The red hangings shew the pictures best; (and there are some very fine ones in this palace:) the combination of red and yellow produces the richest effect. In one room in particular, a reddish flower on a yellow damask is very beautiful. The cornice here has gilt mouldings on a white ground. The furniture is mahogany and gold, with cushions of the damask of the hangings. The gardens occupy a fine situation, overlooking great part of Rome, and art has adorned them with the papal arms in coloured sand, slags, broken pots, and other beauties of that sort, far more lasting than the evanescent bloom of a few flowers.
In front of this palace are the celebrated horses ascribed to Phidias and Praxiteles, and their attendants; of one of which you have a cast at the King’s Mews. They are placed on each side of an obelisk, not on the same line, but forming an angle, which is to embrace a fountain; the enormous basin of which, a cup of a single block of granite, twenty-five palms in diameter, was found in several fragments in the temple of Peace. These figures do not unite perfectly well with the obelisk, and their isolated situation is not such a one as that for which they were originally intended, as may be certainly known by the unfinished backs of the figures; and by the projecting parts having terminated abruptly, certainly against a plain surface. Yet altogether they form a most noble group, and one which would do honour to any building or situation in Europe; one regrets to see the destruction which the weather has occasioned of the surfaces of the marble, furrowing lines on it, and introducing false lights and shades.
Opposite to the palace of the Quirinal is the Consulta, a modern building, erected in 1730 by the Cavaliere Fuga, but really a very handsome and well proportioned edifice. It consists of a cellar story; not a basement, because a basement story is one, which seeming to be intended for the support of another, yet is that by which we enter; a ground-floor, and a mezzanine, all very plain; above these is the principal floor, with a moderate portion of ornament, and there are windows in the frieze, indicating another story. The windows of the ground-floor have a pretty broad dressing, and a pediment over them; and the whole of these dressings has the appearance of resting on a pedestal, which again is supported on a plinth, perforated by the square opening of the lower windows. This arrangement is excellent. The mezzanine windows are perfectly plain. I do not dislike this, but it would be better if there were no mezzanine. Where the whole height exhibits but five ranges of windows, we put the principal range too high when we make it fourth from the bottom.
I have already mentioned to you the eastern portico of St. John Lateran, built by Domenico Fontana, with two ranges of arches, and of rather a licentious architecture. Indeed, Fontana paid but little attention to preserve the characteristic proportions and ornaments of the different orders. This second school of architecture is much less exact than the first; and very much inferior both in the design and execution of the details. Adjoining to the church, Fontana was employed to build the great square palace of the Lateran, but the parts are crowded, and it has not an effect by any means proportioned to its size. This artist also erected for the Cardinal Montalto, the chapel of the Presepio, in Santa Maria Maggiore; the work was stopt for want of money, and Fontana completed it at his own expense. This generosity made the fortune of Fontana, when afterwards his patron became pope, under the name of Sixtus V.
There were two other Fontanas. John, the elder brother of Domenico, was more engaged in hydraulics than in architecture. He was employed in settling the dispute between the inhabitants of Terni and those of Reati, about the disposal of the waters of the Velino, and in forming a head of water in the Aniene at Tivoli, for the supply of the town and of the mills, to which we owe the present form of the great cascade. Carlo came from the same neighbourhood, and was probably therefore of the same family, but he was not much employed as an architect. He is more known as the author of an elaborate account of St. Peter’s, than by any edifice of his own.
But what I have undertaken to give you an account of, is the principal palaces of Rome, and not the lives of their architects, and I believe I have now almost come to the end of my task. The Sapienza, at least as far as regards the front, was built by Giacomo della Porta; it purposes to be a simple range of building, between two towers, but the towers are too small, and not sufficiently marked, being in fact only distinguished by little strips of rustic, intended to have the appearance of quoins: the ground-floor of the middle part is without windows. The disposition would be picturesque, if it were well managed. The court is said to have been begun at least by M. Angelo, but it is doubtful if we see any thing of his; it is nevertheless very handsome, forming an oblong square, surrounded by two stories of arches, not very long, with the church at one end; but unfortunately that church is one of the ravings of Borromini.
There are two architects whose names are so familiar, that you will perhaps expect to hear something of their works. I mean Bernini and Borromini. Both have been mentioned in the account of churches, but in the way of palaces, I think I should hardly notice any of their productions, if it were not for the reputation of the artists. The Propaganda is by the former, but I am at a loss what to say in its praise. The front of the Palazzo Ghigi, afterwards Odescalchi, in the Piazza de’ Santi Apostoli, is also ascribed to him; it is more rich, than magnificent, more adorned, than beautiful. The proportions are however, pretty good, and the effect may be admired, though the details are very bad. The most objectionable particulars are some consoles placed in the frieze, and some wild undescribable crinkums in the ornament of the upper windows. The pilastered front is considerably extended beyond Bernini’s design, and I believe the addition injures the architecture.
Bernini’s whims are principally in the details; the general disposition is often simple and good. His capitals, entablatures, and ornaments to the doors and windows, are capricious, and in general very ugly, merely that they may not be like what had been done before. The childish and licentious love of novelty which this artist exhibited in the ornaments, pervades every part of the designs of Borromini.
The immense Palazzo Barberini was begun by Carlo Maderno, continued by Bernini, and finished by Borromini. The wings are beneath criticism, and have no sort of correspondence in character with the centre. This centre is composed of three ranges of arcades, nearly equal; the first adorned with Doric half-columns, the second with Ionic half-columns, and the third with Corinthian pilasters. This equality of parts, which ought to be distinguished, renders the design confused and displeasing. The principal story in a house, and probably in every building, should be distinctly marked, and separated from the basement below, and from the subordinate parts above it, otherwise neither the eye, nor the understanding, can approve of the design. Considered of themselves, the two lower ranges of arches are good, the upper is very bad.
Borromini has left sufficient marks of his interference in the Palazzo Falconieri, where he has made two equal doorways, and put the staircase as much out of the way as possible. His elevations, with all their faults, are better than his plans, for notwithstanding his extravagance, which at last amounted to absolute madness, he had some feeling of beauty; though I would not be understood to praise wholly, any one of his productions. He is said to have been concerned in the Doria Pamfili, in the Corso, a building monstrous in every sense, and yet, in spite of its absurdity, the long range of similar windows loaded with enormous mouldings, and overcharged in all parts, produces an effect of great grandeur, as seen obliquely in the narrow Corso. This palace, extensive as it appears in its present state, has never been completed, and is a mere fragment of the entire design. It is now perhaps, hardly equal in extent to the Altieri, which is of better architecture, without being good.