House and Garden 
tiful in spring, to the great bushes of oleander 
that will glow with color in the hot sun of J uly. 
At every turn there is something to delight 
the eye. The illustrations give the form, 
imagination or memory must supply the 
color, the sunshine, the life and light. 
The history of the villa is well known and 
has been given at some length by Mrs. Ross 
in her book on Florentine villas. In 1454 
Matteo di Marco Palmieri bought it from 
the Tolomei. Matteo added to the house, 
but it was in 1670-80 that his descendant, 
Palmiero Palmieri made the villa what it is 
now and threw an arch across the old road 
to Fiesole, thus widening the splendid ter¬ 
race in front of the house, until it connected 
the house with the grounds beyond, which 
before that, had been separated by the road. 
The sexagon chapel to the east of the house 
is of far earlier date, even the loggia which 
runs round it was added towards the end of 
the fifteenth century by Matteo Palmieri. It 
was for this Matteo Palmieri, remarkable 
both as a citizen and a man of letters, that 
Botticelli painted his famous picture of the 
“Coronation of the Virgin,” now in the Na¬ 
tional Gallery in London. This picture, 
painted, it is said, from a design of Matteo’s, 
was placed in the family chapel of the Palmieri 
in San Pietro Maggiore. There it remained 
during Matteo’s life and for some five years 
longer. Until then no one had found any 
but words of praise for the great master’s 
work or for his patron. Now, however, was 
published Matteo’s poem the Citt'a di Vita, 
which during his life had lain in the Medi- 
cean Library, read only by a few sympathetic 
friends. Now it fell into the hands of many 
who, envious of the dead man’s great name, 
envious ol the living painter’s fame, were re¬ 
joiced to find that both poem and picture 
could be condemned as heretical. Matteo 
had written that those angels who remained 
neutral during the strife with Lucifer, had 
been punished by losing their immortality 
and having to enter the bodies of men. 
Botticelli in his great picture had given form 
to this heretical doctrine for there, what did 
he depict but the joyful reunion of angels 
above and their once fallen, now redeemed, 
brethren. Friends of both poet and painter 
vainly pleaded the innocent intention of both. 
The orthodox party was too strong. The 
poem was prohibited and the picture removed 
from its place in the chapel and taken up to 
the villa and built in a recess in the south 
A BALUSTRADE OF ONE OF THE TERRACES 
77 
