EENAISSANCE GAKDENS. 



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RENAISSANCE GARDENS. 

 By T. H. Mawson, Hon.A.R.I.B.A. 



[Bead October 12, 1909.] 



In an inquiry into the character and design of the gardens of the 

 Renaissance one must naturally make an inquiry into the term itself and 

 what it expresses. We must not confine ourselves to the restricted sense 

 in which the term is used in our own country, but ascertain its meaning 

 in the world's annals, embracing in our inquiry not alone gardens, but 

 architecture, sculpture, and painting, and see that it counts for a large 

 place in the world's history. 



The word is used in modern language in a very loose sense. It is 

 always difficult as well as unwise to limit a generic term, since we should 

 allow most words an expansive meaning ; but in order to get a concep- 

 tion of what is to be conveyed by its use it is a good plan to get back to 

 what it expresses at its best period, when the great movement found its 

 grandest presentment. It is always a difficulty to define the beginning 

 of a movement and its bounds. 



To make a short cut for the heart of it I may say that Michael 

 Angelo was the greatest artistic genius of the Renaissance. You may take 

 his name as the leading light of that company of architects, sculptors, 

 painters, and designers who fired the Renaissance light in its most glorious 

 period, and you may associate with his name others like-minded, such as 

 Brunelleschi, Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Perugini, Raphael, Alberti, 

 Benvenuto Cellini, and with Dante in literature. The genius of these men 

 was universal and their mental powers were great, like his whose name 

 we have chosen as representative head and leader. 



Their works tower up to-day like monuments around the classic 

 ground of Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice. There instinctively 

 springs to our minds at the very mention of their names and their scenic 

 ground those subtle and noble emotions which those who respond to 

 great art are capable of. Although the greatest of the Renaissance 

 champions had their homes in Italy, where was the spring of the move- 

 ment, we must not confine its bounds to that sunny clime — the foster- 

 mother of the arts — for rich and varied treasures of the movement are 

 to be found in France, Spain, and England, and in lesser degree in other 

 countries, and in a modern way in America. The Renaissance is an 

 inspiring and scholarly form of the ancient classicalism revived to meet 

 the changed conditions of life from medieval times, and to a certain 

 extent to express what is monumental and scholarly at the present day. 

 It is a form of art which is adapted to the expression of a considered 

 scheme on a grand and stately scale. It is the antithesis of the 

 individualism and impressionism of the present day, being more scholarly 

 and deliberate than the sleight-of-hand of modern-day art and tricksters. 



