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I'm on the second leg of my trip around Italy, | 0:00:07 | 0:00:10 | |
exploring the country's loveliest and most influential gardens | 0:00:10 | 0:00:14 | |
and the ideas, landscape and history that shaped them. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:21 | |
I began my journey with the grand gardens of Rome, made by cardinals vying for the papacy. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:29 | |
I'm heading south to Naples, where the sun has inspired gardens of poetry and romance. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:35 | |
Ah, that's just lovely. | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
And right up to the north of the country, where the gardens are magnificently dramatic. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:44 | |
I am actually genuinely lost. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:48 | |
This time I'm in Florence, where the creative flowering we now know as the Renaissance | 0:00:48 | 0:00:55 | |
promoted for the first time in modern history the idea that a garden could be a work of art. | 0:00:55 | 0:01:01 | |
In every direction, you see balance, order and harmony. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:06 | |
I'll be visiting both public and private gardens | 0:01:09 | 0:01:12 | |
in order to find out what it is about them that still has such a powerful resonance with us today. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:19 | |
It does feel like the most extraordinary, dramatic gesture to have at the bottom of the garden. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:24 | |
I'll also discover how British and American garden makers reinvented Renaissance gardens | 0:01:24 | 0:01:30 | |
at the beginning of the 20th century, spreading the myth that they were always a flower free zone. | 0:01:30 | 0:01:36 | |
It's all the same colour and yet building this symphony of green. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:40 | |
In the 15th century, the Tuscan city state of Florence | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
became the artistic and intellectual centre of the Renaissance, | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
which was a profound artistic and cultural revolution, | 0:02:02 | 0:02:06 | |
that over two centuries, took medieval Europe into the modern era. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:10 | |
Florentine artists like Botticelli, Michelangelo and Leonardo, | 0:02:10 | 0:02:14 | |
and architects such as Brunelleschi and Vasari, | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
produced some of the most glorious art and architecture the world has ever seen. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:22 | |
The Renaissance also developed the concept that had lain dormant since classical times, that a garden, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:29 | |
just as much as a painting or a piece of sculpture, could also be a profound artistic expression. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:36 | |
In the 15th century, there was this extraordinary flowering of art and science and literature, | 0:02:36 | 0:02:42 | |
and from that came this idea that gardens could be places that were beautiful in their own right, | 0:02:42 | 0:02:48 | |
that expressed power and pleasure as well as just utilitarianism. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:52 | |
And it does seem to me extraordinary that 500 years later, | 0:02:52 | 0:02:56 | |
we're still finding those gardens have something in them that is deeply attractive to us. | 0:02:56 | 0:03:03 | |
And if you want to discover what that is | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
and what Renaissance gardens were all about, then you need to come here to Florence. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:11 | |
The gardens in and around Florence are among the most beautiful anywhere in the world. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:26 | |
Whilst they were all created as works of art, they were also | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
deliberate expressions of power, wealth and learning. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:40 | |
The gardens made during this period inspired a 20th century Renaissance revival. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:46 | |
It was taken up enthusiastically by the ex-pat community in Florence and then by the rest of the world. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:53 | |
The Renaissance, which was a new synthesis of literature, | 0:04:07 | 0:04:10 | |
art, science and philosophy, was nurtured and financed by Florence's ruling banking dynasty, the Medici. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:17 | |
The development of the printing press led to the spread of ancient text, | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
that in turn inspired artists and philosophers with ideas rediscovered from ancient Greece and Rome. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:30 | |
At the same time, the Medici were growing ever richer as the Pope's banker, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:35 | |
and they fostered a creative home for the greatest artists, thinkers and architects of the day. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:42 | |
I'm heading now to the outskirts of Florence | 0:04:47 | 0:04:50 | |
and the earliest surviving Medici garden, Villa Castello. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
The garden of Villa Castello was begun in 1537 in the later or high Renaissance, | 0:04:59 | 0:05:05 | |
and has been restored to pretty much its original condition. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:08 | |
The thing that strikes you immediately when you walk in is the symmetry. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:27 | |
Everything is balanced. Whatever happens on one side is picked up on the other side. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:33 | |
The result is harmonious, and you can feel it, you can feel this sense of lightness, of generosity | 0:05:33 | 0:05:41 | |
that is completely prepared and ordered and laid out. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:47 | |
And you might think that that would be dull and predictable, but actually, it's not. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:52 | |
Villa Castello was the home of Cosimo de Medici, who became head of state | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
after the murder of his relation Alessandro at the age of just 17. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
Cosimo was an austere and ruthless man, | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
but under his rule, the glory of the Medicis in Florence reached new heights. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:28 | |
However, in 1537, he was hardly more than a boy | 0:06:28 | 0:06:33 | |
and Florence was in a state of turmoil. | 0:06:33 | 0:06:36 | |
Yet one of his first acts was to commission these magnificent gardens, | 0:06:36 | 0:06:40 | |
attached then to a relatively modest villa. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
To understand why Cosimo would stake so much on a garden, I met Giorgio Galetti, | 0:06:43 | 0:06:49 | |
a Renaissance expert who oversaw the superb restoration of these gardens. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:54 | |
Why was this garden made at that time, what was the impetus to do it? | 0:06:54 | 0:06:59 | |
You have to think that these had also a symbolic meaning. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:03 | |
The layout is a kind of symbol of this new order, | 0:07:03 | 0:07:08 | |
after 30 years of confusion, of fights, of bad economic conditions. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:15 | |
They call it buon governo, this good government. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:19 | |
The Medici really are the only one who can provide prosperity | 0:07:19 | 0:07:24 | |
and happiness to Tuscany. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:27 | |
In what way does it exemplify the high Renaissance garden? | 0:07:27 | 0:07:32 | |
I think the layout, it was divided in 16 compartments, | 0:07:32 | 0:07:37 | |
in perfect geometric shape. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
It was a demonstration of perfect control, of man, of space and nature. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:47 | |
And also it was the first time that an axis is used. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:53 | |
From the grotto to the villa, there are two fountains. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:56 | |
The main perspective, this was something new. | 0:07:56 | 0:08:00 | |
So Cosimo commissioned the sculptor Niccolo Tribolo | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
to make a garden that would be a display of his sophistication | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
and power, that he could then show to visiting rulers and ambassadors | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
as a clear demonstration of his wise and strong government. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:23 | |
This aspect of a garden being deliberately intended as a parade of | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
cultural power was a development new to the high Renaissance. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:31 | |
But the layout and the way the design maximises the views of the surrounding countryside | 0:08:31 | 0:08:36 | |
are based upon well established precedents of garden design. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:40 | |
The garden didn't come out of nothing. It was following a set of rules | 0:08:40 | 0:08:45 | |
that were best expressed by a man called Alberti. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
Now, he was a philosopher and a theorist, | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
and he said quite specifically that gardens should have certain features. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:54 | |
There should be paths of symmetry. There should be flowing streams, there should be trees planted, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:59 | |
and they should be planted in the form of a quincunx. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
A quincunx is where you have - and I can show you this really easier than telling you - | 0:09:02 | 0:09:07 | |
is where you have your trees planted in a row like that and then you have another matching set. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:13 | |
Then you plant one in the middle. What it means is, | 0:09:13 | 0:09:18 | |
as your pattern builds up, like that, you have that direction, | 0:09:18 | 0:09:23 | |
you can have them in this direction, you can have them in that direction. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:28 | |
You can see this clearly here, so down there, you can see a line of trees, | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
along here you can see a line of trees, along this axis, there's a line of trees. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
The whole point of that is in every direction, | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
you see balance, order and harmony. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:44 | |
Renaissance thinkers were exploring classical scientific principles, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:59 | |
and one of the beliefs was that God created the world along mathematical lines. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
Thus, the symmetry of Castello's layout was a deliberate echo of the universe's own ordered design. | 0:10:03 | 0:10:09 | |
One of the great discoveries of the Renaissance | 0:10:09 | 0:10:14 | |
were the rules of perspective, where you have a vanishing point where two parallel lines meet. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:19 | |
And of course, where two lines meet at a viewpoint, at a sculpture or a niche, | 0:10:19 | 0:10:27 | |
then that draws you to it, and it's as though they're relishing this new discovery. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:31 | |
That sums up the whole Renaissance spirit, because you have science, | 0:10:31 | 0:10:35 | |
you have mathematics, you have art and you have humanity, the human point of view, all working together. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:42 | |
There is a modern assumption that the Italian gardens of the Renaissance | 0:10:49 | 0:10:55 | |
were dominated by a single colour - green. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:57 | |
Yet Castello is, and was from the very first, full of flowers. | 0:10:57 | 0:11:03 | |
But when Giorgio Galetti started the restoration work, nearly all the original plants were long dead, | 0:11:03 | 0:11:10 | |
so he had to do a great deal of detective work to find out what grew here 500 years ago. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:15 | |
From my research I realised | 0:11:17 | 0:11:20 | |
that in the parterre there were dwarf fruit trees, | 0:11:20 | 0:11:24 | |
and we start to introduce these dwarf fruit trees. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:29 | |
And also there were flowers, and particularly beschels, | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
because they could flower in summer. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:37 | |
The picture you're painting is much more complex and interesting, really. | 0:11:37 | 0:11:41 | |
There were more than 600 bushes of roses. Jasmine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, was collected here. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:46 | |
So this idea that Italian gardens are just green, | 0:11:46 | 0:11:51 | |
with statues and water features, | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
is at best incomplete and actually a myth, really. | 0:11:54 | 0:12:00 | |
Yes. It's a stereotype. Yeah. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
So it just isn't true that Renaissance gardens were simply a formal green geometry. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:15 | |
Villa Castello, like every other Italian garden of the period, was richly floriferous. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:21 | |
And with the discovery of new worlds, new species were starting to come into Italy, | 0:12:21 | 0:12:27 | |
instigating a great resurgence in the science of botany. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:32 | |
Giorgio has found letters from Cosimo | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
revealing his own personal passion for roses, jasmine and citrus. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:42 | |
In fact, some of the 130 different varieties of citrus in | 0:12:42 | 0:12:46 | |
today's garden were propagated from Cosimo's original plants. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:51 | |
Here's a man not just with the money and the power to collect interesting, expensive things, | 0:12:52 | 0:12:58 | |
but a learned man, applying that knowledge to botanical and horticultural affairs. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:04 | |
I think that's really telling about the whole Renaissance spirit. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:08 | |
Every account of Cosimo describes him | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
as an exceptionally remote figure with a penchant for extreme violence. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:18 | |
But the respect he demanded as a ruler | 0:13:18 | 0:13:22 | |
depended as much on the evidence of his learning and culture as his ruthlessness. | 0:13:22 | 0:13:27 | |
To this extent, the garden was all part of his control of the state. | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
When a visitor came up here into the grotto, | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
the first thing they would've appreciated was the cool running water everywhere. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:38 | |
Water in these basins, and from the floor and running down the walls. | 0:13:38 | 0:13:43 | |
But they would also have seen these animals, the extraordinary, great menagerie of animals. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:50 | |
So you have here things like the dromedary, which refers back to | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was given one by the King of Egypt. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:59 | |
You have the goat, because Cosimo's star sign was Capricorn. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:03 | |
Up here there's a rhinoceros, and that refers to Alessandro. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:10 | |
Cosimo's predecessor was a tyrant. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:12 | |
And this is all about Medici power, | 0:14:12 | 0:14:16 | |
some of it positive, some of it benign, but power. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:20 | |
The garden of Villa Castello was one of the first and most influential of | 0:14:23 | 0:14:27 | |
the great wave of Italian garden building that took place in the second half of the 16th century. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:32 | |
Its superb restoration means that it's the nearest thing to | 0:14:32 | 0:14:36 | |
a true Renaissance garden that exists in Italy today. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:41 | |
When I first came to the garden, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
I thought it would be formal and symmetrical, but perhaps a little bit austere, | 0:14:43 | 0:14:50 | |
and even empty in places, and it absolutely is not like that at all. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:54 | |
That very interesting point that Giorgio made, | 0:14:54 | 0:14:58 | |
that it's a myth that Italian gardens didn't have flowers in it. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:04 | |
This garden would certainly have had plants of every kind. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:08 | |
In fact, if you want to see a Renaissance garden | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
as near to the real thing as you possibly could, then this is it. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
Castello was the first garden Cosimo made, but not the last. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:25 | |
Whereas that had been a private show of his public power, | 0:15:25 | 0:15:29 | |
in 1550, when he was still just 29, | 0:15:29 | 0:15:31 | |
work began on a garden that would dwarf Castello, | 0:15:31 | 0:15:35 | |
which was to be a much more public display of his private passions. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:39 | |
Whilst work was still underway at Castello, Cosimo started another garden. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:46 | |
This time it was right in the middle of Florence, it was much bigger, | 0:15:46 | 0:15:50 | |
and it was different in a number of ways, not least in that it was intended from the outset | 0:15:50 | 0:15:55 | |
to house and display his huge collection of sculpture. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:59 | |
The traditional seat of Florentine rulers was the Palazzo Vecchio, in the centre of the city. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:03 | |
But in 1549, Cosimo's wife, Eleanor of Toledo, bought the Pitti Palace, | 0:16:03 | 0:16:08 | |
just across the river, and rebuilt it on an enormous scale. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:12 | |
It's not normally open to the public, but I've been given special permission | 0:16:12 | 0:16:16 | |
to take the elevated corridor that Cosimo had made | 0:16:16 | 0:16:19 | |
in 1564, linking the Pitti Palace to the newly built Uffizi, | 0:16:19 | 0:16:24 | |
just so he could walk privately across the river secure from, and unseen by, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:30 | |
the jostling crowds on the bridge below. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:35 | |
Today, the walls are lined with the Medici family's private collection | 0:16:39 | 0:16:44 | |
of self portraits by some of the world's most renowned artists. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:49 | |
To just walk along and just see a Rembrandt, | 0:16:52 | 0:16:54 | |
Rembrandt in old age, that's worth coming here just to see that. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:59 | |
At the end of the corridor, a door opens | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
into the most ambitious of all the Medici homes, the Boboli gardens. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:10 | |
Throughout the medieval period, sculpture had been primarily displayed in churches. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:28 | |
But now, as Renaissance artists drew inspiration from classical statues that openly relished the human form, | 0:17:28 | 0:17:34 | |
sculpture began to be displayed in Florence's gardens and piazzas. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:40 | |
One of the most opulent displays of sculpture in the Boboli gardens is the grotto, | 0:17:40 | 0:17:46 | |
designed in 1582 by the Florentine architect, Bernardo Buontalenti, for Cosimo's son, Francesco. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:54 | |
In its heyday, the grotto's marble sculptures and walls of volcanic rock, | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
shells and quartz would've shimmered beneath cascades and jets of water. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:07 | |
In the corners are these four sculptures. Now these are concrete cast, but until the 1920s, | 0:18:10 | 0:18:14 | |
they were the originals, and they're by Michelangelo. The Slaves. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:18 | |
I remember being taught about these extraordinary sculptures that showed the slave | 0:18:18 | 0:18:23 | |
trying to break free from the stone that they're imprisoned in, and then much later they came here as a gift. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:29 | |
Of course, Michelangelo, one of the greatest figures in the history of art | 0:18:29 | 0:18:34 | |
and of the Renaissance and of the Medici family. So it's all here in the one place. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:40 | |
The Boboli Gardens continued to be made and remade for over two centuries, | 0:18:43 | 0:18:50 | |
getting ever bigger and grander until eventually, it covered 111 acres. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:54 | |
Initially, the steep, rocky land behind the palace was levelled | 0:18:54 | 0:18:59 | |
to make an open, grassy space flanked by trees, where Cosimo could indulge his mania for hunting. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:06 | |
Then, some 50 years after his death, his descendants took this modest amphitheatre and enlarged it hugely | 0:19:06 | 0:19:13 | |
to accommodate the new, theatrical, baroque fashion. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:16 | |
There was a mania for performance of any kind - | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
pageants, burlesque, masque, and the bigger the better, because it meant that you had lots of money to spend. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:29 | |
They cost a fortune and they would build volcanoes that exploded, and have wild animals. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:35 | |
They flooded an area at one time and had a battle with boats. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:39 | |
It was a kind of elaborate theatre to entertain your guests, who would sit around | 0:19:39 | 0:19:44 | |
and they would take in the space, and the garden became the setting | 0:19:44 | 0:19:48 | |
for the most dramatic performance possible. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
'I met the director of the city's museums, Cristina Acidini, | 0:20:07 | 0:20:12 | |
'to find out more about Boboli's grand masques and pageants.' | 0:20:12 | 0:20:16 | |
It does seem that there was a big change in style, when Cosimo went from Castello to Boboli. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:25 | |
-What instigated that? -The garden is more and more the setting of public events. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:32 | |
They were recorded, admired and spoken about all over Europe. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:37 | |
We have wonderful statements from the Venetian ambassadors | 0:20:37 | 0:20:43 | |
that were very careful and exact in their reports, and they were describing magnificent festivals. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:50 | |
Was this a new development, that gardens could tell these stories? | 0:20:50 | 0:20:54 | |
Yes, it is a significant watershed in the history of gardening. | 0:20:54 | 0:21:01 | |
There were political meanings in them. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:03 | |
The gardens are part of a propaganda expanded programme. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:09 | |
What instigated that? What prompted it? | 0:21:09 | 0:21:12 | |
The Medici, and especially Cosimo, were the rulers of Florence, | 0:21:12 | 0:21:17 | |
and they were keeping peace, thanks to their power. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:20 | |
So, people should support power and in return, they get peace? | 0:21:20 | 0:21:26 | |
Yes, more or less, that's the meaning, the deep meaning of it. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:30 | |
So, the grand pageants were displays of Medici power | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
with the clear message that power equals peace and economic stability for the people of Florence, | 0:21:39 | 0:21:44 | |
but only if they fell in line behind Medici rule. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:49 | |
Boboli was private until the 19th century, when it was opened to the public. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:58 | |
But some parts are still out of bounds, like the Isolotto, | 0:21:58 | 0:22:02 | |
an oval island made in the 1620s, surrounded by a broad moat. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:07 | |
The public aren't allowed on this island, | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
but I've been let in as a treat. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
It's clearly seen better days, but it's still rather wonderful. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
It had a different origin completely. It was a rabbit island. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
You keep rabbits and chickens on the island | 0:22:24 | 0:22:27 | |
and perhaps an aviary as well, and it would be protected by a moat, | 0:22:27 | 0:22:30 | |
and in that you'd have fish, so you had plenty of dinner stored at the bottom of the garden. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:36 | |
And then when they bought the obelisk and put that in the amphitheatre, | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
they moved this, so this is the original decoration. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
You can see the enormity of the scale would've fitted into that space. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:49 | |
Here, well... here, it's very strange, isn't it? | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
I tell you what I like about this. It does feel like the most | 0:22:52 | 0:22:56 | |
extraordinary, dramatic gesture to have at the bottom of the garden. | 0:22:56 | 0:22:59 | |
Bit scrappy, feels a bit unloved, but it is an amazing piece of garden theatre. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:06 | |
The Medici dynasty ruled Florence for more than three centuries | 0:23:15 | 0:23:19 | |
and were the greatest patrons of the Renaissance. They'd also been instrumental | 0:23:19 | 0:23:23 | |
in establishing the concept that a garden could be a work of art | 0:23:23 | 0:23:28 | |
as well as playing an important role in confirming their wealth and power. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:33 | |
I'm off to a shop in the back streets | 0:23:47 | 0:23:50 | |
to sample one of the more unlikely spin-offs from Boboli Garden's grand grotto. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:55 | |
As well as designing the grotto, Bernardo Buontalenti built the Medici ice houses, | 0:23:58 | 0:24:05 | |
where ice for chilling food was stored. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
And according to Florentine legend, when he experimentally chilled a cream-based dessert, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:12 | |
he invented ice cream, to the subsequent delight of the grateful world. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:17 | |
Now, this is the original ice cream, isn't it, that was made by the Medici? | 0:24:21 | 0:24:26 | |
Yes. Bernardo Buontalenti. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:29 | |
-What are the ingredients? -Cream, milk, honey, sugar, spices. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:35 | |
-Can I have a taste of it? -Of course, yes. -And that will take me back to that first ice cream. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:41 | |
Thank you. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:43 | |
-It's very good. It's very custardy, isn't it? -Yes. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
Can I have a little container of it, please? Thank you. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
-Thank you. -You're welcome. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
The next stage of my journey will take me and the Renaissance rule book right into the 20th century. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:17 | |
Of course, now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that by 1600, | 0:25:19 | 0:25:23 | |
the Renaissance had evolved into something much more theatrical, that typified the baroque. | 0:25:23 | 0:25:30 | |
However, the values of order and elegance remained, | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
and in one garden in particular, this combination was to prove enormously influential. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:40 | |
Settignano is a village in the hills overlooking Florence, | 0:25:45 | 0:25:48 | |
famed for its stone cutters and where Michelangelo grew up. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:52 | |
It's also home to a small private garden called Villa Gamberaia. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:58 | |
Gamberaia is a three-acre garden built on top of a ridge by Andrea di Lapi, | 0:26:11 | 0:26:18 | |
a wealthy silk merchant, between 1619 and 1680. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:23 | |
Although it's creation came 150 years after Alberti wrote his Renaissance garden formula | 0:26:23 | 0:26:27 | |
and is very much a baroque garden, Gamberaia still holds true to Alberti's basic rules of order, | 0:26:27 | 0:26:35 | |
symmetry and a clear relationship with the Tuscan landscape around it. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:40 | |
Running the whole length of one side of the garden is the bowling green. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:47 | |
One end is a nymphaeum, and 300 full and perfectly flat green yards distant, | 0:26:47 | 0:26:52 | |
a pine fringe balustraded view over the Tuscan countryside. | 0:26:52 | 0:26:56 | |
I think this bowling green is one of the great pieces of garden design. | 0:26:56 | 0:27:01 | |
Apart from anything else, it's an outrageously ambitious thing to do. This enormous great length | 0:27:01 | 0:27:06 | |
made out of grass in a climate where you can't really grow grass, so they've had | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
to bring in water especially for it, and then building these walls, | 0:27:10 | 0:27:15 | |
some of which are retaining walls, because they slice into the hillside, | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
so that the whole thing is monumental in scale in a relatively small garden. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:25 | |
And yet it doesn't upset the balance of the garden. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:28 | |
Gamberaia was admired from its creation, but it was only at the turn of the 20th century | 0:27:37 | 0:27:42 | |
that it would come to act as a kind of muse to a new generation of garden designers | 0:27:42 | 0:27:47 | |
as the idealised version of what a Tuscan villa might be. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:51 | |
In 1896, Villa Gamberaia was bought by a Romanian princess, | 0:27:56 | 0:28:02 | |
the exotic and reclusive Princess Ghyka, | 0:28:02 | 0:28:06 | |
who settled here with an American woman, rumoured to be her lover. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:11 | |
She married this Albanian prince, who was a bit of an adventurer | 0:28:11 | 0:28:15 | |
and certainly never appeared here at Gamberaia. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:19 | |
Princess Ghyka's affections were directed towards her female companion, | 0:28:19 | 0:28:25 | |
who was wonderfully called Florence Blood. | 0:28:25 | 0:28:28 | |
Princess Ghyka apparently was a great beauty, but her looks went | 0:28:28 | 0:28:32 | |
and she never appeared in public without a veil. In fact, she hardly ever appeared in public at all. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:37 | |
People would just get glimpses of her through the window, | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
but the one thing she was was obsessed by this garden. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:44 | |
By the end of the 19th century, the formal parterre had become a vegetable plot, | 0:28:44 | 0:28:50 | |
and the princess embarked on a major restoration and remodelling of the garden. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:55 | |
To get an idea of the extent of her impact, I met up with Mario Bevilacqua, | 0:28:55 | 0:29:00 | |
professor of architecture at the University of Florence and an expert on the garden's history. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:05 | |
This map is what we call a cabreo. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
The land survey of the Gamberaia can be dated to the beginning of the 18th century. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:14 | |
It's a very important document, because it gives a true representation | 0:29:14 | 0:29:19 | |
of what the property looked like - the agricultural fields, | 0:29:19 | 0:29:23 | |
and the gardens, layout of the gardens and the villa itself. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
Were people concerned that she was going to ruin a historical...? | 0:29:28 | 0:29:32 | |
Absolutely not. She was not ruining anything. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:35 | |
She was enhancing the property and she was restoring it to its former beauty. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:40 | |
She knew how it was, but then, she want to recreate something | 0:29:40 | 0:29:44 | |
which could convey a stronger idea of an idealised Italian formal garden. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:52 | |
And this is what she did out here? | 0:29:52 | 0:29:56 | |
'From the loggia, the garden is laid out perfectly below us.' | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
Princess Ghyka kept the symmetry of the original 17th century layout, | 0:30:13 | 0:30:17 | |
but replaced the ornate box broderie pattern with four pools, | 0:30:17 | 0:30:20 | |
and the Isolotto at the end with a green theatre, completely transforming the garden. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:26 | |
She is said to have swum in the pools, but only at night, safe from prying eyes. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:31 | |
She decided not to obliterate the original pattern of the garden. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:46 | |
She decided to enhance it and create a new garden, which reflect the Renaissance and early baroque period. | 0:30:46 | 0:30:54 | |
She had new trees planted, the theatre at the end, | 0:30:54 | 0:30:58 | |
and she changed the four parquets into water parquets, | 0:30:58 | 0:31:03 | |
which is a very original feature, and she designed it herself. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:07 | |
What I feel is that there are lots of villas and they're beautiful, but what is it about Gamberaia? | 0:31:07 | 0:31:13 | |
There is a kind of balance and magic. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:17 | |
-It's very hard to define about this place. -You are right. | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
It is almost the perfect villa, isn't it? | 0:31:20 | 0:31:23 | |
-The idea of perfect. -The idea of a perfect villa, yes. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
Gamberaia may seem very simple. | 0:31:26 | 0:31:29 | |
Actually, its structure is very complex. | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
And there's a double axis, which is very interesting. | 0:31:32 | 0:31:37 | |
You've got the open countryside this way. You've got the Cupola and historic Florence down there. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:43 | |
The idea of this garden which floats on the city and in the countryside. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:50 | |
The princess's garden is quite complex | 0:31:56 | 0:31:58 | |
and with the box and the layers and the interweaving of it, that's very attractive. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:04 | |
But it is quite difficult to read from a ground level. | 0:32:04 | 0:32:08 | |
Certainly, from the other end, you don't really see the water. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
There's no narrative in the layout. You don't quite know where to go or where it's going to take you | 0:32:11 | 0:32:16 | |
and when you make your way, there doesn't seem to be a logic. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
Of course, as soon as you get up to the loggia and look down, it's as clear as day. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:24 | |
Although Gamberaia is a garden that has accumulated and changed over 300 years, | 0:32:37 | 0:32:42 | |
the essence of it is straight out of the Renaissance garden rule book. | 0:32:42 | 0:32:46 | |
And Gamberaia showed that these ideas could work on a relatively modest, accessible scale. | 0:32:46 | 0:32:53 | |
Visitors could see this and apply its principles to their own gardens. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:58 | |
Gamberaia became famous all over the world, but especially the British Isles and America. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:04 | |
Architects came here and started the Gamberaia, along with the great Renaissance villas around Rome. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:12 | |
It seems that that reputation has endured and it's lasted right up to the present day. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:17 | |
Also because it wasn't so grand, so imposing, and so it could well | 0:33:17 | 0:33:23 | |
be adapted to higher middle class, used as a model. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:28 | |
-It's what we would call aspirational. -Yes. | 0:33:28 | 0:33:30 | |
People could aspire to it. | 0:33:30 | 0:33:32 | |
The combination of the garden's beauty | 0:33:41 | 0:33:43 | |
with its formality and elegance, as well as | 0:33:43 | 0:33:46 | |
its relative accessibility from Florence, | 0:33:46 | 0:33:49 | |
meant that gardeners and designers were drawn to it like a magnet. | 0:33:49 | 0:33:52 | |
And the mysterious and lurid tales of Princess Ghyka only added to the attraction. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:58 | |
There's no doubt that this garden sparked a revival | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
in Renaissance gardening, particularly the idea of the Renaissance garden, | 0:34:06 | 0:34:10 | |
and then combined with the allure of the Princess and her lover, | 0:34:10 | 0:34:15 | |
Gamberaia became something of a cult, and was regarded | 0:34:15 | 0:34:19 | |
at the turn of the 20th century as the perfect villa and garden. | 0:34:19 | 0:34:24 | |
By the end of the 19th century, there was a large ex-pat community living in Florence. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:41 | |
Drawn by its incredible artistic and architectural treasures, and not least | 0:34:41 | 0:34:45 | |
by the much cheaper cost of living, with wonderful Renaissance villas to be rented or bought for a pittance. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:52 | |
They never even needed to learn to speak Italian either, because by 1900, | 0:34:54 | 0:34:58 | |
it was reckoned that one sixth of the Florentine population was English-speaking. | 0:34:58 | 0:35:03 | |
There was also another attraction that drew some to Florence. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:10 | |
There was a big influx of Americans and British people and they came here for a number of reasons. | 0:35:10 | 0:35:16 | |
The weather, the Renaissance, the art, the history, it was cheap. | 0:35:16 | 0:35:20 | |
But there was also another powerful pull, which was sexual freedom. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:25 | |
When people came here, they felt they had a licence to behave | 0:35:25 | 0:35:28 | |
in a way that they just couldn't do back at home. | 0:35:28 | 0:35:30 | |
With its relaxed attitude to extramarital affairs and homosexuality, | 0:35:38 | 0:35:42 | |
Florence offered an escape from the bunged-up Victorian values. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:48 | |
And its gardens soon became the backdrop for the affairs and intrigues of the ex-pat set. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:53 | |
Around the corner from Villa Gamberaia in Settignano, I'm off to visit one such garden. | 0:35:55 | 0:36:01 | |
It was once the hub of this libertine Anglo-American community, | 0:36:01 | 0:36:06 | |
and also the place where the 20th century neo-Renaissance garden was conceived and created. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:12 | |
I'm excited to be visiting this garden at all, because it's not open to the public | 0:36:15 | 0:36:20 | |
and Harvard University, who own it, were a bit wary about letting me in. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:24 | |
Anyway, they've relented. It's called I Tatti and it was designed by an Englishman | 0:36:24 | 0:36:29 | |
called Cecil Pinsent 100 years ago, For a long time, it formed the basis | 0:36:29 | 0:36:35 | |
of what most people thought an Italian garden should look like. | 0:36:35 | 0:36:39 | |
In 1900, an American couple, Bernard Berenson, an art historian | 0:36:47 | 0:36:52 | |
specialising in the Renaissance, and his wife Mary, rented I Tatti. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:58 | |
Later, they bought it and began to make substantial alterations. | 0:36:58 | 0:37:02 | |
Mary Berenson commissioned two 23-year-old Englishmen to work on the house | 0:37:02 | 0:37:06 | |
and to create a new garden from the villa's old vineyards. | 0:37:06 | 0:37:10 | |
They were the newly qualified architect, Cecil Pinsent, | 0:37:10 | 0:37:13 | |
and her husband's secretary, Geoffrey Scott, with whom Mary was having an affair. | 0:37:13 | 0:37:18 | |
This was a ruse by Mary to keep Geoffrey Scott around, | 0:37:20 | 0:37:24 | |
and Berenson tolerated this, but he actively nurtured Pinsent, | 0:37:24 | 0:37:28 | |
and as a Renaissance specialist, sent him to visit formal gardens around Florence for inspiration, | 0:37:28 | 0:37:34 | |
including the nearby Villa Gamberaia. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:36 | |
All the pictures I've seen of I Tatti have been the garden spread out. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:43 | |
I didn't realise you came through a doorway. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:45 | |
And immediately, you can see why people thought that | 0:37:45 | 0:37:49 | |
Renaissance gardens were just green, because that is just solid green. | 0:37:49 | 0:37:54 | |
There is no other colour through this doorway at all. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:57 | |
But what strikes me immediately is that, | 0:38:14 | 0:38:16 | |
where in a Renaissance or baroque parterre, you look down, it's rather two-dimensional. | 0:38:16 | 0:38:22 | |
Here, Pinsent has used uprights. | 0:38:22 | 0:38:26 | |
There are verticals everywhere, and what that creates are boxes of space. | 0:38:26 | 0:38:32 | |
And I don't know why, but that's very satisfying. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:35 | |
It's always a good thing in a garden. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:37 | |
And very rare to see it just in one colour. | 0:38:37 | 0:38:39 | |
Although I can see the influence of his British contemporaries, | 0:38:50 | 0:38:55 | |
Pinsent has made a garden that clearly uses | 0:38:55 | 0:38:58 | |
the idioms and structures of Renaissance and baroque gardens. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:02 | |
Central axis, absolute symmetry, green parterres and a bosco beyond. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:08 | |
It is astonishing that he was a complete novice, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:12 | |
and yet he's made the garden into multi-faceted architecture. | 0:39:12 | 0:39:18 | |
He's ruthlessly excluded all colour except green. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:22 | |
And the result is surprisingly modern and contemporary | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
for a garden that was overtly inspired by the Renaissance. | 0:39:25 | 0:39:29 | |
Despite all this green, there's a lot going on. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
It's really complex and once you walk into the garden, | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
it's got real substance. And I love this bit over there, | 0:39:40 | 0:39:44 | |
because he's created this texture and architectural shape just using green. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:49 | |
There's a wall behind that hedge, so he's planted a hedge on top of a wall | 0:39:49 | 0:39:53 | |
and then a hedge in front of a wall. Now obviously the wall blocks your view and holds up the landscape | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
so you don't need the hedge. But by planting them there, | 0:39:57 | 0:40:02 | |
he's created this structure, this building made out of green, | 0:40:02 | 0:40:06 | |
so it's got a kind of energy, which is exciting, actually. It feels like something's happening. | 0:40:06 | 0:40:12 | |
Giorgio Galetti's research at Villa Castello has shown | 0:40:22 | 0:40:25 | |
that Renaissance gardens were, in fact, filled with colour. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:29 | |
So why did Pinsent choose such a restricted palette? | 0:40:29 | 0:40:33 | |
The historian Alan Grieco is assistant director at I Tatti. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
This was Pinsent's first commission. | 0:40:39 | 0:40:41 | |
He's not even 25 years old when he design. He doesn't have that much experience. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:47 | |
He's coming from a totally different tradition, because the few sketches that we have, | 0:40:47 | 0:40:52 | |
we know that he was very interested in very informal gardens. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
And clearly, coming to Italy, he suddenly discovers this whole world of the formal Italian garden. | 0:40:56 | 0:41:02 | |
It is extraordinary when you think about it. Here we have a man who is not yet 25, | 0:41:02 | 0:41:07 | |
no experience, and yet he makes a garden that becomes internationally renowned. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:12 | |
It's an amazing thing. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:15 | |
One of the old gardeners who knew Pinsent said to me once, | 0:41:15 | 0:41:20 | |
"Pinsent told me, 'I don't know anything about flowers, but any case, | 0:41:20 | 0:41:24 | |
"'these gardens don't really need flowers.'" | 0:41:24 | 0:41:27 | |
So I thought that was very emblematic. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
So when they visited Renaissance gardens, | 0:41:29 | 0:41:33 | |
what they saw was basically what had survived of these gardens, | 0:41:33 | 0:41:38 | |
and therefore, the hedges and the green part | 0:41:38 | 0:41:41 | |
was much more likely to survive than any of the flowers, | 0:41:41 | 0:41:46 | |
and I think that's where the idea comes from that it is very much of a green garden. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:51 | |
What I do like about this severely monochromatic garden is | 0:42:04 | 0:42:08 | |
you have these layers that build up to something very, very special. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
It starts with the grass and there's a little sound of that, | 0:42:12 | 0:42:15 | |
and then that's built upon by the box hedges and | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
different layers of those that interplay with each other. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
Behind that you have the Cypress hedge, clipped, but wanting to grow tall. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:26 | |
Beyond that you have the Holm Oak hedge, a different green, and then, soaring up, you have the Cypresses, | 0:42:26 | 0:42:31 | |
majestic, all the same colour and yet building this symphony of green. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:37 | |
So the idea of the exclusively green Renaissance Italian garden | 0:42:50 | 0:42:56 | |
was a misunderstanding by Edwardian garden makers, who took their cue | 0:42:56 | 0:43:00 | |
from 400-year-old gardens that had simply lost their flowers over the centuries. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:05 | |
It's become fashionable to criticise Pinsent for making a green garden, as though it was his personal fault | 0:43:09 | 0:43:15 | |
for this misconception that Italian gardens, | 0:43:15 | 0:43:18 | |
and Renaissance gardens in particular, were just composed of greenery. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:23 | |
But actually, I think the fact that I Tatti is predominantly a green garden is its glory. | 0:43:23 | 0:43:28 | |
If it had colours, it'd be spoilt. I love it for what it is. | 0:43:28 | 0:43:32 | |
Pinsent and Scott had launched a new fashion for Renaissance style green gardens, | 0:43:41 | 0:43:46 | |
but their partnership didn't last long. Scott ended his affair with Mary Berenson, | 0:43:46 | 0:43:50 | |
and true to the spirit of the place, started another with Bernard Berenson's ex-lover. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:56 | |
Having captured himself a rich wife, he then lost interest in garden making. | 0:43:56 | 0:44:00 | |
But Pinsent flourished and went on to create some of the 20th century's finest gardens. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:06 | |
Before heading off to see a very different Pinsent garden, | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
I really wanted to visit a small garden made by an Italian. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
But astonishingly, I couldn't find one. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
However, judging by the abundance of flower pots on balconies and | 0:44:29 | 0:44:34 | |
window boxes, Florentines clearly love flowers. So it was a puzzle. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:39 | |
I headed off to one of the city's very few garden centres to see if I could find out more about this. | 0:44:39 | 0:44:46 | |
Are there many people growing plants, making gardens, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
so they're nurturing them and making a garden with their hands? | 0:44:52 | 0:44:56 | |
Is gardening popular? | 0:44:56 | 0:44:58 | |
One thing, I see you sell seeds. | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
Are people growing food, are they growing vegetables from seed? | 0:45:32 | 0:45:36 | |
Here is another foreigner who will buy some seeds. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:47 | |
-Misticanza. -Misticanza, OK. | 0:45:49 | 0:45:52 | |
I'll get that. | 0:45:52 | 0:45:53 | |
Very good. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:56 | |
-Grazie. -Grazie, arrivederci, buongiorno. -Buongiorno. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:02 | |
'Although Italians might not be a nation of gardeners - | 0:46:02 | 0:46:05 | |
'don't grow much of their own fruit and veg - that doesn't mean | 0:46:05 | 0:46:09 | |
'that they don't understand and appreciate it with a passion. The city's markets are full | 0:46:09 | 0:46:14 | |
'of the most fabulous quality and range of produce. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:17 | |
'And all of it is grown right here in Italy.' | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
I'd be proud to grow these. Fantastic. What does it say? | 0:46:23 | 0:46:26 | |
HE SPEAKS ITALIAN | 0:46:26 | 0:46:29 | |
-From Italy, there's dried beans. -HE SPEAKS ITALIAN | 0:46:29 | 0:46:33 | |
HE SPEAKS ITALIAN | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
He's saying that they come from Tuscany. | 0:46:36 | 0:46:39 | |
They have to by law put the area it's come from, which of course is from Italy, it's home grown. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:45 | |
Italians really understand food and part of that understanding | 0:46:51 | 0:46:55 | |
involves how it's grown, where it's grown, what the variety is, what season it is. | 0:46:55 | 0:46:59 | |
These things are really the province of the gardener. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
The average British gardener relishes those facts, | 0:47:02 | 0:47:06 | |
so they, if you like, get their gardening kick through what they eat, | 0:47:06 | 0:47:10 | |
and you could argue that the British get their food kick through what they grow. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:14 | |
Farming and locally produced produce has always been an important part of Tuscany's wealth and independence, | 0:47:24 | 0:47:31 | |
but despite its panoramic beauty, it can be a tough and unyielding agricultural landscape. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:37 | |
'I'm making a journey 80-odd miles south of Florence | 0:47:40 | 0:47:43 | |
'to the particularly harsh countryside of the Val d'Orca.' | 0:47:43 | 0:47:47 | |
This is the setting for Cecil Pinsent's last Italian garden, and one of his greatest, | 0:47:52 | 0:47:57 | |
although it was created against the backdrop of the blackest period of modern Italian history. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:03 | |
I've come a good two hours' drive south of Florence, | 0:48:07 | 0:48:10 | |
and this area in particular was very poor when the garden was made. | 0:48:10 | 0:48:15 | |
Pinsent had to work not just with the garden | 0:48:15 | 0:48:17 | |
as a private, enclosed space, but connect it to the landscape all around. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:22 | |
When the Anglo-American Iris Cutting married Marquese Antonio Origo | 0:48:47 | 0:48:52 | |
in 1924, they left Florence to live | 0:48:52 | 0:48:55 | |
in the huge but almost destitute estate of La Foce in Val d'Orca. | 0:48:55 | 0:49:01 | |
The Origos set about renovating the impoverished tenant farms, | 0:49:01 | 0:49:04 | |
with much help from the government's land improvement scheme. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:08 | |
They also commissioned Cecil Pinsent, now 43, | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
to design the house and garden as a sanctuary from the harshness of the landscape. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:17 | |
Pinsent applied his signature green neo-Renaissance structure, | 0:49:19 | 0:49:25 | |
but the flowers that Iris Origo loved were from the outset to be an important part of the garden. | 0:49:25 | 0:49:32 | |
I love the way that Pinsent does simple things extremely well, | 0:49:35 | 0:49:40 | |
and he obviously loves hedges and uses them brilliantly. | 0:49:40 | 0:49:44 | |
So for example, this path has really unexpected but perfectly balanced proportions, | 0:49:44 | 0:49:49 | |
so you have a five foot wide path, and a wall there, | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
and then a one foot high hedge, which is as wide as the path. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:56 | |
Which looks absolutely ordinary, but if you think about it, is really radical. | 0:49:56 | 0:50:02 | |
And of course, the hedge is the backside of another hedge that goes down in front of the wall, | 0:50:02 | 0:50:06 | |
so he's created these green spaces. But when you stand here and look out, | 0:50:06 | 0:50:10 | |
you see what he's doing with all these hedges, because the site is very awkward. | 0:50:10 | 0:50:15 | |
It slopes down in that direction and it slopes down in this direction, | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
and he wants to take you out towards the landscape. To do that, he has to level the site. | 0:50:18 | 0:50:23 | |
Instead of getting bulldozers out, he uses the hedge tops. They start thin and they go perfectly level | 0:50:23 | 0:50:28 | |
and they drop down, then they level off. The net result is when you're standing in the garden, | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
you feel balanced, you have the harmony of the Renaissance garden. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:36 | |
You feel centred, and then you can enjoy it. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:39 | |
Today, Iris's daughter Benedetta lives in the villa. | 0:50:54 | 0:50:58 | |
She knew Cecil Pinsent when she was a small child | 0:50:58 | 0:51:01 | |
and after a lifetime living with her garden, her respect for his design remains stronger than ever. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:07 | |
Pinsent is credited with reviving | 0:51:09 | 0:51:13 | |
the Renaissance garden in the 20th century and creating our concept of the Italian garden. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:18 | |
How does this garden fit into that? | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
I think it's so successful as a garden, just because it's a mixture. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:25 | |
My mother was much more botanical, he was much more architectural. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:32 | |
Also, Cecil had an extraordinary feel for nature, for the lie of the land itself. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:38 | |
This house is oddly placed. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:41 | |
But Cecil was not a person who would change the lie of the land. He would work with it. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:49 | |
-So the garden is always related to the landscape? -Oh, yes, absolutely. | 0:51:49 | 0:51:53 | |
Now, you knew Pinsent quite well, didn't you? | 0:51:53 | 0:51:55 | |
I did, yes. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:57 | |
He had a lovely, dry, very English sense of humour. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:01 | |
Which you had to discover, because he was quite quiet, shy. Very tall. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:06 | |
I remember him dressed in brown tweed, | 0:52:06 | 0:52:09 | |
which is odd, because he came in the summer and he must've been awfully warm. | 0:52:09 | 0:52:13 | |
-Oh, poor man, he must've been boiling! -Boiling. | 0:52:13 | 0:52:16 | |
Much of this garden feels very familiar and I realised it's because it's essentially an English garden. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:33 | |
You've got Pinsent, who's an Englishman, and Iris Origo, | 0:52:33 | 0:52:37 | |
who was brought up essentially as an Englishwoman, albeit here in Italy. | 0:52:37 | 0:52:41 | |
And what they've done is make an English garden that looks at its best in summer, | 0:52:41 | 0:52:48 | |
but instead of summer being five days if you're lucky in July, | 0:52:48 | 0:52:51 | |
it's at least five months of perfect weather. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:54 | |
The garden has one last section that was made after the rest was completed. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:04 | |
This is a large, cypress-lined triangle, which you look down on, | 0:53:04 | 0:53:08 | |
descending grand stone steps to box hedges, | 0:53:08 | 0:53:12 | |
and arrowing to the narrow end, along rather brutal lines, like blocks of troops at a rally. | 0:53:12 | 0:53:19 | |
It's a clever piece of gardening, this. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:26 | |
Because as you walk down through it, you have all those | 0:53:26 | 0:53:30 | |
different lines of box, green lines, folding down towards the point. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:35 | |
And that's Pinsent doing his green garden thing with supreme confidence. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:40 | |
What it feels like here is 30 years later, there's someone at the height of his powers, great confidence, | 0:53:40 | 0:53:46 | |
but there's a kind of brutality about it. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:51 | |
What remains is impressive, but it's not charming. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:56 | |
Throughout the 1930s, as Pinsent continued work on the garden, | 0:54:05 | 0:54:10 | |
the politics of Europe and Italy were turning ugly. | 0:54:10 | 0:54:14 | |
The land improvement scheme that had helped to restore the farmland around La Foce | 0:54:21 | 0:54:25 | |
had been an initiative of Benito Mussolini's Fascist government, | 0:54:25 | 0:54:30 | |
with the intention of making Italy self-sufficient in food. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
Now Mussolini started using Italy's great garden making heritage | 0:54:33 | 0:54:39 | |
as a propaganda tool, mounting exhibitions and garden talks. | 0:54:39 | 0:54:43 | |
And in a deliberate echo of the Medici era, in 1938, | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
Mussolini staged a public pageant in the Boboli gardens to celebrate the visit of Hitler to Florence. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:56 | |
The aim, of course, was to link Fascism with the country's glorious Renaissance history. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:04 | |
The Fascists paraded the Italian garden, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
green and strong and forthright, and beautifully designed. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:13 | |
And it was very influential, still is. Still, people think of Italian gardens like that. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:18 | |
But what the Fascists overlooked were the Renaissance ideals of play | 0:55:18 | 0:55:23 | |
and charm and decoration, and above all, of humanity. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:29 | |
Funds from the Fascist government had helped to renovate the Origos' estate. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:47 | |
But after war broke out in 1939, La Foce became a sanctuary for Allied forces, | 0:55:47 | 0:55:53 | |
as the Origo family risked their lives sheltering escaped British and American prisoners of war, | 0:55:53 | 0:55:58 | |
who were trying to make their way to safety. | 0:55:58 | 0:56:00 | |
And Pinsent, who'd completed his garden | 0:56:01 | 0:56:04 | |
only months before the outbreak of war, joined the British Army as an officer. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:08 | |
Pinsent and La Foce survived the war. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
And today, Alberti's Renaissance ideals | 0:56:13 | 0:56:16 | |
that underwrote his 20th century design are as relevant as ever. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:21 | |
That view has become an icon for Tuscany, especially for those trying to sell it for holidaymakers. | 0:56:26 | 0:56:31 | |
I've seen it at an airport, on a poster. But you hardly ever see tracks like that in Tuscany. | 0:56:31 | 0:56:37 | |
The fields are big and open and it was made by Benedetta's father as a completely practical thing, | 0:56:37 | 0:56:42 | |
so that as he improved the land, you could get vehicles up to the farms that lay beyond. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:47 | |
And that was all of a piece of the way that La Foce was made. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:50 | |
The garden, the land was improved, the people, | 0:56:50 | 0:56:53 | |
and actually, that ties in with the Renaissance ideals | 0:56:53 | 0:56:56 | |
of improving the villa, the garden and the countryside around. | 0:56:56 | 0:57:02 | |
My visits to these gardens, both in and around Florence, | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
have shown me that the ideals of the gardens made here 500 years ago, | 0:57:24 | 0:57:29 | |
marshalling nature with elegant and rhythmic formality | 0:57:29 | 0:57:33 | |
and a surprisingly rich horticultural palette | 0:57:33 | 0:57:36 | |
was one of the great artistic features of the Italian high Renaissance, | 0:57:36 | 0:57:39 | |
and is something that we still instinctively respond to. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:43 | |
The Renaissance, for the first time, took gardens and ordered them with harmony. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:51 | |
Instead of fighting nature and defending themselves against it, it welcomed it. | 0:57:51 | 0:57:56 | |
It looked for interesting plants and created a space | 0:57:56 | 0:58:00 | |
that was balanced, symmetrical, but filled with delight | 0:58:00 | 0:58:05 | |
and also, incidentally, filled with flowers. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:08 | |
Next time I will be down south, where a much more informal and highly romantic style of garden | 0:58:13 | 0:58:19 | |
came to thrive in the beautiful countryside around Naples. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:23 | |
It bursts the constraints of the formal Italian garden, | 0:58:23 | 0:58:27 | |
despite itself, it can't help itself but be free. | 0:58:27 | 0:58:30 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:47 | 0:58:49 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:49 | 0:58:52 |