Christian pessimism on the walls of the Vatican Galleria delle carte geografiche.

A recent addition to the series Mirabilia Italiae has made the riches of the Vatican Galleria delle carte geografiche much more accessible than they were hitherto.(1) The Galleria, a vast, vaulted corridor, one hundred twenty meters long by six meters wide by eight meters high, was commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85) and apparently built within three years (1579-81). The walls feature thirty-two majestic maps of Italy and its provinces, each measuring about 330 by 425 centimeters, with eight smaller maps at each end. They were executed by Egnazio Danti (1536-86), a Dominican friar and experienced cartographer. In a letter to the Antwerp atlas-maker Abraham Ortelius, Danti explains that the gallery vault divides Italy like the Apennines: the eastern provinces on one wall face the western ones on the other.(2) The Apennine-like vault of the Galleria is as fully and elaborately decorated as the walls; ordered in geometrical patterns and formed into stucco frames, it is filled with painted panels, the "collaborative work of a troop of undistinguished painters." The panels are organized in four cycles, including one of birds. Some of the images are allegorical, others biblical, but the main series, from end to end of the vault, is historical - the emperor Constantine to the south, Saint Paul the Apostle to the north, and a wealth of luminaries, mostly saints, in between.(3)

The Galleria, today linking the Vatican museums with the Sistine Chapel, is not easily examined in detail even by interested visitors.(4) In the Monumenta cartographica Vaticana, Roberto Almagia's authoritative publication of the maps is accompanied by good monochrome reproductions. His presentation lacks the vault paintings, and the historical scenes are sometimes not clear enough to be adequately seen.(5) These shortcomings are now remedied by the Mirabilia Italiae set just mentioned - three volumes of La Galleria delle Carte geografiche in Vaticano, edited by Lucio Gambi and Antonio Pinelli (1994). Volume 1 contains a complete photographic atlas, with details of every cartouche, historical scene, allegorical painting, grotesque, etc. The explanatory texts and notes in volume 2 are sometimes thin in details, but the exhaustive color photographic coverage may hardly be faulted. The Galleria has historical scenes on its wall maps as well as in the vault; Gambi and Pinelli's first volume makes it possible at last to study and give serious thought to all these engrossing images.(6)

The maps of the Galleria differ from their counterparts in Italian public buildings of the same period by being almost exclusively of Italy and its provinces; the Vatican, in another room, already had a wall arias of the world.(7) History and geography had a long alliance in medieval mappaemundi; the Italian focus of the Galleria provided a different but equally suitable basis for the association of places and events.(8) Danti's maps are studded with historical episodes, mainly battles, painted directly on the landscape. The maps, moreover, are related to the paintings grouped in the vault. The fifty-one panels of the latter's "cycle of miracles" (so dubbed by Pinelli) are ordered geographically so that the depicted scenes lie above the provinces in which they took place; typically, an episode starring Saint Benedict is situated over the map of Campania, in which Monte Cassino is located.(9) This spatial relationship explains both the existence of the maps and the non-chronological order of the events portrayed on the ceiling. What is still not clear is whether the geographically ordered historical paintings in the vault are related to the twenty-three historical vignettes on the maps and, if so, how. These vignettes depicting eleven ancient and twelve medieval and modern events ranging from 330 B.C. to A.D. 1544 are central to this article.(10) Almost all are accompanied by extended legends in Latin - useful since what is going on is seldom self-evident.

HISTORY IN THE VAULT

The panels in the vault making up the "cycle of miracles" are accompanied by a monochrome "cycle of sacrifices," composed of images out of the Old Testament. The vault also has many allegorical panels, usually serving as brief commentaries to the historical scenes.(11) History in the dominant "miracles" cycle is understood as "Good News," wholly without shadows or imperfections. The sixth-century bishop Gregory of Tours considered his Historiae, in which accounts of human depravity are sporadically interrupted by miracles and other holy deeds, to be a different sort of work from his books of Miracula, which unfold a panorama of unending divine wonders. In medieval vitae sanctorum, a biographical section, implicating the vicissitudes of human existence, is often complemented by a section of posthumous miracles - consistently uplifting.(12) The Galleria vault is worked out on this medieval premise that somehow "perfect" history could be segregated from the grimmer kind ordinarily experienced.

Another indication of the vault designer's intentions is given by the reticent way in which martyrs are represented. Several Roman churches, notably San Stephano Rotondo (then in Jesuit possession), had recently acquired exceptionally gruesome depictions of the barbarities inflicted on martyrs, both ancient and modern. The images were meant, among other things, to motivate would-be missionaries to risk unspeakably painful deaths in promoting the faith in Protestant and heathen lands.(13) The Vatican vault is free of these gory preoccupations; no one is martyred, no scene hair-raising. Martyr-saints, a scant handful, perform miracles unrelated to their passions.(14) The closest we come to anything grim is an ancient legend out of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great - the consignment to hell of Theoderic the Ostrogoth by Pope John I and the patrician Symmachus (whose deaths Theoderic had caused) - but the depiction makes no attempt to inspire horror; hell is barely suggested in a pageant of damnation.(15) What the vault scenes show is history as the Creator wished it to be, and as, by His intervention, it sometimes was. Events of this wholly desirable kind are cut off, in their lofty heights, from a history that, as we shall see, is rooted in the mud of ordinary human actions.(16)

How the "miracle" cycle combines flagrantly supernatural incidents with merely wonderful ones needs closer attention. The twenty-eight panels portraying unequivocal miracles, such as the stigmata of Saint Francis of Assisi, the fish listening to Saint Anthony of Padua, or Saint Francesco di Paola's stepping unharmed from a furnace, leave nothing to the imagination. Famous relics are included: the House at Loreto (a special favorite of Gregory XIII's) is shown in its aerial transit to Italy, whereas the Shroud of Turin is depicted at its first public display (1578) as though its existence were marvel enough.(17) Relics are well suited to this cornucopia of miracles. On the other hand, scenes not obviously linked to heaven seem somewhat incongruous. Eleven incidents are portrayed that, in a perspective of ecclesiastical or papal history, are amazing, awesome, and clearly gratifying, but not miraculous.(18) They deserve to be listed in chronological order:

* Pope Saint Silvester baptizes the emperor Constantine.(19)

* The emperor Constantine acts as groom to Pope Saint Silvester's horse.

* Constantine founds the church of St. Peter (Vatican).

* Constantine and the building of the church of St. Paul (outside the Walls).(20)

* Saint Ambrose drives the (Arian) heretics from Milan.

* Saint Ambrose of Milan refuses the emperor Theodosius I admittance to a church.

* Saint Romuald founds the hermitage of Camaldoli.

* The emperor Henry II takes communion before battle and so do his troops.

* Saint Peter Damian writes his rule for hermits.

* The Corsicans recognize the sovereignty of Pope Gregory VII.

* Countess Matilda gives her lands to Gregory VII and the Holy See.

* Saint Anselm confutes heresy at the Council of Bari.

* Frederick Barbarossa pledges obedience to Alexander III at Venice.(21)

* By the doing of Innocent IV, the siege of Parma by Frederick II is raised.

Some of these incidents might count as supernatural without actually including a visible miracle. Liberations from sieges are numerous among the vault wonders. The intervention of Innocent IV at Parma against Frederick II (no. 648) is paired with Saint Clara freeing Assisi from "Saracens," that is, another army of Fredericks (no. 647), and the two scenes flank a centerpiece of Pope Leo turning back Attila (no. 646); Saints Clara and Leo I intervene visibly by miracle. For Innocent IV, such company suggests miracle by association. Saint Peter Damian is one of a set of sainted hermits, including Saint Romuald, founder of Camaldoli, and Saint Pietro da Morrone, the hermit raised to the papacy. (The Capuchins, a new order prominent in Gregory XIII's Rome, had eremitical aspirations, and the altarpiece in the pope's own chapel featured the proto-hermits Saints Anthony and Paul the Abbot).22 Outside the hermit category Saint Ambrose's expelling Arian heretics might have seemed miracle-like even without specific intervention from heaven. Saint Anselm refuting the Byzantine "heretics" at Bari is much the same.

When the panels just discussed are drawn into the orbit of the supernatural, the remaining scenes lacking miracles depict lay rulers dealing with the consecrated priesthood. The theme linking them is submissiveness to the church and its leaders. The deference of princes toward the clergy had long been advocated and cheered by theorists of Christian rulership: humble kings, recognizing their dependence on God, heeding the counsel of their bishops, were ideals that began to be shaped in the patristic period? Constantine (seemed to) set the example and, unlike the others, was rewarded in very tangible ways. His miraculous vision of the cross foreshadowed victory over his western rival, Maxentius.(24) Other princes had appropriate merits. Theodosius, a public sinner, accepted his exclusion at Ambrose's hands and made satisfaction. Frederick Barbarossa, stiff-necked for a long time, eventually did the right thing; so, too, did the Corsicans, illustrating that collectivities, not just kings, were called upon to be humble vis-a-vis the church. In the Galleria vault panels, the emperor Henry II may be the supreme instance of Christian rulership; instilling piety in his army by personal example, he comes close to sainthood and miracle.(25) Did the munificence of Countess Matilda toward the Holy See also approach the miraculous? The church fathers who had called for princely submissiveness may not have had in mind the creation of church states; the designers of Gregory XIII's gallery definitely did.

Graphic eloquence in the vault is not limited to the literal or historical sense that has just been traced.(26) There are obvious correspondences or pairings, as when Romuald, founder of Camaldoli, in the third large panel from the south end, is mirrored in the third large panel from the north end by Pietro da Morrone (Celestine V)(nos. 600,742). A row of images showing three saintly liberations from ferocious enemies has already been mentioned in connection with Innocent IV (nos. 646-48). The missionary aposde Saint Paul is shown at the north end of the gallery in three panels documenting his almost instant conversion of Malta; at the south end, the five Constantine panels celebrate the "thirteenth aposde" whose baptism destined the Roman Empire to Christian conversion (nos. 788-90, 554-56, 558, 566).(27) More striking still is what the designer did with the four ring- or jewel-like ensembles in which a main panel is embellished with sixteen surrounding "stones," half allegorical and half veterotestamentary. Iris Cheney has explicated these ensembles as they affect the pairing, at the south end of the vault, of "Saint Ambrose refusing admittance to the emperor Theodosius" (no. 576) with "The Donation of Countess Matilda" (no. 622), and at the north end, of "Saint Francesco di Paola emerging unharmed from a furnace" (no. 706) with "Pope Saint John and Symmachus hurl the soul of King Theoderic into Hell" (no. 752).(28) There is no doubt that enhancements by parallelism and allegorizing were entirely familiar to the vault designer. How fully these methods were carried out is not completely clear?

The vault proclaims moments of history when the Incarnation seemed to make a difference - sometimes accompanied by saving interventions from heaven into human affairs, sometimes witnessing rare human deeds that, beyond what could be expected of fallen mankind, attained celestial heights. Geography detaches the panels from chronology and absolves them from having a goal; the incidents shown do not go anywhere: they simply are. The succession of vault panels is.(from the perspective of its designer) unequivocally glorious, history as it would be in a world confident of its redemption. One would have to look far to find another cycle of pictures more eloquently illustrating the summits of tempora Christiana.

HISTORY ON THE MAPS

The twenty-three historical vignettes incorporated in the maps on the gallery walls are subsidiary to geography, blending with the background until deliberately sought by an informed observer. By no means emphatic in drawing attention to themselves, they jostle for prominence with several other distractions from the main geographic outlines: town plans, ships of many types, landscapes, elaborate cartouches.

Commentators have been uncertain about what to do with these vignettes. Almagia, a great historian of cartography, found them random or arbitrary, and believed they were chosen for the non-historical reason of filling gaps in chorographical information? Cheney, who may have overlooked the handling of history in medieval mappaemundi, took the geographical order of scenes in the Galleria to be unusual and to obscure their "truly epic scope." Arguing that the vault and map scenes together, if detached from geography and aligned according to time, form a grand panorama of the history of Christianity, she comes closer to the truth than Gambi and Pinelli, in whose parochial opinion, "These events [on the maps] were chosen from amongst the most hazardous of the dangers braved by the country in Roman times or the various trials faced by Christian Italy as it struggled to overcome internal and external enemies."(31) Too many of the incidents, ancient and modern, elude this interpretation. A suitable test is whether there would have been any point under Gregory XIII in portraying France four times as an "external enemy" of "Christian Italy," a modern counterpart of Attila.(32)

Among the forty maps, various subsidiary insets resemble the historical vignettes, but are detached from them. The main maps include many details, chiefly of cities. Few have explanatory legends. Several are meant to compliment Gregory XIII. His bringing of an obelisk to Rome is illustrated in the detail showing Civitavecchia; also recalled is his attempt to revive the ancient port facilities of Ostia.(33) A boundary agreement between Bologna and Ferrara conduded in 1579 (when the Galleria delle carte geografiche was already under construction) is hailed in special cartouches, and highlighted by a red border line, in the maps of the two districts. This treaty, a credit to the Bolognese pope, also honored the cartographer Danti, who had been on the boundary commission.(34) Less explicable is an inset on the lower edge of the map of Tuscany showing San Miniato, a town in the lower Arno valley. The inscription now attached to this badly damaged image claims that the Lombard king Desiderius and the emperor Frederick II both destroyed San Miniato. The Galleria bears out elsewhere that Desiderius and Frederick II are villains in papal history, but the present inscription was not always there. A copy in a Vatican manuscript of what is probably an earlier version credits Desiderius and Frederick with building San Miniato. Sorting out this confusion is not necessary. Neither San Miniato nor the other town insets involve precise historical happenings; they are chorographic documentation.(35)

The north end of the Galleria is taken up, to the right and left, with maps celebrating recent victories of Christians against the Ottoman Turks. One is the successful four-month resistance of Malta in 1565, under the badly outnumbered knights of St. John, to an attack ordered by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent; the other is the great battle of Lepanto in 1571, shown with the island of Corfu, from which the Christian armada set off to engage the Turks. The two Christian victories did much to contest and deny Ottoman control of the Mediterranean. In both, especially the latter, the papacy had a part.(36)

These maps, set out in keeping with the east-west division of the Galleria, are visually different from those of Italian provinces with historical incidents and are notably smaller. Each is topped by a large angel (the one for Malta wears the robe of the Order of St. John); next down comes the island map and, in lowest position, a picture of the battle or siege equal in size to the map. Because Valetta is very prominent in the map of Malta and an accompanying inset, and because the construction of this formidable fortress came about as a result of the 1565 victory, spectators seem to be invited to prize not only the siege but also its admirable consequence for the future defense of the island against the Turks.(37)

In the maps of Italian provinces the historical vignettes are incorporated into the larger portrayal of the district being mapped, as though they were incidental details. In the cases of Malta and Corfu, chorography and history have separate compartments. The two maps with naval battles are not alone in differing in design from those of the provinces. The extremities of the Galleria - four images at each end integrated into the overall east-west division - are maritime appendages. For reasons of available space, they are also much smaller than the thirty-two maps of Italy. The south end of the gallery specializes in ports: Civitavecchia and Ancona in alignment with the maps of Italian provinces, Genoa and Venice closing the corridor and flanking the door. The north end has islands: Elba and Tremiti after the provinces, and Malta and Corfu as just mentioned. Tremiti is shown in a small but noteworthy engagement with Turkish raiders; Corfu is coupled with Lepanto; and Malta is blended with the total gallery design by three vault paintings celebrating Saint Paul's pause at the island on his way to Rome.(38) Conceivably, these gratifying, resounding, and recent victories were regarded as the points at which the miracles of the vault and the modern cartography of the walls joined and merged. On the other hand, the Malta and Lepanto panels are not culminations prepared by the incidents on the other maps; no connections exist. The victories flanking the northern door, given a special design and merged into subsidiary maritime ensembles, are best understood as historical features existing on their own.(39)

The vexing question as to whether the small incidents on the maps of Italian provinces are thematically related to the much more numerous, geographically ordered historical events on the vault panels remains unanswered. Almagia proposed that the vault was planned to contain miracles from each province and, for this reason, was not very distinct from the maps.(40) This does not seem to be true. The life, if one may call it that, of the vault paintings has almost nothing to do with their location; and, while the link between vault and walls is incontrovertible, its effect is by no means overwhelming. Nothing is stated or done to relate the vault to the small, often hard-to-read historical scenes within the maps. The "cycle of miracles" and the map vignettes can each have their own theme; and this appears to be the case.

In a near-contempory record of Gregory XIII's constructions, responsibility for the Galleria is split three ways: "Ottaviano Mascherino was architect of the great gallery; the design of the maps was carried out in accordance with the direction and drawings of the Very Rev. Ignatio Dante, bishop of Alatri; and the paintings of the vault were carried out by Gieronimo Mutiano, but planned by Cesare Nebbia of Orvieto."(41) The upper and lower ranges are clearly attributed to separate persons, but the source of their historical decorations is not unequivocally indicated. Neither the widely gifted Danti nor the vault artists were historians. One or more unnamed experts could have chosen the historical scenes; and, conceivably, the programs they supplied to Danti and to the vault painters might have formed complementary halves of an integrated thematic scheme. The name Cesare Baronio is proposed as a qualified historical counselor, and so is the papal librarian, Guglielmo Sirleto. More knowledgeable scholars could hardly be imagined, but the participation of either one remains hypothetical.(42)

A valuable clue to the relationship of the two sets occurs in the scene that, uniquely, appears among the maps as well as in the vault. This duplicated incident is the meeting of Pope Leo I and Attila the Hun in A.D. 452 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 5 AND 6 OMITTED]. The two renderings in the Galleria are compatible with each other, but embody different versions of the event.(43) In the lower sequence, Leo turns back the Hun by the force of his eloquence, vi sermonis. In the vault, the real persuader hovers supernaturally above the meeting between pope and barbarian; in keeping with an eighth-century legend, Attila is frightened off by seeing an old man in the sky - Saint Peter - brandishing a sword (in the vault, Saint Paul is there too, but as a supernumerary).(44) That this emphasis on supernatural intervention should appear in the "cycle of miracles" is wholly satisfactory. By comparison, the version worked into the map of the duchy of Mantua is down-to-earth: papal articulateness, a human cause, chases Attila.

The absence of the supernatural from the meeting of Leo and Attila on the map is not an isolated oversight; the same terrestrial quality holds for all the scenes planted in the soil of the mapped Italian provinces. The vault overflows with miracles and other good news of divine generosity to men, and the images are positioned so as to connect the "miracles" with the districts charted in the gallery below. But where the maps themselves are concerned, no incident has any contact with heaven. The earthbound history they embody is compatible with the descriptive geography that Renaissance scholars much admired in Strabo, for whom (and for whose numberless disciples) geography and history went handin-hand. That link with sixteenth-century thinking is suitable in view of the context.(45) Yet it probably matters more that the scenes on the maps also conform to an ancient tradition in Christian historiography, a tradition that, in one version, contrasts "the disasters of worthless men" to "the miracles of the saints" and regards human history as combining both. The Hispano-Roman Orosius, one of the earliest Christian historians, narrated the course of human events as a rarely relieved succession of calamities (A.D. 417). Church authors prized Orosius, however wrongly, for having transposed the ideas of Saint Augustine into narrative history.(46)

The historical incidents on the Galleria maps are a lopsided and unrepresentative selection of Italian history. Those from ancient history form an almost unvaried panorama of calamity and suffering; those consisting of very recent events are comparably gloomy. Danti's historical adviser had little faith in this-worldly happiness. These negative features need emphasis. Juergen Schulz saw only "vignettes . . . of famous battles." Yet several battles are not at all famous, and several scenes are not batdes at all. Pinelli does better when he refers to mainly Italian victories but also Italian defeats. Even more of an improvement would come from reversing the terms, since defeats outnumber victories.(47) The maps contain fewer than half as many scenes as the paintings in the vaults, and they are much more muted; the figures and accompanying paraphernalia almost blend with the landscape. The near equality of old and new events suggests a deliberate paralleling of epochs, implied by Danti's maps of ancient and modern Italy and wholly conforming to the fondness for comparison that long pervaded geography.(48)

The selection of events is strange. If a designer had wished to combine a chorography of all Italy with a representative assortment of Italian history he would have known better than to choose seven episodes from Rome's Second Punic War and four from the recent French involvement in Italy. Within the nineteen centuries separating the misadventure of Alexander of Epirus in Calabria (ca. 330 B.C.) and the battle of Ceresole in Piedmont (A.D. 1544), forty-seven percent of the historical illustrations duster in sixty-six years - three and a half percent of the available time.(49) So disproportionate a selection and distribution of material does not speak for casual or merely illustrative history. The "terrestrial" events probably conform to a deliberate program.

The scenes from ancient history are listed here with reference to the province map on which they appear and in chronological order:

* (Northern Calabria) The Lucanians and Samnites defeat Alexander, king of Epirus (ca. 330 B.C.).

* (Milan) M. Marcellus defeats the Insubres at C!astidium (222 B.C.).

* (Milan) Hannibal's cavalry defeats P. Cornelius Scipio at Pavia (218 B.C.).

* (Parma-Piacenza) Hannibal is victorious at Trebbia (218 B.C.).

* (Perugia) Hannibal is victorious at Trasimene (217 B.C.).

* (Umbria) Hannibal unsuccessfully besieges Spoleto (217 B.C.).(50)

* (Apulia) Hannibal is victorious at Cannae (216 B.C.).

* (Lucania) Hannibal's cavalry overcomes M. Marcellus (208 B.C.).

* (Urbino) Claudius Nero kills Hasdrubal and defeats his army (207 B.C.).

* (Romagna) Caesar and his army head for the Pubicon (49 B.C.).

* (Bologna) Formation of the Second Triumvirate (43 B.C.).(51)

How the wars in Italy between 1494 and 1544 were considered by contemporaries is not easily known; Roman history, however, had long acquired conventional characterizations. Augustine's City of God tells Christians how to envisage the Hannibalic War, "that war fraught with so much horror, ruin, and peril": "Even the historians who set out to sing the praises of the Roman Empire, rather than to recount Rome's wars, have to admit that the victory resembled a defeat."(52) The history of ancient Rome is full of incidents of all kinds, some more cheerful and edifying than others. Whoever chose the eleven ancient scenes for the Vatican gallery concentrated on what was, even by pre-Christian accounts, the gloomiest chapter of the Roman past. Preferred above all was "the victory [that] resembled a defeat."

The incidents we are offered include the disasters par excellence of Roman history. The cataclysms at Trasimene and Cannae were so complete as to become proverbial thereafter of the lowest point of Rome's existence; and Trebbia was no joke.(53) The great Roman hero of the Hannibalic War, Scipio (Africanus), never appears on the maps; we see his father, bested by African cavalry. Two scenes are particularly indicative of the designer's outlook: near Milan, Claudius Marcellus overcame the Celtic tribe of Insubres at Clastidium; years later, after two resounding victories (absent from the Galleria maps), Marcellus perished in a Lucanian skirmish while reconnoitering Hannibal's forces. Whereas the two incidents shown, both unimportant, have little representative value for general history, the juxtaposition of Marcellus's triumph and tragedy is wholly Orosian in spirit.(54)

Should the ups and downs on the maps be weighed and balanced? The scenes of ancient history make better sense if they are interpreted as doleful without exception - illustrations of the earthly vale of tears. Cheney notes that the Romans endured setbacks until, as she puts it, the tide turned with Claudius Nero's victory over Hasdrubal at the Metauto.(55) Her reading of the course of events is plausible, but, in the spirit of Augustine and Orosius, bloodshed and calamity are lamentable on all sides. Roman imperialism was grievous for victims and victors alike; Orosius counts the Carthaginian casualties in mournful tones.(56) The tragic Hannibalic War, though won, is not followed in the Galleria by laughter and dancing. The last images skip ahead to Caesar's army advancing to the Rubicon and to the Second Triumvirate being formed. These are not momentary trials on the way toward a pleasing pre-Christian Empire (which the Galleria images disregard).(57) The concluding incidents of ancient history on the maps are preludes to civil war or to its worst evils, since the Triumvirate went hand-in-hand with a reign of terror notorious for putting to death such luminaries as Cicero. The sadness is unrelieved.

The Roman history excerpted on Danti's maps is neither serene, balanced, nor even prominent. The earliest scene, typically, sends non-experts running for help. Whereas Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, is famous as an enemy of Rome (282-72 B.C.), few remember that Alexander the Molossian, king of Epirus, was overcome by the Lucanians and Samnites.(58) The event is even more minor than the victory of Marcellus over the Insubres. Reference books reassure us. Alexander was brother-in-law to Philip of Macedon and uncle to Alexander the Great; invited by the Tarentines to assist the faltering cause of the Greeks in south Italy, he was opposed by the local natives and displeased the Romans, who themselves aspired to protect the Greeks.(59) In the Galleria, the incident comes out of nowhere and leads nowhere, at least on a premise of "normal" ancient history. A commentator suggests that the image alludes to recent immigration by Albanians to the lands in questionri.(60) This is helpful information, but Orosius is also relevant: Alexander of Epirus appears three times in the History against the Pagans, surrounded by many gloomy notes; his wretched fate documents the sad condition of unredeemed humanity. In the context of Christian moralizing, Alexander is not isolated. In him we encounter neither the glory of the Lucanians and Samnites, nor Roman history, let alone the growth of the Empire, but only the misery of the human condition.(61)

The scenes of modern history are as earth-bound as those of Roman times, with the difference that they occur after the Incarnation and the establishment of the Christian church, in a world where the possibility of salvation at least exists. An outlook identical to that expressed in the scenes of ancient history does not suit Christian times. (Orosius attests to improvements in the condition of the world after the Incarnation.)(62) The distribution of Galleria map subjects anticipates our historical periodization into medieval and modern epochs. Medievalists can applaud the implied contrast with dismal antiquity:

* (Mantua) Leo I turns back Attila (452).(63)

* (Milan) Charlemagne, at the bidding of Pope Hadrian I, defeats Desiderius, king of the Lombards (774).(64)

* (Spoleto) Leo III is saved from his enemies by Winigis, duke of Spoleto (799).(65)

* (Campania) John X with a coalition of princes expels the Saracens from the Garigliano (915).

* (Bologna) By the battle of San Ruffillo, Bologna recovers its liberty (1361).

* (Avignon) Gregory XI brings the papacy back from Avignon to Rome (1377).(66)

Supernatural intervention is absent; nothing miraculous blurs the distinction between scenes on the vault and on the maps. Also absent is the ambiguity of victories resembling defeats. It seems as though spectators are being shown the golden age of the papacy and are expected to rejoice. The "pristina libertas" to which the people of Bologna return is rule by the Holy See. Leo III is memorable not for crowning Charlemagne, but for being rescued by a dutiful dignitary and escorted to "his" city of Spoleto.

In keeping with the early Roman series, the designer did not choose medieval and modern incidents by a standard of absolute importance or with an eye to balanced chronological coverage. The most obtrusive theme, not necessarily the most important, is that of popes working to defend Italy from barbarians. Another prominent notion involves lay princes placing themselves at the papacy's disposal to do its bidding. Such conduct, though clearly approved, differs from the submissiveness of princes in the vault. The recovery of papal territory is featured in the Battle of San Ruffillo, perhaps in honor of the Bolognese pope Gregory XlII. The inscription for Charlemagne's defeat of Desiderius specifies that Charles gave back to the Roman church districts belonging to it that the Lombards had been deceitfully withholding. And Winigis's rescue of Leo III brought the latter to a Spoleto "belonging to the Holy See."(67) Recovery of territories from lay detainers is more mundane than free gifts; Matilda's spectacular donation to the papacy occurs among the miracles in the Galleria vault, not on the lower level.

The final "medieval" scene is Gregory XI's return to Rome; it seems to illustrate only itself and, as a commentator explains, is accompanied by a shift in date to permit number symbolism. In Gregory XIII's time this incident was also painted in the nearby Sala Regia.(68) Is the scene wholly cheerful? The papacy's homecoming brings to mind the original move to Avignon, in lamentable circumstances, and a seventy-year absence. Here, if not in the other vignettes of the medieval group, a note of ambiguity is struck. The image on the map is, as usual, thoroughly terrestrial, but the inscription assures us that Gregory XI decided to move "divino numine permotus." This "divine inspiration" is more likely to refer to the persuasiveness of Catherine of Siena, or something comparable, than to a direct order from heaven.(69)

The six scenes unfold an epoch that was kind to the papacy; this is as good as earth-bound history gets. Yet in the light of the sublime happenings on the Galleria vault, even the cheerful incidents down below are open to second thoughts. The medieval events compare well with the ancient ones; still, Charlemagne's army proceeds to butcher the surrounded Lombards; the expulsion of the Saracens has its costs; San Ruffillo involves much bloodshed.(70) The popes clear Italy of invaders, regain possession of their patrimony, and realize that Rome, not outlying Avignon, is their only possible capital. Orosian insistence on the misery of the human condition is avoided, but expansion, efflorescence, and growth are absent too. The popes engage in Sisyphean labors, and the themes exemplified are as perennial (in the perspective of Gregory XIII's Rome) as the land they concern.

The next vignettes, continuing and completing the modern sequence, reach back less than a century from when Danti drew maps on the Galleria walls. We are not taken on an even-handed promenade through the century; the incidents, some better known than others, are as much a selection as the ones from antiquity and the middle ages. Owing to our sketchy awareness of how the Rome of Gregory XIII judged the recent past, the scenes are not easy to interpret. It would help if we might conjure up Baronio, or someone less learned, and ask how he felt about ambiguous incidents such as the French victory at Ravenna in 1512. In the absence of authoritative interpreters, factual glosses accompany this final list of events:

(Parma-Piacenza) Battle at the Taro (1495). [Better known as Fornovo. Charles VIII of France, retreating from Naples, was almost crushed by a league of Italian princes, including thepope. The French lost their baggage train, but broke the attack, inflicted many casualties, and resumed their retreat. Each side claimed victory.](71)

(Ferrara) "Julius II, seeking to recover the patrimonies that had been taken away by force and injury of the Apostolic See, wished to be borne within [the fortress of Mirandola] through the walls destroyed by cannon" (1511). [Julius II eagerly played the soldier in rebuilding the temporal power of the papacy. Mirandola was the key to Ferrara, an unruly vassal and ally of the French with whom Julius, long their ally, was now in conflict. A week after the breach was made, not waiting for a gate to be cleared, Julius was borne over the rubble, leading a procession, and entered the town.](72)

(Romagna) Battle of Ravenna (1512). [At the river Ronco near Ravenna, the French defeated the opposing coalition, including Julius II, but lost their best general in the battle and were forced from Italy soon after. The papacy and Swiss troops hastened their departure.](73)

(Marches) "The Province of Picenum, faithful to the Apostolic See, spontaneously sent 15,000 soldiers towards Rome to safeguard the pope and the most sacred city from a very ferocious enemy"(1527). [The Picentines were responding to the seizure and eight-day sack of Rome in 1527 by an undisciplined army serving the emperor Charles V. Several months' occupation followed the sack.](74)

(Milan) "Pavia was besieged by Count de St. Pol and, when cannon were taken across the river, was overcome with the greatest violence by the general's skill (1523) [sic]."(75) [In 1528, when the French general Lautrec was besieging Naples, Franfois de Bourbon, Count de St. Pol, was sent from France to Lombardy to impede an imperial force despatched from Germany. St. Pol captured strongholds along the Ticino and stormed Pavia, which Lautrec had taken and sacked in 1527. Two years before Lautrec's seizure, a French siege and battle of Pavia had resulted in a catastrophe at the hands of Charles V's army, including the capture of King Francis I. Retribution for the French humiliation of 1525 fell heavily on Pavia, but the campaigns of Lautrec and St. Pol soon failed with heavy losses.](76)

(Piedmont and Montferrat) Very violent battle (acerrimus conflictus) at Ceresole (1544). [Militarily brilliant success by French forces over imperial ones. Before the year was out, France, facing two invaders in the north, made peace at Crepy with Charles V. The victory in Piedmont was irrelevant.](77)

The Galleria's incidents from Roman antiquity are bathed in Orosian gloom, and the medieval ones, within their limits, are demurely sunny. What can we make of the modern set?

Much happened in Italy between Fornovo and Ceresole (14951544). It is not self-evident why the incidents just listed were chosen for the Galleria maps. Some disregarded battles were renowned: Cerignola (1503), decisive in winning Naples for Spain; Agnadello (1509), a triumph of Franco-papal cooperation against Venice; Marignano (1515), by which Francis I restored the French position in Italy; Bicocca (1522), where the French again lost their hold on the peninsula; and the total imperial victory over the French at Pavia (1525). Another prominent event of the period is the sack of Rome in 1527 by the forces of Charles V, Christian emperor-elect.(78) To judge by what the vignettes contain and the alternatives they omit, the Vatican Galleria is probably as monitory in handling very recent history as it assuredly is in presenting the ancient Roman past.

Except for Malta and Lepanto (which are extras), all instances of modern combat involve the French. The battle of Fornovo illustrates the perplexities we are forced to grapple with throughout. Are the Christian French equated with "barbarians" whose expulsion from Italy was a happy event? This seems unlikely. The cardinal who became Pope Julius II had worked hard to unleash Charles VIII on Naples. The French were in retreat toward home when intercepted. Fornovo witnessed much loss of life on the Italian side; the French baggage train was captured - not a laughing matter; both sides suffered gravely. Charles VIII, though he escaped being trapped, had a hard road to safety. At Ravenna in 1512 the French were victorious over the Holy League that Julius II formed against them. Gaston de Foix, killed late in the battle, was indispensable to the campaign, and the French evacuated Italy scant months after their brilliant victory. Expelling the French was the papal goal at the time, but the Holy See soon had cause for regret, since the cure was about as bad as the disease.(79) Later, the French were papal allies, and two episodes concern these years. The "very violent" battle of Ceresole was won by the French, but inconsequentially, since Francis I, scant months later, was forced to make the Peace of Crepy with Charles V. None of these events had the bluntness of Hannibal cutting Roman armies to pieces; all were costly in lives and inconclusive.

Several of the modern episodes are just as minor as some of the old Roman ones: Julius II is carried into Mirandola through the breach made by his cannon (1511); the Picentines, ever loyal to the Holy See, set out to guard the pope from "a very ferocious" but otherwise unidentified enemy; and a French army seizes Pavia in 1528.

These are fleeting, inconsequential incidents. Julius II at Mirandola was, perhaps, at the summit of his martial ardor for restoring the papacy's temporal possessions, but nothing came of the successful siege: the French victory at Ravenna diverted him, and he died in 1513. Is his triumphal entrance into the captured city, followed by six cardinals on horseback, shown on the Galleria map in admiration or in aversion? Even if no blame is meant, it is certain that Julius's victory was thoroughly "terrestrial," hardly comparable in its effect to the restorations of territory depicted in the Galleria's medieval vignettes.(80) The same equivocal impression carries over to the two other events. In 1527, the Picentenes behaved admirably, like rescue workers after a disaster. They then (presumably) went home.(81) A few months later, St. Pol's army subjected Pavia to its third change of master in two years. As this went on, Lautrec's siege of Naples melted away, as he and many others succumbed to pestilence; few of his troops survived to surrender, and Genoa defected from France. St. Pol, belatedly advancing on Genoa, was surprised by the imperials at Landriaco (still very near Milan), routed, and taken prisoner.(82)

Two of the events just surveyed are remarkable for directly suggesting much more serious but omitted incidents. The troops from the Marches setting out to help the Holy See in 1527 imply the sack of Rome. Pavia, 1528, recalls that France (and its ally Pope Clement VII) had its forces butchered and a king captured there in 1525. Charles V's army, rather than the unfortunate Pavians, was responsible for the French defeat. No matter: St. Pol's skillful assault was the second "revenge" in as many years for the calamity of 1525.

The sixteenth-century episodes, like the others on the maps, have nothing supernatural about them. Rooted in Italian mud, they almost blend with the painted background. Only the loyalty of the Picentenes gives pleasure. The entrance of Julius II into Mirandola may be meant to have the same effect. The battles near Ravenna and at Ceresole are announced as disastrous or very fierce (acerrima clades, acerrimus conflictus), though no suggestion is made that they resembled the catastrophic losses of Rome to Hannibal. The one tribulation of Hannibalic magnitude - Pavia, 1525 - may be alluded to, but it is not mentioned. In the days of Gregory XIII, Italy was under Spanish control.(83) The battles depicted in the Galleria feature the French twice in the papal camp, twice outside it. The Habsburg monarchs and their armies stay off the stage; often implied, they are concealed everywhere (except at Lepanto). On the evidence, the French might be cast as modern counterparts of the Carthaginians - enemies who kept coming back, doing great harm, only to be resolutely cast back toward their lands. There could have been little point, however, in assigning the "rois tres chretiens" and sometime papal allies so unequivocally negative a role.

If any unifying thread runs through the map scenes of modern history - if any rationale guided the choice - it seems to be very similar to the Orosian theme of calamities found in the vignettes of ancient history. The modern incidents are chosen to show successes to one side or the other that rapidly prove to be illusions or emphatic disappointments to those participating in them: rivers of blood shed to no purpose, the vanity of merely terrestrial strivings.

* Fornovo epitomized the Italian chimera of Charles VIII of France, as well as the folly of those who imagined that seizing French baggage turned the battle into a victory.

* Julius II at Mirandola illustrated the illusion of a papacy that sought to pursue territorial ambitions by armed force.

* The French no sooner won their brilliant victory near Ravenna than they were chased out of Italy.

* Picentine assistance to its papal sovereign was a heavily qualified blessing if the sack of Rome was needed to call it forth.

* St. Pol's exploit in capturing Pavia scarcely offset the ruin of both French armies soon afterwards. Double revenge for the French disaster of 1525 came at heavy cost.

* Both sides at Ceresole manifested great heroism - wholly in vain. The exertions of the armies in Piedmont were irrelevant to the necessary peace at Crepy.

Events of political and military history lend themselves rather too easily to ironic interpretations. Because most historical happenings sooner or later turn to ashes, the possibility of revisionism is rarely denied. All or some of the sixteenth-century ironies aligned above are provisional and might well be improved.

What seems likely is that historical reasoning of the Orosian kind guided the designer of the Galleria's map vignettes. The vault panels, with their homogeneous, clearly apparent theme of "celestial history," call for a "terrestrial" complement, and the extraordinarily concentrated choice of scenes from Roman history points to a thoroughly negative vision of earthly passions and strivings. That this pessimistic outlook also guided the selection of incidents from the recent past is suggested by the extraordinary assortment of events that spectators are invited to contemplate.(84)

THE GALLERIA AND MAPS FOR HISTORY

Regardless of whether the subjects are ancient or modern, understandable or obscure, the Galleria map vignettes are almost as distant as the vault paintings from what is found in maps for history. Such maps tended, then as now, to illustrate the geographical implications or context of historical actions. The Exodus, the retreat of the 10,000, or the expedition of Alexander were typical selections, already familiar in the sixteenth century. Ortelius's Parergon - the first historical atlas, and very near to the Galleria in date - illustrates what was involved. When Ortelius or a predecessor showed Asia Minor and Greece as the setting of the travels of Saint Paul, he turned the geography of the Eastern Mediterranean into a historical map and, in this way, shed light on the familiar narrative of Acts.(85) A similar approach to "The Second Triumvirate" might perhaps have shown how the triumvirs divided the Roman world among themselves. The Galleria's vignette of the Second Triumvirate has much more modest goals: the three political bosses, with their henchmen, are glimpsed meeting somewhere near Bologna.(86) The image localizes the event without supplementing what anyone might know about it; one can be well informed about the Second Triumvirate without knowing where it was organized - an incidental detail. The history offered on the Galleria walls consists of pictures-on-maps; the images may divert and please, but add nothing to anyone's understanding of the past.

Historical maps featuring pictures were known when Danti worked on the Galleria. They prolong an historical component of medieval mappaemundi - incidents pictured at the geographical locality where they occurred.(87) In the mid-1500s the printmaker Lafreri in Rome published a map of the Exodus reduced to broadside format from a multi-sheet Swiss original; many copies survive. The map is rich in figures of drowning Egyptians and of Israelites making their way, incident by incident, through the Sinai Desert. What is called "the Genevan map of the Exodus" appeared in the same decade, with its "salient characteristic . . . the emphasis on the route and its events." Six incidents were expressly depicted, having been traditional subjects in Bible illustration since the earliest times.(88) In the 1690s, an enlarged Holy Land was the setting for a completely new, post-biblical design by Hubert Jaillot. Under the tide "Les deserts d'Egypte," it celebrated the earliest desert monks with a sheaf of tiny vignettes based on the vitae patrum literature of the fourth and fifth centuries. A literal copy appeared in Augsburg in the 1740s.(89)

In Holy Land maps, history through pictures enjoyed advantages denied to the Vatican vignettes. Illustrations of the Exodus showed wellknown events, such as the crossing of the Red Sea; onlookers were called on to enjoy, or meditate on, completely familiar incidents; and the pictures were fully integrated with the map. Even if such a scene as "The Worship of the Golden Calf" gained little from geography, the wider context tracking the migration from Egypt to the Promised Land was enlightening. Images and cartography complemented each other. The same held true for Jaillot's much later "Deserts d'Egypte." The edifying literature underlying its design could hardly claim as wide a readership as the Bible, but initiates to the vitae patrum, always numerous in the church, were offered an effective combination of geography and images. The same blend was not wholly alien to profane subjects. A map of 1562 for Antony Jenkinson's contemporary account of Russia and Tartary has many figures; most are decorative, but some, accompanied by framed inscriptions, illustrate aspects of Russian mores. The association of subject, words, and image was adequate to yield an instructive aggregate.(90)

The Galleria vignettes differ sharply from the illustrations just mentioned. They lack the underpinning of a text familiar to prospective spectators and, most of all, they are inessential additions to geographic maps, rather than maps drawn deliberately to illuminate history.(91) The twenty-odd incidents were chosen from among the innumerable events of Italian history. Each has a succinct inscription telling spectators what they are seeing. Everyone presumably knew about Cannae and Attila, but the vignettes include many obscure incidents, such as Marcellus overcoming the Insubres, the Battle of San Ruffillo, and St. Pol storming Pavia. Moreover, the events are mixed together by the accidents of place. The chronological order of events in the lists above is artificial; reality in the Galleria maps typically involves Pope Leo III being taken toward Spoleto not far from Hannibal deciding to raise his siege. A series of inscriptions announce, in effect: "Here such-and-such happened."(92) These legends are pictorially amplified by the adjoining vignettes, and nothing else. As for geography, the pictured events benefit only in that individual locations are indicated. The battle scenes visually dramatize what, in later maps, would be marked abstractly by the convention of crossed swords (or tents). The painted image may heighten the onlooker's awareness and enjoyment of the incident, but offers nothing instructive. Peaceful incidents are portrayed no more informatively than battles.

Holy Land maps, drawn intentionally to evoke and elucidate a wellknown text, may be a fragile parallel; the Galleria vignettes retain their originality and call for an individual explanation. The vault decorations, with their painstaking allegorizing, groupings, and edification, suggest that whoever chose the incidents for the maps put his mind to the didactic aspect of what he was doing. He proceeded much like the designers of medieval mappaemundi, positioning significant historical moments at the geographical points where they occurred. Like these earlier designers, he contemplated the world as "a place of vain pursuits," the theater of the "transitoriness of earthly existence," or something comparably grim.(93) The vault offered a diet of miracles; on the earthbound maps down below, the events were predominantly dismal, their tragic aspects sometimes implied rather than shown. These were the sorrows and disappointments of history as lived on earth by sinful humanity. Maps could situate these incidents in the Italian landscape and give them a credibility that words alone might not attain. The goal was to depict events from ancient and modern history that would characterize earthbound res gestae at their qualified best and irredeemable worst. Perhaps the whole series called for more learning than spectators had, but some or all of Cannae, Trasimene, Trebbia, Metauro, Fornovo, Ravenna, and Ceresole must have been familiar enough to educated viewers to allow the designer's melancholy message to be grasped? As an exemplification of history-in-maps the Galleria was far from ideal and set no fashion. As a station on the way from the mappaemundi of the past to the historical atlases of the future, it is an instructive diversion.

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 

Legend for Figure 2

Multiple incidents in one province are listed from top to bottom of the map and are given alphabetical identifiers in the legend.

Maps of Italia antiqua and the eastern provinces would have been to the left of an entering visitor.

NORTH and EAST of the Apennines

PEDIMONTIUM

Battle at Ceresole, 1544

MEDIOLANUM

a. Cornelius Scipio beaten at Pavia, 218 B.C.

b. Pavia overcome by Count de St Pol, [1528](**)

c. Marcellus victor at Clastidium, 222 B.C.(**)

d. Charlemagne defeats the Lombards, 774

PLACENTIA

a. Roman disaster at Trebbia, 218 B.C.

b. Battle of Fornovo, 1495

MANTUA

Leo I turns back Attila the Hun, 452

FERRARA

Julius II enters conquered Mirandola, 1511

BONONIA

a. Second Triumvirate, 43 B.C.

b. Battle of San Ruflillo, [1361]

FLAMINIA

a. Battle of Ravenna, 1512(*)

b. Caesar heads for the Rubicon, 49 B.C.(*)

URBINUS

Carthaginian defeat at the Metauro, 207 B.C.

PICENUM

Dispatch of 15,000 Picentines to protect Rome and the pope, 1527

APULIA

Roman disaster at Cannae, 216 B.C.

WEST of the Apennines

PERUSINUM

Roman disaster at Trasimene, 217 B.C.

UMBRIA

a. Leo III rescued by Duke Winigis, [799].

b. Hannibal fails at Spoleto, 217 B.C.

CAMPANIA

Saracens driven from the Garigliano, 915

LUCANIA

Marcellus killed by Hannibal's cavalry, 208 B.C.(**)

CALABRIA CITERIOR

Defeat and death of Alexander of Epirus, ca. 330 B.C.(*)

AVENIO

Gregory XI returns the Papacy from Avignon to Rome, 1377

** Legend in Italic script

* No billboard and legend

1 Gambi. I am very grateful to Fred Unwalla (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto) for drawing my attention to the Mirabilia Italiae set, and to Robin Healy (University of Toronto Library) for guiding its acquisition.

2 Ibid., 1:11, 12, 2:34, 43, 66, 84-85; 2:88-96; Fiore, 659-63; Schutte, 57-58. The letter to Ortelius, in Gambi, 2:11-12, 84-85. Danti drew the wall maps to the standard of accuracy prevailing in the printed maps of the day. On the appearance of the gallery and early restorations, Fiorani, 124-27; ibid., 130-35, has important new material on Danti.

3 The vault: Gambi, 2:66. Quotation from Schulz, 108. On the design of the vault see also n. 40, below. For the four cycles, see Gambi, 1:247.

4 Nicely put by Cheney, 22: "the modern visitor tends to retreat to the regional comfort of a familiar map rather than confront the whole, which is rendered almost incomprehensible by the dimensions of the Gallery and the nature of its organizational principles [i.e., geography rather than chronology]."

5 Almagia, 1952.

6 Gambi. The full text has a running English translation as second column. The Latin inscriptions in the many map cartouches are often lengthy and often contain historical information; they are transcribed and translated in vol. 2. Each numbered item whose photograph is in vol. 1 is annotated in vol. 2. I cite particular items of the gallery decoration by those numbers in Gambi that correspond to a note in vol. 2. Unfortunately, several varying numbering systems ate deployed in the book - perhaps its major blemish. Scafi, 193-94, gives an excellent sense of the collection.

7 The detailed coverage of Italy is the gallery's claim to originality (Gambi, 1:15). Almagia, 1952, 11-12 (wall maps in Italian public buildings); see also Schutte, 43-45, with references to the world map in the Vatican Terza Loggia; about the latter, Almagil, 1955: thirteen maps, mainly of European countries (including one of Italy), done 155964 (a part was completed under the auspices of Gregory XIII). How to define the "Italy" of the Galleria maps poses a problem. The solution offered in Gambi, 2:44, is "a detailed atlas of the territory which [Gregory XIII] controlled more or less directly." Cf. Cheney, 21. The papal possessions of Avignon and environs are the conspicuous extra-Italian province. Fiorani, 138, is unaware of conventional hyperbole in the texts she cites and so concludes, wrongly, that the Galleria "proclaims the centrality of Italy in world history." World history is not in question, and Catholics do not "of course" exchange the Holy Land for Italy.

8 Woodward, 1985, 514-19, gives a stimulating account of history and geography in mappaemundi.

9 An inscription announces the relationship of vault pictures to the maps: "Fornix pia sanctorum virorum facta locis in quibus gesta sunt ex advorsum respondentia ostendit" (Gambi, 1:405, 2:384 no. 445). Pinelli refers to "miracles' on good authority. Danti's description of the gallery for Ortelius (quoted, Fiorani, 147 n. 70) mentions eighty "storie di figure . . . rapprese(n)tando qualche segnalato miracolo occorso in quella provincia." Danti does not appear to have in mind a connected history of the church. Fiorani, 139, correctly translates Danti, then glosses his "stories with figures" as "religious narratives' and in the next breath as "episodes of church history" equated to "the main theme of the entire decoration." For Saint Benedict and Campania, Gambi 1:428 no. 662. The total 51 seems to be attained by deducting the Bologna churches (nos. 673, 674) discussed in n. 20, below. Schulz, 108, counts 72 "histories" in the vault but only by including the "cycle of sacrifices" and other non-historical panels.

10 I arrive at twenty-three vignettes by placing certain scenes, notably the battle of Lepanto, in a different category from the vignettes, as explained in nn. 36-39, below.

11 Pinelli, 128, 129-40; see also, Gambi, 1:247, 428-29 (list of the historical scenes). The claim in Gambi, 1:13, that "these 51 scenes form a sort of picture arias of Christian history . . . justifying [the claim of Italy] to be called a new Holy Land" is not sustained by any reasonable definition of an atlas of Christian history. According to Schulz, 108, "Italy is exhibited . . . as a theater of pious deeds." This holds, perhaps, for the vault, but not for the often sanguinary events on the maps. Schulz's idea that the gallery digests world history is also hard to substantiate. Fiorani, 138, points out that the Old Testament sacrifices refer to the Catholic Eucharist.

12 Goffart, 1988, 127-53; Heinzelmann, 235-59.

13 Rottgen, 89-122. He cites Charles Dickens expressing horror at what was depicted in San Stephano (106).

14 Constantius (no. 604): Brunacci, 268-69; Januarius (no. 659): Ambrasi, 135-51; Laverius (no. 685): Caraffa, 1133-34 (Laverius's gore-free miracle, the expulsion of demons, is not in any known legend, Gambi, 2:463-64); Agatha (no. 777): Rigoli, 320-35.

15 Gregory the Great, Dialogi, 4.31, ed. de Vogue, 3:107, "ab illis iuste in ignem missus apparuit, quos in hac vita iniuste iudicavit." The scene is deliberately paired with the miracle of Saint Francesco di Paola (n. 22, below) stepping unharmed from a roaring furnace.

16 Pinelli, 133, proposes that the vault "celebrates the triumph of the Roman church over all her adversaries, past present and future [sic]." Similarly, Schulz, 108, concludes that the gallery decoration shows Italy as "the new Holy Land, the land of the church, which, by the decree of Christ . . .," etc. Cf. Cheney, 22 n. 2, 30. These interpretations seem overwrought when set alongside the discreetly phrased inscriptions on which they are based (Gambi, 1:405, 2:384 no. 445, 189-91,193 nos. 7-9). The papal court knew that the church was universal, not Italian. Caution is also called for by the claim (Gambi, 1:16) that the gallery is an "Autocelebrazione del potere," illustrative of Gregory XIII's desire to control space as well as time (through his calendar reforms) (2:44).

17 Pope Gregory and Loreto: Pastor, 20:551,628. Relics: Saint John the Baptist borne to Genoa (no. 567), display of the Holy Shroud of Turin (no. 568); translation of the holy house to Loreto (no. 730). The relic transfer to Genoa is related to the map of Liguria (Gambi, 2:195-200 no. 36), not that of Genoa in the southern maritime appendix (no. 405). The translation of Saint Mark to Venice is an interesting absentee.

18 Pinelli's phrase "exemplary events" is applicable, too (Gambi, 1:13).

19 Should this be reclassified to the miracles? See Gambi, 1:432 no. 554, 2:408-09. According to the legend, Constantine's baptism was meant to cure him of leprosy, understood literally as well as metaphorically. Nothing in the vault scene alludes to the emperor's illness or cure. About these panels, see Ewig, 1976(1), 72-113 (resemblance to Saint Paul, 74-75). Constantine's vision (omitted here as being an outright miracle) preceded his baptism and was likened to Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.

20 Thanks to the "building" panels, Constantine is the focus of the largest single group of images (see also n. 24, below). They emphasize his relations to the papacy, not his conversion of the empire (as might loosely be said). His sponsoring these key basilicas - even working at St. Paul's as a laborer - makes him a builder of the Holy See, in keeping with western tradition (Ewig, 1976(1), 84). In reality, St. Paul-outside-the-Walls (definitely meant here, with the Pyramid of Sextius to help localization) is not Constantinian but early Theodosian (Ewig, 1976(1), 81). The Bologna complex (most closely affecting Gregory XIII) has panels showing existing churches: the Camaldolese monastery of San Michele in Bosco (no. 673) and the sanctuary of the Virgin on Monte della Guardia (no. 674). "These two small rectangular panels are an anomaly in the arrangement of the vault"(Gambi, 2:458 no. 673). They nevertheless resemble the paintings of relics (n. 17, above), especially if it is correct (Gambi, 2:458-59) that no. 674 originally showed "the miraculous image [of the Madonna di San Luca] . . . being translated to Monte della Guardia." Both panels show signs of deterioration and restoration. For further discussion, see Gambi, 2:455-57 no. 670.

21 This scene was also painted in the (recently decorated) Sala Regia of the Vatican (Rottgen, 92).

22 Pairing of Romuald and Pietro da Morrone, below at n. 27. The hermits in Pope Gregory's chapel (Pastor, 20:615). Francesco di Paola ([dagger]1507), a notable miracle worker represented twice in the vault, founded a hermit order (Schutte, 115). On the Capuchins, see MacVicar, 65-67. Originally called the Friars Minor of the Eremitical Life, they gave their friaries the appearance of hermitages. Gregory XlII lifted the ban on their extending outside Italy. They were second after the Jesuits as champions of the Catholic reformation.

23 Ewig, 1976(2), 1:3-4 (rulers in God's kingdom are not evergetes [independent benefactors] but ministri [managers]), 9-10, 12. Wallace-Hadrill, 31, 53-54, 136, 138-40.

24 Victory over Maxentius gained Constantine supremacy only in the West; more than a decade passed until he won the entire empire in 324. Cf. Cheney, 24. On future interpretations of the vision, Ewig, 1976(1), 75, 84. The accent appears to be on the conversion it occasions, rather than the victory it foretells.

25 Gambi, 2:470-71 no. 731. For the context, Gebhardt, 1:295-96. Painted into the Henry II scene is the notable Calabrian, Cardinal Sirleto ([dagger]1585), then Vatican Librarian (Schutte, 17-18; she made this discovery); see also Gambi, 2:479 no. 731. The identification in this panel of another contemporary is less certain.

26 Schutte conducts an ambitious and thorough study that, among other things, explains how the cycle of sacrifices is linked to that of miracles. Her premises and mine are somewhat different, but not incompatible.

27 Schutte, 142; Pinelli, 135. For Saint Paul at Malta, see Gambi, 2:502-04 (the viper scene was also painted in the Vatican's contemporary Torre dei venti). Constantine as "thirteenth apostle" (Ewig, 1976(1), as nn. 19, 24, above).

28 Cheney, 32. Schulz, 108, classifies this donation, along with Constantine, as a representation "of early church history." On the time scale of church history, can the eleventh century be "early"? Even Constantine does not fit without argument.

29 Some panels do not jell: e.g., Saint Peter, without being mentioned, is crucial to four central panels on the north-south axis: Leo I tames Attila (Saint Peter, an apparition, is the active agent and is shown)(no. 646); "Domine quo vadis?" (no. 650); the Fall of Simon Magus (no. 658); and "Pasce oves meas" (no. 670). The panels flanking Pope Leo (nos. 647, 648) are closely related to the theme of turning away barbarians; the panels around no. 650 (i.e., nos. 651-56) are allegorical or belong to the "cycle of sacrifices." They, too, may enhance the main subject. But the panels flanking Simon Magus (Saints Gennaro and Gemminiano, nos. 659, 660) have no apparent connection.

30 Almagia, 1952, 21. Milanesi, 2:118, stresses Almagii's interest in the technical aspects of maps.

31 Cheney, 22, 23, 37 (on mappaeraundi, see Brincken; Kupfer, 1994; and Woodward). Quotation: Gambi, 1:13. Pinelli, in Gambi, 2:127, praises Cheney for grasping that the maps depict "threats endured and overcome, often at a terrible price, so that a unified Italy [sic] might come into being as the future home of the church." "Survival of the Church in the face of a multitude of threats": Cheney, 23, 24. She was right that suffering was involved. See also n. 49, below.

Fiorani, 135, affirms the inextricable, conceptual linkage of maps and vaults, and claims as proof that the vault scenes are "enlarged versions of the historical vignettes." This is true only in one out of twenty-three cases (n. 43, below), and that painting is a different, not just an enlarged version of the vignette. No visitor to the gallery would confirm that "the maps are visually linked" to the paintings (Fiorani, 136); the links are only spatial and, failing this, would be entirely wanting. As a result, the Galleria is unlikely to be "a well-argued response to the Protestant use of cartography in religious debates" (Fiorani, 137). For preaching to the converted, a less expensive method might have been chosen.

32 Narrowly Italian patriotism also guides the interpretation of Milanesi, 2:122. Ewart, 102: Gregory XIII could not help but be close to Philip II of Spain (who, in effect, dominated Italy), but he kept open his lines to France.

33 Gambi, 1:364 no. 399 (Civitavecchia, beside "Italia Nova"), 390-91 no. 429, 402-03 no. 441 (Ostia, tacked on as extras to distant islands). The existing painting for Civitavecchia is dated 1634 and celebrates work ordered by Urban VIII; the seagoing raft with the obelisk is from the Danti original.

34 Gambi, 2:316-17 no. 281 (Ferrara), 322 no. 292 (Bologna). Fiorani, 135-36, asserts that "the Galleria was clearly used as an accurate and constantly up-dated atlas of ecclesiastical possessions in the Italian peninsula." She may mean "possessions" in a territorial rather than a proprietary sense; either way, substantiation is needed.

35 Gambi, 1:83, 2:206 no. 52; the two "enemies," Desiderius (no. 220), Frederick II (no. 647-48). On San Miniato, see Scaramella, 30:736-37 (no reference to Desiderius).

36 About the siege of 1565, "Malta," in Encyclopedia Britannica, 17:511-12. About Lepanto, see Braudel, 2:1096-1102. Corfu had been raided by the Turks not long before Don John's fleet called, The battle was fought at the mouth of the Gulf of Patras, about 200 kilometers south of Corfu.

37 Gambi, 2:238, 379 no. 434, 381 no. 435 (plan of Valetta), 381-82 no. 438. Valetta was named after the Grand Master of the Order during the siege. On its date and construction, "Malta," in Encyclopedia Britannica 17:512. For a different view, Gambi, 2:396-97. Tooley, 36 no. 374, a map of Malta mentioning Saint Paul's stopover in its title (1565); no. 375, a map of 1563 indicating that the new (fortified) town had been planned before the siege. On Lepanto see: Gambi, 1:392 no. 430, 2:377, 379 (use of a Lafreri print of 1571).

38 Gambi, 1:32-33 (diagram) nos. 33-36 (south end), nos. 37-40 (north). Portrayals of ancient Ostia are tacked on to the lower registers of the panels for Tremiti (no. 429) and Elba (no. 441), as though the space were blank and usable for a suitable purpose, connected only by its portuary theme. About Ostia, see n. 33, above. The Tremiti Islands are in the Adriatic, a little north of the spur of Italy. For Saint Paul, see n. 27, above. Corfu, now Greek, was a Venetian possession.

39 Cheney, 22 n. 2, takes it for granted that the maps "start" with four ports and "end" with islands. The possibility that the two extremities are separate designs, or appendices, makes more sense. Scafi, 139, appears to recognize the distinction.

40 Almagia, 1952, 3.

41 "Della Galeria maggiore ne fu architetto Ortaviano Mascherino, la pittura delle tavole di cosmografia fu fatta con ordine e disegno del [rev.sup.mo] P. Ignatio Dante, vescovo d'Alatri, le pitture della volta ordinate da Gieronimo Mutiano, ma designate da Cesare Nebbia da Orvieto." Pastor, 20:651; Gambi, 2:70. Danti was made bishop three years after the map gallery was finished.

42 Danti was deeply versed in cosmography and mathematics. He takes pains to emphasize the accuracy of his geographic coordinates, while apologizing for the unevenness of his chorographic sources. See Gambi, 2:363-64 no. 391. No one claims he had any interest or learning in history (n. 2, above). Pinalli in Gambi, 1:13, 151-52, emphasizes Danti as an originator, but makes allowances for someone, unidentified, to help him "devise and draw up the iconographic programme" (1:13). Fiorani, 142 n. 19, thinks the ceiling program is "so basic to church history" that it was well within the range of an educated Dominican. The daim that the subjects are "basic" disregards many panels. Schutte, 12-18, 149, makes acase for Guglielmo Sirleto (n. 25, above). Her argument is no more decisive than that made by other commentators for the Oratorian Baronio (author of the pioneering Annales ecclesiastici and a future cardinal). This question needs more work.

43 Vault inscription, Gambi, 1:491 no 646: "S. Leo Pont. Max. Attilam Furentem Repremit." Paul the Deacon does not deny Leo a prominent role (see next note).

44 Paul, Historia Romana, 14.12, ed. Droysen, 204-05. Earlier versions of the incident are given in Droysen's notes.

45 Strabo, 8:43, notes that Nicopolis in the Gulf of Corinth celebrated Augustuss victory at Actium. The coupling of place and identified incident might be described as a Strabo touch. See also Gallois, 154-56; Broc, 71, 84 (via Sebastian Munster, Strabo still dominates European geography at the dawn of the nineteenth century), 238.

46 For the mixture of miracles and disasters, see Gregory of Tours, Historiae, book 2, preface, ed. Krusch-Levison, 36; and Goffart, 1988, 172-75. On Orosius, see WallaceHadrill, 145, for an excellent brief assessment; see also Lacroix, 87-98, 111-17; Arnaud-Lindet, l:xx-xxv and passim; Patrides, 16-20; Mommsen, 325-48; and Brown, 295-96.

47 Schulz, 108; Pinelli, 127.

48 Pinelli, 126-27, believes that the comparison of ancient and modern refers to "the 'ancient' [Italy] of Imperial Rome and the 'modern' one of the Gregorian era," and that the vignettes are crucial to this comparison. About comparison in geography, Goffart, 1995, 50 with nn. 4-6.

49 Seven scenes are from the seventeen years of the Second Punic War, and four from the forty-nine between Fornovo and Ceresole. Gambi, 1:17, proposes that the Galleria incorporates a "providential vision of history, confirmed in the eyes of the faithful by the outcome of many, sometimes bloody events." The connection of providence and "bloody events" in the Vatican Gallery is problematic to say the least. Such events come almost only from the Hannibalic War and the recent French campaigns in Italy. Even if providence governs all, it is hard to think of any scenario of church history emphasizing that Hannibal or Francis I was moved by divine guidance.

50 On Alexander of Epirus, see Hammond, 41; Gambi, 1:160, 2:252-53 no. 129. On Clastidium, see Scullard, 536; Cary, 153; Gambi, 2:287. On the defeat of Scipio: ibid., 1:220, 2:286 no. 218 (at Vigevano). On Trebbia: ibid., 1:251, 2:302 no. 252. On Trasimene: ibid., 1:94-95, 2:21 no. 65. On Spoleto: ibid., 1:116, 2:223 no. 91 (poor English translation of the Latin inscription). The single (Roman) colony of Spoleto teaches Hannibal, by its fierce resistance, how great a problem he faces with Rome itself. Orosius has no apparent reference to this incident.

51 On Cannae, see Gambi, 1:343, 2:356 no. 375. On the death of Marcellus, see ibid., 2:248 no. 127: "The choice of this event is a curious one, since it represents a tragic scene rather than celebrating a historical event." The annotator lists many substitutes he prefers. On the incident, see n. 54, below. On Metauro: ibid., 1:308, 2:337 no. 323. Orosius Historia 4.18.9-16, ed. Zangemeister, 255-57, "to Carthaginians as Trasimene and Cannae were to the Romans"; 58,000 slaughtered. On Caesar: Gambi, 2:332 no. 308. See also 2:333-34 no. 313, "the stele inscribed with the fake senatorial decree [about crossing the Rubicon], a Renaissance invention." Orosius, 6.14.5, 15.1-3, ed. Zangemeister, 293-94, takes a dim view of Caesar's starting civil war. On the Triumvirate: Gambi, 1:286, 2:324 no. 295. Orosius, 6.18.8-12, ed. Zangemeister, 408-09, does not note the formation of the Triumvirate, but is clear about its woeful consequences.

52 Augustine, City of God, 3.21, 3.19; Bettenson, 121, 118. Augustine mainly refers to the historian Florus; cf. Jordanes, Romana, 181 (borrowing from Florus) "ecce alterurn bellum . . . adeo cladium atrocitate terribilis, ut si quis conferat damni utriusque populi, similior victo sit populus ille qui vieit" (Mommsen, 23).

53 The inscription (as n. 50, above) emphasizes the great mortality occasioned by a wave of exceptionally cold weather (mentioned, e.g., by Florus).

54 Rome had more important victories over the Insubres than that of Clastidium, especially Telamon in 225 B.C. (Cary, 152-53). Marcellus is a front-rank figure (Scullard, 536). His victory over Hannibal at Nola (Eutropius, Breviarium, 3.12.1, ed. Droysen, 54, 56), the first Roman exploit after Cannae, is disregarded; $o is his very noteworthy capture of Syracuse (Eutropius, 3.14.3, ed. Droysen, 56). He is shown in his initial exploit and in an engagement memorable only for killing him. His singling out for two appearances in the Galleria is amazing; one would have been curious enough. Marcellus in Orosius, 4.13.15 (Insubres), 16.12 (Nola), 17.1 (Syracuse), 18.4 (another victory over Hannibal), 6, 8 (killed), ed. Zangemeister, 243, 250, 255. Was Marcellus added? The vignettes featuring him are among the three whose legends are in Italic script (the third is St. Pol at Pavia, also in the Milan map).

55 Cheney, 23; a "turning point" would be better placed in the Spoleto panel (n. 50, above).

56 See the quotation from Orosius in n. 51, above. On compassion for victims, see Orosius, 5.1.3-11, ed. Zangemeister, 277-79; Lacroix, 112-17.

57 Cf. Cheney, 23, "which led to the civil wars' conclusion and the eventual institution of Empire." This gloss, which deeply affects one's understanding of the last two vignettes, has no justification within the Vatican panels.

58 As a check on my ignorance, I asked a colleague in Roman history (not specializing in early Rome) whether the expedition of Alexander of Epirus rang a bell with him. Its failure to do so reassures me that the incident is little-known.

59 See n. 50, above. Alexander, and some aspects of his misadventures, are mentioned in connection with Tarentum in Strabo, 3:115, 117.

60 Gambi, 1:160 (Battle of Pandosia); Myres, 698-99; Cary, 100. On the Albanian settlements, see Gambi, 2:252-53 no. 129; the accompanying theory that the Alexander vignette is meant to mask a massacre of Waldensians in the 1560s fails to persuade. Alexander's disaster is one of three vignettes lacking an explanatory legend.

61 Orosius, 3.11.1, 14.4, 18.1, 2, ed. Zangemeister, 155-56, 167, 177-78.

62 Lacroix, 161-73; for important qualifications, see Wallace-Hadrill, 145. Orosius, 1.prolog. 14, ed. Zangemeister, 4, "praeteritos dies non solurn aeque ut hos [i.e., praesentia tempora] graves, verum etiam tanto atrocius miseros quanto 1ongius a remedio verae religionis alienos." Wretchedness is perhaps the same in all epochs, but it is at least palliated by the presence of true religion.

63 Gambi, 1:261, "S. Leo Attilam Urbis excidium anhelantem vi sermonis compescuit." The translation in ibid. has Attila "dream" of destroying Rome, rather than (correctly) "panting" to do so. In ibid., 2:306 no. 264, the annotator seeks geographical sources, not historical ones.

64 Gambi, 2:287 no. 220 (see n. 67, below). The Frankish army is shown narrowly encircling r. he Lombards. The battle is located nowhere near its traditional, but wrong, site: see Vanni, 877.

65 Gambi, 1:114-15, 117: "Vinichisius Dux Spoletanus inclytus cum lectissimo exercitu [Leonera.sup.cae] III Pont. Max. ex hostium manibus atque insidiis ereptum Spoletum urbem Sedi[Ap.sup.cae] addictam ne quid pateret(ur) incommodi honorifice et tutissime deducit." Ibid., 2:223 no. 92, corrects the wrong date; "these events actually took place around 795." The wrong date is "700" - perhaps just an error for 800. See also Baronius, 13:336 (A.D. 799). He does not specify that Spoleto belonged to the Holy See, but its submission to Pope Hadrian at an earlier date is noted. See Duchesne, 1:495.

66 On Garigliano, see Gambi, 2:237 no. 106. On San Ruffillo: ibid., 1:286, 2:324-25 no. 297. Cardinal Albornoz seized Bologna in 1360 and was at once besieged by Bernabo Visconti. The battle celebrated here occurred a year later, with heavy loss of life, and broke the siege. On the return from Avignon, see nn. 68-69, below.

67 About San Ruffillo, see the previous note. Gambi, 2:287 no. 220: "Carolus magnus Hadriano Papa ipso cohortante Desiderium Langobardorum regem bello vicit et in servitutem redegit sic partes eas quae Romanae Ecclesiae erant a Langobardor(um) perfidia iniuste vindictas restituit [A.D. 774]." Almagia, 1952, 38: "l'esercito del duca di Spoleto Vitichindo, che, liberato il pontifiche Leone III, restitui Spoleto alia Sede Apostolica." Cf. n. 65, above. Royal donors to the Holy See (including Charlemagne) were pictured in the Vatican's Sala Regia: Rottgen, 92, 94. There is virtually no overlap between them and those of the Galleria.

68 Gambi, 1:201, 2:273-74 no. 194 (after 70 years in the seventh year of Gregory XI, begun in 1370). Gregory XIII commissioned Vasari to do a "return from Avignon" in the Sala Regia. See ibid., 2:31. According to Rottgen, 96-97, the event was envisaged as a liberation from Avignonese imprisonment and served as a symbol of the current reconquest of lands lost to Catholicism (including Poland and parts of Germany and France). These views should be verified.

69 Gambi, 1:291: "Gregorius XI Sedem Pontiffcam divino numine permotus Avenione Romam post annos LXX reducit." On Catherine of Siena, see Oddasso, 1004-05; Foster, 259. The decision-making process bringing about the departure from Avignon is understandably muddy; e.g., Gregory XI made it known that, when elected, he had secretly vowed to bring the papacy back to Rome. Cheney, 24, mentions Saint Catherine as though she were in the vignette; there is no trace of her in the Galleria.

70 The cartouche inscription (clearly influenced by Gregory XlII's origins) offers a capsule history of Bologna as ever faithful to the Holy See: "inde [after 1360-61] constanter usque ad hunc diem in eiusdem [i.e., papal] auctoritate permansit" (Gambi, 2:321 no. 292). The Bolognese broke away sixteen years after Albornoz's "liberation" and were not tranquil subjects. See Supino, 332.

71 Gambi, 2:302-03 no. 253; Lemonnier, 1911(1), 37.

72 Gambi, 1:271. The inscription refers to "moenia per tormentis diruta." Gambi, 2:314 no. 275. Tormenta is translated as "siege engines," but surely means "cannon," the only "siege engine" depicted. Careful humanists, demanding a classical vocabulary, revised the inscriptions. The word tormenta returns in connection with the siege of Pavia in 1528 (n. 75, below). The pope's dramatic entrance through a breach is also attributed to the French general Lautrec in connection with the siege of Pavia in 1527. See Weiss, 389. I do not vouch for the story. On the circumstances, see Picotti, 324; the modern version is that the pope dimbed a ladder into the breach (January, 1511).

73 Gambi, 1:297, 2:331 no. 337. Lemonnier, 1911(1), 92, 96, 97, 104-05; Atkinson, 926-27; Courtine, 1:235-36.

74 Gambi, 1:320-21, 2:344 no. 337. Did the Picentenes get to Rome and do something noteworthy? How long did they stay? The annotator adds no information to what is said in the inscription. I have not found more myself.

75 Gambi, 2:287, no 219: "Papia a comite S Pauli obsessa traductis per flu(me)n tormentis vi maxima ducis arte fuerit [sic] expugnata anno Domini MD XXlII." The annotator corrects the date to 1528, but sheds no other light on this largely forgotten incident. For an adequate account, see Guicciardini, 1921-22, 1940-41, 1965-78, 1987-92, 1995-2002; cf. Baronius, 32:53. For profiles of St. Poi, see Archives biographiques francaises, fiche 929, frames 371, 374-75.

76 On Lautrec's campaign, see Mignet, 1:344-46; Lemonnier, 1911(2), 58; Courtine, 1:237-38 (including the disaster of 1525); and useful remarks in Taylor, 27-28, 151. No reference to St. Pol's campaign occurs in De Marinis, 548, where much is made of Lautrec's sack; the same omission is in Giono, 288. Guicciardini, 1971, after St. Pol's assault, writes, "La citta tutta anda. a sacco, poco utile per i due sacchio precedenti." Two? Perhaps Lautrec's is one and the imperial recovery early in 1528 the second. Ewart, 50, cites a report of the pitiful condition of the Pavians a few years later.

77 On Ceresole (Cerosolani on the Vatican map), see Ewart, 53; Lemonnier, 19112, 88-92, 113-14 with n. I, 116 (comprehensive); Courtine, 1:238; New Cambridge Modern History, 2:353 (pope then aligned with France); and Hauser, 2:155 nos. 1231-34. Gambi, 1:211, 2:282 no. 206: "Possia quindi giudicare non molto benevola la scelte dell'evento storico recollegato alia geografia regionale." Wrongly assuming that praise guided the choice, the annotator seems not to know that many other scenes on the maps could also be deemed not "well-meaning."

78 The episodes named are given high billing in Langer, 393-95; among the Galleria's recent events, the battle of Ravenna alone has a place in this standard reference work. Taylor, 116, adds Novara and Sesia to the significant battles.

79 On Julius as a cardinal at Charles VIII's court, see Picotti, 324.

80 Sorbello, 428; Bridge, 4:74-76: Julius behaved admirably . . . for a soldier.

81 See n. 74, above.

82 See nn. 75 and 76, above.

83 Schutte, 51: elected with Spanish support, Gregory was not a Spanish puppet (also see n. 32, above).

84 I agree with the conclusions, if not all the reasoning, of Schulz, 97, 107-08. Schutte, 43, points out how, in Italian wall maps, very precise earth-bound geographical depictions were blended with the Christian Weltanschauung and its conceptual system.

85 There is a brief introduction to historical atlases in Goffart, 1995, 49-51. A facsimile of the fully developed Parergon (whose thin first edition appeared when the Vatican Galleria was under construction) is included in Ortelius, 1968 (no paging). The eastern Mediterranean for Saint Paul's travels first occurs in a Bible of 1549, see: Smith, 1990, 67, 69 (shown, 71, figure 2d). Orrelius's version (1579), like earlier ones, leaves Paul's course to the spectator's imagination. The apparent first version with a line is listed by Smith, 1991, 99.

Fiorani, 140, maintains that the Galleria's "original function" was "to place Italy at the centre of the Christian world and the Eucharist at the centre of Christian belief." Even assuming these intentions present, the pope's own promenade, the passage of his visitors, is an improbable place to have advocated them.

86 On the Triumvirate vignette, see Gambi, 1:286.

87 Schulz, 111-20; Brincken, 118-86; Woodward, 1987, 286-368.

88 Nebenzahl, 74-75, multi-sheet original by Wolfgang Wissenburg (1538): "In 1557, Giovanni della Gatta reduced and engraved a copy in one sheet for the atlases of Lafreri. The smaller Italian version is better known." Some examples of della Gattas "Exodus" in Rome collections can be found in the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele, R.D. 93. no. 67; R.D. 82, no. 21; the Biblioteca Casanatense, Rari 1131 (gia BB II 43; gia K. II.43), no. 55 (numbering in pencil). Cf. Tooley, 39 no. 434; also the British Library K. 3.50. On the Genevan bible, see Smith, 1991, 27.

89 Jaillot's Egyptian deserts map (ca. 1692) is in Nebenzahl, 136-37. Gottfried Rogg's eighteenth-century copy is in many Seutter adases.

90 Ortelius, 1968, 104; see also British Library, maps C.2.c. 1.

91 Even Jaillot's latecoming "Deserts d'Egypte" (n. 89, above) was text-centered.

92 Historical labels of this kind occur in Wolfgang Lazius's eleven-map atlas of the Habsburg dominions (1561); e.g., the disastrous battle of Sempach is marked "Austriadum clades 1385" (without an illustration) on the map of the upper Rhine. See Oberhummer, 35. Banff, 56: Lazius "fills the maps with references to past history." See also Oberhummer, 29 (with references to the Roman past).

93 Schulz, 112; Woodward, 1987, 290, 337, 339, 342.

94 Access to the Galleria was limited. Those who frequented it had business with the pope, or accompanied someone who did. See Sereno, 159.

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