.
HISTORY AND LITERATURE: A
brief history of Villa Gamberaia:
The Villa Gamberaia is located on
the hillside of Settignano, with extraordinary views
of Florence and the surrounding Arno valley. It is renowned
for its splendid gardens, which are celebrated throughout
the world by leading landscape architects and garden
historians.
The
villa was completed in the early seventeenth century
by the Florentine noble Zanobi Lapi in the Tuscan style,
and combines interesting architectural features of both
an urban palazzo and suburban villa. In the 18th century,
the property belonged to the Marchesi Capponi, and by
that time the house and gardens had acquired the characteristic
elements seen in the famous engraving by Giuseppe Zocchi
(1744): the cypress allée, bowling green, nymphaeum,
grotto garden, woods, parterre and lemon terrace.
At the end of the nineteenth century,
Princess Giovanna Ghika began the transformation of
the parterre de broderie into the beautiful parterre
d'eau (or water garden), enclosed at its southern end
by a majestic cypress arcade. Elegant expressions of
topiary art were created by the American-born Mathilda
Ledyard Cass, Baroness von Ketteler, in the following
decades. After the Second World War, the villa became
the property of Marcello Marchi and then of his heirs
Luigi Zalum and family, who have continued the work
of restoration and conservation.
The interior decoration of the Villa
is by the Countess Simonetta Paulucci di Calboli.
Some earlier impressions:
The plan of the Gamberaia… combines
in an astonishingly small space, yet without the least
sense of overcrowding, almost every typical excellence
of the old Italian garden: free circulation of sunlight
and air about the house; abundance of water; easy access
to dense shade; sheltered walks with different points
of view; variety of effect produced by the skilful use
of different levels; and, finally, breadth and simplicity
of composition...
Edith Wharton, Italian Villas
and their Gardens, New York, 1904
From the moment you pass the gate,
with its sentinel cypresses, the impression is one of
such perfect loveliness that at last, by force of contrast,
the mind goes back to strong Caprarola or tragic Este,
only to turn once more to bathe in the pefection of
the Tuscan villa.
C. Latham, The Gardens of Italy
(London: Hudson and Keane, 1905)
Certainly the minds of the Florentine
family of Capponi were original and inventive. First,
in 1570, they created the beautifully detailed asymmetrical
gardens at Arcetri overlooking Florence, a simple design
that has the archetypal similarities to Bingham's Melcombe
in England; and in 1717 they finally synthesized and
completed the slowly evolving complex of the Villa Gamberaia
at Settignano across the Arno valley, whose concept
of a domestic landscape is by general consent the most
thoughtful the western world has known………………………….
……A Mannerist garden with
a place for every mood. There is a place for every mood.
Hamlet will find an answering chord in the twilight
of the wood, mysterious, elusive, fantastic with the
shapes of ilex; the joker can go and joke among the
water steps and grotto; and the two can agree to differ
in the most delightful of lemon gardens.
Geoffrey Jellicoe, Italian Gardens
of the Renaissance
Nowhere else in my recollection have
the liquid and the solid… nowhere else in my recollection
have these been composed with such elegant refinement
of taste on so human a scale.(…) The whole conception
of a garden to live with and in on intimate terms, responsive
to loving care and constant culture, has been realized
and expanded. It leaves an enduring impression of serenity,
dignity and cheerful repose.
Harold Acton, Tuscan Villas.
(London 1973).
Its beauty … is … great
enough to absorb one almost completely, the terraces,
the ponds, the great apse of cut cypresses, the bowling
green as you look at it from the grotto toward the south
like a great boat sailing through space, the view over
the quiet landscape of the Chianti hills and further
over domes and towers to the snow-capped Apennines and
the Arno glimmering in the plain . . . [For] years Gamberaia
remained one of … the haunts of my life ….
Bernard Berenson, Sunset and
Twilight. From the Diaries of 1947-1958, 4-5 March,
1948.
- March 4th, (1948) I Tatti:
Walked over to Villa Gamberaia, found
it neglected, unkempt, grass not mown, trees with branches
broken looking like elephants with broken tusks, the
house burnt out with the beautiful courtyard fallen
in, vases and stone animals on parapet thrown down and
broken - and yet the place retains its charm, its power
to inspire longing and dreams, sweet dreams. Its beauty
though so uncared for is still great enough to absorb
one almost completely, the terraces, the ponds, the
great apse of cut cypresses, the bowling green as you
look at it from the grotto toward the south like a great
boat sailing through space, the view over the quiet
landscape of the Chianti hills and further over domes
and towers to the snow-capped Appennines and the Arno
glimmering in the plain.
- March 5th, I Tatti:
Fifty years ago I began to frequent
this paradise, then belonging to a narcissistic Rumanian
lady who lived mysteriously in love with herself perhaps
and certainly with her growing creation, the garden
of the Gamberaia. ... for years the Gamberaia remained
one of the fari (beacons), one of the haunts of my life,
well into his century, till 1910 at least.
Bernard Berenson, Sunset and twilight
- the last diaries 1947-1958, (Milano: 1966) p. 54-55
Today... the garden should give the
impression of a house extended into the open-air, and
its diverse aspects should succeed one another in such
a way that when walking through it one is confronted
by a series of impressions rather than a single effect...
The best example of this design is
at... Villa Gamberaia... after having walked in that
garden, relatively small in size, one goes away with
the impression of having spent more time there and having
discovered more than was in reality the case.
C. Pinsent, Giardini moderni all'italiana,
"il giardino fiorito" 1931 June, (translated
from Italian).
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