Cortese's Ideal Cardinal? Praising Art, Spendour and Magnificence in Bernardino de Carvajal's Roman Residence

Abstract

This article offers a close analysis of three neo-Latin poems from a larger cycle of verse dedicated in 1511 to the Spanish cardinal Bernardino de Carvajal (1456-1523) by the Italian humanist Giambattista Cantalicio (1445-1515). Reviewing the poet's flattering descriptions of lavish banquets, the daily routine of the cardinal's court and a tapestry cycle which once adorned Carvajal's residence, it further analyses the contemporary aesthetics which underlie Cantalicio's praise of the cardinal's lost palace in Rome. In the process, the article also reviews the social dynamic which prompted the display of magnificence as well as the problematic issues raised by the flagrant display of such splendour within an ecclesiastical context. Exploring social practice, artworks and intellectual treatises, the article outlines the process by which the concept of magnificence, which forms the basis of Cantalicio's praise of the cardinal, was rehabilitated in the decades preceding the Reformation. Placing the poet's encomium not only in the light of Giovanni Pontano's so-called social treatises and Paolo Cortese's De cardinalatu (1510), but also within the context of the contemporary iconographic programme at Carvajal's titular church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, the article embeds these neo-Latin poems within the wider social, historical and cultural context of Renaissance Rome.