334 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY 



The gardens of the great Villa Garzoni at Collodi, near Pescia, are a monument of baroque 

 art. The villa overpowers the little antique village, whose ramshackle houses climb the steep 

 hiil behind it, and looms from afar, a huge, giey building, decorated with flamboyant statues, and 

 surrounded by mountains whose undulations are rich with olive woods and vineyards (Fig. 349). 

 The garden is laid out against the hillside, and is evidently designed to impress the visitor as he 

 enters with a grand coup d\ml (Figs. 351 and 352). It differs in this from the gardens of an earlier 

 day, in which you are led on from one revelation to another. Confined within the tall gates and 

 spreading ironwork barriers, the formal garden spreads and expands upwards, lavishly 

 bedecked with plaster figures of great size and small merit. Although the garden, which is 

 a work of the seventeenth century, cannot compare with those of previous ages, there is a fine 

 boldness of idea in the planning of the great stairway, with its balustrades, sweeping up from the 

 centre and rising one tier above another, forming two or three terraces (Figs. 3153 and 354). The 

 terraces themselves are very picturesque, with cypresses towering against the blue distance, and 



347. THE THEATRE, VILLA GARZONI. 



on a summer day the air is heavy with the scent of orange blossom and jasmine. Below the 

 perron of the stairway is placed one of the fantastic shell grottoes so dear to the garden 

 architect of the decadence. It still retains the pretty, foolish trick which must often have 

 made good sport when it was new. You enter, a spring is touched, and a frieze of jets at the 

 entrance keeps you a prisoner till the one who knows the secret bids it cease. We can fancy 

 the conceit lending itself to many mock captures and feigned despairs in those frivolous, bygone 

 summers. 



For Villa Garzoni is par excellence a garden arranged for pleasure. Situated in so isolated 

 a position, far from Florence, alone in the mountains, save for what were only the few peasants' 

 houses that clustered near it, it can only have been used for a summer resort in those days of 

 powder and patches, when its splendour was at its height. Somewhat of an attempt to imitate 

 the gardens of Versailles, it is more rococo and less native than any other of the great villa 



