APPENDIX I

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(Pages 33, 34)

PORTRAITS OF CESARE BORGIA

THE same extremes of reprobation and flattery which alternate in notices of the Duke Valentino puzzle us as to his personal appearance. Giovio, the ardent collector of historical portraits, while describing those which he had brought together, thus comments upon that of Borgia:—"He is said to come of a plague-stricken stock and of corrupted blood; for a livid rush overspread his face, which was full of pimples shedding matter. His eyes, too, were deeply sunk, and their fierce snake-like glance seemed to flash fire, so that even his friends and comrades could not bear to look upon them; yet, while flirting with the ladies, he had a wonderful knack of playing the agreeable." The pen which inscribed these sentences was evidently charged with even more than its wonted gall; but, after every allowance, they cannot well be reconciled with a report of the Venetian envoy Capello, dated in 1500, and bearing that "the Pope loves and greatly fears his son the Duke, who is aged twenty-seven years; his head is most beautiful; he is tall and well made, and handsomer than King Ferdinand."

Nor can we attain to any more satisfactory conclusion from such pictures as are alleged to transmit his features. We have no key to identify as his any of the heads introduced by Pinturicchio into those fine but little noticed frescoes commissioned by Alexander VI. for the Torre di Borgia, now a wing of the Vatican Library. The exquisite medallists of Romagna do not appear to have exercised their skill upon his bust. Of easel portraits I am aware of six, which I mention for the curious in such matters, although not prepared to consider any of them genuine.

1. The elegant effeminate-looking Spaniard in the Borghese Gallery, attributed to Raffaele, is now admitted to be a misnomer both of subject and artist.

2. A mean head, in the manner of Federigo Zuccaro, was purchased a few years ago at Rome by my late friend Monsignor Laureani, librarian of the Vatican, as that of Valentino, and passed from him, in 1844, to my friend the Cavaliere Campana. Its sinister and spiteful expression is not unworthy of such a monster; and allowing an artist's licence in disguising a complexion which no one would willingly represent, it might tally with Giovio's too graphic details. The figure is, however, short, while Capello describes Cesare as tall.

3. A letter from Giuseppe Vallardi to Count Cesare di Castelbarco Visconti was privately printed at Milan in 1843, in which he claims to have discovered in the Count's palace a portrait of Borgia by Raffaele, the original chalk study of which belonged to himself. From the mass of verbiage usual in similar Italian effusions of "municipal fanaticism," there may be extracted an allegation that the picture had been painted from that earlier drawing about 1508, and a bold inference is hazarded from their style that both were the handiwork of Sanzio. The lithograph, however, would entitle us to ascribe them rather to the Milanese school, and such is admitted to be the opinion of various connoisseurs. No fact is adduced to authenticate the head, or to show that Raffaele ever saw Valentino; indeed, the name seems to libel a countenance so gentle, refined, and unimpassioned.

4. Vallardi mentions in the same letter another Borgian head, by Giorgione, as in the Lochis Gallery at Bergamo, of which I cannot speak, not having seen it.

5. A handsome over-dressed youth was engraved for Gordon's Life of Alexander VI., in 1729, from a picture said to belong to D. Giuseppe Valetta of Naples, which I entirely failed in tracing while in Italy. Neither have I discovered any authority for supposing that soulless epicurean to be Cesare Borgia.

Finally, we may include Fuseli's notice of a picture by Titian, no longer, however, in the Borghese collection, representing a conference between the Usurper of Romagna and Machiavelli. A finer subject for the pencil of that intellectual limner could hardly be found, but Valentino's prodigality was apparently never lavished on art.[313] In his eleventh lecture, Fuseli also mentions a portrait of Cesare by Giorgione, as hanging for study in the Royal Academy.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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