THE PISANI PALACE AND MALCONTENTA VILLA, VENICE. 



349 



Viceroy of Italy, and it retains still some interesting Empire furniture. Some older sixteenth 

 century furniture, chairs and sofas also remain, as well as the portraits of the Pisani in marble 

 on the walls of one of the apartments. At the present day the Palace is used by the Venetian 

 Cannal Board. 



The Villa Malcontenta, on the banks of the Brenta (Fig. 360), lies nearer to Venice. The name 

 Malcontenta by tradition reflects the state of mind of a wife banished here for over-indulgence in the 

 gaieties of Venice. The villa was built by the Foscari. The villa, of early but uncertain date,* was 

 one of those works of Palladio which were destined to exert a wonderful influence on the domestic 

 architecture of Europe. Now deserted, the only signs of life on the occasion of my visit were 

 some farm labourers carpentering in the vaulted basement on the ground floor level. It is 

 difficult to imagine how the crowds that once made their way up the Brenta can have so 

 disappeared as to leave a bare canal, to which the slow-moving barges have alone remained 

 faithful. Where are the English milords with their tutors hurrying down the stream to 

 amuse themselves at Venice after three or four days at Vincenza a length of stay in the 

 home of Palladio which, Lord Chesterfield wrote, was sufficient to absorb all the architecture 

 of Palladio, if the base or mechanical part were omitted. 



A generation ago it might well have seemed as if the architecture of Malcontenta was 

 equally as faded and past as this life of theirs on the Brenta. Though standing idle to-day, 

 the palace represents, however, an influence that has by no means exhausted its vitality. There 

 will always be those, nevertheless, who, bored by the starched correctness of the portico fafade 

 (Fig. 360), will find their interest in the grouping of the back elevation. Here Palladio has 

 allowed a trace to appear of the great barrel-vaulted hall which is the dominant feature of the 

 interior. It is a Greek cross on plan barrel vaulted with a groine cross vault at the junction 

 of the arms (Fig. 361). 



Though Palladio's immediate fame and influence have depended on the skill with which he 

 adapted the Roman orders to modern buildings, his greatest gift was that of a sense of harmonious 

 proportion and of a grace which was personal and unique. Had he, therefore, been less 

 obsessed by antiquity it is impossible to believe that he would not have achieved an architecture 

 still more significant. A. T. B. 



* Temanza in his life of Palladio, 1778, regards this as the first work that made Palladio known in Venice. 



362. SECTION OF THE VILLA AT MALCONTENTA. 



