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- Conference
Le jardin d’île : du roman courtois au traité d’architecture by Diane BROCHIER – Château de Bénouville
The island garden: from the courtly novel to the architectural treatise
This conference will endeavour to define the island garden as it was depicted in several courtly novels from the late 15th to the second half of the 17th century. We will briefly consider the importance of The Dream of Poliphilus by Francesco Colonna, within this context. Thanks to adaptations by Nicolas de Herberay des Essarts and Jacques de Gohory of Amadis de Gaula, we will explore how imaginary gardens and real gardens came to interpenetrate each other. Finally, we will focus on the third volume of Jacques Androuet Du Cerceau’s Livre d’architecture (Book of Architecture), in order to identify the formulae he adopted to build his island gardens.
Diane Brochier
After studying at the University of Aix-Marseille I towards a Master’s Degree I on the work of Philibert de l’Orme at the Tuileries Palace, then a Master’s Degree II on the structure and evolution of French Renaissance gardens by the addition of terraces, Diane Brochier defended her PhD thesis entitled ‘D’Azay-le-Rideau à Chenonceau : l’eau et la mise en scène de l’ensemble château-jardin à la Renaissance (1513-1560)’ (From Azay-le-Rideau to Chenonceau: water and the staging of the castle-garden ensemble during the Renaissance period (1513-1560), on the 27th of January 2017. She also had the honour of publishing an article entitled, Le chantier d’un jardin sur l’eau : l’exemple du parterre de Diane de Poitiers au château de Chenonceau (Working on a garden on water: the example of the border by Diane de Poitiers at the Château de Chenonceau), in the magazine Livraisons d’Histoire de l’Architecture, n°27, 1st semester 2014.