ITALIAN VILLAS 
pillared portico, the general air of classical correctness, 
which seems a little cold beside the bright and graceful 
villa-architecture of Venetia. Burckhardt, with his usual 
discernment, remarks in this connection that it was a 
fault of Palladio’s to substitute for the recessed loggia 
of the Roman villa a projecting portico, thus sacrificing 
one of the most characteristic and original features of 
the Italian country house to a not particularly appro- 
priate adaptation of the Greek temple porch. 
But Palladio was a great artist, and if he was great 
in his civic architecture rather than in his country 
houses, if his stately genius lent itself rather to the 
grouping of large masses than to the construction of 
pretty toys, yet his most famous villa is a distinct and 
original contribution to the chief examples of the Italian 
pleasure-house. The Villa Capra, better known as the 
Rotonda, which stands on a hill above Vicenza, has 
been criticized for having four fronts instead of one front, 
two sides and a back. It is, in fact, a square building 
with a projecting Ionic portico on each face — a plan 
open to the charge of monotony, but partly justified in 
this case by the fact that the house is built on the sum- 
mit of a knoll from which there are four views, all 
equally pleasing, and each as it were entitled to the 
distinction of having a loggia to itself. Still, it is cer- 
tain that neither in the Rotonda nor in his other villas 
did Palladio hit on a style half as appropriate or pleas- 
ing as the typical manner of the Roman villa-architects, 
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