DOI Artikel:
Azzi Visentini, Margherita: Around the historiography of Italian gardens: Georgina Masson's contribution; [Rezension]
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14576#0047
AROUN!) Il II HISTORIOGRAPHY Ol I I \l [AN GARDENS: (.1 OKUNA MASSON'S C'ON ÏRIBl ; MON
41
graph on the Villa d'Esté in Tivoli was published in i96 032, and Battisti's books Rinascimento e barocco
and L'antirinascimento were published respectively in 1960 and 1962. Battisti overtumed the traditional
idealistic vision of a rational and "classic" cinquecento, revealing its irrational, troubling, esoteric and alchem-
ical aspeets - in other words, decidedly "anticlassic" éléments for which the garden proved to be an excep-
tional field of expérimentation (e.g. Pratolino)33.
Thus, the times were ripe to examine garden history from an appropriate pulpit, finally granting to a still
vaguely outlined discipline its own identity and, above ail, the scientific dignity that it had lacked until then.
Nevertheless, few scholars were willing to contribute a report to the conférence, given the widespread and
ongoing préjudice towards this field. In the préface to the conférence proceedings, Coffin noted that, after
the long silence that had followed the 1931 exhibition, "the past décade, however, has seen a renewal of
interest in the history of gardens, and récent efforts have been made to relate the Italian garden to other fields
of scholarship. The literary historian of pastoral poetry, the scholar of landscape painting, and the architec-
tural historian concerned with the villa realize that the garden is essential to their interests. Therefore, this
may be the opportune moment to reassess many of our previous assumptions and to reconsider the potentials
of other méthodologies for the history of the Italian garden"34.
In short, the field was opening up to the interdisciplinary interests that Masson had heralded in Italian
Gardens, whose "the outstanding scholarship" Coffin would acknowledge years later, while noting that the
work was "obscured by its popular présentation and lack of scholarly apparatus"35. Each of the four speakers
brought an original contribution in his or her spécifie field, opening up new perspectives for research. Mac-
Dougall, who had completed her doctoral dissertation, "The Villa Mattei and the Development of the Roman
Garden Style", at Harvard two years earlier (1970), discussed the iconography of the sixteenth-century Roman
garden, a topic that she would go on to develop in subséquent studies and at the meetings promoted by the
Dumbarton Oaks programme in Garden and Landscape Studies, which she directed (19 72-19 8 8)36. Battisti
investigated the relationship between art and nature, theory and practice, form and technique, and rationality
and irrationality in the Renaissance garden, which he had discussed in the two works cited above. For the
first time, Puppi probed the rich and complex problems tied to the gardens of the Veneto villas that Dami had
summarily dismissed, and he would produce a significant séries of studies37. Masson examined the role of
flowers in the Italian garden, a subject in which she had long been interested and would subsequently con-
tinue to research, planning a monograph on the subject that was never published due to her death in 198038.
The conférence at Dumbarton Oaks, as we have already noted, inaugurated a new and astonishing stage
in garden history, which over the following décades would émerge as an extraordinarily complex and intrigu-
D.R. Coffin, The Villa d'Esté at Tivoli, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
33 On the critical success of the Italian garden, see Azzi Visentini, Storia dei giardini. Battisti, a brilliant art historian
with interdisciplinary interests, was the first to introduce writings on the history of the images of Warburg and work on Panofsky's
iconographie studies to Italy. His above-mentioned works were republished in Milan in 1989 (Feltrinelli). See also E. Battisti,
Iconologia ed ecologia del giardino e del paesaggio, G. S a с с a r o Del Bu f f a (éd.), Florence 2004.
34 Coffi n, Préface..., p. VIII.
35 D.R. С o f f i n, The Study of the History of the Italian Garden until the First Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium, [in:] С o n a n
(éd.), op. cit., pp. 27-35, at p. 32.
36 E.B. M a с d o u g a 1 1, "Ars Hortulorum ": Sixteenth-Centuiy Garden Iconography and Literary Theory in Italy, [in:] C' o f-
I in (éd.), The Italian Garden..., pp. 37-57. By this scholar, see also other essays on the gardens of Rome in the 16* and 17th
centuries, the fountains, the iconographie programme and more, published between 1972 and 1989 and later collected in: M ac-
d o u g a 11, Fountains, with two important new contributions, one on the flowers from the Barberini garden cited above in note 27,
and the séminal essay on the Venaria Reale outside Turin.
37 E. Battisti, "Natura Artificiosa " to "Natura Artificialis ", and L. Puppi, The \ lila Garden of the l eneto from the Fif-
teenth to the Eighteenth Century, [in:] С o f f i n (éd.), The Italian Garden..., pp. 37-59 and 81 114. Battisti's essay was republished
in an Italian translation in В a 11 i s t i, Iconologia..., pp. 3-50.
38 G. M a s s о n. Italian F/ower Gollcctors ' Gardens in Seventeenth-Gentury Italy, ( in: ] С О f f i n (éd.). The Italian Garden....
PP- 61 80. In the years that followed Masson continued her research on the subject at public and private archives and libraries in
Rome (Vatican Archives and the Caetani Foundation) and Europe, particularly in Brussels and Prague. The results of lier work w civ
to be collected in a monograph that the Architectural History Foundation had agreed to publish. but Masson passed awa\ m 1980.
rhe materiał she wrote, much ofit complète, is now at the Caetani Foundation in Rome. Awarded the title of Officiai ofthe Order
oJ Merit ofthe Italian Republic on 2 .lune. 1967, Masson who had cancer by this time returned to England (winch she referred
to as "home") in 1978. following the death of her faithful and inséparable companion. the stra> dog Wïllv As a member ofthe
Royal Society of Literaturę, she received a pension from the Royal Literary Fund. Assisted b> the friend with whom she lived, the
poet Kathlccn Rame, she died therc m 19X0.
41
graph on the Villa d'Esté in Tivoli was published in i96 032, and Battisti's books Rinascimento e barocco
and L'antirinascimento were published respectively in 1960 and 1962. Battisti overtumed the traditional
idealistic vision of a rational and "classic" cinquecento, revealing its irrational, troubling, esoteric and alchem-
ical aspeets - in other words, decidedly "anticlassic" éléments for which the garden proved to be an excep-
tional field of expérimentation (e.g. Pratolino)33.
Thus, the times were ripe to examine garden history from an appropriate pulpit, finally granting to a still
vaguely outlined discipline its own identity and, above ail, the scientific dignity that it had lacked until then.
Nevertheless, few scholars were willing to contribute a report to the conférence, given the widespread and
ongoing préjudice towards this field. In the préface to the conférence proceedings, Coffin noted that, after
the long silence that had followed the 1931 exhibition, "the past décade, however, has seen a renewal of
interest in the history of gardens, and récent efforts have been made to relate the Italian garden to other fields
of scholarship. The literary historian of pastoral poetry, the scholar of landscape painting, and the architec-
tural historian concerned with the villa realize that the garden is essential to their interests. Therefore, this
may be the opportune moment to reassess many of our previous assumptions and to reconsider the potentials
of other méthodologies for the history of the Italian garden"34.
In short, the field was opening up to the interdisciplinary interests that Masson had heralded in Italian
Gardens, whose "the outstanding scholarship" Coffin would acknowledge years later, while noting that the
work was "obscured by its popular présentation and lack of scholarly apparatus"35. Each of the four speakers
brought an original contribution in his or her spécifie field, opening up new perspectives for research. Mac-
Dougall, who had completed her doctoral dissertation, "The Villa Mattei and the Development of the Roman
Garden Style", at Harvard two years earlier (1970), discussed the iconography of the sixteenth-century Roman
garden, a topic that she would go on to develop in subséquent studies and at the meetings promoted by the
Dumbarton Oaks programme in Garden and Landscape Studies, which she directed (19 72-19 8 8)36. Battisti
investigated the relationship between art and nature, theory and practice, form and technique, and rationality
and irrationality in the Renaissance garden, which he had discussed in the two works cited above. For the
first time, Puppi probed the rich and complex problems tied to the gardens of the Veneto villas that Dami had
summarily dismissed, and he would produce a significant séries of studies37. Masson examined the role of
flowers in the Italian garden, a subject in which she had long been interested and would subsequently con-
tinue to research, planning a monograph on the subject that was never published due to her death in 198038.
The conférence at Dumbarton Oaks, as we have already noted, inaugurated a new and astonishing stage
in garden history, which over the following décades would émerge as an extraordinarily complex and intrigu-
D.R. Coffin, The Villa d'Esté at Tivoli, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
33 On the critical success of the Italian garden, see Azzi Visentini, Storia dei giardini. Battisti, a brilliant art historian
with interdisciplinary interests, was the first to introduce writings on the history of the images of Warburg and work on Panofsky's
iconographie studies to Italy. His above-mentioned works were republished in Milan in 1989 (Feltrinelli). See also E. Battisti,
Iconologia ed ecologia del giardino e del paesaggio, G. S a с с a r o Del Bu f f a (éd.), Florence 2004.
34 Coffi n, Préface..., p. VIII.
35 D.R. С o f f i n, The Study of the History of the Italian Garden until the First Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium, [in:] С o n a n
(éd.), op. cit., pp. 27-35, at p. 32.
36 E.B. M a с d o u g a 1 1, "Ars Hortulorum ": Sixteenth-Centuiy Garden Iconography and Literary Theory in Italy, [in:] C' o f-
I in (éd.), The Italian Garden..., pp. 37-57. By this scholar, see also other essays on the gardens of Rome in the 16* and 17th
centuries, the fountains, the iconographie programme and more, published between 1972 and 1989 and later collected in: M ac-
d o u g a 11, Fountains, with two important new contributions, one on the flowers from the Barberini garden cited above in note 27,
and the séminal essay on the Venaria Reale outside Turin.
37 E. Battisti, "Natura Artificiosa " to "Natura Artificialis ", and L. Puppi, The \ lila Garden of the l eneto from the Fif-
teenth to the Eighteenth Century, [in:] С o f f i n (éd.), The Italian Garden..., pp. 37-59 and 81 114. Battisti's essay was republished
in an Italian translation in В a 11 i s t i, Iconologia..., pp. 3-50.
38 G. M a s s о n. Italian F/ower Gollcctors ' Gardens in Seventeenth-Gentury Italy, ( in: ] С О f f i n (éd.). The Italian Garden....
PP- 61 80. In the years that followed Masson continued her research on the subject at public and private archives and libraries in
Rome (Vatican Archives and the Caetani Foundation) and Europe, particularly in Brussels and Prague. The results of lier work w civ
to be collected in a monograph that the Architectural History Foundation had agreed to publish. but Masson passed awa\ m 1980.
rhe materiał she wrote, much ofit complète, is now at the Caetani Foundation in Rome. Awarded the title of Officiai ofthe Order
oJ Merit ofthe Italian Republic on 2 .lune. 1967, Masson who had cancer by this time returned to England (winch she referred
to as "home") in 1978. following the death of her faithful and inséparable companion. the stra> dog Wïllv As a member ofthe
Royal Society of Literaturę, she received a pension from the Royal Literary Fund. Assisted b> the friend with whom she lived, the
poet Kathlccn Rame, she died therc m 19X0.