TheSacro Bosco ("Sacred Grove"),[1] colloquially calledPark of the Monsters (Parco dei Mostri in Italian), also namedGarden of Bomarzo, is aMannerist monumental complex located inBomarzo, in theprovince of Viterbo, in northernLazio, Italy.[2]
The garden was created during the 16th century.[3] The design is attributed toPirro Ligorio, and the sculptures toSimone Moschino. Situated in a wooded valley bottom beneath the castle of Orsini, it is populated by grotesque sculptures and small buildings located among the natural vegetation.
The park's name stems from the many larger-than-life sculptures, some sculpted in the bedrock, which populate this predominantly barren landscape. It was commissioned byPier Francesco Orsini, calledVicino, a 16th-centurycondottiero, and patron of the arts, greatly devoted to his wife Giulia Farnese (not to be confused with her maternal great-auntGiulia Farnese, the mistress ofPope Alexander VI). When Orsini's wife died, he had the gardens constructed to cope with his grief.
During the 19th century, and deep into the 20th, the garden became overgrown and neglected, but after the Spanish painterSalvador Dalí made a short movie about the park and completed a painting actually based on the park in the 1950s, the Bettini family implemented a restoration program which lasted throughout the 1970s. Today, the garden, which remains private property, is a major tourist attraction.
The Leaning HouseLion sculptureElephantFuryTemplePanorama
The park of Bomarzo was intended not to please, but to astonish, and like manyMannerist works of art, its symbolism is arcane: examples are a large sculpture of one ofHannibal'swar elephants, which mangles aRoman legionary, or the statue ofCeres lounging on the bare ground, with a vase of verdure perched on her head.
The many monstrous statues appear to be unconnected to any rational plan, and appear to have been strewn almost randomly about the area,sol per sfogare il Core ("just to set the heart free") as one inscription in the obelisks says.
Allusive verses in Italian byAnnibal Caro (the first one is of him, in 1564), Bitussi, andCristoforo Madruzzo, some of them now eroded, were inscribed beside the sculptures.
The reason for the layout and design of the garden is largely unknown;Liane Lefaivre thinks they are illustrations of the romance novelHypnerotomachia Poliphili.[4] Perhaps they were meant as a foil to the perfect symmetry and layout of the greatRenaissance gardens nearby atVilla Farnese, andVilla Lante. Next to a formal exit gate is a tilting watchtower-likecasina, the so-calledCasa Pendente ("Leaning House").
Orcus with its mouth wide open and on whose upper lip it is inscribed "OGNI PENSIERO VOLA" ("All Thoughts Fly"), which is illustrated by the fact that the acoustics of the mouth mean that any whisper made inside is clearly heard by anyone standing at the base of the steps. Art historian Luke Morgan describes this sculpture as "The Hell Mouth" and notes that people dined in it, producing the effect of simultaneously eating and being eaten; this duality is representative of 16th century "monsters" in Italian gardens. The Hell Mouth is also only a fragment of a whole body, and thus grotesque.[5]
The Temple of Eternity: memorial to Giulia Farnese, located at the top of the garden, it is an octagonal building with a mixture of classical, Renaissance and Etruscan genres. It currently houses the tombs of Giovanni Bettini and Tina Severi, the owners who restored the garden in the twentieth century.
The story behind Bomarzo and the life of Pier Francesco Orsini are the subject ofa novel by the Argentinian writerManuel Mujica Láinez,Bomarzo (1962). Mujica Láinez himself wrote a libretto based on his novel, which was set to music byAlberto Ginastera (1967). The operaBomarzo premièred in Washington in 1967, since the Argentine government had condemned it as sexually offensive.
A reimagined version of the garden is the centerpiece of the novelA Green and Ancient Light, written byFrederic S. Durbin.
A fight scene in the 1985 filmThe Adventures of Hercules takes place here and the Orcus' mouth acts as an entrance to a cave.
The Dutch painterCarel Willink used several of the park's statue groups in his paintings, e.g.Equilibrium of Forces (1963),The Eternal Cry (1964),To the Future (1965) andLandscape with a Nuclear Reactor (1982).[6]
A replica of the Orcus mouth appears as a major setpiece in the 1997 filmThe Relic.
In the 1999 film version ofAlice in Wonderland, the grotto in the scene involvingGene Wilder as the Mock Turtle is composed of sculptural features copying the garden at Bomarzo.
Orcus mouth appears in the 1964 Italian horror filmIl castello dei morti vivi (also known as Castle of the Living Dead).
The history and the mysteries of the gardens are featured in the 2015 board game "Bomarzo" by Stefano Castelli.
^Matteo Vercelloni, Virgilio Vercelloni Inventing the Garden 2010 - Page 73 "The Sacro Bosco (Sacred Wood) of Bomarzo, in Lazio, is a mysterious park full of curiosities, and monsters, located in what may once have been a ... "
^Caroline Holmes Icons of garden design: 2001 - Page 38 "The Sacro Bosco, or 'sacred grove', takes the Renaissance passion for garden symbolism to a climax. It is a bizarre collection of statues and architectural follies in a wood close to the border between Umbria and Lazio."
^Morgan, Luke (2016).The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 9, 62, 133.ISBN9780812247558.
^Koolbergen, Michiel (1984).In de ban van Bomarzo [Under the spell of Bomarzo] (in Dutch). Amsterdam: Van Dobbenburgh. pp. 88–91.ISBN90-6577-0097.
(in French) Hella Haase,Les jardins de Bomarzo, Seuil, Paris 2000
(German) Richtsfeld, Bruno J.: Der "Heilige Wald" von Bomarzo und sein "Höllenmaul". In: Metamorphosen. Arbeiten von Werner Engelmann und ethnographische Objekte im Vergleich. Herausgegeben von Werner Engelmann und Bruno J. Richtsfeld. München 1989, S. 18 - 36.
(in French) Jessie Sheeler,Le Jardin de Bomarzo - Une énigme de la Renaissance, Actes Sud, Arles 2007
(in Italian) Calvesi M.,Gli incantesimi di Bomarzo. Il Sacro Bosco tra arte e letteratura, Milano, Bompiani, 2000
(in English) Morgan, Luke,The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Giganti in Renaissance Landscape Design, University of Pennsylvania Press 2016, Philadelphia
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