ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
months before his death, giving a full description of the 
Cardinal’s Vigna , has unfortunately been lost, so that it 
is impossible to decide with any certainty what stage the 
work had reached when he died in April 1520. But 
there can be little doubt that by this time the building 
itself and its interior decoration were both well advanced. 
A large number of drawings made by Raphael’s assist¬ 
ants for the villa and its grounds are still preserved in 
the Uffizi, and have been reproduced by Geymiiller and 
Professor Hofmann in their excellent works on the 
subject. 1 No less than four of these artists belonged 
to the San Gallo family, that gifted race of architects 
and sculptors who originally took their name from one 
of the gates in Florence and all worked in Raphael’s 
shop. Chief among them was Antonio di San Gallo, 
who came to Rome at the age of eighteen and spent 
forty-two years in the service of the Popes, working 
first as Raphael’s assistant and eventually succeeding 
him as architect of St. Peter’s. He and his brother 
Battista—surnamed il gobbo , assisted by their cousin 
Francesco and Bastiano, prepared the designs for the 
villa from their master’s sketches, supplemented, after 
Raphael’s habit, by instructions from his own lips. 
From these plans, and more especially from one drawn 
1 H. v. Geymiiller, Raffaello studiato come Architetto; T. Hofmann, 
Raphael als Architekt. La Villa Madama. Cf. Halsey Ricardo, 
“The Cardinal Medici’s Pleasure-house” (Journal of the Royal Insti¬ 
tute of British Architects , xviii. 6). 
86 
