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ITALIAN VILLAS AND THEIR GARDENS
[Illustration: VILLA CAMPI, NEAR FLORENCE]
ITALIAN VILLAS AND THEIR GARDENS
by
EDITH WHARTON
Illustrated with Pictures by Maxfield Parrish
and by Photographs
[Illustration]
New York
The Century Co.
1905
Copyright, 1903, 1904, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Published November, 1904
The De Vinne Press
TO
VERNON LEE
WHO, BETTER THAN ANY ONE ELSE, HAS UNDERSTOOD AND INTERPRETED THE
GARDEN-MAGIC OF ITALY
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 5
I
FLORENTINE VILLAS 19
II
SIENESE VILLAS 63
III
ROMAN VILLAS 81
IV
VILLAS NEAR ROME
I CAPRAROLA AND LANTE 127
II VILLA D’ESTE 139
III FRASCATI 148
V
GENOESE VILLAS 173
VI
LOMBARD VILLAS 197
VII
VILLAS OF VENETIA 231
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Villa Campi, near Florence _Frontispiece_
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
The Reservoir, Villa Falconieri, Frascati 4
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
The Cascade, Villa Torlonia, Frascati 9
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Fountain of Venus, Villa Petraja, Florence 18
From a Photograph.
Villa Gamberaia at Settignano, near Florence 20
Drawn by C. A. Vanderhoof, from a Photograph.
Boboli Garden, Florence 24
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Entrance to Upper Garden, Boboli Garden, Florence 27
From a Photograph.
Cypress Alley, Boboli Garden, Florence 31
From a Photograph.
Ilex-walk, Boboli Garden, Florence 36
From a Photograph.
Villa Gamberaia, near Florence 39
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
View of Amphitheatre, Boboli Garden, Florence 44
From a Photograph.
Villa Corsini, Florence 49
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Vicobello, Siena 62
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
La Palazzina (Villa Gori), Siena 67
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
The Theatre at La Palazzina, Siena 73
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
The Dome of St. Peter’s, from the Vatican Gardens 80
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Entrance to Forecourt, Villa Borghese, Rome 87
From a Photograph.
Grotto, Villa di Papa Giulio, Rome 91
From a Photograph.
Temple of Æsculapius, Villa Borghese, Rome 96
From a Photograph.
Villa Medici, Rome 100
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Courtyard Gate of the Villa Pia, Vatican Gardens 102
Drawn by E. Denison, from a Photograph.
Villa Pia—In the Gardens of the Vatican 105
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Gateway of the Villa Borghese 108
Drawn by E. Denison, from a Photograph.
Villa Chigi, Rome 111
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Parterres on Terrace, Villa Belrespiro (Pamphily-Doria), 116
Rome
From a Photograph.
View from Lower Garden, Villa Belrespiro 121
(Pamphily-Doria), Rome
From a Photograph.
Villa d’Este, Tivoli 126
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Villa Caprarola 129
From a retouched Photograph.
The Casino, Villa Farnese, Caprarola 133
From a Photograph.
Villa Lante, Bagnaia 138
From a Photograph.
The Pool, Villa d’Este, Tivoli 141
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Villa Lante, Bagnaia 146
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Cascade and Rotunda, Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati 149
From a Photograph.
Garden of Villa Lancellotti, Frascati 153
From a Photograph.
Casino, Villa Falconieri, Frascati 157
From a Photograph.
The Entrance, Villa Falconieri, Frascati 161
From a Photograph.
Villa Lancellotti, Frascati 165
From a Photograph.
Villa Scassi, Genoa 172
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
A Garden-niche, Villa Scassi, Genoa 181
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Villa Cicogna, Bisuschio 196
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Villa Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore 203
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
In the Gardens of Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore 210
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Villa Cicogna, from the Terrace above the House 216
From a Photograph.
Villa Pliniana, Lake Como 221
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Iron Gates of the Villa Alario (now Visconti di 224
Saliceto)
Drawn by E. Denison, from a Photograph.
Railing of the Villa Alario 225
Drawn by Malcolm Fraser, from a Photograph.
Gateway of the Botanic Garden, Padua 230
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
View at Val San Zibio, near Battaglia 235
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Plan of the Botanic Garden, Padua 239
Drawn by E. Denison, from Sketch by the Author.
Val San Zibio, near Battaglia 241
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
Gateway, Villa Pisani, Strà 244
Drawn by E. Denison, from a Photograph.
Villa Valmarana, Vicenza 247
Drawn by Maxfield Parrish.
ITALIAN VILLAS AND THEIR GARDENS
[Illustration: THE RESERVOIR, VILLA FALCONIERI, FRASCATI]
ITALIAN VILLAS AND THEIR GARDENS
INTRODUCTION
ITALIAN GARDEN-MAGIC
Though it is an exaggeration to say that there are no flowers in Italian
gardens, yet to enjoy and appreciate the Italian garden-craft one must
always bear in mind that it is independent of floriculture.
The Italian garden does not exist for its flowers; its flowers exist for
it: they are a late and infrequent adjunct to its beauties, a
parenthetical grace counting only as one more touch in the general
effect of enchantment. This is no doubt partly explained by the
difficulty of cultivating any but spring flowers in so hot and dry a
climate, and the result has been a wonderful development of the more
permanent effects to be obtained from the three other factors in
garden-composition—marble, water and perennial verdure—and the
achievement, by their skilful blending, of a charm independent of the
seasons.
It is hard to explain to the modern garden-lover, whose whole conception
of the charm of gardens is formed of successive pictures of
flower-loveliness, how this effect of enchantment can be produced by
anything so dull and monotonous as a mere combination of clipped green
and stonework.
The traveller returning from Italy, with his eyes and imagination full
of the ineffable Italian garden-magic, knows vaguely that the
enchantment exists; that he has been under its spell, and that it is
more potent, more enduring, more intoxicating to every sense than the
most elaborate and glowing effects of modern horticulture; but he may
not have found the key to the mystery. Is it because the sky is bluer,
because the vegetation is more luxuriant? Our midsummer skies are almost
as deep, our foliage is as rich, and perhaps more varied; there are,
indeed, not a few resemblances between the North American summer climate
and that of Italy in spring and autumn.
Some of those who have fallen under the spell are inclined to ascribe
the Italian garden-magic to the effect of time; but, wonder-working as
this undoubtedly is, it leaves many beauties unaccounted for. To seek
the answer one must go deeper: the garden must be studied in relation to
the house, and both in relation to the landscape. The garden of the
Middle Ages, the garden one sees in old missal illuminations and in
early woodcuts, was a mere patch of ground within the castle precincts,
where “simples” were grown around a central wellhead and fruit was
espaliered against the walls. But in the rapid flowering of Italian
civilization the castle walls were soon thrown down, and the garden
expanded, taking in the fish-pond, the bowling-green, the rose-arbour
and the clipped walk. The Italian country house, especially in the
centre and the south of Italy, was almost always built on a hillside,
and one day the architect looked forth from the terrace of his villa,
and saw that, in his survey of the garden, the enclosing landscape was
naturally included: the two formed a part of the same composition.
The recognition of this fact was the first step in the development of
the great garden-art of the Renaissance: the next was the architect’s
discovery of the means by which nature and art might be fused in his
picture. He had now three problems to deal with: his garden must be
adapted to the architectural lines of the house it adjoined; it must be
adapted to the requirements of the inmates of the house, in the sense of
providing shady walks, sunny bowling-greens, parterres and orchards, all
conveniently accessible; and lastly it must be adapted to the landscape
around it. At no time and in no country has this triple problem been so
successfully dealt with as in the treatment of the Italian country house
from the beginning of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth
century; and in the blending of different elements, the subtle
transition from the fixed and formal lines of art to the shifting and
irregular lines of nature, and lastly in the essential convenience and
livableness of the garden, lies the fundamental secret of the old
garden-magic.
However much other factors may contribute to the total impression of
charm, yet by eliminating them one after another, by _thinking away_ the
flowers, the sunlight, the rich tinting of time, one finds that,
underlying all these, there is the deeper harmony of design which is
independent of any adventitious effects. This does not imply that a plan
of an Italian garden is as beautiful as the garden itself. The more
permanent materials of which the latter is made—the stonework, the
evergreen foliage, the effects of rushing or motionless water, above all
the lines of the natural scenery—all form a part of the artist’s design.
But these things are as beautiful at one season as at another; and even
these are but the accessories of the fundamental plan. The inherent
beauty of the garden lies in the grouping of its parts—in the converging
lines of its long ilex-walks, the alternation of sunny open spaces with
cool woodland shade, the proportion between terrace and bowling-green,
or between the height of a wall and the width of a path. None of these
details was negligible to the landscape-architect of the Renaissance: he
considered the distribution of shade and sunlight, of straight lines of
masonry and rippled lines of foliage, as carefully as he weighed the
relation of his whole composition to the scene about it.
[Illustration: THE CASCADE, VILLA TORLONIA, FRASCATI]
Then, again, any one who studies the old Italian gardens will be struck
with the way in which the architect broadened and simplified his plan if
it faced a grandiose landscape. Intricacy of detail, complicated
groupings of terraces, fountains, labyrinths and porticoes, are found in
sites where there is no great sweep of landscape attuning the eye to
larger impressions. The farther north one goes, the less grand the
landscape becomes and the more elaborate the garden. The great
pleasure-grounds overlooking the Roman Campagna are laid out on severe
and majestic lines: the parts are few; the total effect is one of
breadth and simplicity.
It is because, in the modern revival of gardening, so little attention
has been paid to these first principles of the art that the garden-lover
should not content himself with a vague enjoyment of old Italian
gardens, but should try to extract from them principles which may be
applied at home. He should observe, for instance, that the old Italian
garden was meant to be lived in—a use to which, at least in America, the
modern garden is seldom put. He should note that, to this end, the
grounds were as carefully and conveniently planned as the house, with
broad paths (in which two or more could go abreast) leading from one
division to another; with shade easily accessible from the house, as
well as a sunny sheltered walk for winter; and with effective
transitions from the dusk of wooded alleys to open flowery spaces or to
the level sward of the bowling-green. He should remember that the
terraces and formal gardens adjoined the house, that the ilex or laurel
walks beyond were clipped into shape to effect a transition between the
straight lines of masonry and the untrimmed growth of the woodland to
which they led, and that each step away from architecture was a nearer
approach to nature.
The cult of the Italian garden has spread from England to America, and
there is a general feeling that, by placing a marble bench here and a
sun-dial there, Italian “effects” may be achieved. The results produced,
even where much money and thought have been expended, are not altogether
satisfactory; and some critics have thence inferred that the Italian
garden is, so to speak, _untranslatable_, that it cannot be adequately
rendered in another landscape and another age.
Certain effects, those which depend on architectural grandeur as well as
those due to colouring and age, are no doubt unattainable; but there is,
none the less, much to be learned from the old Italian gardens, and the
first lesson is that, if they are to be a real inspiration, they must be
copied, not in the letter but in the spirit. That is, a marble
sarcophagus and a dozen twisted columns will not make an Italian garden;
but a piece of ground laid out and planted on the principles of the old
garden-craft will be, not indeed an Italian garden in the literal sense,
but, what is far better, _a garden as well adapted to its surroundings
as were the models which inspired it_.
This is the secret to be learned from the villas of Italy; and no one
who has looked at them with this object in view will be content to
relapse into vague admiration of their loveliness. As Browning, in
passing Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar Bay, cried out:
“Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?”—say,
so the garden-lover, who longs to transfer something of the old
garden-magic to his own patch of ground at home, will ask himself, in
wandering under the umbrella-pines of the Villa Borghese, or through the
box-parterres of the Villa Lante: What can I bring away from here? And
the more he studies and compares, the more inevitably will the answer
be: “Not this or that amputated statue, or broken bas-relief, or
fragmentary effect of any sort, but a sense of the informing spirit—an
understanding of the gardener’s purpose, and of the uses to which he
meant his garden to be put.”
FLORENTINE VILLAS
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF VENUS, VILLA PETRAJA, FLORENCE]
I
FLORENTINE VILLAS
For centuries Florence has been celebrated for her villa-clad hills.
According to an old chronicler, the country houses were more splendid
than those in the town, and stood so close-set among their
olive-orchards and vineyards that the traveller “thought himself in
Florence three leagues before reaching the city.”
Many of these houses still survive, strongly planted on their broad
terraces, from the fifteenth-century farmhouse-villa, with its
projecting eaves and square tower, to the many-windowed _maison de
plaisance_ in which the luxurious nobles of the seventeenth century
spent the gambling and chocolate-drinking weeks of the vintage season.
It is characteristic of Florentine thrift and conservatism that the
greater number of these later and more pretentious villas are merely
additions to the plain old buildings, while, even in the rare cases
where the whole structure is new, the baroque exuberance which became
fashionable in the seventeenth century is tempered by a restraint and
severity peculiarly Tuscan.
[Illustration: VILLA GAMBERAIA, AT SETTIGNANO, NEAR FLORENCE]
So numerous and well preserved are the buildings of this order about
Florence that the student who should attempt to give an account of them
would have before him a long and laborious undertaking; but where the
villa is to be considered in relation to its garden, the task is reduced
to narrow limits. There is perhaps no region of Italy so rich in old
villas and so lacking in old gardens as the neighbourhood of Florence.
Various causes have brought about this result. The environs of Florence
have always been frequented by the wealthy classes, not only Italian but
foreign. The Tuscan nobility have usually been rich enough to alter
their gardens in accordance with the varying horticultural fashions
imported from England and France; and the English who have colonized in
such numbers the slopes above the Arno have contributed not a little to
the destruction of the old gardens by introducing into their
horticultural plans two features entirely alien to the Tuscan climate
and soil, namely, lawns and deciduous shade-trees.
Many indeed are the parterres and terraces which have disappeared before
the Britannic craving for a lawn, many the olive-orchards and vineyards
which must have given way to the thinly dotted “specimen trees” so dear
to the English landscape-gardener, who is still, with rare exceptions,
the slave of his famous eighteenth-century predecessors, Repton and
“Capability Brown,” as the English architect is still the descendant of
Pugin and the Gothic revival. This Anglicization of the Tuscan garden
did not, of course, come only from direct English influence. The _jardin
anglais_ was fashionable in France when Marie Antoinette laid out the
Petit Trianon, and Herr Tuckermann, in his book on Italian gardens,
propounds a theory, for which he gives no very clear reasons, to the
effect that the naturalistic school of gardening actually originated in
Italy, in the Borghese gardens in Rome, which he supposes to have been
laid out more or less in their present form by Giovanni Fontana, as
early as the first quarter of the seventeenth century.
It is certain, at any rate, that the Florentines adopted the new fashion
early in the nineteenth century, as is shown—to give but one instance—in
the vast Torrigiani gardens, near the Porta Romana, laid out by the
Marchese Torrigiani about 1830 in the most approved “landscape” style,
with an almost complete neglect of the characteristic Tuscan vegetation
and a corresponding disregard of Italian climate and habits. The large
English colony has, however, undoubtedly done much to encourage, even in
the present day, the alteration of the old gardens and the introduction
of alien vegetation in those which have been partly preserved. It is,
for instance, typical of the old Tuscan villa that the farm, or
_podere_, should come up to the edge of the terrace on which the house
stands; but in most cases where old villas have been bought by
foreigners, the vineyards and olive-orchards near the house have been
turned into lawns dotted with plantations of exotic trees. Under these
circumstances it is not surprising that but few unaltered gardens are to
be found near Florence. To learn what the old Tuscan garden was, one
must search the environs of the smaller towns, and there are more
interesting examples about Siena than in the whole circuit of the
Florentine hills.
[Illustration: BOBOLI GARDEN, FLORENCE]
The old Italian architects distinguished two classes of country houses:
the _villa suburbana_, or _maison de plaisance_ (literally the
pleasure-house), standing within or just without the city walls,
surrounded by pleasure-grounds and built for a few weeks’ residence; and
the country house, which is an expansion of the old farm, and stands
generally farther out of town, among its fields and vineyards—the seat
of the country gentleman living on his estates. The Italian
pleasure-garden did not reach its full development till the middle of
the sixteenth century, and doubtless many of the old Florentine villas,
the semi-castle and the quasi-farm of the fourteenth century, stood as
they do now, on a bare terrace among the vines, with a small walled
enclosure for the cultivation of herbs and vegetables. But of the period
in which the garden began to be a studied architectural extension of the
house, few examples are to be found near Florence.
The most important, if not the most pleasing, of Tuscan pleasure-gardens
lies, however, within the city walls. This is the Boboli garden, laid
out on the steep hillside behind the Pitti Palace. The plan of the
Boboli garden is not only magnificent in itself, but interesting as one
of the rare examples, in Tuscany, of a Renaissance garden still
undisturbed in its main outlines. Eleonora de’ Medici, who purchased the
Pitti Palace in 1549, soon afterward acquired the neighbouring ground,
and the garden was laid out by Il Tribolo, continued by Buontalenti, and
completed by Bartolommeo Ammanati, to whom is also due the garden façade
of the palace. The scheme of the garden is worthy of careful study,
though in many respects the effect it now produces is far less
impressive than its designers intended. Probably no grounds of equal
grandeur and extent have less of that peculiar magic which one
associates with the old Italian garden—a fact doubtless due less to
defects of composition than to later changes in the details of planting
and decoration. Still, the main outline remains and is full of
instruction to the garden-lover.
The palace is built against the steep hillside, which is dug out to
receive it, a high retaining-wall being built far enough back from the
central body of the house to allow the latter to stand free. The ground
floor of the palace is so far below ground that its windows look across
a paved court at the face of the retaining-wall, which Ammanati
decorated with an architectural composition representing a grotto, from
which water was meant to gush as though issuing from the hillside. This
grotto he surmounted with a magnificent fountain, standing on a level
with the first-floor windows of the palace and with the surrounding
gardens. The arrangement shows ingenuity in overcoming a technical
difficulty, and the effect, from the garden, is very successful, though
the well-like court makes an unfortunate gap between the house and its
grounds.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO UPPER GARDEN, BOBOLI GARDEN, FLORENCE]
Behind the fountain, and in a line with it, a horseshoe-shaped
amphitheatre has been cut out of the hillside, surrounded by tiers of
stone seats adorned with statues in niches and backed by clipped laurel
hedges, behind which rise the ilex-clad slopes of the upper gardens.
This amphitheatre is one of the triumphs of Italian garden-architecture.
In general design and detail it belongs to the pure Renaissance, without
trace of the heavy and fantastic _barocchismo_ which, half a century
later, began to disfigure such compositions in the villas near Rome.
Indeed, comparison with the grotesque garden-architecture of the Villa
d’Este at Tivoli, which is but little later in date, shows how long the
Tuscan sense of proportion and refinement of taste resisted the
ever-growing desire to astonish instead of charming the spectator.
On each side of the amphitheatre, clipped ilex-walks climb the hill,
coming out some distance above on a plateau containing the toy lake with
its little island, the Isola Bella, which was once the pride of the
Boboli garden. This portion of the grounds has been so stripped of its
architectural adornments and of its surrounding vegetation that it is
now merely forlorn; and the same may be said of the little upper garden,
reached by an imposing flight of steps and commanding a wide view over
Florence. One must revert to the architect’s plan to see how admirably
adapted it was to the difficulties of the site he had to deal with, and
how skilfully he harmonized the dense shade of his ilex-groves with the
great open spaces and pompous architectural effects necessary in a
garden which was to form a worthy setting for the pageants of a
Renaissance court. It is interesting to note in this connection that the
flower-garden, or _giardino segreto_, which in Renaissance gardens
almost invariably adjoins the house, has here been relegated to the
hilltop, doubtless because the only level space near the palace was
required for state ceremonials and theatrical entertainments rather than
for private enjoyment.
It is partly because the Boboli is a court-garden, and not designed for
private use, that it is less interesting and instructive than many
others of less importance. Yet the other Medicean villas near Florence,
though designed on much simpler lines, have the same lack of personal
charm. It is perhaps owing to the fact that Florence was so long under
the dominion of one all-powerful family that there is so little variety
in her pleasure-houses. Pratolino, Poggio a Caiano, Cafaggiuolo,
Careggi, Castello and Petraia, one and all, whatever their origin, soon
passed into the possessorship of the Medici, and thence into that of the
Austrian grand dukes who succeeded them; and of the three whose gardens
have been partly preserved, Castello, Petraia and Poggio Imperiale, it
may be said that they have the same impersonal official look as the
Boboli.
[Illustration: CYPRESS ALLEY, BOBOLI GARDEN, FLORENCE]
Castello and Petraia, situated a mile apart beyond the village of
Quarto, were both built by Buontalenti, that brilliant pupil of
Ammanati’s who had a share in the planning of the gardens behind the
Pitti. Castello stands on level ground, and its severely plain
façade, with windows on consoles and rusticated doorway, faces what
is now a highway, though, according to the print of Zocchi, the
eighteenth-century engraver, a semicircular space enclosed in a low
wall once extended between the house and the road, as at the
neighbouring Villa Corsini and at Poggio Imperiale. It was an
admirable rule of the old Italian architects, where the garden-space
was small and where the site permitted, to build their villas facing
the road, so that the full extent of the grounds was secured to the
private use of the inmates, instead of being laid open by a public
approach to the house. This rule is still followed by French
villa-architects, and it is exceptional in France to see a villa
entered from its grounds when it may be approached directly from the
highroad.
Behind Castello the ground rises in terraces, enclosed in lateral walls,
to a high retaining-wall at the back, surmounted by a wood of ilexes
which contains a pool with an island. Montaigne, who describes but few
gardens in his Italian diary, mentions that the terraces of Castello are
_en pante_ (sic); that is, they incline gradually toward the house, with
the slope of the ground. This bold and unusual adaptation of formal
gardening to the natural exigencies of the site is also seen in the
terraced gardens of the beautiful Villa Imperiali (now Scassi) at
Sampierdarena, near Genoa. The plan of the garden at Castello is
admirable, but in detail it has been modernized at the cost of all its
charm. Wide steps lead up to the first terrace, where Il Tribolo’s
stately fountain of bronze and marble stands surrounded by marble
benches and statues on fine rusticated pedestals. Unhappily, fountain
and statues have lately been scrubbed to preternatural whiteness, and
the same spirit of improvement has turned the old parterres into
sunburnt turf, and dotted it with copper beeches and pampas-grass.
Montaigne alludes to the _berceaux_, or pleached walks, and to the
close-set cypresses which made a delicious coolness in this garden; and
as one looks across its sun-scorched expanse one perceives that its lack
of charm is explained by lack of shade.
As is usual in Italian gardens built against a hillside, the
retaining-wall at the back serves for the great decorative motive at
Castello. It is reached by wide marble steps, and flanked at the sides
by symmetrical lemon-houses. On the central axis of the garden, the wall
has a wide opening between columns, and on each side an arched recess,
equidistant between the lemon-houses and the central opening. Within the
latter is one of those huge grottoes[1] which for two centuries or more
were the delight of Italian garden-architects. The roof is decorated
with masks and arabesques in coloured shell-work, and in the niches of
the tufa of which the background is formed are strange groups of
life-sized animals, a camel, a monkey, a stag with real antlers, a wild
boar with real tusks, and various small animals and birds, some made of
coloured marbles which correspond with their natural tints; while
beneath these groups are basins of pink-and-white marble, carved with
sea-creatures and resting on dolphins. Humour is the quality which
soonest loses its savour, and it is often difficult to understand the
grotesque side of the old garden-architecture; but the curious delight
in the representations of animals, real or fantastic, probably arose
from the general interest in those strange wild beasts of which the
travellers of the Renaissance brought home such fabulous descriptions.
As to the general use of the grotto in Italian gardens, it is a natural
development of the need for shade and coolness, and when the
long-disused waterworks were playing, and cool streams gushed over
quivering beds of fern into the marble tanks, these retreats must have
formed a delicious contrast to the outer glare of the garden.
Footnote 1:
This grotto and its sculptures are the work of Il Tribolo, who also
built the aqueduct bringing thither the waters of the Arno and the
Mugnone.
[Illustration: ILEX-WALK, BOBOLI GARDEN, FLORENCE]
At Petraia the gardens are less elaborate in plan than at Castello, and
are, in fact, noted chiefly for a fountain brought from that villa. This
fountain, the most beautiful of Il Tribolo’s works, is surmounted by the
famous Venus-like figure of a woman wringing out her hair, now generally
attributed to Giovanni da Bologna. Like the other Florentine villas of
this quarter, where water is more abundant, Petraia has a great oblong
_vasca_, or tank, beneath its upper terrace; while the house itself, a
simple structure of the old-fashioned Tuscan type, built about an inner
quadrangle, is remarkable for its very beautiful tower, which, as Herr
Gurlitt[2] suggests, was doubtless inspired by the tower of the Palazzo
Vecchio.
Footnote 2:
“Geschichte des Barockstils in Italien.”
According to Zocchi’s charming etching, the ducal villa of Poggio
Imperiale, on a hillside to the south of Florence, still preserved, in
the eighteenth century, its simple and characteristic Tuscan façade.
This was concealed by the Grand Duke Peter Leopold behind a heavy
pillared front, to which the rusticated porticoes were added later; and
externally nothing remains as it was save the ilex and cypress avenue,
now a public highway, which ascends to the villa from the Porta Romana,
and the semicircular entrance-court with its guardian statues on mighty
pedestals.
Poggio Imperiale was for too long the favourite residence of the
grand-ducal Medici, and of their successors of Lorraine, not to suffer
many changes, and to lose, one by one, all its most typical features.
Within there is a fine court surrounded by an open arcade, probably due
to Giulio Parigi, who, at the end of the sixteenth century, completed
the alterations of the villa according to the plans of Giuliano da
Sangallo; and the vast suites of rooms are interesting to the student of
decoration, since they are adorned, probably by French artists, with
exquisite carvings and _stucchi_ of the Louis XV and Louis XVI periods.
But the grounds have kept little besides their general plan. At the
back, the villa opens directly on a large level pleasure-garden, with
enclosing walls and a central basin surrounded by statues; but the
geometrical parterres have been turned into a lawn. To the right of this
level space, a few steps lead down to a long terrace planted with
ilexes, whence there is a fine view over Florence—an unusual
arrangement, as the _bosco_ was generally above, not below, the
flower-garden.
[Illustration: VILLA GAMBERAIA, NEAR FLORENCE]
If, owing to circumstances, the more famous pleasure-grounds of Florence
have lost much of their antique charm, she has happily preserved a
garden of another sort which possesses to an unusual degree the flavour
of the past. This is the villa of the Gamberaia at Settignano. Till its
recent purchase, the Gamberaia had for many years been let out in
lodgings for the summer, and it doubtless owes to this obscure fate the
complete preservation of its garden-plan. Before the recent alterations
made in its gardens, it was doubly interesting from its unchanged
condition, and from the fact that, even in Italy, where small and
irregular pieces of ground were so often utilized with marvellous skill,
it was probably the most perfect example of the art of producing a great
effect on a small scale.
The villa stands nobly on a ridge overlooking the village of Settignano
and the wide-spread valley of the Arno. The house is small yet
impressive. Though presumably built as late as 1610, it shows few
concessions to the baroque style already prevalent in other parts of
Italy, and is yet equally removed from the classic or Palladian manner
which held its own so long in the Venetian country. The Gamberaia is
distinctly Tuscan, and its projecting eaves, heavily coigned angles and
windows set far apart on massive consoles, show its direct descent from
the severe and sober school of sixteenth-century architects who produced
such noble examples of the great Tuscan villa as I Collazzi and Fonte
all’ Erta. Nevertheless, so well proportioned is its elevation that
there is no sense of heaviness, and the solidity of the main building is
relieved by a kind of flying arcade at each end, one of which connects
the house with its chapel, while the other, by means of a spiral
stairway in a pier of the arcade, leads from the first floor to what was
once the old fish-pond and herb-garden. This garden, an oblong piece of
ground, a few years ago had in its centre a round fish-pond, surrounded
by symmetrical plots planted with roses and vegetables, and in general
design had probably been little changed since the construction of the
villa. It has now been remodelled on an elaborate plan, which has the
disadvantage of being unrelated in style to its surroundings; but
fortunately no other change has been made in the plan and planting of
the grounds.
[Illustration: VIEW OF AMPHITHEATRE, BOBOLI GARDEN, FLORENCE]
Before the façade of the house a grassy terrace bounded by a low wall,
set alternately with stone vases and solemn-looking stone dogs,
overhangs the vineyards and fields, which, as in all unaltered Tuscan
country places, come up close to the house. Behind the villa, and
running parallel with it, is a long grass alley or bowling-green,
flanked for part of its length by a lofty retaining-wall set with
statues, and for the remainder by high hedges which divide it on one
side from the fish-pond garden and on the other from the farm. The green
is closed at one end by a grotto of coloured pebbles and shells, with
nymphs and shepherds in niches about a fountain. This grotto is overhung
by the grove of ancient cypresses for which the Gamberaia is noted. At
its opposite end the bowling-green terminates in a balustrade whence one
looks down on the Arno and across to the hills on the southern side of
the valley.
The retaining-wall which runs parallel with the back of the house
sustains a terrace planted with cypress and ilex. This terraced wood
above the house is very typical of Italian gardens: good examples may be
seen at Castello and at the Villa Medici in Rome. These patches of
shade, however small, are planted irregularly, like a wild wood, with
stone seats under the dense ilex boughs, and a statue placed here and
there in a deep niche of foliage. Just opposite the central doorway of
the house the retaining-wall is broken, and an iron gate leads to a slit
of a garden, hardly more than twenty feet wide, on a level with the
bowling-green. This narrow strip ends also in a grotto-like fountain
with statues, and on each side balustraded flights of steps lead to the
upper level oh which the ilex-grove is planted. This grove, however,
occupies only one portion of the terrace. On the other side of the cleft
formed by the little grotto-garden, the corresponding terrace, formerly
laid out as a vegetable-garden, is backed by the low façade of the
lemon-house, or _stanzone_, which is an adjunct of every Italian villa.
Here the lemon and orange trees, the camellias and other semi-tender
shrubs, are stored in winter, to be set out in May in their red earthen
jars on the stone slabs which border the walks of all old Italian
gardens.
The plan of the Gamberaia has been described thus in detail because it
combines in an astonishingly small space, yet without the least sense of
overcrowding, almost every typical excellence of the old Italian garden:
free circulation of sunlight and air about the house; abundance of
water; easy access to dense shade; sheltered walks with different points
of view; variety of effect produced by the skilful use of different
levels; and, finally, breadth and simplicity of composition.
Here, also, may be noted in its fullest expression that principle of old
gardening which the modern “landscapist” has most completely unlearned,
namely, the value of subdivision of spaces. Whereas the modern
gardener’s one idea of producing an effect of space is to annihilate his
boundaries, and not only to merge into one another the necessary
divisions of the garden, but also to blend this vague whole with the
landscape, the old garden-architect proceeded on the opposite principle,
arguing that, as the garden is but the prolongation of the house, and as
a house containing a single huge room would be less interesting and less
serviceable than one divided according to the varied requirements of its
inmates, so a garden which is merely one huge outdoor room is also less
interesting and less serviceable than one which has its logical
divisions. Utility was doubtless not the only consideration which
produced this careful portioning off of the garden. Æsthetic impressions
were considered, and the effect of passing from the sunny fruit-garden
to the dense grove, thence to the wide-reaching view, and again to the
sheltered privacy of the pleached walk or the mossy coolness of the
grotto—all this was taken into account by a race of artists who studied
the contrast of æsthetic emotions as keenly as they did the
juxtaposition of dark cypress and pale lemon-tree, of deep shade and
level sunlight. But the real value of the old Italian garden-plan is
that logic and beauty meet in it, as they should in all sound
architectural work. Each quarter of the garden was placed where
convenience required, and was made accessible from all the others by the
most direct and rational means; and from this intelligent method of
planning the most varying effects of unexpectedness and beauty were
obtained.
It was said above that lawns are unsuited to the Italian soil and
climate, but it must not be thought that the Italian gardeners did not
appreciate the value of turf. They used it, but sparingly, knowing that
it required great care and was not a characteristic of the soil. The
bowling-green of the Gamberaia shows how well the beauty of a long
stretch of greensward was understood; and at the Villa Capponi, at
Arcetri, on the other side of Florence, there is a fine oblong of old
turf adjoining the house, said to be the only surviving fragment of the
original garden. These bits of sward were always used near the house,
where their full value could be enjoyed, and were set like jewels in
clipped hedges or statue-crowned walls. Though doubtless intended
chiefly for games, they were certainly valued for their æsthetic effect,
for in many Italian gardens steep grass alleys flanked by walls of beech
or ilex are seen ascending a hillside to the temple or statue which
forms the crowning ornament of the grounds. In Florence a good example
of this _tapis vert_, of which Le Nôtre afterward made such admirable
use in the moist climate of France, is seen at the Villa Danti, on the
Arno near Campiobbi.
Close to the ducal villas of Castello lies a country-seat possessing
much of the intimate charm which they lack. This is Prince Corsini’s
villa, the finest example of a baroque country house near Florence. The
old villa, of which the typical Tuscan elevation may still be seen at
the back, was remodelled during the latter half of the seventeenth
century, probably by Antonio Ferri, who built the state saloon and
staircase of the Palazzo Corsini on the Lungarno. The Villa Corsini lies
in the plain, like Castello, and has before it the usual walled
semicircle. The front of the villa is frankly baroque, a two-storied
elevation with windows divided by a meagre order, and a stately central
gable flanked by balustrades surmounted by vases. The whole treatment is
interesting, as showing the manner in which the seventeenth-century
architect overlaid a plain Tuscan structure with florid ornament; and
the effect, if open to criticism, is at once gay and stately.
[Illustration: VILLA CORSINI, FLORENCE]
The house is built about a quadrangle enclosed in an open arcade on
columns. Opposite the porte-cochère is a doorway opening on a broad
space bounded by a balustrade with statues. An ilex avenue extends
beyond this space, on the axis of the doorway. At one end of the house
is the oblong walled garden, with its box-edged flower-beds grouped in
an intricate geometrical pattern about a central fountain. Corresponding
with this garden, at the opposite end of the house, is a dense
ilex-grove with an alley leading down the centre to a beautiful
fountain, a tank surmounted by a kind of voluted pediment, into which
the water falls from a large ilex-shaded tank on a higher level. Here
again the vineyards and olive-orchards come up close to the formal
grounds, the ilex-grove being divided from the _podere_ by a line of
cypresses instead of a wall.
Not far from the Gamberaia, on the hillside of San Gervasio, stands
another country house which preserves only faint traces of its old
gardens, but which, architecturally, is too interesting to be
overlooked. This is the villa of Fonte all’ Erta. Originally a long
building of the villa-farmhouse order, with chapel, offices and
outhouses connected with the main house, it was transformed in the
sixteenth century, probably by Ammanati, into one of the stateliest
country houses near Florence. A splendid rusticated loggia, approached
by a double flight of steps, forms an angle of the main house, and
either then or later the spacious open court, around three sides of
which the villa is built, was roofed over and turned into a great
central saloon like those of the Venetian and Milanese villas. This
two-storied saloon is the finest and most appropriate feature of the
interior planning of Italian villas, but it seems never to have been as
popular in Tuscany as it was farther north or south. The Tuscan villas,
for the most part, are smaller and less pretentious in style than those
erected in other parts of Italy, and only in exceptional instances did
the architect free himself from the traditional plan of the old
farmhouse-villa around its open court. A fine example of this arcaded
court may be seen at Petraia, the Medicean villa near Castello. At Fonte
all’ Erta the former court faced toward what was once an old
flower-garden, raised a few feet above the grass terrace which runs the
length of the façade. Behind this garden, and adjoining the back of the
villa, is the old evergreen grove; but the formal surroundings of the
house have disappeared.
The most splendid and stately villa in the neighbourhood of Florence
stands among the hills a few miles beyond the Certosa of Val d’Ema, and
looks from its lofty ridge across the plain toward Pistoia and the
Apennines. This villa, called Ai Collazzi (now Bombicci), from the
wooded hills which surround it, was built for the Dini family in the
sixteenth century, and, as tradition avers, by no less a hand than
Michelangelo’s. He is known to have been a close friend of the Dini, and
is likely to have worked for them; and if, as some experts think,
certain details of the design, as well as the actual construction of the
villa, are due to Santi di Tito, it is impossible not to feel that its
general conception must have originated with a greater artist.
The Villa Bombicci has in fact the Michelangelesque quality: the
austerity, the breadth, the peculiar majesty which he imparted to his
slightest creations. The house is built about three sides of a raised
stone-flagged terrace, the enclosing elevation consisting of a
two-storied open arcade roofed by widely projecting eaves. The wings are
solid, with the exception of the sides toward the arcade, and the
windows, with their heavy pediments and consoles, are set far apart in
true Tuscan fashion. A majestic double flight of steps, flanked by
shield-bearing lions, leads up to the terrace about which the house is
built. Within is a high central saloon opening at the back on a stone
_perron_, with another double flight of steps which descend in a curve
to the garden. On this side of the house there is, on the upper floor,
an open loggia of great beauty, consisting of three arches divided by
slender coupled shafts. Very fine, also, is the arched and rusticated
doorway surmounted by a stone escutcheon.
The villa is approached by a cypress avenue which leads straight to the
open space before the house. The ridge on which the latter is built is
so narrow, and the land falls away so rapidly, that there could never
have been much opportunity for the development of garden-architecture;
but though all is now Anglicized, it is easy to trace the original plan:
in front, the open space supported by a high retaining-wall, on one side
of the house the grove of cypress and ilex, and at the back, where there
was complete privacy, the small _giardino segreto_, or hedged garden,
with its parterres, benches and statues.
The purpose of this book is to describe the Italian villa in relation to
its grounds, and many villas which have lost their old surroundings must
therefore be omitted; but near Florence there is one old garden which
has always lacked its villa, yet which cannot be overlooked in a study
of Italian garden-craft. Even those most familiar with the fascinations
of Italian gardens will associate a peculiar thrill with their first
sight of the Villa[3] Campi. Laid out by one of the Pucci family,
probably toward the end of the sixteenth century, it lies beyond
Lastra-Signa, above the Arno, about ten miles from Florence. It is not
easy to reach, for so long is it since any one has lived in the
melancholy _villino_ of Villa Campi that even in the streets of Lastra,
the little walled town by the Arno, a guide is hard to find. But at last
one is told to follow a steep country road among vines and olives, past
two or three charming houses buried in ilex-groves, till the way ends in
a lane which leads up to a gateway surmounted by statues. Ascending
thence by a long avenue of cypresses, one reaches the level hilltop on
which the house should have stood. Two pavilions connected by a high
wall face the broad open terrace, whence there is a far-spreading view
over the Arno valley: doubtless the main building was to have been
placed between them. But now the place lies enveloped in a mysterious
silence. The foot falls noiselessly on the grass carpeting of the
alleys, the water is hushed in pools and fountains, and broken statues
peer out startlingly from their niches of unclipped foliage. From the
open space in front of the pavilions, long avenues radiate, descending
and encircling the hillside, walled with cypress and ilex, and leading
to _rond-points_ set with groups of statuary, and to balustraded
terraces overhanging the valley. The plan is vast and complicated, and
appears to have embraced the whole hillside, which, contrary to the
usual frugal Tuscan plan, was to have been converted into a formal park
with vistas, quincunxes and fountains.
Footnote 3:
_Villa_, in Italian, signifies not the house alone, but the house and
pleasure-grounds.