Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello, Vicenza
Encyclopedia
Piazza
A piazza is a city square in Italy, Malta, along the Dalmatian coast and in surrounding regions. The term is roughly equivalent to the Spanish plaza...
Castello, Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
, northern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. It is one of two palazzi
Palazzo
Palazzo, an Italian word meaning a large building , may refer to:-Buildings:*Palazzo, an Italian type of building**Palazzo style architecture, imitative of Italian palazzi...
in the city designed by Andrea Palladio
Andrea Palladio
Andrea Palladio was an architect active in the Republic of Venice. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily by Vitruvius, is widely considered the most influential individual in the history of Western architecture...
for members of the Porto family
Porto family
The Porto surname history has its origins in the Piemonte region of what is today Italy and parts of present day Southern France. They were part of a religious sect called the Valdese; they called themselves the Poor men of Lyon, the Poor of Lombardy, or the Poor...
(the other is Palazzo Porto
Palazzo Porto
Palazzo Porto is a palazzo built by Andrea Palladio in Contrà Porti, Vicenza, Italy. It is one of two palaces in the city designed by Palladio for members of the Porto family...
, for Iseppo Porto, in contrà Porti). Only two bays of it were ever built, beginning shortly after 1571. Why the patron, Alessandro Porto, did not continue with the project is not known.
For completing the scheme, which was probably intended to have been seven bays wide, the Porto family's 15th-century case, still standing to the left of the great architectural torso, would have been incrementally demolished. The structure was completed after Palladio's death by Vincenzo Scamozzi
Vincenzo Scamozzi
thumb|250px|Portrait of Vincenzo Scamozzi by [[Paolo Veronese]]Vincenzo Scamozzi was a Venetian architect and a writer on architecture, active mainly in Vicenza and Republic of Venice area in the second half of the 16th century...
. The project seems to have been initiated immediately following the publication in 1570 of Palladio's Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, in which its design does not appear.
Exedra
In architecture, an exedra is a semicircular recess or plinth, often crowned by a semi-dome, which is sometimes set into a building's facade. The original Greek sense was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for a philosophical...
end was contemplated, of which part was built. Bertotti Scamozzi attributed its design to Vincenzo Scamozzi.
Palazzo Porto in Piazza Casello shows the influence of Palladio's Roman
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
visit. Its grandiose scale was not purely competitive with the Thiene, with whom the Porto were connected by contemporary marriages and whose palazzo faces it across the broad piazza
Piazza
A piazza is a city square in Italy, Malta, along the Dalmatian coast and in surrounding regions. The term is roughly equivalent to the Spanish plaza...
, but corresponds with its urban position, intended to shape and dominate a great open space.
The two standing bays fully define the programme of the intended façade: a colossal order of Composite
Composite order
The composite order is a mixed order, combining the volutes of the Ionic order capital with the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian order. The composite order volutes are larger, however, and the composite order also has echinus molding with egg-and-dart ornamentation between the volutes...
half-columns stand on high socles
Socle (architecture)
In architecture, a socle is a short plinth used to support a pedestal, sculpture or column. In the field of archaeology, this term is used to refer to a wall base, frequently of stone, that supports the upper part of the wall, which is made of a different material, frequently mud brick...
— themselves on bases that are taller than a person's height — against the crisp and flat urbane rustication
Rustication (architecture)
thumb|upright|Two different styles of rustication in the [[Palazzo Medici-Riccardi]] in [[Florence]].In classical architecture rustication is an architectural feature that contrasts in texture with the smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces called ashlar...
of the basement
Basement
__FORCETOC__A basement is one or more floors of a building that are either completely or partially below the ground floor. Basements are typically used as a utility space for a building where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system...
. The full expression of the order in columns breaks the entablature
Entablature
An entablature refers to the superstructure of moldings and bands which lie horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and are commonly divided into the architrave , the frieze ,...
boldly forward over each column; it is one-fifth the height of the columns and pierced with windows in the manner of Baldassare Peruzzi
Baldassare Peruzzi
Baldassare Tommaso Peruzzi was an Italian architect and painter, born in a small town near Siena and died in Rome. He worked for many years, beginning in 1520, under Bramante, Raphael, and later Sangallo during the erection of the new St. Peter's...
, to give light to rooms of a mezzanine
Mezzanine (architecture)
In architecture, a mezzanine or entresol is an intermediate floor between main floors of a building, and therefore typically not counted among the overall floors of a building. Often, a mezzanine is low-ceilinged and projects in the form of a balcony. The term is also used for the lowest balcony in...
. A frieze
Frieze
thumb|267px|Frieze of the [[Tower of the Winds]], AthensIn architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon...
carved with swags of oak garlands in bold relief, hung from the abaci
Abacus (architecture)
In architecture, an abacus is a flat slab forming the uppermost member or division of the capital of a column, above the bell. Its chief function is to provide a large supporting surface to receive the weight of the arch or the architrave above...
of the capitals, passes between them, creating a richly sculptural unbroken band across the façade. Windows with alternating triangular and segmental pediments are each provided with a balustraded balcony supported on brackets.
Conservation
In 1994 UNESCOUNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
designated "Vicenza, City of Palladio" a World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site
A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...
to protect the Palladian architecture of Vicenza. In 1996 the site was expanded to include the villas elsewhere in the Veneto
Veneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...
and it was renamed "City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto
Palladian Villas of the Veneto
The City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto is a World Heritage Site protecting a cluster of works by the architect Andrea Palladio. UNESCO inscribed the site on the World Heritage List in 1994. At first the site was called "Vicenza, City of Palladio" and only buildings in the...
".