In the letter to Leone X about the conservation of the ruins of antiquity, written jointly by Castiglione and Raffaello, what stands out is the lament over the devastation perpetrated by the barbarians on the monuments of ancient Rome: “Onde quelle famose opere che oggidì più chemai sarebbono floride e belle, furono dalla scellerata rabbia e crudele impetode’ malvagi uomini, anzi fiere, arse e distrutte: sebbene non tanto che non virestasse quasi la macchina del tutto, ma senza ornamenti e, per dir così,l’ossa del corpo senza carne” (Where those famous works that today would be more beautiful and florid than ever, were, by the evil rage and cruel impetus of bad men, in stead, wounded, burnt and destroyed: though not to the point where nothing is left at all, but without ornaments, as if, so to speak, they were bones without flesh) (F.P. Di Teodoro, Raffaello, Baldassar Castiglione e la Lettera a Leone X, Bologna 1994, 146). This was a typical theme in humanist culture that had appeared already in the writings of Flavio Biondo and Poggio Bracciolini. But such a level of destruction, perpetrated by “Gotti, Vandali, e d’altri tali perfidi nemici” (Goths and other treacherous enemies), in the eyes of Castiglione took on symbolic significance: it was the emblem of the dramatic and archetypal clash, destined to repeat itself throughout history, between two worlds and two civilisations, one, the Roman one, having reached the pinnacle of its splendour, the other, that of the invaders, rude and primitive, savage and fierce.
The victory of the latter, as can be seen in the letter to Leone X, brought with it not only the destruction of the works and monuments of the past, but also a rapid decadence of the arts, such that an entire tradition was, in a short time, reduced to ashes. The burning of Rome by the barbarians was at one and the same time real and metaphorical, as it transformed into ashes both the monuments and the aesthetic spirit that had inspired them: “poiché Romada’ barbari in tutto fu ruinata e arsa, parve che quello incendio e miseraruina ardesse e ruinasse, insieme con gli edifici, ancor l’arte dello edificare”(as Rome by the barbarians was all ruined and burnt, it seemed that that destruction and fire also burnt and destroyed, along with the buildings, the very art of building itself) (ed. cit., p. 149). The effect of this devastation was the descent into barbaric times of an entire nation, losing its ingeniousness and every memory of ancient. In the eyes of Castiglione the issue was burningly actual in Italy, due to the actions of the Spanish and French armies.
The barbarian devastations
