4 - Gardens of the Late Renaissance
The previous 4 articles were all about Italian gardens. I decided to write a separate article about Northern Renaissance gardens, rather than try to include that information in earlier articles, because there were some basic differences between the Renaissance in Italy and in northern Europe.
For Italians, the Renaissance was a return to their Classical roots. Much of northern Europe had been a part of the Roman Empire, but northern Europeans didn't identify as strongly as the Italians did with the Classical culture of ancient Rome.
For northern Europeans, it was easier to accept intellectual ideas from Italy than it was to adopt the art and architecture of Renaissance Italy. Northern Europeans had developed regional and national styles of Gothic art and architecture; for them, imitating Italian art and architecture meant giving up native traditions.
Even in Italy, gardens had remained essentially Medieval until the early sixteenth century. North of the Alps, ideas from Italian gardens tended to hybridize with Late Medieval traditions to create gardens which were characteristic of the Northern Renaissance.
While Renaissance ideas had spread early to Germany, France was much more open to Italian Renaissance art and architecture. In 1494, Charles VIII of France led an army into Italy. He went as south far as Naples and returned with Italian artists and craftsmen in his entourage; among them was Pacello de Mercigliano, who was described as a gardener (jardinier). The French fell in love with the gardens of Naples, describing them as earthly paradises, and when they returned to their chateaux, they began to create their own versions of them.
When Louis XII succeeded Charles in 1498, the influence of Italian gardens became even stronger, the garden of the Chateau de Bury dates from his reign and that of his successor, Francois I, who became king in 1515. The engraving by Androuet du Cerceau shows what was to become a typical arrangement of square beds before the chateau. The problem with our knowledge about French gardens of this period is that Cerceau's drawings and engravings, which were done during the 1560s and 1570s are our main source for what these gardens looked like; they show the gardens as they appeared in the middle of the century; we don't really know what these gardens looked like when first created.
