Chapter Five

THE GARDEN AS THEATER 5.17. Chantilly. Engraving from Recueil des Veues des Plus Beaux Lieux de France by Adam and Nicholas Pérelle, 1688 to local conditions and taste. It is a style that is still France itself, where the recently built Parc Citroën in influential, as can be seen in some of the gardens of Paris shows how its enduring principles can be trans- the American landscape architects Dan Kiley and lated into a contemporary idiom. Peter Walker, for example. It can also be observed in II. THE GARDEN AS THEATER: ITALIAN BAROQUE AND ROCOCO GARDENS The austere harmonies of French classicism never decorative coats of arms and other family emblems penetrated very deeply into the Italian design ethos. were prominently featured instead of being merely The seventeenth-century Italian style, like that of Le encoded symbolically into the landscape.18 Nôtre, was an integrative one in which individual Not only were dramatic astonishment and the- parts were organized into a unified composition. But atrical perspective effectively used in the layout of instead of achieving compositional unity with author- Italian Baroque gardens, but also many of the gar- itarian axes flung down along lines apparently extend- dens of this period contained actual outdoor theaters ing into infinity, the builders of Italian gardens—often with a grassy stage, hedges for wings, and some- encouraged by topography—wove dramatic hang- times, peeping forth from the greenery, terra-cotta ing terraces and ornamental flights of stairs into figures representing stock characters of the comme- hillsides to produce theatrical arrangements of land- dia dell’arte tradition popularized by troupes of Ital- scape. The dramatic potential of moving water con- ian actors since the second half of the sixteenth tinued to be exploited in the construction of elaborate century (fig. 5.18). Pastoral drama was echoed in the sculptural cascades like the one at Villa Lante (see fig. sculptural Satyrs and Pans that populated garden 4.25). Unlike French garden designers, whose strug- woods or the edges of garden walks, as well as in the gles to furnish water to their fountains, pools, and cas- taste for genre figures of peasants engaged in a vari- cades were herculean and often intensely frustrating ety of tasks. as well as wasteful both of capital and human lives, Italian designers probably found the Cartesian Italian architects were more fortunate in their ability paradigm of non-place-specific axial planning less con- to convey water to their sites in copious quantities, genial than one that recognized place as particular albeit also at the expense of much backbreaking labor and bounded. This may be explained by the fact that and often intense politics. Their gardens were vehi- the topography throughout much of Italy is hilly, cles for princely pomp and display, and the glorifica- thereby promoting greater opportunity visually for tion of their patrons became ever more explicit as spatial enclosure than for spatial extension. In 179 THE GARDEN AS THEATER 5.18. Green theater with commedia dell’arte terra-cotta figures, Villa Marlia, near Lucca, Italy Below: 5.19. Water Theater with spiral pillars, and Cas- cade in the background, Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati, Italy. Designed by Giacomo della Porta, Carlo Maderno, and Giovanni Fontana. 1601–1621. Engraving by Giovanni Battista Falda, from Le Fontane delle Ville di Frascati. Atlas stands beneath the cascade carrying a celestial globe signifying divine wisdom. Originally a Far left: 5.20. Polyphemus, figure of Hercules (now gone) Water Theater, Villa Aldobran- assisted Atlas. Similarly, Cardi- dini. This figure and that of a nal Aldobrandini wished to be centaur (fig. 5.21) illustrate a seen as helping Pope Clement common humanist theme: VIII to uphold Christian truth. the struggle of reason over bestiality. addition, Italian designers were more likely to retain, ial pastimes resulted in relatively small gardens com- Left: 5.21. Centaur figure, however unconsciously, the concept of topos—the posed of well-proportioned “rooms” of greenery. Water Theater, Villa philosophical notion of emplacement derived from One French feature, the parterre de broderie, did gain Aldobrandini Aristotle—because it was already abundantly mani- popularity. By the end of the seventeenth century, it fested in the antique classical landscape tradition to had mostly replaced the geometric compartments of ceed him at a later date. At the very least, the influ- THE FARNESE GARDENS AT which they were heirs. Although much larger than traditional parterres. ence of this relative as a member of the Church estab- CAPRAROLA AND ON THE their Italian Renaissance counterparts, on the whole, lishment would perpetuate the prestige and wealth PALATINE HILL, ROME Italian gardens in the seventeenth century were more VILLA ALDOBRANDINI of the papal family. Papal villa gardens and those cre- At Caprarola, near Viterbo, in the first third of the intimately scaled than those of contemporary France, By the mid-sixteenth century, nepotism had become ated by the cardinal-nephews were therefore opulent sixteenth century, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese had and though axes might dissolve into nature, they did thoroughly institutionalized within the Catholic essays in power politics. commissioned Antonio da Sangallo the Younger not appear to extend into the indefinite distance as if Church, and it was common practice for a pope to Frascati, a hillside town outside of Rome, was (1483–1546) to build a fortified palace, a huge pen- to meet the line of the horizon. In conservative Tus- appoint a nephew as cardinal to serve in the capacity famed, like Tivoli, as a locale of the villeggiatura, the tagonal building with bastions. In 1556, with fear of cany, this observation holds true to an even greater of trusted assistant during his pontificate. The cardi- annual summertime retreat to the country from the renewed Spanish invasion diminishing, the cardinal degree. A predilection for comparatively simple famil- nal-nephew thereby became a strong candidate to suc- heat of the city. It gained prominence after the elec- commissioned the architect Vignola to transform his tion of Pope Clement VIII in 1592, when his nephew fortress into a summer villa. It has been saved for dis- Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini undertook at great cussion here because the additions, which were made expense the introduction of water from the Molara around 1620 by Girolamo Rainaldi (1570–1655), illus- Springs on Monte Algido. The provision of a water- trate the evolution of Italian garden design from a works allowed the construction of an impressive cas- metaphorical fusion of art and nature within the con- cade and magnificent water theater at the villa he built text of a carefully conceived humanistic iconography for himself and his uncle. The architect Carlo into a more purely aesthetic architectural statement. Maderno (c. 1556–1629), assisted by the fountain engi- Caprarola’s significance in the history of land- neer Giovanni Fontana, was responsible for this scape design lies in the creation of the Barchetto, a impressive design. secluded retreat with a casino and herm-guarded The relaxed, ample, architectonic muscularity giardino segreto approached by a quarter-mile-long of this garden sequence epitomizes the Italian path leading through the woods from the summer Baroque garden style. The architectural robustness garden next to the palace (figs. 5.22–5.25). It was built and play of light and shade characteristic of the period five years after Vignola’s death in 1573, probably are particularly evident in the semicircular arcaded according to the design of Giacomo del Duca. Its water theater facing the ground floor of the villa (fig. design as a series of descending terraces built into a 5.19). Its sculptural decor displays the naturalistic char- hillside, its fountain flanked by reclining river gods, acter, compositional arrangement into counterbal- and its curvilinear catena d’acqua, or water cascade, anced diagonals, and thrusting movement into space imitate Vignola’s achievement at Bagnaia. that we associate with Baroque art in general. The The Barchetto at Caprarola, created in two iconographic program, however, is still allusively sym- epochs of garden building—with its original form bolic—a late example of the humanistic message- echoing Vignola’s design at the Villa Lante and its garden (figs. 5.20–5.21). later additions by Rainaldi—provides a unique and 180 181 Ạ ả 5.23. Catena d’acqua, Caprarola Below: 5.24. Giardino segreto and stairway with a water banister of stone dolphins, Caprarola Ả ạ barchetto, caprarola 5.22. Plan of Barchetto, Caprarola. Designed by Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, Giacomo del Duca, and Girolamo Rainaldi. 1556–1620. Drawing by J. C. Shepherd and G. A. Jellicoe, from Italian Gardens of the Renaissance, 1925 one approaches the Barchetto today on either side of a huge vase-shaped between the outer sloping walls on either garden by substituting large herms with on the same fir-lined path, passing fountain ạ. From this, jets of water pat- side of the circular pool and the inner expressive faces and gestures for the through woods of chestnut, beech, ilex, terned to form the Farnese lily spill water walls, which also slope upward as they globe finials that originally decorated the and holm oak, as did Cardinal Farnese into a basin below (fig. 5.25). Curving define the edges of the twin ramps beside perimeter parapet (fig. 5.24). The vases when he wished to enjoy the privacy of ramps lead up to the giardino segreto Ả the water chain, give additional architec- on their heads give a uniform “cornice the casino he had built for summer din- and the casino ả. The casino has a tonic power to the composition. At the line” to the green room of box compart- ing. It is pleasantly surprising to double loggia at its base and a single piazza of the Vase Fountain, along the ments they preside over, thereby increas- encounter the first of a series of terraces loggia above where the piano nobile curving wall embracing the stairs that ing the architectural character of the carved into this woodland setting.

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