The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (26 page)

But that was not all she possessed. Felice had stored ‘in many and varied places
12
,
000
ducats’ worth of grain’. And then there were her precious stones and metals. She owned a ruby valued at
1
,
100
ducats; two emeralds, worth
700
, one set into a ring, and a diamond ring worth
150
ducats. Cleverly, much of her jewellery was set in the form of
crocette
, little crosses. Renaissance clothing laws, known as sumptuary laws, were designed to prevent women wearing overly ostentatious clothing and jewellery, but the laws could be circumvented by wearing gems in the form of crucifixes. Felice had seven
crocette
, all made of diamonds, ranging in value from
20
to
700
ducats, the most costly being the one given to her by her father following her marriage, which had been presented to him by the Republic of Venice. Felice also possessed an array of gold necklaces and bracelets, which, with her gold medals and
paternosters
(rosary beads), were worth
1
,
350
ducats. In total, Felice’s jewellery was worth another
4
,
200
ducats.

Felice della Rovere had also amassed a collection of silverware, vases, boxes and salvers worth
268
ducats. The rest of her goods did not have individual values attached to them, but collectively they formed an impressive whole. There were the hangings and furnishings given Felice by Julius, her dresses of brocaded silk and satin in her adopted cardinal’s colours of scarlet and black. She also owned a particularly regal garment, clearly intended for ceremonial occasions, a magnificent crimson silk dress lined in ermine fur. By the standards of today, Felice’s wardrobe might seem rather small, until it is remembered that the cost of such fabrics at this time could buy several peasants’ homes.

Felice’s inventory also shows that she owned two types of books. One entry simply indicates that she possessed ‘many sets of books’, which she had been amassing for many years now, cheaply bound and of insufficient value to list individually. There were others specifically itemized because as physical objects they were of greater worth. She owned the writings of St Jerome, described as ‘illustrated, with a silver clasp’. This illuminated book might have been made for her by the artist Marcantonio Raimondi. An interesting entry in her account book for
19
August records that ‘Marcantonio da Bologna received the rest of his payment for the St Jerome,
4
.
15
ducats’. This Marcantonio da Bologna would be Marcantonio Raimondi, an associate of Raphael. Among his many works were prints made from Raphael’s designs. These had a wide circulation and were a lucrative business. In
1524
, Marcantonio landed in serious trouble when he was imprisoned on obscenity charges for making prints from Raphael’s pupil Giulio Romano’s drawings of sexual positions,
I Modi
. Marcantonio was probably not on this occasion providing Felice with a print, because a partial payment of
4
ducats would be excessive for such an item. However, his skills could have been put to good use creating the illustrations for Felice’s copy of St Jerome. Felice’s other costly books included an illustrated Suetonius, a Holy Bible, and the works of Pliny. Her castle of Palo stood close to, if not actually on, the site of a villa owned by Pliny’s uncle. The last three volumes were all bound in crimson satin with silver locks and clasps, perhaps all acquired at the same time and with the same provenance.

In addition to the wall hangings, drapes and cushions that meant Felice could furnish a bedroom wherever she went, she had also acquired the furnishings for a portable chapel. Any priest who came to her to say Mass would find himself supplied with the appropriate vestments: cloak, cope, stole and maniple in brocaded silk. There was an altar cloth in the same fabric, silver candlesticks, a silver bell, a pair of silver incense-shakers, a ‘little silver box to hold the hosts’ and a silk embroidered ‘image of Our Lady’. The only other picture Felice possessed was a ‘beautiful Crucifixion in oil valued at
60
ducats’. The high value attached to this image suggests it was by a noteworthy painter. Felice did not collect paintings. She had a peripatetic lifestyle, moving throughout the year between palaces in Rome and castles in the countryside, and she liked to take her favourite possessions with her. Paintings were cumbersome to pack.

There were also a few less costly items, including ‘a purse in gold worked with beautiful figures, two pieces of moonstone, one set in gold and the other plain, two strings of amber beads’. The miscellaneous quality of this part of Felice’s inventory suggests these things had been in her possession for a long time, dating from the period prior to her marriage, when the gems owned by the cardinal’s daughter were not yet diamonds. Now such objects were endowed with sentimental value. Otherwise, there is very little of a sentimental nature about Felice’s property. Everything in her inventory was beautiful – dresses of exquisite fabric, embroidered cushions, tapestries, gems – but these were still possessions amassed with an eye to the practical. She did not collect paintings, antiquities, sculpture, maiolica – items that attracted her elite contemporaries of either sex. Such objects were heavy; they were designed to be stationary. Felice could pack all this up in a few strong boxes. She could be through the door and on her way in a very short period of time, as she had had to be as a young teenager, swept up from Rome and propelled towards Savona.

However, even if Felice’s worldly goods were easily transported, such a swift getaway was not to prove necessary because she was not, in
1516
, destined to leave the Orsini family. Gian Giordano Orsini was not the most active lord his family had seen, but he still gave consideration to its future after he was gone. He had no desire for his family to fall into chaos after his death, which was probable with boys not old enough to rule and no authority figure at the helm. He could look at Felice and see in his headstrong, independent wife a woman who, in over a decade of married life, had proved her commitment to his family. She had borne him two sons and she had focused her attention not only on repairing and refurnishing the castle of Bracciano but also on the public benefit of the community at large. Felice della Rovere had proved herself, in many ways, a worthy legatee. The time had come for Gian Giordano officially to endorse Felice’s future with the Orsini.

chapter 10

A Slave to the House of Orsini

By September
1517
, Gian Giordano Orsini’s health had begun to fail. He knew that it was time to vest Felice with the authority to serve as Orsini regent after his demise, while their sons were still minors. In September
1517
, Felice and Gian Giordano and the children were together at the castle of Vicovaro. Gian Giordano, attended and advised by his doctor, Alessandro Sanctini, made a kind of living will. One of the Orsini chiefs of staff, Giovanni Roberto della Colle, who was present, provided a description of what occurred:

Gian Giordano, sound in mind, but weak in body, lay in the antechamber of the palace at Vicovaro. His wife, Mistress Felice, remained with him along with his daughter Carlotta, and Francesco his son. He took his son Francesco by the hand and he said to him, ‘Francesco, my son, if I die,’ and here Francesco [who was six years old] began to cry, ‘I must leave you, and I shall leave my wife, that is Madonna Felice, named as Lady and Guardian of the children and of the estate because she has been such a woman and such a wife, and so rightly she merits such an honour.’ At this, the Lady Felice broke down and began to cry. She said, ‘When you have been sick and in danger of dying, you never made such a will, and now you are healthy, God be praised, without a fever and not fading away, so, my lord, it is not necessary to say such things.’ And Madonna Felice wanted to leave the antechamber, and go into the main room. Gian Giordano heard her and said, ‘Donna Felice, sit down and please listen to me because there are things I want to say. I shall leave my children everything, and you, their good mother, as the new Lady and Guardian when I die.’ And Madonna Felice replied, ‘My Lord, I would rather die as a slave in this house than a queen of anywhere else.’
1

Whatever depth of emotion Felice and Gian Giordano felt for each another, they had formed a deep bond acting as partners on Rome’s political stage. Felice had prevented Renzo da Ceri and Giulio Orsini from serving Venice against France, which would have embarrassed her husband. She had helped him mediate between the Pope and France, and he had supported her when she wanted to marry Julia into the d’Este family. This exchange between them, as Gian Giordano lay dying, is moving, particularly for a notarial document of Renaissance Italy, which would normally be curt in the extreme. By the same token, however, it does have a staged component, because the situation was directed and acted out by husband and wife. Both Felice and Gian Giordano knew that there would be members of the Orsini family who would object to Felice becoming Lady and Guardian of the estate. She was not a member of the Orsini by blood; she was not even a Roman noble but a clergyman’s bastard daughter. Consequently, Gian Giordano needed to make the proclamation about Felice’s future position in the family in a way that seemed natural and yet had an attentive audience. The scene played out in the antechamber at Vicovaro was to be the last they would perform together. The record of their exchange exists because Giovanni di Roberto della Colle gave a notarized account to the Orsini lawyer, Sabbo di Vannucci, whch was independently verified, and recorded in Latin by Gian Giordano’s doctor, Alessandro Sanctini. Although Gian Giordano was sick, he came out to the antechamber of his bedroom so that Felice’s ladies-in-waiting could hear what he had to say and serve as further witnesses. Giovanni di Roberto and the doctor emphasized his good mental health at the time; Felice even wanted to imply that physically he was quite well. The stronger Gian Giordano was in mind and body, the greater the weight placed on the strength of his decision to leave his wife in charge when he died.

Felice’s performance was also an essential part of the event. There can be little doubt that she felt genuine grief at Gian Giordano’s imminent death. Whatever his eccentricities, he had been a good, and astonishingly progressive, husband for the time. Whatever his initial feelings were about taking a pope’s daughter for a wife, he had come to recognize and appreciate her abilities and he gave her free reign to develop them. Felice might be excited at what was yet to come, as any prince might feel a thrill at his father’s deathbed or certain cardinals at the death of a pope, but on this occasion the important thing for Felice was not what she actually felt but what those around her perceived her to be feeling. She could not appear greedy and grasping, eagerly anticipating her husband’s death so that she could take over the reins of power. Instead, in tears, she had to declare that he had no need to make such a decision because he was in good health. When Gian Giordano insisted he would do so, and Felice acquiesced in his decision, she emphasized her dedication to the Orsini, the family to whom she would rather be a slave than a queen elsewhere. The suppression of her own ego was a crucial part of her performance; she must appear to have no personal interest in becoming the Orsini
Signora et Patrona
.

Gian Giordano died at the beginning of October. His death coincided with an event that would have dramatic implications for the Christian world: Martin Luther’s nailing of the ninety-five theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church, protesting the corruption of the Church fashioned by Felice’s father, Julius, and her friend, Leo. But for Felice and the Orsini, the death of Gian Giordano had far greater impact. Her husband’s vocal decree to leave Felice as Guardian of the Orsini estate was supported by a plethora of legal documents and sanctions. His own will was not complicated; it reiterated what he had told Felice and the assembled company in the antechamber at Vicovaro. He left his children, Francesco, Girolamo and their half-brother Napoleone, all his worldly goods. Felice was their guardian and trustee of the estate during her sons’ minority, and overnight she became one of the most powerful figures in the city of Rome, irrespective of gender. An unknown Roman correspondent recognized this, penning what was ostensibly a consolation note to her for the loss of her husband on
11
October. But the writer takes pains to assert that he himself is consoled, knowing that the Orsini were now in the hands of ‘such a wise and knowing person, who is dignified by such gravity and magnificence’.
²

Felice’s governance needed to be ratified by Pope Leo X, as well as the local governing body of Rome, the Senate. Leo issued a bull in which he ‘recognized Donna Felice della Rovere, the second wife and widow of Gian Giordano Orsini, as Guardian and Caretaker of his children of minor age, on the condition that she remains a widow’.
³
This last provision was the norm in Renaissance Europe; a woman would give up guardianship of her children and along with it any administrative role in her children’s estate were she to remarry. Such a proviso can only have amused Felice. Marriage had never greatly interested her, and to give up the extraordinary position she had now attained for another husband was inconceivable.

The ratification by the Roman Senate highlighted the contradictions in Felice’s position. She was now a woman in charge of one of Rome’s two most powerful Roman families. But because she was a woman she was not allowed a role in legal proceedings, and required a lawyer to act on her behalf. On
22
January
1518
, she appointed ‘Galeotto Ferreolo da Cesena, consistorial advocate’, to serve as her deputy at a meeting of the Roman Senate at their palace on the Capitoline hill. There, he would testify on her behalf that ‘as Guardian and Caretaker of her children Francesco, Girolamo, Giulia and Clarice, she promises faithfully to administer the interests of her charges, to compile an inventory of goods, and to provide an account of her management of the estate’.
⁴