Epilogue

Epilogue

This study began with a nine­te­enth-century photo­graph of Jacopo Galli’s house on the piazza in front of San Lorenzo in Damaso—a corner of Rome poised on the brink of trans­for­ma­tion. The houses of the Galli were demo­lished and, along with them, the memory of the setting where Cardinal Raffaele Riario, Jacopo Galli, and Michel­an­gelo came toge­ther. When these three extra­or­di­nary lives inter­sected, Riario was focused on advan­cing his family’s status and secu­ring lasting power. Galli hoped to navi­gate oppor­tu­ni­ties afforded by his ties to Riario and by his place at the centre of a cultural and commer­cial resur­gence in the Rione Parione. Michel­an­gelo, an ambi­tious and well-connected young artist, arrived in Rome eager to capi­ta­lise on the pros­pects that Riario and Galli could provide. The artist’s drive to assert his talents in rela­tion to the antique masters had been culti­vated in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s sculp­ture garden and recently put on display in Rome by his self-reve­la­tion as the author of the Slee­ping Cupid. Cardinal Riario granted Michel­an­gelo a pivotal commis­sion, chal­len­ging him to study antique figures and summon the ‘spirit’ to rival them with a new statue. Riario’s Bacchus vali­dated Michelangelo’s stan­ding with a work esteemed by a pres­ti­gious patron and considered worthy of inclu­sion in a coll­ec­tion of antiquities.

While it has been assumed that Michel­an­gelo preferred genui­nely clas­sical ‘sources’ in devi­sing his Bacchus, he drew inspi­ra­tion rather from Antonio Federighi’s marble Bacchus, Floren­tine bronze statu­ettes, and the text of the Libellus, resul­ting in a unique reinter­pre­ta­tion of the subject. The statue’s intended place­ment may have been within a garden coll­ec­tion desi­gned to bring pagan ‘gods’ into the quasi-divine realm of Riario’s palace, likely reflec­ting Riario’s aspi­ra­tion to rival Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere’s coll­ec­tion. In an era marked by confi­dence in the Church’s mission of conver­sion and over­seas conquest, the Bacchus aligned with themes Riario favoured in his patro­nage of poetry, theatre, and prea­ching: a new era of Chris­tian triumph had been predicted by ancient prophe­cies, which were now being brought to frui­tion through Riario’s ascent to power. As buil­ding work on Riario’s Palazzo San Giorgio continued, the Bacchus likely never reached Riario’s palace, was kept stored with Jacopo Galli, and ulti­m­ately became the property of Galli and his heirs. Its display in the Isola Galli came to repre­sent Galli’s support of Michel­an­gelo and a part­ner­ship between them that played a critical, though over­looked, role in Michelangelo’s career.

Galli’s fasci­na­ting persona, Michelangelo’s asso­cia­tion with both Galli and Cardinal Riario, and the long­stan­ding presence of the Bacchus and Young Archer in the Galli family’s houses have faded from memory. Only in recent decades have histo­rians begun to examine seriously the role of the Roman nobles like Galli in shaping the city’s anti­qua­rian, cultural, and economic trans­for­ma­tions. Cardinal Riario, too, has been overs­ha­dowed by the powerful legacy of Ascanio Condivi’s damnatio memo­riae, further rein­forced by modern condem­na­tions of Riario’s secular life­style. The pivotal disco­very by Michael Hirst in 1981 that Cardinal Riario, not Galli, was the original patron of the Bacchus exposed Condivi’s red herring. Yet, despite this disco­very, miscon­cep­tions about the context that gave rise to the Bacchus have continued.

Taking into account the power dyna­mics, cultural networks, and intellec­tual impulses that shaped the exch­ange between Riario, Galli, and Michel­an­gelo, this study has sought to correct past misper­cep­tions with a compre­hen­sive reex­ami­na­tion of Riario’s patro­nage, Galli’s importance as an inter­me­diary between Michel­an­gelo and the Cardinal, Michelangelo’s crea­tion of the Bacchus and Young Archer in the milieu of Riario and Galli, and the vivid after­life of his sculp­tures in the Isola Galli. It has shed light on cons­truc­tion of the Palazzo San Giorgio, signi­fi­cant commis­sions asso­ciated with Riario, the begin­nings of Michelangelo’s career with the support of Riario and Galli, and the artist’s profound enga­ge­ment with their Roman milieu. Drawing on an array of histo­rical sources—most signi­fi­cantly the acts of Senilis and the account books of the Galli-Balducci bank—it has chal­lenged the conven­tional view that Michel­an­gelo was an artist shaped by Ficino’s Neopla­to­nism, who was untouched by his early encoun­ters with Riario and Galli in Rome. It has traced the Riario’s dramatic fall follo­wing the loss of Imola and the Petrucci conspi­racy, as well as the decline of the Galli brought about by the devas­ta­ting Sack of 1527. In the after­math of the Sack the Bacchus, deli­bera­tely displayed with its hand missing, remained an endu­ring relic of the Galli’s rela­ti­onship with Michel­an­gelo, allo­wing them to assert their pivotal role in the artist’s career by staging his rivalry with the antique. Ulti­m­ately, however, the Galli could not resist the pres­sure to sell the Bacchus to the Medici, who appro­priated it for their own purposes in Florence.

Since this narra­tive has centred on the forma­tion, disso­lu­tion, and deli­be­rate erasure of a colla­bo­ra­tion between Riario, Galli, and Michel­an­gelo, it has left many avenues open for further explo­ra­tion. These include the evolu­tion of Riario’s patro­nage in the sixte­enth century, Michelangelo’s invol­vement in Rome’s anti­qua­rian scene in his later career, the inter­sec­tion between the Camera Apos­to­lica and the banking networks that supported archi­tec­tural and artistic projects in Rome, or the broader role of the Roman nobi­lity in the patro­nage of powerful cardi­nals. The conver­gence of artistic, finan­cial, and poli­tical inte­rests that united Riario, Galli, and Michelangelo—and was instru­mental in the crea­tion of Michelangelo’s Bacchus—remains a rich field for ongoing discus­sion and debate.