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Bio/Research
Much of my scholarship has focused on gardens, particularly of the Italian Renaissance, and on related issues, from rural architecture to sculptural representations of the natural world, whether animals or personifications of aspects of nature. In my book on Renaissance gardens, I provided a syn...
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Bio/Research
Much of my scholarship has focused on gardens, particularly of the Italian Renaissance, and on related issues, from rural architecture to sculptural representations of the natural world, whether animals or personifications of aspects of nature. In my book on Renaissance gardens, I provided a synthetic overview of Italian Renaissance gardens, including the little-studied aspect of planting, and presented some of the most famous and enduring examples as manifestations of a larger understanding of nature, gardens, and the relationship of nature and culture, art and science. Later studies framed these aspects in cultural, political, and social terms. In different forms, I have addressed the parallel between assumptions about nature and those about human gender differences and roles, with significant political implications in Fascist Italy. I have mined prints and views of gardens for information about the design and planting, the experience of the garden, the social hierarchy contained within it, and much more. In a series of articles, I have traced the changing understanding of the Italian garden as a representation of “Italy,” as that entity changed from a geographical designation freighted with cultural ideas to a modern political state, and as the gardens themselves underwent transformations in taste and through time.
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