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Italian Garden Design

 

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Italian Garden Design

Editor: Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Director Studies in Landscape Architecture, Dumbaron Oaks

17th and 18th century Italian books on garden design
Italian garden art of the Renaissance and Baroque periods played a pivotal role in the ensuing evolution of European garden design. The Villa Medici in Fiesole, the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, the Villa Lante in Bagnaia, and the Villa Mondragone and Villa Aldobrandini, both in Frascati, are just a few examples of this influence.

17th- and 18th-Century Italian Garden Books is the first IDC project to focus exclusively on garden design. The twenty-eight books presented in this collection were selected from the holdings of the Dumbarton Oaks Garden Library Rare Book Collection. They span the period from 1640 to 1817, and include such seminal works as Giovanni Battista Falda's Li Giardini di Roma (Rome 1680) and Dominicus Barrière's Villa Aldobrandina Tusculana sive varij illius hortorum et fontium prospectus (Rome 1647). One group of titles is devoted to descriptions of important individual gardens, for example Andrea Brigenti's description of the Villa Borghese (Rome 1716) and Francesco Maria Soldini's work on the Boboli garden (Florence 1789). Other works discuss elements central to Italian gardens, such as fountains and statuary: an example is Domenico Parasacchi's Raccolta delle principali fontane dell'inclitta città di Roma (Rome 1647). A third group comprises general treatises on the theory and practice of garden design, such as Vincenzo Marulli's L'arte di ordinare i giardini (Naples 1804) and Agostino Mandirola's Manuale de giardinieri diviso in tre libri (Venice 1684).
Italian Garden Design