Palladian Days (19 page)

Finally we sort out the problem. We have been relying on a photographic reprint of the 1738 English-language translation of
Four Books
, not a reliable source because its illustrations might vary from those in the original 1570 Italian edition. In any case, the illustrations in both editions are woodcuts, which can be somewhat elastic. With further reading we learn that every Palladian expert seems to have his own idea of a Vicentine foot, ranging from 34.7 centimeters to 35.7 centimeters. Since the villa's site was originally part of the province of Treviso, we feel we should also consider the possibility that the workers there might actually have used the Tre-visan foot, not the Vicentine one, despite what Palladio wrote. A hurried transatlantic phone call to Doug Lewis produces the information that the Trevisan foot is 34.8 centimeters. Since that falls within the range of lengths we have for the Vicentine foot, we decide that is the unit we will go with. Immediately we are able to confirm that the width of the Noah room as built is 16 Trevisan feet almost on the nose, the same number that Palladio marked on the Villa Cornaro floor plan in
Four Books
.

The length of the room is more problematic. Palladio's drawing specifies it as 26.5 feet. Our own measurements show that it was built at 27.03 feet—a discrepancy of about 18.5 centimeters. The difference is important because we are trying to determine what theoretical system Palladio used to establish the ratio of width to length in the room. Vitruvius, an architect of ancient Rome whose treatise on architecture, rediscovered in the 1400s, deeply influenced Palladio and other Renaissance architects, believed that 6,10, and 16 were “perfect” numbers and that the ratio of 6 to 10 was
commonly found in nature, including some dimensions of the human body. In the Vitruvian system, a room whose width is 16 feet should be 26.667 feet long order to reflect a 6:10 ratio. The Noah room varies slightly from that ratio, both as marked by Pal-ladio on his drawing and as built (and measured by Carl and me). However, the marked and built dimensions are all within 12.7 centimeters (1.4 percent) of the theoretical ratio. The difference could be explained simply as rounding or might reflect Palladio's instruction that walls be built thinner as they rise. On the other hand, there are some other closely related mathematical ratios that might hold the answer, such as V3, the Fibonacci series, or the golden section.

The Noah room, used by the Gables for dining, with rooms beyond aligned on an east-west axis.

I am exhilarated to find so many mysteries still surrounding my
villa after 450 years. They bring a challenge to each day and a promise that we will never be bored in Piombino Dese.

When he leads tour groups through the villa, Carl tells them that the harmony and balance of the interior are what distinguish Palla-dio's own work from Palladianism. Palladianism in architecture today usually means appropriating some exterior motif, perhaps the double projecting portico of Villa Cornaro, the five-part profile of Villa Barbaro, or the oculi of Villa Poiana. Behind those copied exterior motifs hides a jumble of interior spaces. Standing in one room of a modern “Palladian” structure, you have no idea what size or shape or twist or turn awaits you beyond the next door. In a villa designed by Palladio himself, you can stand in one corner room and, without even having seen the rest of the structure, draw a complete floor plan. That is the result of Palladio's interior balance and harmony, the relationship of the parts to each other and to the whole.

“That is what you should learn from your visit to Palladio's villas,” Carl tells them. “You cannot learn it any other way.”

Despite Carl's agony in preparing for it, his Harvard Club speech is a big success. His approach is to back off and discuss how Palladio responded to newly emerging economic needs of his time. He points out that, although the Republic of Venice in Palladio's time continued to act like a rich and powerful nation-state with its mainland empire spread along the islands and coasts of the eastern Mediterranean, it was in fact moribund.

Three crushing events of the prior century, all within a span of about fifty years, tolled the death knell of the republic, although few recognized the peals: the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Columbus's discovery of America in 1492, and Vasco da Gama's pioneering of the sea route around Africa to India and the Orient in 1498. For 250 years much of Venice's wealth had come from its domination of European trade with the East. The Ottoman capture of Constantinople marked the end of the Venetian
monopoly on trade in the eastern Mediterranean, while da Gama demonstrated that the Mediterranean could be bypassed completely in reaching India. Columbus brought the biggest blow of all: Trade with the New World proved much more lucrative than trade with Asia, leading to the rise of the Atlantic powers whose advanced technology in sailing ships beat out the galley ships of the Mediterranean.

By the mid-ijoos the Venetians were in a fury to develop their territory on the mainland into plantations. They needed a source of wealth and agricultural produce to replace their threatened resources in the eastern Mediterranean. Most important for later architecture, the grand Venetian families needed equally grand places to live while they were in the countryside to supervise the planting and harvest seasons on their new lands. They wanted country palaces as imposing as their homes in Venice but, of course, since the country villas were only for seasonal use, they wanted something cheap.

In Carl's analysis, Palladio brought a three-part solution. First, he achieved the grandeur his Venetian patrons were seeking by adapting exterior motifs that the Romans—and the Greeks before them—had used for temples and public buildings. Second, to hold costs down, he executed his villas in brick covered with stucco to resemble marble or Istrian stone, and he used other cost-saving shortcuts such as incorporating foundations from earlier buildings or occasionally substituting terra-cotta for stone. Third, he organized his interiors with the balance and harmony that Carl and I have enjoyed exploring.

Later, Carl gives versions of the speech to several other groups in Atlanta and once even to the Newburyport Historical Society in Massachusetts. As personal Internet Web sites are introduced, Carl cajoles our son Carl—who after college turns his artist's training toward graphic design, including Web sites—into helping him assemble a site on Palladio's villas (www.boglewood.com/palla-dio/). The text of his Harvard Club speech is the core of the site, but he adds bells and whistles, such as a biography of Palladio, a census
of the villas, and a bibliography. He also creates a time line that organizes nineteen key events of Venice's original settlement, expansion, and final decline. To everyone's surprise, the site is soon getting hundreds of visitors every day. Several college professors e-mail Carl to say they have made his Web site required reading for their students.

“Oh, Signora Sally, you can't do that!” Silvana protests. Tradition is a powerful force in a Palladian villa.

We cannot replace the faux antique chairs in the Tower of Babel room with a bright tomato-red contemporary sofa, Silvana explains to me in the gentlest possible way. We must find a way to rescind the order we have just placed with the furniture store in Loreggia, she suggests.

Dick and Julie Rush furnished the villa with antique tables, chairs, sofas,
cassoni
, and
armadi
, most from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though salted with a scattering of reproductions. Several pieces are as old as the villa, but only one of those—a small canopied bed—is from the Veneto. The Rushes wandered Europe and haunted the auction houses for good buys. Many pieces they shipped to the States at their departure, but other items were not worth the trouble and freight, or would not fit into their new Florida home. Dick sold them to us for a lump sum. We became owners of dozens of interesting and desperately uncomfortable chairs, numerous large tables, and several nice
armadi
, including the beautiful armoire that determined our new kitchen color scheme. There are lots of old bed frames and mattresses as well, and Julie has left enough plates and kitchenware to suffice until we can assemble our own.

Like newlyweds, Carl and I plot what we need immediately (new
kitchen, new beds) and what we hope to add over time (comfortable sofas, rugs, bookcases, a new washer-dryer, good china). Afternoon sorties carry us to Bassano for a set of pretty white casual china with a raised border of lily of the valley; to Loreggia for a bright red teakettle and kitchen cups and saucers; to the De Grandis shop just down the street for gorgeous heavy pots and pans and Villeroy & Bosch wineglasses. One afternoon's excursion takes us to Castel-franco for a fax machine so that Carl can transact business while at the villa.

Our initial plan is not to change any of the furniture on the lower floor, where tourists visit, but to focus our nesting efforts upstairs, which we have to ourselves. Our plan collapses when we begin to realize that all of our leisure time downstairs is spent huddied
at the kitchen table because none of the other chairs on that floor is comfortable enough to linger in. That is what leads to our tradition-shattering decision to introduce comfortable seating to the Babel room. Despite her initial misgivings, Silvana admires the sofa when it is installed, as well as the two new large brown leather chairs. Visiting tour guides and their clients are not shocked. In fact, they scarcely notice the changes because, we find, the spirit of the space is not set by the new furniture or even the several old pieces we have left; it derives as ever from Palladio's proportions and from the character and soft colors of the surrounding frescos and stuccos. The Tower of Babel room becomes our den, where we spend comfortable hours reading, visiting with guests, drinking coffee after breakfast and dinner.

Renaissance wrought-iron canopied bed

Our farthest shopping destination is Milan. We find it is easily accessible via a 6:50 a.m.
treno diretto
(through train) from Castel-franco which arrives in Milan at 9:15 a.m. We wander the art deco stores there, ultimately finding a Carlo Zen suite for Carl's office above the Babel room. Its Liberty-style mahogany looks stupendous against the walls’ old pale lavender-and-moss-green stenciling.

Rugs are a high priority for me, to brighten the look and soften the feel of terra-cotta and terrazzo floors. In Atlanta I make the rounds of oriental-rug shops, studying different varieties and trying to understand prices. My special favorites are those art deco rugs woven in China in the 1920s and 1930s. They sprang from the work of an Englishman named Walter Nichols who transported English wool and a fine design sense to China, creating employment for several communities. A number of imitators soon sprang up. The rugs are thick and soft, with deep background colors and art deco designs of birds and flowers. But as Wilma Scquizzato and her husband Paolo drive me around to rug stores and
mercantini
—flea markets—in the Veneto, I'm horrified at the prices, astronomically higher than anything I've seen in Georgia. I begin looking in flea markets and smaller rug shops in Atlanta and encounter some luck in finding, now and again, large Chinese deco rugs at reasonable prices. I buy five or six over a period of three years, carrying them
to Lufthansa's freight service, which transports them direct to Venice. Giacomo is challenged by the process, because he has the burden of driving to Marco Polo Airport to liberate them from the customs and value-added-tax offices. He groans each time I phone him to say I've found another bargain, knowing that three or four hours of negotiation with various government officials lie ahead. He spreads the rugs in the rooms designated in my phone call: olive green in the Tower of Babel room, emerald green in the guest room downstairs, cherry red in our bedroom, umber in the east square bedroom, dark gold in the east living room, purple in the upstairs hall.

Carl makes a special project of finding us a suitable set of china. In our second spring we march into a Ginori retail shop in Padua, clutching artwork of the Cornaro family crest that Carl has asked a graphic artist friend in Atlanta to prepare. Can Ginori produce a special service with the crest in its center? “Of course,” they reply without hesitation. Now we have reached the critical issue: What's the price? To our surprise, the setup charge for the special design is quite modest. Maybe our request is more routine than we thought. In the fall, our new Ginori china awaits us. Returning to the shop in Padua to pick it up, I notice that an extra plate has been produced and is displayed in the shopwindow.