The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

Abstract

This collection of twenty papers originated in sessions of the Renaissance Society of America conference in Florence in March 2000. Clement VII, the second Medici and Florentine pope (from 1523 to 1534), is now recovering from long years of neglect and opprobrium. Both editors have published and will soon publish more about his political career and patronage of art, the two main sections into which the present book is divided. Their introduction summarises the book's aims and contents, though there is also an overall survey of Clement's pontificate by Charles S. Stinger, which appears rather strangely in the middle of the book; slightly edited, it might have come better at the beginning or end. Already in the first sub-section (‘Character, Politics and Family’) Clement begins to look rather different from the well-known contemporary portrayals—as indecisive, avaricious and so on. Such judgements, notably by Francesco Guicciardini and Paolo Giovio, and the whole issue of character judgements in historical writing, are discussed at length in the essay by T.C. Price Zimmerman. Next, Barbara McClung Hallman argues that, in spite of the Sack of Rome in 1527, Clement's pontificate was not ‘disastrous’, even if it destroyed the reputation for astuteness he had previously acquired as Cardinal Giulio de'Medici. Ultimately he achieved his main objectives: the survival of papal authority and of the papal state in central Italy, reconciliation with both France and the Empire, his family's control over Florence, and upwardly-bound careers secured for his young relatives, particularly Ippolito, Alessandro, and Catherine de'Medici. On Clement's relatives, Natalie Tomas writes about two powerful women, Lucrezia and Maria Salviati; on his earlier political experience governing Florence, Patricia J. Osmond discusses the bungled plot against him in 1522, and its disregard of the very precautions which Machiavelli (who appears not to have been involved) had suggested were essential in organising conspiracies. The following section on ‘The Sack of Rome and its Aftermath’ is less focused on Clement himself, but full of fresh information. Cecil Clough discusses the career of Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino, who was no friend of the Medici. Clough stresses Francesco Maria's resentment that Clement did not reinvest him with his vicariates and other honours, and hints that his failure to move the army of the League of Cognac in time to save Rome in May 1527 may have been deliberate. Ivana Ait illustrates conditions during the Sack from the unedited Ephemerides Historicae of the Fleming Cornelius de Fine, while Anna Esposito and Manuel Vaquero Pineiro throw some wholly new light upon that terrible period, using unpublished material from the Rome notarial archives. They demonstrate that to some extent life continued on the assumption that a state of legality would prevail; a number of Spanish captains even had their ransom bargains and appropriated property notarially registered. Finally, Anne Reynolds surveys Clement's period of impoverished exile in Orvieto, citing some documentation from archives there. The second half of the book, embracing ‘Patronage, Cultural Production and Reform’ continues the re-assessment of Clement. In a short essay William E. Wallace illustrates the pope's personal friendship with Michelangelo, and his insistence that the latter must be free to do things in his own way; the pope's only lapse into vanity seems to have been his unfulfilled wish for a colossus in honour of himself outside San Lorenzo in Florence. Caroline Elam is also positive about him, stressing his continued close attention to Medicean projects in Florence, and his delight in ‘qualche fantasia nuova’. She analyses in detail Michelangelo's lunette windows for the New Sacristy in San Lorenzo, with new evidence about his changes in design, and justifies in architectural terms André Chastel's idea of a ‘Clementine style’. Richard Sherr gives an enthralling account of the papal choir, its membership, composition and musical pre-eminence up to the 1560s; he also proves that Clement himself possessed outstanding musical faculties. The remaining five essays are rather miscellaneous in subject, and there is only space here to mention one or two. George L. Gorse discusses Sebastiano del Piombo's Portrait of Andrea Doria, the Genoese admiral commander who all but came to the rescue of Clement in 1528, and on whom (Gorse suggests) lay Clement's hopes for new Roman—or papal—domination of the sea; Sheryl Reiss demonstrates that Adrian VI (Clement's predecessor) was not always so boorish about works of art as Vasari and others insisted. She notes that at any rate his trusted friend and fellow Dutchman, Cardinal Enkevoirt, tried to enlighten him. This valuable—and heavily priced—collection includes about fifty black and white illustrations, copious footnotes (praise to the publishers on this count) and an index. The indexer and two of the authors have invented a non-existent Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga in the 1520s but that is of minor importance.