Only for the Heart’s Amusement

I am absolutely delighted to be putting up a guest post from landscape architect and garden designer Julia Fogg (@fogg_julia) who also has a super blog of her own - Terrain.  Thank you Julia, and over to you...

The image on the template of this blog resurrected thoughts from a visit to Bosco Sacro at Bomarzo and Villa Lante at Bagnaia a while ago.  Both are described as  ‘Mannerist’ and have other similarities such as location – only 20 kms apart – and  their construction in mid-16C, if we believe the data. Also there is some thought that they were designed by Vignola although this is not conclusive. One, Sacro Bosco, was commissioned by a soldier Duke and, the other, by a cardinal.

Certainly, both these gardens are about exaggeration in composition. They also have many expected landscape features in common but they are poles apart in character.

 View from Villa Lante

The Sacro Bosco

Both gardens would be filled by guests enjoying music, comedy and dancing and it’s  easy to imagine the theatricality of night time revels and masques lit with flaming torches instilling intrigue, anticipation with their flickering shadows.

But the differences in treatment of these two gardens couldn’t be more obvious. 

In the Sacro Bosco, there are no visible straight lines, so no clipped hedging, no borders and no parterres. It is based on the story of a life – a journey through life of things seen and experienced, It is developed from a knowledge of the humanities creating a metamorphosis shown in the figures and sculptures struggling out from rock and earth.

The statues have an extreme physicality. They could equally be described as art but also as Disney scale tricks. They contribute to the sense of trepidation felt here, sometimes menace but the overriding atmosphere is of an earthly love formed with violence and passion. The garden was conceived as a memorial for the Duke’s wife. 

Villa Lante is an open stage. The prevailing sense is of organisation. Strict patterns of terraces and pathway network convey a measured crispness. The proportions are perfect and confident. Here there is no sense of playing with scale – all is correct – although surprises and excitement are ensured too. So a garden for promenading and for ‘la passeggiata’, for ambassadors, dukes and hostesses with grandeur and largesse but also maybe a hidden sense of secrecy and the potential for voyeurism.  

The Pegasus Fountain, Villa Lante

A view through the Pegasus Fountain building

Both these gardens could be described as playgrounds but totally contrasting in their sense of individuality and inner message. So tagging gardens – whether ‘political’, ‘gardenesque’, ‘wild’, ‘romantic’ or ‘contemporary’ to highlight just a few – and encapsulate within a known style is unhelpful. My conclusion is that it’s all about the atmosphere. And finally, a footnote to me as a designer, to learn from these examples and endeavour to create at least one part of the garden, if not the whole site, where the character is inherently sexy.

The Italian Renaissance Garden

Villa d'Este

Volumes have been written about the wonders of the Italian Renaissance Gardens.  They are remarkable testaments to their zeitgeist and absolutely have to be visited.  But here are a few thoughts and comments which I hope may inspire you to seek out more information and take a vacation in Italy.  As if an excuse is needed!

Villa Lante

The Renaissance Mind 

The new Renaissance world view owed much to two innovative thinkers and writers: St Thomas Aquinas and Petrarch.

St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)  who developed the concept of natural theology: theology based on reason and experience.  He brought Christian doctrine and Aristotelian logic into a syncretic intellectual system.  By inquiring into the nature of nature he laid the foundations of the scientific revolution.  But remember, he was not suggesting that nature was anything else but created by God.

Villa d'Este, Tivoli

Petrarch (1304-1374) is called the ‘father of Humanism’ and once again without being any way anti-Church or anti-Christian, he advocated a development of literary knowledge and linguistic skill based on the Classics, and in particular the works of the philosophers.  This new familiarity with the Classics resulted in a change in scholarship that saw man as a rational and sentient being, with the ability to decide and think for himself.  That is to say Man should attach prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.

Villa di Castello, Florence

The Renaissance Garden

During the 15th and 16th centuries the garden evolved along side many other art forms and sciences, and the surviving examples, which have influenced garden designers down the centuries, are monuments to the ability of the innovative garden designers, sculptors and engineers who built them. 

Today, however, the gardens tend to be seen only in terms of beautiful statuary, fantastic water works, and large evergreen trees.  This is far from the whole story, but to understand these gardens, it is essential to get into the Renaissance mind, which saw the world as hierarchical, but with each part interrelated.  

Bomarzo

Put simplistically the new relationship between human and divine went something like this.  At the top was God, who had created Man, and Nature.  Man perceived the natural world in terms of its usefulness to his needs: plants and animals provided medicine, food, and clothing.  Yet at the same time Nature was part of the divinely created cosmos, and so to understand Nature was to further understand God. 

This interaction was especially subtle and complex in the garden where art and nature were united into an indistinguishable whole.  Together they produced something that is neither one nor the other and is created equally by both.  Sadly, because the planting and perishable features have disappeared, many surviving Renaissance gardens have lost much of their original symbolism.  But it is possible to ‘recreate’ them. 

Garden Features

Villa Garzoni - main axis & terraces (but a detached villa!)

Axial Alignment
The garden was enclosed, with walls often covered with climbers and fruit trees.   But the most important feature was the garden’s axial arrangement to the house – that is to say a main line ran from the main doorway in the centre of the house to the end of the garden; with areas to right and left of this line essentially mirror images. 

Villa d'Este cross axis - Walk of 100 Fountains

Coming off this main axis was a main cross axis that divided the garden into regular subdivisions.  Wooden latticework structures or pergolas were used to cover the paths and give a stronger visual structure, and the compartments were further subdivided with cross paths to produce a geometric grid pattern of regular units, most commonly squares.  These compartimenti were defined by a low lattice fence or an herb hedge (lavender, sage, rosemary), which could be ornately arranged in a sort of knot garden design.

Planting at Villa Ambrogiana

God’s Meadow
Each compartimenti was planted either with a single specimen, or mixed planting increase the flower season, and to show.  By the 16th century and tied in with the Age of Discovery the obsession with collecting new plants was widespread.  By displaying as large a range of plants as possible, it demonstrated one’s wealth, as well as, of course, displaying the diversity of God’s wonders.

Villa d'Este

Architectural Features
Throughout the garden there were gazebos, pavilions, groves, grottoes, statues, sculptures and spectacular water features.  Again this demonstrated Man’s inventiveness, and offered scope for a symbolic display of the owner’s power and wealth. 

Marie-Luise Gothein's chapter Italy in the time of the Renaissance and the Baroque Style makes for excellent further reading.

B is for Belvedere

Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere

Literally translating as ‘beautiful view', the belvedere is a garden building positioned to take advantage of a particularly commanding vista over the garden and/or out to the landscape beyond.   With its origins as a defensive turret or look-out position, the belvedere was first used as an ornamental feature in the gardens of the Italian Renaissance.  A particularly fine example is in the Vatican Gardens, Rome, where the appropriately named Belvedere Court was designed by Donato Bramante for Pope Julius II from c.1505.  

The Gloriette at Schönbrunn

As an intrinsic feature of the Italian Renaissance Garden, the belvedere made its way across Europe.  In Vienna is to be found both the Belvedere Palace and the belvedere at Schönbrunn - although the latterit technically a gloriette - a belvedere on an elevated site.

Schönbrunn from the Gloriette

In Britain, it could be argued that the banqueting houses and buildings placed on top of the Mount, a Tudor innovation, were, in fact, an early form of belvedere since they provided a view out and had evolved from defensive look-outs.  The Renaissance-influenced belvedere became a particularly popular feature of 18th century landscape gardens. 

The Belvedere Tower at Claremont

Generally taking the form of a tower, they both provided an eye-catching feature within the landscape, and gave a stunning view over the surrounding countryside when climbed.  Arguably Sir John Vanbrugh designed the finest example at Claremont.