DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19776#0083
THE BOBOLI GARDENS,
FLORENCE.
THE public gardens of any great town are
hardly ever interesting ; they have an
official look ; miles of well-raked gravel
paths are enough to damp the most lively
imagination. Yet the Boboli was always a Court
garden, and all the red tape cannot blot out a
stately and interesting past.
The garden is laid out on a steep hill at the
back of that palace that Luca Pitti sold to
Eleanora de Medici, the widow of Cosimo I., in
1549. Eleanora was an excellent, good woman,
but she was never popular with the Florentines,
who described her as of an insopportabile gravita.
Tribolo laid out the garden tor her, together
with Buontalenti, and Bartolomeo Ammanti helped
to ornament and erect many of the buildings.
Near the entrance is a grotto, painted with birds
and flowers, and adorned with coloured stucco
figures, once gay enough, but now rather forlorn
and tawdry. Set into its trumpery work, incon-
gruous and particularly out of keeping, are
four half-finished statues by Michael Angelo,
intended for the monument of Julius II., the
work for which is described as a tragedy by
Condivi, the biographer of the great Florentine.
The statues were intended for captives, and im-
prisoned for ever, as they are, in the marble, half-
struggling to light, they have a double significance.
In the inner chamber is a Venus by Gian Bologna,
the principal figure of a fountain. The main
road mounts up the hill to the back of the palace,
which, detached and spacious as is its facade, is
at the back, sunk in a deep trench-like cutting,
which has necessitated the architect's inventing all
sorts of expedients for filling up and bridging over.
A sort of raised gallery, with a very fine and
elaborate fountain, fills the main vacuum, towards
which the first floor ol the palace looks straight
out across a paved court. The great open slope
immediately at the back of the palace is given
up to a really magnificent amphitheatre, one of
those mises-en-scenes which bring home to us what
regal ideas of entertainment they had in the
Renaissance. It is really large, yet amusing as a
faint copy of the great classic models from which
the idea was taken. It has six tiers of seats in a
huge semi-circle of stone, which is separated from
the arena by a stone balustrade with fluted pillars,
tasteful, even severe, and, like the little niches
which ornament the amphitheatre at intervals,
and which are filled alternately by a vase and a
statue, far removed from the florid and flippant
style of the baroque, which was just coming into
vogue.
The view from the rieht-hand corner of the
amphitheatre is famous ; but let Shelley speak
of it, for it is not altered at all since he saw
it : " You see below, Florence, a smokeless city,
its domes and spires occupying the vale ; and
beyond, to the right, the Apennines, whose base
extends even to the walls. The green valleys of
these mountains, which gently unfold themselves
upon the plain, and the intervening hills covered
with vineyards and olive orchards, are occupied
by the villas, which are, as it were, another city,
a Babylon of palaces and gardens. In the midst
of the picture rolls the Arno, through woods and
bounded by the aerial snow and summits of the
Lucchese Apennines. On the left, a magnificent
buttress of lofty, craggy hills juts out in many
shapes over a lovely vale, and approaches the walls
of the city. Cascine and ville occupy the pinnacles
and abutments of those hills, over which is seen
at intervals the ethereal mountain line, heavy with
snow The vale below is covered with cypress
groups, whose obeliskine forms of intense green
pierce the grey shadow of the hill that overhangs
them. The cypresses, too, of this garden form a
magnificent foreground of accumulated verdure ;
pyramids of dark leaves and shining cones rising
out of the mass, beneath which are cut, like
caverns, recesses which conduct into walks. The
cathedral, with its marble campanile, and the domes
and spires of Florence, are at our feet."
From hardly any other place does one get such
a view of the marble bell-tower and Brunelleschi's
wonderful brown dome. They seem to stand out
above all the surrounding houses, relieved against
the sky, and flanked by the graceful tower of
the Palazzo Vecchio, " noblest symbol of civic
liberty in the world," which sends the deep
note of its bell across the summer air. Behind
the amphitheatre the ground climbs straight up
to a plateau, laid out in a sheet of water in a
( V )
FLORENCE.
THE public gardens of any great town are
hardly ever interesting ; they have an
official look ; miles of well-raked gravel
paths are enough to damp the most lively
imagination. Yet the Boboli was always a Court
garden, and all the red tape cannot blot out a
stately and interesting past.
The garden is laid out on a steep hill at the
back of that palace that Luca Pitti sold to
Eleanora de Medici, the widow of Cosimo I., in
1549. Eleanora was an excellent, good woman,
but she was never popular with the Florentines,
who described her as of an insopportabile gravita.
Tribolo laid out the garden tor her, together
with Buontalenti, and Bartolomeo Ammanti helped
to ornament and erect many of the buildings.
Near the entrance is a grotto, painted with birds
and flowers, and adorned with coloured stucco
figures, once gay enough, but now rather forlorn
and tawdry. Set into its trumpery work, incon-
gruous and particularly out of keeping, are
four half-finished statues by Michael Angelo,
intended for the monument of Julius II., the
work for which is described as a tragedy by
Condivi, the biographer of the great Florentine.
The statues were intended for captives, and im-
prisoned for ever, as they are, in the marble, half-
struggling to light, they have a double significance.
In the inner chamber is a Venus by Gian Bologna,
the principal figure of a fountain. The main
road mounts up the hill to the back of the palace,
which, detached and spacious as is its facade, is
at the back, sunk in a deep trench-like cutting,
which has necessitated the architect's inventing all
sorts of expedients for filling up and bridging over.
A sort of raised gallery, with a very fine and
elaborate fountain, fills the main vacuum, towards
which the first floor ol the palace looks straight
out across a paved court. The great open slope
immediately at the back of the palace is given
up to a really magnificent amphitheatre, one of
those mises-en-scenes which bring home to us what
regal ideas of entertainment they had in the
Renaissance. It is really large, yet amusing as a
faint copy of the great classic models from which
the idea was taken. It has six tiers of seats in a
huge semi-circle of stone, which is separated from
the arena by a stone balustrade with fluted pillars,
tasteful, even severe, and, like the little niches
which ornament the amphitheatre at intervals,
and which are filled alternately by a vase and a
statue, far removed from the florid and flippant
style of the baroque, which was just coming into
vogue.
The view from the rieht-hand corner of the
amphitheatre is famous ; but let Shelley speak
of it, for it is not altered at all since he saw
it : " You see below, Florence, a smokeless city,
its domes and spires occupying the vale ; and
beyond, to the right, the Apennines, whose base
extends even to the walls. The green valleys of
these mountains, which gently unfold themselves
upon the plain, and the intervening hills covered
with vineyards and olive orchards, are occupied
by the villas, which are, as it were, another city,
a Babylon of palaces and gardens. In the midst
of the picture rolls the Arno, through woods and
bounded by the aerial snow and summits of the
Lucchese Apennines. On the left, a magnificent
buttress of lofty, craggy hills juts out in many
shapes over a lovely vale, and approaches the walls
of the city. Cascine and ville occupy the pinnacles
and abutments of those hills, over which is seen
at intervals the ethereal mountain line, heavy with
snow The vale below is covered with cypress
groups, whose obeliskine forms of intense green
pierce the grey shadow of the hill that overhangs
them. The cypresses, too, of this garden form a
magnificent foreground of accumulated verdure ;
pyramids of dark leaves and shining cones rising
out of the mass, beneath which are cut, like
caverns, recesses which conduct into walks. The
cathedral, with its marble campanile, and the domes
and spires of Florence, are at our feet."
From hardly any other place does one get such
a view of the marble bell-tower and Brunelleschi's
wonderful brown dome. They seem to stand out
above all the surrounding houses, relieved against
the sky, and flanked by the graceful tower of
the Palazzo Vecchio, " noblest symbol of civic
liberty in the world," which sends the deep
note of its bell across the summer air. Behind
the amphitheatre the ground climbs straight up
to a plateau, laid out in a sheet of water in a
( V )