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Chap. XI. PERUZZI. 389 The Farnesina Palace, as it is now called, has been poetically described by Vasari as “non murato ma nato”. 1 It is one of the finest of its kind and embodies grace, solidity, and correct proportion. There is no reason to believe that Peruzzi completed it later than 1509 or 1510, 2 at which time not only the main block had been erected and covered externally with subjects, 3 * but the garden-lodge had been finished. In the flat central roof of the latter, Peruzzi drew Perseus overcoming Gorgon, and a female furiously driving a car drawn by oxen; in the curves, gods and goddesses, such as Venus combing her hair on a couch, Pallas preparing for a hunt, Hercules and the lion, Hercules and Hydra, Apollo and the centaur, Leda on the back of the swan, Jove and Europa, Venus and Saturn, Ganymede on the shoulders of the eagle; 1 in the vaulting of the windows, males and females, mostly seated and variously occupied; 5 in the spandrils above the capitals, cupids in dead colour; 6 and in other supplementary spaces, river-gods on monsters, the whole surrounded by monochrome borders so graceful and so ably conceived that Titian declared he could not distin guish them from stone. 7 At a later period, Sebastian del Piombo covered the lunettes purposely left bare by Pe ruzzi, including one which tradition assigns to Michael Angelo. 6 Raphael introduced the beauteous Galatea on the wall below, and Poussin, a number of landscapes. The authorship of Peruzzi has been contested in spite of Va sari’s text, 9 and in defiance of the evidence of style; and the ceiling of the Loggia has been ascribed to Daniel da Volterra, perhaps in consequence of the confusion caused by the similarity of names between the Palazzo Farnese where Daniel did work, and the Palazzo della Farnesina 1 lb. ib. 2 Painted before Raphael had reached the pinnacle of bis fame (Vas. X. 123). 3 They have perished. 1 On blue ground. 5 On gold ground. 6 On green ground. ■> Vas. VIII. 223. s See Lanzi (History of painting ub. sup. I. 148) who confounds the two Palaces of the Farnesina and Farnese. 3 Vas. VIII. 223.