1527

The year 1527 changed the destiny of the Italian peninsula, which, in the European context, began a gradual process of political and military marginalization, of which the Sack of Rome was a clear and terrible representation. Through a cross-analysis of historical, artistic, architectural, literary and historiographical phenomena, this book aims to shed light on the events that, during this annus horribilis for Rome and the Papacy, initiated a process of political, religious, social and artistic transformation. In addition to re-reading well-known documents, the book features previously unpublished sources and eyewitness accounts, suggesting new interpretations of the Sack, often instrumentalized for political and propaganda purposes. The authors’ research into key themes such as economic conditions, the demographic situation and social life shows that the invasion of imperial troops did not cause Rome’s crisis, but drastically accelerated it, helping to aggravate degenerative processes already underway before the Sack. In fact, the decline of the Urbs had already begun with the death of Leo X in 1521, when his successors on the papal throne were unable to retain or attract the greatest artists of the day to the Eternal City. A comparison between the works of art and architecture just before the Sack and those of the early 1530s, when the activity of artists and architects slowly began to flourish again, reveals stylistic and religious mutations. This volume also gives pride of place to Renaissance communication tools, adopted to visually express and disseminate events, but also to influence public opinion. The brush and the chisel remained almost totally silent, but numerous written sources and a few figurative testimonies, such as engravings and ceramics, evocatively expressed the different perceptions of the Sac felt by artists and their patrons.