[1] See Les Arts a la Cour des Papes pendant le XV. et le XVI.  Siecles, E. Muentz, Paris, Thorin, 2me Partie.  M. Muentz has done good service to aesthetic archaeology by vindicating the fame of Paul II. as an employer of artists from the wholesale abuse heaped on him by Platina.  It may here be conveniently noticed that even the fierce Sixtus IV. showed intelligence as a patron of arts and letters.  He built the Sistine Chapel, and brought the greatest painters of the day to Rome—­Signorelli, Perugino, Botticelli, Cosimo, Rosselli, and Ghirlandajo.  Melozzo da Forli worked for him.  One of that painter’s few remaining masterpieces is the wall-picture, now in the Vatican, which represents Sixtus among his Cardinals and Secretaries—­a magnificent piece of vivid portraiture.  Sixtus again threw the Vatican library open to the public, and In his days the Confraternity of S. Luke was founded for the encouragement of design.  Rome owes to him the hospital of S. Spirito, a severe building, by Baccio Pontelli, and the churches of S. Maria del Popolo and S. Maria della Pace.  Innocent VIII. added the Belvedere to the Vatican after Antonio del Pollajuolo’s plan, and commenced the Villa Magliana.  Alexander VI. enriched the Vatican with the famous Borgia apartments, decorated by Pinturhicchio.  He also began the Palace of the University, and converted the Mausoleum of Hadrian into the Castle of S. Angelo.  These brief allusions must suffice.  It is not the object of the present chapter to treat of the Popes as patrons; but it should not be forgotten that, having accepted a place among the despots of Italy, they strove to acquit their debt to art and learning in the spirit of contemporary potentates.

[2] Corio sums up his character thus:  ’Fu costui uomo alla libidine molto proclivo; in grandissimo precio furono le gioie appresso di lui.  Del giorno faceva notte, e la notte ispediva quanto gli occorreva.’  Marcus Attilius Alexius says:  ’Paulus II. ex concubina domum replevit, et quasi sterquilinium facta est sedes Barionis.’  See Gregorovius, Stadt Rom, vol. vii. p. 215, for the latter quotation.

Paul did not live as long as his comparative youth led people to anticipate.  He died of apoplexy in 1471, alone and suddenly, after supping on two huge watermelons, duos praegrandes pepones.  His successor was a man of base extraction, named Francesco della Rovere, born near the town of Savona on the Genoese Riviera.  It was his whim to be thought noble; so he bought the goodwill of the ancient house of Rovere of Turin by giving them two cardinals’ hats, and proclaimed himself their kinsman.  Theirs is the golden oak-tree on an azure ground which Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in compliment to Sixtus and his nephew Julius.  Having bribed the most venal members of the Sacred College, Francesco della Rovere was elected Pope, and assumed the name of Sixtus IV.  He began his career with