Articles > Brief history of ancient garden >
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| GARDENS: ALLEGORY OF THE SUN, METONYMY OF THE DARKNESS |
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| By Gabriella Cetorelli Schivo and Alfredo Corrao |
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| Introduction |
Ancient gardens |
| The roman gardens |
The Garden as Paradise |
| The Cloistered Garden |
The Garden in the Renaissance |
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| “Nature, wild nature, is outside…” |
| …Of Sun, Water, Wind and Stone |
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Made of sun, water, wind and stone: the origins of gardens have continually communicated the evolution of matter moulded by Nature, of Nature moulded by matter and mankind.
Gardens have always been a stimulus for human beings to dedicate themselves to introspection of their own deep roots, to the searching for an intimate and secret dialogue with an adaptable and benign nature, ready to caress and soothe, to raise men’s spirits from the hard work of everyday life, often exhausting and suffered. Or also, gardens amaze and involve the soul in a sequence of lively fantasy games of stones, water and wind going up and down, as well as of wooden inventions.
To create a garden, glorification of beauty and ingenuity of design are the two fundamental components.
To these it is also added the idea of templum, a sacred place where universal symbols, references to the harmony governing the Heaven, or to the myth, the extraordinary, the idyllic landscape can come together.
“Unnatural arrangement of geometric and fantastic models, aiming at an aesthetic result”.
These few but meaningful words are Giulio Carlo Argan’s definition of the most intense expression of garden. An expression of a term and a concept – garden – that is essentially “modern”. As a matter of fact, in ancient times gardens were a display of practical skills; the moral and philosophical aspects of the garden were taken into consideration only later on.
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Florence seen from the Boboli gardens. P. Chevalier (part.)
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Ancient Gardens
The most representative pictures of the garden in antiquity are the peaceful and liquid neatness of the waterscape in Egyptian gardens, where sycamores, palm trees, lotuses and pergolas add joy to images of flowing rivers. Also, the bloom of the splendid Assyro-Babylonian gardens, as narrated in the accounts of enraptured admiration of ancient historians who tried incredulously to describe one of the World’s Marvels – the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, wanted by Nebuchadnezzar – as a blaze of joyful colours, perfumes and coolness…
Expression of the East, it is mostly a delimited space containing a particularly lush vegetation, rich in ornamental plants and surrounded by an outer environment that appears – in contrast – more hostile and opposing.
These are the places for the perfect attainment of relax and spiritual enjoyment: the garden, already from antiquity, is essence of life.
The most ancient source about gardens handed down to us is the Bible.
In fact, the Genesis (2:8-9) tells of a garden where everything grows spontaneously and perfectly, with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the middle ("Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.").
It is the place of regret par excellence, where God’s love for his creatures is opposed to the sin of pride and disobedience of Adam and Eve, who are eventually forced to enter the dramatic reality of human condition.
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The Ninive palace
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Two imaginative reconstructions of the gardens of Babylon
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.jpg "Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights - The Earthly Paradise (Garden of Eden)") |
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| Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Delights |
Masaccio. Adamo ed Eva (part.) |
Cattedrale di Otranto. 1163
Floor Mosaic with the Tree of Life
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While the Bible assails the cult of the feminine figure as a begetter (let’s consider Isaiah, for example), because the sole and exclusive Creator is God, in the Egypt of the Bronze Age – and other cultures as well – vegetation is sometimes identified as the woman (the tree bestows life, just like the woman does). In the Egyptian world two elements prevail in the gardens: the water and the “fence”.
Here, in contrast with the biblical tradition that puts the tree of Eden in the center of the garden, we can find at its place the coolness of a water basin surrounded by a lush vegetation that, for it to survive, needed an efficient irrigation system. |
On the other hand, Persian gardens, also named pardes o paradeisos, are full “of every good and beautiful thing that the earth can offer”: animals, flowers, plants… Water, trees, and a regular layout are their distinctive marks.
In these gardens the Persians acclimatized all the plants taken from the far places conquered by them. Xenophon describes the park ordered by Cyrus at Sardis, where the four parts of the world were portrayed, represented by the areas comprised between two perpendicular channels and a central mountain, symbolized by a pavilion where the channels intersected each other, according to the Persian concept of the universe.
It is then the barren land of Greece that give us an evidence of the concept of garden, firstly with Odysseus wandering through orchards, vineyards, olive trees and brackish bushes burnt by the sun, and eventually arriving at the point of turning the wild nature into a sweet place of relax and embellishment of gymnasia, stadia, templi, schools. Epicurus named his own school “Garden” as a tribute to the importance of the secluded place where the studies took place. Plato called his Academy after the name of a hero, Academus; the central space was devoted to the green, underlined by an elegant arcade.
The Greeks were among the first peoples to study and describe plants.
Theophrastus wrote a nine-tome work on them, and Pedanius Dioscorides analyzed plants in a superb treatise that over the centuries turned out to be a source for research and an influential reference. |
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| The Persian Garden |
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Yet, the modern concept of garden as a decoration of city structure was born with the Romans, as a sumptuous companion of Patrician villas, where tree-lined paths, statues, fountains, hermai and oscilla and other stony ornaments alternated with terraces, aviaries, nymphaea, small temples and astronomical observatories. All this has led the art of gardens to become that incomparable equilibrium between nature and architecture that will constitute its most intrinsic meaning in the years to come, and as still represented nowadays.
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Oscillum (front / rear) from the Archeological Museum of the Abbey of Grottaferrata. Photo by A. Corrao
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.jpg "L. Columella - De Re rustica") |
“Verum ubi iam puro discrimine pectita tellus
deposito squalore nitens sua semina poscet,
pingite tunc varios, terrestria sidera, flores,
candida leucoia, et flaventia lumina caltae,
narcissique comas, et hiantis saeva leonis
ora feri, calathisque virentia lilia canis,
nec non vel niveos vel caeruleos hyacinthos.
Tum quae pallet humi, quae frondens purpurat auro,
ponatur viola, et nimium rosa plena pudoris”
(L. Columella - De Re rustica, X)
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Roman Gardens, Outlines of a “Dishevelled Nature”
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From the Republican Rome, a society that moved to the towns and whose relationship with the countryside, plants and flowers was very strong, together with the Roman villa, fulcrum of the agricultural production system and foundation of the Roman world, three essential elements emerge: topiary art, that is landscape shaping and creation, the skilful use of water, and the study of landscape. The latter was considered the prime synthesis of the first two elements.
Cicero gives us detailed descriptions of the Greek fashion that around 60 B.C. involved Rome: the habit of creating and appreciating gardens, calling them “of delights”, thus changing the concept that the Roman world had about the garden. In fact, up to that moment the Latin language did not distinguish between “garden” and “orchard”.
Romans didn’t like to be dominated by the nature, so they moulded it according to their needs. (However, religious precepts prohibited to interfere with the woods, because they were sacred and untouchable.)
The gardens of the Romans, where from the 1st century B.C. the vegetation was not permitted to grow spontaneously, reflected this concept and traced (in a smaller scale) the same “rectangular” structure used to build their cities. |
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From the Imperial age and on, these cities have tree-lined avenues, porticoes, baths, gardens and gymnasia inside their precinct. The houses as well, divided in two areas – public and private – have luxuriant gardens and porticoes that connected them to the abode. They are mostly peristyle gardens, a natural evolution from the simple horti of the Italic tradition.
In the new mentality, by now pertaining more to townsmen than countryman, the Roman walls marked the boundary between the hostile space, usually represented by forests and woods, perceived as places absolutely sinister and sullen, and the friendly and familiar places.
The skill of the Romans of shaping the scape depends mainly on their ability in hydraulic engineering: carrying, canalizing, warming and using the water, making it available to anybody, promotes and makes the construction of green spaces easier.
An example of this can be seen in the renowned villas of the Pompeian zone. These are an expression from a provincial point of view of the models taken from the Capital, reproducing practical usages together with the displacement of plants and flowers, as well as small trees from where one can pick up tasty fruits to accompany the delight of otium. And again hedges, expertly treated in order to reproduce ideally the Garden of the Hesperides or rather one of the lush pairidaeza of the Babylonian world, or also a simple and elegant vegetable decoration.
Synthesis of a “dishevelled nature”, often gladdened by small courses of gushing water… And there, where reality puts a limit to a space sometimes minute, imagination creates wonderful perspectives of panoramas open to infinity, with birds, fountains, marble seasts and exotic and fairy-tale suggestions portrayed through fresh and vivid brushstrokes on the walls of houses and villas. |
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Triclinio from Villa di Livia. Decorazione parietale
(You can enjoy this photo in detail by clicking on it. To better understand how to use this feature click HERE) |
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"La casa del bracciale d'oro" decorazione parietale da Pompei - IVR di Alfredo Corrao
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Per una agevole visione a pieno schermo:
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| Grateful thanks are due to the Superintendence of Archaeological Heritage of Rome, in the person of Ms. Rita Paris, who organized the exhibition "Rosso Pompeiano" (Pompeian Red) and to the Superintendence of Archaeological Heritage of Pompei, owner of the property. |
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Lo stadio palatino, a Roma, con la sua ampia area di giardino destinata al passeggio.
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And then again, gardens in the shape of circuses, stadia or hippodromes, as documented in the sumptuous imperial dwellings or in the private residential houses. As a matter of fact, Rome was a rejoicing of green, often as a mark of the munificence of rich citizens, if not even emperors.
Unfortunately, little has remained of these gardens and their life, if we exclude the ancient sources that tell us – sometimes in a very detailed manner – about this “countryside in the city”, as the wonderful parks that adorned Nero’s Domus Aurea were defined.
The Empire decadence led to a progressive detachment from what the Romans believed being one of the most evident expressions of the “pleasantness of living”.
During the social anxiety pervading the “twilight of the Empire”, the garden and its pleasantness gives way to the needs of daily life, that must give up the superfluous things in order to be successful.
Christianity alone will give a highly symbolic meaning back to the garden, by the representation of heavenly scenes depicted in the triumphalist basins of the large basilicas’ halls, as well as in the humid and recondite cubicola of the catacombs. The world is changing deeply, and bears with it the premonitory symptoms of a renovation that passes through simpler and more immediate forms of life, peeping out in that middle age that, with its intimate and often lacerating contradictions, starts the modern age off. This modified conception of living in the European civilization, caused by the fall of the Roman Empire, involves understandably the green spaces as well, both the natural and artificial ones. |
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Nantes%20Museo%20Dipartimentale%20Dobr%C3%A9e.jpg) |
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Vertou, Chiesa Saint-Martin, fine del VIe sec. (terracotta 21cm).
Nantes, Museo Dipartimentale Dobrée.
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Bonanno da Pisano “Adamo ed Eva nel Paradiso terrestre”
Formella del portale del duomo di Monreale (Pa) |
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Following an initial abandonment, gardens change their functions and styles over the time.
The islamic conquest of 7th-8th century a.D. modifies the appearance of mediterranean cities and gardens by introducing new tree species: a different concept of garden is born.
For the Arabs, in fact, the garden is essentially a metaphor of Heaven.
The Koran Heaven is a garden where tranquillity dominates, and within its boundaries warriors can enjoy their celestial rewards. It hosts material beauties, not spiritual ones: perfumes, colours, water flows, plays of light and shade are the natural contrast to the arid and wild nature of the deserts. It is a garden created for “the pleasure”.
At its maximal expansion, the Islamic Kingdom streched from Iberian peninsula to the Far East, Indonesia and Malaya: the structures of the islamic gardens were nonetheless identical all over the kingdom; for instance, the Spanish gardens were not different from the eastern gardens.
These masterpieces influenced also Frederik I Barbarossa’s imagination, who asked his ambassadors to tell him stories about the garden wonders. The same Barbarossa describes, in his diary, one of his own gardens rich in peach trees and esotic birds. |
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“...to a garden, wherein was all that sould desireth and that eye charmeth. It was high of walls which from broad base were seen to rise; and it had a gateway vault-wise with a portico like a saloon and a door azure as the skies, as it were one of the gates of Paradise: the name of the door-keeper was Rizwán.”
“...in this garden were all manner of other fruits and sweet-scented herbs and plants and fragrant flowers, such as jessamine and henna and water-lilies and spikenard and roses of every kind and plantain and myrtle and so forth; and indeed it was without compare, seeming as it were a piece of Paradise to whoso beheld it. If a sick man entered it, he came forth from it like a raging lion...”
From The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night, tale "Ali Nûr al-Din and Miriam the Girdle-girl"
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| The Cloistered Garden… |
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The year 1000 is a discriminating date to understand modern Europe: the evolution of the feudal system, the technical breakthroughs in agriculture, the revival of the cities and the appearance of abbeys and castles modify the land once more.
The relationship between man and nature changes again and there is a new strong interest in understanding Nature.
In the abbeys we can notice different types of gardens: kitchen garden, cloister, cultivation of medicinal herbs. Also, the concept of spirituality of the plants and flowers was born, as they are associated to a divine image or to a transcendent notion.
Beginning already from the 11th century, the private residences of the wealthy start to be furnished with gardens: in Paris and London an ever increasing number of gardens appear, and according to descriptions they are rich in trees, fruits, aromatic herbs and flowers.
However, it is in the silence of the cloistered gardens, where the needs of life, the study of nature, and the officinal, alchemical and magical practices live together in the peace of pray and work, that the gardens will reach a more intimate and newer connotation.
At that time the first monastic medicine schools were created, and in the monastery gardens the most famous officinal herbs were grown. Once picked up and dried, their leaves, flowers and roots filled the fragrant shelves of the monks of a nursing order, who were the real doctors of that time.
Observatio et ratio (observation and reasoning), these were the inspiring principles of the human knowledge in the Middle Ages. |
| Giardino monastico, incisione da "Il fiore di Virtù", edizione veneziana del XV sec |
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…Metonymy of Darkness
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At that time, far from the sun’s exposures, the garden lives still more in the charm of the night, in the secrets of the owl and of the mandrake, a plant allegory of the philosophers’ stone with his vain and cruel promise of immortality.
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Mandragora (from Tacuinum Sanitatis)
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Praised in the Bible (Genesis, 30, and Song of Solomon 7:14) and cited in the Ebers Papyrus, the mandrake was appreciated in the Greek and Roman medicine for its antidepressant and aphrodisiac characteristics, and she was the plant par excellence in the Middle Ages.
Since its roots resemble human figures, and it is difficult to pull it out of the earth – and, according to traditional tales, it let out a piercing cry and a nauseating secretion when uprooted – all this have made it, in the widespread popular belief, a distinctive instrument of the evil and its followers.
The rule to pick it up staying into the wind in order to avoid smelling its essence and being conducted in a dangerous and infinite sleep, in addition to the many cautions needed to eschew its poisonous influences as well as the belief that this plant-man in combination with deadly nightshade, henbane and jimson weed represents the basic element in the preparation of potions, ointment and black magic potions used by witches during their Sabbath, prohibited strictly the mandrake use in the Inquisition times, that considered it a nocturnal and evil plant.
A manuscript dating back to the 16th century mentions:
“Chi haverà bevuto del succo di mandragola,
coi suoi frutti et radici,
patirà rossezza del viso, stupidezza di mente
et alienazione et pazzia et sonno profondo .
La sua cura sarà prendere la triaca magna ,
stemperata nel vino, gli sia poi
tardato il mangiare, habbia vino eccellente et puro,
fiuti aceto gagliardo”…
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Hortus Conclusus and Hortus Deliciarum
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In the secluded space of the small cloisters, near the well curb, humble ornamental plants blossom, while in the monastery libraries the botanic culture is kept and handed down by means of codices, reports and illuminations relating all the knowledge of the time about market gardens and gardens. This knowledge increased especially during the Carolingian revival, and also as a consequence of the ever increasing contacts with the Islamic world, that contribute to be acquainted with new plant species originating from the Iberian peninsula and the far eastern countries.
So, in the abbeys we can find the “garden of simples”, with its officinal plants, enlisted in the Tacuini sanitatis, the kitchen garden for the everyday sustenance, the cultivation of fruit-trees.
Having overcome the notorious terrors of the year one thousand, the cultural rebirth promoted by the great abbeys and universities looks at the garden as the main role of human knowledge: indeed, hortus conclusus and hortus deliciarum represent both ends of this mediaeval symbolism.
The former is a place of refuge and shelter in the monastery peace. It is the symbol of the Virgo, of her mystical purity, of her delicate humility...
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The latter is a place of courtly love, of fantastic and imaginary nature, of magic and enchantment, a paradise of an unreal and unattainable happiness.
In the early 14th century, Pietro De’ Crescenzi describes in his De ruralium commodorum – a work of 12 tomes – how to create gardens suited for every social class: the ones of small plants for simple people, those for the middle and high classes, and, eventually, the gardens suitable for kings and lords.
Boccaccio, in his proem of the third day of Decameron, tell us about one of these gardens, situated on Florence’s hills: walled around, in a geometric shape, with trellis of grapes and a large variety of flowers, with a fountain in the center. We can note how this description recalls the paradisiac gardens of antiquity:
“Appresso la qual cosa, fattosi aprire un giardino che di costa era al palagio, in quello, che tutto era dattorno murato, se n'entrarono; e parendo loro nella prima entrata di maravigliosa bellezza tutto insieme, più attentamente le parti di quello cominciarono a riguardare...
Esso avea dintorno da sé e per lo mezzo in assai parti vie ampissime; tutte diritte come strale e coperte di pergolati di viti, le quali facevan gran vista di dovere quello anno assai uve fare; e tutte allora fiorite sì grande odore per lo giardin rendevano, che, mescolato insieme con quello di molte altre cose che per lo giardino olivano, pareva loro essere tra tutta la spezieria che mai nacque in Oriente…
Quante e quali e come ordinate poste fossero le piante che erano in quel luogo, lungo sarebbe a raccontare….
Nel mezzo era un prato di minutissima erba e verde tanto che quasi nera parea, dipinto tutto forse di mille varietà di fiori, chiuso dintorno di verdissimi e vivi aranci e di cedri, li quali, avendo i vecchi frutti e i nuovi e i fiori ancora, non solamente piacevole ombra agli occhi, ma ancora all'odorato facevan piacere.
Nel mezzo del qual prato era una fonte di marmo bianchissimo e con maravigliosi intagli e, gittava tanta acqua e sì alta verso il cielo, che poi non senza dilettevole suono nella fonte chiarissima ricadea…. La qual poi (quella dico che soprabbondava al pieno della fonte) per occulta via del pratello usciva e, per canaletti assai belli e artificiosamente fatti, fuori di quello divenuta palese, tutto lo 'ntorniava…
Il veder questo giardino, il suo bello ordine, le piante e la fontana co' ruscelletti procedenti da quella, tanto piacque a ciascuna donna e a'tre giovani che tutti cominciarono ad affermare che, se Paradiso si potesse in terra fare, non sapevano conoscere che altra forma che quella di quel giardino gli si potesse dare, né pensare, oltre a questo, qual bellezza gli si potesse aggiungere”…
In a little while, we would witness the passage from the intimate and even suggestions described above to a transformed conception of Nature and Man, going through the imaginative use of plants “artfully” placed in refined contrasts of light and shade, among monstrous figures and jeux d’eau, in the magniloquent “gardens of wonders”: new triumphs of sun and stone of the Renaissance period. |
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The "magic" forest of Bomarzo
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| The Garden in the Renaissance: Harmony of the Whole |
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In the 14th-century Europe, after the Black Death epidemic and a tough agricultural crisis, the continent’s population was halved: from 80 million it became about 40 million people. The landscapes changed again and large areas that were previously cultivated turned into wood and wild regions.
The deep mutation that ensues does not involve only the landscape, but also the culture.
The recovery of the 15th century encompasses all sectors of human knowledge, affecting also the way of conceiving the countryside and the gardens.
In Italy, for example, important settlements in the lands of Tuscany and other central regions develop, where productive needs combine with the necessity of taste and pleasure. |
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Two events in particular, the fall of Constantinople (1453) and the discovery of America (1492), mark the decline of the Middle Ages, modifying the economic and political powers. Many merchants, now with enormous fortunes to spend, invest in villas and palaces in the rural world.
The new buildings follow the rules laid down by the two most authoritative authors in the matter during the 15th century: Francesco Colonna (whose work tells the love dream between Poliphilus and Polia in the island/garden of Cythera) and Leonis Baptiste Alberti (De re aedificatoria, 1485) asserting that gardens must be built according to the same rules of other buildings.
These “rules”, that are the same of the ones at the base of Renaissance and Renaissance humanism, speak of reason, comprehension and knowledge of the laws governing Nature.
The Renaissance garden so conceived delineate the summa of what was done and discussed during the preceding centuries: the natural space modelled for man’s own use.
It represents the expansion of architectural structures: it is the continuation of a villa or a palace, towards the outer countryside. The high-class dwellings, built mostly on the hills, so extend their dominion on the surrounding scape.
The perspective, allowing the unification of all the elements making up the garden, the harmony of the whole, subordinated to the attraction of the single parts, as fundamental as the strict proportion and regularity that the garden must have, are the most significant aspects of the Italian garden. The first prototypes of it can be traced back to the middle 15th century (one example of them is the villa di Caffaggiolo, in Tuscany).
The epoch of the Renaissance gardens was characterized by three main stages. A passing period between the castle – model of a late medieval architecture – and a far more open building, with porticoes, loggias and flight of steps. A stage of artistic maturity, where the fountain becomes a distinguishing element and acquires great importance inside the garden. A pre-Mannerist stage. After the sack of Rome in 1527, Rome’s architecture comes to a new life: the garden is enriched with decorations made of vegetable elements, and it becomes the symbol of the most wealthier families very quickly. Beside them there are the gardens “of delights” that we can find in the countryside and in the surrounding areas of the city, far from the Pope’s Rome.
In the rest of Italy Venetian villas and garden arise. Through them, Palladio and Scamozzi “conceived” a countryside inside and outside the villa as less rigid and formal than the rational and geometric one we have described so far.
Some elements are nonetheless peculiar to the Italian garden, making it immediately recognizable: the relationship with the main building (entrance path to the villa or palace), a boundary wall, called also “enclosure”, the regularity of the geometric layout, the use of perspective (a main longitudinal axis and secondary axes perpendicular to it), the presence of terraces with one or two flight of stairs.
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Selfportrait of Leon Battista Alberti.
Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale.
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 Plan of Villa Lante.
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In it, one could find without fail architectural elements such as fountains and basins, towers, porticoes and open galleries, chapels. Also, it was very important the fact that the architectural scenario was unchanging: an evidence of this is the use of the evergreens replacing flowers.
Left behind the enchanted medieval atmospheres, the sound rationality of the Italian garden met with great success the rest of Europe as well. In France, Charles VIII appreciated its refined elegance, calling highly regarded Italian artists in his country; in Holland there was a return to the rules dictated by Leonis Baptiste Alberti.
Pertaining to the Renaissance period is the botanical garden as well: the study of plants brings about their “re-birth”, and in Padua we can see an extremely beautiful circular garden, recalling the Cythera Island exactly as Colonna described it… |
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L'orto botanico di Padova
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| “Nature, wild nature, is outside…” |
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Drawning by Gabriele Tamburini ©
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