DRAFTEvidence of Absence is not Absence of Evidence. Hesdins Garden of Earthly Delights and Orsinis Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo: automata and hydrological systems.An essay based on photographic investigations at Bomarzo in May, 1996, May 2006 and June, 2014, with evidence of, and supporting research for, Vicinos water-animated garden and the missing automata. PART I.Preface: The mystery of the missing elements:Count Vicino Orsinis Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo is a globally celebrated Cinquecento garden located in Upper Lazio, one hundred kilometres north-east of Rome, in the region dominated by Viterbo, a summer destination for Popes, cardinals and their courts over hundreds of years. Bomarzo was, in the early sixteenth century, a difficult place to reach and a backwater not high on many notables lists. Within a few years of 1547, however, the Sacro Bosco was to become celebrated as a place of exceptional interest. In recent decades, after its post-War discovery by Salvador Dali and a landmark film, the Park has been celebrated once again for its Mannerist sculptures:

(Fig. 1: early to mid-twentieth century photograph Mask of Madness, source- Park visitor centre, June, 2014)When first surveyed by the team from the University of Rome in the 1950s, with purchase by the Bettini family who devoted their lives to the Parks restoration, it was a scene of chaos [1]:

(Fig. 2: early to mid-twentieth century photograph Hells Mouth looking south, with attendant sculptures, laden donkey, sheep and shepherds, source- Park visitor centre, June, 2014)

From 1957 until now the Sacro Bosco has undergone a massive physical re-ordering, and been subjected to a phenomenal, almost industrial-scale wave of research, analysis, cultural ascription and discussion. The world is littered with people who cherish this place, from weekend family visitors who undertake a two hours drive north from Rome, to international cognoscenti of Renaissance art and gardens.

Over the last fifty-five years the Bettinis, then the Committee of Management, have spent millions of Euros and thousands of person hours reconstructing paths, levels, walls and zones such as the Garden of the Herms. The famous, perhaps infamous sculptures have stolen the limelight in all of this, not surprisingly, yet almost as obvious but almost unremarked other physical phenomena are stark and self-evident.

(Fig 3: The stone water control tower and unexplained lower cavern; source: Coty, Dreams of Etruria thesis, op. cit. p.147, fig 30)

No commentator has adequately explained features such as those above or the fact that opposite the cavern depicted, which sits below the stone tower (whose purpose remains mysterious to this day) there is a charming but formidably solid love-seat:

(Fig: 4, carved, in situ, peperino boulder love-seat, photographed June, 2014)

These features are inside the Park on the lowest level, set among the spectacular sculptures which now reside in a bosky environment, much unlike their condition and milieu in the early 1950s, but perhaps somewhat more like that which Orsini created during thirty seven years, from 1547 to 1584, as the Sacro Bosco was developed. However, such unexplained features also exist outside the walls of the Park: the following strange caverns are located by the side of the approach road.

(Fig: 5, to east/right of approach road into Sacro Bosco, photograph June, 2014)

Careful inspection of this enormous peperino boulder, associated walls and structures, and other carved boulders nearby do not support Cotys contention that these features were primarily Etruscan- although their shape bears a marginal resemblance to other Etruscan carvings.

If not Etruscan, and if other unexplained elements such as water tanks, walled rectangular below-ground structures and many other boulders with carved lines and caverns in their surfaces suggest something more modern was in play, is another layer of cultural offerings created by Orsini now missing? Inevitably this raises questions such as: what was there? Why was it emplaced and to what messaging purpose? What else is either missing or much reduced? Why did Orsini go to great lengths and expend significant amounts of money for features which now appear pointless? How much of this additional layer was there and how much remains? If whatever was there was in part removed- why and by whom? If there was another significant interpretive element was it part of a topos which, perhaps, Orsini invented for his region? If he did so- as his garden commenced earliest- did it influence other garden creators? Did he have a model, or models from elsewhere, to interpret in his own way, in his locality, and was that model significant in his creative evolution? And so on.

The setting:

(Fig. 6: Source: Coty, Dream of Etruria, Washington U Thesis, p. 131, the greater Viterbo area showing location of Bomarzo and other major local Cinquecento gardens such as Bagnaia (Lante), but not Caprarola- further south on SP9, etc.)

Sixteenth century Italy- the Cinquecento- witnessed a remarkable flowering of artistic and scientific creativity as part of the late Renaissance. Scholars have long acknowledged the debt of that period to Islamic and rediscovered ancient sources which carried knowledge forward from both the deep and from the more recent past. In a number of cases the transmission of such knowledge appears to predate the main period of the Renaissance. For example, in the world of thematic gardens and parks, of animated mythology and narrative, and of automata and hydrological engineering to name a few apparently disparate disciplines, the debt of Italian creative figures in the Cinquecento owes much to what went before.

The relationship between Hesdin and Bomarzo is one such tangled skein.

Robert II, Count of Artois, Burgundian Regent of the Angevin kingdom of Sicily returning to his northern home carried with him Islamic sourced intellectual seeds which saw the astonishing Garden of Earthly Delights being created at Hesdin- in a castle he owned- after 1292. [2].This knowledge, as we shall see, was much later accidentally transmuted by Orsini into arguably the first great animated Italian water garden of its period at Bomarzo.

The techniques and traditions carried from Hesdin to Bomarzo also partnered with the long history of indigenous Italian hydraulic innovation [3], part cause and part product of the Renaissance. Here, technology and skill was transposed and transformed from hill-top urban water supply systems into egocentric, yet beautiful water-based pleasure gardens. In the mid to late Cinquecento these were initially created by and on behalf of a few remarkably powerful and wealthy clerics- in this case all were Princes of the Church. Within that cadre think Farnese, dEste, Gambara, Madruzzo and, later, Aldobrandini- at Caprarola, Tivoli, Bagnaia, Soriano Nel Cimino and Frascati. These are known as Villa Farnese (commenced : c.1557-9); Villa dEste (c. 1560); Villa Lante (c. 1566); Papacqua Soriano- no garden now exists (1560/1); Villa Chili-Albani (c. 1561); and Villa Aldobrandini (c. 1603).But it is argued here that Vicino Orsini, friend to at least three of the Cardinals-Farnese, Madruzzo and Gambara- was the progenitor of this remarkable and influential cultural topos which so brilliantly and mysteriously married genius loci, literature, art and technology into a lasting cultural tour de force. Its features as a garden were still being imitated fifty years later at Hellebrunn in Salzburg, Austria; responded to in powerfully Christian fashion at Valsanzibio a hundred years after; and four centuries later echoed by a Rothschild in Villa Ephrussi at St Jean Cap Ferrat, France.

In terms of Sacro Boscos immediate role as topos or archetype in the Cinquecento, and as primogenitor of other gardens the select, but scholarly display in Bomarzo Municipal Hall- Vicinos Palazzo- has this observation:

La lettere tra gli amici mostrano come soprattutto destate seei si scambiavano visiye frequentissine, che per Vicino erano libere da ogni restrizione, avendo egli stabilito coi cardinale Farnese e Madruzzo le conditioni (...) chinsalatoto hospite, senza dimander licenza, vo et torno et fo quel che mi pace. Questi rapporti amichevoli erano favoriti dalla vicinanza tra rispettivi residenze estive. Il complesso di Bomarzo, per quanto consente di ipotizzare le cronologia sin qui stabilita, pote forse essere un modello, o uno stimolo per le posteriori creazioni del giardino di Caprarola, creato dal cardinale Alessandro, della fonte di Papacqua a Soriano, voluto da cardinal Madruzzo, o per gli ampliamenti di Bagnaia promossi dal cardinal Gambaro.In English:"The letters between friends show that especially in the summer they exchanged frequent visits, which were close to free from any restriction, since he had established with Cardinals Farnese and Madruzzo the conditions (...) of an ungreeted recipient of hospitality, without questioning license , [so] go to me and come back from me yonder only that I'm at peace. These friendly relations were favoured by the proximity between their summer residences. The complex of Bomarzo, if allowed to assume the chronology hitherto established, [could] perhaps be a model, or a stimulus for the creation of the rear garden of Caprarola, created by Cardinal Alessandro, the source of Papacqua Soriano, built by Cardinal Madruzzo, or to expansion of Bagnaia promoted by Cardinal Gambaro. "This is an important statement in many ways. Cardinals Madruzzo and Farnese were exceptionally influential clerics and Princes- both religious and secular- whose quiet patronage would have protected and encouraged Orsini in later years. Vicino had known them since entering military service in 1546, when Alessandro Farnese, his relation through marriage, inveigled him to take part in the mostly disreputable religious wars. Alongside Niccolo Orsini of Pitigliano, Vicino fought under the banner of Cardinal Farnese in the service of Pope Paul III. In 1546 he was part of a strong force that marched over the Alps to successfully confront the armies of the Schmalkaldic (Protestant) League in Germany when he also met Cardinal Madruzzo who helped plan the expedition. [4] Farnese had shared his studentship with Madruzzo at the University of Padua and together they later represented a more liberal and flexible element within a Church which oscillated between rigorous asceticism in line with the more draconian influences surrounding the Tridentine reforms, and their more flexible and accommodating- but profoundly anti-Protestant wing - which sought to obtain support for the reforms from bickering Emperors, Kings and prelates [5].Later, Madruzzo purchased his property at nearby Soriano in 1560/61 and eventually began constructing a Palazzo and garden below the town with a prospect only exceeded by that of Caprarola. Virtually nothing of the garden remains. One of his major contributions to the town was a large fountain reminiscent of several at Sacro Bosco: Papacqua Soriano . Madruzzos Nymphaeum- unusually dedicated to the genius loci- and other aspects of his development at Soriano have pagan sculptures uncannily similar to Bomarzo, satyrs male and female among them. These are somewhat surprising even in a Cardinal who was a leading, if somewhat liberal figure at the Council of Trent [6] There is an inscribed dedication to Madruzzo in the Sacro Boscos Leaning House, near the exit to the lower swimming baths, which makes it clear the Cardinal was at times a close adviser and even philosophical confidant of Vicino. Cardinal Farnese was a man of enormous wealth, cultural prominence, and love of antiquity and power, holding multitudinous religious titles and benefices across Italy and Europe. He was perhaps the greatest collector of antiquities and sculpture in the Cinquecento. Under the direction of his curator and librarian, the antiquarian iconographer Fulvio Orsini, the Farnese collections were enlarged and systematised. He also became a Papal Legate, arranging peace between the perpetually warring Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and Francis I of France. Most especially in regard to Bomarzo Farnese inherited the nearby unfinished fort at Caprarola which, by 1556 or 1557, he began to turn into one of the greatest villas in Italy, using Vignola as his architect. His symmetrical, upper garden, set apart by a bosky walk from the main palazzo- somewhat like Vicinos Sacro Bosco- remains today perhaps the most enchanting of all with its perfect small casino, Garden of the Herms, and exquisite tumbling water course with small side rooms and their squirting water features. [7].This garden was only realised much later after the two formal gardens at the rear of the Villa were established.Against a more expansive setting the special and lost feature of Orsinis Sacro Bosco will be examined. This essay looks at a neglected aspect of Bomarzo, the haunting, for centuries overlooked park created by Count Pier Francisco Vicino Orsini (1523- 1584) in the Mannerist style between 1547 and his death in 1584. It begins a third stage of investigation- the first being the physical uncovering, survey and reordering by the University of Rome and the Bettini family (owners from 1954 until recently) after Salvador Dalis re-discovery in 1949; the second being the explosion of interpretive historical and mythological research and writing from then until now. It is arguably the most commented upon park or garden in Italy and an international academic industry in its own right. Particularly helpful to understand the broader setting and cultural context are the book by Jessie Sheeler, the ground breaking almost book-length article by M Darnall and M Weil, and Horst Brederkamps major study. Sheeler, in particular, has a strong, informed and empathic understanding of Vicino as an individual and as an idiosyncratic part of his contemporary culture.Vicino commenced creative and constructive activity in 1547 and the work continued until just prior to his death.[8] It probably evidenced an early, cumulative, almost intellectual organic growth as development continued in fits and starts until at least 1557 when he returned permanently to Bomarzo.. He may have been assisted conceptually by Vignola who went on to create great things at Caprarola for Farnese and at Tivoli for dEste. It is likely he was also helped by Pirro Ligorio; and by Raffaello da Montelupo, Ippolito Scalza and Fabiano Toti [9]. He was in Florence in 1558 meeting with his near relations (cousins) from the Medici clan who were, at that time, witnessing development at Pratolino of the great animated garden whose remains are only now being determined through painstaking archaeological and cultural research.

Orsinis intense life of travel, warfare, imprisonment and diplomacy after 1546 were punctuated by periods back at Bomarzo where, one imagines, he partly focused upon family matters and on the Sacro Bosco until he retired from the world in 1557. Without the remarkably steadfast management of his local business by Giulia (they married in 1541), Orsinis devoted wife, until her death in 1556, early progress on anything in Bomarzo or his surrounding lands during his absences would have fallen apart, as he openly acknowledged. While matrimonially unfaithful to Giulia, his love for her fortitude and support never wavered. She bore him seven children. To honour this love he dedicated the Boscos small Temple to her and to her memory.By necessity this precursor essay must be tentative. Much gathering of empirical, surveying data and detailed historical research remains to be done. It is an attempt to broach the subject rather than provide a comprehensive statement, in a minor way hopefully continuing the tradition of the trail blazing work of Darnall and Weil in 1984, Brederkamp in 1985 and many others. If it raises more questions and debate than answers, it will have served its purpose.

Orsini: the man, the creative intellect and the mystery:Vicino Orsini was a leading scion of a leading, ancient Roman family. He was also a man of great and deep cultural knowledge. Of the foremost literature of his time; of contemporary Italian thinkers and writers, past and present; of art and religion; of local, family and especially Etruscan history [10]. He experienced every kind of reality: love and war; wine and food; desire and lust; pain and grief; loss and hope; acute wakefulness and dream filled slumber; sobriety and inebriation; interludes poetical and musical; moments engineered and spontaneous; pursuits intellectual and social. He was openly a sensualist or even, in modern terms, a constructive synestheist. If he had lived in the twentieth century it is an even bet that he would have experimented with mescalin or LSD. His capacity for anarchic visualisation in sculpture and three dimensional environments equals that of Hieronymus Bosch in his great work, The Garden of Earthly Delight, in oil painting:

[Fig 7: Hieronymus Bosch,The Garden of Earthly Delights, oil on oak panels, 220 x 389 cm,Museo del Prado, Madrid- available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights#/media/File:The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution.jpg] Above all, Orsinis park or Sacro Bosco embodied the notion that all the senses can be stimulated, through careful design and planning, in a singular location and during a compressed period of time. What are required are the correct stimuli amid the right settings accompanied by a powerful and suggestive narrative pertinent to the narrators objectives. Well deployed these influences can have a mesmeric, even overwhelming affect/effect on the unwitting or ill-defended prospect. Or, they can create responding cultural sparks among the cognoscenti and literati.He hungered for female company. The park at Bomarzo was created for the satisfaction of his desires: especially a profound need for earthly love and a sixteenth century courtiers type of intellectual engagement [11]: for Orsini it was not solely, or even mainly Divine Love which redeemed, instead Redemption is through love not God- a notion of his and others not lost on the Catholic Church which, in some quarters, continued to decry the Parks pagan lasciviousness into the twentieth century- an exorcism was held inside the Park in 1980. In terms of its Mannerist, post Council of Trent art sensibility, as the Tridentine reforms percolated through the Catholic Domain, the parks style would have been increasingly viewed with disfavour:Before we examine Caravaggios persona through the scope of his masterpieces, it is equally important to look fastidiously at the artist in the cultural context of the Cinquecento and Cinquecento. At the turning of the seventeenth century, Rome was in a state of religious turmoil. During the Counter-Reformation the Catholic Church reorganized its doctrines and engaged in a counter attack against the emergence of Protestantism. A new art was sought with the explicit goal to recommit the populace to Catholicism. After the close of the Council of Trents 25thsession, the tradition of sacred art had been altered. [2] In contrast to the once highly accepted style of Mannerism, the new doctrine formulated by the Church advocated Gabriele Paleottis theology and his predominant view that nature, above all things, was the purest form of truth. Thus, the new decrees forbade highly idealized beauty, exaggerated heroic figures, and the depiction of illusionary landscapes. Artists were to create sacred images based on truth as nature presented it, show Jesus and Mary in an age appropriate association, and avoid the addition of elements that merely boasted the artists skill or virtuosity. Moreover, the new art must confront the viewer with profound emotion to ensure a sympathetic spiritual experience. The Catholic Church believed a viewer could reach a level of divine spirituality through a painting created by the imitation of nature, which in turn would bring about a recommitment to the Catholic faith. [12]A chart in Bomarzo Municipal Hall display shows his better known amorous partners mainly over the middle to later period of his life. Of these, one lasted from the mid-1530s until her untimely death in the early 1540s- another evidently throughout his marriage. The other seven recorded liaisons occurred mainly after Giulia died although one was concurrent from 1545 to 1560. In the display text it is made clear that after Giulias death he took up with an unnamed young lady from Bomarzo de 15 in 16 anni as some kind of consolation. These are probably only some of his relationships with members of the opposite sex. His two years at Namur, for example, was spent with courtly ladies as Cardinal Alessandro Farnese- the Papal Legate - who organised his eventual release, pointed out in a letter suggesting Orsinis captivity was no real hardship. Sheeler, quoting Vicinos own words which are graphic establishes, beyond question, his sensuous nature and rampant enjoyment of the physical delights of human sexual experience with the opposite gender. Not surprisingly he devised in his wickedly named Sacro Bosco machinery to make that more rather than less likely. Even the word wood is ambivalent in Italian as in: delivering the wood, a sly sexual reference. In his multifarious affairs and singular marriage Orsini was operating well within the mores of the late Renaissance period, although as post-Tridentine values spread these were under scrutiny for both religious and laity:

While family historians have sought to prove that the Italian Renaissance ideal of the chaste woman dominated society, this work has clearly revealed that the reality was not so clear cut. Families sacrificed the chastity of their daughters, sisters, and even their wives, in the pursuit of power and influence. Neither was the woman who captured the heart of an Italian Renaissance prince condemned and looked down on by society at large. Instead she was celebrated by her princely lover in art, on commemorative medals, and in literature. Her family, her children, and she herself were all well provided for by the prince, as courtly society dictated. These women, in participating in illicit affairs with princes outside of marriage, performed an important role in Italian Renaissance court culture.[13]Orsini had an impish sense of humour. He was in a life-long competition with other contemporary creators of great gardens, notably three or four Cardinals and a close relation or two [14], who perhaps refused to acknowledge his creation openly, but were most probably stimulated in their own endeavours by his innovative and idiosyncratic efforts. In the 1560s, 1570s and 1580s his Sacro Bosco became famous among some aristocratic and noble folk [15], infamous among some more. Probably commenced in 1547, arguably it pre-dates the gardens of all his competitors for whom he was an amusing, innovative gadfly of occasionally dubious mores. He gave them a place to visit where, if they wished, they could let their hair down. One can imagine Vicino, had he lived to meet Groucho Marx, being in violent agreement with Grouchos comment: These are my principles but, if you dont like them, I have others. Orsini possessed innate relativity and a self-aware, but private, sense of humour. Brederkamp argues that he was an anarchist, at least in cultural terms.As a Park or Sacro Bosco rather than a garden Bomarzos local and Etrurian antecedents were outside those of standard Islamic-derivative watergardens- at least in its asymmetrical layout, tufa/peperino elements and wandering, multi-level pathways. The advantages offered by the site which lies below a slowly moving avalanche field of peperino boulders [16], was its location at the foot of the palazzo and town walls; its visibility from there; the availability of water through the adjacency of two streams on the southern side; and its remoteness from major towns and roads permitting privacy, yet access to determined notables, various high-placed friends and other culturati. In these aspects- especially asymmetry- it is not directly related to DEste, Caprarola, or Lante although, as we shall see, it shared a common history with them in respect to its layer of water features and their echo of other sculptural similarities.Orsini was a maverick and a polymath, not unlike Sir William Petty who was a maverick and a polymath in England and Ireland during the next century [17]. Always on the fringe of power; always suspect because of his creative ideas; always striving to achieve his own vision against substantial odds; always searching for personal meaning in what he did; always questionable in his religious views yet sheltered by his social and political contacts from serious persecution. For his part Petty championed evidence based government and economic reasoning; invention; development of social welfare in a model industrial town in Western Ireland; and the power of natural philosophy. In his early to mid-adult life Vicino, for many years, was a martial champion of his family (Farnese/Medici) connections and of the Papacy, while being regarded by those who knew him as a cultivated, idiosyncratic yet creative man. Thus, after horrific experiences of warfare and epic sieges he refused any further military induction or activity and dedicated himself to his wood, to creating and enjoying sensual and cultural experiences. Rain or shine, almost every day he would ride down to the Sacro Bosco to be enfolded by his unfolding creation. Even in Bomarzos occasionally frozen winters or ferociously hot summers he was present to witness the works going on. At the end, chiding life for its unavoidable diminishing of sensory powers, flagging in energy but still developing the scope and delights of his garden, Orsini almost inevitably faced the reality that his incredible, special world was difficult and expensive to maintain and would probably fall into disrepair as tastes changed and family wealth diminished. In fact, within seventy years the property was sold. Probably sooner than that, all the materials used in its construction which were valuable and portable, were likely recycled to supply growing local villages and the onset of further warfare. Think copper, lead, bronze, ceramic piping, wood, cat gut, iron, bronze and steel cogs, and oiled leather.Orsini was a man whose ideas and beliefs were deliberately obscure and difficult to read. He distributed snippets and quotations throughout the garden which were fragmentary, allusory and pertinent to the potential journeys and sequential experiences afforded himself and his companion. Yet he never wrote down his fundamental tenets, choosing instead to create the wood as a mysterious embodiment of those ideas and beliefs with the primary purpose of impressing his peers and stimulating his companions, singular or plural, to indulge in intellectual, entertaining, sexual or shared sensual experiences. In an age when the moral and behavioural thermometer swung from hot, sometimes amoral indulgence on an epic scale to cool counter-Reformation and self-denial, it is no surprise that Orsinis Sacro Bosco developed a reputation for un-Christian, salacious and even diabolical activities [18]. In one way that was good- it kept moralistic sticky beaks away, especially after dark. In another it was risky- the Catholic Church as the Counter Reformation gathered pace- was increasingly seeking windows into mens souls and arbitrating many aspects of contemporary life and belief. As Galileo and Cardano would witness decades later, when the Churchs grip developed, and for which others- like Giordano Bruno- would perish in the flames, this tendency was an increasing threat to freer thinking, liberal contemporaries. In this sense it can be argued Mannerism was a transitional mode of philosophy, thought and design in which commonly perceived dicta were often reversed and many subtle, heterodox and sophisticated strands were surreptitiously woven. We have no idea if Cardinal Madruzzo, for instance, harboured such heterodox ideas but his life experience and more liberal approach during and after the Council of Trent, his pagan decorations in the Nymphaeum , along with his friendship for Vicino free from any restriction, might suggest it was possible.Orsini, therefore, never provided a key to the multivalent allusions represented in the sculpture and we have no concrete or coherent statement of his intellectual position or beliefs. Rather, it is increasingly suggested that the wood was deliberately open to personal interpretation and double meanings at its outset [19], as much as it is today. While channelling Orlando Furioso, a contemporary satire (1516/1532), as a rubric, probably Dantean poetry, Petrarch, and certainly Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna (1499), the Sacro Bosco had multitudinous and many layered sources. Visitors could invest whatever references and allusions they wished in the 1560s to 1580s, either deeply informed by classical and contemporary mythology, history and narrative- or not, depending on that persons own depth of knowledge and range of intellectual interests. In open ended meaning lay scholarship, intrigue, dalliance, seduction, story variance and safety for the principal strolling player in his own staged setting.Orsini was a many layered, quixotic character. Eclectic and courtly, sapient and impish, martial and pacifist, earthy and imaginative, inventive and destructive. Among all this sat his idiosyncratic personality, remarkable erudition, creative drive and sexual appetite. Thus, in a profound sense, the garden was also a synestheist experience. The base layer was made up of the sites topography, vegetation, climate and hydrology- the genius loci- hillside, Bosco, terraces, original peperino boulders, levels, water courses and sequential, yet variable pathways, with different entrances. Next layer was the sculptures, statuary, structures and internal/external spaces: buildings, rooms, caves, piazettas, swards, terraces, lakes, pools, baths, love seats, vistas, prospects and grotto. These often possessed allegorical, literary, historical and philosophical allusions and hidden meanings- or were settings for elements which did. Then there was the layer of Etruscan reference and allusion relating back to Orsinis own reputed family history (Anio) and historical remnants in the areas bosci [20]. Within this context music, masques, food and wine, bathing, swimming, storytelling, dialogue, erotic adventures, talking faces, fountains and interactive water features, animated figures and, eventually, some fully coloured sculptures were an added accompaniment. Not so much a layer or stratum, more a population of experiences which allowed Orsini an almost infinite range of possible storylines and experiential journeys distributed among the various terraces and layers. As Darnall and Weil expressed it [21]:

Once the meaning of the various levels is understood it is amusing to discuss the other ways one can wander through the garden and the iconographic permutations that occur. For example, one choice a guest can make was whether or not to descend through the lower garden when returning from Vicinos Mask of Madness. Should he stay on the level path above the Wrestling Colossi he would arrive at the Hippodrome... [On] a direct route from the Mask...to the Terrestrial Paradise with the little bears....There is no certainty that Orsini let guests travel unaccompanied. Very close friends and family may have been permitted that freedom but it seems likely he normally accompanied other less well known guests for good reasons to do with outlandishness of message and misinterpretation which may exacerbate his and the Boscos reputation. Picking the day, picking the weather, picking the guest or guests, picking the paths, picking the appropriate elements, Vicino could weave a spellbinding experience different to all the others. It was like walking through a larger than life, animated cabinet of curiosities accompanied by a creative genius who tailored each remarkable experience, grotesque or lyrical, to your temperament and character and according to his own creative desires.So, his Sacro Bosco became Vicinos focus and obsession. In it were ravelled all the threads of his life. Upon and within the wood Orsini made a world apart in which he could pursue his many passions. It was an allegory upon a tabla erasa; historically resonant yet unlike anything before or since; a technological marvel yet still a Sacro Bosco; a place of intimate, private dalliance and a location of socially acceptable pageantry; a world of mystery and yet a public journey towards Divine Love and redemption; obscure statement of philosophy but open reference to many literary allusions; theatre of the grotesque yet, just possibly, precursor of the world of Opera; notorious during his life and, from the mid seventeenth century, almost forgotten for nearly three hundred years thereafter; his personal machine for telling stories and casting light on his life, yet misunderstood in many ways even until now. A multi-faceted, almost infinitely optioned place in which to journey, following a different narrative each time according to the intentions of the storey teller and perceptions of his audience. A riddle, wrapped inside a mystery and so on. Now regarded by many garden scholars as adequately explored by two or three generations of their colleagues. A rich vein of intellectual history now all but exhausted?As Orsini himself said in one of the extant inscriptions on a Sphinx which probably sat at one of the original entrances to the wood:you who enter here put your mind to it part by part And tell me then if so many wonders Were made as trickery or as artSheeler has interpreted this duality of meaning in the original Italian in a way which assists the thesis of this essay. Notwithstanding, it is difficult to imagine the sculptures carved from peperino as being capable of incorporating trickery. They are what they are- static sculptures made from local stone, mostly found on site. While in part grotesque, or whimsical, or sensuous, or stately they mutely rested where Orsini placed them or as they were found in situ. Hardly exhibiting trickery? They certainly embodied many layers of referential meaning, as we have seen, but that was not in any way unusual in gardens of the period. So, to what does Orsini refer in this word trickery? JB Bury noted the following in his Bomarzo Revisited article: in Petrarchs context inganno simply means deceit and the arti to which he refers are arti maghe, that is magic arts [22]Such magic arts were associated with the dark side of religion and philosophy by less cultivated and less modern people. Sometimes, such ideas were associated with human made, moving figures- automata- which were increasingly appearing in the houses and palaces of the rich and powerful in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Could Vicinos reference be to automata which created the illusion of movement, music or speech in Bomarzo, or the very real experience of visitors being drenched from below, or from head to toe by both static and moving features?

Hesdin, Orsini, automata and Emperor Charles V:

The transmission of knowledge about water powered and mechanical automata to Vicino can be strongly inferred due to Orsinis assistance in the defence of Hesdin against the army of Emperor Charles V in 1553 and his subsequent period of imprisonment for ransom until 1555.

The Hesdin Garden of Earthly Delights is well documented, as is the siege and consequent slaughter of many non-wealthy combatants on the losing side by the Emperors Spanish troops. The siege was horrific. Orsinis reaction to warfare can partly be sourced from this appalling experience here, and at the Papally ordered massacre at Montefortino, in 1557.

In April, 1557 the town of Montefortino, north-east of Velletri, signed an agreement to support the Pope. Accordingly, Vicino sent them a detachment of his troops, whom the townspeople promptly ambushed and almost entirely wiped out. In retaliation the Pope sent a strong force under another member of the Orsini clan, Giulio Orsini, who managed to capture the town after a difficult siege. The Pope ordered the confiscation of all goods in the town and its total destruction. All the male inhabitants were slaughtered and the churches to which the women and children had fled were burned down. [23]

At Hesdin both castle and city were rapidly removed, stone by stone, item by item except the convent and chapel, on the orders of the Emperor. It is reported this huge and complex feat of engineering took only four weeks. What happened to the marvels appears unknown from available printed sources. The French families of traditional tradesmen who maintained and enhanced the marvels also are not mentioned although their immediate livelihood was removed once the city, castle, and gallery, were demolished.

In Bedinis informative paper on the history of automata in Europe the fascination of Emperor Charles V for this subject is manifested:

Another pioneer in the construction of androids was a contemporary of Bullmann named Gianello Torriano of Cremona (ca. 1515-l585). When the Emperor Charles V visited Pavia in 1529, he expressed a wish to have the famous Astrarium of Giovanni de Dondi restored. Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, governor of Milan, recommended Gianello, already well established as one of the foremost Italian clockmakers. It is generally believed that Gianello entered the Emperor's service at this time and returned with him to Spain. Having found the Dondi Astrarium beyond repair, it is believed that he constructed a replica. When the Emperor abdicated in 1555 and retired to the convent of San Yuste, he was accompanied by a staff of 50 retainers, among whom was Gianello. The clockmaker devoted his time and ability to the construction of automata with which he sought to distract his mournful monarch. Often Gianello surprised the Emperor with the novelty of his creations. After dinner, for instance, he would produce a tableau on the dining table consisting of a variety of little figures of armed soldiers that marched about, rode on horseback, beat drums, blew trumpets, and engaged in battle. On other occasions he would release little carved wooden birds which flew into every corner, to the consternation of the disapproving Superior of the convent, who considered them works of sorcery. The only surviving work which can be attributed to Gianello is an automaton of a lady lute player, now in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna ... [24]

Clearly, the Emperor was engaged in the creation and enjoyment of automata from the 1530s until his death decades later. As such it is hard to believe he was unaware of Hesdins Garden of Earthly Delights. Although in this phase of the religious wars he had already ordered the dismantling of another recalcitrant city, Therouanne, it is not unreasonable to question the speed and completeness of the reduction of Hesdin. As well as the removal of a potential future enemy redoubt and threat, did the Emperor have another reason to take the Castle apart? Were some of the automata dismantled and shipped back to him and Gianello in Spain? If so, was Orsini aware of this and even present at the work scene for a short while as his captivity was being discussed and organised? Did some of the materials and mechanisms fascinate him after he had seen them functioning before, or during a break in the siege? Did he talk with the skilled maintenance tradesmen about what was happening and how the automata functioned? We do not yet know, but it is a fascinating possibility.

Specialised skills in making and maintaining water-powered and mechanical automata were rare, as were skills involved in clock-making. [25]. Mechanical clock making and, the even rarer, automaton fabrication, were sub-skills of arms manufacturing or blacksmithing. A tradition established in Hesdin in the thirteenth century, while fading in the fifteenth was still extant in the mid-sixteenth [26]. In a town of around seven thousand people the highly skilled automata-maintenance tradesmen- by appointment to the Counts of Burgundy- would have been well known, especially if they were blacksmiths, arms makers, clockmakers, or all three.

That these skilled craftsmen were mobile is not in doubt. They went where the work was and where they could get paid the most. Parts of middle Italy, at this stage of the religious wars, were relatively undisturbed after many decades of earlier disruption and savagery nearby. Rural and obscure Northern Lazio, between the Via Cassia and Via Flaminia, may have appeared a comparatively safe backwater and, supported by a wealthy new patron with a big potential project, Bomarzo a safe harbour in comparison to France or the Low Countries where warfare rapidly increased. Especially if you were a traditional Catholic who supported the Pope based in Rome. We do not know who these craftsmen may have been although, later in the article, two possible candidates emerge who were associated with Pirro Ligorio.

Orsini began his Sacro Bosco in 1547, the earliest of all the Cinquecento Italian animated water gardens, so his interest in what he saw at Hesdin may well have been piqued once he was there in 1553 and could witness for himself what the automata manifested and how they worked. The gallery was widely known and visited by royalty, aristocrats and travellers alike. He would not have missed the opportunity to inspect it even if it was no longer in perfect repair.

After the disastrous siege, Vicino was a wealthy and influential captive held at Namur in what is now Belgium, a city not that far from Hesdin in northern France. The Emperor, who had joined the possessions of the Imperium and Spain, controlled this area of the Low Countries. Despite a two year delay in ransom funding he may have purchased some of the automata just after the siege when their value was probably reduced to that of recyclable materials. In a war zone which had been ravaged who else would seek to own this mechanical and hydraulic detritus other than the Emperor or Orsini? He may also have spent time with the skilled family of French trades people who maintained and built the automata before he left for Namur or while there. Given their skill sets it is likely these tradesmen moved from the area of Hesdin fairly quickly since it took a number of years for the Emperors orders, to rebuild the town 6 kms away, to be realised. Alternatively they may have already have left to return to another town close by in France from where, it is reported by Truitt, they originated. The safety of these skilled craftsmen is also likely to have been assured since the Emperors armies needed trained people like this, as did society at large. Without further manuscript evidence, however, we do not know the answers to these questions.

Cooling his heels and waiting for freedom, Orsini may have experienced a burst of creative musing, wishing himself back in Bomarzo with all its possibilities for unique self-expression in his nascent Sacro Bosco. The gallery would have provided welcome stimulus for his creative talents before and possibly even during breaks in the siege. Putting the two interests together later on would not take an enormous leap of imagination.

Subsequently, after an initially tough detention then as an honoured prisoner, he spent time as a gallant, a courtier-like parolee reading, writing, dancing and talking with fellow prisoners and their wealthy captors. With little else to do Vicino would write letters to obtain news and his release, pursue the courtly duties and pleasures of the civilised parolee, read inbound letters and contemporary literature and probably dream of what he could create in his own special domain back home. So long as his upkeep was paid by his family. In that light it is likely he would have been permitted to explore the mechanisms and technologies from the dismantled galleries, talking with local people who knew and maintained them, before leaving for Namur. These were harmless and unthreatening activities of a civilised and courtly captive. Even if not, we can reasonably deduce he would have studied the galleries before the end of the siege. It is also reasonable to suggest that one or two of the tradespeople may have accompanied Orsini, perhaps with some deconstructed automata, to Bomarzo after the ransom was paid.

Is this presently supposition? Yes.

Yet does it explain the water animated and mechanical automata for which we have good evidence in present day literature and at Bomarzo? Yes, in the main.

In his essay Bedini notes categorically that a link existed between Hesdins Gallery and the Italian water gardens of the Cinquecento:

The most important application of the hydraulics devised by the Greek ancients was made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for the elaborate gardens of the royal mansions and palaces of Renaissance Europe. Little change was effected in these mechanisms from the time of Philon and Heron. The grottoes of the European gardens employed the same combination of movements as had been utilized in the most ancient times. The decoration, however, reflected the era; it was executed with considerably more care and with a profusion and confusion of detail and accessories as the Renaissance developed. A tradition was established based on the prototype of the water gardens built by the Count d'Artois in the late thirteenth century for his castle at Hesdin. [27]But Bedini does not establish who was the initial transporter and adopter of this approach and these techniques, potentially, in the fifteenth century or where they were demonstrated. Whether or not there were examples of earlier transmission in that century, which he does not specify, there can be no doubt that Orsini was at Hesdin before, and possibly during, the time the Gallery was taken apart, that he had just begun work on the Sacro Bosco as his life-long project, and that his innovative park at Bomarzo predates those at Pratolino, Lante, Caprarola and dEste. Or that, as we shall see later, there is abundant proof of a massive and complex hydrological system at Bomarzos Sacro Bosco evident to this day. In fact so extensive are these remnants that they appear, when originally installed, to have far outdistanced even dEste in terms of automata, as opposed to fountains, playful water jets or falling waters. There are also elements which suggest mechanical automata may have been installed.

Literature on hydrology and automata in the C15, C16 and C17:

One of the great historians of automata, Silvio Bedini summed up the transmission of knowledge from Ancient Greece, via Islamic scholars to the Renaissance as follows:

Automata had its greatest period of development following the rise of mechanism with the revival of Greek culture during the Renaissance. In addition to the considerable progress that was made in the philosophy of science as well as in the sciences of astronomy and mathematics during this 'turbulent period, the stage was being set for major technological developments which came to fruition in a later era. The writings of Ctesibius, Philon, and Heron, which had been preserved in the works of the Arabs and Byzantines, were brought into the popular domain once more in translations by Renaissance humanists and exercised considerable influence on scientific thought. Distribution of these scientific treatises led to the publication of numerous commentaries by Italian and other writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, resulting in considerable preoccupation with hydraulics and pneumatics and their application to biological automata. The commentaries not only rendered translations and reconstructions of the written words of the Greek ancients, but the writers added sketches and designs to their distillations in an attempt to explain aid, illustrate, and elaborate on, the early mechanisms. These reconstructions often inspired other and more complicated works, which were constructed by architects of that and subsequent periods for the diversion of wealthy patrons. Fragments of Heron's writings were the first of the Greek works to be translated. These appeared for the first time in Latin in the work of Giorgio Valla, [1] published in 1501, followed by complete translations into Latin by Commadini [2] in 1575. The single work which provoked the greatest interest among Renaissance scholars was the Pneumatics, which was translated and published for the first time by Giovanni Battista Aleotti [3] in 1589, and in which the translator incorporated some ideas of his own. [28]

The importance of publications on these subjects was based on an earlier tradition of manuscript copies of Heron, or Hero of Alexander as he is also known. These were sourced from Islamic manuscript documents mainly in Arabic, available in Sicily, Apulia, Constantinople and elsewhere, which had been translated into Italian, or Latin, or both. Sherwood devotes an extended section to sources and translations which appear to span many centuries before and during the Middle Ages. Chapuis and Droz note a specific example in 1492 when a complex automaton theatre derived from Hero was substantially recreated for a celebration in honour of Count Borso DEste, proof that there were detailed manuscript sources, with illustrations, available in the late fifteenth century and probably much earlier. Boas gives a focused account while Ambrosetti, more recently, has tracked many of the manuscript sources in detail.

Given his years as Governor of Angevin Sicily, Robert II may well have collected such manuscripts as well as witnessing such hydraulic enginery at work in these southern gardens in the late thirteenth century.

Later, in the early seventeenth century a highly influential publication, by a much traveled author, appeared which was primarily based on Hero but which also had its own special content and characteristics. Bedini again:

Equally important was the work entitled Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes avec Diverses Machines tant Utiles que Plaisantes (The Relations of Motive Forces, with Various Machines as Useful as they are Pleasing), published in Frankfort in 1615. The author, Salomon de Caus (1576-1626), was a French engineer in the service of the Palatine Elector. In this work he was particularly preoccupied with the production of pleasure gardens and hydraulic displays; he applied the principles of hydraulics for the solution of various problems, in which the influence of Heron is in strong evidence ... Part of the work described grotesque grottoes and fountains, which later served as prototypes for actual constructions.[29]The importance of de Caus to the present article lies in the fact that he travelled to Italy and studied many gardens. His book, while containing some contemporary improvements, was principally based on Heros famous work in print and as it was interpreted in those gardens and, later, by himself. Much of what he illustrates would have been known to Orsini, his Cardinal friends and their architectural and engineering advisers. [30] Although it has been disputed, this author believes there is some evidence to support the idea that de Caus may have visited Bomarzo.As is widely accepted, Orsini was extremely well connected with writers of his day and deeply knowledgeable of Italian literature of his period. A well-educated aristocrat of an ancient and leading family, he was almost certainly fluent in Latin and other European languages apart from his native tongue. Given the scale of the hydraulic systems at Bomarzo and the number of places and spaces where there is irrefutable evidence for hydraulic and mechanical mechanisms emplacement, Bomarzo is likely to have exhibited some, perhaps many of Heros mechanisms adapted to local requirements and tastes. To which was added an eclectic range of hydraulic and possibly mechanical automata based on those at Hesdin, themselves almost certainly based on C13 gardens and technologies found in Sicily and known to Robert II. These, too, would have been the descendants of the Heronic tradition and his corpus of technologies and classical influences

Orsini as accidental catalyst and synestheist:

The essential catalysts for creation of the Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo were: sources of technical, engineering, artistic, cultural and architectural knowledge, a place and resources appropriate for self-expression using such technology and artistic expression, and the creative intellect of a wealthy person. Motive, means and opportunity as the old saying goes. He did the deed, although it took forty years of concentrated effort and a massive investment of funds and creativity to achieve the end result. Even then, it was a work in progress for most of his life. Indeed a recent discovery shows even more unfinished, large-scale works were underway before his death outside the recognised boundaries of the woods Cinquecento walls (see photographs from June, 2014 below). More such may have been identified from GOOGLE Earth.

The vicissitudes of war placed Vicino in a context where it is inconceivable he would have missed the opportunity to visit the Garden of Earthly Delights. He hated the experience of war and his handsome face was physically scarred by it in addition to the psychological trauma which he later indicated. His opportunity to imagine and synthesise a unique creative expression situated in his home location was his acknowledged counterpoint to that ghastly military experience. In all, the old adage Allah is great but proximity greater applies to Vicinos life experience and life-long project- his Sacro Bosco. No-one else travelled where he did, lived where he did, possessed the method, means and opportunity as he did, or possessed the knowledge and creative passions. This helps explain the woods unique character and compelling qualities.

Genius Loci:

Let us ponder, for a moment, the conjunction of climate, topography, vegetation, geology, hydrology and culture- as embodied in Count Orsinis creation. Bomarzo is a place of extremes. The temperature can nowadays vary- and did at that time- from minus 10C (including wind chill factor) to plus 45C, winter to summer. Although Vicino said he was keen to attend his wood under construction most days in the winter he is unlikely to have initiated visits there from friends, patrons, neighbours or lovers. He notes that he visited often throughout the year to confer with tradesmen and other advisers [31]. It is possible he was accompanied on occasion by Giulia while she was alive, or by another family member, to look at progress in the winter but the exposed nature of the road down to the site and the dank winter woodland may have limited these joint excursions. Added to which freezing winter temperatures dictated draining the hydrological systems to avoid bursting joints and pipes.

Bundled up against the cold, with snow, rain and frost on the weather menu, Orsinis winter experiences were partly dictated by such inclement extremes. Life within the Palazzo was warmer, kinder and more enjoyable during the coldest months than life outside. He was wealthy and had many servants. His family would have treasured their comforts. Roaring fires and warm clothes were the order of the day with hearty meals of beef, mutton, game, farinaceous foods and root vegetables, accompanied by local wines famous for quality (Est! Est! Est!). It is reasonable to assume that, apart from workers and engineers or architects, only the passionate progenitor would regularly visit his Park in the worst of Lazios wintry weather.

By the same token, the height of summer can be equally extreme: intense humidity, soaring temperatures, occasional massive storms and seemingly endless heat waves which leave even the most energetic humans enervated and limp are the order of the day. The northern-facing defensive position of the Palazzo was also chosen to provide winds, breezes and air currents caused by convection from valley, up past promontory to sky. The Belvedere, under watered cloth awnings, made for slightly better conditions in the sweltering heat while thermal mass embodied in thick stone walls and floors meant interiors heated up much less slowly than exterior air. But all this would have provided limited relief during the most brutal, extended periods of heat. Down on the western plain at Vulci the heat was so extreme that, in Etruscan then enlarged in Roman times, an entire underground city existed in parallel with that above ground. Conditions below still remain remarkably cool when the mercury rises above 32C+ (the author visited below-ground in Vulci and photographed it in May, 2006).

By the 1570s from the Palazzos Belvedere, the prospect was presented of a deliciously cool woodland environment, the Sacro Bosco, with its lake and faintly visible streams, ponds, grottoes, water features, fountains, baths and swimming pool. Even in 1547 Vicino would have had an inkling of the potential attractions of a well-watered woodland sanctuary during the late spring, high summer and early autumn months. He grew up at Bomarzo and well understood the compelling realities of its summer climate. For a man of great wealth and local power the opportunity to create a halcyon environment with every conceivable summer comfort and distraction would have been challenging yet delightful.

He made the Sacro Bosco because he could, while having the resources and creativity to imagine first, then realise second what was in his mind. Not for him a Walt Disney experience for the masses - from whom to extract a fortune. Rather, an intensely personal and private expression of intellectual subtlety and experiential enjoyment. In the second category subtlety was not always evident, although often it was the order of the day.

The evidence for the statement above? There are a host of pointers. Here, there is no absence of evidence. For example, there is the major installation at the far foot of the park where remains of large scale baths currently exist [32]. It was a notorious contemporary fact that Emperor Hadrians baths (Natatio) were undergoing excavation by Vignola on the part of the Farnese Cardinal. Many of the antiquities found were documented by Pirro Ligorio in his massive manuscript trove. New discoveries kept on being made and broadcast during Vicinos life. While small in comparison with Hadrians, walking toward and round this lowest space today clearly demonstrates Vicinos wit and capacity to create his own bathing experience.

There were and are two obvious ways down to this bathing facility: one was by carriage from the top arrival area- a route still used for maintenance and building works. Whether this road was in use in Vicinos time is not entirely clear. This issue will be addressed below but it is felt that it followed the natural terrain and most probably was extant at the time.

(Fig: 8- current track down from arrival area to swimming bath lower area. Note the small, historic stone cobbles or paving at the beginning; June, 2014)

The other was by the side of the leaning house: a carriageway is flanked by Orsinis joke- an allusion to bathing through two large, but now damaged stone tubs, situated one on each side of the gateway leading down to the lower facility (see commentary in Part III).

(Fig: 9- track down past Leaning House, between two baths. Note the strange, split feature above the bath to the right/east of the Sacro Bosco; June, 2104).

As usual, Vicino gave himself options to progress with different visitors after different sequential experiences. With close friends and family it is reasonable to think that on private days in high summer he would simply have ridden down, or have taken the carriage, from the Palazzo, or have had lunch in one of the upper locations and then to have gone on from there for a cool ablution in these lower baths. On special intimate days, he may have dallied in the Nymphaeum and, after a drink and light picnic lunch inside the Mouth of Hell, have wandered down to swim and bathe al fresco.

The fact that inside the Mouth of Hell there is a table and benches carved from stone is another pointer. It is remarkably pleasant to sit inside on a hot day and picnic within this cave-like, man-made structure. To quarry out the massive inside space of this tufa boulder and carve its exterior decoration would have taken immense energy, skill and careful planning. The cost would have been damnable although with repeated use over the years it was nothing but cumulatively pleasurable. The temperature within is a good 7C lower than outside. With snow and ice-cooled drinks and a table of cold victuals, already set out for the Count and his guest by unseen servants, such an enjoyable experience prior to sallying forth for a swim further down, out of sight to all but themselves, is not difficult to imagine.

(Fig 9: Hells Mouth, massive carved and hollowed peperino boulder, Bomarzos most famous sculpture; June, 2014)Vicino was not alone in creating chilled environments for relief from torpid temperatures within his garden or park. The famous- and extremely beautiful - carved stone table, with central water channel to keep wine containers cool and a channel at foot level to chill ones feet, at Villa Lante is another version of early air conditioning. With fabric awnings, moving wetted canvas sheets and breezes caused by convection this construct permits cooler dining on even the hottest days. What is absent at Villa Lante is any place where one might obviously bathe in an intimate way. This thought deserves greater exploration.

The woodland environment of Sacro Bosco is another pointer. In winter it can be cold, dank and gloomy. The deciduous trees are bare and skeletal; the permanent leafy vegetation often dripping; the wet stone and moss slippery under foot. Water and mist sometimes give the park a damp, forbidding character. In all, an occasionally oppressive and unattractive experience except to the masochist, the toiler in the wood for what equated to a living, or the introspective poet who leant towards melancholy. In summer even now, without all the water features, the reverse is true: a burbling creek animates and cools the experience; omnipresent leaves and greenery lower the ambient temperature, while moss glimmers in a fluorescent display of intense green. Occasionally massive summer storms drench Bomarzo- with storm cells that can stretch 40 kilometres in diameter, 13,000 metres in height and brutal downpours which can dump 20 mm of rain in an hour or less. The delight of cooling off on a day with 45 Celsius degree heat, amid a private, bosky environment unclothed and beneath a deluge is easily imagined.

Back in 1575 the myriad water features with fine mists and heavier drenchings if desired, would have cooled down host and visitor quite sufficiently for the modest, without bathing or swimming. For others, the enclosed Nymphaeum with its oculus would have been deliciously cool and, close by, was the enormous shallow vessel with a sculpture of stylised dolphin heads gushing water at each end. Sheeler refers to this unusual sculpture as the Boat Fountain [33], Darnell and Weill as the Barcaccia (long boat), yet it looks far more like an enormous bath than a boat. Perhaps Orsini referred to it as the latter while using it as the former?

Contemplation in the cool internal cavern could be followed by consummation in a chilled, shallow bath in complete privacy if Orsini and his guest so wished. The bath is notable, however, for its breadth and length. It is quite capable of accommodating more than two people for revels.

This may help explain Sansovinos gushing appreciation for Orsinis hospitality in his Ritratto della citta dItalia of 1575 where he gives a succinct, somewhat cryptic description of the Sacro Bosco [34]. He repeated similar sentiments in 1575, 1578 and 1582. Perhaps there was more than one visit? Given the heterodox and sensual references and opportunities provided by Orsini, in an Italy which was experiencing a greater effect of post-Tridentine reforms and the Inquisition, anything more than an oblique eulogy may have proved to be risky despite protection afforded Vicino by influential senior clerics. This coded, circumspect language is seen in other references such as his own letter to Drouet around 1574, quoted below.

The reputation of Bomarzo:

It is reasonable to deduce from such evidence that Orsini deliberately designed and created a park whose features encouraged and enhanced a wide range of physical experiences, based on climate, topography and vegetation, which reinforced summers pleasures. He did so in a period when aristocratic clothing and garments - certainly those worn for fashionable or stylish events such as masques and courtly visits to an aristocratic park -were comparatively heavy and uncomfortable under hot conditions.

Although in his earlier years a fair degree of private hedonism may have been safe and morally acceptable for Orsini and his guests, as the more ascetic mores of the Counter-Reformation trickled through, acceptable behaviour, at least in semi-public situations, changed and became more restrictive. There was a parallel tightening of rules in the lives of religious orders around the same time, although it took several decades for this to be effected throughout the Catholic world. [35].

Garments grew more linear and severe in Italy as the Spanish style infiltrated southern Europe and outward displays of sensuousness and self-indulgence somewhat less permissive, leading to a change of behaviour- at least in public. Heterodoxy in religious and philosophical terms became more dangerous as Pomponio Algerios public execution in Rome in the 1550s made clear. Arguably, given his high born connections, his championing of the Papal cause and the hidden nature of his garden, Orsinis relatively low profile, obscure location and distance from Rome sheltered him from those intrusive investigations and exposures which increasingly characterised the Inquisition and the Churchs reinforced apparatus of social and moral control. He did not publicise any questionable ideas in later life, after publishing the occasional piece of high-flown poetry earlier on.

Yet his popular reputation was sullied by an historic and cumulative view that the park was a place of abandonment, or worse. After a high reputation in the 1570s and 1580s, as evinced by its lingering effect in Giovanni Guerras drawings published in 1604, it developed a debased reputation in the post Tridentine world which continued through the next century and, in an oblique way, even up to the 1980s. As evidence for this we have the garden created at Valsanzibio after 1669 by the Venetian nobleman Zuane Francesco Barbarigo. His son, Gregorio, a Cardinal and future Saint, inspired the plans symbolic meaning which was drawn up by Luigi Bernini, a leading Vatican architect and fountain expert. Sixty full size statues, mainly conceptualised by Enrico Merengo, with many other smaller sculptures were integrated into an ordered setting of architecture, streams, fountains, water jokes and fish ponds, among hundreds of carefully chosen trees amid a garden of forty acres. A modern author following Edith Whartons footsteps wrote this startling comment: [36]

The first stanza of the sonnet inscribed on the scalinata of Valsanzibio sets out the meaning of the whole garden and, to the last syllable, is a deliberate parody and play on the words of the verse on the pedestal of the sphinx which greets visitors at the entrance of Bomarzo. Whereas Bomarzo represents a haphazard wandering through an underworld that explores the dark forces of life, where there is no clear path and you may or may not find your way out, the path in Valsanzibio is clearly set out: the further you move from the fallibility of pagan mythology, exemplified in Dianas Gate, at the entrance to the garden, the more sophisticated and intelligent the experience becomes...Valsanzibio, the antithesis to Bomarzo, is a deliberate homage to San Carlo Borromini. Barbarigo animated his garden with the spirit of Christianity...

Of Bomarzo, Russell writes:

At the same time, only a few miles away from Lante, the most flagrantly pagan garden in Italy was being created by an iconoclastic aristocrat, Vicino Orsini...a frightening and disturbing underworld, which visitors stumbled through by an unprescribed and uncharted route, eventually reaching a temple at the top of the valley. The gardens message was that redemption was through love, not God.... [and it] did not please the Catholic Church... We should also not forget the views of the Superior of the convent at San Yuste where Charles V retired in the last few years of his life: On other occasions he would release little carved wooden birds which flew into every corner, to the consternation of the disapproving Superior of the convent, who considered them works of sorcery. If the Emperor and his servants could be thought by an educated religious to harbour sorcerers and sorcery, how would uneducated peasants and local farmers in remote Bomarzo view a host of automata and water engines, not to mention undeniable reports- or at the least rumours and gossip- of lascivious revels in the Sacro Bosco? As we shall see, a small army of hidden helpers were needed to operate these automata at Vicinos signals throughout the park. They would have gossiped with their drinking buddies at what they saw and heard among the grotesque sculptures, animated figures and watery places of amorous delight. A local reputation, wafted abroad over time by visitors, was inescapable and it was reinforced by the key message about redemption through love not Divine forgiveness. It may be argued that Vicinos messages were actually more subtle than that- indeed, they were- but that would not be the take home message for a willing- or, especially, unwilling- witness to what transpired in the Boscos lower levels. Orsinis Sacro Bosco carried within its reputation the Latin or Roman allusions associated with Pagan Woods from millennia before and never lost that association except among a limited number of more open-minded aristocrats and intellectuals. If this assessment of the attitude of the Catholic faithful is accurate it explains why Bomarzos later reputation became so poor and why ultimately it was forgotten until the nineteenth century. It also explains the delayed riposte embodied a century after its creation in Valsanzibio. Even in 1669 it mattered enough to build an entire garden to help negate Bomarzos reputedly malign influence. By the mid nineteenth century Bomarzo had sunk into bucolic misery. In 1847 an English traveller, seeking to study Etruscan antiquity and archaeological remains on the ground, wrote about Bomarzo: About twelve miles east of Viterbo on the same slope of the Cimian, is the village of Bomarzo, in the immediate neighbourhood of an Etruscan town where extensive excavations have been carried on of late years...It commands a glorious view of the vale of the Tiber...[but]..Like most villages in the papal State, Bomarzo is squalid in the extreme...George Dennis makes no mention of the Sacro Bosco, but does report on one Etruscan tomb named Grotta Depinta:We are in a chamber whose walls, gaily painted, are alive with sea-horses snorting and plunging- water snakes uprearing their crests...dolphins sporting as in their native element-and- can we believe our eyes? Grim and hideous caricatures of the human face divine. One is the head of an old man, with eye starting from its socket, and mouth wide open as though smitten with terror...Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.[37]While focused on Etrurias history, it is difficult to imagine Dennis would fail to comment on the park if he was aware of it- he comments on so many varied subjects relating to his travels. Especially when Sacro Bosco had numerous grotesque and startling sculptures part inspired by images such as those in Grotta Depinta. There can be no doubt that the park, by then, had disappeared from general public notice due to past obloquy, neglect and disdain. In part, this negative impression continued into the 1980s. After a tragic accident in which Mrs Bettini died during restoration work an altar was set up near the temple and an exorcism was undertaken by an officiating priest from nearby Viterbo. [38]Orsinis intent:

The quotations which are to be found throughout the park as red-lined inscriptions are part of Vicinos deliberately obtuse and confusing world-view. Indeed they and the sculptures have rightly fuelled a massive academic literature whose purpose is to establish Orsinis underlying meanings and allusions. What is so intriguing is that, even while this cumulative interpretive debate has been mounting up from the 1950s, the messages which accompanied the statuary and inscriptions, communicated through talking and moving automata as at Hesdin, have been lost. To rely solely on the sculptures and inscriptions in this case is like relying on the libretto of an opera without knowing much about the plot, music, scenic directions, writers side notes or singers performance.

In a treatment of the Hesdin gallery Jesse Hurlbut says:

Similar to portions of the banquet in Lille, this was an active form of spectacle. Yet, as eager as the duke seemed to be to engage the Grand Turk in single combat, and willing, therefore to participate in the drama of the Holy Church, I don't imagine that he devised this Funhouse in Hesdin in order to subject himself to the buffetings and humiliations it afforded. The primary function of such a contraption was most certainly for entertainment, implying some kind of gratification to an audience--presumably, the duke. But, just who was expected to go through these galleries and just who was in control of the buttons and switches that made it all work? Did the duke herd local peasants through for his own sadistic pleasures? Did he greet visiting dignitaries, perhaps even nobility there? Was it just a practical joke or a convenient way to discourage unwanted visitors? We can find no real answers to these questions. Indeed, I think that where I was able to suggest an ideological motivation for much of what took place at the banquet in Lille, I am unable to substantiate any congruity in motives regarding the galleries of this castle. The codes of chivalry, upheld in the enlistment to honorably serve God, the Virgin-Mother and the Ladies of the court seem breached in this instance. Is there any way that the Funhouse antics can be construed as anything other than sneaky, tricky and abusive? Could an officer of the Order of the Golden Fleece engage in behavior of this sort in good conscience. Or was hazing part of the initiation rite into the prestigious chivalric Order?

[39]

Ladies of the court seemed breached in this instance- thus Jesse Hurlbut moves towards an implied inference that somehow females in the Burgundian court were deliberately targeted by and in the automata which populated Hesdins Garden of Earthly Delights. While it may seem contradictory within a chivalric code of conduct to do so, Hurlbut also notes:

My frustration at so many questions and so few answers has already given rise to too much speculation here. By way of conclusion, then, I will simply point to another important literary product of the Burgundian court, _Les Cent Nouvelles_, in which sacred and profane stories are collected together, demonstrating that there is apparently room for multiple, and even conflicting ideologies within the boundaries of a single cultural space.

This viewpoint also may well apply to Vicino Orsinis approach to the intellectual underpinnings and physical experiences of his wood at Bomarzo. Multi-layered, obfuscated, inferred, allegorical, a journey with open ended mythological meanings- related to and in part derived from Neo-Platonic, Epicurean, Alchemical and other literary, philosophical and historical allusions- this was Orsini the subtle, flexible and fugitive intellectual taking visitors on a literary journey which was almost infinitely variable, depending on personnel, circumstance and the route followed. At the same time his wood made possible frankly physical, Epicurean, hedonistic and even impish experiences, much in the way the Dukes gallery did at Hesdin.

A simple, perhaps simplistic interpretation of one aspect of both gallery and wood- among many- is also possible: heavy garments that are drenched are uncomfortable. Immediately cool after drenching and fun for a while if you play along, soon they may be chafing, clinging and possibly malodorous. To counteract these deficiencies they might be taken off and dried carefully since for public occasions they were usually made of fine, sometimes heavy textiles. It is neither salacious, nor unreasonable, to deduce that this was one reason why prankish- and frankly boorish- wetting mechanisms were incorporated in both private entertainment domains. Nor is it accidental that both were created and governed by wealthy, male aristocrats used to getting their way despite chivalrous persiflage.

In a spirit of slightly tipsy summer fun, what is more natural than to remove clothing which is damp or humid and step lightly and quickly in ones undergarments into an adjacent bath or pool? While to describe this prosaically in academic print may seem in poor taste, in a setting where romantic poetry, philosophical witticism, beautiful surroundings, speaking faces, musical water organs, fountains, high ambient temperatures and a glass or two of Montefasciones finest (or Burgundys) are added for libation- all might make the transition from uncomfortably wet but fully clothed, to clinging undergarments in a pool, seem natural, desirable and acceptable.

This is even more the case at Bomarzo as opposed to Hesdin since the former is mainly outdoors, if sheltered and out of view, and there is as yet no evidence to hand that at Hesdin private bathing and changing spaces were available- although an outdoor pavilion with automata close by the local river and later destroyed by the English army may have played a similar role for the Dukes. Similarly, apart from their respective casini, there is no evidence that Caprarola or Lante had similar facilities adjacent to the watery features which so charmed visitors. Indeed Lantes central table looks as if it was designed to cool fully clothed guests and host- most notably the Cardinal himself. Be that as it may, there was no shortage of private spaces for changing and bathing at Bomarzo. Indeed there was a plethora of such environs especially on the lower, hidden level.

Sheeler notes that Orsini alluded to this gaming of female guests in a letter to his close friend Drouet around 1574:

Of course, sexual pleasure took a prominent place in his thoughts, and he was unashamedly quite frivolous in this aspect of his gardens purpose... he sent Drouet a poem he had written about the garden, using a sly metaphor to describe its attractions. An ancient method in Italy of hunting little birds was to make a trap called a boschetto which was a construction of twigs, branches and moss with limed snares and nets concealed inside and a decoy bird used to entice others. In part the poem reads:

Theres good news here, and the call noteis even better. With lime-twigs Im preparing the well-ordered boschetto,so careful to see that it retains the bird lime.That should be enough for you to be invited.If you want to come Ill expect you- you know the way.And if you dont come aloneWell revel with your companions. [40] Later in the poem Vicino describes how the decoy bird must be touched and handled expertly so that its calls and movements entice other birds. He tells then of the reaction of women: When they hear someone say Ive got a big fat one They always want to hold it in their hand for a bit, Squealing to each other with a noisy commotion Orsinis epistolary comments are private and addressed to a friend, so clearly he was careful not to put anything in writing which could not be explained away. But his intent is clear. The Sacro Bosco was designed and evolved as a place to beguile and ensnare women using trickery and art. The equivalent of the boschettos limed snares was more than mute statues. In addition to all the sculptures and sayings he constructed private spaces and facilities that used water animated marvels and features which, in parallel with Hesdins gallery, might be used to intrigue, persuade, ambush, dampen then arouse female companions singly, or in company. No wonder the big boat or, more likely, the massive bath located by the side of the Nymphaeum and near to the Love Theatre was located at that precise point. These features he also created first. This theme leads inevitably to thoughts about other factors and circumstances at Bomarzo. Matters to do with wealth, cost, technology, hydrology, topography, and the evidence for a large scale hydrological system, engineered to provide multiple sources and control points for water powered and mechanically animated automata. Brief reference was made at the beginning of this article to the physical evidence presently visible at Bomarzo, although in places that evidence is now rapidly decaying, being casually obliterated or overgrown. Not through malice but mainly through progress and ignorance or indifference to Orsinis great water-powered Wood of Earthly Delights (to paraphrase Hesdins descriptor and the title of Boschs painting). We will now turn to that physical evidence.

Hydrological Engineering at Bomarzo- modern maps and ancient technologies:

Jessie Sheeler summed up the importance of water in the Sacro Bosco:

As for the design of the Sacro Bosco as a whole, the siting of most of the works must have been largely dictated by the cliffs and scattered boulders which gave it the wild character it still retains. The most important change Vicino made to the landscape of the boschetto was his damming of the stream to make it a lake, which then fed the numerous fountains and rills in the garden. It was among the earliest of the great Italian waterworks gardens, and the constant yet varying flow of water must have filled the air with a pleasant coolness and rippling sound. Animabale Caro was certainly impressed by Vicinos deployment of water and when he was advising Torquanto Conti on the design of his garden he wrote that water was essential, for you must have jets, streams, ponds, fountains etc. We want to have extravagant things to eclipse even the boschetto of Signor Vicino. It also gave Vicino the opportunity to allude to his interest in the pre-Christian religious imagery that revered water as an essential and sacred element in the physical world.[41]She is certainly correct in underpinning the significance of water in the affects and experience of Bomarzo. But her belief that only the lake fed the fountains and so on is probably misplaced. There was another much more focused, technologically advanced and extensive set of systems which animated the Bosco as supported by existing physical evidence. She also did not add Caros reference to the sounds prevailing at Bomarzo from a water organ- part of Heros portfolio of water powered automata [42].

There is no usable or even extant plan, or map, showing the physical elements which constituted the hydrological engineering system at Bomarzo. Unlike the profusion of plans and interpretive maps describing the sculptures, buildings and settings. Admittedly it has also been difficult for anyone to accurately describe the system in its entirety since so much is lost, so much is overgrown and only a skilled, funded, time-consuming and comprehensive survey, within and without the Sacro Bosco, would completely detail what originally may have been constructed and what remains.

Although the team from the University of Rome undertook extensive surveying work it seems,understandably, as if their main focus was the sculptural and architectural elements. To underestimate the challenge of the task fifty years later would be a form of academic noblesse oblige. Their work was remarkable. Still, their focus had to be on what was predominantly visible- not elements which often were missing or subterranean.

It was also beyond the Bettinis resources although they recognised that water played a role in the Sacro Bosco. Even Brederkamp, in his major work, while highlighting Dominanz des Wassers did not describe in detail the extent, nature, and type of water animated features, now lost. He devoted only three pages to the subject [43], while his remarkably helpful five stage plans of the Boscos development and surroundings do not show their hydrological, water-powered or automatous features. Nor do they illustrate or explore the fish and performance lakes, mysterious caves, tanks, small stone structures or grooves and conduits which meet visitors on their way into and then throughout the site. In passing, it is also the case that no other treatment of the site has adequately analysed the full range of possible entrances, or the unfinished and massive sculptures which recently have been uncovered during weed clearance on private property to the south west of the western wall/main road entrance to the Park (June, 2014), directly across the back road which follows the line of that wall, well beyond the boundaries of the agreed extent of the Sacro Bosco. The impression gained by this author of Bomarzo in 1996 was, first, amazement at the sculptures and structures then, second, a growing puzzlement as to the many caves, caverns, small stone structures, grooves and indentations visible in the rock surfaces and among the boulders. These features are still visible today well before the visitor enters the Park. Quick subsequent research at that time established that cultural and mythological interpretations abounded but it appeared no one had looked at these strange elements systematically or published the results. Which led to four questions: what are they, why are they there, what do they tell us and why has no-one explored them coherently or comprehensively?

The closest to any acknowledgement of the hydrological systems, grooves and caves, with the supporting stone built control buildings, are brief mentions in Darnall/Weil with a plan of fountains, some comments inter alia in various authors to one or two caverns resembling Etruscan tombs- notably Coty in: Dreams of Etruria- and the short but helpful chapter in Brederkamp with those progressive cultural and sculptural development maps, apparently based on cadastral information and the University of Rome surveys from the 1960s. However, there appears to be no published itemised, surveyed or measured hydrological maps or plans of the Sacro Bosco. Even the Bettinis, who spent a lifetime of dedicated reconstruction with attendant costs, while realising water played a large part in the Bosco found this element beyond their means or their scope.

There are also no known contemporary maps of the Sacro Bosco or Bomarzo showing the hydrological systems, although one of Orsinis favourite sources included significant geographic and cartographic information and he would have well understood the concept and engineering drawings for site development. Such plans were common for defensive structures:

(Fig 10, ref: MAP FROM ARIOSTOS ORLANDO FURIOSO. Size of the original: ca. 16.5 X 9.8 cm. Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso -Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1556-, 161. Photographcourtesy of the BL (C.12.e.12) [44]

Nor can any other reference to the probable Hesdin Garden of Earthly Delights linkage be found except in the somewhat generic reference in Bedini already quoted.

The answer to the last of the four questions- an almost complete lack of published recognition or exploration of water systems at the Sacro Bosco- probably lies in the prosaic nature of the features and the now denuded, relatively uninteresting and missing elements which used to fill grooves, stone-built structures and caverns. There is no known written description of them. There is no known visual portrayal. There is, in fact, merely evidence of absence. But, as the quotation in the title suggests, such evidence of absence is not an absence of evidence.

The features described below are factual. The photographs and rough plans document elements manifest and evident. These may be mere partial engineering clues, less exciting than speculation about literature and mythology. Nevertheless they are important sources to guide us towards a fuller unders