Fami­liars, Huma­nists, and Prea­chers, 1480s–1490s

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

4 Fami­liars, Huma­nists, and Prea­chers 1480s–1490s

While Cardinal Riario was carrying out his massive cons­truc­tion project at San Lorenzo, he also set up a magni­fi­cent house­hold on the model of his uncles Pietro and Girolamo. This chapter considers the lite­rati, orators, lingu­ists, astro­lo­gers, and prea­chers in Riario’s circle, while Chapter 5 will turn to his anti­qui­ties coll­ec­tion, his patro­nage of artists, and his villa in Tras­te­vere. A conside­ra­tion of Riario’s court as a whole provides the intellec­tual and artistic context that offered refuge to the young Michel­an­gelo when he arrived there in 1496. It also reas­sesses a major cultural programme staged by Riario, using sources that have been considered only super­fi­ci­ally in the lite­ra­ture. In this chapter, an over­view of the Cardinal’s patro­nage of huma­nists and orators illu­mi­nates his enthu­siasm not only for Neopla­tonic philo­sophy, which was often suspected, but also for astro­logy, Hebrew and Arabic texts, the Kabbalah, and other forms of prisca theo­logia. His strong support of writers and prea­chers who cele­brated Spanish campaigns against Muslims and Jews, moreover, contex­tua­lises the revival of anti­quity among Riario’s fami­liars, who drew upon the antique past to glorify Chris­tian triumphs. These topics will be explored in light of the expan­sive network which supported Riario’s reli­gious, intellec­tual, and poli­tical aspirations.

Cardinal Riario’s Inner Circle

The Galli-Balducci accounts, the acts of Gisberto Senilis, and other key sources provide insight into Riario’s closest allies who lived with the Cardinal, or who depended upon him for their careers in Rome. Several of these asso­ciates had proven their loyalty to the Riario family during the Pazzi conspi­racy, inclu­ding the Casali family of Bologna. The young lawyer Cata­lano Casali had gone to prison in Florence with the Cardinal. After their release, Cata­lano was given a room in Riario’s palace at San Lorenzo, while Catalano’s brother Michele settled in a house on the Piazza San Lorenzo.¹ In comme­mo­ra­tion of their friend­ship and shared good fortune, the artist Lysippus cast a medal that joined toge­ther their portraits, ­Riario’s on one side and Catalano’s on the other.² Michele Casali’s deep bond with Riario continued for decades: in 1490, Riario awarded Michele a contract from the Camera Apos­to­lica for coll­ec­ting the wine tax in Bologna, and when Casali died in 1506, Riario became the guar­dian of his children.³ Riario treated the Casali as extended family, staying in their palazzo in Bologna when he travelled there.⁴

Many of the core members of Riario’s house­hold were rela­tives from Savona. From early in his cardi­na­late, Riario doled out special favours to his brother Fran­cesco Sansoni, who had gone to prison with him in Florence after the Pazzi conspi­racy and had assisted the family in times of turbu­lence after the death of Sixtus IV in 1484.⁵ The Cardinal took care to provide for Fran­cesco by resig­ning the wealthy bene­fice of Chia­ra­valle di Fiastra in his favour. He ensured, as well, that Fran­cesco would be granted his own rooms and his own fami­liars at San Lorenzo in Damaso.⁶ Other Sansoni prospered inside Riario’s circle over decades, such as Corrado Sansoni, who created a role for himself as a manager of Riario’s agri­cul­tural busi­ness, harve­s­ting grain at Pali­doro and Statua and then selling it on to bakers and other clients in Rome. Another close rela­tive, Corrado’s son Lorenzo Sansoni, attempted to estab­lish a career in the curia, appar­ently with limited success.⁷

Riario was also fier­cely loyal to his rela­tives on the Spinola side. He protected Luigi, Agos­tino, and the ‘proto­no­tario’ Fran­cesco Spinola, the sons of his aunt Petruccia Riario and the Genoese nobleman Giovanni Spinola. Fran­cesco Spinola was able to estab­lish his own noble resi­dence near San Lorenzo on the via di Parione, deco­ra­ting it with inscrip­tions bearing his name (Fig. 75) and with fres­coes on the façade by Poli­doro da Cara­vaggio and Matu­rino.⁸ Cardinal Riario also paved the way for Agos­tino Spinola’s rise through the Church, from his appoint­ment as Bishop of Perugia under Julius II, to his eleva­tion as a cardinal, and even­tually his appoint­ment as Camer­lengo under Clement VII.⁹ In the new Palazzo San Giorgio,

fig. 75 Doorway of the Palazzo of Fran­cesco Spinola, Rome, via di Parione, 7. Photo: Author.

fig. 76 Raphael, The Mass at Bolsena, Vatican City, Palazzo Apos­to­lico, Stanza di Elio­doro. 1512–1514. Photo: Vatican Museums and Galle­ries, Vatican City © Npl — DeA Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.

figs. 77–78 Giovanni d’Aria, Tomb of Cardinal Agos­tino Spinola, Savona, Civico Museo Archeo­lo­gico e della Città, Comp­lesso Monu­men­tale del Priamar. 1522. Photos: Author, repro­duced by permis­sion of the Civico Museo Archeo­lo­gico e della Città.

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

Cardinal Riario provided Agos­tino with a promi­nent room in the northe­as­tern corner, which was deco­rated with the Spinola coat of arms.¹⁰ Riario’s promo­tions ulti­m­ately made Agos­tino his most successful protégé, a rela­ti­onship seemingly immor­ta­lised by Raphael in the Vatican Stanze. As Schiavo first argued, the figure with a down­turned mouth and in full profile behind Cardinal Riario in Raphael’s Mass at Bolsena (Fig. 76) is likely Agos­tino Spinola. Schiavo’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is convin­cing, given Spinola’s status in Julius II’s court, as well as the resem­blance between this portrait and the effigy on Spinola’s tomb (Figs 77–78).¹¹

Riario surrounded himself with other Savo­nesi, such as his maestro di casa Giovanni Ferrero, his maggior­domo Accursio de Petra, or Pietro di Giovanni de Costa from nearby Albenga, a procu­rator and came­ra­rius who lived on the via dei Leutari.¹² Costa went into the conclave of 1484 with Riario and frequently appeared as a witness to docu­ments signed at Riario’s palace.¹³ The Cardinal also favoured men from Imola’s élite, such as Giacomo Cardelli, who came to Rome as a fifteen-year-old and remained in Riario’s house­hold for the rest of his life. Cardelli was with Riario when the Cardinal fled Rome in November 1499, and after Riario rebuilt the basi­lica of San Lorenzo, the Cardelli founded a family chapel in the new church. Through his long-term loyalty to the Riario and Spinola, Cardelli reaped nume­rous rewards. Even­tually, he would buy up a cluster of houses in the Campo Marzio and cons­truct the palace now known as the Palazzo Firenze, where his stemma and carved marble door­ways bearing his name can still be seen (Fig. 79).¹⁴

Riario shel­tered several wealthy bishops who, with the Cardinal’s support, laun­ched promi­nent careers of their own. Among them was Giacomo Luzio da Sutri, Bishop of Caiazzo. In April 1504, it was Luzio who would offi­ciate at the ceremony in San Lorenzo in which

fig. 79 Rome, Palazzo Firenze, over­door. Photo by Tatjana Bartsch © Biblio­theca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunst­ge­schichte, Rome.

Cardinal Riario was first orda­ined as a priest.¹⁵ Luzio remained one of the Cardinal’s confidantes and in 1517, in the after­math of the Petrucci conspi­racy, his family pledged a signi­fi­cant sum for the guaran­tees Pope Leo X demanded to free Riario from Castel Sant Angelo.¹⁶ Another figure loyal to Riario throug­hout his career was Bishop Altobello Aver­oldi, who is now remem­bered for his patro­nage of art and parti­cu­larly for the altar­piece he commis­sioned from Titian for SS. Nazario e Celso in Brescia. Aver­oldi first befri­ended Riario in Rome in the mid-1490s and, after Riario’s death in 1521, commis­sioned a double tomb for himself and for Riario, which was installed in SS. Nazario e Celso in close rapport with Titian’s altar­piece.¹⁷ Two cour­tier-bishops who remained at the core of Riario’s affairs over many years were Bishop Otta­viano Fornari of Genoa and Bishop Giovanni Ebu of Viterbo. Otta­viano Fornari, the Bishop of Mariana in Corsica, was a frequent witness to docu­ments signed for Riario and resided with Riario both in the palazzo San Lorenzo and at the palazzo near Sant’Apollinare. At his death in 1500, Fornari was buried at Sant’Agostino in a marble tomb sculpted by the

fig. 80 Andrea Bregno and work­shop, Tomb of Otta­viano Fornari, Rome, ex-cloister of Sant’Agostino. 1496 or after. Photo by Peter1936F, cc by-sa 4.0, via Wiki­media Commons.

Bregno work­shop (Fig. 80).¹⁸ When the Bishop of Crotone Giovanni Ebu died in 1496, he made Cardinal Riario his universal heir. Cardinal Riario’s agent Barto­lomeo de’ Dossis of Parma part­nered with Jacopo Galli to manage the Bishop of Crotone’s estate and, as will be discussed in Chapter 8, to commis­sion an altar­piece from Michel­an­gelo for the Bishop’s funerary chapel. Like Bishop Fornari and others in Riario’s circle, Giovanni Ebu chose to be buried at Sant’Agostino.¹⁹

Giulio Pomponio Leto’s Academy and Riario’s Huma­nist Network: Bonin­contri, Marsi, and Biaxander

Throug­hout his career, Riario embraced huma­nists and intellec­tuals whose work reso­nated with his cultural and reli­gious ambi­tions. As was noted in Chapter 2, Riario’s uncle, Cardinal Pietro, was a cele­brated patron of poetry who supported several of Giulio Pomponio Leto’s asso­ciates, and Raffaele eagerly followed in his uncle’s foot­s­teps. As was discussed, Raffaele Riario appears to have been a sponsor of the Palilie of 1484, when the astro­lo­gical poet Lorenzo Bonin­contri and Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli were both awarded Leto’s laurel crown. It was likely was around this time that Bonin­contri became an important figure in Riario’s house­hold. Bonin­contri had studied astro­logy in Naples in the circle of Giovanni Pontano and, in 1475, returned to his native Tuscany to teach astro­logy in Florence. His lectures garnered the admi­ra­tion of Ficino.²⁰ Around the time of the Pazzi conspi­racy, Bonin­contri left Florence for Pesaro, where he served as court astro­loger for Costanzo and Giovanni Sforza. By 1484, he had relo­cated to Rome, secu­ring a posi­tion as professor of astro­logy at the Studium Urbis and earning favour with Pope Sixtus IV, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, and Cardinal Riario.²¹ Riario’s patro­nage was crucial to Bonincontri’s efforts to revive the art of astro­lo­gical poetry, a genre inspired by the recent redis­co­very of works by Aratus and Marcus Mani­lius.²² In 1484, Bonin­contri expressed his grati­tude to Riario by dedi­ca­ting his edition of Manilius’s Astro­no­micon to the Cardinal. As a skilled astro­loger, Bonin­contri was able to provide Riario with progno­sti­ca­tions and important prac­tical advice about the timing of his actions, based on celes­tial influences. During his time under Riario’s protec­tion, Bonin­contri published several astro­lo­gical forecasts—short, printed pamphlets with predic­tions for the coming year, all of which were dedi­cated to Cardinal Riario.²³

Riario’s spon­sor­ship of Bonin­contri in the 1480s and 1490s reflects the Cardinal’s deep admi­ra­tion for Floren­tine culture, a recur­ring theme in Riario’s patro­nage. More unexpectedly,

however, Riario also demons­trated a marked prefe­rence for fami­liars, huma­nists, and artists asso­ciated with Mantua and the court of the Gonzaga. A notable example of this is his support of Pietro Marsi,²⁴ who had been a fami­liar of Cardinal Gonzaga and then, after Gonzaga’s death, he moved directly to Riario’s house­hold.²⁵ Although Marsi was impri­soned by Paul II for his ties to Pomponio Leto, his fortunes improved during Sixtus IV’s papacy, when he became professor of rhetoric at the Sapi­enza. Marsi was widely admired as an orator and was given the honour of deli­ve­ring the funeral oration for Count Girolamo Riario in Imola in 1488, and for Pomponio Leto in 1498. Thanks to Cardinal Riario’s influence, Marsi was made a canon of San Lorenzo in Damaso and, upon his death in 1511, was buried in the basi­lica.²⁶ Riario’s affi­nity for the Gonzaga circle in Rome is further illus­trated by the favours he granted to Battista Fiera, a Mantuan doctor and poet who is best known for his friend­ship with the artist Andrea Mantegna.²⁷ In 1490, Fiera dedi­cated the medical poem Coena to ­Ria­rio, flat­te­ring the Cardinal using Riario’s emblem of the ship’s rudder, writing, ‘you alone, Raphael, sustain my medical labours. You blow my mise­rable ship on the rough sea towards a favourable port and keep me from dying from the hosti­lity of these times’. Fiera’s popular trea­tise, intro­duced with a poem written by Pomponio Leto, provided a guide in verse to the ancient science of diete­tics, offe­ring advice on how to improve health with specific eating habits.²⁸

Marsi, Fiera, and almost all of Riario’s favoured huma­nists in the 1480s and 1490s had a connec­tion of some sort to Giulio Pomponio Leto’s Roman Academy: De Clodiis and Capella, Sulpizio da Veroli, Bonin­contri, Tommaso Inghi­rami, as well as the Sici­lian poet Antonio Biax­ander, who will be discussed below, were all part of Pomponio Leto’s circle. A distinct overlap can be seen, further­more, between the huma­nists favoured by Riario and the Studium Urbis where Pomponio Leto was a lecturer. Several members of the teaching faculty of the Studium were asso­ciated with Riario, inclu­ding Pietro Marsi, Inghi­rami, Biax­ander, Bonin­contri, Sulpizio, Matteo Bonfini, Barto­lomeo de’ Dossis, and Otta­viano Fornari. The number of univer­sity profes­sors atta­ched to Riario speaks not only to the Cardinal’s personal inte­rests, but also the Camerarius’s admi­nis­tra­tive role in the Studium Urbis. The Camera was tied to the Studium through its autho­rity over the gabella studii and, over the course of the fifte­enth century, the Came­ra­rius became more active in the inner workings of the univer­sity. This included the appoint­ments of its offi­cials, the selec­tion of lectu­rers, and even the deter­mi­na­tion of lectu­rers’ sala­ries. Riario’s influence in the Studium Urbis is evidenced by the fact that in the 1490s two of the most important members of the Cardinal’s house­hold, Bishop Otta­viano Fornari and Barto­lomeo de’ Dossis, drew substan­tial stipends as univer­sity lectu­rers.²⁹ Favours and income gene­rated by the Univer­sity were shared among Riario’s allies: in 1490

and in 1504–1506, the Galli-Balducci bank served as depo­si­tari of the gabella studii and paid out sala­ries in these years to Fornari, Inghi­rami, Marsi, and to Antonio Biax­ander.³⁰

This latter professor, the kabba­list, poet, and scholar of Oriental languages Biax­ander, also known as Flami­nius or ‘Il Flaminio’, received substan­tial support from Riario. Flami­nius is an obscure figure, who has often been confused with the more famous Marco Antonio Flaminio.³¹ In his own time, however, his exper­tise in ancient languages and the Kabbalah won him considerable fame in Rome and beyond, promp­ting the Spanish huma­nist Antonio de Nebrija to describe him as one of the most learned men in all of Italy.³² Much of what is known about Biax­ander is found in letters published by fellow Sici­lian Lucio Marineo Siculus, who, as a young man, had studied Greek with him.³³ These letters reveal that Biax­ander came from Mineo in Sicily, probably from a family of converted Jews. Accor­ding to one of Biaxander’s epigrams, his mother was Dalma­tian and his father Greek.³⁴ He studied ancient Greek under Giacomo Mira­bella in Palermo, adding it to his exper­tise in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic. After a brief stay in Naples in the circle of Giovanni Pontano, Biax­ander moved to Rome, it seems between 1484 and 1486. There, he befri­ended Pomponio Leto and adopted the academic name ‘Flami­nius’. By 1488, he was employed as a tutor of Greek and complained to Siculus about the lack of Greek manu­scripts for sale in Rome, which did not help in his efforts to teach ‘the divine Plato’.³⁵ At some point, certainly by 1494, Flami­nius won a chair in eloquence at the Studium Urbis, which he held for the rest of his life.³⁶ Accor­ding to Pierio Valeriano’s brief but memo­rable descrip­tion of Flami­nius, he was a man who ‘dragged out his life in a parti­cular kind of unhap­pi­ness’, ‘took no plea­sure in the friend­ship or society of anyone’, and never dined in company. Vale­riano recounts that Flaminius’s death went unno­ticed for three days until an innkeeper found him lying among piles of books spread on the floor.³⁷

A sizable group of Hebrew and Arabic manu­scripts in the Vatican and else­where have been traced back to Flaminius’s library, and the marginal notes he made in them shed light on his inte­rests and remar­kable breadth of know­ledge.³⁸ These include kabba­li­stic works, astro­lo­gical trea­tises, and a trans­la­tion of an Arabic medical manual into Hebrew. A trace of his lingu­i­stic compe­tence can be found in an anec­dote passed on in a trea­tise on Coptic and Semitic languages published in 1539. This work by the huma­nist Teseo Ambrogio degli Albo­nesi was concerned with Aramaic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Sama­ritan, and Coptic scripts and the kabba­li­stic meaning of their charac­ters. The alphabet he calls ‘Sama­ritan’, he writes, was given to him in Rome by Fabio Vigili, a ‘secre­tary to Raffaele Riario, Cardinal of San Giorgio’. When in Rome, Ambrogio conti­nues, he also showed this alphabet to the ‘poly­glot Flami­nius, the most learned scholar of his era’. Flami­nius could confirm that it was indeed Sama­ritan and was able to write out a copy for him, which Ambrogio degli Albo­nesi illus­trated in his publi­ca­tion (Fig. 81).³⁹

Flaminius’s poetry survives in an extra­or­di­nary manu­script, a poetic miscel­lany (BAV, MS Vat. lat. 2870) dealing with a wide range of topics, from reli­gious hymns to the Virgin, to works of

art such as the tomb of Inno­cent VIII and the Apollo Belve­dere, to astro­lo­gical themes. Many of the poems in this manu­script, composed between the 1490s and the time of Flaminius’s death in 1513 or 1514, are dedi­cated to Cardinal Riario. They include the verses mentioned above on the colossal statue of a Muse that Riario would even­tually display in the cour­tyard of his new palace (see Fig. 103). Other compo­si­tions feature an unnamed artist who praises Riario for gran­ting him the oppor­tu­nity to learn the art of pain­ting at the Palazzo San Giorgio. These poems will be further explored in Chapter 5, in the context of Riario’s artistic patro­nage and his coll­ec­tion of anti­qui­ties.⁴⁰ Other extra­or­di­nary poems in Biaxander’s miscel­lany treat the astro­lo­gical predic­tions that fasci­nated the Cardinal. They hint at Riario’s use of magical arts as a way to foresee and influence future events, espe­ci­ally papal elec­tions. In one addressed to an ‘image’ of Fortune and Prudence, Flami­nius implores Fortune and Prudence to ‘hand over

fig. 81 Teseo Ambrogio degli Albo­nesi, Intro­ductio in Chal­daicam linguam, Syriacam, atque Arme­nicam, & decem alias linguas, fol. 202, Munich, Baye­ri­sche Staats­bi­blio­thek Res/4 Polygl. 3. <urn:nbn:de:bvb:12bsb10204021‑5>. 1539. Photo: Baye­ri­sche Staats­bi­blio­thek, Munich, NoC-nc/1.0.

the powers of the Vatican’ to Riario. Others are directed at the stars, and call on them to influence the next conclave and ‘make the Cardinal a pope’ [Appendix ii.19].⁴¹ These fasci­na­ting works appar­ently reflect Cardinal Riario’s own inte­rest not only in astro­logy, but also in astral magic. At various moments of the Cardinal’s life, Riario was remem­bered for his reli­ance on mystics and astro­lo­gical advi­sors, parti­cu­larly in rela­tion to his ardent ambi­tion to win the papacy. During the reign of Julius II, a Vene­tian ambassador, for example, mocked Riario for putting ‘his faith in the empty predic­tions of astro­lo­gers, who fore­told that the pope would not live long, and who gave the Cardinal the hope of being able to succeed him’.⁴²

Many of the lite­rati favoured by Riario, like Biax­ander, are now obscure figures, overs­ha­dowed by other Renais­sance huma­nists who align more closely with the inte­rests of modern academic discourse. Yet in Rome, there was no shortage of talented men who could satisfy Riario’s taste for esoteric and syncretic wisdom, astral magic, astro­logy, Oriental languages, and the Kabbalah.⁴³ Already in the 1470s, Ficino had likely guided Riario towards astral magic, and possibly also the Kabbalah.⁴⁴ It seems inevi­table that in Rome the Cardinal would have come into contact with Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada, a.k.a. Flavius Mithri­dates, a converted Jewish scholar from Sicily with a know­ledge of Hebrew, Arabic, and astro­logy. He served as a Hebrew tutor for Giovanni Pico della Miran­dola and trans­lated for Pico an entire library of kabba­li­stic texts.⁴⁵ In 1486, Pico famously proposed to debate his ‘nine hundred theses’ in Rome, inclu­ding those on the Kabbalah’s powers of reve­la­tion, before he was stopped by the pope.⁴⁶ Studies of Hebrew texts and the Kabbalah flou­rished in elite Italian circles along­side the much better-studied huma­nist revival of Greco-Roman anti­quity in this era, and for Riario they were topics of profound reverence.

Docta pietas, pia philo­so­phia: Fra Mariano da Genaz­zano and Egidio da Viterbo

From the 1480s onwards, Riario’s patro­nage brought toge­ther a number of figures invested in prisca theologia—the divine wisdom believed to have been bestowed upon Moses, Hermes Tris­me­gistus, Plato, and other pre-Chris­tian ‘prophets’. This intellec­tual inte­rest was matched by a fasci­na­tion with antique art, poetry, and lite­ra­ture. Toge­ther, these elements formed the core

of a cultural programme which Riario likely unders­tood as a transfer of the refined ambi­ence of Medici Florence to Rome. This ambi­tion reso­nates in the Cardinal’s patro­nage of Bonin­contri and Biax­ander, as well as in his spon­sor­ship of the Augus­ti­nian prea­chers Mariano da Genaz­zano and Egidio da Viterbo. Edgar Wind’s Pagan Myste­ries in the Renais­sance, published in 1958, first explored this theo­lo­gical and intellec­tual context. Wind called atten­tion to the stark contrast between the Domi­nican Girolamo Savo­na­rola in Florence and the Augus­ti­nian entou­rage of Fra Mariano in Rome at the time of Michelangelo’s move to Riario’s court in 1496. In Riario’s circle, ‘which was also Jacopo Galli’s’, he wrote, ‘an Augus­ti­nian revival of Chris­tian mysti­cism was combined with a formal cult of Cicero and Virgil’.⁴⁷ Since Wind’s Pagan Myste­ries, scho­lars such as Alex­ander Nagel and Meredith Gill have empha­sised the forma­tive influence of Riario’s Augus­ti­nian milieu on Michelangelo’s career.⁴⁸ Rese­arch on the theo­lo­gical culture of Renais­sance Rome has also advanced, parti­cu­larly in the work of John O’Malley, shed­ding new light on the cult of prisca theo­logia and the Augus­ti­nian and Neopla­tonic inte­rests in Riario’s circle.⁴⁹

Fra Mariano and Egidio da Viterbo were figures of great importance for Riario, as Augus­ti­nian prea­chers whom the Cardinal supported and advanced in his role of Protector of the Augus­ti­nians. Both embraced a learned approach to Augus­tine that mirrored Augustine’s own encounter with Plato and the Neopla­to­nists.⁵⁰ Fra Mariano da Genaz­zano of the Augus­ti­nian chapter of Lecceto won fame throug­hout Italy for his skills as an orator and was favoured in Rome under Pope Inno­cent VIII, who called him to preach there in 1487. Lorenzo de’ Medici then lured him to Florence, where his erudi­tion and eloquence earned the admi­ra­tion of huma­nists in de’ Medici’s circle.⁵¹ Poli­ziano praised Fra Mariano’s ability to combine reli­gious doctrine with clas­sical lear­ning, contras­ting it with the narrow-minded­ness of ‘pulpit censors’ who sought to stamp out the pagan past. Poli­ziano noted that the Church Fathers, inclu­ding Augus­tine, had reco­g­nised the value of anti­quity, under­stan­ding it as a repo­si­tory of divine wisdom.⁵² Fra Mariano’s popu­la­rity is further empha­sised in a letter from Andrea Corneo of Urbino to Giovanni Pico della Miran­dola, which describes how his audi­ences were left ‘frozen like marble.’ Corneo portrayed Fra Mariano as a modern incar­na­tion of the great clas­sical orators, capable of moving and inspi­ring his listeners with remar­kable eloquence.⁵³

The Medici rewarded Mariano gene­rously for his rheto­rical gifts, poli­tical loyalty, and staunch oppo­si­tion to Savo­na­rola. Accor­ding to Lorenzo’s biographer Niccolò Valori, Fra Mariano became part of a close-knit group that met with Lorenzo de’ Medici at the Augus­ti­nian convent of San Gallo in Florence. As Valori writes,

in order to inflame and ignite faith and the cult of the divine, [Lorenzo] built for the satis­fac­tion of this prea­cher and his friars, at great expense, a large and magni­fi­cent monas­tery just outside the city. Often Pico, his close fami­liar [Giovanni Pico della Miran­dola], and many other lite­rati met there as if at an Academy of Chris­tian reli­gion, discus­sing without inter­rup­tion divine myste­ries and the secrets of theo­logy.⁵⁴

While Mariano delighted Lorenzo de’ Medici’s inner circle, for many in Florence, these discus­sions went too far; his prea­ching seemed too close to acting and too distant from the style of friars whose focus was on the lives of the saints.⁵⁵ After the expul­sion of the Medici in 1494 and the rise of Savo­na­rola in Florence, Fra Mariano sought a new protector. He reestab­lished his ties to Rome by prea­ching in Sant’Agostino in the spring of 1495. Mariano won Cardinal Riario’s affec­tions and quickly rose through the ranks of Augus­ti­nian leader­ship, assuming the role of coau­di­tore in August 1495, then vicario in January 1496. In a ceremony of 13 May 1497 over­seen by Riario, the Augus­ti­nians elected him prior general. When Mariano attempted to refuse the office, clai­ming himself unworthy, Riario inter­vened to ensure he would accept.⁵⁶ On the same day, 13 May 1497, Alex­ander VI issued a procla­ma­tion excom­mu­ni­ca­ting Fra Mariano’s arch-nemesis Savo­na­rola. The sequence of events illu­mi­nates Fra Mariano’s pivotal role in linking the intellec­tual and spiri­tual envi­ron­ment of Medici Florence with Riario’s house­hold in Rome. Michelangelo’s arrival in 1496 took place against this back­drop, during a period when Riario was provi­ding refuge to Savonarola’s dissenters.

In the summer of 1498, Pope Alex­ander VI sent Fra Mariano on a diplo­matic mission to Naples. He travelled to Campania toge­ther with the young Egidio da Viterbo, but died in Sessa Aurunca in December. With Cardinal Riario in atten­dance, Aurelio Bran­do­lini deli­vered Mariano’s funerary oration in the basi­lica of Sant’Agostino. On this occa­sion, Bran­do­lini praised Fra Mariano’s vast know­ledge of poetry and rhetoric, which was so outstan­ding that he seemed to have been educated not by Augus­ti­nian friars but in ‘the gymna­sium of Athens under Demo­sthenes, the prince of Greek oratory’. Cardinal Riario, ‘a man of great spirit and genius’, deserved praise for having brought Mariano ‘to Alex­ander VI and to himself ’.⁵⁷

Fra Mariano’s presence in Rome, and Riario’s protec­tion of the friar, provided the soil in which the more famous Augus­ti­nian prea­cher Egidio da Viterbo would even­tually flou­rish.⁵⁸ Mariano had been a mentor for Egidio and had likely inspired Egidio to join the Augus­ti­nian order in the first place.⁵⁹ Egidio took up the study of theo­logy in Padua, where an encounter with Giovanni Pico della Miran­dola may have sparked his inte­rest in the Kabbalah.⁶⁰ Moving on to a teaching posi­tion in Capo­dis­tria, he won distinc­tion in the study of Plato and the recon­ci­lia­tion of Chris­tia­nity with Platonic philo­sophy. At some point before 1497, Egidio spent time in Florence, where he studied with Ficino. Like Ficino, he too was committed to redis­co­ve­ring the writings of Plato via St. Augustine’s own Neopla­to­nism: it was through Plato that Augus­tine came to know Chris­tia­nity, and it was through Plato that the present-day Church would bring about spiri­tual renewal.⁶¹ Confi­dent in Egidio da Viterbo’s abili­ties, Fra Mariano and Cardinal Riario summoned him to the Augus­ti­nians in Rome where, as Egidio put it, he would ‘reveal and defend all of Plato’ as best he could.⁶² In the spring of 1497 he arrived in Rome, where he advo­cated for theo­logia plato­nica in an exami­na­tion for a degree in theo­logy. In a letter to Ficino, Egidio described this exam as an ener­getic defence of Plato, using terms sugges­tive of a battle:

It seemed they were about to abolish the name of Plato enti­rely, and it would indeed have died had it not received the favour of the holy priests whom they call cardi­nals. However, a doctrine which is divine could not be shaken by the madness of wicked men, and with the aid of God and of Plato’s good and helpful guar­ding spirits we came safe. And in such a way that our enemies blushed before the immense great­ness of Plato.⁶³

While Egidio does not iden­tify these protec­tive cardi­nals by name, it is temp­ting to presume a refe­rence to Raffaele Riario.

Egidio took on a personal role as a spiri­tual coun­sellor for Cardinal Riario, espe­ci­ally after Riario’s appoint­ment as Bishop of Viterbo in August 1498. As a respite after years of prea­ching in nume­rous places, Riario rewarded Egidio with the use of a hermi­tage on Monte Cimino near Bagnaia, the summer resi­dence the Cardinal enjoyed as Bishop of Viterbo. Egidio wrote to Riario from what he called ‘our Cimino’, and Riario is known to have visited him at this retreat.⁶⁴ Before 1505 Egidio da Viterbo was supported not only by Riario, but also by the intellec­tual circle of Jacopo Galli. When Edgar Wind intuited that an ‘Augus­ti­nian revival of Chris­tian mysti­cism’ took place in Rome in a circle which ‘was also Jacopo Galli’s’, he based

this assump­tion on the idea that Galli was the patron of the Bacchus.⁶⁵ Yet Galli’s ties to the Augus­ti­nian ‘revival’ Wind describes are visible in other ways. It has gone unno­ticed that one of the witnesses to Galli’s testa­ment, to its codicil, and to the inven­tory of his goods made after his death [Appendix ii.16–18] was Egidio’s asso­ciate Niccolò Mannio of Canepina, who is described in these docu­ments as the tutor of Jacopo Galli’s children.⁶⁶ Although little is known about Mannio, several letters between him and Egidio da Viterbo are included in Egidio’s printed corre­spon­dence. Already during his trip through Campania with Mariano da Genaz­zano in 1498, Egidio was in corre­spon­dence with Mannio.⁶⁷ Mannio and Egidio exch­anged frequent letters in the follo­wing years, sharing news about their common friends in Rome. This group included several members of Galli’s inner circle—Francesco Cedrario, Giovanni Botonti of Viterbo, Tommaso Inghi­rami, Jacopo Sado­leto, Mario Mellini, and Camillo Porcari, whose rela­ti­onship to Jacopo Galli is outlined in Chapter 8.⁶⁸ These letters reveal that Mannio di Canepina prac­tised reli­gious medi­ta­tion and on at least one occa­sion visited Egidio in Cimino. They show, as well, that Mannio was an asso­ciate of Cardinal Ria­ rio: in 1507, Mannio was trusted with the task of gathe­ring the letters Egidio had sent to the Cardinal, and to other cont­acts in Rome, in prepa­ra­tion for their publi­ca­tion.⁶⁹ There can be little doubt that Mannio di Canepina shared Egidio’s devo­tion to the divine Plato. His letters are smat­tered with quota­tions in Greek, which suggests that Jacopo Galli had hired him to tutor his sons in this language.

Riario’s theo­lo­gical circle followed the guidance of Egidio da Viterbo and Mariano da Genaz­zano, Augus­ti­nian prea­cher-philo­so­phers who opposed Scho­la­stic methods and promoted the poetic, lite­rary, and huma­ni­stic enrich­ment of Chris­tian theo­logy. For this group, the revival of Plato and other pre-Chris­tian tradi­tions meant the embrace of the ‘Chris­tian Muses’, a concept that summa­rises their approach. Giovanni Pontano, founder of a famed Academy in Naples, invoked the image of the Chris­tian Muses in connec­tion to Egidio and Mariano da Viterbo in his Aegi­dius (1501–1503), a dialogue in which the character of Egidio states:

hearing the name of the Muses I get tears in my eyes, since they remind me of Fra Mariano of the Augus­ti­nian Hermits. He recently died to the lament of all Chris­tia­nity and espe­ci­ally all of Italy […], he who culti­vated the vene­ra­tion of the Chris­tian Muses and who, in sanc­tua­ries or from the pulpits of churches, reve­aled their secrets with perfect clarity, and made them reso­nate with great eloquence.

‘Pontanus’ then replies:

Don’t cry, but thank the gods for this man who is now among the celes­tial Muses and pene­trates the core of divine wisdom. Rejoice that he is now among the heavenly Muses,

acces­sing their divine secrets, and be happy that through the Muses he gives inspi­ra­tion to Egidio, his close friend. Accor­ding to the Chris­tian rites and with the grea­test piety, he vene­rates the myste­ries of the Muses and expounds them with rare eloquence, reve­aling them to the people.⁷⁰

There can, it seems, be no better homage to the Chris­tian Muses than the over-life­sized statue of a Muse that would grace the cour­tyard of the Palazzo San Giorgio (see Fig. 103).

The intellec­tual circle that coale­sced around Riario and Galli in the late 1490s remains only parti­ally explored, yet it laid the ground­work for the better-studied Neopla­to­nism and inte­rest in prisca theo­lo­gica that flou­rished in the court of Julius II in the early sixte­enth century. In 1506, Pope Julius II called Egidio to take up the post of vicar general of the Augus­ti­nian Order, but when Egidio resisted, hoping to devote his time to study and writing, Riario ordered him to accept it.⁷¹ Egidio’s erudi­tion and compel­ling prea­ching earned wide­spread admi­ra­tion, leading to his elec­tion as prior general of the Augus­ti­nians in 1507, his eleva­tion to the cardi­na­late in 1517, and his appoint­ment as Cardinal Protector of the Augus­ti­nians after Riario’s death in 1521. Although Egidio’s career during this period lies outside the scope of this study, Riario’s early support was instru­mental in estab­li­shing the foun­da­tions of his later promi­nence in Julius II’s court. As has long been reco­g­nised, Egidio’s life-long study of Neopla­to­nism, and Hebrew and Arabic, would signi­fi­cantly impact the future course of Renais­sance art and theo­logy.⁷²

Riario and the Reconquista

Despite the study of Hebrew and Arabic within Riario’s circle, its members firmly believed in the infe­rio­rity of other reli­gions to Chris­tia­nity and in the Church’s duty to take up arms and combat heresy. Riario’s intellec­tual pursuits were closely tied to his hope for new Crusades, as is evidenced by his support of prea­chers who fore­told an era of Chris­tian triumph and called for the eradi­ca­tion of other reli­gions world­wide. In the 1490s, the Roman Church cele­brated the victo­ries of Ferdi­nand II and Isabella I in Islamic Anda­lusia and North Africa, with the Spanish monarchs relying on Rome for legi­ti­ma­tion. The situa­tion fostered closer diplo­matic ties with Rome and the deve­lo­p­ment of a propa­gan­di­stic programme spear­headed by Riario, in coope­ra­tion with Rodrigo Borgia, Juan Carvajal, and other powerful patrons.⁷³ Riario acted as an inter­me­diary for Isabella and Ferdi­nand, parti­cu­larly because the Camera Apos­to­lica raised and distri­buted funds for Crusades. Spanish and Portu­guese mili­tary successes and over­seas voyages in the 1480s and 1490s were cele­brated widely in Riario’s circle and became a focus of his patro­nage. From the late 1480s, anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic themes ran through the work of huma­nists and theo­lo­gians in Riario’s milieu. The imagery of the

clas­sical past played a signi­fi­cant role in uniting Rome with Iberia, appearing ever­y­where in cele­bra­tory programmes that brought toge­ther the visual arts, poetry, theatre, prea­ching, and ceremonial.

Riario’s enthu­siasm for Chris­tian Crusades was probably encou­raged in his youth by Bishop Nicholas of Modruš, who came to the Cardinal’s aid during his impri­son­ment in Florence. In the after­math of the Pazzi conspi­racy, Modruš dedi­cated to Riario an anti-Medici trea­tise, the Defensio eccle­si­a­sticae liber­tatis.⁷⁴ The trea­tise describes how, as Pius II’s papal legate at Matthias Corvinus’s court, he had helped convince Corvinus to lead a mili­tary campaign against the Otto­mans in Bosnia. It may have been in response to Modruš’s call that a fresco of King Corvinus in the guise of a Chris­tian Crusader appeared very close to Cardinal Riario’s palace, at what is now the via del Pelle­grino, some­time before King Corvinus’s death in April 1490.⁷⁵ Though the fresco no longer survives, a seven­te­enth-century drawing (Fig. 82) records its compo­si­tion.⁷⁶ Accor­ding to a descrip­tion from 1594, the image depicted the King ‘tram­pling on a band of Turks’.⁷⁷ Thus missing from the seven­te­enth-century sketch of the fresco is the object of Corvinus’s wrath, the Turkish armies whom he held back from the borders of Chris­tendom. As Dániel Pócs has noted, the fresco portrayed Corvinus in the guise of Cardinal Riario’s patron St. George: a young man on horse­back, raising his sword high above his head. Possibly, the image is connected to Riario, emer­ging from his enthu­siasm for Crusa­ding rhetoric. Its purpose may have been to align Corvinus with St. George, while allu­ding to Riario himself as another ‘San Giorgio’ and a Crusa­ding knight.⁷⁸

In the 1480s and 1490s, Riario embraced this iden­tity as a cham­pion of the Spanish Recon­quista led by Isabella and Ferdi­nand.⁷⁹ The Cardinal’s ties to Iberia, in particular

fig. 82 Anony­mous, Fresco depic­ting Matthias Corvinus, Biblio­teca Apos­to­lica Vati­cana, ms Barb. lat. 4423, fol. 73 r. 17th century. Photo © 2024 Biblio­teca Apos­to­lica Vaticana.

Castile, had first been estab­lished during the papacy of Sixtus IV.⁸⁰ Sixtus IV had involved Riario in measures taken by the Church to support Spanish campaigns against remai­ning Muslim strong­holds in Anda­lusia. Vast sums began to flow into Spanish coffers after Sixtus permitted the sale of indul­gences not only to Crusaders, but also to anyone who donated money to their cause. Sixtus devoted a tenth of the reve­nues from eccle­si­a­stical bene­fices in the kingdom of Ferdi­nand and Isabella (the so-called decima) for the Recon­quista aimed at expel­ling Muslims from Iberia. In 1485, in reco­gni­tion of Spanish successes, Inno­cent VIII allowed the monarchs to retain the decima in its enti­rety.⁸¹ A resounding return on the popes’ invest­ment came in August 1487, when the key city of Málaga was captured. In Rome, the news inspired wide­spread public cele­bra­tion and comme­mo­ra­tive masses. At Santa Maria del Popolo, the Catalan theo­lo­gian Pere Boscà announced the begin­ning of a new Golden Age, not of the mythical sort described ‘in the cele­bra­tions of poets’ but a new ‘reality’.⁸² Now that Chris­tian souls had been inspired with a new spirit (Boscà invokes the Virgi­lian phrase numine afflatos), the conquest should continue to expand to Africa, to ‘dispel the filth of Muhammad and propa­gate the most holy name of Christ’.⁸³

Arri­ving in Rome soon there­after were Moorish captives whom Ferdi­nand and Isabella sent to the popes and other rulers as ‘gifts’. The prisoners were paraded with chains around their necks and then, as the diarists and chro­nic­lers report, were ‘sparsi tutti per Roma’, having been presented to cardi­nals and Roman nobles.⁸⁴ At this time, Cardinal Riario’s fami­liar Pietro Marsi became a leading figure in the call for the expan­sion of Chris­tia­nity over­seas. After the conquest of Málaga, his prea­ching became more belli­cose, and in December 1487 he deli­vered a sermon in the Sistine Chapel prai­sing recent campaigns in Spain and beyond. In his sermon he high­lighted the threat of the Arabs, Sara­cens, Tartars, and Turks, urging the pope and cardi­nals to expand Chris­tian Crusades. ‘Take up the sword of Peter, Holy Father’, he pleaded, ‘Attack you cardi­nals of the Church mili­tant’.⁸⁵ Marsi followed up these themes in an oration in Sant’Agostino, a panegyric of St. Augus­tine, which he likely deli­vered in August 1488. The text of this sermon begins with a lengthy enco­mium of Ferdi­nand and Isabella, urging them to expand their mili­tary campaigns into North Africa, with the reminder that Thagaste—the birth­place of Saint Augustine—was then in Muslim hands. They should not relent until they reached the Holy Sepulchre. The recent proces­sion of captive slaves in Rome had helped to make their victory Rome’s own; accor­ding to Marsi, ‘Rome trium­phed in recent days and happily took sight of the chained Moors, witnesses to your glorious victory’.⁸⁶

Year after year, the popes renewed the Spanish Bull of Crusade, and their invest­ment paid offs­pec­ta­cu­larly when news of the fall of Granada was announced in Rome on the night of 31 January 1492. The Spanish monarchs had won a key victory for them­selves and the papacy, raising a silver cross donated by Pope Sixtus IV on the highest tower of the Alhambra. The news sparked jubilant cele­bra­tions in Rome, espe­ci­ally since it arrived amidst the thea­trical perfor­mances and festi­vi­ties of Carnival season. The diaries of Gaspare Pontani and Johann Burchard offer details of the bull­fights Rodrigo Borgia staged outside his palazzo.⁸⁷ Soon to follow, on February 19, was a re-enact­ment of the fall of Granada orga­nised by Cardinal Carvajal and the Casti­lian ambassador Juan Ruiz de Medina in Piazza Navona. This spec­tacle featured a drama­ti­cised siege of a wooden tower repre­sen­ting ‘Granada’, bull­fights, and

fig. 83 Jacopo Ripanda, Triumph of Rome over Sicily, Rome, Palazzo dei Conser­va­tori. c. 1507–1508. Photo © Roma, Sovrin­ten­denza Capi­to­lina ai Beni Culturali.

free-flowing wine.⁸⁸ The Roman diarist Sebas­tiano di Branca Tedal­lini praised Riario’s lavish contri­bu­tion to these festi­vi­ties.⁸⁹ It was a time when the Spanish contin­gent in Rome was buoyed by a profound sense of divine favour, heigh­tened by the provi­den­tial disco­very of the titulus crucis—a relic of the True Cross—in Santa Croce in Geru­sa­lemme, the titular church of the Spanish Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza.

Cardinal Riario played a leading role in the cele­bra­tions, enlis­ting his huma­nist and artistic circle to produce a number of thea­trical events. The first was a ‘triumph of the Spanish kings’ held on 26 February, featuring a chariot pulled by four white horses in the style of ancient impe­rial triumphs. The proces­sion made its way to San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, with actors playing Isabella and Ferdi­nand holding the defeated Sultan of Granada, Muhammad XII (‘Boabdil’), in chains. Prece­ding them were Saracen prisoners in ‘the dress and with the colour of real Moors’. Upon arri­ving at San Giacomo, the King and Queen cere­mo­niously presented their prisoners to the church. The event then segued into a six-day joust in Piazza Navona funded by Riario. The prizes offered by the Cardinal hung from windows in Piazza Navona as part of the spec­tacle: a golden cloth, a gilt helmet, and silver spurs, ‘all deco­rated with the arms of the King of Castile’.⁹⁰ The visual programme of Riario’s triumph seems to have been inspired by the study of ancient sculp­ture, parti­cu­larly the imagery of the antique tropaeum; Sigis­mondo dei Conti describes the ‘helmets, bows, arrows, armour, and shields atta­ched to tree trunks, as one sees in ancient triumphs and in monu­ments of the Caesars’.⁹¹ Dei Conti’s account of the elabo­rate cart calls to mind the anti­qua­rian drawings and fres­coes of the Bolo­gnese artist Jacopo Ripanda, who may have already been asso­ciated with Cardinal Riario at this time. By the sixte­enth century, Ripanda was a favou­rite artist of Raffaele Riario, and in c. 1507–1508, possibly with Cardinal Riario’s support, he painted fres­coes in the Palazzo dei Conser­va­tori that evoke the festi­vi­ties Riario spon­sored in the 1490s. In one of these scenes, a perso­ni­fi­ca­tion of Rome drives a trium­phal chariot led by four white horses and subju­gates a captive figure of Sicily (Fig. 83). In the same room, Ripanda shows Rome’s enemy Hannibal as a turbaned King (Fig. 84), evoking the imagery of Riario’s parades of prisoners, or costumed actors dressed up as ‘Moors’.⁹²

For the Palilie cele­bra­tions in April 1492, Riario and his fami­liars put on another spec­tacle: the perfor­mance of a newly commis­sioned play about the conquest of Granada. The work was the Historia Baetica or Regni Granatae obsidio by Carlo Verardi of Cesena, a longstanding

ally of the Riario who had been favoured by Pietro Riario twenty years earlier.⁹³ As Verardi wrote in the dedi­ca­tion of the printed text to Riario,

you orga­nised a beau­tiful carro like that which they used to triumph over Baudelis [Muhammad XII], King of Granada […] with such pomp and sple­ndour that the Senate and People of Rome seemed to see once again the ancient triumphs of their ances­tors, long unknown in our own gene­ra­tion. Offe­ring up great prizes, you put on glorious enter­tain­ments for the people in the circus, with many days of crowded games. […] You approved greatly of this work and arranged that it was performed and repre­sented in a tempo­rary theatre set up in your magni­fi­cent palazzo. And it was heard in great silence by patres and the people.⁹⁴

The setting of the perfor­mance was San Lorenzo in Damaso, when cons­truc­tion of the palace and church was underway.⁹⁵ Verardi wrote his Historia Baetica as a prose dialogue between King Ferdi­nand II d’Aragona and King Muhammad XII, ending in a trium­phant Spanish victory over Granada. The perfor­mance during the Palilie allowed for compa­ri­sons to be made

fig. 84 Jacopo Ripanda, Hannibal in Italy, Rome: Palazzo dei Conser­va­tori. c. 1508. Photo © Roma, Sovrin­ten­denza Capi­to­lina ai Beni Culturali.

between the Spanish King and the rulers of ancient Rome who had conquered ‘barba­rians’ of ages past. The fact that Rome’s birthday, the twenty-first of April, happened to fall on the day before Easter helped rein­force a sense of conti­nuity between ancient victo­ries and Chris­tian triumphs. Reli­gious, mili­ta­ristic themes took the place of the pagan come­dies and trage­dies staged during previous cele­bra­tions of the Palilie; in his dedi­ca­tion, Verardi echoed Boscà’s sermon of 1487 by decla­ring the work would not be a fable like the ‘come­dies of Plautus and Naevius’, but instead a ‘new and real history’.⁹⁶

With the Alhambra Decree of 31 March 1492, Isabella and Ferdi­nand ordered the expul­sion of Jews from their terri­to­ries. The elec­tion of the Valen­cian pope Alex­ander VI followed in August. Pro-Spanish senti­ment swelled, leading to the produc­tion of a sequel to Verardi’s play in December 1492. Th is was yet another neo-Latin play written in an expe­ri­mental mode, the Fernandus servatus by Carlo Verardi’s nephew Marcel­lino. The work was dedi­cated to Cardinal Mendoza and performed before the pope and ‘many of the cardi­nals’; it has been suggested that the event took place at Riario’s palace.⁹⁷ Carlo Verardi wrote the preface to the play, in which he borrows a phrase from Plautus’s Amphi­tryon to define his work as a ‘tragi­co­medy’ devoted not to clas­sical fables but current events: the attempted assas­si­na­tion of King Ferdi­nand II in 1492 and his provi­den­tial escape from danger.⁹⁸ The perfor­mance and printed text served the poli­tical purpose of confir­ming an alli­ance between the Spanish monarchs and the pope, one which would allow the stan­dards of Christ ‘to fly over the world’.⁹⁹

Riario and the lite­rati, prea­chers, and artists he spon­sored stood at the centre of a wide­spread propa­gan­di­stic programme inter­wea­ving Spanish conquests with the imagery of the ancient triumph, portraying Ferdi­nand and Isabella—soon to be dubbed the ‘Catholic Kings’—both as legi­ti­mate heirs of the Roman empire and as agents of the Roman Church.¹⁰⁰ The victo­ries in Málaga and Granada had made a profoundly posi­tive impres­sion in the papal court and were, argu­ably, regarded as even more signi­fi­cant than the news of Columbus’s ‘disco­veries’ in the Atlantic in 1492. Even Gaspare de Clodiis, the follower of Pomponio Leto whose eclogue and panegyric for Cardinal Riario was discussed in Chapter 2, now put his talents to the praise of Ferdi­nand and Isabella; probably soon after the surrender of Granada, De Clodiis published in Seville a Panegy­ricus in honour of the Spanish monarchs.¹⁰¹ The themes De Clodiis’s hexa­me­ters explore were clas­si­cising (Ferdi­nand is equated with Hercules, Isabella with Bellona), and heralded the return of an age of Saturn thanks to their Chris­tian triumphs. In Rome, the Pompo­nians serving Cardinal Riario, as well, joined up Spanish victo­ries with the pres­tige of antique and Chris­tian Rome, cele­bra­ting the dawn of a new era. Riario promoted this rhetoric throug­hout the late 1480s and the 1490s, as is seen not only in Marsi’s orations but also in those of the Spanish prea­cher Martin de Viana, an orator iden­ti­fied as a capel­lanus of Riario. In a sermon prono­unced before Alex­ander VI in 1494 and later brought to press, de Viana praised the Spanish monarchs for their triumphs against Muslims and Jews, calling for further Crusades against the Turks in ‘Greece’ and the Sultan in the Holy Land.¹⁰² Riario’s favourite

Mariano da Genaz­zano like­wise received acclaim for his ability to convert ‘here­tics’. It was said there was no ‘sharper sword against the enemies of the faith’ than his sermons.¹⁰³

By promo­ting this type of prea­ching, Riario aspired to a public image like that of Oliviero Carafa, his coun­ter­part in the Domi­nican Order, whose uncle Diomede Carafa had perso­nally led the papal fleet against the Turks and paraded Turkish captives on a trium­phal proces­sion through Rome in 1473. Oliviero Carafa is known as the founder of the Feast of Pasquino, a poetic contest centred on the statue of Pasquino (Fig. 85, see also Map 3) held annu­ally on the feast day of St. Mark in April. Each year, Carafa spon­sored an orator to deliver a sermon in Filip­pino Lippi’s Carafa Chapel at the Minerva, an event that became a show­case of excel­lence in prea­ching and oratory. Riario’s support for the theatre and for Pomponio Leto’s Academy paral­lels his own devo­tion to prea­ching and to clas­si­cally inspired modes of Chris­tian oratory in Rome.¹⁰⁴ Rome’s Acade­micians found willing spon­sors in Riario and Carafa, in part because of their roles as Cardinal Protec­tors of the Domi­nican and Augus­ti­nian prea­ching orders. Riario’s patro­nage can be charac­te­rised as a conti­nua­tion in Rome of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s efforts to culti­vate Fra Mariano da Genazzano’s brand of huma­nist oratory, enli­vened by a thea­trical style compa­rable to that of an actor on the stage. Contem­po­rary commen­ta­tors often elabo­rated on the paral­lels between the effec­tive use of gesture and vocal range of great actors, such as Fedra, and of great prea­chers in Riario’s circle, such as Fra Mariano and Egidio da Viterbo.¹⁰⁵ As was noted in the previous chapter, in Florence Poli­ziano looked to the model of the anci­ents, who had trained young noblemen in the art of acting as a means of refi­ning orato­rical skills. At the same time, he defended Fra Mariano’s spellb­in­ding prea­ching style, which was infused with arti­stry, persua­sive gestures, and vocal modu­la­tion. As Poli­ziano wrote, Fra Mariano ‘varied his illus­tra­tions and voice accor­ding to his thoughts, and by his gestures supported and heigh­tened the effect of his words’.¹⁰⁶ In Rome, Riario’s spon­sor­ship of the theatre and of Pomponio Leto’s acting troupes was— like Cardinal Carafa’s patro­nage of the Festa di Pasquino—motivated not only by an abstract enthu­siasm for clas­sical culture. It also had the wider goal of bols­te­ring the persua­sive powers of oratory in an era of Catholic militancy.

* * *

In the 1480s and 1490s, as cons­truc­tion at San Lorenzo in Damaso was underway, Raffaele Riario deve­loped a wide network of fami­liars, huma­nists, and cour­tiers. At the top of the hier­archy were the wealthy Bishops who resided with the Cardinal, as well as Riario’s closest Sansoni and Spinola rela­tives. Several common charac­te­ristics among his fami­liars stand out, such as a connec­tion to Pomponio Leto, to Mantua, and to Medici Florence. The themes explored by the huma­nists he protected reflect the Cardinal’s special inte­rests in astro­logy, Neopla­to­nism, the study of Hebrew and Arabic, and prisca theo­logia, topics he had likely

first encoun­tered with Ficino. In Riario’s circle, the search for traces of divine reve­la­tion in pre-Chris­tian tradi­tions over­lapped with the revival of ancient poetry and philo­sophy and, as will be discussed in the next chapter, with a fasci­na­tion for antique sculp­ture. Riario’s fami­liars could see the Cardinal’s ascen­dancy predicted in the stars, in sacred texts, and in the mate­rial traces of ancient Roman past: all signs pointed to his destiny to become pope and to usher in a new Golden Age. Pre-Chris­tian forms of reve­la­tion seemed to predict the fulfilment of this divine plan, which would bring about a world­wide triumph of the Chris­tian Church under Riario. To achieve this visio­nary objec­tive, Riario spon­sored Augus­ti­nian preachers—Pietro Marsi, Mariano da Genaz­zano, and Egidio da Viterbo—reborn clas­sical orators who, like Quin­ti­lian and Cicero, could persuade their audi­ences using the skills of the grea­test actors.

fig. 85 Rome, Pasquino. Roman copy of a Helle­ni­stic original. Photo: Author.