The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses

by James S. Ackerman

A cl assic account of the villa―from ancient Rome to the twentieth century―by “the preeminent American scholar of Italian Renaissance architecture” ( Architect’s Newspaper )

In The Villa , James Ackerman, author of classic studies of Palladio and Michelangelo, discusses villa building in Western countries at various times and places from ancient Rome to twentieth-century France and America. In this wide-ranging book, he illuminates such topics as ancient Roman villas, the early villas of the Medici, the Palladian villa in England, and the modern villas of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier.

Ackerman uses the phenomenon of the “country place” as a focus for examining the relationships between urban and rural life, between building and the natural environment, and between architectural design and social, cultural, economic, and political forces. “The villa,” he reminds us, “accommodates a fantasy which is impervious to reality”: through the ages it has been pleasure that has distinguished the villa estate from the farm. Since their earliest representation in Roman literature, the coveted country delights of relaxation, healthy living, hunting, reading, and conversation with friends have been an ideological construct of those who could afford to escape the city, often by expropriating rural land. Farmers and peasants usually don’t see the country as an idyllic location, but city dwellers have frequently idealized country life and wanted to own property where it could be enjoyed. Hence the villa―which, unlike the farmhouse, typically asserts its modernity and its status as a product of the architect’s imagination.

Genres: Architecture

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1990

About the author

James S. Ackerman, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus at Harvard University and a Fellow and former Trustee of the American Academy in Rome, was born in San Francisco in 1919 and studied at Yale and New York University. He is a former editor of the Art Bulletin, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding member of the British Academy, the Accademia Olimpica (Vicenza), the Ateneo Veneto and the Royal Academy of Uppsala. He gave the Slade Lectures at Cambridge in 1969-70.

Professor Ackerman has lived several years in Italy, beginning with service during the last war, and is the author of many studies on Italian architecture, including The Cortile del Belvedere (1954), a history of the Renaissance portion of the Vatican Palace, and The Architecture of Michelangelo (1961), which received the Charles Rufus Morey Award of the College Art Association of America and the Alice David Hitchcock Award of the Society of Architectural Historians. Recently, he has published The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses (1990); a volume of collected essays, Distance Points, is in press. He is co-author of a volume on historical practice and theory, Art and Archaeology (1963). He has conceived an narrated the films Looking for Renaissance Rome (1975, with Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt) and Palladio the Architet and His Influence in America (1980).

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It feels dated at times, but if you are interested in the concept of the villa and its social implications, this is the book to read. It covers villas from Roman antiquity, Renaissance Italy, Britain, and the United States. It is especially helpful if you are studying the reception of antique art and ideology by later societies.

[Douglas Murphy]

Very thorough, learned and pretty fascinating.