The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio (16 page)

There is no exterior stair in the back; the only way to get to the garden from the
sala
is to go down one of the internal staircases, through the basement, and out a central door. Why didn’t Palladio repeat the portico on the garden side, or at least provide a recessed loggia and a stair on this, the south side of the house? It could not have been a question of cost—this was an expensive house. Perhaps he wanted to heighten the contrast between the private side facing the garden and the public side facing the Brenta. The flat rear façade also emphasizes the intense thrust of the projecting portico and gives this feature pride of place.

I take a last look at the front of the house. Seen up close, the
palatial façade is unusually animated. The water table at the base of the building is unplastered brick, and brick reoccurs in a heavy flat molding, called a fascia, that surrounds the house at the main-floor level, and again in a narrower terra-cotta band, corresponding to the entablature of the portico that defines the attic story. The shafts of the columns are also bare brick. Palladio used similar brick columns in several projects. “Mine eye hath never beheld any columns more stately of stone or marble,” recorded Sir Henry Wotton, who was British ambassador to Venice twenty years after Palladio’s death, “for the bricks having been first formed in a circular mould, and then cut before their burning into four quarters or more, the sides afterwards join so closely, and the joints concentrate so exactly, that the pillars appear one entire piece, shewing how in truth we want rather
art
than
stuff
to satisfy our greatest fancy.”
²⁸

The brick columns at La Malcontenta resemble elegant smokestacks, but to a sixteenth-century observer brick columns would appear merely robust. Their redness contrasts sharply with the white
marmorino
walls. The sloping eaves of the pediment as well as the terra-cotta cornice of the roof are also red. The two-tone color scheme is strikingly different from Palladio’s other villas and recalls the exuberant polychrome decoration of Venice’s famous late Gothic buildings—the stone-and-brick Campanile of San Marco, or the white-and-pink marble of the Doge’s Palace. Was he pandering to his Venetian clients? “The architect is frequently obliged to accommodate himself to the wishes of those who are paying rather than attending to what he should,” he once wrote, betraying an uncharacteristic note of wry resignation.
²⁹
On the whole, and despite his rare complaint, Palladio, like so many Renaissance artists, received exceptional support from his rich and powerful patrons. He also used his considerable personal charm to influence
his clients, and the relatively small number of stillborn projects attests to his powers of persuasion. But architects are always in a poor position to resist the demands of “those who are paying.” This weakness is compounded when a wide social gulf separates them from their clients, as it did in the sixteenth century.

In Palladio’s case, the gulf was particularly wide since he had risen from the ranks of the building trades, rather than from the—slightly—more prestigious fine arts. The only other important Renaissance architect to overcome the stigma of having been a manual worker was Antonio da Sangallo, who had started his career as a carpenter and ended by succeeding Bramante as architect of St. Peter’s. “I may be called Master Antonio,” da Sangallo once bragged, “but I would not exchange my life in Rome with anyone whatsoever.”
³⁰
This was no empty boast—though not achieving the status of
signor,
he became wealthy and lived on a grand scale. So did Giulio, who had been invited to compete for the Basilica. After coming to the Venetian Republic from Rome, he had built himself a splendid house in Mantua.
^III

James Ackerman has described the financial relations between Renaissance architects and their clients as a “mystery.”
³¹
Painters had elaborate written contracts that specified not only payment schedules but also details such as the subject and the quality of the paints, the colors, and even what was to be painted by the master and what could be delegated to assistants.
³²
Architects had emerged only in the previous century, replacing the medieval master builders, or
capomaestri.
On large public buildings architects
were usually paid a monthly retainer, but for private commissions, as far as we know, they did not have formal contracts. They were paid for delivering individual drawings—and they were not paid much. For example, Palladio received only four gold scudi for the plan and façade drawings of the Palazzo Chiericati. Such payments were sometimes augmented when additional details (for moldings, capitals, brackets, fireplaces) were required, and when supervisory visits to the building site were made, but the actual amounts seem to have been at the discretion of the client. The record shows that over the two years that the Palazzo Chiericati was under construction, its owner paid Palladio a total of fourteen gold scudi and
“una soma de peri”
—a load of pears.
³³

There is no complete record of Palladio’s financial situation at this time, but one thing is certain: the income from his private commissions was modest. His close friend the poet and painter Giambattista Maganza once observed wryly, “Uncle Andrea, what he earned he spent.”
³⁴
Since there is no indication that Palladio was extravagant, this can only be taken to mean that his income barely covered his expenses. He continued to receive a monthly stipend for his work on the Basilica—more than half of the lower arcade facing the Piazza dei Signori had been completed—but this was not sufficient to support his large family, which now included four sons, Leonida, Marc’antonio, Orazio, and Silla, and one daughter, Zenobia. Until he was fifty years old, Palladio earned so little that he did not even appear on the city’s tax rolls, and when his name was finally recorded, it was in the lowest bracket.
³⁵

The solution to Palladio’s financial problems was a salaried position in Venice. His reputation in provincial Vicenza did not count for much in the Most Serene Republic, but through his villa commissions he now had several influential backers among
the Venetian nobility. Daniele Barbaro, whom he had met in Padua a decade earlier, introduced him to Jacopo Contarini, a powerful minister in the Republic, a dilettante, and a scientific scholar who was also an architecture enthusiast. Contarini invited Palladio to stay in his house whenever he visited the city.
³⁶
Such contacts were important, yet the 1550s was hardly an auspicious time to establish a professional presence in Venice. Sansovino and Sanmicheli, the two Grand Old Men of architecture, were still on the scene. The brilliant Sansovino was firmly ensconced as
proto,
or construction manager, to the Procurators of St. Mark’s, who were responsible for the buildings around the piazza, and in this capacity was in effect Venice’s official architect. Hale in his seventies, he showed no sign of retiring. Sanmicheli, still the chief military architect of the Republic, was likewise active and currently designing the magnificent Palazzo Grimani on the Grand Canal. The latter promised to be the last major private project for some time, as the Venetian economy was entering a recession.

Starting in 1554, Palladio made several attempts to gain a Venetian foothold. He applied for the salaried position of
proto
of the salt magistracy, which managed the salt monopoly and was responsible for the majority of Venetian public works, but he did not get the job. A few years later, he entered an architectural competition to replace the old wooden Rialto bridge (Palladio had already built a large, hundred-foot bridge in timber for one of his villa clients). Although the competitors included Michelangelo as well as Sansovino, who was the clear favorite, the authorities temporized, and the expensive public project was set aside, not to be undertaken for another thirty years. Palladio also participated in a competition for a new main staircase (now called the Scala d’Oro) for the Doge’s Palace. Sansovino and Sanmicheli submitted a joint entry and, not surprisingly,
won. With Daniele Barbaro’s help, Palladio finally did receive a commission—to design a new façade for the cathedral of Venice. Yet before construction could begin, the Patriarch died and his successor abandoned the project.
^IV

Thus at the time that he was designing La Malcontenta, the forty-five-year-old Palladio, although growing in creative power, was blocked from large public commissions. What frustration he must have felt. So, as architects sometimes do, he used domestic commissions to demonstrate his architectural ideas. Le Corbusier did the same thing in the 1920s when he made white-walled suburban villas outside Paris manifestoes for his new modern architecture; Robert Venturi launched his career—and postmodernism—with a complicated little house designed for his mother in Philadelphia; and Frank Gehry signaled his startling new talent with an idiosyncratic remodeling of his own house, a bungalow in Santa Monica. La Malcontenta’s great imperial portico, which would be seen by dozens of Venetians passing on the Brenta—or on the road, which was the main ground route to Padua—really was a billboard; not only for the Foscari brothers but also for Palladio’s particular vision of Roman classicism.

^I
Twenty-one of the twenty-three villas in
Quattro libri
include room dimensions. Of the 211 rooms thus described, 56 are square, 27 are a square and a half, and 22 are a square and a third. The other recommended proportions appear less frequently: a square and two thirds, and two squares, account for only eight each; two rooms are round, and only one is a root-two rectangle (based on the diagonal of a square). In other words, Palladio followed Vitruvius’s recommendations only about half the time.

^II
Palladio used either Vicentine feet or Venetian feet, depending on the project’s location. A Vicentine foot was about fourteen modern inches; a Venetian foot was slightly shorter.

^III
Giulio’s financial success was also the result of his artistic production, including frescoes, paintings, and a notorious series of pornographic prints.

^IV
The façade of San Pietro, near the Arsenale, was finally realized forty years later, after Palladio’s death. Although his design was not followed exactly, the church is still worth a visit.

he main street of Piombino Dese, a large village east of Vicenza, is Via Roma. The busy artery is lined with unremarkable apartment buildings and neon-fronted shops. It’s Sunday morning and there’s not much traffic. A parking lot near the church is temporarily occupied by a traveling amusement park whose single attraction resembles a huge lazy Susan. Children line up to get on, then scream as the ride begins to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster, finally tilting and turning at the same time. The more daring boys leave their seats to crawl, crablike, across the angled floor. Strobe lights flash, and noisy calliope music is piped over loudspeakers.

Across the street, rising behind a brick wall, the stately portico of the Villa Cornaro overlooks the raucous spectacle. The juxtaposition of the fun fair and the villa makes me think of a scene in a Fellini film. The villa more than holds its own. It looms a full two stories high, its extremely tall portico, shaped like a temple front, silhouetted against the sky. Two stories doesn’t sound impressive, but when each floor is thirty feet high and the house has a basement and attic, it is the equivalent of a six- or seven-story building.

This privately owned house is open to the public on selected days during the summer, but since it is off-season I’ve made arrangements for a special visit. I’m to meet the custodian at eleven o’clock this morning at a nearby cafe called—what else?—the Caffè Palladio. He turns out to be a pleasant young man who tends the bar. After his replacement shows up, we cross the street to the villa, where he unlocks a heavy gate that lets us into the garden. He suggests that I walk around the grounds while he goes inside to open the window shutters.