The Renaissance Garden in England
Gardens, City Life, and Culture: A World Tour (Dumbarton Oaks Studies in Garden and Landscape History)
The Renaissance garden was Italian in origin. It had two distinct phases, the first running through the Quattrocento and whose defining work was the great architect Leon Battista Alberti ‘s De Re Aedificatoria ( 1451 ), the second signalled by the work of another major architect, Donato Bramante , in his orchestration of the papal Villa Belvedere in 1503 – 4 (see Vatican Gardens ). The garden in its Renaissance phase was over by c.1540 when one which can be categorized as mannerist was under way. The principles of the Renaissance garden revolution, however, were to take a century and more to cross Europe and reach its outer fringes like England and Scandinavia.
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The cultural, artistic and literary contributions accompanying the economic changes we have just mentioned cannot simply be considered as descriptive or celebratory refl ections of these
events. They signify, instead, a new social awareness, advancement, consolidation and, frequently, far-sightedness. Thus, on the one hand, these additional forms of expression were
of major importance in supporting the advancement of the
middle-classes and their view of the world, and, on the other,
they supplied the very soil which gave rise to the studies of the
specialist treatises, an attempt to produce the kind of building
that was relevant to their particular ways of life.
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Alberti, Leon Battista (1404–72), Italian humanist writer on the theory of art and architecture, designer of buildings, and, in varying degrees, athlete, lawyer, mathematician, moral philosopher, musician, painter, playwright, and satirist, born in Genoa, the illegitimate son of a Florentine exile. He was educated in Padua, where he was inducted into the humanist movement, and later studied law at Bologna.
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Titian or (Italian) Tiziano Vecellio (c.1489–1576), Italian painter, born in Pieve di Cadore (Veneto); he trained in the Venetian studio of Giovanni Bellini and subsequently worked on the external decoration of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi as an assistant to Giorgione, whose style he emulated so exactly that some paintings (e.g. Concert champêtre, Louvre) could be by either artist.
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The learned societies of Renaissance Europe adopted the term ‘academy’ in imitation of the Academy established by Plato, whose school was named after Academus, the mythical hero who was sacred to the grove on the outskirts of Athens where Plato taught. The first Renaissance academies were established in Florence and Naples.
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Bibiena family (Galli da) Italian painters, architects, and designers. Three generations of Galli da Bibienas were active throughout Europe from the Counter- Reformation to the Enlightenment, a period spanning approximately 1680 to 1780. Students of the baroque, an age that loved illusion, they adopted an exuberant style that made use of new architectural forms, ornate columns, trompe l’œil, overstatement, and exaggerated modelling. Their patrons were emperors and kings, and members of the nobility, as well as the Catholic Church and wealthy merchants in major towns throughout the Italian peninsula, Europe, and Russia; and they spent many years away from the family home in Bologna designing, building, and decorating gardens, palaces, villas, churches; planning and organizing spectacular royal coronations, weddings, and funerals; constructing horseshoe-shaped, many-tiered court playhouses and modern public or community theatres; designing theatre interiors; creating innovative scenery; and engineering stage machinery for operas and ballets by Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Antonio Caldara, and Carl Heinrich Graun.
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Sofonisba Anguissola (also spelled Anguisciola; c. 1532 – November 16, 1625) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.
Sofonisba Anguissola was born in Cremona, Lombardy around 1532, the oldest of seven children, six of whom were daughters. Her father, Amilcare Anguissola, was a member of the Genoese minor nobility. Sofonisba’s mother, Bianca Ponzone, was also of an affluent family of noble background.
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Michelangelo (1475-1564), was one of the most famous artists in history. He was mainly interested in creating large marble statues, but his endless creative energy also led him to become a great painter and architect as well as a poet. He was also one of the most famous people of his time and a great leader of the Italian Renaissance, a period marked by a rebirth of interest in the art and learning of ancient Greece and Rome. Michelangelo is best known for his treatment of the human body in painting and sculpture. His figures convey a sense of grandeur and power, and arouse strong emotions in many spectators.
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Painter, draughtsman and designer, active in Switzerland and England, son of (1) Hans Holbein (i). He is best known as the most important portrait painter in England during the Reformation, although he began his career in Basle, where he worked mainly as a painter of altarpieces and designer of woodcuts. Dissatisfaction with patronage in Switzerland led him to visit England in 1526–8, where, through Erasmus, he met Sir Thomas More and his circle. On returning to Basle, he completed projects that he had begun before his trip to England, undertook commissions for the city authorities and produced designs for stained glass and goldsmiths’ work. In 1532 he returned to England, where he worked almost exclusively as a portrait painter, mainly under the patronage of King Henry VIII and his courtiers.
