Italian Villas and Their Gardens

This classic book about Italian gardens was written by Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937), illustrated by Maxfield Parrish (1870 - 1966), and published in 1904. Wharton wrote several American classics, such as The Decoration of Houses (non-fiction), and Ethan Frome (fiction, and required high school reading for people of a certain age); Parrish was a popular American illustrator with a distinctive style; he painted “The Pied Piper” mural, which hung behind the Palace Hotel bar for a century in San Francisco. A sumptuous edition of Italian Villas and Their Gardens was republished in 2007 by The Mount Press, complete with the original illustrations and photos.

The book includes a list of illustrations with notations, an introduction, and information about the villas, organized by regions, including Florence, Siena, Rome and near-Rome, Genoa, Lombardy, and Venetia. The 2007 edition includes an introduction by John Dixon Hunt, providing context for the subject of "Italian Garden Magic".

I love the "across time" nature of this book. It encompasses Wharton, visiting ancient gardens in her day, and Parrish visiting and painting gardens for the book early in his career (he was trying to break into landscape painting, according to Coy Ludwig in his book, Maxfield Parrish). Italian Villas and Their Gardens is often cited in modern gardening books; Christopher Thacker refers to it in "The Renaissance Garden in Italy" chapter of The History of Gardens. Wharton’s writing is descriptive, and conveys she has visited the gardens she describes. I recommend Italian Villas and Their Gardens to anyone interested in garden history, the Renaissance, and art!