VILLA LANTE IN BAGNAJA 



Into the early history of this villa, which is too long to be recounted 

 here, it is not necessary to enter at length. Let it suffice that the 

 property came into the hands of Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Gambara, 

 of Brescia, about the year 1564. 



A small house] already existed on the site, and something had been 

 done by his predecessors towards laying out the garden, but it is to this 

 Cardinal that we owe the conception of the present villa. The mania for 

 building villas was beginning to make itself felt in Italy, and the Cardinal, 

 desirous of providing one suitable to his rank, appears to have lost no time 

 in securing the services of architect and craftsmen of no mean order to 

 carry out his wishes. The misfortune is that no reliable name has come 

 down to us in connection with this exceptional piece of work. 



Under the Cardinal's personal supervision such progress was made that 

 the fame of it was noised abroad, and he received an intimation from Rome, 

 which he could not afford to ignore, that the money he was spending so 

 lavishly on the embellishment of his villa would be better employed in 

 works of charity. Fortunately much had been already completed, but so 

 interested had the Cardinal been in the fountains and other works about 

 his garden, that only one casino of the two he had planned was built, and 

 so matters remained until his death. 



No such restrictions seem to have been placed upon his successor, 

 Alessandro Damasceno Peretti, Cardinal Montalto, a nephew of Pope 

 Sixtus v., who, about 1588, built the second casino in order to balance the 

 first, and made various changes and additions in other parts of the villa. 

 The work done in his time may be readily distinguished by his armorial 



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