Western Historical Gardens and Chinese Influences--From Great Britain to Picturesque Royal garden in Piedmont

Introduction This dissertation traces the rise of the Landscape garden in England during the 1700s, and its gradual diffusion across France, Germany and Italy. The new style, in a certain degree, inspirited by Chinese classical garden which represented a return to nature and informality, marking a departure from the formal, geometrical gardens which had reigned supreme in Europe during the preceding centuries. The aim of this dissertation, however, is not primarily to add to the stock of facts about picturesque but to take a intelligibly framework to view of the picturesque garden collapsed the opposition between nature and cultural processes in which facts about picturesque garden influenced the Europe—the way, in particular, that the action of Chinese garden individuated in each country—that the nature, history, and semiotic or aesthetic character of picturesque garden is constructed in both its universality and particularity--from its place of origin the Britain to the Apennine peninsula. The role of the Chinese garden emergence of alternative formal solutions in France has different interpretations, the recognition of a parallel that has comforted and strengthened their lines of evolution of the English context. In Italy, this work is to offer a thorough account of Italy’s reaction to and interpretation of the English garden as it occurred largely between 1764 and 1817. This will primarily be achieved by examining and comparing the plans of picturesque garden of this period which addressed the topic, and placing them in the context of the European debate as whole. In order to do so it is necessary to reconstruct nearly a century of theoretical and aesthetic contributions leading up to the 1792 in Padua, an event which constituted the first concerted Italian response to the giardino paesaggistico. In the same period, Piedmont erected the first picturesque garden in the Park of Castle of Racconigi, influenced by its French Princess Giuseppina. Finally, through comparing the similarities and differences with French picturesque garden, so that it concludes distinctive characters of Piedmont of picturesque gardens and its influence on urban public garden in the nineteenth century. The first chapter explores the role of the Chinese taste in the making of English picturesque garden. The influence of Chinese traditions into the picturesque garden discourse is worth reconsidering further, for it raises fundamental question about its myths of origin. Without doubt, most of English scholars persist on their original invention. However, the French considered as the Chinese garden as firewood put into the fire of irregular garden. Admittedly, China encompassed integral art system with irregular garden, from the philosophy to art, which was much earlier than the other countries. However, those foundations of art, literature and philosophy to breed irregular garden could be trace in Britain between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Therefore, the representation of landscape is not only a matter of internal politics and national or class ideology but also an international phenomenon. Indeed, the Britain was not exactly going out on a limb to create a new order of garden and went through a complicated process of exchange, mutual transformation and ambivalence. Throughout the second half of eighteenth century picturesque gardens grew more extensive. Not only did they absorb the Holland and German commons within their neighbor, but occasionally whole the Continent stood in the way of a prospect or an improvement were destroyed and transformed elsewhere. The Britain assimilate features of Chinese garden to improve the picturesque garden in Great Britain--not only use Chinese architectures as a source of garden elements, but also share marrow of Chinese gardening composition. For instance, “contrast” is one of the crucial methods in Chinese classical gardening which was emphasized by Chambers both in his Designs of Chinese buildings […] (1757) and A dissertation on oriental gardening (1772); “multiple oblique views” is another main point of irregular garden that were meant to be experienced while walked through it which was employed frequently in English garden. The following offers authentic and impartial character of Chinese garden Sir William Chambers, argues that the architect’s firsthand exposure to Chinese design as a young man both complicated his relationship to the neoclassical tradition he famously promulgated and infused his rather fantastical writings on Chinese gardening with an emancipatory aesthetic vision modeled on the psychological response to cultural alienation. There was an inaccurate statement that the English garden was influenced by Chinese garden. However, the Chinese garden was divided into scholar garden (or private garden) and imperial garden. There was considerable distinction between them. In the first place, the latter tremendously surpassed the former in size. Yuan Ming Yuan was around forty hectares, but the largest garden in Suzhou, Humble Administrator’s Garden is only 5.1 hectares. In the second place, the latter much drew ideas from the former in general. In this scene, scholar garden was the quintessence of Chinese classical garden. According to the most influenced letters and reports of missionaries in Europe accounted the imperial garden near to Beijing, Old Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan), such as Jean Denis Attiret who praised the Chinese Imperial Garden in his letter arrived in 1743: «However I must except out of this Rule, the palace of the Emperor of Peking, and his Pleasure-houses; for in them everything is truly great and beautiful, both as to the Design and the Execution», as well as «generally wind about and serpentize».Thus, the Chinese garden pushed forwards the English garden that should be exact expression that it was influenced by Chinese Imperial Garden. While the present dissertation has to say about Chinese Scholar garden, part of my purpose in framing central understanding on its essence to distinguish the Chinese garden and the English garden. Although both of them claimed to “imitate nature”, the consequences are tremendous difference. I hope to explain what the Chinese classical garden was and how to make a Chinese garden, so as to clarify the «making over of Chinese culture in the Western image» and misunderstanding of the Western during the transformations of the past hundred years. It is basic on the Chinese treatise on gardens, Yuan Ye, was completed in 1634, in which Ji Cheng accounted and concluded his gardening experience; he was also a painter and poet. The philosophy of Confucianism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism play an important role and help the Chinese forming the perception in the gardening. It could be easily traced the ideology of Zen Buddhism and Taoism in each garden, such as little pagoda in the lake. The perfect effect on Chinese landscape poets and painters brought those perceiving or thought into materialization. From this point, the origin of English landscape shares the identical features with Chinese. Since ancient time in China, it has been said that poetry and painting share the same origin, which is embodied in there is painting-in-poetry just as there is poetry-in-painting. Horace Walpole wrote that «Poetry, Painting and Gardening, or the science of Landscape, will forever by men of taste be deemed Three Sisters, or the Three New Graces who Dress and adorn nature». It must be pointed that, just as the name suggests, scholar garden was created by retired officers (the Humble Administrator's Garden, Zhuozheng Yuan) or literati (the Master of the Nets Garden). If the garden was fashioned by the man of taste, it reflects the epitome of his spiritual world. And in this way, depending on the knowledge of owner, the garden evokes delight or elegance, and stand as emblems of both highly cultivated tastes was equated with its owner. It is surprised that the same expression could be found in English landscape theory, «as is the gardener, so is the garden». The six basic components, hill, rock, water, plants, road and architecture also inspirit the picturesque garden. Especially, the rock was the first noticed and learned by the western, for instance, the grottos at the foot of hills (Pope recognized a grotto at his villa at Twickenham in 1719) and the rockery along the bank of river. However, different from picturesque garden in the countryside and unlimited by site, the Scholar garden was always close to the mansion and in the city center that the Chinese created several methods to enlarge its garden in the vision, “contrast”, “borrowing views”, “multi-views” etc., in order to create multiform space in a limited yard. In addition, changing is another subject: change of seasons, passing of time, or variations in climate such as rain, snow, sunshine, or clouds, all of which, to varying degrees, cast a different light on the artistic effect of the garden’s scenic imagery. So, the Chinese garden is an art of both spatial and temporal planning. Undeniably, the Chinese art of gardening is the driving force behind the English accomplishments. Whereas, the English did not copy Chinese garden, even not precisely estimated by the French to picturesque garden, in my view, the assistance of Chinese garden was one of the firewood in the fire of new style garden to support by the representational practice. French contribution on picturesque garden is discussed in Chapter III. A review of picturesque garden in the eighteenth century, it is no doubt that its vogue swept unhesitatingly over whole the European continent. But, the other countries, such as France, that involved Romantic revolution and made its own contribution to the development of picturesque garden. So it would be useful to identify French picturesque movements that brought about their own distinct feature of the picturesque garden. Cause picturesque was a product from the Britain was not a tradition of France. So when the new idea imported from across the English Channel, they were mingle the native concept of “nature” and “modern”, consequently, forming the different version from the English one. In general, the French picturesque garden is mixture of formal and naturalism garden that is the remarkable feature of French design that also influenced the appearance of Italian picturesque garden in a certain extent. The other feature of French is to stimulate its curiosity of visitors to encourage them quest the fresh sentimental pleasure in the garden, such as Désert de Retz. In addition, according to appendix II, the French erected more Chinese structures than English. Moreover, it is generally believed that the picturesque garden came into being France in the 1760s, and that it was a product of English influence, not of French tradition. Dora Wiebenson argues for instance that gardens on both sides of the Channel presented some supposed “English” features concurrently, rather than successively. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s sentimental ideas of Nature and a free society had a profound influence on French Romantics and Enlightenment in the 1770s. His idea and novel La Nouvelle Héloïse profoundly influenced on French culture which became an original version of picturesque garden, including Claude-Henri Watelet and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Ermenonville of the Marquis de Girardin was poetic nature had benefited from Rousseau’s novel. As the Monceau (1773), le Petit Trianon (1774-1787), Betz (1780-1789), La Folie Saint-James de Neuilly (1784) and the Désert de Retz (1785) which are pastoral style. Claude-Henri Watelet Marquis de Girardin and J.M.Morel devoted to both theory and practice to picturesque garden. Le Rouge published Jardin’s Anglo-Chinois from 1775 to 1789, transferring the idea of new taste and their models to the French gardeners. At last, we will discuss the three types of French picturesque garden: The pastoral farm, Jardin Anglo-Chinois and Ferme Ornée. The sweeping vogue of picturesque gardening would seem hardly reach to Apennine peninsula, however, under the background of picturesque garden, Italy also attempt to naturalize her regular garden forms without first hand materials. The new style simultaneously provoked Italian enthusiasm and skepticism, curiosity and diffidence; and although it became a popular choice for many landowners, relatively few intellectuals chose to sanction it unconditionally in their writings. Protagonists of the debate in Padua such as Ippolito Pindemonte and Melchiorre Cesarotti elected to frame the topic within the context of Italian poetic tradition, and in doing so claimed that Italy deserved credit for conceiving of the naturalistic garden. This allegiance to classical and Renaissance precedent in turn helps explain a general reluctance to relinquish the formal model in favor of a modern, imported style. An Italian translation of Delille’s poem on picturesque gardens appeared in Venice in 1792, the year of Pindemonte’s promotion of the new style in nearby Padua. The Milanese Ercole Silva will emerge as the only true proponent of the English garden in Italy who issued his important and influential Dell’ arte de’ giardini inglesi in 1801, adding illustration for a second edition in 1813. From 1776, Park of Villa Reale of Monza began to reconstruct and settled the first picturesque garden in Italy in emulation of Wörlitz Park, although only transformation of small part in whole formal garden. The garden of villa Belgioioso designed by Pollack in Milan is also an excellent exemplary site in Lombardy. Also, Silva attempted to create a new style garden by terms of the principle of picturesque garden mentioned in his treatise. In 1787, Park of Palace of Caserta was erected. If the garden of Villa Monza was the first plan of English garden designed by Pierrmarini, the first real big English garden was the garden of Caserta is certainly the best known example in Italy, which represents a distinctive Italianness, a move that mixed well with growing aspirations to powerful nation and was supported by its beautiful natural scenery and literature, horticultural and architectural traditions of Italian garden art. The Chapter V focuses on the picturesque garden in region of Piedmont. With the different atmosphere of politics and culture, the diffusion of picturesque garden to Savoy Dynasty was more complicated. The first picturesque garden emerged in Piedmont is the Villa Morra di Lavriano in 1784. As the most of picturesque gardens in Italy, it included different characters: English, French and Chinese sectors. However, thanks to shortage of the materials of Anglo-Chinese garden, the picturesque garden part apparently traces of the formal garden. Only three years later, the year of 1787 marks a turning point--a famous project of Giacomo Pregliasco transfer the central park of Racconigi into picturesque garden. On the one hand, due to the theatrical scenery profession of Pregliasco, the picturesque garden resembles in magnifying scenery. He also designed a Chinese pavilion and rockery stands in the center of the lake which apparently resourced from the design of Park of Bonnelles, which illustrates opportunely the picturesque garden influenced by France. On the other hand, Promoted the picturesque garden in the garden of Racconigi also attributed to its hostess: Princess Giuseppina. Admittedly, the interest of the owner determines the appearance of the garden in a large extent, even did more influence than a designer, both in architecture and garden. Thus, when the attempt at researching the picturesque garden of Racconigi, it would be unreasonable to bypass the cultural background of the client, but only analyzed gardener. As the culture patron, the Princess made a great contribution to the English garden, owing to her writings when she arrived in Turin which is carefully kept in the Royal Library. And her Park of Racconigi, as a princeless heritage—both in material and nonmaterial, was inherited by Carlo Alberto. After 1820, the Park of Racconigi was appointed to Xavier Kurten aimed at seeking a simple nature, natural and softly irregular: a beautiful nature. Kurten gives over to the complete renovation of the park, erasing the formal structures inserted by Pregliasco in a broader context, toning down the characters. Purchases of land and intensive transformations that create the largest plants in the Piedmont landscape, still preserved. The implementation of the picturesque garden was following. Then, Leopoldo Pollack designed the Park of Palace of Riva presso Chieri in 1796 which was borrowed his idea of villa Pesenti, the agriculture, formal garden and picturesque garden blended together, an “idea confusa”. Villa Berroni locates in the Racconigi was a mixed style. Germany Xavier Kurten was the pioneer of modern urban park, because most of his works reflected the idea of city garden. The picturesque garden idea also influenced the later urban planning of Turin, such as the planning of Ferdinando Bonsignore, Ferdinand Boyer and Lawrence Lombardi, as well as Pregliasco’s a new green city in 1802. It is concluded that the picturesque garden in Piedmont has three features: mixed the nature garden with old Italian ones that is following the French habit, as was done at Monza and Racconigi; second, Germany Xavier Kurten abolished completely regular garden in order to create a pure landscape garden with a remarkable feature as vast water system, like the Park of Castle of Racconigi in 1835.