Giambologna's giant and the cinquecento villa garden as a landscape of suffering

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements I would like to thank Nadja Aksamija, Abigail Brundin, Hervé Brunon, Stephen Campbell, Anthony D'Elia, Anne Dunlop, Robert La France, Stuart Lingo, David Marsh and Luke Roman. This article was written with the generous support of fellowship, from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Villa I Tatti. Notes 1. ‘la natura signoreggi con imperio, e nel signoreggiare tutta da ogni parte piacevolissimamente s'allegri e rida’, Jacopo Bonfadio, Lettere famigliari, ed. Antonio Sambuca (Brescia: J. Turlini, 1746), p. 21. Trans. from Claudia Lazzaro, The Italian Renaissance Garden from the Conventions of Planting, Design and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-century Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 111. Lazzaro writes that he is referring to the Florentine countryside, but he is actually praising that of Naples. 2. Raffaello Gualterotti, Vaghezze sopra Pratolino (Florence: Giunti, 1579), p. 12. 3. On topiary in Renaissance gardens and literary descriptions of gardens, see Eugenio Battisti, ‘Natura artificiosa to natura artificialis’, in The Italian Garden (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1972), pp. 15–23. 4. See a summary in Luigi Zangheri, Pratolino: il giardino delle meraviglie (Florence: Gonnelli, 1979), pp. 145–148; and, for bibliography on Appennino and Pratolino in general, Giovanni Valdré, Pratolino e la scrittura: bibliografia storico-ragionata della Villa Medicea e della sua gente (Florence: Alinea, 2003). The most complex and thorough discussion of Giambologna's giant in relation to poetry and metamorphosis is Hervé Brunon, Pratolino: art des jardins et imagaire de la nature dans l'Italie de la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle (Paris: Université de Paris, 2001, revised for electronic publication in 2008), pp. 718–740. 5. Though Francesco's apologists write of his great charity in making the villa, few visitors were ever admitted, as noted in Hervé Brunon, ‘Les prodiges du prince: Pratolino, refuge féerique’, in Le jardin, notre double, ed. Hervé Brunon (Paris: Autrement, 1999), pp. 138–139. On Francesco and alchemy see Suzanne B. Butters, The Triumph of Vulcan: Sculptors’ Tools, Porphyry, and the Prince in Ducal Florence (Florence: Olschki, 1996), I, pp. 241–267. 6. On ‘the gloom of the garden’, see Battisti, ‘Natura’, p. 19. On death, frenzy, and isolation in grottoes see Malgorzata Szafranska, ‘The philosophy of nature and the grotto in the Renaissance garden’, Journal of Garden History, 9, 1989, pp. 78–79. On ‘la gaieté archétypale du locus amoenus’, and the happiness of pastoral subjects in relation to ‘le plaisir de l'effroi’, catharsis, the ‘locus horridus’, and a melancholic nostalgia for the Golden Age, see Brunon, Pratolino, pp. 230–239, 265–295, 682–683 and 703–710. 7. On the use of the term ‘gigante’ in the Renaissance, see Virginia Bush, The Colossal Sculpture of the Cinquecento (New York and London: Garland, 1976), pp. XXVIII–XXX. 8. ‘lo maravoglioso colosso … un gran gigante … di sì smisurata grandezza, che dentro al solo capo è una ben capace stanza … .’ Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, ed. F. Ranalli (Florence: V. Batelli, 1846), II, p. 566. 9. Francesco De Vieri, Discorsi … delle maravigliose opere di Pratolino e d'amore (Florence: G. Marescotti, 1586), p. 27. 10. On the ways in which this type of encrusted surface decoration was received at the time, see Eugenio Battisti, L'Antirinascimento (Milan: Garzanti, 1989), pp. 185–189. For the weathering of the surface, the original appearance, and the materials used, see Cristina Acidini Luchinat, ‘L'Appennino del Giambologna: uomo, grotta, palazzo’, in Arte delle grotte: per la conoscenza e la conservazione delle grotte artificiali, ed. Cristina Acidini Luchinat, Lauro Magnani, and Mariachiara Pozzana (Genoa: Sagep, 1985), pp. 96–97 and 101. 11. John Dixon Hunt, ‘Pegaso in villa. Variazioni sul tema’, in Villa Lante a Bagnaia, ed. Sabine Frommel and Flaminia Bardati (Milan: Electa, 2005), pp. 132–143. For a precedent for placing a personification of the Apennines at the top of a villa garden, see the Villa Medici at Castello, discussed below. 12. Zangheri, Pratolino, pp. 157–158. 13. On the resemblance between this figure and one of the sketch models for the Appennino, see Charles Avery, Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture (Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1987), p. 223. 14. See Luchinat, ‘L'Appennino del Giambologna’, p. 102; and Cristina Acidini Luchinat, ‘L'Appennino dal modello all'opera compiuta’, in Risveglio di un colosso: il restauro dell'Appennino del Giambologna (Florence: Alinari, 1988), pp. 17–18. 15. Gualterotti, Vaghezze, p. 11. 16. ‘Nella cui parte estrema 17. See also Brunon, ‘Prodiges du prince’, pp. 134–135, on Pratolino as a place of golden age eternal spring. 18. See Brunon, ‘Prodiges du prince’, p. 134. 19. Hervé Brunon, ‘“Les mouvements des eaux de l'univers”: Pratolino, jardin météorologique’, in Les éléments et les métamorphoses de la nature: imaginaire et symbolique des arts dans la culture européenne du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Bordeaux: Wm. Blake & Co., 2004), pp. 38–39. 20. Some examples are quoted in Luchinat, ‘L'Appennino dal modello’, pp. 13–14. 21. For example, the Fossombrone sketchbook of c. 1520 includes a sketch of the project, as noted in Enriqueta Harris Frankfort, ‘The “Alexander mountain”’, in Alexander the Great in European art, ed. Nicos Hadjnicolaou (Thessaloniki: Organisation for the Cultural Capital of Europe, 1997), pp. 248–249. 22. Avery, Giambologna, p. 223, suggests that Giambologna may have ‘had in mind’ Michelangelo's project. 23. For example, one viewer called even the satyrs and herms in the Grotto of the Rain at Caprarola ‘Atlases’, despite their bestial forms (as noted in Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 148). 24. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Mary M. Innes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955), IV, p. 111. 25. Boccaccio's learned compilation of classical learning about mountains and other parts of the landscape, De montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, stagnis seu paludibus et de diversis nominibus maris, does not include the Apennines. 26. Aeneid XII, p. 703. See also Aeneid IV, pp. 249–250, for a description of Atlas, suffering not only from his burden, but also because he is beset by storms, and his head and beard are covered with water and icicles. Both references are discussed in Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, pp. 148–149. Other ancient references, so far as I know, are geographical, not to a personification. 27. The full description is quoted in Filippo Clementi, Il carnevale romano nelle cronache contemporanee (Rome: Setth, 1899), p. 130. See also R. Quednau, Die Sala di Costantino im Vatikanischen Palast: Zur Dekoration die beiden Medici Päpste Leo X und Clemens VII (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1979), p. 500. 28. For precedents for this figure, see Quednau, Sala di Costantino, p. 500. For an engraving made after this image, which must have been more legible than the small ceiling fresco, see Alessandro Vezzosi, ‘Inediti e rari per il Gigante di Pratolino’, in L'Appennino del Giambologna: anatomia e identità del gigante, ed. Alessandro Vezzosi (Florence: Alinea, 1990), p. 38. Brunon, Pratolino, p. 721, also mentions this as a precedent for Giambologna's giant. 29. Described as ‘un Appennino carico di diacci e di neve, come luogo per natura freddo e gelato’ in Giorgio Vasari, Le opere, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1906), VIII, p. 214. This work is mentioned in relation to Giambologna's statue in Luchinat, ‘L'Appennino dal modello’, pp. 15–17; Herbert Keutner, ‘Note intorno all'Appennino del Giambologna’, in L'Appennino del Giambologna: anatomia e identità del gigante, ed. Alessandro Vezzosi (Florence: Alinea, 1990), pp. 19–21; and Brunon, Pratolino, p. 721. 30. As noted in Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 178. On these fountains, see also Bertha Harris Wiles, The Fountains of the Florentine Sculptors and their Followers from Donatello to Bernini (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1975), pp. 33–35. 31. ‘un rocher contrefait au naturel’, Michel de Montaigne, Journal de voyage, ed. Fausta Garavini (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), p. 180. On this fountain, see Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 184; Wiles, Fountains, pp. 80–81; and Cristina Acidini Luchinat and Giorgio Galletti, Le ville e i giardini di Castello e Petraia a Firenze (Ospedaletto: Pacino, 1992), p. 130. 32. Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 184, notes that ‘the Apennine mountains were invariably characterized as snow-covered’, and that personifications of snow in the period adopted a similar pose. 33. Montaigne, Journal, pp. 180–181. 34. See Alessandro Conti, ‘Niccolò Tribolo, alle origini della grotta’, in Arte delle grotte: per la conoscenza e la conservazione delle grotte artificiali, ed. Cristina Acidini Luchinat, Lauro Magnani, and Mariachiara Pozzana (Genoa: Sagep, 1985), pp. 15–17; and Luchinat and Galletti, Ville, pp. 46–47. For Tribolo's Fiesole as a precedent for Giambologna's Appennino, see Luchinat, ‘L'Appennino del Giambologna’, p. 96. 35. Luchinat and Galletti, Ville, p. 46, suggest the connection. 36. ‘mutar le membra e ‘l bel corpo colore, ma pur, che fussi già donna ancor credi: le membra mostran, come suol figura bozzata e non finita in pietra dura’, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Opere, ed. Attilio Simioni (Bari: G. Laterza & Figli, 1913), verse 41, p. 301. 37. Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, pp. 170–172, notes that this contrast has been exaggerated by the modern plantings. 38. Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 176. 39. Keutner, ‘Note’, pp. 18–23. On this model, see also Avery, Giambologna, pp. 221–222. 40. Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources (London: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 102. For the various identifications given to one long visible river god, the ‘Marforio’, see Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 125. 41. See Hans Henrik Brummer, The Statue Court in the Vatican Belvedere (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell Press, 1970), pp. 191–204 (with relevant primary sources transcribed on pp. 267, 268, 270 and 271); Bober and Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists, pp. 102–104; and Matthias Winner, ‘La collocazione degli dei fluviali nel Cortile delle Statue e il restauro del Laocoonte del Montorsoli’, in Il Cortile delle Statue: Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im Vatikan, ed. Matthias Winner, Bernard Andreae, and Carlo Pietrangeli (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 1998), p. 119. 42. The work was probably placed in the Belvedere during the reign of Clement VII (1523–34), as argued in Ruth Rubinstein, ‘The Statue of the River God Tigris or Arno’, in Il Cortile delle Statue: Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im Vatikan, ed. Matthias Winner, Bernard Andreae, and Carlo Pietrangeli (Mainz: p. von Za bern, 1998), pp. 277–281. Brummer, Statue Court, p. 187, thinks this is also most likely. 43. Also noted in Rubinstein, ‘Tigris’, pp. 275–277. Winner, ‘Collocazione’, p. 119, notes that the Laocoön must have been viewed from the beginning in relation to the Tiber and the Nile, as depicted in a drawing he attributes to Heemskerck and dates to 1533–34. 44. The niche setting of the Tigris and later fountains imitating this type is discussed in Wiles, Fountains, pp. 32–33. On the niche for the Tigris, see also Brummer, Statue Court, pp. 188–190; and Rubinstein, ‘Tigris’, p. 281. 45. For the evidence (written accounts, beginning in 1570, as well as drawings) that Michelangelo may have at any rate made a model for the restoration of the Tigris, see Rubinstein, ‘Tigris’, pp. 281–283. 46. On the sarcophagus and funerary associations, see Brummer, Statue Court, pp. 165–166. On placing the Cleopatra outdoors, see Brummer, Statue Court, pp. 171–174. 47. Brummer, Statue Court, pp. 166–173 On the multiple interpretations of this statue in the Renaissance see Leonard Barkan, ‘The Beholder's Tale: Ancient Sculpture, Renaissance Narratives’, Representations, 44, 1993, pp. 133–166. 48. See descriptions of 1556 and 1597, in Brummer, Statue Court, pp. 268 and 270. Brummer, Statue Court, pp. 238–239, suggests that the lion in the urn is a reference to Leo X and to Florence. Rubinstein, ‘Tigris’, pp. 277–281 and 284–285, argues that the statue is characterized as the Arno, and was restored under Clement VII (not Leo). 49. I am following the Renaissance usage of ‘pathos’ as tragic suffering (rather than the Warburgian notion of pathosformel or other modern connotations). In Aristotle, pathos can refer to suffering or passions in general but more specifically denotes a tragic turn of events. Renaissance commentators focused more on the inner suffering than events, e.g. Giorgio Bartoli, as discussed in Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), II, pp. 930–931; and Lodovico Castelvetro, On the Art of Poetry, trans. Andrew Buongiorno (Binghamton: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studio, 1984), p. 118. For the pathos of the Laocoön in Renaissance writings, see Sonia Maffei, ed., ‘La fama di Laocoonte nei testi del Cinquecento’, in Salvatore Settis, Laocoonte: fama e stile (Rome: Donzelli, 1999), e.g. pp. 106–107, 118–120, 122, 126, 130, 134, 138–140, 146, 148, 176–177 and 203–205. On Renaissance and later interpretations of Laocoön’s suffering, see Leopold Ettlinger, ‘Exemplum doloris: Reflections on the Laocoön group’, in Millard Meiss, De artibus opuscula: Essays in honor of Erwin Panofsky (New York: New York University Press, 1961), pp. 121–126; Barkan, Unearthing, pp. 2–17; and Richard Brilliant, My Laocoön: Alternative Claims in the Interpretations of Artworks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 50. Aristotle (Poetics 26: 1462a–b) wrote that tragedy was more noble even than epic. 51. See, for example, Ovid's account of the River Peneus, father of Daphne, and his mourning for her tragic fate, discussed below. 52. Bartolomeo Leonico Tomeo, in Maffei, ‘Fama’, p. 136. 53. See for example, Maffei, ‘Fama’, pp. 126–129, 130, 134, 136, 139 and 146–148. Brummer, Statue Court, pp. 118–119, quotes a couple of these poems and notes that ‘the marble itself was seen as a vehicle for an extension of Laocoön's punishment’. 54. Many poets (most notably Sadoleto) dwell on the fact that the statue was long buried among the ruins and forgotten, before being re-discovered (e.g. Maffei, ‘Fama’, pp. 119 and 132). One marvels that the statue has not aged (Maffei, ‘Fama’, p. 142), after being so long abandoned, but another sees the burial of the statue and the loss of a hand as further punishment for the Trojan priest (Maffei, ‘Fama’, p. 132). 55. In Maffei, ‘Fama’, p. 183. 56. On the nostalgia for Antiquity in the Belvedere, see also Brummer, Statue Court, pp. 243–249. Of course, the famous passage that constructs a history of such art, emphasizing the distance from antiquity as well as modern rebirth of it, is Vasari's introduction to the third part of his Lives, in which the statues of the Belvedere play a central role (in Maffei, ‘Fama’, p. 189). 57. They were also, like mountain gods, included in the temporary festival decorations of the period, as discussed in Wiles, Fountains, p. 28. 58. Rubinstein, ‘Tigris’, p. 282, suggests that the restoration of the Tigris could have been ‘partly inspired by the river gods in Raphael's tapestry borders’. 59. On the frescoes for this room in general, see Christoph Luitpold Frommel, Baldassare Peruzzi als Maler und Zeichner (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1967–1968), pp. 87–91. 60. Illustrated Bartsch, XXIX, pp. 177 and 179, nos. 20-I (p. 197), 22-I (p. 198). On these, see Frommel, Peruzzi, p. 78. 61. Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, p. 44. 62. For documentation and literary accounts of the river gods, see John Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, 3rd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1985), pp. 335–337. 63. For Vasari's 1550 description of the chapel and his praise of the ‘melancholia’ of these statues, see Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance, p. 336. 64. See, for example, the Allegory of Pistoia and the Allegory of Prato in the room of Cosimo I; the Allegory of Chianti in the Salone del Cinquecento; Charles V Crowning Alessandro de’ Medici Duke of Florence in the apartment of Clement VII; and Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici Watches the Battle of Ravenna, Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici is Sent to Hungary, and Clement VII Returns from France to Rome, in the apartment of Leo X; and the Return of Gregory XI in the Sala Regia of the Vatican Palace. The image of the pathetic river god had become so standard by this time, that Marco da Faenza included a particularly woeful example in such a celebratory scene as the Baptism in the chapel of the quarters of Leo X, Palazzo Vecchio. 65. For example, the Arno in Alessandro de’ Medici Returning to Florence after his Coronation as Duke by the Emperor, and the Tiber in Giovanni de’ Medici is Elected Pope, both in the apartment of Leo X. 66. As noted in Rubinstein, ‘Tigris’, p. 285. 67. For illustrations, see Giorgio Vasari: Arezzo, 26 settembre–29 novembre 1981 (Florence: EDMA, 1981), p. For a discussion of this room of the statue that is see of the History of in the Vasari, Art pp. See Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance, pp. Wiles, Fountains, pp. and Avery, Giambologna, pp. Wiles, Fountains, p. Avery, Giambologna, pp. Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. Wiles, Fountains, pp. figure and a a pathetic river god by for the Villa the Villa di Keutner, ‘Note’, p. notes a to the river The grotto and and a figure of her and was encrusted with and other as noted in Zangheri, Pratolino, pp. una Gualterotti, Vaghezze, p. 4. On the of see J. Jacopo and the of and London: University of New 1983), p. 35. For the that even in is death, see Erwin in and the in in the NY: 1955), pp. David and in Renaissance of the (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. and a of in the The in The Art of Art History Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. and Jacopo Opere, ed. pp. Opere, pp. Opere, p. The is from Jacopo & trans. University Press, p. Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 148, quotes a part of this passage in relation to Giambologna's 78. On in Ovid's see Stephen The of and the University Press, of in Ovid's of The Journal of pp. and a summary with bibliography in Stephen and of an in ed., The to University Press, pp. See, for example, Castelvetro, Art of Poetry, pp. 119, and 180. See e del (Florence: Olschki, 1984), pp. Brunon, Pratolino, p. mentions Boccaccio's delle in relation to the pastoral but does not the Giovanni in le opere, ed. (Milan: pp. See e nel sul pp. For a more of this see pp. On the and the of metamorphosis see also Brunon, Pratolino, pp. and For a between the and the about Pratolino, see Brunon, Pratolino, pp. On the of the in to Ovid's account of and Daphne, see David in and in Italian pp. in p. also mentions the as a precedent for a passage in the but his is on Lorenzo and For a of the and a discussion of in relation to the Appennino, see Brunon, Pratolino, pp. and Brunon in other on the of and in the of the Villa Medici in Pratolino and the of the in relation to the and description of the Brunon, Pratolino, pp. and on Ovid's were on the of Rome, in as noted in J. M. De ed., des de la Renaissance, p. De Vieri, in general, pp. and and, for De Vieri, pp. that De that the statue of the of not that this which he as On the statue of see Zangheri, Pratolino, pp. For of De Vieri, see Zangheri, Pratolino, p. Giovanni ‘L'Appennino di Giambologna: in L'Appennino del Giambologna: anatomia e identità del gigante, ed. Alessandro Vezzosi 1990), p. and Keutner, ‘Note’, p. 18. Luchinat ‘L'Appennino dal modello’, p. suggests that the of a further Francesco the statue as the giant the of his in of as noted in Alessandro Vezzosi, ed. Il di statue (Florence: Alinea, 1986), p. 53. For example, see which may on Giambologna's Appennino, as noted in Alessandro Vezzosi, dell'Appennino e il restauro del in Risveglio di un colosso: il restauro dell'Appennino del Giambologna (Florence: Alinari, 1988), p. 43. ed. (Milan: 1983), p. 3. The is in pp. For the see pp. pp. la al ma de verse p. 96. verse p. ed. Luigi (Bari: G. II, pp. The of trans. University 1999), pp. and Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance, p. Wiles, Fountains, pp. and (with Reflections on the Garden Grotto (New York: G. pp. Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, pp. In Francesco wrote that the room to in ruins and that Michelangelo's were to the (as discussed in Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 101. For the materials and see ‘La dei e della in del di per la e la del giardino (Florence: 1989), I, pp. This grotto from in that the are not to but also to the as noted in Wiles, Fountains, pp. 102. in as quoted in Pope-Hennessy, Italian High Renaissance, p. On the of and metamorphosis in relation to Giambologna's see Brunon, Pratolino, pp. As quoted in Battisti, I, p. On Francesco and in the see Brunon, Pratolino, pp. For of in relation to the see Les au XVIe et de la nature (Paris: 1998), pp. sees the Michelangelo statues and the on the as both from and being and this grotto to of Vasari, Le opere, II, pp. and Raffaello Il of the with notes ed. pp. il di in Il di ed. Alessandro Vezzosi (Florence: Alinea, 1986), p. 29.

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