Friends of the John Rylands

What did gardens do for sculpture in sixteenth-century Italy?

SUZANNE S. BUTTERS, Emerita Professor of Art History at the University of Manchester, works on the arts in sixteenth-century Italy, specialising in architecture, gardens, city and country planning, and the relationship between materials, technologies and artisanal knowledge. She has published extensively on Medici ducal patronage, and on court workshops, territorial management, and peasant labourers. Her co-authored study of the urban impact of Julius II’s reform of Rome’s law courts came out in 2009, and she is now writing a book on Medici villas, court practices and the countryside.

Large programmatic gardens, with many pathways and spaces linked by intricate narratives, were first developed in sixteenth-century Italy. The meanings that informed their intricate plans and sequences were often expressed through sculptures and so provided sculptors with more opportunities to display their talents. But what effects did this new profusion of gardens have on the art of sculpture? To what extent did sculptors benefit from creating works for gardens? This lecture will suggest some answers, and in the process explore how gardens and sculpture were understood by sixteenth-century patrons, literati, gardeners and practitioners of the arts.