The Borgia Black Legend: Clothing the Prince of Italy

[John Collier. A Glass of Wine with Caesar Borgia (1893), Ipswich Museum, England]

This particular portrait is not contemporaneous with Cesare Borgia’s lifetime. Yet it is an interesting depiction of the family. Cesare is dressed in a richly-made white doublet with slashed sleeves. While these were more prevalent on German landescknechts (mercenaries) they aid in Cesare’s menacing stance. A light-colored shirt pokes through, contrasting the bearded figure with a flagon of wind in hand. Flamboyant, menacing, and rich could all describe Cesare Borgia (1475-1507), the first case study of this period.

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The History of the Prince -

Cesare was anointed archbishop of Valencia when most boys were simple squires. He was appointed as cardinal by his eighteenth birthday. Duke of Valentinois, and conqueror of the Romagna before all of his hopes and dreams were shattered by his father’s death. Notoriously violent, a dangerous cutthroat, and an incestuous abomination. In the words of Paolo Giovio, an Italian physician and historian, Cesare was the devil himself.

“They say that Cesare Borgia, comparable to the tyrants of antiquity for his bloodthirsty character and monstrous cruelty, was born from infected blood and from common seed. Indeed, his face was dark red in [color], covered with purulent scales, his fiery eyes deep-set, glittering with a terrible snake-like gaze.”[1]

Of course, this is not entirely accurate. First, Giovio was a young man when the Borgia pope was in power, and his words are made many years after the Borgias are long dead. Secondly, Giovio is presenting rumors as facts as many did in this period. The Borgia Black Legend darkened Cesare’s name. Largely spread by enemies of the Borgias, the legend is anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish, spiraling along for centuries, accumulating more ilk, myth, and mystery. There is no doubt that Cesare had to have been tenacious, ruthless, and fearless in order to swiftly conquer the Romagna. But incest, mass murder, and fratricide seem too juicy to be true. Machiavelli’s The Prince (pub. 1532) revived many of the legends around Cesare.[2] Modern media casts Cesare in a different light as a victim of his father’s ambitions, and of course, his own.[3]

[Bartolomeo Veneto. Portrait of Cesare Borgia (c. 1500), Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Rome]

Take a look at this portrait of Cesare around the year his conquest of the Romagna began. He wears a dark brocade coat over a cloth-of-gold doublet, both expensive dyes and fabrics. A white silk shirt peaks above the collar of the doublet, the ends of which are embroidered with cloth-of-gold as well. A cap affixes itself to his head. The image is of a rich, well-dressed, statesmen. He is no longer a cleric. The gold rings, fist clutching a missive, and bearded face are that of a politician, a duke, and a prince.

A principality is all Cesare desired. In 1497, he traded his cardinalate for the duchy of Valentinois in France. With French forces at his command, Cesare stormed down the peninsula to swallow Imola and Forlì in 1499. In 1500, he is made commander of the papal army, and with his considerable force, he smashed against Rimini, Pesaro, and Faenza over the course of a year. In 1502, he snatched Urbino, Camerino, and Senigallia with the cunning of a blackguard. As Machiavelli would write at this time, Cesare seemed imbued with “perpetual good fortune.”[4]

Until, like Icarus, he plunged to his demise. The “frailty of human plans and the myriad ways they were subject to changes in fortune” cut short Cesare’s ambitions.[5] His virtù ended when he and his father both fell ill in 1503, the former dying and creating a power vacuum. Machiavelli reported that Cesare was “little by little sliding into his tomb” as supporters deserted him, cities killed the Borgia bull, and the Vatican moved against him.[6] It became apparent that the virtuous prince, proved incapable of escaping “‘the original sin of dependence on his father and on the French.’”[7] All of pope’s horses and all of the pope’s men could not put Cesare back together again.

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Dressing the Prince -

Two portraits, one from the nineteenth century and another from the sixteenth, have revealed a well-dressed man with a groomed beard and commanding presence. Cesare understood that image meant everything as he conquered the Romagna. Dr. Mizumoto-Gitter of the University of Kentucky provides us with insight into the wardrobe of Borgia men. In letters between Alexander VI and his son, Juan, historians catch a glimpse of this expressive dress.[8] In route to Spain, Juan is an ambassador of the Borgias and the papacy. He needs to impress the monarchy for good relations. His father requests that he wear a crimson silk tunic; a richly brocaded robe, lined with crimson damask; a ruby necklace; and a cap in crimson chamois with emerald jewels. The next day he was to wear more jewels with the same outfit, pairing diamonds and rubies with emeralds and pearls.[9] It was an ostentatious display, red signifying the family’s colors, papal supremacy, and wealth.

Mizumoto-Gitter also notes in his article that Juan’s wardrobe was an adult’s wardrobe. This was not the time nor the place “to cut a dashing, sexual figure, or to run wild with friends.”[10] Juan is also told to wear another crimson cap popular among young men in Italy during the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. And for his sea voyage, he should wear white gloves.

It is safe to assume that Cesare would have worn similar attire as Juan for his investiture as duke of Valentinois and his appearance at the French court.

[Altobello Melone. Portrait of a Gentleman (c. 1513), Accademia Carrara, Bergamo]

Take a look at this portrait of an Italian gentlemen, long believed to be Cesare Borgia during his conquest. He, like Juan, has white gloves trimmed in gold thread. His hands clutch a book. He wears a turquoise tunic trimmed in cloth-of-gold; his silk shirt embroidered with gold at the neckline. A cap matching his tunic crowns his bearded head. It is a rich outfit, like the slashed white doublet and the dark, damask tunic in the previous portraits.

These are merely portraits though. While one can assume that Cesare’s charismatic personality would have bled into his attire, historians have little clothing to analyze beyond contemporary fashion and portraits. The Borgia Black Legend has covered the entire family in myth and rumor. Cesare wore a black mask to hide his syphilitic scars.[11] Cesare slaughtered the innocents, raped Caterina Sforza, and committed incest with his sister.

Did he?

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The Prince in the Media -

[Promotional Photo of Francois Arnoud as Cesare Borgia (Showtime, 2011)]

Neil Jordan cracked open Cesare Borgia in his Showtime series The Borgias (2011–13). He explored a complex character plagued by love for his sister, duty to his father, and his own ambitions. Played by Francois Arnoud, Cesare struts a treacherous line between legend and history. As seen in the promotional image of Arnoud’s character, tight leather trousers and an air of sex appeal surrounds him. A gold chain of office sits on an undershirt commonly worn under a doublet. He is half-dressed, giving more weight to sex appeal than historiography. In fact, Cesare in the show is emotional, vulnerable, sexually advanced for his age, and rather fantastic.[12]

The show provides a better look at Cesare’s attire. In his formative years, and in the first season, audiences see Cesare the cleric. He wears rich purple as an archbishop, the fabrics billowing behind him like the sea.[13] When his father invests him as a cardinal, purple becomes bright red.[14] The silks are patterned, dramatically long, flaring from behind him like a villain’s cape. Though he rarely behaves like a cleric; in the series premiere, a courtesan comments she had no idea he was a Churchman as Cesare dons his cassock.

[Top Left: Cesare in a slashed, royal blue doublet (Showtime, 2011); Top Center: Cesare the cardinal (Showtime, 2012); Top Right: Cesare in a black robe (Showtime, 2011); Middle Left: Cesare the archbishop (Showtime, 2011); Middle Right: war-weary Cesare in a black doublet (Showtime, 2013); Bottom: Cesare in a doublet of Borgia red and black as he speaks with his assassin, Micheletto (Showtime, 2012)]

When outside of the Church, he wears brighter colors in patterned fabrics, many with slashed details and ornamentation. He appears more comfortable in lay clothes rather than his ecclesiastical trappings. He feels free, unencumbered by the rules of the Church. Here he is a conqueror, a warrior, and a prince of Italy. The audience sees him unravel, turned into a bloody fiend and someone to be feared. Black features largely in his wardrobe.[15] Look at this portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere by Titian. Though some thirty years after Cesare’s death, the duke’s ink black armor seems appropriate for Cesare as well. The gold accents and padded vambraces, the ornamental helm, and the jousting poles all point to a dark but regal character.

[Titian. Retrato de Francesco Maria della Rovere, por Tiziano (1536-1538), The Uffizi, Florence]

Once he becomes a duke, black military cuts replace Cesare’s ecclesiastical costumes. He dons black and deep Borgia red, either in tight-fitted doublets, studded brigandines, or gold-accented armor.[16] Once again, Cesare wears power and wealth, dressing as a scheming cleric, a roughish soldier, and a conquering prince.

While Arnoud’s Cesare Borgia wears plot lines, emotions, and Borgia symbolism on his sleeves, his costuming is more accurate than other adaptations of Renaissance figures. Although, leather trousers were hardly in fashion at the time. However, the fashion in Showtime’s The Borgias is curiously vintage.

[From Left: Cesare and Lucrezia with the Apple of Eden (Ubisoft, 2010); Cesare Borgia in the game (Ubisoft, 2010)]

Ubisoft devoted their interpretation of Cesare to the Black Legend alone. Cesare becomes the image of evil, the foil character to Ezio Auditore, the great assassin clothed in white. He uses violence to achieve his ambitions of conquering the Romagna.[17] In fact, the Assassin’s Creed franchise, specifically Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (2010), depicts him as a power-hungry sociopath hell-bent on destruction.[18] He has the maniacal expression of a villain, complete with his beard and oily hair. He wears armor with immense ornamentation, often of ecclesiastical iconography. It is more befitting to a bust of a Roman Caesar than as a functional article of clothing. Players see a Romanesque villain fit for the imperial days of Rome. The effect, like with Cesare in the Showtime series, vilifies him further. Borgia red accents his attire. He murders without care, even committing patricide. All is well though; gameplayers as Ezio kill Cesare in battle, claiming victory.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and its villain, Cesare Borgia, capitalizes on the Borgia Black Legend. While Showtime’s series attempts to remedy the rumors, casting Cesare in a sympathetic light, Ubisoft crafted the villain. His fashion is vogue; the whole storyline is vogue, honestly. And while audiences love the sexy, tortured cardinal turned dashing duke, they also love the salacious villain from legend and rumor.

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Notes:

[1] Paolo Giovio never met Cesare Borgia. In fact, his quote is from Elogia virorum illustrium of 1546, written some forty years after Cesare’s death in 1507. Lucinda Byatt, “Prince, villain, Fortune’s fool,” in The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation, ed. Jennifer Mara DeSilva (Routledge: New York, 2020), 203-4. [2] Byatt, “Prince, villain, Fortune’s fool,” 202. [3] Jennifer Mara DeSilva, “What would Rome be without a good plot?” in The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation, ed. Jennifer Mara DeSilva (Routledge: New York, 2020), p. 6.

[4] Byatt, “Prince, villain, Fortune’s fool,” 210.

[5] Byatt, 217. [6] Machiavelli, Legaziano from Byatt, 219. [7] Majemy, “Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia” from Byatt, 220.

[8] The letters date from December 1493, when Juan traveled to Spain to be invested as the duke of Gandía after his half-brother, Pedro Luis (ca. 1458 – 1488) died. Alexander Mizumoto-Gitter, “From Rome to Gandía: Family Networks in the Early Modern Mediterranean World," Royal Studies Journal (2020): forthcoming [9] Sanchis y Sivera, “Detailed Instructions Sent to Joan by Alexander VI,” from Mizumoto-Gitter.

[10] Juan was sixteen when invested as duke. Previous reports had informed the pope that Juan frequented brothels, gambled, and dueled in the streets. Alexander nipped his son’s behavior in the bud. Mizumoto-Gitter.

[11] The rumor of the black mask comes from an account of Cesare’s death. Bustillo Kastrexana, Joxerra. Guía de la conquista de Navarra en 12 escenarios. Donostia: Txertoa, 2012, p. 11.

[12] DeSilva, “What would Rome be without a good plot?”, 8.

[13] The Borgias. “The Poisoned Chalice.” Directed by Neil Jordan. Written by Neil Jordan. Showtime, April 3, 2011. [14] The Borgias. “The Beautiful Deception.” Directed by Jon Amiel. Written by Neil Jordan. Showtime, April 22, 2012.

[15] The Borgias. “The Assassin.” Directed by Neil Jordan. Written by Neil Jordan. Showtime, April 3, 2011.

[16] The Borgias. “The Prince.” Directed by Neil Jordan. Written by Neil Jordan. Showtime, June 16, 2013.

[17] DeSilva, “What would Rome be without a good plot?”, 9. [18] Amanda Madden, “Requiescat in pace,” in The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation, ed. Jennifer Mara DeSilva (Routledge: New York, 2020), 279.