Reproduction of the stone vases of Villa Lante della Rovere



                                

Code art.: 14586
Price: 3.400,00 €
Stock availability: 2

Villa Lante in Bagnaia, a hamlet of Viterbo, is, together with Bomarzo, one of the most famous Italian Mannerist surprise gardens of the sixteenth century. Since December 2014, the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities has been managing it through the Lazio Museum Complex, which in December 2019 became the Regional Directorate for Museums.

Despite the lack of contemporary documentation, the design of the villa is attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola.

For those who arrive after having just visited Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, the first notable impression is the difference between the two Vignola villas, even though they were built in the same area, in the same period, and in the same architectural style: the similarities between the two monuments are few. .

In 2011 it was voted "most beautiful park in Italy". In 2014 a commemorative silver coin with a nominal value of 5 euros was dedicated to her, inserted in the "Villas and gardens of Italy" series.

Construction began in 1511, but was completed around 1566 on commission from Cardinal Gianfrancesco Gambara.

The villa is known as "Villa Lante". However, it did not acquire this name until, in the 17th century, it passed into the hands of Ippolito Lante Montefeltro della Rovere, 1st Duke of Bomarzo, when the building was already 100 years old.
The gardens are the main attraction of Villa Lante, especially the water features, from waterfalls to fountains to dripping grottos. This harmony of water and the perfection of its flow was reached only when the architect called to him, from Siena, a specialist in hydraulic architecture, Tommaso Ghinucci, with the task of supervising the hydraulic project. The well-known garden architect Pirro Ligorio was also consulted, but it is Ghinucci's genius that still flows and lives on in his gardens today.

Entering from this rusticated arch into the village square, leaving behind the dusty, arid and populous square, you enter a different world, fresh, clean and green. The first comparison is the Quadrato, a perfectly regular parterre, built a generation before the first French parterre at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and that of Fontainebleau: the contrast between the village square below and the view on the new parterre must have been be, in the past, even more stunning than today.

The twin houses are on one side only while the other three sides of the garden are bordered by tall box hedges. In the center, the small boxwood shrub is shaped and molded to form decorative motifs surrounding small fountains and sculptures. The most characteristic feature of this parterre is the complex fountain placed at its center, formed by four basins, separated by cordoned paths, with parapets decorated with stone pine cones and decorative urns that intersect the water.

Fountain of the Moors by Giambologn

At the heart of the complex, a central basin contains the famous Fountain of the Moors by Giambologna: four full-size Moors, arranged to form a square around two lions; they hold up the heraldic mountain surmounted by the jet of the fountain in the shape of a star, the coat of arms of the Montalto. This is the focal point of this unusual arrangement of casini and parterre. The Moors delimit the space that one would expect to see occupied by a large building flanked by the two casinos. Only here does one realize that the whole complex is, in fact, a perfectly planned composition devoid of ostentation. Here the garden is not conceived as a mere appendix or, at most, a complement, but is an integral part of the original conception of the villa as a whole.

Above the main parterre the visitor can climb through oaks, holm oaks and plane trees, seeing fountains and sculptures that open through unexpected views, and seeing them again in unexpected contexts. We then arrive at the first of the ascending terraced gardens: here, housed between two stone stairways, is the Fontana dei Lumini, a circular stepped fountain; on the gallery of each step, small fountains in the shape of oil lamps gush out small jets of water. Flowering shrubs of camellias, and other ericaceae, added in the 19th century, shine in the shade of this terrace.

On the next terrace, the third, there is a huge stone table with running water in its center. In this place, Cardinal Gambara entertained his guests with picnics. On the terrace there are still other fountains, which reproduce river divinities. Above is the fourth terrace, containing the chain of water a play of water that Vignola added to many gardens of the sixteenth century. Also visible at Villa Farnese and Villa d'Este, this stream of cavities cascades down the center of the steps to end at the bottom of the terrace.

On the next upper terrace there are still fountains and grottini, and two small casinos that frame other fountains, completing a composition known as the 'theater of the waters'. These small casini, like their larger counterparts on the lower terrace, have a particular design, probably also by Vignola, with open loggias supported by Ionic columns. They bear the name of Cardinal Gambara carved on the frame. One of the casini gives access to a small secret garden, a garden of hedges and topiaries, with a line of columns that gives it an almost melancholy atmosphere.

A perspective plan from 1609 shows a wooded area with paths and views towards the obelisks, and a labyrinth.

Sizes and weight are referred in Inches and Pounds
Height: 27.95
Diameter: 19.69
Weight: 352.74
Manufacturing: Italiana / Made in Italy
Material: Pietra dei Colli Berici
Historical references: 0
Where the original is kept: 0


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