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THE BOBOLI GARDEN, FLORENCE 



PLATES 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 



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TILL remaining undisturbed in so many of its most important features, the 

 Boboli Garden is the most important, though perhaps not the most pleasing, 

 of all the old gardens left in Tuscany. From its size, and from the fact that 

 it was essentially intended for a court-garden rather than for private use, it 

 contains several elements not often to be met with, and fortunately we are 

 able to study it to-day in very much the original condition, for the land- 

 scapist has never been allowed within its walls. And it is likely to be 



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preserved in its present form for many years, as the Florentines have fully realised that in the 

 Boboli Garden they have one of the most artistic of the many beautiful features of their city. 

 The Pitti Palace was commenced in 1441 by Luca Pitti, one of the wealthiest and most 



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influential citizens of Florence, a rival of the Medici rather than of the Strozzi, but who did not 

 yield the palm to either in his ambition to play a leading part in the government. The 

 name Boboli is said to have been derived from a family named Bogoli, who owned the land 

 here before the days when Eleonora de' Medici, the widow of Cosimo L, in 1549,^ commissioned 

 the great architects Buontalenti and II Tribolo to lay out the hillside extending to the south 

 and west of the palace. 



The palace is situated at the foot of a steep hillside, which has been considerably excavated 

 in order to gain a courtyard for light and air at the back. The disjunction of palace and garden 

 by this area makes an unfortunate gap between the two, and is so serious a defect in the scheme 

 that one would feel tempted to believe the original design had been altered, were it not for the 

 fact that it is so shown in engravings made soon after the garden was designed. If, instead of 

 the raised platform, a grand semicircular stairway had been designed, a much finer termination 

 to the courtyard, and more worthy approach to the amphitheatre, would have been the result. The 

 arrangement which was adopted by Ammanati may be studied upon Plate 32. An oblong terrace, 

 to which access was gained from the first-floor level, has a magnificent octagonal fountain with 

 ' putti ' in playful attitudes seated upon the coping. 



From the palace we overlook the amphitheatre (Plate 32), cut out of the hillside, with six tiers 



' According to G. Anguillesi, the garden was commenced under the direction of Niccolo Braccini, called II Tribolo, in May 1550. (I'a/azzi 

 di Toscana, G. Anguillesi ; Pisa, 1815). 



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