Raphael

The Baglioni Altarpiece

1507

Oil on Panel

Galleria Borghese

“Unfortunately, every member of that family deemed himself as fit to rule as his fellows and the Great Betrayal destroyed more than half of them. Neither womankind, nor the religious orders, nor any ties of blood or friendship were sacred to that terrible brood, whose only virtue was their exceeding valour. Even the panegyrist of the ‘Magnificent House’ reluctantly admits that as a result of their lawlessness and violence, everything was undone which had been fairly ordered, on such wise that the city could no longer be spoken of as Persusia Augusta, but Perugia Angusta.”

William Heywood, A History of Perugia (1910)

From the moment that Braccio Bagnioli murdered his cousins in 1460 to become Lord of Perugia, until 1540 when the Pope Paul III ordered the Baglioni homes razed to the ground during the bitter war of the Salt Tax, the Baglioni appear to have been something of a blight on the Umbrian landscape, particularly at Perugia. 1488 saw the advent of Lo Stato dei Baglioni, after a conflict where the family’s vanquished rivals, the Oddi and their supporters, fled Perugia on pain of death.

Perugia found itself in the iron grip of a family infested with its own internal conflicts: presiding over the Dictatorship of Ten, which included a six Baglioni majority, were Rinaldo and Guido Baglioni who loathed each other and would eventually wage a war of their own; forty eight local families swore fealty to the Ten; the local priori was actively excluded from decision making in local legislation, while agents of the papacy- in Perugia to monitor the anarchic goings on- were regularly intimidated; the Baglioni even sought to strong arm Pope Innocent VIII via the amenable machinations of Lorenzo Medici.

In 1495, Pope Alexander VI, seeking sanctuary from the threat of Charles VIII, travelled to Perugia and attempted to bend the will of the Baglioni to his, but concluded that the Baglioni had “Salt in their brains.” In 1497 Cardinal Cesare Borgia, the Pope’s son, visited on a mission to institute some kind of order, but was forced to conclude that the Bagnioli were “Demons with no fear of holy water.” Despite the best efforts of the Borgia administration to instill a sense of order to the region, the tempestuous Umbrians aroused such local enmity that skirmishes with factions on the outskirts of the city were a constant; local wars were provoked with Urbino and Assisi; bloody brawls erupted in the streets with some frequency; the men of the family were constantly away, embroiled in conflict. If such a thing as a Great Betrayal or Red Wedding were to occur on the unstable Italian Peninsula at the dawn of the sixteenth century, Perugia was a most likely setting.

It seems ridiculous that a property dispute should lead to a wholesale massacre at a wedding, but this was Perugia at the end of fifteenth century. The Lord of nearby Camerino, Giulio Cesare da Varana, a hard-bitten condottiere- as were most of the Bagnioli- had inherited property just outside Perugia from Niccolo Piccinino, another condottiere. Niccolo’s cousin Angelo had disputed the bequest, and been protected in his contest by a certain Gismondo Baglioni. This was enough for Giulio Cesare to issue a contract on Angelo’s life, but he also resolved to deal with the Baglioni as well… from within their ranks.

He retained the counsel of Jeronimo della Penna, who had “addressed” the Angelo Piccinino matter, so to speak; Jeronimo had an old resentment against the Bagnioli family, and was willingly treasonous. Giulio Cesare then, with assurances of wealth, recruited his nephew Carlo Barciglia, a lean and hungry (poor and prodigal) young man. Carlo lured one of the many resentful Baglioni bastards, Fillippo de Braccio, into the conspiracy, conveying similar promises. They then inveigled the Baglioni golden boy Grifonetto, son of Grifone and Atalanta, into their plot. He was rich, recognised, married to the beautiful Zenobia, and his beauty according to one contemporary was comparable to that of Ganymede. Why he would run with the conspirators is a mystery, but it has been written that the conspirators convinced him that his cousin, Giampaolo, had cuckolded him. A mob of men, mostly under the age of thirty, was easily marshalled and the July wedding of Astorre Baglioni and his bride, Lavinia Colonna, arranged by the King of Naples, would furnish the opportunity.

In June 1500 Astorre and his bride returned to Perugia swathed in gold. An opulent feast that would run for days had been arranged, its gaudiness inherent in the couple’s ostentatious attire, and a wooden, cloth covered, triumphal arch decorated with Astorre’s victories. On the eve of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the bride and groom were brought to Grifonetto’s palace because the marriage home was not yet completed. That night a storm descended, stirring the superstitious Perugians into fear of ill portent. However, yet another skirmish broke out in the countryside, necessitating the attention of Giampaolo, so the conspirators postponed their mass assassination until he returned on July 14th. On the night of his return, the conspirators, each leading a group of hoodwinked ne’er do wells, broke into the chambers of the sleeping, and slaughtered all the Baglioni they could find, including Astorre, but Giampaolo escaped across the rooftops.

When Grifonetto’s mother heard of the atrocity she immediately left his residence with his wife and returned to her home in the hills outside Perugia. A period followed in which the conspirators gained control of the city, but Giampaolo mustered his own supporters in hiding. Grifonetto, cursed and disowned by his mother, made many attempts at reparations, but she rejected his regrets. Eventually Giampaolo returned to the city, confronted the misguided youth, and watched implacably as his men slaughtered him. Atalanta’s response was profound grief and regret. She went immediately into deep mourning, something the Baglioni were accustomed to. Perhaps it is when she began to emerge from her grief, or maybe it was when her grief deepened, that she commissioned an altarpiece for the family chapel at San Francesco di Prato, with a central Entombment panel, from Raphael. An Eternal Blessing from God the father crowned the altarpiece, separated from The Entombment by a frieze depicting little Griffins for Grifonetto, and depictions of Faith, Hope and Charity for the predella.

It has been suggested that the striking youth in the painting is a commemorative depiction of Grifonetto. The painting is religious because it was intended for a church, but the youth, unusual in a depiction of The Entombment from the period, is a strikingly heroic depiction, with wind-lifted hair, broad shoulders and a charged countenance that doesn’t seem aggrieved, but proud and resolute. Raphael’s choice of red for the youth’s tunic and buskins may also be an indication of the figure’s slaughter. The foreground is clearly shared by this figure and the slain Christ, who is recognisable, but not central to the composition, although in the original arrangement of the panels, God the father directed the viewer’s focus with a gaze fixed on Christ. The pose of the youth forms the upward slant of a compositional pyramid group with the Holy Women behind him supporting the swooning Virgin, and the distant scene of The Crucifixion as an apex. Once again the positioning of the Crucifixes can be considered significant.

Also of interest are the four plants along the base of the frame that may have some coded significance. There is a dried dandelion beneath St John, a flowering white plant beneath Christ, and a yellowish flower beneath the holy women. Only the plant beneath the youth is without flower. Additional scholarship directs the viewer to the myth of Meleager which has a threefold implication for the artwork: Alberti in his 1435 treatise on painting recommended the study of the Meleager sarcophagus as a vital component for a painter’s study of grief; Atalanta Baglioni shared a name with the character whose actions led to Meleager’s death; and the influence of the antique was a key aspect of the Renaissance aesthetic.

“At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.” The Gospel of St John, Chapter Nineteen.

Reading

Francesco Matarazzo, Chronicles of the City of Perugia 1492-1503

Barbara H. Rosenwein, A Short History of the Middle Ages, Volume 1

John T Paoletti & Gary M Radke, Renaissance Art in Italy

Christopher Black, Early Modern Italy a Social History, and The Baglioni as Tyrants of Perugia

Pasquale Villari, The Life and Time of Niccolo Macchiavelli

William Heywood, A History of Perugia

www.condotierri.it

Alison Luchs, A Note on Raphael’s Perugian Patrons

Donal Cooper, Raphael’s Altar-Pieces in S. Francesco al Prato, Perugia: Patronage, Setting and Function

Wikipedia