The Gardens at San Lorenzo in Piacenza, 1656-1665

“This treatise on ornamental horticulture during the Italian Renaissance by an historian of Italian gardens, Ada Segre, is especially welcome for the link it provides between the traditional pattern of early Italian gardens and the ornamental garden design that followed… With so few documented planting plans extant from this period, this historic record in the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library Collection is rare, if not unique.”—Marilyn K. Alaimo, Chicago Botanical Garden

“The Gardens at San Lorenzo is an exhaustive study of an exceptionally rare horticultural notebook in the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library… [U]sing the notebook itself, along with published books and maps, the author has tenaciously pieced together clues from an impressive number of original Renaissance sources—family registers, letters, and the period’s few other extant garden notebooks—to determine the location and ownership of the eponymous gardens and reconstruct their plantings.”—Patricia Jonas, Plants and Gardens News

“Although the focus of this book is narrow, its contribution to the field of garden history is very important.”—Rafaella Fabiani Giannetto, Renaissance Quarterly