The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (29 page)

Felice intervened and had his sentence commuted to a fine of
100
ducats. Renzo da Ceri wrote to her about a similar matter: ‘Julio Maschio, my good friend, has killed one of his sisters. I am asking you if you will bestow compassion upon him.’
¹²
Felice and Renzo did not get on very well. He was married to Napoleone’s sister Francesca and his loyalty lay with her stepson. Felice had shown herself to be particularly hostile to crimes against women, so it is likely that she did not comply with Renzo’s peremptory request. She was more likely to have given assistance to Guidone da Nepi when he wrote to her to tell about his sister ‘who is at present a widow, as our enemies the Braccio have murdered her husband and I understand that they intend to abduct her and make her marry one of their own. We beg of your ladyship to extend your help in placing my sister in a convent.’
¹³

Sometimes Felice’s own officials advised her not to pursue judicial matters. Antonio Casulensis wrote to her about which cases were worth pursuing: ‘We found one Caterina, spinster, who had become pregnant and then aborted, and killed the creature, and being in such a state we were obliged to ask who had impregnated her and her response was that first she had done it with Giovanni, and then with Stefano.’ Antonio felt that too much about the case was nebulous, and it would be rather costly. He concluded, in a similarly ambiguous fashion, that ‘perhaps your illustrious ladyship might wish to take up the matter with your usual immense discretion’, indicating that only Felice herself could terminate the investigation.
¹⁴

On another occasion, an unwanted child was born alive. Perseo da Pontecorvo informed her from Vicovaro about ‘that girl at Cantalupo [a small fief], who was pregnant, gave birth on Tuesday to a daughter. We are asking your ladyship if we can take the child to Santo Spirito in Rome because we have not found the father, and no one wants to take care of her’.
¹⁵
Santo Spirito, the hospital near the Vatican Palace, also took in foundlings. The institution had been promoted by Felice’s great-uncle, Sixtus IV; possibly this family connection would help ensure the baby a place at the orphanage.

In between matters of life and death, Felice received such written mandates as an affidavit in a suit brought by ‘those men of the fief of Santa Croce, over a dispute about creating a piazza at Castello Arcione’.
¹⁶
And there were always debts to be paid. In
1520
, some pig farmers at Vicovaro wrote asking for ‘
100
ducats owed us from the sale of our pigs in
1517
’.
¹⁷
Gian Giordano had left various outstanding debts behind him. Francesco de Altanantis wrote to her several times about a credit of
2000
ducats he had given to Gian Giordano that he now wanted returned. The availability of ready cash was a constant problem for the Orsini estate.

Felice personally authorized the movement of every bushel of grain, side of meat or bottle of wine produced on Orsini land. The archive of her correspondence is littered with small chits of paper, signed ‘Felix Ruveris de Ursinis’, sent to those servants who headed these different areas of production and disbursement. Bernardino Cannovaro, addressed as
in cantina
, ‘in the wine cellar’, at Bracciano, received a great number of such missives. Felice issued Bernardino with instructions to send a bottle of wine to Bernardino Sarto in Rome, a tailor ‘who has worked for our family’ and a bottle of ‘our Bracciano wine, to the pig-herders who are watching over our pigs’. Nerone, the head pig-herder, received separately ‘a bottle of Maremmesca wine’, suggesting wine from the Maremma region was of better quality than the Bracciano estate’s own vintage. Felice ordered that the mother of Priest Menimo of Bracciano was to receive an unspecified amount of bread and wine, and the labourers at Isola an assortment of wines. ‘Silvestro,
balio
of Francesco, my son, is to receive two
cavalli
[a unit of measurement equivalent to the saddlebags a horse could carry] of wine from my vineyard, which shall be part of my sons’ rations.’

Felice knew the exact contents of her cellar. She told Bernardino to send her ‘all the Greek wine [malmsey] in the cellar, which amounts to twenty barrels’. When making requests for the cellar’s best wine, Felice was always clear to state that it was for her own consumption and that of her children: she told Bernardino to ‘send two barrels of the best wine in the cellar that we wish for ourself and our children’. When the time came for the grape harvest, she sent a personal representative to oversee it, one not connected with the Bracciano estate and thus less susceptible to bribery or corruption. She told Bernardino, ‘Francesco d’Arpino, our servant, is coming, who shall be in charge of the
vendemmia
[harvest]...and he shall be given obedience and his orders obeyed as if he were our very self.’
¹⁸

Bernardino exasperated Felice when he did not follow her instructions precisely, or immediately, particularly when it concerned provisions for herself and her family. Her cross little notes give an insight into family meals: ‘Bernardino, we are astonished that you have still not sent the wine’; or ‘We received from Polo Parmesano nine loads of wine and two lambs, which have arrived dead’; on
6
June
1520
, ‘Bernardino, yet again we are writing to you to send the cheese you have yet to send, now we also want you to send three lambs.’ This time Bernardino immediately complied with her request. A day later, Felice wrote a note to confirm the receipt of ‘three lambs, fifteen rounds of ricotta, two sausages...brought by Alessandro Genovese, consigned by Nardo Cannovaro, and received in good condition’.
¹⁹
She also acknowledged receipt of a ‘a bag of leaves for worms’. Silk worms ate mulberry leaves; Felice was perhaps experimenting with silk production.

Nearly all the meat, lamb and veal, grain, wheat and barley, and fruit, in particular figs, consumed by Felice, her family and staff was produced on Orsini land. There were some exceptions, such as fish that did not come from the lake at Bracciano. One Christmas Eve, in Rome, they bought crab legs from Niccolò Ridolifi’s shop. An agent, Perseo di Pontecorvo, was charged with obtaining fish from the port of Gaeta, halfway between Rome and Naples. Perseo wrote to her to tell that his brother at Gaeta had helped him negotiate the sale, as ‘everyone knows that the Gaetani can be cheats’.
²⁰
He sent three kinds of fish: pike, mullet and trout.

If the majority of Orsini foodstuffs was home grown, then the opposite was true of the textiles Felice needed. Some linen was woven from flax grown at Bracciano. Another note Felice wrote to Bernardino from Rome told him, ‘We are in great need of chemises. So we need you to send three yards of linen for us to have in hand as quickly as possible.’ Another occasion saw a minor Orsini relation, Giovanni, writing a receipt to Bernardino for five yards of linen on the commission ‘given to me by her illustrious ladyship’. But sheets or undergarments made of linen were not the only needs generated by Felice’s family. There was also a huge demand for silks and satins, in particular for her own clothing, and for furnishing the Orsini homes. Luxury textiles were not always easy to find, and so a large network of staff and agents was always at work in pursuit of its acquisition. Such fabric was an investment in itself. The high prices it fetched meant that dowries were often at least partly comprised of yards of silks and satins. Secondhand clothes sometimes have a stigma attached to them. In Renaissance Italy, however, an exquisite and beautiful weave was a work of art in itself, and it did not necessarily matter if such fabric had once belonged to somebody else. The secondhand cloth trade was a substantial industry.

Felice had always worn black, so she already had several black dresses for her transition to widowhood, but she still regularly acquired more. In August
1520
Francesco d’Ancona wrote to tell her that ‘Signor Ippolito ordered me to send you from my expedition to Bologna the three yards of white silk and the three yards of the black silk that is the most beautiful possible, as you yourself told me. The cost is
24
carlini
.’
²¹
The city of Bologna was developing an expertise in the production of black silk, a particularly expensive commodity. The Spanish economy did almost as well from its monopoly on the logwood tree on Caribbean islands, which produced rich dark black dye, as it did from the silver the Spanish mined in the New World.

Francesco d’Ancona also bought material in Venice, home of Italy’s finest textiles, which were brought back to Rome by a mule-driver who was paid
0
.
45
carlini
. Valerio Antonelli wrote to tell her that he had found ‘Russian damask of great beauty, black, blue and yellow’. Blue and yellow were the della Rovere colours; Felice might have wished to accessorize her widow’s habit with her father’s family colours, perhaps in the form of a bodice, or undergown. In January
1522
, her ‘affectionate servant’ Antonio di Salmoli told Felice that he had sent the ‘silk of many colours’ she had ordered. Even the family lawyer, Prospero d’Aquasparta, was not exempt from receiving requests from her for purchases: in one letter Felice asked him to send a request to another servant to obtain ‘thread of every colour’ for her.
²²

Felice ordered silk veils, appropriate to her widowed status, specially from
veletori
(veil-makers) in Rome. Her young sons did not wear silks and damasks, but clothes of sturdier and warmer fabric, such as serge and chamblet, a blend of wool, silk and linen. This was for practical reasons; there was no point in making doublets and jerseys for small boys living in the country out of delicate fabric that would quickly be worn through or outgrown. Vicovaro, high in the hills, was extremely cold in the winter.

Felice’s daughter Julia, aged thirteen, asked her mother on
3
October
1520
to send her ‘velvet dress and jacket, as there is an intolerable cold here’.
²³
As a young girl, Julia had grasped the importance of clothes. A year earlier she had written to her mother, ‘I thought it best that your ladyship know that Signor Girolamo has no more shirts, so you might want to send the lawn for five shirts.’ A few days later, she sent her mother the request for some velvet clothes and wrote to ask her for ‘two yards of lawn and an ounce of gold thread’, suggesting she wanted to make an embroidered chemise – intended more probably for herself than for her younger brothers.

chapter 13

Statio

No one on Felice’s staff worked harder for her obtaining what she needed than her servant Statio del Fara. Statio had been in Felice’s employment since at least
1513
, when he appeared on the list of her personal
salariati
as ‘Statio, cancelliero’. He was well educated; his letters are written in a most exquisite hand, and his loyalty to Felice and commitment to his job were unquestionable. He took the issue of expense very seriously indeed:

Through Vincenzo Staffieri I have sent you two pieces of chamblet, and one of home-spun serge. They both exceed the six yards that I wrote down, but because your ladyship has not responded to my letter regarding this I am sending you all the chamblet and the serge and you can measure off what you want...Your ladyship wrote to me to order Signor Girolamo’s overshirt and doublet which amounts to
6
palmi
[
0
.
2234
metres] of serge, and with the lining, which comes to
6
carlini,
it’s
8
carlini
in all. The shoemaker is asking for
4
julios
for Madonna Julia’s slippers and shoes, but I believe he would be content with
3
and a half.
¹

The
julio
was the ducat introduced by Felice’s father, Julius II, with his own portrait engraved in profile. Statio’s days were a frenzy of activity. Like most large Roman palaces, Monte Giordano had shops on its ground-floor level, rented out to butchers, saddlers and apothecaries. This commercial practice dated back to the
insulae
of ancient Rome, and is still common to modern apartment blocks in the city. But most of Statio’s responsibilities would take him into the Via dei Banchi, the street just behind Monte Giordano, which was the heart of Rome’s shopping and financial district, home to stores and banks since the Middle Ages. It was there that Statio would haggle and fight with the silk merchants and the shoe-makers, determined to get his mistress the best prices, and receive praise and credit for his thrifty ways.