Tommaso Francini
Encyclopedia
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
hydraulics engineers
Hydraulics
Hydraulics is a topic in applied science and engineering dealing with the mechanical properties of liquids. Fluid mechanics provides the theoretical foundation for hydraulics, which focuses on the engineering uses of fluid properties. In fluid power, hydraulics is used for the generation, control,...
and garden designers who worked for Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany was the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, ruling from 1574 to 1587.- Biography :...
, above all at the Villa Medicea di Pratolino, where Francesco de Vieri described the water features in 1586: "...and at Pratolino, where the statues there turn about, play music, jet streams of water, are so many and such stupendous artworks in hidden places, that one who saw them all together would be in ecstasies over them."
Francesco's heir, his brother Ferdinando
Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1587 to 1609, having succeeded his older brother Francesco I.-Biography:...
, was persuaded to part with them in 1597 by his niece Maria, married to Henri IV
Henry IV of France
Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
. Their first project, begun in 1598, was to provide fountains, grotto
Grotto
A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...
es, waterworks and, above all, water-driven automata
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
for the series of garden terraces at Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye
The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a royal palace in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale ....
. The main feature there was a great fountain, from which water was channeled and conducted in siphon tubes to the reservoir in the vaulted area that supported the terrace. From there, through a series of secondary tubes, the water had sufficient head to operate grotto
Grotto
A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...
fountains and animate the elaborate automata
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
that were a prized feature of Francini jeux d'eau
Jeux d'eau
Jeux d'eau or "water games", is an umbrella term in the history of gardens for the "water features" that were introduced into mid-16th century Mannerist Italian gardens...
. The upper grottoes on the third terrace opened from a Doric gallery and featured a dragon, a water organ
Water organ
The water organ or hydraulic organ is a type of pipe organ blown by air, where the power source pushing the air is derived by water from a natural source or by a manual pump...
and Neptune; on the next level, the Grotto of Hercules was flanked by two further grottoes; that on one side was devoted to Perseus and Andromeda, in which the delicately counterbalanced hero was made to descend from the ceiling by the hidden weight of water and slay a dragon that arose from the basin, and on the other a Grotto of Orpheus. The only trace of these features, whose high maintenance requirements cut their careers short when the court moved permanently to Fontainebleau, are in some engravings by Abraham Bosse
Abraham Bosse
Abraham Bosse was a French artist, mainly as a printmaker in etching, but also in watercolour.-Life:...
, apparently derived from Francini drawings. The waterworks and automata at Saint-Germain-en-Laye were the most elaborate such things that had been seen in France up to that time, and Alexandre Francini's engravings of the brothers' works served to mark a distinct stage in the importation and transformation of Italian features in the creation of the French formal garden (Adams 1979:46) and far beyond: cast-iron versions of Francini's two-basin Fontaine rustique, dripping with stony icicles, were familiar features again in Victorian gardens.
Not all of Tommaso Francini's mechanisms for courtly entertainments were garden features. He was the designer of a revolving stage-set for an elaborately produced pageant, Le ballet de la délivrance de Renaud, presented in January 1617 at the Palais du Louvre
Palais du Louvre
The Louvre Palace , on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, is a former royal palace situated between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois...
; several contemporaries remarked on the impressive innovation, which was reinvented in the late nineteenth century, at the Residenztheater
Cuvilliés Theatre
The Cuvilliés Theatre or Old Residence Theatre is the former court theatre of the Residenz in Munich, southern Germany.- Description :...
, Munich but no one was more impressed than the poet Giovanni Battista Marino, who was present and recreated the illusion in his directions for L'Adone with its elaborately-staged intermezzi.
In the reign of Louis XIII
Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...
, Francini remained in the employ of the Marie de' Medici
Marie de' Medici
Marie de Médicis , Italian Maria de' Medici, was queen consort of France, as the second wife of King Henry IV of France, of the House of Bourbon. She herself was a member of the wealthy and powerful House of Medici...
, the Queen Mother. He worked with Salomon de Brosse
Salomon de Brosse
Salomon de Brosse was the most influential early 17th-century French architect, a major influence on François Mansart. Salomon was from a prominent Huguenot family, the grandson through his mother of the designer Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau and the son of the architect Jean de Brosse...
, engineering the aqueduct that brought water from the little river of Rungis to the gardens and his Medici Fountain
Medici Fountain
The Medici Fountain is a monumental fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th arrondissement in Paris. It was built in about 1630 by Marie de' Medici, the widow of King Henry IV of France and regent of King Louis XIII of France...
and grotto in the Luxembourg Gardens of her Palais de Luxembourg
Luxembourg Palace
The Luxembourg Palace in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, north of the Luxembourg Garden , is the seat of the French Senate.The formal Luxembourg Garden presents a 25-hectare green parterre of gravel and lawn populated with statues and provided with large basins of water where children sail model...
in Paris. Alessandro Francini engraved views of the fountains and brought out a Livre d'architecture in 1631 that featured many fantastically rusticated doorways and gates.
The Francini brothers founded a dynasty of French fountain engineers; a younger Francini worked on fountains in the early stages of Versailles, especially the Grotto of Thetis (completed 1668, described by André Felibien
André Félibien
André Félibien , sieur des Avaux et de Javercy, was a French chronicler of the arts and official court historian to Louis XIV of France.-Biography:...
, 1676 and demolished for the enlargement of the château 1686). Members of the Francini clan were still at work in the eighteenth century.
Selected works
- Villa Medicea di Pratolino. Fountains and the water organWater organThe water organ or hydraulic organ is a type of pipe organ blown by air, where the power source pushing the air is derived by water from a natural source or by a manual pump...
. - Château de Saint-Germain-en-LayeChâteau de Saint-Germain-en-LayeThe Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a royal palace in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale ....
. Grottos and fountains, engraved in 1614 by Alexandre Francini. - Château de FontainebleauChâteau de FontainebleauThe Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometres from the centre of Paris, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The palace as it is today is the work of many French monarchs, building on an early 16th century structure of Francis I. The building is arranged around a series of courtyards...
. As the designer-engineer in charge of the waterworks at Fontainbleau, Tommaso Francini was responsible for fountains and grottoes; among other things, he devised the fountain rebuilt when the "Diana of VersaillesDiana of VersaillesThe Diana of Versailles is a slightly over lifesize marble statue of the Greek goddess Artemis , with a deer, located in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. It is a Roman copy of a lost Greek bronze original attributed to Leochares, c...
" was removed from Fontainebleau to the Louvre, using Prieur's bronze replica cast from it in 1605, which Francini set upon a high Mannerist marble pedestal with bronze hunting dogs and stag's heads by Pierre Briard, 1603, which Francini plumbed to spit water, all set in a parterreParterreA parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
. - Palais du Luxembourg, Paris. Aqueduct, grotto and Medici FountainMedici FountainThe Medici Fountain is a monumental fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th arrondissement in Paris. It was built in about 1630 by Marie de' Medici, the widow of King Henry IV of France and regent of King Louis XIII of France...
. - Château de Rueil. In gardens laid out by Jean Thiriot to designs of Jacques LemercierJacques LemercierJacques Lemercier was a French architect and engineer, one of the influential trio that included Louis Le Vau and François Mansart who formed the classicizing French Baroque manner, drawing from French traditions of the previous century and current Roman practice the fresh, essentially French...
, Francini's Grand Cascade completed about 1638 for the Cardinal de Richelieu, lay at the end of the Grande AlléeAlleeAllee may refer to:* Alfred Allee , U.S. sheriff.* J. Frank Allee , U.S. merchant and politician.* Warder Clyde Allee , U.S. ecologist, discoverer of the Allee effect.* Verna Allee , U.S. business consultant....
. It has been suggested that Rueil's cascade and gardens were inspired by those of the Villa AldobrandiniVilla AldobrandiniThe Villa Aldobrandini is a villa in Frascati, Italy, property of the Aldobrandini family. Also known as Belvedere for its charming location overlooking the whole valley up to Rome, it was rebuilt on the order of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, Pope Clement VIII's nephew over a pre-existing edifice...
at FrascatiFrascatiFrascati is a town and comune in the province of Rome in the Lazio region of central Italy. It is located south-east of Rome, on the Alban Hills close to the ancient city of Tusculum. Frascati is closely associated with science, being the location of several international scientific...
. In turn the formal Cascade of Rueil down thirty steps inspired more naturalistic cascades at VersaillesPalace of VersaillesThe Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....
, St-CloudChâteau de Saint-CloudThe Château de Saint-Cloud was a Palace in France, built on a magnificent site overlooking the Seine at Saint-Cloud in Hauts-de-Seine, about 10 kilometres west of Paris. Today it is a large park on the outskirts of the capital and is owned by the state, but the area as a whole has had a large...
and at Château de SceauxChâteau de SceauxThe Château de Sceaux is a grand country house in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, not far from Paris, France. Located in a park laid out by André Le Nôtre, it houses the Musée de l’Île-de-France, a museum of local history. The former château was built for Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's minister of...
The cascade at Rueil was replaced by lawn in 1720 and the park was remodelled by the Empress Josephine as part of her Château de MalmaisonChâteau de MalmaisonThe Château de Malmaison is a country house in the city of Rueil-Malmaison about 12 km from Paris.It was formerly the residence of Joséphine de Beauharnais, and with the Tuileries, was from 1800 to 1802 the headquarters of the French government.-History:Joséphine de Beauharnais bought the...
.
Further reading
- Marina Longo, "La figura di Tommaso Francini, architetto scenografo alla corte di Francia" Teatro e Storia 24.