Italian garden
Italian garden (or giardino all'italiana, Italian pronunciation: [dʒarˈdiːno allitaˈljaːna]) typically refers to a style of gardens, wherever located, reflecting a number of large Italian Renaissance gardens which have survived in something like their original form. In the history of gardening, during the Renaissance, Italy had the most advanced and admired gardens in Europe, which greatly influenced other countries, especially the French formal garden and Dutch gardens and, mostly through these, gardens in Britain.
The gardens were formally laid out, but probably in a somewhat more relaxed fashion than the later French style, aiming to extend or project the regularity of the architecture of the house into nature. A garden in something of the same style, and using many Mediterranean plants, is often called an "Italian garden" anywhere in the world.
From the late 18th century many grand Italian gardens were remade in a version of the English landscape garden style, and the range of garden types actually found in Italy is considerable, partly depending on different climatic conditions.
History and influence
The Italian garden was influenced by
Roman influence
Roman gardens (
The principle styles of the giardino all'italiana emerged from the rediscovery by Renaissance scholars of Roman models. They were inspired by the descriptions of Roman gardens given by
Pliny the Younger described his life at his villa at Laurentum: " ...a good life and a genuine one, which is happy and honourable, more rewarding than any "business" can be. You should take the first opportunity to leave the din, the futile bustle and useless occupations of the city and devote yourself to literature or to leisure".[2] The purpose of a garden, according to Pliny, was otium, which could be translated as seclusion, serenity, or relaxation. A garden was a place to think, read, write and relax.[3]
Pliny described shaded paths bordered with hedges, ornamental parterres, fountains, and trees and bushes trimmed to geometric or fantastic shapes; all features which would become part of the future Renaissance garden.[4]
Italian Medieval gardens
Italian Medieval gardens were enclosed by walls, and were devoted to growing vegetables, fruits and medicinal herbs, and, in the case of monastic gardens, for silent meditation and prayer. Generally, monastic garden types consisted of kitchen gardens, infirmary gardens, cemetery orchards, cloister garths, and vineyards. Individual monasteries might also have had a "green court", a plot of grass and trees where horses could graze, as well as a cellarer's garden or private gardens for obedientiaries, monks who held specific posts within the monastery.
Italian Renaissance gardens
The Italian Renaissance garden emerged in the late fifteenth century at villas in Rome and Florence, inspired by classical ideals of order and beauty, and intended for the pleasure of the view of the garden and the landscape beyond, for contemplation, and for the enjoyment of the sights, sounds and smells of the garden itself.
During the late Renaissance, gardens became larger and even more symmetrical, and were filled with fountains, statues, grottoes, water organs and other features designed to delight their owners and amuse and impress visitors.
While the early Italian Renaissance gardens were designed for contemplation and pleasure with tunnels of greenery, trees for shade, an enclosed giardino segreto (secret garden) and fields for games and amusements, the Medici, the ruling dynasty of Florence, used gardens to demonstrate their own power and magnificence. "During the first half of the sixteenth century, magnificence came to be perceived as a princely virtue, and all over the Italian peninsula architects, sculptors, painters, poets, historians and humanist scholars were commissioned to concoct a magnificent image for their powerful patrons."[5] The central fountain at Villa di Castello featured a statue of Hercules, symbolizing Cosimo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence, and the fish-tailed goat that was an emblem of the Medici; the garden represented the power, wisdom, order, beauty and glory that the Medici had brought to Florence.
Italian villas with notable gardens
- Here follows a curated selection of gardens that makes no claim to be complete
The Medici Villa at Fiesole (1455–1461)
The oldest existing Italian Renaissance garden is at the Villa Medici in Fiesole, north of Florence. It was created sometime between 1455 and 1461 by Giovanni de' Medici (1421–1463) the son of Cosimo de' Medici, the founder of the Medici dynasty. Unlike other Medici family villas that were located on flat farmland, this villa was located on a rocky hillside with a view over Florence.
The Villa Medici followed Leon Battista Alberti's precepts that a villa should have a view "that overlooks the city, the owner's land, the sea or a great plain, and familiar hills and mountains", and that the foreground have "the delicacy of gardens".[6] The garden has two large terraces, one at the ground floor level and the other at the level of the first floor. From the reception rooms on the first floor, guests could go out to the loggia and from there to the garden so the loggia was a transition space connecting the interior with the exterior. Unlike later gardens, the Medici Villa did not have a grand staircase or other feature to link the two levels.
The garden was inherited by his nephew, Lorenzo de' Medici, who made it a meeting place for poets, artists, writers and philosophers. In 1479, the poet Agnolo Poliziano, tutor to the Medici children, described the garden in a letter: "..Seated between the sloping sides of the mountains we have here water in abundance and being constantly refreshed with moderate winds find little inconvenience from the glare of the sun. As you approach the house it seems embosomed in the wood, but when you reach it you find it commands a full prospect of the city".[7]
The Palazzo Piccolomini at Pienza, Tuscany (1459)
The
The Cortile del Belvedere in the Vatican Palace, Rome (1504–1513)
In 1504 Pope Julius II commissioned the architect Donato Bramante to recreate a classical Roman pleasure garden in the space between the old papal Vatican palace in Rome and the nearby Villa Belvedere. His model was the ancient Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina or ancient Praeneste, and he used the classical ideals of proportion, symmetry and perspective in his design. He created a central axis to link the two buildings, and a series of terraces connected by double ramps, modelled after those at Palestrina. The terraces were divided into squares and rectangles by paths and flowerbeds, and served as an outdoor setting for Pope Julius's extraordinary collection of classical sculpture, which included the famous Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere. The heart of the garden was a courtyard surrounded by a three-tiered loggia, which served as a theater for entertainments. A central exedra formed the dramatic conclusion of the long perspective up the courtyard, ramps and terraces.[10]
The Venetian Ambassador described the Cortile del Belvedere in 1523: "One enters a very beautiful garden, of which half is filled with growing grass and bays and mulberries and cypresses, while the other half is paved with squares of bricks laid upright, and in every square a beautiful orange tree grows out of the pavement, of which there are a great many, arranged in perfect order....On one side of the garden is a most beautiful loggia, at one end of which is a lovely fountain that irrigates the orange trees and the rest of the garden by a little canal in the center of the loggia."[11]
Unfortunately, the construction of the Vatican Library in the late sixteenth century across the centre of the cortile means that Bramante's design is now obscured but his ideas of proportion, symmetry and dramatic perspectives were used in many of the great gardens of the Italian Renaissance.[12]
The Villa Madama, Rome (1516)
The
Work on the Villa Madama stopped in 1520 after the death of Raphael but was then continued by other artists until 1534. They finished one-half of the villa including half of the circular courtyard, and the northwest loggia that was decorated with grotesque frescoes by Giulio Romano and stucco by Giovanni da Udine. Fine surviving features include a fountain of the head of an elephant by Giovanni da Udine and two gigantic stucco figures by Baccio Bandinelli at the entrance of the giardino segreto, the secret garden.[14] The villa is now a state guest house for the Government of Italy.
Villa di Castello, Tuscany (1538)
Villa di Castello was the project of Cosimo de' Medici, first Duke of Tuscany, begun when he was only seventeen. It was designed by Niccolò Tribolo who designed two other gardens: the Giardino dei Semplici (1545) and the Boboli Gardens (1550) for Cosimo. The garden was laid out on a gentle slope between the villa and the hill of Monte Morello. Tribolo first built a wall across the slope, dividing it into an upper garden filled with orange trees, and a lower garden that was subdivided into garden rooms with walls of hedges, rows of trees and tunnels of citrus trees and cedars. A central axis, articulated by a series of fountains, extended from the villa up to the base of Monte Morello. In this arrangement, the garden had both grand perspectives and enclosed, private spaces.
The lower garden had a large marble fountain that was meant to be seen against a backdrop of dark cypresses, with figures of Hercules and Antaeus. Just above this fountain, in the center of the garden, was a hedge maze formed by cypress, laurel, myrtle, roses and box hedges. Concealed in the middle of the maze was another fountain, with a statue of Venus. Around this fountain, Cosimo had bronze pipes installed under the tiles for giochi d'acqua ("water games"), which were concealed conduits which could be turned on with a key to drench unsuspecting guests. Another unusual feature was a tree house concealed in an ivy-covered oak tree, with a square dining room inside the tree.[15]
At the far end of the garden and set against a wall, Tribolo created an elaborate grotto, decorated with mosaics, pebbles, sea shells, imitation stalactites, and niches with groups of statues of domestic and exotic animals and birds, many with real horns, antlers and tusks. The animals symbolized the virtues and accomplishments of past members of Medici family. Water flowed from the beaks, wings and claws of the animals into marble basins below each niche. A gate could close suddenly behind visitors, and they would be soaked by hidden fountains.[16]
Above the grotto, on the hillside, was small woodland, or bosco, with a pond in the centre. In the pond is a bronze statue of a shivering giant, with cold water running down over his head, which represents either the month of January or the Apennine Mountains.
When the last of the Medici died in 1737, the garden began to be altered by its new owners, the
Villa d'Este at Tivoli (1550–1572)
The
The garden plan is laid out on a central axis with subsidiary cross-axes of carefully varied character, refreshed by some five hundred jets in fountains, pools and water troughs. The copious water is supplied by the
The Villa's uppermost terrace ends in a balustraded balcony at the left end, with a sweeping view over the plain below. Symmetrical double flights of stairs flanking the central axis lead to the next garden terrace, with the Grotto of Diana, richly decorated with frescoes and pebble mosaic to one side and the central Fontana del Bicchierone ("Fountain of the Great Cup") loosely attributed to Bernini, where water issues from a seemingly natural rock into a scrolling shell-like cup.
The Villa d'Este at Tivoli is one of the grandest and best-preserved of the Italian Renaissance gardens. It was created by Cardinal
Ligorio created the garden as a series of terraces descending the steep hillside at the edge of the mountains overlooking the plain of
The glory of the Villa d'Este was the system of fountains, fed by two aqueducts that Ligorio constructed from the River Aniene. In the centre of the garden, the alley of one hundred fountains (which actually had two hundred fountains), crossed the hillside, connecting the Oval Fountain with the Fountain of Rome, which was decorated with models of the famous landmarks of Rome. On a lower level, another alley passed by the Fountain of Dragons and joined the fountain of Proserpine with the Fountain of the Owl. Still lower, an alley of fish ponds connected the Fountain of the Organ to the site of a proposed Fountain of Neptune.[19]
Each fountain and path told a story, linking the d'Este family to the legends of
The Fountain of the Owl used a series of bronze pipes like flutes to make the sound of birds but the most famous feature of the garden was the great Organ Fountain. It was described by the French philosopher
The garden was substantially changed after the death of the Cardinal and in the 17th century, and many statues were sold, but the basic features remain, and the Organ fountain has recently been restored and plays music once again.
Villa Della Torre (1559)
The Villa Della Torre, built for Giulio Della Torre (1480–1563), a law professor and humanist scholar in Verona, was a parody of the classical rules of Vitruvius; the peristyle of the building was in the perfectly harmonious Vitruvius style, but some of the stones were rough-cut and of different sizes and decorated with masks which sprayed water, which jarred the classical harmony. "The building was deformed: it seemed to be caught in a strange, amorphous condition, somewhere crude rustic simplicity and classical perfection.".[22] The fireplaces inside were in the forms of the mouths of gigantic masks. Outside, the garden was filled with disturbing architectural elements, including a grotto whose entrance represented the mouth of hell, with eyes that showed fires burning inside.
Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo, Lazio (1552–1585)
The garden is filled with enormous statues, reached by wandering paths. It included a mouth of Death, a house that seemed to be falling over, fantastic animals and figures, many of them carved of rough volcanic rock in place in the garden. Some of the scenes were taken from the romantic epic poem
Villa Lante
Villa Lante at Bagnaia near Viterbo, attributed to Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (there is no contemporary documentation[25]) is, with the famous Gardens of Bomarzo, one of the most famous Italian 16th century Mannerist gardens of surprises. The first surprise to a visitor coming fresh from Villa Farnese at Caprarola is the difference between the two villas in the same area, period, architectural mannerist style and possibly by the same architect: there is little if any similarity. Villa Lante is arranged not as a dominant single building with adjacent gardens as at Caprarola, but with the gardens as the principal feature, set on the main axis and stepping up the hill slope as a series of terraces between the two small and relatively subservient casinos.
The villa is known as the "Villa Lante". However, it did not become known as this until the villa was passed to Ippolito Lante Montefeltro della Rovere, Duke of Bomarzo, in the 17th century, when it was already 100 years old.
Boboli Gardens
The Boboli Gardens, in Italian Giardino di Boboli, form a famous park in Florence, Italy, that is home to a distinguished collection of sculptures dating from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, with some Roman antiquities.
The Gardens, behind the
Giardino Giusti
The
Giardino Bardini
The
Villa Aldobrandini
The villa was rebuilt in the current form by
Palace of Caserta
The
The garden, a typical example of the Baroque extension of formal vistas, stretch for 120 ha, partly on hilly terrain. It is inspired by the
The fountains and cascades, each filling a vasca ("basin"), with architecture and hydraulics by
- the Fountain of Diana and Actaeon (sculptures by Paolo Persico, Brunelli, Pietro Solari);
- the Fountain of Venus and Adonis (1770–80);
- the Fountain of the Dolphins (1773–80);
- the Fountain of Aeolus;
- the Fountain of Ceres.
A large population of figures from classical antiquity were modelled by Gaetano Salomone for the gardens of the Reggia, and executed by large workshops.
Isola Bella (Lake Maggiore)
The
Influences on other gardening styles
French garden
The form of the French garden was strongly influenced by the Italian gardens of the Renaissance, and was largely fixed by the middle of the 17th century.
Following his campaign in Italy in 1495, where he saw the gardens and castles of Naples, King
In 1536 the architect Philibert de l'Orme, upon his return from Rome, created the gardens of the Château d'Anet following the Italian rules of proportion. The carefully prepared harmony of Anet, with its parterres and surfaces of water integrated with sections of greenery, became one of the earliest and most influential examples of the classic French garden.[33]
English garden
There is some Italian influence in the Elizabethan part of the garden at Hardwick Hall. An Italian garden at Wotton House in Surrey, planted between 1643 and 1652 by John Evelyn (1620–1706) and his elder brother George.[34] is that house's best-known feature.[35]
Glossary of the Italian Renaissance garden
- Bosco sacro. Sacred wood. A grove of trees inspired by the groves where pagans would worship. In Renaissance and especially mannerist gardens, this section was filled with allegorical statues of animals, giants and legendary creatures.
- Fontaniere. The fountain-maker, a hydraulic engineer who designed the water system and fountains.
- Giardino segreto. The Secret Garden. An enclosed private garden within the garden, inspired by the cloisters of Medieval monasteries. A place for reading, writing or quiet conversations.
- Giochi d'acqua. water tricks. Concealed fountains which drenched unsuspecting visitors.
- Semplici. "Simples," or medicinal plants and herbs.
Notes
- ^ Attlee, Helen. Italian Gardens – A Cultural History, 2006: 10.
- ^ Cited in Attlee, 2006: 13.
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 13
- ^ Allain and Christiany, L'Art des jardins en Europe, Paris, 2006: 132.
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 28
- ^ Cited in Attlee, 2006: 14
- ^ Cited in Attlee, 2006: 18
- ^ Allain and Christiany, 2006: 138
- ^ Allain and Christiany, 2006: 140.
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 21
- ^ Cited in Attlee, 2006: 21.
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 22
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 26
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 27
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 30
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 33
- ^ Allain and Christiany, 2006
- ^ Allain and Christiany, 2006: 178.
- ^ The present Fountain of Neptune was built in 1927
- ^ Allain and Christiany, 2006: 182
- ^ Montaigne, M. E.. de, Journal de voyage en Italie, Le Livre de poche, 1974.
- ^ Attlee, 2006: 79.
- ^ Cited by Attlee, 2006: 85
- ^ Cited by Attlee, 2006: 87
- ^ Coffin, David The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome, Princeton University Press, 1979, p. 140
- ^ * Francesco Pona: Sileno overo Delle Bellezze del Luogo dell'Ill.mo Sig. Co. Gio. Giacomo Giusti, 1620 Angelo Tamo, Verona * Francesco Pona: |Il Paradiso de' Fiori overo Lo archetipo de' Giardini, 1622 Angelo Tamo, Verona
- ^ "Il Palazzo". Reggia di Caserta Unoffical (in Italian).
- ISBN 9782259222679– via Google Books.
- ^ Alice M. Coats, "Forgotten Gardeners, II: John Graefer" The Garden History Society Newsletter No. 16 (February 1972), pp. 4–7.
- ^ Wenzler, Architecture du jardin, pg. 12
- ^ Philippe Prevot, Histoire des jardins, pg. 107
- ^ Prevot, Histoire des Jardins, 114
- Le Nôtre, Éd. Hazan, p. 17
- ^ Nairn, Pevsner & Cherry 1971, p. 42.
- ^ English Heritage.
References
- Hobhouse, Penelope, Gardens of Italy, Mitchell Beazley, 1998, ISBN 1857328965
- ISBN 1862056609
- The Oxford Companion to Gardens, eds. Geoffrey Jellicoe, Susan Jellicoe, Patrick Goode and Michael Lancaster, 1986, OUP, ISBN 0192861387
- Pona, Francesco (1622), Il Paradiso de' Fiori overo Lo archetipo de' Giardini, Angelo Tamo in Verona
- English Heritage, Wotton House – Wotton – Surrey – England, BritishListedBuildings.co.uk, retrieved 1 September 2011
- Nairn, Ian; Pevsner, Nikolaus; Cherry, Bridget (1971) [1962], Cherry, Bridget (ed.), Surrey, Buildings of England (2, illustrated, revised, reprint ed.), Penguin