Part 8
This fountain was erected in the last year of the pontificate of Gregory XIII and the first year of the pontificate 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 understand how Sixtus V could have permitted the erection of any fountain so entirely devoid of scriptural suggestion, so purely pagan in its expression of joyous and irresponsible life, as is the Tartarughe. Possibly the play of the boys in the splashing water reminded the old man, who was in spite of his fierce enthusiasms so kindly and so human, of the far-off days of his childhood. 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 garden at Formi, of the pear-trees which he placed in his coat of arms, and of the great cistern in which he dabbled with such happy recklessness that one day he fell in and had to be fished out like any other urchin destined or not for the papal chair.
Rome would, undoubtedly, be the richer for a fountain 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 marbles could have escaped destruction at the time of the sack of Rome in 1527, only six years after Raphael’s death. Perhaps, also, this last 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 surrounds 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 crowning beauty of some prince’s garden or to be celebrated in a canto of “The Faerie Queene” plays on in this commonplace part of Rome unheeded, and seemingly 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. However, the highest jet in the fountain was not changed, as Paola water can rise to a much higher level than Trevi.
FONTANA DEL MOSÈ
FONTANA DEL MOSÈ
This 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 Paul V.
This Fountain of the Moses is a great portal consisting 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 lions, and each lion spouts an additional stream of water. In the 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 reliefs of scenes from the Old Testament relative to the importance and significance of water. The relief to the right represents Gideon testing his soldiers and is the work of Flaminio Vacca, and in the left Giovanni Battista della Porta has carved the scene in the desert after Moses has brought the 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 entablature of which the inscription, in the noble Sixtine caligraphy, forms the most important feature, and is, in fact, the most impressive part of the entire structure. Above the inscription rises the florid pediment, flanked by two obelisks (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 fountain 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 importance the honorable position which it occupies among the fountains of Rome. It is the main delivery tank of the Acqua Felice; and the Acqua Felice was the first new supply of water which Rome had received since 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 lions which served to support the Vatican obelisk, 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 masterpiece, directly from the travertine without any previous modelling--the block lying horizontally on the ground. When the figure was raised it was found to be not only out of proportion but also out of conformity with the laws of perspective. Its unveiling 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 melancholia and died.
The present lions, which are of bigio marble, are modern, dating from the days of Gregory XVI (1846). This Pope created the Egyptian Museum in the Vatican and removed thither the original lions, which were of Egyptian origin and had been appropriated for his fountain by Sixtus V--two from the Piazza of the Pantheon and two from the gate of St. John Lateran.
The two great points of difference between the Fontana fountains and the Amannati fountain on the 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 conspicuously by magnificent inscriptions; whereas Julius 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 public. His inscription, therefore, is not borne aloft on triumphal arches but occupies a place in the central niche, filled in Sixtus V’s fountain by the figure of Moses, and in Paul V’s fountain left absolutely vacant. The stream which Julius III dared appropriate from the Virgo Aqueduct was only large enough to fill a single basin placed before the central niche of Amannati’s fountain; 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 modern buildings crowding upon it and dwarfing 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 all about it, and it easily dominated the walls and gateways which were its only architectural neighbors. The 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 Felice, 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 remains are still to be seen on the Via Prænestina. 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 magnificent fountain. A coin of his period shows the design to have somewhat resembled the present “Fontanone” on the Janiculum.
Sixtus V selected as the site for his fountain an open space on the Viminal Hill 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 Felice enters Rome at the Porta Maggiore at the altitude of 59 metres and supplies 21,632.8 cubic metres of water daily. In order to bring the water to Fontana’s fountain it was necessary to cut a wide street, the Via Ceruaia, and to tunnel through the Baths of Diocletian. Although the Acqua Felice served the Pope’s purposes and literally made the desert blossom like the rose, Sixtus V had no sentiment about it. When the water actually reached the city, his sister and nephew, thinking to please him, hastened to bring him a cupful. The Pope, who hated a scene of any kind, refused to drink it, declaring that it had no taste, which is quite true. It is to this day the least valued of the Roman waters, and the overflow or “lapsed water” of Fontana’s great fountain 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 example of classic architecture. It had been built by Septimius 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, demolished 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 feelings 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 significant. Some of the material went into the fabric of the Moses fountain; but the Romans never forgave either Sixtus V or Fontana.
Considering the dearth of water in Rome in the sixteenth century and the character of Sixtus V, the conception of the central idea of this fountain--that of Moses striking the rock--was not only happy but almost inevitable. Although the Pope was an ardent churchman, it was easier for him to believe in the conversion to Catholicism of the conqueror of Ivry than to understand that the Roman ruins had any other than a commercial value. Leo X had believed in art “for art’s sake.” He had believed 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 devil. 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 command, was alone adequate. It was not unnatural for him to think of himself as standing 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
_Pope Sixtus V, of the Marches, conducted this water from a junction of several streams in the neighborhood of Colonna, at the left of the Prænestine 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 commenced the work in the first year of his pontificate, and finished it in the third, 1587._
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 obelisk for Sixtus 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 1618 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 fountain was not erected until some years later. Sixtus V rushed the work on the Lateran at top speed; and this obelisk was no sooner in place than Fontana was commissioned to transport its companion to the Piazza del Popolo. The Lateran obelisk was erected in 1588. In August, 1590, 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, 1592, Clement VIII (Aldobrandini) had become Pope; and Fontana may have finished this fountain during the first years of Clement’s pontificate, before he fell 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 the corners under the cornice of the screen, changed the design of the intervening space into the Aldobrandini bar. It was a small detail, and the change was a mere matter of custom and policy and involved no disloyalty 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 1605, and Fontana left Rome for Naples in 1596. Therefore, the eagle of this fountain cannot have any connection with the Borghese family. Why did Fontana use it instead of the lion’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 inspired by Michelangelo’s creation. The St. John of the fountain was, according to the old engravings, a beautiful and youthful figure looking to Heaven for inspiration 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 design was original and extremely interesting, as it shows both Sixtus V and Fontana in a new and unusual light. They were dominated by the place. The great new Lateran 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 fountain the insignia of any pontiff 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 Piranesi engraving of the Piazza of the Lateran shows its position and proportions as well as the admirable balance 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 symbol of divinity in a great Pagan theology; and by placing the cross on all those which he re-erected, the Pope felt that he was exhibiting in the 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 obelisk 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 mediæval times, had become one of the “lost waters” of Rome. The difficulties encountered in transporting the obelisk up the rough sides and through the old streets of the Quirinal Hill were numerous. The obelisk of the Piazza del Popolo was removed from the same place and set up on its present site for the sum of ten thousand three hundred and thirty-one scudi; whereas this obelisk of the Lateran cost the papal treasury twenty-four thousand six hundred 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 Byzantium, his successor, Constantine II, visited Rome. He visited Rome like any foreign prince and was profoundly impressed by the magnificence and majesty of his discarded capital. A not unnatural instinct prompted him to leave some memorial of himself among the monuments and trophies of his heroic predecessors; and for this purpose he sent for the obelisk which Thotmes III had originally 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 mystery which hangs over so much of mediæval Rome.[H]
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 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 government had endured such pillage and destruction at the hands of the great Pope’s great architect that all the past vandalism of private individuals seemed slight 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 pontifical residence of the Lateran which had stood since the seventh century on this very piazza. It was a marvellous rambling pile of buildings--churches, monasteries, shrines, loggias, colonnades, oratories, banqueting rooms and halls filled with mosaics, pictures, and frescoes--and, according to a great authority, the most wonderful museum of mediæval art that ever existed. This priceless record of the past was ruthlessly demolished 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 forgave him this destruction, involving as it did the loss of the Oratory of the Holy Cross. An exquisite example of early Christian architecture, built in the shape of a Greek cross, this oratory was held in peculiar veneration 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 oratory could only be ascribed to the promptings of the devil himself. Posterity can hardly accept Pope Sixtus V’s fountain, even with its obelisk, as an adequate substitute for the three fountains of rare marble in the atrium of this oratory which perished by order of the Pope.