Jennifer Nevile (and several other researchers)
have noted the parallels between the Renaissance
gardens and Renaissance choreography in Italy,
England and France. This is also reflected in the
parallels found between dance and gardens during
the Baroque period in Europe. Choreography
changed as the Renaissance progressed into the
Baroque period, and a similar change took place
simultaneously in garden design as well. This was
no coincidence!
.
Parameters that can be examined showing parallels
between dance and garden design:
Garden design and choreography both control
and order space. Dance is concerned with spatial
patterns on the ground as well as in the air.
Formal gardens create patterns on the ground
which are static, but the images or patterns
change as viewers stroll through sections,
opening up new shapes to their view.
To fully appreciate patterns in both choreographed
dances as well as formal gardens, the dances are
best viewed from above. In parallel, to get maximum
appreciation from formal gardens, the gardens are
maximally appreciated when viewed from a height
(from a window in a palacial mansion, or even from
atop a centrally located garden mount). The order,
measure and symmetry found in circles, straight
lines and other geometrical forms existed both in
dance patterns as well as the compartmentalized
garden parterres.
The concerns about choreography and the concerns
about formal garden design took place at roughly
the same time period. For example, major Italian
dance treatises were published in 1581 (Caroso)
and Negri (1602).
Examination of the parallel concerns found in dance
choreography and formal garden design will focus on
the following:
Ordered and measure in gardens and dance.
Geometric shapes or figures found in both
gardens and dance.
Shapes found in both gardens and dance
patterns were meant to be observed from
an elevated height.
Court dance and princely gardens expressed
social power and authority of a ruler, and
supported the social ideology.
.
"Above all, the Renaissance garden was ordered and measured. Through
it was expressed the interaction of the artificial culture created by
human beings with the natural 'culture' created by God. Nature as a
reflection of the cosmic order was seen as inherently ordered, and so
in the garden the art of mankind had to 'imitate not only nature's
outward appearance, but also its underlying order.' This underlying
order was understood to be rendered more perfect by the cultivation
of trees and plants in the garden, and in the addition of sculpture,
ornaments, water features, mounds, and grottos. In the topiary work,
labyrinths, as seen in the Villa d'Este (
fig. 1) and
in trellis constructions, natural materials - plants, vines, and trees
—were cultivated into geometric figures like spheres or pyramids, or
into natural shapes like animals. One fifteenth-century garden is
described as having topiary in the form of 'ships, temples, vases,
giants, men, women, dragons, centaurs, putti, various animals and
birds, jousters, philosophers, a pope [and] cardinals.' In Giusto
Utens's depiction of the Medici villa at Costello, the steps
leading up to the garden are ornamented with topiary in the shape
of vases. Behind these steps is a hedge topped with a topiary parapet,
while at the top of a second, narrower flight of stairs are topiary
obelisks. Although the materials used to construct the topiary work,
or edifices like pavilions were natural, their appearance was not."
1
.
"The overwhelming importance of order in fifteeenth- and
sixteenth-century gardens was the characteristic which distinguished
them from the gardens of earlier centuries. It is also the characteristic
which binds them to other artistic endeavours of the Renaissance, such
as painting, architecture, and poetry, as well as cartography and theatre
design. For example, the influence of symmetry on Renaissance thought can
be seen in the cartographers' strong conviction that the unknown landmass
of the southern hemisphere would have to equal that of the northern
hemisphere. Similarly, in the maps of Gerard Mercator (1595) and Abraham
Ortelius (1570) there is a vertical symmetry between the landmass of the
Old world and that of the New." 1
.
"One of Alberti's central points was that the garden was the concern of
the architect just as much as the house was, because the same geometric
figures should be employed in gardens as in buildings."
2
.
"In the designs of Francesco di Giorgio, for example, the compartments
of the gardens are very similar to the rooms of houses. The ordered and
compartmentalized gardens in sixteenth-century Italy often resembled
the plans for ideal cities which appeared at the same time."
2
.
However, the relationship between palace architecture and palace garden
design that Alberti referred to is more significant than might at first
be realized. "... one of the fifteenth-century dance masters, Guglielmo
da Ebro, spent a great deal of time explaining how the art of dancing
proceeds from the art of music, and how the essential nature of music
was the study of proportion and relation. For the educated of the
fifteenth century (as for those of the Middle Ages) the perfect art was
one in which rational form and proportion were expressed simultaneously
in sound and movement; that is, poetry which was sung and danced.
Thus the art of dance in the Renaissance was also created on the
principles of order and proportion: a proportioning of the dance space:
a proportioning of the movements of the body, and a proportioning of
the music. The resultant choreographies reflected this order in their
use of geometric shapes (squares, straight lines), and in their use of
space." 3
.
"In gardens the order was not only expressed through geometric
forms of the ornaments, but also through the use of bi-lateral
symmetry, the central; paths which bisected each other at right
angles, the trees planted in straight lines, and the geometry
of the compartments, all of which created a strong rectilinear
character. ... (See fig. 2.)
Not only does each compartment
have its own geometric space, but each section is divided into
four quarters. Even the large trees in the beds at the back of
the garden are clearly shown in the 1573 engraving of the Villa
d'Este (fig. 1)."3
.
"In the grand gardens the concern for straight lines and
regular geometric shapes extended from the largest design
units down to the smallest components, as can be seen in the
detail of the garden at L'Ambrogiana. "(See fig. 3.) The beds,
which were filled with flowering plants of different colors and
shapes, were divided again into squares, circles, triangles,
all delineated by paths."4
.
"The similarity between the patterns of the compartments and
those of the choreographies can be illustrated by comparing
the garden at L'Ambrogiana with the sixteenth-century
balletto, Dolce Amoroso Foco. In this dance
for three couples the men stand in a line down one side of
the room, the ladies facing them down the other side. The
first part of the dance emphasizes the straight lines with
all the movement being along the original axes or an axis
perpendicular to it, created when the couples change places.
(This is illustrated by fig. 5.)
The second half of the
dance is a hay which creates patterns that are those of the
compartments. The middle couple start the hay and change
places on the perpendicular axis. They then move diagonally
to change places with the last woman and the first man. They
then move along the original axis to change places with the
remaining two dancers. (The path created is shown in
fig. 6.)
This path is very similar to those in the top left
compartment of figure 3.
After six steps all the dancers
are in a straight line across the width of the hall. The
hay continues in a straight line, with each change of
place creating a circular figure found in the top right
compartment. Holding right then left hands alternately,
each couple traces a 90 degree arc to create a straight
line along the length of the hall. During the next step
they trace another 90 degree arc to complete their half
of the circle and to form a straight line across the
width of the hall. (See fig. 7.)"
.
"One of the major contributing factors to the ordered,
rectilinear nature of the formal gardens was the use of
the square. The compartments, while often having
circular forms within them were invariably square. This
shape was further emphasized by the planting of large
trees in each corner of the compartment, as in Villa
Petraia and L'Ambrogiana. (See fig. 4
and fig. 2.)
This characteristic of the Renaissance garden also
found expression in the patterns created by the dancers
as they progressed through the figures of the dance.
For example, the figure of a square delineated by a
dancer at each corner was a common formation in
Renaissance dance, either as an initial pattern, or as
a formation kept throughout the dance. For example,
Negri's balletto, La Battaglia, is a
dance for two couples which begins and ends in a
square. This dance also contains several hays in which
the square dissolves into a straight line, then back
into a square, then into a line again but on an axis
perpendicular to the previous one. (See fig. 8.)
5
.
"Furthermore, in the choreographies the harmony and
proportion of the straight walks of
espaliered
fruit trees or yew were transmuted into the long,
forward-moving floor tracks of the fifteenth-century
balli and bassedanza, and the common
circular figure which was often interspersed with
rectilinear patterns (I am referring here to the
figure which is created when a couple takes left or
right hands and they move around each other tracing
out a circle as they go.) One example of this type
of the floor pattern is the bassadanza Lauro
(which was choreographed by Lorenzo de'Medici).
(See fig. 9.)
Many of the bassedanza and
balli share this type of floor pattern.
Figure 9 shows the starting position of the two
performers and the path they traverse during the
course of the dance. In this particulare dance the
couple only move forward, with a pause in the middle
of the choreograpy to describe a circle. The floor
track is very similar to the gardens with their long,
straight, central avenue, often interspersed with a
circle around which the four compartments are arranged;
for example, the Medici villa Petraia (fig. 4)
or the Medici villa Poggio a Caiano."
6
.
"[t]hroughout the Renaissance, a central avenue
traversed the garden, often covered with a pergola....
Movement from one end of the garden to the other, but
not excursions to either side, was encouraged by such
an axis."7
.
"Another important design principle of both Renaissance
gardens and court dance is that both were meant to be
viewed from above.
Texts from the fifteenth century and
particularly in the sixteenth repeatedly
stress that the order in the garden must
be visible, primarily from a high spot,
as the patterns in the garden simples
were best viewed from the palace windows....
But even from its highest point, the ordering
of a garden through the repitition of
compartments, geometric figures, ovals, and
hippodromes could not be wholly perceived
from within [emphasis by J. Nevile].
Painted and engraved views of gardens...
present what is not visible from within -
nature ordered through regular units.
.
"The patterns of the dances were also designed to be seen
from above. At a ball the dancing took place on the floor
of the hall, and often the ladies of the court were seated
on raised platforms along one wall. In the late fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries when dancing became a common
feature of theatrical performances, the dancing often took
place on the floor of the hall with thr king or prince
seated on a raised platform to view the spectacle. When
the dances took place out of doors many spectators watched
from the upper-level windows of the buildings around the
city squares. Thus, as in the gardens, the patterns would
not be entirely visible to those on the dance space,
especially not to the performers themselves. The order of
the whole would only be visible from above. This was
certainly the case for the Jacobean masque dances as they
were performed not on the raised stage but on the floor
of the hall, surrounded on three sides by the audience.
Not only would there not have been enough room on the
front of a prospective stage to adequately perform a dance
with eight, nine, twelve, or sixteen participants, but
with most of the audience seated along the sides of the
hall at right angles to the stage and facing in towards
the central space, the danced portrayal of initials and
geometric figures would have been difficult for them to
perceive."8
.
"In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the
choreographies were designed to be viewed from all sides.
The audience, who were often performers, watched the dance
from close by (like the windows of a palace), or from
within the dance space itself (like a mount in the
garden)."9
.
"The gardens of the Renaissance most often operated with
the same focal point. The boundaries of the garden were
also clearly marked by hedges or walls. The space they
occupied was not large, unlike later seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century gardens: 'the whole was measurable and
finite.' One's attention was focused within the garden,
either looking down on the compartments, or within the
compartments themselves, or along a trellised avenue to a
grotto or fountain."9
.
"Gardens increased in size in the seventeenth century,
and the basis of their design changed. No longer were
the gardens organized around a collection of small
compartments enclosed within a wall or a hedge. The two
to three foot hedges of the sixteenth century increased
in height in the seventeenth century so that their
wall-like dimensions controlled the view within the
garden far more and worked to prevent a perception of
the order and organization of the garden as a whole.
From their vantage point of the first floor of the
house, or a raised terrace, the attention of the
visitors came to be focused less on the patterns
within the immediate foreground and more on a distant
vista, which, while still a part of the garden, was
situated at the end of a wide central avenue that
dominated the entire garden."
9
.
"In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
dance increasingly moved onto a stage, which meant that
one side only was the front, and that the focus of the
performers' attention had to be directed out from the
dance space into the body of the hall. The performers
were 'looking out' from the stage into the distance,
as they were no longer surrounded, or in close proximity
to their fellow courtiers. The audience were also further
removed from the dancing. They too were looking at a far
distant vista to see the dance, as perspective channelled
their gaze toward a certain point.
"The effect that changing the nature of the dance space
had on the choreographic patterns can be seen by comparing
Emilio Cavalieri's ballo, O che nuovo miracolo,
for the final intermedio in the 1589 wedding celebrations of
the Grand Duke Ferdinando de'Medici and Christine of Lorraine,
with the social dances of late sixteenth-century Italy.
The floor patterns in Cavalieri's ballo are very
similar to those found in the contemporary courtly social
dances. Cavalieri used common patterns such as una
treccia or una interecciata (a hay), two
seguiti in volta (in which each dancer creates a
small individual circle by turning around one shoulder or
the other), two dancers coming together to meet and take
hands and then to change places, and a 'figure of 8'
pattern in which dancers first circle around the dancer
next to them, and then around the dancer on the other
side of them.
"The main difference between the floor patterns in
O che nuovo miracolo and the majority of the social
dances is that in the former the action has to take place
on a flat plans in front of the arc of seven dancers, with
the focus being outwards in one direction; that is, towards
the audience. The square, or rectangular, patterns in which
the focus and interaction between the performers are inward
looking are not present in this ballo."
10
.
"... The creation of a square, or two lines, of dancers is
not possible, or at least not desirable, when a dance is
transposed to a proscenium stage. Rather than partners
changing place along a perpendicular axis the dancers in
Cavalieri's ballo are all starting facing the same
direction. They then have to move forward, away from the arc
formation, meet, change places, and then return to the arc
so that they all face the front of the stage again at the
end of the step sequence."
11
.
"The court dances and the grand gardens of the Renaissance
were both used by princes, popes, and cardinals as expressions
of their splendour and power.12
The expense and the labor of designing, building, planning,
and maintaining these gardens was enormous, and thus they
were only available to a few. While small private gardens
abounded in Rome as extensions of the indoor living space,
it was only 'the lavish gardens created for the popes, the
cardinals, and the noble families ... that express[ed] the
the intellectual concepts necessary for the consideration
of the garden as a work of art."
"Contemporary discriptions of the princely gardens
recognized their function as a display of the power of its
owner. For these visitors the order and control exerted
over the plant life and over the forces of water in the
fountains and grottoes, and exhibited in the garden were
exemplars of the prince's dominion in other aspects of life.
It was as if the 'streams respond to the call of their lord,
plants spring up at his bidding.'"
13
.
"Dance also functioned as an expression of the authority and
power of a prince. The rules and postural codes of courtly
dance were part of the mechanisms by which the court made
itself appear above and inaccessible to the rest of society.
The courtiers believed that their superiority was to be
demonstrated to the rest of society by the different way
in which they moved, walked, danced, and even stood in repose.
Their carrieage and demeanour when on the dance floor did not
change once they had finished dancing: it remained with them
as it was their normal posture."
"[d]ance was not only an essential part of aristocratic education
and courtly behaviour; it also provided a code of social
emblems and a language of cosmic metaphors which were part
of the Renaissance world-view. To the Renaissance mind, nurtured
on Plato, a well-conducted life was essentially a noble dance."
14, 15
.
"... it was the 'movements and the geometric patterns' that made
Renaissance court dance 'both graceful and more significant than
a simple ritual. The patterns inscribed on the floor of the
ballroom or stage were not haphazard; they had divine effects.'
These were the same geometric patterns which were present in
formal gardens and which were also seen as having a moral effect
on those who walked through them. ... 'the geometric forms which
recur so frequently in these designs for plant-beds - shapes such
as the square (traditionally a symbol of earth and its elements),
the circle (a symbol of heaven and divinity), the regular polygons,
and the triangle (a symbol of fire) - had to sustain complex
astrological and magical-esoteric connotations.'
.
"The house and garden were regarded as one unit, with the garden
laid out so that it was seen at best advantage from a single
viewpoint." [Note: Salomom De Caus' scaeonography, or
linear-perspective] "The geometric compartments of flowers
changed into parterres of box, and the patterns in these beds
also underwent a radical alteration. Gone were the squares,
circles, and hexagons, and the rectilinear character of the
compartment designs. The French parterres were curvilinear,
composed of 'S'-shaped curves, arabesques, arcs, and
embroidery-like scroll patterns, as illustrated by the garden
at Vaux-le-Vicomte, and one of the designs for a
parterre de broderie from Jacques Boyceau's
Traité du Jardinage, of 1638 (fig. 10).
16
.
"One of the earliest gardens in which we know [that
parterres de broderie were introduced into French
gardens was at the] palace at Fontainebleau, renovated by
Claude Mollet in the 1590s under instructions of Henry IV.
A general plan of the palace and gardens from circa 1600
has survived, which show that the beds were still laid out
in geometrical patterns. In 1614, however, another plan
was made of Fontainebleau by Alexandre Francini. In this
design all the parterres are of the new scroll-like
designs. The geometric shapes of the previous century
have gone."17
.
"The radical change in the patterns employed in garden designs
of the seventeenth century is echoed in the change which
occurred in the patterns created by the French choreographers
of the seventeenth century, particularly in the dances created
for Louis XIV's court at Versailles. The rectilinear floor plans
vanished as the courtiers traced out the same sweeping curves
and arabesques found in parterres outside the palace. Figure 11
is the notation of the regular minuet, which was used to open
the balls at Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV. Both the
difference between it and the floor plans of the sixteenth-century
balletti, and the similarity with the parterres de broderie,
are quite striking."18
.
"If the new style of garden design was first used in France some
time between 1600 and 1614, when did these developments arrive in
England, and what does the answer to this question tell us about
the type of dances performed by the courtiers in the masques of
James I's reign?
.
"During the first two decades of the seventeenth century there was
renewed interest among the English nobility in remodelling and
extending their gardens.
.
"Most of the publications reflected gardening practice of
Elizabeth's reign, with their emphasis on enclosed gardens laid
out as a single square, subdivided into four quarters, or as a
series of squares all planted with different knots.
"...the predominant form of gardens at this time were rectilinear.
Smythson's survey of Wimbledon House shows the total area divided
into separate gardens, each laid out in four square compartments,
with the largest garden indicated as planted with knots.
Smythson also recorded the additions made to Somerset House.
'This garden [had] a quatrefoil
laid onto a divided square for its geometrical basis, though this
was merely the preliminary to what became a complex arrangement
of knots, beds and emblematic devices.' From 1603 to 1610 Sir
William Rigdon built a house and a garden for himself at Dowsby
in Lincolnshire. Once again the ground plan for Dowsby indicates
that the patterns of the compartments were knots, and that the
trees in the orchard were to be planted in
quincunx.
19
.
"Wilton House, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, provides a clue
as to when the new French style was adopted in England. From a
description of the garden in 1623 as 'circular, triangular,
quadrangular, orbicular [and] oval,' it seems that the garden was
geometric and rectilinear. Philip Herbert inherited Wilton on the
death of his brother. From 1632 to 1635 he had part of the house
and garden rebuilt, with Isaac de Caus in charge of the work. Ten
years later Isaac de Caus published a series of plans of Wilton,
and from these plans it is very clear that the four compartments
which lay underneath the windows of the piano nobile were
parterres de broderie (fig. 12).
From the surviving evidence,
the garden at Wilton in 1635 appears to be the earliest example of
an English garden laid out according to the new design principles
developed in France."
"The conclusion that the transition from the strongly geometric
Renaissance style to the arabesques of the baroque first occurred
in England in the 1630s is confirmed by another royal garden, St
James's Palace."
"Formal gardens also appear in masque stage sets, and, not
surprisingly, the descriptions of these gardens parallel the
developments in the living gardens of the nobility."
20
.
"... the knots which had filled each quarter
[Banqueting House] had vanished, replaced with the new,
fashionable parterres. On this occasion, the masque was
Thomas Carew's Coleum Britannicum, performed
before the court on 18 February 1634;..."
21
.
"Similarly, a year earlier in the court play, The Shepard's
Paradise, (1633) the design by Inigo Jones portrays a garden
in which the new, French, scroll-like parterres are clearly visible.
.
"If garden styles in England began to change to the new French
style in the late 1620s and early 1630s, did the court dance
practice follow a parallel path? From the descriptions of the
main-masque dances which do exist in the masque-texts themselves
it seems clear that the early masque dances continued practices
of the sixteenth century.22
.
"From the late 1620s onwards there was an increasing French
influence at court, which in the gardens resulted in a change
to the arabesques of the seventeenth-century French style and
may well have had the same result as regards the dance
practice."23
.
"From the late 1620s and early 1630s, however, English
court dance imitated more closely the contemporary practice,
in which geometric shapes changed to scroll-like patterns
and 'S'-shaped curves and arabesques." Flowing, Curvilinear
shapes.24
1
"Dance and the Garden: Moving and Static Choreography in Renaissace Europe",
Jennifer Nevile, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 52, 1999, 805-836, pp. 809, 810
.
Note that Ptolemaic cartography (third method)
showed ellipses in perspective, thus may be
viewed as an early use of what became central
to the Renaissance aesthetic: linear perspective
was of major significance in art, architecture,
garden design, theatre design (perspective
theatres), and even in dance.
2
Ibid., p. 811
3
Ibid., p. 812
4
Ibid., p. 813
5
Ibid., p. 814
6
Ibid., p. 815
7
Ibid., p. 818
8
Ibid., pp. 818, 819
9
Ibid., p. 819
10
Ibid., p. 820
11
Ibid., p. 821
12
Ibid., p. 821 (footnote #53):
"In today's common usage the words 'magnificence'
and 'splendour' are often used interchangeably. In
the sixteenth century, however, there was a
distinction made between them. In the 1490s the
Neapolitan humanist Giovanni Pontano wrote two
treatises, one on 'Magnificence' and one on
'Splendour.' In these two treatises Pontano says
that 'magnificence' applies to large, substantial
and permanent projects such as houses and buildings.
'Splendour' refers to more transient objects,
private collections, furnishings, clothes and
gardens. For more information on this distinction
see Coffin, 1982, especially 213-14."
13
Ibid., p. 821
14
Ibid., p. 822
15
Ibid., footnote #62: "... one of Plato's words for "uneducated"
is 'achorentos,' that is, 'danceless'."
The 'apaidentos' (uneducated) were 'achorentos' (danceless). See
"Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick, 1250-1750", Nevile,
Jennifer (Ed.), Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, In., 2008,
p. 266
16
Ibid., pp. 823, 824.
17
Ibid., p. 824.
18
Ibid., p. 825. "Figure 11 is taken from Kellom Tomlinson's
work, The Art of Dancing, which was published in
1735. The dance is written in a system of notation developed
by Pierre Beauchamp in the latter part of the seventeenth
century. The system was first used in publications by Raoul-Auger
Feuillet in his work, Chorégraphie
ou l'Art de De'crire la Danse, published in Paris in 1700.
Thus, as was the case with the dance treatises of Caroso and Negri,
the written records of the choreographies notate a practice which
had existed for decades previously."
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