The Villa Palmieri near Florence, Italy 
wall of the library, where it remained con¬ 
cealed until the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. It was then discovered and sold. 
Later it passed into the possession of the 
then Duke of Hamilton and was bought in 
t 882 by the National Gallery of London. 
The villa remained in the possession of 
the Palmieri till 1824 when Miss Mary 
Farhill bought it. She bequeathed it to the 
Grand Duchess Marie Antoinette of Tus¬ 
cany who sold it in 1874 to the late Fiarl of 
Crawford and Balcarres. 
Villa Palmieri is said to be one of those 
chosen by Boccaccio for the retreat of his 
youths and maidens. A very different villa 
it must have been in the fourteenth century, 
and yet, according to him, even then, “ a 
most beautiful and magnificent palace.” It 
has not shared the unhappy fate of so many 
fine villas in Italy. It has never gone through 
a long period of decay, or needed, at least 
since Matteo’s time, the kind of restoration 
which is bound to destroy the characteristics 
of a building. 
In the eighteenth century we hear of it as 
the scene of the splendid hospitality of the 
Earl Cowper so often mentioned in Horace 
Walpole’s correspondence. This alone goes 
to prove that it knew no decadence and was 
then what it is now, one of the great “ sig- 
norile ” villas of Tuscany. Lord Crawford, 
while adding numberless beauties to the 
grounds, was careful to do nothing that in 
any way altered their character or interfered 
with the architectural unity ot house and gar¬ 
den. Matteo Palmieri himself, though he 
might shake his shrewd Florentine head at 
so much hillside basking unprofitable in the 
hot sun, growing nothing but fine trees and 
beautiful shrubs, when it might be bringing 
in “ barlle" upon “ barile" of good Tuscan 
wine, would most surely end by agreeing 
that it was just that alteration that made the 
whole scene perfect. 
The Colonnade Overlooking the Pool 
80 
