NORDISK MUSEOLOGI 2008 ● 1-2, S. 74-96

Local heroes – memory in action in the late renaissance garden

JAMES M. BRADBURNE*

Abstract: Hero of Alexandria was a prolific inventor who lived in the 1st century CE and whose writings enjoyed a marked resurgence of popularity in Renaissance Europe. The Greek original of Hero’s most influential text, the Mechanics, was lost early, and was only transmitted to the West in Arabic. The Greek text of his less im- portant – and possibly unfinished – work on Pneumatics, however, found its way to Europe after the fall of Constantinople, where it had been preserved in what Will Noel calls ‘the Ark for ancient literature’. Texts often precede performance, but are equally often the consequence of a tradi- tion of ‘situated’ or maker’s knowledge. This paper looks at the ways in which knowledge became ‘resituated’ in the practice of Renaissance engineers, artists and garden architects through the rediscovery and diffusion of Hero’s Pneumatics. It ex- plores why Hero’s Pneumatics enjoyed such new-found popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries, how Hero’s texts were transmitted and interpreted, and to whom. The paper will argue that this revival in interest was due in part to the near-con- temporary recovery of other classical texts, such as those by Archimedes, Vitruvius and Hermes Trismegistus. Finally, the paper will argue that the Renaissance me- mory of Hero’s Pneumatics is best understood through built works rather than texts, and that these works played an important cultural and ideological role in the revival of neo-Platonism and neo-Pythagorean thought in post-Reformation Euro- pe, losing their potency only with the end of the Thirty Years War. Key words: Renaissance memory, Hero of Alexandria, Pneumatics, neo-Pla- tonism, the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, the Villa Medici at Pratolino, the Hortus Palatinus at , museum, strategy of ‘visible listening’.

Redaktionel kommentar: THE ORIGINAL HERO Artiklen udspringer af et mundtligt oplæg på seminaret “Erindring og glemsel”, København, marts 2008 (se Even though historians as late as the 19th cen- under rubrikken Konferencer og seminarer). tury were uncertain of his dates, Neugebauer convincingly argued in 1938 that Hero of Alexandria lived about 62 CE, on the basis of LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

astronomical evidence. Although Drachmann vive the fifteen centuries that lay between 75 pleads his case,1 it seems that Hero was a ‘B- their writing and their reception in Renaissan- list’engineer, overshadowed by Ctesibios and ce Italy? Philo (from whom he borrowed freely) and that Hero had the singular good fortune of INTO THE ARK having his works preserved, whereas those of his predecessors were lost, mentioned only by Many ancient writers never survived the cen- later writers such as Hero’s contemporary Vi- turies after the Fall of Rome and the adoption truvius.2 Of Hero’s works, his Mechanics were of Christianity by the ruling classes. Either the far and away the most influential, followed by texts did not make the jump from the medi- his Dioptra, Automatic Theatres and his Geo- um of the papyrus roll on which they were metria. Drachmann argues that the Pneuma- originally written to the parchment codex, a tics and the Automata (often found together) process that took some three centuries to were never finished, and consist of a series of complete, or they were lost in the fires and notes on various ‘toys’, a position later reitera- disasters – natural and political – that beset ted by Boas3. Famously, these inventions in- the great libraries of the time, such as when cluded the eolipile, a supposed precursor of the Archbishop of Alexandria sacked the Sera- the steam engine, and various other devices peum, the daughter library of the famous mu- that activated automata, opened curtains, cau- saeum, in 391 CE. Alternatively, they were not sed statues to move or birds to sing. Most of copied because they had little to do with the them depended on an understanding of the roadmap for Christian salvation – they were ways in which air behaves when exposed to not dangerous, they were merely irrelevant. In heat or cold, but unlike Philo, Hero also pro- the course of the first eight centuries of the posed devices that used sophisticated systems Common Era, countless classical texts were of pulleys, quite unparalleled until modern ti- damaged, destroyed, lost or mislaid. There mes.4 His pneumatic devices were based on a were only two havens left for classical learning belief that air was a substance consisting of – Constantinople and Baghdad. Writing tiny particles, between which there was a va- about the preservation of the Archimedes pal- cuum. There is no continuous vacuum in na- impsest, Will Noel writes “Constantinople it- ture, but as Hero’s devices showed, air was sus- self did the one thing it had to do for Archi- ceptible to expansion and contraction, as the medes, and for so many ancient authors; it particles moved closer together or further survived. It was the only city of the ancient apart. As Boas remarks ‘Hero’s Pneumatica is a world of any consequence to survive unmole- treatise on natural magic, as later centuries sted into the Middle Ages. Constantinople called the unexplained properties of nature.5 served as the ark for ancient literature, and the Toys or magic, Hero’s inventions found a wil- Noah of the classics was the Emperor Theodo- ling audience at the courts of the Renaissance, sius. A hundred years before Isidore built his and his automata clearly responded to specific great church, Theodosius had already con- needs of the time and embodied specific structed the city’s massive walls to weather the understandings about the world and how it Dark Age storm.”6 functioned. But how did Hero’s writings sur- The other escape route for ancient texts was JAMES M. BRADBURNE

76 through the Islamic world, and much of the his Automata, appear to have been read and legacy of Greek Antiquity first reached Europe used by both the Banu Musa and Al Jazari.7 in the Middle Ages through Arabic transla- Even though sacked ruthlessly by Christian tions. In particular, the ‘House of Wisdom’ forces during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, founded by Al Mansur in 762 CE played a Constantinople remained a safe haven for nu- central role in preserving Greek science and merous texts of Greek Antiquity, such those of astronomy. The House of Wisdom was origi- as Hero, for a few centuries more. However, nally charged with translating works from Per- after the demise of the Comnenian dynasty at sian, then from Syriac and only later Greek. the close of the 12th century, the Byzantine Under the patronage of caliph al Ma’mun Empire went into decline and the Byzantine (813-833), the emphasis shifted from Persian emperors fled to nearby Nicaea, which beca- to Greek science. At that time, the library was me a camp for refugees from Constantinople. directed by the poet and astrologer Sahl Ibn From this base, Constantinople was taken Harun (d. 830) and other scholars associated from its final Latin ruler, Baldwin II, by By- with the library included some of the Islamic zantine forces under Michael VIII Paleologus world’s greatest astronomers and engineers: in 1261. By 1261, the population of the city Mohammed ibn Musa al Khwarizmi (780- may have fallen as low as 35,000, but Michael 850), the brothers Bana Musa and Yaqub ibn VIII succeeded in increasing the population Ishaq al Kindi (801-873). Along with all the to 70,000 people by the end of his reign. other libraries in Baghdad, the House of Wis- When the Ottoman Turks finally captured it dom was destroyed during the Mongol inva- in 1453, marking the end of the Byzantine sion of Baghdad in 1258 – it was said that the Empire, the population was at 50,000 people waters of the Tigris ran black for six months – a quarter of its population at its height in with ink from the enormous quantities of bo- the 12th century. With the arrival of the oks flung into the river. Interestingly, alt- Turks, the door to Constantinople’s treasures hough Hero is mentioned by Arab authors, slammed shut. Happily, however, many had many of his works did not appear to be wide- already found their way to Venice and the ly read or used, and neither his name nor his West. works are mentioned by the historian Al Ya’qubi. Given the large number of spurious THE TROJAN HORSE and pseudo-Heronic writings, however, his in- fluence can be detected in the Arabic literatu- How did the Greek text of Hero’s Pneumatics re even when his name is not explicitly men- find its way to Italy? In her landmark 1949 tioned. For instance, it has long been noted study of the transmission of Hero’s writings, that Al Khwarizmi’s chapter on Geometry clo- Marie Boas notes that fragments of his works sely parallels Hero’s, as do several other of his had already circulated in manuscript form in calculations. On the other hand, the three the Middle Ages, and a partial translation of brothers Banu Musa appear not to have read Hero’s Mechanics is referred to by Henricus Hero’s Geometry, although Hero’s books on Aristippus.8 Nevertheless, all complete Greek Mechanics (which is only known through an manuscripts date to the 15th century, brought Arabic translation), Pneumatics and especially to Italy from Constantinople. LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

As Jonathan Harris writes, “The image of church of the Holy Apostles, became a mee- 77 the Byzantine exiles as venerable scholars fle- ting place for Greek and Italian scholars, often eing with their books under their arms repre- known as the ‘Academy’, where this issue sents both an exaggeration and an understate- could be discussed. All the aspirations of Bes- ment. It exaggerates the part played by indivi- sarion were driven by three ideas: the union of dual Byzantines in the revival of Greek lear- the Oriental Church with the Latin, the re- ning in Italy, while ignoring the vast majority scue of Greek lands from Muslim domina- of the émigrés, who were involved in no scho- tion, and the virtues of classic literature and larly activity whatsoever.”9 Nevertheless, as philosophy, especially the Greek. Over the Harris himself stresses, it is equally wrong to years he had assembled an extensive library of underestimate the importance of the scholars. Greek codices, many of them brought with “Certainly the Byzantine diplomat Chrysolo- him from Constantinople, others he had copi- ras played a key role when he was invited to ed at his own expense. After he became Patri- teach Greek at Florence University in 1396. arch of Constantinople, he gave his treasures Chrysoloras only occupied this post between to the Republic of Venice where they formed 1397 and 1400, but in that period had a tre- the nucleus of the famous Biblioteca Marcia- mendous effect. Among his pupils were some na. Of all of Bessarion’s legacies, this was per- of the foremost figures of the revival of Greek haps the most far-reaching. In 1469, he pre- studies in Renaissance Italy, including Guari- sented his immense library of over 900 volu- no da Verona (1374-1460) and Palla Strozzi mes, many of them copied by the scribes, to (1372-1462). the church of St. Mark in Venice. Bessarion Chrysoloras was not the only one to receive chose Venice partly because he considered it such a welcome. When George Gemistos Plet- the most politically stable and secure of the hon attended the Council of Florence in Italian city states, and partly because it had of- 1439, his lectures on the differences between fered a refuge for so many of his fellow Gre- the work of Plato and Aristotle were eagerly eks. With the advent of printing, in the 1490s received and prompted the later comment of the Italian printer Aldus Manutius established Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) that Plethon had a Greek press in Venice. The choice of loca- brought the spirit of Plato from the Byzantine tion was no doubt dictated by the availability Empire to Italy.”10 Next to Chrysoloras, the of Greek texts in the library of St. Mark’s, for towering figure in the transmission of Greek Manutius based his editions on these books. It learning to Renaissance Italy was Cardinal was with the help of émigré Greeks such as Bessarion. Demetrius Doukas and Mark Mousouros that Bessarion’s importance as a defender of Pla- Manutius produced printed editions of nearly to in the early Renaissance cannot be underes- all the works of the major Greek authors of timated. As Harris writes, “During the 1450s Antiquity before 1515, thus ensuring their and 1460s, a debate raged in Rome as to survival for posterity.11 whether it was legitimate for Christians to read Plato, and the community of Greek scho- THE HEROIC AGE lars was at the centre of the controversy. The household of Cardinal Bessarion, close to the Despite having arrived in manuscript with JAMES M. BRADBURNE

78 Bessarion – the Pneumatica was certainly pre- With Commandino’s Latin edition (which sent in the earliest inventory of his library in was subsequently reprinted in Paris in 1583 146812 – Hero had to wait over a century be- and again in Amsterdam in 1680, in a lavish fore being translated into Latin and the verna- illustrated edition18) the explosion of interest cular. The first fragments of Hero appeared in in Hero’s Pneumatics begins in earnest.19 The Latin as a paraphrase in Giorgio Valla’s De ex- first printed editions of Hero’s Pneumatica in petendis et fugiendis rebus, published in Venice vernacular Italian appeared in 1589, the illu- in 150113. The first Latin edition was publis- strated edition by Aleotti20 published in Ferra- hed by Federico Commandino (1506-1575) ra, and the translation by Commandino’s col- in Urbino in 1575,14 as part of a broader pro- laborator in Urbino, Bernardino Baldi21 (Bal- ject to make Greek learning available in the di’s work was re-published in 1601). The ver- lingua franca (he also published editions of nacular editions were generally not translated Archimedes, Aristarchus, Euclid, Ptolemy and directly from the Greek, but instead from Pappus, as well as De superficierum divisioni- Commandino’s Latin edition. Another Latin bus by Machometus Bagdedinus at the request edition, by Alessandro Giorgi – who was also of John Dee in 1570). Urbino and the court active at the court in Urbino and claimed of Duke Federigo da Montefetro had been a Commandino as a colleague – appeared in flourishing centre for humanist studies since 1592.22 Even after the first printed editions, the 1460s and Montefeltro’s library was Hero’s works were still copied and circulated among the most renowned in Italy. Despite in manuscript form, notably by Bernardo Da- the gift of donation to Venice in 1468, and vanzati and Oreste Vannoccio Biringuccio in perhaps to protect them from being appropri- 1582, both prepared for Buontalenti. Hero’s ated, Bessarion confided a large number of his works also found their way into the literature Greek manuscripts to Federigo in 1471, and on natural magic, such as Giambattista Della they were only finally removed to the Biblio- Porta’s Pneumaticorum Libri tres, which was teca Marciana in 1474. According to the 1474 based almost entirely on Hero, and the nume- inventory, Hero’s works were among the bo- rous other ‘Books of Secrets’ that flourished in oks sent from Urbino.15 Given the interest in the second half of the 16th century.23 Greek texts and the availability of willing scri- By the end of the16th century, Europe bes in Urbino, it seems likely that Hero’s text abounded with literature on mechanical devi- was transcribed before it left for Venice, and it ces such as pumps, mills and fountains, such seems likely a Greek manuscript copy was in as Ramelli’s (1531-1600) Le Diverse et Artifi- the Biblioteca Urbinate when it was removed ciose Macchine24 Jacobo Strada’s (1515-1588) to Rome in 162716 to form – along with the Kunstliche Abriss allerhand Wasser- Wind- Ross- great Biblioteca Palatina, the spoils from the und Handt Mühlen, etc.25 Jacques Besson’s sacking of Heidelberg by Spinola’s troops in Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum26 1621 – the nucleus of the great Biblioteca Va- and Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s Magiae ticana. It thus seems likely that Commandino Naturalis libri viginti27 – all informed at least and Baldi both would have consulted the Gre- in part by the rediscovery of Hero of Alexan- ek manuscript copy in the Duke of Urbino’s dria’s writings. This should not suggest that library.17 Hero had become a household word – at least LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

not yet. As Alexander Marr notes in his autho- many of other Neoplatonists such as Porphy- 79 ritative updating of Boas’s survey, we must be ry, Iamblichus and Plotinus. Following the more cautious than Boas herself was in assu- lead of Gemistos Plethon, Ficino tried to con- ming that just because a printed text was avai- flate Christianity and Platonism, while his lable, that it was widely read. ‘As one might interest in astrology and astral influences des- expect, the library lists of those authors wri- cribed in the Hermetic texts brought him to ting on automata in the period include copies the attention of a suspicious and sceptical of these books [the Corpus Heronicum]. John Church. Most importantly, the Ficinian enter- Dee owned Commandino’s Latin translation prise was one of recovering texts – seen to be of the Pneumatica, whilst Baldi owned this the door to ancient knowledge, and the key to edition and Giorgi’s 1592 Italian translation. recreating the golden age of Classical Anti- […] Yet the surviving evidence prompts a rat- quity. Inheritor of a long tradition of textual her more conservative estimate of the geo- exegis, Ficino was reluctant to see the texts he graphical extent of the books’ circulation than translated as operative; aimed at doing rather has previously been supposed.’28 Notwithstan- than merely understanding. For Ficino, texts ding this understandable scholarly reserve, it were just that – texts. To his successors, howe- is clear that Hero’s works – and in particular ver, texts were more than just texts, they were the Pneumatica and the Automata – enjoyed instructions – recipes for intervening in the an unprecedented popularity in the last quar- real world. ter of the 16th century, a popularity that was Very broadly put, the climate of Renaissan- only to grow in the first decades of the 17th ce humanism fostered at the Medici court century. nourished the belief that Man could operate not only in the physical realms, but in the in- tellectual and divine realms as well, by means WHO NEEDS NEW HEROES? of the correspondences operating at different But why now? What accounts for the renewed levels of the putative angelic hierarchy.29 Ac- interest in Hero’s writings in the late Renais- cording to Agrippa and Reuchlin, for instan- sance, specifically after 1500? To understand ce, the powers of the angels could be invoked the explosion of interest in Hero and his if the adept could discover their Hebrew na- pneumatic wonders, we have to return to the mes by means of Cabalistic formulae and nu- fertile years in which the first Greek texts arri- merological manipulations.30 As promoted ti- ved in Italy, and made their way to the Medici midly by Ficino, and more aggressively by court in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century. Pico della Mirandola, Renaissance neo-Plato- The key figure in the translation of Greek nism, conflated with the so-called prisca theo- texts into Latin was Marsilio Ficino. When logia of Hermes Trismegistus, provided the Cosimo de Medici decided to re-establish Pla- philosophical underpinning to the pursuit of to’s Academy in Florence, his choice to head it most natural philosophy well into the mid- was Ficino, who made an authoritative trans- 17th century.31 In this hybrid, text, image, ob- lation of Plato in 1484, as well translating a jects and number provided privileged insights collection of Hellenistic Greek documents of into the natural world, and into the world of the Corpus Hermeticum and the writings of the spirit, as defined by the humanist doctrine JAMES M. BRADBURNE

80 of the microcosm and the macrocosm, and by in the Middle Ages (and roundly condemned the Hermetic three worlds of the terrestrial by St Augustine32), newly translated from the (man), celestial (astral influences mediated by Greek by Ficino in 1463. In a celebrated pas- angels and demons) and super-celestial (the sage, Trismegistus tells Asclepius that man can divine). author gods, in the form of statues in which According to this view, the world was God’s were animated by drawing down celestial in- book, and his answers were written in it for all fluences using talismans and images. Just prior to seek. God’s immanence in the world me- to this passage, Trismegistus describes the se- ant, among other things, that all relations ven spheres who have Fortune or Destiny as were real relations, that mathematical truth, their ruler, and states that ‘Air is the instru- the behaviour of the stars and planets, and the ment or organ of all these gods’.33 Over a cen- characteristics of natural phenomena were all tury later, in the introduction to his 1592 presentations of God’s mind in the world. translation of Hero’s Pneumatica (De spiritua- There was no question of a proportion adequ- lis), Alessandro Giorgi situates Hero in the ately representing beauty, it was beauty. In the Platonic discourse: ‘spirituali comes from the same way, neither did a talisman need to re- spirit, and Hero intends by this use of spirit, present an abstract quality, it was the quality. the affected air, which was also the opinion of It must be emphasised that in the Renaissance Hippocrates, as is seen in the Book of the Spi- there are no gaps between thought and signs rit of Plato in his Timaeus’.34 and between signs and reality – as there was It is important to stress that up till now, later to be in Descartes’ mathematicised and Hero has been translated as a text, and repre- mechanistic universe. To the Renaissance sented many things: the recovery of ancient thinker, relations between objects, numbers, wisdom, an instruction manual for making and images were real relations, and they did machines, a key to magical knowledge. But not stand for relations in any arbitrary way. first and foremost it had been translated as Equally, words and signs were knowledge, part of a textual tradition of copying and reco- they did not merely stand for knowledge. This pying, of reading and glossing and requoting. approach thereby avoids one of the key pro- Even after decades of scholarly revision of the blems of modern epistemology, that of the more exaggerated and extravagant claims of adequacy of relation between ideas and things, historians of the Renaissance such as Yates, words and ideas. The key expression of this Gombrich, and Rossi,35 it can still be argued view is the so-called Corpus Hermeticum, a va- that an important sub-text of the late Renais- ried body of writings which include the Pi- sance court was the belief – or at least the awa- mander, the Asclepius, a well as the highly ma- reness – of Christian Cabalist hermetic neo- gical Picatrix, originally attributed to an Platonism, in which one possible task of the Egyptian Magus contemporary with Moses, natural philosopher was to establish corres- and later shown to have been written in the pondences between the ideal and real worlds early centuries of the Common Era. The key in order to better understand the workings of text in this approach to the world can be nature, which was God’s book, on the one found in the Asclepius, the only book of the hand, and to control nature by means of these Corpus Hermeticum already available in Latin correspondences, on the other. According to LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

this world view, by creating the correct corres- and greased leather. In this way, it is likely that 81 pondences between objects, images, texts and the beliefs – and the practices – of the readers the greater worlds of the angels, the natural of texts and the makers of wonders diverges philosopher would be able to participate in di- significantly. vine or quasi-divine powers. In fact, Yates and others argue that the position taken on the FROM HEROIC WORDS TO HEROIC DEEDS ‘god-making’ section of the Asclepius situates the writer precisely in the Christian Hermetic As with Vitruvius, Hero is remembered not landscape of Renaissance thought. only – or perhaps best – by his writings, but in It is precisely this intellectual environment the uses to which he was put, notably in the of Christian Hermeticism built on Ficino’s Italian Renaissance garden. Courts thirsty for translation of the Corpus Hermeticum – con- innovation vied with one another in creating temporary with Bessarion’s stay in Italy with spectacles, pageants and gardens filled with the Corpus Heronicum – that fuelled an inte- hydraulic and mechanical wonders. Three gar- rest in automata and other ‘animated statues’. dens typify this translation of Hero’s Pneuma- Air was still the instrument of the gods, and tica into real, tangible built objects: the Villa these statues were still considered natural ma- d’Este at Tivoli, the Villa Medici at Pratolino gic – as practitioners found to their dismay36 – and the Hortus Palatinus at Heidelberg. but instead of being powered by astral influ- Villa D’Este. The Villa d’Este was arguably ences and inhabited by demons, they were the first important Italian garden to use a wide worked by bellows, kettles and siphons. Along variety of hydraulic and pneumatic techniqu- with Grafton, I believe that the enormous es. It was commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito interest in Hero’s Pneumatica was one of the II d’Este (1509–1572), son of Alfonso I d’Es- consequences of an intellectual environment te and Lucrezia Borgia and grandson of Pope in which theological, philosophical and proto- Alexander VI and completed in 1605 by his scientific speculation found a practical outlet heirs. Ippolito II had the villa reconstructed to for expression among the architects, engine- plans of Pirro Ligorio under the direction of ers, artists and alchemists that peopled the the Ferrarese architect-engineer Alberto Gal- courts of sixteenth century Europe. Did the vani, court architect of the Este family. Pirro engineers who read the texts – or tried to use Ligorio, who was responsible for the icono- them – actually believe they were calling graphic programs worked out in the villa’s down astral powers? Like their colleagues the frescos, was also commissioned to lay out the alchemists and other natural philosophers, the gardens for the villa, with the assistance of To- answer is probably that failing a full under- maso Chiruchi of Bologna, one of the most standing of the factors involved, they were skilled hydraulic engineers of the sixteenth prepared to make allowances for the putative century. Ligorio, Vignola and Chiruchi also effects of astral influences,37 while at the same worked on the fountains at Villa Lante at Bag- time it is unlikely that few makers of automa- naia near Viterbo, and Ligorio was later re- ta – even failing a working notion of ‘air’ – be- sponsible for the famous Mannerist garden at lieved that their movements relied on anyt- Bomarzo. The garden is laid out on a central hing but the workings of kettles, lead tubing axis and includes some five hundred jets in JAMES M. BRADBURNE

82 fountains, pools and water troughs, supplied be due in part to the influence of Renaissance by the nearby river Aniene, which is partly di- neo-Pythagoreanism and neo-Platonism, as verted through the town, and by the Rivellese Renaissance thinkers of all kinds were invol- spring, which supplies a cistern under the vil- ved in the recovery of the Orphic hymns; the la’s courtyard. The garden’s iconography is music by which Orpheus was said to have drawn largely from Ovid’s the source of much quieted wild beasts. Orpheus was believed to Renaissance imagery. The villa’s uppermost be one of the chief poets and musicians of terrace ends in a balcony with a sweeping view Antiquity, and the inventor of the lyre. With over the plain below. Double stairs flanking his music and singing, he could charm wild the axis lead to the next garden terrace, with beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance and the Grotto of Diana, richly decorated with even divert the course of rivers. As one of the frescoes and pebble mosaic to one side and the pioneers of civilization, he is said to have central Fontana del Bicchierone attributed to taught humanity the arts of medicine, agricul- Bernini, where water issues from a seemingly ture and writing. He was also closely connec- natural rock into a scrolling shell-like cup. To ted with the magical arts, especially astrology, descend to the next level, the visitor is re- and is said to have founded or several impor- quired to take stairs at either end – the elabo- tant cults, such as those of Apollo and Diony- rate fountain complex called the Rometta is at sius. In addition to the well-known story of the far left – to view the full length of the Orpheus and Eurydice (Metamorphoses XI), Hundred Fountains on the next level, where Ovid also recounts that the Maenads, angry the water jets fill the long rustic trough. A vi- for having been spurned in favour of ‘tender sitor may then walk behind the water through boys’, first threw sticks and stones at him as he the arcade of the concave nymphaeum, which played, but his music was so beautiful even is peopled by marble nymphs by Giambattista the rocks and branches refused to hit him. En- Della Porta, whose writings on pneumatics raged, the Maenads tore him to pieces during were derived almost entirely from Hero. Abo- the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies. A number ve the nymphaeum, the sculpture of Pegasus of Greek religious poems were attributed to recalls to the visitor the fountain of Hippocre- Orpheus, but of this vast literature, only two ne on Parnassus, haunt of the Muses, a theme examples survive whole: a set of hymns com- that recurs in many of the Este-derived gar- posed at some point in the second or third dens. This terrace is linked to the next by the century CE, and an Orphic Argonautica com- central Fountain of the Dragons, dominating posed somewhere between the fourth and the central perspective of the gardens, erected sixth centuries CE. Clearly Orpheus’s ability for a visit in 1572 of Pope Gregory XIII, who- to call down astral influences resonated with se coat –of arms features a dragon. Central the Hermetic doctrines, and throughout Eu- stairs lead down a wooded slope to three rec- rope poets, musicians and engineers, notably tangular fishponds set on the cross-axis at the the Pléiade, were inspired by the possibility of lowest point of the gardens, terminated at the recovering pristine ancient rhythms in poetry right by the water organ38 and Fountain of and music. For some of the members of the Neptune. Pléiade, such as Pontus de Tyard, the act of The fascination with water organs may also the poetry itself was seen as a form of divine LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

inspiration, a possession by the Muses similar artifice like that of the organ; and then by other 83 to romantic passion, prophetic fervour or al- springs they set in motion an owl, which, appearing at coholic delirium.39 the top of the rock, makes this harmony cease instant- It is not clear to what extent Ligorio had ly, for the birds are frightened by his presence; and read Hero, but he had certainly been in Urb- then he leaves the place to them again. ino in the early 1540s, where he was responsi- ble for the decoration of the Loggia of the Pa- Pratolino. The Heronic villa par excellence was lazzo Ducale, and could well have had access the Villa Medicea at Pratolino, built by the so- to Hero in manuscript. At Villa d’Este, he was litary Francesco I de Medici in part to please assisted by a Frenchman, Claude Venard, who his Venetian mistress, the celebrated Bianca was an experienced manufacturer of hydraulic Cappello, to designs of the polymath Bernar- organs. Organs figured not only in the Corpus do Buontalenti (1536-1608) from 1569 to Heronicum, but notably also in Vitruvius, who 1581, although it was used to provide the set- was widely translated by the mid-sixteenth ting for Francesco’s wedding to Bianca Cap- century. Michel de Montaigne’s Journal de vo- pello in 1579. yage en Italie (1580-81) contains one of the The garden was laid out along a perfectly best contemporary accounts of the Villa d’Es- straight axis passing through the centre of the te’s use of water organs40: villa, which stood midway. Down the central descent, the visitor still walks under a cooling The music of the [water] organ, which is real music arch of fountain jets, without getting wet. Mi- and a natural organ, though always playing the same chel de Montaigne, one of the earliest visitors thing, is effected by means of the water, which falls to leave a description of Pratolino, saw it in with great violence into a round arched cave and agi- 1581, and considered it to have been built to tates the air that is in there and forces it, in order to rival the Villa d’Este. A long description was get out, to go through the pipes of the organ and sup- published by a Florentine, Francesco de’Vieri, ply it with wind. Another stream of water, driving a in 1586 describing the garden’s myriad me- wheel with certain teeth on it, causes the organ key- chanical wonders43 “... where the statues there board to be struck in a certain order; so you hear an turn about, play music, jet streams of water, imitation of the sound of trumpets.41 are so many and such stupendous artworks in hidden places, that one who saw them all to- Evidence for the Villa d’Este’s team having gether would be in ecstasies over them.” All been familiar with at least some of Hero’s wri- that remains of the complicated iconography tings would seem to come from a passage in of the garden is the huge lowering statue of which Montaigne describes almost verbatim Appennino by the Flemish sculptor Giambo- an example used by Hero himself in his Pneu- logna (1529-1608) that seems to emerge from matica42: the niche that once surrounded him. In its he- yday, multiple grottoes with water-driven In another place you hear the song of birds, which are automata, a water organ and hidden giochi little bronze flutes that you see at regals; they give a dell’acqua drenched visitors when the fontani- sound like those little earthenware pots full of water eri opened secret spigots, made a striking con- that little children blow into by the spout, this by an trast with imitations of rugged Nature. Pratol- JAMES M. BRADBURNE

84 ino was famous for its musical automata, preface Hero to Buontalenti,50 and Birunguc- which ‘made music and noises of every kind’.44 cio translated the entire text for him into Ita- An English visitor to the garden wrote in lian in 1582 - albeit the year after Pratolino 1594 ‘you can see the Cave of Aeolus, another had been completed.51 of Parnassus, where with the turning of a coc- Pratolino exercised an enormous influence ke, a paire of organs doth make musicke and as travellers returned from their Italian tours there is a head which together with his eyes is and engineers began to transplant the won- moved to and fro by unseen water.’45 Here ders they had seen into fresh soil. Tommaso Evelyn would take delight in Pan, ‘the Water Francini (1571-1651) and his younger brot- making a melodious sound through his pipe,’ her Alessandro were responsible for carrying and the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Mount Parnas- the Heronic marvels of Pratolino north at the sus where the Muses played on hydraulic or- request of Maria de Medici, married to Henri gans – ‘going further can be found a Mount IV of France. Their first project, begun in Parnassus […] along with the nine Muses and 1598, was to provide fountains, grottoes, wa- an organ, which makes sweet sounds by me- terworks and water-driven automata for the ans of water. Entering the Mount can be series of garden terraces at Saint-Germain-en- found the machines that make the sounds Laye. The main feature there was a great foun- […] at the top can be seen the winged Pega- tain and various elaborate automata. The up- sus, below it a spring feeding a fountain’.46 per grottoes opened from a Doric gallery and The gardens at Pratolino were considered featured a dragon, a now-familiar water organ the best of their kind by contemporaries, who and a Neptune; on the next level, the Grotto reported ‘the works and artifices are marvels of Hercules was flanked by two further grotto- and a wonder of the first order, for their cause es; that on one side was devoted to Perseus is not discovered right away, and because they and Andromeda, in which the delicately are made with such virtue as is beyond com- counterbalanced hero was made to descend mon use’.47 In the verses composed for the from the ceiling by the hidden weight of water wedding of Francesco with Bianca Cappello, and slay a dragon that arose from the basin – a Rafaello Gualterotti enthused ‘In your beauti- direct quotation from Hero52 – and on the ot- ful garden is an earthly Paradise, perhaps even her a Grotto of Orpheus. The only trace of a heavenly one […] here Art and Nature to- these features that remained after the court gether grant every of their graces […] a make moved permanently to Fontainebleau are each hour of the beautiful day more splendid some engravings by Abraham Bosse, said to still with new marvels’.48 That Pratolino was derive from Francini drawings. Ever-fascina- shaped by a close reading of Hero’s Pneumati- ted by gardens, when Evelyn visited Saint ca is highly probable.49 Commandino’s Latin Germain, he was impressed by “Orpheus, edition was in circulation, and Buontalenti with his musique, & the Animals which daun- had friends – if he needed them – who could ce after his harpe […] Neptune sounding with explain the Latin text to him. It was clearly his Trumpet […] and birds chirping and the important to Buontalenti to have an Italian many other devices”.53 translation of Hero to hand: Bernardo Davan- Hortus Palatinus. Perhaps the apogee of zati dedicated his Italian translation of the Hero’s memory can be found not in his wri- LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

tings, but in the famous garden of Frederic V, Anne with a viol of water which ebbed and 85 the Hortus Palatinus, designed by Salomon flowed at the same time as the Thames’.58 cle- De Caus. Salomon De Caus was born to a arly based on Drebbel’s remarkable perpetuum Huguenot family in Dieppe in 1573, and died mobile presented to the court in 1607.59 in Paris in 1626. As a young man, De Caus By whatever agency, by 1611 De Caus was had been in Italy between 1595 and 1598, appointed Architect to the court of Henry and by his own account visited Pratolino. Prince of Wales,60 where Drebbel and Inigo From 1601 (and probably earlier) until 1608, Jones were also active, although he was forced he was employed by the Habsburg Archdukes to cede his place to the sharp-elbowed Floren- Albrecht and Isabella in Brussels..54 De Caus tine Constantine de Servi soon afterwards. was appointed Chief Engineer in 1605, under This was a fertile environment, with myriad the supervision of Wencel Cobergher, respon- possibilities for encounters, exchanges and the sible for water-raising devices and other water- cross-fertilisation of ideas. Unfortunately, the works, as well as grottoes and fountains. He is untimely death of Prince Henry in November said to have left the employ of the Archdukes 1612 shook the foundations of radical Protes- in a fit of spleen after the Duke of Condé left tant Europe, and De Caus found himself wit- his ornate grotto ‘rompu et gasté’ in 160755 hout a patron. Soon afterwards, however, he and set his sights on the court of James VI/I in set out for Heidelberg in the train of Frederic London, where some of his Protestant relati- V, the Elector Palatine and his young bride, ves had already settled. If his preface to La per- Henry’s sister Elizabeth. Employed as Frederi- spective avec la raison des ombres et mirroirs56 is c’s architect, Salomon de Caus was to create at to be believed, De Caus must have had good Heidelberg the most complete example of the contacts at the English court of James VI/I, as Renaissance garden north of the Alps, the he was already tutoring the young Prince Hortus Palatinus. Henry in drawing in 1608, and De Caus’first The great gardens of Heidelberg were laid book is later dedicated to him. In 1609, he out in the grounds of the castle of the Counts was employed by Anne of Denmark to create Palatine in Heidelberg, which overlooked a a Pratolino-like fountain and Mount Parnas- strategic crossing on the River Neckar, a tribu- sus at Somerset House, whose decoration pre- tary of the Rhine. The Prince-Elector (Kur- figures the Tethys Festival, on which the Dutch fürst) of the was one of the inventor Cornelis Drebbel is said to have wor- few nobles with the privilege of electing the ked.57 We know that Anne, too, was no neu- ruler of the , in the 16th tral observer, but had a keen interest in novel- century firmly in the hands of the Austrian ties – especially those that might bear on her Habsburgs. The Palatinate was strictly Calvi- much-enjoyed court entertainments – and by nist, and in addition to its Electoral privileges, one account ‘the Earl [Lord Percy, 9th Earl of its strategic position along the main north- Northumberland, imprisoned in the Tower south route to the Low Countries, and parti- along with Raleigh 1605-1621 ] got seaverall cularly the Spanish Netherlands, gave it an Learned persons to live and Converse with importance far greater than its small size him’ among them were ‘Mr. Heriot [Thomas would suggest. In 1613, the young ‘Palsgrave’ Harriot 1560-1621], who presented Queene Frederic V married Elizabeth, the daughter of JAMES M. BRADBURNE

86 James I/VI, and by so doing became the voice place of the late sixteenth and early sevente- of the militant Protestants in Europe who had enth centuries.67 De Caus himself was explicit opposed themselves to Habsburg hegemony. in acknowledging his debts, both to ancient On the one hand, Frederic V inherited the sources such as Hero and Vitruvius, and to mantle of Elizabeth’s brother Prince Hen- modern influences such as Tyard and the Plé- ry,61who had been seen by many as the cham- iade.68 pion of an aggressive anti-Habsburg foreign De Caus’s borrowings were also clear in the policy,62 and on the other, he was seen as the built fabric of the garden itself. In the main last hope for a Hermetic Christian Renaissan- water parterre the sculptural figures, such as a ce.63 Frederic unwisely accepted the crown of woman squeezing water from her hair, are di- Bohemia in 1619, and left Heidelberg with rect quotes from Giambologna and Nicolo his wife to set up court in Prague from when- Trobolo’s work now at the Villa Petraia and ce they were rudely ejected by Habsburg tro- the laundress is a quote from Giambologna’s ops after the in figure at Pratolino, a theme he used again at 1620, after only one brief winter’s reign as the Medici gardens at Castello. The garden’s masters of the Hradcany and its Rudolphine grottoes are inhabited by the now familiar wonders. automata drawn from Hero and numerous It is one of the characteristics of history that water organs, in which De Caus was a specia- historical actors are unaware of what will hap- list. The iconography is unremarkably Ovi- pen next,64 so it was with considerable opti- dian, and references abound to the heraldic mism that De Caus began work on the gar- lion of Frederic V. The entire garden, of cour- dens in Heidelberg in 1613, seeing them as se, is also a paean to water, and water-driven the culmination of his frustrated attempts to automata based on Hero are present throug- create the ideal Renaissance garden for Eng- hout the garden. The other major theme of lish patrons in England.65 In order to create the garden was love, as the garden was a gift to the Hortus Palatinus, De Caus had to overco- the Elector’s bride, Elizabeth Stuart, who had me several significant technical challenges, not left behind her the world of the English court, least of which was the creation of four extensi- where her mother Anne of Denmark had De ve terraces in the shadow of the ridge from Caus build her a Parnassus of her own, based which the castle overlooked the Neckar and on the Parnassus at Tivoli and Pratolino at So- the town of Heidelberg. The garden itself is merset House.69 In this respect, the garden laid out along two major axes, and comprises functioned as the stage for an elaborate mas- a series of parterres and broderies that, accor- que, in which the Elector and Electress played ding to Richard Patterson, form part of a neo- the principal roles – also not unsurprising for Platonic narrative of ascent through the har- a couple known to love English theatre, and monic mysteries of the microscosm and ma- for whose nuptials were created masques by crocosm.66 More recently, a sober analysis by Thomas Campion with stage designs by Inigo Luke Morgan challenges the Yates-inspired Jones, as well as plays by Shakespeare, notably Hermetic reading of the garden, and argues the Tempest.70 that De Caus was merely using the conventio- In a very real sense, Patterson and Morgan nal topoi and themes that were the common- are both correct, despite their highly divergent LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

readings, but their analyses highlight the im- the French King in Paris, where De Caus died 87 portance of asking: for whom did the gardens in 1626, after having been made responsible mean what? Patterson’s reading of the garden for Paris’ public waterworks. What happened as a Hermetic universe in miniature was pro- to Hero after Europe plunged into (or stum- bably shared by many contemporary visitors bled through, depending on which version to the gardens, notably its noble patrons, well you prefer) the Thirty Years War? Did Hero aware of the intellectual currents of the time emerge intact after the Treaty of Westphalia, and the hopes placed in Frederic V. On the ot- or was he mortally wounded in the wars that her hand, Morgan clearly captures the likely ravaged Europe from 1618-1648? Certainly, attitude of De Caus, whose understanding Hero’s ideas had spread throughout Italy, and was one of a ‘writer’ of gardens, not a reader. north to France, Germany and England by Morgan convincingly argues that with the ex- the early years of the 17th century. As Boas ar- ception of his affinity for the harmonic theori- gued, like Vitruvius, Hero rapidly became a es of the Pléiade and a detailed awareness of reference point and was being cited by natural Renaissance iconography and the classical philosophers such as Francis Bacon, Robert sources now available, combined with a perso- Burton and William Gilbert,71 to name only a nal experience of Pratolino and perhaps other few. Nevertheless, after Heidelberg, there were Italian gardens, De Caus held a more sober no great gardens full of mechanical and hy- and even sceptical position when it came to draulic wonders. Fashions changed, surely, the super-celestial significance of his carefully but so did the intellectual framework in which laid-out knots, parterres and labyrinths. As an automata were wonders. Uprooted from the engineer, he saw his greatest triumph as the rich magical soil of the late Renaissance, the Orangerie, in which tropical fruit could grace marvels of the Renaissance gardens become the tables of the Palsgrave even in the winter – again what they had probably been to Hero – a rare treat for the soon-to-be Winter King. just toys. To understand Hero’s fate in the 17th cen- tury, I would like to return to the observations THE DEFENESTRATION OF HERO I made in my opening remarks: the difference The great gardens of the Hortus Palatinus between readers and makers, between a reade- were never to be completed. With Frederic V r’s knowledge and a maker’s knowledge, bet- in Prague, his own country was open to at- ween the reception by readers and the recep- tack, which came quickly and surgically in the tion by makers and finally the difference bet- form of Spinola’s troops, who took Oppen- ween readers’ memories and makers’ memori- heim in 1620. After Frederic’s crushing defeat es. Although contemporary science can still be at the Battle of White Mountain and his sub- described by anthropologists as a practice do- sequent garter-less flight to the Hague, Spa- minated by the making and reading of texts,72 nish troops besieged, then sacked, Heidelberg it is equally clear that the rise of modern scien- in 1622, carrying away with it as booty the fa- ce involved a turn away from a world in which mous library, the Biblioteca Palatina. De Caus texts were central towards a world in which himself did not follow Frederic and Elizabeth actions and observations could claim to be po- to Prague, but instead left to find service with werful enough to refute each other.73 This pro- JAMES M. BRADBURNE

88 cess was neither immediate nor continuous, Schaffer and Gaby Wood, authors of two excellent, but the victory of the modern science was a complementary accounts – usually connect the rise of victory for the primacy of shared observation automata with the rise of a new, mechanistic phi- over the compelling evidence of texts and tex- losophy (as well as with new political and military tual authority.74 The process began in part conditions, like the creation of a well-ordered police with challenges to texts from within texts state and the military revolution). These correlations themselves, as signalled by Casaubon’s attack are genuine; but they are also partial, a result of taking on the Corpus Hermeticum,75 which demon- the seventeenth century’s rhetoric of novelty and in- strated that rather than being of Mosaic anti- novation too literally. In fact, as I have tried to show, quity, the writings of the Egyptian Thoth both the automaton and the cluster of devices related could be dated – from philological evidence – to it and the mechanised understanding of the body to the first centuries of the Common Era.76 At that underpinned them grew up in a very different the same time, the debate over the nature of world – as only one constellation in a vast starry cos- the vacuum undermined the primacy of Aris- mos of theories and practices, which gradually came totle’s physics, just as Copernicus, Kepler and to outshine and dominate the rest. The great historian Galileo challenged Ptolemy’s astronomy.77 Frances Yates argued long ago that learned magic, This is not the place to document this process with its promise of power over the world, was one in detail,78 but it is clear that when Europe part of the soil from which the New Science of the emerged from the long decades of struggle late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries grew. Many with Spain’s aspirations to European hegemo- have corrected her, on points of detail too numerous ny.79 and England from the turbulent years of to mention here. Yet on the main point, as so often, Cromwell’s universe, in which the royal son her instincts were sound. The particular delta where Charles I himself lost his position at the centre the two rivers of magic and technical practices came of the body politic – and his head – the world together in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tur- was a very different place.80 The world of Boy- ned into spectacularly fertile intellectual territory – le and the Royal Society was not seen by its and the grafting of magic and engineering that took key actors through the same lens as the world place around 1500 produced spectacular orchards, of Drebbel, Fludd or Hobbes.81 This shift – which in turn yielded remarkable new fruits.82 from texts to observation, from readers to ma- kers – has far-ranging consequences for the To understand why Hero was remembered, ways in which memories are preserved. however, we must recognise that the process Much has been written in recent decades was discontinuous, and cannot be described as trying to undermine Yates’ argument for the simply an easy stroll from the dark woods of centrality of Christian Hermeticism as the key magic and superstition to the sunny gardens to understanding the late Renaissance. Howe- of modern science. Hero survived because for ver, when it comes to the renewed and sustai- the readers of Hero, his works spoke to a ned interest in automata – particularly Hero- world in which statues moved according to ce- nic pneumatic automata – I can do no more lestial influences. He was remembered – at le- than concur with Anthony Grafton: ast in part – because the receivers of his works and the visitors to the animated gardens still Modern historians of the automaton – like Simon inhabited a world of texts, in which texts had LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

real power – and magical power to boot.83 But Instead, the memory of Hero – of his greased 89 it was the makers who would have the last belts and leather pulleys, his wooden gears word. As the magical world crumbled, dissol- and his copper kettles – survived in his gar- ved, shred or was driven underground,84 the dens. Unfortunately, gardens are fragile and gardens remained, and their makers of statues ephemeral, and as objects are far less resilient had every reason to believe were driven by bel- than parchment, paper or stone. lows and boilers, not super-celestial beings. Even before Drebbel’s alchemy became the CONCLUSION chymistry of Boyle and Starkey85 – themselves still alchemists just as Kepler remained an What does this mean for today? How does astrologer – the ‘rude mechanicals’ had alrea- understanding the transmission of Hero’s dra- dy confronted the disparity between the magi- gon-slaying automata affect how we look at cal texts and their very real machines.86 Even contemporary memory? I would like to conc- though it would be many decades before the lude with an example drawn directly from my makers would be welcome at the table of the recent museum experience at the Museum for Royal Society, their performative knowledge Applied Art in Frankfurt, where I was Direc- was shaping the discourse about the nature of tor General from 1999 to 2003. At the mu- the world.87 seum (then known by its abbreviation, Maker’s knowledge is situated knowledge – mak.frankfurt), we tried to confront the chal- it consists of a series of practices aimed at a lenges of conserving a trace of the culture that practical result – the object. The maker’s was being created by digital media – but knowledge, and indeed her memories, is in ef- which often has no corresponding object (a fect ‘dissolved’ in the object, which once web page for instance) or when it does, the made, is mute. This is in effect at the heart of object itself is uninformative (such as a com- the museum professional’s dilemma. Texts can puter or a computer disk). still be used to capture memory – both texts In June 1999, the museum launched a pro- that record what was claimed88 and the absen- ject entitled ‘Digital Craft’, a three-year rese- ce of texts that declare what was suppressed89 – arch project in collaboration with Frankfurt’s but objects ‘incorporate’ their memories, and Institut für neue medien (INM), that had as in a very real sense the object serves only as a its goal to define a museum approach to what potential prompt or prop for the eventual ‘re- can only be described as the applied arts of the performance of a situated, incorporated me- next century – digital media. The Digital mory.90 So it is with Hero. As a writer, he was Craft project had two distinct parts: ‘using di- hardly a towering figure. Nevertheless, his gital craft’ as a means of supporting users of writings were recovered as texts in an age in the museum (internal and external), and ‘defi- which texts were the key to building the pre- ning digital craft’, a research project to provi- sent. However, once claimed by makers such de the theoretical basis for a museum strategy, as engineers and architects, the texts became culminating in a collection, public exhibi- both unnecessary and in some ways irrelevant, tions, a curator and plans for further research. and they passed from sight – the first Greek The first part, ‘Using Digital Craft’, was a pre- edition of Hero was only published in 1693.91 requisite of the second, as it created the op- JAMES M. BRADBURNE

90 portunity to conduct research with visitors in esting game is not anything that can be captu- the museum. In its first two years, the Digital red on a hard disk – in fact, it is not that inter- Craft team had created the world’s first exhibi- esting in purely gaming terms. What makes tion of computer viruses92 and of file sharing.93 DOOM or MYST interesting is that they are The applied arts of the 20th and 21st cen- the first multi-player networked games to be turies are not limited to physical artefacts, played over the Internet. Even in the case of whether one-offs or designed. As McCullough stand-alone computer games, what is of inte- states, ‘Ultimately the computer is a means for rest as cultural historians and as museum pro- combining the skilful hand with the reasoning fessionals? Surely the games themselves have mind’.94 The products of mind and hand can value as artefacts, but if we reflect even a little be virtual as well as material, and mak.frank- on the differences between the first PONG furt’s interest in the applied arts stretches from players and the current generation of compu- the distant past into the virtual world of the ter-fluent game players, might it not also be of future. Digital artefacts increasingly shape the interest to collect – somehow – how the games world around us. Digital products are legiti- are played? How do we collect such artefacts? mate, even indispensable objects for our mu- How do we conserve them? How do we rese- seum collections. Certainly there are mu- arch them? How do we exhibit them? These seums that already collect hardware – compu- are non-trivial questions if we are to preserve ter museums, film museums, museums of the our cultural heritage for future generations, moving image, technology museums – and which is to say, if we are to fulfil our mission there are museums that collect digitally crea- as museums. What will a historian have to re- ted art, such as the ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst fer to a century from now when she comes to und Medien) in Karlsruhe and the Ars Elec- write the cultural history of the late 20th cen- tronica Zentrum in Linz. But who is collec- tury? We contacted many game manufactu- ting the computer games, the websites, the rers, and few of them bothered to keep early Palm Pilots, the mobile phones – all artefacts prototypes.Nintendo certainly does not. In whose interest lies in their combination of be- many firms, it is the employees that preserve auty and utility? Many museums use digital the legacy of the past – not the company itself. media – but who is collecting it? In fact, the richest source for early games is The answer is that despite the huge number now to be found on the Internet itself – via of projects in this field worldwide, only a few eBay. museums have taken this challenge seriously. If museums are unable to face the challenge For example, in the early years of the 21st cen- of collecting the new applied arts, we run the tury, the San Francisco MoMA collects websi- risk of facing a ‘black hole’ in cultural history tes as part of its graphics department – almost in thirty years time. Trying to describe the ex- as an afterthought – and the ZKM has a plosion of Internet use, or the breathtaking handful of early computer games, almost by speed at which mobile phones have conquered chance. But what makes a website interesting the market, what will the historian have as is not necessarily its graphic design, but its material evidence? Who will have saved the connectivity. How do we collect and store first website? Who will have a record of the connectivity? What makes DOOM an inter- development of WAP protocols to accompany LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

the Nokia 7110? In a world in which the ol- present in which the past evaporates as soon as 91 dest Internet company on the planet is only it is created. But our challenge is not only a seventeen years old, who is preserving the tra- technological one. It is also a matter of values, ces of our culture as we hurtle headlong into a matter of choosing which memories are to the future? be preserved – as well as how. If the difficult As we have seen, the nature of technology and contingent history of the transmissions of has a powerful influence on which memories Hero’s ideas into the Renaissance teaches us are preserved, and which memories are lost. anything, it is that museums have to look at Hero successfully made the leap from papyrus their role in a new light, and see their role as rolls to parchment codices, and managed to one of preserving the myriad voices – often be copied and thus survive – albeit in few ma- contradictory – of makers and of readers alike, nuscripts – even after the capsizing of the Ark rather than trying to present a single, coherent that was Constantinople. Hero survived into closed narrative. Museums should adopt a the Renaissance, to be re-translated by archi- strategy of ‘visible listening’ and make it their tects and engineers into gardens, and to be lar- goal not only to preserve the material traces of gely forgotten by natural philosophers. In the human culture, but the voices of those who case of Hero, the medium in which his ideas left behind those traces. The museum must were preserved altered both the nature of per- move beyond the object to the voice, and be- ception and the perception of nature. In the gin to preserve not only the objects themsel- gardens of Buontalenti, the Francini and De ves, but also the maker’s knowledge situated in Caus, Hero could be found in the objects the making of objects – perhaps paradoxically themselves – either in the form of direct by capturing it again as text. Through intervi- quotations, or to the extent in which his inge- ews and videos, the museum can become a re- nious toys found new uses in the Renaissance pository not only of things but also of memo- court. Regrettably, situated knowledge is un- ries and skills. In a sense, this means that mu- stable and ephemeral, and unless re-translated seums must see themselves as instruments of once more into texts, passes out of memory collective memory, not only of analytic histo- with the passing of the makers. Mechanisms ry. no longer explain the questions to which they Bob Archibald of the Missouri Historical were once clearly the answers, and remain at Society argues that ‘Museums are the perfect best mute witnesses enshrined in our mu- place to experience empathy, to look at the seums, their dissolved meanings latent, wai- world through the eyes of others who lived in ting for future generations to tease out. We are different places, at different times, and in dif- now confronted with a new generation of ob- ferent circumstances. Objects and images are jects – objects that have no substance at all – our business. Every one of them is a potential whose existence will prove to be far less robust mnemonic device, a touchstone for memory, than papyrus, parchment or paper. an opportunity for important discussion. Mu- It is to this challenge that those of us in the seums exist for people, living, dead, and un- memory business – especially the museum born. These institutions are places where the world – will have to address ourselves if we are boundaries between past, present, and future not to be condemned to living in a perpetual are permeable and the interconnections appa- JAMES M. BRADBURNE

92 rent. Museums are never passive although London, 2006 online http://www.the- some people struggle to make them so’.95 If we orb.net/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html. are to avoid a Hero’s fate of being entombed 10. Op.cit. in motionless statues staring blindly, we must 11. Op.cit. relinquish our hold on the choice of which 12. Labowsky, Lotte, Bessarion’s Library and the voices to enshrine in our museum’s curatorial Biblioteca Marciana, pp. 148-189, Sussidi Erudi- texts, and begin to admit other voices, new ti; Rome: 1979. voices, dissenting voices into the sacred space 13. Boas, op. cit p. 40. of the museum. Only then can we keep faith 14. Heronis Alexandrini Spiritalium Liber. Ex Grae- with the future generations who have charged co, nuper in Latimum Conversus. Federico us with the mission of collecting, preserving, Commandino Urbinate, Urbino: Cum Privilegio studying, interpreting and exhibiting our sha- Gregorii XIII. Pont. Max, 1575. red heritage.96 15. Labowsky op.cit. November 2007 16. Moranti, Maria and Luigi, Il Trasferimento dei ‘Codices Urbinates’ alla Biblioteca Vaticana, Ac- cademia Raffaello; Urbino: 1981. 17. See Guasti, C. Giornale Storico degli Archivi NOTER Toscani, Vol VI/VII, Gabinetto GP Vieusseux; 1. One of the best overviews of ancient mechanics Florence: 1862/63 for the first inventory of the can be found in A.G. Drachmann, The Mecha- library at Urbino. nical Technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity, 18. Spiritalium liber, à Federico Commandino ... ex p. 12, 19, Munksgaard; Copenhagen: 1963. Graeco in Latinum conversus. Huic editioni ac- 2. Bennet Woodcroft, The Pneumatics of Hero of cesserunt Jo. Bapt. Aleotti Quatuor Theoremata Alexandria (facsimile), introduction by Marie Spiritalia, ex Italico in Latinum conversa.Amster- Boas, pp X–XI, Elsevier; London: 1971. dam, Janssonius van Waesberge, 1680. 3. Boas, op.cit pp XII–XIII. 19. Hill cites A.J. Turner as saying in The Time Mu- 4. Hill, Donald, in Learning, Language and Inven- seum (1984) that over 100 manuscript copies of tion: Essays presented to Francis Maddison, pp. Hero’s Pneumatics and Automata were extant in 188-206, Variorum; Aldershot: 1994. the 16th century. op. cit. Hill. 5. Boas, Marie, Hero’s Pneumatica: a study of its 20. Gli artificiosi et curiosi moti spirituali di Herone transmission and influence, Isis, Vol. 40, No. 1 tradooti da M. Gio. Battista Aleotti d’Argenta, (Feb. 1949), p. 39. per Vittorio Baldini; Ferrara: 1589. 6. Netz, Reviel and Noel, William, The Archimedes 21. De gli Automati, overo Machine se Moventi, li- Codex, p.76, Weidenfeld & Nicholson; London: bri due, tradotti dal Greco da Bernardino Baldi, 2007. Venice: Girolamo Porro; 1589. 7. Sezgin, Fuat, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrif- 22. Spiritali ridotti in lingua volgare da Alessandro tums, Band V, Mathematik bis ca. 430 H. Giorgi da Urbino Urbino Ragusii 1592. pp.152-154, Brill; Leiden: 1974. 23. See Eamon, William, Science and the Secrets of 8. Boas op.cit. p. 40. Nature, Princeton University Press; Princeton: 9. Jonathan Harris, Byzantines in Renaissance Italy, 1994. Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway, University of 24. Paris:1588. LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

25. Published by his grandson Ottavio at Paul Iac- see Marr op. cit. 93 ques, Francfort sur le Main: 1617. 37. Examples abound of serious practitioners belie- 26. Lyon: 1578. ving in the efficacy of talismans and other practi- 27. Revised and updated version published by We- ces, see Eamon, op.cit or the long debate about chel; Frankfurt: 1591. the efficacy of the Paracelsan weapon salve. 28. Forone of the best and most thorough discus- 38. Curtis, Joseph, The water organ and other sions of Renaissance automata, see Marr, Alexan- sound-producing automata, unpublished paper; der, Understanding Automata in the Late Renais- 2000. sance, Journal de la Renaissance, Vol. II (2004), 39. See Yates, The French Academies of the Sixte- CESR/Brepols. enth Century, Warburg Institute; London: 1947. 29. See Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Ermete Tris- 40. Dillon Ford, Joseph, From Vocal Memnon To megisto, ed. Carlos Gilly et al. Florence; Centro The Stereophonic Garden: A Short History Of Di: 1999 and Magia, Alchimia, Scienza dal ‘400 Sound And Technology In Landscape Design, al ‘700, ed. Carlos Gilly and Cis van Heertum, CELA, Miami: 1995. Florence; Centro Di: 2002. 41. Montaigne, Michel, Travel Journal 1580-81 30. For an extensive discussion of Agrippa and the Transl. Donald M. Frame. San Francisco: North use of talismans in the Renaissance, see Pierre Point Press, 1983. cf. Béhar, Les langues occultes de la Renaisance, Pa- http://catena.bgc.bard.edu/texts/montaigne.htm ris; Editions Desjonquères: 1996. 42. Theorem XV. 31. A whole generation of Renaissance scholars has 43. Vieri, Francesco de’, called Il Verino Secondo. earned their degrees revising the pioneering his- Discorsi di F. de’ V. delle maravigliose opere di torical research of Frances Yates, which despite Pratolino e d’Amore Manescotti; Firenze: 1586 being wrong in many particulars, still remains 44. Evelyn, Works, 1955, vol. 2, pp. 418-19. uniquely valid in its general argument that the 45. Fynes Moryson , An Itenerary written by Fynes rediscovery of the Hermetic texts had a profound Moryson, Gent. First in the Latine Tongue, and influence on Renaissance philosophy. See Frances then translated by him into English. (Containing Yates, in particular Giordano Bruno and the his ten yeeres travell through the twelve domi- Hermetic Tradition, University of Chicago; Chi- nions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, cago: 1964. Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turky, 32. Augustine’s condemnation of the Asclepius is France, England, Scotland, and Ireland.). J. Bea- well documented, but for an in-depth analysis of le: London: 1617. the arguments used in defence of natural magic 46. Sgrilli, Bernardo Sansone, Descrizione della regia see Grafton, Anthony, A Note from onside the villa, fontane e fabbriche di Pratolino Firenze: Teapot, Cornell University lecture, 1997. 1742. 33. Op.cit. Yates p. 37. 47. op.cit Vieri p.57 Cap. III Comparatione di alcu- 34. Giorgi, op.cit. ne artifitiossime opere di Prataolino con alcune 35. Rossi, P, Clavis Universalis, Riccardo Ricciardi; de gli antichi. Bologna: 1960. 48. Gualterotti, Rafaello, Feste nelle Noce del Sere- 36. In a well-known account, John Dee was almost nissimo Francesco Medici, Giunti; Firenze: 1579. arrested for having contrived a piece of self-mo- 49. See Dezzi Bardeschi, Marco et al. in Pratolino ving stage machinery for Aristophanes in 1547, Laboratorio di meraviglie (particularly Volume 1, JAMES M. BRADBURNE

94 La Fonte delle fonte), Provincia di Firenze/Ali- the motions, unpublished paper, London: 2006. nea; Florence: 1986. 60. See Strong, R. Henry, Prince of Wales and Eng- 50. Erone, Del vuoto, tradotto di Bernardo Davan- land’s Lost Renaissance, Thames & Hudson, zati, degli sezione iniziali degli Spiriituali di Ero- London: 1986 especially pp. 86-138. ne, Versione dedicata anche questa a Buontalenti, 61. Strong, R. op.cit. Firenze: 1582. 62. Prince Henry had himself been seen as the inhe- 51. Hero Alexandrinus, Libro degli artifizii spiritali ritor of the legacy of Henry IV, assassinated in over di fiato, 1582. The Libro degli artifizii spiri- 1610 see Strong op.cit. tali over di fiato is the first Italian translation of 63. Much criticised, the context in which Frederic V Hero’s Pneumatics. It was produced by Oreste and Elizabeth Stuart became the ‘Winter King Vannoccio Biringuccio at the request of Bernar- and Queen’ of Bohemia is explored in Yates, do Buontalenti, chief engineer of the Tuscan Frances, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Rout- Grand Duke Francesco I. He also translated into ledge; London: 1972. Italian Piccolomini’s paraphrase of Aristotle’s Me- 64. The British historian, Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper, chanical Questions in the same year. Oreste Van- maintained that to write history well, one had to noccio Biringuccio was the nephew of Vannoccio look at the ways in which decisions were made Biringuccio, who was famous for his De la piro- from the standpoint of the times in which they technia (1540). The translation was produced were made, without the benefit of knowing the mainly on the basis of the Latin editio princeps outcome in advance. of Commandino, published in 1575. However, 65. De Caus nevertheless left a substantial English the author may also used a Greek manuscript of legacy, and his Les raisons was later revisited by Hero’s Pneumatica, at that time preserved at the his younger brother Isaac, who published an edi- Vatican – presumably a copy of the manuscript ted version entitled Nouvelle invention de lever l’- Bessarion had brought with him to Rome in eau plus hault que sa source avec quelques machines 1461, prior to confiding it to Urbino in 1472. mouvantes par le moyen de l’eau et un discours de 52. Theorem XL. la conduite d’icele (London, 1644) in which he 53. Op.cit. vol. 2, 111. was less reticent about making claims for a per- 54. See Saintenoy,Paul, Les arts et les artistes à la petual motion in Problem IX. An English edition cour de Bruxelles, Brussels:1932,33,35. was subsequently printed in 1659 by Joseph 55. See Strong, R. The Renaissance Garden in Eng- Moxon, friend of Robert Hooke and printer for land, Thames & Hudson, London: 1979 especi- the Royal Society. The English edition is entitled: ally Chapter IV. New and rare inventions of water-works shewing 56. De Caus, S. La perspective avec la raison des the easiest waies to raise water higher then the ombres et mirroirs, Jan Norton, London: 1612. spring : by which invention the perpetual motion is 57. Strong op. cit. pp. 141-158 and 216-217. proposed : many hard labours performed : and vari- 58. Shirley J.W. The Scientific Experiments of Sir eties of notions and sounds produced : a work both Walter Raleigh, the Wizard Earl, and the Three usefull profitable and delightfull for all sorts of pe- ‘Magi’ in the Tower. Ambix 4, 1949 nos 1&2, ople. pp. 52-66. 66. Patterson, Richard, The Hortus Palatinus and 59. For a complete analysis of Drebbel and the per- the Reformation of the World. Part I: The Icono- petuum mobile see Bradburne, J. Going through graphy of the Garden, Journal of Garden History LOCAL HEROES – MEMORY IN ACTION IN THE LATE RENAISSANCE GARDEN

1, no. 1 (1981): pp. 67–104 and Patterson, Ri- S. and Schaffer, S. Leviathan and the Air pump: 95 chard, The Hortus Palatinus and the Reforma- Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life, Prince- tion of the World. Part II: Culture as Science, ton: 1985. Journal of Garden History 1, no. 2 (1981): pp. 82. Grafton, Anthony, Magic and Technology in 179-202. Early Modern Europe, Dibner Library Lecture, 67. Morgan, Luke, Nature as Model, University of Smithsonian Institution; Washington: 2002. Pennsylvania; Philadelphia: 2007. 83. See Newman, W. Promethean Ambitions: alche- 68. Morgan op.cit pp. 148-150. my and the quest to perfect nature; University of 69. See Strong, Roy, The Renaissance Garden in Chicago: 2004. England, Thames & Hudson; London: 1979. 84. See Dickson, D. The Tessera of Antilia, Brill; 70. See Shakespeare, W. The Tempest, ed. Stephen Leiden: 1998. Orgel, OUP; Oxford: 1987. 85. Newman, W. and Principe, L. Alchemy Tried in 71. Boas, op. cit. p. 42. the Fire: Starkey, Boyle and the fate of Helmon- 72. Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. Laboratory Life; the tian Chymistry, University of Chicago: 2002. construction of scientific facts, Sage; New York: 86. See Shapin, S. A Social History of Truth: civility 1979. and science in seventeenth century England, 73. For an excellent account of this transformation University of Chicago: 1994. see Sutton, G. Science for a Polite Society, West- 87. Op.cit. Shapin. view; Boulder: 1995. 88. An authoritative demonstration of the use of 74. See Newman, W. Gehennical Fire: the lives of textual evidence to reconstruct the significance of George Starkey; University of Chicago: 1994 and a Renaissance garden can be found in Breekamp, Principe, L. The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle H. Vicino Orsini e il Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo, and his alchemical quest; Princeton: 1998. Werner’sche Verlag; Worms: 1985, in Italian l’E- 75. De rebus sacris et ecclesiaticis, Norton; London: lefante; 1989. 1614. 89. See Hedrick, C.W. History and Silence, Univer- 76. Op.cit Yates, F. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. sity of Texas; Austin: 2000. 77. For a rather free-wheeling and particular ac- 90. For an extended discussion of the importance of count, see Koestler, A. The Sleepwalkers, Hut- situated knowledge in the Renaissance, see chinson; London: 1959. Smith, P. The Body of the Artisan; University of 78. For a more detailed analysis of this transforma- Chicago: 2004 and Moran, B. Distilling Know- tion, see Newman, W. and Grafton, A. Eds. Se- ledge: alchemy, chemistry and the scientific revo- crets of Nature, MIT; Cambridge: 2001. lution, Harvard University; Cambridge: 2005. 79. See Trevor-Roper, H, The Outbreak of the Thir- 91. Despite the number of Latin and vernacular ty Years War and The Paracelsan Movement in translations that flourished in the late 16th cen- Renaissance Essays, University of Chicago: 1985. tury, there was no Greek edition of Hero’s works 80. See Hill, C. The World Turned Upside Down: until 1693, in Thévenot’s Veterum Mathematico- radical ideas during the English Revolution, rum opera and even that was corrupt. Maurice Temple Smith; London: 1972. 92. Nori, F. ed. i love you, mak.frankfurt: 2002. 81. The classic account of the confrontation betwe- 93. Nori, F. ed.aDonnaM, mak.frankfurt: 2003. en pre-Thirty Years War natural philosophy and 94. McCullough, M. Abstracting Craft: the practi- nascent modern science can be found in Shapin, sed digital hand, p. 14, MIT; Cambridge: 1997. JAMES M. BRADBURNE

96 95. Archibald, R. R. Touching on the Past, unpu- blished paper, Missouri Historical Society; St. Louis, Missouri: December 2006. 96. In 1970, in an address to the American Associa- tion of Museums of which he was then President, Joseph Veach Noble defined the mission of a mu- seum in terms of five museum ‘fingers’ which to- gether worked in concert as the museum ‘hand’.

* Dr. James M. Bradburne AADipl MCSD Director General

Address: Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Firenze ITALIA Phone:+39 055 277 6461 E-mail: j.bradburne@fondazionepalazzostroz- zi.it www.bradburne.org