charm with Prince Chigi’s. This is the Priorato, or Villa of the Knights
of Malta, near Santa Sabina, on the Aventine. Piranesi, in 1765,
remodelled and decorated the old chapel adjoining the house; and it is
said that he also laid out the garden. If he did so, it shows how late
the tradition of the Renaissance garden lingered in Italy; for there is
no trace of romantic influences in the Priorato. The grounds are small,
for the house stands on a steep ledge overlooking the Tiber, whence
there is a glorious view of St. Peter’s and the Janiculan. The designer
of the garden evidently felt that it must be a mere setting to this
view; and accordingly he laid out a straight walk, walled with box and
laurel and running from the gate to the terrace above the river. The
prospect framed in this green tunnel is one of the sights of Rome; and,
by a touch peculiarly Italian, the keyhole of the gate has been so
placed as to take it in. To the left of the pleached walk lies a small
flower-garden, planted with square-cut box-trees, and enclosed in a high
wall with niches containing statues: a real “secret garden,” full of
sunny cloistered stillness, in restful contrast to the wide prospect
below the terrace.
The grounds behind the Palazzo Colonna belong to another type, and are
an interesting example of the treatment of a city garden, especially
valuable now that so many of the great gardens within the walls of Rome
have been destroyed.
The Colonna palace stands at the foot of the Quirinal Hill, and the
gardens are built on the steep slope behind it, being entered by a
stately gateway from the Via Quirinale. On this upper level there is a
charming rectangular box-garden, with flower-plots about a central
basin. Thence one descends to two narrow terraces, one beneath the
other, planted with box and ilex, and adorned with ancient marbles. Down
the centre, starting from the upper garden, there is an elaborate
_château d’eau_ of baroque design, with mossy urns and sea-gods,
terminating in a basin fringed with ferns; and beneath this central
composition the garden ends in a third wide terrace, planted with
square-clipped ilexes, which look from above like a level floor of
verdure. Graceful stone bridges connect this lowest terrace with the
first-floor windows of the palace, which is divided from its garden by a
narrow street; and the whole plan is an interesting example of the
beauty and variety of effect which may be produced on a small steep
piece of ground.
Of the other numerous gardens which once crowned the hills of Rome, but
few fragments remain. The Villa Celimontana, or Mattei, on the Cælian,
still exists, but its grounds have been so Anglicized that it is
interesting chiefly from its site and from its associations with St.
Philip Neri, whose seat beneath the giant ilexes is still preserved. The
magnificent Villa Ludovisi has vanished, leaving only, amid a network of
new streets, the Casino of the Aurora and a few beautiful fragments of
architecture incorporated in the courtyard of the ugly Palazzo
Margherita; and the equally famous Villa Negroni was swept away to make
room for the Piazza delle Terme and the Grand Hôtel. The Villa
Sacchetti, on the slope of Monte Mario, is in ruins; in ruins the old
hunting-lodge of Cecchignola, in the Campagna, on the way to the Divino
Amore. These and many others are gone or going; but at every turn the
watchful eye still lights on some lingering fragment of old
garden-art—some pillared gateway or fluted _vasca_ or broken statue
cowering in its niche—all testifying to what Rome’s crown of gardens
must have been, and still full of suggestion to the student of her past.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM LOWER GARDEN, VILLA BELRESPIRO
(PAMPHILY-DORIA), ROME]
VILLAS NEAR ROME
[Illustration: VILLA D’ESTE, TIVOLI]
IV
VILLAS NEAR ROME
I
CAPRAROLA AND LANTE
The great cardinals did not all build their villas within sight of St.
Peter’s. One of them, Alexander Farnese, chose a site above the mountain
village of Caprarola, which looks forth over the Etrurian plain strewn
with its ancient cities—Nepi, Orte and Cività Castellana—to Soracte,
rising solitary in the middle distance, and the encircling line of
snow-touched Apennines.
There is nothing in all Italy like Caprarola. Burckhardt calls it
“perhaps the highest example of restrained majesty which secular
architecture has achieved”; and Herr Gurlitt makes the interesting
suggestion that Vignola, in building it, broke away from the traditional
palace-architecture of Italy and sought his inspiration in France.
“Caprarola,” he says, “shows the northern castle in the most modern form
it had then attained.... We have to do here with one of the fortified
residences rarely seen save in the north, but doubtless necessary in a
neighbourhood exposed to the ever-increasing dangers of brigandage.
Italy, indeed, built castles and fortified works, but the
fortress-palace, equally adapted to peace and war, was almost unknown.”
The numerous illustrated publications on Caprarola make it unnecessary
to describe its complex architecture in detail. It is sufficient to say
that its five bastions are surrounded by a deep moat, across which a
light bridge at the back of the palace leads to the lower garden. To
pass from the threatening façade to the wide-spread beauty of pleached
walks, fountains and grottoes, brings vividly before one the curious
contrasts of Italian country life in the transition period of the
sixteenth century. Outside, one pictures the cardinal’s soldiers and
_bravi_ lounging on the great platform above the village; while within,
one has a vision of noble ladies and their cavaliers sitting under
rose-arbours or strolling between espaliered lemon-trees, discussing a
Greek manuscript or a Roman bronze, or listening to the last sonnet of
the cardinal’s court poet.
The lower garden of Caprarola is a mere wreck of overgrown box-parterres
and crumbling wall and balustrade. Plaster statues in all stages of
decay stand in the niches or cumber the paths; fruit-trees have been
planted in the flower-beds, and the maidenhair withers in grottoes where
the water no longer flows. The architectural detail of the fountains and
arches is sumptuous and beautiful, but the outline of the general plan
is not easy to trace; and one must pass out of this enclosure and climb
through hanging oak-woods to a higher level to gain an idea of what the
gardens once were.
[Illustration: VILLA CAPRAROLA]
Beyond the woods a broad _tapis vert_ leads to a level space with a
circular fountain sunk in turf. Partly surrounding this is an
architectural composition of rusticated arcades, between which a
_château d’eau_ descends the hillside from a grotto surmounted by two
mighty river-gods, and forming the central motive of a majestic double
stairway of rusticated stonework. This leads up to the highest terrace,
which is crowned by Vignola’s exquisite casino, surely the most
beautiful garden-house in Italy. The motive of the arcades and stairway,
though fine in itself, may be criticized as too massive and important to
be in keeping with the delicate little building above; but once on the
upper terrace, the lack of proportion is no longer seen and all the
surroundings are harmonious. The composition is simple: around the
casino, with its light arcades raised on a broad flight of steps,
stretches a level box-garden with fountains, enclosed in a low wall
surmounted by the famous Canephoræ seen in every picture of
Caprarola—huge sylvan figures half emerging from their stone sheaths,
some fierce or solemn, some full of rustic laughter. The audacity of
placing that row of fantastic terminal divinities against reaches of
illimitable air girdled in mountains gives an indescribable touch of
poetry to the upper garden of Caprarola. There is a quality of
inevitableness about it—one feels of it, as of certain great verse, that
it could not have been otherwise, that, in Vasari’s happy phrase, it was
_born, not built_.
Not more than twelve miles from Caprarola lies the other famous villa
attributed to Vignola, and which one wishes he may indeed have built, if
only to show how a great artist can vary his resources in adapting
himself to a new theme. The Villa Lante, at Bagnaia, near Viterbo,
appears to have been the work not of one cardinal, but of four. Raphael
Riario, Cardinal Bishop of Viterbo, began it toward the end of the
fifteenth century, and the work, carried on by his successors in the
see, Cardinals Ridolfi and Gambara, was finally completed in 1588 by
Cardinal Montalto, nephew of Sixtus V, who bought the estate from the
bishops of Viterbo and bequeathed it to the Holy See. Percier and
Fontaine believe that several architects collaborated in the work, but
its unity of composition shows that the general scheme must have
originated in one mind, and Herr Gurlitt thinks there is nothing to
disprove that Vignola was its author.
[Illustration: THE CASINO, VILLA FARNESE, CAPRAROLA]
Lante, like Caprarola, has been exhaustively sketched and photographed,
but so perfect is it, so far does it surpass, in beauty, in
preservation, and in the quality of garden-magic, all the other great
pleasure-houses of Italy, that the student of garden-craft may always
find fresh inspiration in its study. If Caprarola is “a garden to look
out from,” Lante is one “to look into,” not in the sense that it is
enclosed, for its terraces command a wide horizon; but the pleasant
landscape surrounding it is merely accessory to the gardens, a last
touch of loveliness where all is lovely.
The designer of Lante understood this, and perceived that, the
surroundings being unobtrusive, he might elaborate the foreground. The
flower-garden occupies a level space in front of the twin pavilions; for
instead of one villa there are two at Lante, absolutely identical, and
connected by a _rampe douce_ which ascends between them to an upper
terrace. This peculiar arrangement is probably due to the fact that
Cardinal Montalto, who built the second pavilion, found there was no
other way of providing more house-room without disturbing the plan of
the grounds. The design of the flower-garden is intricate and beautiful,
and its box-bordered parterres surround one of the most famous and
beautiful fountains in Italy. The abundance of water at Lante enabled
the designer to produce a great variety of effects in what Germans call
the “water-art,” and nowhere was his invention happier than in planning
this central fountain. It stands in a square tank or basin, surrounded
by a balustrade, and crossed by four little bridges which lead to a
circular balustraded walk, enclosing an inner basin from the centre of
which rises the fountain. Bridges also cross from the circular walk to
the platform on which the fountain is built, so that one may stand under
the arch of the water-jets, and look across the garden through a mist of
spray.
Lante, doubly happy in its site, is as rich in shade as in water, and
the second terrace, behind the pavilions, is planted with ancient
plane-trees. Above this terrace rise three others, all wooded with plane
and ilex, and down the centre, from the woods above, rushes the cascade
which feeds the basin in the flower-garden. The terraces, with their
balustrades and obelisks and double flights of steps, form a stately
setting to this central _château d’eau_, through which the water gushes
by mossy steps and channels to a splendid central composition of
superimposed basins flanked by recumbent river-gods.
All the garden-architecture at Lante merits special study. The twin
pavilions seem plain and insignificant after the brilliant elevations of
the great Roman villas, but regarded as part of the garden-scheme, and
not as dominating it, they fall into their proper place, and are seen to
be good examples of the severe but pure style of the early cinque-cento.
Specially interesting also is the treatment of the retaining-wall which
faces the entrance to the grounds; and the great gates of the
flower-gardens, and the fountains and garden-houses on the upper
terraces, are all happy instances of Renaissance garden-art untouched by
_barocchismo_.
[Illustration: VILLA LANTE, BAGNAIA]
At Lante, also, one sees one of the earliest examples of the inclusion
of the woodland in the garden-scheme. All the sixteenth-century villas
had small groves adjacent to the house, and the shade of the natural
woodland was used, if possible, as a backing to the gardens; but at the
Villa Lante it is boldly worked into the general scheme, the terraces
and garden-architecture are skilfully blent with it, and its recesses
are pierced by grass alleys leading to clearings where pools surrounded
by stone seats slumber under the spreading branches.
The harmonizing of wood and garden is one of the characteristic features
of the villas at Frascati; but as these are mostly later in date than
the Lante grounds, priority of invention may be claimed for the designer
of the latter. It was undoubtedly from the Italian park of the
Renaissance that Le Nôtre learned the use of the woodland as an adjunct
to the garden; but in France these parks had for the most part to be
planted, whereas in Italy the garden-architect could use the natural
woodland, which was usually hilly, and the effects thus produced were
far more varied and interesting than those possible in the flat
artificial parks of France.
II
VILLA D’ESTE
Of the three great villas built by cardinals beyond the immediate
outskirts of Rome, the third and the most famous is the Villa d’Este at
Tivoli.
Begun before 1540 by the Cardinal Bishop of Cordova, the villa became
the property of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, son of Alfonso I of Ferrara,
who carried on its embellishment at the cost of over a million Roman
scudi. Thence it passed successively to two other cardinals of the house
of Este, who continued its adornment, and finally, in the seventeenth
century, was inherited by the ducal house of Modena.
The villa, an unfinished barrack-like building, stands on a piazza at
one end of the town of Tivoli, above gardens which descend the steep
hillside to the gorge of the Anio. These gardens have excited so much
admiration that little thought has been given to the house, though it is
sufficiently interesting to merit attention. It is said to have been
built by Pirro Ligorio, and surprising as it seems that this huge
featureless pile should have been designed by the creator of the Casino
del Papa, yet one observes that the rooms are decorated with the same
fantastic pebble-work used in such profusion at the Villa Pia. In
extenuation of the ugliness of the Villa d’Este it should, moreover, be
remembered that its long façade is incomplete, save for the splendid
central portico; and also that, while the Villa Pia was intended as
shelter for a summer afternoon, the great palace at Tivoli was planned
to house a cardinal and his guests, including, it is said, “a suite of
two hundred and fifty gentlemen of the noblest blood of Italy.” When one
pictures such a throng, with their innumerable retainers, it is easy to
understand why the Villa d’Este had to be expanded out of all likeness
to an ordinary country house.
[Illustration: THE POOL, VILLA D’ESTE, TIVOLI]
The plan is ingenious and interesting. From the village square only a
high blank wall is visible. Through a door in this wall one passes into
a frescoed corridor which leads to a court enclosed in an open arcade,
with fountains in rusticated niches. From a corner of the court a fine
intramural stairway descends to what is, on the garden side, the _piano
nobile_ of the villa. On this side, looking over the gardens, is a long
enfilade of rooms, gaily frescoed by the Zuccheri and their school; and
behind the rooms runs a vaulted corridor built against the side of the
hill, and lighted by bull’s-eyes in its roof. This corridor has lost its
frescoes, but preserves a line of niches decorated in coloured pebbles
and stucco-work, with gaily painted stucco caryatids supporting the
arches; and as each niche contains a semicircular fountain, the whole
length of the corridor must once have rippled with running water.
The central room opens on the great two-storied portico or loggia,
whence one descends by an outer stairway to a terrace running the length
of the building, and terminated at one end by an ornamental wall, at the
other by an open loggia overlooking the Campagna. From this upper
terrace, with its dense wall of box and laurel, one looks down on the
towering cypresses and ilexes of the lower gardens. The grounds are not
large, but the impression produced is full of a tragic grandeur. The
villa towers above so high and bare, the descent from terrace to terrace
is so long and steep, there are such depths of mystery in the infinite
green distances and in the cypress-shaded pools of the lower garden,
that one has a sense of awe rather than of pleasure in descending from
one level to another of darkly rustling green. But it is the omnipresent
rush of water which gives the Este gardens their peculiar character.
From the Anio, drawn up the hillside at incalculable cost and labour, a
thousand rills gush downward, terrace by terrace, channelling the stone
rails of the balusters, leaping from step to step, dripping into mossy
conchs, flashing in spray from the horns of sea-gods and the jaws of
mythical monsters, or forcing themselves in irrepressible overflow down
the ivy-matted banks. The whole length of the second terrace is edged by
a deep stone channel, into which the stream drips by countless outlets
over a quivering fringe of maidenhair. Every side path or flight of
steps is accompanied by its sparkling rill, every niche in the
retaining-walls has its water-pouring nymph or gushing urn; the solemn
depths of green reverberate with the tumult of innumerable streams. “The
Anio,” as Herr Tuckermann says, “throbs through the whole organism of
the garden like its inmost vital principle.”
[Illustration: VILLA LANTE, BAGNAIA]
The gardens of the Villa d’Este were probably begun by Pirro Ligorio,
and, as Herr Gurlitt thinks, continued later by Giacomo della Porta. It
will doubtless never be known how much Ligorio owed to the taste of
Orazio Olivieri, the famous hydraulic engineer, who raised the Anio to
the hilltop and organized its distribution through the grounds. But it
is apparent that the whole composition was planned about the central
fact of the rushing Anio: that the gardens were to be, as it were, an
organ on which the water played. The result is extraordinarily romantic
and beautiful, and the versatility with which the stream is used, the
varying effects won from it, bear witness to the imaginative feeling of
the designer.
When all has been said in praise of the poetry and charm of the Este
gardens, it must be owned that from the architect’s standpoint they are
less satisfying than those of the other great cinque-cento villas. The
plan is worthy of all praise, but the details are too complicated, and
the ornament is either trivial or cumbrous. So inferior is the
architecture to that of the Lante gardens and Caprarola that Burckhardt
was probably right in attributing much of it to the seventeenth century.
Here for the first time one feels the heavy touch of the baroque. The
fantastic mosaic and stucco temple containing the water-organ above the
great cascade, the arches of triumph, the celebrated “grotto of
Arethusa,” the often-sketched fountain on the second terrace, all seem
pitiably tawdry when compared with the garden-architecture of Raphael or
Vignola. Some of the details of the composition are absolutely
puerile—such as the toy model of an ancient city, thought to be old
Rome, and perhaps suggested by the miniature “Valley of Canopus” in the
neighbouring Villa of Hadrian; and there are endless complications of
detail, where the earlier masters would have felt the need of breadth
and simplicity. Above all, there is a want of harmony between the
landscape and its treatment. The baroque garden-architecture of Italy is
not without charm, and even a touch of the grotesque has its attraction
in the flat gardens of Lombardy or the sunny Euganeans; but the
cypress-groves of the Villa d’Este are too solemn, and the Roman
landscape is too august, to suffer the nearness of the trivial.
III
FRASCATI
The most famous group of villas in the Roman country-side lies on the
hill above Frascati. Here, in the middle of the sixteenth century,
Flaminio Ponzio built the palace of Mondragone for Cardinal Scipione
Borghese.[4] Aloft among hanging ilex-woods rises the mighty pile on its
projecting basement. This fortress-like ground floor, with high-placed
grated windows, is common to all the earlier villas on the
brigand-haunted slopes of Frascati. An avenue of ancient ilexes (now
cruelly cut down) leads up through the park to the villa, which is
preceded by a great walled courtyard, with fountains in the usual
rusticated niches. To the right of this court is another, flanked by the
splendid loggia of Vignola, with the Borghese eagles and dragons
alternating in its sculptured spandrels, and a vaulted ceiling adorned
with _stucchi_—one of the most splendid pieces of garden-architecture in
Italy.
Footnote 4:
The villa was begun by Martino Lunghi the Elder, in 1567, for the
Cardinal Marco d’Altemps, enlarged by Pope Gregory VII, and completed
by Paul V and his nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese. See Gustav Ebe,
“Die Spätrenaissance.”
[Illustration: CASCADE AND ROTUNDA, VILLA ALDOBRANDINI, FRASCATI]
At the other end of this inner court, which was formerly a
flower-garden, Giovanni Fontana, whose name is identified with the
fountains of Frascati, constructed a _théâtre d’eau_, raised above the
court, and approached by a double ramp elaborately inlaid in mosaic.
This ornate composition, with a series of mosaic niches simulating
arcaded galleries in perspective, is now in ruins, and the most
impressive thing about Mondragone is the naked majesty of its great
terrace, unadorned save by a central fountain and two tall twisted
columns, and looking out over the wooded slopes of the park to Frascati,
the Campagna, and the sea.
On a neighbouring height lies the more famous Villa Aldobrandini, built
for the cardinal of that name by Giacomo della Porta in 1598, and said
by Evelyn, who saw it fifty years later, “to surpass the most delicious
places ... for its situation, elegance, plentiful water, groves, ascents
and prospects.”
The house itself does not bear comparison with such buildings as the
Villa Medici or the Villa Pamphily. In style it shows the first stage of
the baroque, before that school had found its formula. Like all the
hill-built villas of Frascati, it is a story lower at the back than in
front; and the roof of this lower story forms at each end a terrace
level with the first-floor windows. These terraces are adorned with two
curious turrets, resting on baroque basements and crowned by
swallow-tailed crenellations—a fantastic reversion to mediævalism, more
suggestive of “Strawberry Hill Gothic” than of the Italian seventeenth
century.