Page 2: A Great Basin of Granite and Marble
However, I see that I too – if only for a moment – was about to fall into the romantic clutches of the incomparable setting of the fountain, so I will stop immediately and say no more on the subject of this fountain; nor shall I try my quill on such flights of fancy, leaving them instead to those who are better equipped, or should I say "have better feathers" than I. As usual, my account will be quite simple, almost mundane, and restricted to one of those Announcements from Rome with which we are now familiar. This one, dated 25 April 1587, noted: "Medici is having that great ancient basin of granite marble brought to his garden at Trinity for the purpose of building a fountain. He bought it from the brothers at S. Salvatore del Lauro for 200 scudi so you could say he had it as a gift, considering how much it is worth."
The Medici in question is the famous Cardinal Ferdinando, the one who supervised all the great water works that were being carried out in these years to bring the Aqua Felice to Rome. This cardinal, the son of Cosimo I de’ Medici had bought from Cardinal Ricci di Montepulciano a villa that Annibale Lippi, one of Michelangelo’s pupils, had built for him on the slopes of the Pincio. This was the same Cardinal Ricci who had been in charge of the water works to bring the Aqua Vergine to the Fountains of Rome a few years earlier.
The villa, as imposing as a fortress, was almost certainly completed in 1572 and its grounds were full of fountains and garden ponds with statues of nymphs, all fed by the Aqua Vergine, whose cisterns, as we know were and still are just at the foot of the hill, in the Salita di S. Sebastianello. The water was pumped to the villa at the top of the hill thanks to the ingenuity of a man from Milan, Camillo Agrippa, who is remembered in a comical inscription in the villa itself. In a play on the man’s surname, this read: "Marcus Agrippa [the son-in-law of the Emperor Augustus] only brought the Aqua Vergine as far as the low-lying region of Campo Marzio; but Master Camillo Agrippa’s good work succeeded in raising it to the top of the Pincio Hill, which shows he was the greater genius".
Cardinal Montepulciano died in 1574 and, as already mentioned, two years later the imposing building and statues was bought by the young and exceedingly rich Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, who eventually embellished the villa with the choicest statues of Antiquity. When the cardinal put away his red biretta and left Rome to collect his inheritance and property in Tuscany, most of these – along with all the "bears, lions, ostriches and other wild animals kept by the Grand Duke [i.e. Ferdinando] in his garden on the Pincio Hill were embarked at Ripa to be shipped to Florence".
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