Renaissance and Humanist Concepts as Employed in Italian Renaissance Gardens

Julián Huertas

27 February 2015

Professor Musgrave

Garden Art in European History

Blog Post Three:

Explain, with examples, the ways in which the Renaissance spirit of a rediscovery of the classics and the new Humanist ways of thinking were expressed in the design and content of the Italian Renaissance garden.

            The Renaissance spirit of rediscovery of the classics and new Humanist ways of thinking expressed itself in garden design, form, and content of Italian Renaissance gardens can be expressed with two primary examples.  These are the gardens of the Villa Medici in Fiesole, Italy and of Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy.  The Humanist ways of thinking led to the view of humans as rational and sentient beings. Individuals had the ability to decide and think for the self instead of God having absolute control. Religion was still a very important part of life, but the concepts and philosophy were on the values and importance of human matters. The additional interest in the classics led to a focus on mathematical precision. This demonstrated the ability of man to use the natural order of nature and improve upon it.

            The  gardens at Villa Medici are constructed using ratios and proportions for the design and form of the garden. The west front of the garden is open, which provides an open view of the Arno Valley and city of Florence. The lower garden is cut into the hillside so that it does detract from this view. These types of concepts echoed those of Leon Battista Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria. He said a villa should be a place to be looked at and looked from. The villa should be set above the garden, gazing down into its own gardens and overlooking its countryside. This created relationship between the garden and architecture took the garden outside of the building. This is quite unlike the Mediæval cloisters, in which the garden was secluded within the Abbey grounds. Thus, using classical ratios and proportions and Alberti’s theories, humans were able to tame and manipulate nature to create new forms of garden design.

            The gardens at Villa d’Este are similar to those of Villa Medici in that they reference classical ratios and proportions.  The axial alignment of the garden creates symmetry and the terraces create open spaces through which to circulate and navigate through the garden. There are ornate water channels, fountains, plants, and sculpture. Water, plants, and stone are all raw materials of nature, and, thus, these decorations reference the human ability to improving upon nature to create a complex, organized garden design.

            These Renaissance spirit and Humanist ways of thinking questions how garden spaces are contemporarily designed and manipulated to this day. A theme popular in modern design is that of “vertical gardens” or “living gardens.” These types of gardens are mounted on walls in varying sizes. Hoses generally run behind the plants and easily allow for watering without being seen. This concept illustrates to an extreme the ability of humans to alter nature’s raw materials and improve upon garden design.

Here is a link for how vertical gardens work, their benefits and are incorporate into small, compact spaces.

Picture of Villa Medici’s gardens. Note the proportions and the view of the garden below and view of the valley and city.

Picture of Villa d’Este's garden. Note the ornate water channels, fountains, plants, and sculpture.

 

Picture of a massive “vertical garden.” This is an extreme, impressive example of altering raw natural materials and placing them in an urban setting.