Villa Cornaro is a patrician

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became ...

Piombino Dese Piombino Dese is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Padua in the Italian region Veneto, located about northwest of Venice and about north of Padua. Piombino Dese borders the following municipalities: Camposampiero, Istrana, Loreggi ...

, about 30 km northwest of

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

, Italy. It was designed by the Italian Renaissance architect

Andrea Palladio Andrea Palladio ( ; ; 30 November 1508 – 19 August 1580) was an Italian Renaissance architect active in the Venetian Republic. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily Vitruvius, is widely considered to be one of ...

in 1552 and is illustrated and described by him in Book Two of his 1570 masterwork, ''

I quattro libri dell'architettura ''I quattro libri dell'architettura'' (''The Four Books of Architecture'') is a treatise on architecture by the architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), written in Italian. It was first published in four volumes in 1570 in Venice, illustrated wi ...

'' (The Four Books on Architecture).

Architecture

Villa Cornaro was mainly constructed in 1553–1554, with additional work into the 1590s, after Palladio had died, for Giorgio Cornaro, younger son of a wealthy family. It represents one of the most exemplary illustrations of a

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

villa during this time frame. The north façade has an innovative projecting central portico-loggia that is a flexible living space out of the sun and open to cooling breezes. The interior space is a harmonious arrangement of the strictly symmetrical floor plans on which Palladio insisted without exception. Rooms of inter-related proportions composed of squares and rectangles flank a central axial vista, which extends through the house. As

Rudolf Wittkower Rudolf Wittkower (22 June 1901 – 11 October 1971) was a British art historian specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, who spent much of his career in London, but was educated in Germany, and later moved to the Unite ...

noted, by moving subsidiary staircases into the projecting wings and filling matching corner spaces with paired oval principal stairs, space was left for a central ''salone'', which is fully as wide as the porticos. The central core of the villa forms a rectangle in which there are six repetitions of an elegant standard module. The interior has 18th-century frescos by Mattia Bortoloni and

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

s by

Camillo Mariani Camillo Mariani (Vicenza 1565–Rome 1611) was a major Italian sculptor whose work bridged the artistic worlds of Venice and Rome, forming a base for the Baroque style of the seventeenth century. Biography Camillo Mariani was born in 1565 in Vic ...

Influence

Through its illustration in Palladio's ''I quattro libri dell'architettura'', in the 18th century Villa Cornaro became a model for villas all over the world, particularly in England Marble Hill House (1724–29) in

Twickenham Twickenham is a suburban district in London, England. It is situated on the River Thames southwest of Charing Cross. Historically part of Middlesex, it has formed part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames since 1965, and the boro ...

, Middlesex, and in colonial America

Drayton Hall Drayton Hall is an 18th-century plantation located on the Ashley River about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Charleston, South Carolina, and directly across the Ashley River from North Charleston, west of the Ashley in the Lowcountry. An exa ...

(1738–1742) in Charleston, South Carolina, and

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...

's initial version of

Monticello Monticello ( ) was the primary plantation of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at age 26. Located just outside Charlottesville, V ...

(1768–1770) are early examples of its influence.

Conservation

Richard Rush purchased the Villa Cornaro in 1969 from an organization of the Italian Government dedicated to preserving the national monuments of Italy in the Veneto (L'Ente per le Ville Venete). He and his wife, Julia, restored the villa and furnished it with antiques over a period of twenty years. Since 1996 the villa has been conserved as part of a

World Heritage Site A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for ...

City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto is a World Heritage Site in Italy, which protects buildings by the architect Andrea Palladio. UNESCO inscribed the site on the World Heritage List in 1994. At first the site was called " ...

". The villa is owned by Carl and Sally Gable, of

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital city, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georgia, Fulton County, the mos ...

, who purchased it in 1989 for $2 million from Dr. Rush. In 2017, the couple put up the villa for sale; the asking price was 35 million British pounds.Sally Gable and Carl I. Gable, ''Palladian Days: Finding a New Life in a Venetian Country House'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005),

Gallery

File:VillaCornaro 2007 07 14 back 4.jpg, Retro File:VillaCornaro 2007 07 14 room.jpg File:VillaCornaro 2007 07 14 main hall.jpg, Main Hall File:Villa Cornaro pianta Bertotti Scamozzi 1781.jpg, Ground plan by Bertotti Scamozzi, 1781

Notes

External links

"Palladio and the Veneto"
a catalogue of the villas maintained by www.cisapalladio.org.
Center for Palladian Studies in America, Inc.
{{Andrea Palladio Houses completed in 1554 Renaissance architecture in Veneto

Cornaro The House of Cornaro or Corner are a family in Venice who were patricians in the Republic of Venice and included many Doges and other high officials. The name ''Corner'', originally from the Venetian dialect, was adopted in the eighteenth centu ...