The Organ Fountain at the Villa d’Este is the ultimate example of garden architecture: An elaborate architectural backdrop creates a frame for the small cupola in the central niche. The cupola originally housed a complex hydraulic organ, which produced sounds by water forcing air into a set of organ pipes. After centuries of disuse, the organ was recently restored, and now delights tourists hourly.
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Luxurious Gardens Designed by Architects
Italian Gardens: Romantic Splendor in the Edwardian Age
by Helena Attlee; photographs by Charles Latham
The Monacelli Press, New York, NY; 2009
192 pp; hardcover; 200 b&w images; $65
ISBN 978-1-58093-231-8
Reviewed by Clem Labine
The word "romantic" in the subtitle of this magnificent new volume has paradoxically conflicting meanings in relation to the book's contents. On one hand, the term is blatantly inaccurate because the book depicts gardens that were definitely not designed as romantic gardens in the sense of the 18th-century Romantic Movement. Rather, the 200 photographs show formal, Classical gardens – geometric, symmetrical products of the logical Latin mind that dominated the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
On the other hand, these Classical gardens were photographed in 1903 – a few hundred years after they had been built, and so most were in a state of genteel decay with partially crumbling masonry accented by mosses, lichens and tangled vines. Their faded splendor thus qualified them as "romantic ruins," one of the favorite motifs of Victorian and Edwardian audiences. And the fact that they were semi-ruined Italian gardens made them doubly romantic, because the English-speaking world had been swooning for decades over the romance of Italy, spurred on by the writings of romantic poets like Byron and Shelley.
This Monacelli Press opus is primarily a picture book, and the story of the photographs is fascinating in itself. In the spring of 1903, the well-known English photographer Charles Latham left London with his large-format camera, several boxes of glass photographic plates, plus an assistant and an assignment from Country Life magazine to photograph historic gardens around Rome and Florence. Latham and his camera produced black-and-white photographs of exceptional clarity and beauty that documented these gardens at a critical point in their history. Italy was on the brink of two world wars and enormous political and economic upheavals that would totally destroy most of these historic pleasure grounds.
A few of the lost gardens have subsequently been partially restored, but for most of them, all that remains are the images stored on Latham's glass negatives.
Latham's photographs were originally published in a large-format volume, The Gardens of Italy, in 1905. Fortunately, Latham's fragile glass-plate negatives still survive, stored in the London archives of Country Life magazine. Because of the magazine's careful stewardship of its photographic files, it is now possible for the world to revel again in the glorious legacy of Classical Italian garden art in its most extravagant form. This new publication of Latham's historic photographs shows 22 of Italy's most ornate and sumptuous Renaissance and Baroque gardens, including the Vatican Gardens, Rome; Villa d'Este, Tivoli; Villa Medici, Rome; Villa Doria Pamphili, Rome; Villa Albani, Rome; and the Villa Farnese, Caprarola.
The jumbo-size 10 x 12-in. format allows the photographs to be displayed to maximum advantage; many of the images cover all 240 square inches of a two-page spread. The high quality of the printing and paper do full justice to the clarity of Latham's original negatives, allowing the reader to discern many of the delicious small architectural details that are to be found in nearly every image.
The text by Helena Attlee, a seasoned writer on garden and landscape topics, provides brief but insightful commentary on each garden. She gives you the history and design concept behind each, and brings to life many of the personalities involved with the gardens' construction, such as the French fontanieri, Luc Le Clerc, who created the fabled Organ Fountain at Villa d'Este.
Contemporary readers will instantly notice how little plant material is contained within these historic Italian gardens. These are not horticulturalists' gardens, but rather are architects' gardens. Their appearance is partly due to the hot dry climate of Italy, which limits the choice and distribution of plant material. But a greater factor in the look of these gardens was the spirit of the time in which they were created. During the Renaissance, intellectual life was shaped by humanist Classicism. In the humanist imagination, gardens were part of the Classical Golden Age, with its Elysian Fields and gardens of Arcadia. But most of all, the image of Classicism's Golden Age was linked to architecture, a vision shaped by the ruins of ancient Rome that protruded from the earth everywhere on the Italian peninsula.
So it was not unexpected that when members of Renaissance aristocracy set out to build sumptuous gardens to symbolize their power and wealth, they turned to their architects. The trend got its impetus in 1504, when Pope Julius II commissioned Bramante, the first architect of St. Peter's Basilica, to design the initial section of what eventually became the extensive Vatican Gardens. Bramante's trend-setting garden work was, not surprisingly, quite architectonic.
In 16th-century Italy, the art of gardening and landscaping was not highly developed. So when Renaissance architects set out to design gardens, it was quite natural that what they did essentially was create outdoor rooms and passages for strolling and entertaining. Renaissance designers built muscular architectural settings in which plant materials were treated like decorative accessories, much as you'd place an ornamental lamp in a living room today.
The "bones" of these architectural gardens dominate the majority of Latham's photographs. His images are filled with structural elements like grottoes, terraces, balustrades, staircases, fountains, water chains, gates, pools, pavilions, cascades, sculpture, arcades, colonnades, plinths, pedestals, urns, herms and even small temples. These hardscape elements provide the framework and backdrop for displaying carefully chosen specimen plants. Many of the trees and hedges are meticulously and obviously shaped by the hand of man; topiary is a recurring feature.
In Romantic landscapes created in the 18th and 19th centuries, the gardener's hand was carefully hidden and all should appear as if nature herself was the designer. In these historic Italian gardens, however, it was important to show that man's intellect had shaped the environment; the chaotic forces of nature had been tamed and were under rational control.
This new Monacelli book has obvious worth as an historical record. But it has considerable value for contemporary designers, too.
Obviously, only a Renaissance prince could afford to build elaborate gardens on the scale shown in this volume. And few clients today fall into that category. But the book can be an inspiration to show how architecture can play a pivotal role in shaping beautiful outdoor environments – even if it's on a smaller scale than a princely Renaissance pleasure ground. Most landscape and garden projects today are designed by "plant people" who, quite naturally, think that green stuff rules. Their first concern is the type and disposition of plant material. The Latham photographs demonstrate that there is an alternative design philosophy, which believes that splendid outdoor environments can be created through emphasis on hardscape.
On a smaller scale, the gardens illustrated in this Attlee/Latham publication can also provide an endless source of design ideas on how to integrate ornamental architectural elements into a garden to provide visual accents in the midst of blooms and foliage. Even if you're not working with the budget of an Italian prince, you can still benefit from this extraordinary photographic compilation. TB
Clem Labine is the founder of Old House Journal, Traditional Building and Period Homes magazines. He has received numerous awards, including awards from The Preservation League of New York State, the Arthur Ross Award from Classical America and The Harley J. McKee Award from the Association for Preservation Technology (APT). Labine was a founding board member of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America (ICA&CA). He served on the board until 2005 when he moved to Board Emeritus status. His blog can be seen at www.traditional-building.com/clem_labine.
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