276 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



other the entrance lodge. In the centre is the great gateway lately restored in pietra serena 

 stone. Entered within the walled enclosure, the visitor sees the villa lying a hundred yards 

 back, with all the advantage of a rising foreground ; the approach roads rise on either hand in 

 a quadrant sweep that follows the lines of a great horseshoe staircase leading up to the first floor 

 (Fig. 288). A feature of the design is that the ground floor is encompassed on its four faces by a 

 vaulted arcade fifteen feet wide, which forms a magnificent terrace all round at the level of the first 

 floor. Each face is about sixty yards in length, so that the scale of the villa is considerable. -The 

 loggia of the main front opens direct upon the terrace at the top of the great horseshoe staircase. 

 It is finely vaulted and decorated. The Delia Robbia frieze, in blue and white, represents 

 War and Peace. The columns are of pietra serena, fine grained and beautifully coloured in 

 that shade of greenish grey which is such an attractive feature of the material. The strange 

 pediment contains the shield of the Medici, with long ribbon attachments. How this 

 inappropriate feature came to be so employed is a mystery, as it cuts the fagade like a knife and 

 dwarfs the loggia to the scale of a window. The house is cream-washed, but the piers of the 

 arcades are coloured as red brickwork, with a somewhat crude effect. The great eaves with 

 triple rafters are a characteristic feature. 



Entering the house from the loggia at the main floor level the visitor, passing through a 

 reception hall, finds himself in a truly magnificent saloon occupying the whole centre of the 



block, and lit from one 

 end only (Fig. 287). 

 Vaulted with a great 

 barrel, richly decorated 

 on sound architectural 

 lines, this ceiling pro- 

 claims itself as the work 

 of Giuliano da San Gallo, 

 who erected the villa in 

 1480 for Lorenzo il 

 Magnifico. Vasari 

 remarks of this hall 

 that " there is no doubt 

 that this is the largest 

 vault ever seen till 

 now." The walls were 

 painted in fresco to the 

 order of Leo X, by 

 Andrea del Sarto, Francia 

 Gigio and Pontormo in 

 1521, and finished by Alless Allori, known as Bronzino, in 1580. The dado is some six 

 feet in height, painted in relief all round. The sides of the hall are divided into two wide 

 and one narrower centre bay by a framework of chiaroscuro architecture with columns and 

 entablatures. The centre compartments contain fine compositions of figures surmounted by 

 the Medici shield with inscriptions below : ' Leo Decimus Pontifex. Max aulam hanc 

 illustrare. E Tornare Coepisset." ' Franciscus Medices Magnus. Dux Etruriae secundus. 

 Magnificentius perfeciendum curavit." Subjects are drawn from the four seasons and from 

 life in the country for the ends of the hall, and for the four large side panels scenes from Roman 

 history, as symbols of events in the lives of the Medici. Such a hall and such decorations are only 

 possible where the window space is required, for coolness and summer use, to be reduced to such 

 dimensions as we see here two tall, narrow lights and a bull's-eye over --thus occupying the space 

 of one end wall only, and leaving three walls free for the frescoes, seen, moreover, under ideal 

 conditions of lighting. This hall is about thirty-nine feet by seventy-two feet, and it is equal to 

 two storeys in height. The idea in derivation is, one may suppose, the hall of the mediaeval 

 castle modernised, but that in turn is but the survival probably of the great living-room, which 

 replaces the southern atrium as, advancing north, the climate becomes colder. 



288. THE VILLA OF POGGIO CAJANO FROM INSIDE THE ENCLOSURE. 



