THE GARDENS OF VENICE 
wards, young Giorgio Vasari came from Florence and 
found the old master of eighty-nine, brush and palette 
in hand, still painting pictures “worthy of immor¬ 
tality.” The delightful situation of the house, the 
beauty of the garden along the edge of the lagoon, 
have been praised by many of his contemporaries, but 
in Titian’s eyes its greatest charm was the prospect 
which it commanded over the mountains of Cadore. 
From his window the great master could look across 
the open lagoon to the blue hills of Ceneda, and on 
clear days could see the sharp peak of Antelao rising 
above his native home. Here, on summer evenings, 
he loved to entertain a few chosen friends—Sansovino, 
the great Tuscan architect, who had fled to Venice 
after the sack of Rome to become the master-builder 
of the Republic; the Veronese master, Sanmichele; the 
printer, Marcolini; the wonderful gem-cutter, Lodovico 
Anichino, and the witty and unscrupulous Pietro 
Aretino—at supper-parties, which lasted far on into 
the night. The Roman grammarian, Priscianese, has 
left us a graphic picture of one of these lively enter¬ 
tainments, at which he was a guest: 
“ On the first of August, the feast of Augustus, now 
known as the festival of the Chains of S. Peter,” he 
writes, “ I was invited to supper in a most beautiful 
garden, belonging to Messer Tiziano, an excellent 
painter, as all the world knows, and a person whose 
in 
