DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0249
220
History of Garden Art
was of the very simplest nature, and there was nothing more than hedges, leafy walks,
and clipped trees. The size of an ornamental garden was still very small, whereas the
gardens for fruit and vegetables, so soon to be carefully hidden in the background, were
large and important. The princely estate is at its best, however, in the park. In the early
years of the Renaissance the love for keeping wild and strange beasts in cages, and the
desire to have them to hunt, grew enormously, as it had done among the ancients. For
this purpose a wide place was desirable, where large aviaries and fishponds could be kept
up. Men of smaller property had such features close to their villas—Soderini, for example,
having fishponds on both sides of his own house.
A park of this sort could not of course have any pretensions to artistic unity, but
we may suppose the place was mapped out and ornamented with a few things here and
there. Thus the French poet describes the park at Poggio Reale as having barricades
for wild beasts, and meadows for domestic animals at grass, and also aviaries and vine-
yards. There is a fountain "big enough to supply the whole town," and there are also
grottoes. Concerning other parks, such as the one belonging to the Cardinal Aquileja,
and the one set up by Prince Ercole close to the gates of Ferrara, we only know the
actual fact that they were there. In Filarete's architectural romance, he has much fanciful
description of a park, but the whole tale of buildings and gardens of fabulous size and
splendour must have been born of his own imagination. He gave the reins to an architect's
dream, so often balked by hard fact, for at the court of Francis I. the Renaissance ideas
of Sforza certainly never materialised: the hanging gardens of his Prince Zagaglia are just
an attempt to outdo in a fairy-tale the gardens of Semiramis in Diodorus.
The park is more easy to understand, for here the writer had in his mind that
in front of the gates of Milan. Filarete's princely park was encompassed by a great wall,
and lower ones intersected the gardens to separate the wild beasts from the tame;
also there were large ponds for ducks and herons, as these birds were hunted with hawk
and falcon. Watch-towers were set up on artificial mounds, from which to view the
chase. At the top of a large round hill at the place of the wild animals the prince had
a church built in a thick shrubbery of pines and laurels, and inside it a hermitage, where
a hermit lived. It had always been considered an advantage to have a holy man living on
the estate. No doubt the romantic and picturesque surroundings were mingled with a
certain sentimentality, for a hermitage, like ancient ruins, seems to be a thing people
like to come upon, and this kind of feeling was natural at a period when men were so much
concerned with their own past. In the love dialogue of Bembo one of the speakers says
that he found a pretty round wood on the rocky hill at the end of the garden, where a
hermit had made his abode among the thick shady walks.
In this matter, as with the passion for ruins, we find only isolated instances among
Italians at this time; and yet the mighty remains of their forefathers in Rome excited
their imagination, and the longing to possess as their own some real antique objects not
only led them to construct gardens round genuine ruins, but also round "faked" ones. Vasari
speaks of a sham rum in a barchetto (small park), which the prince put in the old restored
castle of Pesaro. Inside it there was a handsome staircase like the one at the Belvedere in
Rome. Polifilo also, in his Hypnerotomachia, gives a most romantic account of a ruin of this
kind (Fig. 158). But these seem to have been exceptional, for in Italy there was such an im-
mense quantity of genuine remains of the past that the disguise seemed too poor and thin.
History of Garden Art
was of the very simplest nature, and there was nothing more than hedges, leafy walks,
and clipped trees. The size of an ornamental garden was still very small, whereas the
gardens for fruit and vegetables, so soon to be carefully hidden in the background, were
large and important. The princely estate is at its best, however, in the park. In the early
years of the Renaissance the love for keeping wild and strange beasts in cages, and the
desire to have them to hunt, grew enormously, as it had done among the ancients. For
this purpose a wide place was desirable, where large aviaries and fishponds could be kept
up. Men of smaller property had such features close to their villas—Soderini, for example,
having fishponds on both sides of his own house.
A park of this sort could not of course have any pretensions to artistic unity, but
we may suppose the place was mapped out and ornamented with a few things here and
there. Thus the French poet describes the park at Poggio Reale as having barricades
for wild beasts, and meadows for domestic animals at grass, and also aviaries and vine-
yards. There is a fountain "big enough to supply the whole town," and there are also
grottoes. Concerning other parks, such as the one belonging to the Cardinal Aquileja,
and the one set up by Prince Ercole close to the gates of Ferrara, we only know the
actual fact that they were there. In Filarete's architectural romance, he has much fanciful
description of a park, but the whole tale of buildings and gardens of fabulous size and
splendour must have been born of his own imagination. He gave the reins to an architect's
dream, so often balked by hard fact, for at the court of Francis I. the Renaissance ideas
of Sforza certainly never materialised: the hanging gardens of his Prince Zagaglia are just
an attempt to outdo in a fairy-tale the gardens of Semiramis in Diodorus.
The park is more easy to understand, for here the writer had in his mind that
in front of the gates of Milan. Filarete's princely park was encompassed by a great wall,
and lower ones intersected the gardens to separate the wild beasts from the tame;
also there were large ponds for ducks and herons, as these birds were hunted with hawk
and falcon. Watch-towers were set up on artificial mounds, from which to view the
chase. At the top of a large round hill at the place of the wild animals the prince had
a church built in a thick shrubbery of pines and laurels, and inside it a hermitage, where
a hermit lived. It had always been considered an advantage to have a holy man living on
the estate. No doubt the romantic and picturesque surroundings were mingled with a
certain sentimentality, for a hermitage, like ancient ruins, seems to be a thing people
like to come upon, and this kind of feeling was natural at a period when men were so much
concerned with their own past. In the love dialogue of Bembo one of the speakers says
that he found a pretty round wood on the rocky hill at the end of the garden, where a
hermit had made his abode among the thick shady walks.
In this matter, as with the passion for ruins, we find only isolated instances among
Italians at this time; and yet the mighty remains of their forefathers in Rome excited
their imagination, and the longing to possess as their own some real antique objects not
only led them to construct gardens round genuine ruins, but also round "faked" ones. Vasari
speaks of a sham rum in a barchetto (small park), which the prince put in the old restored
castle of Pesaro. Inside it there was a handsome staircase like the one at the Belvedere in
Rome. Polifilo also, in his Hypnerotomachia, gives a most romantic account of a ruin of this
kind (Fig. 158). But these seem to have been exceptional, for in Italy there was such an im-
mense quantity of genuine remains of the past that the disguise seemed too poor and thin.