terraced flower-gardens, and here the same grandeur of conception is
seen. The upper terrace preserves traces of its formal parterres and
box-hedges. Thence flights of steps lead down to a long bowling-green
between hedges, like that at the Gamberaia. A farther descent reveals
another terrace-garden, with clipped hedges, statues and fountains; and
thence sloping alleys radiate down to stone-edged pools with reclining
river-gods in the mysterious shade of the ilex-groves. Statues are
everywhere: in the upper gardens, nymphs, satyrs, shepherds, and the
cheerful fauna of the open pleasance; at the end of the shadowy glades,
solemn figures of Titanic gods, couched above their pools or reared
aloft on mighty pedestals. Even the opposite hillside must have been
included in the original scheme of this vast garden, for it still shows,
on the central axis between the pavilions, a _tapis vert_ between
cypresses, doubtless intended to lead up to some great stone Hercules
under a crowning arch.
But it is not the size of the Campi gardens which makes them so
remarkable; it is the subtle beauty of their planning, to which time and
neglect have added the requisite touch of poetry. Never perhaps have
natural advantages been utilized with so little perceptible straining
after effect, yet with so complete a sense of the needful adjustment
between landscape and architecture. One feels that these long avenues
and statued terraces were meant to lead up to a “stately
pleasure-house”; yet so little are they out of harmony with the
surrounding scene that nature has gradually taken them back to herself,
has turned them into a haunted grove in which the statues seem like
sylvan gods fallen asleep in their native shade.
There are other Florentine villas which preserve traces of their old
gardens. The beautiful Villa Palmieri has kept its terrace-architecture,
Lappeggi its fine double stairway, the Villa Danti its grass-walk
leading to a giant on the hilltop, and Castel Pulci its stately façade
with a sky-line of statues and the long cypress avenue shown in Zocchi’s
print; even Pratolino, so cruelly devastated, still preserves Giovanni
da Bologna’s colossal figure of the Apennines. But where so much of
greater value remains to be described, space fails to linger over these
fragments which, romantic and charming as they are, can but faintly
suggest, amid their altered surroundings, the vanished garden-plans of
which they formed a part.
SIENESE VILLAS
[Illustration: VICOBELLO, SIENA]
II
SIENESE VILLAS
In the order of age, the first country-seat near Siena which claims
attention is the fortress-villa of Belcaro.
Frequent mention is made of the castle of Belcaro in early chronicles
and documents, and it seems to have been a place of some importance as
far back as the eleventh century. It stands on a hilltop clothed with
oak and ilex in the beautiful wooded country to the west of Siena, and
from its ancient walls one looks forth over the plain to the hill-set
city and its distant circle of mountains. It was perhaps for the sake of
this enchanting prospect that Baldassare Peruzzi, to whom the
transformation of Belcaro is ascribed, left these crenellated walls
untouched, and contented himself with adorning the inner court of the
castle with a delicate mask of Renaissance architecture. A large bare
villa of no architectural pretensions was added to the mediæval
buildings, and Peruzzi worked within the enclosed quadrangle thus
formed.
A handsome architectural screen of brick and marble with a central
gateway leads from a stone-paved court to a garden of about the same
dimensions, at the back of which is an arcaded loggia, also of brick and
marble, exquisitely light and graceful in proportion, and frescoed in
the Raphaelesque manner with medallions and arabesques, fruit-garlands
and brightly plumed birds. Adjoining this loggia is a small brick
chapel, simple but elegant in design, with a frescoed interior also
ascribed to Peruzzi, and still beautiful under its crude repainting. The
garden itself is the real _hortus inclusus_ of the mediæval chronicler:
a small patch of ground enclosed in the fortress walls, with box-edged
plots, a central well and clipped shrubs. It is interesting as a
reminder of what the mediæval garden within the castle must have been,
and its setting of Renaissance architecture makes it look like one of
those little marble-walled pleasances, full of fruit and flowers, in the
backgrounds of Gozzoli or Lorenzo di Credi.
Several miles beyond Belcaro, in a pleasant valley among oak-wooded
hills, lies the Marchese Chigi’s estate of Cetinale. A huge clipped
ilex, one of the few examples of Dutch topiary work in Italy, stands at
the angle of the road which leads to the gates. Across the highway,
facing the courtyard entrance, is another gate, guarded by statues and
leading to a long _tapis vert_ which ascends between double rows of
square-topped ilexes to a statue on the crest of the opposite slope. The
villa looks out on this perspective, facing it across an oblong
courtyard flanked by low outbuildings. The main house, said to have been
built (or more probably rebuilt) in 1680 by Carlo Fontana for Flavio
Chigi, nephew of Pope Alexander VII, is so small and modest of aspect
that one is surprised to learn that it was one of the celebrated
pleasure-houses of its day. It must be remembered, however, that with
the exception of the great houses built near Rome by the Princes of the
Church, and the country-seats of such reigning families as the Medici,
the Italian villa was almost invariably a small and simple building, the
noble proprietor having usually preferred to devote his wealth and time
to the embellishment of his gardens.
The house at Cetinale is so charming, with its stately double flight of
steps leading up to the first floor, and its monumental doorway opening
on a central _salone_, that it may well be ascribed to the architect of
San Marcello in Rome, and of Prince Lichtenstein’s “Garden Palace” in
Vienna. The plan of using the low-studded ground floor for offices,
wine-cellar and store-rooms, while the living-rooms are all
above-stairs, shows the hand of an architect trained in the Roman
school. All the Tuscan and mid-Italian villas open on a level with their
gardens, while about Rome the country houses, at least on one side, have
beneath the living-rooms a ground floor generally used for the storage
of wine and oil.
But the glory of Cetinale is its park. Behind the villa a long
grass-walk as wide as the house extends between high walls to a
fantastic gateway, with statues in ivy-clad niches, and a curious
crowning motive terminating in obelisks and balls. Beyond this the
turf-walk continues again to a raised semicircular terrace, surrounded
by a wall adorned with busts and enclosed in clipped ilexes. This
terrace abuts on the ilex-clothed hillside which bounds the valley. A
gateway leads directly into these wild romantic woods, and a steep
irregular flight of stone steps is seen ascending the wooded slope to a
tiny building on the crest of the hill. This ascent is called the Scala
Santa, and the building to which it leads is a hermitage adorned with
circular niches set in the form of a cross, each niche containing the
bust of a saint. The hermitage being directly on the axis of the villa,
one looks out from the latter down the admirable perspective of the
_tapis vert_ and up the Scala Santa to the little house at its summit.
It is interesting to note that this effect of distance and grandeur is
produced at small cost and in the simplest manner; for the grass-walk
with its semicircular end forms the whole extent of the Cetinale garden.
The olive-orchards and corn-fields of the farm come up to the boundary
walls of the walk, and the wood is left as nature planted it. Fontana,
if it was indeed he who laid out this simple but admirable plan, was
wise enough to profit by the natural advantage of the great forest of
oak and ilex which clothes this part of the country, and to realize that
only the broadest and simplest lines would be in harmony with so noble a
background.
[Illustration: LA PALAZZINA (VILLA GORI), SIENA]
As charming in its way, though less romantic and original, is the
Marchese Chigi’s other seat of Vicobello, a mile or two beyond the Porta
Ovile, on the other side of Siena. Vicobello lies in an open
villa-studded country in complete contrast to the wooded hills about
Cetinale. The villa is placed on a long narrow ridge of land, falling
away abruptly at the back and front. A straight entrance avenue runs
parallel to the outer walls of the outbuildings, which form the boundary
of the court, the latter being entered through a vaulted porte-cochère.
Facing this entrance (as at Cetinale) is a handsome gateway guarded by
statues and set in a semicircular wall. Passing through this gate, one
descends to a series of terraces planted with straight rows of the
square-topped ilexes so characteristic of the Sienese gardens. These
densely shaded terraces descend to a level stretch of sward (perhaps an
old bowling-green) bordered by a wall of clipped ilexes, at the foot of
the hill on which the villa stands.
On entering the forecourt, one faces the villa, a dignified oblong
building of simple Renaissance architecture, ascribed in the local
guide-book to Baldassare Peruzzi, and certainly of earlier construction
than the house at Cetinale. On the left, a gate in a high wall leads to
a walled garden, bounded by a long lemon-house which continues the line
of the outbuildings on the court. Opposite, a corresponding gateway
opens into the _bosco_ which is the indispensable adjunct of the Italian
country house. On the other side of the villa are two long terraces, one
beneath the other, corresponding in dimensions with the court, and
flanked on each hand by walled terrace-gardens, descending on one side
from the grove, on the other from the upper garden adjoining the court.
The plan, which is as elaborate and minutely divided as that of Cetinale
is spacious and simple, shows an equally sure appreciation of natural
conditions, and of the distinction between a _villa suburbana_ and a
country estate. The walls of the upper garden are espaliered with
fruit-trees, and the box-edged flower-plots are probably laid out much
as they were in the eighteenth century. All the architectural details
are beautiful, especially a well in the court, set in the wall between
Ionic columns, and a charming garden-house at the end of the upper
garden, in the form of an open archway faced with Doric pilasters,
before a semicircular recess with a marble seat. The descending walled
gardens, with their different levels, give opportunity for many charming
architectural effects—busts in niches, curving steps, and well-placed
vases and statues; and the whole treatment of Vicobello is remarkable
for the discretion and sureness of taste with which these ornamental
touches are added. There is no excess of decoration, no crowding of
effects, and the garden-plan is in perfect keeping with the simple
stateliness of the house.
About a mile from Vicobello, on an olive-clad hillside near the famous
monastery of the Osservanza, lies another villa of much more modest
dimensions, with grounds which, though in some respects typically
Sienese, are in one way unique in Italy. This is La Palazzina, the
estate of the De’ Gori family. The small seventeenth-century house, with
its adjoining chapel and outbuildings, lies directly on the public road,
and forms the boundary of its own grounds. The charming garden-façade,
with its voluted sky-line, and the two-storied open loggia forming the
central motive of the elevation, faces on a terrace-like open space,
bounded by a wall, and now irregularly planted _à l’Anglaise_, but
doubtless once the site of the old flower-garden. Before the house
stands an old well with a beautiful wrought-iron railing, and on the
axis of the central loggia a gate opens into one of the pleached
ilex-alleys which are the glory of the Palazzina. This ancient tunnel of
gnarled and interlocked trees, where a green twilight reigns in the
hottest summer noon, extends for several hundred feet along a ridge of
ground ending in a sort of circular knoll or platform, surrounded by an
impenetrable wall of square-clipped ilexes. The platform has in its
centre a round clearing, from which four narrow paths radiate at right
angles, one abutting on the pleached walk, the others on the outer
ilex-wall. Between these paths are four small circular spaces planted
with stunted ilexes and cypresses, which are cut down to the height of
shrubs. In these dwarf trees blinded thrushes are tied as decoys to
their wild kin, who are shot at from the circular clearing or the side
paths. This elaborate plantation is a perfectly preserved specimen of a
species of bird-trap once, alas! very common in this part of Italy, and
in which one may picture the young gallants of Folgore da San
Gimignano’s Sienese sonnets “Of the Months” taking their cruel pleasure
on an autumn day.
Another antique alley of pleached ilexes, as densely shaded but not
quite as long, runs from the end of the terrace to a small open-air
theatre which is the greatest curiosity of the Villa de’ Gori. The pit
of this theatre is a semicircular opening, bounded by a low wall or
seat, which is backed by a high ilex-hedge. The parterre is laid out in
an elaborate _broderie_ of turf and gravel, above which the stage is
raised about three feet. The pit and the stage are enclosed in a double
hedge of ilex, so that the actors may reach the wings without being seen
by the audience; but the stage-setting consists of rows of clipped
cypresses, each advancing a few feet beyond the one before it, so that
they form a perspective running up to the back of the stage, and
terminated by the tall shaft of a single cypress which towers high into
the blue in the exact centre of the background. No mere description of
its plan can convey the charm of this exquisite little theatre,
approached through the mysterious dusk of the long pleached alley, and
lying in sunshine and silence under its roof of blue sky, in its walls
of unchanging verdure. Imagination must people the stage with the sylvan
figures of the _Aminta_ or the _Pastor Fido_, and must place on the
encircling seats a company of _nobil donne_ in pearls and satin, with
their cavaliers in the black Spanish habit and falling lace collar which
Vandyke has immortalized in his Genoese portraits; and the remembrance
of this leafy stage will lend new life to the reading of the Italian
pastorals, and throw a brighter sunlight over the woodland comedies of
Shakspeare.
[Illustration: THE THEATRE AT LA PALAZZINA, SIENA]
ROMAN VILLAS
[Illustration: THE DOME OF ST. PETER’S, FROM THE VATICAN GARDENS]
III
ROMAN VILLAS
In studying the villas near the smaller Italian towns, it is difficult
to learn much of their history. Now and then some information may be
gleaned from a local guide-book, but the facts are usually meagre or
inaccurate, and the name of the architect, the date of the building, the
original plan of the garden, have often alike been forgotten.
With regard to the villas in and about Rome, the case is different. Here
the student is overwhelmed by a profusion of documents. Illustrious
architects dispute the honour of having built the famous pleasure-houses
on the seven hills, and historians of art, from Vasari downward, have
recorded their annals. Falda engraved them in the seventeenth century,
and Percier and Fontaine at the beginning of the nineteenth; and they
have been visited and described, at various periods, by countless
travellers from different countries.
One of the earliest Roman gardens of which a description has been
preserved is that which Bramante laid out within the Vatican in the last
years of the fifteenth century. This terraced garden, with its
monumental double flight of steps leading up by three levels to the
Giardino della Pigna, was described in 1523 by the Venetian ambassador
to Rome, who speaks of its grass parterres and fountains, its hedges of
laurel and cypress, its plantations of mulberries and roses. One half of
the garden (the court of the Belvedere) had brick-paved walks between
rows of orange-trees; in its centre were statues of the Nile and the
Tiber above a fountain; while the Apollo, the Laocoon and the Venus of
the Vatican were placed about it in niches. This garden was long since
sacrificed to the building of the Braccio Nuovo and the Vatican Library;
but it is worth mentioning that Burckhardt, whose least word on Italian
gardens is more illuminating than the treatises of other writers,
thought that Bramante’s terraced stairway first set the example of that
architectural magnificence which marks the great Roman gardens of the
Renaissance.
Next in date comes the Villa Madama, Raphael’s unfinished masterpiece on
the slope of Monte Mario. This splendid pleasure-house, which was begun
in 1516 for Cardinal Giuliano de’ Medici, afterward Pope Clement VII,
was intended to be the model of the great _villa suburbana_, and no
subsequent building of the sort is comparable to what it would have been
had the original plans been carried out. But the villa was built under
an evil star. Raphael died before the work was finished, and it was
carried on with some alterations by Giulio Romano and Antonio da
Sangallo. In 1527 the troops of Cardinal Colonna nearly destroyed it by
fire; and, without ever being completed, it passed successively into the
possession of the Chapter of St. Eustace, of the Duchess of Parma
(whence its name of _Madama_), and of the King of Naples, who suffered
it to fall into complete neglect.
The unfinished building, with its mighty loggia stuccoed by Giovanni da
Udine, and the semicircular arcade at the back, is too familiar to need
detailed description; and the gardens are so dilapidated that they are
of interest only to an eye experienced enough to reconstruct them from
their skeleton. They consist of two long terraces, one above the other,
cut in the side of the wooded slope overhanging the villa. The upper
terrace is on a level with Raphael’s splendid loggia, and seems but a
roofless continuation of that airy hall. Against the hillside and at the
end it is bounded by a retaining-wall once surmounted by a marble
balustrade and set with niches for statuary, while on the other side it
looks forth over the Tiber and the Campagna. Below this terrace is
another of the same proportions, its retaining-wall broken at each end
by a stairway descending from the upper level, and the greater part of
its surface taken up by a large rectangular tank, into which water
gushes from the niches in the lateral wall. It is evident from the
breadth of treatment of these terraces that they are but a fragment of
the projected whole. Percier and Fontaine, in their “Maisons de
Plaisance de Rome” (1809), published an interesting “reconstitution” of
the Villa Madama and its gardens, as they conceived it might have been
carried to completion; but their plan is merely the brilliant conjecture
of two artists penetrated with the spirit of the Renaissance, for they
had no documents to go by. The existing fragment is, however, well
worthy of study, for the purity of its architecture and the broad
simplicity of its plan are in marked contrast to the complicated design
and overcharged details of some of the later Roman gardens.
Third in date among the early Renaissance gardens comes another, of
which few traces are left: that of the Vigna del Papa, or Villa di Papa
Giulio, just beyond the Porta del Popolo. Here, however, the building
itself, and the architectural composition which once united the house
and grounds, are fortunately well preserved, and so exceptionally
interesting that they deserved a careful description. The Villa di Papa
Giulio was built by Pope Julius III, whose pontificate extends from 1550
to 1555. The villa therefore dates from the middle of the sixteenth
century; but so many architects were associated with it, and so much
confusion exists as to their respective contributions, that it can only
be said that the Pope himself, Michelangelo, Vignola, Vasari and
Ammanati appear all to have had a hand in the work. The exterior
elevation, though it has been criticized, is not as inharmonious as
might have been expected, and on the garden side both plan and elevation
have a charm and picturesqueness which disarm criticism. Above all, it
is felt at once that the arrangement is perfectly suited to a warm
climate. The villa forms a semicircle at the back, enclosing a paved
court. The ground floor is an open vaulted arcade, adorned with
Zucchero’s celebrated frescoes of _putti_ peeping through vine-wreathed
trellises; and the sides of the court, beyond this arcade, are bounded
by two-storied lateral wings, with blind arcades and niches adorned with
statues. Facing the villa, a colonnaded loggia terminates the court; and
thence one looks down into the beautiful lower court of the bath, which
appears to have been designed by Vasari. From the loggia, steps descend
to a semicircular court enclosed in walls, with a balustraded opening in
its centre; and this balustrade rests on a row of caryatids which
encircle the lowest court and form a screen before the grotto-like bath
under the arches of the upper terrace. The plan is too complicated, and
the architectural motives are too varied, to admit of clear description:
both must be seen to give an idea of the full beauty of the composition.
Returning to the upper loggia above the bath, one looks across the
latter to a corresponding loggia of three arches on the opposite side,
on the axis of which is a gateway leading to the actual gardens—gardens
which, alas! no longer exist. It will thus be seen that the flagged
court, the two open loggias, and the bath are so many skilfully
graduated steps in what Percier and Fontaine call the “artistic
progression” linking the gardens to the house, while the whole is so
planned that from the central hall of the villa (and in fact from its
entrance-door) one may look across the court and down the long vista of
columns, into what were once the shady depths of the garden.
In all Italian garden-architecture there is nothing quite comparable for
charm and delicately reminiscent classicalism with this grotto-bath of
Pope Julius’s villa. Here we find the tradition of the old Roman
villa-architecture, as it had been lovingly studied in the letters of
Pliny, transposed into Renaissance forms, with the sense of its
continued fitness to unchanged conditions of climate and a conscious
return to the splendour of the old patrician life. It is instructive to
compare this natural reflowering of a national art with the frigid
archæological classicalism of Winckelmann and Canova. Here there is no
literal transcription of uncomprehended detail: the spirit is preserved,
because it is still living, but it finds expression in subtly altered
forms. Above all, the artist has drawn his inspiration from Roman art,
the true source of modern architecture, and not from that of Greece,
which, for all its beauty and far-reaching æsthetic influences, was
_not_ the starting-point of modern artistic conceptions, for the plain
historical reason that it was utterly forgotten and unknown when the
mediæval world began to wake from its lethargy and gather up its
scattered heritage of artistic traditions.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO FORECOURT, VILLA BORGHESE, ROME]