Villa Lante

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garden
Waterfall and stone table
Garden plan Villa Lante by Henry Inigo Triggs (around 1910)

The Villa Lante is located in Bagnaia , a district of Viterbo in Italy .

There is a villa of the same name Lante al Gianicolo on Gianicolo Hill in Rome , in which the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae and the Finnish Embassy at the Holy See are located.

Casini

The most original building was built by Cardinal Raffaele Riario in 1477 . This was a hunting pavilion for Pope Leo X. Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Gambara began building a villa in 1566 under the direction of the architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola . In 1573 the first casino was completed; Cardinal Alessandro Peretti had a second built in 1587. These two casini represent the center of the park. In 1656 the nobleman Ippolito Lante , 1st Duke of Bomarzo, changed the building and the park slightly. The frescoes in the so-called Stanza della Caccia of Casino Gambara are attributed to Antonio Tempesta .

garden

The park was also laid out by Vignola in terraces on a hill flank: stairs and ramps run down the slope. At the foot of the hill is a fountain with bronze figures by Taddeo Lantini . Pavilions , which are not parallel to each other, but at an inclined angle, make the entire structural unit appear to widen for the ascending observer, while viewed from above there is a narrowing and the space between the pavilions appears optically limited.

Water plays an important role in this park: a system of fountains and watercourses runs over the entire slope of the hill. The park is an early example of the symbiosis of natural and cultural landscapes.

Garden description

There is a formal garden at the bottom of the hill . In its center is a square fountain ( Fontana del quadrato ) with a circular basin in the middle. Four figures of naked youths, attributed to Taddeo Lantini, hold the Montalto coat of arms.

Behind the twin buildings of the Casini the terrain rises and in this first step are the fountain of lights and the grottoes of Venus and Neptune. Above, the area widens to a terrace, which is dominated in the middle by a stone table (The Cardinal's Table), which has a channel filled with water in the longitudinal axis. Wine and fruit could be cooled in it.

The giant fountain rises up the slope and is fed by a water chain. The water chain arises from the mouth of a crab ( gambero ) and runs down the slope, the water being repeatedly deflected by stones that lie in its course. The top terrace is decorated with the octagonal dolphin fountain with several bowls one on top of the other. The conclusion is formed by the two loggias of the muses. They enclose a grotto in which the spring rises, which feeds the water garden.

The garden tells the story of the lost paradise that has been rediscovered. It begins at the foot of a large hill, where it represents the distant and simple past when humans were in the natural state. The garden then progresses over three terraces and ends as a culmination point in the golden age of the cardinal who built the garden. The universe is represented in miniature in the garden. Gardens have always been, in some respects, analogies of the universe as it was understood in the respective time. The universe mirrored in this garden moves to the current high performance of Italian art and science.

Web links

literature

  • Fritz Barth: The Villa Lante in Bagnaia. Menges, Stuttgart 2001. ISBN 3-932565-05-3
  • Massimo Listri, Cesare M. Cunaccia: Italian Gardens. Fascinating garden art from five centuries. Bassermann, Niedernhausen / Ts. 2001, ISBN 3-8094-0998-7 .
  • Michel Saudan, Sylvia Saudan-Skira: Magic of the garden world. Taschen, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-8228-7831-6 ( Evergreen ).
  • Marie Luise Gothein : History of garden art. Volume 1: From Egypt to the Renaissance in Italy, Spain and Portugal. 2nd Edition. Diederichs, Jena 1926 (reprint. 4th edition. Diederichs, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-424-013676-1 ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Institutum Romanum Finlandiae
  2. ^ Charles Jencks: The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. Frances Lincoln Publishers Ltd, London 2003, ISBN 0-7112-2216-9 , p. 17.

Coordinates: 42 ° 25 ′ 32.2 ″  N , 12 ° 9 ′ 19 ″  E