Part 13

Until quite recently the Acqua Felice fed all the fountains on the Pincian Hill, and the altitude of its source is so nearly the same as the top of the hill, where the public gardens are situated, that the only kind of fountain possible there was a sheet of water; so the sculptor of the chief fountain in the Pincian Gardens, Count Brazza, the elder, made a virtue out of necessity and created a fountain in which any kind of _jet d’eau_ would be distinctly out of place. Brazza’s white marble group of the infant Moses and his mother stands, set about with tall aquatic plants, in the centre of a large white marble basin, which is filled with placid yet ever-changing water, and it is so happily suited, both in subject and treatment, to its purpose that the absence of action in the water is never felt. On the contrary, plashing water would be a false note in the quiet and legendary harmony of this composition, and the higher jet produced by the recent change of water is no improvement. The biblical story is portrayed with great naturalness and dignity. The mother of Moses has placed the basket containing her sleeping infant among the rushes, which are represented by the living plants. As she rises to move away, she pauses, on one knee, to implore divine protection for the child whom she must abandon to his fate. The heroic size of the figure enhances the strength and dignity of the artist’s conception. The design is little in sympathy with the gay and crowded life of the Pincian Gardens, during the afternoon, but all through the morning hours this fountain becomes the centre of one of the world’s most tender settings for the comedy of childhood and early youth. The civilization which man has made and kept can show nothing fairer than the Pincian Gardens at that time. The soft Roman sunshine then filters through the ilex branches only upon groups of little children and their nurses, solitary old men who have become as little children, and bands of seminarists or theological students wearing black or scarlet gowns and speaking divers tongues. The little company occupy the benches, or walk demurely in small groups beneath the trees, or play the endless plays of babyhood, in and out of the warm shadows; all of them living in a dreamland as old as life itself, and finding in this quiet garden of the Eternal City a background full of sympathy and significance. Up and down the shaded alleys, linking the present to the great past, stretch the long rows of portrait busts placed there by order of Mazzini during the short-lived Mazzinian Republic of 1849. This is what has been called “The Silent Company of the Pincio.” No happier fate can befall an imaginative child from northern lands than to wander at will through this Roman playground. All unconsciously the classic beauty is woven into his spiritual fibre, and with that strange sensation of coming into his own--peculiar to such children--he finds, in these seemingly endless rows of white marble heads, faces which stimulate his fancy or fit the names of heroes already known to him.

In the centre of the garden stands an obelisk the history of which brings back the memory of a beautiful pagan youth who lived more than eighteen hundred years ago, and of another story of Old Nile, more pitiful, if less important, than the story of Moses. This is the obelisk which the Emperor Hadrian and his Empress Sabina raised to the memory of their beloved Antinous--the most beautiful youth the world has record of--who drowned himself in the Egyptian river, under the impression that his voluntary death would avert calamity from his benefactor the Emperor. After all these eighteen hundred years it is still possible to feel the passion of Hadrian’s grief. His biographer calls it “feminine”! But the gifted Emperor, lover of all things beautiful in art and nature, and a student of men and character, understood the value of his treasure and knew full well the irreparableness of his loss. He brought back to Rome all that was left of that beauty--an urnful of ashes--and placed it in the Emperor’s own tomb, now called the Castle of St. Angelo; and on the _spina_ of the circus by the tomb, Hadrian and Sabina erected this obelisk whose hieroglyphics, only quite recently deciphered, relate the deification of their favorite and give the information concerning his place of burial. The obelisk must have been removed by a later Emperor, probably Heliogabalus, for it was found in 1570, near Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, in the gardens of the Varian family, to which family that Emperor belonged. Bernini, in the century following its discovery, moved it to the Barberini Palace, which he was erecting and beautifying for the Barberini Pope, Urban VIII. Later on, a Princess Barberini presented it to Pope Pius VI, who set it up in the Giardino della Pigna in the Vatican, that temporary resting-place for so many treasures, and finally, in 1822, Pius VII and Valadier erected it where it now stands in full view of Hadrian’s Tomb, they being quite unconscious, however, that there was any connection between it and that great mausoleum.

Not far from the fountain of Moses stand two umbrella-pines, their great boles shooting high up through all the foliage about. A hundred years ago they marked the exit into a side lane from the vineyard where they had been planted, for until that time these Gardens of the Pincio had been for centuries the vineyard belonging to the Augustinian monks of Santa Maria del Popolo, the same order from which, about 1494, young Cardinal Farnese bought the property by the Tiber, on which he built the Farnese Palace.

The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo had been built by the Roman people in the twelfth century, and from that time on it and the Augustinian convent beside it became the first hospice and sanctuary to the pilgrims from beyond the Alps. This was because the church and convent stand close to the Porta del Popolo, the gateway to the Flaminian Road, which is the great highway leading to the north.

With these Augustinian monks stayed young Martin Luther when business connected with that order had brought him to Rome. The German seminarist who threads his way to-day among the Pincian alleys must often cross those vanished paths in the vineyard once trodden by the sandalled feet of his great fellow countryman, since Luther’s northern feeling for nature would surely have carried him at dawn or sunset to the convent’s vineyard. There the voices of the birds and the well-trained vines could soothe a spirit dazed and disquieted by the splendors and vices of Rome. The history of the German Reformation may well have had its earliest beginnings in the thoughts which thronged the mind of that young monk, as he leaned upon the vineyard wall and gazed with eyes that saw and saw not at the papal city, where old St. Peter’s--the church in which Charlemagne had been crowned--was being made over by Bramante into its present form; and beside it the huge pile of the Vatican housed the fighting Pope, Julius II, and a hierarchy of utter worldliness.

The monks retained possession of their Pincian vineyard during the three following centuries, or until 1809, at which time Napoleon annexed the Papal States to his Empire, banished the recalcitrant Pope, Pius VII, and set about making Rome over to suit himself. He found the architect who had worked for Pius VI and Pius VII equally ready to serve him, and it was to this architect, Giuseppe Valadier, that Napoleon intrusted the conversion of the old convent vineyard into the Pincian Gardens of the present day. The work was not begun until 1812, and before it was finished Pius VII was back in Rome, and Napoleon was eating out his heart in St. Helena. In that long dying, when this last of the world’s great conquerors had time to remember even all that he himself had done, Napoleon must have often thought of Rome. The old mother who had always believed in him, yet never looked up to him, still lived there in her sombre palace under the shadow of the Austrian Legation and the Austrian hate. His favorite sister, Pauline, was a princess of one of the greatest of the Roman families; and the little son, who was to grow up as the Austrian Duke of Reichstadt, was still, to his father, the King of Rome. Did he ever think of the instructions he had given to Valadier about a public garden for the Romans? There was time to think of everything as the seasons came and went and the remote seas washed the crags beneath his feet, while his English jailers watched him from a distance with hard, uncomprehending eyes.

It is something of a shock to find Napoleon’s bust in that company of great Italians which Mazzini placed here. In these Pincian Gardens, as elsewhere in the world, he surely belongs in a niche by himself! However, the Roman episode was of small importance in his life, and he would not have grudged the honorable position to Valadier, whose bust stands alone facing the principal promenade of the Pincian. That architect lived to welcome back the exiled Pius VII and to finish for him the gardens begun by order of Napoleon.

One explanation of Rome’s charm may be found in her power of suggestion. Although the things to be seen in the Eternal City are of transcendent interest, the things which are only apprehended have a still stronger hold upon the imagination. The actual loveliness of the Pincian Gardens is forgotten as the archæologists build up from buried marbles and scattered inscriptions the life lived here in centuries gone by. Where now is Valadier’s casino there stood in the second century of our era a great Roman dwelling, the home of a patrician family, Christian in faith, its members holding from generation to generation high offices of state and called by historians “the noblest of the noble.” The grounds about this house of the Acilii included not only the present public gardens but also the precincts of the Villa Medici, the garden and convent of the Sacred Heart, and a part of the Villa Borghese. It would be impossible to find nowadays in any land the exact counterpart of this Roman dwelling. Its comfort, splendor and universal perfection of detail could not be surpassed, perhaps not equalled. Its artificially heated bathrooms, the cool, dark recesses of the wine-cellars, the courts and offices and state apartments, the devices for garden and foundation building, everything which made up this perfect specimen of the highest domestic civilization the world has known, has been discovered on the Pincian Hill. The great buttresses which this private family built to sustain the northwestern boundaries of their terraced garden still support the public gardens of to-day, and were incorporated by the Emperor Aurelian into the great wall with which he surrounded the city. Surely no stories of the Pincian can ever give so good an idea of the power, solidity, and grandeur of Rome as do these archæological discoveries, which show in fullest detail the domestic life of the Roman patrician under the Antonines. Of all this the northwestern buttresses of the Pincian Hill and the immortality of Nature alone remain.

Napoleon was only following in the footsteps of another Emperor, when he created these gardens; for the Emperor Aurelian made the grounds--which had been the estate of the Acilii--into a public park. So whether owned by private individuals or by Emperor, church, or municipality, the Pincian has always been known as the Hill of Gardens; and the water which now feeds its public fountains is once more the Acqua Marcia--the same water which supplied the fountains, baths, and fish-ponds of the great Antonine villa.

FONTANA PAOLA

[Illustration]

FONTANA PAOLA

Throughout Roman history the Janiculum has suffered many alternations of peace idyllic and of sanguinary strife, for it is a natural garden, and it is also the key to Rome. Whoever can hold the terraces of San Pietro in Montorio and the heights to the north and south has the city at his mercy. At the present day the Villa Pamphili-Doria and the Villa Garibaldi crown its summit, and stretch downward toward the west, and its southeastern slope, leading toward the Tiber, once contained the gardens of Julius Cæsar--those gardens where he received Cleopatra and which he left by his will to the Roman people. One of the earliest chapters in Roman history tells how Lars Porsena came over the Janiculum to reinstate the Tarquins, and one of the latest recounts the struggle carried on across its heights and terraces in Garibaldi’s defense of the Mazzinian Roman Republic. Like the gardens of Ischia and the vineyards on Vesuvius, which are forever threatened by earthquake or eruption, the Janiculum villas will have, so long as war lasts, a precarious existence; but with villas, gardens, and vineyards, so great is the fertility of the soil and so enchanting the prospect, while the world endures men will take the risk.

The water for this part of the city was brought to Rome by the Emperors Augustus and Trajan. Trajan built the aqueduct bearing his name; and this aqueduct, like that of the Virgo, has, in spite of many vicissitudes continued to supply Rome with a varying quantity of water from that time until the present day. The Emperor brought the water thirty-five miles from Lake Bracciano to the Janiculum. It was almost the last water brought to Rome and entered the city at the level of two hundred and three feet above the sea. The first water (the Appian) had entered Rome fifty feet under ground. Trajan used the water from the springs about Lake Bracciano, not from the lake itself, because the spring-water was much purer and the ancient Romans were fastidious in the water they used. Alsietina water, for instance, brought to Rome by Augustus, was considered fit only for baths and the _naumachiæ_; and Frontinus says that, as a matter of fact, the water was intended for that purpose only and for the irrigation of the gardens across the Tiber. Christian Rome was far from being so particular, and its inhabitants drank Tiber water as late as Michelangelo’s time. During the “Golden days of the Renaissance in Rome” Virgo water, which was to be had intermittently from the Trevi fountain, and a remnant of this Acqua Traiana still flowing in the fountain of Innocent VIII were the only pure waters. Meantime many Romans of that period preferred the Tiber water; and Petrarch coming to Rome gave special instructions to a friend to have a quantity of Tiber water which had stood for a day or two, to settle, ready for his use. Paul III took with him, on his journey to Nice to meet the Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France, a supply of Tiber water, so that he might not miss his customary beverage! When, therefore, Pope Paul V bethought him of reconstructing the Trajan Aqueduct he had nothing to hinder him from collecting the water from every available source. He used Trajan water from the springs, water from Lake Bracciano, and water from Lake Alsietina as well. By this means the united water now called the Acqua Paola, although not so pure as the former Acqua Traiana, is yet good enough, and it forms a supply of magnificent quantity and force. Paul V’s intention was to surpass the Acqua Felice, brought to Rome some twenty years previously by Sixtus V. No one could forget Sixtus V and the Acqua Felice. Was not the water always before men’s eyes as it gushed out of the great fountain of Moses on the side of the Viminal Hill; and did not every Roman know that Cavaliere Domenico Fontana had brought it there by order of Sixtus V? The Borghese pontiff determined to erect another fountain, across the Tiber, on the Janiculum, which was a still more commanding position, and to build another aqueduct for Rome, so that there should be an Acqua Paola as well as an Acqua Felice, and men should remember Paul V even as they remembered Sixtus V.

Domenico Fontana had just died in Naples, rich and honored by the Neapolitans, but there were others at hand of that renowned family of architects. Fontana’s elder brother Giovanni was still alive, and had great skill in hydraulics; and Carlo Maderno, his nephew, was also to be had. So in 1611 Paul V employed these two to build his great fountain on the Janiculum. This fountain is made of travertine, adorned with six Ionic columns of red granite taken from the Temple of Minerva in the Forum Transitorium. Other portions of the same beautiful ruin were sawed into slabs and used in the decoration of the fountain. The design is that of a church façade in the style of the florid and debased Renaissance. It consists of five arches, three colossal ones in the middle, directly under the great inscription which they support, and on each side smaller arches. The three centre cascades fall into a huge semicircular basin, which is sunk into the ground, while the arches on the side have small individual basins in which to receive the water. The inscription, which is a magnificent example of Renaissance caligraphy, gives the history of the Paola Aqueduct and the pontifical dates. A smaller inscription describes the final completion of the fountain under Alexander VIII.

PAVLVS · QVINTVS · PONTIFEX · MAXIMVS AQVAM · IN · AGRO · BRACCIANENSI SALVBERRIMIS · E · FONTIBVS · COLLECTAM VETERIBVS · AQVAE · ALSIETINAE · DVCTIBVS · RESTITVTIS NOVISQVE · ADDITIS XXXV · AB · MILLIARIO · DVXIT

ANNO · DOMINI · MDCXII · PONTIFICATVS · SVI · SEPTIMO

ALEXANDER · VIII · OTTHOBONVS · VENETVS · P · M PAVLI · V · P · PROVIDENTISSIMI · PONT · BENEFICIVM TVTATVS REPVRGATO · SPECV · NOVISQVE · FONTIBVS · INDVCTIS RIVOS · SVIS · QVEMQVE · LABRIS · OLIM · ANGVSTE CONTENTOS VNICO · EODEMQVE · PERAMPIO · LACV · EXCITATO · RECEPIT AREAM · ADVERSVS · LABEM · MONTIS · SVBSTRVXIT ET · LAPIDEO · MARGINE · TERMINAVIT · ORNAVITQVE ANNO · SALVTIS · MDCLXXXX · PONTIFICATVS · SVI SECVND...

_This water, drawn from the purest of springs, in the neighborhood of Bracciano, was conducted by Pope Paul the fifth, thirty-five miles from its source, over ancient channels of the Alsietine aqueduct, which he restored, and new ones, which he added._

_In the year of the Lord 1612, and of Paul’s Pontificate the seventh._

_Pope Alexander the eighth, Ottoboni, of Venice, in protection of the beneficent work of that most far-sighted pontiff, Paul the fifth, recleaned the channel, admitted water from new sources, and constructed a single capacious reservoir for the common reception of the several streams which had formerly been strictly confined each to its own channel. To prevent the wearing away of the hill, he paved the surrounding area, surrounding and beautifying it with a marble coping. In the year of Salvation 1690, and of Alexander’s pontificate the second._

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The Borghese griffins and eagles compose the decoration of the mostra, and the whole structure is surmounted by the papal insignia and the arms of Paul V, the escutcheon being guarded by two angels.