Italian villas and their gardens . wo stories and an attic abovethe cornice. There is no order, but the whole facadeis richly frescoed in a severe architectural style, with 190 GENOESE VILLAS niches, statues in grisaille, and other ornaments, allexecuted by a skilful hand. The windows on the firstfloor have broken pediments with a shell-like move-ment, and those above show the same treatment, alter-nating with the usual triangular pediment. But thecrowning distinction of the house consists in the twoexquisite loggias which form the angles of the secondstory. These tall arcades, resting on slen
Italian villas and their gardens . wo stories and an attic abovethe cornice. There is no order, but the whole facadeis richly frescoed in a severe architectural style, with 190 GENOESE VILLAS niches, statues in grisaille, and other ornaments, allexecuted by a skilful hand. The windows on the firstfloor have broken pediments with a shell-like move-ment, and those above show the same treatment, alter-nating with the usual triangular pediment. But thecrowning distinction of the house consists in the twoexquisite loggias which form the angles of the secondstory. These tall arcades, resting on slender columns,give a wonderful effect of spreading lightness to thefacade, and break up its great bulk without disturbingthe general impression of strength and dignity. As askilful distribution of masses the elevation of the VillaImperiali deserves the most careful study, and it is tobe regretted that it can no longer be seen in combina-tion with the wide-spread terraces which once formed apart of its composition. 191 LOMBARD VILLAS. VILOMBARD VILLAS ON the walls of the muniment-room of the oldBorromeo palace in Milan, Michelino, a little-known painter of the fifteenth century, hasdepicted the sports and diversions of that noble may be seen ladies in peaked hennins and longdrooping sleeves, with their shock-headed gallants infur-edged tunics and pointed shoes, engaged in curiousgames and dances, against the background of LakeMaggiore and the Borromean Islands. It takes the modern traveller an effort of mental read-justment to recognize in this clump of peaked isles —bare Leonardesque rocks thrusting themselves splinter-wise above the lake—the smiling groves and terracesof the Isola Bella and the Isola Madre. For in thosedays the Borromei had not converted their rocky islandsinto the hanging gardens which to later travellers becameone of the most important sights of the grand tour;and one may learn from this curious fresco with whatseemingly hopeless problems the I
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