Arno River floods and the Cinquecento grotto at the Boboli garden

Abstract

Although river water was vital to the textile industry and agrarian economy, Italian city‐states suffered catastrophic flooding during the sixteenth century. We know this since these natural disasters are well documented in chronicles and diaries, and preserved by flood markers on buildings throughout Florence and Rome. The Arno bisects Florence, which I argue commemorated frequent floods and inundations in one of the Medici's grottos, Bernardo Buontalenti's Grotta grande (1582–93), built inside the Boboli garden. In Part I of this article, I examine the Arno's relationship to Florence, its perennial flooding, and the Medici's stewardship of water in the city. The article then offers specific reasons that the Grotta grande signifies crisis: the presence of deluge and rain grottos across Italy, Filippo Baldinucci's biography of Buontalenti in the Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno (1681), and Francesco Bocchi's treatment of this space and others in his 1591 guidebook, Le bellezze della citta di Fiorenza. Ultimately I argue that Grotta grande was an artistic coping strategy for the trauma we associate with severe natural disaster, and that it memorializes the fragility of human affairs in light of the colossal forces of nature in Florence, a city obsessed with art and legacy.