Villa Gamberaia

History

The first mention of the property dates to the late fourteenth century and refers to the grant to Giovanni Benozzo in 1398 of a farm and house in the place called Gamberaia by the Abbess of San Martino a Mensola. The place-name "gamberaia" probably refers to the farming of fresh-water shrimp in local ponds. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a house with land, in part cultivated, in part planted with vineyards belonged to the Gamberelli family: Matteo, his sons, among whom the well-known sculptors and architects Antonio and Bernardo "Rossellino", and their descendants.

In 1610 the property was acquired by Zanobi Lapi, a wealthy and cultivated Florentine merchant with ties to the Medici court, and it is he and his nephews who were responsible for the construction of the villa, on the foundations of an earlier casa da signore, and the subsequent layout of the gardens. Evidence of Lapi ownership and patronage is visible in an inscription on the architrave of a door inside the east entrance to the villa ("Zenobius Lapius erexit ac fundavit A.D. MDCX") and in the heraldic lions carved on vases above the gate to the gabinetto rustico and in the relief sculptures of the nymphaeum (or 'Neptune grotto'). Documents of Zanobi's time mention a limonaia, a lawn area, and ilex woods, which remain essential parts of the garden plan, and the conduits that convey water from the springs above the nymphaeum to the several fountains, a complex hydraulic system that still functions today. The architects who built the villa and carried out the massive engineering project that extended the main terrace of the villa to the south, thus creating the long north-south axis of the bowling green and the area of the parterre, have not been identified. Recent studies, however, point to the Florentine architectural tradition of Bartolomeo Ammannati, Bernardo Buontalenti, and Giovanni Battista Caccini and the influence in the gardens and grottos of the theatrical designer Giulio Parigi. …

Select Bibliography

History and Design of the Villa and Gardens

Villa Gamberaia: Sources and Interpretations, special issue of Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 22 (2002), guest ed., P. Osmond. Includes essays on the Gamberaia by Mario Bevilacqua, Marcello Fagiolo, Maia Gahtan, Margherita Caputo, Patricia Osmond, Vincenzo Cazzato.

Revisiting the Gamberaia: An Anthology of Essays, ed. with Preface, Introduction, and Notes by P. J. OsmondIncludes historic essays on the Gamberaia (1901-1973) by Janet Ross, Edith Wharton, E. March Phillipps (with photos by Charles Latham), H. Inigo Triggs, Henry V. Hubbard, Geoffrey Jellicoe (with drawings by J.C. Shepherd), Georgina Masson, and Harold Acton, with Introduction, prefaces to each essay, and notes.

Judith Kinnard, ““The Villa Gamberaia in Settignano: The Street in the Garden,” Journal of Garden History 6 (1986): 1-18.

Gian Luca Simonini. “Il giardino di Gamberaia e l’addizione di Catherine Jeanne Ghyka,” Storia urbana 85 (1998) 151-70.

Luigi Zangheri,. "Pietro Porcinai e La Gamberaia," in I giardini del XX secolo: l'opera di Pietro Porcinai, ed. Maria Chiara Pozzana (Florence: Alinea, 1998), 131-138.

Luigi Zangheri,. “Islamische Einflüsse in der Europäischen Gartenkunst am Beispiel der Villa Gamberaia,” in Historische Gärten heute, ed. M. Rohde and R. Schomann (Leipzig: 2003), 52-57.

Guides

Mariachiara Pozzana, Villa Gamberaia (Florence: Edizioni Casalta, 2015).

Photographic Studies

Balthazar Korab, Gamberaia. Photo essay, with text by Harold Acton. (Florence: Centro Di, 1971).