International studio (16.1902)

Italy's Private Gardens

direct avenue, flanked by old leafy hedges, is its
chief attraction; and far away in the background
gleams St. Peter’s with its golden cupola.
In a short article such as this one cannot discuss
the question of whether the landscape, or natural,
style (which consists in preserving the beauties of
nature, without resorting to artifice of any sort) is
really of Italian origin. Certainly till the six-
teenth century we had examples of that sort, and
the oldest and most important of these is the
garden arranged near Turin by order of Emanuele
Filiberto, Duke of Savoy. The eighteenth-century
architect,. Chambers, travelled much, and was the
first to create a revolution in the art of the garden.
There is nothing to show that he was not in-
fluenced by our non-classical spirit.
Certain it is that old Italy affords conspicuous
examples of the mixed variety: the Villa di ;
Passariano, the Villa Giusti, and others again like’
the Pallavicini Villas at Genoa. The Villa of
Passariano, near Udine, is among the least famous
of these, despite the renown of the Manin family
to which it belonged, and it is recorded that here
Napoleon signed the Treaty of Campoformio.
Restored in 1763 by the architect Borghetti, it
retains to this day its old character, and is to be

recognised by two little hills in its park, the one
adorned by the statues of Pegasus and the N®e
Muses, the other by a sculptured representation
of the Rape of Proserpine. Cypresses and oaks
form the background of this imposing spot.
For sheer sumptuousness, for arboreal abund'
ance, for studied—and yet admirable—symmetry
and for panoramic beauty, the Villa Borromeo, on
Lake Maggiore, has perhaps no equal. It mighh
perhaps, be urged that the beauty of the blue
waters and of the neighbouring hills was some-
what overlooked by the architect, who executed
his work in 1650. The ten-staired terraces were
suggested by the narrowness of the island, jusd)'
styled “the Beautiful.”
The mixed style, due more to successive altera-
tions than to any fixed scheme, preserves much 0

the antique, and one may see in the Parco
Monza, in the Villa San Donato at Florence

largely among the Neapolitans, at Portici,
Sorrento, at Capri, and at Amalfi, terraces

di
and
at
and

hanging gardens, rich in orange trees and palrns>
in full view of the portentous gulf. In Sicily the
palms and cedars give a decorative touch of sped*
value, as well as a sort of oriental aspect to the scene-
Romualdo Pantini.