“Ma noi Italiani siamo nel giardin del mondo”: riflessi di paesaggi costruiti e conquistati nelle porte della cattedrale di Pisa

The fragility of today’s environment, evident on a global scale, calls for the urgent implementation of measures and best practices to manage the evolution of the extremely delicate balance between humankind and nature. And the complex, centuries-long development of the landscape finds significant expression in the history of art, including Paolo Pino’s striking assertion, which rightly deserves to feature in the title of this article – serving, if nothing else, to highlight the inextricable, and to some extent conflictual, link between the garden and the landscape. This observation allows us to introduce an analysis of the bronze friezes on the doors of Pisa Cathedral, commissioned by Ferdinando I de’ Medici and created from 1596 onwards by an international team of sculptors. The creation of these monumental doors is closely linked to the development of the natural sciences at the Pisa Academy, yet at the same time encapsulates in bronze a representation of the Grand Duke’s garden, in which recently acclimatised non-native species take on a new ornamental and symbolic role, thus reflecting explorations, the conquest of new territories, the inevitable human imprint on the landscape, and a progressive alteration of ecosystems now in need of constant protection.