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 facade 
(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. I . B. 
* Temanza in his life of Palladio. 1778, regards this as the first work that made Palladio known in Venice. 
362. — SliCTlON OF THE VILL.'t AT MALCONTENTA. 
