SANUDO AND THE VENETIAN VILLA SUBURBANA

Patrick Monahan Sanudo and the Venetian villa suburbana The Renaissance villa suburbana On 20 February 1533, Marino Sanudo wrote in his Diarii: “A Muran si fa belle feste”1. Sanudo refers here not to the glass making industry that is widely associated with Murano, but to the tra-dition of suburban villeggiatura that took hold on the inner islands of the lagoon from the late-fif-teenth century onward, primarily on Murano and the Giudecca2. Though many villas of archi-tectural merit survive, the subject has received little attention in modern scholarship. The ex-ception is Richard Goy’s Venetian Vernacular Ar-chitecture, though even this volume, as its title suggests, treats the buildings as examples of a vernacular tradition on the periphery of the la-goon, rather than as Venetian manifestations of the polite and widespread architecture of the villa suburbana. With this aim in mind, it is not sur-prising that the Giudecca, a major place of villeg-giatura but a part of Venice proper, goes almost unnoticed in Goy’s survey. Using Sanudo’s diaries as a guide, I would like to reclaim aspects of the suburban villa in Venice that have been ignored or undermined until now, first by connecting them to better-known examples of villas and villeggiatu-ra and second by highlighting unique aspects of their typology3. The villa suburbana in the Renaissance has a long history of scholarly interest, and as a result students of the type have acquired a list of ex-pectations about its form and function. The term conjures images of a familiar group of vil-las and gardens in central Italy, each a subtle en-gagement with antiquity via literary and archeo-logical sources such as the letters of Pliny and the remains of Hadrian’s Villa, not to mention a response to a semi-rural setting4. Palladio, ar-guably the greatest designer of villas, and some-one who perfectly understands the particular tastes of Venice, outlines these aspects admirably in his Quattro Libri dell’Architettura when he compares a gentleman’s use of his houses in the city and country: But he will perhaps find the buildings of his estate [casa di villa] no less useful and comforting, where he will pass the rest of the time watching over and improving his property and increasing his wealth through his skill of farming, and where, by means of the exercise that one usually takes on the coun- try estate on foot or on horseback, his body will more readily maintain its healthiness and strength, and where, finally, someone whose spirit is tired by the aggravations of the city will be revitalized, soothed and will be able to attend in tranquility the study of literature and quiet contemplation; similarly, this was why the sensible men of the an-cient world made a habit of withdrawing fre-quently to such places where, visited by brilliant friends and relatives, they could easily pursue that good life which they could enjoy there since they had lodgings, gardens, fountains, and similar soothing locales, and above all their own virtù5. While I will not deny that these are the compo-nents of the villa, I would like to challenge the architectural expectations that grow out of these essentially abstract benefits of villeggiatura, and to show that many of the houses on Murano and the Giudecca are functionally ville suburbane. The connection between the humanist virtues of a villa and a precise structure is an imaginary one, for we can only guess at how Pliny’s often confusing descriptions of his Laurentine and Tus-can villas could be translated into built form. Our prejudice about the way a villa should look is not the result of Pliny’s writing, nor even of its mani-festation in the Renaissance. In the case of the vil-la suburbana, it is instead the product of modern scholars’ concentration on central Italian villas, whose particular relationship between form and function we take to be universal. It is not by chance that what are accepted as the greatest ville suburbane – Poggio a Caiano, Villa Medici at Fiesole, Villa Madama, Villa Far-nesina, Palazzo del Te, and Villa Giulia – all spring from a central Italian context. When we come across their comparatively unknown Vene-tian cousins, which display a different relation-ship between the use of a suburban villa and the expected building type, our instinct is to declare that form does not follow function. Instead, we should consider how the precise function of a villa, which has been carefully described since the time of Pliny, may give rise to elusive and variable forms. The problem here is partly one of text and image. The activities associated with a villa are best described in text, whereas the form or style of a villa is most accurately preserved in images or ideally in the building itself. Since we have determined that the function of a villa is less var- 45 ied than its possible forms, I will rely on the di-aries of Marino Sanudo to clarify the uses of vil-las on Murano and the Giudecca that might be formally mistaken for minor palazzi on the pe-riphery of the Venetian lagoon. It is not that the structures themselves do not suit the functions of a villa; rather, it is our preconception of the villa suburbana that precludes us from immedi-ately considering them in that light. In other words, Sanudo’s descriptions of happenings on the islands of the lagoon substantiate the identi-ty of a building type. Though Sanudo does not use the term villa (suburbana or otherwise) to describe these build-ings, neither does he generally describe their ur-ban counterparts as palazzi. In keeping with the Republican spirit of the Serenissima, all dwellings are simply called case, or caxe and ca’ in Venetian. In this study, we will confine ourselves to the word villa in order to label a building type which Sanudo has carefully described, and in effect identified, without needing to give it a name. Sanudo, after all, is neither Pliny nor Palladio, nor any other writer of antiquity or the Renais-sance interested in villas and gardens solely for their own merit, and perhaps this is why his di-aries have never before been read with an eye to villeggiatura. The logistical difficulties of reading Sanudo – that is, fifty-eight volumes written in Venetian – have perhaps also delayed this sort of study. More importantly, Sanudo, a frustrated pa-trician in the Venetian government, is not an ob-vious authority on villas and gardens, yet he de-clared, “I will say this: certainly no writer can produce anything modern or decent without see-ing my diary, which comprised everything that has happened…”, much of which, incidentally, happened in the villas of Murano and the Giudecca during the very years that he kept a di-ary (1496-1533)6. Theoretical inquiry into archi-tecture and garden design is absent from his di-aries, though they are full of meticulous and vi-brant descriptions of villeggiatura as it relates to official visitors of the state, the amorous exploits of its well-known figures, and public health, to name a few. We may easily extrapolate from these quotidian events, in which he takes the greatest interest, a comprehensive outline of the tradi-tional motivations for villeggiatura. Although Sanudo will not be our only guide through this world and its buildings, it will be primarily according to his interests (and, by ex-tension, those of the Venetian patriciate) that we shall see them. This study will, therefore, not concern itself as much with architecture per sé as with the themes that motivate it – function rather than form. Nevertheless, a catalogue of villas is provided at the end to categorize the ar-chitectural features and decoration of these much overlooked buildings. Official visitors Sanudo’s greatest interest in the villas of Murano and the Giudecca focuses on their use as housing for dignitaries visiting Venice. Reading Sanudo on these villas gives the impression that their pri-mary purpose was to house orators7. In this re-gard, they are liminal sites and portals to the city, just as the structure of the villa itself is a thresh-old between man and nature. The Venetian villa suburbana certainly had more casual duties, yet in Sanudo’s frame of mind as a politician and unof-ficial historian of Venice this was their most im-portant function. The weight given to official vis-itors staying in villas, however exaggerated, also connects the buildings functionally to their cen-tral Italian cousins. The Villa Madama (begun in Rome in 1508), for instance, was conceived ex-pressly as a place to receive and lodge visitors to the papal court before they entered the city8. Sanudo’s descriptions of visitors’ entries to the villas of the lagoon are worthy of even the most splendid guest in the Villa Madama. On 17 September 1506, Sanudo writes of the entrance of Tangrivardi, the best known dragoman of the period and a representative of the Mamluk Sul-tan of Egypt9: La matina gionse a Lio [Lido], Tagavardin, orator dil soldan…Et inteso questo, la Signoria comman-do a li zenthilomeni deputati dovesseno andar ve-stiti di scarlato fino a Lio a receverlo, et insieme con la galia condurlo a la Zudecha, a la sua stantia deputata, in cha’ dil quondam sier Marco Pasqua-ligo. […] Et cussì zonti, lo aceton, e con la galia medema, montati suso, veneno per canal grando fino a la riva, dove dismontoe. La caxa era prepa-rata honoratamente, e con coltra d’oro; et li fo da-to il felze d’oro su la barcha, e datoli barche, et fa-toli le spexe a conto di cotimo. È da notar, dito orator è venuto qui a spexe di cotimo di Alexan-dria, come ho notato sopra10. There is a calculated order and ostentation in the way Tangrivardi is received in the manner befitting his status. In addition to being wel-comed at the Lido by elegantly dressed men, the Ca’ Pasqualigo on the Giudecca has been pre-pared honorably with gold cutlery. These elabo-rate preparations not only suggest the impor-tance of the visitor, but also the role of Ca’ Pasqualigo as a house of the best standard pre-pared for a dignitary of the highest rank. Before we consider the arrangements for Tan-grivardi’s lodgings, let us first reconstruct what they might have been. Sanudo is neither architect nor theoretician; thus, neither the style nor the situation of the house concerns him, only its suit-ability and preparation to perform an official du-ty. The villas on the Giudecca and Murano would also have been good for security, allowing the Venetians to watch closely over the comings and goings of the visiting ambassadors11. 46 Though Ca’ Pasqualigo does not survive, Ja-copo de’ Barbari’s map of Venice (completed in 1500, only six years before this entry in Sanudo’s diary) includes several buildings on the Giudec-ca that might give a rough idea of it. At one end of the Giudecca in the Barbari map are two houses with extensive gardens (cat. no. 10). The leftmost of these is a two-storey structure with a five-light window on the piano nobile and a loggia of rounded arches on the ground floor. Were it not for the rather low-lying horizontal aspect of the building, it could be mistaken for an urban palazzo. Indeed, it is very like Sansovino’s Palaz-zo Dolfin, begun in 1538, on the Grand Canal12. The differences between the two latter build-ings may be explained by spatial constraints. On the Giudecca, land was less expensive, and patri-cians could afford to build horizontally. More-over, because the waterfront was less densely de-veloped, the plans of the two houses we have mentioned on the Giudecca are parallel, rather than perpendicular to it, as in the Palazzo Dolfin. This orientation of the plan along the waterfront leads in many cases to a shallower building, which, in the case of the house next door to the one we have been discussing, is only three bays deep. The first house in the Barbari map has a more horizontal aspect because it is only built on two floors; however, both buildings have a simi-lar pattern of fenestration (a four or five-light window flanked by two bays on either side). The character of this and many other ville suburbane on Murano and the Giudecca is, therefore, fun-damentally that of a low, though equally wide, urban palazzo. The lower price of land also allowed for ex-tensive gardens, essential to the idea of villeg-giatura. In the case of one house in the Barbari map, the rear loggia runs the whole width of the garden, communicating with it freely. A loggia is an integral part of the villa suburbana – most fa-mously at the Villa Madama and the Farnesina – and acts as a transitional space between the house and garden, providing shade on hot days. Because of the prominence of the loggia behind the house in the Barbari map, we may assume that in such ville suburbane the ground floor would have been a primary pathway from the in-doors to the outdoors for the family and their guests (as in the majority of Palladio’s designs for villas), and not subordinate storage space as it was in many urban palazzi13. In this case, the garden is more an extension of the villa than it is a connection to the natural sur-roundings of the lagoon, since the external envi-ronment is blocked out at every step. Though not exactly a hortus conclusus, the walled garden with a well-head in the middle looks in on itself and af-fords a view beyond its walls only through a trel-liswork gap in the rear wall14. A path leads to the orto, which is well-planted (presumably with fruit trees and vegetables) and has a great pergola at its center, not unlike one found in the Hypnero-tomachia Poliphili or in Giusto Utens’ depiction of the Medici villa at L’Ambrogiana. Although the presence of a pergola immediately connects the house in the Barbari map to real and imag-ined villas and villeggiatura, it also serves a pre-cise compositional purpose. At L’Ambrogiana, the pergolas frame elegant parterres and provide a shady way of viewing the beautiful surround-ings, allowing a visitor to make a tour of the gar-den almost entirely undercover. The Venetian example also provides shade for the visitor to the orto, but does not offer any vista of the lagoon. At the end of the pergola, Barbari shows a wooden fence and a pair of small buildings. While it is unclear whether they are garden sheds or follies (though the simplicity of the buildings suggest the former), in either case they force the visitor to turn back to the house rather than out to the lagoon. At L’Ambrogiana, however, the end of each pergola offers a view over the garden and overlooks either the house or the varied land-scape beyond it. The Venetians seem not to take pleasure in such a view, and in this regard the house and garden can be seen as a response to the less obviously scenic qualities of the low flat expanses of the lagoon. Although certain architectural elements and functions of the Venetian villa suburbana as a place to house visiting dignitaries suggest con-nections to the great papal ville suburbane, the terms under which they were lent for this pur-pose could not be more different. At the Villa Madama, since it was a papal initiative, the boundary between official residence and person-al retreat is a fine one, whereas the scale and ownership of the houses on Murano and the Giudecca suggest a more private arrangement. As such, the Venetian ville suburbane were lent ei-ther to the state or to the visitors themselves by their owners. Moreover, visiting dignitaries were often given money for their living expenses, which provided an important source of revenue for the patrician families who lent their villas for this purpose. Sanudo, ever the statesman, records these dealings in great detail. For in-stance, when Tangrivardi stayed at Ca’ Pasquali-go, his expenses were covered by the cottimo – a local tax paid in the oltremare by Venetian mer-chants trading in Egypt15. Further, in 1520 the Turkish ambassador was given six ducats a day from the state to look after his entourage of eight people when he was staying in Ca’ Mali-piero on the Giudecca16. In October 1530, Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara rented the house of Agostino Venier on Murano for 80 ducats per annum17. Though this is just a small sampling of the different arrangements Sanudo describes, 47 they are similar in that they are fundamentally private. Even when the state gives money to am-bassadors for living expenses, which occurred less frequently, the visitors are given the privacy to run their own households. As there is no princely court to build expansive complexes to house visiting dignitaries, arrangements are made among the citizens of the Republic, even though they may be to a certain extent funded by the state. Throughout his descriptions of the official role of the ville suburbane, Sanudo emphasizes how desirable it is to be lodged in them. Sanudo writes of the arrival of Ali Bey, the Turkish en-voy, to the Lido on 15 January 1513: Fo mandato, per Colegio, a comandar zerca li zentilhomeni di anni 50 in suso quali stesseno in ordine et vestiti di scarlato zonto fusse l’orator dil Turco a Lio [Lido], dove in la caxa dil Consejo di X sarà preparato, debano andar a receverlo et con-durlo a la Zueca in la caxa di sier Polo Malipiero, dove è stà preparato per il suo alozamento, et li voleno far grande onor più che mai18. Placing the Turkish ambassador in the house of Polo Malipiero on the Giudecca is a particular honor (“far grande onor più che mai”), especial-ly since Sanudo writes about this house often be-ing used for this purpose19. Therefore, though the Venetian ville suburbane were not palatial structures by any means, they carried a certain prestige on account of their situation, tranquili-ty, and privacy—in short, all the well-known virtues of the villa suburbana. The lagunar environment It is impossible to consider the villas depicted on the Giudecca in the Barbari map or to under-stand the merits of the lodgings Sanudo de-scribes without mentioning the geography of the lagoon itself. Both Barbari and Sanudo are in-tensely aware of and attuned to the environment that literally envelops their work. It is not by chance that the edges of the Bar-bari map are filled with personifications of the winds, for this is a nod as much to the world maps of the period suggesting Venice’s universal significance as an international emporium as it is a subtle acknowledgement that the city is at the mercy of nature, particularly in the periphery. Sanudo, too, despite his primary attention to po-litical matters, spends a good deal of time con-sidering the weather and the way in which it af-fects suburban life. Although we argued that the horizontal form of the Venetian villa suburbana is both a variation on the urban palazzo and a response to the size of the site, it is also a calculated response to its sur-roundings. The villa’s horizontal nature mirrors the flatness of the waters, while its broad and nar-row plan separates public and private space in the otherwise apparently limitless expanses of the la-goon. In the portion of the Barbari map that shows Murano (cat. no. 1a), we see houses of var-ious types, but nearly all with a fondamenta in front and some sort of an enclosed garden in the rear. It is worth noting that fondamente are rather uncommon in front of urban palaces, except at Rialto where there was a good deal of loading and unloading of cargo for the market. It is clear from the Barbari map, however, that there was a fonda-menta in front of the villas on Murano and the Giudecca, and since this could hardly have served a commercial function we can assume that they were used by patricians and others for strolling or riding. Just as the concept of the villa suburbana describes a threshold between city and country, so does each villa suburbana itself – a boundary zone between the public and private spheres. Sanudo’s sensitivity toward the environment of the houses on Murano and the Giudecca finds a parallel in the importance of nature to villeg-giatura. On 8 May 1525, Sanudo describes a storm on Murano: In questa note piovete assai et fo gran vento, ch’è molti zorni che non ha piovuto, et si fava procession acciò piovesse, et se intese fece danno la tempesta di qua da Treviso et a Muran et su Lido a li orti20. In spite of his vivid description of the weather, and the procession that (quite amusingly) moti-vates it, the gardens themselves have Sanudo’s attention in this passage. He sees Murano as a place closely tied to its gardens, that is, to its em-blems of villeggiatura, and the practical function of the orti to provide fruits and vegetables for the city. An entry in June 1533 also includes praise for the high quality of meat that is raised on Mu-rano and Torcello, the very mention of which shows Sanudo’s pride in these productive and even rustic areas of the lagoon21. Perhaps Sanu-do’s most telling turn of phrase about the restorative properties of the lagoon comes in June 1527, when he writes of Doge Andrea Grit-ti going to Ca’ Vendramin on Murano, a favorite spot of his, “ad aprir li ochi”22. Sansovino also wrote that that the gardens of Murano flour-ished more abundantly than in almost any other part of Italy23. In other words, the horticulture and livestock of the island have strongly restora-tive effects on those who visit them, just as Pal-ladio said they would. In the midst of such visits, the glass making industry continued to flourish and achieved a re-markably symbiotic relationship with villeggiatu-ra. Many people in Sanudo’s time, as they still do today, visit Murano to buy glass and to enjoy the relative peace of the island. In December 1515, M. Vendôme visits Murano to see how glass is made, and then stays to lunch24. In October 1518, the cardinal of Santa Prassede, who is lodged in Ca’ Gritti on the Giudecca, is also tak- 48 1. Giuseppe Heintz the Younger, Il fresco in barca a Murano, 17 C., oil on canvas (Venezia, Museo Correr). en to see the glass making on Murano25. While such visits can perhaps be explained by novel techniques – reticello glass, for instance – they might also seem at odds with the salubrious at-mosphere of villeggiatura. On the contrary, the glass furnaces were believed to purge the island air of impurities26. Sansovino even suggested that each bedroom in a house have its own fire-place, in order to remove bad vapors that might settle in the air27. Though this presents an en-tirely upside-down view of pollution, the various reasons for visiting Murano all point to the var-ied aspects of villeggiatura as idescribed by Palla-dio and in the pages of Sanudo’s diaries. With furnaces and gardens in mind, it is not surprising that Sanudo often describes the is-lands’ perceived benefits for convalescence. In April 1525, the English ambassador arrived in Venice very ill and was pleased to be taken to Ca’ Marcello on the Giudecca, presumably because of its peaceful atmosphere28. Similarly, when Carlo Cappello returned from official duties in Florence he was advised to go to the Giudecca and rest because of its healthier climate29. The good air associated with Murano and the Giu-decca is perhaps most beneficial for the doge, for in addition to a necessary respite from his many duties, it is almost constitutionally impossible for him to leave the city; therefore, the nearby islands of the lagoon provide a viable outlet for his relaxation and convalescence. Sanudo reports that Doge Andrea Gritti, who was plagued by gout, spent extended periods during the summer of 1530 in Ca’ Vendramin on Murano until he became well again30. Thus, although the archi-tecture of the Venetian villa suburbana does not necessarily correspond to better-known images of the type, its use as a place attuned to nature and beneficial to rest strikes at the very essence of villeggiatura. The lagunar villas are also intertwined with the history of the plague in Venice. Not surpris- ingly, Sanudo mentions that Doge Gritti goes to his favorite house, Ca’ Vendramin on Murano, to escape a major outbreak of the plague in 153031. In July of 1514, the Hungarian ambassa-dor changes lodgings from Santo Stefano to a villa on the Giudecca because several people in his entourage died of the plague there32. Such moves away from the city center are both natu-ral in times of plague and are also very much in line with villeggiatura; after all, the Decameron takes place among people in a villa who have es-caped the plague as well. In Venice, it would be disastrous if during a crisis all the nobles fled to their estates on the terraferma, since it would be impossible to achieve a quorum in the Great Council. At least if the nobles went to Murano or the Giudecca, they could easily return to the city for their official duties. In this regard, the very location of the ville suburbane is in tune with the republican spirit. In spite of their desirable setting and climate, the islands of the lagoon were also used for quar-antine of sorts. The same Hungarian ambassa-dor who, it seems, withdrew to the Giudecca by choice was not allowed to leave the island once he got there because there was plague among his household33. Similarly, Marco Foscari, having just returned from Florence in February 1528, where there was an outbreak of the plague, went to stay in the house of his cousin Andrea Fosco-lo on Murano because it was considered best he remain in a remote place lest he spread the dis-ease34. While there are several other references to such advised rest on the islands, it is usually of a restricted and patrician nature35. In this regard, the occasional use of Murano and the Giudecca to house people with infectious diseases does not go against the image of these islands as places of villeggiatura; on the contrary, it underlines their intimate connection with the Venetian patriciate in every state of health. Out on the Lagoon Perhaps the greatest expression of the Venetians’ love of the lagoon, and one that is often dis-cussed in Sanudo, is their passion for going out in boats36. In fact, this is one of the few customs associated with the Venetian suburban environ-ment that survives today. Perhaps the clearest, although not contemporary, picture of Venetians in their boats may be found in Giuseppe Heintz the Younger’s seventeenth-century painting of an Ascension Day procession on Murano’s grand canal (ill. 1). In Heintz’s painting, the island bustles with boats full of elegantly dressed men and women out on the lagoon in honor of the feast day. Be-hind them is a row of villas similar to those we have examined in the Barbari map, many with lush foliage hanging over garden walls, in the 49 ... - tailieumienphi.vn