Villa Porto, Molina di Malo
Villa Porto is an unfinished patrician villa in Molina di Malo, Province of Vicenza, northern Italy, designed by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio in 1570.
History
The ten brick-column shafts that dominate the great 15th century farmyard of the Porto family at Molina mark the first stage of a grandiose project conceived by Palladio on behalf of Iseppo (Giuseppe) Porto: in fact, the patron’s name is inscribed on the plinths of the splendid stone column bases, next to the date 1572.
The rich protagonist of one of Vicenza’s most important families, and brother-in-law of both Adriano and Marcantonio Thiene (patrons of the homonymous palace by Palladio), Iseppo Porto already owned a grandiose city palace, which Palladio had designed him over twenty years earlier, Palazzo Porto.
Archival documents show that the enormous columns are not the fragments of a monumental barchessa, like that for the Villa Pisani at Bagnolo, but rather of the façade of a true and proper country residence. The large Corinthian colonnade, a direct quotation from the pronaos of the Pantheon, would have reached an overall height of over thirteen metres. Lower porticoes, on a quarter-circle plan and still visible in the 19th century, would have tied the manorial house to agricultural annexes to left and right.
This edifice recalls two other projects by Palladio, the Villa Mocenigo on the Brenta and the Villa Thiene at Cicogna, neither of which was ever executed though both are documented by various autograph sketches and were included in the I quattro libri dell'architettura. In publishing Giuseppe Porto’s city palace in the Quattro libri, Palladio enriched the original project with a courtyard of a giant Composite order extremely close to that of the villa at Molina. Giuseppe’s death in 1580 put an end to the building works, which were never completed.
See also
- Palladian Villas of the Veneto
- Palladian architecture
- Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello
- Palazzo Porto, Vicenza
References
External links
- https://www.palladiomuseum.org/veneto/opera/60
- Villa Porto (Molina) in the CISA website (source for the first revision of this article, with kind permission)
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- Convento della Carità (cloisters)
- Il Redentore
- San Francesco della Vigna (façade)
- San Giorgio Maggiore church and monastery
- Santa Maria Nova (attributed)
- San Pietro di Castello
- Tempietto Barbaro
- Valmarana Chapel
- Le Zitelle (attributed)
- Basilica Palladiana
- Casa Cogollo
- Loggia Valmarana
- Palazzo Antonini
- Palazzo Barbaran da Porto
- Palazzo del Capitanio
- Palazzo Chiericati
- Palazzo Civena
- Palazzo Dalla Torre
- Palazzo della Loggia
- Palazzo Pojana
- Palazzo Porto
- Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello
- Palazzo Pretorio (Cividale del Friuli)
- Palazzo Schio
- Palazzo Thiene
- Palazzo Thiene Bonin Longare
- Palazzo Valmarana
- Villa Angarano
- Villa Arnaldi
- Villa Badoer
- Villa Barbaro
- Villa Caldogno
- Villa Capra "La Rotonda"
- Villa Chiericati
- Villa Cornaro
- Villa Emo
- Villa Forni Cerato
- Villa Foscari
- Villa Gazzotti Grimani
- Villa Godi
- Villa Piovene
- Villa Pisani, Bagnolo
- Villa Pisani, Montagnana
- Villa Pojana
- Villa Porto, Molina di Malo
- Villa Porto (Vivaro di Dueville)
- Villa Repeta
- Villa Saraceno
- Villa Serego
- Villa Thiene
- Villa Thiene (Cicogna)
- Villa Trissino (Cricoli)
- Villa Trissino (Meledo di Sarego)
- Villa Valmarana (Lisiera)
- Villa Valmarana (Vigardolo)
- Villa Zeno
- Ponte Vecchio, Bassano
- Arco delle Scalette (attributed)
- Teatro Olimpico
- Jewel of Vicenza (attributed)
45°40′22″N 11°27′50″E / 45.6727°N 11.4639°E / 45.6727; 11.4639