The Italian Formal Garden 



At Tivoli, where there is too much water rather than not 

 enoug'h, and where the upper grades are very steep and the lower 

 ones very grackial, the upper terraces of the ViUa d'Este abound 

 in monumental fountains and cascades, as well as in the ruins 

 of innumerable trick fountains and aquatic eccentricities orig- 

 inally designed to be set in operation by the unwitting steps 

 of the \isitor. Among them was formerly a celebrated water 

 organ, now ruined and silent. The central cascade, or line of 

 cascades, was of great volume, proportioned to the large scale 

 of the whole villa, while on the lower, easy gradients, the water 

 flowed quietly into and through great basins, bordered with 

 vases, shaded with trees, and emptying by little cascades from 

 one to the other, till the water finally disappeared underground. 

 Carlo Fontana, rightly named, was the artificer of these water- 

 works. Several of the villas at Frascati, like the Mondragone 

 and the Aldobrandini, illustrate the same principles. 



At Caserta we have the one example of the colossal in the 

 scale of the water works of an Italian garden. These grounds 

 were laid out by Van Vitelli in 1753, after a sojourn at Paris 

 and Versailles, where he had studied the vast landscape-works 

 and fountains of Le Notre. In the Caserta grounds, if he did 

 not better the instruction, he at least showed consummate skill 

 in the adaptation of its teachings to his special conditions, 

 wholly different from those at Versailles ; for the Caserta 

 grounds are but one thousand feet wide, extending back two 

 miles, first with a gentle grade and then by a steep ascent 

 reaching the summit of the thickly-wooded hill far behind the 

 palace. The water tumbles for nearly a mile over a channel 

 filled with broken rocks, which churn it white, so that it is 

 visible and effective even when seen from the palace two miles 

 away. It then passes through a succession of immense basins, 

 from each of which it issues by a cascade twenty or thirty feet 

 high, each differing essentially from the others, and several of 

 them adorned with statuary not always in the best taste. The 

 architectural treatment of the successive cascades is ingeniously 

 varied, and in several of them is conspicuously successful. A 

 strip of grass two hundred feet wide on either side, planted 

 with occasional flower-beds and flanked by wonderfully beauti- 

 ful ilex avenues next the side walls of the grounds, completes 

 the simple but effective plan of the gardens. Here the water 

 is purposely handled on a colossal scale, suited to the great 



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