Alticchiero par Mad.e J.W.C.D.R. À Padoue, 1787

TOUR OF A 18^TH-CENTURY ENLIGHTENED MASONIC GARDEN

4to (275x197 mm). Engraved title, [8], 80 pp., [1] engraved folding plan of the garden and XXIX full-page (1 folding) engraved plates by Giovanni Maria del Pian and Antonio Sandi. Contemporary half vellum. A very good, clean copy.

First illustrated edition, dedicated by Bartolomeo Benincasa to William Petty Earle of Shelburne (from Venice, 15 August 1787), after the first that was privately printed in Geneva in 1780 by Jean Huber (cf. Graesse, I, p. 87) in a small number of copies without illustrations and with a shorter and incorrect text. As clearly stated in the Avant-propos de l'editeur (pp. [4-5]), the author of the book and the owner of the villa agreed to participate in this second edition to amend and expand the text of the first edition and to include the editor's final notes and the latest additions to the garden, that was still under construction when the first edition was published.

The work describes the villa and garden of Altichiero, near Padua, one of the most iconic place of its time and a cultural meeting place of which the author, Justine Wynne (1737-1791), the natural daughter of Richard Wynne and Anna Gazini, was a regular guest. Justine or (Giustiniana) was a cultivated and charming woman who became acquainted with the British Consul in Venice, Joseph Smith, was for some time lover of Casanova who writes about her in his Memoires, and was in very close relations with Andrea Memmo. She extensively travelled throughout Europe before marrying, in 1761, Philipp-Joseph, Count Orsini-Rosenberg, Austrian ambassador to Venice.

The villa of Altichiero was owned by Angelo Querini (1721-1796), a Venetian nobleman, senator of the Republic, great antiquarian collector and passionate about architecture, who devoted the second part of his life entirely to this villa and its garden, making it an example of that Enlightened and Masonic utopianism that intrigued so many intellectuals at the time. The villa incorporated a relevant collection of sculptures (here depicted in the final plates), some of them from the ancient times (Roman, Greek and Egyptian), others commissioned by Querini himself.

Querini spent most of his time at his villa in Altichiero. He has been described as a perfect example of a refined and cultured gentleman, who lives serenely in his lands and observes the things of the world with detached superiority (cf. F. Haskell, Mecenati e pittori. Studio sui rapporti tra arte e società italiana nell'età barocca, Florence, 1966, p. 559).

The villa, which was not luxurious, but was embellished with a carefully tended garden designed by Querini himself (who also had the opportunity to carry out interesting agronomic experiments at Altichiero), contained prints, paintings, busts, sculptures and allegorical representations that expressed both Querini's love of ancient art and a complex Enlightenment and Masonic symbolism. Querini was close to many men of letters, scientists and thinkers of his time, such as Melchiorre Cesarotti, Gasparo Gozzi, Saverio Bettinelli, Giuseppe Toaldo, Clemente Sibiliato, Francesco Milizia and Carlantonio Pilati, and his villa became a meeting place for enlightened and liberal intellectuals (cf. G. Trebbi, Querini, Angelo, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 86, Rome, 2016, s.v.).

Unfortunately, after his death the villa and the garden were destroyed, and therefore this book is the only veritable witness to one of the most significant Italian gardens of the Enlightenment period.

“The park of Senator Angelo Querini's summer residence in Altichiero was one of the most elaborate and prestigious Masonic gardens of its time. Querini's name appears in numerous Tabelle de' Framassoni in Venezia (‘Tables of Freemasons in Venice') as a member of the Rio Marin lodge from 1785. Querini, an amateur architect and a follower of the functionalist theories learnt at the school of Carlo Lodoli, together with Francesco Algarotti, Andrea Memmo and Girolamo Ascanio Giustinian, dedicated himself with almost manic care to the creation and artistic decoration of the ‘philosophical garden' at his Altichiero estate. For the design of the garden, which was built between 1765 and 1785, Querini called on the architect Domenico Cerato, who, together with Andrea Memmo, was also involved in the creation of the Prato della Valle in Padua. After the disappearance of the seventeenth-century villa, with its mid-eighteenth-century extensions by Cerato, and the subsequent plundering and destruction of the park, whose artefacts were sold and dispersed, the only literary and iconographic evidence of it is the book by Giustiniana Wynne, the second edition of which, enriched with a plan of the garden by Antonio Sandi and twenty-nine engravings and a frontispiece by Giovanni Del Pian, written with the help of the Jacobin abbot Bartolomeo Benincasa, who signed the presentation from Venice on 15 August 1787, was published in Padua in the same year. A first edition, made upon request of the Geneva painter and engraver Jean Huber, known as Huber-Voltaire for his friendship with the famous and celebrated philosopher, whom he portrayed in various poses, was published in Geneva in 1780 in a reduced format and without illustrations. This first edition soon sold out. Huber, who had met Senator Querini in Geneva in 1777 on the occasion of the Venetian patrician's visit to Voltaire, persuaded Giustiniana to produce a second, updated version of the text, the Paduan version. The work was dedicated to Lord William Petty, Marquess of Landsdown, owner of Bowood in Wiltshire, whose park had been designed by Lancelot Brown, known as ‘Capability' for his ability to intervene in every site according to its peculiarities. In the case of Senator Querini's cultivated leisure spaces, a sort of unnatural, studied and artificial naturalism was the basis of Altichiero's ‘philosophical' garden, the result of a precise project. The layout of the garden was traditional in the geometric definition of the spaces, while the initiatory path and the sculptural furnishings were reminiscent of Masonic and esoteric practices. Of particular iconological importance were the Garden of Venus, the ‘Cabane de la Folie' and the Labyrinth at the top right of the plan drawn by Antonio Sandi. The garden was also decorated with statues and bas-reliefs of mythological gods and emperors, illustrious figures of Greek and Roman classicism, philosophers and statesmen. The modern Voltaire and Rousseau were flanked by busts of Bacon, Phocion, Epicurus and a sombre grove of E. Young, dedicated to the poet of the ‘Night-Thoughts', not far from the villa. The cultivated visitor, walking along the winding paths of the garden, pausing in front of the busts of philosophers past and present, the enigmatic Egyptian granite statues scattered with artificial carelessness, meditating at the Altar of Friendship, wandering into the Labyrinth or the Wood of Venus, could understand Querini's secret inclinations. An initiatory path towards the light is the aspiration captured in Wynne de Rosenberg's meticulous description, and it is no coincidence that at the centre of the labyrinth, divided into four parterres alluding to the four stages of human life, the lost traveller was comforted by the sight of Diogenes, caught in the most traditional pose, lantern in hand, shedding light on human errors and ultimately finding the truth” (cf. B. Mazza Boccazzi, Esoterismo nei giardini veneti, in: “Storia d'Italia, Annali 25, Esoterismo”, G.M. Cazzaniga, ed., Turin, 2010, pp. 415-419).

“Il giardino del senatore veneziano si presenta nella sua vasta complessità, a cavallo tra la Wunderkammer seicentesca, il ‘luogo della memoria', il Museo progressivo lodoliano, le ‘fantasie' geniali piranesiane, con implicazioni filosofiche (Lucrezio, Montaigne, Bacone), retoriche e simboli esoterici di non facile decifrazione […] Si è così definita la chiave di lettura del giardino […] quando Altichiero diviene ‘giardino della filosofia' e si scioglie il simbolo dell'altare dell'amicizia e dei due personaggi rappresentati, Focione e Epicuro, l'uno modello di integrità e di sapienza politica, l'altro di ferma e virtuosa calma di spirito […] È da notare che i confini tra l'utopia illuministica della luce che rischiara il mondo dalla superstizione e dal pregiudizio e quella massonica del cammino iniziatico verso la Vera Luce, la Giustizia e la Verità, attraverso la morte e la resurrezione, sono difficilmente delineabili soprattutto in quest'ultimo quarto di secolo. Infatti, non solo in Italia, ma anche in Europa, si avverte in seno alle logge un agitarsi di fermenti razionalisti, nel tentativo di dare all'organizzazione massonica una finalità illuministica, tralasciando rituali e cerimoniali, per promuovere l'evoluzione culturale e scientifica del mondo. La loggia massonica costituiva quindi, in quel momento di passaggio culturale e politico, l'invito ad una battaglia filosofica, impostata sulla lettura di Diderot, Helvetius e Voltaire, preludio alla lotta politica. Probabilmente, però, proprio la divisione per gradi permetteva che nella stessa loggia coabitassero persone con interessi diversi, filantropici ed umanitari, ermetici e spiritualistici. Il confine tra questi due diversi campi di interesse risultano ancora meno definiti per un personaggio quale Angelo Querini, fornito di una cultura profonda ma non ancora completamente delineata. I richiami a Democrito ed a Bacone, e soprattutto il culto per quest'ultimo, esemplificato nel busto che campeggia nella biblioteca e nelle iscrizioni variamente sparse nel giardino (nel tempio di Venere dal De Veritate, per citare un esempio) riconducono, seppure in maniera sempre contraddittoria, ad una fonte di ermetismo che il carattere sperimentale e razionalista dell'Illuminismo parrebbe escludere […] E probabilmente è proprio la lettura di Bacone, forse mediata attraverso il pensiero funzionalista del Lodoli o un certo platonismo del Conti, che rende possibile una ricomposizione degli elementi ragione-natura (materialisticamente intesa) […] E quanto di ermetico c'è ancora in Bacone alimenta quella sottile vena esoterica che dal Polifilo, attraverso i Rosacroce, penetra nella Massoneria, capitolo insufficientemente indagato nelle contraddizioni settecentesche. E proprio la massoneria permette quella mescolanza di illuminismo e esoterismo che fin qui si è delineata nella cultura queriniana […] I simboli di Venere (amore), di Apollo (la luce e il Sole) dell'acqua-fiume-Brenta-Nilo (rigenerazione), di Cibele-Isis (forza della terra) sono riferimenti ermetici […] Il giardino, quindi, ‘nostalgia del Paradiso', dedicato a Venere-amore, divenuto alla fine del secolo il luogo per eccellenza del Personale, rende possibile, al suo interno, la trasposizione dell'immaginario e non attuato nel reale, la sintesi di natura e storia” (G. Ericani, La storia e l'utopia nel giardino del senatore Querini ad Altichiero, in: “Piranesi e la cultura antiquaria: gli antecedenti e il contesto”, Rome, 1983, pp. 175-179).

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\PUVE\005263; Melzi, I, 39; V.C. Donvito & D. Ton Tiepolo, eds., Piazzetta, Novelli. L'incanto del libro illustrato nel Settecento veneto, Crocetta del Montello, 2012, pp. 420-422, no. VIII.8; G. Bignami, Casanova e il mio tempo, Trieste-Bologna, 2020, XIII/11; Cicognara, 4083.

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