Part 10
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.
Yet, after all, the paramount association with the fountain of the Barcaccia is neither French nor Spanish, but belongs pre-eminently to the English-speaking race. This fantastic fountain, with its commonplace background and its limited view of the Scalinata, forms the only outlook from the windows of the house in which the poet Keats spent the last three months of his life; so that from the position of this house the fountain of the Barcaccia is connected for all time with the fate of the “young English poet” who lies buried now these many years in the Protestant cemetery outside the walls. From the windows of his narrow death-chamber he watched the plashing waters in the fountain below him, while above his head the bells in the church, which he could not see, remorselessly rang out the quarter-hours or tolled for some fellow creature the “agonia,” or “passing bell.” During his hours of listlessness or fits of sombre rage, this passing of time and of life was always in his ears, as the futile play of the water was always before his eyes.
It is not difficult to connect the bells and the fountain with the bitter epitaph written, by his own wish, above his grave:
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
TRITON
[Illustration]
TRITON
“Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, And hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.”
The exquisite lines rise involuntarily to the lips as one comes suddenly upon Bernini’s old fountain in the Piazza Tritone, which, standing in the centre of one of the busiest and most prosaic thoroughfares of modern Rome, still keeps its own quality of beauty and seems to weave about itself the enchantment of the world of fable. Roman art has created many Tritons, notably the joyous group surrounding Galatea in the Farnesina Palace, but there is about this water-worn old figure such distinction and such emphasis of life that he becomes the prototype of all his race. He is _Il Tritone_.