HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 
27 
of the villa: the wonderful animals lurking in caves suddenly spouting water over the unwary 
visitor; a shepherd piping to his flock, and other curiosities. 
Of all these marvels practically nothing now remains, save a few of the rare shrubs planted 
by Francesco, who was a passionate botanist and collector of curious plants and animals. The 
once magnificent park is now no more than a mass of brushwood, in the midst of which John 
of Bologna’s colossal statue of the Apennines, built up of large blocks of stone, reclines, 
discharging his horn into a marsh, almost the only remnant of the magnificence of Bianca 
Capello’s favourite villa. 
Some few years before Poggio-a-Cajano was built, Michelozzo Michelozzi erected for 
Giovanni, son of Cosimo de’ Medici, a ‘ magnificent and noble palace ’ at Fiesole, with fine 
gardens laid out upon the hillside in terraces supported by immense buttresses. Vasari tells us 
that ‘the vaults were so well constructed that, though high upon the hill, no crack has ever 
started.’ 
Towards the end of the fifteenth century, the famous Orti Orecellari, at Florence, were 
laid out by Bernardo Rucellai, kinsman of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Here it was that the celebrated 
Platonic Academy held its meetings and Nicolo Machiavelli read his discourses. The gardens, 
which were chiefly designed to please Bianca Capello, were made and re-made many times in 
succeeding generations to suit the dictates of fashion, and in 1527 they were sacked by the 
populace. The Emperor Charles V. was entertained at luncheon here when on a visit to 
Florence. From 1608 to 1640 the garden belonged to the Orsini family, and afterwards to 
Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici, who spent large sums in bringing water by conduits from the Arno. 
He caused his architect, Antonio Novelli, to make many fountains and waterworks, and constructed 
an artificial hill of stones beneath which was a large dome with an inner square apartment, 
known as the Cave of Polyphemus. In the next century the garden was altered to the landscape 
style, and now there is little but the site remaining of what was one of the most famous gardens 
in Florence. 
About the year 1516 Raphael commenced the Villa Madama, in the outskirts of Rome, 
in conjunction with San Gallo. The plan of the villa as designed by Raphael was conceived 
upon a gigantic scale, of which the existing remains form but a very small part. Several 
projects were presented for laying out the grounds, amongst them that of San Gallo, of which 
we give a restoration made by Baron H. von Geymiiller. 1 Besides these projects Raphael himself 
made a complete scheme for laying out the grounds of the villa. The Villa Madama was one 
of the finest creations of its period. It was built over the ruins of the Baths of Agrippa, on the 
declivity of Monte Mario, overlooking the Tiber, and even in its present ruinous and deserted 
state presents a scene of great attraction, backed by dark groves of cypress and ilex. The villa 
was never completed, for scarcely had the work attained to some degree of perfection when it was 
sacrificed to the vengeance of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna on Pope Clement VII. for the destruction 
1 By kind permission of Baron Geymiiller. See Raffaello Sanzio studialo come Architetto. Milano, 1884. 
