ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
As Tuscan architects and painters built the chapels of 
Nicholas the Fifth and Sixtus the Fourth, and decorated 
their walls with frescoes, so the Vatican garden was 
first of all laid out, not by a Roman citizen, but by 
Bramante of Urbino. 
The great man who transformed Italian architecture 
in the sixteenth century was a native of that little 
duchy in the heart of the Apennines, where art and 
letters flourished under the paternal rule of the best of 
princes, and the finest spirits of the age met at the 
court of the Montefeltro Dukes. Born in 1444 at 
a farm two miles from Urbino, young Bramante saw 
with his own eyes the building of Laurana’s wonderful 
palace, and, there can be little doubt, was himself a 
pupil of the Istrian architect. At thirty he went to 
Milan, where he entered the service of the Sforza 
Dukes and became the favourite architect of that 
enlightened prince, Lodovico il Moro, “ the master of 
those who know.” For the next five-and-twenty 
years he lived at this brilliant court in close companion¬ 
ship with Leonardo and Caradosso, building churches 
and bridges, superintending works in the provinces, or 
rearing graceful colonnades and painting frescoes in 
the Castello. When the final catastrophe came and 
“ the Duke,” in Leonardo’s mournful words, “ lost 
state, fortune, and liberty ” at one blow, Bramante was 
compelled to leave his buildings unfinished and seek 
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