E-text prepared by Chuck Greif
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
Pope Julius II. Viewing the Newly-found Statue of theApollo BelvedereFrom the painting by Carl Becker. Permission of the Berlin
PhotographicCo.
ROMANCE OF ROMAN
VILLAS
(THE RENAISSANCE)
BY
ELIZABETH W. CHAMPNEY
AUTHOR OF "ROMANCE OF THE ITALIAN VILLAS," "ROMANCE OF THEFEUDAL CHÂTEAUX," "ROMANCE OF THE FRENCH ABBEYS," etc.
ILLUSTRATED
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1908
INTRODUCTION
In came the cardinal, grave and coldly wise,
His scarlet gown and robes of cobweb lace
Trailed on the marble floor; with convex glass
He bent o'er Guido's shoulder.
Walter Thornbury.
STILL unrivalled, after the lapse of four centuries the villas of thegreat cardinals of the Renaissance retain their supremacy over theirItalian sisters, not, as once, by reason of their prodigal magnificencebut in the appealing charm of their picturesque decay.
The centuries have bestowed a certain pathetic beauty, they have alsotaken away much, and the sympathy which these ruined pleasure palacesevoke whets our curiosity to know what they were like in their heyday ofjoyous revelling.
If we run down the list of the nobler villas of Rome we will find that,with few exceptions, they were built by princes of the purple, and thatthe names they bear are not Roman but those of the ruling families ofother Italian cities.
That the sixteenth century should have produced the most palatialresidences ever inhabited by prelates was but a natural outcome of theconditions then existing. The society of Rome was a hierarchicalaristocracy made up of the younger sons of every powerful and ambitiousfamily of Italy, and the red hat was so greatly desired not for thehonour or emoluments of the cardinalcy per se but because it was astep to the papacy.
"To an Italian," says Alf