Abstract:Located in southwestern Wiltshire, England, Stourhead is famous for its eighteenth-century landscape garden and neo-Palladian house. There is a simple and plain Palladian bridge in the garden, which is quite different from those elegant bridges modelled on Palladio’s design in other English landscape gardens of the same period. Systematic studies of the history of Stourhead began in the 1960s and continue well into the twenty-first century, with some issues still open to debate. In particular, Stourhead Garden has aroused great interest among art, architecture, and garden historians. Scholars have largely focused their discussions on the iconography of the garden, trying to establish various links between Stourhead, the epic Aeneid by the ancient Roman poet Virgil, and certain landscapes by the seventeenth-century painters Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Meanwhile, the Palladian bridge and its significance have been overlooked. This article takes a new perspective on Stourhead Garden by examining the Palladian bridge against its physical setting as well as literary-artistic framework. The text is divided into two parts: the first part traces the history of design and construction of the garden, and, drawing on the visitor’s experience, challenges previous scholars’ iconographical interpretations; the second part explores the genesis of the Palladian bridge and illuminates its unique role in Stourhead Garden by comparing it with other garden bridges inspired by Palladio’s design.
