Pacello da Mercogliano

Pacello because Mercogliano, real name Pacello Mazzarotta, (* about 1455 in Mercogliano, Italy, † 1534 in Amboise, France), and Pierre because Mercogliano and Dom Passolo, was an Italian priest, who as a garden designer and landscape architect among the French kings Charles VIII and Louis XII. worked. With him the tradition of Italian Renaissance gardens began in the castles of the Loire Valley, the design of the later coming fashionable French Baroque gardens had a substantial impact.

Life

Pacello was a clergyman and came from the Italian Mercogliano in Avellino. End of the 15th century, he worked in Naples for Alfonso II and designed there, among other things, the gardens of the villas Poggio Reale and Duchesca.

Charles VIII was so excited after his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples from the parks in the city, that he took her designer Pacello together with 21 other Italian artists and craftsmen in 1495 to France. Since there Mercogliano was entitled jardinier du roi and designed from 1498 together with the brothers Antonio and Giovanni Giusti for the Amboise Castle the first Renaissance garden in France.

After the sudden death of Charles VIII occupied him his successor Louis XII. in Blois on. In addition to his annual salary of 375 ducats he also received a parochial benefice, by Ludwig appointed him on 22 June 1503 canons of the collegiate church of Saint- Sauveur in Blois. The complicated hydraulic system, which supplied the castle gardens of Blois, he designed and crafted together with Fra Giovanni Giocondo, with whom he had already worked in Amboise.

As of 1502 the Italians working for Louis Cardinal Georges d'Amboise Minister, who had built a castle modeled after the royal residences with Gaillon.

His last years were spent as Pacello Mercogliano in Amboise, where he died in 1534.

Works and influence

Pacello because Mercogliano led the late 15th and early 16th century in France, the principle of symmetrical gardens. They are therefore named after the country of origin of their designer "Italian Gardens" or " Italian-style gardens ." As later developed the baroque park from these gardens, the Italians regarded as the intellectual father of the baroque gardens. A variety of innovations in the French garden art goes back to him. So he was the one who first parterres in gardens and pavilions erected in them. Together with an Italian country man, he was responsible for complicated, hydraulic systems, which not only served the irrigation for the first time, but also decorative water features and fountains supplied. Pacello because Mercogliano was also the first landscaper who used citrus trees in mobile planters in order to bring them to winter in an orangery can.

Most of he designed gardens are destroyed in the course of time and disappeared. Their appearance is preserved only on the basis of stitches Jacques I. Androuët you Cerceaus who held numerous French castle grounds including gardens in his two-volume work Les plus excellents Bastiments de France.

Among the best known works as Mercoglianos included the gardens of the following systems:

• Villa Poggio Reale
• Villa Duchesca
• Amboise Castle; from 1498, the first Renaissance garden of France
• Blois Castle; from 1499
• Castle Gaillon; from 1502