Early Renaissance Gardens

Il Trebbio was just used as a hunting lodge, that is the main reason why its garden has survived with very few changes, but its design seems to be characteristic of early Renaissance gardens; the gardens of more important villas were often on a grander scale, but there is no evidence that they were much different from Medieval gardens.

The main difference between Medieval and early Renaissance gardens is in how their owners related to them. During the Middle Ages, it was normal for the powerful to own a number of castles; they would move their large households from castle to castle as a way of administrating their estates without depleting the resources of one village. Medieval landowners were closely connected with agriculture, while the wealthy merchants of Florence were rooted in the city. Florentine merchants had owned agricultural estates before 1400, but it was only in the early fifteenth century that the custom of withdrawing to country estates(villaggiatura) became fashionable.

Villaggiatura differed from the country house parties of nineteenth century Britain in the strong emphasis which was placed on philosophical discussions. The Villa Medici at Careggi was the meeting place for Florence's Platonic Academy. In 1462 Cosimo de Medici wrote a letter to the leader of the Platonic Academy, the neo-Platonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino, which evokes the mood behind the custom of villeggiatura, "Yesterday I came to the villa of Careggi, not to cultivate my fields but my soul. Bring with you our Plato's book De Summo Bono". The simplicity of early Florentine gardens was a product of the desire to cultivate one's soul, as well as the fact that fifteenth century Florence was a Republic and it was more socially acceptable for wealthy merchants to build churches and hospitals than to display their wealth in private gardens.

Leon Battista Alberti (1407-72) was a humanist scholar as well as being one of the most important architects of the Renaissance; his treatise De re aedificatoria libri X (The Ten Books of Architecture) was completed in 1452 and printed in 1485. Alberti's treatise was strongly influenced by Virtruvius' (1st century BC) treatise, De Architectura, in which Virtruvius wrote about beauty being the result of harmony. Alberti was also heavily influenced by Pliny the Younger's (62-133 CE) descriptions of his Tuscan villa, both by the hillside location with a strong emphasis on views of the surrounding countryside and Pliny's garden, with its topiary

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