ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
He devoted much time and money to agricultural 
experiments, and introduced the system of the 
mezzadria or metayer system among the peasants on 
his estates, with the happiest results. More than 
this, he spent large sums in building bridges, making 
new roads, and draining the marshes of the Brenta, 
being convinced that he could do the State no better 
service than to reclaim these waste lands and 
make them fit for cultivation. Happily, Alvise 
Cornaro’s example was followed by many of his 
countrymen, and the last half of the sixteenth century 
witnessed an extraordinary outburst of activity in this 
direction. The ever-increasing passion for villeggiatura 
life led wealthy patricians to build pleasure-houses 
all along the f shores of the Brenta, and in the 
course of the next hundred years this fertile district 
between Padua and Mestre became practically a 
suburb of Venice. 
When, in 1574, the last of the Valois kings, 
Henry III, visited Venice on his return from Poland, 
he was lost in wonder at the splendours of the 
palaces —luoghi di delizie —which lined the banks as he 
rowed down the Brenta in his barge. The Palazzo 
Malcontenta, where the royal guest was entertained 
on this occasion, was built for the Foscari in the 
sixteenth century by Palladio, and decorated with 
frescoes by the painter Zelotti. Its stately Ionic 
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