SrTLES OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN 41 



or niches or other decorative treatment as the case may be. (See 

 Drawing I, opp. p. 26, and Tailpiece on p. 23.) The treatment of 

 water is carried to a great degree of ingenious and fanciful elaboration : 

 water-ramps, water tables, cascades, fountains, and pools of all kinds 

 interweave their sparkle and reflection with the masses of sun and shade 

 into which the schemes are designed to fall. 



In the villas built in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, 

 the Baroque style was carried to at least as great extremes as it was in 

 architecture, because the less necessity for any recognition of struc- 

 tural architectural requirements in garden design and the greater legiti- 

 mate chance for an unrestricted play of fancy gave an exceptional 

 opportunity to the exuberant designers of those times. Among the 

 examples of work done in this period are the Villa Aldobrandini at 

 Frascati, Isola Bella, Villa Giovio at Como, and the Villa Garzoni 

 (Collodi). (See Drawing IV, opp. p. 40.) In these designs, a leading 

 motive in the architecture seems to be to produce striking and pictur- 

 esque forms, violent contrasts of detail and flat surface, even at the 

 sacrifice of delicacy and justness of individual form, rather than to 

 recognize the use and structural lines of the buildings ; and in the 

 smaller garden structures, the gates and steps and niches, this treat- 

 ment of architectural forms as stage scenery to be looked at rather than 

 anything to be used reaches its extreme. In some cases this treatment 

 of each scene for itself alone is admirable ; in other cases the illusion is 

 so transparent that the attention is drawn rather to the incongruity of 

 the scene with its surroundings than to the artistic completeness of the 

 scene within itself.* 



The period of the development of the Italian Renaissance and 

 Baroque gardens covers roughly three centuries. During all this 

 period, though men's ideas as to beauty in decoration changed, men's 

 modes of living continued much the same, and from these and 

 from the climate and vegetation have come essential characteristics 

 which are found in nearly all the villas whether early or late. These 

 are noticeably a feeling for the preciousness of water, expressed in the 

 many ingenious means for displaying all its beauties ; a feeling for the 

 peace and relief of shade in a brilliant and sunny climate, and much 



* Cf. Chapter VII, p. 117, Illusions. 



