Palladian Days

by Sally Gable

  Couturier wonderland! The new Tasca outlet is a treasure-house, I discover, but Michela leaves nothing to chance. Alerted by Francesca, she is there to greet me personally when I arrive with Carl in tow. Then Michela springs her surprise: she has brought her sister Daria, the chief designer of the whole company. I feel like the Duchess of Windsor with Christian Dior hovering about.

  “Purple? Daria, maybe that's a bit too strong for me,” I suggest tentatively as another confection is waved before me.

  Daria is holding a bright green dress highlighted with huge purple circles. The green tone tends toward the blue side of the spectrum, rather than yellow, the neckline swoops low, and the waist is encircled by a lavender cummerbund-like invention. Does she think I'm eighteen?

  “All you'll need is purple shoes,” Daria assures me. “Here's a handbag that will go perfectly. lust try it on, Signora Sally. These are just dresses for you to try on.”

  Daria plants me at an enormous mirror outside a trio of dressing rooms. The bars are draped in a myriad of styles and a rainbow of colors that she has collected from racks around the cavernous room. “Rainbow” isn't exactly the word; there are no pastels here. Everything has deep, strong hues to complement the complexion and dark hair of Italian women. Casting my eyes around, I see few black dresses and not a single white one.

  Daria continues to flit about like a hummingbird, returning with the most unlikely combinations. She holds each garment up before my face and makes a lightning decision about whether to recommend it. I've never dressed and undressed so much in thirty minutes in my life, and I've never enjoyed myself so much while shopping. Even my happiest moments among the racks at Marshall's or Macy's don't compare. Daria is a magician, producing one new effect after another.

  My only restraint is the specter of having to pack all my purchases in suitcases that were already full when I arrived in Italy. Reluctantly, I decide on the items I can't live without. Yes, the orange suit and the green-and-purple dress are among them. (They are my favorites.)

  17

  A Wedding and a Funeral

  I first hear of Stefania Scquizzato several months before we arrive at Villa Cornaro as the new owners. Dick and Julie Rush want us to know that they have agreed to allow Stefania's wedding reception to be held at the villa just two weeks before we are to arrive, in the ambiguous period when we are technically owners of the villa but subject to having it bought away from us by the Italian government.

  Stefania is the youngest child of Memi and Francesca Scquizzato, the sister of Ottorino and Wilma. Carl and I know nothing of the Scquizzatos at that time, of course. Stefania is a marvel, we are told—a beauty and a scholar, already with her degree from the university at Venice, just returned from an assignment as interpreter on a long, high-profile mission to China, now on the eve of her marriage to a young man whom the Rushes have met and admire. Ottorino and Wilma are clearly in the shade of their sister Stefania's bright sun.

  The wedding never occurs. Carl and I never meet Stefania. She dies mysteriously in the hospital at nearby Camposampiero ten days before her wedding date and is buried in the parish cemetery in the gown she would have worn as a bride.

  Stefania entered the hospital because of recurring symptoms of a virus she contracted in China. The family at first believed that the virus caused Stefania's death. In later years, a new story emerges, that she died because a hospital nurse carelessly injected air bubbles into her veins while administering an antibiotic.

  As I come to know the Scquizzato family, I meet Stefania's fiance, Mario, who haunts the Scquizzato home to share their grief. His countenance is so mournful and bereft he resembles a Saint Sebastian escaped from a sculptor's studio. After several years, his visits become less frequent. Finally, they cease altogether. He has a new fidanzata, Wilma says, one who does not wish to share him with a dead bride.

  18

  A Bright idea

  Carl is never sympathetic when I tell him I would like to go back in time and spend one day in mid-sixteenth-century Italy to see what life was like when the villa was built. He's convinced that he would turn up as a subsistence farmer, like most of his ancestors in America, so he never participates in my what-if scenarios.

  I like to imagine that I am there in 1551 when Palladio first meets with the grand Venetian lord Giorgio Cornaro to discuss building a villa for him in Piombino. The Cornaros had cut a wide path in Venice ever since the city was organized some nine hundred years earlier—always rich, always involved in the top leadership, always fighting somewhere along the shore of the eastern Mediterranean to extend the Venetian empire. Giorgio's great-grandmother was a granddaughter of the emperor of Trebizond, the last remnant of the Roman Empire; his great-aunt was the queen of Cyprus. As they might say in thoroughbred breeding, you don't get better lines than that.

  Did Giorgio regard Palladio with suspicion? After all, Giorgio knew perfectly well that “Palladio” wasn't even the man's real name. When he was born in Padua, his parents named him Andrea (ahn-DRAY-ah). There were a lot of Andreas around, so he was referred to as Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, that is, “Andrea, the son of Peter of the gondola.” Note to diary: Peter was a miller or a millstone maker; how does a gondola get in the picture? Since branches of the Cornaro family were everywhere and knew everything, Giorgio was probably also aware that Andrea had made a bad start, careerwise. He began as apprentice to a stonecutter in Padua, a mainland city under Venetian control, when he was thirteen. Something went wrong, though, because he broke his contract after just three years and fled to Vicenza, a neighboring town still within Venetian territory.

  Think of a man standing atop the city wall of Vicenza, watching this runaway approach from the distance, probably carrying some clothes slung over his shoulder in a sack. Would that observer ever have imagined that the arrival of the young man was one of the most important events in the history of the city, that the youth's name (or the name he was going to assume) would become synonymous with the city and ensure its fame for centuries?

  I like to think that Giorgio Cornaro did see that future in Palla-dio when they met in Piombino. He knew that Palladio was still a provincial artisan, but he was a provincial who was attracting increasingly important sponsorship. About fifteen years earlier, while Andrea was still a stonecutter, his abilities caught the eye of Gian Giorgio Trissino, a provincial nobleman of Vicenza. Trissino was a wealthy dilettante architect and poet. Palladio probably came to his attention while working on a renovation that Trissino had under way at his house outside Vicenza. Trissino took Palladio to Rome several times, so Palladio became acquainted with both the ruins of Rome from classical times and the new Renaissance derivatives coming from men like Raphael and Michelangelo. It was Trissino who decided that his protege needed a snappier name and came up with “Palladio” to suggest Pallas Athene, the Greek goddess of wisdom.

  The meeting between Cornaro and Palladio in Piombino may not have been their first encounter. Trissino had spent a long sojourn in Padua in 1538-1541, maybe taking Palladio with him for part of his stay. In Padua, which was a university town, Trissino and Palladio probably spent time in the circle of Alvise Cornaro, a distant cousin of Giorgio. Alvise was a bit of a hustler, but like Trissino he was a great promoter and patron of the new Renaissance ideas in architecture. Giorgio Cornaro was living in Padua at that time, because his father was serving a term as Venice's capitano—military commander—for the city. So it is easy to speculate that all of them might have been introduced in Padua years earlier.

  In any event, whether old friends or strangers when they meet in Piombino, Giorgio Cornaro and Palladio each need something important from the other. Palladio is trying to break into the rich circle of Venetian patrons. They have bigger pocketbooks than the provincial patrons around Vicenza who have primarily sustained him in the past, and working for them would bring a lot more prestige. Giorgio Cornaro would be a big catch.

  Giorgio needs something from Palladio also. When Giorgio's father di
ed a year earlier, in February 1550, the big family villa in Piombino—just twelve years old—was inherited by Giorgio's older brother. Giorgio inherited half of the plantation, but without anyplace on it to live. He needs a new villa urgently because he will soon marry Elena Contarini, sister of the bishop of Padua.

  I can picture Palladio pacing the building site with Giorgio. Palladio has a worried look. This could be his chance to make a real mark among the Venetian grandees, but the site is impossible. On one side looms the big villa that Giorgio's brother has inherited. Michele Sanmicheli designed it. Sanmicheli was Venice's official architect for military structures—forts, gates, and the like—and one of its leading civil architects as well. If you're going to design a villa to stand just 70 feet away from one that Sanmicheli has done, you had better be very careful that yours does not look second-best.

  Sanmicheli is not Palladio's only problem. On the other side of the building site stands an enormous old harchessa, or farm building, stretching 190 feet to the west.

  Palladio swallows hard and tries to put a good face on things. “This will work perfectly. All we have to do is tear down that old harchessa,” he says confidently.

  “Impossible,” Giorgio replies. “We need that for the farmwork. I can't interrupt that.”

  Palladio paces the site some more, shaking his head.

  “Well,” he says cautiously, “maybe there is another site on the plantation that we can use for the villa.”

  “It has to sit here,” Giorgio states emphatically. “This is the only frontage on Via Castellana that I could squeeze out of my arrogant brother, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let him force me to live down some country lane!”

  That's the way I imagine them talking. Maybe I saw too many movies as a child.

  More pacing, more head shaking.

  “In that case, we'll have to build something really tall,” Palladio says pensively. “Really, really tall.”

  Giorgio nods as Palladio speaks, but he doesn't comment.

  “And the grain will have to be stored in the attic, with the wine-making in the cantina,” Palladio concludes.

  Giorgio agrees to the concept.

  I imagine I can detect a satisfied smile on Palladio's face despite his efforts to hide it. I feel like patting him on the back.

  I've always wanted to build something really tall, he seems to be thinking, and I've got a dynamite idea of how to do it.

  In my imagination that is how Palladio came up with Villa Cornaro's unique innovation: the projecting double portico on the villa's north facade. The double portico—that is, a porch with classical columns sitting on top of a second porch with classical columns—was his answer to the height problem. If Palladio had still been just a beginner at architecture, he might have thrown up a tall flat wall with three round-top openings cut into it for an entrance. That's what he did at Villa Godi, his first villa, twelve years earlier. But the result there looks just a bit like a fortress. The double portico at Villa Cornaro gives the whole face of the villa a warm, inviting look. It's functional, too, a sheltered space in which to sit protected from the sun or rain and either supervise the farm-work or enjoy the outdoors. Palladio used the double portico motif on both the north and south facades of the villa. He also used it on one facade at two other projects, Villa Pisani at Montagnana and Palazzo Antonini at Udine. In other words, it is not the double portico motif itself that is unique to Villa Cornaro.

  Villa Cornaro—north facade, with projecting double portico

  What is unique at Villa Cornaro is a special feature that Palladio added to the double portico on the north side of the villa. He did not leave the double portico nested within the central core of the villa, which is the way he used it on the south facade and at the other two examples. Instead, he pushed the whole structure out from the villa, so that the double portico projects out into the garden. It sounds like a small change, but the effect is dramatic when you stand in the two spaces and compare them. The south portico, the one sitting within the core of the villa, feels like a room of the villa with a big picture window on one side. The projecting double portico on the north side gives a completely different feeling. When you stand on it, you feel that you're a part of the outdoors, with the garden all around you.

  Villa Cornaro—south facade, with recessed double portico

  The projecting double portico is what has made Villa Cornaro so widely copied. The earliest surviving example in the United States is Drayton Hall, a plantation house built about 1740 outside Charleston, South Carolina, Carl's hometown. Note to diary. Coincidence? Some other well-known copies of the projecting double portico are at Shirley Plantation in Virginia and the Miles Brewton house, also in Charleston. The feature was probably added to these last two in the late 1700s, some years after the original structures were built.

  Thomas Jefferson liked the projecting double portico. In fact, he built a projecting double portico at Monticello. Jefferson was fickle, though. Later, when he was living in Paris as American ambassador to France, he watched in fascination as the Hotel de Salm (now the French Legion of Honor headquarters, next door to Musee d'orsay) was built nearby, and capped by a dome inspired by another of Palladio's villas, La Rotonda. As soon as he returned to Virginia, Jefferson began tearing out the upstairs portion of Monticello, enlarging it and adding a dome to create the famous look that appears on the nickel. Jefferson's second version left no sign of his home's Villa Cornaro origins.

  19

  Market Day

  “How will you cook those swordfish steaks?” I ask. “Alia griglia? On the grill?”

  It's Saturday, market day in Piombino Dese. Carl and I stand at the fish counter—actually a Mercedes truck whose side panel is lifted to reveal a rolling fish market.

  The genial, middle-aged stranger ahead of us orders enough swordfish for a family of fifty. He must know a lot about swordfish, I decide, and his friendly smile invites my question about cooking them. He immediately outlines for me not one but three recipes. I decide to try the top-of-the-stove one:

  Place 1/2-inch-thick swordfish steaks in a frying pan. Pour over them a separately prepared mixture of a little vegetable oil, a little white wine, a touch of salt, two small tomatoes (chopped), and a little chopped basil. Simmer for ten minutes. Delizioso!

  The gentleman doesn't stop with swordfish. Looking at the shipment of halibut fillets on display at the counter, he launches into a ricetta straordinaria—superb recipe—for them as well. He continues chattering about a rather complicated recipe for coda di rospo (tail of monkfish) while the fishmonger is preparing his order: a dozen swordfish steaks, half a dozen large crayfish, a kilo of bright pink shrimp.

  My culinary consultant introduces himself and pulls out his business card. He lives in Piombino Dese, but we haven't met before because he travels on business much of the time in southern Italy, he explains. “Puglia, Bari, Basilicata …”

  “Ah, Basilicata,” I interject. “I've just begun reading Carlo Levi's Cristo si e fermato a Eboli. What a poor area!”

  “Yes,” he agrees, “but so very beautiful, a magnificent wilderness in Italy.”

  As he gathers his purchases to depart, I ask him if he is an amateur cook, since he's given me so many different recipes.

  “Ah, no.” He smiles. “Non sono un cuoco, sono un mangiatore! I'm not a cook, I'm a big eater!”

  Market day is a delightful anachronism.

  Piombino Dese's market day was sanctioned by a government decree in 1790 and continues to recur every Saturday. Different towns have their markets on different days. Well before Silvana arrives to open the balcone on Saturday morning, a garden of tents sprouts on the piazza opposite the villa and on two piazzas in the next block. Bright awnings burst forth like exuberant petals: large green-and-white stripes, sun-bleached red-and-white thinner stripes, tiny blue-and-white checks, broad orange and white swaths. Stalls erupt with pale melons, fuzzy kiwis, dull-red apples, smooth green pears, tiny green beans, tomatoes long a
nd thin or tiny and round, eggplants a gorgeous deep shiny purple-brown waiting to be broiled in very thin slices and topped with Parmesan to make me dream of heaven. Other stands overflow with huge hanging prosciutto hams, long rosy-gray bundles of salami, all shapes and types of cheeses, some round and fat and deep yellow, others fist-size and white, the hufala mozzarella in wet packets concealing their delicate-textured taste, destined to combine with sweet tomatoes and freshly picked basil as a dish for deities. One movable feast of a truck roasts chickens and pork on the spot for immediate eating, enveloping the piazza in delectable aromas. Smiling Venetans vie for my business with waving arms. “Molto buono! Molto fresco!” they cry.

  As I wander past the fish truck, a long black eel wriggles from a knot of eels squirming in a square basin set under running water. He flops over the lip of the basin and falls to the ground. Unnoticed at first, he slithers along the gutter like a convict who has gone over the wall at Alcatraz. Alas, just inches short of the drain grate that he has targeted as his escape hatch, he is apprehended by the burly fishmonger and dumped back in the basin.

  Bras and panties hang from other booths; belts and shoes of all colors are spread for display. I buy two wonderful undershirts layered with cotton inside and wool outside, knowing the late autumn days of the Veneto can be savagely cold. Sheets and towels flutter like flags; there are tablecloths and kitchen tools, bolts of cloth, and huge boxes of threads—even sewing machines! Dresses, shirts, and trousers hang enticingly, handsome but often cheaply made and priced accordingly. A clever shopper can quickly assemble a new ensemble of sweater, skirt, and sandals, all from different stalls. Other vendors offer a hothouse of flowers and shrubs.

  The food, the dry goods, the sewing machines—all these items are now available in local stores open every day of the week. Although some of the produce may be slightly fresher than what I buy at the Battistons’ supermercato, much of it is not. Once, in unpacking my market purchases in the villa's kitchen, I find the tomatoes chilled from refrigeration, and the date on the container of tiny shrimp no more current than that on containers at the supermercato.