DRAFT

Evidence of Absence is not Absence of Evidence. Hesdins

Garden of Earthly Delights and Orsinis Sacro Bosco at
Bomarzo: automata and hydrological systems.
An essay based on photographic investigations at Bomarzo in May, 1996, May 2006
and June, 2014, with evidence of, and supporting research for, Vicinos wateranimated garden and the missing automata. PART I.

Preface: The mystery of the missing elements:

Count Vicino Orsinis Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo is a globally celebrated
Cinquecento garden located in Upper Lazio, one hundred kilometres northeast of Rome, in the region dominated by Viterbo, a summer destination for
Popes, cardinals and their courts over hundreds of years. Bomarzo was, in the
early sixteenth century, a difficult place to reach and a backwater not high on
many notables lists. Within a few years of 1547, however, the Sacro Bosco
was to become celebrated as a place of exceptional interest. In recent
decades, after its post-War discovery by Salvador Dali and a landmark film,
the Park has been celebrated once again for its Mannerist sculptures:

(Fig. 1: early to mid-twentieth century photograph Mask of Madness, sourcePark visitor centre, June, 2014)
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When first surveyed by the team from the University of Rome in the 1950s,
with purchase by the Bettini family who devoted their lives to the Parks
restoration, it was a scene of chaos [1]:

(Fig. 2: early to mid-twentieth century photograph Hells Mouth looking

south, with attendant sculptures, laden donkey, sheep and shepherds,
source- Park visitor centre, June, 2014)
From 1957 until now the Sacro Bosco has undergone a massive physical reordering, and been subjected to a phenomenal, almost industrial-scale wave
of research, analysis, cultural ascription and discussion. The world is littered
with people who cherish this place, from weekend family visitors who
undertake a two hours drive north from Rome, to international cognoscenti of
Renaissance art and gardens.
Over the last fifty-five years the Bettinis, then the Committee of
Management, have spent millions of Euros and thousands of person hours
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reconstructing paths, levels, walls and zones such as the Garden of the
Herms. The famous, perhaps infamous sculptures have stolen the limelight in
all of this, not surprisingly, yet almost as obvious but almost unremarked
other physical phenomena are stark and self-evident.

(Fig 3: The stone water control tower and unexplained lower cavern; source:
Coty, Dreams of Etruria thesis, op. cit. p.147, fig 30)

No commentator has adequately explained features such as those above or

the fact that opposite the cavern depicted, which sits below the stone tower
(whose purpose remains mysterious to this day) there is a charming but
formidably solid love-seat:

(Fig: 4, carved, in situ, peperino boulder love-seat, photographed June,

2014)

These features are inside the Park on the lowest level, set among the
spectacular sculptures which now reside in a bosky environment, much unlike
their condition and milieu in the early 1950s, but perhaps somewhat more
like that which Orsini created during thirty seven years, from 1547 to 1584,
as the Sacro Bosco was developed. However, such unexplained features also
exist outside the walls of the Park: the following strange caverns are located
by the side of the approach road.

(Fig: 5, to east/right of approach road into Sacro Bosco, photograph June,

2014)
Careful inspection of this enormous peperino boulder, associated walls and
structures, and other carved boulders nearby do not support Cotys
contention that these features were primarily Etruscan- although their shape
bears a marginal resemblance to other Etruscan carvings.
If not Etruscan, and if other unexplained elements such as water tanks,
walled rectangular below-ground structures and many other boulders with
carved lines and caverns in their surfaces suggest something more modern
was in play, is another layer of cultural offerings created by Orsini now
missing? Inevitably this raises questions such as: what was there? Why was it
emplaced and to what messaging purpose? What else is either missing or
much reduced? Why did Orsini go to great lengths and expend significant
amounts of money for features which now appear pointless? How much of
this additional layer was there and how much remains? If whatever was there
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was in part removed- why and by whom? If there was another significant
interpretive element was it part of a topos which, perhaps, Orsini invented for
his region? If he did so- as his garden commenced earliest- did it influence
other garden creators? Did he have a model, or models from elsewhere, to
interpret in his own way, in his locality, and was that model significant in his
creative evolution? And so on.
The setting:

(Fig. 6: Source: Coty, Dream of Etruria, Washington U Thesis, p. 131, the

greater Viterbo area showing location of Bomarzo and other major local
Cinquecento gardens such as Bagnaia (Lante), but not Caprarola- further
south on SP9, etc.)

Sixteenth century Italy- the Cinquecento- witnessed a remarkable flowering of

artistic and scientific creativity as part of the late Renaissance. Scholars have
long acknowledged the debt of that period to Islamic and rediscovered
ancient sources which carried knowledge forward from both the deep and
from the more recent past. In a number of cases the transmission of such
knowledge appears to predate the main period of the Renaissance. For
example, in the world of thematic gardens and parks, of animated mythology
and narrative, and of automata and hydrological engineering to name a few
apparently disparate disciplines, the debt of Italian creative figures in the
Cinquecento owes much to what went before.
The relationship between Hesdin and Bomarzo is one such tangled skein.
Robert II, Count of Artois, Burgundian Regent of the Angevin kingdom of Sicily
returning to his northern home carried with him Islamic sourced intellectual
seeds which saw the astonishing Garden of Earthly Delights being created at
Hesdin- in a castle he owned- after 1292. [2].This knowledge, as we shall see,
was much later accidentally transmuted by Orsini into arguably the first great
animated Italian water garden of its period at Bomarzo.
The techniques and traditions carried from Hesdin to Bomarzo also partnered
with the long history of indigenous Italian hydraulic innovation [3], part cause
and part product of the Renaissance. Here, technology and skill was
transposed and transformed from hill-top urban water supply systems into
egocentric, yet beautiful water-based pleasure gardens. In the mid to late
Cinquecento these were initially created by and on behalf of a few
remarkably powerful and wealthy clerics- in this case all were Princes of the
Church. Within that cadre think Farnese, dEste, Gambara, Madruzzo and,
later, Aldobrandini- at Caprarola, Tivoli, Bagnaia, Soriano Nel Cimino and
Frascati. These are known as Villa Farnese (commenced : c.1557-9); Villa
dEste (c. 1560); Villa Lante (c. 1566); Papacqua Soriano- no garden now
exists (1560/1); Villa Chili-Albani (c. 1561); and Villa Aldobrandini (c.
1603).But it is argued here that Vicino Orsini, friend to at least three of the
Cardinals-Farnese, Madruzzo and Gambara- was the progenitor of this
remarkable and influential cultural topos which so brilliantly and
mysteriously married genius loci, literature, art and technology into a lasting
cultural tour de force. Its features as a garden were still being imitated fifty
years later at Hellebrunn in Salzburg, Austria; responded to in powerfully
Christian fashion at Valsanzibio a hundred years after; and four centuries
later echoed by a Rothschild in Villa Ephrussi at St Jean Cap Ferrat, France.
In terms of Sacro Boscos immediate role as topos or archetype in the
Cinquecento, and as primogenitor of other gardens the select, but scholarly
display in Bomarzo Municipal Hall- Vicinos Palazzo- has this observation:

La lettere tra gli amici mostrano come soprattutto destate seei si scambiavano visiye frequentissine, che per
Vicino erano libere da ogni restrizione, avendo egli stabilito coi cardinale Farnese e Madruzzo le conditioni (...)
chinsalatoto hospite, senza dimander licenza, vo et torno et fo quel che mi pace. Questi rapporti amichevoli erano
favoriti dalla vicinanza tra rispettivi residenze estive. Il complesso di Bomarzo, per quanto consente di ipotizzare le
cronologia sin qui stabilita, pote forse essere un modello, o uno stimolo per le posteriori creazioni del giardino di
Caprarola, creato dal cardinale Alessandro, della fonte di Papacqua a Soriano, voluto da cardinal Madruzzo, o per gli
ampliamenti di Bagnaia promossi dal cardinal Gambaro.

In English:
"The letters between friends show that especially in the summer they exchanged frequent visits, which were close
to free from any restriction, since he had established with Cardinals Farnese and Madruzzo the conditions (...) of
an ungreeted recipient of hospitality, without questioning license , [so] go to me and come back from me yonder
only that I'm at peace. These friendly relations were favoured by the proximity between their summer residences.
The complex of Bomarzo, if allowed to assume the chronology hitherto established, [could] perhaps be a model, or
a stimulus for the creation of the rear garden of Caprarola, created by Cardinal Alessandro, the source of Papacqua
Soriano, built by Cardinal Madruzzo, or to expansion of Bagnaia promoted by Cardinal Gambaro. "

This is an important statement in many ways. Cardinals Madruzzo and Farnese were
exceptionally influential clerics and Princes- both religious and secular- whose quiet
patronage would have protected and encouraged Orsini in later years.
Vicino had known them since entering military service in 1546, when Alessandro Farnese, his
relation through marriage, inveigled him to take part in the mostly disreputable religious
wars. Alongside Niccolo Orsini of Pitigliano, Vicino fought under the banner of Cardinal
Farnese in the service of Pope Paul III. In 1546 he was part of a strong force that marched
over the Alps to successfully confront the armies of the Schmalkaldic (Protestant) League in
Germany when he also met Cardinal Madruzzo who helped plan the expedition. [4] Farnese
had shared his studentship with Madruzzo at the University of Padua and together they later
represented a more liberal and flexible element within a Church which oscillated between
rigorous asceticism in line with the more draconian influences surrounding the Tridentine
reforms, and their more flexible and accommodating- but profoundly anti-Protestant wing which sought to obtain support for the reforms from bickering Emperors, Kings and prelates
[5].
Later, Madruzzo purchased his property at nearby Soriano in 1560/61 and eventually began
constructing a Palazzo and garden below the town with a prospect only exceeded by that of
Caprarola. Virtually nothing of the garden remains. One of his major contributions to the
town was a large fountain reminiscent of several at Sacro Bosco: Papacqua Soriano .
Madruzzos Nymphaeum- unusually dedicated to the genius loci- and other aspects of his
development at Soriano have pagan sculptures uncannily similar to Bomarzo, satyrs male
and female among them. These are somewhat surprising even in a Cardinal who was a
leading, if somewhat liberal figure at the Council of Trent [6] There is an inscribed dedication
to Madruzzo in the Sacro Boscos Leaning House, near the exit to the lower swimming
baths, which makes it clear the Cardinal was at times a close adviser and even philosophical
confidant of Vicino.
Cardinal Farnese was a man of enormous wealth, cultural prominence, and love of antiquity
and power, holding multitudinous religious titles and benefices across Italy and Europe. He
was perhaps the greatest collector of antiquities and sculpture in the Cinquecento. Under
the direction of his curator and librarian, the antiquarian iconographer Fulvio Orsini, the
Farnese collections were enlarged and systematised. He also became a Papal Legate,

arranging peace between the perpetually warring Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and
Francis I of France.
Most especially in regard to Bomarzo Farnese inherited the nearby unfinished fort at
Caprarola which, by 1556 or 1557, he began to turn into one of the greatest villas in Italy,
using Vignola as his architect. His symmetrical, upper garden, set apart by a bosky walk
from the main palazzo- somewhat like Vicinos Sacro Bosco- remains today perhaps the most
enchanting of all with its perfect small casino, Garden of the Herms, and exquisite tumbling
water course with small side rooms and their squirting water features. [7].This garden was
only realised much later after the two formal gardens at the rear of the Villa were
established.
Against a more expansive setting the special and lost feature of Orsinis Sacro

Bosco will be examined. This essay looks at a neglected aspect of Bomarzo, the
haunting, for centuries overlooked park created by Count Pier Francisco Vicino
Orsini (1523- 1584) in the Mannerist style between 1547 and his death in 1584. It
begins a third stage of investigation- the first being the physical uncovering,
survey and reordering by the University of Rome and the Bettini family (owners
from 1954 until recently) after Salvador Dalis re-discovery in 1949; the second
being the explosion of interpretive historical and mythological research and writing
from then until now. It is arguably the most commented upon park or garden in Italy
and an international academic industry in its own right. Particularly helpful to
understand the broader setting and cultural context are the book by Jessie Sheeler,
the ground breaking almost book-length article by M Darnall and M Weil, and Horst
Brederkamps major study. Sheeler, in particular, has a strong, informed and
empathic understanding of Vicino as an individual and as an idiosyncratic part of his
contemporary culture.
Vicino commenced creative and constructive activity in 1547 and the work
continued until just prior to his death.[8] It probably evidenced an early, cumulative,
almost intellectual organic growth as development continued in fits and starts until
at least 1557 when he returned permanently to Bomarzo.. He may have been
assisted conceptually by Vignola who went on to create great things at Caprarola for
Farnese and at Tivoli for dEste. It is likely he was also helped by Pirro Ligorio; and
by Raffaello da Montelupo, Ippolito Scalza and Fabiano Toti [9]. He was in Florence in
1558 meeting with his near relations (cousins) from the Medici clan who were, at
that time, witnessing development at Pratolino of the great animated garden whose
remains are only now being determined through painstaking archaeological and
cultural research.
Orsinis intense life of travel, warfare, imprisonment and diplomacy after 1546 were
punctuated by periods back at Bomarzo where, one imagines, he partly focused
upon family matters and on the Sacro Bosco until he retired from the world in
1557. Without the remarkably steadfast management of his local business by Giulia
(they married in 1541), Orsinis devoted wife, until her death in 1556, early progress
on anything in Bomarzo or his surrounding lands during his absences would have
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fallen apart, as he openly acknowledged. While matrimonially unfaithful to Giulia,

his love for her fortitude and support never wavered. She bore him seven children.
To honour this love he dedicated the Boscos small Temple to her and to her
memory.
By necessity this precursor essay must be tentative. Much gathering of empirical,
surveying data and detailed historical research remains to be done. It is an attempt
to broach the subject rather than provide a comprehensive statement, in a minor
way hopefully continuing the tradition of the trail blazing work of Darnall and Weil in
1984, Brederkamp in 1985 and many others. If it raises more questions and debate
than answers, it will have served its purpose.

Orsini: the man, the creative intellect and the mystery:

Vicino Orsini was a leading scion of a leading, ancient Roman family. He was also a
man of great and deep cultural knowledge. Of the foremost literature of his time; of
contemporary Italian thinkers and writers, past and present; of art and religion; of
local, family and especially Etruscan history [10]. He experienced every kind of
reality: love and war; wine and food; desire and lust; pain and grief; loss and hope;
acute wakefulness and dream filled slumber; sobriety and inebriation; interludes
poetical and musical; moments engineered and spontaneous; pursuits intellectual
and social. He was openly a sensualist or even, in modern terms, a constructive
synestheist. If he had lived in the twentieth century it is an even bet that he would
have experimented with mescalin or LSD. His capacity for anarchic visualisation in
sculpture and three dimensional environments equals that of Hieronymus Bosch in
his great work, The Garden of Earthly Delight, in oil painting:

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[Fig 7: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels, 220 x 389 cm, Museo del Prado,
Madrid- available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights#/media/File:The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch
_High_Resolution.jpg]

Above all, Orsinis park or Sacro Bosco embodied the notion that all the senses can
be stimulated, through careful design and planning, in a singular location and
during a compressed period of time. What are required are the correct stimuli amid
the right settings accompanied by a powerful and suggestive narrative pertinent to
the narrators objectives. Well deployed these influences can have a mesmeric,
even overwhelming affect/effect on the unwitting or ill-defended prospect. Or, they
can create responding cultural sparks among the cognoscenti and literati.
He hungered for female company. The park at Bomarzo was created for the
satisfaction of his desires: especially a profound need for earthly love and a
sixteenth century courtiers type of intellectual engagement [11]: for Orsini it was
not solely, or even mainly Divine Love which redeemed, instead Redemption is
through love not God- a notion of his and others not lost on the Catholic Church
which, in some quarters, continued to decry the Parks pagan lasciviousness into the
twentieth century- an exorcism was held inside the Park in 1980. In terms of its
Mannerist, post Council of Trent art sensibility, as the Tridentine reforms percolated
through the Catholic Domain, the parks style would have been increasingly viewed
with disfavour:
Before we examine Caravaggios persona through the scope of his masterpieces, it is equally important to look
fastidiously at the artist in the cultural context of the Cinquecento and Cinquecento. At the turning of the
seventeenth century, Rome was in a state of religious turmoil. During the Counter-Reformation the Catholic Church
reorganized its doctrines and engaged in a counter attack against the emergence of Protestantism. A new art was

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sought with the explicit goal to recommit the populace to Catholicism. After the close of the Council of Trents
25th session, the tradition of sacred art had been altered. [2] In contrast to the once highly accepted style of
Mannerism, the new doctrine formulated by the Church advocated Gabriele Paleottis theology and his predominant
view that nature, above all things, was the purest form of truth. Thus, the new decrees forbade highly idealized
beauty, exaggerated heroic figures, and the depiction of illusionary landscapes. Artists were to create sacred
images based on truth as nature presented it, show Jesus and Mary in an age appropriate association, and avoid
the addition of elements that merely boasted the artists skill or virtuosity. Moreover, the new art must confront the
viewer with profound emotion to ensure a sympathetic spiritual experience. The Catholic Church believed a viewer
could reach a level of divine spirituality through a painting created by the imitation of nature, which in turn would
bring about a recommitment to the Catholic faith. [12]

A chart in Bomarzo Municipal Hall display shows his better known amorous partners
mainly over the middle to later period of his life. Of these, one lasted from the mid1530s until her untimely death in the early 1540s- another evidently throughout his
marriage. The other seven recorded liaisons occurred mainly after Giulia died
although one was concurrent from 1545 to 1560. In the display text it is made clear
that after Giulias death he took up with an unnamed young lady from Bomarzo de
15 in 16 anni as some kind of consolation.
These are probably only some of his relationships with members of the opposite
sex. His two years at Namur, for example, was spent with courtly ladies as Cardinal
Alessandro Farnese- the Papal Legate - who organised his eventual release, pointed
out in a letter suggesting Orsinis captivity was no real hardship. Sheeler, quoting
Vicinos own words which are graphic establishes, beyond question, his sensuous
nature and rampant enjoyment of the physical delights of human sexual experience
with the opposite gender. Not surprisingly he devised in his wickedly named Sacro
Bosco machinery to make that more rather than less likely. Even the word wood is
ambivalent in Italian as in: delivering the wood, a sly sexual reference.
In his multifarious affairs and singular marriage Orsini was operating well within the
mores of the late Renaissance period, although as post-Tridentine values spread
these were under scrutiny for both religious and laity:

While family historians have sought to prove that the Italian Renaissance ideal of the chaste woman dominated
society, this work has clearly revealed that the reality was not so clear cut. Families sacrificed the chastity of their
daughters, sisters, and even their wives, in the pursuit of power and influence. Neither was the woman who
captured the heart of an Italian Renaissance prince condemned and looked down on by society at large. Instead
she was celebrated by her princely lover in art, on commemorative medals, and in literature. Her family, her
children, and she herself were all well provided for by the prince, as courtly society dictated. These women, in
participating in illicit affairs with princes outside of marriage, performed an important role in Italian Renaissance
court culture.

[13]
Orsini had an impish sense of humour. He was in a life-long competition with other
contemporary creators of great gardens, notably three or four Cardinals and a close
relation or two [14], who perhaps refused to acknowledge his creation openly, but
were most probably stimulated in their own endeavours by his innovative and
idiosyncratic efforts. In the 1560s, 1570s and 1580s his Sacro Bosco became
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famous among some aristocratic and noble folk [15], infamous among some more.
Probably commenced in 1547, arguably it pre-dates the gardens of all his
competitors for whom he was an amusing, innovative gadfly of occasionally dubious
mores. He gave them a place to visit where, if they wished, they could let their hair
down. One can imagine Vicino, had he lived to meet Groucho Marx, being in violent
agreement with Grouchos comment: These are my principles but, if you dont like
them, I have others. Orsini possessed innate relativity and a self-aware, but private,
sense of humour. Brederkamp argues that he was an anarchist, at least in cultural
terms.
As a Park or Sacro Bosco rather than a garden Bomarzos local and Etrurian
antecedents were outside those of standard Islamic-derivative watergardens- at
least in its asymmetrical layout, tufa/peperino elements and wandering, multi-level
pathways. The advantages offered by the site which lies below a slowly moving
avalanche field of peperino boulders [16], was its location at the foot of the palazzo
and town walls; its visibility from there; the availability of water through the
adjacency of two streams on the southern side; and its remoteness from major
towns and roads permitting privacy, yet access to determined notables, various
high-placed friends and other culturati. In these aspects- especially asymmetry- it is
not directly related to DEste, Caprarola, or Lante although, as we shall see, it
shared a common history with them in respect to its layer of water features and
their echo of other sculptural similarities.
Orsini was a maverick and a polymath, not unlike Sir William Petty who was a
maverick and a polymath in England and Ireland during the next century [17].
Always on the fringe of power; always suspect because of his creative ideas; always
striving to achieve his own vision against substantial odds; always searching for
personal meaning in what he did; always questionable in his religious views yet
sheltered by his social and political contacts from serious persecution. For his part
Petty championed evidence based government and economic reasoning; invention;
development of social welfare in a model industrial town in Western Ireland; and the
power of natural philosophy.
In his early to mid-adult life Vicino, for many years, was a martial champion of his
family (Farnese/Medici) connections and of the Papacy, while being regarded by
those who knew him as a cultivated, idiosyncratic yet creative man. Thus, after
horrific experiences of warfare and epic sieges he refused any further military
induction or activity and dedicated himself to his wood, to creating and enjoying
sensual and cultural experiences. Rain or shine, almost every day he would ride
down to the Sacro Bosco to be enfolded by his unfolding creation. Even in
Bomarzos occasionally frozen winters or ferociously hot summers he was present to
witness the works going on.
At the end, chiding life for its unavoidable diminishing of sensory powers, flagging
in energy but still developing the scope and delights of his garden, Orsini almost
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inevitably faced the reality that his incredible, special world was difficult and
expensive to maintain and would probably fall into disrepair as tastes changed and
family wealth diminished. In fact, within seventy years the property was sold.
Probably sooner than that, all the materials used in its construction which were
valuable and portable, were likely recycled to supply growing local villages and the
onset of further warfare. Think copper, lead, bronze, ceramic piping, wood, cat gut,
iron, bronze and steel cogs, and oiled leather.
Orsini was a man whose ideas and beliefs were deliberately obscure and difficult to
read. He distributed snippets and quotations throughout the garden which were
fragmentary, allusory and pertinent to the potential journeys and sequential
experiences afforded himself and his companion. Yet he never wrote down his
fundamental tenets, choosing instead to create the wood as a mysterious
embodiment of those ideas and beliefs with the primary purpose of impressing his
peers and stimulating his companions, singular or plural, to indulge in intellectual,
entertaining, sexual or shared sensual experiences.
In an age when the moral and behavioural thermometer swung from hot,
sometimes amoral indulgence on an epic scale to cool counter-Reformation and selfdenial, it is no surprise that Orsinis Sacro Bosco developed a reputation for unChristian, salacious and even diabolical activities [18]. In one way that was good- it
kept moralistic sticky beaks away, especially after dark. In another it was risky- the
Catholic Church as the Counter Reformation gathered pace- was increasingly
seeking windows into mens souls and arbitrating many aspects of contemporary
life and belief. As Galileo and Cardano would witness decades later, when the
Churchs grip developed, and for which others- like Giordano Bruno- would perish in
the flames, this tendency was an increasing threat to freer thinking, liberal
contemporaries. In this sense it can be argued Mannerism was a transitional mode
of philosophy, thought and design in which commonly perceived dicta were often
reversed and many subtle, heterodox and sophisticated strands were surreptitiously
woven. We have no idea if Cardinal Madruzzo, for instance, harboured such
heterodox ideas but his life experience and more liberal approach during and after
the Council of Trent, his pagan decorations in the Nymphaeum , along with his
friendship for Vicino free from any restriction, might suggest it was possible.
Orsini, therefore, never provided a key to the multivalent allusions represented in
the sculpture and we have no concrete or coherent statement of his intellectual
position or beliefs. Rather, it is increasingly suggested that the wood was
deliberately open to personal interpretation and double meanings at its outset [19],
as much as it is today. While channelling Orlando Furioso, a contemporary satire
(1516/1532), as a rubric, probably Dantean poetry, Petrarch, and certainly
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna (1499), the Sacro Bosco had
multitudinous and many layered sources. Visitors could invest whatever references
and allusions they wished in the 1560s to 1580s, either deeply informed by classical
and contemporary mythology, history and narrative- or not, depending on that
14

persons own depth of knowledge and range of intellectual interests. In open ended
meaning lay scholarship, intrigue, dalliance, seduction, story variance and safety for
the principal strolling player in his own staged setting.
Orsini was a many layered, quixotic character. Eclectic and courtly, sapient and
impish, martial and pacifist, earthy and imaginative, inventive and destructive.
Among all this sat his idiosyncratic personality, remarkable erudition, creative drive
and sexual appetite. Thus, in a profound sense, the garden was also a synestheist
experience. The base layer was made up of the sites topography, vegetation,
climate and hydrology- the genius loci- hillside, Bosco, terraces, original peperino
boulders, levels, water courses and sequential, yet variable pathways, with different
entrances. Next layer was the sculptures, statuary, structures and internal/external
spaces: buildings, rooms, caves, piazettas, swards, terraces, lakes, pools, baths,
love seats, vistas, prospects and grotto. These often possessed allegorical, literary,
historical and philosophical allusions and hidden meanings- or were settings for
elements which did. Then there was the layer of Etruscan reference and allusion
relating back to Orsinis own reputed family history (Anio) and historical remnants in
the areas bosci [20].
Within this context music, masques, food and wine, bathing, swimming, storytelling,
dialogue, erotic adventures, talking faces, fountains and interactive water features,
animated figures and, eventually, some fully coloured sculptures were an added
accompaniment. Not so much a layer or stratum, more a population of experiences
which allowed Orsini an almost infinite range of possible storylines and experiential
journeys distributed among the various terraces and layers. As Darnall and Weil
expressed it [21]:

Once the meaning of the various levels is understood it is amusing to discuss the other ways one can
wander through the garden and the iconographic permutations that occur. For example, one choice a
guest can make was whether or not to descend through the lower garden when returning from Vicinos
Mask of Madness. Should he stay on the level path above the Wrestling Colossi he would arrive at the
Hippodrome... [On] a direct route from the Mask...to the Terrestrial Paradise with the little bears....

There is no certainty that Orsini let guests travel unaccompanied. Very close friends
and family may have been permitted that freedom but it seems likely he normally
accompanied other less well known guests for good reasons to do with
outlandishness of message and misinterpretation which may exacerbate his and the
Boscos reputation. Picking the day, picking the weather, picking the guest or
guests, picking the paths, picking the appropriate elements, Vicino could weave a
spellbinding experience different to all the others. It was like walking through a
larger than life, animated cabinet of curiosities accompanied by a creative genius
who tailored each remarkable experience, grotesque or lyrical, to your
temperament and character and according to his own creative desires.

15

So, his Sacro Bosco became Vicinos focus and obsession. In it were ravelled all the
threads of his life. Upon and within the wood Orsini made a world apart in which he
could pursue his many passions. It was an allegory upon a tabla erasa; historically
resonant yet unlike anything before or since; a technological marvel yet still a
Sacro Bosco; a place of intimate, private dalliance and a location of socially
acceptable pageantry; a world of mystery and yet a public journey towards Divine
Love and redemption; obscure statement of philosophy but open reference to many
literary allusions; theatre of the grotesque yet, just possibly, precursor of the world
of Opera; notorious during his life and, from the mid seventeenth century, almost
forgotten for nearly three hundred years thereafter; his personal machine for telling
stories and casting light on his life, yet misunderstood in many ways even until now.
A multi-faceted, almost infinitely optioned place in which to journey, following a
different narrative each time according to the intentions of the storey teller and
perceptions of his audience. A riddle, wrapped inside a mystery and so on. Now
regarded by many garden scholars as adequately explored by two or three
generations of their colleagues. A rich vein of intellectual history now all but
exhausted?
As Orsini himself said in one of the extant inscriptions on a Sphinx which probably
sat at one of the original entrances to the wood:
you who enter here put your mind to it part by part
And tell me then if so many wonders
Were made as trickery or as art
Sheeler has interpreted this duality of meaning in the original Italian in a way which
assists the thesis of this essay. Notwithstanding, it is difficult to imagine the
sculptures carved from peperino as being capable of incorporating trickery. They
are what they are- static sculptures made from local stone, mostly found on site.
While in part grotesque, or whimsical, or sensuous, or stately they mutely rested
where Orsini placed them or as they were found in situ. Hardly exhibiting trickery?
They certainly embodied many layers of referential meaning, as we have seen, but
that was not in any way unusual in gardens of the period. So, to what does Orsini
refer in this word trickery? JB Bury noted the following in his Bomarzo Revisited
article:
in Petrarchs context inganno simply means deceit and the arti to which he refers are arti maghe, that is magic
arts

[22]

Such magic arts were associated with the dark side of religion and philosophy by
less cultivated and less modern people. Sometimes, such ideas were associated
with human made, moving figures- automata- which were increasingly appearing in
the houses and palaces of the rich and powerful in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. Could Vicinos reference be to automata which created the illusion of
16

movement, music or speech in Bomarzo, or the very real experience of visitors

being drenched from below, or from head to toe by both static and moving
features?

Hesdin, Orsini, automata and Emperor Charles V:

The transmission of knowledge about water powered and mechanical
automata to Vicino can be strongly inferred due to Orsinis assistance in the
defence of Hesdin against the army of Emperor Charles V in 1553 and his
subsequent period of imprisonment for ransom until 1555.
The Hesdin Garden of Earthly Delights is well documented, as is the siege
and consequent slaughter of many non-wealthy combatants on the losing
side by the Emperors Spanish troops. The siege was horrific. Orsinis reaction
to warfare can partly be sourced from this appalling experience here, and at
the Papally ordered massacre at Montefortino, in 1557.
In April, 1557 the town of Montefortino, north-east of Velletri, signed an agreement to
support the Pope. Accordingly, Vicino sent them a detachment of his troops, whom the
townspeople promptly ambushed and almost entirely wiped out. In retaliation the Pope sent a
strong force under another member of the Orsini clan, Giulio Orsini, who managed to capture
the town after a difficult siege. The Pope ordered the confiscation of all goods in the town and
its total destruction. All the male inhabitants were slaughtered and the churches to which the
women and children had fled were burned down.

[23]

At Hesdin both castle and city were rapidly removed, stone by stone, item by
item except the convent and chapel, on the orders of the Emperor. It is
reported this huge and complex feat of engineering took only four weeks.
What happened to the marvels appears unknown from available printed
sources. The French families of traditional tradesmen who maintained and
enhanced the marvels also are not mentioned although their immediate
livelihood was removed once the city, castle, and gallery, were demolished.
In Bedinis informative paper on the history of automata in Europe the
fascination of Emperor Charles V for this subject is manifested:
Another pioneer in the construction of androids was a contemporary of Bullmann named Gianello
Torriano of Cremona (ca. 1515-l585). When the Emperor Charles V visited Pavia in 1529, he expressed
a wish to have the famous Astrarium of Giovanni de Dondi restored. Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga,
governor of Milan, recommended Gianello, already well established as one of the foremost Italian
clockmakers. It is generally believed that Gianello entered the Emperor's service at this time and
returned with him to Spain. Having found the Dondi Astrarium beyond repair, it is believed that he
constructed a replica. When the Emperor abdicated in 1555 and retired to the convent of San Yuste, he

17

was accompanied by a staff of 50 retainers, among whom was Gianello. The clockmaker devoted his
time and ability to the construction of automata with which he sought to distract his mournful
monarch. Often Gianello surprised the Emperor with the novelty of his creations. After dinner, for
instance, he would produce a tableau on the dining table consisting of a variety of little figures of
armed soldiers that marched about, rode on horseback, beat drums, blew trumpets, and engaged in
battle. On other occasions he would release little carved wooden birds which flew into every corner, to
the consternation of the disapproving Superior of the convent, who considered them works of sorcery.
The only surviving work which can be attributed to Gianello is an automaton of a lady lute player, now
in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna ... [24]

Clearly, the Emperor was engaged in the creation and enjoyment of automata
from the 1530s until his death decades later. As such it is hard to believe he
was unaware of Hesdins Garden of Earthly Delights. Although in this phase
of the religious wars he had already ordered the dismantling of another
recalcitrant city, Therouanne, it is not unreasonable to question the speed
and completeness of the reduction of Hesdin. As well as the removal of a
potential future enemy redoubt and threat, did the Emperor have another
reason to take the Castle apart? Were some of the automata dismantled and
shipped back to him and Gianello in Spain? If so, was Orsini aware of this and
even present at the work scene for a short while as his captivity was being
discussed and organised? Did some of the materials and mechanisms
fascinate him after he had seen them functioning before, or during a break in
the siege? Did he talk with the skilled maintenance tradesmen about what
was happening and how the automata functioned? We do not yet know, but it
is a fascinating possibility.
Specialised skills in making and maintaining water-powered and mechanical
automata were rare, as were skills involved in clock-making. [25]. Mechanical
clock making and, the even rarer, automaton fabrication, were sub-skills of
arms manufacturing or blacksmithing. A tradition established in Hesdin in the
thirteenth century, while fading in the fifteenth was still extant in the midsixteenth [26]. In a town of around seven thousand people the highly skilled
automata-maintenance tradesmen- by appointment to the Counts of
Burgundy- would have been well known, especially if they were blacksmiths,
arms makers, clockmakers, or all three.
That these skilled craftsmen were mobile is not in doubt. They went where
the work was and where they could get paid the most. Parts of middle Italy,
at this stage of the religious wars, were relatively undisturbed after many
decades of earlier disruption and savagery nearby. Rural and obscure
Northern Lazio, between the Via Cassia and Via Flaminia, may have appeared
a comparatively safe backwater and, supported by a wealthy new patron with
a big potential project, Bomarzo a safe harbour in comparison to France or
the Low Countries where warfare rapidly increased. Especially if you were a
18

traditional Catholic who supported the Pope based in Rome. We do not know
who these craftsmen may have been although, later in the article, two
possible candidates emerge who were associated with Pirro Ligorio.
Orsini began his Sacro Bosco in 1547, the earliest of all the Cinquecento
Italian animated water gardens, so his interest in what he saw at Hesdin may
well have been piqued once he was there in 1553 and could witness for
himself what the automata manifested and how they worked. The gallery was
widely known and visited by royalty, aristocrats and travellers alike. He would
not have missed the opportunity to inspect it even if it was no longer in
perfect repair.
After the disastrous siege, Vicino was a wealthy and influential captive held at
Namur in what is now Belgium, a city not that far from Hesdin in northern
France. The Emperor, who had joined the possessions of the Imperium and
Spain, controlled this area of the Low Countries. Despite a two year delay in
ransom funding he may have purchased some of the automata just after the
siege when their value was probably reduced to that of recyclable materials.
In a war zone which had been ravaged who else would seek to own this
mechanical and hydraulic detritus other than the Emperor or Orsini? He may
also have spent time with the skilled family of French trades people who
maintained and built the automata before he left for Namur or while there.
Given their skill sets it is likely these tradesmen moved from the area of
Hesdin fairly quickly since it took a number of years for the Emperors orders,
to rebuild the town 6 kms away, to be realised. Alternatively they may have
already have left to return to another town close by in France from where, it is
reported by Truitt, they originated. The safety of these skilled craftsmen is
also likely to have been assured since the Emperors armies needed trained
people like this, as did society at large. Without further manuscript evidence,
however, we do not know the answers to these questions.
Cooling his heels and waiting for freedom, Orsini may have experienced a
burst of creative musing, wishing himself back in Bomarzo with all its
possibilities for unique self-expression in his nascent Sacro Bosco. The
gallery would have provided welcome stimulus for his creative talents before
and possibly even during breaks in the siege. Putting the two interests
together later on would not take an enormous leap of imagination.
Subsequently, after an initially tough detention then as an honoured
prisoner, he spent time as a gallant, a courtier-like parolee reading, writing,
dancing and talking with fellow prisoners and their wealthy captors. With little
else to do Vicino would write letters to obtain news and his release, pursue
the courtly duties and pleasures of the civilised parolee, read inbound letters
and contemporary literature and probably dream of what he could create in
his own special domain back home. So long as his upkeep was paid by his
19

family. In that light it is likely he would have been permitted to explore the
mechanisms and technologies from the dismantled galleries, talking with
local people who knew and maintained them, before leaving for Namur. These
were harmless and unthreatening activities of a civilised and courtly captive.
Even if not, we can reasonably deduce he would have studied the galleries
before the end of the siege. It is also reasonable to suggest that one or two of
the tradespeople may have accompanied Orsini, perhaps with some
deconstructed automata, to Bomarzo after the ransom was paid.
Is this presently supposition? Yes.
Yet does it explain the water animated and mechanical automata for which
we have good evidence in present day literature and at Bomarzo? Yes, in the
main.
In his essay Bedini notes categorically that a link existed between Hesdins
Gallery and the Italian water gardens of the Cinquecento:
The most important application of the hydraulics devised by the Greek ancients was made in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for the elaborate gardens of the royal mansions and palaces of
Renaissance Europe. Little change was effected in these mechanisms from the time of Philon and
Heron. The grottoes of the European gardens employed the same combination of movements as had
been utilized in the most ancient times. The decoration, however, reflected the era; it was executed
with considerably more care and with a profusion and confusion of detail and accessories as the
Renaissance developed. A tradition was established based on the prototype of the water gardens built
by the Count d'Artois in the late thirteenth century for his castle at Hesdin. [27]

But Bedini does not establish who was the initial transporter and adopter of
this approach and these techniques, potentially, in the fifteenth century or
where they were demonstrated. Whether or not there were examples of
earlier transmission in that century, which he does not specify, there can be
no doubt that Orsini was at Hesdin before, and possibly during, the time the
Gallery was taken apart, that he had just begun work on the Sacro Bosco as
his life-long project, and that his innovative park at Bomarzo predates those
at Pratolino, Lante, Caprarola and dEste. Or that, as we shall see later, there
is abundant proof of a massive and complex hydrological system at
Bomarzos Sacro Bosco evident to this day. In fact so extensive are these
remnants that they appear, when originally installed, to have far
outdistanced even dEste in terms of automata, as opposed to fountains,
playful water jets or falling waters. There are also elements which suggest
mechanical automata may have been installed.
Literature on hydrology and automata in the C15, C16 and C17:

20

One of the great historians of automata, Silvio Bedini summed up the

transmission of knowledge from Ancient Greece, via Islamic scholars to the
Renaissance as follows:
Automata had its greatest period of development following the rise of mechanism with the revival of
Greek culture during the Renaissance. In addition to the considerable progress that was made in the
philosophy of science as well as in the sciences of astronomy and mathematics during this 'turbulent
period, the stage was being set for major technological developments which came to fruition in a later
era. The writings of Ctesibius, Philon, and Heron, which had been preserved in the works of the Arabs
and Byzantines, were brought into the popular domain once more in translations by Renaissance
humanists and exercised considerable influence on scientific thought.
Distribution of these scientific treatises led to the publication of numerous commentaries by Italian
and other writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, resulting in considerable preoccupation
with hydraulics and pneumatics and their application to biological automata. The commentaries not
only rendered translations and reconstructions of the written words of the Greek ancients, but the
writers added sketches and designs to their distillations in an attempt to explain aid, illustrate, and
elaborate on, the early mechanisms. These reconstructions often inspired other and more complicated
works, which were constructed by architects of that and subsequent periods for the diversion of
wealthy patrons.
Fragments of Heron's writings were the first of the Greek works to be translated. These appeared for
the first time in Latin in the work of Giorgio Valla, [1] published in 1501, followed by complete
translations into Latin by Commadini [2] in 1575. The single work which provoked the greatest interest
among Renaissance scholars was the Pneumatics, which was translated and published for the first
time by Giovanni Battista Aleotti [3] in 1589, and in which the translator incorporated some ideas of
his own. [28]

The importance of publications on these subjects was based on an earlier

tradition of manuscript copies of Heron, or Hero of Alexander as he is also
known. These were sourced from Islamic manuscript documents mainly in
Arabic, available in Sicily, Apulia, Constantinople and elsewhere, which had
been translated into Italian, or Latin, or both. Sherwood devotes an extended
section to sources and translations which appear to span many centuries
before and during the Middle Ages. Chapuis and Droz note a specific example
in 1492 when a complex automaton theatre derived from Hero was
substantially recreated for a celebration in honour of Count Borso DEste,
proof that there were detailed manuscript sources, with illustrations, available
in the late fifteenth century and probably much earlier. Boas gives a focused
account while Ambrosetti, more recently, has tracked many of the manuscript
sources in detail.
Given his years as Governor of Angevin Sicily, Robert II may well have
collected such manuscripts as well as witnessing such hydraulic enginery at
work in these southern gardens in the late thirteenth century.

21

Later, in the early seventeenth century a highly influential publication, by a

much traveled author, appeared which was primarily based on Hero but
which also had its own special content and characteristics. Bedini again:
Equally important was the work entitled Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes avec Diverses Machines tant Utiles que
Plaisantes (The Relations of Motive Forces, with Various Machines as Useful as they are Pleasing), published in
Frankfort in 1615. The author, Salomon de Caus (1576-1626), was a French engineer in the service of the Palatine
Elector. In this work he was particularly preoccupied with the production of pleasure gardens and hydraulic
displays; he applied the principles of hydraulics for the solution of various problems, in which the influence of Heron
is in strong evidence ... Part of the work described grotesque grottoes and fountains, which later served as
prototypes for actual constructions.[29]

The importance of de Caus to the present article lies in the fact that he travelled to
Italy and studied many gardens. His book, while containing some contemporary
improvements, was principally based on Heros famous work in print and as it was
interpreted in those gardens and, later, by himself. Much of what he illustrates
would have been known to Orsini, his Cardinal friends and their architectural and
engineering advisers. [30] Although it has been disputed, this author believes there
is some evidence to support the idea that de Caus may have visited Bomarzo.
As is widely accepted, Orsini was extremely well connected with writers of his day
and deeply knowledgeable of Italian literature of his period. A well-educated
aristocrat of an ancient and leading family, he was almost certainly fluent in Latin
and other European languages apart from his native tongue. Given the scale of the
hydraulic systems at Bomarzo and the number of places and spaces where there is
irrefutable evidence for hydraulic and mechanical mechanisms emplacement,
Bomarzo is likely to have exhibited some, perhaps many of Heros mechanisms
adapted to local requirements and tastes. To which was added an eclectic range of
hydraulic and possibly mechanical automata based on those at Hesdin, themselves
almost certainly based on C13 gardens and technologies found in Sicily and known
to Robert II. These, too, would have been the descendants of the Heronic tradition
and his corpus of technologies and classical influences

Orsini as accidental catalyst and synestheist:

The essential catalysts for creation of the Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo were:
sources of technical, engineering, artistic, cultural and architectural
knowledge, a place and resources appropriate for self-expression using such
technology and artistic expression, and the creative intellect of a wealthy
person. Motive, means and opportunity as the old saying goes. He did the
deed, although it took forty years of concentrated effort and a massive
investment of funds and creativity to achieve the end result. Even then, it
was a work in progress for most of his life. Indeed a recent discovery shows
even more unfinished, large-scale works were underway before his death
22

outside the recognised boundaries of the woods Cinquecento walls (see

photographs from June, 2014 below). More such may have been identified
from GOOGLE Earth.
The vicissitudes of war placed Vicino in a context where it is inconceivable he
would have missed the opportunity to visit the Garden of Earthly Delights.
He hated the experience of war and his handsome face was physically
scarred by it in addition to the psychological trauma which he later indicated.
His opportunity to imagine and synthesise a unique creative expression
situated in his home location was his acknowledged counterpoint to that
ghastly military experience. In all, the old adage Allah is great but proximity
greater applies to Vicinos life experience and life-long project- his Sacro
Bosco. No-one else travelled where he did, lived where he did, possessed the
method, means and opportunity as he did, or possessed the knowledge and
creative passions. This helps explain the woods unique character and
compelling qualities.
Genius Loci:
Let us ponder, for a moment, the conjunction of climate, topography,
vegetation, geology, hydrology and culture- as embodied in Count Orsinis
creation. Bomarzo is a place of extremes. The temperature can nowadays
vary- and did at that time- from minus 10C (including wind chill factor) to plus
45C, winter to summer. Although Vicino said he was keen to attend his wood
under construction most days in the winter he is unlikely to have initiated
visits there from friends, patrons, neighbours or lovers. He notes that he
visited often throughout the year to confer with tradesmen and other
advisers [31]. It is possible he was accompanied on occasion by Giulia while
she was alive, or by another family member, to look at progress in the winter
but the exposed nature of the road down to the site and the dank winter
woodland may have limited these joint excursions. Added to which freezing
winter temperatures dictated draining the hydrological systems to avoid
bursting joints and pipes.
Bundled up against the cold, with snow, rain and frost on the weather menu,
Orsinis winter experiences were partly dictated by such inclement extremes.
Life within the Palazzo was warmer, kinder and more enjoyable during the
coldest months than life outside. He was wealthy and had many servants. His
family would have treasured their comforts. Roaring fires and warm clothes
were the order of the day with hearty meals of beef, mutton, game,
farinaceous foods and root vegetables, accompanied by local wines famous
for quality (Est! Est! Est!). It is reasonable to assume that, apart from
workers and engineers or architects, only the passionate progenitor would
regularly visit his Park in the worst of Lazios wintry weather.

23

By the same token, the height of summer can be equally extreme: intense
humidity, soaring temperatures, occasional massive storms and seemingly
endless heat waves which leave even the most energetic humans enervated
and limp are the order of the day. The northern-facing defensive position of
the Palazzo was also chosen to provide winds, breezes and air currents
caused by convection from valley, up past promontory to sky. The Belvedere,
under watered cloth awnings, made for slightly better conditions in the
sweltering heat while thermal mass embodied in thick stone walls and floors
meant interiors heated up much less slowly than exterior air. But all this
would have provided limited relief during the most brutal, extended periods
of heat. Down on the western plain at Vulci the heat was so extreme that, in
Etruscan then enlarged in Roman times, an entire underground city existed in
parallel with that above ground. Conditions below still remain remarkably cool
when the mercury rises above 32C+ (the author visited below-ground in Vulci
and photographed it in May, 2006).
By the 1570s from the Palazzos Belvedere, the prospect was presented of a
deliciously cool woodland environment, the Sacro Bosco, with its lake and
faintly visible streams, ponds, grottoes, water features, fountains, baths and
swimming pool. Even in 1547 Vicino would have had an inkling of the
potential attractions of a well-watered woodland sanctuary during the late
spring, high summer and early autumn months. He grew up at Bomarzo and
well understood the compelling realities of its summer climate. For a man of
great wealth and local power the opportunity to create a halcyon
environment with every conceivable summer comfort and distraction would
have been challenging yet delightful.
He made the Sacro Bosco because he could, while having the resources and
creativity to imagine first, then realise second what was in his mind. Not for
him a Walt Disney experience for the masses - from whom to extract a
fortune. Rather, an intensely personal and private expression of intellectual
subtlety and experiential enjoyment. In the second category subtlety was not
always evident, although often it was the order of the day.

The evidence for the statement above? There are a host of pointers. Here,
there is no absence of evidence. For example, there is the major installation
at the far foot of the park where remains of large scale baths currently exist
[32]. It was a notorious contemporary fact that Emperor Hadrians baths
(Natatio) were undergoing excavation by Vignola on the part of the Farnese
Cardinal. Many of the antiquities found were documented by Pirro Ligorio in
his massive manuscript trove. New discoveries kept on being made and
broadcast during Vicinos life. While small in comparison with Hadrians,
24

walking toward and round this lowest space today clearly demonstrates
Vicinos wit and capacity to create his own bathing experience.

There were and are two obvious ways down to this bathing facility: one was
by carriage from the top arrival area- a route still used for maintenance and
building works. Whether this road was in use in Vicinos time is not entirely
clear. This issue will be addressed below but it is felt that it followed the
natural terrain and most probably was extant at the time.

(Fig: 8- current track down from arrival area to swimming bath lower area.
Note the small,
historic stone cobbles or paving at the beginning;
June, 2014)

25

The other was by the side of the leaning house: a carriageway is flanked by Orsinis
joke- an allusion to bathing through two large, but now damaged stone tubs,
situated one on each side of the gateway leading down to the lower facility (see
commentary in Part III).

(Fig: 9- track down past Leaning House, between two baths. Note the strange, split
feature above the bath to the right/east of the Sacro Bosco; June, 2104).
As usual, Vicino gave himself options to progress with different visitors after
different sequential experiences. With close friends and family it is
reasonable to think that on private days in high summer he would simply
have ridden down, or have taken the carriage, from the Palazzo, or have had
lunch in one of the upper locations and then to have gone on from there for a
cool ablution in these lower baths. On special intimate days, he may have
26

dallied in the Nymphaeum and, after a drink and light picnic lunch inside the
Mouth of Hell, have wandered down to swim and bathe al fresco.
The fact that inside the Mouth of Hell there is a table and benches carved
from stone is another pointer. It is remarkably pleasant to sit inside on a hot
day and picnic within this cave-like, man-made structure. To quarry out the
massive inside space of this tufa boulder and carve its exterior decoration
would have taken immense energy, skill and careful planning. The cost would
have been damnable although with repeated use over the years it was
nothing but cumulatively pleasurable. The temperature within is a good 7C
lower than outside. With snow and ice-cooled drinks and a table of cold
victuals, already set out for the Count and his guest by unseen servants, such
an enjoyable experience prior to sallying forth for a swim further down, out of
sight to all but themselves, is not difficult to imagine.

(Fig 9: Hells Mouth, massive carved and hollowed peperino boulder,

Bomarzos most famous sculpture; June, 2014)
Vicino was not alone in creating chilled environments for relief from torpid
temperatures within his garden or park. The famous- and extremely beautiful
- carved stone table, with central water channel to keep wine containers cool
and a channel at foot level to chill ones feet, at Villa Lante is another version
27

of early air conditioning. With fabric awnings, moving wetted canvas sheets
and breezes caused by convection this construct permits cooler dining on
even the hottest days. What is absent at Villa Lante is any place where one
might obviously bathe in an intimate way. This thought deserves greater
exploration.
The woodland environment of Sacro Bosco is another pointer. In winter it can
be cold, dank and gloomy. The deciduous trees are bare and skeletal; the
permanent leafy vegetation often dripping; the wet stone and moss slippery
under foot. Water and mist sometimes give the park a damp, forbidding
character. In all, an occasionally oppressive and unattractive experience
except to the masochist, the toiler in the wood for what equated to a living,
or the introspective poet who leant towards melancholy. In summer even
now, without all the water features, the reverse is true: a burbling creek
animates and cools the experience; omnipresent leaves and greenery lower
the ambient temperature, while moss glimmers in a fluorescent display of
intense green. Occasionally massive summer storms drench Bomarzo- with
storm cells that can stretch 40 kilometres in diameter, 13,000 metres in
height and brutal downpours which can dump 20 mm of rain in an hour or
less. The delight of cooling off on a day with 45 Celsius degree heat, amid a
private, bosky environment unclothed and beneath a deluge is easily
imagined.
Back in 1575 the myriad water features with fine mists and heavier
drenchings if desired, would have cooled down host and visitor quite
sufficiently for the modest, without bathing or swimming. For others, the
enclosed Nymphaeum with its oculus would have been deliciously cool and,
close by, was the enormous shallow vessel with a sculpture of stylised
dolphin heads gushing water at each end. Sheeler refers to this unusual
sculpture as the Boat Fountain [33], Darnell and Weill as the Barcaccia
(long boat), yet it looks far more like an enormous bath than a boat. Perhaps
Orsini referred to it as the latter while using it as the former?
Contemplation in the cool internal cavern could be followed by consummation
in a chilled, shallow bath in complete privacy if Orsini and his guest so
wished. The bath is notable, however, for its breadth and length. It is quite
capable of accommodating more than two people for revels.
This may help explain Sansovinos gushing appreciation for Orsinis
hospitality in his Ritratto della citta dItalia of 1575 where he gives a
succinct, somewhat cryptic description of the Sacro Bosco [34]. He repeated
similar sentiments in 1575, 1578 and 1582. Perhaps there was more than one
visit? Given the heterodox and sensual references and opportunities provided
by Orsini, in an Italy which was experiencing a greater effect of postTridentine reforms and the Inquisition, anything more than an oblique eulogy
28

may have proved to be risky despite protection afforded Vicino by influential

senior clerics. This coded, circumspect language is seen in other references
such as his own letter to Drouet around 1574, quoted below.
The reputation of Bomarzo:
It is reasonable to deduce from such evidence that Orsini deliberately
designed and created a park whose features encouraged and enhanced a
wide range of physical experiences, based on climate, topography and
vegetation, which reinforced summers pleasures. He did so in a period when
aristocratic clothing and garments - certainly those worn for fashionable or
stylish events such as masques and courtly visits to an aristocratic park -were
comparatively heavy and uncomfortable under hot conditions.
Although in his earlier years a fair degree of private hedonism may have been
safe and morally acceptable for Orsini and his guests, as the more ascetic
mores of the Counter-Reformation trickled through, acceptable behaviour, at
least in semi-public situations, changed and became more restrictive. There
was a parallel tightening of rules in the lives of religious orders around the
same time, although it took several decades for this to be effected
throughout the Catholic world. [35].
Garments grew more linear and severe in Italy as the Spanish style
infiltrated southern Europe and outward displays of sensuousness and selfindulgence somewhat less permissive, leading to a change of behaviour- at
least in public. Heterodoxy in religious and philosophical terms became
more dangerous as Pomponio Algerios public execution in Rome in the 1550s
made clear. Arguably, given his high born connections, his championing of
the Papal cause and the hidden nature of his garden, Orsinis relatively low
profile, obscure location and distance from Rome sheltered him from those
intrusive investigations and exposures which increasingly characterised the
Inquisition and the Churchs reinforced apparatus of social and moral control.
He did not publicise any questionable ideas in later life, after publishing the
occasional piece of high-flown poetry earlier on.
Yet his popular reputation was sullied by an historic and cumulative view that
the park was a place of abandonment, or worse. After a high reputation in the
1570s and 1580s, as evinced by its lingering effect in Giovanni Guerras
drawings published in 1604, it developed a debased reputation in the post
Tridentine world which continued through the next century and, in an oblique
way, even up to the 1980s. As evidence for this we have the garden created
at Valsanzibio after 1669 by the Venetian nobleman Zuane Francesco
Barbarigo. His son, Gregorio, a Cardinal and future Saint, inspired the plans
symbolic meaning which was drawn up by Luigi Bernini, a leading Vatican
29

architect and fountain expert. Sixty full size statues, mainly conceptualised
by Enrico Merengo, with many other smaller sculptures were integrated into
an ordered setting of architecture, streams, fountains, water jokes and fish
ponds, among hundreds of carefully chosen trees amid a garden of forty
acres. A modern author following Edith Whartons footsteps wrote this
startling comment: [36]
The first stanza of the sonnet inscribed on the scalinata of Valsanzibio sets out the meaning of the whole
garden and, to the last syllable, is a deliberate parody and play on the words of the verse on the pedestal
of the sphinx which greets visitors at the entrance of Bomarzo. Whereas Bomarzo represents a haphazard
wandering through an underworld that explores the dark forces of life, where there is no clear path and
you may or may not find your way out, the path in Valsanzibio is clearly set out: the further you move from
the fallibility of pagan mythology, exemplified in Dianas Gate, at the entrance to the garden, the more
sophisticated and intelligent the experience becomes...Valsanzibio, the antithesis to Bomarzo, is a
deliberate homage to San Carlo Borromini. Barbarigo animated his garden with the spirit of Christianity...

Of Bomarzo, Russell writes:

At the same time, only a few miles away from Lante, the most flagrantly pagan garden in Italy was being
created by an iconoclastic aristocrat, Vicino Orsini...a frightening and disturbing underworld, which visitors
stumbled through by an unprescribed and uncharted route, eventually reaching a temple at the top of the
valley. The gardens message was that redemption was through love, not God.... [and it] did not please the
Catholic Church...

We should also not forget the views of the Superior of the convent at San Yuste
where Charles V retired in the last few years of his life:
On other occasions he would release little carved wooden birds which flew into every corner, to the
consternation of the disapproving Superior of the convent, who considered them works of sorcery.

If the Emperor and his servants could be thought by an educated religious to

harbour sorcerers and sorcery, how would uneducated peasants and local farmers in
remote Bomarzo view a host of automata and water engines, not to mention
undeniable reports- or at the least rumours and gossip- of lascivious revels in the
Sacro Bosco? As we shall see, a small army of hidden helpers were needed to
operate these automata at Vicinos signals throughout the park. They would have
gossiped with their drinking buddies at what they saw and heard among the
grotesque sculptures, animated figures and watery places of amorous delight. A
local reputation, wafted abroad over time by visitors, was inescapable and it was
reinforced by the key message about redemption through love not Divine
forgiveness. It may be argued that Vicinos messages were actually more subtle
than that- indeed, they were- but that would not be the take home message for a
willing- or, especially, unwilling- witness to what transpired in the Boscos lower
levels. Orsinis Sacro Bosco carried within its reputation the Latin or Roman allusions
associated with Pagan Woods from millennia before and never lost that association
except among a limited number of more open-minded aristocrats and intellectuals.

30

If this assessment of the attitude of the Catholic faithful is accurate it explains why
Bomarzos later reputation became so poor and why ultimately it was forgotten until
the nineteenth century. It also explains the delayed riposte embodied a century
after its creation in Valsanzibio. Even in 1669 it mattered enough to build an entire
garden to help negate Bomarzos reputedly malign influence.
By the mid nineteenth century Bomarzo had sunk into bucolic misery. In 1847 an
English traveller, seeking to study Etruscan antiquity and archaeological remains on
the ground, wrote about Bomarzo:
About twelve miles east of Viterbo on the same slope of the Cimian, is the village of Bomarzo, in the immediate
neighbourhood of an Etruscan town where extensive excavations have been carried on of late years...It commands
a glorious view of the vale of the Tiber...[but]..Like most villages in the papal State, Bomarzo is squalid in the
extreme...

George Dennis makes no mention of the Sacro Bosco, but does report on one
Etruscan tomb named Grotta Depinta:
We are in a chamber whose walls, gaily painted, are alive with sea-horses snorting and plunging- water snakes
uprearing their crests...dolphins sporting as in their native element-and- can we believe our eyes? Grim and
hideous caricatures of the human face divine. One is the head of an old man, with eye starting from its socket, and
mouth wide open as though smitten with terror...Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen
ademptum.[37]

While focused on Etrurias history, it is difficult to imagine Dennis would fail to

comment on the park if he was aware of it- he comments on so many varied
subjects relating to his travels. Especially when Sacro Bosco had numerous
grotesque and startling sculptures part inspired by images such as those in Grotta
Depinta. There can be no doubt that the park, by then, had disappeared from
general public notice due to past obloquy, neglect and disdain. In part, this negative
impression continued into the 1980s. After a tragic accident in which Mrs Bettini
died during restoration work an altar was set up near the temple and an exorcism
was undertaken by an officiating priest from nearby Viterbo. [38]
Orsinis intent:
The quotations which are to be found throughout the park as red-lined
inscriptions are part of Vicinos deliberately obtuse and confusing world-view.
Indeed they and the sculptures have rightly fuelled a massive academic
literature whose purpose is to establish Orsinis underlying meanings and
allusions. What is so intriguing is that, even while this cumulative interpretive
debate has been mounting up from the 1950s, the messages which
accompanied the statuary and inscriptions, communicated through talking
and moving automata as at Hesdin, have been lost. To rely solely on the
sculptures and inscriptions in this case is like relying on the libretto of an
opera without knowing much about the plot, music, scenic directions, writers
side notes or singers performance.

31

In a treatment of the Hesdin gallery Jesse Hurlbut says:

Similar to portions of the banquet in Lille, this was an active form of spectacle. Yet, as eager as the duke
seemed to be
to engage the Grand Turk in single combat, and willing, therefore to participate in the drama of the Holy
Church, I don't imagine
that he devised this Funhouse in Hesdin in order to subject himself to the buffetings and humiliations it
afforded. The
primary function of such a contraption was most certainly for entertainment, implying some kind of
gratification to an
audience--presumably, the duke. But, just who was expected to go through these galleries and just who was
in control of the
buttons and switches that made it all work? Did the duke herd local peasants through for his own sadistic
pleasures? Did he
greet visiting dignitaries, perhaps even nobility there? Was it just a practical joke or a convenient way to
discourage unwanted
visitors? We can find no real answers to these questions. Indeed, I think that where I was able to suggest an
ideological
motivation for much of what took place at the banquet in Lille, I am unable to substantiate any congruity in
motives regarding the
galleries of this castle. The codes of chivalry, upheld in the enlistment to honorably serve God, the VirginMother and the
Ladies of the court seem breached in this instance. Is there any way that the Funhouse antics can be
construed as anything other
than sneaky, tricky and abusive? Could an officer of the Order of the Golden Fleece engage in behavior of this
sort in good
conscience. Or was hazing part of the initiation rite into the prestigious chivalric Order?

[39]

Ladies of the court seemed breached in this instance- thus Jesse Hurlbut
moves towards an implied inference that somehow females in the Burgundian
court were deliberately targeted by and in the automata which populated
Hesdins Garden of Earthly Delights. While it may seem contradictory within
a chivalric code of conduct to do so, Hurlbut also notes:
My frustration at so many questions and so few answers has already given rise to too much speculation here. By
way of conclusion, then, I will simply point to another important literary product of the Burgundian court, _Les Cent
Nouvelles_, in which sacred and profane stories are collected together, demonstrating that there is apparently room
for multiple, and even conflicting ideologies within the boundaries of a single cultural space.

32

This viewpoint also may well apply to Vicino Orsinis approach to the
intellectual underpinnings and physical experiences of his wood at Bomarzo.
Multi-layered, obfuscated, inferred, allegorical, a journey with open ended
mythological meanings- related to and in part derived from Neo-Platonic,
Epicurean, Alchemical and other literary, philosophical and historical
allusions- this was Orsini the subtle, flexible and fugitive intellectual taking
visitors on a literary journey which was almost infinitely variable, depending
on personnel, circumstance and the route followed. At the same time his
wood made possible frankly physical, Epicurean, hedonistic and even impish
experiences, much in the way the Dukes gallery did at Hesdin.
A simple, perhaps simplistic interpretation of one aspect of both gallery and
wood- among many- is also possible: heavy garments that are drenched are
uncomfortable. Immediately cool after drenching and fun for a while if you
play along, soon they may be chafing, clinging and possibly malodorous. To
counteract these deficiencies they might be taken off and dried carefully
since for public occasions they were usually made of fine, sometimes heavy
textiles. It is neither salacious, nor unreasonable, to deduce that this was one
reason why prankish- and frankly boorish- wetting mechanisms were
incorporated in both private entertainment domains. Nor is it accidental that
both were created and governed by wealthy, male aristocrats used to getting
their way despite chivalrous persiflage.
In a spirit of slightly tipsy summer fun, what is more natural than to remove
clothing which is damp or humid and step lightly and quickly in ones
undergarments into an adjacent bath or pool? While to describe this
prosaically in academic print may seem in poor taste, in a setting where
romantic poetry, philosophical witticism, beautiful surroundings, speaking
faces, musical water organs, fountains, high ambient temperatures and a
glass or two of Montefasciones finest (or Burgundys) are added for libationall might make the transition from uncomfortably wet but fully clothed, to
clinging undergarments in a pool, seem natural, desirable and acceptable.
This is even more the case at Bomarzo as opposed to Hesdin since the former
is mainly outdoors, if sheltered and out of view, and there is as yet no
evidence to hand that at Hesdin private bathing and changing spaces were
available- although an outdoor pavilion with automata close by the local river
and later destroyed by the English army may have played a similar role for
the Dukes. Similarly, apart from their respective casini, there is no evidence
that Caprarola or Lante had similar facilities adjacent to the watery features
which so charmed visitors. Indeed Lantes central table looks as if it was
designed to cool fully clothed guests and host- most notably the Cardinal
himself. Be that as it may, there was no shortage of private spaces for

33

changing and bathing at Bomarzo. Indeed there was a plethora of such

environs especially on the lower, hidden level.
Sheeler notes that Orsini alluded to this gaming of female guests in a letter to
his close friend Drouet around 1574:
Of course, sexual pleasure took a prominent place in his thoughts, and he was unashamedly quite
frivolous in this aspect of his gardens purpose... he sent Drouet a poem he had written about the garden,
using a sly metaphor to describe its attractions. An ancient method in Italy of hunting little birds was to
make a trap called a boschetto which was a construction of twigs, branches and moss with limed snares
and nets concealed inside and a decoy bird used to entice others. In part the poem reads:
Theres good news here, and the call note
is even better. With lime-twigs Im preparing the well-ordered boschetto,
so careful to see that it retains the bird lime.
That should be enough for you to be invited.
If you want to come Ill expect you- you know the way.
And if you dont come alone
Well revel with your companions. [40]

Later in the poem Vicino describes how the decoy bird must be touched
and handled expertly
so that its calls and movements entice other birds. He tells then of the
reaction of women:
When they hear someone say Ive got a big fat one
They always want to hold it in their hand for a bit,
Squealing to each other with a noisy commotion

Orsinis epistolary comments are private and addressed to a friend, so clearly he

was careful not to put
anything in writing which could not be explained away. But his intent is clear.
The Sacro Bosco
was designed and evolved as a place to beguile and ensnare women using
trickery and art. The
equivalent of the boschettos limed snares was more than mute statues. In
addition to all
the sculptures and sayings he constructed private spaces and facilities that
used water
animated marvels and features which, in parallel with Hesdins gallery, might
be used to intrigue,

34

persuade, ambush, dampen then arouse female companions singly, or in

company. No wonder the
big boat or, more likely, the massive bath located by the side of the
Nymphaeum and near to the
Love Theatre was located at that precise point. These features he also created
first.

This theme leads inevitably to thoughts about other factors and

circumstances at Bomarzo. Matters to do with wealth, cost, technology,
hydrology, topography, and the evidence for a large scale hydrological
system, engineered to provide multiple sources and control points for water
powered and mechanically animated automata. Brief reference was made at
the beginning of this article to the physical evidence presently visible at
Bomarzo, although in places that evidence is now rapidly decaying, being
casually obliterated or overgrown. Not through malice but mainly through
progress and ignorance or indifference to Orsinis great water-powered
Wood of Earthly Delights (to paraphrase Hesdins descriptor and the title of
Boschs painting). We will now turn to that physical evidence.
Hydrological Engineering at Bomarzo- modern maps and ancient
technologies:
Jessie Sheeler summed up the importance of water in the Sacro Bosco:
As for the design of the Sacro Bosco as a whole, the siting of most of the works must have been largely
dictated by the cliffs and scattered boulders which gave it the wild character it still retains. The most
important change Vicino made to the landscape of the boschetto was his damming of the stream to make
it a lake, which then fed the numerous fountains and rills in the garden. It was among the earliest of the
great Italian waterworks gardens, and the constant yet varying flow of water must have filled the air with a
pleasant coolness and rippling sound. Animabale Caro was certainly impressed by Vicinos deployment of
water and when he was advising Torquanto Conti on the design of his garden he wrote that water was
essential, for you must have jets, streams, ponds, fountains etc. We want to have extravagant things to
eclipse even the boschetto of Signor Vicino. It also gave Vicino the opportunity to allude to his interest in
the pre-Christian religious imagery that revered water as an essential and sacred element in the physical
world.

[41]
She is certainly correct in underpinning the significance of water in the affects
and experience of Bomarzo. But her belief that only the lake fed the fountains
and so on is probably misplaced. There was another much more focused,
technologically advanced and extensive set of systems which animated the
Bosco as supported by existing physical evidence. She also did not add Caros
reference to the sounds prevailing at Bomarzo from a water organ- part of
Heros portfolio of water powered automata [42].

35

There is no usable or even extant plan, or map, showing the physical

elements which constituted the hydrological engineering system at Bomarzo.
Unlike the profusion of plans and interpretive maps describing the sculptures,
buildings and settings. Admittedly it has also been difficult for anyone to
accurately describe the system in its entirety since so much is lost, so much
is overgrown and only a skilled, funded, time-consuming and comprehensive
survey, within and without the Sacro Bosco, would completely detail what
originally may have been constructed and what remains.
Although the team from the University of Rome undertook extensive
surveying work it seems,
understandably, as if their main focus was the sculptural and architectural
elements. To underestimate the challenge of the task fifty years later would
be a form of academic noblesse oblige. Their work was remarkable. Still, their
focus had to be on what was predominantly visible- not elements which often
were missing or subterranean.
It was also beyond the Bettinis resources although they recognised that
water played a role in the Sacro Bosco. Even Brederkamp, in his major work,
while highlighting Dominanz des Wassers did not describe in detail the
extent, nature, and type of water animated features, now lost. He devoted
only three pages to the subject [43], while his remarkably helpful five stage
plans of the Boscos development and surroundings do not show their
hydrological, water-powered or automatous features. Nor do they illustrate or
explore the fish and performance lakes, mysterious caves, tanks, small
stone structures or grooves and conduits which meet visitors on their way
into and then throughout the site. In passing, it is also the case that no other
treatment of the site has adequately analysed the full range of possible
entrances, or the unfinished and massive sculptures which recently have
been uncovered during weed clearance on private property to the south west
of the western wall/main road entrance to the Park (June, 2014), directly
across the back road which follows the line of that wall, well beyond the
boundaries of the agreed extent of the Sacro Bosco.
The impression gained by this author of Bomarzo in 1996 was, first, amazement at
the sculptures and structures then, second, a growing puzzlement as to the many
caves, caverns, small stone structures, grooves and indentations visible in the rock
surfaces and among the boulders. These features are still visible today well before
the visitor enters the Park. Quick subsequent research at that time established that
cultural and mythological interpretations abounded but it appeared no one had
looked at these strange elements systematically or published the results. Which led
to four questions: what are they, why are they there, what do they tell us and why
has no-one explored them coherently or comprehensively?

36

The closest to any acknowledgement of the hydrological systems, grooves

and caves, with the supporting stone built control buildings, are brief
mentions in Darnall/Weil with a plan of fountains, some comments inter alia
in various authors to one or two caverns resembling Etruscan tombs- notably
Coty in: Dreams of Etruria- and the short but helpful chapter in Brederkamp
with those progressive cultural and sculptural development maps,
apparently based on cadastral information and the University of Rome
surveys from the 1960s. However, there appears to be no published itemised,
surveyed or measured hydrological maps or plans of the Sacro Bosco. Even
the Bettinis, who spent a lifetime of dedicated reconstruction with attendant
costs, while realising water played a large part in the Bosco found this
element beyond their means or their scope.
There are also no known contemporary maps of the Sacro Bosco or Bomarzo
showing the hydrological systems, although one of Orsinis favourite sources
included significant geographic and cartographic information and he would
have well understood the concept and engineering drawings for site
development. Such plans were common for defensive structures:

37

(Fig 10, ref: MAP FROM ARIOSTOS ORLANDO FURIOSO. Size of the original:
ca. 16.5 X 9.8 cm. Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso -Venice: Vincenzo
Valgrisi, 1556-, 161. Photograph
courtesy of the BL (C.12.e.12) [44]
Nor can any other reference to the probable Hesdin Garden of Earthly
Delights linkage be found except in the somewhat generic reference in
Bedini already quoted.
The answer to the last of the four questions- an almost complete lack of
published recognition or exploration of water systems at the Sacro Boscoprobably lies in the prosaic nature of the features and the now denuded,
relatively uninteresting and missing elements which used to fill grooves,
stone-built structures and caverns. There is no known written description of
them. There is no known visual portrayal. There is, in fact, merely evidence

38

of absence. But, as the quotation in the title suggests, such evidence of

absence is not an absence of evidence.
The features described below are factual. The photographs and rough plans
document elements manifest and evident. These may be mere partial
engineering clues, less exciting than speculation about literature and
mythology. Nevertheless they are important sources to guide us towards a
fuller understanding of Orsinis originality and exceptional creativity.
Following the dry, pragmatic, perhaps tedious evidence which follows there
is a description of possible automata, which is deductive and speculative, but
which is based on relevant comparators, drawn from manuscript and
published literature, both contemporary and modern; and from actual objects
pictured and described in books and articles, a few remaining gardens and
other sources Together, it is hoped, these comprise a reasonable first
approximation of Orsinis unique synthesis of features, technologies and
experiences.
This article should therefore be seen as a precursor: raising questions based
on what we can more easily see and what we know. Making suggestions and
drawing tentative conclusions. Only detailed surveying, measurement,
research and study can get us closer to what was actually there. In that light
the idea that Bomarzo is exhausted as a subject for further intense study
should surely be questioned.

Sixteenth Century hydrological engineering:

Hydrological systems, carrying large volumes of water which are then
distributed to many outlets, date back thousands of years in the Middle East.
While pre-dating Roman marvels by at least four thousand years, those later
masters of urban hydrology and agricultural irrigation set new standards for
scale and sophistication. After the decline of the western Empire and of Rome
itself, knowledge of hydrostatics and hydrology was almost lost in Europe
except in Byzantium and among those brilliant engineers who accompanied
the spreading armies of Islam. Their mastery was remarkable as hydrological
works in what is now Andaluca, for example, still functioning at the Alhambra
Palace demonstrate.
As knowledge and engineering skills were re-established in the thirteenth
century, the pressing need for water supplies which functioned effectively,
especially in Italian hill towns, began to dominate. These skills were assisted
by access to relevant manuscript information, techniques from places like
Sicily, and the developing cadre of effective engineers who moved from place
to place. Sienna, Orvieto, Urbino, Naples, Palermo and other cities continued
39

to develop complex, efficient and sustainable water systems, a boon to urban

populations perched on hill tops, within massive walls, and subject to sieges
and night time security lock ups. Sophisticated systems of caverns, open
conduits, closed piping, culverts, cisterns, sealed tanks (Bottini); settling
tanks (Galazzoni), public water fountains, grey water and fresh water were
developed over the ensuing centuries to facilitate public health, hygiene and
pleasure especially in hot weather.
A scholarly exhibition mounted in Italy (Florence, c. 1996) by the Museo
Galileo/Institute and Museum of the History of Science: Leonardo and the
engineers of the Renaissance, [45] now traveling, traced the development of
hydrological engineering as a significant element helping power technological
progress in the Renaissance and as a major influence on creative figures such
as Leonardo, whose passion for water studies and water management is well
known. [46]
Common to all countries, topographies and climates which experience a
significant range of temperature and rainfall from winter to summer, were
issues of freezing and thawing, lack of rain at times in summer and risks
associated with standing water and inadequate drainage for grey and brown
water- disease, mosquitos and stench. A real threat in winter was the bursting
effect of freezing and thawing in above ground, or unprotected pipes. To
avoid mixing clean with grey and brown water great skill was required in flow
direction management and reticulation. Added to this were technical
challenges of pressure, control, pipe-construction and joints, materials
selection/supply, sedimentation and its amelioration, and affordability.
Usually only wealthy cities, large scale industries and the nobility could afford
to install complex, efficient and sophisticated gravity fed systems. As far back
as the thirteenth century at Hesdin the ability to create water jokes and
animated tableaux depended on efficient hydrological systems linked to the
local river and assisted by either horse powered, or serf powered pumps. In
Italy the creation of water animated gardens at Tivoli, Bagnaia, Caprarola,
Soriano, Pratolino, Bomarzo and elsewhere was entirely dependent on great
wealth and consultants mastery of effective hydrology, utilising mainly
gravity-fed water sources.
The exhibition mentioned previously outlines in text, historic manuscript
illustrations, models and other media a host of innovative hydrological and
related techniques and machinery: how to measure distances for pipes,
measuring heights, machines to raise water, the excavation of Sienas
underground water systems -Bottini- dam construction and so on. A
particular practitioner, Francesco di Giorgio (Siena, 1439-1510), is featured
with many examples of his manuscript notes and drawings describing

40

hydrological technologies such as : Triple compartment water purification

filter for a fountain and gravel and sand filters to be placed near a fountain.
Orsini, Bomarzo and the Sacro Boscos hydrology:
There can be no doubt that Vicino Orsini would have had available significant,
well established hydrological skills in the period after 1547 if only because
Orvieto with its magnificent underground water supply system, much
enhanced by the Cinquecento, was only forty kilometres away. By that stage
many practitioners were working, the technologies were well established in
the Papal States and elsewhere and the complex systems- possibly three or
four intertwined- which evolved at Bomarzo between 1550 and 1584 were
progressively within the grasp of contemporary technology and engineering.
For example, soon after 1560 Cardinal Ippolito DEste was utilising the
services of professional fontinieri at Tivoli. [47]
Starting with a fairly challenging terrain ruggedly sloping down from the town
from the east, and from the south and west of the site, Orsini would need to
have had the ground mapped topographically and hydrodynamically by his
engineers, then plan the water supply, holding and sedimentation sections
and subsequently the management and distribution systems, after detailed
surveys were laid down on paper. He would possibly have had this work
carried out in segments as his plans evolved, although doing it at one time
would have been more efficient and would have provided a more complete
overview. This is easy to consider in the abstract but technically challenging
in practice. Fortunately he would have had available highly skilled engineers,
the inheritors of specialists such as Francesco di Giorgio, to carry this out.
Between 1547 and 1555, or soon thereafter, Vicino was probably beginning
his broader creative conceptualisation, based on his knowledge of developing
Italian gardens in Florence (such as the Boboli Gardens and at Pratolino) and
elsewhere, on Roman and other authors and, in the latter part, on his
experience at Hesdin. We know he was in Florence with his relations, the
Medici clan, in 1558; their leading scion was just then purchasing land for the
majestic Pratolino project. Perhaps they exchanged pointers and ideas- Vicino
was already eleven- interrupted- years into the Sacro Bosco undertaking. The
garden writers have been extensively analysed in Darnall and Weil,
Brederkamp, Morgan, Rogers and other commentators so the background for
the origins of the Renaissance garden topos or archetype will not be
rehearsed here. The addition of advisers such as Vignola may also have
helped Vicino, although the famous architect himself could well have gone to
school at Bomarzo before moving on to other great projects at Caprarola and
Tivoli. Suffice to say that while the meandering layout and automata in
Orsinis garden did not provide an overall design model for the other
remarkable water gardens mentioned above, the profusion of water features
41

such as fountains, joke water jets and fish pond may well have given the
garden designers and hydrologists very helpful experience for these other
projects. The prolific and abundant water features at Tivoli are clearly a
quantum leap beyond Bomarzo in terms of water-volume and cost. Such
leaps are usually based on hard won, cumulative experience.
The hydrological remnants around and within the park suggest three or four
prime systems at Bomarzo, one of which also appears to have provided some
public water sources.
For his purposes Orsini needed to provide high pressure and low pressure
water in pipes throughout the 3.5 hectare Bosco site. The overall design may
well have evolved organically but planning a three or four part system which
could access all sectors of the descending slopes and terraces would have
required very accurate early surveying outside the eastern, southern and
western boundaries, down from which water courses follow the slopes
westward, northward and eastward as well as responding to the potential
levels and slopes falling north and east within the boundaries of the park.
Available water sources also helped determine the number of separate
systems, as did the range, location, type and number of output pointsfountains, ponds, automata and so on- while the maximum pressure which
contemporary technology could handle was another issue. Reticulation and
multiple use of the same water was an issue of paramount importance as well
as systemic and localised control. Too much water wasted or lost would easily
exhaust the supplies before the strolling player and his guests had passed by
or the special features had had the desired effect and affect on special
targets of interest.
In the late 1540s and 1550s water animated gardens in Middle Italy were
relatively undeveloped and a sophisticated admixture of urban water
technology, irrigation, inventiveness and pragmatic engineering experience,
preferably in an installation such as at Hesdin, would have been needed to
achieve the hydrological step change required at Bomarzo.
Evidence of hydrological systems:
The remaining evidence falls into a number of compartments or subject
categories:
Water sources
Header tanks and cisterns
Water bodies both formally and informally shaped
Sedimentation traps and tanks
Control mechanisms and structures containing them
Pipes of different lengths, diameters, materials and purposes, with
jointing/sealing mechanisms/materials
42

Sub tanks or cisterns

Baths
Fountains and dribbling water apertures
Automata and musical machinery
For the purposes of this article the external and internal site of the park and
surrounds is divided into four quadrants following the standard compass points.
Please see Plan 1 and Plan 2 as attachments. From Plan 1 (large scale- Bomarzo
area) it is clear that there are two streams currently flowing from the south/ southwest quadrant. Thus, beginning in the south-west quadrant it is possible today to
locate an amply-watered stream well beyond and west of the western wall and
accompanying road. Nowadays, this source travels north and east but it is possible
that it was partly diverted south and east by Orsinis engineers towards a significant
open cistern or tank still visible by the side of the back road, but rapidly being
overgrown (2006-2014) please see Plan 1, Tank number 9. Another source for this
tank may have been possible from three tanks to the south (Ibid, Tanks numbers 6,
7, 8) or, paradoxically, from the north via a main pipeline passing by the Naumachia
and fish pond (Ibid, water bodies 4 and 5 respectively). Only investigation will
determine which is correct. Tanks 6, 7, 8 are visible in outline in GOOGLE map
images. Once again, investigation is required to establish what these images
represent.
The interior lining of tank 9 is composed of a fine, water-proof, lime and
ground glass based, yellow tinged, plaster as described by De Caus, or
similar, and a close relation to that used for water-proof collars and joint
sealant:
There is also another Sort of Cement to be made, the which is also very good for this effect:
that is to say, of Glass ground with Lin-seed Oyl, and mixt also with a little Slaked Lime: This
last is also very good against Water, and will not be moistened in any manner as the first
[type], which serves onely for things that are out of the water. [48]

In 2006 remnants of this lining were clearly visible, probably indicating it had
been reapplied at least once in the intervening four hundred and fifty years.
The outer walls are of rough cut stone as described below:

43

(Fig: 11, photograph showing loss of internal yellow lining of tank 9; note pipe
at the northern end, May, 2006)
The diverted stream or streams diversions which may have occurred further
back in the somewhat impenetrable area west south west, or south of the
Bosco- could then have flowed into and out from tanks 8, 7, and 6, specially
constructed for the purpose, permitting the water to be calmed and for first
level sedimentation to occur. This water may also have been split to
go into Main Tank 1, at the foot of the town, accessed by Via del Lavatoio.
Currently access along the forks in the southern arm of the road to Tanks
numbers 6, 7, and 8, is not possible since there is a locked gate on one and
the other is on private property, so the nature of these GOOGLE images
cannot be corroborated. This entire potential hydrological complex, however,
requires detailed on site investigation, measurement, photography, research
and mapping. See further discussion below (pages: 43-44).

A ceramic outflow pipe is just visible in the 2006 photograph low down on the
northern, lower wall of Tank number 9. It faces in the direction of the Mouth of
Madness (approximately 65 metres away) and the Meta Sudans

44

(approximately 300 metres- see below). This might be significant, or not. Two
other examples of these ceramic pipes are noted elsewhere.

The tanks approximately 10 m X 8 m X 3m volume at 240 cu m equalled

240,000 litres capacity. This would have been an ample supply for the Mouth
of Madness and probably the later Meta Sudans, which required extremely
high pressure. The branch line to each water feature would have been
separate, most probably, with that to the Meta Sudans requiring great
technical mastery owing to that fountains height and the extent to which it
dribbled or spurted. Pipes for the latter may have been entirely made of lead
with bronze apertures.

Approximately fifteen metres south-east of this tank, also next to the back
road, is a stone structure, now restored, composed of the traditional,
relatively small profile, rough cubic stone blocks that typify so much of the
parks extant sixteenth century built elements. Less well-crafted than the
Temple or Leaning House, these rougher elements comprise the working
structures which had functional as opposed to purely decorative or
commemorative purposes:

45

(Fig 12: water control building near to Tank 9, Plan 1; June, 2014)
This building probably permitted an engineer/operator to see the Palazzo
directly and, simultaneously, to see the very high tip of the Meta Sudans.
Neither the cistern, nor the control building, is shown on any previous plans
although they are, even now, plainly obvious. Orsini would not have made the
substantial investment in tank or building without a purpose. This may well
have been to provide a significant water source and control point for aquatic,
dynamic features within the Sacro Bosco as noted. Inside the building a choke
point in the form of openable valves would have been constructed, governing
the action of large pipes, probably of lead and/or wood and/or ceramic, while
the valve mechanism would almost certainly have been made of bronze
soldered onto lead. In this regard there is little information available about
Cinquecento bronze valves, although many examples from Roman times are
now known. It is fairly likely that Cinquecento hydrological engineers would
have been apprised of this technology given the profusion of remnant items
which were to be found in Roman structures, examples of which were being
excavated at that time. [49]

46

Of course, it might be the case that the tank was not part of a water system
and was an animal pen or similar. If that was the case, why would Orsini
expend the resources on a pig pen and a chicken shed in stone, tiles and
water-proof plaster and not in less expensive hardwood?
Further south along the road, on the opposite side to the control building,
another aspect of this system could be seen in 2006. Although it is now
obscured by plant growth, or has been removed altogether (the plundering
of decorated stone items in Italy is notorious), this decorated horse and
bullock trough dated from the Cinquecento and was possibly part of a larger
public water supply completed by Giulia Orsini (Farnese) during Vicinos
absences on military and diplomatic duties.

This road was a significant route north of Bomarzo in the Cinquecento,

leading as it does past major Etruscan tomb complexes towards the historic
north east road which led to Attigliano. It is still passable by wheeled vehicles
today. Consequently, a public watering trough was a valuable contribution to
local travellers.

This water trough was possibly part of a larger public water supply:

There is an epigraph inscribed on a stone plaque above the ...cistern which is located under
the stairway leading up to the parish church of Bomarzo[which] may be approximately
translated as this cistern, which had scarcely been excavated by the diligence of Giovanni
Corrado Orsini [Vicinos father] when death intervened, was completed under the care of his
daughter-in-law Giulia Farnese and dedicated to public [uses] while her husband Vicino was on
military service in Germany in the year 1546. [50]

47

(Fig: 13; May, 2006)

It is enlightening to note that work on the town water systems was underway
even before Vicinos time and was resumed by his wife during his absence. It
demonstrates that practical thought, early surveying and probably the laying
of pipes and creation of cisterns was in hand before he began planning for
the Sacro Bosco.
While a survey was beyond the resources of this present study, the
availability of Google satellite imagery has been a recent boon.
Consequently, although there is as yet no corroborating photographic or sitebased data to support this idea, it is possible that the tank and control
building mentioned above was only part of a larger installation.
Approximately 60 metres south of this facility, across the road, the satellite
image appears to show a grouping of three possible settlement and calming
tanks with a small, tiled-roof structure in between two rectangular ones and
another which is larger and appears to be octagonal. This infrastructure, if it
is hydrological in origin, is now on private property and would require the
permission of the owners prior to investigation. Another tantalising straw in
the wind- the new area of sculpture seen in 2014 (see below) - has grooves,
caverns and bowls in the tufa stone boulders as used in hydrological
engineering. This installation is in this quadrant, also, near the potential
settlement Tanks. Finally, higher up the south-western slope on a road which
may have been that shown in Brederkamp, a large rectangular, deeply walled
48

structure appears, similar in position and shape to that dotted feature in

Brederkamp, Plan 2, mentioned above. This may be one of the potential
Tanks numbers 6, 7 and 8, but onsite inspection is needed to confirm. This
data exhausts the south western sectors potential and more obvious
hydrological elements. It now makes sense to look at the south east, the most
significant quadrant. Darnall and Weil described it thus:
In the 16th century a reservoir adjacent to the road south of the park fed the fountains of the
garden (Plan III). [51]

(Fig: 14, western corner of largest Tank, Plan 1, Number 1; May, 2006)
This cisterns capacity was enormous. It is approximately 50 metres by 50
metres by an average of 4 metres deep. Internally shelving it held
approximately six to seven million litres of water. Compared with the one
pictured previously it appears to be at least ten times larger in footprint and a
great deal deeper. The cost of construction, including lining materials, would
have been exceptional. If this cistern was the major source of piped water to
49

the multitude of water features and outlets in the mature park the
hydrological engineering needed would have been of the highest order.
Added to which is the conceptual factor implied in its construction: Orsini may
have planned the capacity, from the outset, to handle most of the eventual
water animated features. How early was that plan conceptualised and when
was the cistern constructed? Probably early enough to provide water to some
features which were in Stage II, as Brederkamp outlined in the evolutionary
plans. What are the implications if this is accurate?
Remarkable.
While it is clear that the Park was developed organically and sequentially, the
possibility exists that Orsini and his advisers created an outline early in the
piece- perhaps after 1555- and followed that outline and allied construction in
a flexible and creative fashion. It is possible the first tank or cistern analysed
above was, in practical terms, the initial holding unit which was rapidly
outgrown. Then, perhaps, Orsini went back to the drawing board. We cannot
know until we carry out detailed surveying and archaeology of remnant
elements. Since there are currently no manuscript plans or written
documents available, or known, to confirm this broader thesis it relies solely
upon a deduced idea based on limited physical evidence. It may or may not
be accurate, but even so it certainly raises issues related to Orsinis
progressive planning and design conceptualisation- and that of his advisers.
Hydrological engineering is ill suited to opportunistic planning.
By June, 2014 this massive tank structure had been turned into a Municipal
car park to provide automobile spaces close to the new Municipal elevator
which can take hoped-for tourists up to the fascinating, if small historic town
within the defensive walls. This place has mainly missed out on the Sacro
Boscos many thousands of visitors who arrive in buses and cars down at the
Park, gawp at the sculptures, maybe have a picnic, play a bit of football with
the kids and go home. The Palazzo which Vicino continued to enhance and
decorate is a lovely, historic building well worth a visit. The small town is a
gem with a charming earlier Church which has some later baroque
decoration. The longer visitors stay the more they spend so tarmacking the
cisterns surface was a pragmatic decision. It is a pity, however, that this
critical element has been further compromised. Especially since Italy leads
the world in garden archaeology and the study of historical garden hydrology.
Just as with Caprarola, all Bomarzos extensive remnants deserve
preservation and UNESCO heritage protection and status.
The site selected for this major cistern seems ideal in terms of providing
adequate water pressure and directional flow along downward slopes and into
major trunk pipelines to the main park. The water source for the cistern most
probably was the same stream which presently flows past the Sacro Bosco so
50

this, as noted above, was probably dammed at a point higher up, probably to
the south- south west. The precise location of this higher settlement and
calming dam is unknown, although it is possible the infrastructure mentioned
above in the south-west quadrant may have served as settlement and
calming for the entire system- being expanded as needed.
The issue of the main access route into the Park in the Cinquecento needs
discussion here since some of the most intriguing remnant stone voids, pipe
chasings and control structures are located by the side of the current curving
roadway into the Boscos car park, engaged upon and within three major tufa
boulders. These elements will be analysed in more detail later but, suffice to
say here, there is no doubt Orsini planned them and provided significant
infrastructure to animate massive automata. Equally interesting though is the
unavoidable conclusion that in the 1550s into the 1560s a very large
investment was made in huge hydrological engineering works by the side of
the main carriageway into the Parks environs. Vicino would, again, not have
invested so much in the hydrological infrastructure if the powered automata
were not immediately visible to visitors. What would have been the point?
The messaging functions of these automata, outside the Boscos internal
environs and on the approaches to the Park entrance, or entrances, would
have been carefully chosen. Highly public, it is unlikely they would have
suggested more than a welcome and a pride in his familys history, and some
generically appropriate mythological, cultural or literary notions.

51

(Fig: 15-View looking south over Sacro Bosco to the larger cistern below the
town, a singular, tall pencil pine in front; June, 2014)
Further reasons to suggest this was the principal public way in are seen in the
next major built structures- probably a fish pond and a Naumachia.
Notwithstanding, Orsini and his advisers knew fullwell that the approaches to
an engaging cultural experience required something along the following lines,
described by the acronym ADROIT. Arrival; decompression; reception;
orientation; introduction; the experience. These stages do not necessarily
have to go in exact order although this has a natural cognitive and intuitive
sense. In the case of the Bosco these automata, and flags and other markers,
may well have covered off part of the arrival-reception-introduction trio. The
overall appearance of the two of the caverns, control booths and
grooves/chasings are shown in the following picture taken in 2006. Another
suite of images, taken in 2014, shows far greater detail, but this initial picture
makes it clear that Orsini made a significant investment to create purpose
designed caverns and grooves which would house hydrologically and
mechanically powered machinery.

52

(Fig: 16- looking east past caverns, rock chasings etc., towards Bomarzo
Palazzo and town; May 2006)
These are the features which first interest an alert visitor in the notion that
some major elements may be inexplicably missing. The idea that these are
primarily Etruscan tombs is perhaps somewhat unlikely.
The hydrological infrastructure- pipes, valves, filters, sedimentation units and
so on will be briefly analysed below. The next major elements, apparently
unremarked upon in academic descriptions, but still highly visible today now
follow.
In the Cinquecento once a walker, rider or carriage passenger had arrived at
the reception point and demounted, she or he was faced by a gentle stone
staircase, reminiscent of the one inside the Bosco leading down from the
Temple- and others elsewhere in the Park- designed to permit easy descent
for a woman in bulky courtly dress. This first staircase passes between two
substantial and expansive rectangular cisterns one much larger and shallower
at around 600 mm deep, one smaller and deeper by approximately another
300 mm.
53

The larger water pool is many metres longer than the smaller, deeper one,
while roughly sharing its width. They are hard to miss and are apparently
sixteenth century in construction, showing the same but slightly more
regular- rough, cubic form which typifies the cut stone in other working
structures in the Park. It is remarkable that these very large elements appear
so far to have escaped academic comment.
At first it seemed to the author these may have been elements constructed
by the Bettinis in the 1960s or 1970s, but their stone work, placement,
staircase feature and steps down into the larger formal tank suggest
otherwise. This, then, further suggests extensive presentations by Orsini on
major visits: even perhaps his own Naumachia, nearly as impressive as
those mounted by the Medici inside the Pitti Palace (see below).
The amount of water required to fill these tanks is massive. Equally, in hot
summer months, they would present a source of odour and a mosquito
breeding habitat which would need careful management- probably a fairly
rapid water flow and water cycling movement. Exactly how they were utilised
will be explored later.

54

(Fig: 17-Larger of the two formal water cisterns- possible Naumachia; in the
Cinquecento no trees would have been planted close by- their roots destroy cistern
walls and waterproof lining- June, 2014)

The closely related position of these two cisterns or water bodies- Numbers 4 and 5,
on Plan 1- suggest that they were related hydrologically and that they were fed from
the same source. Possibly Plan 1, tanks 2 and 3 linked by a major main pipeline. The
water for each would need to be calmed and have sediment removed prior to its
arrival at each cistern- hence possible tanks 2 and 3- although this water was not
necessarily as clear and lacking in sediment as required by water driven automata
or fountains later at the Park. The water that flowed out from these two cisterns
would have been clouded by material blown into, or falling into the Naumachia and,
additionally, by natural waste products and uneaten food in the fish tank. In the
latter case, the fish were being fattened up [52] prior to final consumption, after
being taken from the man-made lake (see below). The resulting water was,
however, still precious so it is likely that it would have been reticulated, after
settlement and cleansing, and reused further down in the Sacro Bosco. Once again
detailed site investigation, photography and analysis are essential.

55

(Fig: 18-Input pipe for larger cistern- Naumachia- probably ceramic. This tank
is shallower than its sibling- June, 2014)
There is doubt still as to whether these are Cinquecento features. Some
items- the input pipe shown above for example- may be a later insertion by
the Bettinis. Still, it also may well be heavy ceramic rather than concrete. It
requires proper materials testing. The quality, measurement, form and
quantity of stone blocks used; their similarity in profile; and the sheer extent
of the two large cisterns suggest these elements were original, sixteenth
century items constructed for Orsini. It is doubtful that the Bettinis possessed
the funding required to construct them, in addition to the very significant
costs of restoring the park itself. These issues require further on- site and
manuscript research. The smaller of the two features, Plan 1, cistern 5, was
probably a fish preparation tank. Currie notes:
Mediaeval fish keeping generally relied upon two types of pond: the vivarium or breeding pond and the
servatorium or holding pond. The former were usually large, damned features where fish were bred and
allowed to grow fatregularly [part] drained so fish could be sorted [The] holding ponds were usually
squarish or rectangular in shape and of relatively small size. [53]

The two features: lake and rectangular cistern, Plan 1, Lake and Cistern 5, fit
this description.

56

(Fig: 19- Steps between the two large cisterns; June, 2014))
The last two major external hydrological elements are the lake that is no
longer present- which Darnall/Weil and Brederkamp both agree was a
significant feature - and the stream which, then and now, flows around the
eastern side of the park. For the man-made lake see Plan 1. The stream did a
great deal of the heavy lifting in terms of hydrological animation and supply.
It demanded exceptionally competent engineering and brilliant planning to
manage it so that it was capable of achieving all the tasks it was required to
perform. We are not dealing with a penny-ante system here but, rather, a
tour de force of engineering and art.
The lake was developed to appear as if natural and free form with a dam at
the north end and probably a sculptural feature in the northern middle space
(Brederkamps map, number 23= Kunstliches Templegrab- literally:
Art/Royal Temple grave '). Various walls and dam elements still survive
outside and alongside the Park and a lively debate between Bury and
Darnell/Weil took place in the 1980s as to which was the main entrance,
whether the dam wall also functioned as a bridge to that entrance and other
57

minutiae. It is the present authors view that Orsini created at least four
entrances: one, maybe two on the western side- there is a fine Cinquecento
stone gate in the wall close to the Temple- a gate which resembles the major
side entrance to Bagnaia; and three on the eastern side: the modern
gateway itself also a Cinquecento structure with adjacent stone built control
structure; the dam/bridge wall entrance into the zone with struggling Colossi;
and an entrance into the bathing or swimming pool- the Natatio- further
down the hill along the track pictured above. Each probably had a role in the
different style of interpretation Vicino might adopt depending on the nature of
the visitor group, or individual, he was conducting through the park.

(Fig: 20- remnant dam wall looking north-east from inside the Park at level 2;
May, 2006)
This was what remained of the dam for the lake in 2006. Clearly visible are:
the wall structures to the north protecting the downstream bank to the east;
the width of the dam at the back of the photograph, yet lacking the pathway
which would have been smooth along the top; the north eastern retaining
wall to the lake side is still in good condition; missing are the sluices which
permitted water to flow once the dam was full, and other management
equipment [54]. The effects of long term sedimentation can be seen on the
right- to the south- of the photograph. It appears that the dam wall has
toppled southwards back in towards the sediment and another kind of robust,
grey stone building units are also visible lying behind the dam. In the corner
58

where the side wall meets the dam is an unusual curved stone element which
might suggest a wider path ran along the dam top, for which a row of such
stone items provided support. It is well dressed and further suggests the
upper walkway finishes could have been of a high quality. The walls and dam
stones are similar to all the working structures, while the internal fill to the
dam is of smaller irregular stones bonded by a specialist mortar. The path
and support stones on top of the dam may well have supported hidden, midsized pipes from the main distribution system heading off west then south.
If this was one of the functions of the bridge/dam then another was the
delivery of three pipes to lower levels including, possibly, the Natatio. Main
line pipes may have been split on the dry side to the east of the dam walls to
supply below the dam, and along the dam. The role of the dam therefore was
one of providing a decorative lake, a potential source of water to at least
three outlets or fountains and, probably, a source for a range of uses
including the Barcaccia or big bath. The following photograph demonstrates
that, to the east of the dam wall, a source of three different outlets was built
in by Orsinis hydrologists. The pipe sizes and the vertical differentiation of
position suggest a complex, sophisticated system of which this was a subpart. If this was the case then the rest of the system was likely as
sophisticated and complex.

59

(Fig: 21- view north-west to dam wall remnant, note three pipe holes to the
right/east; May, 2006)
It is possible that the lake was relatively free flowing once the various cisterns were
filled and before they were discharged. If it was free flowing- and, even if not,
though once again odour, mosquitoes and other insects were a problem- the lake
may well have supplied water to the Barcaccia, or large bath, between the
Nymphaeum and the Love Theatre. Fish in the lake would have helped the mosquito
problem a great deal. The lake water may then have flowed downhill to the
swimming baths or Natatio. Silt was another issue but water taken from near the top
surface of the dam was most likely clear. The lake could not have supplied highpressure outlets close by since it lacked sufficient head, or pressure, due to the
limited fall height available at the lower level of the Colossi.
This, of course, implies that there were sundry independent lines from the distant
major cistern(s) and the lake, with different levels of internal pressure. In turn this
will have determined the type of material from which the pipes- trunk, distribution
and quills- were constructed. The distance from the main cistern to the external
park wall was approximately five hundred metres; from there to the furthest internal
outlet another two hundred metres, perhaps more. A complex and highly
sophisticated network of pipes thus headed out from the major cistern in an arc
stretching from west-south-west to west-north-west. It is possible this trunk line was
a singular massive one which, close to the entrance area, split into three or four
smaller, but still large branches. For major trunk lines see Plan 1, dotted lines.
The diameter of the main trunk line, or lines, would be at least 500 mm or
more, preferably as large as could be engineered with the materials available.
The main pipes would not go below the lake ideally since, if they ruptured
under the lake, getting to them to repair them would require draining the lake
itself. This also implies there was another system coming in from the south
west quadrant to feed the Meta Sudans, Mask of Madness and other items
higher than the lake/main trunk line level- a variance in height level of up to
approximately fifteen metres. It reinforces the potential infrastructure
mentioned for that quadrant above.

There is one last, puzzling element in the south east quadrant. Near the
public (coach drivers) toilets in the north eastern section of the main car
park are what appear to be tank or cistern remnants presently filled in and
covered with concrete. For these elements, mentioned above, see Plan 1, see
possible Tanks 2 and 3. Tank number 3 might be continuations of features
located under the visitors building/sales area, originally constructed by the
Bettinis and upgraded elegantly inside by 2014:
60

(Fig: 22-Classic stone blocks, robust and well made, probably dating from the
Cinquecento, with modern rough concrete covering, photographed in June
2014, in the north-west sector of the car park. Unknown purpose; unknown
reason for infill and C 20 substantial cement topping; June, 2014)

The structure shown above is located almost east-north-east of the modern

main entrance to the parks visitor centre. If modern- which seems unlikely
since the cost of construction in stone blocks would have been prohibitive
and the Bettinis had great financial challenges as they progressively restored
the park- its purpose is unknown. If Cinquecento, then almost certainly it had
to be part of the hydrological system. Given the fact that it is at or below the
free-form lake it is unlikely to have supplied water to the Mask of Madness
level/walkway. More likely, therefore, it was itself supplied by a rectangular
cistern, Plan 1, number 2 , and acted as a settlement and header tank for the
Naumachia and Fish Tank , and then onto the South, perhaps to the control
booth and minor tank- Plan 1, number 9, see dotted line. If this main trunk
line crossed another at a major junction, it is probable that there would have
61

been a switching device permitting the water to be diverted north-west to the

Park directly. See Plan 1, cross over point of dotted lines. Only excavation and
survey can tell us what its purpose was and whether it was part of the
hydrological system. One clue however, is evident. There is clearly a pipe
hole visible in the stone work from Tank or Cistern number 3, about a metre
above the ground level facing roughly towards a point from which an overflow
pipe would come from the rectangular tanks, with a ninety degree turn in the
end of the pipe.

(Fig: 23- pipe in Plan 1, Tank number 3, exiting or entering on eastern side; June,
2014)
Overall, the engineering was much more than meets the visitors eye, then or now.
Any remaining pipe systems below ground yet wait to be identified. Accurate
surveying and ground penetrating radar may well tell us a great deal more about
whatever was originally constructed and dug into the ground and what, if anything
of those systems still rests there.

62

The main hydrological elements external to the Sacro Bosco have been outlined and
described. Only a detailed and complete archaeological and materials survey can
determine how accurate, or otherwise, this brief description proves to be.
Nonetheless, certain first order conclusions may be drawn: the patron and his
engineers/architects developed a massive, sophisticated, creative and expensive
set of hydrological systems with one aim in mind: the design and construction over
an extended period of an extravagant, water animated garden or Sacro Bosco,
which met the increasingly well informed aspirations of its owner and unique
progenitor: Count Vicino Orsini. The fact that no other park or garden remotely
resembled this one is also telling. Not for Vicino the well-ordered, architectural
rectitude of symmetry, clarity and overtly Christian order as exhibited in Caprarola
or Bagnaia, with their open joke water features- but limited hidden ones. Instead it
was a setting or vehicle for an engaging, riotous, grotesque, salacious, sensuous,
historical, impious, literary but, at times, remarkably fugitive and sophisticated
cultural puzzle- the organic product of Orsinis storytelling, milieu, desires and
idiosyncratic personality. And all the more interesting for that.
[END Part I]
NOTES to PART I.
Acknowledgements:
The Milken Foundation, and Michael Milken of Santa Monica, California, encouraged
the author to research Italian gardens of the Renaissance in 1995-1996, as a
background to developing plans for a proposed Gardens of the Mind, part of the
Museum of Creativity project. From the first visit to Bomarzo in 1995 my passion
grew for this over-written, but strangely under-researched site. Professor Jay
Rounds, team leader of the project, also encouraged this research as did the
professional gardening experts from Campbell and Campbell, a specialist team
based in Santa Barbara, California. After a more extended visit in May, 2006 and a
brief visit in 2007 with Jess Taylor to analyse certain details, further site research
and extensive photography took place in June, 2014. Thereafter, contact was made
with Stephen Wass- and continued with Michael Abbott- whose joint assistance with
reference materials, planning, communication and research leading to a detailed
site investigation is much appreciated. Dr Nicolas and Mrs Joanna Barker were
exceptionally helpful in 2006 both in assisting with reference material, sharing their
knowledge about Italian gardens and Italy, and in their gracious hospitality. I would
also like to thank Professor Emeritus Chris MacLeod for her assistance. Naturally, all
omissions, inaccuracies and failings are my own. Part II will be posted in draft in
about ten days time. Part III will follow soon thereafter. More acknowledgements
accompany Parts II and III.
Notes to article:

63

Slavish reference to minor points will be avoided for the sake of brevity. All the
materials referenced below contain critical information relevant to the themes and
argument of this article. The author welcomes any assistance leading to new
sources which support, or contradict this work. The e-mail address to which such
helpful comments may be sent is: sharp.lindsay@gmail.com.
1)
The following are the key references for this article and have extensive
bibliographies: Jessie Sheeler: The Garden at Bomarzo: a Renaissance Riddle,
Frances Lincoln, London (2006); MJ Darnall and MS Weil: Il Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo:
Its Sixteenth Century Literary and Antiquarian Context, J. of Garden History, 4, AprilJune (1984) (ref. D/W) pp. 1-89; H Brederkamp, Vicino Orsini und der Heilige von
Bomarzo: ein Furst als Kunstler und Anarchist, Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft
mbH, Worms (1985)(ref. HB); JB Bury: Some Early Literary References to Italian
gardens; The Reputation of Bomarzo; Bomarzo Revisited; J of Garden History 2
(1982); 3 ( 1983); 5 (1985); K Coty: A Dream of Etruria: The Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo
and the Alternate Antiquity of Alto Lazio, M.A Thesis, University of Washington
(2013); Julie Althoff: Il Sacro Bosco d'Amore: Communication through Desire, M.A.
Thesis, McGill University, (Department of Architecture, Montral, 1999); for a
description of the remarkably inter related world of the Orsini family, the Medici clan
and the Farnese see: Ed. F. Channels, Architecture Arete: Principality to Medici:
(1512-1737)- 22(2013) and 23 (2014): Vasari, the Uffizi and Michelangelo: from
Invention of the Renaissance to the Myth of Florence. Independent Florentine
Studies- for the 500th Anniversary of the birth of Georgio Vasari (1511-2011) and
the Principality Medici (1512-2012). Pp, 269- 279: MM Melardi: Vicino Orsini,
between Florence and Bomarzo: culture, history and imagination, available at:
https://www.academia.edu/11207435/Vicino_Orsini_tra_Firenze_e_Bomarzo._Cultura_
storia_e_immaginario For a brief summary of Pratolino see:
http://www.poderesantapia.com/gardens/pratolino.htm Pratolino-The villa was built
by the solitary Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany in part to please his
Venetian mistress, the celebrated Bianca Capello. The designer of villa and gardens
was his court architect- designer- mechanician- engineer Bernardo Buontalenti, who
completed it in a single campaign that lasted from 1569 to 1581; it was finished
enough 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, [1] and the construction was begun the following spring. The
garden was laid out along a perfectly straight down-slope axis passing through the
centre of the villa, which stood midway. Down the central descent, the visitor still
walks under a cooling arch of fountain jets, without getting wet. The manuscript
sources from Florence Library are quoted at [1].
.
2)
For descriptions of the automata at Hesdin see: EA Truitt, The Garden of
Earthly Delights: Mahaut of Artois and the Automata at Hesdin, at
64

http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1850&context=mff ; Jesse D.
Hurlbut: From Functional Feast to Frivolous Funhouse: Two Ideals of Play in the
Burgundian Court, Paper given at the 5th Annual Indiana University, Symposium on
Medieval Studies: Work and Play in the Middle Ages (April1992)at
http://toisondor.byu.edu/perform/hurlbut.html; Nadia Ambrosetti: Cultural roots of
technology: an interdisciplinary study of automated systems from Antiquity to the
Renaissance, University of Milan, PhD Thesis (2012) at phd_unimi_R07642.pdf;
Merriam Sherwood, Magic and Mechanics in Mediaeval Fiction, Studies in Philology,
44, no 4, (1947), pp.567-592. Ambrosettis work is outstanding for a general history
of automata, much based on a wide field manuscript sources. See also ref:..below
3)
For Roman and other hydrological systems in Antiquity see: LW Mays, et al: A
brief history of urban water supply in antiquity, Water Science and Technology,
Water Supply, 7, 1, (2007) pp. 1-12; MC Monteleone, et al: A review of Ancient
Roman water supply exploring techniques of pressure reduction, ibid, pp. 113-120;
AY al-Hassan, D R Hill, Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History, Cambridge
University Press, (1986), pp.33-91; A. Di Leo and M. Tallini: Irrigation, groundwater
exploitation and cult of water in the rural settlements of Sabina, Central Italy, in
Roman times, Water Science & Technology: Water Supply Vol 7 No 1 pp 191199
IWA Publishing 2007 doi:10.2166/ws.2007.022;, pp. 191199 ; and, T.P. Tassios:
Water supply of ancient Greek cities, ibid, 165172. Available on:
http://www.iwaponline.com/ws/00701/ws007010191.htm
4)

Sheeler, op cit, pp 12-13.

5)
For the Council of Trent and its patchy religious and cultural effects
throughout the Catholic domain see, as examples: K L Turner: The Musical Culture of
La Concezione: Devotion, Politics and Elitism in Post-Tridentine Florence, PhD Thesis,
University of Texas at Austin, (2008); J F Melvin, Fathers as brothers in early modern
Catholicism: Priestly life in Avila, 15601636, PhD Thesis, University of
Pennsylvania, (2009); EA Jones, Convent Spaces and Religious Women: A Look at a
Seventeenth-Century Dichotomy, PhD Thesis, University of Ohio,
(2008),at://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?
accession=ohiou1197995026&disposition=inline; SR Adams, Coexistence and
Conflict: Popular Catholicism, the Council of Trent and the Life Cycle in Carini,
Palermo, Italy, PhD Thesis, Brigham Young University, (2008), at
http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2602&context=etd; for a
brief statement of the impact of the Council on art see:
http://www.electrummagazine.com/2013/07/caravaggios-darkness-a-sinnersreputation-with-a-saints-heart/; H. Hills: The Veiled Body: Within the Folds of Early
Modern Neapolitan Convent Architecture, Oxford Art Journal, Vol 27, no.3 (2004),
pp.271-290, at https://www.academia.edu/10287475/_
6)
S. Lang: Bomarzo: Bomarzo, Architectural Review, pp 427-430 (1957);
Sheeler, op cit, p.111.
65

7)
For succinct, well- illustrated descriptions of Lante, Caprarola, and dEste at
Tivoli, see: D R Coffin, Magnificent Buildings, Splendid Gardens, Princeton University
Press, (2008), pp. 101-166.
8)
Brederkamp, op cit, establishes Orsinis construction work in four phases from
1547/8, up to 1580. This predates all other timelines which tend to commence in
1552. Brederkamp bases this on letters and other documentary evidence and is
much more detailed in his analysis. See appendices, Volume II, Bauphase I ca.
1547/8-1552/ IV ca. 1570-1580 individual plans. It is important to this article that
Orsini established the project as early as 1547, and certainly by 1552, and much of
his private, water-animated lower level and swimming baths, early in the
development, certainly by 1564.
9)

Sheeler, op.cit, pp 26-28; M Melardi, op cit, Abstract.

10)
See Coty, Dream of Etruria, op cit; and the famous, G Dennis, The Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria, London (1848), available on line at
http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/george-dennis/the-cities-and-cemeteriesof-etruria-volume-2-nne.shtml, Chapter XIV, Bomarzo.
11)
See: Althoff: dAmore, MA thesis, op.cit; V Russell: Edith Whartons Italian
Gardens, Frances Lincoln, (1997), pp 88-97; Z Hanafi: The Monster in the Machine,
Duke University Press (2000) p.18.
12)
Kristine Wendt: Caravaggios Darkness: A Sinners Reputation with a Saints
Heart, in Art, July 30, 2013, at
http://www.electrummagazine.com/2013/07/caravaggios-darkness-a-sinnersreputation-with-a-saints-heart/; succinct statements on Mannerism are at The
Mannerist Style and the Lamentation: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1998, file://The
%20Mannerist%20Style%20and%20the%20Lamentation_.html and other articles
om Mannerist Art in the Institutes collection.
13)
For a fascinating analysis of the social, sexual and related mores of
Renaissance aristocrats prior to the full effects of the Council of Trent see: TM
Reimer: Ladies, concubines, mistresses in the courtly culture of the Emilia-Romagna
of Renaissance Italy, MA Thesis, San Diego State University, (2012). See also
Sheeler, op.cit, pp. 13, 17-23. Quotation: Reimer, Conclusion, p.131.
14)
For a description of another remarkable, but now ruined Orsini family park at
Pitigliano see: C. Lazzaro: The Italian Renaissance Garden, Yale University Press
(New Haven and London), pp. 118-130, including a treatment on Bomarzo.
15)

Sheeler, op.cit, p.16.

16)
For the detailed geology of Bomarzo and the Sacro Bosco see: C. Margottini:
the Monsters Grove of Bomarzo (Central Italy): From Rock Fall to Landscape
Architecture, Landslide Science and Practice, 6, Risk Assessment, Management
66

and Mitigation (Conference Proceedings in 2011), pp.511-519 and maps- see

Appendix below; for the nature of peperino stone weathering see: F. Fratini, et al:
The Sculptures in Bomarzo Park, Viterbo, Italy: Deterioration and conservation
problems of the Peperino, in ed. E A Charola et al: Lavas and Volcanic Tufas,
Proceedings of the International Meeting of Easter Island, Chile, (October, 1990),
published Rome (1994), pp.129-141. For a Map showing the larger scale environs of
Bomarzo see Appendix 2 of this work.
17)
For Petty see LG Sharp: Sir William Petty and some aspects of Seventeenth
Century Natural philosophy, D.Phil. Thesis, Oxford (1976). And later articles.
GOOGLE: Petty.
18)

Ref: Sheeler, p.33.

19)

Ref: Darnall, op cit, p.72, emphasise double meanings; Sheeler, op cit, p.33.

20)
See: Coty, Dream of Etruria, op cit; and, G Dennis, The Cities and Cemeteries
of Etruria, op cit.
21)

Darnall, op cit, p.70.

22)

Bury, op cit, J Garden History, 5, p.213.

23)

Sheeler, op cit, p.17

24)
See, SA Bedini: The Role of Automata in the History of Technology, available
at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/b_edini.html
25)
See, ed M Mayer, The Clockwork Universe, German Clocks and Automata,
1550-1560 , Washington/ New York, Smithsonian publications (1980), p.19; Bedini,
The Mechanical Clock and the Scientific Revolution in ibid, pp 19-26; and p.21 on
mobility of craftsmen from the Low Countries during the C16 religious wars
26)

Truitt, op cit, p.3

27)
Bedini, Role of Automata, op cit. There is some question as to the conditions
under which Vicino was held. Melardi, op cit, p. 273- GOOGLE translation: The
operation ends disastrously on July 18 of that year or, with the fall of the fortress
of Hesdin into the hands of the Imperials. Orazio [Orsinis relative] is killed by a
harquebus and Vicino falls prisoner together with Torquato Conti. The prison is tough
but still geared to a certain respect for their rank, as long as their wives, sisters
Giulia and Violante Farnese, are to seen to send the money for their maintenance.
Such early conditions appear to have changed with time when Vicino was moved to
Namur.
28)
Ibid; Sherwood, op cit, pp 567-586; A Chapuis E Droz, Automata a historical
and technological study, Trans Reid, Neuchatel and London (1958), pp 34-40; M
67

Boas, Heros Pneumatica: a study of its transmission and influence, Isis, 40, 1, (Feb
1949), pp. 38-48; Ambrosetti, op cit.
29)

Bedini, Role, ibid.

30)
L Morgan, Nature as Model: Salomon de Caus and Early Seventeenth-Century
Landscape Design (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). This is an
excellent source on the late C16 and early C17 field of European garden hydrology.
31)

Sheeler, op cit, p 32.

32)

Brederkamp, op cit, plan Bauphase IV.

33)

Sheeler, op cit, pp 64-65, excellent photographs.

34)

Bury, Reputation, op cit, pp 108-110.

35)
See refs above for Council of Trent effects, especially: K L Turner: The Musical
Culture of La Concezione, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, (2008).
36)
V Russell: Edith Whartons Italian Gardens, Francis Lincoln, (1997); pp 88-97;
and Z Hanafi, The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvellous in
the Time of the Scientific Revolution, Duke University Press (2000), p.18.
37)
George Dennis: The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, London, (1848), Chapter
XIV, web published by William P Thayer.
38)

Darnall, op cit, p.4.

39)
Hesdin Castle: the automata and play in the mediaeval period; Paper given
at the 5th Annual Indiana University Symposium on Medieval Studies: Work and
Play in the Middle Ages; From Functional Feast to Frivolous Funhouse: Two Ideals of
Play in the Burgundian Court, J D. Hurlbut, p. 17 (April 1992)
40)

Sheeler, op cit, p.32.

41)
Sheeler, op cit, p.28; Bury, Reputation, op cit, gives the full quotation at
p.110
42)

Bury, ibid.

43)

Brederkamp, op cit, pp 56- 58.

44)
For Italian Renaissance cartography see: T J. Cachey Jr, Maps and Literature in
Renaissance Italy, University of Chicago, History of Cartography, 3, pp.450-460/
p.457, available at
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V3_Pt1/HOC_VOLUME3_Part1_chapt
er16.pdf

68

45)
Available on line see ref: Museum of the History of Science:
http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/genscheda.asp?
appl=LIR&indice=63&xsl=slideshow&lingua=ENG&chiave=100992
46)
For Leonardo and gardens see WA Emboden: Leonardo on plants and
gardens, Armand Hammer Center for Leonardo Studies, UCLA, (1987); for
Leonardos interest in robotics and automata see: ME Rosheim: Leonardo and the
lost Robots, Springer, Heidelberg, (2006).
47)
E B Rogers: Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History, Chapter
4, NY Abrams, (2001), p. 138.
48)
There are two de Caus editions used as reference for this article: the later,
abridged, English edition of this work originally by Salomon de Caus: Ed. Isaak de
Caus: New and Rare Inventions of Water Works, London, Joseph Moxon, (1659), p.
24; and the famous original by Salomon de Caus: Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes
Avec diverses Machines Tant utilles Aus Quelles sont adioints plusiers deseings de
grotes et fontaines, Frankfort, a la boutique de Ian Norton, (1615).
49)
Ref: Valve Magazine.com http://www.valvemagazine.com/index.php/webonly/categories/manufacturing/4947-ancient-roman-valves.
50)
JB Bury, Review Essay: Bomarzo Revisited, J of Garden History, op cit, (5, no
2), p.213.
51)

Darnall, op cit, p 3.

52)
For a detailed discussion of fish pond construction and operation- in England,
but practices appear to have been similar in Europe and shared literary sources and
traditions, see: CK Currie, Fishponds as Garden Features, c. 1550-1750, J. of Garden
History, 18, 1, (Spring, 1990), pp.22-46.
53)

Currie, op cit, pp. 22-23.

54)
For the nature and importance of sluice design and construction, see Currie,
op cit: p. 23, 31.

69

[Ref to the MSS published in Hero trans 1851].

70

(Overall simple plan)

71