in temporary clearings, where livestock were allowed to forage without restriction, was being replaced by a new system that involved enclosing permanent fields with hedges, plowing under stubble, and setting aside part of the tilled land to lie fallow each season. The principle of crop rotation, though known, was not widely diffused. The hills were being deforested and planted with grapevines, a practice that, though profitable because of a steadily increasing demand for wine, led to widespread erosion. Crescenzi addressed the problem of soil conservation by recommending, among other things, that hilly terrain be worked a girapoggio (across the slope) rather than a rittochino (in the direction of the slope). The first great works of irrigation in the Po River valley had already been started at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when Crescenzi was writing.75
By the time Tanaglia had written his treatise in the late fifteenth century, a system of drainage, called magalato, had become common in the plains. It involved arranging tilled land annually in porche, or hummocks; that is, narrow, elongated rows separated by shallow furrows. Tanaglia spoke of the increased yield from this system: “Maggior ricolta in piano ha magalato” (The magalato produces the best harvest in the plain).76 He referred also to a shortage of pasture land, writing of letting animals graze on the branches of trees planted in rows along the edges of fields to support grapevines, so that “olmi ancor con la foglia nutriranno gli armenti” (elms with their leaves also will nourish the herds).77 Tanaglia addressed the problem of forage by advocating the renewal of meadows through reseeding and manuring, and by promoting the cultivation of enclosed meadows.78 Tanaglia’s work refers to three landscape forms that appeared on the plains of northern Italy for the first time in the early Renaissance and that persisted in Taegio’s lifetime: the magalato, or fields arranged in porche, rows of trees supporting vines, and hedges protecting fields from indiscriminate pasturage.
Tanaglia paved the way for Taegio by laying the theoretical groundwork for an aesthetic evaluation of agricultural landscape. In book 1 of his treatise, Tanaglia retold the story of the Persian king Cyrus, whom Lysander called “blessed” because of the beauty of his garden in Sardis, to support his argument for the nobility of gardening, just as Taegio would do more than a century and a half later in La Villa.79 In La Villa (p. 48) Taegio applied to farms the same standard of beauty he used to judge gardens, saying “that there can be nothing more usefully productive or more beautifully ordered than well-cultivated land.” The priority Taegio gave to geometry and order in the landscape echoes the value placed on similar qualities in the poem by Tanaglia, who advised that the planning of agricultural estates should conform to a rectilinear system: “Agli orti come a’ prati squadra e lista” (Square up and edge the orchards as well as the meadows).80 Tanaglia argued that trees should be planted in rows because,
Se per tramite retto e pari sesti
Fien compartiti, più grati saranno,
E par che me’ la terra omor vi presti.
(If in a straight line and with even intervals
they are distributed, they will be more graceful,
and it seems that you do more honor to the earth.)81
More than half a century after Tanaglia wrote his verses, and only thirteen years before La Villa appeared, Alamanni’s poem La Coltivazione was published. While the agricultural landscape he knew was more elaborated than Tanaglia’s, Alamanni spoke of the same forms and addressed some of the same issues as his predecessors. In the middle of the sixteenth century, soil erosion and shortage of pasture land were still unsolved problems. Echoing Crescenzi’s advice on soil conservation, Alamanni recommended plowing hillsides parallel to the contours rather than up and down the slopes, saying,
… ponga cura
Ch’ ei non rovini in giù rapido e dritto;
Ma traversando il dorso umile e piano
Con soave dolcezza in basso scenda.
( … take care
that [the furrows] do not crash down, rapid and straight;
but cross over the back [of the slope], humble and slow,
with peaceful sweetness in their downward course.)82
Alamanni called even more urgently than Tanaglia for permanent enclosure of pastures, with these words:
Indi volga il pensier coll’opra insieme
Intorno ai prati ch’ il passato verno
Aperti, in abbandon, negletti furo,
Agli armenti, ad ogni uom pastura e preda.
Quei con fossi talor, talor circondi
Con pali e siepi: o se n’ avesse il loco,
Può di sassi compor muraglie e schermi;
Talchè il rozzo pastor, la greggia ingorda
E col morso e col piè non taglie e prema
La novella virtù ch’ all’ erbe infonde
Con soave liquor la terra e ’l cielo.
(Then turn your thoughts and actions
to the meadows, which last spring
were open and abandoned to the herds:
any man’s for pasturage or taking.
These ditches now, now surround
with palisades and hedges, and with enough space,
you can make walls and barriers of stone,
which the rustic shepherd’s greedy flock
will not cut with mouth or foot, or crush
the new life that the grass receives
as sweet liquor from the earth and sky.)83
The soave liquor of which Alamanni sang is the rain, which for most parts of Italy in the sixteenth century did not fall with sufficient regularity during the growing season “to assure a luxuriance of forage in the meadows.”84 In the Po River valley, however, the construction of elaborate and widespread works of irrigation had the dual effect of making possible the expansion of needed pasture land and imposing new forms on the landscape.
The planning and execution of great irrigation projects in the Po River valley, particularly in Lombardy, during the second half of the fifteenth century were based on uninterrupted experience and tradition dating from at least the eleventh century. Thirteenth-century Lombard documents mention a method of irrigation called marcita, which involved letting a sheet of water run over the meadows in winter. Beginning in the middle of the fifteenth century, the system of canals for irrigation and transportation around Milan was developed rapidly, generally through the initiative of the new signorie. In 1457 Francesco Sforza ordered the excavation of the Binasco canal to carry the waters of the Naviglio Grande from Milan to Pavia, and in 1464 he had the Martesana canal built to bring the waters of the Adda River from Trezzo to Milan. Twenty years later, under Lodovico Sforza, the irrigation of the countryside around Vigevano and Novara was extended with the construction of the Roggia Mora and the
