The Villa di Pratolino was a Renaissance patrician villa in
Vaglia
Vaglia is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Florence in the Italian region Tuscany, located about north of Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of ...
,
Tuscany
Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze'').
Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, art ...
,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
. It was mostly demolished in 1822. Its remains are now part of the Villa Demidoff, 12 km north of
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
, reached from the main road to
Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
.
History
The villa was built by
Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in part to please his Venetian mistress, the celebrated
Bianca Cappello
Bianca Cappello (154820 October 1587) was an Italian noblewoman who was the mistress, and afterward the second wife, of Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Her husband officially made her his consort. Coincidentally, the creation of t ...
. Villa and gardens were designed by his court architect, designer and engineer
Bernardo Buontalenti
Bernardo Buontalenti (), byname of Bernardo Delle Girandole ( 1531 – June 1608), was an Italian stage designer, architect, theatrical designer, military engineer and artist and inventor of italian ice cream.
Biography
Buontalenti was born in ...
, who completed the construction from 1569 to 1581. It was sufficiently finished to provide the setting for Francesco's public wedding to Bianca Cappello in 1579. In its time it was a splendid example of the
Mannerist garden.
Francesco had assembled most of the property, which was not a hereditary
Medici
The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Muge ...
possession, by September 1568, and construction began the following spring.
The garden was laid out along a perfectly straight down-slope axis passing through the center of the villa, which stood midway. Down the central descent, the visitor still walks under a cooling arch of fountain jets, without getting wet.
Michel de Montaigne
Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne ( ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), also known as the Lord of Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a liter ...
, one of the earliest visitors to leave a description of Pratolino, saw it in 1581, and considered it to have been built, he thought when visiting
Villa d'Este
The Villa d'Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli, near Rome, famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renaissance garden and especially for its profusion of fountains. It is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO World Herita ...
, "precisely in rivalry with this place". A long description was published by a Florentine,
Francesco de' Vieri, in 1586.
Giusto Utens
Giusto Utens or Justus Utens (died 1609) was a Flemish painter who is remembered for the series of Medicean villas in lunette form that he painted for the third Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I, in 1599–1602.
He moved to Carrara about 158 ...
included a view of the southern half of the villa and its gardens
among his series of lunettes containing bird's-eye views of the Medicean villas painted in 1599.
Stefano Della Bella
Stefano della Bella (17 May 1610 – 12 July 1664) was an Italian draughtsman and printmaker known for etchings of a great variety of subjects, including military and court scenes, landscapes, and lively genre scenes. He left 1052 prints, and sev ...
made six etchings of the Pratolino's gardens in the mid-17th century,
the picture is rounded out by further 18th century descriptions. Nevertheless, Pratolino has not survived, as other
Medici villas have.
Though the villa and its fountains were kept in repair, after Francesco's death it was deserted. The Pratolino appeared to be closely designed to please the original owner and in later periods many of its features were seen as too expensive to maintain.
In 1773, some of its sculptures were removed to adorn the extension of the
Boboli Gardens
The Boboli Gardens ( it, Giardino di Boboli) is a historical park of the city of Florence that was opened to the public in 1766. Originally designed for the Medici, it represents one of the first and most important examples of the Italian garden, ...
and the place was left to fall into decay;
by 1798 a German visitor was impressed with the romantic ruin of it. Grand Duke
Ferdinand III decided to capitalize on the air of overgrown wildness; in 1820 it was decided to demolish the villa, and the garden was then re-designed in the
English landscape manner and became one of the most romantic gardens ever seen in Tuscany. In 1872 the complex was sold by the heirs of
Leopold II, former Grand Duke of Tuscany, to Prince
Pavel Pavlovich Demidov who restored the ''Paggeria'', or pages' lodgings of the former residence, as the Villa Demidoff di Pratolino. The property was eventually inherited by
Prince Paul of Yugoslavia. Later the park was bought by the province of Florence who maintain the park and open it for public use from April through October.
The complicated iconography of the garden is embodied in the brooding statue of "
Appennino
The Apennines or Apennine Mountains (; grc-gre, links=no, Ἀπέννινα ὄρη or Ἀπέννινον ὄρος; la, Appenninus or – a singular with plural meaning;''Apenninus'' (Greek or ) has the form of an adjective, which wou ...
", a colossal sculpture by
Giambologna
Giambologna (1529 – 13 August 1608), also known as Jean de Boulogne (French), Jehan Boulongne (Flemish) and Giovanni da Bologna (Italian), was the last significant Italian Renaissance sculptor, with a large workshop producing large and small ...
[Steadman, Philip (2021),p.290] built in 1579–1580, which originally seemed to emerge from the vaulted rockwork niche that once surrounded him. Multiple
grottoes with water-driven
automata
An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.Automaton – Definition and More ...
, a
water organ
The water organ or hydraulic organ ( el, ὕδραυλις) (early types are sometimes called hydraulos, hydraulus or hydraula) is a type of pipe organ blown by air, where the power source pushing the air is derived by water from a natural source ...
, surprise jets that drenched visitors' finery when the ''fontanieri'' opened secret spigots,
offered striking juxtapositions of Art with imitations of rugged Nature.
See also
*
Medici villas
*
Villa Feri
References
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Pratolino
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