In September 1494 Charles VIII. of France invaded Italy. The Colonna and the Savelli, whom he had taken into his pay, were threatening the Eternal City from Frascati. Their intention was to take it by assault, make the Pope a prisoner, and seize Djem, the Mahometan prince. The Pope was filled with terror as Ostia surrendered to the allies of France, and a portion of Charles’s fleet appeared at the mouth of the Tiber. Charles himself was advancing through Tuscany, accompanied by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and a proposal was discussed to deprive the Pope, whose crimes had become notorious, of his power. Alexander began to make plans for the defence of the city. He assembled what troops he could muster, and garrisoned and provisioned the Castel Sant’ Angelo. On December 18th, all the furniture and valuables were packed, and as Charles continued to advance, meeting with more welcome than resistance, the treasures of the Vatican were sent to the old Roman fortress. The Pope presently made a treaty with Charles, allowing him a free passage to Naples with his army, and permitting his entry into Rome. Charles entered with a magnificent army, while the Pope with his small force sat trembling in the Vatican.
In January 1495, the Pope, terrified by the violence of the French troops, left his splendid painted suite in the Vatican and shut himself up in Sant’ Angelo, where he remained while the French army sacked the city. Finally, a treaty was concluded by which Alexander ceded many of his possessions, and surrendered Prince Djem, while the king promised to recognise him as Pope, and to defend his rights, thus delivering him from his most imminent danger. The meeting of the Pope and king was arranged to take place, as if by accident, in the garden of the fortress. Charles knelt, and Alexander embraced him. The Pope bestowed the Cardinal’s hat on Briçonnet, a favourite of the king. On January 19th a Consistory was held, at which the king kissed the hand and foot of the Vicar of Christ, and did that formal homage which he had hitherto refused to render. Alexander celebrated a solemn Mass of reconciliation in St. Peter’s, and the king acted as thurifer. On January 12th, the red hat was given to another noble of France, and on the 25th, the Pope, accompanied by Prince Djem, rode with the king in a public procession through Rome, upon which Charles departed, bent on the conquest of Naples. Having accomplished this, he was back in Rome in June, upon which Alexander fled to Orvieto and Perugia, probably taking Pintoricchio in his train. Charles’s policy having taken him to the north of Italy by the end of June, Alexander returned to Rome, where he now, hearing of the defeat of the French troops in Lombardy, found courage to denounce the king.
In 1497 the rooms of the upper storey of Sant’ Angelo, which Alexander at this time strongly fortified, were destroyed by an explosion of powder. They were rebuilt as quickly as possible, and the time of danger being over, Pintoricchio was again called for to immortalise the events of the last two years. There is no doubt (says Gregorovius) that Pintoricchio was in Rome at the time of Charles’s entry, and was an eyewitness of that and other stirring scenes.[28] Vasari says[29] that Pintoricchio painted a number of rooms in the Castel Sant’ Angelo, with grotesques, but the little tower in the garden was adorned with the history of Pope Alexander, and there could be descried Isabella, the Catholic Queen, Niccolo Orsino, Count of Pitigliano, Gianiacomo Trivulzio, and many other relatives and friends of the Pope, and in particular, Cæsar Borgia, with his brother and sister, and many celebrated persons of the time. The garden tower has been pulled down, and in the upper rooms only a fragment of decoration remains, a shield supported by children in Pintoricchio’s favourite manner. We are, however, indebted to Lorenzo Behaim, who for twenty-two years was the Pope’s major-domo, for a list of the subjects painted in the pleasure house.[30]
[28] Gregorovius, vol. viii. part ii. p. 725.
[29] Vasari, vol. iii. p. 500.
[30] Gregorovius. Lucrezia Borgia, pp. 127, 128.
The whole story of the French king’s entry into the capital was made to redound to the glory of the Pope. Charles was represented kneeling at his feet, taking the oath, serving at Mass. The Pope was shown investing the French ecclesiastics with the Cardinal’s hat. In a procession to San Paolo, the king stood at the Pope’s bridle rein, and the final scene showed the departure for Naples, accompanied by the Sultan Djem.
In comparing these in our mind with the frescoes in the Library of Siena, painted a few years later, it is possible to imagine what Pintoricchio would have made of these very similar themes. Here, as there, there is an endowment of the red hat, a Consistory, an act of homage to the enthroned Pope, and a gay procession. In the Louvre is a drawing of Pintoricchio’s of three pages leaning on halberds, which may be part of the design for one of these frescoes. Djem he would have brought in again, as he depicted him in the Borgia Apartments. The number of contemporary portraits would have made this second great piece of work executed for the Borgia Pope of surpassing interest to historians.