2 THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



or tomb canopy. Thus it is that the insular Briton is thrown back to the days of Ultima Thule. 

 He has come back a mere colonial visiting the centre of his world, that mysterious mother city 

 to which his milestoned roads had ever taught him to look. Much, therefore, that seems of 

 vast importance in his island home dwindles away, and a sense of the permanent and unchanging 

 law of greatness in life and art is awakened in the most restless child of the present century. 



In this receptive mood it becomes possible to examine with profit the local conditions that 

 have shaped Italian art. It is only when we see how present and past are woven in one fabric 

 that we can grasp essentials and avoid the pitfalls of the thought-evading imitator. The Italian 

 garden in its most striking development is the child of the hill city and the mountain torrent. 

 It derives its charm from a climate that is the reverse of our own. A country where summer 

 fetes and promenades can be arranged six weeks ahead with a certainty of fine weather for their 

 fulfilment is a lasting amazement. A summer which means sunshine, and not fog and rain, 

 gives point to fountains, pergolas, tree-shaped theatres, casinos and all those accessories of 

 open-air life in the garden which distinguish the great Italian villa. Consider, too, the glorious 

 music of the waters in days when the heat and dryness of an unbroken, cloudless August 

 sap the energy even of the sun-worshipping ' Inglese." At midday to leave the cool and 

 darkened casa is to encounter at the street door the equivalent of the hot blast of a 



stokehole. The reality 

 of the upper chamber, or 

 belvedere, the arcaded 

 living-room at the top of 

 the house, is felt as part 

 of the mechanism of daily 

 life, and no mere gazebo 

 for an occasional view, 

 seldom or never visited. 

 (Figs. 7, 8 and 9.) 



To live in a hill city 

 is to learn the essentials 

 of the city state ; to feel 

 that the politics of Hellas 

 and Rome were matters 

 of life and death and 

 no mere argumentative 



2. ITALIAN RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD, BY RUBENS. ldeals interesting alone 



to constitutional 1 a w - 



makers. Ostracism is a living force in a community enclosed in walls whose circuit 

 is a morning walk. Party politics meant something when failure to secure an election 

 on your side implied death, prison or banishment. Art responded to the pressure of 

 life passed under strenuous conditions ; the Italian garden is the outcome of a dream of 

 peace and rest amid a sea of tumultuous happenings. In the hill city there is no foreground , 

 but the view leaps the chasm to command widespread plains and narrow valleys bounded by 

 opposing heights. The middle distance is full of interest, spread over with cultivated olive 

 and vineyards, intersected by the windings of the dusty highways where bullock trains labour 

 up the slopes. The gaily painted carts pass with their freight of brightly clad peasants, 

 horsemen and mule riders advance at a quicker pace, and the occasional beggar limps to some 

 friendly wayside seat or roadside fountain as a refuge of shade and repose. 



It is usual to look back to La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo, or dream of the monk Poliphilus, 

 by Francesco Colonna (1433-1527),* for the early beginnings of garden illustration and for the 

 dawnings of the ideals which the Renaissance was so fully to realise. The earliest landscapes, back- 

 grounds of the sacred altar-pieces, show a dawning perception of artistic value of the beauty of 

 hill and valley, of peasant hut and rural life in the open fields. Three types of landscapes of as 

 many epochs are given, those of Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens and Titian (Figs, i, 2 and 3). 



* Aldus, 1499. also Venice, 1545, Paris, 1561. In point of fact, garden ^art can be traced far back through illustrations from early 



illuminated MSS. 



