Villa di Pratolino

History

The villa was built by Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in part to please his Venetian mistress, the celebrated Bianca Cappello. Villa and gardens were designed by his court architect, designer and engineer Bernardo Buontalenti, who completed the construction from 1569 to 1581. It was sufficiently finished to provide the setting for Francesco's public wedding to Bianca Cappello in 1579. In its time it was a splendid example of the Mannerist garden.

Francesco had assembled most of the property, which was not a hereditary Medici possession, by September 1568, and construction began the following spring.

The garden was laid out along a perfectly straight down-slope axis passing through the center of the villa, which stood midway. Down the central descent, the visitor still walks under a cooling arch of fountain jets, without getting wet.

Michel de Montaigne, one of the earliest visitors to leave a description of Pratolino, saw it in 1581, and considered it to have been built, he thought when visiting Villa d'Este, "precisely in rivalry with this place". A long description was published by a Florentine, Francesco de' Vieri, in 1586. Giusto Utens included a view of the southern half of the villa and its gardens among his series of lunettes containing bird's-eye views of the Medicean villas painted in 1599. Stefano Della Bella made six etchings of the Pratolino's gardens in the mid-17th century, the picture is rounded out by further 18th century descriptions. Nevertheless, Pratolino has not survived, as other Medici villas have. …