Imitation and invention: Language and decoration in Roman renaissance gardens

Abstract

Abstract In an earlier essay on this subject, I explained that my conclusions were only a preface to an introduction to a prolegomenon to sixteenth-century garden iconography and literary theory.1 This paper represents the results of more than a decade of further study and thought and both expands on and, in some ways, alters the earlier study. Specifically, I was and am concerned with examining the influence of literature on garden decorations in sixteenth century Rome and in tracing the way literary and art theory governed the selection of subject matter and the iconographical programmes of these decorations. The previous discussion centred on the presence of groves or boschetti and the significance of some grottoes in gardens in sixteenth-century Rome. Here I shall discuss the use of statuary and relief sculpture and their role in several Roman gardens.