PLATE XXXIX. ANGLO-ITALIAN VILLA. "Villas on the cliffs arise, Proudly towering in the skies; Below, the rivers how they run Through woods, and meads, in shade and sun! Where the prospect opens wide, How close and small the hedges lie, What streaks of meadows cross the eye, Ever charming, ever new, When will the landscape tire the view ?"-DYER's Gronger Hill. In Italy many villas occupy promontories, while others are seated on the very brow of craggy cliffs, with still higher grounds rising towards the north, and receding to the east, commanding pleasing prospects to the south and west, and a complete panoramic view of the adjacent grounds. The campanile towers, seen at the south-west angle of the villa in the annexed plate, were at one time very generally adopted as a mark of nobility; the belvidere on the top was not only a place of prospect, but frequently employed as a watch-tower. The old English mansions had at one time a similar appendage. To describe the character which distinguishes an Anglo-Italian villa,† we shall first refer to the balustrade terrace, which is of Italian origin, a pleasing esplanade. The roof of the villa is Tuscan, which projects considerably beyond the face of the walls, and protects them from the heavy rains; the roof is likewise here kept low, being subject to violent winds, which might strip it of its covering. The bedchamber windows are here preserved from the rain by the overhanging roof, which in consequence require no caps to the architraves; the lower windows are not so shielded, they have therefore consale caps or cornices, those within the portico of the entrance on the east, and the colonnade at the south are protected. The portico has a flat roof and a balustrade; the first serving as a shelter at the entrance-door while persons are stepping into the carriage, the other as a balcony above, connected with "my lady's chamber."§ As to this architectural structure being designated Anglo-Italian, we shall first remark, that it cannot be otherwise. Now it is not Roman, because all the details are Greek; neither is it Athenian, for some of the windows have arched heads; and, further, the villa is covered with a Tuscan roof. What is this edifice then, if neither of the above characters, but an Italian composition, formed and adapted to the locality, to the climate, and customs of England, receiving all the internal arrangements from its proprietor, the leading external masses from modern Italy, and its component parts from ancient Greece? * The villa Strandata in Italy is situated in the midst of a wood of large trees upon the rocky promontory which separates the two branches of the lake, and which has the form of a A reversed. These trees skirt a precipice five hundred feet deep, rising abruptly from the water.-(Count Stendal's Sketches.) + The Italian is to the Roman what the Tudor is to the Gothic.—(Áuthor.) The roof of Covent-garden Market, from a design by Inigo Jones, of London, is of Tuscan origin.-(Author.) § The balustrade-terrace naturally originated in the peculiar form of the surrounding site of ground; the required shape and arrangement of the rooms prevented uniformity in the south and west fronts respectively, but in an angular view which embraces these fronts, is seen an uniform composition of which the prospect-tower forms the centre. The entrance front (with the exception of the servants' offices, which recede, and are to be hid by evergreen shrubs) will be perceived, though picturesque in one point of view, to be perfectly regular in design in another. Thus, variety of effects successively present themselves at every point of view in an Anglo-Italian villa. Italian architecture is sometimes characterized by irregularity and strange contrasts, and by other painter-like effects. No architect therefore ought to attempt the Italian style who has not studied the composition of landscape scenery generally.—(W. L.) PLATES XL-XLI.-XLII. A PERSIAN PAVILION.-PALACE OF AHASUERUS. In the third year of the reign of Ahasuerus in his palace at Shushan, (supposed to have resembled that at Persepolis, the king assembled all the princes of Persia and Media, his servants and the nobles of his power, over which he reigned from India unto Ethiopia, which were an hundred and seven and twenty provinces. The princes and nobles being assembled, the king showed them all the riches of his glorious kingdom, and the honour of his excellent majesty, many days, even an hundred and four-score. "And when these days were expired, the king made a feast unto all the people that were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great and small, seven days, in the court of the garden of the king's palace; where were white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble: the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble."BOOK OF ESTHER, Chap. i. It is the custom in Persia for the reigning sovereign not to inhabit any palace of his ancestors, so that sumptuous edifices are neglected or otherwise destroyed to erect a different design in its place.* The domestic architecture of the present Persians resembles that of the Arabian and Turkish Mahomedans. The pavilions of the princes in the various provinces are splendid, but the finest palace in Persia is that of Isphan, called Chehel Sitoon or Forty Pillars. As this is to our purpose, we shall detail it. The palace was built by Shah Abbas the Great. It stands in the middle of an immense square, which is interspersed by various canals, and planted in different directions with the beautiful chenar (sycamore) tree, before it spreads a large sheet of water, from whose extremity the palace is beautiful, either beyond the power of language to describe or the correctness of the pencil to delineate. The edifice itself, though inferior to the gardens amid which it stands, is a monument of the luxury and splendour of the age in which it was erected. In front is an open portico containing small pillars; the four central ones, which are placed at the angles of a square fountain, have a device of four lions carved in a hard stone for the pedestals; those pillars are all lofty, about fifty feet, but disproportionately slender; the shafts are of solid sycamore wood, shaped octagonally, and lessening from the base upwards. The capital itself rises in a square, increasing in dimension from below like an inverted pyramid; it is fluted on every side by concave niches so peculiar to the Saracenic architecture. The shafts and capitals of these pillars are entirely covered with silvered glass as mirrors, sometimes wound round in spiral flutings, and others laid in perpendicular plates, and in others again ornamented by flowers and other devices, after the manner of embossed work or polished steel. The ceiling of the roof of the portico is divided into equal compartments, moulded and richly carved, and with azure blue, and gold in admirable devices. The back part of this portico is one entire sheet of gold and mirrors, splendid as a whole, and containing many beauties in its minute details. Every possible variety of form is given to the devices in which the plates and smaller pieces of glass are disposed, and their partitions and frames of gold. Paintings of beautiful females, some sculptured works, or marble inscriptions of highly-finished writing of gold or blue enamel, with a hundred other details impossible to be remembered amid the overwhelming magnificence of so much labour and wealth, distracts the attention of the observer.t * Sir Robert Ker Porter's Travels in Persia. + The hall into which this vestibule leads, and for which the noble portico is an admirable preparation, is, if possible, still more magnificent, though its decorations are of a different character. The vast size of the room itself is alone sufficient to give it a princely air, and the domed roof is indescribably beautiful. In this banqueting-hall (for that such it was is indicated by the character of its decorations) all the caprices, and labours and costs of fashion and Eastern magnificence have been lavished to an incredible prodigal ty. Its walls are embellished with six large paintings, which, though performed without the smallest knowledge of the laws of perspective, and in many respects ridiculous, are nevertheless invaluable here as registrations of the manners of the age in which they were executed, as also the general countenances of the persons they are designed to commemorate, and of the costumes of the several nations assembled at the feast, or engaged in the battles which they represent.—(Chardin's Travels.) |