Fountains of Papal Rome/Colonna
THE fountain of the Piazza Colonaa might be the"Fountain of Youth," for the freshness of its marblesmakes it seem to date from yesterday, whereas it is inreality one of the oldest fountains of modern Rome. Itwas constructed three hundred and twenty-five yearsago, and belongs to that period when the Acqua Vergine (Trevi Water) was the only water with which tofeed a fountain. As the Acqua Vergine has not sufficient head to rise to any great height, and as its supplyis in continuous and wide-spread use for domestic purposes, the designs for the fountains which it furnisheshave to be low, and the sculptor or architect must relyfor his effect not upon any lavish supply of water butupon the beauty of his materials and his own imagination. The fountains of Giacomo della Porta show thepractical difficulties with which he had to contend, andthe felicity of his genius in overcoming the limitation.His fountain of the " Tartarughe " is a work of art, andas such can be admired without the aid of the water.The two side fountains in the Piazza Navona, also hiscreations, were quite lovely before Bernini decoratedone and artists of the nineteenth century the otherwith fantastic sculpture- His fountain of the PiazzaColonna has been less tampered with and, standing infull sunlight or darkened by the vast shadow of theAntonine Column, it remains, in its quiet beauty, amasterpiece among the Roman fountains. It is a graceful, hectagonal receptacle, half basin, half drinkingtrough, composed of different kinds of Porta Santamarble. These are joined together with straps of Carrara ornamented by lions' heads.[1] Its waters come toit from a vase of antique shape standing in the centre.From the shallow bowl of this central vase the watergushes upward to fall over the rim in a soft, unbroken,silvery stream, and through this vestal's veil the Carrara, to which the waters have given a wonderful surface, gleams in unsullied freshness and beauty. Twotiny jets, set midway on either side between the endsof the fountain and the vase in the centre, bring anadditional volume and add to the animation of thepool. The vase in the centre is represented in an oldengraving by Falda as being much lower than thepresent one and carved in crowded leaflike convolutions, like the vase of the Scossa Cavalli fountain.
By 1829 this bit of old travertine sculpture had become so misshapen that the artist StoccM, by order ofLeo XII, replaced it by the present Carrara vase, adding at that time to either end of the trough the smallgroups of shells and dolphins. These are such daintybits of fancy, and so frankly an afterthought, that intheir first freshness at least they could not havemarred the beauty of the original conception. Rathermust they have enhanced it, as the white doves whichare perched upon its rim make the charm of the"Pliny's Vase/ 9 Giacomo della Porta is the first fountain builder of modern Rome, and the fountains whichhe did for Gregory XIII all constructed for TreviWater are still among the loveliest the city holds.The passion for fountain building began in the secondhalf of the Cinque Cento. Julius III rediscovered theimmense aesthetic value of water, the Nymphaeum inhis Villa Giulia being, in fact, the apotheosis of theAcqua Vergine, Pius V's enlarged fountain of Trevi wasa recognition of the importance of water to the city'swelfare. This Pope and his predecessor, Pius IV, aswell as his successor, Gregory XIII, all occupied themselves seriously with the restoration, improvement, andupkeep of the Virgo Aqueduct. The return to thewater question is the one healthy and hopeful sign inthe city's life during those years which lay between thedeath of old Paul III and the accession of Sirtus V.Michelangelo died within this period and his greatspirit was not more surely departed than was the ageof art and learning in which he had moved as king.That outrage to civilization known as the "last sackof Rome" had occurred in 1627, under Clement VII,and Rome, in the person of her pontiff and in that ofevery citizen, had suffered insult, spoliation, and dishonor.
The devotion of the Romans to Clement's successor(the Farnese pontiff, Paul III) was in great part dueto their recognition of the fact that his pontificate represented a sustained and gallant attempt to restore tohis 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 asserted itself and men realized more keenly than everthe permanent devastation wrought by the sack. Posterity gains some faint idea of its horrors from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. It is indebted tohim for the dramatic description of the death of theConstable de Bourbon, killed by a chance shot fromthe ramparts when, in the dense fog which envelopedthe beleaguered city, he was planting the scaling ladders against the walls. Four days earlier, and during themarch on Rome, the other commander of the besiegingarmy, the veteran George Freundsberg, had died of astroke of apoplexy brought on by the mutinous conduct of his troops; so that, without leaders, forty thousand of the worst soldiery of Europe were turned loosewithin the city walls turned loose to recoup themselves for their long arrears of wages out of everythingwhich the taste, learning, and moral sense of civilizedman has always held most precious. History recordsthat the Spanish were the most cold-blooded, the Germans the most bestial, and the Italians the most inventive in forms of villainy. The week of unspeakableatrocities, wanton destruction, and wholesale pillagecame to an end; but when it did, that marvellous treasure-house of civilization Rome of the Renaissancehad perished, and the place thereof was to know her nomore. It was no wonder that, during the decade whichfollowed, Rome what was left of heiv-seemed hardlyto breathe. When, during the pontificate of Paul IIIshe began to revive, it was plain to all men that shewas not, and could never be, the same. life came backto her at last, not through aesthetic but through ethicalchannels.
Thenceforward the popes, whether they wished it ornot, were to be serious men* As the Reformation spreadthrough England, the Low Countries, France and Germany, the papacy set its house in order and preparedto fight, not for its temporal supremacy, as in the mediaeval struggle with the Emperors, but for its spiritualauthority. It was at this point that there came to itsaid a new force, a force -whose influence has never yetbeen accurately measured. In 1689, just before thedose of Luther's life, Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus. This was in the time of Paul III. Fourpontificates later, under Pius IV, the Jesuits, as Calvinwas the first to call them, furnished the sensationalelement in the second sitting of the Council of Trent;and in 1672, when Ugo Boncompagni became Pope,under the title of Gregory XIII, the order made itsappearance on the world's stage as the recognized director of the church militant. The Jesuits were thekeepers of this Pope's conscience, and the history of hispontificate is the first chapter in the history of Jesuitrule. For them the Pope erected the present buildingof the Collegio Romano, founded in Loyola's time; forthem he founded the German and English colleges atRome, and, according to Ranke, "probably there wasnot a single Jesuit school in the world which had not toboast in one way or another of his bounty." The chiefarchitects of the time were put at their disposal. Vignola designed and built for them the vast Church of"the Gesii"; and as he died while the work was inprogress, his distinguished pupil, Giacomo della Porta,turned from the making of beautiful fountains andcompleted the cupola and facade. The latter also builtthe high altar in that church, and in its constructionshowed once more that love of rare marbles which isso distinctive a feature in the Colonna and other fountains of his creation.
Gregory XIII had begun life as a Bolognese lawyer.He had been called to Rome by Paul III the very yearLoyola founded the Society of Jesus. He had gone toSpain as Papal legate under Paul IV, had been createdcardinal by Pius IV, and at the age of seventy wasmade Pope. His life had peculiarly fitted him to appreciate Jesuit ideals. His belief in educational institutions, his keen interest in geography and the remotecorners of the earth, the correctness of his private lifeafter his elevation, his previous worldliness, and hissecular training, all combined to make him the JesuitPope. The Roman Church remembers him as thebuilder of the Gregorian Chapel in St Peter's, the reformer of the calendar, the reorganizer of a great bodyof ecclesiastical law, and the patron of the Order of theJesuits. To Protestants he remains the Pope who sang"Te Deums" for "the St Bartholomew."
The pontificate of Gregory XIII was a deplorableone for the Holy See and for the Romans. Conditionsof living sank to a very low leveL Banditti terrorizedthe States of the Church and could not be controlledeven in Rome. The great families whose estates Gregory had confiscated to pay for his architectural andecclesiastical extravagances were in open revolt, andthe treasury was empty. Venice had been estranged,and England and the Netherlands were forever lost.Gregory XIIFs successor, Sixtus V, fell heir to thiscondition of misrule and disaster. No one can be surprised at the grim irony of the new pontiff in orderingmasses to be said for the soul of Gregory XIII I
Looking at the tranquil loveliness of the Colonnafountain so white and shining in the sunlight it isdifficult to picture it as a part of the turbulent life of the period in which it was erected. Yet many a timeits waters must have restored consciousness, stanchedwounds, stifled cries for mercy or succor, and washedaway the stains of blood. It has always been a Pilgrims'Fountain. Long before Sktus V with his passion forconverting the "high places" of Paganism into Christian monuments had restored the Antonine column andplaced upon it the statue of St. Paul long before thattime the ascent of the column had been a part of theRoman pilgrims' itinerary. In the Middle Ages the column had become the property of the monks of San Silvestro, who leased it to the highest bidder. As Romenumbered her pilgrims by the thousands in any year,and by the tens of thousands during the years of thePapal Jubilee, a goodly profit was derived from thefees paid by the pilgrims to the custodian of the column,and the monks could therefore always count upon mating an advantageous lease. Gregory XIII, in erectingthis fountain, must have thought primarily of the comfort and interest of the pilgrims. As the traveller ofto-day remembers the fountain of Trevi, so the pilgrim of the sixteenth century remembered the fountain by the side of the Column of St. Paul the fountain of the Piazza Colonna. Its beauty delighted theeyes of footsore men from far-off and still barbarouscountries; while the crystalline waters which quenchedtheir thirst and washed away the stains of travel wouldhave had for these Christians from the North a symbolic significance undreamed of by the Romans. Thevision of this shining fountain has been carried back tomany distant monasteries and remote firesides throughout the Christian world. Its situation in the Piazza Colonna, which is but a widening of the Corso,' has kept itin the main current of Roman life. The people use itand cherish it; Falda has engraved it; and, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XII embellished it with its dainty shells and dolphins, as afather might twine flowers in the hair of some beautiful child.
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ The ornamental detail of the" Sixtinelion" looks as if this fountain, like the Tartarughe, had been finished in the pontificate following Gregory XIU's that is, in the pontificate of Sixtus V.