mind, Felice’s consistent refusals could be explained only by a degree of instability. Why else would a woman act in such a way?

Equally fascinating is the independent state of mind Felice had evidently maintained since the time her father was a cardinal. She was not only highly selective about whom she was prepared to take for a husband; she had no qualms whatsoever about remaining on her own. Her widowed status helped her. It was the only state in which an unmarried woman could live honourably in the outside world; otherwise the convent was her destination. If Felice had been born a boy, she would have been by now, over a year into her father’s reign, a fêted and powerful cardinal. But the only ecclesiastical life made possible for a woman, the cloistered existence of a nun, had no appeal for her.

Her first marriage, unsuccessful as it might have been, had provided her with some kind of financial independence. Julius had given her a dowry. It was the law that as long as a woman remained a widow following her husband’s death, her dowry could be used to provide her income. The funds could be reappropriated by her family only at the time of remarriage. Generally speaking, such reappropriation happened quickly and without complaint, especially with a woman of Felice’s young age. But Felice’s status was made more complex because of her illegitimacy. Exactly who controlled her, especially as Julius did not wish to assume an active paternal role, was a much more complicated issue than it was normally and allowed her greater room to manoeuvre. Felice had no plans to relinquish her financial and personal freedom for an unsatisfactory marriage. She still had certain things she needed to do before she was ready to become a bride again.

Holding out for a husband who met her specific standards was only one part of Felice della Rovere’s strategy for personal advancement. As self-confident and self-assured as she might have been on many levels, she did not delude herself. Her transition from cardinal’s daughter to pope’s daughter had brought her a considerable increase in status. However, while the daughter of a duke was groomed from infancy to take her place within the circles of the elite, the illegitimate daughter of a cleric was not. Felice’s upbringing had been in the house of a Roman bureaucrat, and the earliest years of her life as an adult had been spent among the provincial elite and the merchants of a small port town. This background had certainly provided her with several beneficial experiences: life with the de Cupis family had shown her that it was the
haute bourgeoisie
of Roman society who got things done in the city and that they could be the most valuable allies. In Savona, as her father’s sometime representative, she had become a voice of reassuring authority with the
commune
. At the same time, however, Felice was conscious that she had not grown up as the equal of the great ladies of Italy. She might have felt compensated for this sense of inequality had her father favoured her in an open and lavish fashion and welcomed her to Rome with open arms. But Felice was only too aware that such paternal treatment would not be hers. Instead, she desired equivalence with the Italian elite, which would stem from a recognition and admiration of her personal qualities and abilities. Such recognition for herself as herself, and not purely as daughter or wife, could outlast a father’s reign or a husband’s life. To achieve it, she needed to establish a reputation for herself in her own right.

chapter 5

Self-Promotion

In Raphael’s fresco
The Mass of Bolsena
Felice della Rovere, dark like her father, is portrayed as an attractive young woman. Throughout her life she took good care of herself, soliciting, among other things, recipes for toothpaste. However, her dark looks did not necessarily meet the traditional standards of beauty at the turn of the sixteenth century in Rome. Blondes were still favoured, although interestingly this was to change during the reign of Julius, when the Madonnas painted by Raphael evolve from blonde to brunette. There is a great deal of commentary on Lucrezia Borgia’s long golden hair, delicate features and graceful dance steps. No such specific descriptions exist of Felice, which suggests she lacked, or did not develop, these more traditional charms. But that was not where Felice’s interests lay. Instead, as she came to prominence in Rome’s social and cultural orbits, there were few who did not comment on her
prudentia
– wisdom or intelligence. Such a reputation endured throughout her life. The scholar Angelo Firenzuola, writing in defence of the female intellect, cites among the female luminaries of his time: ‘the
prudentissima
Felice della Rovere...of whom with no small amount of praise do many men speak, with a resounding voice’.
¹