Romance of Roman Villas Part 31

Villa Conti Torlonia, Frascati]

Hither certainly came the ladies of Palliano[8] from their castle in the neighbouring hills, for the Conti were cousins of the Colonna, and fond of entertaining their kindred on the terraces of their ancestral villa.

Here Giulia Gonzaga must have met another renowned woman of the family, Giovanna of Aragon, the wife of Ascanio Colonna, with their little son Marcantonio, from the Castle of Marino, hardly three miles away. This boy was to become the most renowned man of his race, and was to form a link between the lives of two women of Palliano, to whom brief reference must be made, for the pity and horror of their fate are not surpa.s.sed in all the annals of tragedy.

At first glance it may seem strange that the Colonnas possessed no suburban villa which could rival that of the Conti. Castles in plenty were theirs, Marino, Palliano, Palestrina, and a score of others, but though these sheltered comfortless, so-called palaces within their strong walls, there was never an attempt made here to indulge in such a feat of landscape-gardening as the Conti's

"fountain stairs, Down which the sheeted water leaps alive."

The reason of this lack of the amenities of life is not far to seek. The magnificent Colonna palace at Rome, with its beautiful garden, answered every purpose of an elaborate villa. Here they flaunted in seasons of prosperity, retiring to their mountain fastnesses in times of trouble.

For five hundred years succeeding generations have added to the sumptuousness and charm of the Roman palace, and the portraits of the fair ladies who once gave those regal rooms their chief attraction still look down upon us from their walls. They hold us still with an all-compelling fascination: the n.o.ble Vittoria Colonna, whom Michael Angelo worshipped; that d.u.c.h.essa Lucrezia, whom Van Dyck painted in her velvet robe and jewelled ruff; Felice Orsini and her children; and the bewitching Marie Mancini, as Mignard makes her known in her arch and innocent girlhood, and again with world-weary disillusion betraying itself through Netscher's pomp and opulence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Vittoria Colonna

From a portrait in the Colonna Gallery]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna

From a portrait in later life by Netscher]

It is the women who interest us most, for the men of the race, masterful and brave, heroic even in certain great crisis, have often shown themselves brutally cruel.

The ceilings of the Colonna palace blaze with the victory of Lepanto whose hero Marcantonio Colonna is the glory of his family; but you will find no portrait of his murdered mistress Eufrosina, or of the most famous of all the d.u.c.h.esses of Palliano, whose ghost might well haunt that gloomy castle.

Violante de Cardona was, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, the most charming woman in Naples. Her wonderful eyes alone rendered her irresistible to most men, and she added to remarkable beauty the fascinations of wit and culture. All of the young bloods of Naples were captives at her chariot wheels, all but young Marcantonio Colonna, who must have known her for he dwelt at this time at the Castle of Ischia inherited from his aunt Vittoria Colonna.

Violante made choice among her adorers of Giovanni Caraffa, nephew of Pope Paul IV. whom Marcantonio had cause to hate, for Paul had despoiled him of Palliano, under pretext of his mother's heretical opinions, and had given the fief to this very Giovanni.

Thus Violante to her great misfortune became the usurping d.u.c.h.ess of Palliano, for her husband made her life a martyrdom and was ultimately responsible for her death. He was not so utterly depraved as his brother Cardinal Carlo Caraffa but his maniacal jealousy was more dangerous than the Cardinal's vices, and he made himself rich by the maladministration of the papal revenues.

The Pope though bigoted and fanatical was sternly upright, and discovering the crimes of his nephews visited unsparing retribution upon them. Cardinal Carlo's offences were most flagrant. He had quarrelled openly with a young gallant, Marcello Capecce, for the favours of Martuccia one of the most notorious courtesans of Rome, drawing his sword upon Capecce at a banquet where he had denied the Cardinal's right to appear as Martuccia's escort. Though the Pope had banished the brothers from Rome they might have lived in peace and obscurity but for Carlo's attempt to revenge himself upon Capecce.

It happened most opportunely for the Cardinal's purpose that Capecce had long cherished a hopeless pa.s.sion for the d.u.c.h.ess of Palliano.

The Cardinal fanned this flame and Marcello, believing himself encouraged followed Violante to her villa. Here the Cardinal managed to bring the Duke at the very moment of the compromising visit.

Why Carlo Caraffa should thus have endangered the life and reputation of his sister-in-law as well as that of his enemy is not definitely stated.

Perhaps he counted on the Duke's love for his wife and intended simply to enrage his brother against a presuming but unfavoured lover. Whatever the accusation the jealous husband was not at first absolutely convinced, and he placed the matter for investigation in the hands of his wife's brother the Count Aliffe, who spied upon Capecce and reported that he was undoubtedly in love with the d.u.c.h.ess of Palliano for his desk was filled with poems in her honour.

De Stendhal tells us vividly how Capecce was arrested on the charge of having attempted to poison the Duke, who, "to avoid public scandal stabbed him to death in prison." He also murdered the d.u.c.h.ess's lady-in-waiting, but seems not to have had the heart to kill his wife with his own hands. Nevertheless he believed it inc.u.mbent upon him as a wronged husband to exercise justice upon her, and he deputed the deed to her brother, who was nothing loth to wipe out the stain upon his family honour.

On the night of the twenty-fifth of August, 1559, the Count Aliffe, with his friend Leonardo del Cardine, a friar, and some soldiers, appeared at the villa and told his sister his errand. She received her sentence with the haughtiest disdain. Never had she been so thoroughly a d.u.c.h.ess.

When urged to confess she protested her innocence, and a.s.sisted her brother in bandaging her own eyes. He hesitated for a moment; perhaps if she had appealed to his affection his heart might have given way; but she raised the handkerchief and coolly asked: "Well, what are we about, then?"

Thus taunted he turned the wand in the noose about her neck, and so strangled her.

The Pope seems to have approved the act or to have been indifferent to it; but it created a thrill of horror even at that time, for the beautiful d.u.c.h.ess had been greatly loved and was believed to be innocent.

Strange to say, the man who was to avenge her fate was he whose heritage she had usurped. Marcantonio Colonna had used all his influence at the Court of Spain until Philip declared war upon Pope Paul IV., and deputed the Duke of Alva and the Spanish Army to wage the famous war of the Campagna. Thus Marcantonio came to his own again, and the Pope, who was near his end, in bitterness of soul signed the capitulation which saved Rome from a second sack by the Spaniards.

News that the Pope was dying ran through Rome, and the populace liberated the prisoners of the Inquisition and burned the building. They howled for the Dominican monks, the guardians of the tribunal, that they might burn them also, but at the entrance to the monastery they were stopped by five mounted knights keeping guard over the doomed monks.

They were all of them n.o.bles, and all had suffered from the Pope, and they were led by Marcantonio Colonna, whose father and mother had been persecuted by the Inquisition. They had ridden in haste to Rome when they heard that Paul was dying to preserve order in the city.

"And at the sight of those calm knights," says Marion Crawford, "sitting their horses without armour and with sheathed swords, the people drew back while Colonna spoke; and because he also had suffered much at Paul's hands they listened to him, and the great monastery was saved from fire and the monks from death."

But though Revenge was restrained, Justice claimed the murderers of the d.u.c.h.ess of Palliano. Their trial was deliberate, but in the end Cardinal Carlo Caraffa met the same death which she had suffered, while her husband, her brother, and their accomplice were beheaded in the Torre di Nona.

The first use made by Colonna of his revenues was to equip the battleship which he commanded at Lepanto, where he won the t.i.tle of Champion of Christendom.

The pitiful story of Eufrosina, who for a brief period was mistress of Palliano, is a sad blot upon the Champion's otherwise honourable career.

Some authorities maintain that she was of good family, and that Marcantonio had killed her husband for love of her; others that she was a slave girl whom he had brought back from the Orient. All agree that she was beautiful, but Colonna had not made her his d.u.c.h.ess. Strangely enough he offered the tiara of the murdered Violante to Felice Orsini, daughter of the very man who had striven in vain to win Palliano by force of arms. It was a tempting marriage, for it united the two great rival houses of Rome, and Eufrosina was heartlessly cast aside. Her after-history is a tragedy beside which the story just related pales to an idyl.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Court of the Ma.s.simi Palace]

That she was a woman of extraordinary powers of fascination is proved by the fact that, though it was notorious that she had been abandoned by Marcantonio, Lelio Ma.s.simi, then the representative of one of the proudest patrician families of Rome, did not hesitate to make her his wife. Ma.s.simi was an old man and a widower, whose first wife, Gerolema Savelli, had given him six sons, notable for their herculean strength and arrogance and their father's remarriage to such a woman was an insult to their mother's memory which they could not condone.

They entered Ma.s.simi's apartment upon his wedding night and shot his bride to death in his arms. The old man cursed his sons excepting only the youngest, Pompeo, who had taken no part in the a.s.sa.s.sination, and shortly afterward died broken-hearted, foretelling that Pompeo alone would continue the line as all of his brothers would die violent deaths.[9]

The record of the hearts of flame which have burned themselves out in the old nest of the phoenix might be indefinitely prolonged, for though battered by many sieges Palliano was never totally destroyed, and formed the background of many a sinister drama. Marie Mancini Colonna, Principessa di Palliano, writes that fear of imprisonment in the dungeon of her t.i.tular castle was the princ.i.p.al motive of her flight from her husband in 1672. She had been threatened with such a fate and the threat was not without precedent.

As a prison the Castle of Palliano exists at the present day. Has its symbol of the phoenix attained a new meaning, and is it possible that erring souls issue from its gates, their stains burned clean by purgatorial flame?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Marie Mancini Colonna, Principessa di Palliano, by Mignard

Photographische Gesellschaft, Berlin]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IX

THE LURE OF OLD ROME

ANTINOUS

Brother, 't is vain to hide That thou dost know of things mysterious, Immortal, starry; such alone could thus Weigh down thy nature. Hast thou sinned in aught Offensive to the heavenly powers? Caught A Paphian dove upon a message sent?

Thy doubtful bow against some deer herd bent Sacred to Dian? Haply thou hast seen Her naked limbs among the alders green And that, alas is death.

KEATS.

It is impossible to saunter even so aimlessly as we have done through the villas of the cardinals of the Renaissance and not feel the potency of the charm by which their builders were enthralled, "the glamour of the world antique."

We may struggle against the spell, telling ourselves that the scope and limits of the present volume will not permit of a glance at the villas of ancient Rome, but they insidiously steal upon us through those of the Renaissance. Particularly is this true of the Villa d'Este and the Villa Albani, magic gateways both leading directly into that earlier, and only real, Rome.