Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant

[Emily]

"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"

What are our origins? Where are we now? Where are we headed? Share your thoughts with us!

   Volume Five (The Renaissance)

       
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
 
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
       
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
       
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."

In this volume the  term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples. 

In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.

Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.

This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.

SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor
 

Thank you Trevor for the report on our friends in New Zealand. We are thankful that you and others who post on these forums are not in the affected zone.

Our thoughts are with those who live on the South Island and the hope that many can be rescued.

I also join the others to thank you for serving as our 'host' on this forum and 'keyboarder in chief'. In looking at the logs, you were there from the very beginning in Nov. 2001 for this discussion, and if we make it to November of this year it will mark ten years of discussion on one subject 'civilization'.

Are we there yet?

I don't think so, as countries are still trying to depose tyrants, dictators, despots, and thieves whose main purpose in life seems to be to live the 'high life' and steal from the public purse to benefit them and theirs, similiar to the Borgias.

I have never understood the near godlike worship of celebrity and the power brokers whether elected or not who seize power, and the rabble who allow them to rule, sometimes for years. The rabble only seem to 'rise up' when their circumstances become desperate.

Emily

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants' SoC
Vol. V  The Renaissance.
Pages 437-439





Caesar Borgia, slowly recovering from the same illness that had killed the Pope, found himself enmeshed in a dozen unanticipated perils. Who could have foreseen that he and his father would be incapacitated at the same time? While the doctors bled him the colonna and the Orsini quickly recovered the castles that he had taken from them; the deposed lords of the Romagna, with the encouragement of Venice, began to reclaim their principalities; and the Roman mob, already out of hand, might at any moment, now that Alexander was dead, plunder the Vatican and seize the funds upon which Caesar depended for the payment of his troops. He sent some armed men to the Vatican; they compelled Cardinal Casanuova, at swords’ points, to give up the treasury; so Caesar repeated Caesar after fifteen centuries. They brought back to him 100,000 ducats in gold, and 300,000 ducats’ worth of plate and jewellery. At the same time he sent galleys and troops to prevent his strongest enemy, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, from reaching Rome. He felt that unless he could persuade the conclave to elect a pope favourable to him, he was lost.
The cardinals insisted that the troops of Caesar, the Orsini, and the Colonna should leave Rome before an unintimidated election could be held. All three groups yielded. Caesar retired with his men to Civita Castellana, while Cardinal Giuliano entered Rome and led, in the conclave, the forces hostile to all Borgias. On September the 22, 1503, the rival factions in the college chose Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini as a compromise pope. He took the name Pius III, in honor of his uncle Aeneas Sylvius. He was a man of integrity and learning, though he was also the father of a large family. He was sixty-four, and suffered from an abscess in his leg. He was friendly to Caesar, and allowed him to return to Rome. But on October 18th Pius III died.
Giuliano della Rovere was chosen pope (Oct 31 1503 ), and took the name Julius II, as if to say, he too would be a Caesar, and better Alexander. Julius bade Caesar go to Imola and recruit a new army for the protection of the Papal States. Caesar agreed, and proceeded to Ostia with a view to sailing to Pisa. At Ostia a message from the Pope commanded him to surrender his control of the Romagna fortresses. In a crucial error suggesting that sickness had impaired his judgment, Caesar refused. Julius ordered him to return to Rome; Caesar obeyed, and was subjected to house arrest. There Guidobaldo, the newly appointed commander of the papal armies, came to see the fallen Borgia. Caesar humbled himself before the man whom he had deposed and despoiled, gave him the watchwords of the fortresses, returned to him some precious books and tapestries left from the Urbino pillage, and begged his intercession with Julius. Julius refused to release him until Caesar persuaded the Romagna castles to yield to the Pope.
Lucrezia implored her husband to help her brother; Alfonso did nothing. She appealed to Isabella d’Este; Isabella did nothing; probably she and Alfonso new that Julius was immovable. Caesar finally gave the word of surrender to his loyal supporters in the Romagna; the Pope freed him, and he fled to Naples.( April 19 1504 ). There he was welcomed by Gonzalo de Córdoba, who gave him safe conduct. His courage returning sooner than his good sense, he organized a small force, and was preparing to sail with it to Piombino, where he was arrested by Gonzalo on orders from Ferdinand of Spain; In August Caesar was transported to Spain, and fretted in prison there for two years.

Lucrezia again sought to have him freed, but in vain. His deserted wife pled for him with her brother Jean d’Albret, King of Navarre; a plan of escape was devised; and in November, 1506, Caesar was again a free man. He soon found a chance to repay d’Albret. The Count of Lerin, a vassal of the King, rebelled. Caesar led part of Jean’s army against the Count’s fortress at Viana; the Count  made a sortie, which Caesar repulsed; Caesar pursued the defeated too recklessly; the Count, reinforced, turned upon him, Caesar’s  few troops fled; Caesar with only one companion, stood his ground’ and fought till he was cut down and killed ( March 12, 1507). He was thirty-one years old.

[Frybabe]

Caesar with only one companion, stood his ground’ and fought till he was cut down and killed ( March 12, 1507).

What on earth was the man thinking? That sounds like suicide, plain and simple.

[JoanK]

It sounds like he's acting more and more like a cornered animal.

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants' SoC
Volume V
The Renaissance
Pages 439-440


It was an honourable end to a questionable life. There are many things in Caesar Borgia that we cannot stomach: his insolent pride, his neglect of his faithful wife, his treatment of women as mere instruments of passing pleasure, his occasional cruelty to his enemies. But even he had virtues. He must have had extraordinary ability to rise so rapidly, to learn so readily the arts of leadership, negotiation, and war. Given the difficult task of restoring, with only a small force at his command, the papal power of the Papal States, he accomplished it with surprising rapidity of movement, skill of strategy, and economy of means. Empowered to govern as well as conquer, he gave the Romagna the fairest rule and most prosperous peace that it had enjoyed in centuries. But his victories, his methods, his power, his dark secrecy, his swift incalculable attacks, made him the terror instead of the liberator of Italy. The faults of his character ruined the accomplishments of his mind. It was his basic tragedy that he had never learned to love.

Except again Lucrezia. What a contrast she offered to her fallen brother in the modesty and prosperity of her final years! She who in Rome had been the subject and victim of every scandalmonger was loved by the people of Ferrara as a model of feminine virtue. She tried there to forget all the horrors and tribulations of her past; she recaptured, with due restraint, the joyousness of her youth, and added to it a generous interest in the needs of others. Ariosto, Tebaldeo, Bembo, Tito and Ercole Strozzi praised her profitably in their verse; they called her ‘pulcherrima virgo’, “most beautiful maiden,” and no one blinked an eye. Perhaps Bembo tried to play Abelard to her Hèloïse, and Lucrezia now became something of a linguist, speaking Spanish, Italian, French,, and reading a “ little Latin and Greek.” We are told she wrote poetry in all these  tongues. Aldus Manutius dedicated to her his edition of the Strozzi poems, and implied, in the preface, that she had offered to underwrite his great printing enterprise.

Amid all these learned concerns she found time to bear to her third husband four sons and a daughter. Alfonso was well pleased with her in his uneffusive way. In 1506, having occasion to leave Ferrara, he appointed her regent; and she fulfilled her duties with such good judgment that the Ferrarese were inclined to pardon Alexander for having once left her in charge of the Vatican.

In the last years of her brief life she devoted herself to the education of her children, and to works of charity and mercy; she became a pious Franciscan tertiary. On June 14, 1519, she was delivered of her seventh child, but it was stillborn. She never rose from that bed of pain. On June 24, aged thirty-nine, Lucrezia Borgia, more sinned against  then sinning, passed away.

[Emily]

There was a televised interview today with the actor Jeremy Irons who is portraying Rodrigo Borgia in the new Showtime series 'The Borgias'. He was asked about the fact that he looked nothing like the Borgia pope. He is tall and thin, and Borgia is fat with a receeding chin with a porcine profile. 

Jeremy Irons did say that the show had a representative from the Vatican as a consultant. He did say that the Borgias were the first criminal mafia family and the 'Godfather' movies were based on the Borgias. He also stated that Rodrigo Borgia had twelve children by many different women and he was 'never' married.

So outlawing 'celibacy' and allowing the leaders in the Catholic church to marry would not have had any affect on Borgia. He had impregnated and abandoned scores of women and children before he ever got to Rome and the Vatican. Durant tells us that fact early on.

Bring on Julius...........

Emily

[Emily]

This quote from Durant on Lucrezia Borgia........

Ariosto, Tebaldeo, Bembo, Tito and Ercole Strozzi praised her profitably in their verse; they called her ‘pulcherrima virgo’, “most beautiful maiden,” and no one blinked an eye.

So Lucrezia is paying five 'publicists' to promote her in the public realm. More propaganda and lies, but I suppose it beats working for a living. 'Maiden' my eye.

Where did she get the money for this 'self promotion'? Stolen from the Vatican coffers, her husband? Helping others....claptrap......this was a self promotion racket.

Another quote from Durant........

Amid all these learned concerns she found time to bear to her third husband four sons and a daughter........On June 14, 1519 she was delivered of her seventh child.

Lets see, four sons and a daughter equals five. Where did these other two children come from? Durant must have overlooked this little addition problem.

According to what we have read, her first husband never consumated the marriage and it was annuled. Her second husband was murdered by her brother and his henchmen over Caesar's jealously of Lucrezia's teenage husband.

Where were Lucrezia's other children.........One note that I posted earlier about the two Papal bulls that Rodrigo Borgia wrote claiming one child to be Caesars and another Papal bull claiming he was the father of one child. After the Pope's death, one child did go to live with Lucrezia and her third husband, that was accepted as her half brother, but Rome claimed she had given birth to the child.

Maiden.......no way.

Emily

[3kings(Trevor)]

The Durant's Soc.
Volume V  The Renaissance.
Julius II
Pages 441-442



If we place before us Raphael’s searching and profound portrait of Julius II, we shall see at once that Giuliano della Rovere was one of the strongest personalities that ever reached the papal chair.A massive head bent with exhaustion and tardy humility, a wide high brow, a large pugnacious nose, grave, deep-set, penetrating eyes, lips tight with resolution, hands heavy with rings of authority, face somber with the disillusionments of power: this is the man who for a decade kept Italy in war and turmoil, freed it from foreign armies, tore down the old St. Peter’s, brought Bramante and a hundred other artists to Rome, discovered, developed, and directed Michelangelo and Raphael, and through them gave to the world a new St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and the “stanze” of the Vatican. ‘Voilà un homme!’—here is a man.

His violent temper presumably characterized him from his first breath. Born near Savonna ( 1443 ) a nephew of Sixtus IV, he reached the cardinalate at twenty-seven, and fumed and fretted in it for thirty-three years before being promoted to what had long seemed to him his manifest due. He paid no more regard to his vow of celibacy than most of his colleagues; his master of ceremonies at the Vatican later reported that Pope Julius would not allow his foot to be kissed because it was disfigured “ex morbo gallico – with the French disease". He had three illegitimate daughters, but he was too busy fighting Alexander to find time for the unconcealed parental fondness that in Alexander so  offended the cherished hypocrisies of mankind. He disliked Alexander as a Spanish intruder, denied his fitness for the papacy, called him a swindler and a usurper, and did all he could to unseat him, even to inviting France to invade Italy.

He seemed made as a foil and contrast to Alexander. The Borgia pope was jovial, sanguine, good-natured (if we except an occasional poisoning or two ); Julius was stern, Jovian, passionate, impatient, readily moved to anger, passing from one fight to another, never really happy except at war. Alexander waged war by proxy, Julius in person; the sexagenarian Pope became a soldier, more at ease in military garb than in pontifical robes, loving camps and besieging towns, having guns pointed and assaults delivered under his commanding eyes. Alexander could play, but Julius moved from one enterprise to another, never resting. Alexander could be a diplomat; Julius found it extremely difficult, for he liked to tell people what he thought if them; often his language overstepped all bounds in its rudeness and violence, and this fault increased perceptibly as he grew older. His courage, like his language, knew no limits; stricken with illness time and again in his campaigns, he would confound his enemies by recovering and leaping upon them once more.

Like Alexander, he had had to buy a few cardinals to ease his way to the papacy, but he denounced the practice in a bull of 1505. If in this manner he did not reform with inconvenient precipitation, he rejected nepotism almost completely, and rarely appointed relatives to office. In selling church benefices and promotions, however, he followed Alexander’s example, and his grants of indulgences shared with the building of St. Peter’s in angering Germany. He managed his revenues well, financed war and art simultaneously, and left Leo a surplus in the treasury. In Rome he restored social order, which had declined in Alexander’s later years, and he governed the States of the Church with wise appointments and policies. He allowed the Orsini and the Colonna to reoccupy their castles, and sought  to tie  these powerful families to loyalty by marriages  with his relatives.

When  he  came  to  power  he   found  the  states  of  the  Church  in  turmoil,  and  half  the  work  of  Alexander  and  Caesar Borgia  undone .

[Emily]

Here is Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius. In the link on the history of what happened to the portrait after Julius died the following.......

History

The painting was "purloined" from the church by Cardinal Sfondrati, the Pope's nephew. He put his collection on the market a few years later, and it was nearly all sold to Cardinal Scipione Borghese. This painting was in the Borghese Collection in 1693, as a small inventory mark at bottom left shows. It presumably left the collection in the 1790s, and was in the Angerstein Collection by 1823, and was acquired by the National Gallery in 1824.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Pope_Julius_II_(Raphael)

The endless looting of the Vatican coffers after the death of each pope in this saga by relatives and friends seems unending. Everything and anything goes up for sale from church property to artwork paid for by the faithful.

Emily

[Emily]

Durant writes.........."hands heavy with rings of authority'.

I had no clue as to a rings 'authority', so I looked it up. One ring the pope wears is called 'the ring of the fisherman' or piscatory ring. This ring's crest was once used as a stamp in wax as a 'seal' of the pope. He put his 'ring stamp' on official papers.

Eventually they had to cut the ring into pieces and destroy the 'seal' after the death of the pope, because cardinals and vatican personel had written up documents and put the pope's 'seal' on them after his death. That was how the claim for 'vatican land holdings' and the so called 'papal states' came into being. Illegal and fraudulent from the start.

But Julius is now off to recapture all those 'fraudulent' holdings. The church knew of this fraud, that is why they started destroying the 'ring of the fisherman' used by each pope and as a seal on official papers. They knew, but their greed did not stop them from continuing the fraud.

Here is a link to Pope Benedict's 'ring of the fisherman'. If you don't want to read the goldsmiths story of its making just scroll down to the last two pictures to see what the ring looks like up close.

http://www.dieter-philippi.de/en/ecclesiastical-fineries/ring-of-the-fisherman-piscatory-ring

Emily

[JoanK]

The link to Raphael's portrait didn't work mfor me. try this one:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Italian%2520Images/images/Firenze/Medici/Raphael-Julius-II-BR2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.paradoxplace.com/Church_Stuff/Popes.htm&h=500&w=413&sz=58&tbnid=pEe7quA6h755aM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=107&prev=/images%3Fq%3Draphael%2Bjulius%2Bii&zoom=1&q=raphael+julius+ii&hl=en&usg=__gqKXOOEEec9bVxTOgaX3mELfdGQ=&sa=X&ei=tiqATdL_HoGysAOGl8Ue&sqi=2&ved=0CCEQ9QEwAQ

[Emily]

Where is everyone?

Durant's writing on Pope Julius is so full of words and phrases that set off blips on my radar, wish I had time to comment on all of them.

Here are two..........

Alexander waged war by proxy, Julius in person.

Julius had courage and Alexander (Borgia) did not.

I admire courage and loathe cowardice, especially in those who suppose themselves to be leaders.

Alexander could play, but Julius moved from one enterprise to another, never resting.

Alexander was a 'playa', Julius a doer.

Julius left a legacy with the Vatican, and Alexander left nothing.

I like a 'doer' and detest a 'playa'. So Julius gets my vote for the better of the two, and that isn't saying much.

Emily 

 

[Frybabe]

I guess Popes aren't a great interest to me just now. I've been here reading along, just haven't had any comments. Pope Julius, sometimes called the Warrior Pope, provided work for many artists and in so doing gave the world some of the most exquisite art the world has ever seen (IMO).

HBO is soon to begin a series called The Borgias. Colm Feore is scheduled to play the part of Julius when he was a Cardinal. Feore played Lord Marshall in The Chronicles of Riddick, one of my favorite SciFi movies.

[JoanK]

FRY: we won't be on the popes forever.

[Brian]

Emily ---  I, too, am reading along, and have not found anything
in Trevor's recent posts from the S. of C. that has urged me to
put my fingers to the keyboard.

As JoanK says - - - the Durants will move to other subjects.

Brian

[Emily]

Thanks Joan for the link of Raphael's portrait of Julius. He seems to have five rings on his fingers. Don't know what the others represent (if anything) other than the 'fishermans ring'. Does anyone know?

Emily

[Brian]

Emily - - -  they represent the love of beautiful (and expensive) things -

The pontiff sits before us in an armchair on which is carved his own personal emblem, the acorn.  Julius’s family name was della Rovere which is the Italian word for oak.  Raphael has not positioned the pope “face-on” as was the norm for portraits of enthroned rulers of that time.  Raphael has captured in this painting an ageing man with a lined face and its sagging flesh.  Raphael however has given it colour and radiance.  The fingers of his hands bear emerald and ruby rings.

My quote comes from a description of Raphael's protrait.

Brian

[Emily]

Thanks everyone for your posts.

Everyone seems to be of the same opinion that the story of the Popes has become boring and mundane. To me this character study of the popes is fascinating as it relates to 'power' and how to get it and use it.

There are so many parallels to today's headlines that a comparison is easy to make. Today's headline says that the King of Saudi Arabia has sent troops into Bahrain to put down the protesters in that country. He is supporting the Sunni King of Bahrain, a minority ruling over a majority with no say in how they are governed.

The Saudi king is waging war by proxy like the Borgia pope against people who have no power or weapons. They are killing their own people to retain power as corrupt absolute dictators.

Since the religion of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all began in the Arabian peninsula and that hotbed of corruption that is the middle east, I see the popes, rabbis, mullahs, dictators, and despots as one, only separated by time.

The desire for power over others and unbridled greed unites them all.

Emily

 

[mabel1015j]

I'm also am reading along....... Jean

[3kings(Trevor)]

I detect some growing boredom with the political and military aspects of this Pope. There are some five more pages in this vain, so I propose moving on to a discussion of Julius II as a patron of the Arts. I feel the military activities of Popes as marking a low point in the Story of Civilization, and so can usefully be ignored.

I would have liked the Durants to have had more interest in science and mathematics, but I know those are tastes that not all are interested in. If others agree, I will move on to telling the story of Julius II, as lover of the arts and architecture. ++ Trevor. 

[Brian]

Trevor - - - I'm with you all the way in that decision.  Let's go !

Brian

[Frybabe]

I'll second that motion.

[mabel1015j]

Me too.......

[JoanK]

I'll third the motion.

Trevor, I'm with you. This was a period of great expansion in scientific ideas. I hope Durant will tell us some of that.

[3kings(Trevor)]

The Durants' SoC.
Vol. V   The Renaissance
Julius II  Pages 447-449

Roman Architecture 1492-1513






The most lasting part of his work was his patronage of art. Under him the Renaissance moved its capital from Florence to Rome. And there reached its zenith in art, as under Leo X it would reach its peak in literature and scholarship. Julius did not care much for literature; it was too quiet and feminine for his temperament; but the monumental in art accorded well with nature and life.So he subordinated all other arts to architecture, and left a new St. Peter’s as an index of his spirit and a symbol of the Church whose secular power he had saved. That he should have financed Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and a hundred more, as well as a dozen wars, and left 700,000 florins in the papal treasury, is one of the wonders of history, and one of the causes of the Reformation.

No other man ever brought so many artists to Rome. It was he, for example, who invited Guillaume de Marcillat from France to set up the fine stained-glass windows of Santa Maria del Popolo. It was characteristic of his vast conceptions that he should try to reconcile Christianity and paganism in art as Nicholas V had done in letters; for what are the stanze of Raphael but a pre-established harmony of classic mythology and philosophy, Hebrew theology and poetry, Christian sentiment and faith? And what could better represent the union of pagan and Christian art and feeling than the portico and dome, the interior columns, statuary, paintings, and tombs of St. Peter’s? Prelates and nobles, bankers and merchants, now crowding into an enriched Rome, followed  the Pope’s lead, and built palaces with almost imperial splendor in opulent rivalry. Broad avenues cut through or from the chaos of the medieval city; hundreds of new streets were opened; one of them still bears the great Pope’s name. Ancient Rome rose out of its ruins, and became again the home of a Caesar.

St. Peter’s aside, it was, in Rome, an age of palaces rather than churches. Exteriors were uniform and plain: a vast rectangular facadeof brick or stone or stucco, a portal of stone usually carved in some decorative design; on each floor rows of windows, topped with triangular or elliptical pediments; and almost always a crowning cornice whose elegant configuration was a special test and care of the architect. Behind this unpretentious front the millionaires concealed a luxury of ornament and display seldom revealed to the jealous popular eye: a central well, usually surrounded or divided by a broad staircase of marble;  on the ground floor, simple rooms for transacting business or storing goods; one the first (Americans’  second) floor, the piano nobile, the spacious halls for reception, and entertainment, and galleries of art, with pavements of marble or sturdy colored tile; the furniture, carpets, and textiles of exquisite material and form; the walls strengthened with marble pilasters, the ceilings coffered in circles, triangles, diamonds, or squares; and on walls and ceilings paintings by famous artists, usually of pagan themes—for fashion now decreed the Christian gentleman, even of the cloth, should live amid scenes from classical mythology; and on the upper floors the private chambers for lords and ladies, for liveried lackeys, for children and nurses, tutors and  governesses and maids. Many men were rich enough to have, beside their palaces, rural villas as refuges from the city’s din or summer heat; and these villas too might conceal sybaritic glories of ornament and comfort, and mural masterpieces by Raphael, Peruzzi, Giuoio Romano, Sebastiano del Piombo…..
This palace and villa architecture was in many ways a selfish art, in which the wealth drawn from unseen and countless laborers and distant lands vaunted itself in gaudy decoration for a few; in this respect ancient Greece and medieval Europe had shown a finer spirit, devoting their wealth not to private luxury but too the temples and cathedrals that were the possession, pride, and inspiration of all, the home of the people as well as the house of God.

[JoanK]

"This palace and villa architecture was in many ways a selfish art ...

in this respect ancient Greece and medieval Europe had shown a finer spirit, devoting their wealth not to private luxury but too the temples and cathedrals that were the possession, pride, and inspiration of all, the home of the people as well as the house of God."

An excellant point. Do we have access to that villa art now, I wonder.

[JoanK]

This makes me wonder: when did the idea of public art museums start in Europe, does anyone know?

[Brian]

JoanK - - - I did not know the answer to your question about the first public art museums in Europe, but this might help - - -

The Capitoline Museums, the oldest public collection of art in the world, began in 1471 when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of important ancient sculptures to the people of Rome. 

- - -  it comes from - - -

             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum#History

Brian

[Emily]

The Farnese Palace designed by Antonio da Sangallo, and enlarged by Michelangelo.

Click on the photos to enlarge.

http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Farnese_Palace.html

Emily

[Emily]

Another link to Palazzo Farnese with up to date history. It is currently the French Embassy (they have a 99 year lease). There are also some photos of artwork in the palace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Farnese

Emily

[Emily]

More renaissance architecture..........Palazzo Massimi........

Today they call themselves Massimo, and Prince Stefano Massimo says the family descends from Hercules which is why they decorated the ceiling of their entrance hall with the infant Hercules strangling the snakes Hera sent to kill him.

http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi76.htm

Emily

[Emily]

Since we have been reading about the Borghese, here are photos of the villa they built in Rome during the renaissance. Click on the photos for a description.

Villa Borghese

http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi187.html

Emily

[Emily]

The villa Borghese gallery is presented here with some of the sculpture and paintings. Scroll down and click on the work for a description. From Raphael's Deposition description........

Raphael's Deposition was painted for Atalanta Baglioni in memory of her son Grifonetto, who was killed in the fighting for the dominance of Perugia, and housed in the church of S.Francesco in Perugia in 1507.

It remained there for 101 years, until it was removed at night with the complicity of the priest and sent to Pope Paul V, who gave it to his nephew for his collection and it thus became the property of the Borghese family.

After the Treaty of Tolentino the painting was sent to Paris in 1797. When it came back to Rome in 1816, only the central scene was returned to the Borghese collection, while the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, remained in the Vatican Museums (the ornamentation surmounting it by Tiberio Alfani is in the National Gallery of Umbria).

Perhaps this will partially answer Joan's question about 'galleries' and how they began and when. Part of Raphael's work went back to the Borghese and the rest to the Vatican, with the ornamental aspects going to the Umbria gallery.

As we have read all through the history of the church, the popes had a 'confiscation' rule (that they wrote) that allowed them to seize the legal property of others. It was theft, pure and simple.

The pope wrote out a paper put his stamp on and took it (in the name of the church of course) and then gave it to his nephew who put it in his own home.

The Borghese built this villa as more of a show place and entertainment center than for a home. A place to show the collection of artwork and sculpture they had collected through their connections, and a place to party.

http://www.galleriaborghese.it/borghese/en/edefault.htm

Emily

[mabel1015j]

Thanks for the links Emily.     Jean

[JoanK]

Wonderful.

[Emily]

Since Lucrezia Borgia married Alfonso d'Este and we have just finished reading their story, here is the Villa d'Este.

http://www.romeartlover.it/Tivoli3.html

[Emily]

Since the Medici have appeared throughout the history of the Popes, here is one of their villas purchased from the Ricci during the renaissance.

When some families fell out of favor with the regime of the day, their villas and palaces went on the market, or they sold off the 'embellishments' to others, or had them stolen outright by the pope of the moment.

In reading about the building of one of the palaces it said they had taken the marble for the floors and staircases from the coliseum. Property rights have more protection today, but the saying, "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" seems appropriate.

http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi188.html

Emily

[Emily]

Durant writes........

....his master of ceremonies at the Vatican later reported that Pope Julius would not allow his foot to be kissed because it was disfigured "ex morbo gallico....with the French disease."

Here is an explanation of what the so called 'French disease' actually was, syphilis. From Wikipedia....

The first well-recorded European outbreak of what is now known as syphilis occurred in 1494 when it broke out among French troops besieging Naples. The French may have caught it via Spanish mercenaries serving King Charles of France in that siege. From this centre, the disease swept across Europe.

As Jared Diamond describes it, "[W]hen syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, caused flesh to fall from people's faces, and led to death within a few months." The disease then was much more lethal than it is today. Diamond concludes,"y 1546, the disease had evolved into the disease with the symptoms so well known to us today." The epidemiology of this first syphilis epidemic shows that the disease was either new or a mutated form of an earlier disease.

Researchers concluded that syphilis was carried from the New World to Europe after Columbus' voyages. Many of the crew members who served on this voyage later joined the army of King Charles VIII in his invasion of Italy in 1495 resulting in the spreading of the disease across Europe and as many as 5 million deaths. The findings suggested Europeans could have carried the nonvenereal tropical bacteria home, where the organisms may have mutated into a more deadly form in the different conditions and low immunity of the population of Europe.

Syphilis was a major killer in Europe during the Renaissance. In his Serpentine Malady (Seville, 1539) Ruy Diaz de Isla estimated that over a million people were infected in Europe.

Since this outbreak occured during the Renaissance with the introduction of syphilis to Europe, claimed by some researchers to have been brought there by the Spanish from the Americas, it seemed relevant to the discussion.

Since we have read about the kissing of the Popes ring (that I don't get), I am unfamiliar with the 'foot kissing' fetish. Does anyone know what those things mean to Christianity?

Emily

[mabel1015j]

Those buildings are so beautiful. Can't imagine living in one. Put as usual i have ambivalence, what was the cost to others for the owners to be able to afford to build them and to pay artists to drcorate them. I'm glad they used some of their money to support artists, and that therefore get to see their work centuries later ....... "Can't have it both ways jean, do you condemn or praise the families/church for their lifestyles?" i want it both ways.... ........ Jean

[Frybabe]

Since we have read about the kissing of the Popes ring (that I don't get), I am unfamiliar with the 'foot kissing' fetish. Does anyone know what those things mean to Christianity?

I think kissing the pope's ring is a sign of respect. I always thought (may have gotten this impression from the movies) that kissing a King's ring came with an acknowledgment that the kisser is to do the King's bidding. Anyhow, it always seems to be member of lower ranks that kiss a higher ranking official's ring.
The foot kissing thing could be similar. There again, I associate foot kissing with grovelling and great thanks for a charity given, rather than simply a respect thing.