The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio (12 page)

Palladio’s design is nothing more than a screen wrapped around an existing building. But what a screen! It is entirely built of hard, white Piovene limestone, and it is
thick.
To further strengthen the arcade, and to resist the lateral thrust of the fifteenth-century building, Palladio uses paired columns to support the
serliana
arches, so the screen wall is actually about five feet deep. And it is a very complicated screen, combining half-columns, full columns, pilasters, arches, and entablatures. The large half-columns, which correspond to the piers, rise a full floor to support an architrave. The lower columns are Doric, the upper Ionic. Like all Renaissance architects, Palladio believed that in multistory buildings the orders should be used in strictly hierarchical fashion. “Doric will always be placed under the Ionic, the Ionic under the Corinthian, and the Corinthian under the Composite,” he wrote.
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The Doric entablature is decorated with traditional garlanded bucrania, or depictions of ox skulls, a reference to the sacrificial function of ancient Roman temples. The
serlianas,
supported on paired columns, are inserted within the almost square bays. In the triangular spaces between the arch and the entablature Palladio pierces
oculi
that subtly mimic the round windows of the great hall above. The other nod to the existing building is the vaults that support the galleries, which are not classical frescoed barrel vaults but
Gothic-style brick cross-vaults. Thanks to such subtle stylistic accommodations, Palladio accomplished the improbable feat of wedding an
all’antica
loggia to the immense Gothic box.

According to Vasari, who saw the lower level of the loggia almost complete, the Basilica, as Palladio called his building, was “much renowned.”
¹³
This single work would assure its maker a prominent place in the architectural pantheon—and Palladio knew it. “I have no doubt at all that this building can be compared to antique structures and included amongst the greatest and most beautiful buildings built since antiquity,” he observed.
¹⁴
The Basilica represents Palladio’s peculiar position with respect to the architectural currents of his time; for despite his awareness of the latest fashion, his provincial status kept him out of the mainstream. Thus, while the Basilica was not in the style of Sanmicheli and Giulio, it did manipulate classical elements in an emotive, mannered fashion. For example, the entablature of the
serliana
created the illusion that it was interrupted by the half-columns, just as the half-columns created the illusion that they, and not the piers behind them, supported the arcade. “How hard he worked at that,” marveled Goethe on his visit to Vicenza in 1786, “how the tangible presence of his creations makes us forget that we are being hypnotized!”
¹⁵

Every evening I walk across the Piazza dei Signori, from the trattoria where I regularly eat dinner to my hotel. The ivory-white Basilica shimmers in the moonlight. Goethe characterized architecture as frozen music, which well describes this extraordinary building. I don’t know what kind of music Goethe heard when he looked at the Basilica, but I hear percussion—the great jazz drummer Philly Joe Jones, my boyhood idol. The tall half-columns are the steady rhythm beat of the bass drum, which Palladio accentuates by breaking the extremely deep cornice and projecting it forward over each capital. At the attic level, a statue above each column provides a high-pitched cymbal clash. The two levels of the arcade keep slightly different times, the lower Roman Doric, with its staccatolike frieze, is more articulated, while the upper Ionic is more delicate and smooth. At the end of the building, which is nine bays long, a cluster of three columns (topped by three statues) marks a pause—a drum roll—and the beat continues around the corner. The arches of the
serlianas
weave a sinuous backbeat, which is punctuated by the double tom-tom pulse of the
oculi,
and the rim-shots of the keystones, which are in the form of
mascheroni,
or grotesque masks.

A
DETAIL OF THE LOGGIA, FROM
Q
UATTRO LIBRI

Despite the masks and statues, the muscular loggias of the Basilica are relatively plain. The plainness emphasizes the Basilica’s three-dimensional sculptural quality. In a typical vertical section of the loggia I count at least fifty distinct projecting and receding planes (compared to perhaps half a dozen in a modern façade). The vigorous modeling of cornices, moldings, and entablatures, the deep frieze, and the orchestrated play between solid and void create a chiaroscuro effect that represented a new interest for Palladio.

He owed his awareness of modeling to Giangiorgio Trissino. In September 1545, shortly before Palladio was to submit his first design for the Basilica, the Count took him on a five-month excursion to Rome—Palladio’s second visit. The entourage included Marco Thiene, who was a cousin of Marc’antonio, and Giambattista Maganza, a painter who had been a pupil of Titian and became Palladio’s close friend and sometime collaborator. Marco Thiene described the outing as a “travelling Academia Trissiniana.” Some historians believe Trissino arranged the trip precisely at this critical juncture to offer Palladio a further opportunity to hone his architectural skills.
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In that case, the architect Palladio could not have missed in Rome was
Michelangelo, who had just begun work on St. Peter’s and on the Capitoline Hill complex. While there was nothing yet built, Palladio would have been able to study models and drawings, which would account for the vigorous and sculptural Michelangelesque quality of the Basilica loggias.

It would be another three years before the Great Council appointed Palladio architect of the Basilica. Trissino was still Palladio’s strongest supporter, and he likely played a behind-the-scenes role in the early deliberations of the building committee, but he was not in Vicenza during the final debate. He had become embroiled in a bitter dispute with his son by a first marriage, whom the Count wanted to disinherit. It was an ugly feud. At one point, Trissino broke into his son’s house looking for papers, and the son in turn had bailiffs eject his sickly, seventy-year-old father from his Cricoli home. The matter went before the magistrates, who not only found in the son’s favor but cruelly stripped Trissino of all his possessions, including his precious villa. Unable to reverse the decision, the embittered—and now impoverished—Count left Vicenza and moved to Rome. He stayed in Marco Thiene’s house, where, ill and suffering from gout, he heard of Palladio’s Basilica appointment. Trissino may have had the good news from Palladio himself. According to Paolo Gualdo’s contemporary account, Palladio was in Rome in December 1549, at the behest of Pope Paul III.
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It is heartening to think of mentor and protégé meeting one last time. Giangiorgio Trissino died the following year, a copy of his beloved Vitruvius by his bedside.

 • • • 

I am reminded of the Basilica as I walk up to the loggia of the Villa Poiana. Palladio designed the villa just as he was finalizing the plans for the Basilica, and obviously
serlianas
were uppermost on his mind. The tall arched opening leads into a long, barrel-vaulted space with white walls and a beautifully frescoed ceiling. A cross-vault in the center echoes the archway of the
serliana.
The semicircular fresco over the door depicts the Poiana coat of arms and an assortment of military trophies, anomalously edged by a border of gay wildflowers. On the projecting architrave of the door frame, a bust of the bearded
padrone,
Bonifacio Poiana, gazes sternly down on his callers. The large door is locked.

I go around to the side wing and what appears to be a service entrance. There’s a small car parked next to the house. A temporary signboard announces that the commune of Poiana Maggiore is in the process of refurbishing the villa—that accounts for the raw, graded earth, the brand-new rainwater gutters around the roof, and the patches of fresh plaster on the walls. I tap on the window.

A woman opens the door. She’s wearing rubber gloves and a kerchief around her head. I can see a mop and pail behind her. I ask if it’s possible to visit the house, explaining that I’ve come from Philadelphia. She seems happy to be interrupted.

“Come in,” she says. “I’ll show you around.”

The large room in which we are standing occupies the entire east wing. A door at the far end leads into the central block. We enter a square room with crescent-shaped quarter-vaults, or lunettes, in each corner. The space is bare—none of the rooms is furnished—but the interior has obviously been recently restored to its original state. (In the 1950s, the villa had been converted into a tenement, subdivided, and rented to six local families.
¹⁸
) We pass into a
camerino,
perhaps once used as an intimate cabinet or study, with an elaborate cross-vaulted ceiling and frescoes. The subjects are
grottesche
—grotesques—fanciful figures of satyrs, cherubs, monkeys, and parrots. They are the work of Bernardino India, who may have done the ceiling frescoes at the Villa Pisani.

T
HE ARCHED MOTIF OF THE SERLIANA IS ECHOED IN THE WINDOW OVER THE DOOR AS WELL AS IN THE VAULTED CEILING.

From here, we enter the
sala.
As usual it is the tallest room, with ceilings about thirty feet high, although less grand than the cruciform hall of the Villa Pisani. The walls, devoid of architectural ornament, are painted white. The ceiling, partially frescoed, is a simple barrel vault. Light enters the room through small arched windows at each end, and through windows on each side of the doors; the
oculi
in the rear wall project sunny circles onto the floor. The arc of
oculi
is repeated on both end walls of the
sala
—circular windows at one end, recesses at the other. The vault itself corresponds exactly to the semicircular archway of the façade. The effect is very beautiful. In each new villa Palladio is achieving a greater sense of unity, not only relating the back to the front but also the interior to the exterior.

Across the
sala
is a reverse sequence of rooms: a small study, a medium-size square room, and finally a larger room.

“La Sala degli Imperatori,” my guide announces.

I am obviously supposed to be impressed. The room is the same size as the
sala
and the raised coved ceiling makes it almost as tall. Walls and ceiling are covered in frescoes. The flat panel on the ceiling depicts a Roman equestrian battle scene, fierce but curiously bloodless. The walls have painted niches filled with statues of Roman war heroes—the emperors. A painted window looks out on an Arcadian scene in which an old man extinguishes the torch of war on the altar of peace, probably a reference to the Peace of Bologna, which in 1529 officially ended the Cambrai war. These frescoes are the work
of Anselmo Carnera, who was also working with Palladio on the Palazzo Thiene. The painted architectural framework of Ionic columns and niches in the Sala degli Imperatori bears a marked resemblance to the drawing of a “Corinthian hall” in
Quattro libri.
“They [the Romans] made the vault either semicircular or coved, that is, its
frezza
[the radius of the cove] was a third of the breadth of the hall,” Palladio wrote, “and it had to be decorated with compartments of stucco and paintings.”
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The layout of the room in the Villa Poiana precisely follows this recommendation, which makes it likely that the overall design of the painted décor, as in the Villa Godi, was Palladio’s responsibility.

The woman beckons me to follow her back to the
sala
where a door leads to a staircase. The brick treads are illuminated by natural light, since Palladio thoughtfully provided a window looking onto the loggia. The stair goes down to the basement. Here the construction is brick: heavy walls, vaulted ceilings. The extremely low vaults—I can almost touch the ceiling—are reinforced by iron tie-bars; the floors are brick. It’s surprisingly bright, the whitewashed surfaces reflecting the light that enters through the small windows. There is nothing improvised about the design: the intersecting curves of the broad vaults have the simple but affecting beauty that straightforward engineering sometimes achieves. Although the basement is empty, I imagine it as a bustling place, with large tables for food preparation, cooking fires, ovens, and rows of copper and cast-iron pots. Much of the cool space would have been used for food storage: casks of wine, containers of olive oil and vinegar, barrels of pickles and salted meats, hams and sausages hanging from the ceiling. On rainy days there would have been racks of clothes drying, for laundering was also done here.