Rovere

Rovere. Italian family that included two popes and three dukes of Urbino, all of them art patrons. The family achieved prominence when Francesco della Rovere (1414–84) became pope in 1471 as Sixtus IV. He was a scholar and was strict in his personal life, but he was ruthless in pursuing his aims and unscrupulous in advancing his relatives (he made six of his nephews cardinals). As a patron, he played a key role in the transformation of Rome from a medieval to a Renaissance city, laying out new streets and widening old ones, building the Ponte Sisto over the Tiber, and restoring old buildings and founding new ones, notably the churches of S. Maria del Popolo and S. Maria della Pace. His most famous foundation is the chapel named after him in the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel. It was built in 1477–80 and the celebrated fresco decorations by Botticelli, Perugino, and other artists were begun in 1481. His huge expenditure, on war as well as art, left the papal treasury depleted.

Sixtus's tomb, by Antonio Pollaiuolo, was commissioned after his death by his nephew Giuliano della Rovere (1453–1513), who in 1503 became pope as Julius II. He was one of the most formidable personalities among all the popes (‘hated by many and feared by all’) and the greatest patron of his time, employing Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raphael to create some of the central works of European art: the new St Peter's (begun 1506), the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508–12), and the decoration of the Vatican Stanze (begun 1508). Howard Hibbard (Michelangelo, 1975) writes that ‘If, as many believe, this was the greatest assembly of talent ever to work for one man at the same time, we must hail Julius as the most perspicacious as well as the most fortunate patron the world has ever known.’ His political policies were aimed at making the papal state the most important power in Italy and he personally led campaigns that greatly expanded its territories (his choice of papal name reflected his admiration for the military prowess of Julius Caesar). In spite of his costly wars and his huge outlay on rebuilding St Peter's, because of his skilful administration he left the papacy more prosperous than he found it. Julius' interest in art extended to collecting antique sculpture, and he placed several of his finest pieces (including the Apollo Belvedere and the Laocoön) in the Belvedere Courtyard of the Vatican, where artists and scholars were allowed to see them; this was the origin of the Vatican Museums.

Julius's nephew Francesco Maria I della Rovere (1490–1538) became Duke of Urbino in 1508, when he succeeded his childless uncle Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who had adopted him as his heir. His favourite painter was Titian, who painted portraits of him and his wife Eleonora Gonzaga (c.1536–8, both Uffizi, Florence). Francesco Maria's son Guidobaldo della Rovere (1514–74) was also a great admirer of Titian and owned his celebrated Venus of Urbino (1538, Uffizi); the title is misleading, as the picture hung in the ducal palace in Pesaro, which was part of Guidobaldo's territories. His son Francesco Maria II della Rovere (1549–1631) employed numerous artists and was in particular the main patron of Federico Barocci.