Who Is Pope Innocent VIII?

In the years following 1485 Pope Innocent VIII had had built and handsomely decorated a villa on the high ground at the back of the old Vatican palace. An enclosed space, bounded by villa and palace to north and south and by the two walls to east and west, was to be divided into a series of courts on different levels, designed originally for the display of sculpture. The great sculptures placed in elaborately painted and decorated niches at the four corners of the court and in the center of each enclosing wall; around and set into these walls, level with the upper part of the niches were thirteen antique masks.

In 1566 there was a tension between the pope's position as head of the Roman Catholic Church and the objects they collected, when the Cardinal Michele Ghislieri was elected pope and took the name of Pius V. This emaciated Dominican friar, sprung from peasant stock, had always lived a life of the greatest austerity-and he made it clear from the moment of his election that he did not intend to change his habits almost the earliest target of his reforming zeal was the sculpture collection of the Belvedere. Within a few weeks of his election it was announced that this was to be dispersed 'because it was not suitable for the successor of St. Peter to keep such idols at home Such feelings were by no
In 1527 Andrea Fulvio found it necessary to deny the old story that Pope Gregory the Great had 'ordered that all the most beautiful statues ... should be thrown into the Tiber so