The Last Days of Beauty

On 6 May 1527, Carles V’s soldiers stormed the walls of the city of Rome, enacting scenes of carnage unlike any other in the history of the city. For three whole days, German Landsknechte plundered Rome, massacring the local population, and laying waste to the city. Shortly thereafter, the Pope was arrested, the water supply was destroyed, and the plague broke out. After nine months of occupation, the population of the city had halved. Rome was no longer the centre of the world. This event signalled the end of the High Renaissance; many artists left the city, the bright skies of the Renaissance grew heavy, and a dark age began, the age of Mannerism and the Ottoman wars.

This book takes the destruction of Rome five hundred years ago as a framework for telling the story of the Renaissance from the perspective of the final moment of its heady golden age and its sudden end. It offers a reconstruction of the moment in which the centre of the Western world was surprisingly destroyed – and a compellingly recounted introduction to the world of the Renaissance. Niklas Maak recounts these dramatic days by way of brief spotlights on some of the key protagonists. How does the painter Parmigianino manage to win the mercenaries over to his side – and where was he when the assault on Rome began? Who was Margerita Luti, the mysterious lover of the painter Raphael, who so often served as his model? How did a poor German Landsknecht make it into the papal palace? Why did Sebastiano del Piombo warn Michelangelo? Did the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini really take up arms to defend the Pope? Why did the humanist and author Pietro Aretino scorn the Pope after the Sack? And how was it possible for the Sack of Rome to occur in the first place? An event that nobody expected, and which in many respects is reminiscent of the escalation of current religious, ideological, and military crises. Maak illustrates how much history is made up of unconnected moments, and how heavily it depends on the most absurd coincidences.