Villa Medici

Not many people know that there is a wild—albeit tiny—woods in downtown Rome where Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici used to take his guests hunting. At the top of the Spanish Steps, next to the church of Trinità dei Monti, the Villa Medici is one of the most magnificent properties in the city, with a 16th-century palazzo designed by Bartolomeo Ammannati, the architect of Florence’s Pitti Palace, sitting in 18 acres of gardens—including the woods—and a breathtaking view of Rome’s skyline. At the time of the Medici the villa was in the Roman countryside, adjoining the estate of Prince Borghese, whose gardens are today a renowned public park. But since 1803, when the conquering Napoleon Bonaparte managed to swap another palazzo for it, this exquisite site has been the home of the Académie de France à Rome. In 2008 President Nicolas Sarkozy named Frédéric Mitterrand, the 61-year-old nephew of former French President François Mitterrand and a well-known author, cinéaste and broadcaster, as its new director.

Louis XIV founded the French Academy in 1666 in order to send France’s most promising artists and sculptors to Rome for classical studies. They would copy paintings, sketch ancient sculpture and live among the greatest monuments of classical antiquity. The Sun King expected his first waves of artists and sculptors to return to France with ideas for the beautification of his grand projects, the Louvre and Versailles. Rome’s contemporary art of the time, from Bernini’s dynamic Baroque sculpture to Piranesi’s architectural etchings, influenced and complemented the students’ art education and so contributed considerably to the development of Neoclassicism in France and throughout Europe. Former director Richard Peduzzi said the Academy’s assigned role was “to allow the blossoming of innumerable talents, precipitating them into the heart of history”. Boucher, Fragonard, Houdon and Jacques-Louis David were among the artists who illuminated the Academy during the 17th century.

Over the years the Academy scholarships—called the Prix de Rome—opened to architects, art historians, writers, musicians, photographers and filmmakers. Today there is even a chef among the pensionnaires, as the Academy residents are called. Ingres (who later became the Academy’s director), Bouguereau, Carpeaux, Cabanel, architects Victor Baltard and Charles Garnier, and composers Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet and Debussy all spent from three to five years refining their talents in the protective and nourishing atmosphere of Villa Medici.

Part of the richness of the pensioner’s experience has always been the exchange among the different disciplines: the shared curiosity and imagination of musicians, sculptors, painters, poets, architects and thinkers living and working together. Today the Prix de Rome offers its scholars six to 18 months’ residency in one of the light-filled studios or independent houses spread throughout the gardens and beyond the woods. Pensioners are given a stipend averaging €2,650 a month and the freedom to pursue a cultural project of their choice.

A new era opened for the Academy in 1961 when then French Culture Minister André Malraux named Balthus (the French artist of Polish descent Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) as its director. During his 16-year tenure, he undertook the first restoration of the villa and gardens, created exhibition spaces and opened the Villa Medici to the public for art exhibits. A complete reorganization of the Academy in 1968 shortened the sojourn but doubled the number of pensioners. Today the Academy’s public program has expanded to photography shows, concerts, film screenings and conferences. Director Mitterrand plans to open Villa Medici even further for cultural exchanges with other European countries, offering more photography and video exhibits. Fashion and TV have also made their debut at the Academy—in 2009 Mitterrand launched a monthly live transmission from the villa in collaboration with French television.

Three days a week there are guided tours of the gardens (in Italian and French only) that include a spirited recounting of the history of the villa and the Medici cardinal-prince who founded it. Visitors get an exterior glimpse of some pensionnaires’ lodgings, including those of Berlioz and Debussy, and a look at the dramatic copy, commissioned by director Balthus, of founder Ferdinando de’ Medici’s prized ancient Niobe sculpture group. (The original has long been dispersed.) The tour also includes the orto, or kitchen garden, and—built on the edge of the property, above the city’s Aurelian wall—Ferdinando’s private study, whose recently rediscovered frescoes, brilliantly preserved by whitewash, were painted by the cardinal’s in-house artist Jacopo Zucchi, a student of Giorgio Vasari.

It seems Ferdinando was named a cardinal as a teenager, but never actually took Holy Orders, making things much easier later, in 1587, when his elder brother died and Ferdinando succeeded as Grand Duke of Tuscany, married and had children. But long before that, in 1576, he acquired a small lodge from the estate of Cardinal Giovanni Ricci di Montepulciano and began to turn it into a stately home. As a connoisseur and an avid collector of antiquities, Ferdinando wanted to incorporate some of his prized artifacts in the facade of his sumptuous new palace. In ancient times the property was part of the fabled gardens of Lucullus, so more artifacts turned up as the foundations were dug. As the story goes, the cardinal also commissioned the theft of some prize ancient Roman friezes and busts from Emperor Trajan’s markets and from the Ara Pacis—the monumental 9 BC altar honoring the peace brought about by Augustus. Architect Ammannati designed the villa with a museum-gallery wing to display Ferdinando’s exquisite sculpture collection—a concept that spread throughout Europe. With the Counter-Reformation then in full swing, Ferdinando thought better of a lavish display open to public view, so the facade of the villa facing the city has a fortress-like austerity. Wedged into the foot of the fountain in front of it is the cannonball that’s been there since 1656, when Queen Christina of Sweden is said to have fired it from one of the cannons on top of Castel Sant’Angelo without aiming first. Some say her intention was to wake the current owner to invite him to go hunting with her.

In an unusual architectural inversion, the main facade of the villa is behind the entrance, designed as a magnificent open-air museum embedded with Ferdinando’s bas-reliefs and sculptures facing the formal garden. Restored in 2000, its striking ivory incandescence is completely in harmony with the ancient marbles it incorporates. On this second facade, a majestic loggia with Egyptian granite columns overlooks the Renaissance parterres. The grounds are being restored under the direction of architect Giorgio Galletti, an expert in Medicean gardens. Though there is much work left to be done, the scenographic spirit of the gardens’ design remains vivid—the spirit that inspired Velázquez to paint three vedute of the gardens during a visit to the villa in the 17th century (they are now on view at the Prado in Madrid). Of all the glory that Rome has to offer a visitor—its ancient monuments, Baroque fountains, picturesque piazzas, cupolas, bell towers and panoramas—it is difficult to match the ethereal sensation of walking from the loggia of Villa Medici at sunset, with torches burning at the quadrants, and crossing the majestic classical facade to the belvedere overlooking the Eternal City.

Originally published in the December 2008 edition of France Today; updated in June 2011