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PALLADIO AND THE VENETO | Villa Pisani - Montagnana - (c. 1552) | ||||||||||||||||
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In 1552, in the neighbourhood of the medieval borgo of Montagnana, Palladio realised a building for his friend Francesco Pisani, which is both city palace and country villa. Pisani, powerful and influential Venetian patrician, was the patron and friend of artists and letterati, from Paolo Veronese to Giambattista Maganza, from Alessandro Vittoria to Palladio himself. The latter pair were jointly involved in the construction and decoration of his home. Building was certainly in progress during September 1553 and works were complete by 1555, including the sculptural decorations. Without any spaces given over to agricultural functions, and a building whose almost cubic volume is of abstract beauty, Villa Pisani must reflect the sophisticated tastes of its proprietor. For the first time a two-storey portico of engaged columns and a two-storey loggia crowned by pediments appear in a villa, a solution we have already met at the Palazzo Chiericati. The whole building is bounded by an uninterrupted and elegant Doric frieze over a texture of white stucco and inscribed ashlar coursing. On the garden front the two-dimensionality of the wall takes on life in the plastic excavation of the portico and the upper loggia. Although no autograph drawings for this building by Palladio survive, it is possible to affirm that the plate (and description) in the Quattro Libri is an elaboration made after the executed project. The building constitutes a rare case in Palladio’s production, a villa on two floors: the upper floor for the seigniorial apartments; the lower for everyday life, where business is conducted and the tenant farmers received, and not only during the summer as numerous fireplaces attest. The two levels present the same articulation of interior spaces, even if their ceilings are very different, those on the ground floor being vaulted. They begin with an extraordinary space of engaged columns, a half-way between an atrium and a salone, clearly the most important space in the house with its sculpture of the Four Seasons by Alessandro Vittoria, who had been employed not long before in Palladio’s Palazzo Thiene. The vertical connections are assured by symmetrical, oval, spiral staircases to either side of the loggia looking onto the garden. |
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