American gardens in Florence

American gardens in Florence

At the end of the nineteenth century, the hills around Florence were filled with abandoned villas whose aristocratic owners had gone bankrupt, lost interest, or moved on to Rome when it became the capital of the newly unified Italy. In his 1909 book, Italian Hours, Henry James observed, ‘if

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Wed 11 Jul 2012 10:00 PM

At the end of the nineteenth century, the hills around
Florence were filled with abandoned villas whose aristocratic owners had gone
bankrupt, lost interest, or moved on to Rome when it became the capital of the
newly unified Italy. In his 1909 book, Italian Hours, Henry James
observed, ‘if one is an aching alien half the talk is of villas’; he also noted
that for less than the price of a good painting one could purchase an entire
villa, garden and surrounding estate. Outcasts, exiles and adventurers of all
nationalities rushed to do this, but it was the English and Americans who
focussed on the gardens, and the Americans who had the money to do so in style.

 

To speak of these
gardens as American, however, is misleading. These gardens are infused with an
English sensibility and an Edwardian love of formality, though perhaps an
American sense of scale and a Puritan suspicion of ornament can be detected in
their simple, monumental lines.

 

The most famous of the so-called American gardens of
Florence is undoubtedly La Pietra, which owes its name to the milestone at its
gate, one mile from the ancient Porta San Gallo, along the historic via
Bolognese. In 1907, this venerable villa was purchased by Hortense and Arthur
Acton. Acton, an English artist, had been drawn to Florence by its Renaissance
art. To supplement his income, he became a dealer, supplying art and artefacts
to America’s east coast elite. After an advantageous marriage to the wealthy
daughter of a Chicago banker, Acton began collecting for himself. Though he was
too grand to do anything as vulgar as open a shop, Mabel Dodge Luhan, a fellow
expatriate, asserted that everything at La Pietra was for sale ‘if the price is
right.’ While the villa offered a suitable backdrop to Acton’s Renaissance
paintings and furniture, the garden he created enhanced the effect, providing
an elegant setting for his huge collection of statuary. Harold Acton, guardian
of the property through the latter half of the twentieth century, proudly
proclaimed that most visitors believed his father’s garden was a genuine
Renaissance creation. To modern eyes, however, the abundance of English roses,
the French-style scrollwork parterres, the dominance of box hedging, the
numerous Roman umbrella pines and the sheer number of sculptures stuffed into
the space, identify it as distinctly Anglo-American.

 

Another much-loved garden, I Tatti, also owes its fame
to an art connoisseur and collector, the controversial Bernard Berenson. Triply
disqualified from the American establishment by his Jewish roots, his
Lithuanian parentage and his long affair with a married woman, Berenson settled
in Florence in the late-nineteenth century, where he’d been sent to acquire
paintings for his patron, Isabella Stewart Gardner. In 1900, when the death of
her first husband allowed him to marry Mary Costello, Berenson rented a rural
farmhouse known as I Tatti, which was named after an earlier owner called
Zatti. Perched on a hillside just below Settignano and flanked by cypresses and
a few lemon trees, I Tatti was much more humble than its inhabitants, and in
1907 when Berenson’s growing fortune enabled him to purchase the villa, Mary
immediately set about creating a setting worthy of her illustrious husband.  She hired a young English architect, Cecil
Pinsent, to oversee the works, and while Berenson is often given credit for the
gardens, documentary evidence that survives suggests they were Pinsent’s design
and Mary’s initiative. Negotiating his way between two very demanding clients,
Pinsent provided a cutting garden near the house to satisfy Mary’s desire for
flowers, while creating a symmetrical, terraced, topiary garden spanning the
slope to satisfy Bernard’s demand for Renaissance formality. A straight cypress-lined
walk to one side is balanced by an open wild-flower meadow to the other, while
a small wood at the base of the slope links the garden to the landscape beyond.
With its masterful balance of man-made and natural, of formal and informal
spaces, I Tatti secured Pinsent’s reputation, making him the landscape designer
of choice in the expatriate community.

 

In 1909, Berenson’s old Harvard friend, the
philosopher Charles Strong, came for a visit and ended up staying. Following
Berenson’s lead, he commissioned Pinsent to turn a narrow, vertiginous strip of
agricultural land in Fiesole into an elegant villa and garden, now called Le
Balze. Here Pinsent created a series of garden rooms round a modest Palladian
villa, balancing open and closed spaces, short and long axes, vertical and
horizontal enclosures. With its dark, mysterious grotto cut into the hillside
behind and its dramatic 190 degree terrace overlooking Florence in front, many
believe this is Pinsent’s most successful design.

 

All three villas are now
academic institutions, and all provide limited public access. Check the
following websites for dates and times:

 

La
Pietra

New
York University

www.nyu.edu/global/lapietra

 

I
Tatti

Harvard University

http://itatti.harvard.edu

 

Le
Balze

Georgetown University

www.villalebalze.org

 

 

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