DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19775#0163
VILLA ALDOBRANDINI,
FRASCATI.
WHAT strikes us most as we examine the
sites or read descriptions of the old
classic villas, is the lavish way in
which their size and arrangements are
planned. " Bring a few more carriages," says
Sir Gorgius Midas to his flunkies. " Build a
few more dining-rooms, another half-a-dozen foun-
tains," seems to have been the order of a Lucullus
or a Pliny. " One loses one's self," says M. Gaston
Boissier, writing of Pliny, " in the enumeration
which he makes of his apartments. He has
dining-rooms of various sizes for all occasions. He
dines in this one when he is alone ; the other
serves him to receive his friends in ; the third is
the largest, and can contain the crowd of his
invited guests. The one faces the sea, and while
taking one's meal one beholds the waves breaking
against the walls ; another is buried in the grounds,
and in it one enjoys on all sides the view of the
fields and of the scenes of rustic life. Nowadays
one bed-chamber usually satisfies the most exacting ;
it would be difficult to say how many Pliny's
villa contained. There are not only bedrooms
for every want, but for every caprice. In some
one can behold the sea from all the windows, in
others one hears without seeing it. This room
is in the form or an abside, and, by large openings,
receives the sun at every hour of the day ; the
other is obscure and cool, and only lets in just so
much light that one may not be in darkness. If
the master desires to enliven himself, he remains
in this open room, whence he can see all that
passes outside ; if he desires to meditate he has
a room just suited for the purpose, where he can
shut himself up, and which is so arranged that no
noise ever reaches his ears. Let us add that these
rooms are adorned with hue mosaics, are often
covered with graceful pictures, and that they nearly
all contain marble fountains. . . . To com-
plete the whole, we must imagine baths, piscenice,
tennis courts, porticoes extending in every direction
for the enjoyment of all the views, alleys sanded
for walks, and for those who chose to ride on
horseback, a l.irge hippodrome, formed of a long
alley, straight and sombre, shaded by plane trees
and laurels, while on all sides curved alleys wind,
which cross and cut each other so as to render
the space greater and the programme more varied."
The pictures of gardens in the old houses of Rome
and Pompeii have these alleys shut in bv walls
of hornbeam, with a round space in the middle
where swans swim in a basin, and little arbours
here and there with a marble statue or a column,
and seats placed at intervals.
The delight in extent, the large ideas, the
lavish conceptions ot the ancients, awoke again in
their prototype, the villa-builders of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. The quoted description
might serve tor that queen of villas, the Aldobran-
dini at Frascati. It is true that the power to
extend in directions almost unlimited had declined,
but the halls opening in all directions, the cool
porticoes, the covered ways, the wealth of falling
water, leave us with the feeling of splendid
expenditure in plan and execution.
The villa, which stands grandly on a succession
of ample terraces falling to a long slope, was
designed bv the Lombard, Giacomo della Porta,
and was begun in 1603, tor Cardinal Pietro
Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement VIII. Its chief
entrance is intended to be from the piazza ot the
town below, from which it is divided by a wrought-
iron balustrade oi remarkably bold and fine design,
and the artist evidently planned that the visitor
should mount up with the coup d'ceil of the great
house always before his eyes, meeting with one
surprise after another as the landscape unfolded.
Nowadays the great gates are never opened, and
a little side door up a lane forms the very
inadequate substitute. The Cardinal had just
received the substantial addition to his income oi the
revenues ot Ferrara, which, as a Latin inscription on
the facade of the palace commemorates, at this time
submitted to the pontifical dominion, and for his
new country seat he certainly secured the master-
piece of the great follower of Vignola. It was
his last work, too, for, driving back to Rome with
the Cardinal one summer's evening after having
eaten too plentifully of melons and ices, Giaccmo
was taken so ill that he" had to be left at the
convent at San Giovanni Laterano, where he died
that night. The work was completed by Fontana,
but we see in it all the majestic yet exuberant
feeling for decoration peculiar to the Lombard
( 153 )
FRASCATI.
WHAT strikes us most as we examine the
sites or read descriptions of the old
classic villas, is the lavish way in
which their size and arrangements are
planned. " Bring a few more carriages," says
Sir Gorgius Midas to his flunkies. " Build a
few more dining-rooms, another half-a-dozen foun-
tains," seems to have been the order of a Lucullus
or a Pliny. " One loses one's self," says M. Gaston
Boissier, writing of Pliny, " in the enumeration
which he makes of his apartments. He has
dining-rooms of various sizes for all occasions. He
dines in this one when he is alone ; the other
serves him to receive his friends in ; the third is
the largest, and can contain the crowd of his
invited guests. The one faces the sea, and while
taking one's meal one beholds the waves breaking
against the walls ; another is buried in the grounds,
and in it one enjoys on all sides the view of the
fields and of the scenes of rustic life. Nowadays
one bed-chamber usually satisfies the most exacting ;
it would be difficult to say how many Pliny's
villa contained. There are not only bedrooms
for every want, but for every caprice. In some
one can behold the sea from all the windows, in
others one hears without seeing it. This room
is in the form or an abside, and, by large openings,
receives the sun at every hour of the day ; the
other is obscure and cool, and only lets in just so
much light that one may not be in darkness. If
the master desires to enliven himself, he remains
in this open room, whence he can see all that
passes outside ; if he desires to meditate he has
a room just suited for the purpose, where he can
shut himself up, and which is so arranged that no
noise ever reaches his ears. Let us add that these
rooms are adorned with hue mosaics, are often
covered with graceful pictures, and that they nearly
all contain marble fountains. . . . To com-
plete the whole, we must imagine baths, piscenice,
tennis courts, porticoes extending in every direction
for the enjoyment of all the views, alleys sanded
for walks, and for those who chose to ride on
horseback, a l.irge hippodrome, formed of a long
alley, straight and sombre, shaded by plane trees
and laurels, while on all sides curved alleys wind,
which cross and cut each other so as to render
the space greater and the programme more varied."
The pictures of gardens in the old houses of Rome
and Pompeii have these alleys shut in bv walls
of hornbeam, with a round space in the middle
where swans swim in a basin, and little arbours
here and there with a marble statue or a column,
and seats placed at intervals.
The delight in extent, the large ideas, the
lavish conceptions ot the ancients, awoke again in
their prototype, the villa-builders of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. The quoted description
might serve tor that queen of villas, the Aldobran-
dini at Frascati. It is true that the power to
extend in directions almost unlimited had declined,
but the halls opening in all directions, the cool
porticoes, the covered ways, the wealth of falling
water, leave us with the feeling of splendid
expenditure in plan and execution.
The villa, which stands grandly on a succession
of ample terraces falling to a long slope, was
designed bv the Lombard, Giacomo della Porta,
and was begun in 1603, tor Cardinal Pietro
Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement VIII. Its chief
entrance is intended to be from the piazza ot the
town below, from which it is divided by a wrought-
iron balustrade oi remarkably bold and fine design,
and the artist evidently planned that the visitor
should mount up with the coup d'ceil of the great
house always before his eyes, meeting with one
surprise after another as the landscape unfolded.
Nowadays the great gates are never opened, and
a little side door up a lane forms the very
inadequate substitute. The Cardinal had just
received the substantial addition to his income oi the
revenues ot Ferrara, which, as a Latin inscription on
the facade of the palace commemorates, at this time
submitted to the pontifical dominion, and for his
new country seat he certainly secured the master-
piece of the great follower of Vignola. It was
his last work, too, for, driving back to Rome with
the Cardinal one summer's evening after having
eaten too plentifully of melons and ices, Giaccmo
was taken so ill that he" had to be left at the
convent at San Giovanni Laterano, where he died
that night. The work was completed by Fontana,
but we see in it all the majestic yet exuberant
feeling for decoration peculiar to the Lombard
( 153 )