Palladian Days

by Sally Gable

  “The architecture raised at Venice during this period is among the worst and basest ever built by the hands of men.” That was John Ruskin's assessment of the new style, expressed in his classic 1853 work The Stones of Venice. The dominance of Renaissance style in western architecture for five hundred years may be taken as a rejection of Ruskin's conclusion, but Ruskin was never troubled by the contrary opinion of others.

  Ruskin would have had little favorable to say of the Cornaro family, since they were responsible for at least two structures that are cited as contenders for the title of first Renaissance building in Venice. The earlier and more curious Ca’ del Duca, House of the Duke, has puzzled generations of tourists passing by on the No. 1 vaporetto. Near the Accademia Bridge two nondescript buildings of the 1600s (or maybe later) rise from a single massive foundation of rusticated Istrian stone. The buildings are noticeable because at one corner they obviously incorporate fragments of an earlier and more stylish building: two walls of rusticated stone, with a freestanding column at the corner where the walls meet. The foundation and the two walls are all that remain of a massive palazzo that Marco Cornaro and his brother Andrea commissioned the stonemason and architect Bartolomeo Bon to construct for them in 1456. If the palazzo had been finished, it would have been the largest in Venice. Unfortunately, in the following year the brothers became embroiled in a massive political scandal. Andrea was accused of bribing the heads of the Council of Forty in his election to the Zonta del Pregadi (Senate) and was banished from Venice. Marco Cornaro halted construction of the palazzo and, four years later, sold the building—scarcely begun—to Duke Francesco Sforza, the ruler of Milan, an ally of Venice at the time. A political rupture between Venice and Milan prevented Sforza from erecting his own planned palace on the Cornaro foundation. In time, other owners built the present structures, frugally incorporating not only the Cornaro foundation but the column and wall fragments as well.

  The rustication of the stonework and the scale of the freestanding corner column show that the huge palace, if completed, would have marked a gigantic stride forward from the Gothic to the Renaissance in Venetian architecture. Its architect, Bartolomeo Bon, was highly respected in his own time, but perhaps if Ca’ del Duca had been completed he would be regarded by posterity as his nation's first great Renaissance architect instead of its last great Gothic one.

  Andrea Cornaro never returned from his banishment; he died in Cyprus in 1473, sixteen years later. During that brief period he and Marco engineered one of the most remarkable personal coups in Venetian history. From his family's immense sugar plantation on Cyprus, Andrea bankrolled the island's king, James II Lusignan, in his civil war with the forces of his half-sister Carlotta. Following the war, the Cornaro brothers extracted from James an agreement that he would marry Marco's daughter Caterina. Upon the king's death in 1473, Caterina became ruling queen of Cyprus, adding an entire country to her family's treasures.

  Mauro Codussi, not Bartolomeo Bon, is usually considered Venice's first important Renaissance architect. When Pietro Lando married Bianca Cornaro, a younger sister of Queen Caterina, it was to Codussi that he turned for the design of a new palazzo on the Grand Canal. The palazzo, constructed about 1485 and now usually referred to as Ca’ Corner-Spinelli, passed to one of Bianca's Cornaro nephews in 1542. Critics acclaim the palace as the first one built in Venice with a wide array of classical elements and a tightly organized facade.

  In about 1542, the family asked Jacopo Sansovino to design its most prominent palazzo on the Grand Canal, Ca’ Cornaro della Ca’ Grande in San Maurizio parish. Sansovino, a Florentine trained in Rome, had been appointed proto (chief architect) of the Procurators of San Marco in 1529. He immediately set about a series of commissions that transformed Piazza di San Marco to its present state of perfection. The Mint, the Marciana Library, and the Loggetta at the foot of the Campanile are all his. Giorgio Vasari, the pioneer art historian of the sixteenth century, proclaimed the palazzo that Sansovino designed for the Cornaros “perhaps the finest in Italy.”

  Caterina Cornaro, queen of Cyprus, by Camillo Mariani (c. 1590). Grand salon, lower piano nobile

  Near the opposite end of the Grand Canal, in San Cassiano parish, stands the family's rococo palace, Ca’ Cornaro della Regina. Despite the name, Queen Caterina never lived there; she lived, at the end of her life, in the palace that would be razed in 1723 to make way for the present structure. Domenico Rossi, architect of the palazzo at San Cassiano, found early fame by winning a competition for designing the facade of Venice's church of San Stae in 1709. Acclaim for him was not universal, however; one critic described him as “an uneducated man, but well-versed in the practical side of building, who had little or no good taste in art.”

  Once Carl and I start searching for Cornaro palaces, we find them everywhere and in all periods. After counting nine Cornaro palaces along the Grand Canal in the San Marco section of Venice, Carl dubs that part of the shoreline the “Cornaro Riviera.”

  Cornaro patronage was never limited to palaces. Carl and I soon begin following leads to Cornaro chapels as well. Guidebooks take us to the better-known ones, such as the chapel in the transept of the church of San Salvatore, where Queen Caterina is buried, and the Cornaro chapel in Santi Apostoli, the church of the Holy Apostles, where the queen's father, Marco, and her brother Giorgio are interred. The latter was designed by Mauro Codussi and is adorned with columns by Tullio Lombardo and a painting of Santa Lucia by Giambattista Tiepolo. Hugh Honour in his Companion Guide to Venice describes the Virgin looking down from the funeral monument of Doge Marco Cornaro in the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo as “perhaps the finest Gothic statue in Venice.” The elaborate Cornaro chapel at the church of the Frari, dating from about 1420, contains later statuary by Tullio Lombardo and Jacopo Sansovino and a luminous triptych by Bartolomeo Vivarini.

  Carl and I stumble across other chapels on our own. A rainstorm leads us to seek shelter in the church of Santa Maria Mater Domini; in the left aisle we spot the Cornaro family crest set into the floor of a chapel. Investigating, we learn that Jacopo Sansovino designed the chapel for the family. In the same accidental fashion we come across the chapel in the right transept of the church of San Nicola da Tolentino commissioned by Doge Giovanni Cornaro II as his burial place. His funeral monument is embellished with busts of eleven Cornaro doges and cardinals; the altar features a painting of four saints by Palma il Giovane.

  The Grand Canal's “Cornaro Riviera”

  We come to realize that even though the extent of Andrea Palla-dio's future fame could not be known in his lifetime, it was not chance that led the Cornaro family to commission him to design one of its grand villas; the Cornaro family always sought out the great artists and architects of each period in Venice's history. A study of the art and architecture commissioned by the family opens a window onto the long history and rich artistic fabric of La Serenissima—the Most Serene Republic.

  The most satisfying result of all our Cornaro explorations is that now when we ride the No. 1 vaporetto in the late evening we can pick from the massed array of buildings certain ones that we are able to place in social and historical context. We can walk the streets of Venice comfortably without a guidebook, happy to make unplanned stops in churches for renewed acquaintance with gorgeous works that seem to be a part of our personal world.

  31

  A Well Resorted Tavern

  George Washington entertained thirty-eight houseguests at Mount Vernon during the month of September 1786. Some of them stayed more than one night. Fifteen others stopped by for dinner (always scheduled for three in the afternoon) during the same period. George and Martha rarely dined alone in their “retirement” years at Mount Vernon, where Martha directed a household staff of twelve or more. For Washington Mount Vernon was like “a well resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers who are going from north to south or from south to north do not spend a day or two at it.”

  Imagine his mixed pleasure and dismay upon re
ceiving yet another note from a wartime admirer: “Dear General, my family and I will be passing close to Mount Vernon on Wednesday next and hope we may stop to pay our respects….” First, he must write a letter of invitation; then he has to figure out where he's going to bed these people; he must alert Martha so she can set extra places at the table; and, finally, he gallops around his estate to ensure that his fields and barns are producing at optimum levels so he can afford these guests.

  But he would have loved the company, the conversation, and the opportunity to show the beauty and the fecundity of his beloved Mount Vernon. I feel the same way about my villa.

  “Help, Sally! What do I do?” Helen is crying into the telephone. Helen is my older sister; she never cries. I learn with relief that these are tears of frustration, not panic or pain.

  “We're in Milan!” she says. “We caught the train for Venice but it went to Milan.” Helen and her husband Bill arrived a week ago for their first visit to Italy. They are model houseguests, pitching into household chores without being asked. They help me make dinner, set the table, fold clothes. Helen even goes out one afternoon and weeds my geranium pots on the front steps. She's learned numerous Italian phrases in their short visit and revels in trying to decipher Italian signs. Moreover, with Carl back in Atlanta, they are wonderful company.

  How did they end up aboard the wayward train?

  Earlier in the week, they decided on a side trip to Florence for several days of sightseeing. Florence is an easy train ride away, with only a transfer at Mestre, the mainland part of Venice. I expected them back this evening at eight-thirty

  Helen shouts her explanation into the phone. For their return trip, she and Bill arrived early at the Florence train station, fortified with abundant magazines in Italian to puzzle their way through during their three-hour trip back to Mestre. A train had already pulled in and was standing on what they took to be the designated track, so they boarded and found seats. In due course the train departed. When the conductor arrived an hour later to punch their tickets, he exclaimed something in Italian which I reconstruct as, “Ah, signori, avete sbagliato! Questo treno va diretto a Milano! You've made a mistake! This train goes direct to Milan!” Several repetitions later, they understood his meaning—particularly his reference to Milano.

  The alternatives are clear and I review them with Helen. They can spend the night in Milan and return tomorrow morning, or they can catch a late train back to Mestre, although the train will arrive in Mestre too late for the last connection to Piombino Dese. Helen and I think alike: Better to get the difficult part over with now and then relax tomorrow. We agree that she and Bill will board the next diretto to Mestre, no matter the hour, and call me when they arrive; I will drive to Mestre and pick them up. In fact, being unsure of the road to the Mestre stazione and understanding that a woman in that area alone at night is presumed to be there on business, I walk across Via Roma to the Caffe Palladio to beg Giacomo to make the drive with me when Helen's call arrives. Of course, I don't have to beg; Giacomo is happy to help.

  Helen's call from Mestre comes at midnight; Giacomo and I meet them in front of McDonald's at the Mestre stazione at 12:30 a.m. Never has a face looked so relieved as Helen's when she spies our approaching car. Bill looks happy as well.

  The following morning Helen sends a huge bouquet of flowers to Giacomo with a sweet note. He says it is the first time in his life he's been given flowers. (Silvana tells him once is enough.)

  Andy, a college classmate of ours, arrives bearing a large Smithfield ham and a package of special Virginia long-grain rice. They are an unusual challenge to the land of prosciutto and risotto. In fact, the ham spices up our fresh eggs every morning for a week in a way that sweet, mild prosciutto never would. I serve thin slices to Italian guests for Sunday's farewell dinner to Andy, draping them over a bed of ripe, white pear slices as an antipasto. Everyone relishes its sharp taste and firm texture as a contrast to prosciutto; every shred vanishes swiftly from the table. I prepare Andy's rice in an American fashion, with chopped onions, shredded carrots, fresh parsley, a touch of soy sauce and Lowry's salt—but without the southern-style gravy that Carl's mother would have insisted on. Again the Italians consume it with interest, because its texture and taste are quite distinct from their own riso.

  Andy, bless his soul, enthusiastically gets to work in the kitchen and, at the same time, regales us with tales of former classmates. Since Carl generally limits his kitchen work to pulling wine corks, Andy's bad example makes him ill at ease.

  “Sally, this is fabulous, just fabulous!” Our Atlanta friend Joe, who was my first boss when Carl and I moved to Atlanta years ago, is standing in our dining room at the west end of the long mahogany table. He has discovered that from this single point he has an uninterrupted view in four directions. He points to the east wall, seen in the distance through the entrance hall, the east salon, and the guest bedroom; to the west wall at the end of the kitchen; to the open window of the north wall just behind him; to the south wall through the Tower of Babel and Jacob's Ladder rooms. “I can see into every room. No wonder you're not afraid to be here alone; you can see if you have any unexpected visitors!”

  Well, almost. The doorways of the five rooms along the north wall align perfectly. Guests in the east bedroom can look straight through to the kitchen in the morning to see if I'm up and preparing breakfast. I love this openness, this directness.

  A young woman who has just completed her dissertation at the University of Venice on the iconography of the villa's frescos and stuccos arrives to present Carl and me with a copy of her thesis and thank us for the access we gave her to study and photograph the villa. Joe is so intrigued by everything that he excitedly sits in with us for the visit, even though the conversation is entirely in Italian and he doesn't speak a word of it. Afterward, he is fascinated as Carl explains that our friend Doug Lewis disagrees with the young Italian laureate's identification of the persons depicted in two of the statues in the grand salon.

  Joe and his wife Barbara wander for hours through the villa, absorbing its dimensions, its colors, its presence. They have studied Palladio's life and works before arriving in Italy, and their enthusiastic delight in the villa renews our own.

  Some houseguests, unlike our friends Joe and Barbara, have no real interest in Venice's history or the history of the villa but are enamored of other facets of Italian life. We see ordinary sights freshly through their eyes.

  Bill, another college classmate, and his wife, Alice, are artists; she is a New York-based sculptor and landscape designer of considerable renown. Early in their stay with us at Villa Cornaro we take them to the celebrated Tomba Brion (Brion Tomb) at San Vito near Altivole, just fifteen miles north of Piombino Dese. Carl and I talk Venetian history as we drive, but our guests’ attention is elsewhere. They busy themselves pointing out unusual trees, interesting patterns in pavements we pass, and quaintly decrepit farm buildings. They remark on the cultivation of every single square meter of land, on the abrupt rise of the Dolomites following a turn in the road.

  They love the small, traditional cemetery of San Vito through which we approach the adjoining Tomba Brion. Brilliant flowers, real and synthetic, adorn almost every gravestone. On some graves small photographs, framed as part of the granite surfaces, convey a remembrance of the deceased.

  The Tomba Brion was completed in 1978. It was the final and one of the most unusual works of the near-legendary twentieth-century Italian architect-designer Carlo Scarpa. The work was commissioned by the widow of an industrialist who was born in the village of San Vito and prospered in Milan. As we wander, Alice voices her professional observations about the design. Its complex scheme forms a grand L embracing the mausoleum and cemetery we've just walked through. Using broad geometric forms— squares, circles, and rectangles and one vast arc—Scarpa created a playground of chiaroscuro that sits slightly above the surrounding countryside. Perimeter walls, slanting inward, establish a meditative mind-frame of utter se
clusion; visitors speak little, and only in hushed tones. The two tombs themselves, of dark granite and white marble, lie under a huge gentle arc whose ceiling is tiled in gold-green-and-blue mosaics. The tombs tilt toward each other, as if the Brions will maintain their living affection past death.

  “Carl, I have just one question,” Elaine says.

  Carl turns to listen. He is accompanying Elaine and her husband, Tom, on the No. 1 vaporetto, chugging along the Grand Canal from the Venice train station to Piazza di San Marco. Tom is a distant relative of Carl; the visit is the first time we have seen the couple in ten years.

  “Where are all the palaces I've heard about in Venice?” Elaine continues.

  At a loss for words, Carl looks back at the mansions they have already passed—Ca’ Pesaro, Ca’ Cornaro della Regina, Ca’ Foscari, Ca’ Rezzonico, among dozens of other stupendous residences on the most elegant “street” in Europe. “Sometimes,” he reports to me that evening, “you just know from early on that it's going to be a bad day.”

  Carl finally finds the words to explain to Elaine that in the Venetian Republic only the doge was permitted to call his residence a palazzo (palace). No matter how grand their homes might be, all the other patricians had to content themselves with a casa (house), usually shortened to Ca’ as part of the name. Yet Carl perceives that the problem for Elaine goes beyond the name: she was expecting a row of Buckingham Palaces lined up side by side. For her a palace is not defined by style, by richness of detail or historical place; it is defined by size. With that perception comes the realization that Elaine is going to be disappointed by anything he might show her in Venice.