Book Synopsis
THE SCHNADELBACH COLLECTION
il Giardino Italiano / The Italian Garden; by Maria Paolo Ponti. Translation by Edward G. Lawson, Edited by R. Terry Schnadelbach, FAAR: (LAUDpress 2010)
Written in 1915 by Maria Paolo Ponti, the manuscript, Il Gardino Italino, was a little known writing on the villa garden rehabilitation underway in Florence, Italy, early in the Twentieth Century. Translation in English in 1919, of this rare Ponti book was the work of the first American Academy in Rome's Prize in landscape architecture, Edward G. Lawson, 1915-1919. The two writings are virtually unknown to scholars and historians. They are of major significance as the first Italian book to have described and critiqued the emerging modernist landscapes of Florentine Villa Gardens. It is significant also, in defining design iterations for the post war restorations to the Villa Gamberaia’s new modern neo-Tuscan landscape compositions.