DOI chapter:
I. Florentine villas
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61216#0086
ITALIAN VILLAS
one comes on the terraced flower-gardens, and here the
same grandeur of conception is seen. The upper ter-
race preserves traces of its formal parterres and box-
hedges. Thence flights of steps lead down to a long
bowling-green between hedges, like that at the Gambe-
raia. A farther descent reveals another terrace-garden,
with clipped hedges, statues and fountains; and thence
sloping alleys radiate down to stone-edged pools with
reclining river-gods in the mysterious shade of the ilex-
groves. Statues are everywhere: in the upper gardens,
nymphs, satyrs, shepherds, and the cheerful fauna of
the open pleasance; at the end of the shadowy glades,
solemn figures of Titanic gods, couched above their pools
or reared aloft on mighty pedestals. Even the opposite
hillside must have been included in the original scheme
of this vast garden, for it still shows, on the central axis
between the pavilions, a tapis vert between cypresses,
doubtless intended to lead up to some great stone Her-
cules under a crowning arch.
But it is not the size of the Campi gardens which
makes them so remarkable; it is the subtle beauty of
their planning, to which time and neglect have added the
requisite touch of poetry. Never perhaps have natural
advantages been utilized with so little perceptible strain-
ing after effect, yet with so complete a sense of the
needful adjustment between landscape and architecture.
One feels that these long avenues and statued terraces
were meant to lead up to a “stately pleasure-house”;
one comes on the terraced flower-gardens, and here the
same grandeur of conception is seen. The upper ter-
race preserves traces of its formal parterres and box-
hedges. Thence flights of steps lead down to a long
bowling-green between hedges, like that at the Gambe-
raia. A farther descent reveals another terrace-garden,
with clipped hedges, statues and fountains; and thence
sloping alleys radiate down to stone-edged pools with
reclining river-gods in the mysterious shade of the ilex-
groves. Statues are everywhere: in the upper gardens,
nymphs, satyrs, shepherds, and the cheerful fauna of
the open pleasance; at the end of the shadowy glades,
solemn figures of Titanic gods, couched above their pools
or reared aloft on mighty pedestals. Even the opposite
hillside must have been included in the original scheme
of this vast garden, for it still shows, on the central axis
between the pavilions, a tapis vert between cypresses,
doubtless intended to lead up to some great stone Her-
cules under a crowning arch.
But it is not the size of the Campi gardens which
makes them so remarkable; it is the subtle beauty of
their planning, to which time and neglect have added the
requisite touch of poetry. Never perhaps have natural
advantages been utilized with so little perceptible strain-
ing after effect, yet with so complete a sense of the
needful adjustment between landscape and architecture.
One feels that these long avenues and statued terraces
were meant to lead up to a “stately pleasure-house”;