DOI chapter:
V. Genoese villas
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61216#0232
ITALIAN VILLAS
block plan, or with but slight projections, and rich though
they are in detail, and stately in general composition,
they lack that touch of fantasy which the Roman villa-
architects knew how to impart.
Before pronouncing this a defect, however, one must
consider the different conditions under which Alessi and
his fellow-architects in Genoa had to work. Annibale
Lippi, Pirro Ligorio, Giacomo della Porta and Carlo
Borromini reared their graceful loggias and stretched
their airy colonnades against masses of luxuriant foliage
and above a far-spreading landscape,
wonderful
To the sea’s edge for gloss and gloom,
while Alessi and Montorsoli had to place their country
houses on narrow ledges of waterless rock, with a thin
coating of soil parched by the wind, and an outlook
over the serried roofs and crowded shipping of a com-
mercial city. The Genoese gardens are mere pockets
of earth in coigns of masonry, where a few olives and
bay-trees fight the sun-glare and sea-wind of a harsh
winter and a burning summer. The beauty of the
prospect consists in the noble outline of the harbour,
enclosed in exquisitely modelled but leafless hills, and
in the great blue stretch of sea on which, now and then,
the mountains of Corsica float for a moment. It will
be seen that, amid such surroundings, the architectural
quality must predominate over the picturesque or natu-
I 78
block plan, or with but slight projections, and rich though
they are in detail, and stately in general composition,
they lack that touch of fantasy which the Roman villa-
architects knew how to impart.
Before pronouncing this a defect, however, one must
consider the different conditions under which Alessi and
his fellow-architects in Genoa had to work. Annibale
Lippi, Pirro Ligorio, Giacomo della Porta and Carlo
Borromini reared their graceful loggias and stretched
their airy colonnades against masses of luxuriant foliage
and above a far-spreading landscape,
wonderful
To the sea’s edge for gloss and gloom,
while Alessi and Montorsoli had to place their country
houses on narrow ledges of waterless rock, with a thin
coating of soil parched by the wind, and an outlook
over the serried roofs and crowded shipping of a com-
mercial city. The Genoese gardens are mere pockets
of earth in coigns of masonry, where a few olives and
bay-trees fight the sun-glare and sea-wind of a harsh
winter and a burning summer. The beauty of the
prospect consists in the noble outline of the harbour,
enclosed in exquisitely modelled but leafless hills, and
in the great blue stretch of sea on which, now and then,
the mountains of Corsica float for a moment. It will
be seen that, amid such surroundings, the architectural
quality must predominate over the picturesque or natu-
I 78