The villa of Pratolino, about six miles from Florence on the high road to Bologna, lies on the eastern slope of Mount Uccellatojo and owes its existence to the Grand Duke Francesco I, who bought the estate of Benedetto di Buonaccorso Uguccione in 1569 and squandered enormous sums upon the villa and the garden, which he filled with statues, grottoes, fountains and _jeux d’eaux_ of every description. The peasantry around were reduced to misery by the large amount of ground he threw out of cultivation to make the park, and by the destruction of their cattle in hauling marble, stone and sand up the long steep hill from Florence. Bernardo Buontalento was the architect, and Baldinucci tells us that “all the architects of that day declared that never had so simple, yet so elegant a building been seen.” The rooms were frescoed by Crescenzio Onofrio Romano, Francesco Petrucci, Pier Dandini and Giovanni da San Giovanni, while the best landscape gardeners of the day were employed to lay out the beautiful gardens and park. Stefano Della Bella has left some delightfully fantastic engravings of the grottoes wherein graceful ladies and tall cavaliers are disporting themselves; of a gigantic tree with a platform high up in its branches on which a gay company is supping; of various fountains; of a long alley, shaded, not by trees but by arches of water under which stately lords and ladies are walking; and of several statues. A rare pamphlet, by Bernardo Sgrilli, gives elaborate plans of the villa and describes the marble statues standing in niches cut out of evergreen hedges; the wonderful animals lurking in caves which suddenly spouted water over the unwary admirer; and the cunningly devised grottoes containing life-like figures or groups. In one a shepherd piped to his flock, in another a knife-grinder sharpened a scythe; then there was a fortress whose walls suddenly became alive with soldiers firing volleys at an imaginary enemy whilst cannon boomed from the embrasures and the rattle of drums was heard; in others a pretty shepherdess tripped daintily along and filled her pails with water at a well, disdaining to look at a lovesick swain who played plaintive airs on his bagpipes; Vulcan made sparks fly from his anvil; a miller ground corn at his mill; a huntsman encouraged his hounds, “baying as though they were alive”; birds sang sweetly in the boughs of fairy-like trees; gliding serpents, hooting owls and “other most beautiful and stupendous inventions too many to enumerate were set in motion by diverse hidden machines driven by water.” But if any unwary spectator sat down on an inviting bench, or took refuge from the sun in a cool grotto, streams of water would pour on him from every side and he was drenched to the skin in an instant.[56]