d Cardinal Ferdinando in the Villa
Medici sustained the family tradition, but Cardinal Alexander Farnese
(Pope Paul III.) outrivalled them both, by filling the Farnese palace
with the most valuable collections ever amassed by a private
individual.[1]

Immediately succeeding Alexander Farnese Julius III. built the noble
Villa di Papa Giulio, and Pius IV. the charming Villa Pia; but nepotism
did not scandalously reassert itself until the last quarter of the
century, when the immense Villa Aldobrandini was erected by a nephew of
Clement VIII.

Pope Paul V. in his turn bestowed more than a million dollars upon his
Borghese nephews, to one of whom, Cardinal Scipione, we owe the
delightful Villa Borghese, just outside the Porta del Popolo.

Early in the next century the evil attained greater proportions. Olimpia
Pamphili, whose name and memory are perpetuated in the villa built by
her son, received from Pope Innocent X. more than two millions. But
Innocent seems to have a fair claim to his name when compared with his
immediate predecessor Urban VIII. who conferred upon his nephews, the
brothers Barberini, sums amounting to one hundred and five millions!

An architecture of pompous ostentation and riotous overloading of
ornament, the Baroque, now took the place of the classical beauty of the
Renaissance and art degraded became the slave of wealth, until the great
Cardinal Albani erected his villa to serve as her temple.

We are ready to expect great results in the villas and palaces of the
millionaires of the earlier half of the sixteenth century when we
reflect that they were executed by Bramante, Peruzzi, San Gallo, Michael
Angelo, and Raphael with a host of lesser men who would have been great
in any other age, and that the ruins of imperial Rome furnished them
with models for their designs and an inexhaustible quarry of statues,
columns, mosaics, and other materials.

The point of view of the present volume is the life rather than the art
of these villas, but it is not possible to ignore the stimulus which the
daily discovery of the masterpieces of ancient art afforded to the
artists of the day, and the connoisseurship imposed upon the rivalling
patrons and collectors.

In the chapters entitled: "The Finding of Apollo" and "The Lure of Old
Rome" I have striven to depict the influence of these discoveries upon
such sensitive souls as those of Raphael and Ligorio, and the gradual
education of the financier Chigi and