ABSTRACT
France and Spain had devastated and subjugated Italy and brought her to the brink of despair. When Charles VIII began his Italian campaign, the memory of the invasions of the German emperors in the Middle Ages had already completely faded. The Italians were always fighting each other, but they no longer knew what it meant to be controlled by a foreign power. They were dazed by the sudden invasion and were never able really to recover from the shock. The French first occupied Naples, then Milan and finally Florence. They were soon driven out of Southern Italy again by the Spaniards, but for whole decades Lombardy remained the scene of conflict between the two great rival powers. The French maintained themselves here until 1525, when Francis I was beaten in the Battle of Pavia and deported to Spain. Charles V now had Italy completely in his hands, and was no longer willing to submit to the intrigues of the Pope. In 1527 twelve thousand mercenaries moved against Rome to punish Clement VII. They joined forces with the Imperial army under the Constable of Bourbon, invaded the Eternal City and eight days later left it in ruins. They plundered the churches and monasteries, killed the priests and monks, raped and illtreated the nuns, turned S.Peter’s into a stable and the Vatican into a barracks. The very foundations of Renaissance culture seemed to be destroyed; the Pope was powerless, the prelates and bankers no longer felt safe in Rome. The members of the school of Raphael, who had dominated the artistic life of Rome, scattered and the city lost its artistic importance in the immediately following period.149 In 1530 Florence also became the prey of the Spanish-German army. In agreement with the Pope, Charles V installed Alessandro Medici as a hereditary prince and thereby did away with the last remains of the Republic. The revolutionary disturbances which had broken out in Florence after the sack of Rome and which led to the expulsion of the Medici expedited the Pope’s decision to come to an agreement with the Emperor. The head of the Pontifical State now becomes the ally of Spain: a Spanish viceroy resides in Naples and a Spanish governor in Milan; in Florence the Spaniards rule through the Medici, in Ferrara through the Este, in Mantua through the Gonzaga. The Spanish way of life and moral code, Spanish etiquette and Spanish elegance reign supreme in both the artistic centres of Italy, Rome and Florence. On the other hand, the intellectual dominion of the conquerors, whose culture is backward in comparison with the Italian, does not penetrate very deep and the connection of art with the native tradition survives. For even where Italian culture seems to succumb to the Hispanic influence it merely follows an evolutionary trend resulting from the pre-suppositions of the Cinquecento, which strives to achieve the formalism of court art quite apart from Spanish influence.150
