Palladian Days

by Sally Gable

  Giorgio Cornaro, Palladio's patron and the villa's first owner, died at the famous Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Lepanto? A famous battle? A later owner of the villa died in the defense of Rettimo. Where's that? Carl and I now own—arrayed in niches around the grand salon—six eight-foot-tall statues of celebrated people we have never heard of by a Renaissance sculptor whose name means nothing to us. The walls of the villa are covered with dozens of frescos depicting Bible stories I heard years ago in Sunday school and now remember only dimly. This will be a long winter.

  In our search for information about the villa, we have a lead. The Rushes have told us that in the mid-1970s a government-supported organization in Vicenza—the town twenty-five miles away where Palladio lived—commissioned Douglas Lewis, a young American scholar, to write a book about Villa Cornaro. The Vicenza organization, called Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio (Andrea Palladio International Center for the Study of Architecture), or CISA, was then in the midst of publishing an ambitious series of books grandly entitled Corpus Palladi-anum, with one volume devoted to each of the structures that Palladio designed and built. The Villa Cornaro volume was delayed, however, and CISA—short of funds—ended its publication of the series after just ten volumes.

  We know that the manuscript still exists. Dick Rush says he has a copy but doesn't know where he put it. He speaks a bit critically of it. It has too much information about the Cornaro family, he says, and about the prior history of the area where the villa is located, instead of concentrating exclusively on the villa itself. I begin to realize already that my own life with Villa Cornaro will be different from Dick's. For Dick, the villa is a beautiful glistening object, existing outside of time as an independent thing of beauty and sculptural purity. I am already drawn into the spirit of the villa as an object firmly rooted in its time and place, as a rational product of the bustling, optimistic, triumphant spirit of the Renaissance, and as a living structure that has supported and interacted with Piombino Dese and with the Cornaro family and later families through hundreds of years. The villa is a great cache of secrets, and I intend to pry out each one. The tenor of Dick's criticism leads me to hope that Doug Lewis is a kindred spirit.

  Douglas Lewis has had the brilliant career that every genius should. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., appointed him curator of sculpture and decorative arts when he was just thirty, and he has continued to turn out meticulously researched articles and books ever since, including the definitive book on Palla-dio's drawings. After the collapse of CISAs Corpus Palladianum project, he abstracted the sections with his most provocative discoveries and published them in individual articles in scholarly magazines and collections in the United States, Germany, and Italy.

  Carl writes to him as soon as we get back to Atlanta. Doug responds cordially with a copy of the manuscript, as well as offprints of the published articles he derived from it. The manuscript is dense to the point of being impenetrable, but Carl and I soldier away at it. We also spend time reading books and articles on Venetian history and art. By the time April arrives and I pack to leave for two months in Piombino Dese—with Carl to join me in May for the three weeks that he can get away from work—I begin to form in my mind a skeletal history of the villa, with a sense of its role in architecture and the Cornaro family's role in Venetian life.

  Yet each new fact that I learn about the past makes my own future seem more complex and confusing. Perhaps more intriguing as well.

  9

  A Tale of a Tub

  I climb into the long, skinny bathtub and stretch out full-length, my head barely above water. The villa is shuttered for the night. My two guests—friends from Atlanta—are settled in their rooms, presumably deep in their blankets to escape the cold that envelops the villa and overwhelms the inadequate electric heaters in their bedrooms and mine. I bask luxuriantly in the steamy natural perfume of the well water and watch motionless as the bar of Dove dissolves on my stomach. I am warm for the first time since my friends arrived earlier in the day, blown from the train station to our gate by a frigid April storm. My mind drifts lazily as I try to remember why it is necessary ever to leave this perfect warmth.

  Suddenly all the lights of the villa go out as quietly as a candle.

  The villa is shuttered tight as a tomb. Not a ray of light from even one streetlamp finds a crevice to peer through. Darkness seizes the villa.

  With my mind shocked awake, I begin to review my situation: I am naked, up to my neck in water, in pitch-darkness, in a room where I have personally killed two scorpions within the past three days. My rational mind, in an effort to distract me from the temptation simply to scream in terror, tells me that the three electric heaters, bored by their pretense of producing heat, have merely turned to their favorite activity: overloading the villa's circuits. My mind is teased by two dim memories: first, that Silvana specifically told me where a candle is located in my bedroom, but that I did not pay much attention; and second, that Giacomo specifically showed me where the circuit breakers are located in a small room between the two main floors of the villa—but I didn't pay much attention to that, either. What I remember best is that, in the stairwell of tight circular wooden stairs leading to the small room, I also killed a scorpion yesterday.

  Scorpions don't kill, I tell myself. Note to diary: Learn more about scorpions. I splash around the bathtub noisily, in the hope of prompting retreat by any scorpion within earshot, then creep out of the tub. I fumble for a towel and feel my way to the bedroom. I pat-search my bureau for the candle. Books, necklace and earrings recently removed, framed photo of Carl (why isn't he here to deal with this mess?), stack of handkerchiefs, no candle. Cross to the bedside table, like walking on ice cubes. I grasp the brass candlestick! The matches are beside it. After three tries, I ignite one of the damp matches. Light at last. I pick my way to Philip's room and Helen's room and bang on their doors in turn. Philip and Helen laugh at my predicament. Warm in their beds, they're not worried about lights; dawn will come and bring sunlight. I'm not prepared to take such a long view. Turn off your heaters, I tell them; with the load reduced, I should be able to flip the circuit breakers back on. I put on the warmest clothes I can find in the candlelight and, shivering and dodging dripping candle wax, proceed cautiously down the circular stairs toward the kitchen. The fuses and circuit breakers are in the mezzanine room that lies twenty-three steps down, between the two main floors. I find the huge array of electric switches and study each one in turn. Several have clearly flipped off. I reverse the process and am bathed instantly in light from the stairwell.

  As I pick my way cautiously up the stairs, which I view as a footpath through a field cleverly booby-trapped with scorpions instead of land mines, I begin doing the arithmetic in my head: The villa is wired for 15 kilowatts of electricity, calculated to be enough for all foreseeable needs. But Helen and Philip have joined me in mid-April of what the television weathermen gleefully and repeatedly call the coldest spring Europe has seen in a hundred years. We plugged in all the villa's three electric radiators and set them on high. Still, there should have been no problem. Then I remember that my running a bath would have started the electric pump at the well that supplies water to the villa. Some lights were on, of course, and who knows what else electrical might have been at work. Anyway, it is clear that we must ration ourselves so as to have just two heaters on at the same time. Maybe we will have to draw lots to see which of the three of us will shut off his or her heater each night.

  Scorpions are my first introduction to Piombino Dese wildlife. Dick Rush never told us about the scorpions. I kill fifty-five inside the villa during my first two-month visit. The first one I find lurking on a window frame in the kitchen the morning after I arrive. As I release the old serpentine iron clasp and pull open the window, this sinister black creature, like a three-inch-long lobster, moves slightly on the right-hand sill. I freeze; it freezes. Then I take off my shoe and whack the beast flat. “Welcome to the NF
L,” I mutter.

  And I continue to whack everywhere: on the wall above my bed, on the floor under the bath mat, peering from a crack in the dining-room floor, half beneath the refrigerator, on the front portico's wall, on the grand salon's window frame. I pluck a dead one off the underside of my bed's coverlet; a live one scuttles out from under some laundry left on the floor.

  We find a nest under the central table in the grand salon, disturbed when we move the furniture for a chamber-music concert. One evening, as I am cooking supper for Ilario and his family, the villa's electricity goes out and I feel my way upstairs in the dark to the circuit-breaker box. When I return to the kitchen an enormous scorpion lies sprawled next to the stove where I had just been standing a few minutes earlier. Where did it come from? One of Ashley's visiting friends expresses terror at the possibility of encountering such an animal. Of course, we assure him—with a confidence we don't feel—that we rarely see a scorpion, this is not the season for scorpions, they flee at the sight of humans, etc. After he leaves and I begin pulling the sheets from his bed, I find a three-incher tangled between the top sheet and the bedspread. I never tell him.

  And I will certainly never tell him about an article I read in an Italian newspaper one morning: An Iranian family of five dies of scorpion poisoning because they drank tea brewed in a teapot where an unseen scorpion lurked. Giacomo assures me that the Italian variety is not lethal, its sting more like that of a wasp. He cautions that if we kill off all the scorpions, we will have many more of the spiders and bugs that scorpions eat. I prefer spiders. A spirited pesticide campaign brings the scorpions under control within a few years, aided by the fact that scorpions actually reproduce slowly, with just one brood a year in some types.

  10

  Peace in Our Time

  Carl and I have each set ourselves a mission for our first spring at Villa Cornaro. I'm determined to get the kitchen reworked with modern equipment and cabinets, and I've convinced Carl—as a man committed to eating at regular intervals—that this is in his interest as well. Carl's project is to become acquainted with the sindaco of Piombino Dese who bedeviled Dick Rush with the plan to build a soccer field on the farmland behind the villa. If we can establish a friendly or at least neutral relationship with the sindaco, Carl reasons, we improve our chances for avoiding other confrontations in the future. At a minimum we will avoid having the ill will that exists between the sindaco and Dick Rush automatically transferred to us. Carl's campaign ultimately produces a photo I think Dick would find amusing, taken in what we call— because of its dominant fresco—the villa's Tower of Babel room.

  Carl's first step is to determine the best way to be introduced to the sindaco. He seeks Giacomo's advice. Giacomo suggests—to our surprise, because we don't understand Italian village life—that we should consult with Don Aldo, the parish priest, whom we met at the Rushes’ welcome/farewell reception last fall. This resonates with an old (and dubious) maxim that Carl has heard somewhere, namely, that the three people most important to know in an Italian town are the sindaco, the priest, and the chief of the carabinieri. Giacomo raises the matter with Don Aldo and reports that we should invite Don Aldo to the villa for tea.

  Within a few days Don Aldo is seated with us in the Tower of Babel room. Don Aldo is a pale man perhaps fifty-five or sixty years old. His height is little more than mine, but his carriage makes him look taller. We're already familiar with his aggressively friendly manner from our earlier introduction at the Rushes’ reception. We restate our interest in achieving good relations with the sindaco and leaving all controversy in the past—although Don Aldo has already been apprised of all this by Giacomo.

  “We should all meet together with the sindaco so this can all be explained,” Don Aldo concludes.

  “We would be happy to meet at any time,” Carl replies. “Whatever time is convenient.”

  Don Aldo rises. “Now,” he says. “The sindaco is expecting us.” It's obvious that Don Aldo is way ahead of us on this. Carl and I hurriedly close a few open windows on the ground floor, lock the villa, and follow Don Aldo's quick step to the municipio, which is housed in a converted eighteenth-century villa just a block away. The sindaco is awaiting us in his office, as Don Aldo has promised. I bring to the meeting an overwhelmingly negative preconception, and nothing about the sindaco changes my view. He seems to be about forty-five or fifty years old; he is muscular and full of energy, defensive and suspicious.

  We explain our purpose, although it's obvious that he has been well briefed by Don Aldo. The sindaco particularly questions whether we are long-term friends of Dick Rush or have just met in connection with the purchase. He joins in our expressions of goodwill. Then Don Aldo surprises us a second time.

  “Why don't we return to the villa and talk there?” he asks. Clearly, Don Aldo intends to memorialize our truce with symbolic ceremony. We all quickly agree. Back at the villa, we change our beverage from tea to prosecco. Carl realizes that we have a unique photo opportunity. He returns with our camera after a hurried search, and we commence a round-robin of snapshots. At one point I am delegated to photograph Don Aldo, the sindaco, and Carl in a cheerful line like old friends. We are in the Tower of Babel room again, but they are standing in front of a different fresco panel. Behind them, Abraham is bowing before God; Don Aldo's head is directly beneath Abraham's lowered face, while the sindaco's is under Abraham's derriere—a symbol Don Aldo does not foresee.

  We follow our armistice with the sindaco by having him and his wife for dinner, a somber affair but suitable for its purpose. Then, when we realize that we need to retain a commercialista (a sort of accountant-cum-tax/business-adviser) to handle our tax filings and various other reports, we visit the sindaco at his office and ask him for a recommendation. In his Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin observes that the best way to obtain a man's approbation is to ask him for a favor, such as the loan of a book. Carl's idea is to follow Franklin's advice on the one hand, and on the other to give the sindaco a chance to gain favor with some ally.

  In the next year, just as all the elements of Carl's program seem to be falling into place, the sindaco subverts our efforts by losing his bid for reelection.

  11

  Lessons

  Like several other Palladian-villa owners, Dick Rush allowed tour groups to visit the first floor of the villa and the park. He required an appointment and charged a small admission fee. Individuals not in a tour group could visit on Saturday afternoons during the summer. Motivated by a combination of public spirit and private interest, Carl and I decide to continue the practice. On the one hand, we want to share our treasure of art and architectural history with all the world; on the other, the income will help us in a small way to maintain the villa.

  Giacomo and Silvana handle the appointments and open the villa when groups arrive. My involvement is not expected. In my first spring at the villa, however, during my weeks alone, I find the groups are good company. They often provide an opportunity to speak English, for a change, even if the group is actually from Germany or France. The tours are also a way for me to expand my own store of knowledge about the villa, as well as learn what features interest tourists most.

  Usually the groups are accompanied by an informed guide or lecturer, sometimes even by a true expert on the Veneto or Palladio such as Peter Lauritzen, Bruce Boucher, or Wilma Barbieri. Often the groups themselves include knowledgeable architects or professors. Yet on some occasions they have no more guidance than that which their bus driver provides, so I become a self-instructed docent, drawing on all the research that Carl and I have been doing, on what I've learned from listening to tour guides, and from my own experiences. Even the professional guides solicit my comments on how it feels to live in a Palladian villa. Is it comfortable? How long do I live here each year? The tourists are pleased to have found a villa that is a real home, not just a museum. They stop to look curiously at the photographs of our family placed around on tables just as in our Atlanta home. They inspect the
books or magazines that I've left half-read on tables and chairs. Finally one day I realize that I've begun to guide whole tours myself. Even the best guides are relaxed about it, just chiming in from time to time on points they want to emphasize. Upon reflection, I am acutely aware that I haven't mastered the nuances of Palladio, details of his influence on later Palladianism, or correspondences between Villa Cornaro and his other works. But in terms of our own magnificent villa—its individual history, its moods, its changing light, its breezes, the adjusting of its shutters to bring in fresh morning air while maintaining its indoor temperature, its unique personality— I become, over time, an expert.

  As a consequence of my growing self-confidence I am less awed than prudence would dictate at meeting some of the distinguished visitors who appear from time to time, such as the directors of great museums or the well-known scholars and writers. I enjoy meeting all tourists to the villa, the well informed and the novices. I appreciate their interest in Italy, in Palladio, and in Villa Cornaro, as well as their enthusiasm and energy. Coming from dozens of countries, they are for the most part drawn by a genuine curiosity to learn more about an architect whose vision of a reborn classical architecture has helped shape the way the world looks today. I am building a great stockpile of memories.

  One morning, when Silvana arrives to open the halcone, she tells me that an arts group from Paris will be visiting at ten o'clock. Later I see a group of smartly dressed women gathering with admirable punctuality on the sidewalk outside the front gate. Gia-como arrives from Caffe Palladio to open the gate and lead the tour guide and her party up the stone steps to the north portico, where I greet them. Even in this splendid party, my eyes are drawn to one elegantly attired woman in a memorable bright red wool knee-length coat that flares out when she moves. I can hear her outfit whispering to me, This is as good as French couture gets. Note to diary: Why can't I ever find something like that at Loehmann's? “Madame Chirac,” the tour leader says, introducing her and the others to me. There is no possibility of my conducting a tour in French, but they all seem perfectly comfortable with English. Ten days later I receive gracious thank-you notes from four of the women—all in English. One of them purports to speak for all in extending to me an invitation to pay a reciprocal visit to the home of any of them in Paris. I presume that the offer includes the Mai-son de Ville, since M. Chirac is mayor of Paris, but it is clearly one of those invitations that are better appreciated than accepted. Nonetheless, I will wonder several years later, after the striking lady's husband has become president of France, whether the offer is still open.