ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
much of their boyhood in Cafaggiuolo. Here they 
were sent when the plague was raging in Florence 
and their grandfather was dying at Careggi, and here 
after his death they often spent the summer with the 
widowed Monna Contessina. The boys, as the fattore 
told their father, had a happy time, riding, fishing, 
shooting, and visiting different parts of the estate. 
Lorenzo, it appears, already showed a taste for garden¬ 
ing, and asked Piero’s leave to lay out the rough 
ground in front of the villa. And it was at a village 
fair in the neighbourhood of Cafaggiuolo that he met 
the peasant girl who became the heroine of his rustic 
idyll, Nencia da Barberino. From the first a genuine 
love of nature inspired his youthful sonnets and 
canzoni. He describes the ilex-woods and rippling 
streams, the song of the nightingales in the thicket, 
the belle , fresche e purpuree viole in the grass and the 
red and white rosebuds of the gardens. A sunflower 
on the terraces of Careggi filled him with tender 
inusings on the death of the fair Simonetta, and his 
mistress Lucrezia first appeared to him, like Botticelli’s 
Venus, in a shower of roses. The simple joys of rural 
life, the calm repose of the villa, and the beauty of 
trees and flowers are themes of which he never tires. 
Let others seek the stately halls and busy marts of the 
city, the games and pleasures which bring with them 
a thousand vexing cares. All he asks for is a little 
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