in the Piazza Spagnola,” many of the great Roman villas were still in
the first freshness of their splendour, and the taste which called them
forth had not yet wearied of them. Later travellers, with altered ideas,
were not sufficiently interested to examine in detail what already
seemed antiquated and out of fashion; but to Evelyn, a passionate lover
of architecture and garden-craft, the Italian villas were patterns of
excellence, to be carefully studied and minutely described for the
benefit of those who sought to imitate them in England. It is doubtful
if later generations will ever be diverted by the aquatic “surprises”
and mechanical toys in which Evelyn took such simple pleasure; but the
real beauties he discerned are once more receiving intelligent
recognition after two centuries of contempt and indifference. It is
worth noting in this connection that, at the very height of the reaction
against Italian gardens, they were lovingly studied and truly understood
by two men great enough to rise above the prejudices of their age: the
French architects Percier and Fontaine, whose volume contains some of
the most suggestive analyses ever written of the purpose and meaning of
Renaissance garden-architecture.
Probably one of the least changed among the villas visited by Evelyn is
“the house of the Duke of Florence upon the brow of Mons Pincius.” The
Villa Medici, on being sold by that family in 1801, had the good fortune
to pass into the hands of the French government, and its “facciata
incrusted with antique and rare basso-relievos and statues” still looks
out over the statued arcade, the terrace “balustraded with white marble”
and planted with “perennial greens,” and the “mount planted with
cypresses,” which Evelyn so justly admired.
The villa, built in the middle of the sixteenth century by Annibale
Lippi, was begun for one cardinal and completed for another. It stands
in true Italian fashion against the hillside above the Spanish Steps,
its airy upper stories planted on one of the mighty bastion-like
basements so characteristic of the Roman villa. A villa above, a
fortress below, it shows that, even in the polished cinque-cento, life
in the Papal States needed the protection of stout walls and heavily
barred windows. The garden-façade, raised a story above the entrance,
has all the smiling openness of the Renaissance pleasure-house, and is
interesting as being probably the earliest example of the systematic use
of fragments of antique sculpture in an architectural elevation. But
this façade, with its charming central loggia, is sufficiently well
known to make a detailed description superfluous, and it need be studied
here only in relation to its surroundings.
[Illustration: GROTTO, VILLA DI PAPA GIULIO, ROME]
Falda’s plan of the grounds, and that of Percier and Fontaine, made over
a hundred and fifty years later, show how little succeeding fashions
have been allowed to disturb the original design. The gardens are still
approached by a long shady alley which ascends from the piazza before
the entrance; and they are still divided into a symmetrically planted
grove, a flower-garden before the house, and an upper wild-wood with a
straight path leading to the “mount planted with cypresses.”
It is safe to say that no one enters the grounds of the Villa Medici
without being soothed and charmed by that garden-magic which is the
peculiar quality of some of the old Italian pleasances. It is not
necessary to be a student of garden-architecture to feel the spell of
quiet and serenity which falls on one at the very gateway; but it is
worth the student’s while to try to analyze the elements of which the
sensation is composed. Perhaps they will be found to resolve themselves
into diversity, simplicity and fitness. The plan of the garden is
simple, but its different parts are so contrasted as to produce, by the
fewest means, a pleasant sense of variety without sacrifice of repose.
The ilex-grove into which one first enters is traversed by hedged alleys
which lead to _rond-points_ with stone seats and marble Terms. At one
point the enclosing wall of ilex is broken to admit a charming open
loggia, whence one looks into the depths of green below. Emerging from
the straight shady walks, with their effect of uniformity and repose,
one comes on the flower-garden before the house, spreading to the
sunshine its box-edged parterres adorned with fountains and statues.
Here garden and house-front are harmonized by a strong predominance of
architectural lines, and by the beautiful lateral loggia, with niches
for statues, above which the upper ilex-wood rises. Tall hedges and
trees there are none; for from the villa one looks across the garden at
the wide sweep of the Campagna and the mountains; indeed, this is
probably one of the first of the gardens which Gurlitt defines as
“gardens to look out from,” in contradistinction to the earlier sort,
the “gardens to look into.” Mounting to the terrace, one comes to the
third division of the garden, the wild-wood with its irregular levels,
through which a path leads to the mount, with a little temple on its
summit. This is a rare feature in Italian grounds: in hilly Italy there
was small need of creating the artificial hillocks so much esteemed in
the old English gardens. In this case, however, the mount justifies its
existence, for it affords a wonderful view over the other side of Rome
and the Campagna.
Finally, the general impression of the Medici garden resolves itself
into a sense of fitness, of perfect harmony between the material at hand
and the use made of it. The architect has used his opportunities to the
utmost; but he has adapted nature without distorting it. In some of the
great French gardens, at Vaux and Versailles for example, one is
conscious, under all the beauty, of the immense effort expended, of the
vast upheavals of earth, the forced creating of effects; but it was the
great gift of the Italian gardener to see the natural advantages of his
incomparable landscape, and to fit them into his scheme with an art
which concealed itself.
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF ÆSCULAPIUS, VILLA BORGHESE, ROME]
While Annibale Lippi, an architect known by only two buildings, was
laying out the Medici garden, the Palatine Hill was being clothed with
monumental terraces by a master to whom the Italian Renaissance owed
much of its stateliest architecture. Vignola, who transformed the slopes
of the Palatine into the sumptuous Farnese gardens, was the architect of
the mighty fortress-villa of Caprarola, and of the garden-portico of
Mondragone; and tradition ascribes to him also the incomparable Lante
gardens at Bagnaia.
In the Farnese gardens he found full play for his gift of grouping
masses and for the scenic sense which enabled him to create such
grandiose backgrounds for the magnificence of the great Roman prelates.
The Palatine gardens have been gradually sacrificed to the excavations
of the Palace of the Cæsars, but their almost theatrical magnificence is
shown in the prints of Falda and of Percier and Fontaine. In this
prodigal development of terraces, niches, porticoes and ramps, one
perceives the outcome of Bramante’s double staircase in the inner
gardens of the Vatican, and Burckhardt justly remarks that in the
Farnese gardens “the period of unity of composition and effective
grouping of masses” finally triumphs over the earlier style.
No villa was ever built on this site, and there is consequently an air
of heaviness and over-importance about the stately ascent which leads
merely to two domed pavilions; but the composition would have regained
its true value had it been crowned by such a palace as the Roman
cardinals were beginning to erect for themselves. It is especially
interesting to note the contrast in style and plan between this garden
and that of the contemporaneous Villa Medici. One was designed for
display, the other for privacy, and the success with which the purpose
of each is fulfilled shows the originality and independence of their
creators. It is a common error to think of the Italian gardens of the
Renaissance as repeating endlessly the same architectural effects: their
peculiar charm lies chiefly in the versatility with which their
designers adapted them to different sites and different requirements.
As an example of this independence of meaningless conventions, let the
student turn from the Villa Medici and the Orti Farnesiani to a third
type of villa created at the same time—the Casino of Pope Pius IV in the
Vatican gardens, built in 1560 by the Neapolitan architect Pirro
Ligorio.
[Illustration: VILLA MEDICI, ROME]
This exquisite little garden-house lies in a hollow of the outer Vatican
gardens near the Via de’ Fondamenti. A hillside once clothed with a
grove rises abruptly behind it, and in this hillside a deep oblong cut
has been made and faced with a retaining-wall. In the space thus cleared
the villa is built, some ten or fifteen feet away from the wall, so that
its ground floor is cool and shaded without being damp. The building,
which is long and narrow, runs lengthwise into the cut, its long façades
being treated as sides, while it presents a narrow end as its front
elevation. The propriety of this plan will be seen when the restricted
surroundings are noted. In such a small space a larger structure would
have been disproportionate; and Ligorio hit on the only means of giving
to a house of considerable size the appearance of a mere
garden-pavilion.
Percier and Fontaine say that Ligorio built the Villa Pia “after the
manner of the ancient houses, of which he had made a special study.” The
influence of the Roman fresco-architecture is in fact visible in this
delicious little building, but so freely modified by the personal taste
of the architect that it has none of the rigidity of the
“reconstitution,” but seems rather the day-dream of an artist who has
saturated his mind with the past.
The façade is a mere pretext for the display of the most exquisite and
varied stucco ornamentation, in which motives borrowed from the Roman
_stucchi_ are harmonized with endless versatility. In spite of the
wealth of detail, it is saved from heaviness and confusion by its
delicacy of treatment and by a certain naïveté which makes it more akin
(fantastic as the comparison may seem) with the stuccoed façade of San
Bernardino at Perugia than with similar compositions of its own period.
The angels or genii in the oblong panels are curiously suggestive of
Agostino da Duccio, and the pale-yellow tarnished surface of the stucco
recalls the delicate hues of the Perugian chapel.
[Illustration: COURTYARD GATE OF THE VILLA PIA]
The ground floor consists of an open loggia of three arches on columns,
forming a kind of atrium curiously faced with an elaborate mosaic-work
of tiny round pebbles, stained in various colours and set in arabesques
and other antique patterns. The coigns of the façade are formed of this
same mosaic—a last touch of fancifulness where all is fantastic. The
barrel-vault of the atrium is a marvel of delicate _stuccature_,
evidently inspired by the work of Giovanni da Udine at the Villa Madama;
and at each end stands a splendid marble basin resting on winged
griffins. The fragile decorations of this exquisite loggia are open on
three sides to the weather, and many windows of the upper rooms (which
are decorated in the same style) are unshuttered and have broken panes,
so that this unique example of cinque-cento decoration is gradually
falling into ruin from mere exposure. The steps of the atrium, flanked
by marble Cupids on dolphins, lead to an oval paved court with a central
fountain in which the Cupid-motive is repeated. This court is enclosed
by a low wall with a seat running around it and surmounted by marble
vases of a beautiful tazza-like shape. Facing the loggia, the wall is
broken (as at the Villa di Papa Giulio) by a small pavilion resting on
an open arcade, with an attic adorned with stucco panels; while at the
sides, equidistant between the villa and the pavilion, are two vaulted
porticoes, with façades like arches of triumph, by means of which access
is obtained to curving ramps that lead to the lower level of the
gardens. These porticoes are also richly adorned with stucco panels, and
lined within with a mosaic-work of pebbles, forming niches for a row of
busts.
From the central pavilion one looks down on a tank at its base (the
pavilion being a story lower on its outer or garden side). This tank is
surmounted by a statue of Thetis on a rock-work throne, in a niche
formed in the basement of the pavilion. The tank encloses the pavilion
on three sides, like a moat, and the water, gushing from three niches,
overflows the low stone curb and drips on a paved walk slightly hollowed
to receive it—a device producing a wonderful effect of coolness and
superabundance of water.
The old gardens of the villa were on a level with the tank, and Falda’s
print shows the ingenuity of their planning. These gardens have now been
almost entirely destroyed, and the _bosco_ above the villa has been cut
down and replaced by bare grass-banks dotted with shrubs.
The Villa Pia has been thus minutely described, first, because it is
seldom accessible, and consequently little known; but chiefly because it
is virtually not a dwellinghouse, but a garden-house, and thus forms a
part of the actual composition of the garden. As such it stands alone in
Italian architecture, and Burckhardt, who notes how well its lavish
ornament is suited to a little pleasure-pavilion in a garden, is right
in describing it as the “most perfect retreat imaginable for a midsummer
afternoon.”
The outer gardens of the Vatican, in a corner of which the Villa Pia
lies, were probably laid out by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, who
died in 1546; and though much disfigured, they still show traces of
their original plan. The sunny sheltered terrace, espaliered with
lemons, is a good example of the “walk for the cold season” for which
Italian garden-architects always provided; and the large sunken
flower-garden surrounded by hanging woods is one of the earliest
instances of this effective treatment of the _giardino segreto_. In
fact, the Vatican may have suggested many features of the later
Renaissance garden, with its wide-spread plan which gradually came to
include the park.
[Illustration: VILLA PIA—IN THE GARDENS OF THE VATICAN]
The seventeenth century saw the development of this extended plan, but
saw also the decline of the architectural restraint and purity of detail
which mark the generation of Vignola and Sangallo. The Villa Borghese,
built in 1618 by the Flemish architect Giovanni Vasanzia (John of
Xanten), shows a complete departure from the old tradition. Its
elevation may indeed be traced to the influence of the garden-front of
the Villa Medici, which was probably the prototype of the gay
pleasure-house in which ornamental detail superseded architectural
composition; but the garden-architecture of the Villa Borghese, and the
treatment of its extensive grounds, show the complete triumph of the
baroque.
The grounds of the Villa Borghese, which include a park of several
hundred acres, were laid out by Domenico Savino and Girolamo Rainaldi,
while its waterworks are due to Giovanni Fontana, whose name is
associated with the great _jeux d’eaux_ of the villas at Frascati.
Falda’s plan shows that the grounds about the house have been little
changed. At each end of the villa is the oblong secret garden, not
sunken but walled; in front an entrance-court, at the back an open space
enclosed in a wall of clipped ilexes against which statues were set, and
containing a central fountain. Beyond the left-hand walled garden are
various dependencies, including an aviary. These little buildings,
boldly baroque in style, surcharged with stucco ornament, and not
without a certain Flemish heaviness of touch, have yet that gaiety, that
_imprévu_, which was becoming the distinguishing note of Roman
garden-architecture. On a larger scale they would be oppressive; but as
mere garden-houses, with their leafy background, and the picturesque
adjuncts of high walls, wrought-iron gates, vases and statues, they have
an undeniable charm.
[Illustration: GATEWAY OF THE VILLA BORGHESE]
The plan of the Borghese park has been the subject of much discussion.
Falda’s print shows only the vicinity of the villa, and it has never
been decided when the outlying grounds were laid out and how much they
have been modified. At present the park, with its romantic groves of
umbrella-pine, its ilex avenues, lake and amphitheatre, its sham ruins
and little buildings scattered on irregular grassy knolls, has the
appearance of a _jardin anglais_ laid out at the end of the eighteenth
century. Herr Tuckermann, persuaded that this park is the work of
Giovanni Fontana, sees in him the originator of the “sentimental”
English and German landscape-gardens, with their hermitages, mausoleums
and temples of Friendship; but Percier and Fontaine, from whose plan of
the park his inference is avowedly drawn, state that the grounds were
much modified in 1789 by Jacob Moore, an English landscape-gardener, and
by Pietro Camporesi of Rome. Herr Gurlitt, who seems to have overlooked
this statement, declares himself unable to pronounce on the date of this
“creation already touched with the feeling of sentimentality”; but
Burckhardt, who is always accurate, says that the hippodrome and the
temple of Æsculapius are of late date, and that the park was remodelled
in the style of Poussin’s landscapes in 1849.
About thirty years later than the Villa Borghese there arose its rival
among the great Roman country-seats, the Villa Belrespiro or Pamphily,
on the Janiculan. The Villa Pamphily, designed by Alessandro Algardi of
Bologna, is probably the best known and most admired of Roman _maisons
de plaisance_, and its incomparable ilex avenues and pine-woods, its
rolling meadows and wide views over the Campagna, have enchanted many to
whom its architectural beauties would not appeal.
The house, with its incrustations of antique bas-reliefs, cleverly
adapted in the style of the Villa Medici, but with far greater richness
and license of ornament, is a perfect example of the seventeenth-century
villa, or rather casino; for it was really intended, not for a
residence, but for a suburban lodge. It is flanked by lateral terraces,
and the garden-front is a story lower than the other, so that the
balcony of the first floor looks down on a great sunken garden, enclosed
in the retaining-walls of the terraces, and richly adorned with statues
in niches, fountains and _parterres de broderie_. Thence a double
stairway descends to what was once the central portion of the gardens, a
great amphitheatre bounded by ilex-woods, with a _théâtre d’eaux_ and
stately flights of steps leading up to terraced ilex-groves; but all
this lower garden was turned into an English park in the first half of
the nineteenth century. One of the finest of Roman gardens fell a
sacrifice to this senseless change; for in beauty of site, in grandeur
of scale, and in the wealth of its Roman sculpture, the Villa Pamphily
was unmatched. Even now it is full of interesting fragments; but the
juxtaposition of an undulating lawn and dotty shrubberies to the stately
garden-architecture about the villa has utterly destroyed the unity of
the composition.
There is a legend to the effect that Le Nôtre laid out the park of the
Villa Pamphily when he came to Rome in 1678; but Percier and Fontaine,
who declare that there is nothing to corroborate the story, point out
that the Villa Pamphily was begun over thirty years before Le Nôtre’s
visit. Absence of proof, however, means little to the average French
author, eager to vindicate Le Nôtre’s claim to being the father not only
of French, but of Italian landscape-architecture; and M. Riat, in “L’Art
des Jardins,” repeats the legend of the Villa Pamphily, while Dussieux,
in his “Artists Français à l’Etranger,” anxious to heap further honours
on his compatriot, actually ascribes to him the plan of the Villa
Albani, which was laid out by Pietro Nolli nearly two hundred years
after Le Nôtre’s visit to Rome! Apparently the whole story of Le Nôtre’s
laying out of Italian gardens is based on the fact that he remodelled
some details of the Villa Ludovisi; but one need only compare the dates
of his gardens with those of the principal Roman villas to see that he
was the pupil and not the master of the great Italian garden-architects.
[Illustration: VILLA CHIGI, ROME]
The last great country house built for a Roman cardinal is the villa
outside the Porta Salaria which Carlo Marchionne built in 1746 for
Cardinal Albani. In spite of its late date, the house still conforms to
the type of Roman _villa suburbana_ which originated with the Villa
Medici; and it is interesting to observe that the Roman architects,
having hit on so appropriate and original a style, did not fear to
continue it in spite of the growing tendency toward a lifeless
classicalism.
Cardinal Albani was a passionate collector of antique sculpture, and the
villa, having been built to display his treasures, is appropriately
planned with an open arcade between rusticated pilasters, which runs the
whole length of the façade on the ground floor, and is continued by a
long portico at each end. The grounds, laid out by Antonio Nolli, have
been much extolled. Burckhardt sees in them traces of the reaction of
French eighteenth-century gardening on the Italian school; but may it
not rather be that, the Villa Albani being, by a rare exception, built
on level ground, the site inevitably suggested a treatment similar to
the French? It is hard to find anything specifically French, any motive
which has not been seen again and again in Italy, in the plan of the
Albani gardens; and their most charming feature, the long ilex-walk
connecting the villa with the _bosco_, exemplifies the Italian habit of
providing shady access from the house to the wood. Dussieux, at any
rate, paid Le Nôtre no compliment in attributing to him the plan of the
Villa Albani; for the great French artist contrived to put more poetry
into the flat horizons of Vaux and Versailles than Nolli has won from
the famous view of the Campagna which is said to have governed the
planning of the Villa Albani.
The grounds are laid out in formal quincunxes of clipped ilex, but
before the house lies a vast sunken garden enclosed in terraces. The
farther end of the garden is terminated by a semicircular portico called
the _Caffè_, built later than the house, under the direction of
Winckelmann; and in this structure, and in the architecture of the
terraces, one sees the heavy touch of that neo-Grecianism which was to
crush the life out of eighteenth-century art. The gardens of the Villa
Albani seem to have been decorated by an archæologist rather than an
artist. It is interesting to note that antique sculpture, when boldly
combined with a living art, is one of the most valuable adjuncts of the
Italian garden; whereas, set in an artificial evocation of its own past,
it loses all its vitality and becomes as lifeless as its background.
[Illustration: PARTERRES ON TERRACE, VILLA BELRESPIRO (PAMPHILY-DORIA),
ROME]
One of the most charming of the smaller Roman villas lies outside the
Porta Salaria, a mile or two beyond the Villa Albani. This is the
country-seat of Prince Don Lodovico Chigi. In many respects it recalls
the Sienese type of villa. At the entrance, the highroad is enlarged
into a semicircle, backed by a wall with busts; and on the axis of the
iron gates one sees first a court flanked by box-gardens, then an open
archway running through the centre of the house, and beyond that, the
vista of a long walk enclosed in high box-hedges and terminating in
another semicircle with statues, backed by an ilex-planted mount. The
plan has all the compactness and charm of the Tuscan and Umbrian villas.
The level ground about the house is subdivided into eight square
box-hedged gardens, four on a side, enclosing symmetrical box-bordered
plots. Beyond these are two little groves with statues and benches. The
ground falls away in farm-land below this level, leaving only the long
central alley which appears to lead to other gardens, but which really
ends in the afore-mentioned semicircle, behind which is a similar alley,
running at right angles, and leading directly to the fields.