satisfied with the populace who now prepared for the arrival of the enemy army in Ferrara.

The following day Duke Alfonso had published a decree ordering all warehouses and shops to close for the week and for everyone to work instead on fortifying the city. And then they waited for the enemy to arrive, going about their business as normally as possible while the winter months passed and Julius II’s forces fought relentlessly for the possession of Mirandola, knowing that once that fortress had fallen, it would be their turn next.

On Maundy Thursday, April 17, the chaplains of the cathedral held the customary confirmation service behind closed doors, ‘which they did, not having permission from the Pope to do because of the excommunication,’ reported the chronicler Zerbinati, who added in the margin of his notebook that ‘I was told about this, because I was not there.’

The winter of 1511 had been unusually long and hard, ‘the greatest cold, the thickest ice and the heaviest snow that I have ever seen,’ commented Zerbinati, adding that ‘the winter has lasted for so long that today, the last day of April, we are still lighting our fires and we are still wearing our fur-lined coats.’ Three weeks later, however, came news that warmed the hearts of the brave populace: the Bolognese had rebelled against Julius II, and the Bentivoglio were once again in power. The celebrations that night were exceptionally loud — bells, fireworks, cannonades, shouting, songs, youths roistering on the streets brandishing branches of trees on which blossoms had begun to bloom — to rejoice at the defeat of the mighty papal army ‘which has threatened us all the past winter.’ The next day ‘all the shops were closed, as if it were a Sunday.’

Throughout these difficult years while Alfonso had been frequently absent, fighting first for Julius II and then against him, it was Lucrezia, his duchess, who took his place as ruler of the city, writing regular letters to him, sometimes as many as three a day, reporting the news from the marketplace, the gossip at court, planning policy, and asking his advice. She had pawned her jewels to raise money for her husband and also managed, in what must have been exceptionally difficult circumstances, to preside over their court, acting as a gracious hostess to the many French nobles who had come to Ferrara with the French army and were quartered in the ducal palace or in the residences of the courtiers. ‘She is a pearl,’ one Frenchman remarked; ‘there has never been such a wonderful duchess,’ he extolled, praising Lucrezia’s beauty and benevolence, her kindness and charm, and, he added, ‘a great service to her husband.’

— CHAPTER 28 — The Death of the Duchess

‘OTHER WOMEN ARE TO LUCREZIA AS TIN IS TO SILVER, COPPER TO GOLD’

NOW THAT THE ANXIETY and worry of the much-feared papal invasion was over, Lucrezia, as so often happens on such occasions, fell ill and retired to the convent of San Bernardino to recover, which she did, after some months of convalescence, and of mourning for the death of the twelve-year-old Rodrigo Bisceglie, her first son, whom she had not seen since he was a toddler when she left Rome for the last time. She did, however, have the comfort of knowing that her other son Juan, the result of her affair with the papal valet Pedro Calderon, was safe and well. Since 1505 he had been living in nearby Carpi and was frequently a visitor in Ferrara, where, thanks to her father’s bull ‘explaining’ the parentage of the boy, he was always assumed to be her half-brother.

In August 1509, at the start of the conflict with Julius II and just sixteen months after the birth of Ercole, Lucrezia had given birth to another healthy son, named Ippolito in honour of Alfonso’s brother, the cardinal. During the troubled years that followed, she had taken refuge with her young sons, spending long hours playing games with them, taking part in masquerades, telling them fairy stories, listening with them to strange surreal tales told by her dwarf, Santino, who sat perched upon a chair placed upon a table like a miniature stylite. On occasions the children’s father would look in on the scene with an indulgent eye, no longer jealous of such threats to the composure of his marriage as Francesco Gonzaga and Pietro Bembo.

Julius II’s threat to Ferrara finally ended on April 11, 1512, when his armies were decisively defeated by the French at the Battle of Ravenna. Duke Alfonso’s knowledge of artillery had played an important part in the victory, which had been fought at the cost of ten thousand lives, including that of Cesare’s erstwhile captain, Yves d’Alegre. And a year later, toward the end of January 1513, Julius II, complaining of being suddenly taken ill, took, uncharacteristically, to his bed. By the end of the week, feeling that the end was near, he summoned his master of ceremonies to dictate detailed instructions for his funeral; and on February 21 he died.

Age never mellowed Julius; to the end he was a papa terribile. As a sick old man, he still spoke of waging a war to drive the Spanish out of Italy. He was, indeed, a great patriot and, unlike so many of his contemporaries, he thought of Italy not as a mere collection of rival states but as an entity of its own. Yet, however much the warrior pope he may have been, Julius II was also one of the most enlightened and discriminating patrons of art that the Western world had ever known. He had much of the Vatican Palace reconstructed and rebuilt the main courtyard as well as the immense courtyard that stretches from the palace toward the Belvedere. Beneath its walls he laid out an extensive and lovely garden, the first great Roman pleasure garden since the days of the Caesars.

Julius II hired artists as if recruiting an army — including most of the great living masters of the Italian Renaissance. One of these was Raphael, who worked for the pope on the decoration of the new official quarters of the palace, the Vatican Stanze; another was Bramante, who undertook to rebuild the ancient and venerated Basilica of St Peter’s, clearing the site of the decaying medieval structure with such eagerness that he became known as ‘maestro Ruinante,’ master Ruiner. He also hired the Florentine artist Michelangelo to paint the memorable frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and to cast an enormous statue of the pope — fourteen feet high and weighing six tons — which was set up on the facade of the cathedral in Bologna and then torn down by the mob after the city rebelled against Julius II’s rule. The ruined statue was given to Duke Alfonso, who melted it down and made it into a cannon, which he wittily named La Giulia.

He had been a great champion of the Church and of its capital city. The Romans, recognizing this, were deeply grateful. When he died in 1513, people wept in the streets and, according to Francesco Guicciardini, they ‘thronged to kiss his feet and gaze upon his dead face, for all knew him to be a true Roman pontiff.’ Although ‘full of fury and extravagant conceptions,’ Guicciardini concluded, ‘he was lamented above all his predecessors and… is held in illustrious remembrance.’

A few days later, twenty-five cardinals assembled in Rome for the conclave that was to elect his successor. Less than a week later, Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, the son of Lorenzo il Magnifico and Alfonso’s prisoner after the Battle of Ravenna, was elected pope as Leo X, and Pietro Bembo, once Lucrezia’s lover, was appointed papal secretary.

It was not until the summer of 1513, four years after the birth of her last child, Ippolito, that Lucrezia found herself pregnant once more; but upon this occasion, the baby boy to whom she gave birth was far from being as handsome as Ippolito and Ercole. Despite being named Alessandro after her beloved father, it clearly pained Lucrezia to look upon the child with its strangely large and misshapen head, and she was relieved rather than distressed when he gave up the struggle to live, aged just two years old.

Meanwhile, in July 1515, when Alessandro was just fifteen months old, Lucrezia had given birth yet again, this time to a daughter, named Eleonora after Alfonso’s mother. By the time Alessandro died, she was pregnant again with Francesco, who was born in November 1516 and, perhaps, as the name chosen had featured in neither her own family nor that of Alfonso’s, the baby was named after its uncle Francesco Gonzaga; but, anyway, it was a pretty baby whom she clearly adored.

So, with no little pleasure, Alfonso found himself the father of a number of children — all his legitimate heirs. He was engrossed in his own affairs; but, nevertheless, he was highly satisfied with the esteem and admiration now bestowed on his wife. The admiration she excited in former years was due to her youthful beauty; it was not owing to her virtues. She, who as a young girl had been the most vilified woman of her times, had, in middle age, won a place of the highest honour.

The ducal couple, now clearly at ease in each other’s company, shared an interest in all the arts, not solely music, and as the patron of artists and poets that all Renaissance princes were expected to be, Alfonso relied upon

Вы читаете The Borgias
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату