The Nature of Authority

Reviews / Votes

"[Harris's work] is a rich and nuanced study filled with a wealth of information, guided by strong and convincing arguments, and framed in a sophisticated language."

-Claudia Lazzaro, Cornell University "Harris's intriguing study examines 18th-century Lombard villas and the contemporary printed views of them by Marc'Antonio Dal Re in a broad context of material culture, politics, social structures, and a variety of activities and issues that involved the larger countryside. The author argues forcefully and convincingly that the villas cannot be examined only as pleasure estates and only through the lens of the upper classes that built them, and she demonstrates the ways in which they incorporate and reflect all the concerns and classes entailed in owning and working the land. To this study, the author brings to bear an impressive and exceptional breadth of source material. These range from archival documents to contemporary treatises on everything from garden design to etiquette and dress, and much else. The result is a rich and nuanced study filled with a wealth of information, guided by strong and convincing arguments, and framed in a sophisticated language."

-Claudia Lazzaro, Cornell University "This study of eighteenth-century Lombard villas belonging to the Clerici and Barbiani families and their representation in Marc'Antonio Dal Re's prints deepens significantly our understanding of designed, recreational landscapes as both spatial expression and aesthetic obscuring of social and environmental relations in a 'colonized' region of the Habsburg empire. A dialectic of enlightenment and absolutism is the defining feature of Lombard society under the Austrian ancien regime. Harris's dissection of this dialectic is masterly; it reveals the villas . . . as integral elements of a social order in a landscape."

-Denis Cosgrove, UCLA "Still, this handsome publication examines a family of artifacts of which only one, the Villa Carlotta on Lake Como, may be familiar to scholars."

-L. Satkowski Choice "Unlike the workers' life in the villas to which it is devoted, this book is a delight. It is clear, well-paced, original, stimulating and rich in carefully analyzed illustrations."

-Luciano Parisi Landscape Research "Harris is especially convincing in the analysis of the landscapes and gardens, their uses, and the gestural codes in the posing and arrangement of figures in Dal Re's views."

-L. Satkowski Choice "Among the most stimulating recent publications in English is the beautifully produced volume by Dianne Harris, The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy. Although the primary purpose of the book, to demonstrate that landscape is a 'powerful ideological framework for the construction of cultural values' (185), is not wholly new, Harris develops this argument in a way that is both persuasive and illuminating. Appealing to a broad audience of scholars-historians, art historians, and historians of landscape among them-the author conducts her work outside the standard geographic, chronological, and methodological boundaries of villa and landscape history. . . . Harris's book represents interdisciplinary work at its finest-with its judicious use of political, economic, and, especially, social history-and is notable for the application of critical theory to villa and landscape architecture. . . . Harris's discussion of the material environment, both the architecture of the villas and their landscape forms, is nicely balanced as she brings to bear not only critical theory but also stylistic analysis, defining, for example, the formal features of the Baroque garden in Lombardy and its relationship to the French absolutist garden. Harris is a rare example of a scholar able to employ theory to its best end (and without jargon) while keeping her work firmly grounded in the empirical."

-Tracy L. Ehrlich Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians