Villa La Foce Estate | La Foce - 61, Strada della Vittoria -53042 Chianciano Terme - Siena | www.lafoce.com

Richard Maxwell Dunn, Geoffrey Scott and the Berenson Circle: Literary and Aesthetic Life in the Early 20th Century, Edwin Mellen Press, 1998, ISBN 088946927X, 9780889469273


[1] Iris Origo, a plain girl who turned herself into a woman of great elegance, was, by all accounts, an obsessive writer. "She always wrote in the morning and came down to lunch in a terrible mood as she had to stop," her daughter Benedetta recalls. Several of her books were international bestsellers when published and many remain in print decades later. Origo is best known for her diary, War in the Val D'Orcia, and her ability, as critic and biographer Quentin Bell put it, "to bring even mountains to life," in her biographical work, such as The Merchant of Prato: Francesco Di Marco Datini – Daily Life in a Medieval Italian City, which enabled her to convey the vivacity of long-dead Italian personalities. In 1947, Origo persuaded Count Gamba to let her have access to his great-aunt's papers; the considerable cache resulted in her internationally acclaimed book, The Last Attachment, an intimate account of Lord Byron's affair with Baroness Teresa Guiccioli.
[2] Villa I Tatti | The famous art historian, Bernard Berenson, bought the Villa I Tatti in 1905 and (in 1909) commissioned two Englishmen (Cecil Ross Pinsent and Geoffrey Scott) to re-design the garden. Scott was famous as the author of a book on The Architecture of Humanism. Pinsent was a young and unknown architect. They began work at a time when Arts and Crafts designers, inspired by Blomfield, Sedding and others, were filled with enthusiasm for Italian renaissance gardens.The results of their work has many renaissance features, and a friendly pastiche charm, but it does not have the disciplined 'feel' of a genuine renaissance garden. It is now owned by Harvard University and they have a very restrictive policy regarding garden photography.
The famous art historian, Bernard Berenson, bought the Villa I Tatti in 1905 and (in 1909) commissioned two Englishmen (Cecil Ross Pinsent and Geoffrey Scott) to re-design the garden. Scott was famous as the author of a book on The Architecture of Humanism. Pinsent was a young and unknown architect. They began work at a time when Arts and Crafts designers, inspired by Blomfield, Sedding and others, were filled with enthusiasm for Italian renaissance gardens.The results of their work has many renaissance features, and a friendly pastiche charm, but it does not have the disciplined 'feel' of a genuine renaissance garden. It is now owned by Harvard University and they have a very restrictive policy regarding garden photography.
Art in Tuscany | Bernard Berenson
[2a] The surviving documentation suggests that, while Pinsent was certainly the maitre d’oeuvre for this job, he had to contend with patrons who had clear ideas about what they wanted their garden to look like. Both Mary Berenson and Bernard did not fail to ask their architect for some substantial modifications to his original project, which intervention was all the more understandable as this was Pinsent’s first major commission.
Work on the garden of Villa I Tatti began with the construction of a little house at the bottom of the property to house the head gardener, and a large cistern sunk into the ground at the very top of the garden to provide a more adequate water supply for the planned plantings. This cistern, fed by spring water that still ensures the water necessary for the garden, was above all destined to keep the Berensons’ "English lawns" flourishing in a climate that was hardly favorable to such a luxury.
In the Spring and Summer of 1912 the intricate pebble mosaics (still much admired) were completed on the landings of the staircase of the Italian garden and in various other parts of the garden. Work in the garden continued well into 1914, although it was to come to a halt in late August due to the beginning of the First World War. Fears of a conflict that would involve all of the peninsula, combined with apprehensions with respect to possible difficulties in transferring funds, stopped most of the building activity at that point in time. When work was resumed some years later the garden was finally brought to completion, with only some small modifications that did not significantly alter the construction and plantings that had been accomplished before the war. [Gardens | Villa I Tatti | www.itatti.harvard.edu]
[3] Myles Baldwin, Period gardens: landscapes for houses with history, with photography by Simon Griffiths, Sydney, Murdoch Books, 2008
[4] The writer Caroline Moorehead, met and interviewed Origo for a feature in the Times in 1988 and later decided to make her the subject of a biography. "I was a little daunted when I began," Moorehead says, "I worried that I wouldn't have anything to add, as Origo had already produced such an excellent autobiography. But although she was such a remarkable woman in many ways and a fine biographer, she was also most discreet and retiring, and in the course of researching her, a lot of riveting and totally unexpected stuff came up."
"What a fine long journey we have travelled together!" Iris wrote to Antonio in a 1976 letter to be read in the event of her death. It was premature. She outlived her husband, but the challenges had already been considerable: a harsh terrain, superstitious Tuscan villagers and a war that made itself felt with air raids, prisoners of war, orphans and evacuees, partisans fighting German soldiers in the hills. She also had two girls to bring up, an estate to run, a job to do, books to write as well as a husband to attend to and travel extensively with (Egypt, Libya and Cambodia were among their destinations).
The Moorehead biography quotes the intimate correspondence between Iris and her lover Colin MacKenzie and her later affairs with the British novelist Leo Myers, who killed himself in 1944, and, in her 50s, with William Hughes, the chief of staff to the general commander of the Allied Forces ("I'm too old to be doing this sort of thing, darling," she is reported to have said to a friend in a Scottish pub during a rendezvous with Hughes). That Antonio had mistresses is presented as a given.
The unresolved torment of her son Gianni's death aged seven from meningitis also aches through the biography. Unsettlingly, Moorehead also alludes to Antonio's sympathies with Mussolini's fascist government, which subsidised the extensive development of La Foce's land, while revealing Iris's sense of alienation from her husband's political proclivities. But, as Moorehead concedes, Antonio never comes through clearly in the documents and photographs left behind. He remains a strong but undefined presence and there is a hint that Origo, ever aware of the reconstructive powers of the biographer, a woman who was, for example, at pains to type up and preserve correspondence with her lover MacKenzie, was keen to keep him as such."
[From Iris Origo: the author honoured by a music festival, by Selma Dabbagh, The Guardian, Friday 6 July 2012 | www.guardian.co.uk]
Further reading: Nicholas Fox Weber, Under the Tuscan Sun, New York Times, July 21, 2002 | www.nytimes.com