THE GARDENS OF PAPAL ROME 
fluence of Raphael’s creation still made itself felt. In 
some instances the general arrangement of the house 
and grounds, in others certain individual motives were 
borrowed from Villa Madama. Thus Antonio di San 
Gallo laid out the Vatican grounds with broad flights 
of steps and gardens at different levels, and in the 
hollow of the valley his successor, Pirro Ligorio, placed 
that jewel of loveliness, the Casino of Pope Pius the 
Fourth. While the example of a great central atrium 
was imitated in the Palazzo Farnese and the Pitti, the 
hemicycle and Nymphaeum were reproduced in the 
villa on the Tiber which Pope Julius the Third built 
for himself outside the Porta del Popolo, within sight 
of Villa Madama. When, in the middle of the 
century, another Cardinal de’ Medici planned the fair 
Casino on the brow of Monte Pincio, which still 
remains the least altered of all the great Roman villas, 
when he laid out the long pine and ilex avenues, and 
decorated fountains and alleys with the statues of 
Niobe and her children, with Giovanni da Bologna’s 
bronze Mercury and the matchless Venus, he must 
have remembered Pope Clement’s Vigna and have 
often gone there in search of new ideas. And can 
we doubt that Ippolito d’Este, the brilliant young 
Cardinal, thought of Raphael, whose name was a 
household word in his home at Ferrara, and of the 
villa on Monte Mario, before he chose the steep hill 
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