Boboli Gardens

The Boboli Gardens, in Italian Giardino di Boboli, form a famous park in Florence, Italy, that is home to a distinguished collection of sculptures dating from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, with some Roman antiquities.

History and layout

The Gardens, behind the Pitti Palace, the main seat of the Medici grand dukes of Tuscany at Florence, are some of the first and most familiar formal sixteenth century Italian gardens. The mid-16th century garden style, as it was developed here, incorporated longer axial developments, wide gravel avenues, a considerable "built" element of stone, the lavish employment of statuary and fountains, and a proliferation of detail, coordinated in semi-private and public spaces that were informed by classical accents: grottos, nympheums, garden temples and the like. The openness of the garden, with an expansive view of the city, was unconventional for its time.

Neptune rises above the Isolotto centered in its pool: the luxuriant and naturalistic plant growth is a 19th-century development.

The Boboli Gardens were laid out for Eleonora di Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici. The first stage was scarcely begun by Niccolo Tribolo before he died in 1550, then was continued by Bartolomeo Ammanati, with contributions in planning from Giorgio Vasari, who laid out the grottos, and in sculpture by Bernardo Buontalenti. The elaborate architecture of the grotto in the courtyard that separates the palace from its garden is by Buontalenti.

The garden lacks a natural water source. To water the plants in the garden, a conduit was built from the nearby Arno River to feed water into an elaborate irrigation system.

The primary axis, centered on the rear facade of the palace, rises on Boboli Hill from a deep amphitheater that is reminiscent in its shape of one half of a classical hippodrome or racecourse. At the center of the amphitheater and rather dwarfed by its position is the Egyptian obelisk brought from the Villa Medici at Rome (illustration, above). This primary axis terminates in a fountain of Neptune (known to the irreverent Florentines as the "Fountain of the Fork" for Neptune's trident), with the sculpture of Neptune by Stoldo Lorenzi (illustration, left) visible against the skyline as a visitor climbs the slope. At the top are the panoramic views of Florence, as painted by Camille Corot (illustration, below right). Giulio Parigi laid out the long secondary axis at a right angle to the main one, which leads down through a series of terraces and water features, with the bosquets on either side. In 1617 he constructed the Grotto of Vulcan (Grotticina di Vulcano).

The gardens have passed through several stages of enlargement and restructuring work. They were enlarged in the 17th century to their present extent of 45,000 meters² (11 acres). The Boboli Gardens have come to form an outdoor museum of garden sculpture that includes Roman antiquities as well as 16th and 17th century works.

In the first phase of building, the amphitheatre was excavated in the hillside behind the palace. Initially formed by clipped edges and greens, it was later formalized by rebuilding in stone decorated with statues based on Roman myths such as the Fountain of the Ocean sculpted by Giambologna, then transferred to another location within the same garden. The small Grotto of Madama, and the Large Grotto, were begun by Vasari and completed by Ammannati and Buontalenti between 1583 and 1593.

Despite the fact that it is currently undergoing restoration work, the Large Grotto's statues continue to be remarkable examples of Mannerist architecture and culture. Decorated internally and externally with stalactites and originally equipped with waterworks and luxuriant vegetation, the fountain is divided into three main sections. The first one was frescoed to create the illusion of a natural grotto, that is a natural refuge to allow shepherds to protect themselves from wild animals; it originally housed The Prisoners of Michelangelo (now replaced by copies), statues that were first intended for the tomb of the Pope Julius II. Other rooms in the Grotto contain Giambologna's famous Bathing Venus and an 18th-century group of Paris and Helen by Vincenzo de Rossi.