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34-574: In ancient times, the site of the Villa Medici was part of the gardens of Lucullus , which passed into the hands of the Imperial family with Messalina , who was murdered in the villa. In 1564, when the nephews of Cardinal Giovanni Ricci of Montepulciano acquired the property, it had long been abandoned to viticulture . The sole dwelling was the Casina of Cardinale Marcello Crescenzi , who had maintained

68-493: A décor that was a homage to the past and, at the same time, radically contemporary: The mysterious melancholic decor he created for Villa Medici has become, in turn, historic and was undergoing a critical restoration campaign in 2016. Work continued under the direction of the previous director, Richard Peduzzi , and the Villa Medici resumed organizing exhibitions and shows created by its artists in residence. The Academy continues its programme of inviting young artists, who receive

102-450: A Roman, and mere play: For I give no higher name to his sumptuous buildings, porticos and baths, still less to his paintings and sculptures, and all his industry about these curiosities, which he collected with vast expense, lavishly bestowing all the wealth and treasure which he got in the war upon them, insomuch that even now, with all the advance of luxury, the Lucullan gardens are counted

136-499: A competition but by application, and their stays generally vary from six to eighteen months. Between 1961 and 1967, the artist Balthus , then at the head of the Academy, carried out a vast restoration campaign of the palace and its gardens, providing them with modern equipment. Balthus participated “hands-on” in all the phases of the construction. Where the historic décor had disappeared, Balthus proposed personal alternatives. He invented

170-406: A house which would be pleasant in summer, but uninhabitable in winter; whom he answered with a smile, "You think me, then, less provident than cranes and storks, not to change my home with the season." Though a Lucullan feast has passed into proverb, Lucullus was not a mere conspicuous consumer . He formed a fine library and kept it open to scholars, wrote himself and supported writers. His garden

204-470: A stipend to spend twelve months in Rome, exhibiting their work. These artists-in-residence are known as pensionnaires. The French word ‘ pension ’ refers to the room & board these, generally young and promising, artists receive. The Villa Medici hosts several guest rooms, and when pensionnaires or other official guests do not use these, they are open to the general public. Several structures base their style on

238-531: A vineyard here and had begun improvements to the villa under the direction of the Florentine Nanni Lippi , who had died however before work had proceeded far. The new proprietors commissioned Annibale Lippi , the late architect's son, to continue work. Interventions by Michelangelo are a tradition. In 1576, the property was acquired by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici , who finished the structure to designs by Bartolomeo Ammanati . The Villa Medici became

272-541: A virtual open-air museum. A series of grand gardens recalled the botanical gardens created at Pisa and at Florence by the Cardinal's father Cosimo I de' Medici , sheltered in plantations of pines, cypresses and oaks. Ferdinando de' Medici had a studiolo , a retreat for study and contemplation, built to the north east of the garden above the Aurelian wall. Now, these rooms look onto Borghese Gardens but would then have had views over

306-432: The 16th century they were owned by Felice della Rovere , daughter of Pope Julius II . The Villa Borghese portion was a vineyard in 160–5, when it was returned to be a grand garden. 41°54′29″N 12°29′02″E  /  41.908°N 12.484°E  / 41.908; 12.484 Kingdom of Etruria The Kingdom of Etruria ( / ɪ ˈ t r ʊər i ə / ih- TROOR -ee-ə ; Italian : Regno di Etruria )

340-801: The Bourbons, the Habsburg Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand III was ousted and compensated with the Electorate of Salzburg by the Treaty of Lunéville . Outside the Treaty of Aranjuez, Spain also secretly agreed to retrocede the Louisiana territory (over 2 million square kilometers) back to France in order to secure the Kingdom of Etruria as a client state for Spain; Louisiana was first ceded by France to Spain in 1763 at

374-774: The Capranica and the della Valle collections. An engraving detailing the arrangement of statues before 1562 was documented by Galassi Alghisi . Three works that arrived at the Villa Medici under Cardinal Fernando, ranked with the most famous in the city: the Niobe Group and the Wrestlers , both discovered in 1583 and immediately purchased by Cardinal Ferdinando, and the Arrotino . When the Cardinal succeeded as Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1587, his elder brother having died, he satisfied himself with plaster copies of his Niobe Group, in full knowledge of

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408-983: The Prix de Rome were abolished in 1968 by André Malraux , the French Minister of Culture . The Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Institut de France then lost their guardianship of the Villa Medici to the Ministry of Culture and the French State. From that time on, the borders no longer belonged solely to the traditional disciplines (painting, sculpture, architecture, metal engraving, precious-stone engraving, musical composition, etc.) but also to new or previously neglected artistic fields (art history, archaeology, literature, stagecraft, photography, movies, video, art restoration , writing and even cooking.) Artists are no longer recruited by

442-454: The Roman countryside. These two rooms were only uncovered in 1985 by the restorer Geraldine Albers: the concealing whitewash had protected and conserved the superb fresco decoration carried out by Jacopo Zucchi in 1576 and 1577. Among the striking assemblage of Roman sculptures in the villa were some one hundred seventy pieces bought from two Roman collections that had come together through marriage,

476-686: The Tigris, took and burnt the royal palaces of Asia in the sight of the kings, Tigranocerta , Cabira, Sinope, and Nisibis, seizing and overwhelming the northern parts as far as the Phasis, the east as far as Media , and making the South and Red Sea his own through the kings of the Arabians." These comments indicate that it was well understood in Rome that this new luxury of gardening originated in Persia. Lucullus's rural villas in

510-567: The Villa Medici formed the nucleus of the collection of antiquities in the Uffizi , and Florence began to figure on the European Grand Tour . The fountain in front of the Villa Medici is formed from a red granite vase from ancient Rome. It was designed by Annibale Lippi in 1589. The view from the Villa looking over the fountain towards St Peter's in the distance has been much painted, but the trees in

544-557: The channel that had been cut through the isthmus at Mount Athos by the Persian king. Because of the massive piles which he built in the sea at his villa in Naples, Pompey mockingly nicknamed Lucullus "the Roman Xerxes ", and Tubero called him "Xerxes in a toga ". Plutarch, like most of Lucullus's Roman contemporaries, thought these occupations of Lucullus's retirement unbecoming to

578-735: The end of the Seven Years' War . Louisiana was duly transferred to France on 15 October 1802, after the signing of the Treaty of Aranjuez. Napoleon subsequently sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase on April 30, 1803, in order to pay for his French armies during the War of the Third Coalition . The first king ( Louis I ) died young in 1803, and his underage son Charles Louis succeeded him. His mother, Maria Luisa of Spain ,

612-467: The first among Medici properties in Rome, intended to give concrete expression to the ascendancy of the Medici among Italian princes and assert their permanent presence in Rome. Under the Cardinal's insistence, Ammanati incorporated into the design Roman bas-reliefs and statues that were coming to sight with almost every spadeful of earth, with the result that the facades of the Villa Medici, as it now was, became

646-578: The foreground have now obscured the view. Like the Villa Borghese that adjoins them, the villa's gardens were far more accessible than the formal palaces such as Palazzo Farnese in the heart of the city. For a century and a half the Villa Medici was one of the most elegant and worldly settings in Rome, the seat of the Grand Dukes' embassy to the Holy See. When the male line of the Medici died out in 1737,

680-415: The hills at Tusculum , near modern Frascati , and at Naples were also set in lavish garden settings. Plutarch, in 'Lucullus' ch. 37, mentions "the chambers and galleries, with their sea-views, built at Naples by Lucullus, out of the spoils of the barbarians.", and Pliny writes of Lucullus cutting a channel through a mountain on his Naples estate to allow seawater to circulate in his fishpond, which recalled

714-533: The loss of their territory in northern Italy (which had been occupied by French troops since 1796). The King of Spain decided that his cousin Ferdinand, Duke of Parma had to cede his duchy to France, and in return his son Louis I was granted the Kingdom of Etruria (which was created from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany ). Shortly after Ferdinand refused to leave, he suddenly died in suspect circumstances. To make way for

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748-495: The noblest the emperor has. Tubero , the stoic , when he saw his buildings at Naples , where he suspended the hills upon vast tunnels, brought in the sea for moats and fish-ponds round his house, and pleasure-houses in the waters, called him Xerxes in a toga. He had also fine seats in Tusculum, belvederes , and large open balconies for men's apartments, and porticos to walk in, where Pompey coming to see him, blamed him for making

782-566: The prestige that accrued to the Medici by keeping such a magnificent collection in the European city whose significance far surpassed that of their capital. The Medici lions was completed in 1598, and the Medici Vase entered the collection at the Villa, followed by the Venus de' Medici by the 1630s; the Medici sculptures were not removed to Florence until the eighteenth century. Then, the antiquities from

816-583: The site, now in the heart of Rome, above the Spanish Steps . The fabled gardens of Lucullus were among the most influential in the history of gardening . Lucullus had first-hand experience of the Persian gardening style, in the satraps ' gardens of Anatolia ( "Asia" to the Romans ) and in Mesopotamia and Persia itself. As Plutarch pointed out, "Lucullus [was] the first Roman who carried an army over Taurus, passed

850-707: The stairs to the courtyard inspired Bernard Foucquet 's bronze lions at the Lejonbacken (lion slope) on the northern side of the Royal Palace in Stockholm from 1700 to 1704. Gardens of Lucullus The Gardens of Lucullus ( Latin : Horti Lucullani ) were the setting for an ancient villa on the Pincian Hill on the edge of Rome ; they were laid out by Lucius Licinius Lucullus about 60 BC. The Villa Borghese gardens still cover 17 acres (6.9 ha) of green on

884-488: The then owner, Valerius Asiaticus , to commit suicide – Tac. Annals XI.1 ), and was the site of her murder in 48 AD on the orders of the Emperor Claudius, her husband. From shortly afterwards, in around 55 AD, mosaics excavated in the gardens have provided the earliest known use of tesserae made with the technique of gold sandwich glass , which was to remain an essential component of Byzantine and Western mosaics. In

918-573: The throne of a new Kingdom of Northern Lusitania (in northern Portugal ), but this plan was never realized due to the break between Napoleon and the Spanish Bourbons in 1808. After Napoleon's downfall in 1814, Tuscany was restored to its Habsburg grand dukes. In 1815, the Duchy of Lucca was carved out of Tuscany, on the lands of the former Republic of Lucca , as compensation for the Bourbons of Parma until they resumed their rule in 1847. As stipulated in

952-612: The villa passed to the house of Lorraine and, briefly in Napoleonic times, to the Kingdom of Etruria . In this manner, Napoleon Bonaparte came into possession of the Villa Medici, which he transferred to the French Academy at Rome . Subsequently, it housed the winners of the prestigious Prix de Rome , under distinguished directors including Ingres and Balthus , until the prize was withdrawn in 1968. In 1656, Christina, Queen of Sweden

986-678: The villa. Architect Edward Lippincott Tilton designed the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs, Colorado in 1893. Philanthropist James H. Dooley had a mansion called Swannanoa built on Rockfish Gap, Virginia in 1912. The NYC architectural firm Schultze and Weaver modeled the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida after the Villa for the hotel's second reconstruction, which took place between 1925 and 1926. The marble Medici lions by

1020-676: The winners of the Prix de Rome . In this way, he hoped to retain for young French artists the opportunity to see and copy the masterpieces of antiquity and the Renaissance . The young architect Auguste-Henri-Victor Grandjean de Montigny undertook the renovation. The competition was interrupted during the First World War, and Benito Mussolini confiscated the villa in 1941, forcing the Academy of France in Rome to withdraw until 1945. The competition and

1054-507: Was an Italian kingdom between 1801 and 1807 that made up a large part of modern Tuscany . It took its name from Etruria , the old Roman name for the land of the Etruscans . The kingdom was created by the Treaty of Aranjuez , signed at Aranjuez, Spain on 21 March 1801. In the context of a larger agreement between Napoleonic France and Spain , the Bourbons of Parma were compensated for

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1088-691: Was appointed regent. However, since Etruria was troubled with smuggling and espionage, Napoleon annexed the territory, thus it was the last non-Bonaparte Italian kingdom on the Peninsula to be absorbed into the French Empire. Since Spain's only hope of compensation lay in Portugal , co-operation with the emperor became more important. In 1807, Napoleon dissolved the kingdom and integrated it into France, turning it into three French departments : Arno , Méditerranée and Ombrone . The king and his mother were promised

1122-516: Was filled with works of art, particularly Greek sculpture, both originals and copies of “old masters”, and has thus been a rich archaeological source of ancient sculpture: for example, the statue of the Scythian knife sharpener (now thought to depict the executioner getting ready to flay Marsyas ) which the Medici removed to Florence was found in this garden. The gardens became the favourite playground of Claudius 's Empress Messalina (after she forced

1156-607: Was said to have fired one of the cannons on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo without aiming it first. The wayward ball hit the villa, destroying one of the Florentine lilies that decorated the facade. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte moved the French Academy in Rome to the Villa Medici to preserve an institution once threatened by the French Revolution . At first, the villa and its gardens were sad, and they had to be renovated to house

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