THE GARDENS OF 
and giving the lucky hat to four Cardinals, who all 
afterwards became Popes. In several of the scenes, 
among all the other portraits, we distinguish the 
pale, sensitive face, with short brown beard, of 
Cardinal Alexander II., the builder of the palace. 
In the Hall “del Mappamondo,” the azure 
ceiling has all the constellations, the twelve signs 
of the Zodiac, and set round in twelve delicately- 
moulded stucco frames, are the fables relating to 
these signs. On the walls are figures symbolising 
Italy and Rome, the mistress of Christianity. Others 
typify the tropics, the four quarters of the globe, 
while over doors and windows are the heroes of 
geographical science, Amerigo Vespucci, Marco 
Polo, Columbus, and Cortes. 
Besides these principal halls, there are many 
smaller. The most attractive are four named after 
the seasons, which show some of the best work of 
the Zuccari. The ceiling of the “Spring”? room 
is painted with a beautiful nude figure, with 
worshippers at her feet. Above her head the 
signs of the Zodiac are placed so as to be caught 
by the rising sun. Garlands and sylvan scenes 
surround her. On the walls are the Rape of 
Europa, the combat of Hercules and Anteus, and 
the  specially-appropriate myth of Persephone, 
wandering with Demeter through the daffodil 
meadows of Enna. In the “Summer” room, 
which is disposed so as to be as cool as possible 
during the sultry season, groups of agriculturists, 
reaping and cooking, and leading teams of white 
oxen, surround the symbolical nymph. A very 
happily-utilised fable is that of Phaeton, child of 
Apollo, who, having obtained his father’s leave to 
drive one of his chariots, turned his four horses out 
of the usual course, with the result that the world 
was burnt up by the excessive heat, so that Jove, 
indignant, flung the chariot and driver into the Po 
in the form of lightning, whence originates the 
“summer lightning” that plays among the clouds 
on hot nights. 
“Autumn” has vines and fruits, intoxicated 
bacchantes borne by satyrs, the birth of Bacchus, 
the wine-god returning from a trip to the Indies, 
having Indian houris among his attendants, and 
again one of those quaint and little-known myths is 
illustrated ; Bacchus, trampled underfoot by tyrant 
Titans, crushed to death, his limbs boiled over a fire, 
suddenly reappears, more comely than before. So 
was typified the vine, crushed and squeezed and 
fermented for wine, and the scattered branches once 
more throwing out leaves and bearing grapes. In 
the “ Winter”? room, a solitary male figure repre- 
sents the season. Circles of children shivering with 
cold, warming themselves at fires, frozen rivers 
and leafless branches, form the setting. The gods 
hold a council over the proposed destruction of the 
world, Vulcan binds Boreas, and Eolus, god of the 
winds, holds aloft a flag, while the clouds part after 
a terrible storm. 
A room at the back of the palace leads out 
on to a bridge which crosses the moat and 
ITALY. 
opens into the garden. Round four angles of 
the five-sided palace, stretches a broad raised 
walk, from the walls of which you look sheer 
down into the moat, far below. Huge statues 
in pairs representing the seasons stand sentinel 
on these walls, and cypresses tower between them. 
Ten of these cypresses were planted at the time 
the palace was built; only four or five now 
remain, but these have grown to enormous size, 
and in some places have forced their way quite 
through the wall, and overhang the space below. 
The first plateau at the back .is a formal garden 
of considerable extent, with clipped box hedges, 
grottoes, fountains, and a fine open belvedere from 
which to gaze out at the far-stretching plain 
below. When Sebastiani, a garrulous and admiring 
chronicler, who lived in the little town, published a 
pamphlet on it in 1741, the lake in the middle of 
the lower garden was filled with fish, the fountains 
played without ceasing. In the middle, a huge lily, 
the crest of the Farnese, formed of lead, sent up a 
shower of water, which rose with such vehemence 
that it burst in fine clouds of spray, in which the 
sunbeams produced a rainbow. 
Against a retaining wall at the back is a 
spacious grotto, worked in stucco, somewhat shabby 
and decadent nowadays. Its walls are sustained by 
six sylvan figures of gigantic size ; within sit groups 
of nymphs, playing on musical instruments. A 
huge vase spouts water in the centre. The pave- 
ment once showed a design of white lilies on a 
darker ground of marble. This grotto was the 
favourite private retreat of his Serenissimo, Cardinal 
Odoardo Farnese, who succeeded Cardinal Ales- 
sandro, and lived here the greater part of the 
year. The garden is kept up in a somewhat 
perfunctory manner, but roses riot in masses over 
the walls—great splendid blooms of royal crimson, 
sheets of Fortune’s Yellow, huge creamy tea and 
shell-like pink against the dark cypress green. 
From the formal garden a wood of plane trees 
slopes gently up for some distaice. On a May 
morning the ground underneath the tender greenery 
is carpeted with wild fowers—orchis, iris, saxifrage, 
cyclamen, and Solomon’s seal. Through an avenue 
of Scotch firs, we reach the upper pleasure-ground, 
laid out some seventy years later by Cardinal 
Odoardo Farnese (the only part of the grounds 
with which Mr. Latham’s photographs deal). 
Here he has given us the immense fountain 
basin, with broad stone edge, in which the water 
is of a deep blue colour, very striking against 
the rich dark green of the avenue of firs leading 
up to it, and one slender jet of water springs 
from the Farnese lily. Above, is the ascent, 
enclosed in arched and grottoed walls, between 
which comes an aqueduct formed of the twisted 
bodies of dolphins, down which the water rushes, 
rippling and swirling in a thousand shell-like 
waves. At the top, recline the “Giants”; two 
river-gods pouring water from stone cornucopiz. 
Everywhere the silver-grey, porous stone is softened 
