ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
Friuli. Like all his comrades, he loved Raphael with 
devoted affection, and when he died more than forty 
years afterwards he begged with his last breath to be 
buried at his master’s feet. 
Giovanni it was who adorned the Vatican Loggia 
with fine stucco and painted reliefs, after the manner of 
the ancients, and brought this style to so rare a degree 
of perfection. While Giulio painted frescoes of Poly¬ 
phemus and Galatea on the cupola of the eastern 
apse, and adorned the banquet-halls with friezes of 
putti, candelabra, and festoons of leaves and flowers, 
Giovanni decorated the vaulted ceiling of the great 
Loggia with graceful reliefs of classical myths, sub¬ 
jects from Ovid’s Metamorphoses , and a hundred other 
exquisite fancies. All the gods of Olympus—Jupiter 
and Ganymede, Juno driving her peacocks, Neptune in 
his car, Apollo playing the lyre, Diana on her chariot, 
Bacchus with his panther—were introduced, and 
together with them, Tritons, Centaurs, Seasons, busts 
of poets, dancing girls, sphinxes and dogs, while the 
Medici arms—three feathers in a ring—appeared 
in the top of the central dome, surmounted by the 
Cardinal’s hat. This alone would prove that the 
decorations of the villa, as well as the actual struc¬ 
ture, were executed in the lifetime of Leo the Tenth, 
before the owner of the house himself succeeded to 
the Papacy. 
88 
