Chapter II: The Nymphæum or “secret Fountain” (2)

This fountain was erected in the last year of the pontificate of Gregory XIII and the first year of the pontificate of Sixtus V, which would explain why its erection is attributed sometimes to the reign of one pope and sometimes to that of the other. It is difficult to understand how Sixtus V could have permitted the erection of any fountain so entirely devoid of scriptural suggestion, so purely pagan in its expression of joyous and irresponsible life, as is the Tartarughe. Possibly the play of the boys in the splashing water reminded the old man, who was in spite of his fierce enthusiasms so kindly and so human, of the far-off days of his childhood. As Cardinal Montalto he had done much for his native village, and many acts of his pontificate prove he had the poor always with him. He never forgot their sufferings or their simple pleasures, and in that old heart there lingered memories of his father’s fruit garden at Formi, of the pear-trees which he placed in his coat of arms, and of the great cistern in which he dabbled with such happy recklessness that one day he fell in and had to be fished out like any other urchin destined or not for the papal chair.

Rome would, undoubtedly, be the richer for a fountain by Raphael, but it is probably fortunate for the Tartarughe that it was not of Raphael’s creation. It is not likely that this bit of fancy in bronze and rare marbles could have escaped destruction at the time of the sack of Rome in 1527, only six years after Raphael’s death. Perhaps, also, this last blossom from the golden Summer of Italian Art owes its perfect preservation to its position in an obscure corner close to what was once the Ghetto. But as a setting for this gem no situation could be more inadequate. A mean square of dingy, uniformly ugly houses surrounds it, and there is not one redeeming feature in all this dreariness except the patch of blue sky overhead. A fountain fit to be the crowning beauty of some prince’s garden or to be celebrated in a canto of “The Faerie Queene” plays on in this commonplace part of Rome unheeded, and seemingly uncared for. However, when in 1898, one of the tortoises was stolen the indignation felt at the theft was so wide-spread and so fierce that the thief was only too glad to abandon the precious tortoise in a place where it could be easily discovered.

Trevi water supplies this fountain at present. Until quite recently it was the Acqua Paola, but its deposits had so discolored the bronze and marbles that the water in the shells was changed back to the Trevi, for which water it was originally constructed. However, the highest jet in the fountain was not changed, as Paola water can rise to a much higher level than Trevi.

FONTANA DEL MOSÈ

FONTANA DEL MOSÈ

This is the first of the great Fontana fountains, and if Domenico Fontana got his inspiration for it from the beautiful public fountain made by Amannati for Julius III on the Via Flaminia, with which he was familiar before the Casino was placed above it, his fountain in its turn became the prototype for the great fountains erected in the next century by his brother for Pope Paul V.

This Fountain of the Moses is a great portal consisting of three arches equal in size, from the base of which the water issues in double cascades. The water falls into three large basins guarded by couchant lions, and each lion spouts an additional stream of water. In the centre archway stands a colossal figure of Moses in the act of striking the rock, and the niches on either side of him are filled by high reliefs of scenes from the Old Testament relative to the importance and significance of water. The relief to the right represents Gideon testing his soldiers and is the work of Flaminio Vacca, and in the left Giovanni Battista della Porta has carved the scene in the desert after Moses has brought the water from the rock. Four beautiful marble columns with Ionic capitals stand one on either side of these arches, and in the small triangular spaces between the capitals and the keystones are the emblems of Sixtus V--the star, the three mounts, the pear branch and the lion. These arches and columns support a massive entablature of which the inscription, in the noble Sixtine caligraphy, forms the most important feature, and is, in fact, the most impressive part of the entire structure. Above the inscription rises the florid pediment, flanked by two obelisks (an idea distinctly borrowed from Amannati’s fountain) and bearing on its apex the three mounts of Sixtus V which carry the huge iron cross. Underneath this and occupying the greater part of the pediment are the armorial bearings of Sixtus V. The huge shield is supported by two angels, a conceit borrowed, perhaps, from Pius IV’s escutcheon over the Porta Pia, and repeated again for Paul V in his fountain on the Janiculum. The armorial sculpture is by Flaminio Vacca. Such is the great Fontana fountain, grandiose rather than magnificent, but still distinctly imposing and adequately filling by its size and importance the honorable position which it occupies among the fountains of Rome. It is the main delivery tank of the Acqua Felice; and the Acqua Felice was the first new supply of water which Rome had received since the aqueducts had been cut off from the city by Vitiges in 537.

The statue of Moses is a colossal blunder. Prospero Bresciano had modelled the curious Sixtine lions which served to support the Vatican obelisk, and the Pope gave him the commission for the principal figure in his great fountain. Contrary to the advice of his friends, Bresciano carved this statue, which was to be his masterpiece, directly from the travertine without any previous modelling--the block lying horizontally on the ground. When the figure was raised it was found to be not only out of proportion but also out of conformity with the laws of perspective. Its unveiling was greeted by the critical Roman populace with a shout of derisive laughter, so Homeric in its volume and duration that it utterly condemned the artist, who, as a result, fell into a melancholia and died.

The present lions, which are of bigio marble, are modern, dating from the days of Gregory XVI (1846). This Pope created the Egyptian Museum in the Vatican and removed thither the original lions, which were of Egyptian origin and had been appropriated for his fountain by Sixtus V--two from the Piazza of the Pantheon and two from the gate of St. John Lateran.

The two great points of difference between the Fontana fountains and the Amannati fountain on the Flaminian Way are interesting and significant. They are, first, the place of the inscription, and secondly the volume of water. The first point of difference is due to the fact that the Fontana fountains, here and on the Janiculum, proclaim the appearance in the city of a new supply of water. Sixtus V and Paul V had each built a new aqueduct and could announce the fact conspicuously by magnificent inscriptions; whereas Julius III, using a stream of water from an aqueduct already in existence, could only claim the honor of having erected the fountain for the convenience of the public. His inscription, therefore, is not borne aloft on triumphal arches but occupies a place in the central niche, filled in Sixtus V’s fountain by the figure of Moses, and in Paul V’s fountain left absolutely vacant. The stream which Julius III dared appropriate from the Virgo Aqueduct was only large enough to fill a single basin placed before the central niche of Amannati’s fountain; whereas in the Fontana fountains the water fills the entire space below the mostra, as it was naturally the intention to show the magnitude and force of the new supply.

Pope Sixtus V’s great fountain demands for its effect, like Paul V’s, wide and spacious surroundings. The high modern buildings crowding upon it and dwarfing it have done much toward diminishing its artistic values. One of the panels in the Vatican Library shows what the fountain was like in the years immediately following its erection. Gardens and vineyards lay all about it, and it easily dominated the walls and gateways which were its only architectural neighbors. The Porta Pia to the left merely enhanced its dignity, and in the far distance the hills, aqueducts, and the open sky lent themselves for a magnificent background.

The Acqua Felice, which was the first water of papal Rome, had been the last water brought to the ancient city. In 226 the Emperor Alexander Severus built the eleventh and last aqueduct of the classic city. Its remains are still to be seen on the Via Prænestina. Over this aqueduct he brought the Acqua Alexandrina, which was from practically the same sources as those which now supply the Acqua Felice. The Acqua Alexandrina was brought by the Emperor down the Via Labicana as far as the Esquiline, where he erected for it a magnificent fountain. A coin of his period shows the design to have somewhat resembled the present “Fontanone” on the Janiculum.

Sixtus V selected as the site for his fountain an open space on the Viminal Hill near the Church of Santa Susanna. He faced it southwest, at right angles to the Via Pia, which terminated at some distance to the northeast in the Porta Pia. The Acqua Felice enters Rome at the Porta Maggiore at the altitude of 59 metres and supplies 21,632.8 cubic metres of water daily. In order to bring the water to Fontana’s fountain it was necessary to cut a wide street, the Via Ceruaia, and to tunnel through the Baths of Diocletian. Although the Acqua Felice served the Pope’s purposes and literally made the desert blossom like the rose, Sixtus V had no sentiment about it. When the water actually reached the city, his sister and nephew, thinking to please him, hastened to bring him a cupful. The Pope, who hated a scene of any kind, refused to drink it, declaring that it had no taste, which is quite true. It is to this day the least valued of the Roman waters, and the overflow or “lapsed water” of Fontana’s great fountain is used for laundry purposes.

The Pope bought the land containing the feeding-springs of the Acqua Felice from Cardinal Colonna, and brought it to the city underground for thirteen miles and for the remaining seven over arches. Its channel is known as the “ugly aqueduct.”

The worst of the crimes committed by Sixtus V and Domenico Fontana against the antiquities of the city was the destruction of the Septizonium. Artists of the period have left invaluable sketches of this last fine example of classic architecture. It had been built by Septimius Severus against the Palatine, probably as an architectural screen to the mass of confused buildings in its rear. It faced south down the road by which travellers from Africa entered the city. It had survived the sieges, the earthquakes, and the fires of more than thirteen centuries; yet Sixtus V, without a qualm, demolished it for the sake of the blocks of travertine and peperino and its beautiful marble columns, which he wished to use in his own architectural enterprises. It is impossible not to wonder what were Fontana’s feelings as he superintended the destruction of this masterpiece of his own profession. He does little more than mention the fact in his memoirs, and this may be in itself significant. Some of the material went into the fabric of the Moses fountain; but the Romans never forgave either Sixtus V or Fontana.

Considering the dearth of water in Rome in the sixteenth century and the character of Sixtus V, the conception of the central idea of this fountain--that of Moses striking the rock--was not only happy but almost inevitable. Although the Pope was an ardent churchman, it was easier for him to believe in the conversion to Catholicism of the conqueror of Ivry than to understand that the Roman ruins had any other than a commercial value. Leo X had believed in art “for art’s sake.” He had believed in nothing else. To Sixtus V, on the other hand, all the efforts of painting, sculpture, and architecture were to be for the glory of God, more particularly as that glory was understood and expounded by himself. The Neptunes and Tritons of later pontificates would have seemed to him creations of the devil. The Old Testament was to him, as it was to the English Puritan of the next century, the source of artistic inspiration; and for his great fountain the Hebrew lawgiver, bringing the water out of the rock at the Divine command, was alone adequate. It was not unnatural for him to think of himself as standing in the place of Moses.

SIXTVS · V · PONT · MAX · PICENVS
AQVAM · EX · AGRO · COLVMNAE
VIA · PRAENEST · SINISTRORSVM
MVLTAR · COLLECTIONE · VENARVM
DVCTV · SINVOSO · A · RECEPTACVLO
MIL · XX · A · CAPITE · XXII · ADDVXIT
FELICEMQ · DE · NOMINE · ANTE · PONT · DIXIT

COEPIT · AN · I · ABSOLVIT · III · MDLXXXVII

_Pope Sixtus V, of the Marches, conducted this water from a junction of several streams in the neighborhood of Colonna, at the left of the Prænestine road, by a winding route, twenty miles from its reservoir and twenty-two from its source, and called it Felix, after the name he himself bore before his pontificate. He commenced the work in the first year of his pontificate, and finished it in the third, 1587._

THE LATERAN

THE LATERAN

Modern photographs can still be found of the original fountain of the Lateran. It was the work of Fontana and was placed in this spot after he had erected the obelisk for Sixtus V. The present fountain is quite new and most inadequately replaces the old one which had stood there for over three hundred years. By the close of the nineteenth century the upper basin of Fontana’s fountain was badly broken, while the lower one had been held together for some time by iron clamps. The carving was so worn and defaced that the dolphins and eagle were quite shapeless, and the figure of St. John writing in a scroll upon his knee and looking to Heaven for inspiration had long since disappeared. Maggi’s engraving of this fountain made in 1618 shows it to have been one of the richest ever designed by Fontana. A curious feature in this old fountain was the blending of the insignia of three popes. The pears of Sixtus V were carved in heavy festoons under the huge supporting scrolls of the mostra (which was a screen made low so as to bring the figure of St. John in simple and high relief against one of the square sides of the pedestal), the Borghese eagle poured the water into the shell-shaped upper basin; and finally the Aldobrandini bar of continuous Maltese crosses was used as frieze.

The obelisk of the Lateran was set in its present place by Fontana only two years before the death of Sixtus V, and it is quite probable the fountain was not erected until some years later. Sixtus V rushed the work on the Lateran at top speed; and this obelisk was no sooner in place than Fontana was commissioned to transport its companion to the Piazza del Popolo. The Lateran obelisk was erected in 1588. In August, 1590, Sixtus V died. Four popes followed him in rapid succession--Urban VII, Gregory XIV, and Innocent IX, all dying so soon that by January 20, 1592, Clement VIII (Aldobrandini) had become Pope; and Fontana may have finished this fountain during the first years of Clement’s pontificate, before he fell under that pontiff’s displeasure. The frieze on the fountain must have been originally the Montalto or Peretti frieze, which forms so beautiful a finish to the Lateran Palace; but Fontana, while keeping the star of Montalto (one of Sixtus V’s emblems) in the corners under the cornice of the screen, changed the design of the intervening space into the Aldobrandini bar. It was a small detail, and the change was a mere matter of custom and policy and involved no disloyalty to the great past in Fontana’s life. This would account for the Aldobrandini frieze. The eagle seems at first more difficult to explain. From the accession of Paul V the eagle denotes the Borghese family; but Paul V did not become Pope until 1605, and Fontana left Rome for Naples in 1596. Therefore, the eagle of this fountain cannot have any connection with the Borghese family. Why did Fontana use it instead of the lion’s head, which was another of Sixtus V’s emblems and would have made a better architectural outlet for the water? It must have been because the eagle is the emblem of St. John. In Michelangelo’s fresco of the Fourth Evangelist in the Sixtine Chapel the eagle stands with bent head and folded wings close against the figure of the saint who, seated upon the ground, is writing in the scroll supported by his knee. Fontana, or the sculptor who carved for him the figure on the top of the mostra of this fountain, was undoubtedly inspired by Michelangelo’s creation. The St. John of the fountain was, according to the old engravings, a beautiful and youthful figure looking to Heaven for inspiration and writing in the scroll held upon his knee. The eagle was wanting, but Fontana placed him just below the cornice between the curving tails of the dolphins, and adapted him to the purposes of a fountain. The design was original and extremely interesting, as it shows both Sixtus V and Fontana in a new and unusual light. They were dominated by the place. The great new Lateran Palace which they had built, the ancient obelisk which they had set up, the fountain which supplied the invaluable Acqua Felice, were all subservient to the venerable basilica of St. John. The piazza and all that it contained were dedicated to St. John, and had been so for seven hundred years. Pope and architect may have felt that in this fountain the insignia of any pontiff were more fittingly kept in a purely subordinate position.

The mostra of the old fountain rested, as the present one does, on the base of the obelisk; and the fine Piranesi engraving of the Piazza of the Lateran shows its position and proportions as well as the admirable balance which it gives to the entire scene.

This obelisk is still the highest in the world, although the lower end was so badly broken and damaged (by fire) that Fontana had to shorten it by three feet. It was also broken in three pieces and Fontana’s device for mending it, which so pleased the Pope, can be traced in various places among the hieroglyphics. When the obelisk was at last erected, Fontana carved his name with his title of knight in Latin on the base, and the three mounts and the star of Sixtus V were fastened to the apex. Above everything was placed the huge bronze cross, for Sixtus V considered the obelisk to be the supreme symbol of divinity in a great Pagan theology; and by placing the cross on all those which he re-erected, the Pope felt that he was exhibiting in the most picturesque and conspicuous manner the triumph of Christianity.

This obelisk, which is of red granite, was found by accident lying prone and buried in the marshy ground of the Circus Maximus. Near by was another, the one which now stands in the Piazza del Popolo. Fontana employed five hundred men in raising and removing the obelisk of the Lateran. Of these men, three hundred were employed day and night keeping out the water which poured in on all sides. This stream is now thought to have been the brook Crabra, the “goat brook” of Tusculum, described by Frontinus, which, in the general decay of mediæval times, had become one of the “lost waters” of Rome. The difficulties encountered in transporting the obelisk up the rough sides and through the old streets of the Quirinal Hill were numerous. The obelisk of the Piazza del Popolo was removed from the same place and set up on its present site for the sum of ten thousand three hundred and thirty-one scudi; whereas this obelisk of the Lateran cost the papal treasury twenty-four thousand six hundred and eleven scudi.

It was originally brought to Rome in the early days of the Christian era. Twenty-seven years after Constantine had transferred the seat of government to his own new capital of Byzantium, his successor, Constantine II, visited Rome. He visited Rome like any foreign prince and was profoundly impressed by the magnificence and majesty of his discarded capital. A not unnatural instinct prompted him to leave some memorial of himself among the monuments and trophies of his heroic predecessors; and for this purpose he sent for the obelisk which Thotmes III had originally placed before the great temple of Thebes. It was brought to Rome and placed in the Circus Maximus. Its subsequent history and the causes of the fall of this last of the imperial obelisks are still lost in the mystery which hangs over so much of mediæval Rome.[H]

The original pedestal had been too damaged by fire to admit of using it again; so Sixtus V gave permission to Domenico Fontana to make the new pedestal out of the materials of an old arch which Domenico was to destroy for this purpose. The permission was given in writing, for Domenico Fontana had found that it was necessary to be armed with written instructions from the Pope whenever he began one of his devastating raids upon the antiquities of the city. The city government had endured such pillage and destruction at the hands of the great Pope’s great architect that all the past vandalism of private individuals seemed slight in comparison. They protested in vain against most of the destruction upon which Sixtus V had set his heart, and neither princes nor magistrates could save the old pontifical residence of the Lateran which had stood since the seventh century on this very piazza. It was a marvellous rambling pile of buildings--churches, monasteries, shrines, loggias, colonnades, oratories, banqueting rooms and halls filled with mosaics, pictures, and frescoes--and, according to a great authority, the most wonderful museum of mediæval art that ever existed. This priceless record of the past was ruthlessly demolished and razed to the ground in a few months’ time by order of Pope Sixtus V. It is difficult to understand his motives for this particular action, since it was not the history of Paganism but of his own predecessors that he was destroying. The populace never forgot, or forgave him this destruction, involving as it did the loss of the Oratory of the Holy Cross. An exquisite example of early Christian architecture, built in the shape of a Greek cross, this oratory was held in peculiar veneration by all classes; and the Roman people might not unnaturally conclude that the wanton destruction of anything at once so beautiful and so sacred as this oratory could only be ascribed to the promptings of the devil himself. Posterity can hardly accept Pope Sixtus V’s fountain, even with its obelisk, as an adequate substitute for the three fountains of rare marble in the atrium of this oratory which perished by order of the Pope.

The Church of St. John Lateran was under the protection of the Kings of France, as the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore was under the protection of the Kings of Spain, St. Peter’s under that of the Emperor of Austria, and St. Paul’s Beyond the Walls under the protection of the English sovereign. In the pontificate of Clement VIII, when the papacy began to turn toward France in its foreign policy, the work of embellishing the Lateran cost Rome--and indeed large portions of the surrounding country--untold treasures in costly marbles and gilt bronzes. The first were sawed into slabs for the transept of the Church; and the Altar of the Sacrament owes its magnificence to the many hundred bronzes which, together with portions of the bronze beams of the Pantheon, went to the smelting furnaces. In Sixtus V’s time, however, the old church was still comparatively simple; and it was in this old Church of the Lateran, probably during his pontificate, that Stradella’s prayer (“Pity, oh, Saviour!”) was sung, while hired assassins waited in the outside darkness to take the composer’s life. As the service was long, the bravos stepped inside the church to enjoy the music before committing the murder. There, in the wavering light of the altar candles and under the subtle influence of the incense, they became so impressed by the pathetic beauty of that marvellous _Aria di Chiesa_ that they felt it impossible to put out of existence the man who could write such music; and in the darkness and silence that followed the close of the divine melody they themselves warned Stradella of the plot against his life and abetted his escape.

Of late years this legend has been discredited; but in such a case as this it is well to remember the attitude taken by the writer of “The Renaissance in Italy,” “I would rather accept,” says Symonds, “sixteenth-century tradition with Vasari than reject it with German or English speculators of to-day. I regard the present tendency to mistrust tradition, only because it is tradition, as in the highest sense uncritical.”

Over the door of the Vatican Library is a fresco map of Sixtine Rome. It portrays not what Sixtus V actually left, but what he at one time intended to leave. In this fresco a great thoroughfare runs from the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza Laterano, and at each end of the magnificent vista stands an obelisk erected by the Pope. Such a street laid out to-day would lead along the Via Babuino, the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Due Macelli, and, passing through the tunnel, come out on the Via Merulana, and reach the Piazza Laterano after traversing the eastern slope of the Esquiline and the new streets between it and the basilica. Sixtus V abandoned the idea as the great thoroughfare would have cut its way directly through the precincts of the Quirinal, and he had determined to make that spot his own abode, not only because he loved it but because he recognized the sovereign quality of the situation of Monte Cavallo in the Rome which he was reconstructing.

The Fontana fountain of the Lateran is not included by Baglioni in his list of Fontana’s works; but that list which is embodied in his account of Fontana’s life is manifestly incomplete. The fountain was engraved in full detail as early as 1618 by Maggi; and later engravings were made of it by Cruyl, Millotte, and Falda. These designs were so comprehensive that it would have been an extremely simple matter to entirely reconstruct the old fountain, more especially as the mostra and old basins were still in place, and there could have been no difficulty in ascertaining the proportions. Had this been done, the pictorial effect and, above all, the historical interest of the Piazza of St. John Lateran would have been greatly enhanced. The old fountain disappeared in the general submersion of papal Rome. Its modern substitute is a mere paraphrase, and the eagle seems intentionally to represent the eagle of imperial Rome rather than the emblem of St. John.

TRINITÀ DE’ MONTI

TRINITÀ DE’ MONTI

The fountain on the terrace in front of the Villa Medici has been called by a lover of Rome “The Fountain of the Brimming Bowl.” It is a happy surname, for the marble vase beneath the formally clipped ilex trees is nothing more or less than a huge bowl filled to overflowing with the Acqua Felice. The stream gushes upward in a slender column until it reaches the spreading branches overhead. There it returns upon itself in clouds of glistening spray, filling the bowl with circles of gleaming water, ever widening until they brim over the edge and veil the marble in a continuous overflow. The octagonal basin which receives this copious stream is sunk into the ground and its shadowed waters have all the unobtrusive beauty of a quiet and sequestered pool. There is no sculpture, no decoration. With unerring taste, the artist has made his appeal to the eye through fundamental and universal elements of beauty. Grace of line and of proportion, contrast of solid rock and flowing water, the impression of abundance and perpetuity, symmetry, contrast, suggestion--these are the simple qualities out of which he composed his Fountain of the Brimming Bowl.

Sunlight flickering through the ilex branches overhead and the crumbling shadows of their dense foliage add a poetic charm, while the Italian trinity--Art, Time, and Nature--have given to this modest fountain a background of unsurpassed interest and dignity. The view from the terrace of the Villa Medici might be described almost exactly by Wordsworth’s sonnet on Westminster Bridge, and truly

“Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty.”

Here in Rome “... towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie,” massed together in that famous quarter of the city known in classic times as the Campus Martius; and through this architectural maze, spanned by bridges old and new, the Tiber “floweth at its own sweet will.” On its farther shore the modern Palace of Justice and a network of thoroughfares with names relating to the Risorgimento and to Italy of to-day crowd against the venerable Castle of St. Angelo. Beyond that lies the densely packed Borgo or Leonine city, surrounded by walls, while the heights of the Janiculum to the left and those of the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario to the right give a background of green to all this masonry. In the very centre of the distance, on the ground once covered by the Circus of Nero, dominating everything and seeming to float against the western sky, rises the dome of St. Peter’s.

The terrace leads on the one hand to the gardens of the Pincio and on the other to the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti. From 1544 to 1560, when Annibale Lippi was working on the Villa Medici, that portion of the Pincian Hill covered to-day by the Pincian Gardens belonged to the Augustinian monks of the Piazza del Popolo. The villa stood on the ground between them and the gardens and convent of the Trinità de’ Monti. The terrace with the fountain was the approach to the cardinal’s villa and to the precincts of the convent. The old engravings show the fountain standing quite free from trees, which, however, are growing along the edge of the hill and down its slope. The fountain is generally ascribed to Annibale Lippi, but there seems to be no positive proof that it is his work. It resembles in general outline the fontanella on the balcony inside the villa, which is by Lippi; and the fact that the basin is made of bigio marble might put its date as early as Lippi’s time. The fountains in the first half of the Cinque Cento were generally made of marble or granite, whereas after Fontana and in Bernini’s period travertine was used almost exclusively.

The villa was the property of Cardinal Monte Pulciano, but it was barely finished when Cardinal Ferdinand de’ Medici began negotiations for its purchase. Medici, whose childhood had been passed in the Boboli Gardens, which were created by his father, spent eleven years in laying out and beautifying the gardens of this villa, where he had a small zoological collection, and also in making the gallery of Greek and Roman sculpture which rivalled that already belonging to his old friend Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. He returned to Florence in 1587, and some time after the villa passed into the hands of another Medici, Cardinal Alessandro, who became Pope Leo XI in 1605. This Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici also spent much time and money in the decoration of the villa, and it seems probable that the fountain was constructed during his tenure of the property, since the introduction of the Acqua Felice in 1587 had at last made it possible to have fountains on this hillside. Evelyn, describing this fountain in the last days of Pope Urban VIII’s pontificate, speaks of the magnificent jet of water spouting fifty feet into the air. The earliest engravings of it date from the middle of the Sei Cento and show the water springing from a large ball of travertine which has long since lost its size and shape from the constant action of the water. The pedestal and base of this fountain are also of travertine.

The present Church of the Trinità de’ Monti was erected by Louis XVIII, of France, to replace the original building which had been destroyed during the excesses of the French Revolutionary period. But in 1544 the old Gothic church of the Valois King stood looking westward over the French quarter of the city. This church dated from the year 1495, when Charles VIII, of France, on his way to reconquer his Neapolitan territory, entered Rome and paid a visit--half threatening, half ceremonious--to Alexander VI. He left as a memorial of his stay in Rome this Church of the Trinità de’ Monti. The church became the nucleus of French influence in Rome. The French convent of the Sacred Heart grew up beside its walls, and many famous Frenchmen lived within its shadow.

Cardinal Ferdinand de’ Medici, who gave his family name to this villa, as well as to the Venus which, upon its discovery in Hadrian’s Villa, he immediately bought and placed here, was one of the commanding figures of his time. Fourth son of Cosimo, first Grand Duke of Tuscany, he had been made a cardinal at fourteen, in the room of his elder brother Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, who had died at nineteen. The second Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand’s eldest brother, died in 1587, leaving no son, and so, after twenty-four years of ecclesiastical life, Cardinal Ferdinand, who had never taken holy orders, laid by the red hat to become third Grand Duke of Tuscany. He married Christine de Lorraine, a granddaughter of Catherine de’ Medici, and therefore a distant cousin of his own, and had, like his great-grandfather Lorenzo the Magnificent, and his own grandfather Cosimo I, eight children, his eldest son succeeding to the grand duchy. It is difficult to trace in the wise and beneficent grand duke the intractable young cardinal who had been a handful for even Sixtus V. The old pontiff had found in him an obstinacy and a craft equal to his own, and he must have “thanked God fasting” when Medici was no longer a member of his curia! The Pope was an old man, and the cardinal had the physical advantage of youth; nevertheless it was a battle royal when this true chip of the Medicean block interceded with the Peretti Pope for the life of his old friend, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Sixtus, who was not to be shaken in his determination, kept track of the time, and held firmly to his resolution until he was sure that the appointed hour for Farnese’s death had come and gone; then, knowing that it was too late, he graciously consented to spare Farnese’s life, to please his Cardinal de’ Medici. But the cardinal knew his Sixtus V, and had, before his audience, taken the precaution to set every clock in the Vatican, outside the Pope’s private apartments, back one hour![I] The fire still lives in the ashes of this Ferdinand, for, in 1906, a deputation from Leghorn visited his tomb in the Medici mausoleum in Florence and laid upon it a bronze wreath as a testimony of their undying gratitude and affection. Leghorn, a mere fishing village of the Cinque Cento, had been raised to her position of the second seaport in Italy by this ex-cardinal, and that chiefly through the operation of an edict of toleration almost incredible at the period in which it was promulgated. When the Spanish Armada, the struggle in the Netherlands, and the religious wars in France kept all Europe in a ferment, Leghorn rose suddenly and swiftly like an exhalation of the sea through the peaceful labors of the French, Flemish, and Jewish refugees who, within her walls and under the powerful protection of her Grand Duke, the ex-cardinal, found absolute liberty of conscience and security of life and property. It was this Ferdinand who furnished from his own rich coffers the sinews of war to Henry of Navarre; it was he who mediated between Henry and the Pope; and it was his niece, Maria de’ Medici, who became Queen of France as wife of Henry IV, bringing with her, as Sully said, such a marriage portion as had never before been brought into the kingdom.

Five years after this event Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici became Pope; so the Villa Medici, as well as the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti, had, in spite of their Italian names, many affiliations with far-off Paris; and partly on account of these associations, partly for the sake of the marvellous view, their terraces became the favorite haunt of those artists who, in the early days of the Sei Cento, began to find their way to Rome.

In the continuity of the development of art there are few events more interesting than the appearance of the French art student in Rome. Gaul had been the first of the northern nations to assimilate Roman culture, and France was the first to come under the influence of the Renaissance. Just at the time when the Catholic reaction against the license of the Cinque Cento had begun to force Italy under the stultifying influence of Spanish domination, France awoke to the full consciousness of her æsthetic nature and to her need of those things which Italy alone could give. The army of Charles VIII had carried back across the Alps imperishable memories of beauty, and soon afterward Francis I had enticed to Paris some of the greatest Italian artists of the time. Even the fierce religious wars of the sixteenth century could not stamp out the seed sown by the soldiers’ stories and by the works of art left by homesick Italian masters in Fontainebleau. One by one the eager French artists crossed the Alps, and they came in ever-increasing numbers when the genius of Richelieu brought order and amenity into French life, and when Richelieu’s contemporary, Maffeo Barberini, for many years papal legate to France, had become Pope Urban VIII. To reach Rome all of these voyagers had to endure severe physical hardships, and some of them never returned to France. The greatest of them--Le Poussin and Claude--died in Rome. Painters, engravers, sculptors, and architects came to these terraces to worship and to work, and to this day the galleries and palaces of northern Europe cherish the pictures planned or sketched about the Fountain of the Brimming Bowl.

Pope Urban VIII, who died in 1644, was himself half French, not only by virtue of his temperament and genius, but also by the trend of his sympathies and his foreign policy. Under his enlightened patronage, the artists of France found a congenial home in the Eternal City. This was the beginning of the French Academy of Painting in Rome, which was formally founded in 1666 by Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV. For the first seven years of its existence this institution had no permanent abode; but in 1673 the Capronica Palace was placed at its disposal, and later on--in Louis XV’s time--it moved to the Mancini Palace near the Corso. The slope leading from the Piazza of the Trinità de’ Monti (now the Piazza di Spagna) to the terraces above had all this time been a natural hillside, whereon grew trees, grass, and wild flowers familiar to Rome. The footpaths leading upward must have been a rather steep climb; but five years before the founding of the Academy an event occurred which was to make the ascent of the hillside not only easy but delightful. In 1661 Rome came into the possession of a large sum of money left to the city by the learned French gentleman, Etienne de Guéffier, for the express purpose of constructing a magnificent stone stairway which should cover this slope of the Pincian Hill, and unite for all time the Campus Martius with the terraces above. The stairway was long in building, and during its construction the connection between the Academy in the Mancini Palace and the old terraces of the Trinità de’ Monti may have been slender; but in 1725 the Scalinata was opened with great pomp, and once again French artists could spend long hours on their beloved terraces. Seventy-six years later Napoleon, with his supreme instinct for effect (a possession he shared with Julius Cæsar),[J] and not unmindful of the French association with this quarter of the city, removed the French Academy from the old Mancini Palace and lodged it permanently and most impressively where it now is, in the Villa Medici, the villa built by that family which had given two queens to France. So the fountain of the Trinità de’ Monti is still a feature in the life of the French artists at Rome; and it is perhaps a pardonable fancy that, in this particular fountain, the Acqua Felice plays in French!

VILLA BORGHESE

NOW

VILLA UMBERTO PRIMO

VILLA BORGHESE

NOW

VILLA UMBERTO PRIMO

A garden where the centuries
Of men have come and none did care
Save for the green grass and the breeze
And shelter from the noontide glare.
But that which makes the garden fair--
The sense of life’s futility,
Is deathless beauty. Born of Death,
It blossoms under cloudless skies--
One’s very dream of Italy.

--_From an unpublished MS._

Such a garden was the Villa Borghese; and such a garden it still is, in spite of constant desecration. This is the home of the most poetic of Bernini’s fountains. It stands on the summit of a rising avenue, yet it does not terminate a vista, it makes itself a part of one, for the avenue continues after the fountain has been reached. It stands in full but tempered sunlight, girt about by a circle of box hedges and ilex trees, with here and there a tall stone pine. The lower basin lies in the turf, like a natural pool, and the water fills it to the brim. It reflects the trees and clouds in its quiet depths, or as the little breeze ruffles the surface, it gives back the sunshine like a broken mirror. Single shafts of water, spouting upward from between the forefeet of the sea-horses, fall back into the same basin from which they rose, curving like the arches of a pergola; yet so steady is their flow that the tranquillity of the pool is hardly troubled. Four foam-flecked circles, only, show where the falling water mingles with the water at rest. Greater peacefulness could not well be given to any artificial bit of water. Then from the centre of this dreaming pool there rises a fountain so rich in carving, so beautiful in design that it seems rather a great and splendid efflorescence than the work of men’s hands. From its leaf-fringed lower basin there rises a second and much smaller one, not like another basin but like a corolla within a corolla, and the flower-like composition terminates in a beautifully wrought cup resembling the blossom of the campanula. The water gushes upward from this cup, but not to any height. It falls back at once over the scalloped edges of the marble, and slipping in and over the carved foliage of the lower basins finally reaches, in a gentle, pensive manner, the quiet pool beneath. Sea-horses with tossed manes and backward curving wings plunge outward from the shelter of the lower basin. Their tails twine about its stem, and the basin is close above their heads, but it does not rest upon them; they are free. It is evident that in one more spring they will be out and away. Yet they do not take it, and they never will. For once Bernini’s genius masters his fancy. His fountain is not a fanciful conceit but a rich and peaceful artistic creation. An enchanter’s wand has checked the horses in mid-career, and here they remain, motionless, for all their movement, under the shadow of the leafy basin, part of a beautiful whole that must never be broken. This is one of those rare compositions in which the artist has most happily achieved the second essential in a fountain, that it should be a thing of beauty, a source of delight to the eye and ear. It is admirably suited to its surroundings, for rich carving and imaginative sculpture held in subservience to the natural charm of quiet water, conform exquisitely with a garden where stately formality enhances the loveliness of wild and simple beauty. The fountain is of travertine, the natural mellow tone of which has been rendered even more lovely by centuries of soft Italian weather. It does not stand out conspicuously in the vista; it detaches itself from the surrounding trees gently, as if it had grown there among them.

On either side of this fountain the ground falls away sharply into groves of ilex, traversed by natural footpaths. In the gloom of these wooded spaces there are two other fountains. Great basins catching the water from tiers of smaller ones in the centre and each surrounded by a broken circle of curved stone benches. They are the work of Antonio Vansantio; and, according to drawings by Letarouilly, the back of each semicircular bench was originally decorated at regular intervals with statues. Behind these stood a formally clipped box hedge rising some three feet above the benches, while the larger trees growing behind the hedge made by their branches a green canopy to this truly charming bit of garden architecture. Vansantio’s basins and benches are now in a half-ruined condition, but they are still extremely lovely and suggest pictures of eighteenth-century garden-parties, where groups of Watteau’s figures idle away the hours. The fountains are hardly visible, even at close range. They betray themselves by the sound of their falling water, which gives to the scene, like the song of the hermit-thrush, a poignant sense of remoteness and solitude. The deep shadows and half-hidden waters of Vansantio’s fountains form a well-conceived contrast to Bernini’s sunlit basins on the slope above.

There are many other fountains in this villa. A large round pool decorated with a central figure of a nymph, and set about with huge cactus-filled vases of a shape peculiar to the Villa Borghese, stands behind the Casino, while at the other end of the gardens the so-called Fountain of Esculapius fills a shady place with the sound and beauty of abundant water. This is a beautiful fountain, not because of any special charm or originality of design in the fountain itself, but because of its splendid jet of water and the composition of it and its surroundings. The arch containing the statue of Esculapius stands on a slight eminence surrounded with tall trees and shadowy foliage. Beneath and before it, the ground slopes in masses of broken rock and bowlders, and the fountain, a single round and shallow vase of finished travertine, stands in the midst of them. The jet of water almost tops the Arch above the statue, and it falls in great abundance upon the rocks at its base.

There is also the Fountain of the Amorini--so daintily lovely that the fact that it is incomplete is hardly noticed. The little Loves still firmly grasp their frogs and dolphins, but the vase they once carried on their heads is gone. The moss-grown stone-work of the basin, and the light and shade of the great ilex trees about it give this little fountain a peculiar charm. It seems to belong quite consciously to other days than ours.

There are fountains everywhere in the gardens. They are as common as the trees and the marbles and the violets. The water seems to play at will among the lights and shadows, for during three centuries this has been a Roman pleasure-ground; and to the Roman no pleasure-ground is worthy the name without the sound and sight of water.

The Villa Borghese was created by Cardinal Scipione Borghese during the sixteen years that his uncle held the keys of St. Peter, under the title of Paul V. The Pope assisted him in every way, for Paul V’s chief pleasure consisted in advancing and aggrandizing his family. Marc Antonio Borghese, a second nephew of his, became the founder of the family in Rome, and Cardinal Scipione had as commanding an influence over the Pope as had ever been known. Paul V found his model in Paul III, and so well did he emulate the founder of the Farnese fortunes that by the close of his pontificate the Borghese had become the wealthiest and most powerful family that had ever arisen in Rome. Cardinal Scipione’s annual income alone was one hundred and fifty thousand scudi--about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars--and Paul V destroyed the ruins of the Baths of Constantine so as to build for him what is now called the Rospigliosi Palace. Their habits, charities, possessions were all but regal. The cardinal endeavored to lessen the envy which such opulence naturally aroused by a complaisant and courtly behavior, as well as by benevolence; and he earned for himself the sobriquet of “the delight of Rome.” This villa he laid out for the benefit of the people, and it has really existed for them for over three hundred years. Paul V’s pontificate came to an end in 1621, and in 1645 Mr. John Evelyn writes in his “Diary” a long account of the Villa Borghese. The groves and avenues had by that time a generation’s growth, but the Casino and little temples and the multifarious delights which enriched them were still in pristine freshness. The taste of the present day may prefer the gardens as they now are to those of 1645; they have more of natural beauty and fewer artificial devices, and the simple fountains are more effective than the spouts of water made to resemble the shapes of vessels and fruits and the conceit of artificial rain. Much of the architecture and statuary Evelyn describes has vanished, but enough remains for the present traveller to recognize the picture and to feel that he is walking in groves and meadows trodden by many feet through many years. Since Evelyn’s time eight generations have also found these pleasure-grounds delightful. As full of memories as of fragrance, these gardens convey a sense of human life once lived among them and now forever gone, which is as poignant as the smell of the boxwood hedges in the hot sunshine.

The Villa Borghese has pre-eminently this subtle quality, and therefore it has become the loveliest as well as the best beloved of all Roman villas; and it is precisely because it is a Roman garden that its memories are so compelling. The men and women who have walked in these long avenues and lingered about these fountains have been the aristocracy of mankind. England, France, and Germany come here to gather memories of their great men. Statues to Goethe and Victor Hugo are not needed. Hugo and Goethe and many more of these noble ghosts come back, together with a long line of splendid popes and brilliant cardinals, to haunt the sun-warmed yet shadowy places, never jostling or disturbing the living but felt by the living in some strange and undefinable way.

These groves and fountains have been the setting for many scenes in Life’s dramas. There has been a Napoleonic interlude with dancing, masquerading, and somewhat boisterous merrymaking; and here, amid the loveliness of an alien civilization, began the last act in the tragedy of the Stuart Kings. The son of the exiled James II of England lived and died in Rome, and his children--Prince Charlie and the little Duke of York--played beneath these trees, as scores of other brothers of less fateful history have played before and since.[K] Here they came every morning with their fowling-pieces. High-spirited English lads, they made of the Italian groves a Sherwood Forest of their own. It was a far cry at that time to Culloden, and a long way to the cathedral of Frascati, where the younger brother was to read the funeral service over the elder. Time means so little in Rome that here in the villa where the Stuart Princes played, the “adventure of the ’45” seems to have happened only yesterday.