ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
in song. Here in June evenings he could linger on 
the wide balconies under Bramante’s arcades, looking 
down on the road by which all the ambassadors entered 
the city, or watching the joyous band of youths and 
maidens at play in the meadows along the Tiber. 
“ I am living here in the Belvedere,” he wrote to his 
mother at Mantua. “ It is a real refreshment to my 
spirit. Would to God you had so delightful a place 
to live in, as this villa with its beautiful view and 
delicious gardens, filled with all these noble antiques, 
fountains, basins, and running water! And what suits 
me best of all, I am close to the Pope’s palace.” 1 
But the best and fullest description that we have 
of the Belvedere gardens is from the pen of Pietro 
Pesaro, one of the three Venetian envoys who were 
sent to congratulate Pope Adrian the Sixth on his 
election in the spring of 1523. They had started for 
Rome in the previous autumn, but had been compelled 
to turn back again at Bologna for fear of the plague, 
and had set out again in March, travelling by the 
rougher roads and staying at remote country inns to 
avoid infection. But the cordial reception which they 
met with atoned for all these privations. One 
Venetian Cardinal, the excellent Patriarch Grimani, 
gave them a splendid banquet on St. Mark’s Day, 
when, according to custom, he threw open his palace 
1 Serassi, Lettere, i. p. 76. 
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