Download Nicholas V, Sixtus IV, and the Rebuilding of Rome

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Perugino’s Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter and Papal Humanism in the Sistine Chapel
Robert Baldwin
Associate Professor of Art History
Connecticut College
New London, CT 06320
[email protected]
(This essay was written in 1993 and has been revised periodically.)
Nicholas V, Sixtus IV, and the Rebuilding of Rome.
The Contribution of Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455)
In the second half of the fifteenth century, popes began working to consolidate the power of the
Roman church recently weakened by schism (two popes), exile (a papacy in southern France),
and conciliarism (a movement of bishops and church councils asserting the authority of local
officials and of groups of church officials).
The most urgent threat was the westward expansion of a seemingly invincible Turkish empire
which controlled most of the Balkan peninsula by 1396, well before the collapse of
Constantinople in 1453. By the 1460s, Turkish ships were raiding coastal towns in Cyprus,
Sicily, and Southern Italy. Sixtus IV headed off Turkish attempts to ally with Venice against
Rome by forming an alliance with Venice and Naples and launching a combined fleet in 1471.
Despite successful attacks on some Turkish ports, the efforts of Sixtus IV and later popes were
undermined by strong rivalries, shifting alliances, and wars between the Italian states of Venice,
Milan, Ferrara, Mantua, Florence, and Naples, and the repeated invasions of Italy by Northern
European states, especially France and the Holy Roman Emperor.
Divided and weakened by internal wars, Italy was unable to mount an effective campaign against
Moslem forces throughout the sixteenth century, though they did win several important battles.
In 1529, Christian forces broke a Turkish siege of Vienna. In 1571, the navies of Venice and
Spain achieved the first major victory over Turkish naval forces at the Battle of Lepanto. By
then, the Ottoman Empire had spread east into Asia, south into Egypt (taking Cairo in 1517) and
all of North Africa, and West into Europe through Hungary and parts of southern Poland.
Despite the setback at Lepanto (much extolled in Venetian painting), the Turkish Empire quickly
rebounded, conquering Persia to the east (1638) and surrounding Vienna with a large army in
1683. Christian forces rallied once again, breaking the siege of Vienna and forcing a treaty of
1699 reclaiming Hungary and pushing Turkish forces back to the Balkan peninsula (Yugoslavia,
Macedonia, Greece) where the Ottoman Empire survived into the early 19th century. Over the
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next hundred years, the Turks lost the Balkans, Greece, Libya, and Egypt in a succession of
nationalist wars.
Nicholas V, pope from 1447-1455, was the first humanist pope to begin rebuilding Rome and
remaking it into an architectural theater of papal power worthy of ancient Rome. The firthcentury biographer, Vespasiano, put it thus.
Liberality is natural to mankind, it does not come by nobility ... for in all classes may be
found men liberal and avaricious. Pope Nicholas did builder's work in several Roman
churches, especially to be noted is the wondrous structure he erected in [old] St. Peters,
which would hold the whole Roman court, and in all the churches of the country he did
marvelous works, concerning which Messer Giannozzo Manetti has written in his life of
the Pope. The building which he carried out would have sufficed for the activity of one of
those Roman Emperors who ruled the entire world: much more for that of a pope, and he
beautified the buildings with ornaments for Divine worship which cost a fortune. It was
happiness for him to spend ... 1
Among other things, Nicholas V moved the papal residence from the Lateran Palace at one end
of the city to the Vatican palace at the other end of Rome near old St. Peters. In part, this new
location capitalized more fully on traditional associations between the papacy and St. Peter. But
it also allowed the pope to ride in triumphal procession with a large retinue through the city of
Rome to the Lateran Palace or to other important churches and to represent his power over the
city and its rival noble families. To safeguard the new papal palace in the Vatican, Nicholas V
took over a noble castle guarding the Ponte St. Angelo (leading into the Vatican) and made it a
newly fortified stronghold of papal power: the Castel Sant'Angelo. The castle even displayed
papal power with a new statue of the avenging archangel of the Apocalypse, Michael, sheathing
his sword after destroying the enemies of God.
In a final speech given to the cardinals on his deathbed in 1455, Nicholas V described grand
architecture as the most effective agent of papal power and Catholic doctrine. This equation of
papal authority and religious faith was typical of official church culture.
"To create solid and stable convictions in the minds of the uncultured masses, there must
be something which appeals to the eye; a popular faith, sustained only on doctrine, will
never be anything but feeble and vacillating. But if the authority of the Holy See [papacy]
were visibly displayed in majestic buildings ... belief would grow ... from one
generation to another." 2
While medieval courtly and religious elites saw architecture in similar terms, medieval writers
and patrons were not as conscious of what they were doing and did not leave such explicit texts
as their Renaissance counterparts. Nor was there a comparable urban culture and social fabric in
which architecture, urban festivity, and public art could have played such a striking role in
shaping public opinion and a local political sphere. The rise of the self-conscious use of the arts
for political purposes in the Renaissance depended to a large extent on the gradual development
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of cities and civic consciousness in the later middle ages and especially in Italy where civic
culture was most pronounced and where the nobility was highly urbanized.
Sixtus IV and the Sistine Chapel
If Nicholas V began building an architecturally powerful, papal Rome, Sixtus IV (1471-1484)
went much further in transforming the city into a Roman imperial theater of Christian power. He
restored crumbling churches, built a new bridge over the Tiber to the Vatican, fortified the
Vatican, rebuilt the hospital for orphans and the poor, (Ospedale di Santo Spirito - Hospital of
the Holy Ghost), built a private chapel in the Vatican, and founded the Vatican Library. He also
restored roads, squares, bridges, and town walls, aquaducts, and the town port. He even restored
ancient Roman sculpture and had it displayed publicly in front of the Roman Senate on the
Capitoline Hill. (This was the spot where Pope Paul III later hired Michelangelo to design a new
piazza, the Campidoglio.) Most of his renovations and constructions projects were marked with
Latin inscriptions comparing Sixtus to the first Roman emperor, Augustus, who rebuilt Rome. As
one writer in the papal court noted, Sixtus had "remade Rome from a city of brick into a city of
stone just as Augustus of old had turned the stone city into marble". 3 (After 1500, the
comparison to Augustus became a cliché in humanist tributes to architectural patrons.)
Sixtus IV also commissioned works of art glorifying for posterity his efforts to rebuild Rome.
Among these was a large bronze tomb monument by Pollaiuolo, where the pope's effigy was
surrounded by humanist personifications of the Liberal Arts. In humanist style, the Liberal Arts
appeared here as sensual, half-naked, young women dressed in diaphanous draperies not unlike
like classical nymphs.
Other works of art used Biblical imagery to spell out messages of papal power and virtue. To
commemorate the humanist project of founding the Vatican Library, Sixtus IV had Melozzo da
Forli paint a large fresco in 1476-77 of the Pope enthroned in an architecturally magnificent,
classical Roman hallway with important church officials. Kneeling before him was the great
humanist, Platina, appointed as director of the library. The long inscription on this fresco
reminds us that images and public inscriptions went hand in hand for Renaissance rulers. Both
were important public media.
Rome, once full of squalor, owes to you, Sixtus, its temples, foundling hospital, street
squares, walks, bridges, the restoration of the Acqua Vergine at the Trevi Fountain, the
port for sailors, the fortifications on the Vatican Hill, and now this celebrated library."
Underscoring the rhetoric of the inscription, Melozzo’s Roman architecture referred to all of the
pope’s architectural patronage, to the founding of the library in particular, and to the pope’s
renovation of modern Rome. Melozzo’s splendid classical forms offered a parallel architectural
language to the classical texts collected by humanists like Platina for the new Vatican library.
Here is one of the most vivid examples of the new patronage of humanism at the highest levels
of the church culture.
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Sixtus IV’s two most impressive commissions in painting included a large fresco cycle in the
Ospedale di Santo Spirito where thirty-scene scenes narrated his life. Although medieval church
officials had commissioned fresco cycles on the lives of early, exemplary popes such as the midthirteenth-century cycle on St. Sylvester (d. 335 A.D.), Sixtus went further by grandly writing his
own life in fresco on the walls of a major orphanage and pilgrim hotel in Rome just before the
Jubilee celebrations of 1475 brought tens of thousands of pilgrims to Rome. Although not noted
for the quality of its painting, this was the first artistic biography of a living patron since classical
antiquity. As such, the frescoed Life of Sixtus IV parallels the rise of historical literature in
Renaissance humanism and the appearance, all over late fifteenth-century Italy, of humanist
biographies of court rulers and pictorial cycles on the lives of famous men and women. The Life
of Sixtus IV began with scenes of the pope’s remarkable childhood promising future greatness,
continued with his rise through the church hierarchy to his triumphal election as pope, looked
extensively at his architectural patronage and renovations in Rome, and ended with the pope
welcomed at the gates of heaven by St. Peter.
The Decorations in the Sistine Chapel
More impressive artistically was another cycle of frescoes commissioned by Sixtus IV to
decorate the new private chapel he built in the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel. Built to the exact
dimensions of the legendary Temple of Jerusalem by King Solomon thousands of years before
the birth of Christ, the Sistine Chapel made a dramatic statement about the supremacy of
Christianity over Judaism and of the pope over the Roman Catholic Church.
Unlike the private chapels of earlier popes, the Sistine Chapel was built on a large scale to
accommodate important church ceremonies. Among these was the conclave (gathering) of
cardinals to elect a new pope. As a place tied ritually to notions of papal authority, the Sistine
Chapel displayed frescoes elaborating this theme in a variety of ways.
To ensure rapid completion of this project, Sixtus hired a large group of leading painters from
central Italy: Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Signorelli, and Rosselli. (Almost all of these were
Florentines since Sixtus IV was trying to reconcile with Lorenzo de’ Medici after plotting with
other leading Florentine families to murder the two Medici men in the Pazzi conspiracy of April,
1478. Lorenzo’s brother was killed and Lorenzo himself severely wounded.) Two historical
cycles of frescoes were executed in the Sistine Chapel. One was a portrait history of the
important popes in the early church up until its recognition by the Emperor Constantine
including St. Sixtus II, painted by Botticelli with the face of Sixtus IV.
Below this was a series of sixteen narrative frescoes, six along each side wall, and two at each of
the end walls. These frescoes offered parallel histories of Moses and Christ, twin patriarchs. At
the altar end was a large Assumption of the Virgin, at once an image of salvation and the triumph
of Mary-Ecclesia. The ceiling was painted a star-studded azure to represent heaven.
In part, these parallel lives of Moses and Christ offered a traditional Christian universal history
integrating the Jewish Old Testament into a larger Christian world history. It did this, following
medieval Christian custom, by interpreting Old Testament events as prefigurations of New
Testament stories. In this way, Christian culture made the older religion of Judaism confirm the
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universal truths of the newer, Christian religion. Fundamental to this universal history of the
world was the mainstream, anti-Semitic view that Christianity had replaced Judaism, fulfilling its
prophecies and imagery with a superior, triumphant religion.
The life of Christ winds down with him transferring power to Peter, seen traditionally in papal
culture as the first pope, and with a scene of the Last Supper where Christ inaugurates the church
and its Eucharistic liturgy. The second of the three great epochs of the Church, which runs from
Christ’s death to the end of time, appears in the frescoes of the major popes above the cycles on
Moses and Christ, and, more subtly, in Perugino’s Ascension of Mary over the altar at the east
end of the chapel which allegorized the triumph of the Church. Some forty-five years later, this
fresco was replaced by a more dramatic painting with more explicit Apocalyptic significance
bringing this world history to its final end: Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.
None of this Christian universal history elaborated under Sixtus IV was new to the Renaissance.
It was common from the early Christian period on. Sixtus IV’s originality lay in the way he used
both Old and New Testament histories to justify a papal culture attributing spiritual and worldly
supremacy to a single, all-powerful ruler, whether Moses in the Old Testament or Christ in the
New Testament. Both rulers appeared as law-givers (Ten Commandments, Sermon on the
Mount) and as protectors and saviors of their people with the power to destroy all enemies. (One
fresco shows Moses saving the Israelites and drowning the army of Pharoah in the Red Sea.) In
1481, the main enemies of the church were Islamic: the Moors who were gradually being
expelled from Southern Spain and the Ottoman Turks whose westward expansion through
Greece, the Balkans, and the eastern Mediterranean after 1375 seemed all but unstoppable.
Botticelli's Conspiracy of Korah, 1481, Sistine Chapel
Inscribed "Challenge to Moses bearer of the written law" this fresco depicts the revolt of Korah
the Levite and his associates against Moses and Aaron, God's chosen rulers for the Israelites.
Korah and his allies threaten Moses with a stoning at right. To resolve the dispute, a test for
divine sanction was set up whereby each party approached the tabernacle with censors. As Korah
and his party approached, they were destroyed by fiery bolts from heaven while Korah
disappeared into a hole which opened miraculously in the ground. Another two hundred and fifty
followers were instantly consumed by heavenly fire. This story, from Numbers 16, was used
from early Christian times to the Renaissance to show the punishment of those who questioned
God's appointed church rulers. In 1469, it was cited in Rodrigo Sanchez's treatise attacking
conciliarism and defending papal supremacy.4In Botticelli's fresco, the triumphal arch in the
background signaled in humanist, Roman terms the victory of the modern, Roman papal church
over its enemies. Similar triumphal arches appeared in Perugino's Christ Delivering the Keys to
St. Peter, discussed below. Botticelli also introduced other references to modern papal culture.
His Moses holds a staff reminiscent of the papal ferula while Aaron wears a tiara of gold and
blue, the colors of Sixtus IV. The Biblical censing in conjunction with the triumphal arch also
recalls the triumphal procession of newly elected popes from St. Peters to the Lateran, a
procession where all the clerics of Rome censed the new pope along a route passing under many
newly erected triumphal arches.
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Perugino, Christ Giving the Keys to Peter, 1481
Under an inscription, "Challenge to Christ, bearer of the law," Peter appears as the first bishop of
Rome, singled out by Christ from the other disciples as the chief power in the church. This
metaphorical event refers to Matthew 16:18-19.
"And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my
church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shall
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall
be loosed in heaven."
By placing a large church directly above Peter, Perugino played on the familiar idea that Peter
was the "rock" on which the Christian church was built. The church also probably represents the
Temple of Jerusalem, the Old Testament temple built by King Solomon which was later replaced
the Christian church, erected in the age of Peter. This is born out by the dimensions of the Sistine
Chapel, modeled on those of the Temple of Solomon, and by the inscription repeated in the attics
of the two triumphal arches flanking this church. “You, Sixtus IV, inferior to Solomon in wealth,
but superior to him in religion and devotion, consecrated this immense temple.” Of course, this
inscription refers to the Sistine Chapel itself, and to the supposed historical triumph of the church
over the temple, of Christianity over Judaism. The painted church at the center of Perugino’s
fresco thus refers backward and forward in time. It is at once the Temple of Solomon, the church
supposedly founded by Christ with his disciples, and the Sistine Chapel built in the late fifteenth
century.
The primary internal threat to papal authority in the fifteenth century came from the conciliar
movement. This was the movement of bishops and some cardinals to contest the growing
assertions of papal primacy by convening church councils favorable to the conciliar agenda.
With respect to the conciliar threat, the other disciples here represent the bishops and the church
councils they called in an attempt to reclaim local autonomy. No wonder Perugino's disciples
show an animated but positive discussion of Christ's empowerment of St. Peter. Many disciples
even turn toward the event with gestures of adoration and fervent acceptance. Papal power may
have been problematic in the Renaissance but it met with general acclaim and acceptance here,
among the disciples (bishops) and the Christian community as a whole.
Only Judas scowls with dismay at the far left as he witnesses the establishment of the religion
said by Christians to have replaced and destroyed Judaism. He reaches for his purse, confirming
other anti-Semitic stereotypes of the Jew as greedy, immoral, and treacherous – as the mortal
enemies of Christ and the murderous agents of his death. Brought into a scene of Christ
conferring a supreme power on Peter which is universally accepted by the other disciples and
witnesses, Judas represents all those in the church who might question papal authority. Research
would probably show that Renaissance papal culture attacked enemies within the church by
comparing them to the treacherous and disloyal Judas. Here we see the demagogic aspect of
papal absolutism, its inability to tolerate dissent and its tendency to attack opposing views as
treachery, evil, heresy, or idolatry (a theme in the nearby fresco of The Israelites Worshipping
the Golden Calf).
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In the background at right, Perugino painted the stoning of Christ by the Jews. In part, this minor
and unusual New Testament subject was included to strengthen ties to the Old Testament cycle
of Moses by recalling the threatened stoning of Moses seen in the right of Botticelli's nearby
fresco, The Conspiracy of Korah. But it also helped to scapegoat enemies of the church and of
the papacy in particular by comparing them to Jews. Since the Jews had historically been
scapegoated as persecutors and murderers of Christ, the appearance of this story in the right
background of Christ Delivering the Keys to Peter borrowed mainstream Christian anti-Semitism
to further Sixtus's campaign against all his enemies in and outside the church.
Church Humanism, Constantine, and the Rise of Roman Catholic Imperialism
In contrast to the triumphal arches in Ghirlandaio's Sassetti Chapel and Tornabuoni Chapel
which depicted the decline of pagan Rome and the triumphal rise of Christianity, the two
triumphal arches of Constantine used in Perugino's fresco explicitly signal the adoption of
Roman classical imperial values and imagery by the Christian church. Although long in the
making thanks to Renaissance humanism – a Roman triumphal arch signaled Christian triumph
in Masaccio’s Holy Trinity as early as 1426 – Perugino’s Christ Giving the Keys to Peter marks
a turning point in Renaissance Christian culture as the highest church elites began to embrace
pagan imagery for the most important Christian works. That Sixtus IV continued to have some
reservations about pagan imagery is clear enough in other frescoes in his new chapel. In
Botticelli’s Moses Punishing Korah, a crumbling Roman triumphal arch symbolized the old
medieval idea of a crumbling pagan epoch yielding to a triumphal Christianity. Perugino’s Christ
Giving the Keys to Peter offers a very different view of Roman imperial imagery, looking
forward to its wholesale adoption by Catholic church culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
To understand how high church culture increasingly adopted ancient Roman imperial forms after
1480, we need to examine the crucial example of Constantine in reconciling pagan and Christian
culture. It was no accident that Perugino’s historically rich fresco chose this triumphal arch
among the other ancient triumphal arches present in Rome in 1481 including the Arch of Titus
and the Arch of Septimus Severus, both very close to the Arch of Constantine. As the Roman
emperor who proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the Roman state in 333 AD,
Constantine was the perfect figure to fuse Roman imperial culture with Renaissance Catholic
values, especially Roman Catholic papal values. He would continue to be a major touchstone of
Roman Catholic papal “imperialism” for the next two centuries as seen in Bernini’s giant
equestrian statue of Constantine’s conversion (1654-70) set in the vestibule of St. Peters.
Constantine (d. 337) transformed Christianity from an underground, persecuted religion into an
official, state religion of the Roman empire, worthy of grand and lavish patronage. Under
Constantine, numerous large Christian churches were built in Rome and other imperial centers.
Constantine's court historian, Eusebius, also attributed all of his many victories on the battlefield
to his faith in the new Christian deity. In his most famous story, Eusebius described a vision of
Constantine before his victory over the forces of the rival emperor, Maxentius (seen in Piero’s
frescoes at Arezzo around 1460 and again in Giulio Romano’s frescoes in the Vatican around
1520). In this vision, an angel showed Constantine a cross and predicted victory if Constantine's
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troops fought under the new Christian banner. Eusebius also hailed Constantine as the Christian
ruler whose military triumphs brought a new, imperial unity and harmony to church and state and
to the cosmos by imposing a single, all-embracing government.
Thus the emperor in all his actions honored God, the Controller of all things, and
exercised an unwearied oversight over His churches. And God requited him, by subduing
all barbarous nations under his feet, so that he was able everywhere to raise trophies
over his enemies: and He proclaimed him as conqueror to all mankind, and made him a
terror to his adversaries: 5
Later Eusebius rejoiced in the cosmic unity and harmony restored by Constantine as the agent of
divine authority.
Each separate portion of the Roman dominion became blended with the rest; the
Eastern nations united with those of the West, and the whole body of the Roman empire
was graced as it were by its head in the person of a single and supreme ruler, whose sole
authority pervaded the whole. Now too the bright rays of the light of godliness gladdened
the days of those who had heretofore been sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.
Past sorrows were no more remembered, for all united in celebrating the praises of the
victorious prince, and avowed their recognition of his preserver as the only true God.
Thus he whose character shone with all the virtues of piety, the emperor Victor, for he
had himself adopted this name as a most fitting appellation to express the victory which
God had granted him over all who hated or opposed him, assumed the dominion of the
East, and thus singly governed the Roman empire, re-united, as in former times, under
one head. Thus, as he was the first to proclaim to all the sole sovereignty of God, so he
himself, as sole sovereign of the Roman world, extended his authority over the whole
human race. Every apprehension of those evils under the pressure of which all had
suffered was now removed; men whose heads had drooped in sorrow now regarded each
other with smiling countenances, and looks expressive of their inward joy. With
processions and hymns of praise they first of all, as they were told, ascribed the supreme
sovereignty to God, as in truth the King of kings; and then with continued acclamations
rendered honor to the victorious emperor, and the Caesars, his most discreet and pious
sons. The former afflictions were forgotten, and all past impieties forgiven: while with the
enjoyment of present happiness was mingled the expectation of continued blessings in the
future. 6
With texts like these revived and circulated by papal humanists, it is easy to see why humanist
popes such as Sixtus IV took a new historical interest in the “age of Constantine” as an
exemplary image of modern papal dreams and ambitions. Here was a legitimate, historically
venerable, Christian form of Roman imperialism which offered Sixtus IV the perfect historical
model for his own "imperial" papal agenda. That Constantine was also praised for his
architectural and artistic patronage which transformed Rome and Constantinople into Christian
capitals, for his defeat of heresies within the church, and his victories over barbarians foes, made
him all the more suited as an exemplary figure for Sixtus IV. Perugino's Constantinian reference
sanctioned the Roman, imperial architectural patronage of Sixtus IV and his own attempts to
create a modern, imperial Rome and a Roman Catholic church culture.
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Constantine was even more important for the Renaissance papacy because of an ancient
document, the Donation of Constantine, which was traditionally accepted as a work of the
Constantinian period until Renaissance humanists unmasked it as a medieval papal forgery. In
this document, Constantine conferred on Pope Sylvester I (314-335 AD) all authority over the
Christian church and its clergy and even offered Sylvester the use of the imperial insignia (which
the pope declined). By including the arch of Constantine twice in the background of Christ
Giving Peter the Keys, Perugino showed how both sacred and secular authorities conferred the
highest power on Peter and, by association, on all later popes.
The flanking images of the Arch of Constantine also represented papal dreams of a single,
unified Christian Europe with the Roman Catholic church in the center, supported by secular
powers. Since Sixtus IV struggled to forge stable alliances with Venice, Naples, Florence, and
other rival powers or centers in Italy, Perugino’s fresco offered an architectural expression of a
utopian political order (in papal terms) much like the architectural paintings of ideal courtly city
states painted by followers of Piero della Francesca in the 1470s.
Perugino's Constantinian references contributed to a growing papal historical interest in the early
Christian church. Renaissance church humanism looked back not just to classical writers and
historical references but to the early Christian period, especially the Constantinian period, as a
glorious, early Christian history when the church was supposedly strong, free of corruption, and
united against external and internal enemies. This Renaissance history of early Christianity was
largely mythical. It manufactured a kind of ecclesiastical Golden Age to which the church could
look back to renew itself and to justify renewed claims to spiritual authority and local political
power. Not surprisingly, critics of papal culture looked back even earlier to find an uncorrupt
church. Thus late medieval and early Renaissance reformers, and, after 1517, Protestant writers,
attacked the Constantinian church as corrupt, the Donation of Constantine as a later forgery and
extolled their own version of a Golden Age of early Christianity, during the "simpler" time of
Christ and the apostles.
As noted above, the inscription on Perugino's twin depictions of the Arch of Constantine are
Renaissance inventions praising Sixtus IV as a patron of church architecture, and in particular, as
the builder of the Sistine Chapel. Thus Perugino's three grand structures establish a historical
comparison between the glories of Christian imperial Rome under Constantine and the glories of
modern Rome under an imperial Sixtus IV. Perugino underlined this comparison by borrowing a
triumphal relief from the arch of Constantine for the space above the doorway to his Christian
church. Here we see the pre-ordained victory of Sixtus IV over all the enemies of the papal
church.
The deployment of Roman imperial architecture to represent papal power continues in other
frescoes in this cycle, most notably in the Baptism of Christ and Botticelli's Conspiracy of
Korah. In the Botticelli, it was projected backwards in time to the Old Testament. While it made
no historical sense architecturally to imagine Roman imperial triumphal arches in the time of
Moses, it makes perfect sense as the new humanist metaphor for a papal authority projecting its
Roman Catholic imperialism into all analogous historical periods. And to show how the
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"imperial" power of Moses was inferior to the later Roman power of Christ and his papal
successors, Botticelli invented a somewhat shaky Roman triumphal arch.
The appearance of Roman triumphal arches in three frescoes in the Sistine Chapel contrasts with
Ghirlandaio's anti-Roman triumphal imagery in Florence, executed at the same moment. A
comparison allows us to see how the same imperial imagery which was unacceptable as a
language of political power in republican Florence had become, in the hands of an aggressively
self-aggrandizing pope, the core of a new language of Roman church humanism and papal
power. The lower frescoes of the Sistine Chapel were a turning point in the development of
church humanism in Renaissance Italy. From Sixtus IV on, Roman imperial power could become
a true image of official Catholic power, especially in the papal court.
If the inscriptions on Perugino's two arches invite us to see all Roman architectural rhetoric in
these frescoes as a reference to the grand architectural patronage of Sixtus IV, Perugino
strengthened these contemporary references by including seven portraits of contemporary
figures, including the architect of the Sistine Chapel, second from the far right, holding a Tsquare, and a self-portrait, fifth from the right, looking out. The same thing happened in the other
frescoes which show more contemporary portraits than any other cycle of religious frescoes in
fifteenth century Italy.
A Delicate Balance: Papal Triumphalism as Cultural Problem
The striking acceptance of Roman imperial triumphal imagery within a modern humanist church
culture was not without its problems and critics. Indeed, the more Renaissance popes claimed
new "Roman" forms of power after 1450, the more criticism they engendered in their enemies.
These ranged from bishops and conciliar movements, threatened noble families in and around
Rome, and religious reformers like Savonorola and later, the Protestants. A striking instance of
this ambiguity appeared in Vespasiano's life of Pope Nicholas V. As exemplified by the
quotation cited above, the overall tenor of Vespasiano's biography is humanist in praising
Nicholas V's magnificent and sumptuous patronage of architecture, church art, and humanist
books. Yet this humanism displayed its own internal anxiety by attaching a moralizing warning
to its celebratory account of the pope's "Roman imperial" patronage.
The Pope has risen to great fame and renown by reason of the mighty buildings which
he has erected and of the many books which his scribes had produced in Rome and in
other places; wherefore Almighty God, according to his way of sometimes chastising us
to let us see that we are but men, sent upon Rome and upon all the country a most
destructive plague of which certain of the Pope's household fell sick and died, and the
Pope himself began to be much afraid; wherefore there occurred to him what S. Paul
said to the Corinthians: how we should not exalt ourselves through glory and
magnificence. 7
By the time of Sixtus IV, church humanism and its Roman imperial culture was more securely
established in the Vatican along with greater papal control over the city. Yet even Perugino's
fresco softened the potentially brutal imagery of Roman military power in a number of ways.
First, Purugino placed both triumphal arches off to the sides of the composition and using
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perspective and the figural drama to draw the eye toward Christ and Peter and the central church.
Though built in a Renaissance, classicizing style, the central church generally avoided the
triumphal architectural rhetoric seen to either side (except for the small relief over the door).
Second, by showing Peter kneeling humbly to accept Christ's offer, Perugino masked Roman
imperial assertions of papal power with a dramatic show of papal humility and obedience to
higher authority. Of course, this gesture of humility was inseparable from the papal myth of
Peter's unique power received directly from Christ. Thus the kneeling posture worked to
heighten Peter's power even while concealing it.
Third, Perugino chose the Arch of Constantine for his two arches rather than the arch of Titus.
Thus he picked an early, heroic moment in Christian history when Roman imperialism fused
legitimately with Christian piety.
One way to see how Sixtus IV moderated his new, Roman imperial self-image is to compare it
with the bolder, still more imperial self-assertions of later Renaissance popes. In the 1540s, Pope
Paul III had Michelangelo use the equestrian statue of the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, to
represent the pope's triumphal, imperial power over the world.
In so far as the arches of Constantine were relegated to the sides of Perugino's composition, with
a central classicizing church relatively free from Roman imperial form, we can see this fresco as
an important early stage in the rise of church humanism. While this fresco and its neighbor,
Botticelli's Conspiracy of Korah, shows a decisive turn at the highest levels of church culture
toward Roman imperial forms in 1481, Perugino's fresco also shows a certain restraint in the
Christian appropriation of Roman imperial forms.
In this sense, we might see the cultural revolution of Sixtus IV as the early maturity of a church
humanism begun by Nicholas V around 1450. This shift in papal culture toward a church
humanism grounded in Roman imperialism was taken much further in the early sixteenth century
by a nephew of Sixtus IV, Pope Julius II, shown as a cardinal in Melozzo da Forli's fresco of the
Dedication of the Vatican Library. Looking back on his uncle's patronage, Julius II decided to
leave a much larger mark on history and on Renaissance Rome. He built the longest straight
street in Rome since antiquity, the Via Giulia. And he extended the Via Papale and placed an
inscription there which read.
To Julius II, Pontifex Optimus Maximus, who ... beautified the city of Rome ... by opening
up and measuring out streets in accordance with the dignity of the empire".
Julius II also hired Raphael to paint his private apartments in the Vatican with allegories of a
new Golden Age and narratives of papal victory over enemies of the church. He had
Michelangelo paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in a way calculated to surpass everything
done below by his uncle's artists. And he hired Bramante to demolish the early Christian church,
St. Peters, and design a new St. Peters surpassing all other Renaissance churches in size,
grandeur, and magnificence. One hundred and fifty years later, after a dozen popes and a halfdozen architects, the new St. Peters was finished under the architect Bernini.
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Partridge, Renaissance Rome, 21
Lewine, Source, 9, 2, 1990, 17.