DRAFTEvidence of Absence is not Absence of Evidence. Hesdins
Garden of Earthly Delights and Orsinis Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo:
automata and hydrological systems.An essay based on photographic
investigations at Bomarzo in May, 1996, May 2006 and June, 2014,
with evidence of, and supporting research for, Vicinos
water-animated garden and the missing automata. PART I.Preface: The
mystery of the missing elements:Count Vicino Orsinis Sacro Bosco at
Bomarzo is a globally celebrated Cinquecento garden located in
Upper Lazio, one hundred kilometres north-east of Rome, in the
region dominated by Viterbo, a summer destination for Popes,
cardinals and their courts over hundreds of years. Bomarzo was, in
the early sixteenth century, a difficult place to reach and a
backwater not high on many notables lists. Within a few years of
1547, however, the Sacro Bosco was to become celebrated as a place
of exceptional interest. In recent decades, after its post-War
discovery by Salvador Dali and a landmark film, the Park has been
celebrated once again for its Mannerist sculptures:
(Fig. 1: early to mid-twentieth century photograph Mask of
Madness, source- Park visitor centre, June, 2014)When first
surveyed by the team from the University of Rome in the 1950s, with
purchase by the Bettini family who devoted their lives to the Parks
restoration, it was a scene of chaos [1]:
(Fig. 2: early to mid-twentieth century photograph Hells Mouth
looking south, with attendant sculptures, laden donkey, sheep and
shepherds, source- Park visitor centre, June, 2014)
From 1957 until now the Sacro Bosco has undergone a massive
physical re-ordering, and been subjected to a phenomenal, almost
industrial-scale wave of research, analysis, cultural ascription
and discussion. The world is littered with people who cherish this
place, from weekend family visitors who undertake a two hours drive
north from Rome, to international cognoscenti of Renaissance art
and gardens.
Over the last fifty-five years the Bettinis, then the Committee
of Management, have spent millions of Euros and thousands of person
hours reconstructing paths, levels, walls and zones such as the
Garden of the Herms. The famous, perhaps infamous sculptures have
stolen the limelight in all of this, not surprisingly, yet almost
as obvious but almost unremarked other physical phenomena are stark
and self-evident.
(Fig 3: The stone water control tower and unexplained lower
cavern; source: Coty, Dreams of Etruria thesis, op. cit. p.147, fig
30)
No commentator has adequately explained features such as those
above or the fact that opposite the cavern depicted, which sits
below the stone tower (whose purpose remains mysterious to this
day) there is a charming but formidably solid love-seat:
(Fig: 4, carved, in situ, peperino boulder love-seat,
photographed June, 2014)
These features are inside the Park on the lowest level, set
among the spectacular sculptures which now reside in a bosky
environment, much unlike their condition and milieu in the early
1950s, but perhaps somewhat more like that which Orsini created
during thirty seven years, from 1547 to 1584, as the Sacro Bosco
was developed. However, such unexplained features also exist
outside the walls of the Park: the following strange caverns are
located by the side of the approach road.
(Fig: 5, to east/right of approach road into Sacro Bosco,
photograph June, 2014)
Careful inspection of this enormous peperino boulder, associated
walls and structures, and other carved boulders nearby do not
support Cotys contention that these features were primarily
Etruscan- although their shape bears a marginal resemblance to
other Etruscan carvings.
If not Etruscan, and if other unexplained elements such as water
tanks, walled rectangular below-ground structures and many other
boulders with carved lines and caverns in their surfaces suggest
something more modern was in play, is another layer of cultural
offerings created by Orsini now missing? Inevitably this raises
questions such as: what was there? Why was it emplaced and to what
messaging purpose? What else is either missing or much reduced? Why
did Orsini go to great lengths and expend significant amounts of
money for features which now appear pointless? How much of this
additional layer was there and how much remains? If whatever was
there was in part removed- why and by whom? If there was another
significant interpretive element was it part of a topos which,
perhaps, Orsini invented for his region? If he did so- as his
garden commenced earliest- did it influence other garden creators?
Did he have a model, or models from elsewhere, to interpret in his
own way, in his locality, and was that model significant in his
creative evolution? And so on.
The setting:
(Fig. 6: Source: Coty, Dream of Etruria, Washington U Thesis, p.
131, the greater Viterbo area showing location of Bomarzo and other
major local Cinquecento gardens such as Bagnaia (Lante), but not
Caprarola- further south on SP9, etc.)
Sixteenth century Italy- the Cinquecento- witnessed a remarkable
flowering of artistic and scientific creativity as part of the late
Renaissance. Scholars have long acknowledged the debt of that
period to Islamic and rediscovered ancient sources which carried
knowledge forward from both the deep and from the more recent past.
In a number of cases the transmission of such knowledge appears to
predate the main period of the Renaissance. For example, in the
world of thematic gardens and parks, of animated mythology and
narrative, and of automata and hydrological engineering to name a
few apparently disparate disciplines, the debt of Italian creative
figures in the Cinquecento owes much to what went before.
The relationship between Hesdin and Bomarzo is one such tangled
skein.
Robert II, Count of Artois, Burgundian Regent of the Angevin
kingdom of Sicily returning to his northern home carried with him
Islamic sourced intellectual seeds which saw the astonishing Garden
of Earthly Delights being created at Hesdin- in a castle he owned-
after 1292. [2].This knowledge, as we shall see, was much later
accidentally transmuted by Orsini into arguably the first great
animated Italian water garden of its period at Bomarzo.
The techniques and traditions carried from Hesdin to Bomarzo
also partnered with the long history of indigenous Italian
hydraulic innovation [3], part cause and part product of the
Renaissance. Here, technology and skill was transposed and
transformed from hill-top urban water supply systems into
egocentric, yet beautiful water-based pleasure gardens. In the mid
to late Cinquecento these were initially created by and on behalf
of a few remarkably powerful and wealthy clerics- in this case all
were Princes of the Church. Within that cadre think Farnese, dEste,
Gambara, Madruzzo and, later, Aldobrandini- at Caprarola, Tivoli,
Bagnaia, Soriano Nel Cimino and Frascati. These are known as Villa
Farnese (commenced : c.1557-9); Villa dEste (c. 1560); Villa Lante
(c. 1566); Papacqua Soriano- no garden now exists (1560/1); Villa
Chili-Albani (c. 1561); and Villa Aldobrandini (c. 1603).But it is
argued here that Vicino Orsini, friend to at least three of the
Cardinals-Farnese, Madruzzo and Gambara- was the progenitor of this
remarkable and influential cultural topos which so brilliantly and
mysteriously married genius loci, literature, art and technology
into a lasting cultural tour de force. Its features as a garden
were still being imitated fifty years later at Hellebrunn in
Salzburg, Austria; responded to in powerfully Christian fashion at
Valsanzibio a hundred years after; and four centuries later echoed
by a Rothschild in Villa Ephrussi at St Jean Cap Ferrat,
France.
In terms of Sacro Boscos immediate role as topos or archetype in
the Cinquecento, and as primogenitor of other gardens the select,
but scholarly display in Bomarzo Municipal Hall- Vicinos Palazzo-
has this observation:
La lettere tra gli amici mostrano come soprattutto destate seei
si scambiavano visiye frequentissine, che per Vicino erano libere
da ogni restrizione, avendo egli stabilito coi cardinale Farnese e
Madruzzo le conditioni (...) chinsalatoto hospite, senza dimander
licenza, vo et torno et fo quel che mi pace. Questi rapporti
amichevoli erano favoriti dalla vicinanza tra rispettivi residenze
estive. Il complesso di Bomarzo, per quanto consente di ipotizzare
le cronologia sin qui stabilita, pote forse essere un modello, o
uno stimolo per le posteriori creazioni del giardino di Caprarola,
creato dal cardinale Alessandro, della fonte di Papacqua a Soriano,
voluto da cardinal Madruzzo, o per gli ampliamenti di Bagnaia
promossi dal cardinal Gambaro.In English:"The letters between
friends show that especially in the summer they exchanged frequent
visits, which were close to free from any restriction, since he had
established with Cardinals Farnese and Madruzzo the conditions
(...) of an ungreeted recipient of hospitality, without questioning
license , [so] go to me and come back from me yonder only that I'm
at peace. These friendly relations were favoured by the proximity
between their summer residences. The complex of Bomarzo, if allowed
to assume the chronology hitherto established, [could] perhaps be a
model, or a stimulus for the creation of the rear garden of
Caprarola, created by Cardinal Alessandro, the source of Papacqua
Soriano, built by Cardinal Madruzzo, or to expansion of Bagnaia
promoted by Cardinal Gambaro. "This is an important statement in
many ways. Cardinals Madruzzo and Farnese were exceptionally
influential clerics and Princes- both religious and secular- whose
quiet patronage would have protected and encouraged Orsini in later
years. Vicino had known them since entering military service in
1546, when Alessandro Farnese, his relation through marriage,
inveigled him to take part in the mostly disreputable religious
wars. Alongside Niccolo Orsini of Pitigliano, Vicino fought under
the banner of Cardinal Farnese in the service of Pope Paul III. In
1546 he was part of a strong force that marched over the Alps to
successfully confront the armies of the Schmalkaldic (Protestant)
League in Germany when he also met Cardinal Madruzzo who helped
plan the expedition. [4] Farnese had shared his studentship with
Madruzzo at the University of Padua and together they later
represented a more liberal and flexible element within a Church
which oscillated between rigorous asceticism in line with the more
draconian influences surrounding the Tridentine reforms, and their
more flexible and accommodating- but profoundly anti-Protestant
wing - which sought to obtain support for the reforms from
bickering Emperors, Kings and prelates [5].Later, Madruzzo
purchased his property at nearby Soriano in 1560/61 and eventually
began constructing a Palazzo and garden below the town with a
prospect only exceeded by that of Caprarola. Virtually nothing of
the garden remains. One of his major contributions to the town was
a large fountain reminiscent of several at Sacro Bosco: Papacqua
Soriano . Madruzzos Nymphaeum- unusually dedicated to the genius
loci- and other aspects of his development at Soriano have pagan
sculptures uncannily similar to Bomarzo, satyrs male and female
among them. These are somewhat surprising even in a Cardinal who
was a leading, if somewhat liberal figure at the Council of Trent
[6] There is an inscribed dedication to Madruzzo in the Sacro
Boscos Leaning House, near the exit to the lower swimming baths,
which makes it clear the Cardinal was at times a close adviser and
even philosophical confidant of Vicino. Cardinal Farnese was a man
of enormous wealth, cultural prominence, and love of antiquity and
power, holding multitudinous religious titles and benefices across
Italy and Europe. He was perhaps the greatest collector of
antiquities and sculpture in the Cinquecento. Under the direction
of his curator and librarian, the antiquarian iconographer Fulvio
Orsini, the Farnese collections were enlarged and systematised. He
also became a Papal Legate, arranging peace between the perpetually
warring Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and Francis I of France. Most
especially in regard to Bomarzo Farnese inherited the nearby
unfinished fort at Caprarola which, by 1556 or 1557, he began to
turn into one of the greatest villas in Italy, using Vignola as his
architect. His symmetrical, upper garden, set apart by a bosky walk
from the main palazzo- somewhat like Vicinos Sacro Bosco- remains
today perhaps the most enchanting of all with its perfect small
casino, Garden of the Herms, and exquisite tumbling water course
with small side rooms and their squirting water features. [7].This
garden was only realised much later after the two formal gardens at
the rear of the Villa were established.Against a more expansive
setting the special and lost feature of Orsinis Sacro Bosco will be
examined. This essay looks at a neglected aspect of Bomarzo, the
haunting, for centuries overlooked park created by Count Pier
Francisco Vicino Orsini (1523- 1584) in the Mannerist style between
1547 and his death in 1584. It begins a third stage of
investigation- the first being the physical uncovering, survey and
reordering by the University of Rome and the Bettini family (owners
from 1954 until recently) after Salvador Dalis re-discovery in
1949; the second being the explosion of interpretive historical and
mythological research and writing from then until now. It is
arguably the most commented upon park or garden in Italy and an
international academic industry in its own right. Particularly
helpful to understand the broader setting and cultural context are
the book by Jessie Sheeler, the ground breaking almost book-length
article by M Darnall and M Weil, and Horst Brederkamps major study.
Sheeler, in particular, has a strong, informed and empathic
understanding of Vicino as an individual and as an idiosyncratic
part of his contemporary culture.Vicino commenced creative and
constructive activity in 1547 and the work continued until just
prior to his death.[8] It probably evidenced an early, cumulative,
almost intellectual organic growth as development continued in fits
and starts until at least 1557 when he returned permanently to
Bomarzo.. He may have been assisted conceptually by Vignola who
went on to create great things at Caprarola for Farnese and at
Tivoli for dEste. It is likely he was also helped by Pirro Ligorio;
and by Raffaello da Montelupo, Ippolito Scalza and Fabiano Toti
[9]. He was in Florence in 1558 meeting with his near relations
(cousins) from the Medici clan who were, at that time, witnessing
development at Pratolino of the great animated garden whose remains
are only now being determined through painstaking archaeological
and cultural research.
Orsinis intense life of travel, warfare, imprisonment and
diplomacy after 1546 were punctuated by periods back at Bomarzo
where, one imagines, he partly focused upon family matters and on
the Sacro Bosco until he retired from the world in 1557. Without
the remarkably steadfast management of his local business by Giulia
(they married in 1541), Orsinis devoted wife, until her death in
1556, early progress on anything in Bomarzo or his surrounding
lands during his absences would have fallen apart, as he openly
acknowledged. While matrimonially unfaithful to Giulia, his love
for her fortitude and support never wavered. She bore him seven
children. To honour this love he dedicated the Boscos small Temple
to her and to her memory.By necessity this precursor essay must be
tentative. Much gathering of empirical, surveying data and detailed
historical research remains to be done. It is an attempt to broach
the subject rather than provide a comprehensive statement, in a
minor way hopefully continuing the tradition of the trail blazing
work of Darnall and Weil in 1984, Brederkamp in 1985 and many
others. If it raises more questions and debate than answers, it
will have served its purpose.
Orsini: the man, the creative intellect and the mystery:Vicino
Orsini was a leading scion of a leading, ancient Roman family. He
was also a man of great and deep cultural knowledge. Of the
foremost literature of his time; of contemporary Italian thinkers
and writers, past and present; of art and religion; of local,
family and especially Etruscan history [10]. He experienced every
kind of reality: love and war; wine and food; desire and lust; pain
and grief; loss and hope; acute wakefulness and dream filled
slumber; sobriety and inebriation; interludes poetical and musical;
moments engineered and spontaneous; pursuits intellectual and
social. He was openly a sensualist or even, in modern terms, a
constructive synestheist. If he had lived in the twentieth century
it is an even bet that he would have experimented with mescalin or
LSD. His capacity for anarchic visualisation in sculpture and three
dimensional environments equals that of Hieronymus Bosch in his
great work, The Garden of Earthly Delight, in oil painting:
[Fig 7: Hieronymus Bosch,The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on
oak panels, 220 x 389 cm,Museo del Prado, Madrid- available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights#/media/File:The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution.jpg]
Above all, Orsinis park or Sacro Bosco embodied the notion that all
the senses can be stimulated, through careful design and planning,
in a singular location and during a compressed period of time. What
are required are the correct stimuli amid the right settings
accompanied by a powerful and suggestive narrative pertinent to the
narrators objectives. Well deployed these influences can have a
mesmeric, even overwhelming affect/effect on the unwitting or
ill-defended prospect. Or, they can create responding cultural
sparks among the cognoscenti and literati.He hungered for female
company. The park at Bomarzo was created for the satisfaction of
his desires: especially a profound need for earthly love and a
sixteenth century courtiers type of intellectual engagement [11]:
for Orsini it was not solely, or even mainly Divine Love which
redeemed, instead Redemption is through love not God- a notion of
his and others not lost on the Catholic Church which, in some
quarters, continued to decry the Parks pagan lasciviousness into
the twentieth century- an exorcism was held inside the Park in
1980. In terms of its Mannerist, post Council of Trent art
sensibility, as the Tridentine reforms percolated through the
Catholic Domain, the parks style would have been increasingly
viewed with disfavour:Before we examine Caravaggios persona through
the scope of his masterpieces, it is equally important to look
fastidiously at the artist in the cultural context of the
Cinquecento and Cinquecento. At the turning of the seventeenth
century, Rome was in a state of religious turmoil. During the
Counter-Reformation the Catholic Church reorganized its doctrines
and engaged in a counter attack against the emergence of
Protestantism. A new art was sought with the explicit goal to
recommit the populace to Catholicism. After the close of the
Council of Trents 25thsession, the tradition of sacred art had been
altered. [2] In contrast to the once highly accepted style of
Mannerism, the new doctrine formulated by the Church advocated
Gabriele Paleottis theology and his predominant view that nature,
above all things, was the purest form of truth. Thus, the new
decrees forbade highly idealized beauty, exaggerated heroic
figures, and the depiction of illusionary landscapes. Artists were
to create sacred images based on truth as nature presented it, show
Jesus and Mary in an age appropriate association, and avoid the
addition of elements that merely boasted the artists skill or
virtuosity. Moreover, the new art must confront the viewer with
profound emotion to ensure a sympathetic spiritual experience. The
Catholic Church believed a viewer could reach a level of divine
spirituality through a painting created by the imitation of nature,
which in turn would bring about a recommitment to the Catholic
faith. [12]A chart in Bomarzo Municipal Hall display shows his
better known amorous partners mainly over the middle to later
period of his life. Of these, one lasted from the mid-1530s until
her untimely death in the early 1540s- another evidently throughout
his marriage. The other seven recorded liaisons occurred mainly
after Giulia died although one was concurrent from 1545 to 1560. In
the display text it is made clear that after Giulias death he took
up with an unnamed young lady from Bomarzo de 15 in 16 anni as some
kind of consolation. These are probably only some of his
relationships with members of the opposite sex. His two years at
Namur, for example, was spent with courtly ladies as Cardinal
Alessandro Farnese- the Papal Legate - who organised his eventual
release, pointed out in a letter suggesting Orsinis captivity was
no real hardship. Sheeler, quoting Vicinos own words which are
graphic establishes, beyond question, his sensuous nature and
rampant enjoyment of the physical delights of human sexual
experience with the opposite gender. Not surprisingly he devised in
his wickedly named Sacro Bosco machinery to make that more rather
than less likely. Even the word wood is ambivalent in Italian as
in: delivering the wood, a sly sexual reference. In his
multifarious affairs and singular marriage Orsini was operating
well within the mores of the late Renaissance period, although as
post-Tridentine values spread these were under scrutiny for both
religious and laity:
While family historians have sought to prove that the Italian
Renaissance ideal of the chaste woman dominated society, this work
has clearly revealed that the reality was not so clear cut.
Families sacrificed the chastity of their daughters, sisters, and
even their wives, in the pursuit of power and influence. Neither
was the woman who captured the heart of an Italian Renaissance
prince condemned and looked down on by society at large. Instead
she was celebrated by her princely lover in art, on commemorative
medals, and in literature. Her family, her children, and she
herself were all well provided for by the prince, as courtly
society dictated. These women, in participating in illicit affairs
with princes outside of marriage, performed an important role in
Italian Renaissance court culture.[13]Orsini had an impish sense of
humour. He was in a life-long competition with other contemporary
creators of great gardens, notably three or four Cardinals and a
close relation or two [14], who perhaps refused to acknowledge his
creation openly, but were most probably stimulated in their own
endeavours by his innovative and idiosyncratic efforts. In the
1560s, 1570s and 1580s his Sacro Bosco became famous among some
aristocratic and noble folk [15], infamous among some more.
Probably commenced in 1547, arguably it pre-dates the gardens of
all his competitors for whom he was an amusing, innovative gadfly
of occasionally dubious mores. He gave them a place to visit where,
if they wished, they could let their hair down. One can imagine
Vicino, had he lived to meet Groucho Marx, being in violent
agreement with Grouchos comment: These are my principles but, if
you dont like them, I have others. Orsini possessed innate
relativity and a self-aware, but private, sense of humour.
Brederkamp argues that he was an anarchist, at least in cultural
terms.As a Park or Sacro Bosco rather than a garden Bomarzos local
and Etrurian antecedents were outside those of standard
Islamic-derivative watergardens- at least in its asymmetrical
layout, tufa/peperino elements and wandering, multi-level pathways.
The advantages offered by the site which lies below a slowly moving
avalanche field of peperino boulders [16], was its location at the
foot of the palazzo and town walls; its visibility from there; the
availability of water through the adjacency of two streams on the
southern side; and its remoteness from major towns and roads
permitting privacy, yet access to determined notables, various
high-placed friends and other culturati. In these aspects-
especially asymmetry- it is not directly related to DEste,
Caprarola, or Lante although, as we shall see, it shared a common
history with them in respect to its layer of water features and
their echo of other sculptural similarities.Orsini was a maverick
and a polymath, not unlike Sir William Petty who was a maverick and
a polymath in England and Ireland during the next century [17].
Always on the fringe of power; always suspect because of his
creative ideas; always striving to achieve his own vision against
substantial odds; always searching for personal meaning in what he
did; always questionable in his religious views yet sheltered by
his social and political contacts from serious persecution. For his
part Petty championed evidence based government and economic
reasoning; invention; development of social welfare in a model
industrial town in Western Ireland; and the power of natural
philosophy. In his early to mid-adult life Vicino, for many years,
was a martial champion of his family (Farnese/Medici) connections
and of the Papacy, while being regarded by those who knew him as a
cultivated, idiosyncratic yet creative man. Thus, after horrific
experiences of warfare and epic sieges he refused any further
military induction or activity and dedicated himself to his wood,
to creating and enjoying sensual and cultural experiences. Rain or
shine, almost every day he would ride down to the Sacro Bosco to be
enfolded by his unfolding creation. Even in Bomarzos occasionally
frozen winters or ferociously hot summers he was present to witness
the works going on. At the end, chiding life for its unavoidable
diminishing of sensory powers, flagging in energy but still
developing the scope and delights of his garden, Orsini almost
inevitably faced the reality that his incredible, special world was
difficult and expensive to maintain and would probably fall into
disrepair as tastes changed and family wealth diminished. In fact,
within seventy years the property was sold. Probably sooner than
that, all the materials used in its construction which were
valuable and portable, were likely recycled to supply growing local
villages and the onset of further warfare. Think copper, lead,
bronze, ceramic piping, wood, cat gut, iron, bronze and steel cogs,
and oiled leather.Orsini was a man whose ideas and beliefs were
deliberately obscure and difficult to read. He distributed snippets
and quotations throughout the garden which were fragmentary,
allusory and pertinent to the potential journeys and sequential
experiences afforded himself and his companion. Yet he never wrote
down his fundamental tenets, choosing instead to create the wood as
a mysterious embodiment of those ideas and beliefs with the primary
purpose of impressing his peers and stimulating his companions,
singular or plural, to indulge in intellectual, entertaining,
sexual or shared sensual experiences. In an age when the moral and
behavioural thermometer swung from hot, sometimes amoral indulgence
on an epic scale to cool counter-Reformation and self-denial, it is
no surprise that Orsinis Sacro Bosco developed a reputation for
un-Christian, salacious and even diabolical activities [18]. In one
way that was good- it kept moralistic sticky beaks away, especially
after dark. In another it was risky- the Catholic Church as the
Counter Reformation gathered pace- was increasingly seeking windows
into mens souls and arbitrating many aspects of contemporary life
and belief. As Galileo and Cardano would witness decades later,
when the Churchs grip developed, and for which others- like
Giordano Bruno- would perish in the flames, this tendency was an
increasing threat to freer thinking, liberal contemporaries. In
this sense it can be argued Mannerism was a transitional mode of
philosophy, thought and design in which commonly perceived dicta
were often reversed and many subtle, heterodox and sophisticated
strands were surreptitiously woven. We have no idea if Cardinal
Madruzzo, for instance, harboured such heterodox ideas but his life
experience and more liberal approach during and after the Council
of Trent, his pagan decorations in the Nymphaeum , along with his
friendship for Vicino free from any restriction, might suggest it
was possible.Orsini, therefore, never provided a key to the
multivalent allusions represented in the sculpture and we have no
concrete or coherent statement of his intellectual position or
beliefs. Rather, it is increasingly suggested that the wood was
deliberately open to personal interpretation and double meanings at
its outset [19], as much as it is today. While channelling Orlando
Furioso, a contemporary satire (1516/1532), as a rubric, probably
Dantean poetry, Petrarch, and certainly Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
by Francesco Colonna (1499), the Sacro Bosco had multitudinous and
many layered sources. Visitors could invest whatever references and
allusions they wished in the 1560s to 1580s, either deeply informed
by classical and contemporary mythology, history and narrative- or
not, depending on that persons own depth of knowledge and range of
intellectual interests. In open ended meaning lay scholarship,
intrigue, dalliance, seduction, story variance and safety for the
principal strolling player in his own staged setting.Orsini was a
many layered, quixotic character. Eclectic and courtly, sapient and
impish, martial and pacifist, earthy and imaginative, inventive and
destructive. Among all this sat his idiosyncratic personality,
remarkable erudition, creative drive and sexual appetite. Thus, in
a profound sense, the garden was also a synestheist experience. The
base layer was made up of the sites topography, vegetation, climate
and hydrology- the genius loci- hillside, Bosco, terraces, original
peperino boulders, levels, water courses and sequential, yet
variable pathways, with different entrances. Next layer was the
sculptures, statuary, structures and internal/external spaces:
buildings, rooms, caves, piazettas, swards, terraces, lakes, pools,
baths, love seats, vistas, prospects and grotto. These often
possessed allegorical, literary, historical and philosophical
allusions and hidden meanings- or were settings for elements which
did. Then there was the layer of Etruscan reference and allusion
relating back to Orsinis own reputed family history (Anio) and
historical remnants in the areas bosci [20]. Within this context
music, masques, food and wine, bathing, swimming, storytelling,
dialogue, erotic adventures, talking faces, fountains and
interactive water features, animated figures and, eventually, some
fully coloured sculptures were an added accompaniment. Not so much
a layer or stratum, more a population of experiences which allowed
Orsini an almost infinite range of possible storylines and
experiential journeys distributed among the various terraces and
layers. As Darnall and Weil expressed it [21]:
Once the meaning of the various levels is understood it is
amusing to discuss the other ways one can wander through the garden
and the iconographic permutations that occur. For example, one
choice a guest can make was whether or not to descend through the
lower garden when returning from Vicinos Mask of Madness. Should he
stay on the level path above the Wrestling Colossi he would arrive
at the Hippodrome... [On] a direct route from the Mask...to the
Terrestrial Paradise with the little bears....There is no certainty
that Orsini let guests travel unaccompanied. Very close friends and
family may have been permitted that freedom but it seems likely he
normally accompanied other less well known guests for good reasons
to do with outlandishness of message and misinterpretation which
may exacerbate his and the Boscos reputation. Picking the day,
picking the weather, picking the guest or guests, picking the
paths, picking the appropriate elements, Vicino could weave a
spellbinding experience different to all the others. It was like
walking through a larger than life, animated cabinet of curiosities
accompanied by a creative genius who tailored each remarkable
experience, grotesque or lyrical, to your temperament and character
and according to his own creative desires.So, his Sacro Bosco
became Vicinos focus and obsession. In it were ravelled all the
threads of his life. Upon and within the wood Orsini made a world
apart in which he could pursue his many passions. It was an
allegory upon a tabla erasa; historically resonant yet unlike
anything before or since; a technological marvel yet still a Sacro
Bosco; a place of intimate, private dalliance and a location of
socially acceptable pageantry; a world of mystery and yet a public
journey towards Divine Love and redemption; obscure statement of
philosophy but open reference to many literary allusions; theatre
of the grotesque yet, just possibly, precursor of the world of
Opera; notorious during his life and, from the mid seventeenth
century, almost forgotten for nearly three hundred years
thereafter; his personal machine for telling stories and casting
light on his life, yet misunderstood in many ways even until now. A
multi-faceted, almost infinitely optioned place in which to
journey, following a different narrative each time according to the
intentions of the storey teller and perceptions of his audience. A
riddle, wrapped inside a mystery and so on. Now regarded by many
garden scholars as adequately explored by two or three generations
of their colleagues. A rich vein of intellectual history now all
but exhausted?As Orsini himself said in one of the extant
inscriptions on a Sphinx which probably sat at one of the original
entrances to the wood:you who enter here put your mind to it part
by part And tell me then if so many wonders Were made as trickery
or as artSheeler has interpreted this duality of meaning in the
original Italian in a way which assists the thesis of this essay.
Notwithstanding, it is difficult to imagine the sculptures carved
from peperino as being capable of incorporating trickery. They are
what they are- static sculptures made from local stone, mostly
found on site. While in part grotesque, or whimsical, or sensuous,
or stately they mutely rested where Orsini placed them or as they
were found in situ. Hardly exhibiting trickery? They certainly
embodied many layers of referential meaning, as we have seen, but
that was not in any way unusual in gardens of the period. So, to
what does Orsini refer in this word trickery? JB Bury noted the
following in his Bomarzo Revisited article: in Petrarchs context
inganno simply means deceit and the arti to which he refers are
arti maghe, that is magic arts [22]Such magic arts were associated
with the dark side of religion and philosophy by less cultivated
and less modern people. Sometimes, such ideas were associated with
human made, moving figures- automata- which were increasingly
appearing in the houses and palaces of the rich and powerful in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Could Vicinos reference be to
automata which created the illusion of movement, music or speech in
Bomarzo, or the very real experience of visitors being drenched
from below, or from head to toe by both static and moving
features?
Hesdin, Orsini, automata and Emperor Charles V:
The transmission of knowledge about water powered and mechanical
automata to Vicino can be strongly inferred due to Orsinis
assistance in the defence of Hesdin against the army of Emperor
Charles V in 1553 and his subsequent period of imprisonment for
ransom until 1555.
The Hesdin Garden of Earthly Delights is well documented, as is
the siege and consequent slaughter of many non-wealthy combatants
on the losing side by the Emperors Spanish troops. The siege was
horrific. Orsinis reaction to warfare can partly be sourced from
this appalling experience here, and at the Papally ordered massacre
at Montefortino, in 1557.
In April, 1557 the town of Montefortino, north-east of Velletri,
signed an agreement to support the Pope. Accordingly, Vicino sent
them a detachment of his troops, whom the townspeople promptly
ambushed and almost entirely wiped out. In retaliation the Pope
sent a strong force under another member of the Orsini clan, Giulio
Orsini, who managed to capture the town after a difficult siege.
The Pope ordered the confiscation of all goods in the town and its
total destruction. All the male inhabitants were slaughtered and
the churches to which the women and children had fled were burned
down. [23]
At Hesdin both castle and city were rapidly removed, stone by
stone, item by item except the convent and chapel, on the orders of
the Emperor. It is reported this huge and complex feat of
engineering took only four weeks. What happened to the marvels
appears unknown from available printed sources. The French families
of traditional tradesmen who maintained and enhanced the marvels
also are not mentioned although their immediate livelihood was
removed once the city, castle, and gallery, were demolished.
In Bedinis informative paper on the history of automata in
Europe the fascination of Emperor Charles V for this subject is
manifested:
Another pioneer in the construction of androids was a
contemporary of Bullmann named Gianello Torriano of Cremona (ca.
1515-l585). When the Emperor Charles V visited Pavia in 1529, he
expressed a wish to have the famous Astrarium of Giovanni de Dondi
restored. Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, governor of Milan, recommended
Gianello, already well established as one of the foremost Italian
clockmakers. It is generally believed that Gianello entered the
Emperor's service at this time and returned with him to Spain.
Having found the Dondi Astrarium beyond repair, it is believed that
he constructed a replica. When the Emperor abdicated in 1555 and
retired to the convent of San Yuste, he was accompanied by a staff
of 50 retainers, among whom was Gianello. The clockmaker devoted
his time and ability to the construction of automata with which he
sought to distract his mournful monarch. Often Gianello surprised
the Emperor with the novelty of his creations. After dinner, for
instance, he would produce a tableau on the dining table consisting
of a variety of little figures of armed soldiers that marched
about, rode on horseback, beat drums, blew trumpets, and engaged in
battle. On other occasions he would release little carved wooden
birds which flew into every corner, to the consternation of the
disapproving Superior of the convent, who considered them works of
sorcery. The only surviving work which can be attributed to
Gianello is an automaton of a lady lute player, now in the
collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna ... [24]
Clearly, the Emperor was engaged in the creation and enjoyment
of automata from the 1530s until his death decades later. As such
it is hard to believe he was unaware of Hesdins Garden of Earthly
Delights. Although in this phase of the religious wars he had
already ordered the dismantling of another recalcitrant city,
Therouanne, it is not unreasonable to question the speed and
completeness of the reduction of Hesdin. As well as the removal of
a potential future enemy redoubt and threat, did the Emperor have
another reason to take the Castle apart? Were some of the automata
dismantled and shipped back to him and Gianello in Spain? If so,
was Orsini aware of this and even present at the work scene for a
short while as his captivity was being discussed and organised? Did
some of the materials and mechanisms fascinate him after he had
seen them functioning before, or during a break in the siege? Did
he talk with the skilled maintenance tradesmen about what was
happening and how the automata functioned? We do not yet know, but
it is a fascinating possibility.
Specialised skills in making and maintaining water-powered and
mechanical automata were rare, as were skills involved in
clock-making. [25]. Mechanical clock making and, the even rarer,
automaton fabrication, were sub-skills of arms manufacturing or
blacksmithing. A tradition established in Hesdin in the thirteenth
century, while fading in the fifteenth was still extant in the
mid-sixteenth [26]. In a town of around seven thousand people the
highly skilled automata-maintenance tradesmen- by appointment to
the Counts of Burgundy- would have been well known, especially if
they were blacksmiths, arms makers, clockmakers, or all three.
That these skilled craftsmen were mobile is not in doubt. They
went where the work was and where they could get paid the most.
Parts of middle Italy, at this stage of the religious wars, were
relatively undisturbed after many decades of earlier disruption and
savagery nearby. Rural and obscure Northern Lazio, between the Via
Cassia and Via Flaminia, may have appeared a comparatively safe
backwater and, supported by a wealthy new patron with a big
potential project, Bomarzo a safe harbour in comparison to France
or the Low Countries where warfare rapidly increased. Especially if
you were a traditional Catholic who supported the Pope based in
Rome. We do not know who these craftsmen may have been although,
later in the article, two possible candidates emerge who were
associated with Pirro Ligorio.
Orsini began his Sacro Bosco in 1547, the earliest of all the
Cinquecento Italian animated water gardens, so his interest in what
he saw at Hesdin may well have been piqued once he was there in
1553 and could witness for himself what the automata manifested and
how they worked. The gallery was widely known and visited by
royalty, aristocrats and travellers alike. He would not have missed
the opportunity to inspect it even if it was no longer in perfect
repair.
After the disastrous siege, Vicino was a wealthy and influential
captive held at Namur in what is now Belgium, a city not that far
from Hesdin in northern France. The Emperor, who had joined the
possessions of the Imperium and Spain, controlled this area of the
Low Countries. Despite a two year delay in ransom funding he may
have purchased some of the automata just after the siege when their
value was probably reduced to that of recyclable materials. In a
war zone which had been ravaged who else would seek to own this
mechanical and hydraulic detritus other than the Emperor or Orsini?
He may also have spent time with the skilled family of French
trades people who maintained and built the automata before he left
for Namur or while there. Given their skill sets it is likely these
tradesmen moved from the area of Hesdin fairly quickly since it
took a number of years for the Emperors orders, to rebuild the town
6 kms away, to be realised. Alternatively they may have already
have left to return to another town close by in France from where,
it is reported by Truitt, they originated. The safety of these
skilled craftsmen is also likely to have been assured since the
Emperors armies needed trained people like this, as did society at
large. Without further manuscript evidence, however, we do not know
the answers to these questions.
Cooling his heels and waiting for freedom, Orsini may have
experienced a burst of creative musing, wishing himself back in
Bomarzo with all its possibilities for unique self-expression in
his nascent Sacro Bosco. The gallery would have provided welcome
stimulus for his creative talents before and possibly even during
breaks in the siege. Putting the two interests together later on
would not take an enormous leap of imagination.
Subsequently, after an initially tough detention then as an
honoured prisoner, he spent time as a gallant, a courtier-like
parolee reading, writing, dancing and talking with fellow prisoners
and their wealthy captors. With little else to do Vicino would
write letters to obtain news and his release, pursue the courtly
duties and pleasures of the civilised parolee, read inbound letters
and contemporary literature and probably dream of what he could
create in his own special domain back home. So long as his upkeep
was paid by his family. In that light it is likely he would have
been permitted to explore the mechanisms and technologies from the
dismantled galleries, talking with local people who knew and
maintained them, before leaving for Namur. These were harmless and
unthreatening activities of a civilised and courtly captive. Even
if not, we can reasonably deduce he would have studied the
galleries before the end of the siege. It is also reasonable to
suggest that one or two of the tradespeople may have accompanied
Orsini, perhaps with some deconstructed automata, to Bomarzo after
the ransom was paid.
Is this presently supposition? Yes.
Yet does it explain the water animated and mechanical automata
for which we have good evidence in present day literature and at
Bomarzo? Yes, in the main.
In his essay Bedini notes categorically that a link existed
between Hesdins Gallery and the Italian water gardens of the
Cinquecento:
The most important application of the hydraulics devised by the
Greek ancients was made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
for the elaborate gardens of the royal mansions and palaces of
Renaissance Europe. Little change was effected in these mechanisms
from the time of Philon and Heron. The grottoes of the European
gardens employed the same combination of movements as had been
utilized in the most ancient times. The decoration, however,
reflected the era; it was executed with considerably more care and
with a profusion and confusion of detail and accessories as the
Renaissance developed. A tradition was established based on the
prototype of the water gardens built by the Count d'Artois in the
late thirteenth century for his castle at Hesdin. [27]But Bedini
does not establish who was the initial transporter and adopter of
this approach and these techniques, potentially, in the fifteenth
century or where they were demonstrated. Whether or not there were
examples of earlier transmission in that century, which he does not
specify, there can be no doubt that Orsini was at Hesdin before,
and possibly during, the time the Gallery was taken apart, that he
had just begun work on the Sacro Bosco as his life-long project,
and that his innovative park at Bomarzo predates those at
Pratolino, Lante, Caprarola and dEste. Or that, as we shall see
later, there is abundant proof of a massive and complex
hydrological system at Bomarzos Sacro Bosco evident to this day. In
fact so extensive are these remnants that they appear, when
originally installed, to have far outdistanced even dEste in terms
of automata, as opposed to fountains, playful water jets or falling
waters. There are also elements which suggest mechanical automata
may have been installed.
Literature on hydrology and automata in the C15, C16 and
C17:
One of the great historians of automata, Silvio Bedini summed up
the transmission of knowledge from Ancient Greece, via Islamic
scholars to the Renaissance as follows:
Automata had its greatest period of development following the
rise of mechanism with the revival of Greek culture during the
Renaissance. In addition to the considerable progress that was made
in the philosophy of science as well as in the sciences of
astronomy and mathematics during this 'turbulent period, the stage
was being set for major technological developments which came to
fruition in a later era. The writings of Ctesibius, Philon, and
Heron, which had been preserved in the works of the Arabs and
Byzantines, were brought into the popular domain once more in
translations by Renaissance humanists and exercised considerable
influence on scientific thought. Distribution of these scientific
treatises led to the publication of numerous commentaries by
Italian and other writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, resulting in considerable preoccupation with hydraulics
and pneumatics and their application to biological automata. The
commentaries not only rendered translations and reconstructions of
the written words of the Greek ancients, but the writers added
sketches and designs to their distillations in an attempt to
explain aid, illustrate, and elaborate on, the early mechanisms.
These reconstructions often inspired other and more complicated
works, which were constructed by architects of that and subsequent
periods for the diversion of wealthy patrons. Fragments of Heron's
writings were the first of the Greek works to be translated. These
appeared for the first time in Latin in the work of Giorgio Valla,
[1] published in 1501, followed by complete translations into Latin
by Commadini [2] in 1575. The single work which provoked the
greatest interest among Renaissance scholars was the Pneumatics,
which was translated and published for the first time by Giovanni
Battista Aleotti [3] in 1589, and in which the translator
incorporated some ideas of his own. [28]
The importance of publications on these subjects was based on an
earlier tradition of manuscript copies of Heron, or Hero of
Alexander as he is also known. These were sourced from Islamic
manuscript documents mainly in Arabic, available in Sicily, Apulia,
Constantinople and elsewhere, which had been translated into
Italian, or Latin, or both. Sherwood devotes an extended section to
sources and translations which appear to span many centuries before
and during the Middle Ages. Chapuis and Droz note a specific
example in 1492 when a complex automaton theatre derived from Hero
was substantially recreated for a celebration in honour of Count
Borso DEste, proof that there were detailed manuscript sources,
with illustrations, available in the late fifteenth century and
probably much earlier. Boas gives a focused account while
Ambrosetti, more recently, has tracked many of the manuscript
sources in detail.
Given his years as Governor of Angevin Sicily, Robert II may
well have collected such manuscripts as well as witnessing such
hydraulic enginery at work in these southern gardens in the late
thirteenth century.
Later, in the early seventeenth century a highly influential
publication, by a much traveled author, appeared which was
primarily based on Hero but which also had its own special content
and characteristics. Bedini again:
Equally important was the work entitled Les Raisons des Forces
Mouvantes avec Diverses Machines tant Utiles que Plaisantes (The
Relations of Motive Forces, with Various Machines as Useful as they
are Pleasing), published in Frankfort in 1615. The author, Salomon
de Caus (1576-1626), was a French engineer in the service of the
Palatine Elector. In this work he was particularly preoccupied with
the production of pleasure gardens and hydraulic displays; he
applied the principles of hydraulics for the solution of various
problems, in which the influence of Heron is in strong evidence ...
Part of the work described grotesque grottoes and fountains, which
later served as prototypes for actual constructions.[29]The
importance of de Caus to the present article lies in the fact that
he travelled to Italy and studied many gardens. His book, while
containing some contemporary improvements, was principally based on
Heros famous work in print and as it was interpreted in those
gardens and, later, by himself. Much of what he illustrates would
have been known to Orsini, his Cardinal friends and their
architectural and engineering advisers. [30] Although it has been
disputed, this author believes there is some evidence to support
the idea that de Caus may have visited Bomarzo.As is widely
accepted, Orsini was extremely well connected with writers of his
day and deeply knowledgeable of Italian literature of his period. A
well-educated aristocrat of an ancient and leading family, he was
almost certainly fluent in Latin and other European languages apart
from his native tongue. Given the scale of the hydraulic systems at
Bomarzo and the number of places and spaces where there is
irrefutable evidence for hydraulic and mechanical mechanisms
emplacement, Bomarzo is likely to have exhibited some, perhaps many
of Heros mechanisms adapted to local requirements and tastes. To
which was added an eclectic range of hydraulic and possibly
mechanical automata based on those at Hesdin, themselves almost
certainly based on C13 gardens and technologies found in Sicily and
known to Robert II. These, too, would have been the descendants of
the Heronic tradition and his corpus of technologies and classical
influences
Orsini as accidental catalyst and synestheist:
The essential catalysts for creation of the Sacro Bosco at
Bomarzo were: sources of technical, engineering, artistic, cultural
and architectural knowledge, a place and resources appropriate for
self-expression using such technology and artistic expression, and
the creative intellect of a wealthy person. Motive, means and
opportunity as the old saying goes. He did the deed, although it
took forty years of concentrated effort and a massive investment of
funds and creativity to achieve the end result. Even then, it was a
work in progress for most of his life. Indeed a recent discovery
shows even more unfinished, large-scale works were underway before
his death outside the recognised boundaries of the woods
Cinquecento walls (see photographs from June, 2014 below). More
such may have been identified from GOOGLE Earth.
The vicissitudes of war placed Vicino in a context where it is
inconceivable he would have missed the opportunity to visit the
Garden of Earthly Delights. He hated the experience of war and his
handsome face was physically scarred by it in addition to the
psychological trauma which he later indicated. His opportunity to
imagine and synthesise a unique creative expression situated in his
home location was his acknowledged counterpoint to that ghastly
military experience. In all, the old adage Allah is great but
proximity greater applies to Vicinos life experience and life-long
project- his Sacro Bosco. No-one else travelled where he did, lived
where he did, possessed the method, means and opportunity as he
did, or possessed the knowledge and creative passions. This helps
explain the woods unique character and compelling qualities.
Genius Loci:
Let us ponder, for a moment, the conjunction of climate,
topography, vegetation, geology, hydrology and culture- as embodied
in Count Orsinis creation. Bomarzo is a place of extremes. The
temperature can nowadays vary- and did at that time- from minus 10C
(including wind chill factor) to plus 45C, winter to summer.
Although Vicino said he was keen to attend his wood under
construction most days in the winter he is unlikely to have
initiated visits there from friends, patrons, neighbours or lovers.
He notes that he visited often throughout the year to confer with
tradesmen and other advisers [31]. It is possible he was
accompanied on occasion by Giulia while she was alive, or by
another family member, to look at progress in the winter but the
exposed nature of the road down to the site and the dank winter
woodland may have limited these joint excursions. Added to which
freezing winter temperatures dictated draining the hydrological
systems to avoid bursting joints and pipes.
Bundled up against the cold, with snow, rain and frost on the
weather menu, Orsinis winter experiences were partly dictated by
such inclement extremes. Life within the Palazzo was warmer, kinder
and more enjoyable during the coldest months than life outside. He
was wealthy and had many servants. His family would have treasured
their comforts. Roaring fires and warm clothes were the order of
the day with hearty meals of beef, mutton, game, farinaceous foods
and root vegetables, accompanied by local wines famous for quality
(Est! Est! Est!). It is reasonable to assume that, apart from
workers and engineers or architects, only the passionate progenitor
would regularly visit his Park in the worst of Lazios wintry
weather.
By the same token, the height of summer can be equally extreme:
intense humidity, soaring temperatures, occasional massive storms
and seemingly endless heat waves which leave even the most
energetic humans enervated and limp are the order of the day. The
northern-facing defensive position of the Palazzo was also chosen
to provide winds, breezes and air currents caused by convection
from valley, up past promontory to sky. The Belvedere, under
watered cloth awnings, made for slightly better conditions in the
sweltering heat while thermal mass embodied in thick stone walls
and floors meant interiors heated up much less slowly than exterior
air. But all this would have provided limited relief during the
most brutal, extended periods of heat. Down on the western plain at
Vulci the heat was so extreme that, in Etruscan then enlarged in
Roman times, an entire underground city existed in parallel with
that above ground. Conditions below still remain remarkably cool
when the mercury rises above 32C+ (the author visited below-ground
in Vulci and photographed it in May, 2006).
By the 1570s from the Palazzos Belvedere, the prospect was
presented of a deliciously cool woodland environment, the Sacro
Bosco, with its lake and faintly visible streams, ponds, grottoes,
water features, fountains, baths and swimming pool. Even in 1547
Vicino would have had an inkling of the potential attractions of a
well-watered woodland sanctuary during the late spring, high summer
and early autumn months. He grew up at Bomarzo and well understood
the compelling realities of its summer climate. For a man of great
wealth and local power the opportunity to create a halcyon
environment with every conceivable summer comfort and distraction
would have been challenging yet delightful.
He made the Sacro Bosco because he could, while having the
resources and creativity to imagine first, then realise second what
was in his mind. Not for him a Walt Disney experience for the
masses - from whom to extract a fortune. Rather, an intensely
personal and private expression of intellectual subtlety and
experiential enjoyment. In the second category subtlety was not
always evident, although often it was the order of the day.
The evidence for the statement above? There are a host of
pointers. Here, there is no absence of evidence. For example, there
is the major installation at the far foot of the park where remains
of large scale baths currently exist [32]. It was a notorious
contemporary fact that Emperor Hadrians baths (Natatio) were
undergoing excavation by Vignola on the part of the Farnese
Cardinal. Many of the antiquities found were documented by Pirro
Ligorio in his massive manuscript trove. New discoveries kept on
being made and broadcast during Vicinos life. While small in
comparison with Hadrians, walking toward and round this lowest
space today clearly demonstrates Vicinos wit and capacity to create
his own bathing experience.
There were and are two obvious ways down to this bathing
facility: one was by carriage from the top arrival area- a route
still used for maintenance and building works. Whether this road
was in use in Vicinos time is not entirely clear. This issue will
be addressed below but it is felt that it followed the natural
terrain and most probably was extant at the time.
(Fig: 8- current track down from arrival area to swimming bath
lower area. Note the small, historic stone cobbles or paving at the
beginning; June, 2014)
The other was by the side of the leaning house: a carriageway is
flanked by Orsinis joke- an allusion to bathing through two large,
but now damaged stone tubs, situated one on each side of the
gateway leading down to the lower facility (see commentary in Part
III).
(Fig: 9- track down past Leaning House, between two baths. Note
the strange, split feature above the bath to the right/east of the
Sacro Bosco; June, 2104).
As usual, Vicino gave himself options to progress with different
visitors after different sequential experiences. With close friends
and family it is reasonable to think that on private days in high
summer he would simply have ridden down, or have taken the
carriage, from the Palazzo, or have had lunch in one of the upper
locations and then to have gone on from there for a cool ablution
in these lower baths. On special intimate days, he may have dallied
in the Nymphaeum and, after a drink and light picnic lunch inside
the Mouth of Hell, have wandered down to swim and bathe al
fresco.
The fact that inside the Mouth of Hell there is a table and
benches carved from stone is another pointer. It is remarkably
pleasant to sit inside on a hot day and picnic within this
cave-like, man-made structure. To quarry out the massive inside
space of this tufa boulder and carve its exterior decoration would
have taken immense energy, skill and careful planning. The cost
would have been damnable although with repeated use over the years
it was nothing but cumulatively pleasurable. The temperature within
is a good 7C lower than outside. With snow and ice-cooled drinks
and a table of cold victuals, already set out for the Count and his
guest by unseen servants, such an enjoyable experience prior to
sallying forth for a swim further down, out of sight to all but
themselves, is not difficult to imagine.
(Fig 9: Hells Mouth, massive carved and hollowed peperino
boulder, Bomarzos most famous sculpture; June, 2014)Vicino was not
alone in creating chilled environments for relief from torpid
temperatures within his garden or park. The famous- and extremely
beautiful - carved stone table, with central water channel to keep
wine containers cool and a channel at foot level to chill ones
feet, at Villa Lante is another version of early air conditioning.
With fabric awnings, moving wetted canvas sheets and breezes caused
by convection this construct permits cooler dining on even the
hottest days. What is absent at Villa Lante is any place where one
might obviously bathe in an intimate way. This thought deserves
greater exploration.
The woodland environment of Sacro Bosco is another pointer. In
winter it can be cold, dank and gloomy. The deciduous trees are
bare and skeletal; the permanent leafy vegetation often dripping;
the wet stone and moss slippery under foot. Water and mist
sometimes give the park a damp, forbidding character. In all, an
occasionally oppressive and unattractive experience except to the
masochist, the toiler in the wood for what equated to a living, or
the introspective poet who leant towards melancholy. In summer even
now, without all the water features, the reverse is true: a
burbling creek animates and cools the experience; omnipresent
leaves and greenery lower the ambient temperature, while moss
glimmers in a fluorescent display of intense green. Occasionally
massive summer storms drench Bomarzo- with storm cells that can
stretch 40 kilometres in diameter, 13,000 metres in height and
brutal downpours which can dump 20 mm of rain in an hour or less.
The delight of cooling off on a day with 45 Celsius degree heat,
amid a private, bosky environment unclothed and beneath a deluge is
easily imagined.
Back in 1575 the myriad water features with fine mists and
heavier drenchings if desired, would have cooled down host and
visitor quite sufficiently for the modest, without bathing or
swimming. For others, the enclosed Nymphaeum with its oculus would
have been deliciously cool and, close by, was the enormous shallow
vessel with a sculpture of stylised dolphin heads gushing water at
each end. Sheeler refers to this unusual sculpture as the Boat
Fountain [33], Darnell and Weill as the Barcaccia (long boat), yet
it looks far more like an enormous bath than a boat. Perhaps Orsini
referred to it as the latter while using it as the former?
Contemplation in the cool internal cavern could be followed by
consummation in a chilled, shallow bath in complete privacy if
Orsini and his guest so wished. The bath is notable, however, for
its breadth and length. It is quite capable of accommodating more
than two people for revels.
This may help explain Sansovinos gushing appreciation for
Orsinis hospitality in his Ritratto della citta dItalia of 1575
where he gives a succinct, somewhat cryptic description of the
Sacro Bosco [34]. He repeated similar sentiments in 1575, 1578 and
1582. Perhaps there was more than one visit? Given the heterodox
and sensual references and opportunities provided by Orsini, in an
Italy which was experiencing a greater effect of post-Tridentine
reforms and the Inquisition, anything more than an oblique eulogy
may have proved to be risky despite protection afforded Vicino by
influential senior clerics. This coded, circumspect language is
seen in other references such as his own letter to Drouet around
1574, quoted below.
The reputation of Bomarzo:
It is reasonable to deduce from such evidence that Orsini
deliberately designed and created a park whose features encouraged
and enhanced a wide range of physical experiences, based on
climate, topography and vegetation, which reinforced summers
pleasures. He did so in a period when aristocratic clothing and
garments - certainly those worn for fashionable or stylish events
such as masques and courtly visits to an aristocratic park -were
comparatively heavy and uncomfortable under hot conditions.
Although in his earlier years a fair degree of private hedonism
may have been safe and morally acceptable for Orsini and his
guests, as the more ascetic mores of the Counter-Reformation
trickled through, acceptable behaviour, at least in semi-public
situations, changed and became more restrictive. There was a
parallel tightening of rules in the lives of religious orders
around the same time, although it took several decades for this to
be effected throughout the Catholic world. [35].
Garments grew more linear and severe in Italy as the Spanish
style infiltrated southern Europe and outward displays of
sensuousness and self-indulgence somewhat less permissive, leading
to a change of behaviour- at least in public. Heterodoxy in
religious and philosophical terms became more dangerous as Pomponio
Algerios public execution in Rome in the 1550s made clear.
Arguably, given his high born connections, his championing of the
Papal cause and the hidden nature of his garden, Orsinis relatively
low profile, obscure location and distance from Rome sheltered him
from those intrusive investigations and exposures which
increasingly characterised the Inquisition and the Churchs
reinforced apparatus of social and moral control. He did not
publicise any questionable ideas in later life, after publishing
the occasional piece of high-flown poetry earlier on.
Yet his popular reputation was sullied by an historic and
cumulative view that the park was a place of abandonment, or worse.
After a high reputation in the 1570s and 1580s, as evinced by its
lingering effect in Giovanni Guerras drawings published in 1604, it
developed a debased reputation in the post Tridentine world which
continued through the next century and, in an oblique way, even up
to the 1980s. As evidence for this we have the garden created at
Valsanzibio after 1669 by the Venetian nobleman Zuane Francesco
Barbarigo. His son, Gregorio, a Cardinal and future Saint, inspired
the plans symbolic meaning which was drawn up by Luigi Bernini, a
leading Vatican architect and fountain expert. Sixty full size
statues, mainly conceptualised by Enrico Merengo, with many other
smaller sculptures were integrated into an ordered setting of
architecture, streams, fountains, water jokes and fish ponds, among
hundreds of carefully chosen trees amid a garden of forty acres. A
modern author following Edith Whartons footsteps wrote this
startling comment: [36]
The first stanza of the sonnet inscribed on the scalinata of
Valsanzibio sets out the meaning of the whole garden and, to the
last syllable, is a deliberate parody and play on the words of the
verse on the pedestal of the sphinx which greets visitors at the
entrance of Bomarzo. Whereas Bomarzo represents a haphazard
wandering through an underworld that explores the dark forces of
life, where there is no clear path and you may or may not find your
way out, the path in Valsanzibio is clearly set out: the further
you move from the fallibility of pagan mythology, exemplified in
Dianas Gate, at the entrance to the garden, the more sophisticated
and intelligent the experience becomes...Valsanzibio, the
antithesis to Bomarzo, is a deliberate homage to San Carlo
Borromini. Barbarigo animated his garden with the spirit of
Christianity...
Of Bomarzo, Russell writes:
At the same time, only a few miles away from Lante, the most
flagrantly pagan garden in Italy was being created by an
iconoclastic aristocrat, Vicino Orsini...a frightening and
disturbing underworld, which visitors stumbled through by an
unprescribed and uncharted route, eventually reaching a temple at
the top of the valley. The gardens message was that redemption was
through love, not God.... [and it] did not please the Catholic
Church... We should also not forget the views of the Superior of
the convent at San Yuste where Charles V retired in the last few
years of his life: On other occasions he would release little
carved wooden birds which flew into every corner, to the
consternation of the disapproving Superior of the convent, who
considered them works of sorcery. If the Emperor and his servants
could be thought by an educated religious to harbour sorcerers and
sorcery, how would uneducated peasants and local farmers in remote
Bomarzo view a host of automata and water engines, not to mention
undeniable reports- or at the least rumours and gossip- of
lascivious revels in the Sacro Bosco? As we shall see, a small army
of hidden helpers were needed to operate these automata at Vicinos
signals throughout the park. They would have gossiped with their
drinking buddies at what they saw and heard among the grotesque
sculptures, animated figures and watery places of amorous delight.
A local reputation, wafted abroad over time by visitors, was
inescapable and it was reinforced by the key message about
redemption through love not Divine forgiveness. It may be argued
that Vicinos messages were actually more subtle than that- indeed,
they were- but that would not be the take home message for a
willing- or, especially, unwilling- witness to what transpired in
the Boscos lower levels. Orsinis Sacro Bosco carried within its
reputation the Latin or Roman allusions associated with Pagan Woods
from millennia before and never lost that association except among
a limited number of more open-minded aristocrats and intellectuals.
If this assessment of the attitude of the Catholic faithful is
accurate it explains why Bomarzos later reputation became so poor
and why ultimately it was forgotten until the nineteenth century.
It also explains the delayed riposte embodied a century after its
creation in Valsanzibio. Even in 1669 it mattered enough to build
an entire garden to help negate Bomarzos reputedly malign
influence. By the mid nineteenth century Bomarzo had sunk into
bucolic misery. In 1847 an English traveller, seeking to study
Etruscan antiquity and archaeological remains on the ground, wrote
about Bomarzo: About twelve miles east of Viterbo on the same slope
of the Cimian, is the village of Bomarzo, in the immediate
neighbourhood of an Etruscan town where extensive excavations have
been carried on of late years...It commands a glorious view of the
vale of the Tiber...[but]..Like most villages in the papal State,
Bomarzo is squalid in the extreme...George Dennis makes no mention
of the Sacro Bosco, but does report on one Etruscan tomb named
Grotta Depinta:We are in a chamber whose walls, gaily painted, are
alive with sea-horses snorting and plunging- water snakes uprearing
their crests...dolphins sporting as in their native element-and-
can we believe our eyes? Grim and hideous caricatures of the human
face divine. One is the head of an old man, with eye starting from
its socket, and mouth wide open as though smitten with
terror...Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen
ademptum.[37]While focused on Etrurias history, it is difficult to
imagine Dennis would fail to comment on the park if he was aware of
it- he comments on so many varied subjects relating to his travels.
Especially when Sacro Bosco had numerous grotesque and startling
sculptures part inspired by images such as those in Grotta Depinta.
There can be no doubt that the park, by then, had disappeared from
general public notice due to past obloquy, neglect and disdain. In
part, this negative impression continued into the 1980s. After a
tragic accident in which Mrs Bettini died during restoration work
an altar was set up near the temple and an exorcism was undertaken
by an officiating priest from nearby Viterbo. [38]Orsinis
intent:
The quotations which are to be found throughout the park as
red-lined inscriptions are part of Vicinos deliberately obtuse and
confusing world-view. Indeed they and the sculptures have rightly
fuelled a massive academic literature whose purpose is to establish
Orsinis underlying meanings and allusions. What is so intriguing is
that, even while this cumulative interpretive debate has been
mounting up from the 1950s, the messages which accompanied the
statuary and inscriptions, communicated through talking and moving
automata as at Hesdin, have been lost. To rely solely on the
sculptures and inscriptions in this case is like relying on the
libretto of an opera without knowing much about the plot, music,
scenic directions, writers side notes or singers performance.
In a treatment of the Hesdin gallery Jesse Hurlbut says:
Similar to portions of the banquet in Lille, this was an active
form of spectacle. Yet, as eager as the duke seemed to be to engage
the Grand Turk in single combat, and willing, therefore to
participate in the drama of the Holy Church, I don't imagine that
he devised this Funhouse in Hesdin in order to subject himself to
the buffetings and humiliations it afforded. The primary function
of such a contraption was most certainly for entertainment,
implying some kind of gratification to an audience--presumably, the
duke. But, just who was expected to go through these galleries and
just who was in control of the buttons and switches that made it
all work? Did the duke herd local peasants through for his own
sadistic pleasures? Did he greet visiting dignitaries, perhaps even
nobility there? Was it just a practical joke or a convenient way to
discourage unwanted visitors? We can find no real answers to these
questions. Indeed, I think that where I was able to suggest an
ideological motivation for much of what took place at the banquet
in Lille, I am unable to substantiate any congruity in motives
regarding the galleries of this castle. The codes of chivalry,
upheld in the enlistment to honorably serve God, the Virgin-Mother
and the Ladies of the court seem breached in this instance. Is
there any way that the Funhouse antics can be construed as anything
other than sneaky, tricky and abusive? Could an officer of the
Order of the Golden Fleece engage in behavior of this sort in good
conscience. Or was hazing part of the initiation rite into the
prestigious chivalric Order?
[39]
Ladies of the court seemed breached in this instance- thus Jesse
Hurlbut moves towards an implied inference that somehow females in
the Burgundian court were deliberately targeted by and in the
automata which populated Hesdins Garden of Earthly Delights. While
it may seem contradictory within a chivalric code of conduct to do
so, Hurlbut also notes:
My frustration at so many questions and so few answers has
already given rise to too much speculation here. By way of
conclusion, then, I will simply point to another important literary
product of the Burgundian court, _Les Cent Nouvelles_, in which
sacred and profane stories are collected together, demonstrating
that there is apparently room for multiple, and even conflicting
ideologies within the boundaries of a single cultural space.
This viewpoint also may well apply to Vicino Orsinis approach to
the intellectual underpinnings and physical experiences of his wood
at Bomarzo. Multi-layered, obfuscated, inferred, allegorical, a
journey with open ended mythological meanings- related to and in
part derived from Neo-Platonic, Epicurean, Alchemical and other
literary, philosophical and historical allusions- this was Orsini
the subtle, flexible and fugitive intellectual taking visitors on a
literary journey which was almost infinitely variable, depending on
personnel, circumstance and the route followed. At the same time
his wood made possible frankly physical, Epicurean, hedonistic and
even impish experiences, much in the way the Dukes gallery did at
Hesdin.
A simple, perhaps simplistic interpretation of one aspect of
both gallery and wood- among many- is also possible: heavy garments
that are drenched are uncomfortable. Immediately cool after
drenching and fun for a while if you play along, soon they may be
chafing, clinging and possibly malodorous. To counteract these
deficiencies they might be taken off and dried carefully since for
public occasions they were usually made of fine, sometimes heavy
textiles. It is neither salacious, nor unreasonable, to deduce that
this was one reason why prankish- and frankly boorish- wetting
mechanisms were incorporated in both private entertainment domains.
Nor is it accidental that both were created and governed by
wealthy, male aristocrats used to getting their way despite
chivalrous persiflage.
In a spirit of slightly tipsy summer fun, what is more natural
than to remove clothing which is damp or humid and step lightly and
quickly in ones undergarments into an adjacent bath or pool? While
to describe this prosaically in academic print may seem in poor
taste, in a setting where romantic poetry, philosophical witticism,
beautiful surroundings, speaking faces, musical water organs,
fountains, high ambient temperatures and a glass or two of
Montefasciones finest (or Burgundys) are added for libation- all
might make the transition from uncomfortably wet but fully clothed,
to clinging undergarments in a pool, seem natural, desirable and
acceptable.
This is even more the case at Bomarzo as opposed to Hesdin since
the former is mainly outdoors, if sheltered and out of view, and
there is as yet no evidence to hand that at Hesdin private bathing
and changing spaces were available- although an outdoor pavilion
with automata close by the local river and later destroyed by the
English army may have played a similar role for the Dukes.
Similarly, apart from their respective casini, there is no evidence
that Caprarola or Lante had similar facilities adjacent to the
watery features which so charmed visitors. Indeed Lantes central
table looks as if it was designed to cool fully clothed guests and
host- most notably the Cardinal himself. Be that as it may, there
was no shortage of private spaces for changing and bathing at
Bomarzo. Indeed there was a plethora of such environs especially on
the lower, hidden level.
Sheeler notes that Orsini alluded to this gaming of female
guests in a letter to his close friend Drouet around 1574:
Of course, sexual pleasure took a prominent place in his
thoughts, and he was unashamedly quite frivolous in this aspect of
his gardens purpose... he sent Drouet a poem he had written about
the garden, using a sly metaphor to describe its attractions. An
ancient method in Italy of hunting little birds was to make a trap
called a boschetto which was a construction of twigs, branches and
moss with limed snares and nets concealed inside and a decoy bird
used to entice others. In part the poem reads:
Theres good news here, and the call noteis even better. With
lime-twigs Im preparing the well-ordered boschetto,so careful to
see that it retains the bird lime.That should be enough for you to
be invited.If you want to come Ill expect you- you know the way.And
if you dont come aloneWell revel with your companions. [40] Later
in the poem Vicino describes how the decoy bird must be touched and
handled expertly so that its calls and movements entice other
birds. He tells then of the reaction of women: When they hear
someone say Ive got a big fat one They always want to hold it in
their hand for a bit, Squealing to each other with a noisy
commotion Orsinis epistolary comments are private and addressed to
a friend, so clearly he was careful not to put anything in writing
which could not be explained away. But his intent is clear. The
Sacro Bosco was designed and evolved as a place to beguile and
ensnare women using trickery and art. The equivalent of the
boschettos limed snares was more than mute statues. In addition to
all the sculptures and sayings he constructed private spaces and
facilities that used water animated marvels and features which, in
parallel with Hesdins gallery, might be used to intrigue, persuade,
ambush, dampen then arouse female companions singly, or in company.
No wonder the big boat or, more likely, the massive bath located by
the side of the Nymphaeum and near to the Love Theatre was located
at that precise point. These features he also created first. This
theme leads inevitably to thoughts about other factors and
circumstances at Bomarzo. Matters to do with wealth, cost,
technology, hydrology, topography, and the evidence for a large
scale hydrological system, engineered to provide multiple sources
and control points for water powered and mechanically animated
automata. Brief reference was made at the beginning of this article
to the physical evidence presently visible at Bomarzo, although in
places that evidence is now rapidly decaying, being casually
obliterated or overgrown. Not through malice but mainly through
progress and ignorance or indifference to Orsinis great
water-powered Wood of Earthly Delights (to paraphrase Hesdins
descriptor and the title of Boschs painting). We will now turn to
that physical evidence.
Hydrological Engineering at Bomarzo- modern maps and ancient
technologies:
Jessie Sheeler summed up the importance of water in the Sacro
Bosco:
As for the design of the Sacro Bosco as a whole, the siting of
most of the works must have been largely dictated by the cliffs and
scattered boulders which gave it the wild character it still
retains. The most important change Vicino made to the landscape of
the boschetto was his damming of the stream to make it a lake,
which then fed the numerous fountains and rills in the garden. It
was among the earliest of the great Italian waterworks gardens, and
the constant yet varying flow of water must have filled the air
with a pleasant coolness and rippling sound. Animabale Caro was
certainly impressed by Vicinos deployment of water and when he was
advising Torquanto Conti on the design of his garden he wrote that
water was essential, for you must have jets, streams, ponds,
fountains etc. We want to have extravagant things to eclipse even
the boschetto of Signor Vicino. It also gave Vicino the opportunity
to allude to his interest in the pre-Christian religious imagery
that revered water as an essential and sacred element in the
physical world.[41]She is certainly correct in underpinning the
significance of water in the affects and experience of Bomarzo. But
her belief that only the lake fed the fountains and so on is
probably misplaced. There was another much more focused,
technologically advanced and extensive set of systems which
animated the Bosco as supported by existing physical evidence. She
also did not add Caros reference to the sounds prevailing at
Bomarzo from a water organ- part of Heros portfolio of water
powered automata [42].
There is no usable or even extant plan, or map, showing the
physical elements which constituted the hydrological engineering
system at Bomarzo. Unlike the profusion of plans and interpretive
maps describing the sculptures, buildings and settings. Admittedly
it has also been difficult for anyone to accurately describe the
system in its entirety since so much is lost, so much is overgrown
and only a skilled, funded, time-consuming and comprehensive
survey, within and without the Sacro Bosco, would completely detail
what originally may have been constructed and what remains.
Although the team from the University of Rome undertook
extensive surveying work it seems,understandably, as if their main
focus was the sculptural and architectural elements. To
underestimate the challenge of the task fifty years later would be
a form of academic noblesse oblige. Their work was remarkable.
Still, their focus had to be on what was predominantly visible- not
elements which often were missing or subterranean.
It was also beyond the Bettinis resources although they
recognised that water played a role in the Sacro Bosco. Even
Brederkamp, in his major work, while highlighting Dominanz des
Wassers did not describe in detail the extent, nature, and type of
water animated features, now lost. He devoted only three pages to
the subject [43], while his remarkably helpful five stage plans of
the Boscos development and surroundings do not show their
hydrological, water-powered or automatous features. Nor do they
illustrate or explore the fish and performance lakes, mysterious
caves, tanks, small stone structures or grooves and conduits which
meet visitors on their way into and then throughout the site. In
passing, it is also the case that no other treatment of the site
has adequately analysed the full range of possible entrances, or
the unfinished and massive sculptures which recently have been
uncovered during weed clearance on private property to the south
west of the western wall/main road entrance to the Park (June,
2014), directly across the back road which follows the line of that
wall, well beyond the boundaries of the agreed extent of the Sacro
Bosco. The impression gained by this author of Bomarzo in 1996 was,
first, amazement at the sculptures and structures then, second, a
growing puzzlement as to the many caves, caverns, small stone
structures, grooves and indentations visible in the rock surfaces
and among the boulders. These features are still visible today well
before the visitor enters the Park. Quick subsequent research at
that time established that cultural and mythological
interpretations abounded but it appeared no one had looked at these
strange elements systematically or published the results. Which led
to four questions: what are they, why are they there, what do they
tell us and why has no-one explored them coherently or
comprehensively?
The closest to any acknowledgement of the hydrological systems,
grooves and caves, with the supporting stone built control
buildings, are brief mentions in Darnall/Weil with a plan of
fountains, some comments inter alia in various authors to one or
two caverns resembling Etruscan tombs- notably Coty in: Dreams of
Etruria- and the short but helpful chapter in Brederkamp with those
progressive cultural and sculptural development maps, apparently
based on cadastral information and the University of Rome surveys
from the 1960s. However, there appears to be no published itemised,
surveyed or measured hydrological maps or plans of the Sacro Bosco.
Even the Bettinis, who spent a lifetime of dedicated reconstruction
with attendant costs, while realising water played a large part in
the Bosco found this element beyond their means or their scope.
There are also no known contemporary maps of the Sacro Bosco or
Bomarzo showing the hydrological systems, although one of Orsinis
favourite sources included significant geographic and cartographic
information and he would have well understood the concept and
engineering drawings for site development. Such plans were common
for defensive structures:
(Fig 10, ref: MAP FROM ARIOSTOS ORLANDO FURIOSO. Size of the
original: ca. 16.5 X 9.8 cm. Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
-Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1556-, 161. Photographcourtesy of the
BL (C.12.e.12) [44]
Nor can any other reference to the probable Hesdin Garden of
Earthly Delights linkage be found except in the somewhat generic
reference in Bedini already quoted.
The answer to the last of the four questions- an almost complete
lack of published recognition or exploration of water systems at
the Sacro Bosco- probably lies in the prosaic nature of the
features and the now denuded, relatively uninteresting and missing
elements which used to fill grooves, stone-built structures and
caverns. There is no known written description of them. There is no
known visual portrayal. There is, in fact, merely evidence of
absence. But, as the quotation in the title suggests, such evidence
of absence is not an absence of evidence.
The features described below are factual. The photographs and
rough plans document elements manifest and evident. These may be
mere partial engineering clues, less exciting than speculation
about literature and mythology. Nevertheless they are important
sources to guide us towards a fuller unders