Roman Villa Terrace, a place of contemplation and pleasure

The Patricians of Ancient Rome established villa culture in their desire to enjoy the coveted pleasures of country life. In the first century before Christ Horace the poet dreamed of a place far away from the bustle of the capital, one where he was not jostled by crowds, stressed out by his dealings with highly placed persons or subjected to the consequences of trivial gossip.

In his villa he could relax, read the books of the ancients, sleep or rest as his mood dictated while enjoying the excellent wine and fresh food of the region, in great abundance. Despite evolving societies and technology the villa became and remains a place where one can dwell “under the tent of heaven”.

According to Oxford, the word classical pertains to the high standard achieved by ancient Greek and Latin authors or their works, or the culture, art and architecture of Greek and Roman antiquity generally. The main characteristics are clarity of outline and restrained harmonious design in accordance with established forms.

During the medieval period throughout Europe bitter rivalry and warring factions dominated everyday life. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century in Italy art, literature and learning was reborn and under the encouragement and patronage of princes, popes and potentates would rise to new heights of achievement.  Using the rediscovery of their own ancient classical past the all powerful family factions turned their energies and attention to building development in the cities and out in the countryside for themselves, as they had in antiquity seeking the pleasures of villa life.

Andrea Palladio - Venetian Architect

Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) was born in Padua at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He grew up in the republic of Venice, becoming an architect and great traveler. He wore a track up and down to Rome over the years where he avidly studied the architecture of antiquity. He believed ‘the study of ancient remains was the power and moral force behind Roman civilization’. He discovered that the Romans had been skillful at reinterpreting the ideas of others, especially the Greeks. The new style of architecture Palladio would develop during his lifetime would have a sense of calm and order because it was based on his interpretation of measurements gleaned from the ancient treatise of first century Roman architect Marcus Pollio Vitruvius. He also studied the remains of ancient sites at Naples, Piedmont and Provence, often travelling dusty dirt roads on foot until old age and infirmity finally prevented him.

Villa Capra (La Rotunda) - sited on a hill 'to see and be seen'

Andrea Palladio produced a style of refined classical architecture that was in direct contrast to the more elaborate ornamentation and forms carried out elsewhere in Italy at that time. The delightful villas he built in and around Venice and the nearby Veneto were designed to be in harmony and balance with man and nature and of a scale that was acceptable to both. He believed the setting for the villa was at its very ‘heart and soul’.

The plans of his layouts, which still exist,  reveal beautifully proportioned rooms that allowed for flexibility of function and purpose. He included vestibules for receiving visitors, galleries for showing off paintings, sculpture and other precious collections of coins and gems plus the necessary rooms that could be utilized as bedchambers and antechambers.

All the living rooms could change with the seasons…bedrooms could move to the coolest side of the house in summer and warmest side in winter. With the invention of printing and the wider circulation of books as well as scientific studies he designed a special room solely for this purpose. A gentleman’s studiolo was what we would today call a study or library and it was usually adjacent to the bedchamber.

All the rooms in his villas whether large or small had proportions based on the scale, proportion and relationship of the parts to the whole of the human body. These were rigorously applied. These ideas may seem fairly commonplace to us today, but at the time, they were virtually unknown and therefore, revolutionary.

During the sixteenth century any other form of decoration remained subservient to architecture and mural painting was a means of emphasizing the architectural elements. Palladio used the genre of Trompe l’ oeil painted effects to extend space visually and bring the outside in.

Interior frescoed landscapes were framed by white columns and alternated with real windows looking out onto real landscapes. They provided a harmonious connection to the external world, while ennobling the landscape. Artist Paolo Veronese was particularly skilled at this type of artistry and would be employed to complete the painted rooms at the Villa Barbero at Maser.

For Palladio as an architect to reach great heights and be regarded as the best in his field was only possible by gaining both recognition and support.  During the sixteenth century this meant having at least one great patron, one who thought beyond himself and not looking to receive monetary or favour rewards.

He needed to be a true Renaissance man…one whose thirst for knowledge was only exceeded by his desire for more and Palladio found those patrons in the renowned scholarly Barbaro Brothers.

The Villa at Maser he would design for them would become much admired and imitated. He wanted to provide them with building that was all at once functional as well as accommodating to the topography of its site.

An important agricultural villa it had flanking wings designed to house agricultural implements, farm animals and protect the crops from the elements as well as store the wine.

Palladio was concerned with using, respecting and conserving natural resources so at Maser he placed dovecotes in symmetrical towers at each end of the flanking wings, catering to the medieval tradition of attracting doves and other fowl to the Lord’s table. On the façade of one tower a giant astronomical clock tracked the heavens. The villa was sited halfway down a gentle slope with an ancient natural spring servicing its occupants with all their water needs as well as feeding the fishponds and finally irrigating the gardens and orchards. Everything was meant to be recycled.

For his clients the Foscari brothers Palladio designed a small compact villa without flanking wings, a simple country house meant for rest and pleasure.

He raised it up on a rusticated basement 11’ high to prevent flooding from the nearby River Brenta. Its site provided a quick method of communication with the city for the family by boat at little expense and to go there from Venice today by boat is still the most successful way of viewing it and understanding Palladio’s intent.

At the Villa Foscari, the basement acted as a podium for the smooth faced upper stories. The main entrance was under a pedimented portico, which was accessed by way of an external flight of stairs up to the entrance level. This first floor, known as the Piano Nobile or noble floor housed the main rooms of the villa and he used the Ionic capital on its giant columns, uniquely solving a method of turning corners in a handsome way. The internal murals that decorate the walls are by artist Giambattista Zelloti, one of which is reputed to be the mysterious la Malcontenta, a women ancestor who legend has it had been unfaithful to her husband and was locked away in a small house on the site.

Villas in Palladio’s day were sparsely furnished by our standards. Furniture was limited to large marriage chests, which were portable and they were often elaborately carved and exquisitely painted (cassoni). There were tables of monumental proportion often topped with coloured inlaid marbles (pietra dure) and cupboards with doors intricately decorated with intarsia (inlay). Great marriages of state joined families of means together – an ideal route to power. This was especially true if land was added to the equation.

In this context beds became the most important piece of furniture in the  house practically and symbolically because of their importance in begetting an heir to the family dynasty.

For a time the great Alps that surround Italy were a barrier to knowledge with only a handful of travelers braving the elements and hardships by land to visit.  In Palladio’s day the Mediterranean was also ruled by foreign empires and pirates so one had to be very keen, mad, or just plain foolhardy to try.

Over the four and more centuries since his death Palladio’s interpretation of the classical style has influenced many and traveled far. From Europe to England, America to Australia he inspired a dwelling that was simple and solid and one that reflects all our aspirations, needs and leisure requirements.

A villa by architect Andrea Palladio was a place where the owners could feel happy, secure and content, which is after all, what most of us still require and aspire to, a place where one can cultivate the head, heart, body and the soul.

Perhaps a villa by Palladio was the perfect house after all?

Carolyn McDowall ©The Culture Concept 2010, 2011

Related posts:

1. Alleluia Apollo, Vitruvius, Palladio, Mozart and Jenkins
2. EVOLUTION OF ART, DESIGN & STYLE
   Course Outline
3. A ‘Compleat’ Gentleman, more than a leader of style

Sir Christopher and Lady Sykes by George Romney

The eighteenth century in England began on horseback and ended in the advent of the railway carriage. The population of nearly 6 million people lived on land under cultivation that was still tilled as in medieval times. In the north impassable mountains, scarcity of population and poverty of the soil meant that the land was pretty barren. Roads were truly appalling and a man might spend his whole life and never go further than the village market. This state of affairs would certainly not suit a man of vision or one seeking to harness the power of the imagination to envision and escape the realities and harshness of everyday life. One who wanted to see himself as a ‘compleat‘ gentleman.

By the second half of the eighteenth century in England power had a broader base and royal favour was no longer a guaranteed way of obtaining land and wealth. The route to the top increasingly lay in outstanding success in a military career, in the law, the church or through trade in an ever expanding international market. Landownership formed a pyramid from the aristocracy down to the smallest yeoman farmer. There were three levels; the peers, the gentry and the freeholders and, it was possible, with some difficulty and the aid of burning ambition and friends in all the right places to break in on well established old-money circles.

West Wycombe Manor is set in a beautiful park and by a lake at Buckinghamshire in England. It is the perfect setting for a man of means who enjoys the good life. Its colonnaded west front is highly unusual, for a climate like England and recalls the happy times its original owner spent lazing in the loggia of an Italian Palazzo. While smaller than most of its owner, Sir Francis Dashwood’s friend’s country houses, today it encapsulates and reflects in architecture the society of a time when young men of privilege went in passionate pursuit of a civilized life.

Watch the Video or, Read On…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUm06t4Qf1U

Berkeley Square, London

In London much of the development in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was in the hands of aristocratic landowners and mainly taking place on land available to the north and west of the city. Alongside their country estates and development interests they were also building, or extending, great houses in town so they could expand their increasingly lucrative international endeavour and enterprises.

Grand Tourist and his Tutor

The persistent phenomenon of the time was the Grand Tour of English noblemen, who would travel along with an entourage on a journey that would culminate in a visit to Italy and Rome and affect his life forever after. He would adopt Italian art, Italian mannerisms and overlay his speeches and correspondence with Italian phrases.

It became inevitable that when he came back to England to design an English estate, or to develop a piece of London and other important English towns and cities he would recall the example of Italy and create the ideal setting for those aspiring to see and be seen.

Portrait of a Young Man by Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano) 1530s - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The idea of a ‘compleat’ Gentleman had developed in ancient Greece five centuries before the Christ event. No other ancient people were so dynamic and creative as the Ancient Greeks, whose citizens while trying every form of action tempered it with the maxim of ‘nothing in excess’. Goodness, or arete, was an intrinsic excellence that existed in all things. A good man was considered to be ‘truly noble in hands and feet and mind, fashioned four square without blemish’.

For all men public and private honour were intimately related and if a man received a reward for his success it was not only a personal reward; it was an obligation that he owed to his city.

Chiswick House, London - Palladian villa built by the 3rd Earl of Burlington

This ideal was wide and generous and they devoted themselves to noble toil, to creating something new and splendid, and to keeping their bodies as fit as their minds. They strove to make order out of disorder and to live in harmony with their fellow citizens. They gave equal respect to mental and physical prowess because they believed the ideal life was one spent in pursuit of excellence in all things

By the fifteenth century at Florence in Italy this ideal achieved finely balanced attitudes. A Florentine gentleman worked for something beyond himself, whether in truth or beauty. He set small store by his own gratification, equating honour with the greater good. As a ‘Renaissance Man’ his pursuit of knowledge was only exceeded by his desire for more.

Becoming a ‘Renaisssance Man’ was an ideal many young English nobles would discover, and aspire to three centuries later during their Grand Tour. They spent up to five years traveling through France and Italy returning home via Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. It was an exciting prospect and, all roads led to Rome.

The great majority of Grand Tourists went to Italy because visits to Greece remained very much the exception due to difficulties of travel and the drastic political situation with the occupation of the Turks. The classical heritage of Rome then, for all intents and purposes at the time, civilization.

American Grand Tourist Joseph Allen Smith overlooking the Arno, by François-Xavier Fabre, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His Grand Tour was undertaken between 1793 and 1807 as an aspiring diplomat. He traveled not just as a tourist, but as a representative of the world's first republic

Parents sent their sons away for years rather than months, usually in the care of a tutor or trusted family friend or both. The main mentor was often a clergyman and/or college fellow whose role was to safeguard his charge’s morals, oversee his studies and look after the practicalities of his travel and accommodation, including ensuring that their was no bed bugs.

They left London for Rome and Naples crossing the English Channel to Calais, and continuing across France, usually with a lengthy stopover in Paris to catch up with friends, see the sights, spend time discoursing in salons and purchasing the latest fashionable garments to wear.

There were two options for crossing into Italy either to travel cross the Alps or to book a sea voyage from southern France to Leghorn (today’s Livorno). English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and politician Horace Walpole’s description of his journey through the Alps in his letter to his friend Richard West would challenge the most hearty.

‘We were eight days in coming hither from Lyons; the four last in crossing the Alps. Such uncouth rocks, and such uncomely inhabitants!’ On their return to England some tourists traveled through Germany and the Low Countries.

Eighteenth century noble men felt a strong kinship to the age of first century Emperor Augustus through the works of the Roman poets. Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), Poet Laureate Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) and Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), who had given their energies to satires, lyrical pieces and odes. From the third century in Western Europe their works were considered essential reading to help train young minds to think, to rationalise, to reason, to strive for harmony and order in the universe and, to be objective.

In Italy the grand tourist was well catered for because there were plenty of famous personalities to meet and the Opera and Catholic processions were something to see. There was a hope of gaining good health, enjoying entirely different food and natural phenomena to examine, such as Vesuvius blowing off steam. As well there were many amazing and interesting archaeological digs underway and treasures from antiquity coming up for sale and most importantly, you could have your portrait painted by Pompeo Batoni (108 – 1787). It was truly an exciting and fruitful time to be there.

To make a tour an’ take a whirl To learn bon ton, an’ see the worl’ Robbie Burns

Col Hon William Gordon by Pompeo Batoni

Artist Pompeo Batoni made a healthy living off his Grand Tourists by depicting them grandly. Italians of the eighteenth century did not care much for portraiture so much as they did for symbolism. Batoni was, for them, a revered painter of allegorical and devotional paintings commissioned by the Italian elite.

American born painter Benjamin West, who lived in London would complain while visiting Rome that Italian artists “talked of nothing, looked at nothing but the works of Pompeo Batoni”. For his British patrons however, Batoni was able to offer a powerful image of themselves to display proudly when they had returned home.

His portrait of Col Hon William Gordon has great emotional intensity and is also an interesting cultural comment. Issue 3 of publication by the Association of Art Historians 2004 says it was ‘Painted in Rome for return to Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire, the portrait is also implicated in Enlightenment debates about Scotland as a ‘primitive’ land and as a centre of intellectual and cultural achievement’. Col Gordon cuts a dashing figure in his plaid in front of the Colosseum standing next to the statue of a seated Roma, the personification of the city of Rome.

Andrea Palladio Antichita de Roma Frontespiec

The buried buildings of Herculaneum and Pompeii began revealing their treasures from 1738 and 1748 respectively, affecting contemporary interests and tastes. Learned societies and architects setting out intentionally to survey these ancient monuments and the increased interest provided accurate information about proportion, scale and ornamental detail with numerous publications coming into circulation.

The finest guide for travelers to Rome had actually been written in 1554 by successful sixteenth century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. Entitled Le Antichita de Roma. It described the buildings of Ancient Rome and as might be expected of an architect of Andrea Palladio’s reputation the guide was closer to the original Roman buildings than any other. The ruins were viewed through his eyes, which is one of the reasons that Palladio exerted such an amazing influence on the course of architectural history, especially for young men from England who were in pursuit of the perfect house.

Charles Towneley and his Friends in the Towneley Gallery, 33 Park Street, Westminster (1781-83) by Johann Zoffany. Boys with their Toys.

A whole new genre of art was invented and an army of copyists would reproduce any old master painting of your choice, for a price, from the splendid selection on display in the art galleries. Portrait painters, illustrators and landscape artists all prospered, or at least survived, by providing memories of the British in Italy. Some copies of European paintings were so convincing they fooled many into believing they were the real deal.

Taking home a cast or a copy of an original was not shameful. It was the only way to share with friends and family what the years away had meant and how much you had learned about the heritage of Greece and Rome. However if you were after a really outstanding piece of classical sculpture, or an original High Renaissance master such as Titian or Raphael while they were extremely difficult to find, they were not impossible if you had the right connections.

Country Gentleman Charles Towneley (1733 – 1805) formed a formidable collection of antiquities, which the British Museum purchased from the family in 1805. It was housed in his purpose built town house in the west of London in his lifetime so he and his friends could discuss the merits of each piece.

What is significant is that many of them appear in a conversation piece painted by artist Johann Zoffany, himself a luminary of the day. In August 1781 Townley wrote to his dealer in Rome ‘Mr Zoffany is painting… a room in my house, wherein he introduces what Subjects he chuses in my collection. It will be a picture of extraordinary effect & truth…’

Artist and social commentator William Hogarth campaigned vigorously against fashionable taste. His witty cartoons also assisted in expanding more serious debate about issues affecting the society of his day, especially the idea that rich people are automatically happy.

Marriage a la Mode - 1 of a Series by William Hogarth

His Marriage a la Mode series was a comment on the dissolute lives many of them really led because they were so unhappy in marriages arranged by parents wanting to further expand their own estates. The whole sad story starts in the mansion of the Earl Squander, who is arranging to marry his son off to the daughter of a wealthy merchant and it all ends tragically with the murder of the son and suicide of the daughter.

By mid century London was the largest city in Western Europe with 750,000 inhabitants. (Edinburgh 57,000 Dublin 90000). It offered a different quality of life and nowhere else in Britain was so urban; no other city so exciting or so shocking!. A great night out was to gape at the antics of the beau monde while they were out and about on the town.

You could do that at Vauxhall Gardens, which occupied about 12 acres across the Thames from Westminster Abbey. Class distinction did not apply, so for young aristocratic risk takers with the ready necessary it was dangerous, and glamorous. For rogues, ruffians, pimps and prostitutes it was a place where they could earn a good living, and for everyone else in between it was to coin a contemporary term, ‘a great gaze’.

Just up the river was Ranelagh Gardens. English writer, critic and renowned conversationalist Dr. Samuel Johnson said Ranelagh produced ‘an expansion and gay sensation‘ such as he had never experienced anywhere else before. It certainly must have been wonderful to be there on June 19, 1764 when eight year old child prodigy Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gave a concert.

The young genius, his father and sister stayed in London for just over one year, not departing until 17 September 1765. Wolfgang’s father reported in a letter home ‘What we have experienced here surpasses everything’ .

Pantheon at Rome and its Grand Tourists

The Grand Tour was so often protracted it is not surprising that many great treasures found their way to England’s shores including paintings by the Italian artist Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Il Canaletto, (1697-1768).

The son of a theatrical scene-painter Giovanni had studied in Rome and between 1746 and 1756 worked in London. Following his return to Venice English grand tourists, guided by English entrepreneur, Joseph Smith who lived there, sought him out. Smith’s own collection was later sold to King George III in 1758 and the British Royal Collection still has the best selection of Canaletto’s works anywhere.

Grand Canal Venice, Canaletto, National Gallery, London

In the summer of 1772 German born artist Johann Zoffany left London for Florence and he would not return until 1779. Zoffany was commissioned by Queen Charlotte to paint ‘the Florence Gallery’ and to do that he needed to enlist the help of influential Englishmen, such as Sir Horace Mann and George, 3rd Earl Cowper who were living there.

Paintings were brought in from the Pitti Palace so he could paint them in situ, and he was able to repay his patrons by including portraits of them in what is an amazing conversation piece, which caused a great deal of criticism when it was put on display in London.

The prime minister’s son Horace Walpole, himself a considerable wit and man of letters, called it ‘a flock of travelling boys, and one does not know, nor care whom’. Zoffany was careful to include himself in the piece for posterity and the connoisseurs, diplomats and other Grand Tourists he included are all identifiable.

Tribuna of the Uffizi by Johann Zoffany Royal Collection, Windsor Castle

Returning Grand Tourists arrived back in England with bags bulging. Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753) returned to England from his Grand Tour of Europe and Italy just in time for his 21st birthday.

He brought with him artist and designer William Kent, whom he had met on his travels, as well as 878 pieces of luggage, containing numerous treasures of paintings, statues, objects of virtu, bas reliefs, a marble table, porphry vases and twelve miniatures, not to mention the set of silver dessert baskets from Paris, a bountiful supply of books and fourteen pairs of gloves!

Burlington and his friends were all heavily influenced by the many and varied essays on the subject as well as their travels where they had seen paintings in which architecture and nature were blended together in a pictorial effect. Burlington and Kent would contribute greatly to the Quest for Nature.

Detail Claude Lorrain Landscape

Of great influence were the paintings by French artist Claude Lorrain, Claude Gellée, dit le Lorrain) (c. 1600 – 21 or 23 November 1682) they had seen on their grand tour. They featured hills and valleys, great clouds, splendid trees with soft foliage with buildings, or groups of buildings of classical ancestry. These romantic concepts were fused together with the search for an ‘Arcadian’ idyll

These new ‘Rulers of Taste’ sought that moment of perfection inspired by all their intellectual and poetic notions, which now played a major part in the broadening their sensibilities. Buildings came to be appreciated not merely as architecture, but for the thoughts and the feelings they inspired and the resultant “Cult of the Picturesque” would be debated well into the next century.

Garden designer extraordinaire Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1715-1783) was in the perfect position to offer returning Grand Tourists a gardening style that suited there newly found sensibilities. He had worked with landscape style innovator William Kent in the garden he was creating at Stowe and found himself in a position to offer his clients an intimate, personal view of nature by ‘softening nature’s harshness and copying her graceful touch’. Brown’s style of natural countryside was the sort of place where you could believe that nymphs and shepherds came together with their elegant eighteenth century counterparts, and felt comfortably at home.

The Bridge at Stourhead in a landscape of autumnal colours

He transformed great tracts of the English landscape into natural curves crowning them with clumps of trees. He used mostly elm, oak, beech, lime, Scots fir, plane, larch and the Cedar of Lebanon. At Stourhead in Wiltshire the contrived circuit walk around the lake was built for the enjoyment of its new young owner banker Henry Hoare “The Magnificent”. Its interplay of light and shadow were a triumph for the contrived and well-laid out park.

Horace Walpole said ‘Such was the effect of his genius …..so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken for it’. How right he was. Brown and his colleagues, during the course of the eighteenth and nineteen centuries would change the whole shape and character of the English countryside from one end of the country to the other in their Quest for Nature. It was human intervention on a monumental scale.

Temple of Flora at Stourhead

THE classical buildings in the garden at Stourhead were a reminder for Henry Hoare of his wonderful years spent in Italy. They were also suitable for all sorts of entertainments during the course of the eighteenth century, including playing music by Mozart. Their principles of design were based on Roman and Greek models, although scaled to be a miniature version, their parts in harmonious proportion to their whole.

Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water seem to strive again
Not chaos like together crushed and bruised
But as the world, harmoniously confused;
Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree Alexander Pope

Sir Francis Dashwood, 15th Baron le Despence

Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet of West Wycombe Park was one of the centuries most colourful characters who, by all accounts, was seldom sober. He also was 2nd Postmaster General, Master of the Great Wardrobe, Member of Parliament and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In 1734 at London Sir Francis Dashwood founded the Society of Dilettanti (dilettante (from the Italian dilettare – to delight) for men who had completed their grand tour of Europe. Over the course of the century the Society of Dilettanti would sponsor serious archaeological expeditions, assemble celebrated collections of antiques and art and advance the study of classical art, architecture and music and science.

Society of Diletannti by William Say

The popular dining club met in Italy, and at home, where they combined ribald revelry, wit, complete irreverence with a serious study of antiquity, which they all associated with the good times spent in Italy, albeit at their parents expense. They had the latest and best wines on hand to toast exalted beauties and life . They contemplated a lengthy future for the arts and culture and having such interests and concerns gradually became the measure of a man of refined taste and style.

Dashwood also revived the Hellfire Club. He went ‘clubbing’ with his clique, the so-called ‘Medmenham Monks’ on the banks of the Thames at Medmenham Abbey just 6 km away from his country house. He also revived the remains of the Abbey as a picturesque ruin. Over the entrance doorway to the a garden, which had been purpose built,  it said Fais ce que tu voudras – a shortened version of Aime et fais ce que tu veux… by St Augustine – Love, and do what you want.

It seems they did because they filled the garden with erotic statues and a shrine dedicated to the erect penis, rather than the penitent penis. Yes, Sir Francis Dashwood’s Italian styled villa at West Wycombe Park was the perfect Temple to Taste, built by one its prime rulers, who fashioned himself as a ‘compleat’ gentleman. But was he?

An eighteenth and nineteenth century gentleman’s broad ranging education, went hand in hand with an improvement in wine processes and a distinct desire to appreciate wine for its own sake and it became a subject for serious study. Connoisseurship became an important concern and men’s clubs devoted to pursuing a passion for art, architecture and the decorative arts sprang up everywhere. This in itself spawned many new trades and expanded employment for those catering to their peace loving luxurious seemingly happy leisure filled lifestyle. After all the art of pleasure is a serious business.

Carolyn McDowall © The Culture Concept 2010, 2011

Related posts:

1. EVOLUTION OF ART, DESIGN & STYLE
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2. CIVILISED: At the Beginnings of Art
3. The Culture Concept Circle – You Tube Channel

Villa Capra, 'La Rotunda' by Venetian Architect Andrea Palladio in the Veneto, Italy

A villa is part of an ongoing tradition in architecture dating back to antiquity. In the sixteenth century Venetian master architect, Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), successfully revived the antique style because he believed ‘the study of ancient remains was the power and moral force behind Roman civilization’. This was when villas were built to cultivate the head, the heart, the body and the soul.

Long before Andrea Palladio began his passionate pursuit to build the perfect house, in the form of a villa in the countryside, the word architectural genius was only associated with those who built temples, cathedrals and palaces. Palladio because of his insight and rare vision changed all of that.

The formality of an Italian Garden suits the symmetrically disposed style of the Villa Capra

The readily adaptable architectural formula that he developed was so successful that he gained many followers and imitators in his own day, as well as over the four centuries or so since. The combination of mathematics, geometry, scale and proportion that he subscribed to were easy for others to interpret and also offered an opportunity for them to express their own ideas as well. Palladio elevated the private domestic house into an art form.

In many parts of the western world his continuing influence is clearly evident in ample porches, vaulted cellars, columned porticoes, grand ceilings, gracious gardens, grand cornices and front door pediments.

Palladio believed a villa should be ‘placed on a hill with a wonderful view, beside a river’ or, nearby to a natural spring. The ready availability of a water source was important to the agricultural premise of a villa and the ongoing good health and wellbeing of its owners. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd President of the United States agreed. He built his villa Monticello (1769 – 1809) on a mountaintop in Charlottesville, basing its architectural formula on the works in Andrea Palladio’s publication I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture). They were first published at Venice in 1570. Jefferson reputedly said to a Virginian neighbour ‘Palladio is the Bible. You should get it and stick to it’.

View from a Villa in Campania, Southern Italy

The patricians of Ancient Rome first established villa culture in a desire to enjoy the coveted pleasures of country life. In his villa in the countryside a man could relax, read the books of the ancients, sleep or rest as his mood dictated, while enjoying the excellent wine and fresh food of the region, in great abundance.

Everyone in ancient times had a direct link to agricultural production, whether they lived in the city or the country. They were dependent on it for their livelihood either as landowners, labourers, or shopkeepers so needed to remain in tune with nature and the environment.

The importance of ‘family’ became a subject for discussion in many treatises from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries when the building of domestic residences became an important activity.

Following the troubling times of the Middle Ages the notion of privacy for a family was a new focus and it became crucial to build in a manner appropriate to one’s station in life, neither too meanly nor too grandly.

The main building and entrance to the Villa at Maser, while it doesn't have a flight of stairs to give it a grand effect the height of its columns and grand dentiled pediment filled with sculpture and entablature provide an imposing presence

A villa in sixteenth century Italy was required to be a polished stylish work of architecture as well as a sturdy, but sophisticated farmhouse. It was entirely distinct from a farmhouse or castle; the word villa referring to the entire estate.

The main building was known as la casa padronale (the master’s house) or more simply as la Casa di Villa. Built in and around Venice, Vicenza and in the nearby Veneto a small group of simply splendid master’s houses were created by Andrea Palladio and his followers, all of which were planned to be in balance with man and nature and, of a scale acceptable to both.

It was important to Andrea Palladio that villas built in his style should express what he called convenienza, or suitability.  The master’s house was divided into rooms, each of which had a specific function and purpose.

Rusticated Basement and smooth upper floors on the Villa Rigoni Savioli nearby to Padua at Italy

This included vestibules for receiving visitors, galleries for showing off paintings, sculpture and other precious collections of coins and gems, plus bedchambers and antechambers. With the invention of printing, the circulation of books, as well as the all-new scientific studies, a room known as a studiolo was added. It is what we would today call a study, or library.

On the exterior the rough cast or rusticated basement level often acted as a podium for smoother faced upper stories reflecting the growth of the family in architecture from pastoral beginnings to reaching sophisticated heights.

Turning the Corner using the Ionic order a solution devised by Andrea Palladio

The five orders of architecture at the foundation of ancient classical Roman architecture are distinguished by the design of the capitals that surmount the villa’s columns.

They are known as Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite.

The Ionic order was Palladio’s favourite and he used it extensively. Its pair of decorative spirals or volutes resembles ram’s horns and he used them skilfully in solving a problem of how to turn corners in a classical building.

The main entrance of a Palladian villa was usually under a pedimented portico supported by columns. It sheltered the entrance door of a villa, which you generally (there were exceptions) ascended stairs to reach.

The first floor was known as the Piano Nobile, or noble floor. It housed the main rooms of a villa that included a principal room that was usually disposed in the centre of the house under a dome. The Piano Nobile was accessed by way of an external flight of stairs. This offered a grand approach to what is essentially a country house, which was adapted by Palladio from the projection in front of an ancient temple. Palladio’s portico is probably the most copied of all his architectural inventions and is found in France and England, in the Americas and in Australia.

Shutters on a Villa in France

A regular patterning of windows, whose frames have attached practical shutters, relieved the façade of a villa.

They could be closed to keep out the heat in Campania, the mistral winds in Provence in the south of France, or the flies and relentless heat of an Australian summer. Villas have since Palladio’s day been transposed around the world providing a focus for family life.

A villa has a wonderful sense of calm and order, which is all about the relationship and harmony of all its parts among themselves and to the whole. These are based on measurements relating to the scale of the human body, reinterpreted by Palladio from the ancient treatise of first century Roman architect Marcus Pollio Vitruvius.

Nymphaeum in the Villa at Maser, an architecturally treated outlet of a reservoir for water

A villa was meant to accommodate the topography of its site and its garden setting was at its very ‘heart and soul’.

Recycling water to the master’s house was of great concern to a villa’s overall planning, because it was such a precious resource.

If there was an ancient natural spring nearby its waters fed a fishpond and serviced the house. Finally, it was piped back outside to irrigate the gardens and orchards.

Andrea Palladio was one of the first conservationists, concerned with respecting and preserving the natural environment.

Villa Rigoni Savioli Fresco of a Page peeping around a door

During the sixteenth century mural painting emphasized a villa’s architectural style. The principal room or sala had trompe l’ oeil, or to trick the eye painted effects. They extended space visually and frescoed landscapes framed by classical columns alternated with real windows looking out onto real landscapes. They provided a harmonious connection to the external world, while ennobling the landscape.

Sparsely furnished by our standards furniture in a villa included carved coffers, cupboards and great beds. The bed was the most important piece of furniture in the house, both practically and symbolically. This was primarily because of its importance in the begetting of an heir for the family dynasty, which at the time was vital because it was an ideal route to power.

Palladio said that he aimed to build ‘in such a way and with such proportions that together all the parts convey to the eyes of onlookers a sweet harmony’. He was all about ensuring order, not chaos, and his restless imagination contributed to a worldwide architectural revolution that was profound.

Villa Malcontenta nearby the Brenta River designed by Andrea Palladio

Part of an Italian villa’s reason for existence was to convey a genial hospitality, much like we do today by putting out a doormat saying welcome. It was always meant to be appropriate for those who would live in it, and also offer those who spent their time in its pleasant places, a harmonious experience.

A villa established in the countryside of Italy is a place in which its owners can feel happy, secure and content, despite the demands of our ever changing society and the rapid advance of technology. It was meant to please the mind, as well as the eye and it is, and will always be, a place where one can dwell happily “under the tent of heaven”.

Carolyn McDowall, The Culture Concept Circle 2011, 2012

Related posts:

1. Villa Rigoni Savioli – Dwelling Under The Tent of Heaven
2. What Is: Palladian Style, more than a villa in the Veneto?
3. What Is: An Ancient Roman Villa, the cultural ideal of rural life?

It is all about revealing the mysteries of life gently. This idea also rolled over into architecture where a vista was meant to reveal itself slowly too. Following a succession of small surprises it would climax from the doorway through the main axis of your villa to a distant point where something wonderful, a piece of sculpture, a wall fountain or beautifully painted fresco would be revealed.

It was also meant to provide an emotional experience similar to that of following a country roadway winding its way gently through undulating valleys and traversing a dense forest until, after scrambling up and over a steep, rocky hillside you arrive nearly breathless at the top. There you are confronted with a spectacular view that literally takes the rest of your breathe away.

If you lived on the lovely coastal aspects of Campania that vista might reveal the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean. This would have happened a great deal in Campania, which was such a beautiful region of southern Italy colonized by the Ancient Greeks. The Goddess Flora’s festival was held each Spring symbolizing the renewal of the cycle of life on earth of drinking and of flowers. While a relatively minor figure in Roman mythology, being one among several fertility goddesses, it was her association with the season of spring that gave Flora particular importance.

In the history of art a fallen ripe pomegranate spilling its seeds onto a shelf gently reminds us of Spring and why the rites of the passage between the seasons and fertility were important. The fundamental difference between our society today and that of ancient times is that practically everyone had a direct link to agricultural production, whether they lived in the city or the country. Most people were dependent on it whether they were landowners, permanent or seasonal labourers, or were simply shopkeepers selling their produce from the land.

Compared to modern times, commerce and industry played a very modest role and the overwhelming importance of agriculture in ancient societies cannot be stressed enough, because it affected all aspects of life.

Fertility is virtually synonymous with survival so it doesn’t take much imagination for us to endeavour to understand why allusions to everything associated with the act of procreation has been uncovered in towns like Pompeii. Add to this the fragility of human life in a world without antibiotics or sophisticated surgical techniques; one in which an infected wound, the drinking of contaminated water or a miscarriage meant certain death, we can begin perhaps to understand just a little more.

Roman social commentator Pliny the Elder recorded two kinds of villas: the villa urbana, a country seat that could easily be reached from Rome (or any another city) where you could spend a pleasurable night or two. And, the villa rustica, the farm-house estate permanently occupied by servants who had charge generally of the running and servicing of the estate, which the owner visited seasonally.

The Roman poet laureate and satirist Horace (65 BCE – 8 BCE) complained of life in the capital, jostled by crowds, suffering from bad weather and, because of his position in society (celebrity status), subjected to gossip. He constantly dreamed like many others did of the perceived pleasures of country life in his Villa located nearby to Tivoli, an ancient Italian town in Lazio about 30 km from Rome. Sited near the water falls of the Aniene river, where it issued from the Sabine hills, at his Villa Horace would shed his toga, (the Roman equivalent of a suit and necktie) and relax with the books of the ancients, sleep, or rest, while enjoying simple, beautifully prepared cuisine,  plentiful wine and discussing, with carefully selected guests, matters of substance. So in nearly 2000 years nothing has really changed about human behaviour. And, perhaps we are all still seeking to fulfill Horace’s dream.

It was Horace who wrote the delightful tale of the country mouse and the city mouse. The former invites his urbane friend to share a meal in his simple dwelling in the woods, offering him to share the few delicacies that he managed to scrimp and save. His fastidious guest barely nibbles on what he has provided while he himself tucks into desiccated berries and scraps of lard. The city mouse then persuades his friend that life is too short to be spent in such rustic and frugal conditions and that he should join him at his house in town, which was filled with fabulous furnishings and a vast array of remains from a banquet of the night before.

So like so many others who come after him, the country mouse succumbs. He is lured by the promise of better things to come. He repairs to the city with his friend. And, as the companions are lounging leisurely on luxurious ivory couches sharing a repast, there is a tumultuous banging on the door. The hall is suddenly filled with terrifying and baying hounds. The country visitor beats a hasty retreat saying thank you but he prefers the quiet of his own simple cave and weeds.

Villa Poppaea an ancient Roman villa situated between Naples and Sorrento

The Roman Poet Virgil (70 BCE – 19 BCE), a contemporary of Horace said…

’man who lives in the city longs for the informality of country living, the healthfulness of the air, the opportunity for exercise, especially hunting and fishing in a place which offers undisturbed intellectual and creative activities, leisurely conversation with friends and the delights of contemplating the natural and cultivated landscape in different seasons and conditions’.

An idealization of country life has never really been one actually shared by those who work the land for a living. They do not generally see the country as idyllic, but rather as a place that offers a challenge to the human spirit through experiencing the devastation of fire, raging floods, plagues of pests and failing crops and famine.

1st Century Apartments at Ostia, Italy

Real country life is far from an imagined rusticity or the ideal of rural life as depicted in Roman literature. “Sought not what was truest, but what could be most appropriately stated, and wished not to instruct farmers but to delight readers” said Virgil as he attempted to explain away an idealized presentation of country life or the falsely idyllic depiction of a man on the land’s existence

The patricians of Ancient Rome first established villa culture in a desire to enjoy the coveted and perceived pleasures of country life. Romans were intelligent gatherers of other people’s ideas and so they enlarged the Greek peristyle house, into a dwelling that reached the height of its popularity during the later republican period. The layout, arrangement and progression of rooms in a Roman Domus (house) were very important and, carefully thought out.

Just as the temple was related to its sanctuary as a whole, and to the sphere of influence of the divinity dwelling within it, so the Roman Domus was characterized by its axiality, or domination of the central courtyard by the principal room and the relationship to its space. This however did not apply in high-rise buildings, such as those built during the first century at the seaside town of Ostia.

The architecture of a villa broke with traditional layout and its interior spaces were adapted to a more informal and leisurely lifestyle, which included being involved in agricultural pursuits. They always took advantage of the topography of their site.

Those villas disposed along cliff tops near Naples and other rocky mountainous areas close to the sea were often built over many levels, following the natural contours of the land. It allowed for all sorts of extra features like a grotto or a cellar for storage beneath, as well as gardens overlooking the sea.

Ladies in the Atrium of a Villa

Generally the door in the middle of the façade of a villa opened into a short corridor, which led into a courtyard open to the sky called the Atrium. This was the first space confronted when the visitor entered. It was partly covered allowing light and air to penetrate while remaining cool and the central focus of domestic life.

High ceilings, pierced by a square or rectangular aperture, were open to the sky, which admitted not only light but also rain as well. Because it was a precious resource water was collected in a central pool and while useful, was also symbolic as it was the source of all life. A most important feature near the entrance was the Lararium, which contained a shrine dedicated to the Lares, the household gods who protected the family. Food and libations were placed in front of their images and alongside were kept wax ancestor portraits.

The Tablinum was separated from the Atrium usually by an array of Corinthian style columns or half columns (pilasters) and had retractable doors or portieres (textile hangings), that were draped from these columns to be drawn at will. This cool airy chamber was often used as a dining room. However as houses grew larger, more frequently they were used simply as a reception area.

The collonade of the Peristyle

Beyond was the Peristyle or, colonnaded corridor which passed around an inner rectangular court, or garden, which was open to the sky. If it was possible the all important vista ran from the front door through the centre of the Atrium all the way through to an architectural form or feature at the rear strategically placed to catch the eye of callers at the entrance door.

The Peristyle was at the heart of every wealthy residence. To reach it you passed through a series of open spaces; a covered courtyard, an open courtyard with a portico and a garden with fountains. It was generally accessible directly from the vestibule and served as a complement to the rooms arranged around its perimeter.

Painted decoration and mosaic floor in the Cubiculum at Boscoreale

The amount of space not being utilized was directly relevant to the social standing of the owner of the house. Unused space, then as it is in many cities of the world today, was considered a luxury.

So the more there was, the richer the occupant was perceived to be. The visitor could not fail to be impressed if the peristyle was large and it would have immediately informed him, indirectly, that the occupant was not a plebian (ordinary), but an aristocrat (special).

Interior decoration was an essential ingredient in the Roman life style transforming and enhancing their living environment. By using the art of perspective in painting they enlarged the physical space within a room. In some instances they achieved this by offering a glimpse of the sky or, by opening a window into a mythical world the decoration seeming to break through the bounds of the wall.

Another role of interior decoration was to turn parts of the house into picture galleries and just as we collect paintings and prints old masters, they collected reproductions of Greek old masters and illustrated stories about Alexander the Great, which held deep moral meanings and lessons about life.

Peace and serenity at the Getty Villa

The unroofed area of the Peristyle allowed light into surrounding chambers, which were flexibly used for bedrooms, offices, storerooms, small dining or banqueting rooms.

Practically every Peristyle of any size was embellished with fountains. When it came to bringing water and plants into the heart of the house the owner had a wide range of possibilities. He might opt for a single basin with a few potted plants. Or, he might turn his entire courtyard into a garden with fountains or a watery fantasy upon which one gazed, but did not enter.

The charm of such a space enhanced the private lives of the residents. And, its magnificent décor conveyed to visitor’s the owner’s high status. Embellished by a combination of architectural and natural effects, it was also space in which a variety of activities took place, from solitary pursuits to great receptions. It provided a workspace for servants with a ready water supply and, as a passageway linked all the main rooms of the house so it was busy and productive.

Classical busts of admired friends or distinguished ancestors were displayed throughout a Roman Domus in deep recesses. Lighting was very difficult as glass was not readily available before the first century and this is the reason why there were only few and small windows, as the heat also escaped. In winter these ‘wind eyes’ that let in such perilous draughts were filled with plaited rushes in an endeavour to keep out the wind and cold night air, which was thought to be injurious to one’s health.

Tripod brazier - purveying the pleasures of fine cuisine

Glass only began to be manufactured in large pieces during the first century at Rome and as such, considered for use by architects. It was an expensive commodity so again, only reached the houses of wealthy aristocrats. The introduction of window glass did eventually led to a better-lit and more efficiently heated style of housing. This came about during the reign of Emperor Augustus (63 BCE -19 ACE 14) when brick faced concrete or stucco brought new standards of stability and safety.

Social commentator Pliny the Younger’s writings gave full details of the way rooms were designed to catch the sun and one of his descriptions mentioned a bedroom, which had a floor heated by pipes of hot steam. It circulated at a regulated temperature.

Braziers were used for both warmth and for cooking as there were no purpose built kitchens. Food was brought from a nearby foodstore and taken home and heated and served. The modern Mediterranean practice of eating out of doors on hot summer evenings goes back to ancient Roman times.

Sheltered by an awning or by a vine arbor and cushioned by mattresses and pillows the diners would recline on their elbows in the Greek manner. They would pick tidbits from a central table, or from floating dishes in the form of little boats and water birds.

As night drew on, lamps would be lit in surrounding candelabra that were suspended from the hands of bronze statues. The diet was generally frugal, even in the grandest homes, and only in cases of great ceremony was haute cuisine employed. And, if it was provided by the Imperial gastronome M. Gavius Apicus, well then you knew you had it made. Apicus became famous for his sauces and dressings. He also kindly gave his name to various cakes and his Sucking pig a la Frontinus was sensational.

The Romans did not invent ornamental gardening. Shrubs and trees had been used by the Greeks to beautify temple precincts and gymnasia. However it was in the Roman period that pleasure gardens became a major facet of the art of fine living.

The term used by Pliny the Elder was opus topiarium derived from the Greek word topia (landscapes). The original aim was to create attractive natural settings and Pliny listed a great variety of gardens as ‘groves, woods, hills, fish pools, canals, rivers, coasts’.

Getty Museum of Antiquities, reproduction of an ancient Roman villa

The Romans from the time of Emperor Augustus introduced the artificial element statuary and garden furniture, formal layouts, the shaping of trees and the combination of plants with water display. Trees and plants were cultivated in ornamental gardens and they put the accent on greenery rather than floral displays. The development of great villa gardens was an extension of the idea of the sacred garden or grove around temple buildings, further influenced by traditions from Persia.

The development of a Villa (a country estate) was especially influenced by poetic themes inspired by Horace and Virgil, as they lyrically expressed their joy in the natural beauty of the countryside, which they loved. In a villa rustica in the Roman countryside they believed pure life and country air allowed for a man to experience true otium (free time). And, as Horace reminds us, ‘he who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses’. A Villa in Roman times was the cultural ideal of rural life and in it, surrounded by nature, man could become master of his own destiny.

Carolyn McDowall, November 2010

Horace’s delightful telling of the story of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse
Illustration by Scott Gustafson

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Country and City Mouse by Scott Gustafson

Now and then Cervius my neighbour spins us a yarn,
Some apt old woman’s tale. So, if anyone praised
Arellius’ wealth but ignored his cares, he’d begin:
‘It’s said a country mouse welcomed a town mouse once
To his humble hole, the guest and the host were old friends:
He lived frugally, and was careful, but his spirit
Was still open to the art of being hospitable.

In short, he never grudged vetch or oats from his store,
And he’d bring raisins or pieces of nibbled bacon
In his mouth, eager by varying the fare to please
His guest, whose fastidious tooth barely sampled it.
At last the town mouse asks: ‘Where’s the pleasure, my friend,
In barely surviving, in this glade on a steep ridge?
Wouldn’t you prefer the crowded city to these wild woods?

Come with me, I mean it. Since all terrestrial creatures
Are mortal, and there’s no escape from death for great
Or small, then live happily, good friend, while you may
Surrounded by joyful things: mindful while you live
How brief existence is.’ His words stirred the country mouse,
Who scrambled lightly from his house: then the two
Took their way together as proposed, eager to scurry

Beneath the city walls in darkness. And now night
Occupied the zenith, as the pair of them made tracks
Through a wealthy house, where covers dyed scarlet
Glowed on ivory couches, and baskets piled nearby
Held the remains of all the courses of a magnificent
Feast, that had been celebrated the previous evening.

Once the town mouse had seated the country mouse
Amongst the purple, he rushed about like a waiter,
The host serving course after course, performing the role
Himself, and not unlike a slave first tasting what he served.
The country-mouse at ease enjoyed the change of style,
Playing the contented guest amongst all the good things,

When suddenly a great crashing of doors, shakes them
From their places. They run through the hall in fear, stricken
By greater panic when the high hall rings to the barking
Of Molossian hounds. Then says the country-mouse: ‘This
Life’s no use to me: and so, farewell: my woodland hole,
And simple vetch, safe from such scares, they’ll do for me.’

Related posts:

1. CIVILISED – At the Beginnings of Art – Day 2 An Arcadian Ideal
2. CIVILISED – At the Beginnings of Art – Day 4 Conversion, Cornerstone and Civilized Life
3. Ancient Rome – An Important Precinct of Power and Glory

The Poets Conversing - detail of 'The School of Athens' by Raphael 1510-1511

Annibal Caro took the advice of Horace, and other significant ancient poets, living his life in ‘moderate serenity’. ‘Why do we strive so hard in our brief lives for great possessions? Why do we change our country for climes warmed by a different sun? What exile from his fatherland ever escaped himself as well?‘ said Horace (65 BCE – 8 BC), who had also observed that otium, or true peace, was to be valued above wealth or power.

Horace was poet laureate under the rule of Roman Emperor Augustus (27BCE – 14 ACE). He wrote satires, lyrical pieces and odes that gained him the reputation of being the unrivalled lyric poet of his time and his popularity was unequalled in literature until the 19th century when Charles Dickens wrote The Tale of Two Cities.

Clean and cool air, views over landscapes, the green of nature, its flora and fauna, an easier rhythm of life these were all available to you in a villa in the countryside in sixteenth century Italy.

At his ‘Carovilla’ in his years of intellectual otium Annibal Caro interpreted the Aeneid, considered one of the most important poems in the history of western literature written by the poet Virgil (70 BC – 19 BC), Horace’s contemporary. Annibal Caro wanted to draw out the essence and dynamism of the original work and was much admired for capturing the musicality of its verse and the eloquence and harmony of its prose in his translation. He composed poetry, sonnets and songs and his wit and spirit of observation were all at once elegant and bountifully rich in ideas and imagination.

Virgil’s epic the Aeneid was written nineteen years before the Christ event based on a story about Aeneas the Trojan, legendary founder of the Roman Nation and of the Julian family, to which Rome’s Emperor Augustus belonged. Virgil’s works were classics in his lifetime.

Following his death his works and those of his colleagues Horace and Ovid (43 BC – 17/18 ACE) became textbooks for Western Europe and its scholars. They were believed to be so special they were ranked sacred by the third century after the Christ event.

Annibal Caro transcribed the Aeneid into Vulgari, the language of the common people of Italy as opposed to the language of academics, Latin. He wanted many more people to be able to access his works.

His five-act play ‘Scruffy Scoundrels’ (‘Gli Straccioni) of 1543 became an important bourgeois comedy for the rest of the century. The fact it is in five acts indicates that Caro knew his Roman authority the lyric poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus 65 BCE – 8 BC) well.

Horace’s Ars Poetica, a treatise on the art of poetry published eighteen years before the Christ event, becam an influential guide for composing poetry, whose popularity lasted until some nineteen centuries after the Christ event and the era of Romanticism in Europe.

Its form, its words and its setting attained a prestige and prominence that was daunting.

Horace knew how to grasp the reader’s imagination and sustain their interest. He also introduced the five-act play and as a result of his much admired example many other playwrights throughout history divided their plays into five acts, including England’s greatest, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), (Supports argument for academic Edward de Vere as Anonymous author of Shakespeare’s works).

There has been a great deal written about the era of the Renaissance in Italy and the rest of Europe. If we were trying to reduce its essence to a few words we would say it was all about the ‘art of living’ or, as Caro observed, ‘the alchemy of staying well’.

This echoed the example that a poem should not mean, ‘but be’, a classic statement of the modernist prose aesthetic, especially as expressed by Scottish poet Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) in his own ‘Ars Poetica’ poem of 1926, which took its title and subject from Horace’s work.

During the sixteenth century in Italy, like a series of inter-connecting spaces or rooms, the influence of humanism on the arts, design, music and culture spread internally at first and then, moving rapidly, reached out to conquer and captivate the rest of the world.

The way religion was interpreted was held up for close examination as humankind embraced a capitalist economy that  transformed artistic life in Italy, as it had in Athens some 2000 years previously.

Its many and varied facets were the product of many different factors and interactions. These included an almost fanatical focus on commerce by merchant families, political upheavals, papal and imperial ambitions, noble arts patronage, major discoveries in science and the natural world, aristocratic and popular violence, legal and illegal precedents, migrations of people, famine, plague, cultural invasion and other factors that impinged on society, its values and virtues.

Together with its many literary and artistic achievements today’s stories about the Renaissance, or rebirth of humankind, include a study of its pomp and circumstance, observations about its perceptions of power, the collective wisdom of its elders and examination of their wealth and status whether real or otherwise. Then there were issues of gender, decadence, systems of class, questions of honour and the all-important rules and rituals.

During the early years of the sixteenth century humanist Pope Leo X like his ancestors, still enjoyed the hunt, appreciating its meticulously planned and executed ceremonial aspects.

As a passion for hunting continued unabated among the elite it became necessary for important men to create barchi, great game reserves. These were installed at Bagnaia, Tivoli and Caprarola and the Villa Lante on the slopes of Monte Sant’Angelo, Cardinal Gambari’s summer retreat that was completed in 1573.

The natural element was water tamed by man, its multiple resources exploited in ingenious ways. Water is above all a symbol of moral and sacred purification and there is hardly a religion in the world that does not use water to evoke life, creation, purity and rebirth.

The garden of the Villa Lante had a special quality in that the park, the garden and the great hunting wood were all intimately related and, a metaphor for life.

It was a Renaissance ideal.

First you rode out through rough rustic areas where everything you encountered was in its natural state, therefore full of danger where you had to fight to survive by killing animals to eat as the early hunters and gatherers had. This served, and appealed to the basest instincts of your humanity.

Eventually however you left the wood behind and rode on through a great park, which was well laid out with stands of trees planted in rows with spectacular vistas over lakes and mountains and this was all about your gradual refinement and making choices. Man had nature in control and so you gained in confidence learning how to lift your game in order to be a success in life.

Then you reached the pinnacle of your life and experience, arriving in the quiet sophisticated solitude of a serene garden where you knew you were secure, could quench your thirst and drink from all the waters of life as you gave yourself up to achieve true otium, inner peace.

An inventory of trees fruit and shrubs in the garden and park of the Cardinal’s villa, was undertaken in 1587. It speaks of twelve square flower beds with eight different types of fruit trees, beside a central fountain in the form of a spire, hedged all around with tall evergreen laurustinus; box surrounded the almond shaped slope above the main parterre area.

This layout was an allusion to the four square garden, the square being a man made shape. It also signified the four quarters of the universe with the four rivers of life intersecting at the garden’s centre, which based on an idea far older than Islam or even the Persian Empire.

The Old Hebrew book of Genesis thousands of years before the Christ event described its idealized pattern ‘And a river went out of Eden to water the garden and from hence it was parted and became into four heads’

Plants were described as suitable for different areas of the garden. Elms in rows, planted seven a side with cherry laurel and plane trees grown for shade. Higher up again five plane trees, with a grove of arbutus, as well as evergreen oaks, the tree Europe’s strength was founded on.

Walls were covered with vines and figs and above an aviary a hedge of roses and sweet chestnuts surrounded an olive grove with plump sweet apricots grafted onto quince, dwarf fruit trees. Farther up still decorative fir trees surrounded juniper, arbutus and myrtle and still yet another little wood of pomegranates and quinces, with oak woods and olive trees, while on the sunny slope the most luscious of fruits, peaches considered to be ambrosia, or ‘fruit of the gods’.

This fantastic setting formed a poetic literary landscape, the perfect place in which to practice, as the poet Annnibal Caro so eloquently put it, ‘the alchemy of staying well’.

Carolyn McDowall, July 2011

Related posts:

1. What Is: An Ancient Roman Villa, the cultural ideal of rural life?
2. Artisans and Artists during the Renaissance Golden Age
3. CLASSIC: Artists & Artisans – Renaissance to Restoration