Il Progetto Ville e Giardini medicei

Among the infinite landscape, monumental and artistic riches of Tuscany, the ensemble of the Medici villas forms an especially special nucleus. Perhaps no family in the history of Europe prior to the revolutions of the last two centuries has succeeded in organizing as well as the Medici a network of such a large, ramified and varied network of sites of splendid villeggiatura and magnificent self-representation, but also of shrewd economic management and political control of the territory. In Italy and elsewhere, of course, there was no shortage of similar phenomena, such as the castles and villas of the Gonzaga family in their Po Valley state or those of the Farnese family in Tuscia, the residences of the Savoys in Piedmont and the neighboring areas they ruled, those of the popes in and around Rome, or the Bourbons' royal palaces in Naples and Campania. Such comparisons nevertheless end up highlighting how exceptional the Medici case was, especially in terms of its geographical extension, the earliness of its occurrence, its duration over three full centuries, and the number of members of the dynasty who took an active part in it.

The factor of precocity was accompanied by that of boldness and foresight. When in the fifteenth century, through projects such as Trebbio, Cafaggiolo, Careggi, Fiesole, Castello, Poggio a Caiano or Spedaletto, the Medici launched that challenge that would generate over time a real system of discreet but firm domination over the countryside of the Florentine state, they were still, at least formally, private citizens. To plan such a plan of material and, above all, symbolic conquest of the suburbs of Florence and the contado of the Republic not only entailed huge financial exposure, but above all it implied, through legally unquestionable patrimonial enterprise, unequivocal ambitions of government. It was this strategy, as well as that of the very many private and public buildings constructed in Florence (palaces and chapels, churches, convents and monasteries for the secular clergy and for the most diverse religious orders), that earned the Medici, on the same plane as the political plots, their gradual rise to the principality, finally obtained in 1532 and lasting thereafter for more than two centuries. As with various other aspects of their patronage and patronage, the Medici, attested in much of fifteenth-century Europe through the many branches of their bank, skillfully put to good use the patterns of life and behavior that in northern countries were the preserve only of the ruling houses: in the second decade of the century, the opening pages of the famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Chantilly, Musée Condé), or the lavishly illuminated book of hours for John, Duke of Berry, son of John II the Good, King of France, had portrayed the passage of time and human existence through the succession of the twelve months of the year; and in the background of almost every outdoor scene stood a crown castle, so as to form with the other scenes a cycle of possessions with strong ideological value. Almost two hundred years later, for a salon in the villa at Artimino, Grand Duke Ferdinand I would commission the Flemish painter Giusto Utens to paint no fewer than seventeen lunettes with views of as many Medici sites.

It goes without saying that over the course of three centuries, until 1737, not all of the Medici villas were in full and simultaneous operation. If some were gradually expanded the series as a result of a new foundation or a new purchase, others, but significantly fewer, were alienated. The network, at any rate, remained so conspicuous that the Lorraines, who succeeded the Medici for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were forced to divest themselves of quite a few of its members. Of the nearly thirty ancient Medici country complexes that have survived to the present day, more than half are privately owned, and only fourteen were chosen to compose, in 2013, the "serial site" recognized by UNESCO as part of the "world heritage" or "world of humanity." These are the places, mostly publicly owned, and all of primary importance for the history of architecture, gardens and landscape, that are represented, documented and narrated in this portal of the Region of Tuscany. The Boboli Garden also participates in the "serial site," which in truth cannot be well understood in its unrepeatable physiognomy if one dissociates it from the immense Pitti Palace, of which it is the open-air extension. However, the Medici city factories, not only in Florence but also in Pisa, Siena, Livorno and Rome, constitute a further chapter, to be narrated in the future, of an unparalleled affair.

Francesco Caglioti