Scheduled maintenance of stone statues in historical gardens

The Garden of Villa Guicciardini Corsi Salviati ranks prominently among Italy's historical gardens. Its importance lies chiefly in the presence of various layers that testify to the successive transformations that took place over more than three hundred years from the Renaissance onwards. Earliest records of the villa and garden date back to the early 16th century: in 1502 Simone di Iacopo Corsi purchased from Luca di Andrea Carnesecchi "an estate in the village of San Martino a Sesto, with Master's Abode and Worker's House". The first changes to the villa and garden were made in the mid-17th century, when Giovanni and Lorenzo Corsi commissioned Gherardo Silvani and Baccio del Bianco to redesign the property. Substantial changes were made in particular to the garden, which became much larger and more refined: attention was lavished on the water displays and the architecture was meticulously remodelled. The greatest transformation to the complex as a whole, however, came in the 18th century. From 1708 to around 1750, the villa and garden took on the appearance they retain (in restored form) to this day. The fronts were decorated and embellished with stuccowork; four terraced towers with loggias were added to the corners of the building, complete with balustrades adorned with statues, pinnacles and urns. Two bird houses were created to the west of the main villa building, one known as the loggia del bacchino after the small bronze statue of Bacchus, depicted pouring water into a small pool. The two are connected by a grand wall with, at the centre, a large arch closed by a wooden door with scrolls and urns flanked by two large serena stone statues depicting mythological characters. The geometric flower-bed in front of the villa was laid out in the form it now displays. The restraint of the rectangular layout of the Italian-style garden was replaced by a series of beds that are triangular at the sides nearest the boundary wall, and trapezoid around the central circular pool and bordered by box hedges; the two oval pools near the entrance to the villa were surrounded by concentric flower-beds. The fishpond became rectangular, with a wrought-iron railing spaced by stone blocks supporting flower vases and four impressive, beautifully crafted statues of the seasons at the corners. The rabbit hutch was eliminated to make way for a large circular pool with various water jets at its centre and surrounded by areas of box-lined lawn. The new lemon grove was also positioned to the west, with, in front of it, a small garden with geometrical flower-beds around a circular pool. An imposing iron railing, surmounted by mythological statues, separated the lemon house area from the large circular pool area. Wrought-iron gates were added to the southern wall that closed off the new garden, and a 300-metre-long ragnaia (a wooded area in which nets were laid out to snare birds), comprising a holm-oak wood crossed by paths. Around 1750, when more water was brought to the garden by marquis Antonio, the ragnaia was extended with a brick-built canal to a waterway (featuring thirteen falls) to a hemicyclical pool with two stone dolphins and another small pool with two niches and mosaic decorations in different materials. In the 19th century as the new English taste began to spread in Italy, the garden underwent other major transformations. An artificial lake was built with an island on it containing a rustic hut and ornamental stone bridge. Other changes include those made by marquis Francesco Antonio Corsi Salviati, who dug up the old 18th-century flower-beds to make way for a large collection of palm trees. He introduced and cultivated various exotic plants and became famous throughout Europe for the successful scientific studies he carried out on them; he also built two hothouses for the plants, heated by powerful steam stoves. The botanical focus given by marquis Francesco was continued and developed after his death in 1878 by his son Bardo (1844-1907), who cultivated particular collections of ornamental plants, including citrus trees, rare orchids, palms and miniature Florentine roses. On Bardo's death in 1907 the villa passed to his grandson, count Giulio Guicciardini Corsi Salviati (1887-1958), who abandoned the cultivation of exotic species and restored the garden to its 18th-century appearance, on the basis of archive material in his possession, but without completely destroying the additions and alterations that had been made over the various cultural periods, displaying respect for art in all its forms and re-organising and improving the ornamentation present in the garden. In 1962 the ragnaia was divided into two parts to allow the passage of a road that was being built to facilitate the flow of traffic heading into the town of Sesto Fiorentino. The lemon house, restored in the second half of the 1980s, is now used as a theatre of the avant-garde run by the municipality of Sesto Fiorentino.