THE GARDEXS OE ITALY. 
nr tomb canopy. Thus it is that the insular Briton is thrown back to the days of Ultima Thule. 
He has come back a mere colonial visiting the centre of his world, that mysterious mother city 
to which his milestoned roads had ever taught him to look. Much, therefore, that seems of 
vast importance in his island home dwindles away, and a sense of the permanent and unchanging 
law of greatness in life and art is awakened in the most restless child of the present century. 
In this receptive mood it becomes possible to examine with profit the local conditions that 
have shaped Italian art. It is only when we see how present and past are woven in one fabric 
that we can grasp essentials and avoid the pitfalls of the thought-evading imitator. The Italian 
garden in its most striking development is the child of the hill city and the mountain torrent. 
It derives its charm from a climate that is the reverse of our own, A countrv where summer 
fetes and promenades can be arranged six weeks ahead with a certainty of fine weather for their 
fulfilment is a lasting amazement. A summer which means sunshine, and not fog and rain, 
gives point to fountains, pergolas, tree-shaped theatres, casinos and all those accessories of 
open-air life in the garden which distinguish the great Italian villa. Consider, too, the glorious 
music of the waters in days when the heat and dryness of an unbroken, cloudless August 
sap the energy even of the sun-worshipping " Inglese.” At midday to leave the cool and 
darkened casa is to encounter at the street door the equivalent of the hot blast of a 
stokehole. The realitv 
of the upper chamber, or 
belvedere, the arcaded 
living-room at the top of 
the house, is felt as part 
of the mechanism of daily 
life, and no mere gazebo 
for an occasional view, 
seldom or never visited. 
(Figs. 7, 8 and g.) 
To live in a hill city 
is to learn the essentials 
of the city state ; to feel 
that the politics of Hellas 
and Rome were matters 
of life and death and 
no mere argumentative 
2. — IT.^LI.VN REN.VISSANCE LANDSCAPE OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD, BY RUBENS. interesting alone 
to constitutional 1 a w - 
makers. Ostracism is a living force in a communitv enclosed in walls whose circuit 
is a morning walk. Party politics meant something when failure to secure an election 
on your side implied death, prison or banishment. Art responded to the pressure of 
life passed under strenuous conditions ; the Italian garden is the outcome of a dream of 
peace and rest amid a sea of tumultuous happenings. In the hill city there is no foreground 
but the view leaps the chasm to command widespread plains and narrow valleys bounded by 
opposing heights. The middle distance is full of interest, spread over with cultivated olive 
and vineyards, intersected by the windings of the dusty highways w'here bullock trains labour 
up the slopes. The gaily painted carts pass with their freight of brightly clad peasants, 
horsemen and mule riders advance at a quicker pace, and the occasional beggar limps to some 
friendly wayside seat or roadside fountain as a refuge of shade and repose. 
It is usual to look back to La Hypncrotomachia di Poliphilo, or dream of the monk Poliphilus, 
by Francesco Colonna (1433-1527),* for the early beginnings of garden illustration and for the 
dawnings of the ideals which the Renaissance was so fully to realise. The earliest landscapes, back- 
grounds of the sacred altar-pieces, show a dawning perception of artistic value of the beauty of 
hill and valley, of peasant hut and rural life in the open fields. Three types of landscapes of as 
many epochs are given, those of Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens and Titian (Figs, i, 2 and 3). 
'Aldus. 1499 also Venice, 15-45, Paris, ijGf. In point of fact, yaruen art can be traced far back through illustrations Iroiii early 
illuminated MSS. 
