ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
his art, by Niccolb’s command, on this last memorial of 
the son he had loved so well. And as we stand by these 
tombs, where father and son rest in their long slumber, 
we feel that Niccolo’s words have come true, and that 
after all this Certosa is his most lasting monument. 
Since his time whole dynasties have risen and fallen 
in the Sicilies, change has succeeded change, and king¬ 
doms have been swept away, till not a trace of his 
work remains to bring back his name to men’s lips. 
But at the end of these five hundred years every 
traveller who, walking through Val d’Ema, sees the 
long pile of buildings lifting their battlements 
against the sky, and asks who founded the Certosa, 
receives for answer—“ Niccolo Acciaiuoli, the Grand 
Seneschal.” 
We see it now in the days of its decay, but for 
many hundred years after Niccolo’s death the Certosa 
was one of the most celebrated monastic foundations 
in Italy. Like other Tuscan convents, it became the 
home of art, a sphere where the painters of different 
schools and ages were invited to diplay their powers. 
In that same chapel of the Acciaiuoli, not many 
years after the great Seneschal’s death, a young 
Dominican friar from the convent of Fiesole painted 
his first works, and introduced some angels playing 
musical instruments, whose exceeding beauty at¬ 
tracted universal attention, and were before long to 
22 6 
