new palace which was to bear his name and fitly domicile the princely
family he was founding, he, and his descendants after him, used for
its decoration the rare marbles and minor artistic trophies from the
baths. No doubt, it seemed to them a happy inspiration to turn these
gigantic granite tubs into a pair of fountains; for these notable
fountains are, in the last analysis, simply huge bathtubs, rendered
imposing by their size, and magnificent by the material out of which
they are made. They are seventeen feet long and about three feet deep,
and are absolutely devoid of decoration except for the lion’s head
carved in relief, low down in the middle of each side--and this is
merely an ornamental outlet for the water, quite as necessary to the
original purpose for which these tubs were made as are the handles
carved high up on either side under the curved rim, simulating metal
rings through which the bronze staves had been inserted whenever it was
found necessary to move the tubs. Carlo and Girolamo Rainaldi, who, in
1612, adapted for Cardinal Odoardo Farnese this furniture of the past
to seventeenth-century decorative purposes, could think of no more
original design than that of the well-known Italian fountain of their
own day. They placed each of the tubs in a large, elegantly curved
basin similar to those in the Piazza Navona standing some two feet
above the pavement. In the middle of each tub they erected a sumptuous
Italian vase, its large, swelling stem, richly carved, upholding an
elaborate shallow bowl, oblong in shape, out of which rises as the
fountain’s final consummation a highly conventional fleur-de-lis, the
emblem of the Farnese family. This is overwrought with fine stone
traceries, and sends upward from its centre convolution a single
slender stream of water. Additional jets, of no artistic value, rise
one on either side in each of the lower basins. This modern work is all
in travertine.
The combination of the severely classic lines of the baths with the
Gothic carving and mediæval emblem of the fleur-de-lis is not good. It
is disastrous to the design as a composition and makes these fountains
archæological curiosities rather than artistic creations. Still, the
Farnese fountains impose by their qualities of size and strength, and
once seen can never be forgotten.
The pleasure derived from the sight of a pair of fountains is not
merely double the pleasure that is felt at the sight of one. The two
objects, though exactly similar, create by their mutual relation an
entirely new set of æsthetic emotions. The feeling for balance and
composition is aroused, and this particular pleasure is produced
in no small degree by these two fountains. Twin fountains are an
unusual feature. There are few of them in the world; and in Rome,
whose fountains are perhaps still unnumbered, there are but five--the
fountains of St. Peter’s, the side fountains of the Piazza del Popolo,
the two end fountains of the Piazza Navona, Vansantio’s fountains in
the Villa Borghese, and these of the Piazza Farnese.
Mr. John Evelyn also describes in his journal the custom of his day for
the Roman gentry to take their airing in the Piazza Farnese, driving
or walking before the palace and about the fountains, whose water gave
to all the architectural magnificence that touch of freshness and
charm essential to the Roman idea of a pleasure-ground. That Evelyn
was taken to the Farnese Palace the very first day of his sojourn
in Rome is significant. The Roman of 1644 evidently considered this
palace and its precincts to be Rome’s chief attraction; and this
proves that in spite of the efforts of Paul V (Borghese), who had died
some twenty years previously (1621), and of Urban VIII (Barberini),
then just passing away, the Farnese pontiff, Paul III, dead for a
century past, had succeeded in giving and preserving to his family an
importance and magnificence hardly to be emulated and impossible to
surpass. The bronze and marble tomb of Paul III is in St. Peter’s, to
the left of the tribune. It contains the dust of as worldly a person,
to quote Ranke, as ever Pope had been. Yet if his actions cannot be
said to “smell sweet and blossom in the dust,” his memory survives in
the annals of Rome, fragrant with the love and pride of his people. He
was an old, old man when he died in 1549. He had been fifteen years
Pope and forty years a cardinal. The date of his birth carries the
mind back to the years before Columbus. His education, conducted by
Pomponeus Lætus, had begun in the full tide of the High Renaissance. In
his early twenties he became a member of the household of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, at whose table and in whose gardens he had met the most
brilliant men of his time and had heard talk that embraced all that
was then known or surmised of art and learning. For Constantinople had
fallen to the Turk only a generation before that time, and what had
survived of Greek culture, fleeing across the seas to Italy, had found
its chief shelter and patronage in the household of the great Medici.
While in Florence, young Farnese must have heard Savonarola preach; but
no trace of the great Dominican’s influence is to be found throughout
his long life. The classic spirit enthralled his intellect, and the
splendor of the Medici prince captured his imagination. In later years
his careful Latinity, his splendid and liberal manner, and his gay and
witty conversation, together with his patronage of artists and his
passion for the antique, proved how profoundly he had been influenced
by the experiences of his early youth. Placed thus in the very heart of
a movement which freed the individual from all limitations save those
of his own personality and opened the world before him, he early made
up his mind to become Pope and to raise his own family, as the Medici
had done, to the rank of princes. The ambition was perhaps common, but
the ability with which he pursued these aims for upward of sixty years
was not common, and their complete achievement was little short of the
marvellous. It took him forty years to reach St. Peter’s chair, and
he occupied it only fifteen; but before he died one of his grandsons
had married a daughter of Charles V, the Emperor of Austria; another
was betrothed to the daughter of the King of France; and two more were
cardinals and multimillionaires. Later on, his descendants married
into the royal houses of Portugal and Spain, and the Farnese family
passed out of existence only by being merged by marriage into the royal
house of the Neapolitan Bourbons. One grandson, Cardinal Alessandro
Farnese II, was the chief art patron of his time, and this in an age
when there were many such men; and one great-grandson was that Duke
of Parma whose fame as a great captain is written in what were, until
the second decade of the twentieth century, the bloodiest annals of
the Netherlands. To provide a suitable setting for this princely
family, the Pope, some five years before his death, began this Farnese
Palace. Antonio da San Gallo, the younger, Giacomo della Porta, and
Michelangelo designed its façades and cornice. The great structure was
completed long after the Pope’s death by Alessandro Farnese II. It
was recognized at once to be the most sumptuous of the Roman palaces.
It stands upon the site of the old Palazzo Ferriz, which was at one
time the residence of the Spanish ambassador, and had passed into the
possession of the Augustine monks of the Piazza del Popolo. The old
Ferriz Palace had been on the Tiber bank, for it was not until Julius
II’s time that the _Strada_, or Via Giulia, was cut through, thus
separating the palace from the river. Where these fountains now stand
as the ornaments of a spacious piazza, there was at that time nothing
but a collection of hovels extending as far as the Campo de’ Fiori. The
far-sighted young cardinal--the Farnese were thrifty, for all their
magnificence--bought the old palace from the monks, and lived there in
ever-increasing splendor under the successive pontificates of Julius
II, Leo X, and Adrian VI.
Finally, under Clement VII, the great sack of the city caused him to
fly to the Castle of St. Angelo. As in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew,
forty-seven years later, only those Huguenot gentlemen survived who
were kept in the King’s closet, so during the horrors of the sack only
those cardinals escaped outrage who were sheltered with the Pope in
the Castle of St. Angelo. Farnese by this time ranked next to the Pope
in importance, and he was, of course, among these. From the Castle he
witnessed, with the terrified Clement, the devastation inflicted upon
the latter’s exquisite pleasure-house on Monte Mario, an act of wanton
vandalism committed by the Colonna to spite the Pope. Some ten years
later Cardinal Farnese bought this wrecked palace, restored it, and
presented it to his daughter-in-law, Margaret of Austria, who rested
there on her triumphal wedding procession into Rome. It is called after
her to this day the Villa Madama.
In 1540, when the old Palazzo Ferriz was destroyed to make room for
the Palazzo Farnese, the workmen came as usual upon traces of earlier
times. Modern archæologists have discovered that the mosaic pavement
under the right wing of the palace was a part of the flooring of the
Barracks of the “Red Squadron of Charioteers.” It has been generally
supposed that the new palace was built of stone from the Coliseum,
but its materials came from numerous and varied sources. The great
travertine blocks were quarried at Tivoli; and Paul III obtained
permission to demolish and use for his building the partly ruined
battlemented monastery of St. Lorenzo Outside the Walls. After this
quarry was exhausted, his nephews obtained the ruins of Porto, the
Baths of Caracalla, and what was still more important the remains of
the greatest temple of imperial Rome--Aurelian’s Temple of the Sun,
which, at that date still towered one hundred feet above the Colonna
gardens.
[Illustration: One of the fountains in the Piazza Farnese.]
Contemporary artists sketched these various structures as the masons
destroyed them, so that students of the present day can form some
idea of their classic grandeur, and can judge for themselves the value
of the Farnese Palace on the one hand and on the other that of the
imperial baths and temple, and the mediæval monastery, out of which it
is built.
The great new palace made necessary the great new square in front of
it; but years before this the Pope had begun that regeneration of Rome
for which he is so gratefully remembered.
The entry into Rome of Charles V, on the 5th of April, 1534, first
aroused the Romans to the deplorable condition of their city, and,
under the Pope’s enlightened guidance, the preparations for the
imperial visitor took the form of permanent and far-reaching municipal
improvements, which improvements were carried on throughout the
entire period of Paul III’s pontificate. The enlarging of such great
thoroughfares as the Babuino and Condotti date from this time, as
does also the modern Corso, this last finally superseding the Via
Giulia as the fashionable resort. Paul III preferred the old Palazzo
di Venezia at its foot to any other residence, and he connected it
with the Campidoglio by the great viaduct, lately destroyed; while for
him Michelangelo designed the Campanile of the Senate House. A great
Roman of the present day asserts that the fifteen years of Paul III’s
pontificate comprise one of the happiest periods in the city’s life.
When Margaret of Austria rode through the Porta del Popolo, “two hours
before sunset, dressed in white satin embroidered in pearls and gold,”
it was not merely a curious crowd who met and welcomed her. That
concourse of citizens represented the self-respect of the Romans, risen
from the abasement of a decade, and eager to prove to the daughter of
the world’s greatest sovereign their worthiness to be her subjects.
They could not know that Margaret felt contempt for her youthful
husband, nor that in the long duel between Paul III and the Emperor of
Austria she stood not for Rome but for Austria, saying once when her
assistance was sought that she had rather cut off her children’s heads
than ask her father to do anything that displeased him! These were
matters for the Farnese to deal with. So far as Rome was concerned,
with the entry of the Emperor’s daughter, its place among the cities of
the world became once more important and imposing.
Charles V might despise the upstart Farnese as Francis I had
laughed at Cesare Borgia, but the self-made Italians of the
Renaissance--churchmen, merchants, and condottieri, were forces which
hereditary monarchy could not do without. Spain had the riches of the
New World; France and England were breeding the manhood of Europe; but
Italy held the keys to the past--to the culture for which men’s souls
longed. The time was not yet--in 1540--although it was close at hand,
when Italy’s deliberate choice of evil rather than good finally made
her, by weakening and corrupting her, a captive to Spain. Time was not
yet; and in that last lingering glow of her greatness and freedom the
old Pope, Paul III, moves as her incarnate spirit. To a figure slight
and stately, though with stooping shoulders, was united a shrewd and
kindly countenance, with a massive nose and flowing beard, mobile lips
and piercing eyes. His voice was modulated, and his manner gracious and
noble. This outer man held guard over a mind so crafty and tenacious,
so secretive and resourceful, that to the Venetian ambassador--ever the
most astute observer--he remained a fascinating and baffling enigma;
while for Cardinal Mendoza and the Emperor he was an antagonist whom,
for all their secret Austrian contempt and bitter hatred, they could
not afford to ignore.
It was remarked that the Pope never wished to hear or to speak of
his predecessor. He felt that the election of Clement VII had robbed
him of fourteen years of the papacy. Posterity may well share his
prejudice, for it seems safe to assume that, had Paul III been Pope
in 1527, Bourbon’s soldiers would never have got within sight of the
city walls; there would have been, in fact, no sack of Rome. The Pope
felt with all the force of his Italian nature the danger to Italy from
the side of Spain. Better patriot than priest, he had made secret
treaties with the Protestants as a weapon against the Spaniard; and
while no one realized more keenly than he the necessity of reforms in
the Church, yet he dreaded them lest they might in any way weaken the
strength of the papacy. His singular ability to unite the fortunes of
his family with profitable political undertakings runs throughout his
long life; but this nepotism, which no pope ever carried further, and
for which he has been unsparingly censured by historians, represents
the kindliest strain in his nature. It was the human side; and it was
the direct cause of his death. In a dispute over retaining the Duchy
of Parma in his family, the Pope’s grandson, Octavius, opposed the old
pontiff. Paul felt this ingratitude deeply, and spoke openly about it
to the Venetian ambassador. The day after All Saints’ Day, 1549, the
old man repaired to his villa on Monte Cavallo “to ease his mind,” and
from there he sent for Alessandro Farnese II. He came, this magnificent
young cardinal, handsome, courtly, the great art patron, the lover of
scholars and poets, the finest flower of the Farnese, a grandson and
namesake of whom Paul III was justly proud. The cardinal was the Pope’s
darling, and from him Paul felt he could expect support and sympathy.
The interview, however, soon became stormy. High words passed. The
Pope flew into a rage and snatched the biretta from the cardinal’s
head. He had discovered that Alessandro also was carrying on a secret
counterplot against him, and the discovery broke the old man’s heart.
Such a violent attack of anger at the age of eighty-three brought on
an illness from which he had neither the strength nor the wish to
recover, and in a week’s time Paul III was dead. Even after his death
the Romans loved him--a rare tribute to any pope--and all Rome went to
kiss his feet. He had been the first Roman to occupy St. Peter’s chair
in over one hundred years, and the Romans felt his virtues and his
failings to be their own. Fifteen years before, they had carried him
on their shoulders into old St. Peter’s for his coronation, and now
they buried him there. His tomb cost twenty-four thousand Roman crowns,
and is the masterpiece of Guglielmo della Porta. The two recumbent
statues upon it are said to be after a sketch by Michelangelo. The
connection of Michelangelo’s name with the tomb is interesting, but
of greater interest is the romantic legend which surrounds the statue
of the younger woman. This figure, once called Truth and now known
to be Justice, is said to be the portrait of Paul III’s sister, and
this recalls the fact that the fortunes of the princely family of the
Farnese rest upon no more honorable basis than the passion of Alexander
VI (Borgia) for this sister, the beautiful Giulia Farnese. No one can
study the statue on the tomb without understanding how it was that this
magnificent creature seemed to the men of her time the flesh-and-blood
presentment of those Pagan goddesses whom they all, secretly or openly,
worshipped. The superb body is now concealed by Bernini’s hideous
leaden draperies, but the carelessly waving hair and tiny ear have
witchery even in the marble, while the face possesses that solemnity
of perfect beauty found only in the masterpieces of the Greeks. Never
before or since was such a price paid for the Red Hat! Alexander
VI made the young brother, Alessandro Farnese, aged twenty-five, a
cardinal, and Giulia Farnese went to reign in those Borgia apartments,
decorated by all the genius of Pinturicchio, and at once the pride and
disgrace of the Vatican. The young cardinal was nicknamed the Petticoat
Cardinal; but he seems to have felt no compunction at the transaction.
With the Romans, as with the Parisians, ridicule is the most powerful
engine of destruction; and the fact that Alessandro Farnese lived this
sobriquet down, proves, as nothing else can prove, the hold he had upon
the Roman people.
Any account of Paul III would be incomplete without some reference to
his extraordinary belief in astrology. It was quite a recognized fact
that he never even considered any scheme, public or private, before
consulting the planets. If the heavenly bodies were not in favorable
conjunction, the enterprise was given up, or as nearly given up as
was possible to so obstinate and tenacious a mind. In his own time
this singular characteristic was felt to be incongruous and rather
disgraceful; but it is easy for the modern spirit to understand, and
even condone, the weakness. Surely, it was not strange that such a man,
with such a life, should feel that “the stars in their courses fought”
for him.
The impression made upon the mind by the Farnese fountains is not
pleasing. They are certainly “rare and vast,” but as fountains they
are not a success. The form overshadows the substance; for the single
jet of water thrown upward over the structural part of the fountain
is not adequate, and is lost in the effect produced upon the eye
by the huge tubs turned black by the deposits of the Acqua Paola;
while the water falling back into these receptacles is caught as in
a prison, the overflow from the upper to the lower basins being not
sufficient to give an idea of a copious stream. The monster granite
baths have a sepulchral effect. They seem more like coffins made to
hold the bones of departed heroes than like basins for receiving
and distributing living water. During more than two centuries these
fountains bore witness to the magnificence of the Farnese family; but
as that magnificence had been sought and held for reasons as purely
personal and selfish as men have ever known, it had no real value or
significance for the world. No memories of patriotism or ghost of
romance hangs over these fountains, or over the palace which they
guard. The family and the splendor once were, and now are not; and all
the sunshine which daily floods the spacious piazza fails to reanimate
the majestic vacancy of the façade, or to lift the gloom from the
dejected and sombre fountains.
VILLA GIULIA
[Illustration]
VILLA GIULIA
I. FONTANA PUBBLICA DI GIULIO III
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,
* * * * *
So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were
girdled round.
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, where blossomed
many an incense-bearing tree,
* * * * *
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice....”
The Villa Giulia is the Italian version of “Kubla Khan,” not built
by “lofty rhyme,” but constructed of actual stone and marble for a
pleasure-loving pontiff of the Cinque Cento. The desire to realize
the poet’s vision is often felt by absolute monarchs. Versailles,
San Souci, and the Hermitage show what unlimited power, wealth, and
caprice have accomplished in that direction; but none of the northern
sovereigns possessed either the climate, soil, historical, poetic,
and pictorial setting or the artists, architects, and marvellous art
treasures which were at the command of Pope Julius III.
When this pontiff, whose election dates from 1550, decided to build
a pleasure-house upon the vineyard in the Via Flaminia, which he had
inherited from his uncle, the elder Cardinal Monte, he bought up
adjoining property from various landowners, so that his domain finally
extended from the Tiber eastward up the Valle Giulia and adjoining
slopes of Monte Parioli. The southern boundaries have not yet been
fully determined, but those to the north extended as far as the Chapel
of St. Andrea, a beautiful little building erected by Vignola to
commemorate Pope Julius’s (then Cardinal Monte) deliverance from the
soldiery at the time of the sack of Rome in 1527. The Via Flaminia was
at that time the fashionable drive. It was lined by fine villas and
palaces, and Amannati alludes to it as the “beautiful Via Flaminia.”
The approach to it was from the Piazza del Popolo, then a place of
gardens, through the fine Porta del Popolo which, begun so long before
under Pope Sixtus IV, had just been finished by Michelangelo and
Vignola. The fine avenue extended as far as the Ponte Molle, where it
crossed the Tiber, and, after skirting the western slopes of Monte
Soracte, began its long march to the north. A little road (called
the Via del Arco Oscuro) leading up from the Tiber crossed the Via
Flaminia at right angles and climbed up the Valle Giulia, turning
abruptly toward the northern spur of Monte Parioli. The original Monte
property lay along this little road; and it was at the head of this
thoroughfare, where it turned sharply to the north and therefore at
some distance from the Via Flaminia and on much higher ground, that
Pope Julius decided to build his villa. Its creation quickly became
the absorbing passion of his life. The greatest architects of the time
were employed upon it and no expense was spared. After Pope Julius’s
death, the entire place was confiscated by the Camera Apostolica for
thirty-seven thousand scudi, the estimated amount of Pope Julius’s
debts.
The Monte Pope (Julius III belonged to the Roman family of Monte) would
leave the Vatican by the passage leading to the Castle of St. Angelo,
take there a magnificent barge and be rowed up the great sweep of the
Tiber to the landing-place at the foot of the Arco Oscuro. Here a
fine flight of steps was constructed leading up to a vaulted pergola
which traversed the fields between the Tiber and the Via Flaminia.
The pergola was a bower of verdure and terminated in a fine building
and gateway bordering the Tiber side of the Via Flaminia. Here it was
necessary to cross the great highway in order to begin the ascent of
the Arco Oscuro, which led directly to his new villa. The highway was
dusty, and the _salita_ or ascent long and steep, and the Pope decided
to create a resting-place at this point. He had begun digging for water
very early, while cultivating his vineyard, “without ever having had
the slightest indication that water could be found there.” Eventually
he accomplished his purpose, for he succeeded in bringing to his
vineyard the leakage waters of the Virgo Aqueduct. The “leakage” was
very much in the nature of a tap, and the proceeding was high-handed
and reprehensible to a degree. In imperial days such tampering with the
aqueducts was visited by punishment which Frontinus considered not too
severe for so great a crime against the public welfare.