Part 5

It was remarked that the Pope never wished to hear or to speak of his predecessor. He felt that the election of Clement VII had robbed him of fourteen years of the papacy. Posterity may well share his prejudice, for it seems safe to assume that, had Paul III been Pope in 1527, Bourbon’s soldiers would never have got within sight of the city walls; there would have been, in fact, no sack of Rome. The Pope felt with all the force of his Italian nature the danger to Italy from the side of Spain. Better patriot than priest, he had made secret treaties with the Protestants as a weapon against the Spaniard; and while no one realized more keenly than he the necessity of reforms in the Church, yet he dreaded them lest they might in any way weaken the strength of the papacy. His singular ability to unite the fortunes of his family with profitable political undertakings runs throughout his long life; but this nepotism, which no pope ever carried further, and for which he has been unsparingly censured by historians, represents the kindliest strain in his nature. It was the human side; and it was the direct cause of his death. In a dispute over retaining the Duchy of Parma in his family, the Pope’s grandson, Octavius, opposed the old pontiff. Paul felt this ingratitude deeply, and spoke openly about it to the Venetian ambassador. The day after All Saints’ Day, 1549, the old man repaired to his villa on Monte Cavallo “to ease his mind,” and from there he sent for Alessandro Farnese II. He came, this magnificent young cardinal, handsome, courtly, the great art patron, the lover of scholars and poets, the finest flower of the Farnese, a grandson and namesake of whom Paul III was justly proud. The cardinal was the Pope’s darling, and from him Paul felt he could expect support and sympathy. The interview, however, soon became stormy. High words passed. The Pope flew into a rage and snatched the biretta from the cardinal’s head. He had discovered that Alessandro also was carrying on a secret counterplot against him, and the discovery broke the old man’s heart. Such a violent attack of anger at the age of eighty-three brought on an illness from which he had neither the strength nor the wish to recover, and in a week’s time Paul III was dead. Even after his death the Romans loved him--a rare tribute to any pope--and all Rome went to kiss his feet. He had been the first Roman to occupy St. Peter’s chair in over one hundred years, and the Romans felt his virtues and his failings to be their own. Fifteen years before, they had carried him on their shoulders into old St. Peter’s for his coronation, and now they buried him there. His tomb cost twenty-four thousand Roman crowns, and is the masterpiece of Guglielmo della Porta. The two recumbent statues upon it are said to be after a sketch by Michelangelo. The connection of Michelangelo’s name with the tomb is interesting, but of greater interest is the romantic legend which surrounds the statue of the younger woman. This figure, once called Truth and now known to be Justice, is said to be the portrait of Paul III’s sister, and this recalls the fact that the fortunes of the princely family of the Farnese rest upon no more honorable basis than the passion of Alexander VI (Borgia) for this sister, the beautiful Giulia Farnese. No one can study the statue on the tomb without understanding how it was that this magnificent creature seemed to the men of her time the flesh-and-blood presentment of those Pagan goddesses whom they all, secretly or openly, worshipped. The superb body is now concealed by Bernini’s hideous leaden draperies, but the carelessly waving hair and tiny ear have witchery even in the marble, while the face possesses that solemnity of perfect beauty found only in the masterpieces of the Greeks. Never before or since was such a price paid for the Red Hat! Alexander VI made the young brother, Alessandro Farnese, aged twenty-five, a cardinal, and Giulia Farnese went to reign in those Borgia apartments, decorated by all the genius of Pinturicchio, and at once the pride and disgrace of the Vatican. The young cardinal was nicknamed the Petticoat Cardinal; but he seems to have felt no compunction at the transaction. With the Romans, as with the Parisians, ridicule is the most powerful engine of destruction; and the fact that Alessandro Farnese lived this sobriquet down, proves, as nothing else can prove, the hold he had upon the Roman people.

Any account of Paul III would be incomplete without some reference to his extraordinary belief in astrology. It was quite a recognized fact that he never even considered any scheme, public or private, before consulting the planets. If the heavenly bodies were not in favorable conjunction, the enterprise was given up, or as nearly given up as was possible to so obstinate and tenacious a mind. In his own time this singular characteristic was felt to be incongruous and rather disgraceful; but it is easy for the modern spirit to understand, and even condone, the weakness. Surely, it was not strange that such a man, with such a life, should feel that “the stars in their courses fought” for him.

The impression made upon the mind by the Farnese fountains is not pleasing. They are certainly “rare and vast,” but as fountains they are not a success. The form overshadows the substance; for the single jet of water thrown upward over the structural part of the fountain is not adequate, and is lost in the effect produced upon the eye by the huge tubs turned black by the deposits of the Acqua Paola; while the water falling back into these receptacles is caught as in a prison, the overflow from the upper to the lower basins being not sufficient to give an idea of a copious stream. The monster granite baths have a sepulchral effect. They seem more like coffins made to hold the bones of departed heroes than like basins for receiving and distributing living water. During more than two centuries these fountains bore witness to the magnificence of the Farnese family; but as that magnificence had been sought and held for reasons as purely personal and selfish as men have ever known, it had no real value or significance for the world. No memories of patriotism or ghost of romance hangs over these fountains, or over the palace which they guard. The family and the splendor once were, and now are not; and all the sunshine which daily floods the spacious piazza fails to reanimate the majestic vacancy of the façade, or to lift the gloom from the dejected and sombre fountains.

VILLA GIULIA

[Illustration]

VILLA GIULIA

I. FONTANA PUBBLICA DI GIULIO III

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,

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So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round. And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree,

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It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice....”

The Villa Giulia is the Italian version of “Kubla Khan,” not built by “lofty rhyme,” but constructed of actual stone and marble for a pleasure-loving pontiff of the Cinque Cento. The desire to realize the poet’s vision is often felt by absolute monarchs. Versailles, San Souci, and the Hermitage show what unlimited power, wealth, and caprice have accomplished in that direction; but none of the northern sovereigns possessed either the climate, soil, historical, poetic, and pictorial setting or the artists, architects, and marvellous art treasures which were at the command of Pope Julius III.

When this pontiff, whose election dates from 1550, decided to build a pleasure-house upon the vineyard in the Via Flaminia, which he had inherited from his uncle, the elder Cardinal Monte, he bought up adjoining property from various landowners, so that his domain finally extended from the Tiber eastward up the Valle Giulia and adjoining slopes of Monte Parioli. The southern boundaries have not yet been fully determined, but those to the north extended as far as the Chapel of St. Andrea, a beautiful little building erected by Vignola to commemorate Pope Julius’s (then Cardinal Monte) deliverance from the soldiery at the time of the sack of Rome in 1527. The Via Flaminia was at that time the fashionable drive. It was lined by fine villas and palaces, and Amannati alludes to it as the “beautiful Via Flaminia.” The approach to it was from the Piazza del Popolo, then a place of gardens, through the fine Porta del Popolo which, begun so long before under Pope Sixtus IV, had just been finished by Michelangelo and Vignola. The fine avenue extended as far as the Ponte Molle, where it crossed the Tiber, and, after skirting the western slopes of Monte Soracte, began its long march to the north. A little road (called the Via del Arco Oscuro) leading up from the Tiber crossed the Via Flaminia at right angles and climbed up the Valle Giulia, turning abruptly toward the northern spur of Monte Parioli. The original Monte property lay along this little road; and it was at the head of this thoroughfare, where it turned sharply to the north and therefore at some distance from the Via Flaminia and on much higher ground, that Pope Julius decided to build his villa. Its creation quickly became the absorbing passion of his life. The greatest architects of the time were employed upon it and no expense was spared. After Pope Julius’s death, the entire place was confiscated by the Camera Apostolica for thirty-seven thousand scudi, the estimated amount of Pope Julius’s debts.

The Monte Pope (Julius III belonged to the Roman family of Monte) would leave the Vatican by the passage leading to the Castle of St. Angelo, take there a magnificent barge and be rowed up the great sweep of the Tiber to the landing-place at the foot of the Arco Oscuro. Here a fine flight of steps was constructed leading up to a vaulted pergola which traversed the fields between the Tiber and the Via Flaminia. The pergola was a bower of verdure and terminated in a fine building and gateway bordering the Tiber side of the Via Flaminia. Here it was necessary to cross the great highway in order to begin the ascent of the Arco Oscuro, which led directly to his new villa. The highway was dusty, and the _salita_ or ascent long and steep, and the Pope decided to create a resting-place at this point. He had begun digging for water very early, while cultivating his vineyard, “without ever having had the slightest indication that water could be found there.” Eventually he accomplished his purpose, for he succeeded in bringing to his vineyard the leakage waters of the Virgo Aqueduct. The “leakage” was very much in the nature of a tap, and the proceeding was high-handed and reprehensible to a degree. In imperial days such tampering with the aqueducts was visited by punishment which Frontinus considered not too severe for so great a crime against the public welfare.

Julius III’s pontificate lasted only five years; but in the year 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.