The Pope's Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice Della Rovere (46 page)

Felice had long sought an alliance with the Farnese family, a desire they had reciprocated. She had once hoped to marry her daughter Clarice to Paul’s son Ranuccio and had commenced negotiations accordingly. As Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, Pope Paul III had accrued substantial wealth. Initially, he had received papal favours because he was the brother of Alexander VI’s lover Giulia Farnese, a situation that had earned him the nickname ‘the petticoat cardinal’. But Alessandro was highly able and had been greatly respected by subsequent popes, Felice’s father among them. Felice’s eagerness for the Farnese alliance undoubtedly emerged from a supposition that Alessandro would eventually be elected pope. After her bad experiences with Hadrian of Utrecht in the early
1520
s, she wanted to ensure that she and her children always maintained a favoured position at the papal court. From the perspective of Alessandro Farnese, an alliance with the Orsini was as useful for him as it had been for Julius, with the added benefit that at the family’s helm was a woman who truly understood the workings of the papacy.

Thanks to Gian Domenico de Cupis, Felice had inside knowledge of the outcome of the
1534
papal election, as she wrote to Francesco at the start of conclave, ‘The common opinion is that Farnese will be elected.’
²¹
Paul’s election made Felice all the more anxious to secure a Farnese bride. She courted the good will of other influential members of the Farnese family, including Paul’s son Pier Luigi. She was very pleased in April
1535
to be able to thank Francesco for sending her a ‘stag, by way of the Reverend Trani [Gian Domenico] which I have kept to make lots of pies to give to his lordship Pier Luigi who Tuesday will lodge with your brother Girolamo at Isola [a small island with good hunting on a small lake near Bracciano] and Signor Girolamo wants to make convenient provisions. So it is best I rush these pies off to them, which I think will be just the thing.’
²²
It is rare to find Felice in such a mood of culinary agitation, but it was important to her that Pier Luigi should feel that his niece would enter a loving and caring family.

It was also important to Felice that Francesco should profit from the match as well. It seems unlikely that the Bishop of Sutri came unbidden to offer Francesco benefices. Felice wanted to ensure he was an important part of the process.

The ultimate prize for Francesco, was, of course, a cardinal’s hat, but even Felice, anxious as she was to gain promotion for her sons, might have realized that such a goal was beyond Francesco’s capabilities. She loved him a great deal, but she also worried about his character and his ability to run his estates effectively. Only a few years earlier she had warned him to take care of his lands and who minded them. In
1535
, she had to write to him regarding two vats of oil he had sent her: ‘One of the vats you sent is missing a third of its content. I think your ministers are stealing and you do not know anything about it.’
²³
On another occasion she wrote to him, ‘With a great deal of anger, annoyance and sorrow I have heard about the cruellest of cruelty that has been used in Galera.’
²⁴
Although she did not specify the actual nature of this act, Felice was upset Francesco had clearly done nothing in response. Francesco acknowledged his shortcomings, at least to his mother, telling her, ‘I have received everything you have written to me, and I understand very well what you write. I beg of you that you do not accuse me of arrogance. I will not be lacking in the affairs of the castle, and I will not spend any more money than I have to.’
²⁵

But while Francesco was afraid of his mother holding a poor opinion of him, he compensated for his incompetence with cruelty. This did not escape Felice’s attention, as she was constantly called on to intervene: ‘Ioacchino di Magnalardo of your Abbey of San Salvatore has been to see me, to explain the situation regarding his father Giovanni d’Antonetto. He tells me that you wish to impose penalties upon him on account of his having built a house. Although he is an old man and his mistake is not grave, I hear you are unhappy about the house, and want to tear it down to the ground. So I am asking you cordially not to do so in order to reassure the said Giovanni.’
²⁶
In a similar fashion, Felice wrote to tell Francesco, ‘Today Madonna Paulina Carrezia di Fara came to see me together with Madonna Angela who strongly begged me to pray to you that you would restore their property to them.’
²⁷

It was not just the laity Francesco tormented. Felice had to write on yet another occasion, when, ‘The Vicar General of the Third Order of St Francis came to see me and told me that you have made accusations against two friars of that order, questioned them in Castel Sant’ Angelo, and taken one of them prisoner, so I beg of you to release him as quickly as possible, and in doing so you would be doing me a great and singular pleasure.’
²⁸

To counteract Francesco’s reputation for malevolence, Felice also tried to encourage him to perform small acts of kindness: ‘I received a visit from Signora Panthasilea d’Alviano on account of a will made by a poor little man, which he will explain to you more fully, for he wishes to ask of you that his will is kept in a safe place, and that you will ensure its execution. In helping him you would be doing a pious act.’
²⁹

Although Felice had hardly retired, now her sons were playing – for better or worse – active roles in the governing of the estate, she could find time for recreation and personal projects. One request she sent Francesco was to ask if he would ‘send me my books, which would be granting me the most singular pleasure’.
³⁰
As a young woman, Felice had avidly acquired books from the Venetian printer Manutius. The demands on her time in the past few decades had given her precious little opportunity to read for enjoyment. Now she hoped she might be able do so.

Although she had had to sell Palo, Felice compensated for its loss by turning her attention to her palace on the Pincian Hill, at Trinità dei Monti. Imagining that she would now spend more time there, in August
1536
she embarked on a project that would bring more light to the palace. She concentrated on the part of the building that bore her name, the tower that was the old
campanile
of the church of San Felice. She wanted to put solar windows in the room made from the tower, using materials from the Orsini estates. She had asked Francesco to facilitate matters. Predictably, he was less than helpful. On
31
August
1536
, she wrote, ‘For the love you bear me, send me the fifty planks of wood about which I have written to you in the past. I have the greatest need of them to make the tower’s thermal windows, and in doing so you would be giving me the greatest pleasure.’
³¹
On
5
September, Felice wrote, ‘Maestro Ascanio of Canemorto sent me twenty plates of bricks which are too soft, and no good, so I need you to send a letter to him on my behalf. I also need to get wood for making a big door, and then I can finish the tower’s solar windows. I have written to you many times, so send me forty planks of chestnut wood.’
³²
The planks still had not arrived by
11
September, when another letter to Francesco began, ‘As I have written to you many times, I really need to make those solar windows in the tower...’
³³

Felice’s anxiety to see her solar windows in place might have been exacerbated by her feeling that she was running out of time. In the early summer of
1535
, her health had begun to fail her, although she refused to let it interrupt her activities. Her condition is unspecified, but it had rendered her frail and unable to get about very easily. She proposed to get round this by using a litter bed, a long curtained sedan chair. Her friend Leo X had used one when his gout made it impossible for him to walk. On
3
May
1536
, she wrote to Francesco, ‘Because for the last two days I have not been in a very good way I decided to get a litter bed made for me. For this, I have given some money to Maestro Paolo Cacciguerra to make it for me. All it needs are nails, everything else is finished. I have begged him to get nails as quickly as possible, as I want to leave Rome, and I am certain that if I were to stay here to await the end of my [unspecified] business, I will be here in perpetuity, so it is best that I have decided to leave as soon as my litter bed is made for me.’
³⁴
Two days later, the combination of unfinished litter and unfinished business were making her testy: ‘I still have not left Rome, as I wrote to you before, as my litter is unfinished and these blessed affairs seem to be eternal...’
³⁵
She also asked Francesco to go to the Brothers of Santo Cosimato at Vicovaro, as they were keeping for her ‘a luxurious sedan chair which belonged to Papa Julio’.
³⁶
Julius as an ageing pope had been carried around the Vatican Palace in such a contraption, and a portrait had even been painted of him on it by Raphael, with the artist depicted as one of the litter-bearers.

Felice’s weakened condition did not diminish her desire to respond to the needs of others. In the same letter concerning her litter bed, she also wanted to make sure that Francesco would make provision for the daughters of her long-serving maid, Madonna Daniela, ‘who is old...and I want you to give her daughters a
rubbio
of grain and twelve bottles of oil’.
³⁷
In June
1536
, she told Francesco that he ought to come to Rome because she had made progress on behalf of various Orsini servants in their lawsuit against the Cenci, a neighbouring Roman family. And in late August, she wrote again to him, having heard about ‘a drunkard, who when he is drunk goes mad and beats his wife. I want him to be fetched immediately and imprisoned, until he gives security that he will no longer beat her, otherwise the poor girl is lost for sure.’
³⁸

Felice’s duties and convictions, not to mention the events of the previous years, took their toll on her. A letter of
6
September to Francesco concludes, ‘Do not admire the signature at the bottom of the letter as it is not in my hand. As you know, I am feeling a little indisposed today.’
³⁹
The last letter in the Orsini archive written by Felice is dated
15
September
1536
. She tells Francesco, ‘An associate of the Cardinal of Naples came to see me Sunday evening, asking me to write to you to see if you would grant him a place at the Abbey of Farfa.’
⁴⁰
Up until her last days, Felice was still doing favours for cardinals, in the expectation that they would be reciprocated in some way, for the benefit of her family.

Less than two weeks later, on
27
September, Felice wrote her last will and testament. The document has a very different tone from that of the one she had composed back in April
1518
, almost twenty years earlier. That first will reflects the exhilaration she was finding in her new position as Orsini
gubernatrix
. Then, a thirty-five-year-old Felice imagined a glorious life after death. Masses were to be sung for her in every corner of Rome, her body entombed in a splendid sepulchre in her chapel at Trinità dei Monti. The memory of Felice della Rovere would endure in the public realm. But times were different now. Money was short, and a tired Felice was perhaps hoping for a quiet afterlife, with rest her major ambition. So instead, ‘Felix de Ruver de Ursini, of a weak body but a sound mind, lying in bed in her palace at Monte Giordano’ composed a very simple will in the presence of her testators.
⁴¹
Present at her bedside were Francesca de Cupis, a friar of San Agostino and the vicar of Santa Maria del Popolo, who were there to give her comfort. The will was witnessed by Galeotto Ferreolo, her consistorial lawyer for many years now; Francesco Vanuzzi, a Roman cleric, and Felice di Massimo, a nobleman, who lived in a neighbouring palace.

Felice asked for her body to be buried in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, the della Rovere family church, where among other family members her cousin Girolamo Basso della Rovere was also buried. Mass at the church was to be sung in perpetuity every year. Without specifying the amount, she left Girolamo and Francesco as her
eredes universalis
. Relatively little was left. Not long after her death her sons sold the Trinità dei Monti palace in order to realize its cash value. Their dowries were all that was left to her daughters Julia and Clarice; back in
1518
they had been supplemented by a legacy of
3000
ducats apiece. But Felice did think of beneficiaries other than her children: the Sisters of Angelica at the church of San Agostino near the de Cupis palace received
100
ducats, her maidservant Camilla
200
. Felice’s doctor, Angelo di Nepi, received
100
ducats ‘for his services’. Her half-sister Francesca received
2000
, money that, after the death of her philandering husband, Angelo del Bufalo, Francesca would use to institute a small convent. Gian Domenico de Cupis, she did not mention, undoubtedly because the Cardinal was already fantastically wealthy in his own right, largely thanks to the efforts of his half-sister. Felice also asked that ‘every single year, on the anniversary of her death, alms will be given to the poor and the sick, in the form of bread and wine of portions sufficient for everyone’.