Ovid, Vico, and the central garden at Caserta

• Autores: George L. Hersey
• Localización: Studies in the history of gardens and designed landscape, ISSN 1460-1176, Vol. 1, Nº 1, 1981, págs. 3-34
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • There is now, thanks to the recent bicentennial of Luigi Vanvitelli's death (1973), a considerable literature on this architect and on his masterpiece, the Bourbon royal palace at Caserta (begun 1753).1 However Vanvitelli's work as a gardenist has not been analysed with anything like the fullness that has been devoted to his architectural career. Perhaps this is partly because the gardens at Caserta, while unquestionably based on Vanvitelli's ideas, were not completed until after his death, at first under the supervision of his son Carlo and, later, by still other designers.2 Two scholars, F. Petrelli and V. Maderna, are currently working on the problems of documentation and attribution which the gardens at Caserta raise. I shall set for myself the rather different goal of analysing the poetic meaning of the garden's central axis, with its canal and sculptural groups.