What Is The History of Garden Statues?

Statues were a standard part of the great gardens of the classical world, but appear to have disappeared from the garden landscape until the Renaissance, and they do not appear to have appeared in large numbers in English gardens until the early 17th century.

It was the Grand Tour that really showed Georgia's elite tourists what they were missing, and upon their return from Italy, laden with what the poet Thomas Gray called "the legendary urn or animated bust", placed in their garden so that they can show off their classical learning.    In the process, these statues, columns, urns and other similar features completely changed the character of English gardens.

Since gardening is often a matter of humans imposing order on nature, are garden ornaments like statues just an extension of that—another way of giving humans control over the artificial world we try to create in our gardens?  That being the case, why do gleaming white figures often look out of place, while other figures that are weathered or covered in lichen or moss look right at home?    Perhaps this could be because we secretly love the fact that if we give nature a chance, it can quickly take back control and upend our best plans.

It wasn't just modern observers who might have thought so: in November 1644, John Evelyn reported that he saw "a row of balustrades supported by white marble, upon which stood various statues and heads, covered with It is decorated with natural shrubs, ivy and other perennial greenery, just like the niches in the Villa Medici in Rome.

Perhaps the first garden in the postclassical world to reintroduce statues was created in the early sixteenth century for the great papal patron of art Julius II.    The Vatican Belvedere Palace designed by Bramante was originally lined with excavated classical statues from Julius's collection, including now famous works such as the "Apollo Belvedere"...

Meanwhile, the royal gardens of Tudor England were decorated not with the classical statues of the early Italian Renaissance but with the painted wood and stone sculptures of the heraldic royal beasts I have written about before.    Classical statues and other antiquities did not appear in the gardens until much later, when they were often associated with journeys to Italy, and the most famous early import is thought to have been purchased by Lord Lumley who was sent to Italy. An embassy in Florence in the 1560s, later recorded in the Lumley inventory in 1590. These include the marble columns, obelisks and fountains recorded in the Palace of the Incomparables, which he received from the crown in 1580.

But it can be said that the person who influenced the introduction of Italian garden style to England in the early 17th century must be Inigo Jones.    His first trip to Italy was in the early 17th century at the request of a wealthy patron - I wonder if he saw the Palazzo Belvedere or other gardens displaying antiquities.  Of course, some 40 years later, John Evelyn reported that he did not see only the Belvedere and its statues, but among other gardens there was also the Villa Borghese with its "numerous rare Statues, Altars and Urns”