ITALIAN VILLA GARDENS 



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forerunners of all modern botanical gardens and zoological 

 parks, do not, strictly speaking, come under the head of 

 pleasure gardens. Dur- 

 ing the fifteenth century 

 there were, indeed, no 

 gardens constructed, ex- 

 cept for more or less 

 practical purposes. 



The transition from 

 the mediaeval garden of 

 the fifteenth to the ar- 

 chitectural one of the 

 sixteenth century was 

 largely brought about 

 by the influence of 

 Humanists like yEneas 

 Silvias Piccolomini and Giovanni Colonna. In the 

 " Hypnerotomachia Poliphili " (a 

 novel by Colonna, containing 

 a mixture of love, philosophy, 

 science, and archaeology) we 

 read of topiary work, statues 

 and columns, temples to the 

 Graces and to Venus, not as 

 existing in Colonna's time but 

 as long before described by Pliny, and later to develop 

 in the typical villas of the Renaissance. 



