following his death the Virgo Aqueduct had already ceased to supply
the city, and his successors, Pius IV, Pius V, and Gregory XIII, were
obliged to begin and carry on a systematic and thorough restoration
and enlargement of the aqueduct. For Julius III the wonderful water
was only a perquisite belonging to the “good gift of the papacy,” and
he devoted his short pontificate to its exploitation and adornment,
possibly silencing his scruples by the thought that the construction
of a public fountain on this highway justified his manner of obtaining
the water. At the two opposite angles of the Via Flaminia and the
Arco Oscuro, where the ascent toward his villa began, he erected two
fountains, blunting the acute end of each angle by a mostra or high
façade from the base of which issued the water. The fountain on the
right-hand side was a drinking-trough for horses, while that on the
left was one of the most beautiful and interesting fountains in all
Rome. It was the work of Bartolomeo Amannati, possibly assisted
by Vignola; and very often must the youthful Domenico Fontana have
studied it, for the famous “Fontana Fountain” is only a modification of
this truly beautiful work of the dying Renaissance. It is noticeable
that Amannati’s fountain is not a screen nor a gateway; its mostra
stands against a solid background with severely plain wings of the
same height flanking it at an angle on either side. This mostra is of
peperino in the Corinthian order, the columns supporting a fine classic
entablature and pediment. The apex of the pediment was surmounted by
a colossal statue of Neptune, and the corners of it terminated in two
pedestals carrying, the one a Minerva, and the other a Rome. Between
these two figures and the Neptune were two minor pedestals marking
the architectural termination of the great central division of the
fountain, and on these stood two small obelisks, a feature borrowed by
Fontana for his fountain of the Moses. The arch of the central division
held between its Corinthian pillars the huge square slab with the
inscription:
JULIUS III PONT. MAX. PUBLICÆ
COMMODITATI ANNO III
The niches on either side of this slab once contained statues, one of
Happiness and the other of Abundance, a design embodied two hundred
years later in the background of the Fountain of Trevi. The basin
for receiving the water did not extend across the full width of the
mostra, but was, and is (for this still remains), a noble white
granite conca standing at the foot of the central division under the
inscription. It originally received the water from a beautiful antique
head of Apollo. All this is described in a letter written by the
architect himself, Amannati, from Rome in 1555, and there follows a
description of the arcade behind the fountain. This consists of three
loggias with Corinthian columns, making a semihexagonal design and
carrying a vaulted roof ornamented by pictures and exquisite stucco
work. This was where “his Holiness got repose without incommoding
the public,” which, on the other side of the wall, refreshed itself
and its beasts of burden from the public fountain. The columns were
joined together by a balustrade, and the three-sided colonnade held
in its embrace a large fish-pond with various _jets d’eau_. Beyond
this architectural loveliness stretched long walks bordered with
fruit-trees and espaliers, and up these paths the Pope walked when,
refreshed after his long journey from the Vatican, and eager to see
what his workmen had concluded over night, he finally decided to go on
to the villa on the hill. This beautiful fountain and its loggias have
suffered more than customary outrage from time, neglect, and stupidity.
There would seem to be no vile use to which the loggias have not been
put; and the superimposition of the Casino of Pope Pius IV, which is
now recognized to be the work of Piero Ligorio, has entirely altered
the proportions and beauty of the public fountain. The fate of Pope
Julius’s creation, from the time of his death until 1900, is poorly
outlined in the various half-obliterated escutcheons and inscriptions
which now ornament the fountain and its superstructural Casino. As the
villa and all the land about it had been immediately sequestered by
the Apostolic Chamber in spite of the protests of Julius III’s legal
heirs before a tardy compensation was awarded them, this portion of the
Monte property was divided by Pope Pius IV between a son of the Duke
of Tuscany “who was to have the usufruct for his lifetime” and his own
two nephews, Carlo and Federigo Borromeo. A sister of these Borromeo
brothers married a Colonna, and the property was bestowed upon her as
dowry. It remained in that family until 1900, when it was purchased by
the present owner, Cavaliere Giuseppe Balestra, who already owned the
adjoining villa on the high ground, which might have been a part of the
original Villa Giulia, since it corresponds to that land which Julius
III had acquired from Cardinal Poggio and Cardinal San Vitelleschi.
The Medici escutcheon may have been placed there either by the Duke
of Tuscany or by Pius IV. The Pope was of very humble Milanese origin
and had no connection whatever with the great family whose name he
happened to have; but after he became Pope, the Duke Cosimo I, who
found it to his interest to have the Pope on his side, permitted him
to use the escutcheon. Contrary to the decent Roman custom,[B] the
original inscription of Julius III was removed in the first quarter of
the seventeenth century, by that one of the Colonna who inherited the
property after the death of the last descendant of the earlier branch.
He placed his own, the present, inscription in place of it, sparing the
inscription to Carlo Borromeo, either because of Borroraeo’s connection
with the Colonna family or because of the great veneration felt by
everyone for the memory of the sainted young cardinal. It was also at
this time that the beautiful antique head of Apollo was replaced by the
Colonna escutcheon and the sculptured trophies. The inscription on the
small tablet under the spring of the arch relates that in 1750 Pope
Benedict XIV gave to the Colonna family the right to draw “two ounces”
of water daily from the receiving-tank of the Trevi Fountain for use in
their Roman palace as a recompense to them for their gift to the public
of the Trevi Water in this old fountain.[C]
Those who visit the Villa Giulia in the morning hours may see the
Campagna carts on their way back from Rome drawn up before the public
fountain of Pope Julius III, and the sleepy drivers, tired horses, and
responsible little dogs refreshing themselves with the water.
[Illustration: Fountain of the Virgins.]
So far the picture created more than three hundred and fifty years
ago remains the same; fundamental customs do not change in Rome. But
on the other side of the wall, where once sat and talked the joyous
Pope and his company, what ruin and desolation! Some day the Italian
Government will sweep the crumbling loggias free from dust and rubbish
and tear away the protecting foliage, not redeeming but unmasking the
desecration of the centuries. To-day the dark water in the rough garden
tanks, the unpruned trees and wild flowers, the old mule stabled under
the ruined loggias where hay is stored, the mysterious gloom of the
vaulted roof above the Corinthian capitals and everywhere black shadows
of impenetrable depth make up a scene whose like can in all probability
be found only among the engravings of Piranesi.
[Illustration]
II. THE NYMPHÆUM OR “SECRET FOUNTAIN”
The Villa Giulia proper is designated in the old Italian books as
l’Invenzione nella Vigna Giulia, and the literal English translation
of invention not inappropriately describes this truly marvellous
creation. Amannati, Vasari, Vignola,[D] and even the aged Michelangelo
spent themselves upon the architectural devices by which this
pleasure-house became a place of almost fabulous beauty. Consummate
knowledge of perspective was employed in making the building, which is
not at all large, seem so, and the only defect in the entire design
is, as might have been expected, the Pope’s fault, for Julius insisted
upon working into the loggias in the rear of the upper court of the
fountain a gift of columns, beautiful in themselves but too small for
the surrounding proportions, thus making that part of the construction
appear insignificant and inferior to the rest. The Pope’s changing
caprice wearied even the good-natured Vasari, who has left the record
that “there was no getting the villa done”; and it was not long before
Vignola, a man of genuine and independent genius, wearied utterly of
serving such a master and went off with the great Cardinal Farnese to
build the latter’s villa of Caprarola, where he could work at peace and
for an appreciative and sympathetic patron.
The last remains of Aurelian’s Temple of the Sun were presented by
Prince Colonna to the Pope and went into the fabric of the villa, and
a great collection of portrait busts of the Emperors, found in the
villa of Hadrian, helped to adorn the loggias and niches. The villa was
filled with rare marbles, tables, statues, and vases, and the marble
columns of the central loggia were so lustrous that Amannati says they
mirrored every one who entered there. As the villa is constructed on
the hillside, various levels are the natural result, and this feature
has been used with diverse and happy effects. The various courts are
all on different planes while, with the one exception of the grand
double stairway in the central court, all the stairs are cunningly
concealed so that there is no suggestion of physical effort as the
eye passes from one plane to another. The vaulted roofs of the long
semicircular galleries and various rooms were decorated with paintings
or with stucco work of the most exquisite perfection. Traces of this
last are still to be seen above the niches containing the colossal
river-gods, the Tiber and the Arno (Amannati was a Florentine). The
place was truly a Palace of Art. Nothing but beauty was permitted
to enter it. Stables, offices, and kitchens were placed outside the
villa, and the one house which stood within the villa grounds--that
of the keeper or custodian--was designed and decorated with great
care, so that, according to Amannati, the entire invention was of
such beauty that it was in itself “good enough for any great prince.”
Nothing remains of this splendor but the bare shell, and this has been
so tampered with that it is only from old plans or from outlines of
restoration by Letarouilly and Stern that a true conception can be
obtained of the villa of Pope Julius III. It is necessary to know,
for instance, that the front court, now a commonplace garden, was
originally a great paved cortile filled with statuary now in the
Vatican or scattered far and wide over Italy. The loggia leading up
and out of this court was originally closed and entered by doors. The
shallow, broad stairway leading down from the right-hand garden under
the terraces was put in for the benefit of the cavalry quartered there
during a petty war of the eighteenth century, when the horses were
taken down to drink at the Nymphæum! The present gardens in no wise
represent the beautiful formal gardens which stretched there on either
side of the various courts, and the present walls cannot possibly
enclose that space which was once filled with orange groves and every
sort of device for fastidious delight. Somewhere in those grounds,
probably on the right hand, there was a monticello or little hill
from which could be seen the Tiber, the Seven Hills, the “beautiful
Strada Flaminia,” the Vatican, and the vast erection of new St.
Peter’s overtopping and gradually engulfing the old basilica, the view
extending even to the sea. Under the high ground still held in place
by a great retaining wall were grottos beautifully decorated by stucco
and painting and icy cold even in summer. In the woods, where the
Italian pastime of snaring birds was carefully provided for, there were
accommodations for every kind of animal, and everywhere there were
fountains, marble seats, and antique garden statuary.
Louis XIV, for whom careful plans of the villa were drawn, wisely
made no attempt to copy the enchanted palace of Italy. Versailles
makes up in size for the beauty of color, architecture, vegetation,
and art treasures here formed into one beautiful whole by Pope Julius
III. The shape of the Villa Giulia is significant. It is a series of
gardens, loggias, and courts, one enclosing the other, each richer in
ornamentation, more ravishing in beauty than the last, until finally
the heart of the creation is reached, and the “secret fountain” of
the Acqua Vergine is discovered flowing out of the shadow and from
a hidden source into a sunlit Nymphæum of marvellous beauty and
again mysteriously disappearing into the shadow. The Fountain of the
Virgins, as it came to be called, was felt by its creator, Amannati,
to be beyond the power of description. Writing to a friend in Padua,
soon after Pope Julius’s death, he describes the entire villa in
extraordinary detail, noting the attitude even of many of the statues;
but when, after pages of description, he has brought his reader to the
lowest court of all, his pen fails him and he says that unless he can
paint a picture of this court and fountain he will never be able to
give his friend “any conception of this, the loveliest, richest, and
most marvellous place in the entire creation.” Amannati saw it in its
first splendor. The caryatides were perfect, white, and gleaming, and
perhaps beautiful. The niches round about were filled with marble boys
carrying urns upon their shoulders from which the water was poured
into the semicircular stream at their feet. It is impossible to tell
from the description of the old pictures what, if any, statue filled
the central niche behind the virgins. At present the niche holds a
great white marble swan, now almost hidden by fern, from whose bill
the water trickles into the black pool beneath. The pavement, made of
every conceivable kind of marble, glowed like a jewel. The balustrade
above held graceful statues and on either side of the court just above
stood a great plane-tree, giving delicious verdure and shade. Then,
as now, the water came from large reservoirs hidden beneath the upper
terrace to the east of the fountain; then, as now, it was carried off
over gentle, rough-paved inclines; then, as now, it fell steeply into
a subterranean cavern--the entire construction producing waves of cool
air and a ripple and murmur of water exquisitely refreshing to both eye
and ear. It is almost necessary to forgive Pope Julius his attack upon
the aqueduct. Never before or since has the Acqua Vergine received such
poetic treatment.
Nothing remains of this beauty but the water and the masonry. Pope
Julius was hardly buried before the spoliation of his villa began.
Like the Pope’s beautiful resting-place behind the public fountain,
the Nymphæum has endured three centuries of vile usage and neglect.
Nowhere in Rome is it more necessary to use imagination than in the
Villa Giulia. The visitor should descend into the lowest court on a
day of brilliant sunshine and, standing before the Fountain of the
Virgins, replace for himself the lost lustre of the columns, the
whiteness of the balustrades, the rich coloring of mural paintings and
stucco, and the gleam of antique statuary. He should see the flickering
shadows cast by the great plane-trees across the marble pavement, and
hear the birds twittering or calling from the aviaries which were in
the loggia wall above the river-gods. He must fancy the fitful music
of stringed instruments, the perfume from the orange groves drifting
over the garden walls where sat the monkeys and brilliant tropical
birds. He must feel the languid stir or deep repose of long, indolent,
luxurious summer days, and through it all, he must be conscious of the
water. Only so will he be able to form some adequate conception of what
the “secret fountain” must have been in the days of Pope Julius III.
The highest charm of the beautiful creation lay in its presentation
of contrast translated into a medium suitable to every sense. It was
an age of contrast, sharp and constant. No feature in the crowded
Italian life of those two centuries is so striking as this. Fame and
obloquy; triumphant health and the lazar-house; honor and exile; the
luxury of an Agostino Chigi and the squalor of the beggar at his doors;
compassion and fiendish cruelty, young Cardinal Borromeo’s sanctity on
the one hand, and on the other unblushing licentiousness; beauty to
which all but divine honors were paid, and hideous deformity; these
lay open to the eye on every side. There seemed to be no transition.
The “secret fountain,” with its light and shade, its rest and motion,
sound and silence, its art and nature, was the poetic expression of
life as it was known by the men for whom it was created.
The records of those days are never free from blood, and at least one
assassination is connected with the building of this house of mirth.
Baronino, an associate of Vignola and Amannati, leaving the villa
with a friend on a certain evening, was set upon as he turned into
the Via Flaminia and stabbed to death. The angle in the walls made
by the public fountain and the fact that it was a natural place for
loiterers probably suggested the choice of the spot. The assassin’s
identity was either never discovered or never revealed and the crime
went unpunished, for Cellini was not the only lucky rascal. Artists
especially carried their lives in their hands, and genius was as open
to violence as it was to fame.
Historians and moralists accord scant justice and no mercy to Julius
III. He is represented by them as spending his life in senseless and
indolent pleasures. Yet he had begun his pontificate with some show of
earnestness. He had reopened the Council of Trent, and had attempted to
play a part in the diplomacy of Europe. That after two years he wearied
of these arduous labors might have been because he had sufficient wit
to perceive that, for his time at least, the Papal See would have to
be a tool in the hands of Austria. His devotion to the creation of
his villa was perhaps the only outlet for the activities of a nature
too slight to cope with the stern and sinister century on which his
lot had fallen. Long days spent with Vignola, Amannati, and Vasari,
and above all, with the aged but undaunted Michelangelo himself, for
whom this Pope felt a loving veneration, must have had a zest and
stimulating quality sufficient to make the Pope’s life in this villa
something more than the sybaritic enjoyment of mere sensuous beauty.
Beyond a doubt, the construction of his villa became an obsession with
the Pope. He gradually abandoned all other avocations and duties. It
was at the villa that he held his audiences, received ambassadors, and
gave his suppers, at which last his wit was said to be of less fine
quality than were his vintages. He even had a medal struck, with his
own head on one side and on the other the front elevation of the Villa
Giulia, with the inscription, “Fons Virginibus.”
One fatal day a pet monkey savagely attacked the Pope. He was rescued
by a lad of sixteen whom he soon after made a cardinal. The scandal was
very great. Prelates and laymen alike felt this to be going too far.
The Pope might lay himself open to censure but not to ridicule. Here
in the midst of the beauty created by Pope Julius, men’s eyes began to
turn toward the slightly grim, ascetic figure of Cardinal della Croce,
great Roman patrician and true saint, who, as if to give the final note
to this life of vivid contrast, moved about in the gay papal court,
reserved, austere, devoted to a life of such sanctity that the Pope
himself felt uncomfortable in his presence.
The villa was still far from finished when Julius III’s short
pontificate came to an end. The Conclave almost unanimously chose as
his successor their saintly brother, Cardinal della Croce.[E] The world
had entered upon a new phase. Northern Europe had brought the spirit
of the Reformation to the gates of Rome, and men were ashamed of Pope
Julius III, whose misfortune it had been to live half a century too
late.
The Villa Giulia passed into the ownership of the popes and remained
there until it was taken over by the state in the present government.
It was eventually finished by Popes Pius IV and Pius V, but the art
treasures were scattered far and wide. During many pontificates it was
used for the stopping place of ambassadors and other great personages
who spent the night there before making their ceremonial entrance into
Rome. Perhaps the presence of so much water and luxurious vegetation
made the place peculiarly sensitive to mould and decay. Even as early
as 1585 it was not considered healthful. Sixtus V, with the restless
caprice of the poor sleeper, wished to spend a night there, but was
forbidden to do so by his physician. As it was papal property, no
private individual ever had the chance to take over the beautiful old
building and gardens and keep them in repair; and those popes whose
tastes might have led them to restore it built pleasure-houses or
palaces for themselves. Gregory XIII began the Quirinal Palace, and
not infrequently for his villegiatura visited the magnificent villa
of Mondragone at Frascati which Cardinal Altemps had already begun
to build. Sixtus V built his Villa Montalto, the new Lateran Palace,
and finished the Quirinal Palace. Clement VIII contented himself with
the Quirinal; but his great cardinal nephew, Peter Aldobrandini,
founded the magnificent Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati. The Medici
Leo XI devoted himself to the Villa Medici. Paul V did indeed make a
restoration, using much stucco, which can easily be distinguished from
the beautiful work of the original period, but that Pope’s interest was
really given to the great villa which his nephew, Cardinal Scipione
Borghese, was creating out of the old Villa Cenci.
Finally, late in the eighteenth century, the papal chair was occupied
by a man of culture who felt the charm of the old Cinque Cento villa in
the Valle Giulia, and tried to rescue it from total ruin. This was the
Ganganelli Pope, Clement XIV, the founder of the Clementine sculpture
gallery in the Vatican. Clement XIV’s investigation of Pope Julius
III’s villa showed that the aqueducts were ruined, the walls crumbled
by water, the pavements cracked by fire, while all the wood and iron
work was broken or rusted, and the exquisite paintings, stucco, and
gilding spoiled by smoke and damp.[F] The papal architect, Raphael
Stern, made careful and elaborate drawings from old plans, with a view
to a genuine restoration, as Pius VI (who, in 1774, succeeded Clement
XIV) carried on the work. This Pope also felt the fascination of the
marvellous, all but ruined pleasure-house, and decided to make it his
autumn residence, but it was too late! Pope Pius VI was carried off
by the French Revolutionary forces in 1798 and died a prisoner in the
French fortress of Valence. From that time forward, the villa fell
more and more into decay. Its pitiful condition might have furnished
material for endless sermons on the vanity of life, and the ruin of its
exquisite decorations fills all artists and lovers of the beautiful
with indignant regret. It has been a veterinary hospital, a cavalry
barracks, a storehouse for hay--no desecration has been spared it. At
last the present government rescued what was left of it and converted
it into a museum of antiquities, giving the last ironic touch to its
fate by filling the rooms built to minister to the joy and pride of
life, with ancient coffins and relics of the dead.
COLONNA
[Illustration]
COLONNA