by virtue of his temperament and genius, but also by the trend of his
sympathies and his foreign policy. Under his enlightened patronage,
the artists of France found a congenial home in the Eternal City.
This was the beginning of the French Academy of Painting in Rome,
which was formally founded in 1666 by Colbert, the great minister of
Louis XIV. For the first seven years of its existence this institution
had no permanent abode; but in 1673 the Capronica Palace was placed
at its disposal, and later on--in Louis XV’s time--it moved to the
Mancini Palace near the Corso. The slope leading from the Piazza of
the Trinità de’ Monti (now the Piazza di Spagna) to the terraces above
had all this time been a natural hillside, whereon grew trees, grass,
and wild flowers familiar to Rome. The footpaths leading upward must
have been a rather steep climb; but five years before the founding
of the Academy an event occurred which was to make the ascent of the
hillside not only easy but delightful. In 1661 Rome came into the
possession of a large sum of money left to the city by the learned
French gentleman, Etienne de Guéffier, for the express purpose of
constructing a magnificent stone stairway which should cover this slope
of the Pincian Hill, and unite for all time the Campus Martius with
the terraces above. The stairway was long in building, and during its
construction the connection between the Academy in the Mancini Palace
and the old terraces of the Trinità de’ Monti may have been slender;
but in 1725 the Scalinata was opened with great pomp, and once again
French artists could spend long hours on their beloved terraces.
Seventy-six years later Napoleon, with his supreme instinct for effect
(a possession he shared with Julius Cæsar),[J] and not unmindful of
the French association with this quarter of the city, removed the
French Academy from the old Mancini Palace and lodged it permanently
and most impressively where it now is, in the Villa Medici, the villa
built by that family which had given two queens to France. So the
fountain of the Trinità de’ Monti is still a feature in the life of the
French artists at Rome; and it is perhaps a pardonable fancy that, in
this particular fountain, the Acqua Felice plays in French!
VILLA BORGHESE
NOW
VILLA UMBERTO PRIMO
[Illustration]
VILLA BORGHESE
NOW
VILLA UMBERTO PRIMO
A garden where the centuries
Of men have come and none did care
Save for the green grass and the breeze
And shelter from the noontide glare.
But that which makes the garden fair--
The sense of life’s futility,
Is deathless beauty. Born of Death,
It blossoms under cloudless skies--
One’s very dream of Italy.
--_From an unpublished MS._
Such a garden was the Villa Borghese; and such a garden it still is,
in spite of constant desecration. This is the home of the most poetic
of Bernini’s fountains. It stands on the summit of a rising avenue,
yet it does not terminate a vista, it makes itself a part of one, for
the avenue continues after the fountain has been reached. It stands
in full but tempered sunlight, girt about by a circle of box hedges
and ilex trees, with here and there a tall stone pine. The lower basin
lies in the turf, like a natural pool, and the water fills it to the
brim. It reflects the trees and clouds in its quiet depths, or as the
little breeze ruffles the surface, it gives back the sunshine like a
broken mirror. Single shafts of water, spouting upward from between
the forefeet of the sea-horses, fall back into the same basin from
which they rose, curving like the arches of a pergola; yet so steady
is their flow that the tranquillity of the pool is hardly troubled.
Four foam-flecked circles, only, show where the falling water mingles
with the water at rest. Greater peacefulness could not well be given
to any artificial bit of water. Then from the centre of this dreaming
pool there rises a fountain so rich in carving, so beautiful in design
that it seems rather a great and splendid efflorescence than the work
of men’s hands. From its leaf-fringed lower basin there rises a second
and much smaller one, not like another basin but like a corolla within
a corolla, and the flower-like composition terminates in a beautifully
wrought cup resembling the blossom of the campanula. The water gushes
upward from this cup, but not to any height. It falls back at once
over the scalloped edges of the marble, and slipping in and over the
carved foliage of the lower basins finally reaches, in a gentle,
pensive manner, the quiet pool beneath. Sea-horses with tossed
manes and backward curving wings plunge outward from the shelter of
the lower basin. Their tails twine about its stem, and the basin is
close above their heads, but it does not rest upon them; they are free.
It is evident that in one more spring they will be out and away. Yet
they do not take it, and they never will. For once Bernini’s genius
masters his fancy. His fountain is not a fanciful conceit but a rich
and peaceful artistic creation. An enchanter’s wand has checked the
horses in mid-career, and here they remain, motionless, for all their
movement, under the shadow of the leafy basin, part of a beautiful
whole that must never be broken. This is one of those rare compositions
in which the artist has most happily achieved the second essential in a
fountain, that it should be a thing of beauty, a source of delight to
the eye and ear. It is admirably suited to its surroundings, for rich
carving and imaginative sculpture held in subservience to the natural
charm of quiet water, conform exquisitely with a garden where stately
formality enhances the loveliness of wild and simple beauty. The
fountain is of travertine, the natural mellow tone of which has been
rendered even more lovely by centuries of soft Italian weather. It does
not stand out conspicuously in the vista; it detaches itself from the
surrounding trees gently, as if it had grown there among them.
[Illustration: The Fountain of the Sea-Horses.]
On either side of this fountain the ground falls away sharply into
groves of ilex, traversed by natural footpaths. In the gloom of these
wooded spaces there are two other fountains. Great basins catching the
water from tiers of smaller ones in the centre and each surrounded by
a broken circle of curved stone benches. They are the work of Antonio
Vansantio; and, according to drawings by Letarouilly, the back of each
semicircular bench was originally decorated at regular intervals with
statues. Behind these stood a formally clipped box hedge rising some
three feet above the benches, while the larger trees growing behind
the hedge made by their branches a green canopy to this truly charming
bit of garden architecture. Vansantio’s basins and benches are now
in a half-ruined condition, but they are still extremely lovely and
suggest pictures of eighteenth-century garden-parties, where groups
of Watteau’s figures idle away the hours. The fountains are hardly
visible, even at close range. They betray themselves by the sound
of their falling water, which gives to the scene, like the song of
the hermit-thrush, a poignant sense of remoteness and solitude. The
deep shadows and half-hidden waters of Vansantio’s fountains form a
well-conceived contrast to Bernini’s sunlit basins on the slope above.
There are many other fountains in this villa. A large round pool
decorated with a central figure of a nymph, and set about with huge
cactus-filled vases of a shape peculiar to the Villa Borghese, stands
behind the Casino, while at the other end of the gardens the so-called
Fountain of Esculapius fills a shady place with the sound and beauty
of abundant water. This is a beautiful fountain, not because of any
special charm or originality of design in the fountain itself, but
because of its splendid jet of water and the composition of it and
its surroundings. The arch containing the statue of Esculapius stands
on a slight eminence surrounded with tall trees and shadowy foliage.
Beneath and before it, the ground slopes in masses of broken rock and
bowlders, and the fountain, a single round and shallow vase of finished
travertine, stands in the midst of them. The jet of water almost tops
the Arch above the statue, and it falls in great abundance upon the
rocks at its base.
There is also the Fountain of the Amorini--so daintily lovely that the
fact that it is incomplete is hardly noticed. The little Loves still
firmly grasp their frogs and dolphins, but the vase they once carried
on their heads is gone. The moss-grown stone-work of the basin, and
the light and shade of the great ilex trees about it give this little
fountain a peculiar charm. It seems to belong quite consciously to
other days than ours.
There are fountains everywhere in the gardens. They are as common as
the trees and the marbles and the violets. The water seems to play at
will among the lights and shadows, for during three centuries this has
been a Roman pleasure-ground; and to the Roman no pleasure-ground is
worthy the name without the sound and sight of water.
[Illustration]
The Villa Borghese was created by Cardinal Scipione Borghese during
the sixteen years that his uncle held the keys of St. Peter, under
the title of Paul V. The Pope assisted him in every way, for Paul V’s
chief pleasure consisted in advancing and aggrandizing his family.
Marc Antonio Borghese, a second nephew of his, became the founder
of the family in Rome, and Cardinal Scipione had as commanding an
influence over the Pope as had ever been known. Paul V found his model
in Paul III, and so well did he emulate the founder of the Farnese
fortunes that by the close of his pontificate the Borghese had become
the wealthiest and most powerful family that had ever arisen in Rome.
Cardinal Scipione’s annual income alone was one hundred and fifty
thousand scudi--about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars--and Paul
V destroyed the ruins of the Baths of Constantine so as to build for
him what is now called the Rospigliosi Palace. Their habits, charities,
possessions were all but regal. The cardinal endeavored to lessen
the envy which such opulence naturally aroused by a complaisant and
courtly behavior, as well as by benevolence; and he earned for himself
the sobriquet of “the delight of Rome.” This villa he laid out for the
benefit of the people, and it has really existed for them for over
three hundred years. Paul V’s pontificate came to an end in 1621, and
in 1645 Mr. John Evelyn writes in his “Diary” a long account of the
Villa Borghese. The groves and avenues had by that time a generation’s
growth, but the Casino and little temples and the multifarious delights
which enriched them were still in pristine freshness. The taste of the
present day may prefer the gardens as they now are to those of 1645;
they have more of natural beauty and fewer artificial devices, and the
simple fountains are more effective than the spouts of water made to
resemble the shapes of vessels and fruits and the conceit of artificial
rain. Much of the architecture and statuary Evelyn describes has
vanished, but enough remains for the present traveller to recognize the
picture and to feel that he is walking in groves and meadows trodden
by many feet through many years. Since Evelyn’s time eight generations
have also found these pleasure-grounds delightful. As full of memories
as of fragrance, these gardens convey a sense of human life once lived
among them and now forever gone, which is as poignant as the smell of
the boxwood hedges in the hot sunshine.
The Villa Borghese has pre-eminently this subtle quality, and therefore
it has become the loveliest as well as the best beloved of all Roman
villas; and it is precisely because it is a Roman garden that its
memories are so compelling. The men and women who have walked in
these long avenues and lingered about these fountains have been the
aristocracy of mankind. England, France, and Germany come here to
gather memories of their great men. Statues to Goethe and Victor Hugo
are not needed. Hugo and Goethe and many more of these noble ghosts
come back, together with a long line of splendid popes and brilliant
cardinals, to haunt the sun-warmed yet shadowy places, never jostling
or disturbing the living but felt by the living in some strange and
undefinable way.
[Illustration: The Fountain of the Amorini.]
These groves and fountains have been the setting for many scenes in
Life’s dramas. There has been a Napoleonic interlude with dancing,
masquerading, and somewhat boisterous merrymaking; and here, amid the
loveliness of an alien civilization, began the last act in the tragedy
of the Stuart Kings. The son of the exiled James II of England lived
and died in Rome, and his children--Prince Charlie and the little Duke
of York--played beneath these trees, as scores of other brothers of
less fateful history have played before and since.[K] Here they came
every morning with their fowling-pieces. High-spirited English lads,
they made of the Italian groves a Sherwood Forest of their own. It was
a far cry at that time to Culloden, and a long way to the cathedral of
Frascati, where the younger brother was to read the funeral service
over the elder. Time means so little in Rome that here in the villa
where the Stuart Princes played, the “adventure of the ’45” seems to
have happened only yesterday.
The villa is at its loveliest in May and October. On every Thursday and
Sunday of this latter month it used to be the custom for the Prince
Borghese to receive all Rome within his gates. Forty to fifty thousand
people would sometimes come to these garden-parties, all classes
mingling yet preserving their identity with the admirable dignity and
self-respect of the Romans. The young Princess Gwendolin Borghese was
seen for the last time at one of these great fêtes. Her saintly young
spirit adds a breath as of incense to the Borghese gardens, and it
is more easy to think of her presence here than among the ponderous
marbles of the Borghese Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore where she lies
buried.
Yet another Princess Borghese has left her memory within these
gates. Canova has portrayed her as Venus Victrix, and she takes her
place among the antique marbles by the right of flawless beauty. The
flesh-and-blood original of Canova’s masterpiece, Pauline Bonaparte,
Princess Borghese, cared but little for her beautiful villa. The ilex
groves were gloomy and the fountains were insignificant compared with
those of Versailles. She wearied of palace, prince, and villa, and
spent as much time as possible with her own kin. It is recorded that
the prince, her husband, was far more jealous of Canova’s statue of his
wife than of his wife’s person. The Princess Pauline Borghese passed
away like a summer cloud, but the Venus Borghese remains.
The personality of Cardinal Scipione Borghese is preserved in the two
magnificent busts still standing in the picture-gallery of the Casino.
It is difficult to believe that such vitality as Bernini has here
portrayed could ever have quite faded from the earth, and surely his
ghost must at times return to these gardens of his creation.
LA BARCACCIA
[Illustration]
LA BARCACCIA
At the foot of the great stone stairway, known in Italian as _La
Scalinata_ and in English as the Spanish Steps, which leads down from
the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti to the Piazza di Spagna lies the
singular fountain called La Barcaccia. The design of this fountain
is that of a quaintly conventionalized boat, fast sinking under the
water which is pouring into it. To this effect it owes its name; for
“barca,” being the Italian for boat, and “accia” a termination of
opprobrium, Barcaccia means a worthless boat. The boat is supposed
to commemorate an event which occurred during the great flood of
1598. On Christmas Day of that year the Tiber rose to its highest
recorded level. All this part of the city was submerged to a depth of
from seventeen to twenty-five feet; and here in the Piazza di Spagna
a boat drifted ashore, grounding on that slope of the Pincian Hill,
which is now covered by the Spanish Steps. For a long time the design
of this fountain was supposed to commemorate this event, and it is
quite possible that this may have been the case. Still there are other
fountains of this design, the work of Carlo Maderno, and as one is in
the Villa d’Este at Tivoli and the other in the Villa Aldobrandini,
it is also quite possible that Carlo Maderno and the creator of the
Barcaccia may have had yet another idea when they constructed their
stone boats with a fountain amidships and lying in basins not much
larger than the boats themselves. For the Romans of this time knew much
and surmised still more about the mysterious boats lying at the bottom
of Lake Nemi, in the Alban Hills, not more than seventeen miles distant
from Rome. These boats had been discovered first during the pontificate
of Pope Eugenius IV, and had been rediscovered in Paul III’s time,
in 1535, or about a hundred years before Carlo Maderno employed this
design for a fountain. At each date an attempt had been made to raise
the boats, but these efforts as well as all subsequent attempts proved
unsuccessful. However, in 1535 measurements had been computed and many
objects belonging to the vessels had been brought to the surface to
excite the wonder and admiration of the Roman world. It was discovered
that the boats when once raised and floated would all but fill the tiny
lake. The decks had been made of concrete and marble, and amidships
there had been fountains whose falling waters mingled with those of the
lake. The mystery surrounding the purpose and construction of those
huge vessels is yet unsolved, but in the seventeenth century it still
stirred men’s imaginations with all the force of fresh discovery. Both
Maderno and Pietro Bernini could not have been ignorant of it, and they
must have seen the exquisite bronzes and lead pipes bearing the stamp
of the Emperor Tiberius which had been detached and brought up from the
sunken vessels.
The Barcaccia fountain is the last work of Pietro Bernini, the father
of Lorenzo. He had been employed to bring a branch of the Trevi Water
from its reservoir at the head of the Vicolo del Bottino as far as
the foot of the Pincian Hill in front of the Trinità de’ Monti, and
the fountain done by order of Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644) was the
adequate consummation of that work. From whatever cause he derived
his inspiration, his design of the Barcaccia fountain is so admirably
suited to its position that it explains and almost excuses the popular
idea that the fountain was made low in order not to obscure the view
of the Spanish Steps. A reference to dates at once shows the absurdity
of this last suggestion. In the Keats Memorial House hard by there can
be seen an engraving by Falda (born in 1640) showing Pietro Bernini’s
completed fountain against the background of the tree-planted slope of
the Pincian Hill. The fountain was finished before the death of Pope
Urban VIII, which occurred in 1644, and the steps were not begun until
1721, nine pontificates after that of Urban VIII.
On the prow and stern of the boat is carved the coat of arras of the
Barberini family, for Urban VIII was the Barberini Pope and the founder
of that family in Rome. This pontiff, whose character was a formidable
compound of priest, statesman, warrior, and man of letters, delighted
in the design of the fountain. Pietro Bernini had placed cannon at
either end, thus making his boat into a war-vessel, whereupon Urban
VIII composed a Latin distich in its praise:
“Bellica pontificum non fundit machina flammas,
Sed dulcem, belli qua perit ignis, aquam.”
“_The war-ship of the priest, instead of flames,
Pours water, and the fire of battle tames._”
At both ends of the large basin in which the boat stands are long,
flat pieces of travertine. These are the stepping-stones on which any
one using the fountain stands while dipping up the water. The Marcia
Pia now supplies the houses in this part of the city, but the Romans
still prefer to drink Trevi, and the stepping-stones are as much in use
as they were in the days when Falda and other artists of that period
engraved this fountain, placing in the lower basin figures of men or
women in the act of dipping up the water. This quarter of Rome, once a
part of the Campus Martius of classical days, has been for a long time
given over to the interests of the American and English colonies; but
for more than three centuries its foreign associations were chiefly
French. Urban VIII was in many ways a French Pope, although he came of
a Florentine family. As papal nuncio he had spent many years and made
many powerful friends at the courts of Henry IV and Louis XIII. In the
conclave which elected him Pope, France openly and ardently supported
his claims. During his residence in France he had known Armand du
Plessis, who was to become Cardinal Richelieu. The two great churchmen
went up the ladder of preferment side by side. They became, as pope and
cardinal minister, respectively, lifelong allies in their tireless and
successful efforts to humble the dual power of Austria and Spain, while
promoting on the one hand the prestige of France and on the other the
stability of the Papal See.
At the accession of Urban VIII, Spain and Austria held the passes of
the Alps, thus dominating Europe and threatening the existence of the
Papal States. At the close of his pontificate, France was rapidly
becoming the first Continental power, and the Papal States had reached
their utmost limit of territorial expansion. With his death the
French influence in papal politics rapidly declined, but its artistic
ascendency still lingered on. Thirteen years later a certain French
gentleman, attached to the French embassy at Rome, and named Etienne
de Guéffier, left in his will a sum of money for the construction of
a great stone stairway which should connect the Piazza of the Trinità
de’ Monti, in the centre of which lay the Barcaccia fountain, with
the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti, standing far above, on the slope
of the Pincian Hill. This gentleman, of whom little is known, must
have been the friend of more than one of the great French artists
who were living in Rome contemporaneously with himself. Possibly the
splendid project of the Scalinata was the result of long hours of
comradeship, when he, with his fellow countrymen, watched the sunset
from the terrace which Sixtus V had placed before the Church on the
Hill, or scrambled down the tree-planted slope before it in order to
reach the fountain at its base. Certain it is that Rome owes this most
distinctive architectural feature of papal times to the imagination and
generosity of a Frenchman. The two Latin inscriptions upon the steps
are worthy of attention.[L]
The building of the steps, begun by Alessandro Specchi and completed
by Francesco de Sanctis, was not undertaken, as appears from the
inscription, till sixty years after the death of De Guéffier and six
pontificates later than that of Alexander VII (Chigi), in which De
Guéffier died. By that time the Spanish influence had reasserted itself
to a marked degree, and as the Spanish embassy had been established in
a palace on the western side of the square, the old name of the Piazza
della Trinità de’ Monti gradually gave way to the present name, Piazza
di Spagna. And so finally the great stone stairway, the gift of a
Frenchman in the heyday of French influence at Rome, came to be known
as the Spanish Steps.