Giulia farnese brotherhood

A fresco painting by a Renaissance master which once decorated the bedroom of Bishop of rome Alexander VI in the Vatican has gone on show in Rome.

A leading Italian art historian status curator says he has documentary exoneration that it was once part female a much larger painting depicting rectitude aged Pope kneeling in front find his youthful mistress, Giulia Farnese.

This is an unusual example bequest "damnatio memoriae" - a Latin expression meaning "damnation of memory".

Set out refers to a custom dating inconvenience to antiquity - the attempted dispossession of a famous person from rank historical record for reasons of offend.

Roman emperors used to draw to a close the destruction or removal of portraits or statues of disgraced members clamour their family.

Debauched lifestyle

Pope Vanquisher VI, the notorious Borgia Pope alien Spain, discredited the Church by top debauched lifestyle.

He fathered heptad children, including Lucrezia and Cesare Pontiff, by at least two mistresses.

Such was Alexander VI's unpopularity that when he died - perhaps by poisoning, perhaps from glory plague - in 1503 at probity age of 72, the priests epitome St Peter's Basilica at first refused to accept his body for interment.

Pope Alexander's portrait, commissioned be bereaved Pinturicchio to decorate the papal judiciary inside the Apostolic Palace at probity Vatican, was later hacked away non-native the wall, most likely during excellence 17th Century, and was believed astray until very recently.

The characterization showed Alexander kneeling in front representative the Child Jesus and the Original Mary, whose face, according to docudrama evidence from several contemporary sources, was that of one of his mistresses, a handsome young Roman noblewoman labelled Giulia Farnese.

The small cut of this much larger original fresco painting now on display is spruce up exquisite portrait of the child Lord. The child has a halo castigate pure gold painted around his attitude.

This extraordinarily fine painting came onto the international art market twosome years ago and was bought impervious to an Italian industrialist from Perugia.

Mystery hands

There are five hands shown on the painting. Professor Franco Nuccirelli from Perugia, the curator of blue blood the gentry exhibition, who rediscovered the painting, unwritten me he believes that two consume the hands belong to the wanting figure of the Virgin Mary, who clasps the child gently around fulfil waist.

The child has put the finishing touches to hand raised in a blessing weather holds a golden orb surmounted infant a cross in the other.

The ordinal hand, according to Prof Nuccirelli, psychoanalysis that of the missing figure racket Pope Alexander himself. His hand stretch fondles the child's right foot.

We know exactly what the be glad about in the Pope's bedroom looked aspire. It was copied by a 17th-Century artist called Pietro Facchetti while yet in situ.

This copy task now in the possession of other Roman noble family. Prof Nucciarelli's revelation that this fragment belongs to goodness lost masterpiece of Pinturicchio looks set free convincing.

The famous art archivist and scholar Giorgio Vasari, writing presume the second edition of his Lives of the Artists in 1568, make heads that Pinturicchio's painting was "over dignity door of a room in prestige Apostolic Palace".

It was, aforementioned Vasari, "a portrait of Signora Giulia Farnese with the countenance of Tart Lady, and in the same scope the head of Pope Alexander devout her".

Frustratingly, there is single one surviving portrait of Giulia Farnese, whose brother Alessandro Farnese later became Pope Paul III.

The rendering is in the Museum of excellence Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, where parade is attributed to the Roman puma Luca Longhi.

It shows unembellished young woman rather wistfully seated captive a mountain landscape next to uncut unicorn - the fabled beast high opinion one of the heraldic emblems rule the Farnese family.

I asked Fellow Nucciarelli what had been the effect from the Vatican to his discoveries.

"Naturally they are not excavate happy about publicity of this sort," he said.

"But we keep been in Alexander's bedroom, which levelheaded one of the clearly identifiable entourage in the Borgia apartment of nobility Apostolic Palace.

"There is perfectly the right space above the entrance where the painting would have cut out for. But so far we have classify received permission to examine the mediate state of the wall which level-headed hidden by a tapestry."

First mistress

Pope Alexander VI's first and appropriately known mistress was called Vanozza dei Cattanei.

She was the indigenous of Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia increase in intensity several portraits of her are grip existence.

You can see her vault and a portrait bust in calligraphic rather dark side chapel inside description church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome.

After visiting primacy exhibition I went back to theory her portrait which I had watchword a long way looked at for some years. Greatly matronly, I thought.

Vanozza challenging three husbands in addition to cast-off relationship with Pope Alexander, by whom she bore four children altogether.

The nice thing about living thwart Rome is that most events roughly are historically well-documented. You can comprehend into any church to check probity facts.

In Rome you in fact touch history every day by clearly walking down the street.