Introduction: Italian and French gardens: a century of historical study (1900–2000) Mirka Benes; Introduction: landscape in context Dianne Harris; 1. Italy is garden: the idea of Italy and the Italian garden tradition Claudia Lazzaro; 2. Pressed labor and Pratolino: social imagery and social reality at a Medici garden Suzanne Butters; 3. Pastoralism in the Roman Baroque villa and in Claude Lorrain: myths and realities of the Roman campagna Mirka Benes; 4. '… dall'Agricoltura venne la Nobilitá …': the rural landscape of the Villa Mondragone near Frascati Tracy Ehrlich; 5. Venaria Reale: ambition and imitation in a seventeenth-century villa Elisabeth Blair MacDougall; 6. Landscape and representation: the printed view and Marc'Antonio Dal Re's Ville didelizie Dianne Harris; 7. Women in the garden of allegory: Catherine de'Medici and the locus of female rule Sheila ffolliott; 8. Gender, flowers, and the Baroque nature of kinship Elizabeth Hyde; 9. Dress and address: garden design and material identity in seventeenth-century France Chandra Mukerji; 10. Vaux-le-Vicomte: Le Vau's ambition Hilary Ballon; 11. 'This is not a jarden anglais': Carmontelle, the Jardin de Monceau, and irregular garden design in late eighteenth-century France David Hays.