The Tigress of Forli (8 page)

The next morning the sun rose on Pentecost Sunday, one of the most glorious holidays of the year. While the Romans were donning their best clothes and adornments to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church, Caterina was readying herself to see the Eternal City for the first time. Her slender frame was enveloped in a mantle of gold brocade and dark silk, which opened to reveal a voluminous crimson skirt. Her sleeves picked up the motif of the brocade, and sapphires, emeralds, and rubies from distant India, cut into myriad shapes and sizes, hung from her neck and bedecked her graceful fingers. These trappings were so heavy that they slowed her pace. In truth, the gem-encrusted costume was designed less for flattering the female form than for displaying the combined wealth of the Sforza and Riario families.

At the Roman gates, an astounding sight awaited her. Six thousand horsemen appeared from all sides and fell in with Caterina as she made her way to Saint Peter's Basilica. She was shown to a place of honor there as the pope entered in procession with the College of Cardinals to celebrate the solemn Mass of Pentecost, which lasted a full three hours. Afterward, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, back in papal favor, and Count Girolamo conducted Caterina, Gian Luigi Bossi, and the dignitaries of her escort to Sixtus. Meeting the Vicar of Christ for the first time, Caterina did as she had been taught to do: she knelt before him and kissed the toe of his red velvet slipper. The other dignitaries followed suit, and Gian Luigi Bossi launched into a long, elegant, well-prepared speech bearing the greetings of the duke of Milan and extolling the virtues and modesty of Caterina. He spoke passionately and eloquently. The delighted pope honored Bossi with knighthood on the spot.

But Sixtus had a more important task at hand. He commanded that Girolamo and Caterina be brought before him and that their marriage ceremony be repeated. No hasty consummation after a financial contract, no ceremony by proxy here: what the pope joined together, no one could cut asunder. The pontiff then presented a gift of his own to the bride. He removed the pearl necklace given to her by Girolamo the evening before and replaced it with another considerably more precious one, with larger, perfectly round pearls of the purest white from his own treasury at the Castel Sant'Angelo.

On being presented to the College of Cardinals, Caterina kissed each eminent hand dutifully, as she had been instructed. The newlyweds then took their leave of the papal court and started off to their new home in Campo dei Fiori. The short trip across the river took the couple through streets rendered fragrant with incense and embellished with bright cloth and floral arrangements bearing the coats of arms of the pope, the Sforzas, and the Riarios.

Nothing that Caterina had seen in Florence or Milan prepared her for the vastness and splendor of her new residence in Rome. At the heart of the palace was a large courtyard hung with festive tapestries for the arrival of the new inhabitants. Dozens of superbly decorated rooms looked out onto a central courtyard in what the Milanese ambassador described as "earthly paradise." Two hundred guests vied for the countess's attention, and gifts worth over twelve thousand ducats were piled high before the stunned and overjoyed young woman. Her wedding banquet was the sort of spectacle that only a city with a two-thousand-year love of theater could produce. Each course was preceded by a child dressed as an angel, who was borne into the room upon a triumphal chariot and then recited a few verses from famous Greek myths. The exotic treats included sugarcoated oranges, and fish encrusted with silver and gold shimmered on the tables. Two calves were roasted whole in their skins and were presented to the countess by two more "angels" holding hunting spears and reciting poetic accolades. An edible tableau of life-size figures sculpted in sugar astonished the guests as it was unveiled for dessert.

At her father's court, Caterina had experienced plenty of extravagance and taken part in costly feasts, but the magnificence of Rome was overwhelming. The sumptuous food and lavish gifts were rendered more awe-inspiring by the presence of the pope and his religious authority. Sacred and profane intertwined to make Caterina's wedding feast a unique event.

Now that Caterina had delighted the papal court and taken her place in her new home, the time was ripe for Bossi to attend to his last commission from Bona of Savoy. Using the goodwill garnered by Caterina, Bossi negotiated with Girolamo to obtain a cardinal's hat for her twenty-two-year-old uncle, Ascanio Sforza. Even though Caterina slept peacefully in her Roman palazzo, her new position and influence were already at work.

T
HE CEREMONIAL PROCESSION
arranged for Caterina's arrival displayed Rome's most glorious finery, but the tapestries and garlands along the streets had hidden dirty, unpaved alleys and the façades of rickety buildings. The incense burned in her honor had disguised the smell of rotting animal corpses and the other fetid odors of a city lacking a sewer system. As Caterina's new life there began, she soon discovered that the unclean roads were merely the most visible sign of decay in Rome. The papal court, the citizens, and even her own home were rife with corruption.

The Romans were a different breed from the diligent, serious Milanesi. Caterina found herself in a much more claustrophobic environment. Fifteenth-century Rome was also a far cry from the city that had been lauded in antiquity as the
caput mundi,
the "head of the world." The Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni had once contemptuously referred to its latter-day denizens as Romans "of whom nothing remains but empty boasting."
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The sixty thousand inhabitants didn't produce costly silks or exquisitely worked armor, nor did they harvest huge surpluses of crops to sell to other regions. Like parasites, they lived off the traffic of pilgrims and the presence of the papal court. They were reputed to be envious and rumormongering, with a violent temper too. Courtiers whispered and intrigued. Cardinals and princes vied to put on the most luxurious parties and the most grandiose public pageants, while the populace, watching these extravagances from their ramshackle abodes, harbored resentment that could escalate into riots at any moment.

Caterina's first Roman home was a palace situated in the heart of the city, near the Campo dei Fiori, its main market. Since Pope Sixtus had recently moved the other major market from the Capitoline Hill to the Piazza Navona a few short blocks away, the young countess found herself in the busiest part of town. Artisans rubbed elbows with the highest prelates; exotic wares sat side by side with spelt flour and onions.

Every time she left her house, Caterina experienced firsthand the tensions and contradictions of Rome. As she and her retinue strolled through the markets, she witnessed some of the immense changes wrought by her visionary patron, the pope. The bustling Via Mercatoria, which stretched from the banking section of town by the river through the Campo dei Fiori market to the Piazza Venezia, flourished with commercial activity. The pope had widened the road and cleared it of overhanging balconies, transforming it into a well-lit, clean path where Roman shops could display their wares to advantage.

Sixtus's restoration of the road did not spring purely from aesthetic taste or a desire to help local merchants. He had acted in response to friendly advice from King Ferdinand of Naples, who had commented that Sixtus would "never be the Lord of Rome as long as women dropping stones from overhead can crush your best soldiers or make them turn tail and run."
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Falling rocks were not the only hazard related to these architectural protuberances. A passerby had to be alert to the possibility that almost anything might be tossed out of Roman windows—from dead cats to the contents of chamber pots.

Although Caterina was used to seeing her father armed and wearing a cuirass when he traveled, she would have been taken aback by the sight of several small armies marching about in the city streets, each in the pay of a noble family. Caterina and her husband were always escorted by armed guards who resembled thugs and were nothing like the elegant Swiss Guard of the modern papacy. Carrying swords and daggers, and quick to draw them, they shoved a path clear for the noble couple as they passed through town. All the important families in Rome employed them, mostly out of necessity. For example, the death of a pope, whether sudden or expected, would unleash anarchy: mobs attacked the houses of the wealthy, and crime infested the streets. Hence, during this period, referred to as
sede vacante
—"the vacant throne"—private armies were essential protection for home and property. Order would be restored with the election of a new pontiff, after a few final throes of violence. As soon as the name of the new successor to Saint Peter was announced from the Vatican loggia, Romans would rush to the man's family palace and loot it. Once crowned, the new pope would make a foray into the city, taking the processional route from the Basilica of Saint Peter to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran and back again. To the rest of the world this symbolized the pope's possession of his cathedral and his regal rule of Rome, but for the inhabitants of the Eternal City it was a ritual gauntlet to be braved by the newly elected pontiff. He rode on the Via Papalis, which twisted and turned through the heart of the city, passing by anti-papal strongholds and the homes of families that had ruled Rome for centuries despite the presence of the papacy. The road skirted the foot of the Capitoline Hill, the great Roman stronghold of the republican age, where certain of Rome's citizens expressed their hostility to papal rule. During Sixtus IV's possession ceremony, stones were thrown at his carriage as he traveled past its slopes.
³

Caterina certainly recognized that the presence of so many private armies meant that her new family did not control its city as firmly as her father had ruled Milan. Yet rather than stay locked indoors, she spent most of her time outside her home, getting to know the members of her new family: the Riarios, the Basso della Roveres, and particularly her husband's cousin, Giuliano della Rovere, the striking cardinal of the Church of Saint Peter in Vincoli.

An endless round of parties began in the afternoon and lasted well into the night. These four-course feasts often boasted forty different dishes. Like a theatrical production, each course was heralded by a master of ceremonies, who changed his clothes and jewels to match the theme of the course. These Renaissance galas entertained the noblest families, greatest thinkers, richest bankers, and loveliest women. Caterina, the crown princess of this luxurious realm, played her part to the full. Roman diarists waxed eloquent about her fair tresses, rare in raven-haired Rome, and gushed over her dresses, which, unlike the high-necked Roman style, displayed daring décolletage. Her intelligence, manners, and sense of fashion were so widely admired that a later chronicler, Fabio Oliva, wrote that "in popular opinion she was the most beautiful and gracious woman of her time." Like many young girls, Caterina delighted in exquisite dresses and sumptuous parties. Much of her day was absorbed by her toilette; out late, she rose late and began the slow process of dressing. Using powders and cosmetic paints, Caterina transformed her teenage features. During her first forays into public life, Caterina found that her stepmother, having once been her mentor in social graces, now acted as her greatest source of fashionable accessories. Bona frequently sent gifts of ribbons, jeweled belts, and beaded hairnets, allowing Caterina to flaunt the latest northern styles. More than these items, however, Caterina appreciated the affection that permeated Bona's letters. In a note dated November 9, 1477, Bona tells Caterina that "hearing you are well fills us with joy as it is with every mother toward a beloved daughter as you are to me,"
⁴
while in another she describes the only consolation "of being deprived of your sweet conversation ... is the thought of your happy circumstances."
⁵

In her return letters to her stepmother, Caterina revealed that her delight in riding and hunting had not diminished. When Bona sent Caterina and Girolamo a fine pair of hunting dogs in January 1478, Caterina was particularly effusive in her thanks. Departing from the stiff formal epistolary tone that characterized her obligatory courtly letters home, Caterina wrote that the dogs were "very dear to me and even more so to my husband ... he was delighted to see them and played with the dogs for hours." Still enamored of the chase, Caterina's happiest moments occurred during equestrian adventures outside the city limits. A few blocks away from her house, Sixtus had built a new bridge, the first since antiquity to span the Tiber. The Ponte Sisto, as it was called, cut traveling time to the Vatican for prelates and pilgrims alike, but for Caterina it was the route to the lush gardens and forests of the Janiculum Hill, where she could breathe freely, away from the stuffy halls and crowded streets of the city. On these days she could leave behind the pounds of silk and brocade and the weighty jewels that even for a fashion maven could sometimes be burdensome. In a light woolen gown, with her hair loosely tied, she would set off on horseback with her dogs to race up and down the hills of Rome. Exploring the thick forests of Lazio was a refreshing change from picking her way through the labyrinth of alleys in the city center, and the fierce boar was a more straightforward foe than the scheming flatterers at court.

Caterina's correspondence home, however, was not all shopping lists and personal news. As soon as she settled into her new home, the young countess went to work. Stacks of letters requesting promotions for courtiers, merciful treatment for an arrested retainer, or parishes for clerics kept her busy for hours every day. The sister of a duke and now the niece of a pope, Caterina was a powerful intercessor, and both her old family and her new one called upon her to exercise this role. In her first two years in Rome, Caterina wrote dozens of personal and official dispatches, and although her tone remained invariably cheery, her life was not without cares and concerns.