Preface

Coffin, David R.

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Preface

David R. Coffin

The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome

The major focus of this study is on the concept of villeggiatura, the withdrawal to the country of the urban Romans, and on the architecture inspired by it. Rather than being concerned primarily with the formal development of the country residence, the emphasis is on the activities the Roman pursued during his moments of recreation and the meaning that his country retreat had for his life....

Author

David R. Coffin

PublisherPrinceton University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00163.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-18522

Preface

The major focus of this study is on the concept of villeggiatura, the withdrawal to the country of the urban Romans, and on the architecture inspired by it. Rather than being concerned primarily with the formal development of the country residence, the emphasis is on the activities the Roman pursued during his moments of recreation and the meaning that his country retreat had for his life. While in form the country house had to provide the physical environment for recreation, it is often the decoration of the villa and the planning of the gardens which convey a sense of the significance of these buildings for the owner.

Geographically the term Roman has consequently to be understood in a very broad sense. Even in antiquity the law recognized that the city of Rome was not to be defined as that area surrounded by its walls, but included the adjacent suburban land outside the walls. The depopulation of the city during the Middle Ages left large areas of the ancient city uninhabited within the Aurelian Walls, especially in the region of the Monti to the east and south of the mediaeval center. There it was that the mediaeval vigne, the farms and vineyards that were to be the predecessors of Renaissance villas, naturally appeared; but these suburban vigne differed from those just outside the walls only in having the protection of the defensive city walls. Once the concept of the city as defined by its walls is breached, the term Roman as applied to country or non-urban residence should include all the land surrounding the city which is owned by persons whose political, religious, commercial, or social activities are centered within it. This area, corresponding loosely to the modern region of Latium or Lazio (Map B), will define roughly the geographical limits of this study.

The change in function of the country residence from a productive farm to a center of pleasurable relaxation is reflected only gradually in the names by which the Roman identified his country house. Throughout the fifteenth century and most of the sixteenth such a building and its grounds, whether suburban or extra-urban, was almost always described as a vigna, for which the English word “vineyard” is somewhat misleading as it emphasizes the original function of the word and not the more generalized meaning of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Even in the second half of the sixteenth century those complexes, like the Villa Madama and the Villa Giulia, which never developed great formal gardens, continued to be called vigne. So the Frenchman, Pierre Belon, who was in Italy between 1546 and 1549, especially noted that what the French might call “fields enclosed by hedges, or hunting parks, or gardens” the Romans would denote as a vigna (vinea).1P. Belon, De Neglecta Stirpium Cultura atque Earum Cognitione Libellus, Antwerp 1589, p. 67.

The word villa, which is now the prevailing term for an Italian country residence, was rarely used in commonplace Italian communication, such as personal correspondence or the avvisi, but was limited instead to printed treatises, obviously in emulation of the ancient Romans. The one important exception was the Villa Mondragone, built by Cardinal Altemps at Frascati for the enjoyment of Pope Gregory XIII, which is always identified as the “Villa” in sixteenth-century accounts. One account, an avviso of 1561, does mention the “Bella Villa Giulia,” qualifying it as “Palazzo, e fonte e terre,” perhaps in imitation of the Latin Papal documents of the time that tend to use the Latin word villa for the entire complex and vinea for adjacent properties or smaller sections, such as the Vigna Poggio.2BAV, Ms Urb. Lat. 1039, fol. 300r, Sept. 20, 1561. Likewise, in a letter of 1563 Cardinal Farnese describes his country residence at Caprarola as a villa, probably to emphasize the new character he was attempting to create for the older, semi-fortified stronghold that his contemporaries preferred to call a castello, rocca, or palazzo.3A. Caro, Prose inedite del commendator Annibal Caro, ed. G. Cugnoni, Imola 1872, p. 162, letter from Caprarola to Onofrio Panvinio at Rome, Aug. 7, 1563.

After the middle of the sixteenth century, and more noticeably in the 1570s, the word giardino, or occasionally orti as a translation of the Latin horti, replaces the word vinea or vigna for those residences with large formal gardens, as the Orti Silvestri (1547), which is the later Giardino Medici behind the Basilica of Maxentius, the Orto or Viridarium Gonzaga (from 1551) on the Aventine, the Orti Du Bellay (1554) opposite Sta. Maria degli Angeli, or the Giardino Vitelli (1566) on the edge of the Quirinal. The Villa d’Este at Tivoli is regularly identified as a giardino or giardino e palazzo. Perhaps more significant is the change in name for some of the earlier vigne, as soon as gardens came to be developed in conjunction with them. Thus, the Carafa property on the Quirinal was always described as a vigna, but after the Cardinal of Ferrara began his extensive gardens there the term giardino was also used. Even more striking is the designation of the Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill. Known always as a vigna during the ownership of Cardinal Ricci, after 1576 it was more frequently called a giardino, as the garden of the Medici cardinal attracted public attention.

The term Renaissance has likewise to be defined temporally. Certainly the return of the papacy to Rome under Pope Martin V in 1420 offers a convenient political moment of definition for the commencement of the Renaissance, although culturally the Renaissance was not to become a pervasive movement in Rome until the reign of Pope Nicholas V in the mid century. For the purposes of this study the election of Pope Sixtus V in 1585 will mark the end of the Renaissance, and generally consideration will be given only to the building and social activities of those villas and vigne whose major creative moment precedes that date. The function of the villa does not change noticeably at this time, although one social activity associated with country residence, the great hunting party, does become less prevalent. The increasing wealth, acquisitiveness, and power of many of the Romans, however, began to change the scope of their suburban villas and the relationship between the villa proper and its landscape setting, as will be discussed in the Conclusion. Already in the second half of the sixteenth century the nomenclature associated with the country residence at Rome identifies this shift in interest from architecture to garden setting and eventually to landscape gardening. Several villa complexes, such as the Villa Giulia, the Villa d’Este on the Quirinal, the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, and the Villa Lante at Bagnaia, are realizations of this growing interest. It is, however, the Villa Montalto of Pope Sixtus V which, in the informality of its organization and particularly in its development in the early seventeenth century, marks a new moment in landscape setting. On the other hand, the overwhelming use of water in the gardens at Caprarola, Tivoli, and Bagnaia was viewed by foreign visitors and later critics as the outstanding characteristic of villas of Rome. Similarly, the impetus of sixteenth-century Romans to classicize their country residences reaches its fullest expression in the intricate iconographical programs developed in the gardens and decoration at Tivoli and Bagnaia. Therefore, it seems appropriate to end the discussion of Renaissance villeggïatura at Rome with them.

The basic form of this study was completed by the fall of 1975 after a long period of gestation during which many graduate students were involved in particular aspects of the study. My greatest debt is, therefore, owed to four doctoral dissertations prepared during this period, that is, Glenn Andres’ history of the building of the Villa Medici in Rome, the iconographical and historical analysis of the Villa Lante at Bagnaia of Claudia Lazzaro Bruno, Graham Smith’s extensive consideration of the decoration of the Casino of Pius IV, and the dissertation on the Medici villa at Castello by David Wright, who also introduced me to the Vitelli documents in the Archives at Florence and often contributed knowledge of various aspects of villa life for my exploration. Other former graduate students, who contributed ideas which I have been able to develop at length or who expanded ideas that I suggested, are David Knapton and Gary Vikan for Peruzzi’s decoration of the Villa Farnesina, Patricia Krouse for the classicism underlying Raphael’s design of the Villa Madama, Annette Melville for the decoration of the Villa Lante at Rome, and William Rhoads for the relationship between the Villa Belvedere and the health of Pope Innocent VIII.

Over the years many other individuals have been very generous in their aid, but I am especially grateful to Dr. Angelo Cantoni at Rome for photographs of the hunting lodge at Bagnaia and for his assistance to Claudia Lazzaro Bruno during her work on the Villa Lante; Allan Ceen of Rome for the photographs he took for me of the buildings at Bagni di Tivoli; and Jean Baer O’Gorman for her photographs of the Villa Lante in Rome.

Many foreign and American institutions have opened their resources to my perusal. I owe a particular debt to the librarians and staff of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the American Academy at Rome for their help during extensive periods of research. And in Princeton I owe a similar debt of gratitude to Miss Frederica Oldach, the librarian of Marquand Library of Princeton University, and Mrs. Mina Bryan, curator of the Scheide Library. The directors and staff of five Italian archives, those of Florence, Mantua, Modena, Parma, and Rome, have aided me over a period of many years in discovering materials preserved in their treasure troves.

The first major impetus for this study was offered by a fellowship for 1963-1964 from the American Council of Learned Societies. After the diversion of a period of administrative activity, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for 1972–1973 permitted a renewed period of research to bring the study close to completion. Both institutions fulfilled their philanthropic goals with a particularly warm and human grace. Several grants from the Spears Fund of the Princeton Department of Art and Archaeology have also helped in the accumulation of research material.

I am particularly grateful to Miss Harriet Anderson of Princeton University Press who undertook to edit the manuscript as one of her last duties at the Press. It is impossible to record all the potential flaws she eliminated by her sensitive and exacting suggestions from which I have also profited over a long period of past editorial cooperation. Thanks are also owed Miss Mary Laing, formerly of the Princeton University Press, for her generous encouragement of the project.

David R. Coffin

June 15, 1977
Princeton, New Jersey

1 P. Belon, De Neglecta Stirpium Cultura atque Earum Cognitione Libellus, Antwerp 1589, p. 67. »

2 BAV, Ms Urb. Lat. 1039, fol. 300r, Sept. 20, 1561. »

3 A. Caro, Prose inedite del commendator Annibal Caro, ed. G. Cugnoni, Imola 1872, p. 162, letter from Caprarola to Onofrio Panvinio at Rome, Aug. 7, 1563. »

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