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| Roman Empire Figure of Emperor as Philosopher (probably Marcus Aurelius) AD 180-200 bronze Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola) Garzone grinding Pigments ca. 1535 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Aubrey Beardsley Mermaid (design for Malory's Morte d'Arthur) ca. 1893 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Heinrich Friedrich Füger Seven Men in Antique Dress 1798 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| John Singer Sargent Figure Studies for The Winds ca. 1922-25 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| John Singer Sargent Figure Study for Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary ca. 1910 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| John Singer Sargent Figure Study for Hell ca. 1905 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| John Singer Sargent Figure Study for The Unveiling of Truth ca. 1922-25 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Académie ca. 1750 drawing National Gallery of Norway, Oslo |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Seated Draped Figure 17th century drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Wilhelm Lehmbruck Fallen Man 1915 cast stone Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart |
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| Giulio Cesare Procaccini Sheet of Studies ca. 1615 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Henry Raeburn Colonel Alastair Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry 1812 oil on canvas Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
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| Salvator Rosa Seated Youth reading under a Tree ca. 1670 drawing Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Anonymous German Artist St Sebastian ca. 1600-1620 painted and gilded wood Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Benjamin West King David rising after the Death of his Child 1775 drawing Princeton University Art Museum |
"Were it not for what we believe to be a conscious or unconscious repression of the sack and its perpetrator, Charles de Bourbon, one would be hard put to understand why not a single contemporary engraving or painting of the event has come to light. It would have been easy, for example, to make use of the battle of allegorical animals that Maurice Scève later described in a lovely though obscure dizain:
Le cerf volant aux abois de l'Autruche
Hors de son gite éperdu s'envola;
Sur le plus haut de l'Europe il se juche,
Cuidant trouver sûreté et repos là,
Cuidant trouver sûreté et repos là,
Lieu sacré et saint, lequel il viola
Par main à tous profanement notoire . . .
The flying buck [Charles de Bourbon] summoned by the Ostrich [Charles V]
Hastened from his lost lair [Bourbon's confiscated land in France];
He came to roost on the highest point of Europe [Rome]
In that sacred and holy place which he violated
By means of a hand notoriously profane [the Lansquenets] . . .
"A view of Rome during the five or ten years following the sack would be invaluable for locating the damage . . . and in particular the fires. But instead, it is as though there had been a refusal in Italy to portray the event, a kind of instinctive censorship."
* * *
"The arrival of the news from Rome initially met with what seems to be embarrassed silence in official Spanish circles. But some measure of its psychological impact can be gleaned from two bitter and impassioned texts, dating from the end of 1527 and the beginning of 1528, which set the tone for the inevitable debate over the justifiability of the sack. Charles abstained from comment. His counselors therefore took it upon themselves to speak for him. Alfonso de Valdès, the emperor's own secretary, drafted the Dialogo de las cosas ocurridas en Roma, which justifies the sack of Rome as "providential" intervention. All responsibility falls to the pontiff who, instead of incarnating the evangelical spirit, acted like a reckless head of state. However dreadful the horrors reported, they can hardly suffice to expiate the abominations of the corrupt city: "Every single horror of the sack is a precise, necessary, and providential punishment for each of the iniquities that soiled Rome." This is the interpretation, give or take a subtlety, that the imperial side would continue to hold."
"But Valdès's Dialogo was not immediately publicized, for not everyone agreed with it. The emperor himself was undecided because of the violent protest made by the papal nuncio whom Charles respected highly, and who was none other than Baldassare Castiglione, author of Il Cortegiano. Castiglione's rebuttal is a biting indictment, with noble indignation. He calls the tendentious explanations of the Dialogo a moral and intellectual affront that puts the finishing touches on the bloody humiliations of the sack. None of the weaknesses, corruptions, or iniquities of modern Rome are denied. To this Castiglione merely replied that the degradation of the Roman See cannot justify such an unparalleled attack or condone such a sacrilege. He elevates the drama to a level on which it ceases to be a political happenstance. He would accept the global denunciation of a debased society, but he places the institution, its symbols, and its tradition above its unworthy servants. He pays homage to Rome's unique position which no Christian nation has the right to abuse, and points out that under no circumstances can Rome, hallowed by the Church and its history, be subjected to unspeakable indignities under the pretext of reform. One can imagine that remonstrances of this gravity, coming from a distinguished gentleman, a caballero, esteemed moreover by Charles, only added to the emperor's embarrassment. He subsequently indicated his eagerness to erase all memory of the sack."
– André Chastel, The Sack of Rome, 1527, translated by Beth Archer, 1983 (expanded from the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1977, and published by Princeton University Press and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)