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RECENSIONI
REVIEWS
Ines Unetič:
KULTURA VRTOV. OBLIKOVANE ZELENE POVRŠINE 
V LJUBLJANI OD SREDINE 18. STOLETJA 
DO ZGODNJEGA 19. STOLETJA. Ljubljana, Univerza v 
Ljubljani, Znanstvena založba Filozofske 
fakultete, 2016, 206 strani.
To speak about gardens and their dwellings means 
to speak about special spaces of the history of art. This 
is a space of art; a literary, sociable, social and political 
space. A space where people willingly change the na-
ture with their interventions, so gardens are invariably 
viewed from the perspective of the relationship between 
man and nature, as a way of representation and integra-
tion of the nature in culture. The presence of gardens 
therefore testifi es to their history and simultaneously 
to the history of the area into which they grew, their 
splendour and frequently their transformation as well. 
The fact that studies about the art of gardens in Slo-
venia are few makes Kultura vrtov by Ines Unetič even 
more valuable. The historiographic overview of the 
garden art in the present book is explicit, as it employs 
the positioning and placement of gardens to portray 
the vivacious cultural and social life in the late 17th, 
18th and early 19th century. The chapters are structured 
through the historic intersection of the emergence of 
the garden art of the capital and its close surroundings, 
and its integration in the broader European space and 
time. Categories such as space and time are inseparable 
in a certain sense. Both meet in the garden. Speaking 
of space, it can be physical as well as metaphysical. 
Although the former is subject to the rules of the land, its 
designer may be daring enough to change it and subject 
it to his own vision of placing nature into space. Change 
and changeability are certainly the constants of the 
design and life of gardens. Gardens have always been 
a refl ection of the metaphysics of the period of their 
emergence; they form an intersection of ideas, which is 
partly revealed by the present study, too.
Each chapter focuses on the infl uences, examples 
and particularities of the gardens that emerged in 
Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana and its surroundings. Noble 
gardens of Ljubljana certainly represented a status sym-
bol of their owners. Numerous noble families dared to 
surround their homes with exquisitely designed gardens 
that are, as the author stresses, "a clear indicator of the 
erudition and education of the nobility." Not much 
information has been preserved about the gardens of 
the palaces in the 17th century. The book points out 
the suburban, noble garden of the Auersperg family 
in Gradišče whose description we owe to Valvasor’s 
The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola and which is an 
example of early Baroque garden designs in the territo-
ry of Slovenia with a central axis. The Auerspergs also 
devoted a lot of attention to the roof garden of their 
palace in the city, which was extraordinary because 
of its opulence as well as because it contained potted 
orange and lemon trees. Libraries of noble families were 
of extreme importance for fi nding examples; the books 
about plants and spatial planning, i.e. garden design 
possessed by the nobility are clearly recognisable as a 
source of inspiration for the design. An example listed 
by the author is precisely the Auersperg garden in Gra-
dišče, which combined the elements of German and 
Italian spaces: a perspectivally-designed garden with a 
touch of intimacy; an inward-oriented world. 
The 18th century Carniola was not unfamiliar with 
the imaginarium and repertoire of gardens made for 
nobility and the highest authorities after the example 
of royal gardens around Europe with Versailles as the 
unbeatable peak of magnifi cence. This century thus 
brings the examples of French garden, especially in the 
famous embroidery parterre and its patterns that were 
modifi ed through time. These examples were also en-
gendered by books, precisely a multitude of theoretical 
works about garden design that essentially infl uenced 
the development of the garden art at the time and the 
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ANNALES · Ser. hist. sociol. · 27 · 2017 · 4
expansion of the Baroque style to Carniola. Leopoldsru-
he or today’s Cekin castle, which was owned by count 
Lamberg, represented a typical example of Baroque 
garden design with the central axis connected with the 
entrance to the castle followed by side axes and a tran-
sverse axis; the central part of the four-part surface was 
designed as an embroidery parterre. This garden evokes 
several examples: a rather precise Viennese example of 
the Strozzi palace that count Lamberg, as indicated by 
the author, had to be familiar with. One can also reco-
gnise details from the Althan garden palace in Vienna 
and from the garden of the Lietzenburg palace in Berlin, 
today’s Charlottenburg.
A notable example among the gardens of noble fami-
lies is that of Baron Codelli, who rearranged the former 
vegetable garden in 1749 into a geometrical segmented 
garden with the typical Baroque axis "through an arran-
ged avenue that reached as far as the thickly planted 
river bank." It was rounded off by a rondo, the successor 
of Baroque bosquets. The book also acquaints readers 
with unrealised projects such as a splendid plan for the 
summer residence with garden of baron Raigersfeld in 
Poljane, the author’s assumption being that the archi-
tectural plan was made by Francesco Robba, a sculptor 
working in Ljubljana. 
Although Unetič does not point out this fact explici-
tly, it is evident that authors, designers of gardens, are 
diffi cult to identify in most cases, especially earlier ones; 
these were presumably the owners of palaces who were 
interested in garden design and who demonstrated their 
interest by their libraries and their selection of literature. 
Their actual impact on the formal garden design is still 
diffi cult to assess in most cases. The common denomi-
nator of all nobility’s gardens is their intended function: 
these are spaces of emotional and sensual comfort as 
well as spaces of pleasure intended for celebrations and 
entertainment. The nobility of Ljubljana demonstrated 
their importance also through the idiom of the tamed 
nature. Gardens thus grew into an indispensable part of 
the city image.
The development of humanity occasionally encoun-
ters major changes, changes in paradigm. Ideological, 
religious, metaphysical as well as scientifi c contexts 
change. The same applies to the changes in mentality, 
culture and aesthetic expression of man. Enlightenment 
certainly brought about such changes at the end of the 
17th and especially in the beginning of the 18th century: 
they were evident in the social fi eld as well as in the 
development of technology and science. Reason and 
progress are actually Enlightenment terms par excellen-
ce, leaving their traces in the art of gardens with the 
development of technology and especially natural sci-
ence. All those changes led to the emergence of a new 
garden style, landscape or English landscape style that 
developed from the tradition of relations between Great 
Britain and France and the still infl uential tradition of 
French Baroque gardens, as well as from newly establi-
shed connections with the Dutch and Northern German 
space. All circumstances of the time are refl ected in the 
visual, garden expression and determine both its form 
and its contents: there emerge asymmetrical elements, 
winding paths and rivulets that are the fi rst indicator 
of the deviation from the design of French Baroque 
gardens. A man is thus not only the measure, but also 
the counter-measure of nature; art is that which draws 
from inspiration and transcends nature. Intense changes 
opened the way to new aesthetic norms, new expression 
and new marks of garden art, too.
In the second half of the 18th century, the new gar-
den style moves to the continent where it is marked by 
an immense interest in and enthusiasm about botanic, 
and cabinets of curiosities began to appear as a sign of 
intellectual erudition and scientifi c interest of many in-
dividuals. The German area as well as other parts of the 
continent saw a boom in the production of garden litera-
ture and publications, which was undoubtedly important 
for the development of the garden art in the territory of 
Slovenia as they constituted the foundation for the deve-
lopment of individual gardens. As pointed out by Unetič, 
the key point of interest for the Carniolan nobility was 
the Viennese court, from which they drew the interest in 
botanic and nature that became a fad at the end of the 
18th century. The chief fi gures of the Enlightenment in 
the Slovenian territory were undoubtedly Žiga Zois and 
his brother Karl Zois, credited with the fi rst botanical 
Alpine garden in Slovenia, naturalists Giovanni Antonio 
Scopoli and Baltazar Hacquet, and slightly later Ksaverij 
Wulfen and the indispensable Franc Hladnik, the founder 
of the lyceum botanical garden in Ljubljana. Intellectual 
enthusiasm undoubtedly brought about the upgrade of 
this garden that slightly later, in the early 19th century, 
became the only designed green area of Ljubljana with 
an educational function: in 1810, in the era of the French 
power, the Botanical Garden was established. There was 
also an extreme growth in the interest in new, foreign 
plant species that were, as a rule, placed in newly-made 
gardens – not only by intellectuals and natural scientists, 
but also by other owners of private gardens. 
The new era brings another novelty: opening of a 
garden to the public, or a public park – willingness to 
open to the people something previously reserved for 
the chosen. The main credit for this achievement in 
Ljubljana certainly goes to Žiga Zois; when the author 
details the baron’s gardens, readers catch a glimpse of 
some of his gardens of extraordinary dimensions that 
were still privately owned, but open to public; they had 
an extraordinary impact on the social and cultural life 
of the people of Ljubljana for they represented not only 
a place of recreation and comfort, but also a venue of 
social, ceremonial events. The area of these gardens is 
now built over, which evokes one of the essential com-
ponents of the art of gardens: transience. 
In the 19th century, it was the French authorities that 
made a clear mark in the design of green areas of Lju-
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ANNALES · Ser. hist. sociol. · 27 · 2017 · 4
bljana that are still visible today. The author comprehen-
sively illustrates the new, English landscape garden style 
in Ljubljana by examples such as highly interesting, but 
nowadays non-existent garden design of the episcopal 
or governor’s garden by the Episcopal Palace dating to 
1812 at the latest, which belongs among the earliest 
examples of new garden designs of the landscape design 
in the central Europe. Because the French authorities 
arranged their palace as a government palace, a private 
garden and a public promenade was arranged besides it. 
The same century saw the arrangement of public parks 
in Ljubljana, with Tivoli as the biggest among them and 
Zvezda with a star-like design that follows a typical 
element of French urbanism whose parks and avenues 
became an indispensable part of town planning; this also 
marks an indirect infl uence of the French on the green 
areas in Ljubljana. In this period, the city was enriched 
by numerous walkways such as Latterman’s avenue, 
a "promenade leading from the town to the Tivoli and 
Cekin mansions or to the foot of the Rožnik hill"; the 
existing walkway from Kodeljevo to Fužine castle and 
back to town on the opposite bank of the Ljubljanica 
was upgraded, there was also a walkway from Prule to 
the Rakovnik palace and back to the Zvezda park, as 
well as a walkway to the popular Castle Hill.
Talking of time, a garden is extremely vulnerable; 
neither do plants defy time very well not is it possible 
to avoid town planning changes that a city undergoes as 
a living organism. Therefore a garden is initially extre-
mely changeable and vulnerable, and fi nally transient. 
The gardens examined and described in the book have, 
with a few exceptions, mostly disappeared or become a 
part of a differently planned space, possibly of a larger 
garden or park plan. It should not be forgotten that the 
only thing that now testifi es to their existence is actually 
the available archival material. The value of Unetič’s 
book is precisely in the examination of this material, 
so the book as a whole is an invaluable document of 
the development of designed green areas of Slovenia’s 
capital related to historical circumstances in the 18th 
and 19th centuries. It should be mentioned that the pre-
sent study is the fi rst of the necessary stages of today’s 
examination of the history of gardens since the history 
of gardens cannot be anything but interdisciplinary and 
requires a "panoramic approach". A garden is designed 
in a narrow, close connection with all components of the 
place where it is located; topography, hydrology, clima-
te etc. Environmental archaeology helps us understand 
more and more that a garden is not an abstract image 
but a created, designed construction in interaction with 
the climate and consequently with the passage of time, 
in interaction with the environment, with that which 
surrounds it, and only in this context can a garden be 
understood in its full historic "volume", i.e. in the exten-
sive, long history.
Just as we would reach for books and draw inspira-
tion for the design and planting of gardens in the past, 
we must now, to revive the representations of garden 
art, reach for Kultura vrtov by Ines Unetič to be able 
to take a retrograde trip to the sensitive heritage of the 
Slovenian capital Ljubljana from the mid-18th century 
to the early 19th century. A careful, minutious work and 
a considerable contribution to both the fi eld of art histo-
ry and the fi eld of landscape architecture in Slovenia. 
A lavishly documented walk, a winding stroll among 
boxwoods, fl owers and avenues of the past in the space 
that is also a part of our present.
Erika Bordon
Tomaž Grušovnik:
ETIKA ŽIVALI. O ČEZVRSTNI GOSTOLJUBNOSTI. 
Koper, Annales, 2016, 235 strani.
Prve vtise po prebrani monografi ji dr. Tomaža Gru-
šovnika bi morda povzel v dveh vprašalnih stavkih, in 
sicer: Je etika živali v resnici etika družbe? Mar ni odnos 
med človekom in živaljo kompatibilen z vladanjem, ki 
preprečuje vsakršen pristop in na splošno predstavlja 
OCENE / RECENSIONI / REVIEWS, 867–876