April 4th, 1830
To the Sistine Chapel for the ceremonies of Palm Sunday; we got into the body of the chapel, not without difficulty; but we saw M. de la Ferronays in his box, and he let us in (Morier and me). It was only on a third attempt I could get there, for twice the Papal halberdiers thrust me back, and I find since it is lucky they did not do worse; for upon some occasion one of them knocked a cardinal’s eye out, and when he found who he was, begged his pardon, and said he had taken him for a bishop. Here I had a fine opportunity of seeing the frescoes, but they are covered with dirt, the ‘Last Judgment’ neither distinguishable nor intelligible to me. The figures on the ceiling and walls are very grand even to my ignorance. The music (all vocal) beautiful, the service harmoniously chanted, and the responsive bursts of the chorus sublime. The cardinals appeared a wretched set of old twaddlers, all but about three in extreme decrepitude—Odescalchi, who is young and a good preacher, Gregorio, Capellari [afterwards Pope Gregory XVI.]. On seeing them, and knowing that the sovereign is elected by and from them, nobody can wonder that the country is so miserably governed. These old creatures, on the demise of a Pope, are as full of ambition and intrigue as in the high and palmy days of the Papal power. Rome and its territory are certainly worth possessing, though the Pontifical authority is so shorn of its beams; but the fact is that the man who is elected does not always govern the country,[15] and he is condemned to a life of privation and seclusion. An able or influential cardinal is seldom elected. The parties in the Conclave usually end by a compromise, and agree to elect some cardinal without weight or influence, and there are not now any Sixtus the Fifths to make such an arrangement hazardous. Austria, Spain, and France have all vetos, and Portugal claims and exercises one when she can. To this degradation Rome is now obliged to submit. The most influential of the cardinals is Albani.[16] At the last election the Papal crown was offered to Cardinal Caprara, but Albani stipulated that he should make him Secretary of State; Caprara refused to promise, and Albani procured the election of the present Pope (who did not desire or expect the elevation), became Secretary of State A DEAD CARDINAL (being eighty), and governs the country. He is rich and stingy. The great Powers still watch the proceedings of the Conclave with jealousy; and though it is difficult to conceive how the Pope can assist any one of them to the detriment of another, an Ambassador will put his veto upon any cardinal whom he thinks unfavourable to his nation; this produces all sorts of trickery, for when the Conclave want to elect a man who is obnoxious to Austria, for example, they choose another whom they think is equally so (but whom they do not really wish to elect), that the veto may be expended upon him, for each Government has one veto only. The last veto absolutely put was on Cardinal ——, who was elected on the death of Pius VII. He had behaved very rudely to the Empress Maria Louisa when she took refuge in the north of Italy after the downfall of Napoleon, thinking it was a good moment to bully the abdicated Emperor’s wife. She complained to her father, who promised her the Cardinal never should be Pope. He was a young and ambitious man, and the veto killed him with vexation and disappointment.
[15] This, from what I have heard since, was not true of the last Pope, Leo XII., who was an odious, tyrannical bigot, but a man of activity, talent, and strength of mind, a good man of business, and his own Minister. He was detested here, and there are many stories of his violent exertions of authority. He was a sort of bastard Sixtus V., but at an immense distance from that great man, ‘following him of old, with steps unequal.’ He used, however, to interfere with the private transactions of society, and banish and imprison people, even of high rank, for immorality.
[16] Albani holds the Austrian veto, and is supported by her authority. But I have heard that since Clement XI., who was an Albani, there has always been a powerful Albani faction in the Conclave. This cardinal is enormously rich and the head of his house. The Duke of Modena is his nephew, and it is generally thought will be his heir.
Went and walked about St. Peter’s, and was surprised to find how very little longer it is than St. Paul’s. To the Farnese Palace, built by Paul III. out of the ruins of the Coliseum, which now, with all the Farnese property, belongs to the King of Naples, and is consequently going to decay. It got into his hands by the marriage of a King of Naples with the last heiress of the house of Farnese. The Neapolitan property here consists of the Farnese and Farnesina Palaces, the Orti Farnesiani, and the Villa Madama, all in a wretched state; and the Orti, in which there are probably great remains, they will not allow to be excavated. Many of the fine things are gone to Naples, but a few remain, most of which came out of the Thermæ of Caracalla, and originally from the Villa of Adrian. These two, principally the one through the other, have been the great mines from which the existing treasures of art were drawn. The frescoes in this palace are beautiful—a gallery by Annibal and Agostino Caracci, with a few pictures by Domenichino, Guido, and Lanfranco. Annibal Caracci’s are as fine as any I have seen; also a little cabinet picture painted entirely by Annibal, which is exquisite.
As we were going to this palace we drove by the Cancellaria (which was likewise built out of the Coliseum), and heard by accident that a dead cardinal (Somaglia) was lying in state there. Somaglia was Secretary of State in Leo’s time. Having seen all the living cardinals, we thought we might as well complete our view of the Sacred College with the dead one, and went up. After a great deal of knocking we were admitted to a private view half an hour before the public was let in. He had been embalmed, and lay on a bed under a canopy on an inclined plane, full dressed in cardinal’s robes, new shoes on, his face and hands uncovered, the former looking very fresh (I believe he was rouged), his fingers black, but on one of them was an emerald ring, candles burning before the bed, and the window curtains drawn. He was 87 years old, but did not look so much, and had a healthier appearance in death than half the old walking mummies we had seen with palms in their hands in the morning.
Took a look at Pasquin, who had nothing but advertisements pasted upon him. I had seen Marphorius in the Capitol; there has long been an end to the witty dialogues of the days of Sixtus V., so quaintly told by Leti; they are so little ‘birds of a feather’ (for Pasquin is a mutilated fragment, Marphorius a colossal statue of the ocean) that, residing as they did at different parts of the town, it is difficult to understand how they ever came to converse with each other at all. I remember one of the best of his stories. Sixtus V. made his sister a princess, and she had been a washerwoman. The next day Pasquin appeared with a dirty shirt on. Marphorius asks him ‘why he wears such foul linen;’ and he answers ‘that his washerwoman has been made a princess, and he can’t get it washed.’
To the Farnesina: Raphael’s frescoes, the famous Galatea, and the great head which Michael Angelo painted on the wall, as it is said as a hint to Raphael that he was too minute. There it is just as he left it. Here Raphael painted the Transfiguration, and here the Fornarina was shut up with POMPEY’S STATUE him that he might not run away from his work. It might be thought that to shut up his mistress with him was not the way to keep him to his work. Be that as it may, the plan was a good one which produced these frescoes and the Transfiguration.
I very nearly forgot to mention the Palazzo Spada, where we went to see the famous statue of Pompey, which was found on the spot where the Senate House formerly stood, and which is (as certainly as these things can be certain) the identical statue at the foot of which Cæsar fell.
Muffling his face within his robe
Ev’n at the base of Pompey’s statue,
Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell.