European and Japanese Gardens 



splendid entertainments to tlie brilliant companies that 

 resorted thither. Passionate collectors of antiquities, and 

 affecting, when they did not cherish it, an enthusiasm for 

 antique life, they made their gardens \eritable museums, 

 even at last, counterfeiting antique ruins when they were 

 not fortunate enough to find them read}' at hand on their 

 estates. The villa was thus no park, no reserved territory 

 left to the beauty of its natural wildness, no mere spread of 

 lawn diversified with trees and shrubs. It was designedly an 

 artificial creation, an artistic ensemble, of which the house and 

 the gardens were distinct and complementary parts, the whole 

 treated as a decorative composition, in which each portion 

 and each detail played a definite role. It was formal and 

 artificial, it was refined and classical in style and detail, because 

 that was what the taste of the time demanded, and because no 

 other treatment befitted the antique fragments and sculptures 

 which formed the basis of their adornment. 



But these villa gardens, with all their formal regularity of 



View from the Terrace 



THE JUXTAPOSITION OF ART AND NATURE" 



Villa Pamfili Doria 



25 



