The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio Read Online Free
Author: Witold Rybczynski
a small gate leading intoa courtyard about two hundred feet square. The enclosing brick wall is believed to have been built by Palladio, although the ornamental gates on two sides are seventeenth-century additions. The gravel drive that leads from one of the gates to the villa is formally laid out, but this was always a working farmyard, not a ceremonial cortile. On the north side stand the villa, the adjoining barchessa, and the medieval farm buildings; on the east, another older house, where Lorella and her husband, David, live, additional outbuildings, a large brick barn (parts of which date from the fifteenth century), and an old dovecote tower. Here, even more than in the majestic Villa Emo, one has the sense of the casa di villa as an integral part of a farm.
The nineteenth-century barchessa gives a general sense of Palladio’s intentions. The six massive Tuscan columns and pilasters have an exaggerated taper, and are spaced a little too far apart, but they imbue this rather ordinary space with great dignity. It’s too cool to eat at the rough-hewn wooden table that stands in the arcade, but it makes a nice place to sit in the late afternoon, when the setting sun casts long shadows across the flagstones. The covered arcade is deep enough to roll in a wagon—or park a car, which we sometimes do when it rains.
I walk over to the barn and, balancing my notebook on top of an old wellhead, sketch the house. With its plain, three-arched loggia, it belongs to an early villa type that Palladio repeated several times even after he discovered the columned portico. Like the nearby Villa Poiana, the Villa Saraceno has a stripped architectural style of great severity and force. The three arches have prominent keystones and imposts, and are topped by a large pediment. Smaller pediments are repeated over the windows. The row of modillions under the cornice casts a serrated shadow on the plastered wall.
I reflect on the anomaly of the all’antica style—that is, theanomaly of Renaissance humanists such as Palladio reviving the architecture of an ancient civilization that was, in addition to its artistic accomplishments, slave-owning, imperialist, and obsessed with power. That power is evident even in this modest house. The three arches of the muscular loggia resemble a stylized triumphal arch. The arches are elongated, for like all of Palladio’s villas, this house surges proudly upward, placed high on a basement podium, the tall main floor made even taller by the attic. No doubt such monumental qualities explain the attraction of Palladianism to landed aristocrats in Kent as well as to plantation owners in South Carolina. Yet there is more to Saraceno than its echo of ancient imperial glories. This noble but almost rustic building does not have the full-blown classical details of Chiswick or Mereworth. It wears its all’antica style lightly, and merely hints at the Roman past. Because of this reserve, Palladio villas are sometimes described as exalted farmhouses, an appellation that captures neither their commanding authority nor their imposing presence. Yet the description has merit, for the unabashedly simple materials and uncomplicated details serve to amplify Palladio’s achievement. “There is something divine about his talent,” Goethe wrote, “something comparable to the power of a great poet who, out of the world of truth and falsehood, creates a third whose borrowed existence enchants us.” 8 That’s exactly how I feel about the Villa Saraceno. With its massive walls and clay-tile roof, it is a real farmhouse, but one that incorporates a Roman triumphal arch. Its monumental presence is almost, but not quite, belied by its ordinary plastered brick construction. It is as if Palladio were turning straw into gold. Enchanting is exactly the right word for this little architectural masterpiece.
V ILLA S ARACENO
Finishing my sketch, I walk over to the broad steps that ascend to the loggia. The abutment walls date
The nineteenth-century barchessa gives a general sense of Palladio’s intentions. The six massive Tuscan columns and pilasters have an exaggerated taper, and are spaced a little too far apart, but they imbue this rather ordinary space with great dignity. It’s too cool to eat at the rough-hewn wooden table that stands in the arcade, but it makes a nice place to sit in the late afternoon, when the setting sun casts long shadows across the flagstones. The covered arcade is deep enough to roll in a wagon—or park a car, which we sometimes do when it rains.
I walk over to the barn and, balancing my notebook on top of an old wellhead, sketch the house. With its plain, three-arched loggia, it belongs to an early villa type that Palladio repeated several times even after he discovered the columned portico. Like the nearby Villa Poiana, the Villa Saraceno has a stripped architectural style of great severity and force. The three arches have prominent keystones and imposts, and are topped by a large pediment. Smaller pediments are repeated over the windows. The row of modillions under the cornice casts a serrated shadow on the plastered wall.
I reflect on the anomaly of the all’antica style—that is, theanomaly of Renaissance humanists such as Palladio reviving the architecture of an ancient civilization that was, in addition to its artistic accomplishments, slave-owning, imperialist, and obsessed with power. That power is evident even in this modest house. The three arches of the muscular loggia resemble a stylized triumphal arch. The arches are elongated, for like all of Palladio’s villas, this house surges proudly upward, placed high on a basement podium, the tall main floor made even taller by the attic. No doubt such monumental qualities explain the attraction of Palladianism to landed aristocrats in Kent as well as to plantation owners in South Carolina. Yet there is more to Saraceno than its echo of ancient imperial glories. This noble but almost rustic building does not have the full-blown classical details of Chiswick or Mereworth. It wears its all’antica style lightly, and merely hints at the Roman past. Because of this reserve, Palladio villas are sometimes described as exalted farmhouses, an appellation that captures neither their commanding authority nor their imposing presence. Yet the description has merit, for the unabashedly simple materials and uncomplicated details serve to amplify Palladio’s achievement. “There is something divine about his talent,” Goethe wrote, “something comparable to the power of a great poet who, out of the world of truth and falsehood, creates a third whose borrowed existence enchants us.” 8 That’s exactly how I feel about the Villa Saraceno. With its massive walls and clay-tile roof, it is a real farmhouse, but one that incorporates a Roman triumphal arch. Its monumental presence is almost, but not quite, belied by its ordinary plastered brick construction. It is as if Palladio were turning straw into gold. Enchanting is exactly the right word for this little architectural masterpiece.
V ILLA S ARACENO
Finishing my sketch, I walk over to the broad steps that ascend to the loggia. The abutment walls date
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