Identifier: italianvillasthe00whar (find matches)
Title: Italian villas and their gardens;
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937
Subjects: Architecture Architecture, Domestic Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Century
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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siirroimdings as were the models which inspired if. 12 ITALIAN GARDEN-MAGIC This is the secret to be learned from the villas ofItaly; and no one who has looked at them with thisobject in view will be content to relapse into vague ad-miration of their loveliness. As Brownmg, in passingCape St. Vincent and Trafalgar Bay, cried out: Here and here did England help me: how can I helpEngland ? — say, SO the garden-lover, who longs to transfer somethingof the old garden-magic to his own patch of ground athome, will ask himself, in wandering under the umbrella-pines of the Villa Borghese, or through the box-par-terres of the Villa Lante : What can I bring away fromhere ? And the more he studies and compares, themore inevitably will the answer be: Not this or thatamputated statue, or broken bas-relief, or fragmentaryeffect of any sort, but a sense of the informing spirit —an understanding of the gardeners purpose, and of theuses to which he meant his garden to be put. 13 FLORENTINE VILLAS
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FOUNTAIN OF VENUS, VILLA PETRAJA, FLORENCE FLORENTINE VILLAS FOR centuries Florence has been celebrated forher villa-clad hills. According to an old chron-icler, the country houses were more splendidthan those in the town, and stood so close-set amongtheir olive-orchards and vineyards that the travellerthought himself in Florence three leagues beforereaching the city. Many of these houses still survive, strongly plantedon their broad terraces, from the fifteenth-century farm-house-villa, with its projecting eaves and square tower,to the many-windowed maison de plaisance in whichthe luxurious nobles of the seventeenth century spentthe gambling and chocolate-drinking weeks of the vin-tage season. It is characteristic of Florentine thrift andconservatism that the greater number of these later andmore pretentious villas are merely additions to the plainold buildings, while, even in the rare cases where thewhole structure is new, the baroque exuberance whichbecame fashionable in the sevent

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