DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0326
The Italian Renaissance and Baroque
297
into the Pope's hands either by gift or sale, and came to form part of the present estate
of the royal garden.
As late as 1580 Montaigne reckons among the most beautiful gardens in Rome those
of Cardinal d'Este on Monte Cavallo. The palace itself was not finished by Paul V.
till the beginning of the seventeenth century, but the garden must have been at the
height of its beauty in the last decades of the sixteenth. Duke Frederick saw it in
1599 and describes it in exactly the same way as Evelyn does forty-five years later. He
particularly praises the magnificent view over the whole of Rome, the precious trees,
herbs, and foreign plants, "the very wonderful and peculiar water devices," of which
he can mention scarcely a tenth part. Still, neither the water stairways nor the great
tanks interest him so much as (under a semicircular arch) "a grand organ piece with four
FIG. 227. VILLA MEDICI, ROME-GENERAL PLAN
registers most cleverly made, which if you turn the water on with a tap begins to play
by itself just as if a good organist was playing on it." He also praises a wood of laurels,
and many walks arched with greenery, as having everywhere beautiful water-works and
figures of marble. He ends his story with the melancholy reflection (more often felt about
the works of a Pope than about other people's) that anyone who begins to build is sure to
die before he has finished.
The sunk grotto with the organ and the large tank in front with plane-trees round
it has been ascribed to Maderna, and this part which is not connected with the buildings
by any general plan gives to the garden a sort of design of its own. The largest stretch
on the level shows dense thicket and paths with hedges (Fig. 226), which were particularly
admired by Evelyn. At his time they were somewhat above the height of a man, and made
of myrtle, laurel, orange, and even ivy, but in that case they were trained over lattice-
work. Evelyn also admires the water stairs and the organs, and says of the former that he
saw in one of the underground natural grottoes a basin made out of a gigantic piece of
ancient porphyry, wherefrom a cascade flowed down steps to a grotto whose roof was
297
into the Pope's hands either by gift or sale, and came to form part of the present estate
of the royal garden.
As late as 1580 Montaigne reckons among the most beautiful gardens in Rome those
of Cardinal d'Este on Monte Cavallo. The palace itself was not finished by Paul V.
till the beginning of the seventeenth century, but the garden must have been at the
height of its beauty in the last decades of the sixteenth. Duke Frederick saw it in
1599 and describes it in exactly the same way as Evelyn does forty-five years later. He
particularly praises the magnificent view over the whole of Rome, the precious trees,
herbs, and foreign plants, "the very wonderful and peculiar water devices," of which
he can mention scarcely a tenth part. Still, neither the water stairways nor the great
tanks interest him so much as (under a semicircular arch) "a grand organ piece with four
FIG. 227. VILLA MEDICI, ROME-GENERAL PLAN
registers most cleverly made, which if you turn the water on with a tap begins to play
by itself just as if a good organist was playing on it." He also praises a wood of laurels,
and many walks arched with greenery, as having everywhere beautiful water-works and
figures of marble. He ends his story with the melancholy reflection (more often felt about
the works of a Pope than about other people's) that anyone who begins to build is sure to
die before he has finished.
The sunk grotto with the organ and the large tank in front with plane-trees round
it has been ascribed to Maderna, and this part which is not connected with the buildings
by any general plan gives to the garden a sort of design of its own. The largest stretch
on the level shows dense thicket and paths with hedges (Fig. 226), which were particularly
admired by Evelyn. At his time they were somewhat above the height of a man, and made
of myrtle, laurel, orange, and even ivy, but in that case they were trained over lattice-
work. Evelyn also admires the water stairs and the organs, and says of the former that he
saw in one of the underground natural grottoes a basin made out of a gigantic piece of
ancient porphyry, wherefrom a cascade flowed down steps to a grotto whose roof was