Padua, 5th November, 1816.
When I engaged my place in the diligence from Verona, I was told, that as we had to perform a journey of eighty miles in the day, it would be necessary to start at two o’clock in the morning; but we did not actually set off till a quarter before four, and arrived at Vicenza at ten at night. My companions were two Germans, an Irishman, an Italian lady, and a Venetian woollen draper. The elder German valued himself highly on his wealth, and boasted of the riches of some of his countrymen. He declared that one house at Vienna had recently gained thirty millions of francs in the space of three months; he also contended that there were many foreigners who could speak French better than the French themselves, and I have no doubt he thought himself one of the number. He spoke English pretty well, and talked Polish to two Polish soldiers who escorted us; but he was what would be called in Italian, ‘un gran seccatore’: Anglicè ‘a bore.’ In the journey from Milan to Verona, we had passed the dead horse of a courier, who had been robbed the night before. I do not know whether it was on this account that we were provided on the present occasion with an escort, which seemed to my English notions rather a ridiculous one. Our two guards were mounted in a sort of gig, and as their horse could not keep pace with ours, they were continually quarrelling with the postillions for driving too fast; and yet our pace on the road could hardly exceed five miles per hour.
Verona is a handsome city. Vicenza looks miserable; yet there is an astonishing number of well designed houses, many of which are of very fine architecture; and even those which do not deserve that praise, from their number, and the richness of their ornaments, would produce a great appearance of magnificence in the city, if they were well kept up; but they appear forlorn, neglected, and half uninhabited. If you ask your way in the streets, you are answered with the greatest civility, but your informant expects a few centimes for his trouble; and you are surprised to find yourself addressed by people of polished manners, and who, though not well dressed, have all the appearance of having seen better days, asking if they can do any thing for you, and proffering their services to shew you the remarkable things in the city, in the hopes of obtaining a piece of one lira.[[34]] The money in this part of Italy is very puzzling; the Milanese lira is worth seventy-six centimes, or about sevenpence halfpenny English, and they sometimes tell you the price in these, and sometimes in francs. A bookseller told me the price of his books in boards, in francs; but if bound, I was to pay an additional sum in Milanese lire. At Verona, I met with a good deal of Venetian money, but the reckoning was always by francs and centimes. At Vicenza, you are told the price of every article, in Venetian lire and soldi. The Venetian commercial lira is an imaginary money, divided like the French into twenty soldi. The proportion it bears to the French is as twenty to forty-one; but in smaller transactions, it is considered half a French franc. The actual coins however, have no simple relation with this imaginary money, and though almost all of them have the nominal value inscribed, yet this serves only to mislead. Thus there are coins marked half a lira, which instead of twenty-five centimes, are current for only twenty-one and a half; others of fifteen soldi, worth twenty-nine centimes; of one lira worth twenty-five centimes; another coin marked as one lira, passes for forty-four centimes. One lira and a half worth sixty-six centimes, two lire worth fifty centimes. With a mode of reckoning so perplexed, it would be easy to cheat a foreigner, yet I have no reason to suspect that they have ever been given me for more than their current value. The standard of morals may be lower in some countries than in others, but there always must be a standard of some sort not generally transgressed. A man here, who would demand without any scruple as much again as the least sum he intended to accept for his goods, would scorn to deceive in the reckoning.
My object in stopping at Vicenza was to examine the buildings of Palladio, the first of modern architects; but we have no name in architecture which stands on the same unrivalled eminence as that of Raphael in painting. Palladio’s buildings are in general very beautiful; but most of them are at present in a very forlorn condition. The fronts and even the columns are of brick, the entablatures of wood; and the stucco, with which both have been covered, is peeling off. I am aware that this statement of their materials, may lessen your respect for the palaces which make so fine a display on paper; but the circumstance does not diminish the merit of the architect, though it does the magnificence of the city. Palladio’s columns are mostly mere ornaments; but in contemplating his buildings, it is impossible to feel this to be a fault. The sculpture which loads the pediments of the windows is certainly ill placed; and still worse, is the little panel of bas-relief so frequently introduced over the lower windows; dividing what ought to be one solid mass, into two miserably weak arches. What is it then that pleases so much, and so universally, in the works of this artist? It seems to me to consist entirely in a certain justness of proportion, with which he has distributed all the parts of his architecture; the basement being neither too high nor too low for the order above it; the windows of the right size, and well spaced; and all the parts and proportions suited to one another. The same excellence is found in his orders, and the relation of the columns, capitals, entablatures, &c. He has not adopted the theoretical rules of another, but has drawn them all from what he felt to be pleasing to himself, and suited to his own style of art; but they are not good, when united to a more solid and less ornamental manner. I must, at the risk of being tedious, particularize some of his most remarkable buildings.
I. The Basilica; this is published pretty correctly by Leoni, except that the roof is not surrounded by a balustrade. Here we have an example, though in the adaptation of an old building, of the merits and defects of the architect; the result is rich and harmonious; although, without the greatest nicety of tact, the composition is such as would have been displeasing. Yet to obtain this composition, he has rather gone against, than complied with, the arrangement of the anterior building. The columns are independent of the real or apparent strength of the edifice, and Palladio intended they should be so, for he has made the entablatures break round them. In this he was right; had the architrave been continued in a straight line, the columns would have become essential, and the great space between them would have produced an appearance of debility. The great roof is not his fault; but as the point of sight is near, it is never so offensive in fact, as in the published elevations. Internally, the lower part is a market, the upper a great hall, which is not handsome. Each intercolumniation of Palladio is opposed to two arches of the original work. I suspect he would have produced a finer building, if he had followed the old plan; but I am better pleased that he did not, because the present forms a more singular disposition, and shews what may be done when the spaces are large.
II. The Palazzo Capitanale is not published by Leoni, but it is to be found in the first volume of Scamozzi’s work. The composition of the front, if completed, would have exhibited a range of eight half columns, comprehending two stories in height. The openings of the lower story are large arches, including almost the whole intercolumniation. Above the order, is an attic. The effect is rich and magnificent, chiefly, I believe, from the solidity and bold relief of the parts. On examination, one cannot but severely condemn the cutting the architrave by the windows; not merely judging by rule, but by the effect. In its present state, the brick columns, the stucco of which is half peeled off, have a forlorn and desolate appearance; yet the colouring thus produced is not bad: what displeases is merely the associated character of poverty and ruin. At the end is an elegant doorway, ornamented with a smaller order.
III. Fabbrica Conte Porto al Castello. This fragment is by some attributed to Palladio, by others to Scamozzi; but the latter disclaimed it, and it appears to me to be Palladian. Whoever was the architect, we may certainly pronounce it a noble design, although a very small part has been executed, and that fragment is nearly in ruins. It would have consisted of a range of Composite columns placed on high detached pedestals, and these on high double plinths. The lower range of windows reaches to the top of the pedestal; the second range, in the spaces between the columns, is much larger than the others; the upper windows are in the frieze; these latter have certainly a bad appearance, and the situation of the lower range is not free from blame; but in these cases, where the order is merely ornamental, their want of perfect correspondence with the apparent internal work is of less consequence than might be imagined.
IV. Palazzo Tiene al Castello. The architect of this is said to have been the proprietor, Count Marc Antonio Tiene, the cotemporary and friend of Palladio, from whom, no doubt, he has largely borrowed. Scamozzi seems to have completed it. It consists of two orders, Corinthian and Composite, and an attic; the lower order is partly rusticated, and an impost moulding contracts the heads of the windows, which are square; this pleases me very well; but the thin flat arch over them, the sunk panel, and then another thin flat arch, are very objectionable. The upper windows are smaller at top than at bottom, but the diminution is slight, and the first time I passed the house I did not observe it; altogether the building is very beautiful. The back consists of an open colonnade of two orders, closed at each end; the middle intercolumniation is wider than the others, and has some masonry and an arch within it; this variation seems to be introduced merely to spoil the composition. The front has eight columns in each story; the back ten.
V. You pass through a triumphal arch to a long covered gallery, which leads up a hill to the church of Sta. Maria del Monte. This arch is simple and elegant, imitated in some degree from that of Titus at Rome. It is crowned with a ridiculous little lion, and the angels represented on the spandrils have too much projection; but these are not essential to the architecture. The gallery is remarkable for nothing but its length: no ingenuity is displayed in overcoming the ill effects of sloping architecture.
VI. The original church of Sta. Maria del Monte, was small and of pointed architecture; but a large new part has been added, in the form of a Greek cross, which internally is very beautiful. What was once the length of the old church, is thus become the breadth of the whole building, and the altar has been removed from the recess in the end of the former building, to a place which was the middle of one of its sides. They do not pay so much attention in Italy to the eastern position of the altar as we do in England. The situation of Vicenza is very pleasant; an agreeable mixture of hill and plain, with rugged mountains at some distance, and I suppose the snowy Alps beyond these, but the clouds have prevented me from seeing them. The situation of the church commands very noble views of these rich and varied scenes; and a fine natural terrace, which forms part of the same hill, and along which I walked in my way to the Rotonda, presents them perhaps in still greater perfection.