The Gardens at San Lorenzo in Piacenza, 1656-1665: A Manuscript Planting Notebook with a Study, Transcription, and Translation (review)

The Gardens at San Lorenzo in Piacenza is a book in two volumes that includes the transcription, translation, and exegesis of an anonymous seventeenth-century Italian manuscript on the planting of three flower gardens. While the second volume of the book is a reproduction of the original manuscript, housed at Dumbarton Oaks, the first volume is divided into three chapters: an introduction, in which the author spells out her objective to locate the gardens described in the notebook and identify their owner; a second chapter aimed at the reconstruction of the three gardens' layouts; and a third chapter addressing the planting design. Segre's methodology relies on a detailed investigation of the urban fabric around the area of San Lorenzo in Piacenza, where the gardens were likely located, with an analysis of historical maps and archival documents that constitute one of the great strengths of this book.

As Segre explains in the first chapter, the scope of garden books was to record the names and position of the plants grown within a garden. The manuscript she analyzes includes working drawings, which suggest that it belonged to whomever was in charge of the gardens' design. The first group of drawings illustrates the plan of a garden, which Segre calls the Early Garden. The second set of drawings reproduces the nine star-shaped compartments of another garden. The third drawing, which is the only one to be drawn on a single page, is a garden plan characterized by a central star-shaped flowerbed.

In the second chapter Segre explains that the garden plans included in the manuscript were drawn with the aid of underlying grids based on a two-module system defining the dimensions of both footpaths and flowerbeds. She argues that the source of this design method is Daniel Loris's Le Trésor des Parterres de l'Univers (1629), in which the author suggests the use of grids for the design of garden plans, and makes clear that these geometrical devices can undergo adaptation according to existing constraints. The plan of the Early Garden, in particular, seems to be an adaptation from a model plan found in Loris's theoretical work. Segre suggests that the location of the individual flowerbeds, which are all reproduced in the manuscript on the recto and verso of each folio, are arranged symmetrically and proportionally following two bimodular grids: an orthogonal grid and a diagonal one. Two superimposed grids also organize the layout of the Nine-Star Garden. In this case, the overall framework is an adaptation from a typical floor tiling pattern. The layout of the third garden is characterized by an array of circle-and-diamond beds constructed on an invisible framework, which dictates the overall geometric structure. Segre's expertise in the Italian horticultural tradition emerges forcefully in the third chapter, in which she points out that the planting scheme was devised in such a way as to emphasize the geometric outline of the flowerbeds in the three gardens. Since these were mainly cultivated with flowering bulbs, such as tulips, they were probably considered as early spring gardens.

Segre's argument is most effective when she analyzes sources that are contemporary with the manuscript under review. For example, she convincingly compares the design methodology she derives from the garden notebook to the principles enunciated by Giovan Battista Ganducci in his Descriptiones oratoriae of 1677, in which the Jesuit Father stresses the importance of subdividing the garden into geometrically shaped compartments; moreover, she rightly links the interest in star-shaped compartments to the new astronomical discoveries that influenced architectural design during the second half of the seventeenth century.

Although the focus of this book is narrow, its contribution to the field of garden history is very important. Segre's...