4096 x 6144 px | 34,7 x 52 cm | 13,7 x 20,5 inches | 300dpi
Data acquisizione:
19 novembre 2008
Ubicazione:
The Porcelain Museum, Boboli Gardens, Florence, Tuscany, Italy, Europe
Altre informazioni:
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.[1] The first stage was scarcely begun by Niccolo Tribolo[1] 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.[2] 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.[1] Boboli Gardens Amphitheatre, viewed from the Pitti Palace The primary axis, centered on the rear facade of the palace, rises on Boboli Hill from a deep amphitheater[2] 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[1] 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 t
