The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio

by Rybczynski, Witold

  The sala is flanked by eight large rooms—four on each side. Six of the rooms are identical, two are slightly smaller to make room for the staircases; the large rooms are each about eighteen by twenty-eight feet. This seems like a lot of space, but the bachelor Girolamo shared the villa with his brothers and their families. There are no corridors; instead, each room opens directly into the next. The doors and windows are exactly lined up so that standing in one of the rooms with my back to a window, I can look through four sets of open doors and see the corresponding window on the opposite side of the house. The stair, the loggia arcade, the front door, the sala, and the serliana are likewise carefully aligned. These precise geometrical relationships give the interior a sense of calm and repose. Everything appears in its place.

  I walk around the house, or rather slide since I am obliged to wear felt slippers to reduce wear on the floors. These are battuto, an early version of terrazzo, made by slathering a mixture of lime, sand, and powdered brick across the floor, pressing milled stone chips into the hardening mixture with heavy rollers, then grinding smooth and oiling the surface. There are no other visitors, and the caretaker has left me alone. I swish from room to room. The doorways are low and the unpretentious doors of simple plank construction have wrought-iron strap hinges. The identical windows incorporate a charming feature: facing stone seats that transform them into little conversation nooks. The flat ceilings are supported by closely spaced wooden beams with ornamental carvings on the underside. The only room with a plaster ceiling is in the southeast corner of the house, a privileged position that gets the morning sun, summer and winter, and probably belonged to Girolamo.

  SERLIANA, OR PALLADIAN WINDOW

  The Godi house, which was begun about 1537, has the distinction of being Palladio’s first villa; indeed, as far as we know, it was his first independent commission. The novice had moments of clumsiness, particularly in the front façade. The recessed entrance bay, for example, while welcoming, has a large section of blank wall over the loggia, which the heraldic coats of arms do not quite fill. The external staircase rises to a complicated landing in front of the loggia that distracts from the overall composition. The asymmetrical placement of the windows on the façade is disturbing. Instead of being equally spaced they are bunched together in pairs (to leave space for the fireplaces and chimneys, which are located on the exterior walls). Thirty years later, when Palladio was writing his architectural treatise, he included drawings of the Villa Godi but took the opportunity to smooth out these defects. Leaving the plan largely unaltered, he simplified the stair, reduced the number of windows and spaced them equally, and capped the central section of the house with a pediment.

  The design of the villa is very successful in one key respect. Earlier Venetian villas often look like town houses transposed to the country, elegant but slightly ill at ease. Palladio manages to make the Godi both a polished work of architecture and a sturdy farmhouse. Like a country gentleman in a tailored hacking coat and muddy rubber boots, the villa fits into its surroundings, even as it holds itself above them. This quality would permeate all of Palladio’s villas, which are both sophisticated and rustic, genteel and rude, cosmopolitan and vernacular.

  The Villa Godi hasn’t always been appreciated. Sir Charles Barry, the leading British architect of the early 1800s, thought it “an unarchitectural pile.”7 Banister Fletcher, the nineteenth-century author of a long-lived architectural history, a bulky copy of which I owned as a student, considered the Godi’s main façade “a very poor example of our master’s genius.”8 The modern art historian Rudolf Wittkower criticized the Villa Godi as “retrogressive.”9 Indeed, as Wittkower pointed out, the design bears a resemblance to the Villa Tiretta, a country house built about forty years earlier near the village of Arcade, only thirty miles away.10 In fact, the proportions of Godi are more robust than Tiretta, and the massing is much more accomplished. But the resemblance is a reminder that Palladio, at this early stage of his career, was not straying far from established local traditions. His conservatism is understandable. Most architects today begin their careers designing kitchen additions or weekend cottages. The Godi is a palatial residence on a dramatic site, for the richest family in town. A mistake here could stop one’s career in its tracks; it is prudent to be cautious.

  THE RAISED LOGGIA, WITH ITS THREE ROMAN ARCHES, MARKS THE ENTRANCE TO THE VILLA GODI.

  An architect’s early work is often consigned to a back drawer. Some masters, such as Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, even suppressed their youthful efforts. Yet when the elderly Palladio was being interviewed by the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari, who was collecting material for Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, he specifically mentioned the Villa Godi.11 And he included a description of the villa in his great treatise, I quattro libri dell’architettura (The four books on architecture), which he published near the end of his life. He may have made some mistakes and not broken new ground at the Villa Godi, but he was obviously proud of his first building. It couldn’t have been an easy commission: a no-doubt demanding client used to getting his own way; an exceptionally large house; a dramatic site with a splendid view, but also perched on a slope and restricted in area; and existing buildings that had to be integrated into the design. Yet the novice pulled it all together and produced a handsome work of great gravitas and, yes, nobility. It is an exceptional accomplishment for a beginner.

  • • •

  A beginner in architecture but no stripling, for when Palladio was first mentioned as working on the Godi house he was already thirty-two years old. Renaissance architectural careers started late: Filippo Brunelleschi was forty-one when he entered the competition to design the dome of the cathedral in Florence; the great Donato Bramante was thirty-seven when he was called to rebuild St. Peter’s in Rome; Vasari was forty when he designed his first building; and Michelangelo was forty-six before he applied his prodigious talent to architecture. Since there were no architects’ guilds or associations in the sixteenth century, there was no period of formal training or apprenticeship. In that sense, to be an architect did not mean to be a professional; it meant, rather, to hold a position. Renaissance architects were generally mature men who had already distinguished themselves in some branch of the fine arts. Brunelleschi was a renowned goldsmith and clockmaker; Bramante and Vasari were accomplished painters; Michelangelo was a celebrated sculptor as well as a painter. Palladio stands out in this company, for when he entered architecture he was not famous nor did he have a background in the arts—he was a stonemason.

  He was born in Padua in 1508, sixteen years after Columbus discovered America. It was November 30, St. Andrew’s Day—or so legend has it—and the child was named Andrea. His father was either a miller or a maker of millstones, but in any case someone who delivered his products by boat, for he was called Pietro dalla Gondola; his mother was Marta, of whom little is known except that she was lame. Since the family lacked a hereditary surname, the son was called Andrea di Pietro dalla Gondola, or simply Andrea di Pietro. There is no record of any siblings, nor is anything known about his ancestors. Yet there is a telling detail associated with his birth: his godfather was a stonemason.

  The city of Padua belonged to the Venetian Republic. The year after Andrea was born, war broke out between the Republic and the so-called League of Cambrai, the combined forces of the Holy Roman Empire, France, and Aragon, several city-states, and the papacy. Early in the war, the Venetians lost a decisive battle, and Padua was occupied by the enemy, changing hands several times as the war dragged on. Although the Republic ultimately regained most of its mainland possessions, including Padua, life did not return to normal for seven years. It was sometime during this turbulent period that Andrea lost his mother.

  At thirteen, as was customary, the boy was apprenticed to learn a trade. He was placed with a local master mason, Bartolomeo Cavazza. Apprenticeship normally lasted five to seven years, but after only three years Andrea quit and
moved with his father to Vicenza, about twenty miles away. Cavazza brought suit, as was his right, and the boy was returned to Padua, but a year later Andrea was back in Vicenza, this time for good. These events remain unexplained. Cavazza was no journeyman mason but a well-known taipiera, or stone carver, who fashioned architectural ornament for churches and convents as well as stately houses.12 Would Andrea really break off such an advantageous relationship? More likely Pietro left Padua for his own reasons and took his only son with him. Moreover, the boy capriciously quitting his apprenticeship is out of character—the adult Palladio is always described as genial and steadfast, and there is evidence that Andrea remained on good terms with Cavazza.13 In any case, he did not abandon his trade. At the age of sixteen, the fante, or apprentice, Andrea di Pietro was formally admitted to the Vicentine guild of plasterers, bricklayers, and masons.

  Vicenza, with a population of about 20,000, was one of the smallest cities of the Venetian Republic, smaller than Padua and much smaller than Venice, whose 150,000 inhabitants made it one of the largest cities in Europe. Nevertheless, Vicenza was prosperous, surrounded by rich farmland that belonged to its many noble families. The city was well situated at the confluence of two rivers and beside an attractive hill, Monte Bèrico. Like all Venetian towns, it was surrounded by a protective wall, much damaged in the recent war. At the foot of the wall, on the Contrà Pedemuro, was located the so-called Pedemuro workshop, considered the leading stone-carving yard in Vicenza. It was here that Andrea continued his training. How did he land this plum position? Perhaps thanks to his godfather, who was a native of Vicenza. Or maybe his experience with a well-known Paduan master impressed Giovanni da Porlezza, co-owner of the workshop, who sponsored the boy at the guild and paid his initiation fee.

  Andrea lived and worked on the Contrà Pedemuro for more than twelve years. There is little documentation about this formative period of his life, yet it should not be glossed over. The workshop, though specializing in carved stone, was also a construction company. Andrea learned not only how to carve a variety of building elements—door frames, portals, column capitals—he was also exposed to all practical aspects of building. This experience served him well. By the time he became an architect, he knew, and could precisely describe, not only what he wanted done but also how he wanted it done. If need be, he could pick up a stone chisel and give a convincing demonstration. This firsthand knowledge was unusual among Renaissance architects whose artistic background generally did not prepare them for dealing with construction issues.

  Porlezza became Andrea’s mentor (and probably a father figure, since Pietro dalla Gondola died before Andrea was twenty). Porlezza was often called upon to function as capomaestro, or master builder, since Vicenza had no architects, and from him Andrea learned about the design of buildings, including the rudiments of geometry and drawing. “Guided by a natural inclination, I dedicated myself to the study of architecture in my youth,” Palladio wrote in Quattro libri, “and since I always held the opinion that the ancient Romans, as in many other things, had also greatly surpassed all those who came after them in building well, I elected as my master and guide Vitruvius, who is the only ancient writer on this art.”14 Vitruvius was a Roman architect whose Ten Books of Architecture was the sole architectural treatise that had survived from ancient times—the Renaissance builders’ Rosetta stone. A medieval copy of the Vitruvian manuscript had come to light in 1415, and had long been studied by scholars in hand-copied form, but it was not until 1521 that an Italian translation—with added illustrations—became widely available as a printed book. Palladio was born only about fifty years after the invention of the printing press, and he was fortunate to live near Venice, one of the great European centers of the new printing industry. (The first Italian translation of Leon Battista Alberti’s important architectural treatise Of Built Things, which had been written in Latin, would be published in Venice in 1546.) Porlezza probably had a copy of Vitruvius in his shop, and one can imagine Andrea poring over it in his spare time. Yet any ambitions he had in that direction were severely limited. Architects lived in Venice and Florence, and worked for the grand signori; he was a mere stonemason. As a popolano, or commoner, he occupied a lowly social position. In Vicenza, as in most cities of the Venetian Republic, anyone engaged in the so-called mechanical arts was precluded from formal citizenship, as were newcomers; in Venice, fifteen years’ residency was required for even partial citizenship.

  AT THE BUILDING SITE OF THE VILLA AT CRICOLI, COUNT TRISSINO, A PATRON, ENCOUNTERED THE YOUNG STONEMASON ANDREA DI PIETRO, SOON TO BE PALLADIO.

  When he was twenty-six, Andrea took a wife. This was somewhat unusual, for men generally married in their thirties or forties, when they were financially independent, and we do not know the circumstances of the marriage. We do know that his bride was named Allegradonna, and that she was the daughter of a carpenter. The record shows that she was in service as a maid, and that it was her mistress who provided the dowry: a bed, a pair of sheets, three new shirts, three used shirts, handkerchiefs, assorted clothing, and lengths of cloth.15 The dowry was valued at about twenty-eight ducats (a far cry from the five to ten thousand ducats that accompanied a nobleman’s daughter). The couple shared Andrea’s room in the workshop after they were married, and it was another year or two before they could afford to set up their own household.

  In 1537, the Pedemuro workshop received a commission to remodel part of a large house on an estate in Cricoli, just outside the northern city gate. The client was Count Giangiorgio Trissino, scion of one of the oldest families in Vicenza. The fifty-nine-year-old nobleman was more or less in retirement. He had spent most of his life as a diplomat and papal ambassador in Rome and elsewhere, and had only recently returned to Vicenza. Now, after a failed second marriage, he was ready to settle down. His new house at Cricoli was not to be merely a suburban retreat—he already owned a country villa as well as a residence in the city—but the seat of a new academy where he planned to introduce the progressive culture of Rome to the young men of his native Vicenza. Trissino was a formidable personage: a familiar of cardinals and popes, confidant of emperors, an intimate friend of that cultivated aristocrat Isabella d’Este and her infamous sister-in-law Lucrezia Borgia. His portrait hangs in the Louvre: large handsome features, a sensual mouth, and heavy-lidded eyes with a shrewd, penetrating gaze. He holds a beautifully bound book in his delicate hands, a symbol of his literary accomplishments. Trissino was a scholar and poet, the author of a celebrated tragedy, and a linguist. Well known throughout the Italian states, he was Vicenza’s leading Renaissance humanist.

  He was also an amateur architect. The Cricoli house that he was remodeling had been bought by his father. It was a castello, a type common throughout the mainland, or terraferma, of the Venetian Republic. Patterned on medieval fortified houses, castelli typically had four corner towers, often picturesquely crenellated, and a main façade with a central balcony or loggia. They were adorned with the delicate Gothic tracery that was popular during the Venetian quattrocento. Trissino was modernizing his house, removing the Gothic elements and completely rebuilding the loggia in the so-called all’antica style, based on the classical architecture of ancient Rome. His design was a literal copy of a garden loggia by the famous architect Raphael, whom he had known in Rome: a three-arched opening surmounted by pedimented windows, with Ionic pilasters below and Corinthian above.

  It is not recorded exactly how Trissino encountered Andrea, but popular legend has them meeting on the Cricoli building site. While the story has been dismissed as apocryphal by some scholars, it seems a plausible explanation; after all, where else would a count meet a stonemason? We do not know exactly what it was that caught Trissino’s eye, for surely it was he who initiated the encounter. Maybe he saw one of Andrea’s sketches and recognized his innate ability. Or maybe he was talent spotting, for Trissino intended the membership of his future academy to include young men of different social backgrounds, not only the sons of his aris
tocratic friends. In any event, as Paolo Gualdo, a canon of the Cathedral of Padua who knew Palladio well, described it, the pair “developed a very close relationship.”16 This must have happened in 1537 or 1538, for by 1539, Andrea is mentioned as being a guest in the Trissino home.

  “Finding Palladio to be a young man of very spirited character and with a great aptitude for science and mathematics,” Gualdo recounts, “Trissino encouraged his natural abilities by training him in the precepts of Vitruvius.”17 Training may not be exactly the right word. Trissino was a man of taste but his architectural abilities were limited. His surviving sketches, for example, are clumsy and amateurish. I went one afternoon to see the loggia at Cricoli, which still exists. It’s a handsome enough building that demonstrates his academic knowledge, but it gives the impression of a textbook exercise, stylistically correct yet curiously flat—a literary man’s idea of architecture. Nor is it likely that Andrea was ever a full-time student at the so-called Accademia Trissiniana, which opened in the late 1530s. For one thing, he had a growing family to support—by this time Allegradonna had borne him three sons. Moreover, whatever his natural aptitude, lacking early schooling or tutoring, he would have been ill-prepared to undertake a humanist education. More likely, Trissino lent him books and invited him to sit in on classes. Yet the nobleman’s influence was considerable. Trissino had lived in Rome and knew the city’s leading artists and architects, and he could speak with firsthand authority about the latest currents of architectural thought, including the all’antica style, which, though it originated in Florence and Rome in the previous century, was still a novelty in the Republic. In that regard, the loggia at Cricoli, whatever its shortcomings, was an invaluable model for Andrea. He had had years of practical training in architectural decoration from Porlezza and, we can assume, years of personal reading; contact with Trissino provided an intellectual frame of reference for this informally acquired knowledge.