House & Garden 
art but also that of others, and he was able 
to turn and work in it. Above all, they were 
ardent lovers of Nature. So when we turn 
to-day to the villa garden we find just what 
we should expect to find following upon those 
conditions: a highly refined, well-ordered 
artistic unit, a combining of all the best 
traditions of the past in garden art. We 
find man making a vantage spot from which 
to enjoy field and sky and wood and stream, 
and the bringing into this spot for his closer 
and more intimate contemplation of them, 
those smaller beloved things of forest and 
meadow that it is impossible to always go 
afield to enjoy ; and we also find this spot 
most admirably arranged for the convenience 
and realization of a highly refined and elegant 
life. 
Because the gardens of the Villa Lante 
show to-day, perhaps, better than any other 
in all Italy, the spirit of the time that pro¬ 
duced them, because they have come down 
to our time with fewest changes, because 
they have from generation to generation 
been so thoughtfully and lovingly cherished 
and cared for, and not allowed to perish, we 
select them to represent the truest spirit ot 
Italian Renaissance gardens. There are 
others that strive for more effect ; there are 
others that are larger ; others that are more 
princely; but none are more charmingly 
beautiful, not another that represents more 
of a complete artistic unit supplying living 
memories to the mind’s eye. 
During most of its history, Lante has been 
the property of the bishops of Viterbo. 
Rafaello Sansoni Riario, a cardinal under 
Pope Sixtus IV, began the building ot the 
villa in 1477. The Florentine, Niccolo 
Ridolfi, fifth cardinal bishop ot Viterbo, 
carried the work on ; but his successor, 
Gualtieri, gave it up on account of the ex¬ 
pense and rented the buildings out. Another 
cardinal bishop, Giovanni Gambara, enriched 
the place with paintings by Antonio Tem- 
pesta, and in 1588 the cardinal Alessandro 
Damasceno Peretti or Montalto acquired 
possession of the villa and reserved it for 
ONE OF THE APPROACHES TO THE CENTRAL FOUNTAIN VILLA LANTE 
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