Reconstruction of the Villa Tuscum

Examples from classical antiquity played an essential role in landscape design from the Renaissance onward. The famous villas Tuscum and Laurentinum described by Pliny the Younger in letters were reconstructed by French and English garden theoreticians in texts and images.

Reconstruction of the villa Tuscum, copperplate engraving, 1706; image source: Félibien des Avaux, Jean-François: Les plans et les descriptions de deux des plus belles maisons de campagne, de Pline le Consul, Amsterdam 1706, figure II from p. 62, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, https://www.zikg.eu/.