Villa Thiene is a 16th-century

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house that provided an escape from urban life. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the f ...

Quinto Vicentino Quinto Vicentino is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Vicenza, Veneto, Italy. It is east of A31. The town is the birthplace of Urbano Lazzaro, the Italian partisan who identified and arrested Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea ...

in the

province of Vicenza The province of Vicenza (; ) is a province in the Veneto region of Italy. Its capital city is Vicenza. The province has an area of 2,722.53 km2, and a total population of 865,082 (as of 2017). There are 113 ''comuni'' (municipalities) in th ...

. The building as it stands today is the work of several architects one of whom was

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 on ...

. Like several other projects on which Palladio worked, it was commissioned by two brothers, in this case Marcantonio and Adriano Thiene. Since 1996, the villa has been conserved as part of a

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

, the "

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 World Heritage Site also includes the

Palazzo Thiene Palazzo Thiene is a 15th-16th-century palace in Vicenza, northern Italy, designed for Marcantonio and Adriano Thiene, probably by Giulio Romano, in 1542,Andrew Hopkins, 2002. ''Italian Architecture from Michelangelo to Borromini''; p. 21. and revi ...

in the city of

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; or , archaically ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, where it straddles the Bacchiglione, River Bacchiglione. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and e ...

, which belonged to same Thiene brothers.

History

Palladio was involved with Villa Thiene in the 1540s, making it one of his earlier works. He appears to have adapted a design by

Giulio Romano Giulio Pippi ( – 1 November 1546), known as Giulio Romano and Jules Romain ( , ; ), was an Italian Renaissance painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the ...

. The extent of Romano's involvement in the project is not clear, in any case he died in Mantua in 1546 while the villa was still under construction. One of the Thiene brothers, Adriano Thiene, had to flee Vicenza in 1547 and building work appears to have been put on hold at that time.

Architecture

A version of the villa is illustrated and discussed in '' I quattro libri dell'architettura'' of 1570. As with a number of the villas described in Palladio's treatise, there are differences between what was published and what was actually built. Palladio's plan indicates that the present building was not intended for the mansion itself, but for one of the agricultural wings. However, there are sixteenth-century frescoes in the building by Giovanni de Mio, suggesting that it was decided at an early state that the building would not be purely utilitarian. The plan shows two courtyards which were never completed. Courtyards are rather unusual among Palladio's villas, but the architect also proposed courtyards for

Villa Serego Villa Serego or Villa Sarego is a Palladian villa at Santa Sofia di Pedemonte, San Pietro in Cariano in the province of Verona, northern Italy. It was built for the aristocratic Sarego family, and designed by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea ...

, another incomplete villa, where one of the courtyards was partially constructed. The front and rear facades have been modified since the sixteenth century: the front facade is probably the closer to Palladio's intentions, although the brickwork would originally have been rendered. The many holes were apparently done during wartime, to extract metal used within the villa's construction. The garden facade of Villa Thiene has been attributed to eighteenth-century architect

Francesco Muttoni Francesco Muttoni (January 22, 1669 – February 21, 1747) was an Italian architect, engineer, and architectural writer, mainly active near Vicenza, Italy. Biography He was born in Lacima, near Porlezza, on Lake Lugano, but his family moved to Vi ...

. Both the thermal window in the concluding gable and portals in the centre part are displeasing. These elements cannot be reconciled with Palladio's formal idiom.Wundram, Manfred, "Andrea Palladio 1508-1580, Architect between the Renaissance and Baroque"

Taschen Taschen is a luxury art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. As of January 2017, Taschen is co-managed by Benedikt Taschen and his eldest daughter, Marlene Taschen. History The company began as Tasch ...

Köln Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

1993 p.40

References

{{Authority control Andrea Palladio buildings

Thiene Thiene () is a city and ''comune'' in the province of Vicenza, in northern Italy, located approximately west of Venice and east of Milan. __NOTOC__ The city has an active and lively industrial sector, composed mainly of small to medium-sized co ...

Palladian villas of Veneto

History

Architecture

See also

References