ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



months before his death, giving a full description of the 

 Cardinal's Vigna^ has unfortunately been lost, so that it 

 is impossible to decide with any certainty what stage the 

 work had reached when he died in April 1520. But 

 there can be little doubt that by this time the building 

 itself and its interior decoration were both well advanced. 

 A large number of drawings made by Raphael's assist- 

 ants for the villa and its grounds are still preserved in 

 the Uffizi, and have been reproduced by Geymiiller and 

 Professor Hofmann in their excellent works on the 

 subject. 1 No less than four of these artists belonged 

 to the San Gallo family, that gifted race of architects 

 and sculptors who originally took their name from one 

 of the gates in Florence and all worked in Raphael's 

 shop. Chief among them was Antonio di San Gallo, 

 who came to Rome at the age of eighteen and spent 

 forty-two years in the service of the Popes, working 

 first as Raphael's assistant and eventually succeeding 

 him as architect of St. Peter's. He and his brother 

 Battista surnamed il gobbo, assisted by their cousin 

 Francesco and Bastiano, prepared the designs for the 

 villa from their master's sketches, supplemented, after 

 Raphael's habit, by instructions from his own lips. 

 From these plans, and more especially from one drawn 



1 tt.v.Gzymu\\&,RajfaellostudiatocomeArchitetto; T. Hofmann, 

 Raphael als Architekt. La Villa Madama. Cf. Halsey Ricardo, 

 "The Cardinal Medici's Pleasure-house" (Journal of the Royal Insti- 

 tute of British Architects^ xviii. 6). 



86 



