Edward Hutton's, Siena and Southern Tuscany contains many brief biographies, especially of little known local saints. Today, I present his brief biography of the famed humanist Pope, Pius II, and the library built by his successor to house his works.
The Library is, then, really a monument to the great humanist Pope who canonized S. Catherine of Siena. The bronze doors were made by Antoniolo Ormanni. Over them is a find fresco of the Coronation of Cardinal Francesco as Pius III. Within are the ten splendid frescoes of the life of Pius II by Pintoricchio.
Pius II was born in 1405. Je was an adventurer of fine character, but an adventurer. He had no great convictions, but, unlike so many who are without them, he was capable of learning from experience. And then, if he was without convictions, he was also without prejudices. He made the most of life in no vulgar way, but with a success that proves his superiority. He was not one to mould the world, but to use it and enjoy it nobly. His early life is said to have been disorderly. He wrote much sensuous and even licentious verse, and a novel that might have come from the hand of Boccaccio in a moment of ennui. At twenty-six he became secretary to the Bishop of Fermo at the Council of Basle. There he made his reputation, and in the years between 1432 and 1435 he was employed on missions to England, Scotland, and Germany. He then followed Frederic III, reformed his life, took Orders, reconciled himself to the Pope, and was created Bishop of Trieste, and returning to Italy in 1456, he became Cardinal of Siena. On the death of Calixtus III, two years later, he was elected Pope, and, in reference to his name of Aeneas, took the title of Pius II. His reign was disappointing; it revealed his want of conviction and his opportunism. Instead of forming that confederation of Europe against the Turks…he wasted himself, his eloquence—which was considerable—and his material power—which was small—in breaking the unruly barons of the Romagna and the Marche… The effort to regain Constantinople, worthy of all his energy, came to nothing, and, as though in remorse for his failure, we see him at last, feeble and suffering, borne to Ancona on a litter to bless and encourage the half-hearted and belated Crusade. There he died in August 1464. Looking back on his life now, it is as a scholar and a humanist he chiefly appeals to us. His long Commentaries are full of human pages and a real love of Nature that in the men of his day was only to be found again in Lorenzo de’ Medici and Leon Alberti. He was a mixture more strange than rare, of weakness and strength, of a vanity and idealism truly Sienese. He erred, but he did not deceive himself; he did not try to make himself out nobler than he was; and for his sincerity and frankness we respect him, so that his very inconsistencies come at last to seem the most real things about him, and his thoughts about life, so plentifully recorded, really spontaneous impressions are valuable to us on that account. And last, but not least, he had the courage of his opinions—he canonized S. Catherine….
Pintoricchio: Frescoes of the Life of Pius II.
Full as these works are of the petty detail that Pintoricchio loved, they are redeemed even from their faults of composition, even from their feebleness of structure, even from their lack of life, by the spaciousness of their landscape and the charm of their thousand incidents. They are a complete decoration to the room, though not perhaps a really splendid one, and they remain the masterpiece of the artist, and one of the brightest and most harmonious works of the Renaissance. *
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Edward Hutton: Siena and Southern Tuscany, 1910, pp. 116-118.
*Image courtesy of David Orme.
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