VII 
VILLAS OF VENETIA 
W RITERS on Italian architecture have hitherto 
paid little attention to the villa-architecture 
ofVenetia. It is only within the last few 
years that English and American critics have deigned 
to recognize any architectural school in Italy later than 
that of Vignola and Palladio, and even these two great 
masters of the sixteenth century have been held up as 
examples of degeneracy to a generation bred in the 
Ruskinian code of art ethics. In France, though the 
influence of Viollet-le-Duc was nearly as hostile as 
Ruskin’s to any true understanding of Italian art, the 
Latin instinct for form has asserted itself in a revived 
study of the classic tradition; but French writers on 
architecture have hitherto confined themselves chiefly to 
the investigation of their national styles. 
It is only in Germany that Italian architecture from 
Palladio to Juvara has received careful and sympathetic 
study. Burckhardt pointed the way in his '‘Cicerone” 
and in “ The Architecture of the Renaissance in Italy ” ; 
Herr Gustav Ebe followed with an interesting book on 
the late Renaissance throughout Europe ; and Herr 
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