DOI chapter:
I. Florentine villas
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61216#0064
FLORENTINE VILLAS
groups are basins of pink-and-white marble, carved
with sea-creatures and resting on dolphins. Humour is
the quality which soonest loses its savour, and it is often
difficult to understand the grotesque side of the old gar-
den-architecture ; but the curious delight in the repre-
sentations of animals, real or fantastic, probably arose
from the general interest in those strange wild beasts
of which the travellers of the Renaissance brought home
such fabulous descriptions. As to the general use of
the grotto in Italian gardens, it is a natural develop-
ment of the need for shade and coolness, and when the
long-disused waterworks were playing, and cool streams
gushed over quivering beds of fern into the marble
tanks, these retreats must have formed a delicious con-
trast to the outer glare of the garden.
At Petraia the gardens are less elaborate in plan than
at Castello, and are, in fact, noted chiefly for a fountain
brought from that villa. This fountain, the most beau-
tiful of II Tribolo’s works, is surmounted by the famous
Venus-like figure of a woman wringing out her hair,
now generally attributed to Giovanni da Bologna. Like
the other Florentine villas of this quarter, where water
is more abundant, Petraia has a great oblong wasca, or
tank, beneath its upper terrace; while the house itself,
a simple structure of the old-fashioned Tuscan type,
built about an inner quadrangle, is remarkable for its very
beautiful. tower, which, as Herr Gurlitt1 suggests, was
doubtless inspired by the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.
x“ Geschichte des Barockstils in Italien.”
37
groups are basins of pink-and-white marble, carved
with sea-creatures and resting on dolphins. Humour is
the quality which soonest loses its savour, and it is often
difficult to understand the grotesque side of the old gar-
den-architecture ; but the curious delight in the repre-
sentations of animals, real or fantastic, probably arose
from the general interest in those strange wild beasts
of which the travellers of the Renaissance brought home
such fabulous descriptions. As to the general use of
the grotto in Italian gardens, it is a natural develop-
ment of the need for shade and coolness, and when the
long-disused waterworks were playing, and cool streams
gushed over quivering beds of fern into the marble
tanks, these retreats must have formed a delicious con-
trast to the outer glare of the garden.
At Petraia the gardens are less elaborate in plan than
at Castello, and are, in fact, noted chiefly for a fountain
brought from that villa. This fountain, the most beau-
tiful of II Tribolo’s works, is surmounted by the famous
Venus-like figure of a woman wringing out her hair,
now generally attributed to Giovanni da Bologna. Like
the other Florentine villas of this quarter, where water
is more abundant, Petraia has a great oblong wasca, or
tank, beneath its upper terrace; while the house itself,
a simple structure of the old-fashioned Tuscan type,
built about an inner quadrangle, is remarkable for its very
beautiful. tower, which, as Herr Gurlitt1 suggests, was
doubtless inspired by the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.
x“ Geschichte des Barockstils in Italien.”
37