ITALIAN VILLAS 
by marble benches and statues on fine rusticated ped- 
estals. Unhappily, fountain and statues have lately 
been scrubbed to preternatural whiteness, and the same 
spirit of improvement has turned the old parterres into 
sunburnt turf, and dotted it with copper beeches and 
pampas-grass. Montaigne alludes to the berceaux, or 
pleached walks, and to the close-set cypresses which 
made a delicious coolness in this garden ; and as one 
looks across its sun-scorched expanse one perceives that 
its lack of charm is explained by lack of shade. 
As is usual in Italian gardens built against a hillside, 
the retaining-wall at the back serves for the great dec- 
orative motive at Castello. It is reached by wide 
marble steps, and flanked at the sides by symmetrical 
lemon-houses. On the central axis of the garden, the 
wall has a wide opening between columns, and on each 
side an arched recess, equidistant between the lemon- 
houses and the central opening. Within the latter is 
one of those huge grottoes 1 which for two centuries or 
more were the delight of Italian garden-architects. 
The roof is decorated with masks and arabesques in 
coloured shell-work, and in the niches of the tufa of 
which the background is formed are strange groups of 
life-sized animals, a camel, a monkey, a stag with real 
antlers, a wild boar with real tusks, and various small 
animals and birds, some made of coloured marbles which 
correspond with their natural tints ; while beneath these 
1 This grotto and its sculptures are the work of 11 Tribolo, who also built 
the aqueduct bringing thither the waters of the Arno and the Mugnone. 
34 
