HOW ROME LOOKED THREE CENTURIES AGO.[93]

HOW ROME LOOKED THREE CENTURIES AGO.[93]

Let us suppose a company of travellers through Italy—strangers from foreign climes, England, Germany, and France—reaching Rome at the period of the accession of Sixtus V. to the throne of St. Peter. Approaching the Eternal City by the road from the north, they find themselves before the Porta del Popolo.

Let us go in with them, and through their eyes see the Rome of that day.

On entering the gates, they pass into an open place of irregular shape. A large convent occupies nearly the entire eastern side, which, with the graceful campanile, or bell-tower, of Santa Maria del Popolo, and the high houses with wide portals between the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babuino, are the only edifices visible. The obelisk is not yet placed there by Sixtus V., and the two little churches with their heavy cupolas, so well known to the modern tourist, and the other buildings now seen there—the work of Pius VII. and the architect Valadier—did not then exist. The Piazza del Popolo was then less symmetrical, but more picturesque. Wayfarers on horseback and on foot pass to and fro; muleteers arrive and depart, driving before them lines of mules and beasts of burden. In the centre of the place women are washing at a circular basin. Idlers follow and gaze at the strangers while they make their declaration to the bargel, or public authority, and submit their effects to the examination of the custom officials. These preliminaries through, our travellers may pass into the city by a street leading around the base of the Pincian Hill, by another going toward the Tiber, both of which have long ceased to exist, or by the well-known Corso. Some find their way to the then celebrated and already venerable hostelry,

THE BEAR,

widely known and greatly in vogue ever since the reign of Sixtus IV. Its peculiar octagon pillars fix the period of its construction. Strange to relate, this patriarch of hotels, which has seen four centuries and twenty generations of travellers pass over its head and through its halls, has continued in existence, and is still open as a tavern in Rome to this day. True, its guests are now no longer, as they were in the sixteenth century, such personages of distinction as foreign prelates, noted scholars, philosophers like Montaigne, and, soon afterward, the earliest known tourists. Its inmates and frequenters of the nineteenth century are now country traders, cattle dealers, and wagoners.

Others of our travellers who intend to make a longer stay in Rome seek out the houses in the neighborhood of the Pantheon or the Minerva, nearly all of which are let out to strangers in rooms or suites. These apartments are luxuriously fitted up and ornamented with the then famous Cordova leather hangings, and richly sculptured and gilded furniture. Everything is brilliant to the eye, but the nineteenth century tourist would have found fault with the lack of cleanliness and the stinted supply of fresh linen.

With yet others of these travellers, let us enter

THE CORSO,

the Via Lata of the ancient Romans. There is no sign of business on it at this early day. But few of the aristocracy have as yet transferred their residences here, but it already wears an air of life and animation, and is well filled at the hours of the promenade.

We pass along between vineyards and vegetable gardens. A single large edifice just completed strikes the stranger's attention. It is the magnificent Ruspoli palace, built by Rucellai, the Florentine banker, upon the designs of his countryman Ammanati.

Now we reach the Via Condotti, to-day well-known to every American who ever saw Rome. Let us turn into it to the left, and traverse it to the Piazza della Trinita (now Piazza di Spagna), whence we may scale the hill above and obtain a commanding view of the entire city.

In doing this, we pass through the then worst quarter of Rome, physically and morally, for the triangle formed by the Corso, the Via Condotti, and the Babuino was at once of the most evil repute and the most unhealthy in all Rome. In this quarter were sure to break out all the epidemics which at that period occasionally decimated the population of Rome. Seeking to mount

THE PINCIAN HILL,

the traveller of that day might have looked in vain for the broad flight of easy marble steps we now see there, and he ascended by a steep and narrow staircase. On reaching the summit, he found himself on the collis hortulorum of the Romans, and saw it still covered with vineyards and tilled fields, and the comparatively modern innovation of the garden of the Villa Medici. The elegant world of Rome in 1585 had to content themselves with taking their promenade and their enjoyment of the evening air about the Porta del Popolo, and knew naught of the charming promenade, the delightful walks, the purer breeze, and the beautiful view which later generations enjoy on the hill above it.

The great painters of the succeeding age who came to Rome, the Carracci, the Domenichinos, the Guidos, and the Salvator Rosas, were the first to discover the attractions of the Pincian Hill, and, braving custom, lack of accommodation, the bad neighborhood, and the unhealthy contiguity of the quarter below, were the first to establish themselves upon it. This was the foundation of the modern Pincian settlement.

Some years ago, the writer of this article occupied apartments in the first house to the right on reaching the summit of the Pincian steps. The tradition of the house ran to the effect that these rooms had been occupied by Salvator Rosa; and if, as they say, he selected them for the sake of their view of the setting sun, he chose well, for all the sunsets of Rome may there be seen to the best advantage. As an American, however, views of the setting sun in Italy were not specially attractive to us, and we always regretted for Salvator Rosa's sake that he had never seen a transatlantic sunset, compared with which those at Naples and Rome are tame spectacles. The traditional "beauty of an Italian sunset" is one of the many English provincialisms we have adopted and believed in along with numerous other errors embalmed in the literature of England. But we forget that we are standing on the Pincian in 1585. All is silent and deserted around us, and Rome is spread out at our feet.

To the left are the salient points, the seven hills—for the Pincian was not one of them—the towers of the Capitol, the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars in the Farnese gardens on the Palatine, the belfry of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline, the Quirinal, as yet without the imposing mass of the pontifical palace. The Rospigliosi palace was not yet built, but the villa of Cardinal Sforza is seen, the same afterward known as the Barberini palace. We turn our eyes upon the lower city—inhabited Rome—and with difficulty make out but three or four cupolas. On the other hand, we see a perfect forest of towers on every side, some of them of prodigious size. On the left bank of the Tiber, many of these towers have of late years disappeared, but the Trastevere, as might be expected, is still full of them—so full, indeed, that a distant view of that quarter presents the appearance of a comb turned teeth upward. At that period, these towers were the universal appendage of an aristocratic dwelling. San Gemiguiano near Sienna is the only city in all Italy which has preserved them to this day.

As our stranger of three hundred years ago looks over Rome and listens to the confused noises which meet his ear, he is struck with the rarity of the sound of bells and with the small number of churches discernible. The great Catholic reaction consequent on the Reformation had for fifty years moved souls, but had not yet begun to move the stones. It is the following era which is to imprint upon Rome the architectural marks of the church triumphant. Later in the day, when our strangers shall have descended into the city and entered the churches, they will be struck with the barrenness of their interiors, and with the absence of paintings. They are probably ignorant of the fact that in Italy, during the middle ages, there was but one altar in a church, that there alone Mass was celebrated, that the mosaics and frescoes came in with architectural innovation, and that only toward the end of the sixteenth century were altars and oil-paintings multiplied with the side chapels.

And yet this comparative quiet of the city was animation itself, compared with the sights and sounds discernible from the same point at the period when the popes returned to Rome from Avignon.

ROME IN 1400.

The residence of the Cæsars was covered with fields, vineyard, and pasture. The Pantheon, the Coliseum, some ruins, and detached columns alone arose over the surrounding waste as witnesses of former grandeur.

It was at this period that the Forum received the name of "The Cow Pasture" (Campo Vaccino). A remnant of life yet remained in the plain extending between the Tiber, the Pincian Hill, and the Capitoline, but the total population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls, the great majority of them huddled together and crowded in hovels clustered under the shadow of the baronial and aristocratic strongholds. High battlemented towers filled the city. Of the scores in the Trastevere, that of the Auguilara family exists to this day. On the Tiberine island arose the Frangipani towers, on the left bank those of the Orsini, from the Porta del Popolo to the Quirinal those of the Colonna, while the towers of the Mellini and the Sanguigni may still be seen on the site of the stadium of Domitian.

Of all the seven hills of Rome, one only had not fallen into the hands of the barons. The Capitoline was still held by the people. But commerce, industry, and the arts had all disappeared. Rome had long been cut off from connection with the active world, and when the work of material revival and rebuilding began, not only architects and sculptors, but stone masons and carpenters had to be brought in from Tuscany and Umbria.

AN ARCHITECTURAL RETROSPECT.

Under the pontificates of Sixtus IV. and his two successors, Pintelli, a pupil of Brunellesco, ornamented Rome with such monuments as San Pietro in Montorio, the façade of St. Peter, and the Sistine Chapel. He brought to his work the boldness and taste of his master, who had made profound study of the monuments of ancient Rome.

This was the period of the first renaissance, with its charms and imperfections, at once timid and capricious, imitating the models of antiquity in their details, but utterly mistaking the proportions which are the essential, while succeeding brilliantly in the accessories and ornaments borrowed from the ancients and used in profusion with some endeavor to adapt them to the ideas and needs of the period. The fundamental principle of architecture, which requires that the exterior should express or respond to the use for which the interior is destined, was unknown to Pintelli.

To break the monotony of the lines, the façade of any given building was, as it were, framed, decoration was freely used, and the object was to please the eye, no matter by what means. At that day, the architect was also the painter, and the majority of artists were both. The first renaissance obtained its apogee toward the year 1500. In the nature of things it had then outlived its day, and a change became indispensable at the risk of degradation.

Fortunately Bramante was ready to answer the call. He was from Umbria, and Raphael was his nephew. He had studied in the north of Italy, where, amid plains devoid of stone, the architect was forced to use brick. Hence the novelty of combination introduced by him in Rome, whose inexhaustible stone quarries were such ancient monuments as the Coliseum. It is from the absence of heavy building-stone and the contrast of the German taste of the Longobards with the Byzantine style of Ravenna that the Lombard style is begotten. It brought with it precisely what the renaissance most needed, namely, its exquisite sentiment of proportions, and it forms the transition between the two schools of the renaissance, the latter of which formed the golden era of architecture in Italy.

Its reign in Rome has left indelible traces. Its productions—and among them are the court of St. Damas, the Belvedere, the galleries of the Vatican, the Giraud palace—were the pride of the age. They taught the comprehension of proportions, the calculation of perspective, the culture of harmony of detail and ensemble, reformed false taste, and created an epoch in profane architecture. With increase of public security, even the Roman barons began to understand that the greatest beauty of the architectural art might be found elsewhere than in a high tower or a battlemented block-house. Even the mezzo-ceto, or middle class, began to contract a taste for something beyond the absolutely necessary, and sought to adorn even their modest habitations. A private dwelling-house built at this period and exclusively bramantesque may still be seen in Rome on the strada papale, opposite the Governo Vecchio. It yet bears the date of its construction (1500) and the name of its builder.

After the death of Bramante appeared Raphael, Michael Angelo, Giulio Romano, and Balthasar Peruzzi, who, prodigal of their treasures of genius, created a golden age.

Romano's Villa Madama became the type of the country-seat; Peruzzi's Farnesina, that of the modern palace. Raphael, more as painter than as architect, composed the designs of the palace Vidoni. It was the great epoch of the culture of simplicity in grandeur, of disdain for the small and the superfluous, of faithful and noble expression of the idea conceived.

The models of antiquity were still followed, but they were transformed. The architect translated modern conceptions into the sonorous but dead and strange language of the old Romans. In interior ornamentation, however, the artist could give free rein to his inspirations, and throw off the trammels of the severe rules scrupulously followed as to the façade and the general composition of the design. Alas! it was here they planted the germs of degeneration and decay. Public taste—never a safe guide—seized upon and clung to these prodigalities of an exuberant and fantastic imagination supposed to be inexhaustible. At Florence, in his work on the chapel of the Medicis, Michael Angelo was the first to enter this flowery but treacherous path.

We see and admire these niches, windows, and ornaments, charming indeed to the eye, but which have no raison d'être. It was at a later period, under the pontificate of Paul III., that the painter of the "Last Judgment" and the sculptor of "Moses" revealed himself at Rome, as an architect stamped his work on the Farnese palace, and astonished the world by reconstructing St. Peter's. Soon this style gained the upper hand. Simplicity yielded to riches; logic to caprice; unrestricted liberty succeeded the voluntary curb which the great masters of the epoch had imposed upon themselves. Presently came pauses. Halts were made. As in all human affairs, action and reaction succeeded. Not so much in details as in ensemble, Vignoli in Rome, Palladio at Vicenza, and to a certain degree Scamazzi in Venice, brought back architecture to the sobriety of the commencement of the century.

But the death of Michael Angelo appeared to have completely demoralized the architects who survived. For thirty years he had reigned supreme. In him alone had the popes confidence; and upon architects employed by them, they imposed the obligation of following him. Piero Ligorio, architect of St. Peter, was dismissed because he manifested an intention to put aside Michael Angelo's plans. In thus officially guarding the manes of the dead master, they apparently hoped to transfer his genius to those who succeeded him. But it was a sad and fatal mistake.

The amount of building effected in Rome during the last third of the sixteenth century has never, probably, been exceeded. In examining the productions of that epoch, the struggle between the servile imitators of Buonarotti and the men of progress, desirous, but through lack of originality incapable, of emancipating themselves, is readily discerned. But let us leave this retrospect, descend the steps of the Pincian Hill, and, traversing the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Condotti, enter

THE CORSO AGAIN,

at the points where to-day's tourist sees the Via della Fontanella, by which he goes toward the bridge of St. Angelo, on his way to St. Peter's. Here our travellers of 1585, passing under the arch of Marcus Aurelius, which separated the Corso into two distinct parts, and was afterwards swept away by Alexander VII. to straighten and widen the thoroughfare, find themselves really in Rome. On either side are solidly built houses without windows or balconies, covered with frescoes, and so high that the sun reaches the pavement only at mid-day. Looking down the Corso, the traveller perceives at its extremity, above the palazetto of St. Mark, the battlemented convent of Ara Cœli, and the tower of the Capitol. Leaving the Colonna place and the Antonine column to the right, our travellers soon reach the place and palace of St. Mark, with its immense battlemented façades, surmounted by a colossal tower built of stone almost entirely taken from the Coliseum. With the exception of some few modifications in the windows of the façade fronting on the Via del Gesú, and in the roof of the tower which formerly projected, this palace—now known as the Austrian—to-day appears to us as the traveller saw it three hundred years ago. Near by is the Church and Convent of the Apostles, where in after-years were shown the cells occupied by the two friars who became respectively Sixtus V. and Clement XIV. (Ganzanelli). When the monks of this convent called in a body upon Sixtus V. to felicitate him on his accession, the cook of the community went up alone to the pope at the close of the audience. "Holy Father," said he, "you doubtless remember the wretched repasts of which you partook when with us?" Sixtus replied that the expression "wretched repasts" perfectly described the meals in question. "Well," continued the cook, "the cause was the want of good water—give us water."

Sixtus declared that this was the only reasonable demand yet made of him, and immediately ordered the construction in the ancient court of a beautiful fountain, which, although much injured by time, yet exists.

Still progressing towards the Capitol, our travellers pass the Gesú. In the small house adjoining it Ignatius Loyola died, and St. Francis Borgia has but lately expired there. And now they ascend to the Capitol by the cordonata of Michael Angelo. Looking still onward, they catch a glimpse of the Forum (Campo Vaccino), enlivened only by droves of browsing cattle and here and there a searcher of buried antique statues. Beyond the Arch of Titus all is silent solitude.

The modern, active, living

ROME OF THAT DAY

was within the triangle bounded by the Corso, the Tiber, and the Capitol. Our travellers turn their faces towards the St. Angelo Bridge, and approach it by long, narrow, and crooked streets, nearly corresponding with the Via Giulia and the Monserrato which we to-day traverse. This was the Faubourg St. Germain of the period, full of palaces, but stately and silent. The strangers find the activity, movement, display, and exuberant activity of Rome in the street now known as the Banchi, then lined with the residences of wealthy bankers, in the rich Spanish quarter beyond the Piazza Navona, in the Tordinone and Coronari.

From the rising to the setting of the sun, throngs of people fill these badly paved thoroughfares, which are more thickly lined with palaces as they approach the bridge. Our strangers are impressed with the great crowd of people, and are of the opinion that it exceeds that of the Marais in Paris, and is second only to the throngs they saw in Venice. About the Pantheon and the Minerva are the houses already mentioned where travellers and visitors to Rome find furnished suites of apartments—the Fifth Avenue and St. Nicholas Hotels of the period. A few years later (1595), on beholding this, the Venetian ambassador writes that "Rome has reached the apogee of its grandeur and prosperity."

With difficulty a passage through the crowd is effected, and the task is rendered even dangerous by the large number of carriages in circulation.

In 1594, there were eight hundred and eighty-three private carriages in the city. They were almost an essential. The great St. Charles Borromeo said, "There are two things necessary in Rome—save your soul and keep a carriage." And a singular-looking carriage it was to our eyes. In shape resembling a cylinder open at both ends, with doors at either side, knocked and tossed about in a sort of basket on four clumsy wheels. The elegants and beaux of the day usually had an opening in the top of the vehicle through which, as they progressed, they admired fair ladies at their windows. "They make an astrolabe of their carriage," thundered a preacher in denunciation of the practice. The crowd increases as the St. Angelo Bridge is approached, and it equals the human pressure of the period of the jubilee as described by Dante:[94]

No ladies are seen. They seldom go out, and then only in carriages. We find the modern Italians highly demonstrative. Their ancestors were more so, as our travellers noticed at every step. Men meeting acquaintances in the street exchanged profound bows. Friends embraced "with effusion." People threw themselves on their knees before those of whom they had favors to ask.

DINNERS AND BANQUETS

for invited guests were sumptuous and of long duration. The culinary art of that epoch—as we learn from a work of Bartholomew Scarpi, the Grand Vatel of the sixteenth century and head cook of the saintly Paul V., whose personal meals cost sixty cents a day, but who, in state receptions, entertained magnificently—was something wonderful, according to our modern ideas. For grand dinners, there were four courses. The first consisted of preserved fruits and ornamented pastry, from which, on being opened, little birds flew out, making it literally a vol au vent. Then came the other courses composed of a multitude of the most diverse dishes, poultry with all the feathers on, capons cooked in bottles, meat, game, and fish, alternating with sweet dishes in confused pell-mell, utterly subversive of all our modern gastronomic ideas. Some dishes were prepared with rose-water, and substances the most heterogeneous and contradictory were mingled in the same preparations. The sublimity of the style was to effect the sharpest possible contrast of materials and odors.

The wines most in favor were the heady wines of Greece, the Malvoisy, and the great Neapolitan brands, the Lachrima and the Mangiaguerra, described as black in color, powerful, spirituous, and so thick that it could almost be cut. So, at least, reports the Venetian Bernardo Navagero, writing from Rome in 1558: "E possente e gagliardo, nero e tantospesso che si potria quasi tagliare."

Before the dessert, the cloth was removed, the guests washed their hands, and the table was covered with sweet dishes, highly perfumed, preserved eggs, and syrups.

Both before and after the repast, distinguished guests used what we would now call finger-bowls and mouth-glasses, demonstratively and even noisily. On arising from table, bouquets of flowers were distributed among the guests. From contemporaneous statements as to the cost of various entertainments of that period, we should judge that the Roman provision supply was much cheaper than we to-day find it in those marvels of modern architecture, the Washington and Fulton Markets. Thus, for instance, a wedding-supper, given by a Roman nobleman (Gottofredi), and which was at the time (1588) noted for its beauty as well as its extravagance, cost five hundred crowns, equivalent, allowing for the difference in specie values, to about nine hundred dollars of our money.

THE HORSE-RACES ON THE CORSO,[95]

during the carnival, are, of course, witnessed by our travellers. These races were formerly one of the traditional holiday amusements of the Piazza Navona, which is on the site of a Roman amphitheatre, and they were transferred to the Corso by Paul II. (1468). Seated in the small room of the corner of the Palazetto of St. Mark, whose windows command a view of the entire length of the Corso, this good-natured pontiff, who was fond of promoting the innocent amusement of his subjects, witnessed the running, and had the barberi (little horses) stopped at that point. The poor governors of Rome have ever since borne and still bear the servitude of this tradition. Four hundred years have gone by since Paul II. sat at the window on the Corso, but to this day the Governor of Rome, clothed in the official robes, whose cut and fashion have not varied a line in all that time, must, in the very same room and at the very same window, witness the running and have the horses stopped at the same points. Under Gregory XIII. these races had somewhat degenerated. Buffaloes of the Campagna, as well as horses, were run, and races were even made for children and for Jews. Sixtus V. reformed all this and made new regulations, which, with slight modifications, are to this day in force.

LITERATURE AND THE THEATRE.

At the period of which we treat, there existed a decided taste for the drama—such as it then was—but it was a taste exercised under difficulties. During the carnival of 1588, permission was obtained, as a great favor, from Sixtus V. to allow representations by the Desiosi troupe, at that time the most celebrated in Italy. But the license was hampered with the following conditions:

First. The representations should take place in the daytime.

Second. No woman should appear on the stage.

Third. No spectator should be admitted with arms about his person.

Such a public edifice as a theatre was at that time unknown in Italy. True, many princes had halls constructed in their palaces for dramatic representations, and the Olympic Academy of Vicenza erected a building for the purpose, which was completed on the designs of Palladio.

As for the dramas represented, it is easy to understand their inferiority when we know that Guarini's Pastor Fido gained a reputation not yet entirely lost, by reason not of its merit, but because of the inferiority of every dramatic production of the time.

The costumes, decorations, and mise en scène formed the main attractions, but the plays themselves loudly proclaimed the decay of literature. They possessed neither originality, invention, nor poetry. When we contemplate our own elevated and purified stage of the present period, with its bouffe, Black Crook, blondes, and brigands, how profoundly should we not pity the benighted Italians of 1585!

About this time, the first edition of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered made its appearance. Issued without the author's consent, it was both defective and incorrect. In spite of the enmity of the Grand Duke Francis and, what was more to be feared, of the opposition of the Della Cruscan Academy, the Jerusalem at once achieved an immense success—a success purely due to its beauty of diction. Contemporary criticisms of Italian poets whose names have since become immortal read strangely now. Tasso was sneered at, Ariosto's merit seriously contested, and Dante absolutely condemned.

"This poet," says Giuseppe Malatesta, a distinguished writer of that day, "has borrowed the wings of Icarus to remove himself as far as possible from the vulgar, and, by dint of searching for the sublime, he has fallen into an obscure sea of obscurities. He is both philosopher and theologian. Of the poet he has only the rhyme. To measure his hell, his purgatory, his paradise, one needs astrolabes. To understand them, one should constantly have at hand some theologian capable of commenting upon his text. He is crude and barbarous; he strives to be disgusting and obscure when it would really cost him less effort to be clear and elegant, resembling in this certain great personages who, possessed of an admirable calligraphy, nevertheless, through pure affectation, write as illegibly as possible."