ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



up, laid out on architectural lines, with broad terraces 

 and flights of steps, and adorned with ancient sarco- 

 phaghi and statues, with frescoed summer-houses and 

 fountains of bronze and marble. Scholars and poets, 

 merchants and princes, vied with Cardinals and Papal 

 officials in making gardens alike in the heart of the 

 city and in its immediate neighbourhood. Cardinal 

 Grimani, whose house at the foot of the Capitol 

 now the Palazzo Venezia was only second in size 

 and splendour to the Cancelleria, had a lawn of the 

 finest and greenest grass in the court of his palace, 

 with a fountain in the centre, surrounded by laurel 

 and orange bowers and avenues of cypress, " a thing," 

 wrote Pesaro, " truly marvellous to behold." Close 

 by, the terraced gardens of the Colonna Palace stretched 

 up the steep slopes of the Quirinal, with the colossal 

 fragment of the Temple of the Sun, its gigantic pillars 

 and sculptured cornice towering into the skies. Here, 

 in the summer of 1526, when the plague was raging 

 in Rome, Isabella d'Este and her lively maidens spent 

 the hot July days and received their chosen guests " in 

 this most beautiful garden," where they enjoyed them- 

 selves so much that they seldom cared to drive out 

 in the chariot, and, as the Marchesa told her son, pre- 

 ferred not to run any risks. 



On the site of the gardens of Sallust, near the 

 Acqua Virgo, were the " Horti Colotiam" where 



78 



