ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
and a fountain sends up its sparkling waters in the 
little cloister with its slender marble columns and 
graceful terra-cotta mouldings. Without is the great 
cloister surrounded by the monks’ cells, each one 
provided with a charming little garden and a loggia 
for use in wet weather. 
Another of the Moro’s works which survived his 
downfall were the gardens along the Naviglio Grande, 
the favourite waterway between Abbiategrasso and 
Milan, by which ambassadors and courtiers were 
constantly travelling to and fro. The beauty of these 
blossoming gardens excited the admiration of the 
French King’s Benedictine chronicler, Jean d’Auton, 
when he accompanied Louis the Twelfth on his 
conquering march to Milan. 
“ On either side of the canal,” he writes, “ are great 
leafy guelder rose bushes and beautiful green meadows, 
planted with orchards and watered by running brooks. 
And all along the water’s edge you see villas and 
pleasure-houses, connected with each other by draw¬ 
bridges thrown across the stream; and I was told that 
Signor Lodovico had been pleased to lay out this 
district, which is indeed so pleasant and delicious that 
it is more like Paradise than this earth.” 1 
To this day several of these gardens along the old 
Lombard canals remain. One especially there is on 
the banks of the Martesana Naviglio, near Monza, 
1 Chroniques, ii. 187. 
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