THE GARDENS OF PAPAL ROME 



Angelo Colocci, the head of the Academy, enter- 

 tained the flower of Roman society at those happy 

 meetings which Sadoleto recalled with tender regret, 

 after the sack of Rome had destroyed the beauties of 

 the Eternal City and scattered all his friends. Some- 

 times the same pleasant company met in Blosio 

 Palladio's gardens on the Tiber banks, or in the house 

 of the venerable German Bishop Goritz, near Trajan's 

 Forum. Sometimes they climbed the Janiculum, and 

 were entertained by Baldassare Turini, the friend and 

 executor of Raphael, in a villa which boasted of enjoy- 

 ing the finest view in Rome. Phaedrus Inghirami, 

 the learned librarian of the Vatican, whose massive 

 brow and squinting eyes are familiar to us in 'Raphael's 

 portrait, bought a country-house on the Palatine and 

 adorned its halls with fragments of old Roman frescoes, 

 while Latino Giovenale Manetti, another member of 

 the Urbino circle, set the fashion of decorating his 

 garden walls with ancient inscriptions and classical 

 reliefs. 



More famous than any of these was the villa of the 

 Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, in the Lungara, on 

 the right bank of the Tiber, now known as the 

 Farnesina. This simple two-storied building in 

 Vasari's words, " Non murato ma veramente nato" 

 was an ideal pleasure-house for a merchant prince of 

 Chigi's type, who could afford to indulge his fine taste 



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