Phantom Papyrus Sprite
Chadwick Bosse
The centuries have bestowed a certain pathetic beauty, they have alsotaken away much, and the sympathy which these ruined pleasure palacesevoke whets our curiosity to know what they were like in their heyday ofjoyous revelling.
If we run down the list of the nobler villas of Rome we will find that,with few exceptions, they were built by princes of the purple, and thatthe names they bear are not Roman but those of the ruling families ofother Italian cities.
That the sixteenth century should have produced the most palatialresidences ever inhabited by prelates was but a natural outcome of theconditions then existing. The society of Rome was a hierarchicalaristocracy made up of the younger sons of every powerful and ambitiousfamily of Italy, and the red hat was so greatly desired not for thehonour or emoluments of the cardinalcy per se but because it was astep to the papacy.
"To an Italian," says Alfred Austin, "it must seem a reproach never tohave had a pope in the family, and you will with difficulty find a villaof any pretension, certainly not in Frascati, where memorial tassels andtiara carven in stone over porch and doorway do not attest pontificalkinship."
The young cardinal's first move in the game which he was to play was atall expense to create an impression, and if, as in the case of Ippolitod'Este, he had no benevolent uncle in St. Peter's chair to guide hiscareer, the parental coffers were drawn upon recklessly and the cadet ofthe great house led a more extravagant life in his Roman villa than theduke his elder brother in his provincial court. The object of hisambition once attained the new Pope unscrupulously enriched his family,and endeavoured to make his office hereditary by elevating his favouritenephew to the cardinalcy, and endowing this future candidate for thepapacy with means from the revenues of the Church to purchase the votesof his rivals. This is the constantly reiterated history of the buildersof the palaces and villas of Rome.
Leo X. after his election as pope, proved to be a greater spendthriftthan Sixtus IV., for he not only repaired the broken fortunes of theMedici but eclipsed his father as a patron of art, making the erectionof monumental buildings and the collection of objects of art a maniaamong all men of wealth and culture. Cardinal Giulio (afterwardsClement VII.) in the Villa Madama, and Cardinal Ferdinando in the VillaMedici sustained the family tradition, but Cardinal Alexander Farnese(Pope Paul III.) outrivalled them both, by filling the Farnese palacewith the most valuable collections ever amassed by a privateindividual.[1]
Immediately succeeding Alexander Farnese Julius III. built the nobleVilla di Papa Giulio, and Pius IV. the charming Villa Pia; but nepotismdid not scandalously reassert itself until the last quarter of thecentury, when the immense Villa Aldobrandini was erected by a nephew ofClement VIII.
Early in the next century the evil attained greater proportions. OlimpiaPamphili, whose name and memory are perpetuated in the villa built byher son, received from Pope Innocent X. more than two millions. ButInnocent seems to have a fair claim to his name when compared with hisimmediate predecessor Urban VIII. who conferred upon his nephews, thebrothers Barberini, sums amounting to one hundred and five millions!
An architecture of pompous ostentation and riotous overloading ofornament, the Baroque, now took the place of the classical beauty of theRenaissance and art degraded became the slave of wealth, until the greatCardinal Albani erected his villa to serve as her temple.
We are ready to expect great results in the villas and palaces of themillionaires of the earlier half of the sixteenth century when wereflect that they were executed by Bramante, Peruzzi, San Gallo, MichaelAngelo, and Raphael with a host of lesser men who would have been greatin any other age, and that the ruins of imperial Rome furnished themwith models for their designs and an inexhaustible quarry of statues,columns, mosaics, and other materials.
The point of view of the present volume is the life rather than the artof these villas, but it is not possible to ignore the stimulus which thedaily discovery of the masterpieces of ancient art afforded to theartists of the day, and the connoisseurship imposed upon the rivallingpatrons and collectors.
In the chapters entitled: "The Finding of Apollo" and "The Lure of OldRome" I have striven to depict the influence of these discoveries uponsuch sensitive souls as those of Raphael and Ligorio, and the gradualeducation of the financier Chigi and Cardinal Ippolito d'Este in therefinements of dilettantism.
But the Fornarina left a more potent impression on Raphael's art thanthe Apollo Belvedere, and her memory and that of Imperia still haunt thevilla of the Farnesina indissolubly united with that of the master ofart and the master of revels.
But if Michael Angelo carved or painted Vittoria the portrait is lost;and it is to his love, not to his art that she owes her immortality. Sofrom the history of these beautiful dwellings I have chosen as the focalpoint of each of the following chapters, the half-forgotten face of somewoman, and were it not that the story of Vittoria Colonna is so wellknown that noble woman might well have led the procession. For the samereason, and because her castle of Spoleto could not be classed under mytopic, I have laid aside a study of Lucrezia Borgia and of anotherLucrezia who may have resided within its walls.
But from the succession of beauties who kissed their lovers beneath therose-trellises of Rome, I have stolen secrets enough to overfill thesepages, secrets which few of the gentle shades would forbid my telling,since for the most part they are sweet and innocent and true. For theothers, daughters of disorder, may their sufferings bespeak your pity.
The difficulty in arriving at just estimates has only made the attemptthe more engrossing, as those will attest who have tracked through themass of conflicting histories the story of the elusive lady who gave thename of Madama to the exquisite villa which Raphael designed for ClementVII.
The Villa Aldobrandini recalls an ancient legend preserved in more thanone of the Italian novelli; and reading between the lines of theAmyntas we may trace Tasso's love for Leonora which blossomed in theterraced garden of the Villa d'Este.
The villas Borghese and Mondragone are still instinct with thepersonality of a romantic little lady of a later period, the bewilderingPauline Bonaparte. It is impossible while enthralled by her portraitstatue to remember any other princess of that noble house; but as wewander through the portrait gallery of the Colonna palace it is equallydifficult to choose a favourite from its brilliant gallery. My apologiesare due to many another in fixing upon Giulia Gonzaga, wife of VespasianColonna as my heroine, though such was the fame of her beauty that theSultan of Turkey despatched a fleet for her capture.
In the last decade of the century, Marie de' Medici looked down uponRome from the villa of her uncle, Cardinal Ferdinando, and wanderedamong that wonderful array of statues which now form the glory of thePitti Palace.
Each statue unearthed in the cardinal's garden, as it reassumed itsplace upon the familiar terrace, must have whispered to its marblecompanions: "They call this the Villa d'Este! We know better, it isHadrian's. Their learned men have labelled you, 'By an UnknownSculptor,' little suspecting that your lips were arched by Praxiteles.They have christened our friend in the garden of Lucullus, the 'Venusde' Medici,' ignorant of the prouder name she bore, and they call therelief in that new villa, 'The Antinous of Cardinal Albani,' not knowingthat the portrait and its original were alike, Faustina's."
Shall we, indulgent reader, on some fair, future day, led by the lure ofold Rome, together revisit our loved villas and win the confidences ofthese marble men and women who smile on us so inscrutably, and yet withsuch all-compelling fascination?
Certes, I am not one of your practised romancers thus to reveal my plotat the beginning, and yet, with all I have told, you will never guess inwhat mysterious guise, yet so subtly that it seemed a breath of wind hadbut fluttered a leaf of paper, the enemy we feared was struck with suchopportune paralysis.
Let those who doubt the truth of this tale or the existence of thebasilisk question Cesare Borgia, for we saw the creature at the sametime as we rode together near Imola in northern Italy. It was thebeginning of that campaign in which I, much against my will, was incommand of the French troops, which his Majesty Louis XII. had sent toaid his ally in the conquest of Romagna. I would far liefer have gonewith my brother knights deputed to sustain Louis's right to theMilanese, for it is one thing to fight honourably for France andanother, as I soon discovered, to aid a villain in the massacre of hisown countrymen, and all for aims in which I had no interest. But it wasonly by degrees that I was enlightened concerning the character ofBorgia. He was brave beyond doubt, and courage had for me greatfascination. I never saw him flinch but once, and that before a thingwhich seemed so trivial that I counted it but a matter of physicalrepulsion.
We were riding thus side by side in advance of our men, when a smallsnake darted from the thicket and hissed its puny defiance. I stoopedfrom my saddle, impaled it on my sword, and waved it writhing in theair. But Cesare, to my astonishment, turned deadly pale and gallopedincontinently in the opposite direction.
When I rejoined him after throwing the reptile into the underbrush heexplained the seizure. The astrologer, Ormes, had predicted that hewould meet his death neither from natural sickness nor from poison, noryet by the sword or cord, but from the eye of a basilisk.
"It is a serpent," he replied, "but one so rare in Italy that not oncein a century is it met with. The monster is gifted with the evil eye,killing whomsoever it looks upon. It bears a star-shaped spot upon itshead, and when you whirled yon reptile in the air methought I discernedits baleful flash."
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