La Villa. Bartolomeo Taegio
Claudio Tolomei’s own writings contain a suggestion that he was familiar with Bonfadio’s articulation of the idea of third nature, and this fact opens up the possibility that some of their mutual acquaintances, such as Taegio, might have been familiar with it as well. In a letter to Giambattista Grimaldi, dated July 26, 1543, Tolomei described a grotto in a garden near the Trevi Fountain in Rome, which was fed by the newly restored Acqua Vergine, where, he said, “mescolando l’arte con la natura, non si sa discernere s’elle è opera di questo o di quella; anzi or altrui pare un naturale artifizio ora una artifiziosa natura” (mingling art with nature, one does not know how to discern whether it is a work of the former or the latter; on the contrary, now it seems to be a natural artifice, then an artificial nature.)230 While the phrase terza natura does not appear in Tolomei’s letter, the idea conveyed by this excerpt is unmistakably the same. Tolomei had the opportunity to see Bonfadio’s letter, and he may have been a crucial link between Bonfadio and Taegio.
It is not impossible that both Taegio and Bonfadio derived their statements about third nature independently from earlier sources. However, it is much more likely that Bonfadio’s letter was Taegio’s source for both the phrase terza natura and the idea of third nature. It remains to be seen if Bonfadio’s use of the phrase terza natura was in turn dependent on earlier sources.
The question of whether phrases similar to terza natura, and anticipations of the idea, existed in the literature with which Bonfadio and Taegio were familiar is complicated by the fact that the word natura admits of some ambiguity. Natura comes from natus, the past participle of the Latin verb nascor, nasci, which means “to be born,” and it is the counterpart of the Greek word physis. Like physis, natura has, in Italian as well as in Latin, two different senses, although in ancient Latin texts these two senses are not always distinct. In one sense, natura is used, in Italian and Latin literature, to refer to the innate qualities of people and things. In the other sense, it is used in both languages to signify the order and constitution of the world.
It is in the latter sense that Bonfadio and Taegio employed natura in the phrase terza natura. The usage of the phrase by these authors is marked by three characteristics that are important to delineate for the purpose of comparison to similar expressions in earlier literature. The primary characteristic of third nature is that it is the result of something which both Bonfadio and Taegio describe as the in corporation of nature with art. Second, this “incorporation” is accomplished by human beings (gardeners in Taegio; peasants, or local people, in Bonfadio) who are engaged in making gardens. Finally, third nature in turn brings about a result; it causes the fruits that grow on trees, particularly trees that have been grafted, to taste better. In other words, third nature benefits humankind by producing something that neither human beings nor nature can produce without the help of the other. Claudia Lazzaro has read a great deal into the incorporation, or “conjunction,” as she has called it, of nature with art. She has found in Bonfadio’s terza natura a “symbiotic relationship” between nature and art, a participation of each “in the character of the other,” and a uniting of the two “into an indistinguishable whole.” She has also interpreted Bonfadio’s sentence “La natura incorporata con l’arte è fatta artifice, e connaturale de l’arte” to mean “Nature becomes the creator of art.”231 At the core of this sentence is the formulation that, as a result of its incorporation with art, nature is made the connaturale of art. Although the English equivalent of the Italian noun connaturale (connatural) is archaic, the meaning of “connatural” is nevertheless clear enough: “a person or thing of the same or like nature.”232
Taegio did not use the word connaturale in his discussion of third nature. Rather, in La Villa (p. 103), where he described the garden of Scipione Simonetta in Milan, he referred to the incorporation of nature with art in terms of unity and reconciliation: “This man has a splendid, happy, and precious garden in Milan clothed in eternal springtime, where are seen things rare, marvelous, and novel; where art and nature, now in competition one with the other, demonstrate their latest trials, now both, incorporated, united and reconciled together, make amazing things.”
This passage is an elaboration of the idea that to produce gardens, nature and art work together in partnership. Anticipations of this idea, and phrases that are similar to terza natura, are to be found in the relevant literature.
The Latin equivalent of terza natura occurs in two of Taegio’s sources: the verse treatise on nature, De rerum natura, of Titus Lucretius Carus (95–52 B.C.), to which both Bonfadio and Taegio alluded, and Pliny the Elder’s encyclopedic Naturalis historia (A.D. 70). In neither of these works is third nature associated with gardens. Lucretius, in a discussion of the things that constitute the world, employed the term tertia natura to refer to something that cannot exist. After having specified that nature consists of only two kinds of things, bodies and void, Lucretius added, “Praeterea nil est quod possis dicere ab omni corpore seiunctum secretumque esse ab inani, quod quasi tertia sit numero natura reperta” (Besides, there is nothing which you can call wholly distinct from body and separate from void, to be discovered as a kind of third nature.)233 Like Bonfadio’s terza natura, Lucretius’s tertia natura refers to nature in the sense of the order and constitution of the world, although ambiguously, in a way that blurs the distinction between the two senses of the word natura. The impossibility of third nature for Lucretius provides an intriguing counterpoint to the novelty that Bonfadio and Taegio seem to ascribe to it. It is possible that the De rerum natura was a source for Bonfadio’s use of the phrase terza natura. Lucretius’s poem was printed in northern Italy at least five times between 1486 and 1515.
The Latin equivalent of terza natura occurs twice in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia, where it is applied to marine life. In both instances, the phrase tertiam naturam appears in the context of a description of aquatic species that share the characteristics (the nature) of both plants and animals. In book 1 of Naturalis historia, Pliny the Elder referred to “de ariete pisce de is quae tertiam naturam habent animalium et fructum” (species intermediate between animal and vegetable)234 In book 9, he wrote, “Equidem et iis inesse sensum arbitror quae neque animalium neque fruticum sed tertiam quandam ex utroque naturam habent, urticis dico et spongeis” (For my own part I hold the view that even those creatures which have not got the nature of either animals or plants, but some third nature derived from both, possess sense-perception—I mean jelly-fish and sponges.)235 In both of these passages, the word natura signifies the innate qualities of living creatures, not the order and constitution of the world. In this respect, Pliny the Elder’s tertiam naturam differs from Bonfadio’s and Taegio’s terza natura. However, in other respects, the phrases are quite similar. Pliny the Elder, like Bonfadio, was attempting to name something that did not belong in either of two established categories. Both of these authors were referring to something which had never been classified, and in which the characteristics proper to existing classifications were seen to be united. Pliny the Elder’s hesitation in calling this thing by a new name, tertiam naturam, is evident in his interjection of the qualifier quandam (some), just as Bonfadio’s tentativeness is apparent in his appendage of the phrase “a cui non sarei dar nome” (which I would not know how to name) to terza natura. These similarities are significant enough to warrant asking whether Bonfadio, who, as we have already seen, was imitating Pliny the Younger in the style of his letter, could also have been imitating Pliny the Elder, even in the way he qualified the name for third nature. In fact, he had ample opportunity to become familiar with Pliny’s use of the term tertiam naturam. More than thirty printed editions of Naturalis historia appeared in Italy between 1469 and 1540. In Venice alone, the Latin text of Naturalis historia was published on at least twenty occasions within that time frame, and a translation by Cristoforo Landino was published in five separate editions between 1476 and 1516. Latin versions also came out of Treviso, Parma, Rome, Brescia, and Ferrara between 1493 and 1509. There is no reason to think that Bonfadio relied on Italian translations, since several of his letters attest to the fact that he was a competent Latinist. From the evidence of stylistic similarity between Pliny the Elder’s and Bonfadio’s