Print Specifics:
- Type of print: Wood engraving or Xylograph - Original antique print "... designed by the most celebrated artists."
- Year of printing: not indicated in the print - actual: 1875
- Publisher: D. Appleton & Co, 549 and 551 Broadway
- Condition: 1 (1. Excellent - 2. Very good - 3. Good - 4. Fair)
- Dimensions: 9.5 x 13 inches (24 x 33 cm), including blank margins (borders) around the images.
- Paper weight: 3 (1. Thick - 2. Heavier - 3. Medium heavy - 4. Slightly heavier - 5. Thin)
- Reverse side: Blank
- Notes:
- Green color around the print in the photo is a contrasting background on which the print was photographed.
- The print detail is sharper than the photo of the print.
- Original Narrative: Elevated on the hill of the gardens whence it dominates city and fields, the Villa
Medici , which you see from all sides, is masked by the two pavilions
rising out above the trees, over a broad and clear façade. From the
exterior side which faces towards Rome, the building has a cold look ;
windows of tolerable simplicity and very spacious, a very high doorway
crowned by a balcony-such is the unostentatious arrangement adopted in
1540 by Annibale Lippi, when he erected the palace for the Cardinal
Montepulciano. This soberness has been well conceived , especially if
at the time they had the intention of making of the opposite side a gem
of architecture enriched by
a collection of bas-reliefs, the precious fragments of antique
sculpture. This façade with its portico sustained on splendid columns
and watched by lions, is in vivid contrast with the other, of which the
design has without the slightest proof been attributed to Michelangelo.
It is probable, for the rest, that the plan was modified when Cardinal
Alessandro de Medici acquired possession of it, and gave it a name. He
amused himself by decorating it in the few periods of leisure which he
was allowed under Clement VIII . from the negotiations with which he
was charged at the courts of various sovereigns , and among others at
the court of the Béarnais, Henry IV. On the death of Aldobrandini , the
cardinal having been chosen pope on the 1st of April, 1605 , he took
the name of Leo XI., and died only twenty-seven days after, leaving as
many regrets as he had inspired
hopes. The Cardinal de Medici commenced collections which under the
Florentine sovereigns continued to enrich the villa on the Pincian : on
the vase placed in front of the steps was once seen the Mercury of John
of Bologna ; a document recently published informs us that in 1671 the
young marquis of Seignelay admired in these gardens a Cleopatra ,
Ganymede, Marsyas, as well as Niobe with her fourteen children . It was
Cosmo III . who , towards the end of his interminable reign , despoiled
the Roman villa for the benefit of his gallery of the Uffizi at
Florence ; the deserted husband of Margaret of Orleans died an
octogenarian in 1723.
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