Romance of Roman Villas (The Renaissance)

o-here the C

th them, An

her as she g

r her, while F

gravel-here t

where o'er

ooks above th

e Cam

Wetmor

that Story rightly associated the men and women

aunte

i Torlonia

neighbouring hills, for the Conti were cousins of the Colonna, and fond

io, from the Castle of Marino, hardly three miles away. This boy was to become the most renowned man of his race, and was to form a link between the liv

plenty were theirs, Marino, Palliano, Palestrina, and a score of others, but though these sheltered comfortless, so-called palac

tain

sheeted water

lace at Rome, with its beautiful garden, answered every purpose of an elaborate villa. Here the

us from their walls. They hold us still with an all-compelling fascination: the noble Vittoria Colonna, whom Michael Angelo worshipped; that Duchessa Lucrezia, whom Van Dyck painted in her velvet robe and jewelled ruff;

ria C

ait in the C

ini, Princ

it in later l

he race, masterful and brave, heroic even in certain g

is the glory of his family; but you will find no portrait of his murdered mistress Eufrosina, or o

e to most men, and she added to remarkable beauty the fascinations of wit and culture. All of the young bloods of Naples were captives at her chariot whee

hom Marcantonio had cause to hate, for Paul had despoiled him of Palliano, under pret

as ultimately responsible for her death. He was not so utterly depraved as his brother Cardinal Carlo Caraffa but his maniacal

relled openly with a young gallant, Marcello Capecce, for the favours of Martuccia one of the most notorious courtesans of Rome, drawing his sword upon Capecce at a banquet where he had denied the Ca

's purpose that Capecce had long cherished a

couraged followed Violante to her villa. Here the Cardinal manage

ntended simply to enrage his brother against a presuming but unfavoured lover. Whatever the accusation the jealous husband was not at first absolutely convinced, and he placed the matter for investigati

son." He also murdered the Duchess's lady-in-waiting, but seems not to have had the heart to kill his wife with his own hands. Nevertheless he believed it incumbent

l Cardine, a friar, and some soldiers, appeared at the villa and told his sister his errand. Sh

eyes. He hesitated for a moment; perhaps if she had appealed to his affection his heart might h

wand in the noose about her

o it; but it created a thrill of horror even at that time, for the be

in until Philip declared war upon Pope Paul IV., and deputed the Duke of Alva and the Spanish Army to wage the famous war of the Campagna. Thus Marcantonio

hey might burn them also, but at the entrance to the monastery they were stopped by five mounted knights keeping guard over the doomed monks. They were all of them nobles, and all had suffered from the Pope

with sheathed swords, the people drew back while Colonna spoke; and because he also had suffered much at

ir trial was deliberate, but in the end Cardinal Carlo Caraffa met the same death which she had

o equip the battleship which he commanded at Lepant

others that she was a slave girl whom he had brought back from the Orient. All agree that she was beautiful, but Colonna had not made her his duchess. Strangely enough he offered the tiara of the murdered Violante to Felice Orsini, daughter of the very man w

the Massi

presentative of one of the proudest patrician families of Rome, did not hesitate to make her his wife. Massimi was an old man and a widower, whose first wife, Gerolema Savelli, had g

s sons excepting only the youngest, Pompeo, who had taken no part in the assassination, and shortly afterward died bro

was never totally destroyed, and formed the background of many a sinister drama. Marie Mancini Colonna, Principessa di Palliano, writes that fear of imprisonment in the dun

bol of the ph?nix attained a new meaning, and is it possible that erring

na, Principessa di

che Gesellsc

PTE

RE OF

TI

't is vai

t know of thi

rry; such alo

ature. Hast thou

the heavenly

ove upon a

ow against som

an? Haply th

mbs among th

, alas i

at

las of the cardinals of the Renaissance and not feel the potency of the charm

ance at the villas of ancient Rome, but they insidiously steal upon us through those of the Renaissance. Particularly is thi

m the villa of the Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli, they are

ntom which can never be disassociated from those imperial ruins, a face whose bea

t "it is no shadow of sin which gives the pure brow its gravity, and that whatever may be the burden which bows the bea

ti

Hadrian's Villa, now

vedere, commanded wider admiration as a type of manly beauty. But the Apollo is a theatrical manifestation of the po

etations of his familiar and unmistakable personality; so that it is common to speak of the Antinous type as the last ideal creation of ancient art. And

t curls falling over the forehead. It is the beautiful expression of a nature which combined the Greek and the Asiatic characteristics only slightly idealised. We read the fate of Antinous in this s

n youth so extravagantly that he made him his inseparable companion and even contemplated him as his successor; that during the fateful Egyptian journey an oracle announced that the Emperor must shortly die unless a voluntary victim could be found to take upon himself the do

his novel The Emperor, is inadequate. He laboriously loads its pages with his carefu

ry of Statues in

tching by

ecret of the sadness in that haunting face, to which sculptors alone have done full justice. There are hints scattered through his p

rough the crystal lenses of uncoloured truth, the stage where the drama which we seek was enacted we shall s

and bare, exposed to the burning sun and the wandering winds, despoiled even of the vines and flowers with which nature has striven to hide th

uthoritative map of Hadrian's villa. A Neapolitan by birth, but called to Rome by his friend Pope Paul IV. (C

his place to a younger genius. Paul IV. had the wisdom to retain Michael Angelo in his important post, and the tact to take the sting from Ligorio's removal by giving

the perfect adaptability of its plan to new requirements proves that it could never have been produced earlier than t

hus, in the Muse

ion of

n of classical feeling, and it is in the ornamental details, not in the conception of the ensemble, that we detect the influence of the Villa of Hadrian. When the papal villa was approaching completion, Ligorio at

ries which Ligorio records is that of a statue of Antinous. It depicted the youth under the attributes of Bacchus, a

ew enthusiasm, for a lucky chance had guided the excavators to the most richly ornamented of all the apartments in the Emperor's wonder

ed that this was the Emperor's natatorium or swimming pool. But the feminine elegance of the fairy-like suite of apartments, to which the canal served as a moat; the presence of drawbridges worked from the centre, thus cutting off or affording communication with the colonnade at the will of the occupant, and evidences that the canal itself was a nympheum or aquatic garden, among whose rose-coloured lotus bloss

the Garden

rio, archi

in some Rosalind's bower of the immense labyrinthine palace, while the most valuable statues in the entire villa, such as the replica of the Cnidian Venus by Praxiteles, the Eros bending the bow, by the same master, made this temple of love an

ghter of the same name, an empress in her turn, and

na Imperatrix applies equally to the

r th

y, throwing

d, brig

, scornful l

hame, F

e maligned. "Modern scholarship," says Monsieur Victor Duruy, "argues for their rehabilitation, and chiefly

er Faustina, "I am indebted that I have such a wi

oninus Pius cried in his grief: "O God, I would rather l

d, while the scholarly boy, Marcus Aurelius, her cousin, listened to the disqu

Pia, V

rro Ligorio, a

was the comrade of Antinous, and as they passed to and fro together through colonnaded rotonda they must have often noted t

"Forget not," he writes, "that in times gone by everything has already happened just as it is happening. Place before thine eyes whole dramas with the sa

ificant words, "Even in a palace life may be well led," each of us can a

years he explored with the most intense enthusiasm the interminable apartments which were to prove an inexhaustible mine of art for mo

nterest, and a young German scholar was called to superintend the building and installation

as the work carried on that it would almost seem that, the duration of human life not being sufficient to complete it, Cardin

ending

oline

f Prax

oline

t early in the eighteenth century Gavin Hamilton, commissioned to secure antiques for the British Museum, drained an extensive marsh called the Pantello and found it to be the depository in which Belisarius had secreted the missing statues on the approach of Totila.[10] From this hiding-p

ere purchased by him. At the same time the magnificent collection of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, was offered at public sale by the deg

the arch?ologist. What solicitude for its appropriate setting, only surpassed by that of Hadrian himself,

well preserved" (and still to be seen reclining on the margin of a reservoir). To the relief of Antinous Winckelm

s not hesitate to assert, "are two likenesses of Antinous." One of them, in the

the right hand, which is empty, is in a position that leads me to conclude that it must have held the reins. In this work therefore would have

a Al

illa Alba

labru

an's

the Vati

labru

an's

the Vati

I hold it no heresy to say is, next to the Vatican Apollo and t

rished marbles. Many of these he donated to the Capitoline Museum and to the Vatican, but the relief of Antinous he held among his most cherished possessions. It would have broken the good man's heart to have known that these statues were doo

he secured the restitution of the two hundred and ninety-four statues which Napoleon had taken from the Villa Albani, Cardinal Giuseppe Albani, an unworthy successor of the great collector, sold all but one in order t

lery of the villa, it is hardly necessary to state, was the relief of Antinous. Here it remains and lures us, according to our bent, to study or to dream

Philip V. Eight of them may still be seen in the Museum of Madrid, but the ninth muse, Urania, from which the d'Estes could not then be induced to part, is now in the Sala delle

t for a portrait-statue of a genuine Selene, found by Ligorio

an

the Vati

nded to represent Endymion is due to the inability of the scientific mind to grasp more than one idea at a time, for the features bore so marked a resemblance to those of Antoninus Pius that it was rightly considered a portrait of that Emperor in his youth. Only recently have arch?ologists accepted the title, Antoninus Pius as Endymion and it seems probable that the Selene of Villa Albani portrayed the Empress Faustina, and that this group was a tribute of the Emperor's to his beautiful wife, his "Diva Faustina," who stooped to him like the moon-goddess from the sky. Is it not equally possible that he caused the symbols of Selene to

y rendered as in the Endymion of Keats, and his description of the d

rai

upward, but it

omething sail

ckly veil my

. .

simply gordiane

aked comelin

ears, white neck

ee her ho

veined, more

sea-born Venus

adle shell. The

to a flutter

over-spangled

, as though th

kest lushest

of dais

people forced him to make the wiser choice. Had Antinous been so favoured, is there any doubt whether Faustina would not have inc

us fully realise Keat

th was f

Ganymede to m

n his counten

kers-on like

ss in gro

some who feel

ouble in his

hey sigh, 'A

young Endymio

set the gossip of the Court crackling like a flame in dry grass? Or was it merely his aspiration for the throne of the C?sars which was signified by the common expression, "he longed for the moon," and no

ted, and that Antinous, believing that in so doing he saved Hadrian's life, launched forth upon the Nile during

nked by obelisks and guarded by a sphinx; and he built about it a magnificent city which he called A

mple tomb have all been mapped by arch?ologists, and its Arch of Triumph, of Roman bricks faced with white marble, its long

. Angelo. It served as a mausoleum for the imperial family. The ashes of Faustina (to whose memory her husband erected the

Vatican, in whose galleries may be found some of the statues with which Hadrian decorated the upper colonnade of the m

hy of Hadrian thus sums up his achie

h the joy of the ancients. He travelled throughout the world and found it worth the trou

eed with the estimate of Marcus Aurelius: "All that belongs to the soul is a dream and a delus

ality of the soul the well-known poem writt

vagula,

comesque

abibis

a, rigid

oles dab

spirit, eva

st and share

whither dost

tom, nude and

e again to f

ith me

that arch?ology, while it tells us much o

gination. We see the imperial barges glide up the Nile as in a pageant, but

re he a thousand

th gaze intent,

imbs reflectin

wn the sadnes

w in line un

lls upon the

ey approach a

joy there fall

ase that rang a

ps the jests

art is seized b

retched they ga

y! O waken f

seest below th

ife's enigma

own fair i

rom his reve

e river drif

e of the Gate of the Vil

EN

limpse at R

resses, a

ho pass are

a of the

ights, with cr

old were wo

the ilex

the subtle

pon the pa

e some ensan

keys, trad

tes of Heav

villa gate t

rown carved d

ou crave a

e glimpses

enter. Yo

f art, a H

e

TNO

h legends of Giulio Farnese and Vittoria Accoramboni in the author's Romance of Italian Villas, wh

sody, by permission of Mr

ed by E. Frè

outh, and yet how fast it flies! Those who wish for joy must sn

s, clubs, and spades, but with swords, money, clubs, and cups.

all him Richart de Cornouai

generally of a couplet beginning

di li

o e non si p

agre le p

di gr

ri mie foss

ondo sareb

ning's Fra Lippo Lippi of two

iano, for the name i

as shot down in an ambuscade while pursuing his amours with a gentle lady. A third, Alessandro, died under arms before Paris in the troops of General Farnese. A fourth, Luca, was imprisoned at Rome for his share of the step-mother's murder, but was released on the plea that he had avenge

by Piranesi whose engravings record

Pompeii, and here the deep blue of an Italian night