The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

THE MONUMENTS OF ANTIQUITY. II3
the Villa Giulia.i Several pieces from the same place were
also sent to Florence, as a gift to Francesco de' Medici, the
eldest son of Cosimo. The agent of the Medici in Rome
obtained from the Pope in March, 1560, the gift of no fewer
than 26 statutes taken from the villa of Pius IV. 2
This generosity of the Pope, which had stripped tlie villas
of Julius III. and Pius IV,, aroused the fear in Rome that Pius
V. intended to make a clean sweep of all pagan remains. In
the spring of 1569 the Imperial agent, Cusano, announced to
his master that the Pope intended not only to destroy the
theatre of the Belvedere, but also to lay hands on the Colosseum
and the triumphal arches, in order to remove the temptation
from visitors to Rome to pay more attention to pagan than to
Christian things. The fear was expressed, as had been the
case in the time of Adrian VI., that, in order to obtain the
material for the restoration of the churches, Pius would make
an onslaught on the grandest monuments of Roman antiquity
and reduce the statues to lirae,^ though it was soon realized
that these fears were exaggerated. The changes in the theatre
of the Belvedere were limited to the removal of the tiers of
seats, so that there might be no more public performances
1 See the reports of Arco in Michaelis, Statuenhof, 63 seq., to
complete which use may also be made of the *report of INIonti
from Rome, July 28, 1569, which mentions the statues of Hercules
and Aphrodite (8-9 palms in height) presented to the Emperor,
" et sono stimate assai per la loro bellezza et antichita." State
Archives, Vienna. Ibid, a *report of Arco, which escaped the
notice of Michaelis, of March 19, 1569
: Cardinal Colonna has
presented to the Emperor a bust of Socrates and one of Antoninus,
Famese a statue of Mercury. In Varia, fasc. 4 of the State
Archives, Vienna, there is also a *letter from Fra Guglielmo della
Porta to Maximihan II., of March 23, 1569 : he sends the Emperor
?. sketch for a crucifix.
2 See Michaelis, Statuenhof, 43 seq., 65 seq.; cf. Archdol.
Zeitung, XXXIV., 152.
' See in App. n. 58 the *letter of Cusano of March 26, 1569,
State Archives, Vienna, and the *Avviso di Roma of April 2, 1569,
Urb. 104 1, p. 50, Vatican Library (App. n. 59).
VOL. XVII. 8