Bomarzo, Sacro Bosco [Villa Orsini]. Italian estate below the hill town of Bomarzo, near Viterbo. The popular name derives from an inscription in the wood, which refers to it as a ‘sacro bosco’, an allusion to Arcadia (1504) by Jacopo Sannazaro. The Sacro Bosco, built for Pier Francesco (‘Vicino’) Orsini (d 1585) from c. 1552, was dedicated by him to his deceased wife, Giulia Farnese. Called a boschetto (little wood) by Orsini, the site is hilly with untouched terrain, although there are also level terraces and rectilinear enclosures. Much was done by 1564; sculpture was added during the 1570s, and work continued until Orsini’s death in January 1585. The original planting plan is unknown, and since the rediscovery of the site in the 1940s much has been replanted. The stream may have been dammed to form a lake in the areas of the present entrance and the path lined with heads (moved there in the modern restoration). The original entrance was probably near the Leaning House, the former location of the sphinxes, as their inscriptions address the entering visitor. The hypothesis of a formal garden contemporary with the Sacro Bosco on the hillside above must be rejected without further evidence. The Sacro Bosco is filled with garden architecture and sculpture, some of which were originally fountains. Much of the architecture is in a classical style, although the principal structure, the tempietto dedicated to Giulia Farnese, imitates an Etruscan temple. The other major architectural works include the Leaning House , dedicated to Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, the theatre, inspired by the exedra of Bramante’s Belvedere Court in the Vatican, Rome, and the all’antica nymphaeum adjacent to it. The sculpture is for the most part carved of volcanic outcroppings and is colossal in size; in late 1574 it was coloured. The sculpted figures are strikingly novel and enigmatic, although many belong to conventional categories of garden ornaments. The animals—common in 16th-century woods—include a stylized dragon fighting lions, a life-size African war elephant bearing a castle on its back and a soldier in its trunk, a giant tortoise supporting a statue of fame, an orc and the three-headed dog Cerberus. Other garden ornaments include a fountain of Pegasus, a river god, a sleeping nymph, a siren and grotesque heads; the giant grotesque head supporting a sphere with a castle on top and the colossal head called the Mouth of Hell are unparalleled, as are the seated female figure with a huge vase on her head and siren-like creatures holding an upended male figure at her back. Orsini was involved in the creation of the garden, which extended over a long period. Among the many architects whose names have been suggested in connection with the site are Jacopo Vignola, Bartolomeo Ammanati and Pirro Ligorio. The colossal figures of the mid-1570s have been attributed to Simone Mosca Moschino. A number of architectural and sculpted elements bear carved inscriptions, which during the modern restoration were painted over, some inaccurately. Sources have been noted in literary texts by such writers as Dante, Petrarch and Ariosto. Many and widely different interpretations of the garden have been suggested, although its unusually personal character is widely agreed. The themes of history, time and artistic deception are evident in several feigned Etruscan funerary monuments as well as feigned evidence of destruction in the pseudo-Roman nymphaeum and the Leaning House. The Etruscan civilization—important to both regional and Orsini family history—is alluded to throughout. Sources have been uncovered for many of the ornaments, in Etruscan and Roman antiquities, engravings, emblems and woodcuts from the Hypnerotomachia poliphili (Venice, 1499) as well as influences from India, China and the New World. Disagreement remains about the significance and relationship of individual elements: some see a narrative development corresponding to Orsini’s own biography or to such literary texts as Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532), others a more general unifying theme in Vicino’s devotion to his wife. The layout, diversity of ornaments and long period of creation instead suggest several overlapping themes including the pastoral ones of love and death. Bibliography A. Bruschi: ‘Il problema storico di Bomarzo’, Palladio, xiii (1963), pp. 85–114 A. Bruschi: ‘Nuovi dati documentari sulle opere orsiniane di Bomarzo’, Quad. Ist. Stor. Archit., 55–60 (1963), pp. 13–58 J. von Hennenberg: ‘Bomarzo: Nuovi dati e un’interpretazione’, Stor. A., xiii (1972), pp. 43–55 J. Theurillat: Les Mystères de Bomarzo et des jardins symboliques de la Renaissance (Geneva, 1973) L. Quartermaine: ‘Vicino Orsini’s Garden of Conceits’, It. Stud., xxxii (1977), pp. 68–85 E. G. Dotson: ‘Shapes of Earth and Time in European Gardens’, A. J. [New York], xlii (1982), pp. 210–16 M. J. Darnell and M. S. Weil: ‘Il Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo: Its 16th-century Literary and Antiquarian Context’, J. Gdn Hist., iv (1984), pp. 1–91 H. Bredekamp: Vicino Orsini und der heilige Wald von Bomarzo, 2 vols (Worms, 1985) J. B. Bury: ‘Review Essay: Bomarzo Revisited’, J. Gdn Hist., v (1985), pp. 213–23 C. Lazzaro: The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Planting, Design and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-century Central Italy (New Haven, 1990) H. Bredekamp: Vicino Orsini und der heilige Wald von Bomarzo: Ein Fürst als Künstler und Anarchist (Worms, 1991) M. Koolbergen: Het laatste geheim van Bomarzo (Leiden, 1996) M. Calvesi: Il sacro bosco di Bomarzo (Rome, 1998) M. Berberi: Bomarzo: un giardino alchemico del Cinquecento (Bologna, 1999) M. Calvesi: Gli incantesini di Bomarzo: il Sacro Bosco tra arte e letteratura (Milan, 2000) C. L. Frommel: Il Palazzo Orsini a Bomarzo: opera di Baldassare Peruzzi (Munich, 2002) L. Donadono: ‘Il “palazzo” degli Orsini di Bomarzo’, Bomarzo: architetture fra natura e società, ed. L. Donadono (Rome, 2004), pp. 9–20 L. Cellauro: ‘Classical paradigms: Pliny the Younger’s Hippodrome at his Tuscan Villa and Renaissance Gardens’, Die Gartenkunst, xvii/1 (2005), pp. 73–89 E. Guidoni: Il sacro bosco di Bomarzo nella cultura europea (Vetralla, 2006) B. Guthmuller: ‘“Per dare invenzione al pittore”: Auftraggeber, Literat und Maler in Annibal Caros Briefen an Vicino Orsini’, Künstler und Literat: Schrift- und Buchkultur in der europäischen Renaissance, ed. B. Guthmuller, B. Hamm and A. Tonnesmann (Wiesbaden, 2006), pp. 31–46 Claudia Lazzaro Claudia Lazzaro. "Bomarzo, Sacro Bosco." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 19 Sep. 2013. .
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 03:03:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015