Giovanni Francesco Venturini, The Fountain of Venus, depicting a grotto at Villa d’Este, Tivoli.

Featured on PDR in the essay Petrified Waters: The Artificial Grottoes of the Renaissance and Beyond

Idling alongside the waters of artificial grottoes, visitors found themselves in lush, otherworldly settings, where art and nature, pleasure and peril, and humans and nymphs could, for a time, coexist. Laura Tradii spelunks through the handmade caves of the Italian Renaissance and their reception abroad, illuminating how these curious spaces transformed across the centuries.

Grotto at Villa d’Este, Tivoli

Artist

Date

before 1691

From

The Fountain of Venus


Underlying Rights

Public Domain Worldwide

Digital Rights

No Additional Rights


Image Size

1400 x 1046

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