Villa d'Este

History

The Villa was commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este (1509–1572), second son of Alfonso I d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara and grandson of Pope Alexander VI through his mother Lucrezia Borgia. The Este family had been lords of Ferrara since 1393, and were famous as patrons of the arts and of the humanist scholars of the Renaissance. As a second son, Ippolito was destined for a career in the church; he was named archbishop of Milan when he was only ten years old. At the age of 27, he was sent to the French court, where he became an advisor to the French King, Francis I, and in 1540 became a member of the King's Private Council. At the age of thirty, at the request of the King, Pope Paul III made d'Este a cardinal. Thanks to his ecclesiastical and royal connections, he became one of the wealthiest cardinals of the time, with an annual income estimated at 120,000 scudi. He was a lavish patron of the arts, supporting among others the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, the musician Pierluigi da Palestrina and the poet Torquato Tasso. While his income was enormous, he was always in debt. The new French King, Henry II, sent him as an envoy to Rome, where he played a major role in the social and political life of the city. He appeared destined to become Pope and used all of his money and influence toward that goal, but at the time of the Reformation and the Council of Trent, his extravagant style of life worked against him. His first candidacy for the papal position, in 1549, with the support of the French King, was blocked by the Habsburg Emperor. D'Este promptly withdrew his own candidacy, endorsed the Habsburg candidate, and was rewarded by the College of Cardinals on December 3, 1549, with the lifetime position of Governor of Tivoli. This new title suited d'Este, because he was already a passionate collector of antiquities, and it gave him jurisdiction over the site of Hadrian's villa and other sites just being excavated. He did not give up his ambition to become Pope. He was five times a candidate for Pope, but was never selected. …

Villa

Today the villa is entered from a doorway on the Piazza Trento, next to the entrance of the Church of Santa-Maria Maggiore. In the time of Ippolito d'Este, this entrance was rarely used; visitors arrived at the bottom of the gardens, and ascended, step by step, to the villa, viewing the fountains and statuary. The current door dates to 1521, to the period before Ippolito. The foyer inside the door has a painted vault which was once covered with paintings, which were largely destroyed by the bombing during World War II.

It was decorated with monochrome scenes from the Old Testament, a few of which, including The Sacrifice of Isaac, still can be seen. They date to the period between 1563 and 1565, and were probably designed by Girolamo Muziano. The next room, the Hall of the Stories of Solomon, shows scenes from life of King Solomon, set in frames painted to resemble marble. They also are attributed to Muziano and his craftsmen, also from about 1565. A massive head of travertine stone is on display here, which until the 18th century was in the garden.

The Courtyard is placed where the original cloister of the convent was located. It was constructed in 1566–67, and is surrounded by a gallery. The centrepiece of the courtyard is the Fountain of Venus, the only fountain in the Villa which retains its original appearance and decoration. The fountain, designed by Raffaelo Sangallo in 1568–69, is framed by two doric columns, and crowned by a 4th-century marble bust of the Emperor Constantine. The central element of the fountain is a Roman statue of a sleeping Venus, made in the 4th or 5th centuries A.D. Water originally poured from a vase beside her into a Roman labrum of white marble (2nd century AD) decorated with two lion heads. The fountain is surrounded on three sides by a sixteenth-century courtyard sited on the former Benedictine cloister. The fountain on a side wall contains a grotto and a figure which follows a Hellenistic prototype most familiar in the Sleeping Ariadne of the Vatican. The grotto, epitomized by the high-relief stalactites, identifies her as the resident nymph, or genius loci, though guidebooks sometimes call her a Venus. The base of the fountain is decorated with a stucco bas relief which was once gilded, and portrays the white heraldic eagles of the D'Este. It illustrates the course of the river flowing from Mount Sant'Angelo to the Villa. …

Gardens and fountains

The fame and glory of the Villa d'Este was above all established by its extraordinary system of fountains; fifty-one fountains and nymphaeums, 398 spouts, 364 water jets, 64 waterfalls, and 220 basins, fed by 875 metres of canals, channels and cascades, and all working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps.

Pirro Ligorio, who was responsible for the iconographic programs worked out in the villa's frescos, was also commissioned to lay out the gardens for the villa, with the assistance of Tommaso Chiruchi of Bologna, one of the most skilled hydraulic engineers of the sixteenth century; Chiruchi had worked on the fountains at Villa Lante. At Villa d'Este he was assisted in the technical designs for the fountains by a Frenchman, Claude Venard, who was a manufacturer of hydraulic organs. The result was one of the finest gardens of the Renaissance, rivaled only by the Villa Lante, the Villa Farnese at Caprarola and the Villas Aldobrandini and Torlonia in Frascati. The garden and water features were admired and imitated over the next two centuries in gardens from Portugal to Saint Petersburg.

The garden plan is laid out on a central axis with subsidiary cross-axes, refreshed by some five hundred jets in fountains, pools and water troughs. The water is supplied by the Aniene, which is partly diverted through the town, a distance of a kilometer, and, originally, by the Rivellese spring, which supplied a cistern under the villa's courtyard (now supplied by the Aniene too). The garden is now part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani.

A large terrace, 200 metres long, called the Vialone, lies between the Villa and the gardens, with a panoramic view of the gardens and countryside beyond. It was constructed between 1568 and 1569. The Cardinals used the space for fireworks, games, spectacles and festivities. It originally was shaded by two rows of elm trees, except for the space directly in front of the Villa, left empty to preserve the view. The terrace is enclosed at one end by the Fountain of Europa, and at the other by an immense loggia and belvedere in the form of a triumphal arch called the Cenacolo. This structure provided shade beneath in summer, as well as commanding viewpoints of the scenery. It was originally intended to be decorated in the interior with stucco decoration, gilding and frescoes, but it was never finished. …

The lower garden – The Rotonda of the Cypresses and the Fountain of Diana of Ephesus

In the 16th century the lower garden, below the fishponds, was originally largely a kitchen garden. The center of the lower garden was divided into sixteen large squares, with a pergola in the center of each section, surrounded by beds of medicinal herbs and flowers, and large pots of fruit trees. The main paths dividing the garden were covered with trellises on which grew grapes, heather and jasmine. In the center was a large wooden pavilion, which contained four small fountains in the form of flowers, jetting water. The pergolas and pavilion were demolished in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and replaced by the Rotonda of the Cypresses, a circular alley which originally contained sixteen cypress trees, and offered shade to visitors arriving in the gardens, as well as a dramatic view of the rest of the garden, the fountains and the Villa high above. By the 19th century the cypress trees were huge, and were among the most famous features of gardens, painted by artists and inspiring music by Franz Liszt and poetry by Gabriele d'Annunzio. Two of the original cypress trees are still there; the other cypresses and laurel hedges were planted at the end of the 20th century.

The Fountains of the d'Este eagle are a group of small rustic fountains, with water spurting up from stone bowls, with a variety of themes. One contains a group of statues of the white eagle, the emblem of the d'Este family. These fountains are a vestige the formal gardens that occupied that part of the garden before the Rotonda of Cypresses was built.

The lower garden also contains two large rustic fountains, called the Mete, located on the northwest corner of the garden near the entrance. They were designed to look like natural rock, with grottos and niches. Created in 1568–69, they were made by Tommaso da Como, and were originally intended to feature two large statues of giants, the guardians of the garden. A smaller rustic fountain, called the Fontana Rustca dell'Inverno, holds a 16th-century statue of Winter that originally was in the Gran Loggia. …