THE BORGIA APARTMENTS

There are, as I have said, few parts of the Vatican about which the information to be found in English books is so incomplete and incorrect as the Borgia Apartments; most of them describe this splendid suite, which is the official residence of the Cardinal Secretary of State, as the Mediæval Museum of the Papacy, or the Armoury, or the Guard-Room of the Swiss Guard. What is more curious, hardly any of them make any allusion to its having been a library, though, from the days of Gregory XVI. to well on into the reign of Leo XIII., it was the Vatican Library as far as the printed books were concerned. The whole two hundred and fifty thousand of them were crowded into its narrow limits, and were so inconveniently crowded that students could not work at them properly. The walls up to the ceilings were blocked with bookcases, and the books of the various Collections, from which the great library was formed, had got hopelessly mixed as far as their source of origin was concerned, though they were arranged according to their contents.

It is difficult for anyone who visits these apartments in their present stately condition to realize that, up to May 1891, the printed books of the Vatican were all here.

Leo XIII., the most brilliant writer in Latin of the two hundred and sixty-four Popes, was a great lover of books, and wished to vie with his predecessors’ achievements in adding to the artistic glories of his palace. He listened eagerly to the petitions which reached him from art lovers begging for a restoration of the Borgia Apartments. The paintings of Pinturicchio, which had made their ceilings a blaze of beauty, had, since the days of Gregory XVI., experienced a great revival in popularity; in the last years of the nineteenth century his fame had almost rivalled that of Perugino.

These glorious works of art were completed, though there is such an incredible amount, not only of painting, but of stucco and papier-mâché work in them (papier-mâché four hundred years ago was turned to more architectural account than it is now), in less than three years, 1492-1494. And this, though Pinturicchio was under a contract at the time to the Canons of Orvieto Cathedral.

the Borgia rooms.]

Alexander VI. was most anxious to occupy the rooms which he had chosen for his apartments in the old Papal Palace on the north side of the quadrangle framed by the Sistine Chapel on the south, and to which he was building a most important addition, the Borgia Tower, where the Hall of the Credo and the Hall of the Sibyls are situated. This was, of course, to be his place of refuge in case of the wars into which his imperious and outrageous acts hurried him. It was Alexander VI. who put the passage between the Vatican and the Castle of Sant’ Angelo into its present fortified condition, and, indeed, who converted the Castle of Sant’ Angelo into a first-class mediæval fortress.

But at the same time, says Ricci, he wished everything to be of unparalleled grandeur and brilliance. In which he succeeded, for Charles VIII., King of France, a monarch of extravagant notions, who dined with the Pope in these rooms immediately after their opening, said he had never seen their equal in palace or castle.

Of course, Pinturicchio, accustomed as he was to working with feverish enthusiasm, could never have accomplished such a _magnum opus_ with his own hands in two or three years. But he was assisted by a number of pupils, including the unidentified disciple of Perugino, who, after himself, did the best work. Also, he did nothing to the first and largest room, and is only partly responsible for the fifth and sixth, the two tower rooms. But the second, third, and fourth, which present some of the most glorious masses of colour in Italy, were entirely of his conception and design, from the cornice upwards, and the most beautiful of the great pictures, which fill the lunettes, were painted by his hand. The Dispute of St. Catherine with the Philosophers is declared to be Pinturicchio’s masterpiece.

The beauty and gorgeousness of these rooms completely satisfied the splendour-loving Pope, as he himself acknowledged in the grant of lands he made Pinturicchio in payment for them. He gave him to understand, says Ricci, that he was to consider the Apostolic Camera not a little in his debt for the paintings in the Palace and the Castle of Sant’ Angelo. “_Industria et maximo sumptu factis._”

But they proved an ill-omened acquisition, for they were of the era when the French King, Charles VIII., who alone could have checkmated the ambitions of the vigorous Borgia, was invading Italy. And the crowning tragedies of the reign were interwoven with them, for it was here that the pleasure-loving Pontiff heard of the murder of his eldest son, Giovanni, by a younger son, the monster Cesare Borgia; and it was here that he heard of the savage attacks of Savonarola; and it was here, says Ricci, that they must have trembled at his death-rattle, when, poisoned, perhaps dying, he measured in his heart the abyss that was to swallow up his evil house. It was here certainly that the old legend of the devil coming for his soul was located.

In the centuries following the Middle Ages at Rome, people seemed to have had no reverence for monuments, however splendid, unless they had built them themselves. Everyone knows how Julius II. tore down Old St. Peter’s, and half a hundred Cardinals tore down old basilicas to replace them with baroque monstrosities. Considering all things, it was a mercy that Julius II. did not reduce the Borgia Rooms to a scrap-heap the moment he came to the throne, so bitter was his hatred of the Borgia Pontiff who meant to encompass his death and had driven him into exile.

Their neglect and abuse must have set in early, for Alexander VI. only died in 1503, and we find Pius IV., when he was elected in 1559, rescuing the Borgia Rooms, which had been terribly knocked about; the Popes were using Raffaelle’s Stanze on the floor above to get more light and air, and these rooms were given up to the Cardinal Nephews. After Sixtus V. had completed the suite of apartments at the eastern end of the Vatican, which are now occupied by the Pope, the Borgia Rooms were abandoned altogether except for emergencies. They suffered still more in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when they were used for erecting the cells in which Cardinals were confined when they were in Conclave to elect a new Pope. And they were also used for the meals of the various officials assembled in the Vatican for the great ceremonies of Holy Week.

In 1816 they suffered fresh violence when Pius VII. drove nails into their walls to hang the pictures returned from Paris, which had no proper places of their own, because they did not belong to him, but to various Italian churches. He did not, of course, touch the great frescoes; since they were painted on vaults of the ceiling they were, fortunately, of no use for his purpose. The rooms were of little enough use as it was, they were so dark, although the marble Guelph crosses and bars were removed from the windows. After five years the pictures were removed and the apartments became a museum of statuary; the walls again suffered, for brackets were nailed up on them. But the most mischief was done when the apartments were turned into the Vatican Library, to receive all the printed books, by Gregory XVI.

Monsignor Ugolini, senior _Scrittore_ of the Vatican Library, who wrote the excellent monograph on the transference of the books from the Borgia Apartments to the Leonine Library, to which the books have been taken, gives this date for the turning the Borgia Rooms into a library, and he must be better informed than Ricci on such a point. Ricci says that it was Pius IX. who turned the rooms into a library to receive the books of Cardinal Mai. When Leo XIII. had the rooms cleared of the books and their shelves, he found that the room was “greatly damaged by old scratches, by the fastening up of pictures in 1816, by the insertion of brackets supporting busts and statuettes in 1821, by the fastening up of the bookcases put up by Pius IX., by the opening up of new doors, and by the closing up of old ones” (Ricci).

The architect employed in the restoration was the Conte Francesco Vespignani. The painter was Commendatore Ludovico Seitz, the art director of the Vatican Galleries. Nothing was done that was not necessary; the repairs were chiefly confined to the injuries on the walls, the plaster, the frescoes, and the stucco. Former renovations were allowed to stand. In some parts of the roofs of Rooms V. and VI. the painting was detached, the wall and plaster restored, and the painting put on again with such accuracy as to leave no mark except a faint white line, “which at once disappeared at a light touch of the brush.” No other retouching was allowed, so as not to interfere with the authenticity of the work. Most of the earlier retouching, according to Ehrle and Stevenson, was done in the time of Pius VII., though some was done when the rooms were occupied by the Cardinal Nephews, especially in the time of Pius IV. and Gregory XIII. Ehrle and Stevenson claim that it is better to have such restoration, because it covers the worst damages in the original frescoes; for to take them away would damage the frescoes still further, and leave bare places; because, being so old, they have their place in the artistic records of the frescoes in the rooms, and because they are recognizable at a glance, and, therefore, do not interfere with the authenticity of the pictures. The only considerable alteration of the pictures in Seitz’s restoration was the painting over the scratch on the Pope’s chin in the magnificent portrait of Alexander VI., in the Sala dei Misteri, which changed the whole character and effect of the portrait.

Ricci strongly disagrees with most of their opinions, though he admits the skill with which Seitz executed his work.

In his superb book on Pinturicchio, published by Heinemann at five and a half guineas, he gives a most interesting account, translated from Ehrle and Stevenson, of the way in which the restorers got over the most difficult part of their work, in making the lower walls, which had sustained all the damage, decorative enough to allow the apartments to be used for State purposes. They are now occupied by the Cardinal Secretary of State, as they were occupied in the sixteenth century by the Cardinal Nephews who performed the duties of that high office. Their side walls had not only been knocked about, but had been covered with whitewash, which had to be removed throughout. When it was removed, it was discovered that, while in the first four rooms there were considerable remains of the old decorations, in the fifth and sixth there were no outlines of any kind except the slightest possible trace by the north window of the former. In the third room there were only slight traces of decorations, just enough to enable the main portions of the design and colouring to be distinguished. In the first room the remaining fragments were not in a condition to be completed, nor to be left _in situ_ as they were found, without disturbing the whole effect. In the second and fourth rooms the ornaments of the walls were in moderately good condition and afforded sufficient scope for the completion of the missing portions.

In these two rooms, known as the _Sala dei Misteri_ and the _Sala delle Arti Liberali_ respectively, the bare walls have been restored with the original designs throughout. But in order to distinguish between the original and the restored parts, the latter have been sketched in much more brightly, or in neutral tints.

In the third room the remaining parts of the old decorations, say these authors, sufficed for the restoration of the principal parts of the design and colouring, while the secondary parts were left entirely to the restorer; the lower part was throughout covered with panels of intarsia work, almost contemporary with Pinturicchio, and made for the rooms immediately below the Borgia Rooms (said to have been used for the Vatican Library by Sixtus IV.); the upper part was covered with canvases, on which what was left of the original decorations was imitated and completed as well as could possibly have been done.

In the first room canvases were employed in the same way, and by a brilliant conception the huge expanses of its walls were relieved by hanging them with a superb series of large tapestries. The walls of the fifth and sixth rooms were also covered with canvases of the same description, but here the painters had a more formidable task before them, for all the original decorations had perished; they had to devise designs in harmony with the ceilings, with the few remnants of painting round the north window, and with the splendid old tiles left here and there on the floor, made in the Spanish style so common in Sicily, with the Borgia arms--the ox and raying crown, for the motives.

It is not my intention in describing the Palace rooms, which are among the most delightfully gay and gorgeous of the world’s monuments, to pause to inquire if Pinturicchio painted the whole of the Pope’s mantle in that wonderful kneeling figure of Alexander VI., or to discuss technicalities at all. That is for artists to propound to artists, a very small and depreciative audience. I am not capable of writing for them, and I do not wish to write for them; most of them go through galleries looking out for faults, not beauties, and though the chance of the humblest living depends on it, they nearly always fail to remember that art was made for mankind, not for rival artists. I have a melancholy example before me of the dangers of a little knowledge of art. Writing about the Borgia Rooms, which form admittedly one of the most beautiful _ensembles_ in the whole of art, it is only occasionally that the author vouchsafes a saltspoonful of praise; he is afraid of devoting one word to enthusiasm.

That is not the way to write about the Borgia Rooms. The ordinary visitors who go there do not want to know if Pinturicchio and his school drew hands well; they want to rise on stepping-stones to higher things.

_Sala I_

The first room, it must be admitted, leaves you a little cold: but then it is not by Pinturicchio; the designs on the roof are little mythological plaques by two pupils of Raffaelle--Pierino del Vaga and Giovanni da Udine, both good humanists, however, who in other places had delightful inspirations from the Classic world with which they created late-born and lovely visions of “Olympus’ faded hierarchy.”

The large noble tapestries round the walls, with trophies of shining armour hanging between, I take to be of the sixteenth century; they are very fine and delicate, both in design and colouring; they have just the faded reds and blues which you get in the wonderful fifteenth-century tapestries in the Musée Cluny, which have established them as the tints _par excellence_ for tapestry. The faces are a little fuller than you get in pictures and tapestries of the true Gothic feeling. They have more of beauty and less of romance in them, and, of course, have no suggestion at all of the atmosphere of the story of Cephalus and Procris, which they represent. But they have the sumptuous beauty of their great century, and play their part well in making the first of the Borgia Rooms look essentially the antechamber of a palace.

Then you step through a door into a second room, the fine applicability of whose title you recognize before your foot is off the threshold: the Sala dei Misteri--the Hall of the Mysteries. You are in Aladdin’s cave. There is nothing like it in Rome outside of these precincts. The Garden of Paradise in the ancient basilica of S. Prassede is likewise all gold and colour, with its mosaics of a thousand years ago, but it is small, and its figures are cramped, almost grotesque; the roof of the Farnesina, with Raffaelle’s Cupid and Psyche spread over it, lacks the richness of setting which these great frescoes of Pinturicchio have in the moulding and gilding of the Gothic ribs of the Borgias’ pleasure-house. There may be this or the other fault to find with the work of Pinturicchio; the faults need little finding in the work of most of his pupils; but the fact remains that, if one suddenly became a fairy prince and had the choice of all the frescoes in the world for the decoration of one’s pleasure-house, these are the frescoes one would choose,--before the more serious frescoes of the Library of Siena; before the nobler frescoes of Raffaelle in the rooms exactly above (the Stanze), which contain the School of Athens, and the other tableaux of that glorious suite; before the frescoes of the Farnesina, more perfect, but with less to nourish the eyes.

The frescoes in the second, third, and fourth Borgia Rooms are not even rivalled by those which make gems of the Chapel of Nicholas V., painted by Fra Angelico for the Vatican, and the chapel painted for the Riccardi Palace at Florence, by Benozzo Gozzoli. These, perhaps, come nearest the Borgia Rooms among paintings, but they are small, and lack the splendour of the setting which the magnificent Borgia gave to the frescoes of Pinturicchio. Perhaps a better parallel could be found in the mosaics of St. Mark’s, Venice, or the Royal Chapel at Palermo.

For here in these Borgia Rooms I had, when I visited him there, an overpowering feeling of sensuous beauty curiously mingled with the atmosphere of awe which emanated from the residence of the highest personage but one in Roman Catholic Christendom. I used to wonder what the effect must be on his mind of constantly regarding such wonderful beauty. One day I met him and asked him. He parried the question with equal simplicity or skill: “I never have any time to look up.”

_Sala II_

To imagine this second room, the _Sala dei Misteri_, you must picture to yourself a room of fair size, almost square, with a tiled floor and a rich cornice running round it at about half its height. Below the cornice the walls are decorated with skilfully restored arabesques, and their conventional patterns in fresco are broken by sculptured Renaissance ornaments. From the cornice springs an elaborate system of intersecting vaults whose lunettes are filled with glorious frescoes by Pinturicchio; the ribs are moulded in gilt, with wonderful richness, and the intervening spaces have little pictures, together forming a blaze of gold and colour. The large frescoes in this room are the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and the Assumption of the Virgin. The finest of them all is the Resurrection, in which there is a superb figure of Alexander VI., the wicked Borgia Pope, for whom these rooms were decorated, regarding the Resurrection, a topic upon which you would not have expected him, of all men, to dwell with much satisfaction.

The portrait is a marvellous one; the very hands speak. They are folded in the attitude of prayer, but not of meekness; the whole anatomy of the figure speaks, though it is swathed in a great cloak stiff with gold and gems; and though the head is bald and the face fat, with double chin, long upper lip, and parrot-like nose, the impression you get is of calm strength, of a man who saw his end clearly and grasped it without allowing his attention to be drawn off by any conventions or excuses. In his portrait the man who flung conventionalities to the winds, and brooked no obstacle to his projects for providing for his children, does not look bad or merciless; it is true that to represent him as such might not have been pleasant for Pinturicchio. Here he looks only a man not to be deterred. He was at all events a wise patron of the arts, and he steered his ship in the troubled sea of Italian civil wars and intrigues with a manfulness which any civil Prince of his time might have envied. After all, he was quite up to the moral standard of the gods of Greece--was very much the Jupiter of the Vatican.

Were it only for this portrait of Alexander VI., a visit to the Borgia Rooms would be worth making. But the three charming, youthful figures kneeling below the broken marble sarcophagus from which Our Lord rises, are of the highest interest, for they are believed to represent the three sons of Alexander VI., Jofre, born in 1481, being the exquisite sleeping figure in front. As Ricci points out, the halberd head with the broken point beside him, and the gash in the cuirass, broken across the chest, containing the figure of a youth with a cap on his head and his garments fastened with lacets, must typify one of the many mysteries of the Borgias. Pier Luigi, the eldest of the Pope’s sons, had been dead for some years, so Ricci suggests that it may signify that Jofre was broken-hearted for his loss, and that the Pope wished all four of his sons to come into the picture. The beautiful boy with long golden hair who kneels, holding a halberd, on the opposite side of the sarcophagus to balance the figure of the Pope, is the terrible Cesare Borgia, who had not yet begun his murderous career. The even more beautiful figure in ancient Roman dress turning round is Giovanni Borgia, whom Cesare murdered in 1497.

After the great portrait of Alexander VI., the most notable feature in the _Sala dei Misteri_ is the Annunciation. Notice in it the exquisite peace and humility in which Pinturicchio excelled, and the wonderfully rich and elegant Renaissance archway which encloses the vista behind. The few technical faults the picture may have do not detract from the main fact that here you have a picture full and typical of the loveliness of fifteenth-century Italy.

The figures in the Nativity, which, with singular inappropriateness, is divided by the Borgia Bull from the Annunciation, are to me less beautiful. The Virgin has not to such a high degree the wonderful grace of anatomy which Pinturicchio contrives to suggest through the rich clothing of his figures. But it has one of his beautiful Umbrian landscapes behind the classic porch with a thatched roof, which is his conventional way of expressing the stable.

The Adoration of the Magi is not the work of Pinturicchio. In the lunette of the Coming of the Holy Ghost, though it is condemned by art critics, and though much of it is the work of another hand, is one of Pinturicchio’s purely lovely conceptions. I do not venture to criticize the art; I look for the beauty in these rooms. And in the group to the spectator’s left are two perfectly exquisite figures: the boy just appearing in the centre and the boy with the outstretched left hand; and what grace, what lovely repose there are in the background!

In the lunette of the Assumption, beside the empty sarcophagus full of flowers, which Pinturicchio, Perugino, and Raffaelle used almost identically, is a beautiful figure by the unidentified disciple of Perugino. The Madonna, seated in a mandorla, is surrounded by charming Pinturicchio angels.

_Sala III_

This room, which is called the _Sala delle Vite dei Santi_, is even more glorious than the preceding, for it contains the Disputa of St. Catherine, which Ricci, with Italian cynicism, suggests may have been selected by the Pope because she was the protectress of illegitimate children, and, as such, of great importance to him. It is more certain that the subject was chosen because St. Catherine came from Alexandria, and his name was Alexander. The Pope had the ceiling of this very room decorated with the superbly painted story of Isis and Osiris, because it pleased him to identify the Bull Apis with the ox of the Borgias. This wonderful ceiling is so rich and beautiful that it is almost impossible to look into it properly. Your eyes lose themselves in the richness of the general effect, as they do when you are inspecting a rich Byzantine _paliotto_. But the details are exquisite; the child-figures especially are purely lovely. All sorts of scenes will be recognized, from the marriage of Isis and Osiris, in the orthodox Christian fashion, to David and Goliath, and Judith and Holofernes. Ricci draws attention to the beautiful figure of a _putto_ riding a swan, and to the representation of little field industries, such as ploughing and the culture of apples, which Osiris taught, given at the sides of his temple. The most striking subject is the hewing of Osiris to pieces. The ox in a litter, shaped like a temple, and carried upon the shoulders of four men, is the triumph of Osiris changed into the God Apis. Very much of this glorification of the Borgia ox is from the hand of the great master himself, and its splendour is almost inconceivable; in fact, some of the little pictures contained in it are among the most beautiful creations of Pinturicchio, who was one of the most prodigal creators of beauty.

I will leave the St. Catherine to the end; it would be an anticlimax to talk of the other pictures after that.

I will commence with St. Sebastian, because it is to me the most unattractive picture in the room, with an interest chiefly antiquarian. It has a beautiful background, remarkable as giving a picture of the Colosseum, very much out of drawing, but in much more its present condition than one would have imagined. The oddest thing about it is that, to make it “group” better, Pinturicchio makes it appear to be standing upon the Palatine, which he has introduced so as to include the Church of St. Sebastian on the Palatine. The picture has a beautiful background, and artists point out that Pinturicchio was more careful than usual of the rules of composition.

The first picture you notice when you enter is the Susanna and the Elders. This is a most beautiful picture. The figure of Susanna is chaste, humble, graceful, shrinking; and behind the charming fifteenth-century Renaissance fountain by which she stands is an equally charming landscape. The monkey and the rabbit sitting up in front give a little cynical touch. The group in the background on one side represent Susanna pinioned, being led to execution; and, on the other side, the Elders bound back to back being stoned. The landscape is perfectly beautiful. The next picture to the Susanna is the famous Santa Barbara escaping from the tower in which she had been imprisoned by her father. Here again is one of Pinturicchio’s lovely backgrounds, with a river running through it like the Thames below Richmond Hill. The whole centre of the picture is occupied by a tower in the style of the Venetian Renaissance. The treatment of the picture is allegorical. There is a split in the tower to show how Barbara escaped; and though she and her father are apparently only a yard or two apart, their attitudes tell us that she has already escaped, and that he is going, sword in hand, on the wrong track. The delightful young soldier in front of the tower is likewise symbolic. The ordinary visitor does not trouble about the symbolism: he is content that the fleeing figure of Santa Barbara is one of exquisite beauty and grace, and full of motion; and that the landscape behind, in which she appears again at a distance, is so beautiful. The Visitation, in this room, is another delightful fresco; the Virgin is one of his most beautiful figures, and the background is incomparably lovely; for in it we have an ancient Roman house, made up of loggias, and from the little terrace on the top of one of them an old woman and a fair-haired girl are looking down upon the scene. In the distance, throwing up the extraordinary richness of the architecture, is one of those fair Umbrian backgrounds; but after taking in all these distant beauties one harks back to the grace and exquisite humility of the Virgin. There are few more gracious pictures in existence. The child, in the corner behind Elisabeth and the maidens, gives fresh proofs, which were not needed, of the absolute lovableness of Pinturicchio at his best. This picture is considered to be wholly his own work. The Temptation of St. Anthony, which comes between this and the great picture, cannot be compared with this as a whole; though the figures of the two hermits and the three beautiful she-devils are all considered to be by Pinturicchio. Of these last Ricci says: “But we believe that Pinturicchio is responsible for these three--at all events for the design, if not for the execution--so clearly are they creations of the master, alike in attitude, costume, and arrangement of the hair. It is true that the technical details, from the hook-like curves in the folds to the tone of the colours, differ from his, and are more in the manner of Perugino. The three demon-women have gentle and beautiful faces, with lips tight shut and pouting as if to dart out kisses, dresses varied and vivid of colour and rich in ornament, the delicate hands of fine ladies, stretched out with grace, one holding a little box; but instead of feet they have the talons of birds of prey; from their heads spring twisted horns; from their shoulders green bats’ wings (the emblem of vice ever since the time of Giotto). They come, fawning and alluring, taking counsel together as to their mode of attack, while St. Anthony, turning his back upon them, calmly talks of divine things with his companion.”

We now come to the great Disputa of St. Catherine, which is considered Pinturicchio’s masterpiece. I do not propose to enter into the controversy as to which figure is supposed to represent Prince Djem, the brother of the Sultan Bajazet II., whom the Pope obligingly, and in consideration of a large annual subscription, kept a sort of prisoner in the Vatican, though I should like to believe that he is the superb figure on the white horse, as striking as the figure of Aeneas Sylvius on the white horse in the first of Pinturicchio’s frescoes in the Library of Siena, and Benozzo Gozzoli’s figure of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Riccardi Chapel. Few ordinary visitors will be interested in the argument whether the other Greeks and Turks are or are not derived from Gentile Bellini’s studies: they will be satisfied with the magnificent grouping of the picture; the gorgeous Renaissance arch, adapted from the Arch of Constantine, which fills the centre, and the very peaceful and soft outlines of the landscape. The colouring of the picture is immeasurably rich; it is a regular feast of beauty. In front of the Royal figure of the Emperor Maximian is the youthful figure of Catherine, modest, but fortified with innocence, making the points against the fifty philosophers on the fingers of her hands, which have much-faded golden fetters linking them together. She is said to represent the Pope’s daughter, the lovely Lucrezia Borgia, though Lucrezia was very young at the time for a figure on the borderland of girlhood and womanhood, which has hardly any superior in the whole of Italian painting.

Over the door by which you enter this room from the third room, is the Madonna with the Child, which is supposed to represent Giulia Farnese, the mother of Alexander VI.’s youngest son. The attitudes of mother and child have rather a Byzantine stiffness, but their faces, like those of the cherubs round them, are sweet and gracious. The frame is of the gilded papier-mâché, which so offended Vasari’s sense of fitness. Ricci calls it one of the most lovely Madonnas which Pinturicchio ever painted. With regard to the question of the identity, Ricci says: “Was Vasari alluding to this Virgin when he said that Pinturicchio painted Giulia Farnese over the door of a room, in the form of Our Lady? Some are of that opinion. But in this case, where is ‘the head of Alexander adoring her’? And if the Madonna really represents the fair friend of the Pope, how easy it must have been for the painter to portray a face which is one of the most usual types of Umbrian beauty, and particularly characteristic of his own art.”

The _Sala dei Santi_ is a noble room: the designs of the canvas screens, painted to cover its perished walls, and the fifteenth-century intarsia work brought up from Sixtus IV.’s Library, harmonize well with the superb frescoes and the gorgeous ceiling, from which they are divided by a cornice of white marble, conventionalizing the Borgia ox; which is supposed, like the other white marble work of these apartments, to have come from the _atelier_ of Andrea Bregno.

No reproduction of the pictures in these apartments, unless they are coloured like Ricci’s great work, can do them justice; for it is the glow of the gold, and the rich red raiment, and the flowers on the sward, and the sky, which constitute their chief marvel.

_Sala IV_

This room is known as the _Sala delle Arti Liberali_, or the _Sala delle Arti e Scienze_, and I cannot say that it is as attractive to me as the second and third rooms for its frescoes; though its wall-decorations are remarkable, alike for their intrinsic beauty and the large amount of the original decorations which are retained. But the great old fifteenth-century mantelpiece which decorates them did not originally belong to this room; it came from the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and was executed by Simon Mosca, although it was designed by the great Sansovino. This handsome room has rightly a palatial effect, for it is here that the Cardinal Secretary of State used to receive the ambassadors of the Princes twice a week. The left-hand corner of the room farthest from the window is where the Cardinal sat, with his visitors seated along the two walls of the angle.

Some of the old tiles of the floor are exhibited in the cabinet of choice pottery in the right-hand corner; the blocked-up door in the corner beside it is said to lead to the room in which Alexander VI. died, and which is now occupied by the Noble Guard. The ceiling of this room is not to be compared with that of the last in richness: its decorations are conventional, but the frescoes contain some lovely figures. Cut on the walls by some servant is “W. Paulus III. Pont. Max. e W. Farnesia Proles.” V V is the Italian way of writing _Viva_ (Long life); and Ricci points out that the inscription must have been cut by some member of the Conclave of October 1534, which elected Paul III., the Farnese Pope. There is a rich stucco cornice. In this room, more than any other, the critics engage in a battle royal as to the authorship of the various frescoes. The reader will not thank me for attempting to judge between them, nor have I the audacity to attempt it. I shall only point out some of the features which I have enjoyed in the various lunettes which derive their subjects from the Trivium, _i.e._ Grammar, Rhetoric, and Dialectics; and the Quadrivium--Astronomy, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Music, which were the foundations of learning in the Middle Ages. The _Dialectics_ have a very rich architectural background; notice the lovely figures, especially on the left-hand side. _Geometry_ has exquisite figures on her right hand of the kind which give Pinturicchio such a place in our affections. And _Rhetoric_, which holds a sword in the right hand and a glove in the left, has, as Ricci points out, the best and the most delicate figure, by virtue both of the beauty of her face with its opaline and roseate colours and the grandiose simplicity of her pose. One can see Pinturicchio’s hand here. _Arithmetic_ is very youthful and lovable; she has such a pathetic droop of the mouth that she looks like a sorrowful child. Is this to typify that arithmetic is the science which we take at the earliest age? She holds in her hand an elegant Renaissance slate with figures, which is well worthy of imitation for our own writing-tablets. She is surrounded by fine groups of figures, though not so fine as Ghirlandajo would have made them; and is seated on a remarkable throne with a sounding-board above it and a landscape behind. The _Grammar_ is not so good as the others; it is supposed to be by the same hand as the lunettes in the Hall of the Sibyls, the sixth apartment. To me the other three lunettes are still more striking. _Astronomy_, much attacked by the critics, will appear to the ordinary visitor a very noble conception. She is enthroned on a little hill, which might well be the outside of our globe; on either side of which, situated against a bright landscape and sky, are tall pines and cypresses. The youthful figures on each side are of remarkable beauty, and like the figures of Raffaelle in the School of Athens. The _Music_ is another delightful fresco. The figure of the harper on her right must linger in the memory; it is so graceful and romantic. But the background is not good. _Astrology_, the remaining lunette, has charming and sumptuous figures.

_Sala V and Sala VI_

The fifth and sixth rooms are in the Torre Borgia, the tower built by Alexander VI., doubtless as a refuge. Number V., which is approached from Number IV. by a flight of about a dozen steps, was used by Cardinal Merry del Val as his study, and, as I have said above, is entirely redecorated with skilfully made canvas screens, so that the original walls have not been interfered with in case a fresh examination of their perished decorations should appear to be desirable. These two rooms were not shown except by the Cardinal himself to an occasional privileged visitor. On the floor are some well-preserved specimens of the old Borgia tiles with the ox and the raying crown. Here, too, the ceiling has conventional decorations as in the second room. “In the tower room,” says Ricci, “Bernardino (_i.e._ Pinturicchio) is only seen as a directing influence.” In each lunette, with its yellow border and many-coloured ornaments, is the half-length figure of a Prophet or an Apostle.

According to a mediæval legend, the Creed was composed by the Apostles before they separated to preach the Gospel throughout all the world, each writing an article. So to each is attributed his own verse, which is inscribed on broad, fluttering streamers. Ricci says that they were painted by the same hand as the Grammar and the Sibyls.

Sala VI. has a richer ceiling. Two of the Sibyls have considerable charm, but they are obviously not the work of Pinturicchio, and the visitors are not likely to care for them.

In the story of the Torre Borgia above them is the famous bathroom of Cardinal Bibiena, wrongly called, says Layard, “_Il Retiro del Giulio II._” A former Pope is understood to have had it bricked up on account of the amatory nature of its charming mythological compositions; and though they are said to have been opened again under the more liberal régime of the present Pontiff, certainly no visitor has been permitted to see them; and it is said that not even have any of the Cardinals seen them. But Kugler had evidently seen it, for he gives this description of it: “This room was decorated in the antique taste--the walls of a dark red ground, and with seven gracefully designed compartments, each containing subjects alluding to the power of Love. These were designed by Raffaelle and executed by his scholars. The birth of Venus, Venus and Cupid on dolphins, and Cupid complaining to Venus of his wound, are the most graceful. Beneath them, on a black ground, are figures of Amorini, exemplifying the various devices and varying progress of Love--one, in a shell, drawn by butterflies; another in a shell drawn by tortoises; a third harnessing a pair of snakes; a fourth drawn by snails, etc. On the ceiling are numerous designs, most of them so injured as to be hardly visible. Cupid wrestling with Pan, a charming conceit, is still seen. Repetitions of these designs are found in a villa erected on the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars, known as the Villa Spada (also as the Villa called Santini, Magnani, Mills, etc., according to its successive owners).” There are paintings by Raffaelle in the Vatican yet more invisible, for all trace of them has been lost. I refer to the famous Hours of Raffaelle, of which garbled copies are sold on postcards. No tenable theory has been advanced as to where they may be.

The Borgia Apartments of the Vatican, for so many years the library of the Vatican printed books, are the chief rival of that other library frescoed by Pinturicchio, the immortal Library of Siena.

The Borgia Rooms are among the brightest gems in the tiara of art which encircles the Vatican, of which the Sculpture Gallery, with its masterpieces of antiquity, the Sistine Chapel, with its frescoes by Michel Angelo, and the rooms which contain the frescoes of Raffaelle may claim to be the three crowns.

Certainly none of these latter made such a royal impression on my senses, as I entered them, as the late official residence of the Cardinal Secretary of State. It breathed the air of a presence. Only five of us were admitted at a time, and we were frozen into court manners by chilling servants, who did not take our wraps, but motioned us to deposit them in a corner. Then we moved gently round, drinking in the superb proportions of the room, examining its noble tapestries, the elegant scholarship and manipulation of its ceiling; this was the _Sala dei Pontefici_--the Hall of the Popes.

Amazing as was the _coup d’œil_ when I entered the second room with its superb ceiling and frescoes, I still had only an adequate conception of the full effect of the ceiling when I had been at one of the Cardinal’s receptions, where the curtains are drawn and the whole blaze of electric light is thrown upon the ceiling, bringing out every facet of that jewel-like decoration.

Certainly the Borgia Rooms are the most Royal in the Vatican; they were the fine flower of the Pagan Renaissance in Rome.

NOTE BY PROFESSOR TANI, THE PRINCIPAL ITALIAN AUTHORITY ON THE ANTIQUITIES OF ROME.

_22nd November 1913._

Corrado Ricci, in the Italian edition of his _Pinturicchio_, demonstrates that Antonio del Massaro da Viterbo, better known by the name of Il Pastura, was the principal _collaborateur_ of Pinturicchio in the frescoes of the Borgia Apartments, and the following are the noteworthy parts of the frescoes due to Il Pastura (Il Pattura): “The Descent of the Holy Ghost,” in the Hall of Mysteries; “The Assumption of the Virgin” and the allegorical figures of Music and Rhetoric, in the Hall of the Liberal Arts.

The armour of Julius II. and of the Bourbon have been removed to other places in the Vatican, and neither is on view. No furniture is left in the Borgia Apartments, but in the first room there is a marble bust of Leo XIII., and in the second, a bronze gilt bust of Pinturicchio.