CHAPTER III 



THE ITALIAN GARDEN 



HE account of Pietro Crescenzi, quoted in the last 

 chapter, enables us to form some idea of the state of 

 garden design in Italy during the latter half of the thir- 

 teenth century. Throughout the whole of the fourteenth 

 and fifteenth centuries the work of Crescenzi stands 

 alone in the history of gardening. As the Renaissance 

 in architecture proceeded, villas sprang into being upon all sides, the 

 result of a period of peace and comparative security, and during the 

 fourteenth century the craze for gardening grew apace, and had become 

 quite a passion when Boccaccio sketched from life the delightful picture 

 of the garden of his time in the introduction to the third day of the Decameron. 

 He describes a garden breathing the spirit of the Ancients, one which might 

 have been laid out quite as well in the days of Pliny as in the middle of the 

 fourteenth century. The garden of the fairy palace to which Pampinea 

 conducts her gay company has been identified as that of the Villa Palmiera, 

 some few miles outside Florence. The spot was well known to Boccaccio, 

 and from his habit of taking many of his sketches direct from life it may 

 readily be assumed that he faithfully portrays the Italian garden of his 

 time. 



Such gardens as Boccaccio has described are frequently found in paint- 

 ings of the period. The well-known " Massacre of the Innocents " in 

 the Academy at Florence shows a courtyard enclosure, upon the walls of 

 which is a pergola with low round bowls alternating between the columns. 

 In Lorenzo Lotto's picture of " Christ's farewell to the Virgin " is a 

 garden with pleached alleys leading to a circular arbour (see annexed figure), 

 and in Pinturicchio's picture of " Susanna and the Elders " the garden is 

 shown, surrounded by a low red wall and a hedge of roses trained upon a 



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