"THE FAMILIES WHO MADE ROME" by Anthony Majanlahti
REVIEWED BY CHARLES
NICHOLL
The Sistine Chapel is famous for
its serene architecture and dramatic frescos, and even for its modest-looking
but oracular chimney. Much less is generally known about the man who caused it
to be built, and after whom it is named: Francesco di Leonardo della Rovere, or
Pope Sixtus IV. This lacuna, and many others, can be filled by reading Anthony
Majanlahti’s elegant and informative new book. Working on the sound
principle that every building tells a story, especially in Rome, he offers an
entertaining mix of travelogue and history as he pursues the great families of
Renaissance Rome, whose history is entwined in the city’s palaces,
churches, colonnades and fountains.
The
della Rovere dynasty is one of seven which he treats in detail, and is typical
enough in the velocity of its rise to power and wealth, and in the fact that the
Church was the route of its upward mobility. Most of these families had one or
more popes to their name. Fran-cesco, the future Sixtus IV, sprang from obscure
origins in Savona, on the Ligurian coast near Genoa, though he was not the son
of an illiterate fisherman: this disciple-like background was a piece of Vatican
spin. Sixtus advanced via Padua university and the Franciscan order to a
cardinalship, and in August 1471, in his late fifties, was elected pope —
a compromise candidate. He crusaded against the Turks, and backed an
assassination plot against Lorenzo de’ Medici. When the resulting war with
Florence ended in 1480, he made diplomatic amends by inviting artists, including
Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, to decorate his new chapel with frescos. He also
built the Ponte Sesto across the Tiber, and founded the churches of Santa Maria
del Popolo and Santa Maria della Pace.
Full review at timesonline.co.uk >>>
Posted: Mon - May 16, 2005 at 02:51 PM