Of all these marvels nothing remains but the beautiful park with its magnificent trees, and a few of the rare shrubs planted by Francesco, a passionate collector of curious plants and animals, who was in correspondence with all the famous botanists of the day; and the huge statue of the Apennines, cunningly built of large blocks of stone by Giovanni da Bologna. (?) Bianca Cappello, the second wife of Francesco I, was fond of Pratolino, where she passed the summer months to escape the heat in Florence. No less a person than Torquato Tasso has sung its beauties in many charming sonnets, mingling praises of the place with adulation of the all-powerful Venetian: “Pleasant and stately grove, Your scented foliage spread forth cool and green, For here beneath your screen This noble maid to couch on grass doth love. Together join your boughs, beeches and firs; Ye too link yours together, pine and oak, Thou, sacred laurel, and thou myrtle bright: Guard from all harm those fairest locks of hers And keep her from fierce noonday’s fiery stroke; Mingle your green with golden glancing light. Shades gentle and serene, Nobler is this your victory o’er the sun Than that each night by pale Astræa won.”[57] Bianca was helpful to the unhappy poet, who in return indited madrigals in her honour. “Had Your Royal Highness not experienced both good and evil fortune, you would not so well understand the misfortunes of others,” he writes to her in 1586. People who wished to make presents to the Grand Duchess occasionally asked Tasso to write a madrigal to be sent with the gift, thus enhancing its value. Among others, a Florentine lady, Caterina Frescobaldi, sent Bianca a magnificent dress embroidered with eight different designs, and to each was pinned an appropriate poem. In the collection of fifty madrigals, privately printed in 1871 from the copy given by Tasso to the fair Venetian, he plays fancifully with her name Bianca, turning it into Alba, Candida, Bianca Luna, etc.; this play upon words renders it difficult to translate them into English. “Behold Love’s miracle, That my White Dawn should shed Glory, which doth the light by Day’s Dawn spread In radiance far excell. Dawn’s glory is not her own, the Sun knows well; For that himself doth lend her; But from herself hath my White Dawn her splendour.”