Part 3

There is in the Piazza Mastai another fountain erected by Pius IX. And he also instituted several washing troughs in the Trastevere among the poor, for whom he had always a sincere and profound sympathy. Those who would render justice to this last “Papa Re” should drive up the magnificent approach to the Quirinal Palace. This modern driveway and masonry were erected, as can be seen from the tablet on the sustaining wall of the terrace, for Pius IX by his great architect and engineer Virginio Vespignani. They give the finishing touch of magnificence to the Piazza of the Quirinal, originally laid out on its present grade and in its fine proportions by Domenico Fontana for Sixtus V (some two hundred and eighty years earlier). This approach to the Quirinal and the great buttress walls of the Coliseum might easily be enough to prove Pius IX’s care for the city; but, as with those of his predecessors who had the welfare of their people most at heart, his chief claim upon the memory of the Romans lies in the interest which he took in the city’s water supply. Pius IX gave his permission to an English company to introduce into Rome the rediscovered springs of the Marcian water. These springs had been first brought to Rome by the Marcian aqueduct in the years 144–140 B. C. This aqueduct was the first of the true high-level aqueducts, and covered its path of fifty-eight miles on great arches which brought it to Rome at the Porta Maggiore one hundred and ninety-five feet above sea-level. The two aqueducts which antedated it--the Appian and the Anio Vetus--ran most of the distance underground, the Anio Vetus appearing above ground for only eleven hundred feet, while the Appian (the first of all the Roman aqueducts) was carried overground on low arches for three hundred feet, and actually entered the city fifty feet below the surface of the earth. The springs of the Marcia are now called the Second and Third Serena and are situated in the Valley of the Anio above Tivoli, on the north side of the stream, near Agosta. The original Marcian aqueduct had been destroyed by Fontana when he was collecting material to build the Acquedotto Felice. A portion, however, of the ancient masonry remains, and although to-day the Marcian water comes to Rome chiefly through modern iron pipes, some parts of its passage lead through the old stone channels. The water now enters Rome through the Porta Pia at an altitude of two hundred feet; thus it ranks next to the Paola, which is two hundred and three feet above the sea-level. The Marcia ranks next to the Virgo in abundance, and at present supplies most of the dwelling houses in Rome. Its history is embodied in its full name, Acqua Marcia Pia.

Pius IX made his last public appearance as sovereign pontiff when this water was introduced into Rome. This occurred on September 18, 1870, just two days before the famous “Venti Settembre,” when the Italian troops entered Rome through a breach in the Porta Pia. The fountain which was destined to be the last fountain of papal Rome stood in the Piazza delle Terme,--not where the present one stands, but off to one side, for the city was still papal Rome and the great Villa Negroni (formerly Montalto) of Pope Sixtus V then covered the site now occupied by the present railway station. Within the gardens of that villa many of the original Acqua Felice fountains were still flowing, and one latter-day inhabitant of the villa tells how, as a child, she often looked down at night from her nursery windows upon an old fountain about which stood a circle of little Campagna foxes drinking from its cypress-guarded waters. The Pope drove to the inauguration of his Marcia Pia amid a vast concourse of people who strewed flowers and shouted: “King, King!” There were, however, few distinguished people at the ceremony. He drank a cup of the water, praised its purity and freshness and thanked the magistrates for giving it his name. It was the last public act of his sovereign pontificate, and derives both significance and dignity from that long list of popes who, since the time of Hadrian I had constituted themselves guardians and builders of Roman aqueducts.

The fountain which Pius IX thus inaugurated has been swept away to make room for the present bronze affair. But the Acqua Marcia Pia now flows in the Pope’s pretty fountain of Piazza Pia, so that here in the Borgo, the ancient “Porch of St. Peter’s,” we find the last water and, with the exception of the fountain in the Piazza Mastai, the last fountain, of papal Rome.

CAMPIDOGLIO

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CAMPIDOGLIO

The three fountains of the Campidoglio have one fundamental characteristic in common--that of being a part of Rome from a period of great antiquity. Like those families who “were there when the Conqueror came,” the sculptures which adorn these fountains have been in Rome since Christian Rome began. All the statues have occupied their present positions a comparatively short time, and have passed through many vicissitudes before reaching the places they now hold. In fact, each fountain of the Campidoglio is a fountain with a past. The sculptural part of each is a survival of some artistic design or idea antedating to a remote period the time of its conversion into the fountain of to-day.

The general view of the Campidoglio comprises the stairway called “La Cordonata,” the piazza at its summit crowned by the Palace of the Senators, with the Museum of the Capitol to the left and the Palace of the Conservatori on the right; and it is so impressive in its architectural majesty that the fountain which is a part of it all keeps its true place in the great composition, and is recognized only as a note in the general harmony of proportion, design, and decoration. This is, of course, as it should be--as Michelangelo meant it to be when, some three hundred and seventy-five years ago, the vision of the Campidoglio as it now stands unfolded itself in his brain. Not that every detail of the magnificent reality is as he planned it. The fatality which followed him, spoiling or changing nearly all his great designs, has been at work here; and it is the fountain which has suffered.

This fountain, which is a part of the approach to the Senate House, was to have as its central statue a figure of Jove. Vasari, who is quite carried away with Master Michelangelo’s beautiful design, describes the fountain as if it were already done,--Jove in the centre and the two river-gods on either side. But Michelangelo and the enthusiastic Vasari had been dead for years when Sixtus V brought the Acqua Felice to the Campidoglio and finally erected the fountain. He placed in the noble niche where a colossal and majestic Jupiter should have stood, the antique statue of a Minerva done over to represent Rome. The white marble head and arms of this statue are modern restorations, but the porphyry torso was found at Cori, and its air of undeniable antiquity is all that saves this curiously inadequate figure from utter insignificance. It is too small for the niche it occupies, and is so out of proportion to its surroundings and on so different a plane of artistic treatment that it would quite spoil any creation less triumphantly dominant than is this whole staircase and façade.

The two river-gods which also adorn this fountain are very old. Together with Marforio, now to be found in the Museum of the Capitol, they have the distinction of never having been buried since the downfall of Rome. Once they stood before “that most magnificent of all Roman temples”--Aurelian’s Temple of the Sun. Later they belonged to the Mediæval Museum of Statues, a collection kept in or near the old papal palace of the Lateran, where they had been called Bacchus and Saturn. The Nile, who should have been unmistakable because of his emblem of the Sphinx, has now his proper designation; but the other statue has a curious history. It was originally the River Tigris, a river familiar to the Romans since the wars with Mithradates. When, under Paul III, Michelangelo placed these statues in their present position, some influential person suggested that the Tigris, no longer of any interest to the Romans, should be changed into the Tiber. The emblem of the Tigris--a tiger--was then altered to represent the Roman Wolf, and the Twins were added. Pirro Ligorio tells the story, and goes on to say that the fingers of one of the Twins were originally a part of the Tiger’s fur.

The erection of the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the centre of the piazza was the first step in the design of the Campidoglio of to-day, for Michelangelo’s admiration of the statue had been shared by Paul III, and the Pope brought it hither in 1538 when the embellishment of Rome, originally begun in honor of the visit in 1534 of Charles V, had become with both Pope and citizens a great and permanent interest. This statue also had been a part of that Mediæval Museum in the Lateran which was probably one of the places to visit when Charlemagne came to Rome to be crowned in old St. Peter’s on Christmas Day, 800. The façade of the Senate House, which forms the background to the piazza and its statues, is built in great part of travertine, so the structural part of the fountain is of the same material. This consists of a huge niche, sixteen and a half feet in height, sunk into the foundation of the terrace before the main entrance to the Senate House. On either side of the niche is a pair of Doric pilasters, which support the floor of the terrace and its beautiful balustrade. A great stairway, down which the balustrade continues, connects this entrance of the Senate House with the piazza below; and the foundation of these steps, forming triangular wings to the niche, serves as a background to the river-gods. These figures lie one on either side of the semicircular basins containing the water. The simplicity of the design partakes of the inevitable. Considering it from any point of view, it is not only impossible to think of anything better, it is impossible to think of anything else. If it is not the work of Michelangelo, there must have been two Michelangelos in 1538!

[Illustration: View of the Piazza del Campidoglio from the left side of the Cordonata.]

In Piranesi’s engraving of the Campidoglio a fine balustrade like the one on the stairway surrounds the fountain. It follows the contour of the lower basin and stands at some three or four feet distant from it. This balustrade, which has disappeared, enhanced distinctly the beauty of the fountain, bringing it more into harmony with the entire composition.

The river-god is one of the earliest sculptural personifications of natural phenomena. In these days comparatively little heed is paid to the smaller water-ways, so the modern spirit fails to see the significance of these conventionalized figures. To the ancients, however, the statues personified that physical object upon which all civilized life depended--a great stream of unfailing water. The rivers of Greece were small, while the Roman Empire contained some of the largest in the world; but the ideas they represented were the same. The river, small or great, made the city. The river gave food and drink to the inhabitants, connected them with the outside world, brought trade, turned the mills, defended the city from invasion, carried away pestilence, cleansed, purified, and supported all the works of men; and therefore Father Tiber and his brothers were to be worshipped and to be honored, and statues were to be set up to them in public places, so that men should remember what they owed to their river. The river is always personified as a benign and majestic figure in the full strength of mature manhood, with long and abundant hair and beard. The lower limbs are draped, so that the mystery of partial concealment hangs about him. On one arm he bears a horn of plenty; while with the other he reclines upon some support, which is usually the characteristic emblem of the particular stream which he represents.

Power, abundance, and calm strength are the qualities of a great river; and these qualities the ancients most adequately expressed in their own peculiar medium, which was sculpture. Men of to-day put their ideas into music, or more explicitly into prose or verse, and there are still those who appreciate the significance of the river. Washington Irving’s epithet of the “lordly Hudson” proves the hold that great river had over his perception and imagination; and not any statue of a river-god can give the conception of a river which is to be found in Arnold’s “Sohrab and Rustum”:

“But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, Rejoicing, through the hush’d Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon;--he flow’d Right for the polar star, past Orgunjè, Brimming, and bright, and large; then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell’d Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles-- Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere, A foil’d circuitous wanderer--till at last The long’d-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.”

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MARFORIO

The nearest approach which the Romans have left us to such grandeur as this is to be found in their statue called Marforio. The north wing of the Campidoglio group is known as the Museum of the Capitol, and it is in the entrance court of this edifice that Marforio is now to be seen. If this most majestic of all river-gods ever represented any particular river, the name of that river was forgotten centuries ago. His title of Marforio was given him long since, because he once poured the water into a fountain which stood in a small square to the left of the Senate House, where Augustus had erected the Martis Forum. There he seems to have remained throughout the darkest days of Rome’s decadence, surviving every vicissitude, and always respected by the half-barbarous Romans of that time. Gregory XIII (Boncompagni, 1572–1585) is responsible for removing Marforio from this classic position and for separating him at that time from the huge granite basin into which flowed the water from the urn on which he is leaning. Thenceforth the basin has a history of its own, while Marforio’s odyssey (he wandered for some time after leaving his old home) finally brought him to the Campidoglio. Sixtus V then placed him on the left side of the piazza, facing the south wing. This south wing, known as the Palazzo dei Conservatori, was the first of the present group of buildings to be erected, Tommaso de’ Cavalieri--a Roman gentleman and one of Michelangelo’s few intimates--having had charge of its construction in Michelangelo’s lifetime. The north wing, or the Museum of the Capitol, was not done until the architect Rainaldi erected it for Innocent X (Pamphili), twelve pontificates after the reign of Paul III. During a period of one hundred and sixty years Marforio remained where Sixtus had placed him, and then Clement XII (Corsini) installed him in the court of the Capitoline Museum, and again he was given a fountain to feed and protect.

Marforio’s career after he had been parted from his basin was a curious one. Bored, perhaps, by the lonely magnificence of his new surroundings, he fell into evil ways. He became the partner of Pasquino! Pasquino, the mutilated torso from an old Greek group of statuary, stands at the farthest corner of the Braschi Palace (now the Ministero dell’ Interno). He had first been set up there in the reign of Alexander VI; and from that time he had become the medium for the popular and anonymous criticisms of the government. His name of Pasquino was taken from a witty tailor or barber who lived near the Palazzo Orsini and whose sallies against those in authority greatly delighted the Roman people. It became the custom to affix anonymous couplets or epigrams to the old torso, which thus obtained the name of Pasquino, and the epigrams came to be known as pasquinades; and from the days of the Borgias to the time of Napoleon, and even later, most of the current witticisms or scathing reflections upon public events or notable personages were ascribed to Pasquino. When Marforio took up his abode in the Piazza of the Campidoglio, he became to the Romans the partner of Pasquino. According to a modern authority, Marforio never originated the sally. His function was to put the question which elicited the witty retort, or to reply in kind to Pasquino’s interrogatories. With Marforio’s incarceration in the court of the Museum the long dialogue came to an end; and a century later the passing of papal Rome brought Pasquino’s career to its final close. Modern freedom of the press leaves no place for Pasquino; and it may be said of him that, Marforio being gone,

“... of sheer regret He died soon after.”

This is not strictly true, for, although the statues themselves no longer have a part in the game, it still goes on. One of the most popular of the Roman newspapers still publishes questions and repartee by Marforio and Pasquino.

It is only necessary to study for a short time the various river-gods in Rome, such as those of the Tiber and the Nile, here at the Capitol, or Fontana’s statue in the Quattro Fontane, or the modern work in the western fountain of the Piazza del Popolo, and then to return to Marforio, to appreciate the immense artistic superiority of the latter. Marforio is truly a river-god, a personification of all or any of the earth’s rivers. The ancient and forgotten sculptor has given to the ponderous stone a fluid quality which is really wonderful. To make the hair and beard merge into the god’s breast and shoulders would have been simple both in conception and execution, but only a genius could have secured to the massive and supine figure that appearance of being outstretched in powerful yet melting length along the surface of things. Artists of the Renaissance from Rome and from beyond the Alps always speak of the _gran simulacro a giacere_, an expression difficult to anglicize, but which is an attempt to describe this singular quality of a static position instinct with continuous and onward flowing movement. Finally, the god’s face is full of genuine power and benignity and is the adequate consummation of the sculptor’s ideal. It is no wonder that Marforio has become a type. Vasari, for instance, speaks of young Baccio Bandinelli making “a Marforio” out of snow, as not long before the youthful Michelangelo had made a faun from the same perishable material.

For a thousand years--and we do not know for how much longer--Marforio has been a part of the city’s life. He has survived the Norman pillage in 1084, as well as the great sack of Rome in 1527. As a kindly god, dispensing water to rich and poor, he has had his part in all the triumphs and disasters, and has shared the ups and downs of life not only with the city but with her children. Roman and barbarian, patrician and plebeian, slave and citizen, Pagan and Christian--all have drunk from his fountain. What has he not seen, and not heard! It was an unerring instinct for the fitness of things which made him Pasquino’s gossip, and his present honorable but unnatural seclusion from the city’s busy streets and squares is commonly attributed not to Pope Clement XII’s lack of imagination but, on the contrary, to his recognition of Marforio’s malicious influence over the popular mind. A tablet has been set up in the house which is built over the site where history finds him, Number 49, Via Marforio. In short, Marforio belongs to that curious class of inanimate things which have developed a personality; injury to him would arouse fierce popular resentment; and were he to be destroyed, the Romans would feel that they had lost not a work of art but a personal friend.

THE LION

The third fountain in the trio of the Campidoglio is to be found in the upper garden of the Palazzo dei Conservatori--the building to the right hand in the ascent of the Cordonata. It can hardly be called a fountain, since it is merely a large basin of water surrounding some rockwork on which stands an old bit of sculpture of a character manifestly inappropriate to the sentiment of a fountain. It represents a lion tearing out the vitals of a horse which it has sprung upon and borne to the ground. This much-restored fragment is of real importance from an artistic standpoint, while as a Roman antiquity it has extraordinary interest. The marble bears distinct traces of having been subjected to the action of water, and, as a matter of fact, it was found more than a thousand years ago in the bed of the River Almo. Nothing is known of its history previous to that discovery.

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