Ippolito Pizzetti Collection

Ippolito Pizzetti was born in Milan on January 30th, 1926. He graduated in Italian literature under Natalino Sapegno and from the late 1970s he worked as a landscape designer, with public and private commissions. He wrote newspaper columns, cooperated with and published articles and essays on various periodicals, and directed publishing series. Starting from 1992 he taught art of gardens and landscape composition at the Universities of Rome, Palermo and Venice (Iuav). He took part in a number of national and international projects and competitions with Costantino Dardi, Ludovico Quaroni, Gino Valle, Aldo Aymonino, Vittorio Gregotti, Luigi Snozzi and others, as well as a great number of seminars, conferences, workshops.

In 1989 he began a collaboration with Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, being a member of the Scientific Committee of the Course on landscape management, of the Jury of the International Carlo Scarpa Garden Prize and making many trips and site visits. In January 1992 he donated his scientific library to the Foundation.

He chaired AIAPP (Italian Association of Landscape Architecture) and was a member of the Committee for Historical Gardens of the Ministry of Cultural Assets. He was also awarded numerous honours such as Commendatore of the Italian Republic, the Gold Medal of Merit for Culture and Art.

 

His works include: The book of flowers (1968), Robinson in the city. Private life of a mad gardener (1998), the Encyclopaedia of Flowers and Gardens (1998) and Natural inclination. Coherent ramblings of a wayward landscape designer (2006, new edition 2011).

He died on August 15th 2007.

 

Contents of the collection

The collection consists of the section of the scientific library of Ippolito Pizzetti dedicated to the landscape. The library, which reflects the scholar’s complex personality and his literary and naturalistic training, mainly includes books and magazines published from the second half of the 19th century to the present with some rare and precious books. The documented topics are natural environment, landscape and garden, botany, ecology, floriculture, zoology. The books are in Italian, English, French and German; the publications range from popularising to specialistic ones. It includes 3,518 monographs and 139 periodicals, 27 multimedia, 8 bachelor and PhD theses. Some archival materials are added to the library, including nursery catalogs, leaflets and brochures related to lectures and congresses, courses, stored in 9 boxes.

 

Research instruments

All the monographs and the various annual collections of periodicals can be consulted from the library catalogue. It is also possible to consult the lists of documents which cannot be obtained from the catalogue: list of periodicals held in single folder, list of nurseries, list of uncatalogued documents.

 

Accessibility conditions

The Pizzetti collection, held in the Rosario Assunto room of the library, is freely accessible for referencing by scholars but, due to its special collection nature, it is not available for external loans.

 

Methods for acquisition

The collection was gifted by Ippolito Pizzetti in January in 1992 and delivered with various stages in the following years.