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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000000296321 | NA9063 W66 1986 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
On Order
Reviews 3
Publisher's Weekly Review
Woodbridge is popular as a book author and writer in British garden journals; he contributed the France section in the Oxford Companion to Gardens, a subject he further explores in this comprehensive volume. Scholars as well as general readers who share the author's passion for France's antique glories will find the book indispensable. Woodbridge provides information on famous parks and gardens created in France going back to the 15th century, the Italian influence on designers, the wide differences between English and French gardens, etc. Black-and-white photos of restored sites and drawings of vanished plots illustrate the book. While unexciting, the photos effectively document the scholarly, impeccably organized and well-written text. (June 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Choice Review
Woodbridge's remarkable study traces the development of the French formal garden from its medieval origins through its Italianate transformation during the Renaissance to its culmination and codification in such great garden parks as Le N^otre's Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles in the 17th century, and to its later revival around the turn of the 20th century. The appearance and character of a great many little-known as well as famous gardens are studied and illustrated in a superb corpus of old prints, paintings, and in photographs of existing garden sites. Not only art and architectural history, but the history of ideas, politics, manners, technology, botany, and similar subjects are illuminated in this rich and wide-ranging book. The scholarly apparatus is elaborate and thorough, and the book will become a standard work in its field. The text, very dense and detailed in its analyses and documentation, is rather dry in style, but it will repay amply the efforts of the patient reader. The book belongs in all academic libraries.-D. Posner, New York University
Library Journal Review
Woodbridge, noted garden historian, presents a well-researched study of the great 17th and 18th century French gardensincredible labors of art, creativity, and devotionmany of which no longer exist. He not only delineates the gardens' historical background in detailtheir purposes, social results, architects, and commissionersbut also shows their creation step-by-step with extensive illustrations and contemporary photographs. This scholarly work offers both an excellent social history of the changing pattern of the park and garden of those times and a noteworthy celebration of the lost art of the great French garden. Highly recommended for subject collections, it will also appeal to the Francophile. Daniel S. Kalk, Enfield Central Lib., Ct. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
