Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture 9789048551125

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Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy

Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 A forum for innovative research on the role of images and objects in the late medieval and early modern periods, Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700 publishes monographs and essay collections that combine rigorous investigation with critical inquiry to present new narratives on a wide range of topics, from traditional arts to seemingly ordinary things. Recognizing the fluidity of images, objects, and ideas, this series fosters cross-cultural as well as multi-disciplinary exploration. We consider proposals from across the spectrum of analytic approaches and methodologies. Series Editor Allison Levy is Digital Scholarship Editor at Brown University. She has authored or edited five books on early modern Italian visual and material culture.

Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture

Katrina Grant

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Mathäus Küsel after Ludovico Burnacini, Figures on the bank of the River Xanthos, of Il Pomo d’Oro (Vienna, 1667). 26.7 x 43.3cm. Etching and engraving. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953. Accession Number (53.600.3549). Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 153 0 978 90 4855 112 5 e-isbn doi 10.5117/9789463721530 nur 654 © K. Grant / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 1. Theatricality, a View from the Landscape

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2. Gardens of the Gods: Classical Revival, Intermedi, Early Opera and the Idea of Nature

45

3. The (Singing) Figure in the Landscape

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4. Triumph over Nature: Machines and Meraviglia on the Seventeenthcentury Stage

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5. The Theatre in the Landscape: Pliny to Pratolino

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6. The Garden as Stage, the Visitor as Performer

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7. Stages without Actors: Theatres of Sculpture, Water and Flowers

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8. Performing in the Parrhasian Grove: Green Theatres and the Academies 233 Bibliography 263 Index 287

Acknowledgements The research for this book has been done over an extended period so thanks are due to a range of people and institutions who have supported me. This interdisciplinary study really began with the encouragement and support David R. Marshall over several years at the University of Melbourne. I first discovered the art, architecture and gardens of Italy during undergraduate courses he taught in Rome. Since then David has always expressed a very genuine interest in my work and constantly challenged me to push my ideas and my research that bit further. I received funding and institutional support initially from the University of Melbourne, including a Rome Scholarship based at the British School at Rome. I was also supported by the Australian Foundation for Studies in Italy and the Lemmerman Foundation. More recently my research overseas has been supported by travel funds from the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University, which has given me several opportunities for research and writing time based in Italy. The British School at Rome was the base for much of my research and has always been a supportive environment. I would especially like to thank Susan Russell, who was very supportive both in her role as Assistant Director and as a friend. I would also like to thank the recently retired Valerie Scott and the staff of the library. I have made use of a number of collections across Italy for this work and the assistance of staff at these libraries and archives has been invaluable. In particular I would like to thank the Biblioteca Hertziana in Rome, Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, the Archivio di Stato in Lucca, Museo Civico in Turin, Biblioteca Livia Simone in Milan, the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome, the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, the American Academy in Rome, and the Archivio Vicariato in Rome. Thanks are also due to the many collections who have kindly allowed me to reproduce images from their collections, especially those wonderful institutions like the Rijksmuseum, Getty, Cooper Hewitt Museum and the Met who now allow free open source use of their collections. Many colleagues and friends gave me support over the years and I would like to thank everyone who made time to chat to me about my ideas or discuss my project or to give me encouragement when I needed it. Two dear friends and colleagues, Lisa Beaven and Robert Wellington, supported the creation of this book from idea to final publication. Both have given me excellent practical advice on the process as well as discussing the ideas and helping me to consider how my research fitted within the broader context of studies on early modern Europe. I would like to thank Karin Wolfe and Tommaso Manfredi for their support in Rome. At the Australian National University my colleagues in the Centre for Digital Humanities Research

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and Research School of Humanities and the Arts have supported my work on the book: Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller, Kylie Message, Paul Pickering and Howard Morphy all encouraged me to carve time out of my other responsibilities to focus on writing. I also owe thanks to the team at Amsterdam University Press for supporting the development of this book, in particular the manuscript reviewers including the series editor Allison Levy and my editor Erika Gaffney. Thanks are also owed to my friends and family, who were always supportive and seemed to know when to drag me away from my desk and buy me a coffee or a glass of wine. My parents Anne and Ian have supported me and always been genuinely interested in my project, not least when they drove me through a blizzard to visit gardens in Italy. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Mark Shepheard. His support is constant, both personal and professional. His excellent knowledge on music and performance of the period has allowed me to write a book that engages deeply across music, theatre and art. We have often shared research trips and many ideas have been developed in conversation with him. He has also been a wonderful support personally, and this book is dedicated to him with love.

Introduction All’Atto secondo un’improvisa mutatione della Scena, che di grotta si vidde a un tratto rappresentare l’Isola disabitata di Magistea, nido horrendo della Chimera; Boscareccia era l’apparenza, e qualche fabrica, che pur si vedeva per entro rovinosa, e disfatta, erano però quelle rovine dilettevoli alla vista come piene d’arte eccelente, […] gl’alberi si vedevano con somma diligenza intagliati […] Ondeggiava in faccia un gran mare turbato.1 The Second Act began with an unexpected change of Scene, a cave suddenly appeared to represent the uninhabited island of Magistea, the horrendous nest of the Chimera; A woodland could be seen, and some of the buildings, which, although they were ruined and destroyed, still delighted the eye with the excellence of their art […] the trees that could be see had been carved with great diligence […] in front was a great and turbulent sea – Bellerofonte, 1642

These words from the libretto of the opera Bellerofonte conjure up a vision of a longlost scene from the Venetian stage. The landscape is both delightful and horrendous, it shows great art in its design and takes the eye across a landscape. This theatrical, or scenographic landscape, is just one of many that were staged for audiences in the seventeenth century. Written descriptions tell us of the ‘meraviglia’ or wonders that captured the eye and the feelings of delight and horror they elicited in the audience. They speak of the illusion of naturalness of the scenes and amazement at the mimicry of the natural effects of clouds, lightning and thunder brought inside. The seventeenth century was a time when the relationship between humans and nature shifted. In art this new fascination with nature saw the rise of the genre of landscape painting. In gardens architects introduced monumental structures designed to overwhelm spectators, which were contrasted with smaller, intimate spaces designed for retreat. At the same time engineers revived ancient techniques and built upon them to realize new ways to control and reshape the landscape and put these techniques to work in gardens. Yet, there is one aspect of this visual 1 From the libretto for Bellerofonte (1642), reproduced in Per Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli and Baroque Stage Design (Stockholm: Almsquist & Wiksell, 1962). Author’s translation.

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culture that has been largely neglected, and that is the theatre. On stage painters, architects and engineers conjured living, moving landscapes to delight audiences. While texts and images reveal to us the scripted nature of garden experiences during this period, visitors were routinely cast as performers and spectators and encouraged to imagine themselves entering the worlds they had seen conjured upon the stage.

Theatre, Theatricality and the Landscape as Stage The study of gardens, designed landscapes and their audiences in seventeenthcentury Italy has, like art more broadly, been subject to theatrical analogy. The histories of this period often shift between the use of sociological metaphors like ‘life as theatre’ and ‘all the world’s a stage’ to capture a general sense of the spirit of the time and a search for evidence of actual exchange between theatre and art. The garden was, as will be explored below, often used as an actual stage for performances, but it also often fulfilled a role analogous to that of theatre, of making tangible a fantastical or idealized world. It is important to look at the way in which gardens were conceived as stages, and to examine the connections between the depiction of nature on stage and its presentation in gardens. In seventeenth-century garden design and in stage settings for theatre we can observe a desire to access ‘imaginary or physically inaccessible worlds’, or to generate experiences of wonder (meraviglia) in ways similar to the theatre. In the theatre this was achieved through the use of special effects and illusionistic scenery, and within the garden it was achieved by creating an immersive space that mimicked or alluded to fictional worlds. The aim of this book is to demonstrate that the idea of nature evoked on stage through performed narratives and theatrical scenography reshaped—both physically and conceptually—the exterior world in early modern Italy. This study provides a new perspective on the landscape as a means of cultural expression. It reveals the central role that theatre and performance played in the new styles of landscape design, painting and narrative description that emerged across the 1600s. This book looks at a range of sites, specific performances, and contexts throughout Italy. By taking this long view, in terms of both time and place, it is possible to draw out links, continuities, and dramatic shifts that illustrate the way in which the idea of landscape was being transformed. This long view is grounded in a series of focused case studies that examine key moments in the development of theatre and landscape design. The research includes critical analysis of visual material and extant sites supported by the close examination of a range of primary source documents from archives. It draws on visual records of performances, official descriptions and audience accounts, treatises on performance, and the poetry written for opera

Introduc tion 

and other performances. This study takes an interdisciplinary view, with the focus on visual culture of theatre, landscape, and garden performances supported by a comprehensive use of current research from musicology, theatre, and social history of the period.

The Theatrical Baroque? The study of the visual culture of theatre is a challenging one for several reasons. The sources are largely ephemeral and fragmentary. A culture of secrecy around theatrical staging meant that very little was published in formal treatises, compared to the arts of poetry and music. But there is an additional challenge, the problem of how to disentangle our modern ideas of ‘theatre’ and ‘theatricality’ from those relevant to the seventeenth century. The use of the term theatrical and the application of the word theatre as metaphor is common in discussions of the long seventeenth century in Italy, and Europe more broadly. Numerous texts, books and catalogue essays invoke the idea of the ‘theatrical baroque’ as a period when ‘all the world was a stage’ and life, and art, was a performance. This framing comes in part from the fact that theatre flourished as an art during the period. New styles of performance, such as opera, emerged. Texts were written that explored, categorized and promoted the performing arts. The culture of fêtes, festivals and courtly performance thrived as rulers combined music, poetry and art to entertain and persuade their subjects. Despite this rich array of sources, the use of the terms theatrical and theatre are still often applied to the period as though they are an explanation, in and of themselves, of the artistic and cultural milieu of the time. Chapter 1 asks what is meant when we describe the seventeenth century as theatrical? It looks both at the seventeenth-century attitudes toward theatre and performance as a metaphor, and the characterization of the baroque period as ‘theatrical’ in subsequent centuries. It also introduces the vast array of sources and the key critical and interpretative issues that are central to the study of the visual culture of theatre, and of designed landscapes. The rest of the book is divided into two halves—the first looks at ‘landscape in the theatre’, the second ‘theatre in the landscape’.

From Satyrs to La gran strega – the Landscape on Stage The rich culture of performance and spectacle in Medici Florence around 1600 is a key moment not only in the emergence of opera, but in the development of the stage set. The sets played a crucial role in the transformation of opera into an immersive

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environment that transcended sound to appeal to all the senses simultaneously. Chapter 2 traces the development of the stage set, and the significance of the pastoral or ‘satyric’ scene from the classical revival of antique plays in the fifteenth century to the rise of the intermedi, one of the precursors to opera, and the emergence of opera itself at the court of the Medici dukes. Gardens and landscapes played a key narrative role in these productions. Early plays by fifteenth-century poets such as Poliziano were based on classical fables, and characters like Orpheus roamed amongst pastoral settings. The revival of classical plays meant that designers looked to the ancients as sources for staging plays, and architects like Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) designed set types of stages based on sources such as Vitruvius. One of these, the satyric setting, was a vision of rustic nature and intended to be the setting for satirical plays. Despite the popularity of Serlio’s type as a source for understanding sixteenth-century settings, his design for a satyric set captures a type of play that never became as popular as the tragedy or the comedy (also illustrated by Serlio). Instead, the classical, mythical pastoral setting became the dominant vision of nature on stage. A concern for verisimilitude and ‘unity of place’ in the first operas meant that the settings tended to be pastoral settings because it seemed more plausible that characters such as shepherds, shepherdesses, and nymphs would sing their speech. This meant that the powerfully emotional music and poetry of the first operas, with their themes of love and loss of love, tended to be closely associated with landscape settings. As opera gained in popularity across the Italian peninsula, the idea that sets should contribute to the ‘unity of place’ began to be superseded by a focus on the visual appeal of sets, and the surprise and wonder that they could induce in audiences. The role of opera as a tool of courtly politics to produce displays of magnificence meant that scenes of landscape rapidly became settings for the staging of wonders, or meraviglia. The audience were presented with visions of marvellous landscapes where gods would fly across the clouds, nymphs would assemble to perform dances and songs, and hellish caves would spew forth fire. This vision of the landscape as stage echoed a shift in the use of gardens. At the Medici court the engineer and designer Bernardo Buontalenti presented nature as a stage for performances, he conjured a vision of Apollo’s Mount Parnassus (replete with automata) in a physical feature designed for the garden of Pratolino in 1586. Three years later this same scene appeared on stage in an intermedio staged for the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’Medici and Christine of Lorraine. This demand for special effects and the fascination with new aesthetics, such as ‘endless’ one-point perspectives, shaped the vision of nature presented on stage. Technical innovations meant that set designers and opera impresarios delighted in creating effects that mimicked nature. This reflected an approach that fed, and was fed by, contemporary interest in human ability to control and manipulate nature.

Introduc tion 

Chapters 3 and 4 treat set design and special effects as conceptual inventions, capable of persuasion, which responded to current aesthetic ideas and were driven by the social and cultural contexts of their own time and place. In Chapter 3 set design is considered alongside other forms of visual art, particularly landscape painting and drawing. The ideals of unity and verisimilitude of sets intersected with the rise of landscape painting as a genre and both led to the creation of a new vision of nature on the stage. The work of Giulio Parigi and his son Alfonso at the Medici court are taken as an example of artists who worked across drawing, painting and set design. The sets of the elder Parigi seem to respond to the newly emergent style of landscape painting, such as a desire for naturalism, but the resulting compositions are clearly scenographic. They include large open spaces for actors to ‘fly’ across the sky, or for dances to take place. These links between painting and theatre are further examined in relation to the work of the designer Francesco Guitti for the Barberini court, where the landscape sets seem to change in response to the style of artists such as Pietro da Cortona and Claude Lorrain. A particular iconography of the landscape set also began to emerge. Scenes set within nature became a standard type for performances, especially in opera where sets multiplied from just four or five to over ten, and an iconography of the landscape set emerges. Ludovico Burnacini’s 23 separate sets designed for Il Pomo d’Oro staged at the Hapsburg court in 1668 featured visions of nature that ran a spectrum from gardens of love to forests where fearful characters lost their way, literally and metaphorically. As opera became more standardized, such landscape and garden settings came to have set meanings within the narratives, which in turn shaped audience reception of these places away from the stage.

Engineering Landscape on the Stage It was architects and engineers who tended to be put in charge of the development of sets and special effects during this period and it is they, more than any others, who would shape the visual experience of theatre. Chapter 4 explores how sets became a tool for creating wonders and magnificence and how the audience emotionally engaged with them. Seventeenth-century set design, like painting, was not simply concerned with filling the gap between the representation and the real with an affective response; but with exploiting the gap itself. The wonder and illusion of stage sets were central to eliciting an emotional and sensory engagement from the viewer. Gianlorenzo Bernini created several plays that directly engaged with these ideas. Either tricking the audience by creating fake fires and floods or poking fun at himself as a designer seeking ‘real’ instead of ‘false’ illusions. Designers for the theatre also seem to have engaged with more serious debates about nature and the

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experience and understanding of natural phenomena. Several translations of key texts from the antique about hydraulics, engineering and mechanical philosophy were driven by engineers who worked for the stage. Buontalenti commissioned an Italian translation of Hero’s Pneumatics, and Giovanni Battista Aleotti, the designer of the innovative new wing-system, then produced his own translation of Hero. The scenes of nature devised by these engineers can be read as a visual expression of a new idea about human relationships with landscape. Set designs and special effects overwhelmed the viewer and expressed the capacity of rulers and their engineers to mimic and control the elements of the natural world.

The Theatre in the Landscape: from Pliny to the Parrhasian Grove The second half of this book examines the theatre in the landscape. The challenge of tracing the development and use of the garden as a theatre returns us to the problem of theatre as metaphor. What exactly is a garden theatre? Terms like ‘teatro’ appear in numerous views of gardens, diary accounts and garden plans. The term is used to describe a myriad of features from obvious amphitheatres to vague open spaces. In some cases it appears the term itself drove the function of these spaces. The label of water theatre, for instance, transformed a collection of fountains and statuary into a spectacle of hydraulic engineering. To understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to trace both the development of the theatre as a physical feature of the garden, and the way that ideas about performance and spectatorship informed the experience of landscape. Chapter 5 begins by looking how the idea of the landscape or garden as theatre developed in the sixteenth century. The earliest garden and outdoor theatres tended to recreate what was known of antique villa design and included features like hippodromes and theatres. In the sixteenth century architects like Palladio, and others, picked up the Plinian idea of the landscape as a vast amphitheatre and built it into new garden designs. The U-shaped hillside planted with trees at the Boboli gardens, designed in the sixteenth century by Niccolo Tribolo to mimic a ‘natural amphitheatre’, would later become a setting for a permanent one made of stone in 1637. Designs inspired by the antique gradually gave way to garden theatres that mirrored theatrical designs from the stage.

Spectators and Performers The rise of the theatrical garden was not only a matter of the construction of physical theatres, but also reflected a shift in the way that gardens were experienced.

Introduc tion 

Chapter 6 looks at this phenomenon in detail. It returns to the challenges outlined in Chapter 1 around the use of the term theatre as metaphor and the idea of the viewer or visitor as audience or performer. The widespread use of the term teatro—both during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in recent secondary literature on the period—to describe a myriad of often quite different garden features has made it a difficult form to classify. Over the course of the seventeenth century, it is possible to trace a continuity and development of the theatre in the landscape from the examples outlined in the previous chapter. Theatres were built for performances and continued to draw both on classical precedents and on contemporary theatre design. Theatres were also built to present wondrous and marvellous spectacles of nature, of hydraulic engineering or collections of antiquities. ‘Theatre’ and associated terms also entered the lexicon for describing the way in which gardens and landscapes were experienced. The theatre in the garden is, in a sense, not simply a popular feature of the baroque garden but rather a manifestation of a certain ideological approach to the space of the garden and its accompanying art forms. From the early 1600s different types of theatres appeared with a certain regularity in new gardens and redesigned landscapes. Many of these were not performance spaces for plays in the conventional sense, instead their designers and patrons took concepts or shared ideas from the theatre and implemented them within landscape settings. More than just the product of a society obsessed with spectacle, these theatre types often explored more particular ideas. Chapter 7 examines the way that garden designs made a spectacle of nature. These features illustrate the different ways that the idea of theatre and performance guided the human experience of nature. The famous ‘teatri d’acqui’ of Frascati are an example of the fascination with monumental design, which drew on the tradition of designing villas after the antique but added in feats of hydraulic engineering that created an immersive spectacle of the elements of nature. The final chapter looks at smaller, more intimate performances in the landscape. The hedge theatres of Lucca, or ‘teatri di verzura’, are a starting point for understanding the role that performance within natural settings played in the intellectual life of early modern Italy. Hedge theatres were constructed within in the gardens of members of the Lucchese Accademia degli Oscuri, whose culture of poetic composition and semi-private performances gave rise to these intimate performance spaces. This ‘academic’ culture of performance in the landscape was transformed in Rome in the decades around 1700 by the members of Accademia degli Arcadi. The fragile, temporary spaces this group carved out in nature for their meetings and intellectual games of composition and performance bring us back to the operatic stage. This group of poets and intellectuals created a culture of place-making in these aristocratic gardens and semi-wild nature around Rome. In doing so they

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ushered in new ideas about both landscape and the performance of opera that would have an impact on the move toward a more romantic, melancholy, and personal relationship with nature that would shape how the people of enlightenment Europe approached the natural landscape.

Bibliography Per Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli and Baroque Stage Design (Stockholm: Almsquist & Wiksell, 1962).

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Theatricality, a View from the Landscape Abstract This chapter explores the problem of how to disentangle our modern ideas of ‘theatre’ and ‘theatricality’ from those relevant to the seventeenth century. It asks what is meant when we describe a garden as theatrical? And, how did the ‘theatricality’ of a place affect the way in which people experienced them? Keywords: Theatre, Art, Gardens, Theatricality

The term ‘theatrical’ is used frequently in descriptions of life and art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in catalogues of art exhibitions, academic texts, and descriptions of the period in popular culture. The term seems to have become indispensable in attempting to capture and convey the convergence of art, society, and performance in Europe across the long seventeenth century. However, just like the popular period designation ‘baroque’, ‘theatrical’ is a loaded term. It can be a useful one and, as this book will aim to demonstrate, in many cases an apt one. But it is also a term that requires critical deconstruction and analysis. What does ‘theatrical’ mean? What does it describe? And why is it apparently more present in the art and culture of the baroque period than, for example, in the Renaissance, which also had a keen interest in the production of theatre and theatrical spectacles? The following chapter examines the current scholarship on the relationship between theatre and visual culture during this period and considers the problem of how to disentangle our modern ideas of ‘theatre’ and ‘theatricality’ from those relevant to the seventeenth century.

The Problem with Theatricality The challenge of untangling the intricate and fluid relationship between theatre, art, and the observation of society have been explored by several scholars.1 A useful 1 Key studies relevant to seventeenth-century Italy include José Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, ed. Wlad Godzich and Nicholas Spadaccini, trans. Terry

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place to start is with Keith Christiansen’s explanation of the ‘notion of theatricality’ in the work of Tiepolo. He writes that, ‘[i]n discussing the work of Giambattista Tiepolo it has become commonplace to employ terminology that suggests some kind of affinity between his paintings and the stage’.2 Christiansen observes two distinct intentions behind the use of this language. The first is analogy, to describe Tiepolo’s Würzburg frescoes as theatrical because they are framed by drawn-back curtains in stucco is to suggest their visual similarity to scenes upon a stage. The second is to indicate a certain degree of artificiality or dramatic expressivity that may seem excessive to modern eyes. Christiansen’s analysis can serve as a guide for further investigation of issues that arise from the use of the term ‘theatrical’. The first usage indicates that the work of art in question is in some way derived from the stage, the second is to make a value judgment about the work.3 The first is rather unproblematic (though we need to be careful in our assumptions about the adaption of ideas from the theatre to art and vice versa). The second is more significant for a critical discussion of how to approach the idea of ‘theatrical art’ as it is used to indicate a certain degree of artificiality or dramatic expressivity that may seem excessive to modern eyes. Christiansen contrasts Michael Levey’s modern, twentieth-century reading of Tiepolo’s Way to Calvary with that of an eighteenth-century viewer. Levey describes the figure of Christ thus, ‘[h]is cross is gigantically long, fearful as a burden, yet oddly lacking in real weight, a little too much a stage property. His very prostration and his gesture of painful collapse are suggestive of the stage’. 4 By contrast, Jacques-Onésyme Cochran, Theory and History of Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Caroline Van Eck and Stijn Bussels, ‘The Visual Arts and the Theatre in Early Modern Europe’, Art History 33 (2010): 209–223; Josh Ellengbogen, ‘Representational Theory and the Staging of Social Performance’, in The Theatrical Baroque, ed. Larry F. Norman (Chicago: The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2001), 21–31; Peter Gillgren and Mårten Snickare, Performativity and Performance in Baroque Rome (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2012); Peter Burke, ‘The Language of Gesture in Early Modern Italy’, in A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 71–83; Edward Hundert, ‘Performing the Passions in Commercial Society: Bernard Mandeville and the Theatricality of Eighteenth-Century Thought’, in Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998), 141–172. A 2002 edition of the journal SubStance (vol. 31, 2002) edited by Josette Feral includes a thorough bibliography on the study of theatricality and art, Josette Feral, ‘Foreword’, SubStance 31 (2002): 3–13. 2 Keith Christiansen, ‘Tiepolo, Theater, and the Notion of Theatricality’, The Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 665–692, 665. 3 In relation to modernist theatre, Alan Ackerman and Martin Puchner make a similar point about the meaning of the word theatre, stating that ‘[t]heatre is understood sometimes as a medium, sometimes as a trope or idea’ (Ackerman and Puchner, Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage, ed. Arnold Aronson et al. (New York and Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 1). 4 Levey, quoted by Christiansen, ‘Tiepolo, Theater, and the Notion of Theatricality’, 665.

Theatricalit y, a View from the L andscape 

Bergeret de Grancourt, an eighteenth-century commentator, found the composition and expression to be ‘not only acceptable but appropriate’.5 The perception of theatricality therefore depends upon the viewer and his or her interpretation; it is not necessarily inherent within the work itself. A similar point is made in regard to the theatricality of everyday life by the sociologist Elizabeth Burns, who observes that individuals often cast themselves as spectators or performers and that this division in itself can lead to the use of theatrical terminology to describe a situation: Theatricality is not therefore a mode of behaviour or expression, but attaches to any kind of behaviour perceived and interpreted by others and described (mentally or explicitly) in theatrical terms […] There is of course always a social norm to which people adhere and of which people in another society may be unaware, so that degrees of theatricality are culturally determined. But theatricality itself is determined by a particular viewpoint, a mode of perception.6

Burns gives the example if a foreigner to Greek culture who may find the cries of women in mourning to be overtly theatrical, whereas those within that culture may feel them to be spontaneous and natural expressions of grief. It is only through the presence of an outsider, who, with no role to play, becomes a spectator, that the event is interpreted as theatrical.7 Art too can occupy that same space. The use of the terms ‘theatrical’ and ‘theatricality’ to describe a work of art reflects our own viewpoint and mode of perception as much as the intention of the artist. As art historians we may read theatricality in the art of the past in an attempt to explain what we perceive to be artificial, but which may not have been artificial to the creator or contemporary viewer. ‘Theatrical’ often implies a level of value judgment, beyond mere analogy, and this complicates our understanding of the relationship between art and theatre.

Pejorative Theatricality For contemporary scholars of western, mostly European, culture our understanding of theatricality in the seventeenth century has been filtered through more than 300 years of changing attitudes toward the theatre itself. The censure of baroque theatre began as early as 1675 with the criticism of Marinist poetry and opera 5 Quote in Christiansen, ‘Tiepolo, Theater, and the Notion of Theatricality’, 665. De Grancourt saw the work in situ at S. Alvise in 1774. 6 Elizabeth Burns, Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life (London: Longman, 1972), 11–13. 7 Burns, Theatricality, 13.

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libretti by poets and theorists such as Francesco Fulvio Frugone and Apostolo Zeno.8 Their criticism was often based on a dislike for the more sensuous and conspicuous aspects of opera, such as costume, sets and even music, which were thought to draw the listener’s attention away from the drama. In a sense they were arguing against the ‘bel composto’ or total work of art, and arguing for a type of separation, a distillation of the arts into their essential parts: poetry, music, painting as separate entities. This idea was never taken up wholesale, remaining very much a topic for debate. But by the early 1720s, the cause had been taken up by Benedetto Marcello in his satire Il teatro alla moda (1721), which described the decline of Venetian opera from a noble art to one more concerned with fashion, novelty and special effects.9 The privileging of elaborate stage sets and special effects over substance was seen by Marcello to be the result of ignorance. In his Instructions for Impresarios he wrote: The modern impresario must not know anything at all about the theatre, about music, poetry, or painting. He may give in to the clamouring of his friends and hire some stage hands, conductors, dancers, tailors, and extras, but in this he should use the utmost economy so that he can spend all the more on singers, especially prima donnas, as well as on the bear, a tiger, flashes of lightning, thunderbolts, and earthquakes.10

The popularity of his satire demonstrates that the idea that baroque theatre, in this case opera, is essentially about outward display and has little serious substance was gaining traction.11 This shift in what was viewed as desirable in the practice of theatre was taken to new extremes by Denis Diderot (1713–1784). Michael Fried, in his study of Diderot, has observed: 8 Robert S. Freeman, Opera without Drama: Currents of Change in Italian Opera, 1675-1725 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 2. This anxiety also dates much earlier. Marvin Carlson places it to at least Plato, who worried that the empty representations of theatre ‘threatened the authenticity of the real self’. (Carlson, ‘The Resistance to Theatricality’, SubStance 31 (2002): 240–241). 9 Commentary and translation by Reinhard Pauly in Benedetto Marcello, ‘Il Teatro alla Moda ‒ Part 1, Translated and Annotated by Reinhard G. Pauly’, The Musical Quarterly 34 (1948): 371–403; Benedetto Marcello, ‘Il Teatro alla Moda ‒ Part 2, Translated and Annotated by Reinhard G. Pauly’, The Musical Quarterly 35 (1949): 85–105. 10 Marcello, ‘Il Teatro alla Moda ‒ Part 2’, 85. 11 This is particularly the case in scholarly work that discusses music from outside the musicological discipline. For example, a PhD thesis by Carole Durand on the set designs of Ferdinando Galli Bibiena suggests that while the set designs for baroque opera were magnificent and innovative the music and poetry were dull (Carroll Ruth Durand, ‘The Evolution and Actualization of the ‘Scena per Angolo’: High Baroque Scenography of the Galli-Bibienas’ (PhD, Tufts University, 1983), xxvi, 39).

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Diderot urged playwrights to give up contriving elaborate coups de théâtre (surprising turns of plot, reversals, revelations), whose effect he judged to be shallow and fleeting at best, and instead to seek what he called tableaux (visually satisfying, essentially silent, seemingly accidental groupings of figures), which is properly managed he believed were capable of moving an audience to the depths of its collective being.12

Diderot’s recommendations echo Marcello’s view that the theatre was too contrived and too focused upon astonishing and impressing the viewer. Unlike Marcello, however, Diderot took issue with similar ‘problems’ in painting. Fried describes the new attitude promoted by Diderot as one that applauds the absorption of the viewer in the events being depicted, and that disapproves of any art or theatre that seeks to directly engage the spectator or beholder. Diderot’s comments on painting and theatre frequently refer to this problem. For example, in his Entretiens, he wrote that: Whether you compose or act, think no more of the beholder than if he did not exist. Imagine, at the edge of the stage, a high wall that separates you from the orchestra. Act as if the curtain never rose.13

In regard to painting, he employs almost the same phrase: Lairesse claims that the artist is permitted to have the beholder enter the scene of his painting. I do not believe it, and there are so few exceptions that I would gladly make a general rule of the opposite. That would seem to me in as poor taste as the performance of an actor who addresses himself to the audience.14

To Diderot a consciousness of being beheld was inherently theatrical or théâtral, which in turn was synonymous with falseness. As Fried observes: In Diderot’s writings on painting and drama the object-beholder relationship as such, the very condition of spectatordom, stands indicted as theatrical, a medium of dislocation and estrangement rather than of absorption, sympathy [and] self transcendence.15 12 Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1980), 78. 13 Diderot from Discours de la póesie dramatique, p. 266, as translated in Fried, Absorption and Theatricality, 95. 14 Diderot from Pensées detachées sur le peinture, p. 792, as translated in Fried, Absorption and Theatricality, 96. 15 Fried, Absorption and Theatricality, 104.

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Figure 1.1  Jacques Callot after Giulio Parigi, ‘The Isle of Ischia an intermezzo from La liberazione del Tirreno’ (Uffizi Theatre, Florence, 1617). 29.5 x 20.9cm. Etching. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (RP-P-OB-20.855).

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For Diderot, the role of the spectator in creating an impression of theatricality was crucial. For instance, Diderot commented in his Entretiens sur le Fils naturel that In a dramatic representation, the beholder is no more to be taken into account than if he did not exist. Is there something addressed to him? The author has departed from his subject, the actor has been led away from his part. They both step down from the stage. I see them in the orchestra.16

A century earlier art that had had an element of ‘playing to the spectator’ was also often described in terms of the theatre, but it was cast in a more positive light. Diderot’s metaphor of the actor stepping down from the stage is a precise description of exactly what happened in numerous performances in the seventeenth century. For instance, the famous example of the courtly ballet for the 1617 performance of The Liberation of Tyrrhenus and Arnea, depicted in an engraving by Jacques Callot after Giulio Parigi (Fig. 1.1) where the performers have left the stage by way of a double ramp and dance among the spectators, while the Duke and Duchess themselves dance upon the stage.17 However, to Diderot it was undesirable because it led to falseness. This perception remains implicit in our contemporary conception of theatricality, even if we no longer share Diderot’s ideals on how art and theatre should or should not engage the viewer. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a continuation of this negative attitude toward the theatre and theatricality. Friedrich Nietzsche took up the cause, and the artists and critics of modernist art and theatre brought anti-theatricality into the twentieth century. Nietzsche became disillusioned with the theatre (in particular that of Wagner), which he came to regard as being inauthentic. Nietzsche had begun as a great devotee of Wagner and his theatre, describing it as an attempt to have theatre ‘reoccupy the place left vacant with the death of God’.18 When it failed to fill this place for Nietzsche, he attacked Wagner and the associated movements in European culture, such as French Romanticism, describing them as ‘opiates for the senses and for understanding’, condemning what he saw as the ‘Theatrocracy – the craziness of a belief in the pre-eminence of the theatre, in the right of the theatre to rule supreme over the arts, over Art in general’.19 Modernists also attacked the theatre and, as Karsten Harries puts it in his study of Charles Garnier’s design for the Paris Opéra, ‘laid claim to an authenticity that 16 Denis Diderot, Selected Writings on Art and Literature, (London: Penguin Books, 1994), 22. 17 Arthur Blumenthal, Theatre Art of the Medici (Dartmouth: University Press of New England, 1980), cat. 52. 18 Karsten Harries, ‘Theatricality and Re-Presentation’, Perspecta 26 (1990): 28. 19 Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche: The Case of Wagner, (Edinburgh and London: T.N. Foulis, 1911), 47.

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has to place it “at war” with the theatre’.20 According to modernist thought theatre was essentially inauthentic and dishonest. Although for some critics this meant rejecting theatre, for others theatre could still exist but it had to be different. In some cases, it was contrasted with the new art of cinema and held up as more real because the actor had to personally confront the audience rather than hiding behind a cameraman. Theatre was also described as the means through which the masks and disguises that people wore daily were stripped away, and so became more authentic than day-to-day experience.21 For art history, the popularity and dominance of modernist critics such as Clement Greenberg and then Michael Fried (who had more than a historical interest in exploring Diderot’s anti-theatricality) led to a dominance of these ideas across much scholarship and description of art from a range of periods.22 Attitudes shaped by this long history are now embodied in our accepted definitions of the term ‘theatrical’ and have coloured understanding not only of the word itself, but also of any type of art that can be seen to fit within a definition of the theatrical. Key works of scholarship on baroque art from the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s had an awkward relationship with the theatrical in art. For example, Irving Lavin in his study of Bernini’s Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria wrote: The epithet ‘Baroque theatricality’ has often been levelled at his [Bernini’s] work in general and the Teresa chapel in particular, implying a kind of meretricious stagecraftiness that transfers formal and expressive devices from the domain of ephemeral and artificial to that of permanent and ‘serious’ arts, where they have no proper business.23

Lavin’s many studies of Bernini did recognize the significance of his work in theatre, and yet statements like this recognize the strong discomfort of the association of theatre with ‘high art’. It is necessary for us to understand this transformation of the essential idea of what theatre, and by extension theatricality, represents before we can begin to comprehend what the relationship between theatre and the wider arts meant in 20 Harries, ‘Theatricality and Re-Presentation’, 25. 21 See, for example, the ideas of the Polish-American playwright Jerzy Grotowski, who wrote that his play was not a performance and that audience members were not required (Jerzy Grotowski and Mario Biagini, ‘Untitled Text by Jerzy Grotowski, Signed in Pontedera, Italy, July 4, 1998’, TDR 43 (1999): 11–12). Similar ideas are explored Ackerman and Puchner, Against Theatre. 22 Carlson, The Resistance to Theatricality, 241 and Michael Fried, ‘Art and Objecthood’, Artforum 5, no. 10 (1967): 12–23. 23 Irving Lavin, Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts (New York: Pierpoint Morgan Library & Oxford University Press, 1980), 146–147.

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the seventeenth century. The standard terms of reference for the word and idea of ‘theatrical’ are inadequate for an understanding of baroque art. Instead, we must form an understanding of ‘theatrical’ art that is grounded in an understanding of the actual relationship between art and theatre during the early modern period.

Performativity and Society To frame a critical view of performativity and theatricality in art, culture and society it is useful to draw upon the discussions of these from beyond art history. Several scholars from history to anthropology offer useful critical frameworks for understanding the role of performance and performativity in society beyond conventional theatre productions. Over the time that art historians and art critics were outwardly rejecting, or at least downplaying, the importance of theatre, performativity, and spectatorship in art, sociologists (such as Erving Goffman), anthropologists (such as Clifford Geertz), cultural historians (such as Jose Maravall and Peter Burke), and other cultural theorists were embracing the potential of semi-scripted performances and theatrical metaphors to critically examine a range of cultural production and social structures across various periods in history. The well-known ideas of Geertz and his theory of the ‘theatre state’ in Bali, where power and hierarchy is expressed through spectacle, have a useful resonance for the baroque courts.24 Historians of early modern court culture have been engaged with the idea that performance and theatrical events were inextricably intertwined with real life. The theatre state idea has been applied to various societies, though not always universally agreed on. Anne-Laure Van Bruaene observes, for example, that it has been generally accepted as a description of the Burgundian court, with this ‘theatre state’ defined as such because it ‘prioritized the public and dramatized communication with its subjects.25 Though, Peter Burke has argued that Geertz in his Interpretation of Cultures actually ‘justified historical method and described it in language more sophisticated than historians had customarily used’, so his ideas were not so much taken up by historians, as complimenting work that was already underway.26 Theatre studies itself has closely engaged with sociological and anthropological studies. Erika Fischer-Lichte in a mid-1990s overview notes the ‘puzzling situation’ 24 Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). 25 Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, ‘The Habsburg Theatre State. Court, City and The Performance of Identity in the Early Modern Southern Low Countries’, in Networks, Regions and Nations: Shaping Identities in the Low Countries, 1300-1650, ed. Robert Stein and Judith Pollman (Brill, 2009), 22. 26 Peter Burke, ‘Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues (Review)’, Common Knowledge 13, no. 2 (2007): 457.

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facing theatre historians as many researchers across the arts and social science adopted ‘the concept of theatre as a heuristic model to a wide extent’.27 Marvin Carlson in a study from 2002 notes that this interpenetration is so widespread that ‘in the study of social phenomena today metaphors of theatre and performance are so common that they have become almost transparent’, and theatre studies is likewise dominated by the ‘metaphors and the topoi of social analysis’.28 The study of the art of theatre and opera has advanced in recent decades, largely led by the rise in festival studies, which has turned an interdisciplinary eye on the study of performance culture in early modern Europe.29 Yet still, in 2012 an essay by Peter Burke for the book Performativity and Performance in Baroque Rome levelled the charge that ‘art historians have not yet taken unscripted or semi-scripted performance seriously enough’ asking whether such considerations, aided by discussions between anthropologists and art historians might serve to illuminate the culture of baroque Rome.30 There is still only a small body of literature that examines more directly the relationship between art (painting, sculpture, architecture) and the theatre. On the one hand this is because, as will be explored in this book, setting definite boundaries around types of artistic production is not necessarily all that useful. We should be able to talk of the festival culture, or the visual culture of a society in a way that includes set design as much as painting, ephemeral architecture as much as permanent structures. But, on the other hand, there is a need to think quite explicitly and deliberately about what we mean when we talk about the performative culture or the ‘theatrical art’ of the seventeenth century. The ‘theatrical culture’ of the baroque period is not, after all, only a metaphor for understanding social structures and interpersonal engagements, it often explicitly relates to and describes theatre itself. Some of this theatre is easily classified under current definitions (operas, plays) but other elements lack direct equivalences in our current society (multi-day wedding pageants in Florence, a seranata performed on election days in Lucca, or poets meeting under the guise of ancient Greek shepherds in Rome). The idea that artists were inspired by theatre and incorporated it into their painting, sculpture or architecture is too simplistic. It ignores that many artists worked across theatre and the other visual arts, and that shifts in the representation of themes, like landscape, were driven by a range of factors (such as the new natural philosophy). What is key in devising a critical framework for understanding this 27 Erika Fischer-Lichte, ‘Introduction: Theatricality: A Key Concept in Theatre and Cultural Studies’, Theatre Research International 20, no. 2 (1995): 85. 28 Carlson, Resistance to Theatricality, 238. 29 See for example, Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Europa Triumphans (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010). 30 Peter Burke, ‘Varieties of Performance in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, in Performativity and Performance in Baroque Rome, ed. Peter Gillgren and Mårten Snickare (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 17.

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milieu is to be able to articulate how those artists, patrons and the broader society understood the role of theatre as a metaphor or driver for art in this period. The idea of theatre as metaphor is not, after all, a recent development of twentieth-century sociologists or anthropologists, but something much older. Shakespeare’s ‘All the world’s a stage’ is only the most famous of a widespread belief in early modern Europe that daily life and interaction could be understood through the lens of performance. Here again, Elisabeth Burns suggestion that theatricality depends on ‘point of view’ is important and remains salient. It is not enough for us to observe that a certain historical period was ‘theatrical’ from our modern point of view; we need to try to understand the viewpoint of those who were making, sponsoring and viewing the art. As will be further explored in Chapters 6 and 7, the term ‘Theatre’ (and its variations like Teatro, Theatrum) became a favoured metaphor in the seventeenth century itself. It was used in numerous books to indicate an idea of conspectus or a universal, ‘total view’ of a topic. It also began to appear in descriptions of urban and landscape spaces. In his book, The Rome of Alexander VII, architectural historian Richard Krautheimer explores the use of the word teatro in the set of engravings of Rome by Giambattista Falda, Il nuovo teatro delle fabriche et edificii in prospettiva di Roma moderna (1665) to describe areas of Rome following their transformation by Alexander VII in the mid-seventeenth century.31 Krautheimer proposed that the use of the word teatro designated ‘a show’, in the sense that ‘[t]he teatro de portici di S. Pietro, [or] the teatro della Pace, are shows worth seeing’.32 This is in contrast to interpretations, such as that by Timothy Kitao, that understand the description of the Piazza S. Pietro as a teatro to mean that it was modelled upon the form of a theatre.33 For Krautheimer, the term teatro had meanings to Falda other than being a structure in which plays are performed. This definition of teatro can usefully be taken to be the core meaning of ‘theatricality’ in this period. It can apply to any situation where elements of display or spectacle, or observing or being observed, are to be found. Krautheimer offers the interpretation that: They (the teatri) were showpieces indeed, different and separated from the fabric of a reality apparent to everybody but not supposed to be acknowledged. Their 31 The first edition of Il Nuovo Teatro was published by Giovanni Giacomo de’ Rossi in 1665, with several further editions published until 1699. Some later editions include engravings by Alessandro Specchi (1666–1729). 32 Richard Krautheimer, The Rome of Alexander VII, 1655-1667 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 7. 33 Timothy K. Kitao, Circle and Oval in the Square of Saint Peter’s (New York: New York University Press, 1974), 19–22.

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Figure 1.2 Orazio Scarabelli, ‘The fifth entry arch for the Medici wedding, the arch at the Canto de’ Bischeri (Via del Proconsolo)’, 1589, Engraving. London, British Museum (1897,0113.40). © The Trustees of the British Museum.

function was not so much to conceal that reality – though the colonnades planned for the churches built on the wedges of Piazza del Popolo or the palatial facades delineating Piazza della Pace were meant to do just that. Rather they were to create another reality: a Rome to be seen by and impress a visitor.34

This idea of layering the ‘performative’ over the real is a useful one for understanding the role of theatre and performance in seventeenth century Italy. Indeed, as will be discussed in the case studies examined in this book, this layering was deliberate and evolved to such an extent that narratives of plays and poems would play on the confusion that arose in the viewer trying to sort reality from fantasy. As will be explored in Chapter 4, artists who worked across a range of visual culture, such as Gianlorenzo Bernini, even parodied the obsession with wonder and spectacle that had become such a central part of art and life. The idea of layering a ‘set’ over another reality was not new in the seventeenth century. European cities were often transformed into theatrical sets. In 1548 the medieval city of Lyon was transformed into a Roman townscape for the triumphal 34 Krautheimer, Rome of Alexander, p. 131.

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entry of Henri II in September 1548. The transformation was achieved through the erection of a number of temporary structures, including obelisks and triumphal arches. Joining these various monuments was a painted perspective showing a classical cityscape that was positioned across a medieval street.35 This showed a symmetrical view of buildings in central perspective, with fountains and a circular temple. At Lyon perspective techniques popular in both set design and painting were used in temporary festival structures to create a convincing illusion of a classical city. Similar techniques were also popular in Florence for the triumphal entries of a succession of Medici brides: in 1592 Christine of Lorraine and her entourage were greeted with an array of street décor that classicized the streets of Florence, added a façade to the still incomplete Duomo, and colossal statues and painted scenes of the history of Florence and European victories over the Turks (Fig. 1.2).36 These ephemeral facades and painted scenes were about more than just tidying up a city for a special occasion, they were creating a new vision of Florence that could be inhabited, moved through, and bodily experienced. They are different to theatre performances too because the line between fiction and reality is not so clearly drawn, these were real events and the people in them were not actors, even if they were playing symbolic roles. As is further explored in Part 1 of this book, the drive to create a convincing illusion of a different reality is also a key aspect of the baroque theatre, not only in the sense that any piece of theatre is meant to involve the audience in a fiction, but also in the way stage designers endeavoured to create a heightened reaction in their audiences. Their preoccupation with engaging the spectator to a point of almost total immersion in an illusion stemmed from the desire to create a tangible alternative or heightened reality.

Theatricality and the Spectator The notion that within a society people can be assigned the role of either actor or spectator is, as already noted, common in sociology. While it is true that the spectator can always be considered to be present, whether in day-to-day life or in relation to a work of art, it is not useful to consider every situation involving a spectator as necessarily being theatrical. The issue of theatricality and the spectator can be refined by concentrating upon the extent that the spectator is ‘played to’ by a work of art. Michael Fried, in his account of the rejection of seventeenth-century 35 Maurice Scève, The Entry of Henri II into Lyon, September 1548, (Tempe (Arizona): Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), pp. 44–61. 36 Blumenthal, Theatre Art, pp. 2–7.

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modes of presenting and viewing art, actually provides a useful definition of this in Absorption and Theatricality. He writes: In several essays on recent abstract painting and sculpture published in the second half of the 1960s I argued that much seemingly difficult and advanced but actually ingratiating and mediocre work of those years sought to establish what I called a theatrical relation to the beholder, whereas the very best recent work – the paintings of Louis, Noland, Olitski, and Stella and the sculptures of Smith and Caro – were in essence anti-theatrical, which is to say that they treated the beholder as if he were not there.37

Fried goes on to discuss how the work of eighteenth-century French artists such as Greuze, Vernet and Van Loo represents a fundamental shift in the way they thought about the spectator. There is obviously a value judgement in Fried’s assessment of this art, he seems to be suggesting that while artistic style may shift between an attempt to establish a theatrical versus an absorptive relationship with the viewer, that the latter is always to be preferred. Nonetheless, his articulation is useful as an example of some of the challenges in developing a more positive critical framework for understanding the theatricality of seventeenth-century art. This type of painting was set in opposition to ‘theatrical’ artists, such as Boucher, by critics such as Diderot and Pierre Estève. The latter wrote of Boucher’s Le Coucher du Soleil (1753): In the foreground […] there is a beautiful group of three nereids supported upon the water by a dolphin. The expression of these figures did not seem suitable. Abandoned to their nonchalance, they take no interest in the arrival of Apollo. Should they not at least imitate their sovereign, who condescends to honour the god of light with an obliging look?38

This lack of attention to the god that Estève found objectionable could also be read as a compositional device designed to draw the viewer’s eye around the painting toward the central figure of Apollo. The ‘unengaged figures’ in the Le lever du Soleil (1753) gaze out of the canvas to engage the viewer and draw them into the event being depicted. In a general criticism of Boucher and his admirers Diderot wrote that ‘[t]here is so much imagination, of effect, of magic […] he [Boucher] is made 37 Fried, 1980, p. 5. The essays to which Fried is referring are mostly collected in Fried, 1998. Ndalianis puts forward the idea that contemporary cinema and multimedia formats have challenged the traditional twentieth-century conception of the ‘passive spectator’ (Ndalianis, 2004, p. 3). 38 Pierre Estéve, Lettre à un ami sur l’exposition des tableaux, faite dans le grand salon du Louvre le 25 août 1753, p. 2, as cited and translated in Fried, Absorption and Theatricality, 37.

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for turning the heads of all sorts of people’.39 Boucher’s paintings were criticized by Diderot, Estève and other contemporaries precisely because they recognized that his works sought to establish a theatrical relationship with the beholder. Yet, this is exactly what artists had been aiming for over the past century or so. There is ample evidence that seventeenth-century viewers would consciously cast themselves in the roles of either spectator or performer in order to explain various experiences. For example, Henry Wotton (1568–1639) wrote in The Elements of Architecture (1624) that a visitor experiencing a garden should experience ‘various entertainments of sent [sic], and sight […] every one of these diversities, was as if hee had beene Magically transported into a new Garden’. 40 This consciousness of one’s role as either spectator or spectacle has been described by Dianne Harris as the ‘scenographic sensibility’. She writes that this sensibility ‘evolved to govern most aspects of space and social life’. 41 In short, artists and designers were not simply taking ideas from the theatre; they were creating works of art for a society that was actively receptive, even expectant, of a theatrical experience of which they could be either spectator or actor.

Theatre, Art, and Visual Culture Performance, spectacle and music were central to both court life and public theatre. Architects, painters, sculptors and engineers worked for the theatre, sometimes as their primary focus. It was not only entertainment but became a means to present social structure and enforce status, to revive the culture and intellectual milieu of Greece and Rome, to scientific knowledge and nature and to explore new ways of eliciting responses of passion, emotion and wonder. The visual culture of theatre at this time was rich, the staging of plays and opera often required multiple sets and elaborate macchine and apparato (machinery and stage apparatus) to create special effects such as flight, storms, and metamorphoses. In his compendium of descriptions of theatre by Vasari, Thomas A. Pallen has tracked the involvement of artists with theatre over the centuries more or less up to the point where this book begins. Vasari’s records show that noted painters like Andrea del Sarto and Jacopo Pontormo painted chariots for Carnevale processions.42 Filippo Brunelleschi 39 Diderot, Salons 1759-61-63, as quoted in Jo Hedley, François Boucher: Seductive Visions (London: The Wallace Collection, 2004), 151 40 Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture (London: John Bill, 1624), 110, https://archive.org/details/ architectureelem00wott. 41 Diane Harris, The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in EighteenthCentury Lombardy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003), 151. 42 Thomas A. Pallen, Vasari on Theatre (Carbondale: SIU Press, 1999), 70–71.

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developed apparati for sacra rappresentazione that created effects of ‘jets of fire’ and ‘rotating heavens’. Vasari emphasizes the importance of such productions, worked on by a range of technicians and craftsmen at significance expense, for the later developments of scenography and staging under the Medici a century or more later.43 Despite these clear records of the fluidity of exchange among theatre, festival and the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, the study of visual culture, as has been noted by several scholars in recent years, became separated from the study of theatre and festival. 44 Theatre also played a key role in the intellectual practice of the various academies in Italy who were central to the transformation of knowledge in the seventeenth century. To return to Christiansen’s first definition of ‘theatrical’ as a straightforward description that indicates that the work, or an aspect of it, is similar to the way that one would expect a theatre and its scenery to appear. Stage curtains as a framing device are an obvious example. However, there is a tacit assumption in modern scholarship that when the word ‘theatrical’ is used the work of art in question must be derived from the theatre. Once an element of what Christiansen terms ‘dramatic expressivity’, for example, has been noted and described as theatrical, attempts are made to establish that the work of art has been derived from the artist’s experience or involvement with the theatre. When we perceive a metaphorical theatricality, we expect to explain it by supposing that the artist took ideas directly from his or her experience of theatre. The Cornaro Chapel designed by Gianlorenzo Bernini exemplifies this problem. Both the chapel as a whole and its sculpture are frequently referred to as being ‘theatrical’, 45 which has prompted an exploration of Bernini’s involvement with the theatre. To simply label his work as ‘theatrical’ leads many to assume that to understand Bernini’s work one must find its precedents within the theatre. This assumption characterised some earlier scholarship of his art. The groups of figures that surround the central sculpture and are shown leaning over a kind of balcony (Fig. 1.3) have been described as occupying theatre boxes.46 Such a reading is disputed by both Anthony Blunt and Irving Lavin.47 Blunt gives the reason that, amongst other things, theatre boxes did not exist in the 1640s. Although to state that they did not 43 Pallen, Vasari, 15–18. 44 Van Eck and Bussels, Visual Arts and the Theatre. 45 One example is Mark S. Weil, ‘Love, Monsters, Movement, and Machines: The Marvelous in Theatres, Festivals, and Gardens’, in The Age of the Marvelous, ed. Joy Kenseth (Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 1991), 164; another is Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, Bernini: Una Introduzione al Gran Teatro del Barocco (Rome: M. Bulzoni, 1967) who interprets almost all of Bernini’s work in terms of theatre. Each work is given a theatrical label. Apollo and Daphne are ‘Il Balletto’; the Baldacchino in St. Peter’s is ‘L’Apparato Scenografico’; the Cornaro Chapel is ‘Il Palcoscenico’ (pp. 58-60). 46 Fagiolo dell’Arco, Bernini, p. 58. 47 Anthony Blunt, ‘Gianlorenzo Bernini: Illusionism and Mysticism’, Art History 1 (1978): 76 and Lavin, Bernini, 93.

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Figure 1.3  Gianlorenzo Bernini, Detail of Cardinals in Cornaro Chapel, 1645–1652. Santa Maria Vittoria Rome. Authors Photo.

exist is not entirely accurate, it is true that they were relatively uncommon and had not yet attained the significance of visual shorthand for ‘spectator’ that they have for a modern viewer. 48 Moreover, the low relief architecture behind the figures is clearly a barrel-vaulted hall, not the interior of a theatre-box. While Lavin does not challenge the theatrical associations of these groups so strongly as Blunt, he does consider the theatre to have had no more than a tangential influence. He writes: [Bernini’s reliefs] recall certain earlier stage sets, which might include angle wings whose oblique faces were painted with symmetrical architectural perspectives […] Yet once again, Bernini’s design must be considered as a whole: walls, vault, 48 Lavin, Bernini, 93. Possibly the earliest were those constructed in and around Venice. One early written record comes from a libretto for a tournament called Ermonia performed in Padua in 1638 (cited in Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 70).

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altar and perspective form a single vision. It then becomes clear that the arrangement in the Teresa chapel […] had but one antecedent. This was the tradition of sacrament tabernacles. 49

Lavin points out that while Bernini was closely involved with the production of opera and plays, none of the so-called theatrical devices in the chapel can be solely ascribed to the influence of the theatre, and ‘every detail has roots in the prior development of the permanent visual arts’.50 This is an example of how when trying to explain the ‘theatricality’ of something one can make the mistake of looking at what we know of modern theatre and generalizing from there about historical theatre. The search for direct visual equivalences or obvious references to theatres is certainly not a useful mode of analysis in examining the ‘theatrical’ seventeenth century. However, the other side of this is that Blunt and Lavin seem eager to use the ‘theatre box’ dispute as a way to sever this work of art from any influence of the theatre. Their observations are fair to an extent but are perhaps not in the spirit of a deeper understanding of this period. The idea of direct equivalences from theatre to art is too simple. However, Bernini’s involvement with theatre was considerable: he wrote several plays for which he also created the scenes and stage machinery and directed the action.51 Genevieve Warwick in her recent study of Bernini places his work in the theatre, and his place with the theatrical culture of Rome, at the centre of his career. Warwick recognizes the need to ‘move on’ from earlier cautious avoidance of links between his art and theatre. She claims that ‘to draw together Bernini’s art with theatre is to situate his work at the heart of baroque cultural production’.52 Likewise, Elena Tamburini’s recent study of Bernini has placed his work firmly within the theatrical milieu of Rome. She also argues for a deeper understanding of the continuity between Bernini’s work in theatre and his sculptural, architectural and even pictorial work.53 The work may not include deliberate visual references to the theatre, but it must certainly be read in terms of the particular visual and performative culture for which it was created. It is generally recognized, for example, that within the Cornaro Chapel Bernini succeeded in fusing the arts in a bel composto (beautiful or unified whole) to an intensity and degree never before achieved. The theatre was likewise actively 49 Lavin, Bernini, 93–95. 50 Lavin, Bernini, 147. 51 This is recorded by John Evelyn on a visit to Rome in 1644, John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. De Beer, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), vol. II, 261. 52 Genevieve Warwick, Bernini: Art as Theatre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 3. 53 Elena Tamburini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini e Il Teatro dell’arte ‒ National Gallery of Art Library (Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2012), 23.

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recognized by practitioners at the time as a place in which the use of a variety of media to create a unified whole was inherent. The importance of understanding the fluidity of ideas between theatre and art does not only apply to singular exceptional artists like Bernini who worked across different modes of art. The recent study by Alessandra Buccheri looking at cloud illusionism in painted domes, ceilings and in theatre has demonstrated the interconnected nature of the art of theatre with painting, and architecture. Her study clearly demonstrates that by examining the visual arts of theatre, scholars can discover new sources for shifts in the more permanent arts, as per her argument that the great illusionistic ceilings of the Roman Baroque can’t be simply explained as Correggesque revival but are in fact closely aligned with the depiction of clouds and heavens as illusions in the theatre. These depictions on stage and in sacra rappresentazione both preceded the great sixteenth-century ceilings and continued to be the main medium for the development of visual illusionism to a high level of sophistication.54 Buccheri’s study provides an excellent model for revaluating the role of theatre on the broader visual culture of seventeenth-century Italy.

Landscape in Theatre Understanding the sets and machinery of the theatre in a broader context requires a conceptual framework for understanding the art of sets not as scene building, but, as argued by Mercedes Viale Ferrero, as art that ‘encompasses conceptual invention [and] theoretical constructs that can generate persuasion’.55 Non-specialist studies, in other words those not focused specifically on stage designers, have tended to turn mainly to well-known set types, and this has limited a broader understanding of the visual art of theatre. Marcello Fagiolo, for example, has written about the garden as theatre in the following terms: Abbiamo cercato in passato di dimostrare che, a partire dal ‘500, il giardino puo esibirsi come scena, differenziabile secondo la fortunate classificazione vitruviana: scena tragica (l’acqua e il verde, strutturati architettonicamente, imitano talora archi, tempie, costruzioni di una ideale composizione aulica, […] ), scena comica (e persino farsesca, con rappresentazione rustiche, scherzo d’acqua, scene di genere perfino volgari), scena satiresca (il Bosco della Villa corrisponde alla scena descritta dal Serlio.) 54 Alessandra Buccheri, The Spectacle of Clouds (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 1. 55 Mercedes Viale Ferrero, ‘Stage and Set’, in Opera on Stage, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 17.

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We have sought in the past to demonstrate that, from the sixteenth century, the garden presented itself like a theatre set, differentiated according to the appropriate Vitruvian classification: the tragic scene (water and greenery, structured architectonically, that imitate arches, temples, and other constructions of an ideal courtly composition, […] ), the comic scene (and even absurd, with rustic performances, water tricks, and scenes of general earthiness), the satiric scene (the wood of the Villa corresponds to the scene described by Serlio.)56

Fagiolo begins with the general observation that from the early sixteenth century a rapport existed between the art of garden and that of the theatre. This is accurate enough, but he then argues that, since the Italian garden is like a set design, and since the defining Italian set designs are those by Serlio based upon Vitruvius, one can apply Serlian and Vitruvian categories to an understanding of the garden. Hence, anything architectonic is related to the tragic scene with its reliance on classical architecture, anything amusing or coarse is related to the comic scene, and anything wild and sylvan is related to the satyric scene. While Italian gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth century can be read as having areas similar to the three types of theatre, this does not necessarily mean that garden designers actually turned to the scenes illustrated by Serlio or described by Vitruvius as a basis for their garden designs.57 The invocation of the Serlian set as a synecdoche for theatre is also problematic. They have become so familiar to scholars of Renaissance theatre and art that they are frequently assigned a greater significance than they deserve. An example is the debate about the meaning of the perspectival constructions of urban space in the Urbino, Baltimore and Berlin panels.58 The similarity between these panels and some of the set types described by Vitruvius and illustrated by Serlio has prompted interpretation of the images as depictions of set design. This was first proposed by Krautheimer, who claimed that the Baltimore panel represented the Tragic scene and the Urbino panel the Comic scene.59 The Berlin panel was omitted from discussion as it did not fit one of the Vitruvian types. The lack of a painted version of the Satyric 56 Marcello Fagiolo, ‘Il Teatro Vivente: La Scena della Vita e della Morte, dell’Amore e della Virtù’, in Teatri Di Verzura: La Scena del Giardino dal Barocco al Novecento, ed. Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and M. Adriana Giusti (Florence: EDIFIR, 1993), 10. 57 The sources for the three garden spaces within the garden have been discussed in John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory, Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000) 32–115 and Eugenio Battisti, ‘Natura Artificiosa to Natura Artificialis’, in The Italian Garden, ed. David R. Coffin (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1972), 9–15. 58 The panels are in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Acc No. 37.677, the Gemaldgalerie in Berlin. 59 Richard Krautheimer, ‘The Tragic and Comic Scenes of the Renaissance: The Baltimore and Urbino Panels’, Gazette Des Beaux Arts 33 (1948): 327–346. Krautheimer later drastically reversed his opinion; see Krautheimer, Rome of Alexander, 233.

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scene was acknowledged but not considered of particular issue. Krautheimer’s interpretation has been criticized by Hubert Damisch as one that clouds our ability to understand these works.60 He talks of the ‘Vitruvian paradigm’, invoked as a sort of ‘preestablished, preconstituted interpretive framework’.61 The same criticism can be applied to Fagiolo’s description of the theatricality of the garden. As Annamaria Petrioli Tofani has pointed out, Serlio’s representations were ‘already anachronistic in style’ when they were published in the mid-sixteenth century, as they maintained a separation between ‘tragic’, ‘comic’ and ‘satyric’ that had begun to disintegrate earlier in the century.62 The separation between ‘tragic’, ‘comic’ and ‘satyric’ was never more than an ideal possibility. Consequently, the theatrical aspect of the garden, Fagiolo’s ‘il teatro vivente’, should not be explained by reference to set types that are not representative of contemporary theatre practices.63 The ‘Serlian’ approach is symptomatic of the lack of a clear distinction in the use of the term ‘theatrical’ between instances of formal and metaphorical similarity. This is not to deny that there was a strong theatrical element to baroque art. Artists and architects alike often worked in the theatre producing set designs and therefore it is natural to expect that there would be crossover between the art of the theatre and the more permanent arts, including gardens. However, to further our understanding of the relationship between garden and theatre we need to look less at the overall ‘theatricality’ of the baroque garden and instead examine the wide array of ‘theatrical’ elements of garden design and garden experience on a case-by-case basis. And this needs to begin with a closer understanding of how landscape was presented on stage. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of this book look at the development of set design from the point of the development of the perspective stage set and the rise of the intermedi with a focus on landscape as a specific topic of representation. These chapters look not only at the stylistic development but also the technical development, new machinery and engineering techniques that allowed set designers to mimic nature and create living landscapes on stage. The second half of the book looks at the ‘theatre in the landscape’. These chapters take their cue from recent studies that focus not only on the design narrative of gardens, but also on the records of the experience of such spaces. The garden or 60 Hubert Damisch, The Origin of Perspective (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 1994), 279–312. 61 Damisch, Origin of Perspective, 283. 62 Annamaria Petrioli Tofani suggests that Serlio’s designs should be understood on a theoretical level, rather than as representative of what was really going on in set design of the same period (Tofani, ‘From Scenery to City: Set Designs’, in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, ed. Henry A. Millon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 530). 63 The similarities between types of garden experience and the Vitruvian/Serlian set types could be explained by a common cultural origin as proposed by Damisch, Origin of Perspective, 185–197.

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designed landscape is different to the theatre, in that it is both real and unreal at the same time. John Dixon Hunt has suggested the term ‘virtual reality’ is helpful in understanding the experience of gardens: There is the palpable, haptic place, smelling, sounding, catching the eye; then there is also the sense of an invented or special place […] Like cyberspace, a designed landscape is always at bottom a fiction, a contrivance – yet its hold on our imagination will derive, paradoxically, from the actual materiality of its invented sceneries.64

While Michel Conan, in his study of seventeenth-century French gardens, suggests that the design of gardens ‘were meant to stimulate two types of motion […] one related to the sense of exploration on foot, in a horse-drawn carriage, or in a boat, and the other to the sense of the imagination’.65 He goes on to observe that in many cases visitors were not consciously aware of the way in which the design of gardens, and carefully placed ‘props’ within them, shaped their experience. Another useful idea is that proposed by Norman Klein in his study of special effects from the Renaissance period to the twenty-first century. He has observed the way in which the design of certain spaces means that ‘the audience walks into the story’.66 He uses the term ‘scripted spaces’ to describe a ‘walk-through or click-through environment (a mall, a church, a casino, a theme park, a computer game). They are designed to emphasize the viewer’s journey—the space between—rather than the gimmicks on the wall’. This concept is one that fits well the immersive and often highly controlled experience of visiting a seventeenth-century garden. Although one may appear free to choose the route through, for example, the bosquets at Versailles, one is not free to dictate the experience of suddenly emerging from a confined avenue of high hedges into the open space of, for example, the spectacle of the ‘Bosquet des Trois Fontaines’. Although they do not use the term ‘virtual reality’, seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury writers and garden designers alike frequently allude to the idea that through the garden the visitor can gain access to imaginary worlds. The term ‘virtual reality’ is very much a modern one, but it perhaps a more useful conceptual framework for understanding the ‘theatricality’ of seventeenth-century landscapes, than our modern idea of theatre. To return to Michel Conan, in a different study, he elaborates 64 John Dixon Hunt, The Afterlife of Gardens (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 37. 65 Michel Conan, ‘Friendship and Imagination in French Baroque Gardens before 1661’, in Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion, ed. Michel Conan (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2005), 353. 66 Norman M. Klein, The Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects (New York and London: The New Press, 2004), 11–12, 98.

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on the role that imagination plays in constructing our emotional experience of a landscape, and the way in which this ‘garden imagination’ is culturally constructed. He argues that it is the activities that take place in a garden that act as hinges connecting the materiality of the garden with the imagination.67 So the use of the garden as a stage for structured and semi-scripted performances transformed the way they were viewed in seventeenth-century Italy. An important element in framing the ‘imagination’ about landscape and nature that people brought with them into gardens was the representation of nature on stage. The theatre at this time delivered scenes of pastoral love, illusions of natural forces like storms and lightning, and visions of landscapes very different to those the audience was accustomed to, all of which affected their experience of garden landscapes. At the Villa Barbarigo at Valsanzibio the idea that the garden was a reality separate to the everyday was stated upon the entrance gate of the garden where the visitor would read the following inscription: Here the sun casts his rays with greatest splendour; here Venus comes from the sea with greatest beauty; here the moon’s movements are most bright; here Mars’s fury cannot enter to disturb. Here Saturn does not devour his offspring; here Jove shows favour, and his face is calm; here Mercury loses all his guile. Here tears have no place but laughter rules; here the Court’s thunder does not sound.68

In the Sacro Bosco in Bomarzo inscriptions and sculptures alluded to the fantastical and divine worlds found in both Classical and Renaissance literature. A fountain with a statue of Pegasus evokes Mount Parnassus. While an inscription on the Mouth of Hell refers to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Jessie Sheeler observes that just as in Dante’s Divine Comedy the poet must descend to Hell before finding his way to Paradise, so too ‘the Sacro Bosco is arranged on a series of terraces from the valley bottom, up past enigmas, titillations and horrors […] to a temple’.69 The experience of the fantastical or divine worlds conjured up by the sculpture and the inscriptions is a physical as well as an imaginative and intellectual one. Through the use of architectural features, automata, fountains, contrived plantings, and reshaping of 67 Michel Conan, ‘Methods and Perspectives for the Study of Gardens and Their Reception’, in Gardens and Imagination: Cultural History and Agency, ed. Michel Conan, (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2008), 10. 68 As translated in Lionello Puppi, ‘The Giardino Barbarigo at Valsanzibio’, Journal of Garden History 3 (1983), 296, from the inscription recorded in J. Salomonio, Inscriptiones patavinae sacrae et prophane, Patavii, 1696. 69 Jessie Sheeler, The Garden at Bomarzo: A Renaissance Riddle (London: Frances Lincoln, 2007), 37.

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the land itself, the garden was created as a three dimensional ‘virtual reality’ within which the viewer could be immersed, just as they were in the theatre. The experience that was created in these gardens often closely resembled the type of garden or natural environment being depicted upon the seventeenth-century stage.70 The garden was, in turn, referred to as a stage or a theatre for human action and interaction. Hence, the visitor upon entering the garden would understand the expectation that they take on and perform a role. These ranged from roles that secured or raised their social status to those that allowed actions that may not have been considered decorous to their usual position in society, for example, noble women playing at shepherdesses or Pope Urban VIII spraying his cardinals with water tricks at the Villa Aldobrandini.71 Another example of a ‘dressed down’ role enacted within the garden is the Accademia dell’Arcadia where each member took the guise of a shepherd or shepherdess, and it was ostensibly only under this guise that they could achieve the Arcadian rationalism and produce proper classical poetry.72 The ‘virtual reality’ of the garden as a site of role-playing was a theme explored within the plots of baroque theatre where truth was often discovered and obscured through the disguise and role-playing of various characters.73

Bibliography Ackerman, Alan, and Martin Puchner. Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage. New York and Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Barroero, Liliana, and Stefano Susinno. ‘Arcadian Rome, Universal Capital of the Arts’. In Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Edgar Peters Bowron and Joseph J. Rishel, 47–77. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000. Battisti, Eugenio. ‘Natura Artificiosa to Natura Artificialis’. In The Italian Garden, edited by David R. Coffin, 1–36. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1972. 70 Angela Ndalianis makes a similar comparison in her study of the neo-baroque using the modern example of a special effects movie, Jurassic Park, which in the first instance astounded audiences by the realism of the fictional world on screen and was later realized in an actual geographical locale (Ndalianis, Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, Media in Transition (Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: The MIT Press, 2004) 1–2). 71 Tracy L. Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 98. 72 Liliana Barroero and Stefano Susinno, ‘Arcadian Rome, Universal Capital of the Arts’, in Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Edgar Peters Bowron and Joseph J. Rishel (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000), 47–77. 73 For instance, in the opera Ciro performed in 1712 in Rome the rightful heir to the throne is bought up as a poor shepherd, although in due course he resumes his rightful place; see Ciro. Dramma posto in musica dal Signore Alessandro Scarlatti e rappresentato om Rome l’Anno 1712, BMa, Segnatura 1.00.X.55.

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Blumenthal, Arthur. Theatre Art of the Medici. Dartmouth: University Press of New England, 1980. Blunt, Anthony. ‘Gianlorenzo Bernini: Illusionism and Mysticism’. Art History 1 (1978): 67–89. Bruaene, Anne-Laure Van. ‘The Habsburg Theatre State: Court, City and the Performance of Identity in the Early Modern Southern Low Countries’. In Networks, Regions and Nations: Shaping Identities in the Low Countries, 1300-1650, edited by Robert Stein and Judith Pollman, 131–149. Brill, 2009. Buccheri, Alessandra. The Spectacle of Clouds. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Burke, Peter. ‘Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues (Review)’. Common Knowledge 13, no. 2 (2007): 457. Burke, Peter. ‘The Language of Gesture in Early Modern Italy’. In A Cultural History of Gesture, edited by Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, 71–83. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Burke, Peter. ‘Varieties of Performance in Seventeenth-Century Italy’. In Performativity and Performance in Baroque Rome, edited by Peter Gillgren and Mårten Snickare. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. Burns, Elizabeth. Theatricality: A Study of Convention in the Theatre and in Social Life. London: Longman, 1972. Carlson, Marvin. ‘The Resistance to Theatricality’. SubStance 31 (2002): 238–250. Christiansen, Keith. ‘Tiepolo, Theater, and the Notion of Theatricality’. The Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 665–692. Conan, Michel. ‘Friendship and Imagination in French Baroque Gardens before 1661’. In Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion, edited by Michel Conan, 323–384. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2005. Conan, Michel. ‘Methods and Perspectives for the Study of Gardens and Their Reception’. In Gardens and Imagination: Cultural History and Agency, edited by Michel Conan, 3-18, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2008. Damisch, Hubert. The Origin of Perspective. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 1994. Diderot, Denis. Selected Writings on Art and Literature. Translated by Geoffrey Bremmer. London: Penguin Books, 1994. Durand, Carroll Ruth. ‘The Evolution and Actualization of the ‘Scena per Angolo’ : High Baroque Scenography of the Galli-Bibienas’. PhD, Tufts University, 1983. Ehrlich, Tracy L. Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Ellengbogen, Josh. ‘Representational Theory and the Staging of Social Performance’. In The Theatrical Baroque, edited by Larry F. Norman, 21–31. Chicago: The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2001. John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. De Beer, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Maurizio. Bernini: Una Introduzione al Gran Teatro Del Barocco. Rome: M. Bulzoni, 1967.

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Fagiolo, Marcello. ‘Il Teatro Vivente: La Scena Della Vita e Della Morte, Dell’Amore e Della Virtù’. In Teatri Di Verzura: La Scena Del Giardino Dal Barocco al Novecento, edited by Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and M. Adriana Giusti, 9–45. Florence: EDIFIR, 1993. Feral, Josette. ‘Foreword.’ SubStance 31 (2002): 3–13. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. ‘I — Theatricality Introduction: Theatricality: A Key Concept in Theatre and Cultural Studies’. Theatre Research International 20, no. 2 (1995): 85–89. Freeman, Robert S. Opera without Drama: Currents of Change in Italian Opera, 1675-1725. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981. Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1980. Fried, Michael. ‘Art and Objecthood’. Artforum 5, no. 10 (1967): 12–23. Geertz, Clifford. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Gillgren, Peter, and Mårten Snickare. Performativity and Performance in Baroque Rome. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2012. Grotowski, Jerzy, and Mario Biagini. ‘Untitled Text by Jerzy Grotowski, Signed in Pontedera, Italy, July 4, 1998’. TDR 43 (1999): 11–12. Harries, Karsten. ‘Theatricality and Re-Presentation’. Perspecta 26 (1990): 21–40. Harris, Diane. The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003. Hedley, Jo. François Boucher: Seductive Visions. London: The Wallace Collection, 2004. Hundert, Edward. ‘Performing the Passions in Commercial Society: Bernard Mandeville and the Theatricality of Eighteenth-Century Thought’. In Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, 141–172. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998. Hunt, John Dixon. Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory. Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. Hunt, John Dixon. The Afterlife of Gardens. London: Reaktion Books, 2004. Kitao, Timothy K. Circle and Oval in the Square of Saint Peter’s. New York: New York University Press, 1974. Klein, Norman M. The Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects. New York and London: The New Press, 2004. Krautheimer, Richard. The Rome of Alexander VII, 1655-1667. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Krautheimer, Richard. ‘The Tragic and Comic Scenes of the Renaissance: The Baltimore and Urbino Panels’. Gazette Des Beaux Arts 33 (1948): 327–346. Lavin, Irving. Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts. New York: Pierpoint Morgan Library & Oxford University Press, 1980.

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Maravall, José Antonio. Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure. Edited by Wlad Godzich and Nicholas Spadaccini. Translated by Terry Cochran. Theory and History of Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Marcello, Benedetto. ‘Il Teatro Alla Moda ‒ Part 1, Translated and Annotated by Reinhard G. Pauly’. The Musical Quarterly 34 (1948): 371–403. Marcello, Benedetto. ‘Il Teatro Alla Moda ‒ Part 2, Translated and Annotated by Reinhard G. Pauly’. The Musical Quarterly 35 (1949): 85–105. Ndalianis, Angela. Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment. Media in Transition. Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: The MIT Press, 2004. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, Selected Aphorisms. Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. Edinburgh and London: T.N. Foulis, 1911. Pallen, Thomas A. Vasari on Theatre. Carbondale: SIU Press, 1999. Petrioli Tofani, Annamaria. ‘From Scenery to City: Set Designs’. In The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, edited by Henry A. Millon, 529–537. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994. Puppi, Lionello. ‘The Giardino Barbarigo at Valsanzibio’. Journal of Garden History 3 (1983): 281–300. Rosand, Ellen. Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Scève, Maurice. The Entry of Henri II into Lyon, September 1548. Edited by Richard Cooper. Tempe (Arizona): Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997. Sheeler, Jessie. The Garden at Bomarzo: A Renaissance Riddle. London: Frances Lincoln, 2007. Tamburini, Elena. Gian Lorenzo Bernini e Il Teatro Dell’arte ‒ National Gallery of Art Library. Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2012. Van Eck, Caroline, and Stijn Bussels. ‘The Visual Arts and the Theatre in Early Modern Europe’. Art History 33 (2010): 209–223. Viale Ferrero, Mercedes. ‘Stage and Set’. In Opera on Stage, edited by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002, 1–124. Warwick, Genevieve. Bernini: Art as Theatre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen. Europa Triumphans. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2010. Weil, Mark S. ‘Love, Monsters, Movement, and Machines: The Marvelous in Theatres, Festivals, and Gardens’. In The Age of the Marvelous, edited by Joy Kenseth, 159–178. Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 1991. Wotton, Henry. The Elements of Architecture. London: John Bill, 1624.

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Gardens of the Gods: Classical Revival, Intermedi, Early Opera and the Idea of Nature Abstract This chapter looks at the rich culture of performance and spectacle that emerged over the course of the sixteenth century with the revival of classical plays and the adoption of the perspective stage set. This culminated in a series of performances in Medici Florence around 1600 that gave birth to opera. Stage sets played a crucial role in the transformation of opera into an immersive environment that transcended sound to appeal to all the senses simultaneously. Already in the intermedi, one of the precursors to opera, gardens and landscapes played a key narrative role, with designs by artists such as Bernardo Buontalenti often mirroring new designs in gardens. As well, the concern for verisimilitude and ‘unity of place’ in the first operas meant that the settings tended to be pastoral settings because it seemed more plausible that characters such as shepherds, shepherdesses, and nymphs would sing their speech. This meant that the powerfully emotional music and poetry of the first operas, with their themes of love and loss of love, tended to be closely associated with landscape settings. Keywords: Medici, Opera, Stage Sets, Theatre, Bernardo Buontalenti

The best part of all these plays and feste has been the scenes against which they were performed, which were made by one Maestro Pellegrino: there is a road and a perspective of a town with houses, churches, bell towers and gardens such that one can never tire of looking at because of the variety of things in it, all cleverly contrived and well-planned.1 – Bernadino Prosperi on the set for Ariosto’s La Cassaria, 1508. 1 Bernardo Prosperi, the letter is reproduced in Giuseppe Campori, Notizie per La Vita Di Ludovico Ariosto (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1896), 51, translation from Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, trans. Kevin Eales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 77.

Grant, K., Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463721530_ch02

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A stage is a solid structure on which are erected sets made of wood, paint and other tangible materials designed to conjure up a fictitious space in which narratives unfold. The type of setting—woodland, city, palace—conveyed meaning by making tangible the place in which the narrative was enacted, and through the symbolic associations that certain spaces and places held for the audience. Set designs were not only integral parts of most dramatic performances, but also constituted a significant part of European visual culture from the sixteenth century onward. Contemporary discussions of the history of sets have tended to focus upon the architectural settings, the cityscapes rendered in one-point perspective by Renaissance architects like Baldassare Peruzzi or Vincenzo Scamozzi, or the elaborate, fantastical interiors created by the Bibiena family. Landscape was also present on stage. Stories of classical gods or the performance of elaborate allegories tended to unfold not in cities but in nature. Early opera took as its subject the pastoral, so the first decades of this new artform, which appealed to all the senses, and evoked strong emotions of love and loss were intimately connected with landscape. The study of the visual culture of theatre in this period is challenging due to the lack of tangible evidence. Visual records, when they exist at all, are in the form of sketches or prints, in other words, representations of sets and not the sets themselves. This remains the case for most productions examined in this study (most surviving sets are from the eighteenth century onwards).2 There are many productions from the later sixteenth century and the early decades of the seventeenth century where we must rely entirely upon written descriptions.3 These fill out the picture considerably. The rapidly changing culture of theatre and music at this time left behind a substantial number of written sources, treatises, letters, and dialogues that record the debates, practical advice and intellectual concerns of those involved in the transformation. Compared to music and poetry, however, the staging, set designs and machinery of performances are not discussed to the same extent. The reasons for this are various, but a key one is the secrecy surrounding the building and design of sets and machines. Newly developed techniques were closely guarded 2 The sets that do survive for European theatre are mostly mid- to late eighteenth century, for instance the baroque theatre at Drottningholm Palace in Sweden has around thirty sets from the late eighteenth century. 3 Several overviews of the development of the perspective sets and stage technology can be found in Mercedes Viale Ferrero, Le Scenografia dalle Origini al 1936, vol. 3, Storia del Teatro Regio Di Torino (Turin: Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, 1980); Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, ‘From Scenery to City: Set Designs’, in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, ed. Henry A. Millon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), pp. 529–537; Elena Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects of Italian Scenography’, in Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, ed. Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 281–383; and several chapters (17 and 25) in the Routledge book on scenography also offer useful introductions, Arnold Aronson, ed., The Routledge Companion to Scenography, 1st ed. (Routledge, 2017).

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and rarely published (with a few notable exceptions).4 Yet, a close reading of a variety of texts, from architectural and music treatises to official descriptions of courtly events, reveal clues to the appearance of the sets and the audience’s reception of them. Evidence from the archival record—orders, payments, contracts, and letters containing first-hand accounts—can help to fill out the picture.5 The records, however, are patchy, often where we have surviving images, we may have no archival record and vice versa. Studying these performances requires necessary reconstruction and informed speculation about the multi-sensory environments that were created for theatre.

The Staging of Theatre in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century Italy To understand the importance of theatre in shaping the idea of nature and landscape in the early modern period, it makes sense to step back to the decades when the revival of ancient plays by humanist scholars ushered in new types of staging. For landscape, there are two important types of plays that shaped the idea of the appearance and narrative role of nature on stage at this time: the pastoral and the satyric. Throughout the Medieval and early Renaissance period, plays, whether secular or religious, were typically presented on a long stage that represented several places simultaneously, usually a series of buildings: mansion, church, inn, and so forth. This type of staging continued into the sixteenth century, and among the scant visual records of this style of staging is a drawing by Hubert Cailleau used for a performance of a passion play at Valenciennes in 1547.6 The set represents a scene that is almost entirely urban, with 4 Simon Paulus, ‘The Engineer’s Gaze. Some Remarks on Spatial and Technological Perception and Presentation in the Codex Iconographicus 401 (The Furttenbach Manuscript)’, in Technologies of Theatre: Joseph Furttenbach and the Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in Early Modern Theatre Cultures, ed. Jan Lazardig and Hole Rößler (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2016), p. 449. 5 See, for example, the studies Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon, Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) and Frederick Hammond, The Ruined Bridge: Studies in Barberini Patronage (Sterling Heights, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 2010). 6 The drawing is held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. See Povoledo, Origins and Aspects, 300–301. On the Valenciennes set see A. M. Nagler, A Source Book in Theatrical History (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1952), pp. 47-49, who also discusses a range of early stage settings and Élie Konigson, La Représentation d’un Mystère de La Passion à Valenciennes En 1547 (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1969). The Valenciennes set was derived from earlier Italian prototypes (Ludovico Zorzi, Il teatro e la città: saggi sulla scena italiana, (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), vol. 2, pp. 695–699). For a similar set for a play performed in Venice in c. 1525 see Timothy Verdon, ‘Donatello and the Theater: Stage Space and Projected Space in the San Lorenzo Pulpits’, Artibus et Historiae 7 (1986): pp. 44–45. This record, which shares a date with others in a ‘later style’ discussed below, demonstrates why any attempt to trace an organized linear development of staging from Medieval to Renaissance and Baroque is ill-advised

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a harbour on the right-hand side, city gates representing Nazareth and Jerusalem, and the fiery mouth of hell.7 The set was built in three dimensions. The aim of the setting was to transform a public space and act as a prompt for the audience to engage emotionally and as a trigger for their imaginations. One of the earliest known examples of a pastoral setting in this period is for the play La fabula d’Orfeo by Angelo Ambrogini (Poliziano) (1454–1494), which was performed in 1480 for the court at Mantua. No visual records survive but Elena Povoledo has pieced together a description based on a close study of Poliziano’s text.8 The narrative for this play unfolded as a continuous series of events, which meant that only a single set was required. This took the form of a three-dimensional mound that represented a ‘prettily flowered shaded hill’.9 It was hollow on the inside yet strong enough to be walked upon. It was probably built either upon an edifizio (a movable wagon or float) or on a stationary tribunale (a type of scaffold). Such a stage could be adapted to the requirements of the available space and was usually set up in a hall or courtyard, with the basic setting enhanced with tapestries and greenery. A setting like this used techniques that had been popular for over a century, including moveable three-dimensional sets, and was similar to the floats used in parades at carnival, wedding celebrations, and other festivals.10 With the revival of classical plays from ancient Greece and Rome, the scholars and artists staging such performances looked to the ancients for instruction on the appropriate settings. Leon Battista Alberti in his De architectura writes about the classical staging found in Vitruvius. He explains that the antique theatre hosted three types of drama (tragic, comedic, and satyric) and that these were served by ‘new rotating machinery […] capable of presenting at an instant a painted backdrop, or of revealing an atrium, house, or even a wood, according to the type of drama and the action of the play’.11 The rotating machinery were presumably periaktoi, three sided prisms with a different scene on each side that could be turned. Alberti does not elaborate on whether this type of staging was currently in use at the time when he wrote his treatise (around 1452). In an edition of Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria from around 1486 the humanist Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli included descriptions 7 Laura Weigert, ‘‘Theatricality’ in Tapestries and Mystery Plays and Its Afterlife in Painting’, Art History 33 (2010): pp. 225–235. 8 Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects’, pp. 283–298 and Pirrotta and Povoledo, Music and Theatre pp. 3–37. 9 Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects’, p. 283. 10 For instance, the floats used for the 1589 wedding celebrations in Florence (recorded in drawings), Blumenthal, Theatre Art, pp. 2–27. 11 Translation from Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 1988), p. 273. For the original text see Leon Battista Alberti, I dieci libri de l’architettura di Leon Battista de gli Alberti Fiorentino (In Vinegia: Appresso Vincenzo Vavgris, 1546), http:// archive.org/details/idiecilibridelar00albe.

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of the staging of a tragic play that he had created for Cardinal Riario (to whom the text was dedicated).12 He claims that this revival of ancient staging was based upon Vitruvius where he ‘introduced painted scenery to the stage’. This picturata scaena (painted scene) was devised for Riaro in Rome for a comedy put on by the Accademici Pomponiani. Annamaria Petrioli Tofani suggests that this set probably consisted of a ‘large drape hung for the occasion at the back of a raised platform’ and a scene that ‘had a picture painted on it showing some sort of architectural setting which was intended—or so we believe—to create a spatial illusion’.13 From the late f ifteenth century this use of one-point perspective to create an illusion of depth began to grow in popularity. The earliest recorded use of a perspective set was in 1508 in Ferrara for a performance of Ariosto’s La Cassaria, designed by Pellegrino da Udine, as described above by Bernadino Prosperi. In 1515 the architect Baldassare Peruzzi designed a set for the play La Calandria, written by Cardinal Bibbiena. Vasari included a description of the set in his life of Peruzzi: Baldassarre made two scenes that were marvellous and that opened the way for those made in our times. Nor could one imagine how he, in such a narrow place, made room for so many streets, palaces, and various temples, balconies and cornices so well made that they seemed not imitations but very real, and the piazza not painted and little but real and very large. Similarly, he arranged the chandeliers, the interior lights that served the perspective, and all the other necessary things with great judgment. Although, as I said, the practice of comedies had been lost almost completely, in my belief this manner of spectacle, when it has all its accessories, surpasses any other kind, however magnificent and sumptuous.14

A drawing in the Uffizi formerly attributed to Peruzzi has been typically associated with the play, but it now seems unlikely.15 Recently, Mari Yoka Hara has argued that as the drawing was once owned by Vasari the above description from his Vite of Peruzzi may have been based on this drawing, even if the drawing is not actually 12 Pierre Gros, ‘Vitruve Sulpizio, Giovanni’, Architectura ‒ Les livres d’Architecture, 2012, http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/VitruveSulpizio.asp?param=en [Accessed 30/9/2020]. 13 Petrioli Tofani, ‘Scenery to City’, p. 529. 14 Vasari from his Life of Peruzzi, as translated in Thomas A. Pallen, Vasari on Theatre (Carbondale: SIU Press, 1999), 60–61. Petrioli Tofani, ‘Scenery to City’, pp. 529–530. An earlier performance of La Calandra in 1513 in Urbino with a setting by Girolamo Genga is described by G.B. Castiglione (translation in Nagler, Theatrical History, p. 71). The setting represented a Roman piazza and for each intermedio there was an elaborately decorated float; see Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects’, pp. 339–340. 15 The drawing is catalogued as ‘Unknown Italian draftsman (formerly attributed to Baldassarre Peruzzi), perspective set with Roman buildings, mid-sixteenth century (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Uffizi Gallery, Florence [UA291r]).

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connected to the play.16 Nevertheless, this, and other drawings connected with Peruzzi reveal the shift to the use of linear perspective as the main organizing principle of space on stage. Nino Pirrotta has pointed out that ‘the adoption of a set which was both fixed and designed according to the rules of perspective would foster the development of the unity of place’.17 Linear perspective created an illusionistic extension of the viewer’s space, thereby suggesting that the events represented were occurring in the fictitious space depicted on stage, just beyond the viewer.18 One-point perspective sets are inherently architectural, and the majority of the early perspective stage sets that survive in drawings and descriptions depict cities. Indeed, much of the writing on sets that we have from the period comes from the pen of architects and is found in architectural treatises. Although Prosperi’s description above includes a reference to a garden, it is clearly subordinate to the architecture and part of the urban fabric of a city.19 Other records confirm that around 1500 satyric plays or pastoral eclogues were often simply given in the same urban settings as comedies and tragedies.20 The earliest sets representing natural settings to be published appear in Serlio’s, Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospettiva (1545).21 Serlio described and illustrated three basic set types, which are based on those described in the first-century AD architectural treatise by Vitruvius, De architectura.22 For 16 Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Uffizi Gallery, Florence [UA291r]. Mari Yoko Hara, ‘Capturing Eyes and Moving Souls: Peruzzi’s Perspective Set for La Calandria and the Performative Agency of Architectural Bodies’, Renaissance Studies 31, no. 4 (2017): p. 590. Petrioli Tofani (‘Scenery to City’, 532) attributes this drawing to Vasari himself. 17 Nino Pirrota, Li Due Orfei: Da Poliziano a Monteverdi (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), p. 128. 18 For the development of perspective and pictorial space in Western art see Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 9–52. For the development of perspective in Renaissance architectural drawings see Christoph Luitpold Frommel, ‘Reflections on the Early Architectural Drawings’, in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, ed. Henry A. Millon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), pp. 101–122. For a discussion of the relationship between stage design and the development of perspective and pictorial space see Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli, pp. 15–28; Susan Scott Munshower, ‘Filippo Juvarra’s Spatial Concepts and Italian Stage Design: The Consummation of a Renaissance Discovery’ (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University, 1995), pp. 32–103; and Jaime Cuenca, ‘The Princely Viewpoint: Perspectival Scenery and Its Political Meaning in Early Modern Courts’, in Perspective As Practice: Renaissance Cultures of Optics, ed. Sven Dupré (Turnhout, BELGIUM: Brepols Publishers, 2019), pp. 149–172. 19 On the 1508 production see Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects’, pp. 316–317. Several other one-point perspective set designs by Bramante, Raphael, and Francesco Salviati amongst others from the f irst decades of the sixteenth century are still extant but none record garden or pastoral settings; see the catalogue entries in Petrioli Tofani, ‘Scenery to City’, pp. 529–537. 20 Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects’, pp. 326–327. 21 Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture: Books I-V of Tutte l’opere d’architettura et Prospettiva, trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, vol. 1, (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 83–91. 22 Vitruvius, 1960, pp. 150–151.

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tragedies, Serlio recommends buildings appropriate to ‘characters of high rank’ such as ‘noblemen, Dukes, great Princes and Kings’.23 For comedy there should be ‘private houses; that is belonging to citizens, lawyers, parasites and other similar characters. Above all there should be a bawd’s house and an Inn’.24 For Satires he recommends a rustic setting appropriate to [A] type of drama in which all those who live dissolute and devil-may-care lives are criticized […] However, it is understandable that this sort of licence was granted to characters who spoke their minds, that is to say, rustic folk. For this reason Vitruvius, when discussing stage scenery, wanted this type to be decorated with wooded groves, rocks, hills, mountains, greenery, flowers and fountains. He also stipulated some rustic huts.25

Serlio’s illustration (Fig. 2.1) is his own invention as Vitruvius left no more than a short, written description.26 It shows a one-point perspective set in which the central perspective is formed by a path flanked by trees, while in the foreground there are two rustic huts. Serlio’s design for a scena satirica represents one of our few surviving images of a naturalistic setting from the first half of the sixteenth century. As such, it has been much reproduced and is a key document for understanding the depiction of nature on stage at this time, but it cannot be taken at face value. Serlio’s sets should be understood to be ‘ideal sets’ intended to illustrate Vitruvius’ description. In part they seem to draw on printed books as much as actual sets: Serlio’s depiction of plants, rocks and other details have stylistic similarities to botanical illustrations in other sixteenth-century treatises, such as those by Lonicer in Kreuterbuch (1569). 27 But since few other representations of sets with natural settings that survive from the period, Serlio’s design has come to be relied on as an indication of how early sets must have appeared. Also useful is Serlio’s description of a garden set from this period designed by Girolamo Genga for a production presented to the Duke of Urbino at Pesaro in around 1525: ‘What wonder it was to see so many trees and fruits, so many herbs and diverse flowers, 23 Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio, p. 88. 24 Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio, p. 86. 25 Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio, p. 90. 26 Studies of Serlio’s other two sets show that he drew upon designs by Peruzzi, Bramante and others. As far as a I know, no similar stylistic analysis of the satyric set has been undertaken, but it seems plausible this also drew upon earlier designs; see Klaus Neiiendam, ‘‘II Portico’ and ‘La Bottega’ on the Early Italian Perspective Stage: A Comparative Study in Theatre Iconography’, in The Renaissance Theatre: Texts, Performance, Design: Volume 2, ed. Christopher Cairns (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1991), pp. 32–40. 27 J. A. Lonicer, Kreuterbuch, Frankfurt: Egenolffs Erben, 1569.

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Figure 2.1 Sebastiano Serlio, ‘Satyric Set’, from Il Primo libro d’architettura, Venice: Per Cornelio de Nicolini da Sabbio a instantia de Marchio Sessa, 1551. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (85-B6505).

all made from the finest silk of the most beautiful colours, the cliffs and rocks covered with diverse sea shells’.28 This description offers a sense of the colour and materiality of the sets, with rich colours and precious fabrics, a vision now entirely lost to us in the engravings.

28 Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture: Books VI and VII Tutte l’opere d’architettura et Prospettiva, trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, vol. 2 (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 90.

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Although Serlio’s set is not a record of a set used in an actual performance, it is still an ideal vision of how a landscape set might appear on stage. In the image of the satyric set published by Serlio we can observe the way that nature is made subservient to the main organizing principle of one-point perspective. The slightly twisted trees frame a path that leads towards a single point, and the rustic huts mirror one another in the foreground. At the base are broken masonry steps that lead from the viewers space into the landscape. The impression is of rustic nature rather than wild nature, a space removed from the order of the urban landscape, but not entirely separate. Serlio’s artfully constructed representation of rustic nature for the stage echoes components of the Renaissance and Mannerist garden. In particular the vigna (vineyard) bosco (wood) or barco (hunting park). These areas were less rigidly ordered than the formal parts of the garden closer to the palazzo, which were organized with a tight geometry. For example, in Giacomo Lauro’s 1612 engraving of the Villa Lante at Bagnaia, in the area of the barco at right we see ‘natural’ or irregular plantings, but with long avenues cut through them.29 Such avenues would have created views through groves of trees that would have been similar to what we see in Serlio’s one-point perspective. These areas were used for the quiet enjoyment of nature, or occasionally for small scale hunting and trapping.30 They represented a tamed version of ‘wild’ nature and acted as a necessary counterpart to the order of the formal part of the garden. Yet they are not truly wild and it is possible that settings for pastoral or satyric plays took their cue from the ‘wild’ areas of villa gardens, such as boschetti. Other visual records from this period offer a view of a different type of naturalistic set to Serlio’s version. For example, a set design of c. 1565 for an unknown production that was part of a Ferrarese tournament shows a scene in one point perspective with a more extensive stage than the one shown in Serlio’s woodcut.31 This set employs a mixture of trees, rocks and classical architecture. The classical building in the middle-ground, probably intended to represent a temple, is set into a large cave. In the foreground stand three figures—a winged figure, a man in armour and a woman in flowing drapery—who may be the protagonists 29 Giacomo Lauro, ‘View of the Villa Lante, Bagnaia’ from Antiquae urbis splendor, Rome, 1612–1628, p. 165, https://archive.org/details/gri_33125011056070/page/n338/mode/1up. 30 Claudia Lazzaro, The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 109; Eugenio Battisti, ‘Natura Artificiosa to Natura Artificialis’, in The Italian Garden, ed. David R. Coffin (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1972), 24-36; and Elisabeth MacDougall, ‘Ars Hortulorum: Sixteenth Century Garden Iconography and Literary Theory in Italy’, in The Italian Garden, ed. David R. Coffin (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1972), pp. 41–53. 31 Set published in Silvio D’Amico and Sandro D’Amico, Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo (Rome: Unedi ‒ Unione Editoriale, 1975), vol. 6, pl. 87.

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Figure 2.2  Giovanni Battista da Sangallo, ‘Drawings of the Tragic Scene, Comic Scene and Satyric Scene in the margin of Vitruvius’ De architectura’, nd. 29.5 x 22.5cm. Pen on white paper. Rome, Biblioteca Corsiniana (Inc. 50, F.I.).

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of a narrative drawn from classical mythology or from the chivalric romances of Tasso and Ariosto. The combination of classical architecture and woodland scene suggests that, contrary to Serlio’s account of the distinctions between the architectural forms appropriate to each category of stage set—classical for the tragic scene, vernacular for the comic, and natural for the satyric—in sixteenthcentury theatre these forms would also be combined in the one set.32 This blending of classical architecture and naturalistic setting would, as discussed below, come to dominate the vision of nature on stage as pastoral narratives overtook the ‘satyric’ in popularity. Another sixteenth-century setting that provides a contrast to Serlio is a sketch by Giovanni Battista da Sangallo (1496–1548) in the margin of an edition of Vitruvius’ De architectura, datable to before 1548 (Fig. 2.2). Sangallo illustrates each of the three Vitruvian set types, including the satyric scene.33 It is not known whether he ever produced set designs for plays, and as these sketches correspond to descriptions of sets designed by his cousin Bastiano (called Aristotile) da Sangallo (1481–1551) it may be that he is drawing on those as examples.34 The sketch shows a set with a centralized perspective, a large stage space and on either side a series of mountains covered with trees and dotted with small caves. In the background there is a watery cascade. As with Serlio’s designs, Giovanni Battista’s sketch is not a set design proper but an illustration of Vitruvius. Nonetheless, it seems likely that, as with Serlio, it aligns to an extent with the appearance of actual stage sets in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Satires and Pastorals Serlio’s treatise presents us with one of the first instances of the use of what would become the ‘type set’; that is, the practice of associating certain types of scenery— such as classical cities, forests, or vernacular architecture—with particular theatrical narratives. Serlio specifies that his rustic or wild setting is for the performance of ‘satirica’ rather than pastoral plays. However, the distinction between these two genres was not entirely clear and it seems that the landscape settings for both pastorals and ‘satirica’ led to a conflation of the genres. The sixteenth-century ‘satirica’, or satires, to which Serlio refers were probably revivals of classical satyr 32 Even Serlio did not keep strictly to the categories in his treatise. In one of his painted versions of a stage setting there is a mix of classical and vernacular architecture, set published in Da Giotto a Malevic. La Reciproca Meraviglia, Roma, Scuderie del Quirinale (Milan: Electa, 2004), p. 130. 33 Petrioli Tofani, ‘Scenery to City’, cat. 168, p. 533. 34 Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects’, p. 327

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plays.35 They were not satires in the vein of classical writers like Juvenal, but plays where the protagonists were woodland deities or Olympian gods. Though there was debate over the correct approach to such plays. The mid-cinquecento writer Giambattista Giraldi declared, in his Lettera ovvera Discorso sopra il comporre le satire atte alle scene (1554), that the satire should be a play solely concerned with the adventures of ‘woodland deities’ or Olympian gods.36 He firmly disapproved of examples that included shepherds and shepherdesses as he knew of no ancient examples. Giraldi’s definition was written at a time when there was widespread confusion about the exact etymology of the term ‘satire’. Most sixteenth-century writers believed that it was derived from ‘satyr’. This was in part because an ancient authority—the fourth-century Roman grammarian Donatus—had written in his history of drama that: The satyra, which is named after satyrs who, we know, are gods always indulging in jokes and wantonness, although some think wrongly that it comes from other sources. This satyra was such that in it there was a poem with somewhat hard and, as it were, rustic sport about the vices of citizens.37

This convinced sixteenth-century writers that the genre of the satire originated in the satyr play, where rough and lusty satyrs were given to speaking freely and attacking the vices of men. Giraldi’s own play, a dramma satiresco, was not a satire in the modern sense, but wholly concerned with the adventures of satyrs and nymphs. In short, there were satyr plays that had satyrs as main characters, there were satires in the vein of Juvenal that attacked vices, and there was a conflation of, or confusion between, the two that resulted in satyrs speaking satirically. Because of this, nature was depicted as a place where rusticity and wildness jostled against order and habitation and became associated with a certain type of freedom and license. Satyr plays were also often conflated with another type of play that required a naturalistic setting, the pastorale or boschereccia. These also had their roots in antique sources, but in poems, not plays, and therefore there was no corresponding 35 Walter Bullock points out that ‘the [sixteenth-century] satire was not a satire in the modern sense, but a revival of the classical satyr play, of which the only ancient example that has come down whole to us is the Cyclops of Euripides’ (Bullock, ‘Tragical-Satirical-Comical: A Note on the History of the Cinquecento Dramma Satiresco’, Italica 15 (September 1938): p. 163). 36 Giambattista Giraldi, Lettera ovvero Discorso sopra il comporre le satire ate alle scene, 1554 as translated in Bullock, ‘Tragical-Satirical-Comical’, p. 165. 37 Donatus, as quoted in Raymond B. Waddington, Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 94.

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set type in Vitruvius. Some of the most popular sixteenth-century works with pastoral themes were described variously as favola pastorale (Il sacrificio, Agostino Beccari, 1555), favola boschereccia (Aminta, Torquato Tasso, 1573), and tragicommedia pastorale (Il pastor fido, Guarini, c. 1580–1585). There was also flexibility in the distinction between the pastoral and the satyric play. Although Giraldi believed that a satire should contain only satyrs and other mythical characters and not shepherds or shepherdesses, in practice plays set within woodland or pastoral settings were frequently populated by a mixture of shepherds, nymphs, shepherdesses and gods, with satyrs given a minor comic role.38 Such plays therefore better fit the definition of a pastoral play than a satyric one. Natural settings, of the sort illustrated in Serlio, were more likely to be used for pastoral plays where shepherds mingled with the likes of Orpheus or Venus and Adonis rather than for ‘satyr’ plays. Such mythological and pastoral characters as these remained the most common inhabitants of satyric or pastoral scenes throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the same time, the pastoral, like the satire, was sometimes a vehicle for social commentary, with shepherds or shepherdesses being disguised representations of real contemporary people.39

Landscape on Stage: Third Nature or Locus Amoenus? By the end of the sixteenth century naturalistic settings for the theatre tended to have a specific, though not static, iconographical meaning. Rustic nature (natura rustica or rusticale) stood in opposition to the order of courtly life. The term was used to refer to the country life of farmers and peasants, simple and earthly. Pastoral nature (pastorale), at this point, could refer to country life, and often represented the world of shepherds, but would also draw in characters from myth, such as nymphs and include the classical gods most closely connected to stories of love. Both rustic and pastoral nature, in different ways, represented a necessary counterbalance to the power and order represented by urban and courtly settings. This idea of natural places as necessarily distinct from urban or palace life aligns with ideas that shaped the design of gardens themselves; they were typically regarded as a locus amoenus, a refuge for private meditation, or a place that permitted sexual and intellectual freedom. They could also be a setting for intellectual enquiry and philosophical discussions, and for entertainments that often played upon the idea of the garden 38 For a concise discussion of the sixteenth-century genre types in theatre see Richard Andrews, ‘Theatre’, in The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, ed. Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 277–300. 39 Andrews, ‘Theatre’, p. 292.

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as a place and love and pleasure. These ideas were also explored in painting, such as Pozzoserratos’ paintings depicting the pleasures of villa life from the 1580s, and in text, such as Jacopo Sannazzaro’s pastoral novel Arcadia first published in 1504 and republished many times throughout the following century. What is particular about this idea of landscape is that it is never truly wild, these natural settings are always constructed and show the hand of human control. Whether through the physical reshaping of land for a garden, or in the idealized arrangement of the painter’s composition, or in the prose of the writer. Eugenio Battisti describes this particular conceptualization of nature at this time as ‘natura artificiosa […] [t]he garden is the opposite of both the city, which surrounds it, and the countryside, where cultivation, although following a repeated geometric pattern, is seasonal and lack the quality of concentration or perpetuity’. 40 This also aligns with the idea of gardens as a terza natura (third nature), one where art and nature combine to produce something that is distinct from the wilderness (f irst nature) or agricultural (second nature) landscape. 41 This idea, developed in writings by Jacopo Bonifadio and Bartolomeo Teagio in the sixteenth century, built upon classical texts by Pliny the Younger, Lucretius, Virgil and Cicero. Thomas F. Beck suggests that ‘third nature’ is distinguished by three key characteristics, the incorporation of art with nature, the role of people in doing this, and the resulting benef it that comes from both of these. 42 Third nature describes landscapes where human intervention and art is clear and the idea becomes a guiding principle for understanding the role of the garden during this period, but it is also useful for understanding the depiction of nature on stage. The ideal vision of nature was one that had been improved with art, and where human intervention would produce benefits. Designs from this period by Serlio, and others, for landscape sets must also be understood within this context of a re-conceptualization of how humans related to nature that had been ongoing from the previous century. The satyric set offers one idea of how human behaviour might be expected to unfold in a natural setting, the pastoral set offers another. Although we must rely upon only a small corpus of surviving visual records, we can still see how these early sets often aligned with the representation of nature in gardens and in painting, and that sets presented an ordered view of semi-wild nature, or glimpses of charming gardens, both of which acted as a counterpart to urban life. 40 Battisti, Natura Artificiosa, p. 10. 41 Tom Beck, ‘Gardens as a ‘Third Nature’: The Ancient Roots of a Renaissance Idea’, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes 22 (2002): p. 329; John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory, Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 62–63. 42 Beck, Third Nature’, p. 328.

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The Intermedi and the Spectacle of Landscape The representation of nature on stage was transformed again by the rapid development of intermedi as the focal point for set design and stage machinery towards the end of the sixteenth century, and the role of ‘art’ and human ingenuity in mediating the appearance and experience of nature and natural phenomena would become increasingly explicit. Intermedi (typically a series of tableaux inserted between the acts of a drama) emerged as a feature of theatrical performances with the revival of classical comedies. The court of Ercole d’Este at Ferrara is generally recognized as leading this revival, and it is here that we first find the introduction of intermedi.43 They usually had a separate storyline to the play and were often concerned with pastoral themes and stories that revolved around nymphs, shepherds, gods and goddesses. They often included dancing and music, and, offered an opportunity to enact symbolic allegories on stage. Initially these short acts did not have fixed sets, because their task was to divert the audience whilst the stage-hands changed the sets for the play.44 In some cases a setting for these short pieces was created by using a movable float that could be hauled on to the stage for the intermedio and hauled off again when the play resumed.45 The intermedi gradually evolved into more elaborate set pieces, and rather than simple interludes they began to be used as an opportunity to create more elaborate and visually (as well as musically) exciting entertainments that were not part of the more serious classical play. In 1487 Bernardino Zambotti, the Ferrarese court chronicler, described a performance of Plautus where the stage for the intermedio included a backdrop that represented heaven with lanterns shining against a black curtain as though they were stars, and small boys dressed in white to represent the planets.46 As their status increased, a tension developed between the importance of, or audience interest in, the classical play versus the intermedi. A letter by Isabella d’Este to her husband recounts that she much preferred the intermedi to the play.47 While, around the same time, Zambotti reported that the audience of one four-hour long revival of Plautus watched ‘con taciturnità’. 48 Both sources suggest that the intermedi were designed to appeal to those in the audience who found the classical 43 Lewis Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara 1400-1505: The Creation of a Musical Centre in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 308–313. 44 Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects’, 339. 45 Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 281 and Zambotti, 1934, p. 221. Another example of ‘pastoral’ themes in early productions is found in a description by Niccolò Cagnolo of the wedding festivities held in Parma in 1502, reproduced in Bernardino Zambotti, Diario Ferrarese dall’anno 1476 sino al 1504, ed. Giuseppe Pardi, (Bologna: Niccolo Zanichelli, 1937), pp. 318–333, http://archive.org/details/p7rerumitalicarum24card. 46 Zambotti, Diario Ferrarese, 179 and Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, p. 281. 47 David R. B. Kimbell, Italian Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 19. 48 Zambotti, Diario Ferrarese, 172. See discussion of this in Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara, p. 281.

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plays less than riveting. In this guise the intermedi began to play a central role in the development of set designs and the gradual introduction of increasingly elaborate special effects produced by stage machinery (macchine). Over the course of the sixteenth century the intermedi continued to grow in importance. They were transformed from simple pieces commenting on the action of the play and serving the pragmatic purpose of filling an empty stage between acts, to parallel performances that were expected to include music, costuming, set design and machinery. The tension between the role of the intermedi and the play itself continued. The poet Anton Francesco Grazzini, author of La Strega (c. 1566), used his prologue to complain about this change in status of the intermedi, protesting that ‘gl’intermedij, che servissero alle Comedia, ma hora si fanno le Comedia, che servono a gl’intermedij’ (formerly intermedi were made to serve the comedy, but now they make comedies which serve the intermedi).49 When considering the types of stages set down by Serlio in his treatise, it needs to be kept in mind that these classically derived set types may well have shared the stage with intermedi. It seems likely that by the latter half of the sixteenth century the single static stages used for plays served to provide an opportunity for the sets and machinery for the intermedi to be set up during the acts of the play.50 A complete reversal of the original conception. As they evolved into something quite distinct from plays, theorists and organizers of music, theatre and performance began to try and categorize and explain the role that intermedi played in the staging of theatre. Giovanni Battista Strozzi, who wrote the fourth intermedio for the 1589 performance in Florence of ‘La Pellegrina’ (discussed below), wrote a detailed description of the role of court intermedi in his Prescrizioni per Intermedi. This text was unpublished, but probably intended for Grand Duke Ferdinando, and likely in connection with one of the Medici weddings.51 Strozzi’s observations about the changing role of intermedi and his prescriptions for how they should be staged are worth examining at length. He writes: Gli intermedij, s’io non m’inganno, furono già ritrovati per ricreatione e diletto degli spettatori, per commodità degli Historioni, e per salvare il verisimile del tempo dell’Attione in quella maniera che à più commoda occas[ione] si dirà […] mi pens’io, ch’egli habbiano queste conditioni. […] P[rim]a Grandezza, cioè cose Heroiche e divine degne di rappresentarsi à Principi, e non cose di picciol momento da Comedia private; Et è bene osservare che di 49 From the prologue of La Strega by A.F. Grazzini known as Il Lasca, written before 1566 and published in 1582, as translated in Povoledo, ‘Origins and Aspects’, p. 346. 50 Claude V. Palisca, The Florentine Camerata: Documentary Studies and Translations, Music Theory Translation Series (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 217. 51 Palisca, The Florentine Camerata, p. 212 suggest that the 1608 wedding is most likely.

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mano in mano ogni Interm[edi]o vadi a crescendo, ò almeno che l’ult[im]o sia maggiore e più bello che gli altri. [IV] Maraviglia. Cioè non cose ordinarie, e solite a vedersi: ma le impossibili agli huomini, ò in cosa che repugni al senso. Mostrirsi invenzione e giudizio, e perche la maraviglia nasce da novità non si faccia il fatto da altri, ò s’alteri, s’abbellisca e si megliori. Chiarezza. Sia tutto q[u]el che si rappresentata intelligibiile e senza fatica dello spettatore; e gli Idioti con ogni picciola dichiaratione l’intendino, ò ne cavino qualche costrutto. Diletto. Compiacciasene la vista e l’udito per la richezza degli habiti per la novità e bellezza delle macchine, per la destrezza, e grazia de rappresentanti. Per la dolcezza e varietà delle Musiche, massimo quando le parole son belle affetuose e s’intendo. Convenienza ò proporzione con la Comedia, e particolarm[ent]e nell’ultim[o] perche essendo in essa il fin lueto, disconuerebbe negli Intermedi un fin mesto. Connessione. Se un’Interm[edi]o non depende ò in qualche cosa non conviene con l’altro, manca d’ordine e d’unità, e senza quello e questa non puo esser bellezza[.] ma sfuggasi il fastidio con la varietà e co’l far chiaschedun Interm[edi]o differente dall’altro. Intermedi, if I do not deceive myself, were invented for the recreation and delight of spectators. But today the magnificence of princes, and particularly here in Florence, has so augmented and elevated intermedi that it shows that their goal is to stupefy every viewer with their grandness. Therefore, we can say that instead of serving the comedy, the comedy serves them, and they are now not an accessory but the principal thing. First, grandness—that is, heroic and divine matters worthy of being performed before princes, and not things of little importance for private comedies. It is good to observe that each intermedio be progressively bigger than the previous one, or at least that the last one be greater, and more beautiful than the others. Wonder. That is, not ordinary things usually seen, but things impossible to men or such as are believed to be so, in which one must keep an eye on the verisimilar,

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not to end up in the modest and cold or in something repugnant to the senses. Let invention and judgment be apparent, and, because wonder is born from novelty, avoid doing something done by others, or change it and embellish and improve it. Clarity. Everything that is represented ought to be intelligible to the spectator, and that without effort. Idiots ought to understand it with only the slightest explanation and ought to be able to draw some interpretation. Delight. The sight and hearing ought to be gratified by the richness of the costumes and the novelty and beauty of the machines, by the skills and elegance of the players, by the sweetness and variety of the music, most of all when the words are beautiful and affective and can be heard. Suitability or proportionateness to the play, and particularly at the end, because, since it [the play] has a happy ending, it would be inappropriate to have the intermedio end sadly. Connection. If one intermedio does not depend in some way on another, order and unity are absent, and without either there cannot be beauty. But boredom should be avoided through variety and by making each intermedio different from every other.52

Strozzi’s text presents both an explanation of the uses of intermedi and a critique of the way they were being staged. His key points, that intermedi should be grand and novel, that they should prompt wonder and delight, but that they should also be clear and easy to understand and while being varied, still maintain some connection to one another, seem aimed at finding a balance and a purpose for these new types of spectacles. Strozzi’s prescriptions are fascinating for their explanation of the expectation that intermedi would cause ‘wonder’, ‘delight’ and also convey clear ideas about heroism, divinity and princeliness. Another source from the same era is an anonymous treatise on the performance of ancient tragedy that has been attributed to Giovanni Bardi, who was the host of an intellectual group now called the Florentine Camerata. This treatise declares that the use of machines in this way is a new development: Non si usavano ne’cori, o nelle tragedie avanti ne dopo macchine, imperocche non avveniva come negl’intermedi nostri delle commedie, che per esser disgiunti dalla favola, altri fa venir macchine, e quel che più gli aggrada. Ben usarano alcuna fiata macchine annesse con la stessa tragedia, ove ne havea di quelle che 52 Strozzi as translated in Palisca, The Florentine Camerata, pp. 220–225.

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accomodate dietro alla sinistra porta della scena in un momento rivoltandosi conducevano Acheloo, o Aretusa. Machines were not used in the choruses or in the tragedies, whether before or after [the tragedy], for it did not happen as in our intermedi, into which, being detached from the story, someone else introduced machines and whatever else they relished. To be sure, they sometimes used machines belonging to the tragedy itself, for example those fitted behind the left door of the stage, which in a moment revolved and delivered Achelous, Aretusa.53

Bardi goes on to say that machines were used for flying gods or heroes, or to show a figure descending from or ascending to the heavens, and that the Athenians spent lavish sums upon their performances of tragedies. Bardi is clearly concerned with the correct use of machines, seeming to suggest that they should not be used in the performance of tragedies in the same way as they are used in the new intermedi. It is clear from these, and other accounts, that the intermedi had become a vehicle for elaborate staging and special effects, and that they played a role that was distinct from the plays into which they were inserted. Bardi’s connection of the staging to ancient Greece is also significant, as in Serlio’s treatise, he seems to be arguing that while there are antique sources that would justify the contemporary use of machinery on stage, that it does not support the way that they are being used in the intermedi. These two sources reveal that the staging of performances was diverging. On the one hand adherence and respect for antique sources remained important for plays (both ancient and modern), while on the other, the intermedi were beginning to fulfil a new role as part of sixteenth-century court culture that took an active interest in new technologies and visual effects. This is confirmed by a statement made by the Medici court chronicler, Camillo Rinuccini, in 1608 when he wrote that ‘l’azioni della favola non ricercava maraviglie di macchine, furono aggiunti gl’intermedi, per render lo spettacolo in tutto, e per tutto mirabile (the performance of the play did not seek the marvels of machines, these were added to the intermedi, to create a wondrous spectacle with every marvel)’.54 The combination of intermedi, which brought the sophisticated machinery of festival and pageantry on stage, with a continued intellectual interest in reviving classical modes of performance over the past century created the conditions for opera to be developed as a new 53 Bardi (attr.), as transcribed and translated in Palisca, The Florentine Camerata, pp. 150–151. 54 Camillo Rinuccini, Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de’ Serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de’ Medici, e Maria Maddalena arcidvchessa d’Avstria (Florence: Appresso i Giunti, 1608), http:// archive.org/details/dellefestefatten00rinu.

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art form, as will be discussed below. However, the intermedi are also important for this discussion because they were often based on pastoral themes, they included mythological characters arrayed in fantastical landscapes, and they demonstrated the ability of engineers and artists to simulate natural phenomena like thunder, snow, waves, and lightning. This increased emphasis on the intermedio led to an evolution of the landscape or pastoral set, distinct from Serlio’s satyric scene. The best surviving examples of which were created for the Medici in Florence.

Gardens of the Gods: The Medici Intermedi in 1589 After the Medici were created Grand Dukes of Tuscany in 1569, they consolidated their position with a series of dynastic marriages that linked them to the French and Spanish royal families. These weddings were celebrated with days of entertainments, including equestrian ballets, tournaments, mock sea battles, and the performance of a play, or commedia, which was punctuated with intermedi. The celebrations for the wedding between Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici and the French princess Christine de Lorraine, (niece of King Henri III), represent a high point of performance in Florence under the Medici. The intermedi for the play ‘La Pellegrina’ (1589) were highly regarded at the time of their performance and make an important case study, as we have a variety of surviving images of each intermedio (from sketches to finished engravings for wider distribution), along with a range of written descriptions including a detailed official account written by Bastiano de’Rossi. The celebrations involved more than a month of pageantry that followed Christine’s progress through the main Tuscan cities ending in a triumphal entry into Florence.55 An account of the play and the intermedi is given in Bastiano de’Rossi’s Descrizione dell’apparato e degl’intermedi. Fatti per la Commedia Rappresentata in Firenze.56 De’Rossi collaborated with the author of the intermedi Giovanni de’Bardi, and his description can be considered to represent the intermedi as Bardi wished them to be understood. The celebrations reached a climax with the performance of Girolamo Bargagli’s comedy La Pellegrina. 55 A major text on the event is James M. Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996). However, other important texts include alternative readings of the theatre and stage design: see Anna Maria Testaverde, ‘L’avventura del teatro granducale degli Uffizi (1586-1637)’, Drammaturgia, 12 (2016), pp. 56–62; Mario Fabbri, Elvira Garbero Zorzi, and Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, Il Luogo Teatrale a Firenze, Brunelleschi, Vasari, Buontalenti, Parigi : Firenze, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Museo Mediceo 31 Reggio/31 Ottobre 1975 (Milan: Electa Editrice, 1975), pp. 110–116; and Blumenthal, Theatre Art, pp. 7–12. 56 Bastiano de’ Rossi, Descrizione dell’ apparato e degl’ intermedi fatti per la commedia rappresentata in Firenze nelle nozze de Don Ferdinando Medici e Cristina di Loreno Gran Duchi di Toscana (Florence: Anton Padovani, 1589).

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Between the acts of the play were inserted six intermedi, masterminded by Bardi, with poetry by Ottavio Rinuccini and music by composers who included Jacopo Peri, Cristofano Malvezzi and Luca Marenzio. The costumes, scenes, and special effects were designed by Bernardo Buontalenti (c. 1531–1608). Buontalenti was an architect and engineer who worked for the Medici dukes for over 40 years. He had been a pupil of Giorgio Vasari and assisted him on the design for the celebrations of the wedding of Francesco de’ Medici in 1565.57 He is an important figure for understanding the development of stage design and technology, and his work as an engineer meant that he was at the forefront of new developments in technologies that could control and reshape the natural environment. In 1589 Buontalenti designed seven stage sets in one-point perspective for the performance of the comedy and the accompanying intermedi. There are no extant representations of the set for La Pellegrina, but we know it portrayed a perspective view of the city of Pisa, and was probably similar to a perspective street scene used for a different comedy that was performed in the same year.58 The urban setting of the play was contrasted by the pastoral settings of the intermedi.59 Each intermedio had a different locale representing the abodes of the pagan gods, satyrs and nymphs, shepherds and shepherdesses, furies and cupids, and other mythological characters. The different scenes were intended to represent the four realms of the universe: sea, heaven, hell and earth. They represent a shift in the way nature was depicted on stage from earlier in the sixteenth century. Instead of a pastoral or woodland scene inhabited primarily by satyrs, shepherds and nymphs, nature became a realm that was the domain of the Olympian deities and personifications. Shepherds and nymphs still appeared, as in the final intermedio, but only as an audience for the deities. Nature was presented as ‘other’, a mystical and magical place, while the play, with its earthlier themes typical of a comedy, unfolded within a familiar urban setting of a nearby city.60 The prologue (of which no pictorial record remains) featured a Doric Temple and a colonnade. The first intermedio featured a scene entirely composed of clouds. A drawing by Buontalenti and an engraving by Agostino Carracci both show clouds arranged in one-point perspective with female figures representing the Sirens and the Planets standing upon them, while in the centre the figure of Harmony is seated 57 Vasari wrote a detailed description of the event including details about stage technology and design, Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston de Vere, vol. 1, (London: David Campbell Publishers, 1996), pp. 962–970. 58 Saslow, Medici Wedding, pp. 244–245. 59 These survive in preparatory drawings made by Buontalenti. The drawings securely attributed to Buontalenti for intermedi 1–3 and 6 are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Others are by assistants including Andrea Boscoli. 60 Girolamo Bargagli, La Pellegrina (Siena: Luca Bonetti, 1589), http://archive.org/details/ image30TeatroOpal.

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Figure. 2.3  Epifanio d’Alfiano (after Bernardo Buontalenti), ‘Design for second intermedio from La Pellegrina’ (Uffizi Theatre, Florence, 1589). 23.8 x 34.4cm. Engraving. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (np. 31.72.5(14).

on a throne amongst the clouds. The final scene mirrored the first, presumably to visually bracket the performance. Buontalenti’s drawing differs in the details from the engraving made after the performance by Epifanio d’Alfiano, but both show a scene composed in one-point perspective with figures of shepherds and nymphs standing on the ground. On clouds above are seated the Muses, Jupiter, Apollo and Bacchus accompanied by personifications of Rhythm and Harmony. The engraving also shows the three graces who were added to the final performance. The second intermedio represented Mount Parnassus with two fictive grottoes. There is a significant difference between the drawing by Buontalenti, which was a preparatory study produced prior to the performance and the engraving after the performance by Epifanio d’Alfiano (Fig. 2.3).61 Buontalenti’s drawing depicts a 61 The drawing is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, inv (E.1187-1931). Saslow insists that the drawing must be associated with the 1589 performance, stating that it was ‘erroneously identified by Strong (followed by Blumenthal) as a design for Caccini’s Il rapimento di Cefalo of 1600’ (Medici Wedding, pp. 209–211). It had earlier been identified with the 1589 production by A. M. Nagler, Theatre Festivals of the Medici 1539-1637 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 81 and Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà and Anna Maria Petrioli Tofani, Feste a Apparati Medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1969), p. 81. Blumenthal acknowledges these disputes and points out that it does not match well

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Figure 2.4  Agostino Carracci after Bernardo Buontalenti, ‘Design for third intermedio from La Pellegrina’ (Uffizi Theatre, Florence, 1589). 24.4 x 34.1cm, etching and engraving. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926, Acc No. 26.70.4(33).

mountainous landscape in which sparsely vegetated rocky outcrops frame Mount Parnassus. On top of the mountain is Pegasus surrounded by Apollo and several Muses, and at its base is a grotto containing a personification of the spring of Hippocrene surrounded by eighteen Muses. In the engraving Pegasus is absent, replaced by the figure of Apollo playing a lira di braccio (a type of viol), the mountain is more stylized, and the rocky outcrops have been replaced by elegant bowers with latticework and female herms, two of which contain grottoes with musicians. These grottoes, bowers, fruit trees and statues distinguish this set as something closer to a garden than the pastoral or woodland scenes of Serlio’s scena satirica and other earlier scenes of nature. The third intermedio depicts Apollo’s combat with the Python on the island of Delphi (Fig. 2.4). The set is again composed in one-point perspective with the representation of woodland reminiscent of Serlio’s satyric set, with the stage space flanked by trees diminishing towards the vanishing point. In the centre is the dragon, and Apollo descends from above. with Alfiano’s engraving (Theatre Art, p. 29, n. 2). The difference is striking, especially when compared to the relative similarity between Buontalenti’s other drawings and the engraved versions, but it is not unusual for preliminary designs to differ greatly from the final design or the engraved version.

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This shift of emphasis from pastoral and satirical settings to mythological ones reflects the use of these festivities as political tools designed to glorify the Medici family in the eyes of their subjects and the nobility and royalty of Europe. Their political importance is indicated by the fact that that Grand Duke Ferdinando twice postponed his son’s wedding in 1608 to allow more time for the development of the festivities. It is unsurprising that bawdy and rustic satyrs critiquing the elite of society would not have been permitted on the stage.62 Instead, nature increasingly became a setting where humans, be they characters on stage or members of the audience, could glimpse the ideal landscapes of myth and be awestruck by visual wonders of flying gods. This change in the way nature was represented on stage also reflected a shift in the way that nature was experienced in the Medici gardens. The gardens of the Medici were no longer considered primarily as sites for humanistic retreat, as they had been in the time of Cosimo de’ Medici and his son Lorenzo the Magnificent.63 Instead they were transformed into stages on which the Medici would perform. As court architect and engineer Buontalenti was also closely involved in the construction and renovation of gardens for the Medici in and around Florence including the design of the villas at Pratolino, Artiminio and Poggio-Francoli. He also carried out work in the Boboli gardens including the creation of the Grotta Grande between 1583 and 1593. The similarities between these spaces and those conjured on stage are striking. Nature and the garden became sites of spectacle, fantasy and adventure. As on stage, new machinery was used to create structures at Pratolino and the Boboli gardens designed to amaze visitors. Several of the scenes of nature staged for the intermedi are similar to garden features designed under the instruction of Buontalenti. The second intermedio representing Mount Parnassus recalls Buontalenti’s Mount of Parnassus, now destroyed but recorded in a drawing by Giovanni Guerra (Fig. 2.5), at Pratolino three years earlier in 1586.64 The two mountains, at least as depicted in the drawings recording them, are very similar. Both have Apollo and the muses arrayed upon them performing music; on stage these were live musicians, and in the garden, they were automata. This similarity demonstrates that the earliest ‘garden’ sets were designed along similar lines to gardens. This is unsurprising considering that the development of the intermedi and Buontalenti’s work on the Medici gardens coincided with the rediscovery of important treatises on mechanics, key amongst them Heron Alexandrinus’s work on Automata (translated into Italian in 1589) and 62 Arthur Blumenthal, ‘Giulio Parigi’s Stage Designs: Florence and the Early Baroque Spectacle’ (PhD, New York, New York University, 1984), p. 127. 63 David R. Coff in, The Italian Garden, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1972), pp. 9–21. 64 Louis Cellauro, ‘Iconographical Aspects of the Renaissance Villa and Garden: Mount Parnassus, Pegasus and the Muses’, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 2003, p. 47.

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Figure 2.5  Giovanni Guerra, ‘Theatro per comodo gli spettatori’, 1604. Dimensions unknown. Drawing. The Albertina Museum, Vienna.

his Pneumatica (translated into Italian in 1592).65 These treatises offered technical instructions, which were equally applicable on stage and in the garden, and they also theorised on the importance of creating wonder and surprise in viewers that resonated with the interests of those designing for the stage. These ideas clearly interested Buontalenti as he wrote in the margins of a copy of Domenico Mellini’s scientific text on the idea of perpetual motion, Discorso nel quale si prova contra l’oppenione di alcuni non si potere artifizialmente ritrovare, ne dare ad un corpo composto di materia corrottibile, un movimento, che sia continuo et perpetuo (1583), the phrase ‘L’ARTE VINSE LA NATURA’ (art supersedes or conquers nature).66 He wrote this against a passage in which Mellini made the observation that ‘although Aristotle said the Art makes and leads to perfection some things, which are not made and reduced to perfection by Nature, of which Art is imitator, 65 Matteo Valleriani, ‘From Condensation to Compression: How Renaissance Italian Engineers Approached Hero’s Pneumatics’, in Übersetzung Und Transformation, ed. H Böhme, C Rapp, and W. Rösler (Berlin, 2007), p. 342. 66 Amelio Fara, Bernardo Buontalenti: l’architettura, la guerra e l’elemento geometrico, (Genova: Sagep 1988), pp. 206–207 and Matteo Valleriani, Galileo Engineer (Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2010), pp. 201–202. The copy is in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Di Firenze, Palat. Serie Targioni 86.

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[however] as the same Philosopher said in the same passage of the second book of the physics, Art is rather daughter of Nature, […]; therefore it is not absolutely so, that Art can do more than Nature and is more than that’.67 That such ideas were part of the thinking of engineers like Buontalenti suggests that the intermedi were also becoming a medium for showcasing scenic, engineering and mechanical marvels. This use of spectacle and the wonder that designers aimed to induce in the audience was not just about entertainment or princely propaganda, it also engaged with current debates surrounding the role of art in relation to nature. These debates (taken up in more detail below in Chapter 4) swirled around much of visual culture, as they did around the performance of music, and the writing of poetry. Artists and theorists alike debated whether it was the role of art to faithfully imitate nature, or whether it was capable of expressing ideas that drew on the inner world of the creator, types of fantasies and things not part of the earthly world. It is in this environment that the first performances of a new, experimental, genre of musical-dramatic performance were staged, and so from the very beginning, opera was closely aligned with elaborate staging and special effects.

The Rise of Opera The composers, poets and patrons who drove the development of opera in Florence around 1600 wanted to create a new form of music and new performative techniques capable of moving the passions.68 The key difference between opera and earlier types of musical performance was the inclusion of solo singing by the performers. Solo singing accompanied by instruments was thought to be a style of performance practised in classical Greece. This style of performance was also believed to more powerfully move the emotions of audiences than earlier forms of music and dramatic performance. The texts that accompany the published versions of the works all 67 Mellini as translated in Valleriani, Galileo Engineer, p. 201. 68 On the birth of opera see Nino Pirrotta, ‘Studies in the Music of Renaissance Theatre’, in Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, ed. Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 217–234. Whether it was created in Florence is contested, see Piero Weiss, Opera: A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 8, 19. When opera came into being a myriad of different names were used, the Italian word opera was almost never used on a title page of musical drama until well into the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, in earlier periods the term ‘opera’ was used colloquially for ‘musical drama’ and in this sense occurs in diary accounts and in critical writings about opera. But normally in Italian the word opera simply means a ‘work’ and was attached to numerous written plays (as well as general books and treatises) in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Marita P. McClymonds and Daniel Heartz give the example of Francesco Andreini’s play L’ingannata Proserpina (1611) which was described in its dedication as opera rappresentativa, e scenica, a work intended to be read and staged (‘Opera Seria’, in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, 2010, p. 417).

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emphasize this point. For example, Alessandro Guidotti in his preface to Emilio de’Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di anima, et di corpo (performed around 1600 in Rome) described it as Fatte a somiglianza di quello stile, col quale si dice che gli antichi Greci e Romani nelle scene e teatri loro solevano a diversi affetti muovere gli spettatori […] Volendo rappresentare in palco la presente opera, o vero altre simili, e seguire gli avvertimenti del signor Emilio de Cavalieri, e far sì che questa sorte di musica da lui rinovata commova a diversi affetti, come a pietà et a giubilo, a pianto et a riso, et ad altri simili, come s’è con effetto veduto in una scena moderna della Dispersazione di Fileno, da lui composta: nella quale recitando la signora Vittoria Archilei, la cui eccellenza nella musica a tutti è notissima, mosse meravigliosamente a lacrime, in quel mentre che la persona di Fileno movèa a riso. Made in a style similar to that with which it is said the ancient Greeks and Romans were wont to move the spectators to diverse affections in their scenes and their theatres […] [I]f one wishes to cause this sort of music […] to elicit diverse affections, such as pity and joy, tears and laughter, and others like them, as was effectively shown in La dispersazione di Fileno, a modern scene composed by him, in which Signora Vittoria Archilei, whose excellence in music is well known to all, recited and moved everyone to tears while the character of Fileno moved [everyone] to laughter.69

In the same year the composer Jacopo Peri wrote in his preface to L’Euridice—performed in Florence in 1600 and usually regarded as the first publicly performed opera—that the new style was intended to imitate and enhance the natural spoken voice in order to better convey the emotion of the text: Conobbi, parimente, nel nostro parlare alcune voci intonarsi in guisa che vi si può fondare armonia, e nel corso della favella passarsi per altre molte che non si intuonano, finchè si ritorni ad altra capace di movimento di nuova consonanza. Et avuto riguardo a que’ modi et a quegli accenti che nel dolerci, nel rallegrarci et in somiglianti cose ci servono, feci muovere il basso al tempo di quegli, or più or meno, secondo gli affetti, e lo tenni fermo tra le false e tra le buone proporzioni, finchè, scorrendo per varie note, la voce di chi ragiona arrivasse a quello che nel parlare ordinario intonandosi, apre la via a nuovo concento.70 69 Guidotti (as translated by Weiss, Opera, p. 20) from the libretto of Emilio de’Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di anima, et di corpo published in 1600. The work was performed in Rome and, as Weiss notes, Guidotti is at pains to claim precedence in the establishment of wholly sung drama (over those working in Florence). 70 Jacopo Peri, ‘Dedicatoria e prefazione a L’Euridice (1600), reprinted in Angelo Solerti, Le Origini del Melodramma: Testimonianze Dei Contemporanei (Turin: Bocca, 1903), pp. 46–47.

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I recognized, as well, that in our speech certain words are intoned in such a manner that they allow harmony to be founded on them, passing, in the course of speech, through many others that are not intoned, returning eventually to another [word] capable of a new consonant movement. And having regard to those modes and those accents that serve us in lamenting, rejoicing, and similar moments, I set the bass moving at the same pace as those accents, now faster, now slower, according to the affections, and held it through dissonances and consonances until, running through various notes, the voice of the speaker arrived at ordinary speech, opening the way to a new consort.71

It is clear that these first operas were regarded as one the most emotionally affective forms of performance. But what was the role of sets in these early operas? Jacopo Peri’s first opera Dafne (performed in 1597–1598) had minimal staging, which is hardly surprising given that it was performed in a small room. It was probably regarded as too new and experimental to warrant the expense of set designs and machinery. It is also possible that its status in regard to the staging required was unclear, did opera require staging similar to plays or to intermedi? On the one hand opera was regarded as a revival of the way that classical plays had traditionally been performed, perhaps meaning the staging should conform to the typical single set used for plays. On the other, its inclusion of music and singing aligned it with the intermedi, and their use of more elaborate, varied staging and effects. The first performance of L’Euridice in 1600 was quite different. The music for this was by Jacopo Peri with the libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It formed part of the celebrations held in Florence to mark the marriage of Maria de’Medici to King Henry IV of France and as such was fully staged with sets, stage machinery and complex special effects. Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger wrote a detailed description: Il magnifico apparato in degna sala dopo le cortine fra l’aspetto di un grand’arco, e di due nicchie da fianchi suoi, entro le quali la Poesia, e la Pittura con bell’avviso dello inventore vi erano per istatue; mostrava selve vaghissimo, e rilevate, e dipinte, accomodatevi con bel disegno: e per lumi ben dispostivi piene di una luce come di giorno. Ma dovendosi poscia vederlo inferno, quelle mutatesi, orridi massi si scorsero, e spaventevoli, che parean veri, sovra de’quali sfrondati li sterpi, e livide l’erbe apparivano. È la più ad entro per la rottura d’una gran rupe la Città di Dite ardere vi si conobbe vibrando lingue di fiamme per le apertura dell sue torri, l’aere d’intorno avvampandovi di un colore come di rame. Dopo questa mutazionsola la scena di prima tornò, ne più si vide mutare, il tutto compiutamente passando 71 Jacopo Peri as translated in Weiss, Opera, p. 15.

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con onore di chi à condurla in qualunque parte vi intervenne; e con piacer vario, e di mente, e di senso in che vi fu spettatore. In a worthy hall, beyond the curtains within a great arch with niches on either side (wherein statues, in a pretty conceit of the artist, represented Poetry and Painting), the magnificent apparatus showed the most enchanting woods both in relief and painted, placed in a well-composed arrangement and lit as if by daylight by means of aptly placed lights within. But as Hades was to be represented next, the woods were seen to turn into hideous and fearsome rocks which seemed real, over which twigs appeared leafless and the grass livid. And there, deeper inside, through a fissure in a large cliff was seen the city of Pluto all ablaze, tongues of flame flaring from the openings of its towers, the air all around turned to a coppery colour. After this change the first scene returned, nor were there any further changes. Everything took place with the greatest perfection and to the honour of all who had any share in its direction; and it gave a variety of pleasures both for the mind and for the senses to those who witnessed it.72

This description makes it clear that a decision had been made that the staging of L’Euridice should be more in the tradition of the intermedi. Its status as part of the wedding festivities explains the staging; this performance was only one of many that employed macchine and special effects designed by Buontalenti and his team for the wedding celebrations. Other examples include the elaborate banquet that included oaks with spreading branches at the head of the tables, covered in white leaves and silver acorns, and a feast where the food was made to resemble a hunting scene in the snow.73 Several pages of the description are dedicated to a blow-by-blow description of the banquet and the many wondrous visual effects included as part of the entertainment. Similarly, in Buonarroti’s description of L’Euridice his praise of the music and the singing is dealt with in just a few short lines, after which he turns to his much more detailed description of the visual aspect of the performance with the implication that the scenery was one of the most engaging things about the performance. The focus on the scenery in the official descriptions recalls the debates about whether audiences were preoccupied with the visual splendour of opera at the 72 Buonarroti on L’Euridice, as translated by Weiss, Opera, 2002, pp. 11-12. The full description in Italian can be found in Michelangelo Buonarroti, Il Giudizio Di Paride Fauola, (Florence: Sermartelli, 1608), https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_24SW0PS_w1QC, np (pp. 20–21). 73 Eravi nel primo servito tra le dissimulate vivande, che parevano altri animali da quelli, che erana, e vivi; una confettura affinata tutta di statue, e sembianze d’architettura. Animali in più gruppi sparsi, e caccie, e uccellagioni diverse, con molti huomini, a varie operazioni intenti, vi furono. Buonarroti, Descrizione delle Felicissime Nozze, np (pp. 19, 20).

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expense of the music and the poetry. Although this issue is not discussed directly in Buonarroti’s text, the presence of the statues of poetry and painting flanking the stage suggests that perhaps the role of set design in the theatre was being considered by designers. These figures may have been intended to evoke the idea of ‘ut picture poesis’ (‘as is painting so is poetry’) from Horace’s Ars Poetica. This text had grown in popularity during the sixteenth century as a means to discuss whether painting could express meaning as effectively as poetry, and whether it could elicit similar emotional responses. It provided a classical basis for arguing that painting was one of the liberal arts. Poets and painters alike, the Renaissance writers on art argued, had the skills to both imitate nature and to exercise inventive imagination.74 The inclusion of personifications of Poetry and Painting as part of the decorations for this performance could indicate that a similar debate was happening in regard to the visual settings for poetry that was performed as part of opera. Indeed, Buonarroti’s description emphasizes the way that the change in scenery elicited a change in the mood from ‘enchanting woods’ to ‘hideous and fearsome rocks’ and suggests that designers and observers alike were recognizing that sets played a crucial role in transforming opera into an immersive environment that transcended sound or text to appeal to all the senses simultaneously. Claude-François Ménestrier in his treatise Des représentations en musique (1681) recalls the introduction of operas to Venice by Claudio Monteverdi in the first decades of the seventeenth century: He introduced there [in Venice] those sorts of representations that have become so well known for their magnificent stage settings and costume, their refined singing, their harmonious instrumental accompaniment, and the erudite music of Monteverdi himself […]. Such dramatic entertainments must be given all these ornaments if they are to be well received; for if they boast nothing other than beauty of composition, people consider them just like any other piece of vocal music sung by several choruses or in recitative. But when all the decorative elements of a dramatic presentation were added, such as scene changes, stage machines, costumes, and orchestra […] these entertainments were received with great applause throughout Italy.75

Ménestrier’s remarks make it clear that the ability to create convincing visual worlds on stage was a necessary ingredient for the creation of opera as a distinct 74 Francis Ames-Lewis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 163–164. 75 Claude-François Menestrier, Des representations en musique anciennes et modernes (Paris, Chez R. Guignard, 1681), pp. 164–165. As translated in Viale Ferrero, ‘Stage and Set’, p. 6.

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musical and theatrical genre in the seventeenth century. The sets were a crucial part of the whole. His description fits neatly with the later idea of the bel composto (typically attributed to Bernini via his biographer Filippo Baldinucci) or the beautiful whole, in which multiple media (typically architecture, painting and sculpture) are combined to create, an integrated environment, which elicits a more intense sensory response from the viewer.76 Although in the seventeenth century this is a term that is applied to art it is nevertheless a useful one for explaining the importance of stage sets and machinery in seventeenth-century opera.77 The sets and machinery were necessary to enhance the audience’s sense of being immersed in the place where the action of the narrative was taking place, which would in turn create an emotional response that was intensif ied or more ‘real’. Very few visual records of sets survive from this period, however, descriptions from court chroniclers like Buonarroti demonstrate that the powerful emotional music and poetry of opera, with its themes of love and loss, were intimately associated with landscape settings from the beginning. Over the course of the seventeenth century opera would rapidly become one of the most popular forms of cultural expression, moving from an intellectual endeavour in the Florentine Camerata under the sponsorship of the Medici, to the other courts of Italy and then taken up as a form of entertainment for a paying public, particularly in Venice. Although opera tends to be discussed primarily in terms of the history and culture of music, in reality, the opera stage generated an immersive environment that transcended music to appeal to all the senses simultaneously.

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Testaverde, Anna Maria, ‘L’avventura del teatro granducale degli Uffizi (1586-1637)’. Drammaturgia, 2016, 45–69, Valleriani, Matteo. ‘From Condensation to Compression: How Renaissance Italian Engineers Approached Hero’s Pneumatics’. In Übersetzung Und Transformation, edited by H Böhme, C Rapp, and W. Rösler, 333–354. Berlin, 2007. Valleriani, Matteo. Galileo Engineer. Springer Science & Business Media, 2010. Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Translated by Gaston de Vere. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Everymans Library. London: David Campbell Publishers, 1996. Verdon, Timothy. ‘Donatello and the Theater: Stage Space and Projected Space in the San Lorenzo Pulpits’. Artibus et Historiae 7 (1986): 29–55. Viale Ferrero, Mercedes. Le Scenografia Dalle Origini al 1936. Vol. 3. Storia Del Teatro Regio Di Torino. Turin: Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, 1980. Vitruvius. The Ten Books on Architecture. Translated by Morris Hicky Morgan. 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications, 1960. Waddington, Raymond B. Aretino’s Satyr: Sexuality, Satire and Self-Projection in SixteenthCentury Literature and Art. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Weigert, Laura. ‘’Theatricality’ in Tapestries and Mystery Plays and Its Afterlife in Painting’. Art History 33 (2010): 225–235. Weiss, Piero. Opera: A History in Documents. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Zambotti, Bernardino. Diario Ferrarese dall’anno 1476 sino al 1504. Edited by Giuseppe Pardi. (Bernardino Zambotti). Bologna: Niccolo Zanichelli, 1937. Zorzi, Ludovico. Il teatro e la città: saggi sulla scena italiana. Saggi. Turin: Einaudi, 1977.

3.

The (Singing) Figure in the Landscape Abstract This chapter looks at how the representation of nature on stage fits within the broader visual culture of landscape painting and drawing in early modern Italy. This, and the following chapter treat set design and special effects as conceptual inventions, capable of persuasion, which responded to current aesthetic ideas and were driven by the social and cultural contexts of their own time and place. In this chapter three case studies of artists and their milieu examine the connections between landscape on stage and in broader visual culture. The convergences and divergences between painting, drawing and the stage are examined in relation to Giulio and Alfonso Parigi’s work for the Medici in Florence. The connections between landscape painting, sets and the new interest in natural philosophy and close observation of nature is examined in relation to the Barberini court in Rome. The emotional and narrative meaning of landscape in opera is examined in relation to Ludovico Burnacini’s sets for the Hapsburg court in Vienna. Keywords: Landscape painting, Set Design, Engineers, Barberini, Emotion, Giulio Parigi, Alfonso Parigi, Ludovico Burnacini

‘[P]er lo terzo intermedio, la scena divenne un bel giardino pien d’ogni sorte di delizie, alberi co’pomi d’oro, spalliere di variate verzure, muri con vasi pieni di fiori, grottesche di spugne stellanti, fonti in mezzo de prati, e simili delizie vincitrici de’sensi. In testa sotto una bellissima cerchiata di piante Verdi, comparve Calipso Regina dell’Isola Ogigia’ For the third intermedio, the scene became a beautiful garden filled with every kind of delight, trees with golden apples, a variety of espaliered plants, walls with vases full of flowers, grottoes decorated with colourful coral and sponges, fountains set in the centre of the fields, and similar delights that overwhelmed the senses. At the top of the garden, under a beautiful bower of greenery appeared Calypso, Queen of the Island of Ogygia.1 1 Camillo Rinuccini, Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de’ Serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de’ Medici, e Maria Maddalena arcidvchessa d’Avstria (Firenze: Appresso i Giunti, 1608), http:// archive.org/details/dellefestefatten00rinu, pp. 43–44.

Grant, K., Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463721530_ch03

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Camillo Rinuccini, Descrizione della Feste fatte nelle Reali Nozze de’Serenissima Principi di Toscana D. Cosimo de’Medici, e Maria Maddalena Arciduchessa d’Austria, 1608.

Scenography was key to intensifying the emotional experience of the music and action in opera. As opera increased in popularity, set design and stage machinery became a regular part of the broader visual culture. No longer were such spectacles occasional special events for ducal marriages, from the earlyto-mid decades of the seventeenth century each carnival season in cities like Venice and Rome would see several new operas, each with their own array of new sets and machines. Yet, twentieth-century scholarship on opera often tended to be dismissive of set design, regarding it as formulaic, unimportant, and a distraction from the serious poetry and the sublime music. This attitude has largely shifted in recent decades. The musicologist Daniel Heartz in his study of eighteenth-century opera acknowledges that his discipline has traditionally paid far too little attention to the visual aspect of performance, despite its obvious importance to poets and composers.2 Likewise, scholars such as Mercedes Viale Ferrero, over many decades, have argued for its importance as part of visual culture, and as an integral part of the cultural production and experience of opera.3 Still, scenography remains on the margins of musicology, art and architectural history and theatre studies due to the challenges of understanding this ephemeral art form. 4 The lack of extant sets surviving from the seventeenth century means we must reconstruct their appearance from drawings made as part of the design process and from engravings made after to commemorate the sets. These are typically monochrome and two-dimensional whereas in reality sets were vividly coloured and three-dimensional. Much of the serious scholarship that has been done has concentrated on the progression of visual technologies or as a focus on a particularly prolific and prominent individual or family, such as the studies on Giacomo Torelli 2 Daniel Heartz, From Garrick to Gluck: Essays on Opera in the Age of Enlightenment, 2004, (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2004), p. 15. 3 Mercedes Viale Ferrero, ‘Stage and Set’, in Opera on Stage (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press), 2002, pp. 1–124 4 Some recent studies that focus on scenography and extend the critical possibilities of this f ield include: Javier Berzal de Dios, Visual Experiences in Cinquecento Theatrical Spaces (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019); Alessandra Buccheri, The Spectacle of Clouds (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); Jaime Cuenca, ‘The Princely Viewpoint: Perspectival Scenery and its Political Meaning in Early Modern Courts’, in Perspective As Practice: Renaissance Cultures of Optics, ed. Sven Dupré (Turnhout, BELGIUM: Brepols Publishers, 2019), pp. 149–172; Bruno Forment, ‘Trimming Scenic Invention: Oblique Perspective as Poetics of Discipline’, Music in Art, 34, no. 1/2 (2009): pp. 31–43.

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or the Bibiena family.5 However, even in these studies the line of authorship can be difficult to trace, because these productions engaged a range of diverse creators; it is rare to be able to attribute the visual aspects of an opera to a single artist. The artists engaged in planning, designing and executing sets and designing machinery also came from a broad range of backgrounds. For example, Michel Plaisance has uncovered records that show that in Florence in the 1540s the development of the ‘trionfi’ (a type of carnival procession) were undertaken by a specialized group that included poets (Antonfrancesco Grazzini, Giovan Battista Strozzi, Benedetto Varchi), painters (Agnolo Bronzino), architects (Niccolò dei Pericoli called il Tribolo, Giovan Battista del Tasso), sculptors (Benvenuto Cellini) and musicians (Francesco Corteccia, Giovanbattista Rampollini detto lo Squitti).6 Plaisance suggests that this group of writers, artists and musicians formed a type of workshop for the development of new theatrical techniques and innovations in performance. From the later sixteenth century through to at least the mid-seventeenth century we typically find that most of the artists at a court were engaged in the staging of opera and other theatrical productions. Therefore, not only is the idea of sets as the invention of a singular creator not particularly useful, nor are the traditional divisions of art into painting, sculpture, architecture and so on. As performances became increasingly elaborate and involved many different stage sets and machines, engineers like Bernardo Buontalenti and later Giacomo Torelli in Venice, were commonly put in charge of the visual aspects of a performance, and they then employed architects and painters to complete the sets. Engineers and architects in particular were often working on landscaping projects, architectural projects in the city, at villas and on other large-scale engineering works alongside their work for the theatre. This coordination role was also taken up by artists, as Bernini did in Rome. As such, it is important to look at set design and stage machinery as part of the rich visual culture of the seventeenth century, linked with the other arts, but also as a domain of its own with specific expectations and constraints. These challenges in the research and understanding of sets means that we also lack a robust conceptual framework within which to understand the role that sets and special effects played within visual culture. The interdisciplinary work required to understand sets means that there have been few comparative studies that have looked at sets in relation to broader trends and developments at this time. The topic of landscape and the representation of nature is an ideal topic 5 For example, Deanna Lenzi, ‘La Dinastia Dei Galli Bibiena’, in I Bibiena: Una Famiglia Europea, ed. Deanna Lenzi et al. (Venice: Marsilio Editore, 2000), pp. 19–36; Francesco Milesi, Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione Scenica nell’Europa Barocca (Fano: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, 2000). 6 Michel Plaisance and Nicole Carew-Reid, Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Essays and Studies, 2008, p. 112.

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for such a study. As already outlined the narratives of theatrical performances frequently called for landscape settings. In the seventeenth century these included palaces, piazza, mountains, seascapes, gardens, prisons and more. At the same time that these scenes of nature were being created on stage the genre of landscape painting was taking on a new status, and the design of physical landscapes, gardens, also changed. Can a closer comparison between the representation of nature in painting, drawing, gardens and sets reveal similarities? Do Paul Bril’s rugged mountains, or Claude Lorrain’s broad plains and soft golden sunlight have a reflection on the stage? Do sets present the same vision of nature and explore similar ideas about human connections with landscape as painting? Do set designs reflect trends in garden design as it evolved over the course of the century? These questions can be answered by examining a number of overlapping themes in relation to the stylistic development of scenography for court opera as it relates to our understanding of the representation of nature. The first of these is illustrated by looking at the milieu of Giulio and Alfonso Parigi in Florence, which demonstrates a connection between the emergence of the genre of landscape painting and the vision of natural landscapes presented on stage. The second is to examine how the mode of viewing a set was different to that of paintings, drawings and engravings as is demonstrated by the painters and engineers creating productions for the Barberini court in Rome. The third is to investigate the symbolism of settings produced later in the century by Ludovico Burnacini in Vienna, where, as the number of sets used in a single performance rapidly increased, the idea of the type set emerged, and certain places came to symbolize specific emotional states.

Unity, Verisimilitude and the Landscape on Stage While stage sets were expected to contribute to the ‘beautiful whole’ of the opera, they were also required to comply with Aristotelian unities of time and space.7 These ‘unities’ were of vital importance to many poets and critics at the time, including those involved with the creation of opera. They required that a text should contain just one coherent action, to which all events in the play contribute; and this action should take place in a single f ictive day. With the advent of stage design in the sixteenth century was added the requirement that the events should unfold in a single setting. We see on frontispieces for plays from this period a statement about the time and space in which the events took place; 7 Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, trans. Kevin Eales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 128.

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for example, in Grazzini’s aforementioned La Strega (1566) the scene is described as ‘È Firenze’ with different parts of the play set in a series of different houses, and that ‘la favola comincia di buon’hora, e finisce all fine del giorno’.8 The three unities (place, time, action), if complied with, were believed to ensure that the work would have the appearance of being ‘real’, or true to nature, in short that it would have verisimilitude. In the first decades of the seventeenth century, the unities led to some restrictions being imposed on the settings for early opera. ‘Verisimilitude’ was problematic for the creators of opera because of the fact that having characters sing instead of speak was considered inherently unrealistic. These concerns placed a new importance on the pastoral, as it was believed that the synthesis of music and drama could be better essayed in that genre where the relationship between the two art forms seemed more natural, intimate and spontaneous. It was regarded as more appropriate for characters from myth to express themselves in song. Similarly, the shepherds of Arcadia were believed to have roamed the fields singing of their love. In his Trattato della musica scenica (1633–1635) Giovanni Battista Doni wrote that the pastoral appealed because: Quanto poi alla Pastorale (che tiene oggi il luogo del Drama satirico de’Greci […] ) io direi, che siccome questa specie suole avere più del poetico, e astratto, che le Commedie, e le Rappresentazioni, e si usa comporle quasi sempre di soggetti amorosi, e con stile fiorito, e soave (come si vede nell’Aminta, e nel Pastorfido) così anco se gli potesse concedere di avere la melodia in tutte le sue parti, massime perchè vi si rappresentano Deità, Ninfe, e Pastori di quell’antichissimo secolo, nel quale la Musica era naturale, e la favella quasi poetica. As for the Pastoral (which today holds the place of Greek satirical drama […] ) I would say that, since this genre is more poetic, and abstract, than Comedies, and Dramas, and because it is customary to compose them with subjects based on love, and in a style more flowery and sweet (as in Aminta and in Pastorfido), so too I could grant that it could be set to music throughout, especially because they represent Gods, Nymphs, and Shepherds from that very ancient century, in which Music was more natural, and the speech more like poetry.9

8 Anton Francesco Grazzini, La Strega (Venice: Bernardo Giunti, 1582), https://archive.org/details/ lastregacomedia00graz, pp. 5–6. 9 Giovanni Battista Doni, De’Trattato Di Musica, vol. 2 (Florence: Stamperia Imperiale, 1763), https:// archive.org/details/bub_gb_xGcMjhGfNswC, 15. Author’s translation. See discussion in David Kimbell, ‘Opera’, in The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, ed. Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 33.

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These concerns are also articulated by an anonymous author in a Florentine treatise of about 1630, more or less contemporary to Doni, who suggests that poets should: [B]egin with characters or interlocutors that musical setting seems to suit best, for secular plots the ancient deities such as Apollo, Thetis, Neptune and other respected gods seem very appropriate, as do demigods and ancient heroes, among whom one might especially list rivers and lakes, and especially those most famous among the Muses, such as Peneus, the Tiber, and the Trasimenus, and above all those personages whom we consider to have been perfect musicians, such as Orpheus, Amphion, and the like. The reason for all this is that since each listener knows all too well that at least in the more familiar parts of the earth ordinary men do not speak in music, but plainly, speaking in music is more consonant with one’s conception of superhuman characters than with the notion and experience one has of ordinary men; because, given that musical discourse is more elevated, more authoritative, sweeter, and more noble than ordinary speech, one attributes it to characters who, through a certain innate feeling, have more of a sublime or divine quality.10

In other instances, the use of song within dramas was justified by reference to antique examples. Nino Pirrotta relates that the poet and dramatist Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478–1550) felt justified in having a group of sailors singing as they formed a chorus of the kind used in the plays of the classical author Aristophanes.11 These debates led to many early operas being based upon narratives taken from the pastoral eclogues of Virgil or the Metamorphoses of Ovid. The earliest operas, Rinuccini and Peri’s Dafne (1598), Rinuccini, Peri and Caccini’s L’Euridice (1600) and Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607) and Arianna (1608), were all pastoral.12 This meant that, at least initially, the powerfully emotional music and poetry of the first operas, with their themes of love and loss of love, tended to be closely associated with landscape settings. Favola was the preferred term for most early operas with pastoral and mythological themes. It translates as ‘story’, ‘fable’ or ‘legend’ and 10 Ferdinando Saracinelli (attr.), Il corago o veto alcune osservazioni per metter bene in scena le composizioni drammatiche, c. 1630 as translated in Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 39 and 428. The attribution to Saracinelli is suggested in Kelley Ann Harness, Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence, Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 113, n. 6. 11 Pirotta and Povoledo, Music and Theatre, pp. 127–128. 12 Very few sets have been identified for these works. There is one drawing by Ludovico Cardi, called il Cigoli, that may be for Euridice; see Caterina Caneva and Francesco Solinas, Maria de’ Medici (1573-1642): Una Principessa Fiorentina Sul Trono Di Francia (Livorno: Sillabe, 2005), pp. 186–187.

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Dent suggests that it may be regarded as a term referring to a musical category.13 Favole were usually further distinguished as pastorali, boschereccie, piscatorie, or marittime. Although not all favole were pastoral, all had naturalistic settings, such as woods, fields or the sea.14 They were generally described using the literary classifications of tragedia, commedia, and satyrica qualified by the addition of words such as ‘recitato in musica’ or ‘rappresentato in musica’. The earliest operas in the seventeenth century were described in similar terms: dramma pastorale (Eumelio, 1606, Agostino Agazzari); tragicomedia pastorale (La morte d’Orfeo, 1619, Stefano Landi); or favola boschereccia (La catena d’Adone, 1626, Domenico Mazocchi).15 When opera emerged in Medici Florence around 1600 the concern for verisimilitude and ‘unity of place’ meant that pastoral settings were favoured. Although these concerns about unity of place began to fall away as the century progressed, we do see a continuity of the landscape as a place that is associated with the types of emotions (love, loss) most often expressed in the first operas.16 Over the course of the century, the representation of nature on stage would continue to be characterized by elements that had emerged at this moment of transition from the spectacle of intermedi to opera. However, ideas about the human relationships with nature were not only shaped by theatre, but also by the growing interest in landscape painting and drawing.

The Landscape on Stage The development of landscape painting, particularly in Italy, is typically dated to the later sixteenth century.17 Landscape as a genre increased in popularity beginning with later sixteenth-century northern European artists like Pieter 13 Edward J. Dent, ‘The Nomenclature of Opera-1’, Music & Letters 25 (1944): p. 134. 14 Paolo Fabbri interprets the term favola to mean ‘dramatic performance’. Therefore, a title like La Favola d’Orfeo meant that it was a work to be performed rather than read (Fabbri, Monteverdi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 66). Letizia Panizza records plays with titles including favola as early as 1480 (for example, Poliziano’s Favola di Orfeo) and suggests that it was Poliziano who initiated the new genre of the favola pastorale (‘The Quattrocento’, in The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, ed. Peter Brand and Lino Pertile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 166). 15 The term favola was a popular one for a variety of pastoral operas. For example, Monteverdi’s Le Nozze di Tetide (1616–1617) was subtitled a favola marittima. 16 In the French context Joseph Harris has argued that not only did opera flout the ‘unity of place’ but that stage sets ‘made redundant the psychological justification for this unity’ (Harris, Inventing the Spectator: Subjectivity and the Theatrical Experience in Early Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 43). 17 Cappelletti, Francesca. Archivi dello Sguardo: Origini e Momenti della Pittura Di Paesaggio in Italia. (Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2006), p. xi.

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Brueghel who began creating paintings of landscape subjects, generally modest in size and intended for an open market.18 Landscape subjects also became popular as engravings, a cheaper and easily distributed alternative to paintings. In Italy Venetian painters such as Giorgione and Titian are generally regarded as precursors of the classical landscape, producing pastoral subjects set in nature, but with more emphasis on figures than in the later examples.19 The period around the turn of the seventeenth century—now generally described as the early baroque—that followed the Counter Reformation saw an increased interest in naturalism in Italy. Artists, such as the Carracci brothers and Agostino Tassi, and Dutch and Flemish artists, such as Paul Bril, began to develop a new style of landscapes rendered with a greater naturalism. The northern artists who travelled to Italy at this time brought with them a new emphasis on the close observation of nature as part of their artistic practice. In the drawings and paintings these artists produced the importance of figures gradually receded, and the focus became the landscape itself. These ranged from pure landscapes, often employed as decoration within palace or villa interiors, to idealized pastoral scenes based on stories from classical myth, such as those take from Ovid, and from recent poets such as Torquato Tasso.20 These artists developed an idealized vision of nature (scenes with fanciful arrangements of ruins and carefully balanced compositions of trees, water, and hills), coupled with close observation of nature itself (identifiable trees, flowers and landscape formations). These representations reflected a new relationship between humans and nature that was developing at the same time, which effected a change in the representation of landscape across all of visual culture. New styles of drawing and observing nature at first hand changed the way that nature was represented on page and canvas, technical innovation in hydraulics and landscape engineering changed garden design, and the interest in pastorals made landscape a key locus for the exploration of human relationships in poetry and theatre. Giulio and Alfonso Parigi It is a challenge to do justice to comparisons between painted and theatrical landscapes. Some studies have examined these links, attempting to discern whether set designers were responding to emerging trends in painting, or if painters were 18 Leopoldine van Hogendorp Prosperetti, Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2009), pp. 157–189. 19 David Rosand, ‘Pastoral Topoi: On the Construction of Meaning in Landscape’, in The Pastoral Landscape, ed. John Dixon Hunt, (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1992), pp. 161–178. 20 Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf, Ideal Landscape: Annibale Carracci, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 2.

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translating landscape painting onto the stage.21 Although painters were employed in the development of stage settings, typically painting flats and scenery, there is not much concrete evidence of a crossover between those key artists developing landscape as a genre of painting and those at work in the theatre. Many painters are recorded as working as scene painters at some point early in their careers, but we tend to lack detail about what productions they worked on.22 The landscape painter Agostino Carracci produced at least one engraving after Buontalenti’s sets for the 1589 intermedi.23 The scene is composed in one-point perspective with allegorical figures of the Fates and Necessity on thrones with the seven planets, flanked by virtuous heroes, and Sirens on the stage floor. Agostino Carracci seems to have based the engraving entirely on Boscoli’s drawing, thought it does demonstrate, at least, his familiarity with the scenographic style. One example we do have of a clear intersection of drawing, painting and set design is the work of Giulio Parigi (1571–1635). He took over as a set designer to the Medici court following the death of Buontalenti, his teacher, in 1608. Parigi’s career as a set designer began much like Buontalenti’s: he designed sets and coordinated special effects for intermedi and other events for Medici festivals, celebrations and commemorations. During this time the combination of a comedy or drama with intermedi was gradually abandoned in favour of the pastoral play with intermedi. These narratives called for a variety of garden and landscape settings and the records we have of his designs are dominated by scenes of nature. Parigi was also noted as a skilled landscape artist; he was a member of the Accademia del Disegno from 1598, where he is described as ‘Accademici Pittori’, and he first appears in the Medici employment records in 1597 as a pittore.24 It seems likely that his skills as a painter were used in designs for the stage. The challenge of making comparisons between painting, drawing and stage design is compounded by the fact that we must base our observations of the appearance of stage scenery on two-dimensional reproductions, either sketches by the designers themselves or engravings made by specialist artists who translated the aesthetics of the stage into the aesthetics of the print. There are often distinct visual 21 Per Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli and Baroque Stage Design (Stockholm: Almsquist & Wiksell, 1962). 22 Alessandra Buccheri and Mina Gregori, ‘Il ruolo della scenografia da Bernardo Buontalenti a Giulio Parigi’, in Il Seicento (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 2001), p. 22. 23 James M. Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 180–181. A copy of Carracci’s print is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, no. 26.70.4(32). 24 Alessandro Rinaldi, ‘Due Disegni Di Giulio Parigi per Gli Allestimenti Fiorentini del 1608’, Paragone/ Arte 68, no. 134 (2017): pp. 63–72; Arthur Blumenthal suggests that Giulio Parigi’s technique derived directly from Paul Bril (1554–1626), whom he may have met in Rome (Blumenthal, ‘Giulio Parigi’s Stage Designs: Florence and the Early Baroque Spectacle’ (PhD, New York, New York University, 1984), pp. 29, 31, 63).

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Figure 3.1 Remigio Cantagallina after Giulio Parigi, ‘Set for Il Giudizio di Paride’ (Florence, Medici Theatre, 1608), etching, 19.6 x 26.9cm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011.

characteristics of drawings or engravings that represent performances, such as exact symmetry and exaggerated one-point perspective. We can see how the two differed if we compare Giulio Parigi’s scene of a forest for the performance of Il Giudizio di Paride (Florence, 1608) (Fig. 3.1) with Annibale Carracci’s River Landscape from c. 1590 (Fig. 3.2).25 Parigi’s forest, captured in an engraving by Remigio Cantagallina, shows Mount Ida, the home of Paris, with rocky mountains and woods, distant valleys and a rustic hut and is composed in one-point perspective: rocky outcrops with trees are arranged symmetrically and diminish in size to create the deep space characteristic of his designs. The small rocky outcrops topped by trees are not exactly symmetrical but are positioned at regular intervals into the background. The central space, the stage space, is open and populated by a central figure of Venus with six cupids. In the background we catch glimpses of a view down a valley with distant towns. The sky is left open and large, representing the upper stage space 25 On the performance, see Mario Fabbri, Elvira Garbero Zorzi, and Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, Il Luogo Teatrale a Firenze, Brunelleschi, Vasari, Buontalenti, (Milan: Electa Editrice, 1975), pp. 118–121 and Blumenthal, ‘Giulio Parigi’, p. 128. On Carracci, see Diane De Grazia and Eric Garberson, Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 45–48.

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Figure 3.2  Annibale Carracci, River Landscape, c. 1590, oil on canvas, 88.3 x 148.1 cm (34 3/4 x 58 5/16 in.). Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington. Samuel H. Kress Collection, Accession Number, 1952.5.58.

that were used for macchine that allowed the ‘flight’ of certain characters and the inclusion of weather effects. Carracci’s River Landscape, by contrast, presents a more intimate view of landscape, the foreground is dominated by a copse of trees that cut across the centre of the composition. A river flows generally through the centre, flanked by hills and forest, drawing the eye in a zigzag towards a distant city and mountains. The figures in the boat are almost incidental, just capturing the eye, but also partially hidden behind the trees. The distinction here between the landscape on stage—grand, imposing, symmetrical—with the painted view—intimate, zigzag, contemplative—is clear. Yet when set designs more closely resemble paintings, we cannot be sure if this is a true correspondence with set designers emulating new styles in landscape painting, or a tendency to render sets in engravings as pictorial landscapes. That challenge aside, there are convergences and connections that make a closer comparison of the two worthwhile. Parigi’s set for Il Giudizio di Paride, although clearly scenographic in design, does include elements that visually link it to landscape drawings and paintings from the turn of the seventeenth century. Parigi’s designs for sets representing the natural landscape closely resemble his own landscape drawings. For example, his drawing A landscape depicting a hunter with a falcon (Fig. 3.3) shows trees perched atop rocky crags and recalls his set of Mount Ida.26 However, where the landscape 26 Marco Chiarini points to Parigi’s similarity to Bril in his landscape drawings (Chiarini, I Disegni Italiani Di Paesaggio dal 1600 al 1750 (Treviso: Libreria Editrice Canova, 1972), pp. 13–14).

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motifs of rocks and trees are similar, the compositions tend to differ, with his sets composed symmetrically and his landscape drawings composed asymmetrically. Both Parigi’s drawings and sets reveal similarities to the drawings and paintings of Paul Bril, particularly the motifs of dramatic rocky cliffs and twisting trees in the foreground and the rapid recession into the distance. Louisa Wood Ruby has demonstrated the impact of Bril’s paintings and drawings on Parigi and she notes that Bril’s style was also taken up by the artist Remigio Cantagallina, who engraved several of Parigi’s sets and was a member of the academy Parigi set up in his home in Florence.27 So Parigi’s designs have elements that align them with the developing genre of pure landscape, there is a desire for naturalism and mimicry of nature. The resulting compositions are distinct, larges spaces are left open for figures and machinery, which will draw the eye of the audience, and natural elements are repeated and mirrored on stage flats. The audience also viewed these scenes of nature in a very different way, the original settings were three-dimensional and dynamic. A useful sense of how these sets appeared was captured by Joseph Furttenbach (1591–1667) in his notes on Florentine festival and stage machinery. He included Giulio Parigi’s engravings of sets and accompanies each with a series of descriptive notes. In his description of the garden of Calypso for the third intermezzo (Fig. 3.4) he explains: The stage changed into a garden for the third intermezzo. Calypso, queen of the island of Ogygia, arrived with her virgins playing music at B. The clouds opened up, revealing Jupiter at D, sitting in his glory with his heavenly choir. At A, Mercury sat on his cloud and talked to Jupiter. Mercury then descended on the cloud, commanded Calypso to release the detained Ulysses, and ascended again on the cloud. The two fountains C beautifully spouted water. Then, the stage changed again to Mount Ida, where the shepherds of the tale of Paris began to recite verses of poetry.28

This description of the scene as performed conveys the dynamism of stage settings. The official description by Rinuccini states that it included ‘delights that overwhelmed the senses’; clearly it was not just sight, but also the sound of running water. Furttenbach’s explanation of practical construction of the scene explains the different elements required to create the illusion of space on stage: 27 Louisa Wood Ruby, Paul Bril: The Drawings (Brepols Publishers, 1999), 57–58 and 149; Blumenthal, ‘Giulio Parigi’, pp. 34–36. 28 Furttenbach in Jan Lazardig and Hole Rößler, eds., Technologies of Theatre: Joseph Furttenbach and the Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in Early Modern Theatre Cultures (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2016), p. 322.

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Figure 3.3  Giulio Parigi, ‘A landscape depicting a hunter with a falcon’, nd. 30.6 x 39.4 cm. Pen and brown chalk. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, (Inv. 164. P.).

The whole garden on both sides is painted on canvas and nailed to the frames [the periaktoi], so that they are visible when [the frames] are turned around. The back wall from o to n has to be slid in front of the rear pit in two [separate] parts that lock together [in the center] at f. However, the fields o n remain open, so that it is possible to see past them to the back wall beyond the rear pit, creating a far perspective. The frames on which the clouds are painted can be pulled apart to open the heavens, which can be arranged many times one after another. The opening should be well filled with lights, so that it is more brightly lit than on the stage.29

The creation of such sets was a combination of painting, three-dimensional structures, machinery to move elements around, and carefully designed lighting. When considered in this sense, the sets begin to seem more distant from painting and drawing, at least in terms of composition. In the case of the forest on the slopes of Mount Ida, the set captures a pastoral, mythical landscape, similar to those in landscape paintings from the same period, but the experience of viewing it was very 29 Furttenbach, Technologies of Theatre, pp. 322–323.

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Figure 3.4  Giulio Parigi, ‘The Garden of Calypso on the Island of Ogygia for the third intermedio of Il Giudizio di Paride’ (Uffizi Theatre, Florence, 1608), etching, 19.6 x 26.9. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011 (2012.136.311.3).

different. The garden of Calypso is far from static. The descriptions of characters flying in on clouds and fountains spouting water conjures up the sense of the space as one in three dimensions, more akin, in some ways to a real garden than a painting. This garden scene, depicted with Parigi’s exact symmetry, is overtly architectural and shows the ways in which compositional techniques for the depiction of gardens and landscapes on stage were evolving. Trellised bowers set with niches containing classical statues generate the perspectival recession. An elaborate pergola cuts across the middle-ground, beneath the central arch of which is Calypso surrounded by three maidens. This use of a structure that cuts across the middle ground was known as the ‘interscenium’ and a common feature of seventeenth-century garden sets. This division of the scene enhanced the illusion of a greater depth of space by permitting only glimpses of the scene beyond and prevented the eye of the viewer from being drawn constantly to the vanishing point. It also provided a sense of enclosure suggestive of a garden.30 The painted backdrop would have extended the perspective 30 Susan Scott Munshower, ‘Filippo Juvarra’s Spatial Concepts and Italian Stage Design: The Consummation of a Renaissance Discovery’ (PhD, The Pennsylvania State University, 1995), p. 137. Munshower posits

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with representations of more pergolas supported by herms, clipped cypresses and bowers. The stage space is trapezoidal rather than triangular and creates a contrast between the delimitation of space by the architectural structures and the openness of the backdrop. This type of garden, dominated by architecture, sculpture, fountains, and neatly clipped hedges, became the norm for the representation of gardens in opera for much of the seventeenth century.31 The translation of pictorial concepts into three-dimensional ones on stage involved a range of skills. Something of the breadth of these skills that Parigi brought to bear on his work can be understood from the account of the ‘scuola’ that he set up in his home to train young artists. His biographer, Filippo Baldinucci, records that Aveva Giulio Parigi eretta in casa sua una scuola, vogliamo dire accademia, nella quale leggeva Euclide, insegnava le meccaniche, la prospettiva, architettura civile o militare e un bello e nuovo modo di toccar di penna vaghissimi paesi. Giulio Parigi had set up in his house a school, or as we like to call it an academy, in which Euclid was read, mechanics, perspective, civil and military architecture were taught, along with a nice new manner of capturing beautiful countryside with a pen.32

Baldinucci captures the way in which this artist’s workshop was a nexus for ideas and development ranging from military engineering to sketching. At this moment, around the turn of the seventeenth century, artists within milieus like that of Giulio Parigi’s workshop, engaged with ‘landscape’ in a multitude of ways, from the creation of picturesque landscapes requiring observation of plants, animals and terrain to work that required the physical reshaping of land for military campaigns to the generation of fantastical visions of mythical landscapes and wondrous special effects on stage for theatre. So Parigi’s designs may not have been based directly on paintings or drawings, but they drew on related interests in the representation of landscape. Parigi was not only a master innovator in the technique of stage design, he was also dedicated to self-promotion. He carefully recorded his designs for sets in engravings that he prepared himself. These images were widely distributed as engravings and were copied by designers across Europe. Parigi’s vision of nature on stage, first derived from Buontalenti then further developed via a combination of that the interscenium was a new device used by Torelli in the 1640s, but it is clear that Giulio Parigi was already using them in the first decade of the seventeenth century. Although the term ‘interscenium’ was not used at the time, it is nevertheless a useful term for referring to the structures in the middle ground that closed the ‘stage space’. 31 Blumenthal, ‘Giulio Parigi’, p. 137. 32 Blumenthal, ‘Giulio Parigi’, pp. 32-3.

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his own studies of landscape drawing and painting and his innovations in staging, would continue to influence stage settings over the next half century. The English architect Inigo Jones (1573–1652), who had spent time in Parigi’s academy in Florence, designed masque settings, many of which were closely modelled on Parigi’s sets. For example, in Jones’ design for scene I of Tempe restor’d (1632) the wings are copied from Parigi’s garden of Calypso for Il Giudizio di Paride.33 As late as 1667 the Turin set designer Tommaso Borgonio was copying aspects of Parigi’s designs. Borgonio’s ‘Giardino dell’Amore’ for the ballet Il Falso Amor Bandito includes an exact copy of the pergola from Parigi’s set for the ‘Giardino di Calypso’.34 After the death of Giulio Parigi in 1635 his son Alfonso Parigi continued to work for the Medici in much the same role. Alfonso had already designed, either in whole or in part, the sets for the performance of La Liberazione del Ruggiero dall’Isola d’Alcina (1625), described as a balletto a cavallo (literally a horse ballet, but the sets were for a part of the event that was very much in the style of early opera). These sets show how closely he followed his father’s style. The garden set is architectonic with neatly clipped hedges and elaborate pergolas and the landscape settings are full of jagged mountains with craggy trees.35 Alfonso did develop his style beyond that of his father in the direction of a greater monumentality. In 1637 he designed sets for the opera Le Nozze degli dei, where the design for the second scene depicted the wood of Diana (Fig 3.5). This set is composed with huge wings representing cypresses flanking a glade where the main action takes place, while the backdrop shows a view of distant hills. There is an expansive area of sky and a macchina representing deities seated upon clouds. The engraving shows the figures to be relatively small in scale. This large scale of the setting was made possible by staging opera in the open air in the courtyard of the Palazzo Pitti with the Boboli gardens behind. Several of Alfonso Parigi’s designs for Le Nozze degli dei directly engaged the actual space of the Boboli gardens. The third scene depicted the garden of Venus. The garden is composed of large architectural structures with niches containing statues of Pan, Bacchus and others. On top of these structures is a forest of trees. A fountain forms the interscenium and the backdrop is a long allée that recedes far into the distance. This setting, although similar to Giulio’s 1608 ‘Garden of Calypso’, 33 Inigo Jones, ‘Vale of Tempe from Tempe Restor’d’ (London, Whitehall Palace, 1632). 35.5 x 38.5cm. Pen and Brown Ink. Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection. For Inigo Jones’ masque designs, his time in Italy and his borrowings from Parigi, see John Peacock, The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 158–207. 34 Tommasio Borgonio, ‘Giardino dell’Amore’ from Il Falso Amor Bandito, (Turin, 1667). Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale. The ballet is discussed in Mercedes Viale Ferrero, Le Scenografia dalle Origini al 1936, vol. 3, Storia del Teatro Regio Di Torino (Turin: Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, 1980), pp. 11, 18. 35 The engravings from this production are in several collections including the British Museum, London, Department of Prints and Drawings, 1861, 0713.1487.

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Figure 3.5 Stefano della Bella after Alfonso Parigi, ‘Wood of Diana’ for scene two of Le Nozze degli Dei, (Florence Palazzo Pitti, 1637), 20.6 x 29.3cm. Etching. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1960 (60.623.10).

is also more monumental, perhaps again in keeping with the larger area available to Alfonso in the courtyard of the Pitti Palace. The elevated situation of the boschetto in the set would correlate with the actual position of the Boboli gardens. The painted representation of the Boboli gardens by Giusto Utens from 1599 clearly shows that the hill that rose up behind the area, which was to become the stone amphitheatre, was planted with large trees much as it appears today.36 Whether the trees were real or whether they mimicked the real plantings in the garden is not clear, however, when the set design is compared to a modern photograph it is clear that the trees in the set design could have correlated with plantings around the edges of the Boboli amphitheatre.37 The dominance of the architectural features recalls the large scale theatres built in gardens during the seventeenth century, such as the water theatres at the Villas Aldobrandini and Mondragone in Frascati, and the Boboli amphitheatre itself, which was designed by Giulio Parigi and completed by Alfonso. As with the sets by Buontalenti, the similarities between sets representing gardens and the 36 Giusto Utens, View of the Boboli Gardens and Pitti Palace, 1599. 143 x 285 cm. Tempera on canvas. Florence, Museo di Firenze Com’Era. (Inv. 1890 n. 6314). 37 Blumenthal, Theatre Art, p. 168.

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actual garden architecture of the time are evident, but direct links with painting are not so easy to discern. However, the set designers were very clearly part of the broader artistic milieu, either working as painters or alongside them, and this in turn shaped the way that landscape was represented on stage, in painting and in gardens. A similar milieu worth examining is that of the Barberini court in Rome.

The Scenographic Landscape in Barberini Rome One of the other most prominent set designers during the period of humanist court opera was Francesco Guitti (c. 1605–1645). He was a set designer and stage engineer in Ferrara in the 1620s for the Este family. He travelled to Parma in 1628 to work on the celebrations for the marriage of Duke Odoardo Farnese and Margherita de’ Medici. He then returned to Ferrara and by the 1630s was working for the Barberini in Rome.38 He coordinated both intermedi and opera and was known for his elaborate stage machinery. In Rome it seems that Guitti collaborated with the painter Pietro da Cortona on the opera Il Sant’Alessio (music by Stefano Landi, libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi) for the Barberini court in Rome.39 It was probably performed in 1632 in the temporary theatre erected in one of the large rooms of the Barberini palace, and again in 1634. 40 The narrative of Sant’Alessio concerned 38 The main sources on Guitti are Elena Povoledo, ‘Francesco Guitti’, in Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, ed. Silvio D’Amico, vol. 6 (Rome: Unedi ‒ Unione Editoriale, 1975), pp. 68–72 and Giuseppe Adami, ‘Ingegnere-Scenografo e l’ingegnere-Venturiero: Le Macchine e Le Scene di Francesco Guitti Ideate per Il Torneo de ‘La Contesa’’, in Barocke Inszenierung, ed. Joseph Imorde, Fritz Neumeyer, and Tristan Weddigen (Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 1999), pp. 159–189. On his work in Parma and his letters see Irving Lavin, ‘Lettres de Parme (1618, 1627-8) et Débuts Du Théâtre Baroque’, in Le Lieu Théâtrale à La Renaissance [Colloques Internationaux Du Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique. Sciences Humaines.], ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: CNRS, 1968), pp. 105–158. For Guitti’s work for the Barberini see Frederick Hammond, Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Barberini Patronage under Urban VIII (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 205–208, and Sara Mamone, ‘La Vocazione Teatrale Di Giulio Rospigliosi’, in I Teatri del Paradiso: La Personalità, l’Opera, Il Mecantismo Di Giulio Rospigliosi (Papa Clemente IX), edited by Chiara d’Afflitto and Danilo Romei, (Siena: Alsaba, 2001), pp. 37–69 and Leila Zammar, ‘Scenography at the Barberini Court in Rome: 1628-1656’ (PhD, Warwick, The University of Warwick, 2017). Libretti with engravings of Guitti sets include G. Estense Jassone, La Contesa, Ferrara, 1632; G. Rospigliosi, Erminia sul Giordano, Rome, 1637; V. Mascardi, Festa, fatta in Roma, alli 28 di febraio, 1634; A. Pio Savoia, La Discordia superata, Ferrara, 1635; A. Pio Savoia, Andromeda, Ferrara, 1638. 39 A version of Sant’Alessio has been performed already in 1629, though the location of the performance is not certain, Tamburini presents evidence that this included sets and machinery as well and suggests that Bernini likely had some involvement in their design (Elena Tamburini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini e Il Teatro dell’arte (Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2012), p. 46). 40 G. Martucci, G. ‘Salvator Rosa nel Personaggio Di Formica’, Nuova Antologia 83 (1885): pp. 641–658 suggested the sets were thought to be by Bernini and others, but more recently the sets have been attributed to Pietro da Cortona, who at the time was executing the ceiling decoration in the grand salone

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the life and death of the fifth-century Roman patrician turned ascetic Christian hermit Saint Alexis and required only urban settings, but the work also included an Intermezzo campestre (Fig 3.6). The engraving of the set by François Collignon represents this set as a grassy field, flanked by a variety of trees including cypresses and, in the background, a palm tree. The palm was perhaps intended to be symbolic of the east as Sant’Alessio had returned to Rome from Syria, but the setting for the intermezzo campestre represented an estate outside of Rome.41 The set, which could be either by Cortona or Guitti, is similar to Guitti’s setting for the L’Alcina Maga Favola Pescatoria in Ferrara from earlier in the same year. The stage space is large, as is apparent from the eight dancers and guitar player shown in the engraving, and once again the pastoral setting opens out to a distant view. In this case, however, the view expands laterally as a wide horizon with a valley, river and gentle rolling hills, rather than the telescopic perspectives favoured by Guitti for his earlier pastoral settings. It is difficult, however, to be certain of why this shift in style occurred. Could Guitti have been responding to the new style of landscape painting popular at the Barberini court? Although we know that painters like Pietro da Cortona worked on the productions, we know very little of what they did. The change in style could be in response to the physical restrictions of the stage itself, to the requirements of the narrative, or even the style that Collignon used to represent the scene. Two years later Guitti worked with the painter Andrea Camassei (1602–1649) to produce sets for the 1633 Carnival opera Erminia sul Giordano with a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi based upon Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata and music by Michelangelo Rossi.42 A number of set designs for this opera were preserved in engravings by Collignon that were printed with the 1637 score.43 The settings are again substantially different from those Guitti had designed for earlier productions in Ferrara. Three of the settings show woodland scenes (Fig 3.7) that are much shallower than those at Ferrara and correspond to the smaller stage of the Barberini theatre. There is a general thinning of the trees and the middle-ground and background open onto wide horizons, rather than telescoping to a point. This makes them similar to Roman landscape paintings of the 1630s, in particular those of Claude Lorrain. of the Palazzo Barberini (Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, ‘Lo Spettacolo Barocco’, Storia dell’Arte, 1969), p. 229. Irving Lavin casts doubt on the attribution to Cortona on a basis of style and suggests the contribution of the painter Francesco Buonamici (Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts (New York: Pierpoint Morgan Library & Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 147, n. 7). Hammond supports the attribution to Cortona on the basis of payments made to him for scenery and also suggests the contribution of Francesco Guitti (Music and Spectacle, pp. 210–212). 41 Margaret Murata, Operas for the Papal Court 1631-1668 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), p. 182. 42 Murata, Operas for the Papal Court, pp. 23–27, 249–252. On Camassei as set designer see Hammond, Music and Spectacle, 206–208. On his painting and life see Silvestro Nessi Andrea Camassei: Un Pittore del Seicento Tra Roma e l’Umbria. (Perugia: Quattroemme, 2005). 43 Mamone, ‘La vocazione teatrale’, pp. 43–45.

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Figure 3.6 Francois Collignon after Francesco Guitti, ‘Pastoral Intermezzo from Sant’Alessio’ (Rome, Teatro Barberini, 1631). 34 x 45.5cm. Engraving. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2576-755).

Claude had been active as a landscape painter in Rome from 1630—his earliest landscape painting dates to 1629—and produced paintings for the Barberini several years later from 1637. 44 Per Bjurström has suggested that it may have been the engraver Collignon who was responsible for the painterly rendering of the sets in the engravings. 45 But it is also possible that Guitti and Camassei modelled their settings after the representations of landscape available to them in Rome. Guitti’s earlier sets were modelled on both Parigi and Serlio, and he may well have taken on a Roman model in Rome, particularly after working with Pietro da Cortona. The similarity between landscape paintings and the set designs could also have been the result of ideas from the stage being adopted by painters. Lisa Beaven has argued that Claude’s fascination with representations of the rising or setting sun in his harbour scenes can be linked to the artistic, theatrical and scientific milieu of the Barberini court. 46 The theories of Galileo and Pope Urban VIII’s personal interest in astrology gave rise to an interest in the movements and lighting effects 44 Langdon, Helen. Claude Lorrain. (Oxford: Phaidon, 1989), p. 28. 45 Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli, p. 199. 46 Lisa Beaven, ‘Claude Lorrain’s Harbour Scenes: Sun, Science and the Theatre in the Barberini Years’, Melbourne Art Journal 9–10 (2007): pp. 144–161.

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Figure 3.7 Francois Collignon after Francesco Guitti and Andrea Camassei, ‘Scene campestre with Erminia and Ergasto for Act 2, scene 4 of Erminia sul Giordano’, (Rome, Teatro Barberini, 1633). 26.6 x 38.4cm. Engraving. Theatermuseum, Vienna. (Inv. Nr.: GS_GSG2226).

of the sun. A machine was invented by Bernini to depict the setting of the sun. This is described in several sources, with the Aedes Barberini stating that ‘whoever had just entered the theatre really leaving the Sun in the West, would easily believe the opposite, just as though it were approaching, about to shine on new markets’.47 This exchange of ideas and experiments in visual representation of nature and natural phenomena clearly had an impact on the stage and on landscape painting. Scholars such as Martin Kemp have pointed out the affinity between the ‘observational concerns in the visual arts and the sciences’ in Europe in this period in relation to painting and the science of optics. 48 In 1604 Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) published his Ad vitellionem paralipomena in which he gave a description of the eye that was to change the nature of optics. By showing that the eye was comparable to a camera obscura, he proved that visual rays were received by the eye, not projected by it. Vision thus became divorced from subjectivity and could be studied as a phenomenon depending on the laws of physics. This idea that the eye was itself a lens, a type of optical instrument, led to the realization that it could be enhanced 47 Murata, Operas for the Papal Court, p. 281. 48 Kemp, Science of Art, p. 1. He does look briefly at set design also, see for example, pp. 139–141.

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by the use of aids like a telescope and the discovery, or realization, that there was a vast space beyond the known world in the heavens. Kepler proposed that light was capable of being propagated into illimitable space. The idea of infinite space in the heavens took hold and was a source of fascination and discomfort, Kepler himself stated that thinking about ‘carried with it I do not know what hidden terror; indeed one finds oneself wandering in the immensity, to which are denied limits and center and therefore also all determinate places’. 49 These new ideas of how vision and perception worked clearly had an impact on the stage. An important point of distinction between sets, paintings and drawings is the viewing mode or visual experience of them. As noted above, comparisons now tend to be made between the records of the sets, captured in drawings or engravings. These can reinforce the similarities between them and risks reducing the set to a two-dimensional art form. It is important, therefore, to engage other sources to help us to understand how they differed as visual experiences. The written descriptions of performances, both those that accompany the libretto and those written by audience members, are useful for this. In a description of Guitti’s work for the stage from the life of Don Taddeo Barberini written by his younger brother Cardinal Francesco Barberini, Guitti’s work for Erminia sul Giordano (1633) was remembered as having ‘scene cosi varie, moti, e voli di figure, apparenze, e lontananze, con sontuosità, e vaghezza di abiti (varied scenes, movements and flights of characters, apparitions, and perspective scenes, with sumptuousness and beauty of costumes)’.50 While Giulio Rospigliosi wrote a description of the sets in his libretto for Erminia sul Giordano that richly evokes the expected effect of them upon the audience: che si stravedessero più tosto che vedessero con nuovo incanto rappresentati i successi di Erminia e gl’incanti d’Armida, attesi i piacevoli inganni delle macchine e delle volubili scene, che impercettibilmente fecero apparire ora annichilarsi un gran rupe e comparirne una grotta e un fiume, dal quale si vede sorger prima il Giordano e poi le Naiadi; ora venirsene Amore a volo et appresso nascondersi fra le nuvole; ora per i sentieri dell’aria in un carro tirato da draghi portarsi Armida, et in un baleno sparire; ora cangiarsi l’ordinaria scena in campo di guerra, le selve in padiglioni, e le prospettive del teatro in muraglie dell’assediata Gerusalemme; ora da non so qual voragine di Averno far sortita piacevolmente orribile i Demonii in compagnia di Furie, le quali insieme danzando et assise 49 Kepler as quoted in Michel Baridon, ‘The Scientific Imagination and the Baroque Garden’, Journal of Garden History 18 (1998): p. 9. 50 From the life of Don Taddeo Barberini, in Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan (New York, Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: The Architectural History Foundation/ The MIT Press, 1990), p. 337, citing BAV, Archivio Barberini, Ind. IV, no. 1254. Author’s translation.

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poscia in carri infernali per l’aria se ne sparissero; et ora poi finalmente Apollo, con vaghissima comitiva di Zeff iri, sopra un carro sfavillante di lucidissimi splendori, far sentire un concento di inestimabile melodia. they were soon to see enchantments representing the successes of Erminia and the enchantment of Armida, they were expecting the pleasing deception of the machines and of the changing scenery, in one instant the overwhelming sight of a great cliff appears, then appears a grotto and a river, from which we first see the [personification of the] Jordan rising and then the Naiads; now comes Love in flight and hidden amongst the clouds; now along paths in the air comes a carriage pulled by dragons carrying Armida, and in a flash disappear; now it changes to an ordinary scene in a war camp, with pavilions in the woods, and in the background of the set are the walls of Jerusalem under siege; and now from I don’t which chasm of Averno the Demons in the company of Furies make a pleasantly horrible foray, together they dance and then assemble, seated, in infernal chariots and vanish into the air; and now finally comes Apollo, with a beautiful group of Zephyrs, on a carriage sparkling with splendid light, to play us a concert of inestimable melodiousness.51

This description by Rospigliosi’s gives some sense of how this visual experience differed from that of paintings or drawings. Although the composition of each set, as noted above, shows similarities with the arrangement of landscape paintings, the viewing experience is wholly different. Rospigliosi’s description conveys a sense of fluid motion, of scenes of diverse landscapes, switching from heavenly, to earthly, infernal, and mythical. Characters emerge and vanish in rapid sequences. There are flashes of lightning, hellish dances, sparkling beauty and a terrifying abyss. The impression of the viewer’s experience is not one of reflective contemplation, but of excited anticipation of anticipated marvels and then an emotional rollercoaster from frightening to beautiful, hellish to earthly to heavenly. When looking at the compositions of such scenes we need to remember they were much more than just symmetrical, perspectival arrangements, they were settings for a landscape in motion. The performance compressed a sequence of diverse scenes into a rich ‘multimedia’ experience. Earlier in the preface Rospigliosi alludes to the idea of himself as un ‘mago innocente’ who wishes to transport the viewer from the business of courtly life to see the ‘bellissima Erminia’, and he refers to Francesco Guitti, designer of the machines, as a genius and creator of marvels that meet with universal applause. This preface underlines the importance of the sets. It is necessary, therefore, to look more closely at the entire visual production 51 From the A chi legge of Erminia sul giordano, from Angelo Solerti, Gli Albori del Melodramma (Milan, Palermo and Napoli: Remo Sandron Editore, 1904), pp. 130–131. Author’s translation.

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of these performances. The role of machines and special effects is considered in the following chapter, but it is worth considering in brief the way that landscape appeared within the narrative of the entire opera.

Ludovico Burnacini and the Iconography of Scenographic Landscapes A generation younger than Guitti was Ludovico Burnacini (1636–1707). He produced his best-known sets for the Hapsburg Court and built on the tradition of Parigi, Guitti, and Giacomo Torelli. In 1668 he designed the sets for Il Pomo d’Oro (music by Antonio Cesti, libretto by Francesco Sbarra), which was performed to celebrate the marriage of Emperor Leopold I to the Infanta Margherita of Spain.52 The wide range of settings, and the emphasis that was laid upon the religious and political symbolism of every aspect of the production, meant that Burnacini’s designs included most of the set types of the period. It also makes this production an ideal illustration of the narrative meanings that could be assigned to scenes of nature in the seventeenth century, which carried on into the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries.53 The performance was described as a festa teatrale and included both ballet and opera. Sbarra divided the libretto into a prologue and five acts with a total of 66 scenes.54 The story was based on the Judgement of Paris and had a complicated mix of subplots and modifications to the original designed to flatter the royal couple. Burnacini’s designs for Il Pomo d’Oro were among the most elaborate of the seventeenth century, with 23 separate sets and a range of special effects from storms with thunder and lightning to fire-breathing dragons, flying deities and floating palaces. Burnacini also built and decorated the Theater auf der Cortina in which the performance took place. This custom-built theatre had elaborate machinery to create special effects and a very deep stage space that allowed for the creation of very long perspectives.55 The settings for Il Pomo d’Oro alternated 52 Burnacini took over as lead set designer to the court after his father’s death in 1655. On the production of Il Pomo d’Oro see Flora Biach-Schiffmann, Giovanni Und Ludovico Burnacini: Theater Unde Feste Am Wiener Hofe. (Vienna and Berlin: Krystall-Verlag, 1931), pp. 52–56; see Carl B Schmidt, ‘Antonio Cesti’s ‘Il Pomo d’oro’: A Reexamination of a Famous Hapsburg Court Spectacle’, Journal of the American Musicology Society 29 (1976): pp. 381–412 and Robert Arthur Griffin, High Baroque Culture and Theatre in Vienna (New York: Humanities Press, 1972), pp. 83–115. 53 The stage iconography of this production and others is discussed in Viale Ferrero, ‘Stage and Set’, pp. 44–46. 54 Francesco Sbarra, Il Pomo d’Oro Festa Teatrale Rappresentata in Vienna per l’Augustissime Nozze della Sacre Cesaree e Reali Maestà di Leopoldo e Margherita (Vienna: 1667). The full libretto was published in several editions including a complete edition with engravings (an edition held in the Biblioteca Livia Simone, Milan (TI.T 186)). 55 Griffin, High Baroque Culture, pp. 53–56 and 79–80.

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Figure 3.8  Mathäus Küsel after Ludovico Burnacini, ‘Wooded landscape on Mount Ida from Il Pomo d’Oro’ (Vienna, 1667). 26.5 x 43.8cm. Etching and engraving. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953. Accession Number (53.600.3541).

between shallow and deep, which provided visual rhythm. About one-third were interiors (three shallow and two deep) and two-thirds were exteriors (seven shallow and nine deep).56 The exterior scenes ranged from a seaport with an armed camp to the mouth of hell and included several garden and woodland settings. The f inal setting represented heaven, earth, air and the sea. The scenes supported a narrative that moved from the heavens to the earth, down to the underworld and then back to the heavens. This wide range of settings responded to the prevailing idea that the theatre should be a representation of the universe or theatrum mundi.57 Compositionally the sets have close similarities to those by the Venetian designer Giacomo Torelli (discussed in the next chapter) whose sets Burnacini must have known, since his father Giovanni had worked in Venice at the same time as Torelli.58 The first woodland setting depicted a forest landscape on Mount Ida (Fig. 3.8), which is similar to sets by Torelli in that there are symmetrical rows of trees of different types, spreading trees in the foreground and cypresses in the middle 56 Griffin, High Baroque Culture, pp. 85–87. 57 Viale Ferrero, ‘Stage and Set’, p. 44. 58 Ludovico came to Vienna as assistant to his father who had worked for the public opera in Venice in the 1640s. In 1644 Giovanni came second to Torelli in a stage design competition (Biach-Schiffman, Giovanni Und Ludovico Burnacini, pp. 9–10).

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Figure 3.9  Mathäus Küsel after Ludovico Burnacini, Figures on the bank of the River Xanthos, of Il Pomo d’Oro (Vienna, 1667). 26.7 x 43.3cm. Etching and engraving. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953. Accession Number (53.600.3549).

Figure 3.10  Mathäus Küsel after Ludovico Burnacini, ‘Garden of Joy for Act 1, scene 15 of Il Pomo d’Oro’ (Vienna, 1667). 26.4 x 43.8cm. Etching. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953. Accession Number (53.600.3543).

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ground, flanking the stage space. In the distance are small copses. A set design for another wood, this time depicting the forest around the Tritonian Swamp, the birthplace of Paris, shows regular rows of identical trees and a painted backdrop of mountains. A third woodland scene was another deep set, with a pine forest in a mountainous landscape with a view of the river Xanthos in the middle ground and possibly waterfalls in the background (Fig. 3.9). Unlike sets by Torelli the set designs by Burnacini for exterior spaces usually did not have an interscenium: instead they had distant perspectives, often disappearing into a view of far-off mountains. In Il Pomo d’Oro there were two garden settings, one a formal garden and the other a wooded grove within a garden. The set for the ‘Garden of Joy’ (Act 1, Scene 15) shows a formal garden (Fig. 3.10). The forestage is flanked by high hedges with tall niched recesses, in front of which are elaborate sculptural groups and trees in pots. This scene is one of the few to have an interscenium, which was formed by a tall fountain composed of intertwined winged figures. Beyond this more of the formal garden is visible. The set for the first scene of Act 4 showed a grove of trees in a garden (Fig. 3.11). The scene was shallow rather than deep and the trees are arranged in regular rows with thirteen diverging avenues. This architectonic arrangement is reminiscent of those by Giulio and Alfonso Parigi. It is also similar in structure to Burnacini’s design for an amphitheatre for the previous scene. The sets designed by Burnacini are good examples of the way in which certain sets would be symbolic representations of points in the narrative of the opera. In the seventeenth century opera tended to be accessible rather than cryptic. A stormy sea would represent an actual storm in the narrative and would also act as a metaphor for the tempestuous feelings of a spurned lover. Temples usually represented religious power while palaces and royal courtyards demonstrated institutional and secular power.59 Naturalistic settings such as woods or wildernesses could be places of mystery in which characters lose their way, both literally and metaphorically, or places suited to intimacy, soliloquy, or dreaming. Gardens represented a middle point between the architecture of a palace or a city, the structure of which echoed the structured nature of courtly life, and the less regulated encounters or events (such as a character who was lost and confused) that might happen in a wood or wilderness. Gardens were spaces where social interactions could take place, but where there was greater license and opportunity for individual action than in the palace or city.60 In Il Pomo d’Oro the scenes of nature appeared at specific points in the narrative. The set depicting spacious woodlands with Mount Ida (Fig 3.8) beyond was the setting for a love duet between Paris and the nymph Ennone. Thick woodland appears at points in the narrative when a character has lost his 59 Viale Ferrero, ‘Stage and Set’, pp. 45–46. 60 Viale Ferrero, ‘Stage and Set’, pp. 46–47.

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Figure 3.11  Ludovico Burnacini, ‘Grove of trees for Act 4, scene 1 of Il Pomo d’Oro’ (Vienna, 1667). 26.1 x 43.8cm. Etching. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953. Accession Number (53.600.3553).

or her way or is beset by fear: the river Xanthos with a dense pine forest appears at a point when the shepherd Aurindo, having been spurned in love, is about to throw himself into the river. A formal garden was used for a scene where Venus bribes Paris with the promise of Helen, an instance of the garden being a place dominated by a powerful female deity or enchantress where a hero is tempted. A cedar grove was the setting for a soliloquy by Ennone about her sadness at not having been able to find Paris. However, this symbolism was not fixed: a garden setting might also be chosen for the visual counterpoint it provided to an urban scene. In seventeenth-century opera—in particular following the development of Venetian public opera, which will be discussed further in following chapter—both garden and landscape sets became part of a standardized approach to sets and appeared in almost all operas. The Vitruvian ideal of particular settings for particular theatrical genres had by now disappeared. Garden sets had become a central part of the visual language of opera and the designs frequently reflected the appearance of real gardens. Landscape settings reflected new techniques for representing nature used in painting, but with different compositions that allowed for the use of complex machinery and special effects. These effects in turn reflected a new interest in the mimicry of natural effects like sunsets and moving water. Audience responses highlighted the dynamism of stage sets and the enjoyment that they took in the sense of immersion in a fictional space.

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Bibliography Adami, Giuseppe. ‘Ingegnere-Scenografo e l’ingegnere-Venturiero: Le Macchine e Le Scene Di Francesco Guitti Ideate per Il Torneo de ‘La Contesa’.’ In Barocke Inszenierung, edited by Joseph Imorde, Fritz Neumeyer, and Tristan Weddigen, 159–89. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 1999. Beaven, Lisa. ‘Claude Lorrain’s Harbour Scenes: Sun, Science and the Theatre in the Barberini Years’. Melbourne Art Journal 9–10 (2007): 144–161. Bertelà, Giovanna Gaeta, and Anna Maria Petrioli Tofani. Feste a Apparati Medicei Da Cosimo I a Cosimo II. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1969. Berzal de Dios, Javier. Visual Experiences in Cinquecento Theatrical Spaces. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. Biach-Schiffmann, Flora. Giovanni Und Ludovico Burnacini: Theater Unde Feste Am Wiener Hofe. Vienna and Berlin: Krystall-Verlag, 1931. Bjurström, Per. Giacomo Torelli and Baroque Stage Design. Stockholm: Almsquist & Wiksell, 1962. Blumenthal, Arthur. ‘Giulio Parigi’s Stage Designs: Florence and the Early Baroque Spectacle’. PhD, New York University, 1984. Blumenthal, Arthur. Theatre Art of the Medici. Dartmouth: University Press of New England, 1980. Buccheri, Alessandra. The Spectacle of Clouds. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Buccheri, Alessandra, and Mina Gregori. ‘Il ruolo della scenografia da Bernardo Buontalenti a Giulio Parigi’. In Il Seicento, 21–28. Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 2001. Caneva, Caterina, and Francesco Solinas. Maria de’Medici (1573-1642): Une Principessa Fiorentina Sul Trono Di Francia. Livorno: Sillabe, 2005. Cappelletti, Francesca. Archivi Dello Sguardo: Origini e Momenti Della Pittura Di Paesaggio in Italia. Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2006. Chiarini, Marco. I Disegni Italiani Di Paesaggio Dal 1600 al 1750. Treviso: Libreria Editrice Canova, 1972. Cuenca, Jaime. ‘The Princely Viewpoint: Perspectival Scenery and Its Political Meaning in Early Modern Courts’. In Perspective As Practice: Renaissance Cultures of Optics, edited by Sven Dupré, 149–172. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2019. De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Dent, Edward J. ‘The Nomenclature of Opera-1’. Music & Letters 25 (1944): 132–140. Doni, Giovanni Battista. De’Trattato Di Musica. Vol. 2. Florence: Stamperia Imperiale, 1763. Fabbri, Paolo. Monteverdi. Translated by Tim Carter. English edition 1994. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Fabbri, Mario, Elvira Garbero Zorzi, and Annamaria Petrioli Tofani. Il Luogo Teatrale a Firenze, Brunelleschi, Vasari, Buontalenti, Milan: Electa Editrice, 1975.

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Fagiolo dell’Arco, Maurizio. ‘Lo Spettacolo Barocco’. Storia Dell’Arte, 1969, 227–229. Forment, Bruno. ‘Trimming Scenic Invention: Oblique Perspective as Poetics of Discipline’. Music in Art 34, no. 1/2 (2009): 31–43. Grazzini, Anton Francesco. La Strega. Venice: Bernardo Giunti, 1582. Griffin, Robert Arthur. High Baroque Culture and Theatre in Vienna. New York: Humanities Press, 1972. Hammond, Frederick. Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Barberini Patronage under Urban VIII. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. Harness, Kelley Ann. Echoes of Women’s Voices: Music, Art, and Female Patronage in Early Modern Florence. Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Harris, Joseph. Inventing the Spectator: Subjectivity and the Theatrical Experience in Early Modern France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Kemp, Martin. The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Kimbell, David. ‘Opera’. In The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, edited by Peter Brand and Lino Pertile, 336–340 & 363–370. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Lagerlöf, Margaretha Rossholm. Ideal Landscape: Annibale Carracci, Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Langdon, Helen. Claude Lorrain. Oxford: Phaidon, 1989. Lavin, Irving. ‘Lettres de Parme (1618, 1627-8) et Débuts Du Théâtre Baroque’. In Le Lieu Théâtrale à La Renaissance [Colloques Internationaux Du Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique. Sciences Humaines.], edited by Jean Jacquot, 105–158. Paris: CNRS, 1968. Lavin, Irving. Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts. New York: Pierpoint Morgan Library & Oxford University Press, 1980. Lazardig, Jan, and Hole Rößler, eds. Technologies of Theatre: Joseph Furttenbach and the Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in Early Modern Theatre Cultures. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2016. Lenzi, Deanna. ‘La Dinastia Dei Galli Bibiena’. In I Bibiena: Una Famiglia Europea, edited by Deanna Lenzi, Jadranka Bentini, Silvia Battistini, and Alessandra Cantelli, 19–36. Venice: Marsilio Editore, 2000. Mamone, Sara. ‘La Vocazione Teatrale Di Giulio Rospigliosi’. In I Teatri Del Paradiso: La Personalità, l’Opera, Il Mecantismo Di Giulio Rospigliosi (Papa Clemente IX), edited by Chiara d’Afflitto and Danilo Romei, 37–69. Siena: Alsaba, 2001. Martucci, G. ‘Salvator Rosa Nel Personaggio Di Formica’. Nuova Antologia 83 (1885): 641–658. Milesi, Francesco. Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione Scenica Nell’Europa Barocca. Fano: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, 2000. Munshower, Susan Scott. ‘Filippo Juvarra’s Spatial Concepts and Italian Stage Design: The Consummation of a Renaissance Discovery’. PhD, The Pennsylvania State University, 1995. Murata, Margaret. Operas for the Papal Court 1631-1668. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981.

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Nessi, Silvestro. Andrea Camassei: Un Pittore Del Seicento Tra Roma e l’Umbria. Perugia: Quattroemme, 2005. Panizza, Letizia. ‘The Quattrocento’. In The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, edited by Peter Brand and Lino Pertile, 131–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Peacock, John. The Stage Designs of Inigo Jones: The European Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pirrotta, Nino, and Elena Povoledo. Music and Theatre From Poliziano to Monteverdi. Translated by Kevin Eales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Plaisance, Michel, and Nicole Carew-Reid. Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Essays and Studies, 2008. Prosperetti, Leopoldine van Hogendorp. Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625). Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2009. Rinaldi, Alessandro. ‘Due Disegni Di Giulio Parigi per Gli Allestimenti Fiorentini Del 1608’. Paragone/Arte 68, no. 134 (2017): 63–72. Rinuccini, Camillo. Descrizione delle feste fatte nelle reali nozze de’ Serenissimi principi di Toscana d. Cosimo de’ Medici, e Maria Maddalena arcidvchessa d’Avstria. In Firenze : Appresso i Giunti, 1608. Rosand, David. ‘Pastoral Topoi: On the Construction of Meaning in Landscape’. In The Pastoral Landscape, edited by John Dixon Hunt, 161–178. Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 36. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1992. Rosand, Ellen. Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Ruby, Louisa Wood. Paul Bril: The Drawings. Brepols Publishers, 1999. Saslow, James M. The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. Schmidt, Carl B. ‘Antonio Cesti’s ‘Il Pomo d’oro’: A Reexamination of A Famous Hapsburg Court Spectacle’. Journal of the American Musicology Society 29 (1976): 381–412. Solerti, Angelo. Gli Albori Del Melodramma. Milan, Palermo and Napoli: Remo Sandron Editore, 1904. Tamburini, Elena. Gian Lorenzo Bernini e Il Teatro Dell’arte. Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2012. Viale Ferrero, Mercedes. Le Scenografia Dalle Origini al 1936. Vol. 3. Storia Del Teatro Regio Di Torino. Turin: Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, 1980. Viale Ferrero, Mercedes. ‘Stage and Set’. In Opera on Stage, edited by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 1–124. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Waddy, Patricia. Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan. New York/ Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: The Architectural History Foundation/ The MIT Press, 1990. Zammar, Leila. ‘Scenography at the Barberini Court in Rome: 1628-1656’. PhD, The University of Warwick, 2017.

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Triumph over Nature: Machines and Meraviglia on the Seventeenth-century Stage Abstract As opera gained in popularity across the Italian peninsula the idea that sets should contribute to the ‘unity of place’ began to be superseded by a focus on the visual appeal of sets, and the surprise and wonder that they could induce in audiences. This demand for special effects and the fascination with aesthetics, such as ‘endless’ one-point perspectives, shaped the vision of nature presented on stage. Technical innovations meant that set designers and opera impresarios delighted in creating effects that mimicked nature, an approach that fed, and was fed by, contemporary interest in the human capacity to control and manipulate nature. This chapter looks at the phenomenon of macchine, or stage machinery, and the creation of immersive illusions of nature on stage. The role of the engineer in theatre is examined in relation to Giovanni Battista Aleotti, Francesco Guitti, and Giacomo Torelli in Venice. The way in which these techniques played into broader visual culture is examined at in relation to Bernini’s work for the theatre in Rome. Keywords: Opera, stage sets, stage machinery, engineers, Giacomo Torelli, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Giovanni Battista Aleotti, Francesco Guitti,

Of all the things which can be presented on a stage, none in my view more ravishes the minds of the spectators than the machines. This is because it is a source of great delight to witness things which are seemingly supernatural: such as an earth-bound person mounting to the sky; the appearance of a cloud filled with players and singers; seeing a temple rise up through the earth; a sudden scene-change to a wilderness or forest; seeing the ocean suddenly appear and in it tritons, gods, ships and other trompes-loeil.1 – Il Corago, c. 1630. 1 Translation of Il Corago, c. 1630 Roger Savage and Matteo Sansone, ‘‘Il Corago’ and the Staging of Early Opera: Four Chapters from an Anonymous Treatise circa 1630’, Early Music 17, no. 4 (1989): p. 63. Italian original in Paolo Fabbri and Angelo Pompilio, Il Corago, o Vero Alcune Osservazioni per Metter Bene in Scena Le Composizioni Drammatiche (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1983), p. 116.

Grant, K., Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463721530_ch04

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As opera gained in popularity across the Italian peninsula the idea that sets should contribute to the ‘unity of place’ was superseded by a focus on the visual appeal of sets and stage machinery (macchine) and the surprise and wonder (meraviglia) that they could induce in audiences. The delight that audiences took in the immersive possibilities of opera as a multi-sensory experience led to rapid technical innovations. This fascination with visual effects, such as fake lightning and moving waves, shaped the vision of nature presented on stage. The following chapter focuses upon the role that special effects, or marvels, played in the representation of landscape on stage. The new types of stage machinery that were developed over the course of the seventeenth century by architects and engineers, transformed opera. Set designers and opera impresarios competed to create effects that mimicked nature, an approach that fed, and was fed by, contemporary interest in human ability to control and manipulate nature.

Meraviglia and the Illusion of Nature While the capacity of music to move the emotions has received a good deal of attention from musicologists, philosophers, and psychologists, the history of opera has not tended to consider how sets induced an affective response in the viewer.2 Studying the emotional effect of stage sets prompts us to look more closely at their reception, as much as their construction. To understand how audiences reacted to the visual aspect of a performance is important not only because it fills in another missing piece in our attempts to reconstruct what a theatrical performance was like in the baroque period, but also because the visual spectacle mattered to viewers. There are many descriptions of the sensory and emotional effect of sets on viewers. There are also long-running debates, along similar lines to those discussed above in relation to the commentary on the intermedi, about whether operas should have sets, and whether performances were too focused upon the magnificence of the setting and the ingenuity of the machines at the expense of the poetry and narrative. Despite this, development of staging continued apace. As José Antonio Maravall observes 2 On music and emotion see for example the writings of Peter Kivy including his 2002 collected writing on philosophy of music, Peter Kivy, Introduction to a Philosophy of Music, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). Joseph Harris looks at the reception of theatre (including but not restricted to opera) in France in the early modern period. He includes some discussion of stage sets, see Joseph Harris, Inventing the Spectator: Subjectivity and the Theatrical Experience in Early Modern France, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 41–43. Elements of this discussion can also be found in Katrina Grant, ‘‘To Make Them Gaze in Wonder’: Emotional Responses to Stage Scenery in Seventeenth-Century Opera’, In Emotion and the Seduction of the Senses, Baroque to Neo-Baroque, ed. Angela Ndalianis and Lisa Beaven, (Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018), pp. 79–98.

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in his analysis of the culture of the baroque, there ‘was a genuine development of stage engineering; admiration for it is reflected in many pamphlets dedicated to describing the dazzling effects of certain representations that became famous’.3 In 1664 in the preface to his libretto for the opera Alessandro il vincitor di se stesso, Francesco Sbarra, in apologizing (as was the custom) for the defects in his text draws attention to the work done by the ‘magnificenza delle scene, e macchine, dalla vaghezza, e bizzarria delle comparse, e de’balli e sopra tutto dall’eccellenza della Musica, e dall’esiquitezza de gli’attori (magnificence of the scenes, the machinery, of the beauty and strangeness of the minor characters, and the dances, and above all the excellence of the Music and the exquisiteness of the actors)’. 4 There are a significant number of sources, scattered across different formats, that allow us to begin to understand the role played by sets and special effects. As well as the visual records of the sets themselves, the libretti for operas include written descriptions of settings and machinery and sometimes commentary on the anticipated effect of these. Accounts from spectators in letters typically offer breathless accounts of illusions and marvels conjured up on stage (or critique of their failure). The treatises on staging that we do have, while mainly offering practical guidance on designing flats, pulleys and raked stages, also include suggestions of what will enhance or detract from the experience of the spectators.

The Engineered Stage Most of the names that can be attached to the development of sets and machinery from this period are architects or engineers (or both), and they, more than any others, shaped the visual and multi-sensory experience of theatre in the decades from 1600. Just as new technologies allowed the engineering of the real landscape for the creation of fortifications, military installations, to support agriculture and to create pleasure gardens, so too it allowed them to bring landscape inside the theatre, and to animate it. In thinking about the scenographic landscape, it is worth taking a moment to note that the role of engineers and architects in bringing the landscape inside the theatre is a central one in the seventeenth century, and to acknowledge the role that it played in the reconfiguring of landscape and the natural world more broadly. In his treatise Pratica di fabricar scene e machine ne’ teatri (1638) Nicola Sabbattini describes himself as an ‘Architetto’ and refers to his work as a civil 3 José Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, ed. Wlad Godzich and Nicholas Spadaccini, trans. Terry Cochran, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 237. 4 Francesco Sbarra, Il Pomo d’Oro Festa Teatrale Rappresentata in Vienna per l’Augustissime Nozze della Sacre Cesaree e Reali Maestà Di Leopoldo e Margherita, (Vienna, 1668), p. 6.

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Figure 4.1 Nicola Sabbattini, ‘Diagram of a wave machine’, from Pratica di fabricar scene e machine ne’ teatri (In Rauenna: Per Pietro de’ Paoli e Gio. Battista Giouannelli stampatori, 1638), p. 111. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (84-B8211).

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and military architect.5 Sabbattini’s text includes instructions on cutting wood, painting canvas and positioning machinery operators, and outlines the expertise and work involved in creating varied effects on stage. He illustrates a number of techniques for the creation of natural phenomena on stage, such as the technique for creating the illusion of waves in motion for maritime scenes. He includes three techniques for representing the sea, one for making it appear to ‘rise, swell, contort and change colour’, as well as multiple methods for depicting the movement of boats across it, and how to make dolphins and sea monsters appear from the depths.6 His preferred method for presenting the sea is described as: Questo terzo modo di rappresentare il mare mi pare che sia migliore dei già detti, volendo dunque far questo si faranno fare dei cilindri composti di liste di tavole non più larghe di quattro oncie, le quali faransi segare à modo di Onde, e che siano di lunghezza quanto à punto dovrà essere il mare. This third method of representing the sea seems to me the best of those already mentioned, if you want to do this you will need to make cylinders composed of strips of board, not larger than four inches, that are sawn in the manner of waves, and that are the length that sea is on stage.7

His diagram of the technique shows this clearly, long cylinders are curved in a corkscrew shape, almost in the form of Solomonic column, and attached to either side of the stage (Fig. 4.1). A shaft runs through the centre, and a handle on each end could be turned by a man, hidden inside the stage flats. As the cylinders rotated the stage seemed to fill with rippling waves. Other effects could be added to this, such as painted canvas boards in black and silver that were moved separately and gave the effect of turbulent waves and the rippling surface of the sea changing colour as the ‘weather’ changed. Other techniques outlined by Sabbattini include: ‘How to create the illusion of a running river’, ‘How to create the appearance of Hell’, ‘How to raise mountains on the stage’, ‘How to turn a person into stone’, ‘How to gradually cloud over the sky’, ‘Creating wind’, ‘How to fake lightning’, ‘How to create the coming of the dawn’. More often than not, these macchine were used to mimic the natural world, or even to surpass it in the case of flying people or the metamorphoses of a rock to a man and back again. 5 Nicola Sabbattini, Pratica di fabricar scene e machine ne’ teatri (Ravenna: Per Pietro de’ Paoli e Gio. Battista Giouannelli stampatori, 1638), http://archive.org/details/praticadifabrica00sabb, p. 11. 6 Sabbattini, Pratica di fabricar, pp. 107–125. 7 Sabbattini, Pratica di fabricar, p. 110. Author’s translation.

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Giovanni Battista Aleotti and Francesco Giutti Giovanni Battista Aleotti (1546–1636) was an engineer, architect and designer based mainly in Ferrara, he worked on theatres and theatrical productions in Parma, Mantua and Venice and is perhaps best known for his design of the Farnese Theatre in Parma, which pioneered the use of the wing theatre where moveable stage flats allowed for rapid changes of scene. He also wrote extensively on engineering, writing texts (published and unpublished) on hydraulics, artillery and fortif ications, music, mathematics and the study of physical phenomena. Aleotti’s work is representative of the importance of those individuals whose talents crossed between engineering, architecture, mathematics and the observation of the natural world. He was sent to Florence by Alfonso II d’Este to observe the hydraulics designed by Buontalenti that powered the automata and water tricks at Pratolino.8 In 1626 he collaborated with Francesco Guitti on the Intramezzi di Ferrara in honour of Don Taddeo Barberini. For the performance they designed flight machines, machines that allowed them to show descending and oblique movements, a machine that grew larger as it moved, and machines that allowed people and objects to rise from beneath the stage.9 In 1628 he worked on the celebrations for the Medici-Farnese wedding in Parma and created a sea with waves that moved, zodiacs that descended and revolved, descents and flights for gods and other characters, and a naumachia in the Teatro Farnese when it was flooded to a depth of more than three metres. 10 For the wedding he also produced such marvels as the palace of Alcina brought in on a rock that opened to reveal her garden, and a woodland scene that also opened, this time to reveal an actual lake.11 Through the skill of engineers and architects like Aleotti and Guitti the landscape was not just depicted on stage, it was brought to life. In 1631 Guitti worked for the court of Ferrara on the designs for La Contesa, torneo fatto in Ferrara (with music by an anonymous composer and a libretto by G.B. 8 Daniela Lamberini, ‘Cultura Ingegneristica nel Granducato di Toscana ai Tempi dell’Aleotti’, in Giambattista Aleotti e Gli Ingegneri del Rinascimento, ed. Alessandra Fiocca (Florence: Olschki, 1998), p. 301. 9 Frederick Hammond, Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Barberini Patronage under Urban VIII (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 205. 10 Hammond, Music and Spectacle, pp. 205–206, and Irving Lavin, ‘Lettres de Parme (1618, 1627-8) et Débuts Du Théâtre Baroque’, in Le Lieu Théâtrale à La Renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: CNRS, 1968), pp. 105–158. 11 Lavin, ‘Lettres de Parme (1618, 1627-8) et Débuts Du Théâtre Baroque’, in Le Lieu Théâtrale à La Renaissance [Colloques Internationaux Du Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique. Sciences Humaines.], edited by Jean Jacquot, 105–158. Paris: CNRS, 1968, pp. 105–158 and Frederick Hammond, ‘More on Music in Casa Barberini’, Studi Musicali, 14 (1985): p. 244.

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Figure 4.2  Engraving after Francesco Guitti, ‘Proscenium for La Contesa, Il Torneo a piedi’ (Ferrara, 1631), from La contesa, torneo fatto in Ferrara per le nozze Dell’IllustrissimoSignor Gio: Francesco Sachetti, Francesco Suzzi: Ferrara, 1632. Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense (inv. 6 060011578). By permission of the Ministry of Culture – Pinacoteca di Brera – Biblioteca Braidense, Milan.

Estense Tassone). For this performance he designed several stage sets, including a pastoral one (Fig. 4.2).12 The engraving of the set shows that it is designed in one-point perspective, and the stage space is depicted as being covered with grass and rocks and flanked by small copses of trees, which would have been painted on the wings. The background opens onto a distant and hilly landscape. The set is not unlike the satyric set illustrated by Serlio in 1545, but, like Parigi’s sets, Guitti’s scene is much deeper than Serlio’s, and the area of sky is larger to accommodate the use of machines. There are some hints of this shifted focus in staging the landscape in Guitti’s variation on the traditional proscenium. In the 12 The performance is recorded in Giovanni Francesco Sacchetti, La Contesa. Torneo fatto in Ferrara per le nozze dell’ Illustrissimo Signor Gio: Francesco Sacchetti Coll’Illustrissima Signora D. Beatrice Estense Tassona, (Ferrara: Francesco Suzz, 1632). It is rare, but there are copies in the National Art Library at the V&A museum and at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan.

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Figure 4.3  G. B. Torre after Francesco Guitti, ‘Set for La Contesa, Il Torneo a piedi’ (Ferrara, 1631), from La contesa, torneo fatto in Ferrara per le nozze Dell’IllustrissimoSignor Gio: Francesco Sachetti, Francesco Suzzi: Ferrara, 1632. Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense (inv. 6 060011578). By permission of the Ministry of Culture – Pinacoteca di Brera – Biblioteca Braidense, Milan.

print, which may well represent the real proscenium, it is shown as a structure composed of marble blocks and columns that have crumbled and cracked to reveal the brick underneath.13 A sort of joke, reminiscent of mannerist frescoes, such as Giulio Romano’s Palazzo del Te, but also making a statement about the ever shifting, uncertain and marvellous world depicted on stage. Guitti’s illusion of a crumbling proscenium marks the shift away from concerns about verisimilitude and the increasing dominance of surprise and wonder. So, although the engraving seems to show that this pastoral setting differed little from Serlio’s satyric setting, the use of elaborate machinery during the performances would have created a very different effect. 13 Alice Jarrard, Architecture as Performance in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Court Ritual in Modena, Rome, and Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 64, 67. Jarrard’s note (p. 239, n. 29) correctly links the design to La Contesa. The engraving of this set is found in La contesa, torneo fatto, 1632 and Giuseppe Adami, ‘Ingegnere-Scenografo e l’ingegnere-Venturiero: Le Macchine e Le Scene Di Francesco Guitti Ideate per Il Torneo de ‘La Contesa’’, in Barocke Inszenierung, ed. Joseph Imorde, Fritz Neumeyer, and Weddigen (Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 1999), pp. 159–189 and Giuseppe Adami, Scenografia e scenotecnica barocca tra Ferrara e Parma (1625-1631) (Rome: ‘L’Erma’ di Bretschneider, 2003), p. 117.

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An engraving of a different set by Guitti for La Contesa records one of the ‘apparitions’ that would appear on stage.14 The set shows a mountainous landscape (Fig. 4.3), in a style reminiscent of Giulio Parigi’s setting for Il Giudizio di Paride (Fig. 3.1), in the centre there is a temple or palace that appears to hover upon clouds. Despite the secrecy surrounding the deployment of such techniques, Sabbattini’s treatise offers some insights into how this may have been achieved. His section on ‘Come si possa far calare una Nuvola, la quale si divida in tre parti, e di poi nel salire si riunisca in una’ (How to lower a Cloud, which is then divided into three parts, and then reunites into a single cloud as it is raised), explains the complicated mechanism that would be fixed to tracks on the stage and the walls. The basic cloud mechanism required a vertical track on the rear wall or stage partition with a horizontal beam that had a depiction of a cloud fixed to it, it could then move up and down. Grooves on the stage allowed clouds to be move across the stage, and a mechanism where a cloud was made from thin cloth and attached to thin strips of wood, like an umbrella, allowed clouds to change shape and size.15 Sabbattini’s descriptions are focused on the mechanics of building such scenes, but other sources help us to understand the intended effect on the audience. In the libretto for a performance staged in 1646 in Ferrara called La discordia confusa rappresentata con macchine, e musica, e combattuta by Ascanio Pio di Savoia (1588–1649) the author notes that al compimento della maraviglia, che reca la vista di tre Macchine stupende nella scena d’un pregiatissimo Giardino, due gran massi di Nuvole infocate, ch’ingombrano l’ultima parte superiore della scena. the completion of the marvel, brings the sight of three stupendous Machines into the scene of a very precious Garden, two great masses of fiery Clouds, which obscure the very upper part of the scene.16

He goes on to relate how knights dressed in finery of blue and gold descended into the scene and caused every heart to stop. These descriptions, as with many others from the time, directly engage with three main points: the sense of wonder or meraviglia, the mimicry of natural effects (or supernatural versions of them), 14 Elena Povoledo, ‘Francesco Guitti’, in Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, ed. Silvio D’Amico, vol. 6 (Rome: Unedi ‒ Unione Editoriale, 1975), pp. 69–71. La contesa was a torneo a piedi or a choreographed combat. 15 Barnard Hewitt, The Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach, (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1958), p. 154. 16 Ascanio Pio, La discordia confusa rappresentata con macchine, e musica, e combattuta in Ferrara nel passaggio della ser.ma Anna de Medici […] componimento di D. Ascanio Pio di Sauoia (per il Gironi Stamp. Episcop., 1646), p. 32.

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and the emotional or even visceral (in the case of ‘heart stopping’) effect of them on the audience. This idea of the magic or ‘miracle’ of staging was reinforced by a high level of secrecy surrounding the technology used to create settings and special effects. The nobleman Barthold von Gadenstady who, saw Buontalenti’s intermezzi for La Pellegrina performed in 1589 had desired a closer look at the stage machinery, wrote, ‘We would have liked to have the opportunity to see how it was operated, but it was seriously forbidden to show it to anyone’.17 This secrecy has led to some of the gaps in our knowledge about how such staging worked, despite the vast numbers of visual depictions of spectacular stage effects there is very limited circulation of ‘stagecraft knowledge in print form’.18 This secrecy was not for quite the same reasons as for other engineering advances (such as design of military technology); there was fear that inventions could be stolen and that if the methods were known, or recreated too often elsewhere, that the moment of wonder would be compromised. Treatises on set design often urge the designers to be careful to conceal machinery and to ensure that actors and stagehands do not ruin the effect. Sabbattini, for example, warns of the risk of actors entering too far back on a raked stage and then appearing enormous in relation to the buildings (which reduced in size along the perspective to create the illusion of space). This issue also that is also raised in the anonymous treatise on staging opera called Il Corago (published around the same time): He [the producer] must take care as far as he can that none of the actors or other stage personnel leans out of the perspectives, because—apart from the ugly sight they make—they may hinder the movements of the periaktoi and cause many other mishaps. However, this maybe a very difficult thing to achieve, since the late Grand Duke Cosimo was only able to do it by keeping two dwarves who would shoot with crossbows at anyone leaning out.19

The secrecy of sets fed into the expected suspension of disbelief and the desire to observe wonders and miracles. These landscape settings, of which Aleotti’s and Guitti’s are just a small selection, with their moving clouds, pretend thunder and real running water, created a very different vision of landscape compared to the sixteenth-century pastoral and satyric 17 Barthold von Gadenstadt as translated Jan Lazardig and Hole Rößler, eds., Technologies of Theatre: Joseph Furttenbach and the Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in Early Modern Theatre Cultures (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2016), p. 278. 18 Lazardzig and Rößler, Technologies of Theatre, p. 279 and Carla Bino, ‘Macchine e teatro: il cantiere di Bernardo Buontalenti agli Uffizi’, Nuncius 18, no. 1 (2003): p. 251. 19 Translation from Savage and Sansone, ‘Il Corago’, p. 505.

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scenes. Buontalenti’s note in the margins of his copy of Mellini’s treatise, ‘ARTE VINSE NATURE’ had, in a sense, become the guiding conviction of the representation of landscape on stage. Giuseppe Adami, in his study of the seventeenth-century writings of Joseph Furttenbach (1591–1667) on theatre staging and technology, writes that Heron of Alexandria claimed that ‘hiding the mechanisms responsible for marvellous effects from the spectator, the builder of automata placed himself in an epistemologically superior position to that of the observer’.20 This, Adami argues, was combined with the idea, drawn from both Plato and Aristotle, that the relationship between ‘awareness and astonishment’ was key to engaging the audience and transforming their understanding. The stagecraft engaged the audiences’ attention via surprise and wonder and then presenting to them theories and ideas about natural or supernatural phenomena including the movement of planets, sunset and sunrise, earthquakes, miraculous appearance of gods and angelic choirs, metamorphoses and the transformation of matter. In the case of Guitti and Aleotti’s work for princely courts, this performance of knowledge and expertise and its reception in audiences as surprise and wonder has often been considered mainly as a demonstration of princely power and control. Maravall suggests that the idea of wonder, and the enthusiasm for it, shifted in the seventeenth century. He argues that wonder was no longer linked so strongly with the Renaissance interpretation of Aristotelian theories of wonder, where it played a role in offering access to knowledge. Instead, wonder was conceived of as ‘psychological effect that for a few instants brings the forces of contemplation or admiration to a halt so as to let them act more vigorously when they are afterwards released’.21 Maravall argues that this use of wonder, as a tool to stun, impress and overwhelm, were taken up by rulers as a means to reinforce their power. The special effects, what Maravall refers to as ‘the calculated use of pulleys’, caused the public to see actors as divine persons. Although the audience might have understood the presence of artifice in the creation of special effects, the wonder at the technical ability to produce these actually heightened the sense of awe at the power of the ruler.22 The wonder was as much at the technical ability, the artifice, as at the unexpected visions presented to the audience. The representation of landscape in seventeenth-century visual culture has often been linked to structures of power. Denis Cosgrove, for example, in his study of landscape painting and cartography, has observed that these were a 20 Giuseppe Adami, ‘Between Tradition and Innovation Reconsidering Florentine Stage Machinery of the Seventeenth Century in the Light of the Furttenbach Codex Iconographicus 401’, in Technologies of Theatre: Joseph Furttenbach and the Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in Early Modern Theatre Cultures, ed. Jan Lazardig and Hole Rößler (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2016), p. 418. 21 Maravall, Culture of the Baroque, p. 216. 22 Maravall, Culture of the Baroque, p. 241.

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visual representation of a desire for control, ‘an attempt on the part of Europeans to clarify a new conception of space as a coherent visual structure into which the actions of human life could be inserted in a controlled and orderly fashion’.23 Likewise, W. J. T. Mitchell’s reflections on what a landscape is and his suggestion that representations of landscapes acted to ‘naturalize a cultural and social construction’.24 These observations can be usefully turned to an understanding of the landscapes represented on stage. The scenes presented could range from pleasant flowery meadows to horrifying scenes of craggy, rocky caves of hell, but what was ultimately conveyed was a sense of landscape, nature, tamed and brought under control by the engineer and his patron. This would align with similar ideas put forward to deconstruct the role of engineering in garden building in the seventeenth century. Chandra Mukerji in her studies of French gardens, landscapes and engineering projects has observed that in the gardens ‘aesthetic displays of control over natural forces yielded stunning visual effects that dazzled foreign visitors’ and observes that the gardens also acted as ‘laboratories for and demonstrations of French capacities to use the countryside as a political resource for power’.25 The engineering of physical landscapes and gardens is covered at length in the subsequent chapters, but the way that nature was conquered in the theatre via machines that simulated and even surpassed its effects is worth unpacking in more detail.

A Mechanical Philosophy of Nature? The theatre and the garden were both stages for engineers and architects to perform their skills and innovations, but it would be simplistic to suggest that it was only about propping up the power of rulers. Texts that focus only on theatre, like Sabbattini’s, tend to read as handbooks for building sets and lack philosophical engagement with larger ideas. However, there are other sources that provide an insight into the intellectual milieu to which stage designers may have been responding. In the sixteenth-century the text Quaestiones mechanicae (Mechanical Questions) was translated into Latin from ancient Greek. It was believed to be by Aristotle, and this increased its popularity. It became a key text for the development of architectural and engineering thinking in the sixteenth 23 Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (London & Sydney: Croom Helm, 1984), p. 21. 24 W. J. T. Mitchell, Landscape and Power (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 2. 25 Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 2.

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and seventeenth centuries.26 The text includes diagrams of simple mechanical process, explains the application of these processes in different professions, celebrates the universal properties of the circle and includes a definition of the mechanical art as ‘the skill that helps us overcome our perplexity in order to act against nature and produce useful results’.27 A number of commentaries were published on this text, and it had an impact on key thinkers in the seventeenth century including Galileo and Descartes.28 It is plausible that stage engineers were also engaged with the text, and were actively considering how machines could be used on stage to frame human understanding of nature and natural phenomena. Hero’s Pneumatics is known to have been used by engineers such as Buontalenti, and therefore directly supported the development of hydraulics for gardens and for festivals. Pneumatics—not a simple handbook to building machines (like Sabbatini’s text)—included theories on how the forces of nature worked. For example, in Hero’s introductory chapter he proposes that air is matter and made of particles, the space between these could grow or contract due to external forces. Hero’s text demonstrated to engineers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that machines, such as pneumatic devices, were made possible by the close observation of nature and natural effects. Machines were, in turn, used to explain the workings of the natural world, which were harder to discern, and mechanics was in turn applauded for its capacity not to mimic but to surpass or challenge nature. The result of this increased interest in engineering and machines was the development of what Helen Hattab has described as a ‘mechanical philosophy of nature’. Human relationships with the natural environment were being transformed, not only through their observation of landscape painting or maps, but through their engagement with machines that manipulated, mimicked and transcended nature. Gardens and theatres played a dual role as sites for the presentation of technical wonders and scientific discoveries. Commentaries on the Quaestiones mechanicae often reflected on the relationship between art and nature. Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (1456–1531) for example, classified mechanics as an ‘art’ because it ‘accomplishes things that are contrary to nature for the sake of the utility of men’.29 Guidobaldo del Monte (1545–1607) made a similar observation when he wrote in his commentary, 26 Helen Hattab, ‘From Mechanics to Mechanism: The Quaestiones Mechnicae and Descartes’ Physics’, in The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century: Patterns of Change in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, ed. Peter R. Anstey and John A. Schuster (Springer Netherlands, 2005), p. 100. 27 Hattab, ‘From Mechanics to Mechanism’, p. 100. 28 Hattab, ‘From Mechanics to Mechanism’, p. 102 and Matteo Valleriani, ‘The Transformation of Aristotle’s Mechanical Questions: A Bridge Between the Italian Renaissance Architects and Galileo’s First New Science’, Annals of Science 66, no. 2 (2009): pp. 183–208, 184–185. 29 Hattab, ‘From Mechanics to Mechanism’, p. 105.

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the Mechanicorum Liber (1577), that mechanics ‘holds control of the realm of nature’ and ‘operates against nature or rather in rivalry with the laws of nature’.30 Matteo Valleriani in his study of these early engineers suggests that there was a ‘kind of conviction amongst artist-engineers that the battle against nature raged on’.31 Such commentaries chime with descriptions such as that from Il corago quoted above that refer to the ‘supernatural’ quality of the scenes of nature presented on stage. We know that set designers and engineers associated with the development of macchine for the stage were closely engaged with such debates. It was at the request of Buontalenti himself that Hero’s text was first translated into Italian. Due to his poor grasp of Latin he asked Oreste Vannocci Biringucci and Bernardo Davanzati to produce an edition.32 One of the next translations of Hero was produced by Aleotti in 1589 and included references to Guidobaldo’s text.33 That the stage engineers themselves were so closely involved in the revival of key ancient texts and their application across a range of fields suggests that the representation of ‘Arte vinse natura’ onstage can be linked to more than just a demand to prop up the power of rulers.

Public Opera and the Set Designer as Magician The death of Pope Urban VIII in 1644 in many ways marked the close of the period of humanist court opera, and the second half of the seventeenth century was dominated by the rise of public opera.34 The style of opera usually referred to as the dramma per musica, which had begun to emerge in the 1630s, became dominant and was performed within a different social and cultural framework. The shift from 30 As translated in Stillman Drake and L. E. Drabkin, Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Selections from Tartaglia, Benedetti, Guido Ubaldo, & Galileo (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 241. 31 Matteo Valleriani, Galileo Engineer, (Springer Science & Business Media, 2010), p. 201. 32 Matteo Valleriani, ‘From Condensation to Compression: How Renaissance Italian Engineers Approached Hero’s Pneumatics’, in Übersetzung Und Transformation, ed. H. Böhme, C. Rapp, and W. Rösler (Berlin, 2007), p. 342. The text was called Libro degli artifizii spiritali over di fiato, 1582 and the manuscript is in the Biblioteca degli Intronati di Siena, available here: http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/MPIWG:40QGK7T7. 33 Paul Lawrence Rose and Stillman Drake, ‘The Pseudo-Aristotelian Questions of Mechanics in Renaissance Culture’, Studies in the Renaissance 18 (1971): pp. 96–97. Aleotti’s translation is available as Gli artificiosi e curiosi moti spiritali de Herone, here: https://archive.org/details/gliartificiosiec00hero. 34 Tim Carter and John Butt suggest that opera at the humanistic courts of (mainly) Northern Italy were really just one part of a ‘broader gamut’ of princely entertainment, and he dates the ‘real’ birth of opera to Venice in 1637 (The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 241–242). For detailed accounts of the business of public opera see Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) and Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon, Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

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courtly to public opera performance originated in Venice, where noble families backed opera for financial gain and family prestige. Public opera was quickly exported and rapidly became the dominant form of theatrical entertainment throughout the Italian peninsula and in Paris, Vienna and Hamburg.35 The form remained more-or-less standard but was adapted to suit the situation. In Florence it took over from plays and intermedi for courtly entertainments that celebrated weddings and births. In Naples, Venetian operas were adapted to celebrate the Spanish viceroy. Rome had a short period of public opera under Pope Clement IX (Rospigliosi) (1600–1669) before being banned.36 It was during this period that the structure of opera was standardized as a prologue and three acts, a form that altered little over the next century and a half. Subjects were drawn from a variety of sources—classical myth, epic, history, or newly invented—but the narratives became standardized, and generally involved two pairs of lovers and their comic attendants. Gods withdrew from the action and appeared only in the prologue, if at all. Classical heroes continued to appear as characters on stage, but were accompanied by servants or nurses, or in pastoral settings, by satyrs and nymphs.37 In addition to the main narrative there were numerous secondary plots, and all the characters would become entangled in a seemingly inextricable tangle. Such plots fitted perfectly with the belief that the world was a deceptive illusion, and in keeping with this, many characters would appear in disguise. The requirements of staging remained relatively constant, with the three acts divided into two to four scenes. In terms of the musical structure aria and recitative became increasingly distinct musical forms. The number of sets gradually increased with many public and court operas having up to ten or twelve sets. In some acts there would be a new set for almost every scene, while in other instances one set would be used for the entire act.38 However, the relative consistency in dramatic form did not mean there were fixed rules concerning staging, which varied from place to place. The number of sets depended on the opera and the resources available to the designer, and the type and impressiveness of special effects depended on the technical capabilities of specific theatres and individual designers. Whether an opera was for a public audience, a domestic one, or for a one-off festa teatrale also affected the staging. 35 Rosand, Opera, pp. 11–15 dates the beginning of public opera in Venice to the year 1637. 36 Silke Leopold, ‘Rome: Sacred and Secular’, in The Early Baroque Era: From the Late 16th Century to the 1660s, ed. Curtis Price (London: The Macmillan Press, 1993), pp. 49–50, 59–72. 37 Silke Leopold, ‘‘La Calisto’ and the 17th Century Venetian Opera’, in Cavalli, La Calisto, trans. Derek Yeld (Arles: Harmonia Mundi, 1995), p. 23. 38 Per Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli and Baroque Stage Design (Stockholm: Almsquist & Wiksell, 1962), pp. 58–73.

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Giacomo Torelli From the 1640s onward Venice became one of the key centres for the production of opera. It was produced for a paying public, free from courtly constraints, and from the 1630s onwards gained international renown for its dazzling visual effects. A description of the opera Andromeda by Benedetto Ferrari included a long description of the extraordinary vision of the landscape settings: Sparita la Tenda si vide la Scena, tutta mare; con una lontananza così artifitiosa d’acque, e di scogli, che la naturalezza, di quella (ancor che finta) movea dubbio à Riguardanti, se veramente fossero in un Teatro, ò in una spiaggia di mare effettiva […]. In un istante si vide la Scena, di maritima Boschereccia; così del natural, ch’al vivo al vivo ti portava all’occhio quell’effetiva cima nevosa, quel vero pian fiorito quella reale intrecciature del Bosco, e quel non finto scioglimento d’acque. When the curtain was removed and one saw the scene was all sea, with a distant view of water, and of rocks, made with much artifice so that the naturalness of it (even though not real) made the audience doubt whether if they were truly in a Theatre, or on the actual shore of the sea […]. In an instant one saw the scene change from sea to Forest; which was so natural, that from moment to moment the eye moved from actual snowy peaks, to true fields of flowers, to an actual tangled forest, and real running water.39

Ferrari emphasizes the ‘naturalezza’ of the scene presented, the sense of disbelief or doubt raised in the audience by the persuasiveness of the illusion, and the sudden shifting from scene to scene. He presents the landscapes on stage as appearing almost real. The audience is whisked across snowy mountains, flowered fields, seascapes and forests, the naturalness is mentioned more than once, and the audience are apparently so fully immersed in the scene that they are not sure where they physically are. In contrast to the many treatises and other texts written on poetry, music and the arts of painting and sculpture, very little was ever written about the theoretical and conceptual ‘idea’ of sets during this period. The texts that exist tend be more practical guides to set construction. Although the reception and experience of sets can be gleaned to some extent from these practical texts and from mentions in libretti and accounts written by audience members, none of these really constitute a ‘theory of set design’. One exception to this is the work of one of Venice’s leading set designers and stage engineers, Giacomo Torelli, who 39 Benedetto Ferrari, L’ Andromeda (Bariletti, 1637), pp. 5–7; on Andromeda see Glixon and Glixon, Inventing the Business of Opera, p. 227.

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established himself as ‘la gran strega’ (the great sorcerer) of the stage.40 Born in Fano in 1608 Torelli originally trained as an engineer but shortly after his arrival in Venice he began to work for the public opera houses and enjoyed a productive career in Venice, and subsequently in Paris, both as a designer of sets and an inventor of stage machinery. He famously designed a machine that changed stage sets instantaneously that could be operated ‘by a single boy of fifteen turning a handle’, instead of the usual large group of men. 41 This ability to smoothly transition between sets led to more varied scenes being added. As well as being one of the most important and innovative set designers of the seventeenth century, Torelli is significant in studies of scenography as many engravings of his sets survive along with some detailed descriptions of the effect of these upon the viewers. Through these we can begin to understand the role that surprise, spectacle and wonder played in the visual culture of seventeenth-century theatre. A commemorative volume commissioned by Torelli and intended to document his achievements called Apparati scenici per lo Teatro Novissimo di Venetia in 1644 includes a description of the audience’s response to the final scene of an opera (not named, but probably Venere Gelosa): Al natale di questa Scena dovea tutto il Teatro, non cheil Palco, o gl’edifitij sollevarsi, e ben sollevossi, poichè al muovere di quei gran telari allo sparire del cielo, & al veder tutte le cose di quella gran machina rivolgere, e sconvolgersi, non restò alcuno de’ spettatori fermo, s’alzò, si rivolse, e non sapeva, che si vedesse, ò aspettasse se non una gran novità, ma ben presto l’occhio restò pago, poiche rappresentò la Scena tratta in vago & dilettevole Giardino Reale, egli era di gran lunga diverso da quanti mai se ne sono rappresentati, e su le scene, e su le stampe. At the birth of this scene the whole theatre, not just the stage or the buildings, was supposed to rise, and it rose indeed, for with the movement of those great back-drops and the disappearance of the sky, and upon seeing all the parts of that great machine turn and mix in great confusion, not one of the spectators sat still: they stood up and turned around and did not know what they were seeing or what to expect, if not a great novelty; but soon the eye was satisfied, because it saw the scene transformed into a lovely and delightful Royal garden, which was far different from any that have been depicted, either on stage or in print.42 40 On Torelli’s career see Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli, and Francesco Milesi, Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione Scenica nell’Europa Barocca (Fano: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, 2000). 41 Bjurström, Giacomo Torelli, pp. 53–58. 42 The descriptions in the volume are written by Maiolino Bisaccioni; see Giacomo Torelli, Apparati Scenici per Lo Teatro Novissimo (Venice: Vecellio e Leni, 1644), p. 39. Translation from Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, p. 105.

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This response of surprise and amazement is the one most often recorded in seventeenth-century accounts of opera performances. John Evelyn on his visit to the opera in Venice in 1645 briefly mentioned the ‘recitative music by the most excellent musicians’ and then focused most of his description of the ‘variety of scenes painted and contrived with no less art of perspective, and machines for flying in the air, and other wonderful notions; taken together, it is one of the most magnificent and expensive diversions the wit of man can invent’. 43 The wonder also extended to the efficacy of the illusions when they showed things that were known to be impossible. In 1647 Ménestrier wrote about a performance of L’Orfeo (given at the Palais Royale in Paris with sets and machinery by Torelli) that ‘on favoir dés la premiere Scene un Bocage don’t l’étenduë & la profondeur sembloit surpasser plus de cent fois le Theatre (from the first scene we have a wood whose breadth and depth seemed to surpass more than a hundred times the [size of the] Theatre)’44 The visual experience seems to have been designed to immerse viewers and even unsettle them. The description of sets and machines as ‘wondrous’ or ‘miraculous’ can seem to be a bit of a cliché in accounts of opera, even occasionally appearing on the printed libretti distributed to the audience before the performance. It was a surprise that often seems to have been fully anticipated (a bit like we now anticipate the experience of being amazed at CGI effects in blockbuster movies). This ‘wonder’ response from seventeenth-century audiences is often dismissed, even by the early eighteenth century, as ‘a sort of credulous stupidity’. For example, Joseph Addison (his view coloured by a nationalistically driven prejudice against Italian opera) wrote in 1711 that ‘An Opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its Decorations, as its only Design is to gratify the Senses, and keep up an indolent Attention in the Audience’. 45 However, it is simplistic to regard the response of wonder by the audience as one that played only to the superficial emotions of the audience. In the seventeenth century the experience of wonder was conceptualized as one of the passions. Descartes positioned it as the first of the passions: When the first encounter with some object surprises us […] this makes us wonder and be astonished […] And since this can happen before we know in the least 43 John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. John Bray (New York and London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), p. 202. The opera he saw was ‘Ercole in Lidia’, Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice, 107. Although Torelli’s name is not tied directly to this opera the sets and machinery Evelyn saw would have been based on those Torelli had created for the Teatro Novissimo during his long association with the theatre. 44 Claude-François Menestrier, Des representations en musique anciennes et modernes (Paris, Chez R. Guignard, 1681), http://archive.org/details/desrepresentatio00mene, p. 196; see also Frederick Hammond, The Ruined Bridge: Studies in Barberini Patronage (Sterling Heights, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 2010), p. 171. 45 Joseph Addison, The Spectator: A New Edition with Biographical Notices of the Contributors (London: William Tegg, 1866), p. 10.

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whether this object is suitable to us or not, it seems to me that Wonder is the first of all the passions. It has no opposite, because if the object presented has nothing in it that surprises us, we are not in the least moved by it and regard it without passion. 46

This observation is key to understanding the seventeenth-century obsession with wonder in theatrical productions, as wonder was intimately connected to emotional engagement. Descartes is stating that without surprise or wonder there is no passion. This idea that wonder was a necessary prompt to further emotional engagement is also suggested by an anonymous description of Torelli’s sets for a performance of Androméde (this one a play by Pierre Corneille) in Paris in 1650. This account describes the setting of Act III when the scene of a beautiful garden changed to show the sea (Fig. 4.4) surrounded by craggy rocks: The myrtle and jasmine change into masses of frightful rocks, and their craggy and uneven shapes seem so exactly a result of Nature’s whim, that she would seem to have contributed more than art has, in ranging them at the sides of the stage. Here the artifice of the design is marvellously effective in hiding the marks of its own handiwork. Sea billows engulf the scene, except for a strip five or six feet wide that serves as a shore. In the gulf formed by the towering cliffs, the waves break continually, and race out its mouth into the first sea. This sea appears so vast that one would swear the vessels, floating near the horizon which bounds the view, are more than six leagues away. No one who sees it can fail to regard this horrible spectacle as the deadly display of the gods’ injustice, and of Andromeda’s agony. And then she appears in the clouds, whence she is borne off violently by two zephyrs that chain her to the foot of one of the rocks. 47

This description emphasizes the idea that the set was more than just visually engaging; it served to enhance the ‘horrible spectacle’. The vast sea and frightful rocks added to the audience’s sense of Andromeda’s despair and ‘agony’ at being abandoned to the sea monster. This description closely links the vision presented on stage with real emotional responses (agony, violence, fear, horror) that are observed or experienced by the viewer. The technical innovations of designers such as Torelli 46 René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1989), p. 52. 47 Anonymous French description (S. Wilma Holsboer, L’histoire de La Mise En Scène Dans Le Théâtre Français de 1600 à 1657 (Paris: Librairie Droz, 1933), pp. 151–154), translation from A. M. Nagler, A Source Book in Theatrical History (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1952), pp. 169–170. For more detail on the production of Androméde see de Jerome de La Gorce, ‘Un Aspetto del Mestiere Teatrale Di Torelli: La Ritualizzazione della Scenografie dell’Andromède’ per Il ‘Ballet de La Nuit’’, in Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione Scenica nell’Europa Barocca, ed. Francesco Milesi (Fano: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, 2002), pp. 235–241.

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Figure 4.4 François Chauveau after Giacomo Torelli, Scene for Act 3 of Andromède (Paris, 1650), dimensions unknown, etching, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (RESERVE FOL-QB-201 (59)).

transformed set design into something capable of being as emotionally persuasive as the music. Mercedes Viale Ferrero has argued that the texts written on Torelli’s designs are perhaps the closest we have to a text that explains set design as an art that ‘encompasses conceptual invention’.48 Through the descriptions commissioned (and perhaps even written by Torelli himself) we can begin to understand how set design might have responded to broader intellectual discussions about ‘seeing’, perception, illusion and wonder, all themes at the centre of discussions of art at the time. The experience of surprise and wonder at ‘impossible scenes’ entertained, but also repeatedly challenged audiences to consider the fallibility of visual observation in a way that aligns with contemporary debates about it in scientific circles. The idea of sensory experience was important at this period as a means for understanding nature. The revival of antique texts, along with new breakthroughs in the study of nature led to discussions about how humans perceived and understood the world: how did immediate sensations and moments of wonder translate into knowledge and understanding? The philosopher Tommaso Campanella wrote that the ‘senses, then, our own and others, are in a certain measure narrators and 48 Mercedes Viale Ferrero, ‘Stage and Set’, in Opera on Stage, ed. Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 17.

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witnesses for the soul, which is the inventor, builder and master of the sciences’. 49 There were debates over the ability of sensory perception to be trusted, and later in the seventeenth century Gianvincenzo Gravina would argue that the senses were not really trustworthy, that ‘information arising from outside the subject could never transmit anything but the bare and distorted traces of things, refracted and modified by the senses and the imagination before reaching the conscious mind’.50 These are only two examples of debates that continued over the century as philosophers and others attempted to understand how the senses worked (to support or refute the method of empirical observation), debated the role of imagination in interpreting the exterior world, and the role of wonder and amazement. The question of the difference between ‘seeing and knowing’ was a key one across variety of intellectual debates, from astronomy to painting. For example, Galileo wrote, ‘I do not possess such a perfect faculty of discrimination. I am more like the monkey who firmly believed that he was another monkey in the mirror […] and discovered his error only after running behind the glass several times […] I should like to know the visual differences by which he [referring here to his adversaries in these theories] so readily distinguishes the real from the spurious’.51 This experience of Galileo echoes the accounts of audiences in the theatre, constantly in doubt about what was real and what was illusory. The idea of wonder, belief and reality was also being taken up in discussions of poetry and music. Even by the later part of the sixteenth century the philosopher Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597) had been developing a ‘poetics of wonder’ put up in opposition to Aristotle’s poetics based on mimesis in his Della Poetica (1586), in which he also condemned the modern interpretation of Aristotle ‘according to which poetry must be based on credibility, verisimilitude, possibility, necessity, truth’.52 For Patrizi, the poet’s objective should instead be to alter reality, ‘to give to a thing a form and appearance different from that which it first had’. He goes on to explain, in terms that anticipate the observations of Descartes, that: the above mentioned power of wonder [potenza ammirata] is neither reason, nor emotion, but separate from them both and in the business of communicating between the two […] the power of wonder is almost an Euripos [violent current] […] the tide running back and forth from reason to emotion […] something new 49 Brendan Dooley, ‘Veritas Filia Temporis: Experience and Belief in Early Modern Culture’, Journal of the History of Ideas 60, no. 3 (1999): p. 491. 50 Gravina as paraphrased in Dooley, ‘Veritas Filia Temporis’, p. 498. 51 Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 96. 52 Patrizi as paraphrased in Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto, ‘‘Not before Either Known or Dreamt of’: The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Craft of Wonder’, Word & Image 31, no. 2 (2015): p. 112.

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and sudden and unexpected which appears before us, creates a movement in our soul, almost contradictory in itself of believing and not believing. Of believing because the thing is seen to exist; and of not believing because it is sudden, new, and not before either known or dreamt of.53

Patrizi’s description of wonder, although directed at poetic invention, corresponds to the reported effects of set design and macchine reported in libretti and audience accounts. The account of the audience at the 1637 performance of Andromeda marvelling at ‘the naturalness of it (even though not real)’ and the effect of making the ‘audience doubt whether if they were truly in a Theatre’ suggests a tension between reason and emotion. Or the account of Torelli’s audience standing up and turning around at the sight of wondrous mechanisms, this too f its with what Peter G. Platt has described, in relation to Patrizi’s text, as the ‘place where wonder and reason constantly destabilize each other, where contingency reigns’.54 Patrizi’s ideas of wonder, although pushing back against the popularity of Aristotle, also drew upon an antique source, the Longinian (or Pseudo-Longinian) treatise On the Sublime. This text described a style of writing and use of language that was effective in prompting strong visual imagery and affective response to it in the reader or listener. The use of this style was intended to have a transformative effect on audiences by triggering responses of amazement and wonder. It is widely accepted that increasing popularity of concepts like meraviglia, stupor and estasi in the seventeenth century were driven in part by the growing popularity of the Longinian text.55 Helen Langdon, in her study of the sublime and its association with landscape painting in the seventeenth century, points out that the Longinian examples of the sublime were linked to the ‘elemental forces of nature’.56 Langdon suggests that the interest in the Longinian sublime helped to frame responses to the natural world in seventeenth century. She suggests that ideas of the sublime explored by scientists like Daniello Bartoli (1608–1685) that favoured the ‘spectacular and overwhelming […] immense forests, cliffs, the Sun, waterfalls, shipwrecks, caves’ drew directly on Longinus and represented a shift away from the earlier vision of an 53 Patrizi as translated in Peter G. Platt, ‘‘Not before Either Known or Dreamt of’: Francesco Patrizi and the Power of Wonder in Renaissance Poetics’, The Review of English Studies 43, no. 171 (1992): p. 391. 54 Platt, ‘Not before Either Known’, p. 394. 55 Eugenio Refini, ‘Longinus and Poetic Imagination in Late Renaissance Literary Theory’, in Translations of the Sublime: The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre, ed. Caroline Van Eck et al. (Leiden, Boston: BRILL, 2012), p. 37. 56 Helen Langdon, ‘The Baroque Sublime: The Affective Power of Landscape’, in Emotion and the Seduction of the Senses, Baroque to Neo-Baroque, ed. Lisa Beaven and Angela Ndalianis (Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018), p. 44.

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ideal of serene, pastoral nature.57 Langdon also argues that these ideas had a direct impact on landscape painting, specifically the works of Salvator Rosa and Gaspar Dughet, that presented nature as a spectacle. This idea of a ‘baroque sublime’ fits well with the accounts of sets and stage machinery. Indeed, the account above of Torelli’s set for Androméde not only captures the visual spectacle of the set, it flags a range of intense emotional responses, ‘frightful rocks’, ‘towering cliffs’, and the vast sea, all of which contribute to a sense of ‘horrible spectacle’ that echoes the popular aspects of the ‘horror’ of the sublime. Bartoli himself invoked theatrical metaphors in his writing when he described man in nature as a ‘Spettatore in un teatro di sempre nuove, e tutte nobili meraviglie (spectator in a theatre of constant new and splendid wonders)’.58 The theatre was a metaphor for such experiences and, through the use of sets and machines, a vehicle for reinforcing them. Over the course of half a century or so, the representation of landscape on stage had shifted from a focus on serene, beautiful, pastoral settings to a fascination with rendering highly convincing illusions of living landscapes. Nature was no longer presented only as a pastoral retreat or a satyric wood, scenes now also depicted the ‘horror’ of wild and powerful nature and gave audiences the emotional thrill of being subjected to nature’s grandeur and power. The vision of the world enacted upon stage was a powerful one that was both responding to new ideas about human relationships to the natural world, and in turn shaping these by presenting compelling multimedia visions that the audience could experience first-hand.

Playing with the Audience’s Emotions To finish this examination of the role of the set and the machine in the representation of landscape and natural phenomena we turn to the sets of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Despite a tantalizing lack of sources about the true extent of Bernini’s involvement with the theatre, those that we do have contain some important revelations about how Bernini regarded the role of stage sets and stage machinery.59 57 Langdon, ‘Baroque Sublime’, p. 47. 58 Daniello Bartoli, L’ uomo di lettere difeso ed emendato del P. Daniele Bartoli (Venice: G. Tasso, 1853), p. 17. 59 The evidence for Bernini’s work in the theatre can be found in C. D’Onofrio, La Villa Aldobrandini Di Frascati (Rome, 1963), pp. 91–110. There is a more recent overview by Franco Mormando in his preface to Domenico Bernini’s, The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini; see Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 55–57. See also Hammond, Music and Spectacle, pp. 189 and 237–239, who notes that despite Bernini being linked with almost every Barberini production (both by seventeenth-century biographers and in more recent scholarship), records only prove his involvement with one production. Also, Irving Lavin, Visible Spirit: The Art of Gianlorenzo Bernini (London: The Pindar Press, 2007), pp. 16–17. More recently the work of Elena Tamburini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini e Il Teatro dell’arte (Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2012) has revealed much more about

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The f irst of these is a play written in the 1640s and usually referred to as The Impresario or Fontana di Trevi. It may never have actually been performed, but the text survives. The narrative follows the main character (possibly intended to be played by Bernini himself), an impresario called Signor Gratiano who is tasked with creating ‘belle Prospettive’ (beautiful stage sets) for a ‘commedia’ to be given in honour of a local prince.60 On the one hand this play is a simple commedia erudita, with characters drawn based upon the commedia dell’arte, with scheming servants and foolish masters. The comedy functions mainly as a witty critique by Bernini of the artifice of stage design and stage machinery itself. At one point, Gratiano admonishes his assistant (who has said that his sets will have the entire audience in fits of laughter): ‘Damn you all, stage machines aren’t to make people laugh, but to make them gaze in wonder. Who the hell’s going to marvel at this contraption?’61 Elsewhere he worries about secrecy of the sets declaring: ‘I don’t want anybody to see them. No one from court is to lay eyes on them. Once they’re seen, they’re no longer thought beautiful’.62 This guarding of secrets is one of the main themes of the play and here Gratiano/Bernini makes it clear the element of surprise is crucial for the audience to find them compelling. The characters also have much to say about illusion and naturalism. Gratiano’s servant, Zanni, who is keen to display his knowledge of the complicated stage machinery, explains to the audience: ‘When a thing looks truly natural, there’s got to be some craft behind it’.63 This is a revealing comment. It tells us that the audience is not meant to believe it to be the real thing; instead they are to be amazed by the craft of the artist (Bernini) who has so cleverly created a perfect facsimile of the real thing. Later in the play Gratiano explains to one of the stage carpenters, Sepio, that special effects must appear ‘completely natural’ in order to deceive the audience: SEPIO: Tell me straight out, how do you want it done? GRATIANO: I want it to appear completely natural. SEPIO: How do you mean, natural? Bernini’s work for the theatre and demonstrated his central importance in the theatrical life of Rome in the seventeenth century. 60 There are two published version of the play, one in Italian, see Cesare D’Onofrio, Fontana Di Trevi: Commedia Inedita (Rome: Staderini editore, 1963) and another in English, Donald Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella, ‘A Comedy by Bernini’, in Gianlorenzo Bernini: New Aspects of His Art and Thought, ed. Irving Lavin (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985), pp. 63–113. Both editions include a commentary on the text. 61 Bernini as translated in Beecher and Ciavolella, Gianlorenzo Bernini, p. 101. 62 Bernini as translated in Beecher and Ciavolella, Gianlorenzo Bernini, p. 87. 63 Bernini as translated in Beecher and Ciavolella, Gianlorenzo Bernini, p. 91.

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GRATIANO: By natural, I don’t mean a cloud stuck in place up there. I want my cloud standing out, detached against the blue, and visible in all its dimensions like a real cloud up in the air. SEPIO: Up in the air eh? There’s nothing but doubletalk. Detach it from up there, you’ll more likely see a cloud on the floor than in the air ‒ unless you suspend it by magic. GRATIANO: Ingenuity and design constitute the Magic Art by whose means you deceive the eye and make your audience gaze in wonder, make a cloud stand out against the horizon, then float downstage, still free, with a natural motion. Gradually approaching the viewer, it will seem to dilate, to grow larger and larger. The wind will seem to waft it, waveringly, here and there, then up, higher and higher—not just haul it in place, bang, with a counterweight. SEPIO: Well, Messer Gratiano, you can do these things with words but not with hands.

Gratiano’s explanation reveals that while the audience may be aware that it is an illusion, they want to be drawn into that illusion and surrender to it, which only works if they have no idea how it is being done, thus creating a sense of amazement and disbelief. Donald Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella in their analysis of the play point out that this exchange could be read as a statement of Bernini’s aesthetic principles that the ‘quality of the meraviglia comes only when the viewer recognizes the degree to which man’s ingenuity and artifice is responsible for the ‘real’’.64 This is not stupid wonder of the masses; instead it is a sophisticated and layered form of cognition that understands and applauds the deception, and the craft that lies behind it Accounts by audience members at one the best known of Bernini’s theatrical productions, La Fiera di Farfa (1639) as an intermedi for the secular opera Chi soffre speri convey these sentiments almost exactly. The performance was staged in the salone grande of the Palazzo Barberini at Quattro Fontane. Although there are no extant designs, there are several first-hand descriptions.65 For this performance Bernini created on the stage a country fair complete with live animals, a recreation of the Barberini garden with passing carriages and the illusion of a sunrise and a sunset. The Avvisi di Roma recorded that there were Real merchants on horseback […] the procession of carriages and the running of a palio, and at the end the effect the sun makes when it sets. In the last intermedio one sees the likeness of the garden of the same Palace of the Signori Barberini 64 Beecher and Ciavolella, Gianlorenzo Bernini, p. 70. 65 For more detail on the first-hand accounts of Chi soffre speri see Hammond, ‘More on Music’, pp. 115–118.

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with the game of pillotta, the passage of carriages, horses, and litters, and similar things which arouse such great wonder that it has been judged universally a rare artifice and the most successful of those which ever have been seen in this city.66

This description clearly demonstrates that the audience responded in the way that Gratiano/Bernini intended them to, with ‘wonder’ and ‘surprise’ at the cleverness of the illusion, enhanced by it being located in their immediate environment. However, two other plays staged by Bernini, recorded by his son Domenico, show him instead radically subverting the expectations of the audience. A performance of a commedia by Bernini, called ‘The Fair’ (not the same as La Fiera), performed sometime before 1645, featured a scene where a Carnival float was seen returning from a celebration accompanied by excited merrymakers holding torches.67 Suddenly one of the actors stumbled and dropped his torch, flames spread rapidly from the torch across to the scenery (constructed, we assume, of the usual wood, paint, canvas and other flammable materials). The audience panicked, leapt up from their seats and rushed for the exit, desperate to escape the seemingly inevitable conflagration of the theatre (an event that was not an uncommon occurrence in this period). Then, all of a sudden, ‘with marvellous orderliness, the scenery was transformed, and the fire that appeared to be burning on stage became a most exquisite garden’. The fire was revealed as a piece of trickery. Bernini had made use of the sophisticated pyrotechnics and fire illusions, which were usually used for hell scenes and on-stage firework displays, specifically in order to frighten the audience. For another play called The Flooding of the Tiber Domenico relates that Bernini: [M]ade great quantities of actual water come forth from the distance, which, at the most appropriate moment within the action of the play, burst through their barriers at certain points that the Cavaliere’s clever handiwork had already weakened for precisely this purpose. The water then flowed across the stage and spilled over with a rush toward the seats of the spectators. The latter, in turn, taking this simulation for a real flood, became so terrified that, believing, an accident that which was in fact done artfully on purpose, rose in haste to escape; some climbed atop benches in order to raise themselves above danger and in the general chaos trampled over everything between them. Then, all of a sudden, with the opening of a trap door, all of that great quantity of water was 66 Avvisi di Roma (March 5, 1639), as translated in Frederick Hammond, ‘Bernini and the ‘Fiera Di Farfa’’, in Gianlorenzo Bernini: New Aspects of His Art and Though, ed. Irving Lavin (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1985), p. 116. 67 Mormando, Bernini, pp. 133–134. Tamburini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini e Il Teatro, 19, 204.

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drained away, without any further harm to the spectators beyond the fright they had experienced.68

In both these instances Bernini turns the experience of set design upside down. These productions have often been only a footnote to both Bernini’s artistic output and to seventeenth-century baroque theatre, viewed as intriguing anomalies rather than key works. However, if we look at these performances not in terms of what they can tell us about Bernini as an artist, but for what they can tell us about the reception of stage sets, then they are actually more revealing than many more conventional accounts of performances. Here Bernini demonstrates what happens when the audience doesn’t recognize the artifice behind the illusion but is instead entirely deceived. In both these instances it could be argued that Bernini causes real ‘core’ emotional responses in the audience, who experienced real fear and panic.69 These emotional responses are quite different to those of surprise or delight invoked above. Bernini was playing with the audience’s expectation that they would be ‘amazed’ by illusions but not truly tricked or deceived by them. He showed them instead what it meant to be truly taken in by an illusion. Bernini alludes to this trickery in his play when Gratiano’s servant, Zanni, is trying to get involved with the design of the machines for the play. Gratiano declares that ‘It’s no surprise when a Zanni becomes an operator [machinatore] in my household, but when an operator becomes a Zanni, look out!’70 Zanni is not simply Gratiano’s servant, but also the traditional trickster in the commedia dell’arte productions, so Bernini is also here also saying ‘beware the set designer who turns trickster’, which is precisely what he does in the two plays described by Domenico. Seventeenth-century set design was not simply concerned with filling the gap between the representation and the real with an affective response, but with exploiting the gap itself.

Bibliography Adami, Giuseppe. ‘Ingegnere-Scenografo e l’ingegnere-Venturiero: Le Macchine e Le Scene Di Francesco Guitti Ideate per Il Torneo de ‘La Contesa’’. In Barocke Inszenierung, edited by Joseph Imorde, Fritz Neumeyer, and Tristan Weddigen, 159–89. Emsdetten: Edition Imorde, 1999. Adami, Giuseppe. Scenografia e scenotecnica barocca tra Ferrara e Parma (1625 ‒ 1631). Rome: ‘L’Erma’ di Bretschneider, 2003. 68 Mormando, Bernini, p. 133. It is possible that this play was performed in the Barberini theatre, see D’Onofrio, Fontana di Trevi, pp. 96–99. 69 Patricia Greenspan has discussed this difference between the emotion of seeing something frightening or horrible in a film and the emotion of actually feeling a sense of threat to oneself, see Patricia S. Greenspan, Emotions and Reasons: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 32. 70 Bernini as translated in Beecher and Ciavolella, Gianlorenzo Bernini, p. 94.

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Adami, Giuseppe. ‘Between Tradition and Innovation Reconsidering Florentine Stage Machinery of the Seventeenth Century in the Light of the Furttenbach Codex Iconographicus 401’. In Technologies of Theatre: Joseph Furttenbach and the Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in Early Modern Theatre Cultures, edited by Jan Lazardig and Hole Rößler, 3-4, 417-437. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2016. Addison, Joseph. The Spectator: A New Edition with Biographical Notices of the Contributors, London: William Tegg, 1866. Bartoli, Daniello. L’uomo di lettere difeso ed emendato del P. Daniele Bartoli. Venice: G. Tasso, 1853. Beecher, Donald, and Massimo Ciavolella. ‘A Comedy by Bernini’. In Gianlorenzo Bernini: New Aspects of His Art and Thought, edited by Irving Lavin, 63–113. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1985. Bino, Carla. ‘Macchine e teatro: il cantiere di Bernardo Buontalenti agli Uffizi’. Nuncius 18, no. 1 (2003): 249–268. Bjurström, Per. Giacomo Torelli and Baroque Stage Design. Stockholm: Almsquist & Wiksell, 1962. Carter, Tim, and John Butt. The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Cosgrove, Denis E. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1984. Descartes, René. The Passions of the Soul. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1989. D’Onofrio, Cesare. La Villa Aldobrandini Di Frascati. Rome: Staderini, 1963. D’Onofrio, Cesare. Fontana Di Trevi: Commedia Inedita. Rome: Staderini editore, 1963. Dooley, Brendan. ‘Veritas Filia Temporis: Experience and Belief in Early Modern Culture’. Journal of the History of Ideas 60, no. 3 (1999): 487–504. Drake, Stillman, and Drabkin, L.E. Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Selections from Tartaglia, Benedetti, Guido Ubaldo, & Galileo. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Edited by John Bray. New York and London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901. Fabbri, Paolo, and Angelo Pompilio. Il Corago, o Vero Alcune Osservazioni per Metter Bene in Scena Le Composizioni Drammatiche. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1983. Ferrari, Benedetto. L’ Andromeda. Bariletti, 1637. Giannetto, Raffaella Fabiani. ‘‘Not before Either Known or Dreamt of’: The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Craft of Wonder’. Word & Image 31, no. 2 (2015): 112–118. Glixon, Beth L., and Jonathan E. Glixon. Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Gorce, Jerome de La. ‘Un Aspetto Del Mestiere Teatrale Di Torelli: La Ritualizzazione Della Scenografie Dell’Andromède’ per Il ‘Ballet de La Nuit’’. In Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione Scenica Nell’Europa Barocca, edited by Francesco Milesi, 235–241. Fano: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, 2002.

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Grant, Katrina. ‘‘To Make Them Gaze in Wonder’: Emotional Responses to Stage Scenery in Seventeenth-Century Opera’. In Emotion and the Seduction of the Senses, Baroque to Neo-Baroque, edited by Angela Ndalianis and Lisa Beaven, 79-98. Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018. Greenspan, Patricia S. Emotions and Reasons: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification. New York: Routledge, 1988. Hammond, Frederick. ‘Bernini and the ‘Fiera Di Farfa’’. In Gianlorenzo Bernini: New Aspects of His Art and Though, edited by Irving Lavin, 115–125. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1985. Hammond, Frederick. ‘More on Music in Casa Barberini.’ Studi Musicali 14 (1985): 244. Hammond, Frederick. Music and Spectacle in Baroque Rome: Barberini Patronage under Urban VIII. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. Hammond, Frederick. The Ruined Bridge: Studies in Barberini Patronage. Sterling Heights, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press, 2010. Harris, Joseph. Inventing the Spectator: Subjectivity and the Theatrical Experience in Early Modern France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Hattab, Helen. Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Hattab, Helen. ‘From Mechanics to Mechanism: The Quaestiones Mechnicae and Descartes’ Physics’. In The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century: Patterns of Change in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, edited by Peter R. Anstey and John A. Schuster, 99–129. Springer Netherlands, 2005. Hewitt, Barnard. The Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1958. Holsboer, S. Wilma. L’histoire de La Mise En Scène Dans Le Théâtre Français de 1600 à 1657. Paris: Librairie Droz, 1933. Jarrard, Alice. Architecture as Performance in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Court Ritual in Modena, Rome, and Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Kemp, Martin. The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Kivy, Peter. Introduction to a Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Lamberini, Daniela. ‘Cultura Ingegneristica Nel Granducato Di Toscana Ai Tempi Dell’Aleotti’. In Giambattista Aleotti e Gli Ingegneri Del Rinascimento, edited by Alessandra Fiocca, 293–308. Florence: Olschki, 1998. Langdon, Helen. ‘The Baroque Sublime: The Affective Power of Landscape’. In Emotion and the Seduction of the Senses, Baroque to Neo-Baroque, edited by Lisa Beaven and Angela Ndalianis, 43–62. Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2018. Lavin, Irving. Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts. New York: Pierpoint Morgan Library & Oxford University Press, 1980. Lavin, Irving. ‘Lettres de Parme (1618, 1627-8) et Débuts Du Théâtre Baroque’. In Le Lieu Théâtrale à La Renaissance [Colloques Internationaux Du Centre National de La

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Recherche Scientifique. Sciences Humaines.], edited by Jean Jacquot, 105–158. Paris: CNRS, 1968. Lavin, Irving. Visible Spirit: The Art of Gianlorenzo Bernini. London: The Pindar Press, 2007. Lazardig, Jan, and Hole Rößler, eds. Technologies of Theatre: Joseph Furttenbach and the Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in Early Modern Theatre Cultures. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2016. Leopold, Silke. ‘Rome: Sacred and Secular’. In The Early Baroque Era: From the Late 16th Century to the 1660s, edited by Curtis Price, 49–74. London: The Macmillan Press, 1993. Leopold, Silke. ‘‘La Calisto’ and the 17th Century Venetian Opera’. In Cavalli, La Calisto, translated by Derek Yeld, 22–25. Arles: Harmonia Mundi, 1995. Maravall, José Antonio. Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure. Edited by Wlad Godzich and Nicholas Spadaccini. Translated by Terry Cochran. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. Menestrier, Claude-François. Des representations en musique anciennes et modernes. Paris, Chez R. Guignard, 1681. Milesi, Francesco. Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione Scenica Nell’Europa Barocca. Fano: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, 2000. Mitchell, W. J. T. Landscape and Power. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. Mormando, Franco. Bernini: His Life and His Rome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Mukerji, Chandra. Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Nagler, A. M. A Source Book in Theatrical History. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1952. Pio, Ascanio. La discordia confusa rappresentata con macchine, e musica, e combattuta in Ferrara nel passaggio della ser.ma Anna de Medici … componimento di D. Ascanio Pio di Sauoia. Ferrara: per il Gironi Stamp. Episcop., 1646. Platt, Peter G. ‘‘Not before Either Known or Dreamt of’: Francesco Patrizi and the Power of Wonder in Renaissance Poetics’. The Review of English Studies 43, no. 171 (1992): 387–394. Povoledo, Elena. ‘Francesco Guitti’. In Enciclopedia Dello Spettacolo, edited by Silvio D’Amico, 6:68–72. Rome: Unedi ‒ Unione Editoriale, 1975. Refini, Eugenio. ‘Longinus and Poetic Imagination in Late Renaissance Literary Theory’. In Translations of the Sublime : The Early Modern Reception and Dissemination of Longinus’ Peri Hupsous in Rhetoric, the Visual Arts, Architecture and the Theatre, edited by Caroline Van Eck, Stijn Bussels, Maarten Delbeke, and Jurgen Pieters, 33–53. Leiden, Boston: BRILL, 2012. Rosand, Ellen. Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Rose, Paul Lawrence, and Stillman Drake. ‘The Pseudo-Aristotelian Questions of Mechanics in Renaissance Culture’. Studies in the Renaissance 18 (1971): 65–104.

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Sabbattini, Nicola. Pratica di fabricar scene e machine ne’ teatri. Ravenna: Per Pietro de’ Paoli e Gio. Battista Giouannelli stampatori, 1638. Savage, Roger, and Matteo Sansone. ‘‘Il Corago’ and the Staging of Early Opera: Four Chapters from an Anonymous Treatise circa 1630’. Early Music 17, no. 4 (1989): 495–511. Sbarra, Francesco. ‘Il Pomo d’Oro Festa Teatrale Rappresentata in Vienna per l’Augustissime Nozze Della Sacre Cesaree e Reali Maestà Di Leopoldo e Margherita’. Vienna: Matteo Cosmerovio, 1667. Tamburini, Elena. Gian Lorenzo Bernini e Il Teatro Dell’arte ‒ National Gallery of Art Library. Florence: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2012. Torelli, Giacomo. Apparati Scenici per Lo Teatro Novissimo. Venice: Vecellio e Leni, 1644. Valleriani, Matteo. ‘From Condensation to Compression: How Renaissance Italian Engineers Approached Hero’s Pneumatics’. In Übersetzung Und Transformation, edited by H. Böhme, C Rapp, and W. Rösler, 333–354. Berlin, 2007. Valleriani, Matteo. Galileo Engineer. Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2010. Valleriani, Matteo. ‘The Transformation of Aristotle’s Mechanical Questions: A Bridge Between the Italian Renaissance Architects and Galileo’s First New Science’. Annals of Science 66, no. 2 (2009): 183–208. Viale Ferrero, Mercedes. ‘Stage and Set’. In Opera on Stage, edited by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 1–124. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

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The Theatre in the Landscape: Pliny to Pratolino Abstract The second half of this book examines theatre in the landscape. This chapter begins by looking at how the idea of the landscape as theatre developed in the sixteenth century, with architects like Palladio, and others, picking up the Plinian idea of the landscape as a vast amphitheatre. It then explores the rise of the emergence of the garden as a theatre in the sixteenth century and its connection to ancient sources, contemporary theatre and pastoral literature. Gardens discussed include the Villa Madama in Rome and the Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo. Keywords: Gardens, Designed Landscapes, Renaissance, Garden Theatres, Antique Revival

What is a garden theatre? The terms ‘theatre’, teatro or théâtre appear on many illustrations of gardens and in written accounts labelling features ranging from fountains to courtyards. The exact function of these spaces is sometimes obvious: the amphitheatre at the Boboli gardens, for instance, was constructed as a performance space for large scale festivities.1 Water theatres, although not used for performance in the conventional sense, were stages for dramatic displays of hydraulic engineering, as at the garden of the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati. But in other instances, the exact theatrical function is elusive. This leads us to the question: what was the label ‘theatre’ intended to identify to the visitor at the time? Was it 1 On the amphitheatre see Arthur Blumenthal, ‘Giulio Parigi’s Stage Designs: Florence and the Early Baroque Spectacle’ (PhD, New York, New York University, 1984), p. 42; Claudia Lazzaro, The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 191–214; Pietro Marchi, ‘Il Giardino Di Boboli e Il Suo Anfiteatro’, in Città Effimera e l’universo Artificiale del Giardino: La Firenza Dei Medici e l’Italia del ‘500, ed. Marcello Fagiolo (Roma: Officina Edizioni, 1980), pp. 359–369; Gabriele Capecchi, Il Giardino Di Boboli, Un Anfiteatro per La Gioia Dei Granduchi, (Firenze : Edizioni medicea, 1993); and Louis Cellauro, ‘Classical Paradigms: Pliny the Younger’s Hippodrome at His Tuscan Villa and Renaissance Gardens’, Gartenkunst (Worms) 17 (2005): pp. 84–86.

Grant, K., Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463721530_ch05

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a term applied systematically to denote a certain type of structure or space? Or was it a term applied in a more random fashion to suggest a certain ‘theatricality’ or ‘scenographic sensibility’ in the way that visitors in the seventeenth century approached the experience garden.2 Neither of these questions can be properly answered without an understanding of the origins of the garden theatre in Italian gardens in the late fifteenth century.

Antique Sources There is no precise origin for the introduction of theatrical structures into the Italian garden. They became more common from the early seventeenth century, but they clearly have a precedent in several structures designed for Italian gardens in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These theatre designs tended to draw on antique sources and were often built to emulate the ancients. The sources of these theatres tended to be extant remains of Roman theatres (both public and private examples) and references made to theatres in antique literature. Pliny The description most often quoted as the inspiration for the creation of garden theatre, both by the patrons and the architects of sixteenth and seventeenth-century gardens as well as by modern garden historians, is that written by Pliny the Younger about his garden at Laurentium: The countryside is very beautiful. Picture to yourself a vast amphitheatre such as could only be the work of nature […]. It is a great pleasure to look down on the countryside from the mountain, for the view seems to be a painted scene of unusual beauty rather than a real landscape.3

Pliny suggests that there is something theatrical about his garden, but it is not particular structures that are so described. Rather, it is the view which is considered to be like a painted set or backdrop. A manuscript of Pliny’s writings was circulated amongst scholars as early as 1419, which included some of his descriptions of his Tuscan villa. In 1508 the Aldine edition was published in Venice and contained 2 Diane Harris, The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in EighteenthCentury Lombardy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003), p. 151. 3 Letter from Pliny the Younger to Domitius Apollinaris, Pliny, The Letters of the Younger Pliny, trans. Betty Radice (London: Penguin, 1969), pp. 139–140.

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all the letters, which had been rediscovered near Paris in 1500. This was followed in 1510 by the publication of Giovanni Maria Cataneo’s edition, which contained commentaries on the letters.4 These descriptions were noted by sixteenth-century architects, in particular Andrea Palladio, whose description of the ideal situation of a villa in his Quattro Libri (first published in 1571) clearly draws upon that of Pliny. The villa in question is that of the Vicentine gentleman Monsignor Paolo Almerico: The site is one of the most pleasing and delightful that one could find because it is on top of a small hill which is easy to ascend; on one side it is bathed by the Bacchiglione, a navigable river, and on the other is surrounded by other pleasant hills which resemble a vast theatre and are completely cultivated.5

This Plinian ‘amphitheatre’ setting for gardens was also realized in several other sixteenth-century gardens, notably the Boboli gardens in Florence. The original layout of the garden was conceived by Niccolò Tribolo as a U-shaped hillside planted with boschetti, which surrounded a central prato (lawn), known as the ‘Prato Grande’. This arrangement can be seen in the lunette illustrating the garden painted by Giustus Utens in 1599.6 The topography of the ‘Prato Grande’ had always been suggestive of an amphitheatre, and it is possible Tribolo’s original design aimed to emphasize this natural amphitheatre in keeping with Pliny’s description.7 Pliny’s strong association of garden sites with theatre seems to have a left a particular impression on architects like Palladio. The link between theatre and garden is largely a conceptual one rather than based upon a specific type of structure or space. Pliny’s descriptions of the ‘riding ground’ or hippodromus at his Tuscan villa also seem to have been significant for the design of gardens in this period. His lengthy description begins by stating that ‘the design and beauty of the buildings is greatly surpassed by the riding-ground hippodromus. The centre is quite open so that the whole extent of the course can be seen as one enters’.8 This description was one of 4 Cellauro, ‘Classical Paradigms’, pp. 80–84. 5 Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor and Richard Schof ield (Chicago: The MIT Press, 1997), p. 94. 6 Daniela Mignani, Le Ville Medicee Di Giusto Utens (Florence: Arnaud Ed, 1988), pp. 74–76. 7 Cellauro ‘Classical Paradigms’, pp. 84, 86, observes that Tribolo appears to have ordered ‘a natural hollow behind the palace’ rather than necessarily setting out to create an amphitheatre. D. R. Edward Wright suggests Virgil’s description of the site of Aeneas’ funeral games as another possible source for the layout of the gardens (‘Some Medici Gardens of the Florentine Renaissance: An Essay in Post-Aesthetic Interpretation’, in The Italian Garden: Art, Design and Culture, ed. John Dixon Hunt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 45). 8 Letter from Pliny the Younger to Domitius Apollinaris, Pliny, The Letters, pp. 139–140. The hippodrome is discussed in Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey, The Villas of Pliny from Antiquity to Posterity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 34. The description by Pliny included detailed descriptions of the

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the most detailed records of classical gardens available to Renaissance architects and designers and consequently appeared in many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century garden designs.9 Although Pliny does not present his hippodrome as a theatre space, the hippodrome or circus structure was well known as a site for spectacle from other examples, such as Nero’s circus and the Stadium of Domitian, now Piazza Navona. The hippodrome form appeared in several sixteenth-century gardens, most notably the Villa Madama. Vitruvius Although the descriptions by Pliny legitimized the presence of a theatre within a garden it did not give architects any particular instructions as to its form. Architects and garden designers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries instead could follow the instructions set down by Vitruvius in his ‘Ten Books of Architecture’ as to the design of theatres (though these were for urban theatres rather than for gardens). His text was known during the Middle Ages and became increasingly popular during the fifteenth century.10 Vitruvius’s description stated that a theatre should have a stage ‘deeper than the Greeks’ and a semi-circle of steeped seating. Around the uppermost level of seating should run a colonnade, the top of which must be level with the scaenae frons. This scaenae in turn was to consist of the following scheme: In the centre are double doors decorated like those of a royal palace. At the right and left are the doors of the guest chambers. Beyond are spaces provided for decoration—places that the Greeks call periaktoi […] When the play is to be changed, or when the gods enter to the accompaniment of sudden claps of thunder, these may be revolved and present a face differently decorated.11

The theatre described by Vitruvius was not situated in a garden; it was an outdoor theatre to be sited next to the forum ‘for the purpose of seeing plays or festivals of the immortal gods’.12 Nevertheless, Vitruvius’s clear description of a classical plants and planting arrangements in the hippodrome (Indra Kagis McEwen, ‘Housing Fame: In the Tuscan Villa of Pliny the Younger’, Res 27 (1995): pp. 11–24). 9 The hippodrome is also a feature in the reconstructions of Pliny’s villa by François Félibien des Avaux (1699) and Robert Castell (1728) (Du Prey, The Villas, p. 141). 10 Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960), pp. 137–153 and Peter Murray, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance (London: Thames & Hudson, 1986), pp. 10–12; Daniel Millette, ‘Vitruvius and the Re-Invention of Classical Theatre Architecture’, in Vitruvianism, ed. Paolo Sanvito (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2015). 11 Vitruvius, Ten Books, p. 150; he also described a Greek Theatre (p. 151). 12 Vitruvius, Ten Books, p. 137.

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theatre clearly appealed to architects as it provided more explicit information upon the structure of an outdoor theatre in comparison to the very general descriptions of Pliny. Although few of the earliest garden theatres (such as the one proposed for the Villa Madama, discussed below) truly resembled the theatre described by Vitruvius, certain elements, such as stepped or semi-circular seating, are present in several of the earliest garden theatres. The extant remains of ancient theatres were another source of information and inspiration to garden designers, particularly from the sixteenth century onwards when ancient ruins began to be excavated and documented. Of particular importance were the remains of theatres at Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli. This imperial villa had originally housed three theatres: the Greek Theatre, the Latin theatre, and the South Theatre.13 Each took the form of a classical Roman theatre with a cavea that had semi-circular stepped seating, an orchestra and a scaenae frons.14 The villa was rediscovered by artists, architects and humanist scholars in the fifteenth century, and continued to be closely studied throughout the following centuries.15 The presence of the Greek and South theatres was definitely known by the second half of the sixteenth century, as Pirro Ligorio had partially excavated them in the 1550s and 1560s.16 There are also several examples of remains that were identified as theatres of ancient villas, which have since proved to be either public theatres or different structures altogether. In Rome there was the ‘Auditorium of Maecenas’ on the Esquiline Hill, now identified as a cenatio or nymphaeum. The semi-circular seats in the apse were thought to be seats for an audience who would gather to listen to music or poetry recitations (the steps are now thought to have been a cascade).17 Another ancient ‘garden theatre’ was identified at Frascati. It was believed to have formed part of the Villa of Cicero but is now known to be the theatre of the city of Tusculum. In the late seventeenth century Domenico da Frascati described it as 13 Frank Sear notes that all three theatres were more-or-less correctly identified in the seventeenth century by Francesco Contini (1599–1669) who published Adriani Caesaris immanen in Tyburtino Villam (1668), a large fold out map of the villa, though he mis-identif ied the North or Greek Theatre as the remains of a naumachia (Roman Theatres: An Architectural Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 46, 140). William L. MacDonald and John A. Pinto believed that Contini invented the ‘Latin Theatre’ in the East Valley (Hadrian’s Villa and Its Legacy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 222–223), but Sear confirms that it did indeed exist. 14 For diagrams of the theatres see Sear, Roman Theatres, pp. 140–141, plans 31–33. 15 An overview of the rediscovery and subsequent study of Hadrian’s villa is given in MacDonald and Pinto, Hadrian’s Villa, pp. 206–228. On the layout of the gardens at the villa, see Wilhelmina F. Jashemski, Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti, and John Foss, ‘Preliminary Excavations in the Gardens of Hadrian’s Villa: The Canopus Area and the Piazza d’Oro’, American Journal of Archaeology 96 (1992): pp. 579–597. 16 MacDonald and Pinto, Hadrian’s Villa, 217. 17 Sear, Roman Theatres, p. 47 and Filippo Coarelli, Roma (Rome: Laterza, 1980), pp. 219–220.

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the ‘scuola’ or ‘accademia di Cicero’.18 Even in the early twentieth century, when the theatre had been fully excavated, the identification of it with Cicero’s villa and his ‘scuola’ was still being maintained.19 This association of a garden amphitheatre with an academy and academic activities of learned conversation, discourse and recitation of poetry was a significant motivation behind the creation of garden theatres from the sixteenth century onwards. Hypnerotomachia Polifili Classical sources for garden and outdoor theatres also featured in Renaissance literature, in particular the Hypnerotomachia Polifili (1499), which is often regarded as a key source of ideas for sixteenth-century garden design.20 Although it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which the book was drawn upon by garden designers, it offers insights into the relationship between gardens and theatre around the turn of the sixteenth century. In the book the main character Polifilo travels to the Isle of Cythera. He describes the island as follows: There was no place for mountains or deserts; all unevenness had been eliminated, so that it was plane and level up to the circular steps of the wonderful theatre […] I admired on the bare banks beside the shore the tall uniform cypresses with their astringent, pitted cones, rising firmly to their heavy tops. Between their trunks […] there was a space of three feet separating one from the other. This regular order continued round in a circle, and was followed the entire periphery of the island […] The last and central sixth of a mile, between the river and the centre, was proportionally divided. It consisted, as I have said, of 166 ½ paces […] The area around the theatre was 16 paces, and the theatre contained 16 18 Tracy L. Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era, Monuments of Papal Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 57 (cites ASC, cred. XIV, no. 83, Domenico da Frascati, ‘Antichità’ f. 90 r). 19 Sear, Roman Theatres, p. 141. 20 Kenneth Woodbridge states that the Hypnerotomachia is ‘the richest Renaissance source of garden imagery’ as well as a ‘major source of the romantic cult of Classical remains; the world discovered and recorded by the early Renaissance antiquaries’ (Princely Gardens: The Origins and Development of the French Formal Style (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), p. 23). However, there needs to be a distinction between literature which is a source for modern scholars of garden history and literature that was a source for sixteenth-century garden designers. See Marcello Fagiolo, ‘Il Teatro Vivente: La Scena della Vita e della Morte, dell’Amore e della Virtù’, in Teatri Di Verzura: La Scena del Giardino dal Barocco al Novecento, ed. Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and M. Adriana Giusti (Florence: EDIFIR, 1993), 28–46. For a discussion of the way that the gardens represented in the Hypnerotomachia were derived from garden and literary sources, see A. Segre, ‘Untangling the Knot: Garden Design in Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’, Word & Image 14 (1998): pp. 82–108.

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more from its edge to the centre […] The amphitheatre was of a structure not to be believed, because its elegant base, its string-courses, its ring of symmetrical columns with their beams, zophori and cornices were all cast exclusively from bronze, fire-gilded with bright gold.21

The Isle of Cythera both contains a ‘wondrous’ amphitheatre and resembles an amphitheatre in its totality. The idea of the amphitheatre is clearly derived from antique sources, such as the Colosseum. The theatre also presents Polifilo with a type of ‘totality’ insofar as the Isle of Cythera contains complete collections of herbs, plants, trees, animals and so on. The island and its garden not only imitate the architectonic form of an amphitheatre, and include an actual amphitheatre, but also embody the idea of the theatre as providing a comprehensive overview or conspectus of the world, a place where all things can be viewed simultaneously. In this case the theatre appears as a conspectus of the natural world.22 This idea of the theatre as conspectus also features in another popular Renaissance text the Idea del Teatro by Giulio Camillo (1480–1544), which was published posthumously in 1550. In this book Camillo presented the idea of a ‘memory theatre’ or ‘theatre of the world’.23 The ‘theatre’ proposed by Camillo did not have a concrete existence in the real world; instead, the term denoted a scholarly system for acquiring and arranging knowledge. There is at least one example of a model of the famous memory theatre of Giulio Camillo, intended as a complete conspectus of knowledge, being included within a garden design. This was at the estate of Pomponio Cotta, though little is known of it beyond the fact that it existed.24 The impact of these ideas about the theatre in literary sources on garden design is hard to ascertain. However, the idea of the theatre as a conspectus or as a prompt for intellectual reflection (rather than as a site for performance) on a collection or conspectus is found in several seventeenth-century gardens.

Garden Theatres in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries Many of the garden theatres constructed from the late fifteenth century onward are derived in some way from these classical sources. However, towards the end 21 Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ed. Joscelyn Godwin, 1999, pp. 290–325, 348–352 for descriptions of the amphitheatre. 22 John Dixon Hunt, ‘Experiencing Gardens in the Hypnerotomachia Polifili’, Word & Image 14 (1998): p. 117. 23 Richard Bernheimer, ‘Theatrum Mundi’, Art Bulletin 38 (1956): pp. 225-226 and Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London: Bodley Head, 1992), pp. 129–159. 24 Yates, Art of Memory, p. 139.

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of the sixteenth century we also begin to see the emergence of garden theatres that take their cue from contemporary theatres and theatrical activity of the late sixteenth century. The Courtyard at Poggioreale The courtyard at the now destroyed Villa Poggioreale near Naples, begun in 1487, could be considered an early version of the garden, or villa theatre.25 The architect was the Florentine Giuliano da Maiano (1432–1490) and his patron was the Duke of Calabria, later Alfonso II of Aragon. The courtyard had a sunken centre surrounded by four tiers of stepped seats in the manner of an antique amphitheatre, which was illustrated by Serlio in Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospettiva (1545) (Fig. 5.1).26 The space also contained complex hydraulic engineering works, which included tiny pipes in the masonry that meant the courtyard could be flooded.27 Serlio described it thus: In the central part, marked E, there were many steps descending to a beautiful paved floor. In this place the King was accompanied by those Lords and Ladies whose company he most enjoyed; and here, once the tables were laid with diverse delicacies, they used to dine. Sometimes when the King fancied indulging in his greatest pleasure, he used to have some secret places opened such that in a moment the place filled with water, covering all the Lords and Ladies with water. In the same way, when the King thought it good, in an instant he made the place become dry.28

It has been suggested that it was used for naumachiae (mock naval battles) but there is little evidence to support this. The records that do exist refer to semi-submerged 25 One of the earliest records of Poggioreale is in Serlio. Another is in a French poem, ‘Le Vergiez d’Honneur’ (sixteenth century), George L. Hersey, Alfonso II and the Artistic Renewal of Naples 1485-1495 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969), pp. 64–65. Also useful is an account in the Italian travel journal of Johann Fichard (1536) discussed in August Schmarsow, ‘Excerpte Aus Joh. Fichard’s ‘Italia’ von 1536’, Repertorium Für Kunstwissenschaft 14 (1891): p. 374. See Modesti’s book on the villa with its detailed use of historical sources, Paola Modesti, Le delizie ritrovate. Poggioreale e la villa del Rinascimento nella Napoli aragonese (Firenze: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki, 2014), pp. 49, 127–128, 182. 26 The amphitheatre appears in the plan after Poggioreale by Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture: Books I-V of Tutte l’opere d’architettura et Prospettiva, trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, vol. 1, 2 vols. (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 241. It should be noted that a very similar project for an inner courtyard with stepped levels had been designed by Giuliano da Sangallo for the King of Naples in 1488, see Arnaldo Bruschi, Bramante, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977), p. 98 and fig. 96. 27 This idea is discussed in Hersey, Alfonso II, p. 60. 28 Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio, p. 240.

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banquets, which seem to have been its principal function. Paola Modesti suggests that there is evidence that the space was conceived of as a theatrical space for ‘rappresentazioni’.29 It is possible that descriptions of antique naumachiae by Suetonius (first century AD) and Cassius Dio (second century AD) were a source for the idea of a submergible courtyard, even if it was not used this way. These accounts suggest that mock naval battles were held in Augustus’ stagnum as well as in the Flavian Amphitheatre.30 How much the architects and patrons of the fifteenth century would have known about naumachiae is unclear; even today scholars are in disagreement upon how, where, and even if, such events were staged. And some records of antique naumachiae have been identified as a source for several structures in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century gardens. The nymphaeum by Bramante at Genazzano is one.31 The fountain at the centre of the parterre garden in the Villa Lante at Bagnaia is another. Although the fountain has now been altered, it still retains the small boatmen that symbolized the ancient sea battle.32 Similar square courtyard theatres continued to be built, often as temporary spaces making use of permanent structures enhanced with temporary structures for seating, including one at the Capitoline in Rome in 1513 for Pope Leo X.33 Belvedere Courtyard and Theatre In the mid-fifteenth century Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) began, but failed to complete, an ambitious building programme for the Vatican. It was in these plans 29 Hersey, Alfonso II, p. 65 and Mario Martelli, ‘I Pensieri Architettonici del Magnifico’, Commentari 17 (1966): pp. 107–111, 109. See Modesti, Le delizie ritrovate, p. 190 for a description of the submerged banquet. 30 K. M. Coleman, ‘Launching into History: Aquatic Displays in the Early Empire’, The Journal of Roman Studies 83 (1993): pp. 48–74 and Rabun Taylor, ‘Torrent or Trickle? The Aqua Alsietina, the Naumachia Augusti, and the Transtiberim’, American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997): pp. 466–468 for a brief catalogue of quotes from primary sources on the Augustan naumachia. See James S. Ackerman, ‘The Belvedere as a Classical Villa’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14 (1951): pp. 82–83 on the idea of the Vatican area as an ancient naumachia. At Poggioreale the large vivaio (reservoir) was used by boats (Bruce L. Edelstein, ‘‘Acqua Viva e Corrente’: Private Display and Public Distribution of Fresh Water at the Neapolitan Villa of Poggioreale as a Hydraulic Model for Sixteenth-Century Medici Gardens’, in Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation in the Italian Renaissance City, ed. Stephen J. Campbell and Stephen J. Milner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 191–192) and the idea that boats were used in the courtyard/amphitheatre could be a confusion or conflation of these two distinct areas at the villa. 31 Christopher Frommel, ‘Bramante’s ‘Ninfeo’ in Genazzano’, Romisches Jahrbuch Für Kunstgeschichte 12 (1969): pp. 137–160. 32 Claudia Lazzaro-Bruno, ‘The Villa Lante at Bagnaia’, Art Bulletin 59 (1977): p. 560. 33 There is a good discussion of these theatres in Eugene J. Johnson, Inventing the Opera House: Theater Architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 24–25, 40–45.

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Figure 5.1 Sebastiano Serlio, ‘Plan of Poggio Reale in Naples’, from Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospettiva, 1619. Venice: Appresso Giacomo de’ Franceschi. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (85-B6560).

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that the idea for a theatre within the gardens of the Vatican had first been proposed.34 This theatre was never constructed, but half a century later a courtyard theatre was commissioned by Julius II (1503–1513) and created by Donato Bramante (1444–1514). Work began in 1505 and remained unfinished at the death of Bramante in 1514. The theatre was completed by Pirro Ligorio in 1565 to a slightly different design.35 For the initial project Bramante looked not to the ‘modern’ architectural tradition of Alberti and Brunelleschi, but directly to the ancients, though it is likely that he would have known of the example of the courtyard theatre at Poggioreale.36 This focus upon ancient examples was prompted as much by the patron as by Bramante himself. Julius II wanted to create a series of buildings that would emulate what the ancient Emperors had. Bramante’s design for the Belvedere courtyard and the inclusion of a theatre was based on a number of classical sources. The courtyard was thought to have been built over the Circus of Nero, which may have prompted Bramante to create an area with allusions to classical performance spaces.37 The shape of the long garden court enclosed by arcaded porticos has similarities to ancient stadiums or hippodromes.38 Further, the stadium or circus had legitimacy as a form for classical garden design because Pliny had referred to the presence of a hippodrome in his garden.39 More importantly, the scant sources for ancient villas that did exist in the writings of Pliny and the ruins of Hadrian’s villa, meant that the theatre was understood as an integral part of a classical villa, along with gardens, courtyards and fountains. 40 There is a second aspect of the Belvedere courtyard that links it to theatre; it was designed perspectivally, to be viewed from an ideal viewing point as though it were 34 David R. Coffin, Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 8–9, 59, and Bruschi, Bramante, p. 91. 35 Ackerman, ‘The Belvedere’, and James S. Ackerman, The Cortile del Belvedere, Studi e Document per La Storia del Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1954). 36 Bruschi, Bramante, pp. 90–91, and Cellauro, ‘Classical paradigms’, p. 83. 37 Bruschi also proposes that the Belvedere could have been inspired by Nero’s Golden House, at that time undiscovered but known from the descriptions in Suetonius, whose description of its location in a valley between two hills could have been understood as referring to the site of the Vatican Belvedere (Bramante, p. 97). 38 James S. Ackerman, ‘Sources of the Renaissance Villa’, in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, Vol. II: The Renaissance and Mannerism, ed. Ida E. Rubin, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 6–18; Bruschi, Bramante, pp. 97–100; and David R. Coffin, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 241–242. 39 The connection of Pliny’s description to the Belvedere project is discussed in Bruschi, Bramante, p. 97, who points out that Julius II owned a copy of Pliny’s text and early visitors often made the connection, describing the courtyard in ‘Plinian’ terms. 40 Coff in, The Villa, 243–245; Cellauro, ‘Classical Paradigms’, pp. 80–87; and Frommel, ‘Bramante’s ‘Ninfeo’’, pp. 137–160.

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a stage set. 41 The use of linear perspective was not drawn from antique sources, instead it came from contemporary artistic and performance practice. The ideal vantage point was situated in the Stanza della Segnatura in the papal apartments, from the window of which the courtyard would appear to the viewer much like a theatre set. 42 Festivities in the courtyard could be viewed from this point in the same way that a Renaissance stage set was best viewed from the princely seat. The visitor to the courtyard walked into this space as though walking onto a stage. It seems likely that this design was both intentional by the designers and recognized by the viewer. The rapid shift from medieval style of staging to the design of stage spaces constructed around linear perspective were part of architectural practice in the first half of the sixteenth century. An engraving of perspective scenery linked to Bramante himself is one of our key documents for the early adoption of perspectival stage sets. The engraving shows a view of a classical city, a loggia on the left-hand side and a colonnade to the right, while a triumphal arch marks the end of the ‘stage space’, and glimpses of more classical buildings can be seen beyond. The exact purpose of this design is not certain, it may be for a performance as we know Bramante supplied sets, or it might be a theoretical illustration. 43 Nonetheless, it demonstrates Bramante’s familiarity with the development of linear perspective for the stage, and supports the idea that his Vatican theatre was a blend of antique revival and references to the new styles of perspectival stage design. Javier Berzal de Dios in his study of the experience and ideals behind these new scenographic designs argues that linear perspective was embraced on the stage because of its capacity to create a unified vision of space, which was important because of the Aristotelian demand for verisimilitude and unity in performance. 44 If linear perspective symbolized unity then its deployment in the new Vatican courtyard may have represented not just that the space would be used for performance but that this design was part of a new vision of Rome. The unified space would have stood in stark contrast to many of the still degraded architectural and urban spaces of Rome following its decline. The building programmes instigated by Nicholas V and carried out by Julius II were intended to return Rome to it glory. 41 Bruschi, Bramante, pp. 99–106 and David R. Coffin, Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), p. 62. 42 Coffin, The Villa, 242, fig. 146 and Alessandro Rinaldi, ‘Il Transito e l’ascesa: Teatri Di Scale dal Cortile del Belvedere a Trinità Dei Monti’, in Il Teatro a Roma nel Settecento, ed. Luciana Buccellato and Fiorella Trapani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1989), pp. 119–122. 43 Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, ‘From Scenery to City: Set Designs’, in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, ed. Henry A. Millon (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), p. 530. 44 Javier Berzal de Dios, Visual Experiences in Cinquecento Theatrical Spaces (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), pp. 10–16.

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The courtyard was built to connect the villa of Innocent VIII (1484–1492) with the papal palace. The theatre designed by Bramante was square in shape and formed the lower section of the courtyard. Vasari observed that Julius II had transformed: [T]he space that lay between the Belvedere and the Papal Palace, as to give it the aspect of a square theatre, embracing a little valley that ran between the old Papal Palace and the new buildings that Innocent VIII had erected as a habitation for the Popes. 45

The extent to which the courtyard was actually used as a theatre is uncertain. We know that early in the sixteenth century the lower area was levelled for a bullfight. 46 We also know, from a plan from the Codex Coner based on a design by Bramante, that rows of huge steps, presumably intended to act as seating for viewing performances, were planned for the central section of the courtyard, flanking the small steps of the central staircase. 47 However, these were not completed until 1565. These plans were obviously in circulation, as they are included in several representations of the courtyard. A view by Amico Aspertini (1474–1552) from his Roman sketchbook of the 1530s shows the staircase. 48 A fresco in the Castel Sant’Angelo that dates to c. 1545 also shows them. 49 However, a drawing, now attributed to G.B. Naldini, of c. 1558–1561, shows the courtyard with only a central staircase and the sections to either side as an undeveloped sloping bank.50 It was only after Pirro Ligorio took over the project that permanent seating was constructed. The first seating built was a semi-circular auditorium of stone seats that was added at the south end, against the Palace in imitation of a Roman theatre. It was probably based on the theatres that Ligorio had excavated at Hadrian’s villa, as the semi-circular seats bear a close resemblance to those in the Greek 45 Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston de Vere, (London: David Campbell Publishers, 1996), vol. I, p. 662. 46 Ackerman, ‘The Belvedere’, p. 73 and Godfried Joannes Hoogewerff, ‘Documenti in Parte Inediti Che Riguardano Rafaello Ed Altri Artisti Contemporanei’, Rendiconti (Pontificia Accademia Romana Di Archeologia) 21 (June 1945): pp. 253–268, document 13. 47 Anonymous (after Bramante), Plan of the Cortile Belvedere, 1520–1525. Pen and wash on paper, 16.8 x 23.3 cm. London, Sir John Soane Museum, ‘Codex Coner’ (f. 17). 48 British Museum (ref no. 1862,0712.424). See Phyllis Pray Bober, Drawings after the Antique by Amico Aspertini: Sketchbooks in the British Museum, Studies of the Warburg Institute 21 (London: Warburg Institute, 1957), p. 86 and Ackerman, The Cortile del Belvedere, p. 207. 49 Ackerman, ‘The Belvedere’, p. 76; M. Borgatti, Castel Sant’Angelo in Roma (Rome, 1931), fig. 245. 50 The drawing is in Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, (Arch. No. 2599A). Ackerman, ‘The Belvedere’, p. 75. This drawing (Uffizi, Architettura 2559) was originally attributed to Giovanni Antonio Dosio, but has been recently reattributed to G.B. Naldini, see Coffin, Pirro Ligorio, p. 53, fig. 44. G. B. Naldini, View of the Belvedere Courtyard, c. 1558–1561.

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Figure 5.2  Master HCB, Tournament in the Belvedere Courtyard, from Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, 1565. 43.4 x 65.8cm. Etching. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1941. Accession Number: 41.72(3.72).

Theatre.51 The creation of this permanent seating was clearly motivated by a new desire to utilize Bramante’s performance space. The giant steps that featured in his original design were completed in 1565 specif ically so theatre could be used for a tournament given by Pius IV to celebrate the wedding of his nephew, Annibale Altemps, to Ortensia Borromeo, sister of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (Fig. 5.2). The engraving of the joust shows that both the giant steps and the curved steps were used to seat spectators. Other people can be seen positioned on the balconies to either side. An engraving dated 1575 by Mario Cartaro of the Vatican palace and gardens show the Belvedere courtyard in it most complete state.52 It is seen from above and its three levels are clearly distinguished. The 51 Coffin, Pirro Ligorio, pp. 60–62. 52 Annalisa Cattaneo, ‘Mario Cartaro. Catalogo delle Incisoni (Parte 1)’, Grafica d’arte 42 (2000): pp. 6–14 and Ackerman, The Cortile del Belvedere, cat. 47. A smaller copy of this print also exists, with a few variations on the staffage and the different title ‘Vero disegno degli stupendi edif itii giardini boschi fontane et cose meravigliose di Belvedere in Roma’; it is otherwise identical. Ackerman attributes it to Ambrogio Brambilla, published by Claude Duchet in 1579. Both prints are held in the British Museum, reference numbers 1871,0812.778 (Cartaro) and 1852,1009.1053 (Brambilla).

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large semi-circle of stepped seating, designed by Ligorio, is at the far end. This section is described by Cartaro as ‘Theatro dove si fece la giostra’, which suggests that jousting and equestrian displays were considered to be the primary use of the Belvedere courtyard theatre. Just as the theatre was completed its days were already numbered. The Counter Reformation ushered in a period with a more sombre use of the papal palace and villa and the 1565 joust was the last use of the courtyard as a stage. Antonfrancesco Cirni, who wrote about the 1565 joust in a letter to Cosimo de’ Medici, records that the Pope did not publicly attend the joust.53 The courtyard was effectively ‘de-theatricalized’ in 1587 by Sixtus V when he built the present Vatican library across the giant steps. A letter from Cosimo Bartoli to Francesco I de’Medici gives details of the planned destructions and the reasons behind it: [L]a distruzione del Theatro di Belvedere, della quale si ragionava a questi giorni per non piacere simil luoghi a Sua Santità [Pius V], […] non volendo Sua Santità che per tempo avvenire si possino fare in detto luogo spettacoli publici. [T]he destruction of the Belvedere Theatre, of which the reason is that such a space it is not pleasing to his Holiness [Pius V], […] His Holiness does not wish that these days it be possible to hold, in said place, public spectacles.54

Ligorio’s theatre existed until the mid-eighteenth century when it was replaced by a simple wall.55 In addition to the square theatre, Bramante also created a theatre-like structure in the exedra.56 This was situated at the northern end of the upper garden and consisted of three discrete elements: a hemicycle at the rear, an annular platform and a circular staircase that descended from the platform to the level of the garden in two stages, the upper semicircle being convex, the lower concave. Semi-circular steps are characteristic of the cavea of the ancient theatre. The form of Bramante’s exedra, which was widely disseminated by Serlio in his De Architectura (1545), appeared in several later garden designs including structures 53 A detailed account of the tournament can be found in a letter from Antonfrancesco Cirni to Cosimo de’Medici, reproduced in Anton Francesco Cirni, Narrazione del torneo fatto nella corte di Belvedere in Vaticano a di 5 marzo 1565 in occasione […] (Rome: Unione Cooperativa Editrice, 1898). The print is discussed in Bury, 2001, pp. 162–163, cat. 111 and Coffin, Pirro Ligorio, pp. 60–61. There is another, anonymous, print that shows the knights and their attendants dressed for the tournament in Michael Bury, The Print in Italy: 1550-1620. (London: The British Museum Press, 2001), pp. 159–160, cat. 110a-h). 54 ASF, Mediceo filza, 3080, f. 532. 55 Coffin, Pirro Ligorio, pp. 61–62. 56 Ackerman, The Cortile del Belvedere, pp. 27–32, pl. II and Bruschi, Bramante, p. 105.

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that were described as theatres, such as those at Bomarzo and Isola Bella, discussed below. (The exedra was destroyed in 1550 and transformed into the Nicchione by Pirro Ligorio in 1562–1563.)57 Although the Belvedere courtyard belongs to the beginning of the revival of the classical garden, and was designed and built almost a century before the earliest of examples of baroque garden theatres, the features—such as the stepped seating, the use of an exedra to close off a courtyard and the conception of courtyard and piazza spaces as stages—that it introduced into the art of garden design remained popular into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Villa Madama The Villa Madama was begun in 1517 by Raphael under the patronage of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, later pope Clement VII.58 It was intended that the complex include a theatre carved out of the hillside to the south-west, visible in plans for the villa drawn up by both Antonio and Bernardo da Sangallo.59 It was described in detail by Raphael in a letter.60 The theatre was one of several sections of the villa that had not been completed when the Sack of Rome (1527) halted work more-or-less permanently.61 The theatre was to be located off the circular courtyard, between the two wings of the villa. The drawing by Antonio da Sangallo shows the theatre in the top centre section of the plan, where it would have been accessible from the circular courtyard. The design of the villa complex as a whole was based closely on the descriptions by Pliny the Younger of his Villa at Laurentium.62 The designs for the Villa Madama were also intended to replicate the relationship between architecture 57 Coffin, Pirro Ligorio, pp. 55–58. 58 The main sources for the Villa Madama are David R. Coffin, ‘The Plans of the Villa Madama’, The Art Bulletin 49 (1967): 118; Coffin, The Villa, pp. 245–257; Renato Lefevre, Villa Madama (Roma: Editalia, 1973); and Yvonne Elet, Architectural Invention in Renaissance Rome: Artists, Humanists, and the Planning of Raphael’s Villa Madama. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 59 The drawing is in Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (273A). Guy Dewez, Villa Madama: A Memoir Relating to Raphael’s Project, (London: Lund Humphries, 1993), pp. 178–179, fig. 66, includes an image of the Villa as it would have appeared if it had been completed. Full discussion of the various plans is found in Coffin, ‘Villa Madama’. 60 The letter is reproduced in Margherita Azzi Visentini, L’Arte Dei Giardini: Scritti Teorici e Pratici dal XIV al XIX Secolo, ed. G. Boccaccio et al., 2 vols. (Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1999), pp. 207–216. See commentary in Lefevre, Villa Madama and Philip Foster, ‘Raphael on the Villa Madama: The Text of a Lost Letter’, Römisches Jahrbuch Der Biblioteca Hertziana 11 (August 1967): pp. 308–312. It is not clear who the recipient of the letter was. 61 Coffin, ‘Villa Madama’, p. 112. 62 Coffin, The Villa, p. 246.

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and surrounding landscape found at Palestrina.63 The plan by Antonio da Sangallo also shows a hippodrome garden to the far left of the villa clearly modelled after Pliny’s description, referred to in Raphael’s letter as the hippodramo.64 Today this space contains a garden. Pliny’s description, however, did not specify a theatre in the form that Raphael planned, which clearly draws upon Vitruvius.65 It has a cavea with one tier of stepped semi-circular seating and an orchestra. In the scaenae frons area free-standing columns are indicated. These presumably represent the columnatio, which was a typical feature of classical theatres and had been described in detail by Vitruvius.66 As the theatre at the Villa Madama was never completed its exact purpose is difficult to ascertain. Yvonne Elet has argued that the villa as a whole was conceived of as a ‘theater of diplomacy’, and it is possible the actual theatre itself was an important aspect of this function.67 Had the villa been completed, the theatre may have functioned as a viewing point for important visitors to observe the villa and a view of the surrounding countryside down toward the Milvian Bridge and the road they had arrived on.68 The theatre itself was not designed to host the sort of large-scale performances held at the Vatican Belvedere. Instead, the Villa Madama theatre was modelled on theatres used for classical plays.69 In the text of a letter about the villa Raphael writes of the need for voices to carry when commedie are performed and also that there would be painted scenery.70 So it seems most likely that it was intended as a venue for the performance of classical plays in the humanistic tradition. The examples of the Villa Madama and the Vatican Belvedere demonstrate that the presence of a theatre within the villa complex was considered to be integral to the classical villa. The actual structures were based on Vitruvius or on remains of antique theatres like those at Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, and the idea was further supported by the literary sources, mainly Pliny the Younger. Both these theatres were 63 Denis Ribouillault, ‘The Cultural Landscape of the Villa in Early Modern Rome’, in A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692, ed. Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield (Leiden and Boston: BRILL, 2019), p. 379. 64 Cellauro, ‘Classical paradigms’, pp. 82–84. 65 Relevant section in Vitruvius, Ten Books, pp. 146–50, v-vi, 1-8. See also Coffin, The Villa, 248 and Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Raphael (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 233. 66 Vitruvius, Ten Books, 148 and Sear, Roman Theatres, p. 33. 67 Yvonne Elet, ‘Raphael and the Roads to Rome: Designing for Diplomatic Encounters at Villa Madama’, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 19, no. 1 (2016): p. 146. 68 Elet, ‘Raphael’, p. 157. 69 There is some suggestion in Coffin, The Villa, p. 255 and Lefevre, 1969, p. 432 that the theatre at Villa Madama was not intended for boisterous public events; however, Elet’s more recent study suggests that diplomatic functions were at the heart of this design. 70 Jones and Penny, Raphael, p. 233 and Foster, ‘Raphael’, p. 311 for comments upon the theatre.

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designed as extensions of the villa building and were situated within courtyards rather than in the garden. As the sixteenth century progressed, however, a different type of theatre began to appear, one that belonged to the garden rather than to the villa building. The Sacro Bosco of Vicino Orsini, Bomarzo Vicino Orsini’s Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo includes a small theatre of stone and grass (Fig 5.3).71 It is on a path that leads from the present-day entrance and is built into the retaining wall of the second level of the garden. The theatre consists of a stone exedra within which are set five rectangular niches. In front of this is an oval-shaped area with a concave-convex step arrangement bordered by straight steps. The structure of the Bomarzo theatre is clearly derived from the form of Bramante’s exedra in the Belvedere courtyard. Vicino may well have seen the real exedra previous to its destruction in 1550, but he could also have studied the version published by Serlio in 1545.72 The step arrangement at Bomarzo is different. Instead of convex steps changing to concave, there are a roughly circular ring of steps and the descent is provided by the slope of the hill. There are two short flights of steps to either side of the circular steps that merge with two long steps at the front of the theatre. The concave-convex step arrangement also appears at the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola; although this was also derived from Bramante, the Caprarola version is more similar to Bomarzo and a possible source for Orsini’s design (the two gardens are only about 20 kilometres apart). The hemicycle is also less elaborate at Bomarzo compared to Serlio’s illustration. The theatre originally served as a fountain with water emerging from the oval in the centre.73 It is likely that Vicino was also aware of the fountain at the nearby Villa Lante at Bagnaia that also used the concave-convex formation of steps.74 Most scholars have assumed that the theatre was intended to be symbolic rather than a functional performance space. There is an inscription on the plinth on the right-hand side of the theatre that reads ‘Vicino nel MDCII’ (Vicino in 1552). Claudia Lazzaro interprets this as meaning that Vicino intended the structure to be read as a ‘modern’ creation by him rather than as a ‘counterfeit antiquity like the Etruscan tombs and Roman nymphaeum’.75 The left-hand plinth reads ‘Sol per sfogar il core’ 71 Margareta J. Darnall and Mark S. Weil, ‘Il Sacro Bosco Di Bomarzo: Its 16th-Century Literary and Antiquarian Context’, Journal of Garden History 4 (1984): pp. 28–34. 72 Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 127. 73 Darnall and Weil, ‘Il Sacro Bosco’, p. 28. 74 Lazzaro-Bruno, ‘The Villa Lante’, p. 559 and K. Schwager, ‘Kardinal Aldobrandinis Villa Di Belvedere in Frascati’, Römisches Jahrbuch Der Biblioteca Hertziana 9–10 (February 1961): p. 380. 75 Lazzaro, Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 127.

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Figure 5.3  Bomarzo. View of the Theatre of Love in the Sacro Bosco. (Author’s Photo).

(Only to relieve my heart), words borrowed from Petrarch. Darnall and Weil, who describe the structure as the ‘Love Theatre’, have taken this passage to mean that that the theatre was a ‘place where one awakens from the vanities of earthly love and the apparent beauty of the Love Garden in the Sacro Bosco and becomes aware of the serious nature of the garden’.76 They link the theatre to Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and propose that the theatre alludes to Ruggiero’s awakening from the charms of the deceptive sorceress Alcina.77 In doing this they interpret the theatre as a signifier—a structure that reveals truth. It is symbolic of the awakening of the Ariostean characters from the vanities and false charms of earthly love, and thereby prompts the garden visitor to also be aware of them. Like the Sacro Bosco overall, this theatre and its associated symbolism is unique in the sixteenth century. It does, however, have several features—the exedra, the variation on the concave-convex step arrangement and the fountain—that were adapted from earlier theatres and which would appear again in later garden theatres. The symbolic meaning of the theatre, if it was intended to allude to Ariosto’s tale of love and madness, also has much in common with later examples of garden performances. This makes it quite different in function to the classically inspired theatres designed for the Belvedere courtyard and the Villa Madama. 76 Darnall and Weil, ‘Il Sacro Bosco’, p. 31. 77 The link between Ariosto’s writings and Bomarzo are also discussed in Maurizio Calvesi, Gli Incantesimi Di Bomarzo: Il Sacro Bosco Tra Arte e Letteratura (Milano: Bompiani, 2000).

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The theatre is mentioned by Francesco Sansovino in his description of the garden written in his introduction to Sannazaro’s Arcadia (1586).78 Quando mi viene a mente il vostro bellissimo luogo di Bomarzo non possa astenermi di non trar alle volte qualche sospiro. […] Mi pare fin di quà di esser su quella loggia, la qual scuopre tutto il paese, e mena l’occhio de riguardanti giù per quella collina, a pie della quale si vede il Theatro, il lago, e il Tempio […] Desiderar dico di rivederle quando che sia. Et tanto più desiderarlo, quanto che leggendo il presente Volume, vi ho trovato per entro alcune descrittioni di colli e di valli, che rappresentandomi il sito di Bomarzo, me ne hanno fatto venir grandissima voglia. When I am reminded of your beautiful estate of Bomarzo it is impossible for me not to sigh a few times. […] It seems to me that I am upon that loggia, from which one can see the whole land, and leads the eye down to that hill, at the foot of which one sees the Theatre, the lake, and the Temple […] [I am] longing to see it again. And how much more I desire this, when reading the present volume, as I found within some descriptions of hills and valleys, which recall the site of Bomarzo, and have made me feel great desire for it.79

What is significant in Sansovino’s text is not the description, which merely mentions the existence of the theatre, but his linking of this site and its structures with the places evoked in Sannazaro’s literary evocation of Arcadia. It demonstrates the way in which the idea of nature that visitors brought with them (or contemplated when absent) shaped their interpretation of such spaces, an example of Michel Conan’s aforementioned ‘garden imagination’.80 Sannazaro’s text is not a theatrical one, but its central theme of a retreat into an Arcadian idyll tinged with melancholy shaped the pastoral as it was performed on stage in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Arcadia, as proposed by Sannazaro, was, as Marsha S. Collins has described, a ‘theatrical space for staged encounters between conflicting views and contrasting ideologies’.81 The conception of this space as a type of Arcadia positioned it as performative, not in the sense of grand courtly festivals, but in the sense that visitors would take on a role. The structure is only antique insofar as it derives from the Belvedere courtyard. Rather than harking back to antique functions of the theatre—an arena for spectacle or a space for intellectual debate—the Bomarzo 78 The dedication f irst appears in the 1578 version, see J. B. Bury, ‘The Reputation of Bomarzo’, The Journal of Garden History 3, no. 2 (1983): pp. 108–109. 79 Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia (Venice: Ventura de Salvador, 1586), np. Author’s translation. 80 Michel Conan, ‘Methods and Perspectives for the Study of Gardens and Their Reception’, in Gardens and Imagination: Cultural History and Agency, ed. Michel Conan, 2008, p. 10. 81 Marsha S. Collins, Imagining Arcadia in Renaissance Romance (New York: Routledge, 2016), p. 13.

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theatre is linked to contemporary pastoral literature and theatre. The Bomarzo theatre could therefore arguably be the first garden theatre in Italy in this period that was not designed as a performance space. Instead, it was a structure that invoked the idea of theatre and the narratives associated with it. If we consider the contemporary transformation of theatre that was taking place in the later decades of the sixteenth century it seems likely that the small theatre may have stimulated ideas of the wondrous and the mythical that were becoming common to performances of intermedi and which are evoked elsewhere in the garden through the depiction of monsters and mythical creatures from antique myth and from contemporary texts such as Ariosto and Sannazaro.82 The Reggio Parco in Turin Two sixteenth century garden theatres based on a contemporary idea of theatre were found at the Reggio Parco, originally called Viboccone or ‘L’Isola di Viboccone’, in Turin, begun by the architect Ascanio Vitozzi (1539–1615) in 1567.83 The garden was outside of the fortifications of Turin on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Po, the Stura and Dora rivers. An engraving of the Palazzo del Viboccone is in the Theatrum Sabaudiae (a compendium of prints that illustrated the churches, palaces, villas and gardens in the kingdom of the Savoy published in 1682) but it does not show the royal park.84 The painter Federico Zuccaro visited the park in 1605 and described the theatre: [A]ll’entrare del Parco, passato il ponte sopra la Dora, si trova un teatro d’alberi nel quale hanno principio cinque stradoni divisi là di mezzo, longhi una lega, aperta e spatiosa, che passa per mezzo il bosco e si dilate nella campagna aperta di esso Parco. At the entrance to the Park, past the bridge over the Dora, one finds a theatre of trees where begin five large avenues that divide in the middle, one league in 82 Luke Morgan, The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) on the representations of monsters in the garden at Bomarzo. 83 Aurora Scotti, Ascanio Vitozzi: Ingegnere Ducale a Torino (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1969), p. 55 (n. 29). 84 The Theatrum Sabaudiae was first published in 1682 by the publisher Jean Bleau who had initiated the project with Carlo Emmanuele II in the 1660s. The original plates were mainly by Giovenale Boetto and Tommaso Borgonio, (Robert Oresko, ‘The House of Savoy in Search for a Royal Crown in the Seventeenth Century’, in Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe, ed. Robert Oresko, G. C. Gibbs, and H. M. Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 277). The park is discussed in Scotti, Ascanio Vitozzi, pp. 47–52 and Nino Carboneri, Ascanio Vitozzi: Un Architetto Tra Manierismo e Barocco (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1966), pp. 159–174.

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length, open and spacious, that pass by way the wood and spread out into the countryside of the Park.85

This is an early example of the ‘teatro di prospettive’ (theatre of prospects); that is, a space where the viewer could take in a range of vistas through the garden. These were to become popular in the seventeenth-century garden. Zuccaro recorded another area in the garden that served as a place for performance: Vi è un praticello in forma ovata, di buona grandezza, circondato di alberi di esso bosco, ove S.A. suole alle volte fare recitare diverse opera, come fece l’anno passato una bellissima pastorale, che, senza altro apparato che un palchetto per le Dame e seggie all’intorno per se stesso, il luogo serve per scena, uscendo et entrando da ciascuna parte del bosco ninfe e pastori. There is a small field in the form of an oval, of a goodly size, enclosed by the trees of that wood where His Excellency at times has had various works performed, like a beautiful pastoral he had performed last year, that, without any other stage-set than a small box for the Ladies and seats around it for them. The place serves as a stage setting, with nymphs and shepherds leaving and entering from each part of the wood.86

From Zuccaro’s description, the theatre was apparently no more than ‘a small oval field’ surrounded by trees with little resemblance to the classically inspired theatres of the Belvedere courtyard and Villa Madama. Pastoral plays were popular upon the stage in Turin. We know that Guarino Guarini’s seminal pastoral Il pastor fido (finished by 1585) was performed several times in Turin in the late sixteenth century. It is possible that their popularity prompted the duke to have a suitable theatre for such plays created in his garden.87 In addition, there can be little doubt that the Savoy were aware of the fêtes and pastoral plays that had been performed for the French queen Catherine de’Medici in the 1560s in the gardens of Fontainebleau, Chenonceau and La Charité-sur-Loire, amongst others.88 These green theatres were to become a common feature of seventeenth-century gardens in Italy with the advent of the ‘teatro di verzura’, further discussed below. The theatre is also mentioned in a description of the Reggio Parco during the reign of Carlo Emmanuele 85 F. Zuccaro, ‘I Viaggi Di Federico Zuccaro’, ed. Detlef Heikamp, Paragone 9, no. 105 (1958): p. 49. 86 Zuccaro, ‘I Viaggi’, p. 50. Author’s translation. 87 Scotti, Ascanio Vitozzi, p. 55 (n. 30). 88 Michel Baridon, A History of the Gardens of Versailles, Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 8–11.

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I (1562–1630). Giovanni Botero, in his Relationi di Piamonte (1607), records it as a place of education for the prince and young aristocrats. Botero indicates that the arts of war were learnt through hunting, the arts of science and botany were learnt through examination of the plants and hydraulic systems, and the arts of leisure were experienced in the labyrinth, the grottoes and the green theatre.89 In this context the theatre forms part of the education in the arts of leisure of a prince. The Garden of Pratolino The garden of Pratolino outside Florence, begun in 1569, was contemporary with the Reggio Parco in Turin and it included a theatre designed by Buontalenti.90 The original garden is mostly lost, but the theatre was recorded in a drawing of 1604 that depicts the ‘Monte Parnasso di Pratolino’ by Giovanni Guerra (1544–1618) (Fig 2.5).91 Guerra’s drawing shows, on the left, a semicircular seat divided into two and surrounded by tall trees with several spectators sitting and standing. Guerra has labelled this the ‘theatre [sic] commodo a li spettatori cosi per vista come per udire l’armonia’ (theatre for the convenience of spectators to both see and hear the harmony).92 To the right is the musical ‘performance’ of Apollo, the Muses and Pegasus on Mount Parnassus, which is represented by a small rocky hill. The mountain can be seen at the bottom right of the lunette representing the southern half of Pratolino painted by Giusto Utens in 1599.93 The mountain is represented on a map by Bernardo Sgrilli, which he made to accompany his Descrizione della regia villa, fontane, e fabriche de Pratolino (1742).94 However, Sgrilli makes no mention of the theatre suggesting that by this date it had gone, or that he did not consider it worth mentioning, as his description is focused on the sculpture and hydraulic wonders of the garden. Buontalenti’s garden designs are determined in large part by his interest in new engineering techniques.95 As noted previously in relation to his work for 89 Giovanni Bottero Benese, I Capitani (Turin: Giovanni Domenico Tarino, 1607), pp. 193–202 for the Relationi di Piamonte and C. Roggero Bardelli, Maria Grazia Vinardi, and Vittorio Defabiani, Ville Sabuade (Milan, 1990), p. 334. 90 Zangheri, 1979a, pp. 157–158; Luigi Zangheri, ‘The Gardens of Buontalenti’, in The Architecture of Western Gardens: A Design History from the Renaissance to the Present Day, ed. Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot (Cambridge (Massachusetts): The MIT Press, 1990), pp. 96–99. 91 The drawing is one of a set that depict the gardens at Pratolino now held in the Graphische Sammlung, Albertina, Vienna. 92 Lazzaro, The Italian Garden, pp. 132–133. 93 Webster Smith, ‘Pratolino’, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 20 (1961): p. 155–156, n.7 and Mignani, Le Ville Medicee, pp. 77–81. 94 Bernardo Sgrilli, Descrizione della Regia Villa, Fontane, e Fabriche de Pratolino (Florence, 1742), p. 26. 95 Zangheri, ‘Gardens of Buontalenti’, pp. 96–99.

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the theatre, he was actively engaged in the development of new techniques for creating a range of special effects on stage. At Pratolino he used the most advanced technology available to exploit the plentiful supply of water for fountains and to power hydraulic organs and automata. As well as the translation of the Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria he had commissioned, he also wrote his own treatise on engineering and architecture.96 The original garden at Pratolino would have been experienced by the visitor as a series of tableaux, animated by automata and in some cases by music or other sound effects. As such it must have been reminiscent of the theatre performances. Indeed, the scene of Parnassus with Apollo and his Muses is very similar to scene from the second intermedio of the 1589 theatrical celebrations.97 However, the intermedio was actually produced after work at Pratolino had been completed and it is therefore likely that Buontalenti was drawing on, or referring to, his garden design when he created the scene for the intermedio. This type of scene demonstrates another shift away from classically inspired theatres toward a type of garden theatre that drew on, or was at least analogous to, the types of scenes and special effects found in contemporary theatrical productions. Pratolino is also important for its demonstration of the important role of scientific and technological innovation in the design and experience of gardens in this period. Both gardens and theatres came to be understood as potential representations of knowledge, and both were used to present the idea of a conspectus, or an overview. Both played a role in allowing audiences and visitors to experience wonders.98 This is not to overstate their role; demonstrations of scientific thinking and engineering were by no means restricted to these spaces. However, the similarities in the way that they were deployed are striking. Engineering enabled wonders on stage and performances in gardens, and both potentially prompted thinking about the natural world and technology in new ways. The Belvedere courtyard and the Villa Madama demonstrate that the garden theatres of the seventeenth century had their roots were firmly planted in the gardens of the sixteenth century. Sixteenth-century garden theatres were motivated by the desire to emulate the ancients and create a true ‘classical’ villa, so several of these early theatres were intended either for large scale performances that emulated 96 Amelio Fara, Bernardo Buontalenti e Firenze: Architettura e Disegno dal 1576 al 1607. Catalogo della Mostra (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1998), pp. 57–59. 97 Blumenthal, ‘Giulio Parigi’, p. 93. 98 Denis Ribouillault, ‘Atlas and Hercules in the Garden: Scientific Culture and Literary Imagination at the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati’, Nuncius 30, no. 1 (2015): pp. 124–160 and Claudio Pizzorusso. 2002. ‘Galileo in the Garden: Observations on the Sculptural Furnishings of Florentine Gardens between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in The Medici, Michelangelo, & the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, edited by Cristina Acidini Luchinat, pp. 113–121.

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ancient spectacles, or for the performance of classical plays. Many of the features that would be found in baroque garden theatres first appear during the sixteenth century, such as stepped stone seating, the amphitheatre or hemicycle form. As the century progressed the creation of garden theatres was driven by developments in contemporary theatre and by a desire to situate actual performances, or allusions to performances, within gardens. The sixteenth century also anticipated the practice of including sites and structures that were described as theatres but were not used as sites for performance in the conventional sense, as at Bomarzo or the Reggio Parco.

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Serlio, Sebastiano. Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture: Books I-V of Tutte l’opere d’architettura et Prospettiva. Translated by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks. Vol. 1. 2 vols. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Sgrilli, Bernardo. Descrizione Della Regia Villa, Fontane, e Fabriche de Pratolino. Florence, 1742. Smith, Webster. ‘Pratolino’. The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 20 (1961): 155–168. Taylor, Rabun. ‘Torrent or Trickle? The Aqua Alsietina, the Naumachia Augusti, and the Transtiberim’. American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997): 465–492. Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects. Translated by Gaston de Vere. Everymans Library. London: David Campbell Publishers, 1996. Vitruvius. The Ten Books on Architecture. Translated by Morris Hicky Morgan. 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960. Woodbridge, Kenneth. Princely Gardens. The Origins and Development of the French Formal Style. London: Thames and Hudson, 1986. Wright, D. R. Edward. ‘Some Medici Gardens of the Florentine Renaissance: An Essay in Post-Aesthetic Interpretation’. In The Italian Garden: Art, Design and Culture, edited by John Dixon Hunt, 34-59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. London: Bodley Head, 1992. Zangheri, Luigi. Pratolino, Il Giardino Delle Meraviglie I: Testi e Documenti. Documenti Inediti Di Cultura Toscana. Florence: Edizioni Gonnelli, 1979. Zangheri, Luigi. ‘The Gardens of Buontalenti’. In The Architecture of Western Gardens: A Design History from the Renaissance to the Present Day, edited by Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot, 96–99. Cambridge (Massachusetts): The MIT Press, 1990. Zuccaro, F. ‘I Viaggi Di Federico Zuccaro’. Edited by Detlef Heikamp. Paragone 9, no. 105 (1958): 40–63.

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6. The Garden as Stage, the Visitor as Performer Abstract This chapter explores the rise of the idea of the garden as a stage, looking at the emergence of the theatre as a key feature of garden design in this period. It looks at the printed views published by Giambattista Falda and Marcantonio Dal Re as examples of the seventeenth-century ‘scenographic gaze’. It also examines the way that descriptive accounts of the experience of gardens began to foreground theatrical terms like stage, performer and spectator. It links these representations and accounts to broader shifts in seventeenth century culture toward framing human activity in terms of performativity and spectacle. Keywords: Giambattista Falda, Marcantonio Dal Re, Prints, Vedute, Travel accounts, Theatrum Mundi

In July 1637 a crowd assembled on the stone steps of a newly completed amphitheatre in the Boboli gardens in Florence. The amphitheatre was a seventeenth-century addition to the sixteenth-century garden. It is situated directly behind the Palazzo Pitti, along a central axis that led from the large, rusticated entranceway through the Ammannati courtyard, through the amphitheatre, and up the hill behind. The courtyard had already begun to be used as a site for performances such as equestrian ballets and parades of floats which had previously been held in the more public setting of the Piazza della Croce. Temporary wooden seating had been set up around the lower part of the garden directly behind the courtyard, the Prato Grande, in 1618, and by 1637 was replaced by a stone amphitheatre designed by Giulio Parigi and completed by his son Alfonso.1 1 Gabriele Capecchi, Il Giardino Di Boboli, Un Anfiteatro per La Gioia Dei Granduchi, Fronde d’oro, 2 (Firenze: Edizioni Medicea, 1993); Claudia Lazzaro, The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 208; and Pietro Marchi, ‘Il Giardino Di Boboli e Il Suo Anfiteatro’, in Città Effimera e l’universo Artificiale del Giardino: La Firenza Dei Medici e l’Italia del ‘500, ed. Marcello

Grant, K., Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463721530_ch06

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The assembled spectators were there to watch a magnificent equestrian ballet staged as part of the wedding celebrations for Ferdinando II de’Medici and Vittoria della Rovere. This ballet had a binding narrative about the wonders and enchantments of nature and their seductive effects taken from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. The text was put together by Ferdinando Saracinelli and it followed the story of Armida, the Saracen sorceress sent to stop the Christian knights and murder the hero Rinaldo, who instead falls in love with her target and creates a beautiful garden in which to hold him hostage.2 The narrative celebrated ideals of chaste love and suitable marriage alliances, but it also used performance to invoke the idea of the garden as an enchanted realm. The engravings by Stefano Della Bella and the published Descrizione dell festa are both suggestive of the type of performance that the audience was anticipating (and which could then be recreated in the imaginations of an even wider audience through these official records).3 The entire event is represented on a single sheet (Fig. 6.1), and the performance is shown from different points-of-view so that the entire space and each key event are captured. The central image shows the moment when Armida had been drawn into the centre of the amphitheatre on a chariot from which she descended and then sung an address to the audience.4 The viewer of the print looks down on the arena from a point-of-view high above the amphitheatre, a view no actual spectator could have had. The small figures in the foreground seem intended to be read as the top tier of spectators; the dimensions of the amphitheatre have been exaggerated so that the spectators and even the performers look tiny in the vast space. This scene is framed by curtains as though it is a stage set rather than a record of a real event, a pictorial device that underlines the idea that the gardens, the performers, and even the assembled audience are meant to be read as a performance. Around the edges are fifteen small scenes that show the equestrian Fagiolo (Roma, 1980), p. 172; and Pietro Marchi, ‘Il Giardino Come ‘Luogo Teatrale’’, in Giardino Storico, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Florence: Olschki, 1981), p. 214. For an example of temporary seating as set up in Piazza Santa Croce see Arthur Blumenthal, Theatre Art of the Medici (Dartmouth: University Press of New England, 1980), pp. 108–109 (fig. 51). 2 This story is found in Canto 6 of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, see Torquato Tasso, ‘La Gerusalemme Liberata (Il Giardino Di Armida, Canto XVI, 9–16, in Tasso, 1971, pp. 476-478)’, ed. Margherita Azzi Visentini, L’Arte Dei Giardini: Scritti Teorici e Pratici dal XIV al XIX Secolo, 1999, pp. 341–345. The spectacle was recorded in Ferdinando Bardi, Descrizione delle Feste Fatte in Firenze per Le Reali Nozze de Serenissimi Sposi Ferdinando II. Gran Duca Di Toscana, e Vittoria Principessa d’Urbino (Florence: Zanobi Pignoni, 1637), https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_YkvPEta3p0EC, 36-51. See also the discussion in Blumenthal, Theatre Art, p. 179. 3 The wide dissemination of these spectacles to an audience beyond Florence was intended, see, for example, James M. Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 15–16. 4 Bardi, Descrizione della festa, p. 38.

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Figure 6.1 Stefano della Bella, Carousel in Florence for the Marriage of The Grand Duke Ferdinand II with details of an equestrian ballet held in the Boboli Amphitheatre, 1637. 32.7 x 44cm. Etching. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1960 (67.542.4).

ballets. These are shown from a bird’s eye view, presumably chosen because it best captures the elaborate formations achieved by the riders. At the top a smaller image captioned ‘Carro d’Amore’ shows the figure of Chaste Love on his chariot from the point of view of spectators looking back across the amphitheatre toward the Palazzo Pitti. Again, the size of the amphitheatre is greatly exaggerated and any viewer unfamiliar with the real site would have gained the impression that the amphitheatre was much larger than the palace itself (the reverse is true). The image shows the spectators immersed within a garden that has become a stage. The official written record underlines the immersive nature of the event and the way in which the enchanted garden was ‘superimposed’ upon the real garden. The description records that the space was lit in such a way as to seem to be filled with stars and that there were so many torches that the ‘night was vanquished’.5 This language recalls that discussed above in relation to the use of macchine on the stage. The Descrizione reports that Armida arrived in the amphitheatre down the wide central avenue that led from the top of the Boboli gardens to the theatre. 5 Bardi, Descrizione della festa, p. 38.

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This had been made to look like a ‘scena boschereccia’ (woodland setting) and that it was not really possible to distinguish ‘il finto dal vero’ (the false from the true).6 Throughout the description, the illusions of the special effects are described as though they were seamless, echoing the story of enchantment being told in the narrative. After Armida arrived in the theatre, drawn on her carriage by four elephants, she sang of her power to enchant men and to control nature by turning night into day. Following this, the original scene undertook a number of impressive transformations. The carriage Armida rode in was transformed with ‘prestezza incredibile’ (incredible speed) into a mountain, terrifying in appearance, with caverns that spewed flame and from which emerged an enormous serpent. At the same moment and with ‘l’istessa celerità’ (the same swift speed) the woodland scene was replaced by a beautiful castle (this is the scene shown in the main image on della Bella’s print).7 It seems unlikely that the special effects in the real event were quite so seamless, but the effectiveness of an illusion is always relative to the expectations of the audience so it may well have seemed instantaneous and magical, and this, in turn, is how it is historically ‘remembered’ in the records of the event. The landscape setting of the gardens became part of the theatrical setting. The central image in Della Bella’s engravings shows the tall trees of the real boschetto and the description includes reference to the fact that the broad avenue that ran up the centre of the garden (largo viale conduce al Giardino) was part of the performance. The imaginary character of Armida is described as having travelled through the gardens to emerge upon the amphitheatre stage, as though she is a real manifestation of the enchantress, not just a performer who has entered from ‘backstage’.8 The garden as a whole was understood as part of the stage set, even though the audience’s focus was upon the amphitheatre. It suggested to a visitor who knew of the performance (first, or second hand) that the real garden is a place where they might cross over into the enchanted realm of pleasure, an idea with obvious appeal to members of the court spending time in the gardens. But it is a portrayal of the garden that is ambiguous. On the one hand it seems to offer the flipside to the ‘meraviglia’ presented on stage in theatres, where the power of engineers (and princes) was shown to control the effects of nature, and instead tells of nature’s power to entrap humans and to overwhelm them. However, the conclusion of the ballet showed Armida ultimately defeated, banished, and Chaste Love (essentially a representation of Princely Duty) triumphant over nature and its unbridled pleasures. The garden is presented as a place of pleasure and delight into which one can retreat, but where one must not fall prey to intemperate idleness 6 Bardi, Descrizione della festa, pp. 38–39. 7 Bardi, Descrizione della festa, p. 42. 8 Bardi, Descrizione della festa, pp. 38–39.

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or inappropriate amorous adventures. The wonders of the garden are impressive, but also fleeting; the garden is presented as a site where pleasure can be indulged, but also where it can be contained.9 The form of this amphitheatre is based on classical precedents filtered through sixteenth-century examples. Rows of stepped stone seats rise sharply up from a large semi-circular open space. The seating is divided by a central avenue, which ascends the steep hill behind the amphitheatre. The theatre is walled-in by hedges and trees, visible in Stefano della Bella’s engraving of the inaugural event of 1637. The extent of Parigi’s knowledge of antique theatres is uncertain; however, there is a clear resemblance between this theatre and Pirro Ligorio’s Belvedere courtyard, though the exact seating arrangement is different, dictated by the requirements of the site. The design is actually closer to indoor princely theatres, in particular the Uffizi Theatre, built in 1586 by Buontalenti as a teatro all’antica, as well as the Farnese theatre in Parma built in 1618.10 This theatre is also a permanent version of the temporary theatres or amphitheatres that were set up in Piazza Santa Croce. An etching by Jacques Callot, after Giulio Parigi, illustrates one such event, the Guerra di Bellezza (War of Beauty) held in honour of a visit by the Prince of Urbino, Federigo della Rovere, to Florence in 1616.11 The etching shows the piazza transformed for the festival, which had been devised by the poet and librettist Andrea Salvadori (1591–1635), into an amphitheatre with rows of stepped seating, including a ‘royal box’.12 These must take their cue, as did the Belvedere courtyard, in part from classical hippodromes. The Boboli amphitheatre design is both an outside version 9 These ideas are further explored in relation to other European garden performances in a forthcoming chapter, Katrina Grant, ‘The Princely Landscape as Stage: Early Modern Courts in Enchanted Gardens’, in Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World, ed. Stephen Whiteman (University Park: Penn State Press, 2022). 10 Blumenthal, Theatre Art, p. 111 (fig. 52). The prime example of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theatre based on classical sources is Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico (1585). See Licisco Magagnato, ‘The Genesis of the Teatro Olimpico’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14 (1951): pp. 209–220 and James S. Ackerman, Palladio, The Architect and Society (London: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 178–182. Also see D. Heikamp, ‘Il Teatro Mediceo Degli Uffizi’, Bolletino del Centro Internazionale Di Studi Di Architettura Andrea Palladio 16 (1974): pp. 323–332 and P. Roselli, ‘I Teatri Dei Medici’, Bolletino Degli Ingeneri 22 (1974): p. 3–12. Court theatres tended to be different, with U-shaped, rather than semi-circular, seating. This U-shaped seating is similar to classical hippodromes and was also dictated by the need to use the open area in front of the stage as a performance space for ballets, which was not necessary at the Teatro Olimpico. On the Farnese theatre see Gianni Capelli, Il Teatro Farnese Di Parma: Architettura, Scene, Spettacoli, ed. Pier Luigi Cervellati and Mauro Barbacini (Parma: Artegrafica Silva, 1990). 11 Blumenthal, Theatre Art, pp. 108–109. See Angelo Solerti, Musica, Ballo e Drammatica alla Corte Medicea dal 1600 al 1637 (Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, Editori, 1905), p. 115 for a description of the festival. 12 Jacques Callot, after Giulio Parigi, ‘View of Piazza Santa Croce with Tiers of Seating for Spectators’, from Andrea Salvadori’s Guerra d’Amore, festa del Serenissimo Gran Duca di Toscana Cosimo Secundo, 1616. 22.2 x 30.1cm. Etching. London, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings (1861, 0713.867).

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of a princely theatre and a permanent version of the amphitheatres previously set up in the piazze of Florence. Although the performances held within gardens during this period were impermanent, they constitute a significant way in which many visitors experienced a site and the means by which they interpreted it. A performance temporarily transformed the garden into a stage, often with fireworks, an array of mythological characters come to life either as living actors or moving creatures in papier maché, that added to the more permanent features such as plants, fountains and sculpture. ⁠

The Garden as Theatre: Theory and Approach The Boboli theatre, although in part modelled upon the Uffizi theatre, was not a stage for the same types of performances.13 Neither did the Boboli theatre represent a shift from mainly indoor to mainly outdoor performance. Instead, it was often used in conjunction with performances within the indoor Uff izi theatre; it represented a shift from public to semi-private performance.14 The Boboli garden amphitheatre was unique in size and function. Although princely gardens were common sites of performance, as discussed above, the stages and seating were usually temporary; there are no other examples of so large a structure made permanent in the garden.15 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the numbers of garden theatres did multiply, but the forms that they took became more varied. Topiarized hedge, fountains, flowerbeds, piazze, stone amphitheatres, hippodromes, and courtyards were all identified as theatres.16 Even the general 13 Phyllis D. Massar, ‘Presenting Stefano della Bella’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 27 (1968): pp. 159–162. 14 Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 24–26. 15 Another example is the theatre built for opera performance at the Villa Favorita in the eighteenth century. This theatre is shown at the top right corner of the plan of the villa and garden by Solomon Kleiner dating around 1730. Theatre design at the court at Vienna was influenced by both Italy and France, and this theatre is like a permanent version of the temporary stages erected at Versailles. See Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Fig. 8. 16 There are early studies on garden theatres by Mario Corsi, Il Teatro Aperto in Italia (Milan: Rizzoli, 1939) and A. G. Bragaglia, ‘Teatri all’aperto’, Capitolium 31 (1956): pp. 230–236. The main study is Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and Maria Adriana Giusti, Teatri Di Verzura: La Scena del Giardino dal Barocco al Novecento (Florence: EDIFIR Edizione Firenze, 1993), a book ostensibly about teatri di verzura, but which deals with other types of garden theatres, the concept of the garden as theatre and some set designs that feature gardens. Another study by the same authors, Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Adriana Giusti, Lo Specchio del Paradiso: L’immagine del Giardino dell’Antico al Novecento, 2 vols (Milan: Silvana Editorale, 1996) makes many similar observations.

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experience of visiting a garden began to be characterized as performative. This chapter will address this last phenomenon first: the problem of definition and the complexities of understanding the use of the word teatro to describe a range of garden spaces and experiences. Definition, Categorization and Evidence The garden theatres built in Italian gardens during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be generally divided into two categories. The first are functional theatres; that is, theatres that were used for performing plays, music, equestrian displays and so on. These theatres are essentially a continuation of those sixteenthcentury theatres outlined in the previous chapter, such as that proposed for the Villa Madama, though the types of performances and the general form altered over the centuries. The second category are theatres that did not function as conventional performance spaces, but displayed the elements of the garden (water, plants, sculpture, vistas) in a theatrical form. They range from the elaborate fountains called teatri d’acqua to spaces within the garden which often did not have a distinct structural form. These theatres represent a new use of the term theatre, or teatro, to describe a variety of garden features, many with little or no resemblance to either classical or baroque theatre structures. Instead, they were theatres in the sense of presenting garden elements, such as water, flowers or prospects, as a show or a spectacle. The use of the garden as a space for performance is not, of course, unique to this period. The medieval garden at Hesdin had complex hydraulically driven automata that could produce an array of special effects such as moving figures and bird songs.17 The humanist academies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would often meet within a garden setting and perform poetry. Numerous sixteenth-century paintings show concerts held within gardens, such as the Concerto in Villa by Ludovico Pozzoserrato (c. 1580), which shows a group of musicians in the foreground, a lady at the harpsichord, with another behind her holding music, to her left a man glances at the music whilst playing his lute.18 What is different during the period from the late 1500s up to the early decades of the 1700s is the way in which display and spectacle became central to the garden experience. Something echoed in other parts of courtly life. The medieval and early Renaissance practice of displaying horsemanship through jousting was largely replaced by the safer spectacle of 17 Patrick M. De Winter, ‘Castles and Town Residences of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1364-1404)’, Artibus et Historiae 4 (1983): p. 116. 18 The painting is held in the Museo Civico Santa Caterino, Treviso, see Natsumi Nonaka, ‘Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography: Toeput and the Italian Villa Tradition’, in Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy, ed. Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger, and Leopoldine Prosperetti, Art and the Verdant Earth (Amsterdam University Press, 2019), pp. 135–136.

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equestrian ballets.19 Musical concerts and banquets in gardens and in palaces were often absorbed into elaborate and fully integrated feste or fêtes. Edward Wright has observed that in Florence the long-established pastime of hunting changed from a serious activity in which rulers and nobles took an active role to one of observation and ritualized performance: By the Renaissance, it seems possible to speak of a contrast between the hunt as a physical sport involving the direct participation of the nobility, and the hunt as a type of mental recreation staged by professionals for dignitaries who, for one reason or another, might wish to limit exertions to the most pleasurable and ceremonial aspects, such as the boisterous outdoor banquets, the exciting coup de grace, and the feudal rite of the division of the kill.20

This performativity that ran like a thread through baroque culture, extended, of course, to the garden. However, even where these spaces survive, understanding the conditions under which they were experienced in the past can be challenging. A modern visitor’s encounter with a seventeenth-century garden, even one that is still physically close to the original design, is not likely to include a concert or equestrian ballet, and only rarely the experience of working automata or water tricks.21 In the absence of such experiences, gardens have been studied and interpreted primarily in terms of the permanent design features, and not through the experience or idea of them. Many theatres in seventeenth-century Italian gardens can be identified only through the study of printed garden views and written descriptions. This is not just because, in some cases, the gardens have vanished or fallen into disrepair, but also because to modern viewers they are not obviously theatres. The printed views and written descriptions help us to see the way that owners and visitors in the seventeenth century conceptualized and wished to present their gardens.22 Denis 19 Wright has suggested that this shift of the courtiers’ involvement in hunting and jousting from participant to spectator is mirrored in part by the practices of Ancient Rome when owners of large villa complexes were as likely to hire professional hunters to ‘perform the hunt’ as to participate in the hunt themselves. He cites the writings of Seneca who deplored the slaying of animals ‘just to make a show’ rather than for genuine hunting (D. R. Edward Wright, ‘Some Medici Gardens of the Florentine Renaissance: An Essay in Post-Aesthetic Interpretation’, in The Italian Garden: Art, Design and Culture, ed. John Dixon Hunt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 50–51). 20 Wright, ‘Some Medici Gardens’, p. 50. 21 This is not to say that such performances and displays are never part of the modern experience of gardens. Many historical gardens host performances; for instance at Versailles in recent years there have been ‘Les Grandes Eaux Musicales’, which are essentially promenades to visit the fountains, accompanied by music and are intended to recreate the fêtes held in the seventeenth century. 22 This important aspect of images and records of gardens is explored in Linda Cabe Halpern, ‘The Uses of Paintings in Garden History’, in Garden History: Issues, Approaches, Methods: Dumbarton Oaks

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Ribouillault has coined the term ‘the archaeology of the gaze’ to investigate the way in which a ‘certain vision of space is encoded’ in representations of gardens and landscapes in sixteenth-century Italy and to discuss the ways in which such images played a role in perception and understanding of space.23 While John Dixon Hunt has proposed the idea of reception studies applied to garden history, a method that he suggests better acknowledges ‘[h]ow gardens are visited, how they are used […] and how they are absorbed into the experiences of generations of people who explore them after their creation constitute a very different and just as fascinating a story.24 This is a particularly useful idea for untangling the idea of theatre and its relationship to landscape and gardens during this period. Key sources for the study of these gardens are prints and descriptions, the spaces themselves are ephemeral, many no longer exist, and if they do are altered and presented to twenty-first century viewers with a very different understanding of how humans should engage with nature. As with the sketches and engravings of set designs discussed in the previous chapter, none of these sources can be interpreted as simulacra of the original space or performance. The motives that lie behind the creation of the material must also be taken into account. Although on the one hand these records offer us only mediated access to the original landscapes, subject to their own pictorial or linguistic styles, they also offer us access to understand how these spaces were encoded for their viewers at the time, and allow us to unearth and reconstruct the early modern ‘gaze’.

Word, Image and Experience: Giambattista Falda and Marcantonio Dal Re A key source for the study of these garden theatres are the collections of printed views of gardens by Giambattista Falda (1643–1678) and Marcantonio Dal Re (1697–1766). Falda (and a number of collaborators) produced several publications that illustrated gardens in Rome and Frascati: Ville e Giardini di Roma (1683) and Le Fontane delle Ville di Frascati nel Tusculano con il loro Prospetti (1687).25 As with Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture XIII, ed. John Dixon Hunt (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992), p. 189. 23 Denis Ribouillault, ‘Toward an Archaeology of the Gaze: The Perception and Function of Garden Views in Italian Renaissance Villas’, in Clio in the Italian Garden: Twenty-First-Century Studies in Historical Methods and Theoretical Perspectives, ed. Mirka Benes and M. Lee, (Washington D.C.: Harvard University Press, 2011), p. 205. 24 John Dixon Hunt, The Afterlife of Gardens (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), p. 11. 25 On Falda’s garden prints see Ulrich Thieme and Feliz Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon Der Bildenden Künstler von Der Antike Bis Zur Gegenwart (Leipzig: E.A. Seeman, 1907), vol. 11, p. 226; Rosario Assunto,

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his views of Rome, the garden views also take the term teatro and apply it to a variety of spaces and structures. Some have a traditional ‘theatrical’ shape, such as an amphitheatre or an exedra, but others do not. Dal Re created a collection of printed representations of the villas of the Lombard nobility in the volumes Ville de delizie o siano palaggi camparecci nello Stato di Milano, published in 1726–1727, and Le delizie della Villa di Castellazzo descritte in verso in 1743.26 Although produced over half a century later, Dal Re’s engravings and texts use a similar language to Falda, and provide a useful point of comparison between the two regions. Dal Re’s prints are accompanied by often lengthy descriptions of several of the estates and the idea of theatres and theatrical forms is often invoked. He describes the landing for boats at Villa Castelletto di Cuggiono as ‘lavorato in forma teatrale’ (made in a theatrical form).27 The aviaries of the Villa Chignolo are described as the ‘Prospetto del teatro delle Ucceliere (View of the Aviary Theatre)’ (Fig. 6.2). There is a similarity here to Falda’s use of the term to describe an Altro teatro adornato di Statue, marmi, et enscrittioni antiche (Other theatre adorned with Statues, marbles and ancient inscriptions)’ in the gardens of the Villa Borghese.28 At the Villa di Corbetta Dal Re’s description echoes Pliny’s description of ‘a vast amphitheatre such as could only be the work of nature’ when he describes the spacious plain upon which the villa is set in the following terms: [A] cui, benché in lontananza di molte miglia, fanno corona, e presentano un grazioso teatro alla vista da levante girando da tramontana. [T]o which, although many miles away, there makes a crown, and presents a gracious theatre to the view from the west around to the north.29 ‘Notizie Sull’autore e Sull’opera’, in Ville E Giardini Di Roma nelle Incisione Di Giovanni Battista Falda, ed. Giovan Battista Falda (Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1980), pp. 9–40; Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, Fons Sapientiae: Renaissance Garden Fountains, ed. George L. Hersey et al. (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1978), pp. 24–27; and Maurizio Gargano, ‘Villas, Gardens and Fountains of Rome: The Etchings of Giovanni Battista Falda’, in The Architecture of Western Gardens: A Design History from the Renaissance to the Present Day, ed. Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot (Cambridge (Massachusetts): The MIT Press, 1991), pp. 166–168. After Falda’s death in 1678 some of the sets were completed by Giovanni Francesco Venturini (1650–c. 1710). The sets published by Falda also included prints by other artists such as Simone Felice, who drew the plan of the Villa Borghese and the plans and views of the Villa Doria Pamphilj. Some of the engravers are not identified, as with the plan of the Villa Savelli Peretti in Li giardino di Roma. 26 Marc’Antonio dal Re, Ville de Delizia o siano Palagi Camparecci nello Stato Di Milano, ed. Pier Fausto Bagatti Valsecchi (Milan, 1963), np. 27 Dal Re, Ville de Delizia, np. 28 Giovan Battista Falda, Ville e Giardini di Roma nelle Incisione di Giovanni Battista Falda, (Roma: Gio: Giacomo de Rossi), c. 1680, there is an open access copy available via the National Gallery of Art Library, https://library.nga.gov/permalink/01NGA_INST/h04v03/alma99845163504896 [Accessed 11/6/2020]. 29 Dal Re, Ville de Delizia, np.

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Figure 6.2  Marc’Antonio Dal Re, ‘Prospetto del teatro delle Ucceliere (View of the Aviary Theatre)’, from Ville de delizia o siano palagi camparecci nello Stato di Milano, Milan, 1726. Civica Raccolta Stampe A. Bertarelli. Castello Sforzesco, Milan (Albo I 11, tav. 55).

At the same villa he describes several teatri, che fanno termine a’viali coperti (theatres that terminate covered avenues).30 It is principally these printed views and descriptions that identify for us as modern viewers the various spaces that were intended to be read as theatres by the early modern viewer. These spaces are not the most spectacular of garden theatres and they have received the least attention in modern scholarship. However, they arguably hold the key to understanding the popularity of theatres as a feature in the gardens of the period. In Falda’s depiction of the Farnese Gardens on the Palatine Hill the space at the foot of the two staircases, which lead down from either side of the aviaries, is labelled Fontana e Teatro sotto la loggia fra le due Ucceliere (Fountain and Theatre under the loggia between the two Aviaries) (Fig. 6.3).31 This ‘theatre’ is only a section of the garden avenue and so could be seen to indicate that the word teatro was becoming a ubiquitous term for various garden structures and spaces. However, 30 Dal Re, Ville de Delizia, np. 31 Falda, Ville E Giardini Di Roma, plates 9 and 10.

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Figure 6.3  Giambattista Falda, ‘View of the Orti Farnesiani’, from Li Giardini di Roma con le loro piante alzate e vedvte in prospettiva, Rome: Giovanni Giacomo Rossi, c. 1680. Engraving. 38 x 40cm (volume). National Gallery of Art Library (Washington), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Matson.

some contemporary accounts suggest that the different terms were used to describe specific forms within gardens.32 For instance, Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564–1637) in a letter written to the Flemish lawyer Teodoro Ameyden (referred to in the letter as Teodoro Amideni) at some time between 1615 and 1620, in which he gives advice on the siting, planning, designing and construction of a private house and garden, writes: per ultimo diro, che se il giardino riesce grande, o almeno più che mediocre, con diversità di viali, e piazze, e frontispizi, ne’ quali li viali terminano, sarà necessario imporre un nome a ciascuna cosa più propria che si può, o alla qualità, o all’ornamento, o alla forma, o al sito, o ad altro contrassegno; e questo acciò, quando si ragiona, si possa capire bene di qual parte si deve intendere, altrimento si troverà sempre confusione. my final point is that, if the garden is a large one, or at least bigger than average, with a variety of avenues, open piazzas, and porticoes at the ends of the avenues, it will be necessary to give as specific a name as possible to everything, according 32 This is the assessment made by Dianne Harris in relation to her study of the gardens of Lombardy depicted in the prints of Marcantonio Dal Re. She observes that the term teatro was used ‘ubiquitously to describe built form’ (Diane Harris, The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003), p. 151).

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to its qualities, ornamentation, shape, position, or other token. This is so that, when talking about the garden, everyone understands perfectly which part is meant; otherwise there will always be confusion.33

Giustiniani names the various spaces of an early seventeenth-century garden and he indicates the importance of naming spaces within the garden for such practical purposes as identification by visitors. The vocabulary used to describe gardens during the this period is also important for garden and art historians as evidence of how gardens were understood and experienced by the viewer in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the same letter Giustiniani also mentions the theatre as a familiar space within a garden: Si ha da premere che le piazza, i teatri, e vicoli siano più lunghi e spaziosi che si può; e sopra tutto non pecchino di stretto, o angusto; siano dritti, e ben spianati, e in squadra, per quanto più comporta il sito. One would ensure that the open piazzas, theatres, and walks are as long and spacious as possible; the worst defect is for them to be cramped or narrow. They should be straight, level, and set at right angles, as far as the site allows.34

The type of theatre suggested by Giustiniani’s description is not a structure, like a water theatre, but a space. The reference here to a ‘theatre’ is made in passing, and he clearly assumes his reader will understand what is meant. This suggests that the designation of garden spaces as teatri was by this time relatively well understood if not commonplace. It is nevertheless difficult to isolate a specific type of space that was considered to be a theatre. These engravings and descriptions commonly show three basic types of gardens space that were described as theatre: the teatro di prospettive (theatre of prospects); the teatro d’ingresso (entrance theatre), and the teatro di rastrelli (theatre of grille or latticework). These were all spaces within the garden where the viewer could observe a prospect along several different avenues of the gardens. Often, they took the form of an amphitheatre or theatre, but not always, and were most often situated either at the entrance to the garden or in front of the palazzo. Some theatres clearly cross over stylistic boundaries, water theatres (discussed below) often also displayed sculptures and antiques and vice versa, entrance theatres were often shaped with hedge. Where evidence exists 33 Giustiniani in Melanie L. Simo, ‘Vincenzo Giustiniani: His Villa at Bassano di Sutri, near Rome, and His ‘Instructions to a Builder and Gardener’’, Journal of Garden History 1 (1981): p. 268. The letter (the Italian text and an English translation) is reproduced in Simo, ‘Vincenzo Giustiniani’, pp. 255–269. The original Italian text is also reproduced in Azzi Visentini, L’Arte Dei Giardini, p. 522. 34 Giustiniani in Simo, ‘Vincenzo Giustiniani’, p. 266.

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for the terminology used to describe the theatre in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, such as the name it was given in Falda or Dal Re, it is grouped according to that description. Where no such evidence exists, the theatre is discussed according to that group into which it most obviously fits. The importance of studying the language used to describe gardens is discussed by Claudia Lazzaro, who remarks in her important study of the Italian Renaissance garden that ‘linguistic distinctions are the key to understanding what was common as well as new and important to contemporaries’.35 Michel Baridon has also emphasized the importance of studying the linguistic evidence alongside the visual evidence in garden studies. He states that ‘[t]he vocabulary of garden treatises, when studied in close connection with their illustrations, cannot but yield interesting evidence’.36 Although Baridon is writing in relation to the use of scientific language in garden description, his statements are equally pertinent to the use of theatrical language. Ribouillault notes in relation to garden views that they have shifted status from ‘documents’ to ‘monuments’ and, following Foucault, that with such sources historians must ‘explore the condition of their genesis and the transmission of their traces to unravel their apparent meaning or to interrogate their silence’.37 The textual descriptions offer some voice in this silence, but how do we read something as simple as a label on a garden plan for a deeper understanding of the conditions under which such spaces were built and experienced? Piazzas and Prospects as Theatres In prints included in Falda’s in Li Giardini di Roma (designed and engraved by Simone Felice) the open area in front of the rear façade of the palazzo at the Villa Borghese is described as the Piazza o Teatro avanti il Palazzo con la Fontana di Narciso (Piazza or Theatre in front of the Palace with the Fountain of Narcissus) (Fig. 6.4).38 The description seems to indicate that the term teatro is interchangeable with piazza (the open space on the other side of the palazzo is called a piazza). The two spaces are essentially the same, though the teatro is smaller, both are rectangular and enclosed by a wall or hedge adorned with vases or sculpture. Falda and Felice’s terminology indicates to us that a piazza has the potential to be a theatre. In a technical sense the space may be a piazza, but in terms of how the visitor understood and reacted to it, it is a theatre. In contrast the exedra shape 35 Lazzaro, The Italian Renaissance Garden, p. 6. 36 Michel Baridon, ‘The Scientific Imagination and the Baroque Garden’, Journal of Garden History 18 (1998): p. 16. 37 Ribouillault, ‘Toward an Archaeology of the Gaze’, p. 204. 38 Falda, Ville E Giardini, plates 15 and 16. In the perspective view the space is referred to as ‘Teatro Avanti il palazzo e facciata verso il Levante con la Fontana di Narciso nel secondo recinto’.

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Figure 6.4 Simone Felice, ‘View of the Villa Borghese’, from Li Giardini di Roma con le loro piante alzate e vedvte in prospettiva, Rome: Giovanni Giacomo Rossi, c. 1680. Engraving. 38 x 40cm (volume). National Gallery of Art Library (Washington), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Matson.

at the entrance to the gardens, seen more clearly in a view of the Villa Borghese made by Matthäus Greuter (c. 1564/6–1638) in 1623, just inside of the main entrance of the primo recinto (first enclosure) of the gardens although taking the form of a hemicycle created from clipped hedges, and set with rectangular niches containing benches or statues, is not described as a theatre.39 The entrance exedra is also discernible in Giovanni Maggi’s Pianta di Roma of 1626, which shows how the Fontanone Rustico at the end of the avenue would have created a scenographic backdrop for the teatro as visitors entered through the monumental gateway. 40 Although the spaces have similar functions, and in many ways the entrance area has a more ‘theatrical’ form, they are labelled differently. In the engraving of the villa of Cardinal Savelli Peretti (Villa Montalto, now destroyed), the entrance area is described as the Teatro e fontane avanti la cancellata della vigna (Theatre and fountain in front of the gate to the vigna), and the space in front of the palazzo is the 39 David R. Coffin, Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 201, notes that at a later date in the seventeenth century plane trees were planted behind the hedges. 40 Giovanni Maggi, La Pianta di Roma, 1625. This is also visible in the plan by Felice at number 7 on the key.

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Teatro e fontane avanti il Palazzo felice (Theatre and fountain in front of the Palazzo Felice).41 Both have the same basic hemicycle shape created by clipped hedges with what look like cypresses standing behind. Several similar theatres can also be seen in the plan of the Villa Doria Pamphilj (called Bel Respiro). For instance, the Teatro con diversi fonti avanti il Casino (Theatre with different fountains in front of the Casino). Similar semi-circular spaces in front of fountains can also be seen in the plans of the Quirinal Gardens and the Villa Mattei but are not labelled as teatri. These spaces are obviously not formal stages, instead the word is being used to indicate an idea of how the space was to be used and experienced by visitors. To recall, Krautheimer’s discussion of Falda’s prints of the urban spaces of Rome discussed in Chapter 1, the term ‘teatro’ designated a show and the potential for performativity. These sites then can be understood as points in the garden where elements of deliberate display or spectacle were to be found, and places where the visitor should understand the potential for them to observe or to be observed. The teatro or piazza in the villa garden is an open space that creates a spectacle of the villa’s façade. The audience stands within the space and admires the spectacle of the villa and the surrounding gardens. Conversely, the visitors in the space could be observed from the villa windows as actors upon a stage. This teatro is both a stage and a point from which to view a spectacle. Rome as a city was a site of spectacle and performance, in both public and semipublic spaces, a ‘ritual city’.42 This approach to the experience of space and social interaction as a performance chimes with observations about seventeenth-century life more broadly. Patricia Waddy, writing about life in seventeenth-century Roman palaces, comments that ‘ceremony and spectacle were an integral part of Roman aristocratic life, so that the line between theatre and daily life is imprecisely drawn’. Even seemingly routine events, such as the arrival of guests at a reception, were carefully choreographed and just as carefully observed.43 The same is true of the social interaction that occurred within gardens. Records of experience such as prints and personal accounts demonstrate that the visitor’s interaction with the garden, as well as with other people within the garden, was frequently expressed in terms of theatre 41 Falda, Ville E Giardini Di Roma, Plate 14. 42 Minou Schraven, ‘Roma Theatrum Mundi: Festivals and Processions in the Ritual City’, in A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692, ed. Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield (Brill, 2019), p. 247. 43 Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan (New York/ Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: The Architectural History Foundation/ The MIT Press, 1990), pp. 3–5. Sylvana Tomaselli, ‘The Death and Rebirth of Character in the Eighteenth Century’, in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. Roy Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 85, makes a similar observation, stating that the eighteenth century had become an era where ‘every pair of eyes sought in others a pleasing image of themselves’.

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and spectacle. Movement through the garden itself was a type of structured experience. Michel Conan observes that motion is a central ‘aspect of landscape design, setting it apart from sculpture, painting, or literature […] one has to address motion, however uncharted the waters’.44 John Dixon Hunt groups movement through the garden into three types: the procession or ritual, the stroll, and the ramble.45 The first type, the procession or ritual movement, implies a type of experience that is highly structured and that is likely to have an inherent element of spectacle. This is a useful category for thinking about seventeenth century garden experiences. Processions are undertaken not simply to get an individual from one point to another, but so that the individual may be observed by spectators in this movement, or so that others may join a choreographed ritual. A procession or promenade is undertaken with a studied awareness of the presence of a spectator, which is one of the key aspects of theatricality, whether in the form of a static audience observing from the sidelines or in the form of participants observing each other. This idea of the procession may help to explain the labels of theatres on these prospects and piazza, they indicate specific sites, and moments, of enhanced spectacle. The labels and descriptions are also suggestive of the embodied experience of visiting these gardens. Mårtin Snickare has observed that Richard Lassels’ contemporary account of the appearance of the Piazza San Pietro, as it was designed by Bernini for Pope Alexander VII, is focused not on ‘architectural style or iconography’ but on ‘movement, motion and action’. He argues that these descriptions demonstrate that Lassels conceived of the space foremost as a space ‘for different kinds of performances, and performative acts’. 46 The views by Falda suggest that the experience at villas was not substantially different. 47 The piazza or teatro was the place in which one’s rank was displayed by the number of carriages in train, where the clothing worn that indicated one’s wealth and status was first visible and so on. 48 In the case of the Orti Farnesiani the teatro is presumably the spectacle of the aviaries and the fountains that can be observed from this particular spot in the garden, but it also acts as a central focal point for the lower half of the gardens. The view in perspective shows it as a point where the visitor could pause after 44 Michel Conan, ‘Introduction: Garden and Landscape Design, from Emotion to the Construction of Self’, in Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion, ed. Michel Conan (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2003), p. 1. 45 Hunt, John Dixon Hunt, ‘‘Lordship of the Feet’: Toward a Poetics of Movement in the Garden’, in Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion, ed. Michel Conan (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2003), and Hunt, The Afterlife of Gardens, pp. 145–172. 46 Mårten Snickare, ‘How to Do Things with the Piazza San Pietro: Performativity and Baroque Architecture’, in Performativity and Performance in Baroque Rome, ed. Peter Gillgren and Mårten Snickare (Ashgate Publishing: Farnham, 2012), p. 68. 47 Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, pp. 61–66. 48 Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, pp. 3–5.

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Figure 6.5  Marcantonio Dal Re, ‘View of the Amphitheatre at Palazzo di Brignano’, from Ville de delizia o siano palagi camparecci nello Stato di Milano, Milan: nella Contrada di Santa Margherita, all’ insegna dell’ Aquila Imperiale,1726. Civica Raccolta Stampe A. Bertarelli. Castello Sforzesco, Milan (Albo H 12, tav. 15).

climbing the steps up from the Campo Vaccino and look back across the remains of the Roman Forum. The prints by Dal Re of the villas of Lombardy also show several of these theatrical piazzas. In a birds-eye view of the Castello Visconti at Brignano from Ville de delizie Dal Re has illustrated the large entrance area, which is described as the ‘Anfiteatro di Palazzo’. This large courtyard in front of the palace is roughly in the shape of an amphitheatre (Fig. 6.5). It is completely enclosed by a high wall, with three main openings.49 The print shows a view from the palace façade through the ‘anfiteatro’ and toward the town beyond. It has a central exedra with two wings. This central structure is articulated by pilasters alternated with nine niches containing statues. In the upper section are nine framed scenes which are barely discernible in the print. 49 The villa was rebuilt in the early eighteenth century to a design by the Roman born Giovanni Ruggieri (1680–1745). See Gianni Mezzanotte, ‘Giovanni Ruggeri e Le Ville de Delizia Lombarde’, Bolletino del Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio 11 (1969): 243–254 and Harris, The Nature of Authority, pp. 151–152.

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Figure 6.6  Marcantonio Dal Re, ‘Spaccato di Prospettive’, from Ville de delizia o siano palagi camparecci nello Stato di Milano, Milan: nella Contrada di Santa Margherita, all’ insegna dell’ Aquila Imperiale, 1726. Civica Raccolta Stampe A. Bertarelli. Castello Sforzesco, Milan (Albo I 11, tav. 64).

Dal Re appears to play up the similarity between this courtyard and the classical theatres, in particular the sixteenth-century recreation of an antique theatre, the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. The central structure or screen is like the scaenae frons and for the viewer at ground level the town (which is visible in Dal Re’s print) would have been seen through each of the three arched openings, much like a stage set. Another similar theatre is depicted in the print of the Castello di Belgioioso.50 Dal Re’s print shows a piazza with five elaborate iron gates that close off three avenues, lined by poplars, which lead away from the piazza into the less formal area of the park. The theatricality of this scene is explicitly stated in the accompanying description that reads Teatro dei cinque Rastrelli in fine del Giardino del Belgioioso (Theatre of the Five Grilles at the entrance of the Garden of the Belgioioso). The space is different to that typical of the Roman gardens illustrated by Falda, with the spectacle instead created by the elaborate gates and the trivium of avenues, which in turn mimic a typical early eighteenth-century set design. Several of Dal Re’s engravings explicitly adopt the 50 Dal Re, Ville de delizia, np and Harris, The Nature of Authority, p. 167.

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Figure 6.7 Carlo Antonio Buffagnotti after Francesco Bibiena, design for ‘Il nuovo teatro dell’Accademia degil Ardenti al Porto’, 1703. Engraving, 39.1 x 31.5cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926. Accession Number: 26.44(2).

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aesthetic conventions of set design in their depictions of gardens. If we look, for instance, at the print described as the Spaccato in Prospettiva (Perspective View [but literally ‘section’]) of the Villa Belgioioso we see a view of a highly stylized boschetto (Fig. 6.6). The scene has a central perspective and two diverging perspectives to either side, clearly derived from the scena per angolo described in Ferdinando Bibiena’s L’Architettura Civile (1711).51 If we compare this to a set design for a garden by Francesco Bibiena (Fig. 6.7), we see it has exactly the same central perspective view, with subsidiary perspectives to either side. The similarity between the way gardens were portrayed in printed views and their depiction in set designs is unmistakeable. This use of aesthetic conventions from set design is also seen in another set of early eighteenth-century garden prints, the Delizie Farnesiane (1721).52 These views of the gardens at Colorno, near Parma, are very similar to those by Dal Re, though their creation predates Dal Re’s publication by at least five years. The Veduta di un Trivio is just like the Spaccato di prospettiva, exploiting the techniques of perspective and scena per angolo, to create an exaggerated sense of distance and space.53 These examples demonstrate that the term teatro was being used to emphasize the elements of display or spectacle that were central to the way in which a visitor at the time was expected to experience the garden.

Theatre as Way of Life These traces of the way in which everyday activities such as hunting and strolling become performances with visitors cast in the role of actor or spectator, or both, are also found in personal accounts of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century visitors and show that a theatrical mode of thinking often coloured the visitor’s attitude toward the garden. Accounts of garden visits frequently employed theatrical terminology in that they described garden spaces as ‘theatres’. Fountains, sculpture collections and even other visitors would be described in terms of ‘spectacles’ or ‘performances’. The term ‘theatre’ was the metaphor of choice in travel accounts and descriptions of a variety of open spaces, be they in a city or a garden.54 The seventeenth-century English diarist John Evelyn wrote in his diary that the garden 51 Ferdinando Galli da Bibiena, L’architettura Civile, ed. Diane Kelder (New York: Blom, 1971). 52 A copy of Le Delizie Farnesiane is held in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma. For studies on the images Vera Comoli Mandracci, ‘Le ‘Delizie Farnesiane’ Di Colorno’, Arte Lombarda 10 (1965): pp. 107–114 and Carlo Mambriani, ‘I Bibiena Nei Ducati Farnesiani Di Parma e Piacenza’, in I Bibiena: Una Famiglia Europea, ed. Deanna Lenzi and Jadranka Bentini (Bologna: Marsilio, 2000), pp. 97–108 and 351–354. 53 Mambriani, ‘I Bibiena Nei Ducati’, pp. 97–108. 54 This common description of gardens as theatres is discussed in John Dixon Hunt, Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination 1600-1750 (London and Melbourne: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1986), pp. 60–61, 236–237.

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of the Villa Mondragone had ‘at the end a Theatre for Pastimes’.55 He is no doubt referring to the water theatre situated at the southern end of the giardino segreto (see Chapter 7 below). Charles de Brosses in the first half of the eighteenth century described the experience of this same water theatre at the Villa Mondragone: The ceremony started at the Mondragone around a Polypriapic pool, which is to say one whose edges are supplied all around with water spouts […] these leaned over quite innocently when at rest, whereupon having opened the tap, as the air pressed by the water would fill their cavernous bodies, these fine little gentlemen would right themselves little by little in a rather curious manner and [would start to] relieve themselves of fresh water; Migieu, whom you would not have thought of being the greatest prankster of the group, took hold of one of these cutlasses which he turned against the face of our good Lacurne; he, in turn wasted no time: the excellent lark was instantly taken up by everyone and did not end until after we were all soaked.56

De Brosses’ account conveys the interactive aspect of these scherzi d’acqua (water tricks) as well as the shock of the unexpected. Water tricks were common to most gardens from the late sixteenth century onwards and were often positioned in spaces which suggested a stage: the raised platform and exedra at the Villa Mondragone is an obvious example. Tracey Ehrlich, in her study of the early seventeenth-century villas at Frascati, neatly describes the scherzi d’acqua as akin to ‘instant intermezzi’ because they called upon all visitors to perform, whether willing or not.57 Visitors also described the experience of moving through the garden in theatrical terms. In the early seventeenth century Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639) in his description of a garden (possibly the Villa d’Este) wrote that: From this [terrace] the beholder descending many steps, was afterwards conveyed again, by several mountings and valings, to various entertainments of his scent and sight […] every one of these diversities was as if he had been magically transported into a new garden.58 55 John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. De Beer, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 393. 56 Charles de Brosses, Lettres d’Italie (Dijon: Éditions du Raisin, 1927), p. 229. 57 Tracy L. Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era, Monuments of Papal Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 98. Francis Mortoft mentioned water tricks constantly in his diary of his Italian trip. Most of his descriptions of Italian gardens revolve around the differently disguised water tricks, see Francis Mortoft, Francis Mortoft: His Book, Being His Travels through France and Italy 1658-1659, ed. Malcolm Letts (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1925), Villa Montalto p. 114–115, Vatican Gardens pp. 134–135, Frascati pp. 163–167. 58 Henry Wotton, The Elements of Architecture (London: John Bill, 1624), https://archive.org/details/ architectureelem00wott, pp. 109–110.

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Wotton’s identification of himself as a spectator observing ‘various entertainments’ demonstrates that visitors to the garden actively took the role of spectator as if they were in attendance at a theatrical spectacle. In turn we find the design of gardens provided what Hunt has described as ‘triggers and prompts’ that elicited a theatrical response.59 Water tricks caused visitors to leap to safety, hydraulic organs provided concerts, automata presented miniature shows, while water theatres provided grand spectacles. Wotton’s account also alludes to the idea of the garden as a type of virtual reality, in the sense that the quality of the entertainments was such that they ‘magically transported’ him. This idea that the experience of entering a garden was akin to a sort of ‘magical transportation’ or virtual reality is one that appears frequently in the records of garden experience in the period. The experience of gardens during this period was frequently based on theatre and performance, these examples demonstrate that the garden was widely regarded as a stage upon which life could be enacted.

Bibliography Ackerman, James S. Palladio. London: Penguin Books, 1966. Assunto, Rosario. ‘Notizie Sull’autore e Sull’opera’. In Ville E Giardini Di Roma Nelle Incisione Di Giovanni Battista Falda, 9–40. Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1980. Azzi Visentini, Margherita. L’Arte Dei Giardini: Scritti Teorici e Pratici Dal XIV al XIX Secolo. 2 vols. Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1999. Bardi, Ferdinando. Descrizione Delle Feste Fatte in Firenze per Le Reali Nozze de Serenissimi Sposi Ferdinando II. Gran Duca Di Toscana, e Vittoria Principessa d’Urbino. Florence: Zanobi Pignoni, 1637. Baridon, Michel. ‘The Scientific Imagination and the Baroque Garden’. Journal of Garden History 18 (1998): 5–19. Bibiena, Ferdinando Galli da. L’architettura Civile. Edited by Diane Kelder. New York: Blom, 1971. Blumenthal, Arthur. Theatre Art of the Medici. Dartmouth: University Press of New England, 1980. Bragaglia, A. G. ‘Teatri All’aperto’. Capitolium 31 (1956): 230–236. Brosses, Charles de. Lettres d’Italie. Dijon: Éditions du Raisin, 1927. Cabe Halpern, Linda. ‘The Uses of Paintings in Garden History’. In Garden History: Issues, Approaches, Methods: Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape 59 Hunt frequently returns to this idea of ‘triggers and prompts’ in his various writings upon the garden. See for example Hunt, The Afterlife of Gardens, pp. 77–112, in which he discusses the ideas in relation to the ‘fabriques’ in gardens of the picturesque period and in the recent garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay.

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Architecture XIII, edited by John Dixon Hunt, 183–202. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992. Capecchi, Gabriele. Il Giardino Di Boboli, Un Anfiteatro per La Gioia Dei Granduchi. Firenze: Edizioni medicea, 1993. Capelli, Gianni. Il Teatro Farnese Di Parma: Architettura, Scene, Spettacoli. Edited by Pier Luigi Cervellati and Mauro Barbacini. Parma: Artegrafica Silva, 1990. Carlson, Marvin. Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre Architecture. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989. Cazzato, Vincenzo, Marcello Fagiolo, and Maria Adriana Giusti. Teatri Di Verzura: La Scena Del Giardino Dal Barocco al Novecento. Florence: EDIFIR Edizione Firenze, 1993. Coffin, David R. Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Comoli Mandracci, Vera. ‘Le ‘Delizie Farnesiane’ Di Colorno’. Arte Lombarda 10 (1965): 107–114. Conan, Michel. ‘Introduction: Garden and Landscape Design, from Emotion to the Construction of Self’. In Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion, edited by Michel Conan, 1–34. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2003. Corsi, Mario. Il Teatro Aperto in Italia: Con 159 Illustrazioni. Milan: Rizzoli, 1939. Dal Re, Marc’Antonio. Ville de Delizia o Siano Palagi Camparecci Nello Stato Di Milano. Edited by Pier Fausto Bagatti Valsecchi. Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1963. De Winter, Patrick M. ‘Castles and Town Residences of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1364-1404)’. Artibus et Historiae 4 (1983): 95–118. Duindam, Jeroen. Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Ehrlich, Tracy L. Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Edited by E. S. De Beer. Vol. Volume II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Fagiolo, Marcello, and Maria Adriana Giusti. Lo Specchio Del Paradiso: L’immagine Del Giardino Dell’Antico al Novecento. 2 vols. Milan: Silvana Editorale, 1996. Falda, Giovan Battista. Ville E Giardini Di Roma Nelle Incisione Di Giovanni Battista Falda. Edited by Assunto Rosario and Alessandro Tagliolni. Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1980. Gargano, Maurizio. ‘Villas, Gardens and Fountains of Rome: The Etchings of Giovanni Battista Falda’. In The Architecture of Western Gardens: A Design History from the Renaissance to the Present Day, edited by Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot, 166–168. Cambridge (Massachusetts): The MIT Press, 1991. Grant, Katrina. ‘The Princely Landscape as Stage: Early Modern Courts in Enchanted Gardens’, in Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World, edited by Stephen Whiteman. University Park: Penn State Press, forthcoming.

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Harris, Diane. The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003. Heikamp, D. ‘Il Teatro Mediceo Degli Uffizi’. Bolletino Del Centro Internazionale Di Studi Di Architettura Andrea Palladio 16 (1974): 323–332. Hunt, John Dixon. Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination 1600-1750. London and Melbourne: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1986. Hunt, John Dixon. ‘‘Lordship of the Feet’: Toward a Poetics of Movement in the Garden’. In Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion, edited by Michel Conan. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2003. Hunt, John Dixon. The Afterlife of Gardens. London: Reaktion Books, 2004. Lazzaro, Claudia. The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. MacDougall, Elisabeth Blair. Fons Sapientiae: Renaissance Garden Fountains. Edited by George L. Hersey, Terry Comito, Elisabeth MacDougall, Detlef Heikamp, and Naomi Miller. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1978. Magagnato, Licisco. ‘The Genesis of the Teatro Olimpico’. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14 (1951): 209–220. Mambriani, Carlo. ‘I Bibiena Nei Ducati Farnesiani Di Parma e Piacenza’. In I Bibiena: Una Famiglia Europea, edited by Deanna Lenzi and Jadranka Bentini, 97–108. Bologna: Marsilio, 2000. Marchi, Pietro. ‘Il Giardino Come ‘Luogo Teatrale’’. In Giardino Storico, edited by Giovanna Ragionieri, 211–219. Florence: Olschki, 1981. Marchi, Pietro. ‘Il Giardino Di Boboli e Il Suo Anfiteatro’. In Città Effimera e l’universo Artificiale Del Giardino: La Firenza Dei Medici e l’Italia Del ’500, edited by Marcello Fagiolo, 162-182. Roma: Officina Edizioni, 1980. Massar, Phyllis D. ‘Presenting Stefano Della Bella’. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 27 (1968): 159–176. Mezzanotte, Gianni. ‘Giovanni Ruggeri e Le Ville de Delizia Lombarde’. Bolletino Del Centro Internazionale Di Studi Di Architettura Andrea Palladio 11 (1969): 243–254. Mortoft, Francis. Francis Mortoft: His Book, Being His Travels through France and Italy 1658-1659. Edited by Malcolm Letts. London: The Hakluyt Society, 1925. Nonaka, Natsumi. ‘Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography: Toeput and the Italian Villa Tradition’. In Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy, edited by Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger, and Leopoldine Prosperetti, 131–152. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. Ribouillault, Denis. ‘Toward an Archaeology of the Gaze: The Perception and Function of Garden Views in Italian Renaissance Villas’. In Clio in the Italian Garden: Twenty-FirstCentury Studies in Historical Methods and Theoretical Perspectives, edited by Mirka Benes and M. Lee, 203–232. Washington D.C.: Harvard University Press, 2011.

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Roselli, P. ‘I Teatri Dei Medici’. Bolletino Degli Ingeneri 22 (1974): 3–12. Saslow, James M. The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. Schraven, Minou. ‘Roma Theatrum Mundi: Festivals and Processions in the Ritual City’. In A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492-1692, edited by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield, 247–265. Brill, 2019. Simo, Melanie L. ‘Vincenzo Giustiniani: His Villa at Bassano Di Sutri, near Rome, and His ‘Instructions to a Builder and Gardener’’. Journal of Garden History 1 (1981): 253–270. Snickare, Mårten. ‘How to Do Things with the Piazza San Pietro: Performativity and Baroque Architecture’. In Performativity and Performance in Baroque Rome, edited by Peter Gillgren and Mårten Snickare, 65-83. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2012. Solerti, Angelo. Musica, Ballo e Drammatica Alla Corte Medicea Dal 1600 al 1637. Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, Editori, 1905. Tasso, Torquato. ‘La Gerusalemme Liberata (Il Giardino Di Armida, Canto XVI, 9-16, in Tasso, 1971, Pp.476-8)’. Edited by Margherita Azzi Visentini. L’Arte Dei Giardini: Scritti Teorici e Pratici Dal XIV al XIX Secolo, 1999, 341–345. Thieme, Ulrich, and Feliz Becker. Allgemeines Lexikon Der Bildenden Künstler von Der Antike Bis Zur Gegenwart. Leipzig: E.A. Seeman, 1907. Tomaselli, Sylvana. ‘The Death and Rebirth of Character in the Eighteenth Century’. In Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Roy Porter, 84–96. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Waddy, Patricia. Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan. New York/ Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: The Architectural History Foundation/The MIT Press, 1990. Wotton, Henry. The Elements of Architecture. London: John Bill, 1624. Wright, D. R. Edward. ‘Some Medici Gardens of the Florentine Renaissance: An Essay in Post-Aesthetic Interpretation.’ In The Italian Garden: Art, Design and Culture, edited by John Dixon Hunt, 34-59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

7.

Stages without Actors: Theatres of Sculpture, Water and Flowers Abstract This chapter examines the idea of stages without actors and the rise of landscape designs that presented nature as a spectacle. It looks not only at the rise of design features like water theatres and sculpture theatres, but links these to themes explored above in relation to sets. Seventeenth-century designers and engineers rapidly developed a range of new techniques for controlling wild nature in the garden, it was mimicked, shaped and manipulated. These features were, more often than not, framed as spectacles and the garden became a stage for the performance of a new type of relationship between humans and the natural world. Keywords: Gardens, Landscapes, Garden Design, Hydraulic engineering, Theatre

Many garden theatres were not used for conventional performance but were conceived of as stages for the display of nature. Three key ideas seem to guide the construction of a diverse array of garden features from the early 1600s. The first is the preoccupation with machines and the use of new engineering skills to replicate, and even surpass, the effects of nature itself. The second is the idea of the theatre as compendia and display, the theatrum mundi set to work on large and small scales. The third is the idea that nature itself, its movement, growth and sensory experiences could be presented as performances for the pleasure of spectators.

Engineering Water and Spectacle in the Teatri d’Acqua of Frascati In May 1645 the English traveller John Evelyn visited the Villa Aldobrandini and stated that he found it to be ‘surpassing, in my opinion, the most delicious places I ever beheld’. Much of his description focuses on the grand water theatre built behind the villa: Under this [theatre] is made an artif icial Grott, where in are curious rocks, hydraulic organs & all sorts of singing birds moving, & chirping by force of the

Grant, K., Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463721530_ch07

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water, with severall other pageants and surprizing inventions: In the center of one of these roomes rises a coper ball that continualy daunces about 3 foote above the pavement, by virtue of a Wind conveyed seacretly to a hole beneath it, with many other devices to wett the unwary spectators, so as one can hardly step without wetting to the skin: In one of these Theaters of Water, is an atlas spouting up the streame to an incredible height, & another monster which makes a terrible roaring with an horn [the centaur]; but above all the representation of a storme is most naturall, with such fury of raine, wind and Thunder as one would imagine oneself in some extreame Tempest.1

Evelyn’s account makes clear that the this was not a static tableau, but a performance with movement, sound, and special effects. The description recalls accounts of theatre performances and suggests that the designers of the Aldobrandini theatre were concerned to present the iconographic programme celebrating its patron not as a motionless collection of statuary but instead as a show that engaged the spectator with ‘tempests’ and birdcalls. Even if the spectator remained uncertain of, or even uninterested in, the exact iconographic programme, he or she would have been left in no doubt as to the virtuosic ability of the Cardinal and his designers to control, and artificially recreate, nature.2 The water theatres of Frascati are amongst the earliest examples of garden theatres during the seventeenth century. Water theatres are found in the gardens of the villas built by the families of three early seventeenth-century popes: the Villa Belvedere, built by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini during the pontificate of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1592–1605); the Villa Mondragone, built by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V (1605–1621); and the Villa Ludovisi, built by Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV Ludovisi (1621–1623). Villa Aldobrandini The Villa Aldobrandini, also known as the Villa Belvedere, at Frascati is often presented as the f irst of the truly baroque gardens.3 The property where the 1 John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. De Beer, vol. Volume II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), pp. 392–393 with Evelyn’s original spelling. 2 Ronald Martin Steinberg, ‘The Iconography of the Teatro dell’Acqua at the Villa Aldobrandini’, Art Bulletin 47 (1965): pp. 453-463, points out that the iconography of the whole villa is concerned with the idea of controlled and manipulated nature. Tracy L. Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era, Monuments of Papal Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 108–110, points out that control of water itself was a significant issue in villa building, citing the fights between Pietro Aldobrandini and Scipione Borghese over water supply. 3 Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, p. 4 and Attlee, 2006, p. 91.

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villa was to be constructed was given to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini by his uncle Pope Clement VIII, who had inherited it in 1598, as a reward for his reacquisition of Ferrara. 4 The villa and gardens were remodelled first under the direction of Giacomo della Porta and subsequently of Giovanni Fontana and Carlo Maderno.5 The stylistic consistency of the design was a consequence of the rapidity of its execution resulting from the elderly pope’s desire to see the villa built before his death. It was begun 1598 and was pushed along with such vigour that by 1603 it was more-or-less complete and could be inhabited by the pope.6 A type of water theatre and system of fountains was part of Della Porta’s original design for the villa; however, the monumental design which was eventually constructed must be attributed to Maderno, while Fontana carried out the hydraulic engineering works.7 The first payments for the construction of the water theatre were made in 1603 for earth removal and work continued on the theatre until 1621 when the final statues, by the sculptor Jacques Sarrazin, were put into place.8 In addition to the construction of the water theatre Cardinal Aldobrandini, wielding his power as cardinal-nephew, devoted much attention to sourcing the water necessary to create a magnificent display of waterworks. The water theatre is comprised of a large exedra with two wings to either side (Fig 7.1) built into the steeply sloping hillside opposite the garden façade of the palazzo. These wings contain, at right, a room dedicated to Apollo and, at left, a chapel dedicated to St. Sebastian. The walls of the theatre are articulated by caryatids and pilasters and there are five niches that contain sculptural groups. The large central niche originally held five statues, though today only Atlas with his sphere of the heavens, and the head and hands of Tantalus now remain. This group originally included Hercules reaching for Atlas’s sphere and two female 4 The main scholarly works on the Villa Aldobrandini are K. Schwager, ‘Kardinal Aldobrandinis Villa Di Belvedere in Frascati’, Römisches Jahrbuch Der Biblioteca Hertziana 9–10 (February 1961): pp. 289–382; Steinberg, ‘The Iconography’; Carl L. Franck, The Villas of Frascati: 1550-1750 (London: Alec Tiranti Ltd, 1966), and most recently Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, pp. 78–106 and Luigi Devoti, ‘Villa Belvedere Aldobrandini Di Frascati’, in Le Ville nel Lazio, ed. Luigi Devoti (Rome: Anemone Purpurea editrice, 2006), pp. 189–212. On Maderno see Howard Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture, 1580-1630 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971). 5 Hibbard, Carlo Maderno, p. 131; Franck, The Villas of Frascati, p. 119; Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, pp. 79–80. 6 Franck, The Villas of Frascati, p. 119. 7 There are three drawings now held in the Albertina in Vienna that document the designs for the theatre (It. AZ Rom 1251; It. AZ ROM II, Umschlag 1,18; It. AZ Rom II, Umschlag 1,17), which have been identified as from the Maderno circle. See Hibbard, Carlo Maderno, pp. 47–50, 132, pl. 27 and Schwager, ‘Kardinal Aldobrandinis Villa’, pp. 341–347, figs. 272–274. 8 The chronology of the design and construction is detailed in Hibbard, Carlo Maderno, pp. 131–133; Schwager, ‘Kardinal Aldobrandinis Villa’; and C. D’Onofrio, La Villa Aldobrandini Di Frascati (Rome: Staderini, 1963).

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Figure 7.1  Giambattista Falda, ‘View of the Grand Water Theatre at the Villa Aldobrandini’, from Le Fontane delle Ville di Frascati nel Tuscolano con li loro Prospetti, Parte Seconda, Rome: Giovanni Giacomo Rossi, 1691. Courtesy of Catena Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive, Bard Graduate Center, New York.

personifications of the arts. On either side of the central niche are two smaller niches that contain fountains. The two niches at the extreme left and right of the exedra contain a statue of a Centaur and a statue of Polyphemus respectively. There was originally another sculptural group in the circular space in front of the central niche that represented a lion fighting a wild boar.9 The original intended meaning of the programme presented by the statues is not exactly known. Steinberg suggests that they were intended to present a tableau about Cardinal Aldobrandini and equate him with Hercules as one who seeks divine wisdom.10 Looking up towards the first terrace one can see the two giant columns with spiral decorations, the so-called columns of Hercules. In this reading, the water also had iconographic significance: falling from the sphere held by Atlas and Hercules it represents the happiness and wisdom that God sends down to earth’.11 Cesare d’Onofrio, using similar sources, offers a different reading in which Pietro Aldobrandini is Hercules and Atlas is his uncle, the pope.12 Denis Ribouillault offers 9 Steinberg, ‘The Iconography’, pp. 459–460. The lion and boar were intended to represent the fortitude of the soul (the lion) and the fortitude of the body (the boar). 10 Steinberg, ‘The Iconography’, p. 460 gives an account of the programme. 11 Steinberg, ‘The Iconography’, p. 460. 12 D’Onofrio, La Villa Aldobrandini, pp. 122–123.

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a third reading linked closely to a letter by Giovanni Battista Agucchi that links the group to the ‘study of astronomy and the contemplation of celestial things’.13 The sources for the design of the water theatre seem to be both sixteenth century and classical. References made in letters written by Cardinal Aldobrandini make it clear that he was concerned with relating the design and siting of his villa to ancient Roman examples (he claimed that the villa was built on the site of the ancient villa of Lucullus).14 The water theatre was an important part of this programme. The theatre was based upon ancient prototypes. This, and its grandiose size, both served to associate the Cardinal with the great villa builders of the ancient Rome. The exedra clearly derives from ancient Roman examples of villa architecture, in particular the Canopus at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli. The water stairs, transformed by Maderno to a monumental scale, were also present in the fountain niches of the Canopus.15 The water theatre also had several precedents in sixteenth-century gardens. The great hemicycle or exedra is often linked to theatre structures, but it is also a characteristic of other garden features, such as the nymphaeum. The most important instance of such an exedra-nymphaeum is at the Villa Barbaro at Maser, designed by Palladio and illustrated in his Quattri Libri, which Maderno owned.16 Palladio had, in turn, drawn upon the design of the nymphaeum at the Villa Giulia in Rome.17 The exedra as a form seems to shift in meaning in the seventeenth century, becoming synonymous with ‘theatres’ in gardens.18 The exedra is not a shape that was present in classical theatres. The backdrop or scaenae frons was flat, and the curved sections were for seating. This was also the case with Renaissance theatres. The idea that it symbolized a theatre space could perhaps derive from the porticus which was a colonnade that ran around the top of the cavea.19 Palladio included a type of porticus in his Teatro Olimpico at Vicenza that had statuary atop it and also niches set into the walls containing further statues, but this sat behind the 13 Agucchi as translated in Denis Ribouillault, ‘Atlas and Hercules in the Garden: Scientific Culture and Literary Imagination at the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati’, Nuncius 30, no. 1 (2015): p. 151. 14 Schwager, ‘Kardinal Aldobrandinis Villa’, p. 294, n. 9. On the possible position of the Villa of Lucullus see Henri Broise, Vincent Jolivet, and Andrea Moneti, ‘A proposito di Andrea Moneti, forma e posizione della villa degli horti Luculliani secondo i rilievi rinascimentali: la loro influenza sui progetti del Belvedere e delle Ville Madama, Barbaro e Aldobrandini, in ‘Palladio’’, Palladio 20 (1998): pp. 119–125. 15 Steinberg, ‘The Iconography’, p. 455 and ns. 12–13; Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, p. 95. 16 Andrea Palladio, I Quattro Libri dell’architettura (Venice: Bartolomeo Carampello, 1616), p. 51. On the influence of Palladio upon the Villa Aldobrandini see Hibbard, Carlo Maderno, p. 48. 17 Carolyn Kolb and Melissa Beck, ‘The Sculptures on the Nymphaeum Hemicycle of the Villa Barbaro at Maser’, Artibus et Historiae 18 (1997): p. 15. 18 John Dixon Hunt has described the use of exedra as one feature that ‘the architects of Renaissance gardens freely adapted […] which gave some ‘theatrical’ potential to their design’ (Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination 1600-1750 (London and Melbourne: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1986), p. 63). 19 Frank Sear, Roman Theatres: An Architectural Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 2.

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audience rather than the stage space.20 As will be illustrated below, the exedra as a form leant itself to the display of statuary, plants and water and as the exhibition of garden elements became conceptualized in terms of spectacle or ‘theatres’ so the exedra acquired theatrical connotations. Villa Mondragone The water theatre as a central garden feature was repeated at the nearby Villa Mondragone. The water theatre is still extant and was recorded by Falda in his view of the villas of Frascati (Fig. 7.2). The villa and garden were built for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V. With the accession of his uncle to the papacy Scipione Borghese became cardinal nephew like Aldobrandini before him, and the two were rivals in art and architectural patronage.21 The Villa Mondragone, along with the Villa Tusculana, was purchased by Scipione in 1613 from Duke Giovanni Angelo Altemps. Between 1614 and 1616 the cardinal renovated the Villa Mondragone and then in 1616 began a series of works to expand the papal palace to designs by the architect Jan Van Zanten (1550–1621). These works included the construction of the teatro d’acqua.22 The water theatre was structurally complete by early 1619. It was designed to close the southern end of the villa’s giardino segreto, which meant that the portico at the northern end of the garden would frame the view of the water theatre. It takes the same form of an exedra flanked by two wings. The theatre is raised above the level of the giardino segreto with access by way of two gently sloping ramps that ascend from the centre to either side of the exedra. There is a semi-circular fishpond, or peschiera, surrounded by a balustrade. Behind this is the exedra, or theatre façade, which is set with seven niches that originally contained antique statues. The niches are quite shallow and use a perspectival trick to create a sense of depth. The central nicchione was occupied by a Borghese dragon on a rocky base with a hidden water jet. The exedra is articulated with Ionic pilasters, the shafts of which are covered by rusticated masonry, typical of garden architecture. The attic level also originally supported statues, now replaced by urns. 20 James S. Ackerman, Palladio, The Architect and Society (London: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 177–182. 21 Michael Hill, ‘The Patronage of a Disenfranchized Nephew: Cardinal Scipione Borghese and the Restoration of San Crisogono in Rome, 1618-1628’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60 (2001): pp. 433–449 and Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, pp. 108–110. 22 The theatre was originally attributed to Giovanni Fontana by contemporaries, for example, Pietro Bellori, Nota delli Musei, Librerie, Gallerie & Ornamenti di Statue, e Pitture, né Palazzi, nelle Case, e né Giardini di Roma, ed. Emma Zocca (Rome: Istituto nazionale di archeologia e storia dell’arte, 1976), p. 174. This attribution was also maintained in Franck, The Villas of Frascati, p. 65. The new attribution comes from Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, pp. 136–140.

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Figure 7.2  Giambattista Falda, ‘View of the water theatre and the garden at the Villa Mondragone’, from Le Fontane delle Ville di Frascati nel Tuscolano con li loro Prospetti, Parte Seconda, Rome: Giovanni Giacomo Rossi, 1691. Etching. 27.9 x 40.4cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of D. W. Langton, transferred from the Library. Accession Number: 1991.1073.145(1–107).

The Villa Mondragone theatre is clearly based upon that built for Cardinal Aldobrandini, Scipione’s rival, with which it shares the basic form, although the water display is quite different. The theatre is paired with the portico at the opposite end of the courtyard, rather than the axial relationship of the theatre, garden and villa that was central to Maderno’s design at the Villa Aldobrandini. It also has similarities with Palladio’s nymphaeum at the Villa Barbaro. It shares the concave façade articulated by niches decorated with statuary and the semi-circular pool that serves as a fishpond. Unlike the Aldobrandini theatre and sixteenth-century gardens like the Villa d’Este there was no iconographic programme. Instead, the Mondragone theatre was intended primarily for the display of antique sculpture, which was intended to impress upon the viewer the splendour of Scipione’s patronage, as well as his good taste and cultivation.23 The use of antique sculpture also evoked links with the villas of the ancient Rome. 23 That the Aldobrandini theatre was the last at Frascati to have an overall programme is proposed in David R. Coffin, Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 100 and supported by Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, pp. 140–141.

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Although the Villa Mondragone theatre did not strive for quite the same overwhelming effect as that of the Villa Aldobrandini, water was still the main element of the display. A water show was created around the fishpond with jets of water that shot up from the balustrade as well as a water jet in the centre of the pond. These were designed to drench unsuspecting spectators who would lean over the balustrade to observe the fish and would suddenly find themselves soaked with water from the jets which could be turned on and off at will.24 In Falda’s print we can also see water tricks or scherzi d’acqua drenching the spectators as they begin to climb the ramps. Villa Ludovisi The third of the large-scale water theatres built at Frascati was at the Villa Ludovisi (now Torlonia). It was devised in two stages under two different owners. The first, Scipione Borghese, commissioned the architect, Flaminio Ponzio, to enlarge what was then the Villa Como (subsequently Ludovisi and now Torlonia), which he had purchased in 1607.25 In addition to this work on the villa buildings Ponzio was also given the task of enlarging the gardens. In 1607 the cardinal secured an increased supply of water for the villa from Giovanni Angelo Altemps, who allowed him to tap the Canalicchio, an ancient water source originally known as the Aqua Crabra.26 In the absence of Cardinal Aldobrandini (who was out of favour and residing in Ravenna) Scipione took advantage of his rival’s designers and hydraulic experts, Carlo Maderno and Giovanni Fontana, to get them to restore a fifteenth-century aqueduct to allow water to flow from the Canalicchio to the villa. This enabled him to create a scala d’acqua (water staircase) that ran down the hillside into a large circular basin. This is clearly derived from the one at the neighbouring Villa Aldobrandini, as well as from the earlier examples at Caprarola and Bagnaia, though unlike those examples the scala d’acqua is not on the same axis as that of the villa.27 24 The experience of these water tricks is related in Charles de Brosses, Lettres d’Italie (Dijon: Éditions du Raisin, 1927), vol. 2, pp. 229–230. 25 The main study on the Villa Ludovisi theatre is Hibbard, Carlo Maderno, 210–211 and Stefania Frezzotti, ‘Il Teatro delle Acque della Villa Ludovisi a Frascati’, Ricerche Di Storia dell’Arte Roma 25 (1985): pp. 80–90. See also the mention in Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, p. 106. The Villa Como had originally belonged to the humanist Annibale Caro, whose heirs had sold it to the Cenci family, who sold it to Cardinal Galli of Como, see David R. Coffin, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 48–50. 26 Frezzotti, ‘Teatro delle Acque’, p. 81 records payments made to Maderno and Ponzio between 1607 and 1609. 27 Frezzotti, ‘Teatro delle Acque’, p. 80 suggests that the different axes for the water staircase and the villa was because the villa was based around an extant building whereas the fountains had to be placed in the position on the hillside that ensured the best water pressure.

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Figure 7.3  Matthias Greuter, Pianta di Frascati, 1620. 38.1 x 144.78 cm. Etching, hand coloured. Courtesy of Catena Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive, Bard Graduate Center, New York.

It seems likely that Maderno was closely involved in the design of the cascade and other fountains, alongside the main architect Ponzio.28 In this first incarnation the water theatre of the Villa Ludovisi did not have a grand termination or display in the form of an exedra like those in the nearby Aldobrandini and Mondragone theatres, and it could be more accurate to describe it as a water cascade rather than a theatre.29 It was not until the redesign of the cascade in the 1620s that it becomes a true water theatre. The villa was sold by in 1614 to the Altemps family and it was subsequently bought by the papal nephew of Pope Gregory XV, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, in 1621.30 The cardinal then commissioned Carlo Maderno, who had previously worked on the villa under the Borghese, to transform the cascade into a monumental water theatre.31 After its renovation the Ludovisi water theatre had the same basic structure as the Villa Aldobrandini with cascade above and retaining wall below. The theatre was partially destroyed during World War II and rebuilt so the most accurate record of its original form is in Greuter’s print of the villas of Frascati (Fig. 7.3).32 The focal point of the garden layout is the scala d’acqua, and at 28 The authorship of the first cascade and fountains at Villa Ludovisi is contested. Heinrich Thelen, Francesco Borromini, Die Handzeichungen (Graz: Hill and Wang, 1967), p. 21 attributed it to Maderno but Hibbard, Carlo Maderno, 210 gives the design to Ponzio instead. Frezzotti, ‘Teatro delle Acque’, p. 83 suggests that Maderno had significantly more status than Ponzio and it would therefore seem odd to suggest that he simply carried out work on Ponzio’s design and argues that although the documents for the project carry Ponzio’s signature this does not necessarily signify authorship. Ehrlich maintains the principal attribution to Ponzio, rather than Maderno. She acknowledges the latter’s work on the hydraulic engineering side of things but suggests that he was subsequently ‘spirited away to work on St. Peter’s’, (Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, pp. 109, 334–335 ns. 161–164.) 29 The records of the construction of the water features during Scipione’s patronage tend to describe it in terms of ‘cascata’ rather than a theatre. 30 Frezzotti, ‘Teatro delle Acque’, pp. 84–85. 31 Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, p. 190 refers to it as a façade nymphaeum. 32 The print by Greuter identifies the villa as ‘Villa del Sr. Duca Altemps’ as the villa was at this time owned by the Altemps family, who had purchased it from the Borghese in 1614.

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Figure 7.4  Giambattista Falda, ‘View of the Water Theatre at Villa Ludovisi (Torlonia)’, from Le Fontane delle Ville di Frascati nel Tuscolano con li loro Prospetti, Parte Seconda, Rome: Giovanni Giacomo Rossi, 1691. Etching. 21.6 x 34.2cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (BI-1893-A39-47).

the summit of the hill can be seen a piazzale surrounded by clipped hedge walls with a peschiera at the centre. This has a jet of water at the centre surrounded by four smaller jets, and numerous smaller water jets along the balustrade. The cascade begins on the level directly below the peschiera and flows through four oval basins as a stepped ramp descends on either side of the cascade. The large retaining wall is not really visible in Greuter’s print, possibly because it was still under construction. Greuter’s print shows two terraces at the bottom of the cascade, both closed by a balustrade. The most complete view of the water theatre as it appeared after the changes made by the Ludovisi is in a print by Falda published in 1687 (Fig. 7.4). The façade of the theatre was a straight wall rather than an exedra. It was set with a series of niches which each contained a fountain, alternating between an urn with a water jet or a triton. This recalls the ‘façade fountain’ at Scipione Borghese’s Quirinal Garden (now Rospigliosi-Pallavicini).33 At the foot of the cascade Maderno created a rustic mound, similar to the rustic fountain on the third level of the Aldobrandini cascade, over which the water flowed into a large pool. 33 Howard Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture, 1580-1630, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971, pl 80c). Hibbard is uncertain as to whether the fountain façade is a modification of Cigoli’s original architecture by Maderno or by Van Zanten.

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The Water Theatre: Form and Function There is nothing in the structure of these teatri d’acqua that, in a strictly architectural sense, relates them to the theatre. There are no stepped seats, no obvious stage space, no space for performers. The differences between these three key water theatres at Frascati, all constructed within a few decades of one another, demonstrate that there was no fixed form to which the water theatre conformed. The Aldobrandini and Mondragone theatres both employ exedras, a form that is typically associated with the theatre, but the Ludovisi is a flat wall. Both the Aldobrandini and Ludovisi theatres have monumental displays of water at the base of a cascade, but the Mondragone theatre has a fishpond, albeit enhanced with water tricks. Steinberg suggests that the term teatro d’acqua is ‘the seventeenthcentury term for nymphaeum’ and that the terms teatro d’acqua and nymphaeum are essentially interchangeable with regard to the Villa Aldobrandini.34 As has already been observed the sixteenth-century nymphaea were a key source for the Frascati water theatres. So is teatro d’acqua simply the baroque term for a nymphaeum?35 The nymphaeum of the humanist garden was a revival of the antique Roman nymphaeum. For the patrons and architects of humanist gardens nymphaea were associated with the abodes of certain classical nymphs, in particular the nymph Egeria who instructed the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, in the rites of religion and peacemaking and the nymph Corycia of Mount Parnassus who endowed the waters of the grotto with a numinous spirit, which became a source of artistic creativity.36 An artif icial cave that dates from the second century AD, in the Valle della Caffarella outside Rome, was known as the ‘Grotto of Egeria’ from at least the fourteenth century and was thought to be the place where the meetings between Egeria and Numa Pompilius took place.37 This ‘cave’ is a deep grotto with a vaulted ceiling, at the back of the cave is a large niche and several water channels.38 This ‘original’ nymphaeum was the model for several Renaissance versions. One of the f irst Renaissance nymphaea was 34 Steinberg, ‘The Iconography’, p. 455. 35 Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, p. 190 writes in relation to the Villa Ludovisi theatre that Maderno transformed ‘Scipione’s original cascade into a monumental façade nymphaeum that contemporaries referred to as a teatro even though it was not semi-circular’. 36 Phyllis Pray Bober, ‘The Coryciana and the Nymph Corycia’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 40 (1977): pp. 229–230. 37 Ann Kuttner, ‘Delight and Danger in the Roman Water Garden: Sperlonga and Tivoli’, in Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion, ed. Michel Conan, vol. 24, (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2003), p. 148. 38 The decoration and fountains have been added to and altered over time, see Coffin, Gardens and Gardening, 30–31.

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created by Bramante for the Belvedere court at the Vatican. This took the form of a deep recess or grotto in the centre of the rear wall of the middle terrace of the court.39 Another notable nymphaeum is that at the Villa Giulia in Rome. This nymphaeum was sunk into the ground and completely enclosed at ground level. Two curving staircases lead the visitor from the level of the court to the middle level of the nymphaeum. Inside the nymphaeum were statues and urns of water that poured into basins. Nymphaea were used as places of retreat from the heat of summer and for contemplation as at the Villa Giulia or used for dining and to house spectacles as at Genazzano. 40 The basic form of the early Frascati water theatres was certainly derived from Renaissance nymphaea, and they performed certain similar functions, such as displaying water or sculpture. However, there are distinct differences between the two types of structure. Nymphaea typically had interior spaces intended for retreat from the hot summer sun and for contemplation and repose. At the Villa Giulia the nymphaeum is entirely hidden from view until the visitor enters it. By contrast, the water theatre was primarily concerned with exteriors. It was a structure designed to impress through the display of water and statuary, not a place for solitary contemplation. Its audience was not the individual, but a multiplicity of viewers situated in the open space before it, on what is in effect a stage. Although the Villa Aldobrandini teatro had interior spaces, and the small chapel would have been a place of repose and contemplation, the Stanza di Venti with its representation of Mount Parnassus with Apollo and the Muses ‘playing’ hydraulically driven instruments was for show rather than retreat. The key to understanding the difference between water theatres and nymphaea lies in understanding the way that they were experienced by viewers. In the case of Frascati we have several excellent records by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century visitors. John Evelyn’s account of the Villa Aldobrandini theatre quoted above describes it in terms of a theatrical spectacle. Francis Mortoft’s account of the Villa Mondragone observed that in the garden: is a very fine waterworke, which doth not want for art and expense to make it delightful and pleasant. In the midst of it came out a great spout of water with such force that it seemed to thunder, snow, haile and rain, in the same manner as before wee had seene it at Frescata. 41 39 Arnaldo Bruschi, Bramante, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977), p. 101. It was enhanced in 1551 when the fontaniere Curzio Maccarone executed further waterworks and may have covered the walls of the nymphaeum with tartari, pieces of rough, porous stone (Coffin, Gardens and Gardening, p. 32). 40 Coffin, The Villa, pp. 162–165. 41 Francis Mortoft, Francis Mortoft: His Book, Being His Travels through France and Italy 1658-1659, ed. Malcolm Letts (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1925), p. 167.

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Mortoft, like Evelyn, interpreted the waterworks as an attempt to represent the forces of nature. The following century Charles de Brosses recorded a similar experience at the Villa Aldobrandini: When we were sitting quite peacefully on the square of the Belvedere [the Villa Aldobrandini] and paid little attention to a hundred vicious little tubes concealed in the joints of the pavement, they suddenly went off and showered us with innumerable circular jets. Since we had no longer to take care of anything, having emptied our clothes bags already to the bottom after the scene on Mondragone, we threw ourselves undaunted into the most watery region of the palace where we spent the rest of the afternoon with similar wet pranks. I particularly remember a marvellous winding stair: you are hardly in it when it starts sprouting from above, from below and from all sides simultaneously; no use shouting, you have to undergo the whole salvo, non c’è rimedio. Above the stair, we were revenged on Legouz, to whom we owed the shower bathe in the forecourt. He turned on a water cock to water us, but this cock was there only pour tromper les trompeurs, and with vicious force shot a water jet as thick as an arm into Legouz’ stomach. 42

Neither Mortoft nor de Brosses bother to mention the iconographic programme at the Villa Aldobrandini nor are they particularly focused on the particularities of the antiquities at the Villa Mondragone. It would seem that seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury visitors found the overall spectacle of the architecture, the scherzi and other special effects much more memorable and engaging than the iconographic themes. The water theatre was an effective way of showing off the water that the owner had been able to obtain. The desire to display water was driven by the fact that water was of great economic importance in Frascati. The cardinals who built these villas spent a great deal of money and used their positions of power to supply their villas with water. Although in antiquity a system of aqueducts had supplied ancient Tusculum with an ample supply of water, by the mid-sixteenth century the hillside was virtually bereft of water. Some improvements were made by Cardinal Altemps in the later sixteenth century, with the assistance of Pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni (1572–1785). In 1599 Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini sponsored a search for water, which resulted in him tapping not only the Canalicchio, but also the Formello and the Algentiana rivers, and by early 1604 he controlled virtually all the major water sources. 43 The construction of conduits to bring water to his villa 42 De Brosses, Lettres d’Italie, vol. 2, pp. 230, and 228–229 for description of the rest of the water theatre and villa. The passage is as translated in Franck, The Villas of Frascati, p. 122. 43 Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, pp. 75, 86. Duke Altemps had inherited the territory from his Grandfather, Cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps. The latter had acquired the territory of Molara, which included Canalicchio, specifically to give him access to water for his villa in Frascati (the original Villa

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was rumoured to have cost him 50,000 scudi, which meant, as the Pope himself observed, ‘the villa is not worth as much as the water’. 44 Water was valued equally for its quantity and its quality, and both were exhibited through a multitude of waterworks from fountains, cascades and water chains, to hydraulic automata and water organs.45 With water such a hard-won resource and consequently evidence of power and status, it is hardly surprising that it should form the focus of a garden’s principal display feature. 46 Visitors must also have made the connection between the spectacle of performances of opera and intermezzi, the effects of thunder and rain being ones found also on the stage. Hydraulic engineering such as that used in the theatres, allowed the control of water by powerful patrons and landowners. It was also a demonstration of the engineer and owner’s ability to tame wild nature, and in this way fed into the emerging debates about the observation and manipulation of nature. Ribouillault, in his study of the Villa Aldobrandini, points that the iconography of Atlas and Hercules supporting a globe, suggested by Agucchi, is only one of many elements at the villa that evoked the ‘dual world of astronomy and cosmography’. 47 He also links the sundial with the culture of fascination with machines that could produce wonder and marvel. The water theatres at Frascati, following the model set by the Aldobrandini one, can be read as a focal point for a broader experience of the garden that brought together displays of power, scientific thinking, sensory experience, wonder, and engineering. A poem published in 1648 by Giovanni Ciampoli uses phrases like ‘stupori’ and ‘spettacoli’, drawing attention to the work of breaking and shaping the mountain to form the theatre. 48 Ciampoli, like Patrizi before him, Mondragone). The entire town of Frascati had been bereft of a proper water supply since the disintegration of the ancient aqueduct system. 44 D’Onofrio, La Villa Aldobrandini, p. 70. 45 The role of water in gardens has been well explored see in particular Coffin, Gardens and Gardening, 28–57; Claudia Lazzaro, The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 191–242; and Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, pp. 84–103. 46 As an aside it is interesting to note a recent study by Magnus Olausson of the development of the Baroque garden in Sweden, Magnus Olausson, ‘The Aesthetic and Social Reception and Development of the Baroque Garden in Sweden’, in Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion, ed. Michel Conan (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2005), p. 194. He notes that although the style was based upon that of France there was little or no interest in the construction of large pools or canals of water and he attributes this to the abundance of water in the Swedish landscape. 47 Ribouillault, ‘Atlas and Hercules’, p. 140. 48 Giovanni Ciampoli, Rime Di Monsignor Giovanni Ciampoli: Dedicate All’eminentiss. E Reverendiss. Signor Cardinale Girolamo Colonna (Rome: Appresso gli Heredi del Corbelleti, 1648), pp. 75–77, see for example ‘Qui sesteggiò natura, / E quì le forze sue l’arte scoperse. /Turba di ferri armata il monte aperse/ Ruppe gli scogli, e ne formò pianura. /O che teatro adorno/ Erge in campo sì bel marmoree mura. Ribouillault, ‘Atlas and Hercules’, p. 139 also looks at Ciampoli’s poem as source of knowledge about the garden at this period.

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was attempting to drive knowledge and learning away from Aristotle and toward a mode of understanding the world based on empiricism and sensorial perception. This idea of the baroque garden as a site for scientific thinking was also picked up by Michel Baridon who observed that ‘the triumph of mechanics and the geometrising spirit’ spread across Europe, and drove changes in garden design such as the shift from quadrature design to the use of infinite perspectives, as at Versailles. 49 As in the theatre, such machines and engineering works were intended to advance knowledge of the world and render it legible. The water theatres at Frascati seemed to set a model for a new type of permanent theatre as a feature in the seventeenth century garden, and subsequently also in France. These theatres had acquired, by way of the Frascati examples, an identifiable form. This consisted of a façade with or without an exedra set with niches, plentiful sculpture and a central fountain. This type continued to be employed as a basic motif in a variety of theatres in Italian gardens of the mid- to late seventeenth century. The water theatre also gave rise to a slightly different subset of the water theatre, where the object of display was not nature but antiquities. Villa Borghese One such theatre was constructed at the Villa Borghese on the flat façade of the wall that enclosed the formal garden to the north-east side of the palazzo. The theatre today has been denuded of most of its sculpture, but the basic architectural structure remains. The theatre takes the form of a long wall articulated by paired pilasters of tufa that alternate with oval niches and two recessed windows that allow views of an enclosure beyond. At the centre are two pairs of free-standing granite columns that frame two niches and support an attic section surmounted by a broken pediment, on which is a seated figure, often identified as Ceres, though it is actually a funerary figure. The open area in front of the theatre is semi-circular and was surrounded by walls of hedge. In the engraving by Felice in Falda’s Li giardini di Roma the theatre is described as Altro teatro adornato di statue, marmi et enscrittioni antiche (Other theatre adorned with marble statues and antique inscriptions).50 Descriptions of the theatre in 1650 by Jacomo Manilli and in 1700 by Domenico Montelatici detail the range of antiquities that once decorated it. The four oval niches had busts of moderni (recent notable figures), at the centre in the two niches were statues of Flora and Mammea, as well as Faustina and Livia 49 Michel Baridon, ‘The Scientific Imagination and the Baroque Garden’, Journal of Garden History 18 (1998): pp. 8–10. 50 Alberta Campitelli, Villa Borghese: Da Giardino del Principe a Parco Dei Romani (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca della Stato, 2003), pp. 60, 153 attributes the actual plan of the Villa Borghese in Falda’s Li Giardini to Simone Felice Delino.

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Augusta. In the central section was a large slab of marble, now lost. The wings to either side were decorated with reliefs that depicted allegories of poetry and the seasons, scenes of battle, and, antique inscriptions.51 Although this theatre did not have a water component, in its basic structure and the display of antiquities it is closely related to the water theatres at the Villa Mondragone and the design can probably be attributed to the same architect, Jan van Zanten.52 The water theatre decorated with antique sculpture became a common feature at Borghese properties in the seventeenth century. For example, Van Zanten had designed a small water feature in 1612 for a Borghese property in Rome on the Quirinal Hill, now the Villa Pallavicini Rospigliosi, which resembles the Mondragone theatre.53 It had a shallow exedra with a central fountain and a display of statuary. Another water and sculpture theatre was designed later in the century for the courtyard of the Palazzo Borghese in Rome. It was constructed during the renovations of the palace for Prince Giovanni Battista Borghese in the 1670s.54 It was included in Giovanni Venturini’s Le Fontane ne’ Palazzi e ne’ Giardini di Roma (c. 1676) and described as Fontana nel palazzo del signor prencipe Borghese in Roma situata da un lato del Teatro et Giardino (Fountain in the palace of Prince Borghese in Rome situated on the side of the Theatre and Garden) and Fontana nel palazzo del signor prencipe Borghese in Roma in faccia all’ingresso del Teatro et Giardino (Fountain in the palace of Prince Borghese in Rome facing the entrance to the Theatre and Garden).55 The prints only illustrate the central and left-hand fountains but there are actually three altogether, each of a similar design. These fountain theatres were richly decorated with sculpture, reliefs, busts and three niche grottoes with sculptures of bathing nymphs. Falda and Venturini give the attribution to Carlo Rainaldi, but Hibbard has suggested that Johann Paul Schor (1615–1674) is a more likely candidate.56 Again the theatre serves as a display space, 51 Jacamo Manilli, Villa Borghese Fuori Di Porta Pinciana (Rome: Grignani, 1650), pp. 153–154; Domenico Montelatici, Villa Borghese fuori di Porta Pinciana: con l’ornamenti, che si osservano nel di lei palazzo, e con le figure delle statue più singolari (Rome: G. Buagni, 1700), pp. 86–89. 52 Campitelli, Villa Borghese, pp. 148–153. She notes that the design of this section has often been attributed to Girolamo Rainaldi but that this is not borne out by the documents on the villa and that the attribution to Giovanni Vasanzio (Jan van Zanten) is more likely to be correct. She also suggests that the sculptors Paolo Massone, Giuseppe de Jacomo, Lorenzo Malvisti, Agostino and Bernardino Radi, David Larique and Pietro Bernini all worked on the theatre. 53 Ehrlich, Landscape and Identity, p. 150. 54 Howard Hibbard, ‘Palazzo Borghese Studies I: The Garden and Its Fountains’, The Burlington Magazine 100 (1958), pp. 204–215. 55 Venturini’s prints are similar to those by Falda and were also published by Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi. They were clearly intended to form part of de Rossi’s series of prints begun by Falda. 56 Hibbard, ‘Palazzo Borghese Studies’, p. 206 notes that Schor was discharged from his position in charge of the garden in 1672 for ‘extravagance’ and the fountains were completed by Rainaldi.

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but not for performers. Instead, it is populated by collections of antiquities and the display of fountains. The theatres display knowledge of the antique and innovation (derived from antique sources) in hydraulic engineering. These tableaus could be read either as a type of static scene, staged for the audience, or as a version of the wunderkammer or theatrum mundi. Villa Doria Pamphlij The Villa Doria Pamphilj in Rome also included a theatre that combined water displays and antique sculpture. It was commissioned as part of the villa and gardens for the papal nephew Cardinal Camillo Pamphilj. The design of the theatre is attributed to Antonio Algardi and G. F. Grimaldi and it was constructed between 1644 and 1655.57 In the print by Falda it is described as the Teatro con fontane statue e Bassirilievi (Theatre with fountains, statues and Bas-reliefs).58 The theatre is the central focus of the lower garden in front of the palazzo, though it sits not on not an axis with the palace itself, but at the end of a cross axis. The original plan for the theatre and surrounding structures, as shown in an engraving by Falda and Barrière in Villa Pamphilia (1670) (Fig. 7.5), was for a much larger arrangement than was eventually constructed. The view shows a design that has much in common with the water theatre of the Villa Aldobrandini, though with less emphasis on water. The lowest section takes the form of an exedra and is articulated by pilasters that alternate with large niches containing antique sculptures and small oval niches containing busts with inscriptions below.59 Two of the niches were dressed in tartari and originally contained water jets that fell into a long basin that ran the length of the exedra. A balustrade ran across the top and was decorated with sculpted figures. The exedra was also an arcade which could be entered on either side and led to a central room. A perspective view can be seen in another print from the same series (Fig. 7.6). This room may have originally used for musical and theatrical performances, and in 1758 this space was transformed by Francesco Nicoletti to hold a hydraulic organ.60 There was also a second level planned but not constructed 57 On the theatre and its design see Paola Hoffman, Villa Doria Pamphilj (Rome: Edizioni Capitolini, 1976), pp. 15–20, 58–60, and Carla Benocci, Villa Doria Pamphilj (Rome: Editalia, 1996), pp. 132–152. 58 Falda, Ville E Giardini Di Roma, plate 21. 59 Benocci, Villa Doria Pamphilj, pp. 135–152 for details of the sculptures that once decorated the theatre. 60 Benocci, Villa Doria Pamphilj, p. 134, who does not indicate the types of performance presented. In addition, Benocci chooses to read much of the decoration of the casino and the garden in terms of theatre, stating that the ‘decorazioni a stucco del Casino sia al melodrama, che affiance lo sviluppo dell’azione agli intermezzi: anche nel caso di questo teatro i diversi rilievi si succedono come intermezzi, pur riferendosi ad un’idea scenic unitaria’ (Benocci, Villa Doria Pamphilj, p. 136), though many of these themes, like Orpheus, were widely popular across visual culture.

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Figure 7.5  Giambattista Falda, ‘Plan of the Villa Pamphilj’, from Villa Pamphilia: eiusque palatium, cum suis prospectibus, statuae, fontes, vivaria, theatra, areolae, plantarum, viarumque ordines, cum eiusdem villae absoluta delineatione, Rome: Formis Io. Iacobi de Rubeis, c. 1670. Courtesy of Catena Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive, Bard Graduate Center, New York.

which can be seen in the Falda and Barrière view. It is a flat wall set with three niches, the central one containing a grotto. To either side of this are two curved staircases. Although this theatre had a fountain as part of the design, its primary function, as with the rest of the Villa Doria Pamphilj, was to be a display of antique sculpture and bas-reliefs. In this respect it has more in common with the Borghese theatres at the Villa Mondragone and at the Villa Borghese. One of the designers, Grimaldi, was better known for his work as a landscape painter and a designer of sets.61 Indeed, he designed several sets for the sets for the opera La Vita Umana ovvero Il trionfo della Pietà (libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi and music by Marco Marrazzoli) that are similar to Roman gardens of the same period.62 In an engraving by Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi that closely follows the 61 Danuta Batorska, ‘Grimaldi’s Designs for the Sets of ‘Il Trionfo della Pieta ovvero La Vita Humana’’, Master Drawings, 32 (1994): p. 43. Coffin, Gardens and Gardening, pp. 153–158. 62 Grimaldi designed sets for an earlier production in Rome in 1638 called La Sincerita Trionfante ovvero L’Erculeo Ardire (Batorska, ‘Grimaldi’s Designs’, p. 40).

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Figure 7.6  Giambattista Falda and Dominique Barrière, ‘Pamphilae villae prospectus quartus solem orientum videns’, from Villa Pamphilia: eiusque palatium, cum suis prospectibus, statuae, fontes, vivaria, theatra, areolae, plantarum, viarumque ordines, cum eiusdem villae absoluta delineatione, Rome: Formis Io. Iacobi de Rubeis, c. 1670. Courtesy of Catena Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive, Bard Graduate Center, New York.

drawing by Grimaldi for one of these sets we can see two double-storey buildings in classical style flank the stage space (Fig. 7.7). These are surrounded by tall trees and in front are green arcades and classical statues. At the back of the stage space are two dome-shaped aviaries raised upon columns. Beyond this is a parterre enclosed by an exedra with a two-storey archway in the centre. The buildings in the foreground are similar to the smaller palazzi or casini found at many of the suburban villas in Rome, such as the Casino Bel Respiro at the Villa Doria Pamphilj. The buildings in the set are richly decorated with classical statuary and recall the façade of the Villa Doria Pamphilj: there are full size figures standing on top of the building and on the first storey balustrade, and antique busts set into circular niches. The exedra that closes the view is similar to the ‘Teatro con fontane’ in the gardens of the Villa Doria Pamphilj in that both have an exedra articulated by pilasters or columns and with statues arranged along the top. The original plan for the water theatre at the Villa Doria Pamphilj included a second level in the centre, which while not exactly the same as the central structure topped by a pediment in the set it would have had a similar design. In this set we see the garden theatre structures, originally drawn from the antique, featuring on stage. This is a reminder of the circular nature of inspiration and derivation of ideas from the theatre and their reimagining in other contexts.

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Figure 7.7  Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi after Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, ‘Garden with Guilt, Pleasure and Knowledge’, from La Vita Umana ovvero Il trionfo della Pietà, (Teatro Barberini, Rome, 1656). 1658. Etching. 31.4 x 0.2cm. Cooper Hewitt Museum. Museum purchase through gift of various donors and from Eleanor G. Hewitt Fund; 1938-88-8566.

Another variation on the form is the water theatre at Isola Bella in Lake Maggiore. The garden and villa were commissioned by Count Carlo Borromeo in 1630 and completed by his son Vitaliano by 1670.63 Vitaliano wrote a description of the theatre: Nel lato poi della piramide […] nella sommità vi è una gran niccie ed è in quella statua che rappresenta il Lago Maggiore e per finimento di esso teatro vi è un gran Alicorno, stemma dei Borromei milanesi, di ceppo gentile lungo 28 palmi 63 Georgina Masson, Italian Gardens, (London: Thames & Hudson, 1961), p. 245 records that building on the island ‘is only now being finished according to the seventeenth-century plans’. On the villa see Barbara Schmidt-Nechl, ‘Die Isola Bella Im Lago Maggiore: Die Entwicklung Einer Garteninsel Im Seicento’, Gartenkunst (Worms) 11 (1999): pp. 240–267; Margherita Azzi Visentini, ‘‘… paiano quelle isole incantate di Alcina o Calipso … ‘: Osservazioni in margine alla fortuna critica delle Isole Borromee’, Verbanus 22 (2001): pp. 127–150; Margherita Azzi Visentini, ‘Islands of Delight: Shifting Perceptions of the Borromean Islands’, in Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion, ed. Michel Conan (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2005), pp. 245–289.

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romani e che sta nell’atto di saltare, ed ha sopra di esso una statue di Amore, che con legami dorati unisce due gran statue di ventidue palmi romani rappresentanti l’una Arte, l’altra la Natura. On the side of the pyramid […] at the summit there is a grand niche and in it is the statue that represents Lake Maggiore and as the finishing touch for the theatre there is a grand Unicorn, the symbol of the Borromeo family of Milan, of ceppo gentile [a type of soft porous stone] 28 palmi romani long, that stands in the act of leaping, and it has upon it a statue of Love, that with gilded links unites the two grand statues, measuring 22 palmi romani, representing respectively Art and Nature.64

The garden and theatre were illustrated in their early eighteenth-century state in an etching by Marcantonio Dal Re and the water theatre (still extant) is illustrated in a separate etching (Fig. 7.8).65 The theatre is located at the highest point of the garden and at the end of a long avenue on an axis with the villa. The theatre has three tiers of exedras each set with five niches. The niches below the unicorn contain a mixture of shell fountains, statues of river gods and the triton-like figure that represented Lago Maggiore. On top of each of the pilasters is a dancing putto. To either side are staircases that lead the visitor to a high terrace behind the theatre. The theatre clearly has similarities to the Frascati water theatres, although the structure itself has a greater vertical emphasis. It is possible that the architect Carlo Fontana was involved in its design and construction.66 It is therefore unsurprising that the theatre combines several elements of the seventeenth-century water and sculpture theatres of papal Rome and Frascati, which would have been well known to Fontana. The theatre also recalls the theatres of sixteenth-century gardens. In front of the theatre is a circular concave-convex staircase similar to Bramante’s exedra at the Vatican, and that recalls the Theatre of Love at Bomarzo. The figure of the Unicorn, a heraldic symbol of the Borromeo family, also recalls the Mount Parnassus theatre at Pratolino. 64 Vitaliano VI Borromeo, ‘Descrizione dell’Isola Bella (Dopo Il 1670)’, in Azzi Visentini, L’Arte dei Giardini, pp. 579–583. Author’s translation. A single palmo romano is equal to 0.2234 metres, or about nine inches (Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan (New York/ Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: The Architectural History Foundation/ The MIT Press, 1990), p. xiii. 65 Dal Re’s view of Isola Bella is based upon one printed in 1721 by Fischer von Erlach. Diane Harris, The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003), p. 38. 66 A. Braham and Hellmut Hager state that Fontana’s name is closely associated with the design of the Isola Bella but the exact nature of his work is there is not clear. They suggest that two drawings by Fontana for a garden gallery and for a sala di trono may represent the extent of his work on the complex (Carlo Fontana: The Drawings at Windsor Castle, Studies in Architecture (London: A. Zwemmer Ltd, 1977), pp. 172–173 and figs. 461–462).

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Figure 7.8  Marc’Antonio Dal Re, ‘Water Theatre at Isola Bella’, from Ville de delizia o siano palagi caparecci nello Stato di Milano, Milan: nella Contrada di Santa Margherita, all’ insegna dell’ Aquila Imperiale, 1726. Courtesy of Catena Historic Gardens and Landscapes Archive, Bard Graduate Center, New York.

Count Vitaliano VI, under whose direction the theatre was constructed, was a great patron of music and theatre. Many theatrical productions produced under Vitaliano VI’s patronage had themes that celebrated Isola Bella. A theatre proper was constructed in 1666 on the island, but the water theatre also functioned as a backdrop to actual performances that would take place throughout the gardens and palace, which Margherita Azzi Visentini has described as transforming the island gardens and palace into a ‘macchina scenica’.67 This theatre, therefore, had links to contemporary theatre but the basic structure is clearly derived from the theatres of water and sculpture popularized in the gardens of papal Rome earlier in the century.

The Water Theatre in France By the middle of the seventeenth century the water theatre had spread beyond Italy. An etching by Israel Silvestre records a now destroyed water theatre designed by Pierre Le Muet at Tanlay in France, which was constructed between 1643 and 1649.68 This theatre appears to be closely based upon the water theatre of the Villa Mondragone it is raised on a platform and can be reached by two gently sloping staircases. On the platform is a large hemicycle set with niches, the largest central niche is set within a triumphal arch that juts forward and above the hemicycle. The water appears to drain from a central fishpond on the platform (not visible in 67 Azzi Visentini, ‘paiano quelle isole incantate’, p. 134. 68 Robert W. Berger, ‘Garden Cascades in Italy and France, 1565-1665’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 33 (1974): p. 321 and fig. 26, who also describes the theatre as a château d’eau.

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the etching) and gushes out from five grotesque masks into the ‘grand canal’ in front of the theatre. In France the water theatre also took on a new form, finding its fullest expression in the gardens of Versailles. The théâtre d’eau, described by André Félibien, was one of a number of permanent displays in the bosquets constructed around 1671.69 Before 1664 these bosquets were simple arrangements of walks laid out in regular patterns opening into green rooms at their intersection or in the centre. After the fête of 1664 they became increasingly elaborate. Vigarani, who had devised many of the ephemeral set-pieces for the various divertissements, designed several of these new bosquets. William Adams in his study of the development of the French garden suggests that this was after a realization by Le Nôtre and other artists ‘that it made more sense to build a variety of more or less permanent garden apartments or rooms as theatrical settings for court functions rather than to continue the endless and wasteful construction of elaborate but perishable decorations’.70 This may be true in part, but, the permanent bosquet settings were not generally used for performances at the fêtes; they were instead part of the ‘day-to-day’ decoration of the garden. It is more likely that their creation was driven solely by a desire to make the elaborate settings of the fêtes a more permanent garden feature. In 1670 Vigarani created a fountain display in one of them called the Théâtre d’Eau.71 The theatre is now gone but is depicted in a painting by Jean Cotelle and was described by Félibien as a large circular space, about 52 metres in diameter, divided into two sections.72 One section was a cavea with three tiers of turf seats, and the other was the stage. Cotelle’s painting shows that there were three ‘water allées’ which branched off in a patte d’oie from the stage. Along each allée ran gently sloping cascades that fed into basins surrounding the stage. A multitude of water jets can be seen shooting straight up alongside each cascade. These jets could be manipulated to spurt straight upwards, curve inwards or outwards, create circles or a berceaux (bower). This water theatre at Versailles, like the Italian examples, was a showpiece for the display of an abundance of water, but unlike most of the Italian examples the water display imitated the spaces and structures characteristic of a contemporary indoor theatres. The seats, the stage, and importantly the convergence of three perspective allées closely resemble the set designs of the day, such as the set by the Giacomo Torelli for Act III Scene I of the Les Fâcheaux (1661), which was a garden 69 Michel Baridon, A History of the Gardens of Versailles, Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 183–184, 186. 70 William Howard Adams, The French Garden 1500-1800 (New York: George Brazilier, 1979), p. 88. 71 Carlo Vigarani, ‘Plan of the Structure and Water Circulation of the Théâtre d’Eau’, c. 1670. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ark:/12148/btv1b53128174x. 72 Jean Cotelle, Théâtre d’Eau, 1688–1690. Oil on canvas. Musée National du Château et des Trianons, Versailles.

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set with an ornate architectural proscenium with five arched openings through which are visible long garden perspectives.73 This difference is representative of the development of spaces and structures within gardens that mimicked actual theatres, which began after the middle of the seventeenth century and had also begun to appear in Italian gardens in the form of the teatro di verzura or hedge theatre, which is discussed below. By the turn of the eighteenth century the water theatre had been classified as a standard feature of French gardens in the various handbooks of gardening and encyclopaedias. A French publication of 1704, Dictionnaire Universal François et Latin, vulgairement appelé dictionnaire de Trévoux, defined a ‘théâtre d’eau’ as: C’est une disposition d’une ou plusieurs allées d’eaux, ornées de rocailles, de figures, &c. pour former divers changments dans une décoration perspective. It is an arrangement of one or several avenues of water ornamented with rocaille (rock- or shell-work), figures, etc. in order to form various variations in a perspective decoration.74

The later Encyclopedié by Diderot and D’Alembert reproduces this description and points directly to the théâtre d’eau at Versailles when it describes a water theatre. C’est disposition d’une ou plusiers allées d’eau, ornées de rocailles, de figures, &c. pour former divers changemens dans une decoration perspective, & pour y représenter des spectacles: tel est le théâtre d’eau de Versailles. It is an arrangement of one or more avenues of water, decorated with rocaille, figures etc., in order to form a variety of changes in a perspective decoration, and for representing spectacles there, such as the water theatre of Versailles.75

Water theatres, which had begun by drawing upon antique and Renaissance structures such as nymphaea and exedras and linking these with theatre through the use of hydraulic machinery and the generation of marvels and spectacle, 73 Marie-Françoise Christout, ‘Il Trionfo della Scenografia a Parigi. Giacomo Torelli e l’elaborazione Di Una Tipologia Esemplare’, in Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione Scenica nell’Europa Barocca, ed. Francesco Milesi (Fano: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, 2000), p. 197. 74 Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire Universal François et Latin, Vulgairement Appelé Dictionnaire de Trévoux, vol. 18 (Paris: Par la Compagnie des libraires associés, 1771), vol. 18, p. 8 (Originally published in 1704). 75 Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopédie Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts et Des Métiers, Par Une Société de Gens de Lettres (Compact Edition) (Neufchastel: Samuel Faulche & Compagnie, Libraires & Imprimeurs, 1765), p. 237.

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had by now converged with contemporary aesthetics of stage design and theatre architecture. Such theatres still made a ‘show’ of nature, with jets of water that could be manipulated to create a variety of different scenes.

The Spectacle of Nature Spectacles of nature ‘performing’ in the garden continued to be popular into the eighteenth century, flower and plant theatres in particular became popular features of French gardens and then appeared in Italian gardens. Many were described in French treatises on gardens and landscape, such as Noël-Antoine Pluche’s Le Spectacle de la Nature (1732), translated as Lo Spettacolo della Natura (1751–1752), which described an arrangement of plants, generally in vases, that Consiste in un assortimento di pilastri disposti a scala […] di modo che quei di dietro sian sempre più alti di quei dinanzi, e tutti si presentino addiritura sì all’occhio, come alla mano. Consists of an assortment of pillars arranged in a step-like manner a staircase […] in such a way that those behind are always higher than those in front, and all are presented immediately both to the eye and to the hand.76

This arrangement was described as a theatre in the Encyclopédie of D’Alembert and Diderot, first published in 1765, where the théâtre de fleurs: consistent dans le mélange des pots avec les caisses, ou dans l’arrangement que l’on fait par symmétrie sur des gradins & estrades de Pierre, de bois, ou de gazon. Les fleurs propres pour cela sont l’oeillet, la tubéreuse, l’amarante, la hyacinthe, l’oreille d’ours, la balsamine, le tricolor & la giroflée. consists of the mixing of pots with planters, or in a symmetrical arrangement that one makes on steps and paths of stone, wood, or grass. Suitable flowers for this are the carnation, the tuberose, the amaranth, the hyacinth, the bear’s ear, balsam, the tricolor and the gillyflower.77 76 Maria Adriana Giusti, ‘Per una definizione del ‘teatro verde’, in Teatri di Verzura: la scena del giardino dal barocco al novecento, ed. Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and Maria Adriana Giusti (Florence: EDIFIR Edizione Firenze, 1993), p. 58. The original French ‘Spectacle de la Nature’ was first published in 1732. 77 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, p. 238.

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Figure 7.9  Antonio Fritz and Giuseppe Pini, ‘Anfiteatro d’Agrumi’, from Le delizie farnesiane, 1720. Biblioteca Palatina, Parma.

An example of such a teatro dei fiori was recorded by the French traveller De Lalande, when visiting Italy in 1765 and 1766. He noted a floral display in the Colonna gardens on the Quirinal Hill which he described as ‘two amphitheatres of five rows of pots which form the most beautiful effect in the world’.78 One of the grandest examples is in the gardens of the Villa Ducale at Colorno. The garden is now completely altered but the theatre is represented in the set of printed views of the garden, Le Delizie Farnesiane (1726), attributed to the engraver Antonio Fritz and Giuseppe Pini.79 The captions to two views describe an Anfiteatro d’Agrumi (Amphitheatre of Citrus) (Fig. 7.9). They show a large semi-circle formed by f ive concentric rows of steps with small citrus trees in vases placed upon them. Around the outer edge is a stone balustrade with statues arranged at intervals. At the centre of the ‘stage’ are two large fountains with jets of water being shot into the air from mouths of various sculpted animals, including dragons. At the front are two matching grass parterres and behind 78 J. J. L. F. de Lalande, Voyage d’un François en Italie fait dan les Années (Yverdom, 1769), pp. 459–460. 79 Carlo Mambriani, ‘I Bibiena Nei Ducati Farnesiani Di Parma e Piacenza’, in I Bibiena: Una Famiglia Europea, ed. Deanna Lenzi and Jadranka Bentini (Bologna: Marsilio, 2000), pp. 97–108.

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are just visible paths leading away between grass parterres. This amphitheatre was situated between the high and low gardens and acted as a link between the two. It closed the parterre garden that sat immediately in front of the palazzo and through the central opening f ive avenues led away into the upper garden and hunting park beyond. This amphitheatre was constructed between 1708–1712, during the first phase of the garden’s construction, under the direction of Ferdinando Bibiena (1657–1743).80 It is possible that Ferdinando’s other role as set designer inspired the creation of a version of a theatre constructed from plants. The Farnese family were also patrons of theatre, and Ferdinando designed the garden whilst working as set designer to the court.81 Much of the style of the garden is also derived from Versailles, a point of reference that was both formal and political.82 Bosquets and fountains that recalled Versailles, while the style of the parterres and elements of the amphitheatre, such as the grass parterres, closely resemble those published in 1709 by Dezallier d’Argenville.83 One feature, however, an amphitheatre of citrus, does not have a direct precedent at Versailles, where citrus trees were treated very differently: the Parterre de l’Orangerie has them placed in a gridded arrangement around a central circular pond. This amphitheatre has been read as a verdant version of Bernini’s colonnade in Piazza of S. Pietro in Rome, and consequently as an allusion to the strenuous faithfulness of Francesco Farnese to the papacy.84 Whether or not the amphitheatre was intended to have explicit political undertones, the idea that it was based upon the structure of the Piazza San Pietro is plausible as the two plans are almost identical. Both have two semi-circular spaces facing each other, while the five rows of potted citrus at Colorno stand in for the colonnade at St. Peter’s. There were two fountains that correspond to the two in the square and the two grass parterres at the entrance to the amphitheatre are shaped to imitate the form of carriages. At least one other garden in Italy contains green versions of the piazza of St. Peter’s, though in hedges rather than agrumi. The Villa Morosoni Cappello at Cartigliano 80 Carlo Mambriani, ‘La Versaglia dei Duchi di Parma: Prototipi e Metamorfosi Dei Giardini Di Colorno’, in I Giardini del ‘Principe’: IV Convegno Internazionale, Parche e Giardini Storici, Parchi Letterai, ed. Mirella Macera, vol. 1 (Savigliano: L’Artistica, 1994), pp. 152–153 and Marco Pellegri, Colorno Villa Ducale (Parma: Artegrafica Silva, 1981). 81 The palace at Colorno had its own theatre recorded by the French poet Anne-Marie Lepage Fiquet du Boccage (Anne-Marie Lepage Fiquet Du Boccage, Lettres Sur l’Angleterre, La Hollande et l’Italie, Oeuvres Du Madame Du Boccages (Lyon: Freres Perisse, 1770), p. 366) who wrote that ‘Il teatro di corte di Colorno è ben adorno e più grande di quello de Versailles’. 82 Mambriani, ‘La Versaglia’, p. 149. 83 Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville, La théorie et la pratique du jardinage où l’on traite à fond des beaux jardin appelés (Paris: J. Mariette, 1709), p. 38. 84 Mambriani, ‘La Versaglia’, p. 125.

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in the Veneto has a cortile in imitation of Bernini’s colonnade at St. Peter’s. Instead of columns, cypresses define the double-hemicycle shape framing the entrance.85 The design is attributed to Francesco Zamberlan. One of the great theatrical urban spaces of Rome reimagined as a green theatre shows that the rise of the teatro in the garden was not only a matter of the introduction of theatre-like structures to gardens; there was also an increase in the description and conception of garden spaces as theatres. Just as the Rome ‘created’ by Pope Alexander VII can be understood as an urban ‘stage set’, so too the baroque garden can be understood as a ‘living stage set’ presenting spectacles of water and nature, of the villa, and of the visitor themselves. Such conclusions are supported by the noticeable increase in the use of theatrical terminology in descriptions of gardens. The theatrical terminology utilized by printmakers such as Falda and Dal Re exhibits the fact that artists and designers approached and explained garden spaces in terms of theatre. So too did their visitors. In the eighteenth century the Arcadian poet Antonio Cerati wrote a poem about the Villa Garzoni describing ‘Teatral scena in altra parte ci scorge’ (One perceives theatrical scenery in many places). 86 The descriptions by travellers of these gardens also apply to earlier gardens, which results in a sort of ‘retrospective theatricalization’ of gardens. For example, Edmund Warcupp’s 1660 translation of Franciscus Schottus’ guide to Italy included a description of the Villa d’Este that ‘the great Father Oceanus [is] placed in a semi-circle like a Theatre’. 87 Across the seventeenth century (and into the eighteenth) there was an interplay between theatre as structure and theatre as concept. Garden architecture and open spaces were reimagined in terms of spectacle and performance, whether performance of the self, of machines or of nature. Formal designs for theatres, as at Frascati, led to informal descriptions of gardens as theatre by visitors and creators of vedute. The slippage also played to shared concerns for the privileging of sensory experiences, of wonder, and the shaping, imitation and control of natural forces. 85 Margherita Azzi Visentini, Il giardino veneto: Storia e Conservazione (Milan: Electa, 1988), p. 44, figs. 43 and 44. The exact date of this layout is not known but postdates a map of the garden made in 1619 that shows the garden laid out in simple square compartments. 86 Antonio Cerati, Le Ville Lucchesi (Parma: Stamperia Reale, 1783), np. ‘Un più libero ciel cercano indarno./ Teatral scena in altra parte ci scorge,/ E mira, ahi vista! Che nel cor piagato /Rinovò la memoria dolorosa/ De’gravi affanni miei, delle mie pene,/ Mira un Amor, che con acuto dardo,/ La mesta istoria de’sospiri miei,/ Che udì Citera, che i fugaci noti/ Rapír dispersi, per cui rise ingrata/ Una Ninfa crudel […] Sorte nemica!/ Giovinezza che val, che valmi il dono’. 87 Edmund Warcupp, Italy in Its Originall Glory, Ruine and Revivall (London: S. Griff in, 1660), p. 311 (also discussed in Hunt, Garden and Grove, 63). Schottus original account was published in Antwerp in 1600.

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Christout, Marie-Françoise. ‘Il Trionfo Della Scenograf ia a Parigi. Giacomo Torelli e l’elaborazione Di Una Tipologia Esemplare’. In Giacomo Torelli: L’invenzione Scenica Nell’Europa Barocca, edited by Francesco Milesi, 194–213. Fano: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Fano, 2000. Ciampoli, Giovanni. Rime Di Monsignor Giovanni Ciampoli: Dedicate All’eminentiss. E Reverendiss. Signor Cardinale Girolamo Colonna. Rome: Appresso gli Heredi del Corbelleti, 1648. Coffin, David R. The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Coffin, David R. Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Devoti, Luigi. ‘Villa Belvedere Aldobrandini Di Frascati’. In Le Ville Nel Lazio, edited by Luigi Devoti, 189–212. Rome: Anemone Purpurea editrice, 2006. Dezallier d’Argenville, Antoine-Joseph. La Théorie et La Pratique Du Jardinage Où l’on Traite à Fond Des Beaux Jardin Appelés. Paris: J. Mariette, 1709. Diderot, Denis, and Jean le Rond d’Alembert. Encyclopédie Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts et Des Métiers, Par Une Société de Gens de Lettres (Compact Edition). Neufchastel: Samuel Faulche & Compagnie, Libraires & Imprimeurs, 1765. D’Onofrio, Cesare. La Villa Aldobrandini Di Frascati. Rome: Staderini, 1963. Ehrlich, Tracy L. Landscape and Identity in Early Modern Rome: Villa Culture at Frascati in the Borghese Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Evelyn, John. The Diary of John Evelyn. Edited by E. S. De Beer. Vol. Volume II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Fiquet Du Boccage, Anne-Marie Lepage. Lettres Sur l’Angleterre, La Hollande et l’Italie. Oeuvres Du Madame Du Boccages. Lyon: Freres Perisse, 1770. Franck, Carl L. The Villas of Frascati: 1550-1750. London: Alec Tiranti Ltd, 1966. Frezzotti, Stefania. ‘Il Teatro Delle Acque Della Villa Ludovisi a Frascati’. Ricerche Di Storia Dell’Arte Roma 25 (1985): 80–90. Furetière, Antoine. Dictionnaire Universal François et Latin, Vulgairement Appelé Dictionnaire de Trévoux. Vol. 18. Paris: Par la Compagnie des libraires associés, 1771. Giusti, Maria Adriana. ‘La Residenza Dei Principati a Marlia’. In Il Principiate Napoleonico Dei Baciochhi (1805-1814). Riforma Dello Stato e Società., edited by Clara Baracchini, Dario Matteoni, and Giorgio Tori, 465–489. Lucca: Ministero Beni Culturali e Ambientali, 1984. Giusti, Maria Adriana. ‘Per Una Definizione Del ‘Teatro Verde’’. In Teatri Di Verzura: La Scena Del Giardino Dal Barocco al Novecento, edited by Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and Maria Adriana Giusti, 47–54. Florence: EDIFIR Edizione Firenze, 1993. Giusti, Maria Adriana. ‘Il Parco Di Villa Reale a Marlia: Scena Di Principi e Di Popolo.’ In I Giardini Del ‘Principe’: IV Convegno Internazionale, Parche e Giardini Storici, Parchi Letterai, edited by Mirella Macera, 189–199. Savigliano: Tip. de l’Artistica, 1994. Harris, Diane. The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003.

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Hibbard, Howard. ‘Palazzo Borghese Studies I: The Garden and Its Fountains’. The Burlington Magazine 100 (1958): 204–215. Hibbard, Howard. Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture, 1580-1630. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971. Hill, Michael. ‘The Patronage of a Disenfranchised Nephew: Cardinal Scipione Borghese and the Restoration of San Crisogono in Rome, 1618-1628’. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60 (2001): 433–449. Hoffman, Paola. Villa Doria Pamphilj. Rome: Edizioni Capitolini, 1976. Hunt, John Dixon. Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination 1600-1750. London and Melbourne: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1986. Kolb, Carolyn, and Melissa Beck. ‘The Sculptures on the Nymphaeum Hemicycle of the Villa Barbaro at Maser’. Artibus et Historiae 18 (1997): 15-33, 35-40. Kuttner, Ann. ‘Delight and Danger in the Roman Water Garden: Sperlonga and Tivoli’. In Landscape Design and the Experience of Motion, edited by Michel Conan, 103–156. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2003. Lalande, J. J. L. F. de. Voyage d’un François En Italie Fait Dan Les Années. Yverdom, 1769. Lazzaro, Claudia. The Italian Renaissance Garden: From the Conventions of Planting, Design, and Ornament to the Grand Gardens of Sixteenth-Century Central Italy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Mambriani, Carlo. ‘La Versaglia dei Duchi di Parma: Prototipi e Metamorfosi dei Giardini di Colorno’. In I Giardini Del ‘Principe’: IV Convegno Internazionale, Parche e Giardini Storici, Parchi Letterai, edited by Mirella Macera, 149–158. Savigliano: L’Artistica, 1994. Mambriani, Carlo. ‘I Bibiena nei Ducati Farnesiani di Parma e Piacenza’. In I Bibiena: Una Famiglia Europea, edited by Deanna Lenzi and Jadranka Bentini, 97–108. Bologna: Marsilio, 2000. Manilli, Jacamo. Villa Borghese Fuori Di Porta Pinciana. Rome: Grignani, 1650. Masson, Georgina. Italian Gardens. London: Thames & Hudson, 1961. Montelatici, Domenico. Villa Borghese Fuori Di Porta Pinciana: Con l’ornamenti, Che Si Osservano Nel Di Lei Palazzo, e Con Le Figure Delle Statue Più Singolari. Rome: G. Buagni, 1700. Mortoft, Francis. Francis Mortoft: His Book, Being His Travels through France and Italy 1658-1659. Edited by Malcolm Letts. London: The Hakluyt Society, 1925. Olausson, Magnus. ‘The Aesthetic and Social Reception and Development of the Baroque Garden in Sweden’. In Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion, edited by Michel Conan, 183–211. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2005. Palladio, Andrea. I Quattro Libri Dell’architettura. Venice: Bartolomeo Carampello, 1616. Pellegri, Marco. Colorno Villa Ducale. Parma: Artegrafica Silva, 1981. Ribouillault, Denis. ‘Atlas and Hercules in the Garden: Scientific Culture and Literary Imagination at the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati’. Nuncius 30, no. 1 (2015): 124–160.

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Schmidt-Nechl, Barbara. ‘Die Isola Bella Im Lago Maggiore: Die Entwicklung Einer Garteninsel Im Seicento’. Gartenkunst (Worms) 11 (1999): 240–267. Schwager, K. ‘Kardinal Aldobrandinis Villa Di Belvedere in Frascati’. Römisches Jahrbuch Der Biblioteca Hertziana 9–10 (February 1961): 289–382. Sear, Frank. Roman Theatres: An Architectural Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Steinberg, Ronald Martin. ‘The Iconography of the Teatro Dell’Acqua at the Villa Aldobrandini’. Art Bulletin 47 (1965): 453–463. Thelen, Heinrich. Francesco Borromini, Die Handzeichungen. Graz: Hill and Wang, 1967. Waddy, Patricia. Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan. New York/ Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: The Architectural History Foundation/The MIT Press, 1990. Warcupp, Edmund. Italy in Its Originall Glory, Ruine and Revivall: Being an Exact Survey of the Whole Geography, and History of That Famous Country with the Adjacent Islands of Sicily, Malta &c.: And Whatever Is Remarkable in Rome (the Mistress of The World) and All Those Towns and Territories, Mentioned in Antient and Modern Authors. London: S. Griffin, 1660.

8. Performing in the Parrhasian Grove: Green Theatres and the Academies Abstract This chapter looks at smaller, more intimate performances in the landscape. First, it examines the emergence of hedge theatres in the gardens of members of the Lucchese Accademia degli Oscuri, and the culture of poetic composition and semi-private performances that gave rise to these intimate performance spaces. It then looks at how the ‘academic’ culture of performance in the landscape is transformed in Rome in the decades around 1700, when the performance and place-making culture around the Arcadian Academy ushered in new ideas about both landscape and the performance opera. Keywords: Italian Academies, Arcadian Academy, Lucca, Accademia degli Oscuri, Garden Theatres

The garden theatre must be understood not only as an architectonic form, but as representative of a broader culture of performance. As explored in the previous chapter, these spaces were often symbolic, representative of the spectacle of water or a stage for the display of antiquities. But gardens were also performance spaces in the more traditional sense, sites for festivals and large-scale equestrian ballets, and also for the recitation of poetry, the performance of prose and intellectual debates and for musical works such as serenata. While the idea of the garden as a site for large-scale spectacle is well known, through the fame of sites like the Boboli gardens and Versailles, the use of the garden for smaller, more intimate gatherings centred upon performance has received less attention. Central to this intellectual and often more intimate culture of performance were the academic societies that flourished across many Italian cities from the sixteenth century until the eighteenth. In previous chapters their role in the emergence of new forms of theatre such as opera and in debates about drama and poetry has been explored,

Grant, K., Landscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Theatre, Gardens and Visual Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022 doi 10.5117/9789463721530_ch08

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but they also played an important role in the conceptualization of gardens and landscape spaces as sites for performance.1 The tradition of informal intellectual groups conducting their meetings within garden spaces goes back to the ancient Greeks, and the belief that Plato and Aristotle taught philosophy within groves. The very name ‘academia’ derives from Plato’s Grove of Academe (though the revival of the word in the sixteenth century can be closely tied to Cicero’s ‘New Academy’ and Academic dialogues).2 This association of gardens with learning was revived in the fifteenth century, particularly in Florence, Rome and Naples. The humanist Poggio Bracciolini in a letter of 1427 called his garden at Terranuova in the Val d’Arno the ‘Accademia Valdornina’ in emulation of Cicero’s villa at Tusculum, which had in turn been inspired by Plato’s academy. Humanist thinkers, such as Marsilio Ficino, believed that villa life cultivated the soul as well as the fields and philosophical dialogues would often be set within a villa or its gardens.3 Vittorino da Feltre (d. 1446) who was ducal librarian at the court of Mantua set up a court school the Casa Giocosa, which earned a reputation as one of the most progressive of the early humanist schools, within a former pleasure garden. 4 The Villa Medici at Careggi, near Florence, was the site for many meetings of learned humanists, including the Platonic Academy that met under the leadership of Ficino.5 The practice continued into the sixteenth century. As well as the proposed theatre for intellectual pursuits at the Villa Madama, discussed above, several humanists in Rome used their gardens for such activities. The garden of Angelo Colocci, a humanist at the court of Pope Leo X, on the Pincio in Rome was a place where his friends would gather to study ancient literature, discuss philosophy 1 Lisa Sampson, ‘Reforming Theatre in Farnese Parma: The Case of the Accademia degli Innominati (1574–1608)’, in The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent, ed. Jane E. Everson, Denis V. Reidy, and Lisa Sampson (Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2016), pp. 62–69. 2 Alison Brown, ‘Defining the Place of Academies in Florentine Culture and Politics’, in The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent, ed. Jane E. Everson, Denis V Reidy, and Lisa Sampson (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016), p. 22. 3 Terry Comito, ‘The Humanist Garden’, in The Architecture of Western Gardens: A Design History from the Renaissance to the Present Day, ed. Monique Mosser and Georges Teyssot (Cambridge (Massachusetts): The MIT Press, 1990), p. 37 and David R. Coff in, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 10–11. Coffin gives the example, amongst others, of Bracciolini’s dialogue De Avaritia set at a vigna near the Lateran in Rome, and two others, De Nobilitate and Historia Convivalis, set in his own property at Terranuova. 4 Enrico Paglia. La Casa Giocosa di Vittorino da Feltre in Mantova. (Milan: Tipografia Bortolotti di dal Bono e C, 1884). 5 Coff in, The Villa, pp. 9–13. James Hankins has cast doubt upon whether Cosimo de’Medici did in fact create an academy in his Villa at Careggi or whether it was just an association of the villa with the contemplative life (‘Cosimo de’Medici and the ‘Platonic Academy’’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990): 147).

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and hold poetry reading competitions.6 Colocci’s friend and colleague at the papal court, Hans Goritz, likewise owned a garden in Rome, near the Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius, where he would assemble groups of learned men.7 These gardens also had associations with Mount Parnassus and the Muses who were considered to preside ‘over the newly reborn academies of learning and the reborn art of poetry’.8 Vicino Orsini at Bomarzo, included representations of Pegasus as an allusion to similar learned activities. During the seventeenth century, the interest in the theatre as a form for expression of ideas within the garden aligned with this tradition of intellectual gatherings within nature to give rise to a new form of garden theatre, the teatro di verzura, best translated as green or hedge theatre. In many senses this is a true theatre, which cannot be described as anything other than a theatre and did not have roots in any earlier garden structure. The earliest hedge theatres are found in gardens clustered around the city of Lucca. These gardens represent high points of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century design, each with their own distinct style and with clear links to the cultural and intellectual life of their Lucchese patrons.9 The city of Lucca is built upon a plain, and the villas were generally built upon the colline di Lucca (the hills of Lucca) that surround the city, but unlike the gardens of Frascati or Tivoli near Rome the villas and its gardens were usually laid out upon a level area at the foot of the hills. They were still high enough to command a view of the surrounding countryside, as observed by the eighteenth-century traveller Georg Christoph Martini, who wrote of the view from the Villa Santini (today Villa Torrigiani) near Camigliano: Dall’alto del palazzo si gode la più bella veduta che si possa immaginare: si vedono giardini, pianure, boschi, verdeggianti colline, il mare, i fiumi ed ogni altra cosa che rende così attraenti quei dintorni. 6 Elisabeth MacDougall, ‘The Sleeping Nymph: Origins of a Humanist Fountain Type’, The Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 361–363. Also see the life of Colocci, Ubaldini, 1969, pp. 38–60 for a description of the garden F. Ubaldini, Vita Di Mons. Angelo Colocci, studi e testi, ed. V. Fanelli (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1969). 7 Domenico Gnoli, ‘Orti letterari nella Rome di Leon X’, Nuova Antologia 347 (1930): pp. 151–153. 8 MacDougall, ‘The Sleeping Nymph’, p. 363. 9 The hedge theatres of Italy (Lucca and Siena in particular) were the subject of several early twentiethcentury texts by landscape architects, see Henry Vincent Hubbard, ‘Italian Garden Theaters’, Landscape Architecture, no. January (1914): pp. 52–65; Frank A. Waugh, ‘Some Garden Theatres’, Architectural Review, 1916, pp. 161–167; Frank A. Waugh, Outdoor Theatres (Boston, 1917), pp. 131–135; Mario Corsi, Il Teatro Aperto in Italia: con 159 Illustrazioni (Milan: Rizzoli, 1939); and C. R. Sutton, The Villa Marlia, Lucca (Rome, 1932). The twentieth-century rediscovery and revival of hedge theatres has been discussed in Vincenzo Cazzato, Ville e Giardini Italiani: I disegni di architetti e paesaggisti dell’American Academy in Rome, (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca della Stato, 2004), pp. 199–224.

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From the height of the palazzo one enjoys the most beautiful view that one could possibly imagine: one sees gardens, plains, woods, verdant hills, the sea, rivers and every other thing that makes the environs so attractive.10

Martini observed that ‘[n]early every citizen has a country home commensurate with his status and fortune’.11 A treatise upon agriculture by the Lucchese citizen Giovanni di Vincenzo Saminiati, written in the sixteenth century when many of the original villas were first constructed, encourages this rapport between city, villa and surrounding countryside. He issued the following instructions for choosing a site for a noble villa: Il sito per edificar il palazzo in villa et scopra più che sia possible con la veduta tutto il podere, et assai de nobili luoghi convicini, et essendo anco la Città acciò che si godino in esso le vaghe vedute, et dia di sé nobili vista et prospettiva ai palazzo et luoghi circumvicini.12 The site for building a palazzo in the country [should be] exposed as much as possible with a view of the entire farm, and most noble places with villages, and if possible also the City in order that the lovely sight of them may be enjoyed, and so that it in turn offers a noble sight and perspective to the surrounding palazzo and places.

The eighteenth-century poet Cristoforo Martelli Leonardi described the villas of Lucca as ‘villareci deliziosi alberghi (delightful rural abodes)’ that make ‘un nobile corona (a noble crown)’ for the city of Lucca. The gardens themselves he describes as: Boschetti, e boschi di natura, d’arte E delle età mirabile lavoro Ed orti sempre mai Verdi, e fiorenti, E ben schierate vigne, e ciuffi spessi Dell argentata oliva. Little forests, woods of nature and of art A work that is a wonder of the ages 10 Georg Christoph Martini, Viaggio in Toscana (1725-1745), ed. Oscar Trumpy, 1 vols (Massa and Modena: Palazzo di S. Elisabetta and Aedes Muratoriana, 1969), p. 136 (This and subsequent quotes from Martini are the author’s translation). 11 Martini, Viaggio in Toscana, p. 134. 12 Giovanni da Vincenzo Saminiati, ‘Dell’edificar delle case e palazzi in villa, e dell’ordinar dei giardini ed orti’, in La Villa a Lucca dal XV al XIX Secolo, ed. Mario Barsali and Isa Belli Barsali (Rome: De Luca, 1964), pp. 234–235. (Author’s translation).

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kitchen gardens always green, and full of flowers And well-ordered vineyards, and dense groves of silver-plated olive.13

Leonardi’s elegiac words present the Lucchese estates as places that were both elegant and rural. Although many of the estates surrounding Lucca date to the sixteenth century or earlier, the relative stability for the patrician class during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw a boom in the construction of villas and many existing gardens and buildings were significantly renovated or redesigned.14 These changes reflected the new tastes in garden style of the second half of the seventeenth century. Scherzi d’acqua or water tricks, were popular, as were figurative sculptures usually depicting characters from pastoral myth such as satyrs, nymphs, Apollo and Daphne, or Flora the goddess of flowers and parterres de broderie based upon those at Versailles. The gardens were generally divided into a series of rooms, usually square in shape and enclosed by walls of stone or vegetation. These rooms would include labyrinths, fishponds (peschiere), flower displays and full theatres created entirely out of hedge.

The Hedge Theatre The theatres at the Villa Reale, the Villa Cenami and at the Villa Garzoni appear to be amongst the earliest of these theatres constructed, from which the later examples were presumably derived.15 At f irst glance the teatro di verzura, or hedge theatre, appears to be a straightforward concept. It is a version of a wing theatre, the type of structure pioneered by Aleotti in Parma in the early 1600s, and commonplace thereafter. Although hedge theatres vary in size, they tended to be fairly similar in form. They typically consist of a raised section of grass, with flat angled wings made from rectilinear blocks of hedge arranged upon it. The backdrop is formed either by a further hedge or a masonry wall. Some theatres include fountains or sculpture upon the stage, and others include a proscenium arch constructed of stone. This definition fits well the main theatres near Siena and Lucca that are still extant: the Villa Reale (previously Orsetti) at Marlia,

13 C. M. Martelli Leonardi, I Giardini ossia l’Arte di abbellire i Paesaggi del sig. Abate De Lille Traduzione e l’idea de’medesimi giardini applicata alle Mura e Contorni di Lucca, originale del sig. Abate Cristofano Matteo Martelli-Leonardi canonico di Pietrasanta (Lucca: Lucca presso Domenico Marescandoli, 1794), np. 14 Isa Belli Barsali, Ville e committenti dello Stato Di Lucca (Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1980), p. 369. 15 And earlier version of this research can be found in Katrina Grant, ‘Hedge Theatres of Lucca’, in Art, Site and Spectacle, edited by David R. Marshall, (Melbourne: Fine Arts Network, 2007).

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the Villa Cenami at Saltocchio, and the Villa Garzoni at Collodi.16 It also f its those found nearer to neighbouring Siena: the Villa Gori at Marciano, the Villa Bianchi Bandinelli at Geggiano, the Villa Terrasi Vagnoli (formerly Piccolomini) at Castelnuovo Berardegna and the Villa Sergardi at Torre Fiorentina.17 Variations upon the theme also exist. One in the form of a hedge amphitheatre at the Villa Bernardini at Vicopelago from the early eighteenth century. Another variation is the use of a hemicycle formed from hedge (rather than flat wings), as at the Villa Chigi, near Cetinale and the Villa Mansi at Segromigno.18 Although a number of early records of these theatres exist, none states explicitly whether they were performance spaces; nor do these sources provide interpretations of their place within the larger programme of the garden. Villa Reale, Marlia The Villa Reale at Marlia, north-east of Lucca, was originally the property of the Orsetti family and is now the Villa Pecci-Blunt. The name Villa Reale comes from the period when it belonged to Princess Elisa Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon, who redesigned the property in the nineteenth century.19 The Orsetti family had purchased the property from the Buonvisi family in 1651.20 They renovated the palazzo, laid out the gardens and constructed the ‘Palazzina dell’Orologio’.21 A print of 1775 by 16 Isa Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca dal XV al XIX Secolo (Rome: De Luca Editore, 1964), pp. 148–149, 191–198 (Villa Garzoni), and pp. 198–202 (Villa Marlia). 17 Narcisa Fargnoli, ‘Teatri Di Verzura’, in Vita in Villa Senese, ed. Lucia Bonelli Conenna and Ettore Pacini (Siena: Pacini editore, 2000), pp. 325–347, and Vincenzo Cazzato and Maria Adriana Giusti, ‘Teatri di Verzura in Italia’, in Teatri di Verzura: La Scena del Giardino dal Barocco al Novecento, ed. Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and Maria Adriana Giusti (Florence: EDIFIR, 1993), pp. 115–116 (Villa Gori), 117–120 (Villa Bianchi Bandinelli), pp. 121–123 (Villa Piccolomini), and p. 124 (Villa Sergardi). 18 Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca, pp. 152–153 and Maria Adriana Giusti, ‘Teatri Di Vegetazione: Flora, Pomona e La Verzura’, in Teatri Di Verzura: La Scena del Giardino dal Barocco al Novecento, ed. Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and Maria Adriana Giusti (Florence: EDIFIR Edizione Firenze, 1993), pp. 61–64. 19 Isa Belli Barsali, ‘I Giardini Lucchesi tra Settecento e Ottocento’, in Isa Belli Barsali per La Città di Lucca Scritti Scelti dal 1947 al 1986, ed. Maria Teresa Filieri (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 2004), pp. 305–308. 20 ASLu, Archivio Arnolfini, n. 58 relates to the sale. Belli Barsali, Ville e committenti, 372–373; Cazzato and Giusti, ‘Teatri di Verzura’, pp. 97–102; Maria Adriana Giusti, ‘Il Parco Di Villa Reale a Marlia: Scena Di Principi e Di Popolo’, in I Giardini del ‘Principe’: IV Convegno Internazionale, Parche e Giardini Storici, Parchi Letterai, ed. Mirella Macera (Savigliano: Tip. de l’Artistica, 1994), pp. 189–199. For the later nineteenth-century renovations see Paolo Emilio Tomei, ‘Il Giardino della Villa Di Marlia e l’orto Botanico’, in Il Giardino Italiano dell’Ottocento [Proceedings of the II Meeting of the Study Centre for Historical and Contemporary Gardens of Pietrasanta, ed. Alessandro Tagliolni (Milan, 1989), pp. 504–507. 21 Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca, pp. 198–199.

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Francesco Venturi shows the garden before the renovations of Elisa Bonaparte.22 The palazzo is situated within a large green field walled by hedges. Straight avenues were cut into the neatly trimmed hedge, creating a series of avenues, which still exist today, though the planting has been softened. Where the seventeenth-century garden had sharply clipped hedges punctuated at the corners with clipped cypress, now there is a graduated planting of bushes and trees. Behind the palazzo is the hedge and water theatre and in front is the large lawn. To the right of the lawn is a large ‘garden room’ often described as the ‘ballroom’ in which there is a large square pool. An avenue leads off from this to the smaller garden room containing the hedge theatre. The theatre was built sometime between the 1650s and the 1670s in the second phase of works undertaken by the Orsetti family.23 The theatre’s designer is unknown.24 It is twenty-four metres in length and the entire room is walled by yew hedges. To either side as the visitor enters is a semicircle of stone seats, now covered by clipped hedge. Further space for spectators is located behind the hedge wall at the back of the theatre, where a completely enclosed path runs along a higher tier and windows and niches have been made in the hedge. The separation between the public and stage is formed by a green screen and sequence of green spheres simulating lights. The stage is formed by a succession of wings that are five and a half metres high and slightly inclined. In front of the hedge wall that forms the backdrop are terracotta statues that represent commedia dell’arte characters including Pulcinella, Columbina, and Pantalone. These are eighteenth-century additions.25 At the centre, between the stage and the orchestra are two other later additions (both are absent from the Venturi engraving), topiary forms that represent the podium for the conductor and prompt box.26 There are no records of the Villa 22 Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca, p. 198, fig. 414. Cazzato and Giusti, ‘Teatri di Verzura’, p. 98, fig. 5 suggest a date of 1771. 23 The villa was purchased in 1651 and the palazzo enlarged between 1664 and 1670. The theatre was complete by the time Georg Christoph Martini recorded it in the 1720s (Martini, Viaggio in Toscana, pp. 267–268). Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca, 201 and G. Trabucco, ‘Il Teatro Di Verdura della Villa Reale Di Marlia’, Commentari 28 (1977): p. 159 suggest the theatre was built as early as 1652 whereas Cazzato and Giusti propose a date between 1676 and 1690 (Cazzato and Giusti, ‘Teatri di Verzura’, p. 99). 24 Cazzato and Giusti, ‘Teatri di Verzura’, pp. 99–100, propose that there is a link with the circle of Carlo Fontana through the architect Domenico Martinelli, though there is little direct evidence to support this. Trabucco, ‘Il Teatro Di Verdura’, p. 158, notes that the garden and theatre possibly reflect the hand of several different designers. 25 Trabucco, ‘Il Teatro Di Verdura’, p. 157. 26 The prompt box and podium were not features of Baroque theatres and are later, possibly nineteenthcentury, additions. They are absent from the Venturi engraving of 1775, but present in the early twentiethcentury depiction by H.V. Hubbard and B.W. Pond in Henry Vincent Hubbard, ‘Italian Garden Theaters’, Landscape Architecture, no. January (1914): pp. 59–60.

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Reale theatre having been used as a performance space before the Napoleonic era.27 The Villa Reale theatre is one of the largest near Lucca, and also the most complete of the theatres, having a stage, wings, an auditorium and even theatre-boxes. Green theatres were commonly on a smaller scale as at the nearby Villa Garzoni. Villa Garzoni, Collodi The garden of the Villa Garzoni was constructed in the 1630s after the Garzoni purchased the villa from the province of Pistoia, although they had owned property in the town of Collodi since the fourteenth century.28 A drawing of c. 1630, now in the State Archives in Lucca, shows the palazzo before it was enlarged.29 Another drawing, dated 1633, is also in the archives and shows the palazzo with the town of Collodi behind it.30 Because of its location the garden had to be constructed on its own axis and now occupies the adjacent hill, with a bridge to connect it to the palazzo across the river Pescia. The gardens were begun around 1633 and more-orless complete by 1652 when Francesco Sbarra wrote a poem entitled Le Pompe di Collodi Delitiosissima Villa del Signor Cavalier Romano Garzoni or ‘The Splendours of the Most Delightful Villa Collodi of Signor Cavalier Romano Garzoni’.31 The theatre at the Villa Garzoni is still extant. It was in bad condition by the late twentieth century but has been restored in recent years.32 The poem by Sbarra 27 Giusti and Cazzato, ‘Teatri di Verzura’, pp. 101–102. They note that the virtuoso violinist Nicolò Paganini performed in the theatre during his years in Lucca, but that there is little direct reference to the theatre being used even in the many feste held by the Bonaparte princess. A recent short article includes images of its use in the twentieth century, see Claudia Massi, ‘Il teatro di Verzura nei giardini di Collodi’, Nebulae 17 (2013): pp. 12–16. 28 The majority of the sources upon this villa are conserved in the Archivio di Stato di Lucca (in particular in the Fondo Arnolfini and the Fondo Garzoni). Also, in the ASLu are designs (reproduced in Andreini Galli and Gurrieri, 1975). Of particular interest is ‘un fascicolo di ‘Osservazioni sopra le istitute valutazioni de’miglioramenti della Villa di Collodi’ (ASLu Arnolfini, f. 36 n.). On the history of the Garzoni see Nori Andreini Galli and Francesco Gurrieri, Il Giardino e Il Castello Garzoni a Collodi (Florence: Stiav, 1975), pp. 15–17. 29 ASLu, Consiglio Generale 673, p. 1583, includes a plan of c. 1630 showing the old property. 30 ASLu, Consiglio Generale, filza 673, p. 1583. 31 BSLu, Codici Baroni Bernardini No. 7.CC Ms 996, from here referred to as Francesco Sbarra, Le Pompe di Collodi Delitiosissima Villa del Signor Cavalier Romano Garzoni (Lucca: Bernardino Pieri e Diacinto Paci, 1652). Another major phase of work upon the gardens was in the eighteenth century. Filippo Juvarra designed the Palazzina dell’Orologio, which closed the small garden behind the palazzo, around 1715 (Gianfranco Gritella, Juvarra l’Architettura, 2 vols. (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1992), pp. 202–204 and Belli Barsali, (Ville e committenti, p. 495)). The small palazzo was not built under Juvarra’s direction, but in the following years, possibly by Giovanna Francesco Giusti. Extensive works on the waterworks f ixed and the lowest level are associated with the architect Ottavio Diodati and the patron Romano Garzoni (1721–1786) (Silvia Martelli, ‘Il Giardino Garzoni a Collodi: Documenti per La Storia e Proposte per La Conservazione’, Arte Dei Giardini 2 (1993): pp. 13–28). 32 Massi, ‘Il teatro di Verzura’.

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is the earliest detailed record of the gardens. The poetic account mentions a ‘bel Teatro’, which may well refer to the green theatre.33 The poem also mentions a ‘teatro augusto […] costruito con alta struttura di piante’ (majestic theatre […] formed by high plant structures), which is a description of the great semicircular entrance area bordered by hedges, and presumably an allusion to the Plinian idea of the landscape as theatre.34 A ‘Terrilogio’ map includes a map of a small ‘anfiteatro’ opposite the entrance to the garden, designed for visitors to sit upon and view the garden. The accompanying description reads ‘Un pezzo di terreno seminativo ulivato con sito aperto dall’aria di Levante co’suoi Sedili e Siepe viva di Cipressi […] che viene a formare una specie di Anfiteatro in punto di veduta del Giardino (A piece of arable land with olives open to the breezes of the East with seats and hedges of living cypress […] that forms type of amphitheatre with a view of the garden)’.35 These second two descriptions obviously fit within the tradition of describing areas of the garden in terms of audience and stage, as outlined in the previous chapters. One of the earliest concrete records of the theatre is an inventory of 1670.36 This describes the ‘Fabbriche, Decorazioni, Ornamenti e Delizie’ (Fabric, Decoration, Ornament and Delights) of the Villa Garzoni and includes the description of ‘un teatro a giorno’ (a day theatre). Clearly the theatre was in place by 1670 and its construction probably belongs to the second phase of works upon the garden in the later seventeenth century.37 Similar to the Villa Reale the Garzoni theatre is tucked away, down the end of an avenue, in a partially enclosed space. The theatre as it exists today is formed by a stage which is a raised area of grass with a small hedge wall in front. The wings, four on either side, are formed by clipped hedge, in this case of cypress and are not angled. The Garzoni theatre is one of the smallest examples of teatro di verzura, only about a third of the size of that at the nearby Villa Reale in Marlia. It is decorated with two statues representing comedy and tragedy and two stone candelabra. The rear of the stage area has a small fountain and grotto. The current arrangement includes seats for the audience on the other side of the avenue facing the stage. Several eighteenth-century documents provide a visual source for the theatre’s structure. A sketch of c. 1780 by Michele Flosio is housed in the Lucchese Archives, showing the semi-circular stage area flanked each side by four wings. The sketch 33 Sbarra, Le Pompe, p. 362. 34 Sbarra, Le Pompe, p. 362. The lower garden ‘amphitheatre’ in the early twentieth century can be seen in Evelyn March Phillipps, The Gardens of Italy with Historical and Descriptive Notes (London: Country Life, 1919), fig. 349. 35 ASLu, Fondo Garzoni, p. 198, 1797, map 14. 36 ASLu, Fondo Garzoni, p. 55. 37 Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca, pp. 195–196.

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Figure 8.1 Terrilogio of the Villa Garzoni, 1792. Lucca, Archivio di Stato (Archivio Garzoni, n. 198 c.13). By permission of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism – Lucca State Archives.

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also indicates a fountain basin at the rear of the stage.38 Another ‘Terrilogio’ from 1792 illustrates the garden in its complete state, after the changes made by Ottavio Diodati in the eighteenth century (Fig. 8.1).39 This shows the garden with two entrances, one from the palace via a small garden, giardinetto, and another from the main road. The main axis of the garden was centred upon this gate on the main road. The plan shows the lowest terrace of the garden was occupied by two round basins with getti d’acqua, surrounded by parterres. The next terrace was divided into three sections, with the Garzoni coat of arms at the centre of each. Behind these are three transverse terrace walks. The plan shows the theatre to the far left of the water chain, at the end of one of the terraced walks, describing it as ‘un prato con un bellissimo teatro con spalliere tessute di Cipressi’ (a lawn with a beautiful theatre with clipped and espaliered cypresses). 40 Records also exist of the theatre’s condition in the early twentieth century. There is a plan of the Villa Garzoni in Shepherd and Jellicoe’s Italian Gardens of the Renaissance (1925) that shows the theatre clearly to the left of the central staircase and cascade.41 An early photograph of the theatre also exists, in E. March Philipps’ Gardens of Italy (1914), showing that the theatre’s condition at the start of the twentieth century was quite good. 42 The garden theatre was also illustrated by a number of architects from the American Academy in Rome during the early part of the twentieth century. 43 Villa Cenami, Saltocchio The Villa Cenami at Saltocchio dates to the last decade of the sixteenth century, though it was possibly not built by the Cenami family. 44 The earliest record of it in the possession of the Cenami is in 1657, when Flaminio De Nobili vicario generale, gave permission for Lorenzo and Anna Cenami to celebrate mass in the private oratories of both their palace in the city and in their villa of Saltocchio.45 A territory 38 ASLu, Fondo Stampe, n. 965. 39 ASLu, Fondo Garzoni, n. 198, c. 13, ‘Terrilogio di Parte de’ beni stabili di proprietá di sua eccelenza il Marchese Paolo Lodovico Garzoni Venturi nel Ducato di Lucca’. This plan has been published with the erroneous date of 1692 (Andreini Galli and Gurrieri, Il giardino e il castello, p. 88). 40 ASLu, Fondo Garzoni n. 28, Bozze de’ Beni della Nobile Casa Garzoni formate prima del 1692 da Duccino Duccini pub.o per.to Agrimensore, c.10. 41 J. C. Shepherd and G. A. Jellicoe, Italian Gardens of the Renaissance (London: Alec Tiranti Ltd, 1953), p. 49. 42 March Phillipps, The Gardens of Italy, p. 334. 43 Cazzato, Ville e Giardini Italiani, pp. 185–187, 189, 597. 44 The construction has been dated to 1590. In the villa itself the date 1599 has been incised into the central mosaic pavement. Belli Barsali La Villa a Lucca, p. 104 and 125 n. 73, notes that there is no documentary evidence to properly date the construction in the Cenami archives and the previous owners are not known. 45 ASLu, Archivio Diplomatico, Fondo Cenami, 1 giugno 1657.

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map of the villa, ‘Terrilogio di V Finucci del 1691’, still in the property of the Cenami, gives some idea what was present in the seventeenth-century garden: Una bellissima Chiusa murata intorno con Palazzo ornato di macigni e pitture con altre case per uso di servitù, con Capanne e Rimesse, con tinaro separato e stanze per riponervi i vasi, con Frantoro con due Chiesine una dentro a l’altra su la strada maestra con un Catro nobilissimo; con più Fontane, Peschiere, Laghetti, Teatri adorni di Statue, Strade coperte, Parterri, Boschetti, Giardini murati con Bosco murato per serraglio d’animali con terreni per Horti ripieni di diverse sorte di Frutti, con Vigne e Stradoni e con’altre sue ragioni e pertinenze, posta in ditto Commune di Saltocchio. A most beautiful walled enclosure with the Palace inside, decorated by stones and pictures with other houses for the use of the servants, with sheds and coach-houses with separate wine cellar and rooms for placing the vases, with an oil mill with two small churches one inside and the other of the main road with a most noble gate; with many fountains, fishponds, small lakes, theatres adorned with statues, covered walkways, parterres, small woods, walled gardens with wood walled for a menagerie of animals with earth for Kitchen garden filled with diverse kinds of Fruit, with vineyards and long road, it is in the aforementioned Commune of Saltocchio. 46

The garden was renovated in the early nineteenth century in a style ‘all’inglese’ by Bartolomeo Cenami, and the villa was sold in 1828 to the Bernardini family. The garden was illustrated by Shepherd and Jellicoe (at this point called the Villa Bernardini) in the early twentieth century and this twentieth-century drawing shows it to be largely unchanged. 47 The theatre is still extant, though the plantings have changed. The ‘Terrilogio’ map of the villa shows the theatre at the far end of the garden, on a direct axis with the palazzo. 48 This map suggests that the centre of the theatre would have been visible from the palazzo down a long narrow avenue, bordered by hedge walls. It is in the form of a hedge exedra, punctuated by five tall cypress trees and interspersed with niches and statues. The twentieth-century image from Shepherd and Jellicoe 46 Terrilogio dei beni stabili dello Spettabili Bartolomeo Cenami. Misurati e descritti da me Vincenzo Finucci Agrimensore Pubblico 1691, c.12 (disegno e descrizione), ms. di proprietà Cenami, Lucca. Republished in Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca, p. 105. Author’s translation. There is another description by Antonio Cerati from the later eighteenth century (Antonio Cerati, Le Ville Lucchesi con altri opuscoli in versi ed in prosa (Parma: Stamperia Reale, 1783), p. 7). 47 Shepherd and Jellicoe, Italian Gardens, fig. 37. 48 Reproduced in Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca, figs. 196–197, p. 201.

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shows that the form of theatre is still present but the plantings have been softened and a pool added in the centre. 49 There is also a sketch for a design for a garden in the Lucchese archives, which appears to be an eighteenth-century design for a garden renovation at the Villa Cenami, Saltocchio.50 The design contains at least two garden theatres. One is a wing theatre located in a bosquet to the right of the palazzo. The other is to the left of the palazzo with a curved flight of steps leading to a parterre garden. The theatre takes the form of an exedra, apparently to be constructed from hedges.

The Function of Hedge Theatres In much modern scholarship the hedge theatre has largely been assigned a purely symbolic role. In her study of the eighteenth-century gardens of Lombardy, Dianne Harris has even gone so far as to suggest that ‘small outdoor theatres formed of clipped vegetation seem redundant within the villa complexes that were themselves enormous theatres for the display of wealth, production, and culture’.51 The one study that that has looked at the phenomenon of the garden theatre in detail presents a similar interpretation. Marcello Fagiolo suggests that the hedge theatre is essentially symbolic. He links it to the scena satirica of Serlio and suggests that in the baroque period ‘venga realizzata quella sorta di ‘scena satirica’ che è il teatro di verzura (there was created a type of ‘satyric scene’, that is, the theatres of greenery)’.52 Maria Adriana Giusti, in the same study, also reads the teatro di verzura as a symbolic form that alludes to the role of a garden as a whole being a theatre, or as a stage set come alive. She concentrates on the garden theatre of the Villa Garzoni, describing it as a ‘maquette’ or ‘synecdoche’ of the greater garden theatre and observes the strange reversal of the green theatre, where the 49 Martini’s travel account (Martini, Viaggio in Toscana, 256) suggested that this pool was added by Filippo Juvarra in the early eighteenth century. The pool does have a distinct similarity to a several sketches that Juvarra made for Lucchese gardens around the year 1714, though none of these has been directly linked with the Villa Cenami (Gritella, Juvarra l’Architettura, vol. 1, pp. 194–197). 50 ASLu Fondo Stampe 966a. On the back of the drawing is written in ink ‘Cenami’ and in pencil ‘Saltocchio’. The drawing has been attributed to Juvarra (Giusti, ‘Teatri di vegetazione’, pp. 75–77) but the drawing is clumsily executed. The drawing has clearly been done in pencil and gone over in ink (perhaps by a different hand) so it is possible that this has exaggerated the clumsy execution. The drawing is not discussed as ‘by’ or even ‘attributed to’ Juvarra in Gritella, Juvarra l’Architettura. 51 Diane Harris, The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in EighteenthCentury Lombardy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2003), p. 153. 52 Marcello Fagiolo, ‘Il Teatro Vivente: La Scena della Vita e della Morte, dell’Amore e della Virtù’, in Teatri Di Verzura: La Scena del Giardino dal Barocco al Novecento, ed. Vincenzo Cazzato, Marcello Fagiolo, and M. Adriana Giusti (Florence: EDIFIR, 1993), pp. 10–14.

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structure is ephemeral, first ‘vivente’ (living) and then ‘muore’ (dead), while the performers, represented by statues, are static and seemingly more permanent.53 It certainly seems likely that these theatres, imitations of permanent structures rendered in an impermanent material with frozen performers, played a symbolic or representational role. These ideas of metamorphoses and the living turned to stone, or the transformation of inanimate objects into living things, certainly fit with broader decorative themes found in seventeenth-century gardens. But can we be sure that this was their only function? For their owners, gardens were spaces to be experienced, rather than analytically read. Such a reading denies the differences between various types of garden theatres and distracts attention from an understanding of how such theatres were experienced and used. Although the modern viewer may read hedge theatres as signifiers of the theatricality of the baroque garden, for the seventeenth-century viewer it would have been the experience that mattered. We must therefore ask the question: how were these gardens used and experienced by their owners and visitors? Among the scanty early references to hedge theatres there are some hints that they may have been used as performance spaces. For example, the inventory description of the Villa Garzoni made in 1670 describes the theatre as: [U]n teatro a giorno, con scenario di Verdi, suoi passage, e gabinetti, con grotticella graziosamente eseguita di tufi in fondo all scena, dalla quale grotticella sgorge acqua, con sotto vaschetta e zampillo, con statua rappresentante la Tragica a destra dello scenario, ed altra statua della Comica a sinistra; con due candelabra di pietra e con seditoio di pietrame lavorato in prospetto del proscenio, per comodo delli spettatori. A day theatre, with sets made from greenery, as are its passages and cabinets, with a small grotto gracefully executed in tufa at the back of the stage, from the little grotto gushes out water, and below it is a small basin and a jet of water, with a statue representing Tragedy at the right of the stage and another statue of Comedy on the left. There are two stone candelabra and a seat of worked stone with a view of the stage for the convenience of the spectators.54

The use of the term ‘day theatre’ (teatro a giorno) and the reference to accommodation for spectators on stone seats suggests that the theatre was used for performances 53 Giusti, ‘Teatri di vegetazione’, pp. 69, 82. 54 ASLu, Fondo Garzoni 55. Author’s translation. The exact date of the theatre’s construction is not certain. This inventory indicates that it was in place by 1670 and was probably part of the second phase of works on the garden in the later seventeenth century.

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during daylight hours. Similarly a description of the theatre at the Villa Reale at Marlia by the traveller Georg Christoph Martini notes that there is ‘[U]n teatro per la commedia chiuso da siepi: le scene sono realizzate con piante così elegantamente disposte da sembrare posticce (A theatre for commedia closed by hedges: the scenery is made from plants arranged with such elegance as to seem unreal)’.55 Martini’s description suggests that this theatre was to be used for performances of commedie (comedies, or more generally, plays). The word commedia in Italian texts refers both to comedy and play in a more general sense. The designation for commedia should be read as for ‘spoken word’ performances, rather than opera or music. It could also be read in a more general sense as indicating that this theatre was ‘for performance’ rather than a metaphorical theatre, as in a ‘teatro d’acqua’. Records of performances in hedge theatres do exist from the middle of the eighteenth century. By this time the hedge theatre had entered the mainstream of garden design, and variations were appearing in many Venetian and Lombard gardens, as well as further afield in Austria and elsewhere. The hedge theatre of the Villa Bianchi Bandinelli, for example, was constructed on the occasion of a wedding between the Bianchi Bandinelli and the Chigi Zondadori in 1768 and was apparently used for performances to celebrate their nuptials. There are also records of its use for a performance of a tragedy by Vittorio Alfieri in 1783.56 Similarly at the nearby Villa Sergardi at Torre Fiorentina there are records of a performance of a ‘Cantata Boschereccia’ performed in the ‘teatro campestre’ in the garden on 19 August 1804.57 In Lucca there are also a few records of theatrical activities taking place in villas. For example, the opera Il Conte d’Altamura was performed at the Villa Santini (now Torrigiani) at Camigliano, in 1692, although this was held not in the garden but in the small theatre within the villa itself.58 In the absence of clear evidence of how these garden theatres were used in the seventeenth century, how are we to reach a conclusion about their purpose? The answer may be to look at the way analogous features functioned. Both the sunken garden at the Villa Torrigiani and the grotto at the Villa Garzoni contained water tricks designed to wet the unwary visitor. Fishponds (peschiere) were not only ornamental but were often used for boating, as is shown in a painting of the garden at the Villa Mansi at Segromigno, as well as for their original purpose which was to 55 Martini, Viaggio in Toscana, p. 101. 56 Cazzato and Giusti, ‘Teatri di Verzura’, pp. 117–119. 57 Fargnoli, ‘Teatri di Verzura’, pp. 325–347. 58 The libretto (BSLu Ba, 314.3) Il Conte d’Altamura/ Dramma per musica/ Da Recitarsi nel Teatro/della Villa Di Camigliano dell’Illustrissimo Signore Nicolao Santini/ In Lucca/ Par Domenico Ciufetti 4 maggio 1792 (the date 1792 is erroneous and should read 1692). Another opera was performed in 1700, Amchilde Pellegrini, Spettacoli Lucchesi nei Secoli XVII-XIX, vol. 14, Memorie e Documenti delle Storia Di Lucca (Lucca: Tipografia Giusti, 1881), pp. 260, 282.

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provide fish for the table.59 Similarly the labyrinths found at the Villa Reale and the Villa Garzoni were meant to be engaged with actively: they were places for alternately losing and finding oneself, rather than patterns to be viewed. Miniature woods called selvaggi or ragnaie were stocked with exotic birds and animals to be hunted as much as to be admired. These examples make clear that many features of such gardens were not simply ornamental but were actively used. It seems likely, therefore, that hedge theatres, even those of small scale, were intended to be used for performances of some kind. If the precise nature of these performances is uncertain, they must surely have reflected the active musical life of Lucca. In a single year, 1653, the year after the construction of the first of the hedge theatres at the Villa Reale, the Lucchese were treated to numerous performances of opera, plays, cantatas and poetry recitations. These included a number of opere per musica in the Palazzo de’Borghi, a cantata performed in the middle of June entitled Applausi d’Elicona, and comedy performances by troupes of actors such as that for the festival of S. Croce. Typically at least two operas were performed for carnival, and other spectacles included performances by acrobatic troupes, and plays by travelling companies such as the Febi Armonici.60 In the year 1695, for example, during the winter months, there were performances of the opera La Forza dell’Innocenza, the commedia Il Geloso Immaginario con Il Finto Amico puntito dalla propria funzione and L’Intermedio in musica Il Finto Quoco, the comedy Le Gelose Cautele, l’Ermenegarda, and the play Cleonte.61 Sacred plays and cantatas were performed to mark various religious occasions, such as the feast of Santa Croce. Music also played a central part in the elections, ‘Le Tasche’, that were held in Lucca every two to three years to elect the representatives who would govern Lucca. The elections continued for five days, during which music was performed to mark the beginning of each day of voting and to celebrate its conclusion. Special serenate exhorting the virtues of good governance were composed especially for this event.62 Performance spaces were numerous for a city less than a quarter the size of Florence. The state had always been closely involved in theatrical productions, not only in terms of providing permissions for performances, but also in subsidizing performances such as those by the Accademia dei Balordi and also paying for stages to be constructed in the main palaces. Before the construction of the Teatro Pubblico 59 Saminiati, ‘Dell’edificar delle’, pp. 235–236. 60 Pellegrini, Spettacoli Lucchesi, pp. 119, 132–134 and Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, ‘Dalla ‘Finta Pazza’ alla ‘Veremonda’: Storie Di Febiarmonici’, Rivista Italiana di Musicologia 10 (1975): p. 380. 61 Pellegrini, Spettacoli Lucchesi, 270–272. Also see details of the performance of a comic troupe recommended by the Duke of Mantua, ASLu, Magist. Dei Segret. Delib. Cit. c.31 (17 agosto). 62 Gabriella Biagi-Ravenni and Carolyn Gianturco, ‘The ‘Tasche’ of Lucca: 150 Years of Political Serenatas’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 111 (May 1984): pp. 45–65.

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in the late seventeenth century the main performances space was the Palazzo dei Borghi, where a temporary theatre had been erected. Also used were the Palazzo Pubblico and Palazzo dell Potesta, as well as the Seminary, the Vescovato and various convents for sacred plays and cantatas. In addition, the various citizens or spettabile, played host to a variety of performances.63 The demand for theatre was such that in the late seventeenth century the Government decided to construct a permanent theatre. This theatre, the Teatro Pubblico or Teatro di Lucca, opened on the 14 January 1675 with the opera La Prosperita d’Elio Seiano. The leading patrons of theatre in the city of Lucca were also the owners of garden theatres. A contract of 5 June 1674 stipulates that four citizens, amongst them Lelio Orsetti and Nicolao Santini, who owned respectively the gardens of the Villa Reale at Marlia and the Villa Santini (now Torrigiani) at Camigliano (which, as was noted above, did not have a hedge theatre but rather a theatre inside the palazzo), made an application to the Offizio sull’entrate for ‘the theatre made for Comedies’ (Il Teatro fabricato per servitio delle Commedie) in which they asked for permission ‘to collect the rent, that is the price of the stanzini (boxes), situated in that theatre from those persons or person to whom they will be allocated by the said Office on the occasion of comedies or other public entertainments’ (‘risquotere affitto, or prezzo delli stanzini, esistenti in detto Teatro da quelli, ò quello à quali saranno destribuiti da detto M.to Ill. Off.o nell’occasione di Commedie ò altri pubblici trattenimenti’).64 A second contract requesting the use of a theatre for the performance of a commedia ‘placed near the church of St. Jerome’ (‘posto vicino alla Chiesa S. Girolamo’) for the whole period of Carnival in the following year bears the name of another Orsetti and that of Carlo Mansi of the Villa Mansi at Segromigno, where a hedge theatre would be constructed in the early eighteenth century.65 If these members of the Lucchese aristocracy were so closely involved in sponsoring and paying for theatrical productions it is not difficult to imagine that such activities were transposed to their villas and the green theatres within them. The designation of the Garzoni and Marlia theatres respectively as ‘teatro di giorno’ and ‘teatro per commedia’ might encompass any number of theatrical genres, ranging from a fully staged play to poetry readings. The statuary that decorates these theatres is generically theatrical, and ranges from representations of the muses of tragedy and poetry to commedia dell’arte figures. One thing, however, is certain: 63 Gabriella Biagi-Ravenni, ‘Il Teatro Pubblica al Servizio della Repubblica di Lucca’, in Il Melodramma Italiana in Italia e in Germania nell’etá Barocca, ed. Alberto Colzani (Como: AMIS Centro italo-tedesco Villa Vigoni, 1995), pp. 277–316. 64 ASLu, Offizio sull’entrate 277 (Contratti 1672–1674), fols. 161–163, as transcribed in Biagi-Ravenni, ‘Il Teatro Pubblica’, pp. 310–312. 65 ASLu, Notarile 4504 (Notaio Bernardino Buzzolini 1693), fols. 491–493, 6 November 1693. Biagi-Ravenni, ‘Il Teatro Pubblica’, 312–313.

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these theatres were hardly suitable for the performance of opera, and its requirement for an orchestra, sets and expensive singers. The hedge theatres were clearly better adapted to intimate, small-scale performances. The best documented performances set in gardens that fit this description are the poetry readings and orations held in the final decade of the seventeenth and first decades of the eighteenth century in the Accademia degli Arcadi (Arcadian Academy) in Rome. The garden performances of the Arcadian Academy may well be the best model we have for what went on in the hedge theatres of Lucca.

Academic Life in Seventeenth-Century Lucca A number of members of the Lucchese nobility would become members of the Arcadian Academy, but the formation of that academy in 1691 postdates the first garden theatres by at least twenty years. The Roman academy would create a permanent garden space for their activities when it constructed the Bosco Parrasio on the Janiculum in 1725 to a design by Antonio Canevari.66 The Arcadian Academy was one of a number of informal intellectual groups that often conducted their meetings within garden spaces. In Lucca there were comparable academies to the Arcadian Academy. The most prominent of these was the Accademia degli Oscuri founded by Giovanni Lorenzo Malpigli in 1584 and which continues to exist under the name of the Accademia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. The Oscuri traditionally held meetings in the country residences of its members, with the earliest meetings of the late sixteenth century held in the Villa Malpigli at Loppeglia and the Villa Buonvisi at Forci.67 The patrons of the gardens that contained hedge theatres near Lucca all appear to have been members of this academy, including the Cenami, the Garzoni, the Bernardini, the Orsetti, and the Mansi. So too was Niccolò Santini, although his garden at Camigliano did not have a hedge theatre, 66 Daniela Predieri, Bosco Parrasio Un Giardino per l’Arcadia (Modena: Mucchi Editore, 1990), P. Petraroia, ‘Il Bosco Parrasio’, in Il Teatro a Roma nel Settecento, ed. Luciana Buccellato and Fiorella Trapani, vol. 1, Biblioteca Italiana Di Cultura (Rome: Istituto dell Enciclopedia italiana, 1989), pp. 173–198 and Susan M. Dixon, Between the Real and the Ideal: The Accademia degli Arcadi and Its Garden in Eighteenth-Century Rome (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006). 67 The Accademia degli Oscuri continues to exist under the name of the Accademia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti), see Angelo Bertacchi, ‘Storia dell’Accademia Lucchese’, in Memorie e Documenti per Servire alla Storia di Lucca, vol. 13 (Lucca: Tipografia Giusti, 1881). On Malpigli’s villa see Belli Barsali, La Villa a Lucca, pp. 93–94. Several academies existed within Siena the Accademia degli Intronati and the Accademia de’Rozzi, see Giuseppe Fabiani, Storia dell’Accademia de’Rozzi Estratta da’manoscritti della Stessa dall’Accademia Secondente e Pubblicata dall’Acceso (Siena: Stamperia di Vincenzo Pazzini Carli e figli, 1775) for the links between these academies and Fargnoli, Teatri di Verzura, for garden performances associated with them.

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but it did have an indoor theatre. Another member was the poet Francesco Sbarra who composed the poem about the Villa Garzoni discussed above.68 The Accademia degli Oscuri, although ostensibly a literary academy, became closely involved with music and theatre. Many of the members were poets and composed libretti for plays and drammi per musica. Its members would assist in organizing the celebrations for Carnival and sponsor opera productions. One of the earliest was in 1612 when the Accademia sponsored a commedia, with intermedi between the acts based upon ‘il lepidissimo caso del fanciullo If i (Iphis)’. The intermezzi were performed in music and with scenery and effects by Federigo Arnolfini.69 In 1628 the academy put on a performance of the tragicomedy Aliffa with the intermezzo Esione. Singers were procured from outside Lucca with financial support from Romano Garzoni, who was nominated to the academy on 12 January 1628, with sets by the engineer and architect Muzio Oddi, who would later produce plans for the renovation of the Garzoni properties at Collodi.70 The academy also produced a number of dispute or poems, which were usually inserted between the acts of plays, and performed within the Palazzo Buonvisi ‘al Giardino’ where the academy had constructed its own indoor theatre. Hedge theatres would seem to be particularly suitable for small pieces such as these poetical dispute. In addition to their city base at the Palazzo Buonviso ‘al Giardino’ the Oscuri held meetings in the country residences of its members. That these country gardens were associated with poetry is supported by the presence of a ‘poets’ grove’ at the Villa Garzoni. The poet Francesco Sbarra, as well as composing the poem about the Villa Garzoni, also composed at least one sonnet and one madrigal in praise of the beauties of the Villa Garzoni. These would be perfectly adapted to being performed in the small garden theatre. Several decades later the Arcadians would be performing similar madrigals and poems in their various teatri in the gardens of Rome.71 The tradition of literary academies using villas and gardens as meeting places, combined with the fact that the owners of Lucchese gardens were also members of the Accademia degli Oscuri, points to a link between the hedge theatres in these gardens and the activities of the Oscuri. The idea that such theatres were signifiers or a result of the comprehensive ‘theatricalization’ of the baroque garden, while perhaps sufficient to explain such phenomena as the re-labelling of piazze as teatri d’ingressi, is insufficient to explain why such a particular type of structure 68 Sbarra, Le Pompe di Collodi. 69 Angelo Bertacchi, ‘Storia dell’Accademia Lucchese’, in Memorie e Documenti per Servire alla Storia di Lucca, vol. 13 (Lucca: Tipografia Giusti, 1881), p. xxi. 70 Bertacchi, ‘Storia dell’Accademia Lucchese’, 1881, p. xxii. 71 Dixon, Between the Real and the Ideal, pp. 22–24, 54–65. See also the proceedings of one of the Giuochi Olimpici, BAV, MAG STAMPATI R.G. Miscell.H.102 (int.1).

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as the teatri di verzura suddenly appeared in a particular location, Lucca. But it is not difficult to imagine that a patron like Romano Garzoni, closely involved with the Academy and with theatre generally, would want a space within the garden where he could conduct his own, intimate, gatherings of academicians or of other like-minded visitors to hear recitations of poetry or the singing of madrigals that celebrated the beauty of his garden. It is possible that these theatres in and around Lucca were an important precursor to the theatres conceived of for the Arcadian Academy from the last decade of the seventeenth century.

The Arcadian Academy and the Garden as a Stage for Intellectual Performance After the death of Queen Christina in 1689 a new group was formed by fourteen learned gentlemen in an open field near the Castel Sant’Angelo. On October 5, 1690 the fourteen founder members, headed by Giovan Mario Crescimbeni officially instituted the ‘Ragunanza degli Arcadi’, in the garden of the Padri Reformati behind San Pietro in Montorio.72 The members were interested in recovering the heritage of Rome’s golden centuries and took their name from the region in ancient Greece associated with the Golden Age. The meeting place, whatever its location, was considered to evoke the Parrhasian Woods, the ‘Bosco Parrasio’, the sacred grove of Apollo located on Mount Lycaeus in Arcadia in Ancient Greece. Members adopted a pseudonym as pastori or pastorelle. The Arcadians met out of doors and initially there was no fixed meeting point with the Academy gathering in various gardens around Rome, including the Farnese gardens on the Palatine, and the Ginnasi garden on the Aventine.73 The purpose of the Academy was to create and present literary compositions, to discuss the compositions and also other literary matters. It was intended that the members generate and disperse Arcadian logic and good taste, which were based on a few key concepts: balance between nature and reason in the name of ‘good taste’, between imagination and intellect, and between poetic invention and verisimilitude, in the name of ‘good sense’. The Arcadians intended to meet nine times a year and each meeting would involve the performance of poetic compositions. The Arcadians also held formal competitions at the Bosco Parrasio, which 72 Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, Storia dell’Accademia degli Arcadi istituita in Roma l’anno 1690 per la coltivazione delle scienze, delle lettere umane e dela poesia (London: T. Becket, 1804), http://archive.org/ details/storiadellaccade00cres, p. 53. 73 There were seven temporary meeting spots between 1690 and 1626, Dixon, Between the Real and the Ideal, pp. 54–64 and Predieri, Bosco Parrasio, p. 39.

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were called Olympiads or Giuochi Olimpici.74 The games revolve around song and poetry with descriptions such as: Primo Giuoco/Intitolato L’oracolo: Essendo stata fatta dal Custode ad uno de’più favi, e prudenti Pastori la solita interrogazione: se l’Arcadia sarà felice nella corrente Olimpiade, egli ha risposto co’seguenti enimmatici versi. First Game/Entitled the Oracle: Being put by the Custodian to one of the most favoured, and prudent Shepherds the usual interrogation: if the Arcadians are to be happy in the current Olympiad, he responded with the following enigmatic verses.75

A theatre was a key element of the places created by the Arcadians for their meetings from the outset, which always revolved around the performance of poetic verse and debate. In the accounts of the genesis of the Academy, which is recorded in their writings in a narrative that seems intended to create a quasi-mythical origin, the original group meets in the open air, seated upon the grass to recite poetry: In un altro di luoghi deliziosi, che Roma concede a suoi felici Abitatori. Avvenne pertanto un giorno, che sedendo eglino su un verde Prato, e recitando i loro Versi, uno di essi più spiritoso degli altri disse per gioco: Ecco per noi riforta Arcadia. In one of those delightful places, which Rome grants to its happy Inhabitants. It therefore happened that one day, as they were sitting on a green lawn and reciting their verses, one of them, more witty than the others, said as a game: Here we have reformed Arcadia.76

Over the next several decades the Arcadians met in a variety of settings, and each of these was expected to have a theatre, typically formed of natural elements such as grass, stone and hedge, almost as though it was a natural part of the landscape itself. 74 These are listed in Michel Giuseppe Morei, Le Vite degli Arcadia Illustri Scritte da Diversi Autori, e Pubblicate d’ordine della Generale Adunanza da Michel Giuseppe Morei Custode d’Arcadia. Parte Quinta. (Rome: Antonio de’Rossi, 1751), pp. 110–112. Many of the libretti of these events are still held in collections such as the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the Biblioteca Angelica, Rome. 75 BAV, MAG STAMPATI R.G. Miscell.H.102 (int.1), I Giuochi Olimpici / Celebrati dagli Arcadi nell’Olimpiade DCXX, p. 23. 76 This story is well known and often recounted in the literature on the Arcadians, a key version of it is found in Michel Giuseppe Morei, Memorie istoriche dell’Adunanza degli Arcadi (Rome: Stamperia de’ Rossi, 1761), pp. 18–20 and another in Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, L’istoria della volgar poesia scritta da Gio.Mar. Crescimbeni (Venice: L. Basegio, 1730), pp. 218–219.

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Other garden theatres included one at the Orti Farnesiani on the Janiculum, another at the Orti Ginnasi on the Esquiline, one at the Giardino Reale at the Villa Riario on Via della Lungara, which had been the long term residence of Queen Christina of Sweden (who had since been crowned the basilissa of the Arcadian Academy to acknowledge her role in bringing together the intellectuals of Rome who would found the academy).77 The Arcadians returned to the Orto Farnesiani where a semi-permanent theatre was created in part of the garden. They remained here until 1698 when a set of satirical verses caused friction between the Dukes of Parma and the Papacy. Descriptions of the early ‘boschi’ and theatres also appear in Crescimbeni’s book L’Arcadia (1708) which recounts the journey of a group of nymphs and shepherds to the Bosco Parrasio for the Giuochi Olimpici (Olympic Games), which were a regular feature of the meetings of the real academy in Rome. The book claims to record the origins of the academy, and though told as though it were a mythical origin story, features real members of the academy who appear under their Arcadian pseudonyms. They meet the painter Carlo Maratta (Disfilo Coriteo) and discuss painting and classical mythology, they meet the composer Arcangelo Corelli (Arcomelo Erimanteo) and hear the beautiful music he has composed in the hut of the famous shepherd ‘Crateo’ (Cardinal Ottoboni, the patron of Corelli), and they meet Selvaggio (Francesco Bianchini, a librarian and historian) who shows them antique medals. This text has been closely examined for what it tells us about Crescimbeni (and the other early Arcadians) conception that a structure for the Academy that promoted egalitarianism would overcome many of the restrictions on social and cultural life in the period, and that this newfound ‘sociability’ would help to promote ‘buon gusto’. In the opening pages we read that the ‘gentile brigata’ of nymphs and shepherds has reached the Bosco Parrasio and there follows a description of its form: in mezzo del Bosco si stende in forma di boschereccio Teatro, ove la state sogliono i Pastori concorrere da tutte le parti d’Arcadia a tener virtuose adunanze, e passare la noia della calda stagione in lieti canti, e in fruttuosi ragionamenti. È il Teatro in forma ritonda, e tanto vasto, quanto possano comodamente sentirsi le voci. Ha egli due ordini di sedili semplici, e rusticani, ma vaghi, e deliziosi, essendo tutti vestiti d’odorosa Mortella, e di verde Lauro insieme intrecciati. Rendono poi venerabile questo luogo le spesse magnifiche Piramidi, che alla memoria de’famosi defunti Arcadi con bell’ordine ivi sono innalzate: alle quali le Ninfe subitamente diedoro d’occhio, e chi di quà, e che di là corse a leggere l’inscrizioni, che v’erano incise. 77 Crescimbeni, L’istoria della volgar, pp. 221–224.

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the middle of the Bosco was laid out in the form of a woodland Theatre, where the Shepherds had been in the habit of coming together from all parts of Arcadia to hold virtuous meetings, and to pass the monotony of the hot months in lighthearted song and fruitful discussion. The Theatre is in a circular form, it is very big, as much as is possible to still comfortably hear the voices. It has two tiers of seats simple, and rustic, but beautiful, and delightful, being covered in fragrant Myrtle, and green Laurel intertwined together. This place was also made more venerable by the magnificent Pyramids, that have been raised here to the memory of the famous dead Arcadians: to which the Nymphs subtly looked upon, and who ran from here to there to read the inscriptions that were engraved upon them.78

As noted in Crescimbeni’s text itself this theatre is based upon one that was actually erected in 1705 in the at the Giardino Giustiniani in 1705 for the Giuochi Olimpici, in a footnote he wrote ‘Forma del Teatro che avevano gli Arcadi l’anno 1705 nel Giardino Giustiniani’. In another text by Crescimbeni recording the event of 1705 for which this theatre was erected, he describes it as follows: Il Teatro per questa funzione fu apparecchiato nel Giardino dell’Eccellentissimo Sig. Principe Giustiniani fuori di Porta del Popolo, entro amenissimo recinto di Lauri, ornato di bellissime Statue, e d’altre antiche memorie. Era fabbricato in forma circolare di due ordini di sedili boscherecci, ne’quali comodamente potevano adagiarsi presso a cinquecento persone. Nella parte più cospicua ambedue gli ordini s’aprivano, e davano luogo al Seggio accomodato per gli Eminentissimi Cardinali nella più magnifica forma, che possa permettere il séplice istituto di questa letteraria Adunanza. Dietro l’ordine esteriore erano alzate in egual distanza nove Piramidi riquadrate di circa venti palmi d’altezza, e nove di larghezza per ogni lato, le quali erano tutte coperte di lauri, e ornate su per gli angoli con festoni di cipresso, e di mortella, e con trecce di fiori: Siccome altresì lo stesso ornamento avevano intorno le Lapide sepolcrali, fi fino marmo, delle quali, nella faccia, che risguardava il Teatro, in ciascuna Piramide n’era incastrata una. The theatre for this function was erected in the Garden of the His Excellency the Prince Giustiniani outside the Porta del Popolo, within the pleasant enclosure of Laurel, decorated by beautiful Statues, and other antique memorials. It was made in a circular form with two rows of woodland seats, in which could comfortably be accommodated up to 500 people. In the most conspicuous section between 78 Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, L’Arcadia del can. Gio. Mario Crescimbeni custode della medesima Arcadia, e accademico fiorentino (Rome: Antonio de’ Rossi alla Piazza di Ceri, 1708), p. 5–6.

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the two levels of seats there was an opening, which created a place for a seat that accommodated the most eminent Cardinals in a magnificent fashion, which allowed the establishment of the simple institution of this literary Gathering. Behind the back of the rows there was raised, at equal distances, nine square pyramids, decorated on each corner with festoon of cypress and myrtle, and braids of flowers: the same ornament was also around the tombstones, of fine marble, which guarded the Theatre, one had been embedded in the face of each Pyramid.79

This construction was clearly substantial: the nine pyramids were almost five metres high, the surrounding benches and pyramids were both covered in green fabric to create the illusion, one assumes, of being within a natural theatre.80 This creates a clear link to the earlier teatri di verzura around Lucca and Siena. In 1721 after the death of the Academy’s protector, Pope Clement XI (1649–1721), the Arcadians named King John V of Portugal to fill the vacancy. Two years later he provided funds for the purchase of land for a permanent meeting place, and in October 1725 the first stones were laid.81 It was naturally a member of the Academy who was asked to design the garden, Antonio Canevari (1681–1764), who had joined the Academy in 1716.82 The garden was built on a triangular site bordered by the Via di Porta S. Pancrazio and the wall of the Palazzo Corsini gardens on the slopes of Rome’s Janiculum Hill. A perspective drawing after Canevari’s design shows the long narrow garden defined by its central axis which linked the entrance, bordered in the illustration by two pavilions that were never constructed.83 The amphitheatre, which formed the climax of the garden, was the most important feature and had been present in many of the seven earlier versions of the Bosco Parrasio.84 It has been suggested that the amphitheatre as a form was chosen for its associations with ancient Rome, and furthermore because as an architectural 79 Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni, I Giuochi Olimpici celebrati in Arcadia nell’Olimpiade DCXXI. in lode degli Arcadi defunti, e pubblicati da G. M. de’Crescimbeni (Rome: Stamperia di Antonio de Rossi, 1705), p. 7. 80 Katrina Grant, ‘The Bosco Parrasio as a Site of Pleasure and of Sadness’, Histoire Culturelle de l’Europe [En Ligne], Prochains Numéros, Jardin et Mélancolie En Europe Entre Le XVIIIe Siècle et l’époque Contemporaine, Jardin et Création Littéraire, 2019. 81 Dixon, Between the Real and the Ideal, pp. 83–104 for details of the commission and construction. 82 Paola Ferraris, ‘Il Bosco Parrasio dell’Arcadia (1721-1726)’, in Giovanni V Di Portogallo (1707-1750) e La Cultura Romana nel Settecento, ed. Sandra Vasco Rocca and Gabriele Borghini (Rome: Argos, 1995), pp. 137–148. 83 The drawing is held in the Accademia di San Luca, Rome see Anna Lo Bianco and Angela Negro, Il Settecento a Roma (Milan: Silvana, 2005), pp. 123–124. The garden still exists and has been undergoing restoration over the past few years. 84 Dixon, Between the Real and the Ideal, pp. 54–82 gives a history of these gardens, they are listed in many of Crescimbeni’s texts also, see for example, Crescimbeni, Storia dell’Accademia, pp. 6–8.

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Figure 8.2  Jonas Åkerstrom, Meeting in the Bosco Parrasio, 1788. Dimensions unknown. Watercolour on paper. Stockholm, Nationalmuseum (NMTiD 1423). Photo: Erik Cornelius/Nationalmuseum.

form it evoked the ‘idea of an event in which all participants were on an equal footing’.85 Although there was, in fact, a special bench for the cardinals or other prominent visitors that faced outwards across the slope and provided the best view. Behind the amphitheatre was the serbatoio, which functioned as an archive for the various manuscripts, published material, portraits of deceased members and also as an alternate meeting space in bad weather. Curving stairs lead the viewer up the ascending terraces in a manner which has been likened to the Spanish Steps, which were under construction at the same time.86 The amphitheatre of the Bosco Parrasio on the Janiculum when it was finished in 1726 was the main setting for the Academy’s meetings and continued to be used on a regular basis over the following decades, up to the end of the eighteenth century. A watercolour by Jonas Åkerstrom, Meeting in the Bosco Parrasio, 1788, shows the academicians seated around the amphitheatre (Fig. 8.2). The Arcadian 85 Dixon, Between the Real and the Ideal, p. 69. 86 John A. Pinto, ‘Architecture and Urbanism’, in Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Edgar Peters Bowron and Joseph J. Rishel (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000), p. 118. Dixon, Between the Real and the Ideal, pp. 65–68 suggests that there was a link with the staircase as used in theatre to signify a figurative movement upwards of a character.

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Academy’s theatre and garden is a highly sophisticated and nuanced version of the garden as a site for intellectual pursuits. It is unique, but at the same time could be considered the culmination of a tradition that had begun in the fifteenth century. Although many of the ideals, those of intellectual discussion, composition of poetry and an emulation of the golden age of antiquity remained the same, during the seventeenth century there was an increased tendency to centre such meetings around performance. Crescimbeni’s L’Arcadia suggests another link to topics discussed in previous chapters, that of the cultural imagination that viewers of spectacle (and visitors to gardens) carry with them when they experience a space or a performance. Crescimbeni’s record of the origins and early years of the Arcadian Academy’s existence are written not as a factual history (another Arcadian, Michel Giuseppe Morei, would later write this type of history) but as a founding myth for the Academy. Arcadia is layered over the real city of Rome, palaces become capanne (shepherds huts), cardinals become shepherds, villa gardens become the Parrhasian Woods. Like the large-scale performances at princely gardens, the real spaces and places are presented to the reader (or viewer) via a narrative drawn from myth and enacted upon the garden stage.

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285

Index Page numbers in italics refer to images. academe, grove of: 234 Accademia del disegno, Florence: 89 Accademia degli Arcadi: 15, 40, 250, 251, 252-58 Accademia degli Oscuri: 15, 250, 251 academies: 15, 89 and gardens: 40, 57, 150, 181, 233-35, 249-58 and theatre: 32, 49, 250-251 Addison, Joseph: 130 Åkerstrom, Jonas, Meeting in the Bosco Parrasio: 257 Alberti, Leon Battista: 48-49, 155 De Re Aedificatoria: 48-49 Aldobrandini, Cardinal Pietro: 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 213, Aleotti, Giovanni Battista: 14, 118-19, 122-23, 126, 237 Alessandro il vincitor di se stesso (Francesco Sbarra): 115 Alexander VII Chigi, Pope: 27, 191, 228 Alfiano, Epifanio, d’ Design for second intermedio from La Pellegrina: 66-67 Algardi, Antonio: 217 Altemps family: 158, 206, 208, 209, 213 Ambrogio, Angelo see Poliziano amphitheatres: 14, 97, 145-47, 150-51, 152, 153, 169, 179, 184, 187, 192, 226-27, 238, 241, 256, 257 see also Boboli Gardens, Florence Andromeda (Benedetto Ferrari): 128 Androméde (Pierre Corneille): 131, 134, 135 Apparati scenici per lo Teatro di Venetia nell’anno 1644: 129-30 Arcadian Academy see Accademia degli Arcadi Arianna (Claudio Monteverdi): 86 Ariosto, Ludovico: 45, 49, 55, 163, 165 Cassaria, La (Ludovico Ariosto): 45, 49 Aristotle: 69, 84-87, 123, 124, 133, 134, 156, 215, 234, Aristotelian unities: 84-87, 156 Aspertini, Amico: 157 Baldinucci, Filippo: 75, 95 Life of Bernini: 75 Barberini family: 13, 84, 98, 99-100, 102, 118, 137 Bardi, Giovanni de’: 62-63, 64-65 Bargagli, Girolamo: 64 Bartoli, Cosimo: 159 Bartoli, Daniello: 134-35 Beccari, Agostino: 57 bel composto: 20, 34, 75, 84 Bellerofonte (Vincenzo Nolfi): 9 Belvedere Courtyard, Rome: 153-160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 166, 168, 179, 212 Bernini, Gianlorenzo: 13, 24, 28, 32-35, 75, 83, 101, 135-39, 191, 227, 228, Cornaro Chapel, Rome: 24, 32-34, 33 Bibbiena, Cardinal, La Calandria: 49

Bibiena family: 46, 83, 194, 227 Bibiena, Ferdinano: 227 Architettura Civile: 195 Bibiena, Francesco, Il nuovo teatro dell’Accademia degil Ardenti al Porto: 194, 195 Boboli Gardens, Florence: 14, 68, 96-97, 145, 147, 175-80 Bonifadio, Jacopo: 58 Borghese, Scipione Cardinal: 202, 206, 208, 210 Borghese, Prince Giovanni Battista: 216 Borgonio, Tommaso: 96 Borromeo, Count Carlo: 220 Borromeo, Count Vitaliano VI: 220 Bosco Parrasio: 250, 252, 254, 256-58 Janiculum garden: 256-58 earlier versions: 253, 254, 256 Boscoli, Andrea: 89 Boucher, Francois, as theatrical artist: 30-31 Bracciolini, Poggio: 234 Bramante, Donato: 153, 155-57, 158, 159, 162, 212, 221, Bril, Paul: 84, 88, 92 Brosses, Charles de: 196, 213 Buonarotti the Younger, Michelangelo: 72-74, 75 Buontalenti, Bernardo: 12, 14, 65-70, 66, 67, 73, 83, 89, 95, 97, 118, 122, 123, 125, 126, 167-68, 179, Burnacini, Ludovico: 13, 84, 104-08 Wooded landscape on Mount Ida: 105 Figures on the bank of the River Xanthos: 106 Garden of Joy: 106 Grove of trees: 108 Cailleau, Hubert, design for passion play: 47-48 Callot, Jacques: 22, 23, 179 The Liberation of Tyrrhenus and Arnea: 22, 23 Camillo, Giulio, Idea del Teatro: 151 Camassei, Andrea: 99-100 Campanella, Tommaso: 132-33 Canevari, Antonio: 250, 256 Cantagallina, Remigio: 90, 92 Set for Il Giudizio di Paride: 90, 91 Carracci, Agostino: 65, 67, 89 Design for third intermedio from La Pellegrina: 67 Carracci, Annibale, River Landscape: 91-92 Carracci family: 88 Cartaro, Mario: 158, 159 Castello del Belgioioso, Belgioioso: 193, 195 Castello Visconti, Brignano: 192 Cavalieri, Emilio de’: 71 Cerati, Antonio: 228 Cesti, Antonio, Il Pomo d’oro: 104 Chaveau, François Scene for Act 3 of Andromède: 13, 132 Christina, Queen of Sweden: 252, 254 Ciampoli, Giovanni: 214-15

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Cicero: 58, 234 ‘Villa’ of: 149-50 Clement VII, Pope (de’Medici): 160 Clement VIII, Pope (Aldobrandini): 202, 203 Clement IX, Pope see Giulio Rospigliosi Collignon, Francois: 99, 100, 101 Pastoral Intermezzo from Sant’Alessio: 99-100 Scena campestre with Erminia and Ergasto: 99, 101 Contesa, torneo fatto in Ferrara, La (G.B. Estense Tassone): 118-21 Corneille, Pierre, Androméde see Androméde (Pierre Corneille) Corago, Il: 113, 122, 126 Cortona, Pietro da: 13, 98-99 Cotelle, Jean: 223 Crescimbeni, Giovanni Maria: 252, 254, 255, 256, 258 L’Arcadia: 254, 258 Dafne (Jacopo Peri): 72, 86 D’Alembert, Jean le Rond: 224, 225 Dal Re, Marcantonio: 183-85, 188, 192, 193, 195, 221, 222, 228 Prospetto del teatro delle Ucceliere: 185 Spaccato di Prospettive: 193 View of the Amphitheatre at Palazzo Brignano: 192 Water Theatre at Isola Bella: 222 d’Argenville, Dezaillier: 227 De Lalande, J.J.L.F.: 226 Della Bella, Stefano: 97, 176, 177, 178, 179 Carousel in Florence for the Marriage of The Grand Duke Ferdinand II: 177 Wood of Diana: 97 della Porta, Giacomo: 203 Descartes, Rene: 125, 130-31, 133 d’Este, Ercole: 59 d’Este, Isabella: 59 Diderot, Denis: 20-23, 24, 30-31, 224, 225 Diodati, Ottavio: 243 Donatus: 56 Doni, Giovanni Battista, Trattato della musica scenica: 85-86 Dughet, Gaspar: 135 emotion: 57, 59-60, 61-62, 133, 134, 135-39 and opera: 12, 13, 31, 39, 46, 48, 70-75, 82, 84, 86, 87, 102-04, 114, 122, 130-32, 135 boredom: 59-60, 61-62 delight and pleasure: 58, 62, 63, 81, 92, 103-04, 113-14, 136, 178-79 horror and fear: 73, 74, 102-03, 108, 131, 134-35, 138, 139 sadness: 108 see also wonder engineering: 68-70, 83, 88 stage design: 13-14, 64, 65, 68, 70, 83, 95, 115-18, 123-26, 128-29 garden design: 14-15, 124, 145, 152, 167-68, 178, 201-03, 208-09, 214-15, 217, 223 Erminia sul Giordano (Giulio Rospigliosi): 99, 101-03

Evelyn, John: 34, 130, 195-96, 201-02, 212, 213 Euridice, L’ (Jacopo Peri, Ottavio Rinuccini): 71-73 Euridice, L’ (Francesca Caccini): 86 Fabula d’Orfeo, La (Poliziano): 48 Fâcheaux, Les (Jean-Baptiste Molière): 223 Falda, Giambattista: 27, 183, 185, 188-91, 193, 204, 206, 207, 208, 210, 215-19, 228 Pamphilae villae prospectus quartus solem orientum videns: 219 Plan of the Villa Pamphilj: 218 View of the Grand Water Theatre at the Villa Aldobrandini: 204 View of the Water Theatre at Villa Ludovisi (Torlonia): 210 View of the water theatre and the garden at the Villa Mondragone: 207 Farnese family: 98, 118, 185, 227, 252 Félibien, André: 223 Felice, Simone, View of the Villa Borghese: 188, 189, 215 Ferrara: 49, 53, 59, 98, 99, 118, 119, 120, 121 Ferrari, Benedetto: 128 Fiera di Farfa, La (Gian Lorenzo Bernini): 137-38 Flooding of the Tiber, The (Gian Lorenzo Bernini): 138-139 Florence: 11-12, 26, 29, 60, 64, 68, 70, 71, 72, 75, 83, 84, 87, 90, 92, 96, 118, 127, 175, 179, 180, 182, 234 see also Boboli Gardens; Medici family; Pratolino Florentine Camerata: 62, 75 Flosio, Michele: 241 flower and plant theatres: 225-28 Fontana, Carlo: 221 Fontana, Giovanni: 203, 208 Frascati: 15, 149, 183, 196, 201-15, 221, 228, 235 Antique theatre: 149 See also Villa Aldobrandini; Villa Mondragone Villa Ludovisi Fried, Michael, and critique of theatricality: 24, 29-30 Fritz, Antonio and Giuseppe Pini, Anfiteatro d’Agrumi: 226 Frugone, Francesco Fulvio: 20 Furetière, Antoine, Dictionnaire Universal François et Latin: 224 Furttenbach, Joseph: 92-93, 123 Galestruzzi, Giovanni Battista Garden with Guilt, Pleasure and Knowledge: 219-20 Galileo, Galilei: 100, 125, 133 garden design: 57, 58, 68, 84, 186-87, 236-37, 239, 243 see also garden theatres garden experience: 38-39, 53, 57, 68, 164, 175-180, 181-83, 190-91, 195-97, 246-48, 252-53 as stage: 10, 12, 39-40, 68, 175-80, 181-82, 225, 233, 238 garden imagination: 38-39, 164 movement: 38, 39, 191 sensory: 38, 201-02, 212-13, 214-15

289

Index 

virtual reality: 38-40, 197 visitor as performer: 14, 31, 40, 164, 190-91, 241 visitor as spectator: 14, 31, 38, 158, 167, 176-178, 190-191, 195, 197, 201-202, 208, 212, 217, 241, 246 garden performances and entertainments: 39, 57, 180, 181, 217, 223, 234 garden theatres: 14-16, 35-36, 145-69, 175-95, 228, 235 antique sources for: 14, 146-50, 151, 153, 155, 156-61, 179, 184, 205-06 categorisation, definitions, terminology: 15, 145, 147, 180, 181-83, 184-85, 187-188, 224-25 connection to set design: 193-95, 214, 218-20, 222, 223-24, 237 exedra as theatre: 159-60, 162-63, 188, 189, 192, 196, 203-04, 205-06, 211, 215, 216, 217, 219, 221, 224, 244, 245 form and design: 147, 152, 155-56, 162, 163, 166, 167, 175, 179-80, 184-85, 187, 188-90, 192-93, 211, 212, 215-16, 226-28, 235, 254-57 piazzas and prospects as theatres: 188-90 use: 31, 152-53, 158-59, 161, 166-67, 175-79, 180, 190-91, 192, 201, 207, 212-13, 216, 245-46, 251 sources for study: 182-88 symbolism: 162-64, 203-05, 233, 245-46 see also amphitheatres; flower and plant theatres; hedge theatres; water theatres Garzoni, Romano: 240, 251, 252 Genga, Girolamo: 51-52 Giraldi, Giambattista Lettera ovvera Discorso: 56-57 Giudizio di Paride, Il (Michelangelo Buonarrotti il giovane): 90, 91, 94, 96, 121 Giustiniani, Vincenzo: 186-87 Gravina, Gianvincenzo: 133 Grazzini, Anton Francesco: 60, 83, 85 La Strega: 60, 85 Greenberg, Clement, and critique of theatricality: 24 Greuter, Matthias: 189, 209, 210 Pianta di Frascati: 209, 210 Grimaldi, Giovanni: 217, 218, 219, 220 Garden with Guilt, Pleasure and Knowledge: 219, 220 Guarino, Guarini, Pastor Fido: 57, 166 Guerra, Giovanni, Theatro per comodo gli spettatori: 68, 69, 167 Guidobaldo, Marquis di Monte: 125-26 Guidotti, Alessandro: 71 Guitti, Francesco: 13, 98-100, 102-03, 104, 118-23 Pastoral Intermezzo from Sant’Alessio: 100 Proscenium for La Contesa: 119 Scene campestre with Erminia and Ergasto: 101 Set for La Contesa: 120, 121 Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli: 149, 155, 157, 161, 205 hedge theatres: 15, 166, 187, 224, 227, 235, 237-52 Hero of Alexandria: 14, 68-69, 123, 125, 126, 168 Automata: 68 Pneumatics: 14, 69, 125 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: 150-51

Ideal City panels (Baltimore, Urbino, Berlin): 36-37 illusion: 9, 13, 29, 35, 49-50, 92-93, 114, 115, 127, 133-34, 139, 178-79, 201-02, 256 in theatre: 49-50, 92-93, 114, 115, 117, 120, 122, 128, 130, 132, 133, 134, 136-39 see also garden experience; perspective; stage machinery; wonder Impresario, The or Fontana di Trevi (Gian Lorenzo Bernini): 135-37 intermedi: 12, 37, 59-70, 72, 73, 81, 87, 89, 114, 122, 127, 137, 165, 168, 251 audience response: 61-62 connection to garden design: 68 critique of: 60-63 development: 59-60 precursor to opera: 63, 70 staging: 59, 60, 66, 67 Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore: 160, 220-22 Julius II, Pope: 155, 156, 157 Juvenal: 56 Jones, Inigo: 96 Kepler, Johannes Ad vitellionem paralipomena: 101-02 Küsel, Mathäus: 105-06 Wooded landscape on Mount Ida: 105 Figures on the bank of the River Xanthos: 106 Garden of Joy: 106 landscape drawing and painting: 13, 84, 87-95, 98-103, 108, 123-25, 134-35 connection to set design: 84, 94-95, 98-103, 108 Lauro, Giacomo: 53 Le Muet, Pierre: 222 Le Nôtre, Andre: 223 Leonardi, Cristoforo Martelli: 236-37 Liberazione del Ruggiero, La (Francesca Caccini): 96 Ligorio, Pirro: 149, 155, 157, 159, 160, 179 locus amoenus: 57 Longinus, On the Sublime: 134 Lorrain, Claude: 13, 84, 99-100 Lucca: 15, 235-37, 247-52, 256 see also hedge theatre, Palazzo Buonvisi ‘al Giardino’ Ludovisi, Ludovico Cardinal: 202, 209 Lyon, France: 28-29 macchine see stage machinery Maderno, Carlo: 203, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210 Maggi, Giovanni: 189 Maiano, Giuliano da: 152-53 Malpligli, Giovanni Lorenzo: 250 Malvezzi, Cristofano: 65 Mantua: 48, 234 Marcello, Benedetto, Il teatro alla moda: 20-21 Marenzio, Luca: 65 Master HCB, Tournament in the Belvedere Courtyard: 158

290 

L andscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy

Martini, Georg Christoph: 235-236, 247 Medici family: 11-13, 68, 75, 166, 234 patronage of theatre: 32, 60, 64, 65, 68, 75, 87, 89, 96 Christine of Lorraine: 29, 64 Medici weddings: 28-29, 60, 64, 68, 72, 73, 81-82, 118, 176 Grand Duke Ferdinando I, de Medici: 60, 64 Francesco de’Medici, wedding: 65, 159 Marie de’Medici marriage to Henri IV: 72 see also Clement VII, Pope (de’Medici) Mellini, Domenico, Discorso nel quale si prova: 69-70, 123 Menestrier, Claude-Francois: 74, 130 Des representation en musique: 74 Monteverdi, Claudio: 74 Arianna: 86 Orfeo: 86 Mortoft, Francis: 212-13 Naldini, G.B.: 157 nature: 9, 47, 53, 57, 68, 69, 132, 134-35 human control of: 122-126, 177, 202, 213-14 idea of: 57-58, 65, 88 human relationship with: 9-10, 58, 68, 69, 87, 88, 114, 123-26, 132, 134-35 on stage: 39, 51, 65, 115, 117-18, 121-22, 128, 131, 135, 225-26 third nature: 57, 58 naumachiae: 118, 152-53 Nicholas V, Pope: 153, 155, 156 Nietzsche, Friedrich: 23 Nozze degli dei, Le (Ferdinando Saracinelli): 96-97 nymphaea: 149, 153, 162 connection to water theatres: 205, 207, 211-12, 224 opera: 12-13, 26, 46, 70-75, 81-82, 84-87, 104-08, 114, 126-27, 129-31 audience response: 70-72, 108, 114, 131 connection to antique: 72 , 85, 86 debates about staging: 20, 73-74, 114 emergence: 70-75 naming conventions: 86-87 pastoral: 46, 85-87, 93 sensory experience: 74, 75, 81, 92, 114, 132 staging: 72-75, 82, 84-85, 96, 98, 104-08, 127, 129 see also set design; stage machinery Orsini, Vicino: 162 Ovid: 86 Orti Farnesiani, Rome: 185-186, 191, 252, 254 Palazzo Borghese, Rome: 216 Palazzo Buonvisi ‘al Giardino’, Lucca: 251 Palazzo Farnese, Caprarola: 162, 208 Palladio, Andrea: 14, 147, 205, 207 Pamphilj, Cardinal Camillo: 217 Parigi, Alfonso: 13, 84, 88, 96-98, 107, 175 Wood of Diana: 96-97

Parigi, Giulio: 13, 22, 23, 84, 88-96, 97, 100, 104, 107, 119, 121, 175, 179 Garden of Calypso on the Island of Ogygia: 92-95, 94, 96 Isle of Ischia an intermezzo from La liberazione del Tirreno: 22 Landscape depicting a hunter with a falcon, 91-93 Paris: 129, 130, 131 Parma: 98, 118, 179 pastoral see theatre, pastoral; opera, pastoral Patrizi, Francesco Della Poetica: 133-34, 214 Pellegrina, La (Girolamo Bargagli): 60, 64, 65, 66, 67, 122 Peri, Jacopo: 65, 71, 72, 86 perspective: 12, 29, 33-34, 36-37, 46, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 65-67, 89-90, 93-95, 96, 99, 102, 107, 119, 122, 130, 155-56, 195, 223 one-point perspective: 12, 46, 48, 50, 53, 55, 65-67, 89-90, 119, 195, 215 see also illusion; Aristotelian unities Peruzzi, Baldassare: 46, 49, 50 Pini, Giuseppe see Fritz, Antonio Plautus: 59 Plato: 123 plays: 45, 47-48, 50, 51, 56-57, 65 comedy: 51 classical revival: 48, 56-57, 59-60, 63 pastoral: 47, 48, 50, 56-57 satyr: 47, 50, 51, 55, 56-57 satyr vs satirical: 55-57 tragedy: 50, 51 Pliny the Younger: 14, 58, 146-48, 149, 155, 160, 161, 184 Pluche, Noël-Antoine Le Spectacle de la Nature: 225 Poliziano (Angelo Ambrogio): 48 Pomo d’Oro, Il (Francesco Sbarra): 13, 104-08 Pozzoserrato, Lodovico (Lodewijck Toeput): 58, 181 Pratolino, Florence: 12, 68, 118, 167-69, 221 Prosperi, Bernardo: 45, 49, 50 Quaestiones mechanicae: 124-25 Quirinal Gardens: 210, 216 Rainaldi, Carlo: 216 Raphael: 160, 161 Rappresentatione di anima, et di corpo (Alessandro Guidotti): 71 Regio Parco, Turin: 165-67, 169 Riario, Cardinal: 49 Rinuccini, Camillo: 63, 81, 92 Rinuccini, Ottavio: 65, 72 Rome: 26, 27, 83, 84, 98, 100, 127, 137, 149, 153, 156, 160, 183-84, 189, 190, 205, 212, 216, 217, 219, 221, 227, 234, 235, 250, 252-54, 258 see also Belvedere Courtyard; Bosco Parrasio; Orti Farnesiani; Palazzo Borghese; Piazza San Pietro;Villa Borghese; Villa Doria Pamphilj; Villa Giulia; Villa Madama; Villa Pallavicini Rospigliosi Rosa, Salvator: 135

291

Index 

Rospigliosi, Giulio: 98, 99, 102-03, 127, 218 Rossi, Bastiano de’: 64 Sabbattini, Nicola, Pratica di fabricar scene: 115-17, 116, 121, 122, 124, 125 Sacro Bosco, Bomarzo: 39, 162-65, 169 Saminiati, Giovanni di Vincenzo: 236, 248 Sannazaro, Jacopo Arcadia: 58, 164, 165 Sangallo, Antonio: 160, 161 Sangallo, Bastiano da: 55 Sangallo, Giovanni Battista da: 54, 55, 160 Drawings of the Tragic Scene, Comic Scene and Satyric Scene: 54, 55 Sansovino, Francesco: 164 Sant’Alessio, Il (Giulio Rospigliosi): 98-99 Santini, Niccolò: 249, 250 Sbarra, Francesco: 104, 115, 240, 251 Scamozzi, Vincenzo: 46 Scarabelli, Orazio, The fifth entry arch for the Medici wedding: 28, 29 Schor, Johann Paul: 216 science: 101, 102, 130-32, 132-35, 168 and theatre: 101-02, 130-32 and garden design: 168, 214-15 understandings of perceptions and senses: 132-35, 215 sensory experience see opera; garden experience; theatre Serlio, Sebastiano: 12, 36, 37, 50-53, 55, 57, 58, 60, 63, 64, 67, 100, 119, 120, 152, 154, 159, 162, 245 Plan of Poggio Reale in Naples: 154 Satyric Set: 51-53, 52, 55, 67, 119, 245 Tutte le opere d’architettura: 50-52, 152, 153, 159 set design: 9, 12-14, 20, 31, 35-37, 45-46, 48-53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 63, 65-68, 72-75, 81-84, 85 antique sources for: 48-49, 50-51, 54, 55, 62-63 audience experience: 48, 59, 68, 70, 92-93, 102-03, 108, 114, 121, 134 connection to garden design: 35-36, 53, 68 construction of sets: 46, 47-48, 51-52, 92-93 connection to other visual arts: 31-32, 34, 35, 38, 46, 58, 74, 82-84, 87-95, 103, 108 floats: 48, 59 garden sets: 40, 50, 67, 81, 89, 92-95, 96, 104-108, 106, 129, 218-20, 223-24 landscape sets: 37, 40, 46, 48, 51, 53, 54, 55, 58, 66, 67, 84, 86, 89-92, 96-97, 99-100, 102-03, 104-08, 106, 119-24, 128, 178 sources for study: 11, 32, 46-47, 58, 82-83, 89, 102-03, 115, 128 symbolism: 46, 84, 104-08 type sets: 50-51, 54, 55-56 urban settings: 47-48, 49-50, 65, 107 see also opera; plays; stage machinery; theatre Sgrilli, Bernardo: 167 Silvestre, Israel: 222 spectators: 19-21, 25, 29-31 see also garden experience, visitor as spectator; opera, audience response; set design,

audience experience of; stage machinery, audience response stage machinery: 31, 48, 59, 60, 61, 62-63, 72-75, 91, 96, 102-103, 104, 108, 113-26, 128-31, 135-39 audience response: 102-03, 122-23, 128, 129-31, 134, 136-39 construction: 116-17, 137 justification for use: 62-63 mimicry of nature: 31, 37, 64, 114, 116-18, 122-23, 128, 135, 177 periaktoi: 48, 93, 122, 148 secrecy: 11, 46, 121, 122, 136 as magic: 122, 129, 137, 178 see also engineering; intermedi; stage sets; wonder Strozzi, Giovanni Battista: 60-62, 83 Tanlay, France: 222 Tasso, Torquato: 55, 57, 88, 99, 176 Aminta: 57 teatro d’acque see water theatre teatro di verzura see hedge theatre Teagio, Bartolomeo: 58 theatre: 11, 14, 15, 20, 23, 25-6, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33-34, 35, 39, 59, 148, 179, 248-49 audience response: 59-60 connection to painting and sculpture: 33-35 definitions: 27 metaphor: 14, 15, 23, 25-6, 27, 29, 135, 195 modernists and critique: 23-24 sensory experience: 47 urban design: 27-28, 179 see also garden theatre; set design theatricality: 10-11, 17-19, 21, 23, 24-7, 29-31, 32-33, 34, 37, 38, 145-46, 191, 193, 246, 251 theatrum mundi: 10, 27, 105, 151, 168, 201, 217 Tiepolo, Giambattista: 18 Toeput, Lodewijck see Pozzoserrato, Lodovico Tomeo, Niccolò Leonico: 125 Torelli, Giacomo: 82, 83, 104, 105, 107, 128-32, 134-35, 223 Scene for Act 3 of Andromède: 131-32 Torre, G. B. Set for a Contesa: 120 Tribolo, Niccolo: 14, 83, 147 Turin see Regio Parco Udine, Pellegrino da: 49 Unities see Aristotelian unities; verisimilitude urban design see theatre, urban design Urban VIII, Pope: 40, 100-01, 126 Utens, Giusto: 97, 147, 167 van Zanten, Jan: 206, 216 Vasari, Giorgio: 31-32, 49, 65, 157 Venice: 9, 74, 75, 105, 108, 118, 126-30 Venturini, Giovanni: 216 verisimilitude and unity of place: 12-13, 84-87, 120, 133, 156 Veroli, Giovanni Sulpizio da: 48

292 

L andscape and the Arts in Early Modern Italy

Versailles: 38, 215, 223-24, 227, 237 Vienna: 84, 104 Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati: 40, 97, 145, 201-06, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213-14, 217 Villa Barbarigo, Valsanzibio: 39 Villa Barbaro, Maser: 205, 207 Villa Bernardini, Vicopelago: 238, 244 Villa Bianchi Bandinelli, Geggiano: 238, 247 Villa Borghese, Rome: 184, 188-89, 215-17, 218-19 Villa Cenami, Saltocchio: 237, 238, 243-45 Villa Chigi, Cetinale: 238 Villa Chignolo, Chignolo Po: 184 Villa di Corbetta: 184 Villa d’Este, Tivoli: 196, 207, 228 Villa Doria Pamphilj: 190, 217-19 Villa Ducale, Colorno: 226-27 Villa Garzoni, Collodi: 228, 237, 238, 240-43, 245, 246, 247, 248, 251 Villa Giulia, Rome: 205, 212 Villa Lante, Bagnaia: 53, 153, 162 Villa Ludovisi, Frascati: 202, 208-10 Villa Madama, Rome: 148, 160-62, 163, 166, 168, 181, 234 Villa Mansi, Segromigno: 238, 247, 249 Villa Mondragone, Frascati: 97, 196, 202, 206-08, 209, 211, 212, 213, 216, 218, 222 Villa Montalto, Rome: 189 Villa Morosoni Cappello, Cartigliano: 227 Villa Pallavicini Rospigliosi, Rome see Quirinal Gardens Villa Poggioreale, Naples: 152-53, 154, 155 Villa Reale (Orsetti) (Pecci Blunt), Marlia: 237, 238-40, 241, 247, 249

Villa Sergardi, Torre Fiorentina: 238, 247 Villa Torrigiani (Santini), Camigliano: 235, 247, 249 Villa Terrasi Vagnoli/Piccolomini, Castelnuovo Berardegna: 238 Vigarani, Carlo: 223 Virgil: 58, 86 virtual reality see garden experience Vitozzi, Ascanio: 165 Vitruvius: 12, 36, 37, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 57, 108, 148-50, 161 De architectura: 50, 54, 55 Warcupp, Edmund: 228 water theatres: 14, 15, 145, 181, 196, 201-25, 239 form and design: 203-05, 206-12, 215-24 see also garden theatres; nymphaea water tricks: 36, 40, 182, 196-97, 208, 211, 213, 237, 243, 247 wonder: 9-10, 12, 13, 51-52, 61-62, 63, 69-70, 113-15, 120-23, 125, 129-35, 136-39 gardens: 168, 176, 179, 214, 228, meraviglia: 9-10, 12, 61, 63, 113-15, 134, 175 power: 61-62, 68, 70, 123-24 theatre and opera: 51-52, 61-62, 68, 122, 129-32, 136-39 Wotton, Henry: 31, 196 Zamberlan, Francesco: 228 Zambotti, Bernardino: 59 Zeno, Apostolo: 20 Zuccaro, Federico: 165-66