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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924015715489 
 
FOUNTAINS 
 OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 BY 
 MRS. CHARLES MAC VEAGH 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN 
 
 AND ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY 
 
 RUDOLPH RUZICKA 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1915 
 
|\v. \'2>o\ 
 
 COPTBXGHT, 1915, BT 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBKEH'S SONS 
 
 Published October, 1915 
 
TO THE MEMOBY OP 
 A FATHER AND DAUGHTEB 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 St. Peter's 1 
 
 ScossA Cavalli 19 
 
 Piazza Pia 33 
 
 Campidogijo 41 
 
 Fabnese 61 
 
 Villa Giulia 81 
 
 COLONNA 105 
 
 quattko fontane 117 
 
 Tartarughe 133 
 
 fontana del mose 143 
 
 The Lateran 153 
 
 Trinita de' Monti 167 
 
 Villa Borghese, now Villa Umberto Primo 179 
 
 La Barcaccia 195 
 
 Triton 205 
 
 Navona 213 
 
 [ vii ] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Trevi 227 
 
 Piazza del Popolo 239 
 
 PiNCIAN 257 
 
 FoNTANA Paola 267 
 
 Monte Cavallo 285 
 
 Appendix 303 
 
 Cheonological Index of Aqueducts Men- 
 tioned, Ancient and Modern . . . 307 
 
 Chronological Index of Popes Mentioned 308 
 
 Alphabetical Index of Architects, Sculp- 
 tors, Painters, and Engravers Men- 
 tioned 310 
 
 [ viii ] 
 
LIST OF FULI^PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 View of Fountains and Obelisk of St. Peter's from 
 
 beneath Bernini's Colonnade 9 
 
 Upper Basin of the Fountain in the Piazza Scossa 
 
 Cavalli 25 
 
 View of the Piazza del Campidoglio from the Left Side 
 
 of the Cordonata 47 
 
 One of the Fountains in the Piazza Farnese ... 71 
 
 Fountain of the Virgins 91 
 
 Fountain of the Tartarughe 137 
 
 The Fountain of the Sea-Horses 183 
 
 The Fountain of the Amorini 191 
 
 The Fountain of the ffritonj 209 
 
 The Fountain of the Four Rivers 217 
 
 Figure of "Neptune" in the Fountain of Trevi . . 233 
 
 Piazza del Popolo from the West 247 
 
 Mostra of the "Fontanone" 279 
 
 The Fountain of Monte Cavallo 291 
 
ERRATA 
 Page 170, line 18, for London read Westminster. 
 Page 221, line 25, for Leo X read Innocent X. 
 Page 232, line 22, for Tre-vii read Trevie. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Rome has been called the most religious city in the 
 world because of the number of her churches. With 
 equal propriety, and perhaps with greater justice, she 
 might be called the cleanest city in the world because 
 of the number of her fountains. Pagan emperors and 
 Christian popes ahke have found both profit and 
 pleasure in adding another fountain or in making or 
 repairing one more aqueduct to give a still greater 
 supply of water to the Roman populace. No other 
 people, with the possible exception of the Spanish 
 Moors, have so appreciated the value and the beauty 
 of abundant water. 
 
 There are few squares, even in the Rome of to-day, 
 where, at least in the silence of the night, the sound of 
 splashing water may not be heard. The tiny fountain, 
 often fern-fringed, with its ceaseless, slender stream of 
 water, is the one priceless possession in hundreds of old 
 courtyards, where it fills a damp and lonely silence 
 with charm, or redeems by its indestructible quality of 
 
 [ xi ] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 beauty the meanness of the squaUd hfe about it. It is 
 impossible to think of Rome without her foimtains. 
 Yet, after a few weeks, the eye is hardly aware of their 
 presence. It is as if by their very beauty and omni- 
 presence they had acquired the divine attributes of sun- 
 light; and it requires the silence, as with the sunlight it 
 requires the cloud, to rouse our consciousness to their 
 existence. They take their place among the elemental 
 causes of happiness, since the pain we feel at their loss is 
 the only adequate measiu-e of the pleasure they give us. 
 It is difficult for the man of to-day to picture to him- 
 self the abundauice and splendor of the fountains in 
 imperial Rome. Some idea of their character may be 
 obtained from the description gathered from various 
 sources of Nero's fountain on the Caelian. The mingled 
 waters of the Claudian and the Anio Novus aque- 
 ducts were brought thither over the Neronian arches. 
 A wall fifty feet in height, faced with rare marbles and 
 decorated by hemicycles Euid statues, formed the back- 
 ground of the first cascade. At the foot of this wall a 
 huge basin received the stream, which then fell into 
 another basin ten feet below the first, and thence flowed 
 into the great artificial lake, described by Suetonius as 
 like imto a sea, which fiUed all that space now occupied 
 by the Cofiseum. Of great magnificence also was the 
 fountain of Severus Alexander on the Esquiline which 
 served to introduce the Acqua Alexandrina, the elev- 
 enth and last water-supply of imperial Rome. A 
 
 [ xii ] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 coin of the period gives a representation of this foun- 
 tain, and in it can be traced a certain resemblance to 
 the Fontana Paola which stands at the present day on 
 the Janiculum, and which in its size and quantity of 
 water reproduces faintly the fountains of the past. 
 
 That fine phrase, "la nostalgic de la civihsation, " 
 nowhere finds a more perfect illustration than in the 
 attitude of the Western world toweu-d Rome. Some 
 homing instinct of the human heart has for centuries 
 carried thither men of every nation and of every sort of 
 belief or unbehef ; and the conviction that it will bring 
 them thither in the future as in the past is impUed in 
 that other name by which we know her. She is the 
 Eternal City. Every one can feel but no one can explain 
 the charm which she has over the spirits of men. Here 
 the psychic forces of the world's great past are stored 
 in imperishable memories. Here each individual finds 
 spiritual influences which seem to have been waiting 
 through the ages for his own peculiar appropriation. 
 King Theodoric, in the sixth century, spoke not only 
 for himself but for all succeeding generations of North- 
 men when he said that Rome was indifferent to none 
 because foreign to none. It seems as if the feeling 
 for Rome were an instinct congenital with our appe- 
 tites and our passions. It requires no justification and 
 it admits of no substitute. It is dateless and univer- 
 sal. The Gothic king of the past finds a spiritual brother 
 in the schoolboy of to-day who caught his mother's arm 
 
 [ 3dii ] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 on the Terrace at Frascati to say, with an uncontrol- 
 lable tremor in his voice: "See there; that Uttle spot 
 over there ! That is Rome, and she was once the whole 
 world!" King and schoolboy might have met famil- 
 iarly in some smmy portico of the classic city. Both 
 were members of the great freemasonry of the lovers of 
 Rome, which stretches its network far and wide over 
 our civilization. 
 
 In this company there are not a few who find them- 
 selves in Rome, yet not able to see Rome — ^to see it, 
 that is, as the historians, artists, archaeologists, and 
 their own minds call upon them to see it. Their right 
 to tread the Roman streets depends upon their obe- 
 dience to some law compelling an existence lived en- 
 tirely in the open air and in the broad sunshine. To 
 such the gates of Paradise seem closed. To be forbidden 
 the galleries and churches and catacombs and the hid- 
 den recesses of the old ruins appears an intolerable fate. 
 Yet even to these, who have made the great acceptance 
 and are living upon the half -loaf of life — even to these, 
 Rome is kind. Little by little, in easy periods, they 
 can get back into the days of the Renaissance, of the 
 Counter-Reformation, of the Napoleonic Era, and of 
 the great Risorgimento. This can be done under the 
 conditions of open air and sunshine; for it is in such 
 surroundings that we find the fountains, and the foun- 
 tains of Rome are in themselves title-pages to Roman 
 history. 
 
 [ xiv ] 
 
ST. PETER'S 
 
ST. PETER'S 
 
 "Fountains are among the most successful monu- 
 ments of the late Renaissance," and those which stand 
 on either side of the great Square of St. Peter's show 
 that Symonds's statement should be enlarged so as to 
 include the centmy which followed that period. Mr. 
 John Evelyn, the accomplished EngUsh traveller of the 
 seventeenth century, saw the fountain of Paul V soon 
 after its completion and describes it in his diary as the 
 "goodliest I ever saw." Since his day the twin foun- 
 tains both of Trafalgar Square and of the Place de la 
 Concorde have been erected, but Evelyn could still 
 give the superlative praise to the' great Roman model. 
 Although the two fountains in the Square of St. Peter's 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 are exactly alike they are not of precisely the same 
 _date. The conception of the design belongs to Carlo 
 Mademo, who executed the fountain on the right of 
 the approach tp the basilica for Pope Paul V (Borghcfie, 
 i6o5-i62i), while the fountain to the left was copied 
 from this for Pope Clement X (Altieri, 1670-1676), 
 some sixty years later. Clement's courtiers had ob- 
 served that whenever His Holiness walked in the di- 
 rection of Paul V's great fountain his eyes contmually 
 .turned toward it. At length Clement ordered his archi- 
 tect, Carlo Fontana, nephew, of Carlo Maderno, to 
 make an exact copy of Mademo's work and to erect 
 it on the south side of the obelisk. The double fountain 
 not only enhances the magnificence of the entire scene, 
 but so changes it by introducing the additional element 
 of balance that Clement X's order for the second foun- 
 tain was in reality an order for a new composition. The 
 coat of arms cut upon the octagonal support of the 
 upper basins and half hidden and obliterated by the 
 falling water is, on the right-hand foimtain, that of the 
 Borghese family (the crowned eagle above the dragon) ; 
 and on the left-hand fountain, that of the Altieri fam- 
 ily, an inverted pyramid of six stars. The latter foun- 
 tain looks as if it were the older, for, as it is situated in 
 the southeast corner of the wide piazza, it is exposed to 
 the fuU sweep of the Tramontana, or north wind, which 
 has fretted and worn in no small degree the surface of 
 the travertine. It may have been the more sheltered 
 position of the northeast corner which determined the 
 location of Paul V's fountain, the earlier of the two. 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
ST. PETER'S 
 
 In the spring the Altieri fountain is the more beautiful 
 because at that time that portion of the Colonnade 
 which forms its background reveals vistas of foliage, 
 while the moss web woven about the crown of the shaft 
 is of a more brilliant green and the lower basin is full of 
 the same aquatic growth swaying with the motion of 
 the water. 
 
 The Acqua Paola, which feeds these fountains, comes, 
 in the last instance, from the summit of the Janiculum, 
 and therefore their central jets are flung upward to a 
 height of sixty-four feet, far above the balustrade 
 crowning Bernini's lofty colonnades, which form the 
 background of the piazza. This height exceeds by 
 from twenty-four to thirty-four feet the height of 
 the EngUsh and French foimtains; and whereas in 
 the fountains of London and Paris th^ supply and 
 force of the water varies with the season of the year 
 and the time of day (the Trafalgar Square foimtedns 
 in summer play thirteen hours out of the twenty- 
 four emd in winter only seven), the abundance and 
 power of the water in these great Roman foimtains 
 is unfailing and unchanging. At midnight, at high 
 noon, in summer, in winter, they are always flowing, 
 and the splash and wash of the water makes them akin 
 to the cascades of Nature. 
 
 This perpetual flow has been a characteristic of the 
 Roman fountains since the days of the Emperors. 
 Frontinus, writing in the reign of Trajan, says that all 
 the great fountains were constructed with two receiv- 
 ing-tanks, each from a separate aqueduct, so that no 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 accident or emergency should diminish or stop the 
 supply of water. The later popes were also careful to 
 preserve this uninterrupted flow, and since the close of 
 the Cinque Cento their fountains have played unceas- 
 ingly. The lowest basins of both fountains (twenty-six 
 feet in diameter) are of travertine with a rim of Carrara 
 marble. The middle basins (fifteen feet in diameter) are 
 of granite. That in the right-hand fountain is of red 
 Oriental granite, and that in the left-hand fountain of 
 gray granite. The inverted basins at the summit, on 
 which the water falls, are of travertine, as are also the 
 massive shafts, which, however, Maderno adorned 
 with a slight moulding of Carrara marble just above 
 the water-line in the lowest basins. The entire struc- 
 tures have been so transformed in color by three hun- 
 dred years' deposit of the Acqua Paola that they have 
 the appearance of bronze. The water in each fountain ' 
 rises in a crowded mass of separate jets from the simi- 
 mit of the central and single shaft, and falls at first oni 
 an inverted basin covered by deep carving, the richness 
 of which gains in beauty from the green web woven 
 about its curves and angles by the fall of the water. 
 This upper carving seems to be a part of the fantastic 
 action of the wind-tossed spray. The lower basins which 
 receive the water are severely pljun, the design follow- 
 ing Nature's scheme of development, from a fretted 
 and turbulent source to the. broad surfaces of the fuU 
 stream. Eiit„the_ architectural values of these f ountain s 
 are incalculably affected by the wonderful play of the 
 water. It leaps upward as if to meet the sim; it falls 
 ^ [ 6 ] 
 
ST. PETEE'S 
 
 back in tiunult and foam; it drenches all about with 
 its far-flung spray and wasteful overflow. It is the very 
 triumph of vitality and joy. 
 
 The fountains of St. Peter's might be said to bear to- 
 ward the vast piazza of which they are a part the same 
 relation as that of the eye to the human countenance : 
 without them the noble spaces would seem cold and in- 
 animate. This gleaming, tossing water endlessly at play 
 with the wind and the sun, instinct with a power and a 
 beauty not of man's making — this it is which gives to 
 the world-famous scene the touch of life. 
 
 Pope Paul V has not only the honor of having erected 
 the jBrst of these two modern fountains, but he has also 
 that of having himself discovered the original manu- 
 script of a poem in which mention is made of the first 
 foimtain connected with the Church of St. Peter. This 
 poem dates from the foiu-th century and was written by 
 Pope Damasus (366-384). This pontiff was, like the 
 Emperor Hadrian, a Spaniard; and, like Hadrian, he 
 was not only a ruler of men, but gifted with many and 
 varied talents. He was an archaeologist, a civil engineer, 
 theologian, and poet. He presided over that Ecumen- 
 ical Council by which the second great heresy threat- 
 ening the church was condemned, as the first had been 
 at the Council of Nicsea. 
 
 St. Jerome, after years of friendship, became secre- 
 tary to the then care-worn and aihng pontiff, among 
 whose many labors had been the restoration of the 
 Catacomb of St. Cahxtus, and other tombs of the early 
 Christians and martyrs, some of which he marked with 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 metrical inscriptions of his own composition. It must 
 have been while engaged upon this pious work of re; 
 construction in the Vatican Hill that he came upon 
 those springs that, for lack of a proper channel, had 
 damaged the tombs upon the hillside and were threat- 
 ening to undermine his great basilica (the first Church 
 of St. Peter) within less than fifty years of its erection 
 by Constantine. He drained the ground in the vicinity, 
 building a small aqueduct, "neatly in the old Roman 
 style of masonry," to lead these unshepherded waters 
 to definite localities where they could be a benefit and 
 not a danger to their surroundings. The water thus col- 
 lected is called the Acqua Damasiana, and to this day 
 the private apartments of the Pope are supplied from 
 this source. The feeding springs of this water are lo- 
 cated at Sant' Antonio, to the west of the church, and 
 the aqueduct of Pope Damasus Kes at a depth of 
 ninety-eight feet. Pope Damasus himself describes this 
 inthe poem which was discovered in 1607, more than 
 twelve hundred years later, by Pope PaulV. 
 
 Pope Damasus says: "The Hill" (Vatican Hill) 
 "was abundant in springs, and the water found 
 its way to the very graves of the saints. Pope 
 Damasus determined to check the evil. He caused 
 a large portion of the Vatican Hill to be cut away, 
 and by excavating channels and boring cuniculi he 
 drained the springs so as to make the basilica dry 
 and also to provide it with a steady fountain of 
 excellent water." Of this steady fountain there is 
 no description, and therefore the fountain of Pope 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
View of fountains and obelisk of St. Peter's from beneath 
 Bernini's Colonnade. 
 
ST. PETER'S 
 
 Symmachus (498-5 1 4) becomes the first fountain re- 
 corded in the history of St. Peter's. 
 
 Pope Symmachus was a Corsican. He evidently had 
 a passion for building every kind of structure connected 
 with water as a cleanser and as a beautifier of man's 
 civic life. His fountain, built at a time when civiliza- 
 tion and art in Rome were at a low ebb, was a 
 quaint and exquisite structure, composed of a square 
 tabernacle supported by eight columns of red porphyry 
 with a dome of gilt bronze. Peacocks, dolphins, and 
 flowers, also of gilt bronze, were placed on the four 
 architraves, from which jets of water flowed into the 
 basin below. The border of the basin was made of an- 
 cient marble bas-reliefs, representing panoplies, grif- 
 fins, and other graceful devices. On the top of the 
 structure were semicircular bronze ornaments worked 
 "a jour, " that is, in open rehef, without background, 
 and crowned by the monogram of Christ. In the centre 
 of the tabernacle and under the dome stood a bronze 
 pine-cone. This fountain stood, not in the Piazza of St. 
 Peter's, but in the atrium, or the square portico, which 
 stood ia front and on the right hand of the old basilica. 
 
 The history of the construction and destruction of 
 this beautiful fountain of the dark ages is £m excellent 
 example of the artistic and architectural methods of 
 those times. Arts and crafts had already sunk to so low 
 a depth that there were no longer any men in Rome 
 capable of casting or carving statues like those of 
 former days, and marble had ceased to be imported 
 into the city. Consequently all monmnents or other 
 
 [ II ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 artistic structures were made up of figures in marble or 
 bronze, panels, columns, friezes, and similar decora- 
 tions, stolen from the productions of the great days of 
 the Empire. The Arch of Constantine, erected in 3i5, 
 is composed to such an extent of colimms and sculp- 
 ture from a Triumphal Arch of Trajan that it was sur- 
 named "iEsop's Crow"; and the Column of Phocas 
 (608) , the last triumphal monument to be erected in im- 
 perial Rome, consists of a shaft and capital.surmounted 
 by a bronze figure, all taken from earlier as well as dif- 
 ferent structures. Pope Symmachus was only following 
 the established methods when, to ornament his por- 
 phyry columns (themselves probably part of some 
 classic temple), he took four of the golden peacocks 
 which had been originally cast for a decoration to the 
 raiUng of the walk surrounding the Tomb of Hadrian, 
 and, furthermore, placed as the centrepiece a great 
 pine-cone taken from the Baths of Agrippa. These 
 pine-cones were a customary feature of the classic 
 fountain, as the scales of the cone present natural and 
 graceful outlets for the falling water. Symmachus's 
 fountain was one of the beauties of Rome in the days 
 when the great Gothic King Theodoric ruled and loved 
 the city. Three hundred years later it captivated the 
 fancy of Charlemagne, crowned Emperor in St. Peter's 
 on Christmas Day, 800; and the fountain afterward 
 erected before his great cathedral at Aix is ornamented 
 with a huge pine-cone like the one which he and his 
 Franks had seen in the exquisite fountain of St. 
 Peter's. 
 
 [ 12 ] 
 
ST. PETER'S 
 
 Three other fountains were placed before the church 
 as the years went by. They are described by Pope Ce- 
 lestinus II (ii43-ii44), while he was Canon of St. 
 Peter's, and are set down in his "Ordo Romanus," or 
 Itinerary, or Guide. They were situated, not ia the 
 atrium, where stood the fountain of Synunachus, but 
 below, in that small square or cortile at the foot of the 
 steps of St. Peter's. One fountain was of porphyry and 
 two of white jnarble. They would seem to have disap- 
 peared quite early. The fountain of Synunachus was 
 described in 1190 by Censius Camerarius, afterward 
 Pope Honorius III, and it stood through more than 
 eleven centuries of the confused and turbulent history 
 of the city. It survived the siege £ind capture of Rome 
 by Vitiges in 687. It came imscathed through the sack 
 of the city by the Saracens in 886, emd that of the Nor- 
 mans in 1084 ; and stranger still, it was not wrecked by 
 the terrible Lanzknechts of the Constable de Bourbon 
 in 1527. Only when the ages of violence and pillage 
 were passed, did this historic fountain of the early 
 church succumb to a fate similar to that of the Pagan 
 monuments, out of which it had itself been formed. 
 When in 1607 the work on the new Church of St. Peter, 
 which Wcis begun in i5o6 at the rear of the old sanctu- 
 ary and brought forward through the century, had 
 reached the atrium, this "gem of the art of the dark 
 ages" was deliberately demoUshed by Pope Paul V, 
 who melted the gilded bronze to make the figure of the 
 Virgin now surmounting the Column of Santa Maria 
 Maggiore. Perhaps the metal thus obtained was more 
 
 [ i3 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 than he needed; possibly some artistic or antiquarian 
 compunction visited the pontiif — for two of the pea- 
 cocks and the great bronze cone were spared. They 
 found their way to the Vatican Gardens, and now they 
 stand in the Giardino della Pigna waiting for the next 
 turn of Fortune's wheel. 
 
 Yet another fountain was once associated with the 
 basilica of St. Peter. It was erected in the old square 
 while the fountain of Symmachus still stood in the 
 atrium to the right of the main entrance to the 
 church. About the year i/iga, Innocent VIII (Gio- 
 vanni Battista Cibo) gathered the waters from springs 
 on the Vatican Hill and from the practically ruined 
 Aqueduct of Trajan into this fountain, which was 
 finished by his successor, Alexander VI (Borgia). The 
 design was greatly admired in its day. It consisted 
 of golden bulls, from whose mouths the water fell 
 into a granite basin, and the buU was the emblem of 
 the Borgia family. During the crowded years of the 
 famous Cinque Cento, or until the pontificate of 
 Gregory XIII, this fountain of Innocent VIII, and 
 the old fountain of Trevi (restored by Sixtus IV) 
 suppHed Rome with what the present day would call 
 its pure drinking water. They contained the only 
 water brought into the city from distant springs, for 
 mediaeval Rome had lost all but two of her great 
 aqueducts, and these were constantly falling into 
 disuse; and all the pontiffs, painters, poets, and archi- 
 tects, as well as the populace of that dramatic period 
 drank the doubtful water of wells and of the Tiber. 
 
 [ i4 ] 
 
ST. PETER'S 
 
 This fountain of Innocent VIII was destroyed when 
 the modern Piazza of St. Peter's replaced the very 
 much smaller one of earlier days. Probably the golden 
 bulls were melted do\ni into other shapes, and the great 
 red granite basin was used by Carlo Maderno for the 
 upper basin of the magnificent new fountain which he 
 designed and executed at that period for Paul V, and 
 which is the northern one of the two fountains of the 
 present day in the Piazza of St. Peter's. 
 
 Standing between the fountains of St. Peter's is an 
 obelisk, the surpassing interest of whose history adds 
 not a little to the importance of the fountains them- 
 selves, and indeed of the entire square. It is, according 
 to Lanciani, undoubtedly the obehsk at the foot of 
 which St. Peter was crucified. Formerly the place of 
 his martyrdom was located on the Janiculum Hill, on 
 the spot where San Pietro in Montorio was bmlt by 
 Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile to com- 
 memorate the event. Lately this location of the site of 
 St. Peter's crucifixion has been discredited, but it is 
 easy to see how that mistake occurred. 
 
 Caligula had brought the obelisk from HeliopoHs 
 some time during the four short years of his reign and 
 placed it in the circus he began to build in those gar- 
 dens of his mother, the noble Agrippina the elder, 
 which lay along the northern side of the plain between 
 the Janiculum and Mons Vaticanus. There it stood on 
 the centre of the spina, the long, straight line stretch- 
 ing down the middle of the arena from the two oppo- 
 site goals at either end. Caligula was assassinated be- 
 
 [ i5 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL HOME 
 
 fore he could finish the circus and it was completed 
 some thirteen years later by Nero, under whom it be- 
 came the scene of those atrocities against the Chris- 
 tians which have rendered his reign infamous. St. Peter 
 was crucified one year before the death of Nero. His 
 cross was raised on the spina of the circus at an exact 
 distance between the two goals — metas — built at either 
 end of the amphitheatre, and therefore, at the foot of 
 the obeUsk which stood on that spot. 
 
 Christian tradition handed down the description of 
 the place "between the two goals" (inter duas metas). 
 Now meta was a name afterward given to tombs of 
 pyramidal shape, two of which existed in mediaeval 
 Rome — one, that of Caius Cestius, still standing next 
 to the present Protestant Cemetery, and the other in 
 the Borgo Vecchio, destroyed later by Alexander VI. 
 A straight line drawn from one of these tombs to the 
 other has its centre in a point on the Janiculum, and 
 therefore this spot was thought to be the exact loca- 
 tion of St. Peter's martyrdom. Even to-day visitors to 
 the exquisite Tempietto of Bramante, erected in the 
 cloister of the Church of San Pietro in Montorio, are 
 shown below its pavement the very stone in which the 
 cross of St. Peter was fixed. The legend of this location 
 for the crucifixion of St. Peter grew up during the Mid- 
 dle Ages, a period in which all knowledge of the au- 
 thentic site was entirely lost. Modern archaeology has 
 recently succeeded in locating this position and its 
 topography can now be easily understood. 
 
 When the Emperor Constantine, after his conversion 
 [ i6 ] 
 
ST. PETER'S 
 
 to Christianity, determined to build a basilica in honor 
 of St. Peter, he planned to erect the edifice so that its 
 centre should rise directly over the tomb of St. Peter, 
 who, according to historical documents, was buried not 
 far from the scene of his martyrdom. To do this, he 
 found himself obliged to build so near the Circus of 
 Caligula and Nero that the southern wall of his edifice 
 corresponded exactly to the northern wall of the Cir- 
 cus. He therefore used this wall of the Circus as the 
 southern foundation waU of his church. This naturally 
 brought the southern side of the old St. Peter's within 
 a very short distance of the spina of the Circus, on 
 which stood the obelisk, with a chapel before it called 
 the Chapel of the Crucifixion. The Chapel disappeared 
 seven or eight centuries ago, but not before its true 
 significance had been quite forgotten, and men sup- 
 posed the name to refer not to the crucifixion of St. 
 Peter but to the Crucifixion of Our Lord. An old en- 
 graving by Bonanni, antedating the reign of Sixtus V, 
 shows the old Church of St. Peter on its southern 
 side, with the obelisk, stiU tipped by its Pagan ball, 
 standing in close proximity. When the plan for the new 
 Church of St. Peter was accepted it was seen that the 
 southern side of the great edifice would extend so far 
 beyond the limits of the original church that it must 
 entirely cover the spot on which the obelisk was stand- 
 ing; and as the connection of the obehsk with the mar- 
 tyrdom of St. Peter had long since been forgotten. Pope 
 Sixtus V conceived the idea of moving the obelisk to a 
 more conspicuous £md important position. 
 
 [ 17 1 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Thus it came about that the obelisk now forms the 
 central feature in the piazza before the Cathedral of 
 Christendom; while the place of St. Peter's crucifixion, 
 that site of transcendent interest to all Christians, re- 
 mains imidentified, buried beneath the masses of ma- 
 sonry composing the Baptistery on the southern side of 
 the vast structure which bears St. Peter's name. 
 
 [ i8 ] 
 
SCOSSA CAVALLI 
 
SCOSSA CAVALLI 
 
 This work of Carlo Maderno belongs to that group of 
 fountains which owe their origin to the introduction 
 into Rome of the Acqua Paola. The lower basin stands 
 about three feet above the level of the pavement. It is 
 oblong in shape, the oval broken at both ends by grace- 
 ful variations in the curve. The secondary basin is 
 much smaller, round and quite shallow. From its cen- 
 tre rises a richly carved cup much resembling a Co- 
 rinthian capital, this cup being the apex of the central 
 shaft, upon which rests the second basin, and the main 
 stream of water spouts upward from its leaflike con- 
 volutions. The proportions of the fountain are excel- 
 lent. It is neither too low nor too high, and the lower 
 basin is large enough to catch and retain the water 
 which pours over the rim of the upper basin, so that it 
 does not wash over as does the water in Mademo's 
 much more magnificent fountain in the Square of St. 
 
 [ 21 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Peter's. The central shaft of the Scossa CavaUi foun- 
 tain has a Doric massiveness which gives a background 
 of strength to the whole design and makes all the more 
 delicate the play of the four slender jets of water, about 
 five feet in height, which, rising at equal intervals from 
 the lower basin, form an arch around the upper basin 
 into whose shallow water they fling their spray. The 
 crowned eagle and griffin of the Borghese are still to be 
 discerned on the half-obliterated carving of the central 
 shaft. The kind of travertine out of which this fountain 
 is made is so susceptible to erosion, and has become so 
 blackened by the deposit of the water, that the whole 
 structure appears far older than it is. In reality it has 
 stood here Uttle more than three hundred years, as the 
 Acqua Paola was not brought to Rome until the time 
 of Pope Paul V. This splendor-loving pontiff deter- 
 mined, on his accession in i6o5, to emulate and, if 
 possible, surpass Pope Sixtus V, whose brilliant pontif- 
 icate antedated his own by less than a score of years. 
 Sixtus V had bmlt the first great aqueduct of modern 
 Rome. Paul V determined to build the second. Sixtus 
 V had christened after himself the water which he had 
 brought to Rome, and Paul V gave his name to the 
 stream which, partly by using the aU but ruined Aque- 
 duct of Trajan, he had brought from Bracciano and 
 its hills. Domenico Fontana had built for Sixtus V, as 
 the chief outlet for the Acqua FeHce, the fine Fountain 
 of the Moses on the Viminal Hill. Giovanni Fontana, 
 brother of Domenico, should design for the Acqua 
 Paola on the opposite slope of the Janiculum a yet more 
 
 [ 22 ■] 
 
SCOSSA CAVALLI 
 
 glorious fountain which should dispense five times the 
 amount of water given out by the fountain of Sixtus V. 
 All this was done, and from the heights of the Janicu- 
 lum the great stream descended in various channels, 
 and was widely spread over the Trastevere or that por- 
 tion of the city lying on the western side of the Tiber. 
 One channel found another fine outlet in the fountain 
 which Carlo Maderno, nephew of Fontana, also built 
 for Paul V on the northern side of the Square of St. 
 Peter's. From thence the water was conducted down 
 the Via Alessandrina (now the Borgo Nuovo) to this 
 small piazza of the Scossa Cavalli where Mademo con- 
 structed for it this second and very properly less splen- 
 did fountain. Thus it will be seen that the water as 
 well as the architectural part of this founteiin belongs 
 to the beginning of the seventeenth centiny; but the 
 interest attaching to the buildings siuroimding the 
 square in which it stands dates back farther than 
 that, dates back in fact to the crowded days of the 
 High Renaissance, when this prosaic Uttle piazza was 
 a centre of ardent and vivid Ufe. 
 
 The long, plain, yet dignified building to the south, 
 now called the Ora Penitenzieri, was built by Cardinal 
 Domenico della Rovere, who was one of the nephews of 
 Pope Sixtus IV and brother to Pope JuHus II, the 
 friend and patron of Michelangelo. To the west, and 
 on the corner made by the square and the street of the 
 Borgo Nuovo, stands the house built by Bramante, 
 and purchased by Raphael. The ateher of the "di- 
 vine painter" is the corner room on the second floor. 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL HOME 
 
 Against the wall behind those gloomy windows stood 
 his last picture, "The Transfiguration," unfinished; 
 and on a bed placed at the foot of that picture, Ra- 
 phael died. 
 
 Another death agony is connected with the history 
 of the square, for in th6 gardens behind the palace to 
 the north, now called Palazzo Giraud-Torlonia, was 
 held that fatal supper where the Borgias, father and 
 son, fell victims to the poison which they had prepared 
 for the cardinal who was their host and the owner of 
 the palace. Even the legends of classic Rome seem 
 somewhat colorless compared with the memories which 
 haunt this dull little square. Nothing could be more 
 prosaic than its present-day appearance. It is truly 
 "empty, swept, and garnished," but the devils which 
 have gone out of it have seldom had their equal; its 
 memories belong to a more splendid and to a more 
 shameful past than is the heritage of any other city of 
 our modern world. 
 
 In 1492, when Columbus had discovered the West- 
 ern Hemisphere and Copernicus was revolutionizing 
 the mediaeval view of the universe, Rome was still 
 emerging from the shadow under which she had lain 
 while the popes resided at Avignon. In 1471 Sixtus IV 
 began to restore and embellish the city, and with him 
 the Holy See entered upon that long period of secular- 
 ization which reached its acme of infamy, of magnifi- 
 cence, and of territorial possessions in the respective 
 pontificates of the Borgia, Medici, and Barberini popes. 
 Each of these pontiffs left his mark on some particular 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
Upper basin of the fountain in the Piazza Scossa Cavalli. 
 
SCOSSA CAVALLI 
 
 quarter of the city ; and although in the years following 
 the times of Alexander VI efforts were made to obUter- 
 ate the memory of the Borgias, the Borgo Nuovo re- 
 mains forever bound up with their history. 
 
 Throughout the Middle Ages the only thoroughfare 
 from the Bridge of St. Angelo to the Square of St. 
 Peter's was the Borgo Vecchio. It was a narrow and 
 tortuous street and quite inadequate to the traffic 
 and processions and pilgrimages which continually 
 passed between its rows of crowded old houses. 
 
 Alexander VI formed the new Borgo by cutting a 
 street through the orchards, gardens, and slums of this 
 quarter, and by granting special privileges to the prop- 
 erty owners who, within a specified time would build 
 on it houses not less than forty feet high. The Pope was 
 greatly interested in his new street and christened it for 
 himself, the Via Alessandrina. He was fortunate in hav- 
 ing in Rome at that time Bramante of Urbino, who was 
 just launched on that career of popular favor which 
 was only to be surpassed in length of days or in exag- 
 gerated estimation by the career of Bernini a century 
 later. 
 
 A sure way to please the Pope was to employ some 
 great architect and to erect a noble house upon the new 
 thoroughfare. Raphael, who was amusing himself with 
 architecture, is said to have worked with Bramante in 
 the construction of the palace afterward owned by him, 
 next door to the palace owned by the Queen of Cyprus,* 
 
 * The Queen's palace was in the rear of Raphael's house and faced 
 the Borgo Vecchio. Opposite to it was the palace of Cesare Borgia. 
 
 [ 27 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 and the great room on the piano nobile, the beautiful 
 wooden ceiUng of which had been designed by Bra- 
 mante, was a stately studio. The room is now divided 
 into two apartments; but it is easy in imagination to 
 sweep away the modern alterations and to see this 
 most beautiful, gracious, and best-loved of all Italian 
 artists at work here among his pupils, or receiving 
 with an exquisite sweetness and modesty the greatest 
 princes of the Church and State. 
 
 Rome was at this period the finest marble quarry in 
 the world. It was still a century before the time of Six- 
 tus V and Domenico Fontana; the Farnese had not 
 yet built their great palace from the spoils of the Baths 
 of Caracalla and other noble ruins; the last sack of 
 Rome was stUl thirty years in the future; and very 
 Uttle building of any importance had been carried on 
 through the long period of the popes' absence in Avig- 
 non. Bramante found the richest marbles ready to his 
 hand, and he built the fagade of the Palazzo Giraud- 
 Torlonia out of materials taken from the Basilica Giu- 
 Ua and the Temple of Janus. However, already in 
 Sixtus IV's time the rage had begun for the destruc- 
 tion of old monuments, and in order to build the Via 
 AlessEmdrina, the Pope had demoUshed a Pagan tomb 
 which had once been a landmark in the Borgo. Dur- 
 ing the Middle Ages it was called the Tomb of Romu- 
 lus, and Raphael has painted it ia his "Vision of 
 Constantine." It was of pyramidal form, like the 
 tomb called the Pyramid of Cestius, which is stiU 
 standing near the Protestant Cemetery on th.e road, 
 
 [ 28 ] 
 
SCOSSA CAVALLI 
 
 to St. Paul's Beyond the Walls. Doubtless, its massive 
 blocks went into the construction of the new palaces 
 surrounding the little square, which now took the 
 place of the old tomb as the central point in that 
 quarter of the city. In this square the two chief palaces 
 are connected with two of the greatest of the Pope's 
 cardinals, each of whom had found it to his advemtage 
 to hold a post in foreign lands. 
 
 The fiery and forceful Giulio della Rovere, who gave 
 his name to the palace built by his brother Domenico 
 and now known as the Penitenzieri, had been the chief 
 rival of Rodrigo Borgia in the papal election of i492, 
 and, thereafter, the open enemy of Alexander VI. It is 
 possible he might never have become that Pope's suc- 
 cessor had he not put himself under the protection of 
 Charles VIII of France. On the other hand, Cardinal 
 AdriEuio Cometo, who built the palace now the Giraud- 
 Torlonia, stood high in the Pope's good graces. Alex- 
 ander made him collector of the papal revenues in Eng- 
 land, where he was already known as the papal peace- 
 maker between Henry VII and the ill-starred James IV 
 of ScotlEoid. There he made a valuable friend in no less 
 a personage than King Henry VII himself. The Tudor 
 King was not lavish of his money, but, for some rea- 
 son, he gave large sums to Cardinal Cometo as a per- 
 sonal gift. 
 
 England proved a safe and agreeable asylum for the 
 accomplished cardinal, and when he was finally recalled 
 he must have returned to Rome with some misgivings. 
 He found the Curia, as well as the city, living under 
 
 [ 29 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 that spell of terror which the Borgias, father and son, 
 had woven about them. Strange stories, horrible sus- 
 picions, and mysterious crimes were the order of the 
 day; and the cardinal, returning from his bishopric 
 of Bath and Wells and the frankness and simplicity of 
 the English court, must have found the change little 
 to his liking. Very probably it was to secure the Pope's 
 friendship that he engaged the services of Bramante 
 and began to build a magnificent palace on the Pope's 
 new thoroughfare. But while Alexander VI loved splen- 
 dor, he also coveted money. The new palace was slow 
 in building, and before it was completed, the Pope 
 could see that all the gold which the cardinal had col- 
 lected in England had not gone into the papal coffers. 
 In short, he comprehended the fact that his Cardinal 
 Adriano Corneto was a very rich man; and in the 
 summer of i5o3 he sent him a message that His Holi- 
 ness and the Duke of Valentino (Cesare Borgia) would 
 honor him by taking supper with him on the night of 
 August 12. It is easy to understand the consternation 
 with which the message was received, the look of frozen 
 horror on the cardinal's face as he already saw himseK 
 dying in sudden convulsions or fading slowly away 
 with a fatal and mysterious malady. No time was to 
 be lost, and a large share of the cardinal's English 
 gold bought over the Pope's majordomo to his side. 
 Possibly some of the deadly work had already begun 
 before the bargain was struck. Possibly the majordomo 
 thought it best to appear to have obeyed the Pope's 
 orders, even at the risk of a little torture to the cardi- 
 
 [ 3o ] 
 
SCOSSA CAVALLI 
 
 nal, for although Cardinal Cometo survived that fatal 
 supper, it was said that the skin fell from him in strips. 
 The Pope died within ten days, the monstrous appear- 
 ance of the corpse terrifying all who beheld it. Only 
 Cesare Borgia's almost superhuman vitality saved him 
 from a like fate. 
 
 Years after, when he had been shut out forever from 
 Rome, Cesare told his friend and admirer MachiaveUi 
 that the results of this supper in the gardens of the car- 
 dinal's palace had frustrated all his plans. Cesare had 
 fully determined that his father's successor should not 
 humiliate and despoil him as his father had despoiled 
 and humiliated the nephews of his predecessor, Pope 
 Sixtus IV. He had made every arrangement to make 
 himself master of Rome as soon as his father should 
 die. He had, so he told the author of "II Principe," 
 foreseen and provided for every possible difficulty. The 
 one thing he had not been able to foresee was that he 
 himself should be too ill to leave his bed. 
 
 The Borgias passed away from Rome. Cardinal della 
 Rovere was made Pope, and men set about to obUter- 
 ate aU memories of that brood whose crimes had made 
 Rome a stench in the nostrils of Christendom. Gradu- 
 ally, but effectively, the work was accomplished. Alex- 
 ander VI's tomb was built without any monument. 
 The Fountain of the Gilded Bulls, the emblem of the 
 Borgias, which stood before St. Peter's was destroyed. 
 The Borgia apartments in the Vatican were walled 
 up, and remained so for centuries. The nude figure 
 of the beautiful GiuUa Farnese on the tomb of her 
 
 [ 3i ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 brother Pope Paul III in St. Peter's was covered 
 with painted metal draperies. Even the Via Alessan- 
 drina became the Borgo Nuovo. 
 
 Cardinal Adriano Corneto lived through the pon- 
 tificate of Pope Julius II and into that of Pope 
 Leo X; but the fame of his riches did at last work 
 his undoing. Leo X, who needed money as much as 
 Alexander VI, insisted that the cardinal was privy to a 
 conspiracy against his life. Cometo was deprived of 
 his cardinalate, even degraded from the priesthood, 
 and was obliged to make his escape from Rome. He 
 died in obscurity, leaving his beautiful palace, stiU 
 unfinished, to his benefactor King Henry VII, who 
 made it the residence of the English ambassador. 
 
 A century later, when Mademo built the fountain 
 of the Scossa CavalU for Pope Paul V, Cardinal Cor- 
 neto's palace had again passed into the hands of the 
 Romans, where it has remained. The Reformation had 
 swept over England, and there was no longer an Eng- 
 lish ambassador to the Papal See. 
 
 [ 32 ] 
 
PIAZZA PIA 
 
PIAZZA PIA 
 
 No one can walk the Roman streets without perceiv- 
 ing, and ahnost at once, that here time is of no impor- 
 tance. It is, in fact, an absolutely negUgible quantity. 
 Buildings and monuments dating from widely diverse 
 periods stand side by side, and it is in no wise incon- 
 gruous from the Roman standpoint to find at the head 
 of the Borgo (the ancient Leonine city) one of the very 
 latest fountains of papal Rome. It is a charming Uttle 
 creation, quite consciously harking back to the great 
 days of the papacy and rebuking by its sober, yet im- 
 aginative sculpture those geometrical designs or extrav- 
 agant ebullitions of fancy — the fountains of the pres- 
 
 [ 35 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL EOME 
 
 ent regime. It stands in the Piazza Pia, against that 
 narrow fagade which blunts the point of the long angle 
 or wedge-shaped block of buildings lying between the 
 Borgo Vecchio and the Borgo Nuovo. Its Fontanesque 
 mostra is composed of two beautiful white Carrara col- 
 nmns with Corinthian capitals supporting a pediment 
 and entablature on which is an inscription to the effect 
 that the fountain was erected by Pius IX in the six- 
 teenth yeeir of his pontificate, which would make it the 
 year 1862. The sculptural part of the fountain bears a 
 certain resemblance to the work of Luigi Amici and 
 Bitta Zappal^, the artists who not many years later 
 executed the modern figures in the side fountains of 
 the Piazza Navona, 
 
 The Piazza Pia fountain might also be ascribed to 
 Tenerani, a distinguished sculptor of Pius IX's pon- 
 tificate, who, in his devotion to the Pope, did not dis- 
 dain to design some of the triumphal devices with 
 which Rome welcomed back Pio Nono after Gaeta. 
 But Tenerani's bust is among the "Silent Company 
 of the Piacio," and if the httle fountain were 
 indeed his work, the fact would be known. As it 
 is, the sculptor's name seems, for the present, at 
 least, to have been forgotten in the confusion at- 
 tendant upon the transformation of papal into Italian 
 Rome. 
 
 The fountain originally held Paola water, and the 
 charming little vase and dolphins composed of white 
 Carrara have become through the deposits of this water 
 so black that the beauty of the fountain is distinctly 
 
 [ 36 ] 
 
PIAZZA PIA 
 
 marred. This fountain takes the place of an earlier one 
 executed by Carlo Maderno and called the Mask of the 
 Borgo. The design was a large mask from which water 
 flowed into a pilgrim shell over which perched the 
 Borghese eagle, while two lions' heads on either side 
 spouted additional streams. As this first fountain was 
 in travertine it had in all probabihty succumbed to the 
 disastrous effects of the Paola water, which seems to 
 disintegrate as well as to discolor some varieties of that 
 stone. 
 
 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 sym- 
 pathy. Those who would render justice to this last 
 "Papa Re" should drive up the magnificent approach 
 to the Quirinal Palace. This modern driveway and ma- 
 sonry 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 
 waUs 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 Ro- 
 mans lies in the interest which he took in the city's 
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 water supply. Pius IX gave his permission to an Eng- 
 lish 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 i44-i4o 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 an- 
 tedated it — the Appian and the Anio Vetus — ^ran most 
 of the distance imderground, the Anio Vetus appearing 
 above ground for only eleven hundred feet, while the 
 Appian (the first of all the Roman aqueducts) was car- 
 ried overground on low arches for three hundred feet, 
 and actually entered the city fifty feet below the sur- 
 face 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 TivoU, on the north side 
 of the stream, near Agosta. The original Marcian aque- 
 duct 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 sm altitude 
 of two himdred 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 abun- 
 dance, and at present supplies most of the dwelling 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
PIAZZA PIA 
 
 houses in Rome. Its history is embodied in its full 
 name, Acqua Marcia Pia. 
 
 Pius IX made his last public appearance as sov- 
 ereign pontiff when this water was introduced into 
 Rome. This occurred on September i8, 1870, just two 
 days before the, famous "Venti Settembre," when 
 the Itahan 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 
 VUla Negroni (formerly Montalto) of Pope Sixtus V 
 then covered the site now occupied by the present rail- 
 way station. Within the gardens of that vUla many of 
 the original Acqua FeUce fountains were stiU flowing, 
 and one latter-day inhabitant of the villa tells how, as 
 a child, she often looked down at night from her nurs- 
 ery windows upon an old fountain about which stood a 
 circle of Uttle Campagna foxes drinking from its cy- 
 press-guarded waters. The Pope drove to the inaugura- 
 tion of his Marcia Pia amid a vast concoiu-se 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 pur- 
 ity and freshness and thanked the magistrates for giv- 
 ing it his name. It was the last pubUc act of his sov- 
 ereign 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. 
 
 [ 39 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 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. 
 
 [ 4o ] 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
 The three fountains of the Ceimpidoglio have one 
 fundamentEil characteristic in common — that of being 
 a part of Rome from a period of great antiquity. Like 
 those famiUes 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. 
 
 [ 43 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 The general view of the Campidoglio comprises the 
 stairway called "La Cordonata," the piazza at its sum- 
 mit crowned by the Palace of the Senators, with the 
 Musemn 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 compo- 
 sition, 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 Campidogho as it now st£inds un- 
 folded 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 fig- 
 ure 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 Michelan- 
 gelo and the enthusiastic Vasari had been dead for 
 years when Sixtus V brought the Acqua FeUce to the 
 Campidogho and finally erected the fountain. He 
 placed in the noble niche where a colossal and majes- 
 tic 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 res- 
 torations, but the prophyry torso was found at Gori, 
 
 [ 44 ] 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
 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 triiunphemtly dominant than is this whole 
 staircase and fagade. 
 
 The two river-gods which also adorn this fountain 
 are very old. Together with Marforio, now to be found 
 in the Musemn of the Capitol, they have the distinc- 
 tion of never having been buried since the downfall of 
 Rome. Once they stood before "that most magnifi- 
 cent of all Roman temples " — ^Aurelian's Temple of the 
 Sun. Later they belonged to the Mediaeval Museum of 
 Statues, a collection kept in or near the old papal palace 
 of the Lateran, where they had been called Bacchus 
 and Satiun. The Nile, who should have been unmis- 
 takable because of his emblem of the Sphinx, has now 
 his proper designation; but the other statue has a curi- 
 ous history. It was originally the River Tigris, a river 
 familiar to the Romans since the wars with Mithra- 
 dates. When, under Paul III, Michelangelo placed 
 these statues in their present position, some influential 
 person suggested that the Tigris, no longer of any in- 
 terest 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 Ldgorio tells the story, and goes on 
 to say that the fingers of one of the Twins were origi- 
 nally a part of the Tiger's fur. 
 
 The erection of the bronze equestrian statue of Mar- 
 [ 45 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 cus Aurelius in the centre of the piazza was the first 
 step in the design of the CampidogUo of to-day, for 
 Michelangelo's admiration of the statue had been 
 shared by Paul III, and the Pope brought it hither in 
 1 538 when the embellishment of Rome, originally 
 begun in honor of the visit in i534 of Charles V, had 
 become with both Pope and citizens a great and per- 
 manent interest. This statue also had been a part of 
 that Mediaeval 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 fagade of the Senate House, 
 which forms the background to the piazza and its stat- 
 ues, is built in great part of travertine, so the struc- 
 tural 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 bedustrade continues, 
 connects this entrance of the Senate House with the 
 piazza below; and the foundation of these steps, form- 
 ing triangular wings to the niche, serves as a back- 
 ground to the river-gods. These figures he 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 Mi- 
 
 [ 46 ] 
 
View of the Piazza del Campidoglio from the left side of the 
 Cordonata. 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
 chelangelo, there must have been two Michelangelos 
 in i538 ! 
 
 In Piranesi's engraving of the CampidogUo a fine 
 balustrade Uke 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 har- 
 mony with the entire composition. 
 
 The river-god is one of the earhest sculptural per- 
 sonifications of natural phenomena. In these days 
 comparatively Httle heed is paid to the smaller water- 
 ways, so the modern spirit fails to see the significance 
 of these conventionalized figures. To the ancients, how- 
 ever, 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, con- 
 nected them with the outside world, brought trade, 
 turned the mills, defended the city from invasion, car- 
 ried 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 pubKc places, 
 so that men should remember what they owed to their 
 river. The river is always personified as a benign and 
 majestic figuf e in the full strength of mature manhood, 
 
 [ 49 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 with long and abundant hair and beard. The lower 
 limbs are draped, so that the mystery of partial con- 
 cealment 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 quali- 
 ties of a great river; and these qualities the ancients 
 most adequately expressed in their own peculiar 
 medium, which was sculptm-e. 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 foimd 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 soUtary moon; — ^he flow'd 
 Right for the polar star, past Orgunj^, 
 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 
 
 [ 5o ] 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
 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." 
 
 MABFORIO 
 
 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 CampidogUo 
 group is known as the Musemn of the Capitol, and it 
 is in the entremce 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 de- 
 cadence, surviving every vicissitude, and always re- 
 spected by the haK-barbarous Romans of that time. 
 
 [ 5i ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Gregory XIII (Boncompagni, i572-i585) is responsi- 
 ble 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 Campidogho. 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' CavaUeri — 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 (Pamphih), twelve pontificates after the 
 reign of Paul III. During a period of one hundred 
 and sixty yeeirs Marforio remgdned where Sixtus 
 had placed him, and then Clement XII (Corsini) in- 
 stalled 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 siuroimdings, he fell into evil 
 ways. He became the partner of Pasquino ! Pasquino, 
 the mutilated torso from an old Greek group of statu- 
 ary, stands at the farthest corner of the Braschi Palace 
 (now the Ministero dell' Intemo). He had first been set 
 
 [ 52 ] 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
 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 agaiast 
 those in authority greatly deUghted the Roman people. 
 It became the custom to affibc 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 cur- 
 rent witticisms or scathing reflections upon pubhc 
 events or notable personages were ascribed to Pas- 
 quino. When Marforio took up his abode in the Piazza 
 of the Campidoglio, he became to the Romans the part- 
 ner of Pasquino. According to a modem authority, 
 Marforio never originated the saUy. 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 comt 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. Modem 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 
 
 [ 53 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 newspapers still publishes questions and repartee by 
 Marforio and Pasquino. 
 
 It is only necessary to study for a short time the va- 
 rious 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 aU or any of the earth's rivers. The 
 ancient £uid forgotten sculptor has given to the ponder- 
 ous 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 concep- 
 tion and execution, but only a genius could have se- 
 cured 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 simulacra a giacere, an expression difficult to 
 anglicize, but which is an attempt to describe this sin- 
 gular quality of a static position instinct with contin- 
 uous 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 BandineUi making "a 
 Marforio " out of snow, as not long before the youth- 
 ful Michelangelo had made a faun from the same per- 
 ishable material. 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
 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 io84, as 
 well as the great sack of Rome in 1 52 7. 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 fit- 
 ness 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 miad. A tablet has been set 
 up in the house which is built over the site where his- 
 tory finds him. Number 49, Via Marforio. In short, 
 Marforio belongs to that curious class of inanimate 
 things which have developed a personaHty; injury to 
 him would arouse fierce populeu* 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 Campidogho is 
 to be found in the upper garden of the Palazzo dei Con- 
 servatori — ^the building to the right hand in the ascent 
 of the Cordonata. It can hardly be called a fountain, 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 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 senti- 
 ment 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 haviag 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 pre- 
 vious to that discovery. 
 
 The Almo is a little brook in the Campagna not far 
 from Rome, rising in the hills between the Via Appia 
 and Via Latina and emptyiug into the Tiber. Its mod- 
 ern name is Acquataccio. The Almo was connected 
 with the ancient worship of the goddess Cybele, whose 
 sacred image was ceremonially washed in it each year 
 on the 27th of March by the priests. This religious 
 ceremony, doubtless, preserved the chaimel of the 
 
 [ 56 1 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
 stream so that it would have been quite possible to 
 hide successfully a great piece of statuary in its depths 
 or in some reedy pool along its banks. River-beds were 
 not imcommon hiding-places for treasures during the 
 Dark Ages which followed the breaking-up of the 
 Roman Empire, and it is quite possible that this group 
 may have been so hidden by its owner whose great 
 villa, situated near the stream, was threatened with 
 piUage or destruction by some barbarian incursion. 
 The high value evidently placed upon it by its origi- 
 nal possessor was also given to it by its discoverers. It 
 belonged to that remote museum of antiquities kept in 
 or near the Lateran Palace during the Middle Ages 
 and dating back at least to the days when Charlemagne 
 first visited Rome, in 781, bringing with him his Uttle 
 son Pepin, aged four, to be anointed King of Italy 
 by Pope Hadrian I. This museum contained also the 
 equestrian statue of Marcus AureUus, now standing in 
 the centre of the piazza of the Campidoglio, together 
 with the two river-gods, placed later onby Michelangelo 
 where they now lie — one on either side of the central 
 fountain of the CampidogUo; and other marbles and 
 bronzes of great value. Most of these art treasures were 
 removed from the Lateran to the Capitol when Pope 
 Sixtus IV (Riario, i47i-i484) founded the CapitoHne 
 Museum; but long before that time the lion, as it was 
 always called (the original portion of the horse being 
 merely the body), had been taken from its academic 
 seclusion and set in the midst of things. During three 
 centuries of the turbulent life of mediaeval Rome, it 
 
 [ 57 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Stood to the left hand and at the foot of the long flight 
 of steps which, previous to Michelangelo's time, led up 
 from the Piazza of the Ara Coeli to the Capitol. All 
 about it was held the pubUc market; the city officials, 
 found guilty of misdemeanors, were made to do pen- 
 ance sitting astride the Lion's back with their hands 
 tied behind them emid their faces smeared with honey 
 — the Roman version of the pillory ! The ferocity of 
 the Lion was thought to typify the punishment of 
 crime, and the pubUc executions were held before this 
 old fragment. Here, on August 3i, i354, the famous 
 soldier of fortune, Fra Monreale, was beheaded by 
 order of Cola di Rienzi. On October 8 of the same 
 year, Rienzi himself was caught as he was escaping in 
 disguise from the burning palace of the Capitol, and 
 here he stood, during the last hour of his life, leaning 
 against the Lion, turning his head this way and that 
 in vain quest of succor, while the mob which was so 
 soon to tear him to pieces held back in a strange awe, 
 and a sUence reigned over everything I That was the 
 greatest of aU the tragedies — though there were so 
 many of them — connected with the Lion. 
 
 The old bit of sculptiu:e continued to hold its sinister 
 place in Roman life, until the pontificate of Paul III 
 (Famese, i534-i549). At that time Master Michelan- 
 gelo (to use Vasari's phraseology) .working for the Pope, 
 remodelled the Capitol and decorated it with many 
 old statues. The group of the horse and lion was then 
 completely, though poorly, restored, and placed in the 
 court of the Palazzo dei Conservatori — this being the 
 
 [ 58 ] 
 
CAMPIDOGLIO 
 
 first of the three buildings of the Capitol to be built 
 after Michelangelo's designs. At the same time the 
 place for the public executions was transferred from 
 the piazza of the Ara Coeh to the Piazza di Ponte Sant' 
 Angelo. 
 
 The Lion was placed in its present position in igoS, 
 and Rome of the twentieth century is responsible for 
 the extraordinary taste which converted into a foim- 
 tain this old fragment, highly interesting as an antiq- 
 uity but repulsive in itself, and associated chiefly with 
 the bloodiest and least attractive pages in Roman 
 annals. 
 
 It is impossible to leave the Campidoglio without a 
 heightened appreciation of the might of the construc- 
 tive imagination. Only that faculty, developed to its 
 highest power as in Michelangelo, could have produced 
 this magnificent harmony out of the incongruous mass 
 of classic and mediaeval survivals with which he had 
 to deal. 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
FARNESE 
 
FARNESE 
 
 "At the entrance to this palace stand two rare and 
 vast fountains made of granite stone and brought from 
 the Baths of Titus." Thus wrote John Evelyn in No- 
 vember, 1 644- The description holds to this day, al- 
 though the modern sight-seer wiU substitute Ceiracalla 
 for Titus. 
 
 The fountains were erected by the Farnese family to 
 add the final touch of distinction to their new palace. 
 They owe their unique combination of original classic 
 features and seventeenth-century taste to the genius 
 and opportunities of Paul III and his grandson, Car- 
 dinal Alessandro Farnese II, and to a still later de- 
 scendant Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. The Pope and the 
 
 [ 63 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 earlier cardinal, men of wide culture and enormous 
 wealth, were the first to excavate and exploit the Baths 
 of Caracalla. The treasures they there found might well 
 have been the loot of some fabulous city, and yet the 
 pearls and gold and rubies brought some twenty years 
 later by Francis Drake to his royal mistress were of 
 small significance compared to the works of art found 
 in those great baths — ^baths which had been the most 
 sumptuous pleasure-house of imperial Rome. It is the 
 glory of Italy that she knew this at the time. Her great 
 churchmen reverently exhumed those masterpieces of 
 Greek and Roman art and made of them the Famese 
 Collection — according to a well-known authority the 
 rarest collection ever got together by private individ- 
 uals, and forming to-day the chief interest in the 
 Museum at Naples. 
 
 When the Pope, Paul III (Farnese), began the erec- 
 tion of the great new palace which was to bear his name 
 and fitly domicile the princely family he was founding, 
 he, and his descendants after him, used for its decora- 
 tion the rare marbles and minor artistic trophies from 
 the baths. No doubt, it seemed to them a happy inspi- 
 ration to turn these gigantic granite tubs into a pair of 
 fountains; for these notable fountains are, in the last 
 analysis, simply huge bathtubs, rendered imposing by 
 their size, and magnificent by the material out of which 
 they are made. They are seventeen feet long and about 
 three feet deep, and are absolutely devoid of decora- 
 tion except for the Uon's head carved in reUef, low 
 down in the middle of each side — and this is merely an 
 
 [ 64 ] 
 
FARNESE 
 
 ornamental outlet for the water, quite as necessary to 
 the original pm-pose for which these tubs were made as 
 are the handles carved high up on either side under the 
 curved rim, simulating metal rings through which the 
 bronze staves had been inserted whenever it was found 
 necessary to move the tubs. Carlo and Girolamo Rai- 
 naldi, who, in 1612, adapted for Cardinal Odoardo Far- 
 nese this furniture of the past to seventeenth-century 
 decorative purposes, could think of no more original 
 design than that of the well-known ItaUan fountain of 
 their own day. They placed each of the tubs in a large, 
 elegantly curved basin similar to those in the Piazza 
 Navona standing some two feet above the pavement. 
 In the middle of each tub they erected a sumptuous 
 Itahan \ase, its large, swelling stem, richly carved, up- 
 holding an elaborate shallow bowl, oblong in shape, 
 out of which rises as the foimtain's final consummation 
 a highly conventional fleur-de-Us, the emblem of the 
 Famese family. This is overwrought with fine stone 
 traceries, and sends upward from its centre convolu- 
 tion a single slender stream of water. Additional jets, 
 of no artistic value, rise one on either side in each of 
 the lower basins. This modem work is all in traver- 
 tine. 
 
 The combination of the severely classic lines of the 
 baths with the Gothic carving and mediaeval emblem 
 of the fleur-de-Hs is not good. It is disastrous to the 
 design as a composition and makes these fountains 
 archaeological curiosities rather than artistic creations. 
 Still, the Farnese foimtains impose by their quahties 
 
 [ 65 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 of size and strength, and once seen can never be for- 
 gotten. 
 
 The pleasure derived from the sight of a pair of 
 fountains is not merely double the pleasure that is felt 
 at the sight of one. The two objects, though exactly 
 similar, create by their mutual relation an entirely new 
 set of aesthetic emotions. The feeUng for balance and 
 composition is aroused, and this particular pleasure is 
 produced in no small degree by these two fountains. 
 Twin fountains are an unusual feature. There are few 
 of them in the world; and in Rome, whose fountains 
 are perhaps still unnumbered, there eu-e but five — the 
 fountains of St. Peter's, the side fountains of the Piazza 
 del Popolo, the two end fountains of the Piazza Na- 
 vona, Vansantio's fountains in the Villa Borghese, and 
 these of the Piazza Farnese. 
 
 Mr. John Evelyn also describes in his jovmial the 
 custom of his day for the Roman gentry to take their 
 airing in the Piazza Farnese, driving or walking before 
 the palace and about the fountains, whose water gave 
 to all the architectural magnificence that touch of 
 freshness and charm essential to the Roman idea of a 
 pleasure-ground. That Evelyn was taken to the Far- 
 nese Palace the very first day of his sojourn in Rome 
 is significant. The Roman of i644 evidently considered 
 this palace and its precincts to be Rome's chief attrac- 
 tion; £uid this proves that in spite of the efforts of Paul 
 V (Borghese), who had died some twenty years previ- 
 ously (1621), and of Urban VIII (Barberini), then just 
 passing away, the Farnese pontiff, Paul III, dead for a 
 
 [ 66 ] 
 
FARNESE 
 
 century past, had succeeded in giving and preserving 
 to his family an importance and magnificence hardly to 
 be emulated and impossible to surpass. The bronze and 
 marble tomb of Paul III is in St. Peter's, to the left of 
 the tribune. It contains the dust of as worldly a person, 
 to quote Rgmke, as ever Pope had been. Yet if his ac- 
 tions cannot be said to " smell sweet and blossom in the 
 dust," his memory sm^ves in the annals of Rome, 
 fragrant with the love and pride of his people. He was 
 an old, old man when he died in i549. He had been 
 fifteen years Pope and forty years a cardinal. The date 
 of his birth carries the mind back to the years before 
 Columbus. His education, conducted by Pomponeus 
 Laetus, had begun in the fuU tide of the High Renais- 
 sance. In his early twenties he became a member of the 
 household of Lorenzo the Magnificent, at whose table 
 and in whose gardens he had met the most brilliant 
 men of his time and had heard talk that embraced all 
 that was then known or surmised of art and learning. 
 For Constantinople had fallen to the Turk only a gen- 
 eration before that time, and what had survived of 
 Greek culture, fleeing across the seas to Italy, had 
 found its chief shelter and patronage in the household 
 of the great Medici. While in Florence, young Farnese 
 must have heard Savonarola preach; but no trace of 
 the great Dominican's influence is to be found through- 
 out his long life. The classic spirit enthralled his intel- 
 lect, and the splendor of the Medici prince captured 
 his imagination. In later years his careful Latinity, his 
 splendid and liberal manner, and his gay and witty 
 
 [ 67 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 conversation, together with his patronage of artists 
 and his passion for the antique, proved how profoundly 
 he had been influenced by the experiences of his early 
 youth. Placed thus in the very heart of a movement 
 which freed the individual from aU limitations save 
 those of his own personahty and opened the worid be- 
 fore him, he early made up his mind to become Pope 
 and to raise his own family, as the Medici had done, 
 to the Tank of princes. The ambition was perhaps 
 common, but the ability with which he pursued these 
 aims for upward of sixty years was not common, and 
 their complete achievement was httle short of the 
 marvellous. It took him forty years to reach St. Peter's 
 chair, and he occupied it only fifteen; but before he 
 died one of his grandsons had married a daughter of 
 Charles V, the Emperor of Austria; another was be- 
 trothed to the daughter of the King of France; and 
 two more were cardinals and multimillionaires. Later 
 on, his descendants married into the royal houses of 
 Portugal and Spain, and the Farnese family passed 
 out of existence only by being merged by marriage 
 into the royal house of the Neapolitan Bourbons. One 
 grandson, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese II, was the 
 chief art patron of his time, and this in an age when 
 there were many such men; and one great-grandson 
 was that Duke of Parma whose fame as a great cap- 
 tain is written in what were, until the second decade 
 of the twentieth century, the bloodiest annals of the 
 Netherlands. To provide a suitable setting for this 
 princely family, the Pope, some five years before his 
 
 [ 68 ] 
 
FABNESE 
 
 death, began this Farnese Palace. Antonio da San 
 Gallo, the younger, Giacomo della Porta, and Michel- 
 angelo designed its fagades and cornice. The great 
 structure was completed long after the Pope's death 
 by Alessandro Farnese II. It was recognized at once 
 to be the most sumptuous of the Roman palaces. It 
 stands upon the site of the old Palazzo Ferriz, which 
 was at one time the residence of the Spanish ambas- 
 sador, and had passed into the possession of the Au- 
 gustine monks of the Piazza del Popolo, The old 
 Ferriz Palace had been on the Tiber bank, for it was 
 not imtil JuHus II's time that the Strada, or Via 
 Giuha, was cut through, thus separating the palace 
 from the river. Where these foimtaius now stand as 
 the ornaments of a spacious piazza, there was at that 
 time nothing but a collection of hovels extending as far 
 as the Campo de' Fiori. The feir-sighted young cardinal 
 — ^the Farnese were thrifty, for all their magnificence — 
 bought the old palace from the monks, and Uved there 
 in ever-increasing splendor under the successive pon- 
 tificates of Julius II, Leo X, and Adrian VI. 
 
 Finally, under Clement VII, the great sack of the 
 city caused him to fly to the Castle of St. Angelo. As in 
 the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, forty-seven years 
 later, only those Huguenot gentlemen survived who 
 were kept in the King's closet, so during the horrors of 
 the sack only those cardinals escaped outrage who were 
 sheltered with the Pope in the Castle of St. Angelo. 
 Farnese by this time ranked next to the Pope in im- 
 portance, and he was, of course, among these. From the 
 
 [ 69 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Castle he witnessed, with the terrified Clement, the 
 devastation inflicted upon the latter's exquisite plea- 
 sure-house on Monte Mario, an act of wanton vandal- 
 ism committed by the Colonna to spite the Pope. Some 
 ten years later Cardinal Famese bought this wrecked 
 palace, restored it, and presented it to his daughter-in- 
 law, Margaret of Austria, who rested there on her tri- 
 umphal wedding procession into Rome. It is called after 
 her to this day the Villa Madama. 
 
 In i54o, when the old Palazzo Ferriz was destroyed 
 to make room for the Palazzo Farnese, the workmen 
 came as usual upon traces of earher times. Modem 
 archaeologists have discovered that the mosaic pave- 
 ment under the right wing of the palace was a part of 
 the flooring of the Barracks of the "Red Squadron of 
 Charioteers." It has been generally supposed that the 
 new palace was built of stone from the Coliseum, but 
 its materials came from numerous and varied sources. 
 The great travertine blocks were quarried at Tivoli; 
 and Paul III obtained permission to demolish and use 
 for his building the partly ruined battlemented monas- 
 tery of St. Lorenzo Outside the Walls. After this quarry 
 was exhausted, his nephews obtained the ruins of 
 Porto, the Baths of CaracaUa, and what was stiU more 
 important the remains of the greatest temple of im- 
 perial Rome — ^Aurelian's Temple of the Sun, which, at 
 that date stiU towered one hundred feet above the 
 Colonna gardens. 
 
 Contemporary artists sketched these various struc- 
 tures as the masons destroyed them, so that students 
 
 [ 70 ] 
 
One of the fountains in the Pieizza Famese. 
 
FARNESE 
 
 of the present day can form some idea of their classic 
 grandem", and can judge for themselves the value of the 
 Farnese Palace on the one hand and on the other that 
 of the imperial baths and temple, and the mediaeval 
 monastery, out of which it is built. 
 
 The great new palace made necessary the great new 
 square in front of it; but years before this the Pope 
 had begun that regeneration of Rome for which he is 
 so gratefully remembered. 
 
 The entry into Rome of Charles V, on the 5th of 
 April, 1 534, first aroused the Romans to the deplorable 
 condition of their city, and, under the Pope's enlight- 
 ened guidance, the preparations for the imperial visitor 
 took the form of permanent and far-reaching municipal 
 improvements, which improvements were carried on 
 throughout the entire period of Paul Ill's pontificate. 
 The enlarging of such great thoroughfares as the Ba- 
 buino and Condotti date from this time, as does also 
 the modern Corso, this last finally superseding the Via 
 Giuha as the fashionable resort. Paul III preferred the 
 old Palazzo di Venezia at its foot to any other resi- 
 dence, and he connected it with the Campidoglio by 
 the great viaduct, lately destroyed; while for him 
 Michelangelo designed the Campanile of the Senate 
 House. A great Roman of the present day asserts that 
 the fifteen years of Paul Ill's pontificate comprise one 
 of the happiest periods in the city's fife. 
 
 When Margaret of Austria rode through the Porta 
 del Popolo, "two hours before sunset, dressed in white 
 satin embroidered in pearls and gold," it was not 
 
 [ 73 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 merely a curious crowd who met and welcomed her. 
 That concourse of citizens represented the self-respect 
 of the Romans, risen from the abasement of a decade, 
 and eager to prove to the daughter of the world's 
 greatest sovereign their worthiness to be her subjects. 
 They could not know that Margaret felt contempt for 
 her youthful husband, nor that in the long duel be- 
 tween Paul III and the Emperor of Austria she stood 
 not for Rome but for Austria, saying once when her 
 assistance was sought that she had rather cut off her 
 children's heads than ask her father to do anything 
 that displeased him ! These were matters for the Far- 
 nese to deal with. So far as Rome was concerned, with 
 the entry of the Emperor's daughter, its place among 
 the cities of the world became once more important and 
 imposing. 
 
 Charles V might despise the upstart Famese as 
 Francis I had laughed at Cesare Borgia, but the self- 
 made ItaUans of the Renaissance — churchmen, mer- 
 chants, £uid condottieri, were forces which hereditary 
 monarchy could not do without. Spain had the riches 
 of the New World; France and England were breeding 
 the manhood of Europe; but Italy held the keys to the 
 past — to the culture for which men's souls longed. The 
 time was not yet — ^in i54o — although it was close at 
 hand, when Italy's deliberate choice of evil rather than 
 good finally made her, by weakening and corrupting 
 her, a captive to Spain. Time was not yet; and in that 
 last lingering glow of her greatness and freedom the old 
 Pope, Paul III, moves as her incarnate spirit. To a fig- 
 
 [ 74 ] 
 
FARNESE 
 
 ure slight and stately, though -with stooping shoulders, 
 was united a shrewd and kindly countenance, with a 
 massive nose and flowing beard, mobile lips and pierc- 
 ing eyes. His voice was modulated, and his manner 
 gracious and noble. This outer man held guard over a 
 mind so crafty and tenacious, so secretive and resource- 
 ful, that to the Venetian ambassador — ever the most 
 astute observer — he remained a fascinating and baf- 
 fling enigma; while for Cardinal Mendoza and the Em- 
 peror he was an antagonist whom, for aU their secret 
 Austrian contempt and bitter hatred, they could not 
 afford to ignore. 
 
 It was remarked that the Pope never wished to hear 
 or to speak of his predecessor. He felt that the election 
 of Qement VH had robbed him of fourteen years of 
 the papacy. Posterity may well share his prejudice, for 
 it seems safe to assmne that, had Paul HI been Pope in 
 i527, Bourbon's soldiers would never have got within 
 sight of the city walls; there would have been, iu fact, 
 no sack of Rome. The Pope felt with aU 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 Chiu"ch, 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 poUtical un- 
 dertakings runs throughout his long Hfe; but this nep- 
 otism, which no pope ever carried further, and for 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 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 AH Saints' Day, i549, *^6 o^^ ^^"^ 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, coiully, the 
 great art patron, the lover of scholeus 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 darUng, 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 car- 
 dinal'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 himdred years, and the Ro- 
 mans felt his virtues and his faiUngs to be their own. 
 Fifteen years before, they had carried him on their 
 
 [ 76 ] 
 
FARNESE 
 
 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 
 Gugliehno della Porta. The two recmnbent 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 Ill's 
 sister, and this recalls the fact that the fortunes of the 
 princely family of the Famese rest upon no more hon- 
 orable basis than the passion of Alexander VI (Bor- 
 gia) for this sister, the beautiful Giulia Farnese. No 
 one can study the statue on the tomb without under- 
 standing how it was that this magnificent creature 
 seemed to the men of her time the flesh-and-blood pre- 
 sentment of those Pagan goddesses whom they all, se- 
 cretly 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 solem- 
 nity 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 car- 
 dinal, and Giulia Famese went to reign in those Borgia 
 apartments, decorated by all the genius of Pinturic- 
 chio, and at once the pride and disgrace of the Vatican. 
 The young cardined was nicknamed the Petticoat Car- 
 
 [ 77 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 dinal; 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 Uved this sobri- 
 quet down, proves, as nothing else can prove, the hold 
 he had upon the Roman people. 
 
 Any account of Paul III would be incomplete with- 
 out some reference to his extraordinary beUef in astrol- 
 ogy. It was quite a recognized fact that he never even 
 considered any scheme, pubhc or private, before con- 
 sulting 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 char- 
 acteristic was felt to be incongruous and rather dis- 
 graceful; but it is easy for the modem spirit to under- 
 stand, and even condone, the weakness. Surely, it was 
 not strange that such a man, with such a Ufe, 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 pro- 
 duced upon the eye by the huge tubs turned black by 
 the deposits of the Acqua Paola ; while the water f alUng 
 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 mon- 
 
 [ 78 ] 
 
FARNESE 
 
 ster granite baths have a sepulchral effect. They seem 
 more like coffins made to hold the bones of departed 
 heroes than Uke basins for receiving and distributing 
 Uving water. During more than two centuries these 
 fountedns bore witness to the magnificence of the Far- 
 nese 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 signifi- 
 cance 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 splen- 
 dor once were, and now are not; and all the sunshine 
 which daily floods the spacious piazza fails to reani- 
 mate the majestic vacancy of the fagade, or to lift the 
 gloom from the dejected and sombre fountains. 
 
 [ 79 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 I. FONTANA PUBBLICA DI GIULIO III 
 "In Xanadu did Knbla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, 
 
 So twice five nules 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. 
 
 It was a miracle of rare device, 
 
 A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice. . . ." 
 
 The Villa Giiilia 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 imlimited 
 
 [ 83 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 power, wealth, and caprice have accomplished in that 
 direction; but none of the northern sovereigns pos- 
 sessed either the climate, soil, historical, poetic, and 
 pictorial setting or the artists, architects, and mar- 
 vellous art treasures which were at the command of 
 Pope Julius III. 
 
 When this pontiff, whose election dates from i55o, 
 decided to build a pleasiu-e-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 fuUy deter- 
 mined, 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 Car- 
 dinal 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 hned by fine 
 viUas 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 Uttle road (called 
 the Via del Arco Oscuro) leading up from the Tiber 
 
 [ 84 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 crossed the Via Flaminia at right angles and climbed 
 up the Valle Giuha, 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 hfe. The greatest archi- 
 tects of the time were employed upon it and no ex- 
 pense was spared. After Pope Julius's death, the entire 
 place was confiscated by the Camera Apostolica for 
 thirty-seven thousand scudi, the estimated amoimt of 
 Pope Julius's debts. 
 
 The Monte Pope (Julius III belonged to the Roman 
 family of Monte) would leave the Vatican by the pas- 
 sage 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 Flgiminia. 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 Os- 
 curo, 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 cul- 
 
 [ 85 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 tivating his vineyard, "without ever having had the 
 sHghtest indication that water could be found there." 
 Eventually he accomplished his purpose, for he suc- 
 ceeded 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 pun- 
 ishment which Frontinus considered not too severe for 
 so great a crime against the pubUc welfare. 
 
 Julius Ill'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 restora- 
 tion 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 pubhc fountain on this highway jus- 
 tified his manner of obtaining the water. At the two 
 opposite angles of the Via Flaminia and the Arco Os- 
 curo, where the ascent toward his vUla began, he 
 erected two fountains, blunting the acute end of each 
 angle by a mostra or high f agade 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 foun- 
 tains in all Rome. It was the \vork of Bartolomeo 
 
 [ 86 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 Amannati, possibly assisted by Vignola; and very often 
 must the youthful Domenico Fontana have studied it, 
 for the famous "Fonttuia Fountain" is only a modifi- 
 cation of this truly beautiful work of the dying Renais- 
 sance. It is noticeable that Amaonati's fountain is not 
 a screen nor a gateway; its mostra stands against a 
 soUd background with severely plain wings of the same 
 height flanking it at an angle on either side. This mos- 
 tra is of peperino in the Corinthian order, the columns 
 supporting a fine classic entablatiure and pediment. 
 The apex of the pediment was surmounted by a co- 
 lossal statue of Neptune, and the corners of it ter- 
 minated 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 divi- 
 sion of the fountain, and on these stood two small 
 obehsks, a feature borrowed by Fontana for his foun- 
 taia 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. PUBLICiE 
 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 back- 
 ground of the Fountain of Trevi. The basin for receiv- 
 ing the water did not extend across the full width of 
 the mostra, but was, and is (for this still remains), a 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 noble white granite conca standing at the foot of the 
 central division under the inscription. It originally re- 
 ceived the water from a beautiful antique head of 
 Apollo. AH this is described in a letter written by the 
 architect himself, Amannati, from Rome in i555, and 
 there follows a description of the arcade behind the 
 fountain. This consists of three loggias with Corinthian 
 columns, making a semihexagonal design and carry- 
 ing a vaulted roof ornamented by pictures and exqui- 
 site stucco work. This was where "his Holiness got re- 
 pose without incommoding the public," which, on the 
 other side of the wall, refreshed itself and its beasts of 
 burden from the pubhc 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 es- 
 paliers, and up these paths the Pope walked when, re- 
 freshed 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 suf- 
 fered 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 superim- 
 position 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 foun- 
 tain. The fate of Pope Julius's creation, from the time 
 of his death until 1900, is poorly outlined in the vari- 
 
 [ 88 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 ous half-obliterated escutcheons and inscriptions which 
 now ornament the fountain and its superstructural 
 Casino. As the villa and aU the land about it had been 
 immediately sequestered by the Apostolic Chamber in 
 spite of the protests of Julius Ill's legal heirs before a 
 tardy compensation was awarded them, this portion of 
 the Monte property was divided by Pope Pius IV be- 
 tween 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 Borro- 
 meo brothers married a Colonna, and the property was 
 bestowed upon her as dowry. It remained in that fam- 
 ily imtil 1900, when it was purchased by the present 
 owner, CavaUere Giuseppe Balestra, who already 
 owned the adjoining villa on the high ground, which 
 might have been a part of the original ViUa Giulia, 
 since it corresponds to that land which Juhus 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,* 
 the original inscription of Julius III was removed in 
 
 * Sixtus V was severely criticised for substituting his own arms for 
 those of his predecessor, Gregory XIII, in the Quirinal Palace, and 
 after Sixtus's death the Boncompagni arms were restored to their 
 original place. 
 
 [ 89 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 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 earUer branch. 
 He placed his own, the present, inscription in place of 
 it, sparing the inscription to Carlo Borromeo, either 
 because of Borromeo's connection with the Colonna 
 family or because of the great veneration felt by every- 
 one for the memory of the sainted young cardinal. It 
 was also at this time that the beautiful antique head of 
 ApoUo 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 1760 
 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 pubhc of the Trevi Water in this old fountain.* 
 Those who visit the ViUa Giulia in the morning 
 hours may see the Campagna carts on their way back 
 from Rome drawn up before the pubhc fountain of 
 Pope JuUus III, and the sleepy drivers, tired horses, 
 and responsible Uttle dogs refreshing themselves with 
 the water. 
 
 * "Ounce" was a mediaeval measurement of rimning water, of which 
 there were once as many vwieties in Italy as there were provinces. 
 Some of these are still in use. The Roman oncia d'acqua, or ounce of 
 water, was practically equivalent to four times the quantity of water 
 known as the California "miner's inch." This "miner's inch" amounts 
 to something like sixteen thousand gallons in twenty-four hours, and 
 •therefore the grant of two Roman "ounces" gave the Colonna the 
 right to draw from the Fountain of Trevi eight times that amount, or 
 one hundred and twenty-eight thousand gallons every twenty-four 
 hours. 
 
 [ 90 ] 
 
Fountain of the Virgins. 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 So far the picture created more than three hundred 
 and fifty years ago remains the same ; fundamental cus- 
 toms 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 ItaUan Government will sweep the crumbhng log- 
 gias free from dust and rubbish and tear away the pro- 
 tecting foUage, not redeeming but unmasking the dese- 
 cration of the centuries. To-day the dark water in the 
 rough garden tanks, the impruned 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 every- 
 where black shadows of impenetrable depth make up a 
 scene whose like can in all probability be found only 
 among the engravings of Piranesi. 
 
 II. THE NYMPHiEUM OR "SECRET FOUNTAIN 
 
 The Villa Giulia proper is designated in the old Ital- 
 ian books as I'lnvenzione nella Vigna GiuUa, £uad the 
 literal EngUsh translation of invention not inappropri- 
 
 [ 93 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 ately describes this truly marvellous creation. Aman- 
 nati, Vasari, Vignola,* and even the aged Michelan- 
 gelo spent themselves upon the architectural devices 
 by which this pleasure-house became a place of almost 
 fabulous beauty. Consummate knowledge of perspec- 
 tive 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 inde- 
 pendent genius, wearied utterly of serving such a mas- 
 ter 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 sympa- 
 thetic patron. 
 
 The last remains of Aurelian's Temple of the Sun 
 were presented by Prince Colonna to the Pope and 
 
 * One of Vignola's early plans for the Villa Giulia has lately come 
 to light. It shows the main structure much as it is, but with a large 
 wing to left and right, and a long garden running down either side of 
 the central court behind each wing. There are also other differentia- 
 tions, and it is evident the plan must have entailed a larger and more 
 expensive building than that which was finally erected. The plan 
 measures four by five feet and is beautifully prepared. It is now in the 
 possession of Mr. Lawrence Grant White, of New York. 
 
 [ 94 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 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 colmnns 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 cun- 
 ningly 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 semicirculeir 
 galleries and various rooms were decorated with paint- 
 ings or with stucco work of the most exquisite per- 
 fection. Traces of this last are still to be seen above 
 the niches containing the colossal river-gods, the Tiber 
 and the Amo (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 inven- 
 tion was of such beauty that it was in itseff "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 
 
 [ 95 1 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 outlines of restoration by Letarouilly and Stem that 
 a true conception can be obtained of the vflla 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 fiUed 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 Nymphseum 1 The present gar- 
 dens in no wise represent the beautiful formal gardens 
 which stretched there on either side of the various 
 covirts, and the present walls cannot possibly enclose 
 that space which was once filled with orange groves 
 and every sort of device for fastidious deUght. Some- 
 where in those grounds, probably on the right hand, 
 there was a monticello or little hiU 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 accommoda- 
 tions for every kind of animal, and everywhere there 
 
 [ 96 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 were fountains, marble seats, and antique garden 
 statuary. 
 
 Louis XIV, for whom careful plans of the viUa were 
 drawn, wisely made no attempt to copy the enchanted 
 palace of Italy. Versailles makes up ia size for the 
 beauty of color, architecture, vegetation, and art trea- 
 sures here formed into one beautiful whole by Pope 
 Julius III. The shape of the ViUa Giuha is significant. 
 It is a series of gardens, loggias, and courts, one en- 
 closing the other, each richer in ornamentation, more 
 ravishing in beauty than the last, until finally the 
 heart of the creation is reached, and the "secret foun- 
 tain" of the Acqua Vergine is discovered flowing out 
 of the shadow and from a hidden source into a sunht 
 Nymphaeum of marvellous beauty and again mysteri- 
 ously disappearing into the shadow. The Fountain of 
 the Virgins, as it came to be called, was felt by its 
 creator, Amannati, to be beyond the power of descrip- 
 tion. Writing to a friend in Padua, soon after Pope 
 Julius's death, he describes the entire viUa in ex- 
 traordiaary detail, noting the attitude even of msiny of 
 the statues; but when, after pages of description, he 
 has brought his reader to the lowest court of all, his 
 pen fails hini and he says that unless he can peiint a 
 picture of this court and fountain he will never be 
 able to give his friend "any conception of this, the 
 loveliest, richest, and most marvellous place in the 
 entire creation." Amamiati saw it in its first splen- 
 dor. The caryatides were perfect, white, and gleam- 
 ing, and perhaps beautiful. The niches round about 
 
 [ 97 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 were filled with marble boys carrying urns upon their 
 shoulders from which the water was poured into the 
 semicircular stream at their feet. It is impossible to 
 tell from the description of the old pictures what, if 
 any, statue filled the central niche behind the virgins. 
 At present the niche holds a great white marble swan, 
 now almost hidden by fern, from whose bill the water 
 trickles into the black pool beneath. The pavement, 
 made of every conceivable kind of marble, glowed like 
 a jewel. The balustrade above held graceful statues 
 and on either side of the court just above stood a great 
 plane-tree, giving deUcious verdure and shade. Then, 
 as now, the water came from large reservoirs hidden 
 beneath the upper terrace to the east of the fountain; 
 then, as now, it was carried oS over gentle, rough- 
 paved incUnes; then, as now, it fell steeply into a sub- 
 terranean cavern — the entire construction producing 
 waves of cool air and a ripple and murmur of water 
 exquisitely refreshing to both eye and ear. It is almost 
 necessary to forgive Pope Julius his attack upon the 
 aqueduct. Never before or since has the Acqua Vergine 
 received such poetic treatment. 
 
 Nothing remains of this beauty but the water and 
 the masonry. Pope Julius was hardly biu-ied before the 
 spoUation of his villa began. Like the Pope's beautiful 
 resting-place behind the pubhc fountain, the Nym- 
 phseum has endured three centuries of vile usage and 
 neglect. Nowhere in Rome is it more necessary to use 
 imagination than in the Villa GiuUa. The visitor should 
 descend into the lowest court on a day of brilliant sun- 
 
 [ 98 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 shine and, standing before the Fountain of the Virgins, 
 replace for himself the lost lustre of the columns, the 
 whiteness of the balustrades, the rich coloring of mural 
 paintings and stucco, and the gleam of antique statu- 
 ary. He should see the flickering shadows cast by the 
 great plane-trees across the marble pavement, and hear 
 the birds twittering or calling from the aviaries which 
 were in the loggia wall above the river-gods. He must 
 fancy the fitful music of stringed instruments, the per- 
 fume from the orange groves drifting over the garden 
 walls where sat the monkeys and brilUant tropical 
 birds. He must feel the languid stir or deep repose of 
 long, indolent, luxurious summer days, and through it 
 all, he must be conscious of the water. Only so will he 
 be able to form some adequate conception of what the 
 "secret fountain" must have been in the days of Pope 
 Julius III. The highest charm of the beautiful creation 
 lay in its presentation of contrast translated into a me- 
 diiun suitable to every sense. It was an age of contrast, 
 sharp and constant. No feature iu the crowded Italian 
 life of those two centuries is so striking as this. Fame 
 and obloquy; triumphant health and the lazar-house; 
 honor and exile; the luxury of an Agostino Chigi and 
 the squalor of the beggar at his doors; compassion and 
 fiendish cruelty, young Cardinal Borromeo's sanctity 
 on the one hand, and on the other unblushing licen- 
 tiousness; beauty to which all but divine honors were 
 paid, and hideous deformity; these lay open to the eye 
 on every side. There seemed to be no transition. The 
 "secret fountain," with its light and shade, its rest and 
 
 [ 99 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 motion, sound and silence, its art and nature, was the 
 poetic expression of life as it was known by the men 
 for whom it was created. 
 
 The records of those days are never free from blood, 
 and at least one assassination is connected with the 
 building of this house of mirth. Baronino, an associate 
 of Vignola and Amannati, leaving the villa with a 
 friend on a certain evening, was set upon as he turned 
 into the Via Flaminia and stabbed to death. The angle 
 in the walls made by the pubUc foimtain and the fact 
 that it was a natural place for loiterers probably sug- 
 gested the choice of the spot. The assassin's identity 
 was either never discovered or never revealed and the 
 crime went unpunished, for CeUini was not the only 
 lucky rascal. Artists especially carried their lives in 
 their hands, and genius was as open to violence as it 
 was to fame. 
 
 Historians and moralists accord scant justice and 
 no mercy to Julius III. He is represented by them as 
 spending his life in senseless and indolent pleasures. 
 Yet he had begun his pontificate with some show of 
 earnestness. He had reopened the Council of Trent, 
 and had attempted to play a part in the diplomacy of 
 Europe. That after two years he wearied of these ardu- 
 ous labors might have been because he had sufficient 
 wit to perceive that, for his time at least, the Papal 
 See would have to be a tool in the hands of Austria. 
 His devotion to the creation of his villa was perhaps 
 the only outlet for the activities of a nature too sUght 
 to cope with the stem and sinister century on which 
 
 [ 100 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 his lot had fallen. Long days spent with Vignola, 
 Amannati, and Vasari, and above all, with the aged 
 but undaunted Michelangelo himself, for whom this 
 Pope felt a loving veneration, must have had a zest 
 and stimulating quality sufficient to make the Pope's 
 Ufe in this viUa something more than the sybaritic 
 enjoyment of mere sensuous beauty. 
 
 Beyond a doubt, the construction of his villa became 
 an obsession with the Pope. He gradually abandoned 
 aU other avocations and duties. It was at the villa that 
 he held his audiences, received ambassadors, and gave 
 his suppers, at which last his wit was said to be of less 
 fine quaKty than were his vintages. He even had a 
 medal struck, with his own head on one side and on 
 the other the front elevation of the Villa Giulia, with 
 the inscription, "Fons Virginibus." 
 
 One fatal day a pet monkey savagely attacked the 
 Pope. He was rescued by a lad of sixteen whom he soon 
 after made a cardinal. The scandal was very great. 
 Prelates and laymen alike felt this to be going too far. 
 The Pope might lay himself open to censure but not to 
 ridicule. Here in the midst of the beauty created by 
 Pope Julius, men's eyes began to turn toward the 
 sUghtly grim, ascetic figure of Cardinal della Croce, 
 great Roman patrician and true saint, who, as if to give 
 the final note to this life of vivid contrast, moved about 
 in the gay papal court, reserved, austere, devoted to a 
 hfe of such sanctity that the Pope himself felt uncom- 
 fortable in his presence. 
 
 The viUa was stiU far from finished when Julius 
 
 [ loi ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Ill's short pontificate came to an end. The Conclave 
 ahnost unanimously chose as his successor their saintly- 
 brother, Cardinal deUa Croce.* The world had entered 
 upon a new phase. Northern Europe had brought the 
 spirit of the Reformation to the gates of Rome, and 
 men were ashamed of Pope Julius III, whose misfor- 
 tune it had been to Uve half a century too late. 
 
 The ViUa Giulia passed into the ownership of the 
 popes and remained there until it was taken over by 
 the state in the present government. It was eventually 
 finished by Popes Pius IV and Pius V, but the art 
 treasures were scattered far and wide. During many 
 pontificates it was used for the stopping place of am- 
 bassadors and other great personages who spent the 
 night there before making their ceremonial entrance 
 into Rome. Perhaps the presence of so much water and 
 luxurious vegetation made the place peculiarly sensi- 
 tive to mould and decay. Even as early as i585 it was 
 not considered healthful. Sixtus V, with the restless ca- 
 price of the poor sleeper, wished to spend a night there, 
 but was forbidden to do so by his physician. As it was 
 papal property, no private individual ever had the 
 chance to take over the beautiful old building and gar- 
 dens and keep them in repair; and those popes whose 
 tastes might have led them to restore it built pleasure- 
 houses or palaces for themselves. Gregory XIII began 
 the Quirinal Palace, and not infrequently for his ville- 
 giatura visited the magnificent villa of Mondragone at 
 
 * This cardinal became Pope Marcellus, for whom Palestrina is said 
 to have written the Mass of Pope Marcellus. 
 
 [ I02 ] 
 
VILLA GIULIA 
 
 Frascati which Cardinal Altemps had aheady begun to 
 bmld. SLxtus V built his Villa Montalto, the new Lat- 
 eran Palace, and finished the Quirinal Palace. Clement 
 VIII contented himself with the Quirinal; but his 
 great cardinal nephew, Peter Aldobrandini, founded 
 the magnificent VUla Aldobrandini at Frascati. The 
 Medici Leo XI devoted himself to the ViUa Medici. 
 Paul V did indeed make a restoration, using much 
 stucco, which can easily be distinguished from the 
 beautiful work of the original period, but that Pope's 
 interest was really given to the great viUa which his 
 nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, was creating out 
 of the old ViUa Cenci. 
 
 Finally, late in the eighteenth century, the papal 
 chair was occupied by a man of culture who felt the 
 chann of the old Cinque Cento viUa in the Valle Giu- 
 lia, and tried to rescue it from total ruin. This was the 
 GanganeUi Pope, Clement XIV, the founder of the 
 Clementine sculpture gallery in the Vatican. Clement 
 XIV's investigation of Pope Julius Ill's viUa showed 
 that the aqueducts were ruined, the walls crumbled by 
 water, the pavements cracked by fire, while all the 
 wood and iron work was broken or rusted, and the ex- 
 quisite paintings, stucco, and gilding spoiled by smoke 
 and damp.* The papal architect, Raphael Stern, 
 made careful and elaborate drawings from old plans, 
 with a view to a genuine restoration, as Pius VI (who, 
 
 * A curious story related by Wraxall ("Memoirs," vol. I, p. 183) 
 shows that the Villa Giulia in its eighteenth century period of isolation 
 and decay proved a convenient shelter for secret crimes committed by 
 persons of exalted rank. 
 
 [ io3 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 in 1774, succeeded Clement XIV) carried on the work. 
 This Pope also felt the fascination of the marvellous, 
 all but ruined pleasure-house, and decided to make it 
 his autumn residence, but it was too late ! Pope Pius 
 VI was carried off by the French Revolutionary forces 
 in 1798 and died a prisoner in the French fortress of 
 Valence. From that time forward, the villa fell more 
 and more into decay. Its pitiful condition might have 
 furnished material for endless sermons on the vanity of 
 life, and the ruin of its exquisite decorations fills all art- 
 ists and lovers of the beautiful with indignant regret. 
 It has been a veterinsu-y hospital, a cavalry barracks, 
 a storehouse for hay — ^no desecration has been spared 
 it. At last the present government rescued what was 
 left of it and converted it into a museum of antiquities, 
 giving the last ironic touch to its fate by filling the 
 rooms built to minister to the joy and pride of life, 
 with ancient coffins and reUcs of the dead. 
 
 [ io4 ] 
 
COLONNA 
 
COLONNA 
 
 The fountain of the Piazza Colonna might be the 
 "Fountain of Youth," for the freshness of its marbles 
 makes it seem to date from yesterday, whereas it is in 
 reahty one of the oldest fountains of modern Rome. It 
 was constructed three hundred and twenty-five years 
 ago, and belongs to that period when the Acqua Ver- 
 gine (Trevi Water) was the only water with which to 
 feed a fountain. As the Acqua Vergine has not suffi- 
 cient head to rise to any great height, and as its supply 
 is in continuous and wide-spread use for domestic pur- 
 poses, the designs for the fountains which it fiuiiishes 
 have to be low, and the sculptor or architect must rely 
 for his effect not upon any lavish supply of water but 
 upon the beauty of his materials and his own imagina- 
 tion. The fountains of Giacomo della Porta show the 
 practical difficulties with which he had to contend, and 
 
 [ 107 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 the felicity of his genius in overcoming the limitation. 
 His f omitain of the ' ' Tartarughe " is a work of art, and 
 as such can be admired without the aid of the water. 
 The two side fountains in the Piazza Navona, also his 
 creations, were quite lovely before Bernini decorated 
 one and artists of the nineteenth century the other 
 with fantastic sculpture. His fountain of the Piazza 
 Coloima has been less tampered with and, standing in 
 full sunhght or darkened by the vast shadow of the 
 Antonine Column, it remains, in its quiet beauty, a 
 masterpiece among the Roman fountains. It is a grace- 
 ful, hectagonal receptacle, half basin, haK drinking- 
 trough, composed of different kinds of Porta Santa 
 marble. These are joined together with straps of Car- 
 rara ornamented by lions' heads.* Its waters come to 
 it from a vase of antique shape standing in the centre. 
 From the shallow bowl of this central vase the water 
 gushes upward to fall over the rim in a soft, unbroken, 
 silvery stream, and through this vestal's veil the Car- 
 rara, to which the waters have given a wonderful sur- 
 face, gleams in tmsullied freshness and beauty. Two 
 tiny jets, set midway on either side between the ends 
 of the fountain and the vase in the centre, bring an 
 additional volume and add to the animation of the 
 pool. The vase in the centre is represented in an old 
 engraving by Falda as being much lower than the 
 present one and carved in crowded leaflike con- 
 
 * The ornamental detail of the " Sixtine lion " looks a3 if this foun- 
 tain, lite the Tartarughe, had been finished in the pontificate follow- 
 ing Gregory Xlll'a— that is, in the pontificate of Sbrtus V. 
 
 [ io8 ] 
 
COLONNA 
 
 volutions, like the vase of the Scossa CavaUi foun- 
 t£iin. 
 
 By 1829 this bit of old travertine sculpture had be- 
 come so misshapen that the artist Stocchi, by order of 
 Leo XII, replaced it by the present Carrara vase, add- 
 ing at that time to either end of the trough the small 
 groups of shells and dolphins. These are such dainty 
 bits of fancy, and so frankly an afterthought, that in 
 their first freshness at least they could not have 
 marred the beauty of the original conception. Rather 
 must they have enhanced it, as the white doves which 
 are perched upon its rim make the charm of the 
 "Pliny's Vase." Giacomo della Porta is the first foun- 
 tain builder of niodern Rome, and the fountains which 
 |ie did for Gregory XIII — all constructed for Trevi 
 Water — are still among the loveUest the city holds. 
 The passion for fountain building began in the second 
 half of the Cinque Cento. JuUus III rediscovered the 
 immense aesthetic value of water, the Nymphseum in 
 his Villa GiuUa being, in fact, the apotheosis of the 
 Acqua Vergine. Pius V's enlarged fountain of Trevi was 
 a recognition of the importance of water to the city's 
 welfare. This Pope and his predecessor, Pius IV, as 
 well as his successor, Gregory XIII, aU occupied them- 
 selves seriously with the restoration, improvement, and 
 upkeep of the Virgo Aqueduct. The return to the 
 water question is the one healthy and hopeful sign in 
 the city's life during those years which lay between the 
 death of old Paul III and the accession of Sixtus V. 
 Michelangelo died within this period and his great 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 spirit was not more surely departed than was the age 
 of art and learning in which he had moved as king. 
 That outrage to civiUzation known as the "last sack 
 of Rome" had occurred in i527, under Clement VII, 
 and Rome, in the person of her pontiff and in that of 
 every citizen, had suffered insult, spoliation, and dis- 
 honor. 
 
 The devotion of the Romans to Clement's successor 
 (the Farnese pontiff, Paul III) was in great part due 
 to their recognition of the fact that his pontificate rep- 
 resented a sustained and gallant attempt to restore to 
 his people their lost prestige — that figura so dear to 
 the Roman heart. With the death of the old patrician 
 the deplorable condition of the city once more as- 
 serted itself and men reahzed more keenly than ever 
 the permanent devastation wrought by the sack. Pos- 
 terity gains some faint idea of its horrors from the au- 
 tobiography of Benvenuto CeUini. It is indebted to 
 him for the dramatic description of the death of the 
 Constable de Bourbon, killed by a chance shot from 
 the ramparts when, in the dense fog which enveloped 
 the beleaguered city, he was planting the scaling lad- 
 ders against the walls. Four days earher, and during the 
 march on Rome, the other commander of the besieging 
 army, the veteran George Freimdsberg, had died of a 
 stroke of apoplexy brought on by the mutinous con- 
 duct of his troops; so that, without leaders, forty thou- 
 sand of the worst soldiery of Europe were turned loose 
 within the city walls — turned loose to recoup them- 
 selves for their long arrears of wages out of everything 
 
 [ iio ] 
 
COLONNA 
 
 which the taste, learning, and moral sense of civilized 
 man has always held most precious. History records 
 that the Spanish were the most cold-blooded, the Ger- 
 mans the most bestial, and the Itahans the most inven- 
 tive in forms of villainy. The week of unspeakable 
 atrocities, wanton destruction, and wholesale pillage 
 came to an end; but when it did, that marvellous trea- 
 sure-house of civilization — Rome of the Renaissance — 
 had perished, and the place thereof was to know her no 
 more. It was no wonder that, during the decade which 
 followed, Rome — ^what was left of her — seemed hardly 
 to breathe. When, during the pontificate of Paul III 
 she began to revive, it was plain to all men that she 
 was not, and could never be, the same. Life came back 
 to her at last, not through aesthetic but through ethical 
 channels. 
 
 Thenceforward the popes, whether they wished it or 
 not, were to be serious men. As the Reformation spread 
 through England, the Low Countries, France and Ger- 
 many, the papacy set its house in order and prepared 
 to fight, not for its temporal supremacy, as in the medi- 
 aeval struggle with the Emperors, but for its spiritual 
 authority. It was at this point that there came to its 
 aid a new force, a force whose influence has never yet 
 been accurately measured. In iBSg, just before the 
 close of Luther's life, Ignatius Loyola founded the So- 
 ciety of Jesus. This was in the time of Paul III. Four 
 pontificates later, under Pius IV, the Jesuits, as Calvin 
 was the first to ceJI them, furnished the sensational 
 element in the second sitting of the Council of Trent; 
 
 [ III ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL EOME 
 
 and in 1572, when Ugo Boncompagni became Pope, 
 under the title of Gregory XIII, the order made its 
 appearance on the world's stage as the recognized di- 
 rector of the church militant. The Jesuits were the 
 keepers of this Pope's conscience, and the history of his 
 pontificate is the first chapter in the history of Jesuit 
 rule. For them the Pope erected the present building 
 of the CoUegio Romano, founded in Loyola's time; for 
 them he founded the German and EngKsh colleges at 
 Rome, and, according to Ranke, "probably there was 
 not a single Jesuit school in the world which had not to 
 boast in one way or another of his bounty." The chief 
 architects of the time were put at their disposal. Vi- 
 gnola designed and buUt for them the vast Church of 
 "the Gesu"; and as he died while the work was in 
 progress, his distinguished pupil, Giacomo della Porta, 
 tiu"ned from the making of beautiful fountains and 
 completed the cupola and fagade. The latter also built 
 the high altar in that church, and in its construction 
 showed once more that love of rare marbles which is 
 so distinctive a feature in the Colonna and other foun- 
 tains of his creation. 
 
 Gregory XIII had begun life as a Bolognese lawyer. 
 He had been called to Rome by Paul III the very year 
 Loyola founded the Society of Jesus. He had gone to 
 Spain as Papal legate under Paul IV, had been created 
 cardinal by Pius IV, and at the age of seventy was 
 made Pope. His life had peculiarly fitted him to appre- 
 ciate Jesuit ideals. His belief in educational institu- 
 tions, his keen interest in geography and the remote 
 
 [ 112 ] 
 
COLONNA 
 
 corners of the earth, the correctness of his private life 
 after his elevation, his previous worldUness, and his 
 secular training, all combined to make him the Jesuit 
 Pope. The Roman Church remembers him as the 
 builder of the Gregorian Chapel in St. Peter's, the re- 
 former of the calendeir, the reorganizer of a great body 
 of ecclesiastical law, and the patron of the Order of the 
 Jesuits. To Protestants he remains the Pope who sang 
 "Te Deums" for "the St. Bartholomew." 
 
 The pontificate of Gregory XIII was a deplorable 
 one for the Holy See and for the Romans. Conditions 
 of living sank to a very low level. Banditti terrorized 
 the States of the Church and could not be controlled 
 even in Rome. The great families whose estates Greg- 
 ory had confiscated to pay for his architectural and 
 ecclesiastical extravagances were in open revolt, and 
 the treasury was empty. Venice had been estranged, 
 and England and the Netherlands were forever lost. 
 Gregory XIII's successor, Sixtus V, feU heir to this 
 condition of misrule and disaster. No one can be sur- 
 prised at the grim irony of the new pontiff in ordering 
 masses to be said for the soul of Gregory XIII ! 
 
 Looking at the tranquil loveliness of the Colonna 
 fountain — so white and shining in the sunlight — ^it is 
 difficult to picture it as a part of the turbulent life of 
 the period in which it was erected. Yet many a time 
 its waters must have restored consciousness, stanched 
 woimds, stifled cries for mercy or succor, and washed 
 away the stains of blood. It has always been a Pilgrims' 
 Fountain. Long before Sixtus V with his passion for 
 
 I ii3 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 converting the "high places" of Paganism into Chris- 
 tian monuments had restored the Antonine colmnn and 
 placed upon it the statue of St. Paul — long before that 
 time the ascent of the column had been a part of the 
 Roman pilgrims' itinerary. In the Middle Ages the col- 
 umn had become the property of the monks of San Sil- 
 vestro, who leased it to the highest bidder. As Rome 
 nimabered her pilgrims by the thousands in any year, 
 and by the tens of thousands during the years of the 
 Papal Jubilee, a goodly profit was derived from the 
 fees paid by the pilgrims to the custodian of the column, 
 and the monks could therefore always count upon mak- 
 ing an advantageous lease. Gregory XIII, in erecting 
 this fountain, must have thought primarily of the com- 
 fort and interest of the pilgrims. As the traveller of 
 to-day remembers the fountain of Trevi, so the pil- 
 grim of the sixteenth century remembered the foun- 
 tain by the side of the Column of St. Paul — the foun- 
 tain of the Piazza Colonna. Its beauty delighted the 
 eyes of footsore men from far-off and still barbarous 
 countries; while the crystalline waters which quenched 
 their thirst and washed away the stains of travel would 
 have had for these Christians from the North a sym- 
 bolic significance undreamed of by the Romans. The 
 vision of this shining foimtain has been carried back to 
 many distant monasteries and remote firesides through- 
 out the Christian world. Its situation in the Piazza Co- 
 lonna, which is but a widening of the Corso, has kept it 
 in the main current of Roman life. The people use it 
 and cherish it; Falda has engraved it; and, in the be- 
 
 [ "4 ] 
 
COLONNA 
 
 ginmng of the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XII em- 
 bellished it with its dainty shells and dolphins, as a 
 father might twine flowers in the hair of some beautiful 
 child. 
 
 [ "5 ] 
 
QUATTRO FONTANE 
 
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 QUATTRO FONTANE 
 
 These quaint old fountains, now fast fading away, 
 were erected during the pontificate of Sixtus V to dec- 
 orate the famous "Crossing" created by himself and 
 his architect Domenico Fohtana when these two began 
 to make over Rome of the Renaissance into modem 
 Rome. The Crossing occurs where the Via Venti 
 Settembre traverses at right angles the Via Sistina. 
 The former leads from the Porta Pia to the Piazza of 
 the Quirinal, and the latter runs all the way from the 
 Trinita de' Monti to Santa Maria Maggiore, changing 
 its name just above the Crossing to Via Quattro 
 Fontane, smd after passing the Via Nazionale becom- 
 ing Via Agostino Depretis. The Via Venti Settembre 
 becomes, after leaving the Crossing on the Quirinal 
 side, the Via QuirinsJe, Sixtus V laid out the Via Sis- 
 
 [ "9 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 tina, and called it for himself the Via Felice. The Via 
 Venti Settembre was called in his time the Via Pia, as 
 it led to the Porta Pia, which was erected by Pope 
 Pius IV. 
 
 The four fountains are of travertine and represent 
 two rivers and two virtues. They are all by Fontana 
 except that one which is placed across the grille in the 
 wall of the Barberini Gardens. This is the work of Pi- 
 etro da Cortona. The choice both of the rivers and of 
 the virtues is significant. Pope Sixtus V's early life 
 shows what need he had of fortitude, while fidelity 
 marks his attitude toward his two (and only) friends. 
 Pope Pius V and Domenico Fontana. 
 
 The Tiber, represented by a river-god behind whom 
 the reeds are growing, was of course to be expected. 
 The Anio, also a river-god but with the emblem of the 
 oak-tree, may have been chosen because of Sixtus V's 
 intention to bring its waters to Rome, not by an aque- 
 duct but in a canal, for the transportation of the trav- 
 ertine and wood needed in his great enterprises. For 
 the Tiber also he had plans. He wished to enlarge its 
 bed so that he might bring up his galleys from the sea 
 to Rome; and he had a scheme for its separation at the 
 Ponte MoUe and for bringing one arm of it behind the 
 Vatican, so as to make an island of that part of Rome 
 containing the papal palace, St. Peter's and the Castle 
 of St. Angelo. These were among the projects which he 
 had not the time to carry out, for Sixtus V's pontificate 
 lasted but five years. Seeing what he actually accom- 
 plished during that short period and reading what he 
 
 [ I20 ] 
 
QUATTRO FONTANE 
 
 still intended to do, it seems as if this Pope were not a 
 link in the long chain of St. Peter's successors but one 
 of those " explosions of energy " which occur from time 
 to time in the history of men. 
 
 Sixtus V was not a Roman nor even by descent an 
 Italian. His origin was from the humblest condition in 
 life. The family name of Peretti (a little pear) might 
 have been taken by his father, an Illyrian immigrant of 
 Slavonic origin, to denote his occupation, which was 
 that of a fruit gardener. At twelve years of age this 
 man's son, FeUx Peretti, became a Franciscan novice; 
 and from that time the enthusiasm, ideals, and limita- 
 tions of the great Order of St. Francis moulded and in- 
 spired a character formed by nature for leadership in 
 any position to which it might attain. To an ardent 
 temperament, an imperious will, and a strong intellect 
 
 [ 121 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL HOME 
 
 was added a constructive, even fantastic, imagination 
 of a high order; but his lack of early culture and his 
 exclusively monastic training had kept him in igno- 
 rance of all education not immediately connected with 
 religion and had bred in him a hostility toward clas- 
 sic art almost amounting to fanaticism. Such was the 
 great Franciscan friar, Felix Peretti who, after first be- 
 coming Cardinal Montalto, was elected Pope in i585 
 and took the title of Sixtus V. It may be said that, al- 
 though as head of the Roman See his abilities obtained 
 a far wider scope than his order could have given him, 
 yet from the point of view of character and ideals he 
 remained the Franciscan friar all his life. His brief 
 and splendid pontificate closed suddenly amid the last 
 great political and religious struggle between France 
 and Spain. To neither opponent had Sixtus, who could 
 see both sides of the conflict, given his final support; 
 and his suspension of judgment in a cause where the 
 forces of Protestantism were still represented in the 
 person of Henry of Navarre gave rise to suspicions, 
 most unjust, of his orthodoxy. The Roman people for- 
 got the benefits and glories of his reign and remembered 
 only its severity, the destruction of their antiquities, 
 the drain of his taxation, and his temperate poUcy to- 
 ward a Protestant king. The marvel of his extraordi- 
 nary rise to power had produced in the public mind fan- 
 tastic theories, and when a great storm burst over the 
 Palace of the Quirinal, where the Pope lay dying, it 
 was commonly beUeved that "Friar Felix" had at 
 last been called upon to fulfil his part of the com- 
 [ 122 ] 
 
QUATTRO FONTANE 
 
 pact which he had made with the devil for power 
 and place. 
 
 When this Pope ascended the chair of St. Peter he 
 found an exhausted treasury, a starving people, a 
 cramped and crowded city suffering from lack of water 
 and from every means of hygienic living; and added to 
 this there was such a condition of lawlessness in the 
 States of the Church as made them a byword through- 
 out Christendom. Within a year after his election the 
 last great chieftain of the banditti had been destroyed, 
 and the foreign ambassadors join-neyed in safety to 
 take up their abode in the Holy City. Within three 
 years he had deposited in the Castle of St. Angelo great 
 sums of money, which were to be used, however, only 
 for the defense of the city, the purchase of lost papal 
 territory, and wars against the Turks, with which last 
 contingency his imagination was constemtly at play. 
 During these years he had also reconciled the feud of 
 the Colonna and Orsini, had restored the disputed 
 privileges of the nobility in the great cities, and had 
 brought Venice once more into harmony with the pa- 
 pacy. It was by command of this Pope, Sixtus V, that 
 the gardens, hills, wolds, and valleys of the States of 
 the Church were planted with mulberry-trees, so that 
 "where no com grew the sUk industry might flourish." 
 It was Sixtus V who encouraged woollen manufacture 
 so that — to quote his own words — "the poor might 
 have something." In connection with this, it is inter- 
 esting to see that he had fully intended to turn the Col- 
 iseum into an immense woollen factory. The streets of 
 [ 123 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Rome resounded with the cheerful din of his architects 
 and masons ; and though the nobihty and populace had 
 reason enough to fear the entire destruction of their 
 ancient monuments at the hands of this Franciscan, 
 yet they could but admire the great triumphs of archi- 
 tecture and engineering which day by day raised the 
 city to her lost pre-eminence and restored the pride of 
 the Roman people. His first great public enterprise 
 marked him at once as a born administrator. This was 
 the introduction iato Rome of a new supply of water. 
 The work which the Pope determined should be worthy 
 of imperial Rome was accomplished ia spite of every 
 obstacle and at a cost of two hundred and fifty-five 
 thousand three hundred and forty-one scudi. By it he 
 all but doubled the population of his city and reclaimed 
 that great tract of land comprising the Viminal, Quiri- 
 nal, and EsquHiae Hills. This quarter had been a desert 
 during eleven centimes; and yet, in the days of the 
 Empire, it was the garden of Rome. 
 
 Piranesi's engravings give some idea of the savage 
 wildness of the uninhabited peirts of Rome ; and the rag- 
 ged and uncouth figures with which he peoples his ruins 
 are, no doubt, a faithful representation of the squalor of 
 the wretched tribe of outlaws who dwelt among them. 
 This state of things had resulted from one cause — lack 
 of water. The aqueducts which supplied these hills had 
 been the first to perish at the hands of the barbarians, 
 and desolation had followed inevitably upon their de- 
 struction. Pius IV had dreamed of restoring this great 
 portion of the city; but Pius IV, like his immediate 
 
 [ 124 ] 
 
QUATTRO FONTANE 
 
 predecessors, had lacked the means of doing this. Six- 
 tus V brought to the task the required money, pubUc 
 tranquillity, and imagination. He found in the erst- 
 while mason's apprentice from Como, Domenico Fon- 
 tana, the engiueer and architect for such undertakings. 
 The old Marcian Aqueduct furnished the materials for 
 the Acquedotto Felice, and the water was brought all 
 the way from ZagaroUa in the Agra Colonna, near 
 Frascati, twenty miles distant from Rome, to the 
 Pope's vineyard outside the Porta Maggiore, and 
 thence to the Church of Santa Susanna. The splendid 
 stream carried over these arches was thus distributed 
 throughout the desolation and steriUty of the Vimuial, 
 Esquiline, and Quirinal Hills. With this water at his 
 command, Sixtus V began laying out what might be 
 called to-day Sixtine Rome — the Rome which Kes be- 
 tween the terraces of the Trinita de' Monti and that 
 portion of the Aurelian wall pierced by the six gates — 
 Porta Pinciana, Porta Salaria, Porta Pia, Porta San 
 Lorenzo, Porta Maggiore, and Porta San Giovanni. It 
 was an enormous space to cover, and the frescoes in the 
 VaticEin Library show how desolate and how wild it 
 was. The two great basiUcas of the Lateran and Santa 
 Maria Maggiore, the CoUseum, and the Septizonium 
 (for very good reasons not included in the picture), the 
 Baths of Diocletian, the Neronian arches, the ViUa 
 Montalto with its rows of famous cypresses, and in 
 one panel the Moses fountain and the Porta Pia — 
 these constitute the main features of the wild land- 
 scape with its hiUy background and its foreground 
 [ 125 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 of rough, bare earth and shaggy vegetation. The Pope 
 offered special privileges to all who would build on 
 these hiUs, and he himself began the work by level- 
 ling the ground about the Church of the Trinita de' 
 Monti and building the fine flights of steps which 
 lead up on both sides to the church. Half-way be- 
 tween this church and the basilica of Santa Maria 
 Maggiore he created the Crossing; and for rest and 
 refreshment, as well as for beauty, he placed here 
 these four fountains. This half-way point in the long 
 ascent from the Trinita de' Monti to the basihca of 
 Santa Maria Maggiore was well knoAsm to Sixtus V. 
 Many a time had he, as Friar Felix Peretti, climbed 
 that lonely hillside and felt for himself the soUtude and 
 thirst of the desolate vicinity. Later oh, when he had 
 become Cardinal Montalto, he had passed that way in 
 such state as a poor cardinal could command. Here 
 Fontana had first built him a modest dwelling, and 
 here he began to construct the ViUa Montalto, which, 
 as Fontana labored over it, became at length so 
 beautiful that it, together with the chapel he was also 
 building in Santa Maria Maggiore, cost Montalto the 
 allowance given by the Camera ApostoHca to poor 
 cardinals, since the Pope judged no man to be poor 
 who could build so magnificently. Gregory XIII's 
 inference and consequent action may have been natu- 
 ral, but was not on that account just. The endur- 
 ing antipathy between Ugo Boncompagni and Felix 
 Peretti dated from that Spanish mission on which . 
 they had been sent together by Pius V; and when 
 [ 126 ] 
 
QUATTRO FONTANE 
 
 Boncompagni had become Pope and had, therefore, 
 Cardmal Montalto in his power, it befitted him to 
 make a thorough investigation of any matter con- 
 cerning his old antagonist before taking action. As 
 a matter of fact, the villa, though costing in the end 
 thirty thousand scudi, could not have been so extrav- 
 agant in the beginning. The characters of Cardinal 
 Montalto and Fontana, as well as their accounts, prove 
 how certainly the owner and architect could get the 
 best possible returns for their money. These two men 
 formed at that time one of the notable friendships of 
 history. Fontana supplied out of his savings the fimds 
 for continuing the chapel; and Montalto, as Sixtus V, 
 proved his gratitude and appreciation. Their confi- 
 dence in each other was as complete as was their rec- 
 ognition of each other's ability. Sixtus gave Fontana 
 the work of taking down and re-erecting the obeUsk of 
 the Vatican — and this, in spite of Fontana's youth (he 
 was forty-two years old and judged by his contempo- 
 raries to be too young for such responsibihty) as well as 
 the reputation of Amannati and other competitors. 
 Furthermore, when the obelisk was finally lowered to 
 its present position amid the prayers of the vast con- 
 course of people, Sbrtus was not even present. The 
 French ambassador was to have his audience at that 
 hour, and the state of Europe was the Pope's chief con- 
 cern. As Sixtus passed along the street to the Vatican, 
 revolving the affairs of Phihp II and Elizabeth of 
 England, of Mary Stuart and Henry of Navarre, 
 and the "Unspeakable Turk," the gims of St. Angelo 
 [ 127 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 apprised him that the obeUsk was in place. That had 
 been Fontana's business and he had trusted it to 
 him. Nevertheless, the old pontiff shed tears of satis- 
 faction. 
 
 The Villa Montalto was eventually finished by the 
 Pope's nephew, Cardinal Montalto II, and later on it 
 was known as the ViUa Negroni. Engravings of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show that it con- 
 tained an endless variety of fountains; among them 
 Fontana's great fish-pond was truly magnificent. All of 
 these had been made possible by the Acqua Fehce. 
 Sixtus V preferred the Quirinal to any other residence. 
 Perhaps the Villa Montalto may have become distaste- 
 ful to him by reason of the crime which was immortal- 
 ized by Webster's tragedy of "Vittoria Accoramboni 
 or the White Devil." Cinque Cento Italy was the Italy 
 of the Elizabethan dramatists, and in this tragedy, the 
 blackest of their Italian productions, many of the chief 
 characters were drawn from actual life. The Cardinal 
 Monticelso of the written tragedy had been the actual 
 Cardinal Montalto, and Vittoria Accoramboni and her 
 husband had been his nephew and his nephew's wife. 
 Francesco Peretti was the cardinal's favorite nephew, 
 and the ever-perplexing question of the formation of a 
 cardinal's household had been solved for Montalto by 
 domiciling Francesco and Vittoria in the ViUa Mont- 
 alto. Vittoria had great beauty, and her ambition and 
 audacity were boundless. She aspired to something 
 higher than the handsome nephew of a parsimonious 
 and conspicuously infirm old cardinal. She captivated 
 [ 128 ] 
 
QUATTRO FONTANE 
 
 the head of the Orsini, the Duke of Bracciano, and 
 gave him to understand that she would marry him 
 after he had made away with his wife and her hus- 
 band. The Duchess of Bracciano was the sister of the 
 powerful Grand Duke of Tuscany. Nevertheless, Brac- 
 ciano stremgled her with his own hands while pretend- 
 ing to kiss her. Young Peretti was then called away 
 from the Villa Montalto one night on the pretext that 
 his dearest friend had need of him, decoyed into the 
 desolate spaces on Monte CavaUo, and stabbed to 
 death. The cardinal, his uncle, buried him without a 
 cry either for justice or vengeance. He waited. But 
 Gregory XIII forbade forever the union of Vittoria and 
 the duke. More the Pope could hardly dare do against 
 the greatest of his subjects. Vittoria and Bracciano 
 went through a mock ceremony and retired to the 
 duke's great fortress castle of Bracciano, not far from 
 Rome, where they waited for the Pope's death. When 
 this occurred, they returned to the city in order to 
 have the marriage performed during that interim which 
 must elapse between the death of one pope and the 
 election of another. Vittoria became the legal Duchess 
 of Bracciano; but her former husband's uncle, the 
 feeble old Cardinal Montalto, was elected Pope, and 
 the two great criminals fled from a certain and terrible 
 retribution. Venice at that time was the refuge for aU 
 the terror-stricken, and the duke's kinsman, Ludovico 
 Orsini, Uved there as a successful general. Bracciano 
 died there seven months later; and six weeks afterward 
 Ludovico Orsini murdered both Vittoria and her young 
 [ 129 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 brother Flaminio in Padua, whither they had gone to 
 live on the duke's great legacy. Vittoria's possession of 
 Bracciano's fortune, and the outraged pride of the Or- 
 sini occasioned by her marriage, for she was of humble 
 origin, prompted Ludovico's crime. But all three of 
 these actors in the tragedy were guests of Venice, and 
 Ludovico Orsini had in very truth reckoned without 
 his host. There was one pride greater than that of a 
 Roman noble, and that was the pride of Venice. Padua 
 was Venetian territory, and the republic suffered no 
 such acts of lawless vengeance within her jurisdiction, 
 no matter by whom they were committed nor on what 
 provocation. The Venetian reprisals were summary and 
 fearful. Ludovico Orsini was strangled by the Bargello 
 with the red silk cord which, as a nobleman, he had a 
 right to demand; and his accomplices died by tortiu-e 
 in the pubUc square. It was an age of crime, flagrant 
 and atrocious; but the story of Vittoria Accoramboni, 
 involving, as it did, the temporary ruin of the Orsini 
 family, lives on when others equally horrible have been 
 happily buried and forgotten in the archives of the 
 families in which they occurred. 
 
 Sixty years after the death of Sbctus V this region 
 about the Quattro Fontane had become both fashion- 
 able and beautiful. The fountains were then known as 
 the four fountains of Lepidus, and Evelyn described 
 them as the "abutments of four stately ways." Sixtus 
 V had made it illegal for any house along his great 
 thoroughfare of the FeUce to be torn down against the 
 will of the owner, even after a decree of the Tribunal. 
 [ i3o ] 
 
QUATTRO FONTANE 
 
 In an age of uncertainty created by the Pope's own 
 high-handed measures, this security alone must have 
 gone a long way toward encouraging building. 
 
 In 1 587 Sixtus himself bought the beautiful Piazza of 
 Monte Cavallo from the heirs of the CEU-affa family, 
 and the Quirinal Palace, already begun by Gregory 
 XIII, was finished by him with great magnificence. 
 Fontana also built in one corner of the Quattro Fon- 
 tane the Palazzo Mattel, now the Palazzo Albani. The 
 invaluable stimulant of the "master's eye " was always 
 to be felt about the neighborhood, for Sixtus V often 
 took his Simday walk, after mass along these streets, 
 examining, criticising, and commanding everything. 
 He was "always in a hiury." It was as if he felt the 
 time was short. No modem methods surpass the rush 
 of his undertakings; but unlike the modern building, 
 that which he bmlt remained, and remains until this 
 day. The feeble body which so successfully deceived 
 the Conclave at his election and yet survived for those 
 five titanic years of his pontificate lies in Santa Maria 
 Maggiore, in the great chapel built for him by his Fon- 
 tana. There, as Stendhal truly says: "Amid all the 
 marble magnificence, what one really cares to see is 
 the sculptured physiognomy of the Pope himself." 
 
 One other statue of this Sixtus which formerly 
 adorned Rome would now be of surpassing interest. 
 It was erected at the Capitol in the Pope's lifetime, 
 and was the work of that gifted young Florentine art- 
 ist, Taddeo Landini, who modelled the bronze boys in 
 the Tartarughe fountain. The night the Pope died this 
 
 I i3i ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Statue was covered by boards for fear of the violence 
 of the mob, and soon after it was removed; but it is 
 probably stiU in existence, and the increasing interest 
 in Sixtine Rome may some day bring it to light. 
 
 In this mortuary chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore 
 there is also the tomb of Pope Pius V, erected by Sixtus 
 V, and one of the panels in the Vatican Library depicts 
 the solemn removal of the old saint's body to this splen- 
 did restiQg-place. Sixtus V saw this accomplished in his 
 lifetime, for his devotion to the Pope, who, like himself, 
 had begun life as a friar, and who had made him car- 
 dinal and stood his friend in trouble, never wavered 
 nor grew cold. Historians have dwelt much upon Sixtus 
 Vs parsimony. Economy was said to be his favorite 
 virtue. But the best of the Quattro Fontane is that 
 which represents the virtue of fidelity; and this is the 
 only one of them which is decorated with the emblems 
 of Sixtus V. 
 
 [ l32 1 
 
TARTARUGHE 
 
TARTARUGHE 
 
 GiACOMO DELIA PoRTA, Domenico and Giovanni Fon- 
 tana, Carlo Maderno, and Bernini are the Roman mas- 
 ters in the gentle art of foimtain-making. Giacomo della 
 Porta stands first chronologically, and he has also 
 created the loveliest of the lovely. This is the Tar- 
 tarughe fomitain for which the Senate and people of 
 Rome paid over twelve hundred scudi, evidently a 
 large sum at that time for a fountain, as BagKoni men- 
 tions it particularly. Giacomo della Porta deUghted in 
 rare marbles and for his fountain of the Tartarughe he 
 carved the broad shallow bowl of the classic drinking 
 cup in the centre in bigio morraio fasciato, or veined 
 gray marble, while he made the stem of a mottled 
 yellow marble called Saravezza. The cup stands upon 
 a Carrara base, moulded and carved with decora- 
 tive shields or escutcheons, from the four comers of 
 which project huge shells of rare beauty and distinc- 
 tion of form carved in different varieties of African 
 marble. It rises from a shallow travertine basin, grace- 
 fully shaped and shghtly sunk below the level of the 
 present pavement. So far there is nothing to distin^ 
 guish this fountain from others of its kind except the 
 I i35 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 richness of its marbles and the shape of the shells, but 
 its four bronze figvires so harmoniously composed give 
 this design the dignity of a work of art, and make it the 
 most exquisite of Roman fountains. They are by Tad- 
 deo Landini, whose early death was a distinct loss to 
 the worid of axt. 
 
 These figures are of boys in the most beautiful period 
 of adolescence, their sinuous bodies lean against the 
 sweUing stem of the cup, one slender leg of each figure 
 pushed backward so that the foot rests on the toes, 
 preserving the balance, while the other leg, lifted high 
 and bent at the knee, presses its foot upon the head of 
 a bronze dolphin. The torsos lean toward each other in 
 couples, each supporting itself on its elbow so that the 
 right shoulder of the one and the left shoulder of the 
 other come rather close together. The hands of these 
 supporting arms grasp the tails of the dolphins, while 
 the other arms, raised high above the head, push up- 
 ward with open palms and outspread fingers four 
 bronze tortoises which clamber over the rim of the cup 
 in haste to plunge into the water. Projecting from the 
 under surface of the rim are carved in marble heads of 
 cherubs, so placed that the water which they spout 
 falls in a steady stream between the figures of the boys 
 and is received into the lowest basin. 
 
 The composition of these figures of boys and water- 
 creatures is quite lovely; and the water, rising in a 
 central jet from the drinking-cup, gushing from the 
 mouths of the dolphins and shpping in slender runnels 
 from the cunningly curved lips of the huge shells en- 
 [ i36 ] 
 
Fountain of the Tartarughe. 
 
TARTARUGHE 
 
 hances, as it should, the joyous naturalness of the 
 entire conception. 
 
 The popular appreciation of the beauty of the Tar- 
 tarughe is shown by the wide-spread impression that it 
 was designed by Raphael. It is painful to give up that 
 belief, and in the face of facts which prove the hope- 
 lessness of such a contention the enthusiastic admirer 
 can only assert that had Raphael designed a fountain 
 this is the fountain he would have designed. 
 
 There is assuredly some excuse for this assertion. 
 Raphael depicted often, and with peculiar tenderness, 
 the gracious figures of youths. There is, also, a whim- 
 sicality in this conceit, a certain sympathy seems to 
 imite the boys with the water-creatures; it is as if they 
 were aU joining in the sport of their own free will, and 
 might at any moment break away from each other 
 only to reunite in some fresh prank in splashing water 
 under happy skies. AU this is highly reminiscent of the 
 art of Raphael. By virtue of it the Tartarughe belongs 
 not to the end of the sixteenth century but to that 
 great period of the High Renaissance when "for Leo X 
 Raphael filled rooms, galleries, and chapels with the 
 ideal forms of human beauty and the pure expression 
 of existence." 
 
 This fountain was erected in the last year of the pon- 
 tificate of Gregory XIII and the first year of the pontif- 
 icate of Sixtus V, which would explain why its erection 
 is attributed sometimes to the reign of one pope and 
 sometimes to that of the other. It is difficult to under- 
 stand how Sixtus V could have permitted the erection 
 
 [ i39 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 of any fountain so entirely devoid of scriptural sugges- 
 tion, so purely pagan in its expression of joyous and 
 irresponsible life, as is the Tartarughe. Possibly the 
 play of the boys in the spl£ishing water reminded the 
 old man, who was in spite of his fierce enthusiasms so 
 kindly and so human, of the fsir-off days of his child- 
 hood. As Cardinal Montalto he had done much for his 
 native village, and many acts of his pontificate prove 
 he had the poor always with him. He never forgot their 
 sufferings or their simple pleasures, and in that old 
 heart there lingered memories of his father's fruit gar- 
 den at Formi, of the pear-trees which he placed in his 
 coat of arms, and of the great cistern in which he dab- 
 bled with such happy recklessness that one day he fell 
 in and had to be fished out like any other urchin des- 
 tined or not for the papal chair. 
 
 Rome would, undoubtedly, be the richer for a foun- 
 tain by Raphael, but it is probably fortunate for the 
 Tartarughe that it was not of Raphael's creation. It is 
 not likely that this bit of fancy in bronze and rare mar- 
 bles could have escaped destruction at the time of the 
 sack of Rome in 1627, only six years after Raphael's 
 death. Perhaps, also, this lEist blossom from the golden 
 Summer of Italian Art owes its perfect preservation to 
 its position in an obscure corner close to what was once 
 the Ghetto. But as a setting for this gem no situation 
 could be more inadequate. A mean square of dingy, 
 uniformly ugly houses surroimds it, and there is not 
 one redeeming feature in all this dreariness except the 
 patch of blue sky overhead. A fountain fit to be the 
 [ i4o ] 
 
TARTARUGHE 
 
 crowning beauty of some prince's garden or to be cele- 
 brated in a canto of "The Faerie Queene" plays on in 
 this commonplace part of Rome unheeded, and seem- 
 ingly uncared for. However, when in 1898, one of the 
 tortoises was stolen the indignation felt at the theft 
 was so wide-spread and so fierce that the thief was only 
 too glad to abandon the precious tortoise in a place 
 where it could be easily discovered. 
 
 Trevi water supplies this fountain at present. Until 
 quite recently it was the Acqua Paola, but its deposits 
 had so discolored the bronze and marbles that the 
 water in the shells was changed back to the Trevi, 
 for which water it was originally constructed. How- 
 ever, the highest jet in the fountain was not changed, 
 as Paola water can rise to a much higher level than 
 Trevi. 
 
 [ i4i ] 
 
FONTANA DEL MOSfe 
 
M:=liM<ttHrt^=IH;ftHttHH=ltttttil'^« 
 
 FONTANA DEL MOSE 
 
 Tffls is the first of the great Fontana fountains, and if 
 Domenico Fontana got his inspiration for it from the 
 beautiful public fountain made by Amannati for Julius 
 III on the Via Flaminia, with which he was familiar 
 before the Casino was placed above it, his fountain in 
 its turn became the prototype for the great fountains 
 erected in the next century by his brother for Pope 
 PaulV. 
 
 This Fountain of the Moses is a great portal consist- 
 ing of three arches equal in size, from the base of which 
 the water issues in double cascades. The water falls 
 into three large basins guarded by couchant Uons, and 
 each lion spouts an additional stream of water. In the 
 [ i45 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 centre archway stands a colossal figure of Moses in the 
 act of striking the rock, and the niches on either side of 
 him are filled by high reUefs of scenes from the Old 
 Testtonent relative to the importance and significance 
 / of water. The relief to the right represents Gideon test- 
 ing his soldiers and is the work of Flaminio Vacca, £ind 
 in the left Giovanni Battista deUa Porta has carved 
 ' the scene in the desert after Moses has brought the 
 i water from the rock. Four beautiful marble columns 
 : with Ionic capitals stand one on either side of these 
 arches, and in the small triangular spaces between the 
 capitals and the keystones are the emblems of Sixtus 
 V — the star, the three mounts, the pear branch and the 
 lion. These arches and columns support a massive en- 
 tablature of which the inscription, in the noble Six- 
 tine caligraphy, forms the most important featiu-e, and 
 is, in fact, the most impressive part of the entire struc- 
 \ ture. Above the inscription rises the florid pediment, 
 \ flanked by two obeUsks (an idea distinctly borrowed 
 \ from Amannati's fountain) and bearing on its apex the 
 ' three mounts of Sixtus V which carry the huge iron 
 cross. Underneath this and occupying the greater part 
 of the pediment are the armorial bearings of Sixtus V. 
 The huge shield is supported by two angels, a conceit 
 borrowed, perhaps, from Pius IV's escutcheon over the 
 Porta Pia, and repeated again for Paul V in his foun- 
 tain on the Janiculum. The armorial sculpture is by 
 Flaminio Vacca. Such is the great Fontana fountain, 
 grandiose rather than magnificent, but still distinctly 
 imposing and adequately filling by its size and impor- 
 [ i46 ] 
 
\ 
 
 FONTANA DEL MOSE\ 
 
 tance the honorable position which it occli^ies among 
 the fountains of Rome. It is the main delivery tank of 
 the Acqua Fehce; and the Acqua FeUce was the first 
 new supply of water which Rome had received stnce 
 the aqueducts had been cut off from the city by Vitiges 
 in 537. 
 
 The statue of Moses is a colossal blunder. Prospero 
 Bresciano had modelled the curious Sixtine hons which 
 served to support the Vatican obehsk, and the Pope 
 gave him the commission for the principal figure in his 
 great fountain. Contrary to the advice of his friends, 
 Bresciano carved this statue, which was to be his mas- 
 terpiece, directly from the travertine without any pre- 
 vious. modelling — the block lying horizontally on the 
 ground. When the figm-e was raised it was found to be 
 not only out of proportion but also out of conformity 
 with the laws of perspective. Its unveihng was greeted 
 by the critical Roman populace with a shout of derisive 
 laughter, so Homeric in its volume and duration that it 
 utterly condemned the artist, who, as a result, fell into 
 a melanchoUa and died. 
 
 The present lions, which are of bigio marble, are 
 modern, dating from the days of Gregory XVI (i846). 
 This Pope created the Egyptian Museum in the Vati- 
 can and removed thither the original lions, which were 
 of Egyptian origin and had been appropriated for his 
 foimtain by Sixtus V — two from the Piazza of the Pan- 
 theon and two from the gate of St. John Lateran. 
 
 The two great points of difference between the Fon- 
 tana fountains and the Amannati foimtain on the 
 
 [147] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 Flaminian Way are interesting and significant. They 
 are, first, the place of the inscription, and secondly the 
 volume of water. The first point of difference is due to 
 the fact that the Fontana fountains, here and on the 
 Janiculum, proclaim the appearance in the city of 
 a new supply of water. Sixtus V and Paul V had each 
 built a new aqueduct and could announce the fact con- 
 spicuously by magnificent inscriptions; whereas Juhus 
 III, using a stream of water from an aqueduct already 
 in existence, could only claim the honor of having 
 erected the fountain for the convenience of the pubUc. 
 His inscription, therefore, is not borne aloft on tri- 
 umphal arches but occupies a place in the central niche, 
 filled in Sbctus V's fountain by the figure of Moses, and 
 in Paul V's fountain left absolutely vacant. The stream 
 which Juhus III dared appropriate from the Virgo 
 Aqueduct was only Isirge enough to fill a single basin 
 placed before the central niche of Amannati's foun- 
 tain; whereas in the Fontana fountains the water fills 
 the entire space below the mostra, as it was naturally 
 the intention to show the magnitude and force of the 
 new supply. 
 
 Pope Sixtus V's great fountain demands for its effect, 
 like Paul V's, wide and spacious surroundings. The 
 high modei-n buildings crowding upon it and dwarf- 
 ing it have done much toward diminishing its artistic 
 values. One of the panels in the Vatican Library shows 
 what the fountain was like in the years immediately 
 following its erection. Gardens and vineyards lay aU 
 about it, and it easily dominated the walls and gate- 
 ways which were its only architectural neighbors. The 
 [ i48 ] 
 
FONTANA DEL MOSE 
 
 Porta Pia to the left merely enhanced its dignity, and 
 in the far distance the hills, aqueducts, and the open 
 sky lent themselves for a magnificent background. 
 
 The Acqua E^eUce, which was the-first water of papal 
 Rome, had been the last water brought to the ancient 
 city. In 226 the Emperor Alexander Severus built the 
 eleventh and last aqueduct of the classic city. Its re- 
 mains are stiU to be seen on the Via Praenestina. Over 
 this aqueduct he brought the Acqua Alexandrina, which 
 was from practically the same sources as those which 
 now supply the Acqua Felice. The Acqua Alexandrina 
 was brought by the Emperor down the Via Labicana 
 as far as the Esquiline, where he erected for it a mag- 
 nificent fountain. A coin of his period shows the de- 
 sign to have somewhat resembled the present "Fon- 
 tanone" on the Janiculum. 
 
 Sixtus V selected as the site for his fountain an open 
 space on the Viminal HiU near the Church of Santa 
 Susanna. He faced it southwest, at right angles to the 
 Via Pia, which terminated at some distance to the 
 northeast in the Porta Pia. The Acqua FeHce enters 
 Rome at the Porta Maggiore at the altitude of Bg 
 metres and supplies 21, 682.8 cubic metres of water 
 daily. In order to bring the water to Fontana's foun- 
 tain it was necessary to cut a wide street, the Via Ce- 
 ruaia, and to tunnel through the Baths of Diocletian. 
 Although the Acqua Felice served the Pope's purposes 
 and UteraUy made the desert blossom like the rose, Six- 
 tus V had no sentiment about it. When the water actu- 
 ally reached the city, his sister and nephew, thinking to 
 please him, hastened to bring him a cupful. The Pope, 
 
 [ i49 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL EOME 
 
 who hated a scene of any kind, refused to drink it, de- 
 claring that it had no taste, which is quite true. It is to 
 this day the least vedued of the Roman waters, and the 
 overflow or "lapsed water" of Fontana's great foun- 
 tain is used for laundry purposes. 
 
 The Pope bought the land containing the feeding- 
 springs of the Acqua Felice from Cardinal Colonna, 
 and brought it to the city underground for thirteen 
 miles and for the remaining seven over arches. Its 
 channel is known as the "ugly aqueduct." 
 
 The worst of the crimes committed by Sixtus V and 
 Domenico Fontana against the antiquities of the city 
 was the destruction of the Septizonium. Artists of the 
 period have left invaluable sketches of this last fine ex- 
 ample of classic architecture. It had been built by Sep- 
 timius Severus against the Palatine, probably as an 
 architectural screen to the mass of confused buildings 
 in its rear. It faced south down the road by which 
 travellers from Africa entered the city. It had survived 
 the sieges, the earthquakes, and the fires of more than 
 thirteen centuries; yet Sixtus V, without a qualm, de- 
 molished it for the sake of the blocks of travertine and 
 peperino and its beautiful marble columns, which he 
 wished to use in his own architectural enterprises. It is 
 impossible not to wonder what were Fontana's feeliags 
 as he superintended the destruction of this masterpiece 
 of his own profession. He does little more than mention 
 the fact in his memoirs, and this may be in itself signif- 
 icant. Some of the material went into the fabric of the 
 Moses fountain; but the Romans never forgave either 
 Sixtus V or Fontana. 
 
 [ i5o ] 
 
FONTANA DEL MOSfi 
 
 Considering the dearth of water in Rome in the six- 
 teenth century and the character of Sixtus V, the con- 
 ception of the central idea of this fountain — that of 
 Moses striking the rock — ^was not only happy but al- 
 most inevitable. Although the Pope was an ardent 
 churchman, it was easier for him to believe in the con- 
 version to CathoUcism of the conquerer of Ivry than to 
 understand that the Roman ruins had any other than a 
 conamercial value. Leo X had beUeved in art "for art's 
 sake." He had beKeved in nothing else. To Sixtus V, on 
 the other hand, all the efforts of painting, sculpture, 
 and architecture were to be for the glory of God, 
 more particularly as that glory was understood and 
 expounded by himself. The Neptunes and Tritons of 
 later pontificates would have seemed to him creations 
 of the devU. The Old Testament was to him, as it 
 was to the English Puritan of the next century, the 
 source of artistic inspiration; and for his great fountain 
 the Hebrew lawgiver, bringing the water out of the 
 rock at the Divine conomand, was alone adequate. It 
 was not unnatural for him to think of himself as stand- 
 ing in the place of Moses. 
 
 SIXTVS • V • PONT • MAX • PICENVS 
 
 AQVAM ■ EX • AGRO • COLVMNAE 
 
 VIA • PRAENEST • SINISTRORSVM 
 
 MVLTAR • COLLECTIONE • VENARVM 
 
 DVCTV - SINVOSO • A • RECEPTACVLO 
 
 MIL • XX • A • CAPITE - XXII • ADDVXIT 
 
 FELICEMQ • DE • NOMINE ■ ANTE • PONT DIXIT 
 
 COEPIT • AN - I ABSOLVIT • III - MDLXXXVII 
 
 [ i5i ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Pope Sixtus V, of the Marches, conducted this water 
 from a Junction of several streams in the neighborhood 
 of Cohnna, at the left of the Prsenestine road, by a 
 winding route, twenty miles from its reservoir and 
 twenty-two from its source, and called it Felix, after 
 the name he himself bore before his pontificate. He com- 
 menced the work in the first year of his pontificate, and 
 finished it in the third, iSSy. 
 
 [ i52 ] 
 
THE LATERAN 
 
THE LATERAN 
 
 Modern photographs can still be found of the original 
 fountain of the Lateran. It was the work of Fontana 
 and was placed in this spot after he had erected the 
 obeUsk for Sbctus V. The present fountain is quite new 
 and most inadequately replaces the old one which had 
 stood there for over three hundred years. By the close 
 of the nineteenth century the upper basin of Fontana's 
 fountain was badly broken, while the lower one had 
 been held together for some time by iron clamps. The 
 carving was so worn and defaced that the dolphins and 
 eagle were quite shapeless, and the figure of St. John 
 writing in a scroll upon his knee and looking to 
 Heaven for inspiration had long since disappeared. 
 Maggi's engraving of this fountain made in i6i8- 
 [ i55 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 shows it to have been one of the richest ever designed 
 by Fontana. A curious feature in this old fountain 
 was the blending of the insignia of three popes. The 
 pears of Sixtus V were carved in heavy festoons under 
 the huge supporting scrolls of the mostra (which was 
 a screen made low so as to bring the figure of St. John 
 in simple and high relief against one of the square 
 sides of the pedestal), the Borghese eagle poured the 
 water into the shell-shaped upper basin; and finally 
 the Aldobrandini bar of continuous Maltese crosses 
 was used as frieze. 
 
 The obelisk of the Lateran was set in its present 
 place by Fontana only two years before the death of 
 Sixtus V, and it is quite probable the foimtain was 
 not erected until some years later, Sixtus V rushed 
 the work on the Lateran at top speed; and this 
 obeUsk was no sooner in place than Fontana was 
 commissioned to transport its companion to the Piazza 
 del Popolo. The Lateran obelisk was erected in i588. 
 In August, 1 590, Sixtus V died. Four popes followed 
 him in rapid succession — ^Urban VII, Gregory XIV, 
 and Innocent IX, all dying so soon that by January 
 20, 1692, Clement VIII (Aldobrandini) had become 
 Pope; and Fontana may have finished this fountain 
 during the first years of Clement's pontificate, before 
 he feU under that pontiff's displeasure. The frieze on 
 the fountain must have been originally the Montalto 
 or Peretti frieze, which forms so beautiful a finish 
 to the Lateran Palace; but Fontana, while keeping 
 the star of Montalto (one of Sixtus V's emblems) in 
 [ i56 ] 
 
THE LATERAN 
 
 the corners under the cornice of the screen, changed 
 the design of the intervening space into the Aldobran- 
 dini bar. It was a small detail, and the change was a 
 mere matter of custom and policy and involved no dis- 
 loyalty to the great past in Fontana's life. This would 
 account for the Aldobrandini frieze. The eagle seems at 
 first more difficult to explain. From the accession of 
 Paul V the eagle denotes the Borghese family ; but Paul 
 V did not become Pope until i6o5, and Fontana left 
 Rome for Naples in iBgG. Therefore, the eagle of this 
 fountain cannot have any connection with the Bor- 
 ghese family. Why did FontEuaa use it instead of the 
 hon's head, which was another of Sixtus V's emblems 
 and would have made a better architectural outlet for 
 the water .•* It must have been because the eagle is the 
 emblem of St. John. In Michelangelo's fresco of the 
 Fourth Evangelist in the Sixtine Chapel the eagle 
 stands with bent head and folded wings close against 
 the figure of the saint who, seated upon the ground, is 
 writing in the scroll supported by his knee. Fontana, or 
 the sculptor who carved for him the figure on the top 
 of the mostra of this fountain, was undoubtedly in- 
 spired by Michelangelo's creation. The St. John of the 
 fountain was, according to the old engravings, a beau- 
 ful and youthful figure looking to Heaven for inspira- 
 tion and writing in the scroll held upon his knee. The 
 eagle was wanting, but Fontana placed him just below 
 the cornice between the curving tails of the dolphins, 
 and adapted him to the purposes of a fountain. The de- 
 sign was original and extremely interesting, as it shows 
 [ i57 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 both Sixtus V and Fontana in a new and unusual light. 
 They were dominated by the place. The great new Lat- 
 eran Palace which they had built, the ancient obelisk 
 which they had set up, the fountain which supplied the 
 invaluable Acqua Felice, were all subservient to the 
 venerable basilica of St. John. The piazza and all that 
 it contained were dedicated to St. John, and had been 
 so for seven hundred years. Pope and architect may 
 have felt that in this fotmtain the insignia of any pon- 
 tiff were more fittingly kept in a purely subordinate 
 position. 
 
 The mostra of the old fountain rested, as the present 
 one does, on the base of the obelisk; and the fine Pi- 
 ranesi engraving of the Piazza of the Lateran shows its 
 position and proportions as well £is the admirable bal- 
 ance which it gives to the entire scene. 
 
 This obelisk is still the highest in the world, although 
 the lower end was so badly broken and damaged (by 
 fire) that Fontana had to shorten it by three feet. It 
 was also broken in three pieces, and Fontana's device 
 for mending it, which so pleased the Pope, can be traced 
 in various places among the hieroglyphics. When the 
 obelisk was at last erected, Fontana carved his name 
 with his title of knight in Latin on the base, and the 
 three mounts and the star of Sixtus V were fastened 
 to the apex. Above everything was placed the huge 
 bronze cross, for Sixtus V considered the obelisk to be 
 the supreme smybol of divinity in a great Pagan the- 
 ology; and by placing the cross on all those which he 
 re-erected, the Pope felt that he was exhibiting in the 
 [ i58 ] 
 
THE LATERAN 
 
 most picturesque and conspicuous manner the triumph 
 of Christianity, 
 
 This obelisk, which is of red granite, was found by 
 accident lying prone and buried in the marshy ground 
 of the Circus Maximus. Near by was another, the one 
 which now stands in the Piazza del Popolo. Fontana 
 employed five hundred men in raising and removing 
 the obeUsk of the Lateran. Of these men, three hundred 
 were employed day and night keeping out the water 
 which poured in on all sides. This stream is now 
 thought to have been the brook Crabra, the "goat 
 brook" of Tusculum, described by Frontinus, which, in 
 the general decay of mediaeval times, had become one 
 of the "lost waters" of Rome. The difficulties encoun- 
 tered in transporting the obelisk up the rough sides and 
 through the old streets of the Quirinal Hill were nu- 
 merous. The obeUsk of the Piazza del Popolo was re- 
 moved from the same place and set up on its present 
 site for the siun of ten thousand three hundred and 
 thirty-one scudi; whereas this obeUsk of the Lateran 
 cost the papal treasury twenty-four thousand six hun- 
 dred and eleven scudi. 
 
 It was originally brought to Rome in the early 
 days of the Christian era. Twenty-seven years after 
 Constantine had transferred the seat of government 
 to his own new capital of Byzantimn, his successor, 
 Constantine II, visited Rome. He visited Rome like 
 any foreign prince and was profoimdly impressed by 
 the magnificence and majesty of his discarded capi- 
 tal. A not unnatural instinct prompted him to leave 
 
 [ i59 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 some memorial of himself among the monmnents and 
 trophies of his heroic predecessors; and for this pmpose 
 he sent for the obeUsk which Thotmes III had origi- 
 nally placed before the great temple of Thebes. It was 
 brought to Rome and placed in the Circus Maximus. 
 Its subsequent history and the causes of the fall of this 
 last of the imperial obelisks are still lost in the mys- 
 tery which hangs over so much of mediaeval Rome.* 
 The original pedestal had been too damaged by fire 
 to admit of using it again; so Sixtus V gave permission 
 to Domenico Fontana to make the new pedestal out of 
 the materials of an old arch which Domenico was to 
 destroy for this purpose. The permission was given in 
 writing, for Domenico Fontana had found that it was 
 
 * The fate of the Roman obelisks presents one of the most bafOing 
 and fascinating problems of archaeology. As no satisfactory explana- 
 tion of their overthrow and mutilation has ever been given, possibly 
 the theory that they were destroyed by the Romans of the Dark 
 Ages, in search of bronze, is as good a working hypothesis as any 
 other. The idea that they were wrecked by barbarians, and the assmnp- 
 tion that they were thrown down by earthquakes are equally untenable. 
 Much curious evidence goes to show that some of the principal obe- 
 lisks were standing in the sixrth and seventh centimes. One stood erect 
 on its pedestal in Charlemagne's time, while the fall of another can be 
 placed as late as the tenth or eleventh century. Three of the principal 
 obelisks show holes drilled in the shaft for the insertion of levers or 
 crowbars, and have unmistakable marks of fire about the pedestal. 
 Now, the Romans generally re-erected the obelisk, not directly upon 
 its pedestal, but upon bronze crabs (as in the obelisk of the Vatican) 
 or upon brass "dice" (as in the larger of the two obelisks in Constan- 
 tinople). The Egyptians sheathed the pyramidion of the obeUsk with 
 " bright metal " to reflect the rays of the sun, and the Romans crowned 
 the apex, sometimes if not always, with metal ornaments, like the ball 
 upon the Vatican obelisk, which, until it was removed by Sixtus V, 
 was supposed to contain the ashes of JuUus Ceesar. The obelisk now in 
 Central Park had been re-erected by the Romans at Alexandria, in 
 this fashion, and one of the bronze crabs was brought to New York 
 with the obelisk, and is now in the Metropolitan Museum. These 
 
 [ i6o ] 
 
THE LATERAN 
 
 necessary to be armed with written instructions from 
 the Pope whenever he began one of his devastating 
 raids upon the antiquities of the city. The city govern- 
 ment had endiu-ed such pillage and destruction at the 
 hands of the great Pope's great architect that all the 
 past vandahsm of private individuals seemed sUght in 
 comparison. They protested in vain against most of the 
 destruction upon which Sixtus V had set his heart, and 
 neither princes nor magistrates could save the old pon- 
 tifical residence of the Lateran which had stood since 
 the seventh century on this very piazza. It was a mar- 
 vellous rambling pile of buildings — churches, monas- 
 teries, shrines, loggias, colonnades, oratories, banquet- 
 ing rooms and halls filled with mosaics, pictures, and 
 
 bronze supports were firmly attached to the obelisk by heavy bronze 
 dowels, one dowel running upward into each comer of the shaft, 
 the other going down into each comer of the pedestal. Between the 
 shaft and the pedestal there was therefore a space, perhaps some four 
 inches in height, through which light was visible. This was seen in the 
 Vatican obelisk, which was still in situ when Fontana drew his plans 
 for changing its location, and in the Central Park obehsk, as described 
 by an eye-witness of its removal. Three historians of Rome's destruc- 
 tion — Fea, Dyer, and Gibbon — describe the almost incredible in- 
 genuity, labor, and patience exerted by the Romans of the Dark Ages 
 in their search for bronze and other metals. Wherever bronze could be 
 obtained, it was stolen, stripped, or melted, on account of its value and 
 the ease with which it could be transported. During the same historic 
 period, 'all pagan monuments were deprived of whatever protection 
 they had had as objects of religious veneration. The obelisks standing 
 in spacious and lonely surroundings would have proved an easy prey to 
 bands of clandestine or open marauders. The Roman method of blast- 
 ing 'consisted in building a fire against the rock and pouring vinegar, 
 or-even water, upon the red-hot stone which then disintegrated. It 
 would have been an easy matter to kindle great fires at every corner 
 of the pedestal which, by the time this kind of destruction became 
 popular, had already lost much of their original height through the 
 gradual rise of the ground level. This method of blasting by fire would 
 account for the all but universal gnawing away, or rough rounding off 
 
 [ i6i ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL KOME 
 
 frescoes — and, according to a great authority, the most 
 wonderful museum of mediaeval art that ever existed. 
 This priceless record of the past was ruthlessly demol- 
 ished and razed to the ground in a few months' time by 
 order of Pope Sixtus V. It is difficult to understand his 
 motives for this particular action, since it was not the 
 history of Paganism but of his own predecessors that 
 he was destroying. The populace never forgot, or for- 
 gave him this destruction, involving as it did the loss 
 of the Oratory of the Holy Cross. An exquisite example 
 of early Christian architectm'e, built in the shape of a 
 Greek cross, this oratory was held in peculiar venera- 
 tion by all classes; and the Roman people might not 
 unnaturally conclude that the wanton destruction of 
 anything at once so beautiful and so sacred as this ora- 
 tory could only be ascribed to the promptings of the 
 
 of the lower comers of the shaft, in which the bronze dowels were so 
 flrmly embedded. After the disintegration of the granite the partially 
 melted bronze could be extracted from both shaft and pedestal, but 
 not before the shaft had been thrown over, and this was evidently 
 helped along by the use of levers. When the shaft was prone, it became 
 possible to remove any bronze which had been attached to its summit. 
 With perhaps only one exception, the fallen shafts were always found 
 broken in three pieces, but there seems to be no record of any bronze 
 found in Rome, near the original sites of the obelisks. What bronze 
 there is was on the one Roman obelisk that had not been thrown 
 down (the Vatican obelisk). The original site of this obelisk, in the 
 centre of the old circus of CaUgula and Nero, was close to the old 
 Church of St. Peter, and it was furthermore protected, according to 
 Lanciani, by the chapel at its base, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion. 
 When, in 1586, Fontana removed this obelisk to its present position in 
 the centre of the modern Piazza of modern St. Peter's, he re-erected it 
 upon its original classic Roman crabs, hiding them by the purely 
 decorative Sixtine lions of Prospero Bresciano, as they had been hid- 
 den in earher times by the bronze Uons mentioned by Plutarch, and 
 gone since the sack of Rome in 1527. The obelisk in Constantinople, 
 referred to above, is still standing on its four brass "dice." 
 
 [ 162 ] 
 
THE LATERAN 
 
 devil himself. Posterity can hardly accept Pope Sixtus 
 V's fountain, even with its obelisk, as an adequate sub- 
 stitute for the three fountains of rare marble in the 
 atrium of this oratory which perished by order of the 
 Pope. 
 
 The Church of St. John Latersin was under the pro- 
 tection of the Kings of France, as the Church of Santa 
 Maria Maggiore was under the protection of the Kings 
 of Spain, St. Peter's under that of the Emperor of Aus- 
 tria, and St. Paul's Beyond the Walls under the pro- 
 tection of the English sovereign. In the pontificate of 
 Clement VIII, when the papacy began to turn toward 
 France in its foreign policy, the work of embellishing 
 the Lateran cost Rome — and indeed large portions of 
 the surrounding country — imtold treasures in costly 
 marbles and gilt bronzes. The first were sawed into 
 slabs for the transept of the Chiu-ch; and the Altar of 
 the Sacrament owes its magnificence to the many hun- 
 dred bronzes which, together with portions of the 
 bronze beams of the Pantheon, went to the smeltiag 
 furnaces. In Sixtus V's time, however, the old church 
 was stiU comparatively simple; and it was in this old 
 Church of the Lateran, probably during his pontifi- 
 cate, that Stradella's prayer ("Pity, oh. Saviour!") 
 was sung, while hired assassins waited in the outside 
 darkness to take the composer's life. As the service 
 was long, the bravos stepped inside the church to en- 
 joy the music before committing the mTirder. There, in 
 the wavering light of the sltai candles and under the 
 subtle influence of the incense, they became so im- 
 [ i63 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 pressed by the pathetic beauty of that marvellous Aria 
 di Chiesa that they felt it impossible to put out of ex- 
 istence the man who could write such music; and in 
 the darkness and silence that followed the close of the 
 divine melody they themselves warned Stradella of the 
 plot against his Ufe and abetted his escape. 
 
 Of late years this legend has been discredited; but in 
 such a case as this it is well to remember the attitude 
 taken by the writer of "The Renaissance in Italy," 
 "I would rather accept," says Symonds, "sixteenth- 
 century tradition with Vasari than reject it with Ger- 
 man or English speculators of to-day. I regard the 
 present tendency to mistrust tradition, only because it 
 is tradition, as in the highest sense uncritical." 
 
 Over the door of the Vatican Library is a fresco map 
 of Sixtine Rome. It portrays not what Sixtus V actu- 
 ally left, but what he at one time intended to leave. In 
 this fresco a great thoroughfare runs from the Piazza 
 del Popolo to the Piazza Laterano, and at each end of 
 the magnificent vista stands an obeUsk erected by the 
 Pope. Such a street laid out to-day would lead along 
 the Via Babuino, the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Due 
 Macelli, and, passing through the tunnel, come out on 
 the Via Merulana, and reach the Piazza Laterano after 
 traversing the eastern slope of the Esquiline and the 
 new streets between it and the basiUca. Sixtus V aban- 
 doned the idea as the great thoroughfare would have 
 cut its way directly through the precincts of the Quiri- 
 nal, and he had determined to make that spot his own 
 abode, not only because he loved it but because he 
 
 [ i64 ] 
 
THE LATERAN 
 
 recognized the sovereign quality of the situation of 
 Monte Cavallo in the Rome which he was reconstruct- 
 ing. 
 
 The Fontana fountain of the Lateran is not included 
 by BagUoni in his Ust of Fontana's works; but that list 
 which is embodied in his account of Fontana's life is 
 manifestly incomplete. The fountaiu was engraved in 
 full detail as early as 1618 by Maggi; and later engrav- 
 ings were made of it by Cruyl, Millotte, and Falda. 
 These designs were so comprehensive that it would 
 have been an extremely simple matter to entirely re- 
 construct the old fountain, more especially as the 
 mostra and old basins were still in place, and there 
 could have been no difficulty in ascertaining the pro- 
 portions. Had this been done, the pictorial effect and, 
 above all, the historical interest of the Piazza of St. 
 John Lateran would have been greatly enhanced. The 
 old foimtain disappeared in the general submersion of 
 papal Rome. Its modem substitute is a mere para- 
 phrase, and the eagle seems intentionally to represent 
 the eagle of imperial Rome rather than the emblem of 
 St. John. 
 
 [ i65 1 
 
TRINITA DE' MONTI 
 
TRINITA DE' MONTI 
 
 The foimtain on the terrace in front of the Villa Med- 
 ici has been called by a lover of Rome "The Foun- 
 tain of the Brimming Bowl." It is a happy surname, 
 for the marble vase beneath the formally clipped ilex 
 trees is nothing more or less than a huge bowl filled to 
 overflowing with the Acqua Felice. The stream gushes 
 upward in a slender column until it reaches the spread- 
 ing branches overhead. There it returns upon itself in 
 clouds of glistening spray, filUng the bowl with circles 
 of gleaming water, ever widening until they brim over 
 the edge and veil the marble in a continuous overflow. 
 The octagonal basin which receives this copious stream 
 
 [ 169 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL EOME 
 
 is sunk into the ground and its shadowed waters have 
 all the unobtrusive beauty of a quiet and sequestered 
 pool. There is no sculpture, no decoration. With un- 
 erring taste, the artist has made his appeal to the eye 
 through fundamental and universal elements of beauty. 
 Grace of line and of proportion, contrast of soUd rock 
 and flowing water, the impression of abimdance and 
 perpetuity, symmetry, contrast, suggestion — these are 
 the simple quaUties out of which he composed his 
 Fountain of the Brimming Bowl. 
 
 Sunlight flickering through the ilex branches over- 
 head and the crumbling shadows of their dense foliage 
 add a poetic charm, while the ItaUan trinity — ^Art, 
 Time, and Natm-e — have given to this modest foun- 
 tain a background of unsurpassed interest and dignity. 
 The view from the terrace of the Villa Medici might 
 be described almost exactly by Wordsworth's sonnet 
 on London Bridge, and truly 
 
 "Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
 A sight so touching in its majesty." 
 
 Here in Rome ". . . towers, domes, theatres, and 
 temples Ue," massed together in that famous quarter 
 of the city known in classic times as the Campus Mar- 
 tius; and through this architectural maze, spanned by 
 bridges old and new, the Tiber "floweth at its own 
 sweet will." On its farther shore the modern Palace of 
 Justice and a network of thoroughfares with names re- 
 lating to the Risorgimento and to Italy of to-day 
 crowd against the venerable Castle of St. Angelo. Be- 
 
 [ 170 ] 
 
TRINITA DE' MONTI 
 
 yond that lies the densely packed Borgo or Leonine 
 city, surrounded by walls, while the heights of the Ja- 
 niculum to the left and those of the Vatican Hill and 
 Monte Mario to the right give a background of green 
 to aU this maisonry. In the very centre of the distance, 
 on the ground once covered by the Circus of Nero, 
 dominating everything and seeming to float against 
 the western sky, rises the dome of St. Peter's. 
 
 The terrace leads on the one hand to the gardens of 
 the Pincio and on the other to the Church of the Trin- 
 ita de' Monti. From i544 to i56o, when Annibale Lippi 
 was working on the ViUa Medici, that portion of the 
 Pincian Hill covered to-day by the Pincian Gardens 
 belonged to the Augustinian monks of the Piazza del 
 Popolo. The vUla stood on the ground between them 
 and the gardens and convent of the Trinita de' Monti. 
 The terrace with the fountain was the approach to the 
 cardinal's villa and to the precincts of the convent. 
 The old engravings show the fountain standing quite 
 free from trees, which, however, are growing along the 
 edge of the hiU and down its slope. The foimtain is 
 generally ascribed to Annibale Lippi, but there seems 
 to be no positive proof that it is his work. It resembles 
 in general outline the fontaneUa on the balcony inside 
 the villa, which is by Lippi; and the fact that the basin 
 is made of bigio marble might put its date as early as 
 Lippi's time. The fountains in the first half of the 
 Cinque Cento were generally made of marble or gran- 
 ite, whereas after Fontana and in Bernini's period 
 travertine was used almost exclusively. 
 
 [ 171 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 The villa was the property of Cardinal Monte Pul- 
 ciano, but it was barely finished when Cardinal Ferdi- 
 nand de' Medici began negotiations for its purchase. 
 Medici, whose childhood had been passed in the Bo- 
 boU Gardens, which were created by his father, spent 
 eleven years in laying out and beautifying the gardens 
 of this villa, where he had a small zoological collection, 
 and also in making the gallery of Greek and Roman 
 sculptiu-e which rivalled that already belonging to his 
 old friend Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. He returned to 
 Florence in 1687, and some time after the villa passed 
 into the hands of another Medici, Cardinal Alessandro, 
 who became Pope Leo XI in i6o5. This Cardinal Ales- 
 sandro de' Medici also spent much time and money in 
 the decoration of the viUa, £tad it seems probable that 
 the fountain was constructed during his tenure of the 
 property, since the introduction of the Acqua Fehce in 
 1587 had at last made it possible to have fountains on 
 this hillside. Evelyn, describing this fountain in the 
 last days of Pope Urban VIH's pontificate, speaks of 
 the magnificent jet of water spouting fifty feet into the 
 air. The earUest engravings of it date from the middle 
 of the Sei Cento and show the water springing from a 
 large ball of travertine which has long since lost its size 
 and shape from the constant action of the water. The 
 pedestal and base of this fountain are also of travertine. 
 
 The present Church of the TrinitSi de' Monti was 
 erected by Louis XVIII, of France, to replace the orig- 
 inal building which had been destroyed during the ex- 
 cesses of the French Revolutionary period. But in i544 
 
 [ 172 ] 
 
TKINITA DE' MONTI 
 
 the old Gothic church of the Valois King stood looking 
 westward over the French quarter of the city. This 
 church dated from the year idgS, when Charles VIII, 
 of France, on his way to reconquer his NeapoKtan ter- 
 ritory, entered Rome and paid a visit — ^half threaten- 
 ing, half ceremonious — ^to Alexander VI. He left as a 
 memorial of his stay in Rome this Church of the Tri- 
 nita'de' Monti. The church became the nucleus of 
 French influence in Rome. The French convent of the 
 Sacred Heart grew up beside its walls, and many fa- 
 mous Frenchmen lived within its shadow. 
 
 Cardinal Ferdinand de' Medici, who gave his family 
 name to this villa, as well as to the Venus which, upon 
 its discovery in Hadrian's ViUa, he immediately bought 
 and placed here, was one of the commanding figures of 
 his time. Fourth son of Cosimo, first Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany, he had been made a cardinal at fourteen, in 
 the room of his elder brother Cardinal Giovanni de' 
 Medici, who had died at nineteen. The second Grand 
 Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand's eldest brother, died in 
 1587, leaving no son, and so, after twenty-four years of 
 ecclesiastical life, Cardinal Ferdinand, who had never 
 taken holy orders, laid by the red hat to become third 
 Grand Duke of Tuscany. He married Christine de Lor- 
 raine, a granddaughter of Catherine de' Medici, and 
 therefore a distant cousin of his own, and had, like his 
 great-grandfather Lorenzo the Magnificent, and his 
 own grandfather Cosimo I, eight children, his eldest 
 son succeeding to the grand duchy. It is difficult to 
 trace ia the wise and beneficent grand duke the ui- 
 
 [ 173 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 tractable young cardinal who had been a handful for 
 even Sixtus V. The old pontiff had found in him an 
 obstinacy and a craft equal to his own, and he must 
 have "thanked God fasting" when Medici was no 
 longer a member of his curia ! The Pope was an old 
 man, and the cardinal had the physical advantage of 
 youth; nevertheless it was a battle royal when this true 
 chip of the Medicean block interceded with the Peretti 
 Pope for the life of his old friend. Cardinal Alessandro 
 Famese. Sixtus, who was not to be shaken in his deter- 
 mination, kept track of the time, and held firmly to his 
 resolution until he was sure that the appointed hour 
 for Farnese's death had come and gone; then, knowing 
 that it was too late, he graciously consented to spare 
 Farnese's life, to please his Cardinal de' Medici. But 
 the cardinal knew his Sixtus V, and had, before his 
 audience, taken the precaution to set every clock in the 
 Vatican, outside the Pope's private apartments, back 
 one hour ! * The fire still lives in the ashes of this Ferdi- 
 nand, for, in 1906, a deputation from Leghorn visited 
 his tomb in the Medici mausolemn in Florence and laid 
 upon it a bronze wreath as a testimony of their vmdying 
 gratitude and affection. Leghorn, a mere fishing village 
 of the Cinque Cento, had been raised to her position 
 of the second seaport in Italy by this ex-cardinal, and 
 that chiefly through the operation of an edict of tolera- 
 tion almost incredible at the period in which it was 
 promulgated. When the Spanish Armada, the struggle 
 
 * This story is told in another form. In it Cardinal Famese employs 
 the same ruse to save the life of the young Duke of Paima. 
 
 [ 174 ] 
 
TRINITA DE' MONTI 
 
 in the Netherleinds, and the reUgious wars in France 
 kept all Europe in a ferment, Leghorn rose suddenly 
 and swiftly like an exhalation of the sea through the 
 peaceful labors of the French, Flemish, and Jewish refu- 
 gees who, within her walls and under the powerful 
 protection of her Grand Duke, the ex-cardinal, found 
 absolute liberty of conscience and security of life and 
 property. It was this Ferdinand who furnished from 
 his own rich coffers the sinews of war to Henry 
 of Navarre; it was he who mediated between Henry 
 and the Pope; and it was his niece, Maria de' Medici, 
 who became Queen of France as wife of Henry IV, 
 bringing with her, as Sully said, such a meirriage 
 portion as had never before been brought into the 
 kingdom. 
 
 Five years after this event Cardinal Alessandro de' 
 Medici became Pope; so the ViUa Medici, as well as the 
 Church of the Trinita de' Monti, had, in spite of their 
 ItaUan names, many affihations with far-off Paris; 
 and partly on account of these associations, partly 
 for the sake of the marvellous view, their terraces 
 became the favorite haunt of those artists who, in 
 the early days of the Sei Cento, began to find their 
 way to Rome, 
 
 In the continuity of the development of art there 
 are few events more interesting than the appearance 
 of the French art student in Rome. Gaul had been the 
 first of the northern nations to assimilate Roman cul- 
 ture, and France was the first to come under the influ- 
 ence of the Renaissance. Just at the time when the 
 
 [ 175 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Catholic reaction against the license of the Cinque 
 Cento had begun to force Italy under the stultifying 
 influence of Spanish domination, Freince awoke to the 
 full consciousness of her aesthetic nature and to her 
 need of those things which Italy alone could give. The 
 army of Charles VIII had carried back across the Alps 
 imperishable memories of beauty, and soon afterward 
 Francis I had enticed to Paris some of the greatest 
 Italian artists of the time. Even the fierce reUgious 
 wars of the sixteenth century could not stamp out the 
 seed sown by the soldiers' stories and by the works of 
 art left by homesick Italian masters in Fontainebleau. 
 One by one the eager French artists crossed the Alps, 
 and they came in ever-iucreasing numbers when the 
 genius of RicheUeu brought order and amenity into 
 French life, and when Richelieu's contemporary, Maf- 
 feo Barberini, for many years papal legate to France, 
 had become Pope Urbem VIII. To reach Rome all of 
 these voyagers had to endure severe physical hard- 
 ships, and some of them never returned to France. The 
 greatest of them — Le Poussin and Claude — died in 
 Rome. Painters, engravers, sculptors, and architects 
 came to these terraces to worship and to work, and to 
 this day the galleries and palaces of northern Europe 
 cherish the pictures plaimed or sketched about the 
 Fountain of the Brimming Bowl. 
 
 Pope Urban VIII, who died in i644. was himself 
 
 half French, not only by virtue of his temperament 
 
 and genius, but also by the trend of his sympathies 
 
 and his foreign policy. Under his enlightened patron- 
 
 [ 176 ] 
 
TEINITA DE' MONTI 
 
 age, the artists of France found a congenial home in 
 the Eternal City. This was the beginning of the French 
 Academy of Painting in Rome, which was fonnally 
 founded in 1666 by Colbert, the great minister of Louis 
 XIV. For the first seven years of its existence this in- 
 stitution had no permanent abode; but iu 1673 the 
 Capronica Palace weis placed at its disposal, and later 
 on — ^in Louis XV's time — ^it moved to the Mancini Pal- 
 ace near the Corso. The slope leading from the Piazza 
 of the TrinitSi de' Monti (now the Piazza di Spagna) 
 to the terraces above had all this time been a natural 
 hillside, whereon grew trees, grass, and wild flowers 
 familiar to Rome. The footpaths leading upward must 
 have been a rather steep climb; but five years before 
 the founding of the Academy an event occurred which 
 was to make the ascent of the hillside not only easy 
 but delightful. In 166 1 Rome came into the possession 
 of a large sum of money left to the city by the learned 
 French gentleman, Etieime de GuSffier, for the express 
 pmpose of constructing a magnificent stone stairway 
 which should cover this slope of the Pincian HiU, and 
 unite for all time the Campus Martins with the ter- 
 races above. The stairway was long in building, and 
 during its construction the connection between the 
 Academy in the Mancini Palace and the old terraces of 
 the Trinita de' Monti may have been slender; but in 
 1725 the Scalinata was opened with great pomp, and 
 once again French artists could spend long hours on 
 their beloved terraces. Seventy-six years later Napo- 
 leon, with his supreme instinct for effect (a possession 
 
 t 177 I 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL EOME 
 
 he shared with JuUus Csesar),* and not unmindful of 
 the French association with this quarter of the city, 
 removed the French Academy from the old Mancini 
 Palace and lodged it permanently and most impres- 
 sively where it now is, in the Villa Medici, the viUa 
 built by that family which had given two queens to 
 France. So the fountain of the Trinita de' Monti is still 
 a feature in the Ufe of the French artists at Rome; and 
 it is perhaps a pardonable fancy that, in this particu- 
 lar fountain, the Acqua Fehce plays in French ! 
 
 * Suetonius, Bk. I. " And he (Csesar) mounted the Capitol by torch- 
 light with forty elephants bearing lamps on his right and on his left." 
 
 [ 178 ] 
 
VILLA BORGHESE 
 
 NOW 
 
 VILLA UMBERTO PRIMO 
 
VILLA BORGHESE 
 
 NOW 
 
 VILLA UMBERTO PRIMO 
 
 A garden where the centuries 
 
 Of men have come and none did care 
 
 Save for the green grass and the breeze 
 
 And shelter from the noontide glare. 
 
 But that which meikes the garden fair — 
 
 The sense of Life's futility, 
 
 Is deathless beauty. Bom of Death, 
 
 It blossoms under cloudless skies — 
 
 One's very dream of Italy. 
 
 — Vrom. an unfMished MS. 
 
 Such a garden was the Villa Borghese; and such a 
 garden it still is, in spite of constant desecration. This 
 is the home of the most poetic of Bernini's fountains. It 
 
 [ i8i ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 stands on the summit of a rising avenue, yet it does not 
 terminate a vista, it makes itself a part of one, for the 
 avenue continues after the foimtain has been reached. 
 It stands in full but tempered sunlight, girt about by a 
 circle of box hedges and ilex trees, with here and there 
 a tall stone pine. The lower basin lies in the turf, like a 
 natural pool, and the water fills it to the brim. It re- 
 flects the trees and clouds in its quiet depths, or as the 
 Kttle breeze ruffles the surface, it gives back the sun- 
 shine like a broken mirror. Single shafts of water, 
 spouting upward from between the forefeet of the sea- 
 horses, fall back into the same basin from which they 
 rose, curving Uke the arches of a pergola; yet so steady 
 is their flow that the tranquillity of the pool is hardly 
 troubled. Four foam-flecked circles, only, show where 
 the falling water mingles with the water at rest. 
 Greater peacefulness could not weU be given to any 
 artificial bit of water. Then from the centre of this 
 dreaming pool there rises a fountain so rich in carving, 
 so beautiful in design that it seems rather a great and 
 splendid efflorescence than the work of men's hands. 
 From its leaf-fringed lower basin there rises a second 
 and much smaUer one, not like another basin but Uke a 
 corolla within a corolla, and the flower-Uke composi- 
 tion terminates in a beautifully wrought cup resem- 
 bhng the blossom of the campanula. The water gushes 
 upward from this cup, but not to any height. It falls 
 back at once over the scalloped edges of the marble, 
 and sUpping in and over the carved fohage of the lower 
 basins finaUy reaches, in a gentle, pensive manner, the 
 [ 182 ] 
 
The Fountain of the Sea-Horses. 
 
VILLA BORGHESE 
 
 quiet pool beneath. Sea-horses with tossed manes and 
 backweird curving wings plunge outward from the 
 shelter of the lower basin. Their tails twine about its 
 stem, and the basin is close above their heads, but it 
 does not rest upon them; they are free. It is evident 
 that in one more spring they will be out and away. 
 Yet they do not take it, and they never will. For once 
 Bernini's genius meisters his fancy. His fountain is not 
 a fanciful conceit but a rich and peaceful artistic crea- 
 tion. An enchanter's wand has checked the horses in 
 mid-career, and here they remain, motionless, for all 
 their movement, under the shadow of the leafy basin, 
 part of a beautiful whole that must never be broken. 
 This is one of those rare compositions in which the art- 
 ist has most happily achieved the second essential in a 
 fountain, that it should be a thing of beauty, a source 
 of delight to the eye and ear. It is admirably suited to 
 its surroundings, for rich ceirving and imaginative 
 sculpture held in subservience to the natural charm of 
 quiet water, conform exquisitely with a garden where 
 stately formality enhances the loveliness of wild and 
 simple beauty. The fountain is of travertine, the natu- 
 ral mellow tone of which has been rendered even more 
 lovely by centuries of soft Italian weather. It does not 
 stand out conspicuously in the vista; it detaches itself 
 from the surrounding trees gently, as if it had grown 
 there among them. 
 
 On either side of this fountain the groimd falls away 
 sharply into groves of ilex, traversed by natural foot- 
 paths. In the gloom of these wooded spaces there are 
 [ i85 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 two other fountains. Great basins catching the water 
 from tiers of smaller ones in the centre and each sur- 
 rounded by a broken circle of curved stone benches. 
 They are the work of Antonio Vansantio; and, ac- 
 cording to drawings by LetarouiUy, the back of each 
 semicircular bench was originally decorated at reg- 
 ular intervals with statues. Behind these stood a 
 formally cUpped box hedge rising some three feet 
 above the benches, while the larger trees growing 
 behind the hedge made by their branches a green 
 canopy to this truly charming bit of garden archi- 
 tecture. Vansantio's basins and benches are now in a 
 half-ruined condition, but they are stiU extremely 
 lovely and suggest pictures of eighteenth-century gar- 
 den-parties, where groups of Watteau's figures idle 
 away the hoiu-s. The foimtains are hardly visible, even 
 at close range. They betray themselves by the sound of 
 their falling water, which gives to the scene, like the 
 song of the hermit-thrush, a poignant sense of remote- 
 ness and soUtude. The deep shadows and haK-hidden 
 waters of Vansantio's fountains form a weU-conceived 
 contrast to Bernini's sunlit basins on the slope above. 
 There are many other fountains in this villa. A large 
 round pool decorated with a central figure of a nymph, 
 and set about with huge cactus-filled vases of a shape 
 peculiEU" to the ViUa Borghese, stands behind the Ca- 
 sino, while at the other end of the gardens the so-called 
 Fountain of Esculapius fills a shady place with the 
 sound and beauty of abundant water. This is a beau- 
 tiful fountain, not because of any special charm or 
 [ i86 ] 
 
VILLA BORGHESE 
 
 originality of design in the fountain itself, but because 
 of its splendid jet of water and the composition of it 
 and its surroundings. The arch containing the statue 
 of Esculapius stands on a sUght eminence surrounded 
 with tall trees and shadowy foUage. Beneath and before 
 it, the groxmd slopes in masses of broken rock and 
 bowlders, and the fountain, a single roimd and shallow 
 vase of finished travertine, stands in the midst of them. 
 The jet of water almost tops the Arch above the statue, 
 and it falls in great abundance upon the rocks at its 
 base. 
 
 There is also the Fountain of the Amorini — so dain- 
 tily lovely that the fact that it is incomplete is hardly 
 noticed. The little Loves still firmly grasp their frogs 
 and dolphins, but the vase they once carried on their 
 heads is gone. The moss-grown stone-work of the basin, 
 and the light and shade of the great ilex trees about it 
 give this little foimtain a peculiar charm. It seems to 
 belong quite consciously to other days than ours. 
 
 There are fountains everywhere in the gardens. They 
 are as common as the trees and the marbles and the 
 violets. The water seems to play at will among the 
 lights and shadows, for during three centuries this has 
 been a Roman pleasure-ground; and to the Roman no 
 pleasure-ground is worthy the name without the sound 
 and sight of water. 
 
 The ViUa Borghese was created by Cardinal Scipi- 
 
 one Borghese during the sixteen years that his uncle 
 
 held the keys of St. Peter, under the title of Paul V. 
 
 The Pope assisted him in every way, for Paul V's chief 
 
 [ 187 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 pleasure consisted in advancing and aggrandizing his 
 family. Marc Antonio Borghese, a second nephew of 
 his, became the founder of the family in Rome, and 
 Cardinal Scipione had as commanding an influence 
 over the Pope as had ever been known. Paul V found 
 his model in Paul III, and so well did he emulate the 
 
 founder of the Farnese fortunes that by the close of his 
 pontificate the Borghese had become the wealthiest and 
 most powerful family that had ever arisen in Rome. 
 Cardined Scipione's annual income alone was one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand scudi — about one hundred and 
 sixty thousand dollars — and Paul V destroyed the 
 ruins of the Baths of Constemtine so as to build for 
 him what is now called the Rospighosi Palace. Their 
 habits, charities, possessions were aU but regal. The car- 
 [ i88 ] 
 
VILLA BORGHESE 
 
 dinal endeavored to lessen the envy which such opu- 
 lence naturally aroused by a complaisant and courtly 
 behavior, as well as by benevolence; and he earned for 
 himself the sobriquet of "the delight of Rome." This 
 villa he laid out for the benefit of the people, and it 
 has really existed for them for over three himdred 
 years. Paul V's pontificate came to an end in 162 1, and 
 in 1645 Mr. John Evelyn writes in his "Diary" a long 
 account of the ViUa Borghese. The groves and avenues 
 had by that time a. generation's growth, but the Casino 
 and little temples and the multifarious deUghts which 
 enriched them were still in pristine freshness. The 
 taste of the present day may prefer the gardens as they 
 now are to those of i645; they have more of natural 
 beauty and fewer artificial devices, and the simple 
 fountains are more effective than the spouts of water 
 made to resemble the shapes of vessels and fruits and 
 the conceit of artificial rain. Much of the architecture 
 and statuary Evelyn describes has vanished, but 
 enough remains for the present traveller to recognize 
 the picture and to feel that he is walking in groves and 
 meadows trodden by many feet through many years. 
 Since Evelyn's time eight generations have also found 
 these pleasure-grounds delightful. As fuU of memories 
 as of fragrance, these gardens convey a sense of human 
 Ufe once Uved among them and now forever gone, 
 which is as poignant as the smell of the boxwood hedges 
 in the hot sunshine. 
 
 The Villa Borghese has pre-eminently this subtle 
 quaUty, and therefore it has become the loveliest as 
 
 [ 189 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 well as the best beloved of all Roman villas; and it is 
 precisely because it is a Roman garden that its mem- 
 ories are so compelling. The men and women who have 
 walked in these long avenues and lingered about these 
 fountains have been the aristocracy of mankind. Eng- 
 land, France, and Germany come here to gather mem- 
 ories of their great men. Statues to Goethe and Victor 
 Hugo are not needed. Hugo and Goethe and many more 
 of these noble ghosts come back, together with a long 
 line of splendid popes and briUiant cardinals, to haunt 
 the Sim-warmed yet shadowy places, never jostling or 
 disturbing the living but felt by the living in some 
 strange and undefinable way. 
 
 These groves and fountains have been the setting 
 for many scenes in Life's dramas. There has been a 
 Napoleonic interlude with dancing, masquerading, and 
 somewhat boisterous merrymaking; and here, amid 
 the loveliness of an alien civilization, began the last 
 act in the tragedy of the Stuart Kings. The son of the 
 exiled James H of England lived and died in Rome, and 
 his children — ^Prince Charlie and the Uttle Duke of 
 York — played beneath these trees, as scores of other 
 brothers of less fateful history have played before and 
 since.* Here they came every morning with their fowl- 
 
 *The "Memoirs of Madame d'Arblay" relate a touching incident 
 in the life of this exiled Stuart. 
 
 Daddy Crump, Fanny Bumey's old gossip, while sojourning in Rome 
 attended a carnival ball at a certain palace, where he saw many nota- 
 bles, among them King James III, as he was always called in Rome, 
 and his two young sons — Prince Charles Edward and Henry, Duke of 
 York. There were numbers of English among the guests, and, charac- 
 teristically, they did not mingle with the other nationalities, but grouped 
 
 [ 190 ] 
 
The Fountain of the AmormL 
 
VILLA BORGHESE 
 
 ing-pieces. High-spirited English lads, they made of 
 the ItaUan groves a Sherwood Forest of their own. It 
 was a far cry at that time to Culloden, and a long way 
 to the cathedral of Frascati, where the younger brother 
 was to read the funeral service over the elder. Time 
 means so httle in Rome that here in the villa where the 
 Stuart Princes played, the "adventure of the '45" 
 seems to have happened only yesterday. 
 
 The villa is at its loveUest in May and October. On 
 every Thursday and Sunday of this latter month it 
 used to be the custom for the Prince Borghese to re- 
 ceive all Rome within his gates. Forty to fifty thousand 
 people would sometimes come to these garden-parties, 
 all classes mingling yet preserving their identity with 
 the admirable dignity and self-respect of the Romans. 
 The young Princess Gwendolin Borghese was seen for 
 the last time at one of these great fetes. Her saintly 
 young spirit adds a breath as of incense to the Bor- 
 ghese gardens, and it is more easy to think of her pres- 
 ence here than among the ponderous marbles of the 
 Borghese Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore where she 
 lies buried. 
 
 Yet another Princess Borghese has left her memory 
 
 themselves together in a solid mass at one end of the ballroom. 
 Suddenly, while all were watching the dancers. King James, taking ad- 
 vantage of his mask and official incognito, crossed the room and placed 
 himself in the front rank of his fellow countrymen. The moment was 
 psychic, but the "loyal subjects of the House of Hanover " " took not the 
 slightest notice of him" while he stood as his forebears had stood — an 
 English king among his own people. Daddy Crump relates with smug 
 satisfaction that the "English never moved an eyelid" during those 
 few minutes when their hereditary sovereign assuaged the passionate 
 homesickness of his exile heart with a brief and tragic make-believe. 
 
 [ 193 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 within these gates. Canova has portrayed her as Venus 
 Victrix, and she takes her place among the antique 
 marbles by the right of flawless beauty. The flesh-and- 
 blood original of Canova's masterpiece, Pauline Bona- 
 parte, Princess Borghese, cared but Uttle for her beau- 
 tiful vUla. The ilex groves were gloomy and the foun- 
 tains were insignificant compared with those of Ver- 
 sailles. She wearied of palace, prince, and villa, and 
 spent as much time as possible with her own kin. It is 
 recorded that the prince, her husband, was far more 
 jealous of Canova's statue of his wife than of his wife's 
 person. The Princess Pauline Borghese passed away 
 like a summer cloud, but the Venus Borghese remains. 
 The personality of Cardinal Scipione Borghese is 
 preserved in the two magnificent busts still standing in 
 the picture-gallery of the Casino. It is difficult to be- 
 Ueve that such vitality as Bernini has here portrayed 
 could ever have quite faded from the earth, and surely 
 his ghost must at times return to these gardens of his 
 creation. 
 
 [ 194 ] 
 
LA BARCACCIA 
 
LA BARCACCIA 
 
 At the foot of the great stone stairway, known in Ital- 
 ian a s La Scali nata and in English as the Spanish Steps, 
 which leads down from the Church of the Trinita de' 
 Monti to the Piazza di Spagna lies the singular foun- 
 tain called La Barcaccia. The design of this fountain is 
 that of a quaintly conventionahzed boat, fast sinking 
 under the water which is pouring into it. To this effect 
 it owes its name; for "barca," being the Italian for 
 boat, and "accia" a termination of opprobrium, Bar- 
 caccia means a worthless boat. The boat is supposed to 
 
 [ 197 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 commemorate an event which occmred during the 
 great flood of iBgS. On Christmas Day of that year the 
 Tiber rose to its highest recorded level. AU this part of 
 the city was submerged to a depth of from seventeen 
 to twenty-five feet; and here in the Piazza di Spagna a 
 boat drifted ashore, grounding on that slope of the Pin- 
 cian HiU, which is now covered by the Spanish Steps. 
 For a long time the design of this fountain was sup- 
 posed to commemorate this event, and it is quite pos- 
 sible that this may have been the case. Still there are 
 other fountains of this design, the work of Carlo Ma- 
 derno, and as one is in the Villa d'Este at Tivoli and 
 the other in the Villa Aldobrandini, it is also quite pos- 
 sible that Carlo Mademo and the creator of the Bar- 
 caccia may have had yet another idea when they con- 
 structed their stone boats with a fountain amidships 
 and lying in basins not much larger than the boats 
 themselves. For the Romans of this time knew much 
 and surmised stiU more about the mysterious boats ly- 
 ing at the bottom of Lake Nemi, in the Alban HUls, 
 not more than seventeen miles distant from Rome. 
 These boats had been discovered first during the pon- 
 tificate of Pope Eugenius IV, and had been rediscov- 
 ered in Paul Ill's time, in i535, or about a hundred 
 years before Carlo Mademo employed this design for a 
 fountain. At each date an attempt had been made to 
 raise the boats, but these efforts as well as all subse- 
 quent attempts proved unsuccessful. However, in i535 
 measurements had been computed and many objects 
 belonging to the vessels had been brought to the sur- 
 
 [ 198 ] 
 
LA BARCACCIA 
 
 face to excite the wonder and admiration of the Roman 
 world. It was discovered that the boats when once 
 raised and floated would all but fill the tiny lake. The 
 decks had been made of concrete and marble, and 
 amidships there had been fountains whose falling 
 waters mingled with those of the lake. The mystery 
 surrounding the purpose and construction of those 
 huge vessels is yet unsolved, but in the seventeenth 
 century it still stirred men's imaginations with all the 
 force of fresh discovery. Both Maderno and Pietro 
 Bernini could not have been ignorant of it, and they 
 must have seen the exquisite bronzes and lead pipes 
 bearing the stamp of the Emperor Tiberius which had 
 been detached and brought up from the sunken vessels. 
 The Barcaccia fountain is the last work of Pietro 
 Bernini, the father of Lorenzo. He had been employed 
 to bring a branch of the Trevi Water from its reservoir 
 at the head of the Vicolo del Bottino as far as the foot 
 of the Pincian Hill in front of the Trinita de' Montif "~^ 
 and the fountain done by order of Pope Urban VIII 
 (1623-1644) was the adequate consummation of that 
 work. From whatever cause he derived his inspiration, 
 his design of the Barcaccia fountain is so admirably 
 suited to its position that it explains and almost ex- 
 cuses the popular idea that the foimtain was made low 
 in order not to obscure the view of the Spanish Steps. 
 A reference to dates at once shows the absurdity of this 
 last suggestion. In the Keats Memorial House hard by 
 there can be seen an engraving by Falda (bom in i64o) 
 showing Pietro Bernini's completed fountain against 
 
 [ 199 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 the background of the tree-planted slope of the Pin- 
 cian Hill. The fountain was finished before the death 
 of Pope Urban VIII, which occurred in i644, and the 
 steps were not begun until 1721, nine pontificates after 
 that of Urban VIII. 
 
 On the prow and stem of the boat is carved the 
 coat of arms of the Barberini family, for Urban VIII 
 was the Barberini Pope and the founder of that family 
 in Rome. This pontiff, whose character was a formi- 
 dable compound of priest, statesman, warrior, and man 
 of letters, delighted in the design of the fountain. Pie- 
 tro Bernini had placed cannon at either end, thus mak- 
 ing his boat into a war-vessel, whereupon Urban VIII 
 composed a Latin distich in its praise: 
 
 "Bellica pontificum non fundit machina flammas, 
 Sed dulcem, belU qua perit ignis, aquam." 
 
 " The war-ship of the priest, instead of flames. 
 Pours water, and the fire of battle tames" 
 
 At both ends of the large basin in which the boat 
 stands are long, flat pieces of travertine. These are the 
 stepping-stones on which any one using the fountain 
 stands while dipping up the water. The Marcia Pia 
 now supplies the houses in this part of the city, but the 
 Romans still prefer to drink Trevi, and the stepping- 
 stones are as much in use as they were in the days when 
 Falda and other artists of that period engraved this 
 fountain, placing in the lower basin figures of men or 
 women in the act of dipping up the water. This quarter 
 [ 200 ] 
 
LA BARCACCIA 
 
 of Rome, once a part of the Campus Martius of clas- 
 sical days, has been for a long time given over to the 
 interests of the American and English colonies; but for 
 more than three centuries its foreign associations were 
 chiefly French. Urbeui VIII was in many ways a French 
 Pope, although he came of a Florentine family. As 
 papal nuncio he had spent many years £uid made 
 many powerful friends at the courts of Henry TV and 
 Louis XIII. In the conclave which elected him Pope, 
 France openly and ardently supported his claims. Dur- 
 ing his residence in France he had known Armand du 
 Plessis, who was to become Cardinal Richelieu. The 
 two great chiu-chmen went up the ladder of preferment 
 side by side. They became, as pope and cardinal min- 
 ister, respectively, lifelong allies in their tireless and 
 successful efforts to humble the dual power of Austria 
 and Spain, while promoting on the one hand the pres- 
 tige of France and on the other the stabiUty of the 
 Papal See. 
 
 At the accession of Urban VIII, Spain and Austria 
 held the passes of the Alps, thus dominating Europe 
 and threatening the existence of the Papal States. At 
 the close of his pontificate, France was rapidly becom- 
 ing the first Continental power, and the Papal States 
 had reached their utmost limit of territorial expansion. 
 With his death the French influence in papal politics 
 rapidly declined, but its artistic ascendency stiU lin- 
 gered on. Thirteen years later a certain French gentle- 
 man, attached to the French embassy at Rome, and 
 named Etienne de Gueffier, left in his wiU a sum of 
 
 [ 20I ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 money for the construction of a great stone stairway 
 which should connect the Piazza of. the Trinita de' 
 Monti, in the centre of which lay the Barcaccia foun- 
 tain, with the Chiu-ch of the Trinita de' Monti, stand- 
 ing far above, on the slope of the Pincian HiU. This 
 gentleman, of whom httle is known, must have been 
 the friend of more than one of the great French artists 
 who were Uving in Rome contemporaneously with him- 
 self. Possibly the splendid project of the Scalinata was 
 the result of long hours of comradeship, when he, with 
 his feUow countrymen, watched the sunset from the 
 terrace which Sixtus V had placed before the Church 
 on the Hill, or scrambled down the tree-planted slope 
 before it in order to reach the foimtain at its base. Cer- 
 tain it is that Rome owes this most distinctive archi- 
 tectural feature of papal times to the imagination and 
 generosity of a Frenchman. The two Latin inscriptions 
 upon the steps are worthy of attention.* 
 
 The building of the steps, begun by Alessandro 
 Specchi and completed by Francesco de Sanctis, was 
 not undertaken, as appears from the inscription, tiU 
 sixty years after the death of De Gueffier and six pon- 
 tificates later than that of Alexander VII (Chigi), in 
 which De Gueffier died. By that time the Spanish in- 
 fluence had reasserted itself to a marked degree, and as 
 the Spanish embassy had been established in a palace 
 on the western side of the square, the old name of the 
 Piazza deUa Trinita de' Monti gradually gave way to 
 the present name. Piazza di Spagna. And so finally the 
 
 * See Appendix. 
 [ 202 ] 
 
LA BARCACCIA 
 
 great stone stairway, the gift of a Frenchman in the 
 heyday of French influence at Rome, came to be known 
 as the Spanish Steps. 
 
 Yet, after all, the paramomit association with the 
 fomitain of the Earcaccia is neither French nor Span- 
 ish, but belongs pre-eminently to the English-speaking 
 race. This fantastic fountain, with its commonplace 
 background and its limited view of the ScaUnata, forms 
 the only outlook from the windows of the house in 
 which the poet Keats spent the last three months of 
 his life; so that from the position of this house the 
 fountain of the Barcaccia is connected for all time with 
 the fate of the "young English poet" who hes buried 
 now these many years in the Protestant cemetery out- 
 side the walls. From the windows of his narrow death- 
 chamber he watched the plashing waters in the foun- 
 tain below him, while above his head the beUs in the 
 church, which he could not see, remorselessly rang out 
 the quarter-hours or toUed for some feUow creature 
 the "agonia," or "passing beU." During his hours of 
 hstlessness or fits of sombre rage, this passing of time 
 and of life was always in his ears, as the futile play of 
 the water was always before his eyes. 
 
 It is not difificult to connect the bells and the foun- 
 tain with the bitter epitaph written, by his own wish, 
 above his grave: 
 
 "Here hes one whose name was writ in water." 
 
 [ 2o3 ] 
 
TRITON 
 
TRITON 
 
 "Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
 And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 
 
 The exquisite lines rise involuntarily to the lips as one 
 comes suddenly upon Bernini's old fountaia in the Pi- 
 azza Tritone, which, stEuiding in the centre of one of 
 the busiest and most prosaic thoroughfares of modern 
 Rome, stiU keeps its own cpiality of beauty and seems 
 to weave eibout itself the enchantment of the world of 
 fable. Roman art has created many Tritons, notably 
 the joyous group surrounding Galatea in the Farnesina 
 [ 207 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Palace, but there is about this water-worn old figure 
 such distinction and such emphasis of life that he be- 
 comes the prototype of all his race. He is II Tritone. 
 
 Triton blows his conch-sheU with all his might as he 
 kneels across the hinge of a wide-open scaUop-shell, 
 which is supported on the upturned tails of three dol- 
 phins massed together in the middle of a large, low- 
 lying basin. The dolphins' tails are twisted and folded 
 about large papal keys — a Bernini conceit which, sug- 
 gesting St. Peter both as fisherman and pontiff, must 
 have delighted the Pope. The composition of dolphins, 
 keys, and shell is extraordinarily rich and harmonious. 
 
 Triton, kneeling upon this noble support is, from the 
 waist upward, a severely simple figure, almost uncouth 
 and somewhat out of keeping with the rest of the de- 
 sign. This effect is entirely accidental. It has been 
 brought about by the ceaseless flow of the water, which 
 for two and a half centuries has been thrown upward in 
 a slender jet of great height, returning upon itself with 
 such precision that Triton's face and shoulders have 
 been worn and blurred into shapeless smfaces of trav- 
 ertine. Triton has suffered from a sculptor's point of 
 view, but as a work of imaginative art it is, perhaps, 
 all the better for Nature's modelling. The shapeless 
 head and shoulders have in them something of the 
 formlessness and blurred masses of the elements, and 
 the water-creature becomes more real to the imagina- 
 tion in proportion as he suggests — ^but does not entirely 
 resemble — a man. The entire design is on a colossal 
 scale and has a dignity and harmony rarely to be found 
 [ 208 ] 
 
The Fountain of the Triton. 
 
TRITON 
 
 in Bernini's creations. This is because the central idea 
 is the only idea, and no subsidiary and fantastic inven- 
 tions are presented to bewilder the eye and brain. 
 
 This fountain was done by Lorenzo Bernini for Pope 
 Urban VIII. It stands near the Barberini Church of 
 the Capuchins, and was intended to adorn the approach 
 to the Palazzo Barberini. This third of the trio of the 
 great palaces of the nepotizing Popes — ^Famese, Bor- 
 ghese, and Barberini — ^was built by Urban VIII in 
 order to invest his house with an importance equal to 
 that enjoyed by the families of Paul III and Paul V. 
 As the fountain was an adjunct of the palace, it had 
 to bear upon it in some way the emblem of the Bar- 
 berini — ^the colossal bee — and this explains why Ber- 
 nini united the curving bodies of his dolphins by es- 
 cutcheons carrying three bees and the papal arms. 
 
 Another foimtain, contemporaneous with the Tri- 
 ton, once stood in this same piazza, at the corner of 
 the Via Sistina; and this fountain, also made for Urban 
 VIII by Bernini, was in itself the emblem of the Bar- 
 berini, for it represented merely a great shell into which 
 the bees spouted water. In some way this second foun- 
 tain has disappeared, but the piazza still remains the 
 Barberini quarter of the city; and the Triton, as well as 
 the magnificent palace, recalls the days when the power 
 and rapacity of that family brought upon it the unfor- 
 getable pasquinade: 
 
 "What the Barbarians spared, 
 The Barberini took." 
 
 [ 211 ] 
 
NAVONA 
 
NAVONA 
 
 Before the genius of Valadier moulded the isolated 
 buildings and waste spaces of the Piazza del Popolo 
 into a noble symmetry, the Navona was considered the 
 finest and most important piazza in Rome. In length 
 and breadth it is a reproduction of the stadium of 
 Domitian, for the houses, churches, and palaces which 
 line the Piazza Navona are based squarely upon the 
 seats and corridors of that old Roman playground. 
 This part of the city, not far from the Pantheon or old 
 Baths of Agrippa, is low, and it has always been easy 
 
 [ 2l5 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 to flood it with water. The ancient Romans were so 
 keen for shows of every kind that when the great Fla- 
 vian amphitheatre (the Coliseum) was closed for re- 
 pairs, Domitian fomid it necessary to provide a second 
 place of amusement where the gladiatorial combats and 
 the naumachix or sea fights could go on without inter- 
 ruption. 
 
 It was a rule strictly enforced under the empire that 
 no one could open new baths in the city without pro- 
 viding a fresh supply of water. Something more than a 
 century after Domitian, Alexander Severus — Shaving 
 brought the Acqua Alessandrina to Rome — was able to 
 repair Domitian's old stadium and to use it once more 
 for the naumachise. In modem times there does not ap- 
 pear to have been any fountain here until the pontifi- 
 cate of Gregory XIII, and at that time the passion 
 for fountain-building in modern Rome really began. 
 
 Pius IV, the Pope last but one preceding Gregory 
 XIII, had repaired the old aqueduct of the Acqua 
 Virgo, originally brought to the city by Marcus 
 Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, so that that wa- 
 ter, which for a long time had been running only inter- 
 mittently in the fountain of Trevi, could now be ob- 
 tained in a continuous stream. It is impossible to throw 
 Virgo Water to any great height, and the fountains of 
 the Piazza Navona have had to be constructed with 
 reference to this limitation. 
 
 The two end fountains, designed for Gregory XIII 
 by Giacomo deUa Porta, are simply great basins of 
 Porta Santa marble standing in stiU larger Carrara 
 [ 216 ] 
 
The Fountain of the Four Rivers. 
 
NAVONA 
 
 basins of exactly the same shape Eind sunk into the 
 ground. The beauty of these fountains consists in their 
 elegant shape, the fineness of the marble, and in their 
 air of simple distinction. The great basins hold the lim- 
 pid Trevi Water as a Venetian goblet holds wine: the 
 receptacle and that which it contains enhance each 
 other's beauty, and any further decoration seems su- 
 perfluous and unfortunate. This, however, was not the 
 taste of the seventeenth century, at which time there 
 were added the various figures now crowding the upper 
 basin of the south fountain. On one side of the piazza 
 stands the fine palace built for Innocent X (Pamphih, 
 i644-i655) by Rainaldi. It was occupied during the 
 Pope's lifetime by his sister-in-law. Donna Olympia 
 Maidalchini, who, for that period, became the most 
 important person of the papal court. She filled the 
 palace with art treasures and, in order to make its ex- 
 terior still more imposing, Bernini was commissioned 
 to decorate della Porta's fountain, which stood directly 
 in front of the palace. The central figure, called the 
 Moor, was modelled by Bernini himself, and it was 
 sculptured for hiTn by Gianantonio Mari. It is in 
 travertine. The Carrara masques and marine crea- 
 tures are by various pupils of Bernini. Toward the 
 close of the last century the originals of these side 
 groups, which had become badly disfigured, were 
 removed and replaced by those of the present day, 
 which were sculptured by Amici after the old models. 
 This fountain since Bernini's time has been called the 
 fountain of the Moor. The fountain at the other end 
 [ 219 1 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 went from the earliest times by the name of the Foim- 
 tain of the Scaldino, probably because of the shape of 
 the small vase in the centre which resembled a cleissic 
 scaldino or brazier. It can be seen in an engraving by 
 Piranesi, for the fountain was left undisturbed imtil 
 the close of the last century when the Scaldino was re- 
 moved and replaced by the figme of Neptune. This fig- 
 ure w£is carved by Bitta Zappala from a model of Ber- 
 nini's found in the Villa Montalto. The figures aroimd 
 the edge are Zappala's own, and they as well as the 
 Neptune are of Carrara. All this wedding-cake decora- 
 tion has spoiled the original effect of della Porta's 
 work, and the best that can now be said for the side 
 founteiins is that they are in harmony with the foun- 
 tain in the centre. In justice, however, to the genius of 
 della Porta and to the taste of an earher day, an at- 
 tempt should be made to think of these fountains with- 
 out their more modem excrescences. It is a pity that 
 the Roman municipality has found it necessary to sur- 
 round them with a high iron fence. If these fountains 
 could be left free like the side fountains in the Piazza 
 del Popolo their charm could be and would be much 
 better appreciated. 
 
 In the centre of the piazza, immediately opposite 
 the church, Bernini erected for Innocent X the Foun- 
 tain of the Four Rivers. The obelisk of red Oriental 
 granite which surmounts it was brought from the Cir- 
 cus of Maxentius, and tipped with the bronze dove 
 and oUve-branch, the emblem of the Pamphili family, 
 to which Innocent X belonged. Bernini placed the obe- 
 [ 220 ] 
 
NAVONA 
 
 lisk on four flying buttresses of white granite, crossing 
 each other at right angles. The obelisk rests upon the 
 arch thus formed, and the space beneath it is left as a 
 grotto with four openings. This gives the obeUsk the 
 appearance of resting upon nothing, an effect which 
 was greatly admired by the artist's contemporaries. 
 The bases of these flying buttresses are broadened and 
 flattened so as to receive the recumbent figures of four 
 river-gods carved in Carrara. They represent respec- 
 tively the Ganges, the Nile, the Danube, and the Rio de 
 la Plata. The obelisk and its base stand in the centre of 
 a basin some seventy-eight feet in circumference, which 
 is sunk into the pavement, and which receives the 
 water flowing from the four rocky projections where 
 the river-gods Ue. Beneath the grotto additional jets of 
 water spout upward, while a river-horse dashes furi- 
 ously through one archway as if in terror of a Uon 
 which is coming out of another to drink of the water 
 under the shade of a palm-tree cut in high relief 
 against the rocks. On top of one of the rocks crawls a 
 serpent, and a mass of cactus grows upward from be- 
 hind one of the rivers. In the lower basin two mon- 
 strous travertine fish are disporting themselves in 
 characteristic Bernini contortions. Escutcheons bear- 
 ing the arms of Leo X (three fleur-de-lis and a dove 
 with an olive-branch) of course are not wanting. All 
 this sculpture is in travertine. 
 
 This fountain has been caUed Bernini's masterpiece, 
 and it deserves that title as an example of the utmost 
 length to which the Bernini idea of artistic invention 
 
 [ 221 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL HOME 
 
 can be carried. From an aesthetic standpoint it shows 
 both in execution and design the faults and excesses 
 into which he was led by his popularity, and the bound- 
 less fertiUty of his genius. The extravagances and ab- 
 surdities of this fountain and its debased execution 
 arouse curiosity both as to the artist and to the taste 
 and character of the seventeenth-century Romans for 
 whom it was erected and by whom it was so greatly 
 admired. Bernini came in with the seventeenth century 
 and lived through eighty years of it. The pompous epi- 
 taph under his bust, which is let into the wall in the 
 Palazzo Mercede, speaks no more them the truth. 
 Princes and popes did bend before him, from Paul V, 
 who recognized his precocious genius, to Louis XIV, 
 who enticed him to Paris. Charles I sent his Van Dyck 
 portraits to Rome, that Bernini might use them as 
 guides in making his portrait bust of the Stuart King, 
 and Urban VIII thanked a gracious Providence that 
 Bernini hved during his pontificate. His journey to 
 Paris was a triumphal progress. The few clouds which 
 marred his long and prosperous day were due not to 
 any waning of popular appreciation but to the inevi- 
 table jealousy of less fortunate men. Yet his best work 
 was done in his youth under the enlightened patronage 
 of Paul V and Urban VIII. By the time Innocent X (a 
 mediocre man) could command his services his faults 
 had obscured his genius, and the great days of Rome 
 were definitely over. With the death of Urban VIII, 
 the Pope immediately preceding Innocent X, the last 
 trace of vigorous artistic life had disappeared; for as 
 
 [ 222 ] 
 
NAVONA 
 
 the French influence in the papal court declined and 
 the Hapsburg ideas regained and held the ascendancy 
 spontaneous and free expression of thought and feehng 
 were rigorously repressed. Men were made to hve on 
 the surface of things, and in proportion as they became 
 formal and superficial in themselves they demanded 
 excitement and extravagance in their art. This was the 
 secret of Bernini's immense success. He was exactly 
 fitted to his time. Men wanted " Sound and fury, sig- 
 nifying nothing," and he gave it to them in fuU 
 measure. 
 
 In this fountain he strove to produce the effect of a 
 wild concourse of waters. He wished to reproduce in 
 stone the tumult of the falls of TivoU. Confusion, ra- 
 pidity of movement, and noise are the qualities which 
 he attempted to embody in his sculpture. That the ef- 
 fect should be bathos and not grandeur was inevitable. 
 The ideas which Bernini strove to express cannot be 
 portrayed. Music is the only artistic medium by which 
 they can be rendered, and in looking at the Bernini 
 sculpture as well as architecture it is impossible not to 
 wish that this artist of such undeniable genius and im- 
 mense facility had been a musician. As the composer 
 and interpreter of great brio music Bernini might have 
 given no less pleasure to the men of his time and 
 have secured from posterity a kindUer appreciation.* 
 But in the seventeenth century secular music as an art 
 was still in its infancy, and it was inevitable that Ber- 
 
 * Compare the sensations produced by this fountain and those given 
 by the "Rhapsodie Hongroise." 
 
 [ 223 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 nini should express himself in sculpture, or in the 
 "frozen music" of architecture. As the Borgo holds its 
 memories of the Borgias, and the Via Sistina and its 
 vicinity recall the power of Sixtus V, and the Piazza 
 di Spagna the versatility of Urban VIII, so the Piazza 
 Navona brings back the times of Innocent X. The 
 greatest gift which the Pamphih family has left to 
 Rome is the Villa Pamphih, which was built by the 
 Pope's nephew, but here in the Piazza Navona stand 
 the Pamphih Palace, the Collegio Innocentiimi and the 
 Church of St. Agnes, whose new fagade dates from his 
 pontificate. 
 
 It was during his lifetime that the festas of the 
 "Lago of the Piazza Navona" were inaugurated. 
 Every Sunday in July and August the outlets of the 
 great central fountain were stopped and the water 
 was permitted to flood the entire piazza, which was 
 at that time much lower than it is at present. Then 
 the carriages of the nobihty and gentry drove around 
 the piazza, the water reaching up as far as the middle 
 of the smaller wheels. The owners of the houses and 
 palaces invited friends to witness the spectacle from 
 their windows, refreshments were served, and bands of 
 music played on stands erected at various parts of the 
 piazza. The fact that only people owning carriages 
 could drive ia the procession and that only the in- 
 habitants of the houses and palaces could invite their 
 guests, limited the number and regulated the quahty 
 of the participants in these curious pageants. In the 
 earlier days much license was permitted, and the 
 
 [ 224 1 
 
NAVONA 
 
 entertainments lasted through the night, but in Clem- 
 ent XIII's time, or about 1760, the number of hours 
 was curtailed. With the ringing of the Ave Maria the 
 piazza was drained and the waters once more con- 
 fined to the basin of Bernini's Fountain of the Four 
 Rivers. 
 
 These harmless midsummer carnivals which came to 
 an end during the pontificate of Pope Pius IX were as 
 much reUshed by the Romans as were the nawnachias 
 held fomteen himdred years earlier in the same place. 
 
 [ 225 ] 
 
TREVI 
 
TREVI 
 
 One hundred and fifteen years after Agrippa brought 
 the Acqua Virgo into Rome the Emperor Nerva ap- 
 pointed as commissioner of the water-works of the city 
 a man of extraordinary integrity and energy who was 
 possessed of many accompUshments and had had along 
 training in the practical experience of government and 
 war. Fortunately for posterity, he was able to write 
 as well as govern, and in his book, " The Water Supply 
 of the City of Rome," a copy of which has been pre- 
 served in the monastery of Monte Cassino for more 
 [ 229 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 than thirteen centuries, there is an account, true be- 
 yond the shadow of doubt, of the earUest history of 
 the Trevi Water. Frontinus says that the water was 
 shown to some Roman soldiers by a young maiden who 
 guided them to the springs near her father's home, that 
 a small temple was erected near the springs containing 
 a picture of the incident, and that the name of Virgo, or 
 maiden, which still endures, commemorates the event. 
 Agrippa at once brought the water to Rome and its 
 deUghtful purity as well as its abundance must have 
 given it immediate popularity. Suetonius relates that 
 about this time the Romans complained to Augustus 
 of the expense and scarcity of wine, whereupon the 
 Emperor sent word to them that his son-in-law, 
 Agrippa, had sufficiently provided for their thirst by 
 the ample supply of water which he had brought to 
 Rome. The springs of the Virgo rise in the valley of the 
 Anio and are not more than eighty feet above sea-level. 
 They are on land which once belonged to Lucullus. 
 The veteran adversary of Mithradates, who had suf- 
 fered all the privations of far-eastern warfare, knew 
 from personal experience the immense value of pure 
 and abundant water. It is not improbable that he was 
 aware of his priceless possession and that he kept it for 
 his own private use during those years of his peaceful 
 old age passed in his gardens on the Pincian HiU. 
 When, a generation after Lucullus's death, Agrippa 
 constructed the Virgo Aqueduct he brought it under- 
 ground through the old gardens of Lucullus to a reser- 
 voir beneath the hill, and from there the water 
 [ 23o ] 
 
TREVI 
 
 was carried to the Campus Martius, and thence dis- 
 tributed throughout the city, whose gardens and foun- 
 tains it still supplies. Cassiodorus, prime minister to 
 that Gothic King, Theodoric, who, from 493 to 526, 
 governed the Romans with such extraordinary sym- 
 pathy and intelligence, felt for the Virgo Water the 
 admiration and love of a veritable Roman. The true 
 origin of the name had abeady been forgotten, and 
 Cassiodorus supposes that "Virgo's stream is so pm-e 
 that the name, according to common opinion, is de- 
 rived from the fact that those waters are never sullied, 
 since, while all the others give evidence of the violence 
 of rain-storms by the turgidity of their waters, Virgo 
 alone ever maintains her purity." It was quite a nat- 
 ural supposition, for the Virgo Water has never had a 
 filtering or setthng reservoir. Those who have the gpod 
 fortune to drink it receive it from its Roman fountains 
 exactly as it comes from its springs on the Via Colla- 
 tina. This aqueduct was cut off from the city in 537 '^y 
 the Goths and Burgundians, and, though in the same 
 year Behsarius restored the aqueducts of Claudius and 
 Trajan, the Virgo seems to have remained entirely un- 
 used for the next two hundred years. During that pe- 
 riod the popes were not sufficiently powerful to under- 
 take any great pubUc works, but when Charlemagne 
 visited Rome in 778 he gave the needed support to the 
 head of the church, and thereafter the popes began the 
 restoration and the maintenance of the Roman aque- 
 ducts. The Virgo was restored in i447 by Nicholas V, in 
 whose pontificate Constantinople was taken by the 
 [ 23i ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Turks and the Wars of the Roses began in England. He 
 was a great Pope and repaired the aqueduct so thor- 
 oughly that it remained in use for thirty years. There 
 must always have been a main fountain for the Virgo 
 Water, but the records of the modem "Fountain of 
 Trevi" begins with the fountain which Vasari says 
 was rebuilt by Nicholas Vs architect, Leon Batista 
 Alberti. After a short period the aqueduct was again 
 restored and the fountain enlarged by "The Great 
 Builder, " Sixtus IV. Then occurs a period of various 
 vicissitudes, and finally, in 1670, Pius V restored the 
 Virgo Aqueduct effectively and rebuilt Sixtus IV's 
 fountain, making what is now known as the "old Trevi 
 fountain." This fountain stood not where the present 
 one stands, but to the west of it, in the little Piazza 
 Santa Crocifere. The old engravings show it to have 
 been a huge semicircular pool into which the water 
 poured from three great apertures made in massive 
 stone piers. 
 
 The name of Trevi is supposed by some writers to be 
 derived from these three streams of water — three ways, 
 Tre-vii; but there is more reason to believe that the 
 fountain took its name from the mediaeval name of that 
 quarter of the city^-Regione Trevi, from trevium, be- 
 cause of three roads which converge near the present 
 Piazza of Trevi. Sixtus IV had constructed near the 
 fountain a large pubUc washing-trough, and the whole 
 composition was extremely simple and practical. The 
 Rome of Sixtus V and Paul V became too sumptuous 
 for the old fountain, and as early as 1626 plans were 
 [ 282 ] 
 
Figure of "Neptune" in the Fountain of Trevi. 
 
TREVI 
 
 made for its reconstruction. The Barberini Pope, Urban 
 VIII, had his own ideas of magnificence; he proposed 
 to change the fomitain from its old site to its present 
 position against the southern fagade of the great Poli 
 Palace; and Bernini made for him some beautiful 
 sketches for the new meisterpiece. Urban VIII stripped 
 the portico of the Pantheon of its bronze and also car- 
 ried off a part of the base of the tomb of Cecilia Me- 
 tella, proposing to construct his fountain out of these 
 materials. The Roman people, whose love for their own 
 antiquities was constantly growing, showed such in- 
 dignation when the Pope's project became known that 
 Urban was actually obliged to abandon his scheme, 
 and it was not until eleven pontificates after his time 
 that the work on the new fountain was really begun. 
 Then it was intrusted to the architect Niccolo Salvi by 
 Clement XII (Corsiui, 1 780-1740), and after the death 
 of this pontiff and his successor, Benedict XIV, and 
 eleven years after the death of Salvi himself, the 
 foimtain was at last finished. This was in 1762, imder 
 Clement XIII (Rezzonico, 1 768-1 769). Niccolo Salvi 
 had succumbed prematurely to the hardships of his 
 task. The construction of the fountain necessitated 
 spending much time in the subterranean chambers of 
 the Virgo Aqueduct, and this had proved fatal to 
 Salvi's health. The tomb of Cecilia Metella was 
 never again attacked, and there is no bronze in the 
 present fountain; in other respects the great scheme 
 of Urban VIII was revived. The fountain was placed 
 against the Poli Palace, and Salvi used for the sculp- 
 tural part of the fountain Bernini's beautiful designs. 
 [ 235 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 So severe a critic as Francesco Milizia declares that 
 this fountain is justly considered to be the best work 
 produced in Rome din-ing the eighteenth century. It 
 has elicited extravagant praise from other authorities, 
 and in later times some adverse criticism. It has been 
 woven into many of the romances connected with 
 Rome, and imtil quite recently there were few Ameri- 
 can and EngUsh visitors to the Eternal City who left 
 her without paying a moonlight visit to Trevi, there to 
 toss a coin into the water while they drank to their cer- 
 tain return. Romans of the eighteenth century often 
 saw AJfieri, the tragic dramatist, crouched beside the 
 fountain, lost in a day-dream evoked by the tumult 
 and beauty of the water; and it is recorded that the 
 day after Michelangelo's death there was found in his 
 house no wine whatever, but five jars of water, presum- 
 ably the Trevi, as it was the only pure drinkable water 
 in Rome. The Trevi fountain has become a feature in 
 the city's life. It is the chief fountain of the one water 
 which modern Rome inherits directly from her great 
 past. 
 
 The fountain consists of a vast semicircular basin, 
 sunk so far below the level of the pavement that it is 
 necessary to descend a flight of steps in order to stand 
 beside it. This device, which was rendered necessary 
 by the low head of the water, is excellent from an aes- 
 thetic view-point, as the spectator, being on a different 
 grade from the piazza and its surroundings, feels that 
 he is in another world and is able to forget the city 
 and give his entire attention to the scene before him. 
 Looking up, he sees a great ledge of broken rock, over 
 
 [ 236 ] 
 
TREVI 
 
 which the water pours in many streams and waterfalls, 
 disappearing and reappearing among the rocks like a 
 veritable mountain torrent. The main stream descends 
 in a series of three quite lovely cascades, their semi- 
 circular-shaped basins being prototypes of the great 
 lower basin, into which aU eventually flow. Their edges 
 are smooth, as if they had been water-worn, and the 
 force of the water feeding them is so great that it boils 
 and roars among masses of broken rock as it does in 
 a natural waterfall. Above all this finely simulated 
 wildness rises the ornate group of Neptune riding 
 in a chariot made of an enormous sea-shell and drawn 
 by two sea-horses. The horses are placed well to each 
 side of the central cascades, and the group is termi- 
 nated by Tritons who are restraining the onward dash 
 of the horses and eire blowing conches. The back- 
 ground or frame-work to this scene of commotion and 
 tumult is the highly finished conventional fagade of a 
 Roman palace; Neptime issues forth not from a rocky 
 cavern but from a Renaissance tribune constructed 
 with four Ionic pillars and a richly carved roof, on 
 the frieze of which runs the following inscription: 
 
 CLEMENS • XII - PONT • MAX 
 
 AQVAM • VERGINEM • COPIA = ET • SALVBRITATE 
 
 COMMENDATAM • CVLTV • MAGNIFICO • ORNAVIT 
 
 ANNO • DOMINO • MDCCXXXV - PONTIF: VI 
 
 Pope Clement XII decked out with magnificent orna- 
 ment the aqueduct of the Maiden, which is recommended 
 for its plenteous flow and for the healthful qualities of its 
 water. In the year of the Lord 1735, and of Clement's 
 pontificate the sixOi. 
 
 [ 237 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 On either side of this tribune the palace wall breaks 
 into niches containing statues, one of Abundance, the 
 other of Health; and separated from each other by tall 
 columns are panels depicting in high relief the dis- 
 covery of the water and the construction of the aque- 
 duct. Beyond these sculptures the windows and bal- 
 conies of the palace frankly make their appearance. 
 
 Nothing could be more incongruous and artificial. 
 The design is one which demands a background as an 
 integreJ part of the composition, but this background 
 has absolutely no connection with the foimtain, except 
 the purely physical connection of juxtaposition. Nep- 
 tune should be appearing from some sea cave, worn in 
 straight, steep cliffs like the clifiFs at Sorrento. The 
 architect who could so skilfully mass these rocky 
 ledges and dispose these streams and cascades could 
 have designed quite as well stone palisades and grot- 
 tos; but the fountain belongs to an age which played 
 "Macbeth" in periwig and ruffles, and it remains a 
 magnificent example of the taste of that period. 
 
 ['238 ] 
 
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO 
 
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO 
 
 The fountains in the Piazza del Popolo should not be 
 considered as individual creations; they must be re- 
 garded as parts of an architectural composition which 
 includes the piazza as a whole — ^its shape, dimensions, 
 and location, and the buildings which surround it. This 
 composition is the work of the distinguished Roman 
 architect Giuseppe Valadier, whose life lay within the 
 last thirty-:eight years of the eighteenth century and 
 the first three decades of the nineteenth. His bust 
 stands in the place of honor on the Pincian; that is, it 
 stands at the end of and facing the long, broad drive 
 called the Passeggiata, which begins on the terrace be- 
 fore the Villa Medici and runs northward along the 
 western crest of the Pincian Hill. Valadier had been 
 papal architect under Pius VI and Pius VII, and he 
 
 [ 24l 1 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 had laid out for Napoleon the public gardens of the 
 Pincian. Up to that time most of that land had be- 
 longed to the Augustinian monks whose convent stands 
 below the hill, close to the Church of Santa Maria del 
 Popolo. It has been their vineyard, and the story goes 
 that it was while he was walking in this vineyard that 
 Valadier got his first conception of what he might make 
 out of the Piazza del Popolo. 
 
 Standing on the brow of the hill, from which is ob- 
 tained the incomparable view of St. Peter's at sunset, 
 Valadier looked down upon the Piazza del Popolo as 
 Piranesi had engraved it in his time (1720-1778). A 
 somewhat shapeless area of flat ground stretching in an 
 indeterminate way westward from the base of the Pin- 
 cian Hill, it seemed to be only the debouchment of the 
 three great thoroughfares running into it from the 
 heart of the city. The twin churches standing one on 
 either side of the Corso, the centre thoroughfare, were 
 the chief architectural features on the south side, while 
 on the north side ran the city wall and the Church of 
 St. Mary of the People. In the centre of this sccea stood 
 the obehsk as it stands to-day, placed there by Sixtus 
 V in 1589, and with a single foimtain at its foot — a 
 huge basin carved by Domenico Fontana out of one 
 solid block of marble taken from the ruins of AureUan's 
 Temple of the Sun. The water supplying this fountain 
 was the Acqua Trevi, the same which fills the fountains 
 of the present day. Such was the Piazza del Popolo as 
 Valadier's eyes beheld it, but at that point where the 
 Aurelian wall is pierced by the Porta del Popolo (the 
 
 [ 242 ] 
 
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO 
 
 old Flaminian Gate) he saw something else: He saw 
 the end of the Flaminian Way — ^the great highroad 
 leading directly from the north. And at that point the 
 actual faded away, and to Valadier there came a vision. 
 He saw the Piazza del Popolo as the magnificent and 
 adequate antechamber to Rome. He saw it approached 
 by this great highroad which, first skirting the shore of 
 the Adriatic, then traversing the breadth of Italy and 
 the watershed of the Appenines, descends thence to the 
 western slopes of Mount Soracte and, crossing the 
 Ponte MoUe, comes all the way to Rome from far-off 
 Ariminum, or Rimini, the Roman fortress and frontier 
 town on the Adriatic — ^two himdred and twenty miles 
 distant — and the key to Cisalpine Gaul. Down this 
 road, which is but a continuation of the still greater 
 Via EmiUa, have come all the northern friends and all 
 [ 243 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 the northern foes of Rome. Other eyes than Valadier's 
 can see that procession. Barbarian invaders and im- 
 perial armies have covered all the countryside like 
 swarms of locusts — ^the progress of most of them 
 marked by burning farms arid plundered villages. In 
 quieter times there have come pilgrim hosts and com- 
 panies of merchants; and travelling scholars, and art- 
 ists "with hearts on fire" for Rome; also ambassadors 
 and foreign prelates, exiles and penitents, great bridal 
 processions like Margaret of Austria's ia iSSy, funeral 
 pageants, bandit troops, fugitives of every type, bare- 
 legged friars (among them a Luther), soldiers of for- 
 tune, and Enghsh noblemen in travelling carriages 
 with postilions; every sort and condition of man whom 
 the north has sent forth to the Eternal City. Down this 
 Flaminian Road they came, passed through the Fla- 
 minian Gate, and received their first impression of 
 Rome here in the Campus Martins — the modem Pi- 
 azza del Popolo. Valadier lived in the period of the 
 First Empire, when the shock of change and of contrast 
 quickened even the most formal imagination. He came 
 down from his "mount of vision" and designed the 
 noble and finely proportioned piazza of the present 
 day. He formed the vast and slovenly-shaped piece of 
 ground into a stately ellipse, whose broadly curving 
 ends, made of Roman brick and travertine, ornamented 
 by sphinxes and allegorical figures, become the retain- 
 ing walls of the terraced gardens at their rear, so that 
 these long retaining walls seem coped by a line of glis- 
 tening green foliage. On the side of the Piacian Hill the 
 
 [ 244 ] 
 
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO 
 
 grass and trees of the Pincian Gardens rise in four tiers 
 of terraces, high against the sky. Behind the retaining 
 wall, opposite the Pincian, the tall cypresses screen the 
 new city which stretches oflf toward the Tiber. A beau- 
 tiful small semicircular basin, with a shell-like upper 
 basin, stands in the centre of each of these curving 
 ends. They might be called decorative keystones to re- 
 cumbent arches. The water, gushes through the retain- 
 ing walls which form their background and ftills be- 
 tween the convolutions of the shell in a fringe of steady, 
 slender streams. 
 
 It has been truly said that the eighteenth century 
 did not die with the close of the year 1799. It lingered 
 on through the first, and more than the first, decade 
 of the century which followed. Valadier remained an 
 eighteenth-century architect to the end of his life. This 
 is most apparent in the Piazza del Popolo, his work of 
 widest scope and freest fancy and the product of his 
 most mature talent. Elegance, proportion, and formal- 
 ity are the qualities on which Valadier relies. His com- 
 position is simple, polished, and formal, and the note 
 of affectation ingrained in the art of that period is 
 given in the Egyptian character of some of the or- 
 naments and accessories. This character was imdoubt- 
 edly suggested by the obelisk, but it is a curious coin- 
 cidence that many archaeological remains of Egyptian 
 origin have been discovered in this part of Rome. 
 
 The allegorical groups placed behind the fountains 
 represent on the side of the Pincian the god Mars in 
 full armor, supported by the river-gods Anio and Tiber, 
 [ 245 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 each with his respective emblem, one of the emblems 
 belonging to the Tiber being the figure of Mercury, the 
 god of trade. On the side toward the river the group 
 represents Neptune between two Tritons. These groups 
 are by Valadier, and their mass of elaborate detail 
 proves an admirable foil to the fountains beneath, 
 which in their great simplicity are among the very 
 loveliest in Rome. Small white marble sphinxes, said 
 to be made out of blocks of Greek marble, found under 
 the sea at the time that the bronze vase of Mithradates 
 in the Palazzo dei Conservatori was discovered, mark 
 the descending grades along the curving wall, and, as 
 might be expected, statues of the four seasons adorn 
 its four terminal piers. 
 
 These conventional figiu-es are the work of various 
 and now Uttle known artists of Valadier's time or later. 
 The effect of Valadier's creation has been somewhat 
 marred by the huge monument to King Victor Em- 
 manuel I of Italy. This ponderous and tasteless ma- 
 sonry rises in a series of three tiers, placed one above 
 the other, against the Pincian Hill, and makes a hard 
 and artificial background to the fountains in the 
 square. Besides being far less attractive than the green 
 turf and Uving foUage, this monument is quite out of 
 proportion to all its surroundings. It occupies the place 
 where Valadier had intended in the first instance to 
 construct a vast fountain, which was to rise in various 
 jets on the summit of the hill now bordered by the es- 
 planade and balustrade, and descend in cascades from 
 terrace to terrace imtU it gained the level of the piazza. 
 [ 246 ] 
 
Piazza del Popolo from the West. 
 
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO 
 
 The scheme was abandoned for lack of water. Only the 
 aqueducts of imperial Rome could have furnished the 
 amount required for such a fountain. The design was 
 most imposing, but it is possible that Valadier himself 
 may have relinquished it wiUingly. He was keenly alive 
 to the beauty of proportion, and the monmnent to " II 
 Re Galantuomo" shows how incongruous a Niagara 
 would have been amid such circumscribed and highly 
 finished surroundings. 
 
 When the time came to carry out Valadier's design 
 for the foimtains about the obehsk, Domenico Fon- 
 tana's massive old basin was removed from its position 
 on the south side of that monument and placed in the 
 gardens of San Pietro in Montorio, now the public gar- 
 dens on the Janiculum. Then the low stone terrace 
 with its five steps was built around the base of the ob- 
 ehsk, and the four comers of this terrace were marked 
 by miniature pyramids of seven steps, the top of each 
 pyramid supporting an Egyptian Uoness couchant 
 carved of Carrara. The water gushes in a copious fan- 
 shaped stream from the mouths of these beasts and 
 falls into four massive travertine basins, each basin set 
 so close against the base of its pyramid that the lower 
 steps of the pyramid project well over a portion of the 
 basin's rim. The task of providing a modem architec- 
 tural setting to an Egyptian obehsk is probably an im- 
 possible one. It must be conceded, however, that 
 Valadier, while not achieving the impossible, did suc- 
 ceed in producing a design which enhances the dignity 
 and importance of the obehsk, considered as the central 
 
 [ 249 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 architectural feature in a Roman square. More than 
 this could not be expected, and as much as this has not 
 been achieved by any other architect. The obeUsk on 
 Monte Cavallo is in no way affected by the objects 
 grouped about it. It is as utterly detached from the 
 Roman fountain and the Greek statues at its base as 
 though it stood by itself at Alexandria. Bernini's ex- 
 travaganzas, in which the Egyptian symbol of the mys- 
 tery of Ufe becomes the meaningless centrepiece for a 
 banal fountain, have long ceased to give pleasure. It 
 is doubtful whether the obelisk was altogether pleas- 
 ing to the ancient Romans. They could not fail to ad- 
 mire its austere dignity and strength, and they re- 
 garded it as the insignia of supreme power, human or 
 divine. Roman Emperors from Augustus onward con- 
 stantly imported them to Rome to celebrate a victory, 
 to adorn a circus, or to place in pairs, one on either 
 side of the entrance to a tomb. But when the Romans 
 re-erected an obelisk, whether in Rome, in Egypt, or in 
 Constantinople, they frequently, if not always, raised 
 the monoUth a perceptible distance above the pKnth of 
 the base. On the four comers of this plinth they placed 
 a bronze crab — one of the emblems of Apollo — or, as in 
 Constantinople, a square of metal, and the obelisk it- 
 self rested upon these, daylight being distinctly visible 
 between the obelisk and its base. The crabs were fixed 
 into the plinth of the base by huge bronze dowels, and 
 other dowels ran up into the four corners of the ob- 
 elisk, holding it in place. The obelisk in New York, its 
 mate in London, the larger Constantinople obelisk, and 
 [ 25o ] 
 
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO 
 
 the Vatican obelisk were all re-erected by the Romans 
 in that way. Opinions differ as to the reason for this 
 departure from the original Egyptian method, but the 
 decorative effect of this bold but simple device is at 
 once apparent. It is obvious that an obehsk mounted 
 in this way lends itself more easily to alien architec- 
 tural smroundings. 
 
 This obelisk of the Piazza del Popolo was brought 
 to Rome by young Octavius, afterward the Emperor 
 Augustus, to honor his victory over Mark Antony at 
 the battle of Actium, B. C. 3i. Octavius believed that 
 he owed his triumph to Apollo; and this obelisk erected 
 by an Egyptian monarch of the XlXth dynasty be- 
 fore the great temple in HeUopoUs, the city of the 
 sun, seemed an altogether appropriate trophy. Octa- 
 vius erected it in the Circus Maximus, where it stood 
 throughout the greatest days of the Roman Empire. 
 But the fate of the Roman obelisks had overtaken it 
 at some time, for when Domenico Fontana suggested 
 to Sixtus V to remove it to its present position it was 
 lying broken in three pieces under masses of rubbish 
 on the site of the old Circus. 
 
 There is no inscription upon the four fountains of 
 the Uonesses. They are to be regarded solely as ad- 
 juncts architecturally suitable to the obeUsk, the inter- 
 est of which must transcend all minor annals. 
 
 In developing his design for the Piazza del Popolo, 
 Valadier had to consider and amalgamate the architec- 
 tural features of many previous generations ; for here in 
 the Piazza del Popolo are grouped the works of a great 
 [ 25l ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 number of Roman architects — ^men of the very first 
 distinction in their own time and who have left the im- 
 print of their industry or genius upon a large part of 
 modem Rome. Baccio PinteUi, Michelangelo, Vignola, 
 Carlo Fontana, Rainaldi, and Bernini were at work 
 here in the centuries preceding Valadier, but to this 
 last was given an opportunity of combining the past 
 with the works of his own creation, such as had not 
 fallen to the lot of any other Roman architect since the 
 days when Michelangelo remodelled the Capitol. 
 
 Throughout the Middle Ages, all that part of Rome 
 which hes between the Flaminian Gate and the Church 
 of San Lorenzo in Lucina on the Corso was almost 
 devoid of human habitation and given over entirely 
 to orchards and gardens. This condition still prevailed 
 when Sixtus IV (i47i-i484) demohshed the old Fla- 
 minian Gate, through which, some five hundred years 
 before, the Saracens had captured Rome. He did this 
 in order to build the modern Porta del Popolo. It was 
 by way of this Porta del Popolo that Charles VIII 
 of France entered the city on New Year's Day, i495, 
 with the most imposing and brilliant force of arms 
 which modern Rome had ever beheld. At three o'clock 
 on the winter's afternoon, the great gates opened to 
 receive them, and it was nine at night before they 
 could close. For six hours the great procession marched 
 down the Corso, and when darkness fell torches and 
 flambeaus were lighted and held aloft by the march- 
 ing troops. The advance-guard of Swiss and Germans 
 was followed by five thousand Gascons, small of stat- 
 
 [ 252 ] 
 
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO 
 
 ure and very agile, like the bersaglieri of the present 
 day. Then came the cavalry, twenty-five hundred 
 cuirassiers from the French nobiUty, all arrayed in silk 
 mantles and golden collars, and each knight followed 
 by his squire and grooms leading three additional 
 horses. Then more cavalry, and finally four hundred 
 archers, of whom one hundred were Scotch. These last 
 formed the body-guard of the King, who rode sur- 
 rounded by two hundred of the greatest of his nobles; 
 and among these came Cardinal Giuliano deUa Rovere, 
 afterward Pope Julius II, at that time papal legate to 
 France and the most implacable enemy of the Pope 
 whose territory they were invading. "The King," 
 wrote Brantdme, "was in full armor; lance on thigh 
 as though pricking toward a foe. Riding thus in full 
 and furious order of battle, trumpet sounding, drums 
 a-beating," the rattle and rumble of the artillery bring- 
 ing up the rear, Charles made his way to the Palazzo 
 di Venezia, whence he issued his edicts and gave his 
 orders, while his army, with all its network of sen- 
 tries and pickets, occupied the city as though it were 
 Paris. 
 
 Pope Alexander VI fled to the Vatican and, later, 
 to the Castle of St. Angelo. Very little came — or, for 
 the time, very Httle seemed to come — of all this gUtter 
 and commotion. " Charles VIII and his lusty company 
 of young men, among them the youthful Bayard, aU of 
 good family, " says the old chronicler, "but Httle mider 
 control," were making a holiday war. They could 
 not have comprehended the great forces that were at 
 [ 253 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 work beneath the noisy agitation of their enterprise. 
 Yet King and nobles fell at once under the speU of 
 Italy. Charles VIII, bred in the fortress castles of 
 Louis XI, wrote home to his sister, Anne de Beaujeu, 
 describing the loveUness of his Neapolitan gardens and 
 the genius of the Italian painters who were to do won- 
 derful ceilings for him when he had carried them back 
 to France. Before he quitted Rome, the army got one 
 day of piUage and the King founded the Church of the 
 Trinita de' Monti. Then after six months more of pic- 
 turesque soldiering Charles went back to France, plan- 
 ning his return already in his heart, and taking with 
 him over the Alpine passes an army which spread the 
 legend of Italy far and wide through the northern 
 countries. In the fifteenth centiuy there were but two 
 ways for a man to see the world. Either he went on pil- 
 grimage to some far-distant shrine or he had to join 
 an army of invasion ! Charles VIII did not return, but 
 he had shown his subjects the way to Rome, having 
 been the first French King to cross the Alps since 
 Charlemagne. Even before the Porta del Popolo was 
 finished and long after the orchards and gardens of this 
 district had been converted into the spacious Piazza 
 del Popolo, Rome and France felt the influence for evil 
 and for good set in motion by this unjustifiable and 
 light-hearted incursion of (as the old Huguenot histo- 
 rian calls him) a "madly adventurous yoimg King." 
 Modern methods of travel have deprived men of 
 one of fife's greatest sensations. Lovers of Rome know 
 this. One of them, a schoolboy, spoke for all when he 
 [ 254 ] 
 
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO 
 
 came out of the railway station, exclaiming in bitter 
 disappointment: "So this is ancient Rome ! It might as 
 well be modem Chicago ! " The Piazza del Popolo is no 
 longer the entrance haU to the Eternal City. It must 
 be sought for, with guide-book or map; but when it is 
 found there is no better way to revive the ghost of that 
 thrill which came spontaneously to those who entered 
 Rome by the Porta del Popolo than to seat oneself 
 upon the edge of one of Valadier's fountains, prefer- 
 ably the western one, and then — ^to try to think ! 
 
 [ 255 ] 
 
PINCIAN 
 
/;; 
 
 PINCIAN 
 
 Until quite recently the Acqua Felice fed all the 
 fountains on the Pincian Hill, and the altitude of its 
 source is so nearly the same as the top of the hill, 
 where the pubUc gardens are situated, that the only 
 kind of fountain possible there was a sheet of water; 
 so the sculptor of the chief fountain in the Pincian 
 Gardens, Coxmt Brazza, the elder, made a virtue out 
 of necessity and created a fountain in which any kind 
 of jet d'eau would be distinctly out of place. Brazza's 
 white marble group of the infant Moses and his 
 mother stands, set about with taU aquatic plants, in 
 the centre of a large white marble basin, which is filled 
 with placid yet ever-changing water, and it is so hap- 
 pily suited, both in subject and treatment, to its pur- 
 pose that the absence of action iu the water is never 
 felt. On the contrary, plashing water would be a false 
 note in the quiet and legendary harmony of this com- 
 position, and the higher jet produced by the recent 
 [ 259 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 change of water is no improvement. The bibKcal story 
 is portrayed with great natm-ahiess and dignity. The 
 mother of Moses has placed the basket containing her 
 sleeping infant among the rushes, which are repre- 
 sented by the Uving plants. As she rises to move away, 
 she pauses, on one knee, to implore divine protection 
 for the child whom she must abandon to his fate. The 
 heroic size of the figure enhances the strength and dig- 
 nity of the artist's conception. The design is Httle in 
 sympathy with the gay and crowded life of the Pincian 
 Gardens, during the afternoon, but aU through the 
 morning hours this fountain becomes the centre of one 
 of the world's most tender settings for the comedy of 
 childhood and early youth. The civilization which man 
 has made and kept can show nothing fairer than the 
 Pincian Gardens at that time. The soft Roman sun- 
 shine then filters through the ilex branches only upon 
 groups of Uttle children and their nurses, solitary old 
 men who have become as little children, and bands 
 of seminarists or theological students wearing black or 
 scarlet gowns and speaking divers tongues. The little 
 company occupy the benches, or walk demurely in 
 small groups beneath the trees, or play the endless 
 plays of babyhood, in and out of the warm shadows; 
 all of them living in a dreamland as old as life itself, 
 and finding in this quiet garden of the Eternal City a 
 background full of sympathy and significance. Up and 
 down the shaded alleys, linking the present to the great 
 past, stretch the long rows of portrait busts placed 
 there by order of Mazzini during the short-lived Maz- 
 [ 260 ] 
 
PINCIAN 
 
 zinian Republic of 1849. This is what has been called 
 "The Silent Company of the Pincio." No happier fate 
 can befall an imaginative child from northern lands 
 than to wadder at will through this Roman playground. 
 All unconsciously the classic beauty is woven into his 
 spiritual fibre, and with that strange sensation of com- 
 ing into his own — ^peculiar to such children — ^he finds, 
 in these seemingly endless rows of white marble heads, 
 faces which stimulate his fancy or fit the names of he- 
 roes already known to him. 
 
 In the centre of the garden stands an obelisk the his- 
 tory of which brings back the memory of a beautiful 
 pagan youth who lived more than eighteen hundred 
 years ago, and of another story of Old Nile, more piti- 
 ful, if less important, than the story of Moses. This is 
 the obelisk which the Emperor Hadrian and his Em- 
 press Sabina raised to the memory of their beloved 
 Antinous — the most beautiful youth the world has 
 record of — ^who drowned himself in the Egyptian river, 
 imder the impression that his volimtary death would 
 avert calamity from his benefactor the Emperor. After 
 all these eighteen hundred years it is stiU possible to 
 feel the passion of Hadrian's grief. His biographer calls 
 it "feminine"! But the gifted Emperor, lover of all 
 things beautiful in art and nature, and a student of 
 men and character, understood the value of his trea- 
 sure and knew full well the irreparableness of his loss. 
 He brought back to Rome all that was left of that 
 beauty — an lu-nful of ashes — and placed it in the Em- 
 peror's own tomb, now called the Castle of St. Angelo; 
 [ 261 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 and on the spina of the circus by the tomb, Hadrian 
 and Sabina erected this obelisk whose hieroglyphics, 
 only quite recently deciphered, relate the deification 
 of their favorite and give the information concerning 
 his place of burial. The obelisk must have been re- 
 moved by a later Emperor, probably HeUogabalus, for 
 it was found in iByo, near Santa Croce in Gerusa- 
 lemme, in the gardens of the Varian family, to which 
 family that Emperor belonged. Bernini, in the century 
 foUowihg its discovery, moved it to the Barberini Pal- 
 ace, which he was erecting and beautifying for the 
 Barberini Pope, Urban VIII. Later on, a Princess Bar- 
 berini presented it to Pope Pius VI, who set it up in 
 the Giardino della Pigna in the Vatican, that tempo- 
 rary resting-place for so many treasures, and finally, in 
 1822, Pius VII and Valadier erected it where it now 
 stands in full view of Hadrian's Tomb, they being 
 quite unconscious, however, that there was any con- 
 nection between it and that great mausoleum. 
 
 T>f ot far from the fountain of Moses stand two um- 
 brella-pines, their great boles shooting high up through 
 aU the foUage about. A hundred years ago they marked 
 the exit into a side lane from the vineyard where they 
 had been planted, for until that time these Gardens of 
 the Pincio had been for centiu-ies the vineyard belong- 
 ing to the Augustinian monks of Santa Maria del Po- 
 polo, the same order from which, about i494> young 
 Cardinal Farnese bought the property by the Tiber, 
 on which he built the Farnese Palace. 
 
 The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo had been 
 [ 262 ] 
 
PINCIAN 
 
 built by the Roman people in the twelfth century, and 
 from that time on it and the Augustinian convent be- 
 side it became the first hospice eind sanctuary to the 
 pUgrims from beyond the Alps. This was because the 
 church and convent stand close to the Porta del Popolo, 
 the gateway to the Flaminian Road, which is the great 
 highway leading to the north. 
 
 With these Augustinian monks stayed young Martin 
 Luther when business connected with that order had 
 brought him to Rome. The German seminarist who 
 threads his way to-day among the Pincian alleys must 
 often cross those vanished paths in the vineyard once 
 trodden by the sandaUed feet of his great fellow coun- 
 tryman, since Luther's northern feeUng for nature 
 would surely have carried him at dawn or sunset to the 
 convent's vineyard. There the voices of the birds and 
 the well-trained vines could soothe a spirit dazed and 
 disquieted by the splendors and vices of Rome. The 
 history of the German Reformation may well have had 
 its earUest beginnings in the thoughts which thronged 
 the mind of that young monk, as he leaned upon the 
 vineyard wall and gazed with eyes that saw and saw 
 not at the papal city, where old St. Peter's — the 
 church in which Charlemagne had been crowned — ^was 
 being made over by Bramante into its present form; 
 and beside it the huge pile of the Vatican housed the 
 fighting Pope, Julius II, and a hierarchy of utter world- 
 liaess. 
 
 The monks retained possession of their Pincian vine- 
 yard during the three following centuries, or until 1809, 
 [ 263 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 at which time Napoleon annexed the Papal States to 
 his Empire, banished the recalcitrant Pope, Pius VII, 
 and set about making Rome over to suit himself. He 
 found the architect who had worked for Pius VI and 
 Pius VII equally ready to serve him, and it was to this 
 architect, Giuseppe Valadier, that Napoleon intrusted 
 the conversion of the old convent vineyard into the 
 Pincian Gardens of the present day. The work was 
 not begun until 1812, and before it was finished Pius 
 VII was back in Rome, and Napoleon was eating out 
 his heart in St. Helena. In that long dying, when this 
 last of the world's great conquerors had time to re- 
 member even aU that he himself had done, Napoleon 
 must have often thought of Rome. The old mother 
 who had always believed in him, yet never looked up 
 to him, stiU lived there in her sombre palace under the 
 shadow of the Austrian Legation and the Austrian 
 hate. His favorite sister, Pauline, was a princess of one 
 of the greatest of the Roman families; and the httle 
 son, who was to grow up as the Austrian Duke of 
 Reichstadt, was still, to his father, the King of Rome. 
 Did he ever think of the instructions he had given to 
 Valadier about a public garden for the Romans ? There 
 was time to think of everything as the seasons came 
 and went and the remote seas washed the crags be- 
 neath his feet, while his EngUsh jailers watched him 
 from a distance with hard, uncomprehendiag eyes. 
 
 It is something of a shock to find Napoleon's bust in 
 that company of great Itahans which Mazzini placed 
 here. In these Pincian Gardens, as elsewhere in the 
 
 [ 264 ] 
 
PINCIAN 
 
 world, he surely belongs in a niche by himself ! How- 
 ever, the Roman episode was of small importance in his 
 life, and he would not have grudged the honorable po- 
 sition to Valadier, whose bust stands alone facing the 
 principal promenade of the Pincian. That architect 
 Uved to welcome back the exiled Pius VII and to finish 
 for him the gardens begun by order of Napoleon. 
 
 One explanation of Rome's charm may be found in 
 her power of suggestion. Although the things to be seen 
 in the Eternal City are of transcendent interest, the 
 things which are only apprehended have a still stronger 
 hold upon the imagination. The actual loveliness of the 
 Pincian Gardens is forgotten as the archaeologists build 
 up from buried marbles and scattered inscriptions the 
 life hved here in centuries gone by. Where now is Va- 
 ladier's casino there stood in the second century of our 
 era a great Romsm dwelling, the home of a patrician 
 family. Christian in faith, its members holding from 
 generation to generation high offices of state and called 
 by historians "the noblest of the noble." The grounds 
 about this house of the Acilii included not only the 
 present pubhc gardens but also the precincts of the 
 Villa Medici, the garden and convent of the Sacred 
 Heart, eind a part of the Villa Borghese. It would be 
 impossible to find nowadays in any land the exact 
 coimterpart of this Roman dweUing. Its comfort, splen- 
 dor and universal perfection of detsul could not be sur- 
 passed, perhaps not equalled. Its artificially heated 
 bathrooms, the cool, dark recesses of the wine-cellars, 
 the courts and offices and state apartments, the de- 
 [ 265 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 vices for garden and fountain building, everything 
 which made up this perfect specimen of the highest 
 domestic civilization the world has known, has been 
 discovered on the Pincian Hill. The great buttresses 
 which this private family built to sustain the north- 
 western boundaries of their terraced garden still sup- 
 port the pubUc gardens of to-day, and were incorpo- 
 rated by the Emperor Avu-elian into the great wall with 
 which he smrounded the city. Surely no stories of the 
 Pincian can ever give so good an idea of the power, 
 solidity, and grandeur of Rome as do these archaeolog- 
 ical discoveries, which show in fullest detail the do- 
 mestic life of the Roman patrician under the Antonines. 
 Of all this the northwestern buttresses of the Pincian 
 Hill and the immortality of Nature alone remain. 
 
 Napoleon was only following in the footsteps of an- 
 other Emperor, when he created these gardens; for the 
 Emperor Aurelian made the groimds — ^which had been 
 the estate of the Acilii — ^into a public park. So whether 
 owned by private individuals or by Emperor, church, 
 or municipaUty, the Pincian has always been known 
 as the Hill of Gardens; and the water which now feeds 
 its pubhc fountains is once more the Acqua Marcia — 
 the same water which supplied the fountains, baths, 
 and fish-ponds of the great Antonine villa. 
 
 [ 266 ] 
 
FONTANA PAOLA 
 
FONTANA PAOLA 
 
 Throughout Roman history the Janiculum has suf- 
 fered many alternations of peace idyllic and of san- 
 guinary strife, for it is a natural garden, and it is also 
 the key to Rome. Whoever can hold the terraces of San 
 Pietro in Montorio and the heights to the north and 
 south has the city at his mercy. At the present day the 
 Villa PamphiU-Doria and the Villa Garibaldi crown 
 its summit £ind stretch downward toward the west, 
 and its southeastern slope, leading toward the Tiber, 
 once contained the gardens of Juhus Caesar — ^those 
 gardens where he received Cleopatra and which he left 
 by his will to the Roman people. One of the earUest 
 chapters in Roman history teUs how Lars Porsena came 
 [ 269 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 over the Janiculum to reinstate the Tarquins, and one 
 of the latest recounts the struggle carried on across its 
 heights and terraces in Garibaldi's defense of the Maz- 
 zinian Roman Republic, Like the gardens of Ischia 
 and the vineyards on Vesuvius, which are forever 
 threatened by earthquake or eruption, the Janiculum 
 villas wiU have, so long as war lasts, a precarious exist- 
 ence; but with villas, gardens, and vineyards, so great 
 is the fertility of the soil and so enchanting the 
 prospect, while the world endures men wiU take 
 the risk. 
 
 The water for this part of the city was brought to 
 Rome by the Emperors Augustus and Trajan. Trajan 
 built the aqueduct bearing his name; and this aque- 
 duct, like that of the Virgo, has, in spite of many vicis- 
 situdes continued to supply Rome with a varying 
 quantity of water from that time until the present day. 
 The Emperor brought the water thirty-five miles from 
 Lake Bracciano to the Janiculum. It was almost the 
 last water brought to Rome and entered the city at the 
 level of two hundred and three feet above the sea. The 
 first water (the Appian) had entered Rome fifty feet 
 under ground. Trajan used the water from the springs 
 about Lake Bracciano, not from the lake itself, be- 
 cause the spring-water was much purer and the ancient 
 Romans were fastidious in the water they used. Alsie- 
 tina water, for instance, brought to Rome by Augustus, 
 was considered fit only for baths and the naumachise; 
 and Frontinus says that, as a matter of fact, the water 
 was intended for that purpose only and for the irriga- 
 [ 270 ] 
 
FONTANA PAOLA 
 
 tion of the gardens across the Tiber. Christian Rome 
 w£is far from being so particular, and its inhabitants 
 drank Tiber water as late as Michelangelo's time. Dur- 
 ing the "Golden days of the Renaissance in Rome" 
 Virgo water, which was to be had intermittently from 
 the Trevi fountain, and a remnant of this Acqua Trai- 
 ana still flowing in the fountain of Innocent VIII were 
 the only pure waters. Meantime many Romans of that 
 period preferred the Tiber water; and Petrarch coming 
 to Rome gave special instructions to a friend to have a 
 quantity of Tiber water which had stood for a day or 
 two, to settle, ready for his use. Paul III took with him, 
 on his journey to Nice to meet the Emperor Charles V 
 and King Francis I of France, a supply of Tiber water, 
 so that he might not miss his customary beverage ! 
 When, therefore. Pope Paul V bethought him of re- 
 constructing the Trajan Aqueduct he had nothing to 
 hinder him from collecting the water from every avail- 
 able source. He used Trajan water from the springs, 
 water from Lake Rracciano, and water from Lake Al- 
 sietina as well. Ry this means the united water now 
 called the Acqua Paola, although not so pure as the 
 former Acqua Treuana, is yet good enough, and it forms 
 a supply of magnificent quantity and force. Paul V's 
 intention was to surpass the Acqua FeUce, brought to 
 Rome some twenty years previously by Sixtus V. No 
 one could forget Sixtus V and the Acqua Fehce. Was 
 not the water always before men's eyes as it gushed 
 out of the great fountain of Moses on the side of the 
 Viminal Hill; and did not every Roman know that 
 [ 271 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 Cavaliere Domenico Fontana had brought it there by 
 order of Sixtus V ? The Borghese pontiff determined to 
 erect another fountain, across the Tiber, on the Janic- 
 ulum, which was a still more commanding position, 
 and to buUd another aqueduct for Rome, so that there 
 should be an Acqua Paola as well as an Acqua FeUce, 
 and men should remember Paul V even as they re- 
 membered Sixtus V. 
 
 Domenico Fontana had just died in Naples, rich and 
 honored by the Neapolitans, but there were others at 
 hand of that renowned family of architects. Fontana's 
 elder brother Giovanni was still alive, and had great 
 skill in hydraulics; and Carlo Mademo, his nephew, 
 was also to be had. So in 1611 Paul V employed these 
 two to build his great fountain on the Janiculum. This 
 fountain is made of travertine, adorned with six Ionic 
 columns of red granite taken from the Temple of Mi- 
 nerva in the Forum Transitorium. Other portions of 
 the same beautiful ruin were sawed into slabs and used 
 in the decoration of the fountain. The design is that of 
 a church fagade in the style of the florid and debased 
 Renaissance. It consists of five arches, three colossal 
 ones in the middle, directly under the great inscription 
 which they support, and on each side smaller arches. 
 The three centre cascades fall into a huge semicircular 
 basin, which is sunk into the ground, while the arches 
 on the side have small individual basins in which to 
 receive the water. The inscription, which is a magnifi- 
 cent example of Renaissance caUgraphy, gives the his- 
 tory of the Paola Aqueduct and the pontifical dates. A 
 [ 272 ] 
 
FONTANA PAOLA 
 
 smaller inscription describes the final completion of 
 the fomitain under Alexander VIII. 
 
 PAVI.VS • QVINTVS • PONTIFEX • MAXIMVS 
 
 AQVAM • IN ■ AGRO • BRACCIANENSI 
 
 SALVBERRBMIS • E • FONTIBVS • COLLECTAM 
 
 VETERIBVS • AQVAE • ALSIETINAE • DVCTIBVS • RESTITVTIS 
 
 NOVISQVE ■ ADDITIS 
 
 XXXV • AB • MILLIARIO • DVXIT 
 
 ANNO • DOMINI • MDCXII • PONTIFICATVS • SVI • SEPTIMO 
 
 ALEXANDER • VHI • OTTHOBONVS • VENETVS • P • H 
 
 PAVLI • V • P ■ PROVIDENTISSIMI • PONT • BENEFICIVH 
 
 TVTATVS 
 
 REPVRGATO • SPECV • NOVISQVE • FONTIBVS • INDVCTIS 
 
 RTVOS • SVIS • QVEMQVE • LABRIS • OLIM • ANGVSTE 
 
 CONTENTOS 
 
 VNICO • EODEMQVE • PERAMPIO • LAC V ■ EXCITATO • RECEPIT 
 
 AREAM • ADVERSVS • LABEM • MONTIS • SVBSTRVXIT 
 
 ET • LAPIDEO • MARGINE • TERMINAVIT • ORNAVITQVE 
 
 ANNO • SALVTIS • MDCLXXXX • PONTIFICATVS • SVI 
 
 SECVND 
 
 This water, drawn from the purest of springs, in the 
 neighborhood of Bracciano, was conducted by Pope Paul 
 the fifth, thirty-five miles from its source, over ancient 
 channels of the Alsietine aqueduct, which he restored, 
 and new ones, which he added. 
 
 In the year of the Lord 1612, and of PauVs Pontifi- 
 cate the seventh. 
 
 Pope Alexander the eighth, Ottoboni, of Venice, in 
 protection of the beneficent work of that most far- 
 [ 273 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL EOME 
 
 sighted pontiff, Paul the fifth, recleaned the channel, 
 admitted water from new sources, and constructed a 
 single capacious reservoir for the common reception of 
 the several streams which had formerly been strictly con- 
 fined each to its own channel. To prevent the wearing 
 away of the hill, he paved the surrounding area, sur- 
 rounding and beautifying it with a marble coping. In 
 the year of Salvation 1690, and of Alexander's pontif- 
 icate the second. 
 
 The Borghese griffins and eagles compose the deco- 
 ration of the mostra, and the whole structure is sur- 
 mounted by the papal insignia and the arms of Paul V, 
 the escutcheon being guarded by two angels. 
 
 In Maggi's book on the fountains of Rome, printed 
 in 1618, there is an engraving of this fountain. It is rep- 
 resented as having four griffins and two eagles spouting 
 water into the basins as do the Uons in Sixtus V's 
 Fountain of the Moses. This device is not shown in 
 Falda's engraving a generation later, nor does Pira- 
 nesi show it. It is probable that this feature existed 
 only on paper in the original design for the fountain. 
 Under the two side niches of the actual foimtain the 
 water spouts from lions' mouths. From the three centre 
 niches it simply pours in three cascades, equal in size, 
 and of really magnificent force and volume. The effect 
 of this water in fuU sunshine is dazzling in the extreme, 
 and both in sight and sound the fountain must have 
 been as conspicuous as Paul V could have wished it to 
 be. Paul V never saw it completed, for he died in 162 1, 
 ten years after the fountain was begun. It was finished 
 
 [ 274 ] 
 
PONTANA PAOLA 
 
 by Alexander VIII in 1690, eight pontificates later. It 
 was, therefore, seventy-eight years in building, whereas 
 Domenico Fontana built and unveiled the Fountain of 
 the Moses for Sixtus V within that Pope's own pontifi- 
 cate, which lasted only five years ! The Fontana Paola 
 is — ^to translate sight into sound — an echo of the Foun- 
 tain of the Moses. It has the characteristics of an echo 
 — ^it is magnified and meaningless. Giovanni Fontana 
 and Maderno could not free themselves from the taste 
 and traditions of the greater and more forceful Do- 
 menico. They did not mar the effect of their great 
 fountain by an absurd colossus, like the Moses, but 
 they made a mistake of another kind; they left the 
 central niche above the cascade absolutely empty, yet 
 failed to secure an adequate background for the eye to 
 rest upon, so that the structure, for all its. size and 
 magnificence, gives a disagreeable sense of vacancy and 
 incompleteness. However, as one studies the Fonta- 
 none, as this foimtain is commonly called, it becomes 
 apparent that its mostra must be regarded not as a 
 fagade, nor as a screen, but as a great water-gate. It is a 
 triumphal arch through which the water of the Pauline 
 Aqueduct makes its formal entry on the Janiculum in 
 the sight of all Rome. It is also built to hold before 
 the eyes of all Rome the inscription which sets forth 
 the history of Pope Paul V and the construction of the 
 aqueduct. The inscription is certainly the most suc- 
 cessful part of the mostra. It is adequately supported, 
 its dimensions are noble, and the lettering is remark- 
 ably beautiful. The entrance of the water, on the other 
 [ 275 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 hand, is not sufficiently imposing. The three streams 
 are not great enough in themselves to justify their 
 right to so pretentious a setting, and they require a 
 background which would augment their importance. 
 Through the huge arches, which were certainly never 
 intended to hold statuary, the eye should see the ap- 
 proach of the water either in a series of cascades or in 
 one broad flood like the serried ranks of a great army. 
 But to produce this effect it would be necessary for the 
 channel of the aqueduct to approach the fountaia di- 
 rectly from the rear and to have the casteUum or re- 
 ceiving tank immediately behind the mostra. It is no- 
 ticeable that neither in this fountain nor in the other 
 two great fountains of Rome — ^the Moses and the 
 Trevi — is this done. In all three the casteUum is at the 
 side of the mostra, and the water falls into the basins 
 at a right angle to the direction in which it enters the 
 fountain from the casteUum. This position of the cas- 
 teUum was obUgatory in the case of Trevi, as that 
 foimtain backs against the PoU Palace, but when the 
 Moses and Paola fountains were constructed they 
 stood free from aU other buUdings on open hillsides, 
 and the casteUum in either instance could be located 
 at wiU. In the Paola fountain the casteUum Ues to the 
 left of the mostra, as it faces the city, and the aque- 
 duct comes underground down the hiU forming the 
 boundary between the gardens now belonging to the 
 ViUa ChiaravigUo, which is a part of the American 
 Academy, and a smaU vUla owned by the Torlonia 
 fanuly, so that the stream approaches the fountain 
 [ 276 ] 
 
FONTANA PAOLA 
 
 obliquely. The ground directly back of the Paola 
 fountaia is occupied by a modem villa with a small 
 garden, and the entrance to the house as well as the 
 trees in the garden are clearly seen through the arches 
 of the mostra, which thus has more or less the appear- 
 ance from the front of a huge screen before a shriae 
 of no signification, while the view of it in profile is 
 too thia. The entire fountain seems to require a solid 
 background such as Giovanni Fontana gave to his 
 truly noble and beautiful fountain of the Ponte Sisto. 
 There the immense niche is placed against a massive 
 wall, and the gloom of the vaulted space is Ughted 
 by a gleaming cascade which issues not at the base 
 of the niche but high up iu the very spring of the 
 arch. This cascade falls into a projecting vase, also 
 near the roof, and thence descends ia heavy spray to 
 the black pool beneath. On either side this pool jets 
 of water spouting from the Borghese grififins cross like 
 flashing rapiers — a natural enough fancy to an artist 
 living ia an age when the thrust and parry of the 
 rapier were known to all men. This most artistic of all 
 the Fontana fountains was also erected for Paul V. 
 It used to stand on the other side of the Tiber, oppo- 
 site the Strada Giulia, but ia recent years, when the 
 Tiber embankment was constructed, the fountaia w£is 
 taken down and set up in its present position at the 
 head of the Ponte Sisto. If the waters of the Fon- 
 tanone had received some such treatment as this, 
 Paul V's greatest fountain might have indeed rivalled 
 those of ancient Rome. 
 
 [ 277 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL BOME 
 
 Paul V (Borghese), sumamed by the friends of the 
 Aldobrandini "the Grand Ingrate," succeeded to the 
 papacy in i6o5. His immediate predecessor had been 
 the Medici pontiff, Leo XI, but Leo died twenty-six 
 days after his election, so that Paul V's real fore- 
 runner was Clement VIII (Aldobrandini). 
 
 The Borghese family came originally from Siena. 
 When the Spaniard took that heroic and beautiful 
 city, PhiUp II handed her over to the Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany, and many Sienese families emigrated, rather 
 than submit to the rule of the Medici. Camillo Bor- 
 ghese, the father of Paul V, emigrated to Rome, where 
 his son Camillo, the futiu-e pontiff, was bom. This was 
 in i552, Juhus III being then Pope. CamiUo's career 
 began in the law, as has been the case with so many of 
 those who have risen to the See of St. Peter. He studied 
 in Perugia and Padua; was sent on a mission to Spain, 
 and, proving successful there, was given the Red Hat 
 in iBgS by Clement VIII, he being at that time forty- 
 four years of age. Living as cardinal, quietly and unob- 
 trusively among his books and documents, he had 
 seemed to Peter Aldobrandini, who was the all-power- 
 ful nephew of Clement VIII, the very man to carry on 
 Clement's steady policy of restoring the French influ- 
 ence at Rome and of keeping his own family in power. 
 The Aldobrandini had left Florence from hatred of 
 the Medici, as the Borghese had left Siena, and Peter 
 felt that in the case of Camillo Borghese he could 
 rely upon feelings similar to his own to back up the 
 coalition of himself and France against Spain. With the 
 [ 278 ] 
 
Mostra of the " Fontanone." 
 
FONTANA PAOLA 
 
 premature death of Leo XI all the complicated ma- 
 chinery of the conclave had had to be put in motion 
 once again, and iu this second conclave the nephew of 
 Clement VIII was the most powerful of the forces at 
 work. He threw his influence for Cardinal Borghese, 
 and Paul V undoubtedly owed his election to that 
 fact. Peter Aldobrandini had been a very great papal 
 nephew, indeed, and he expected from the Borghese 
 pontiff a proper recognition of his services. Even with 
 the keenest sense of humor in the world. Cardinal Al- 
 dobrandini would have found it hard not to feel re- 
 sentment when he learned that Cardinal Borghese, now 
 Paul V, considered his unsought-for election to the 
 papal chair entirely due to the direct intervention of 
 the Holy Spirit, and that in consequence he owed 
 nothing whatever to earthly aid. It was because Paul 
 V carried this idea so far on the one hand, and on the 
 other poiu-ed such lavish favors upon his own kin, that 
 he won for himself the name of "the Grand Ingrate." 
 Looking upon himself as divinely appointed in a 
 marked and special degree, the quiet, unassuming car- 
 dinal became the opinionated and inflexible pontiff. He 
 administered the papal power, temporal and spiritual, 
 with the arrogance of a despot, the intolerance of an 
 inquisitor, and the formahty of the jiu-ist. During the 
 sixteen years of his pontificate he succeeded in rousing 
 bitter hostihty on aU sides. The aged Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany, who had Uved through nine pontificates and 
 had known both Sixtus V and Clement VIII, com- 
 plained that this Pope judged of the world as he would 
 [ 281 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 of one of the towns belonging to the papal territory 
 where everything was done according to the letter of 
 the law, and went on to say that in this respect there 
 would soon have to be a change. The year before his 
 election the gimpowder plot had fanned England into 
 a white heat of patriotism, and a new oath of alle- 
 giance was required by Parliament. Paul V was the 
 Pope who forbade the English Catholics to take it. He 
 also was the Pope who so mishandled the GaUican 
 Church that he forced the States General of i6i4 to 
 declare that the King of France held his power from 
 God alone; and, finally, it was Paul V who spent the 
 first two years of his pontificate in such a quarrel with 
 Venice as threatened to involve all Christendom. The 
 Republic so unflinchingly endured excommunication 
 and interdict that the Pope even thought of subduing 
 her by arms. He was brought to his senses only by the 
 fear that Venice in her extremity might call Protestant 
 powers to her aid and thus bring confusion and dis- 
 aster not only upon Italy but upon all Cathohc coun- 
 tries. In this grave crisis France took it upon herself 
 to mediate, and the dispute was finally settled, but 
 with httle honor to the papacy. It was a Venetian am- 
 bassador who has recorded of Clement VIII that when 
 he found he could not reform Florence without great 
 trouble he reformed his own mind. But Paul V did not, 
 like the wise Clement VIII, "look to his predecessors" 
 when in difficulties. Paul V had certainly no cause to 
 love the Venetians, and it is one of the quaint tricks of 
 history that his magnificent fountain on the Janiculum 
 was at last finished by a Venetian Pope. 
 [ 282 ] 
 
FONTANA PAOLA 
 
 Although the Fontanone was built in the seven- 
 \ teenth century, its most interesting associations are 
 ysonnected with modem Rome. It is pre-eminently the 
 tpimtain of the Risorgimento, for the last stand in 
 Garibaldi's three months' defense of the Roman Re- 
 pubhc was made upon the terraces surrounding this 
 water, and it was just above here that the worst fight- 
 ing occurred. 
 
 The second stage of the siege consisted of the nine 
 days' defense of the AureUan wall, behind which Gari- 
 baldi was intrenched. 
 
 This bit of wall runs northwest and southeast on 
 the eastern slope of the hiU, and within the walls of 
 Pope Urban VIII. At its northern end it is at about an 
 equal distance from the Fontanone and the Porta San 
 Pancrazio. When this defense broke down, the French 
 troops entered the city through a breach in the Urban 
 walls to the southwest of the fountain. The narrow 
 lane leading from this point to Porta San Pancrazio 
 was soon choked with the dead and dying. The Italians 
 and French fought hand to hand in the darkness, along 
 the road in front of the Villa Axu-elia, that road which is 
 to-day so quiet and so clean! During the previous 
 eight days bursting shells from the French batteries 
 erected on the walls and near the ViUa Corsini and the 
 Convent of San Pancrazio had wrought far-reachiag 
 havoc. 
 
 The Church of San Pietro in Montorio was used by 
 
 Garibaldi as a hospital, but its roof had collapsed, and 
 
 on the slopes above it all the great villas were in ruins. 
 
 To the northwest of the fountain, just above the Porta 
 
 [ 283 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 San Pancrazio, the Villa Savorelli (now the Villa Aure- 
 lia and the present -home of the American Academy) 
 stood up against the sky, a mere shell of blackened 
 walls. Outside the porta, the Vascello lay in masses of 
 crmnbled masonry, although Medici still held it for 
 Garibaldi. Farther up the hill, over the spot now oc- 
 cupied by the triumphal arch, towered the remains of 
 the magnificent Villa Corsini; before it the body of 
 Masina, stUl lying where the young lancer had fallen 
 after his last wild charge up the villa steps. Amid the 
 general devastation the Fontanone stood unscathed. 
 Its splendid stream of water flowed unpolluted, and 
 it fulfilled the noblest functions of a fountain during 
 the heat and carnage of that Roman June. 
 
 To those who are familiar with the story of the 
 heroic "Defense" a visit to Paul V's great fountain on 
 the Janiculum is not a bit of sight-seeing — ^it has be- 
 come a pilgrimage. 
 
 [ 284 ] 
 
MONTE CAVALLO 
 
MONTE CAVALLO 
 
 The fountain of the Monte Cavallo is overshadowed 
 both literally and figuratively by the size and impor- 
 tance of the objects which surround it. Without it the 
 obehsk, which fonns its background, and the great 
 groups of the Dioscuri, which flank it on either side, 
 would be sufficiently imposing and significant, either 
 separately or together, to form the central decora- 
 [ 287 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 tion of the Piazza of Monte Cavallo, or of any piazza 
 in any city; but the fountain is not entirely superflu- 
 ous. Its magnificent jet of water, thrown upward be- 
 tween the heads of the rearing horses and swept hither 
 and thither at the will of the wmd, buids together the 
 otherwise disjointed and inharmonious group. 
 
 This fountain is not the first one to be erected on 
 Monte CavaUo, but the first fountain w£is as sub- 
 servient as the present one to the colossal groups 
 which have given the name "Cavallo" to this entire 
 district. The Dioscuri were once a part of a kind of 
 open-air museum which, during the earUest days of 
 the papacy, existed on the slope of the Quirinal HiQ. 
 Gregory XIII had them removed to the Capitol, but 
 when Sixtus V had pm-chased from the heirs of Car- 
 dinal Caraffa the site and the partly erected buildings 
 of the Quirinal, he brought them back again and sub- 
 jected them to a thorough restoration, usiag for this 
 purpose the material from the base of one of them. 
 
 There has existed a villa on this spot antedating 
 Pope Sixtus V's time by many years. It had been 
 called the VUla d'Este, but it should not be confused 
 with the Villa d'Este, at Tivoli, although it was built 
 by the same Cardinal IppoUto of that family. 
 
 Sixtus V was extremely fond of this portion of the 
 city and with Fontana's assistance he created the mag- 
 nificent palace and surroundings which ever since his 
 day have been associated with sovereign power in 
 Rome. Fontana enlarged the piazza before the palace 
 in order to make it " commodious for consistories," and 
 [ 288 ] 
 
MONTE CAVALLO 
 
 he also lowered the grade in order to bring hither the 
 Acqua Felice. 
 
 There must have been many discussions between 
 Pope Sixtus V and his architect with regard to the 
 fountain on the Quirinal. Everything that Sixtus V 
 did he did thoroughly and magnificently, and it was 
 quite natural that he should desire a splendid fountain 
 before his own palace, considering that it was he him- 
 self who had made it possible, by the introduction of 
 the Acqua Felice, to have a fountain in that place at 
 aU. A rare old engraving shows that the foimtain, as at 
 first planned, resembled the Fountain of the Moses. 
 In it the Dioscuri occupy the niches as does the Moses 
 in the fountain on the Viminal. This plan was happily 
 abandoned. The great classic figures were erected as 
 they stand to-day in front of the palace, and Fontana 
 placed between the two groups, in the same position as 
 the fountain of the present day, the conventional large 
 basin and central vase which is to be seen in the old 
 engravings of the seventeenth century. It was certainly 
 neither a very original nor a very interesting design 
 and it must have rehed for its effect entirely upon the 
 copious supply of water which was described by Evelyn 
 in i644 as "two great rivers." 
 
 It is difficult to say when this old fountain of Fon- 
 tana's disappeared. It was probably removed either at 
 the time when Antinori erected the obehsk for Pius VI 
 or in the following pontificate when the same architect 
 suggested to Pius VII the idea of replacing it by the 
 present granite b£isia. This basin had stood since i5g4 
 [ 289 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 in the Campo Vaccino, the mediaeval name for the 
 ruins of the Roman Formn. It had been placed there 
 during the pontificate of Clement VIII (Aldobran- 
 dini) by the city magistrates on a piece of ground 
 given to them by Cardinal Famese, near the three col- 
 nmna of Castor and Pollux and the Church of S. Maria 
 Liberatrice. They had provided a high travertine base 
 for it, and it was fed from three jets of the Acqua Fe- 
 lice, which, some eight or nine years previously, had 
 been brought to Rome by Sixtus V. The basin was used 
 as a watering-trough for cattle, and by the time Pius 
 VII rescued it the travertine base had entirely disap- 
 peared under the gradually rising level of the Campo 
 Vaccino — ^that strange composite mass of rubbish, 
 earth, and ruins which, up to the second half of the 
 nineteenth century, covered the old Forum floor to a 
 depth of more than twenty feet. The basin measures 
 twenty-three metres in circumference, and when it was 
 thus sunk in the ground it became a pleasant pool 
 through which the carters walked their horses to re- 
 fresh them on a warm and dusty day. The removal of 
 this basin was actually accomplished in 1818, when the 
 architect Raphael Stem (who bmlt for Pius VII the 
 Bracchio Nuovo) designed the present foimtain of 
 Monte Cavallo. He sank the basin in the pavement 
 between the horse-tamers and erected in the middle of 
 it a second basin which rests upon a travertine base. 
 The water of the fountain rises in a copious jet from the 
 centre of the second basin to a height somewhat below 
 [ 290 1 
 
The Fountain of Monte Cavallo. 
 
MONTE CAVALLO 
 
 the heads of the horses and, returning on itself, falls in 
 a generous overflow into the lower basin. 
 
 To some, the chief interest of this composite group 
 of obeUsk, statuary, and fountain centres in this lower 
 basin, for it is none other than the granite tazza into 
 which Marforio once poured the water from his um, 
 far, far back in the days of Charlemagne, and no one 
 knows for how many years before that. 
 
 The obehsk which forms the centre of this group of 
 antiquities now clustered together in the Monte Ca- 
 vallo is one of a pair which flanked the entrance to the 
 Mausolemn of Augustus. Its mate was erected by Six- 
 tus V and Domenico Fontana near the Church of S. 
 Maria Maggiore. 
 
 Pius VI and Pius VII were the two Popes whose pon- 
 tificates coincide with the era of the French Revolu- 
 tion and the Napoleonic conquests. Their imhappy 
 stories are boimd up with the history of the Quirinal 
 Palace, which fronts upon the Monte CavaUo; and 
 they form a pitiful contrast to the hfe of that masterful 
 old Pontiff Sixtus V, in whose reign the history of the 
 palace and the modern piazza begins. Sixtus, having 
 destroyed, for no reason now known, the old mediaeval 
 papal palace of the Lateran, decided to rebufld it to suit 
 himself, but found, as the new building progressed, 
 that it was too cold and uncomfortable for a residence. 
 So the Lateran, which had been the papal palace since 
 the seventh century, holding its own against the mag- 
 nificence and enormous size of the Vatican, was gradu- 
 [ 293 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 ally abandoned as a residence, and Sixtus established 
 himself in the Quirinal. 
 
 Sixtus V, for all his detestation of classic statuary, 
 must have shared with his people the profound respect 
 and admiration always aroused by the Dioscuri. These 
 colossal groups were among the few rare works of an- 
 tiquity which were cherished by the semi-barbarous 
 Romans of the Middle Ages, and the web of fable 
 spun about them during those dark years proves the 
 hold they had over the superstitious imagination of 
 the times. "Nothing is beyond question" about them, 
 says Lanciani, except that they once adorned the 
 temple which the Emperor Aurelian bmlt to the sun 
 on his return from the conquest of Palmyra in 272. 
 This most magnificent of aU Roman temples, to quote 
 the same great modern authority, became a quarry 
 for building materials, even as early as the sixth cen- 
 tury. The Emperor Justinian is said to have taken 
 some porphyry columns from it to adorn the Church 
 of St. Sophia in his new capital of Constantinople. 
 The Dioscm-i must have been discovered later in the 
 Baths of Constantine. The relative positions of the 
 horses and their tamers were ascertained from antique 
 coins. Modern authorities are of the opinion that they 
 are Roman copies of Greek originals, and they are 
 coimted among the great inheritances from imperial 
 Rome. 
 
 It is curious to trace the working of the mediaeval 
 intelligence, groping its way through mysticism and 
 [ 294 ] 
 
MONTE CAVALLO 
 
 allegory to find some explanation for the undeniable 
 impression made by these heroic figm-es upon the 
 minds of all who behold them. The attempt to read 
 into them some abstruse ethical meaniag was aban- 
 doned long ago, and the world of to-day accepts the 
 Dioscuri frankly for what they are, admiring, with a 
 wonder not unmixed with despair, the unreclaimable 
 art of ancient Greece. 
 
 "Ye too marvellous Twain, that erect on the Monte 
 
 Cavallo 
 Stand by your rearing steeds in the grace of your 
 
 motionless movement. 
 Stand with upstretched arms and tranquil, regardant 
 
 faces. 
 Stand as instinct with life, in the might of immutable 
 
 manhood — 
 Oh, ye mighty and strange — ^ye ancient divine ones 
 
 of Hellas 1" 
 
 Whatever may have been the lot of the Dioscuri in 
 the unaccounted-for days of the past, since Sixtus V 
 placed them here they have been in the very thick of 
 Roman poHtical life. Around and about them have 
 surged some of the worst mobs of modern Roman his- 
 tory; and imder their "tranquil, regardant faces" 
 crowds of peaceful, expectant citizens have gathered 
 from time to time during the last two centuries of 
 papal government. Here they have waited during papal 
 elections to watch for the smoke from the chimney of 
 the Quirinal which should indicate to the outside world 
 
 [ 295 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 that no choice had yet been made by the Conclave, 
 since the cardinals were burning the ballots. Here they 
 have received the blessing of the newly elected Pope, 
 which was given from the balcony of the window over 
 the entrance. 
 
 Sixtus V died in the Quirinal Palace. His pontificate 
 had lasted but five years, and it remains to this day one 
 of the most memorable periods in the development and 
 power of Rome. Never had Pope done more for his 
 people; yet, when he came to die, the Romans had al- 
 ready forgotten the benefits of his pontificate and re- 
 membered only the severities. They recalled the fact 
 that this Sixtus who was dying as the head of Chris- 
 tendom had been bom a poor gardener's son. Such 
 dramatic contrasts exercise great sway over the Roman 
 mind — superstition and fancy played with the story, 
 and strange rumors drifted about concerning an un- 
 holy bargain which Sixtus was said to have made for 
 power. Here, before the palace which he had built, the 
 silent crowds gathered to await his end; and when, as 
 the old pontiff drew his last breath, that terrific thun- 
 derstorm broke over the Quirinal, men shuddered and 
 fled, saying and beheving that the Prince of Darkness 
 had come in person for the soul of the monk whom he 
 had made Pope. Kindly old Sixtus ! It was well that 
 he could not know how the poor whom he had always 
 remembered would remember him ! 
 
 Across the Monte Cavallo, to pause before the bal- 
 cony of the Quirinal, came in i84o that extraordinary 
 [ 296 ] 
 
MONTE CAVALLO 
 
 funeral cortege which carried the body of Lady Gwen- 
 dolin Talbot, Princess Borghese, to be laid in the Bor- 
 ghese chapel in S. Maria Maggiore. At seven in the 
 evening of October 3o, by torcMight, amid a silence so 
 profound that the low prayers of the priests were dis- 
 tinctly audible, the procession moved slowly along the 
 three-quarters of a league from the Borghese Palace to 
 the church of S. Maria Maggiore. Soldiers with re- 
 versed arms, mounted dragoons, mourning carriages, 
 reUgious societies, priests, prelates, and all the Roman 
 poor, comprised the train. The funeral car was drawn, 
 not by horses but by forty Romans dressed in deep 
 mourning. Flowers were thrown upon the bier from 
 the palaces along the Corso, and when the procession 
 reached Monte Cavallo and paused before the Quirinal, 
 from the balcony over the entrance Pope Gregory XVI 
 gave his final blessing to the beautiful young princess, 
 dead at twenty-two, and saint if ever there has been 
 one. All the poor of Rome felt that they had lost a 
 friend and benefactress, the like of whom would not 
 come again. Later, when Prince Borghese wished to 
 know the names of those who had drawn the funeral 
 car, he was only told that they were Romans ! 
 
 Up the slopes of Monte Cavallo in February, 1798, 
 came with their tricolored cockades the soldiers of the 
 French Revolutionary Army. They entered the Quiri- 
 nal and called upon Pope Pius VI to renounce the tem- 
 poral power. The eighteenth-centiuy pontiff calmly re- 
 fused to comply with this preposterous demand. That 
 
 [ 397 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME 
 
 refusal lost him the tiara and brought about his death 
 eighteen months later in a French fortress. 
 
 Rome was metamorphosed into a republic, but this 
 obscuration of the papal power was only temporary. 
 When Pius VI died, at Valence, in August, 1799, the 
 cardinals held their Conclave at Venice, and on March 
 i4, i8o4, elected Pius VII (Chiaramonti, i8o4-i823), 
 who returned to Rome the following July. This was the 
 Pope who, after many misgivings, consented to crown 
 Napoleon. Five years later, when the Emperor pro- 
 ceeded to annex the Papal States to his empire, this 
 was the Pope who excommunicated him. 
 
 Few of St, Peter's successors have been called upon 
 to suffer and to dare more than the good and gentle 
 Pius VII. His ItaUan nature comprehended to an im- 
 usual degree the strange character of Napoleon, en- 
 during with perfect composure the Emperor's out- 
 biu-sts of histrionic rage, and daring to bring him back 
 to business by the single word, " comedian." He braved 
 no less cahnly Napoleon's genuine anger at the buU of 
 excommunication, and refused to cancel it. Conse- 
 quently, on the night of July 5, 1809, the Emperor's 
 soldiers broke into the Quirinal and took the Pope 
 prisoner. For a moment, standing under the stars 
 which looked down upon Monte Cavallo, Pius VII 
 blessed his sleeping city, and then was hurried away 
 from Rome to that wandering exile, depicted in the 
 frescoes of the Vatican Library, which was only 
 brought to an end by Napoleon's fall. Then the States 
 
 [ 298 ] 
 
MONTE CAVALLO 
 
 of the Church were restored to the papacy, and the 
 Quirinal Palace once more received the aged pontiff. 
 
 In the quiet sunset of his days, which outlasted by 
 two years the life of the great conqueror, the Pope had 
 time to erect the fountain of Monte Cavallo, and to 
 begin or continue the architectural and archaeological 
 projects connected with his name. 
 
 In that brief halcyon period immediately following 
 Pius IX's election to the Holy See, in i846, the Quirinal 
 Palace and the Monte Cavallo were in a state of un- 
 wonted and constant activity. Pius played with all his 
 heart the role of the liberal Pope, both he and the Ro- 
 mans mistaking his amiable disposition for Uberal po- 
 litical convictions. Day after day the Romans thronged 
 the space before the palace, waiting for their idol, who. 
 was sure to appear some time on the balcony over the 
 entrance. Standing there in his white robe, his dark 
 eyes glowing with sympathetic emotion, he would bless 
 the people with uplifted hand and in the most moving 
 and beautiful of voices. If the hour was late, he might 
 add the injunction to go home to bed ! The attitude of 
 the Pope and people at this time is epitomized in the 
 story of the ragged Uttle boy who one day found him- 
 self in the Quirinal Gardens face to face with the Holy 
 Father, Dazed and enraptured, he poured forth the 
 pitiful tale of his hardships to the handsome and com- 
 passionate coimtenance bending over him, and the 
 wonderful voice comforted him with promises of re- 
 dress — ^promises which both pontiff and child beUeved 
 in passionately. 
 
 [ 299 ] 
 
THE FOUNTAINS OP PAPAL ROME 
 
 There is about this period of Pius IX's life, with its 
 visits to the prisons, its charities £uid public appear- 
 ances, a strange atmosphere of unreahty. A factitious 
 glamour bUnded the popular mind, and the Pope lived 
 upon pious and ideal Ulusions — as Marie Antoinette 
 had played at simplicity and a return to Nature on 
 the eve of the Revolution. 
 
 When the golden charm was broken by the out- 
 break of the Revolution in Palermo and the murder of 
 Pellegrino Rossi in Rome, the frightened pontiff, turn- 
 ing from an angry people, whom in the nature of things 
 he could not possibly satisfy, appealed to the most 
 reactionary of all the Italian powers, the King of Na- 
 ples, or "Bomba." Then the Quirinal witnessed the 
 last act which the papacy was to play within its pre- 
 cincts. The Pope and one attendant escaped from the 
 palace by a small side door in the garden wall and fled 
 across the frontier to Gaeta, on Neapolitan territory. He 
 carried with him the pyx which Pius VII had carried 
 when he also had quitted the Quirinal in haste thirty- 
 nine years before; but, unlike Pius VII, Pius IX never 
 returned thither. When he came back to Rome the 
 Vatican received him. 
 
 The Quirinal, the third one of the papal palaces, has 
 become a symbol of the actual sovereignty of Rome, 
 and, in 1871, it passed with the temporal power 
 from Pope Pius IX to Victor Emmanuel II, King of 
 Italy. 
 
 The cardinals' coaches no longer drive about the 
 fountain of Pius VII. The consistories are held in the 
 [ 3oo ] 
 
MONTE CAVALLO 
 
 Vatican; Eind on the Monte Cavallo the Bersaglieri 
 have superseded the papal Zouaves. Over the Quirinal 
 the pontifical yellow and white has given way to the 
 green and white and red of United Italy. "Old things 
 are passed away. Behold, aU things have become new" 
 — once agaia in the city of eternal change. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Inscriptions in Piazza di Spagna 
 ON THE Spanish Steps 
 
 I 
 D. 0. M. 
 
 MAGNEFICAM BANC SPECTATOH QVAM MIRARIS SCALAM 
 VT COMMODAM AC ORNAMENTVM NON EXIGWM 
 
 REGIO COENOBIO ipsiq. vbbi allatvbam 
 
 ANIMO CONCEPIT LEGATAQ. SVPREMIS IN TABVLIS PECVNIA 
 VNDB SVMPTVS SVPPEDITARENTVH CONSTHVI MANDAVIT 
 
 NOBILIS GALLVS STEPHANVS GVEFFIER 
 
 QVI REGIO IN MINISTERIO DIV PLVHES APVD PONTIFICES 
 
 ALIOSQVB SVBLIMES PRINCIPES EGHEGIE VEHSATVS 
 
 ROMAE VIVERE DESIIT XXX. IVNII MDCLXI. 
 
 OPVS AVTEM VARIO RERVM INTEHVENTV 
 
 PRiMVM svB CLEMENTE XI 
 
 CVM MVLTI PROPONERENTVR MODVLI ET FORMAE 
 
 IN DELIBERATIONE POSITVM 
 
 DEINDE SVB INNOCENTIO XIII. STABttlTVM 
 
 ET R. P. BERTRANDI MONSINAT TOLOSATIS 
 
 ORD. MINIMORVM S. FRANCISCI DE PAVLA CORRECTORIS GENLIS 
 
 FIDEI CVRAEQ. COMMISSVM AC INCHOATVM 
 
 TANDEM BENEDICTO XIII feliciter sedente 
 
 CONFECTVM ABSOLVTVMQVE EST 
 ANNO JVBILEI MDCCXXV 
 
 [ 3o3 ] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 II 
 
 D. 0. M. 
 
 SEDENTE BENEDICTO XIII 
 
 PONT. MAX. 
 
 LUDOVICO XV 
 
 IN GALLIIS REGNANTE 
 
 EIVSQ. APVD SANCTAM SEDEM 
 NEGOTIIS PBj5BPOSITO 
 
 MELCHIORE S. R. ECCLESI^ 
 CARDINALI DE POLIGNAC 
 
 archiepiscopo avscitano 
 
 ad sacilb mdis alblbqve vbbis 
 
 ornambntvm 
 
 ac civivm commodvm 
 
 marmorea scala 
 
 digno tantis avspiciis opebe 
 
 absolvta 
 
 anno domini mdccxxv 
 
 Translation of Above 
 
 I 
 
 spectator, this magnificent stairway which you gaze 
 at in wonder, that it might afford convenience and no 
 small ornament to the city, the noble Frenchman Etienne 
 Gueffier conceived in his mind, and, money having been 
 left in his will whence to defray expenses, ordered it to 
 be built. He conducted himself with distinction in the 
 service of the King at the courts of several pontiffs and 
 
 [ 3o4 ] 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 other sublime princes, and died in Rome the thirtieth of 
 June, 1661. 
 
 The work, however, was interrupted by a variety of 
 things, and first in the reign of Clement XI there were 
 placed before a council many plans and designs. It was 
 decided upon under Clement XI, and, being intrusted to 
 the faithful care of the Reverend Father Bertrand Mon- 
 sLnat of Toulouse, corrector generalis of the lesser order of 
 St. Francis de Paul, was begun, and finally, Benedict 
 XIII blessedly seated upon the papal chair, was brought 
 to an end in the year of jubilee, 1725. 
 
 II 
 
 Benedict XIII sitting in the papal chair as Pontifex 
 Maximus; Louis XV reigning in France; Melchior de 
 Polignac, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, and Arch- 
 bishop of Aquitaine, being his minister at the sacred see; 
 these marble steps, in a manner worthy of such auspices, 
 for the ornamentation of the sacred temple (the church 
 above) and the beloved city, and for the convenience of 
 the citizens, were completed in the year of our Lord, 1725. 
 
 [ 3o5 ] 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX OF AQUEDUCTS 
 MENTIONED, ANCIENT AND MODERN 
 
 ANCIENT 
 
 DATE OF 
 AQUEDUCT CONSTRUCTION PAGE 
 
 Appia 312 B. C 38, 270. 
 
 Anio Vetus 272-269 B. C. .38. 
 
 Marcia 144-140 B. C . .38, 125, 266. 
 
 Alsietina (Under the Edi- 
 
 peror Augustus) 270, 273. 
 
 Virgo 19 B. C 38, 86, 109,148, 216, 229-232, 
 
 235. 237, 270, 271. 
 
 Claudia 38-52 A. D. . . .x, 231. 
 
 Anio Novus 38-52 A. D x. 
 
 Traiana 109 A. D 14, 22, 231, 270, 271. 
 
 Alexandrina 226 A. D 149. 216. 
 
 MODERN 
 
 Acqua Damasiana . . (Under Pope 
 
 Damasus) 8. 
 
 Acqua Vergine di 
 
 Trevi 1570 A. D 14, 38, 90, 97, 98, 107, 109, 
 
 128, 141, 199, 200, 216, 219, 
 230, 232, 236, 242, 276. 
 
 Acqua FeUce 1587 A. D 22, 38, 39, 44, 124. 125, 128, 
 
 147, 149, 152, 158, 169, 172, 
 178, 259, 271, 272, 289, 290. 
 
 Acqua Paola 1611 A. D 5, 6, 21, 22, 36, 37. 38. 78, 141, 
 
 271, 272, 276. 
 
 Acqua Marcia Pia. . 1870 A. D 38-40, 200, 266. 
 
 [ 307 ] 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX OF POPES 
 MENTIONED 
 
 POPE DATE PAGE 
 
 Damasus 366-384 7, 8. 
 
 Symmachus 498-514 11-14. 
 
 Hadrian 1 772-795 39, 57. 
 
 Celestine II 1143-1144 13. 
 
 Honorius III 1216-1227 13. 
 
 Eugenius IV 1431-1447. .... 198. 
 
 Nicholas V 1447-1455. .. ..231, 232. 
 
 Sixtus IV 1471-1484 14, 23, 24, 28, 31, 57, 84, 232, 
 
 252. 
 
 Innocent VIII 1484-1492 14, 15, 271. 
 
 Alexander VI 1492-1503 14, 16, 24, 27, 29-32, 53, 77. 
 
 173, 253. 
 
 Julius II 1503-1513 23, 29, 32, 69, 253, 263. 
 
 Leo X 1513-1522 24, 32, 69, 139, 151. 
 
 Adrian VI 1522-1523 69. 
 
 Clement VII 1523-1534 69, 70, 75, 110. 
 
 Paul m 1534-1550 32, 45, 46, 52, 58, 63-79, 109- 
 
 112, 188, 198, 211, 271. 
 
 Julius III 1550-1555 83-104, 109, 145, 148, 278. 
 
 Marcellus II 1555 102. 
 
 Paul IV 1555-1559 112. 
 
 Pius IV 1559-1566 86, 88, 89, 102, 109, 111, 112, 
 
 120, 124, 146, 216. 
 
 Pius V 1566-1572 86,102, 109,120, 126, 132,232. 
 
 Gregory XIII 1572-1585 ..... 14, 52, 86, 89, 102, 108, 109. 
 
 112-114, 126, 129, 131, 139, 
 
 216, 288. 
 Sixtus V 1585-1590 17, 22, 23, 28, 37, 39, 44, 52, 
 
 89, 102, 103, 108, 109, 113, 
 
 119-132, 139, 146-152, 155- 
 
 165, 174, 224, 232, 242, 251, 
 
 271, 272, 274, 275, 281, 288- 
 
 296. 
 
 [ 3o8 ] 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX 
 
 POPE DATE PAGE 
 
 Urban Vn 1590 156. 
 
 Gregory XIV 1590-1591 156. 
 
 Innocent IX 1591-1592 156. 
 
 Clement VHE 1592-1605 103, 156, 163, 278, 281, 282, 
 
 290. 
 
 Leo XI 1605 103, 172, 278, 281. 
 
 Paul V 1605-1621 3-18, 22-32, 66, 103, 145, 146, 
 
 148, 157, 187-189, 211, 222, 
 
 232, 270-284. 
 Urban Vm 1623-1644 24, 66, 172, 176, 199-201, 211, 
 
 222, 224, 235, 262, 283. 
 
 Innocent X 1644-1655 52, 219-222, 224. 
 
 Alexander VII 1655-1667 202. 
 
 Clement X 1670-1676 4. 
 
 Alexander vm. . . .1689-1691 273-275. 
 
 Clement XII 1730-1740 52, 55, 235, 237. 
 
 Benedict XIV 1740-1758 90, 235. 
 
 Clement XIII 1758-1769 225, 235. 
 
 Clement XIV 1769-1775 103, 104. 
 
 Pius VI 1775-1800 103, 104, 241, 262, 264, 289, 
 
 293, 297, 298. 
 Pius vn 1800-1823 241, 262, 264, 265, 289, 290, 
 
 293,298-300. 
 
 Leo Xn 1823-1829 109, 115. 
 
 Gregory XVI 1831-1846 147, 297. 
 
 Pius IX 1846-1878 35-40, 225, 299, 300, 
 
 [ 3o9 ] 
 
ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF ARCHITECTS, 
 SCULPTORS, PAINTERS, AND EN- 
 GRAVERS MENTIONED 
 
 XAMB DATE PAGE 
 
 Alberti, Leon Battista 1404-1472 .. 232. 
 
 Amannati, Bartolommeo . . .1511-1586. .84, 87, 88, 94, 95, 97, 100, 
 
 101, 127, 145-148. 
 
 Amici. Luigi 1813-1897. .36, 219. 
 
 Antinori fl. ca. 1800. .289. 
 
 Bandinelli, Baccio 1487-1559. .54. 
 
 Baronino fl. ca. 1550. .100. 
 
 Barozzi, Giacomo, da Vi- 
 
 gnola 1507-1573. .84, 87, 94, 100, 101, 112, 
 
 252. 
 
 Berettina, Pietro da Cor- 
 
 tona 1596-1669. . 120. 
 
 Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo.. 1598-1680.. 5, 27, 77, 108, 135, 171, 
 
 181, 185, 186, 194, 199, 
 207, 208, 211, 219-225, 
 235, 250, 252. 
 
 Bernini, Pietro 1562-1629 . . 199, 200. 
 
 Betti, Bernardino di Pin- 
 
 turicchio 1454-1513. .77. 
 
 Bitta, della ZappaE 1807- . .36, 220. 
 
 Bonanni fl. ca. 1570 . . 17. 
 
 Brazza, Count (the elder). . .fl. ca. 1830 . .259. 
 
 Bresciano, Prospero fl. ca. 1585 . . 147, 162. 
 
 Buonarroti, Michelangelo.. .1474-1564. .23, 44-46, 49, 52, 54,57- 
 
 59, 69, 73, 77, 84, 94, 
 101, 109, 157, 236, 252, 
 271. 
 
 Canova, Antonio 1757-1822. . 194. 
 
 Cavalieri, Tommaso de fl. ca. 1500. .52. 
 
 Cellini. Benvenuto 1500-1570. . 100, 110. 
 
 [ 3io ] 
 
ALPHABETICAL INDEX 
 
 NAME DATE PAGE 
 
 CrUyl 1640 (?)... .165. 
 
 FaJda, Giovanni Battista... 1648-1 691.. 108, 114, 165, 199, 200, 
 
 274. 
 
 Fontana, Carlo 1634-1714 . . 4, 252. 
 
 Fontana, Domenico 1543-1607. . 22, 23, 28, 37, 38, 54, 87, 
 
 119, 120, 125-128, 131, 
 135, 145-150, 155-165, 
 171, 242, 249, 251, 272, 
 275, 288, 289, 293. 
 
 Fontana, Giovanni 1540-1641 .. 22, 135, 272, 275, 277. 
 
 Gelee, Claude Lorraine 1600-1682. . 176. 
 
 Landini, Taddeo -1594 . . 131, 136. 
 
 Lazzari Donate, Bramante 
 
 da Urbino 1444-1514 . . 16, 23, 27, 28, 30, 263. 
 
 LetarouiUy 1795-1865. .96, 186. 
 
 Ligorio, Pirro 149^1573 . .45, 88. 
 
 Lippi, Annibale fl. ca. 1550. .171. 
 
 Maderno, Carlo 1556-1629 ..4,6, 15, 21, 23, 32, 37, 135, 
 
 198, 199, 252, 272, 275. 
 
 Maggi 1566-1620( ?) 155, 165, 274. 
 
 Millotti :'i. .165. 
 
 Man, Gianantonio fl. ca. 1648. .219. 
 
 Picconi, Antonio da San- 
 
 gallo 1482-1546. .69. 
 
 Pintelli, Baccio 1420-1480. . 252. 
 
 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista.1707-1778. .49, 93, 124, 146, 158,220, 
 
 242, 274. 
 
 Porta, Giacomo della 1541-1604 .. 69, 107, 109, 112, 138, 
 
 216, 219, 220. 
 
 Porta, Giovanni Battista 
 
 della 1539-1594. .146. 
 
 Porta, Guglielmo della -1577 . . 77, 135. 
 
 Poussin. Nicholas 1574-1665 . . 176. 
 
 Rainaldi, Carlo 1611-1691 . . 52, 65, 219, 252. 
 
 Rainaldi, Girolamo 1570-1655. .52, 65. 
 
 Salvi, Niccol6 1699-1751 . . 235. 
 
 Sanctis, Francesco de fl. ca. 1725. .202. 
 
 Sanzio, Raphael da Urbino..l483-1520.. 23, 24, 27, 28, 139, 140. 
 
 Specchi, Alessandro 1665-1706 . . 202. 
 
 Stem, Raphael 1790-1821 . . 96, 103, 290. 
 
 Stocchi fl. ca. 1825. .109. 
 
 [ 3ll ] 
 
ALPHABETICAL INDEX. 
 
 NAME DATE PAGE 
 
 Tenerani, Pietro 1789-1869. .36. 
 
 Vacca, Flaminio 1530-1596 . . 146. 
 
 Valadier. Giuseppe 1762-1839 .. 215, 241-255, 262, 264, 
 
 265. 
 
 Vansantio, Antonio -1710( ?) 66, 186. 
 
 Vasari, Giorgio 1493-1573. .44, 54, 58, 94, 101, 164. 
 
 232. 
 
 Vespignani, Virginio 1808-1882. .37. 
 
 Watteau, Antoine 1684-1721 . . 186. 
 
 I 3l2 1