Gardens of the Late Renaissance - Page: 2
Even before the 1527 sack of Rome, many artists were moving away from the calm harmony of High Renaissance compositions towards more a complex and eccentric style (or collection of styles) which art historians call Mannerist. While many Late Renaissance gardens featured Mannerist sculpture, there are very few gardens that I would really call Mannerist. Many Late Renaissance gardens have an elegant playfulness which is more typical of Mannerismthan it is of High Renaissance art, but this was the period when most of the great Renaissance gardens were created. It was during the High Renaissance that garden design became a great art, equal to architecture, and created by the greatest architects of the period.
During the Early Renaissance, Florence was the cultural center, while the High Renaissance was centered in Rome. After 1527, no one city was the center of Renaissance culture; the culture of the High Renaissance spread over all of Italy and beyond the Alps to the rest of Europe.
In 1537, at the age of 18, Cosimo de Medici became duke of Florence and began to renovate the villa which he had inherited at Castello, near Florence. The present garden was begun about 1538 by Niccolo Tribolo. The design of the garden is surprisingly conservative, but was also very innovative.
Giorgio Vasari described this garden as the "most rich, magnificent and ornamental garden in Europe", but most modern visitors to this garden are probably there to visit the grotto, the rest of the garden isn't very interesting. This is because the basic design is rather monotonous, and most of the statues and water features which once enlivened it were removed in the late eighteenth century.
Water was always the glory of this garden and this was the first Renaissance garden to use water on a lavish scale. The garden featured many fountains as well as large fishponds and giochi d'aqua (water games). This was also the first Renaissance garden in which all of the statues were part of an allegorical theme. It was these two innovations which would have a strong impact on the gardens which followed it.
Because Renaissance gardens were quite formal, people often don't realize that many of these gardens were created for avid plant collectors. It was usual for each kind of plant to be given its own bed; this encouraged the practice of creating formal gardens in which the pattern was composed out of many small beds. Padua's Orto Botanico, which was designed by Giovanni Moroni in 1545, still displays its plants in this manner.
In 1549, Tribolo was commissioned to design the Boboli Gardens, behind Florence's Pitti Palace. He did not live to see his design completed, but according to Vasari, Tribolo's design dictated the basic plan and planting of the garden. The land behind the Pitti Palace was in the shape of an amphitheater. Tribolo's plan was for an U shaped lawn with an enormous fountain at its center. The sloping ground was divided up by a formal system of paths and planted with fir, holm oak, cypress, and laurel trees. This sort of ornamental woodland (or bosco) was to become a typical feature of Late Renaissance gardens in Italy.
The Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo is the only garden that I would really call Mannerist. This garden, which was created for Pier Francesco Orsini between 1552 and 1555 is one of the strangest gardens ever created in Europe, featuring gigantic sculptures carved out of living rock. The garden is loaded with antiquarian and literary references which are now obscure, but which would have been clearly understood by Orsini and his circle of friends.
The Villa Giulia was the most important garden to be created in the area of Rome since 1527; it was begun in 1551 for Pope Julius III (1551-55) by Giocomo Vignola, Bartolomeo Ammanti, and Giorgio Vasari. This villa was strongly influenced by the Villa Madama's interpenetration of indoor and outdoor spaces. The gardens no longer exist, but the inner courtyards could be called the most important in courtyard spaces since Donato Bramante began the Cortile del Belvedere in 1505. Vignola also designed the Villa Farnese at Caparola and probably designed the Villa Lante at Bagnaia.
While Pirro Ligorio has never been regarded as Vignola's equal as an architect, the casino that he built in the Vatican Gardens for Pius IV (1559-65) is one of the most original and delightful of the giardini segreti (secret gardens) which were features in most large Renaissance gardens. The garden which he created at Tivoli for Cardinal Ippolito d'Este has always rivaled the Villa Lante, it has always been regarded as one of the greatest Renaissance gardens. The Villa Lante is the ultimate expression of humanist ideas about garden design, but no garden has ever surpassed the Villa d'Este's display of fountains.
The garden of the Villa Medici at Pratolino, which was begun about 1569 for Francesco de Medici, probably by Bernado Buonotalenti, was famous for its giochi d'aqua, including automata. While the fountains were very inventive, the design of the garden was not as timelessly classical as the Villa d'Este. This garden no longer exists.
The garden of Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati, which was begun about 1598 by Giacomo della Porta, for Pope Clement VII, was designed to rival or surpass these great Late Renaissance gardens. It certainly rivals them, but it has always been regarded as a classic example of Roman Baroque garden design because of its late date and because it anticipates the large-scale dramatic effects of later Baroque gardens. The main difference between Late Renaissance and Baroque gardens is that, with the exception of the Cortile del Belvedere, Renaissance gardens were designed on a rather modest and human scale, while the great Baroque gardens were designed to be grand displays of power and wealth.
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