8o 
THE ART OF GARDEN DESIGN IN ITALY 
fountains, which are to be met with in nearly every old Italian garden, also served the very 
useful purpose of keeping the hot, parched stonework occasionally moist, and in the case of 
grottos, where they are more usually found, they imparted a coolness to these retreats that was 
all the more grateful in the scorching heat of the summer sun. Upon either side of the garden 
are the large ‘ stanzoni,’ with exquisitely modelled terminals of pheasants and other game 
birds, a few of which have found their way to the Museum of the Bargello in Florence. This 
love of representing animal life, which was so great a feature of the Renaissance, and which 
probably arose from the general interest in strange beasts from descriptions brought home by 
travellers, is further evinced in the central grotto under the great terrace, which is decorated with 
masks, scrolls, baskets of flowers, and arabesques done in different coloured shells. In the 
recesses are nearly life-sized animals: here a camel with a monkey on its back, there a 
unicorn, a wild boar, ram, lion, bear, hounds, and smaller creatures, carved in happy confusion 
from a variety of marbles 
to correspond, as far as may 
be, with the colours of the 
animals portrayed. Animals 
are gathered here from all 
quarters of the globe by an 
artist who was certainly ac¬ 
curate in many of his re¬ 
presentations. Several of 
the animals, as the stag and 
the ram, have real horns, 
and the boar has real tusks 
in his mouth; which serves to enhance the illusion. On either side of the grotto are large 
sarcophagi or baths with all sorts of shell-fish and tangles of shells, crabs, and crayfish sculptured 
on their sides. This grotto is perhaps the finest of its kind in Italy, and was designed by 
II Tribolo. As Mrs. Wharton has remarked, the general use of the grotto in Italian gardens is 
a natural development of the need for shade and coolness, and when the long disused waterworks 
were playing and cool streams gushed over quivering beds of fern into the marble tanks, these 
retreats must have formed a delicious contrast to the outer glare of the garden. 1 
Two stairways at either end of the orange garden lead to the terrace above, with its far- 
reaching view over the valley of the Arno; here are the remains of the labyrinth described by 
Vasari in his Life of II Tribolo, some fine ilex and cypress trees, and a large reservoir of cool 
emerald-green water, with an island in the centre on which crouches a colossal figure of the 
Apennines, also said to be by II Tribolo. Near by is the old-world gardener’s house, with 
typical Tuscan oil-mill. 
Italian Villas and their Gardens. By Edith Wharton. London 1904. 
