Iconographical aspects of the Renaissance villa and garden: Mount Parnassus, Pegasus and the Muses

Abstract

A general survey of sixteenth-century villa gardens shows that the topoi of Apollo, the Muses, Pegasus and the Hippocrene spring, and mounts Parnassus and Helicon, are the most frequent iconographical subjects of Renaissance gardens. There was scarcely a garden — especially in Rome — from the ‘Mons Vaticanus’ in the Vatican gardens, characterized in a poem written in 1517 as a new Parnassus, to the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati in the early seventeenth century without a general association with mounts Parnassus and Helicon or without the presence in their iconography of Apollo, the Muses, Pegasus, and artificial n1.ounts Parnassus and Helicon.1 The list includes the Giardino del Bufalo, the Casino of Pius IV, the two d'Este villas at Tivoli and at Rome, the Villa Lante at Bagnaia, the Medici villas at Pratolino and at Rome, the Villa Barbaro at Maser, and several royal and princely residences in France. This paper presents a detailed survey of these topoi, and describes how the development of this iconographical programme in the sixteenth century was fostered by the literary activities — especially poetry — associated with Renaissance villa and garden life, and alluded to the gardens' owners as patrons and protectors of the arts and literature.