Italian villas and their gardens . basin in the flower-garden. Theterraces, with their balustrades and obelisks and doubleflights of steps, form a stately setting to this centralchateau deait, through which the water gushes bymossy steps and channels to a splendid central compo-sition of superimposed basins flanked by recumbentriver-gods. All the garden-architecture at Lante merits specialstudy. The twin pavilions seem plain and insignificantafter the brilliant elevations of the great Roman villas,but regarded as part of the garden-scheme, and not asdominating it, they fall into their proper p
Italian villas and their gardens . basin in the flower-garden. Theterraces, with their balustrades and obelisks and doubleflights of steps, form a stately setting to this centralchateau deait, through which the water gushes bymossy steps and channels to a splendid central compo-sition of superimposed basins flanked by recumbentriver-gods. All the garden-architecture at Lante merits specialstudy. The twin pavilions seem plain and insignificantafter the brilliant elevations of the great Roman villas,but regarded as part of the garden-scheme, and not asdominating it, they fall into their proper place, and areseen to be good examples of the severe but pure styleof the early cinque-cento. Specially interesting also isthe treatment of the retaining-wall which faces the en-trance to the grounds; and the great gates of the flower-gardens, and the fountains and garden-houses on theupper terraces, are all happy instances of Renaissancegarden-art untouched by barocchismo. At Lante, also, one sees one of the earliest examples 136. VILLAS NEAR ROME of the inclusion of the woodland in the the sixteenth-century villas had small groves ad-jacent to the house, and the shade of the natural wood-land was used, if possible, as a backing to the gardens;but at the Villa Lante it is boldly worked into the gen-eral scheme, the terraces and garden-architecture areskilfully blent with it, and its recesses are pierced bygrass alleys leading to clearings where pools surroundedby stone seats slumber under the spreading branches. The harmonizing of wood and garden is one of thecharacteristic features of the villas at Frascati; but asthese are mostly later in date than the Lante grounds,priority of invention may be claimed for the designerof the latter. It was undoubtedly from the Italian parkof the Renaissance that Le Notre learned the use of thewoodland as an adjunct to the garden; but in Francethese parks had for the most part to be planted, whereasin Italy the garden-archite
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