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THE SEVBN llIONDERS OF THE WORLD THE PYRAMIDS i{ND THE R¡SÊ OF WONDER and even did a turn in jail. 6HO'T5 OF WONDER Certainly, he seems to have cared very little for the aged and respected, not to say revered, Michelangelo. Even when the great Florentine was still Famous only briefly, the garden grove of Bomarzo died with Orsini when his estates working at St Peter's, planning its great dome, Pirro is supposed to have said that the passed into the hands of more orthodox landlords. The intricate theatre of ideas was old man was in his second childhood, and that he could provide nothing more than 'the s(x,n overgrown and tumbled, the standing sculptures thal remained to show where it ignorance of a poor councillor'. What had annoyed Pirro, apart from his impatience to had been were barely noticed and very linle known. Local historians thought that they succeed to the old man's post, was that one of Michelangelo's designs had called for the might be the work of ancient Etrurans: certainly, they had no role at all in that pretty transformation ofan antique statue ofthe god ofthe Tigris into a statue ofthe god of aesthetic vision of'The Renaissance'that rgth-century writers conjured so effectively the Tiber, anil that this changling had been set up at the Capitoline itselfas part ofan and it was not until the r95os that Orsini's gardens were rediscovered and identified. By architectural scheme that underlined the medieval notion of the Capitoline as a world that time most of the pathways that would have showed the garden's order and direc- wonder, as the centre of Rome and the centre of the world. 'Babylon resurgent', pirro tion had disappeared and to this day, no exqrvation has taken place to tell us ofthe gar- called the plan. He was a scholar. For him, every old statue had individual identity and den's plan. Yet even in its present condition Bomarzo holds extraordinary residual signiñcance. He regularly advised cardinals and noblemen on the restoration ofantiq- power; clearly a great artist Bave Orsini's dreams this wild extravagant reality, and races uities. Some of these restorations had led to his reputation for forgery but he believed of the guiding hand remain. Bomarzo's frnest sculptures, for example, bear close resem- he was merely restoring their ancient identities. The difference was vital. God, thought blance to those in other Roman country gardens made by Orsini's contemPo¡aries. Pirro, was a practical scientist, and had left him many clues..All the work of the ancients, Several ofthese gardens along with others at Rome itselfwere partly decorated and from books like those ofVitruvius to statues like the god ofthe Tigris, held part ofthe designed by this same man, he who had also made the drawing of Orsini's Pharos for key to an understanding ofthe order ofthat golden Roman age that had been broken him: the Neapolitan architect-antiquarian, Pirro Ligorio. Not only was Ligorio person- by Gothic invasions, and medieval povertF. ally fascinated by the ancient Seven Wonders of the world, he was also one of the geat- Along with Fulvio Orsini, Vicino's contemporary and an illegitimate member of that est garden-makers that the West has ever known. same great Roman family, Pirro founded the learned Academy of Virtue to study Rome and its ancient wisdom. Throughout his adult life, he wrote ceaselessly about antiqui- ties. More than 5o 6ne quarto volumes remain, alì written in Pirro's exquisite calligraphic hand in brown transparent ink on light blue paper, the text accompanied by the most delicate ofline drawings. Scholars ofearlier generations usually conjured up their visions of the past from books alone; even the z4 plates of Calvo's Simulachrum owed more to ancient texts than contemporary archaeology. Pirro, however, saw the fragments ofthe past as ifthey were all parts ofan airliner that had crashed and been strewn across the landscape. With the aid of texts, Pirro studied all these pieces and tried to reconstruct them. The greater part ofthe antiquities that he describes in his 5o volumes, everything from altars to copper coins, from the inscriptions on leaden drainpipes to the most cel- ebrated statues, came from Rome. Pirro measured and translated them all and wrote commentaries on them as sensitive as his drawings. At the same time, Pirro was a sufficiently eminent architect to be appointed as Michelangelo's successor as architect in charge ofSt Peter's. Despite all this, perhaps indeed because ofit, Pirro was little appreciated by the Renaissance's most celebrated hagiographer, Giorgio Vasari. Pirro after all was a broad-accented sharp-tongued Neapolitan. Vasari, on the other hand was Pirro's Pharos, after Madonna, 1976 a very proper Tuscan who worshipped his 'divine' Michelangelo. So Pirro got short shrift. Yet this was the man who designed the most beautiful of all the papal pavilions, most Pino is best kno¡,r,n today as a scurrilous forger of antiquities and for being the archi- gracefully set amidst the gardens of the Vatican, and planned as well the magnificent tect in charge of St Peter's who was sacked for attemPting to change Michelangelo's gardens oflppolito d'Este, Cardinal ofFerrara, gardens ofsuch fame today that the very designs. Pirro, whose neme means 'fiery', and who somctimcs signed himself name ofTivoli, the town in which they stand, has been taken and used by other plea- 'Meisopogniro', the hater of the wicked, did not worry overmuch about making enemies sure gardens all around the world. At Tivoli, Pirro's profound obsession with antiquity 272 213 THE SEVEN WONDBRS THE WORLD OF THE PYRAMIDS AND THE R, ISE OF WONDER with and the Seven Wonders found popular advertisement. And partly by this means, the models of owls and song birds which, like those of Leo the Mathematician of the images ofthose s€ven ancient things have flowed deep into the modern city. Byzantium, chirruped their song to their amused beholders. pirro stood his Mother The seat of Cardind Ippolito d'Este's famil¡ the north Italian city of Fenara, had long Nature at the ce shaped like the ending of a Renaissance temple; been surrounded by great houses with fine gardens, and these the cardinal had already Artemis Polyma eaming water'spinning out lyke silver twist' says reproduced on a smaller scale beside his Roman palace. Plunging dramatically through Ìhe Hypnerotom the rocþ gorges ofthe town, Tivoli's roaring cascades of river water must presented have Art would bring this wild nature garden into civilization. Another section of the gar- an irresistible challenge for the enthusiastic gardener-cardinal from the flat plains ofthe den was made in the image of Parnassus, the home of Apollo and of all the arts. At its River Po, for his water gardens a series of fountains and - waterfalls set running through centre stood a statue of a leaping horse, Pegasus, looking much like its Bomarzo twin. high stone terraces decorate and regularize this splendid phenomenon. .nature - natural Facing Parnassus, formal gardens laid out in c¿reful lines showed the benefits of Working erratically through the decades after r55o, in which year the cardinal frrst improved and transformed' by obtained the land, an entire hillside was fashioned to accommodate these cascades, and ancient Rome, Pirro's particular an elaborate system ofaqueducts and reservoi¡s was cut into the rocky hillside around tion of the natural world. There the town above. At the same time, vast quantities of earth were moved into the lower verse. Tivoli was also the Garden sections of the valley, transforming the ancient city walls into an enormous terace that golden apples of Temperance, chastity and prudence. A subtle choice this, for the car- held four great green o¡chards, four enormous fish tanks, garden and four mazes. dinal proudly counted Hercules as his ancestor - such pagan stories were employed by In the manner of and at ancient Hero Philo Aleiandria, the water's pressure in the artists and writers of the time to illustrate the christian virtues. so pirro's Hesperides gardens gave voice to water organs, whose ethereal music hung in the spaces between was also another Eden, offering a choice ofpaths, just as had been offered to both Eve the rows giant and of fountains the architectural façades that frame them. Now the and Hercules. Pirro broke the garden's careful symmetry of pathwap especially to make façades remain in silence, the organs having been quietened by time. The fountains, a grand diversity ofchoice. though, still explode in the sunlight and form patterns like the lilies of the cardinal's Tivoli had been a Roman resort long before cardinal d'Este took up residence there. emblem, the devices of their splashings decorate statues and grotesques. Even at the sum- A celebrated Roman temple still stood within the city, and on the plain below were the mer's height, the garden is scented, green and pleasant. It is sheded too, for the cardinal ruins of the Emperor Hadrian's huge country villa, in reality a fair-sized town, whose planted hundreds oftrees in it; locd chestnuts, firs, elms and laurels, and imported cit- lakes and fish tanks had all been supplied from Tivoli's cascades. In its day, Hadrian's rus. The four square mazes that once slood at the gardens'ending had hedges oftwo villa had also been frlled with wonders, made apparentty in celebration of his travels complementary perfumed species: orange and myrtle; cherry and honeysuckle; pine and through the empire. Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia were all represented in buildings thyme; spruce and forella.

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