THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
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CHAPTER XXI. 
THE BOBOLI GARDENS, FLORENCE. 
T he 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 gravita. 
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 11 , 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. 
Ammaiiali, Architect. 
