Cultivating the Renaissance—a Social History of the Medici Tuscan Villas
Katie Campbell (Routledge, £29)
THIS fascinating study, scholarly in its publisher and presentation, but aimed at the informed general reader, traces the evolution of the Renaissance through the villas built in the Florentine hinterland by the most powerful family of the period. This is no dry academic exegesis, rather a rich social history. Although the Medici villas made no significant innovations in architectural style, they represented a developing awareness in Nature and landscape, depicted in the remarkable villa and garden lunette paintings by Justus Utens.
Katie Campbell is a garden historian who leads tours around these villas, so the gardens and landscapes are treated with assurance. She writes delightfully, with an elegance and enthusiasm that brings the gardens alive as they teem with fantastical conceits by Michelangelo, Giambologna and Ammannati—particularly important in a sparsely illustrated text. However, the great strength of her book is the domestic detail of the Medici family itself, especially the women, who have often been sidelined.
Grand Duke Cosimo’s daughter, Isabella, although subjected to a dynastic marriage to a playboy, Paolo Orsini, ran her own court at the Villa Baroncelli as her husband womanised and hunted. Isabella had been brought up in the humanist tradition, but enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle. She fell in love with her husband’s cousin and was invited by Paolo to a hunting party. When he was making love to her, he got his friends to lower a rope from a hole in the bedroom ceiling with which he strangled her.
The book confirms an 18thcentury observation that, although the Medici should be revered for their benefactions, they must also be viewed with horror and amazement. It reads like a Webster tragedy or a more grotesque version of Succession, but this pocket-book guide is essential reading for a trip to Florence. Timothy Mowl