Fountains of Papal Rome/Villa Borghese
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 makes the garden fair
The sense of Life's futility,
Is deathless beauty Born of Death,
It blossoms under cloudless skies.
--From an unpublished MS,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 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 fountain 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 reflects the trees and clouds in its quiet depths, or as the little breeze ruffles the surface, it gives back the sunshine like a broken mirror. Single shafts of water, spouting upward from between the forefeet of the seahorses, fall back into the same basin from which they rose, curving like 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 well 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 smaller one, not like another basin but like a corolla within a corolla, and the flower-like composition terminates in a beautifully wrought cup resembling 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 slipping in and over the carved foliage of the lower basins finally reaches, in a gentle, pensive manner, the quiet pool beneath. Sea-horses with tossed manes and backward 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 masters his fancy. His fountain is not a fanciful conceit but a rich and peaceful artistic creation. 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 artist 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 carving 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 natural 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 ground falls away sharply into groves of ilex, traversed by natural footpaths. In the gloom of these wooded spaces there are two other fountains. Great basins catching the water from tiers of smaller ones in the centre and each surrounded by a broken circle of curved stone benches. They are the work of Antonio Vansantio; and, according to drawings by Letarouilly, the back of each semicircular bench was originally decorated at regular intervals with statues. Behind these stood a formally clipped 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 architecture. Vansantio's basins and benches are now in a half-ruined condition, but they are still extremely lovely and suggest pictures of eighteenth-century garden-parties, where groups of Watteau's figures idle away the hours. The fountains are hardly visible, even at dose 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 remoteness and solitude. The deep shadows and half-hidden waters of Vansantio's fountains form a well-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 peculiar to the Villa Borghese, stands behind the Casino, 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 beautiful fountain, not because of any special charm or 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 slight eminence surrounded with tall trees and shadowy foliage. Beneath and before it, the ground slopes in masses of broken rock and bowlders, and the fountain, a single round and shallow vase of finished travertine, stands in the midst of thenou 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 daintily 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 fountain 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 Villa Borghese was created by Cardinal Scipione Borghese during the sixteen years that his made held the keys of St. Peter, under the title of Paul V. The Pope assisted him in every way, for Paul V's chief 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 dose of his pontificate the Borghese had become the wealthiest and most powerful family that had ever arisen in Rome* Cardinal Scipione's annual income alone was one hundred and fifty thousand scudi about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars and Paul V destroyed the ruins of the Baths of Constantine so as to build for him what is now called the Rospigliosi Palace. Their habits, charities, possessions were all but regal. The cardinal endeavored to lessen the envy which such opulence 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 hundred years. Paul V's pontificate came to an end in 1621, and in i645 Mr. John Evelyn writes in his "Diary" a long account of the Villa Borghese. The groves and avenues had by that time a generation's growth, but the Casino and little temples and the multifarious delights 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 full of memories as of fragrance, these gardens convey a sense of human life once lived 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 quality, and therefore it has become the loveliest as well as the best beloved of all Roman villas; and it is precisely because it is a Roman garden that its memories 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, England, France, and Germany come here to gather memories 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 brilliant cardinals, to haunt the sun-warmed yet shadowy places, never jostling or disturbing the living but felt by the living in some strange and undefinabie 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 II of England lived and died in Rome, and his children Prince Charlie and the little Duke of York played beneath these trees, as scores of other brothers of less fateful history have played before and since.[1] Here they came every morning with their fowling-pieces. High-spirited English lads, they made of the Italian 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 little 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 loveliest in May and October. On every Thursday and Sunday of this latter month it used to be the custom for the Prince Borghese to receive 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 Borghese gardens, and it is more easy to think of her presence 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 within these gates. Canova has portrayed her as Venus Victrix, and she takes her place among the antique marbles hy the right of flawless beauty. The flesh-andblood original of Canova's masterpiece, Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese, cared but little for her beautiful villa. The ilex groves were gloomy and the fountains were insignificant compared with those of Versailles. 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 believe 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.
- ↑ 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 notables, 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, characteristically, they did not mingle with the other nationalities, but grouped themselves together in a solid mass at one end of the ballroom. Suddenly, while all were watching the dancers, King James, taking advantage of his mask and official incognito, crossed tie 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 "" tooknotthe 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 exfle heart with a brief and tragic make-believe.