Tuscan villas :: a bibliography :: Villas of Tuscany

Ackerman, James S. The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990)

Acton, Harold The villas of Tuscany (formerly entitled: Great Houses of Italy, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1973 revised 1987)

Alberti, Leon Battista De Re Aedificatoria. Translated by Joseph Rywert with Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988)

Bajard, Sophie Villas and gardens of Tuscany (Paris: Editions Pierre Terrail, 1993)

Barsali, Isa Belli Ville di Roma, 2nd ed. (Milan: Rusconi, 1983)

Barsali, Isa Belli and Maria Grazia Branchetti Ville della Campagna Romana (Milan: Rusconi, 1981)

Benes, Mirka and Diane Harris Villas and Gardens in Early Modern Italy and France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Caro, Stefano de ‘The Sculptures of the Villa of Poppaea at Oplontis: A Preliminary Report,’ Ancient Roman Villa Gardens (Washington DC.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1987)

Chatfield, Judith A Tour of Italian Gardens (New York: Rizzoli, 1988)

Coffin, David R Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)

Coffin, David R The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)

Coffin, David R., ed. The Italian Garden (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1972)

Colonna, Francesco Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream. Trans. Joscelyn Godwin (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1999)

Clarke, Ethne The Gardens of Tuscany (New York : Rizzoli, 1990)

Eustis, Elizabeth European Pleasure Gardens: Rare Books and Prints of Historic Landscape Design from the Elizabeth K. Reilley Collection (New York: The New York Botanical Garden, 2003)

Goode, Patrick and Michael Lancaster, eds. The Oxford Companion to Gardens (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)

Hunt, John Dixon, ed. The Italian Garden: Art, Design and Culture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Jashemski, Wilhelmina “Recently Excavated Gardens and Cultivated Land of the Villas at Boscoreale and Oplontis,” in Ancient Roman Villa Gardens (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1987)

Lazzaro, Claudia The Italian Renaissance Garden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)

MacDougall, Elizabeth B., ed. Fons Sapientiae: Renaissance Garden Fountains (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1978)

Masson, Georgina Italian Gardens. 1961. Rev. ed. Woodbridge, Suffolk, (England: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1987)

Osmond, Patricia, ed. “Villa Gamberaia: Sources and Interpretations,” in Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 2002 (Special issue).

Osmond, Patricia, ed. Revisiting the Gamberaia: An Anthology of Essays on Villa Gamberaia (Florence: Centro Di della Edifimi, 2004)

Piccione, Massimo, ed. Gardens of Tuscany (Florence: Edifir, 2001)

Platt, Charles A Italian Gardens (Portland, OR: Sagapress/Timber Press, 1993)

Shepherd, J.C. and G.A. Jellicoe Italian Gardens of the Renaissance (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993)

Triggs, H. Inigo The Art of Garden Design in Italy (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1906)

van der Ree, Paul, Gerrit Smienk, and Clemens Steenbergen Italian Villas and Gardens (Amsterdam: Thoth, 1992)

Wharton, Edith Italian Villas and Their Gardens (New York: Da Capo, 1976)

Wolfflin, Heinrich “The Villa and the Garden,” in Renaissance and Baroque. Trans. Katharine Simon. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966)

Italian Gardens
Judith Wade Judith Wade

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Since the earliest Roman settlements, Italians have been expertly cultivating their land into beautiful and creative displays of nature, combining terraces and walkways, plants and flowers, water and statuary. The Italian garden has greatly evolved throughout the ages. Early Italian gardens made use of citrus, the ancient art of the topiary was revived in the Renaissance, and the refined parterre was developed to spread forth from the great palazzos and provide a dramatic view from their upper stories. Later, in the nineteenth century, the influence of the English garden took hold, with its meandering paths, asymmetrical lakes, and blossoming trees. In Italian Gardens, Wade explores more than five hundred years of the Italian garden tradition, introducing the reader to thirty-seven of the most captivating gardens of Italy, in eleven regions are visited, from Lombardy and Piedmont in the north, to the island of Sicily in the south.

Italian Gardens: A Guide
Helena Attlee & Alex Ramsey

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For more than 500 years the gardens of Italy been irresistibly attractive. Many of the greatest artists and architects of the Renaissance were employed in their design and ornamentation. Italian Gardens is a practical and beautifully illustrated guide to more than 60 of the finest examples, from the seventeenth-century gardens of Castello d'Aglie in Piedmont to the thirteenth-century Moorish garden of the Villa Rufolo in Campania. This book provides histories and descriptions, as well as detailed information on locations, facilities, opening times, and accessibility.

Edith Wharton's Italian Gardens
Vivian Russell

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Edith Wharton published her first book on Italian garden architecture, "Italian Villas and Their Gardens", in 1904. She was a lifelong Italophile as well as a lifelong gardener. Nineteen of the gardens Wharton and her illustrator Maxfield Parrish brought to public attention are virtually unchanged by the passage of the single century since her descriptions were written. Russell has recaptured both the essence of the gardens themselves and Wharton's experience of them in a series of excellent photographs and historical summaries of each garden.

Tuscan villas

A bibliography