Dealing with Decadence: (Re)flourishing the Giardino dei Semplici Under Targioni Tozzetti’s Administration

In 1545, Duke Cosimo I founded the Giardino dei Semplici, a botanical garden for the exclusive use of medical students at the University of Pisa. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, under the impetus of Cosimo III and Gian Gastone, the garden was opened to the public under the direction of Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti (1712-83), a physician and botanist who considered it a typical expression of Medici cultural policy, deserving of attention from the wide public. In this paper, I intend to reflect on the case study of the Giardino dei Semplici as a scientific and cultural institution of ancient origins that flourished in a moment traditionally viewed as one of crisis and decline for the grand duchy. In fact, not only did Targioni Tozzetti proposed to open this garden to the public, freeing it from its solely didactic value, but also wanted to rationalize its structure and botanical collections, with a view to representing power as a patron and protector of the sciences and arts. From this case study, it is possible to glimpse Gian Gastone's desire to continue the previous grand ducal tradition and innovate it according to the new cultural stimuli of the early eighteenth century.