The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio (24 page)

T
HE VIEW FROM ONE OF THE CURVED LOGGIAS OF THE
V
ILLA
B
ADOER DELINEATES THE COMPLEXITY AND RICHNESS OF
P
ALLADIO’S STAIR DESIGN.

Palladio wrote that curved loggias “make an immensely pleasing sight,” and used them several times.
¹⁷
They are a perfect blend of utility and delight. Like a
barchessa,
they provide a sheltered space for various activities, but they are not parts of barns, serving chiefly as covered walkways, linking the house to distant outbuildings. Architecturally, the low loggias create an attractive setting that leads the eye to the higher pedimented temple front, which is the center of the composition. By curving the loggias, Palladio also achieved a startlingly novel effect: parallax—that is, the experience of the ever-shifting views between the staggered columns as one walks around the curve. Palladio was obviously influenced by his recent visit to the Villa Giulia in Rome, whose large hemicycle faces the garden, but his use of low, curved loggias to define a welcoming entrance court as well as to dramatize the main building was entirely original.

Since the Villa Mocenigo has been demolished, and both the Villa Trissino and the Villa Thiene at Cicogna—the other Palladio villas with curved loggias—were never completed, the remote Villa Badoer is the only surviving example of Palladio’s curved loggias. However, thanks to Inigo Jones—and to the designs in
Quattro libri
—circular loggias became one of the most popular British Palladian motifs. Robert Adam and James Gibbs both used curved loggias in country houses, and through Gibbs’s treatise, the device migrated to America, where it was
adopted by eighteenth-century planters. Mount Airy in Richmond County, one of the largest Virginia plantation houses, has enclosed curved loggias leading to outbuildings. George Washington built curved loggias when he expanded Mount Vernon. The delicate open loggias lead to outbuildings containing the kitchen and servants’ quarters.
¹⁸
Mount Vernon incorporates other Palladian elements: a large pediment over the entrance; a rear portico that serves as a grand garden piazza, or porch; and a beautiful
serliana
window in the main dining room. The contemporary American architect Allan Greenberg, who admires Washington, has built a handsome modern version of Mount Vernon in Connecticut.
¹⁹
The outbuildings contain a pool house and staff quarters. In another house with a distinctly Palladian plan, Greenberg enclosed the curved loggias to make a kitchen and a garden room, and used the outbuildings for a bedroom suite and the garages.
²⁰
The two wings embrace a gravel entrance court and still “seem like arms, to gather in those who approach the house,” as Palladio poetically wrote more than four centuries ago.
²¹

Palladio’s impact on classical architecture was decisive. He developed a simple set of architectural elements (vocabulary) and straightforward rules (grammar) that inspired and were used by succeeding generations of architects. In that regard, his influence on the language of building is comparable to the lasting impact that William Shakespeare has had on the English language. Palladio and Shakespeare both belong to the sixteenth century—Palladio was born in 1508, Shakespeare in 1564—yet, like the playwright, the architect does not seem a distant figure. Not because of his buildings, which relatively few people have seen, but rather because his way of making architecture—with noble porticoes and welcoming curved loggias—has become our own.

 • • • 

The front doors to the Villa Badoer are more than twelve feet high, surrounded by a beautiful carved stone frame. Above the doors are the intertwined
stemmi
of the Badoer and the Loredan, and on each side frescoed grotesques of welcoming jesters surmounted by festoons; larger panels are repeated over the two smaller doors that lead to the rectangular rooms on either side. The portico ceiling consists of extremely deep wooden coffers, mimicking the masonry coffers of ancient Roman vaults.

The floor of the portico is raised high above the ground and provides a vantage point overlooking the courtyard. Directly in front of the villa gates is a small bridge, and on the other side of the Scortico River the busy shopping street of Fratta. It’s nearing lunchtime, and there are people on the sidewalks. Suddenly I feel vulnerable and exposed, an interloper who has wandered onto the stage.

I slip out of the front gate, replacing the chain, and look for a place to eat. Sure enough, a sign advertises a Ristorante Palladio. The large dining room is full of workers. A noisy group of fifteen or more men with ruddy faces and overalls occupies a long table in the center; the rest of us, alone or in pairs, sit at smaller tables. No menu is offered, and for ten minutes nothing happens. Service in such local eateries—the Italian equivalent of American diners—is usually pretty quick. Suddenly a flurry of waiters appears, wheeling carts loaded with steaming plates. They fan out into the room bringing us the first course. There is a lull while we dispose of the dishes—gnocchi for me—and soon after the empty plates are whisked away, a second convoy of carts appears. This time the choice is between fish, chicken, and a dish that I don’t recognize. I’ve treated myself with the gnocchi, so I virtuously opt for the fish—some sort of small perch or trout—even though I dislike picking bones out of my
teeth. A final cart carries desserts, and I choose something that resembles flan.

The noise in the room has diminished considerably, in inverse proportion to the rising general level of contentment. I finish a cup of espresso that dampens the effect of a half-liter of wine and call for the bill. The waiter brings a small, tulip-shaped glass of clear liquid.

“Signore,” he says with a flourish.

It is not a question. Not wishing to appear rude, I accept the complimentary drink. The grappa is delicious.

Leaving the restaurant considerably lighter-headed—and heavier-bodied—than I was when I arrived an hour ago, I walk down the street. Passing the villa, which still appears to be empty, I have a sudden urge to go back in and take a second look. But while I was eating someone has secured the padlock. Was my ingression observed? Or was the man in the lane really the caretaker? I mentally tip my hat to him, and make my way back to the car.

^I
Palladio’s other son, Orazio, was studying law.

he back of the Villa Emo at Fanzolo looks out over a vast, featureless lawn, ending in a line of trees, that has replaced the “square garden of eighty campi trevigiani, through the middle of which runs a stream that makes the site very pretty and delightful,” as it was described by Palladio.
¹
Beyond the trees lies the plain of the Trevigiana, flat as a billiard table, a patchwork of plowed fields, hedgerows, and irrigation ditches. It is a hazy day, otherwise I could see the foothills of the Dolomites far to the north. In the same direction, only seven miles away, is the Villa Barbaro.

So close and yet so far. The rear of Barbaro is characterized by a secret garden with an ornate nymphaeum and a tinkling fountain; the back façade of Emo is almost bleak. There is no portico nor, according to
Quattro libri,
was one intended; no pediment, no columns or pilasters, no
serliana,
no thermal window, not even the usual line of modillions beneath the eaves—no classical motifs of any kind. The simplest of fascias, or horizontal bands, marks the division between the tall basement and the main floor. The window openings don’t have frames. Someone has painted the shutters green, but the touch of color only serves to emphasize the plainness of the architecture. The house is flanked by two lower wings whose backs are a utilitarian assortment of doors and windows. The roofs are punctuated
by more than a dozen stubby chimneys. At the end of each long wing is a dovecote in the form of a squat watchtower.

The building is astonishingly long, stretching about four hundred feet between the two towers. The left wing shows signs of once having been a warm ocher color, but its plaster walls, long without paint, are dark with patches of mold. Yet the weather-beaten condition, while hardly charming, does not undermine the architect’s intentions, quite the opposite. This is the most antique of Palladio’s villas, but instead of recalling the ancient city of majestic temples and monuments, it makes me think of another Rome: the orderly world of frugal military engineers, hard-traveling centurions, and implacable colonial administrators. This could easily be a barracks outpost in one of the farflung reaches of the empire. The architectural historian Vincent Scully called Emo “ruthless,” which accurately describes its soldierly, unsentimental soul.
²

A gravel path takes me to a curving double stair—an eighteenth-century addition that replaced the original straight stair—in the precise center of the house. The stair leads to a pair of doors that open into the
sala.
The imposing room is a large cube, about thirty feet high. My eye is drawn to the ceiling, coffered like a deep egg-crate, which is unique among Palladio’s villas. The coffers were discovered in the late 1930s hidden behind an ornate nineteenth-century plaster ceiling.
³
They are unpainted wood, carried on intersecting beams. The entablature and giant fluted Corinthian columns, like the rest of the décor of this dazzling room, are frescoed by Palladio’s old collaborator Giambattista Zelotti.

The Emo frescoes bear comparison to those of the Villa Barbaro. Zelotti and Veronese, who were almost the same age, had been apprentices together under Sanmicheli and had jointly decorated Palladio’s Palazzo da Porto. But by the 1550s they were
going their separate ways. There is no doubt that Veronese, whose fame in Venice came to rival that of Titian and Tintoretto, was the more accomplished painter. But in many ways Zelotti was a better decorator—that is, he was more sensitive to the architecture and more interested in the purely ornamental aspects of his art. Palladio worked with him several times, not only at the Villa Godi and La Malcontenta but also at the Villa Caldogno, the Palazzo Chiericati, and again, here, at the Villa Emo, their happiest collaboration.

It’s easy to see Palladio’s hand in the design of the frescoed architectural elements. The lower part of the wall is a faux marble dado that incorporates the doors leading into the side rooms. Prisoners in Michelangelesque poses recline next to piles of war trophies atop the dado ledge. The upper part of the wall contains frescoed niches with bronze statues of gods and goddesses symbolizing the elements; between the niches are lifelike scenes representing manly Roman virtues. Below, frescoed bronze panels depicting military processions allude to ancestral Emo victories over Lutherans and Turks. The festoons of wild roses that are slung between the columns and trail down to the floor form a gay counterpoint to the martial theme.

Above the door that I have just entered is an elaborate wood carving of the Emo coat of arms—alternating diagonals of crimson and silver—set within gilded scrolls and surmounted by the winged lion of St. Mark. Two mailed fists emerge dramatically from the wall on each side, one holding a sword, the other a general’s mace crowned by a helmet. The effect is at once magnificent and slightly lugubrious. On the opposite wall, a frescoed ceremonial archway topped by a broken pediment forms a somewhat precarious perch for two reclining, half-clothed maidens representing Abundance and Prudence. Zelotti painted their garments draped casually over the edge of the pediment,
throwing complicated shadows on the moldings below. The archway frames the entrance vestibule, whose double doors are filled with translucent leaded-glass panes. The faux marble dado continues into the vestibule, and includes frescoed niches whose allegorical bronze statues of Conjugal Love and Household Economy (a woman holding a roll of accounts) welcome the visitor. The upper part of the walls and the vaulted ceiling depict a charming grape arbor with wooden trelliswork, twining vines, and a hovering winged cherub.

The plan of the Villa Emo is simplicity itself. Eschewing cruciform
salas
and intricate geometry, Palladio returned to the straightforward layout of his second villa, the Villa Valmarana: back-to-back portico and
sala,
sandwiched between suites of rooms lined up one behind the other. The plan is simple but refined: the largest rooms are accessed directly from the
sala;
the medium-size rooms have their own exterior entrances from the portico; the small rooms sit snugly in between. The medium and small rooms have Palladio’s favorite proportions—a square, and a square and a half—while the large rooms are a square and two thirds. With great finesse, he placed the two staircases between the loggia and the
sala,
producing a plan that resembles a tic-tac-toe diagram. The main room dimensions in
Quattro libri
are 16 and 27 Vicentine feet, which sounds arbitrary until I realize that both measures are a multiple of 5
¹
/
₃
Vicentine feet (27 feet is five modules rounded-off; the actual dimension in the house is 26 feet 7 inches, which is almost exactly five modules).
⁴
In fact, all the spaces in the Villa Emo are modular: the small rooms are two by three modules, the medium rooms are three by three, the large rooms and the portico are three by five, and the
sala
is five by five. In terms of simple mathematical ratios, this is the most perfectly resolved of all Palladio’s villas, and since it is very beautiful, it’s a compelling argument for simple room proportions. I’m not sure if the actual size of the module is significant; it was probably merely a convenient way to subdivide 16 feet. Using a module enabled Palladio to achieve dimensional control. Since workmen did not carry measuring tapes, all they needed was a stick 5 feet 4 inches long, and a simple set of instructions: “make the portico three by five sticks, the
sala
five by five sticks,” and so on.
^I