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THE DANZATRICI BORGHESE, NOW IN THE LOUVRE

MAIDENS HANGING A WREATH TO A CANDELABRA, A COMPANION
PICTURE TO THE DANZATRICI, FORMERLY IN THE VILLA
BORGHESE, AND NOW IN THE LOUVRE

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A BRONZE REPLICA OF THE ABOVE, NOW IN THE SALLE DES
CARYATIDES

THE HOUSE OF RAPHAEL IN THE BORGO (from an engraving by
A. Lafreri)

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THE HOUSE OF RAPHAEL (dotted lines), TRANSFORMED INTO ITS
PRESENT SHAPE BY CARDINAL COMENDONE IN 1582.
PLAN OF VIEW FROM RAPHAEL'S HOUSE

THE OLD CHANNEL CONNECTING THE OSTIA SALT-WORKS WITH
THE SEA (the pine forest of Castel Fusano in the back-
ground)

THE COAT OF ARMS OF THE BINI, PAINTED BY PIERINO DEL
VAGA ON THE CEILING OF THEIR BANKING PREMISES
THE ENTRANCE TO THE CHIGI CHAPEL IN THE CHURCH
SANTA MARIA DEL POPOLO, WITH THE TOMB OF THE
PRINCESS MARY FLAMINIA BY PAOLO POJI.

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THE PALAZZO FARNESE OVERLOOKING THE GARDEN OF AGOSTINO CHIGI (a view of the district by the Porta Settimiana, taken before its modern transformation).

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THE PORTICO OF BACCIO PONTELLI IN THE CASTLE OF LA MA-
GLIANA

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THE FOUNTAIN OF PIUS IV IN THE COURT OF LA MAGLIANA .320

THE

GOLDEN DAYS OF THE RENAISSANCE

IN ROME

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I

THE CITY

It is said that when in the year 1377 Pope Gregory XI restored to Rome the seat of the supreme pontificate, of which she had been deprived for the space of seventy

two years, there were not more than seventeen thousand people living in the ruinous waste within the old walls of Aurelian. Whether the figures be exact or not, those few men who held firm and faithful to their native soil deserve the gratitude of mankind. Without them the site of Rome would now be pointed out to the inquiring stranger like those of Fidena, Veii, Ostia, or Tusculum, - places fit only for the exhumation of the records of the past, and doomed forever to silence and solitude.

It is also said that the young Pope' was so affected by the transition from the gay and refined life of Avignon to the horrors of Rome, that he died of grief on March 27 of the following year, 1378. The Romans, to whom his longing for "le beau pays de France was not a secret, treated his memory with contempt, and the preserver of their city was buried in the church of Santa Maria Nuova (S. Francesca Romana) in a plain coffin, on the lid of which this simple epitaph was inscribed in Gothic letters,

1 Pierre Rogier de Beaufort, born A. D. 1336, in the Château de Montroux, near Limoges, was elected pope in 1370.

"Here lies the body of the blessed Pope Gregory XI," without any reference to the great deed he had accomplished at the cost of his life.

Things were allowed to remain in this state until the end of the sixteenth century, when the City Council, feeling pangs of remorse, voted the erection of a memorial in the same church, selecting among various schemes the one proposed by Pietro Paolo Olivieri, who had achieved fame as an architect by the erection of the church of Sant' Andrea della Valle, and as a sculptor with his statue of Gregory XIII in the Capitol, and his bas-relief of the Adoration of the Wise Men in the Caetani chapel at Santa Pudentiana.

The central panel of the memorial of Gregory XI represents his triumphal entry by the Porta di San Paolo on the morning of January 17, 1377. The gate is surmounted by the coat of arms of the Counts of Beaufort, which appears also on the flags displayed by the standard-bearers at the head of the cavalcade. Of this glorious coat of arms only one specimen survives in Rome, in the frieze of the canopy or ciborium of St. John the Lateran, on the side facing the apse. It consists of two groups of three rosettes each, divided by a diagonal band.

I have purposely begun this study of a new period in the artistic and historical life of Rome with the mausoleum of Gregory XI, now almost forgotten, because as the column of Phocas marks the end of the ancient and the beginning of the medieval periods, so the grave of that Pope marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. The transition from one to the other was neither sudden nor noticeable at first, but the simple fact of the head of the Church having taken up again his residence in the city by the Tiber, where hundreds of thousands of

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