ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



Trifone were good instances of the second class, while 

 a splendid example of the first class is still to be seen 

 in the palatial Villa Maser, which the Barbaro brothers 

 employed Palladio to rear on a spur of the Julian 

 Alps, and brought Paolo Veronese and his pupils to 

 adorn with frescoes that are still in existence. 



On the heights of Asolo, in the dolomite country, 

 was the stately home where the widowed Queen of 

 Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro, held her court, and made 

 the foremost poets and scholars of the day welcome. 

 The massive tower of her Castello still rises above the 

 picturesque streets of the old mountain town, and 

 from its battlements we look down through a tangled 

 mass of briar-rose and acacia on the Lombard plain 

 stretching far away to the wide horizon. Little is 

 left to-day of these wonderful gardens where courtiers 

 and maidens sang and danced, and talked of love and 

 poetry through the long summer days, but Bembo 

 has given us some idea of their beauty in the poem of 

 Gil Asolani, which he wrote in the first years of 

 the new century, and dedicated to the Duchess 

 Lucrezia. In language recalling Boccaccio's immortal 

 prose, the young Venetian has told us how he arrived 

 at this " vago e piacevole Castello " standing on a far 

 ridge of the Alps, above the Trevigiana, when the 

 marriage-feast of one of the Queen's maidens was 



being celebrated. The wedding was over, the guests 



126 



