The road to Garlenda passes through orchards of peaches and fields of narcissus.
“The valley is radiantly beautiful in spring. Overhead are tall peach trees with their luxuriance of pink blossom. Beneath these the vines cling in Bacchanalian festoons, leaping from tree to tree, and below all large melons, young corn, and bright green flax, waving here and there into sheets of blue flower, form the carpet of Nature. Sometimes gaily-painted towers and ancient palazzi, with carved armorial gateways and arched porticoes, break in upon the solitude of the valley.”—Hare.
CHAPTER XIX
SAVONA
The city and port—Pope Sixtus IV.—The Della Rovere family—Nepotism—Assassination of Giuliano di Medici—Methods of filling the treasury—Sixtus and the Spirituals—Julius II.—A fighting pope: his portrait by Raphael—Pius VII. at Savona: his removal from Rome—Death of Princess Borgia—Bishop Grossulano—The Margravate of Savona—The Sanctuario—Crowned images—Jacques de Voragine—The Albizzola Palace: and Gardens—Mme. de Genlis and travelling on Corniche Road—Ruined palaces of Liguria.
SAVONA, with its port, its towers, its engirdling mountains, and its wide-stretching orange and lemon orchards, is a very charming town.
The port, with its picturesque tower, engages the eye at once. The cathedral, built in 1604, is in the uninteresting style of that period. It contains some good pictures by Brea, 1495, and Aurelio Robertelli, 1449; and the tomb of the parents of Pope Sixtus IV. who was a native of Celle, near Savona. His father was a poor boat or fisherman called della Rovere; but it was the whim of Francesco della Rovere, when he became Pope under the title of Sixtus IV., to be thought a scion of the ancient house of the same name at Turin. A false pedigree was forged, and he purchased the complaisance of the Turin family, and silenced their jibes, by giving them two cardinal’s hats. He assumed their arms—a golden oak tree on an azure ground—which figures on the tomb at Savona, and which Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in compliment to Pope Sixtus and to his nephew Julius.
Francis de la Rovere was born in 1414, and entered the Franciscan order, became provincial of Liguria, and finally general of the order. He was elevated to be Cardinal by the advice of Bessarion, who had conceived a high notion of his learning and abilities. He became Pope in 1471 and occupied the papal chair till 1484, and was perhaps the second wickedest pontiff seated on that throne, coming only a short way after Alexander VI.