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June 11, 2006
Alessandro Farnese, the Womanizing Prelate
Earlier this year, I gave a talk The Cardinal Who Wanted to Be a Prince at Princeton’s 55Plus. People were shocked, but it is true that Alessandro Cardinal Farnese became cardinal at the age of fourteen, and the vice-chancellor of the Roman Catholic Church one year later. An unwilling victim of his grandfather Pope Paul’s dynastic schemes for another Farnese pope, the young man deeply resented the clerical career chosen for him, desiring a royal bride instead. After all, his two younger brothers, Ottavio and Orazio, the sons of Pierluigi Farnese, were lucky to marry the daughters of Emperor Charles V and French King Henry II, even if the dull princesses were born on the wrong side of the blanket!
Papabile three times, Alessandro never made it to St. Peter's throne. The immensely rich man simply wasn’t rich enough to bribe his enemies, the Medicis and Philip II. He never became a prince. But goodness, did he live a splendid life of luxury and contempt, considering the rules of the Church he represented. A fond supporter of the newly-founded order of the Jesuits--he financed their first church in Rome, and in the world--he somehow didn’t understand their motto: poverty, chastity, and obedience. What a farce!
Money didn’t buy Alessandro the desired tiara, but it provided him with a beautiful portrait of his mistress Angela. Portrayed at first as a deliciously reclining erotic nude, the cardinal ordered the grand master Titian to inpaint a few details to change her to Danaë. (I’m sure, dear reader, that you remember about the mythological princess who was locked in a tower, but somehow raped by Zeus who descended on her in a shower of gold!)
How convenient for a man of church of Alessandro’s stature to use his wealth for some good causes. And he kept Danaë, his sensuous nude, in his private chambers almost until the end of life.
Can you image him saying: Well, my friends, it’s the Titian I’m keeping, not this goddess whose sensuality would have knocked off even the Grand Inquisitor off his feet!? And so our womanizing prelate did eat his cake after all. It just lacked a bit of frosting. Povero uomo!
Posted by Eva Siroka at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2006
Maddalena and Rudy Rucker's As Above, So Below
A while ago, I promised to tell how Maddalena was born. For my Princeton doctoral dissertation, I chose to write on northerners in sixteenth-century Rome, artists enlightened by the caput mundi. In the process, I became drawn to--no hopelessly engaged by--the graphic art of one Fleming, Hans Speckaert, a little-known artist born in Brussels ca. 1540. Two documents, one stating that he didn't pay his dues to the painter’s guild of St. Luke in Rome and the other recording his paralysis, and a bunch of prints bearing his name were my lonely guide on a frustrating journey.
It seemed hopeless trying to recapture Speckaert's artistic personality. My first attempt to impress the graduate committee's members with a workable topic simply failed. In fact, Professor David Coffin, one member, pointedly reminded me that the Farnese archives in Naples perished during the war. Yet, by navigating uncharted waters and using pioneering methods, I came to refine the artistic personality of a talented, but forgotten, Flemish artist. In the course, I also learned about other northerners. The Secret Life of Bartholomaeus Spranger, the first working title for Maddalena, was to have been a fictional tale, an academic's adventurous vent.
Recently, I came across an amazing book of Peter Breugel’s life by the talented, and prolific, writer of science fiction and non-fiction books, Rudy Rucker. His As Above, So Below reminds me so much of how the original manuscript of The Secret Life looked like, a colorfully drawn scenario of sixteenth-century life in Italy, central Europe, and the Low Countries, with details so sharp and vivid that you’d swear the author had witnessed it. People drawn to history savor fictional tales that don’t necessarily have a strong, exciting plot line or powerful characters.
When I began looking for a literary agent Alan Nevins, I found one in Lisa Hamilton, then an assistant to at Artists Management Group.
Too long. Not exciting enough. Make it like Girl with A Pearl Earring was the frank advice.
Out came numerous chapters and sections, for various editors had rejected the plot for its languid pace, with descriptions of, for example, a pastoral play, seen as a “defunct form of Renaissance theater,” the editor demanding a descriptive style of a dramatic, compelling story.
Well, to start with, there was no marriage of Jesus and Magdalene in my plot to catch a big publisher. And, one critic voiced: “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m sorry to say it didn’t knock me out. There’s so much philosophical and ethical speculation that it tends to bog down the pace of the novel, overloading it with abstaract [sic] pontificating and perhaps overlong trains of thought. While I think Ms. Siroka is a talented writer, I’m afraid this one’s not for me.”
A double sigh. Does the reader have to be knocked out? Rucker’s historical novel, so similar in scope to my Maddalena, has dramatic points, for example a scene in which the young Breugel runs for his life, pursued by the hated Rode Rockx, the paid mercenaries of the pious, foppish Philip II Habsburg, the lord and tyrant of the Low Countries--a scene of pregnant suspense, to be smothered by fascinating, but static images of sixteenth-century life. Pastoral views, paintings, drawings, artistic tools and techniques, costumes, food, lechery--all described with a gusto to be relished--mark this vivid tale.
I am proud to tell my tale with equal appeal.
Posted by Eva Siroka at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)
Titian's Penitent Magdalene
Of all the painted and sculpted Mary Magdalenes, Titian’s nude Magdalen is the most erotic. No wonder that the great Venetian master completed at least five copies just for the Mantuan court!
Imagine a young woman with long auburn tresses, cascading in turbulent waterfalls around the smooth promontory of alabaster breasts thrust erotically towards the onlooker. An itzy-pitzy, tiny alabaster jar in the left bottom corner identifies her in the painting. Called Penitent, the red around her beautiful eyes looks like Hollywood paint. She looks no more holy than does Titian’s Danaë with her legs spread wide invoke scholarly thoughts.
The Palazzo Pitti version of the Magdalene, signed “TITIANUS” and painted ca. 1535, was one of several lascivious images that inspired Cardinal Alessandro Farnese to order a nude portrait of his own concubine Angela, adjusted by Titian to look like Danaë for the sake of propriety. Ten years later, the twenty-five-year old man with no desire to take his major orders--if he could help it--already enjoyed the tremendous prestige of the Vice-Chancellor of the Roman Catholic church. The lucrative post, accompanied by countless more, made the grandson of Pope Paul III just about the richest man in Rome.
Isn’t life wonderful when a young man’s grandfather is one of the most corrupt and nepotistic popes in the history of the Catholic Church?
When rewriting the first lengthy draft of Maddalena, a tale of oltramontani, the northern artists who crossed the Alps to study art in Rome, I was struck by the obvious. I had to shorten the story to focus on the tale of the lecherous, worldly Cardinal. And long after it was complete, I wasn’t surprised to see him described thus in As Above, So Below, Rudy Rucker’s wonderful tale about the Flemish artist Peter Bruegel (p. 30).
“Cardinal Farnese ordered these [miniatures] as presents for his three mistresses.”
“You know the Pope and the cardinals personally” marveled de Vos in his smooth Latin. “Are they good or are they evil?”
“They’re Romans.” … “Crooked and devious. Rotten to the core.”
On page 37, Rudy Rucker completes the picture:
“Using a great iron key, the Cardinal unlocked a gate and the little party entered the building’s enclosed courtyard. A trio of voluptuous women appeared on the second floor balcony, calling lewdly down to the Cardinal. The Cardinal sent Clovio’s three boxed paintings upstairs with an assistant, and then his three mistresses began blowing kisses down to him. Actually, it was more than kisses, they were gesturing to him with their tongues, yes, their full-lipped mouths were wide open and their fat tongues licked about. The plump trulls tried to outdo each other in their bawdy display of licentiousness: cooing, giggling, and showing off their breasts and legs. The Cardinal seemed tempted to lug his carcass up to join them, but he still had his requiem mass to do, so it was onward to the Sistine Chapel (p.36).”
As for Titian’s Penitent Magdalene, I have a confession to make, and this is as good a place as any to make it. I have the Palazzo Pitti version, painted for the Duke of Urbino, Federico Maria della Rovere, and the father of Alessandro’s brother-in-law, hanging in Alessandro’s bedroom in Maddalena. Even it's a fictional story, I regret my error in the author’s comments. But, I edited the book in a horrible time of my life, when soon after one family member fell prey to cancer, my dear father was also diagnosed with the terminal disease. No wonder things got jumbled in my own head.
Titian’s Penitent Magdalene still feels right in my story. Who knows, one of his many copies could have found a way to the real cardinal’s secret bedroom. And Titian did paint a less licentious, clothed version for the aging cardinal. By that time, Alessandro Farnese must have feared that not all the masses and all the indulgences could save him from meeting his papal grandfather in hell.
Posted by Eva Siroka at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)