The Italian Formal Garden 



THROWN UP IN SMALL JETS IT IS POURED FROM BASIN TO BASIN " 

 The Boboli Gardens Florence 



passage through underground conduits, in the form of cas- 

 cades, in which its fall is broken again and again by marble 

 steps, basins and rockeries, massive cataracts, and lofty jets. 

 The roar and agitation of powerful masses of water were rarely 

 attempted or desired ; they would have been out of scale, so to 

 speak, out of harmony with the refined elegance of the gar- 

 dens. Great skill and taste were evinced in the design of the 

 architectural and sculptural elements of these water works, 

 which display generally the same sense of proportion and 

 scale that has been already referred to, and there is often a 

 touch of the grotesque, of humor and exaggeration in the 

 accompanying sculpture, which like that of some of the statues 

 on the terraces, enlivens the scene with a suggestion of 

 comedy. 



Three typical examples of the handling of the water are 

 furnished by the Villas Lante at Bagnaia and d'Este at Tivoli, 

 and the palace gardens at Caserta. In the first-named, largely 



36 



