DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0411
382
History of Garden Art
geometrical parterre. What is best worth noticing is the park, which opens behind the
house, and has several little chapels in it. At the highest point, half concealed m rock, is
the beautiful rotunda of the Mary Chapel, with a ruined arcade round it. The entrance
to this small place, lying among lovely trees, is by a door with Sanscrit inscriptions on
it. In the middle of this space stands a tombstone which states that here rests the heart
of Dom Joao after the work that in life he devoted to his fatherland. The park seemed
wonderful to contemporaries because of the number of foreign plants it contained, brought
home by de Castro from his travels, and falling in thus with the botanical interests of the
period. His biographer relates that he had the fruit-bearing trees removed from this
place (which the king had given him as a reward for his services) in order that he might
gain nothing useful from it.
A marked feature in the decoration of Portuguese architecture and gardens is the
FIG. 305. QUINTA DI BACALHAO—POOL IN THE GARDEN AND PILLARED PAVILION
use of tiles, originally blue but afterwards of different-coloured materials. Here, as in Spain,
they were a legacy of Moorish art, but in Portugal the use of them was more widespread
and endured for a longer time. These tiles they particularly liked (as we saw in the cloister
courts) for the basins, where the reflections gave a variegated effect. So the peculiar treat-
ment of such basins gave a national character to the Portuguese gardens of the sixteenth
century. In the first villa that clearly shows Italian influence in Portugal, the country
place of Bacalhao, a charming specimen has been preserved. The founder was the natural
son and sole heir of the great Admiral Albuquerque. As quite a young man this Alfonso
travelled in Italy in 1521 in the train of Donna Brites, when she came to Savoy as the
duke's bride. From Villafranca, near Nice, where they landed, the Portuguese gentlemen
made a journey to Italy, and there Alfonso had his eyes opened and his taste formed when
he saw the pictures of Italian art. Thus when later he bought this property from the
Infante and built his castle he chose Italian styles, but his garden showed his own
individual taste as well as a combination of Spanish and Italian.
The house is approached through a court flanked by pavilions and includes a little
giardino secreto, which we ought to call an alegrete. This part is at one corner of a very
History of Garden Art
geometrical parterre. What is best worth noticing is the park, which opens behind the
house, and has several little chapels in it. At the highest point, half concealed m rock, is
the beautiful rotunda of the Mary Chapel, with a ruined arcade round it. The entrance
to this small place, lying among lovely trees, is by a door with Sanscrit inscriptions on
it. In the middle of this space stands a tombstone which states that here rests the heart
of Dom Joao after the work that in life he devoted to his fatherland. The park seemed
wonderful to contemporaries because of the number of foreign plants it contained, brought
home by de Castro from his travels, and falling in thus with the botanical interests of the
period. His biographer relates that he had the fruit-bearing trees removed from this
place (which the king had given him as a reward for his services) in order that he might
gain nothing useful from it.
A marked feature in the decoration of Portuguese architecture and gardens is the
FIG. 305. QUINTA DI BACALHAO—POOL IN THE GARDEN AND PILLARED PAVILION
use of tiles, originally blue but afterwards of different-coloured materials. Here, as in Spain,
they were a legacy of Moorish art, but in Portugal the use of them was more widespread
and endured for a longer time. These tiles they particularly liked (as we saw in the cloister
courts) for the basins, where the reflections gave a variegated effect. So the peculiar treat-
ment of such basins gave a national character to the Portuguese gardens of the sixteenth
century. In the first villa that clearly shows Italian influence in Portugal, the country
place of Bacalhao, a charming specimen has been preserved. The founder was the natural
son and sole heir of the great Admiral Albuquerque. As quite a young man this Alfonso
travelled in Italy in 1521 in the train of Donna Brites, when she came to Savoy as the
duke's bride. From Villafranca, near Nice, where they landed, the Portuguese gentlemen
made a journey to Italy, and there Alfonso had his eyes opened and his taste formed when
he saw the pictures of Italian art. Thus when later he bought this property from the
Infante and built his castle he chose Italian styles, but his garden showed his own
individual taste as well as a combination of Spanish and Italian.
The house is approached through a court flanked by pavilions and includes a little
giardino secreto, which we ought to call an alegrete. This part is at one corner of a very