ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
Trifone were good instances of the second class, while 
a splendid example of the first class is still to be seen 
in the palatial Villa Maser, which the Barbaro brothers 
employed Palladio to rear on a spur of the Julian 
Alps, and brought Paolo Veronese and his pupils to 
adorn with frescoes that are still in existence. 
On the heights of Asolo, in the dolomite country, 
was the stately home where the widowed Queen of 
Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro, held her court, and made 
the foremost poets and scholars of the day welcome. 
The massive tower of her Castello still rises above the 
picturesque streets of the old mountain town, and 
from its battlements we look down through a tangled 
mass of briar-rose and acacia on the Lombard plain 
stretching far away to the wide horizon. Little is 
left to-day of these wonderful gardens where courtiers 
and maidens sang and danced, and talked of love and 
poetry through the long summer days, but Bembo 
has given us some idea of their beauty in the poem of 
Gli Asolani , which he wrote in the first years of 
the new century, and dedicated to the Duchess 
Lucrezia. In language recalling Boccaccio’s immortal 
prose, the young Venetian has told us how he arrived 
at this “ vago e piacevole Castello ” standing on a far 
ridge of the Alps, above the Trevigiana, when the 
marriage-feast of one of the Queen’s maidens was 
being celebrated. The wedding was over, the guests 
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