Patterns of Patronage in Renaissance Rome

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Acknowledgements

The research for this book grew from a small contribution to the on-line Neo-Latin Anthology of the Society for Neo-Latin Studies. I submitted three short epigrams which Sperulo had written for Cesare Borgia. These not only presented an interesting narrative (the discovery of an abandoned baby girl; her baptism and puns around her name) but also offered a different perspective upon one of the most notorious figures of the Italian Renaissance. This anthology also required a short biography of the poet to preface the works selected. At the time I offered only the most rudimentary outline of the poet’s life. I found Sperulo’s work for Cesare Borgia, however, to be of such interest that I decided to pursue the research. This book is the result.

There remains the pleasant duty of recording debts of thanks. My research has profited from the advice of many friends and colleagues. My thanks for answering questions, for discussion, for various kinds of help go to Albrect Burkardt, David Chambers, Tracy Cosgriff, Ann Giletti, Jeffery Glodzik, Luke Houghton, Jakub Koguciuk, John Law, Rosie Lehmann, Frances Muecke, Marianne Pade, Alessandro Pagliara, Isabel Porcu, Ellie Reeve and Bernhard Schirg. Pete Sheppard and Sarah Yates provided unbounded antipodean hospitality and access to their library. Jean Schofield, once again, admirably fulfilled the role of Gentle Reader. Franziska Wallner Romana obtained volumes and articles that would otherwise have been inaccessible. Rosa Fusco, Daniele Torri and Gianluca Ariodante of the IT department of The American University of Rome always responded promptly and politely to repeated pestering. Malissa Arras and Anna Schorch chased and cross-checked references. James Green completed the Index. Vincent Drago kindly read through some of the Latin passages and questioned Sperulo’s grammar and syntax. Kristen Hook proved a delightful companion with whom to work on the transcriptions and translations of Sperulo’s vernacular correspondence. The inclusion of her essay on the ← xi | xii → language of these letters greatly enhances the quality of this research. Any infelicities of translation in the Latin and Italian texts are, needless to say, my own responsibility. Mazen Haidar used his technological skill to draw the maps and plans and make preliminary drafts of the cover and plates. Special thanks are due to Andrew Thompson, then acting-President of The American University of Rome, for his invaluable support at a critical time and to the inimitable Fabio Barry for keeping me in good spirits.

In the process of writing this book, I have frequently recalled with gratitude the lecture courses and seminars of Professor R.D. Williams who first introduced me, a raw undergraduate at the University of Reading, to the sophisticated delights of Augustan poetry. My debt is greater than I can possibly acknowledge but I hope repaid in part herein.

The series editor, Sarah Alyn Stacey, has guided my contribution to this new venture with wit and wisdom. I am, once again, in her debt. Similarly, I must thank David Rundle. His input and constructive criticism at all stages of the development of this study were of immense importance. If, despite their valiant efforts, any faults remain, they are the result of my own stubbornness. I should also like to express my warmest thanks to Jasmin Allousch, Christabel Scaife and all the staff at Peter Lang for their hard work in preparing the manuscript for press. This book could not have been completed in a timely fashion without the award of a sabbatical semester and a grant towards publication costs from The American University of Rome.

Thanks are also due to the Director, librarians and staffs of a number of archives and libraries across Europe who kindly facilitated access to Sperulo’s works and who supplied images and photocopies of his manuscripts and diplomatic correspondence, in particular, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Città del Vaticano.

My greatest thanks, however, go to my mother Beryl Patricia Gwynne who allowed me frequently ‘to go back to Tara’, scatter books across the living room and write. The book is dedicated to her.

— PAUL GARETH GWYNNE, Capo d’Africa, Rome, November 2014

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List of Abbreviations

In referring to classical authors and their works I have followed the standard abbreviations as listed by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, eds, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn revd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) xxix–liv. All references to classical texts, unless otherwise stated, are to the Loeb Classical Library. Similarly, all translations of classical Latin are taken from the most recent Loeb editions (at times with my own adaptions), and are acknowledged accordingly.

Archives and Libraries

Works

Abbreviations for the Citation of Archival and Manuscript Sources

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List of Illustrations

Colour Plates

1. Dedicatory epistle, Book One, manuscript for Cesare Borgia. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5205, fol. 1^r. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican)

2. Dedicatory epistle, Book Two, manuscript for Cesare Borgia. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5205, fol. 32^r. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican)

3. Title-page, manuscript for Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5812, fol. 1^v. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican)

4. Dedicatory epistle, manuscript for Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5812, fol. 2^r. © Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican)

Black and White Figures

1. Partial genealogy of the Medici family

2. Letter from Maria della Rovere to Felice della Rovere seeking the Bishopric of Civita Castellana for Sperulo. Written by Sperulo. ASC, Archivio Orsini, 1. 93, c. 282^r

3. Letter from Sperulo to Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (BOP, Monumenti Rovereschi MS 375, vol. 3, c. 115^r)

4. Letter from Maria della Rovere to her son Sigismondo da Varano concerning his safety. Written by Sperulo and Maria della Rovere. ASF, Ducato di Urbino, Classe Prima, 14, c. 539^r ← xvii | xviii →

5. Letter from Maria della Rovere to her sister-in-law Eleonora Gonzaga della Rovere, Duchess of Urbino, from Ancona, 8 February 1528. Written by Sperulo. ASF, Ducato di Urbino, Classe Prima, 108, c. 221

6. Key to the codes and ciphers

7. Map of Italy showing Cesare’s second campaign in the Romagna, 1500 (after Bradford)

8. Pietro Santi Bartoli, Scenes from the Life of Pope Leo X, engravings taken from Raphael’s tapestries for the Sistine Chapel: The River Tiber

9. Pietro Santi Bartoli, Scenes from the Life of Pope Leo X, engravings taken from Raphael’s tapestries for the Sistine Chapel: Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici escapes his French captors at the Battle of Ravenna

10. Map of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Khanate of the Crimea with the Battle of Olszanica, 1527

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Introduction to Both Volumes

Many of the neo-Latin poets who frequented the literary circles of early sixteenth-century Rome are shadowy figures. Most are known only by their name or, at best, a solitary poem often found in a single manuscript or rare, early printed anthologies. With the exception of Poliziano, for example, most of the poets who contributed verses to the deluxe manuscript on the death of Orsini Lanfredini († 1488), the son of the Florentine representative in Rome, are unknown elsewhere, while few of the 120 contributors to the printed anthology, known as the Coryciana, are well-known (see below, Chapters 2 and 12).¹ Occasionally a whole volume of verse survives from a poet, for example, the elegies written on a variety of themes by Guido Posthumo Silvestri (1479–1521).²

Francesco Sperulo (1463–1531), however, is particularly fortunate for three manuscripts of his Latin poetry have survived and are now preserved in the Vatican Library.³ Two are deluxe presentation copies written on fine ← xix | xx → parchment in coloured inks: BAV, Vat. lat. 5205, a brief epic on the siege of Faenza and a series of epigrams addressed to Cesare Borgia in 1501 (Colour Plates 1–2); BAV, Vat. lat. 5812, an extended description of the building of a suburban villa on the slopes of Monte Mario (now the Villa Madama) presented in 1519 to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (afterwards Pope Clement VII; Colour Plates 3–4). The third manuscript is a collection of four books of elegiac verse (BAV, Vat. lat. 1673; Figures 14–17). Unlike the manuscripts for Cesare Borgia and Cardinal de’ Medici, this is a large paper volume that was originally intended for Cardinal Luigi de’ Rossi, but reworked, after the Cardinal’s untimely death, to solicit patronage from Cardinal Ercole Rangone, and, to judge from the revisions and additions to the verse, this manuscript ultimately became the poet’s taccuino [composition book]. Other poems ascribed to the poet can be found in various manuscript anthologies in libraries across Europe. Two public orations, dated 1526 and 1527, were later published, at Rome, and at Rome and Krakow and Kraków respectively.