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CHAPTER XXIIL MELOZZO OF FORLI AND MARCO PALMEZZANO. The name of Sixtus the fourth has frequently been no ticed in these pages. During a long pontificate of thirteen years, he promoted the interests of artists in Italy with a . zeal scarcely surpassed by later popes. He had not been long raised to the chair of S. Peter before he undertook a series of great architectural and pictorial enterprises. He caused the Sixtine chapel to be erected in 1473, the Vatican library to be restored in 1475, and the churches of S.S. Apostoli, S. Pietro in Vinculis and S. Sisto at Rome to assume a new shape. His relatives, the Della Roveres and Riarios shared his partiality for architectural improve ments; and the whole family favoured with its regard, or supported by wages, a crowd of architects and painters from every province of Italy. We have seen with what perseverance Sixtus the fourth called in succession, to Rome, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Perugino and Signorelli. His chief architect, Baccio Pontelli, 1 bred under Francesco Giovanni Francione at Florence, distin guished himself so remarkably that Federigo of Monte- feltro who had perhaps made his acquaintance at the wedding of his daughter to Giovanni della Rovere in 1472, was induced to engage him for the completion of his pa laces at Urbino and Gubbio. But Sixtus was not content to think that Roman pontiffs should always be obliged to ransack the cities of the Peninsula for artists, and he de- 1 See Vas. Vol. IV. p.p. 135. and following, and Gaye Carteggio. Vol. I. p.p. 274. and following.
