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Humanism,
The Geo-Politics
of the Ideal Villa
las which "Wittkower used to reinforce his argument for reading Renaissance architecture in
terms of irreducible rules or principles.' These
drawings showed that architectural artefacts
ples were thus implicitly proposed as an intellectual framework for architectural form, superior to
the functional, programmatic or aesthetic goals to
which architectural history was then still bound.
As a core component of architecture's
einerging historiography, Wittkower's reading
whole typology.
PaUadio's villas themselves were commissioned at the highpoint of widespread social and
economic reforms advanced by the Serenissima
Republic i n the sixteenth century, and their particular formal composition - a central palace
flanked by two barns - is deeply embedded in
the political, social and formal impetus of such
reform. If, as James Ackerman has argued, the
viUa is one the most radically ideological architectures because i n claiming self-sufficiency
within the countryside it hides its economic
dependency on the city, then Palladio's palace +
barchesse composition openly signals the villa's
relation with its regional and agricultural economic context.3 This immediately suggests an
anti-ideal city.
v i l l a Thiene at Cicogna
Villa Badoer at Fratta Polesine
Villa Pisani at Monatagnana
Villa Pisani at Bagnolo
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Humanism,
The Geo-Politics
of the Ideal Villa
Pier Vittono
Aureli
agricultural sheds and were an essential component of Palladio's villas, providing not only a
whole typology.
Rov/e,whose
The Mathematics
las which Wittkower used to reinforce his argument for reading Renaissance architecture i n
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anti-ideal city.
First, however, let's deal with the name,
Palladio, boiubastic and slightly ridiculous in
its overloaded pretention. This was the name
conferred on Andrea della Gondola when he
was already in his 30s, having completed a long
apprenticeship in a stonemason's workshop.
The man who named h i m - the Renaissance poet,
humanist and diplomat Giangiorgio Trissino
77
alladio's last trip to Rome i n 1557 provided the material for two books, one
of them a guide to the city's antiquities
that would remain the standard reference for
tourists for the next two centuries, the other
a curious guide for pilgrims that documented
Rome's many churches.'' If Roman antiquity
offered the source for Palladio's universal architectural grammar, the mapping of churches many of them located i n what was their typically
suburban and de-populated, fragmented
context - enabled h i m to present the city as
an archipelago of monuments. These flnite,
autonomous artefacts carried a highly charged
ritualisde geography, even when presented
in isolation. But Palladio went beyond this by
ordering the descriptions o f t h e churches
according to the pilgrim's peripatetic approach
to the city. I n other words, the guide does not
describe these churches as monumental forms
removed f r o m their context, but addresses them
within site-speciflc patterns of an urban itinerary. I n addition to his study of antiquity, therefore, PaUadio's interestin compiling a pilgrim's
guide is of exceptional interest because i t signifles his familiarity with the geographic symbolism of the city. And it is precisely this act of
locating and marldng that seems to underpin
Palladio's abihty to define the city through
its architecture.
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79
ffering some kind of theoretical legitimacy to this shift f r o m sea to land were
the ideas of the theorist and patron of
the arts Alvise Cornaro (1484-1566), who argxied,
in particular, for the promotion of agriculture as
an alternative to Venice's existing mercantilist
economy. Author of i a Vita Sobria, a treatise on
the virtue of living in the countryside, Cornaro
was one of the most active political thinkers during the Veneto's economic crisis, His ideas largely
concerned the reclamation of land, and the promotion of agriculture over trade as the basis for a
more solid relationship between power and territory.'" Before Cornaro, country life (of which the
villa was the most idealised form) was typically
understood as radically anti-political because it
turned its back on the political space par excellence, the city. After Cornaro, however, this image
was subverted: rather than being predicated on
the fundamentally apolitical ideas of disinterest
and denial, the countryside became highly politicised by its promotion of a new formal model and
its explicit rejection ofthe existing one - Venice.
To represent his vision of a civic life, Cornaro
built his own analogous city i n tlie countryside
near Padua, Palladio's birthplace. I n the 1520s,
he commissioned the Pa duan painter Giovanni
Battista Falconetto to produce a garden loggia,
and a year later an odeon was built next to it to
host the performances of a famous local dialect
actor Angelo Beolco (better know by his pseudonym, Ruzzante). I n Cornaro's garden, therefore,
it is possible to see an attempt to elevate the rustic
countryside to the level of a new, cultivated civic
condition - one that lay beyond the city's monumental spaces but had a competing measure of
cultural and social charisma. Falconetto's loggia
- the first example in the Veneto of architecture a
la Romana - was clearly built as a highly symbolic
prototype, an example. Its key feature is the formal theme of the loggia itself, with its generous
openings, didactic exposition of the orders as a
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O
i
ffering some kind of theoretical legitimacy to this shift from sea to land were
the ideas of the theorist and patron of
the arts Alvise Cornaro (1484-1566), who argued,
in particular, for the promotion of agriculture as
an alternative to Venice's existing mercantUist
economy. Author of l a Vita Soin'cz, a treatise on
the virtue of livingin the countryside, Cornaro
was one of the most active political thinkers during the Veneto's economic crisis. His ideas largely
concerned the reclamation of land, and the promotion of agriculture over trade as the basis for a
more solid relationship between power and territory." Before Cornaro, country life (ofwhich the
viUa was the most idealised form) was typically
understood as radically anti-political because it
turned its back on the political space par excellence, the city. After Cornaro, however, this image
was subverted: rather than being predicated on
the fundamentally apolitical ideas of disinterest
and denial, the countryside became highly politicised by its promotion of a new formal model and
its explicit rejection of the existing one - Venice.
To represent his vision of a civic life, Cornaro
buUthis own analogous city in the countryside
nearPadua, PaUadio's birthplace. In the 1520s,
he commissioned the Paduan painter Giovanni
Battista Falconetto to produce a garden loggia,
and a year later an odeon was built next to it to
host the performances of a famous local dialect
actor Angelo Beolco (better know by his pseudonym, Ruzzante). I n Cornaro's garden, therefore,
it is possible to see an attempt to elevate the rustic
countryside to the level of a new, cultivated civic
condition - one that lay beyond the city's monumental spaces but had a competing measure of
cultural and social charisma. Falconetto's loggia
- the flrst example i n the Veneto of architecture a
la Rotnana-was clearly built as a highly symbolic
prototype, an example. Its key feature is the formal theme of the loggia itself, with its generous
openings, didactic exposition of the orders as a
AA F I L E S 59
he second vision, culturally more complex and sophisticated, was an elaboration by Alvise Cornaro of the concept
of the theatre he had constructed i n his garden
in Padua. Like Sabbadino, Cornaro aimed to synthesise two apparently contradictory forces by
opening the city towards the Lagoon while at the
same time insisting on a clearly deflned urban
edge. The project itself was articulated in two
parts. The flrst consisted of a man-made grove of
trees planted on a linear island, built i n the f o r m
of a floating city-wall. This wooded isthmus was
proposed not just as a defence system, offering
protection f r o m military attacks and the forces
of the sea, but as social infrastructure for the city
- i n effect a gigantic park. The project's second
part focused on the most strategic and monumental point i n the city; the basin of San Marco,
the vast and monumental space triangulated by
the Piazzetta of San Marco, the Punta della
Dogana and the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.
W i t h i n this space Cornaro imagined another triangulation - a floating theatre a la Romana; an
artificial island i n the f o r m of a 'shapeless little
h i l l ' , built out of the m u d extracted f r o m the
city's canals, planted with trees and topped with
a loggia; and a spring-water fountain set on the
edge of the piazzetta, right between the two
monumental columns featuring Venice's twin
patrons, the lion of St Mark and the statue of St
Teodoro of Amasea, which framed the view of
the basin f r o m St Mark's Square. The rationale
(and, as Manfredo Tafuri has noted, powerful
ideological resonances") behind this composition seems to have been based around the idea
of introducing a territorial condition into
Venice' s largely aquatic universe. Yet what is
interesting about this insertion is that i t is formalised not by destroying Venice's insularity,
but by theatrically emphasising the silhouette
of the Lagoon as an archipelago.
The schemes of both Sabbadino and
Cornaro were designed to expand the city
beyond the limits of its traditional monumental
spaces, until then iconographically controlled
by the Piazza San Marco. Elements of Cornaro's
urban vision - notably the freshwater spring
and the linear wooded glade - were also clearly
meant to introduce, analogically, the theme
of agriculture and land management into a
city that had previously developed only through
its maritime economy. Moreover, the island
82
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aI
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84
Architecture.
e I palazzi
Barbieri, Vicenza:Storia
Review,
Simposio
del
6. PierfilippoCastelli,Ifly/trf/
Giovangiorgio
Trissino,
OratoreePoeta
di una avven-
Ein
Symposium
Metodo
VaoloVirno,Mondanita:L'ideadimondo
tra espertenza sensiblle e
sferapubblica
op cit, pp 217-29.
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of Palladio's
with Buildings
Designfor
from
the Bridge
Vicenza,
c 1759
ofRialto,
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of Palladio's
with Buildingsfivm
Vicenza,
c 1759
N a t i o n a l Gallery, P a r m a
Rialto,