sChURCHCS, v|ONUMeNi.- ^RT,AND ^IffiQumes [ILm^UW* ^-^ IL ROME Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN ROME By FRANCIS WEY WITH ABOUT TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ILLUSTRATIONS H "jncw ^bition LONDON WILLIAM G L A I S H E R 265, HUH I HOLBORN ^3e (BreB0am (press* UNWIN BKOTHEKS, LIMITED. LONDON AM) WOKINO, SANTA BARBARA PREFACE. RULY Rome is a world : whatever has possessed greatness in the west art, rehgion, history has left its traces in this city. Pagan antiquity, the origin of Christianity and of Byzantine civilisation, the struggles and the transformation of the early middle age, the ecclesiastical supremacy of the thirteenth century, the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth all these epochs had Rome for their centre ; they covered it with their works, and they live again in it in a crowd of monuments. How many considerable States present us, in comparison with the reminiscences accumulated here, with nothing but fragments without significance ! In such a collection each author has made his choice ; it struck me that one ought, for once at least, to decide to see all and to study p11. Still, even in a special frame, completeness is rare. As day by day and slowly you pursue the pilgrimage of the wonders of Rome, at each step, in the reminiscences of the inhabitants, in the knowledge of the learned men of the country, in forgotten books, and most of all in I)ersonal discoveries, you come upon a series of facts which have not been collected before, and you gradually rectify a multitude of erro- neous traditions as to the monuments and w^orks of art. In the midst of the masterpieces that fill the churches and palaces, how many undetected oems ! A mono- the famous ruins, all throuo^h the ancient dwellings of the populous quarters and deserted suburbs, how many remarkable footprints that have hitherto been little remarked ! Even in the .sanctuaries who.se very names call to th^m the attention of all, how many explorations have been left only partly accomplished ! Every one has spoken of the Vatican, but its multitudinous collections and the splendid halls raised to contain them have never been the vi Preface. object of a thoroughly complete description. To judge from the works I have consulted, half Rome still awaits its historian : I may hope, then, that long and laborious research will render some service. If the share of personal research ought to be great, what account ought we not to make of the steps forward taken by erudition ! Although surrounded with difficulties and dry details, which too often are the only points that strike the public, this science only aspires to awake the soul of the past ; a new touch, a livelier tint, brought to life again on the likeness of the vanished ages, such is the last word of the most special monography. I took singular pleasure in this part of my task. There will be found in these pages the results of the most recent works on Roman antiquities, on primitive Christianity, on that strange life of the Renaissance, on the lives of painters and their works ; there will be found here not only the restoration, from the last excavations and from epigraphy, of certain regions, of many edifices of the city of consuls, Caesars, pontiffs, but also the revelation of curiosities, of monuments hardly exhumed yesterday, such as the barrack of the Vigiles of the seventh cohort, the covered portions of underground Rome, the frescoes of the crypt of St. Clement, the imperial edifices of the Palatine, the admirable paintings of the house of Livia. The external aspect of things occupies a considerable place in the emotions which make up a stay at Rome : all travellers have felt this ; but it seems to me that our time has new qualities for feeling and describing. The taste for precision, the eye for the beautiful and the interesting, while remaining faithful to reality, ar'e carried very far in our time. Here still, to confine oneself to general impressions is to be incomplete ; we have to do for the sites of Rome and the Campagna, so different from all others, what works of art call for ; we have to be patient, curious, thoroughly penetrated with their poetry. How many pictures then offer themselves to our eyes ! The artist finds richer and more varied galleries than those of museums and palaces, and they are no less vivid. The study of monuments and landscapes, that of men and manners, of past and present, mingle Incessantly in this book, as they are confused also in the eyes of who- ever lives in Rome : you refresh yourself with one after leaving the other ; and then the reader is accustomed to the indefinable charm of the life of Rome, and to those delights which you never forget after having once felt them. Preface. vii It had to be one of the cares of my work to seek the drawings which shoLikl furnish the best commentary on my descriptions. I am indebted to my publishers for leaving me full liberty, for not shrinking from either the number or the expensive perfection of the engravings ; they animate and brighten many pages in which the tongue cannot say all : I could thus reproduce sites and a number of monuments not hitherto published. Eminent artists have given us their assistance, and some their useful advice ; namely, Louis Francais, Therond, Catenacci, H. Clerget, C. Nanteuil, Anastasi, Jules Lefebvre, E. Bayard, A. de Neuville, Hector Leroux, Paquier, Viollet-le-Duc, Paul Baudry artists who have given evidence of the'r tact in understand- ing and interpreting works of art and Italian nature. Can I forget in this band him whom an heroic death has snatched from us ? The best studies that Henri Regnault ever designed on wood are devoted to the illustration of this volume. His career, already marked out for glory, was fatally broken ; he was only eight-and-twenty years old when he was killed in the defence of his country. Will people find in his rare pictures, as well as in the sketches collected here, the last relics of an artist so highly gifted, the variety of his imagination, his marvellous suppleness in dealing with all kinds of work, his skill in composing scenes and grouping figures ? What shall I say of the general idea of my book ? You have no concern with Rome, unless you recognise two sentiments in yourself the love of the beautiful and respect for what is great. Rome is the museum of all ages. Above erudition, above scrupu- lous accuracy and the best conducted researches, what ought to rule here is the love of what Rome has loved ; she has preserved her greatness in the world by the passion she declared for all the expressions of the beautiful. Many are the sects to-day in diis religion of art, some simply didactic, others philosophical, historical, or even moral. The reader will see, after experience of them all, that we have not given ourselves slavishly to any of them, having recognised that the genius of the city and its artists was not dissijjated in these chimeras, but that it followed surer instincts, which carried it on in the simple search after ideal beauty. When you come to Rome after an attentive study of the whole of Italy and I had the good fortune to prelude by this necessary initiation, you perceive that in this city the various schools of a country more fruitfiil in models than any other all sum themselves up, and that particular theories VllI Preface. have here necessarily become general. I would fain have known how to explain all that has been exceptional and fertilising in their destiny ; if I had only succeeded in part, this book would still contribute to the progress of the history of art. As for reverence for all that is great, notwithstanding the criticisms that we might make and which escaped nobody, pontifical Rome, which I explored on the eve of an approaching revolution, would have commanded this in the most sceptical person. All of us, historians, artists, worshippers of traditions, had a difficulty in thinking of this city, fallen from its universal character, reduced to the condition of vulgar capitals, become a constitutional, military administrative centre ; Rome seemed too deeply poetical for such a part. It was the reverses of France that brought about this occu- pation. We have not to seek what time will do with this conquest, but we could never find a way of regretting any of our illusions. The Rome that I have depicted is the ancient metropolis, the religious metropolis, the native land of the arts, the sanctuary of incompa -able memories, the home of a people who even to this hour are like no other. That city may look with indifferent eye upon our revolutions, upon our politics of a day : its glory, which has already defied so many ruins, will see new ones, but it has not to dread the fainting memory of men ; so long as society stands, Rome will remain a holy city, or rather, as the admiration of the old world used to say with majestic simplicity, it will remain the Urbs\\\^ City of Cities. F. W. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. I!n)ccoli. The Fountain of Trevi. The Corso. St. Peter's. The Pantheon of Aijjrippa. The Trastevere. St. Peter in Montorio. Overlooking Rome CHAPTER n. I'orum Romanum. The Temple of Concord. Churches and Basilicas.- The McuP mcnts. St. Paul E.\tra Muros. 'J'he Coliseum. The Coliseum at Night CHAPTER in. Sij;hts in the Streets. The Barberini Gallery. The Sciarra Gallery. 7hc Paintmgfs. 'i'he C'enci.- The Castle of St. Angclo. The Cenci Tragedies.- Beatrice de' Cenci. Execution of l^catrice de' Cenci. The Castle DungcoiiS 33 CHAPTER IV. Roman Remedy for Grief. St. Franccsca Romana. Temple ot Antoninus and Faustina. Basilica of Constantino. 'J'he Arch of Scptimius Severus.^'Jhe Arch, of i'itus ............... 56 CHAPTER V. The Baths of Caracalla. The Basilica of St. Clement. Antiquity of the Church. Interiorof St. Clement's. Fourth Century Frescoes.- Tlic Legeiuj ofSt. l.iljertinus. Ninth Century i'Vescocs. Legend of St. Clement. 'J'cnth Century Frescoes. Ninth Century I'ilasters. Romance of St. Alexius 69 CHAPTER VI. 1 he Church of St. Crcilia- Santa Maria in Trastcverc. Tasso Region. Palazzo del Govcrno Vccchio. Maria in Cosmcdin. Rienzi' j House 1 he Pescheria J he Fishermen's Quaiter. Santa ^3 Contents. CHAPTER VII. PAGH Market of the Piazza Navona. Church of St. Agnes Extra Muros. The Catacombs. The Early Christians. Inscriptions in the Catacombs. The Catacombs. The Nomontano Bridge no CHAPTER Vlll. Santa Maria della Navicclla. Playing at Mora. San Stefano Rotondo. The Two Dungeons. The Tullianum. --Bronze of Marcus Aurelius. The Statues. -The Hospital of St. Michael. The San Spirito Infirmary 128 CHAPTER IX. The Bambino. Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. The Quattro Capi Bridge. The Island of the Tiber. The Christian Festival. The Farnesini Palace. The Pamphili Gardens .............. 149 CHAPTER X. St. John of the Florentines. The Library of the Philippines. The Sette Sale. The Baths of Trajan. St. Martin Ai Monti. The Pope's Pastoral Staff . . . 164 CHAPTER XI. The Fa9ade of St. Peter's. The Building of St. Peter's. The Nave of St. Peter's. ^ St. Peter's Chair. The Pieta. The Chapels. The Sacristies. The Cupola. Inside the Bronze Ball. The Obelisk of Caligula. High Mass at St. Peter's. The Procession. The Benediction. The Sacramental Prayers . . . .176 CHAPTER XII. San Pietro in Vincoli. Its Founder. The Appian Way. The Circus of Romulus . 204 CHAPTER XIII. The Villa Madama. Sant' Agostino. The Tomb of Rossi. The Murder of Rossi. The Farnese Palace. -Old Book-stalls. The Mattel Palace. The Aventine . 212 CHAPTER XIV. The Palatine Wall. The Palatine Ruins. The Empress Livia's House. Its Decorations. The Paintings. The Palace of Tiberius. -The Connections. The Galleries. The Circus ............ 220 CHAPTER XV. The Alban Hills. Rocca di Papa. Tusculum 249 CHAPTER XVI. Trajan's Column. St. John Lateran. The Monuments. The Neighbourhood of St. John. The Gregorian Museum. Symbols ....... 257 Contents. xi PAGE CHAPTER XVII. The Quirinal. The Surroundings. La Trinita dei Monti. The Pincian Gardens 271 CHAPTER XVin. The Villa Medici. Inspiration from Rome . 281 CHAPTER XIX. San Lorenzo. The Pillars. The Frescoes. St. Pudentiana. The Constantinian Mosaic. Church of St. Cosmus. Chapel of St. Prasseda. The Crowning of the Virgin . . . , 287 CHAPTER XX. The Carnival. Clearing the Streets. The Barbary Steeds. The German Festival. The Villa Albani . 304 CHAPTER XXI. The Pictures in the Borghesc Palace. Santa Maria del Popolo. The Paintings. The Statues. Bernini's Works . 3'4 CHAPTER XXII. The Falls of Tivoli. The Surroundings . . 325 CHAPTER XXIII. The Vatican. The Gallery of Pictures. The Transfiguration. The Etruscan Museum . . . . . . ^l'^ CHAPTER XXIV. The Chiaramonti Museum. The Statues. The Braccio Nuovo. The Sculpture. The Nile Statue. The Belvedere Torso. 'Jhe Laocoon. The Hall of the Animals. The Gallery of the Statues ^ 340 CHAPTER XXV. Gallery of the Candelabra. The Biga. The Round Hall ...... 359 CHAI'TER XXVI. The Sixtine Chapel. The Paintings. The Ceiling. The Creation of Man. The Fall of Man. The Frescoes. Raphael's Poem of the Soul. Raphael's Colour . . 367 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Fountain of the Triton ... 2 Arch of Septimius Severu.s ... 3 Fountain ok Trevi .... 5 Column of Antoninus .... 6 The Colonnades of St. Peter . . 9 "The Vale'is of 'ihe Cardinals. . . very cekemonious under anti- QUATED LIVERIES." By Henri Reg- NAULT 10 The Pantheon of Agrippa . . .11 Temple oe Antoninus . . . .13 Pish Market. By Henri Regnault . 14 View of Sr. Pejer in Moniorio . . iC Entry of the Forum Romanum by the Via Sacra ; Temple of Venus at Rome; S.\nta Fkancesca 'Romana ; Arch of Titus; Ca.mpanile of ihe Capitol, etc 19 Temple of Vespasian and Portico of THE Twelve Gods . . . .20 Entabl.\iure of the Temple of Con- cord 21 Remains of ihe Temple of Castor . 22 Column of Phocas 23 Pave.men I OF Julian Basilica and TAnu- f ARiUM 24 .St. Paul extra Muros . . . .25 Under the (ialleries of the Coliseum 27 The Arena of the Coliseum . . 29 General View of ihe Coliseu.m . .31 A (Jorkidor of the Coliseum . . 32 "The scholars . . , with voluminous SHOVEL-HATS." By HeNRI REGNAULT 34 On the Pincian. By Henri Regnault 35 The AuR'jka of Guido Reni in the Rospigliosi Palace . . . .36 La. Foknarina ok the Barberini Palace, at Rome . . . .38 La Foknarina ok the Uffizi, at Florence 39 The P.EATRICE de' Cknci. By Guido Reni 40 The Violinist of Raphael (Sciarra Palace) 41 Bridge and Ca.stle of St. Angeio . 45 Banks of the Tiber between Ripetia AND the Bridge of St. Angelo . 47 Ci.oi.ster of St. John Lateran . .51 Woman at the Bridge of St. Angelo. By Henri Rhgnailt . -55 Gate of the Palace of Venice . Pontifical Procession .\t the Feast of the Madonna. ByHknri Regnault Temple of Anioninus and I"\\ustina . The Arches of Peace . . . . InJ ERIOR OF the BaSILICA OF CONSTAN- TINE Temple of Nerva, Paniani Postern . Forum Transitorium, or Forum of Nerva Arch of Titus Bas-relief of the Arch of Titus Bas-relief of the Arch of Titus Caldarium of the Baths of Caracalla Aliar of St. Clement's PUI PIT OK the EpI.STI.E AT Sl'. CLEMENT'S Street ok St. John Laifran Side Entry of St. Cle.ment's . I-XTEKNAL Portico ok St. Clemenj's . F.ragmeni- of a Fresco oi the P'ourth Century Fragment of a Frfsco of the Fourth Century LegI'Nd ok St. Liber i inus : Frescoes of the Eighth Century A-ssuMiTioN OF THE Virgin: Fresco of the Ti.me ok Leo IV. . Byzantine Madonna : P'rksco of the Ninth Ckntuky Legend ok St. Clement: Episode of SisiNius (Tenth Century) Miracle at the To.mb of St. Cie.ment (Tenth Century) .... St. Blasius Picking a Thorn kro.m the Throat of a Child: Fresco on a Pilaster (Ninth Century) Daniel Spared by the I>ions : Pilaster OF THE Ninth Century . Legend of St. Alexius : Frf-sco of the Tenih Century .... The. Pauline Fount.vin .... The Statue of St. Cecilia. By Sti-phen Madekno Portico of Santa Cecilia in Traste- VKRE Young \V'o.man ok the Trastevere .Sant' Onofrio ...... Portrait after ihe Mask of Tasso . Pedlment of the Portico ok Octavia . 57 .S8 60 61 62 65 66 67 68 70 71 73 79 80 82 83 85 86 88 89 9' 93 94 95 97 98 99 lOI \1V List of Illustrations. Gate of St. Angk.i.o in Pkscheria Courtyard in thk Palazzo dklGovkrno Vecchio, Via uklla Peschekia Barker in the Open Air. By Henri Regnault A FlSHERM.\N ON THE WaTCH BEEORE HIS GiRELLA. By Henri Regnault Fountain of Bizzaccheri, and Temple OK thf. Sun, or Vest.v Santa Maria in Cos.medin . House oe Rienzi, and Temple of For- TUN.\ Virilis The Market of the Piazza Navona. By Henri Regnault "While the Contadini Drink." By Henri Regnault .... Piazza Navona and Church of St. Agnes St. Agnes : after the Mosaic of the Choir (Seventh Ceniury) St. Agnes extra Muros on the Via Nomentana Subterranean Galleries and Loculi of the Caiwcomb of St. Agnes . Subterranean Altar, Tombs, and Chapel in the Cemetery of St. Agnes Valerianus and C.^':cilia. Mosa'c ok the Ninth Century at St. C.iiCiLiA Inscription in the Catacombs The Children in the Furnace; Prayer; Jonah and the Whale . PL.A.YING AT BOWLS. By HenRI Ri G- naui.t Painiings of the First Century on a Chapel Vault (Catacombs of Cal- LISTUS) Ponte Nomentano Street and Apse of St. John and- St. Paul Arch of Dolabella and Gate of the Old Convent of the Trinitarians Romans Playing at Mora. By Henri Regnault Entry of the Convenp of Sv. John AND St. Paul San Stefano Rotondo ... Fragment ok Raphael .... Madame Vigee-Lebrun. By Her- self Arches ok St. John and St. Paul, as seen when descending from the Cu:li.\n One of the Trophies, called of Marius, at the Capi roL . Steps of the Sen.vforial Palace : T.a.rpeian Stairc\se Junius Brutus ... . . Piazza of the Capitol Gallery of Aniiques The Dying Gladiator .... Faun, after Praxiteles The Amazon ...... Mesalina Makius Agrippina, Daughter of Drusus . Roman L.\dy, taken for the FiRsr Agrippina The Hospital ok Sr. Michael Nest of Houses on the Banks of the Tiber. By Henri Regnault . View o.n the Tiber in front of the Cloaca Maxima . . . . Frontage of S.\nta Maria in Ara CCELI The Bambino liNTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SANTA Maria in Ara CffiLi Holiday Carriage of the Holy Father The Equipage of the Bambino Principal Door of the Ara Cceli Ogival Vaults in Ara Cceli Island of the Tiker, St. Bartholomew, AND THE QuATTRO CAPI BRIDGE Upper Gallery of the Cloister of THE Ara Cceli .... La Porta Settimiana in the Traste VERE View of the Villa Pamphii.iDoria Gardens of the Pamphili Villa . Gardens of the Pamphili Villa . St. John of the Florentines. Traste verine Bank. Slope of the Jani CULUM The Father-Man.a.ger of the Philip PINES. By Henri Regnault . Porta Maggiore .... Interior of the Minerva Medica Arch of Gallienus The Sette Sale .... Family of Beggars View of St. Peter's and the. Vatican The Piazza of St. Peter at the Grea' Benediction .... Under the Portico of St. Peter's (side of the Sacristy) . Plan of the Basilica of St. Peter's CuRULE Chair, attributed to the Apostle Peter .... Tomb of Innocent VIII. State Carriage coming fro.m St Peter's Angels of the Cupola : after Melozzo DA Forli Passage under the Portico of St Peter's Tribuna and Chair of St. Phter Obelisk of Caligula and Fountains OF the Piazza ok St. Peter's Fan-bI':arers Old Noble Guard. By A. de Neuville The Pope's Old Swiss Guard. By A DE Neuville .... The Pope's Bearers. By A. de Neuville A Benediction from the Loggia by Pope Pius IX Tiara-bearer. By A. de Neuville Interior of Sr. Peter's . Nave of St. Peter's Display of the Grand Relics A Mace-bearer. By A. de Neuvilli The Moses ok Michelangelo Piazza of San Pietro in Vincoli Vaulted Passage under the Palace OF Lucrezia Borgia Well in the Cloister of San Pietro IN Vincoli J47 '5 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 159 160 162 163 16s 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 177 180 183 185 186 187 189 191 193 194 195 196 197 iq8 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 2o5 207 List of Illustrations. XV Arch of Drusus The AppfAN Way Mausoleum of Cecilta Metklla Circus of Romulus Maxkntius . Between ihe Ponte Molle and the MoNiE Mario Fountain at the Villa of Pope Julius III. Bv Henri Regnault Casino of Jitlius III St. Peter and St. Paul, by the Bridge of Sr. Angelo Raphael's Four Sibyls . . . . RiARio Palace (Cancelleria) The Farnese Palace . . . . Loggia of the Farnese, from the Bank of the Tiber. Bv IIe.nri Regnault The Excav.\!Ed Hercules The Sp.vda Pompeius . . . . Brokers and Bookworms in Open Air. By Henri Regnault Fountain of the Tortoises . Coi'rt of the Mattei Palace Torch of St. George in Velabro In the Palace of Caligul.\ Porch of Santa .Sabino Exhumaiton of the House of Livia . Ruins on the Palatine Remains of the Public Palace, and Loggi.a. of the P'arnese Remains of the Public Palace of Do.MIII.\N Livia's House (Left Wing) . Paintings of the Tablinum of Livi.a. Restoration of the Clivus Victori.e Vaulted Passage between the Pal- ace of Tiberius and the Public Palace Ruins of the Palaces of Tiberius . Remains of the Library of the Public Palace Ruins of the Palatine, towards the Circus Maximus . . . . View from the Palatine, towards thf. Ca-:LiAN Old Tower of the Palatine, facing the Circus ^L\XIMUs Staircase in the Palace of Caligul\ Ancient Procession to the Lateran . Road to Castel-Gandolfo : La Gal- LERIA Ariccia and its Viaduct Lake of Aluano and Pontifical Villa (Fvening) At Rocca di J'apa. By Henri Reg- nault Youthful Shepherdess Oxen ok the Roman Campagna. Bv Henri Regnault .... The Salita of Marino .... The Piazza ok .St. John Laikkan Trajan's Column and Ulpian J^asilica Well ok the Sixiii Cenilrv, in the Cloister ok .St. John Santa Crock in (ikkusalemme . PoxTico OF St. John Lateran Penitents Ascending the Holy Stair- case Sophocles E'Ar.K 208 209 210 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 226 227 228 230 231 232 233 237 238 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 250 251 253 254 2.v') 2.Sf> 2,S7 25 261 262 263 264 2 00 PAGK 267 209 272 273 274 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 288 289 290 291 2Q3 294 295 296 297 Christ Sy.mbolized in Orpheus . "A Group Slumbering over .v Cradle"' Via della Pilotta .... Fountain of the Pi.\zz \. MonieC.\v.\li.o ARKIV.A.L of the CARDINALS AT THE Quirinal Palace. Bv H. Regnault L.\ Bakcacci.v .\nd the Steps ok L.\ Trinita DEI Monti .... House where Poussin Died Perron ok the Trimt.v On the Terrace ok the Pinxtan L.\ Pascuccia The Emblems of Justice (Raphael's Stanze) Portico ok the Villa Medici ViLL.v Medici (Gxkden Front) VlALE COPERTO, IN THE VlLL.\ MeDICI . Under the Portico .... On the Terrace of the JMedici Gardens View at the back of the Choir, San Lorenzo ...... B.vsilica and Convent of S.\n Lorenzo Fuori le Mura .... Transept and Confession.vl of San Lorenzo ...... Pulpit of the Gospel, at San Lorenzo Cloister ok San Lorenzo Fuoki le Mura Convent of St. Pudenitana St. Pra.ssed.\ and St. Pudentian.\ (Catacomb of Priscilla) Door of St. Pudentiana Mosaic of Sr. Pudentiana . The Church of St. Cosmus and St. Damianus 298 Door of the Colonna Chapel, at St. Prasseda 300 S.\NTA MaRI.A MaGGIORE . . . 3OI Lnterior of St. Prasseda . . . 302 Off to the Carnival .... 304 Piazza del Popolo .... 305 Awaiting the Illuminations. By A. DE Neuville 306 Rack OK THE Barberi : the Start. By H. Regnault 307 German Ma.squkrading : the March Pas I'. By II. Regnault . . 308 The (JERMAN Fesiival: Entering the Grottcjes. By II. Regnault . 310 Terraces and Portico at the Villa Albani 312 Gardens of the Villa Albani . -313 Nuptials of Alexander and 1<.oxana . 315 Piazza and Porto delPopolo; Church OK Sama Maria . . . -317 ToMii OK William Rocca (Sacristy ok Santa Maria del Popolo) . . 318 Florentine Statues, Bas-rei.iek ok i he PisANS (Cf)RRIDOROKTHE.SACRI.STV) . 319 Bernini's Daphne 321 Fountain in the Bf)RGHK,sE G.ardkns . 322 The I'.oRGHESE Venus .... 323 Portico. OF Octavia .... 324 Ravine: Temple ok IIk.cules, called OK THE .SlBYI 326 A Street ap Tivoli .... 327 ".Some Pk.cor.\ri like Clephts." By Henri Regnault .... 328 XVI Jst of Illustrations. Remains ok the Villa Adriana Vatican Lihrary .... The Throne-room at the Vatican Porta Angelica Pontifical Resi DENCE IN the VATICAN . The Chiaramonti Gallery . Sarcophagus of the Bacchantes The Braccio Nrovo Augustus (Braccu) Nuovo) . Pig-Clemen riNE Museu.m The Nile (Braccio Nuovo^ . Demosi'henes (Braccio Nuovo) Torso of the i;elvedfre The Perseus of Canova Hall of the Animals (Pio-Cleme\ TINE Museum) .... Antique Group (Hall of the Animals) Mknander (Pio-Cleme.\tine Gallery) Gallery of the Candelabra 330 332 ZIZ 335 341 343 344 34(> 348 349 350 351 352 354 353 355 -,6i The Biga Casino of Pius IX. .... Exit fro.m the Pontifical Garden . The Round Hali The Ignudi (Vault of the Si.xtine Chapel) Julius H The Prophet Joix (Ceiling of the Sixtine) Delphic Sibyl (Ceiling of the Sixtine) The Creation of Man (fro.u the Roof of the Sixiine) The Creation of A'oman (from the Roof of the Sixtine) The Fall of Man (from the Roof of the Sixtine) Poetry Theology The First Sin (La Segnatura) . PAGE 362 363 364 365 368 371 372 373 375 376 377 37 379 381 ROME. CHAPTER 1. Y first night in Rome was spent under a roof in the street of the Ouattro Fontane, which, by the FeHce and Sistini roads, comes out on the Pinc'an, the Tuileries garden of the city of Romuhis. On the following morning, I stole away from the house to venture alone into the labyrinth of streets. On my right the straight and hilly street made with its high walls a distant frame for a conical belfry sketched against a grey and rainy sky. I did not know the situation of Santa Maria Maggiore. I was still furthur from suspecting that in these blurred swellings I saw the renowned Quirinal and Viminal hills. The road continued on the left in absolute monotony ; before me in false square, in an ill-kept court, arose a vast building with a tolerably new look about it, and with a portico crowded with soldiers. The edifice struck me as handsome enough for a barrack ; but recognising it as the famous palace of the Barbcrini, I thought it too much of a barrack for a palace. On the Piazza Barberini, as you return towards the street, you come upon a fountain of sombre colour, but whose basin is in good proportion with the design that occupies the centre ; four dolphins, whose gaping throats just touch the water, are solidly bound together, forming by their raised tails a base for the arms of the Barberini, and on this is placed, describing a semi-spiral and serving for an upper basin, a large shell, of which the overflow falls away in a shower of pearls. P>om the midst of this, solidly supported, there rises a vigorous Triton, who blows to the sky in a horn of shell form, from which spirts a thread of water, as shown in the illustration on the next page. This original and robust conception, which reminded me of b 2 Rome. Pierre Puget, is the work of Bernini. I did not know it then, and in giving this piece of information I am anticipating : I beg the reader to allow me often to do this, and to complete these first impressions by the further results of my studies, so as thus to avoid returning to the same subject. Turning my back to the piazza, I took a cross street, the Via del Tritone, which begins with shops for the sale of smoked and greasy meat, trattoric that the Germans must frequent, for you see in them avast quantity of sausages and choppes of beer ; the common people, squatted or leaned against the wall all round the door, proud, idle, sober. FOUNTAIN OF THE TRITON. In this country, where fever is endemic, I do not know if sobriety be an instinct of self-preservation ; at any rate, it is exemplary in all classes, and in truth the quality of the articles of food decidedly encourages so estimable a disposition. Veal killed too young is bad and scarce ; mutton is stale and hard ; beef has little taste ; fowl is skinny and tough as leather. Game only is of superior quality, and, except partridge, it is common. Close and insufficiently kneaded, the bread is heavy ; the wine, usually tolerable, is carelessly made : it should be excellent. Pastry, made \vith a mixture of oil and dripping, is repugnant enough to bring one's heart up. Broccoli. 5 For that matter, the humbler folk care little about these culinary elements. This is how they sustain themselves : all the winter they prepare for the public at the street corners in large cauldrons, twice a day, those long, greenish cauliflowers called broccoli, and they are carried home on drainers from shop to shop. They eat also con- B 2 ^ Rovie. siderably of large lupins, round and yellow, cooked in water, without butter or dripping. On the broccoli they put salt and oil with vinegar. Add some olives, some dry figs, cervelas, parched and often rancid, and stalks of fennel ; and for dessert, nuts, ptnocchi, the seeds of the pine. In summer, fruits, especially water-melon and the green gourd with purple pulp, of so poor a flavour. Such is pretty nearly the substance of the diet of the people of Rome, if you add a few common pastes. Some muddy streets, without footways ; some mean, arched shops, with narrow doors, such as you see at La Chatre and Dinan ; walls in which the peeling plaster has received a daubing of earth from the splashing of the gutter ; now and then some church with shabby facade in the modern taste, set in among the houses ; much animation and babbling among the people ; all the women ragged, and with hair elaborately dressed, even those who have none, terrible to behold this is what greets you at every corner. I there received, for the first time, the distinct impression of the odours or, more poetically speaking, the perfume of Rome ; it is a local exhalation of cabbage or broccoli broth mixed with the raw smell of roots, sulphurous emanations to which one has to become accustomed, for the pavement and the black mud of the streets are impregnated with that essence, which has not become pure in becoming everlasting. Gradually, as I advanced along a narrow street with the air of a kitchen-garden, in which the crowd was thickening, and where leaves of vegetables were all trampled under foot, I perceived a sort of indistinct murmur like that of the waves, which first accompanied and then overwhelmed the noises of the throng, and all at once, at the corner of the street, I was dazzled by sheets of water, which, from a pell-mell of rocks, dominated by a building covered with statues, tumbled foaming and sparkling on every side, to be engulfed in cavernous holes. I was in front of the fountain of Trevi. It is a showy example of ostentatious decoration as understood by the school of Bernini. In the midst of rock-work and shell, Neptune emerges with his steed from the basement of a palace to which this enormous construction is fixed. The pretty and graceful bas-reliefs describe the discovery of the Acqua Vergine by a youthful maiden in the neighbourhood of Tusculum. From the upper basins, from the hollow of rocks in which intertwine climbing plants carved on rough stone, streams, of whose size one has no idea, spout forth on every The Fountain of Tjxvi. 5 side ; a cataract or river .... in the guise of the stage i The waters, for that matter, are the most limpid and pure ; their salutary FOUNTAIN OF TREVI. virtues are reputed to cure twelve disorders. The torrent breaks forth with the tumult of a mountain cascade. r, Rome. ()\\ tlu; brink of th'; lower lasin, on an cvoni'n;^ when the moon makes iJiis ;^.Mtat;fl sheet sj^arkle h'ke th(; steel links in a hauberk, yon ,f)m'tinu;s '.ee a yonn^ maiden benrl over the water, while a lov( r m llu^ distance this tower of water with its majesiic siatlolding. its impression would be thoroughly victorious. Wi; rnulcrstaiid. alUT all. that the dry and poverty-stricken imitation <^{ such a style, as it is to be seen in France, and I (i| I'MN Ol' ANTONINUS. The Corso. 7 especially in Prussia, is the most obsolete of all the forms of artistic decline. By accident I came out into the Corso. Another deception : this famous road, which serves as a turf for equestrians, is narrow and full of shops, like our St. Martin's Lane, which it recalls still further by its mean footpaths. A number of small shops where wares of no great value are retailed ; a palace here and there to relieve the rows of houses. In passing by the side of the great Colonna piazza, I measured with my eyes the tall Doric shaft of white marble which adorns the centre, vaguely provoked that the column of Trajan left so slight an impression. Far abroad as I was, a man becomes thoughtless ; it was only the Antonine pillar, and I never even thought of it. It was under Sixtus V, that, in restoring the half-buried pedestal of this monument, raised in honour of Marcus Aurelius after his victories over the Germans, they mistook its real purpose, and attributed to Antoninus Pius a structure that only dates from his successor. The old inscription, with several bas-reliefs, was brought under Gregory XVI. to the middle of the Giardino della Pina, so called because in the centre of one of the facades with which Bramante surrounded this great space surrounded with quincunxes, there figures between two iron peacocks a large bronze pineapple funereal emblems taken from the Pantheon of Agrippa, and not, as has been said, from Adrian's Mole. The vast square where the pillar of the Antonines rises is monumental, surroun- ded as it is with the Ferraioli and Chigi palaces, the last raised by the nephews of Alexander VII., as well as the Piombino palace, which on the Corso fronts the building of the Grand' Garde, carried on a long peristyle whose pillars came from the excavations of the ancient city of Veii. Leaving the Corso, I met an old friend, an abbe, who took me by the arm, and said, " Come, my good friend, I shall take you straight to St. Peter's." So to St. Peter's we went. P>om the end of the .Santa Lucia bridixe to the bridfje of St. Angelo, you follow an interminable row of streets, whose appearance is wretched, and even reaches downright repulsiveness, as one approaches the Via di Tordinone. This ugliness at last amuses you. Besides, as I look about, I listened to the abbe with all my ears ; with him this polypus of streets became full of life. At the point where two lanes divide, he showed me the Albergo dell' Orso where Montaigne once lodged. Nothing has been changed there ; 8 Rome. notliing- does change in Rome : waggoners and market people put up their carts under this gateway, even then ancient, where the Bordelais gentleman dismounted with his suite. It is a symbolical protest against the vanities of the stage to have condemned Apollo, patron of the opera at Rome, to take up his abode in a kind of ignoble closet, which, seen from without from the extremity of the street, under its robe of brown plaster and bare of all ornament, has at once the equivocal physiognomy of an ill place, and the ghastly look of a sinner in the livery of public penitence. The high blank wall which descends steeply to the river, flanked with little huts and wooden corridors, is like the enclosure of a tannery. I was blunted by too many iconographic reminiscences, but, with the satisfaction of a vision realised, I recognised the bridge of St. Angelo and Adrian's Mole, My companion laid himself out to distract my attention ; he named a hundred objects, and flashed in my eyes a hundred souvenirs. I was surprised by the breadth of the Tiber and the extent of the buildings of the San-Spirito Hospital. At last, at the end of the Borgo Nuovo, from the bottom of the Piazza Rusticucci, we discerned the facade of St. Peter, colossal collet of the ring described by the colonnades of Bernini. This was the great deception of the day. The vain majesty which renders this gigantic work empty and dumb struck me spontaneously with a crudity that was almost choking. From the bottom of the place the columns of Bernini connected themselves easily with the facade, on. each side of which they are seen to mark nearly a right angle. But when, as I went forward, I saw them fold in a circle behind me, and thus form with the portal a sort of scorpion with a double tail, it all seemed to me an abuse of the permission to pile stone on stone for the mere amusement of the eye. The real vastness of the work might have had the power of impressing me ; nothing of the kind ; the immensity of the proportions escaped me. The commonplace of the style extinguished whatever interest the whole ought to have inspired. Looking to the ground, I found the open space w^ell paved ; the obelisk of Sixtus V. interested me, especially on account of Fontana; the three-story arcades where the Loggie are, glazed as they are at the present day, affected me like an enormous cage, and nothing, in truth I confess it to my shame nothing within me would have stirred, unless the abbe, showincr me behind the other buildines a S/. Peter's. 9 small, low roof on a corner of bare wall had not said, " 'Tis the roof of the Sistine Chapel." To enter that sanctuary was not to be thought of in a moment of such dismay. I even refused to enter the church. In the open space I had noticed a carriage pass by, which only lO Roine. pulled up at the foot of the great steps. I thought the vehicle and Its horses ridiculously small. There got down from it two or three ants. . . . When we came in front of the portico, the abbe gently said to me, " Place yourself quite close closer ; there, measure with your arms the diameter of these columns and their flutings." Their size was indeed formidable ; statues might have been niched in the flutings ! " Come away," I cried, over- whelmed. My guide was a trifle discouraged : I was no less so at responding so ill to his instructions. " I have no longer," I said, "any oc- casion to seek the origin of the French decline of the last two centuries ; from Louis XIII. to Thermidor ; all is there, down to the endive wreaths of the Pantheon Ste. Genevieve." " The basilica of St. Peter's," said my friend, "offers one particularity; at the first approach its faults all stare you in the face, and its aspect surprises nobody ; but the more you visit it, the more unforeseen revelations you find there ; and there comes a moment when surprise, gradually deve- loped, becomes prodigious the single example of an energetic The Pantheon of A grip pa. 1 1 impression like amazement and marvelling admiration springing up by degrees. As soon as you can appreciate St. Peter's, you will have taken a great step." But in what sense ? thought I, with inward disquiet. I had time to reflect on it ; for the abbe left me alone for half-an- hour, to execute in passing a commission at the house of an Eminent Excellency who received that day. We mounted to a story as high as the third in London houses, and I waited for my companion in the antechamber, where loitered, in an indolence quite in harmony with my own discouragement, groups of THE PANTHEON OF AGRIl'I'A. valets, very important and in very poor feather. A few poor wretches crouched on benches ; the valets of the cardinals affected a diplomatic style, being extremely ceremonious under antiquated and rich liveries, too large, too narrow, or too long for those whom they clothed. Pretentious disclosures of domestic distress, these cast-off things must have passed into the possession of half-a-score of digni- taries, and held as many lackeys as a sentry-box shelters sentinels. My mentor next brought me by a meshwork of alleys to the Pantheon of Agrippa, which he made me enter without any prepara- tion. The portico, though added afterwards, appeared to me in all 1 2 Rovic, the bold and original solidity of its Roman character, with more clearness than impressiveness. I had visited the Greek temples at l\Tstum. Still I regarded with interest a monument raised at the dawn of the age of Augustus. I went out, I turned round it, and looked at it from the bottom of the piazza ; I returned to it again, never wearied of examining an example so precious of the art of building at the end of the Republic. Perhaps earlier than Agrippa who finished it, and primitively dedicated (Pliny tells us) to Jupiter the Avenger, the Pantheon, whose dome offers a very model of building, is, as has been said, fronted by a portico or peristyle or sort of hors d'ceuvre, which rests on sixteen enormous monolithic columns of oriental granite, crowned by the finest capitals that Rome has bequeathed to us. These columns, eight in front, are doubled by a second row ; engaged pilasters form a third against the building itself. Here, mark another singularity, which produces an illusion as to the depth of the portico. Instead of being arranged in line on parallels forming a right angle with the steps, these columns radiate gradually, in such a way that from the middle of the piazza, where those of the first row that support the pediment ought to conceal those of the second and the third row, we see them on the contrary in echelons, because their slightly oblique position produces an imaginary perspective, whose result is to throw the distances back. This piazza of the Pantheon, cleared by Eugenius IV. of the ruins, which included the basalt lions, a bronze head of M. Agrippa, a chariot, a porphyry sarcophagus in which Clement XII. made his bed, this little piazza, inherited by the hucksters with their petty trade, w^as once a wild and mysterious spot, the valley of the She- Goat ; swamps bristling with reeds, surrounded with underwood, in the midst of which the second prodigy of the genesis of Rome was accomplished the disappearance of Romulus. It was at the end of the seventeenth century that the douane de tcrre was installed in the remains of a temple of the second century, dedicated, to all appearance, to Antoninus Pius. The old building was vaulted, and, seen from the inside, the back part of the architrave and the base of the vault seem like a rock raised in the air, and resting on a wall. W'e must know that Borromini, who restored two centuries ago the frieze and the entablature, connected the whole with a coating of stucco, which produces the illusion. The Corinthian engaged columns in the modern building have branches of olive The Trastevere. 13 among the acanthus of the capital, but the dcHcacy of these capitals is far from equalling the purity of the Pantheon. Fires have cracked the shafts, torn like the trunks of trees that the liorhtnine has blasted. In the court, among the bales, boxes, carts, a whole population of clerks and draymen is busy ; incongruous spectacle of that dead ruin, which encloses and shows in its bosom a house full of life. It seems that we had arrived in the Trastevere without any understanding either why or where I was so swiftly car- ried along. I no- ticed three streets by reason of the monotony of their names : the Lun - q'ara, the Luncjarina, the Lungaretta. In the midst of this rapid flight one re- collection struck me, and remained with me. Close to the Borgo, by the anci- ent Septimian gate, at the corner of the Via Santa Dorotea, in the old rag-stone wall of a dirty build- ing, is the outline of the stopped arch of an arcade of shops. It is flanked by a granite column, over which ri.ses an Ionic pilaster, the whole enframed in the wall. " An old bakery," said the abbe, " before which Raphael passed many a time ; it was there that the I^'onarina lived." As we began to ascend, and as the grass became more abundant in the streets as the houses grew less frequent, I asked whither we were IKXH'Li; Of ANTONINUS. 14 Rome. going;, and was told that wc were climbing the Janiculum, the Monte d'Oro where Janus had his town of Antipolis in front of that of Saturn ; where, according to Titus Livius, the tomb of Numa was found ; where the citadel of Ancus Martins rose ; where, according to the Christian legend, the Apostle Peter w^as crucified. Along the street I had already remarked that snuff-boxes are a usage as hospitable as universal, and that in this respect Rome still lingered in the habits of the a^e of Fontenelle, when both sexes carried about a snuff-box and a walkinor-stick. The Romans have dropped the stick ; it w^ould need an effort to carry one. The monks of the Montorio took and offered about two pinches a minute ; it is the base of conversation. The abbe, who insisted on hindering me from looking behind me, was eager to inform me that in all classes, young and old, handsome and ugly, bourgeois, peasants, monks and soldiers, everybody crams his nostrils most zealously. " You will see at the Sistine Chapel, where the whole sacred college figures, how funny this labour of nasal alimentation is. A veteran snuff-taker, Pius IX., constantly uses a genuine Capucin's handkerchief, a bit of cretonne of red and blue check, such as we hardly ever see at home except among the Scottish farmers. This poor rag jars with the gold and purple of the heir of the emperors of Rome : don't you think that such a sample from the wardrobe of the sovereign-pontiff reveals the conventual simplicity of the monk framed in the splendours of the church ? " At the moment we were going to cross the threshold of the church, the abbe, plucking me by the arm, resumed : " Let me tell you, before going in, that Baccio Pintelli of Florence, who died in 1480, rebuilt, at the expense of Ferdinand IV. of Spain, the church of St. Peter in Montorio for monks of the Order of St. Francis, to whom it had been ceded." We cannot, however, help admiring there one of the good works of Sebastian del Piombo the Flagellation of Christ. The work is supposed to have been executed after a cartoon of Michael Angelo ; its style is lofty without being either violent or harsh ; the painting, of a very deep quality, would be more easily appreciated if the small chapel which gives it shelter w^ere less sombre. It is on the master altar of St. Peter in Montorio that, before the Italian campaigns, Raphael's Transfiguration was to be found a famous work of a painter whom it represents when handed over to the ambitions of his third manner : then this famous canvas was sent to the Louvre, Sf. Pdcy in Mo7itorio. 15 whence it was restored in 1854. Since then it remains at the Vatican. I should have noticed at St. Peter's the sepulchral chapel of the Del IMontc family, by Ammanato, who has carved some fine figures, among others that of Justice, which offers the little-known singu- larity of having been taken from the same model as the renowned i6 Rome. statue of G. dclla Porte at the tomb of St. Paul in the Vatican basihca. Let us mention a small round temple, surrounded by sixteen grey marble columns, and surmounted by a cupola. Ferdinand and Isabella had it erected by Bramante at the very spot where St. Peter is said to have been crucihed. A gift of alms will procure you a present of a pinch or even a packet of the dust of the place. I scandalized my companion by consi- dering this little ob- ject as a fine ex- ample of those cor- rect styles that the Joseph Prud'hommes of art have conse- crated. Nothing is worse adapted for a great commemora- tion, or so ill becomes a spot where Nero had set up the cross of the first of the popes, as this pro- totype of the bel- vederes which, in the Enorlish crardens under Lewis XV L, prepared resting- places at the top of the grass-plots for the Aspasias of the Directory. To describe what meets one on this terrace, from which Montaigne three centuries ago threw his eye over a noble winter prospect (26th January), one would have to introduce into the description the abridgment of Roman history. Rome is only a foreground of the picture ; for the view extends towards the north over the plains reaching as far as the Apennines, whence once rushed down Equi, viKW OF ST. peti<:r in montorio. Overlooking Rome. 17 Sabini, Hernici, Towards the south-east at the foot of the Alban mountains it embraces those plains of the old Latium which open out by the country of the Rutuli on the swamps of the Volsci. The sun, ready to set behind us in the Tyrrhene Sea, inflamed with its crepuscular purple the domes, towers, and pinnacles, the facades of palaces and ruins, as well as the volcanic mounds scattered at the foot of the chains and over the plateaux ; a few peaks silvered with early snow crowned the violet Apennines with a pyramid of rose-colour, where brighter lines marked here and there a hamlet perched high. Between these two extreme points, the blue-tinged mountains, the city glowing and ruddy in the midst of the bronze zone of its Byzantine walls, lay stretched before us a mixture of verdure and russet outlines, the country crossed by aqueducts covered with ancient villas, and pierced by long roads of old renown, marked out and lined with tombs. The yellow Tiber, flavus, as Horace called it, winds at your feet like a track of sand ; going up towards the horizon, it melts, on one side in the azure of the sky, on the other in the fires of the settinof sun. While the abbe continued to point out to me each monument, each site, from Mount Soracte to Tivoli, from the tomb of Adrian to the mole of Ccecilia Metella, I fancied I saw again what he introduced to me. To the right especially, beyond St. Paul and the Ardean road, to the culminating point of the hill of Jupiter, from Alba Longa and the distances of the Appian Way to the old Latin gate, memorable spots occur in such numbers, on a theatre so noble, that one looks forth, as in a dream where one traversed the air with wings, over all the legend of the ages closing in its sanctuary the Forum Romanum, whose ruins, rising to the left of the Coliseum, at this moment glittered in a burning light. Framing panoplies of ruins and little domes and terraced gardens, the famous hills, the Cculian, the Palatine, the Capitoline, marked the enclosure of the dale of Romulus and the swamps of the Velabrum. How many mighty names, how many mighty things in this little space! How many kingdoms in miniature destroyed by wars of giants ! B| i 1 3d >) ^H ^ !5 ^ ^ 1 M 1 l\ ^ i ^^^ Kb ^^k^"< 1 ^1 ^ g^M ^ 1 ^ S i M i CHAPTER II. jHEN we remember what this bit of narrow valley was, the interests of the world that have been debated there, the voices that have resounded there, the dramas that have been there unfolded ; when we think that from the almost fabulous time of the alliance of the Sabines with the hordes of Romulus down to the last Augustuli, this spot was the very brain of the immense Roman Empire, we hardly dare to tread its soil, so profoundly is one seized with a religious impres- sion. The entire history of a people, of the most renowned of all peoples, worked itself out on this scene, soul and sanctuary of Rome. We know where the Eorum was, but its exact boundaries leave room for a host of uncertainties, and have given rise to numerous controversies. A portion only of the place has been exposed by excavations. The truth as to the whole is still half buried under four- and- twenty feet of ruins heaped up in the eleventh century by the vandalism of Robert Guiscard, who, to avenge the Popes, destroyed their capital, the marvel of the old world. It would have been necessary, therefore, only the coffer of St. Peter is not rich enough, to continue on this long space, divided by two distinct levels, the excavations begun under Paul III., pushed on with more activity when Rome, violently usurped, made part of the P^ench Empire, and since then under the reigns of Leo XII. and (Gregory XVI. The Temple of Saturn is separated from that of Vespasian by a branch of the Via Sacra, which was called the Cliviis Capitoliims, or slope of the Capitol. Leaving this to follow a sort of alley encumbered with broken marbles, you reach the Schola Xantha. Here arc the lodges {tahcrncr), to the number of six, which served as bureaux for the scribes, the archivists, the t>rcecones of the curule Fan (in Rovianiim.. in sediles. These vaulted shops have stiU their threshold; they continue below and in front of the portico of the Twelve Gods as far as the g 2 20 Ko7ne. foot of the Tabiilarium. Pius IX. had them cleared out and restored in 1857. Let us now cross, parallel to the Tabularium, the base of the Capitoline iiitcnjionfium, by directing our course on the side of the Tullian prison and the Gemonice, which have given way to the slope of the Ara Coeli. We shall come across, between the arch of Septimius Severus fepv^^ ^~ ^"^ "--= -^^ ;nj ^^^ ^j^g corner of ^v|^ "] the portico erected ^^ j in 676 of Rome by 3 Lutatius Catulus, in _ c;i front of the building where they kept the tables of bronze (the archives of the Re- public), the remains of the renowned Temple of Concord, erected, it is said, by Tiberius. On this point no uncertainty; votive inscriptions confirm with refer- ence to the site and aspect of this edifice the indications of Plutarch, Dion Cas- sius, and Festus. The entry of the temple, one of the stirring historic spots of An- cient Rome, is still marked by the holes in which the hinges of the gates turned. The monument was enormous, nearly square ; they descended from Its vast portico by steps of marble, of which numerous fragments still remain in their place. Turned to the Forum, close to the Gemoniae, standing back at the foot of the Capitol, the portico of the Temple of Concord served as a meeting-place ; the senate assembled there on great occasions, 'IKMl'LE OF VESPASIAN AND PORTICO OK THE TWELVE GODS. The Temple of Concord. 21 where it was necessary to address the people congregated before the rostra. The place of the speaker, therefore, must have been placed between the steps of the temple and the popular comitia of the Forum. Now the tribune, at first placed near the Temple of Castor and Pollux, long confounded with the Gra^costasis, where from the time of Pyrrhus foreign ambassadors were quartered, the tri- bune for orations was afterwards trans- ferred between the comitium, of which these steps are still to be recognised, and the foot of the many steps of the Temple of Concord, almost in the angle of Se- verus's arch. There still remain of it mas- sive constructions of peperino or volcanic rock ten yards long. I have measured them. Close by is the office of the scribes who preserved the speeches, officials who, from Tullius Tiro downwards, Ci- cero's freed man, may be compared to our shorthand writers. These signs are written unmistakably, and the essential portions still subsist. I shall be forgiven, then, if I abstain from dissertations on the subject. I should fear to chill the impressions which this spot stirs. Nor will I expatiate on the monography of the Temple of Concord ; facings of the cella in antique yellow, African marbles that introduced all the animation of natural polychromy, ..... KNTAIil.ATURF. OF THK TEMPI.E OF CONCORD. 22 Rome. oxtinguished pleasures of which one is reduced to a mere Hst of memories. To establish the antiquity of the work, I will remind the reader that one superb entablature and some highly decorated bases of columns preserved in the Capitol are in work and design closely recalled by some square bases and other fragments found in Nero's palace under the baths of Titus. It was at the entry of the Forum that the Piso lived whom Agrippina accused of having poisoned Ger- manicus, and it was there where he was mysteriously assassi- nated ; Tacitus in- sinuates that it was at the insticration of Tiberius, who might have been compro- mised by his compli- city. What wondrous events on a scene as narrow as that of a play-house, from the days since Brutus showed there the dagger of Lucretia, and Virginius bought in the shops to the north of the Forum, whose site is still marked, the knife which, to reach the decemvirs, was to pass through his daughter's heart, down to the memorable occasion when the curia was burnt before the body of Ccesar ! To animate all, to justify all, to bring back the great spectres of history that they may introduce the emotions of their presence, it is enough to seat oneself on a column, and fit reminiscences to that fallen ornament. At the very foot of the Palatine, at the bottom and on the lower REMAINS OF THE TEMPLE OF CASTOR. Churches and Basilicas. 23 sides of the F'orum, as well as along the Via Sacra, was a row of shops of which one strikes the remains at the first stroke of the pick- axe ; there are still collected here shopkeepers' signs engraved on squares of marble. I have beheld one, belonging to one of the jewellers who succeeded one another there, from the time when Papirius Cursor dis- tributed the bucklers of chased Q^old and the mas^nificent arms of the Samnites, so that being displayed in front of the shops those trophies might furnish a magnificent decoration to the Forum. The custom was afterwards ob- served by the cediles. Into whatever place you step, you come upon memo- rials ; on whatever side you turn, the eye is interested by mo- numents. A little on this side of the co- lumn of Phocas, right of the Via Sacra, the damp ground covers the fountain of Ju- turna where Curtius sacrificed himself ILxactly here stood the milliarium aurciiui, and on this pavement Galba was massacred by his furious legionaries, who carried off the bald head of the emperor supporting it through the mouth. Lift your eyes beyond the P'orum, turning your back to the Palatine; the walls, the brackets, the stucco of the I'lmilian basilica lose themselves under the portal of St. Adrian. Near the gaol of Tullius is St. Luke, formerly St. Martinc : between St. Luke and St. Cosmo here is San Lorenzo in COLUMN OF PHOCAS. 24 Rome. Miranda, which grasps in its arms the temple of Antoninus and Faus- tina. As we cross the open space transversely going towards the arch of Septimus Severus, we follow the road along which Vitellius was dragged, down to the narrow staircase of the Gemoniae by which criminals passed out from the Mamertine prison. The Momunents.. 2^ The Forum with Its frame of buildings, from the heights of the Capitol to the basilica of Constantine, was assuredly within small ST. PAUL tXlRA r.IUROS. compass the most imposing spot in the universe ; no wonder the restoration of this city of monuments, perched one above another 26 Rome. under the sides of the three hills is the privileged historic romance of all architects! It is certain that this multitude of temples, basilicas, porticoes, piled up and placed one above another, and stretching against the blue sky their white and rose profiles, that these forests of columns of all shades, standing in rows from the Julian basilica to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and letting the oblique sun-rays play between their ruddy shafts, that these deep vaults, this net-work of aisles and shinino- architraves ao-ainst the chiaro-oscuro of the galleries, must indeed have dazzled barbarian and Gaul as they drew near the Olympus of the conquering divinities. Such as it became, this necropolis is still, I repeat ; for one still feels it, until one is overwhelmed beneath the thought, to be the most considerable spot on the globe. After losing oneself in forgetfulness there until night, like a scholar on his first pilgrimage, one turns away with a blue veronica between the pages of one's album and a tiny bit of marble in one's pocket. Still, a son of the north, something of an archaeologist and always an arguer, will have some trouble in preventing himself from regretting, as he makes his way into St. Paul's, that the piety of the faithful towards sacred traditions should have led them to restore what a catastrophe had laid in ruins. The new church is splendid ; the most costly materials are piled up ; it costs Christendom millions ; so much expense and effort only succeeds in mournfully recalling the basilica founded by Constantine on the tomb of St. Paul, rebuilt with great splendour from 386 to 392 by the Emperors Valentinian, Thcodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius, preserved for fifteen centuries, and burnt in 1823, by some clumsy plumbers. When the Ostian basilica was destroyed Pius VII. was dying; the)' contrived to hide the disaster from his knowledge. It was then Leo XII. who ordered the reconstruction of St. Paul on the same dimensions, copying the dead basilica from memory. The whole world joined in the work. Schismatical Russia offered the gift of an altar of malachite ; Mahomet brought as tribute to the sanctuaries of Christ four columns of oriental alabaster, presented by the Sultan ; gold, silver, and jewels flowed in from every side. Hence the porticoes of veined Greek marble, the pilasters taken from the quartz of the Simplon, the walls of Carrara, framed with gems of varied hues ; the entablature of Paros with its violet frieze ; the enormous capitals, so lavish in size, so delicate in execution. Wondrous spectacle, at first sight especially, that vast monument so ancient and so new, SL Paul Extra Muros. 27 unique in our bourgeois age, of a colossal reliquary executed as if it were a miniature, and revealed in all its dazzlin^ freshness. UNDKR TlIK CAI.LERIES OF THE COLISEUM. But you do not lose yourself there, as in the old edifices of Havenna) in. a dream of wondering and confiding admiration. The 28 Rome, moment you pass to analysis, the poverty of existing artists is disclosed in such a degree, that to restore to this noble shrine some- thing of its soul and the veneration that it ought to inspire, you apply yourself to the search for the smallest vestiges of the primitive basilica that may have escaped from the disaster of 1823, This examination is repaid by a few consolations. Notwithstanding all its imperfections, St. Paul will continue to be reckoned among the important monuments of Rome ; its richness and splendour, and certain details still preserved, make the building still interesting. But if the church did not exist, it would yet be necessary to go there to visit the cloister, one of the two finest works in that kind that the thirteenth century has bequeathed to us. The other is the cloister of St. John Lateran, which this recalls very closely. Farther on you leave to the left the artificial mound of Monte- Testaccio, formed in long years by the pile of earthenware vessels, in which the peasants placed most of their wares that they brought to the great market of Rome, and whose fragments they threw away in this common place of deposit established behind the Emporium, from which they have recently cleared away the debris. Most of the wares they unloaded there, even dried vegetables, were carried in vessels of clay, and not as in our time in tilted carts, in baskets, sacks, or chests. These worthless vessels once emptied were tossed away, and this explains what was for long the enigmatical existence of the enormous cumulus. You then come to the Marmorata, a store of the marbles of Greece and Italy; they have just exhumed, for the purpose of making use of them, blocks that have been unloaded there these fifteen centuries, and known ever since the time of Sixtus V., a fact that facilitated a discovery that has in these later times made much noise. Hence we pass to the foot of the convent of Sta. Sabina, whose bells sound on the Aventine, whose church has seen St. Dominic and Father Lacordaire; famous names that open and close the annals of the order of preaching friars. In front beyond the Til)er is the hospital of St. Michael, where they have a school of arts and trades for orphans. Finally, at the extremity of this escarped face of the Aventine, covered with shrubs and brambles, you gradually see the city encircle the stream behind the remains of the Pons Sublicius which Anchus Martins placed on wooden joists, as its name indicates, and which was rebuilt by the censor ^Emilius Lepidus in the reign of the second of the Ccesars. This was the bridge that Horatius Codes defended ; it is from this primitive monument, whose construction, The Coliseum. 29 preservation, and maintenance was confided to the college of priests, that our word pontiff comes. The magnificence of the Coliseum has been so well appreciated, that the popes have at great expense restored and consolidated the Flavian amphitheatre ; they are proud of a solicitude with which all ^o Rome. Rome associates itself. We may conceive the fine effect produced some years ago by one of the T'^rench bishops, when preaching in the pulpit of the Coliseum, he ventured to exclaim, " What, ruins of abomination, relics of impurity, you still stand ! O shame, that Christians should endure the sight of these infamous walls ! They do not scatter the stones of this Babel, heaped up by the impious pride of the enemies of the faith !...." Here were eloquent emotions to convince a Genseric or an Attila ; but the prelates of Rome have a less primitive zeal. Whence it follows that in condemning, by this appeal for the destruction of the Coliseum, so many pontiffs who had been the religious preservers of its antique splendours, Monseigneur just a little compromised his country. " At the bottom of your hearts," an official remarked to me on this subject, " you are the descendants of the Gauls who devastated Italy." The quantity of shrubs, of pellitory, of saxifrage, that the Coliseum nurtures is even less surprising than the rarity of the species. Wliether it is that this vast mass raised high in the air intercepts wandering germs on their passage, or that the nature of the artificial soil or the composition of the cements that bind the stones have been favourable to exotic growths, it is the case that the botanists have drawn up a considerable herbarium of Colisean objects that are to be found in no other place under the Roman sky. This mountain of the F'lavii has its own flora, like Hymettus or Hybla. It is not, however, in the first moments that you give your atten- tion to these details that are so close to you. By an instinct which is an aspiration after the infinite, the eye first of all darts to the farthest point of the horizon that the soul would fain pass. Above the escarped edges of this crater, you discover at the points of the four cardinal winds, not landscapes, not a city, not a simple bird's- eye view, but the unnumbered illustrations of the greatest book of history. This spectacle you regard with the sensations of dream peopled by apparitions. Silence, which often makes its impression without the spirit being conscious of it, perhaps increased the illusion of the mirage, and for that reason a noise that was suddenly made conveyed to us the sensa- tion of being roughly awakened. From the bottom of this crucible for fusing stars in, confusedly issued strains of church music; our eyes attracted to the bottom of the abyss distinguished a microscopic procession of penitents masked by their sheets, taper in hand and banner at the head, who, followed by countrymen and shepherds, The Coliseum at Night. -^i chanted the office of Via Crucis before the fourteen chapels which arc arranged round the arena, l^rom these depths up to the 32 Rome. purple of the west, where the solar ball was sinking, we measured strange distances, gradations of lii-ht and colour more marvellous than ever. And widiout being able to speak, we gazed ; as the night fell we still cfazed. A CORRIDOR OF THE COLISEUM. CHAPTER III. |T Rome the multiplicity of journeys and visits, the absence of omnibuses, the scarcity of cabs, all combine to keep you on the trot more than half the day from street to street. But you take this duty with patience, because the streets change in physiognomy according to the quarter, and because on pavement there overflows a tide of common people, simple in their manners, and bringing with them into full day, besides their por- ringers and chafing-dish, their household habits, sometimes the prac- tice of their trade, without being disturbed by prohibitive regulations. In the lonof monastic streets where the frrass crrows on the road for instance from Santa Maria Maggiore to the Lateran amusing processions move without noise along with the few and discreet passers-by. The scholars of seminaries and colleges, originally from the five parts of the globe, dressed up like little abbes in all colours according to their nations, with voluminous shovel-hats on thin bodies and childish faces, furnish a diverting sight. The Germans wear red cassocks, the English violet ; the white frock of the little Americans contrasts with the browned heads of young negroes and red-skins brightened by the Indian sun. On the Pincian every morning appointments are made for talking politics between heteroclite and discreet persons whom you would take for retired clerks or merchants, were it not for their clerical dress, which savours of the ancient r^<^iinc and sun^sjests the old comedy rather than the church. A yellowish umbrella under the; arm, a snuff-box in the hand, these prelates have the air of honest shopkeepers of old days. In consequence of some maternal vow one used to see Carmelites. Franciscans, Carthusians, from eight to ten months old at their nurse's breast ; this is what still happens in the Kingdom of Naples Down to Leo XII. and (Gregory XVI., who put an end to another D Rome. abuse, the clerks of solicitors and notaries, as well as a host of officials beloni^ins^ to the administration, arroL^ated to themselves the privilege of wearinij- the cas- sock, while they kept the life and behaviour of the young men of the day. Hence for foreigners many an occasion for scan- dal, they attributing to the clergy the follies and mis- deeds of the law- yers' clerks. The cassock is there what with us the ad- ministrative frock and military uni- form are the dress of those who are something in the State. Many monks and nuns and a certain quantity of soldiers are what contribute to give variety to the look of the streets, settine" off somewhat the rag- gedness of the Trastevere or of the Suburra. Po- pular costumes no longer exist at Rome, but there still come a few from the country. The country districts send up to the great city, besides models for painters, families who in order to utilise some necessary journey of the head of the tribe will accompany Szg/its in the Streets. 35 him in full force in their fine costume, equipped with some gewgaws to sell, some couplets to sing, or a curiosity to exhibit. The principal business concluded, or the market closed, the good folks stay where they have got out, at the piazza Montanara, in the quarter of the Regola, in the environs of the Farnese Palace, towards the Ponte Sisto, or at the corner of the Ouattro Capi bridge, waiting for the hour of return to the mountains, and munching morsels of bread. Seated on a curb-stone, or arranged in a group on the angular heap and the parapets, a rural household will be seen there all installed as if in their quarters, the youngsters sport- ing round the mater- nal skirts, and the contadina suckling the youngest while she waits her lord. These are the sights of the street ; they offer a diversion as one hurries from a church, or from one gallery to another. Warned against the classic seductions of Guido no less than against those of Do- menico Zampieri, I still felt as I looked in the original on the ceiling of the Aurora, too chilled by the graver of Morghen, the sensation that is produced by a work poetically treated and indebted for a happy effect to a choice of colour full of freedom and delight. Preceded by a Genius who bears in the air the torch of day, Apollo on his car advances in flame through the sky to commence his day.. I le is followed by Flora and surrounded by the Hours, who dance around. These have been nourished without any economy, and are perhaps a little too plump ; would to heaven that in these full and jubilant visages' D 2 l).\ IlIK I'INCIAN. liV HENRI Rl'X.NAri.T. 26 Ro7ne. one could recognise the por.r and wretched. At the bottom of the picture, in the distances of earth, the sea and its shores, still bluish, are not warmed by the freshness of the dawn. The composition is harmonious, the painting bright and tranquil ; the draperies are studied, and the poses graceful. It is the attractive masterpiece of an artist usually cold, and of whom we shall find among the Barberini collection the best, or at any rate the most agreeable, portrait. As to the iMrst Fault, by Domenichino, it is a sketch of Breughel de \'elours enlarged by a Roman from Bologna who knows his rank ; the graces of the subject humanise the magisterial cleverness of the painter. Adam plucking the apple. Eve who receives it stooping, are attractive fi^j-ures ; the menagerie distributed in an Eden inspired THE AURORA OF GUIDO RENI IN THE ROSPIGLIOSI PALACE. from the Roman Campagna gives animation to a scene of rich fancy. Built for Scipio Borghese, the Rospigliosi Palace was formerly acquired by Mazarin. After the death of the cardinal minister they stationed the French Embassy there, which only left it in 1704. Let us go down again to the street of the Ouattro Fontane. The vast Barberini Palace, at which three generations of architects worked, Charles Maderno, Borromini, and Bernini, Is thrown In false square on hilly gardens whose lofty trees have seen pass beneath them all the race of the nephews of Urban VIII. As soon as one had mounted the staircase on the rl^ht or the Staircase on the left the one of Borromini, Imitated from Bramante, who took a model from St. NIcolo of Pisa, the other of Bernini one The Bar bey 1111 Gallery, 37 had crossed a frontier; Rome showed herself on the spot by the peculiar note of her patrician dwelling-places. The great hall to which you approach by two staircases of honour, has for celling an immense production of Peter of Cortona, the Triumph of Glory, capo dopera as far as knowledge and skill, a swarming conception which escapes from all the conditions of verisimilitude that have hitherto been respected in ceilings. On the walls an ancient picture of Roman Masquerade, infinitely curious ; in the neighbouring rooms family portraits and ancient busts. In the form of credence or console a Madame Barberini of old days, travestied as Diana in repose, sleeps her last sleep over an enormous and ancient sarco- phagus. Restored mausoleums in this way become here furniture for an antechamber or a dining-room. As for the gallery, which is situated In a low entresol, one of its attractions is that it offers the original and indisputable portrait of a woman beloved by Raphael, whom tradition has made a female baker. Rome possesses five oi* six copies of it ; they are inferior to the authenticated example of the Villa Barberini. They show that the adorable brunette of the Tribuna of the Uffizi at Florence is not that friend of the painter whose real name was Margaret and who is called La Fornarina, and I regret it for his sake, for the lady of the Uffjzi is handsomer than the lady at Rome. The latter, as she is represented by the portrait of the Barberini, is the relief of an artist wearied of the ideal and of ethereal creations. She is a substantial, hearty woman in full bloom, whose nose drinks the wind with full aspiration, accompanying little greedy eyes, and a mouth softened by laughter. The jet-black locks are harmonized with the skin by browned tones of a burning warmth ; she has over her the sketch of a diaphonous robe. The signature of the master, or of the slave, is on a narrow circlet attached in the shape of a bracelet round the biceps of the left arm. One perceives that she was very finely made ; the hands are pretty, but we discern there as well as on the arms vexatious repaintings. The piece in its smoky tone is cleverly restored ; still the model has less delicacy than frankness. For anybody who knows the two portraits, that of Rome and that of riorence, two women who have not the most distant likeness, the once-celebrated work of Ouatremere de Ouincy on the works of Raphael loses much of its value. He expatiates gravely on the question whether it is the Fornarina of the Pitti Palace, or its 38 Rojuc. rcproduch'on in the l^aroerini Palace, which is the true original. He can only have seen one of the two pictures. Around this picture there are others of which one ought only to speak in order to warn good souls against the pretensions of the Notice. The lioly I'^amily of Andrea del Sarto, that one of his pupils would have i)ainted with a less awkward servility of imitation ; apocryphal Madonnas of Bellini, of F"rancia, of that Antonio Razzi who is calumniated in more forms than one; a Jesus among the Doctors, a bit of Teutonic barbarism, impudently attributed to Albert Dlirer ; a cardinal's portrait which would compromise the name of Titian if the draperies were less dull ; a so-called por- trait of Masaccio, in which they have only copied his cap : here are equivocal works denoting the oblivion of tradition in a country so rich in subjects of study. A curious picture of this gal- lery, a portion detached from that of the Sciarra Palace, is the Death of Germanicus, by Poussin ; a canvas of a fine colour, of a dramatic sentiment, full of simplicity ; and with this master candour is hardly com- mon. Probably, when he exe- cuted it, the artist had not yet impregnated his spirit with the monuments of antiquity. A rcMuiniscence of the etiquette of courts governs the arrangement of the Death of Germanicus : before these Romans we think of the warriors of Lebrun ; we involuntarily look for Lauzun and the ?^Iarshal de la P^euillade by the pillow of the son of Drusus. Robbed of his manner, away from his system, Poussin becomes less profes- sorial and more pleasing. It is here also that we find the original of an extremely sweet portrait of a young girl, a hundred times reproduced by engraving in all sizes the Beatrice de' Cenci of Guido, a face fascinating and LA FORNARINA OF THE BARBERINI PALACE, AT ROME. Tlie Sciarra Gallery. 39 suffering, with a head-dress of white draperies heavily arranged a melancholy, interesting figure, though a little too set. Michael Angelo of Caravagio painted, in an effect of shadow after the manner of Rembrandt, with a head-dress still more massive, the mother of this heroine ; finally, a third picture, the best and the least remarked, the portrait of a ripe beauty with an elegant sweep of outline and a physiognomy expressive of calm cruelty, transmits to us, they say, the features of the mother-in-law of Beatrice, the Lucrezia Petroni : this work is by Scipio of Gaeta. Not here, but a little later, we shall attempt to retrace that horrible tale ; these fine portraits, especially the first, being suspected of being apocryphal. In fact, although at the death of Beatrice, Reni was already four- and-twenty, it is doubtful whether he arrived at Rome before the death of Clement VIII. More- over, the portrait of the Cenci has less the air of a study executed from nature than of a head composed with the help of an earlier portrait. Guido may have executed after- wards an idealized likeness of the famous heroine. However this may be, to personify so romantic a victim no face could have been chosen more touching in expres- sion or more sure to move pity. From the street of the Ouattro Fontanc to the Corso the distance is not great ; it is still less from the Barberini Gallery to the Sciarra Gallery, a collection which is the trihiiua or sanctuary of the other. The casket presents in fact among some pebbles of the Rhine certain I)recious stones of fine water. The two figures called Vanity and Modesty justify by their perfection the niistake of those who have so often attributed to Leonardo the works of Bernardino Luini, that affectionate artist so loyal to the glorification of his master, like all who heard and loved that famous man. Between the Circe of Garofalo, a landscape where the companions of Ulysses are in the very struggle of being transformed into beasts, and the St, Sebastian of Perugino, Albert Diirer in the Death of the Virgin makes us T.A FORNARINA OF THE UFl'IZI, AT FLORENCE. 40 R. OVIC. pardon the country of his birth by force of skill and simplicity. He is rarely seen to gain this triumph. Poussin has in this palace some curious canvases : the St. Erasmus, whose bowels executioners are tearing out, a ghastly subject handled with vigour so as to be occupied in mosaic, a picture with more energy and truth than his representation of St. Peter ; the St. Mat- thew writing, a very fine piece which has not become too dark ; the views of the banks of the Tiber, and of the Acqua Acetosa, rendered by a master who loves the sites and the district. But amono^ smaller marvels are certain tiny landscapes of Claude of Lorraine ; one in particular, which, from the sides of the sfreen crater into which heaven has poured the lake of Albano, represents on the hori- zon thecrest of Castel Gandolfo. Another of these compositions, of a more costly finish, was painted on a plate of silver, a piece of far-fetched luxury to little purpose, which nobody can perceive, and that I should not know of but for the Princess Barberini having since then revealed it to me in a Paris salon. The weight of a silver mounting scarcely adds to the value of the jewels of the master, Claude. Rome Triumphant, and the Death of St. John the Baptist, are the two most important pieces of Valentino. This last painting has an effect in relief of great power ; the Herodiad is a magnificent piece. P>om this picture to that of Michael Angelo of Caravagio, realist in a time when people did not yet possess works so ill compounded, the interval Is easily traversed ; it will strike a simple spectator vividly, and may possibly stop in passing the connoisseur, and even the moralist, who usually only understands the vicious sides of the arts. Two sharpers agree to pluck a pigeon; one posted behind the stripling marks on his fingers for his accomplice the number of Er O LIl d.l THE BEATRICE DE CENCI, BY GUIDO RENT. The Paintings. 41 points. The first is an old rascal, seamed, stamped, and branded by vice and infamy in every line of his face ; the other, the accomplice who pla}'s, pale, stooping, prematurely degraded, confronts with his debased adolescence the candid youth of his victim. From his doublet he withdraws a card, assuring himself by an oblique and false glance of the success of his knavery. I have reserved to the last the Young Man with the Bow, or Violinist of Raphael. It is here we find this so justly renowned picture, dated 15 18 and signed. Everybody recalls that delicate and feminine face, widi its black cap so gracefully adjusted and posed over a broad collar of fur. These two palaces, whose galleries are not too undigested, gave me a fancy for collections formed by families of the coun- try, the intelligent luxuries of the Roman princes. Some de- ceptions, however, awaited me at the Corso, in the Doria Palace, whose salons, richly de- corated in the time of Innocent X. with those daubings that our architects of the great reign imitated, exhibit among several masterpieces mediocre copies and apocryphal pieces in great number. The catalogues not being published, it may be con- venient to point out the best l)ictures, and to mark among the golden ears parasitic blights, such as some IMurillos, several Andrea del Sartos and Francias, that those masters never saw. Poussin, Van Dyck, Titian especially, are frequently compromised by cold imitators ; they give for the original of the last painter a weak enough copy of his Magdalen of the Pitti Palace. Wandering here and there, you come upon a fine Descent from the Cross in the style of the primitive painters of the north, attributed presumptuously to Ilemling; and a good portrait of a man. attributed to Giorgione. On the right hand of the great gallery let us notice a pretty litde Reader, by Lucas of Leyden, and let us unmask a copy THE VIOLINIST OV RAPHAEL (sCIARKA PALACK), 42 Rome. of the Aklobrandinc Nuptials, attributed very gratuitously to Poussin. In the centre of the bay you will be scandalized by portraits usurping the names of Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck. Those who have named these paltry things have not even had respect to the chronological indications furnished by the dress, for the way in which the pictures arc assigned involves the most amusing blunders. Thus a rather villainous copy of a picture of three faces in the Pitti Palace, which represents three Italians without beard, is thus described, " Calvin, Luther, and Catherine, by Giorgione." Giorgio Barbarelli, who died in 15 ii, cannot have painted the portrait of the wife of Luther, still less that of Calvin, wdio was born in 1509. They attri- bute to Leonardo da Vinci a copy of the Jane of Aragon that the books of the Louvre properly give to Raphael. In the Doria Palace the face offers some variations, and especially in the background, where a bright green curtain recalls Andrea di Solaria. This charm- inof head of the crranddaucrhter of Ferdinand I,, who married the Constable Colonna, is known at Rome under the pseudonym of Queen Jane of Naples. What more common than such blunders ! At Paris did they not take the Lucrezia Crivelli for La Belle Ferronnicre ? This good and old copy of Madame Colonna has a false air of the school of Leonardo ; but the original, that we have had in our pos- session since the reign of Francis I., has not the very marked characteristics of a portrait of Raphael. So recourse has been had to the usual expedient of throwing on to Giulio Romano the execution of the body and the accessories. The painting by Claude, called " The Mill," contains all the poetry of the Roman Campagna. A river of some breadth, its basin cut off by a sluice, descends facing the spectator from the Alban hills which bound plains strewn with the ruin of aqueducts ; at the back to the right is a small town inspired by that picturesque Etruria of which the old painter dreamed before the ruins of the Latin towns ; on the other bank turns, at a corner of a rustic manufactory, a water-mill, whose wheel shines like silver ; it contrasts with the small Temple of Vesta perceived at the foot of a hilly indentation ; the whole is toned in vast foregrounds of verdure plunged by enormous trees into thick translucent shadow, in which idyllic figures glance to and fro in dancing and rustic games. The vigour, the intensity, the movement of this foreground, prolonged in far perspective, produce a delicate and variegated light which fascinates our eyes and attracts them to the sky, to the Monte Gennaro, the snows of the Apennines, and the The Cenci. 43 remote hills which fall away in the Campagna. Before a diversity of detail like this we have a difficulty in understanding such limpid tranquillity of effect and impression. There is nothing staring ; as in nature, you have to get accustomed and recognise the whole site litde by litde. After my visit to the Barberini Palace the features of the Beatrice de' Cenci remained in my memory, and I had vague dreams of seeking out the palace once inhabited by the actors in one of the most sombre tragedies of the past time. I was still ignorant of the situation of the house, when one day wandering about the city I took it into my head that chance had brought me to the quarter of the Cenci. The aspect of the house is scarcely less appropriate to the melo- drama which has made the old name of the Cenci so'familiar. It is in the corner of a small choked and uneven piazza that the old entry to the palace hides itself under a truncated tower, the palace on this side only revealing a straight outline. Iron cross bars impress on the facade a character of mystery and duress ; one of the gates, arched and carved, is surmounted by an antique mask of a Medusa of a dreary and tearful expression. In the other corner of the piazza, shut in and lugubrious as the court of an old dungeon, Francesco Cenci he who was assassinated had raised towards 1575, to the honour of St. Thomas, a small oratory on the wall, of which an inscription per- petuates this reminiscence. They have also fitted into the walls adjoining two small cippi, or funeVal altars, bearing the name of one Marcus Cintius. They were for the Cenci stone charters, for their boast was that they had descended from this Cintius, as the Muti descended from Mutius Screvola. They would have been more happily inspired in claiming kinship with Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who, 153 before our era, being praetor in Sicily, was made prisoner by Hannibal, of whom he wrote a history, quoted by Macrobius, and praised by Livy. But the ignorance of the feudal barons was as great as their vanity, as is frequently proclaimed by their pretensions of this sort. The Santa Croce boasted of being of the line of Valerius Publicola : hence the name of Santa Maria de Publicolis given to the church where they have their burying-places, among which, besides fine monumental stones of the fourteenth century, one ought to men- tion a magnificent Florentine mausoleum. The continuation of the Cenci Palace, in the inside of which there is nothing any longer to recall the contemporaries of Clement VIII., reaches to another larger and lower square in front of the synagogue. 44 Rome. The principal existing entry is surmounted with the inscription, Cenci BoLocNKiTi ; but the heirs of the name do not live in the palace. It was in the Castle of St. Angelo, that Roman version of the Tower of Nesle, and in face of the mole of Adrian, that the terrible adventure of their ancestors came to its end. You can by making some turns approach this strange-outlined monument by alleys that isolate and set off the massive and imposing prison-house. In spite of the original head-dress with which the popes from the time of Boniface IX. crowned it, the tower-shaped burying-place of the Antonines, which is not less than six hundred feet in circumference, still keeps an. equivocal and sinister expression, especially when viewed from the river, or from the poor districts of which I have spoken. Transformed in the middle ages into a prison and into a fortress ; disguised afterwards as the residence of a prince, then as a barrack, the mole of Adrian, of which the Orsini in the fourteenth century made a lair for themselves, has never been able to strip Itself of the physiognomy of its original destination ; before the postern one still expects to see a coffin go in and an executioner come out. These sepulchral dungeons were then In use. Without speaking of those of the Appian Way, let us remember that on the other bank at Ripetta there rose, and still stands in part, the model of the Castle of St. Angelo, the mole built by Augustus for the Ceesars of his family. It is well to say a few words about it, if only to prove the uselessness of troubling oneself about it. It Is a thick, large, squat tower, engaged in buildings ; Its masonry was almost entirely of reticulated work. The Colonna fortified and quartered themselves there in the middle age ; but since then, mockery of fate, they have arranged a small daily spectacle In that vast coliinibarinm, where, with the exception of Nero, most of the Caesars down to Adrian reposed. What a monstrous melodrama, the history of the Castle of St. Angelo ! It only wore a rather smiling look In the days when it received the dead. Procopius paints it for us at that first epoch ; the immense rotunda, terminating in different elevations, with the imperial colossus on the summit, had Its sides covered with Parian marble ; the circumference had pilasters surmounted wnth a ring of Greek statues ; the whole on a basement, decorated with festoons, and tablets with funeral inscriptions, and colossal equestrian groups in gilt bronze at the four corners. Round the monument was an iron grating surmounted by peacocks, also in gilt. The Castle of St. A^igelo. 45 In 537 this fine structure was still intact; but \'itiges havincr attacked it, they broke the statues, in order to hurl the pieces on the assailants. Durinc^ the three centuries which followed, the mole of Adrian, connected from the time of Ilonorius, perhaps, with the 46 Rome. defences of the city, served as a fortress. It was to entrench himself that the patrician Crescentius, who wished (974) to restore the Roman repubhc, made himself master of it. He even kept it tolerably long, as the monument took from him the name of Castel Crescenzio. But, invited by one of the anti-popes of that anarchic period, the Emperor Otto having invaded Rome and massacred Crescentius with his prin- cipal partisans at a banquet, the tomb of Adrian was discovered and dismantled. Half a century before, this spot had been the theatre of a tragedy which followed strange saturnalia. An incongruous relic of antique profligacy and of the monstrosities of the lower empire, drawing a mischievous power from feudal institutions, Theodora, a Roman lady, illustrious for her rank and her beauty, quartered herself from the year 908 in the Castle of St. Angelo, from which she exercised over Rome a complete tyranny, sustained against German influence by an Italian party, which counted among its chiefs Adalbert II., Count of Tuscany, the father of this Messalina. Theodora caused several pontiffs to be deposed, and nominated eight popes successively. She had a daughter as beautiful and as powerful as herself, and of still worse perversity. Marozia, so she was called, reigned likewise in the Castle of St. Angelo, where she caused the election of Sergius III. and Anastasius III. and John X., a creature of Theodora, who had had him nominated to the bishopric of Ravenna. Early the widow of a Marquis of Tusculum, and married to Guy, Prince of Tuscany, Marozia speedily had John X. suffocated in the Castle of St. Angelo ; then united by a third marriage to Hugo of Provence, brother of her second husband, after having successively exhibited on the pontifical throne Leo. VI. and Stephen VIII., she gave the tira to John XL, one of her youngest sons. She had only too many children, for one of them imprisoned in this same dungeon both his mother and his brother, the Pope, and there destroyed them. Such at that time, under the brutal pressure of feudal anarchy, had the chair of St. Peter become. The Castle of St. Angelo, from the seventh to the ninth century, is found connected with all the outrages and all the factions that desolated Rome ; and, down to the end of the fourteenth, its destiny was not very different. It was then that Boniface IX., a Neapolitan by origin, crowned the dungeon, to make it still stronger, with the works which make it at once less gloomy and more striking. Alexander VI. completed the restoration, and, by a passage con- The Castle of St. Angela. aj structed in the. wall of the Leonine city, he brought the Castle of St Angelo into communication with the Vatican. This idea was profitable 48 Ro7nc. (1527) to Clement VII., when he was obhged, in order to escape the unbridled hordes of the Constable de Bourbon, to seek an Inviolable asylum in the thick walls of the Castle of St. Angelo. Before entering, let us recall the manner in which it acquired the | name that time has consecrated. j In the year 590, as St. Gregory the Great, recently called to the' pontificate by the people and the bishops, was bewailing the misfor- tunes of his flock that a plague was then decimating, he ordered a general procession to the tomb of St. Peter to seek the removal of this scourge. The procession was headed by Pope Gregory himself, who walked with naked feet. As it crossed the Tiber on the /Elian Bridge, built by Adrian, a bridge which still stands and confronts his mausoleum, suddenly above the mole Gregory saw, starting from the clouds and appearing to him as symbol of hope, the radiant Archangel St. Michael. Thus it was not by any means, as the guide-books have it, on account of the bronze statue placed on the top by Benedict XIV. that the mole became the Castel Sant' Angelo. The first book w^ould have proved that they had called it so for a thousand years. Every country possesses among its judicial annals some never-to- be-forgotten drama of which legend takes possession. The middle age had among ourselves the adventure of Gabrielle de Vergy, that of Aubri de Montdidier ; later, the assassination of the Marquise de Ganges and the poisonings of Madame Brinvilliers supplied stories for an evening. In Italy, and at Rome especially, these atrocities have never been rare ; the great school is there. But nothing equals the interest, and nothing has counterbalanced the renown of Beatrice de' Cinci. The family was extremely rich, and in possession of a sombre kind of celebrity of remote date ; for it boasted of counting in its ancestral stock Crescentius, that consul of whom we have just spoken, and who took up his quarters in the Castle of St. Angelo, where we see the prison of his descendants. It w^as one of the Cenci who, being stationed on Christmas night in the same dungeon by Henry IV., while Gregory VII. was celebrating the first mass, seized him at the altar and dragged him by the hair out of the sanctuary to throw him into a cell. These examples had perhaps contributed to maintain a violent spirit in the family, of wdiich the most odious shoot Is, towards the end of the sixteenth century, that Francesco Cenci who had inflicted on three of his sons the most abominable and unspeakable outrages ; who had the second and the third assassinated ; who over- The Cenci Tragedies. 40 whelmed his daughter and his second wife with ill-usage ; and who, twice convicted of the most infamous crimes, escaped the penalties by bribing his judges. Taking pity on the eldest among the children, as well as on the eldest of the two sisters, the Pope had rescued the sons from a degrading yoke and married the daughter, at the same time compel- ling Francesco to give her dower. Afterwards, the youngest children of the monster, Beatrice and Bernardino, as well as Lucrezia Petroni, their stepmother, losing courage to go on bearing the usage that lay so heavy on them, addressed to Clement VIII. one of the most touching memorials, imploring his pity and protection. Their suppli- cation miscarried and remained unanswered, to the despair of Lucrezia and of Beatrice, who abhorred in her father the dishonour of the family and the murderer of her two brothers. At last, one night when Francesco Cenci was at the quarters of the Colonna, at the castle of Rocca di Petrella in the kingdom of Naples, he was assassinated there by unknown hands and in the most singular manner. During his sleep, two enormous nails were driven into his eyes with a hammer, a feat which implied the co-operation of two accomplices at least. This took place the 15th of September, 1598. Lucrezia was speedily suspected. On the first incjuiries, Guerra, a very handsome monsignore who passed for the chosen friend of the young Beatrice, took to flight, after procuring the murder of one of the two assassins whose track had been discovered and who was called Olimpio. The other, named Marcio, arrested and put to the torture, declared that he as well as his slain comrade had been hired by Jacopo, Lucrezia, and Beatrice de' Cenci, seconded by Guerra, who, having put their victim to sleep with a narcotic draught, then intro- duced the two hravi into his room, where Lucrezia had placed in their hands the nails that were to be the instruments of vengeance. After that they had given them a thousand crowns of gold. At the first rumour of these inquiries, the female De' Cenci returned tranquilly with the two sons to Rome to their palace, where the Pope placed sentinels to hold them in arrest. Marcio was transferred to the pontifical prisons, where he repeated his declarations ; but, being confronted with Beatrice, he was so crushed by the reproaches, the denials, and the ascendancy of that marvellous beauty, that he retracted all, and persisted thenceforth in his denial even in the midst of the tortures which at last killed him. It was at this moment that there began in this extraordinary trial !: KQ Rome. the strancre turns brought by unforeseen circumstances. The whole of Rome was absorbed with the event, and offered all its vows for two beautiful, young, oppressed women. The recantation of Marcio was then all the better received by the judges, as Beatrice had endured the torture with superhuman courage, while she protested her innocence. But wdiile the issue was going in this direction, the police arrested for some offence a ruffian, who was recognised as the assassin of OHmpio, the second murderer of the count. The witness thus suddenly raised up confirmed the first deposition of Marcio. This story charged the two women, as well as Jacopo and Guerra. The whole family of the Cenci was thrown into the Castle of St. Angelo where the proceedings were resumed and slowly persevered in. This anguish of the torture Beatrice de' Cenci confronted for nearly a year without a word of confession. Such was the interest excited by her courage that even the judges were subjugated by so many attractions of youth and eloquence. It was necessary to withdraw the cause from them and to entrust it to more callous persons. Her elder brother and her mother-in-law, their constancy worn out, then con- fessed ; the young Bernardino, a stranger to the v/hole affair and who knew nothing of it, confessed all that they wished, in order to escape from that Gehenna. Later on his innocence was demonstrated. Why should one not regard as acquitted all the wretches condemned on their own testimony thus extracted by torment ? But it was in vain that they opposed to the young heiress of the Cenci the crushing evidence of her family ; she persisted in the enthusiastic declaration of her innocence. No threat, no torment, vanquished her ; and her tenacity suspended the doom of the accused. The winter passed in this way ; Beatrice was compared to Lucretia, to Mrginia, to Clelia, Roman women of the heroic time, whose firm- ness she recalled while she surpassed their charms. One day, in order to apply some new torture, they had to begin by cutting off all her hair ; they were fair locks, the most silken, the longest, the most marvellous in colour ever seen. Beatrice grew pale ; she was vehemently stirred, and, repelling the executioner, she cried out, ' Touch not my head ; let me die without mutilation ! ' Sad wage for so much bravery ! She destroyed herself to save her tresses ; and by a full confession confirmed all the depositions. They w^ere all four condemned to die, a decree against which Beatrice protested by a fierce access of indignation that found an echo Beatrice de' Cenci. 5 i in every soul. In the city, in the palaces, even in the cloisters, they talked of nothing- else. If the valour of this noble soul had won for CLOISTICR OV ST. JOHN L.\TERAN. her so much sympathy, jud^^e of the effect wrought on a population of artists and poets by this unforeseen weakness, childlike and truly 2 5 2 Rome, touching, by which the young maiden and the woman had betrayed the heroine ! It was an effect of deHrium, of adoration ; and Clement \'III. was incHned to yield to the current of feeling, when, by a second stroke of fate, one Massini poisoned his father. Other crimes of this kind already weighed heavily on the nobles ; the Pope resolved on making an example, and he confirmed the judgment on the four prisoners. Such a sentence, undoubtedly unjust so far as it touched the young Bernardino, and of doubtful equity, as we must confess, with reference to the others, revolted the whole city. Car- dinals and religious corporations, magistrates and citizens, threw themselves at the knees of the Pontiff, urgently seeking revision of judgment. Clement VIII., yielding to this request, supplied the Cenci w^ith skilful champions, Nicolo de' Angeli and Farinacci, and he ordered the case to be argued in his presence. Officially appointed to plead before the Holy Father, the two advocates displayed irresistible eloquence ; recalling the abominations of Francesco Cenci twice snatched from justice, and the probable murder of his two sons, Farinacci argued that such a monster must have created a host of foes and stirred up against him more than one avenger. He had the art of convincing and softening to such a degree, that the Pope left the hearing profoundly moved. Every- body then was in expectation of mercy when, third fatal accident ! while the case was yet pending, a young Marquis of Santa Croce assassinated his mother. Did the Pope believe himself warned by heaven and exhorted to harshness ? In any case, from this moment he remained inflexible ; and having pardoned Bernardino, whose innocence was notorious, he gave the order for hastening the execution, forcing the youthful son of the Cenci to look on at the butchery of his family. The judicial agony of these unhappy souls had lasted a year. They were to be slain on the 8th of September, 1599, but it was the festival of the Holy Virgin. It was Beatrice who thought of this, and who, that the day of the Madonna might not be stained with blood, implored the respite of a few hours an act of piety which rendered her fate still more touching. On the morning of the 9th, the Pope Aldobrandini, to be far away from the scene of punishment, quitted Rome ; he passed before the Castle of St. Angelo, over the bridge that was soon to be trodden by the condemned. A pontiff with erudition, the son of an illustrious man of letters, Clement VIII. was not inaccessible to pity; he only Executioji of Beatrice de* Cenci, 53 went as far as a convent that was near the walls, so that beino- warned by three discharges of cannon of the fatal moment, he might absolve the poor folk who were going to die. When the booming resounded through the air, the Pope raised himself; he went through the form of plenary absolution and then fell back almost swooning. If he had seen what was passing the same hour in the section of the piazza of the bridge of St. Angelo, lying between the quay and the opening of the streets Paolo and del Banco di San Spirito, what would he then have done, what thought then of his justice ! For the punishment of these three victims, there had been organized there, under the name of mannaja, a sort of mechanism with a knife whose clumsy play perhaps retarded for two centuries the great political machine of 1793. The heat was suffocating ; the sun poured down on the crowd held in by horsemen ; the carriages w^ere crowded together up to the very edge of the scaffold ; the three open spaces were densely thronged ; from the streets, from the piazza, from windows, from roofs, everybody could see advancing across the bridge in front of the huge and massive dungeon of the Antonines, the sinister procession. The condemned ascended the scaffold, which was placed on the piece of ground before the statues of St. Peter and St. Paul. Soon this crowd, which had been already stirred to the heart by the youth and beauty of Beatrice de' Cenci, saw with horror Lucrezia, who was large and corpulent, struggling for shame, held down and uncovered under the hands of the executioner, while the knife hacked her throat. The shrieks of the wretched woman were answered by cries of horror from the depths of the crowd. Whilst the rage of the people directs itself to the scaffold, and the horses of the soldiers rear against the carriages, which are thrown in their turn on the women and children crushed in the shock, the executioners, dripping with blood, stricken with confusion, hasten to cut off the head of l^eatrice ; and as Giacomo de' Cenci, masterinof with his voice the tumult that surrounded him, denounces the sentence which makes their young brother a witness of the appalling scene, bitter shrieks answer him the shrieks of Bernardino, torn by convulsions, and who was hurried away at the moment when he saw one of the executioners raise a mass of iron over Giacomo and strike him down like an ox. His body was cut into four quarters in the presence of the crowd ; those of the women remained exposed until nightfall on the bridge of St. Angelo, and after that Beatrice de' Cenci, being claimed by a 54 Rome. religious company, was buried behind the altar of St. Peter in Mon- torio, at the foot of the Transfiguration of Raphael. By her will, the reading of which raised to its height the compassion that always surrounded the heroine, she disposed of a part of her property in dowering and marrying fifty young girls. But nearly all the appanages of the Cenci were confiscated, an incident of condem- nations which never helped to make them less frequent ; it was the result of this acquisition that a few years after, by the wish of Paul X., the domains of the Cenci were given to his nephews. In this way one estate of the condemned became the Villa Borghese, a spoliation which rendered this terrible tragedy yet more unpopular. It was under the impression of this tragic legend that I entered the Castle of St. Angelo. Along the circular passage, which by a gentle inclination slopes spirally to the foundations of the tower, throw a cannon-ball ; it dis- appears in the shadow, and continuing to roll on the arena and awaking a multitude of echoes, conveys to the ear with the prolonged sound of thunder the perspectives of the distance. In the heart of the dungeon a vault of extreme height, with niches hollowed out to receive Colossi, marks the old Columbarium of the Antonines, The solid structure of this Roman catacomb, smoky with the torches which with their tongues of resinous fire half reveal its lines, gives it a character all the more mysterious and solemn, inasmuch as sounds are swallowed up there just as light is. The useless splendour of mosaics and facings of Parian marble had been lavished in this densely black chamber ; the corridors found from a few pyramidal loop-holes a memory of the light. The modern prisons, that is to say of the last three centuries, have been arranged in upper stories ; they consist of cells, small obscure rooms surrounding an oblong court : here for the grandiose ferocity of absolute will and arbitrary power is substituted the mean ugliness of a wretched social institution. You will have shown to you the dungeons of the Cenci, and many others ; you will be invited to shudder over prisons . . . which are the repository of the archives. It is in pleasant rooms decorated by the school of Raphael that you must seek the chamber in which, by order of Pius IV., was strangled Cardinal Caraffa, nephew of the previous Pope, the same day on which his brother the Prince Paliano had his head cut off; the room in which an old rancour was gratified against the nephew of Paul IV. is desig- nated quite naturally Chamber of Justice. Zuccheri, who has drawn The Castle Dunoreons. 55 there the Virtues in fresco, has endowed the virtue of justice with graces that are perhaps sh'ghtly deceptive. On the doors, on the walls of these apartments, adorned by care of Cardinal Crispo and recently occupied by a French commandant, pupils of Giovanni d' Udine or Perino del Vaga traced elegant arabesques by way of frame for divers pieces of local history. Now in this country the annals of this city are another name for Roman history. WOMAN AT THE UKlUUh Ol' .SI. ANGKLU. IIY HENRI REUNAII.T. ^^s m ^^1 ^^^Hj b^^BFtMA ^^m ^^^^ ^^P^gw ^^M 1^^^^ ^^^io Bi^BBsBBMa CHAPTER IV, iHEN a prince or a princess of Rome dies, they clothe the dead in robes of ceremony and lay them out on a state-bed under the canopy of the throne, where the body remains exposed in the midst of a constellation of tapers for the sensi- bility of the populace. You will not be edified, as in our countries, by the tender assiduity of relations or by their affectionate urgency round the dying. At Rome, and throughout nearly all Italy, when a sick person is at the extremity, the family flee from the house : a husband, a beloved wife, a father, a grandfather, dies abandoned ; the last gaze meets only hired faces. This custom, which speaks clearly as to the real religion of the people of Rome, has for its origin the rather pagan dread of being bewitched ; they imagine that the dying have the evil-eye. They do not accompany the train of friends to the cemetery ; the procession a procession of state (more decent at Rome than in Tuscany, where in an evening, carried along by the light of torches, the dead hasten so swiftly) is only recruited from among the religious orders. It is joined by the servants, the carriages of the defunct, his horses if he has any, and his dogs, very likely, if their inclination carries them thither. Nothing is lighter than the temperaments of demonstrative and violent passion. When the Romans are struck by an affliction, they hasten to apply alteratives and drench the stomach. One day as I accompanied a friend to a trattoria, where the host and hostess with two marriageable daughters were sitting together, my companion inquired the reason why on the preceding evening the house was closed. " Alas ! " replied the father, " they were carrying our son to his grave ; we are deeply afflicted ! " Whilst my friend brought forward the usual formulas of condolence, there comes up an apothecary with four bottles, which he places in a row upon the table, and while the father, the mother, and the two Romaji Remedy /or Grief. 57 daughters, each seize one, the landlady says to us, in a pathetic tone, " One may well take ri medio for such deep grief ! " They shake them off, these deep griefs, with a good deal of courage. I remember that on the eve of the funeral of the father of a family, I saw the widow and the two daughters all dressed up to o-q out. " Poor things ! " said the mother ; " they have wept so much that they need some distraction. For me, I only do it on their account ..." She was taking them to the play ! * * * # The V^enetian Pa- lace, in the neigh- bourhood of St. Mark, is a purely Florentine building and of a fine epoch. The church, a monu- ment of the same stock, has been made young again after the Roman manner. One and the other were built in 1468, not by Julian de Maiano, as Vasari says, but, as is proved from a con- temporary chronicle quoted by Muratori, by one Francesco di Borgo San .Sepolcro. Mino da Fie.sole exe- cuted, they say, nearly all the .sculptures ; it is permitted us to doubt that. Pope Paul II., who was called Barbo and came originally from Venice, reconstructed the church that Gregory IV. had already built over again in 833, and that had been founded in 336 by the Pope St. Mark in honour of the Evangelist his patron. Paul II. could not be content without having a fine church freshly decorated in the 'fVAl. GATK OK THE PAI.ACK OK VKNICK. 58 Rome. neio-hboLirhood of a palace in wlilch he lived, and where there dwelt ,fP'P'";ll'l!!'t^1!!'!iif!|!!''!l!l?!!f^ til more or less after him nineteen pontiffs ; it was to this natural desire 5/. Francesca Romana. 59 that the oratory of Gregory IV. was sacrificed, of which, however, they respected the tribuna on account of its ninth-century mosaic, which has for predella the symboHcal lamb with its twelve sheep, but which is otherwise meanly rude. The porch of this temple is grace- ful, and its grace is exquisite. A sermon had attracted a number of women to the church ; it was charming to see them leaning against some pillar, the head covered by the hood, the eyes lifted and attentive, like the holy women of an old painting. We know that it is forbidden to the sex to enter the naves bareheaded at Rome, where women of every age go out with- out a head-dress even in winter. To attend a mass or a funziouc, they make a hood out of their shawls or a muffler with their handkerchiefs. This prescription dates from the primitive church ; I believe even St. Paul says something on the subject. The Barbo Palace had cost the friends of antiquity dear ; to raise its walls they have used materials chipped away in the Coliseum, which was turned into a quarry. As it is necessary to take a little rest, on arriving at the Piazza of Trajan, I entered St. Marie de Lorette, the little octangular church of which Antonio of San Gallo ornamented the cupola with such a beautiful lantern, and I paid a visit to the St, Susannah of Francis Duquesnoy, one of the exquisite statues produced by the seventeenth century. The masterpiece of the estimable Duquesnoy recalled to me that at the left of the Sacred W^ay the little church of St. Francesca Romana contains the work of a French artist. So I went there by the avenue of stupid little trees, ill nourished by a heap of rubbish which ought to be cleared away, and which, without giving me much shade from the burning sun of this evening, intercepted the frame of the Forum. It is not to vaunt the carvings designed by Pernini on the tomb of Francesca, a Roman lady of the fifteenth century who, under the title of Oblates, founded beguines at Rome, that I shall mention this little church; nor to point out the tomb of Gregory XI., who re-established the pontifical see at Rome after seventy-two years of exile. I shall content myself with commending some interesting objects that people do not usually seek, and of which the guides say nothinof. There is, to beein with, behind the master-altar, a mosaic of the tenth century, which re|)resents the Virgin surrounded by four .saints, separated from one another by arches and columns. In a transept on the left are two pictures attributed to Perugino : one is of 6o Rome, the school of Francia, and the other might very well be the work of a rare master Gerino da Pistoja. The church of Antoninus and Faustina, with its travertine cella, crowned with the frieze on which griffins sport, separated by candelabra and vases, was formerly a pagan temple whose columns, Tiviple of Antoninus and Faustina. 6i the greatest monoliths of cipolHno that are known, have for diadems an entablature of enormous blocks of Carrara. The columns of the hexastyle, are not less than forty- three feet; they are under the ground In our time by about five yards : under the emperor you ascended twenty-one steps to reach the temple. 62 Rome. At a little distance we come in front of three high and broad apses in which the eye seeks as if on the threshold of three caverns INTERIOR OF THE BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. to pierce the darkness, and which the vulgar call the Arches of Peace. The remains of the building, whose plan is not at the first glance intelligible, are so massive and thick, that we should be mis- Basilica of Constaiitine. 5^ taken as co their elevation if the people of the neighbourhood, who have worn a short cut under these naves, did not give you so many J KM PI. K i\V NF.RVA, PANTAM POSTFRV. opportunities of comparing with the size of the blocks, as well as of the scattered foundations of the fallen portion, the lilliputian pro- portions of a passer-by. 64 Rovic. The vaults are more than sixty feet in arch ; the marble cornices measure an immense cubic contents, and their weight must be tremendous. From all time these ruins and the mystery that belongs to them have filled the popular imagination. Some authors since the fifteenth century have fancied that they recognised a Temple of Peace erected by Vespasian : an inscription from the Capitol found in the neigh- bourhood gave rise to this supposition, but it is no longer tenable. The character of the architecture, the plan, which is that of a basilica, the testimony of the annalists, the marks stamped on the bricks employed in the construction everything denotes that it is later, and must be attributed to Maxentius, the competitor of Constantino. In these quarters it seems that the ancient city prolongs itself indefinitely. At the bottom of a street a little before the basilica you see in a row, captive in a trench, the columns of the Temple of Nerva, supported by a wall which bars the way, and is pierced by an enormous arch, by which there was a communication with the Forum, that bore several names. They called it Transitorium, because It was necessary to cross it to ascend the three hills that command it; Forum of Nerva, because Trajan had dedicated it to his father ; and Forum Palladium, because the Colonnacce, the remains, according to some, of a temple to Minerva erected there by Domltian, bear on their fluted shafts, that are two-thirds underground, a figure of Pallas crowning the fine entablature of an attica. The frieze has bas-reliefs of charming execution, but much damaged. Below these marbles, these reliefs, this foliage of acanthus and laurel, a baker has his stall and his oven. Near this are the triumphal arches which have served for models to so many votive buildings. Like the custom of triumphs, these vaulted arches are of Roman origin ; the oldest was raised in the year 634, two years after the death of Calus Gracchus, in honour of a Fablus who had beaten the Allobroges. The three most splendid types of this construction are found very little apart from one another, by the side of the way along which the triumphs passed. What a marvel is the smallest of the three ! It is that of Septlmius Severus, which marks the old level of the Forum at the foot of the steps of the Temple of Concord. (See p. 3.) It was surmounted by a car with six horses, in which the emperor was seen seated between his two sons. On the front of the structure a long The Arch of Septiiniiis Severus. 65 and fine inscription describes the dedication of it, a memorial doubly FORUM TRANsrroRIU.M, OR FORUM OF NERVA. interesting since Caracalla, having assassinated Geta his brother, had his name and all that concerned him erased. What I had previously explored, and with an impatient curiosity, 66 Rome. was the Arch of Titus, entirely bared of the castrmn with which in ARCH OF TITUS. the middle ages the Frangipani had overloaded it. What a glorious Tlie Arch of Titus. 67 effect is produced from three or four different points of view by this noble arch, with a single gateway, robust in its ensemble, exquisite in detail, and which, seen from afar, has for its principal decoration the fine letters of its inscription ! On the other face they have described in a summary the capture of Jerusalem and the submission of Judaea. Seventeen hundred years and more have gone by since Domitian dedicated this triumphal arch to his brother and to their father Vespasian. Dho Tito proves that the work was completed after the death of Titus. On the bas-relief placed in front the spoils of the subjugated nations HAS-REI.IF.F OF THK ARCH OF TITUS. are conveyed on litters, borne by legionaries wreathed with laurel. We recognise the table of shew^-bread, which was of solid gold, the trumpets of the jubilee, and the golden candlestick with the seven branches from Solomon's Temple so often repeated on this monument, which alone has transmitted its form to us. After the tables of the law marched barefooted in a black robe the chief of the Israelites, Limon, son of Gioras, In point of execution, in point of delicacy, and in point of design, these bas-reliefs, alas, too much damaged, are to be classed among the most perfect that antiquity has left in Italy. They demonstrate the veracity of Josephus, and Joscohus attests the fidelity of the sculptors. 68 Ro7ne. The Arch of Constantine produces the Hveliest impression ; we admire without having analyzed any part of it. Perhaps it wants solidity, but in front it fascinates by its grandeur, by the harmony of jts proportions, by the fine ordering of its chief parts. It is the finest of the three, exclaim nearly all travellers ; only scarcely any of them have examined its details sufficiently to remember it. This is its single defect, the abuse of richness. It only tends towards degeneracy by the fixed resolution it shows to accumulate wonders. What it contains in exquisite figures, in charming groups, in bas-reliefs that form pictures composed with a master's hand, it is impossible to enumerate. ^-S^-rT 'Jmlijj,-)."-. Isl^BSiSiiili BAS-RF.LIF.F OF XHK AK.CH -JF TITUS. CHAPTER V. NE of the most considerable monuments in the world is the Baths of Antoninus Caracalla, which are situated at the extremity of the Circus Maximus, between the back of the Aventine and that of the Coelian, in one of those stripped suburbs where fields and gardens flourish over the graves of an ancient quarter. Contained in a valley, measuring their height with the elevation of the hills, these baths are the finest ruins in Rome. We should have a false idea of these establishments if we were to take things literally, and sec in them only a place of luxurious and very perfect baths. Assuredly the stoves occupied a notable place in them, since, according to Olympiodorus, the baths of Caracalla could supply warm baths for sixteen hundred persons at a time ; but that was only a pretext of a monument, the porticos of which, according to Lampridius, were only erected between Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus. Besides the baths of different temperatures, the chambers heated by steam, and the basins and fountains, there were found in the thermee scent-shops, stalls for articles of fashion, buffets for re- freshments, kitchens and refectories, peristyles for conversation and walking in wet weather, libraries and reading-rooms, a stage for the performance of comedy, gymnasia for athletes, an arena for running and wrestling : they had there, got together and administered by a numerous staff of virtuosi, artists, and slaves, all that could divert an indolent people and make it forget life. There were even picture galleries and museums of statues : it was pleasure raised to the rank of an institution and organised on the plan of an architect. F'or sovereigns who had to maintain a power, as absolute as it was fragile, over a corrupt population in whose breasts not even faith in their country had survived, the distribution of the public amusements on an enormous scale was a political interest of the first consequence. 70 Rome, Thus the more the nation abases itself and fjrovels, the more does the CALDARIUM OF THE BATHS OF CARACALLA. ministration of pleasure increase in importance : the despots could only The Baths of Caracalla. 7 t maintain themselves by becoming proxenetce. Continued by Helio- ALTAk Ul' sr. CLE.MEN 1 .-i. gabalus, the baths of Caracalla are the most macrnificent of all 1^ Rome. several thousand citizens were able every day to exhaust there the varied cycle of the delights of mind and sense. The exterior buildings form a perimeter of 4,200 feet. In the court thus cut off by these buildings there rose on Babylonian vaults another edifice in several stories, which was nearly 700 feet by 450 broad. The Caldarium, a rotunda lighted from above like a green- house, can only be compared to the Pantheon of Agrippa, which is purer in its ornamentation, but not so bold in construction. Before 1857, when people wished to give the idea of a Constantinian church arranged as in primitive times, they chose St. Clement. It was known from St. Jerome that a church was built in Rome which, from an early date, perpetuated the recollection of the successor of St. Anaclete, and that in 417 it had acquired the rank of basilica when St. Zosimus pronounced judgment in it against Celestius, who had fallen into the Pelagian heresy. St. Leo speaks of this temple in a letter to St. F'lavian ; it is mentioned in 499, on the occasion of the council which Symmachus presided over ; St. Gregory the Great, who had delivered two homilies in it, described the last moments, under the Clementine porch, of St. Servulus the paralytic. Adrian I., Leo III., in the eight century, Leo IV, and John VIII. in the ninth, did, as we know from Anastasius, the first of them restore the roofing the second and third enrich the church with sacred ornaments, with marbles, above all with paintings, whose loss was long deplored. The last of the four rebuilt the choir, as is shown by his monogram, which is repeatedly carved on the plutei or balustrades. To justify these traditions the interior of the building displayed as so many witnesses the columns of its portico in grey granite, its pillars of cipollino and of red granite which separate the three naves, and which come from the ruins of pagan temples. Ancient friezes annexed to the entablatures, and inscriptions of the era of the martyrs set in the walls, added the proofs of a charter-house of stone, die ante- chapel, the first inclosure, in which the sub-deacons, minor clerks, and the chanters had place ; at the two sides the pulpits, with porphyry plaques and contemporary with John VIII., in the loftier of which, on the left, the Deacons read the Gospel, proclaimed edicts, and denounced the excommunicated, while the other was only used iot the Epistle ; before the passage to the right, the desk ; finally, the twisted pillar, destined for the Easter taper, a ribbon of mosaic under a Corinthian capital, bearing an ancient vase, decorated under Inno- cent IV. The sanctuarium appears equally decisive and curious, The Basilica of St. Clemen f s. 73 separated as it is from the naves, a usage still preserved in ori- ental churches. Cut off by the ancient railing from the transept, ITLPIT OF THK KI'ISTI.K AT ST. < I.r.MKNT S. the altar or confession is covered by a ciborium, supported on slender columns of violet marble; in the circle of the apse is tlu; presbyteriunij 74 Rome. ill the centre of which the chief seat is raised by three steps, all multiplied proofs of a very lofty antiquity. A few years ago in raising some pavement for the purpose of dig- ging a well, the prior of the Dominicans of Ireland, to whom the convent was given by Urban VI 1 1., discovered, buried under the present church of St. Clement, the real Constantinian basilica that had passed into a subterranean state. How could one suspect that, far from depreciating the monument which had been the object of so extraordinary a misconception, this discovery would soon give it a triple value! As they removed the earth with which the crypts were filled up, they perceived by the light of their torches the walls gradu- ally peopling themselves with strange forms resuscitated from the darkness. The church above was a cabinet of curiosities, while the church underground is a gallery, and the only one which could by authentic pictures fill up the gap of between the fourth and eleventh centuries in the history of painting. The edifice was buried in 1084, and, as the level of the soil liad been greatly raised by the load of ruins, when four-and-twenty years after they wished to rebuild the church, instead of building other foundations, they completed the filling up of the hidden basilica, after taking the pains to withdraw from it the ciborium, the plaques of marble and porphyry which had separated the transept, most of the columns, and whatever else could, without destroying the edifice under- ground, contribute to the adornment of the new temple while perpetu- ating the memory of the old. The church of St. Clement is situated between the Coliseum and the church of St. John Lateran.- You enter to the left of an alley of monastic rudeness by a heavy porch, poor of aspect, though with fine columns that do not match, and of such primitive simplicity that we wonder if it may not have seen Pope Liberius pass. The atrium is joined to a much lower portico, of which the arches -rest on ancient columns with Ionian capitals; this arrangement is the frame to a small cloister which usually stood in front of the first basilicas, and in which catechumens as well as penitents remained. A side-door gives access to the monastery, and here you must ring to have the church opened, as it is nearly always shut up. The homely roofs, arranged to cover the vaults, do so little to prepare one's mind for the dimen- sions of a rich church with three naves, that with the interest thus spon- taneously awakened there mingles the magic of a supernatural vision. While the treasures of the place present the very ideal of a historical Antiquity of the Church. 75 monument, various portions and their arrangement according to the primitive rites carry the mind back to the morrow of the catacombs. Even certain marks of barbarism contribute to the general effect. At what time, to level the unmatched columns of the atrium, could they have taken it into their heads, instead of shortening the shafts, to saw o^ the capitals in the middle ? The ancient barriers of the transept. .1 K1,K 1 (l |i)HN LATERAN SIDE KNTRY OF ST. CLKMKNTS. with their Byzantine crosses, their plaited crowns, their untwined serpents, and their frames of glittering mosaic; the pulpits of so grave a form, theciborium, the inscriptions, the funereal symbols of antiquity mixed with the bas-reliefs of the pagan era, that profusion of marbles of every age and every colour, would suffice to raise the value of the monument amply high enough. But it is to other richXis that it owes 76 Rome. the spontancousness of effect. From the door of the church to the choir you tread upon the flowery garden of a tapestry of coloured marble arranged six centuries since, that is at the best moment of the opus Alcxamiriuum ; and then, behind the tabernacle above the presbyterium, which was completed the beginning of the twelfth century by Cardinal Anastasius, the semicircle of the apse, a demi- cupola of dark gold traversed by arabesques in which mystic figures appear among the darkness of legend and of ages, the whole of this portion of the church is one immense piece of mosaic, executed in the time of Jacopo da Turrita, that is, in the revival w^hich crowned the thirteenth century. Displayed between these sumptuous pictures of Alexandrine pavement and of the tribuna, the smallest objects possess a strange value, for they are not overwhelmed. Time has gilded the fresh crudities of the marbles, and cooled the too glowing warmth of the eold of the mosaic ; and these elements of what would have been an incongruous splendour have gained an intensity which wraps them in charm and mystery. Below the ornaments of the cupola, where the cross rises from a scroll rose, a frieze rich in veined marble, marked by the uncials of an inscription, separates the neo-Greek emblems from the correspond- ing Latin realities. On the upper course are arranged in two proces- sions on each side of the Lamb, who has a golden nimbus and is placed in the centre, the Twelve Sheep whom he bade follow him, and who eye him with an interrogating expression. Under the entablature Christ is seen with his mother, surrounded by the twelve disciples, separated from one another by as many palms. This decoration, due to Celano, belongs to the fourteenth century. On the pendants of the vault are certain apocalyptic figures with floating draperies spread forth like clouds. We recognise, over Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Isaiah, Jeremiah, St. Laurence, St. Paul, St Clement, and St. Peter; Urban VI I L introduced St. Dominic. To the right of the altar, beneath the flourishes of a pilaster, is a ravishing taber- nacle of mosaic and sculpture in the Gothic style of the Pisans, a gem that Cardinal Tomasio of the Minor Brothers had executed in 1299, at the same time as the great arabesques of the semicircle, " to please the city of Rome and his uncle, Boniface VIII." In one of the chapels of St. Clement is the marble statue of St. John the Baptist, one of those living representations of asceticism and penance that no one dared approach but the supple and vigorous Donatello, with all his contempt for the traditions of antiquity. This Intirior of St. Clemeiifs. ^y figure is attributed to Simon, brother of that distant forerunner of AJichael Angelo. In the same chapel have been erected, also in the fifteenth century, two Florentine tombs of admirable quality, espe- cially that of Cardinal Roverella. \'otive inscriptions exhumed from the catacombs revive upon the walls and recall to one's mind aNAI. portico Ol- .ST. CLEMENTS ancient and romantic names that seem to have been gleaned from the poets. It is not without an emotion above ordinary curiosity that you prepare in one of the low naves, while the guides are lighting their torches, to descend from the churches where so many antiquities have entranced you, down to a monument of a yet more venerable antiquity, In which time has displaced nothing on the evil pretence of restoring 78 Rome. or beautifying. We are sure that the torches will light up halls in which St. Augustine, St. Sylvester, St Gregory the Great, made their voices heard ; we know that for eight hundred years no eye beheld this sanctuary, in which Gregory VII. was the last to officiate. When Pascal II. had the San Clemente rebuilt, they only left in the lower church some marble pilasters and a few columns, and these blocks still mark the separation of the naves. The rough casting of the walls, that is frequendy peeled off, lets us see the irregular layers of abuildino-formed for the most part of inferior materials, mixed with F1CA.GMENT OF A FRESCO OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. parts of much greater antiquity. As soon as the torches cease to wave in front of you, the compositions disclose themselves. We perceive that time and damp have wrought much destruction by making the pozzuolana fall away from the facings ; but besides that whole pages have remained all but untouched ; whatever is not destroyed has preserved the freshness of its colouring. The general appearance from this point of view is that of the mosaics of Ravenna, I would even say of the early frescoes of the Campo Santo at Pisa, if the usage of cruder colours, of ochres especially, which make deep reds and yellows, did not give to these pictures a more truly antique Fourth Century Frescoes. 79 simplicity of aspect. As for the design, it has in general more sup- pleness of movement; in the less ancient portions the composition is more freely picturesque than it was under the hand of the contem- poraries of Ducci and Giotti. Let us proceed in the order of the dates, as far as possible, to a rapid analysis of these curiosities, that are too little known and that have not yet been explained. They lately found two heads of life-size, the one on a kind of island of plaster of considerable thickness, the other on a piece of very light rough cast, which permits the stones to be seen through it ; these fragments are, so far, the oldest nobiliary I'RAG.MKNT OF A FKKSt.O UF THli I'OURIH tKNTlRV. titles of the monument. The one represents a woman, true type of the Roman matron, with black eyes, and eyebrows deeply arclied under a low brow. This face, framed in a nimbus, seems to belong to the end of the fourth century, and it recalls with more art the pro- cesses used in the frescoes of the catacombs. The other reproduces them still more perceptibly ; it is a man's head, with the bust draped in the Roman fashion ; short hair marks off the brow, which is low, the nose is extremely aquiline, the chin salient and broad, the eyes finely cut, the mouth accentuated, and the mask joined to the shoulders by a well-set neck. This fresco is obtained by a succession of tones 8o Rome. passed one over t!ie other and forming flat tints, a process which characterises also the likenesses in the catacombs. The woman is, perhaps, Eiiodia or Eutyche, that St. Paul gives to St. Clement for helpers, or Domitilla, whom he converted. As for the man, it would be difficult to hazard any theory. Still, it may be said that in the opinion of the most competent this head, which is of a style and sweep purely Roman, can scarcely have been pamted later than the year 310. The Z7> fogafiis permits us, therefore, to attribute to this portion of the church an origin anterior to Constantine. LEGEND OF ST. LIBEKTiNUS : FRESOOBS OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY. The most ancient fragments, though sadly mutilated, that we next find in the northern wing date from the eighth century, and offer three subjects taken from the legend of St. Catherine of Alexandria. This is the most ancient iconographic mention of the virgin-martyr. These paintings, in which we find some hints of movement, are of a remark- able rudeness. They are more barbarous than those devoted to St. Gregory the Great, on account, no doubt, of the homilies which he pronounced in this church. The three others are taken from the numerous writings of St. Gregory, who, describing some traits of the holy monk Libertinus, recounts how the monk charged a serpent to The Ltgeiid of St. Libcrtinus. 8i watch the vegetables of the monastery of Fondi, which a robber used to come and carry off every night by scaling the walls. The serpent seized with his coils the foot of the offender, and hissed loudly by way of summoning Libertinus, who unbound the captive, and author- ised him in order to avoid sin to come henceforth to the house for the fruit of which he had need. This Libertinus was of such humility that, after being beaten by his superior, he presented himself before him with as much sweetness as if nothing had happened, and the abbot was so moved that he prostrated himself before the simple brother, and besought his forgiveness. One day as Libertinus was entering Ravenna, a woman took his horse by the bridle, and forced the monk to come and bring to life again the child that she had just lost. These legendary stories, evoked by the writings of St. Gregory, were evidently painted subsequently to his death in 604 ; but they may have been painted less than a century after, under Gregory II., who was a Savelli, and who was, I believe, titularly of this church, for the popes gladly illustrated the canonised predecessor whose name they bore. These frescoes, in great part destroyed, are placed under the chapel of St. Catherine, and may have been executed between 715 and 730, for they recall pretty closely the \'atican manu- scripts of the same epoch. The neighbouring compartment, evidently executed to comi)lete an exposition of doctrine, is more remarkable : it is the oldest known representation of the Assumption of the Virgin. Round the tomb the aposdes express their stupefaction by their faces and by the attitudes of a movement that is as varied as it is energetic. Covered with an ample cloak, slightly lifted by her extended arms, with eyes raised to the sky, where she beholds her son seated in the midst of four angels and surrounded by an ellipsoid nimbus, the Madonna rises from the earth. The scene has a motion in it which is still far away from Byzantine immobility. These comi)ositions anathematize the heresies of the Pelagians and their errors touching grace, the holy sacrament, original sin, and the divinity of Christ. Close by they have introduced, armed with his Chronicle and his Poems against the denicrs of grace, .St. Prosper, who came from Marseilles at the invitation of St. Leo the Great to fight by the side of Augustine against the Pelagian.s. In order the better to show the invention, at one of the extremities of the picture of the Assumption they place St. X'itus, Archbishop of X'ienna, who had destroyed as against the Arians certain analogous errors. Pic 82 Rome. forms a counterpart to the illustrious Pope Leo IV., a Roman of old time, who resisted the Saracens, who fortified Rome, constructed the Leonine enceinte round the Vatican, and made great restorations in the church of St. Clement. The square green nimbus surrounding his head is a sign that, at the time he was painted, he was still living. Still we ought not in general to grant absolute authority to this pre- sumption ; it assists a probability without warranting certainty. Leo IV., who was canonised, wore the tiara from 847 to 885. It was he who had this fresco composed; the formal and curious inscription that ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN : FRESCO OF THE TIME OF LEO IV. informs us on this point shows us Latin prosody in decay; it con- tributed also to prove the age of the paintings : QUOD ILEC PR/E CUNCTIS SPLENDET PICTURA DECORE, COMPOXERE PIAXC STUDUIT PR/ESBYTER ECCE LEO. At the north of the crypt is a Madonna with a diadem loaded with stones or drachms ; she is posed in full face, her eyes fixed in front of her, with her son below also in full face, and with that sphinx-like immobility to which these people systematically condemned their Ninth Century Frescoes. ^Z figures. To right and left two saints, of whom we only sea that the heads are equally mummified ; above, in a medallion, the Christ, beardless and draped as in the primitive times, belongs to another hand, if it is not earlier. Lower than the lateral figures, two subjects from the Sacrifice of Abraham form pendants to one another ; we should suppose that they were copied from one of those sculptured olifants sent by Sara- cen art to the stout folk of the Carloving- ian cycle. The purely Greek style of this little chapel in the form of a niche we shall soon see under- going modification, because at that time those who imparted it were still open to the influence of the; more free, more dra- matic and living art of the Latin races; a tradition which was not entirely extinct at the end of the ninth or the begin- ning of the tenth cen- tury. Certain monu- ments, in fact, will di.sclose, at that dis- tant date, the abortive attempt at renais- sance ; abortive be- cause the Roman in.spiration soon completed the process of its extinction, while the Greek school, remaining absolute master of the field, ended by imposing its iconography, in the symmetrical immobility of which the orientals satisfied their in.stinctive aversion for images. Of these last productions of a hybrid school, connected with the Roman tradition by its movement, its feeling, and its intelligence, with the school of ,iiiliiiii*taw*'iw^ ItYZANTINK MADONNA: I'KK.SCU OK IHE MM 11 CKNJLKV. 84 Rome. B)'zantium by its mannerism and costume, no one would ever have suspected the existence if the crypts of St. Clement did not furnish proof of such a transition. So far we have only seen Pope Clement in his church in an episodic state. The finding of the remains of this pontiff by St. Cyril the Philosopher, brother of St. Methodius, and the translation of the relics under Nicholas I., that is, between 858 and 869 this return of a patrician martyr to his home after seven centuries of exile gave a new impulse to the worship of the saint. The event and its date are of extreme importance for setding the origin of our church and the age of the paintings that are left for me to describe. It was, according to all appearance, between 900 and 940 that they set themselves to paint on the walls of the principal naves the series of illustrations of a legend suddenly become popular. These subjects, which are numerous and most interestinsf, are as a rule in orood preservation. The first, which presents itself on a thick and very broad pilaster, quite close to the master-altar, is the most important page in the series ; it is the Conversion of Sisinius, the friend of Domitian. The principal subject is that of the centre, which represents a church lighted by seven lamps, answering to the seven gifts of the Spirit of Light ; the lamp which surmounts the altar on which the missal and the chalice are placed itself consists of seven flames arranged in a circular lustre. They have chosen the moment when St. Clement, who is officiating, with the pallium on his shoulder and wearing a chasuble falling to a point, turns round with extended arms to chant the Pax Domini sit semper vohiscum, and when the pagan Sisinius, drawn to the temple by a malignant curiosity, becomes blind and deaf; his steps are uncertain, and a young attendant much marvelling leads him forth. The pious wife of the courtier, Theodora, beholds what has happened with a surprise that has nothing painful in it. The deacons and bishops, placed on the other side of the altar, present the givers of the fresco, who, in elegant apparel, bear crowns. They are in stature less by a half than the chief personages of the drama ; an inscription that is over the arabesques on which the picture rests has transmitted to us the names of these persons : Ego Beno de Rapizacum ]\Iaria Uxore mea pro amore dei etbeati Clementis. The space being too short to continue, the following character have been placed vertically over one another under the last letter of Z egi 71 d of St. Clement. 85 dementis : P. G. R. F. C. They offer by far the most singular method of abbreviation that I think I ever met, the initials of each syllable being included, PiiiGeReFeCi. Elsewhere the same formula in all letters, beginning by ego Bene, &c., ends hy fecit Ego . , . feeit. This is Latin in extreme decay. But the subject treated oi predelle with more negligence will bring in philological curio- sities of a different sort. Sisinius having commanded his at- tendants to strangle Clement, they bind and drag along the shaft of a column which, thanks to a miracle, they mis- take for the saint. The saint has es- caped at the oppo- site end ; he is only represented by his last words, pronounc- ed as he crosses the portico on which the painter has writ- ten: " JJUKITIAM COR- DIS VKS'i'Kis {sic) . . SAX A TRAKRK MKRIJ- isTi.'' The two at- tendants of Sisinius, who struggle to draw the column, are named C o s m a r i s and Albertcl. The first has pulled the cord on to his shoulder, the other has it under his arm ; " Aliskrtkl TRAi," says the legend, written over his head, " Albcrtel draws." 7)-(ii is no longer Latin, but it belongs to vulgar idiom. ( )n the side at which the saint has lied, a person, probably of his suite, and named Colopalo, is turning round. Rushing with a stick, as wiih LKGENI) OK Sr. CI.F.MKNT : KIMSUDE 01< SlSlMLij. (IKNTH CICNTUKV.; 86 Rome. a rope he shaKes tlie base of the shaft, he looks at an attendant, wlio was drawing at the other end, and casts at him some words that are figured thus: " falitedkketo." To discover the sense of this queer group of syllables, I think we must decompose it to these four words, Fali tc dc veto ! and translate it by this ironical phrase, " Cheat thyself by this delusion ! " It is Italian, ill taken from Latin forms ; de rcto, instead of di rete, is explicable, by a pro- pensity of the decline to assimilate the forms of the second declen- sion to most substan- tives. That the in- scription is in Italian one could show by that which is placed as a pendant, and as to which no uncer- tainty can be main- tained, but the apos- trophe of Sisinius is too rude to be repro- duced. In the central composition the cos- tumes are Greek ; a certain unity presides over the arrange- ments ; the frame is filled up with indisput- able art, for the inten- tions, W'ithout being forced, are shown in a free and natural manner, and the heads are far from being inexpressive. Those artists succeeded better in young than in old forms, in the heads of w^omen and the figures of men, in draped personages than in those which are not so all of them characteristic traits of Christian art. The figure of Theodora is graceful, well draped, supple, and of a handsome cast. We shall see again, in the continuance of this legend, all the family of Beno de Rapiza, at the bottom of the representation of the miracle MIRACLE AT THE TOMB OF ST. CLEMENT (TENTH CENTURY) Tenth Century Frescoes. 87 which took place before the submarine grave of St. Clement, when a widow finds there her child, who had been forgotten at the festivities of the previous year. Below the fresco, in a great medallion, is the pontiff, to whom Beno, his son Clement, his daughter Atila, his wife Maria, and the grandmother of the children, bring each a taper with crowns. These are priceless studies of costume. The upper subject, destroyed as on the previous panel, represented the construction of the tomb by an angel, as the half- preserved inscription shows. As for the principal picture, the arrival of the clergy of Kherson, with the bishop at their head, to assist at the prodigy of the child found safe and sound, the work is one of the most remarkable, as much by the architecture of the little monument on which the altar appears, the curtains of the Tabernacle having been symmetrically looped up, as by the drawing of the figures, which arc reproduced in a double action. The stooping mother raises the child extending its arms to her ; then, standing upright, pressing it to her breast, she leans her head tenderly against that of her son. In the second subject, the group has a movement so faithful, and the draperies are of such a style, that this charming figure recalls the sculptures of Chartres and those of Erwin of Steinbach at Strasburg. It shows to an equal extent the thought and intelligence of the West applied to the art of Byzantium, but the artists who here reach this result are three centuries before Giotto. The miraculous shrine in which the scene passes is covered with large tiles, like the churches of Ravenna ; four arches, in spite of symmetry, are only equipped with three lamps, because these lights symbolise the divine virtues. The anchor that they fastened about the neck of the pontiff when he was drowned by order of Trajan is fastened to a ring in the wall; peopled by fish swimming, the waves of the sea envelop the miraculous chapel. In the shape of epilogues are added tlic acts and deeds of St. Cyril, who died under Nicholas I. during his sta}- at Rome. A fresco, of which few traces remain, placed above an excaxation by which we descend into the darkness of earlier times down to the Htruscan substructions, allows us to recognise Cyril, or Constantine the Philosopher, receiving from die I'^mperor Michael III., called the Drunkard, the mission to iro and convert die Slavs and Bulgarians. Behind the apostle is, or rather was, for few fragments remain, his brother Methodius. Close by we perceive the King Bogoris, being baptized naked in a piscina in which he is plunged up to the waist. Let us further remark two extremely curious pilasters, which might 88 Rome. very well date from Leo IV. On one are represented St. Giles and Sr. Blasius. one above the other; the Arnienian bishop, at tiie prayers of a weepino- mother, is drawing from the throat of her child a thorn which choked it. It is for this reason that, in order to be cured of quinsy, people go to touch at the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata the relic of the throat of St. Blasius. Below is drawn a kind of devouring wolf, which is carrying off a creature and scratching it with its whiskers ; this subject is separated from the basement by an ornament taken from the acanthus, and inspired from the ancient ara- besques. On the other pilaster, St. Antonine the Martyr, in the time of Diocletian, has beneath him Daniel, whose feet two lions of a heraldic make are lickino;, twistino; themselves into the strangest posture. The prophet, who was minister to the kings of Babylon, wears the gay and half- war- like costume of the young Byzantine lords of the ninth century. A broad belt is over the surcoat ; the breast- plate is trimmed with ornaments ; short open cuffs expose to sight long and tight sleeves, fastened at the wa-ist by an embroidered decoration ; the buskins are elegant. In the lower compartment struggle five monsters that we might call man-lions, three of which erect on their hind feet try to devour Daniel, and open formidable jaws. The ornament of the base is of exquisite taste, consisting of curves which meet enclosing rosettes be- tween denticulated cinctures. What would lead one to suppose that these pilasters are earlier than the L'. BLA>U.-, PlOKl.N(. A THORN FROM THE THROAT OF A CHILD : FRKSCQ ON A PILASTl R (MNTH CKNTrRVV Ninth Century Pilasters. 89 second half of the ninth century is that there is no question of St. Clement, and that St. Giles of Nismes acquired renown in Rome at the end of the seventh. Let us not omit a composition entirely Greek and of later date, Cyril and Me- thodius presented to Christ ; the one by St. Clement, whose relics he has broua-ht back ; the other bv St. Andrew, the predecessor of Methodius in the apostolate to the Scythians. The Saviour, draped in the toga, is too short by more than a third considering the size of the head ; he is blessing in the Greek manner, that is, the ring- finger bent under the thumb and the three others extended, a unique example of the oriental rite in the monuments of Rome, but not in the rest of the West, where we meet it from one remote time to another up to the twelfth century. At the bottom of the church is a painting that can only be attributed to the authors of the miracles of St. Clement, already described. It is the representation of the funeral of St. Cyril, carried to the Vatican with face luicovered on a cataletto, covered by a rich quilt. The clerks in long dresses have torches in their hands ; the incense bearers swing their spherical cen- sors. In front of the altar of St. Peter is the Pope, who pronounce, the Pax Domini. 'ihis pontiff, who is Nicholas I., is also drawn at the head of the procession, with a mitre on his head, or pointed tiara with sins^le circle, and wearinc'- DANIEL SI'ARF.I) HY TI K I.IONS : ril.ASTKR IN JUK MMIl CK.NTIKV. a white pallium sprinkled 90 Rome. with black crosses. At his right walks Methodius, the brother of tlie deceased, in deep sorrow. The two saints and the Eastern clero-y wear the beard, while the Roman clergy are shaven. Behind the cross- bearer of the Pope rise banners of stuff sprinkled with gold, surmounted with a Greek cross. Under the frieze, which is framed by two inscriptions, we learn that " Maria the butcher's wife (Macel- laria) for the reverence of God and the healing of her soul has had this drawn." Here, then, in religious buildings, long before the development of the monasteries and the impulse given by Franciscans and Dominicans, here are works of art due to the munificence of the Roman citizens. We may conclude from this that throughout the events of the middle ages the commune preserved a certain prepon- derance, and that the middle classes had gathered the spoils of the fallen patriciate. Nothing is truer ; it was not before the end of the tenth century that civil discords brought Rome to ruin, sacked and destroyed property, and extinguished for two hundred years and more the intellectual lights which had begun again to shine forth. Along the nave, perhaps to fill up an empty space, towards the same epoch, the end of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth cen- tury, they grouped into a single frontispiece the principal points in the legend of St. Alexius. They are painted in the midst of a ravishing ornamentation of rosettes and compartments decked with flowers, among which birds move, with a cornice, half destroyed, on which Christ figured, censed by the two archangels, Michael and Gabriel, who are accompanied by St. Clement and Nicholas I. The three acts of this edifying little drama pass in front of the house of the senator Eufimlanus, father of the pilgrim who in his early youth quitted the paternal roof to exile himself in Palestine ; the buildings of the palace occupy three-quarters of the background placed in the middle of a fresco. Under a window, from which, without recognis- ing him, his betrothed, whom he abandoned on the day of their nuptials, is regarding him, Alexius, having returned to Rome, with the staff and wallet of the traveller, goes before the patrician, who arrives on horseback follow^ed by an escort. The pilgrim w^ithout being recognised ofi"ers his services to his father, who receives him into the number of his attendants. This figure, walking and speak- ing, is posed with an ingeniousness which does not exclude observation of nature. W^e perceive that the young man solicits humbly and entreats warmly. He separates himself from a group on which he turns his back, and which represents another situation ; the Pope, Roma f ice of Sf. Alexius. 91 followed by his clergy, and coming, warned by a voice from heaven, to release the body of a saint in the house of Eufimianus. They find at the door, resting on a mat, the poor servant who for seventeen years dwelt under a staircase in his father's palace. In the hands of IF';' NM) 01- sr. Ai.rxu-s: rxisro ok tiii: ir.xiii rrNTi^RV. Alexius was folded a writing, which the pontiff unrolls and reads before the company and the sorrow-stricken kinsfolk : this third subject in the distribution of the figures is couibined v.ith the two others. The groups balance one another, and the scene is so skil- c)2 Rome. fully occupied tliat \vc seem at first to have to examine only one homoL^eneous subject cleverly disposed. The blessed one is placed on a coucli, covered l3y a counterpane with alternate medallions of Greek crosses and doves. The betrothed of Alexius, hastening up, presses him in her arms, while the father and mother have rent their gar- ments and are tearing their hair. This picture fixes the date of the adventure of St. Alexius ; it must have taken place under Boniface I., who held the Roman bishopric from the year 418 to 422. The name of the Pontiff is shown thus ; Bcniipliatius. This curious painting, in the inspection which serves for legend, offers the most singular example of the prosodical decom- position of Latin verse, and of the transition from scanned rhythm to syllabic and rhymed rhythm. The events traced by the painter are summed up in these two hexameters : NON TATER AGxOSCIT, MISERERIQUE SIBI pOSCIT ; PAPA TENET cARTAM, VITAMQUE NUNTIAT ARTAM. It can escape no one that each of these verses cut in two forms two versicles of modern structure with leonine rhymes. Thus the church of St. Clement, a museum of archaeology in its upper story, a gallery of paintings unique over the whole world in its crypt underground, furnishes, besides the revelation of certain un- known schools, precious documents on the decomposition of Latinity and specimens of the Italian tongue towards the end of the age of Charles the Great. The monument so recently discovered also throws a vivid light on the origin of the first basilicas, on the rites, usages, and costume of the obscurest epochs, as well as on the antiquity of legends. Only, to exhibit the whole interest which a Roman church may stir, it was necessary to leave nothing out, for here detail is the very web of history. CHAPTER VL jN entering the city by the gate of St. Pancras you begin to hear sounds of a cascade, which announce the Pauhne P ountain. The ornamentation of this watervvork has for its single purpose to accompany the inscriptive tablet, which is perhaps the most gigantic in the world. As the building is nearly on the top of the Janiculum, you will discover from a great lllli TAULINK I'ULNTAIN. distance this page of writing framed in marble vignettes, which are accompanied by six columns of red granite taken from the P'orum of Nerva ; the ostentatious style of the sevente(?nth century triumphs here by its size. Paul V., restoring life to th(t aqueducts of Trajan, 94 Rome. and infusing Lake Hracciano into their arteries, did not mean it to enter Rome in poor guise, below the arms of the Borghese, ilhistrated by the tiara crowning of the attica, there rush forth brawling from three opeh gateways three currents, and from two neighbouring niches pretty streams. Dragons also spout forth other streams. These TJie CJmrcli of St. Cciilia. 95 masses of water, so unexpected on the bare summit of a hill, and pure as the crystal of the Alps, pour down into a vast marble basin. There was once here a Temple of Minerva. The Nympheum, a monument of the liberal foresight of the popes, nobly enough connects their power with the secular traditions of the emperors, by makin^T the memory of Trajan flower again among the younger buds of the Borghese. The con- struction does honour to Fontana as well as to the sculptor- archi- tect, Stephen Maderno. You find this last artist again at the foot of the Janiculum in a very different and per- haps more original work, if after turning the base of the hill to- wards the south, leav- ing to the right the convent of Franciscans in which dwelt St. Francis of Assisi, and following the suburban street in which the great St. Benedict stayed in the sixth century, you finally enter the church of St. Cecilia. What has made the legend of the virgin martyr disputable is that her execution is imputed, under Alexander Severus who did not persecute the Christians, to one Almacus, a prciorian prefect unknown to history. .Signor de Rossi has shown the error of the I>ollandists on this point, and confirmed the statement of I-'ortunatus, who places the martyrdom of St. Cecilia under Marcus Aurelius. The place of her burial shows the family from which she ciriM \ i\ I R g6 Rome. sprang ; but these are points to whicli we shall return as we proceed amono; the catacombs. The church of St. Ceciha, which gives a title to a cardinal priest, passes as having been built by Urban I. towards the year 230, on the site of the saint's dwelling-place. lliey show you in one of the chapels to the right the remains of the baths of her house, and on a lower story some fragments of the primitive pavement. Pascal I. who rebuilt the temple respected, as they had done in the third century, the remains of the furnace, where we recognise the conduits for heat and water. Clement VI I. presented St. Cecilia to the Benedictine Sisters; Clement VIII., in 1579, had opened the sarco- phagus of their patron, the body of whom, intact and masked by the folds of a long robe, disclosed itself in an expressive and singular attitude, and this exhumation occasioned one of the finest statues that was executed in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Pope being desirous that it should represent the saint in the vestments and the position in which they had surprised her, the task was confided to Stephen Maderno. This curious little temple rises in front of an apse of the ninth century, in \vhich a mosaic has bequeathed to us, besides a portrait of Pascal I., the figures of St. Cecilia and her husband \'alerianus, in the costume of the patricians and Roman ladies ten years after the death of Charles the Great. The saint wears a white mantle over a tunic of green, with a golden border ; the robe and the peplum of Cecilia are of golden stuffs, and richly overwrought. Flowers are scattered on their way ; by their side palm-trees laden with fruit symbolize the merits of martyrdom, while over one branch is the haloed phoenix, the emblem of resur- rection. At some distance from St. Cecilia, and at the end of the Lungaretta, rises the fine church on the right bank of the Tiber, Santa Maria in Trastevere. It is contended that on this spot there was erected under the first emperors a Tahcnia meritoria, a sort of hospital for the invalids of the army; and that this institution, having been aban- doned at the time of Caracalla and Heliogabalus, no doubt because the number of cripples became too great, the building was conceded to the Christians by Alexander Severus, with permission to found an oratory there, a project that was realised by the pope St. Callistus. Anterior by nearly a century to the era of Constantine, Santa Maria \\\ Trastevere ought to be the oldest church in Rome, and perhaps in the \\ est. What is certain is that Pope Julius I. rebuilt this temple Santa j\Iaria in Trasfcvcrc. 97 at an epoch when assuredly there was no other to reconstruct (349), and that before 1140 Innocent II. substituted for the monument of Pope Julius the present church, which is one of the prettiest in Rome, and one of the most interesting from the point of view of art and archaeology. It is one of the churches of character in which everybody can glean ; the pavement of Alexandrine work contributes to its air of opulence. They have just finished decking it up afresh, but I rejoice at having: seen it be- fore it became superb I remember that trying to go out, and having mistaken the entrance to the sacristy for a door, I observed in a passage some small tabernacles, on one of which some very charming but little- known bas-reliefs are signed Opus Mini ; for those who have studied Florence necessary initiation for a journey to Rome the name of Mino da Fiesole is placed under the ban- ner Ghiberti, between those of I'Va Angelico and the La Robbia. You come out on the other side of the cross by a lateral door which joins the railing of a pretty little garden, that is made cheerful by an ossuary, furnishing an unexpected reminiscence of Lower IJrittany. One of the interesting pilgrimages from the Trastcvere, and from that slope of the Janiculum on which gardens look towards the city, II YOl'NG WOMAN OF THK TRASTEVF.RK. 98 Rome. is the monastery of Sant' Onofrio, the witness of the agony of Tasso. As soon as one has set foot in the little church of Sant' Onofrio, the comic element speedily puts romantic leanings to rout. The monument of Torquato Tasso, inaugurated in 1857 by Pius IX., does more honour to the sentiments of the Holy Father than to the talent of Giuseppe Fabrizi, to whom, for want of somebody better, no doubt, they had to confide its execution. His bas-reliefs and his figure of Tasso are of a smooth, scraped, and pomaded execution, and of a taste quite extraordinarily laughable. Close to the door is the ancient sant' onofrio. burying-place, where under a modest stone has slept for more than two centuries the author of the Jerusalem Delivered, at the foot of a portrait of the time, which is bad enough, but which may be a likeness. In the passages of the monastery, where one loves to adventure in the footsteps of the poet, there is a litde fresco representing the \ irgin and Child, who blesses a donor at prayer. The picture is arched, and is surrounded with a frame in flowers and fruit on an enamelled ground, a rude imitation of Andrea della Robbia. The donor's portrait in profile, the infant Jesus from a soft model and of Tasso. 99 charining gesture, the fine movement, the dehcate sweep, the lofty brow of the smiHng Madonna- all reveal and proclaim Leonardo da Vinci, to whom this precious jewel is justly attributed. The chamber in which Tasso ended his sad and glorious life is well placed. What he looked upon in his last dreams, we see to-day just as he left it. Leaning on the window where the lover of Leonore d'Este leaned, we beheld wdth rapture what he beheld wath such gloom. The chamber is still just as he left it for the vault of Sant' Onofrio ; a few pale marks on the walls show the place of thinors that have disappeared. Yet all has not been dispersed : certain objects have been preserved that be- longed to the poet ; his table, with an inkstand of wood, his great chair covered with Cor- dovan leather very w^orn, a small Ger- man cabinet, a mir- ror, an autograph letter, a large bowl, a crucifix. There is found also the original of a mask in wax, moulded portrait aftkr the mask ok iasso. from nature, and the copies of which known abroad have become much effaced. The monks have placed this- face on a clothed bust, an incoherence from which there springs a fantastic effect. The head is delicate, of a peculiarly spiritual beauty, and of a fascinating expression ; the purity of the profile and the firmness of the mouth heighten the distinction of the poet's face. Between the southern slope of the Tarpeian rock and the Fabrician bridge, near the Piazza Montenara, you come upon one of the pure lOO Rome. monuments of tlie best epoch, the theatre dedicated by Augustus to the young- Marcelkis, his nephew. Such is the perfection of this monument that the Doric and Ionic coUmins of the two superimposed orders which supported the arches have been adopted by architects since as models of proportion. There remains an enormous segment of this building, of which the Pierleoni and the Savelli made a fortress in the middle age. When, doubling the round of the theatre of Marcellus, you proceed to lose yourself in the region of the Pescheria Vecchia, you discover a memento of Augustus in a colonnade once splendid. Octavius, who had dedicated to the son of his sister the neighbouring theatre began by Julius CcTcsar, placed under the patronage of Octavia the new portico, in which he placed together the altars of Jupiter and Juno. In an alley close at hand is the little church of St. Angelo in Pescheria, crowned by a covered belfry. It was from here that Cola de Rienzi, on the igth of May, 1347, after hearing mass, came forth escorted by his adherents and the Vicar Apostolic, to ascend to the Capitol, where the populace whom he had convoked conferred upon him the lordship of the Roman Republic. Situated in a poor quarter with all sorts of incoherent masonry, the ruins of antiquity are connected on every side with buildings from the seventh to the thirteenth century. Under the pediment they have described an arch, by way of replacing two broken pillars ; of the neighbouring colonnades there remain two capitals, one of them muffled in masonry, the other a fine piece crowned with acanthus, placed on a pedestal of brick ; a pilaster dis- robed of its surrounding of marble. The principal effect of these ruins comes of the contrast between the grandeur and the magnificence of the antique style, and the picturesque, sordid, and inveterate squalor of dens that are now given up to the fishery and Jewry installed there by the middle age. Turning the corner of the portico and passing under a low arch, you suddenly come out at the head of a deep, narrow street, the houses of which, dark and of unequal height, are made yet more obscure by pent-house roofs and by clothes-lines set up, as at Smyrna, across the road, in the shape of ropes on which swing garments of varied hue. These abodes exhibit a complete harlequinade of all sorts of epochs and all sorts of purposes. The majority of them have been in turn palaces, convents, oratories, houses of business in many forms, and at last they are become garrets and dens for sheltering wretched- ness. Everybody has patched up the walls for his own use, and such The Pcscheria Region. lOI is the quality of the cement that a square of wall pierced, stopped, mined, torn away ten times in twelve centuries, remains solid as a PEDIMENT OF THK PORTICO OF OCTAVIA. rock, without there being any need to prop it. Hence, before each of these facades made up of pieces and bits, one recognises, as on an ill- TTTVT-nT-VTJQTTY OF CATiFQRNIA I02 Rome. scraped parchment on which various texts have followed one another, the plan and tJie appropriation of the previous dwellings. The small Roman bit, the remains of some ^acclliun of the lower empire, will form a kind of figured stuff with the narrow bricks of the thirteenth centur)- and the large courses of travertine of the fifteenth. You will perceive from story to story spacious round windows stop- ped and replaced by tiny lattices, which are to-day in their turn con- demned. Vast arches sketching their fes- toons in a wall pierced by a window^ will recall ancient porticoes. A console perched high in notched bas-reliefs, a shaft of syenite or of African granite com- ing out of the mosaics of masonry, will betray a whole mystery of vanished greatness. Marbles fouled with soot mingled here and there wdth the mud of the buildings ; casting furtive glances to the bottom of the avenues, you will discover among the filth of a blind court captive colonnades and the crumbling scraps of some palace, such as those of the Governo "Vecchio, whose porticoes are half concealed amid the hovels of the Pescheria. At Rome to build they never completely pulled down ; erections having come from age to age to hive themselves one against the other like cells, it follows that the old quarters abandoned to the populace retrace the rank and tell the story of the life of the castes GATE OF ST. ANGELO IN PESCHERIA. Palaszo del Governo Vecchio. 103 which from century to century have been quartered there Even the doors have been re-cut or re-hung ; marvellous lock-fastenings, COURTYARD IN THK PALAZZO DKI. (lOVF.RNO VICCHIO, VIA DKLI.A PIS( UKRIA. antique and complicated gratings, will close sinks; a sarcophagus will serve for a trough, a gravestone for a basement, while dirty water will 104 Rome. hav(^ for outtcrs tombs that were contemporary with Gregory VII. Ill this way the smallest bit of building may become a summary of history, but you must inspect it close, for too often by dint of passing from hand to hand the book has been effaced. On each side of this curious street lie larofe flafvstones of white marble, gently inclined like tombstones, which forming a double row at the foot of the houses take towards nightfall, when the street is deserted, a most lugubrious look ; it seems that the graves of ancestors arc arranged before the doors. These blocks of Carrara or cipollino, taken from the temples of the gods or the inferior palaces, serve as 1: *' ' '^ ill ''' \\\y I VSWIi-JUlfSS BARBER IN THE OPEN AIR. BY HKNRI REGNAUI.T. stalls for the vendors of fish. When on these tables they cut up the bronze-coloured sword-fish, sea-eels, doradoes with bluish gill, their blood mingles in violet and rose-coloured webs with threads of carmine over the delicate whiteness of the marble, composing bouquets of colour which would have given delight to a rival of Van Ostade. It was in digging at the end of this street that, in the seventeenth century, they exhumed the Venus de' Medici at the entrance of the rione of the Jews, who with an amazing thoughtlessness have never thought of scratching the fruitful earth whose treasures they trample under foot. The Fishcnnan s Ouarter 105 Rome allows the Israelites to keep open shop on the Sunday, and it does not forbid Christians to make their purchases in the Ghetto on that day, nor even to go and buy cigar- ends by the pound, or be shaved by the barbers in the open aii-, where people wait their turn with so much patience, while they gather from the lips of the inex- haustible Figaro the news of the quarter and of the two hemispheres. To have one's beard shaved is for the Romans the only toilet luxury over which their taste for dirt has not triumphed. Above the Ghetto and Cenci Palace, between this piazza and the Via de' Pettinavi, are the lines along the Tiber with its deserted A FISHERMAN ON THK WATCH BEFORE HIS GIRELI.A. BY HENRI REGNAULT. barges, of certain streets, still more curious than those of the tribe of the Hebrews. P^rom the bank you see retreating in perspective a mass of habitations, one leaning over the other, as if they had been driven by a blast of wind. The sight continues as far as the Ponte Sisto, under which you may discover a fisherman on the watch be- fore his gii'dla stretched at the foot of an arch. Penetrating to the principal street, which is parallel to the stream, but sinuous and witli a breach here and there in its line, this ragged quarter is alive with the noise of the people and with the incongruity of contrasts. There are deep lanes, showing at their mouths palaces without name, whose ICO Rome. fifteen centuries of architecture tumble one upon another ; the lemon- tree and the laurel push out from clefts in the stone in the midst of filthiness and the creatures of the courtyard. These places are called the Rione della Regola, and are inhabited by tanners ; the sour and pungent odour of the tan and the hides mix with the accustomed perfiune of the cabbage. Not fiir from this, on the bank of the river, is the graceful Rotunda of the Sun, dedicated by some modern archseologists to Vesta, a gracious monument of the age of Trajan, very inferior to the more ancient marvel of Tivoli, but still attractive in spite of having lost its FOUNTAIN OF BIZZACCHERI, AND TEMPLE OF THE SUN, OR VESTA. architraves and its pediment. To save this pagan altar, of which the primitive institution ascends, they say, as far as Numa, it was placed by the popes under the protection of St. Mary of the Sun. This plaything in style has for pendant the basin, in the midst of which l)y order of Clement XI Carlo Bizzaccheri placed high and dry upon a rock two sirens of no very dangerous beauty. \ he bottom of this piazza is occupied by the porch of Santa Maria in Cosmcdin. It is a common opinion that Pope Adrian I., in recon- structing this church, which was of Constantinian origin, enriched it with an ornamentation so splendid that it retained the surname, in Santa UTaria in Cosmcdin. 107 Cosmcdin, from Koaao<^, decoration ornament ; but this designation is earlier than the year 780. Santa Maria, at the foot of the Aventine ^Tiliiiilgiua.. iiJiiiiiiiJiiiiiiiii'iyiBliteM and the Palatine, at the end of the street Bocca della Verita and at the bottom of a piazza, surrounded by ancient monuments, has l)een installed between the Corinthian arms of a temple of Ceres and loS Rome. Proserpine rebuilt by Tiberius. We can still distinguish a portion of the Cella in large blocks of travertine, as well as eight columns of the pt'ristyle in white marble, fluted and of the composite order. Seven of them are set in the walls of the church, which itself contains two distinct kinds of construction. The small basilica, which is primitive and probably of the date of Constantine, is drawn across the ancient temple : it is narrow, deep, and divided from the lower aisle of more modern date by antique columns with various capitals. The pave- ment is Alexandrine work of hard stone of the richest and oldest sort; the pulpits, of the sixth century, were adorned in the thirteenth by some rows of mosaic ; at the bottom of the basilica is placed the cathedra belonging to the first ages ; it was here that Pope Gela- sius 1 1, and the anti-Pope Benedict XI I. were proclaimed : the master- altar is surmounted by a ciborium, supported on four columns of granite. This church, on which the primitive times have left their mark, is a hundred steps from the school where St. Augustine professed rhetoric, and the adjoining street perpetuates the recollection, for it is still called the Via della Greca, though the Bishop of Hippo taught in Latin the lessons of Homer, whose own tongue he had not studied. It is under the vast porch of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, where we find a splendid tomb of the twelfth century, that there has been fixed against a wall the colossal mask in veined marble, from four to five feet in diameter, so well known under the name of the Bocca della Verita. It is a flat or slightly concave face, with a mouth opening in a circle in the middle, as if to serve for the funnel of some tube. At Rome they consider the Bocca della Verita as the ornament of a fountain-pipe in the funnel of a drain. As for the rather sibylline title that the mask has given to the open space in front of the church, it is less ambitious than you might suppose, the children of the neigh- bourhood amusing themselves by clambering on to the great lunar face and burying their fists in its round mouth. The grandmothers have fancied and repeated for centuries to these youngsters that if they put their hands into the bocca after telling a lie, they will never be able to draw them back again. The little folk believe, and to escape the terrible test they make up their minds to honourable confession. Close by the side of the Temple of Fortune, some centuries of venerable antiquity have introduced the elements of an enigma that has a very different complication. Built with a collection of sculptured materials got from I know not whence, fragments covering a period between the fourth century and the thirteenth, the Loggia, surmounted Rienzi s House. IC9 with a curious erection which they call the Casa di Rienzo, would furnish the frame for a long lecture in archseolo^j^y. An inveterate tradition assigns it to Cola di Rienzi, who governed the commune of Rome. Before fixing himself at the Capitol and taking shelter in the castle of St. Angelo, could the friend of Petrarch, Cola di Rienzi, when he was notary apostolic, have lived in this house ? The thing does not seem improbable. Towards the year 1340 Rienzi, his imagination inflamed with the old Rome, with the orators of the queen of the universe, whose equal he claimed to be, with republican manners HOUSE OF RIENZI, AND TEMl'LE OF EORIUNA VlRiLlS. which he strove hard to restore with the view of rousing public spirit and suppressing feudal brigandage, Cola di Rienzi, who in preaching his crusade recalled to mind the Gracchi, the Fabricii, the Brutuses, the Scipios, this Roman of old time who appealed on behalf of free- dom to inscriptions, monuments, ruins, may well have made his home in this house that had been built out of the ruins of Roman grandeur, at the bottom of the Yelabrum in front of the camp of Porsenna, close to the P^abrician bridge, at the foot of the Tarpcian rock, before the rotunda of the Sun, at the side of the Republican temple of Portuna Virilis. CHAPTER VII. jjONSTRUCTED afresh by Borromini and Rainaldi on the great piazzi Navona, which is blocked with booths and stalls and animated with all the hum and noise of a market, the church of St. Agnes with its cupola, accompanied by two flashing belfries, its facade adorned with composite columns and joined to the palace which it overwhelms, St. Agnes, a mass of broken lines, of sombre openings and projections whence the sun flashes back his rays, bursts upon you between two fountains, whose bubblings play accompaniments to the chatter of the market-women. Around these market-women, encamped under enormous umbrellas of yellow chintz, stirs the tide of customers, housekeepers and servants, Franciscans foraging, women from the Trastevere or the Suburra, peasant-women with their traditional head-dress. As they march along with hand on hip and head laden with a basket of fruits, you would take them for canephorce come out of Greek sculpture. You can scarcely ever forget the day on which for the first time you tread the Roman campagna, especially if, directing your steps towards the Mons Sacer, who have gone out by the Porta Pia which replaces the old Komentane gate by which the Emperor Nero, in full flight from his soldiers, who had at last revolted, made his escape from Rome followed by a slave. There still remain in the walls of Honorius some signs of their masked outlet, and in the projection of an embankment the remains of a camp occupied by the preetorians, under which the fugitive Caesar passed so close to them that he could hear them shout, " Long life to Galba." It was there that in later times these troops sold the empire by auction : it was there, in the midst of this praetorian camp, that Caracalla slew his brother Geta in the arms of their mother, Julia, who was covered with blood and wounded in the hand in attempting to defend one son against the Market of the Piasza Navona. I II other. Built by Pius IV., the Porta Pia was designed by ^lichael Angelo, the great architect and painter. To penetrate into the uncultivated regions of the great historic and pastoral desert, you had not then to traverse that suburb of small houses and taverns which ends in the masquerades of the Villq. I 12 Rome. Torlonia, where its owner has constructed imitative ruins. To set up counterfeit in the midst of the richest necropolis of antiquity what ckunsy competition ! A little beyond, on a low rising ground, let us observe an ostcric where the peasants from the north of the Abruzzi make their last halt, when they come down from the counterforts of the iNIonte Corno to visit the great markets of Rome. The sluggish train of lean jades wait at the door with entire philosophy while the contadini drink. The country begins to afford glimpses of glorious landscape as soon as one reaches the church of St. Agnes. This "WHILE THE CONTADINI DRINK." BV HENRI REGNAULT. church is at the corner of a monastery, and its extremely sober walls would not lead one to guess half its antiquity. When at the prayer of his daughter, Constantine, in order to dis- cover the body of the saint, had the catacombs of the Via Nomentana explored, they took up from around the tomb the earth of the galleries, and the basilica imprisoned the mausoleum. One has, then, in order to reach this church, which comes after a series of caverns, to descend forty steps under a vault whose walls are adorned with fragments and ancient inscriptions. The basilica has three aisles with two stories of coloniiades. Its pillars of granite, of violet marble, of porta santa, taken from ancient temples, its seat of marble of the fourth century, CJiurcJi of St. Agnes Extra Miiros. IT its mosaic of the year b?.6, representing between Pope Damasus and the first Honorius, Agnes crowned, wearing a golden and jewelled PIAZZA NAVONA AND CHURCH OF ST. AGNES. laticlave, with white borders and a violet tunic, all contributes to the religious impression of a monument half underground. 1 114 Rome. Near St. Agnes and in the domain of the community is a monument of older origin preserved in greater entirety. To see it you must, by a path strewn with fragments of marble, make for a Christian ceme- tery that is open to the sky, and is perhaps the oldest that was ever established. It is bounded by a thick wall of brick belonging to the fjxth century, supported on an embankment of more than a hun- dred feet. There rises a rotunda wholly Constantinian ; it was for his daughter and his sister that the son of St. Helen erected the baptistery of Constantia, as Am- mianus Marce-llinus attests. The great porphyry sarcophagus of St. Constantia, placed in the Vatican by the order of Pius VI., has from the fourth to the end of the eighteenth century fur- nished on the spot a no less formal proof. When, in 1256, he erected this baptistery into a church, Alexander IV. had de- posited under the altar in the middle the body of St. Constantia and that of St. Emerentianus. They are there still. A Christian church can hardly date from an earlier epoch than this, and among the basilicas of the same date there is none in a more satisfactory state of preservation. This baptistery, in which St. Sylvester christened the two Constantias, presents among all the edifices of the Roman decline the most ancient example of coupled columns. They are of ancient origin, and reach the number of four-and-twenty ; their shafts of granite support over varied capitals very curious protuberant friezes, above which rises a cupola. The vaults of the Ambulatorium which forms the circumference are decorated with mosaics on a white ground, belonging to the first half of the fourth century a specimen that .ST. AGNE.S, AFTER THE MOSAIC OF 1 HE CHOIR ('.SEVENTH CENrURV). Tlie Catacombs. 1 1 would be unique if those of St. Pudentiana had not been preserved equally, for the frieze of Santa Maria Maggiore can only belong to the end of the same century. The precious mosaics of the baptistery have for their subjects flowing designs formed by vine-shoots turned in various directions and laden with ripe bunches. Pagan genii at large, and angels latest born of the Mother of the Loves, gather the grapes from branch to branch ; some interspaces are furnished with grotesque heads ; some coffer-work frames rosettes connected by interlacings which form crosses. Round the little convent of St. Agnes, over a space of two or three k'-' CAlitihZ SI'. AGNKS EXTKA MLKOS ON THE VIA NOMKNTANA. acres on a road side, you have the complete picture of the heroic ages of religion. The martyrs, the subterranean worship in three stories of catacombs, the symbolical inscriptions, the sacred paintings of the earliest centuries, all await you in the depths of the earth. Below the ancient Rome, along the fifteen Consular roads which radiated from the Capitol as centre, there existed in the third century, besides a score of underground cemeteries consecrated to families, twenty-six great catacombs, which answer to the number of the parishes of that time. It has been calculated that these labyrinths must measure a hundred and fifty leagues of gallery, and must contain 1 2 J J 5 Rome. six millions of the dead. The average width of the corridors is nearly a )"ard ; placed one over another, so as sometimes to form five stories, they are never dug deeper than about five-and-twenty yards, a thickness beneath which the volcanic crust ends to make way for humid clays. Nothing can be more interesting than this cradle of religion, this elvsium of the martyrs of imperial tyranny, ancestors whom all Christian communions venerate. The cemetery where St. Agnes had her tomb, which, as it has been exposed, now serves as an altar for the church constructed about it, this dormitory, for such is the literal and spiritualistic mean- ing of the word, is situated a distance of two miles from Rome ; you go down to it from the midst of a wild garden by some thirty steps. At the bottom of the cellar steps you penetrate a series of narrow corridors one after another, cut at right angels, intricate like a network of lanes, and whose complexities could certainly never have permitted any kind of working. The Christians must then have chosen in the intermediate section of the volcanic stratum that porous marl which was of a sufficient consistency, while it was tolerably easy to chip away ; a light substance, of which the fracture is soft, which does not split, and where one could work excavations without encumbering the passages with bulky heavy blocks which would be difficult to get out. Such is the geological constitution of the catacombs. The useless matter of which they are formed was heaped up in the passages out of the way, or brought from the bottom of these sacred burrowings under some look-out hole, and from these the rubbish was raised by means of rope and basket, and mixed either with the sand of the quarries of the upper range or with the uncultivated ground of the surface. At any rate, it is certain that the catacombs could only have been established to serve as cemeteries, and to be expressly set apart for tliat purpose. Their use, for that matter, long preceded the Christian era ; Pliny informs us that the practice of incineration was not very ancient, and that many great families had preserved the custom of burying their dead. Sallust had under his garden catacombs provided with loculi ; the dictator Sulla was the first of the Cornelian family whose body was burned. As we see with what economy they utilised space, leaving no more than the necessary room between the compartments, and taking advantage of the very smallest nooks for the burial-places of childreu, The Catacombs 117 of which the number is prodigious, we are better instructed here than in any book as to the rapid propagation of the faith during the hrst SUBTERRANEAN GALLERIES AND LOCTTLI OF THE CATACOMn OF ST. AGNES. centuries. The complexity of the place explains how, under the territory of the ancient city alone, they could have made about three jiS Rome. hundred and sixty miles of winding ways. Pagan Rome was simply mined by the catacombs. If I add that before the year 316 these cities of the dead, where the holy mysteries were celebrated, and where catechumens were instructed, sometimes hid as many of the living as they con- cealed of the dead, we can understand how at the moment when Christianitv was officially proclaimed, it had rallied all the lower and middle class, only leaving to pagan worship as the defender of ancient institutions the support of the old Roman aristocracy, which was the enemy of a dogma that, while it proclaimed equality arid the fraternal possession of earthly goods in common, annihilated at once both large properties and the institution of slavery, the single means of working such extensive appanages. Thus Tacitus, the mouthpiece of the most oppressive tyranny that ever was, describes the Christians as " infamous and pestilent men, execrated for their crimes." In yielding to the necessity of attracting the Nazarenes to his party and placing the cross upon his standard, Constantine made sure of the empire ; in hoc signo vicit. And we may imagine how imperious this necessity must have been, when we recall that more tiian a century before, under Septimius Severus, Tertullian affirmed that if the Christians were forced to emigrate, the Roman empire woulci become a desert. Some visitors are so vividly impressed by the aspect of the cata- combs, and so suffocated by the atmosphere of their narrow, low, and never-ending passages, where the air is made thick by the smoke of torches, that they beg to be allowed to make their way back. In truth, if the torches were to go out, one would be condemned to await death in this tomb of some millions of souls ; if the old and bowed guide who went before us had by mischance been struck by apoplexy, probably not one of us would ever again have seen the light. The caverns of St. Agnes not being public, we had come alone to our appointment ; and even supposing that a week after another guide should have brought a company, the party would most likely have directed its steps towards some different quarter. These are reflec- tions to which people do not stoop until after the event. The tombs of martyrs and heroes often nameless draw ones attention specially ; it is easy to make them out, for when the grave-makers closed them, they fastened in their cement by the side of the head an ampulla of glass in which the blood of the confessor had been collected. You still see on nearly every hand the mark and often the fragments of these vessels. When the martyrs had been drowned, burned, or put TJie Catacombs. iig to death without spilHng of blood, then in sealing up the burial place the workman with the point of his trowel drew in the fresh mortar a SUBTERRANEAN ALTAR, TOMBS, AND CHAPEL IN THE CEMETERY OF ST. AGNES. rude sketch of a palm-tree, and a certain number of these are to be seen. Occasionally wc recognise the calcined bones of a martyr burnt alive, 1 20 Rome. and it sometimes happens that the bones are crystallised to such a degree as to shine. Inscriptions give the name of the dead ; those in Greek are usually the oldest, Greek having been the official tongue of the primitive Church. Many of the tombs are closed fast and untouched. If )ou wish to penetrate further in the study of the catacombs and its symbols, it is necessary to return to Rome, cross the whole of the city, and reach the gate of St. Sebastian. Forgotten for centuries, confouirded even no more than twenty years back either wath the cemetery of St. Sebastian or with that of Domi- tilla, the catacombs of Callistus were definitely discovered in 1852, by the most eminent of Roman archaeologists, Signor Rossi. St. Callistus is one of the caves which help us best to understand what after the reign of Constantine w^as the fate of the catacombs. Pope Uamasus and his successors decorate them and organise stations in them ; light-holes are made above the monuments made illustrious by saints ; they wall up corridors that had no interest, and which only added to the complications of the labyriath ; they allow new loculi to be hollowed out for the burial of pious families under the protection of the blessed patrons of the ages of trial. It was then that the faithful of the fourth century described this place as the Jerusalem of the martyrs of the Lord, telievers came thither from all parts of the world. This catacomb was constructed long before the epoch at which Pope Callistus I. sprung, they say, from the Domitian family, but who had directed a bank in the P^orum bequeathed his name to a cemetery lying under his vineyard ; some loculi are closed with bricks, the stamping on which dates from Marcus Aurelius ; everything shows that this cemetery of pagan origin was created by the Metelli on tlieir vast territories, which extended as far as the mole of Caecilia Metclla. As at St, Agnes, it is from the midst of an uncultivated garden that by the corner of a ruined country villa you descend into that legendary spot where the most modern restorations date from between 366 and 420, Half-way down the descent, along which the steps and the face of the wall are stocked with vegetation, as soon as you have lost sight of the city and its hills, the torches are kindled, and each visitor, flambeau in hand, penetrates into this labyrinth of sanctuaries very much as the subterranean processions u.sed to go. Armed with torches, the guides who precede you plunge deeper and The Euvly CJiristians. 121 deeper into the sombre corridors, where the black smoke of the resin seems to throw them into strange and funereal perspective. I'^or very nervous persons the sensation of fright is not less invincible here than it is at St. Agnes, and we frequently see women and old men so overwhelmed that they stop and pray to be taken back to the light of the sun. You are among not less than three rows of sepulchres one VAI-KRIANL'.S AND C/IXILIA. MOSAIC OF THE NINTH CKNITRV, AT ST. CICIIJA. over another : skeletons are under your feet as over your head ; they elbow you right and left. Men by hundreds of thousands have prayed and sung in these galleries, and now they sleep in them the sleep of death. It is near the burial-places of St. Cyprian, Hishop of Carthage, and St Eusebius, who died in 311, that one of the inscriptions of I 5i I\0)?lC. namasiis in six verses, enj^raved upon a tablet of marble, informs us tliat the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul were long concealed in these catacombs. In the second and third centuries the little underground basilica of St. Callistus and the chambers which surround it were the metro- polis of the Holy Sen, and the cen.re of the pontifical administration. They still show there the little cell which served as working-room for these spiritual masters of the Christian world, reduced to this curious appanage unknown to the sun. They had as guardians, as soldiers, and as legates, mendicants posted from distance to distance who kept watch along the Appian Way. The site of the tomb of St. Ccecilia is still marked at St. Callistus, as well as the spot where St. Lucina reposed. Around the loculus of St. C?ecilia, tombs and a multitude of inscriptions placed on the walls l)y enthusiastic pilgrims announce that famous personage, before, in a cr\pt adjoining the papal room, one has recognised the likeness of the saint and that of Urban who buried her. The subterranean \'atican of the primitive church abounds in interesting epitaphs. " Mere was laid to sleep Gorgonius, whom all loved and who hated none." This inscription, like many others, is in Greek ; the following are in Latin, but without any date, which is a sign of great antiquity : " Too soon hast thou fallen, Constantia ! Admirable for Beauty and for her Charms, she lived xviii Years, vi Months, xvi Days. Constantia, in peace." There are some epitaphs which retrace the memories of the per- secutions ; such is that of one Marius, a young officer under Adrian, " u'Jio lived long ciwito/i, for he spent his life and his blood for Christ.'' His friends laid him there with much wailing and many fears. This one, which comes from St. Agnes, and which is com- posed in Latin with Greek letters, has a very different significance: " Here Gordianus, Messenger from Gaul, Slain for the Faith, with all his P\'imily. They rest in peace. Theophila, their servant, had this done.' The poor envoy from Gaul, put to death on foreign soil with all his family ; the servant, left alone and far from her land, raising a monument to her master and adorning it with a palm here is a touching episode in the inner life of our forefathers. The workmen of the catacombs, or grave-makers, formed not a corporation but a minor order of the clergy. An inscription has been found at St. Inscriptions in the Cataconihs, 12 Callistus with these \Yords : '' Diogenes the Gravedigger, in Peace, laid here the eighth before the Kal. of October." This is placed above the delineation of the deceased. His tunic comes down to his knees, and he is shod with sandals. On his left shoulder is a piece of fur or stuff; on his right shoulder as well as above the knees are traced small crosses ; in one hand he holds a mattock, and in the other a lamp hung by a small chain ; around him are the tools of his business. The characteristic cf most of the inscriptions is tender and consolatory thought ; affection sighs its regrets, and faith breathes in hope. There is nothing pompous, nothincr to recall the di^rnities of this world ; much cheerfulness, much simplicity, much sweetness. " To Adeodata, meritorious X'irgin, who rests herein peace, her Christ having willed it so." The virtues praised among the deceased are ahvays amiable virtues ; friend of the poor, tender and blameless soul, lamb of the Lord. A widower recalls fifteen years of union sine lesion e animi ; he was father of seven children, but his rcife has four of them with her 7i'ith the Lord. " May thy soul be refreshed in supreme bliss, O Kalemira ! " Certain names .show how recent the conversions were. Two sons address this prayer over the tomb of their mother : " Lord, may the soul of our mother, VENUS, not be left in darkness." 124 Rovu It sc'cmcd to inc that at St. Callistus the paintings were more niuncrous as well as more important than at St. Agnes. You come upon the Anchor, which symbolizes hope, and figures the cross ; the Dove flying away with the ohve-branch in his mouth, emblem of the Christian soul that quits this world in peace ; the Ship at the foot of a beacon ; the Fish, IXGY^, whose Greek name recalls that of Christ and furnishes the initials of the formula, I//o-ouv X^naros Qeov Yiov S(f)T//p ; Bread, symbol of the Eucharist; the Rabbit gnawing, sym- bol of the destruction of the body. The Tortoise and the Dormouse signify that the sleep of death will be followed by an awakening; the Children in the Furnace remind the confessor that he must brave torment ; Daniel given to the Lions is the patron of martyrs ; Jonas is the em- blem of regeneration by faith. In a vault distributed into compartments, a number of these subjects make a frame to Orpheus, who draws a crowd of animals and even turtles to himself This curious vault, which Bosio first sketched, goes back, according to D'Agincourt, to the end of the first century. The cemetery of Callistus makes us acquainted with the works of em- bellishment executed in the catacombs down to the pontificate of Pascal I. Starting from St. Damasus, described as the Viro^in Doctor of the virg^in church by St. Jerome, who was his secretary, and who remembered wandering in the catacombs in his childhood. This pope, who prevented the raising in the senate of a pagan altar of X'ictory, and who obtained from Valentinian in 370 a The Nonieiitanc Bride'e. 127 At a short distance beyond the basilica of St. Agnes is the No- mentane bridge which contributes with a massive tomb, in which the shepherds have hollowed out a hut for themselves, to give colour to a landscape of tranquil simplicity. Near at hand was the villa of Phaon, where the Emperor Nero found his last shelter and ended his life when pursued after his escape from the capitol by the Nomen- tane road and bridge. In the neighbourhood of it, under the green arbours of a rural tavern, by the side of the Teverone, the Roman holiday-makers of modern days empty their flasks or quarrel over the points of a game at bowls. Like the Great Desert the Roman Campagna is eternally un- known ; no one crosses it without searching; for somethinir, and each year is witness of some discovery. It is a vast region of inexhausti- ble treasure. i'UNTE NOMKMANO. 124 Rome, It seemed to me that at St. Callistus the paintings were more numerous as well as more important than at St. Agnes. You come upon the Anchor, which symbolizes hope, and figures the cross ; the Dove flying away with the olive-branch in his mouth, emblem of the Christian soul that quits this world in peace ; the Ship at the foot of a beacon ; the Fish, 1X6Y^, whose Greek name recalls that of Christ and furnishes the initials of the formula, \)]govs Xpiaro^ Ocov Ylos- ^(OTi'ip ; Bread, symbol of the Eucharist; the Rabbit gnawing, sym- bol of the destruction of the body. The Tortoise and the Dormouse signify that the sleep of death will be followed by an awakening ; the Children in the Furnace remind the confessor that he must brave torment ; Daniel given to the Lions is the patron of martyrs ; Jonas is the em- blem of regeneration by faith. In a vault distributed into compartments, a number of these subjects make a frame to Orpheus, who draws a crowd of animals and even turtles to himself This curious vault, which Bosio first sketched, goes back, according to D'Agincourt, to the end of the first century. The cemetery of Callistus makes us acquainted with the works of em- bellishment executed in the catacombs down to the pontificate of Pascal I. Starting from St. Damasus, described as the Virgin Doctor of the vircrin church by St. Jerome, who was his secretary, and who remembered wandering in the catacombs in his childhood. This pope, who prevented the raising in the senate of a pagan altar of X'ictory, and who obtained from Valentinian in 370 a The Nonioitanc Brid^^e. o I 27 At a short distance beyond the basilica of St. Agnes is the No- mentane bridge which contributes with a massive tomb, in which the shepherds have hollowed out a hut for themselves, to give colour to a landscape of tranquil simplicity. Near at hand was the villa of Phaon, where the Emperor Nero found his last shelter and ended his life when pursued after his escape from the capitol by the Nomen- tane road and bridge. In the neighbourhood of it, under the green arbours of a rural tavern, by the side of the Teverone, the Roman holiday-makers of modern days empty their flasks or quarrel over the points of a game at bowls. Like the Great Desert the Roman Campagna is eternally un- known ; no one crosses it without searchins: for somethinir, and each year is witness of some discovery. It is a vast region of inexhausti- ble treasure. gin ,Tt>a<>nf The church of San Stefano Rotondo is extremely spacious, and a double colonnade surrounded it previously to Nicholas V. ; its conical roof sloping on to an architrave which covers fifty- six columns, as well in marble as in granite, with Ionic and Corinthian capitals. The unequal dimensions of the shafts, certain disproportions between their diameters and those of the heads, the rude design of some of the ornaments, a number of incised crosses in the heart of the acanthuses, all denote a Christian temple constructed of bits and pieces on a circular ground-plan at the end of the fifth century. It is said, in fact, that it was inaugurated towards 465 by Pope Simplicius, who as SAN STF.FANO ROTONDO. a native of TivoH might, before the Sibylline temple, Itave acquired a fancy for monuments- of round form. This is surrounded by a perfect necklace of altars; one of them still preserves a mosaic of the seventh century. Let us also not forget to mention a very fine Bishop lying on a sarcophagus by Lorenzetto. But this is not the principal curiosity of San Stefano Rotondo, nor what makes it so popular. In old times, when spectacles were rare, the spiritual and temporal pastors of a i^eople that were degenerate in their passion for theatres, in order to attract the populace, whose mind it was necessary to stir, had invested most of the churches with ceremonies and display of a 134 Rome. I cculiar character At St. Peter, the re^al pomps of the sovereign church ; at the Ara Ccili. the i)astoral of the Nativity; at St. Stephen the Rouiul. they represent with all its terrors the melodrama of martvrdom. and this is quite naturally the spectacle which the po[)ulace prefer. To enter the gallery of St. Luke, you have to ring* at a modest door on the left of the Via Bonella, and once entered you find yourself before some cows that Berghem has brought to graze among the ruins. A fine ship- wreck of Tempesta, a landscape of Salvator Rosa, a few country pieces of Blomen, instantly ^\^^ you the key of the modern note and of simple nature. I wish I could give some sKetch of this museum, of the impression it makes, of the entertainment or use that one may find, there, without be- lieving myself obliged to mention this or that, under penalty of appear- ing incomplete. As for detail, there is a catalogue. The principal at- traction of this collection comes of its diversity ; it possesses something of every school, and the most tho- rough, rather than the largest, examples of each school a rare circumstance in a gallery created with a view to teaching. The sanctuary of the place is dedi- cated to Raphael on account of two important paintings ; the one which represents a robust and beautiful child, naked, in the style of Farnesini, is a piece of fresco detached from one of the rooms of the Vatican, and which once belonged to W'icar, the- benefactor of the museum at Lille ; the other picture has been made common by engraving, and the painters have placed a copy of it in their church. It is the St. Luke painting the Madonna, who descends from heaven to pose for him ; behind the evangelist a pupil, FRAGMENT OF RAPHAEL. The T7V0 Diiugeous. n: probably Raphael, looks and draws in inspiration ; a charming- head painted with much suppleness. One of the gems of the Gallery is the portrait of the handsome Madame Yigee-Lebrun, whom I knew when she was nearly a hundred years old, at Louveciennes, where she died. A grey dress, a cloud of white muslin, serving- at once for kerchief round the neck and coiffi.re for the head, constitute her neglige. This celebrated artist, who had exhausted all the triumphs that fame and beauty can confer, had cut on her grave- stone the simple words, " At last I rest.'' Turn the street to begin the ascent of the Capitol ; at the corner of the \'ia del Marforio, under the small church of San Giuseppe, a monument of an en- tirely difterent sort will arrest you on the way. I mean the two dungeons, one o\er the other, which, by way of recalling their founders, bear the denominations of the IMamertine prison, in memory of the King Ancus Martins (issue of Mars, whom the Oscans called Mamer- cus), and the Tullian i)rison, because the king, Scrvius Tullius, they say, had the deeper of the two dug out under the first. These caves of detention, the oldest in the world, are sccmi in the nakedn(,"ss of primitive construction, and in the sinipli! it)' j)roper for the circumstances which their nauie is enough to make; remarkable. 'ihe Mam(;rtine prison, properly so called, into which )()u tlescend at theprt'sent day by the church of St. Joseph, due to tlic corporation of the car{)ent('rs. is in the shape of a trapezium twent)' feet long by about sixteen broad ; tlie masonry consists of enormous blocks of volcanic stone or reddish pe])erino, cubed and arranged in the Etruscan way ; the vault, which is semi-c)lin(lrical (though irregular, the sides of the square being uneciual), is formed of immense blocks. I his chamber, wliere you recognise the traces of a window that has MADAME VIGEE-I.MIKU.V, BV HKRSKLK, 1.^6 }\0])lC. been long- condcmiieci, had no door ; previously bound tight, the prisoners were plunged through a round hole into the Mamertine by means of a rope. The Lucunios of Tarquinla^ were sprung of the Etruscan stock which permitted human sacrifices, and the crypt of the temple dedicated to their gods must have been a slaughter-house. J o s e p h u s demon- strates the duration of these customs. ' It is a pious usage,' writes the Jewish historian, ' to put to death in the Mamer- tine prisons the chiefs of the conquered nations, while the triumphant conquer- or sacrifices on the Capitol to Jupiter.' For at the same time Pliny the Elder saw buried alive in the Forum Boarium,with the design of winning the favour of the gods, a man and a young woman born in Gaul, with which they were then at war ; and this pious atrocity seems quite natural to Pliny. This prison was exactly as we see it to-day four or five centuries bcfo'e the Ccesars, In the time of the Decemvirs, when Appius Claudius slew himself in this prison. Who has not thought of the lot of Manllus Capltolinus, reduced to appeal In vain for his defence against the envious Camillus, to thirty enemies slain with his own hand, to his eight civic crowns^ to his thirty-two military awards, and AKLlllii. UF ST. JOHN AND ST. PAUL, AS SEEN WHEN DESCENDIMG EROM THE CCELIAN. The Tiillianum. m to the scars that adorned his breast ? He was pkmged into the frightful TulHanum. Then arrives in this hostelry of slaughter, before Syphax king of Numidia, Jugurtha, who carried on so long a campaign, and whom Marius and Sulla together would never have conquered, if the treason of the king of Mauritania had not delivered him to the Republic ; as he came down from the Capitol, where he had figured in the trium- phal car of Marius, Jugurtha, like an actor whose part is over, was stripped and cast into the Tullianum. ' By the gods ! ' he exclaimed, as they entered his name on the jailer's scroll, ' how cold your stoves are ! ' For death to come to him, six days of inanition were enough. It was in the Tullianum that they strangled Ce- thegus, Gabinius, Statilius, and Ceparius, those hardy accomplices of Catilina, after Cicero had dragged Lentulus to the prison, whom he caused to be put to death first, proceeding in his own person to that swift transaction. Cicero scarcely foresaw that to l)unish him for thinking that he had saved his country, an exceptional law would come, confiscating his property and driving him into exile. Aristobulus and 'Jigranes, after the triiimi)h of Pom[)eius, were incarcerated according to custom in the Mamertine prisons. After all, these Romans were a cruel people, and these great men had small souls. The valiant fair-haired warrior of the Gauls, Ver- cingetorix, who confronted Julius Cccsar with an enemy worthy of ONE OF THE TROPHIF.S, CALLED OK MARKS, AT THE CAPITOL. 1 38 Rome. him, was transported to the Mamertine cage to await the ceremony of the triumph. It was put off for six years; Vercingetorix figured in it, and then Ca.\sar liad him slain under the vault of the Tullianum. It has devoured people of every sort, this famous jail, and even criminals. Sejanus was put to death in it, as well as his daughters. Six years before the remnant of Israel had entered there, another Simon, Simon the Fisher, and Saul the converted philosopher of Damascus, had borne into these caves their last fetters. It is in memory of this captivity that the Tullianum has beconte a chapel under the designation of San Pietro in Carcere. It is said that St. Peter was bound to the pillar at the side of the altar. The tin bowl placed near the subterranean spring is for the use of the faithful who care to drink water which quenched the thirst of the Apostle and baptized his jailers, Processus and Martinianus. As you reflect that at the dawn of the Republic these prisons already belonged to an earlier regime, that for five-and-twenty centuries so many illustrious victims have wept, raged, prayed, groaned in this cave with its soil kneaded with blood, you are pro- foundly moved at the contemplation of what has been looked upon by kings of Asia, by consuls, by enemies of Rome, by saints ; by seeing them exactly as these men left them, by breathing in the atmosphere in which they lived, and by saying to yourself as you touched the walls that there perhaps where your hand lies, the first of the popes rested his head, which had been touched by the hand of Christ. On the hill of the Capitol the Senatorial Palace, planted on that ancient base, has its chief frontage in the midst of the Intermontium. Cut down steep on one side on to the Forum, which it masks, this piece of architecture on the other side bounds a space, standing in the middle of which you have on your right the Protomotheca, founded by Pius \'I[., and the palace of the Conservators or civil magistrates. The left side is occupied by the museum of the Capitol. A litde behind rises the church of the Ara Coeli, where the Temple of Jupiter used to be, a pendant to the Tarpeian rock, which was crowned of old by the Acropolis. The enceinte of the small central space has for boundary-marks balustrades guarded by lions, and some steps, above which rise the colossal figures of Castor and Pollux, adjoining those celebrated trophies which have retained the name of Marius, but which belong to the age of Trajan. Between the steps and the principal palace rises the single eques- trian bronze bequeathed to us by Roman antiquity. Yet this only Bronze of Marcus Aurcims. 139 ovred its preservation during the middle ages to a mistake ; the pseudonym of Constantine protected Marcus Aurelius. In the fifth century, Totila is said to have carried off this statue, which was then gilded, and he was proceeding to put it on shipboard when Belisarius 140 Rome, recovered it. In the time of Sylvester II. the pretended Constantine edified the faitliful in the riorum Boarium ; Pope Scolari (Clement III.) transported it to the front of the Lateran palace, the old abode of Constantine. The Marcus Aurelius stayed there until the time .when, under Paul III., Michelangelo had it brought on to the Capitoline piazza, at the very spot where Arnold of Brescia had been burnt in 1 155 ; near the steps at the foot of which, two centuries after, Rienzi, on his night from the Capitol, came to his end under the knife of an artisan. WhcMi Andrea Verocchio, the best jeweller in Florence, came to Rome, the Marcus Aurelius made so vivid an impression upon him that he was emboldened by that re- velation of equestrian sculp- ture to execute the Barto- lommeo Colleone of the Piazetta Zanipolo at Venice, a truly incomparable master- piece. The illustrious pupil of Ghirlandajo and Veroc- chio, Leonardo da Vinci, was likewise inspired by the Marcus Aurelius, and also, according to Paolo Jove, by the horses of the Dioscuri, when he offered to the admiration of the joeople of Milan his model of the eques- trian figure of Francis Sforza, which, when exposed to view in 1493, seemed superior to the Donatello of Padua (Gattamelatay and even to the Verocchio of Venice. The revolution of 1499 hindered the execution of this masterpiece : nothing is left of the sculptures of-the great Leonardo, and it is only from the testimony of Ludovico Dolce that we know to what a point this artist, the only one of the three greatest contemporary painters whose school maintained itself without degeneracy, was ' stitpendissimo in far cavalli.' At the very first we are attracted by the singularity of another bronze, the bust of Michelangelo In his old age, from a marble sculp, ture from life by one of his pupils. It is surely the most extra- JUNIUS BRUTUS. 7 he Statues. 141 ordinarily constructed head, the most onarled skull, the most violent. PIAZZA OF THE CAPITOL GALLERY OF ANTIQUES. the most diabolic oudine. As a pendant to it there rises another still THE nVTNO OLAniATOR. more striking figure, Junius Brutus, founder of the Republic. His 14-^ Rome. short. Hat hair, his brow with its acute angles, his frowning eyebrows, under which there shine out in the tawny glow of the bronze black e)eballs on an enamelled crystal ; the severe shape of a very aquiline nose, the broad chin, the iron lips, the firm-set lines of a jaw that stands out under a short bristling beard all impresses upon this physiognomy, which has a beauty incom- patible with grace, a really terrible cha- racter. Descending: from the museum you enter a court decorated as they all are by an- tique fragments. I remarked among them a group ener- getically cast, repre- senting a horse de- voured by a lion ; the important resto- ration of this piece, corroded by damp, is attributed to Michel- angelo. Not far off is the statue of the Ocean, which they call Marforio, and which has given its name to one of the neighbouring streets. It was found in the Forum of Augustus, or of Mars, Marte- Foro, and hence ac- cording to some the name of Marforio ; but this etymology is barely satisfactory. We decipher in this court a number of inscriptions of prcetorian soldiers ; we find in it sarcophagi, statues, bas-reliefs ; but what I observed there particularly were the ornamented fragments of the Temple of Concord, cut with marvellous art. An amateur FAUN, AFTER PRAXITELES. The Statues. 143 will scarcely omit to look at the fine tomb from which the Porlland v^ase was taken. The staircase has for its decoration those plaques of marble which were taken from the Temple of Romulus, and which preserve for us a plan of Rome engraved under Septimus Severus. In a saloon that was arranged ten years ago for works in metal, you will find with interest, marked with an undeniable Greek inscrip- tion, the strange and noble bronze that Mithridates gave to the gymnasium of the Eupatorists. There are also graduated weights and measures of ancient Rome ; an admirable Hercules in gilded bronze ; the Greek Child holding a comic mask, by which Raphael ^ fErof THE AMAZON. MKSSAI IN A. was more than once inspired ; and the Ariadne, the ideal of fascinat- ing beauty. A mistake has given a name to the chamber of the Gladiator. The warrior mortally wounded, that for so many years has been admired in the Capitol under the designation of the Dying Gladiator, does not in truth represent a gladiator at all, but a Gaulish chieftain. The collar or torques leaves no doubt on this subject. Gne may compare this tyi)e with the combatants of the battle of Telamone, fought with the Gauls 355 years before our era by Attilius Regulus, who was killed there. The figures of this curious sarco- phagus recalled, by their type and their curling hair, this dying warrior, iiii whom wc sec one of the ancjcnt heroes of the I"" reach race. Here 144. Rome. also is an old reproduction of the "b aiin of Praxiteles ; some Etruscan fragments and a quantity of works from Greece, including even archaic l)asticci, initiate the visitor into a multitude of forms, schools, and practices. It is in a chamber of this museum that the Antinoiis is to be found, die ideal of sensual beauty ; there the bust of the murderer of C\Tsar, Marcus Brutus, a fine, intelligent, marked, and sombre head, strangely recalling the features of Armand Carrel ; also that statue of a Roman lady, so naturally posed and so well draped, in which without valid reason some people have pretended to recognise AGRIPPINA, DAUGHTER OF DRUSUS. Agrippina, others Domitia. We will only cite, by way of enumeration, the figures of Flora, the Amazon, and the infant Hercules. The inhabitants of Olympus are no more than the lares of this palace ; in proportion as the great personages of antiquity are resus- citated by the excavations, our popes send them to recruit the lofty society of the Capitol. How, in the midst of so noble a population, can we help believing with the contemporaries of Apuleius, with St. Augiistin himself, that the spectres of marble are tenanted by souls ? Etiquette has formed two distinct salons : in one of them the writers and philosophers of Rome give hospitality to those of Greece ; and this areopagus forms an assembly in which more than eighty celebrities The Hospital of St. Michael. 145 shine. There you visit Socrates, Seneca, Agrippa, Diogenes, Theo- phrastus, Apuleius, the architect Posidonius, Demosthenes, Sophocles, Cato, Thucydides, Antisthenes, Terence, Apollonius of Tyana, Aspasia and Pericles, Archytas, Sappho, Periander .... we cannot cite all of them. In the middle sits Marcellus, the victor of Syracuse ; while on the walls are bas-reliefs : among them a Sacrifice to Hygieia, marked by Callimachus. It does not take very long to come down from a mountain whose sum- mit is not more than fifty yards above the level of the sea. Near the foot of the Capitol is the hospital of La Consolazione, belong- ing to the sick of the weaker sex, where a dormitory opens on to a piazza in direct con- of a lonof ROMAN I.ADY, TAKEN I'OR TIIK FIRST AGkl I'lMNA . cmuation street. Rome was the first to organize and de- velop genuinely special hospitals. As you enter Rome by the Porta Portese, situated at the southern extremity of the Jani- culum, you leave to the right the Tiber and the vast hospital of St. Michael, which occupies at Ripa Grande, a port constructed by Innocent XII., part of the site of the Prata Mutia. It is here that legend places the camp of Porsenna and the royal tent where Mutius Scsevola thrust his hand into the flame. St. Michael is a reformatory for young prisoners, combined with a conservatory of industrial craft and the fine arts, while they also receive into it the poor, the aged, and the infirm of both sexes. Pour hundred indigent children are collected there, educated by the most skilful masters, and kept until the age of twenty one, when ihe lads, provided with a position, go L 146 Rome. away with full purses, and the gh'ls receive a dower of a hundred crowns. 1 have reserved what concerns the ordinary object of charitable establishments, the treatment of the patients and the administration The San Spii ito lujinnary. M7 of the numerous hospitals. The most considerable is that of the San Spirito, which contains also a refuge for foundlings. NEoTOK HOUSES ON IHK BANKS OK THE TIBER. BY HENRI REGNAULT. It was in 1 198 that, as he was walking on the banks of the Tiber, Innocent III. came upon a fisherman who had just brought up in L 2 his net three dead infants. Deeply moved, the Holy Father immediately had established on a barge contiguous to the hospital of San Spirito, which he had just instituted, a movable turning box lined with a mattress, in which they might at any hour place abandoned children ; at the same time he forbade, under severe penalties, all inquiry as to who placed them there. The children are kept at San Spirito till they are old enough to be sent to the asylum at Yiterbo, where they are taught a trade. At seventeen they receive enough to live upon for a year. The girls are the object of a still more paternal solicitude. We cannot either too much admire, or too warmly praise, or be too much struck, as we recognise that Rome has constantly directed the Christian world in the path of charity ; if religion has truth for its basis, that was bound to be so ; and the thing being so, to state it becomes a duty. On the banks of the Tiber, adjoining the Vatican, in the place where the Gauls and Germans who were brought by Vitellius perished of fever, and sought, according to Tacitus, in the waters of the stream, a disastrous relief from the summer heats, there is the hospital of San Spirito. It would be out of place here to describe this vast establish- ment. It is situated on the abrupt corner which separates the Vatican Hill from the northern extremity of the Janiculum, where it occupies a triangle as large as a small town. Marchione of Arezzo, Bacio Pintelli, San Gallo, perhaps even Palladio, worked successfully at this charitable institution. To establish it, Innocent HI. chose a site already consecrated by a Saxon king, who in the year 7 1 7 set up there a hospitium for his countrymen, and hence the name of San Spirito in Sassia which the house still bears. The bull of foundation bears the date a.d. 1198. At San Spirito, whoever is suffering is received and tended, whatever the position, nationality, age, or even the religious creed of the patient. CHAPTER IX. i|LTHOUGH the Capitoline promontory, looking on the Tiber and the Palatine, is nearly to its top scaled by houses of tolerable height, the Tarpeian rock has not disappeared ; to see it quite close you have to go by the lane of Torre de' Specchi, in front of a religious house, which depends upon St. Fran- cesca Romana. There, under the escarped terraces of the hill, opens an irregular court, encumbered w^ith old buildings, sheds, and pent- houses, which seem to carry on their roofs the little gardens of this . point of lugubrious memory. The rock, of which the citadel followed the outlines, is porous and of a dark shade, being a tufa like that of the Tullianum. It bounds abruptly on the plateau the garden of the old Caffarelli Palace, whence the eye can measure, above plenty of other ruins, the ruins of a precipice so deep that by jumping down one would be perfectly sure to break one's bones. It was there that in old times ingratitude and envy used to launch into eternity the great men who had done too much for their country, and genius that was too embarrassing for the ruling mediocrity. The anfractuosities of this aerial cemetery of glory are scented with yellow violets and rose-coloured gillyflowers. Seen from a slight distance the rock by no means discloses its size, because it is masked ; but in entering at the back of the hospital della Consolazione, in a lane which comes out upon the \'ia Bocca della Verita, you measure better the real height of the Tarpeian rock, with one or two cavities in it, and veined with sewers of an indefinite age. Although the grounds of the Velabrum and the neighbouring quarters have since the time of Sulla been raised forty-two feet, the Tarpeian rock is less changed in appearance than might be supposed. In his description of the siege of the citadel by the partisans of X'itcllius, who wished to recover it from the soldiers of Sabinus, and who set fire to it, Tacitus represents the besiegers as climbing ' the hundred 1 50 Rome. steps wiiich separate the sacred wood of refuge from the Tarpeian ock,' and he adds that the soldiers mounted to the fortress *by the The Bambino. ISI roofs of houses, which, owing to a long peace, had been built close to the walls, so high that they reached the level of the Capitol.' If this description dated from yesterday we should think it exaggerated. I'RONTAGE Of SANTA MARIA IN AKA CCEI.I. The best-feted saint in the Capitoline Church is the Bambino, for whom the pifferari form a procession when he makes his visits in a IS2 Rome. gala coach, which was acqinred by the Franciscans in a singular enough manner. In 1848, the people hav- ing set to work to burn the pope's car- riages, one of the triumvirs bethought him, in order to save the finest, of making a present of it to the Bambino. On his return Pius IX. had some scruples about taking back what had been offered to God. The Bambino,cutfrom a block of cedar by a monk of the sixteenth century, is transported in his royal equipage to the bed of the sick, who send for him when medicine has no power. Only he is not moved while the exhibition of the creche lasts; and when the first day of the year comes, it is the sick who set off to convey him their homage. To build up the bric-a-brac of anti- quity called the Ara Cceli at a distant and undeterminate first known dedication dates from the year 595, quantity of ruins, which makes this church hybrid, and curious. Different in module, I HE BAMBINO. the period, for they dug among a strangely furnished, Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. 153 the columns do not present three capitals that are alike : one of them, above the third column to the left as you enter by the great nave, bears on the abacus this equivocal inscription, though the cha- racters seem ancient enough : e cvbicvlu av(;. Gilded with gold taken from the Turks at the battle of Lepanto, the church is richly paved, but the borderings, in opus Alexandriiiiini, arc reduced to patches by the profusion of sculptured tombstones; those of the fourteenth 154 Rome. century, \vhich abound in relief, are so numerous, that in going through the church one is caught at every step. These reclining figures, which replace under } our eyes in the churches the society that once frequented them, render them more animated. The Temple of the Ara Coeli is a veritable museum. It would take too long to enumerate all ; but we cannot pass over, towards the top of the lower aisle on the right, the tombs of the Savelli from 1260 to 1306. That of Pope Hbnorius \\ . and the monument raised to his father present a small model of the frontao"e of a Pisan church, in the style of San Miniato; adorned widi rosettes and bands of mosaic, the little temple is of marble, and IIOT.TBAY CAKRTAGK OF THE HOLY FATHER THE EQUIPAGE OF THE 15AMB1N0 is an authentic work of Arnolfo. This pope Honorius, who reposes among his kinsfolk, is a fine figure that the trumpet of the last day will not awake without trouble, in such deep slumber is it plunged. The tiara of 1290, by its rudimentary shape, adds still further to the verisimilitude of this repose, for it is like a cotton nightcap. There repo ,es, too, the first pope of the house of Savelli, Honorius III., who, in I 216, succeeded Innocent III. ; this chapel belonged to the family. Let us not forget near the pulpits, which are of the twelfth century, and which are remarkable, a tombstone set against the wall, which must oblige the Queen Catherine of Bosnia to sleep standing, widow The Quatrro Cixpi Bridge. OD N "0. Xi'^XVNjS/ ''^'*' of that King Stephen whom Mahomet II. had flayed alive ; nor, in a chapel to the left, the mausoleum of Philip of \^alla, a Florentine monument of rare delicacy. The two weeping genii who bear the scutcheons, the reclining statue, the arabesques of the lower part, are treated with a master-hand. At the bottom of the nave close to the door, the chapel of the Bufalini, at the invitation of St. Bernardin of Sienna, was decorated by Pinturicchio with frescoes which ought to be fixed upon as among thefinest inspirationsof this genius: the death of the saint, who has had himselflaid out in abler, where he expires in the midst of his religi- ous comrades, is a most skilful composition. You enter by a charm- ing doorway, which admits you to the church as well. I re- call wide corridors with ogival vaults tinted by pale gleams of light, along which one would summon the shade of a St. Bruno ; as well as a cloister in two tiers, austere, of fine style, which has an air of a l^hebaid, three paces away from the Capitol and its museums. The convent, at the time of the jubilee of 1450, when St. Bernardin of Sienna was canonised, received in general chapter three thousand brethren from the houses founded by this blessecl patron. The Tiber, which is rapid, large, and deep, divides into two arms in the midst of Rome, and thus leaves an isle which is tolerably populous ; you reach it by a bridge of stone, built by Fabricius, under I'KIXCIPAI. DOOR OF THK ARA r'i,, __ LA PORTA SRITIMIANA, IN THK TRASTKVF.RK. and confetti, and things fried in oil, the equivocal incense offering of the solemnity. At the third hour after the vintiquattro, the crowd collects at the approaches of St. Eustace ; everybody is provided with noisy instru- ments, and until after midnight this assembly, which includes every i6o Rome. class as well as every age, moves and tosses about with immense tumult in the narrow s[)ace ; all try, along the illuminated street where they are trampling and elbowing one another, who shall produce the most formidable uproar. They whistle, they howl, they imitate by means of calls the cries of savage beasts, they stamp and bellow, they push The Fames hi i Palace. 16 1 and are pushed ; the tumult is diaboHcal, the image of violence is on every side, but there is no temper ; brawls are uncommon, and it would be to fail in the etiquette of this feast of unreason to get up a quarrel. I had been present at so many church ceremonies, at so many civic festivals, that I was impatient to discover at the villa of the Farnese the divinities of Olympus, those finished models of the perfect form, so prodigal of attractions for initiating mortals into the science of the beautiful. It was then with a certain satisfaction that, remain- ing in the tranquil region of the Trastevere, in order to gain the per- spective of the Lungara, I passed under the choked archway and dovetail battlements which in the middle age travestied the Porta Settimiana, which got its name from the father of Geta, which was restored by Alexander VI., and then condemned under Urban VI., to be no more than an ornament of the quarter. In the Farnesina Palace that Peruzzi built for a friend of Raphael, for the banker Agostino Chigi who survived him only a few days, we come upon that pagan Renaissance which so dazzled the Valois. Described as a villa, although it is in the city nearly in the front of the Corsini Palace, but because it is in a garden, the P^arnesina has a very gloomy aspect from the outide. The purity of the lines and pinnacles impresses an eternal youth on the edifice, which for all that has a dilapidated kind of physiognomy ; the neglected aspect of the uncultivated grounds contributes to the same impression. As soon as you pass the staircase, twelve great subjects designed and begun by Raphael, and then executed by the eagles of his school, fill the roof of the vast hall which serves for vestibule. Two great compositions divide the ceiling the Marriage of Psyche, the piece which has suffered most from retouching, and the Assembly of the Gods, where the figure of Mercury, that of Cupid, and the head of Venus, are of exquisite line. This vigorous and free piece reminds one of certain freaks of the audacious naturalism which delights Michelangelo. To see again for a few moments green fields and fresh waters after one has been so busy exploring a city, to end under the shade of trees a day where one has summoned up all the visions of m}thology in company with Raphael, and laboriously scanned the frames of a gallery, is a temptation that a man hardly resists, especially if you remember that the Farnese and the palace of the Corsini are not far from one of those fairy works where the mind is so ready to call up the divinities of woods and fountains. You know, reader, that in the Roman Campagna the small pro- M I62 Rome. [)crtic.s described elsewhere as orchards, meadows, lodges, are called vineyards ; hence so many bas-reliefs and statues found nviong the A L;arden is a very different thing. This term often means enormous spaces, comprising groves, meadows, hills, ponds, and rivers, with ruins and scattered monuments ; such are the Pamphili gardens on the site of those of Galba. Under the rampart of Rome, a few yards from the gate of St. Pancras, of warlike memory, they present GARDENS OF THE PAMPHILI VILLA. the close dales, the woody shades, the plantations of genuinely rural solitude. As the approach to the domain is at the back of the plateau which bounds Rome on this side, you no sooner enter the park than the city disappears from the horizon, except towards the north, where at the extremity of a valley -shut in between hills rises solitary the enormous mass of St. Peter, flanked by the Vatican, and framed on every side by meadows, fields, and gentle slopes, like a colossal Chartreuse lost in the midst of a Thebaid. Between the rosc-hued Soracte and the Monte Mario, the dome rises into the Tlic Pa nip hi I i Gardens. 16 clouds supported by masses of trees and bounded by the Leonine city, which winds across the slope, its lands of brick running from distance to distance by keeps of the ninth century. The ruins of a villa restored in the manner of a triumphal arch furnish an approach at present to those grov^is of oak, of planes, of great spreading pines. At the back of these wooded plains, long avenues spread out unseen by the day, aisles in which the birds sing, and dividing a slope at the end of which the plain extends far out of sight, a kind of solid ocean which the other ocean made level in old times. This shady labyrinth, which goes up and down by turns, will show you the snows of the Apennines through the breaks in the trees ; to perspectives of verdure will succeed perspectives of water. Under the cool freshness of the waters and the tall trees the grass gets a fineness and brightness which recall the Alps; in the dawn of spring, the anemones, violets, periw'inkles, primroses, and cyclamen display their mosaic on the turf. Further off the walls of the embank- ment are crowned with camellias ; the arabesques of the parterres of the flower-beds, the enamel of their compartments, which frame bas-reliefs and statues, cause the surprises of art to come upon the poem of nature. You recognise, from having seen it in pictures, a certain semicircle of architecture reflected with its garlands of trees in a sheet of water; the rest is unforeseen, and causes new sensations ; you believe you walk in a dream. The gardens of Kome were assuredly thus in the time of Virgil and the poets of the Empire. GARDENS OF Tllli I'AMl'iULl VILL. CHAPTER X. [HERE are in Italy a dozen churches which, like Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella of Florence, like the dome of Sienna, like St. Clement and Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, are for architecture, painting, and sculpture, true museums by the aid of which one might unfold all the annals of modern art. Such is the church of the Dominicans, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, so called because it replaces a temple erected by Pompeius to the Virgin of paganism. Nothing is so unexpected as the first aspect of its three ogival aisles supported on pillars without either capitals or bases, like huge trunks reflected in the polished marble pavement. The vault and walls lighted dimly from above are of a bluish green, and shining like the moist walls of a marine grotto covered with lotus, seaweed, and scolopendra. The monks in 1855 had the temple covered with a kind of stucco, imitating with an excessive brightness the tint and veining of green porphyry. The date of the building is about the end of the fourteenth century ; the nave is wide and fairly high ; the choir, more modern and recently harmonized with the ogival style, is of fine proportion ; a series of chapels very highly decorated cluster in the rather narrow side-aisles. But as you enter, you are so struck with the green and lustrous colour of a nave that doubles under your feet in a mirror of polished marble, that the church under its skylight seems dark and empty ; to commence to make it out, one must acclimatize one's eyes. As often happens to people who pry, one of the first monuments that I proceeded to discover was one of those most hidden. On a tombstone set up in a deep chapel in the left transept is represented in relief a monk, an ascetic with hollow cheeks, with delicate and angular features, with a large arched brow which gives accent to a pensive expression, while the slender and knotty fingers indicate at once manual activity and the sentiment of St. John of the Florentines. 65 the ideal. It is the only known portrait of the angel of Florentine painting, of the blessed John of Fiesole, the painter of souls and the heaven of which he had had glimpses. Who does not now admire this holy artist ? The President de Brosses, Dupaty, Beyle, have never even pronounced his name. I insisted on keeping the epitaph ST. JOHN OF THE FI.ORENTINFS. TRASTEVERINE BANK. SLOPE OK THE JANICULUM. of the patron of religious artists composed by his venerable friend Nicholas V,, who died the same year. IIIC JACET VENER. PICTO. FR. JO. DE FLO. ORDIS RDICATO .-* Non mihi sit laudi quod eram velut alter Apelles, Sed quod lucra tuis omnia Christe, dabam : Altera nam terris opera extant, altera coelo. Uihs me Johaiinem Flos tulit Etruri?e. mcccclv. The cenotaph of Cardinal Orsini goes back to the end of the four- teenth century. The monuments of that age are superior to those of the following century by their collected gravity ; the last slumber is pro- foimd then ; later on death becomes a triumph, first for its victim, and next for the artist charged with commemorating him ; the hero con- tinues to act, to live, to command. We may associate with this school the mausoleums of the two Medici who are not at Morcnce Leo X. and Clement VII. Of the two statues in sitting posture and confronting 1 66 Rome. one another, attended in the air by figures of saints singularly twisted and tormented, the best is that of Pope Leo, which seems to have inspired iM'ancois Honivard, the prisoner of Chillon, with that other Portrait rccenth' published at Geneva : ' . . . . savant en lettres orecques et latines et davantage bon musicien .... a la reste, bel personnage de corps, mais de visaige fort laid et difforme ; car il I'avoit o-ros plutot en enflure que par chair ni graisse ; et d'un ceil nc voyoit o-outte, de I'autre bien peu, sinon par le benefice d'une lunette de bcr)-l appelee en italien un ochial ; mais, avec iceluy, il y voyoit plus loin que homme de sa cour.' The author of the Advis et Devis might, when he was prior of St. Victor, have seen Pope Leo X. close. St. Andrew of the Valley, its fa9ade full of sweeping architec- tural floridnesses, is a large and very rich church where Zampieri painted the Evangelists on the pendentives of the cupola. These figures might make one think that the imitator of the Caracci ventured this time to raise his eyes to Michelangelo ; for the rest, we find here the serenely bright colouring which goes so well with the architec- ture. The effect of these qualities is still more perceptible in the vault of the choir and on the apse, where the same artist has dis- tributed in compartments, elegantly marked out by garlands of ara- besques, his figures of the Virtues and various points in the legends of St. Peter and St. Andrew. Whatever the merits of the person- ages and the compositions, qualities that are hardly to be disputed, it happened to me to forget the actors of the scene, and Domenichino will often occasion these distractions to people with a passion for a certain interpretation of nature. In the subject which represents St. John pointing out the Saviour to Simon and Andrew, the landscape has a charm and invention that are admirable ; the Crucifixion of St Andrew rises from architecture that forms a splendid decoration. The Florentines of the famous epoch had not so much style ; nor the \^cronese so much purity. The Convent of the Philippines possesses a very fine library, in which also they preserve some unpublished works of Baronius. I only entered this establishment once, accompanying one of our artists who was anxious to buy an old tapestry, which the society was willing to part with for a very moderate price, so it was said. But as soon as we came into the presence of the father manager, whose ascetic leanness I have still before my eyes, he gradually raised his pretensions so high, that in spite of the eflbrts of a young frater who pleaded for us, it became necessary to give up an acquisition that was too visibly The Library of the Philippines. 167 desired. As we parted In mutual dissatisfaction, I lost an opportunity of seeing the famous Bible of Alcuin which Is there; the youno- artist recompensed me by the expressive sketch below of our little scene. A large framework of wall, under which are two wide arches, hav- ing at their sides three small gates, crowned with pediments resting on columns ; there in all Its simplicity is the Porta Nevia, better known as Porta Maoroiore. Its 00 austere and solid character, and the roughness of the out- lines, give full effect to the facade which three emperors left unfinished without ordering it to be roughcast: the Ro- mans concerned them- selves before all else with utility, with just and practical appro- priateness. This fa- cade is reduced to what may be called a speaking ornamenta- tion ; three inscrip- tions placed one over another, cut in hand- some capitals on that white page, describe from two thou.sand years ago the consoli- dation of the monu- ment as well as of the aqueducts by Claudius, the son of Drusus, by Vespasian, and l)y Titus. The middle age re- duced the dimensions of the porticoes by Inscril^ing in them smaller arches, surmounted by embattled copings of extremely unhappy effect. Out of the Porta Magglore, set with antique i)avement, and parallel with the aqueducts, of which Aurelian and Ilonorius made a rampart, the old Pra-nestiiK- ro.id begins. Live or six aqueducts cross one THE FAIIIKR MANAC.F.R OK THK I'iUI.II'PINES. HV HKNKI KKCNAIMT. i68 Rome. another in this plateau, and their great arches rise against the sky, and are continued in the background by other ruins. I have reserved to close this chapter, and serve for introduction to the next, a small church of which, after passing under the arch of Gallienus, I proceeded in search in a recess of the Vicolo delle Sette Sale You make your way through a square court into the impover- The Sette Sa/e. 169 ished Temple of San Martino ai Monti, and you can come out of it, by the side of the apse through a small door, at the end of a claustral- FAMILY 01-- BKGGAKS. looking alley. On one side as on the other this place is solitary to a degree rarely equalled. Yet 1 found there, grouped as for a picture, a beesfar-woman with her three children. 170 Rome. St. Martin tries the sagacity of archiieolooists, because there are in this place two or three churches one over another. In reconstructini^ ARCH OF GALLIENUS. the oratory at the beginninf^ of the sixth century, St. Symmachus prepared at the Baths of Trajan a burial-place for Martin I., who was The Baths of Trajan. 171 actually buried there one hundred and fiftv years later. Below the church which Symmachus dealt with, there is another that Peter of Cortona totally disficrured ; from this you descend into a crypt where St. Sylvester has his tomb, and where he is 5aid to have presided over 172 Rome. the council of Rome in 424. It is paved in 1)lack and white mosaic. Reniainino- poor, though twice decked out in the fmery of the deca- INTERIOR OF illE MINERVA MEUICA. dence, St. IMartin lias neitiier vaults nor ceiling ; the wood-work of the roof is by an original contrast supported on twenty-four ancient St. Martin ai Monti. 173 Corinthiar columns of precious marble. They preserve here the seat gf Pope Martin whom Constant II. sent to end his days in exile in the 1/4 Rome. depth of the Chersonese, because he had condemned the heresy of the Monothelites. Let us also note a small mosaic of the seventh century The Pope' s Pastoral Staff. 1^ which is very curious though damaged. As at St. Agnes for Honorius I., as at Santa Maria in the Trastevere for St. CorneHa, I remarked that the Pope alwa}'s wore a sHpper with a cross embroidered on it, and that, as in all the other figures of the sovereign pontift, the metro- poHtan of Rome has no crosier. A cross is drawn upon the sHpper, so that when people kiss the foot of the father of the faithful, the homage is addressed to the symbol and not to the man. There have been refinements in humility resorted to, ever since St. Gregory the Great adopted and transmitted the formula, So'vus sci voniiii Dei ; they are more laudable in intention than in appearance, for the cross might be more suitably placed than on a slipper. The absence of the crosier among the insignia of the papacy is explained by a legend that Innocent III. will tell us in a very few words. 'The Roman pontiff has no pastoral staff, because the blessed apostle Peter gave his to Eucherius, first bishop of Trier, to awake from the dead Maturnus, whom he had sent with Valerius to preach the gospel to the Teutonic nation, and Maturnus succeeded Eucherius. This staft is still pre- served at 'JVier with the greatest veneration.' {Dc Sacrif. Miss., c. vi.) St. Thomas Aquinas completes the story in the following terms : 'The Roman pontiff does not use a staff, because St. Peter sent his to resuscitate one of his disciples, who was made Bishop of Trier. This is why the popes only carry the pastoral staff in the diocese of Trier, and not in other dioceses.' FACC-l ATA INTERIOR E DELL A ClHESA ANTICHA DI S PlETRO IN V^TICANO,E 5^0 ATRIO Dunlin da CarU flubvit. i/J/nnaJa it fnlaflula Ja Cua/tni BaKdia Fild*. tiaftne, it CHAPTER XI. ET us examine first what concerns the general appearance of the work ; then let us point out the most remarkable of the numerous objects of art which the Basilica of St. Peter's contains, with the hope of calling especial attention to works that are either not appreciated at all, or not appreciated as they should be ; finally, let us do our best to rise to the idea which presides over this conception, which gives it a unique significance, and which con- stitutes its grandeur. At the exit of the Piazza Rusticucci, at the moment when, facing the dome, you proceed to make your way into the round of Doric columns which mark the ellipsoid outline of an immense space, you are struck with the apparent unity of so vast a construction, commenced in 1450 and continued over two centuries and a half The more we look at these erections, the more astonished we are, as we recall the names of Bramante, of the two San Gallo, of Raphael, of Peruzzi, of Michaelangelo, and of Vignola, the principal masters of the first century of the construction. The circular colonnade of Bernini, nearly three hundred columns set in four rows, and leaving between them a central passage for carriages this enormous phantasy is the manifesto of a style which subordinates utility to symmetry, and rules to deco- rative effect : these two hundred and eighty-four columns, which are strong enough to support the palaces of Semiramis, support nothing at all ; they are placed there for show ; they are the feet of two banqueting tables set for a congress of giants, on which are drawn up in a row ninety-six statues of between three and four yards, which from a distance cannot be distinguished, and which you do not see any better when you are near. For that matter, no one looks at them ; and such is the fate of works of art that are lavished out of place. The facade is not a success, as everybody has remarked ; it masks the dome, it'- pediment is abortive, its attica ill accented by a row of TJic, Facade of St. Peter's. X77 UNDI'R THE PORTICO OF ST. I'K'IKR's (SIDI-, OK THF. SACRISTY). small. low, and inisshajjcn windows ; its top is ridiculously equipped N 1 78 Rome. by the thirteen colossal figures of Christ and the apostles gesticulating on tht; balustrade. I like also the interior gallery running the length of the facade and ending at the extremities by vestibules, at the foot of which appear two weak and characterless equestrian statues. One of them, the work of Bernini, represents Constantine ; and the other, Charles the Great. Above the great door they have replaced the Barque of St. Peter, a mosaic executed in 1 298 by Giotto for the old basilica ; the work has been so re-handled as to have lost its character. The last door on the right is walled up, with a bronze cross in the centre; it is that of the Jubilees; it is only opened in the holy year, four times in a century. In Italy they do not shut the churches by a system of small doors soon made greasy by the hands of the populace. Giving a literal interpretation to Christ's saying, ' My Father's house is always open,' they are content with a curtain ; but in order to prevent it from flying about in the wind this curtain, especially for doorways of great size like that of St. Peter's, is a sort of canvas with lead at the foot of it and doubled by a piece of leather. The process is dirtier than ours, for, as it falls back on you, the leather, which is plastered with all the tilth from people's hands for centuries, often gives you a brush in the face. However, there is no noise: you enter as if you miraculously made a hole in a wall that instantly closed up again. The sensation is particularly striking at St. Peter's, where you are dazzled with a mass of splendour, and it would be still more so if the longest of naves, and one of the highest, since the vault is over fifty yards from the pavement, disclosed to you instantaneously its astonishing dimensions. Is it true that you have no suspicion of the immensity of the church, before you have measured yourself with Liberoni's angels in yellow marble, seven feet high, which support against the first pillar a vessel for holy water in the shape of a shell ? This is not quite accurate ; the thickness of the air which makes the bottom of the nave cloudy, the microscopic smallness of distant passers-by, have al read)-" given you warning. The Angels in question occasion a peculiar illusion ; the mere prettiness of these naked children, recalling a number of ana- logous subjects smaller than nature, hinders you at the first glance from conceiving that a pier should have been exaggerated to such a point. To understand what must have passed here, and to explain their disproportions, which are real in spite of the theories which are strained for their justification, it is indispensable to describe the various phases which the structure has passed through. The BuiJding of St. Peter's. 179 RossellinI and Albert!, the first interpreters of the intentions of Nicholas \\, confined themselves to raising from the ground th(i walls of an enlarged apse, when, to answer to the vast designs of Julius II. and to efface the renown of Brunelleschi, who had constructed the cupola of Florence, Donato Lazzari, called Bramante, proposed to raise in the middle of a Greek cross formed by four long naves in the style of Constantine, a cupola on the model of that of Agrippa, but enlarged to untold proportions. Such was his ardour, stimulated by the large and ambitious character of Julius II., that in 1513, after seven years of work, the cupola without supports launched its arches into the sky, but erected too quickly, and on unsure foundations, the Babel threat- ened ruin, and had to be demolished. Raphael, the successor of I)ramante, who in taking his flight, " dreaded," he v/rote, " the doom of Icarus," Raphael, assisted by Giuliano da San Gallo and by Fra Giocondo, strengthened the pillars; curtailing the chevet and the transepts, he adopted the design of a Latin cross ; his design has not been preserved. Balthazar Peruzzi erected the apse, and returned to the idea of a Greek cross less developed ; consequently Antonio da San Gallo, when he replaced him, preferred the Latin cross. They still show his plan in relief, rich in. belfries and pyramidal outline, a scheme that Michelangelo depreciated by accusing it of savouring of Gothic. San Gallo showed himself more penetrating than his pre- decessors ; divining the rock on which they had split, he supported the building on formidable stays, and excavating the mysterious soil of the Neronian Circus, which w-as furrowed by the graves of martyrs, he solidified the whole of the circumference down to an extreme depth. After that they could build on substantial foundations. This was preparing the glory of Michelangelo, who did not fail to return to the Greek cross, and who ended the drum of the cupola, to which the rest was subordinate. It has been maintained that he meant to raise a portico with columns, in the style of that of the Pantheon ; but the elevation of his plan, executed in colour under Sixtus V against one of the cartouches of the Vatican Library, contra- dicts this assertion. It shows us four small bays in a cross terminated by semicircular apses, and the great cupola surrounded by a circle of statues at the base and accompanied by four small domes. All these rounded masses were to be isolated in a quadrangular space of a calm and severe architecture. Vignola and Pirro Ligorio who came next, in accordance with the wishes of Pius V., conformed to the plans of Michelancrelo ; but as soon as Giacomo della Porta had finished the N 2 I So Rome. dome, Carlo Maderno, left too free by Paul V., made haste, in order to A. Chapel of St. Se' astian. B. the Holy S.iLianjL'nt. C. Gregorian chapel. D D '. Transepts. K. Pontifical altar. F. Confessional of St. Peter. G. Entrance to Sacristx'. H. Clementine chapel. I. Choral chapel. L. Presentation chapel. M. Haptistry. N. Scala Regia. O, P. Galleries of Hernini. V. Urn with remains of last pope. X. Tomb of Innocent VIII. y. Entrance of stai-s to dome. 2. Tomb of the Stuarts. THE BASILICA OF ST. PETER'S. 1. The Jubilee gate. 2. Statue of Charles the Great. 3. ,, Constantine. 4. Chapel of the Pieta. 5. Tomb of Christian of .Sweden. 6. Leo XI r. 7. Innocent XII. 26. 8. Countess Matilda. 9. .Sixtus IV. 28 10. Gregory XII. 11. ,, Gregory XUI. 12. Gregory XIV^. 13. St. Jerome. 14. Bronze statue of St. Peter. 15. Tomb of Benedict XI V. 31 16. Martyrdom of -St. Processus. 32. 17. St. Erasmus. ^t, 17'. .Statue of .St. Bruno. 34 18. Tomb of Clement XIII. 35 19. St. Michael (Guido Reni). St. Petronilla. lorab of Clement X. Urban VIII. Pulpit of St. Peter. Tomb of Paul III. ,, Alexander VIII. Bas-relief. Tomb of Alexander VII. Crucifixion of St. Peter (Guido Reni). Stigmata of St. Francis (Domeni- chino). St. Peter and St. Andrew (Pome- ranico). St. Gregory the Great (Sacchi). Tomb of Pius VII. Transfiguratinn (Raphael). Tomb of Leo XI. Innocent XI. The Nave of St. Peter' s. i8i show his genius by a novelty a novelty four times tried to return to the Latin cross by elongating the great nave. He ended it by that frightful facade which Bernini connected with a bracelet of columns. It was not without good reason that the most expert, Peruzzi, Michelangelo, Vignola, Delia Porta, were bent on avoiding a conflict between so enormous a dome and the longest nave that had been seen. As it was necessary, after the death of Bramante, in order to support a cupola nearly as high as the Great Pyramid, to more than double the thickness of the pillars of the choir and make them terribly massive, these great men understood that it was necessary to bring the supports of the nave into proportion, and that it wouljd be crushed by them. Such the peril that Maderno braved, being obliged, in order to bring himself into harmony with the end portion, to give to the pillars of his nave a volume so monstrous, that only three could be arranged on each side, and it is these enormous supports which do more than anything else to make the gigantic church look small. In fact, who will dream of suspecting that a nave whose length only divides into three arches, is the longest in the world! I was bent on measuring these blocks of masonry which give the nave so short a perspective ; each pilaster measures thirty of my steps, and the pillars of the cupola are two hundred and six feet in circumference. As for the traditionally professed opinion with reference to St. Peter's, that these dwarfing deceptions are the valuable result of an ideal harmony of the proportions, that is a piece of nonsense begotten of the servility of inferior schools, and we should not trouble our- selves about it, if it were less widely spread. Surely there would be a ruinous inconsistency in laying out money to erect the largest religious edifice in the world, and yet to do so in such a way that it should appear small. We should rather incline to the contrary idea : to build the edifice as vast as possible, and try by a skilful combination of lines to make it seem even larger that it is. How can we help perceiving, in the course of this long undertaking, the continual influence of personal vanities ? Bramante and Maderno claim to surpass, the one all the cupolas, the other all the naves, and their ambition comes to nothing ; the cupola of St. Peter's is higher, but it is neither so deep nor by any means so wide in diameter as that of Florence, by the great and simple Brunelleschi ; the nave of the basilica exceeds all others in length, but we only set forth this advantage to mark an eflcct that has completely miscarried. In the accomplishment of this work, in which pride ever went Io2 Rome. 1)cfore, the error of the popes lay in putting into a position of rivalry with one another a series of men of genius, who were too illustrious to consent to execute with docility a rival's conception. Each of them on coming forward claimed that he w^as the bearer of new prodigies ; the people were full of joy, the pontiffs were radiant, and it cost them dear; for towards the end of the seventeenth century, Carlo Fontana calculated that die expenses up to that time mounted to nearly ;/"6,o8o,ooo sterling. To meet this demand it was necessary, from the reign of Leo X-, to coin money in every fashion, and hence the traffic in indulgences, which furnished such dangerous weapons to Luther. Rome thought she was raising on the tomb of the apostle the monu- ment of triumphant unity ; she was working for the Reformation : the breach between modern art and religious sentiment, of which the last champion perished on the scaffold of Savonarola, was to be consummated for ever by the pompous style of the edifice that was consecrated to the temporal glory of the popes. When you pay a visit to St. Peter's, you might imagine that you were come to pay court to some one. So many prelates and pontiffs in their dresses of ceremony seem still to exist there, the statues of an illustrious congregation of saints unite respect for ceremony with attitudes so deliberate that, the great man driving from the mind the ascetic or the martyr, and the astragals making the idea of the palace master that of a temple, the place invites less to prayer than to conversation ; the basilica is the vastest reception-room on the globe, and people will understand the necessity of self-restraint on the subject of a church where we count forty-four altars, seven hundred and forty- eight columns, and a council of three hundred and eighty-nine statues. The old basilica, situated in the same place,' lasted for eleven hundred years, when Pope Nicholas V,, though with pious designs, committed the archaeological impiety of presuming to substitute for it a temple superior to that of Solomon. By good fortune the Constan- tinian basilica was only pulled down proportionally with the works, and fifty years after the death of Thomas of Sarzano one-half of the church still served for worship ; and these delays still permitted the replacing in the new church of various monuments which it was good to preserve. The statue which people generally visit first, by way of paying dutiful respect to the patron of the place, is the seated statue of St. Peter, a bronze of the fifth century, which, towards the year 445, Pope Leo placed in the basilica. At the bottom of the nave the eye is attracted to the (i'ont of Sf. Peter's Chair. the master- altar, at the foot of which are the eighty-seven lamps, perpetually burning on the circular balustrade of the crypt or Confes- sion ; you would take them for a mass of yellow roses. Their stems are gilded cornucopias. At the foot of the steps is Pius \'I. kneelino- in prayer, his eyes fixed on the tomb of the apostles : his last desires, as he lay dying in exile, w^ere a dream of this burial-place. Canova has impressed on the martyr's features a sublime aspect of devout meditation and fervour. The Confession grives access to a fragment of the primitive oratory raised by Anacletus on the monument of his predecessor, and the tomb of Peter and Paul serves for an altar to that chapel of the Grot- toes, above which they have replaced the master-altar of the new patriarchal church, in the very spot where the successors of St. Syl- vester officiated. I have mentioned the dimensions of the canopy; that estimate adopted for a standard, you take in almost with terror the height of the vault, beneath which this toy of thirty-one yards is lost. The apse is one hundred and sixty-four feet long. At the back is the presby- terium, where in the days of pontifical solemnity the sacred colk;ge is ranged around the pope. There is in it a sumj:)tuous altar, and, in the middle of a glory, the Chair of vSt. Peter, sustained by four colossal figures of bronze and gold, which represent two fathers of the Latin and two of the Cireek Church. The Chair, by l)ernini, is only an out- side case, containing the curule seat of ICgyptian wood faced with ivory, which is supposed to have been given i)y the senator Pudens to his guest, the ap(xstle Peter. They show in the .sacristy a mothd of Hfc.. CURULE CHATR ATTRIBUTED TO THE ATOSTLE PETER. 1 84 Rome. this precious piece, which is rarely exhibited, as well as some of the small ivory facings that have been detached from it ; they represent the Labours of Hercules, and are of an Indisputable antiquity. Let us come down the church again, and turn to the right to the back of the transept, at the entrance of which on Holy Thursday Is erected the seat of the Grand Penitentiary, who on that day after public confession gives absolution to some great sinner muffled up as a pilgrim. We will pass before the chapel of St. Leo without allowing ourselves to be dazzled by the queer cleverness of Algardi ; his bas-relief of Attila is a virtuoso's trick and nothing more. At the foot of this altar is, not the tombstone, but the commemorative monument, of Leo XH,, with the following votive inscription which he wrote a few days before his death: "Leoni magno patrono celesti, me supplex commendans, hie apud sacros ejus clneres, locum sepulturse elegi, Leo XH. humilis cliens, heredum tanti nominis minimus." Before the Choral Chapel, where each day, with a view to hearing the practice of singing, strangers go and seat themselves in white ties and dress coats, we at last, against the pillars of an arch, come upon a work of a pure time, origin, and style, the tomb of Innocent VHL Antonio Pollajuolo at the end of the fifteenth century made it in bronze for the old basilica. What grandeur, after so many vulgari- ties, has this Florentine jewellery! Compare these four Virtues in bas-relief with the great Bellonas of the Barberini, and mark the nobleness, the personality, of these two statues of the pontiff, the one representing him full of life, the other extinguished in death. In its elegant refinement, the ornamentation waits without solicitation or stir for the eye to come and rest upon It. Opposite Is a door, and above it a coffer of stucco, which contains the corpse of the last Pope deceased, until the demise of his successor. Before coming to the baptismal fonts, remarkable for their por- phyry basin, which Is the upturned lid of the sarcophagus of the Emperor Otto II. (a gem twelve feet long cut in the tenth century, and set by Fontana in a fine mounting), you will pass before the pillar against which lean the tombs of the last of the exiled Stuarts. People were in the full fervour of monarchical restorations, when Canova, having to portray these three princes, bravely gave to the children of James II. the titles of Charles IIL and Henry IX. Rome professes the eternal perpetuity of right, and only confers the absolution of the fait accompli by favour of repentance. Above these two Augustuli, an Angel and Rello-ion exhibit in a Louis XV. The Piefa. i8: frame a fine medallion in mosaic of Maria Casimir, the inconstant and adventurous grand-daughter of John Sobieski. We pass in front of the chapel of the Pieta, a word that we ouoht lOMli OK INNOCKNl' VIII. to translate by Pity, if you prefer the real sense to a nonsense of custom. It is so called because on the altar is a marble group repre- senting the; Mater Dolorosa with the dead Christ. When he thus i86 Rome. ventured to cast this corpse across the knees of a divine mother, Michelangelo was not four-and-twenty ; hardy, already original, but ingenuous ; stirred by ancient beauty, but imbued with Christian sentiment, he enlarged the expression without as yet altering it. If I note in passing the triumph of the Cross that Lanfranc painted on The Chapels. 187 the vault, it is to rectify the widely spread error that all the paintin<^s at St. Peter's are mosaics. The finest and one of the most spacious of the chapels is that of the Holy Sacrament, where in front of a copy in mosaic of Cara- vaggio's Descent from the Cross, and at the foot of the altar which it decorates, is a monument in bronze, very lowly since it lies upon the ground, and very simple as you take it in at a glance, but which is in my eyes the marvel of the basilica : the true amateur has already named the tomb of Sixtus IV. which Antonio Pollajuolo executed. ANGKI-S OF THK CUPOLA, AFTER MKT.OZZO DA FORI! The construction, which has a very wide and open pedestal, rests on large feet attached to the corners by foliage ; in the middle the pontiff slumbers on a simj^le truckle bed. WwX. to the right and left, on the border of the pedestal, seven Virtues surround him, and as these are not enough to illustrate the life of a sovereign, the arts and sciences are added, forming the subjects of admiral)le grace: the little figure representing Music is one of the gc-ms of the Renaissance. This comj)osition is rich without confusion, noble with simplicity, delicate without dr)ness. In the chapel of the \'irgin, on the inscription of Benedict XIV., 1 88 Rome, we notice the appearance of a practice that was introduced by the impoverishment of the pontifical families, who were no longer rich enouo-h to erect royal mausoleums to their celebrities. Those who ac- quitted this debt to Benedict XIV. were his natural clients, Cardinales ah CO cveati. Such is the custom at the present day, whence it follows that long reigns create many donors to the profit of their memories. In a niche near the altar people greatly admire the large figure of St. Bruno by Michael Slodtz of Paris, latest born of those Slodtz of Antwerp who worked so hard at the sculpture in the gardens of Versailles under Louis XIV. and Louis XV. This figure is well worth looking at ; it is the apogee of anecdotic and amusing statuary : that is its merit, and perhaps its slight defect also. St. Bruno refused to be pope, for which reason Slodtz represents him as tempted by an angel who offered him the tiara and the keys. The saint, whose posture is somewhat mannered, turns aside and refuses with undecided gesture, all the more expressive as it is not free from a certain clumsiness. To be ashamed of the triple crown in the beard of so many pontiffs who have worn it, and in their own basilica, would, without the introduction of certain forms, be to teach a lesson to the spiritual sovereigns ; so Bruno refuses with hesitation, feebly, while his master lets fall a tender smiling glance on the pontifical ensigns from which he has difficulty in taking regretful eyes. But then where would be the merit if Bruno was not tempted ? Let us finish with an incomplete work, in which what is defective is more widely renowned than what is sublime. Canova was in his early maturity when he designed the monument of Clement XIII. ; the great sculptor then worked under the influence of the Maecenas of the north and academic theorists ; I fear that he was bent on surpassing himself Whatever it was, this construction, which is too big, too empty, too rectilinear, with its virago who is too short, and whose skirts are too short, and who personifies Religion ; with its two figures fixed in bas-relief to the sarcophagus, and its too smooth and intelligent lions, of which one watches while the other slumbers with one eye open ; with its Genius of Death, who weeps as he turns down the torch of life, this affair has a coldness, an insipid attempt at poetry, and a past taste which will never return. But above the sarcophagus the kneeling statue of Pope Clement is avowedly the finest represen- tation ever executed of a priest at prayer ; this figure, which prays with so much fervour of soul, would be less expressive if the attitude did not exactly harmonize with the radiant spirit of the countenance. The Sacristies. 189 Such are, so far as I remember, not all the important works contained in St. Peter's, but at least those which it is essential to study, to preserve the recollection of it. My involuntary omissions will give pilgrims a better chance of making discoveries ; my notes, by the elimination of a mass of secondary works, w^ill help people to find with less trouble what are of a trul\ superior kind by eacl. master of each school. Pope Pius VI. put an end to the buildings by making Marchion- ni erect sacristies, which are of a purer taste than the earlier portions. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, architecture, making a supreme effort, seized more closely and with a less mixed taste the ancient traditions. The clerks and canons are lodged in these vast buildings, which contain a small world ; besides the common sacristy, which is octagonal in form, there are three others for special purposes. You reach them by galleries adorned with anticjue inscriptions in the space between the columns. The capitals of the pilasters bear the complicated arms of Pius VI.: palms rolled in volutes, a star for the eye, and the branch of lily in the centre. In the sacristy of the canons there is in front of the altar, which is decorated by a picture by Fattore, a painting by Giulio Romano, the Virgin with the infant Jesus and St. John, which deserves a special place in the work of a master whose too ostentatious rAS5v\GE T'NDER THE PORTICO OF ST. l-KTEK S. 1 90 Rome, science is not always tempered by sentiment and charm. In the chapter-hall is the reproduction of the ancient Seat of the Apostle, with a host of precious objects which it would take too long to enumerate. These Italian sacristies are at once cabinets of curiosities and private apartments ; the priests dress and undress ; they write, they hum, they despatch their breviary ; and if your discretion detains you on the threshold, they bid you enter. Fully to appreciate the extravagant immensity of the basilica it is not enough to saunter there for long hours ; you must wander all round it, and contemplate from the gardens the dome and one of the apses, falling formidably and as at a single cast down to the branches of the great green oaks, which are made to look like mere shrubs ; you must pass under the portico which from the outside leads to the sacristy, and from the basement of the church watch at the end of the piazza the distant houses, which look like German toys ; you must in descending laterally from the portico count the twenty steps of a staircase, which does not reach up to the stylobate of the neigh- bouring pilaster ; you must estimate the little space which is taken on its pedestal by the equestrian figure of Constantine, entirely absorbed as it is in the thickness of a pillar. But above all do not shrink from the ascent of the cupola of St. Peter's. Let us conclude by examining this monument. A gentle interior slope, cut by some very low steps, and that sheep might ascend, raises you to the platform between the summit of the facade and the drum of the dome ; it is the first plateau of this artificial mountain. Advancing immediately towards the piazza, to throw a glance from this height upon the pavement, I leaned against an upright rock, posted there like a Druidical altar ; and as other similar masses disclosed their outlines at my side, I recognised the twelve statues of the apostles which crown Maderno's fa9ade. Turning right round, I had in front of me a sort of plain, ending in the monstrous tower of which the cupola is the roof To the right and left, like hills, the small octagonal domes, now become considerable, bound the valley, which is the flattened roof of the three aisles. The country is inhabited ; there has been formed in it a small hamlet, with workshops, huts, sheds for domestic beasts, a forge, a carpenter's stores, w^ash-houses, ovens ; some little carts are stabled; a fountain sparkles in a rivulet which conducts it to a large basin or small lake in which the dome mirrors itself; you feel that there is up here an organized existence. For several families, in fact, it is a native land; TJie Cupola. j the workmen of St. Peter's, called San Pietrini, succeed one another f.-om father to son, and form a tribe. The natives of the terrace triht'na and chair of st. rr.rrR, have laws and customs of their own. iM'om this spot, whence you discern the heic^dit of tlie buildino^ in full development, there are still two hundred and eii^^hty-five feet to climb. 192 Rome. Another point of view over the interior of the church is contrived in the entablature whicli describes the circumference of the cupola. This border is more than six feet high, although from the pave- ment you would take it for a simple moulding ; it seems narrow up here, when you undertake on such a slip a circular walk of three hundred paces. From this height the church seems to you like the bottom of an abyss ; the canopy of the altar sinks into earth, the pillars, attenuated at their base by a retreating perspective, form a reversed pyramid, and the faithful are dots ; a bluish haze increases the enormousness of the space. And as your eyes ascend the walls of the dome, the frieze discloses in capital letters seven feet high the famous inscription, Tu es Petrus, which from below does not seem more than six inches high. On the pendentives I had remarked a St. Mark of a reasonable stature ; seen from here it stretches under the cupola like a cloud ; the pen with which he writes is a yard and a half in length. At length the real ascent begins between the two shells of the cupola, and this strange journey, in which as you climb you lean over curved and inclined planes, at last by a curious sensation robs you of all feeling of a horizontal line, and consequently of a perpendicular. You are then in a state of considerable amazement, when you come out upon two sights of a most singular effect : in the inside, seen from a circular balustrade devised in the lantern, the pavement of the church as if seen at the end of a telescope with the object at the small end ; outside, from a narrow gallery round the lantern, a perspective that is almost unbounded ; it embraces all the old Latin world from the Sabine hills to the sea, and from the heights of Alba to Etruria. Only when you come out from the inner arches into the full and dazzling sun of this eagle's nest, you are not only dazzled, but almost lifted up in the air by hurricanes of wind which come from the Mediterranean to dash themselves against this height. You have now only to seek the ball of bronze, which from below has the effect of a melon, and which is capable of holding sixteen persons. You reach it by an iron ladder absolutely perpendicular. The concussion of the wind makes this iron globe constantly musical ; it is pierced with loopholes invisible from below, and through which, seated on an iron ledge, you prolong your gaze far over the mountains. Seen thus from the blue tract of the skies, the Roman Campagna loses its russet glow in a green mirage ; the flattened slopes no longer justify the many windings of the Tiber, and Inside the Bronze Ball. 193 the seven hills of Rome which are in truth ten are no lono-er distinguishable. These perspectives are still more macncal from the OBKI.ISK OK CAI.IGTrr.A AND FOUNTAINS OK THK PIAZZA OK ST. PFTF.R'S. Giro dei Candelabri, where, commanding the cupola with its arches descending like the slopes of an escarped island from a lower height, o 194 Rome. you measure the extent of the Borgo and the Vatican palaces, which with their square buildings and labyrinthine gardens produce the effect of a heavenly Jerusalem in the illuminations of some old missal. The most ancient monument of the Vatican that is still standing, is an obelisk to which the authors of the first century first called the attention of posterity; Pliny tells us how, to bring it from I'-gypt, Caligula sent to sea the ofreatest shin that O J. ever existed. The obelisk disembarked, they set it up at the Spina of the circus which Caligula had established in his gar- dens in the Vatican, and this circus took the name of Nero when the successor of Claudius received through his mother Agrippina the in- heritance of Caligula. But before, as after Nero, the hill was always desert and of evil name. Under the republic people heard voices there ; vaticinia were given there, and hence, according to some, the origin of the word Vatican. All then beofan in these gardens in Nero's circus, at the foot of the obelisk that still remains standing ; for in the middle of the ruins of the Vatican, which was abandoned at the end of that reign, the v.itness that had been sent from Egypt never fell. Sixtus V. found it in its place, close to the present sacristy, in a court where it cou- FAN-UF.ARERS. The Obelisk of Caligula. 195 tinued to mark the Spina of the circus which had been the theatre of the first martyrdoms. It was here that the Christians dug graves for their brethren, under the very ground on which they had confessed to their beHef. The spot was henceforth consecrated ; when its aban- donment by the emperors had left it desert, the faithful brought hither the head of St. Paul, which had been buried near the Salvian springs on the Ostian Road ; it was the same with St. Peter, whom his disciples hid for some time, before burying him on the Vatican with the other victims of the first perse- cution. Evidence shows, so far as testimony of that sort is evidence, the authenticity of this burial-place : four-and- twenty years after the execution of Peter, Anacletus marked it by a small oratory, of which a portion remains ; for this monu- ment was preserved by Pope St. Sylvester when he had the Vatican catacombs excavated, in order to lay the foundation of the basilica erected by com- mand of Constantine on the ruins of the oratory of Anacletus. Eleven centuries later they overturned the ground still further for the commence- ment of a larger basilica, but on the same spot, still continuing to respect the tomb of the apostle, round which there still remains in the grottoes the pavement of the Constantinian church : finally, three centuries ago the grave was opened, and the presence of the bones established. This is the basilica of St. Peter, and this is what that obelisk of Caligula watches, which saw all done at its base, and all grow over a tomb once dug in a garden, it will soon be two thousand years ago, by timid and disquieted shadows. u 2 J. )- OLD NOBLE GUARD. BY A DE NEUVILLE. 196 Rome. When a long residence at Rome has familiarised you with the basilica of St. Peter, the monument acquires an extreme importance in your mind ; under the naves where one loves to wander and think, all concurs, the moment you are free from the minutice of analysis, to raise you to the feeling of a truly universal conception, uniting all peoples in a common fraternity. Certain practices con- tribute to this impres- sion : round the arms of the cross, here as at St. John Lateran, the priests of ten nations, almost in per- manence, hear peni- tents submissive to the same dogma, and com- ing to profess it in all tongues ; the dialects are marked by a sign on the front of each chapel. The custom of ex- alting on a sella ges- tatoria the fathers of the Roman country, the sovereign pontiffs, the patricians, and the emperors, has its origin under the Re- public, in the time when Sulla was dic- tator : was not the first seat of the Popes, lent to St. Peter by Pudcns, a curule chair ? On a Pontifex maximus, a title perpetuated to our own day, in the year 51 1 of Rome, was conferred for the first time the privilege of being carried in a chair to the senate ; at the time of a conflagration in the temple of Vesta, C^cilius had at the peril of his life saved the sacred thinsfs. Since then the dienitaries ""'J./ss j,^. THE pope's old SWISS GUARD. BV A. DE NEUVILLE. High Mass at St. Peter s. 107 of state have claimed a privilege first enjoyed by a supreme pontiff and which only the sovereign pontiff has retained. On either side of the " sella " huge fans of feathers are carried, and the rich and pictur- esque uniforms of the Guardia Nobile and the Pope's Swiss Guard have added much to the effect of the shows, when the Pope was carried in procession. Assisting at the ^^^x.>..^ offices of the o^reat ^=?^- festivals in the Roman ^ ^^^ ^ basilicas, one wonders whether the columns of their naves, refugees from pagan temples, have not seen some- thing analogous to the display of the Catholic ceremonial. Do you wish to assist in our own day at the Luper- calia, the feast of the shepherd and tillers of the soil, older than Rome, celebrated since its foundation on the Palatine by the Ouinc- tian clan in honour of Ceres or Faunus, and of Pan^ the destroyer of wolves ? Then go to high mass at St. Peter's on Candlemas Day. On that day the car- dinals wear a violet the poi'e's bkarkrs. by a. dk molville. chasuble richly embroi- dered with gold, and mitres like the bishops, who wear copes to match. When the holy father is installed on the pontifical throne, the ceremony commences by the benediction of a multitude of torches ; at the Introit, the priests and the deacons of the choir come and fall on their knees in turn before the Pope, who supports in his two hands iqS Roffie. a taper placed horizontally, to which they have fastened crosses and Madonnas at each of the ends. It is offered to the prelates to kiss, A BENEDICTION FROM THE LOGGIA BY POPE PIUS IX. after which, as the postulant kneels before him, the Pope, raising his arms, places the taper above his head ; then one of the officials takes The Procession. 19: it and hands it to the recipient. The cardinals and bi.shops, the chamberlain, the heads of orders, the senators, the prince assistant all come for a taper ; after them defile in the train of the mace-bearers, the conservators, ambassadors, and generals ; each in turn accom- plishes the same ceremonial. During the formalities of this homage to the pontifical throne, tapers are distributed to personages of lower dignity ; the cross- bearers resume their advance, and a new pro- cession of torches, start- inor from the ri^ht of the baldacchino, completes the circle of the church, returning by the left. Cardinals, mitred bishops, to the number of some fifty, in their chasubles and copes all glittering with gold, sur- rounding the curule chair of the sovereign, this time wearing a mitre of gold ; foreign princes, ambassadors, officers, men-at-arms in their uniform, all compose a most striking spectacle. On the return of the procession, all the eccle- siastical ornaments, the chair of the holy father, and the back of the papal dais, suddenly change colour ; white has replaced scarlet. Returning to the choir, the holy father is robed afresh in a long silver cope, while the cardinals, quitting the chasubles, resume their long purple cloak with ermine hood ; the mitre is replaced by a biretta which they hold folded up, and which looks like a fan. This public change of toilettes produces TIARA-liEARliR. liV A. I)K NKUVII.LE. 200 Rome. a half-comic kind of animation. The high mass of Candlemas is INTERIOR OF ST. PETER'S. celebrated by a cardinal wearing a mitre of gold on which in relief stand out cars of corn and flowers ; he is assisted by four deacons and The Benediction. 20 1 as many sub-deacons. The Pope gives the benediction, after intonino- NAVE Ut ST. I'KTliK S. the accustomed Te Deuni in commemoration of the earthquake of 202 R077l6. 170V The ceremony offers nothing else that is very peculiar, uniesS it is that at the Co)iJiteor,l\\Q O^./^;, and the Domine non sumdignus, DISPLAY O" THE GRAND RELICS. the cardinals, leaving their seats, descend rapidly in a circle to the middle of the choir, where, half turning to one another, as if to call one The Sacramental Prayers. 203 another mutually to witness, they recite with loud voice the sacramental prayers ; the Pope does the same with his assistants ; and the sound of the words crossing one another in this way is very singular. Raised on several steps, the high altar at St. Peter's has an inevitable bareness, because in the patriarchal basilicas they celebrate so as to face the faithful assembled in the nave. Tiaras and precious mitres taken from the treasury are placed in dishes at the angles of the altar a usage that rather surprised me. On these occasions a great variety of sacerdotal as well as military costume is to be seen. On occasions when the " Grand Relics" are to be displayed, the whole show is grouped below and in front of the statue of St. Veronica, below the cupola. A MACK-IJIARI K. IIY A. UK NIH' VII.I.H;. THE MOSES OF MICHELANGELO. CHAPTER XII. NE would be more eager to enter the little church of San Pietro in Vincoli but for the temptation to seat one's self on the steps outside, before a vista contrived at the bottom of a rather steep space, half shut in by old buildings at the foot of which grass springs up in the pavement. This piazzetta is a San Pietro in Vincoli. tdt^ sort of embankment over an uneven street, and above it there come I'lAZZA OK SAN I'lETKO IN VINCUI,!. into outline the Capitol, some houses perched on the Tarpeian Rock, 206 Rome. and the distant monastic "grounds of the Janiculum. In the foreground are grouped the irregular roofs and square clock-tower of a monastery, from which a fine palm-tree stands out, enriching the background with an elegant setting off; here and there certain enclosures are marked with orange-trees, cypresses, and laurels ; the picture is bounded to the right by the patched and ancient walls of the palace of Lucrezia Borgia, under which you go down to the Via Scelerata. Cross the thresh- old of the church and go up the nave : you are before the Moses of Michel- angelo. The monument, which occupies the right side of a well- lighted choir, is placed well in front of a marble recess ; seated before you on the same plane of the horizon, the figure is colossal and animated by a superhuman power of execution : thus, as one is not ac- customed to see one's self face to face and so close to giants, the first impression is one of stupor. To the amazing grandeur of the style, which characterizes a conception as singular as it is naturally worked out, is added the finish of this most delicately wrought piece of rock; no lapidary ever caressed with such affection the model of a cameo. The Moses is eleven feet high ; the polish of the marble makes it shining as an onyx. 1 he church celebrated for the possession of this masterpiece is not VAULTED PASSAGE UNDER THE PALACE OF LUCREZIA BORGIA. lis Founder. ?07 without interest. An execrable woman founded the church of San Pietro in VincoH, to be the rehquary of the chains by which the first apostle had been fastened. It was, I suppose, Athenais-Eudoxia, wife of Theodosius II., who, having withdrawn into the Holy Land, whither she came to seek a refuge and a tomb, sent her daughter Eudoxia the chains which St. Peter had borne at Jerusalem. Here is buried the jeweller, the sculptor, the bronze- worker, the painter, Antonio Pollajuolo {Pullarius), by the side of his brother Peter, who initiated him in oil colours, re- cently revealed to his master Andrea del Castagno by Domen- ico, whom Andrea assassinated, that he might remain the soli- tary possessor of the secret. The inscrip- tion of Antonio, which recalls the tombs of Sixtus IV. and Inno- cent VIII., tells how he wished to repose by the side of his brother. The two died within a few months of one another in 1498 ; but this text shows against all the notices that Peter pre- ceded Antonio. r^inally you return to Moses. The structure of which it occupies the centre was meant to form one of the sides of the four-fronted tomb which Julius II. promised himself in the middle of the nave of St. Peter's : the scattered materials of this vast design contribute to the WKI.L TN THK CLOTSTKR OF SAN PIKTRO IN VTNrOIT. 20S Rovie. adornment of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, of San Lorenzo, and even of the Louvre. ARCH OF DRUSUS. As you leave this church and its little- visited cloister, in the middle of which is a well with a remarkable brim, you are pleased to see the The Appian Way 209 little piazza again, before plunging under the black vault which ends in the Via Scelerata, bounded by Etruscan substructions, which brings you down into the still-plebeian quarter of the Suburra, whither flocked in old days the companions of the seven guilds already constituted under the Tarquins, namely, the flute - players, the jewellers, the carpenters, the cordwainers, the copper-workers, the potters, and the dyers. From San Pietro in Vincoli, by the arch of Drusus, I wandered to the Porta Appia, rebuilt by N arses, and the triumphal arch decreed by the senate to the father of Claudius, to Drusus Germanicus after his victories over the Germans and the Alpine tribes. The son of -^AOC^NA^S-- THE APPIAN WAY. Livia, adopted by Augustus, is the first Roman leader who sailed on the North Sea. His monument, under the arch of which the Appian Way retreats in perspective, is topped by an appendage that bristles with brambles an addition of unhappy effect due to Caracalla, who made the triumphal arch of Germanicus serve as a suj)j)()rt for the aqueduct of his baths. As far as St. Sebastian the aspect of this never-ending suburb is that of a poor and half-abandoned faubourg. You follow, without diversion, the road which the censor Ap[)ius Claudius, after digging the first aqueduct to direct the waters of Praneste on Rome, opened and paved three hundred and ten years before our era. It has kept the name of its founder, though Ca-sar prolonged itfarl)eyond the country of the V^olsci, while Augustus, that is to say Agrippa, who had the r 2IO Rome. honour of finishing it, carried it as far as Cuma.\ The road is broad and very straight, with remains of paths and open spaces in Visigothic pavement ; the grass is green on the way, but the track remains definitely marked with a melancholy grandeur by two avenues of mausoleums in ruins of every shape and size, which, from the gate of St. Sebastian down to the foot of Albano, are counted by thousands. In the middle age, some feudal bandits having transformed several of these tombs into fortresses for detaining travellers for ransoms, the latter deserted a sinister avenue bristling with strong castles ; they gradually wore to the left the present road to Albano, and even the very track of MAUSOLEUM OF CECILIA METKLLA. the Appian Way at last was effaced by grass and brushwood. We owe Its exhumation to Pius IX., who has had it cleared, who has had the tombs repaired over a space of five or six miles, and who has given back to the civilised world the most splendid of historical promenades. Excavations have been carried on along this avenue, where thirty thousand mausoleums are to be counted. At the end of the rise in the ground the outline of the mole of Csecllia Metella is seen. This turriform mausoleum is not less than one hundred feet in diameter, and it must be a third more in height; the walls, which are thirty-five feet In thickness, contained until the The Circus of Romulus. 211 reign of Paul V. the fine sarcophagus that is to-day to be seen in the court of the Farnese Palace. This tower is the oldest Roman building of an assured date, where the use of marble is shown. The temple of Romulus Maxentius is close to the circus bearing the same name. They made some noise in 1825 about the discovery of these curious ruins, but what was really found were the inscriptions which decide archaeologists as to the date of foundation. As for the circus itself, it could never have been lost; the whole arena and its circumference came out in the grass, to a length of 1,680 Roman feet, and a breadth of 250. This circus of Romulus the son of Maxentius, where vast populations used to throng, is now only the haunts of birdc and adders. CIRCUS OK ROMULUS MAXKNTIUS. P 2 CHAPTER XIII. MM EDI AT ELY after exploring the funereal rooms of the Latin way, one ought to carry the memory of one's impres- sions in all their freshness before the decorative paintings of the school of the Sanzio, either in the Vatican galleries or at the Villa Madama, decorated for Julius de' Medici by the pleiad of Raphael. This excursion, which is one of the most interesting to be made in the environs, will take us out of Rome in an entirely opposite direction ; by the Porta del Popolo, or else the Porta Angelica. At the time when Cardinal Julius, who became Pope under the name of Clement VIL, leagued himself with Charles V. against Florence, to seal that honourable pact, he married Alexander de' Medici to a natural daughter of the Emperor, and endowed her v/ith the villa, which was still Margaret's when, having become a widow, she married Ottavio Farnese. Having quitted the government of the Low Countries, she came to end at Rome, in 1586, a life of many and chequered days. The title of Madame was preserved to this daughter of the Emperor ; hence the designation still preserved by a residence that recalls unhappy times and sinister figures. To gain the Monte Mario, at the back of which the Villa Madama is situated, we took the way of scholars, for the course was towards the Ponte Molle, that Milvian bridge of which Livy speaks in his account of the second Punic war, and at the end of which you come upon the Flaminian Way. Our first pause after leaving the Porta del Popolo was in front of the Villa of Julius HL, a casino built by Vignola, who from an architectural medallion has sent a fountain bubbling forth, where the peasants refresh their beasts before entering the city. On the side of the hill which has kept the name oi Mario Millini, some thickets end in a rustic eate contrived in the broken walls of die The Villa Madaina. 21 Villa Madama. "When the gate was opened we entered a high- vaulted apartment, a splendid state-chamber. In the darkness, there opened a door the bottom of which was broken into a fringe, like a beggar's skirts ; all at once we came out with dazzled eyes into full light of day, by the back of an enormous BETWEF.N THF. PONTF. MOLIJC AM) THK MOM E MARIO. Loggia divided into three lobes, painted and carved like the i)orch of a palace of fairies, and whose arches, grou{)e(l in broad shadows on the pavement, threw a pure outline against the ethereal depth of the blue sky. This masterpiece of ornamentation was designed by Giovanni da Udine and Giulio Romano ; wc should be tempted to assign it to the artists of the first century who executed the chambers since dis- 2 1 4 Rome. covered on the Latin Way, with such success did Raphael and his Ml' ' group, impregnated as they were with the ancient arts, proceed perspicaciously from the known to the unknown. Sanf Agostino. ^15 By way of the Borgo tlie way back is short, and we went so quickly that the day was not far advanced when, having passed the Porta Angelica, and turned the colonnade of Bernini, we passed at the feet of St. Peter and St. Paul, coming from off the bridge of St. Angelo. But at the end of the Via de' Coronari, we chose for our halting-place Sant' Agostino. Now what all the world will go to see at Sant' Ao^ostino is that abjuration of his own principles and senti- ment which Raphael expressed in his famous fresco of the Prophet Isaiah ; an inexplic- able piece, if he did mean to prove that the style, which con- sists in twistincr the body and loading it with sculptural dra- peries, only to produce the travesty of a pro- phet, is no difficult task. Let us hope that such was the in- tention of the painter- poet Giovanni Santi, whom Pietro Bembo insisted for love of euphony in calling Sanzio, so delicate was the car of the author of Gli Asolani, the Ciceronian prelate who was so hostile to bad I.atinity that he never read his breviary, and described the Epistles of St. Paul as Epistolacce. If Raphael meant to strive with Buonarotti on the same ground, he was venturing into perilous games, for the figure has neither the nobleness nor the biblical majesty of his rival, and his glory will always remain under the slur of a semi-abdication before Michelangelo. OK JLLILS 111. 2r6 :ome. To estimate the pretensioi\s of Raphael, in presence of his terrible rival, it is enough on leaving Sant' Agostino to go as far as the church of Santa Maria della Pace, the foundation of Sixtus IV. You will see there one of the most important frescoes of the painter of U rhino's Four Sibyls, which he painted because Michelangelo had painted Sibyls. Only he seems to me this time to have been inspired by designs more worthy of his genius. At Santa Maria the impressionable young man shows himself a proselyte to the idea that it is necessary, even in religious paintings, to rival the statuary of the ancients in beauty of form ; and the pagan subject of the Sibyls, in which the ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL, BY THE BRIDGE OF ST. ANGELO. aesthetic of the two religions, is united, seemed to him a happy occasion for affirming these doctrines. But he does not renounce his own manner of sentiment, his theological prepossessions, or even the habits of composition which he inherited from the painters who were impregnated with the teachings of Savonarola. A little distance from the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, and in the neighbourhood of Pompey's theatre, a swarming quarter of which the Campo di Fiori is the centre, we come across some French memories in the Riario Palace, which in our own days witnessed the end of a tragical adventure. TJic 7hinb of Rossi. 2iy Here are to be seen a hue Florentine tomb, the exquisite bust of a princess Massimi, the tombs of Sadolet, the diplomatic cardinal and poet, and of Annibal Caro, who translated X'irgil ; finally, the mausoleum of a scholar, a jurisconsult, an economist, an Italian states- man, who made himself celebrated in three countries in Geneva, in France, and at Rome, where he died from the blow of an assassin. Tenerani has carved a bust in a lofty style on the tomb which Pius I X. erected to his minister, Count Pellegrino Rossi. The memory of this tragedy still gives a certain sombreness to the church and palace where the crime was perpetrated. Like the first of the Caesars, Rossi was warned five times in the same day of the lot that awaited him; the public was in the confidence of a plot against which no obstacle was interposed. Devoted to the task of obtaining for Italy by means of negotiation the liberal conquests, for which he doubted the chances of war, and of organizing at Rome a parliamentary system by moderating the excess42s of revolution ; hostile like every lover of freedom to the tyranny of the plebs, and the victim of the demagogic party, spurred on, they say, by tlic aristocratic faction, Rossi was immolatc.'d exactly as he would have been in the time of the Gracchi or of Marius. He went straight to the Riario Palace, where there was a great 2l8 R. ojiie. crowd, for the anticipation of a sight which was vaguely hoped for had brought together bravoes and the curious in a throng under the portico, on the steps, and as far as the gallery of the first story, in presence of the civic guard, which was drawn up in the court, and which, without clearing the peristyle or protecting the minister, saw the preparations for the murder and looked on without an attempt to hinder it. Count Rossi entered by the great door ; immediately he was greeted by loud shouts and some thirty Bersaglieri cut off his retreat, while the other conspirators threw themselves in his path. He passed RIARIO PALACE (CANCELLERIA). the portico with deliberate step, and with his head upright ; and as he was proceeding to mount the second flight, and passed by a small round door let into the wall, the Bersaglieri rushed upon him and thrust him against this wall. Then one of the bravoes, slipping between Rossi and the door, struck him rudely on the left shoulder. By a natural movement Rossi turned his head, thus exposing his neck, when one J ergo took advantage of this expected motion to plunge a poniard of great length into his throat, and thus the Italian from Modenn, who had gained high posts in the administration of the Gauls, was stabbed at a distance of a hundred paces from the curia The Murder of Rossi. 2 1 o where, under the steel of the accomplices of Brutus, Julius Caesar had fallen of old at the feet of the statue of Pompeius. Let us proceed to seek the statue which thus beheld the murder of Ca^'sar. To find it, you must t^^o to the Spada Palace ; but if the little spec- 2 20 Rojne. tacle of popular manners displayed in die piazza Campo di Fieri do not make you forget your object in amusement on your way, the Farnese Palace, before which you will come out before turning the Via de^ Mascherone, solicits a visit that you will hardly refuse. The Fanicse Palace. 221 I will beg all travellers given to art to study this monument : the vast edifice of which Alexander Farnese, before becoming pope, that is before 1534, confided the plan to Antonio San Gallo, is one of those classics which it is well worth while to read over again. When Quatremere de Quincy wrote, the Farnese was considered the finest palace of modern architecture. It has a colour which animates and increases its charm : brick mixed with stone forms the ground of the fa<^ades ; the entablature, the bands, bossages, windows columns, are of travertine taken from the theatre of Marcellus, and even from the Coliseum, which still seems all but untouched, and from which centuries have drawn supplies as if from a quarry. There is now no- thing to be seen in the cloister but two sarcophagi : the one with perpendicular flutings is a Christian monu- ment of the third century ; the other, in the form of a gondola, loaded with sculp- ture and ornaments, has ac- quired a great celebrity ; it is that assigned to Ca^cilia Metella, if we may believe scholars, who by multitudinous dissertations have confirmed this account of its origin. It cannot really be thrown further back than the time of Adrian. The Righetti Palace contains deep cellars of two stories, which wind under the court. I saw these caves, remains of the portico and the theatre, rising at the back of an opening pierced to enlarge the Hotel Pio. As they were clearing away to come upon foundations that should resist them, the workmen struck u[)on what seemed a THE EXCAVATED llEKCLLIS. Rome. block of gold ; under die gilding they recognised bronze. At length they made out a Hercules, fourteen feet high, whose face, hands, and arms are intact, and which only wants one of its feet. The skull with a circular hole behind denotes that the statue delivered oracles ; the son of Alcmena has on one arm the skin of the Nemean lion. In crossing the piazza Capo di Ferro I had already noticed the Spada Palace. Buried a certain depth down, the Colossus of the defeated of Pharsalia was exhumed in 1552 in the street of the Leutari, near the Pa- lazzo Riario, and nearer still to the theatre of Pompeius, among the sub- structions of its portico and of the chamber, where was perpetrated the classic model of the assassina- tions called political. The attitude of the statue is majestic without being forced ; the features have a striking mark of indi- viduality, an expressive and severe physiognomy. The triumvir carries the object of his cheated am- bition the globe, an at- tribute that he may have appropriated to himself by having his head placed on the decapitated trunk of some god ; for the head is fitted on, and Pompeius was not too modest. Such substitutions became frequent under the emperors. So far as concerns the identity of this figure with that which saw Csesar expire under the blows of Cassius and Brutus, the presumption may be reasonably upheld. It was exhumed near the spot where the murder was committed ; Suetonius informinfj us that he saw it " in a THli SPADA POMPEIUS. Old Book-stalls. 22 palace adjoining the theatre of Pompeius, whither Augustus had had it transported." As it is not very probable that the hero, at a time when they did not multiply statues, , would be repre- sented twice under the same portico, we have good grounds for admitting, in cpite of a school that is ready to deny everything, that the colossal Pompeius of the Palazzo Spada may have seen the fall of C?esar. The monu- ment is not very familiar, the Spada princes never having allowed it to be either modelled or copi-ed. The attraction which led me out of my way across the inexhaustible bric-a- brac of the old quar- ters brought me out, near the Piazza Montanara, by a stall, where, under awnings erected at a street corner, amateurs and clerics disputed a {ii\N smoked and trashy pictures, antiquities of modern date, and old books ill used by time. Much theology, which was not my affair, but which interested semi- narists, a Dominican, and some Philippines, who, for cheapness, read 224 Rome. the books on the spot instead of buying them ; one of them, however, pressing three small books to his heart, was driving his bargain with much fury and gesticulation. The group formed so good a subject that a painter posted ten paces off maliciously took out his pencil, producing a very clever and characteristic sketch. As I followed the labyrinths of streets that end at the back of the IIMilli'iilll ii iipHiill til; ': I \ FOUNTAIN OF THE TORTOISES. Capitol, a wrong turning brought me to the Fountain of the Tortoises, that a little while before I had been vainly seeking. Imagine two basins, the upper' of which is supported by four young Tritons, their feet on the heads of four dolphins; these equatic divinities are thrusting tortoises into the upper vase, from which the water fiows over. The complexity of the arrangement does not obscure the clearness and graceful movement of the figures; all is animated, unusual, and charming. The Mattel Palace. 225 Giacomo della Porta designed the Fontana delle Tartar ughe, but the bronze figures are the work of Taddeo Landini, of Florence. Close at hand rises the lofty and sombre gate of one of those palaces which have fallen from their high estate proud homes of families that have vanished, on which time and misery imprint their marks : it is the ancient Palace of the ]\Iattei. The court, which is COURT OF THK MATTEI PAI.ACF.. surrounded by a peristyle contemporary with Pius V., still preserves some statues, and a few busts on consoles. To go in to the church of St. George in V^elabro you must seek at a neighbouring house a Portinaio, who seems surprised at your visit. Then, under a charming porch of th(; thirt(;:Mith century erected by Stefano, prior of St. George, you enter a temple with three aisles 226 Rome. marked by twelve columns of oranite and four of violet marble, fluted, the shafts of which, without st)'lobates, bury themselves in the mosaics of the pavement, like trunks of trees in a flowery sward. Heavy arches trust themselves to these rather slight pillars ; the old and decayed ceiling- matches the dilapidation of a pavement patched with inscrip- tions, and made green by mould that is impregnated with the myste- PORCH OF ST. GEORGE IN VELABRO. rious perfume of old marbles, the chilly incense of the buildings of a thousand years ago. Next let us cross, past the street of the Greeks where St. Augustin professed, the Marrana stream which Ccesar banked in, and, turning from the shores of the Tiber, having caught a glimpse of the Aventine, let us on that bring to a close a journey marked by so many miscei- The Aventine. 22'- laneous recollections. If chance had turned us to rio-ht or left, the harvest would have been just as fertile ; when you have worked through the streets of Rome, and explored them house by house, you know too well that the task of describing- everything- can only end in skimming a subject whose real extent is boundless. The Aventine, where three convents stand out on a deserted IN THE PALACE OF CALIGULA. platepUjWas once one of the plebeian sections of Rome. It was there that, 630 years before our era, King Ancus is said to have quartered the inhabitants of four conquered or destroyed Latin cities. Rome thus became for the conquered first a place of exile, then a colony, and finally a country. Historians contend that in order to put this suburb out of danger of foreign incursions, this king surrounded the Aventine Q 2 2-8 Rome. witli a strong wall, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus even traces its outline. But the traditions of nearly a fabulous epoch are almost always suspicious, especially when they are supported by no palpable proof. The priory of St. Mary replaces the Bona Dea, a temple cele- brated by Cicero's epistles : St. Sabina rises between the Temple of Juno and the remains of the fortress of Honorius III., as the convent which replaces the house where St. Peter baptized St. Prisca rises between Minerva and Uiana. POUCH Of SAMA SABIIsO. CHAPTER XIV. xA.LF-LOCKED within the modern city, the Palatine, round which the seven hills group themselves, is, as we know, the primitive site of Rome. It was there, according to the legend, that the twin sons of Mars and Sylvia were suckled by a she-wolf, then reared by the shepherd Faustulus ; and it was there that, after their recognition by Numitor, they founded the new city under the guidance of favourable auguries. The site determined on, Romulus proceeding to trace the ponucriuvi or sacred enclosure of the future capital, harnessed to the plough a heifer and a bull without blemish, and then he raised his wall on the furrow which the share had traced between the rising and the going down of the sun. Although, according to all appearance, this line describes an elongated trapezium with a break towards the east, the city of Romulus owes to this enclosure its designation of Roma qiiadrata. Among the legendary stories invented to occupy our minds, the most seductive are those which project historic i)roofs into the domain of fable. To allow that Romulus ever existed is a condescension that has gone out of fashion. Livy, Dionysius, Plutarch, Tacitus even, raise a smile by their credulity. As you sit facing the Aventine, residence of Remus and the Fabii, on the remains of the poina'viwn of Romulus, you may fairly imagine that on this very spot, for having contemptuously climbed over the growing wall, the brother of the first king of Rome was struck down by his twin brother, crying, ' Thus perish whosoever shall cross this wall!' We shall not be sorry, thanks to this discovery, to gain an honourable pretext for seeking some other traces of the primitive reigns, that for thirty years have been reduced to ni} ths. It was above the cavern of Cacus, celebrated by I lercules, and not far from the ficns rji7ni)ialis, that tradition placed the hut of the shepherd Faustulus, covered with reeds, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 2;o Rome. in whose lifetime they showed both the fig-tree and the hut piously preserved. To the north-west of the Porta Mugionis, at the very spot indicated by Livy, they have exhumed the peribolus of the temple dedicated to Jupi- ter Stator by the founder of Rome, when the god made the fleeing Romans resume the offen- sive. In the time of Pliny the eques- trian statue of Cloelia rose opposite to their temple, reconstructed by Regulus after the war of the Sam- nites. More to the west and near the Via Sacra, to the right of the Temple of Vesta, the ruins of Castor and Pollux mark the spotwhere the Dioscuri ap- peared for the first time. Before lettino- our feet stray at will in so renowned a spot, which has just acquired a double interest, thanks to the ex- cavations of which we have just de- scribed the results, let us sketch some of the present aspects of this Palatine, which is less spacious than the garden of the Tuileries, and which has held all the grandeurs of Rome. The Palatine Wall. 2%\ An embankment-wall, in the centre of which X'ignola has set one of the correct doors such as are given to pupils in art schools to draw, KIMNS ON I UK I'AI.AIIM'. separates the Palatine from the Via Sacra. At the very entrance you ascend a slope divided into green compartments; then you /?, OVIC. mount by broad steps, on the top of which is planted a casino, well situated as a point of view for antique Rome, and which the Farnese constructed when they transformed the Palatine desert into an historical garden. Verdure had long enveloped the enclosure of Romulus, too great for modern generations ; the)- moved away from the terrible shadows which its ruins summoned to the mind. It seems even that our religion, the faith of slaves and the poor, fell back before the sanctuary of monarchical unity and Roman pride ; this ponlcBviiim is the only consecrated ground of which Christianity did not take posses- sion. No pope touched the Palatine before Paul III., who in an age RKMAIN.S OF THE I'UliLIC PALACE, AND LOGGIA OF THE FARXESE. that had become reconciled to the gods of Olympus, built a villa there. But it was the destiny of the hill to remain a royal appanage ; the last heiress of the pontiff and the Farnese, Elizabeth, brought the Palatine to the King of Spain, Philip V., and through Don Carlos it entered into the possession of the kings of Naples. Then, by a singular play of fortune, the cradle of the Ccesars passed from the house of Bourbon into the hands of Napoleon III., who chose the ingenious Pietro Rosa, epigraphlst, geographer, consummate Latinist, expert geologist, and descendant of Salvator Rosa, to direct the excavations which he proposed to undertake in the Palatine, and The Palatine Ruins. 233 installed him in the midst of the Farnese gardens, which in the space of eight years Rosa turned up, to disclose in their place anocher Pompeii. Let us saunter among these thickets of ruins and flowers, as we verify without trouble all that has been cleared, for each fragment finds KEMAINS OF IHE PUBLIC PALACE OF DOMITIAN. its identity guaranteed by a citation from some annalist or poet of antiquity. Romulus-'inhabitcd the summit of the i)lateau between the peribolus of Jupiter Propugnator and the spot where Tiberius after- wards built his palace; Numa, the corner of the Via Sacra and the Velabrum, towards the Temple of Vesta : Hie fuit antiqui reoia parva Niinuu, said Ovid. The Temple of the Penates, says Solinus, 2-.^ Ro7?ie, under Heliogabalus, replaced on the Velia (eastern slope) the dwelling of 'rullus Hostilius. It is lower down than the Porta Mugionis, above the Summa \'ia Sacra, near the altar of the Lares, that Varro fixes the dwellincT of Ancus. Tarquinius Priscus installed himself more at the back, at the Summa Via Nova. It was there that the children of Ancus had him slain by shepherds ; you may mark the spot from a high window looking on to the Via Nova, for the king was quartered close to Jupiter Stator. Tanaquil addressed the Quirites and caused Servius to be proclaimed king. The site of the temple has been restored by Rosa, as well as that of the Porta Mugionis indicated by Solinus. When the Republic had fastened the nation under the yoke of a rapacious aristocracy, persons of mark who were rich enough to pay for the usurpation of authority sought a dwelling on the Palatine. There dwelt, besides the chief dictators, the Gracchi, as well as Catullus, Flaccus, Hortensius, Sulla, and even Catiline, in the neigh- bourhood of Marcus Tullius. This last built facing the Via Sacra, below the house of Scaurus, bought, as Asconius tells us, by the tribune Clodius, against whom Cicero pleaded. * I will raise my roof higher,' wrote the great orator, ' not from contempt for thee, but to veil from thee the view of the city which thou wouldst fain have de- stroyed.' Violets grow there under rose-trees, and the substructions mark the compartment of a parterre. Below the roof of Cicero, more to the right, * to the east of the sacred wood of Vesta,' Julius Ceesar came and established himself as soon as he was in possession of the pontificate. Before, adds Suetonius, ' he had lived in a modest habitation among the plebeians of the Suburra.' Marcus Antonius resided on the. Palatine ; Claudius Nero, the father of Tiberius, and Octavius, father of Augustus, built on the eastern and southern slopes of Roma quadrata. The Caesars having come to resume on the Palatine the thread of royal tradition, Augustus extended his constructions as far as the slope facing the Circus Max- imus ; and to prolong his palaces to the east to the intermontium,. he displaced a street, the Via Nova, without suspecting the cruel mistakes to which he would expose the archaeologists of the future. Domitian was the first to build a public palace in the dependencies of the imperial quarters. His constructions occupy a vast space to the north-west of the house of Augustus, on which they possibly encroached : for below the Flavian ruins you find galleries which they consolidated by filling them up from top to bottom with masses of mortar between The Empress Livid s House. 2"=; planks, of which the imprint still remains. The walls were so thick, the pillars so robust, the pozzuolana so tenacious, that before buildincr they did not take the trouble to pull down. Each generation settled over the quarters of predecessors. In the early times of the Empire the hill of Romulus shakes off the patrician residences. Tiberius, who built between the Auguratorium and the old houses of Clodius, and who surrounded his edifices to east and south with a half-subterranean portico, still left at the corner of his Cryptoporticus a private habitation that has been exhumed, and which is the most curious and considerable discovery of the Palatine. In liberating it from the earth with which it was filled up, the excavators at once observed that it was contis^uous to the buildincrs of Tiberius, that it was approached by the very portico, and that, as it was placed on a lower level, they must have set up some steps in order to go down into it. These circumstances showed that it must have belonged to the successor of Augustus, and was older than the palace ; for they w'ould not have erected it lower down, except to make the best of an inconvenient arrangement. Other circumstances persuaded them that it had had for its owner Claudius Nero, the first husband of Livia ; the pursuit of the excava- tions brought to light a subterranean passage, round which, in tlie direction of the ancient palace of Augustus, were the leaden pipes that used to bring water to the pretended Domus Tiberiana. On these pipes we read from distance to distance ivliak avo. As the name of the ow-ner is constantly inscribed on pipes of this kind, this inscription is a genuine proof of ownership, and ' informs us that the house in question belonged to the Empress Livia, Julia Augusta; means, in fact, Livia, widow of Augustus.' When he instituted her heiress to a third of his property, Augustus prescribed that shu should take his name. Livia wished to be the first priestess of her husband after he was raised to the rank of the gods. This explains the subterranean passage which wxmt from her house to that of Augustus ; she probably had it constructed so as to be free to go, without passing through the public street, to fulfil the ministrations of her function. This passage is now interrupted at the junction with the a'(i(:s pub/icce, erected in the reign of Domitian. Hut shortly before arriving at these redes, we observe the passage branch to the right, which was most likely made in order to turn them. The exhumation of a Roman dwellinir-house of the time of 236 Rome. Augustus, the date of which is known, is an interesting fact. If v/e add to this that the residence of Livia contains the finest and most ancient pictures bequeathed to us from such distant ages, the reader will hardly reproach us for having edified him with proofs as to the origin of the building. You approach by the south side of the Cryptoporticus of Tiberius, going down four steps, to reach a vesti- bule opening on to the Atrium in which figure the altars of the Lares covered over with minium, as well as their foundation. You then front the Tablinum (chambers of honour), in which the master of the house kept his family archives and received his guests; to your right is situated the Triclinium. These porticoes, near which space for an antechamber has been procured, form four apartments, the only ones decorated. At the back of the three compartments of the Tablinum, which adjoin chambers belonging to the private living- place (Cubicula), is situated the Peristylum, in the middle of which a staircase with two flights led up to the stories where guests never entered. Of these quarters there remain thirteen chambers without artiy ornament, faced with a brown pigment. They had outlets both on the peristyle and on a long corridor {Fauces) which, constructed between the Tablinum and the Triclinium, and traversing the extent of the buildings, furnishes an approach both right and left to the apartments on the ground-floor. These comprise two bath-chambers, narrow and dark as they are described by Seneca, until Maecenas had, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, set up the first Cal- darium that the Romans ever saw. Let us proceed to the most interesting part of this exhumation, to the painted chambers opening on to the Atrium. They are not very large ; they have greater depth than breadth, and the height of the walls does not exceed four yards. Their decoration is distributed in panels separated by figured columns of which the entablatures bear cornices and rest on stylobates, also painted. Among the decorative subjects, we observe large transparent Paterae, filled with fruit piled up pyramidically the simple indication of the vessels in which they presented fruits at their banquets. One of the panels contains a fanciful landscape in which trees, terraces adorned with statues, bridges thrown out into space, rockeries, and flowing waters make up a site that would delight a Chinese : in the foreground three ducks are coming out of an aquatic grotto, leaving long furrows in the water. Animals run along the cornice. At the bottom and on the sides of the left wing, at the entrance to which survive the fragments of a mosaic pave- Its Decorations. 237 ment that Livia once trod, the panels are surmounted by a series of cartouches with a clear ground, on which Genii stand out in pairs with wings of blue, green, and rose-colour, recalling some of the small figures of Raphael ; they sport too among the arabesques. These cartouches have a purple framing, and are separated by mouldings with a gold ground with orriffins runninof, from bro.vn panels, marked by a line of lotus of a bluish tint, and divided by gar- lands of leaves of pale green : the lower portions, red upon red, are de- tached from the panels by a broad plinth of a chamois tone. The whole decoration is rich, bold, and harmoni- ous. In the right wing the chamois panels are enriched, by way of a simple orna- ment, with thick gar- lands of flowers and fruits succeeding one another in festoons and bound with ribands. On a band above these compart- ments, and under a frieze of dark yellow, defiles a curious procession of tiny figures, such as are to be seen in the Egytian hypogea ; they represent scenes borrowed from the daily movement of the popular life of the streets. A consul, escorted by lictors without arms and preceded by an accensus, is attending to his private business; matrons go to the neigh- bouring temple ; others along the Appian Way visit the tombs and LIVIA'S HOUSE (LEFT WINC.;, ^ -.g Rome. carry offerings to the altars ; women of the people go with their PAINTINGS OF TUK TALiLlNUM OF LIVIA. SIRELT VIEW. SACRIFICE OF A LAMB. 10 AND ARCl'S. The Paintings. 239 baskets to market ; lawyers make their way to the Forum, of which you see the outHne in front of them ; merchants come with their camels laden with wares ; the freedmen go about their affairs, hunters are on their way back to town, a fisherman spreads his snares. Nothing can be more lively than these revelations of popular habits at the end of the Republic. It is for the central compartment of the Tablinum that art has reserved the principal subjects. Starting from basements of brown framed with scarlet, the false columns, whose flutings are broken by rings of foliage, support cornices equally illusory, and of strange opulence : between the panels of a brighter red, set off by friezes of a delicate blue and varied by yellow coffer-work, between these archi- tectural caprices so elegant in their strangeness, is a succession of well- preserved paintings. The finest in point of style represents, seated at the foot of a column, and watched by a draped Juno, lo, the daughter of Inachus, watched by Argus and just about to betaken from him by Mercury. The Hermes and Argus are naked and of superb design ; the first has his name inscribed at his feet. Between this painting and that which represents lo, and on the same wall, is a subject that gives us all the representation w^e have of the external aspect of the bourgeois dw^ellings of the seventh century of Rome. Two houses issue on the street by small square doors of a single leaf; the upper stories, pierced with small windows, fall back and leave projecting terraces, one of which forms a covered gallery supported on two pillars ; a cordon divides the first floor from the second. At a window and on balconies five persons follow with their eyes down into the street a becomingly draped lady, who, fanning herself with Tijlabciiiini, has just gone out, followed by a little girl. These paintings are of a rare delicacy ; their colouring, even in the tones of minium, which often grows black, has preserved all its freshness ; the ochres possess a good deal of liveliness ; and the ensemble of tints presents a sprightly variety. Such, then, is a nearly unique monument of an early school imported from Greece, described by authors of the first century, and of whom nothing else has been left. These works, existing in the only ancient house of which we know both the exact date and the owner, are superior to all that Pompeii has bequeathed to us. Let us return to the ruins of the palace of Tiberius, continued on a vaster scale by his successor as far as the extremity of the Palatine, breaking down on to the Via Sacra, it is on this side that you [)ass 240 Rome. through guard-houses, where to pass the time the soldiers used to RESTOKAIIU.N OF THE CUVUS VICTORIA. TJie Palace of Tiberius. 241 draw on the walls confidences and emblems, sometimes with their signature, and sentences that are easily deciphered. There has lately been found here a caricature of Nero ; a small narrow brow with a garland, and a chin tufted with a growing beard ; the profile is very lifelike. The excavations around the modest house of Livia have brought to light a marble bust of the same emperor, the only one which goes back with certainty to the time when he lived. VAULTED PASSAGK BKTWF.KN TIIK I'ALACF OF TIliFRIfS AND THE ITBMC PALACE. Caligula brought under his gigantic palaces the Clivus Victorian and the Porta Romana, which Romulus opened at the western corner of his wall to go down into the T'orum. In keeping his palace on the level of the summit, by means of galleries as high as the mountain itself, the successor of Tiberius, to unite the Palatine to the Capitol, undertook above the V'elabrum that immense bridge whose abutment has been brought ^o light, and which was demolished by Claudius. It K 242 Rome. was in clearing out the accumulation of this precipice erected by the hand of man, that Rosa, sustaining galleries and vaultings with as ttl V\A\rTCUVV RUINS OF THE PALACES OF TIBERIUS. much art as economy, succeeded in extricating from a mass of debris the most ancient portions of the imperial residence. Bas-reliefs, a few The Connections. 243 cartoons of stucco represt;nting wanton scenes, corridors terminatino- in small chambers, enable us to recognise the haunts out of which, according to Suetonius, the emperor raised a tax, and where the sena- tors made it a duty to degrade themselves in order to please Ceesar. The coffers of the vaults formed a decoration of a purer kind than the ornaments of Pompeii. As to the Argiletum, Caligula prolonged his palaces, according to Suetonius, towards the Forum as far as the Temple of Castor, to which he made a vestibule, where he exhibited himself as an object of public adoration, under the title of Jupiter Latinus REMAINS OF THE ETBRARY OF THE PUBLIC I'ALACE. After the great fire of the year 64, described by Tacitus, Nero rebuilt on plans of such immensity, that they invaded the valley and assailed even the Esquiline slope as far as the ancient palaee of Mcecenas. Otho installed himself in a section of the palaces of Tiberius, that Messalina and Claudius had once inhabited. Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and their successors, must have enlarged their dwellings on the side of the Auguratorium, and continued the porti- coes, which had then become subterranean, from which another gallery branches out. Covered with a low vault and lii^hted from above, it allowed the emperors to proceed, without being seen, from their private dwelling to the throne-room, by penetrating, at the back of ^44 Rome. the Tribuna of the basihca, into the palace appropriated by Domitian for audiences and receptions. In the pubHc palace the lower courses of most of the rooms have been brought into daylight : the stumps of the columns still mark the The Galleries. 245 galleries ; the levelled soil is the rough-cart in which the mosaics were laid, of which a few scattered bits are still left. At the Tribune of 246 Rome. the TricHnium. which was surrounded by coh.imns projecting from broad pilasters, a pavement of mosaic marks the spot where these masters of the world used to feast. Beyond, a second portico covering foundations of the date of the Republic, and further on the Library, reconstructed at the very place where Augustus established two one for Greek books, the other for Latin. It is contiguous to tlie Academia, a room for reading and dissertation upon poets and philosophy ; it was separated from the Libreria, so that the noise might not disturb the readers ; and it was brought next to it so as to have the documents close at hand. OLD TOWER OF THE PALATINE, FACING THE CIRCUS MAXIMUS. Beyond this hall for conversation, the ground falls away, and at the bottom of a ravine of buildings in fragments, your eyes wander over the narrow valley of the Circus Maximus. Close by at your right is the peribolus, with three steps, of the Temple of Jupiter Victor, erected by O. Fabius Maximus ; the Cassars respected it. In ordinary language we have come to confound circuses with amphitheatres. Among the Romans the circus was not a round monument, but a very elongated enclosure (about a mile), making a course for chariots, men, and horses between the terraces covered with seats, and nearly parallel to one another. The circus is wider The Circles. H7 at the entrance than at the other end, which allows the cars to be arranged at starting in the shape of a fan, so as to equalise the conditions of distance between them. To mark what we should now call the course, a road divides the circus in two throughout its length, only leaving at the extremity room for the course or arena, which turns the spur of it. This kind of causew^ay, called the Spina, was STAIRCASE IN THE PALACE OK CALIGULA. drawn rather obliquely, in such a way as to leave more breadth at the starting-post, where the cars were not yet in a file, than at the goal, where they would only go out one by one. The principal ornament of the circus was this Spina, which was less than two yards high, and in breadth only from eight to nine, and on which from all sides the eyes of the onlookers were directed, because it divided the arena. So 248 l^ome. on this long causeway art had collected all the charms at its disposal; there were ranged, round the narrow channel filled for irrigation, the masterpieces of Greek statuary and the curiosities of the East. It was there that they found the obelisks that decorate the Piazza del Popolo and that of St. John Lateran. Thirteen arches on a segment of a circle formed the Carceres, from which the cars, to the number of twelve, shot forth ; the arch in the middle only introduced the festal procession, f^onipa circeiisis. At each end of the Carceres rose towers, on which they stationed fifes, drums, and trumpets, to animate the horses by their fanfares. Under a small portico the charioteers prepared themselves, divided by their colours into four factions, Albata, Russata, Prasina, Veneta (white, red, green, and azure). Above the Carceres, and between the towers, on the terrace of the Oppidum, gathered the privileged amateurs, betting-men, and owners. The circuses were not used merely for races of chariots and horses: wrestling, boxing, frjot races, the chase after ferocious animals, varied the spectacles. ANCIENT PROCESSION TO THE LATEKAN. CHAPTER XV. |FTER some months of residence at Rome, after incessant occupation amid ruins, basilicas, galleries, libraries, one is struck with a desire to be among fields and woods ; one morning we started for Albano and the forests and lakes of the Alban Hills. Our first walk was by the charming road called La Galleria to Castel Gandolfo. As at Rome and its environs, this district and its hamlets are full of historic memories, of monuments, of mysteries unfathomable in these solitudes, where the sovereign aristocracy of the world concealed its inmost life. These country scenes, that nature has clothed in supreme beauty, have not been disfigured by the modern time ; as we go through them, we smile at their striking resemblance to the pictures that the Latin poets have drawn of them. In the early morning we again saw from another point, and in the lights of a different hour, the profound hollow of the Lake of Albano. On the terrace of the Capucins, the point of view is higher and the solitude more complete, and you. can observe geologically the bizarre configuration of a region that volcanoes have overflowed twice or thrice. The way back is shortened by three viaducts, and that of Ariccia is so deep, that it has required one of those bridges of three super- posed ranges of arches, which figure among the wonders worthy of comparison with ancient achievements. The splendour of the site enhances the style of the erection. On the morrow we wished to employ the day in going round the lake through the woods, in identifying the ancient via triiiiiiplialis of the Alban Mount, in ascending the deserted counterforts of the Monte Cavo, as far as Rocca di Papa, an escarped hamlet to which the landscape-painter enticed us. 2 so Rome. At the Madonna del Tuffo (a votive chapel commemorating a fall of rocks, which the virtue of a prayer stopped before two cavaliers) The A lb an Hills 25 there is a new point of view. You then find yourself under the Monte Cavo ; a small convent of Passionists replaces the Temple of Jupiter Latialis, where in old times the FericX Latinae were celebrated. The sun havinij^ cleared a portion of the plain, we perceived the enormous dome of St. Peter's yxs'wv^ out of the mist with its Vatican pedestals 252 Rome. of the whole eternal city, at that distance this is the only building you LAKE OF ALBANO ANL) ruN'JiFlCAL VILLA (EVEiNING). Rocca di Papa. 25, can distinguish ; the rest was dissolved in the soft undulations of the Etruscan Hills. Rocca di Papa presents the sight of a pyramid faced with brown houses, and terminated on the summit by a ruined fort ; you climb up here through a laby- rinth of alleys by forty steps. While the goats pressed round the hovels the men played at mora ; the sound of songs came out of'the houses ; girls, in holi- day attire, kept going to the fountain and running from house to house in sportivebands, many of them so hand- some as to provoke a cry of surprise ; the more calm amonsf them returned from the water, bearing on their heads the handsome copper amphora, which we knew from the Etruscan bas - reliefs and the paintings of Pompeii. We offered the guide refreshments, but he declined : he even dissuaded us from stop- ping because it was late and it were better not to be overtaken by night too far from Albano. This prudence struck me as opportune enough ; we had met in the forest some woodcutters, of whom their guns had made me a little suspicious, because after all it is not by gunshot that -54 Rome. one fells trees. We made therefore a hasty survey of Rocca di Papa, an Alpine villac^e from which, with feet in the snow, you could see eighty yards of olive-trees. But this poor place, with its striking style, its concentric alleys, its old and low gateways, and its roofs pointed as in the north, left on me a very vivid impression. From Albano to Frascati over the mountain, the journey even in winter is varied and interesting. It introduces you to hamlets more or less popu- lous, but more curious than this renowned patron of so many places of pleasure. It was on the slope of Palazzuolo that they showed us the exact posi- tion of Alba Longa, built by the son of ^neas, and which long after its destruction by Tullus Hostillus, bequeathed its name to the hamlet formed round an entrenched camp, established to protect the Appian Way at the time of the second Car- thaginian invasion. These re- collections brought us to the entrance of Marino, by the valley in which still runs the spring of the goddess Feren- tina, the V^enus Genitrix of the old Latins ; it was there, before the foundation of Rome, that assembled, under the presi- dency of Alba, the represen- tatives of the thirty cities of which the Latin confederation was composed. Tarquin reddened with the blood of Herdonius that water to w^hich w^e saw two she-goats going down, pensively tended by a girl of fourteen. She did not at our approach raise her pretty head, bent over the spindle which her fingers turned ; you might have taken her for a little princess playing at being shepherdess. No place has been more extolled for the mildness of its temperature, YOITHFUL SHEPHliRUESS. Tui>culum. 255 sheltered as it is from the cold winds of cast and north, than Tusculum, which was incorporated in the Roman State 381 i^.c, and which at that epoch retained its walls and its municipal independence, llie flowers and trees of this little town were the delight of Cicero ; Hortensius had a house there, to which he added a chamber for Cydias's picture of the Argonauts ; thither withdrew both pleasure- seekers and sages and the two were often only one in the times of Augustus. So to symbolize this happy vocation of a town of pleasure, people assigned its foundation to a son of Circe the sorceress, by Ulysses the eloquent to that Telegonus who, when pressed by hunger, OXEN OF THE ROMAN CAMl'AGNA. BY HENRI RliGNALI.T. slew his father by mistake in his search for a meal. Idie palace ruins, discovered almost at the summit of the mountain, where the wind moves noiselessly over the bare ground, may i^o back to Cicero as well as to Tiberius, that sombre and skilful administrator who made choice of three great workshops for landscape-painters --Rhodes, Tusculum, Capreas. The opus rclicnlariinn is everywhere ; the Schola has left circular traces : some mutilated statues have l^een found, with which they have decked and supported the four corners of a house of a custodian, whom the winter had put to flight a building crammed full of pieces of old marbles. Against the wind, laden with snowflakes, we had no shelter but the wall-side. To the left of the theatre, along a ^56 Rome. l)atliway hidden by brushwood, still exists a fountain in peperino, in a broad st)le. ^rhc tlieatre of Tuscuhnn remains nearly untouched ; the outline of the tiers of seats came out very softly and almost effaced from under the snow, whence rose on the proscenium the shafts of some Doric columns, fluted, massive, and without stylobates ; the art of Magna Gra:cia, brought into fashion by the villeggiature of Pompeii, of Baiae, and Pcxstum. must have smiled at a Hellenized aristocracy. Here and there rows of pillars, sunk partially underground and surmounted by their capitals, rose from a dark pavement like huge mushrooms. We next descended to Frascati. We came to the villa Rufinella ; then the villa r^Iondragone, so vain of its three hundred and seventy-four windows ; and the villa Taverna, and I know not what others ; for as you enter Frascati, the villa of the Belvedere, designed by Giacomo della Porta for the Cardinal Aldobrandini, drives all the rest from your mind. i^:^jg*?' ^"^'"^.^^ THE SALITA OF MARINO. THE I'lAZZA OF ST. JOHN LATERAN. CHAPTER XVI. [N tlic midst of the stirring quarters l}ing at the base of the Ouirinal, you come out upon a great piazza which )ou name at once without ever having seen it before : Trajan's Column serves as ensign for a forum, of which Apollodorus of Damascus erected tlie porticoes. Tlie lines described by the remains of a plantation of pillars will help you to identify the peri- meter of the temjjle which Adrian consecrated, and the site of the Ulpian Library which was divided into two chambers one for Circek books, and the other f(jr Laf'n ; and finalh- the situation of the 23 S Rome. basilica, of which the entrance was to tlie foram and its apse in the north-north \vest direction. Divided into five aisles, it was paved with antique yellow and violet breccia ; the facings were in marble of Luna ; the ceiling of gilded bronze reposed on columns of granite. You even find the remains of five massive steps oi porta santa, which elevated the monument upon a rich pedestal The basilica survived the invasions of the barbarians and even the Vandals of Genseric ; but the contests of the middle ages and the pious brutalities of the stupid and valorous Normans have buried in ruins a monument which, for Christians especially, must have been an object of veneration. It was in the Ulpian Basilica that, in 312, Constantine, having assembled the notables of the empire, came and seated himself in the presbyterium, to proclaim his adjuration of polytheism in favour of the religion of Christ ; it was on this day and at this spot that the prince closed, the cycle of antiquity, opened the catacombs, and inaugurated the modern world. The Acts of St. Sylvester described many passages of the discourse in which, ' invoking truth against mischievous divisions,' and declaring that he ' put away superstitions born of ignorance and reared on unreason,' the emperor ordains that * churches be opened to Christians, and that the priests of the temples and those of Christ enjoy the same privileges. ' He himself under- takes to build a church in his Lateran palace. The senators listened to the harancrue in dull silence, for the patrician houses remained attached to the old worship. But along the aisles of the basilica pressed the Christian populace, now for the first time expanding in sunshine. When the emperor ceased speaking, ' there was as it were a long breath ; ' then the popufar joy burst forth, and the cries of the multitude broke out ' for the space of nearly tw^o hours.' They exalted the power of Christ and his glory, and then, the enthusiasm reaching almost to delirium, they declared to be foes of the emperor all who should not honour the God who had vanquished Maxentius ; at last the populace, exasperated by the attitude of the senators, demanded the expulsion of the old priests and the pro- scription of all who continued to offer sacrifice. A massacre was imminent, when Constantine, again speaking, began to set forth the difference between the service of God and that of men : that the second is forced while the first is free. ' To be Christian,' he saifi, * it is needful to desire to become one. To refuse admission to one who seeks it would be blameworthy; to impose it would be against equity; this is the rule of truth. Those who do not imitate us shall not lose Trajan's Column . 259 our good o-races; those who become Christians with us shall be our 77J^]r.\\S, COLUMN AM) ULPIAN ItASI 1,:('A. S 2 26o Rome. friends.' Truly great on that day, Constantine had the tolerance of a saoe, a rare virtue among neophytes ; at gne stroke he proclaimed the faith of Christ and freedom of conscience. To regain what he o-ave, not less than fifteen centuries have been needed. It was without doubt in commemoration of the incident which took place here, that Sixtus V. placed the statue of St. Peter on the summit of the column of Trajan, to replace that of the emperor, which was carried off in 663 by that Constans II. who pillaged Rome. I do not think there exists any monument in the world more precious or more exquisite in its proportions than Trajan's Column, nor one that has rendered more capital service. It is of pure Carrara marble. The shaft is about ninety-seven feet high, by twelve of diameter at the base, and ten below the capital, which is Doric and composed of a single block ; the structure consists of thirty-four distinct blocks, hollowed out and cut internally into a winding staircase. Along the outside, forming a spiral round the shaft, is a series of bas-reliefs, divided from one another by a narrow band which, running parallel to the inner staircase of a hundred and eighty- two steps, describes twenty-three circuits to reach the platform on which the statue is placed. From the Ulpian Basilica, where he has just made the church free, let us follow Constantine to his Lateran house, where he founded the first cathedral. Built by Constantine in the enclosure of his palace, St. John Lateran is the metropolis of the Roman bishopric, as officially recognised by the emperors. St. Damasus was consecrated in the Lateran Basilica; it was there that since Sylvester I. the popes have taken possession of their see. At St. Peter of the Vatican the pope is the spiritual sovereign of the world ; at St. John Lateran he is bishop ; the basilica of St. John is the cathedral of Rome. San Giovanni in Laterano is now little more than a place conse- crated by great memories. The basilica of Constantine had lasted ten centuries, when, towards 1308, a fire destroyed the temple and palace. Clement V., who lived at Avignon, commenced the recon- struction, and carried it on a considerable way; then Urban V. and Alexander VI. continued and decorated it; Pius IV. burdened the nave with its heavy gilded ceiling, and erected on the piazza the lateral facade with Its two bell-towers, too far apart ; Sixtus V. commissioned Fontana to add the portico, and Salimbeni to paint it. It vvas there thjt Nicholas Cordler placed the bronze statue of Henry IV., canon of St John Lateran, like all the sovereigns of 5/. John Latcran. 261 France. Giacomo della Porta, under Clement VIII., rebuilt the tran- sept ; Borromini rebuilt the rest under Innocent X. ; Clement XII. had the principal facade erected by Galilei, which provided a mean imitation of that of St. Peter's, and was, like that, surmounted by a recrimcnt of statues. The style of the forerunners of Bernini presided over the work; as at the Vatican, it is a vast portico with the Porta Santa at .%i^* \\\U.\. OV THK SIXTH CEXTTTRV, IN THE CI.OISTKR OK ST. JOHN. the extremity, and five other entrances, of which the centre one, in bronze, is said to come from the /P^milian ])asilica : at the end of the gallery rises a colossal statue of Constantino, the only authentic likeness of that emperor. Allhoug-h St. John Latcran has been rebuilt at least three times, we are led to suppose that the fire of 1308, which destroyed the 262 Rome. building of the fourth century, still spared the apse, or else that this apse had been re -erected before the end of the thirteenth ; for its vault is decorated with mosaics signed by Jacopo da Turrita, Fra Jacopo da Camerino, and executed in i.^qi for Pope Nicholas IV. ; it was Gaddo Gaddi, they say, who finished them. In sentiment and style they are not very remote from art as it was practised in the He de France between 1203 and 1250; but here the design has more suppleness, and the colour has a sweet and tender brightness, which the mosaic workers of Venice two centuries later seldom surpassed. If you are bent on finding some remains of the Lateran buildings ^. /AHCtlo SANTA CROCE IN GERUSALEMME. going back into respectable ages, you must seek them in the cloister. This monument of the thirteenth century, the arches of which sur- mounted by mosaics rest on small columns diversified by an ingenious fancy, this cloister is one of the most delicious erections in Rome or in the world. It can only be compared to that of St. Paul, belonging to the same epoch ; they both offer the variety of the buildings of the middle ages, made regular in harmony of outline by frequent resort to antique monuments. Under the arcades you see the massive seat of the old metropolis ; how many pontiffs have sat on this since the eighth century ! They preserve here also a number of bas-reliefs The Monuments. ^63 earlier than the fourteenth, and notably, among other fragments of the old altar, a graceful carving, in which some small clerks blow with pipes on the pan of a censer. Let us also notice a marble statue of Boniface VIII. In the middle of this court, with some neglected plants growing around it, is a Ime well of the sixth century. 64 Rome. From St, John Lateran to Santa Croce, the fourth basilica of Rome, the distance is short. St. Helen, when she brought back from PENITENTS ASCENDING THE HOLY STAIRCASE. Jerusalem the Saviour's cross, built a church for it, which, being rebuilt by Benedict XI\\ in 1743, with the exception of the apse, still betrays The Neighbourhood of St. John. 26 ^ the inclination to imitate St. Peter's. But the bolder facade does not want grace ; a pretty open campanile of the thirteenth century, a rustic chapel close by, masses of trees arranged among the buildin^Ts, make of the little church of Domenico Gregorini a series of land- scapes. One would not feel bound to visit it, if it had not preserved at the Tribuna of the high altar some large frescoes which represent the finding of the holy cross, the discovery of the three pieces of wood, the trials to which they were subjected, and the procession of St. Helen on her return to Jerusalem. These compositions are dramatic, still simple and already skilful : it is the apogee of the inspired school which goes immediately before Michelangelo and Raphael. This chapel is separated in two by a grating, which women cannot pass without incurring excommunication, while in the reserved space a chest is opened, in which they keep a very large fragment of the true cross, the only one whose authenticity can be guaranteed. Let us return to the Piazzi del Laterano. Solitude and silence reign on the deserted plateau of St. John Lateran, and the grass grows on it ; the obelisk of Thothmes, the greatest of known mono- liths, turns round the piazza a shadow which from morning to night meets no creature. The street which, since the time of the Flavians, ascends from the Coliseum to the palace of Lateranus, becomes solitary as you draw near to the plateau ; and when from a rather elevated point you view the few houses which are around you at a respectful distance, and the lower as they come nearest to the church, it seems as though they w^ere prostrating themselves before their mother. On whichever side you turn, the sight and the mind are well repaid. From the ancient Porta Asinaria, by which Totila invaded Rome, to the Praenestine gate marked by a triumphal arch of Agrippa, the glacis descending in a gentle slope is bounded by the crenelated walls of Aurelian, in which the Amphitheatrum Castrense is incrusted, a ring whose collet is the basilica of St. Cross. On the other horizon, vague outlying grounds are surrounded by the Neronian and Claudian aqueducts connecting themselves with the walls, beyond which you discover the theatre of the earliest wars of the republic, spreading plains along which uncoil the old roads, recognisable by their tombs. The horizon is terminated by hills, and the ancient cities of Latium which decorate the pedestal of the Sabine Hills. To give perspective to the.se successive distances, you have curtains of dark trees, and nearer to you, in front of the Scala Santa, where the 266 Rome. pil'^rims climb on their knees the eight-and-twenty steps of the stair- case of Pontius Pilate, the Triclinio, a fragment of the ancient refectory of the popes in the eighth century: Benedict XIV. added to it an apse to expose three mosaics of Leo III. on a golden ground. That in the middle represents the apostles girding themselves to go forth and preach to the nations ; the two others, St. Sylvester and Constantine re- ceiving from Christ's hands the Labarum and the keys ; then St. Peter givins: the pallium to Leo IIL and the standard to Charles the Great ; two portraits of the time, which are unique, and which survive in open air. Around you at this deserted extremity of the city, all is monu- mental, but without symmetry ; all is cele- brated and neglected. The palace is only inhabited by the cus- todians. Sixtus V. had it rebuilt by Fon- tana on the founda- tions of the old edifice, which was burnt in the sixteenth century. The interior, a cloister with two stories, is damp, austere, and cold. As men could not live there, Gregory XV L installed statues in it, and Pius IX. added an historical museum. A few words, first, on the Gregorian collection, which occupy no less than fourteen apar:ments. Let us first note a bas-relief of Trajan SOPHOCLES. The Gregorian Museum. 267 with three other figures, a piece which comes from the old arch of that emperor, and has been taken from his Forum. No other likeness of Trajan has such delicacy or such truth of expression the intellectual and benevolent physiognomy of a man who, understandin^r ail, can pardon all. The Gregorian museum possesses the finest draped statue I have seen : it represents a man of fine p(3rt, eloquent, sure of himself, accustomed to dazzle, practised in making his talents avail by the seductive authority of mien. Made to tell from head to foot by the clever negligence of the drapery, the figure is a thorough success, and the great Sophocles, for it is he, has taken with ease an imposed CHRIST SYMBOLIZED IN ORPHEUS. attitude which has become natural to him, and which completes the representation. Under the folds of the robe, which is half tightened round him, the body describes its lines in a harmonious curve, the head harmonizes perfectly with the attitude, the beard is curled with art, and the outlines are well balanced. It was near the old Anxur that they exhumed this masterpiece in the time of Gregory XVI. But this Lateran Palace offers collections of a niore curious kind in the galleries and in some chambers of the upper story, where they preserve the boxers and gladiators in mosaic that were taken from the Thermae of Caracalla. These naked figures, stronger than nature, are likenesses with the names of the models ; realistic works, if ever 26S Rome. there were any, which give us vigour in all its ugliness, animal vigour stripped of all style. Let us proceed to that portion of the museum which is an idea of Pius I X. The pontiff wished the house of Constantine and the first cloister of St. Sylvester to become a museum of Christian epigraphy and iconography. So, adding to the inscriptions the tombstones and sarcophagi got up every day in the course of the excavations, and to these elements joining the fac-similes of paintings that it was neither possible nor proper to take from the catacombs, Pius IX. formed so rich a collection, that all along the broad staircase of state, on the landings, in the chambers and galleries of the first story, the walls are entirely covered. This museum is a unique source of information as to the forms, the rites, the spirit, and the tendencies of dogma in those almost unknown ages. At the first steps of the staircase you are stopped by a series of sarcophagi, in which bas-reliefs bring together the correlative symbols of the Old Testament and the New. One of the most complete is a large Constantinian vessel, of which the carvings placed over one another in pairs, and grouping several subjects in four divisions, reproduce the symbolism of our spiritual history. Man and his I companion are represented as created not by the Father, but by the Trinity ; Jesus draws from the side of Adam the first woman, the Father touches her brow, the Holy Spirit breathes a soul into her. The Son and the Holy Spirit are alwa^^s beardless ; the Father, after Olympian precedents, is also young, as Diespiter was. Then comes the First Fall, so represented as to banish every painful or humiliating idea : Christ gives to Adam and Eve the emblems of work : to him some ears of wheat, to her a sheep '-^.hose. wool she is to spin. The second canto opens with the Incarnation of the Son ; the magi come to adore ; the Virgin is attended by two youths, the Holy Spirit and St. Joseph : the latter is constantly represented as young in the primitive monuments. In the next bas-relief ChrivSt gives sight to the man born blind symbol of the redemption. Then St. Peter denies his master : at his feet the cock crows ; the second fall is a pendant to the first. Then the apostle repentant, and confessing the faith, follows pagans who drag him after them. Finally he becomes Moses, and explains the sense of the figures ; it is he, Peter, who strikes the rock and makes the water gush forth, in which we see the troop of the faithful borne along ; Moses and Peter play alternately the same part. In the centre of the sarcophagus are marked two Symbols. 269 unworked medallions ; these tombs were prepared and carved before- hand, and only room was reserved for the portraits of the future purchasers. The study 01 symbols teaches us to determine the Christian myths of those early times : we see religion completely formed at the end of the first century, in which paintings and sculptures are taken by choice either from the Gospel of St. John, a tardy and victorious reply to the scholars who thought it later than Eutychian ; or from the allegorical picture of the reign of Nero, written by the same apostle at Patmos, and called the Apocalypse. Recent researches have shown equally m^Mm^.^m. 'A GROUP SLUMBERING OVJ-.K A iRAULE.' plainly, contrary to the assertion of Mgr. Gerbet, that the first Christians did by no means abstain from personifying God the Father. For a long time they dissembled the mystery of the sacra- ments under emblems : the passage of the Red Sea meant baptism ; the blind restored to sight, penitence ; Jonas interprets the idea of resurrection. Adam, the first sinner, is always beautiful ; Eve is often seated by the side of Mary, and in the hand of the first woman they place not one apple, but seven the deadly sins. I noticed on frescoes of the first century, the Magian kings reduced to two, or raised to four ; they wear Phrygian caps, and in these paintings the 2 70 Rome. \"irgin is always pretty and elaborately draped. Certain subjects are represented by symbolical animals, on account of their crudity : thus, a sheep between two foxes on the edge of a fountain represents the chaste Susannah. So far as concerns usages and costumes, these drawings are invaluable. Besides the fac-similes, they have placed in the collection the remains of frescoes, from the era of the Caesars down to the fifteenth century, fixed on canvas with much skill. A curiosity of the first rank is the seated statue of St. Hippolytus, bishop of Porto, a work of the third century discovered in the catacombs of St. Lawrence, The head is a restoration, but the monument furnishes us, engraved against the episcopal seat, with the Paschal calendar, which the prelate composed to refute the Quartodecimani, who obsti- nately persisted in celebrating Easter on the same day as the Jews. The obelisk on the Piazza of St. John Lateran is, as I have said, the loftiest of the monoliths, and it is covered with curious hiero- glyphics. Constantine brought it on board ship ; he had it dragged to Rome, and set up in the Circus Maximus. Overthrown by the barbarians, it broke into three pieces, and the earth buried it ; Sixtus v., who dug it up, had it fastened together again, and then erected it before his palace of Lateran. , .,. CHAPTER XVII. HE Colonna Palace is situated between the Corso and the Ouirinal, on the slope of which the gardens extend, con- tiguous to the church of the Santi Apostoli ; with that the building's occupy one of the great sides of a long piazza, bounded on the north by the narrow Saporelli Palace, where died the last Stuart, nominally James III. On account of certain analogies of style, the Co'lonna Palace presents a curious appearance to persons who have studied the decora- tions of our royal residences of the great age. It is not that the galleries are filled w^th paintings, but the selections are happy, the portraits of the family are of the highest value, and the Colonna Palace preserves pictures that are not to be found elsewhere. Such is the portrait in profile of a young man, by that Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father, of whom our biographers have not failed to make a mediocre painter, to enhance by so much the genius of the son. Unluckily, the works of Santi are very rare, but they are in general of a warm and vigorous colour for pictures of such exquisite finish : the Giovinetto of the Colonna Palace unites to the delicate physi- ognomy of a Francia the deep colouring of a Venetian. As we were going away. Lorenzo Colonna, brother of Martin V., held us fixed under his glance : it is Master Holbein who places in your way this gentleman with tawny beard, mixed with the furs of a robe, and from whose features life shines tranquilly out. Contrary to what is customary, the search for the real does not in this portrait end in dryness ; the painting is rich and powerful, and as the pro- portions are just, the colour assumes a deep brilliance. I have never seen one of Holbein's portraits comparable to this of Lorenzo Colonna. Established in 1572, after the battle; of Lepanto, to consecrate the glory of Marco Antonio Colonna, who commanded the Christian - 1- Romc. galleys a.':^ainst the Turks, the great gallery of this palace reminds one of that of St. Cloud, and still more of the gallery of mirrors at \'ersailles. The structure rests on pilasters in antique yellow ; medallions and bas-reliefs have been disposed under each of the ten crreat windows, the intervals between them being occupied by panoplies of oriental arms; the frescoes tell the story of the Battle of Le- panto, along the arches of the ceiling. On a series of mirrors arranged down the hall, Mario de' Fiori has painted Cupids among the finest gar- lands that his pencil ever drew. Add to all this elegance and wealth a pavement of antique marbles ; multiply in sym- metrical proportions the furniture with its sweepingly turned lines, the giant con- soles, of which the tables, of oriental breccia, are supported by Turks stooping and in fetters ; Asiatic cabinets in ivory and lapis and ebony; count up the statues, the groups, the portraits, the cartoons ; and you will have an idea of the vast gallery where, as at St. Cloud, the paintings like the portraits are arranged in the ornamentation. The more you look, the more convinced you are that Mansart drew his inspiration for the decoration of Versailles from the great hall of the Colonna Palace, and what increases the probability of this imitation is the timidity of the copy. The communication between the palace and its escarped gardens is VIA DEI-LA PILOTTA. The Oitiriual. -7 7 -) -/J by two or three bridges, each of one arch, thrown over a deep street, the Via della Pilotta, which runs round the foot of the hill, and on which the branches of the trees pour down festooned shadows. The palace, the ruins two thousand years old, the basins of green water, and this precipice changed into a cascade of flowers all are in the very heart of the town, and in a very populous quarter. Every one knows that the popes enclosed the most notable portion of the Ouirinal between the walls of the vast palace, in which they have established a residence, if not for summer, at least for the semi-season, and also a residence for wdnter. But this erection of "^m ^^z&pS:^^ FOUNTAIN OF THE PIAZZA MONTK CAVALLO. Gregory XIII., designed by the Lombard, Tdaminio I^onzio. finisned under Si.xtus \'. and Clement VIII. by Fontana, enlarged by Carlo Maderno, completed by Fuga and Bernini, and restored under PiusXT I. the work of ten pontiffs, the Ouirinal Palace has not hatl the honour of giving its name to the piazza which its j)rincij)al facade decorate.s. In the middle of the piazza a jet of water pla)s in a basin of oriental granite; Pius VII. brought it thither from the I'\)rum ; above the basin stand in hard outline against the sky two athletic statues and two horses of marble, placed there by Sixtus V, ; afterwards, Pius \T. subordinated the two groups, reducing them to serve as accessories to T 2 74 Rome. a needle of red granite, once posted as sentinel before the Mausoleum of Augustus. These fine figures, and still finer coursers groups in TJie Snrround{}7gs. 275 which the Oulrites amused themselves by recognising their old patrons, Castor and Pollux these masterpieces attributed to Praxiteles and Phidias, chose the hill for pedestal, and renamed it. Unfortunately, they are cut in a porous marble which the damp blackens; placed too high, they only appear like a bare outline in the air ; in another way the obelisk planted between the two disperses the interest, and this conflict of precious works adorning the Piazza Monte Cavallo produces a discordant effect. Seen from the outside, the building is a fairly handsome barrack, soberly faced, with small architectural elegance. Ample staircases, an enormous court of cloistered appearance, the garden of peculiar arrangement such is the aspect of the Quirinal. The gardens of this great convent are turned into a royal residence, with their terraces, their statues, their fountains, their clipped avenues, their parterres .cut into arabesques, their architectural arbours, and their flaunting kiosk which Fuga erected to be a buffet, in which the holy father in the midst of the landscapes of Battoni and Orizonte offers sherbet and coffee to the grandees of this world. On certain days, the Quirinal, where grass grows and the spider weaves, sees the carriages and rich liveries of the prelates rolling up in front of its walls. This is when the palace transforms itself into an hotel for cardmals, and when, each evening, a motley populace of twenty nationalities, with eyes fixed on a large balcony, awaits the name of the master whom the conclave will give to themselves, to launch it on the echoes of the whole world. The Via di Porta Pia, which continues that of the Quirinal, will take us to the Chartreuse of Sta. Maria degli Angeli. Buonarotti was over eighty when he took it into his head to plant in the rotunda of the Thermae of Diocletian this church, which he had been entrusted to build by Pius IV. So, while he raised the floor of the temple twelve feet, he preserved the eight enormous monolithic columns of Egyptian granite which supported the entablature, and faced the bases with marble. In the centre of the cloister with its hundred pillars of travertine, four cypresses, tossed by time and grown into irregular forms, which, Michelangelo planted, disguise the edge of the well like a tomb : the distant lines of the low galleries against a blue sky give to these sombre giants colossal dimensions The square of the court makes a kitchen garden, in which smile some Bengal roses, but nothing inter- feres with the silent poetry of an enclosure consecrated to meditation. T 2 276 Rome. LA liARCACCIA AND THE STEPS OF LA TRINITA DEI MOiNTI. Let us regain the street of the Quattro Fontane, and pass Capole La Trinita del Monti. 277 Case, to go as far as our clmrch of the Trinita dei Monti, built on the Pincian in 149.; by Charles VIII. for the brethren of S. Francesco norsK WHERE rofssix dikd. de Paolo. It is a mediocre monument, but with a considerable appearance ; to keep a favourable idea of it, confine yourself for a 78 Rome. long- time to looking at the outside, especially from the Piazza di Spagna, at the top of which it crowns a magnificent staircase. On the Piazza di Spagna, in front of the College of the Propaganda, the nursery of missionaries for barbarous countries, rises the column of die Immacolata, which, since 1856, consecrates the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception. They made use for this purpose of a shaft of Carystian marble, exhumed in 1778 from the Piazza Campo Marzio. Everybody hat; ascended a hundred times, by its broad hollow with gentle steps, the slope lead- ing from the piazza to which the palace of the Spanish ambassa- dors has given a name, to the Villa Medici and the Pin- cian Gardens. In pro- portion as you rise, you see the facade of the Trinita dei Monti lessen ; it is cut in two by a little obelisk planted in front of the portico, where it tries to make itself big by the aid of a pedestal which is too long. On an angular pile by the steps of the church, two popes have displayed their arms ; above they have placed an enormous capital taken from some temple of the third century ; on this capital they have fastened a tombstone, and as no less has been done on the other side, this bit of bric-a-brac is an agreeable ornament to the space in which the Via Gregoriana and the Via Sistina come gut, separated by the house with tetrastyle porch where Poussin PERRON OF THE TRIXITA. The Pincian Gardens. 279 died, ten steps from the house of Salvator Rosa, and nearly frontina that of Claude of Lorraine. These three sanctuaries guard the approach of the terrace, which ends at our academy of paintinor and at the Pincian Gardens. This i)ark extends to the end of the hill, and descends on the Piazza del Popolo, which is so flaunting on the 2So Rome. occasion of the festival of the Madonna, when, entering- the city in gorgeous procession by the bridge of St. Angelo, the carriage of the sovereign pontiff, preceded by the cross-bearer on a caparisoned mule comes out of the Via di Ripetta on its way to Sta, Maria del Popolo. The Trinita dei Monti and the old convent of the Minimes are occupied by the nuns of the Sacre Coeur ; it is *a fine establishment with most extensive grounds. Nearly every morning I passed in front of the Trinita, on my way either to the Pincian for a view of the hills lighted up by the rising sun, or to the \Tlla Medici, at the approaches to which the artists find ready for them some damsels from the fields clad in rustic attire, the materials of local colouring for the use of the studios. There used often to plant herself a ravishing creature, that our students did their best to see with the eyes of Leonardo La Pascuccia, whose wide black eyes and waving hair I have seen on many a canvas. LA PASCUCCIA. IHE EMBLEMS OF JUSTICE (RAPIIAia'S SIANZK| CHAPTER XVIII. [:ET us ascend the Pincian Hill We will then enter the Villa Medici. Elevated on the hill of the gardens whence it dominates city and fields, the Villa, which you see from all sides, is masked by the two pavilions rising out above the trees, over a broad and clear facade. From the exterior side, which faces towards Rome, the building has a cold look ; windows of tolerable simplicity and very spacious, a very high doorway crowned by a balcony such is the unostentatious arrangement adopted in 1540 by Annibale Lippi when he erected the palace for the Cardinal Montepulciano. This soberness has been well conceived, especially if at the time they had the intention of making of the opposite side a gem of architecture enriched by a collection of bas-reliefs, the precious fragments of antique sculpture. This facade, with its portico sustained on splendid columns and watched by lions, is in vivid contrast with the other, of which the desiij^n has, without the sliiihtest proof, been attributed to Michelangelo. It is probable, for the rest, that the plan was modified when Cardinal Alessandro de Medici accpiired possession of it, and gave it a name. He amused himself by decorating it in the few periods of leisure which he was allowed under Cleuient VIII. from the negotia- tions with which he was clian/ed at the courts of various sovereigns, 2vS2 Rome. and among others at the court of the Bcarnais, Henry IV. On the death of Aldobrandini, the cardinal having been chosen pope on the ist of April, 1605, he took the name of Leo XL, and died only twenty-seven days after, leaving as many regrets as he had inspired hopes. The Cardinal de Medici commenced collections which under the Florentine sovereigns continued to enrich the villa on the Pincian : on the vase placed in front of the steps was once seen the Mercury of John of Bologna; a document recendy published informs us that in 167 1 the young Marquis of Seignelay admired in these gardens a Cleopatra, Ganymede, Marsyas, as well as Niobe with her fourteen PORTICO OF THE VILLA MEDICI. children. It was Cosmo III. who, towards the end of his interminable reign, despoiled the Roman villa for the benefit of his gallery of the Uffizi at Florence ; the deserted husband of Margaret of Orleans died an octogenarian in 1723. The most remarkable of the domestic apartments is the dining- room, adjoining a kitchen, whence issues that disturbing and too- familiar odour of such offices in lyceums and boarding-houses. This fine refectory is vaulted, and the arch has been divided into compart- ments, in which since 181 1 the portraits of French laureates have been [ilaced by their comrades; a brotherly idea, which too often suggests TJie Villa Medici. 28 melancholy reflections, for how manyare unknown among these laurelled heads! Independently of the bad taste that belongs to every period 2S4 Rome. f fashion, two things struck me how little common are passable por- traits, and how rare on these young brows is the luminous halo of youth. One of the most extraordinary is Hector Berlioz, with high tufts of hair over the head of a cock, strangled in a cravat half a foot high. In the features of F. Halcvy, nearly a child to look at, we have some trouble in recoQi^nisinor the amiable and sad- dened man, w'ho bore with visible resigna- tion the burden of his life. Ambrose Thomas (by Flandrin) and Francois Bazin are the models whom years have done least to alter; one of the masterpieces of the gallery is the profile of a musician painted by M. Henner. Among these like- nesses, the epic laureates of 1 8 1 2 and the romanticists of 1827 have, the one a sombre mien ct la Curtis, the others Byron ic expressions, which seem ridicu- lous to the more citizen-like realists of our own day. I may add that the estab- lishment possesses a library, which is treated by the majority of these gentlemen with respectful consideration. Rome IS the last city of our busy century in which abstinence from labour has kept its ancient dignity. Free from the thirst of amassing money, and from the desires of luxury, withdrawn by its indolent independence from the deterioration produced by manufactories. TIALE COPERTO, IN THE VILLA MEDICI. Inspiration from Rome. 28^ the Roman people, living in the open air in perfect freedom, have preserved their original beauty : they keep a proud air, imperious gestures, and the attitudes of sculpture. In no other country can you find such a collection of creatures worthy to furnish models in the highest style. Go a few furlongs away ; the slopes that mirror in the Tiber their ruins and domes, the Sabine and Alban Hills, will revive all the inspirations of Claude and Poussin. Their historic landscapes, formed by the masters of the world, have pre- served the balanced lines and grave aspects which, reminding us of far-off ages, make a way to the soul like some sounding harmony L.NDIUv Till-; POkTlCO. that majesty of nature which in the language of art is expressed by the word style. In a word, this city, the ancestress of our civiliza- tions, is the storehouse of the most numerous and the most perfect monuments of ancient and modern art alike. In later times the germs of the Renaissance, which had been developed in the neigh- bouring states, came and flourished in the capital of Martin Colonna, of Nicholas V., of Julius II., and of Leo X. ; so that for all branches of art Rome is the vastest studio and the most complete museum that exists. Assuredly it was here, and not elsewhere, that it was right to establish for sculptors, painters, and architects a centre of studies, a 2^0 Rome. home for observation, \vhere everything comes to take its just place and reach its own end. If it had no other advantages than that of isolating in a spot where horizons expand and even silence is eloquent, a number of young men who at home would be made heavy by the triple prose of interests, examples, and dangerous pleasures, the Academy here would still be an advantage. There is a ^race which must leave in the understanding^, the feelings, and consequently in the works, an ideal that is ineffaceable, in having lived for five years away from the commands of fashion and its purveyors, and having breathed the air with the marbles of Greece and the creations of Raphael and Michelangelo, who are there in their integrity ; in having contemplated the beautiful under the horizons of Rome, and having absorbed the aroma of all its majes- ties ; in having passed through the decisive phases of youth in the shade of the gardens where Armida is replaced by study, and where, as in the Elysium of the poets, you daily frequent, and almost hear speak, the great masters of the world by their own hearth. ON THE TERRACE OF THE MEDICI GARDENS. ^ Pffrr^ff ^ 1 m B^S ^ ^P ^^^^ n ^^^^^m S ra 1^ ^2l^ ^m ^^ fi i ^C 9^1^^^ M ^ g ''^F V Ix^^^ Mb #s J/v^ 1 lAi -^^1^ ^^^^if l^pv M fejC'N^'ff m 1 'VjT> HhI W ^^^ ^^2 ^^^ ^g^^ i ^ ^a ^ ^^ ^ 1 ^^ i 1 1 CHAPTER XIX. jN the times when the Emperor \'alerian was chastising the Christians at Rome, the pontifical see was filled by an old man who was a native of Athens, honoured under the name of St. Sixtus : he was put to death in 259, as his predecessor Stephen had been two years before. As he went to punishment, a young deacon followed close behind him, and cried to him with many tears, ' Will you go without your son ? Shall I not help you more in this last sacrifice ? ' ' My son,' replied the old man, ' thou shalt rejoin me in three days.' The deacon who thus invited martyrdom was called Laurentius. Sixtus II. intrusted to him the treasures of the church, and when he found himself being dragged to the praetorium, he bade him sell the sacred vessels and share the price of them among the poor. The bishop having been slain, the prefect enjoined on the deacon to hand these riches to the /Erarium, and Laurence havino^ befjo^ed for some hours in which he might bring them together, reappeared with a crowd of mendicants in his train. ' Behold,' he said, ' the treasures of the children of Christ ! ' Taking for a mockery these words which he could not rightly understand, the prefect commanded that the young Laurentius should be beaten with rods ; then he had him stretched all bleeding over a gridiron heated red-hot by live coals. His courage and gentleness appeared so superhuman, that many people were converted to the Christian faith, seeing this execution, which took place on the 1 oth of August, the fourth day after the death of St. Sixtus, as he had foretold. In the sixth century St. Laurence extra Muros, one of ihe jjatri- archal basilicas, was half buried ; Pope Pelagius had it disimjjrisoned; making a centre of the apse, at the foot of which rest the remains of the deacon, he doubled the extent of the church by erecting aisle facing aisle. Towards 12 16 Honorius HI. simplified the temple, 28S Rome. VIEW AT THE BACK OF THE CHOIR, SAN LORENZO. which had two levels, by raising the presbyterium, of which the Saf^ Lorenso. 189 foundation was to a lar^e extent filled up ; the altar since then has been at a still greater height above the sepulchral vault. Pius IX. ililPiri ifi I! ii; ir:lif#Mf- ' ifll wished to exhume the whole : havlnt^ c()ni|)let(nl the isolation of the church from the iiill, he diseuLTaj-ed the ei-ht lliited colunms with C3 ^5 V 2C)0 Rome. TRANSEPT AND CONFESSIONAL OF SAN LORENZO. Corinthian capitals of the Constantinian basilica, to which Pelagius The Pillars. 2Ql PCLl'lT OF THE GOSPEL, AT SAN LORENZO. had added two pillars crowned with trophies and figures, and resting 2 u 292 Rpjne. on bases adorned widi rosettes and crosses. It Is to Pope Ilonorius that we owe the fine mosaic which, on the arch of the vault, represents on one side St. Laurence and Pope Pelagius II. led before the Saviour by St. Peter, and on the other St. Paul between St. Stephen and St. Hippolytus, draped in white. The Christ is seated on the globe ; Bethlehem and Jerusalem, his cradle and his tomb, are drawn at each end of this important composition. The pulpits, which Innocent III. had decorated with panels of red porphyry and green serpentine, are heightened in eftect by settings of small mosaic. Rome possesses nothing in this kind which attains such charm of effect with so much simplicity. The choir having been freed by Pius IX. from the rubbish which supported it, they had ^ ^ stay it on a colonnade, which upholds a ceiling of modern taste and out of harmony with the style of the church ; this space isolates the tomb of St. Laurence, which )ou discern in shadow through a gilded grating. At the corners of the basilica they found doors walled up, which continued the aisles through the Catacombs. The basilica, one of the five cathedrals of the pontifical Roman bishopric, possesses in the centre of Its Presbyterium an antique and massive seat, which was decorated in 1254 w-ith two graceful torse columns, was edged with fine mosaics, and w^as set in a facing of marble, with porphyry coffer-work framed with gems. We cannot omit to mention the ornamentation of a monument, on which so many centuries have left their traces. In fact the sculptured debris of palaces or temples, entablatures preserved from the primitive basilica, are supported on twelve antique columns of violet marble with Corinthian capitals. The upper gallery forms a square enclosure, resting on twelve other small columns with Ionic capitals, also fluted, and composed of a greenish granite from Egypt, the rarest in the world. To close what concerns this church, let us not forget under Its vast porch forty frescoes of the thirteenth century, consecrated to the legends of St. Laurence, St. Hippolytus, and that other saint who perished nine months after the Saviour St. Stephen, the first martyr, and the second who prayed for his executioners. From the year 415, when the remains of Stephen were dug out from the field of Gamaliel, the Roman Deacon Laurence, and the Archdeacon of Jerusalem St. Irenceus gives him this title were gathered together under the altar of St. Laurence without the walls. The frescoes are extremely curious In point of movement and of costume, and for the The Frescoes. 293 usages which tliey reproduce ; but they have been repainted with a heaviness which lessens their worth. After taking a last glance at the heraldic lions at the foot of the two pilasters of the doorways, and seen from the piazza the walls, with deep open cornice, of that house 294 Rome. which, though so little striking without, is a magnificent temple within ; after looking at the buildings of the Franciscans with their low cloister and sombre campanile, at St. Laurence on his pillar, at the cypresses of the cemetery even then the Interest of the place is not exhausted. There Is a cloister which is very rarely visited. Its galleries have arches ^ fully vaulted, narrow and low ; their pillars, which are unlike one another, and are sometimes joined in pieces, adapt the gorge or cavetto which surmounts them to bevelled entablatures ; three- lobed niches orna- ment the upper story, restlngf on a frieze In a romantic taste of a very accentuated kind. Earlier than the wonderful cloisters of St. Paul and St. John Lateran, this, which shows the same principle of Art in Its beginnings, belongs to the eleventh cen- tury. After returning to the city by a long rectilinear street, In which hlQ;-h walls hide the gardens of the Esquiline from you, and when you have crossed the piazza and passed the church of Santa Maria Mag- glore, you observe at the corner of the Via Urbana a small church placed on a lower level of ground. St. Pudentlana Is announced by a square bell-tower of brick, of solid and firm look, although on Its four fronts it is opened by a triple row of three-lobed arches, sup- CONVENT OF ST. 1 UUKNTIANA. St. riidentinna. 1c\^ 95 ported by two columns. Each of these stories, adorned with small medallions of black marble, is finished by a cornice of round tiles, with modillions with projectmg denticules ; a double coping runs round the arches; a low roof surmounted by an iron cross crowns the whole, while tiny bits of vegetation mingle green veins with the tone of the brick. Such bell-towers are numerous at Rome ; their form, derived from the antique style, ennobles in them a certain indefinable look of poverty and dilapidation. The church is associated with the first patricians of Rome who professed Christianity ; you still distinguish under the crypt the ST. PRAS.SF.DA AND ST. PUDKNTfANA (' AI'ACOMB OI-' I'KISCILLA). foundations of a palace of which Pius I. made an oratory in the year 154 : this palace was that of a senatorial family, who are supposed under that pontiff to have given hosi)itality to St. Justin, as its ancestors had given to St. Peter. Let us not be afraid of admitting as authorities the Acts of the Apostles, the Episdcs of St. Paul, the Acts of St. Justin, the chronicles of Ku.sebius, the works of Anastasius and of St. Jerome, the Annals even of Paronius, and the P)()llandists, who have compelled all to enter in. The.se writers follow for more than a century the family of the senator Punicus Pudens, who, with hi.-? mother Priscilla, had welcomed and protected St. Peter ; the Acta have transmitted the 296 Rome, memory of the cliiklren of this patrician, Putlentius and Sabinella ; fmally, that of the third generation represented by two brothers, Timothy and Novatiis, and two girls, Prasseda, or Praxedes, and Pudentiana. Inscriptions confirm the witness of the sacred historians : the cemetery, underground, where, close to the Yiminal, beyond the Salarian gate, Punicus Pudens and his wife were buried, has kept the name of Priscilla ; St. Peter was repre- sented there in the third century between the two daughters of Sabinella ; in the eighth, Pascal I. dis- covered and brought to Rome the bodies of St. Prasseda and St. Pudentiana, the two hostesses of St. Justin : we still read in the catacombs of Priscilla the inscrip- tion of a Cornelia Pudentianeta, which attests the immense duration of this family burying-place. llie Constantinian mosaic, of great size, executed in the tribune of the choir at the back of the high altar, and composed in honour of the family of Punicus Pudens, is something more than a document or a curiosity ; it is a masterpiece of Christian antiquity. Giulio Romano must have loved this rare piece, which Poussin could never weary of contemplating and extolling. The com- position is simple and well arranged in its symmetry : in the centre is seated Christ, draped in a toga of gold ; to his right and left are placed St. Peter and St. Paul crowned, the one by St. Pudentiana, the other by nOOR OF ST. Pr'nENTIAN.\. The Cou^tnntinian Mosnic. 297 her sister Prasseda; around these principal figures are grouped Pudens and his descendants, Pudentius, Novatus, Timothy, and Sabinella. The e;^^ q draperies of the Saviour are well distributed ; the calm of the picture, the character and arrani^ement of the fiirures, are all alike remarkable- 298 Rome. It is the most ancient Christian picture that can be studied at Rome from the point of view of art. In following to the bottom the Via Urbana which Urban VIII. had laid out, but which under the kings, as Livy tells us, was already called cliviis Urbi/is, you fall into the quarter of the Suburra, which fiofures so often in the Roman annals. Let us turn our dicjression to advantage by going to the entrance of the Forum, in front of the choirs of St. Cosmus and St. Damianus, to look at mosaics nearly as important as those of St. Pudentiana, and which ouorht to find a place here. The church of St. Cosmus has enclosing it the colonnades and the banctuaryof an ancient temple. You wall read everywhere that this temple was conse- crated to Romulus and his brother ; the truth is, that nobody knows to whom it was dedi- cated, and that prob- ably from 526 to 530, when Felix IV. erec- ted this little church, and gave it the pagan cella for vestibule, contemporaries knew no more than w'e do. This rotunda possesses an antique door of bronze, adapted to its primitive marbles. Placed upright on the summit of the arch, between St. Damianus and St. Cosmus, who are presented by St. Peter and St. Paul, the figure of the Saviour, blessing with his right hand, and with his left holding the Gospels, and clothed under an ample white mantle, with CIU'RCH OF ST. COSMUS AND ST. nAAIIANUS. Church of St. Cosjjms. 299 a purple dalmatic, this figure with its nimbus possesses an incon- testable majesty. St. Cosmus bears one of those crowns of flowers which covered the bread of oblation offered by the faithful a usa^e perpetuated down to our own time. Distributed with great dignity, the draperies are well suited to the attitudes and forms ; it is still somewhat antique art, but under another law. These mosaics can only be compared to those of St. Pudentiana, and to those which we shall soon see at Santa Maria Maggiore. Let us not forget that nine centuries afterwards, when he designed for the tapestries of Leo X. the cartoons of which seven originals are at Hampton Court, Raphael did not disdain for figure of the Saviour to copy, or almost copy, the Christ of St. Cosmus and St. Damlanus. Above the old theatre of Florus, and the piazza where the house of Propertius was, which Ovid and Tibullus used to visit, a few steps from the house of the Pudentii, and probably in their ground, w^ere the Thermae of Novatus, brother of Prasseda. Plus L founded an oratory there, which Pascal L, in the eight century, erected into a church. Innocent II L ceded this temple to the monks of Vallom- brosa, which is still very interesting, though it was einhcllisliLd by St. Charles Borromeo, cardinal of St. Prasseda. So far as restoration goes, saints are undoubtedly not so bold of hand as the other princes ; for St. Prasseda has preserved a venerable and attractive air. Aisles divided by sixteen columns of granite, an altar-canopy supported on pillars of porphyry ; a choir with two flights of steps of enormous blocks of rosso ailtico, the most valuable of stones, since it is no longer to be found such are the materials which throw back into antiquity a Carlovingian temple all decked out with fragments of the pagan era. The great arch and the Triljune have mosaics also belonging to the ninth century, and curious from various points of view. While at St. Pudentiana the two sisters are crowning the apostles, here they are presented to Christ by the guests of the family, St. Peter and St. Paul. This mosaic has a strange style about it ; the taste and execution of it are of a wildness which pro\ es that centuries elapsed b(;tween the composition of the almost classic work of St. Pudentiana and that of St. Prasseda. Enriched with mosaics, mostly widi a golden ground, curious in arrangement, adorned with exquisite splendour, this chai)el is a perfect jewel-casket ; the thirteenth century, completing it, was content to give it -a certain fineness or delicacy which enhances the ;oo Rome. oriental character of the whole. On three sides the base of the wall DOOR OF THE COLONNA CHAPEL, AT ST. PRASSEDA. is faced with marbles of an amber shade ; at the corners are raised on antique stylobates four granite pillars with gilded Corinthian Chapel of St. Prasseda. 3 c i capitals, and pedestals of four angels in mosaic, whose heads touch the top of the vault, which is occupied by a figure of Christ. The space is filled by several of the blessed, singularly apparelled ; above the door are represented Sabinella, and St. Prasseda, St. Pudentiaiia, 102 Rome. and St. Bridget ; on the altar, between two columns of oriental alabaster, they have execute.! in mosaic a very incongruous Madonna. With its crushed domes, its seventeenth and eighteenth century facades, its double porticos vaguely degenerate from St. Peter's, the patriarchal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore would only announce a modern monument, if our countryman, Gregory XL, had not pre- INTERIOR OF ST. PRASSEUA. sented it wath a great bell-tower of four stories, with a conical roof, which is the highest in Rome : that is not saying much. You see the tower from the two ends of the very long street which this church interrupts and divides, -the street which from Santa Croce to the Trinita dei Monti, touches the Esquiline, Viminal, and Pincian, going through populous regions and through deserts. The " Crozviiiiig of tJic Virgin." 303 Santa Maria Maggiore is a great name : Peter the X'enerable says that the basihca of Lateran apart, that of Liberius is the first (nmjof digiiitntc) of the churches of Rome and of the world. On the large hemicycle which goes round the Presbyterium, behind the master-altar, the Franciscan monk, Turrita or Torrita, with the suavity p;.culiar to a disciple of the Sienese school at the dawn of the prosperities of that republic, painted in an enormous medallion in a ground of starred blue, the '' Crowning of the X'irgin." The di\ine throne, a seat with two places, occupies the centre of this composition, in which the Christ is of a triumphant beauty. The remainder of the vault is equipped with saints on a gold ground, who are divided from the Virgin by two groups of angels, having above them and at the sides a sort of frame of intertwined branches, enamelled with flowers and animated by birds : nothing is richer or tenderer to the eye than the fair harmony of this decoration. OFF TO THE CAK NIVAL. CHAPTER XX. :T is on Shrove Tuesday that the diversions of a populace fallen into childhood, and collected together in a single street, reach the very frenzy of their gaiety. An hour before the Ave Maria, you ought to go through the Corso, from the Piazza del Popolo to the Piombino Palace, at the risk of being torn by Maenads. I do not know how the women with bouquets for sale succeed in moving between the close lines of carriages, or the dealers in confetti coming with fresh supplies for the trays which hang on the edges of the cars. The Students of the Academy of France had organised a brake, hung with white, with escutcheons at the corners and gilded wheels : the enormous box was placed, like a nest, in a bed of leaves ; the four horses had garlands of flowers for reins and harness. Clad in white, with African burnouses or flowered hoods on their heads, our young artists hurled such a profusion of bouquets, that they seemed to grow under their fingers. In the centre of the car, incense smoked in an antique tripod ; at the back, behind a griffin, was a graceful little model, whom our gentlemen had daubed over into a negro. The Apollo of the Egyptians, Orus, carried a thyrsus on the front of the equipage. The Carnival. 305 Four times while the carnival lasts, they end the day by a sf ec- tacle that it would seem impossible to improvise with a people gone mad with the glory of never obeying. The preparations are as curious as O U <: i: the representation itself. Towards half-past five, the soldiers have made the carriages i)ass round by the adjacent streets ; there only remain foot-[)assengers on the Corso a moving mosaic of hats and X ;o6 Rome. bonnets. Then the carabiniers, in files two broad, invading the middle of the street, divide the compact crowd in two ; they heave it aside, liliP I J'l! 11 AWAITING THE ILLUMINATIONS. BY A. DE NEUVILLE. so to say, on to the causeways, as snow is swept back on mountain roads. The centre is nearly empty, but unequally ; the edge straggles over its border ; so hardly is this first operation complete, before a Clearing the Streets. 307 squadron of cavalry rushes forward at full crallop to finish the clearinc of the street. After this double expedition the road is made, and the X 2 5o8 Rome. field swept clean. Almost immediately, from the Piazza del Popolo, where they are held back by cables that they not unfrequently break The Barbary Steeds. 309 throucrh, there are let loose on the Corso six Barbary steeds, wild and without any gear, without riders, or bits, or bridles, free as in the desert. The mane plaited, with glowing eye and foaming mouth, they fly down this long narrow avenue, in which even the houses seem full of life and passion ; they finish this straight course in the twinkling of an eye, terrified at the loud cries and shouts of the crowd at their side, and of the great quantity of people up at the windows. The swiftest are applauded and goaded on by an uproar that makes them rear, while the last are escorted by hissings and hootings. The cavalcade clears the space like some dark flash ; behind it the throng resume possession of the street, which once more becomes choked up. At the outlet of the Piazza of X'enice the barber L come rushing to the foot of the balcony where the Senator sits, who hands to the winner the prize of the race, as well as a great standard of precious stuff" from ten to twelve metres long. These are of woven silk and gold thread, of extreme magnificence, because the Israelites of Rome, bound ever since the Middle Ages to furnish this standard by way of feudal service, make it a point of honour to be generous. As soon as the horses Iiave vanished, madness resumes its course, until the hour when authority, by a monosyllable uttered by the cannon of St. Angelo suddenly restores the delirious city to its right mind. The confetti cease to rain down ; the cries all stop ; you see on the Corso only tranquil citizens making their way home. The last evening of the carnival, the barber i gone and the night closed in, the carriages return to the Corso, where the masquerading pedestrians throng more thickly than ever. Small candles have been distributed, and around cars illuminated with torches, tapers, fire- works, every one holds up in the air his lighted nioecoliiio. In the stands, balconies, windows, up to the roofs and inside the rooms, the moceoli are sparkling everywhere. To the prolonged shouts of the crowd have succeeded short and stifled laughs, litde panting, breath- less cries slight and chirping noises of a most singular effect: a struggle has begun, which produces an indescribable animation, every- body trying to blow out the candle of his neighbour, and to keep his own alight not only in the street, but also in all the houses. If a man is too tall, or if he has got his moccoletlo at the end of a long pole, they mount on his shoulders, or hang on to his arms, they [)ursue him with other poles, armed with bunches in the shape of extinguishers. Un the cars, whose sides are scaled, the lights flicker and vacillate ,io Rome. twenty times extinguished and twenty times rekindled. From the street you will see through the open windows of palaces, the lights TJie German Festival. y\\ moving rapidly on the ceilings, and madmen jumping about in continu- ation indoors of the exhilarating drama of the Corso; universal move- ment, and of a contagious fascination ! I have seen princes, ambas- sadors, even prelates, battling in real delirium, and the noble beauties of Rome lost in the war of the streets, sacrifice, in order to extin- guish tapers and resinous torches, their embroidered handkerchiefs, Indian shawls, and muffs of the finest furs. Rome has other festivals like the carnival, but of German impor- tation, and celebrates the ist of May, a day of joy across the Rhine, where they still solemnise the new season. The masquerade which we are going to see was created by the artists of the German club, organised at the beginning of this century, when the Tedeschi bor- rowed from the French the custom of oroinQf forth to receive at the Ponte Molle the new recruits on their arrival at Rome. The character of the fetes recalls the Middle Ages, like every burlesque exhibition of pagan rites : it has its dignitaries, its militia, its corporations of musicians, of high priests, of cooks, of scullions, of poets, of masters of the ceremonies, and of Yetturini, who must all accept the office to which they are appointed, and dress themselves up in grotesque costumes. At daybreak the whole band goes out by the Porta Maggiore, and proceeds as far as the Tcrro de' Schiavi, a general meeting-place, whence the procession makes its way for the grottos of Cervara, seven miles from Rome, near Teverone. At the moment of departure, on a car festooned with garlands and drawn by four great oxen, whose ample horns have been gilded, appears the President, in the midst of his court of chamberlains, of madmen, and poets : he passes his countrymen in review, makes them a solemn and grotesque discourse. As at the Feast of Unreason, asses furnish a heroic mount to the heroes of the masquerade, they are harnessed in toys from Nuremberg ; their riders are clad in garments which make them look like good-men of the woods. The tumult of crowds at last awakens the desire of sil(Mice and repose. The carnival prepares you by striking contrast lor the spectacles of the Villa Albani Castelbarco. The porticoes and their statues, the verdant terraces, the masses of tropical trees rising in clumps out of a foreground of ll'nvered beds, stand out with a firm harmony against the rosy distance and the azure of the Sabine hills. The silvery snows in the sky make a wonderful frame for the lemon- trees, the pine, the laurel of the poets, the cypress, and the palms of the desert, bringing to the city of the apostles a reminiscence of Jordan. 312 Rome. The constructions of the villa, bedizened in the Greek manner of the last century, were designed with a view to a museum of antiqui- ties, and made worthy of a family, originally from Epirus, who, llv' ^'"'''''!iifw ill ;'". i i