The Rise of the Riario, 1471–1484

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

The Rise of the Riario 2 1471–1484 Riario 1471–1484

2 The Rise of the Riario 1471–1484

In contrast to the patro­nage of the Della Rovere, that of the Riario has received scant atten­tion, despite the family’s signi­fi­cance in artistic, poli­tical, and cultural spheres. The main prot­ago­nists of the Riario dynasty in the fifte­enth and sixte­enth centuries—the brot­hers Cardinal Pietro and Count Girolamo Riario and their nephew Cardinal Raffaele—were long synony­mous with immo­ra­lity and deca­dence and have only recently been the subject of more balanced studies. Many of the family’s most signi­fi­cant artistic commis­sions, both in Rome and in their home­town of Savona, have been lost, misat­tri­buted, or forgotten. In the art-histo­rical discus­sion of Raffaele Riario, the Cardinal’s role in the family’s wider poli­tical ambi­tions, furthered by the patro­nage of art and archi­tec­ture, has scar­cely been explored. This chapter considers these topics, begin­ning with the origins of the Riario dynasty’s power in the era of Sixtus IV. It discusses how, from a young age, Raffaele Riario was drawn into the family’s plans to amass power and secure a fiefdom in the Romagna. Riario was promoted to the cardi­na­late at the age of seven­teen and imme­dia­tely sent by his uncle Girolamo to Florence to assist in a Riario-Pazzi plot to assas­si­nate Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici. In the spring of 1478, as the Pazzi conspi­racy unfolded, the conspi­ra­tors used Raffaele as their pawn, reques­ting invi­ta­tions from the Medici under the guise of the Cardinal’s keen inte­rest in their coll­ec­tions of art. As Riario spent several months immersed in Pazzi circles, he grew parti­cu­larly close to Marsilio Ficino. This chapter examines these expe­ri­ences and considers the Cardinal’s first steps as a patron in Rome, after he was awarded the powerful office of Came­ra­rius. It inves­ti­gates a previously unex­plored Latin eclogue commis­sioned by Agos­tino Maffei for the Cardinal and concludes with a discus­sion of the patro­nage of Riario’s uncles Count Girolamo and Cardinal Pietro, asking how these eminent figures served as role models for Raffaele.

Accor­ding to a contem­po­rary chro­nicler who was not sympa­thetic towards the Riario, Count Girolamo Riario was the son of a humble shoe­maker who began his career as an apothe­cary. Other, more reliable sources attri­bute a noble iden­tity to the Riario of Savona, describing them as a family of magis­trates, seafa­rers, and soldiers.¹ The event that brought them to unex­pected promi­nence was the elec­tion in 1471 of Fran­cesco della Rovere as Pope Sixtus IV. Sixtus favoured the Riario above all other fami­lies, even if their exact rela­ti­onship to the pope is diffi­cult to estab­lish. Most offi­cial accounts from the fifte­enth century state that Pietro and Girolamo Riario were the sons of Sixtus IV’s sister, Bianca della Rovere, by her husband Paolo Riario.² Of late, however, histo­rians have favoured a more compli­cated version of events. Quat­tro­cento sources reveal that Paolo Riario was married three times, first to Violante della ­Rovere, then to the Savo­nese noble­woman Bianca Beccalla, and finally to Sixtus IV’s sister Bianca della Rovere. These unions produced at least two daugh­ters, Violante and Petruccia,

fig. 13 Melozzo da Forlì, Sixtus IV Appoints Platina as Head of the Vatican Library, Vatican, Musei Vati­cani. 1477. Photo © bpk / Scala.

and three sons, Raffaele, Girolamo, and Pietro.³ As was stated in Girolamo Riario’s funerary oration and other sources, Girolamo and Pietro were the children not of the pope’s sister, but of Paolo Riario’s second wife, Bianca Beccalla. If these accounts are accu­rate, Pietro and Girolamo Riario were not Sixtus’s nephews, nor were they the pope’s blood relations.

What first cemented the Riario family’s connec­tion to the future pope Fran­cesco della Rovere was the personal bond between Paolo Riario and Della Rovere, a rela­ti­onship detailed by the painter and histo­rian Leone Cobelli in his Cronache Forli­vesi. Cobelli states that Paolo Riario took in the young ‘Frate Fran­ce­schino’ and hired him as a tutor for his sons. Reco­g­nising Francesco’s love of lear­ning, Paolo lent him the money he needed to fund his educa­tion. Fran­cesco became espe­ci­ally fond of Paolo’s son Pietro and even asked Paolo to ‘give’ him Pietro as his protégé.⁴ Ulti­m­ately, Pietro’s loyal service to Della Rovere would secure the future success of the Riario in Rome. When Fran­cesco della Rovere became a Cardinal, he made Pietro Riario his secre­tary. In the conclave of 1471, Pietro lobbied inten­si­vely for Della Rovere’s elec­tion as pope, and contem­po­rary chro­nic­lers give Pietro much of the credit for Della Rovere’s surprise victory.⁵ As Pope Sixtus IV, Della Rovere began to shower Pietro with rewards. Only a few months after his elec­tion and in defi­ance of agree­ments settled in the conclave, he made Pietro the Cardinal priest of San Sisto.⁶ On the same day, he also promoted another former pupil, Giuliano della Rovere (the future pope Julius II), to the office of Cardinal priest of San Pietro in Vincoli. Of these two young ‘nephews’, the twenty-sixyear-old Pietro Riario was easily the pope’s favou­rite. Over the follo­wing three years, before Pietro’s prema­ture demise in 1474, Sixtus handed Riario unpre­ce­dented privi­leges, spar­king rumours that Pietro was the pope’s secret son.⁷

The new pope needed allies, and many repre­sen­ta­tives of Savona’s nobility—not only the Della Rovere and Riario but also the Gara, Basso, Spinola, Sansoni, Vegerio, Ferrero, and Del Carretto—flocked to Rome.⁸ In exch­ange for their loyalty, Sixtus offered them cardi­nalates, advan­ta­geous marriages, illus­trious titles, and fief­doms. His approach marks a tran­si­tion to what Italian histo­rians have referred to as grande nepo­tismo.⁹ Sixtus’s aim in this advanced form of nepo­tism was not only to make his rela­tives and family acquain­tances as powerful as possible, but also to encou­rage them to estab­lish their own dynasties in compe­ti­tion with one another. The Riario, the Della Rovere of Pied­mont, and the Della Rovere of Liguria were Sixtus’s closest allies, but among one another they became rivals. They culti­vated inde­pen­dent iden­ti­ties by forging alli­ances with contras­ting powers: Cardinal Pietro Riario allied

with the Mila­nese, while Cardinal Giuliano allied with Milan’s nemesis, the King of Naples. The rivalry—and antagonism—that deve­loped between the papal nipoti, and parti­cu­larly between Girolamo Riario and Giuliano della Rovere, worked to Sixtus’s advan­tage. At a time when the papacy was drawn further than ever before into warfare on the Italian penin­sula, control­ling the frag­mented and divided Papal States required the frequent realignment of alli­ances. Having nipoti posi­tioned in rival camps offered Sixtus the agility to operate across a broad poli­tical spectrum.

In 1472, Cardinal Giuliano won a coup for the Della Rovere by successfully broke­ring a marriage between his brother Leonardo, ‘Prefetto di Roma’, and the daughter of King Ferrante of Naples, which won for Leonardo the terri­to­ries of Sora and Arpino.¹⁰ In the summer of 1472, Pietro Riario hastened to Milan with the hope of winning a compa­rable match from the Sforza Dukes for his brother Girolamo. Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, was a natural ally for the Riario, since Savona was at the time a city under Mila­nese domi­na­tion. Sforza made Pietro Riario the attrac­tive offer of a marriage between Girolamo and his own ille­gi­ti­mate daughter, Cate­rina Sforza. The union would prove to be fateful for the Riario who, through this alli­ance, became part of the extended family of the Mila­nese Dukes. Girolamo’s marriage to Cate­rina, who was then only around ten years of age, brought him the terri­tory of Bosco d’Alessandria in nort­hern Romagna, the title of ‘Conte’, and the right to quarter his arms with those of the Sforza.¹¹ One month after Conte Girolamo and Caterina’s marriage, in February 1473, Sixtus bols­tered Girolamo’s status further by promo­ting him to the office of Capi­tano gene­rale della Chiesa (commander of the papal armies). Cardinal Pietro took the next step by travel­ling once again to Milan in September, this time accom­pa­nied by an entou­rage of over two hundred men. His mission ended with the agree­ment that Sixtus IV and the Riario would purchase Imola, a terri­tory under Mila­nese control, for 40,000 ducats. The Medici family of Florence had already attempted to acquire this important strong­hold, but the pope had blocked the sale, which would have opened a path to domi­na­tion over all of Central Italy for the Floren­tines. Control­ling Imola, while preven­ting the Medici from winning it for them­selves, was a crucial stra­tegic move for Sixtus and a boon for the Riario, who estab­lished their own state. Since, however, the agreed price was far beyond the family’s finan­cial means, the pope was forced to take out large loans, which he first sought from the Medici bank. When Lorenzo de’ Medici refused his request, Sixtus made a decision with far-reaching conse­quences when he sought the help of a rival family of Floren­tine bankers, the Pazzi.¹²

Sixtus IV’s appoint­ment of Conte Riario as the new vicar of Imola, on 6 November 1473, is widely unders­tood as a turning point in papal poli­tics. The forma­tion of a Riario state within the Papal States was a direct, undis­gu­ised effort to leverage the power of the papacy as a means of winning privi­leges for his own ‘rela­tives’. It was a move that fores­ha­dows the better-known case of Cesare Borgia’s conquests in the Romagna with the help of his father, Pope Alex­ander VI. For the upstart Riario, Imola was a signi­fi­cant prize, espe­ci­ally conside­ring the city’s strong defences and its stra­tegic loca­tion on the via Emilia. Since any army in transit through Italy would need to travel either through Tuscany or through the Romagna on the via Emilia, the gover­nance of Imola gave the Riario immense bargai­ning power. At the same time, Girolamo Riario’s posi­tion was a preca­rious one. Even if the Riario were appointed vicars of Imola in perp­etuity, they remained in power only at the discre­tion of Sixtus IV, and then of the next pope when the office changed hands. The Riario were also obliged to serve the Sforza of Milan. Since control over Imola was a defen­sive neces­sity for the Sforza, Girolamo Riario main­tained a stan­ding army in Imola for Milan and served as the Sforza Duke’s cond­ot­tiere.¹³ Beholden to two powerful lords—the pope and the Dukes of Milan—the Riario were poli­ti­cally compro­mised, and it was only a matter of time before their alle­gi­ances would be divided.

In January, shortly after his return from Milan, Cardinal Pietro Riario died unex­pec­tedly, putting recent agree­ments made with Duke Sforza into doubt.¹⁴ Girolamo quickly arranged his inves­ti­ture as Signore of Imola in February. In April, he secured his autho­rity there by instal­ling his sister Violante Riario and her husband Dome­nico Gentile Ricci in Imola as his vice-regents.¹⁵ Violante had previously been married to Antonio Sansoni, and when Gentile Ricci and Riario went to the Romagna they brought with them the young Raffaele Sansoni, Violante’s son by her first husband.¹⁶ Perhaps around the time of his move to the Romagna, Raffaele aban­doned the name ‘Sansoni’ he had inhe­rited from his father and assumed the name ‘Riario’.¹⁷ Such a move was not unpre­ce­dented: Rodrigo Borgia, for example, aban­doned his birth name Lançol after Pope Callixtus III adopted him. Raffaele Riario’s new name is nevert­heless an extra­or­di­nary sign of the power of the Riario at this time, and of the inten­tion to make Raffaele a substi­tute for his uncle, Pietro Riario. Gentile Ricci, Violante Riario and the young Raffaele left Savona to support Riario ambi­tions in Central Italy, and were rewarded by Sixtus IV. Even­tually, Gentile Ricci was appointed Castellan of Spoleto, where Violante died and was buried in a promi­nent posi­tion in Spoleto’s Cathe­dral (Fig. 14).

Girolamo Riario set his sights on Sixtus IV’s rapid promo­tion of the young Raffaele to the cardi­na­late, and it is on the brink of a bright future that Melozzo da Forlì portrayed Raffaele in a famous group portrait (Fig. 13). Some­time between July 1476 and December 1477, the appoint­ment of Barto­lomeo Sacchi (known as ‘il Platina’) as Prefect of the Vatican library was comme­mo­rated with a portrait of the Platina knee­ling before the pope, surrounded by Sixtus’s closest ‘family’. The fresco origi­nally adorned the library’s Sala Latina.¹⁸ The figure

wearing a pale blue velvet garment repres­ents Count Girolamo Riario, shown in a portrait that directly echoes his portrait on the tomb of his brother Pietro Riario at SS. Apos­toli (see Figs 44–45). The figure furthest to the left can be iden­ti­fied without contro­versy as Cardinal Giuliano’s brother Giovanni della Rovere, Prefect of Rome. After the Riario had acquired Imola, Giuliano della Rovere arranged a marriage between Giovanni and the daughter of Federico da Monte­feltro, which brought with it the vica­riate of Seni­g­allia and Mondavio in the Marches.¹⁹ Melozzo’s fresco shows Girolamo Riario and Giovanni della Rovere on the left-hand side of the fresco as the secular leaders of their respec­tive clans. They face diffe­rent direc­tions and are distin­gu­ished from one another by the diffe­rent colours of their elegant robes, yet both wear thick, gold chains, flush with the success of recent alli­ances with the Monte­feltro and the Sforza. Stan­ding in front of Della Rovere, Girolamo Riario is clearly accorded greater importance in the hier­archy of the papal famiglia.

In Melozzo’s group portrait, a column sepa­rates the laymen on the left from the clerics on the right. While the promi­nent figure wearing red cardinal’s robes in the right half of the fresco is certainly Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, the iden­tity of the figure posi­tioned in front of Della Rovere and next to Pope Sixtus (Fig. 15) has long been a matter of dispute. In 1886, August Schmarsow argued that this figure is the teenage Raffaele Riario shortly before his eleva­tion to the cardi­na­late. His iden­ti­fi­ca­tion went uncha­l­lenged until José Ruys­schaert, citing

fig. 14 Tomb of Violante Riario Ricci (mother of Raffaele Riario) and her child. Spoleto, Duomo. 1483. Photo: Author.

a passage in the poem Convi­vium scien­ti­arum by the notary Antonio de Tomeis, argued that the portrait repres­ents the deceased Cardinal Pietro Riario.²⁰ It is diffi­cult to believe, however, that Pietro Riario would not be depicted wearing red cardinal’s robes like Giuliano della Rovere.²¹ Follo­wing Schmarsow’s original thesis, the figure to Sixtus’s right shown with tonsured hair, an aqui­line nose, bulbous jaw, and down­turned mouth can be iden­ti­fied as Raffaele Riario. As has been pointed out, Riario is shown dressed in the type of dark mantle worn by apos­tolic proto­no­ta­ries, the office he held at the time. Melozzo’s subject, moreover, bears a distinct resem­blance to a portrait of Riario—with a promi­nent jaw and sagging mouth—in a nearly contem­po­rary medal (Figs 16–17).²² There is even a discer­nible resem­blance to Raphael’s portrait of Cardinal Riario in his full matu­rity in the Mass at Bolsena (see Fig. 76). Within Melozzo’s group portrait as a whole, Raffaele Riario is shown as the heir appa­rent to his uncle Pietro, at a time when he was about to be promoted to posi­tions of immense power. Raffaele stands close to Sixtus, their profiles and the direc­tion of their gazes locked, as if to unders­core their shared loyalty and common ambitions.

Cardinal Riario, Marsilio Ficino, and the Pazzi Conspiracy

The favours predicted in this fresco soon came to frui­tion since, in December 1477, Sixtus made the seven­teen-year-old Raffaele Riario a Cardinal. As a conces­sion to his youth and lack of clerical educa­tion, the pope made him a cardinal deacon, rather than cardinal priest, assig­ning him the church of San Giorgio in Velabro ‘ad velum aureum’ near the Roman

fig. 15 Melozzo da Forlì, Sixtus IV Appoints Platina as Head of the Vatican Library, detail, portrait of Raffaele Riario and Pope Sixtus IV, Vatican, Musei Vati­cani. 1477. Photo © Vatican Museums and Galle­ries, Vatican City / Bridgeman Images.

Forum.²³ A medal cast to cele­brate the promo­tion attempts to offset the scandal of Riario’s tender age by asso­cia­ting him with a youthful and heroic ‘San Giorgio’ (see Figs 16 and 17). The medal estab­lishes the title and imagery of Saint George that the Cardinal would adopt throug­hout his life.²⁴ On the obverse, the Cardinal’s profile is shown toge­ther with the words ‘raphael annorum xvii cardi­nalis S georgii’, while the reverse bears an image of Saint George slaying the dragon toge­ther with the motto ‘virtvs’.²⁵ The image invokes the story of St. George as it was told in the Golden Legend: George slew a dragon to save a prin­cess, who could be asso­ciated with Ecclesia, using a lance that could be asso­ciated with the cross. St. George was a hero of the Crusades and a figure of Chris­tian faith and mili­tary valour fitting for Riario to adopt at this moment, when Girolamo Riario was about to enlist him in a war against the Medici.

Awar­ding a cardi­na­late to Raffaele Riario in 1477 was itself a strong rebuke to the Medici family. The Floren­tine bankers had supported Sixtus IV’s elec­tion during the conclave of 1471, and at the time of his inau­gu­ra­tion the pope had welcomed Lorenzo de’ Medici in Rome with open arms. Lorenzo received antique busts as gifts from the pope and was able to purchase precious objects form­erly in Pope Paul II’s coll­ec­tion, inclu­ding the Tazza Farnese (see Fig. 110).²⁶ The pope favoured de’ Medici further by giving him hope that he would soon

figs 16–17 Attri­buted to Lysippus, Medal of Raffaele Riario as the Cardinal of San Giorgio, obverse and reverse, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. A.192‑1910. Post December 1477. Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

grant a cardi­na­late to a Florentine—perhaps even to Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano. In the years that followed, however, Sixtus’s rela­ti­onship with the Medici turned sour. In 1474, Sixtus and the Riario bought Imola, a terri­tory that the Medici had long desired, using loans from the rival Pazzi bank. In the summer of that year, after Lorenzo supported a rebel­lion against papal rule at Città di Castello, the pope stripped the Medici of their role as depo­si­tari of the Camera Apos­to­lica and appointed the Pazzi as his prin­cipal bankers. In October, he made Fran­cesco Salviati, a cousin of the Pazzi, Arch­bi­shop of Pisa, bypas­sing the custo­mary request for appr­oval from the Floren­tine Signoria. The Medici found Salviati’s appoint­ment so into­le­rable that they blocked him from taking up the office for more than a year. Another blow followed in the summer of 1476, when Sixtus shifted contracts for mana­ging papal alum mines in Tolfa from the Medici to the Pazzi. In 1477, after an attempt to elevate Arch­bi­shop Salviati to the cardi­na­late failed, Sixtus IV promoted Raffaele Riario. The clear message was that Riario was given the ‘Floren­tine’ cardi­na­late that the Medici had lobbied for and had hoped to win for Giuliano.²⁷

The eleva­tion of the young Raffaele Riario to the cardi­na­late was an important step in the Riario-Pazzi plot to elimi­nate the Medici family. After the assas­si­na­tion of Galeazzo Maria Sforza in December 1476 removed one of the Medici’s powerful allies, a covert plan to assas­si­nate Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici took shape. The Count of Monte­secco, one of the prin­cipal actors in the plot, reve­aled in his confes­sion that Arch­bi­shop Salviati, Fran­cesco Pazzi, and Girolamo Riario had hatched the scheme toge­ther in Rome during the summer of 1477. Pope Sixtus, Monte­secco claimed, supported the idea of regime change in Florence, but refused to condone the use of bloodshed.²⁸ Sixtus used his powers to favour the conspi­ra­tors, and the Pazzi plot began to mate­ria­lise after he made Raffaele Riario a cardinal in December. The first step was to posi­tion Cardinal Riario in Pisa, where he was enrolled as a student in canon law under the protec­tion of Arch­bi­shop Salviati. Subse­quently, Riario was appointed papal legate in Umbria, dele­ga­ting his duties to the Croa­tian Bishop Nicholas of Modruš, who acted as his substi­tute in the region.²⁹ Assig­ning Cardinal Riario this role drew a parallel between Raffaele Riario and his uncle Pietro, Sixtus’s former legate, while clari­fying that Raffaele would continue Pietro’s role as advo­cate for a Riario state in Central Italy. The move also brought Raffaele Riario into contrast with the Medici, given that Perugia was in the throes of an anti-papal insur­rec­tion supported by Lorenzo il Magni­fico.³⁰

With the excuse of needing to escape an outbreak of the plague in Pisa, Cardinal Riario was sent to stay with the Pazzi in Florence. He travelled to Florence with a large entou­rage, which served as an ideal hiding place for the conspi­ra­tors. The Cardinal arrived in March 1478, accom­pa­nied by his secre­tary Jacopo di Poggio Brac­cio­lini and by Salviati, and was housed at the ‘Loggia dei Pazzi’, the villa of the Pazzi family in Montughi.³¹ From their posi­tion at the door­step of the Medici, the conspi­ra­tors’ plans began to unfold. Key to their stra­tegy was the

under­stan­ding that Riario’s status as a Cardinal obliged the Medici to receive him with a banquet, which would offer them the oppor­tu­nity to launch an attack. The Medici duly extended an invi­ta­tion to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s villa in Fiesole, in reco­gni­tion of Riario’s office and his desire ‘to see that place, which is beau­tiful in its views and its archi­tec­ture, as well as the Badia’.³² Aware of the danger, Giuliano de’ Medici stayed at home ill, stymi­eing the conspi­ra­tors’ plans. They sought another oppor­tu­nity, once again by stres­sing the need to further the Cardinal’s artistic educa­tion: Riario had expe­ri­enced the delights of Fiesole, but could not be deprived of a visit to the Medici’s famous palace on via Larga. Riario should be invited to the palace, as Angelo Poli­ziano put it in his history of the conspi­racy, to see all of its ‘silver and gems, medals, and other sple­ndid things’. Lorenzo had no choice but to accom­mo­date the request and extended an invi­ta­tion for a banquet to be held after mass on Sunday, 26 April.³³

On the appointed day, Riario entered Florence with a large convoy of fami­liars and servants. It was reported that his first stop was Palazzo Medici, where the Cardinal intended to change out of his riding clothes. Due to a misun­derstan­ding, or perhaps as part of a deli­be­rate ploy to sow confu­sion, the Medici were not at home to receive him.³⁴ For a few, highly fraught moments, Riario could have taken in the sights of the Medici palace when it was sple­ndidly prepared for his lunchtime recep­tion. If only briefly, he could have laid eyes on the antique statues displayed in the garden, Donatello’s David (see Fig. 166) in the cortile, the ‘silver, statuary, and reliefs gathered in the cour­tyard’, and the price­less gems that the Medici had ‘arranged in cupboards’.³⁵

Before the mass, it became clear that Giuliano would excuse himself from the banquet, and the conspi­ra­tors quickly rear­ranged their plans so that the coup could unfold in the Floren­tine Duomo. After the desi­gnated assassin, the Count of Monte­secco, refused to commit murder on sacred ground, a group of inex­pe­ri­enced priests were left to carry out the deed. With Cardinal Riario seated in a posi­tion of honour near the altar, the Pazzi and their allies advanced upon the Medici, killing Giuliano but only mana­ging to wound Lorenzo. A medal later cast by Bertoldo di Giovanni (Figs 18–19) repres­ents the attack taking place just outside of Brunelleschi’s wooden choir screen. The obverse, labelled ‘salus publica’, cele­brates Lorenzo’s survival, while the reverse, marked ‘luctus publicus’, mourns Giuliano’s murder. On both obverse and reverse, a number of clerics are shown inside the choir obser­ving the mass. While their features are barely distin­gu­is­hable, the man shown seated wearing a wide hat on both sides of the medal likely repres­ents Cardinal Riario.³⁶ Bertoldo’s medal portrays Riario disen­gaged from the violent episode, with his gaze focused on the ceremony itself and his back turned to the events unfol­ding outside the choir.

The assas­sins’ plan to win the support of the Floren­tines crum­bled in the chaotic after­math of Giuliano’s murder. When it became clear that the Pazzi would not win control of the city, the

Medici and their allies began to exact brutal revenge. Jacopo Pazzi, Arch­bi­shop Salviati, and Jacopo Brac­cio­lini were hanged from the windows of the Palazzo della Signoria, and many other members of Riario’s retinue lost their lives. It was reported that the Cardinal was so fearful of the crowds that day that he requested his own arrest.³⁷ Toge­ther with his brother Fran­cesco Sansoni, who had also been present in the Duomo that day, Cardinal Riario was put into prison at the Palazzo Vecchio.³⁸ Lorenzo de’ Medici spared the Cardinal’s life but kept him in Florence to exploit his value as a hostage. In the weeks that followed, repre­sen­ta­tives of the pope arrived to attempt to broker Riario’s release from Palazzo Vecchio, among them Bishop Nicholas of Modruš. Modruš claimed to win quick conces­sions from the Medici, which the pope announced in the consistory of 15 March 1478: Lorenzo de’ Medici would marry his daughter Lucrezia to Fran­cesco Sansoni, the ‘fratello del Cardi­nale’, and Raffaele Riario would receive the Arch­bi­shopric of Pisa previously held by Salviati. Undoub­tedly, these were false state­ments circu­lated to weaken the Floren­tine posi­tion.³⁹

After lengthy nego­tia­tions and a war of words waged by both sides, Riario was at last released in June. On the day he was freed, Sixtus issued a papal bull excom­mu­ni­ca­ting Lorenzo de’ Medici and his supporters, and putting Florence, Pistoia, and Fiesole under reli­gious inter­dict. Among the reasons cited were the assas­si­na­tion of Riario’s fami­liars and the Cardinal’s lengthy confi­ne­ment. Riario was very nearly dragged back to prison, but took flight from Florence and succeeded in reaching Siena on 13 June. By all accounts, he arrived there in a state of terror, more ‘dead than alive’ after his narrow escape.⁴⁰ Riario’s fear was so great, it was said, that he main­tained a ghostly, white comple­xion for the rest of his life.⁴¹

figs 18–19 Bertoldo di Giovanni, The Pazzi Conspi­racy, obverse and reverse, New York, The Metro­po­litan Museum of Art, Acces­sion no. 23.280.44, Bequest of Anne D. Th omson, 1923. 1478 or after. Photo: The Metro­po­litan Museum of Art, New York, public domain.

While Riario had evaded death because of his youth and his high rank, the ques­tion of his ‘inno­cence’ was, and still remains, a matter of debate. Pole­mical texts written soon after the events presented contras­ting opinions concer­ning the Cardinal’s role in the conspi­racy and his treat­ment in its after­math. The Floren­tina Synodus, published anony­mously by Medici apolo­gist Giovanni de’ Becchi in the summer of 1478, main­tained that Riario had merely been a ‘guest’ of the Floren­tines. De’ Becchi cited a letter he claimed was written by Riario himself to express sympathy for Florence and to testify to his close friend­ship with Lorenzo il Magni­fico.⁴² A counter-narra­tive from the papal point of view, the Dissentio inter Sanc­tis­simum dominum nostrum Papam et Floren­tinos suborta, was published in the autumn of 1478. Although it, too, was printed anony­mously, it has often been attri­buted to Platina. Echoing claims made by Nicholas of Modruš, the Dissentio asserted that Lorenzo de’ Medici offered to marry his daughter to Riario’s brother (Fran­cesco Sansoni) and award him the Arch­bi­shopric of Pisa.⁴³ The Dissentio portrayed Raffaele Riario as a bystander, arguing that Girolamo Riario could never have been so cruel as to have put the teenage Raffaele in mortal danger.

Most modern-day histo­rians who have considered the ques­tion of Riario’s inno­cence have favoured this papal point of view. Accor­ding to Paul Oskar Kristeller, for example, ‘the Cardinal was not actually involved in the conspi­racy and probably unaware of it’.⁴⁴ It seems unima­gi­nable, however, that Riario would have been igno­rant of a plot that unfolded in his inner circle over months. More credible is the unspa­ring summary of events by the histo­rian Paolo Giovio:

Cardinal Raffaele Riario was brought from the Univer­sity of Pisa to Florence on the pretext that he wanted to visit the city, because it was so beau­tiful and so rich in monu­ments. In reality, however, he came for another reason: to lend his support and autho­rity to the conspi­ra­tors, even if others think he was in the dark about a plot this signi­fi­cant, given his youth and scant intellec­tual depth.⁴⁵

While Riario’s expe­ri­ences in Florence were harro­wing, they also provided him with a profound cultural and artistic educa­tion. His stay with the Pazzi in the 1470s immersed him in Florence’s commu­nity of lite­rati, artists, and coll­ec­tors. The Cardinal engaged actively with the city’s cultural offe­rings, and a precious four­te­enth-century manu­script of the Divine Comedy now in Savona was possibly one of the works Riario acquired in Florence during his stay.⁴⁶ He could have come to know the sculp­ture of Donatello and Bertoldo di Giovanni and the pain­tings of Botti­celli and Filippo Lippi. As was seen, a remar­kable aspect of the Pazzi plot is that it hinged upon the sple­ndour and fame of the Medici coll­ec­tions and the presump­tion that the Medici would have to satisfy Riario’s keen desire to see them. It is compel­ling to

imagine that one of the Medici attrac­tions that Riario expe­ri­enced in the run-up to the conspi­racy was the anti­qui­ties garden of Lorenzo de’ Medici near San Marco, where Michel­an­gelo would later train. The sculp­ture garden existed by 1478, and in the 1480s visi­tors to Florence considered it to be an important land­mark.⁴⁷ A visit to the sculp­ture garden by Riario seems impro­bable, however, since it would have required a formal recep­tion by the Medici, and ther­e­fore would have been recorded in one of the histo­ries of the conspi­racy. Riario would nevert­heless have had the oppor­tu­nity to visit other coll­ec­tions in Florence, notably, that at the palazzo of Guglielmo Pazzi on the via dell’Oriuolo, which at least in the sixte­enth century was known for its antique and modern sculp­tures.⁴⁸ Imme­dia­tely after his release from prison in Florence, he took refuge in Siena at the house of Tommaso del Testa Picco­lo­mini, Bishop of Pienza. Once inside Picco­lo­mini circles, he possibly had the oppor­tu­nity to view Antonio Federighi’s Bacchus (see Figs 158–59), a marble statue that would later be an important inspi­ra­tion for Michelangelo’s statue of this subject.

In the spring of 1478, Riario came into close contact with Marsilio Ficino, an asso­ciate of the Pazzi since the 1450s and a former tutor of Piero de’ Pazzi’s children. At the time, Ficino was famous for having largely completed the trans­la­tion of Plato’s dialo­gues he had begun for Cosimo de’ Medici. On the eve of the Pazzi conspi­racy, Ficino had recently finished a commen­tary on the Sympo­sium of Plato (the De amore) as well as the eigh­teen books of his Theo­logia Plato­nica, which was printed in 1482. In the late 1470s, Ficino was in search of new patrons and had sought out Riario even before the Cardinal’s arrival in Florence. In January 1478, while Riario was still in Pisa, Ficino sent him his Epis­tola Veri­tatis: de insti­tu­tione prin­cipis (‘Truth’s Letter: On the Educa­tion of the Prince’), care of the Cardinal’s guar­dians, Fran­cesco Salviati and Jacopo Brac­cio­lini, whom he called ‘great men and true friends’. In the Epis­tola, Ficino imagines he visited Riario the day before, guided by the light of the planet Venus and the moon. Today, his guide would be Cupid, who urges him to seek Riario’s love. In the text that follows, Ficino addresses the Cardinal in the voice of Veritas, ‘Truth’, who is naked. In the tradi­tion of the ‘mirror of princes’, Truth offers the Cardinal philo­so­phical and moral advice. She reminds Riario that he has won his high office not because of his own achie­ve­ments, but because of his family connec­tions. He thus bears the burden of proving himself worthy by culti­vating inner virtue and avoi­ding corrup­tion. Stay away from flat­te­rers, Truth advises Riario, and shun envy, pomp, and luxury. Devote yourself to divine service, to study, and to a tempe­rate, serious life. ‘Let your house’, the text conti­nues, ‘be a temple of God. Let it be an eye of prudence, a scale of justice, a seat of forti­tude, let it be an example of mode­ra­tion, a stan­dard of inte­grity, a sple­ndour of love, a source of the Graces, and a chorus of the Muses’.⁴⁹

To comple­ment this letter, Ficino sent Riario a copy of his De Chris­tiana reli­gione, a trea­tise he had first written in 1474 and had reworked over the course of the follo­wing decade.⁵⁰ The trea­tise sets out Ficino’s hopes for a spiri­tual renewal of the Church and a resto­ra­tion of the true meaning of the Chris­tian reli­gion. Long before the coming of Christ, it argues,

God had reve­aled divine myste­ries to prophets from the past—Hermes Tris­me­gistus, Moses, Orpheus, Plato, and others. Since Chris­tia­nity is the end point and true subject of many forms of reve­la­tion, whether it be Hebrew scrip­ture or the writings of Plato, these works could be read as forms of Chris­tian prophecy. Now that Chris­tia­nity had become degraded and over-insti­tu­tio­na­lised, a return to Plato and other instances of ancient theo­logy could offer much-needed spiri­tual refresh­ment. In a second part, the De Chris­tiana reli­gione, combines a justi­fi­ca­tion for the Chris­tian inter­pre­ta­tion of Hebrew sacred texts with a forceful attack on the vali­dity of the Jewish reli­gion. For this part of the trea­tise, Ficino relied upon anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic pole­mics and drew upon Crusa­ding rhetoric shar­pened by recent conflicts with the Otto­mans.⁵¹

Ficino found a willing and enthu­si­a­stic student in Riario. After the Cardinal arrived in Florence, the two walked toge­ther in the ‘hills of Montughi’ near the Pazzi villa, and for several weeks travelled in the same, small circle that included the Pazzi, Salviati, Brac­cio­lini, as well as the poet Niccolò Lelio Cosmico, who seems to have been the Cardinal’s tutor.⁵² In these months Ficino’s cousin and pupil Sebas­tiano Salvini, who had colla­bo­rated with Ficino on the De Chris­tiana reli­gione, also courted Riario. Some­time after the conspi­racy, probably in 1480 or 1481, Salvini published a text he had presented and dedi­cated to Riario in the spring of 1478. This was an Italian trans­la­tion of the Letter against the Errors of the Jews (Epis­tola contra Judae­orum errores) attri­buted to a certain ‘Rabbi Samuel’. It was purported to be a Rabbi’s account of how the Old Testa­ment had converted him to Chris­tia­nity, but was actually a fiction used as a tool of Chris­tian conver­sion. Salvini’s dedi­ca­tion of this text to Riario sheds light on the topics discussed between Salvini and Riario in Florence in early 1478, when Salvini was attemp­ting to win Riario’s support and when he spoke with Riario ‘several times’.⁵³ It draws upon the same anti­se­mitic rhetoric of the De Chris­tiana reli­gione, and the same propo­si­tion that the Hebrew tradi­tion of sacred writings conceals Chris­tian truths. The reli­gious and philo­so­phical educa­tion that Ficino and Salvini presented to Riario, as well as the pole­mics under­pin­ning it, seem to have impacted Riario profoundly. Over the follo­wing decades, the Cardinal would whole­he­ar­tedly support campaigns against Jews and Muslims, and his patro­nage of arts and letters would reveal his fasci­na­tion for subjects dear to Ficino’s heart, such as astro­logy, Plato­nism, Hebrew scrip­ture, and ancient theology.

Since Ficino has been consis­t­ently linked to the Medici in the art-histo­rical lite­ra­ture, his close asso­cia­tion with Cardinal Riario in the lead-up to the Pazzi conspi­racy reveals an alter­na­tive, unex­pected image of the philo­so­pher. As a way of resol­ving the appa­rent paradox of Ficino’s ‘friend­ship’ with Riario, their exch­ange has been inter­preted as a personal matter arising from shared intellec­tual inte­rests. Riccardo Fubini, however, has chal­lenged the idea­lised image of Ficino as an intellec­tual detached from the poli­tics of his times. When Ficino met Riario, Fubini argued, it was not as a ‘Medici philo­so­pher’ but as an inde­pen­dent actor aware of the

anti-Medici stance of the Riario and Pazzi and the possi­bi­lity of regime change.⁵⁴ Ficino’s decision to approach Riario was a risky move that strained his ties with the Medici in the long term.⁵⁵ After the Pazzi conspi­racy failed, attempts were made to conceal how close his rela­ti­onship with the Cardinal, Salviati, and Brac­cio­lini had been in the spring of 1478; the most damning details were crossed out of the manu­script copy of his letters and were not included in the printed compi­la­tion of his works.⁵⁶ Riario was aware of the dangers Ficino faced in Florence in the after­math of the conspi­racy since, as their corre­spon­dence reveals, the Cardinal offered Ficino the option of joining him in Rome as part of his house­hold.⁵⁷ Ficino declined the offer, knowing it would likely result in perma­nent exile from Florence. Yet the philo­so­pher continued to write letters to Riario for many years after­wards. ‘You told me’, he wrote to Riario, ‘that if I did not go with you [to Rome] when you left, you would never write to me again or even send messages’.⁵⁸ Since there are no letters from Riario to Ficino that have survived, it seems the Cardinal kept to his word.

Raffaele Riario, S. R. E. Camerarius

Follo­wing the Pazzi conspi­racy, Sixtus IV and Count Girolamo continued to pursue aggres­si­vely the goal of expan­ding Riario’s terri­tory in Central Italy, and in August 1480, the pope invested Girolamo with the vica­riate of Forlì, another valuable prize in the region.⁵⁹ Raffaele Riario was once again deployed to support their objec­tives, and less than a week after arri­ving in Rome in 1478, he was sent to Perugia to take up a post as papal legate. Follo­wing his term in Perugia, he was legate in the Marches from November 1480 to November 1481.⁶⁰ On this latter mission, Riario would presu­mably have visited the court of Duke Federico da Monte­feltro at Urbino, where he would have seen first-hand the magni­fi­cent ducal palace that Fran­cesco di Giorgio Martini was then comple­ting (Fig. 20). In Urbino, Riario may also have encoun­tered Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli, the huma­nist and educator who would later dedi­cate to Riario the editio prin­ceps of Vitruvius’s De archi­tec­tura, as will be discussed in Chapter 3. The cont­acts Riario made on these diplo­matic missions persisted after Riario returned to Rome, as can be seen in one of his earliest known artistic commis­sions: a portolan map on parch­ment made for Riario by the carto­grapher Grazioso Benin­casa of Ancona. The signa­ture on the map reveals that Benin­casa completed it in Ancona in 1482, soon after the Cardinal’s trip to the Marches (Fig. 21). This extra­or­di­nary map offers insight into Riario’s perspec­tive on the globe on the eve of Euro­pean voyages to the Americas and South Asia. In this world­view, Genoa is imagined as the centre of an expan­ding mari­time network that crossed the entire Medi­ter­ra­nean. The map’s borders are popu­lated with mythical African and Asian kings and ships spee­ding towards parts unknown.⁶¹

fig. 20 Cortile d’onore, Urbino, Palazzo Ducale. 1466–1472. Photo © iStock / Getty Images / Gim42.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

fig. 22 Pianta da Roma sino a Viterbo, Rome, Archivio di Stato, Presi­denza delle strade, Catasto Ales­sand­rino 433/V. 1660. Photo © Minis­tero della Cultura. All rights reserved.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

fig. 21 Grazioso Benin­casa, Portolan Map of Raffaele Riario, Bologna, Biblio­teca Univer­si­taria di Bologna, Rotulo 3. 1482. Photo © Alma Mater Studiorum Univer­sità di Bologna — Biblio­teca Univer­si­taria di Bologna. All rights reserved.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

In the aft ermath of the Pazzi conspi­racy, Pope Sixtus IV show­ered Riario with important offices, which would provide him with income for decades to come. He received nume­rous bene­fices in Imola⁶² and the Duchess of Milan, Bona of Savoy, granted Riario the Cister­cian Abbey of Chia­ra­valle della Colomba.⁶³ In April 1479, Cardinal Riario was made commen­da­tory abbot of the wealthy SS. Vincenzo e Anastasio alle Tre Fontane. Although the Abbey was located on the outskirts of Rome, its holdings included estates in the coun­try­side at Pali­doro and Strac­cia­cappe, which Riario would use for his own profit and enjoy­ment.⁶⁴ Pali­doro was located offthe via Aurelia, halfway between Rome and Civi­ta­vec­chia, while Strac­cia­cappe was north of Rome, near the Lago di Brac­ciano. Over decades, Riario exploited Pali­doro as a profi­table source of grain, fish, and lumber.⁶⁵ Close to Strac­cia­cappe was Monterosi, where Riario had an agri­cul­tural estate, vigna, and guest­house that he used as a stopover and retreat.⁶⁶ Monterosi’s loca­tion at the inter­sec­tion of the via Cassia and via Flaminia (Fig. 22) made it an ideal setting for the recep­tion of important visi­tors, and Jacopo Gherardi’s Diarium romanum reports that Pope Sixtus himself stopped there to dine in ‘the xeno­do­chium of Cardinal San Giorgio’.⁶⁷

In September 1479, Sixtus IV awarded Riario the major prize of the Arch­bi­shopric of Pisa, which had been left vacant by the death of Fran­cesco Salviati. The Floren­tines initi­ally blocked the appoint­ment, but then accepted it as part of peace agree­ments settled with the pope in January and February 1480.⁶⁸ Around this time, Cardinal Riario had a seal made to comme­mo­rate his new office (Fig. 23). At the bottom, it displays his Cardinal’s stemma with the Riario symbol of the rose, while above, it portrays the Virgin in a mandorla supported by angels. Under­neath the Virgin, an image of St. George slaying the dragon with his lance draws a parallel between the youthful Cardinal Riario and the valiant Saint George, patron of Crusaders. Like Riario’s portrait medals, the seal’s imagery is mili­ta­ristic and heroic, laying emphasis on his role in the recent conflict with Florence.⁶⁹ In contrast to the reli­gious imagery of the seal itself, its handle displays the Cardinal’s anti­qua­rian affi­ni­ties (Fig. 24) with its repre­sen­ta­tion of the antique motif of a dolphin biting on a squid. Th is symbol of tenacity

fig. 24 Seal matrix of Cardinal Riario as Arch­bi­shop of Pisa, detail of handle, Rome, Museo Nazio­nale di San Marco. 1479 or after, inv. 9529/87. Photo: © Minis­tero della Cultura – Vitto­riano e Palazzo Venezia.

fig. 23 Seal matrix of Cardinal Riario as Arch­bi­shop of Pisa, Rome, Museo Nazio­nale di San Marco. 1479 or after. inv. 9529/87, recto. Photo: © Minis­tero della Cultura – Vitto­riano e Palazzo Venezia.

is one of the many nautical themes that reap­pear in Cardinal Riario’s imagery over his long career. His origins in the sea-faring town of Savona, the city on the Tyrrhe­nian coast where Chris­to­pher Columbus spent his youth, would be consis­t­ently refe­renced by a range of personal devices the Cardinal adopted and inter­mingled with the Riario emblem of the rose: the ship’s rudder, the globe, and the armil­lary sphere (Figs 25–27).⁷⁰

The peace agree­ment between Sixtus and Florence lift ed previous inter­dic­tions and allowed diplo­matic rela­tions with the Medici to resume. A new era of Floren­tine cultural diplo­macy and patro­nage was underway by the spring of 1481, when Lorenzo de’ Medici sent an envoy of artists to deco­rate the Sistine Chapel—Botticelli, Ghir­lan­daio, Cosimo Rosselli, Piero di Cosimo, and Luca Signo­relli. Th eir presence in Rome and the reope­ning of Florence’s artistic resources must have made a profound impres­sion on Riario.⁷¹ New oppor­tu­ni­ties opened up for Riario’s own programme of patro­nage, as Sixtus conferred upon him rewards and privi­leges that would allow him to estab­lish a magni­fi­cent court. The death in January 1483 of French Cardinal Guil­laume d’Estouteville (Figs 28–29) enabled Sixtus to pass on to Riario the offices of Protector General of the Augus­ti­nian Order and Apos­tolic Cham­ber­lain (Camer­lengo di Santa Romana Ecclesia).⁷² In the days leading up to the announce­ment, there was much specu­la­tion that Sixtus might appoint Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere as Came­ra­rius. However, he ulti­m­ately entrusted Riario with the posi­tion and its vast powers. After his appoint­ment, Riario lived in the palace offof Piazza Sant’Apollinare form­erly occu­pied by d’Estouteville Map 1.2 and 1.3), close by the basi­lica of Sant’Agostino, the mother church of the Augus­ti­nian Hermits that d’Estouteville had recently rebuilt (Fig. 30, Map 1.4). D’Estouteville’s palazzo was not one of the most coveted in Rome, and in October 1483, a preferable alter­na­tive presented itself when the death of the Mantuan Cardinal Fran­cesco Gonzaga freed up the basi­lica of San Lorenzo in Damaso (Map 2). Sixtus imme­dia­tely granted Riario this pres­ti­gious church and its atta­ched domus ‘in perp­etuity’. San Lorenzo in Damaso was one of Rome’s most ancient basi­licas, it was ideally located in the city centre, and it was

fig. 26 Detail of door frame deco­rated with the Riario rose, Rome, Palazzo San Giorgio, c. 1500. Photo: Author.

fig. 25 Detail of door frame deco­rated with the Riario rudder, Rome, Palazzo San Giorgio. c. 1500. Photo: Author.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

figs 28–29 Cris­to­foro di Geremia, Medal of Guil­laume d’Estouteville, obverse and reverse, Washington, DC„ National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Coll­ec­tion, inv. 1957.14.807.a. 1461 or after. Photo: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, public domain.

fig. 30 Jacopo da Pietra­santa and Sebas­tiano Fioren­tino, Façade of Sant’Agostino, Rome. 1483. Photo © Giulio Riotta.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

one of the few equipped with a large titular palace. The Cardinal must have greatly desired the move, since the pope acted with remar­kable speed to ensure his take­over, signing the neces­sary docu­ments when Gonzaga was still only ‘presu­mably dead’ in faraway Bologna.⁷³

In a short time, Sixtus gave Riario extra­or­di­nary prizes: nume­rous Bishop­rics and Arch­bi­shop­rics (in 1479 Pisa and Cuenca, in 1480 Tréguier, in 1482 Sala­manca, and in 1483 Osma), the palace of San Lorenzo, and the office of Came­ra­rius, a posi­tion second only to the papacy itself.⁷⁴ Here it is wort­hwhile conside­ring Riario’s role of Came­ra­rius and the nature of his autho­rity in further depth since, despite the atten­tion paid to the patro­nage of cardi­nals in Early Modern Rome, art histo­rians have often over­looked the special signi­fi­cance of this office, not least in matters of art, archi­tec­ture, and anti­qui­ties coll­ec­ting. Riario’s role as head of the Camera Apos­to­lica defined his public iden­tity and his career as a patron, and its powers were key to the cons­truc­tion of the Palazzo San Giorgio. As Came­ra­rius, Riario in effect shared with the pope temporal powers over Rome and the Papal States and was given vast over­sight in matters of warfare, justice, gover­nance, and commerce. It was an open secret that the Camerlengo’s autho­rity over the fort­resses of the Papal States, as well as his ability to admi­nister papal mili­tary contracts, made this office ‘una via al papato’.⁷⁵ Indeed, a key element in the Riario’s rise to power was their ability to combine Girolamo’s role as captain of papal armies and Raffaele’s role as Came­ra­rius.⁷⁶

The Came­ra­rius led the exten­sive orga­ni­sa­tion of the Camera Apos­to­lica, which was managed by several chie­rici di Camera (clerics of the Camera), the Auditor Camerae, a treasurer, and a Vice-Camer­lengo who was also the ‘Guber­nator in alma Urbe’, or governor of Rome. The Camera’s primary seat in the fifte­enth century was a large palazzo that Inno­cent VIII had built next to the atrium of Old St. Peter’s. It received income from many diffe­rent sources, inclu­ding taxes imposed on eccle­si­a­stical bene­fices, which were managed by an inter­na­tional network of coll­ec­tors. The Camera was the head of all the treasu­ries of the Papal States (the Tesorieri Provin­ciali of Umbria, of the Romagna, and else­where), and it coll­ected yearly tributes from the gover­nors of papal Vica­riates. Its sources of income included the papal salt mono­po­lies in the Marches and in Ostia and, after their disco­very in the 1460s, the lucra­tive Tolfa alum mines. As part of the centra­li­sa­tion and expan­sion of the autho­rity of the Curia, in the fifte­enth century the Camera assumed greater control over taxa­tion and matters of admi­nis­tra­tion in Rome, sipho­ning offpowers previously held by Roman muni­cipal autho­ri­ties and local merchant-bankers. After the popes’ return to Rome in the early Quat­tro­cento, the Camera Apos­to­lica took charge of local food and import taxes that had been tradi­tio­nally managed by the Camera Urbis, Rome’s muni­cipal treasury.⁷⁷ These included taxes levied on goods arri­ving by the Tiber (the Dogana di Ripa e Ripetta) or over land (the Dogana delle Merci or di Sant’Eustachio), as well as taxes on the sale of fish, meat, oil, wood, and quick­lime (the Dogana della Grascia). Income was raised from tolls on bridges and city gates, and from

the gabella studii—a tax on foreign wine sold in taverns that had been estab­lished to fund the Univer­sity of Rome.⁷⁸

Flowing out from the Camerlengo’s coffers were payments for the day-to-day expenses of the papal court, papal and civic buil­ding projects, the main­ten­ance of Church bureau­cracy, and papal armies. The Camera was respon­sible for conclaves; the possessi or initia­tion proces­sions taken by each pope, jubi­lees, and papal fune­rals; for the Vatican’s supplies of horses, armour, and gunpowder; and for the sala­ries of the castel­lans of the Papal States, the papal Master of Cere­mo­nies, and the pope’s singers. It paid the bills for the main­ten­ance and deco­ra­tion of the papal palace and financed the Fabbrica di San Pietro, as well as other papal buil­ding projects.⁷⁹ The Camera Apos­to­lica exer­cised control over coinage and over the water supply of Rome.

The Came­ra­rius was given the role of Arch-Chan­cellor of both the Studium Urbis and the Studium Curiae, and in this capa­city wielded power over the appoint­ment of profes­sors and the setting of lectu­rers’ sala­ries.⁸⁰ He directed street­works and super­vised the Maestri delle Strade; it was in his capa­city as Came­ra­rius that Cardinal Riario, in 1499, oversaw the cons­truc­tion of the Via Ales­sand­rina between the Vatican and the Tiber and ordered the removal of a signi­fi­cant portion of the ‘Meta Romuli’ that obstructed its path.⁸¹ Wiel­ding autho­rity over the export of grain and other commo­di­ties, the Camera issued licences for the export of anti­qui­ties, even if the Roman Conservators—invoking their tradi­tional prero­ga­tive as custo­dians of Rome’s cultural patrimony—discouraged the prac­tice.⁸² It also issued permits for archaeo­lo­gical excava­tions inside Rome. The insti­tu­tion poss­essed broad powers in this regard, often reser­ving a share of archaeo­lo­gical finds for itself when issuing such licences.⁸³ Given its wide juris­dic­tion over buil­ding works, festi­vals, and excava­tions, the Camera played a major role in the visual arts, anti­qui­ties coll­ec­ting, urba­nism, archi­tec­ture, and ephemera in Early Modern Rome. As will be discussed in the context of this study, Riario’s posi­tion as head of the Camera was crucial in his rela­ti­onship with the Galli-Balducci bank, the recon­s­truc­tion of San Lorenzo in Damaso, and all aspects of Riario’s public identity.

Portraits and Poetry

In the after­math of his appoint­ment to the office of Camer­lengo, a number of texts and images cele­brated Riario as a youthful, heroic figure, often with refe­rence to antique ideals. One is a medal issued to cele­brate his new posi­tion (Figs 31–32), which features a sombre profile portrait of ‘Raphael de Riario’ on the obverse and a semi-nude alle­gory of Libe­ra­litas with a cornu­copia on the reverse. The alle­go­rical figure, seated on an urn and distri­bu­ting a coin to a suppli­cant, pays tribute both to the Cardinal’s gene­ro­sity and to his role as papal treasurer.⁸⁴ Riario’s youthful, idea­lised image was also cele­brated in two exqui­site portrait busts,

one in terra­cotta now in Berlin (Fig. 33) and another in marble, now in Boston (Fig. 34). Both the Boston and the Berlin versions of the bust have been attri­buted to Andrea Bregno, and toge­ther they repre­sent a rare case in which a prepa­ra­tory version of a portrait in terra­cotta and a final version sculpted in marble both survive. An unde­niable resem­blance to the Cardinal’s other portraits, as well as the figure’s dress and tonsured hair, enabled Fran­cesco Caglioti to iden­tify the subject of these busts as Riario. As Caglioti points out, there are holes in the marble bust where a halo was once set, after the sitter’s iden­tity was forgotten and the bust was unders­tood to repre­sent a deacon saint, perhaps San Lorenzo.⁸⁵ Th ese portraits depict the Cardinal in a distinctly clas­si­cising mode, using the antique-inspired form of the head-and-shoulder bust. Repre­sen­ting Riario with an alert expres­sion and pursed lips, they draw paral­lels between the youthful Riario and an Augustan-era prince.

Probably around the time that Bregno conceived these busts, the poet Aurelio ‘Lippo’ Bran­do­lini composed a poem that like­wise made a virtue of Cardinal Riario’s youth. The date of c. 1480 is suggested by the poem’s refe­rence to the glory the Cardinal had recently won as a papal legate in the Marches (‘the land of Picene’). Brandolini’s poem fills out the image he culti­vated in the aft ermath of the Pazzi conspi­racy: that of an able agent of Count Girolamo Riario and a quasi-divine hero:

On the praise of Cardinal Raffaele of San Giorgio Who will deny that virtue exists imme­dia­tely from one’s tender years? Who will deny that it exists in the first seed? What rays now, what lights now does it pour forth? How bright is the virtue that shines in all his breast? See the excel­lent expres­sion in his youthful body: what elegance, how much grace is there in all the man? How char­ming, how gene­rous, pious, pure, and fair? His glory, born in the land of Picene, bears witness. But indeed, how great is the power of his intellect and spirit? What ardour is there? He cannot be contained by any bounds. He spurns wealth, he burns with love for the utmost praise; his noble

figs 31–32 Attri­buted to Adriano Fioren­tino, Medal of Cardinal Riario as Came­ra­rius, obverse and reverse, Brescia, Musei d’Arte e Storia di Brescia, Rizzini 776. 1483 or after. Photo © Archivio foto­gra­fico Musei d’Arte e Storia di Brescia.

mind aspires to the utmost honour. Your Girolamo moves you to the ethe­real stars; a sacred shadow of prospe­rous strength fosters you. Let now the fates inspire you: provided that life remains, glory will raise you, Raffaele, to the stars [Appendix ii.2].

This lite­rary parallel to Bregno’s clas­si­cising repre­sen­ta­tion of a young and heroic prince is reflected as well in a Latin eclogue and two panegy­rics composed in Riario’s honour by the poets Gaspare ‘Manio’ de Clodiis and Bernar­dino Capella some­time after Riario’s appoint­ment as Came­ra­rius (January 1483) and before the death of Sixtus IV (August 1484). These poems have been mentioned in passing in previous lite­ra­ture, but are published here in full [Appendix i] for the first time.⁸⁶ As the prologue relates, the Vero­nese huma­nist Agos­tino Maffei commis­sioned the eclogue from De Clodiis and Capella, which was to be performed ‘for fun’ at the end of a comedy of unspe­ci­fied title staged in Riario’s honour. Addi­tio­nally, Manio and Capella composed short panegy­rics for Riario that were combined with the eclogue in the most complete survi­ving manu­script copy, now in the British Library. These works offer signi­fi­cant insight not only into the lite­rary acti­vi­ties of Riario’s entou­rage in the 1480s, but also into the direct overlap between Riario’s favoured poets and the Roman Academy of Giulio Pomponio Leto, Professor of Rhetoric and the Studium Urbis. While Pope Paul II accused Leto and his follo­wers of heresy, impri­so­ning many of them, Sixtus IV, during his papacy, restored their repu­ta­tion and appointed Leto’s asso­ciate, Platina, as papal libra­rian. Riario and others among Sixtus’s nipoti often offered patro­nage and other favours to the members of Leto’s lite­rary circle.

fig. 33 Attri­buted to Andrea Bregno, Bust of Cardinal Riario, Berlin, smb, Skulp­tu­ren­samm­lung und Museum für Byzan­ti­ni­sche Kunst, inv. 4996. c. 1478. Photo © bpk / Skulp­tu­ren­samm­lung und Museum für Byzan­ti­ni­sche Kunst, smb. fig. 34 Attri­buted to Andrea Bregno, Bust of Raffaele Riario, Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, acces­sion no. S27w71. c. 1478. Photo © Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

fig. 35 Grave marker of Gaspare de Clodiis, Rome, via Giulia, 131. 1497. Photo: Author.

fig. 36 Lorenzo di Lodo­vico di Guglielmo, known as Loren­zetto, Tomb of Bernar­dino Capella, Rome, Santo Stefano Rotondo. 1524 or after. Photo: Author.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

De Clodiis and Capella seem to have been compa­n­ions from the time of their youth, thanks to a common connec­tion to Pomponio Leto.⁸⁷ Of these two poets, less is known about the Roman De Clodiis, who went by the academic name ‘Manius’ and wrote a commen­tary on Propertius’s Elegies in 1480 with Leto’s assis­tance.⁸⁸ In 1497, De Clodiis was buried at Santa Lucia del Gonfa­lone with a simple epitaph that names him as a ‘poeta Romanus’ (Fig. 35).⁸⁹ The other author, Bernar­dino Capella, who was also Roman, seems to have attained greater renown. In April 1484, when Lorenzo Bonin­contri and Elio Lampridio Cerva received poetic laurels from Leto, Capella was chosen to deliver an oration in their honour.⁹⁰ Capella’s name surfaces, as well, in letters he exch­anged with Federico Flavio of Foligno, Riario’s long-term secre­tary.⁹¹ The most remar­kable relic of Capella’s successes, however, is his tomb at Santo Stefano Rotondo. When he died in 1523, Capella was buried in this impres­sive monu­ment which was desi­gned by the sculptor Loren­zetto and paid for by Capella’s lite­rary friends, Mario Maffei of Volterra and Jacopo Sado­leto (Fig. 36).⁹²

The patron of De Clodiis and Capella’s eclogue was Agos­tino Maffei, another close asso­ciate of Pomponio Leto’s who was sent to prison with Leto during Paul II’s perse­cu­tions. Maffei came from a noted family of anti­qua­rians, biblio­philes, and coll­ec­tors of Vero­nese origin. Agos­tino can probably be credited with foun­ding the Maffei coll­ec­tion of anti­qui­ties, which by the end of the Quat­tro­cento included the famous Slee­ping Ariadne that the family later sold to the popes, and which would become one of the high­lights of the Belve­dere statue court (Fig. 37). In the 1530s, the coll­ec­tions of the Maffei on the via de’ Cestari, near the Pantheon, attracted the eye of Nether­landish artist Maarten van Heems­kerck, who drew the cour­tyard of their house crowded with antique sculp­tures (Fig. 38).⁹³ Agos­tino Maffei’s spon­sor­ship of the eclogue reflects his long-term rela­ti­onship with the Riario family: Maffei supported Girolamo Riario throug­hout the 1470s and 1480s, to the extent that Marcan­tonio Altieri described Maffei as the person who ‘managed’ all of Count Girolamo’s public and private affairs.⁹⁴ In January 1479, Maffei sold to Girolamo a house which the Conte incor­po­rated into the palace he built at Piazza Sant’Apollinare, just north of Piazza Navona (Map 1.2

fig. 37 Slee­ping Ariadne, Vatican, Musei Vati­cani, inv. mv.548.0.0. Hadrianic copy of 2nd century Bce original. Photo © bpk / Scala.

fig. 38 Maarten van Heems­kerck, House of the Maffei, Berlin, SmB, Kupfer­stich­ka­bi­nett, inv. 79.D.2, Album I, fol. 3 v. 1532–1537. Photo © bpk / Kupfer­stich­ka­bi­nett, SmB / Jörg P. Anders.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

and 5).⁹⁵ Later, in 1492, Maffei once again assisted the family when he sold Cardinal Riario his own vigna in Tras­te­vere, the first foun­da­tion of the Villa Riario-Corsini.⁹⁶ As an agent, enabler, and also a wealthy backer who could provide loans to the Riario when needed, Maffei’s role fores­ha­dows that which Jacopo Galli would fill as a ‘manager’ for Raffaele Riario’s affairs (as Galli was described in 1497).⁹⁷ Both Agos­tino Maffei and Jacopo Galli were wealthy and well-connected Romans. They were also huma­nists, procu­rers, coll­ec­tors, and patrons of the theatre who provided the Riario with a range of services, as well as access to the city’s huma­nist and anti­qua­rian circles.

Turning now to Manio and Capella’s eclogue, the text begins with a brief intro­duc­tion in which Manio and Capella, who call them­selves the Cardinal’s ‘most devoted clients’, present their work. Follo­wing the conven­tions of pastoral poetry, Manio and Capella ask the Cardinal to excuse its levity and its rustic themes. As they write:

The poets offer hints as to the context of the work and suggest the perfor­mance of the eclogue, and the comedy that preceded it, took place not in a palace, but in a villa or vigna:

While you read these insuf­fi­ci­ently eloquent jeux d’esprit that are shameful, rather rustic, crude, and inso­lent, which have not been written with exces­sive toil, lower in a lenient manner your brow that is sacred to Latium. Here is not the Curia, the Temples, and the Senate, but rather the Gymnasia, the Thea­tres, the Baths, among which there is no shame in confes­sing what is base.

The eclogue itself then begins. Its two interlo­cu­tors are a rustic musi­cian, Almo, and the goat herder Tibe­rinus, charac­ters named after Rome’s sacred rivers. The poem describes how Almo finds Tibe­rinus sitting silently in the shade and complai­ning that his surroun­dings, which

were once peaceful and idyllic, have now fallen into ruin after the arrival of an outside aggressor. The two reflect toge­ther upon a past time when the herds grazed conten­tedly, when the fields were fertile, and when they played joyful songs in the company of satyrs and nymphs. As their dialogue progresses, their mood becomes hopeful as they imagine a time of peace, when the rustic gods will return and the land­scape will be restored to its former state. The eclogue then draws to a close with a fare­well to the farmers and the Romans who have witnessed it.

Assuming a more elevated tone, Manio then begins his panegyric to Riario. He praises the young Cardinal with verses to be sung to the accom­p­animent of the lyre, ‘Now, outstan­ding Prince Raphael’, he writes, ‘it is time to speak with a better lyre and a more sublime plec­trum’. Why should Manio call upon the powers of the gods in Riario’s presence, he asks, when the Cardinal himself inspires him? Addres­sing Riario with an epithet used for the god Bacchus (‘Euhan’), he conti­nues, ‘You are my Phoebus’, he asserts, ‘my Parn­as­sian Spring’. ‘Through you’, he writes, ‘happy Rome may look upon her theatre and, though envied, may long for the houses of old’. Capella then pres­ents his panegyric of Riario, lavis­hing the Cardinal with further praise for his patro­nage of poetry and theatre:

You are the only certain hope for ragged poets, and the Muse lives, now that she has been received into your embrace. And through you Rome may reco­g­nise her own descen­dants, and the past ages of the Roman toga may return. By this new gift, ancient applause may be repeated when the culti­vated thea­tres reso­nate with plea­sant jokes.

Manio and Capella stress that as a great statesman and as a leader of the Church, Riario will prove his merits by prepa­ring Rome’s defences against its enemies. But for the time being, Capella asserts, while he is still young, Riario should enjoy the ‘sweet leisure of the Casta­lian font and drink dry over­flowing cups under green shade’. The delights of the table await, and before old age takes hold, he should deco­rate his hair ‘with shining flowers’. ‘And may it please a tender girl’, he conti­nues, ‘to reside in your embrace, and to bring welcome kisses to your purple cheeks’.

Toge­ther, the remar­kable eclogue and panegy­rics read as a poignant response to the wars with Florence that waged between 1478 and 1480 and to the Salt Wars that began in 1482 and lasted until Sixtus’s death in 1484. During these conflicts, hosti­li­ties erupted inside Rome and in the Roman coun­try­side between the factions of the Colonna and the Orsini. Manio and Capella seemingly reflect upon the destruc­tive conse­quences of these events and depict Riario as a mili­tary leader capable of expel­ling the enemy. Riario, they say, will restore Rome’s land­scape to peace and make it, once again, a setting for poetry and song. Thus, Tibe­rinus and Almo hope that Pales, ‘Father Liber’, the Fauns, and Ceres will return, brin­ging back peace, justice, and joyful music-making. As a whole, their compo­si­tions offer remar­kable insight into the forma­tion of Riario’s public image and into the themes of his patro­nage that would endure over the follo­wing decades. They herald the Cardinal’s future spon­sor­ship of poetry and theatre, as well as his future commis­sion of Michelangelo’s Bacchus, an agri­cul­tural god who is asso­ciated in the eclogue with the protec­tion of Rome’s landscape.

Possibly, since the poets and huma­nists involved overlap with those who took part in the cele­bra­tion of Rome’s birthday (known as the Palilie) staged by Pomponio Leto and his asso­ciates in 1484, Maffei commis­sioned the comedy, eclogue, panegy­rics, and convi­vial dinner that followed as part of that year’s festi­vi­ties. One of the high­lights of the Palilie was a poetic contest orga­nised by Leto, the winner of which was hono­ured with a laurea­tion ceremony at Leto’s house. In 1484, Leto awarded the top prize to two victors: Elio Lampridio and the astro­lo­gical poet Lorenzo Bonin­contri. As was noted, Bernar­dino Capella was chosen to deliver the oration that year in honour of the two laureates. As Bonin­contri wrote in his descrip­tion of the event, a favourable alignment of the stars and planets led to his laurea­tion ‘by the college of poets with Gaspare Biondo presi­ding and Pomponio, Sulpizio, and Pietro Marsi censors’.⁹⁸ These parti­ci­pants were all part of Cardinal Riario’s entou­rage at the time, inclu­ding Gaspare Biondo of Forlì, the eldest son of Flavio Biondo and a notary of the Camera Apos­to­lica, and Pietro Marsi, an orator and Univer­sity lecturer.⁹⁹ As will be discussed, Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli would dedi­cate to Raffaele Riario the editio prin­ceps of Vitruvius’s De archi­tec­tura in 1487, and Bonin­contri was a fami­liar of Riario’s who wrote astro­lo­gical fore­casts for the Cardinal.¹⁰⁰ In short, Capella, Bonin­contri, Biondo, Sulpizio, and Marsi were all central figures in the Palilie cele­bra­tions of 1484, were all asso­ciates of Leto, and were all favoured by Raffaele Riario. Possibly, then, the eclogue was commis­sioned by Agos­tino Maffei as one of the produc­tions staged that year in honour of Rome’s birthday; conside­ring the events that the poets seem to allude to, a date of April 1484 seems probable. In the inti­mate setting of a Roman vineyard, after many years of war, Manio and Capella likely used the occa­sion of Rome’s birthday to contem­p­late the city’s ruined land­scape and to express the hope that Riario’s devo­tion to ‘the Muses and Phoebus Apollo’ would bring renewal.

Models of Patro­nage: Cardinal Pietro Riario

From a young age, Raffaele Riario absorbed the life lessons of his powerful uncles Cardinal Pietro and Count Girolamo Riario. Pietro, in parti­cular, was an exem­plar for Riario, as the promi­nent figure whom the young Raffaele Sansoni had been recruited to replace. Pietro Riario was one of Rome’s leading patrons of thea­trical spec­ta­cles, poetry, astro­logy, and archi­tec­ture, and in all of these inte­rests he was an important role model for Raffaele.¹⁰¹ In modern scho­lar­ship the ‘first’ Cardinal Riario has often been unde­re­sti­mated, and has been considered an arche­type of the secular and worldly excesses of Renais­sance cardi­nals. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde portrayed Pietro Riario as ‘the young Cardinal Arch­bi­shop of Florence, child and minion of Sixtus IV, whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who received Eleo­nora d’Aragona in a pavi­lion of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs’.¹⁰² Ferdi­nand Grego­ro­vius cemented Riario’s repu­ta­tion as a ‘poor monk’ who ‘suddenly became a Croesus, plunged into the wildest sensual­ity’.¹⁰³ While misappre­hen­sion about Pietro long endured in the lite­ra­ture, recent work has gone beyond stereo­types and taken more seriously his role as a patron of the arts. Moving past moral judge­ments, histo­rians have of late reframed the moti­va­tions behind Pietro’s intro­duc­tion of ‘conspi­cuous opulence into the life of the Renais­sance cardinal, an idea previously

reserved for secular princes’.¹⁰⁴ As Jennifer DeSilva and others have argued, Sixtus’s cardi­nals on the Della Rovere and Riario sides were wealthy and culti­vated surro­gates who could repre­sent the pope’s inte­rests in matters of ceremony, diplo­macy, and the arts. With banquets and grand archi­tec­tural projects, Pietro Riario and his successor Cardinal Raffaele operated as proxies for the pope in the secular realm of poli­tics.¹⁰⁵

When Sixtus elevated Pietro Riario to the cardi­na­late in 1471, he gave him SS. Apos­toli, a church of his own order, the Fran­ciscan Friars Minor Conven­tual. He promoted Pietro aggres­si­vely, and although he was a Cardinal for only two years, Riario won extra­or­di­nary bene­fices and titles, inclu­ding the Patri­ar­chate of Constan­ti­nople and the Arch­bi­shop­rics of Valencia, Split, Seville, and Florence. Riario is thought to have been the richest Cardinal in fifte­enth-century Rome, judging from Paolo Cortesi’s esti­ma­tion of his annual income at 60,000 gold florins.¹⁰⁶ The Cardinal had plans to build a large library at his palace at SS. Apos­toli and put Giovanni Andrea Bussi in charge of the project with orders to purchase manu­scripts, setting a prece­dent for Sixtus’s Vatican library (whose first libra­rian was Bussi).¹⁰⁷ Pietro assem­bled one of the largest fami­glie in Rome, which was reported to have reached five hundred members.¹⁰⁸ With the aspi­ra­tion of making his palace a ‘home of the Muses’, he was also one of the most gene­rous patrons of lite­rati in Italy.¹⁰⁹ In his funeral oration for Cardinal Riario, Niccolò Perotti portrayed Riario’s house­hold as a refuge for ‘pain­ters, sculp­tors, orators, poets, profes­sors of the liberal arts, mathematicians—in short, ever­yone with even the smal­lest spark of virtue’.¹¹⁰ Platina remem­bered Pietro’s ‘servants dressed in silk and scarlet, promi­sing poets, and famous pain­ters’.¹¹¹ His glit­te­ring court attracted lite­rary talent from far and wide: Domizio Calde­rini from Verona, Porcelio Pandone from Naples, Baccio Ugolini from Florence, and Ottavio Cleofilo from Fano.¹¹² Pietro was Arch­bi­shop of Florence from July 1473 until his death in January 1474, and he was said to have had a special prefe­rence for Floren­tine actors and artists. After Riario’s death, the elderly Cardinal Amman­nati Picco­lo­mini complained in a letter to Cardinal Fran­cesco Gonzaga about the Floren­tine ‘artists, actors, and mimes’ whom Riario brought to Rome. Others

remem­bered the sacre rappre­sen­ta­zioni that the Cardinal put on for Eleo­nora d’Aragona using the services of ‘li Fioren­tini festaioli’, in refe­rence to the Floren­tine confra­ter­ni­ties who specia­lised in reli­gious theatre.¹¹³ These hints of his appre­cia­tion of Floren­tine talent suggest that Pietro’s tastes provided a model for his successor, Raffaele Riario, who recruited nume­rous lite­rati and artists from Medici Florence.

Pietro Riario’s gene­ro­sity as a patron is a recur­ring theme in many poems dedi­cated to him. One such poem, composed by Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli, sought to gain Riario’s favour by reflec­ting on the signs and port­ents that had fore­told his illus­trious future. It praises Riario by imagi­ning that Apollo himself had commanded him to offer ‘refuge for poets’.¹¹⁴ Nume­rous other poems hono­u­ring Pietro Riario are coll­ected in the printed works of Giann­an­tonio Campano. These poems flatter Riario by drawing compa­ri­sons to Augustus—who trans­formed Rome from a city of brick to one of marble—or to Agrippa, who rebuilt Rome and ushered in a Golden Age.¹¹⁵ Campano lauded Riario’s grand archi­tec­tural ambi­tions, writing, ‘He builds in the heavens, not on earth, and he justi­fiably seeks to make the gods his neigh­bours’.¹¹⁶ Campano was not alone in extol­ling Pietro’s patro­nage of archi­tec­ture, even if the projects he started remained incom­plete at the time of his death. Platina’s Life of Pope Sixtus IV relates that Pietro began to build so magni­fi­cently at SS. Apos­toli that he seemed to ‘contend with the antique in gran­deur’. As Nicholas of Modruš stated in his funerary oration for Riario, ‘he did not cease to restore churches under his tutelage that had fallen into disre­pair, or to provide for those in need of resto­ra­tion’.¹¹⁷ Although it is uncer­tain what Pietro managed to build at SS. Apos­toli, he likely intended to recon­s­truct the Cardinal’s palace to the south of SS. Apos­toli, which he had inhe­rited from Cardinal Bessa­rion and which would pass at his death to Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. At this palace, which is now part of the complex of the Colonna, a survi­ving console sculpted with Riario’s coat of arms offers tangible proof of his archi­tec­tural patro­nage (Fig. 39).¹¹⁸ It has been suggested that Pietro was the first to conceive of a buil­ding project later brought to frui­tion by Cardinal della Rovere while he was resi­dent there: joining the palaces on the left and right of SS. Apos­toli by means of a

double-height loggia across the façade of the church (Fig. 40).¹¹⁹ Pietro’s vision also seems to have inspired the archi­tec­tural patro­nage his nephew, Raffaele Riario. When Raffaele fully inte­grated the design of San Lorenzo in Damaso with the cons­truc­tion of a new Cardinal’s palace, he appears to have looked back to concepts devised earlier by Pietro.

As part of the broader re-evalua­tion of Pietro’s patro­nage, it has emerged that the Cardinal also commis­sioned a new apse at the basi­lica of SS. Apos­toli and had it deco­rated with fres­coes by Melozzo da Forlì. This painted apse, depic­ting a scene of the Ascen­sion with music-making angels, was dismantled in the eigh­te­enth century and now only survives in frag­ments at the Vatican Museums and the Palazzo del Quiri­nale (Fig. 41). The apse was long attri­buted to Pietro Riario’s successor, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. In his Lives, Giorgio Vasari stated that it was ‘Cardinal [Pietro] Riario, nephew of Sixtus IV’ who had ordered the fres­coes and paid Melozzo da Forlì for the work.¹²⁰ Yet, Platina credited Giuliano della Rovere with the concep­tion and execu­tion of the apse, the only known payment for the project dates to 1474, when Della Rovere was the resi­dent Cardinal.¹²¹ In 1886, August

fig. 39 Console with the coat of arms of Cardinal Pietro Riario, Rome, Palazzo Colonna. 1471–1474. Photo: Roberto Sigis­mondi © Biblio­theca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunst­ge­schichte, Rome.

fig. 40 Rome, SS. Apos­toli. Photo: Author.

fig. 41 Melozzo da Forlì, Music-making Angel, frag­ment of fresco cycle for the apse of SS. Apos­toli, Vatican, Musei Vati­cani, mv.40269.14.14. Ante 1474. Photo © bpk / Scala.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

Schmarsow, unable to recon­cile what he considered to be a late work of Melozzo’s with a date before Pietro Riario’s death in 1474, argued that the fres­coes must have been commis­sioned by Giuliano della Rovere.¹²² Th is conclu­sion was widely accepted until Stefano Tumidei published a drawing of a putto holding up the stemma of Cardinal Riario on the arch that spanned the tribune before its destruc­tion. Lorenzo Finocchi Ghersi reve­aled that the archi­tect in charge of rebuil­ding the tribune in the eigh­te­enth century, Fran­cesco Fontana, also observed Pietro Riario’s coat of arms on both left and right sides of this arch.¹²³ Resis­tance to the idea that Pietro Riario had commis­sioned the fresco cycle gave rise to the impro­bable argu­ment that the stemmi in ques­tion were not part of the original deco­ra­tions, but were added in the sixte­enth century by Cardinal Ales­sandro Riario, after

fig. 42 Sante Picci­netti, The Apse of ss. Apos­toli, Naples, Archivio di Stato, busta 53, fasc. c. c. 1708. Photo by conces­sion of the Ministry of Cultural Heri­tage and Acti­vi­ties and Tourism.

he gained control of the chapel.¹²⁴ In 2010, the debates surfaced once again when Mario Epifani published another, more detailed drawing of the lost Riario coat of arms (Fig. 42).¹²⁵ Vasari’s testimony and the survival of these drawings leave no doubt that Pietro Riario indeed commis­sioned the fresco cycle from Melozzo da Forlì for a tribune he likely conceived as a Riario mauso­leum. When Giuliano della Rovere assumed the role of Cardinal-protector at SS. Apos­toli, he shifted atten­tion away from the Riario and towards the Della Rovere by placing the tomb of his own father, Raffaele della Rovere (Fig. 43), in a place of honour at the centre of the apse.¹²⁶ The situa­tion unders­cores the success of the Della Rovere in surpas­sing the Riario and in appro­pria­ting their monu­ments, a tactic that still defines the

way that these two fami­lies are perceived in the lite­ra­ture. The Della Rovere’s repu­ta­tion and legacy continue to overs­hadow that of the Riario in the art-histo­rical discus­sion, just as the posi­tive recep­tion of the Della Rovere contrasts with the portrayal of the Riario as deca­dent or immoral.¹²⁷

Pietro Riario’s repu­ta­tion for deca­dence stems in part from the fact that during his short career, he won parti­cular fame for staging magni­fi­cent thea­trical events and feste. Spec­ta­tors marvelled at the scale of Riario’s thea­trical enter­tain­ments, sacre rappre­sen­ta­zioni, jousts, and lavish banquets such as one held during the Carnival cele­bra­tions in Rome in 1473. Guests, inclu­ding several cardi­nals, ambassa­dors, and Count Girolamo, were enter­tained by ‘Moorish’ dancers and a rendi­tion of ‘o rosa bella’ sung in honour of the Riario rose. They watched costumed actors

fig. 43 Andrea Bregno, Tomb of Raffaele della Rovere, Rome, SS. Apos­toli. 1477 or after. Photo: Author.

on a raised stage playing Uzun Hassan—the Türkmen ruler of Persia. At the time, Uzun Hassan was regarded in Rome as a possible ally against the Otto­mans. During the event, an ‘Ottoman ambassador’ inter­rupted the banquet to declare war on Uzun Hassan and on Cardinal Riario. A group of Turks entered, were converted to Chris­tia­nity before the eyes of the guests and took up the Cardinal’s cause. After dinner, the scene moved outside to Piazza SS. Apos­toli, where the Otto­mans and Uzun Hassan battled in public, and the latter emerged victo­rious. After­wards, the Turkish soldiers were taken in proces­sion through the city and brought to Riario’s palace to be ‘impri­soned’. The proces­sion mirrored the recent triumph of January 1473, when Cardinal Diomede Carafa, after winning a major victory against Ottoman forces, had paraded a group of ‘twenty-five Turks and twelve camels’ through Rome. It seems likely that some of these prisoners were enlisted for roles in Cardinal Riario’s perfor­mance.¹²⁸ With these spec­ta­cles, Pietro high­lighted his public image as a Chris­tian Caesar who would bring all the other reli­gions into submis­sion. As Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli wrote in a panegyric to Pietro:

You will be the glory of the world, greater than Caesar Augustus. You will restore the Satur­nian age to the wret­ched lands. You will extin­guish the Moham­medan rites ever­y­where. And you will offer the highest tribute from the chained Emir. You will imme­dia­tely restore the old power of the Tarpeian Rock. You will bring back the peoples of Europe, Asia, and hot Libya under the reli­gion of Christ.¹²⁹

By using thea­trical perfor­mance to repre­sent himself as a defender of the Chris­tian reli­gion, Pietro set an important example for Raffaele, since public festi­vi­ties cele­bra­ting the defeat of Islam would also be a major element of the younger Cardinal Riario’s patronage.

The most famous of Pietro Riario’s enter­tain­ments was the banquet he hosted in June 1473 for Eleo­nora d’Aragona, daughter of King Ferrante of Naples, as she passed through Rome on her way to Ferrara to marry Ercole I d’Este. The event left behind an impres­sive lite­rary legacy. Several descrip­tions of it survive, inclu­ding those written by Eleo­nora herself in letters to her father.¹³⁰ Although the sources differ in their details, they all agree on the magni­ficence of the tempo­rary wooden banquet hall that Pietro built for the occa­sion in Piazza SS. Apos­toli. For the comfort of Eleo­nora and her entou­rage of Neapo­litan and Ferra­rese cour­tiers, the hall was covered with an awning and cooled with snow. Guests marvelled at columns wound with garlands and flowers, tapestries, and a twelve-tier credenza. Throug­hout the feast, frequent refe­rences were made to the Riario rose: guests were given roses, washed their hands with

rose­water, ate edible roses made of sugar, and even admired a fountain—fed from a basin on the roof of SS. Apostoli—featuring a gilded putto ‘urina­ting’ rose­water.¹³¹ At the banquet, various courses were intro­duced by the gods in mytho­lo­gi­cally themed inter­valli, during which costumed actors recited Latin epigrams.¹³² Among the divine charac­ters who performed for Riario’s guests was Bacchus, who arrived at the banquet toge­ther with Ceres to offer their gifts of wine and bread. Accor­ding to the descrip­tions in the verses written for the occa­sion by Porcelio Pandone and Domizio Calde­rini, the gods arrived toge­ther on a chariot. As Pandone relates, Bacchus presented himself as Liber wearing a crown of grapes. Appearing with a ‘chained tiger’, he has conquered Libya and the Indies and has returned a victor from ‘the new world’. Unders­coring Bacchus’s rever­ence for Cardinal Pietro Riario, the god brought an ‘effigy’ of the Cardinal in his trium­phal chariot, an image or portrait which Pandone does not describe further. In Calderini’s verses, Bacchus commands his compa­n­ions to join the table in cele­bra­tion of the marriage of Eleo­nora, a ‘beau­tiful Ariadne’. The god of wine brings double joy to the occa­sion with his ‘double-sized’ cups.¹³³ Both Pandone and Calde­rini include the phrase ‘Bacchus is here!’ (‘Bacchus adest’), a toast that borrows from an often-evoked line uttered by Dido, Queen of Carthage, in Virgil’s Aeneid (i.734) during the banquet at which she fell in love with Aeneas: ‘Let Bacchus, giver of happi­ness, be present’.

It was widely expected that Pietro Riario would succeed Sixtus as pope, an ambi­tion alluded to a letter of December 1473, which refers to one of his banquets as ‘ponti­fical’ in its gran­deur. After this meal, Riario showed his guests some of his prized posses­sions, inclu­ding a chair (cathedra) he had recently commis­sioned, ‘covered in velvet with gold brocade […] elegantly worked, with feet of gilt silver in the form of griffon’s talons […] and with bosses in the form of gilt roses, so that it is a most beau­tiful thing to see, and easily suitable for a pope or an emperor’.¹³⁴ Less than a week later Riario died, aged twenty-eight, in circum­s­tances that suggest he was poisoned.¹³⁵ For the elderly Cardinal Amman­nati Picco­lo­mini, Riario’s prema­ture death was a warning to others in the College who would become so deeply immersed in mate­rial luxu­ries and secular plea­sures. A Cardinal who had loved banquets, he wrote, had become food for worms, a patron who had deco­rated his palace in silver, gold, and silk was now housed in a tomb of cement and chalk. Pietro had been promoted at an early age, not because of his illus­trious deeds, and he had cared only for pomp and for banquets that ‘all of pagan anti­quity’ could admire.¹³⁶

Count Girolamo Riario

After Cardinal Pietro’s unex­pected death, Sixtus IV was keen to coun­teract such critique, to memo­ri­a­lise Riario, and to insist on the endu­rance of the Riario dynasty. Although it was unusual at the time for popes to commis­sion tombs, he ordered a funerary monu­ment for Pietro Riario from Andrea Bregno and Mino da Fiesole (Fig. 44).¹³⁷ With this gesture, Sixtus rein­forced the idea of his own fami­lial bond to the Riario, while asser­ting Girolamo’s ability to continue the family line. The elegant monu­ment, installed on the left side of the apse of SS. Apos­toli, combines an effigy of Pietro with a relief showing portraits of Pietro and Girolamo Riario knee­ling before the Virgin and Christ. Fran­ciscan saints stand in niches to either side. While Peter on the Virgin’s right side recom­mends Pietro to the Christ Child, who blesses him, Saint Paul places his sword beside Girolamo (Fig. 45), unders­coring the Count’s role as captain of Sixtus’s papal armies. The parallel, knee­ling figures of Pietro and Girolamo Riario empha­sise the forti­tude of the Riario dynasty and its protec­tion by Christ and the Virgin.

Girolamo Riario, like his brother Pietro, was a crucial role model for Raffaele Riario. Despite acqui­ring Imola in 1473, Girolamo remained in Rome in close proxi­mity to Sixtus IV and embraced his role as the pope’s capi­tano gene­rale.¹³⁸ Nume­rous chro­nic­lers report on Girolamo’s vast powers in Rome which, as was the case with Pietro Riario, were criti­cized for seeming to equal those of the pope himself.¹³⁹ Girolamo was well known for his ruthl­ess­ness and for the mili­tary exer­cises and jousts he orga­nised as a show of strength.¹⁴⁰ His infa­tua­tion with jous­ting is even docu­mented in the customs regis­ters of Rome, which reveal the Conte’s insa­tiable appe­tite for imported saddles, reins, lances, and equestrian armour.¹⁴¹ His own bruta­lity became legen­dary during the war that waged between the Orsini and Colonna in the years 1482–1484. During this conflict, Sixtus and Girolamo allied with the Orsini and the cond­ot­tiere Virginio Orsini. Animo­sity between the baro­nial fami­lies flared up after the assas­si­na­tion, in April 1482, of Girolamo Colonna by the Sant­acroce, who were allies of the Orsini. It worsened when the Colonna struck a deal with Naples during the Salt Wars, which pitted the popes against Ercole d’Este of Ferrara and d’Este’s father-in-law, Ferrante of Naples. The Colonna opened up their terri­to­ries outside of Rome to Neapo­litan armies, enra­ging Sixtus IV and Count Riario. In the spring of 1484, Riario took revenge on the Colonna, targe­ting in parti­cular the proto­no­tary Lorenzo Oddone Colonna. With Rome gripped by a state of fear, Colonna barri­caded himself in his family’s compound near SS. Apos­toli. Accor­ding to the diarist Stefano Infes­sura, Cardinal Raffaele Riario attempted to resolve the situa­tion, and even sent a warning to Colonna of the immi­nent danger. This caveat, and the protec­tion of

fig. 44 Andrea Bregno and Mino da Fiesole, Tomb of Pietro Riario, Rome, SS. Apos­toli. 1474 or after. Photo © Foto Marburg, Albert Hirmer and Irmgard Ernst­meier- Hirmer.

fig. 45 Andrea Bregno and Mino da Fiesole, Tomb of Pietro Riario, detail, Rome, SS. Apos­toli. 1474 or after. Photo © Foto Marburg, Albert Hirmer and Irmgard Ernst­meier- Hirmer.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

Giuliano della Rovere, could not save the proto­no­tario, whom Girolamo Riario had tortured and executed at Castel Sant’Angelo.¹⁴²

Like Pietro, Girolamo borrowed from the gran­deur of ancient Rome as a means of self-promo­tion. He gave his eldest sons the clas­sical names Otta­viano and Cesare and planned for them to succeed him in the Romagna. He also built a dynastic seat for the Riario in Rome: a palazzo to the north of Piazza Navona, near Sant’Apollinare and the tower known as the Tor Sangu­igna. Today, the former Palazzo Riario forms the core of the Palazzo Altemps, a national museum of antique sculp­ture (Fig. 46). In 1483, it was described as a ‘most hono­urable’ palace ‘with a garden, stables, and tower’.¹⁴³ As Margaret Daly Davis has observed, a passage in Luca Pacioli’s Divina propor­tione, composed by the end of the fifte­enth century and published in 1509, looked back on the cons­truc­tion of this palazzo as a time when many talents converged

fig. 46 Rome, Palazzo Riario- Altemps. Photo © Giulio Riotta.

in Girolamo’s court. Accor­ding to Pacioli, Girolamo engaged perso­nally in discus­sions about archi­tec­ture toge­ther with Pacioli and Melozzo da Forlì, who urged Riario to ask one of his stone carvers to sculpt a capital in the style of Pacioli’s geome­tric diagrams. Both Riario and the anony­mous maestro unde­re­sti­mated the diffi­culty of this task, and when the carver failed to meet the chall­enge, Pacioli inter­vened.¹⁴⁴ While the passage need not be unders­tood as an accu­rate account, it is sugges­tive of Riario’s aspi­ra­tions as a patron of archi­tec­ture.¹⁴⁵

Riario admired Melozzo da Forli and involved him in the deco­ra­tion of his new palazzo. Accor­ding to Leone Cobelli, Riario paid Melozzo gene­rously in reco­gni­tion of his status in the arts of pain­ting and perspec­tive. Cobelli asserts that Count Girolamo called him Melancio after the ancient painter, that is, the painter Melan­thius of Sicyon remem­bered by Pliny.¹⁴⁶ While Melozzo’s pain­tings for the Palazzo Riario have been lost, one of the few remnants of the Quat­tro­cento décor that does survive is the famous illu­sio­ni­stic fresco of a credenza set against a fictive mille­fleur tapestry (Fig. 47). The work combines Burgun­dian-style courtly imagery with antique-style masonry. Its prin­cipal subject is a lumi­nous array of plates, cups, and vases, some of which were probably gilded. Also on display are repre­sen­ta­tions of letters left by visi­tors and well-wishers, likely allu­ding to the guests who had attended the wedding of Girolamo Riario and Cate­rina Sforza in Rome in 1477. The image evokes the banquets and recep­tions offered by Cardinal Pietro, and the legen­dary coll­ec­tions of tapestries and serving dishes that Pietro had once owned, which passed into the posses­sion of his brother Girolamo after Pietro’s death.¹⁴⁷

When Cardinal Pietro died unex­pec­tedly, the huma­nists of Rome hoped that his brother Girolamo would make up for the loss and offer them his patro­nage. Paolo Emilio Bocca­bella attempted to win Girolamo’s favour by rede­di­ca­ting to him one of the coll­ec­tions of panegyric poetry he had written for Pietro, while Porcelio Pandone made a similar bid for Girolamo’s support.¹⁴⁸ Yet Girolamo Riario does not seem to have been inte­rested in patro­ni­sing poetry. While many of the Pompo­nians contri­buted to a printed coll­ec­tion of poems written in mour­ning of the untimely death of Girolamo Riario’s page boy, Ales­sandro Cinuzzi of Siena, Girolamo’s name is absent from the poems them­selves, suggesting that the Conte was not directly engaged with them.¹⁴⁹ Girolamo’s indif­fe­rence contrasts with the fact that anti­qua­rians and follo­wers of Pomponio Leto numbered among his fami­liars, most signi­fi­cantly Agos­tino Maffei of Verona who, as was noted, served as Riario’s agent and ‘man­ager’.¹⁵⁰ Another fami­liar from Leto’s circle was the Frenchman Thomas James, who assisted the Riario during the Pazzi conspi­racy. James, who became the Bishop of Dol in Brittany in 1482, deve­loped a taste for anti­qui­ties and anti­qua­rian coll­ec­tions in Florence and Rome, as is seen in the stun­ning missal he commis­sioned from the Floren­tine illu­mi­nator Atta­vante degli Atta­vanti in 1483/1484. Folio 6 v of this work is popu­lated with imagery borrowed from antique gems owned by Lorenzo de’ Medici, as well as from a Nereid sarco­phagus that even­tually reached

fig. 47 Anony­mous, Credenza, Rome, Palazzo Riario, Sala della Piat­taia. c. 1477–1480. Photo © Soprin­ten­denza Speciale per i Beni Archeo­lo­gici di Roma. All rights reserved.

fig. 48 Atta­vante degli Atta­vanti and work­shop, Roman Missal of Thomas James, Bishop of Dol. c. 1483–1484, Lyon: Biblio­t­hèque Muni­ci­pale de Lyon, MS 5123, fol. 6 v. Photo © Coll­ec­tion BmL | Numelyo Ms 5123 fol. 6 v.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

the coll­ec­tion of the Della Valle, revel­ling in the beauty of these objects (Fig. 48). The bishop’s prefe­rences for Floren­tine, clas­si­cising imagery were even­tually also reco­g­nised in his tomb in the Cathe­dral of Dol, commis­sioned in 1507 by his nephew from the Floren­tines Giovanni and Antonio Giusti (Fig. 49).¹⁵¹ As was the case with Raffaele Riario, it seems his expe­ri­ence in Florence during the Pazzi conspi­racy had a signi­fi­cant impact on his artistic taste.

Throug­hout his career, Raffaele Riario consis­t­ently drew upon the example of ambi­tious patro­nage set by his uncles. Like Cardinal Pietro, Raffaele patro­nised poets skilled in panegyric; just as Pietro’s fami­liars praised the Cardinal for brin­ging back the ‘spec­ta­cles of the ancient circus’,¹⁵² the huma­nists surroun­ding Raffaele urged him to revive the antique theatre and to stage public festi­vals. The younger Cardinal Riario closely followed his uncle Pietro’s example in his spon­sor­ship of archi­tec­ture, anti­qua­ria­nism, and astro­logy. Like Pietro, Raffaele also won popu­la­rity in Rome with perfor­mances cele­bra­ting a world-wide victory of Chris­tia­nity in wars of reli­gion. As will be discussed in Chapter 7, the inter­ming­ling of ‘the gods’ in Pietro Riario’s self-repre­sen­ta­tional programme in the 1470s set a prece­dent for his nephew’s inte­rest, in the 1490s, in a statue of Bacchus. Pietro’s brother Girolamo, as well, was a model for Raffaele as a patron of archi­tec­ture and of jous­ting matches; Girolamo’s public image as a chival­rous hero is echoed in the Cardinal’s evoca­tion of the crusa­ding saint, ‘San Giorgio’. The coali­tions Girolamo estab­lished with the Sforza of Milan and with allies in the Pazzi conspi­racy continued seam­lessly in Raffaele’s court, as is seen in the cohort of familiars—among them, Nicholas of Modruš, Thomas James, and Agos­tino Maffei—who moved from Girolamo’s house­hold to Raffaele’s. Above all, Raffaele’s uncles impressed upon him, from an early age, the need to expand the autho­rity of the Riario dynasty, both in Rome and in the Romagna.

* * *

With the know­ledge that their fortunes could easily shift with a change of regime after Sixtus IV’s death, the Riario worked swiftly to accu­mu­late power in the hope that it would endure. Their circum­s­tances shifted drama­ti­cally with the death of the pope in August 1484. The treaty of Bagnolo, drawn up on 7 August 1484, concluded the Salt Wars without any terri­to­rial gains for Sixtus IV and the Papal States. It was reported that when Sixtus heard of the news, he entered into a fit of rage, dying five days later. With Sixtus’s death, the favours and protec­tion that the Riario had enjoyed came to an abrupt halt. Unleas­hing years of pent-up antago­nism towards the Conte, the popolo converged on Girolamo Riario’s palace near Piazza Navona. With shouts of ‘Colonna! Colonna!’, a furious mob plun­dered the palace, robbing

fig. 49 Giovanni and Antonio Giusti, Tomb of Bishop Thomas James and his nephews, Dol, Cathé­drale Saint-Samson. 1507 or after. Photo © Manuel Cohen.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.

it of door­frames and strip­ping offthe gilded roses from its walls.¹⁵³ Mean­while, Girolamo and Cate­rina Sforza took swift action to prevent the elec­tion of a pope hostile to the Riario. Cardinal Riario’s posi­tion as Came­ra­rius proved crucial to their efforts: as head of the Sacred College and of the conclave during the sede vacante, he held meetings of the cardi­nals at his own palace in the hope of influen­cing the elec­tion. Riario’s powers over the papal fort­resses and the appoint­ment of castel­lans allowed him to rely upon the support of Fran­cesco Mascardi, Castellan of Castel Sant’Angelo. With Girolamo absent from Rome, a heavily pregnant Cate­rina Sforza was allowed to occupy Castel Sant’Angelo toge­ther with Paolo Orsini, based on the claim that the pope had given the fort­ress to Girolamo Riario as his capi­tano gene­rale. After Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, joined by the Colonna and their allies, mounted a coun­ter­at­tack, Girolamo Riario agreed to leave Rome in exch­ange for a large ransom and the right to rule in Imola and Forlì. The blunt show of force proved successful, since it secured for Girolamo the conti­nua­tion of his preca­rious vica­riate.¹⁵⁴ At the same time, new threats emerged after an ally of Giuliano della Rovere, the Genoese Giov­an­bat­tista Cibo, was elected Pope Inno­cent VIII. The balance of power imme­dia­tely shift ed in favour of the Della Rovere, as is seen in the appoint­ment of Giovanni della Rovere as gonfa­lo­niere of the Church and Barto­lomeo della Rovere as Castellan of Castel Sant’Angelo.¹⁵⁵ Sixtus IV’s death and the ascent of the Della Rovere, parti­cu­larly Cardinal Giuliano, created signi­fi­cant risks for the Riario. In the years between 1484 and his exile from Rome in 1499, Cardinal Riario was should­ered with the respon­si­bi­lity to protect and further his family’s inte­rests, as was expressed above all in the cons­truc­tion of the Palazzo San Giorgio.

Illus­tra­tion page. See the complete open-access PDF for the image.