Roman Renaissance

The Renaissance in Rome occupied a period from the mid-15th to the mid-16th centuries, a period which spawned such masters as Michelangelo and Raphael, who left an indelible mark on Western figurative art. The city had been a magnet for artists wishing to study its classical ruins since the early 1400s. A revived interest in the Classics brought about the first archaeological study of Roman remains by the architect Brunelleschi and sculptor Donatello. This inspired a corresponding classicism in painting and sculpture, which manifested itself in the paintings of Masaccio and Uccello. Pisanello and his assistants also frequently took inspiration from ancient remains, but their approach was essentially cataloguing, acquiring a repertoire of models to be exploited later. In the year 1420, Pope Martin V moved the papal seat back to Rome, following its long “Babylonian Captivity”, and after the Great Schism, when several “popes” simultaneously claimed the office. He at once set to work, establishing order and restoring the dilapidated churches, palaces, bridges, and other public structures. For this reconstruction he engaged some famous masters of the Tuscan school, and thus laid the foundation for the Roman Renaissance.

The fourteenth century in Rome, with the absence of the popes during the Avignon Papacy, was a century of neglect and misery. Rome dropped to its lowest level of population, and those that remained were starving and wretched. Before the return of the papacy, repeatedly postponed because of the bad conditions of the city and the lack of control and security, it was first necessary to strengthen the political and doctrinal aspects of the pontiff. When, in 1377, Gregory XI did return to Rome, he found his power more formal than real. It was a city in anarchy because of the struggles between the nobility and the popular faction. There followed four decades of instability, characterized locally by power struggles between the commune and the papacy, and internationally by the great Western Schism. It was finally Martin V of the Colonna family who managed to bring order to the city, laying the foundations of its rebirth.

Martin V was born at Genazzano in the Campagna di Roma, in 1368. He studied at the University of Perugia, became prothonotary Apostolic under Urban VI, and papal auditor and nuncio at various Italian courts under Boniface IX. On 12 June 1402 he was made Cardinal Deacon of San Giorgio in Velabro. At the Council of Constance he was unanimously elected pope on 11 November 1417, and took the name Martin V in honor of the saint of Tours whose feast fell on the day of his election. King Sigismund of Germany tried to induce Martin V to stay in Germany while France begged him to come to Avignon, but, rejecting all offers, he set out for Rome on 16 May 1418. After many detours, primarily to cement relations with the Queen of Naples, Bracco di Montone, and others, he arrived on 28 September 1420.

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