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Italian Renaissance Garden
The Italian Renaissance garden was a new style of garden which emerged in the late 15th century at villas in Rome and Florence, inspired by classical ideals of order and beauty, and intended for the pleasure of the view of the garden and the landscape beyond, for contemplation, and for the enjoyment of the sights, sounds and smells of the garden itself. In the late Italian Renaissance, the gardens became larger, grander and more symmetrical, and were filled with fountains, statues, grottoes, water organs and other features designed to delight their owners and amuse and impress visitors. The style was imitated throughout Europe, influencing the gardens of the French Renaissance, the English knot garden, and the French formal garden style developed in the 17th century. Background Prior to the Italian Renaissance, Italian medieval gardens were enclosed by walls, and were mostly devoted to growing vegetables, fruits and Medicinal plants, medicinal herbs, as well as, in the case of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Villa Aldobrandini
The Villa Aldobrandini is a villa in Frascati, Italy. It is still owned and lived in by the Aldobrandini family, and known as Belvedere for its location overlooking the valley toward the city of Rome. It is the only grand Papal garden not owned by the state. Construction Roman prelate Alessandro Rufini built the original villa in 1550. Pope Clement VIII gave his nephew Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini the villa in 1598 as a reward for the negotiations he undertook with France that resulted in the peace treaty of 1595 and for his role in annexing Ferrara to the Papal States. Conversion Aldobrandini commissioned the Roman architect Giacomo della Porta to convert the villa into suitable accommodation in which a Cardinal could live and also entertain a Pope. Works started in 1598. While the core of the villa was completed by the time of Giacomo della Porta's death in 1603, work continued for another 20 years on the various aspects of the villa and the garden under the supervision of Carl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Gardens
Roman gardens and ornamental horticulture became highly developed under Roman civilization, and thrived from 150 BC to 350 AD. The Gardens of Lucullus (''Horti Lucullani''), on the Pincian Hill in Rome, introduced the Persian garden to Europe around 60 BC. It was seen as a place of peace and tranquillity, a refuge from urban life, and a place filled with religious and symbolic meaning. As Roman culture developed and became increasingly influenced by foreign civilizations, the use of gardens expanded. The Roman garden's history, function, and style is investigated through archaeological and archaeobotanical research, famously conducted at Pompeii, literary sources, and wall paintings and mosaics in homes. Influences Roman gardening was influenced by Egyptian and Persian gardening techniques, through acquaintance with Greek gardening. The gardens of Ancient Persia were organized around rills, known from Pasargadae and other sites. Although archaeological evidence of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vitruvius
Vitruvius ( ; ; –70 BC – after ) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work titled . As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture. It is not clear to what extent his contemporaries regarded his book as original or important. He states that all buildings should have three attributes: , , and ("strength", "utility", and "beauty"), principles reflected in much Ancient Roman architecture. His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing of the ''Vitruvian Man'' by Leonardo da Vinci. Little is known about Vitruvius' life, but by his own descriptionDe Arch. Book 1, preface. section 2. he served as an artilleryman, the third class of arms in the Roman military offices. He probably served as a senior of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leon Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti (; 14 February 1404 – 25 April 1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, Catholic priest, priest, linguistics, linguist, philosopher, and cryptography, cryptographer; he epitomised the nature of those identified now as polymaths. He is considered the founder of European cryptography, a claim he shares with Johannes Trithemius. He is often considered primarily an architect. However, according to James Beck, "to single out one of Leon Battista's 'fields' over others as somehow functionally independent and self-sufficient is of no help at all to any effort to characterize Alberti's extensive explorations in the fine arts". Although Alberti is known mostly as an artist, he was also a mathematician and made significant contributions to that field. Among the most famous buildings he designed are the churches of San Sebastiano (1460) and Sant'Andrea (1472), both in Mantua. Alberti's life was told in Giorgio Vasari's ''Lives of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De Re Aedificatoria
(''On the Art of Building'') is a classic architectural treatise written by Leon Battista Alberti between 1443 and 1452. Although largely dependent on Vitruvius's , it was the first theoretical book on the subject written in the Italian Renaissance, and in 1485 it became the first printed book on architecture. It was followed in 1486 with the first printed edition of Vitruvius. Book Alberti's ''Ten Books'' consciously echoes Vitruvius's writing, but Alberti also adopts a critical attitude toward his predecessor. In his discussion, Alberti includes a wide variety of literary sources, including Plato and Aristotle, presenting a concise version of the sociology of architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi .... is subdivided into ten books and includes: * Boo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leon Battista Alberti, Self-Portrait, C
Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again from 1296 to 1301 * León (historical region), composed of the Spanish provinces León, Salamanca, and Zamora * Viscounty of Léon, a feudal state in France during the 11th to 13th centuries * Saint-Pol-de-Léon, a commune in Brittany, France * Léon, Landes, a commune in Aquitaine, France * Isla de León, a Spanish island * Leon (Souda Bay), an islet in Souda Bay, Chania, on the island of Crete North America * León, Guanajuato, Mexico, a large city * Leon, California, United States, a ghost town * Leon, Iowa, United States * Leon, Kansas, United States * Leon, New York, United States * Leon, Oklahoma, United States * Leon, Virginia, United States * Leon, West Virginia, United States * Leon, Wisconsin (other), United States, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parterre
A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, plats, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the part of the garden nearest the house, perhaps after a terrace. The view of a parterre from inside the house, especially from the upper floors, was a major consideration in its design. The word "parterre" was and is used both for the whole part of the garden containing parterres and for each individual section between the "alleys". The pattern or the borders of the beds may be marked by low, tightly pruned, evergreen hedge (gardening) , hedging, and their interiors may be planted with flowers or other plants or filled with mulch or gravel. Parterres need not have any flowers at all, and the originals from the 17th and 18th centuries had far fewer than modern survivals or reconstructions. Statues or small evergreen trees, clipped as pyra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otium
is a Latin abstract term which has a variety of meanings, including leisure time for "self-realization activities" such as eating, playing, relaxing, contemplation, and Academy, academic endeavors. It sometimes relates to a time in a person's retirement after previous service to the public or private sector, as opposed to "active public life" (the negative ''negotium'' meaning "busy-ness"). ''Otium'' can be a temporary or sporadic time of leisure. It can have intellectual, virtuous, or immoral implications. The concept originally expressed the idea of withdrawing from one's daily business or affairs to engage in activities that were considered to be artistically valuable or enlightening (i.e., speaking, writing, philosophy), and had particular meaning to businessmen, diplomats, philosophers, and poets. Early usage In ancient Roman culture ''otium'' was a military concept as its first Latin usage. This was in Ennius's ''Iphigenia''. According to historian Carl Deroux in hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Villa
A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house in the territory of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Nevertheless, the term "Roman villa" generally covers buildings with the common features of being extra-urban (i.e. located outside urban settlements, unlike the ''domus'' which was inside them) and residential, with accommodation for the owner. The definition also changed with time: the earliest examples are mostly humble farmhouses in Italy, while from the Roman Republic, Republican period a range of larger building types are included. Typology and distribution The present meaning of "villa" is partially based on the fairly numerous ancient Roman written sources and on archaeological remains, though many of these are poorly preserved. The most detailed ancient text on the meaning of "villa" is by Varro (116–27 BC) dating from the end of the Republican period, which is used for most modern considerations. But R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BCE) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Virgil and Cicero). He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus ("Varro of Rieti") to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus ("Varro of Atax"). Biography Varro was born in or near Reate (now Rieti in Lazio) into a family thought to be of equestrian rank. He always remained close to his roots in the area, owning a large farm in the Reatine plain (reported as near Lago di Ripasottile,) until his old age. He supported Pompey, reaching the office of praetor, after having served as tribune of the people, '' quaestor'' and '' curule aedile''. It is probable that Varro was discontented with the course on which Pompey entered when the First Triumvirate formed 60 BC, and he may thus have lost his chance of rising to the consulship. He actually ridiculed th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural History (Pliny)
The ''Natural History'' () is a Latin work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the ''Natural History'' compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life". It is encyclopedic in scope, but its structure is not like that of a modern encyclopedia. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of Pliny the Elder#Death, his death during the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger. The work is divided into 37 books, organised into 10 volumes. These cover topics including astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic (''Natural History''), a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is Lost literary work, no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used ''Bella Ger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
