"Whom the wild wave of pleasure ever drove
Before the sprightly tempest, tossing light,"

was magnificent beyond example, lavish in his tastes for silver and gold stuffs, splendid dresses, spirited horses. He was surrounded by troops of retainers, and filled his house with rising poets and celebrated painters. He was munificent to the learned, generous to the poor, and frequently celebrated public banquets and games at prodigious expense. Though he lived but two years and a half after his elevation to the purple, he had in that brief space completed a rarely equalled career of civil and ecclesiastical preferment, of public extravagance, and personal debauchery. Taddeo Manfredi, Lord of Imola, having been expelled by domestic intrigues, was bribed by the Cardinal with 40,000 crowns to assign that fief to his brother Girolamo Riario, an arrangement sanctioned willingly by Sixtus, reluctantly by the consistory. After making a progress to Lombardy and Venice as papal legate, with a pomp unequalled even in an age of splendour, Pietro returned to Rome, and died in January 1474, of fever aggravated by previous excesses. Panvinio says he seemed born to waste money, and estimates his expenditure whilst cardinal at the enormous sum of 270,000 golden scudi.[212]

The wars into which the Pontiff recklessly plunged, from rage against the Medici and anxiety to consolidate a sovereignty for Count Girolamo, occasioned vast expense, and the deficiency of his exchequer led him to adopt expedients of an eventually dangerous tendency. Panvinio asserts for him a disreputable priority in the creation of places and offices, in order to raise a revenue by their sale. The simony thus systematised tended at once to taint the morals and degrade the reputation of the Roman court. Under Borgia's pontificate we have seen it carried to a frightful height, and attended by scandals the most heinous; in that of Leo X. it became a mainspring of the Reformation.

Yet it was not by wars alone that the papal treasury was embarrassed, nor were the bounties of Sixtus limited to claims of nepotism, for he reaped from many the praises due to a liberality large rather than discriminating. The whirlwind of Turkish invasion had lately swept over the ruins of the Eastern Empire, and for the Christian princes who fled before it, abandoning their states to seek a precarious hospitality, Rome formed the natural refuge. Thither came the expelled despots of Albania and the Morea, the crownless queens of Cyprus and Bosnia, all of whom received from the Pontiff a welcome and honourable entertainment due to their misfortunes and to their virtual martyrdom. To such European princes as visited the Eternal City, in performance of their religious duties, he accorded a splendid reception. But there were other outlays still more creditable to him, as adorning the city and ameliorating the condition of its inhabitants. He was the first pope who earnestly set about rescuing from degradation the monuments of ancient Rome, and improving the modern city. Among numerous public buildings erected, restored, or decorated by him were the Ponte Sisto, the great hospital of Santo Spirito, the old Vatican Library, the aqueduct of Trevi, the churches of La Pace, il Popolo, S. Vitale, S. Sisto, S. Pietro in Vinculis, and many others. To the Riarii, by his encouragement, we owe the Cancelleria Palace and the adjoining church of S. Lorenzo in Damaso. The restoration of that of the SS. Apostoli, begun on a grand scale by his nephew Pietro, was interrupted by the early death of that dissolute minion, whose tomb remains in the choir, finely conceived and beautifully executed. Nor was public convenience overlooked amid such magnificent creations. As Augustus was said to have replaced his capital of brick with one of marble, it became proverbial that Sixtus rebuilt in brick what he found of mud. He paved the streets, re-opened the sewers, conveyed the aqua vergine to the heart of the city. By proclaiming the jubilee at the end of twenty-five years, instead of each half-century, he doubled the influx of pilgrim revenues; and, warned by the catastrophe of its preceding celebration, when crowds had been trodden down on the Ponte S. Angelo, he provided for the devout multitude a new access to S. Peter's by the bridge which bears his name. His beneficial undertakings, however, extended far beyond the Eternal City: he cleared out the choked harbour of Ostia, thoroughly repaired the crumbling church of St. Francis at Assisi,[*213] and began, in honour of the Santa Casa at Loreto, that gorgeous fane which was unworthily finished by the next Pontiff of his name. Neither was he indifferent to the social disorganisation of his metropolis. He curbed its lawless state by a rigorous police. Public begging was strictly suppressed; and all who could not prove some legitimate means of livelihood were banished. Malefactors of every sort, after summary conviction, were whipped through the streets, and consigned to the galleys or the gallows. Daily executions took place for a time, and though the measures adopted were both sanguinary and oppressive, order and security were in a great degree restored to the thoroughfares.

There is reason to fear that the stern discipline, whereby he vindicated public manners, was not applied to his personal habits. Yet the character given of him by Infessura, whereon depends most of the scandal by which his memory has been blackened, appears so grossly exaggerated as to defeat its own end, and to establish a charge of prejudice, if not of malevolence, against its author. To transcribe it would be to stain our pages; but its purport is summed up in some ribald Latin verses, borrowed, probably, from Pasquin, which impute to the Pope every imaginable iniquity and disgraceful indulgence, and congratulate Nero in being at length exceeded in crime.[*214]

Although the name of Sixtus, as a friend of letters and arts, has been dimmed by the more glorious ones of Nicolas V. and Leo X., which at no long intervals preceded and followed him, the memorials remaining of his judicious patronage are interesting and important. Innocent III., in building the Hospital of S. Spirito, had embellished it with six frescoes illustrative of its destination. To these Sixtus added twenty-seven others, forming a cycle of the personal and public incidents of his life, from his mother's miraculous vision, to his anticipated introduction into Paradise by St. Paul, in recompense of his piety. These paintings are no longer visible; nor do we know from whose pencils the vast series emanated, but in the Sistine Chapel, which perpetuates his name, and was his most important artistic undertaking, his choice was unexceptionable. Apart from the celebrity conferred upon it by the subsequent impress of Buonarroti's stupendous inventions, the series wherein the lives of our Saviour and of Moses are contrasted constitutes a chapter of scarcely equalled importance in the progress of Christian painting. Who can view the mighty themes of that oratory,—the types and antitypes of scriptural history on its walls, the creations of Omnipotence on its roof, the final Judgment over its altar,—without gratitude to the della Rovere pontiffs, by whom these triumphs were commissioned, and for the most part carried out? This may, indeed, be called the foundation of the Roman pictorial school. Giotto, Fra Angelico, Gentile da Fabriano, and Masaccio had, indeed, visited the metropolis of Christendom, but no pontiff before Sixtus had summoned hither, and at once employed, all the most distinguished artists of Central Italy. The glorious band, though headed by Perugino,[*215] consisted of Florentines,—Signorelli, Botticelli, Rosselli, della Gatta, and Ghirlandaio; but these soon returned to the art-loving and art-inspiring Arno, leaving on the plain of the Tiber few other works, and a most transient influence, in exchange for the classical ideas which they had imbibed in "august, imperial Rome," and which quickly supplanted the sacred traditions of their native school. Although Pinturicchio was not associated in their labours upon the Sistine, he was busy upon other not less important mural decorations, which still adorn the churches of Aracoeli, Sta. Croce in Gerusalemme, and S. Onofrio. But Sta. Maria del Popolo was especially the scene of his triumphs, under the auspices of various Cardinals della Rovere, and other members of the consistory, who were instigated by example of his Holiness to such laudable employment of their exorbitant incomes.

Panvinio speaks of this Pope's solicitude to gather from all Europe additions to the library founded by Nicolas V., and attest his having first put it upon a satisfactory footing, by appointing qualified persons to superintend it, and by assigning it an adequate endowment. Though the rooms in which he placed books have been devoted to other purposes, ever since Sixtus V. removed the augmented collection to its present site, a most interesting memorial of the Pontiff's family and court remains, and has till lately adorned its original locality. It is a fresco, now transported to the Vatican Picture-gallery, wherein Sixtus sits in a noble hall of imposing architecture, with his librarian Bartolomeo Sacchi, surnamed Platina, kneeling at his feet, and pointing to an inscription, which enumerates in rough Latin verses, those ameliorations for which Rome was indebted to his Holiness. In attendance stand his two favourite cardinal nephews; Pietro, with features expressive of unrefined sensualism, wearing the russet habit of the mendicant fraternity, from whose discipline he emerged to lavish ill-gotten gold with rarely equalled prodigality; whilst in the cold and unimpassioned countenance of Giuliano, we vainly seek for those massive features, and that angry scowl, which the pencil of Raffaele subsequently immortalised. The group is completed by the two younger nephews, Girolamo, Lord of Forlì, gawky and common-place in figure, with the Prefect Giovanni, of blunt and burly aspect. It would be difficult satisfactorily to render so large a group in these pages, but we give an unedited and speaking likeness of the Pontiff from a miniature of the same size prefixed to the MS. of Platina's Lives of the Popes, dedicated to him and now in the Vatican Library.

Besides the claims of this fresco upon our notice, from representing the important members of the della Rovere family, it would be still more interesting to us, were it, as formerly supposed, from the pencil of Pietro della Francesca, court-painter of Urbino. It is now, however, ascribed, almost beyond question, to a pupil of his, sung by Giovanni Sanzi, as

"Melozzo, dear to me,
Who to perspective farther limits gave."