DOI chapter:
IV. Villas near Rome
DOI chapter:I. Caprarola and Lante
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61216#0176
ITALIAN VILLAS
gives an indescribable touch of poetry to the upper gar-
den of Caprarola. There is a quality of inevitableness
about it—one feels of it, as of certain great verse, that
it could not have been otherwise, that, in Vasari’s happy
phrase, it was born, not built.
Not more than twelve miles from Caprarola lies the
other famous villa attributed to Vignola, and which one
wishes he may indeed have built, if only to show how a
great artist can vary his resources in adapting himself
to a new theme. The Villa Lante, at Bagnaia, near
Viterbo, appears to have been the work not of one car-
dinal, but of four. Raphael Riario, Cardinal Bishop of
Viterbo, began it toward the end of the fifteenth century,
and the work, carried on by his successors in the see,
Cardinals Ridolfi and Gambara, was finally completed
in 1588 by Cardinal Montalto, nephew of Sixtus V,
who bought the estate from the bishops of Viterbo and
bequeathed it to the Holy See. Bercier and Fontaine
believe that several architects collaborated in the work,
but its unity of composition shows that the general
scheme must have originated in one mind, and Herr
Gurlitt thinks there is nothing to disprove that Vignola
was its author.
Lante, like Caprarola, has been exhaustively sketched
and photographed, but so perfect is it, so far does it
surpass, in beauty, in preservation, and in the quality
of garden-magic, all the other great pleasure-houses of
Italy, that the student of garden-craft may always find
132
gives an indescribable touch of poetry to the upper gar-
den of Caprarola. There is a quality of inevitableness
about it—one feels of it, as of certain great verse, that
it could not have been otherwise, that, in Vasari’s happy
phrase, it was born, not built.
Not more than twelve miles from Caprarola lies the
other famous villa attributed to Vignola, and which one
wishes he may indeed have built, if only to show how a
great artist can vary his resources in adapting himself
to a new theme. The Villa Lante, at Bagnaia, near
Viterbo, appears to have been the work not of one car-
dinal, but of four. Raphael Riario, Cardinal Bishop of
Viterbo, began it toward the end of the fifteenth century,
and the work, carried on by his successors in the see,
Cardinals Ridolfi and Gambara, was finally completed
in 1588 by Cardinal Montalto, nephew of Sixtus V,
who bought the estate from the bishops of Viterbo and
bequeathed it to the Holy See. Bercier and Fontaine
believe that several architects collaborated in the work,
but its unity of composition shows that the general
scheme must have originated in one mind, and Herr
Gurlitt thinks there is nothing to disprove that Vignola
was its author.
Lante, like Caprarola, has been exhaustively sketched
and photographed, but so perfect is it, so far does it
surpass, in beauty, in preservation, and in the quality
of garden-magic, all the other great pleasure-houses of
Italy, that the student of garden-craft may always find
132