Note 1 — PASQUINO.1

The statue called by this name was not originally found in its present situation. The shop of the tailor Pasquino was in the Via in Parione, a turning out of the Via del Governo Vecchio, some little distance off, nor was it discovered at all till after Pasquino’s death. At his time it was buried unperceived in the pavement of the street, and the inequalities of its outline afforded stepping-stones by means of which passengers picked their way through the puddles! Cancellieri (Mercato, appendix, N. iii.)] quotes a passage from a certain Tibaldeo di Ferrara, quoted in a book, his dissertation concerning the author of which is too long to quote. This Tibaldeo, however, says, ‘as the street was being repaired, and I had the shop that was Pasquino’s made level, the trunk of a statue, probably of a gladiator, was found, and the people immediately gave it his name.’ He, however, quotes from other writers mention of other sites for its discovery mostly somewhat nearer to the present situation. The site of the present Palazzo Braschi was then occupied by the so-called Torre Orsini, a building of a very different ground-plan. Cancellieri quotes from more than one MS. diary that at the time the Marquis de Créquy came to Rome as ambassador of Louis XIII. in 1633, the Palazzo de’ Orsini, where he was lodged, was designated as ‘sopra Pasquino.’ And again from another MS. diary, that in 1728, when the palace was bought by the Duca di Bracciano-Odoscalchi, the same designation remained in use. In the Diary of Cracas, under date March 19, 1791, is an entry detailing the care with which the Pasquino statue was removed to a pedestal prepared for it in front of Palazzo Pamfili during the completion of the contiguous portion of the Palazzo Braschi, and its restoration is duly entered on the 14th March of the same year.2

It was Adrian VI. (not Alexander VI. as Murray has it), who proposed to throw it into the Tiber. Adrian VI. was a victim of pasquinades for two reasons,—the first, because born at Utrecht and tutor of Charles V., and afterwards viceroy in Spain, during all Charles’ absence in Germany Rome feared at his election that he would set up the Papal See in Spain; and it is not altogether impossible that the popular satires may have had some influence in deciding him on the contrary to repair immediately to Rome,—the second, because he was an energetic and unsparing reformer; and those who were touched by his measures were just those who could afford to pay the hire of the tongues of popular wags.