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Examining work by writers such as Du Bellay, Grevin, Montaigne, and Gamier, and by architects and artists such as Philibert de L'Orme and Jean Cousin, Margaret McGowan shows how they drew upon classical ruins and upon their reconstruction not only to reenact past meanings and achievements but also, more dynamically, to interpret the present. She describes how Renaissance Rome, enhanced by the presence of so many signs of ancient grandeur, provided a fertile source of intellectual and artistic creativity. Study of the fragments of the past tempted writers to an imaginative reconstruction of whole forms, while the new structures they created in France revealed the artistic potency of the incomplete and the fragmentary. McGowan carries the underlying themes of
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Chapter One
Voyages
INTRODUCTION
Rome: capitale du monde, orgueilleuse, triomphante, ancienne, glorieuse, romuléane, noble, puissante, fameuse, superbe, magnifique, ornement du monde, papale, grande, admirable, pompeuse, guerrière, immortelle.
[Rome: capital of the world, proud, triumphant, ancient, glorious, Romulean, noble, powerful, famous, superb, magnificent, the world's ornament, papal, great, admirable, pompous, warring, immortal.]
Thus it was in 1571 that Maurice de la Porte in his posthumously published work Les Epithètes summed up the characteristics and attractions of Rome, and in one sentence brought together accumulated impressions and offered some justification for his contemporaries who undertook often arduous journeys to see the splendour of the imperial city. It is noticeable that La Porte's adjectives all serve to conjure up the ancient, pagan place and to ignore - with the exception of 'papale' -- its Christian mission.
The vision of Rome which this present book seeks to capture will also stress the pagan aspects since these seem to have particularly impressed the imagination, although Christian travellers like Jean Tarde who accompanied the bishop of Sarlat to Rome in 1593 (and again in 1614-15) recorded its Catholic and religious significance:
En pensant à moi, ai trouvé érange de me voir encore une fois à Rome, jadis la première ville du Monde, matresse de l'Univers, reine de la Terre, et domicile de Vertu, théâtre des plus beaux esprits et l'abrégé de l'honneur, gloire et splendeur du monde, ville sainte pour être arrosée du sang précieux de tant de martyrs, et à présent chef de la religion chrétienne et catholique.
[Thinking of myself, I found it strange to be in Rome again, once the first city in the World, Mistress of the Universe, Queen of the Earth and abode of Virtue, theatre of the brightest minds, epitome of the world's honour, splendour and glory, a city sacred for having been watered with the blood of so many martyrs, now the fountainhead of Christian and Catholic faith.]
Tarde's definition reproduces the formulae which were the conventional, lapidary phrases, blending abstract and concrete, that a long tradition of descriptions of Rome had transmitted. Apart from the word étrange , there is nothing personal in the depiction beyond the rising, fervent tone of the committed Christian with which the passage ends.
By contrast, an immediacy of reaction is caught in Blaise de Vigenère's lament on the destruction so evident in the city which he witnessed in 1549 and then from 1551 when he made a prolonged sojourn in Rome. He could not get out of his mind:
Le souvenir des piteuses marques qui se voient à Rome ... de la felonnie inhumaine de ces Barbares ... ains ruiné presque de fonds en comble ceste triomphante eternelle ville ... Les edifices les plus superbes qu'oncques le Soleil apperceut, explanez iusques à plein de terre: tout pesle-mesle de ruines à guise d'un autre Chaos: ... Somme, tout ce qui avoit esté là par de si longues revolutions de siecles comme surentassé par despit, gasté, diffamé, villenné d'une vraye rage et forcenerie; ou plustost par quelque secrete divine disposition.
[The memory of the pitiful marks that can be seen in Rome ... of the inhuman treachery of those Barbarians ... who have utterly ruined this eternal and triumphant city ... The most splendid edifices which the Sun has ever seen flattened to the ground: a jumble of ruins just such another Chaos ... In short, all that was built up over so many centuries now piled up together through spite, spoilt and defamed, blackened through some mad rage, or rather through some mysterious divine will] (Figure 3).
Embedded within his lament, which expresses the extent and the intensity of his distress, is a list of all the works of art damaged and even effaced by the fury of Rome's assailants: obelisks thrown to the ground; proud columns scorched by fire; and temples and wall paintings which had virtually disappeared. The tone is not only one of personal loss; it is also imbued with the outrage of a lover of beautiful things deprived of the opportunity to gaze upon their splendour. There is also the implication that some mysterious power has, through this destruction of Rome, avenged the brutality the Romans themselves had meted out to others. In such commentaries on Rome it is difficult to escape the moral dimension.
La Porte, Tarde and Vigenère offer three very different records of their experience. The differences are even more marked if their evocations are set beside the maps of ancient Rome drawn and engraved by Pirro Ligorio. Ligorio's first map, executed in 1553 and published by Michele Tramezzino in Rome, was a small plan ( pianta piccolo as it was termed) depicting all the ancient monuments within the circumference of Rome as if they were restored to a perfect state (Figure 4). As well as showing the principal buildings. (circuses, theatres, baths, sepulchres and the Colosseum), Ligorio had indicated the main arteries of the city and slipped in the newly constructed Belvedere, St Peter's and St Paul's. His second map, which also showed the whole city, displayed the detail of each region on separate plates from the Porta Pinciana to the Porta Vaticano. Anyone looking at these delicately drawn reconstructions of Rome's most eminent buildings (Figure 5) would be satisfied that he had before him real, solid structures that could be visited and explored, although Ligorio admitted in his L'Antiquità di Roma that ruins had produced confusion and that the form of the city resembled a labyrinth.
Ligorio's maps were eagerly sought after, printed and reprinted in Rome and Venice, engraved by Etienne du Pérac for the publisher Antoine Lafréry under the new title Urbis Romae sciographia ex antiquis monumentis accuratiss. delineata , and copied by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau who then produced each reconstituted building on a separately engraved sheet. How far did they determine the image of Rome for those who could not travel there? La Porte and Ligorio produced idealized images for audiences who wanted to look upon the city in its pristine glory; yet Jean Tarde seems not to have been touched, scarcely seeing what was berate him in his anxiety to satisfy his religious fervour. It is interesting to speculate whether the sense of shock and outrage, as exemplified by Vigenère, was intensified by the expectations aroused by Ligorio's 'false' depictions of the city. Did French travellers to Rome in the late sixteenth century seek to measure the distance between the idealized vision and the reality of ruins, uneven ground, partial monuments and deserted stretches of land? Or is this an inappropriate question for the time? Furthermore, how far did travellers try to relate recorded images to the constantly changing face of Rome, transformed by new building projects?
The purpose of this chapter is to give a sense of the varied experience recorded by French writers who visited Rome at this time, to examine the form and nature of their testimony and, in so far as it is possible, to explore their motives. The number of visits had become extraordinary. Montaigne complained, in 1580, that Rome was full only of Frenchmen, and it is noteworthy that the phenomenon of travel coincided with the slowing down of French political intrusions into Italy which had been frequent since the time of Charles VIII and which had brought opportunities for plunder and gain.
THE GENRE RÉCIT DE VOYAGE
The genre récit de voyage is neither easy to determine nor straightforward in its interpretation, for travellers recorded their experience in many forms, and it is not always clear whether they were writing fictions or relating facts, or sometimes indulging in the one and then the other within the same text. Peregrination was an enriching and bewildering movement of both body and mind, and the status of the writing that emerged from that experience was often ambiguous. The writer might claim one thing for his work and demonstrate quite another. In the testimony that remains of journeys to Rome, we sometimes find notes, kept secret for personal perusal only and which have survived in manuscript. There were the daily calendars of events intended as the raw material on which to build future publications such as the Journal of Audebert, the Voyages of Villamont, or the Bref recueil of Rigaud. There was also the record of 'choses notoires', which might be curiosities or rare works, literary texts or strange sculpted objects, or which could relate to scholarly or scientific encounters such as the conversations that Jean Tarde had with Galileo or the discussions Villeroy enjoyed with Fulvio Orsini and others. Some works were styled 'commentaires/papiers journaux' such as Du Bellay's Regrets or Monluc's Commentaires where private observations were distilled and shaped for public consumption; or there were letter's sent back home not only to entertain the family but also expected to be widely distributed and admired by friends, acquaintances and rivals. Such were the carefully constructed letters in Latin of Pierre Paschal, or the elegant reminiscences which the ambitious young writer Guez de Balzac created. Journals of voyages were generally written retrospectively to preserve the memory of precious experience and to serve as guides to others, as Villamont explicitly stated; or they might be mere sketches, preliminary gestures towards literary forms, as is evident from the Journal of Audebert.
This mass of materials, varied and multiform, is invaluable for it not only records those features of their experience which struck the minds of observers -- and it is interesting how often impressions overlap from one writer to another -- but it also testifies to the effort individual visitors to Rome made to articulate fully their reactions and, abandoning the use of well-tried formulae, to pass on their view to others. Whatever their overall framework and form, these writings are uneven. The views they expressed were open-ended and seemingly arbitrary in that some objects or events are described in detail while others are merely named. They are always incomplete in so far as the record terminates abruptly or evokes objects that have not been seen and are, paradoxically, indicated by their absence.
Many wrote modestly about what they were trying to do; Villamont, for instance, asked the reader to excuse him:
si j'ay obmis quelquechose par inadventance ou si mon langage n'a esté enrichy de quelques belles fleurs d'éloquence, comme la matière le requeroit bien.
[If I've omitted something inadvertently or if my language is insufficiently rich in the fine flowers of eloquence that the subject would require.]
The plea betrays the extent to which he expected to be read critically, and reveals assumptions about the lofty style he thought appropriate to considerations upon Rome. Similarly, the young Jean Rigaud wrote a few years later:
s'il y a du deffaut excuse m'en s'il te plaist, parce que ie l'ay fait ainsi et proprement comme sur le lieu. Ie l'avois desja escrit, seulement, depuis augmenté par moy des traductions, advis et glose en marge que j'ay estimé y estre convenables, hors d'autre embellissement.
[if there are faults, please forgive me, because I wrote this on the spot. I had already written it, only (afterwards) I added translations and commentaries in the margin which I thought appropriate; no other embellishment.]
These may be insincere disclaimers; but they may also expose the will not only to describe but to do it well, with suitable adornments and erudition (although, in fact, Rigaud's marginal comments are slight and unremarkable). Notwithstanding his literary and scholarly ambitions, Rigaud insisted that he only wrote about what he had seen with his own eyes, 'pour les avoir bien veües et deüement visitees ... Car ce seroit une trop lourde faute, d'asseurer chose que mes yeux n'eussent eu la preuve' (sig. Br) (having seen and duly visited them ... because it would be a signal fault to assert something of which my eyes did not have proof). Such assurances about accuracy and authenticity were commonplace in travel writing even though, as will be shown, the interference of texts already written on the sights of Rome often obscured what visitors actually claimed to have seen.
Rigaud's apology suggests that he had reviewed his text more than once before its publication. Nicolas Audebert, too, had prepared his initial jottings very carefully with the intention of making them more widely available. The Lansdowne manuscript in the British Library is clearly a fair copy which has been much worked upon. Audebert, envisaging his account as a balanced whole, shaped and organized the material, cross-referencing within the text and explaining methodically what he intended to do. He withheld, for example, detailed descriptions of the Porto S. Popolo when he first encountered it (I, 280) in order to reserve his considered comments for the time when he developed his discourse on the gates of Rome more generally. His approach is businesslike and systematic. He starts his account of Rome from the perimeter, taking his reader conscientiously round the walls of the city, counting the paces as he goes; and he describes the monuments embedded in the walls as he comes upon them, giving them detailed attention. Indeed, of all the French observers of Rome, it is Audebert who tells us most. It is evident, from the care that he has taken, that he wished to leave a record which was recognizably his own; and yet the views of 'others' are abundantly present in his work. Authors of guidebooks can be seen watching over Audebert's shoulder as he observes the monuments of Rome. He was aware of their presence, for he engages them in debate along with those 'others', authors of classical texts from which citations are frequently made. From the perimeter, his ordering mind takes the reader along the main arteries of Rome moving methodically into the heart of the city itself. Audebert's bulky Voyage is not without literary pretensions, and to these we shall return.
Complex seem to have been the motives which led so many to undertake the journey to Rome. For some, the prospect of indulgences and of papal blessings was sufficient incentive. Greffin Affagart and his companions, for example, left Chartres on 1 March 1533 'vestuz en faczon d'hermites pour plus simplement et religieusement faire nostre voyage' (dressed as hermits in order to effect our journey with greater simplicity and devotion), and they stayed in Rome just long enough to visit the seven holy places and to receive 'la benediction de nostre S.P. le Pape' before wending their way to the shrine at Loreto. By contrast, Protestants, like Gregory Martin in 1576-8, enjoyed a crude sense of satisfaction and superiority as they gloated on the Rome that was no more.
From his journeys, Montaigne had sought many things: the moral and intellectual enhancement that he had advocated for others in his essay De l'institution des enfans (I, 26); escape from the religious strife that was overrunning France; and relief from preoccupation with his kidney stone. What he found was a source of philosophical reflection and a creative impulse. Those same ruins that had roused Martin's glee produced in Montaigne an overwhelming sense of awe. This feeling was recorded by Montaigne's secretary in a famous passage from the Journal de voyage where opposing notions were drawn together: 'ces petites montres de sa ruine' (these tiny signs of its ruin) which seem to have the same deprecatory flavour as in the reactions of Gregory Martin were, in truth, the signs that recalled the 'épouvantable machine de Rome' (fearful machine of Rome), and the city's 'gloire', 'preeminence' and 'grandeur'. Montaigne's response had placed the accent simultaneously on the lingering evidence of extraordinary greatness and all-embracing achievement, as well as on the ambiguity of what he observed.
This same sense of ambiguity and paradox was felt by both Nicolas Audebert and by an anonymous traveller to Rome in 1606. The former saw the ruins of Diocletian's Thermae as showing 'assez la grandeur et chose merveilleuse que c'estoit quasi incroyable' (sufficiently the marvellous greatness of the thing that it is almost incredible) (II, 267), while the latter depicts the whole of Rome as 'ce fatal et admirable endroit de la terre' (this doomed and admirable place on Earth). The moral uplift they had come to experience was satisfied; but there is something more, a conviction (shared by Montaigne and Italian humanists before them) that they were dwelling in a unique place (Figure 6). They could not yet articulate it as Boswell was to do rather cynically --'a man who has not been to Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from not having seen what it is expected a man should see' -- but their words transmit the sense of having been associated with something rare and precious, which would endure.
Although Frenchmen did not come to Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century as their predecessors had done, greedy for war and spoils, they did come eagerly as scholars, artists, diplomats and treasure seekers. Charles de Neufville de Villeroy, marquis d'Alincourt ('party de Paris le 12 de Novembre, 1583'), was often perfunctory in his comments on Rome, and he lazily repeated others' words and judgements. Yet it would probably be unfair to base an assessment of his reaction on the brief notes which he has left since, like Audebert, he carried letters of introduction to Fulvio Orsini. Unfortunately, he did not record his conversations with this erudite librarian of Alessandro Farnese. Both Villeroy and Audebert had gone to Italy for intellectual improvement, to copy down inscriptions, and to receive a scholarly training. The latter certainly found it; through the kind offices of Jacques Corbinelli and Piero Vettori (in Florence) he was encouraged to edit his father's poem Roma which was published in 1585. Audebert appreciated the need to understand the technical aspects of Roman building so that he might assess the quality of what he saw; and he undertook his studies solemnly and assiduously so that, for instance, he might comprehend the water marvels at Tivoli (II, 69). Similarly, Jacques Auguste de Thou and the ambassador Paul de Foix travelled to enhance their studies and they recount how they read Aristotle with Marc-Antoine de Muret. Paul de Foix wrote in his letters to Dupuy: 'nous lisons maintenant les Politiques ayant parachevé nos Ethiques' (having read the Ethics, we are now on to the Politics). The ambassador had nothing but praise for the intellectual penetration of his companion and only regretted that his diplomatic duties prevented him from exploring the riches of Rome more thoroughly. To be in Rome with evidence all around of books, art works and inscriptions also offered the opportunity of belonging to circles of scholars committed to the task of making available the great works of the past, explaining their meaning and conveying their style and sense. Thus, De Thou related in his Mémoires how he visited the learned Sigonio and was entertained by Paulus Manutius; some years later, Jean Tarde also benefited from the knowledge of Fulvio Orsini, 'homme des grandes lettres et fort amateur de l'Antiquité' (a great man of Letters and very learned about antiquity); and, later still, De Fresnes Canaye sent his three sons to Italy that they might witness 'les principales antiquitez, et choses remarquables de Rome' (the principal antiquities, and the most remarkable sights in Rome).
Artists had flocked to the imperial city from the early years of the sixteenth century encouraged by the demands of princes who, like Charles VIII, admired the paintings and buildings they had seen in Italy and wished to furnish their palaces with similar splendid examples. Jean Duvet, for instance, had spent over a decade there (from 1533) studying and copying the masterpieces of Mantegna, Raphael and Leonardo. Marten van Heemskerck was in Rome at the same time, and his sketchbook (preserved in Berlin) testifies to the attention he lavished on buildings and ruins. Onto his drawings he often inscribed his name as though he now owned the object; and his paintings show how imaginatively he incorporated the monuments he admired into his own compositions. Their status is perhaps most apparent in the self-portrait (now in the Fitzwilliam Museum) which he painted around 1553, twenty years after his visit to Rome. In it the artist and the Colosseum are given equal prominence, and the former is depicted in the very act of sketching the monument (Figure 7). For more than a century, a steady flow of French artists followed, sent to Rome to learn to paint and to build, or to negotiate with the papal authorities the export of precious remains to France. Their activities will be explored in more detail in Chapter 5.
The value of the experience gained from travel was asserted in most récits de voyage . Villamont was adamant that travel refines the judgement and prepares a man for the affairs of his country much more effectively than book learning.
Certainement l'experience nous a faict cognoistre que ceux qui avoyent beaucoup voyagé et remarqué avec jugement les façons de vivre des provinces les plus esloignees, estoient beaucoup plus propres au maniement des affaires, que ceux qui s'estoient contentez de vivre en leurs maisons et fueilleter leurs livres.
[Certainly, the experience has made me realize that those who are much travelled and who have judiciously assessed the ways of life in the most distant places are much better suited to the management of public affairs than are those who have been content to stay at home leafing through their books.]
He recognized that not everyone had the chance to go. Having returned home, and wishing to reap personal advantage from the recollection, 'la souvenance des choses rares que j'y avois veües' (the remembrance of the rare things that I have seen), he determined to satisfy his mind with a reconstruction of what he had seen so that others, less fortunate, he thought, might profit.
Is it possible to trace the emotions felt by those who gazed on the city of Rome? Erasmus claimed to have left his soul there and, had it been possible, would have chosen the city for his final resting place. The excited anticipation of arriving in Italy was well caught by Jean Antoine de Baïf:
Je frétille d'aller, je désire de voir
Les villes d'Italie et veu ramentevoir
Les marques de Romains jadis Rois de la terre.
[I'm quivering with the desire to go and see/ Italian cities and to recall/the traces of the Romans, once kings of the Earth.]
The same sentiments were expressed by Rabelais, who was filled with joy at the prospect of going to Rome, and having arrived wanted to draw everything straight away. Excitement was even found in Montaigne who, having nonchalantly claimed to be indifferent to Rome, when he was within a day's journey made everyone get up three hours before dawn so anxious was he to tread the stones of the imperial city. His secretary reported: 'Nous en partismes lendemain trois heures avant le jour, tant il avoit envy de voir le pavé de Rome'. Olivier de Magny, too, sang sweetly as he anticipated the pleasure of being 'En cette antique Cité', and of seeing rare treasures and his friend Joachim du Bellay:
Là i verray les raritez,
Et les belles antiquitez ...
Et nostre Bellay Angevin
Qui plus que cela le decore.
[There, you will see rare things, beautiful antiquities, and one who adorns the place more than all that -- our Du Bellay from Anjou.]
The emotional power of arrival could be overwhelming. One traveller, as he stood at the centre of the world in a city favoured by the planet Jupiter and predestined by God, asked 'Qui est celuy qui ne tressaillit de joye?' (who does not thrill with joy?). The thought of being in Rome was so overpowering that this same visitor forgot to look around him and to describe what he actually saw; instead, he launched into the history of Rome, its growth and its successive physical states before providing a list of its current marvels. The personal emotion has given way to the style of history or to that of the guidebook.
IMPAIRED VISION OF ROME
The tendency to describe what was, rather than to say what is, was not unusual. It is perhaps partly explained by the extensive reading many had done in preparation for their journey. They came with visions of Cicero, Virgil, Ovid and Propertius, Seneca and Lucan in their heads, and they walked around where so many great men had walked and debated. When they did look, they could not match what they saw with what they had expected, and their thoughts constantly turned from present prospects to pictures conjured up from the past and recorded in the lines from works they had read or in the reconstructed images which artists like Ligorio had provided.
Recognition of the gap was not always as conscious as it had been with Petrarch who, after his first effusions and astonishment, turned in his second letter to Giovanni Colonna to a reconstruction of the ancient city and its peoples: 'Here was the palace of Evander ... the shrine of Carmentis ... the conversations of Numa and Egeria ...' The evocation was written with fervour and with the emotion of one who had long awaited the experience. There is no sense of loss or disappointment in Petrarch's words; rather, there is a feeling of thankfulness in being given the opportunity to pen this great setpiece of evocative reconstruction. Some sixteenth-century French visitors felt more ambivalently.
Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, whose interest was rarely engaged by aesthetic considerations, nonetheless expressed his astonishment at the sight of the old buildings in Rome which continued to show their beauty and to provoke awe:
ces orgueilleuses antiquitez, les ruines de ces beaux palais, ces superbes colisées et grands termes, qui montrent bien encore quels ils ont esté, donnent encore admiration et terreur à tout le monde et la ruine en demeure admirable et espouvantable.
[these proud monuments of antiquity, ruins of noble palaces, superb baths and arenas which still bear witness to what they were, inspiring the whole world with both admiration and terror, their ruin still provokes admiration and fear.]
Pierre Paschal, too, wrote in his letters about his complex feelings which conjured up both past heroes and heroic events and present neglect and ruin. As he described the 'vias Appias et Aurelias incultas' and the fractured columns, broken marble and tumbledown buildings, Paschal's tone retains the nostalgia which a long tradition of commentators on the fate of Rome had exploited, although he scarcely responded to the recreative power of the stones. In others' works, reading had transformed those stones, turning the shock of discovering a scene strewn with fragments and mounds of ruins into an active process of evocation and of building (Figure 8).
This automatic and almost magical recreation is now well known. It was most memorably articulated by Sigmund Freud, for whom Rome's power was awakened by the simple act of gazing on the city and bringing to that looking the vast resources of history, art and literature. For the person who seeks to know Rome has only, in Freud's words, 'to change the direction of his glance or his position for phase upon phase of Roman history, palace upon palace, to rise before him'.
Coming upon Rome from the direction of Tivoli, Florisel de Claveson, sieur de Mercurol, saw the countryside filled with old forts spread out at intervals of a mile. After enquiries, there sprang into his mind the noise of the guards who had once patrolled them:
Retournant à Rome voyant ceste campagne, remplie d'antiennes et vieilles tours, voysines ung mille ou plus les unes des autres, me fust dist qu'en icelles jadis estoient sentinelles et corps de gardes, respondants les uns aux aultres, esquels du temps et regne des Anciens Empereurs Romains, falloit arraisonner auparavant qu'aborder leurs Majestés.
[Returning to Rome and seeing this countryside filled with old and ancient towers at a mile's distance or more from each other, I was told that in olden times guards and sentinels patrolled there, communicating with each other, and in the reign of the Old Roman Emperors, they had to be addressed first before their Majesties could be approached.]
(Continues...)
