Artistic, poetical, rhetorical, and prophetic aspects of the Medici family gardens in Florence, at Fiesole, and at Castello: New aesthetic paradigms for quattrocento and cinquecento Italian Renaissance gardens

I examine the iconographic origins of the gardens of the Italian humanists, linking them to developments in the visual and liberal arts as well as to the rediscovery of classical antiquity. In particular, I show that the aesthetic paradigms that governed the designs of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, Medici family gardens in Florence, at Fiesole, and at Castello were derived from artistic, poetical, and rhetorical traditions as well as from practical and religious ones. I claim that certain texts, such as the Bible, Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, and Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy , acted as inspirational works. I contend that the Medici family gardens constituted historie in the Albertian sense and that Leon Battista Alberti's On Painting served as a primary source. In conclusion, I posit that in accordance with humanist ideals, the dream and its related, contemplative imageries functioned as unifying devices for the diverse messages of the gardens's art works.