at the present day as one enters, with
the suite of rooms that are about it. And since the place has no living
rock, and no quarries from which to excavate material for hewn and
carved stone, such as are used in building by those who can obtain them,
he made use of brick and baked stone, which he afterwards worked over
with stucco; and with this material he made columns, bases, capitals,
cornices, doors, windows, and other things, all with most beautiful
proportions. And he executed the decorations of the vaults in a new and
fantastic manner, with very handsome compartments, and with richly
adorned recesses, which was the reason that the Marquis, after a
beginning so humble, then resolved to have the whole of that building
reconstructed in the form of a great palace.

[Illustration: THE MARRIAGE BANQUET OF CUPID AND PSYCHE

(_After the fresco by =Giulio Romano=. Mantua: Palazzo del Te_)

_Alinari_]

Thereupon Giulio made a very beautiful model, all of rustic work both
without and within the courtyard, which pleased that lord so much, that
he assigned a good sum of money for the building; and after Giulio had
engaged many masters, the work was quickly carried to completion. The
form of the palace is as follows: The building is quadrangular, and has
in the centre an open courtyard after the manner of a meadow, or rather,
of a piazza, into which open four entrances in the form of a cross.
The first of these traverses straightway, or rather, passes, into a very
large loggia, which opens by another into the garden, and two others
lead into various apartments; and these are all adorned with stucco-work
and paintings. In the hall to which the first entrance gives access the
vaulting is wrought in various compartments and painted in fresco, and
on the walls are portraits from life of all the favourite and most
beautiful horses from the stud of the Marquis, together with the dogs of
the same coat or marking as the horses, with their names; which were all
designed by Giulio, and painted in fresco on the plaster by the painters
Benedetto Pagni and Rinaldo Mantovano, his disciples, and so well, in
truth, that they seem to be alive.

From this hall one passes into a room which is at one corner of the
palace, and has the vaulting most beautifully wrought with compartments
in stucco-work and varied mouldings, touched in certain places with
gold. These mouldings divide the surface into four octagons, which
enclose a picture in th