La Villa
Bartolomeo Taegio. Edited and translated by Thomas E. Beck
352 pages | 6 x 9 | 16 illus.
Cloth 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4317-8 | $65.00 | £42.50
A volume in the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture series
Published in 1559 and appearing here for the first time in English, La Villa is a rare source of Renaissance landscape theory. Written by Bartolomeo Taegio, a Milanese jurist and man of letters, after his banishment (possibly for murder, Thomas E. Beck speculates), the text takes the form of a dialogue between two gentlemen, one a proponent of the country, the other of the city. While it is not a gardening treatise, La Villa reflects an aesthetic appreciation of the land in the Renaissance, reveals the symbolic and metaphorical significance of sixteenth-century gardens for their owners, and articulates a specific philosophy about the interaction of nature and culture in the garden.
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