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MEDICI
VILLAS
Another
great testimony of the presence of the Medici family in Tuscany are their
impressive villas they used as summer residences. This tour starts with
the visit of the Poggio a Caiano villa, designed by Giuliano da Sangallo
for Lorenzo the Magnificent and built around 1480, this is the best known
of the Medicis villas.
In front of the villa there is a
garden redesigned in the nineteenth century. The villa has an unusual
"H" –shaped ground plan which stands on a porticoed base. A
loggia (portico) with Ionic columns and a broad pediment with a glazed
terra-cotta frieze by Andrea Sansovino (the original is in a room inside)
is situated at the center of the harmonious classical facade. The double
curving staircase was added in the late eighteen century to replace the
original rectilinear flights of stairs. Of particular note in the
marvelously furnished interior is the splendid "Salone di Leone
X" (which takes its name from the famous pope, son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent) with important sixteenth-century frescoes: episodes from
Roman history, with obvious allusions to the life of Lorenzo, were begun
by Andrea del Sarto and finished by Alessandro Allori. The finest work,
however, is the lunette frescoed by Pontormo, depicting the rural
divinities Vurtumnus and Pomona, one of the masterpieces of Florentine
Mannerism. The most evocative of the country idylls so delightfully
described in the verses of Lorenzo il Magnifico. The trip carries on towards Carmignano where it one can see the
villa "La Ferdinanda". The villa was designed by Buontalenti in
1594 as a "hunting lodge" for Ferdinand I, since it lay in the
vicinity of the vast private hunting reserve (hundreds of hectares on
Monte Albano), set aside by Cosimo I.
The most striking element is the host of chimneys (which has earned it the
name of "Villa of the hundred chimneys") which, like so many
miniature towers, add a note of gaiety to the austere facade. Actually
there are only forty , and each one corresponds to a specific room.
The
famous series of lunettes by the Flemish painter Giusto Utens which depict
the Medici villas were in the main room which is at present primarily used
for lectures, conventions and banquets. As we head back to base-camp there
are two more “must-sees” near Sesto Fiorentino: they are La Petraia,
and Castello (only the garden). Villa La Petraia was formerly a
castle of the Brunelleschi family, and in 1575 it passed to Cardinal
Ferdinando de' Medici who had Buontalenti completely renovate the
structure. Of particular beauty is the great entrance court: covered with
a glass skylight in the nineteenth century so it could serve as a ball
room, it houses a series of frescoes by Volterrano (17th cent.) depicting
the pomp of the house of Medic. Elected as his summer residence by Victor
Emmanuel II, the villa still has richly furnished period rooms (an odd
collection of parlor games is also on view).
The building overlooks an Italian-style garden laid out by Tribolo, who
also designed the famous fountain of "Fiorenza Emerging From the
Water" sculpted by Giambologna. Nurseries, hothouses and basins are
scattered throughout the "terraces", with their geometrically
patterned boxwood hedges. The spacious English park stretches between the
villa of the Petraia and that of Castello, and is characterized by its
dense groves of holm-oaks, cedars, pines, plane trees, conceived by the
Bohemian landscape artist J. Fritsch, for the Lorraines.
(click
on photo to enlarge)
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