ROMAN VILLAS 
was the great gift of the Italian gardener to see the nat- 
ural advantages of his incomparable landscape, and to 
fit them into his scheme with an art which concealed 
itself. 
While Annibale Lippi, an architect known by only 
two buildings, was laying out the Medici garden, the 
Palatine Hill was being clothed with monumental ter- 
races by a master to whom the Italian Renaissance 
owed much of its stateliest architecture. Vignola, who 
transformed the slopes of the Palatine into the sumptu- 
ous Farnese gardens, was the architect of the mighty 
fortress-villa of Caprarola, and of the garden-portico of 
Mondragone ; and tradition ascribes to him also the in- 
comparable Lante gardens at Bagnaia. 
In the Farnese gardens he found full play for his gift 
of grouping masses and for the scenic sense which en- 
abled him to create such grandiose backgrounds for the 
magnificence of the great Roman prelates. The Pala- 
tine gardens have been gradually sacrificed to the exca- 
vations of the Palace of the Caesars, but their almost 
theatrical magnificence is shown in the prints of Falda 
and of Percier and Fontaine. In this prodigal develop- 
ment of terraces, niches, porticoes and ramps, one per- 
ceives the outcome of Bramante’s double staircase in 
the inner gardens of the Vatican, and Burckhardt justly 
remarks that in the Farnese gardens “the period of 
unity of composition and effective grouping of masses ” 
finally triumphs over the earlier style. 
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