f a villa, for Signor Girolamo de' Godi; and at
Angarano another for Count Jacopo Angarano, which is truly most
beautiful, although it appears a small thing to the great mind of that
lord. At Quinto, also, near Vicenza, he erected not long ago another
palace for Count Marc'Antonio Tiene, which has in it more of the grand
and the magnificent than I could express. In short, Palladio has
constructed so many vast and lovely buildings within and without
Vicenza, that, even if there were no others there, they would suffice
to make a very handsome city with most beautiful surroundings.

In Venice the same Palladio has begun many buildings, but one that is
marvellous and most notable among them all, in imitation of the houses
that the ancients used to build, in the Monastery of the Carita. The
atrium of this is forty feet wide and fifty-four feet long, which are
exactly the diameters of the quadrangle, the wings being one-third and
a half of the length. The columns, which are Corinthian, are three
feet and a half in thickness and thirty-five feet high. From the
atrium one goes into the peristyle, that is, into a clauster (for thus
do the friars call their courts), which on the side towards the atrium
is divided into five parts, and at the flanks into seven, with three
orders of columns one above the other, of which the Doric is at the
foot, and above it the Ionic and the Corinthian. Opposite to the
atrium is the refectory, two squares in length, and as high as the
level of the peristyle, with its officines around it, all most
commodious. The stairs are spiral, in the form of an oval, and they
have neither wall nor column, nor any part in the middle to support
them; they are thirteen feet wide, and the steps by their position
support one another, being fixed in the wall. This edifice is all
built of baked stone, that is, of brick, save the bases of the
columns, the capitals, the imposts of the arches, the stairs, the
surface of the cornices, and the whole of the windows and doors. The
same Palladio has built for the Black Friars of S. Benedict, in their
Monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, a very large and most
beautiful refectory with its vestibule in front, and has begun to
found a new church, with such beautiful ordering, according as the
model shows, that, if it is carried to completion, it will prove a
stupendous and most lovely work. Besides this, he has begun the facade
of the Church of S. Francesco della Vigna, wh