The recent restoration of the Giardino Quadrato (“Square Garden”) area, completed in August 2019, was intended to enhance its architectural and sculptural elements, such as the sculpted portal of the time of Pius IV (1559-1565), the double-flight staircase ( XVIII century) and the pontifical coat of arms of Gregory XVI (1831-1846). These aspects of the space tell the story of the garden born as a place of delights through the centuries and later became the courtyard of the Pinacoteca in the XX century and one of the fundamental hubs of the museum itinerary. With the election to the papal throne, Paul III Farnese (1534-1549) commissioned the completion of the grandiose design for the Cortile del Belvedere, left unfinished by Bramante, as well as the arrangement of the Vatican gardens. He gave the assignment to build a large, secret garden, to the west of the aforementioned courtyard, and today in front of the Pinacoteca Vaticana. This design is documented by various sixteenth-century prints in its characteristic rectangular plan. A fresco inside Castel Sant'Angelo, built by Prospero Fontana in 1545, shows the garden surrounded by a high wall; subsequently, we find it documented in 1574 in a plan by Mario Cartaro from 1574 with the name of "Giardino Secreto of Pope Paulo III", and a few years later in an etching by Etienne Duperac, in which we read the definition "viridarium" (regarding the ornamental garden traditionally placed in the patrician houses of ancient Rome). The pontiff commissioned the work of the Ferrarese architect Jacopo Meleghino, a former collaborator of Baldassarre Peruzzi, who leveled a large area of land of about 90 x 130 meters, and inspired by the typical style of Renaissance secret gardens, enclosed the space with high walls covered with espaliers of citrus fruits, melangoli, lemons, and cedars, placing a large access portal on each side. Inside the garden was divided into four flowerbeds intersected by avenues covered by pergolas, which at the intersection point formed a characteristic green dome, clearly visible in all the engravings of the time (in particular in a print by Lafrery of 1565). During the pontificate of Clement X Altieri (1670-1676) the garden underwent its first changes: the plantings in the square were enlarged, justifying the new name of the area as we know it today. A later plan by Giovan Battista Nolli of 1748 shows the garden divided into sixteen rectangular flowerbeds. On the portal placed in the south boundary wall, which survived the structural extension, stands the inscription dedicated to Pius IV Medici of Marignano (1559-1565), probably added at the time of the construction of the Casina designed by Pirro Ligorio. According to scholars, this ideal link underlines the importance of the Farnese pope's garden in the broader arrangement of the Vatican gardens. In the nineteenth century, Pope Gregorio XVI Cappellari (1831-1846) showed a marked interest in the area of the Gardens, commissioning numerous projects and works of restructuring and embellishment, of which he wrote in detail the scholar Gaetano Moroni, papal dignitary, and close collaborator of the Pope, in his monumental Dictionary of historical-ecclesial erudition (1840-1861). The garden still shows itself divided into four macro flower beds, which are in turn divided into four sections, with a monumental fountain in the center, composed of a circular basin supported by a high base decorated with the symbols of the pontiff's coat of arms and a basin in gray marble. Coming from the Courtyard of the Pinecone, the fountain had been removed in 1835 to make room for the base of the Antonina column and subsequently placed in the center of the square Garden. Other fountains were distributed inside the façades leaning against the enclosure walls. A watercolor sheet with the view of the square garden, dating back to the time of Gregory XVI, by Francesco Rinaldi, son of the papal gardener Sebastiano Rinaldi, documents the double ramp staircase still existing today in front of the portal, which leads to the garden level. In the center stands a sculptural group and four small obelisks are placed above the stair balustrade, now no longer in place. It is therefore assumed that the scale, absent in the 16th-17th century iconographic documentation, may have been made during the 18th century, also following the stylistic layout and the panel decoration of the front of the two flights of steps.The restoration project was carried out by the Marble Restoration Laboratory under the scientific direction of Alessandra Rodolfo, curator of the Art Department of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the collaboration of the Department of Classical Antiquities and the 19th and Contemporary Art Department. The portal, in particular, with the staircase, has thus acquired new and more correct readability highlighting their original and refined architectural forms enriched by precious decorative details, returning to being one of the most suggestive views in the garden. The two large marble pilasters, probably of reuse and placed at the sides of the portal, present a very refined decoration that refers to the figurations of the Domus Aurea, with tall and thin candelabras and vegetable volutes; above the architrave is carved with reliefs of garlands of flowers and fruits and winged putti. The restoration has made possible the stylistic comparison between the decoration of the lateral bands and that of the architrave, highlighting in all probability the different chronology of the parts: if the fineness of the pilasters refers clearly to a sixteenth-century visual culture, for the floral garlands at the top it seems possible to identify a later taste, probably already seventeenth-century, of proto baroque. The decisive cut and the expressive force of the jutting heads, together with the sculptural rendering of the plant parts, testify in fact to a decorative culture which is by now later compared to the more linear and elegant references to the classical world represented by the wonderful candelabras with plant ornaments on the pilasters, now visible again and appreciated by all visitors.

State of Preservation

The conservative state of the artifacts of the square garden area showed different forms of degradation, among which the biodeterioration processes represented the most widespread phenomenon. The state of conservation of the constituent materials of the works present in the area (white marble, travertine, peperino, and metals, such as lead), showed the following phenomena: the presence of biodeteriogens and consequent dark spots, weeds, incoherent and partially deposits adherents, coherent superficial deposits, concretions and incrustations, black crusts, de-cohesion, a loss of surface material, scaling and exfoliation, fractures and cracks, oxidized pins, grouting, and unsuitable building materials such as resins and cement.