Cesare Borgia, commonly known as the Duke of Valentinois, gained his state through his father’s fortune, and lost it with that same fortune, despite employing every imaginable means and doing everything that a prudent and skillful man should do to establish himself in a state acquired with the help of arms and the support of others

The man who fundamentally inspired Machiavelli, among others, for the model of a ruler that he described in his work The Prince (although he also mentioned Ferdinand of Aragon, but he was more distant) was undoubtedly one of the great figures of the Renaissance. Along with other members of his family, he became the subject of a thousand and one legends, some with more basis than others. Great artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, Pinturicchio, Titian, and El Bosco, among others, had him or other members of the Borgia family as their patrons.

In fact, Cesare Borgia’s relationship with art has a truly curious chapter: some authors believe that he was not only the model for The Prince but also that his facial features were used by many contemporary artists for the face of Christ. Until then, Christian iconography had represented Jesus in various ways, from the initial beardless moscophoros, which persisted until the Middle Ages, to the bearded and long-haired Jesus that became popular later due to inspiration from the Syrian-Palestinian region, transitioning from a majestic attitude to a more human one that was introduced in the Renaissance.

And according to some, it was Leonardo who was responsible. In 1502, da Vinci had left the patronage of Ludovico Sforza of Milan to put himself under the patronage of Cesare, who was interested in his military inventions and, as the story goes, in him inventing an undetectable poison – a favorite method in medieval and Renaissance Italy for getting rid of enemies or troublesome individuals.

Cesare Borgia with Machiavelli (Federico Faruffini)/Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

Legend has it that the two of them became lovers, but there are so many stories surrounding the Borgias that this is just one more. What interests us here is that this love affair would have led Leonardo to paint a Christ with the face of Borgia (the famous Salvator Mundi), and Borgia’s father, Pope Alexander VI, would have been responsible for its dissemination.

The same legend says that Michelangelo, jealous of Leonardo, adopted the same aesthetic canon of a clearly white Christ, far removed from the Semitic appearance of earlier times, laying the foundations for a new iconography.

All of this story is apocryphal and unlikely, of course, and if it had any semblance of reality, it would surely be reduced to the intention of giving Jesus a less Hebrew appearance, perhaps because the Borgia (and Spaniards in general) were derogatorily considered to be Jewish. To add more confusion to the matter, the authorship of the Salvator Mundi has been in doubt in recent times.

Some see a resemblance in features and facial structure between the faces of the best known portrait of Cesare Borgia by Altobello Melone and Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi./Image 1: public domain on Wikimedia Commons – Image 2: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

And who was this Cesare who caused so much talk in his time? Although he was born in Rome, his father came from Jativa, Valencia: Roderic (or Rodrigo) de Borja, of noble lineage, was the nephew of a bishop who would become Pope (Calixtus III) and who facilitated his appointment as cardinal deacon in Rome, where he rose through the hierarchy to receive the bishoprics of Gerona (1457) and Valencia (1458), among many other honors and positions. He remained in the Levantine city until 1492, when he was elected to replace Innocent VIII.

He managed to impose himself in the conclave over other candidates with illustrious surnames such as Ascanio Sforza, Lorenzo Cibo, and Giuliano della Roverere, who at first seemed to have an advantage for being Italian but could not counteract Rodrigo’s cunning maneuvers to win the votes of the cardinals, alternating conviction with simony (promises and bribes).

He assumed the name Alexander VI and despite Italianizing his surname to counteract the slander against him for his foreign origin, he never managed to shake off that stigma, duly fueled by his political enemies, who accused him of favoring the interests of Aragon.

Rodrigo de Borgia, Pope Alexander VI (Cristofano dell’Altissimo)/Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

This caused his scandalous private life to be exaggerated, not particularly exemplary but not very different from that of his predecessors and the majority of popes and ecclesiastical hierarchs of those centuries. He maintained romantic relationships with several women, of which we are interested here in the most important, Vannozza Cattanei, because all the children she gave him, who were acknowledged by the prelate, achieved a certain fame: Juan, César, Lucrecia, and Jofré. Besides, he had had Pedro Luis (whose mother is unknown), and later had Juan and Rodrigo (also from unknown mothers), apart from speculation about the paternity of the offspring of another famous lover, Julia Farnesio.

Born in 1475, Cesare Borgia was, therefore, the second son; something that he disliked because, according to the custom of the time, it meant that he was destined to take the habit (become a clergyman) when he had shown an interest in the profession of arms since he was a child, becoming a skilled rider and fencer, combining beauty, strength, and ambition in his person. However, he had no choice but to study theology and law, obtaining the bishopric of Pamplona at only seventeen years old, and later moving to Valencia three years later and being appointed cardinal.

A family tragedy changed that outlook. His brother Juan, the eldest, who was the captain general of the papal armies, was assassinated in 1497, and the circumstances of his death and the identity of the culprits remain unknown because the servants who accompanied him perished with him. Rumors pointed to Cesare, who longed for his position (and certainly would have been much more competent in it), but also to Jofré (because Juan was having an affair with his wife).

A glass of wine with Cesare Borgia. In this painting by John Collier we see, from left to right, Cesare, Lucrezia, Alexander VI and a servant./Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

Any Borgia was suspect by definition, as they were compared to Nero and Caligula, accused of crimes, rapes, and worse… In any case, Cesare was finally able to abandon the priesthood to devote himself to military life.

The renunciation of the purple, which he executed the following year, implied the need to seek an advantageous marriage. While doing so, Louis XII of France gave him the duchy of Valentinois with the aim of winning the support of the Borgias to seize the Milanese, which the Spanish also had their eyes on; hence Cesare was known in his time as Duke of Valentinois.

The French monarch also gave him the long-awaited wife: Charlotte of Albret, sister of the king of Navarre, whom he married in 1499; together they would have a daughter, Louise (although Cesare would father a dozen more children out of wedlock).

Possible child portrait of Cesare Borgia by Pinturicchio/Imagen: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

As agreed, the Borgias supported the French campaign, and later Louis returned the favor as an ally in the conquest of Romagna, which the Pope wanted to incorporate into the Papal States. Cesare led the war with varying success, alternating triumphs such as the capture of Imola and the imprisonment of Caterina Sforza with failures such as having to retreat in the face of the intervention of the Milanese Ludovico il Moro. However, he managed to take several cities and subject Florence as a tributary, earning him the title of Lord of Romagna.

The next episode took place in the south of the Italian peninsula, in the context of the dispute between France and Aragon over who would take Naples. Alexander VI washed his hands of the matter but mediated for the kingdom to be split, and Cesare joined the French army that occupied the assigned territory in 1501. The following year, he returned to the north to continue the unification of central Italy that his father aspired to. He took control of Urbino and Camerino, but when he was about to besiege Bologna, Louis XII began to distrust this expansion that threatened his possessions and demanded that it be ended.

That withdrawal of French support encouraged some of the condottieri he had hired to betray him and keep his conquests, dividing them among themselves. Cesare asked for help again from Louis XII and eventually had to negotiate an agreement. At least in theory, because Alexander VI took reprisals against the Orsini family, involved in the uprising, while Cesare managed to capture and execute the main leaders. Obviously, the Orsini did not sit idly by and hostilities broke out again.

Italian lordships in 1499/Image: Wikimedia Commons

It was not until the spring of 1503 that an armistice was reached. Everything seemed to be on track, but that summer a malaria epidemic that had spread throughout Rome ended the Pope’s life (poisoning was also mentioned, a constant in Renaissance Italy) and Cesare thus lost not only a father but also someone who had his back.

As a result, he was forced to leave Rome while a successor was elected, as there was a fear that he would use the army to impose his candidate, the French cardinal Georges d’Amboise.

The matter was between him and Giuliano della Rovere, a declared enemy of the Borgias. However, the winner was Francesco Nanni Todeschini Piccolomini, crowned with the name Pius III. Nobody expected him to last long because he was very ill with gout, and indeed, he died twenty-six days later.

Cesare Borgia leaving the Vatican (Giuseppe Lorenzo Gatteri)/Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

In October, Giuliano finally got the coveted tiara; the one who has gone down in history as Julius II did not hesitate to order the arrest of Cesare, although he kept him detained in the Vatican Palace instead of throwing him into a dungeon in the Castel Sant’Angelo. As Machiavelli wrote:

“All the others, when they reached the throne, had to fear him, except for the Cardinal of Amboise, given his power, which came from that of France, and the Spaniards bound to him by alliance and reciprocal obligations. Therefore, the Duke should first try to anoint a Spanish pope, and failing that, accept the Cardinal of Amboise before the one from San Pedro Advíncula. For whoever believes that new benefits make old offenses forgotten is mistaken. The Duke was mistaken in this choice, the ultimate cause of his definitive ruin.”

During his imprisonment, the Republic of Venice took advantage and seized control of the Romagna. The new Pope, who wished to maintain that territory under his jurisdiction, made a deal with his prisoner: he would grant Cesare his freedom if he led his troops to recapture the Romagna. Cesare fulfilled his end of the bargain and returned some cities to the Pope, while others remained under Venetian control. However, Cesare had other plans. He traveled to Spain, where the Catholic Monarchs had offered him a position in the service of Prospero Colonna, a military leader who had played a prominent role alongside the Great Captain in the battles of Ceriñola and Garellano (and years later in Bicoca), which secured the monarchs’ control over Naples.

But Cesare was playing a double game. Everyone believed he was heading to Naples when in reality he was trying to join the French army led by the Duke of Mantua. However, the clever Spanish cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal suspected his scheme and warned Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, appointed viceroy of Naples, who ordered Cesare’s arrest in Castilnovo and asked for instructions from the Crown, recommending deportation. This is how Cesare Borgia arrived in the land of his family, although in dishonorable circumstances, passing through the dungeons of Cartagena and Chinchilla before ending up locked up in the Castle of La Mota in Medina del Campo.

As expected, he did not resign himself to his fate and on an autumn night in 1506 he escaped by climbing down from a window. Pretending to be a merchant, he left Medina del Campo and reached Santander, where he managed to board a ship. Bad luck caused the ship to return due to a storm, so he decided to flee by land through the Basque Country and Navarre.

Tombstone of the tomb of Cesare Borgia/Image: Pathferrero on Wikimedia Commons

In December he was in Pamplona, where he was welcomed by the Navarrese king Juan de Albret, after all his brother-in-law, who also appointed him constable of the kingdom, giving him once again the opportunity to wield the sword (on which, by the way, he carried the motto «Aut Caesar aut nihil», that is, «Either Caesar or nothing», in memory of what Julius Caesar’s legions exclaimed when crossing the Rubicon).

The problem was that the Kingdom of Navarre was in the midst of a civil war: the Beaumontese, who supported Luis de Beaumont (the former constable), against the Agramontese, who defended the monarch. The king put Cesare in charge of the army, conquering Viana and besieging its castle. Furious because on the night of March 11, 1507, a group of riders managed to break the siege and supply the besieged with food, he pursued them without realizing that he was leaving his men behind. The fugitives ambushed him and put an end to his tumultuous existence.

The body was initially buried in a church in Viana, but in the 16th century, the parish priest ordered it to be exhumed, considering it unworthy to be there, and it was buried in the middle of the street. In 1945, his remains were taken out again to be reburied in the temple – only at the entrance, not inside – and they remain there.

It is ironic that the one who allegedly gave the face to Jesus Christ was denied eternal rest in consecrated ground, and that he died almost at the same age.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on January 21, 2019. Puedes leer la versión en español en César Borgia, el modelo de Maquiavelo para su príncipe renacentista y presunta inspiración de Leonardo para el rostro de Cristo

Sources

El príncipe (Nicolás Maquiavelo)/El príncipe del Renacimiento. Vida y obra de César Borgia (José Catalán Deus)/El papa Borgia. Un inédito Alejandro VI liberado al fin de la leyenda negra (Lola Galán y José Catalán Deu)/Los Borgia. Iglesia y poder entre los siglos XV y XVI (Óscar Villarroel González)/Los 7 Borgia. Una historia de ambición, refinamiento y perversidad (Ana Martos Rubio)/César Borgia y Viana (1507-2007) (Félix Cariñanos)/Wikipedia

  • Share this article:

Discover more from LBV Magazine English Edition

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Sandro_Botticelli_-_La_nascita_di_Venere_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited-2
Simonetta Vespucci, the muse who was a model both for Botticelli and many others, died at the age of 23 If we had to choose the most famous paintings in history, there would certainly be one from Botticelli and, most likely, the one chosen would be The birth of Venus,…
The Impossible Triangle in Perth, Australia
The Penrose Triangle, an Impossible Object that Defies Euclidean Geometry and Inspired Escher In the vast world of geometry and art, there are figures that challenge our perception and understanding of space. One of these figures is the Penrose Triangle, also known as…
Autoportrait en moqueur
Joseph Ducreux, the Painter Who Created the Most Extravagant Self-Portraits in History In another article, we talked about the tronie, a type of caricature portrait practiced by Dutch Golden Age painters. In the following century, it was a French artist who revived…
Helen and Paris in one of the frescoes discovered in Pompeii
Spectacular Frescoes Depicting Scenes Related to the Trojan War Discovered in Pompeii The archaeological excavation initiated in 2023 in Insula 10 of Regio IX in Pompeii has uncovered two interconnected houses facing Via di Nola, adorned with frescoes in their interiors. Frescoes…
Età_augustea,_affresco_delle_nozze_aldobrandini,_dai_pressi_della_distrutta_chiesa_di_s._giuliano_l’ospitaliero_sull’esquilino,_02-2
The Aldobrandini Wedding, the Most Famous and Admired Roman Fresco until Pompeii was Discovered Since the Renaissance, the search for ancient remains, statues, marbles, and any object that could be sold to collectors in Rome was the order of the day. By the early…
The reconstructed telamon in the Archaeological Park of Agrigento
Colossal Telamon from the Temple of Zeus at Agrigento Restored to its Original Upright Position After twenty years of study, research, and restoration, the "stone giant" of ancient Akragas has been resurrected. The "telamon", one of the colossal anthropomorphic statues supporting the entablature of the…

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.