Sphinxes dedicated to the Emperor Augusta, the faces of the Gods, Saturn, Giano and Fauno, the enormous head of Proteo-Glauco supported by the earth's globe that supports a castle, and the fight between the giants, Hercules and Caco, then Pegasus and the turtle and the nymph, the theatre and the elephant surmounted by a tower, the ogre, the dragons and the leaning house that defies balance. These are monsters of Bomarzo, enormous masses of peperino carved at Prince Orsini's request as a gesture of love, which towards the second half of the XVI century were just shapeless rocks emerging from the ground.
The skill of sculptors and stonecutters, whose names are still unknown to us, transformed this wood into a profoundly evocative, moving and sensory place.
What we do not realise wandering in the wood is the important role played by man. In this environment, so natural, the rocks have been sculpted, chiselled, modelled, smoothed and actually coloured; the terrain has been artificially moulded, paths have been marked out, grounds levelled and flattened, the natural course of the land articulated. Nevertheless, everything appears in harmonious, and in place, as if there had been movements of the earth itself that produced the ogres and elephants rather than just primitive stones. When we climb steep slopes, descend steps cut in the ground and rock, walk through tree shaded lanes, we continue to find ourselves in wide areas where the imposing vegetation gives rise, inexorably, to the questions and thrills that these inanimate, extraordinarily alive creatures excite in us. Walking through the Sacred Wood, as if we were strolling in any wood, where we expect to come across a curled up snake, a leaping deer, or an insect of a strange luminescent shape, some rock nature has moulded may remind us of an animal, even if only hinted at, like a cubist sculpture, giving us a sense of movement. Here in the Sacred Wood however, the astonishment is drawn out, since there is no rapidity of movement or quick catlike movement, but everything is immobile, immutable, until you can hear the movement of the branches, the rustling of leaves, the sound of the waterfall encountering the stream, the sunlight filtering through the trees making the earth vibrate. Then everything becomes animated: the casual and the unexpected are pervasive.
I was in Bomarzo on a rainy autumn day. In this season the vegetation is coloured with reds and yellows, becoming more intense and bright due to the rain, blending together, and the multicoloured bushes emerge reserving for us unexpected colours. The anthropomorphic and zoological forms of the rocks become camouflaged and the sensations of suspense and levity multiply at the moment of discovery. If we do not allow the rain to restrain our desire for discovery, the dampness will remain only be a weak memory compared with the sensation of fusion and perfect harmony that the troublesome, but continuous, drops of water contribute to creating. The construction of the Sacred Wood began in the Vth century when the rules suggested other landscape scenarios; order, symmetry, visual perspective were prescribed. Anticipating the Baroque, here at Bomarzo, there was an explosion of asymmetry, naturalism, chaos, and irrationality, all components that do not induce a state of calm and placid admiration for beauty.
The harmony that is felt in the Sacred Wood is not only visual, as in Renaissance gardens, but involves the whole body and all the senses. It belongs to a savage world where the participation of man is barely perceptible.
