VILLA BORGHESE, ROME 



PLATES 75, 76, 77. 78, 79 



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the early years of the seventeenth century, on the accession of Camillo Borghese 

 to the Papal throne as Pope Paul V., his nephew, Scipione Borghese, who was 

 created a cardinal, and assumed at once a prominent place in politics, desired 

 to establish, outside the walls of Rome, a palace and establishment com- 

 mensurate with his exalted rank. The nucleus of the villa was a small vine- 

 yard belonging to the Borghese family, outside the Porta Pinciana. He had 

 already a fine estate at Frascati. but his political duties demanded his almost 

 constant residence near the Vatican. 



The casino was commenced about 1618, by Giovanni Vasanzio. a Flemish architect, known 

 also as II Fiammingo, and the grounds were laid out first by Rainaldi, and afterwards extended and 

 remodelled under the direction of Domenico Savino. The waterworks were designed by Giovanni 

 Fontana. The plan in Plate 75 is taken from that published in 1809, by Percier and Fontaine; it 

 differs very little from the earlier plan of Falda. Percier and Fontaine state that the grounds were 

 much modified in 1789, by an English landscape gardener named Jacob Moore, and also by Pietro 

 Camporesi. John Evelyn, who visited the gardens in 1644, calls the villa 'an Elysium of delight 

 somewhat without the city walls, circumscribed by another wall, full of small turrets and 

 banqueting-houses, which make it appeare at a distance like a little towne ... in the centre 

 a noble Palace ; but the entrance of the garden presents us with a very glorious fabrick or rather dore 

 case, adorned with divers excellent marble statues. This garden abounded with all sorts of delicious 

 fruit and exotic simples, fountaines of sundry inventions, groves and small rivulets. There is also 

 adjoining to it a vivarium for estriges, peacocks, swanns, cranes etc., and divers strange beasts, 

 deare, and hares. The grotto is very rare, and represents, amongst other devices, artificial raine, 

 and sundry shapes of vessels, flowers etc., which is effected by changing the heads of the 



Taine, who gives a description in the last century, says, ' The Villa Borghese is a 

 vast park four miles in circumference, with buildings of all kinds scattered over it. The undulating 

 surface rises and falls in beautiful meadows, red with the delicate, trembling anemone. Italian 

 pines, purposely separated, display their elegant forms and stately heads against the white sky, 

 fountains murmur at every turn of the avenues, and, in small valleys, grand old oaks send up 

 their valiant, heroic antique forms. You remain contemplating the ilex, the vague bluish tint of 



fountaines.' 



( 99) 



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