European and Japanese Gardens 
splendid entertainments to the 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 veritable museums, 
even at last, counterfeiting antique ruins when they were 
not fortunate enough to find them ready 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 
“the JUXTAPOSITION OF ART AND NATURE” 
View from the Terrace Villa Pamfili Doria 
25 
