House and Garden 
To the east a 
winter garden has 
been added, on 
which the long 
drawing- room 
opens, and to main¬ 
tain the symmetry 
of the building, a 
wall, its coping 
curved in a bold 
volute and its plas¬ 
ter decorated by a 
sham window, has 
been built out to 
the westward. 
The gardens of 
the Villa Corsi- 
Salviati are narrow 
in comparison with 
their great length. 
Built as the house 
is on the plain, the 
view from it was 
too limited to have 
to be considered. 
There was nothing 
to be seen but the 
long lines of olive trees festooned with vines 
stretching far away towards the river. A 
very ornate wall was built to conceal this 
homely view, peeps of which are, however, 
to be had through tree-high wrought-iron 
gates placed at regular distances. The one 
facing the center of the house bears the lion 
rampant of the Corsi. The wall, plaster 
covered, with here and there a medallion in 
rocaille , is divided by pilasters, ending in 
capitals, on which stand figures in stone, of 
a less heroic type than those elsewhere in 
the garden, 
for these, on 
the wall, are 
mere mortals 
busy gleaning, 
reaping or 
grape- pick¬ 
ing, and wear 
homely petti¬ 
coats or knee- 
breeches, 
while those 
round the 
fountain be¬ 
low display freely 
such godlike mus¬ 
cles as are not con¬ 
cealed by helmet or 
sword, and others 
elsewhere in the 
garden stand mag¬ 
nificently encom¬ 
passed by the 
wealth of floating 
draperies dear to 
eighteenth century 
sculptors. 
The coping on 
the wall between 
the pilasters curves 
into volutes which, 
meeting in the cen¬ 
ter, form a pedestal 
on which rest urns 
almost as large as 
the little men and 
women in petticoats 
and knee-breeches 
slightly above 
them. This makes 
one suspect that 
either larger statues once stood there, or that 
these were placed long after the wall was 
built. Statues and urns stand alternatelv on 
capital and volute until the third of the three 
iron gates is reached. After that urns alone 
rise side by side. 
Idle last of the three gates is so placed 
that, on the garden side, it faces a long, nar¬ 
row stone-built reservoir of water, or vasca, 
surrounded by a low wall at the corners of 
which are statues. On the other or podere 
side the ground runs down slightly and the 
surplus water 
from the vas¬ 
ca , after bub¬ 
bling up in a 
little circular 
fountain, 
whose marble 
rim is orna¬ 
mented with 
dolphins, rip¬ 
ples down and 
away for five 
hundred me¬ 
ters along a 
H7 
