ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
and spend his leisure hours in luxurious ease. The 
best artists in Rome—the Sienese master Baldassare 
Peruzzi, who was probably the architect of the house, 
Sebastiano del Piombo and Sodoma—decorated the 
rooms with frescoes. At the end of one hall Raphael 
painted his divine Galatea, in which Castiglione saw 
the perfect flower of the humanist’s dreams, while 
his scholars decorated the spandrils of the open loggia 
with scenes from the popular tale of Cupid and Psyche, 
and transformed its vaulted roof into a bower of green 
leaves and garlands of flowers with rich tapestries 
spread out against the blue sky. When at Christmas 
1518 the wealthy banker opened his villa doors to the 
public, all Rome flocked to Trastevere, and a scene of 
the wildest enthusiasm took place. Poets celebrated 
the marvels of Chigi’s villa in Latin and Italian verse 
and congratulated the owner on the possession of this 
pearl without price. Unfortunately the garden-house 
designed by Raphael on the edge of the river, where 
Chigi entertained the Pope and Cardinals at banquets 
of Lucullan fame, was demolished, together with the 
greater part of the villa grounds, when the new em¬ 
bankment was built in 1883. 
Leo the Tenth, the typical Renaissance Pope, who 
determined, from the moment of his election, “ to 
enjoy the Papacy,” and took especial interest in all 
the minor branches of art, shared the fashionable taste 
80 
