The Motivation for the Patronage of Pope Julius Ii

THE MOTIVATION FOR THE PATRONAGE OF POPE JULIUS II Christine Shaw As the head of the Western Church, Giuliano della Rovere, Pope Julius II (1503-13), has had his critics, from his own day to ours, above all for his role as ‘the warrior pope’. The aspect of his rule that has won most general approval has been his patronage of the arts. The complex iconography of some of the works Julius commissioned, particularly Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican Stanze, and the scale of some of the projects he initiated – the rebuilding of St Peter’s, the development of the via Giulia, the massive and elaborate tomb Michelangelo planned to create for him – have provided fertile soil for interpretation of these works as expressions of Julius’s own ideals, aspirations, motives and self-image. Too fertile, perhaps – some interpretations have arguably become over-elaborate and recherchés. The temptation to link the larger than life character of Julius II with the claims for the transcendent power and majesty of the papacy embodied in the iconography and ideology of the works of art and writings produced in Rome during his pontificate, whether or not they were commissioned by the pope, has often proved irresistible to scholars. Some of the works associated with Julius can be read as expressions of certain conceptions of papal authority, and of the Rome of the Renaissance popes as the culmination of classical and Jewish, as well as early Christian history. But should they be read as Julius’s conception of his role as pope, his programme for his own papacy? Just because others identified him with Julius Caesar, or with Moses, does that mean that he saw himself as Moses, as a second Julius Caesar? There were plenty of learned men in Rome, ready to elabore theories of papal power which drew on different traditions and to fit Julius into them, just as they had fitted earlier popes and would fit later popes into them. They needed no encouragement from Julius to do this, just as they needed no encouragement from Alexander VI (1492-1503) to hail him as a new Alexander the Great.1 However flattering Alexander VI may have found it to be compared with Alexander the Great, he is not generally seen as identifying with him, nor as having chosen his pontifical name to invoke the comparison. Yet 1 Stinger, The Renaissance,p.91;Miglio,Scritture, pp. 147-148. 44 CHRISTINE SHAW Giuliano della Rovere’s choice of Julius as his pontifical name has been widely seen as significant. In accounts of his pontificate and his patronage it has become a commonplace that Julius encouraged the identification of himself and Julius Caesar, and even that he saw himself as a new Julius Caesar. I have argued elsewhere2 that there is very little direct evidence that Julius identified himself with, or strove to emulate, Julius Caesar. In fact, the only direct evidence is the inscription on one medal, JVLIVS. CAESAR. PONT. II. – if it is assumed that Julius knew of and approved the inscription. There is among the works commissioned by Julius nothing re- motely like the frescoes of Alexander the Great painted for Pope Paul III (1534-49) in the Sala Paolina of the papal fortress in Rome, the Castel Sant’ Angelo, recalling the pope’s baptismal name, Alessandro. Yet Paul III is not seen as being driven by a vision of himself as a new Alexander, any more than is Alexander VI. Invocations of Julius Caesar were a commonplace of princely flattery and iconography, and not just in Rome; why should they be taken as particularly significant for Julius II?3 If Julius did approve the striking of the medal bearing the inscription JVLIVS. CAESAR. PONT. II., it would be a reflection of his exaltation at the successful outcome of his military expedition to Perugia and Bologna in 1506. Recovery of the lands of the Roman Church, including the re-estab- lishment of direct control by the papacy over parts of the Papal States where families like the Bentivoglio of Bologna and the Baglioni of Perugia had seemed to be becoming de facto rulers of their cities, despite the presence of papal governors and administrators, was central to Julius’s personal sense of his mission as pope. It may not have accorded with the conception many of his contemporaries had of what the role of the pope should be, nor with ours, but Julius’s belief in the importance of his self-imposed task dated from before he became pope. As a cardinal he had been noted for his con- 2 Shaw, Julius II, pp. 204-206. 3 I cannot agree with Ingrid Rowland (The Culture, pp. 172, 315) that the argument that ‘Julius Caesar [was] a figure of great symbolic importance to Pope Julius, who must have chosen his own pontifical name with the parallel in mind’ is ‘proven une- quivocally’ in the Postscript to the reprint of J. S. Ackerman’s essay on ‘Belvedere as a Classical Villa’, in his Distance Points. His statement there (p. 357) that ‘Con- temporary sources reveal Julius’s intention to represent himself as a descendant and reincarnation of Julius Caesar’ is supported by reference to ‘the coin of 1506’, an inscription on one of the triumphal arches created to celebrate Julius’s return to Rome from Bologna in 1507, which included the phrase Veni, vidi, vici, and a couplet written by an unknown Roman poet referring to the statue then known as Cleopatra in the Belvedere sculpture court, invoking the ‘second Julius’. In the absence of evidence that Julius commissioned these inscriptions, asking for these references to Caesar, they prove nothing about Julius’s intentions..

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