The Garden at Bomarzo: A Renaissance Riddle [Hardcover]

Jessie Sheeler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2007

Probably the most enigmatic garden in Europe, the Sacred Wood at Bomarzo in central Italy has been called extravagant, mysterious, unholy, surrealist, fascinating and good fun, but it has never been perfectly understood – which is possibly just as its creator intended. The recurring theme of the ornamentation in the garden is the struggle of man's soul to distinguish between earthly and divine love, to see what is real and what illusion. Drawing on familiar figures from classical literature and contemporary Italian works, Vicino poses challenges to his audience, forcing an intellectual as well as an aesthetic response to the complex landscape of Bomarzo.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The pick of the coffee-table books this Christmas. Independent on Sunday An attractive book, beautifully produced and intelligently written, and to be recommended to all who wish to visit Bomarzo. Garden History This is garden history at its best, and a stirring story of an interesting man of plants, sculpture and letters. The excellent text is matched by sensitive photography by Mark Edward Smith who captures the shady mysteries of the palace and the dappled groves of the garden, You could not do better than to read this if you intend visiting Bomarzo and it is surely a good consolation, if you are not able to go. Museum of Garden History magazine

About the Author

Jessie Sheeler was brought up in Edinburgh and read Classics at Edinburgh University. In the early 1960s, working with Ian Hamilton Finlay, she co-founded the Wild Hawthorn Press and its poetry magazine Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. After various teaching jobs and a spell as an assistant in day care centres in New York, she settled with her family in Hampshire where she became Head of Classics at the co-educational boarding school Bedales. She now lives in Scotland on the Solway coast, teaching Latin and desperately trying to keep two and a half acres of unruly garden under control.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Frances Lincoln (July 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0711226733
• ISBN-13: 978-0711226739
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #633,804 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A TREASURE FOR HISTORIANS AND GARDEN ENTHUSIASTS, August 5, 2007

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Garden at Bomarzo: A Renaissance Riddle (Hardcover)

The Sacred Wood at Bomarzo, Italy is arguably the most puzzling and fascinating garden in all of Europe. Created in the mid-sixteenth century by Vincino Orsini, Lord of Bomarzo, as a tribute to his late beloved wife, Giulia, it lies in a wooded valley below the Orsini palace so that Vincino could look out upon his spectacular composition.

Many of us have visited and strolled the more formal gardens - the Farnese or Borghese. This, the Bosco dei Mostri (Monsters Wood) as it is also called, is a far cry from sculptured hedges and carefully laid out pathways. It is the home of enormous, often grotesque creatures - a two-faced herm, the Mask of Madness, and the Mouth of Hell. These denizens of the garden confound most, and it is left to Classic scholar Jessie Sheeler to explicate not only the statuary but also the carved texts accompanying them.

The garden is considered to be a reflection of Vincino's thinking, perhaps his search for meaning. Fortunately, many of his letters are still in existence, which give us an inkling of his ideas. We can read his comment to a friend, "I prefer living here among these woods to being immersed in the falsities and vanities of the courts, especially that of Rome."

While a precise account of who the man was is probably lost to us, his garden remains an incredible sight after having been restored some 25 years ago. Mark Edward Smith's photographs are stunning and The Garden At Bomarzo is both a treasure and a puzzle for both historians and garden enthusiasts.

- Gail Cooke

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Secrets behind a captivating Renaissance garden in Italy, September 18, 2007

By 

Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Garden at Bomarzo: A Renaissance Riddle (Hardcover)

Bomarzo is a place in central Italy. The Lord of Bomarzo in the middle part of the 1500s was a Vincino with a wife named Giulia. Vincino lived a long time after his wife died. Though he displayed a sense of melancholy throughout the rest of his life and occasional periods of depression, this cannot be attributed solely to the untimely loss of his wife. For from the garden he founded and remained involved with during his life as well as what other sketchy biographical facts there are to go on, the Lord of Bomarzo had a rather gloomy soul; though one enlivened by intellectual curiosity about diverse interests of the Renaissance, including classical culture, mythology, alchemy, literature, and sculpture. The Garden at Bomarzo was not particularly a memorial to the Lord's departed wife, but rather something of a museum of sculptural representations of the Lord's varied intellectual interests.

A war elephant with its trunk curled around a soldier, a small classical theater, a temple, large stone acorn, the three-headed mythological dog Cerberus, and a dragon being attacked by lions are among the statuary of the Renaissance garden. The "riddle" of the garden is posed by inscriptions in Latin in prominent spots of many of the statutes. "The cave and the fountain free one from all serious thought" and "I want to tell you, and make you in amazement/purse your lips and raise your eyebrows" are two of these. Sheeler--who has a background in classics studies--does not solve the riddle, but to the extent possible makes sense of the garden's diverse objects and cryptic statements. The Renaissance-era personality of the Lord Vincino go a long way toward this explanation. "The ambivalences and the attractive intelligence in his own character find an expression in the variety and puzzling allusiveness of the [garden's] works...." The Lord was a respected soldier who also had leanings toward "Epicurean pacifism"; he sought out the company of his social superiors for intellectual stimulation while chaffing against the social conventions of the time; the balance between his sensuality and intellectuality shifted at different times of his life. The Lord of Bomarzo shows something of the modern spirit of individuality and independence arising in the Renaissance, while still referring to medieval symbolisms and beliefs for expressing itself. The many color photographs, several full-page and a couple double-page, of the moss-covering, in some cases partly deteriorated statutes of the Bomarzo garden are a treat in themselves of classical and baroque statuary.