Fountains of Papal Rome/Trevi

hundred and fifteen years after Agrippa brought the Acqua Virgo into Rome the Emperor Nerva appointed as commissioner of the water-works of the city a man of extraordinary integrity and energy who was possessed of many accomplishments and had had along training in the practical experience of government and war. Fortunately for posterity, he was able to write as well as govern, and in his book, " The Water Supply of the City of Rome/' a copy of which has been preserved in the monastery of Monte Cassino for more than thirteen centuries, there is an account, true beyond the shadow of doubt, of the earliest history of the Trevi Water. Frontinus says that the water was shown to some Roman soldiers by a young maiden who guided them to the springs near her father's home, that a small temple was erected near the springs containing a picture of the incident, and that the name of Virgo, or maiden, which still endures, commemorates the event. Agrippa at once brought the water to Rome and its delightful purity as well as its abundance must have given it immediate popularity. Suetonius relates that about this time the Romans complained to Augustus of the expense and scarcity of wine, whereupon the Emperor sent word to them that his son-in-law, Agrippa, had sufficiently provided for their thirst by the ample supply of water which he had brought to Rome. The springs of the Virgo rise in the valley of the Anio and are not more than eighty feet above sea-level. They are on land which once belonged to Lucullus. The veteran adversary of Mithradates, who had suf- fered all the privations of far-eastern warfare, knew from personal experience the immense value of pure and abundant water. It is not improbable that he was aware of his priceless possession and that he kept it for his own private use during those years of his peaceful old age passed in his gardens on the Pincian Hill. When, a generation after Lucullus's death, Agrippa constructed the Virgo Aqueduct he brought it underground through the old gardens of Lucullus to a reservoir beneath the hill, and from there the water was carried to the Campus Martius, and thence distributed throughout the city, whose gardens and fountains it still supplies. Cassiodorus, prime minister to that Gothic King, Theodoric, who, from 4g3 to 626, governed the Romans with such extraordinary sympathy and intelligence, felt for the Virgo Water the admiration and love of a veritable Roman. The true origin of the name had already been forgotten, and Cassiodorus supposes that "Virgo's stream is so pure that the name, according to common opinion, is derived from the fact that those waters are never sullied, since, while all the others give evidence of the violence of ram-storms by the turgidity of their waters, Virgo alone ever maintains her purity/' It was quite a natural supposition, for the Virgo Water has never had a filtering or settling reservoir. Those who have the good fortune to drink it receive it from its Roman fountains exactly as it comes from its springs on the Via Coflatina. This aqueduct was cut off from the city in 687 by the Goths and Burgundians, and, though in the same year Belisarius restored the aqueducts of Claudius and Trajan, the Virgo seems to have remained entirely unused for the next two hundred years. During that period the popes were not sufficiently powerful to undertake any great public works, but when Charlemagne visited Rome in 778 he gave the needed support to the head of the church, and thereafter the popes began the restoration and the maintenance of the Roman aqueducts. The Virgo was restored in i447 by Nicholas V, in whose pontificate Constantinople was taken by the Turks and the Wars of the Roses began in England. He was a great Pope and repaired the aqueduct so thoroughly that it remained in use for thirty years. There must always have been a main fountain for the Virgo Water, but the records of the modern "Fountain of Trevi" begins with the fountain which Vasari says was rebuilt by Nicholas V's architect, Leon Batista Alberti. After a short period the aqueduct was again restored and the fountain enlarged by "The Great Builder, " Sixtus IV. Then occurs a period of various vicissitudes, and finally, in 1670, Pius V restored the Virgo Aqueduct effectively and rebuilt Sixtus TV's fountain, making what is now known as the "old Trevi fountain." This fountain stood not where the present one stands, but to the west of it, in the little Piazza Santa Crocifere. The old engravings show it to have been a huge semicircular pool into which the water poured from three great apertures made in massive stone piers.

The name of Trevi is supposed by some writers to be derived from these three streams of water three ways, Tre-vii; but there is more reason to believe that the fountain took its name from the mediaeval name of that quarter of the city Regione Trevi, from trevium, because of three roads which converge near the present Piazza of Trevi. Sixtus IV had constructed near the fountain a large public washing-trough, and the whole composition was extremely simple and practical. The Rome of Sixtus V and Paul V became too sumptuous for the old fountain, and as early as 1626 plans were made for its reconstruction. The Barberini Pope, Urban VIII, had his own ideas of magnificence; he proposed to change the fountain from its old site to its present position against the southern facade of the great Poli Palace; and Bernini made for him some beautiful sketches for the new masterpiece. Urban VIII stripped the portico of the Pantheon of its bronze and also carried off a part of the base of the tomb of Cecilia Metella, proposing to construct his fountain out of these materials. The Roman people, whose love for their own antiquities was constantly growing, showed such indignation when the Pope's project became known that Urban was actually obliged to abandon his scheme, and it was not until eleven pontificates after his time that the work on the new fountain was really begun. Then it was intrusted to the architect Niccolo Salvi by Clement XII (Corsini, 1780-1740), and after the death of this pontiff and his successor, Benedict XIV, and eleven years after the death of Salvi himself, the fountain was at last finished. This was in 1762, under Clement XIII (Rezzonico, 1758-1769). Niccolo Salvi had succumbed prematurely to the hardships of his task. The construction of the fountain necessitated spending much time in the subterranean chambers of tibie Virgo Aqueduct, and this had proved fatal to Salvf s health. The tomb of Cecilia Metella was never again attacked, and there is no bronze in the present fountain; in other respects the great scheme of Urban VIII was revived. The fountain was placed against the Poli Palace, and Salvi used for the sculptural part of the fountain Bernini's beautiful designs.

So severe a critic as Francesco Milizia declares that this fountain is justly considered to be the best work produced in Rome during the eighteenth century. It has elicited extravagant praise from other authorities, and in later times some adverse criticism. It has been woven into many of the romances connected with Rome, and until quite recently there were few American and English visitors to the Eternal City who left her without paying a moonlight visit to Trevi, there to toss a coin into the water while they drank to their certain return. Romans of the eighteenth century often saw Alfieri, the tragic dramatist, crouched beside the fountain, lost in a day-dream evoked by the tumult and beauty of the water; and it is recorded that the day after Michelangelo's death there was found in his house no wine whatever, but five jars of water, presumably the Trevi, as it was the only pure drinkable water in Rome. The Trevi fountain has become a feature in the city's life. It is the chief fountain of the one water which modern Rome inherits directly from her great past.

The fountain consists of a vast semicircular basin, sunk so far below the level of the pavement that it is necessary to descend a flight of steps in order to stand beside it. This device, which was rendered necessary by the low head of the water, is excellent from an aesthetic view-point, as the spectator, being on a different grade from the piazza and its surroundings, feels that he is in another world and is able to forget the city and give his entire attention to the scene before him. Looking up, he sees a great ledge of broken rock, over which the water pours in many streams and waterfalls, disappearing and reappearing among the rocks like a veritable mountain torrent. The main stream descends in a series of three quite lovely cascades, their semicircular-shaped basins being prototypes of the great lower basin, into which all eventually flow. Their edges are smooth, as if they had been water-worn, and the force of the water feeding them is so great that it boils and roars among masses of broken rock as it does in a natural waterfall. Above all this finely simulated wildness rises the ornate group of Neptune riding in a chariot made of an enormous sea-shell and drawn by two sea-horses. The horses are placed well to each side of the central cascades, and the group is terminated by Tritons who are restraining the onward dash of the horses and are blowing conches. The background or frame-work to this scene of commotion and tumult is the highly finished conventional facade of a Roman palace; Neptune issues forth not from a rocky cavern but from a Renaissance tribune constructed with four Ionic pillars and a richly carved roof, on the frieze of which runs the following inscription:

CLEMENS • XH • PONT • MAX AQVAM • VERGINEM • COPIA • ET • SALVBRTTATE COMMENDATAM • CVLTV • MAGNIFICO • ORNAVTT ANNO • DOMINO • MDCCXXXV • PONTIF: VI

''Pope Clement XII decked out with magnificent ornament the aqueduct of the Maiden, which is recommended for its plenteous flow and for the healthful qualities of its water. In the year of the Lord i735, and of Clemen? s pontificate the sixth.''

On either side of this tribune the palace wall breaks into niches containing statues, one of Abundance, the other of Health; and separated from each other by tall columns are panels depicting in high relief the discovery of the water and the construction of the aqueduct* Beyond these sculptures the windows and balconies of the palace frankly make their appearance.

Nothing could be more incongruous and artificial* The design is one which demands a background as an integral part of the composition, but this background has absolutely no connection with the fountain, except the purely physical connection of juxtaposition. Neptune should be appearing from some sea cave, worn in straight, steep cliffs like the cliffs at Sorrento, The architect who could so skilfully mass these rocky ledges and dispose these streams and cascades could have designed quite as well stone palisades and grottos; but the fountain belongs to an age which played "Macbeth 5 * in periwig and ruffles, and it remains a magnificent example of the taste of that period.