GARDENS OF FLORENTINE HUMANISTS 
Caiano’s nymphs, fled from the embraces of the river- 
god Ombrone, and was turned into a rock by the 
goddess Diana. 
In his later years, the Magnifico employed Sangallo 
to build yet another villa at Lo Spedaletto on the 
heights near Volterra, where he spent the autumn 
months in the hope that the mountain air might benefit 
his failing health. There Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and 
Filippino decorated the hall with paintings of Lorenzo’s 
favourite Greek myths, and traces of colour may still 
be seen on a loggia in the garden. But of all these 
villas, Careggi is the one most closely associated with 
Lorenzo’s memory. Here every year, on the birthday 
of Plato, he gave a banquet to the Florentine Academy, 
and it was here, like his grandfather, that he died. 
Seldom have comfort and splendour, richness and 
simplicity, the beauties of Art and Nature, been more 
happily combined than in these villas, where Lorenzo, 
himself the most perfect of hosts, entertained the fore¬ 
most scholars of the age, where Pulci recited romances 
from his Morgante for the amusement of Monna 
Lucrezia,and the witty chaplain Matteo Franco delighted 
and annoyed the guests by turn with his sallies. Many 
of the city gardens were also intimately associated with 
the life of its humanists. Lorenzo adorned the gardens 
of his palace in the Via Larga with excellent paintings 
and antique marbles, and threw them open to artists 
