GARDENS OF ESTE AND GONZAGA PRINCES 



entertained his future son-in-law, Lodovico Sforza, and 

 his two brothers, and two blind poets sang and played 

 the lyre while the Duke and his guests were at supper 

 in the loggia. 



In these early years Ercole built the grand marble 

 stairway of the Corte Vecchia, one of the few memorials 

 of his reign still in existence, and laid out the Barco 

 and Barchetto. The Barchetto was a wooded enclosure 

 to the east of the villa of Belfiore, with a round fish- 

 pond and marble loggia, surrounded by tall poplars and 

 fruit trees, which no one might touch without incurring 

 heavy penalties. The laying out of the vast hunting 

 ground known as the Barco involved the destruction of 

 many houses and churches between the north wall of 

 the city and the banks of the Po. This New Forest of 

 the Este princes was peopled with stags, gazelles, ante- 

 lopes, and wild boars, as well as with the leopards and 

 spotted giraffes to which Niccolo da Correggio alludes in 

 his fable of Psyche. During the war of 1482, when the 

 Duke lay ill in the Castello, the Venetian invaders 

 planted the banner of St. Mark in the Barco, killed the 

 deer and peacocks, and carried off the giraffes and leo- 

 pards to Venice. It was a terrible moment in the history 

 of Ferrara. But when peace was restored a new era of 

 prosperity dawned, and Ercole returned to his favourite 

 pursuits with fresh vigour. " The Duke," complained 

 one of his subjects, " thinks of nothing but the embel- 



37 



