The English Garden in Piedmont in the Late Eighteenth Century: Variations on the Picturesque, the Anglo-Chinese and the Landscape Garden

In his Coup d’oeil sur Beloil published in 1786, Charles Joseph de Ligne - a privileged observer of the advent of the picturesque in continental Europe –stigmatizes the French baroque garden heritage: “Tired trees, languishing arbours, tilled paths on which it is impossible to walk, unhealthy vegetation, hay instead of grass”. This portrait of former glories as un ugly garden witnesses a new sensibility spread all over Europe. New garden design ideas reach Piedmont - at the same time like in other European countries - thanks to the twenty-one Cahiers of the Jardins Anglo-chinois by Le Rouge (1775-89), but also thanks to direct connections with Great Britain. Giovanni Battista Borra works at Racconigi (after London and Stowe), designing a real English villa (1755), the gardener Gullini signs a project of an anglo-chinese garden in 1784 at Villastellone (maybe the first in Piedmont), as Pregliasco does in 1787 in Racconigi park and Pollack in 1796 at Riva di Chieri. Filippo Castelli’s drawings depict a not executed free-mason garden. The Scottish gardener John Wallace works in the park of Villastellone between 1784 and 1804 following a double approach: picturesque close to the villa, according to Capabality Brown’s principles in the huge park. After, the development of the landscape garden in Piedmont will be ruled by the German-French garden designer Xavier Kurten.