CARDINAL BEMBO AND HIS VILLA 



Santo, where he housed his priceless treasures of 

 art, the paintings by Raphael and Bellini, by Man- 

 tegna and Memling, the bronzes and marbles, the 

 gems and rare manuscripts, which he had collected. 

 But although he adorned this town house with a 

 lovely garden and terraces of orange and lemon 

 trees, and planted a grove where his favourite 

 nightingales made their nests, he always escaped to 

 the Villa in the early spring and lingered there until, 

 on All Saints' Day, the University term opened with 

 High Mass in the Cathedral. 



His life there was brightened by the companion- 

 ship of Morosina, the beautiful young girl who had 

 lived with him in Rome, and who, until her death 

 in 1535, was the cherished partner of his home and 

 the mother of his children, although he never made 

 her his wife. Bembo, as he sometimes found it 

 necessary to remind his correspondents, was not a 

 priest. Like many of his contemporaries, he had 

 only taken minor orders to enable him to hold 

 ecclesiastical benefices, and in this age of lax morals 

 the irregularity of the connection gave no cause for 

 scandal. The guests who came and went at the 

 Villa, the friends who shared Bembo's intimacy, 

 treated her exactly as if she had been his legal wife. 

 Rodolfo Pio of Carpi, the young Protonotary De 

 Rossi, Trifone Gabriele, and Molza talked and 

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