Bomarzo

From Free net encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)

Revision as of 12:12, 8 April 2006
Kjkolb (Talk | contribs)
removed wikify tag - the article is categorized, well linked, and the subject is bolded, if it needs additional work please use a different tag
Next diff →

Current revision

Bomarzo is also a film by Michelangelo Antonioni

Bomarzo is a town and comune of Viterbo province (Lazio, central Italy), in the lower valley of the Tiber at Template:Coor dm, 263 m (863 ft) above mean sea level, with 1609 inhabitants according to the 2003 census. It is located at 15 kilometers from Viterbo and 68 from Rome.

Its current name is supposed to come from the Roman-era Polymartium of uncertain meaning. It was a historical fief of the Orsini family, whose castle is at the edge of the densely-built town, until Marzio sold it to the Lante family in 1645; but Bomarzo's chief claim to fame is a garden usually referred to as the Bosco Sacro (Sacred grove) or, locally, Bosco dei Mostri (Monsters' Grove), named for the many larger-than-life sculptures, some sculpted in the bedrock, which populate this predominantly barren landscape. It is the work of Pier Francesco Orsini, Duke of Bomarzo, Vicino (1528–1588), a patron of the arts and greatly devoted to his wife Julia Farnese; when she died, he created the gardens. The design that has been attributed to Pirro Ligorio, a well known architect of his day who was working 60 km (35 miles) away in Rome, on the complex around the Villa Giulia is likely to have been limited largely to the small domed temple behind a pedimented porch, which is the reward of the garden's sequences of bizarre and private imagery. In fact Bomarzo is more the product of a philosopher than an architect, and it is constructed as a journey, rather than a setting for social life, a journey to be undertaken perhaps alone, but certainly in silence, as the inscription on the plinth of a sphinx near the starting point enjoins.

The park of Bomarzo contains no pretty flower beds or sweeping lawns. A truly Mannerist work of art, it seeks, not to please, but to astonish, and like many Mannerist works of art, its symbolism is arcane: instead, a large sculpture of one of Hannibal's war elephants, mangles a Roman legionary, Ceres lounges incongruously on the bare ground — a vase of verdure perched on her head. Shelter from the blazing sun can be had by climbing a flight of steps into the mouth of a grotesque Giant's head carved from the living rock.

The many monstrous statues appear to be unconnected to any rational plan and appear to have been strewn almost randomly about the area, sol per sfogare il Core ("just to set the heart free") as one inscription in the obelisks says. Allusive verses in Italian by Annibal Caro, Bitussi and Cardinal Modruzzo, some of them already eroded, were inscribed besides sculptures. The reason for the layout and design of the garden is largely unknown: perhaps they were meant as a foil to the perfect symmetry and layout of the great Renaissance gardens nearby at Villa Farnese and Villa Lante. Next to a formal exedra a watchtowerlike casina tilts irrationally, the Casa Storta.

An octogonal templet was added about twenty years later to honor the second wife of Orsini, Julia Farnese. The Bettinis have dedicated it to Tina Severi Bettini, one of the impulsors of reconstruction, who died from wounds during the works.

During the 19th century and deep into the 20th century the garden became overgrown and neglected, but in the 1970s a program of restoration was implemented by the Bettini family, and today the garden, which remains private property, is a major tourist attraction.

The surreal nature of the Parco dei Mostri greatly appealed to Jean Cocteau and the great surrealist Salvador Dalí, who discussed it at great length. The poet André Pieyre de Mandiargues wrote an essay devoted to Bomarzo. Niki de Saint Phalle was inspired for her Tarot Garden. Whatever the reason for its conception it is one of the most amazing sights, offering simultaneously the thrill of the startling with the unexplainable.

[edit]