Pagan and Christian Rome

by Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

TOMB OF PAUL III

Paul III., Alessandro Farnese, was the first Roman elevated to the supreme pontificate after Martin V., Colonna (1417-1424). Pomponio Leto, his preceptor, had imbued him with the spirit of the humanists. His conversation was gay and spirituelle; he seemed to bring back with him the fine old times of Leo III. He died beloved and worshipped by his subjects. We may well share a little of these sentiments, if we remember how much art is indebted to him.

The Palazzo Madama, now used as the Senate-house, and the Villa Madama, on the eastern slope of Monte Mario, still belonging to the descendants of the Farnese family, were given by him to Marguerite of Spain, after her marriage with his grandson Ottavio. The Farnesina, which he bought at auction in 1586, associates his memory with that of the Chigis, of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Baldassarre Peruzzi. Then comes his share in the construction of S. Peter's; in the painting of the "Last Judgment," and in the finishing of the "Sala Regia," the richest hall in the Vatican. But no other work, in my estimation, gives us as true an idea of his taste and delicate sentiment as the apartments which he caused to be built and decorated, on the summit of Hadrian's Mole. I am writing these lines in the loggia or vestibule which opens from the great hall. Paul himself placed on the lintel a record of his work, of which Raffaello da Montelupo and Antonio da Sangallo were the architects; Marco da Siena, Pierin del Vaga, and Giulio Romano, the decorators. The ceilings of the bedroom and dining-hall, carved in wood, and those of the reception-room, in gilt and painted stucco, are things of beauty which no visitor to Rome should fail to see. The bath-room, a work of his predecessor, Clement VII., is copied from the antique. In 1538, while the building of this artistic gem was in progress, Benvenuto Cellini was thrown into one of the dungeons below, as a prisoner of state. He was accused of having stolen jewels belonging to the apostolic treasury; but the true reason seems to have been an offence against the Pope, which he had committed in 1527, while the hosts of the constable de Bourbon were besieging the castle. The offence is described by Benvenuto himself in the following words:—

"While I was performing this duty [of keeping guard on the ramparts] some of the cardinals who were in the castle used to come up to see me, and most of all cardinal Ravenna and cardinal de' Gaddi, to whom I often said that I wished they would not come any more, because their red caps could be seen a long way off, and made it mighty dangerous for both them and me from those palaces which were near by, like the Torre de' Bini; so that, finally, I shut them out altogether, and gained thereby their ill-will quite decidedly. Signor Orazio Baglioni, who was my very good friend, also used to come and chat with me. While he was talking with me one day, he noticed a kind of a demonstration in a certain tavern, which was outside the Porta di Castello, at a place called Baccanello. This tavern had for a sign a red sun, painted between two windows. The windows being closed, Signor Orazio guessed that just behind the sun between them, there was a company of soldiers having a good time. So he said to me, 'Benvenuto, if you had a mind to fire your cannon near that sun, I believe you would do a good piece of work, because there is a good deal of noise there, and they must be men of importance.' I replied to the gentleman, 'It is enough for me to see that sun to be able to fire into the middle of it; but if I do, the noise of the gun and the shock it will make will knock over that barrel of stones which is standing near its mouth.' To which the gentleman answered, 'Don't wait to talk about it, Benvenuto, for, in the first place, in the way in which the barrel is standing, the shock of the cannon could not knock it over; but even if it did, and the Pope himself were under it, it would not be as bad as you think; so shoot, shoot!' So I, thinking no more about it, fired right into the middle of the sun, exactly as I had promised I would. The barrel fell, just as I said, and struck the ground between cardinal Farnese and messer Jacopo Salviati. It would have crushed both of them had it not happened that they were quarrelling, because the cardinal had just accused messer Jacopo of being the cause of the sacking of Rome, and had separated to give more room to the insults they were flinging at each other."[120] The cardinal never forgot his narrow escape.

From the point of view of archæological interests Paul III. will always be remembered as long as the Museo Nazionale of Naples and the Baths of Caracalla of Rome continue to hold the admiration of students. In reading the account of his excavation of the Baths, we seem to be transported to dreamland. No one before him had laid hands on the immeasurable treasures which the building contained. Statues were found in their niches or lying in front of them; the columns were standing on their pedestals; the walls were still incrusted with rare marbles and richly carved panels; the swimming-basins were still ready for use. Pietro Sante Bartoli says: "The excavation of the Baths of Caracalla, which took place in the time of Paul III. (1546) is the most successful ever accomplished. It yielded such a mass of statues, columns, bas-reliefs, marbles, cameos, intaglios, bronze figures, medals, and lamps, that no more room could be found for them in the Farnese palace." The collection comprises the Farnese Bull, the two statues of Herakles, the Flora, the Athletes, the Venus Callipyge, the Diana, the "Atreus and Thyestes," the so-called "Tuccia," and a hundred more masterpieces, which were, unfortunately, removed to Naples towards the end of the last century.

The Tomb of Clement XIII. From the golden age of Guglielmo della Porta to the barocco art of the eighteenth century; from the tomb of Alessandro Farnese to that of Prospero Lambertini (Benedict XIV., 1740-1758), we can follow, stage by stage, the pernicious influence exercised on Roman art by the school of Bernini. The richness and magnificence of papal mausolea increased in proportion to the decline in taste. The sculptors seem to have had but one ambition, to produce a theatrical effect; their abuse of polychromy is incredible; the grouping of their figures conventional; the contortions to which they submit their Hopes and Charities, their Liberalities and Benevolences, their Justices and Prudences are simply absurd.

Pietro Bracci, the artist of the monument of Benedict XIV., by pushing mannerism to the extreme point, caused a wholesome reaction in art. The tomb of Clement XIII., Carlo Rezzonico of Venice (1758-1769), was intrusted to Canova. There is the difference of a few years only between the two, but it seems as if there were centuries. This monument, which marks a prodigious reaction towards the pure ideals of classical art, was uncovered on April 4, 1795, before an immense assembly of people. The whole of Rome was there, and the defeat of the partisans of Bernini's style could not have been more complete.