The Villa [antikvár]

Foreword This book is expanded from six Mellon Lectures delivered in Spring 1985 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It is composed ofa general introductory chapter treating the typology of the villa in the Western world since antiquity, and ten chapters that focus on moments of innovation and change in the history of villa building. While I sought to distribute my choices of times and places to provide a wide spread, the limitations of my experience and knowledge forced me to favor Italy, England and America. I most regret the absence of German examples —for example, the villas of Karl Friedrich Schinkel—and of a discussion of the situation in France, where in the ancien régime the role of the villa is subsumed into that of the château. A comparison with Japanese imperial villas might have been valuable, but I knew that I should be misled in that enterprise by my ignorance of the language. I was attracted to the subject originally by the striking contrast between the rich variety of forms in the history of country houses and the perception that the ideology of life in the country and in the villa has remained much the same from the time of late RepubHcan Rome to the present, by contrast to major shifts in purpose and in emphasis in other ongoing building types such as urban dwellings and churches. Accordingly, my interpretations of the idea and the functions of the villa in each epoch constitute the thread that binds the several parts. Of the many who have helped me with suggestions and criticisms of drafts, I want to thank particularly my wife, Jill Slosburg-Ackerman, Thomas Cerbu, Alfred Frazer, John Harris, Michelangelo Muraro, and Natasha Staller. I want also to thank the Getty Center in Santa Monica for hospitality that eased the writing for one chapter. I am grateful to Emily Lane for her meticulous and inspired copyreading and for the refinement of the translation in Chapter 5 and its Appendix, to my remarkably resourceful research assistants, Daniel Abramson and Ann Gilkerson, and to Barbara Shapiro for her lucid drawings. The book refreshes recollections of many country wanderings with my late wife Mildred and celebrates the many years of her encouragement and forbearance.