The nature theatre and the sacred, light and water, the sky and the earth are themes which run across myth and history, art and science. They identify ways of designing and memorizing, stimulating intercultural and landscape design comparisons. They are the garden’s substance, a metaphor of landscape. The perception and the tools of expressing this perception of the garden and the meanings behind this phenomena such as tangible and intangible components. Today the garden-landscape relationship has expanded in global and ecological dimensions as a sustainable project. Garden and landscape are cultural nodes that metabolize artistic and social dimensions and are always open to new ideas and views.
â‚Ź 22,00
Maria Adriana Giusti is a full Professor of Restoration at the Turin Politecnico. She is the Director of MSc Degree in Architecture/ Heritage Restoration and Enhancement and is on the teaching staff at the Graduate School of Advanced Studies in Cultural Heritage Technology and Management (IMT, Lucca). She mainly works in the garden and landscape sector, as designer and researcher. She has produced numerous publications on these topics. Of particular note is: The trilogy Lo Specchio del Paradiso (with M. Fagiolo), Atlante delle grotte e dei ninfei in Italia (with V. Cazzato and M. Fagiolo) and Restauro dei giardini. Teorie e storia (2004).
maria adriana giusti
garden vs landscape
materials and symbols garden vs landscape
materials and symbols
EDIZIONI
ETS
Maria Adriana Giusti
materials and symbols
garden vs landscape
EDIZIONI
ETS
Maria Adriana Giusti
Materials and Symbols materials Garden vsand Landscape symbols Marialandscape Adriana Giusti garden vs
Edizioni ETS Edizioni ETS
Traduzione Felicity Babao
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Progetto grafico Susanna Cerri Š Copyright 2010 Edizioni ETS Piazza Carrara, 16-19, I-56126 Pisa info@edizioniets.com www.edizioniets.com Distribuzione PDE ISBN 978-884672712-1
Maria Adriana Giusti
materials and symbols garden vs landscape
6 Maria Adriana Giusti. Materials and Symbols. Garden vs Landscape
Preface
San Francisco (USA). Shoes Garden in Alamo Square (detail).
There has been a change in the Western garden culture in the last two decades of the twentieth century. This change culminated in the Charter of Florence (1981) on the restoration of gardens, a theme that was recognized internationally and opened a fruitful debate within the Landscaping and Architecture community. New studies and new critical perspectives on the history and design of architecture “Polymaterials� (comprised of natural and artificial, organic and mineral materials) are a result of this charter. Over time, however, the clamour of opinion seemed to decrease, rather than defining the parameters of action. For these reasons I have gathered the results of several studies conducted in the period from the 80s until present day: to give continuity to contributions received, though often fragmented, from within small professional communities. The objective being, to analyze the contemporary condition of a design by placing garden at the center-landscape and the continuity using restoration and innovation. The volume is thus the key point of the historiographical journey that touches on transversal themes, relating to matter and meaning: from the theatre of nature to the idea of the sacred, from light to water, from heaven to earth. From these, emerges a universal idea, inherent in nature and cultivated gardens that crosses the ages and cultures. These reflections were the subject of many of my studies over two
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Maria Adriana Giusti. Materials and Symbols. Garden vs Landscape
Wien (Austria), Belvedere Garden. Shrubbery side.
decades. These include dissertations written with Marcello Fagiolo, a trilogy, Lo Specchio del Paradiso (1996-1998): L’immagine del giardino dall’Antico al Novecento, Il giardino e il teatro dall’Antico al Novecento (with the help of Vincenzo Cazzato and Hervé Brunon); Il giardino e il sacro dall’Antico all’Ottocento. These dissertations have helped create a systematic history of gardens. Historically and analytically classifying the many possible types of gardens next to portraits, more or less faithfully, of royal gardens. If these themes are looked at in detail, it is from their interweaving and continuous interactions that the garden has taken shape in its own complex extraordinary way. Methodologically, these studies have involved the close examination of papers and experiences hitherto unpublished. Consider the study of the garden Chigi Cetinale near Siena, the history of which is interwoven with the culture of art, antiques, philosophy, or that of Roman Baroque or the garden theater at Garzoni Collodi near Lucca, which is one of the rare examples of anamorphic landscaping application. From these, studies flowed including a book on the history and theories of the restoration of gardens derived from these studies (M.A. Giusti, Restauro dei giardini. Teorie e storia, 2004), which, for the first time, attempted to give a historical-analytical perspective of the culture of conservation in the garden. Finally, the recognition of the themes’ complexities linked with the dynamics of nature and culture which has led to the enlargement of design size: from garden to landscape, expressed the contemporary cultural landscape, with a more holistic view on biological, artistic, and social issues. This book is the result of this extremely condensed research, with a rational based on assessment of possible components of an analytical approach to address more closely the theme of the design in continuity and unity of scale. Writing this book has allowed me to revisit an intense period of studies, research projects during which I came across the great “masters” to whom I owe a lot: Eugenio Battisti, Marcello Fagiolo, Marco Dezzi Bardeschi and Alessandro Tagliolini. I wish to express gratitude to all my colleagues and students that helped stimulate ideas and debate, on these themes. The list is large, and of course, open. Turin, March 2010
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18 Maria Adriana Giusti. Materials and Symbols. Garden vs Landscape
Materials and symbols
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32 Maria Adriana Giusti. Materials and Symbols. Garden vs Landscape
Cetinale (Siena, Italy), Villa Chigi. Central allee towards the hermitage.
Cultures of the sacred.The multiple meanings that every historical period has given to the garden comes from a common denominator, that of the sacred genesis: Eden, the paradise of Muhammad and the Christian God, a place of the chosen, A place that identifies with sec-
Materials and symbols
The Sacred
ular power; the privilege of aristocracy who see the garden as an undeniable affirmation of their power. In this sense, it explains the relationship of continuity which was established in the Western world, between sacred and profane gardens at least until the sixteenth century: a structure of geometry, projection of divine order, prospective of control over nature, ornaments used as metaphors of power. With the inviolability of the garden fence, assimilated or opposed to metamorphic and mysterious world of nature, it is the place where thought manifested can transcend nature itself.37 As nature has transformed in culture, the garden is an expression of a creative force that links heaven and earth, human and divine. Its manifestations have been historically determined by the meeting of the pagan and Christian worlds: God and Gods, the God-Father and Sun God, Venus and Mary, nymphs, fauns, satyrs and saints, the Dionysian forces and the heavenly virtues. With different expressions, even in Eastern philosophy, the garden reveals the relationship of analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, between yin and yang, as in Taoism, or place of meeting with the Supreme Being, Brahma, as in Hindu tradition. In Western culture, the mysticism of ancient origin of nature is reflected in the Christianization of Greek and Roman myths. In particular, this process occurred in some symbolic places that correspond closely with Eastern cultures, like caves and nymphaeums, grottos and caverns, mountains and labyrinths, islands and rivers. More importantly, the sacred garden celebrates the ideal continuity between the Paradise of Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem in two figures, full of symbolic references and harmony: the sacred tree and water of life. Water expresses mutation, metamorphosis, and therefore the link between the physical and symbolic sacred world and nature. From the wells of mystical gardens to the symbolism of the baptismal font, water has direct symmetries with Eastern symbolism. From the garden of Sakuteiki, the oldest text dedicated to the composition of oriental gardens, elements emerged; the island, the lake, the waterfall, as well as the mountains and rocks that are throw backs to the theme of immortality38. In Chinese culture, mountains
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32 Maria Adriana Giusti. Materials and Symbols. Garden vs Landscape
Cetinale (Siena, Italy), Villa Chigi. Central allee towards the hermitage.
Cultures of the sacred.The multiple meanings that every historical period has given to the garden comes from a common denominator, that of the sacred genesis: Eden, the paradise of Muhammad and the Christian God, a place of the chosen, A place that identifies with sec-
Materials and symbols
The Sacred
ular power; the privilege of aristocracy who see the garden as an undeniable affirmation of their power. In this sense, it explains the relationship of continuity which was established in the Western world, between sacred and profane gardens at least until the sixteenth century: a structure of geometry, projection of divine order, prospective of control over nature, ornaments used as metaphors of power. With the inviolability of the garden fence, assimilated or opposed to metamorphic and mysterious world of nature, it is the place where thought manifested can transcend nature itself.37 As nature has transformed in culture, the garden is an expression of a creative force that links heaven and earth, human and divine. Its manifestations have been historically determined by the meeting of the pagan and Christian worlds: God and Gods, the God-Father and Sun God, Venus and Mary, nymphs, fauns, satyrs and saints, the Dionysian forces and the heavenly virtues. With different expressions, even in Eastern philosophy, the garden reveals the relationship of analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, between yin and yang, as in Taoism, or place of meeting with the Supreme Being, Brahma, as in Hindu tradition. In Western culture, the mysticism of ancient origin of nature is reflected in the Christianization of Greek and Roman myths. In particular, this process occurred in some symbolic places that correspond closely with Eastern cultures, like caves and nymphaeums, grottos and caverns, mountains and labyrinths, islands and rivers. More importantly, the sacred garden celebrates the ideal continuity between the Paradise of Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem in two figures, full of symbolic references and harmony: the sacred tree and water of life. Water expresses mutation, metamorphosis, and therefore the link between the physical and symbolic sacred world and nature. From the wells of mystical gardens to the symbolism of the baptismal font, water has direct symmetries with Eastern symbolism. From the garden of Sakuteiki, the oldest text dedicated to the composition of oriental gardens, elements emerged; the island, the lake, the waterfall, as well as the mountains and rocks that are throw backs to the theme of immortality38. In Chinese culture, mountains
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Maria Adriana Giusti. Materials and Symbols. Garden vs Landscape
in “barbaric and monastic” imagery, were mentioned by Walpole, because they correspond with a search for variety, the taste of the unusual, the surprise-effect of a landscaped garCalci (Pisa, Italy), Charterhouse. Fountain on the wall of the gardens.
den. This is a sacredness that filters through literary culture, from Etienne Pivert de-Senancour to Chateaubiand, from Matthew Gregory to Lewis Walpole. Even more evident is the Gothic novel fascination pursued in Studley Royal Park in Yorkshire, set in the engravings of Walker (1758). The ruined castle in the overture scene of A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe (1790), where a monk has his head bent to the ground, forming a “strange sight in the landscape.” Where the neo-medieval mysticism meets the evocation of the legendary world of chivalry, with the myth of the Templars and the Quest for the Holy Grail. This is evident in the park of Villa Citadel Vigodarzere of Saonara (Padova), designed by Giuseppe Jappelli in 1817. It is also evident in the Veneto region, in the park of Villa Maraschin-Zannini of Sandrigo, which was built in the second half of the nineteenth century by Antonio Caregaro Negrin. The symbolic journey through the grottos leading to the family burial ground, an octagonal temple, crowned by a statue, the Angel of Peace. This theme, despite losing incisiveness does not end
42
romantic culture, as evidenced today, by the Mausoleum, “Temple of Herta, in the park of Vil-
Emeronville (France). London (England). The Rousseau island. Althorp Park. Diana Spencer Island.
Island of the Dead. (Arnold Böcklin, Leipzig Art Museum 1886).
Materials and symbols
la Ottolenghi at Aqui Terme. The Akme scenic route which is called “Heaven on Earth”, was made in the 20s of the twentieth century for the Ottolenghi Counts, Arturo and Herta von zu Horst Wedekind, and was designed by Marcello Piacentini. In a series of frescoes about Genesis from birth to the Final Judgement, the circular building is located in the park, halfway up the hill at a place called “Heaven on Earth”. In contemporary times, we could also include the sacred in the repertoire of the gardens of the dead that perhaps formed the twilight of the sanctity of an enlightened culture. An area that links Eastern and Western cultures in an endless bond of symbolic correspondence. It is in this significant sense, the burial place of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit who gave life to mutual cultural respect exchanges between the East and the West. He died in Beijing in 1610 at Tenggong Zhalan and was buried in the cemetery-garden for foreign missionaries, that has now become a place thick with intense symbolisms. The presence of graves and mausoleums in gardens is the sacred sign of heroic virtue, allegorized by the presence of illustrious people from the worlds of culture, art and history. Consider the tomb of Rousseau on the island of Pioppi in Emeronville in bosquet religieux, by Barthélémy Michel Hazon in Cantiers park near Gisors, where his grave, along with that of his wife’s, is topped by an earth pyramid with a tree at the top. This theme refers to the continuity of life-death-resurrection as seen in the “media” burial of Diana Spencer on a tiny islet in the middle of the lake at Althorp Park, northwest London. An appropriate quiet setting on the Oval Island, a thicket of trees in the middle of a lake, “where Charles Spencer, brother of the deceased, created all this by mixing classical reminiscences (presumably Diana of Catullus, the green woods and remote clearings) with commercial intuition”41.
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Collodi (Italy), Villa Garzoni. The Muse Thalia, Comedy allegory, with a ivy garland and a stick in the green-theater.
Green Stage. The art of shaping plant material to create performance space, “Theatron” or places of visual concurrence, have been throughout history of Western gardens, from ancient to modern times42. In dictionaries and architectural manuscripts published between the late
Materials and symbols
The natural show
seventeenth and early nineteenth century, the term “garden theater” was used to describe the connection between the performance place (stage) and action: a place reserved for theatrical performances, celebrations and mundane ceremonies. The term theatre is used with the etymological meaning “to see”, which the word “represent” also derives from. The “garden theater” like architecture built with organic matter, is developed on the rules of perspective. The setting is a means to regulate nature and reduce it to a man-made, artificial space in which nature represents itself and becomes “the theater”. Through the reduction of stage space, the synthesis of two forms of spectacularity is achieved, as shown in the link between architectural expression and living material. The chosen site for nature also becomes the place chosen for the play, the last level of ephemeral artifice. The term “garden theater” tends to characterize the site through the form and substance, which it represents. The significance and meaning: “the theater of greenery”, “theater of flowers”, “theater of water”, “theater of rocks”, are attributes that refer to the concept of garden architecture as a whole composition of different dominating elements from a system of performance view. The set is the space syntax, which is able to measure the individual components represented, each with its own expressive and combinatorial potential. These preliminary idea attributes of “garden-theater” enter lexicon heritage of French origin, of the eighteenth century (Versailles represents the extreme synthesis of the theater becomes garden, container of various types of dramatic theater). In the book, La theorie et la pratique du jardinage by Dézallier D’Argenville (first edition, 1709), the theater of greenery is considered to be part of the architecture and “ornaments de verdure”, built according to the rules of the ars topiaria that form “green rooms”. Between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth century with the spread of books on architecture and gardens, the general acceptance of theater garden switches to typological specifications of the stage area through the use of stage
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Maria Adriana Giusti. Materials and Symbols. Garden vs Landscape
Landscape from the film Barry Lindon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975).
wide-open spaces and sunny Baroque perspective99, Jean-Jacques Rousseau contrasted lightdark, exerting a decisive influence in encouraging the shift from formalism to the “natural” landscape. Letter XXIII to Julie, in the novel Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise100, brings substance to landscape painting, through a play of natural light, that has a surprising effect on the perspective of the mountains: “add to that the optical illusion, the peaks lit differently, the lightdark of sun and shade, and all the lighting effects that occur in the morning and evening”. Rousseau wrote “you will have some idea of the continuous scenarios that do not cease to attract my imagination and seem to be offering me a real theater, because the view of the mountains, vertical, catches the eye more than the plain that is seen as obliquely and fugitive, where one object hides another....”. These images also recall the “always a new pleasure” play of light in the Alps, stated Swiss botanist Albrecht von Haller (The Alpes 1729), when “the first rays of the sun gilded the tips of rocks and its radius dispelling the mist, opening up the top of the mountain [...], where a whole mountain looks like a carpet of green embroidered by a rainbow....”101. The poetic landscape of English painters in the eighteenth century captures the light in all its nuances, and in the individual parts and together. For William Gilpin, it was the top of the mountains that spoke the language of art. Where the effects light-dark are multiplied through cavities projecting shadows on the surface, where there is a mixing of colors in a continuous movement that generates an infinite number of variations. And it is the “sublime” of the mountain, which a landscape painter must look at. The landscape painting is a reflection of landscape architecture, which must “engage the eye and spirit”. According to René-Louis de Girardin103, the composition of a landscape is not the responsibility of architects, or gardeners, but of poets and painters. For these, the effect is an especially picturesque “emphasis on each object and draws charm from variation that changes on a daily basis, taking on different aspects and forms, through a well-mixed contrast of light and shadow”. Light is an instrument for painting landscape, chromatic color contrasts, or through the shading, where things are slightly out of focus in the vision. “If the painter is compelled to imitate the nature of a uniform and flat landscape,” wrote Roger De Piles, in Cours de peinture par principes (1708), “he must make good through the distribution of well-studied light-and dark-benefit of chromatic shading [...] should observe the penetration of light on the land-
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Materials and symbols
scape, taking into account that in the evening when the sun goes down the light turns yellow red changing the colors”. These visions determine spatial compositions ranging from exposed places to the sun, usually destined for flower-patterned parterre, places of shade, with strong clumps of vegetation, up to the wooded areas and stretches of water that propagate the reflections of light. In these compositions are crucial intermediate linking areas, which dissolve the boundaries of vegetation and structures. Here, the light varies according to humidity and temperature, producing haze that can be seen in the distance, round objects that “take on power and all varieties of color [...] distance produces confusion (of color), monotony shows gray, grayish, opaque white more or less brightening, according to the place of light and the effect of the sun [...]. Who has not studied and felt the effects of light and darkness in the countryside, the forest floor, on houses, roofs of the city, day, night, leave the brushes..” (Denis Diderot, Essai sur la peinture, 1766). The play of light and shadow are variable parameters in the arch of a day that may facet, multiply, intensify the effects of vision, build excitement and take the viewer on a journey of empathic understanding. The nuance brings back memory as a metaphor and the melancholy felt at the realization that the memory has diminished. For Thomas Whately104, a place of melancholy is a “shaded pond with deep and dark water.” With these words, he demonstrated
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238 Maria Adriana Giusti. Materials and Symbols. Garden vs Landscape
Index Preface MATERIALS AND SYMBOLS Reflective Garden/Reflection on the Garden Garden image in the history Iconography and project
7 11 11 22
The sacred Cultures of the Sacred Theatrum sacrum and memories
33 33 39
The natural show Green Stage Theaters of grottos and ruins Scene of the landscape
45 45 51 57
Vegetation Treaties: Theory and Practice. Restoration of the vegetable matter
61 61 79
Light-Shadow Natural and artificial Light. Optics, reflection, color
83 83 88
Water and sounds Water in landscape composition. Between Art and Psyche. Enhancement of water architecture
100 100 107 118
HISTORIOGRAPHY, IDENTITY, RESTORATION Garden, Park, Landscape Garden Architecture and Monument Park and Parks Ancient and Modern
127 127 129 131
Paris (France). MusĂŠ de Quai de Bainly. Vegetable wall.
Garden History in European Culture Garden historiography French Culture of the late Nineteenth Century. Retourn to Formal Garden Italian garden and its models Intelligent Landscape Jardines clĂ sicos
139 139 143 149 154 164 176
Contemporary culture of the preservation The second century Things to Built/Things to plant Open debate
181 181 198 203
CULTURE AND POETIC PROJECT Units and fragments of landscape Villa-Landscape. Fragmented Unity: new design challeges. Planet-Garden Garden and Beyond Selected Bibliography
215 215 219 221 225 234
The nature theatre and the sacred, light and water, the sky and the earth are themes which run across myth and history, art and science. They identify ways of designing and memorizing, stimulating intercultural and landscape design comparisons. They are the garden’s substance, a metaphor of landscape. The perception and the tools of expressing this perception of the garden and the meanings behind this phenomena such as tangible and intangible components. Today the garden-landscape relationship has expanded in global and ecological dimensions as a sustainable project. Garden and landscape are cultural nodes that metabolize artistic and social dimensions and are always open to new ideas and views.
â‚Ź 22,00
Maria Adriana Giusti is a full Professor of Restoration at the Turin Politecnico. She is the Director of MSc Degree in Architecture/ Heritage Restoration and Enhancement and is on the teaching staff at the Graduate School of Advanced Studies in Cultural Heritage Technology and Management (IMT, Lucca). She mainly works in the garden and landscape sector, as designer and researcher. She has produced numerous publications on these topics. Of particular note is: The trilogy Lo Specchio del Paradiso (with M. Fagiolo), Atlante delle grotte e dei ninfei in Italia (with V. Cazzato and M. Fagiolo) and Restauro dei giardini. Teorie e storia (2004).
maria adriana giusti
garden vs landscape
materials and symbols garden vs landscape
materials and symbols
EDIZIONI
ETS
Maria Adriana Giusti
materials and symbols
garden vs landscape
EDIZIONI
ETS