o- CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FINE ARTS LIBRARY THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME ^ -j«4V^ (S~V"«->l/, TWENTY FIFTH ANNIVERSARY MCMXX //«/ V. Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924020674036 American Academy in Rome Twenty-Fifth Anniversary THE history of the first twenty-five years of the life of the American Academy in Rome, is a complete justification of the vision of its Founders. The men this institution has already sent forth, and their influence in establishing high standards and in moulding thought, both in the Arts of Architecture, Painting and Sculpture, and in Classical Literature and Archae- ology, have demonstrated its paramount importance to higher education in America. The success already achieved warrants the Trustees in extending the field of its activities to include the arts of Musical Composition and Landscape Architecture, and in opening its doors to the women as well as the men of America. In order to maintain the Academy in its present state, and in order to in- sure its growth in these directions, additional endowment is necessary. France owes her pre-eminence in Arts and Letters today to the establish- ment of the French Academy in Rome over two hundred years ago. Spain, England, Belgium, Austria, Germany and Russia have followed her example. The Trustees of the American Academy turn confidently to the men and women of America, in the belief that their support of this great national and patriotic institution will not fail. [3] CHARLES POLLEN McKIM Albin Polasek, Sculptor Fe/kiv of lie American Academy h Rome Founders *Charles F. McKim J. P. Morgan Wm. K. Vanderbilt *J. PiERPONT Morgan *Henry Frick Henry Walters Harvard University American Academy in Rome Endowment Committee Honourary National Committee of Men Hon. Elihu Root, Chairman, New York His Excellency the Italian Ambassador Baron Romano Avezzana, Washington Hon. Charles E. Hughes, New York Hon. Thomas Nelson Page, Washington Hon. Henry White, Washington Mr. J. P. Morgan, New York Dr. Charles W. Eliot, Boston Mr. George Wharton Pepper, Philadelphia Mr. Martin Ryerson, Chicago Mr. Francis E. Drury, Cleveland Mr. Oliver C. Fuller, Milwaukee Mr. Robert S. Brookings, St. Louis Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, San Francisco Honourary National Committee of Women Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Chairman, New York Mrs. H. Fairfield Osborn, New York Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, New York Mrs. B. G. Work, New York Mrs. Willard Straight, New York Mrs. Montgomery Sears, Boston Mrs. Charles P. Taft, Cincinnati Mrs. J. Ross Todd, Louisville, Ky. Mrs. John Davis, St. Louis Mrs. John Markoe, Philadelphia ♦Deceased fAppointed Mrs. John Alden Carpenter, Chicago, Mrs. Walter S. Brewster, Chicago Mrs. R. B. Mellon, Pittsburgh Mrs. W. S. Cowles, Farmington, Conn. Miss Elizabeth T. Miller, Detroit Mrs. Sumner McKnight, Minneapolis Mrs. Thomas F. Frothingham, S. Barbara, Cal. tPRESiDENT M. Carey Thomas, Bryn Mawr College JPresident E. F. Pendleton, Wellesley College Mrs. William Crocker, San Francisco [5] The American Academy in Rome AMERICA owns a great possession lying in the Eternal City; great, for . its material value, greater for the influence it is destined to exert upon the arts and learning of our country. The nature of this possession, what it is, how it came to be, why it should be, this account will attempt to show. The statement that it is the property of America and not of certain in- dividuals, may be explained by comparison. The chief exemplar, as well as the oldest of all post-graduate academies of art, is that of France, which was founded under Louis XIV, and has occupied its present beautiful quarters in the famous Villa Medici for well over a century. All the world knows what the Grand Prix de Rome means to a French artist — ^the supreme reward of student excellence, to be gained in strenuous competition. The French nation maintains its Academy, as a governmental institution, under the Ministry of Fine Arts; its Director is a government official; those returning from residence there may expect, in greater or less degree, some official support. We in America do not do things in this way; we have no Ministry of Fine Arts, nor any equivalent. When we want an Academy, we must ask our citizens to put their hands into their pockets and give the funds for its estab- lishment and maintenance; for though our government gives us a charter, it does not, and may not be expected to, give financial support. Such funds are committed to the keeping of a Board of Trustees, existing under authority of an Act of Congress, and therefore, to that extent, a national body. Accord- ingly they must so use those funds, however and by whomsoever given, that the advantages to be derived from them shall be available to all such citizens of the United States as may be qualified, under the rules which the trustees are empowered to make, to profit therefrom. Hence the property held in Rome by the trustees, and the educational opportunities there offered, truly belong to America, and those who have given to the Academy have given to our country. The building of the World's Fair at Chicago made a turning-point in our artistic progress, so marked that it may well be termed an epoch. Its effect was profound and far-reaching, strongly influencing our subsequent work and point of view. It was the first occasion upon which there were [6] brought together, to work for a common result, not only a number of archi- tects, but also the practitioners of the allied arts. The lessons learned were important: the inestimable value of coherence and classic orderliness; the individual freedom given to those who accept a common restraint; greatest of all, perhaps, the meaning of collaboration: That the architect, the painter, the sculptor, if each is to reach his highest expression, must work all together, mind to mind and hand to hand, not as separate units fortuitously assembled, but as an intimately interwoven and mutually comprehending team — as men worked in every great age of the past to make great works of art. Perhaps the full lesson was not entirely grasped, perhaps it was too vast for immediate complete realization; but at any rate it bore some fruit promptly, and the American School of Architecture in Rome was opened in 1894. It was in the fertile brain of that most distinguished ornament of American architecture, Charles F. McKim, that the idea was bom; under his fervor and enthusiasm, together with that of Daniel Burnham, that it took shape; to their unswerving devotion to this idea, their gifts to it of money and time; to their inspiring example; to the years of Frank Millet's unselfish service, ending only with his tragic death in that very service; and to the adherence of such others as La Farge and Saint-Gaudens, now gone, Mowbray, French, and Blashfield, happily still with us, that this fruition was due. Begun by two such princes of architecture as McKim and Burnham, it naturally took at first an architectural form, but the rest soon followed. In 1897 the scope was enlarged by the founding of the American Academy in Rome, for students of architecture, painting, and sculpture. The Villa Aurora was used as headquarters until 1904, when the Academy purchased the Villa Mirafiore, which it occupied until October, 1914. Toward the close of 1909, Mrs. Heyland, an American lady living in Rome, devised to the Academy the property known as the Villa Aurelia, of which, in due course, it took possession. This was an important step and one requiring much consideration. It in- volved the abandonment, sooner or later, of the Villa Mirafiore; the expendi- ture of a considerable sum in taxes, and, beyond that, upon new building; for the Villa Aurelia, though a house of imposing appearance, standing in a spacious and lovely garden, was by no means adequate for such an establish- ment as the Academy requires. But the greatest factor was the character and quality of the offered site. For the Mirafiore, charming, convenient, comfort- able and with fine grounds, lies well outside the walls toward the Campagna in a modem quarter of Rome, and has no historical association. [7] B' I UT the Villa Aurelia stands upon the summit of the Janiculum,the highest point within the walls; the gate to its grounds is immediately next to the Porta San Pancrazio, between which and the Villa Doria-Pamfili, just beyond, was the terrific fighting led by Garibaldi in 1849; it was in this house, then the Villa Savorelli, that he made his last headquarters, and the siege left it a battered ruin. From its windows and its terraces one sees the dome of St. Peter's, its springing level with the eye; one sees all of Rome stretched out beneath, all of it from Monte Mario past the pyramid of Cestius to the tombs on the Appiaii Way; Soracte, Leonessa, the Abruzzi, the Sabine and Alban hills, the Campagna, the lighthouse twinkling by night at distant Ostia. The modem restored house is not in the grand manner, but it has some splendid rooms, and a part of it actually is a bit of the Aurelian Wall. Those who live in it gaze daily, from a place of utmost loveliness, down upon "the heart of Europe and the living chronicle of man's long march to civilization." At the time of this event another step, which had for some time been under consideration, was taken. The American School of Classical Studies in Rome was founded in 1895, and occupied as headquarters the Villino Bonghi, near the Baths of Diocletian. It is, as its name implies, an institution for the higher development of advanced students in the fields of archaeology, literature, and ancient art. Its work is of a twofold character — educational and scientific. On the general educational side it has been a highly valuable force in vivifying and invigorating the standards of classical teaching, by making intending teachers acquainted with the rich store of Roman antiquities. On the strictly scientific side the work has been done by the professors and fellows of the Schools, and has consisted of epigraphic and paleographic studies and publi- cations. The proposal made was that the Academy and the School of Classical Studies should unite. In the writer's opinion, it required some breadth of vision to see the reason for this union. The easy view was (it still is) that classical learning and the arts have nothing to say to each other; that they are practised by two different breeds of people who have not, and will not have, anything much in common. This view is an acceptance of what lies like a blight upon much of our educational systems of today, against which thought- ful people are more and more rebelling. It is a downright denial of the human- ity of man; an assumption that he is a mere machine to be trained only in [8] narrow grooves, rather than to be ripened and stimulated and cultivated to the highest possible expression of his powers . It would be hard to find a better cure for the misconception than by intimate contemplation of what the gener- ations of men have done in Italy. The other view was taken by the trustees— that the close association of those pursuing their various aims would benefit all of them, widen their intellectual horizons and make of them completer beings. They felt that the student of history, who perforce must deal with works of art, cannot but find them more real through contact with those whose calling is to produce works of art; that the artist will have his imagination more stirred, that his comprehension will be more acute, if in his study of the past he knows all that he can of the lives and the manners of those whose expressions he studies — of what caused those expressions. Accordingly, the union was agreed upon; the two branches to be consoli- dated under the title of the' American Academy in Rome, with a School of Fine Arts and a School of Classical Studies. The agreement went into effect on December 31, 1912. Briefly, the plan of organization provides that the resident officers in Rome shall be a Director of the Academy as a whole, a Professor in charge of each School, an Executive Secretary to administer business matters, with such other professors, lecturers, or instructors as may be deemed advisable. The utmost possible autonomy is preserved for each school, within its educational province. Since acquiring the Villa Aurelia, the Academy has been enriched by the donation of adjacent property, including two residences. On part of this property there has been erected a large building, which, with its fine approach, its beautiful cortile, and spacious, well-proportioned rooms, is the working Academy headquarters. It contains the living-rooms of the Fellows, their studios and study-rooms, dining-hall, lounges, a great library, museum, kitchens, and offices. The transfer of the whole Academy to the new quarters occurred in October, 1914. The following then constitutes its plant: The Academy building, residence and work-rooms of the Fellows. Villa Aurelia, which was the residence of the late Dr. Jesse Benedict Carter, Director of the Academy until his lamented death in the midst of active war service. Closed as a measure of economy through part of the war, it was occupied by the officers of the Red Cross in 1918. Its beautiful gardens are a pleasure- ground for Fellows and students, and a perfect spot for outdoor life classes. [9] Villa Chiaraviglio, a commodious and agreeable house with good garden, residence of the Executive Secretary. A smaller house, also with a garden, of varying occupancy. Educational Plan T N considering the educational plan of the American Academy in Rome, let ■'■ us realize, first of all, that although its two coordinate branches are, for the sake of convenience, called "Schools," they are not schools in any commonly accepted sense. The Academy is not a school; it is not for technical training or the teaching of any rudiments; it does not have classes nor does it even im- pose a very rigid, prescribed course. Its beneficiaries are those who have already advanced far beyond the preliminary stages of their various callings; frequently they may be people ready to embark, or who have embarked, upon their professional careers. All of them come to Rome for the enlargement and fuller development of their knowledge and talents through first-hand contact with the record of the past. Next — and this cannot be too plainly or too emphatically stated — what the Academy offers, its Prize of Rome, is not meant to be a benevolent assistance to worthy youth, but the means whereby the best material discoverable may be raised to its highest powers for the elevation of American art and letters. The winners of the prize are termed Fellows. At present there are sent out annually, and maintained at the expense of the Academy in residence there — in the Fine Arts division, an architect, a mural painter, and a sculptor, each for a term of three years; and at this writing a landscape architect is in resi- dence. Fellowships in Music will be established when funds are available; there are similar and equally cogent reasons for the advanced study of this art in Italy as in the case of the other arts. In the Classical division, two Fellows, to be increased to four as soon as funds permit. The full plan, there- fore, contemplates the sending out each year of nine Fellows, making twenty- seven always in residence. The Academy also offers, to the extent of its capacity, the privilege of residence to the holders of various traveling scholar- ships, and the eagerness with which this privilege is availed of is eloquent testimony as to the needs it meets. The traveling scholar is apt to be some- what of an aimless wanderer, lost and confused among all the superabundant riches of the Old World, and greatly helped by some experienced guidance. The Academy also extends the use of its library and attendance at lectures to numerous students, largely from university graduate schools. [10] Fellows in the Fine Arts are chosen by competitions. Fellows in Classical Studies, who must be holders of a college degree, are selected upon submission of evidence of their special fitness for the study and investigation of the arch- aeology, literature, or history of the classical or later periods. They must also submit evidence of special study in one or more of the following subjects: Roman epigraphy, paleography, Roman topography, Roman or Etruscan archaeology, and the history of ancient art, and show by scholarly papers, or otherwise, thek fitness to undertake special work in Rome. Architectural candidates must be either graduates of an accepted archi- tectural school, or of a college or university of high standing, holding certifi- cates of at least two years' study in such architectural school; or pupils of the first class of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, who have obtained at least three values in that class. Painters and sculptors must show evidence of advanced attain- ment and special fitness. All the above are conditions prerequisite to con- sideration as competitors. Certain work , or rather work of certain kinds , is prescribed . For the artists , copies of masterpieces, collaborative problems, and restorations; for the others some piece of special research, to be published as the Academy may direct. Certain travel is also required; for instance, the Fellow in the Fine Arts must go to Greece. These requirements, however, are a sort of general frame, within which great individual latitude is not only expected but encouraged. THE winner of the American Academy's Prize of Rome, then, has the full equivalent of what France holds out to her most brilliant students of art — and not France only, but other European nations — Germany, Spain, Great Britain, and Russia. And remember that, no matter how high the performance of an American at the Beaux-Arts, the ^rix de Rome is closed to him; and that the Beaux-Arts, famous though it be, is but a school, after all. It is not too much to say that the Academy gives even more, in cultural possibility, through the addition of classical learning to artistic cultivation. It is sometimes objected that, after all, the Academy takes care of but a small number of students, relative to its great establishment. A very little reflection will show the fallacy of any such objection. In the very nature of things the Academy cannot be conducted as an institution for giving in- [11] struction to large numbers. It is the exact opposite of that; for not merely high but the highest post-graduate improvement. Its advantages should be extended only to exceptional persons— they are the only ones to whom such advantages are worth giving. To measure the efficiency of such an establish- ment in terms of per capita cost is to miss the point entirely. One perfect genius, finished and rounded as he may be by what the Academy gives him, is worth, to America, the whole cost of the Academy for long periods of time. The two points have now here been made, that the Academy is of national character, and that it is erected upon the underlying conception of the value and need of collaborative work. It is not enough to claim national breadth merely because of a charter from Congress; the fact is that Academy Fellows do actually come from widely distributed parts of the United States, while applications are yearly received from all over the country. The Fine Arts competitions take place at various schools of art and architecture throughout the Union. The question of collaborative work is of vital consequence. It is in the realm of architecture that this country must, as have all other countries before it, find its completest material expression; architecture in all its manifold forms; of landscape setting, town planning, groups of buildings, as well as individual structures; architecture enriched and vivified by the sister arts of painting and sculpture. What every serious person who contemplates the works of bygone splendid days must realize, is that those who produced those works did so in unison; the architect did not design a building in vacuo, vn\h spaces left which some bewildered painter of easel pictures would weaken and fail to decorate, or on which the sculptor, untrained in architectural form, would stick his figures like jugs on a mantel-piece. Far from it; they were all, in a sense, architects; frequently they were actually so. Look at some of the men of the Renaissance: Giotto the painter designs the Florence Campanile; Amolfo del Cambio, the sculptor trained by Niccola Pisano, builds the Palazzo Vecchio; and so on through a long list, to say nothing of Alberti, Sangallo, Michelangelo and Raphael. We are almost as far from this today as though it had never been, and we must have it back again. But valuable and even necessary as is all the exposition of our need, so constantly the subject of speakers and writers on art, it is not by that alone we shall get it. We shall get it by throwing the chosen men themselves together, for sufficient lengths [12] of time, in close personal association during their formative period, and in the constant, richest atmosphere of such masterpieces as will tell them the story over and over again. That is what the Academy is doing. Nobody can fully realize this who does not actually go among them — ^whoso does will have a veritable revelation. Not merely Fellowships, but fellowship; constant discussion and criticism of each other's different lines of work; talks about how to tackle the collaborative problems set for them; a painter illustrating his ideas by modeling a figure; architects, painters, sculptors, historians, and archaeologists going about to- gether to see works of art. An architect designs and executes a fine decorative relief in color; a sculptor makes such drawings of the minute detail of classic ornament as the best architectural draughtsman would be proud of; a painter discovers the wonderful picturesqueness and interest of ancient Cretan cos- tume, and so goes to Crete, works as an archaeologist, makes all sorts of notes, collects all sorts of objects, and then embarks upon a huge mural figure- painting in which he brings back to life this extraordinary, newly discovered past. They go together to Greece and all over Italy — ^it is human and real and vital, and what is more, it is pregnant with possibilities for the develop- ment of beauty in American art, of capacity to handle in a masterly way the tremendous problems that this growing country has in store, beyond any present conception. In one important particular the Academy differs from its European fellows — ^the composition of its Board of Trustees. The by-laws provide that: Each of the following branches of study pursued in the Academy, viz: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Archaeology, Literature, and History, shall be represented in the Board. The total number of Trustees devoting themselves professionally to these subjects shall be no less than three-fifths of the entire number of Trustees, and the representatives of Architecture, Sculptxxre, and Painting shall always be no less than two-thirds of the pro- fessional members of the Board. This means that the direction of the Academy's educational policy lies in the hands of devoted experts. A scrutiny of the list of trustees will show this, and also that among them are those whose names are a guarantee of wise financial administration. Whoever realizes what the Academy offers as a factor in our advance to a higher and more splendid civilization may give to it, therefore, with fullest confidence. [13] Why Rome? THERE is a question often and strangely asked— why Rome? Why not Florence, Paris, or— well, one might propose several alternatives. The answer, it seems to me, is not direct; if one could make it, it would be to tell what Rome is, rather than what other places are not. This I cannot do, nor can any one writer, even though highly gifted; and herein may be the very answer. But come with me, my doubting countryman, and sit on the terrace . of your house on the Janiculum, as the sun behind you drops low over Etruria, and the evening glow falls on the great city spread before you and beneath. The scent of the rioting roses and the tall box hedges comes up to you from the sweet garden where the merlo sings, like his cousin the wood thrush at home. Turn your eyes to the north, where above the tree-tops floats the in- comparable curve of Michelangelo's great dome, now white against dark clouds, now dark against white ones, now blue with the blueness of the pale sky be- hind it . Under it are his Pieta and that terrible beauty of his Sistine painting . Surely you think of him now in all his aspects— poet, painter, sciilptor, archi- tect, engineer, and soldier. You look before you over the city, at a golden villa standing alone amidst the dark green trees of the Pincian Hill — ^the Villa Medici. We see the generations of talented young men who have there evolved their artistic destinies; how fitting a place, that bears the name of that great family. One has the picture of the Medici in their power, all the new discoveries and enthusiasms clustering brilliantly around them; one thinks of the giants of art who made the names of princes famous, high among them Raphael. Your gaze now turns northward again to the accented profile of Monte Mario, where stands the architect Raphael's Villa Madama, and so again to St. Peter's; you wonder how he found the time to superintend its building, and to make projects for excavating ancient Rome while he painted all his pictures. You recall the vast corridors of that huge Vatican hidden by the trees of your garden, and the miles of galleries through which you wandered this morning, looking at the marvelous remnants of ancient Rome, and how at last, a little jaded by the endlessness of it, you came into those rooms where the divine master left the record of his immortal genius. You know how you were both humbled and exalted by that utter perfection of beauty, and that all fatigue was forgotten. And now, as you think of this, of the most touching figure that the world of art has known; of the beautiful young man dead in his youth, your eye moves further down among all the walls and countless [14] roofs to rest upon the quiet gray of another dome, the dome of the Pantheon. I remember that when we went in there you, too, were thrilled by the majesty of the noble portico, and it was of Agrippa we were thinking— Augustus and Agrippa and Imperial Rome. And then, as we walked about under the soaring dome, with its open eye through which the rain had fallen on the pavement, as so many rains have fallen since the smoke of the sacrifices mounted to that eye, nineteen centuries ago, we found ourselves by an unpretentious tomb, and read the inscription which begins "Ilk hie est RaphaeV'—l think we then both of us felt what such an artist and his story mean to the centuries that Uve after him. Those three huge, dark-red arches set on high that so dominate the urban panorama are the fragment of what was once the BasiUca of Constantine, in which a cathedral might have been placed with room to spare. Directly below you, on the farther bank of Tiber, are three other arches in the center of a great fagade; the splendid loggia of the Famese Palace, built of the stone stripped from such imperial remains, as were so many of its fellows: "Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecerunt Barberini." Under that Basilica lies the Forum; we can not see it from here, but we were there the other day and know how it lies so still in the heart of the bustling modem city. We traced, as innumerable visitors from every comer of the earth continually do, the story there written of every stage of humanity; the primitive graves; Sulla's wall in the Treasury; the record of the Caesars; the mediaeval church that once was the library of Augustus, at the foot of the Palatine; the altar set where they bumed Julius' body, while the conspirators fled and the triumvirs gathered together, and none yet dreamed of Philippi or of Actium, or the deadly asp, or of the long line that would be styled Semper Augustus. We talked of the distant sun- worshiping origins lost in the mist of unrecorded time, that placed the Sacred Fire in the Atrium Vests. We looked with sheer delight at the exquisite carved omament of the marble fragments and had the vivid picture of Bmnel- leschi's coming with his friend Donatello to see the wonderful discoveries that caused the new birth of art. So have men ever come to Rome; so men ever will. Now, as evening comes on and the sun is near its setting, there come up to us as we sit here, from the drill-ground under our feet, past San Pietro in Montorio, where they show you, under Bramante's Tempietto, the place [15] where they say St. Peter died; past the murmur of the Acqua Paola, rumiing and splashing in its fountain made of spoils of Minerva's temple and old St. Peter's— Trajan's water, that fills all the fountains in Trastevere and those inclosed by Bernini's colonnade— the clear notes of the bersagUeri bugles. You remember how we saw them in the morning, marching up the steep road along which Garibaldi led his men; how they tramped with trumpets at their lips, and how they were like the marching trumpeters on the Arch of Titus in the Forum. Down at the foot of the hill, on this side of Tiber, we can see the tip of a little brick campanile. It does not look like much, but we know that if we go into the church alongside, S. Maria in Trastevere, we shall see a golden glory of mosaic; that if we look now over the city we can find many other such little brick towers, each one the sign of early or mediaeval Christian art, of mosaics, inlaid pavements, work of the Cosmati, and we think of the huge Coliseum over there, its Roman games and Christian martyrs; of the cata- combs and the hidden places of worship; of the law-courts turned into the churches of the new faith triumphant; of Byzantium and Venice and Ravenna and Sicily; of the long, long struggle between popes and emperors; of the eastern and western empires; of Frederick and his Saracens; of Hildebrand and Henry IV; of Normandy and Anjou; of Spain, Provence, the troubadours, and Avignon. Confused? Yes, but what a glorious confusion, out of which in time will come to him who remains and studies clear thoughts and stirring ambitions. And we, in this brief moment, are touching only a little spot here and there among all that packed and swarming wealth we look upon. T ET us now look twenty miles beyond the city, to those hills from which ■*-^ Romulus came, to which Horace fled for peace, whence Rome drew so much of its lavish water, where emperors, popes and princes made their villas, their strongholds, and such gardens as are both our delight and our despair. Rome begins to lie in cool shadow, but Alba and Lucretilis are bathed in level rays of sun; hardly do they seem solid hills, but great, translucent, pearly, opalescent dreams, shining like the tumbled masses of luminous clouds that day by day form over them. Those clustering white jewels that are strung high in the mountain folds are towns— Grotta Ferrata, Frascati, Tivoli. [16] We shall go to Tivoli tomorrow, to ancient Tibur on the Via Tiburtina, past that great villa of Hadrian's; in the evening we shall walk in the moonlight through the crooked, romantic, hilly streets, under high, frowning stone walls and mediaeval towers; look far, far down into the mysterious gorge, where the silver spray of Anio forever floats over its fall, while above its roar rises the chorus of the nightingales, and on the brink the little round Roman temple sits gracious under the moon. We shall have our first glimpse of the unrivaled cypresses of the Villa d'Este, standing black against the moonlit sky. In the morning, after we have climbed the rough Monte Catillo, and looked across the dark Campagna to the purple mist that veils Rome, we shall see the rising sun disclose, out of that mist, miles away, a shape of pearl — that perfect dome of Michelangelo's, which crowns the mother church of Christendom. Then, when we have strolled through a garden which should be a very bible of his art to the landscape designer, we shall drive for miles along the Via Valeria, through the valleys of the Sabine hills to the pleasant spot where Horace made his farm on the Digentia, and found the seclusion he craved. Fields all enameled with poppy and kis, calling to Fra Angelico and Botticelli to steal from them again, and by that stealing to enrich them; brier roses and white locust blooms; stony gray hills changing their color every moment in cloud-shadow and sunshine; jade-green Anio swirling in the valley; hill towns and castles perched on high, such as you never dreamed of— maddest of all, the incredible Saracinesco, that cannot be a town at all, so pale, so high, so far away, so like the clouds that cast their magic over all this land. But we may not tell of them all now— of Castel-Madama, San Polo dei Cavalieri, San Cosimato with its cliffs and ranks of cypresses, Vicovara, Rocca Giovane, Licenza — ^the light is going. The Campagna grows dark, and we just make out in the gloom the arches of one of the aqueducts— which water? Julia, Tepula, Anio Novus, Claudia; or is it Marcia? Aqua Marcia, that filled your tub this morning with clear green coldness—" . . . nives et irigora ducens Marcia"; of which Augustus boasted in his great record at-AncYra—"Aquam quae Marcia ap- pellatur duplicavi, fonte novo in rivum ejus inmisso"? No matter; let us for an instant remember Sextus Julius Frontinus and' the story he left us of the Roman water. How Vespasian called him to Rome to serve his city, this man who had done well in Sicily, to be praetor and augur and three times consul. How he fought for Domitian in Germany and with Trajan against [17] the Dacians; how his recovery from illness was recorded by his daughter's grateful inscription, found in Germany; how he was pro-consul in Britain, where you may see today his camp on the Via Julia near ruined Chepstow; how Nerva made him water commissioner. Just one among the Roman administrators; but those broken arches are eloquent to us of all that great marvel of power and distant control that was Rome, of all that spread from Rome and brought men to Rome in ancient days as now. The daylight is nearly gone. The myriad walls that front the west, shops, houses, public buildings, churches, villas, palaces; great monuments of past time, structures of every age; fagades that have been studied and drawn and copied all over the world; walls that hide the glorious wonders of the Renais- sance, that surround courtyards famous in the history of art— all have a cold blue light from the western sky. Among them run the curving lines of those that catch the lighting of the streets, warm glows in the blueness. The lights of the city are sprinkling it with dots of fire; brighter they sparkle as the night closes down — ^now you can see only the silhouette against the sky; the angel crest of Hadrian's tomb; the twin towers of S. Maria Maggiore; the ragged profile of St. John Lateran, seat of the Bishop of Rome, who wears the triple tiara yonder in the Vatican. In the middle, opposite you and just next to that overpowering ruin of Constantine's, rises the highest of all — the Ara Coeli. There was the Capitol. There stand Castor and Pollux, guarding the wolf and the eagle in their cages. There is where, six hundred years ago, the Senate and People of Rome crowned with laurel, as scholar and poet, their adored Petrarch, to show that they saw the dawn of a new day. There are the steps on which you may walk today, and down which Rienzi's slaughtered body was dragged and hacked, just as we drag and hack our discarded idols, not for their failure, but in very shame of our hysteria that idolized them. It is almost too dark now to distinguish between the Capitol and the Pala- tine, covered with its palatial ruins; but we look down into the lower ground between as the lights blaze more and more brightly. It is the Velabrum. And before we turn away, you recall your reading about Rome; that you plodded through the dry recital of Suetonius, page upon page of the old gossip, until in the Deified Julius you came upon this, about the celebration of his five triumphs: "each differing from the rest in its equipment and display of spoils. As he rode through the Velabrum on the day of his Gallic triumph, [18] the axle of his chariot broke, and he was all but thrown out; and he mounted the Capitol by torchlight, with forty elephants bearing lamps on his right and his left." Ascenditque Capitolium ad lumina, quadraginta elephantis, dextra sinis- traque, lychnuchos gestantibus. D O YOU not see it now? Can brevity be briefer? Can you, by words, add to the picture? That which you have gazed upon is Rome; the living city that has been a city for two thousand years; that stretched from here to silken Samarcand and cedared Lebanon; to the Nile and the African sands; to the shores of Pontus and the dark German forests, and Gaul, and foggy new-found Britain, and to Spain ; that has given us law and statecraft, and much of the very tongues we speak; that called to herself, through the ages, the Greek, the ByzanttQe, the Barbarian, the men who made the arts of Italy supreme. Why Rome? Because all this uncounted wealth, this endless store heaped up by the hands, the passions and the minds of all that long procession of the generations; this still undiminished fountain men call Italy — all this belongs to no one people, to no group nor class nor nation. It is yours and it is mine; it is there for all who would seek. But it will not, may not, come to us; it must be sought, sought in the land of its making. And the center of all that land, its focus and its very heart, is Rome. C. GRANT LaFARGE Secretary of the Academy [19] Yale University DURING the twenty-five years of its existence the American Academy in Rome has had an honorable record and made a highly important place for itself among our institutions of learning. Its special significance lies in the fact that it is a place where classic art and classic letters are studied side by side, so that it brings our modem students in contact with Roman life as a whole and not with any single aspect of it, and teaches them lessons which our country needs to learn in their entirety. i//VU/u-^ (/co^w-M^ Jrif^^^^ President of Yale University. Princeton University THE American Academy in Rome is one of the most significant ties between the Old and the New World. Through the twenty-five years of its activi- ties in instruction and research, the American Academy has proved a most valuable home of learning for our American students. Inspired by their surroundings and by the rare opportunities furnished by the Academy for the prosecution of their studies, they have returned to this country to contribute to our American life the spirit of that tradition which made Rome great and gave to the world a heritage which we cannot too highly prize. To support this Academy in the time of its need and appeal to the country should be regarded not only as an obligation but as a privilege by all who seriously desire to conserve the intellectual and spiritual elements in our civilization. President of Princeton University. [20] Columbia University IT GIVES me no small satisfaction to support most earnestly the appeal of the Trustees of the American Academy in Rome for funds necessary to establish the work of the Academy upon a sound permanent basis. The Academy stands at a strategic point not only historically and geographically, but for the work of training in classical literature and institutions as well as in architecture and the fine arts. It provides a cap stone to much of the most eager and scholarly work carried on in American universities and under the auspices of academies and associations for the promotion of the fine arts. Its plans are wise and well considered, the progress that has been made is most encouraging. What remains is to put this noble work beyond the reach of interruption or distress. K,tu^ "L.M.j^/^-^ President of Columbia University. Harvard University I AM glad to testify to the service which the American Academy in Rome is doing. A considerable number of our former students have studied in both the School of Classical Studies and in the School of Fine Arts. Some of these have returned to teach with us, and all have profited by the oppor- tunities which the Academy offers. I wish the campaign for the endowment fund for the Academy success. Very truly yours, President Harvard University. 21] School of Classical Studies WHAT do we want to do? To teach well the most valuable things in the literature, history and antiquities of a thousand years of Classical Rome, things fundamental to the better side of American thought and life. We want also to teach well the best things in the second thousand years of Rome, down to modern times. For these great ends there is no place like the center of the older civilized world; no teacher like the Eternal City. Though the actors, great and small, in the vast drama of two milleniums are gone, the stage and scenery remain. Dwelling there, students live and live anew amid influences which stir their deepest impulses, clear their knowledge and quicken them to the highest efforts. Living daily in the Present, they also view daily, as though present, the long vistas of the Past, our Past, and are thus wakened, as in no other way, to understand and interpret each in the light of the other. Here is the new humanism, the appreciative selection of the best in the Past to serve our own day, the vivid realization of the inestimable worth of the things that abide amid all change, the tempering of the restless Spirit of the Age by the calm Spirit of the Ages. Noi passiamo; Roma resta eterna. Men and women so trained can never be either shallow amateurs or formal pedants. They will be living springs of ennobling influence. And for this one high purpose our School exists. What do we need? Quick help — for we deserve it. Twenty-five years of effort with precarious and scanty means and the closest economies have never- theless yielded rich results. We have furnished our universities and schools with nearly one hundred and fifty professors trained in the humanistic as opposed to the pedantic spirit. We have also trained a group of curators for museums and a fair number of gifted writers and critics. They are fore- runners in a new Renaissance of the antiquities, history and literature of our ancestral civilization and of the later periods as well, a new force for eleva- tion and progress, a force badly and widely needed in our education today. We need quick help so that gifted young Americans, the pick of our land, may not lose the great chance they are so well fitted to take. We must meet [22] the enhanced cost of living and match the new scale of university salaries, or we shall not be able to get or keep first-rate professors or Fellows of high ability. We must keep up our library. We must be able to publish to the world the best researches of our Fellows. In response to a continued demand we are pledged to established a Summer School in Rome as soon as practicable. It is hard to over-estimate the value of this to our classical teachers all over the land. A building for women is also badly needed. The Academy has land available for the purpose. We need more; but this is the minimum. ANDREW F. WEST Dean of the Graduate School, Princeton University. [23] Landscape Architecture YOUNG among her sister arts, landscape design in America is making rapid strides, and as it develops, there is a growing recognition on the part of the public of its functions as a fine art, in creating and preserving beauty through the efficient adaptation of land to human service. The opportunity for highly trained landscape architects is very great in this country and the few who, through natural talent, intensive study and broad cultural development, excel in this art, will have the rare privilege of fostering ever higher standards of landscape design and execution. With the establishment of three fellowships in landscape architecture, it will be the Academy's function to select these exceptional men from among the most promising graduates of those American Universities which give proper instruction in this art and to send them to Rome for three years. In Italy they will study some of the best examples Europe has to offer; study them intensively, thoroughly, with intimate appreciation, coming back to them again and again, in different lights, at different seasons; not merely to carry away stimulating superficial impressions, but to learn by patient analysis what are the essential qualities upon which those impressions depend and to train themselves by recording them faithfully in graphic, plastic and verbal form until they gain a real mastery of their elements. With their analytic study of the masterpieces, they will carry on constructive essays in design. They will work, not in classes, but each on his own responsibiUty, to make the very utmost of the extraordinary opportunity which has come to them, free to concentrate for three years, without compromise, on the single aim of quality in their chosen art. They will work in collaboration with architects, painters and sculptors, learning the limitations of those forms of artistic expression as well as of their own, gaining a sense of understanding and sympathy which adds human values to the training of the mind and of the eye. These fellows will therefore have in Italy a wonderful opportunity to master many fundamental principles of the art of landscape design. During their third year, as the Fellows in Architecture are sent for a while to Greece, the [24] Fellows in Landscape Architecture will be sent to France and to England to see how the same principles have been applied to other forms of landscape design which often differ from the stately and formal Italian compositions because they interpret human needs based on a different intellectual, eco- nomic and social life, and are applied to widely differing natural conditions. On their return to America these exceptional men will go to different parts of the country to practice and to share with others the benefit of their extensive training, greater ability, increased taste and understanding — thereby con- tributing, in ever increasing ratio as their numbers increase from year to year, to the raising of the standard of their art. Men of refinement and culture, they will also lead the public in this country toward greater appreciation of the value of beauty in the adaptation of land to human service. The benefit they have derived from the generous opportunity given them by the American public by means of the Academy will then be returned to the American public through their work and through the spreading of an education based on more catholic taste and greater understanding. FERRUCCIO VITALE [25; Musical Composition THE American Academy in Rome has decided to include musical composi- tion in its scheme of encouragement and reward to American students who show original creative gift. As the French Academy with its "Prix de Rome" has sheltered and developed such illustrious composers as Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, and Debussy, so our Academy will provide for young musicians of marked promise. The American Academy has already realized the hopes of its generous and farseeing supporters. A number of our talented young men, sculptors, paint- ers, architects and students of classical literature and archaeology, have re- turned from their profitable sojourn of three years beneath its roof. These are not only making names for themselves, but helping to establish the higher standards of culture for which the Academy exists. For more than a hundred years the achievements of French artists who have had the inspiration and artistic nourishment which the first Napoleon believed that they would derive from Italy, have fulfilled his expectation and justified his plan. A long line of German composers from Mozart to Strauss has sought and found the same inspiration. That our youths of talent should also be matured in this ar- tistic climate is the aim of our Academy. It is more important to American artists than to Frenchmen that in the formative years they should have the companionship and surroundings created by the society of comrades with similar aspirations, rather than to live sporadically in a community chiefly commercial, with the immediate physical and mental burden of self-support. Our Democracy has taken up music more vigorously and sympathetically than any of the other Fine Arts. The many symphony orchestras, choral societies, string quartettes, and other musical organizations which have been established during the past twenty years from the Atlantic to the Pacific are a proof of this. But although there are many schools and academies in this country which have turned out performers of the first rank, they never have, and in the very nature of things they cannot produce composers. It is to meet this urgent need for bringing to its full fruition the wonderful musical talent of America that the Academy in Rome proposes to found its musical establishment. W. R. SPALDING Professor of Music, Harvard Ufiiversity. [26] What the Alumni Have Done "\"\ /"HEN one is asked to advocate or contribute to such an institution as the » » American Academy in Rome in its twenty-fifth year, a most important and fair question is "What has it done?" To put into a few cryptic sen- tences an estimate of the aesthetic influence of the Academy in America is difficult, especially so when one considers how deep the root of any aesthetic or artistic influence lies and how great a length of time it takes to create it. No one, however biased he may be in his advocacy of certain period styles, can refute not alone the influence on American architecture, but in fact the triumph of the ideas advocated so brilliantly by Charles FoUen McKim, one of the founders of the Academy. The excellence of his and his associates' works was due to the evolution of principles gained by familiarity with those sources of the great ages in which were laid and developed the bases of our American civilization. The principles upon which men like McKim, John La Farge, and St. Gaudens worked are those upon which the American Academy in Rome is founded. Whatever the preliminary training of architects, painters, sculptors, classical students may be, they are inevitably thrown back upon tradition as a basis to build upon and shape into new forms to express our new phases of life. It is not unfair to say that the significance of art in the life of France today is due to the establishment of the academies of fine arts and classical studies in Rome over two centuries ago. The sporadic attempts to break away entirely from tradition have not lasted and cannot last. The test through the last twenty-five years of the principles of the American Academy in Rome in carrying on such study of precedent, is shown by the universally high standard of American art to-day. The test of the achievement of the Academy itself is summed up in the list of Alumni whose work is consistently representative of the standard of excellence in America today. While it seems unfair to single out only a few from among the long list of American Academy Alumni, it is difficult to refrain from mentioning a few names of practically national prominence from all over the United States. [27] In the fine arts we note John Russell Pope, H. Van Buren Magonigla, F. Livingston Pell, Harry Allen Jacobs, architects; Paul Manship, Hermon A. MacNeil, Albin Polasek, Charles Keck, sculptors; George W. Breck, Barry Faulkner, Ezra Winter, Eugene Savage, painters. In the classical studies we find many teachers, writers, museum experts, of whom the follow- ing are exemplary: Howard Crosby Butler, John R. Crawford, Dean Lock- wood, Walter Lowrie, Ralph V. Magoffin, Esther B. Van Deman, John C. Egbert. Is not their work telling now in its influence on American art and letters? Is it not worth while? EDGAR I. WILLIAMS President Associalion of The Alumni. [28 Officers, ig2o William Rutherford Mead, President Breck Trowbridge, Vice-President C. Grant LaFarge, Secretary William A. Boring, Treasurer Trustees Frank Frost Abbott George Allison Armour William A. Boring Charles A. Coolidge Robert W. Deforest Edward D. Adams Herbert Adams Francis C. Jones Edward Robinson Charles D. Norton Edwin H. Blashfield James C. Egbert Edgar I. Williams Daniel C. French Gorham p. Stevens {Ex-offlcio) Wm. Mitchell Kendall Hermon a. MacNeil George B. McClellan Edward K. Rand Breck Trowbridge H. Siddons Mowbray John B. Pine John C. Rolfe Henry Walters Andrew F. West Charles A. Platt C. Grant LaFarge Wm. Rutherford Mead Edward P. Mellon Ferruccio Vitale Finance Committee Henry Walters, Chairman Edward D. Adams Robert W. Deforest Charles D. Norton Counsel of the Academy John B. Pine Executive Secretary RoscoE Guernsey Officers Resident in Rome Director of the Academy and Professor in Charge of the School of Fine Arts Gorham Phillips Stevens Professor in Charge of the School of Classical Studies George Lincoln Hendrickson Executive Secretary H, Blakiston Wilkins [29] Endowment Committee S. Breck Trowbrtoge, Chairman Edward P. Mellon James C. Egbert C. Grant LaFarge From the Trustees Charles A. Platt Francis C. Jones Februccio Vitale Edgar I. Williams Paul Manship From the Alumni George Koyl Barry Faulkner Frank Crowninshield Felix Lamond At Large T. Leslie Shear [30] Funds for the expenses of this campaign for the endowment of the American Academy in Rome have been subscribed by friends of the Academy, so that every dollar received will go to the Endowment Fund. The Academy was in debt to the Morgan estate, $375,000. Mr. J. P. Morgan has made an offer to cancel a dollar of this debt for every dollar subscribed to the endowment up to that amount; thus every contribution will be doubled by Mr. Morgan's munificent offer. Many Universities are ahready Contributing Colleges. There should be many more to avail themselves of the privileges which such annual subscriptions give. And those privileges may be retained in perpetuity by any University which shall capitalize its subscription by making a contribution of five thousand dollars to the endowment of the Academy. Liberty Bonds will be gladly received at their face value. Contributions to the Academy may be deducted from income on tax rettims. All contributions should be made to the order of and mailed to EDWARD P. MELLON, TreasuTer of Endowment Committee 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York City. [31] Cornell University Library DG 12.A51L152 The American academy in Rome, twenty fif 3 1924 020 674 036 ; t-'N & '&