Fountains of Papal Rome/Colonna

 THE fountain of the Piazza Colonaa might be the "Fountain of Youth," for the freshness of its marbles makes it seem to date from yesterday, whereas it is in reality one of the oldest fountains of modern Rome. It was constructed three hundred and twenty-five years ago, and belongs to that period when the Acqua Vergine (Trevi Water) was the only water with which to feed a fountain. As the Acqua Vergine has not sufficient head to rise to any great height, and as its supply is in continuous and wide-spread use for domestic purposes, the designs for the fountains which it furnishes have to be low, and the sculptor or architect must rely for his effect not upon any lavish supply of water but upon the beauty of his materials and his own imagination. The fountains of Giacomo della Porta show the practical difficulties with which he had to contend, and the felicity of his genius in overcoming the limitation. His fountain of the " Tartarughe " is a work of art, and as such can be admired without the aid of the water. The two side fountains in the Piazza Navona, also his creations, were quite lovely before Bernini decorated one and artists of the nineteenth century the other with fantastic sculpture- His fountain of the Piazza Colonna has been less tampered with and, standing in full sunlight or darkened by the vast shadow of the Antonine Column, it remains, in its quiet beauty, a masterpiece among the Roman fountains. It is a graceful, hectagonal receptacle, half basin, half drinking trough, composed of different kinds of Porta Santamarble. These are joined together with straps of Carrara ornamented by lions' heads.^[1] Its waters come toit from a vase of antique shape standing in the centre. From the shallow bowl of this central vase the water gushes upward to fall over the rim in a soft, unbroken, silvery stream, and through this vestal's veil the Carrara, to which the waters have given a wonderful surface, gleams in unsullied freshness and beauty. Two tiny jets, set midway on either side between the ends of the fountain and the vase in the centre, bring an additional volume and add to the animation of the pool. The vase in the centre is represented in an old engraving by Falda as being much lower than the present one and carved in crowded leaflike convolutions, like the vase of the Scossa Cavalli fountain.

By 1829 this bit of old travertine sculpture had become so misshapen that the artist Stocchi, by order Leo XII, replaced it by the present Carrara vase, adding at that time to either end of the trough the small groups of shells and dolphins. These are such dainty bits of fancy, and so frankly an afterthought, that in their first freshness at least they could not have marred the beauty of the original conception. Rather must they have enhanced it, as the white doves which are perched upon its rim make the charm of the "Pliny’s Vase." Giacomo Giacomo della Porta is the first fountain builder of modern Rome, and the fountains which he did for Gregory XIII all constructed for Trevi Water are still among the loveliest the city holds. The passion for fountain building began in the second half of the Cinque Cento. Julius III rediscovered the immense aesthetic value of water, the Nymphaeum in his Villa Giulia being, in fact, the apotheosis of the Acqua Vergine, Pius V's enlarged fountain of Trevi was a recognition of the importance of water to the city's welfare. This Pope and his predecessor, Pius IV, as well as his successor, Gregory XIII, all occupied themselves seriously with the restoration, improvement, and upkeep of the Virgo Aqueduct. The return to the water question is the one healthy and hopeful sign in the city's life during those years which lay between the death of old Paul III and the accession of Sextus V. Michelangelo died within this period and his great spirit was not more surely departed than was the age of art and learning in which he had moved as king. That outrage to civilization known as the "last sack of Rome" had occurred in 1627, under Clement VII, and Rome, in the person of her pontiff and in that of every citizen, had suffered insult, spoliation, and dishonor.

The devotion of the Romans to Clement's successor (the Farnese pontiff, Paul III) was in great part due to their recognition of the fact that his pontificate represented a sustained and gallant attempt to restore to his people their lost—prestige that figura so dear to the Roman heart. With the death of the old patrician the deplorable condition of the city once more asserted itself and men realized more keenly than ever the permanent devastation wrought by the sack. Posterity gains some faint idea of its horrors from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. It is indebted to him for the dramatic description of the death of the Constable de Bourbon, killed by a chance shot from the ramparts when, in the dense fog which enveloped the beleaguered city, he was planting the scaling ladders against the walls. Four days earlier, and during the march on Rome, the other commander of the besieging army, the veteran George Freundsberg, had died of a stroke of apoplexy brought on by the mutinous conduct of his troops; so that, without leaders, forty thousand of the worst soldiery of Europe were turned loose within the city walls—turned loose to recoup themselves for their long arrears of wages out of everything which the taste, learning, and moral sense of civilized man has always held most precious. History records that the Spanish were the most cold-blooded, the Germans the most bestial, and the Italians the most inventive in forms of villainy. The week of unspeakable atrocities, wanton destruction, and wholesale pillage came to an end; but when it did, that marvellous treasure-house of civilization—Rome of the Renaissance—had perished, and the place thereof was to know her no more. It was no wonder that, during the decade which followed, Rome—what was left of her—seemed hardly to breathe. When, during the pontificate of Paul III she began to revive, it was plain to all men that she was not, and could never be, the same. Life came back to her at last, not through aesthetic but through ethical channels.

Thenceforward the popes, whether they wished it or not, were to be serious men.* As the Reformation spread through England, the Low Countries, France and Germany, the papacy set its house in order and prepared to fight, not for its temporal supremacy, as in the mediaeval struggle with the Emperors, but for its spiritual authority. It was at this point that there came to it said a new force, a force -whose influence has never yet been accurately measured. In 1689, just before the dose of Luther's life, Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus. This was in the time of Paul III. Four pontificates later, under Pius IV, the Jesuits, as Calvin was the first to call them, furnished the sensational element in the second sitting of the Council of Trent; and in 1672, when Ugo Boncompagni became Pope, under the title of Gregory XIII, the order made it appearance on the world's stage as the recognized director of the church militant. The Jesuits were the keepers of this Pope's conscience, and the history of his pontificate is the first chapter in the history of Jesuit rule. For them the Pope erected the present building of the Collegio Romano, founded in Loyola's time; for them he founded the German and English colleges at Rome, and, according to Ranke, "probably there was not a single Jesuit school in the world which had not to boast in one way or another of his bounty." The chief architects of the time were put at their disposal. Vignola designed and built for them the vast Church of "the Gesii"; and as he died while the work was in progress, his distinguished pupil, Giacomo della Porta, turned from the making of beautiful fountains and completed the cupola and facade. The latter also built the high altar in that church, and in its construction showed once more that love of rare marbles which is so distinctive a feature in the Colonna and other fountains of his creation.

Gregory XIII had begun life as a Bolognese lawyer. He had been called to Rome by Paul III the very year Loyola founded the Society of Jesus. He had gone to Spain as Papal legate under Paul IV, had been created cardinal by Pius IV, and at the age of seventy was made Pope. His life had peculiarly fitted him to appreciate Jesuit ideals. His belief in educational institutions, his keen interest in geography and the remote corners of the earth, the correctness of his private life after his elevation, his previous worldliness, and his secular training, all combined to make him the Jesuit Pope. The Roman Church remembers him as the builder of the Gregorian Chapel in St Peter's, the reformer of the calendar, the reorganizer of a great body of ecclesiastical law, and the patron of the Order of the Jesuits. To Protestants he remains the Pope who sang "Te Deums" for "the St Bartholomew."

The pontificate of Gregory XIII was a deplorable one for the Holy See and for the Romans. Conditions of living sank to a very low level. Banditti terrorized the States of the Church and could not be controlled even in Rome. The great families whose estates Gregory had confiscated to pay for his architectural and ecclesiastical extravagances were in open revolt, and the treasury was empty. Venice had been estranged, and England and the Netherlands were forever lost. Gregory XIIFs successor, Sixtus V, fell heir to this condition of misrule and disaster. No one can be surprised at the grim irony of the new pontiff in ordering masses to be said for the soul of Gregory XIII I

Looking at the tranquil loveliness of the Colonna fountain so white and shining in the sunlight it is difficult to picture it as a part of the turbulent life of the period in which it was erected. Yet many a time its waters must have restored consciousness, stanched wounds, stifled cries for mercy or succor, and washed away the stains of blood. It has always been a Pilgrims 'Fountain. Long before Sextus V with his passion for converting the "high places" of Paganism into Christian monuments had restored the Antonine column and placed upon it the statue of St. Paul long before that time the ascent of the column had been a part of the Roman pilgrims' itinerary. In the Middle Ages the column had become the property of the monks of San Silvestro, who leased it to the highest bidder. As Rome numbered her pilgrims by the thousands in any year, and by the tens of thousands during the years of the Papal Jubilee, a goodly profit was derived from the fees paid by the pilgrims to the custodian of the column, and the monks could therefore always count upon making an advantageous lease. Gregory XIII, in erecting this fountain, must have thought primarily of the comfort and interest of the pilgrims. As the traveller of to-day remembers the fountain of Trevi, so the pilgrim of the sixteenth century remembered the fountain by the side of the Column of St. Paul—the fountain of the Piazza Colonna. Its beauty delighted the eyes of footsore men from far-off and still barbarous countries; while the crystalline waters which quenched their thirst and washed away the stains of travel would have had for these Christians from the North a symbolic significance undreamed of by the Romans. The vision of this shining fountain has been carried back to many distant monasteries and remote firesides throughout the Christian world. Its situation in the Piazza Colonna, which is but a widening of the Corso, has kept it in the main current of Roman life. The people use it and cherish it; Falda has engraved it; and, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XII embellished it with its dainty shells and dolphins, as a father might twine flowers in the hair of some beautiful child.