ITALIAN GARDENS 



By FERRUCCIO VITALE 

 (Meeting of April 18. 1905) 



IF I should be asked what an Italian garden is, it would be diflBcuIt to reply. It would 

 be much easier to say what it is not. It is not such a concentration of stone or marble 

 benches, wells, statues, and pergolas, in a small, geometrically shaped and generally flat 

 piece of ground, as I have mostly seen called by the name. A nation, as a whole, produces 

 the art which the nature of its land, the character of its people, and the climate suggest. 

 An artist, individually, produces what his environment, what his personality, and what 

 his studies dictate; but the influence of the surroundings in which he was born and raised 

 is much more intense and tenacious than all the others. It is perhaps for this reason that, 

 although we are willing to give up, so to speak, in matters of engineering and detail, which 

 were determined in our minds after training and experience, we are not equally willing 

 to give up in matters of conception and design. 



Italy, if we study its architecture or anything else, must be considered as an aggregation 

 of parts more or less diff^erent from each other, and not as a whole. The political divisions, 

 which have kept the country for centuries under difl'erent rules and rulers, have divided, 

 also, the people of the various provinces, and radically molded in difl'erent ways their 

 intellectual and artistic tendencies. Moreover, the geographical form of Italy, its enormous 

 length in proportion to its width, its large northern plains, and its hilly or mountainous 

 aspect in the central and southern parts, cause a much greater variety of climate than is 

 commonly recognized when one speaks of its blue skies and sunny slopes. 



I would, therefore, begin by making the following division: Lombardy; Venice; Genoa 

 and the Riviera; Tuscany; the Pontifical States; the ex-kingdom of the two Sicilies. I 

 do not think it worth while to take into separate account the gardens of Piedmont, because, 

 in my opinion, they might, with but few exceptions, be more properly included among 

 French rather than among Italian gardens; for France, Piedmont's close neighbor, has 

 at all times exercised a great influence upon that small province. 



Lombardy, the Venetian States, Genoa and its Riviera, diff"er considerably in their 

 physical aspect. The first is a wide and continuous plain, crowned by the lake region; 

 the second is partly covered by picturesque volcanic hills, while the third may be considered 

 as a narrow strip of mountainous land which forms a frame of granite to one of the most 

 beautiful bays in the world. But all three have a point in common — and a very influential 

 one for the purpose of our study — namely, the character of the people in the days when 

 landscape architecture was in its bloom. All three of these provinces possessed a large 

 number of very wealthy nobles, engaged in maritime commerce or speculation, who patron- 

 ized art as a diversion from their daily cares in business. Foreign influence was necessarily 

 very strong with these men who, as a rule, traveled widely. The most striking effect of 

 this influence may be seen in Genoese and Venetian architecture where the French, Spanish, 

 and Moorish styles are frequently very evident. 



Outside of this wealthy coterie, the people took no interest whatsoever in art. Thrifty 

 and industrious, they attended only to the art of making money; the great artists, therefore, 

 were, with few exceptions, imported from other provinces. The same character has pre- 



(37) 



