DIXON HUNT, JOHN
Gardens play an important role in mediating between people and their surroundings. They reflect the establishment of a secure habitat through utilising and adapting to local conditions, often in the face of extreme circumstances. Perhaps this is nowhere more apparent than in Venice, a city which is in essence an act of urban defiance against its surrounding lagoon landscape. Given the city's uniqueness and the historical role it played in developing cross-continental mercantile capitalism, it is unsurprising that it has developed it's own specific garden vernacular, a sense of 'Venicity'. Something which has not only been influenced by social and political developments, but has also played a role in determining them.
Yet the lack of recognition accorded the importance of this garden culture is something that strikes garden historian John Dixon Hunt as rather confounding. For whilst the 19th century produced belletristic travelogues, and recent times have spawned coffee table books featuring Venice's gardens, there is a distinct lack of researched history - a situation this book aims to redress.
Drawing upon visual and literary sources, Hunt discovers an emergent wealth of material in the 15th century allowing insight into the nascent garden culture. His primary focus is upon a woodcut panorama 'Bird's-Eye view of Venice' by painter and printmaker Jacopo de' Barbari, which provides evidence of a fully fledged cityscape in which gardens are an important part of the layout. Another rich mine of information is a survey of Venetian gardens published by Sansovino in 1581, which is discussed alongside fictional works such as the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.
