The Borgias Between Legend and Art

Roman exhibition celebrates controversial family which helped bring in Renaissance

Centuries after their deaths, with their alleged misdeeds so far behind us, the Borgias still spur debate. This time the controversial family forms the subject of a current exhibition in Rome, at Palazzo Ruspoli, that will close on February 23, 2003. The title is, understandably, I Borgia ("The Borgias").
Machiavelli celebrated their diplomatic ability and their effective command strategies; Guicciardini criticized them harshly; Savonarola publicly decried their dissolute behaviour. Many artists of the time exalted their virtues or attacked their vices. This exhibition contributes to reconstruct the atmosphere of Italy's Renaissance, "beautiful and dramatic in its political, artistic, religious and cultural aspects, packed with tragedy and passion, subversion and power struggles, wickedness and holiness, humanistic paganism and mystic religiosity." The much-despised Borgia family is not seen simply as exemplary evil (having the author of a libel about their family crimes arrested, and his tongue and right hand cut), but as men and women "able to cultivate civilization and progress."
In any case, this was one of the most powerful dynasties in Italian history, for centuries the symbol of unbridled nepotism and openly displayed corruption. And yet, under their Papal rule there was an exceptional vivacity in arts and letters, an unparalleled phenomenon in European history. This was the beginning of the Renaissance, the golden century of Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Bramante, Cellini, Antonello da Messina, Mantegna, Raphael, Dürer, Ariosto, Bembo, Galileo, Copernicus.
The Borgias, coming from Catalonia, kept many splendid customs that derived from their land of origin. Two Borgias became popes. The first, Alonso Borgia, born in Jàtiva (near Valencia) in 1378, assumed the papal name of Callistus III and distinguished himself by opposing the Turkish advance in Europe. His grandson, Rodrigo Borgia, born in 1431, was elected Pope as Alexander VI in 1492, a fundamental date for Europe and the rest of the world. That was the year America was discovered, Lorenzo the Magnificent died, expansionistic policies were enacted, and the central role of cities in the delicate balance of Italian politics faced a crisis.
This is the scenario of Alexander VI's papacy, promoter of a Crusade against the Turks and of a Jubilee, sponsor of the arts, supporter of universities, and author of a decree that split the New Continent between Spain and Portugal. The exhibition deals with all this through three thematic sections: history, art, and dark legends of one of history's most famous and influential families.
One can think of this story about the rich papal family as a sort of Dallas set in the Middle Ages: rich, powerful and with nasty characters. In the end, their secret, midway between truth and rumours, was just this. They were so modern and "libertine" to resemble people from our own period. Even in their proclaimed perversions, such as their insane fondness for poisons, they could be readily compared to some anti-hero from a television serial.
Pope Alexander VI has always been the emblem of any possible sin of simony and nepotism, his son Valentino has become the symbol of a prince ready to do "anything" to keep the power, and his daughter Lucretia has been seen as the embodiment of the courtesan constantly balancing artistic impulse and palace plotting. However, the Borgias weren't simply rich, powerful and nasty (although no one can say they were beautiful either, despite the best efforts of Titian and an anonymous painter from Romagna). In fact, they were among the strongest art sponsors of the Renaissance, and this exhibition has been assembled precisely to retell the role they played in history and their influence on politics, arts and thought.
When Alexander VI died age, possibly poisoned, everything the family had built crumbled like a house of cards; all that remained was the memory of this family, soon transformed into legend. But there is a strong suspicion that the legend was spread and loaded with dark sides less for their moral turpitude than for the trembling fear that their ambitions had provoked in the hearts of many Italian courts.

Publication Date: 2002-11-24
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2029