GARDENS OF FLORENTINE HUMANISTS 



became an essential part of Italian gardens. In that 

 strange romance printed at the Aldine Press in 1499, 

 the Hypernotomachia of Francesco Colonna, Polyphilus 

 and his beloved are led through an enchanted garden, 

 where banquet-houses, temples, and statues stand in 

 the midst of myrtle groves and labyrinths on the 

 banks of a shining stream. The pages of this 

 curious book are adorned with a profusion of wood- 

 cuts, by some Venetian engraver, representing pergolas, 

 fountains, sunk parterres, pillared loggie, clipped box 

 and ilex trees of every variety, which give a good idea 

 of the garden-architecture then in vogue. 



Many other delightful pictures of Tuscan gardens 

 are to be found in the works of contemporary painters. 

 Everyone who has visited the Campo Santo of Pisa 

 will remember the gay knights and ladies seated on 

 the grassy bank under the orange-groves in the famous 

 fresco of the " Triumph of Death," and Puccio's 

 " Garden of Eden," with the rose-trellis and fruit 

 trees, the song birds, and marble fountain adorned 

 with lions' heads. In the cells of San Marco, Fra 

 Angelico shows us the Magdalen and her risen Lord 

 walking in a garden planted with olive, cypress, and 

 palm, and the Archangel bending before the lowly 

 Virgin in a loggia opening on the convent garden, 

 where pinks and daisies flower in the grass, and rose- 

 bushes and cypresses rise behind the wooden paling. 

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