International studio (16.1902)

Italy s Private Gardens

this is a charm to those who have been dispirited
by that sacrifice of invention to an imitative display
°f excellent mechanism that detracts from the
educational value of the Royal School of Art
Needlework in London. “ Drink waters out of
thine own cistern,” says Solomon, “and running
waters out of thine own well.”
I’o gather from fine specimens of ancient work all
the craft-knowledge that they have to teach—this,
to be sure, is an excellent thing to do ; but
that knowledge is not art ; to become art it
must be shown (as often as possible) in fresh
'nventions, in new enthusiasms. Declining crafts
cannot be revived by a mere imitation of their
ancient processes. Most of the schools of needle-
work fail to realise this fact. They follow the past
as dependents, they do not lead the present with
an alert invention enriched with acquired know-
ledge. And for this reason we have to turn to
the work done in Liverpool, in Glasgow, and in
°ther art schools, if we wish to think of to-
day’s embroidery as a thing that lives and
grows, and therefore of greater interest and value
than a display of archteology in patterns and in
stitches.

TALY’S PRIVATE GARDENS. BY
DR. ROMUALDO PANTINI.
The period in which the Italian spirit,
after a lethargy lasting nearly a thousand years,
awoke and resumed all its old energy and know-
ledge was undoubtedly that of the Quattrocento.
As the artist’s hand grew more expert at tracing
the forms and expressing the feelings of mankind,
so the humbler worshippers of divine nature
turned to the plant-world, therefrom to derive
new and varied forms of decoration, such as should
satisfy both the purely spiritual and the material
necessities of the time, and revive, even amid the
tumult of wars and internal sedition, the ancient
spirit of grandeur by means of opulent gardens.
I have thought it well to advance these general
considerations, because one constantly finds en-
dorsed in recent French works the opinion of
Burckhardt that the private houses of the Italian
Renaissance period were built as they were “ be-
cause the love of fresh air was so great that people
preferred to expose themselves to the risks of war-
fare by living out of doors than to remain in safety
behind city walls.” There were other reasons


view of the city of Florence from the terrace of the villa fabbricotti

PHOTOGRAI'H BY ALINARI