266 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



Venus by Gian Bologna, the principal figure of a fountain. The main road mounts up the hill 

 to the back of the palace, which, detached and spacious as it is in front, is, at the back, sunk in 

 a deep trench-like cutting, which has necessitated the contrivance of various expedients for filling 

 up and bridging over. A raised plateau, with a very fine and elaborate fountain, fills the main 

 vacuum, towards which the first floor of the palace looks straight out across a paved court (Fig. 273). 

 The great open slope immediately at the back of the palace is given up to a really 

 magnificent amphitheatre, one of those mises-en-scenes which bring home to us how regal were the 

 ideas of entertainment current in the Renaissance. It is really large, and yet amusing as a faint 

 copy of the great classic models from which the idea was taken. There are six tiers of seats 

 in the huge semicircle of stone, and the arena is fenced round by a stone balustrade with fluted 

 pillars, tasteful, even severe, in design. The niches which ornament the amphitheatre at 

 intervals, filled alternately by a vase and a statue, are far removed from the florid and flippant 

 style of the baroque, which was then just coming into vogue (Figs. 275 and 276). 



278. LOOKING UP THE GREAT AVENUE. 



The view from the right-hand corner of the amphitheatre is famous ; but let Shelley speak 

 of it, for it is not altered at all since he saw it : " You see below, Florence, a smokeless city, its 

 domes and spires occupying the vale ; and beyond, to the right, the Apennines, w r hose base 

 extends even to the walls. The green valleys of these mountains, which gently unfold them- 

 selves upon the plain, and the intervening hills covered with vineyards and olive orchards, are 

 occupied by the villas, which are, as it were, another city, a Babylon of palaces and gardens. In 

 the midst of the picture rolls the Arno, through woods and bounded by the aerial snow and 

 summits of the Lucchese Apennines. On the left, a magnificent buttress of lofty, craggy hills 

 juts out in many shapes over a lovely vale and approaches the walls of the city. Cascine and 

 ville occupy the pinnacles and abutments of those hills, over which is seen at intervals the 

 ethereal mountain line, heavy with snow. The vale below is covered with cypress groups, 

 whose obeliskine forms of intense green pierce the grey shadow of the hill that overhangs them. 

 The cypresses, too, of this garden form a magnificent foreground of accumulated verdure ; 



