villanella

Updated: June 14, 2025

Hesitating among the cypresses on the verge of the olives gardens, Michelangelo called it La bella Villanella, and truly in its warm simplicity and shy loveliness it is just that, a beautiful peasant girl among the vines in a garden of olives.

Edward Hutton - Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations In Colour By William Parkinson: And Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition

And I shall lift up my eyes and behold once more the hill of gardens across Arno, with the Belvedere just within the old walls, and S. Miniato, like a white and fragile ghost in the sunshine, and La Bella Villanella couched like a brown bird under the cypresses above the grey olives in the wind and the sun.

Edward Hutton - Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations In Colour By William Parkinson: And Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition