Rome
Académie de France – The Villa Medici
Created in 1666, the Académie de France had many homes in Rome before moving from its first home in the Palais Mancini to the Villa Medici in 1803. It was thereafter attached to the Institut de France, and the competition for admission, the « Prix de Rome », which Berlioz won in 1830, was managed by the Académie des Beaux Arts. At the time of Berlioz’s stay, the director of the Académie was the painter Horace Vernet (1789-1863), who had been appointed in 1828; he was to be succeeded in 1835 by another painter, Ingres.
Berlioz arrived in Rome in March 1831 after an eventful crossing from Marseille to Livourne; there is a graphic account of the journey in the Memoirs (chapter 32) and also in a long letter he wrote from Nice to Thomas Gounet and several other friends in Paris, dated 6 May 1831 (Correspondance générale no. 223, hereafter CG for short). He then pursued the journey to Rome on land via Florence. The same chapter of the Memoirs describes the final stage of the journey and the arrival in Rome through the Piazza del Popolo.
The Académie de France, in the Villa Medici in Rome, was Berlioz’s base during his stay in Italy in 1831-1832, as it was for his fellow Prix de Rome laureates. He describes it thus (Memoirs, chapter 32):
The villa Medici, where the boarders and the director of the Académie de France live, was built in 1557 by Annibal Lippi; Michelangelo subsequently added a wing and other improvements. It is located on that part of the Monte Pincio which overlooks the city of Rome, from where one can enjoy one of the most beautiful views in the world.
To the right stretches the Pincio avenue [now the Viale della Trinitá dei Monti]; it is the Champs-Élysées of Rome. Every day, when the heat begins to abate, it is flooded with pedestrians, horse-riders and especially open carriages, which for a while bring to life this magnificent but deserted plateau, but at the stroke of seven they all hurriedly go down to the city and disperse like a swarm of flies swept away by the wind.
To the left of the villa, the Pincio avenue leads to the little square of Trinità del Monte which is graced by an obelisk, from which a large flight of marble steps descends into Rome and serves as a direct communication link between the top of the hill and the Piazza di Spagna.
On the opposite side the palace opens up on fine gardens designed in the style of Lenôtre, as you would expect from the gardens of any self-respecting academy. They comprise a wood of laurel and oak trees rising on a terrace, bounded on one side by the walls of Rome, and on the other by the convent of the French Ursulines which adjoins the ground of the villa Medici.
Opposite, in the midst of the uncultivated fields of the villa Borghese, one notices the miserable and abandoned country house where Raphaël used to live; a further touch of gloom is added to this melancholy landscape by a ring of pine trees which bounds the horizon and is permanently covered by a black swarm of crows.
Such in summary is the setting of the truly royal dwelling which the munificence of the French government has provided to its artists for the duration of their stay in Rome. The director’s quarters are astonishingly lavish; many an ambassador would be happy to have their equivalent. On the other hand the rooms of the boarders, except for two or three, are small, uncomfortable and especially very badly furnished. I bet that from this point of view a sergeant at the Popincourt barracks in Paris is better off than I was at the palace of the Accademia di Francia.
[…] The boarders are admittedly required to send every year to the Academy in Paris a painting, drawing, medallion or a score, but once this task has been completed they can spend their time as they please, or even fail altogether to spend it profitably, and nobody takes any notice.
Berlioz fulfilled the letter, if not the spirit, of this requirement: from Rome he sent to the Institut de France in Paris the overture Rob Roy, the Quartetto e coro dei maggi (which was coolly received), and the Resurrexit from his 1825 Messe solennelle. As he recalls in his Memoirs (chapter 39), the academicians did not even notice that this score was old material and had already been performed in Paris at Saint-Roch and Saint-Eustache years before Berlioz won the Prix de Rome and went to Italy.
From his base at the villa Medici Berlioz was able to visit the famous sights of Rome, such as St Peter’s or the Colosseum; he also excursioned widely in Italy, to towns nearby, such as his favourite Subiaco or Tivoli, and more widely as far as Campania and the Bay of Naples.
Laureates of the Prix de Rome were required to spend two years in Italy. But by a special authorisation granted by Horace Vernet, the obliging director of the Académie, Berlioz was able to leave Italy for France six months before the end of his statutory stay. He left Rome on 2 May, but did not in fact proceed straight to Paris: he spent five months in La Côte-Saint-André before eventually reaching Paris on 7 November 1832.
One of the by-products of Berlioz’s stay in Rome were the first genuine portraits of himself. He refers to this in the letter of 6 May 1831 from Nice mentioned above:
Talking of lithographs, I have had my portrait done in Rome; it is no good; but a sculptor has done my medallion, and it is a very good likeness, in a half-size plaster.
The portrait,
by Émile Signol, in fact was apparently not
completed till the following year in late April (CG
no. 269).
Portrait painted by Émile Signol
This portrait is in the Académie de France, Villa Medici. It was on display at the Bibliothèque nationale de France special exhibition in 2003 marking the bicentenary of Berlioz’s birth.
Medallion made by Dantan in Rome in 1831
The original copy of this picture is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
The Villa Medici was extensively refurbished in the 1960s and 1970s under its
then director, the painter Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, known as Balthus
(1960-1977). Unless otherwise stated, all the pictures below were taken by
Michel Austin in May 2007.
The Villa Medici
–
view from the Janiculum
hill across the Tiber
The Villa Medici
– view from Viale
della Trinitá dei Monti
The Villa Medici – the main entrance
The Villa Medici
– the main entrance, view from the fountain across the road
The Villa Medici
– view of Rome from the main entrance
View of Rome from the main entrance in the 19th century
This painting, entitled The Fountain of the Académie de France, Rome, with St Peter’s in the distance, is by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. It is in the Municipal Gallery of Art, Dublin, Ireland.
Interior of the Villa Medici
– entry staircase and the statue of
Louis XIV
This staircase leads to
the gardens and to the offices and pensioners’ rooms.
The Villa Medici – view from the gardens
Saint Peter’s can be seen in the distance.
The Villa Medici in 1835
– view from
the gardens
This engraving is in our own collection.
The Villa Medici – view from the gardens
The Villa Medici – view from the gardens
The original obelisk was taken to Florence in 1764-1788. Joseph Suvée (1792-1807), director of the Académie, replaced it with a statue of Venus, which remained in place until 1960. In 1961, the then director Balthus, had the statue replaced with a resin replica of the original obelisk.
The Villa Medici – the terrace which overlooks the gardens
In the evenings, after the usual drinks at the Caffè Greco, Berlioz and his fellow pensioners would sometimes gather on this terrace and sing opera arias, as Berlioz recalls in the Memoirs (chapter 36):
Those who returned virtuously to the barracks of the Académie [sc. after visiting the Caffè Greco] would sometimes gather under the great vestibule which overlooks the gardens. Whenever I was there, my poor voice and miserable guitar were called upon. We would all sit around the little fountain which falls back into a marble basin and refreshes this echoing portico, and sing by moonlight the dreamy melodies of Der Freischütz and Oberon, the vigorous choruses from Euryanthe, or entire acts of Iphigénie en Tauride, la Vestale or Don Giovanni; for I must say, to the credit of my companions at the Académie, that their musical tastes were anything but vulgar.
A letter to his family dated 24 June 1831 gives a first hand report of such an evening (CG no. 232):
The evening before last I had for the first time in our convent an experience that truly moved me. There were four or five of us sitting in moonlight around the fountain on the little staircase which leads to the gardens; lots were drawn for someone to fetch my guitar, and as the audience consisted of the small number of pensioners that I can tolerate I did not need any prompting to sing. As I was starting an aria from Iphigénie en Tauride, M. Carle Vernet [father of Horace Vernet] arrived, and within two minutes he started sobbing and burst into tears; unable to bear it he fled to his son’s sitting room, shouting in a choking voice: « Horace! Horace, come! — What is it, what is it? — We are all crying! — How come, how come, what’s happened? — It is M. Berlioz who is singing Gluck for us; yes, monsieur, as you say, it makes you want to fall on your knees (he said to me). Come, you are a melancholy character, I understand you, I do, there are people who… » — He didn’t finish, yet nobody laughed.
The Villa Medici
– the vestibule behind the terrace
which overlooks the gardens
The Villa Medici
– entrance to the Grand Salon in the vestibule
This could have been the refectory
in which Berlioz had dinner with his fellow pensioners.
The Villa Medici in 2007
– view from the terrace which
overlooks the gardens
The Villa Medici – a view of the gardens
The Villa Medici – a view of the gardens
The Villa Medici – a statue at the end of an alleyway
The gardens have many alleyways, at the end of some
of which there is a statue on a marble pedestal, like the one shown in the above
photo. These statues were installed in the 1960s as part of Balthus’s great
project of restoration of the Villa Medici.
The Villa Medici
– view of Rome from the grounds of the Villa
Saint Peter’s can be seen on the right.
© 2003-2007 (unless otherwise stated) Michel Austin and Monir Tayeb for all the photos, engravings and information on this page.
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