MarketTommaso and Alessandro Francini
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Tommaso and Alessandro Francini

Tommaso Francini (1571–1651) and his younger brother Alessandro Francini were Florentine hydraulics engineers and garden designers. They worked for Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, above all at the Villa Medicea di Pratolino, whose water features Francesco de Vieri described thus in 1586: "the statues there turn about, play music, jet streams of water, are so many and such stupendous artworks in hidden places, that one who saw them all together would be in ecstasies over them."

Selected works
Villa Medicea di Pratolino. Fountains and the water organ. • Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Grottos and fountains, engraved in 1614 by Alexandre Francini. • Château de Fontainebleau. As the designer-engineer in charge of the waterworks at Fontainbleau, Tommaso Francini was responsible for fountains and grottoes; among other things, he devised the fountain rebuilt when the "Diana of Versailles" was removed from Fontainebleau to the Louvre, using Prieur's bronze replica cast from it in 1605, which Francini set upon a high Mannerist marble pedestal with bronze hunting dogs and stag's heads by Pierre Briard, 1603, which Francini plumbed to spit water, all set in a parterre. • Palais du Luxembourg, Paris. Aqueduct, grotto and Medici Fountain. • Château de Rueil. In gardens laid out by Jean Thiriot to designs of Jacques Lemercier, Francini's Grand Cascade completed about 1638 for the Cardinal de Richelieu, lay at the end of the Grande Allée. It has been suggested that Rueil's cascade and gardens were inspired by those of the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati. In turn the formal Cascade of Rueil down thirty steps inspired more naturalistic cascades at Versailles, St-Cloud and at Château de Sceaux The cascade at Rueil was replaced by lawn in 1720 and the park was remodelled by the Empress Josephine as part of her Château de Malmaison. ==Notes==
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