ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



Palace. O blessed country life, how untold are your 

 joys ! " l 



So Leo Battista Albert!, the greatest prose writer 

 of the age, sings the praises of the simple life. His 

 words recall many a plain white-washed villa of the 

 fifteenth century which is still to be found hidden 

 among the olive-woods round Florence, with a clump 

 of cypresses by the gateway and a hedge of roses and 

 blue iris along the path where the young wheat is 

 sprouting in the furrow. 



The Italians, like the old Romans, were always 

 careful to discriminate between the Villa Urbana and 

 Rustica, the one a palatial building in the city or its 

 immediate neighbourhood, the other a modest, oblong 

 house with broad eaves and square tower, half farm 

 and half fortress the podere or vigna of the landlord 

 who spends six months of the year on his estates. On 

 one occasion, indeed, an animated debate was held in 

 the Roman Academy as to the different meaning of the 

 words villa and vigna, and the philosophers who 

 discussed the question finally decided that their 

 significance was precisely the same. But whether the 

 villa stood in the city or country, the garden was 

 always treated as an integral part of the house, a place 

 to be lived in, which must be adapted to the architec- 

 tural design of the building as well as to the require- 



1 Del Governo del la EamigUa> p. 109. 

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