Villa+Lante

In September 1568, Cardinal Alessandro II Farnese wrote to his protégé Cardinal Gianfrancesco Gambara to tell him that Farnes'e architect Vignola was on his way to Bagnaia and ready to receive his instructions. He also wished him 'every contentment', for the Renaissance garden that Vignola and Cardinal Gambara were to devise together.



The above fresco shows the grid-like plan of the garden. Within the formal garden one side is the mirror image of the other as a celebration of symmetry, the laws of proprotion and the counterpointing of circles and squares that Vignola had begun to explore at Caprarola. The twin miniature palaces replace the usual single palazzo. Wharton's comment was they are 'part of a garden scheme and not dominating it'. The garden takes centre state. The woodland (boschetto) planted with fruit trees and untended fines depicts the Golden Age of humanity's innocence and Nature's fertility.

The allegory is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which he described a time 'when men of their own accord did what was right... The earth itself, untouched by the hoe, produced all things spontaneously'. This theme is represented in fountains with icons of ducks and acorns which symbolize naturala abundance, and the unicaor and dragon. which stand for purity. The most important fountain is that of Pegasus, which is surrounded by herms of the nine Muses identifying the boscehtto as Parnassus, home of the Muses. This particular theme was taken from the Oval Fountain of Pegasus at Villa d'Este.

Cardinal Gambara was a model of piety and probity. He was appointed cardinal by Pope Pius IV to serve on the Inquisition in charge of heretical literature, and was subsequently made Bishop of Viterbo by the austere Pope Pius V. Initially he resided in the small castle of Bagnaia, a medieval town at the foot of the Cimini hills renowned for its mineral waters. A hunting park had been created on the hill above the town by previous cardinals, who had built a hunting lodge and an aqueduct that would provide the freshest, clearest and most admired water of any of the villas. While Cardinal Gambara was contemplating the villa and garden he wanted to lay out inside this walled park, the two great rivals, Cardinal Farnese and Cardinal d'Este, were completing theirs. The Farnese garden was monumental in its physical scale; the Este garden was stupendous in its intellectual and iconographic complexity. Cardinal Gambara, who was not a rival but a friend of both cardinals – related to Cardinal Farnese by marriage and the executor of Cardinal d'Este's will – made a garden of extraordinary sophistication on a very small scale based on the archetypal themes of man's fall from grace and his redemption. The garden at Villa Lante is the story of paradise – paradise lost and paradise regained – told in a wood and three terraces.

The mythological concept of the twin peaks of Mount Parnassus and its sacred spring, home of the Muses, dominates the hillside. Two palazzini, echoing the peaks, prominently frame a long water chain inside the formal garden, and outside, in the boschetto, is a large pool with Pegasus surrounded by the nine Muses. These two halves make up the whole, and this duality is repeated throughout the garden. The boschetto represents the Golden Age of innocence and Nature's abundance. The garden charts the story of the consequences of original sin. Man has lost his innocence. Nature no longer produces freely, and man must live by the cultivation of' his garden and his intellect, guided and inspired by the Muses as patrons of the arts and sciences, Thus the garden honours man’s endeavours to feed his body and nourish his soul.



The story is told in a sequence of terraces. Beginning at the top. the highest describes the retributive Flood as related by Ovid. “The sky god Jupiter in his anger resolved to send rain pot down from every corner of the sky, and so destroy mankind beneath the waters. . . the greater part of the human race were swallowed up by the waters and dolphins took possession of the woods. . . a high mountain, called Parnassus, raises twin summits to the stars. . . and the little boat which carried Deuclaion and his wife ran aground here.' However, humanity is eventually saved from the waters: Jupiter knew they were both guiltless, true worshippers of God. . . and he bid Neptune to recall the waves and rivers. . . and the sea had shores once more. The swollen rivers were contained within their own channels.' The second terrace celebrates the harvest and the third is a hymn to civilization, where man finds salvation through his intelligence and his creativity.

The genius of the Villa Lante garden is not merely in the far-reaching complexity of its concept, but also in the way in which it makes use of the very achievements it celebrates. The triumphs of ancient Roman architecture, the laws of mathematics and proportional relationships, and the literature of Petrarch and Ovid are all there.