VENETIAN GARDENS AND VILLAS. 345 



Venice and called on Titian he remarked to Vasari what a pity it was that the Venetians, who 

 were such good colourists, did not learn to draw. This criticism holds good not only in their 

 painting, but in their architecture and decorative arts as well. 



Coming direct from the great villas of Tuscany, stamped with the sober truth-seeking art 

 of the School of Florence, to the Villa Palace of Stra is to be translated into another world, 

 where art speaks in the terms of the theatre. Venice itself is, in the main, a city of fa9ades, 

 where well-nigh all the changes have been rung in window grouping and surface decoration. 

 No student of architecture to-day is likely to accept Ruskin's estimate of the Stones of Venice ; 

 rather is he likely to think of their resemblance to those gems for which Marguerite made so 

 fatal a traffic. 



In the days of her glory Venice stretched out a fascinated hand to the mainland, and by 

 degrees her patricians began to line the banks of the Brenta all the way to Padua with villas and 

 gardens of vast extent. By this policy of encroachment upon the mainland Vincenza, destined 

 to be the birth city of Palladio a century later, came in 1400 within the sphere of Venice. 

 Absorbed in her life, the great architect's work is coloured by her traditions of facile art and 

 careless splendour. It is well to remind ourselves that Ammanati, Vignola and Pirro Ligorio 

 were the almost exact contemporaries of Palladio (1518-80). 



When we come to describe Maser we shall find Venetian architect, painter and sculptor 

 working in unison with two patricians of noble family, producing a work which may stand as 

 the very mould of Venetian form. In such good company Palladio seems to relax, unless it be 

 that the master has been otherwise viewed by his disciples, or that what he wrote has over- 

 weighted what he did. Venice itself was too crowded for garden space, but in these mainland 

 villas we find her contribution to the art of garden architecture. A. T. B. 



