Among the wonders of Bomarzo: the sylvan landscape, the paragone, and memory games in the Orsini Sacro Bosco

Abstract

Scholars reveal odd hesitance, almost unease, in trying to situate the Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo among the conventional typologies of landscape architecture. Is it truly a garden? And, if not, what else could it be — a villa, a park, or perhaps a grove, but sacred to what or to whom? Standard Italian glossaries offer little guidance in that respect. The word bosco, which means ‘wood’, evoked vernacular landscapes, where densely forested areas alternated with lush meadows and tilled fields. Although rife with well-known dangers, these patches of woodland were not necessarily seen as wilderness. To the eye of a landowner, they represented a productive resource that promised a range of materials and foodstuffs: from timber for construction and firewood for fuel to acorns for the pigs, chestnuts for the peasants, and truffles for the elite. Boschetto, Vicino Orsini’s preferred name for his creation, had less somber or utilitarian associations. Whether natural or curated (with parallel rows of trees composed of specimens of the same size and age to facilitate surveying and felling), it was primarily a place of leisure: of amorous encounters, hunting parties, and recreational strolls. The same word, however, could also designate fowling grounds that made it synonymous with ragnaia. A related term, selvatico (from selva or silva meaning ‘forest’ or ‘thicket’), referred to areas of imitated woodland within the garden’s confines. Dense but geometrically ordered and regularly spaced, this artificial wilderness helped mitigate the transition between designed and vernacular landscapes, blurring the boundaries of a property to blend it with the natural surroundings. In early modern imagination, bosco, therefore, represented a well-defined type of landscape, its sylvan aspect usually conveyed by a predominantly arboreal palette and a distinct system of planting and orientation. In this regard, it resembled barco or hunting park — although, not always intended as a game preserve, it did not have to be walled and thus lacked the inherent character of an enclosure. The garden proper, giardino, lay on the opposite end of the notional scale of wilderness and cultivation. Usually given a terraced layout with commanding vistas and manicured parterres, it retained many features of an agricultural property as exemplified by dividing hedges, irrigation ditches, and planting beds. By contrast, bosco, even when governed by the same geometric logic, claimed no such control over the visitors’ vision and movement, allowing for oblique views and meandering routes independent of the orthogonal patterns of agriculture. In its categorization as bosco, Bomarzo was hardly unique among other evocations or imitations of wilderness in early modern Italian garden design. A notable example from the same period was the Casino of Pius IV in the Vatican, begun as a woodland retreat for the ailing Pope Paul IV (r. 1555–59). Known to contemporaries as the ‘Casino del Bosco’, this pleasure house in a remote part of the papal compound with long alleys of shady trees offered an ideal spot for the outdoor meals and quiet strolls needed by the aged pontiffs (Figure 1). The Palazzina del Bosco della Fontana near