Les Monstres de Bomarzo

The garden at Bomarzo was built in the sixteenth century by an Italian nobleman as a memorial to his wife Guilia. Populated by Fish-tailed Harpies, Fortified Elephants, a Grotto of Venus and a Mask of Madness, turtles, lions, dragons and bears, it was called a ‘sacred grove’ - Sacro Bosco, by its creator, Vicino Orsini (c.1513-84).

Like many other Italian Renaissance gardens, Vicino’s Sacro Bosco was anything but ornamental. Constructed rather with images and ideas, the garden and its statues can be read by the enlightened visitor like a book, providing a philosophical journey through themes such as love, death, memory and truth. Vicino’s garden-book is, however, obscure and ambiguous, and requires a knowledge of poets such as Dante, Petrarch and Ariosto to unravel; every reading produces a different set of ideas that reflect the complex personality of Vicino himself.

The visitor is nevertheless spared carrying around a library of Italian medieval and renaissance poetry by the many inscribed quotations that Vicino placed around his garden. On the pedestal of one of a pair of sphinges found in the garden is a typically gnomic sentence:

CHI CON CIGLIA INARCATE / ET LABBRA STRETTE / NON VA PER QUESTO LOCO / MANCO AMMIRA / LE FAMOSE DEL MONDO / MOLI SETTE

(He who does not visit this place with raised eyebrows and tight lips will fail to admire the seven wonders of the world.)

The mouth of Hell

The crumbling inscription around the lips of this extraordinary infernal vision; OGNI PENSIERO VO(LA) (all reason departs) can be completed by Giovanni Guerra’s drawing in which he noted the inscription as LASCIATE OGNI PENSIERO VOI CH’ENTRATE (abandon all reason, you who here enter). The reference to Dante’s inscription above the mouth of hell is clear, although Dante’s damned are told to abandon hope - speranza - rather than reason. Inside Vicino’s hell there is a picnic table, formed by hell’s tongue, and seating space for a small party.



http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/insight/stonard_bomarzo.html