Of the architects of this intervening stage the greatest was Giacomo Barozzi, surnamed Vignola after the little town where he was born in the province of Modena. He was a man of theories, had great knowledge of classical architecture, and wrote a manual on the architectural orders which enjoyed great authority for two centuries and more. He built various buildings at Bologna, and designed a gigantic palace at Piacenza for the Farnesi, the ducal children of Alexander Farnese, Paul III, and nephews of the beautiful Giulia. The art of making gardens, of using cypress trees, greensward, pools, terraces, and clumps of ilex as joint partners with stone, brick, and stucco, in one artistic whole, had come into being in the sixteenth century; and Vignola was one of the masters of this new art. He designed the Farnese gardens on the Palatine Hill, since destroyed by time, neglect, subsequent owners, and eager archaeologists. He was an artist of great ideas, and sometimes caught the grand manner. On the other hand, he also helped to bring on the Baroque. His famous church at Rome, the Gesu, despite its vast, high-arching nave, lent itself with fatal facility to a gorgeous hideousness of decoration, and set the fashion for many imitative Jesuit churches, which caught the hideous gorgeousness but missed the grandeur of their exemplar. He had an important part in building the _Villa di Papa Giulio_ (Pope Julius III), a little outside the city walls, charming in its grace, its variety, and its succession of arcades, courts, loggias, balustrades, grotto, terrace, and garden.