Compared to the scale of both Hadrian’s Villa and the Villa D’Este, the Villa Giulia is quite small, partially due to its proximity to the city of Rome and the amount of land they had available to build on. It is categorized as a Villa Suburbana, one which is closer to the city and used for short trips to get away from the urban center. It had no bedrooms, which immediately says that it was used for social gatherings only. Built around the 1550’s by the architects Vignola and Vasari (and some contributions by Michelangelo), it hosted parties for Pope Julius III, art exhibitions in its gallery, and other private gatherings. One thing that struck me just looking at the façade was the almost complete difference in styles from the lower to upper levels. While the Renaissance architects sought harmony through the complete design of a structure and its part to whole relationships, as you move further into this period you begin to see more Mannerist attempts at art and architecture.
The part to whole relations here are not completely ignored, but are interpreted in a very different way. Rusticated and bulky on the bottom, yet smooth and carefully rendered on the top, the façade of the building is playing tricks with your typical expectations of what a Renaissance building should look like. The façade is still symmetrical and each lower pilaster/column matches one on the upper floor, so those elements are still remaining from the Renaissance period. Even in the interior courtyard, the columns are vertically aligned but are rendered in different orders, breaking cornices, and always changing scales. What ties the entire structure together is its axial condition, again keeping in line the idea of symmetry, yet one has to exit this axis in order to get to the lower grotto once you reach the inner loggia. This constant playing games with your expectations is what makes this villa unique, along with its representation of the underground world (via the grotto) accessed from paradise (upper loggia). In this underground world a nymphaeum holds various caryatid statues along with two statues of the river gods of the Tiber and Arno.
I was also surprised to learn that the grass we were sitting on in the inner courtyard was in fact a feature of this villa which made it one of the more lavish in all of Rome. Because mechanical mowing hadn’t been invented until the 19th century, workers here had to cut the lawn by hand, a price that the owners were willing to pay to impress their guests and patrons. To think of lawn being a luxury is completely a foreign concept to me. I’ve taken for granted by whole life the fact that my house in the US has a large front lawn that we cut every once in a while in the summer. While a chore, I can’t imagine cutting that amount of grass by hand, given the poor implements they must have used. Being able to mow your lawn brings up all kinds of interesting topics such as the rise in popularity of lawn sports during the 19th century, and the fact that all grass apparently is not native to the US at all but had to be imported. The expansion in the amount of leisure time people had because of the Industrial Revolution must have been quite an amazing time for those who had the opportunity to enjoy and take advantage of it. Both football and baseball two of the mega institutions in terms of sports in the US, have to seem improbable to those of the Renaissance time, due simply to the amount of grass they have to continually manicure, cultivate, and maintain.
While I haven’t studied many of the theories behind landscape architecture, I found the discussion on gardens quite fascinating. What was particularly interesting was the contrast between the objective, manicured, garden world and the subjective, wild outside world. Our ability as a civilization to conquer that wild world is fully realized in the gardens we make and their enclosures. Inside the garden space, where the material reality of cultivated greenery is manifested through our knack for juxtaposing different kinds of flowers, plants, and tightly controlled spaces, our imaginations can run wild with ideas for organizing what once was “out there” beyond the walls into a highly structured zone that may sometimes remind us of what was once rural but is now ours to manipulate.
On site at the Villa Giulia is a 20th century representation of an Etruscan temple – an excellent example of the type of structure that is now extinct to the modern world. It has a highly decorated pediment with rudimentary-looking Doric columns, terra cotta tiles attached to the wood substrate, and Acroteri – angel figures capping the roof tiles on either side. Along with this temple there exists within the Villa Giulia a museum filled with Etruscan artifacts. Out of all of the artifacts that remain from this time period, a stunning 40% of everything from that world exists within this building. I find this mere fact to be stunning because we have so much from the Roman and Greek worlds but little from the Etruscan world. What remains, however, are excellent examples of the level of craftsmanship they had attained working with gold. Somehow, the Etruscans were able to atomize gold and produce pieces of jewelry with exquisite detail and exacting precision.
Location: Piazza Navona
After meandering through the Villa Borghese we eventually made it to the presentation at the Piazza Navona. I particularly enjoy this piazza, but for completely different reasons than why I like the Piazza del Popolo. This piazza is filled with life. Every available square foot is taken up by venders selling all kinds of tourist-y items such as paintings, food, postcards, statuettes, toys, etc. It sometimes features live concerts, street performers, musicians, all existing within the fabric of the piazza in harmony with each other and with the three fountains spaced out along the length of the piazza. Originally a Roman circus that would hold as many as 30,000 people, the piazza has been through a variety of uses over its long history. For around 400 years it was used as a market place and is one of the primary sources of attraction for tourists today.
For me, the most attractive feature of the piazza is the Fountain of the 4 Rivers, designed by Bernini and built in 1651. According to the available knowledge of the time, it represented the 4 largest rivers on each of the 4 continents: the Danube, Ganges, Nile, and Rio della Plata (the latter being in Venezuela as the Italians had no knowledge of the Amazon). Punctuated by an obelisk atop the sculpture, which was brought from Egypt by Pope Innocent X, each of the 4 fountains is anthropomorphized by a human statue. They are shown in different poses; one which faces the Church of St. Agnese has his arm covering his face. Legend has it that because Bernini and the designer of the façade of the church Borromini had such a great rivalry, Bernini subtly used this pose to represent his supposed hostility toward his contemporary adversary.
The Church of St. Agnese is an interesting case study in Baroque architecture. Carlo Rinaldi was the original designer of the church in 1652 but failed to complete it, leaving the exterior to be finished by Borromini. Standing in front of the church, the two bell towers appear to be taller than the dome itself. The cornices that line the exterior of the building are broken, twisted, bent, curved, pushed, pulled and relentlessly toyed with. The Corinthian columns on the first level seem to be engaged. A closer look reveals that the façade has been pulled back ever so slightly from the columns, a new trick that I had not seen before. I have a different appreciation for Baroque architecture than I do for Classical architecture. Borromini’s designs are very unique and give a new variation to the old styles. When I design a building in studio I try to come up with an aesthetic that has never been seen before not just to be different but to not fully duplicate what has come before me. Obviously, the individual parts that Borromini employs are not new per se, he just uses those parts in a different way to make a cohesive whole. His work conveys a tremendous amount of emotional depth, as I was quite amazed to see such a unique structure.
The interior of the church conveys this same sense of newness about the space. As the plan of the church is a Greek cross, the twist that Borromini employs is that the main axis is 10% shorter than the transverse axis. In addition, the pendentives and dome are richly decorated, drawing your eye upward and stretching the space more so even than St. Peter’s. Where the Vatican dome has a well-proportioned circular dome, this particular one employs unique geometry and you almost feel pulled upward when you stare at the dome and become an active participant in the space. The Baroque period featured a concept called vacui, or fear of empty space. Therefore, most all of the work exhibited during this time is filled with statues or artwork: none of the space is left empty. I can understand the feeling of being afraid of open space, but of empty space? This is perhaps why the piazza features 3 fountains instead of the 1 in the center. The attitude that purveyed the church was one of rich emotion, so perhaps this is one reason they filled every space with something. The designers of these types of churches certainly could pull from enough Biblical material with which to create dynamic artwork. You compare this period of rich decoration with the exact opposite side of the spectrum in Modern architecture where NO surface is decorated. The change made in society within a mere 300 years is quite stunning, and it goes to show how each of our subjective perceptions of reality inform how we interpret this world and represent it in three dimensions.
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