Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/44

 campaign against the Duke of Urbino (1516); the menace to Ferrara (1519); the crafty enticing of Giampaolo Baglione, Lord of Perugia, to Rome and his murder despite the safe-conduct promised him; the war against Ludovico Freducci, Lord of Fermo; the annexation of the towns and fortresses in the province of Ancona; the attempt on the life of the Duke of Ferrara; the betrayal of Francis I and the league with Charles V in 1521. The senseless extravagance of the Court, the constant succession of very mundane festivals, hunting-parties, and other amusements, left Leo in continual embarrassment for money and led him into debt not only to all the bankers but to his own officials. They even drove him to unworthy extortion, such as followed on the conspiracy of Cardinal Petrucci and the pardon granted to his accomplices, or that which was his motive for the creation of thirty-one cardinals in a single day.

All this taken together brings us to the conclusion that Leo's one real merit was his patronage of Raffaelle. Despite the noble and generous way in which his reign began the Pope soon fell into an effeminate life of self-indulgence spent among players and buffoons, a life rich in undignified farce and offensive jests, but poor in every kind of positive achievement. The Pope laughed, hunted, and gambled; he enjoyed the papacy. Had he not said to his brother Giuliano on his accession: "Godiamoci il papato poichè Dio ci l' ha dato?" Though he himself has not been accused of sensual excesses the moral sense of the Pope could not be delicate when he found fit to amuse himself with indecent comedies like La Calandria, and on April 30, 1518, attended the wedding of Agostino Chigi with his concubine of many years' standing, himself placing the ring on the hand of the bride, already mother of a large family.

Nor can Leo's reign, apart from his own share in it, be regarded as the best period of the Renaissance. The great masters had done their best work before 1513. Bramante died at the beginning of Leo's pontificate, Michelangelo had painted the Sistine Chapel from 1508 to 1512, Leonardo the Cena in 1496, Raffaelle the Stanza della Segnatura, 1508-11. The later Stanze are far inferior to that masterpiece; the work of his pupils comes more to the fore in the execution of the paintings. And in his own work, as also in that of Michelangelo, the germ of decadence is already visible, and a slight tendency to barocco style is to be seen in both. The autumn wind is blowing, and the first leaves begin to fall.

The truth results that the zenith of Renaissance art falls in the time between 1496 and 1512, during which the Last Supper, the roof of the Sistine Chapel, and the Stanza della Segnatura were painted, and Bramante's plans for St Peter's were drawn up. We can even mark a narrower limit, and say that the four wall-paintings of the Stanza della Segnatura mark the point at which medieval and modern thought touch one another; the narrow medieval world ceases, the modern world stands