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French 16th-century château and garden near Tonnerre, in Burgundy. Antoine de Clermont, brother-in-law of Duchesse de Valentinois Diane de Poitiers commissioned Sebastiano Serlio, who was employed at the court of Francis I, to design the château and garden; construction on a large level site began c. 1546. The house is built around a large rectangular courtyard of majestic proportions. The twelve principal rooms on the ground floor, notably the Chambre des Nudités and the Chambre de Diane, are adorned with tapestries and frescoes. On the first floor, the apartments and galleries were sumptuously decorated by Francesco Primaticcio.

A drawing by Jacques Du Cerceau shows that the original gardens echoed the rectangular shape of the house. A huge rectangular raised terrace was constructed around the house and garden, and this terrace was used as a promenade from which house and gardens could be viewed.

French 16th-century château c. 75 km west of Paris, in the département of Eure-et-Loire. In 1546 Duchesse de Valentinois Diane de Poitiers, widow of Louis de Brézé (d 1531), began to build a modest house in the village of Anet; it underwent considerable and magnificent enlargement (after 1547, until 1553) when her lover Henry II became King of France and placed Philibert de L’Orme and virtually unlimited resources at her disposal. The château is built on a moated site around three courtyards with gardens to the north. Around the middle court, the Cour du Seigneur, were three residential wings and the entrance gate set in a screen wall. To the east lay the estate farm buildings around the Basse Cour, while to the west was the Cour de la Fontaine and beyond it the tennis-court, the stables and Diane de Poitiers’ burial chapel. Largely demolished (1798–1811...

Spanish palace that stands beside the rivers Tagus and Jarama in the province of Madrid, 47 km south of the capital. It was intended as a spring and summer residence for the royal family and is renowned for its gardens and fountains. The summer residence built at Aranjuez in 1387 by Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa, Grand Master of the Order of Santiago, became royal property under Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, and Isabella, Queen of Castile and León. In the reign of Charles V improvements were carried out by Luis de Vega (from c. 1537) and the palace was extensively enlarged by Philip II. The chapel was designed by Juan Bautista de Toledo and completed by Jerónimo Gili and Juan de Herrera. It was built in a combination of white stone from Colmenar de Oreja and brick, giving a two-toned effect that was adopted for the rest of the palace. In ...

Italian estate near Viterbo, c. 65 km north-east of Rome. It was built for Cardinal Gianfrancesco Gambara, Bishop of Viterbo, from c. 1568, and the design of the whole estate, comprising small twin palaces (palazzine, called casinos in the 17th century), a formal garden and a park, is attributed to Jacopo Vignola. The garden and the first palazzina were mostly completed by 1578 under the direction of the local architect and hydraulic engineer Tommaso Ghinucci. Carlo Maderno built the second palazzina for Cardinal Alessandro Peretti Montalto between 1611 and 1613. The two buildings were planned from the start and have identical exteriors. Their cubical form, with hipped roof and central belvedere, resembles those of the Villa Vecchia at Frascati and the hunting-lodge at Caprarola, both designed by Vignola. Rural and urban architectural traditions were united in the design of the buildings. The simple block with central projection recalls the towers and dovecotes typical of the countryside, while the exterior stone revetment and classical articulation is reminiscent of urban palaces. The floor plan is a variation on a common tripartite plan with a long central space. In the second ...

English country house near Woodstock, Oxon, designed by John Vanbrugh for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. It was begun in 1705 and completed c. 1725. The gardens, initially laid out by Vanbrugh and Henry Wise, were largely redesigned in 1764–74 by ‘Capability’ Brown. Blenheim Palace is regarded as one of the finest examples of English Baroque architecture. It was a gift to the Duke from a grateful Crown and nation to commemorate his victory in 1704 over the French and Bavarians at Blenheim (now Blindheim) during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). The intention was to create a public monument symbolizing the glory of Britain and a palace fit for a hero, rather than a building on a domestic scale. This is reflected in Vanbrugh’s dramatic and monumental design, inspired by both English and French architecture, which developed the style he had begun to formulate in his earlier work at Castle Howard, N. Yorks. In both undertakings he was assisted by ...

Sacro Bosco [Villa Orsini]

Italian estate below the hill town of Bomarzo, near Viterbo. The popular name derives from an inscription in the wood, which refers to it as a ‘sacro bosco’, an allusion to Arcadia (1504) by Jacopo Sannazaro. The Sacro Bosco, built for Pier Francesco (‘Vicino’) Orsini (d 1585) from c. 1552, was dedicated by him to his deceased wife, Giulia Farnese. Called a boschetto (little wood) by Orsini, the site is hilly with untouched terrain, although there are also level terraces and rectilinear enclosures. Much was done by 1564; sculpture was added during the 1570s, and work continued until Orsini’s death in January 1585.

The original planting plan is unknown, and since the rediscovery of the site in the 1940s much has been replanted. The stream may have been dammed to form a lake in the areas of the present entrance and the path lined with heads (moved there in the modern restoration). The original entrance was probably near the Leaning House, the former location of the sphinxes, as their inscriptions address the entering visitor. The hypothesis of a formal garden contemporary with the Sacro Bosco on the hillside above must be rejected without further evidence....

(b Saint-Jean-d’Angely, Charente-Maritime, c. 1562; d Paris, c. 1634).

French garden designer and theorist. Of Huguenot origin, he seems early to have enjoyed the favour of Henry of Navarre, later Henry IV. A respected member of the royal entourage, Boyceau was appointed Surintendant des Jardins du Roi in the succeeding reign of Louis XIII. Consequently, he was in a position to exert substantial influence in determining the nature of garden design at that time. In his Traité du jardinage, published in 1638, Boyceau succinctly summarized the history of French gardening and codified the rules that would govern the 17th-century formal garden. For the first time a French designer adopted an aesthetic point of view, thereby promoting the intellectual climate that was to establish gardening as a fine art. He introduced a new feeling for monumental scale to the French garden, insisting that it should reflect a strong sense of organic unity in which order, symmetry, and visual harmony would be all-pervasive....

[Reggia]

Large 18th-century palazzo situated in Italian town of Caserta, the successor of ancient and medieval Capua. The town is the capital of a province of the Campania region and is situated 28 km from Naples. Its growth dates from the 19th century. The Bourbon king Charles VII of Naples (from 1759 King Charles III of Spain) decided to make Caserta the site of a royal residence in imitation of Versailles. His choice was based on the excellent local hunting and the vulnerability of his palazzo at Naples in the event of a popular uprising or an attack from the sea. The building was designed by Luigi Vanvitelli and executed between 1752 and 1772. It was inhabitable from 1775 onwards and in the late 1770s and during the 1780s such artists as Fidele Fischetti and Domenico Mondo produced frescoes for various rooms (e.g. Mondo’s Classical Heroes, 1781, for the overdoors of the Sala delle Dame, and ...

English country house in N. Yorks built (1701–24) by John Vanbrugh for Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle; the gardens were laid out by George London during the same period. One of the largest, grandest and, architecturally, most important country houses in England, Castle Howard was first planned in October 1698, when the 3rd Earl took out a lease for life on the ruinous Henderskelfe Castle (burnt 1693; destr. 1724) and its manor from his grandmother, Anne Howard, Countess of Carlisle. The following spring he consulted the architect William Talman, Comptroller of Works to William III, on the design for a house to replace the old castle of Henderskelfe, but during the summer Talman was supplanted by the playwright John Vanbrugh. Castle Howard was Vanbrugh’s first important architectural commission. A model in wood was shown to the King in the summer of 1700, and work on the hill-top site began in the spring of ...

(b Dieppe; d England, after 1655).

French architect and garden designer, either the son, brother or nephew of Salomon de Caus. His first recorded work in England was the construction of a grotto (1623–4) in the basement of the Banqueting House, London, designed by Inigo Jones. From this point on he appears to have been closely associated with Jones, and possibly acted as chief garden designer under James I and Charles I. His French background assured him of a sympathetic employer in Queen Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s wife, for whom he built a grotto (1630–33; destr.) at Somerset House in London. Most of his work, however, was for Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford. He was the executant architect of the houses built on the Bedford estate at Covent Garden, London, c. 1633–4, and he also may have designed many of the gabled houses in a north European style on the exit streets of the piazza there. He almost certainly designed Lord Bedford’s garden, which was adjacent to the piazza on the south side, and since the grotto (extant) at the Bedford family seat at Woburn Abbey, Beds, is in the style of de Caus, he may well have been responsible for the rebuilding of the west and south fronts of Woburn in the 1630s....

(b France, 1576; bur; Paris, Feb 28, 1626).

French architect, engineer, and landscape gardener. He was a Huguenot from the Dieppe region (Normandy). Between c. 1595 and 1598 he visited Italy, where he was strongly influenced by the gardens laid out c. 1570 by Bernardo Buontalenti at Pratolino, near Florence, and by their mechanical artifices. De Caus’s work also reveals a knowledge of the gardens of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli. From c. 1598 to 1610 he was in Brussels, in the service of the Stadholder of the Netherlands, Albert, Archduke of Austria. There he was the engineer responsible for wells, fountains and the automatic works in the two grottoes (destr. 1768) in the garden of the Stadholder’s residence. From 1610 he lived in England, moving in the artistic circle of Henry, Prince of Wales, to whom he taught drawing and for whom he built a picture gallery at Richmond. Together with Constantino de’ Servi (1554–1622...

Italian family of collectors. The family, whose origins were in the Umbrian town of Cesi, settled in Rome in the 15th century. In the 16th century they were celebrated for the splendour of the Giardino dei Cesi, a sculpture garden at their palace at the foot of the Gianicolo. This was established by Cardinal Paolo Emilio Cesi (b Rome, 1481; d Rome, 5 Aug 1537), who adorned the garden with antique (and contemporary) statuary. It was inherited by his brother Federico Cesi (b ?Rome, ?1 July 1500; d Rome, 28 Jan 1565), who became Cardinal in 1544 and who reorganized the garden and the palazzo so that it seemed like ‘the entrance to Paradise’ (Aldrovandi). He restored the statues and, above all, constructed an antique sculpture museum (destr. with the palazzo, 1940) with a Greek-cross plan, designed (1556–64) by Guidetto Guidetti and intended for small but precious pieces: it was one of the first buildings constructed purposely as a ...

English country house and garden, near Bakewell, Derbys. The estate was purchased in 1549 by Sir William Cavendish (1505–57) and his wife, Elizabeth Talbot, later Countess of Shrewsbury, and the courtyard house was built from 1552. The 3rd Earl of Devonshire (1617–84) remodelled the interior and refenestrated the house (1676–80). The 1st Duke of Devonshire rebuilt it in stages between 1686 and 1706, following the plan of the earlier house (see Cavendish, William, 4th Earl and 1st Duke of Devonshire). The four distinct fronts, each articulated with a giant order and topped with a balustrade, are among the finest and earliest Baroque façades in England: the south and west fronts are boldly ornamented with sculptural details, and the curved north façade shows strong Italian influence.

The south wing (1687–9), designed by William Talman (see Talman family, §1), contains the second-floor State Apartments and the chapel. In the State Drawing Room the ceiling (...

French château on the River Cher, near Amboise, Indre-et-Loire. Having belonged to the lords of Marques from the 13th century, it was razed in 1411 and in 1513 came into the possession of Thomas Bohier (d 1524), a financier from Tours who became Deputy Treasurer to Louis XII. He set about an ambitious scheme (c. 1514–22) to rebuild the château on the foundations of an old water-mill on the right bank of the river; Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II, and Catherine de’ Medici, Henry’s wife, were responsible for further 16th-century additions. The present pale stone building under tall slate roofs is one of the most picturesque of the Loire Valley châteaux. It consists of a square corps de logis and a narrow, two-storey gallery that spans the river on a series of arches.

Of the medieval building, only the keep on the right bank of the Cher, the ‘Tour des Marques’, survives, with 16th-century alterations. Bohier’s building, on a square plan with round, corbelled turrets at each corner, originally had three symmetrical elevations. The fourth, the east front, is interrupted by the two unequal projections of the library and chapel. Each elevation is of three storeys and is three bays wide, the axial bays being wider, with larger areas of window, and topped by elaborate gables to their dormers. The carved decoration, particularly the delicate Renaissance motifs on the entrance door to the north, is of very high quality....

(b ?Abbeville, Somme; fl 1714–56).

French sculptor, active in the northern Netherlands. His earliest known works are two signed and very elegant Louis XIV garden vases decorated with allegories of the seasons (1714; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.); they were commissioned by David van Mollem (1670–1746), a silk merchant, who was laying out a fine garden for the country house on his estate of Zijdebalen, near Utrecht. Cressant’s name is first mentioned in Utrecht c. 1730–31 in connection with his statue of Justice for the Stadhuis; it is now in the Paleis van Justitie in Utrecht. The many commissions for garden sculpture that Cressant received from van Mollem probably account for his settling in Utrecht: other artists who made sculptures and vases for these gardens are Jan-Baptiste Xavery, Jan van der Mast (fl c. 1736) and J. Matthijsen. Cressant made for van Mollem, among other things, vases, putti and a wooden Neptune: very little of this work survives....

(b Cefalù, c. 1520; d Cefalù, July 9, 1604).

Italian sculptor, architect, bronze-caster and garden designer. He trained in Sicily with Antonello Gaggini and then in Rome with Michelangelo, whom he met through his uncle, Antonio del Duca, Capellano of S Maria di Loreto. He became one of Michelangelo’s principal assistants and continued to work for him until Michelangelo’s death in 1564. He also worked independently before that date; his marble relief for the abbey of S Bartolomeo di Campagna (now Trisulti; in situ) was begun before 1561.

In 1562–3 Giacomo assisted Michelangelo on a new gate to Rome, the Porta Pia, commissioned by Pope Pius IV, for which he executed the winged figures above the main arch, as well as the mask on the keystone. Also in this period he worked with Michelangelo on S Maria degli Angeli, Rome, commissioned by Pius IV and built on the remains of the ancient Baths of Diocletian. The project was promoted by Antonio del Duca, who had first petitioned the papacy about it in ...

[Du Perac, Stefano]

(b Bordeaux, c. 1525; d Paris, 1601).

French painter, engraver and garden designer. He went to Rome in 1550 and stayed there for over 20 years, soon becoming acknowledged as a first-rate engraver and designer. His work provides an invaluable record of later 16th-century Rome, telling much about the state of the ancient ruins, contemporary architecture and urban planning, especially the work of Michelangelo. Many of Dupérac’s engravings were published by Antoine Lafréry. Those depicting the work of Michelangelo were published in 1569 after the latter’s death (1564); they give a useful insight into Michelangelo’s original, unrealized intentions for such projects in Rome as the Capitoline Hill and St Peter’s. It has been shown that Dupérac designed and painted part of the decoration of the loggia of Pope Pius IV in the Vatican. His work as a painter continued on his return to France in 1570 when, after the publication of his Vues perspectives des jardins de Tivoli...

(bapt Dachau, Feb 4, 1687; d Munich, Feb 23, 1745).

German architect. His family had been gardeners in the service of the Electors of Bavaria for several generations, and Effner also trained as a gardener in Paris from 1706. However, with the permission of Elector Maximilian II Emanuel, then living in exile in France, he soon transferred to architecture and became a pupil of Germain Boffrand. Effner collaborated with Boffrand on the decoration (1713) of the château of St Cloud for Maximilian Emanuel II before returning to Munich with the Elector in 1715. As a court architect and, after the death of Enrico Zuccalli, as Chief Court Architect, Effner controlled architectural projects at the court in Munich. At first he altered and extended existing castles in the Munich area, including the Schloss at Dachau, where he also laid out the court garden, the hunting-lodge at Fürstenried and above all Schloss Nymphenburg (see Munich §IV 3.), which he enlarged considerably. Effner also worked on the plans for the park at Nymphenburg and created three pavilions there: the Pagodenburg (...

(d Rome, 1505).

Italian banker and patron. He was from a noble family in Rome, prominent in banking and as civic officials, and received a humanist education. He formed a collection of antiquities, which was arranged in the garden of the Casa Galli (destr.), near the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome. In 1496, probably through his friend Cardinal Raffaele Riario, he met Michelangelo, who was on his first visit to Rome. Michelangelo came to live in Galli’s house, and Galli bought his first large-scale sculpture, the marble Bacchus (1496; Florence, Bargello). The Bacchus was displayed in the garden of the Casa Galli, where it was recorded in a drawing of 1536 by Maarten van Heemskerck (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) and in a description c. 1550 by Ulisse Aldrovandi, until its purchase in 1571–2 by Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Galli is documented as owning a standing marble Cupid, or Apollo, by Michelangelo (untraced, though possibly to be identified as that in New York, French Embassy Cult. Bldg). He also supervised the contract of ...

(b Paris, Feb 24, 1735; d Vernouillet, Sept 20, 1808).

French landscape designer and writer. He inherited a considerable fortune, which allowed him to develop his interests as a seigneur-philosophe. In 1754 he joined the army and, following the cessation of the Seven Years War in 1763, entered military service at Lunéville under the exiled King of Poland, Stanislav I Leszczyński. Between 1761 and 1766 Girardin also travelled in Italy, Germany and England, where he visited several English landscape gardens, including Stowe, Blenheim and the Leasowes.

In 1766, following the death of Stanislav, Girardin settled at Ermenonville, Oise, where during the next decade he laid out an influential Picturesque landscape garden. Shortly after its completion he published De la composition des paysages (1777), in which he codified his own accomplishments and presented his theory of landscape gardening. Although this treatise reveals his intimate understanding of the associationist aesthetics of contemporary French and English garden theory, as found for example in Thomas Whately’s ...