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Sixtus IV — Description

Pope Sixtus IV was head of the Catholic Church from 1471 to 1484, but he didn't start out that way. Shocking, I know, I too was under the impression that the xenomorph queen under the Vatican just kinda spawns a new Pope as soon as one of us defeats the old one in mortal combat. No, Sixtus began his life in the town of Celle Ligure as Francesco della Rovere on July 21, 1414, the son of prominent (though not necessarily well off) Genoese merchants Leonardo della Rovere and Luchina Monleoni. Aside from that, the historical record just seems… completely disinterested in the first fifty years of his life, or at least that's the impression I've gotten reading online biographies. They typically begin the tale all the way in 1464, when Francesco was selected to be the minister general of the Franciscan Order he'd joined in his youth. By all accounts, he was an expert theologian and communicator, hosting several lectures at the University of Pavia. It's probably that charisma that carried him all the way to his appointment as cardinal by Pope Paul II in 1467, and won him the election to the papacy following Paul’s death in 1471. See? Eventually being a nobody edutainer will pay off big time. Totally. Just… gotta double my current lifespan.
Congratulations Francesco, you're now Pope Sixtus IV, hurray! Except… tch… no one really gives a shit. He tried to get everyone pumped by calling for a new crusade against the Ottomans, but the only people he managed to muster were some Venetians he could chuck at Smyrna. Clearly, the matter of Constantinople getting the works was nobody's business but the Turks, and no one was really committed to sacking the Roman Empire again. The capital was still on fire from the last time. It was kind of a bummer for Sixtus, because he was banking on retaking Istanbul to persuade the Russian Church to snuggle back into the Catholic fold. Then there was the French. They still thought they were better than everyone else, and clearly that problem never got resolved. Specifically, King Louis XI was carrying on the pissing match with the Pope that Charlemagne had gotten rolling, adamant that all Papal Bulls had to go through him before they had any effect within French borders. Sixtus could do little more about this than be very very angry with King Louis, and write him a letter telling him how angry he was.
So damn, this sucks. Sixtus was starting his papacy as a total loser. He had some cool administrative accomplishments to his name, sure, most famously the erection of the Sistine Chapel in 1473 (named for Sixtus, though Michaelangelo's famous paintings wouldn't show up until 1508), and the establishment of the Vatican Library (as we know it today at least) in 1475, but that's nerd shit. There was only one way to get people to start taking the papacy seriously: he needed some fuckin clout! He needed silver in palms and friends with power, and what better way to get that ball rolling than some good old fashioned nepotism? Of the thirty-four cardinals he'd created during his reign, six of them were his own nephews, and many of them had little interest in things the big JC would approve of. The most Neronic of these rapidly-advancing young princes was Girolamo Riario, made lord of Imola upon his marriage to Caterina Sforza in 1473. Caterina Sforza was the then-ten-year-old daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan. He got Julius-Caesared by a band of conspirators in 1476. Riario looked at that, then at that pesky Medici family that was hogging all the power and money that could be his, and then a little light bulb went off in his head. On April 26, 1478, knives bought with Riario's money were drawn in Florence, leaving Lorenzo de’ Medici's brother Giuliano dead in a puddle of blood. Sixtus had been approached prior to the conspiracy asking for papal consent, and while he insisted his office couldn't condone outright murder… he also told them he wouldn't be that upset if someone just so happened to remove his biggest political rival from the board, wink wink nudge nudge.
This thinly veiled grant of permission obviously pissed Lorenzo right the fuck off. He didn't get to be the most powerful man in Italy by being some pushover afraid of a little assassination attempt, so he hung the apprehended murderers from the bell tower like hunting trophies, which in turn gave Sixtus an excuse to go omg that's so ungodly of you Lorenzo well shucks I guess I have no choice but to issue an interdict and declare war on you now! Not only did Sixtus sick Naples on Florence, but for some strange reason he also sicked Venice on Ferrara. I guess he was just in the mood. This turned out to be a disastrous first attempt at diplomatic chess, however, because literally no one else in Italy approved of Ferrara getting dicked over like this. Lorenzo established peace with Naples behind Sixtus's back in 1480, both teaming up with Milan just so they could put the kibosh on the Venetian advance in 1482. Sixtus, surrounded on all sides, shuffled his feet, whined something about totally not meaning it guys gosh, and issued an interdict against Venice in 1483. This appears to be the same attitude he took when it turned out the Spanish Inquisition (which Sixtus had signed into existence back in 1478) was like… killing people and stuff! So in 1482 he had to pen a letter to the Spanish monarchs saying guuuuyyyyyys you're taking this persecution of religious minorities thing way too far! Now everyone is mad at me!
Evidently, Sixtus turned out to be such a fucking embarrassment in these last few years that God himself decided to expedite him upstairs on August 12, 1484. Man, I'd pay good money to be in that room to watch the cosmic reprimanding he must've gotten before being sent to bed without supper. In his place, the xenomorph queen shat out Pope Innocent VIII, whose incompetence allowed one Rodrigo Borgia to rise to power, take full advantage of the seeds of secular despotism which Sixtus had planted in the Papal States. The decadence Sixtus had accumulated is at least partially what eventually led to the Protestant Reformation and the ludicrously destructive conflicts that raged with it. In that way, Sixtus is kinda responsible for the very Sack of Rome which destroyed his original tomb in 1527. Though, the big fuck off bronze funerary monument dedicated to him by Antonio del Pollaiuolo still survives, so… the poetry there is a little conflicted. Maybe that in itself is kinda poetic when you think about it.
Design notes, there was a pretty limited selection of historical depictions of Sixtus that I was able to dig up. There’s the aforementioned bronze funerary monument, which is surprisingly difficult to find just a clear top-down photograph of, and a 1474-ish portrait by artists Justus van Gent and Pedro Berruguete. Berruguete at some point seems to have produced a slight variant on this same portrait, which I referenced more for the design of the mantle just cause I thought it looked better. I also came across a 1545 painting by Titian and a 1477 depiction by Melozzo of Forlì of Sixtus appointing Bartolomeo Platina as librarian of the Vatican Library, but neither of these really lent themselves to detailed inspiration. One thing I have noticed between this guy and Rodrigo Borgia is that all these Popes… kinda all look the same, like to the point that it's really hard to verify if a portrait someone is hosting in an article about a specific Pope is in fact originally meant to be that Pope unless the artwork literally has an inscription with their name and number under it. This is a prospect I'm not looking forward to contending with as I inevitably stumble across more Popes to make fun of.