ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
Again, in the paintings of that devout Piagnone 
artist, Lorenzo di Credi, we are allowed charming 
glimpses of formal gardens with broad walks and ilex 
avenues on the banks of running streams. Botticelli 
thrones his Madonna in a bower of palm and olive, 
cypress and myrtle, with tall white lilies and red and 
white roses standing in bowls along the marble parapet, 
and places the Court of Venus in a woodland glade 
where the Graces dance hand in hand on the flowery 
turf. 
But of all these old Florentines, none took greater 
delight in rural scenes than Fra Angelico’s pupil, 
Benozzo Gozzoli. In the Campo Santo of Pisa this 
excellent artist painted a whole series of Tuscan land¬ 
scapes as a setting for the history of the patriarchs, 
to the great admiration of his contemporaries. The 
Tower of Babel rears its lofty pile among terraced 
gardens and blossoming orchards ; youths and maidens 
pluck the purple grapes from the pergola over 
Noah’s head; while the Renaissance portico, where St. 
Augustine teaches rhetoric, opens on a hillside crowned 
with smiling villa-gardens. Still more to Benozzo’s 
taste was the task of painting the walls of the Medici 
chapel in Via Larga which Cosimo’s son Piero gave 
him in 1459. Here he had to commemorate the 
Council of Florence and introduce portraits of the 
Greek Emperor and Patriarch, of Cosimo and his 
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