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Basis and Theories of Gardens:
Pliny and the Renaissance Garden
First, the awareness that house and garden
belong together as a unity supporting and reinforcing
each other in a way that the eye can recognize.
Second, the discovery that this new-found unity
may have a clearly defined purpose, for example
that of creating an atmosphere of welcome. And
third, that the garden because of its new position
on an incline may look without difficulty into
the outer world whenever it chooses. The basis
of these early Renaissance gardens lay in thought.
For the first time for centuries men thought
about how a garden should be made and did not
merely allow it to happen. In a way it would
not have mattered if the ideal theoretical garden
of Alberti had never existed; what was important
was that the idea had existed. No example of
Alberti's work survives now. The Villa Quaracchi
garden although attributed to him seems to have
been essentially medieval, elaborated certainly,
but not yet really touched by the Renaissance
idea. If Alberti had anything to do with it,
then we have an example of the divergence of
precept and practice not without parallel in
an age when the original inspiration was usually
literary). In the Villa Quaracchi there was nearly
everything that the medieval garden normally
contained. There were several pergolas giving
shade to the walks; there were breast-high espaliers
of box; there was a walled garden which was clearly
the descendant of a long line of monastic herb
gardens, containing violets, marjoram and basil,
grown in terracotta pots; there were roses and
honeysuckle; an aviary; a balustraded fish-pond;
and an artificial hill, covered with evergreens,
about which wound spirally eight separate paths.
There was also, and here we detect the shape
of things to come, an avenue made perhaps of
ilexes and vines. It is reasonable to suppose
that the many villas of both Cosimo and Lorenzo
the Magnificent had gardens of this sort. Architecturally
they were modest semi-fortress homes with small
barred lower windows.
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