ITALIAN VILLAS 
which may be seen in Rubens’s collection) is in site 
and design a typical Genoese suburban house of the 
sixteenth century. The lower story has a series of 
arched windows between Ionic pilasters; above are 
square-headed windows with upper lights, divided by 
fluted Corinthian pilasters and surmounted by a beau- 
tiful cornice and a roof-balustrade of unusual design, 
in which groups of balusters alternate with oblong 
panels of richly carved openwork. The very slightly 
projecting wings have, on both stories, arched recesses 
in which heroic statues are painted in grisaille . 
The narrow ledge of ground on which the villa is 
built permits only of a broad terrace in front of the house, 
with a central basin surmounted by a beautiful winged 
figure and enclosed in stone-edged flower-beds. Stately 
flights of steps lead down to a lower terrace, of which 
the mighty retaining-wall is faced by a Doric portico, 
with a recessed loggia behind it. From this level other 
flights of steps, flanked by great balustraded walls nearly 
a hundred feet high, descend to a third terrace, narrower 
than the others, whence one looks down into lower- 
lying gardens, wedged into every projecting shelf of 
ground between palace roofs and towering slopes of 
masonry ; while directly beneath this crowded foreground 
sparkles the blue expanse of the Mediterranean. 
On a higher ledge, above the Villa Pallavicini, lies the 
Villa Durazzo-Grapollo, perhaps also a work of Alessi’s. 
Here the unusual extent of ground about the house has 
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