THE GARDENS OF PAPAL ROME 



fluence of Raphael's creation still made itself felt. In 

 some instances the general arrangement of the house 

 and grounds, in others certain individual motives were 

 borrowed from Villa Madama. Thus Antonio di San 

 Gallo laid out the Vatican grounds with broad flights 

 of steps and gardens at different levels, and in the 

 hollow of the valley his successor, Pirro Ligorio, placed 

 that jewel of loveliness, the Casino of Pope Pius the 

 Fourth. While the example of a great central atrium 

 was imitated in the Palazzo Farnese and the Pitti, the 

 hemicycle and Nymphaeum were reproduced in the 

 villa on the Tiber which Pope Julius the Third built 

 for himself outside the Porta del Popolo, within sight 

 of Villa Madama. When, in the middle of the 

 century, another Cardinal de' Medici planned the fair 

 Casino on the brow of Monte Pincio, which still 

 remains the least altered of all the great Roman villas, 

 when he laid out the long pine and ilex avenues, and 

 decorated fountains and alleys with the statues of 

 Niobe and her children, with Giovanni da Bologna's 

 bronze Mercury and the matchless Venus, he must 

 have remembered Pope Clement's Vigna and have 

 often gone there in search of new ideas. And can 

 we doubt that Ippolito d'Este, the brilliant young 

 Cardinal, thought of Raphael, whose name was a 

 household word in his home at Ferrara, and of the 

 villa on Monte Mario, before he chose the steep hill 

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