These quaint old fountains, now fast fading away, were erected during the pontificate of Sixtus V to decorate the famous "Crossing 5 * created by himself and his architect Domenico Fontana when these two hegan to make over Rome of the Renaissance into modern Rome. The Crossing occurs where the Via Venti Settemhre traverses at right angles the Via Sistina. The former leads from the Porta Pia to the Piazza of the Quirinal, and the latter runs all the way from the Trinita de* Monti to Santa Maria Maggiore, changing its name just above the Crossing to Via Quattro Fontane, and after passing the Via Nazionale becoming Via Agostino Depretis. The Via Venti Settembre becomes, after leaving the Crossing on the Quirinal side, the Via Quirinale. Sixtus V laid out the Via Sistina, and called it for himself the Via Felice. The Via Venti Settembre was called in fiis time the Via Pia, as it led to the Porta Pia, which was erected by Pope Pius IV.
The four fountains are of travertine and represent two rivers and two virtues. They are all by Fontana except that one which is placed across the grille in the wall of the Barberini Gardens. This is the work of Pietro da Cortona. The choice both of the rivers and of the virtues is significant. Pope Sixtus V's early life shows what need he had of fortitude, while fidelity marks his attitude toward his two (and only) friends, Pope Pius V and Domenico Fontana.
The Tiber, represented by a river-god behind whom the reeds are growing, was of course to be expected. The Anio, also a river-god but with the emblem of the oak-tree, may have been chosen because of Sixtus V's intention to bring its waters to Rome, not by an aqueduct but in a canal, for the transportation of the travertine and wood needed in his great enterprises. For the Tiber also he had plans. He wished to enlarge its bed so that he might bring up his galleys from the sea to Rome; and he had a scheme for its separation at the Ponte Molle and for bringing one arm of it behind the Vatican, so as to make an island of that part of Rome containing the papal palace, St. Peter's and the Castle of St. Angelo. These were among the projects which he had not the time to carry out, for Sixtus V's pontificate lasted but five years. Seeing what he actually accomplished during that short period and reading what he still intended to do, it seems as if this Pope were not a link in the long chain of St. Peter's successors but one of those " explosions of energy" which occur from time to time in the history of men.
Sixtus V was not a Roman nor even by descent an Italian. His origin was from the humblest condition in life. The family name of Peretti (a little pear) might have been taken by his father, an Illyrian immigrant of Slavonic origin, to denote his occupation, which was that of a fruit gardener. At twelve years of age this man's son, Felix Peretti, became a Franciscan novice; and from that time the enthusiasm, ideals, and limitations of the great Order of St. Francis moulded and inspired a character formed by nature for leadership in any position to which it might attain. To an ardent temperament, an imperious will, and a strong intellect was added a constructive, even fantastic, imagination of a high order; but his lack of early culture and his exclusively monastic training had kept him in ignorance of all education not immediately connected with religion and had bred in him a hostility toward classic art almost amounting to fanaticism. Such was the great Franciscan friar, Felix Peretti who, after first becoming Cardinal Montalto, was elected Pope in i585 and took the title of Sixtus V, It may be said that, although as head of the Roman See his abilities obtained a far wider scope than his order could have given him, yet from the point of view of character and ideals he remained the Franciscan friar all his life. His brief and splendid pontificate closed suddenly amid the last great political and religious struggle between France and Spain. To neither opponent had Sixtus, who could see both sides of the conflict, given his final support; and his suspension of judgment in a cause where the forces of Protestantism were still represented in the person of Henry of Navarre gave rise to suspicions, most unjust, of his orthodoxy. The Roman people forgot the benefits and glories of his reign and remembered only its severity, the destruction of their antiquities, the drain of his taxation, and his temperate policy toward a Protestant king. The marvel of his extraordinary rise to power had produced in the public mind fantastic theories, and when a great storm burst over the Palace of the Quirinal, where the Pope lay dying, it was commonly believed that "Friar Felix" had at last been called upon to fulfil his part of the com* pact which he had made with the devil for power and place.
When this Pope ascended the chair of St. Peter he found an exhausted treasury, a starving people, a cramped and crowded city suffering from lack of water and from every means of hygienic Kving; and added to this there was such a condition of lawlessness in the States of the Church as made them a byword throughout Christendom. Within a year after his election the last great chieftain of the banditti had been destroyed, and the foreign ambassadors journeyed in safety to take up their abode in the Holy City. Within three years he had deposited in the Castle of St. Angelo great sums of money, which were to be used, however, only for the defense of the city, the purchase of lost papal territory, and wars against the Turks, with which last contingency his imagination was constantly at play. During these years he had also reconciled the feud of the Colonna and Orsini, had restored the disputed privileges of the nobility in the great cities, and had brought Venice once more into harmony with the papacy. It was by command of this Pope, Sixtus V, that the gardens, hills, wolds, and valleys of the States of the Church were planted with mulberry-trees, so that "where no corn grew the silk industry might flourish." It was Sixtus V who encouraged woollen manufacture so that to quote his own wordsr "the poor might have something." In connection with this, it is interesting to see that he had fully intended to turn the Coliseum into an immense woollen factory. The streets of Rome resounded with the cheerful din of his architects and masons ; and though the nobility and populace had reason enough to fear the entire destruction of their ancient monuments at the hands of this Franciscan, yet they could but admire the great triumphs of architecture and engineering which day by day raised the city to her lost pre-eminence and restored the pride of the Roman people. His first great public enterprise marked him at once as a born administrator. This was the introduction into Rome of a new supply of water. The work which the Pope determined should be worthy of imperial Rome was accomplished in spite of every obstacle and at a cost of two hundred and fifty-five thousand three hundred and forty-one scudi. By it he all but doubled the population of his city and reclaimed that great tract of land comprising the Viminal, Quirinal, and Esquiline Hills. This quarter had been a desert during eleven centuries; and yet, in the days of the Empire, it was the garden of Rome.
Piranesi's engravings give some idea of the savage wildnessoftheurdnhabitedpartsofRome; and the ragged and uncouth figures with which he peoples his ruins are, no doubt, a faithful representation of the squalor of the wretched tribe of outlaws who dwelt among them. This state of things had resulted from one cause lack of water. The aqueducts which supplied these KW* had been the first to perish at the hands of the barbarians, and desolation had followed inevitably upon their destruction. Pius IV had dreamed of restoring this great portion of the city; but Pius IV, like his immediate predecessors, had lacked the means of doing this. Sixtus V brought to the task the required money, public tranquillity, and imagination. He found in the erstwhile mason's apprentice from Como, Domenico Fontana, the engineer and architect for such underleasings. The old Marcian Aqueduct furnished the materials for the Acquedotto Felice, and the water was brought all the way from Zagarolla in the Agra Colonna, near Frascati, twenty miles distant from Rome, to the Pope's vineyard outside the Porta Maggiore, and thence to the Church of Santa Susanna. The splendid stream carried over these arches was thus distributed throughout the desolation and sterility of the Viminal, Esquiline, and Quirinal Hills. With this water at his command, Sixtus V began laying out what might be called to-day Sixtine Rome the Rome which lies between the terraces of the Trinita de' Monti and that portion of the Aurelian wall pierced by the six gates Porta Pinciana, Porta Salaria, Porta Pia, Porta San Lorenzo, Porta Maggiore, and Porta San Giovanni. It was an enormous space to cover, and the frescoes in the Vatican Library show how desolate and how wild it was. The two great basilicas of the Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, the Coliseum, and the Septizonium (for very good reasons not included in the picture) , the Baths of Diocletian, the Neronian arches, the Villa Montalto with its rows of famous cypresses, and in one panel the Moses fountain and the Porta Pia these constitute the main features of the wild landscape with its hilly background and its foreground of rough, bare earth and shaggy vegetation- The Pope offered special privileges to all who would build on these hills, and he himself began the work by levelling the ground about the Church of the Trinita de* Monti and building the fine flights of steps which lead up on both sides to the church. Half-way between this church and the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore he created the Crossing; and for rest and refreshment, as well as for beauty, he placed here these four fountains. This half-way point in the long ascent from the Trinita de* Monti to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore was well known to Sixtus V. Many a time had he, as Friar Felix Peretti, climbed that lonely hillside and felt for himself the solitude and thirst of the desolate vicinity. Later on, when he had become Cardinal Montalto, he had passed that way in such state as a poor cardinal could command. Here Fontana had first built him a modest dwelling, and here he began to construct the Villa Montalto, which, as Fontana labored over it, became at length so beautiful that it, together with the chapel he was also building in Santa Maria Maggiore, cost Montalto the allowance given by the Camera Apostolica to poor cardinals, since the Pope judged no man to be poor who could build so magnificently. Gregory XIIFs inference and consequent action may have been natural, but was not on that account just. The enduring antipathy between Ugo Boncompagni and Felix Peretti dated from that Spanish mission on which they had been sent together by Pius V; and when Boncompagni had become Pope and had, therefore, Cardinal Montalto in his power, it befitted hi to make a thorough investigation of any matter concerning his old antagonist before taking action. As a matter of fact, the villa, though costing in the end thirty thousand scudi, could not have been so extravagant in the beginning. The characters of Cardinal Montalto and Fontana, as well as their accounts, prove how certainly the owner and architect could get the best possible returns for their money. These two men formed at that time one of the notable friendships of history. Fontana supplied out of his savings the funds for continuing the chapel; and Montalto, as Sixtus V, proved his gratitude and appreciation. Their confidence in each other was as complete as was their recognition of each other's ability. Sixtus gave Fontana the work of taking down and re-erecting the obelisk of the Vatican and this, in spite of Fontana's youth (he was forty-two years old and judged by his contemporaries to be too young for such responsibility) as well as the reputation of Amannati and other competitors. Furthermore, when the obelisk was finally lowered to its present position amid the prayers of the vast concourse of people, Sixtus was not even present. The French ambassador was to have his audience at that hour, and the state of Europe was the Pope's chief concern. As Sixtus passed along the street to the Vatican, revolving the affairs of Philip II and Elizabeth of England, of Mary Stuart and Henry of Navarre, and the "Unspeakable Turk," the guns of St. Angelo apprised him that the obelisk was in place. That had been Fontana's business and he had trusted it to him. Nevertheless, the old pontiff shed tears of satisfaction.
The Villa Montalto was eventually finished by the Pope's nephew, Cardinal Montalto II, and later on it was known as the Villa Negroni. Engravings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries show that it contained an endless variety of fountains; among them Fontana's great fish-pond was truly magnificent. All of these had been made possible by the Acqua Felice. Sixtus V preferred the Quirinal to any other residence. Perhaps the Villa Montalto may have become distasteful to him by reason of the crime which was immortalized by Webster's tragedy of "Vittoria Accoramboni or the White Devil." Cinque Cento Italy was the Italy of the Elizabethan dramatists, and in this tragedy, the blackest of their Italian productions, many of the chief characters were drawn from actual life. The Cardinal Monticelso of the written tragedy had been the actual Cardinal Montalto, and Vittoria Accoramboni and her husband had been his nephew and his nephew's wife. Francesco Peretti was the cardinal's favorite nephew, and the ever-perplexing question of the formation of a cardinal's household had been solved for Montalto by domiciling Francesco and Vittoria in the Villa Montalto. Vittoria had great beauty, and her ambition and audacity were boundless. She aspired to something higher than the handsome nephew of a parsimonious and conspicuously infirm old cardinal. She captivated the head of the Orsini, the Duke of Bracciano, and gave him to understand that she would marry him after he had made away with his wife and her husband. The Duchess of Bracciano was the sister of the powerful Grand Duke of Tuscany. Nevertheless, Bracciano strangled her with his own hands while pretending to kiss her. Young Peretti was then called away from the Villa Montalto one night on the pretext that his dearest friend had need of him, decoyed into the desolate spaces on Monte Cavallo, and stabbed to death. The cardinal, his uncle, buried him without a cry either for justice or vengeance. He waited. But Gregory XIII forbade forever the union of Vittoria and the duke. More the Pope could hardly dare do against the greatest of his subjects. Vittoria and Bracciano went through a mock ceremony and retired to the duke's great fortress castle of Bracciano, not far from Rome, where they waited for the Pope's death. When this occurred, they returned to the city in order to have the marriage performed during that interim which must elapse between the death of one pope and the election of another, Vittoria became the legal Duchess of Bracciano; but her former husband's uncle, the feeble old Cardinal Montalto, was elected Pope, and the two great criminals fled from a certain and terrible retribution. Venice at that time was the refuge for all the terror-stricken, and the duke's kinsman, Ludovico Orsini, lived there as a successful general. Bracciano died there seven months later; and six weeks afterward Ludovico Orsini murdered both Vittoria and her young brother Flaminio in Padua, whither they had gone to live on the duke's great legacy* Vittoria's possession of Bracciano's fortune, and the outraged pride of the Orsini occasioned by her marriage, for she was of humble origin, prompted Ludovico's crime. But all three of these actors in the tragedy were guests of Venice, and Ludovico Orsim had in very truth reckoned without his host. There was one pride greater than that of a Roman noble, and that was the pride of Venice. Padua was Venetian territory, and the republic suffered no such acts of lawless vengeance within her jurisdiction, no matter by whom they were committed nor on what provocation. The Venetian reprisals were summary and fearful. Ludovico Orsini was strangled by the Bargello with the red silk cord which, as a nobleman, he had a right to demand; and his accomplices died by torture in the public square. It was an age of crime, flagrant and atrocious; but the story of Vittoria Accoramboni, involving, as it did, the temporary ruin of the Orsini family, lives on when others equally horrible have been happily buried and forgotten in the archives of the families in which they occurred.
Sixty years after the death of Sixtus V this region about the Quattro Fontane had become both fashionable and beautiful. The fountains were then known as the four fountains of Lepidus, and Evelyn described them as the "abutments of four stately ways." Sixtus V had made it illegal for any house along his great thoroughfare of the Felice to be torn down against the will of the owner, even after a decree of the Tribunal.
In an age of uncertainty created by the Pope's own high-handed measures, this security alone must have gone a long way toward encouraging building.
In 1687 Sixtus himself bought the beautiful Piazza of Monte Cavallo from the heirs of the Caraffa family, and the Quirinal Palace, already begun by Gregory XIII, was finished by him with great magnificence. Fontana also built in one corner of the Quattro Fontane the Palazzo Mattei, now the Palazzo Albani. The invaluable stimulant of the "master's eye" was always to be felt about the neighborhood, for Sixtus V often took his Sunday walk after mass along these streets, examining, criticising, and commanding everything. He was " always in a hurry/* It was as if he felt the time was short. No modern methods surpass the rush of his undertakings; but unlike the modern building, that which he built remained, and remains until this day. The feeble body which so successfully deceived the Conclave at his election and yet survived for those five titanic years of his pontificate lies in Santa Maria Maggiore, in the great chapel built for him by his Fontana. There, as Stendhal truly says: "Amid all the marble magnificence, what one really cares to see is the sculptured physiognomy of the Pope himself."
One other statue of this Sixtus which formerly adorned Rome would now be of surpassing interest. It was erected at the Capitol in the Pope's lifetime, and was the work of that gifted young Florentine artist, Taddeo Landini, who modelled the bronze boys in the Tartarughe fountain. The night the Pope died this statue was covered by boards for fear of the violence of the mob, and soon after it was removed; but it is probably still in existence, and the increasing interest in Sixtine Rome may some day bring it to light.
In this mortuary chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore there is also the tomb of Pope Pius V, erected by Sixtus V, and one of the panels in the Vatican Library depicts the solemn removal of the old saint's body to this splendid resting-place. Sixtus V saw this accomplished in his lifetime, for his devotion to the Pope, who, like himself, had begun life as a friar, and who had made him cardinal and stood his friend in trouble, never wavered nor grew cold. Historians have dwelt much upon Sixtus V's parsimony. Economy was said to be his favorite virtue. But the best of the Quattro Fontane is that which represents the virtue of fidelity; and this is the only one of them which is decorated with the emblems of Sixtus V.