This work of Carlo Maderno belongs to that group of fountains which owe their origin to the introduction into Rome of the Acqua Paola. The lower basin stands about three feet above the level of the pavement. It is oblong in shape, the oval broken at both ends by graceful variations in the curve. The secondary basin is much smaller, round and quite shallow. From its centre rises a richly carved cup much resembling a Corinthian capital, this cup being the apex of the central shaft, upon which rests the second basin, and the main stream of water spouts upward from its leaflike convolutions. The proportions of the fountain are excellent. It is neither too low nor too high, and the lower basin is large enough to catch and retain the water which pours over the rim of the upper basin, so that it does not wash over as does the water in Maderno's much more magnificent fountain in the Square of St. Peter's. The central shaft of the Scossa Cavalli fountain has a Doric massiveness which gives a background of strength to the whole design and makes all the more delicate the play of the four slender jets of water, about five feet in height, which, rising at equal intervals from the lower basin, form an arch around the upper basin into whose shallow water they fling their spray. The crowned eagle and griffin of the Borghese are still to be discerned on the half-obliterated carving of the central shaft. The kind of travertine out of which this fountain is made is so susceptible to erosion, and has become so blackened by the deposit of the water, that the whole structure appears far older than it is. In reality it has stood here little more than three hundred years, as the Acqua Paola was not brought to Rome until the time of Pope Paul V. This splendor-loving pontiff determined, on his accession in 1605, to emulate and, if possible, surpass Pope Sixtus V, whose brilliant pontificate antedated his own by less than a score of years. Sixtus V had built the first great aqueduct of modern Rome. Paul V determined to build the second. Sixtus V had christened after himself the water which he had brought to Rome, and Paul V gave his name to the stream which, partly by using the all but ruined Aqueduct of Trajan, he had brought from Bracciano and its hills. Domenico Fontana had built for Sixtus V, as the chief outlet for the Acqua Felice, the fine Fountain of the Moses on the Viminal Hill. Giovanni Fontana, brother of Domenico, should design for the Acqua Paola on the opposite slope of the Janiculum a yet more glorious fountain which should dispense five times the amount of water given out by the fountain of Sixtus V. All this was done, and from the heights of the Janiculum the great stream descended in various channels, and was widely spread over the Trastevere or that portion of the city lying on the western side of the Tiber. One channel found another fine outlet in the fountain which Carlo Maderno, nephew of Fontana, also built for Paul V on the northern side of the Square of St. Peter's. From thence the water was conducted down the Via Alessandrina (now the Borgo Nuovo) to this small piazza of the Scossa Cavalli where Maderno constructed for it this second and very properly less splendid fountain. Thus it will be seen that the water as well as the architectural part of this fountain belongs to the beginning of the seventeenth century; but the interest attaching to the buildings surrounding the square in which it stands dates back farther than that, dates back in fact to the crowded days of the High Renaissance, when this prosaic little piazza was a centre of ardent and vivid life.
The long, plain, yet dignified building to the south, now called the Ora Penitenzieri, was built by Cardinal Domenico della Rovere, who was one of the nephews of Pope Sixtus IV and brother to Pope Julius II, the friend and patron of Michelangelo. To the west, and on the corner made by the square and the street of the Borgo Nuovo, stands the house built by Bramante, and purchased by Raphael. The atelier of the "divine painter" is the corner room on the second floor. Against the wall behind those gloomy windows stood his last picture, "The Transfiguration," unfinished; and on a bed placed at the foot of that picture, Raphael died.
Another death agony is connected with the history of the square, for in the gardens behind the palace to the north, now called Palazzo Giraud-Torlonia, was held that fatal supper where the Borgias, father and son, fell victims to the poison which they had prepared for the cardinal who was their host and the owner of the palace. Even the legends of classic Rome seem somewhat colorless compared with the memories which haunt this dull little square. Nothing could be more prosaic than its present-day appearance. It is truly "empty, swept, and garnished," but the devils which have gone out of it have seldom had their equal; its memories belong to a more splendid and to a more shameful past than is the heritage of any other city of our modern world.
In 1492, when Columbus had discovered the Western Hemisphere and Copernicus was revolutionizing the mediæval view of the universe, Rome was still emerging from the shadow under which she had lain while the popes resided at Avignon. In 1471 Sixtus IV began to restore and embellish the city, and with him the Holy See entered upon that long period of secularization which reached its acme of infamy, of magnificence, and of territorial possessions in the respective pontificates of the Borgia, Medici, and Barberini popes. Each of these pontiffs left his mark on some particular quarter of the city; and although in the years following the times of Alexander VI efforts were made to obliterate the memory of the Borgias, the Borgo Nuovo remains forever bound up with their history.
Throughout the Middle Ages the only thoroughfare from the Bridge of St. Angelo to the Square of St. Peter's was the Borgo Vecchio. It was a narrow and tortuous street and quite inadequate to the traffic and processions and pilgrimages which continually passed between its rows of crowded old houses.
Alexander VI formed the new Borgo by cutting a street through the orchards, gardens, and slums of this quarter, and by granting special privileges to the property owners who, within a specified time would build on it houses not less than forty feet high. The Pope was greatly interested in his new street and christened it for himself, the Via Alessandrina. He was fortunate in having in Rome at that time Bramante of Urbino, who was just launched on that career of popular favor which was only to be surpassed in length of days or in exaggerated estimation by the career of Bernini a century later.
A sure way to please the Pope was to employ some great architect and to erect a noble house upon the new thoroughfare. Raphael, who was amusing himself with architecture, is said to have worked with Bramante in the construction of the palace afterward owned by him, next door to the palace owned by the Queen of Cyprus,[1] and the great room on the piano nobile, the beautiful wooden ceiling of which had been designed by Bramante, was a stately studio. The room is now divided into two apartments; but it is easy in imagination to sweep away the modern alterations and to see this most beautiful, gracious, and best-loved of all Italian artists at work here among his pupils, or receiving with an exquisite sweetness and modesty the greatest princes of the Church and State.
Rome was at this period the finest marble quarry in the world. It was still a century before the time of Sixtus V and Domenico Fontana; the Farnese had not yet built their great palace from the spoils of the Baths of Caracalla and other noble ruins; the last sack of Rome was still thirty years in the future; and very little building of any importance had been carried on through the long period of the popes' absence in Avignon. Bramante found the richest marbles ready to his hand, and he built the façade of the Palazzo Giraud-Torlonia out of materials taken from the Basilica Giulia and the Temple of Janus. However, already in Sixtus IV's time the rage had begun for the destruction of old monuments, and in order to build the Via Alessandrina, the Pope had demolished a Pagan tomb which had once been a landmark in the Borgo. During the Middle Ages it was called the Tomb of Romulus, and Raphael has painted it in his "Vision of Constantine." It was of pyramidal form, like the tomb called the Pyramid of Cestius, which is still standing near the Protestant Cemetery on the road to St. Paul's Beyond the Walls. Doubtless, its massive blocks went into the construction of the new palaces surrounding the little square, which now took the place of the old tomb as the central point in that quarter of the city. In this square the two chief palaces are connected with two of the greatest of the Pope's cardinals, each of whom had found it to his advantage to hold a post in foreign lands.
The fiery and forceful Giulio della Rovere, who gave his name to the palace built by his brother Domenico and now known as the Penitenzieri, had been the chief rival of Rodrigo Borgia in the papal election of 1492, and, thereafter, the open enemy of Alexander VI. It is possible he might never have become that Pope's successor bad he not put himself under the protection of Charles VIII of France. On the other hand, Cardinal Adriano Corneto, who built the palace now the Giraud-Torlonia, stood high in the Pope's good graces. Alexander made him collector of the papal revenues in England, where he was already known as the papal peacemaker between Henry VII and the ill-starred James IV of Scotland. There he made a valuable friend in no less a personage than King Henry VII himself. The Tudor King was not lavish of his money, but, for some reason, he gave large sums to Cardinal Corneto as a personal gift.
England proved a safe and agreeable asylum for the accomplished cardinal, and when be was finally recalled he must have returned to Rome with some misgivings. He found the Curia, as well as the city, living under that spell of terror which the Borgias, father and son, had woven about them. Strange stories, horrible suspicions, and mysterious crimes were the order of the day; and the cardinal, returning from his bishopric of Bath and Wells and the frankness and simplicity of the English court, must have found the change little to his liking. Very probably it was to secure the Pope's friendship that he engaged the services of Bramante and began to build a magnificent palace on the Pope's new thoroughfare. But while Alexander VI loved splendor, he also coveted money. The new palace was slow in building, and before it was completed, the Pope could see that all the gold which the cardinal had collected in England had not gone into the papal coffers. In short, he comprehended the fact that his Cardinal Adriano Corneto was a very rich man; and in the summer of 1503 he sent him a message that His Holiness and the Duke of Valentino (Cesare Borgia) would honor him by taking supper with him on the night of August 12. It is easy to understand the consternation with which the message was received, the look of frozen horror on the cardinal's face as he already saw himself dying in sudden convulsions or fading slowly away with a fatal and mysterious malady. No time was to be lost, and a large share of the cardinal's English gold bought over the Pope's majordomo to his side. Possibly some of the deadly work had already begun before the bargain was struck. Possibly the majordomo thought it best to appear to have obeyed the Pope's orders, even at the risk of a little torture to the cardinal, for although Cardinal Corneto survived that fatal supper, it was said that the skin fell from him in strips. The Pope died within ten days, the monstrous appearance of the corpse terrifying all who beheld it. Only Cesare Borgia's almost superhuman vitality saved him from a like fate.
Years after, when he had been shut out forever from Rome, Cesare told his friend and admirer Machiavelli that the results of this supper in the gardens of the cardinal's palace had frustrated all his plans. Cesare had fully determined that his father's successor should not humiliate and despoil him as his father had despoiled and humiliated the nephews of his predecessor, Pope Sixtus IV. He had made every arrangement to make himself master of Rome as soon as his father should die. He had, so he told the author of "Il Principe," foreseen and provided for every possible difficulty. The one thing he had not been able to foresee was that he himself should be too ill to leave his bed.
The Borgias passed away from Rome. Cardinal della Rovere was made Pope, and men set about to obliterate all memories of that brood whose crimes had made Rome a stench in the nostrils of Christendom. Gradually, but effectively, the work was accomplished. Alexander VI's tomb was built without any monument. The Fountain of the Gilded Bulls, the emblem of the Borgias, which stood before St. Peter's was destroyed. The Borgia apartments in the Vatican were walled up, and remained so for centuries. The nude figure of the beautiful Giulia Farnese on the tomb of her brother Pope Paul III in St. Peter's was covered with painted metal draperies. Even the Via Alessandrina became the Borgo Nuovo.
Cardinal Adriano Corneto lived through the pontificate of Pope Julius II and into that of Pope Leo X; but the fame of his riches did at last work his undoing. Leo X, who needed money as much as Alexander VI, insisted that the cardinal was privy to a conspiracy against his life. Corneto was deprived of his cardinalate, even degraded from the priesthood, and was obliged to make his escape from Rome. He died in obscurity, leaving his beautiful palace, still unfinished, to his benefactor King Henry VII, who made it the residence of the English ambassador.
A century later, when Maderno built the fountain of the Scossa Cavalli for Pope Paul V, Cardinal Corneto's palace had again passed into the hands of the Romans, where it has remained. The Reformation had swept over England, and there was no longer an English ambassador to the Papal See.
Footnotes edit
- ↑ The Queen's palace was in the rear of Raphael's house and faced the Borgo Vecchio. Opposite to it was the palace of Cesare Borgia.