![Villa Foscari 20070710-1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Villa_Foscari_20070710-1.jpg)
Villa Foscari is a
patrician
Patrician may refer to:
* Patrician (ancient Rome), the original aristocratic families of ancient Rome, and a synonym for "aristocratic" in modern English usage
* Patrician (post-Roman Europe), the governing elites of cities in parts of medieval ...
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 s ...
in
Mira
Mira (), designation Omicron Ceti (ο Ceti, abbreviated Omicron Cet, ο Cet), is a red-giant star estimated to be 200–400 light-years from the Sun in the constellation Cetus.
ο Ceti is a binary stellar system, consisting of a vari ...
, near
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
, northern
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
, 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 ...
. It is also known as ''La Malcontenta'' ("The Discontented"), a nickname which—according to a legend—it received when the spouse of one of the Foscaris was locked up in the house because she allegedly didn't live up to her conjugal duty.
Architecture
![(Mira) Villa Foscari - La Malcontenta - La serra](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/%28Mira%29_Villa_Foscari_-_La_Malcontenta_-_La_serra.jpg)
The villa was commissioned by the brothers Nicolò and Alvise (Luigi)
Foscari, members of a patrician Venetian family that produced
Francesco Foscari
Francesco Foscari (19 June 1373 – 1 November 1457) was the 65th Doge of the Republic of Venice from 1423 to 1457. His reign, the longest of all Doges in Venetian history, lasted 34 years, 6 months and 8 days, and coincided with the inception o ...
, one of Venice's most noted
doges. It was built between 1558 and 1560. It is located beside the
Brenta canal and is raised on a pedestal, which is characteristic of Palladio's villas; this pedestal is more massive than most of Palladio's villas (the base is 11 feet high, more than twice the height Palladio normally used) because it was not possible to construct a subterranean basement on the site.
The villa lacks the agricultural buildings which were an integral part of some of the other Palladian villas. It was used for official receptions, such as that given for
Henry III of France in 1574. It has been proposed that the Villa was the home of Portia called Belmont in
The Merchant of Venice
''The Merchant of Venice'' is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock.
Although classified as ...
.
Villa Foscari's
thermal windows inspired the ones used on the facade of
Villa Toeplitz (Varese)
Villa Toeplitz is a historic villa located in Varese, Lombardy, Italy. Construction was complete by 1901 and subsequently named after the banker Jósef Leopold Toeplitz (in Italian, Giuseppe Toeplitz), who bought the villa in 1914. It previously ...
in Varese.
File:Villa Foscari Malcontenta pianta Bertotti Scamozzi 1781.jpg, Plan, drawn by Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi, 1781
File:Villa Foscari Malcontenta sezione Bertotti Scamozzi 1781.jpg, Cross section (Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi, 1781)
Interior
The interior of the villa is richly decorated with
frescoes by
Battista Franco
Battista Franco Veneziano also known by his correct name of Giovanni Battista Franco (before 1510 – 1561) was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker in etching active in Rome, Urbino, and Venice in the mid 16th century. He is also known ...
and
Giambattista Zelotti
Giovanni Battista Zelotti (; 1526 – 28 August 1578) was an Italian painter of the late Renaissance, active in Venice and her mainland territories.
He appears to have been born in Verona, then part of the Venetian mainland, and trained wit ...
.
Mythological scenes from
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
alternate with allegories of the Arts and Virtues. As at other Palladian villas, the paintings reflect villa life in, for example, ''Astraea showing Jove the pleasures of the Earth''. The frescoes have dulled over time, signs of the increasing threat that air pollution poses to works of art.
Malcontenta_interno_2.jpg,
Malcontenta interno.jpg,
Malcontenta_grotesque.jpg,
Recent history
The British travel writer
Robert Byron
Robert Byron (26 February 1905 – 24 February 1941) was a British travel writer, best known for his travelogue ''The Road to Oxiana''. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian.
Biography
He was the son of Eric Byron, a civil engi ...
visited the villa in 1933 and afterwards wrote that ''bon vivant'' Albert Clinton Landsberg had, nine years earlier, found the villa "at the point of ruin, doorless and windowless, a granary of indeterminate farm-produce. He has made it a habitable dwelling. The proportion of the great hall and state rooms are a mathematical paean." The villa had indeed been vacated in the early 19th century, the surrounding stables and other buildings had fallen apart and were demolished by Austrian troops during the
1848 uprisings. At the end of the 19th century however, banker Baron
Frédéric Emile d'Erlanger, based in Paris and London, had found the house in the above described condition, then leased the villa from the Foscari family, and undertook some renovation work. Bertie Landsberg had purchased the villa in 1926, together with his friends Paul Rodocanachi and
Catherine, Baroness d'Erlanger, the daughter-in-law of the former tenant. The new owners renovated the house and gardens and invited members of the high-society to lavish
salons during summer seasons: choreographer
Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev ( ; rus, Серге́й Па́влович Дя́гилев, , sʲɪˈrɡʲej ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈdʲæɡʲɪlʲɪf; 19 August 1929), usually referred to outside Russia as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, pa ...
, dancers
Boris Kochno and
Serge Lifar
Serge Lifar ( ua, Сергій Михайлович Лифар, ''Serhіy Mуkhailovуch Lуfar'') ( 15 December 1986) was a Ukrainian ballet dancer and choreographer, famous as one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century. No ...
, writer
Paul Morand
Paul Morand (13 March 1888 – 24 July 1976) was a French author whose short stories and novellas were lauded for their style, wit and descriptive power. His most productive literary period was the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. He was mu ...
, architect
Le Corbusier,
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
, among others. Bertie Landsberg, issue of an originally Jewish banking family, as the Erlangers, fled the
Italian Fascists in 1939 and only returned to the villa in 1947. Kate d'Erlanger moved to Beverly Hills. In 1965 the English architect
Claud Phillimore, 4th Baron Phillimore
Claud Stephen Phillimore, 4th Baron Phillimore (15 January 1911 – 29 March 1994) was an English architect specialising in larger country houses who succeeded to his family's title in 1990.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he ...
(1911–1994) inherited the villa from Landsberg. He began restoration, but sold the house in 1973 to count Antonio ("Tonci") Foscari (b. 1938), a descendant of the former owners and professor for architecture and preservation. He and his wife, Barbara del Vicario, undertook a painstaking process of restoring it to its original grandeur. In 2012, Foscari wrote of the villa's renaissance.
Since 1996 the building has been conserved as part of the
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 h ...
"
City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto".
Official website
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Today, the villa is open to the public for visits on a limited basis.
See also
* Ca' Foscari
* Palladian Villas of the Veneto
* Palladian architecture
References
*
External links
*
*
Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio
{{Authority control
Houses completed in 1560
Foscari
Andrea Palladio buildings
Museums in Veneto
Historic house museums in Italy
Palladian villas of Veneto