Garden and Grove. The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination: 1600-1750

Hunt, John Dixon

ISBN 10: 0460046810 / ISBN 13: 9780460046817

Published by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1986

First edition, first impression. Some very slight edge wear to top and bottom of jacket and spine, small closed tear to top back spine, not price clipped (£25.00), no inscriptions, internally clean tight and square, overall a vg++ copy. 268pp, lavishly illustrated. A pioneering study of the English fascination with Italian Renaissance gardens. Quite a scarce book. A large heavy book, extra postage may be required. Seller Inventory # 004483

Synopsis:

Garden and Grove is a pioneering study of the English fascination with Italian Renaissance gardens. John Dixon Hunt studies reactions of English visitors in their journals and travel books to the exciting world of Italian gardens: its links with classical villas, with Virgil and farming, with Ovid and metamorphosis, its association with theater, its variety, its staged debates between art and nature. Then he looks at what English visitors made of these Italian garden experiences upon their return home and at how they created Italianate gardens on their estates, on their stages, and in their poems.

With a wealth of literary and visual materials previously untapped, Hunt provides a new history of an intriguing and vital phase of English garden history. Not only does he suggest the centrality of the garden as a focus for many social, aesthetic, political, and philosophical ideas but he argues that the so-called English landscape garden before "Capability" Brown, in the late eighteenth century, owed much to a long and continuing emulation of Italian Renaissance models.

John Dixon Hunt is Professor and Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, at the University of Pennsylvania. He edits the international Journal of Garden History and is senior editor of Word & Image. His publications include The Genius of the Place, The Figure in the Landscape, William Kent, and Gardens and the Picturesque.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Garden and Grove. The Italian Renaissance ...
Publisher: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London
Publication Date: 1986
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: 1st Edition