DOI article:
Azzi Visentini, Margherita: Around the historiography of Italian gardens: Georgina Masson's contribution; [Rezension]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14576#0038
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MARGHI-RITA AZZ1 VISENTINI
Garda, whose garden had been described a short time earlier by Henry Thode13. She also cited Isola Bella
on Lake Maggiore, the Padua Botanical Garden and the Palace of Te in Mantua, which had already been
discussed extensively by critics. Gothein dealt adroitly with both ancient and contemporary publications as
well as literary and iconographie sources, from the letter in which Giovanni Rucellai described the garden
of the Villa Quaracchi to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and from the plans and views by Falda and Venturini
to the surveys of Percier and Fontaine as well as those of Letarouilly, Triggs and others. As she noted in the
préface to the first édition, she was well aware that, in order to understand a garden fully, one must com-
mence with a critical study of the sources, because "what you actually see with your eyes has to be 'restored',
like a corrupt text, into its original context, and then compared with traditions and ancient examples"14.
The American Academy in Rome, founded in 1894, encourages its fellows who are aspiring landscape
architects (a profession that acquired a spécifie profile in the United States when the American Society of
Landscape Architects was founded in 189915) to survey Italian villas and gardens, which critics have long
praised for the perfect relationship of buildings, gardens and the landscape. One of the first works of this
type is the séries of plans, élévations and sections of Isola Bella, on Lake Maggiore, completed by Edgar
Williams between 1910 and 1912, and published in the July 1914 issue of Landscape Architecture. Thus,
over the years an extraordinary graphie corpus was compiled. Brought to the attention of critics only recently,
it constitutes valuable documentation and, in some cases, provides the sole testimony of complexes that were
later extensively reorganized or no longer exist16.
The Frenchman Georges Gromort, who taught at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, also drew up
surveys of Italian gardens and published them in a pretentious in folio work titled Jardins d'Italie. Originally
put out in two volumes in 1922 and then reprinted, updated and supplemented by a third volume in 1931,
this work has more than 200 plates with views of Roman, Tuscan and northern Italian villas, and over
30 plans, some of which made specifically for the publication and others taken from existing materials. They
are accompanied by detailed descriptions17.
The successful Italian Gardens of the Renaissance was published in London in 1925 and features sur-
veys of the gardens of 26 Italian villas, mainly in Lazio and Tuscany (Siena, Lucca and Florence), but also
around Genoa, Verona, Milan and the Lombard lakes; most of them were sketched on site. The book features
drawings and photographs by John C. Shepherd and plans and texts by Geoffrey A. Jellicoe, students at the
Architectural Association of London. They were executed during a study trip in 1923-1924 in order to write
a thesis on Italian villas and gardens, a subject suggested by their supervisor because, as Jellicoe recalled
many years later, "no surveys had been made since the somewhat crude drawings of the French architects
Percier and Fontaine a hundred years previously". The authors concur that the Villa Madama represents "the
greatest conception of a country pleasure house of the Renaissance, and even though never completed, [it]
exercised a wider influence than any other on garden design"18. Masson dedicated Italian Gardens to Geof-
frey Jellicoe and his wife Susan, as they were the ones who introduced her to the gardens of Italian villas.
The Italian contributions of this period lavished attention on the formai aspect of gardens, but they also
offered historical and artistic considérations, documented by countless illustrations and literary documenta-
tion on the subject. Notable contributions include the articles by Luigi Dami that were published starting in
1914, followed by his book II giardino italiano (1924), which has 351 illustrations, mainly views of plans
from period engravings, drawings, paintings, woodeuts and photographs, slightly more than 20 pages of text
and 508 entries under "bibliography and iconography", i.e. "itinerary guides, engravings from the 17th and
3 H. Thode, Somnii Explanatio. Traumbilder vom Gardasee in S. Vigilio, Berlin 1909.
14 M.L. Gothein, Geschichte der Gartenkunst, 2 vols., Jena 1914; English édition: A History of Garden Art, New York
1928 and later éditions.
15 See W.H. T i s h 1 e r, American Landscape Architecture. Designers and Places, Washington 1989.
16 Regarding thèse surveys, in some cases the only ones still existing for famous gardens, see V. С a z z a t o, Ville e giardini
italiani. I disegni di architetti e paesaggisti dell American Academy in Rome, Rome 2004.
17 G. Gromort, Jardins d'Italie, vols. 1-2, Paris 1922, vol. 3, Paris 1931.
18 J.C. Shepherd, G. A. Jellicoe, Italian Gardens of the Renaissance, London 1925, 4th ed. London 1986 (the source
of the quotations), Foreword and p. 12. The author would later discuss the events surrounding the préparation of the volume and
the limitations of some of the surveys: G. Jellicoe, An Italian Study, being an analysis of Italian Gardens of the Renaissance
Published in 1925, [in:] G. A. Jellicoe, The Studies of a Landscape Designer over H0 Years, 4 vols., vol. 1, Woodbridge, Suffolk
1993, pp. 61 157.
MARGHI-RITA AZZ1 VISENTINI
Garda, whose garden had been described a short time earlier by Henry Thode13. She also cited Isola Bella
on Lake Maggiore, the Padua Botanical Garden and the Palace of Te in Mantua, which had already been
discussed extensively by critics. Gothein dealt adroitly with both ancient and contemporary publications as
well as literary and iconographie sources, from the letter in which Giovanni Rucellai described the garden
of the Villa Quaracchi to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and from the plans and views by Falda and Venturini
to the surveys of Percier and Fontaine as well as those of Letarouilly, Triggs and others. As she noted in the
préface to the first édition, she was well aware that, in order to understand a garden fully, one must com-
mence with a critical study of the sources, because "what you actually see with your eyes has to be 'restored',
like a corrupt text, into its original context, and then compared with traditions and ancient examples"14.
The American Academy in Rome, founded in 1894, encourages its fellows who are aspiring landscape
architects (a profession that acquired a spécifie profile in the United States when the American Society of
Landscape Architects was founded in 189915) to survey Italian villas and gardens, which critics have long
praised for the perfect relationship of buildings, gardens and the landscape. One of the first works of this
type is the séries of plans, élévations and sections of Isola Bella, on Lake Maggiore, completed by Edgar
Williams between 1910 and 1912, and published in the July 1914 issue of Landscape Architecture. Thus,
over the years an extraordinary graphie corpus was compiled. Brought to the attention of critics only recently,
it constitutes valuable documentation and, in some cases, provides the sole testimony of complexes that were
later extensively reorganized or no longer exist16.
The Frenchman Georges Gromort, who taught at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, also drew up
surveys of Italian gardens and published them in a pretentious in folio work titled Jardins d'Italie. Originally
put out in two volumes in 1922 and then reprinted, updated and supplemented by a third volume in 1931,
this work has more than 200 plates with views of Roman, Tuscan and northern Italian villas, and over
30 plans, some of which made specifically for the publication and others taken from existing materials. They
are accompanied by detailed descriptions17.
The successful Italian Gardens of the Renaissance was published in London in 1925 and features sur-
veys of the gardens of 26 Italian villas, mainly in Lazio and Tuscany (Siena, Lucca and Florence), but also
around Genoa, Verona, Milan and the Lombard lakes; most of them were sketched on site. The book features
drawings and photographs by John C. Shepherd and plans and texts by Geoffrey A. Jellicoe, students at the
Architectural Association of London. They were executed during a study trip in 1923-1924 in order to write
a thesis on Italian villas and gardens, a subject suggested by their supervisor because, as Jellicoe recalled
many years later, "no surveys had been made since the somewhat crude drawings of the French architects
Percier and Fontaine a hundred years previously". The authors concur that the Villa Madama represents "the
greatest conception of a country pleasure house of the Renaissance, and even though never completed, [it]
exercised a wider influence than any other on garden design"18. Masson dedicated Italian Gardens to Geof-
frey Jellicoe and his wife Susan, as they were the ones who introduced her to the gardens of Italian villas.
The Italian contributions of this period lavished attention on the formai aspect of gardens, but they also
offered historical and artistic considérations, documented by countless illustrations and literary documenta-
tion on the subject. Notable contributions include the articles by Luigi Dami that were published starting in
1914, followed by his book II giardino italiano (1924), which has 351 illustrations, mainly views of plans
from period engravings, drawings, paintings, woodeuts and photographs, slightly more than 20 pages of text
and 508 entries under "bibliography and iconography", i.e. "itinerary guides, engravings from the 17th and
3 H. Thode, Somnii Explanatio. Traumbilder vom Gardasee in S. Vigilio, Berlin 1909.
14 M.L. Gothein, Geschichte der Gartenkunst, 2 vols., Jena 1914; English édition: A History of Garden Art, New York
1928 and later éditions.
15 See W.H. T i s h 1 e r, American Landscape Architecture. Designers and Places, Washington 1989.
16 Regarding thèse surveys, in some cases the only ones still existing for famous gardens, see V. С a z z a t o, Ville e giardini
italiani. I disegni di architetti e paesaggisti dell American Academy in Rome, Rome 2004.
17 G. Gromort, Jardins d'Italie, vols. 1-2, Paris 1922, vol. 3, Paris 1931.
18 J.C. Shepherd, G. A. Jellicoe, Italian Gardens of the Renaissance, London 1925, 4th ed. London 1986 (the source
of the quotations), Foreword and p. 12. The author would later discuss the events surrounding the préparation of the volume and
the limitations of some of the surveys: G. Jellicoe, An Italian Study, being an analysis of Italian Gardens of the Renaissance
Published in 1925, [in:] G. A. Jellicoe, The Studies of a Landscape Designer over H0 Years, 4 vols., vol. 1, Woodbridge, Suffolk
1993, pp. 61 157.