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#0044
38
MARGHHRITA AZZI VISENTINI
Her book Italian Villas and Palaces was published in 1959, followed two years later by Italian Gar-
dens. Although thèse works are connectée! as far as their subjects are concernée!, there are nevertheless sig-
nificant différences between the two, as the latter reflects a far more complex and mature critical approach,
based on a broad range of sources that the former - mainly descriptive - seems to ignore. Italian Villas and
Palaces présents a sélection of 95 palaces and villas built between the 15lh and 18th centuries. They are clas-
sified by geographical location and are mainly in central and northern Italy, with a few examples from Naples
and Sicily under Bourbon rule (the Royal Palaces in Naples and Caserta, the Palazzina Cinese in Palermo,
and the Villa Valguarnera and the Villa Palagonia in Bagheria). Alongside the descriptions of thèse buildings
and their interiors, the gardens are also mentioned briefly.
Italian Gardens is instead a work reflecting more mature critical interprétation. Masson roamed the
peninsula with her inséparable Rolleiflex, which she first used in 1950 for her début article. She managed to
capture countless détails that had never been reproduced before and showed great familiarity with the sites
she described, ranging from the gardens of ancient Rome to the résidences around Palermo during the Arab-
Norman period, the Royal Palace at Caserta (in which she recognized French influence combined with Italy's
great tradition) and on to the newly finished Villa San Remigio at Pallanza (which takes up the tradition of the
Italian Renaissance and Baroque garden to a certain extent). She discovered entire areas and individual sites
that were little known or had previously been completely overlooked, such as the gardens of the Marche and
the parterres of the Ruspoli Castle in Vignanello, whose miraculous conservation she was the first to note.
She had direct access to a myriad of sources - literary and iconographie, printed and manuscript, and
well known, obscure or previously unpublished - and, in keeping with the slant she had chosen, she tossed
off this information casually, as if carried away in a conversation. By the same token, with a nonchalance
verging towards snobbishness, she barely touched subjects that deserved far more in-depth treatment25.
One example is her passing mention of the literary coteries in the gardens of Roman antiquities shortly
before the tragic 1527 Sack, including that of Johannes Goritz (better known in Italy as Coricio), on the
slopes of the Campidoglio, with a view of Trajan's Forum and a grotto dedicated to nymphs. His feasts were
evoked in a nostalgie letter that Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto wrote in 1529 from Carpentras, where he was
posted at the time, and with whom Masson associated the amusing détail of a painting by Vincenzo Campi
in the Galleria Doria. The topic, alluded to by Gnoli in the 1930s and mentioned in passing by Gustavo Gio-
vannoni, whose monograph about Antonio da Sangallo the Younger reported a drawing depicting a portai of
Goritz's garden26, was later deservedly developed by David Coffin in his Gardens and Gardening in Papal
Rome (1991). Likewise, in her essays from the 1970s, reprinted in Fountains, Statues and Flowers. Studies
in Italian Gardens of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1993), Elisabeth B. MacDougall took an in-
depth look at the reasons behind the artificial grotto dedicated to nymphs or other water gods.
To offer yet another example of Masson's approach, in discussing the transformations that had gradu-
ally taken place in the park of the Villa Doria Pamphili on the Gianicolo, Masson mentioned imaginative
sketches of gardens, in both an Italian and "Anglo-Chinese" style, from an album in the Doria Pamphili
Archives. They were attributed to a certain "Faragine di Bettini", the young protégé of a family member, the
Apostolic Nuncio in Paris in the late 18th century, whom he then followed to Rome27. However, it would be
pointless to look for this name - which was also misspelled - or many others, as there was no index of names
in the editio princeps and the one in the 1966 édition is sorely incomplète. Twenty years later Minna Heim-
biirger Ravalli's monograph, Disegni di giardini e opère minori di un artista del 700. Francesco Bettini
(1981), finally shed light on this highly eccentric figure who created a large collection of drawings, mainly
25 As of the mid-19th century, photographs - often by the author of the work (as in the case of Platt and Masson) or under his
or her supervision - became an essential part of writings about gardens. See Capodi ferro, L au f (eds.), Georgina Masson...
The literary and iconographie sources used by Masson include the woodeuts from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), the Roman
drawings of Francisco de Hollanda and Pirro Ligorio's studies of Roman antiquities; prints of villas and gardens by G.B. F a 1 d a,
F. Ve nt ur i n i, M.A. Dal Re, V. С o r o n e 11 i, G.F. Costa and others; paintings by Hubert Robert and Fragonard, etc. Foi-
sources on Italian gardens, see M. A z z i V i s e n t i n i, Fonti per /о studio dei giardini, [in:] M. С unie o, D. Luci a n i (eds.),
Paradisi ritrovati. Esperienze e proposte per il governo del paesaggio e del giardino, Milan 1991, pp. 15-22; A z z i V i s e n t i n i,
La villa in Italia..., bibliography on pp. 342 -358; L'arte dei giardini. Scritti teorici e pratici dal XIV al XIX secolo, M. Azzi
V i s e n t i n i (éd.), 2 vols., Milan 1999, and the cited bibliography.
26 G. G i о v a n n о n i, Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane, Rome n.d. [1959], p. 26 (Uffizi drawing 989).
27 For Bettini, see p. 156 of the 1961 Italian édition of Masson's book.
MARGHHRITA AZZI VISENTINI
Her book Italian Villas and Palaces was published in 1959, followed two years later by Italian Gar-
dens. Although thèse works are connectée! as far as their subjects are concernée!, there are nevertheless sig-
nificant différences between the two, as the latter reflects a far more complex and mature critical approach,
based on a broad range of sources that the former - mainly descriptive - seems to ignore. Italian Villas and
Palaces présents a sélection of 95 palaces and villas built between the 15lh and 18th centuries. They are clas-
sified by geographical location and are mainly in central and northern Italy, with a few examples from Naples
and Sicily under Bourbon rule (the Royal Palaces in Naples and Caserta, the Palazzina Cinese in Palermo,
and the Villa Valguarnera and the Villa Palagonia in Bagheria). Alongside the descriptions of thèse buildings
and their interiors, the gardens are also mentioned briefly.
Italian Gardens is instead a work reflecting more mature critical interprétation. Masson roamed the
peninsula with her inséparable Rolleiflex, which she first used in 1950 for her début article. She managed to
capture countless détails that had never been reproduced before and showed great familiarity with the sites
she described, ranging from the gardens of ancient Rome to the résidences around Palermo during the Arab-
Norman period, the Royal Palace at Caserta (in which she recognized French influence combined with Italy's
great tradition) and on to the newly finished Villa San Remigio at Pallanza (which takes up the tradition of the
Italian Renaissance and Baroque garden to a certain extent). She discovered entire areas and individual sites
that were little known or had previously been completely overlooked, such as the gardens of the Marche and
the parterres of the Ruspoli Castle in Vignanello, whose miraculous conservation she was the first to note.
She had direct access to a myriad of sources - literary and iconographie, printed and manuscript, and
well known, obscure or previously unpublished - and, in keeping with the slant she had chosen, she tossed
off this information casually, as if carried away in a conversation. By the same token, with a nonchalance
verging towards snobbishness, she barely touched subjects that deserved far more in-depth treatment25.
One example is her passing mention of the literary coteries in the gardens of Roman antiquities shortly
before the tragic 1527 Sack, including that of Johannes Goritz (better known in Italy as Coricio), on the
slopes of the Campidoglio, with a view of Trajan's Forum and a grotto dedicated to nymphs. His feasts were
evoked in a nostalgie letter that Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto wrote in 1529 from Carpentras, where he was
posted at the time, and with whom Masson associated the amusing détail of a painting by Vincenzo Campi
in the Galleria Doria. The topic, alluded to by Gnoli in the 1930s and mentioned in passing by Gustavo Gio-
vannoni, whose monograph about Antonio da Sangallo the Younger reported a drawing depicting a portai of
Goritz's garden26, was later deservedly developed by David Coffin in his Gardens and Gardening in Papal
Rome (1991). Likewise, in her essays from the 1970s, reprinted in Fountains, Statues and Flowers. Studies
in Italian Gardens of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1993), Elisabeth B. MacDougall took an in-
depth look at the reasons behind the artificial grotto dedicated to nymphs or other water gods.
To offer yet another example of Masson's approach, in discussing the transformations that had gradu-
ally taken place in the park of the Villa Doria Pamphili on the Gianicolo, Masson mentioned imaginative
sketches of gardens, in both an Italian and "Anglo-Chinese" style, from an album in the Doria Pamphili
Archives. They were attributed to a certain "Faragine di Bettini", the young protégé of a family member, the
Apostolic Nuncio in Paris in the late 18th century, whom he then followed to Rome27. However, it would be
pointless to look for this name - which was also misspelled - or many others, as there was no index of names
in the editio princeps and the one in the 1966 édition is sorely incomplète. Twenty years later Minna Heim-
biirger Ravalli's monograph, Disegni di giardini e opère minori di un artista del 700. Francesco Bettini
(1981), finally shed light on this highly eccentric figure who created a large collection of drawings, mainly
25 As of the mid-19th century, photographs - often by the author of the work (as in the case of Platt and Masson) or under his
or her supervision - became an essential part of writings about gardens. See Capodi ferro, L au f (eds.), Georgina Masson...
The literary and iconographie sources used by Masson include the woodeuts from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), the Roman
drawings of Francisco de Hollanda and Pirro Ligorio's studies of Roman antiquities; prints of villas and gardens by G.B. F a 1 d a,
F. Ve nt ur i n i, M.A. Dal Re, V. С o r o n e 11 i, G.F. Costa and others; paintings by Hubert Robert and Fragonard, etc. Foi-
sources on Italian gardens, see M. A z z i V i s e n t i n i, Fonti per /о studio dei giardini, [in:] M. С unie o, D. Luci a n i (eds.),
Paradisi ritrovati. Esperienze e proposte per il governo del paesaggio e del giardino, Milan 1991, pp. 15-22; A z z i V i s e n t i n i,
La villa in Italia..., bibliography on pp. 342 -358; L'arte dei giardini. Scritti teorici e pratici dal XIV al XIX secolo, M. Azzi
V i s e n t i n i (éd.), 2 vols., Milan 1999, and the cited bibliography.
26 G. G i о v a n n о n i, Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane, Rome n.d. [1959], p. 26 (Uffizi drawing 989).
27 For Bettini, see p. 156 of the 1961 Italian édition of Masson's book.