The Villa Medici, one of the many country residences of the great Lorenzo, brings home very forcibly the life of entertaining associated with that Florentine school of thought, the Platonic Academy. Such a villa, designed solely to provide luxurious mental refreshment, and placed in the most beautiful situation of any round Florence, could not fail to attract scholars for the interchange and acquisition of knowledge. If the life may have inclined to ease, at least the architecture of the place rises to a very great level. There is probably as much dignity of learning expressed in the long simple lines of the terraces cut out of the hill below Fiesole, as there ever was in all cultivating arguments prompted within its precincts. As one of the buildings, therefore, which make the dawn of the Renaissance, and in which the newly born love of art and freedom were fostered and spread abroad, the Villa has a special interest. As work of garden architecture, it was a thoroughly sound conception, and one of the most important foundations of future garden design.
H. Ingo Triggs
H. Ingo Triggs
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