The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (20 page)

Julius’s bad relationship with Alfonso also affected how he viewed the Gonzaga family, the rulers of Mantua. Francesco Gonzaga and Alfonso were brothers-in-law. Isabella d’Este was, respectively, their wife and sister. Francesco was also commander of the papal troops, a position of which Julius might have relieved him, were it not that Francesco’s daughter, Eleonora, was the wife of the Pope’s nephew, Francesco Maria della Rovere. However, Julius saw Francesco as an unreliable and ineffectual general, and felt his ties to Alfonso compromised his military position. To ensure Francesco’s loyalty to him, Julius insisted Francesco’s young son Federico be held at the papal court as a hostage to ensure his father’s good behaviour. Federico, who might well be the pretty, blond boy depicted at the front of Raphael’s
School of Athens
, became a favourite of the papal
famiglia
, and was perhaps more indulged than if he had stayed at home. The little boy possessed great charm. The Mantuan ambassador at court wrote to his mother and father to assure them how beloved he was ‘by the Pope, by Agostino Chigi [who had become Julius’s financier], Gian Giordano Orsini and Madonna Felice, who willingly bestow affection upon him, and have invited him to Bracciano’.
²
On other evenings, he visited Monte Giordano.

That Julius looked on both Isabella d’Este’s brother and husband with considerable distrust was not a situation that the Marchesa cared to endure. Poor relations with the Pope meant the withholding of lucrative papal rewards, cardinals’ hats for her sons and nephews, access to Church benefices and the rights to the revenue on certain taxes. Isabella could not endure the thought of any kind of financial deprivation. Looking to see who at the papal court could be a useful friend to her families, she turned to the woman who had solicited her friendship half a decade earlier.

Felice was willing, indeed anxious, to be of assistance to the influential Isabella. The situation not only appealed to her taste for diplomatic mediation, it provided her with an opportunity for further advancement on the Italian political stage. In April
1511
, Felice went to her father to ‘see if he would consent to her giving her daughter [Julia] as a wife to one of the sons of the His Excellency the Duke of Ferrara’. Given that neither child was much more than four years old, it can be safely assumed that this was no more than a betrothal, designed as an overture to cementing an alliance between the d’Este and the della Rovere. Julius, however, was highly irritated by Felice’s unsolicited matrimonial suggestion. He told her to go away and ‘attend to her sewing’.
³

It was a calculated dismissal on Julius’s part: instructing Felice to return to women’s work implied she was meddling in a masculine world in which she had no business. The irony, of course, is that Julius was perfectly happy for Felice to play the man when it suited him, when he needed her to dissuade the Orsini from serving Venice, or to serve as papal representative at peace talks with France. But Felice’s masculine character was to be utilized only at his discretion and his command. Otherwise, she had to return to womanly subservience. Felice felt frustrated, knowing her father’s appreciation of her ability and vision would have been much less inconsistent had she been born a boy.

However, Felice was stubborn and tenacious, and was not deterred by her father’s response. Isabella d’Este was equally determined. So they tried again to advance their cause the following year. This time, Isabella wanted Felice’s support not only for Alfonso but also for another of her brothers, Cardinal Ippolito. Stazio Gaddi, the Mantuan ambassador at the Vatican, sent both Isabella and Francesco reports on the proceedings.

Stazio wrote the more sensitive parts of his reports in code, to be translated when the letter reached Mantua. Some of the code was encrypted hieroglyphics, while in other parts an alias was incorporated to hide the identity of the subject. In some of Stazio’s letters the name ‘Sappho’ appears. Rather indiscreetly breaking his own code, Stazio wrote at the bottom of the letter, ‘I use the name of the great Sappho for Signora Felice.’
⁴

Sappho is an especially fascinating choice of alias for Felice. Stazio was perhaps inspired by the depiction of the poetess by Raphael in the
Parnassus
he painted in Julius’s library, now the Stanza della Segnatura. Raphael’s rendering of Sappho has always attracted attention, as she is the only historical female figure present in the picture, among figures such as Virgil and Homer, and her name is spelled out above her. Felice had a similarly singular presence at the Vatican. Sappho was also renowned for her wisdom; the name perhaps reflected Stazio’s confidence in Felice’s abilities.

With Sappho as the code name for Felice, her father’s code name became Lesbia, the island where the poetess had lived. ‘Sappho went to Lesbia’ meant ‘Felice went to see the Pope’. On
17
June
1512
, Stazio wrote to Isabella that Felice was

well disposed to do good work for Europa [code name for Ippolito d’Este], and that she would do all that was possible. She has said that she will be going to Rome in four days and will most willingly exhaust herself in working for his good. She will also bring up her own interests, that is that she desires nothing more in the world than to see her daughter in the house of d’Este. In this matter, great dexterity and diligence has been used to make sure that Signor Gian Giordano is happy that she comes to Rome.
⁵

This is the only reference that indicates that Gian Giordano, as well as Felice, might have a concern in their daughter’s future marriage plans. Isabella added her encouragement for Felice’s endeavours, writing her a long and flattering letter, far removed form the capricious and dictatorial tone she often used with her correspondents:

Your Illustrious Excellency, who is like my dearest sister. I understand from various sources how lovingly and favourably you have acted in the matters of my illustrious brothers, and I know your goodness is not only out of respect for them, but also for love of me...I want you to know how much I esteem your efforts and authority which I know His Holiness prizes greatly, and in every other matter I am consigning the bearer of this letter to thank you for such generosity and virtue that comes from you. I hope that you continue in favouring my brother and particularly the Cardinal, who, I understand may become court secretary. I am sure that he will act with great maturity in this capacity were he to be appointed and be obedient and faithful to His Holiness. You yourself will acquire a friend and a house that will perpetually serve you.
⁶

Unfortunately for Felice’s plans, Alfonso d’Este’s behaviour continued to arouse Julius’s ire. The Duke refused to come to the Vatican to affirm his fealty to the Pope. On
2
October
1512
Stazio wrote to Isabella, ‘Last Wednesday Sappho went to Lesbia to speak about the matters of your Excellency’s affairs. But she found the widow [another code name for Julius] in a great fury as the Duke was gone, and had been seen in Bolsena. Sappho could not talk with the Pope, and she has now left the palace.’
7
But if Felice was disappointed that these negotiations could not go forward, she was absolutely crushed by another blow Julius delivered to her. He refused to let her become the governor of the city of Pesaro. Pesaro was the major port in the province of the Marche, the point of access on the Adriatic for such cities as Urbino. Until
1512
, a scion of the Sforza family had ruled the city. Lucrezia Borgia’s first husband, Giovanni, had been its governor and Lucrezia herself the city’s countess. Perhaps Felice’s interest in acquiring the city was motivated by her desire to outdo the other pope’s daughter; only, this time, she would possess Pesaro in her own right. Felice did not want it as a gift. She wanted to pay for Pesaro with money she had earned from the Palo estate and through brokering political favours and ecclesiastical offices at the Vatican. If it was a gift, it might be taken from her; if it was a purchase, it was hers outright.

The other contender for this prize was her younger cousin, Francesco Maria della Rovere. In
1507
Francesco Maria had succeeded his gouty maternal uncle Guidobaldo as Duke of Urbino, and his father, Julius’s brother Giovanni, as Prefect of Rome. The twenty-two-year-old Francesco Maria was feckless and dangerously volatile. He had performed poorly as a general in Julius’s military campaigns and in
1508
he had murdered the cleric he saw as a rival for his uncle Julius’s attentions, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi. Felice, however, was surprisingly fond of him. He had been hidden from the Borgia in Savona in
1502
, and she had come to view him as a younger brother, a temporary replacement for the one she had left behind in Rome, Gian Domenico de Cupis. She actively petitioned her father to absolve Francesco Maria of the murder. Julius did so, in part because he recognized the future of the della Rovere dynasty lay with his nephew.

Felice had not taken her younger cousin, who was already endowed with so much, as a serious rival for the prize of Pesaro. On
11
October
1512
she went to her father, whose moods were increasingly unpredictable. What occurred is told tersely by the Mantuan Stazio Gadi: ‘Sappho, wishing to speak with His Holiness about buying Pesaro, went to him and found him in a great rage. He greatly rebuffed her, saying he wants Pesaro for the Duke of Urbino, and spoke to her in such a way that she has left Rome, weeping.’
8
Stazio’s description of Felice’s emotional state is quite surprising in its candour. Thus far in her life, Felice had performed in public, no matter what she may have felt inside, as a woman who was both proud and resilient. The greatest amount of discomfort she had ever openly displayed was her blush when Gian Giordano tried to give her a French kiss on their wedding day. For her to leave Rome in tears is an indication of the deep humiliation she felt from her father’s refusal of her request. Life was frequently unfair for women in the Renaissance, but its unfairness on this occasion seemed particularly harsh to Felice. She had proved herself a more than competent estate manager, a shrewd businesswoman, an admired diplomat. All were useful attributes for becoming governor of a city. Bar her father and uncle, she had single-handedly achieved much

more than any of her male della Rovere relatives, who had grown soft and lazy on papal handouts. And yet her father turned from her to her less popular and less competent cousin, simply because he was a man. If the elderly Pope remembered how much it had pained him as a younger man to have been passed over by Sixtus, despite all his hard work, in favour of his less deserving Riario cousins, then he chose not to act on his recollections. And there is certain poignancy in Felice, who so often acted as a man, being reduced on this occasion to tears, that traditionally feminine emotional response.

I. J. Boissard, engraving of
Sleeping Nymph
in garden of Angelo Colocci

chapter 11

The Julian Legacy

After her father’s last rebuff, Felice abandoned any further attempts to marry her daughter Julia to the son of the Duke of Ferrara, and she stayed away from the Vatican Palace. A Mantuan envoy who went out to Bracciano to see her wrote to Isabella on
5
November
1512
that Felice had assured him she had done ‘everything possible to benefit the Duke of Ferrara, although little of it helped him’.
¹
Several years passed without any further contact between Isabella and Felice and the Mantuan envoys. It was clear that Julius would do nothing for her brother and Isabella was not one to waste her time soliciting fruitless favours. Moreover, by late
1512
, Julius was in constantly poor health. Soon, there would be a change at the Vatican and Alfonso d’Este’s reputation could be rehabilitated. Five days after the Mantuan’s report from Bracciano, news reached Venice that ‘the Pope has shivering fits, and negotiations are already beginning for the choice of his successor’.
²

Felice kept her own eye on her father’s decline. On several occasions she paid the travelling expenses of Julius’s doctor, Archangelo, to come out to her country estates when she was absent from Rome to keep her informed of his condition. He was paid well for his trouble, receiving
25
ducats (the equivalent of several thousand pounds today) on one occasion just to come to Bracciano. Julius, the
papa terribile
, was tenacious to the end and recovered on several occasions from what was widely believed to be his deathbed. But when he took to his bed in early January
1513
, he was not to rise again. He died on
21
February.
³

In the last days of Julius’s life, Felice came to ask him for one last favour. She wanted him to make her nineteen-year-old half-brother, Gian Domenico de Cupis, a cardinal. Felice was largely motivated by sisterly affection and a desire to look after the interests of the de Cupis family. But also of great concern to her was a need to have a member of the curia whose loyalty would be to her and her alone. Felice did not know who the next pope would be, and she wanted to be sure there was someone wielding power on her behalf within the Vatican’s inner circles. But while Julius had already made Gian Domenico a canon of St Peter’s and a secretary at the Vatican, he refused this request. He claimed that to make such a ‘young and ignorant boy’ a cardinal would displease other members of the College.
⁴
However, Julius did re-bequeath Felice the
12
,
000
ducats she had returned to him the previous year. In total, in addition to her
15
,
000
-ducat dowry, Julius had bestowed on Felice a personal cash fortune of
21
,
000
ducats including the money she used to purchase Palo. It was an exceptional sum for a father to leave autonomously to a daughter at this time, and made Felice one of the most independently wealthy women in Italy – if not the wealthiest.