The landscape architects of the Boboli Gardens…
1561 CE
The landscape architects of the Boboli Gardens of the Pitti Palace in Florence, begun in 1560, exploit natural undulations in the land to create water pressure.
As the garden lacks a natural water source, a conduit is built from the nearby Arno River to feed water into an elaborate irrigation system.
Some of the first and most familiar formal sixteenth century Italian gardens, the mid-sixteenth century garden style, as it is developed here, incorporates longer axial developments, wide gravel avenues, a considerable "built" element of stone, the lavish employment of statuary and fountains, and a proliferation of detail, coordinated in semi-private and public spaces that are informed by classical accents: grottos, nympheums, garden temples and the like.
The openness of the garden, with an expansive view of the city, is unconventional for its time.
The Boboli Gardens have been laid out for Eleonora di Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici.
The first stage had scarcely been begun by Niccolo Tribolo before he died in 1550, and has been continued by Ammanati, with contributions in planning from Giorgio Vasari, who has laid out the grottos, and in sculpture by Bernardo Buontalenti.
The elaborate architecture of the grotto in the courtyard that separates the palace from its garden is by Buontalenti.