ITALIAN VILLAS 
double flight of steps leading up by three levels to the 
Giardino della Pigna, was described in 1523 by the 
Venetian ambassador to Rome, who speaks of its grass 
parterres and fountains, its hedges of laurel and cypress, 
its plantations of mulberries and roses. One half of the 
garden (the court of the Belvedere) had brick-paved 
walks between rows of orange-trees ; in its centre were 
statues of the Nile and the Tiber above a fountain ; while 
the Apollo, the Laocoon and the Venus of the Vatican 
were placed about it in niches. This garden was long 
since sacrificed to the building of the Braccio Nuovo 
and the Vatican Library; but it is worth mentioning 
that Burckhardt, whose least word on Italian gardens is 
more illuminating than the treatises of other writers, 
thought that Bramante’s terraced stairway first set the 
example of that architectural magnificence which marks 
the great Roman gardens of the Renaissance. 
Next in date comes the Villa Madama, Raphael’s un- 
finished masterpiece on the slope of Monte Mario. This 
splendid pleasure-house, which was begun in 1516 for 
Cardinal Giuliano de’ Medici, afterward Pope Clement 
VII, was intended to be the model of the great villa 
suburbana , and no subsequent building of the sort is 
comparable to what it would have been had the original 
plans been carried out. But the villa was built under 
an evil star. Raphael died before the work was finished, 
and it was carried on with some alterations by Giulio 
Romano and Antonio da Sangallo. In 1527 the troops 
82 
