Free The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere by Caroline P. Murphy Page A

her father, Felice did not shy away from conflict with her peers, but it gave her pleasure to feel that she had the power to smooth any ruffled feathers in the town to which she had arrived, as an outsider, a decade earlier.
    Felice’s period of respite from the matrimonial carousel was, however, brief. At the end of May, Julius summoned his daughter back to Rome, this time in the company of her aunt Luchina.
     

    chapter 3
    The della Rovere Women in Rome
    On 31 May 1504 , the Venetian ambassador at the Vatican court, Antonio Giustiniani, reported on the arrival of Julius’s sister Luchina in Rome. She was expected there soon, ‘in the company of Madonna Felice, daughter of the Pope, for whom galleys set sail several days ago to fetch from Savona’. 1 He reported their arrival at the port of Ostia on 8 June and noted that the following day they would make their formal entrance into Rome. Their entrance was still discreet, however, with few onlookers for ‘the plague is making great progress, and there are few places in the city that are not infected...the Pope is inclined to leave Rome, although it has not been determined where he shall go’. 2
    Despite the threat of disease, Julius did not move from Rome, and a few days later he hosted a celebratory event for the arrival of his female relatives. ‘These ladies,’ the Venetian ambassador wrote, ‘the daughter and sister of the Pope, in the company of the Prefectress have gone publicly [his emphasis] to the Pope’s Castle attended by many courtiers from the family of the Pope and other Cardinals, and they enjoyed themselves until late in the evening with His Holiness.’ 3 The Venetian ambassador took pains to imply there was a hint of scandal attached to Julius carousing with the women. Julius would not have hosted such an event for his daughter alone; even in the company of her
    aunt her ‘public’ entrance warranted underscoring in Giustiniani’s missive. None the less, that Luchina was there did dilute the impact of Felice’s presence. Moreover, the festivities took place at ‘the Pope’s Castle’, Castel Sant’ Angelo, the Castle of the Holy Angel. This vast circular structure, originally the mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, was converted into a fortified, moated castle in the Middle Ages, its name changed to remove its association with the pagan past. It stood at the foot of the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, the bridge over the Tiber leading to the Vatican Hill. It was close to the Vatican Palace, to which it was connected by a secret passageway, yet was recognized as a separate building. Julius could thus entertain his female relations in splendid fashion, but outside the ecclesiastical complex itself, thus maintaining Church decorum.
    To maintain decorum while catering to family needs became Julius’s first priority as the patron engineer of Vatican Palace additions. His recent predecessors, from Nicholas V onwards, had all made renovations and amendments to the palace structure, but the palace was still a disharmonious collection of medieval buildings, assembled one on top of the other on the Vatican Hill. Julius would have the man best described as his ‘partner in design’, the architect Donato Bramante, make numerous improvements to his papal residence. 4 Bramante was originally from Urbino, but had worked for many years at the Sforza court in Milan. He and Julius shared a similar vision of Rome. Both were enamoured of the idea of returning the golden age of ancient Rome to the Julian city. The first task Julius gave Bramante, in the spring of 1504 , was to make the Villa Belvedere more easily accessible. The villa was built in the 1480 s by Innocent VIII, the Ligurian pope Julius had so closely assisted, and was described by those that visited it as ‘a most exquisite and delightful place’. 5 Located north of the Vatican Palace on the Mons San Egidio, it became Julius’s favourite site for family entertainments. Like Castel Sant’ Angelo, the