Historical gardens, truth and fiction
Critical readings of historical models in the landscapes of the 20th and 21st centuries
edited by Monique Mosser, José Tito Rojo, Simonetta Zanon
Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche-Antiga
Treviso 2021
320 pages, 215 illustrations
cover price 30 euro, ISBN 978-88-8435-230-9
Italian edition, ISBN 978-88-8435-229-3
(Memorie, 19)
The collective volume, edited by Monique Mosser, José Tito Rojo and Simonetta Zanon, contains contributions by: Elena Antoniolli, Vincenzo Cazzato, Chiara Comegna, Stéphanie de Courtois, Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto, Luigi Gallo, Dieter Kienast, Luigi Latini, Monique Mosser, Finola O’Kane, Franco Panzini, Filippo Pizzoni, Giuseppe Rallo, Bianca Maria Rinaldi, José Tito Rojo, Francesco Vallerani, Annachiara Vendramin, Simonetta Zanon.
Historical gardens, truth and fiction casts an apparently ironic, almost irreverent eye on those occasions in the last century when history was exploited to replicate garden forms and designs, sometimes overt copies. In many cases these were ‘genuine fakes’ that expressed and attitude to the past that we are now in a position to appraise with sharper insight.
The same period, however, also produced many more convincing examples that reveal sensibilities of a different kind, thanks to which work in the field of historical gardens has fostered continuity and developed a passion both for understanding and for the creative exercise of a critical interpretation of history.
Starting with the themes tackled by the 2019 International Landscape Study Days and other research and experimentation workshops organized recently by the Foundation, eighteen authors explore various lines of enquiry in sixteen contributions. Together these chapters reconstruct a complex geography of relationships, exchanges and richly fertile reciprocal influences on which contemporary garden and landscape culture continues to draw, inspiring projects that don’t simply freeze-frame the forms of the past but which rather raise questions about the continuity of places and the contexts to which they belong and on the presence of those who inhabit them and take responsibility for their future.
Contents
Preface, by Luigi Latini and Simonetta Zanon
Introduction, by Monique Mosser, José Tito Rojo and Simonetta Zanon
Readings and interpretations of historical models
Luigi Gallo and Chiara Comegna, The gardens of Pompeii: evocations of antiquity and scientific understanding
José Tito Rojo, The untroubled imagination. Fantasies in the gardens of the Alhambra
Finola O’Kane, Colonial landscapes: design strategies from Ireland and the Irish Caribbean
Bianca Maria Rinaldi, The comfort of tradition: the Chinese garden in contemporary landscape architecture projects
The fortunes of the Italian garden: inventions, copies, influences
Vincenzo Cazzato, Truth and artefice in 20th-century Italian gardens: projects, models, constructions
Filippo Pizzoni, Italian gardens’ and ‘English gardens,’ fashions and reciprocal influences
Franco Panzini, “Transplanted memories of the missionaries.” Gardens of historicist inspiration in Southern California
Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto, The Italian legacy in 20th-century American gardens. The case of Philadelphia
Evolution and invention in the landscape of north-eastern Italy
Giuseppe Rallo and Simonetta Zanon, The Farsetti garden in Santa Maria di Sala. A villa veneta landscape and its future
Francesco Vallerani, Palladian heritage and new landscapes. Arcadian eulogies and vandalistic localism in the Veneto
Annachiara Vendramin, The park at Miramare, Trieste: between reality and illusion
European landscape architects and the reinterpretation of the historical garden: some examples
Monique Mosser, Reaction and progress. Return to history and modernity in gardens in France, 1867-1937
Stéphanie de Courtois, Jacques Gréber and the rereading of the formal garden, 1920-1939. Creations, reinventions, reception
Luigi Latini, The short life of a modern garden. Pietro Porcinai and the Villa Theobald in Cologne, 1961-1964
Elena Antoniolli, Contemporary design and historic gardens in the work of Pascal Cribier and Michael van Gessel
Dieter Kienast and the sense of history in contemporary Swiss gardens, edited by Simonetta Zanon
The authors
References for illustrations
Index of names and places
The editors
Monique Mosser, historian of art, architecture, and gardens, is a researcher at the CNRS (Centre André Chastel, Paris), and honorary member since September 2012.
José Tito Rojo, botanist, since the outset of his professional activity, has devoted himself to the subject of gardens, both from a theoretical, primarily historical, point of view and in practical terms, as a garden designer.
Simonetta Zanon works for the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche in Treviso as landscape project and research manager.
