Art and history
meet here
The garden
The story in brief
The Bonacchi Villa, with its surrounding romantic park, scattered with “memories” (buildings, monuments, columns, epitaphs), represents the most intact and significant part, survived from the dismemberment of the ancient Puccini Garden.
This Garden was initiated by Maddalena Brunozzi (1782-1836) and Domenico Puccini in 1822 and was continued and completed by Niccolò Puccini (1799-1852, son of Maddalena and brother of Domenico) over a thirty-year period, reaching a remarkable extension of 123 hectares, from Porta al Borgo to the foothills of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines.
Created in 1822 by Maddalena Brunozzi and Domenico Puccini, the garden was enlarged by Niccolò Puccini.
The project of the ancient romantic park desired by Niccolò reflected the inspirations of the English gardens admired by the Pistoian nobleman, patriot, philanthropist, and patron during his travels in Italy and Europe.
In the 1840s, the complex could be considered defined in its natural spaces, enriched with ideal and pedagogical content thanks to the "picturesque factories," inspired by the spiritual and patriotic potential of the Gothic revival that had reached the most restless artistic avant-garde in Italy from Pugin and Barry's England to Schinkel's Germany.
Three paths can also be recognized in the Garden: artistic, patriotic, and scientific, the reference points for which are marked by monuments, markers, statues, and columns.
The park reflects Niccolò Puccini's love for English gardens, inspired by his European travels.
He wanted to spread culture in his own city, Pistoia.
They have survived the ravages of time and the neglect of man, induced by the historical and heritage contingencies suffered by the complex: the column dedicated to Gutenberg, those "twin" columns already topped by the busts of Raphael and Canova, the monument to Carl Linnaeus, the semicircle of Galileo (once completed by the statues of Torricelli and Viviani), the monument to Michelangelo Buonarroti (now located inside the Pantheon), the monument to Dante Alighieri, to the Comedy (originally placed between the two lakes at the site of the current column), to Francesco Ferrucci, to Industry, to Friendship, the Piazzale delle Belle Arti, the Tempietto that contained the bust of Tommaso Puccini, the Madonna delle Vigne, the broken column (from another monument, now placed on the original base of the Comedy).
Niccolò Puccini
In the romantic sense, the park was the result of nature's work (hills, rocks, caves, waterfalls, extensive use of tall trees and exotic shrubs with varying seasonal colors) and of educational and pedagogical intentions.
Architectural pavilions contributed to this, selected based on their ability to express the bond with nature (the neo-Gothic factories, rustic huts or log houses entrusted to the mimetic effect of painting, like the worker's house adjacent to the Hermitage, or the rustic Café inserted in the southeast wing of the Castle), the “civic purpose” (the “troubadour” style Castle that towers over the lake with Ghibelline merlons, watchtower and turret, drawbridge, and coats of arms of municipalities, recalling “the idea of the fortifications that the Italian republics erected to protect the territory from enemy invasions”), or the victory of time (the ruins).
Finally, there was an attempt to stimulate melancholic meditation (the Calvary), to set an optical goal to strive for (the tower), to expand the space with the refraction of the surrounding areas (the lake with the island).
The fortres
The greatness of the epic decade
The “picturesque building,” commissioned by Niccolò Puccini on an existing colonial layout, lacks certain documents but is dated around the 1830s based on epistolary references and historical and cultural contingencies.
In the “epic” decade (1820-1830), dear to Stendhal for “Italian ardor,” the reactionary and pro-Austrian aspirations in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany during the Restoration were counterbalanced by the moderate and autonomist policies of ministers Vittorio Fossombroni and Neri Corsini.
Meanwhile, the formation of liberal and democratic tendencies was taking shape. The former would prevail in Florence around the “circle” of Vieusseux and the “Anthology,” which is an example of a new “philosophical and technical” culture open to trade with the more advanced Italian and European literature, to which Niccolò Puccini would not remain indifferent.
The democratic demands would, instead, prevail in Livorno with Bini, Guerrazzi, the “Livornese Indicator,” and among the students of the University of Pisa thanks to the teachings of Centofanti and the proselytism of Montanelli, creating a bond with the Mazzinian movement of Young Italy, as well as with utopian and reformist socialism.
The interior of the Fortress
For Puccini, who remained the sole heir to a substantial inheritance – after the death in 1824 of his brother Domenico – and to the family tradition of culture and artistic patronage (one need only think of his uncle Tommaso Puccini, who from the end of the eighteenth century was the director of the Florence "Real Gallery"), the decade coincided with the period of greatest detachment from grand-ducal power and the completion of his own education.
To this end, the "ortisiano" journey in Italy was crucial, as it put him in contact with Pietro Giordani, and the European tour of 1826 was particularly significant for the ideological and figurative influences he brought back from the English experience.
In England, Puccini was attracted by a civilization regarded as a guarantee of enlightened order and justice, while he was captivated by the art of English gardens.
Additionally, for liberal tendencies, the Florentine connections with Giovan Battista Niccolini and the "circle" of Vieusseux during the winter months were important.
Finally, in the meantime, Puccini established a friendship with Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi – a figure with democratic tendencies – along with a cultural and artistic collaboration evidenced by a significant correspondence.
The exterior of the Fortress
To enable the Puccini creation of the Romantic Park of Scornio as a “melting pot of the national culture of the Risorgimento” (Sisi), in addition to the youthful sympathies for American Independence and the Greek people's struggle against Turkish domination, the work of organizing Pistoiese culture around the group of friends and collaborators of the “Scornio circle” intervened, especially with the creation of the Society of Parental Honors for Great Italians.
The public celebratory intent of the great Italian literati, artists, and scientists consisted in “comforting the weary virtue of those present, reminding them of the happy daring of those past.”
The richly detailed internal magic of the fortress
This same civil and patriotic intent includes the realization of the Gothic Castle or Fortress by the lake. The Enlightenment nostalgia of the neoclassical buildings (the Temple of Pythagoras, the Pantheon) was followed by the “picturesque factories” of the Gothic Castle and the Hermitage, inspired by the European medieval revival (from the English authors Walter Scott, Walpole, Barry, Pugin, to the German Schinckel) or by the sixteenth-century challenge between Italians and foreigners in the novel by Massimo d’Azeglio (Ettore Fieramosca or the challenge of Barletta, 1833) and the last defense of the freedom of the Florentine people during the Siege of Florence, published by Guerrazzi in ’36.
The busts of two anti-Medici heroes, Pier Capponi and Filippo Strozzi, beautifully display themselves in the front niches of the neo-Gothic entrance to the “Fortress.” Without a doubt, in the gallery of magnates, frescoed by Ferdinando Marini and Bartolomeo Valiani at the neo-Gothic entrance and foyer of the “Castle,” there are presents the secular-Ghibelline hints of Giovanni Battista Niccolini, author of the tragic mythologies of Arnaldo and Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, not to mention the appropriation of the teachings of Alfieri, Foscolo, and the Civil Songs of Leopardi.
Interior of the Fortress
Not by chance, in the Gothic gallery of Castruccio, Uguccione, Farinata, Carmagnola, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Pier Capponi, and Filippo Strozzi, it was the emblematic figures of the Renaissance's duty to suggest the opposition to tyranny. Likewise, in the monument to Francesco Ferrucci erected near the castle, in parallel with the symbolic intent of Guerrazzi's novel, the freedom of the Florentine people during the brief republican period, safeguarded by Savonarola and defended by a handful of heroes, was exalted.
Moreover, the confirmation that the "bizarre and at the same time modern little factory [...] adorned with the character of ornamentation that imitates the so-called feudal Gothic" (Estimation report of the Scornio estate, 1859), still offers "the tastes of different centuries of ferocity and valor, of wars and freedom, of love and energy" is derived not only from the letter of Luigi Leoni from 1830 but also from the very structure with towers and Ghibelline merlons, sprinkled with coats of arms of the free communes and heated by the dominant red color even in the fourteenth-century decorations of the neo-Gothic interiors, in a figurative contrast with the white stuccos of the "Pompeian bath" and the neoclassical "white hall."
If, then, we add to the abstract, ideal world of a bygone time the tangible world of the woods that offer a fleeting chromatic festival culminating in the summer of "San Martino," it is evident that we are facing another unique place to enhance and make known in this Italy, one of the most beautiful countries in the world that Puccini intended to revive, at least in the form of myths and exemplary stories, during one of the dark periods of our national history.
The Pantheon
Symbol of romantic elegance
It does not seem far-fetched to trace the first contacts between Niccolò Puccini and Alessandro Gherardesca back to 1825, perhaps mediated by the Livorno environment, where the architect-engineer from Pisa was known as a custodian of an updated architectural culture.
It is more difficult to trace the reasons for the involvement of a representative of the "alternative" medievalist register, already experimented in the "style completions" of Pisa.
It can be assumed that at the beginning the client was not unfamiliar with the need to test an architectural message that was not limited to a simple "matter of style", to open up to the lessons of History, to the affirmation of a "civil reason".
The paradox was to consist of a marked coincidence in time between the project and the choices of the owner, who rejected the "postic façade" in Gothic style and opted for an "Attic" solution, in line with the changed function of the building (from "school of mutual teaching" to "Pantheon of illustrious men").
The medieval inspirations would have acted on the renovations of the castle and the Gothic temple, but in the absence of Gherardesca.
In 1825, Niccolò Puccini got in touch with Alessandro Gherardesca, known for his up-to-date architectural knowledge.
A fact, nonetheless, is undeniable: the project of the "School of Mutual Teaching," commissioned by Niccolò Puccini, was published by Gherardesca with the characteristic dual stylistic guise.
If fidelity to absolute and universal models of neoclassicism was confirmed in the drawings of the facade (left drawing) and the internal section (bottom right drawing), the project of the "back facade" aligned itself instead with linguistic essays, proposing romantic values.
While the role of a break, in an ideal and political sense, of the medieval-style scenographies has been called into question, there tends to be recognition of a relative adherence to municipal dimensions (in this case, the references concerned the Pisan Gothic, in the “florid” sense of Santa Maria della Spina).
The path to the National Romantic Pantheon, with the three 19th century academic classes of ‘worthy’ protagonists of literature, figurative arts and scientific discoveries, was long and arduous for the Scornio factory.
Puccini wanted to explore an architectural message that went beyond style, asserting a "civic reason."
"The toughest nut to crack will be that damn braggart Gerardesca, excellent at making ideal plans, but not suited for real ones: last night I talked for two hours with Digni who greets her, Mariotti is on the street, and I don't know what to decisively resolve regarding the noted school, except to wait a bit and then leave it like Digni, and take something else and do it myself, with the mason."
(From the letters of Niccolò Puccini)
Historical photo of the Pantheon
In order to retrace the events in the evolution of the Gherardesca proposal from “school of mutual teaching” to “Pantheon of illustrious men”, according to a compendium of the greatness of the Italian genius, a significant contribution comes from the Puccinian entourage.
In particular, the letters to the mother with her responses and those of Alessandro Gherardesca, in addition to providing the chronological terms to assert the priority of the Pantheon of Scornio over the Roncioni garden (1831), which was renovated in Pisa by the same architect, indicate a state of tension between the autonomy of the designer, reluctant to submit to controls, and the client’s desire to make variations to the original project.
The completed Pantheon reflects a refined classicism, with a new sensitivity in the use of light and decorations.
Once completed, the Pantheon adhered to the principles of a measured classicism, while simultaneously introducing compositional elements that manifested a new sensitivity in the use of surfaces, light, colors, and decorative apparatus. In this way, the building, erected in an elevated position in the highest part of the lake (now filled in), took on "a pleasant and romantic appearance."
Monuments
The true protagonists of the garden
The underlying ideology that permeates the “scenes” that make up the garden can be used as a key to interpret its richness and originality as part of the vast architectural-environmental heritage created by Puccini.
The overall composition, the result of a process of successive constructions of buildings and monuments that spans from the early 1821 to 1844, highlighted by tree arrangements that configure the different “scenes,” bears the evident imprint of the soul and mind of its owner-author.
Through the dedication of buildings, the celebration with busts and columns accompanied by epigraphs, Puccini, infused with the cosmopolitan spirit of the Enlightenment, exalts, celebrates the great men of European History (Gutenberg, Napoleon, etc.) alongside the Great Italians (Galileo, Dante, etc.) as examples of commitment and love for the homeland proposed for emulation by contemporaries.
Nor do symbolic representations drawn from the ideology and values of the emerging bourgeoisie (industry, wisdom, etc.) and virtues not devoid of distant Enlightenment echoes (reason, friendship, philosophy) lack in the garden.
This iconographic material, on the other hand, is not used by Puccini in the composition of the garden with exclusively celebratory intentions, but mainly with educational and didactic aims; intentions explicitly educational towards the people, especially towards the peasants of his lands, because Puccini believes in multidisciplinary knowledge, progress, and the factors of civilization.
Among the surviving memories, monuments and columns tell of an era of spiritual and cultural rebirth.
The iconography of the new gardens of the nineteenth century in the English style, to which the Puccini Garden is connected, expresses the triumph of the contemporary history itself, contrasted with the formal seventeenth-century garden, rigidly geometric, a mirror of the proud awareness of a total knowledge, geometrically demonstrated.
The educational itinerary desired by Puccini therefore finds in this new conception of the garden the appropriate location. In the development of this itinerary, indeed, the fixed focal perspective design of the seventeenth-century garden (optical telescopes, perspective symmetries, strictly obliged viewpoints) is excluded from the very beginning of the planning.
The buildings and monuments are distributed according to the conformation of the places, and the invention of “scenes,” underscored by natural elements, is aimed at surprising and suggesting pauses and reflection. Architecture and celebratory monuments are also present in the true agricultural part.
The insertion of wide cultivated areas in the landscape garden of the 19th century, also highlighted by the disappearance of massive fencing walls, serves to broaden and dissolve the boundaries of the garden’s perspective views and underscore the leitmotif of the contrast between man’s work and nature.
In the composition of the Puccini Garden, the cultivated countryside seems to perform, however, an additional function, perhaps even more important than the others. It has the function of bringing, alongside the monuments of thought and of the ideal, the testimony of the land understood as economy, as agricultural industry.
The monuments that punctuate it not only constitute the formal link with the remaining part of the garden but also, through the utility functions assigned to them, express the tangible “interest” of the owner towards agricultural activity and the farmers.
The park unites nature and architecture, evoking a melancholic reflection and a deep connection with the past.
The morphology of the area that slopes down in gentle terraced hills until opening up to the plain of Pistoia near the villa of Scornio allows Puccini to articulate multiple points of interest. Some, which present themselves in a succession of scenes to the visitor, are located in the plain, near the artificial lakes and the wooded area; others, on the terraces, enhance the natural features or constitute themselves, landscape emergences visible from almost every point in the garden.
Closely related to the scenes of the artificial lake are the Pantheon and the Gothic Castle. The placement of minor monuments (columns, semicircles, niches, busts) also responds, in most cases, to some rule of relation with the landscape and the natural environment.
They are, in fact, mostly located in isolation or in groups, in correspondence with singular elements of the garden (clearings, scenic viewpoints, ancient trees). Thus, some significant monuments such as the statues of Ferruccio and Dante are placed in large grassy clearings, while others, almost immersed in the vegetation, are marked by particular natural elements: the bust of Machiavelli, shaded by a majestic oak, the monument dedicated to friendship surrounded by a group of laurels.
“Two large lateral avenues reconnect at the medium near the northern end; smaller ones in all directions and in various shapes also facilitate the way to consider the most notable things, and to take delight in the scenes that the garden offers to the eye from time to time.”
The Pantheon
Originally, the Pantheon, situated on a rise, dominated one end of the scene, while the Castle, lower down, was directly related visually to the waters of the lake. The scenic effect was completed by an island with the ruins of a temple dedicated to Pythagoras. Currently, these visual relationships are altered by tree canopies between the lake and the monuments.
The Fortress, the Gothic Temple, which in the iconography of the romantic garden expresses regret and melancholy, was situated according to guidelines near an ancient chestnut forest (now vanished) at the edge of the park towards a panorama of open fields.
Similarly dedicated to sweet melancholy and contemplation was the Hermitage, also, according to compositional rules, situated in an isolated position, on the border with the cultivated countryside, along the slope of the hill.
The Fortress
Readable visual meanings at a larger scale, it takes on the Bridge and Napoleon's Theatre that rises above the ditch that feeds the two lakes and which was, in Puccini's intent, meant to "pass gently through" the S. Anna valley.
This vast building, which undoubtedly constitutes a strong feature of the landscape, also represents the visual focal point connecting the most significant elements that characterize the panorama against the backdrop of the garden: the ancient Villa of Bellosguardo, which Puccini associated with three imposing columns and parts of the entablature to represent the ruins of a Greek temple, and in the background, isolated and inaccessible, the Tower of Catilina.
This last monument, a singular observatory placed in a patch of woods, rises at the highest point and dominates the entire area of the garden, visible from almost all open places.
The Madonna of the vines
From the Bridge and Napoleon's Theater to the Val di Brana, the "beautiful countryside" unfolds where the "Festa delle Spighe" was held annually, established by Puccini in celebration and support of agricultural activity.
While Napoleon's Theater served as a gathering place and refreshment spot for the participants, the religious ceremonies of the Festival took place in the chapel of the Romitorio, not far from the Bridge, near the shrine of Madonna delle Vigne, now in the midst of the countryside, at the center of the crops on an artificial hill from which one can enjoy the view of the Val di Brana.
Monument to Francesco Ferrucci
The statue of Francesco stands in the lawn in front of the Gothic Castle. It was commissioned by Puccini from Luigi Zini around 1835, who took care to paint it in metallic grey to give the illusion of the armour the hero wore.
Monument to Industry
Galileo's Emicle
What remains today of the original monument is only the central portion, the semicircular niche containing the now headless statue of the mathematician. The large masonry wings that outlined, with their slight curvature, a sort of wide square ending with two statues on pedestals, one dedicated to Torricelli and the other to Viviani, are almost completely missing.
Some steps lead into the niche. The wall plasters from the perimeter walls have completely disappeared, and even the semicupola shows scant traces of the original decoration with wall panels.
A chain placed at an unknown time has played a crucial role in the stability of the roof of this curious construction, which still maintains in good condition the two Doric columns located on either side of the entrance. Highly corroded and, as mentioned, lacking a head and hands, the statue of Galileo is entirely made of terracotta.
The hemicycle is the only one of the monuments in the park that is still visible in the vast grassy area that lies between the Ponte Napoleone complex to the north, the Pantheon and the Castle to the south, and the Romitorio to the east. All the others have largely disappeared.
Monument to Dante Alighieri
It was commissioned in 1825 by Giovanni Merlini. It stands in front of the Pantheon and depicts the poet holding the Comedy in his raised right hand, which has now disappeared along with part of the forearm. This is the largest monument still visible in the Garden. The inscription dictated by Pietro Giordani has also disappeared.
Fine Arts Plaza
This is a large circular square where the long tree-lined avenue that once led directly from the "garden of flowers" of the Villa ends.
The square is surrounded by eight short stone columns, each topped with terracotta jugs and cone-shaped decorations, adorned with vines, reptiles, and other phytomorphic motifs.
There is nothing left but a trace of the shaped wall bearing the statues of architecture, painting, and sculpture, and a plaque that remembered the plane tree planted by Puccini to celebrate the third decade of the 19th century.
Hermitage
It was one of the focal points of the Garden, built as a family burial site, also open to the most deserving citizens of the area. The small temple also housed the tomb of Puccini's mother and later the burial of Puccini himself.
The church has two side chapels, designed like small baptisteries with a polygonal plan covered by a dome, attached to the main building and originally decorated similarly with horizontal white and black bands.
Inside, it was adorned with paintings, a wooden choir, altars that have since disappeared, mostly the work of Giovanni Gianni, who is also credited with the Gothic loggia that was placed in front of the church entrance in the early 1940s, when the Hermitage became one of the main places for the Feast of the Ears.
On such occasions, the complex was the venue for all liturgical ceremonies, masses, and blessings of ears of grain and herds, choirs, processions, and sermons. The Hermitage was certainly the most degraded of the monuments desired by Puccini, but its restoration is underway.
Deprived of its original function as a place of worship and not replaced by any other role, the building remained in complete abandonment for decades.
The loggia has completely lost its roof, and the same was happening to the body of the Church, although the roof had been subsequently protected by metal sheets. In better condition are the two side chapels, the roofs of which are still intact.
The portion of the building that served as a sacristy and is orthogonal to the church retains its old volume and the same decorations visible in the nineteenth-century engravings.
In front of the church, what remains of the so-called Calvary is still visible, a simple mound of rough stones mixed with vegetation on which a crude wooden cross is fixed. Originally, the monument was completed by a stone pillar and a kneeling terracotta figure. Today, the restoration of the Hermitage is underway.
