ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



Friuli. Like all his comrades, he loved Raphael with 

 devoted affection, and when he died more than forty 

 years afterwards he begged with his last breath to be 

 buried at his master's feet. 



Giovanni it was who adorned the Vatican Loggia 

 with fine stucco and painted reliefs, after the manner of 

 the ancients, and brought this style to so rare a degree 

 of perfection. While Giulio painted frescoes of Poly- 

 phemus and Galatea on the cupola of the eastern 

 apse, and adorned the banquet-halls with friezes of 

 putti, candelabra, and festoons of leaves and flowers, 

 .Giovanni decorated the vaulted ceiling of the great 

 Loggia with graceful reliefs of classical myths, sub- 

 jects from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and a hundred other 

 exquisite fancies. All the gods of Olympus Jupiter 

 and Ganymede, Juno driving her peacocks, Neptune in 

 his car, Apollo playing the lyre, Diana on her chariot, 

 Bacchus with his panther were introduced, and 

 together with them, Tritons, Centaurs, Seasons, busts 

 of poets, dancing girls, sphinxes and dogs, while the 

 Medici arms three feathers in a ring appeared 

 in the top of the central dome, surmounted by the 

 Cardinal's hat. This alone would prove that the 

 decorations of the villa, as well as the actual struc- 

 ture, were executed in the lifetime of Leo the Tenth, 

 before the owner of the house himself succeeded to 



the Papacy. 



88 



