Palladian Days (21 page)

Venetian architecture evolved from that early Veneto-Byzantine style through Gothic into the Renaissance style of Mauro Codussi, Jacopo Sansovino, and Palladio, and later into the baroque and rococo of Baldassare Longhena, Domenico Rossi, and others. The Gothic style in Venice was always different from that in northern Europe. There were pointed arches aplenty, but the sandbars and wooden-piling foundations in the Venetian lagoon never allowed the reach-for-the-sky monumentalism of the northern European Gothic. Probably because of the influence of its trade partners in the eastern Mediterranean, Venice relied for impact on opulent exterior decoration—murals, mosaics, foliated windows,
elaborate tracery, and cutouts in myriad variations. Then, over a period of perhaps seventy-five years, all the Gothic frills and frippery that contribute so much to the Venetian sensation of exuberant luxury were abandoned.

For years architectural historians debated which palace or church introduced to Venice the classical style of the Renaissance. New candidates emerged as frequently as doctoral theses could be penned. Gradually, however, the arguments have subsided and scholars have recognized that there is no such thing as a “first” building. The change was evolutionary, the wildly asymmetrical, gingerbread facades of the Gothic palaces gradually reorganizing into the balance, clean angles, and classical columns of the Renaissance. Thus the question of selecting which structure first evidenced enough harmony and enough classical elements to be deemed “Renaissance” becomes a matter of taste.

“The architecture raised at Venice during this period is among the worst and basest ever built by the hands of men.” That was John Ruskin's assessment of the new style, expressed in his classic 1853 work
The Stones of Venice
. The dominance of Renaissance style in western architecture for five hundred years may be taken as a rejection of Ruskin's conclusion, but Ruskin was never troubled by the contrary opinion of others.

Ruskin would have had little favorable to say of the Cornaro family, since they were responsible for at least two structures that are cited as contenders for the title of first Renaissance building in Venice. The earlier and more curious Ca’ del Duca, House of the Duke, has puzzled generations of tourists passing by on the No. 1 vaporetto. Near the Accademia Bridge two nondescript buildings of the 1600s (or maybe later) rise from a single massive foundation of rusticated Istrian stone. The buildings are noticeable because at one corner they obviously incorporate fragments of an earlier and more stylish building: two walls of rusticated stone, with a freestanding column at the corner where the walls meet. The foundation and the two walls are all that remain of a massive palazzo that
Marco Cornaro and his brother Andrea commissioned the stonemason and architect Bartolomeo Bon to construct for them in 1456. If the palazzo had been finished, it would have been the largest in Venice. Unfortunately, in the following year the brothers became embroiled in a massive political scandal. Andrea was accused of bribing the heads of the Council of Forty in his election to the Zonta del Pregadi (Senate) and was banished from Venice. Marco Cornaro halted construction of the palazzo and, four years later, sold the building—scarcely begun—to Duke Francesco Sforza, the ruler of Milan, an ally of Venice at the time. A political rupture between Venice and Milan prevented Sforza from erecting his own planned palace on the Cornaro foundation. In time, other owners built the present structures, frugally incorporating not only the Cornaro foundation but the column and wall fragments as well.

The rustication of the stonework and the scale of the freestanding corner column show that the huge palace, if completed, would have marked a gigantic stride forward from the Gothic to the Renaissance in Venetian architecture. Its architect, Bartolomeo Bon, was highly respected in his own time, but perhaps if Ca’ del Duca had been completed he would be regarded by posterity as his nation's first great Renaissance architect instead of its last great Gothic one.

Andrea Cornaro never returned from his banishment; he died in Cyprus in 1473, sixteen years later. During that brief period he and Marco engineered one of the most remarkable personal coups in Venetian history. From his family's immense sugar plantation on Cyprus, Andrea bankrolled the island's king, James II Lusignan, in his civil war with the forces of his half-sister Carlotta. Following the war, the Cornaro brothers extracted from James an agreement that he would marry Marco's daughter Caterina. Upon the king's death in 1473, Caterina became ruling queen of Cyprus, adding an entire country to her family's treasures.

Mauro Codussi, not Bartolomeo Bon, is usually considered Venice's first important Renaissance architect. When Pietro Lando married Bianca Cornaro, a younger sister of Queen Caterina, it was
to Codussi that he turned for the design of a new palazzo on the Grand Canal. The palazzo, constructed about 1485 and now usually referred to as Ca’ Corner-Spinelli, passed to one of Bianca's Cornaro nephews in 1542. Critics acclaim the palace as the first one built in Venice with a wide array of classical elements and a tightly organized facade.

In about 1542, the family asked Jacopo Sansovino to design its most prominent palazzo on the Grand Canal, Ca’ Cornaro della Ca’ Grande in San Maurizio parish. Sansovino, a Florentine trained in Rome, had been appointed
proto
(chief architect) of the Procurators of San Marco in 1529. He immediately set about a series of commissions that transformed Piazza di San Marco to its present state
of perfection. The Mint, the Marciana Library, and the Loggetta at the foot of the Campanile are all his. Giorgio Vasari, the pioneer art historian of the sixteenth century, proclaimed the palazzo that Sansovino designed for the Cornaros “perhaps the finest in Italy.”

Caterina Cornaro, queen of Cyprus, by Camillo Mariani (c. 1590). Grand salon, lower
piano nobile

Near the opposite end of the Grand Canal, in San Cassiano parish, stands the family's rococo palace, Ca’ Cornaro della Regina. Despite the name, Queen Caterina never lived there; she lived, at the end of her life, in the palace that would be razed in 1723 to make way for the present structure. Domenico Rossi, architect of the palazzo at San Cassiano, found early fame by winning a competition for designing the facade of Venice's church of San Stae in 1709. Acclaim for him was not universal, however; one critic described him as “an uneducated man, but well-versed in the practical side of building, who had little or no good taste in art.”

Once Carl and I start searching for Cornaro palaces, we find them everywhere and in all periods. After counting nine Cornaro palaces along the Grand Canal in the San Marco section of Venice, Carl dubs that part of the shoreline the “Cornaro Riviera.”

Cornaro patronage was never limited to palaces. Carl and I soon begin following leads to Cornaro chapels as well. Guidebooks take us to the better-known ones, such as the chapel in the transept of the church of San Salvatore, where Queen Caterina is buried, and the Cornaro chapel in Santi Apostoli, the church of the Holy Apostles, where the queen's father, Marco, and her brother Giorgio are interred. The latter was designed by Mauro Codussi and is adorned with columns by Tullio Lombardo and a painting of Santa Lucia by Giambattista Tiepolo. Hugh Honour in his
Companion Guide to Venice
describes the Virgin looking down from the funeral monument of Doge Marco Cornaro in the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo as “perhaps the finest Gothic statue in Venice.” The elaborate Cornaro chapel at the church of the Frari, dating from about 1420, contains later statuary by Tullio Lombardo and Jacopo Sansovino and a luminous triptych by Bartolomeo Vivarini.

Carl and I stumble across other chapels on our own. A rainstorm
leads us to seek shelter in the church of Santa Maria Mater Domini; in the left aisle we spot the Cornaro family crest set into the floor of a chapel. Investigating, we learn that Jacopo Sansovino designed the chapel for the family. In the same accidental fashion we come across the chapel in the right transept of the church of San Nicola da Tolentino commissioned by Doge Giovanni Cornaro II as his burial place. His funeral monument is embellished with busts of eleven Cornaro doges and cardinals; the altar features a painting of four saints by Palma il Giovane.

The Grand Canal's “Cornaro Riviera”

We come to realize that even though the extent of Andrea Palla-dio's future fame could not be known in his lifetime, it was not chance that led the Cornaro family to commission him to design one of its grand villas; the Cornaro family always sought out the great artists and architects of each period in Venice's history. A study of the art and architecture commissioned by the family opens a window onto the long history and rich artistic fabric of La Serenissima—the Most Serene Republic.

The most satisfying result of all our Cornaro explorations is that now when we ride the No. 1 vaporetto in the late evening we can pick from the massed array of buildings certain ones that we are
able to place in social and historical context. We can walk the streets of Venice comfortably without a guidebook, happy to make unplanned stops in churches for renewed acquaintance with gorgeous works that seem to be a part of our personal world.

George Washington entertained thirty-eight houseguests at Mount Vernon during the month of September 1786. Some of them stayed more than one night. Fifteen others stopped by for dinner (always scheduled for three in the afternoon) during the same period. George and Martha rarely dined alone in their “retirement” years at Mount Vernon, where Martha directed a household staff of twelve or more. For Washington Mount Vernon was like “a well resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers who are going from north to south or from south to north do not spend a day or two at it.”

Imagine his mixed pleasure and dismay upon receiving yet another note from a wartime admirer: “Dear General, my family and I will be passing close to Mount Vernon on Wednesday next and hope we may stop to pay our respects….” First, he must write a letter of invitation; then he has to figure out where he's going to bed these people; he must alert Martha so she can set extra places at the table; and, finally, he gallops around his estate to ensure that his fields and barns are producing at optimum levels so he can afford these guests.

But he would have loved the company, the conversation, and the opportunity to show the beauty and the fecundity of his beloved Mount Vernon. I feel the same way about my villa.

“Help, Sally! What do I do?” Helen is crying into the telephone. Helen is my older sister; she never cries. I learn with relief that these are tears of frustration, not panic or pain.

“We're in Milan!” she says. “We caught the train for Venice but it went to Milan.” Helen and her husband Bill arrived a week ago for their first visit to Italy. They are model houseguests, pitching into household chores without being asked. They help me make dinner, set the table, fold clothes. Helen even goes out one afternoon and weeds my geranium pots on the front steps. She's learned numerous Italian phrases in their short visit and revels in trying to decipher Italian signs. Moreover, with Carl back in Atlanta, they are wonderful company.

How did they end up aboard the wayward train?

Earlier in the week, they decided on a side trip to Florence for several days of sightseeing. Florence is an easy train ride away, with only a transfer at Mestre, the mainland part of Venice. I expected them back this evening at eight-thirty

Helen shouts her explanation into the phone. For their return trip, she and Bill arrived early at the Florence train station, fortified with abundant magazines in Italian to puzzle their way through during their three-hour trip back to Mestre. A train had already pulled in and was standing on what they took to be the designated track, so they boarded and found seats. In due course the train departed. When the conductor arrived an hour later to punch their tickets, he exclaimed something in Italian which I reconstruct as,
“Ah, signori, avete sbagliato! Questo treno va diretto a Milano!
You've made a mistake! This train goes direct to Milan!” Several repetitions later, they understood his meaning—particularly his reference to Milano.