Villa Pisani, Montagnana
The Villa Pisani is a patrician villa outside the city walls of Montagnana,[1] Veneto, northern Italy.
Architecture
It was designed by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio about 1552, for Cardinal Francesco Pisani. Pisani was also a patron of the painters Paolo Veronese and Giambattista Maganza and the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria, who provided sculptures of the Four Seasons for the villa, which is in fact provided with fireplaces to dispel winter chill. Unlike more typical Palladian villas – and their imitations in Britain, Germany and the United States – the Villa Pisani at Montagnana combines an urban front, facing a piazza of the comune, and, on the other side, a rural frontage extending into gardens, with an agricultural setting beyond.
Unlike many of Palladio's villas in purely rural settings, it has an upper storey, set apart from more public reception rooms on the main floor; twin suites of apartments are accessed by twin oval staircases that flank the central recess on the garden side. On the exterior, little differentiation between floors is made: there is no obviously visible piano nobile. On the garden front, access to the park is from the central recessed portico only; a balustrade above a deep ditch keeps out informal wanderers.
Construction of the villa was under way by September 1553, and it was complete in 1555. The central block is an uncompromising rectangle, with a pedimented tetrastyle portico, Ionic over Doric, that has been sunk into its wall-plane so that the columns are embedded half-columns. On the garden front, the similar structure instead forms a screen across the fronts of a recessed portico surmounted by a loggia, which become in single recessed central feature. The Doric frieze[2] runs uninterrupted round the building, further binding all elements together. There are no surviving autograph drawings related to this project. However, Palladio published a version of the building in his I quattro libri dell'architettura. The woodcut shows an idealized, amplified form of the villa, in which the central block is flanked by arched gateway structures that end in tall, three-storey tower-like pavilions.[3]
Conservation
In 1996, UNESCO included the Villa Pisani in the World Heritage Site "City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto". The villa continues to be in private ownership.
Influence on other buildings
The Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis, Maryland, Kinlet Hall in the United Kingdom and Wilanów Palace in Warsaw were all inspired by Palladio's designs for the Villa Pisani.
See also
References
- ^ The most prominent "Villa Pisani", among numerous villas that belonged to this Venetian family, is the baroque villa at Stra.
- ^ It is fully developed, with bucrania and paterae in the metopes between the triglyphs.
- ^ I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura[permanent dead link], Venice, 1570 — facsimile of the book at octavo.com ] (in Italian)
External links
- Centro Internazionale di Studi Achitettura Andrea Palladio: Villa Pisani di Montagnana (in English and Italian)
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- Convento della Carità (cloisters)
- Il Redentore
- San Francesco della Vigna (façade)
- San Giorgio Maggiore church and monastery
- Santa Maria Nova (attributed)
- San Pietro di Castello
- Tempietto Barbaro
- Valmarana Chapel
- Le Zitelle (attributed)
- Basilica Palladiana
- Casa Cogollo
- Loggia Valmarana
- Palazzo Antonini
- Palazzo Barbaran da Porto
- Palazzo del Capitanio
- Palazzo Chiericati
- Palazzo Civena
- Palazzo Dalla Torre
- Palazzo della Loggia
- Palazzo Pojana
- Palazzo Porto
- Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello
- Palazzo Pretorio (Cividale del Friuli)
- Palazzo Schio
- Palazzo Thiene
- Palazzo Thiene Bonin Longare
- Palazzo Valmarana
- Villa Angarano
- Villa Arnaldi
- Villa Badoer
- Villa Barbaro
- Villa Caldogno
- Villa Capra "La Rotonda"
- Villa Chiericati
- Villa Cornaro
- Villa Emo
- Villa Forni Cerato
- Villa Foscari
- Villa Gazzotti Grimani
- Villa Godi
- Villa Piovene
- Villa Pisani, Bagnolo
- Villa Pisani, Montagnana
- Villa Pojana
- Villa Porto, Molina di Malo
- Villa Porto (Vivaro di Dueville)
- Villa Repeta
- Villa Saraceno
- Villa Serego
- Villa Thiene
- Villa Thiene (Cicogna)
- Villa Trissino (Cricoli)
- Villa Trissino (Meledo di Sarego)
- Villa Valmarana (Lisiera)
- Villa Valmarana (Vigardolo)
- Villa Zeno
- Ponte Vecchio, Bassano
- Arco delle Scalette (attributed)
- Teatro Olimpico
- Jewel of Vicenza (attributed)