THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



CHAPTER I. 

 INTRODUCTORY. 



The Spirit of the Italian Garden The Influence of Antiquity Baroque and the analogy of Nature 

 iHd, Farm and Garden The Italian note in English Garden Design Work of Sir Charles Barry. 



WHATEVER may have been the vanished charm that placed the mysterious Hanging 

 Gardens of Babylon among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it is 

 hard to believe that it surpassed the achieved magic of the Italian gardens of the 

 Golden Age of the Renaissance. The Villas of Italy have ever been the despair 

 of the garden architects of the whole of Europe. The very madness of the imitation has not 

 succeeded in obscuring the great lessons that they continue to teach. Whether we regard the 

 garden as a creation by itself, or as the outdoor continuation of the house and of the life 

 originating within it, it is to Italy that we turn in our search for a model. The best examples 

 teach the lesson of a sane and artistic adaptation of means to ends the reconciliation of man's 

 handiwork with the surrounding creation of Nature. 



To the end of time there will be those who are unable to form their own synthesis of 

 a style, and to judge of the achievements and tendencies of an art from more than one, or 

 possibly two examples. Thus it is that knowledge of one Italian garden, real or alleged, is 

 sufficient to give them a distaste for the Italian School of architecture and gardening as a whole. 

 The critic is welcomed who talks of midget-haunted ponds, damp fountains, tedious flights of 

 steps, useless balustrades and an ensemble based on a stonemason's yard. To such the Italian 

 might fitly reply in the sense of Dante : " With them I held no converse ; I looked and passed on." 



The attraction of Italy for the Northern races, and for the " Inglese " in particular, 

 is a fact not only of long standing and historical interest, but also of ever-fresh recurrence. The 

 first essential should be a stay of such continuous duration, combined with such wanderings 

 through the less known parts of the peninsula, as will impress on the mind of the English visitor 

 certain fundamental ^^ 



w*-^| 



points of likeness and dis- 

 similarity. Of these, first, 

 perhaps, in importance is 

 the historic sense that is 

 woven through the fabric 

 of Italian life. That 

 Sanctuario on the hill is, 

 no doubt, of the latest 

 barocco, but climb up the 

 hillside and on the way 

 you will pass the hewn 

 caves of the Etruscans. 

 The very church walls 

 themselves embed solid 

 massive relics of the con- 

 structions of Republican 

 or Imperial Rome. All the 

 Middle Ages, passing in 

 a flash, have left a mere 

 trace in some altar-piece 



vV 



I. ITALIAN RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE OF THE EARLY PERIOD, BY 



LEONARDO DA VINCI. 



