DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19776#0110
THE GARDENS OF ITALY.
neighbourhood of Villa Medici there are even yet
traces of the witch-traditions of the Middle Ages ;
on the northern slope of the hill, the subterranean
chambers of the Roman theatre are still called
by the country people the Witches' Caves [Bacche
ddle Fate).
Among these friends Lorenzo passed perhaps
his happiest hours, discussing philosophy and
politics, and writing verses and sonnets. Poliziano
speaks of these visits in his poem " Rusticus :
" Such was my song, with idle thought
In Fiesole's cool grottoes wrought,
Where from the Medici's retreat
On that famed mount, beneath my feet
The Tuscan city I survey,
And winding Arno, far away.
Here sometime at happy leisure,
Bounteous Lorenzo takes his pleasure
His friends to entertain and feast
(Of Phoebus' sons, himself not least).
Offering a haven, safe and free,
To storm-tossed ships of Poesy."
The following sonnet on a present of violets,
by Lorenzo himself, shows that he was really
a poet :
" Not from bright cultured gardens, where sweet airs
Steal softly round the rose's terraced home,
Into thy white hand, Lady, have we come ;
Deep in dark dingles are our wild wood lairs,
W here once came Venus racked with aching cares,
Seeking Adonis through our leafy gloam :
Hither and thither vainly doth she roam,
Till her bare foot a felon bramble tears.
To catch the sacred blood that from above
Dripped off the leaves, our small white Howers we spread:
Whence came that purple hue that now is ours.
Not summer airs, nor rills from far springs led
Have nursed our beauty ; but by tears of love
Our roots were watered, love-sighs formed our flowers."
Villa Medici had, however, a darker association
for Lorenzo. It was when he was staying here
as a youth, with his brother Giuliano, that the Pazzi
conspiracy was formed against him. It had been
the intention of the conspirators to commit the
murder when they went to dine with Lorenzo at
Fiesole, and it was only after they found that
Giuliano would be absent, that they transferred their
attempt to the cathedral ; the lifting of the Host
was to give the signal. Giuliano was murdered, and
Lorenzo, who escaped by his coolness and presence
of mind, took a terrible vengeance on the assassins.
The villa, which was built by Michelozzo
Michelozzi lor Lorenzo's lather, has been trans-
formed into an eighteenth century house, but the
arched rooms are there ; there must always have
been the terrace in front, and the glory of
Villa Medici is its view. It stands high upon the
hillside, with the ground dropping swiftly below,
and there lies the whole landscape — Florence
spreads over the valley, the low violet hills bound
the horizon, Arno winds like a white ribbon, bells
come soft through the delicious mountain air.
Why does the place bring those men so vividly
before one, as one gazes at the blue distance over
winch time has passed unchanged, at the olives
making a silver tracerv against it, at the cypresses,
velvet spires as green as when Benozzo Gozzoli
set his palette ? From this spot Lorenzo and
Giuliano rode down on that April day to the
Duomo, which they could see far away in the
valley, on that expedition from which one of
them was never to come back. Here they
gathered those they loved around them, in the
intervals of that thronging life, and we know they
felt that thought and leisure and friendship were
still the best thing's it had to give.
" Once more the world's great age begins anew,
Once more the blossoms of that marvellous spring unclose."
As the sun sinks behind the purple Carrara
mountains we picture the group who once often
watched it from this terrace : the Magnificent
Medici, dark, saturnine, sympathetic, the man of
marvellous tact and variety, with his brilliant
friends, full of wit and grave discourse and social
gossip, the music of Plato or Homer sounding in
their ears. " Then when the stream of thought
begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a
bran-new canto of Morgante, or a singing-boy is
bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer Angelo's
last-named ballata."
( 9« )
neighbourhood of Villa Medici there are even yet
traces of the witch-traditions of the Middle Ages ;
on the northern slope of the hill, the subterranean
chambers of the Roman theatre are still called
by the country people the Witches' Caves [Bacche
ddle Fate).
Among these friends Lorenzo passed perhaps
his happiest hours, discussing philosophy and
politics, and writing verses and sonnets. Poliziano
speaks of these visits in his poem " Rusticus :
" Such was my song, with idle thought
In Fiesole's cool grottoes wrought,
Where from the Medici's retreat
On that famed mount, beneath my feet
The Tuscan city I survey,
And winding Arno, far away.
Here sometime at happy leisure,
Bounteous Lorenzo takes his pleasure
His friends to entertain and feast
(Of Phoebus' sons, himself not least).
Offering a haven, safe and free,
To storm-tossed ships of Poesy."
The following sonnet on a present of violets,
by Lorenzo himself, shows that he was really
a poet :
" Not from bright cultured gardens, where sweet airs
Steal softly round the rose's terraced home,
Into thy white hand, Lady, have we come ;
Deep in dark dingles are our wild wood lairs,
W here once came Venus racked with aching cares,
Seeking Adonis through our leafy gloam :
Hither and thither vainly doth she roam,
Till her bare foot a felon bramble tears.
To catch the sacred blood that from above
Dripped off the leaves, our small white Howers we spread:
Whence came that purple hue that now is ours.
Not summer airs, nor rills from far springs led
Have nursed our beauty ; but by tears of love
Our roots were watered, love-sighs formed our flowers."
Villa Medici had, however, a darker association
for Lorenzo. It was when he was staying here
as a youth, with his brother Giuliano, that the Pazzi
conspiracy was formed against him. It had been
the intention of the conspirators to commit the
murder when they went to dine with Lorenzo at
Fiesole, and it was only after they found that
Giuliano would be absent, that they transferred their
attempt to the cathedral ; the lifting of the Host
was to give the signal. Giuliano was murdered, and
Lorenzo, who escaped by his coolness and presence
of mind, took a terrible vengeance on the assassins.
The villa, which was built by Michelozzo
Michelozzi lor Lorenzo's lather, has been trans-
formed into an eighteenth century house, but the
arched rooms are there ; there must always have
been the terrace in front, and the glory of
Villa Medici is its view. It stands high upon the
hillside, with the ground dropping swiftly below,
and there lies the whole landscape — Florence
spreads over the valley, the low violet hills bound
the horizon, Arno winds like a white ribbon, bells
come soft through the delicious mountain air.
Why does the place bring those men so vividly
before one, as one gazes at the blue distance over
winch time has passed unchanged, at the olives
making a silver tracerv against it, at the cypresses,
velvet spires as green as when Benozzo Gozzoli
set his palette ? From this spot Lorenzo and
Giuliano rode down on that April day to the
Duomo, which they could see far away in the
valley, on that expedition from which one of
them was never to come back. Here they
gathered those they loved around them, in the
intervals of that thronging life, and we know they
felt that thought and leisure and friendship were
still the best thing's it had to give.
" Once more the world's great age begins anew,
Once more the blossoms of that marvellous spring unclose."
As the sun sinks behind the purple Carrara
mountains we picture the group who once often
watched it from this terrace : the Magnificent
Medici, dark, saturnine, sympathetic, the man of
marvellous tact and variety, with his brilliant
friends, full of wit and grave discourse and social
gossip, the music of Plato or Homer sounding in
their ears. " Then when the stream of thought
begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a
bran-new canto of Morgante, or a singing-boy is
bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer Angelo's
last-named ballata."
( 9« )