RESEARCH General Art

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
Researcher focuses on 'panoramic history' of villa culture

Melissa Mitchell, News Editor
(217) 333-5491; melissa@uiuc.edu

5/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand Landscape architecture professor Dianne Harris' new book on 18th-century Italian villa culture reveals a rich, complex story ... "a very interdisciplinary history."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — At first glance, browsers might mistake Dianne Harris’ new book on 18th-century Italian villa culture as a niche publication, of interest only to landscape architecture scholars.

But a closer look at "The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, & Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy" (Pennsylvania State University Press) reveals a rich, complex story of a colonial culture evolving and responding in an era of rapid political, economic and social reform. "It’s a very interdisciplinary history," said Harris, a landscape architecture professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "What interested me was that few historians examine the way the built environment is an active agent in producing culture – not just reflecting it. The key thing I’m interested in is trying to unite the panoramic history, not just the architecture and gardens, but the social and political history as well. Because of its broad focus, Harris believes the book may appeal to anyone interested in environmental change, in 18th-century European history, art and literature, and to history buffs in general.

Marc'Antonio Dal Re, "Prospetto delle otto statue di Castelazzo," from "Le delizie della Villa di Castelazzo descritte in verso," 1743.Collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon, Oak Spring Garden Library, Upperville, Va.

Representations of villa life of this period, popularized in books and film, typically portray an idle, status-conscious elite, who moved about from town to country, against an opulent background distinguished by classical architecture and spectacular gardens. While the people who populated the Lombard estates that Harris studied resembled those ideals in part, the real-life characters who populated the villas in that region were far less two-dimensional. The landed gentry of these estates certainly lived the good life, but it was not necessarily a carefree existence for these families, who also maintained extensive, commercial agricultural operations. Harris argues that increasing tensions over rising taxation levels and other reforms imposed by the ruling Hapsburg court in Vienna gradually changed the fabric of villa life in Lombardy through the course of the 18th century.

A starting point for Harris’ study was a set of prints by Marc’ Antonio Dal Re, published in 1726-27. "Despite their compelling sense of accuracy, Dal Re’s prints are highly idealized and are often aggrandizing," Harris noted. The scholar ultimately pieced together a more accurate picture of life on these compounds by studying additional source materials, including existing buildings and gardens, family and estate records, maps and registers, legal documents, water rights and travelers’ accounts.

Despite the fact that her book documents a centuries-old culture, Harris believes it holds a number of lessons for today’s readers. Primary among them is regaining what she calls "an understanding of the power of the built environment and its agency in the formation of culture."

"Eighteenth-century Lombardy was not exceptional for the integral significance of all the aspects of landscape in its cultural history. Nor is any other place or time. The landscape that surrounds us today and those who shape it – landscape architects, city officials in economic development, politicians, private patrons, and so on – play a key role in constructing cultural life and values."