Our last field trip started in a fortified villa, went through a garden villa we all drew before we even knew what it was, and ended in a monster park carved out of rock. The Villa Farnese was an excellent cap off to a semester that has been all about Renaissance Palazzi. Villa Lante in the fall will leave us with some of the best memories of Renaissance garden design in a time that couldn’t be more perfect to visit. Lastly, The Monster Park proved to be one of the strangest and most curious sites on any of our trips, and reminded us that even when we thought we knew everything about Italian art and architecture, there will always be more to know, and see.
The Villa Farnese was the grandest of the Farnese properties, and it is indicative of a time when the wealthy families of Italy no longer felt secure when they displayed their wealth. Thus they built pentagonal fortresses with all of the amenities of a Renaissance Palazzo, including secret gardens with private retreats. The Villa held a commanding view of the landscape, and its stables were bigger than the apartment building I grew up in. Its combination of platonic forms made one hell of a cut away plan, section, axon, showing us that drawings like these existed well before the ‘80’s. http://www.architecture.com/LibraryDrawingsAndPhotographs/Palladio/PalladianBritain/VillasInBritain/AnInternationalPerspective/VillaFarnese.aspx
The Villa Lante was a welcomed surprise, especially because we were starting to get a little confused with all of the names of these villas and Palazzi. This Villa Lante, the one in Bagnaia, is the Villa Lante that Professor Ovaska showed us and had us draw in second year for site planning, not to be confused with the Villa Lante on the Janiculum in Rome. The one in Rome is one of Jerry’s favorites, and he made us draw it at the beginning of this semester which now seems so long ago. Now we stood there drawing something in situ, that we had seen and drawn before 4,300 miles away and 2 years ago.
