Villa Badoer
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Villa Badoer is a villa in Fratta Polesine in the Veneto region of Italy. It was designed and built in the 1550s by Andrea Palladio for Francesco Badoer of Venice. It replaced a medieval castle which guarded a bridge across a navigable canal.
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[edit] Architectural Details
The villa is constructed on the foundations of the old castle, saving money, and giving a slightly raised setting to the building. An imposing three-flight staircase leads to the front door of the villa. This was the first time Palladio used his fully-developed temple pediment in the facade of a villa.
The house is framed by two semi-circular arcade wings, or curved loggias. These originally housed agricultural activities, for this was a working villa, like Villa Emo and various other designs by Palladio.
Unusually among Palladio's completed works, the wings here do not actually touch the villa, and they are set slightly in front of it. Palladio noted that the curved loggias had the effect of seeming to embrace visitors coming to the house. Vasari thought that they were beautiful, and even fantastic.
As in most of the villas designed by Palladio, the attic is a granary, the ground floor, the piano nobile, is where all the livable rooms (for sleeping, eating, etc.) are located, and the raised basement is used for storage and for service rooms such as the kitchen.
The piano nobile retains its original fresco decoration. Palladio himself referred to these frescoes as being "grottesche di bellissima inventione" by Giallo Fiorentino: their subject matter is rather obscure.
All the rooms are covered by flat ceilings. Architectural critics such as Witold Rybczynski think that the interior is relatively small and unimpressive, compared to the grandiose exterior.
The plan of Villa Badoer presented in Palladio's I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura of 1570 is somewhat different from what was really built there. For instance, there is no portico in the rear and the roof is different.
[edit] Conservation
The building was renovated at the end of the 20th century. In 1996 UNESCO designated Villa Badoer as part of the World Heritage Site "City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto". The building is open to the public.
[edit] References
- Boucher, Bruce. Andrea Palladio: The Architect in his Time. New York: Abbeville Press, 1998.
- Rybczynski, Witold The Perfect House: A Journey with the Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio. Scribner, New York 2002.
[edit] See also
Palladian Villas of the Veneto
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