Category Archives: Baroque Gardens

Schloss Trautsmannsdorf Meditations 2: Jean-François de Bastide’s La Petite Maison and Architectural Seduction

Posted on August 7, 2018 by Montacute Pavilion

Following my exploration of the somewhat unsatisfactory Garden for Lovers at Schloss Trautsmannsdorf (https://villacastagnadaylesford.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/schloss-trautmannsdorf-and-the-problematic-of-gardens-for-lovers) it may be worth turning to eighteenth-century France for a very different approach to the erotic garden. The key text is Jean-François de Bastide’s La Petite … Continue reading →

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Schloss Trautmannsdorf Meditations I: the Problematic of Gardens for Lovers

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Montacute Pavilion

The garden at Schloss Trautmannsdorf is a kind of Eden Project, a new garden created from 1995 and opened in 2001 (Fig. 1). The castle, which has had a sorry history, contains the provincial tourism museum, or Touriseum, which is … Continue reading →

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Onion Domes and the Spire of the Dresden Hofkirche (1738-51), with asides on the Frauenkirche

Posted on April 27, 2018 by Montacute Pavilion

Onion domes are seen here as being extravagantly exotic. They are certainly un-English and un-Australian. While ogee curves are common enough here in neo-Elizabethan buildings and Victorian bandstands, I cannot think of an example of an ‘onion’ dome. But first … Continue reading →

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Portmeirion 3. How Serious is Portmeirion?

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

The trauma of the First World War seems to have manifested itself in the ‘silly ass’ artistic culture of the 1920s. Novelists like Margery Allingham, and even Dorothy L. Sayers, created their detective heroes as upper class twits who took … Continue reading →

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The Monkey Puzzle Parterre at Biddulph Grange

Posted on November 13, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

At the National Trust’s Biddulph Grange garden in England they have a little terraced gardens in the section called ‘Italy’ which has four small monkey puzzle trees in a little box-edged parterre centred on a stone vase (Figs 1–3). This … Continue reading →

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Portmeirion 1. Introduction

Posted on November 12, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

People don’t always get Portmeirion (Fig. 1). For example, it has been argued that it is a proto-Post-Modernist work, created by an architect trying to subvert the modernist norm long before Venturi and Scott-Brown came on the scene. But this … Continue reading →

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On Garden Gateways: Part 1. Serlio’s Libro Estraordinario

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

Sebastiano Serlio’s Libro Estraordinario (Lyons, 1551, also 1558 and 1560) contrasts thirty rustic gateways with twenty ‘delicate’ ones. In a well-known passage, Serlio describes how he came to conceive them: ‘… finding myself continually in this solitude of Fontainebleau, where … Continue reading →

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A Baroque Villa Garden in a Painting by Passeri

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Montacute Pavilion

There is an interesting painting by G. B. Passeri in the window of Apolloni in Via del Babuino. It shows the ‘ottobrate’ (autumn festival) at a villa outside Rome, with a view of Rome in the distance. It shows two … Continue reading →

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More Dragon Spouts: Schwäbische Hall

Posted on December 16, 2016 by Montacute Pavilion

The Rathaus at Schwäbische Hall has some splendid dragon spouts (Fig. 1). The main channel is only half-round, with the top of the jaw completing it. It clarifies the ornamental ‘ears’. At Krakow there are both ‘ears’ and wings.  Here … Continue reading →

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Quentin Matsys Fence with Heraldic Animals

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Montacute Pavilion

This is a detail of Quentin Matsys (1456/1466–1530), the Virgin Enthroned in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. It shows a paling fence with polygonal posts. There is a bottom rail on the ground, a top rail, and a rail above the half-way … Continue reading →

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