The Emo frescoes bear comparison to those of the Villa Barbaro. Zelotti and Veronese, who were almost the same age, had been apprentices together under Sanmicheli and had jointly decorated Palladio’s Palazzo da Porto. But by the 1550s they were going their separate ways. There is no doubt that Veronese, whose fame in Venice came to rival that of Titian and Tintoretto, was the more accomplished painter. But in many ways Zelotti was a better decorator—that is, he was more sensitive to the architecture and more interested in the purely ornamental aspects of his art. Palladio worked with him several times, not only at the Villa Godi and La Malcontenta but also at the Villa Caldogno, the Palazzo Chiericati, and again, here, at the Villa Emo, their happiest collaboration.
It’s easy to see Palladio’s hand in the design of the frescoed architectural elements. The lower part of the wall is a faux marble dado that incorporates the doors leading into the side rooms. Prisoners in Michelangelesque poses recline next to piles of war trophies atop the dado ledge. The upper part of the wall contains frescoed niches with bronze statues of gods and goddesses symbolizing the elements; between the niches are lifelike scenes representing manly Roman virtues. Below, frescoed bronze panels depicting military processions allude to ancestral Emo victories over Lutherans and Turks. The festoons of wild roses that are slung between the columns and trail down to the floor form a gay counterpoint to the martial theme.
Above the door that I have just entered is an elaborate wood carving of the Emo coat of arms—alternating diagonals of crimson and silver—set within gilded scrolls and surmounted by the winged lion of St. Mark. Two mailed fists emerge dramatically from the wall on each side, one holding a sword, the other a general’s mace crowned by a helmet. The effect is at once magnificent and slightly lugubrious. On the opposite wall, a frescoed ceremonial archway topped by a broken pediment forms a somewhat precarious perch for two reclining, half-clothed maidens representing Abundance and Prudence. Zelotti painted their garments draped casually over the edge of the pediment, throwing complicated shadows on the moldings below. The archway frames the entrance vestibule, whose double doors are filled with translucent leaded-glass panes. The faux marble dado continues into the vestibule, and includes frescoed niches whose allegorical bronze statues of Conjugal Love and Household Economy (a woman holding a roll of accounts) welcome the visitor. The upper part of the walls and the vaulted ceiling depict a charming grape arbor with wooden trelliswork, twining vines, and a hovering winged cherub.
The plan of the Villa Emo is simplicity itself. Eschewing cruciform salas and intricate geometry, Palladio returned to the straightforward layout of his second villa, the Villa Valmarana: back-to-back portico and sala, sandwiched between suites of rooms lined up one behind the other. The plan is simple but refined: the largest rooms are accessed directly from the sala; the medium-size rooms have their own exterior entrances from the portico; the small rooms sit snugly in between. The medium and small rooms have Palladio’s favorite proportions—a square, and a square and a half—while the large rooms are a square and two thirds. With great finesse, he placed the two staircases between the loggia and the sala, producing a plan that resembles a tic-tac-toe diagram. The main room dimensions in Quattro libri are 16 and 27 Vicentine feet, which sounds arbitrary until I realize that both measures are a multiple of 51/3 Vicentine feet (27 feet is five modules rounded-off; the actual dimension in the house is 26 feet 7 inches, which is almost exactly five modules).4 In fact, all the spaces in the Villa Emo are modular: the small rooms are two by three modules, the medium rooms are three by three, the large rooms and the portico are three by five, and the sala is five by five. In terms of simple mathematical ratios, this is the most perfectly resolved of all Palladio’s villas, and since it is very beautiful, it’s a compelling argument for simple room proportions. I’m not sure if the actual size of the module is significant; it was probably merely a convenient way to subdivide 16 feet. Using a module enabled Palladio to achieve dimensional control. Since workmen did not carry measuring tapes, all they needed was a stick 5 feet 4 inches long, and a simple set of instructions: “make the portico three by five sticks, the sala five by five sticks,” and so on.I
PLAN OF VILLA EMO, FROM QUATTRO LIBRI
The large room on the west side of the sala is frescoed with scenes from the life of Hercules. Like all the rooms, it has a flat ceiling supported by closely spaced beams. Next is a small room with a proportionately lower ceiling, decorated with grotesques. This anteroom leads to a square room whose decorative theme is the arts. This room is assumed to have belonged to the original owner, since his portrait is included in a lunette over the door. Palladio’s client, Leonardo Emo, is also called Leonardo the Younger, to distinguish him from his illustrious grandfather. The formidable Leonardo the Elder was a victorious general in the war, governor of the province of Friuli, podestà (mayor) of Verona, and the moving force behind the agricultural development of the Trevigiana. He reclaimed land, dug canals, and built mills. He also introduced the cultivation of granturco—corn—recently brought from America, which replaced millet as the Venetian staple and, incidentally, led to the invention of polenta. At the age of sixty-two he retired to his estate at Fanzolo. When he died, he left half of the farm to his namesake and grandson, Leonardo, then seven, who had been living with him since his own father had died. Twenty years later, in 1559, Leonardo commissioned Palladio to design a new country house.
A THRESHING FLOOR LEADS UP TO THE SIMPLE DORIC PORTICO OF THE VILLA EMO.
It is always interesting to speculate how a client chooses an architect, whether by a social connection, a recommendation, or a chance encounter. In this case the connection was familial: Leonardo the Younger’s mother, Andrianna, was the sister of Francesco Badoer. Since Leonardo was still only twenty-seven—one year beyond his majority—it is possible that his mother not only recommended Palladio but also played a role in the building process. If so, she was a better client than Lucietta Badoer, for Palladio delivered a flawless design. As so often happened, the house was built on the occasion of a marriage—a particularly propitious marriage; Leonardo was betrothed to Cornalia Grimani, a member of a most eminent Venetian family and the direct descendant of a famous doge. Hence the new villa had to proclaim the Emos’ own distinguished heritage, not least Leonardo’s grandfather’s military exploits. This may explain the soldierly appearance of the house, and the martial atmosphere of the sala with its war trophies, mailed fists, and manly themes. At the same time, a marriage was a joyful occasion, and Zelotti introduced festive motifs such as the gay floral decorations and the grape arbor in the entrance vestibule. The west rooms were for Leonardo, the east side was for Cornalia, the love story of Venus and Adonis forming a pendant to Hercules, and the myth of Jupiter and Io balancing the Arts. In the first room, a gilded bust of Venus—perhaps also a likeness of Cornalia—looks down from above the door. Distracting loud sounds come from a television monitor in the corner of the cavernous room. It is playing a video recording about the villa, and showing a fireworks display. The flickering little image on the screen is a paltry thing compared to Zelotti’s magnificent frescoes.
A small room decorated with grotesques leads to a corner room that serves as the ticket office. An elderly woman sits at a table. I bid her good-bye—this is my second visit in two days—and step outside.
The Emo portico is impressive. It rises the full height of the house, including the attic—about thirty feet. The ceiling, like that of the sala, consists of deep wooden coffers. The four—only four—giant columns across the front have puzzled scholars since Bertotti-Scamozzi, for they are Doric but with a plain Tuscan entablature, and their proportions and intercolumniation are neither exactly Doric nor Tuscan. Once more, Palladio is bending the rules. In any event, this is the simplest order of any of his villa porticoes, and it gives the house a moving, austere dignity. The walls of the loggia are richly frescoed with corresponding columns and frescoed door and window frames, draped with festoons of flowers. Zelot
ti’s cheerful depictions of gods and goddesses, including Ceres, the goddess of plenty, soften Palladio’s severe architecture.
In place of the usual monumental stair, the Villa Emo has a broad ramp. Although Sansovino used a gently ramped entrance at the Villa Garzoni, ramps were uncommon in Veneto country houses, and the purpose of the Emo ramp has been a matter of conjecture. One historian has suggested that a ramp made it easier to roll casks or drag bundles into the house; another has surmised that the south-facing ramp was used for drying newly threshed grain; yet another guesses that it was an equestrian ramp, allowing riders to dismount at the front door.5 None of these explanations is convincing; kitchens and cellars were in the basement, not on the main floor, and the flat landing halfway up the ramp would be superfluous for both drying grain and for riding. I think the ramp was intended for entering the house on foot, and was another of Palladio’s continuing experiments with ceremonial entrances. After trying ramped stairs in the Villa Cornaro, he built a true ramp at Emo, which both complements the villa’s hard, Roman appearance and provides a particularly regal way of ascending to the portico.
At the foot of the ramp is a large paved area that is usually referred to as a threshing floor. Palladio recommended that threshing floors should be close enough to a villa so that the work could be overseen, but he also specified that they “must not be too close to the owner’s house because of the dust.”6 The Emo threshing floor seems a little close, on the other hand the paved area also serves as a grand entranceway leading up to, and visually balancing, the wide ramp.
The arcaded wings are much longer than those of the Villa Barbaro and were intended uniquely for farm functions. Built in the form of barchesse, they perfectly evoke Palladio’s ideal of farm buildings in close proximity to the gentleman’s house. “The covered outbuildings for items belonging to the farm should be built for the produce and animals and connected to the owner’s house in such a way that he can go everywhere under cover so that neither the rain nor the blazing summer sun would bother him as he goes to supervise his business; this arrangement will also be of the greatest use for storing wood under cover and the infinite variety of other objects belonging to the farm that would be destroyed by the rain and sun,” he wrote, adding almost offhandedly, “besides which these porticoes are extremely attractive.”7 And so they are. The arcades recall a cloister, the monastic effect heightened by the simplicity of the design: no mascherone, no keystones over the arches, and simple stone imposts. The flanking barchesse serve as foils to the only classical element of the entire house, the elevated portico, whose four columns support a simple entablature and pediment. The tympanum contains figural decoration: two winged victories holding a shield bearing the Emo coat of arms. Otherwise, the front has the same hard simplicity as the rear.
VILLA EMO
THE BARCHESSA OF THE VILLA EMO PROVIDED A PROTECTED OUTDOOR SPACE FOR WORKING, UNLOADING WAGONS, AND STORING FARM IMPLEMENTS.
Palladio’s description of the Villa Emo in Quattro libri is terse, only seven lines. Indeed, he has less to say about this house than about almost any of the others, and although he mentions the back garden—and Zelotti’s frescoes—he is more closemouthed than usual about his own intentions. Yet his very brevity and the beautifully spare layout of the page are revealing. Emo is like a quickly drawn sketch, its basic elements distilled from two decades of practice, nothing extraneous allowed to interfere with the essence of the idea. This is the work of a confident master in full possession of his powers. In many ways, the Villa Emo appeals to me most of all the Palladio villas. It is neither a retreat nor a villa suburbana, but a true farm. Commodity, firmness, and delight are in perfect balance; truly, nothing can be added, nothing taken away. The relationship between the arcades and the house is subtly controlled by the two perfectly proportioned dovecote towers, which emphasize the predominance of the central block. There is not even a hint of grandiosity; instead the sober architecture is sublime, calm, dignified. It is also extremely simple. Like Beethoven during his so-called third period, Palladio’s full command of his art allowed him to achieve his aims with utterly uncomplicated means. (In the last decade of his life, he developed a rich and ornate style, but that was after he stopped building villas.) In the Villa Emo he returned to the minimalist classicism of his youth, further enhanced by his profound knowledge of antiquity. Rather than simply mimic classical forms, however, he did something more subtle, and more affecting: he evoked an intangible whiff of the Roman past, the remembered fragrance of a distant time.
Leonardo Emo, who never became a soldier but served the Republic as an administrator in banking and public finance, clearly loved this house.8 He died at only fifty-four in one of the great plagues that decimated the Veneto at the end of the sixteenth century. In his will he had taken the unusual step of authorizing his wife to dispose of any of his property if the need arose, “But I beg that no part of the villa in Fanzolo be sold.”II,9
• • •
In 1565, Zelotti completed the frescoes, and Leonardo and Cornalia were married. The 1560s saw Palladio’s practice expand, finally, to Venice. His first Venetian commission was modest enough. The abbot of the Benedictine religious order, whose church and monastery were on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore opposite the Piazzetta di San Marco, asked him to complete an unfinished refectory and its vestibule. Palladio added lofty vaults and thermal windows, creating a dramatic setting for a painting by Veronese. The severe, white space impressed Vasari, who met Palladio in Venice in 1566, and thought the refectory “very large and most beautiful.”10 At about the same time the order of Lateran canons commissioned Palladio to enlarge the convent of Santa Maria della Carità (today the Accademia di Belle Arti). For this large project, Palladio designed something unusual: “I endeavored to make this house like those of the ancients.”11 The new convent was based on his reconstruction of a Roman town house, with a Corinthian atrium ringed by colossal Composite columns, connected to a three-story cloister and a refectory. It is not clear exactly how much of this ambitious scheme was realized since only a few fragments, including one side of the cloister and a splendid spiral staircase, survived a 1630 fire. The first two stories of the cloister are open arcades (today glazed), with half columns—Ionic over Doric; the third, which contained the monks’ cells, is enclosed and has flat Corinthian pilasters. The beautifully built arcades are unplastered brick with stone trim—these are the brick columns that so impressed Sir Henry Wotton. The effect is at once sensuous and severe. Goethe, who saw the Carità in 1786 during his tour of Italy, revisited the cloister several times and considered it the best of Palladio’s buildings. “The funniest thing is the way I expound all this to my hired servant,” he wrote in his diary, “because when you’re full of a thing, you can’t stop talking about it, and you keep looking for some new angle from which to show how wonderful it is.”12
Palladio’s strict interpretation of the all’antica style was a novelty in Venice. While Vasari, a sophisticated Florentine, found the convent “marvelous” and “the most notable” of Palladio’s projects in the city, the plain, almost ascetic style did not appeal to the average Venetian, judging from a piece of popular doggerel that has survived from this period.13
Non va il Palladio per male a puttane;
Che se tal volta pur gli suol andare
Lo fa, perchè le esorta a fabbricare
Un atrio antico in mezzo Carampane.14
Palladio does not go to whores for iniquity;
But even if at times he plays the rake,
’Tis but to encourage them to make
In mid-Carampane, an atrium of antiquity.
What is striking about the verse, which attests to Palladio’s celebrity, is that though it lewdly ridicules his obsession with ancient architecture—the Carampane was Venice’s brothel district—it does so with affection. “A nature so amiable and gentle, that it renders him well-beloved with everyone,” observed Vasari.15
Palladio’s next major comm
ission came from yet another of Venice’s many religious orders. San Francesco della Vigna was a Franciscan church in the eastern district that had been built by Sansovino thirty-five years earlier, but whose front façade remained unfinished due to disagreements between the various sponsors of the church. Finally, the responsibility for completing the work fell on the patriarch of Aquiléia, Giovanni Grimani. Undoubtedly influenced by Daniele Barbaro, his appointed successor, and perhaps also encouraged by his young cousin Cornalia Grimani (soon to be Emo), he dismissed Sansovino and gave the job to Palladio.
The imposing façade of Istrian stone facing the campo has nothing to do with Sansovino’s church—it is all Palladio. This was his opportunity to shine, and he made the most of it. He set out to solve a problem that had bedeviled Renaissance architects for a hundred years: how to adapt ancient Roman temple architecture to a Christian church. Architectural propriety required that there be a relationship between the façade and what lay behind it, yet it was unclear how a classical temple front could be successfully combined with a tall nave flanked by lower side aisles. Using his knowledge of antiquity and his extensive experience designing villa porticoes, Palladio resolved the apparent contradiction. He juxtaposed two overlapping temple fronts of different sizes and scales. A pediment supported on four giant Corinthian columns signified the tall nave, and a lower pediment, carried by shorter columns, signified the aisles (which in this case were actually chapels). The columns of San Francesco are engaged—that is, they are three-quarters round and their connection to the wall is concealed behind the inward curve of their shaft, which makes them appear freestanding. The result is a modulated façade of great sculptural richness but one that is also classically correct, with the large and small orders skillfully combined atop a tall base. While architects since Alberti had been adapting ancient Roman architecture to church façades, no one had ever done it with such authority and aplomb.
The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio Page 16