Italian
Renaissance artists were tasked with the challenge of translating pure form, or
ideal beauty, into physical reality. This task was enhanced by the recent
interest in the mathematical concepts of proportion and harmony. Alberti, a
Renaissance man in every sense of the word (poet, scholar, philosopher, and architect)
also determined how a garden should be designed. He defined beauty as concinnitas. In his words this means, “that reasoned harmony of all
the parts within a body, so that nothing may be added or taken away or altered,
but for the worse,”. To achieve this holistic beauty Alberti promoted the use of symmetry in the gardens as well as
incorporating building parts in symbolically significant ratios of proportion,
thus allowing the harmony of man (the building) and nature (the garden). This
was most commonly done with a central axis upon which the garden is based. The
axis originates at the back of the building and transverses the garden and the
rest of the garden is, more or less, symmetrical. This technique can be applied
to small gardens as well as very large grand gardens (which was more likely
since the individuals who built gardens would be wealthy and building the
gardens for their villa outside the city). An example of this symmetry can be
seen in the botanical Gardens of Padua and Villa d’Este (Fig 1 & 2). The central axis is defined by a path beginning
at the back of the building and running through the garden.
Fig 1:
Fig 2:
As
aforementioned, a new theme of the Renaissance was the harmony between man and
nature and also their relationship to God. One of the goals of the Renaissance
was to gain as much knowledge about humans and our world as possible, for to
know this God-made world was to know God. Therefore the garden was an artistic expression
of God’s creations. The humanists believed that man and nature should be in
harmony, but also that nature could be improved upon. This could be seen in the
grottoes and fountains of the Villas. A
large inspiration for the architechure and design of the Roman and Tuscan
Villas was the book called Hypnerotomachia
Poliphili. In this book there are many descriptions of nature in ancient
Rome (gardens, water/fountains, etc.) and since the desire of the Renaissance
was to bring back the culture form the Roman empire, the architects took the
designs and improved them and made them much larger. A couple of the fountains described in the
book are of mythological creatures, nymphs and harpies, both with water
streaming from their breast. According to the historian Simon Schama, this made
the fountains “both erotic and philosophical, animal and ethereal”. A very
clear example of this style being used in Italian Renaissance gardens is a
Villa d’Este in the Fountain of Diana (Fig 3).
This fountain is also an example of the Roman mythology being heavily
incorporated into the gardens despite the Catholic belief: Diana is the goddess
of the hunt, moon and birthing and is associated with animals and woodland.
Thus making this fountain another display of man and nature connected. Other than the symbolism of the statues that
are a incorporated into the fountains, the sheer display of massive fountains was a way for man to show his
connection to and power over nature. This can be seen in the gardens of Villa
Lante (Fig 4) and Villa d’Este (Fig 5).
Fig 3:
Fig 4:
Fig 5:
Axial symmetry, incorporation
of Roman mythology into the grottoes, and large displays of water in massive fountains were
just a few of the many ways in which the humanist thinking was expressed in the
design of the Italian Renaissance garden.
Sources:
You make a really interesting point about the importance of Greek and Roman mythology in the garden, even though the Catholic Church still played a relatively large role in Renaissance life. I find it surprising that pagan gods and symbols played such a large part in Renaissance gardens, especially since many of the largest gardens in Italy, like Villa d'Este, belonged to Cardinals and other important Church officials, who would naturally be against such pagan idolatry. Perhaps, then, these mythological statues also represent the changing relationship between religion and man, in which humanism flourished and the direct influence of the Church on day-to-day life dwindled.
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