HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 341 



The villas Ludovisi, Medici, Doria Pamphili, the gardens of the 

 Quirinal and others may be studied in Giovanni Battista Falda's 

 copper-plates of Roman gardens. The gardens of the villa Albani, 

 outside the Porta Salaria, planned by the great Cardinal-Antiquary, 

 Alessandro Albani, the patron and friend of Winckelmann, are 

 taken by Taine as the text for an eloquent aesthetic sermon upon 

 the art and arrangement loved by the "grand seigneur homme 

 de cour " of Italy : 



* No liberty is left to nature, all is artificial. The water leaps 

 out in jets and plumes, and has no bed save vases and urns. 

 The lawns are hemmed in by enormous hedges taller than a man, 

 thick as walls, and forming geometrical triangles of which the 

 apexes all point to one centre. In the foreground stretches a 

 compact alley of small cypresses planted in a row. 



'You ascend from one garden to another by large stone stair- 

 cases like those at Versailles. The flower-beds are enclosed in 

 small box frames ; they compose designs and resemble well- 

 bordered carpets in a regular medley of gradated colours. This 

 villa is a wreck, as it were the fossil skeleton of a life that lasted 

 two centuries, whose chief pleasure was conversation amid beauti- 

 ful surroundings, with the customs of Salon and Ante-chamber.' 1 



1 The following are some of the chief authorities on Italian villas and 

 Gardens : 



Pietro Crescenzi, 'Opus Ruralium Commodorum,' Bk. viii., 1471. 



Angeli Politiani, ' Rusticus,' 1486. 



M. Bussato, ' Giardino d'Agricoltura,' Venetia, 1612. 



I. B. Ferrarius, 'de Florum Cultura,' Rome, 1633. 



Israeli Silvestro, ' Alcune vedute di Giardini e Fontane di Roma e di Tivoli,' 

 Paris, 1646. 



Melchior Kysell, ' Recueil des Jardins Italiens,' Augsburg, 1682. 



G. B. Falda, ' Li Giardini di Roma,' 1670. 



Evelyn's Diary. 



R. Castell's ' Villas of the Ancients,' 1728. 



L. Vanvitelli, ' Disegni del Reale Palazzo di Caserta,' 1756. 



Piranesi's 'Vedute di Roma,' 1765. 



De Brosse's Letters. 



Eustace's ' Classical Tour through Italy.' 



Beckford's ' Letters from Italy.' 



