276 
THE GAIWENS OF ITALY. 
other the entrance lodge. In the centre is the great gateway lately restored in pietra serena 
stone. Entered within the walled enclosure, the visitor sees the villa lying a hundred yards 
back, with all the advantage of a rising foreground ; the approach roads rise on either hand in 
a quadrant sweep that follows the lines of a great horseshoe staircase leading up to the first floor 
(Fig. 288). A feature of the design is that the ground floor is encompassed on its four faces by a 
vaulted arcade fifteen feet wide, which forms a magnificent terrace all round at the level of the first 
floor. Each face is about sixty yards in length, so that the scale of the villa is considerable. The 
loggia of the main front opens direct upon the terrace at the top of the great horseshoe staircase. 
It is finely vaulted and decorated. The Della Robbia frieze, in blue and white, represents 
War and Peace. The columns are of pietra serena, fine grained and beautifully coloured in 
that shade of greenish grey which is such an attractive feature of the material. The strange 
pediment contains the shield of the Medici, with long ribbon attachments. How this 
inappropriate feature came to be so employed is a mystery, as it cuts the facade like a knife and 
dwarfs the loggia to the scale of a window. The house is cream-washed, but the piers of the 
arcades are coloured as red brickwork, with a somewhat crude effect. The great eaves with 
triple rafters are a characteristic feature. 
Entering the house from the loggia at the main floor level the visitor, passing through a 
reception hall, finds himself in a triilv magnificent saloon occupying the whole centre of the 
block, and lit from one 
end only (Fig. 287). 
Vaulted with a great 
barrel, richly decorated 
on sound architectural 
lines, this ceiling pro- 
claims itself as the work 
of Giuliano da San Gallo, 
who erected the villa in 
1480 for Lorenzo i 1 
Magnifico. Vasari 
remarks of this hall 
that “ there is no doubt 
that this is the largest 
vault ever seen till 
now.” The walls were 
painted in fresco to the 
order of Leo X, by 
Andrea del Sarto, PTancia 
Gigio and Pontormo in 
The dado is some six 
feet in height, painted in relief all round. The sides of the hall are divided into two wide 
and one narrower centre bay by a framework of chiaroscuro architecture with columns and 
entablatures. The centre compartments contain fine compositions of figures surmounted by 
the Medici shield with inscriptions below : “ Leo Decimus Pontifex. Max aulam hanc 
illustrare. E Tornare Coepisset.” ” Franciscus Medices Magnus. Dux Etruri^e secundus. 
Magnificentius perfeciendum curavit.” Subjects are drawn from the four seasons and from 
life in the country for the ends of the hall, and for the four large side panels scenes from Roman 
historv, as symbols of events in the lives of the Medici. Such a hall and such decorations are only 
possible where the window space is required, for coolness and summer use, to be reduced to such 
dimensions as we see here- two tall, narrow lights and a bull’s-eye over - thus occupying the space 
of one end wall only, and leaving three walls free for the frescoes, seen, moreover, under ideal 
conditions of lighting. This hall is about thirty-nine feet by seventy-two feet, and it is equal to 
two storeys in height. The idea in derivation is, one may suppose, the hall of the mediaeval 
castle modernised, but that in turn is but the survival probably of the great living-room, which 
replaces the southern atrium as, advancing north, the climate becomes colder. 
1 
288. — THE VILL.A. OF POGGIO CAJ.ANO FROM INSIDE THE ENCLOSURE. 
1521, and finished by Alless Allori, known as Bronzino, in 1580. 
