The Idea of Villa Castagna
A garden is both a real place, and a cloud of possibilities. What you will find here will be both something real, and something that may or may not become real. For this reason you will find no map: Instead you will meet fragments, part real, part possible.
-
Join 37 other subscribers
No Instagram images were found.
Pages
Category Archives: Garden History
On Garden Gateways: Part 1. Serlio’s Libro Estraordinario
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 →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Baroque Gardens, Design, English Gardens, Garden History, Uncategorized, Villas
|
Leave a comment
A Baroque Villa Garden in a Painting by Passeri
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 →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Baroque Gardens, Garden History, Uncategorized, Villas
|
Leave a comment
Quentin Matsys Fence with Heraldic Animals
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 →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Baroque Gardens, Garden History, Uncategorized
|
Leave a comment
The Scale of Schloss Luisium in the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm
Looking at Montacute through the autumn leaves I was reminded of Schloss Luisium near Wörlitz. I have always like the way this little vertical building is tucked away in the woods. It struck me as a delightful miniature building, and … Continue reading →
Notes on Rodmarton Manor: The Circle
Kelmscott Manor is a Museum that feels like a private house, but Rodmarton Manor, curiously enough, is a private house that feels like a museum. The interiors feel oddly unlived in, even though the sofas (a sure sign of inhabited … Continue reading →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Baroque Gardens, English Gardens, Garden History
|
Tagged Arts and Crafts, Garden History, Kelmscott Manor
|
Leave a comment
The Autonomous Garden
The literature on gardens always comes back to the relationship with the house. The garden associated with the house forms part of living; it is a ‘lifestyle’ thing. You get up in the morning and there it is. You may … Continue reading →
The Garden of Bagatelle, Paris
Visit to Bagatelle, May 2011 Bagatelle was a disappointment. Partly it was the effort getting there. My guidebook rather unhelpfully listed various metro stops and left it at that, and it was off the edge of their map. I made … Continue reading →
Posted in Baroque Gardens, Design, Fabriques, Garden History
|
Tagged Bagatelle, Baroque Gardens, Garden History
|
Leave a comment
A Curious Impost Block at Iford Manor
At Harold Peto’s Iford Manor by there is a neo-Romanesque pavilion called the Casita on the upper terrace. Its wonderfully weathered architrave is supported on double stone columns with fused capitals (apparently pink Verona marble dating from c. 1200) with … Continue reading →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Construction, Design, English Gardens, Fabriques, Garden History
|
Tagged English Gardens, Garden History, Harold Peto, Iford Manor
|
Leave a comment
On Baroque Gardens
I picked up Tim Richardson’s The Arcadian Friends. Inventing the English Landscape Garden at the local remainder bookshop. Although the subject is the landscape garden it has an unusually sensitive account of the Baroque garden: ‘there is a tendency today … Continue reading →
Posted in All Posts, Baroque Gardens, Book Commentaries, Garden History
|
Tagged Baroque Gardens, Fontainebleau, Garden History, Vignanello, Villa D'Este, Villa Doria-Pamphilj
|
Leave a comment
Villa Castagna 
The Impossibility of Australian Architectural Connoisseurship
‘An Australian, however well-informed, simply cannot distinguish between a piece of Trust House timbering and a genuine Tudor building; an Englishman however uncultured knows at once …’. [Evelyn Waugh to John Betjeman, cited in A.N. Wilson’s Biography of Betjeman, 2007, … Continue reading →