ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



Dives and Lazarus. A long marble colonnade led 

 to a paved courtyard surrounded with fountains and 

 grottoes enriched with shells and corals, and at the 

 end of the garden was a pillared loggia, decorated 

 with landscapes by the best Venetian painters and 

 commanding a superb view of the lagoon towards 

 Chioggia. "Thus," writes Martinioni, the continu- 

 ator of Sansovino, " you are able at the same moment 

 to enjoy the splendour of the sea and the beauties 

 of mountains, woods, and flowers, in short of all that 

 pleases both the eye and the heart of man." l 



On the opposite side of Venice, at Birigrande, in the 

 north-east quarter behind the great Dominican church 

 of S. Giovanni and Paolo, was the house where Titian 

 lived so long. There the great master received his 

 illustrious patrons, the Dukes of Mantua and Ferrara, 

 Cardinal de Granvelle, the Spanish prelate Pacheco, and 

 Henry III, the last of the Valois kings. There 

 Isabella d'Este came, still full of vitality in spite of 

 her declining years, to examine the painter's latest 

 works and endeavour to secure a Magdalen or a 

 S. Jerome for her studio. In the summer of 1534, 

 her son-in-law and daughter, the Duke and Duchess 

 of Urbino, often rowed across from their house at 

 Murano to visit the artist and give him sittings for 

 their portraits. Here, more than thirty years after- 



1 F. Sansovino, Venetia^ 370. 

 IIO 



