Italian garden
An Italian garden is a geometrically laid out garden that was usually designed and laid out in connection with a villa .
Early Renaissance
During the Italian Renaissance (it. Rinascimento ), garden art flourished in connection with the pronounced preference of the time for villas on the outskirts of cities and in the country. The centers of this garden culture were Florence , Rome and the Terraferma of the Republic of Venice . Leon Battista Alberti was the first modern architectural theorist who basically dealt with the design of gardens. In his book Über die Baukunst , written in 1485, a chapter is devoted to garden art. Alberti based himself in many details on the description of ancient villas by Pliny the Elder. J. As with the ancient villas, where the garden was an integral part of the complex, the Renaissance gardens were also part of an overall concept. Occasionally the architect of the villa was also the architect of the garden. According to Alberti, the villa and garden should reflect the personality of the owner. In contrast to gardens from the Middle Ages, in which the aspect of demarcation from an outside world that was perceived as threatening played an essential role, the Italian villa of the Renaissance should be located on a hill if possible, with the aim of visually integrating the landscape into the garden concept. Within the garden, the area was divided into smaller compartments . The garden contained paths bordered with boxwood, grottos , water basins, staircases that were supposed to enable effortless access to the slopes, and also the arcades, which were popular in medieval gardens and occasionally reminiscent of a hortus conclusus , gardens enclosed with high walls or hedges, the Giardini segreti . Hedges, trees and flower beds were usually trimmed according to geometric templates. Evergreen plants were preferred because of the lack of water. Flowers found their place in garden vases . As in the villas of Pliny, the gardens were decorated with ancient or contemporary sculptures . In some gardens, orchards and vegetable gardens were integrated according to ancient patterns, which were also laid out geometrically.
In contrast to the French Garden , the early Italian gardens lacked the generous lines of sight from the villa .
High Renaissance and Mannerism
The tendency to merge house and garden into a perfect unit was perfectly realized in the design of Villa Madama in 1518 by Raffael , Giulio Romano and Antonio da Sangallo . However, when the building was used by the Italian state, the original facility was changed or destroyed.
With Bramante's design for the Belvedere of the papal residence in Rome, the Italian garden experienced a stronger architectural form at the beginning of the 16th century. Bramante laid out a three-level terrace in a narrow and steep space, which were connected by a complex system of stairs and which, together with the villa, formed a harmonious whole. The complex itself was stocked with valuable antiques from the papal collection. Although Bramante's garden was largely destroyed by the subsequent Pope Pius V , his design was momentous for the creation of gardens in Italy.
As a result, the garden was less used for the relaxation of the owner and his guests, as in the early Renaissance, but became a means of representation , and it was also used as an open-air museum in which the owner's treasures were displayed.
Baroque
Running water was an essential element of Italian gardens. Unexpected water jokes, with which the guests could be frightened, occurred for the first time in the now-preserved Villa Poggio Reale near Naples. They were admired and often imitated in the baroque gardens of the 16th and 17th centuries. The playful water arts of the Villa Aldobrandini , which show the enthusiasm of the times for technology and machines , were famous .
The lavish abundance of baroque water features is almost completely preserved in the Villa d'Este near Tivoli . Other baroque elements of this garden complex are the subordination of the ensemble to a closed iconographic program , the installation of a hedge theater and a miniature world panorama . In the Villa d'Este, too, the axes of French gardens that relate to a dominant center are missing .
A perfectly preserved example of a baroque Italian garden is Isola Bella , one of the Borromean islands, in Lake Maggiore . Between 1632 and 1672, the Borromeo family laid out a garden of ten superimposed terraces lavishly furnished with balustrades , sculptures and vases, which were furnished with an overflowing abundance of flowers and decorative living peacocks on the rocky islet . The role of water, which is so important for Italian gardens, is taken over by the lake.
gallery
Ground floor of Villa Lante
Villa Lante: waterfall and stone table
Monumental sculpture in the Sacro Bosco or Park of the Monsters
Cafaggiolo country estate of the Medici family from the 14th century
Villa Marignolle
Villa Castello
Villa Petraia
Villa d'Este , Fontana di Tivoli
Villa d'Este, Avenue of the Hundred Fountains
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literature
- Leone Battista Alberti : De re aedificatoria. Nicolaus Laurentii, Florence 29. XII. 1485 (In German: Ten books on architecture [1485]. Translated into German, introduced and provided with notes and drawings by Max Theuer. Heller, Vienna et al. 1912 (2nd, unchanged edition, unchanged reprographic reprint. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2005 , ISBN 3-534-07171-9 )).
- David R. Coffin: The villa d'Este at Tivoli (= Princeton Monographs in Art and Archeology. Vol. 34, ZDB -ID 419074-9 ). Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1960.
- Georgina Masson : Italian Gardens. Droemer / Knaur, Munich et al. 1962.
- Giardini e ville di Toscana. Touring Club Italiano et al., Milan et al. 2003.
