Garden History – Renaissance Europe

The Renaissance garden continued to evolve, and began to spread across Europe. Books about Italian gardens were published, prompting Northern Europeans to visit Italian gardens and bring home new ideas. Monarchs and the wealthy embraced the new style of gardening, and often employed Italian gardeners. Through this exchange, the Italian Renaissance garden spread from Italy into the rest of Europe, especially France, England, and the Low Countries (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg).

The Renaissance garden continued to evolve under the influence of the Baroque period (from about 1600 until 1750). For gardens, Baroque characteristics included:

• Manipulation of space using curved forms, forced perspective, and optical illusions
• Monumental scale in landscaping, and grand treatment of elevation using fountains and stairways
• Axial organization, such as axes that radiated outward from a central focal point or a long axis that ran from the formal garden to a distant focal point through wild, forested regions
• Spatial elements, such as straight avenues of trees (allees)

Palace Het Loo, in Apeldoorn, Holland – photo by JE at UWO (2002).

 

The Renaissance garden also evolved culturally. Christopher Thacker (The History of Gardens) observes that medieval gardens continued as they were in Europe (foursquare enclosures, regularly divided with raised beds, and tunnels and arbors made of trellis work), but were combined with the exuberance, enjoyment, and extravagant display of the Renaissance garden. Penelope Hobhouse notes in The Story of Gardening that the Italian principles had to be adapted to the local topography, climate, and architecture. The resulting European Renaissance gardens were a hybrid of Italian style and ideas, and local conditions and practicality.

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!

Elements of the Italian Renaissance Garden

The Renaissance period was a rebirth of thought and culture, and had its impact on Italian gardens. The resurging interest in ancient Rome included architecture, mechanics, hydraulics, botany, and natural history. Many of the old texts, maintained in monasteries and centers of learning over the long centuries of the Dark Ages, made the knowledge available. Some elements of Renaissance gardens, summarized from The History of Gardens by Christopher Thacker:

• Renaissance style – the architectural style was characterized by symmetry, proportion, geometry, and the regularity of parts, based on classical Roman principles. These architectural elements were mirrored in garden hardscaping, through terraces, porticoes, columns, arches, and other forms.
• Site selection – the site was used to its best advantage. Sun, light, air, breezes, shade, and views were incorporated in the garden design. Since many villas and their gardens were built on slopes and hills, the garden site could be viewed from outside the property, and the surrounding view and garden could be enjoyed from inside the garden.
• Unified design – the villa and the garden complemented each other, and were designed as a unified whole. Garden frescoes were painted inside the villa, bringing the garden inside; courtyards and terraces became outdoor rooms, extending the villa to the outside.
• Walls and courtyards – coming out of the Medieval period, gardens walls were still used for security and privacy, but with the villa and garden built on a slope, the garden was viewable from within and without the walls. Outside courtyards, often covered with arbors or shade structures, provided a place for exercise, recreation, and outside living.
• Pleasure garden – the garden was meant to be enjoyed, used for strolling, contemplation, retreat, and refuge from the hot Mediterranean sun. This is a marked difference from the “useful” gardens of Medieval times.
• Surprise and fantasy – the garden was meant to be discovered, to surprise and delight its visitors. This might take the form of unexpected views, shady glades, topiary, grottoes, statues, ruins, and arbors. Fountains and waterworks were implemented, often squirting the unsuspecting visitor or emitting the sounds of birds or animals; many of these based on pneumatic designs recorded by Hero of Alexandria (20 – 62 AD).
• Plants and trees – bushes were clipped into fantastical shapes and box hedges clipped into geometric patterns or mazes. Trees were coveted for their shade, including yew and cypress. Fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables were grown, and exotic plants were starting to be imported from other lands.

Look for some of these elements in these photos from the Villa Lante in Bagnaia.


Villa Lante - gardens in Bagnaia.
Photo by Roby Ferrari.

Villa Lante - part of the formal gardens.
Photo by Brookie.



Garden History – Renaissance Italy

For more garden history, we turn to the Renaissance gardens of Italy, which grew out of the rediscovery of ancient Roman ideals and knowledge after nearly 1000 years of the Dark Ages. Again I am using Christopher Thacker’s The History of Gardens for my reference, and Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and Their Gardens. The Renaissance period is typically categorized in three main periods: early Renaissance (1400 – 1500), High Renaissance (1500 - 1525), and Late Renaissance or Mannerism (1520 – 1600).

According to Thacker, there are no surviving gardens of the early Renaissance period. Gardens from this transitional period were still influenced by the poverty and difficulties of the Medieval period. Written documents describe idealized gardens, rather than existing ones, but do show the ideas that would influence later garden design.

• On the Art of Building in Ten Books by Leone Battista Alberti (1404 – 1472) – describes garden design and use, drawing on architectural principles from the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (circa 80 – 15 BC), the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (23 – 79 AD), and magistrate Pliny the Younger (61 – 112 AD).
•  Strife of Love in a Dream by Poliphilo, published by the monk Francesco Colonna in 1499 – a romance describing the adventures of Poliphile looking for his love, Polia. Many of the scenes in the story were later translated into gardens, such as Boboli Gardens.

One Hundred Fountains at the Villa d'Este, Tivoli, Italy (near Rome).
Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in June 2007 and placed in the public domain.

Many fine examples of Italian Renaissance gardens from the later periods still exist in Italy today, and classic Renaissance gardens have inspired gardens around the world. The Renaissance garden is designed to complement the villa and its structures, and vice versa; incorporate classic ideas about form and proportion, including geometric elements and symmetry; take advantage of the natural site; incorporate distant views and borrowed scenery; and to be used for enjoyment, reflection, contemplation, and pleasure. It is both formal and inviting, incorporating unexpected elements, including water treatments, fountains, grottoes, views, and vistas. Later, in the High Renaissance, gardens were used to demonstrate power.