Original name
Giuliano Della Rovere (b.1443, Albisola, d. 1513, Rome), greatest art patron of
the papal line (reigned 1503-13) and one of the most powerful rulers of his age.
Although he led military efforts to prevent French domination of Italy, Julius
is most important for his close friendship with Michelangelo and for his
patronage of other artists, including Bramante and Raphael. He commissioned
Michelangelo's "Moses" and paintings in the Sistine Chapel and Raphael's
frescoes in the Vatican.
Giuliano was the son of the impoverished Rafaello della
Rovere, Pope Sixtus IV's only brother. In 1468 he became a Franciscan, and in
1471 Sixtus IV made him a cardinal. In this office Giuliano displayed all of the
attributes of cupidity and corruption of an unscrupulous Renaissance prince. The
Pope lavished on him six bishoprics in France and three in Italy along with an
abundance of wealthy abbeys and benefices. The Cardinal, who lacked any interest
in spiritual pursuits, became an outstanding patron of the arts. He is shown
with his protégés in Melozzo da Forlě's superb fresco of Sixtus IV in the
Vatican Museum.
After the death of Sixtus IV, for whom Giuliano commissioned
a bronze sepulchre by Antonio Pollaiuolo, now in the Vatican Grotto of St.
Peter's, the Cardinal's candidate, the weak Innocent VIII, was elected through
bribery. When Rodrigo Borgia, elected pope as Alexander VI in 1492, plotted
Giuliano's assassination, Giuliano fled in 1494 to the court of Charles VIII of
France. He accompanied the French king on his expedition against Naples in the
hope that Charles would also depose Alexander VI. After accompanying Charles on
his forced return to France, Giuliano took part in Louis XII's invasion of Italy
in 1502. Alexander VI twice attempted to seize him.
Following the death of the Borgia pope in 1503, Giuliano
returned to Rome, having been 10 years in exile, and, after Pius III's brief
pontificate, was, with the liberal help of simony, elected Pope Julius II in
October 1503. Immediately after his election he decreed that all future
simoniacal papal elections would be invalid and subject to penalty.
Julius II viewed as the main task of his pontificate the
restoration of the Papal States, which had been reduced to ruin by the Borgias.
Large portions of it had been appropriated by Venice after Alexander VI's death.
As a first step as pope, Julius subjugated Perugia and Bologna in the autumn of
1508. Then, in March 1509, he joined the League of Cambrai, an anti-Venetian
alliance formed in December 1508 between Louis XII, who then ruled Milan,
Emperor Maximilian I, and Ferdinand II of Spain, who had been king of Naples
since 1503. The league troops defeated Venice in May 1509 near Cremona, and the
Papal States were restored.
Having become an exponent of Italian national consciousness,
Julius II proposed to drive the French from Italy, but his second war, which
lasted from September 1510 to May 1511, was unsuccessful. Several cardinals
defected to Louis XII and called a schismatic council, to which Julius responded
by summoning the fifth Lateran Council. After concluding an alliance with Venice
and Ferdinand II of Spain and Naples in October 1511, he opened the council in
May 1512 at the Lateran Palace. Louis XII had defeated the troops of the
alliance at Ravenna in April 1512, but the situation changed when Swiss troops
were sent to the Pope's aid. The territories in northern Italy occupied by the
French revolted, the French left the country, and the Papal States were
augmented by the acquisition of Parma and Piacenza. Toward the end of his life,
he viewed with concern the replacement of French by Spanish efforts to attain
supremacy in Italy. Julius II was Italy's saviour.
The enduring impact of the life of Julius II stemmed from his
gift for inspiring great artistic creations. His name is closely linked with
those of such great artists as Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo. With his
wealth of visionary ideas, he contributed to their creativity. Following an
overall plan, he added many fine buildings to Rome and laid the groundwork in
the Vatican Museum for the world's greatest collection of antiquities. Among the
innumerable Italian churches that benefitted from his encouragement of the arts
was Sta. Maria del Popolo in Rome, for which he commissioned Andrea Sansovino to
create sepulchres for a number of cardinals and Pinturicchio to paint the
frescoes in the apse. Donato Bramante became the architect of Julius'
fortifications in Latium, of the two galleries that form the Belvedere Court,
and of other Vatican buildings. Around 1503 the Pope conceived the idea of
building a new basilica of St. Peter, the first model of which Bramante created.
Its foundation stone was laid on April 18, 1506.
The Pope's friendship with Michelangelo, begun in 1506, was
enduring despite recurrent strains imposed on their relations by the two overly
similar personalities. Their relationship was so close that the Pope became, in
fact, Michelangelo's intellectual collaborator. Of Julius' tomb only the "Moses"
in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome, was completed; the Pope is,
however, not interred there but in St. Peter's, along with the remains of Sixtus
IV. The famous bronze statue of the Pope for the church of S. Petronio in
Bologna, completed in 1508, was destroyed in 1511. In 1508 Michelangelo was
prevailed upon by Julius to begin his paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel, which were unveiled in October 1512. The paintings, which represent a
climax in Western art, were, in form and conception, a product of the artistic
symbiosis of Michelangelo and the Pope.
By 1509 Raphael, introduced to Julius, had begun his
masterpieces for the Pope, the frescoes in three rooms of the Vatican. Spiritual
references to the person and the pontificate of Julius II are evident in one of
the rooms (the Stanza della Segnatura), where earthly and celestial wisdom are
juxtaposed in the "School of Athens" and the "Disputa," while the beauty of
creativity is represented in the "Parnassus." The theme of another room (the
Stanza d'Eliodoro), which could be called a transcendental "political" biography
of the Pope, is still more personal. "The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the
Temple" symbolizes the expulsion of the French and the subjugation of all the
church's enemies, with Julius II depicted witnessing the scene from his portable
throne. Closely related to this is the "Liberation of St. Peter," in which light
and darkness serve to symbolize the historic events of the pontificate. The
third great fresco in this room, the "Mass of Bolsena," shows the Pope kneeling,
rather than enthroned, in commemoration of his veneration of the corporale
(communion cloth) of Bolsena in the cathedral of Orvieto. In addition to these
fresco portraits, there is one by Raphael in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, one
of the masterpieces of portraiture, which shows the Pope not as the victorious
Moses springing to his feet, as Michelangelo portrayed him, but as a resigned,
pensive old man at the end of an adventurous, embattled life. Michelangelo's
chalk drawing of the Pope in the Uffizi gallery approaches it in quality.
As cardinal, Julius II fathered three illegitimate daughters,
Felice, Clarissa, and Giulia, none of whom achieved any particular distinction.
He made four members of the Della Rovere family cardinals, only one of whom
achieved any importance. From the marriage of the Pope's only brother, Giovanni,
to the daughter and heiress of Duke Federigo of Montefeltro descended the dukes
of Urbino.
The Pope added wisely to the church's treasures. Although he
had little of the priest in him, he was concerned toward the end only with the
church's grandeur. He wished for greatness for the papacy rather than for the
pope, and he wished for peace in Italy. The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt
called him the "saviour of the papacy," because Alexander VI had greatly
endangered its existence for the sake of his family interests.
Julius had an extraordinarily violent temper, often lost his
self-control, and could be rude and often even vulgar in manner. Yet, apart from
the avarice and corruption inherent in his office and time as much as in
himself, he was incapable of baseness and vindictiveness and despised informers
and flatterers; no one was able to influence his decisions. Everywhere he saw
and sought out greatness. He lacked the smooth manners of the servile. His
faults arose from his relentless candour and uncontrollable temper. He was
called terrible, an epithet suggesting that he was regarded as sublime, even
superhuman.
