ITALIAN VILLAS 
Fra Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli,the Florentine, must 
here be named first, since his chief work, the Palazzo 
Andrea Doria, built in 1 529, is the earliest of the great 
Genoese villas. It is also the most familiar to modern 
travelers, for the other beautiful country houses which 
formerly crowned the heights above Genoa, from Pegli 
to Nervi, have now been buried in the growth of manu- 
facturing suburbs, so that only the diligent seeker after 
villa-architecture will be likely to come upon their ruined 
gardens and peeling stucco fagades among the factory 
chimneys of Sampierdarena or the squalid tenements 
of San Fruttuoso. 
The great Andrea Doria, “Admiral of the Navies of 
the Pope, the Emperor, the King of France and the 
Republic of Genoa,” in 1521 bought the villas Lomel- 
lini and Giustiniani, on the western shore of the port 
of Genoa, and throwing the two estates together, cre- 
ated a villa wherein “ to enjoy in peace the fruits of an 
honoured life” — so runs the inscription on the outer 
wall of the house. 
Fra Montorsoli was first and foremost a sculptor, a 
pupil of Michelangelo’s, a plastic artist to whom archi- 
tecture was probably of secondary interest. Partly per- 
haps for this reason, and also because the Villa Doria 
was in great measure designed to show the frescoes of 
Pierin del Vaga, there is little elaboration in its treat- 
ment. Yet the continuous open loggia on the ground 
floor, and the projecting side colonnades enclosing the 
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