THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



261 



CHAPTER XXI. 

 THE BOBOLI GARDENS, FLORENCE. 



THE public gardens of any great town are hardly ever interesting ; they have an official 

 look ; miles of well raked gravel paths are enough to damp the most lively imagination. 

 Yet the Boboli was always a Court garden, and all the red tape in the world cannot 

 blot out a stately and interesting past. 



The garden is laid out on a steep hill at the back of that palace which Luca Pitti sold to 

 Eleanora de Medici, the widow of Cosimo I, in 1549. Eleanora was an excellent, good woman, 

 but she was never popular with the Florentines, who described her as of an insopportabile gravitd . 

 Tribolo laid out the garden for her, together with Buontalenti, and Bartolomeo Ammanti helped 

 to ornament and erect many of the buildings. Near the entrance is a grotto painted with 

 birds and flowers and adorned with coloured stucco figures, once gay enough, but now rather 

 forlorn and tawdry. Set into its trumpery work, incongruous and particularly out of keeping, 

 are four half finished statues by Michelangelo, intended for the monument of Julius II, that 

 ill starred undertaking which is described as a tragedy by Condivi, the biographer of the great 

 Florentine. The statues were intended for captives, and, imprisoned for ever, as they are, in the 

 marble, half struggling to light, they have a double significance. In the inner chamber is a 



273. THE FOUNTAIN ABOVE THE GROTTO IN THE CORTILE OF THE PITTI PALACE, FLORENCE. 



Ammanali, Architect. 



