External connexions
Scève’s poem, with its reference to herbes (33) and flowers (34) inevitably reminds of Petrarch’s poems, with their numerous references to i fiori et l’erba (RCV CXIV, CXXI, CXXV, CXLV, CLXII, CCXXXIX, CCCXXIII, … It further evokes a famous garden description, that by Petrarch’s friend and contemporary, Giovanni Boccaccio in the Decameron (in bold type, elements that recur in Scève’s text):26
“It was bordered and traversed in many parts by alleys, each very wide and straight as an arrow and roofed in with trellis of vines, which gave good promise of bearing clusters that year, and, being all in flower, dispersed such fragrance throughout the garden as blended with that exhaled by any another plant that grew therein made the garden seem redolent of all the spices that ever grew in the East. The sides of the alleys were all, as it were, walled in with roses white and red and jasmine; insomuch that there was no part of the garden but one might walk there not merely in the morning but at high noon in grateful shade and fragrance, completely screened from the sun.
As for the plants that were in the garden, ’twere long to enumerate them, to specify their sorts, to describe the order of their arrangement; enough, in brief, that there was abundance of every rarer species that our climate allows.
In the middle of the garden, a thing not less but much more to be commended than aught else, was a lawn of the finest turf, and so green that it seemed almost black, flanked with flowers of, perhaps, a thousand sorts, and girt about with the richest living verdure of orange-trees and cedars, which showed not only flowers but fruits both new and old, and were no less grateful to the smell by their fragrance than to the eye by their shade. In the middle of the lawn was a basin of whitest marble, graven with marvellous art; in the centre whereof–whether the spring were natural or artificial I know not–rose a column supporting a figure which sent forth a jet of water of such volume and to such an altitude that it fell, not without a delicious splash, into the basin in quantity amply sufficient to turn a mill-wheel.
The overflow was carried away from the lawn by a hidden conduit, and then, reemerging, was distributed through tiny channels, very fair and cunningly contrived, in such sort as to flow round the entire lawn, and by similar derivative channels to penetrate almost every part of the fair garden, until, re-uniting at a certain point, it issued thence, and, clear as crystal, slid down towards the plain, turning by the way two mill-wheels with extreme velocity to the no small profit of the lord.
The aspect of this garden, its fair order, the plants and the fountain and the rivulets that flowed from it, so charmed the ladies and the three young men that with one accord they affirmed that they knew not how it could receive any accession of beauty, or what other form could be given to Paradise, if it were to be planted on earth.”
Clearly, Boccaccio’s description was the archetext for Scève’s. Which emphasizes a continuity between medieval and Renaissance gardens—all the more so that Scève’s 12 lines are remarkable not only for what they include, but also for the absent items, such as reference to a knot garden or, as already mentioned, to a parterre en broderie.27
Line 35 deserves close scrutiny. Such fountains featured prominantly in Renaissance gardens. This line explains why. I submit that (i) it embodies a trace of Petrarchism, with the contrast between the two linked words, canaux and marbres; (ii) Petrarch’s Canzoniere was so influent in the Renaissance that even garden architecture was not left untouched.
The segment studied here indeed offers evidence aplenty for Petrarch’s influence. For instance, plaisamment murmurantes echoes the soavemente mormorando of RVF CCCXXIII on the Fontaine de Vaucluse.
I am contending thus that the ubiquitous marble fountains were erected, not only in imitation of Roman villas but also in the poet from the Trecento’s enduring legacy. Among Petrarch’s antitheses, marble is often juxtaposed with a contrasting notion, that of a live person most often. For example, when Petrarch cites the ancient myth of Medusa, he pits it again Laura’s face (Canzoniere 179, sonnet 146):
E ccio non fusse, andrei non altramente
a veder lei, che ‘l volto di Medusa,
che facea marmo diventar la gente.
(I would not go to see her otherwise than to see the face of Medusa, which made people become marble) or when he wrote (Canzoniere 171):
L’altro è d’un marmo che si mova et spiri
(the rest of her is made from a marble that moves and breathes).
In the same manner as Boccaccio and Petrach provide the archetext for Scève’s segment on gardens of Microcosme, the French Renaissance garden was imported from Northern Italy.28,29