The Villa as Paradigm

Author(s): James Ackerman

Source: Perspecta, Vol. 22, Paradigms of Architecture (1986), pp. 10-31
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Perspecta.
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10

The Villa as Paradigm James Ackerman

1
Roman relief showing town
and suburban villa,
Avezzano, Italy

Introduction

A villa is a building in the country-or

at least outside the city - designed for its
owner'senjoymentand relaxation.Though a
villa may also serve as the center of an agriculturalenterprise,the pleasurefactor is
what essentially distinguishesthis kind of
residencefrom the farmhouse. Similarly, a
villa estate differs from the farm.' The
farmhousetends to be simple in structure
and to perpetuateformal solutions that do
not requirethe interventionof a designer.
The villa, typically the productof an architect'simagination,asserts its modernity.
Since it was first fixed by the patriciansof
ancientRome, the basic programof the
villa has remainedunchangedfor more than
two thousandyears. The villa is therefore
unique as a paradigm;other architectural
types- the palace, the place of worship, the
factory-have changed in form and purpose
as the role of the ruler, the characterof the
liturgy,the natureof manufacturehave
changed, frequentlyand often radically.The
villa has remainedsubstantiallythe same
because it fulfills a need that never alters.
Because it is not materialbut psychological
and ideological, this need is not subjectto
the influences of evolving societies and

technologies. The villa accommodatesa

fantasy impervious to reality.
The villa cannot be understoodapartfrom
the city; it exists not to fulfill autonomous
functions but as the antithesisto urban
values and accommodations,and its economic situation is that of a satellite (fig. 1).
The villa may be built and supportedwith
monetary surplusesgeneratedby urban
commerce and industry;or, when it is sustained by agriculture,the villa may be
justified by urbancenters' need for the
surplus it will produce. Consequentlythe
fate of the villa has been intimatelytied to
that of the city; villa culturehas thrivedin
periods of metropolitangrowth (as was true
in ancientRome, eighteenth-andnineteenthcentury Britain, and the twentiethcentury
throughoutthe West) and has declined with
urbandecline - indeed, to the point of extinction as urbanlife witheredfrom the fifth
to the eleventh century in the West. But this
generalizationis invalid for two moments in
Westernhistory: the apogee of the republican city-statein classical Greece and the
communes of central Europe and Italy in
the period 1000-1300. Perhapsin these
moments of communalidealism those whom
the political institutionsmost benefitedfelt
no need to escape the city; or it may be that
life in the country was still too rugged and
unsafe for anyone not raised to endureits
rigors.

As satellites, villas have not always been

near the cities on which they depended.
Some colonial agriculturalcenters-such as
those in Gaul, Britain, and Africa in Roman
times and in the southernUnited States in
pre-Revolutionarytimes -were established
in areas almost devoid of urbandevelopment and became in themselves industrial
and culturalcenters, importingthe values of
urbanculture. They often grew to be large
in scale, and their dependenceon the institution of slavery was due in partto
their isolation.
I shall exclude from what follows examples
designed for rulers. While only persons of
wealth, and usually of prestige and power,
have been able to afford a villa (at least
until the nineteenthcentury), the idea of a
country dwelling is a bourgeois concept, responding to the perceived needs of the city
dweller. The villas of kings and princes,
built and supportedby public wealth, are
essentially hybrids, rooted in bourgeois
ideology but, by virtue of often unlimited
economic means and the symbolic andrepresentationalrequirementsof supremepower,
demanding a scale and an elegance in some
degree antitheticalto the concept. The villa
of the EmperorHadrianat Tivoli is the
paradigmof this hybrid form.

11

The Ideology of the Villa

12

Today, as in the past, the farmerand the

peasant, whetherpoor and oppressedor rich
and independent, do not as a rule regard
country life as an idyllic state;they accept
it as a necessary and, more often than not,
somewhat antipatheticcondition. In the
folklore of all ages the country dweller
longs- though possibly with some misgivings- for the stimulationand comforts of
city life. The city dweller, on the other
hand, has typically idealized country life
and has sought to acquirea propertyfrom
which it might be enjoyed if he could afford
it. This impulse is generatedby psychological ratherthan utilitarianneeds; it is
quintessentiallyideological.2

have been able to expropriateruralland

often requiringthe care of a laboringclass
or of slaves for the realizationof the myth.

These and other prolific periods in villa

history were also markedby a literaturedevoted to the design and improvementof
villas and their gardens- an equally rich
Because literatureis a primaryform expres- source for the interpretationof the myth.
The rathermuddledprescriptionsof ancient
sing myths, the ideology of the villa in
is
reinforced
authorsstimulateda particularinventiveevery epoch richly
by poetry
and prose. Indeed, literaryworks have not
ness in treatise writers of the Renaissance
(Palladio immediately comes to mind). The
merely reflected the villa cultureof their
time; they have promotedvilla concepts de- publicationin Englandof books on the
villa from the early eighteenthto the midveloped in later times.
nineteenthcentury was literally an industry
in itself, and there were those for whom it
Major revivals of the villa from that of the
fifteenth century in Italy to Le Corbusier
was a primaryvocation. In America, from
have been explicitly justified by referenceto the time of The Horticulturalistin the
the Roman writers of the late Republic and 1830s to Sunset Magazine, House and Garearly Empire-Cato, Varro,Virgil, Horace, den, and House Beautiful in the mid- and
I use "ideology" not in the currentcollolater twentiethcentury, instructionin the
Pliny the Younger,Vitruvius, and others.
Each villa revival has been accompaniedby nurtureof the suburbanvilla has attracteda
quial sense, to designate a strongly held
a revival of villa literature:in the fifteenth
conviction, but ratheras referringto a
large public.
concept or myth so firmly rooted in the
century that of Poliziano and Bembo; in
unconscious that it is held as an incontroPaintingalso bolsters the ideology. In Pomeighteenth-centuryEnglandthat of
vertible truth. Marxists interpretideology in Shaftesbury,James Thompson, Pope, and
peiian and other Campanianvillas the walls
this sense as the means by which the domi- ultimately the early novel (the writings of
were often decoratedwith ideal gardenand
nant class reinforces andjustifies the social
villa scenes; it is chiefly from this source
Jane Austen seem obsessed with the propand economic structureand its privileged
erty and status problems of urban-oriented that we know of the appearanceof the seaside pleasure residences of the type called
position within it while obscuringits moticountry life); in nineteenth-centuryAmervation from itself and others. In these terms ica, that of the Transcendentalists,Henry
villa marittima. Tapestriesand wall paintthe villa is a paradigm,not only of architec- James, and Edith Wharton.
ings in late-medievalcountry castles
but
of
it
is
a
or
ture,
ideology;
myth fantasy
depicted the delights of country life, anticiover
the
course
of
millenthroughwhich,
pating the scenes of social gatherings,
of
whose
is
music parties, and outings on the walls of
nia, persons
position privilege
rooted in urbancommerce and industry

2
Fresco of a pleasure villa
from Villa Barbaro, Masir,
Italy, by Paolo Veronese
3
"Badminton" by Antonio
Canaletto

Cri
h
'-----??1 [?:cz?.;;t;;;;t?.,
t (E! '110"'(8
1r )A

in

Ei.

?ri

Ibr

I!rl

classical landscape
Seventeenth-century
that of Claude
particularly
painting,
Lorrain,rose to prominencein the following centuryand fostered the aesthetic of the
picturesqueand the informalEnglish garden;at the end of the centurythe first
Romanticvilla designers actuallytook the
imaginarybuildings of the Roman Campagnain Lorrainpaintings as architectural
models.The more modest ambitionsof the
mid-nineteenthcentury suburbanvilla are
reflectedin early Impressionistpaintings,
especiallythose of Monet.

It

i
Et

Palladianvillas (fig. 2). Eighteenth-century

Englandpioneeredin a new genre of painting, the portraitof the country house; its
popularitywas stimulatedby the visit of the
distinguishedVenetiantopographicalpainter
Canaletto(fig. 3). Turnergot his startas a
specialistin this genre which, though it admittedlygave prominenceto the great
countryhouses of the landed aristocracy,
musthave promotedbourgeois idealization
of countrylife.

,.

,?I

le

?"

1111

The content of villa ideology is rooted in

the contrastof country and city, the virtues
and delights of the one being presentedas
the antithesesof the vices and excesses of
the other. The expression is fully articulated
in the literatureof RepublicanRome, where
it evolves from an early protovillastage in
the agriculturaltreatises of Cato and Varro
into the typical matureform of Pliny the
Younger'stwo lettersdescribingto a friend
the pleasures of two of his numerousluxurious estates-one on the Tuscan seashore
and one at Laurentiumoutside Rome. The
early stage, relatedto stoicism in its ascetic
and moral tone, advises the urbanman of
affairs to acquire a modest farmhouseon a
small country propertyand to cultivate it
himself with little or no help; the labor
itself is seen as purifying him of the contaminationof the city. A similarpatternof
evolution is repeatedin the later provincial
villa culture of ImperialRome, with its
transitionfrom the simple and almost unadorned country residences of the fifteenth
century in the Veneto to the elegance of
Palladianvillas. The same metamorphosisis
traceablein Thomas Jefferson'sconcept of
his farm at Monticello from the modest
structureof the 1770s (itself surely influenced by the early Roman writers)to the
lavish estate of the early nineteenthcentury (fig. 4).

13

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14

In describing the sumptuousTuscanvilla,

Pliny set the tone for later writers;the letter
concludes with an encomium that clearly
delineates the rural-urbanantithesis.
For besides the attractionswhichI have
mentioned, the greatest is the relaxation
and carefree luxuryof the place - there is
no need for a toga, the neighborsdo not
come to call, it is always quiet and peaceful-advantages as great as the healthful
situation and limpidair. I alwaysfeel energetic andfit for anythingat my Tuscan
villa, both mentallyand physically. I exercise my mind by study, my body by hunting. My household, too, flourishes better
here than elsewhere: I have never lost a retainer [slave?], none of those I broughtup
with me.3
About 1600 years later Palladiodescribes
the same benefitsfrom the architect's
perspective.
But the villa mansion is of no less utility
and comfort [than the city house], since the
rest of the time [the gentleman]passes
there overseeing his possessions and in improving their potential with industryand
with the skill of agriculture. There also, by
means of the exercise that one can get in
the villa on foot or horseback, the body may
more actively be made to preserve its health
and robustness, and there the spirit tired of
the turmoilof the city may be greatly re-

stored and consoled and may peacefully

attend to the pursuit of letters and of contemplation.For this reason, the ancient
sages used often to retire to such places,
where they might be visited by their virtuousfriends and relatives and where there
were houses, gardens,fountains and similar relaxing places . . . so that they could
easily pursue that blessed life so far as it
may be achieved here below.4
And Le Corbusier,writing to a client in the
1920s, stresses the importanceof the landscape setting:
The inhabitantscome here because this
rustic landscape goes well with countrylife.
They survey their whole domainfrom the
height of their jardin suspenduor from the
four aspects of their fenetres en longeur.
Their domestic life is insertedinto a Vergilian dream.5
The same repertoryof the benefits of villa
life echoes down the centuries:the practical
advantagesof farming, the healthfulness
providedby the air and exercise-particularly hunting-relaxation in reading,
conversationwith virtuousfriends and
contemplation, and delightfulviews of
the landscape.

Monticello, Charlottesville,
Virginia, 1769, Thomas
Jefferson

Gallo-Roman Villa Anthee,

near Naumur, Belgium

Social and Economic Aspects

Le Corbusier'sreferenceto his client's "domain" remindsus that the villa is by nature

the possession of the privileged and powerful class in society, though at certaintimes
in history, as in the mid-nineteenthcentury,
the privilege has filtereddown to those of
modest financialmeans. The social structure of most of the villas we are considering
involves the proprietorand his guests on
one stratum,servantson another,and in the
case of agriculturalestablishments,farm laborers (often supervisedby bailiffs) on still
a third. Whetherfree or enslaved, all of the
latter were dependenton the proprietorand
his estate for their subsistenceduringmost
of the historical span we are considering,
and they could not breakthe serf-master
bond without great risk. The owner, however, had no reciprocalobligationtoward
his retainers.In this respect the villa differs
fundamentallyfrom the feudal castle, where
the relation between the lord and his retainers was contractualand reciprocal;they
providedgoods and services-including
military service - and he providedprotection against common enemies. Long after
the feudal system had been forced into the
backgroundby a money economy and by
urbancapitalism, the landed nobility resisted abandoningcountrycastles in favor
of villas; this class had no reasonto develop
a villa ideology until it became economically dependenton the city.

In those areas of the postmedievalwestern

world in which the feudal system was most
firmly established, therefore,a villa culture
was slow to develop. The situationis clearly
delineated in France, where the formatof
country life for the privileged classes derived from the feudal chateau.The social
characterof the chateaudid not change substantiallyas the monarchygained in power,
drawing the aristocracyinto a dependent
position at the court, where the competition
for prefermentmade rustic retirementa
risky option. Furthermore,the prestige of
the aristocracyin Francewas such that,
well into the nineteenthcentury,bourgeois
proprietorsmodeled theircountryresidences
on the aristocrat'schateau. Viollet-le-Duc's
designs for country residences are called
"chateaux"while CesarDaly's, for a lower
social stratum,are called "villas."

on the economic resourcesof the city.

The villa frequentlyappearsin a colonial

context, where a powerfulempirecontrols
distant territoriesfrom whose produceit
gains sufficientprofitto offset the expense
and burdenof providingdefense and communications. Colonial villas tend to differ
in type and scale from those in the homeland; being isolated, they must functionas
social and administrativeunits in themselves, often serving as substitutesfor
towns. Their proprietorsare, typically, economically dependenton the productionof
their estates. The grandervillas on the periphery of the RomanEmpire-in Gaul,
Pannonia,Africa, and the like-mostly
built between the second and the fifth centuries, were more complex establishments
than those on the Italianpeninsula;some,
like the villa Anthee nearNaumurin
of
two
villa
falls
into
one
Belgium (fig. 5), were small villages in
Economically the
themselves, containingcommunitybaths.
categories: the self-sustainingagricultural
The American colonies of the southernAtits
for
estate that yields not only produce
lantic seaboardwere virtuallywithout any
or
own use but a surplusfor sale to urban
nearby towns, so that the estates had to
regional marketssufficientto sustainthe
accommodateall the communalfunctions;
proprietor'sdesired mode of life; and the
as
Battista
Alberti
villa described by Leone
many included dependentsettlements,like
Roman ancestors. The dwellings and
their
as
conceived
purely
"per semplice diletto,"
a retreatand dependentfor its construcworkshopsof slaves and freedmenhave survived too selectively to permit a credible
tion and maintenanceon surpluscapital
of these settlements.
reconstruction
The
ideourban
centers.
in
earned
normally
and
of
city
logical opposition country
values is thus in part a responseto the dependence of the villa style of countrylife

15

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Drayton Hall, Charleston,

North Carolina

"Villa in the Italian Style,"

from The Architecture of
CountryHouses, 1850, by
Andrew Jackson Downing

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In the course of time colonial villas in rural

territoriesoften spawnedtowns, reversing
the normal dependenceof the villa on the
city. The far-flungImperialvilla-settlements
of Rome and the Americanplantationcenters had originally been sited in places
suitable for communication,transport,and
in the case of the Romanexamples, defense; as urbanizationincreased, these
considerationsencouragedthe growthof
towns, as we are remindedin the etymological linking of "villa," "village," andthe
French "ville." These were not the great
metropolitancenters that grew up as administrative headquarters,but more modest
markettowns. In the southernUnited States
the domestic architectureof these towns retained some of the openness and ruralflavor
of the villa-plantationresidence.
Southernplantationmansions themselves
were not designed to express autonomy
from the mothercountry;on the contrary,
their owners, eager to affirmtheir close ties
to Britain, had their carpentersbuild from
plans in books recentlypublishedin London; this intentionexplains the Palladian
porch added to the facade of DraytonHall
near Charleston(fig. 6), which was to have
had symmetricallyplaced outbuildingsconnected to the central block by Palladian
quadrants.The fact that these settlershad to
subduethe wildernessof a new land at great
physical and financialrisk cementedtheir

attachmentto the country life and architectural tastes of the British squire. The
absence of a comparablevilla development
in the northernAtlanticcolonies is initially
attributableto the differentsocial and political orientationof the colonists, the
majorityof whom, refugees from church
and class dominationat home, had not attained positions of privilege and statuson
which to reflect with nostalgia. They had,
furthermore,chosen an area more adapted
to family farming on small freeholdproperties, and they had establisheda society in
which there were no slaves, peasants, or
serfs to supporta gentlemanfarmeror to
maintaina pleasurevilla. The contrastbetween the northerncolonial farmerand the
southernplantationowner was even greater
than thatbetween Cato and Pliny the
Younger;Cato, a statesman,farmedfor
ideological and philosophicalreasons, while
his American counterparttilled the land to
survive, with a certainCatonian(and Protestant) pride in successful crops and in the
sweat they representedbut withoutthose
mythic trappingsthat find expressionin the
literature,art, and architecturalsymbolism
of a properideology. Eventuallythe polarity in both the Romanand the American
social and ethical attitudesbecame seeds of
civil war.

The most radical mutationin the history of

the villa occurredin the early nineteenth
century, when the villa ideology became democratizedand accessible to the growing
body of lower-middle-classcity dwellers.6
The causes were complex: the rapidgrowth
of central cities at the expense of the countryside; industrialization;rail and trolley
transportation;the effects of eighteenthcentury egalitariansocial philosophy;
Romanticism;and others. The development
was anticipatedin British villa literatureof
the later eighteenthand early nineteenth
centuries (most effectively by JohnClaudius
Loudon in GreatBritainand by Alexander
JacksonDavis andAndrewJacksonDowning
in the United States), which firstprovided
model plans for small and inexpensive
country houses; the texts accompanying
these plans promotedthe elements of the
traditionalmythology suited to proprietors
below the rankof gentleman(fig. 7). Once
the villa had been presentedas a commodity, it was a short step to its manufactureby
entrepreneursfor the open market,and another short step to its mass productionon
the peripheryof great cities and ultimately
of smaller ones. The garden-citymovement
of the later nineteenthcentury appropriated
as much as possible of villa ideology into
its blurredvision of urbanand ruralvalues.
Ultimately the term "villa" came to be
applied to any detachedor semidetached
residence in city, suburb,or countrywith

17

Style and Form

18

a little more open space aroundit than

could be found in dwellings in the densely
populatedstreets of the urbancore. This
development,however, did not affect the
evolution of the villa in its traditionalsense,
except perhapsin helping to disparagethe
use of the word "villa" to designatethe
type. Nineteenth-centurycountry houses in
the villa tradition-such as those of Scott,
Richardson,Viollet-le-Duc, and Voyseywere not called villas, and in the present
century Le Corbusierwas exceptional in reviving the designation.

The distinction between the farmhouseand

the villa is not simply one of purposeand of
program;it is rooted in differentcultures
and in differentrates of evolution. Just as
agriculturalpractices change more slowly
than those of industryand commerce, so
the farmhousechanges more slowly than
the villa. Frenchhistoriansof the Annales
school have called this phenomenonof
gradualismthe longue duree and have
opened new historicalpotentialitiesin studying its processes.7 Farmhousesin many
parts of Europe today retainforms that have
remainedunchangedfor millennia- though
they are rapidlybeing replacedby contractors' villas and will soon be threatenedwith
total extinction. The debased economic
and social position of the peasant(as well
as the contadino and the sharecropper)
have, until recent times, kept him from
altering his agriculturalmethods or the
physical setting in which he lives and
works; but even on the rareoccasions when
he became wealthy and worldly, his sense of
proprietyand pride of class led him to retain traditionalforms.
The villa is quite the opposite; it seldom
displays an effort on the part of the proprietor or the architectto conform to past
custom; with rare exceptions it strainsto
be the paradigmof the architecturalavantgarde. The rule is illustratedby the celebrated milestones of modernistarchitecture:

the Ames Gatehouse, the Coonley House,

the Villa Savoye at Poissy (fig. 8), the suburbanretreatsof the New York Five (fig. 9),
and Venturi. Granted,Renaissancearchitects sought to revive antiquevillas, and
British eighteenth-centuryvilla architects
were fanatic Palladians;but in both cases
the revival was a progressive statementthat
explicitly rejected a prevailingstyle. There
is hardly a moment in the history of architecture when villas were less innovative
than other architecturaltypes. Though urban residences have sometimes kept abreast
of villas, generally they follow a more conservative tradition, even in instances where
urbanand ruralresidences were designed
for the same patron. The differenthousing
styles are consistent with the proprietors'
usual fashions of dress in the city as opposed to the country.
The villa is less fixed in form than most
other architecturaltypes because the requirementsof leisure lack clear definition.
But two contrastingmodels were firmly
established in Roman times: the condensedcubic and the open-extended.The former
was better suited to such crowdedsuburbs
as Pompeii, where the line between the city
house and villa was - as in the residencesof
Le Corbusieror Peter Eisenman(figs. 8,
9)- not firmly drawnand to the initial

8
Villa Savoye, Poissy,
France, 1929-1930,
Le Corbusier

9
House II (Falk House),
Hardwick, Vermont, 1969,
Peter Eisenman

19

10

20

settlements on the peripheryof the Empire,

where considerationsof defense demanded
consolidation. The compactedPompeiian
form, as in the Villa dei Misteri, just outside the city walls (fig. 10), is due also to
the fact that the villa had not yet gained its
independencefrom urbanmodels by the
first century B.C.; the vaguenessof the contemporarywriter Vitruviusin describing
villas (his main point is that the orderof
rooms at the entrancediffers from that of
the city houses) confirmsthis suspicion.
When the condensed villa faced a farmyard
or a view, it tended to acquirea loggia along
its facade, in Romanexamples typically
framedbetween two projectingblocks or
towers. This type reappearsin the small
early Renaissancevilla, like the Belvedere
of Innocent VIII at the Vatican,or the Farnesina in Rome (fig. 11). Tropicalforest
conditions produceda variantof the cubic
type in the plantationhouses of seventeenthcentury Brazil and in the eighteenth-century
Caribbean,a unique veranda-surrounded
block that seems not to have been exported
from Europe;it found its way into the
plantation-housedesign of the early-nineteenth-centuryMississippi valley, as at
Home Place in Louisiana(fig. 12).8

The open villa is more congenial to the

ideological engagementwith nature.It expands informally in extended asymmetrical
blocks and porticoes, and in the variedprofiles of changing levels; it often grows
organicallyas the wealthy proprietoris
temptedto continuouslyextend the initial
structureby adding rooms, courts, and porticoes. Pliny must have done as much, and
Jefferson(who in the course of forty years
never ceased to alter the shape of Monticello), as did FrankLloyd Wrightat the
Taliesins (fig. 13).
To fulfill its ideological mission, the villa
must interactin some way with nature,and
the two majortypes I have definedare
roughly coordinatedwith two types of interaction. The compact-cubicvilla is often a
foil to nature, standingoff from it in polar
opposition; the open-extendedtype is integrative, imitatingnaturein the irregularity
of its layout and profile, embracingthe
ground, assuming naturalcolors and textures. A paradigmof the first is Lorenzode'
Medici's villa at Poggio a Caiano, outside
Florence (fig. 14). Inscribedwithin a cube,
it is faced with white stucco to emphasize
its total polarity to the irrationalityof trees
and rolling hills; to underscorethis message, it is raised on a high podiumto assure
that the contact of the residentswith nature
would be not intimate but removedand
in perspective.9

10
Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii,
Italy, first century B.c.

11
Villa Farnesina, Rome,
1509, sixteenth-century
view
12
Home Place Plantation,
Louisiana, 1801

13
Taliesin East, Spring
Green, Wisconsin, begun
1911, Frank Lloyd Wright

12

14
Villaof Lorenzo
de' Medici,Poggioa
Caiano,Italy,1489
15
VillaGodi,Lonedo,Italy,
1537-1542

The white-stuccoedpodium-villabecame a
major twentieth-centuryparadigm,notably
in the Villa Savoye at Poissy (fig. 8) and in
the TugendhatHouse in Bmo. Palladioalso
followed this traditionin the design of his
first villa, that of the Godi family in Lonedo
(fig. 15), which is also sharplygeometrical
in form, avoiding even window framesor
moldings; there is no podium, but the entrance stairwayleads to the upperfloor (later Palladianworks are more engaged with
nature-even the entirely cubic Villa Rotunda in Vicenza, which is designed to reflect the varied views and which seems to
crown the hill on which it is placed). The
effort to respond to natureby antithesisexplains the apparentparadoxof melding the
sharplygeometrical and classical Palladian
style in early eighteenth-centuryBritain (at
Lord Burlington'svilla at Chiswick, for example) with the inventionof the informal
English garden in reaction againstthe imposition of geometric orderon plant life.

21

22

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16
Imperial villa, Piazza
Armerina, Rome, third
century

17
Villa Lante, Ragnia,
Italy, 1568

18
Villa d'Este, Tivoli, Italy,
1565 (etching by Venturini)

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Pliny's descriptionsof extended, even

sprawlingstructuresoffer a model of the
more collaborativeresponse to the landscape, but the appearanceof these villas is
difficult to reconstructfrom his letters;the
villa at Piazza Armerinain Sicily, unearthedin recent times, providesa better
opportunityto visualize this exceptionally
large and lavish "organic" type (fig. 16).

den design; for the first time the centralaxis

of the composition is occupied by landscaping elements- watercourses, fountains,
and stairways- while the shy, cubic residential casinos are pushed to either side.

Renaissancedesigners would have been

disappointedand disorientedhad they
discovered that Romanvillas were not classical. Most of the ancient models (none of
of
villas
were
too
Renaissance
which
was known priorto the discovery
Designers
fixed on the polarity of natureand culture
of Pompeii) lacked the axial symmetry,
to devise schemes in which the barriers
rational integration, and proportionthat
between the two were blurred;what intersupportedtheir conception of the heritage
action did occur was, rather,between the
of antiquity.WhetherRomanvillas, like
architectureand the garden, which remany in later times, expressed their commained firmly in the artist'scontrol. The
munion with natureby a richness of color
formal garden of the Renaissancewas freand of texture is hardto tell even today,
because of the condition of the remains. In
quently complementedby a barco, or
hunting park, where the wildness of nature any event, Renaissancearchitectsfrom
could be accepted;the nature-artdialectic
Giuliano da Sangallo throughBramante,
was transferredto the contrastof wild and
Raphael, and Palladiodid give the villa a
tamed greenery and water. An early engrav- classical form by imposing a rule of order,
number, and symmetrythat fixed the type
ing of the Villa Lante in Bagnaiashows a
small "wild" area in the lower right corner
until the moment of naturalistdisruptionin
the eighteenth century (SebastianoSerlio,
(fig. 17). In nonagriculturalRenaissance
in his manuscriptfor a book on villas and
villas, such as those of the Papalcourt in
Rome, the artifices of the formal garden
palaces, even classicized the peasant'shut).
took precedence even over the architecture; This achievementgreatly narrowedthe distance between the two Romantypes by
the Villa d'Este in Tivoli concedes all empulling the extending arms and wings of the
phasis to the garden(fig. 18), while the
building itself is exceptionally inexpressive open villa in symmetricalorderabouta
and bland. The architectureof the Villa
central block, as in the porticoedvillas
Lante in Bagnaia is overwhelmedby its gar- of Palladio.

The triumphof natureover architectural

form was ultimately achieved in the eighteenth century, when the fashion of the
picturesqueemerged. The desire to make
the real environmentlook like pictureswas
stimulatedby the landscapepaintingsof
Poussin, Claude Lorrain,Ruysdael, and
others, in which the architecture,while
frequentlygeometric in its forms, was designed to be seen as part of the landscape
and to respondto it in mood. Authorsof
books on architectureand landscapedesign-such as RichardPayneKnight,
Uvedale Price, and their heir Humphrey
Repton- urged clients to build villas that
borrowedfrom the landscapesomethingof
its irregularity,its contrastsof light, and its
shadows and textures. The asymmetriesof
Gothic proved sympatheticto this aim, and
the "ItalianVilla" style (fig. 7) abruptly
emerged, not from any actualmodels in
Italy, but from the canvasesof the French
and British painterswho had workedthere
(Schinkel'sCharlottenhofgardener'svilla
was one exception; its motives were authenticallyItalian). From this point on,
a picturesque, nature-integratingspirit
dominates the naturalistlineage of villa
architecture-from the publicists Papworth,
Loudon, andDowningthroughPhilipWebb's
Red House, Shaw and Richardson,Lutyens,
Aalto, Wright, the Greens, andMaybeckto
Moore.

23

The View

24

In reflecting on the ways in which villas

respondto the landscape, one must remember to look not only at them, but out from
them. The choice of prospectis almost as
subject to myth and the rule of taste as is
the choice of design-I say "almost"because villa buildersare limited in the choice
of land formationand floraby the natureof
the particularterritoryin which they intend
to settle and by the propertyavailableto
them. The environs of Tivoli, west of
Rome, offer paradigmaticexamples of three
genres of villa siting. Hadrian'svast villa
extends over a low-lying escarpmentat the
base of the hills thatrise out of the wooded
Campagna,just barely above the level of the
plain; it is a nestling villa in the lap of the
hills, with views just over the treetops. The
villa of QuintiliusVarusand the Renaissance Villa of the Este family are perched
high on the slopes-not on the very peaks,
but high enough to gain a vast panoramaof
the countrysideand distantmountains.A
view towardthe formerfrom the terraceof
the latter (fig. 19) shows both to be commanding, extrovertedvillas (the famed gardens of Villa d'Este, incidentally,are barely

visible from the villa itself: they drop away

sharply, and attentionis drawnonly to the
distant panorama).By contrast, Horace's
"Sabine Farm" is back within the mountains on an extraordinarysite suited to a
poet (fig. 20): a saddle, only large enough
to hold a small cubic structure,deeply embedded between two sharplyrising hills,
with a valley on one side of the cross-axis
and conical peaks on the other, atop one
of which a village seems almost to cling
(the surviving one is believed to occupy the
site of its Roman predecessor). Surely the
architectureof each of these four structures is designed aroundwhat can be seen
from them as much as aroundwhat is done
in them.
The villa view that in one sense most fully
illustratesthe urbanroots of the villa myth
is the one that looks back on the city from a
high and distantpromontoryoutside its
walls; such villas once dotted the slopes of
Mount Vesuvius when Pompeii flourished,
and Cosimo de' Medici built one of the earliest Renaissancevillas on a man-made
terraceabove Fiesole, so that in his leisure
hours he could enjoy visual commandof the
city he controlledpolitically.

The impact of the prospecton the conception of the villa was intensifiedin
eighteenth-centuryEnglandwhen the vogue
for the informal gardenwas extendedto
embrace the entire agriculturallandscape.
The effect was achievedby removingwalls,
hedges, and fences so that the lawn and
planted trees would merge imperceptibly
into pastureand bosc. The innovationwas
due not merely to a change of taste, as its
promotersmade it out to be, but also to a
radical change in agriculturaleconomy and
society resulting from the Acts of Enclosure, which wiped out the ancientcommon
pasturesand peasanttillage, as well as
many villages on the great estates, and
concentrateddevelopmentof the entire
landscape in the hands of the landowners.
Extended fields with cattle and haystacks
could now become embellishmentsof a
pastoralelegy.

19
View from Villa d'Este,
Tivoli, Italy, 1565

20

Horace's Sabine Farm,

Tivoli, Italy, first century

25

20

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21

22

Survival or Revival?

26

Renaissancevilla architects,intentas they

were on reviving the ancientvillas, did not
know of any models on which to base their
designs and were forced to dependentirely
on the meager literary sources.'?Of these,
Vitruviuswas almost no help, and Pliny's
descriptions, though ample, were useful
only for projectsof great lavishness, such
as Raphael'sdesign for Villa Madamain
Rome (about which he wrote a letter filled
with Plinian phrases). In spite of this lack,
archaeologicalevidence continuesto mount
of Roman villas that anticipatedRenaissance and later types. Since a revival of
these ancient forms cannot have occurred,
they must somehow or otherhave survived
over the interveningcenturiesthroughlinks
that have now almost entirely vanished. The
persistence of the compact-cubictype may
not be especially significant, since within
the rationalistorientationof Mediterranean
culture it is one self-evident architectural
solution to the problem of designing a freestanding structure.The U-shapedvilla, with
projectingblocks framinga centralloggia,
however, is specific enough in form to
arouse curiosity about how it traveledfrom
the late Roman empire to the fifteenthcentury and beyond. Whateverthe answer, it is
more likely to be in the realm of folkways
than of architecturalstyle. In a characteristic Roman provincialexample, at Mayen in
GermanGaul (fig. 21), the loggia with
extended wings was added in the fourth

century to an earlierblock. The type was

preserved in a sixth-centuryvilla of Theodoric in Galeata(fig. 22), not far from Ravenna, and emerges again in the typical
Venetian-Byzantinepalace, from which it
passes back into a type of early Renaissance
villa that achieves a refinedform in BaldassarePeruzzi'sVilla Farnesinain Rome
(fig. 11). Anothervilla (fig. 23), only
recently excavated at Montmaurinin
the French part of Gaul, anticipatedthe
entrancewayflankedwith two quadrantsof
a circle in a style reinventedby Palladiofor
such projects as the Villa Badoer at Fratta
Pol6sine (fig. 24) and passing from there
into innumerablehouses and villas in Europe and America.

21
Gallo-Roman villa, Mayen,
Rhineland, first to fourth
centuries
22
Villa of Theodoric,
reconstruction, Galeata
near Ravenna, Italy, sixth
century
23
Gallo-Roman villa,
Montmaurin, France,
fourth century
24

Villa Badoer, Fratta

Polesine, Italy, after 1556,
Andrea Palladio

27

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25
28

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"Falling Water"
(Kaufmann house), Bear
Pennsylvania, 1936,
lFrank Lloyd Wright

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Rustic gate, 1584,
Serlio
27

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__ Gate Lodge, North

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~Easton,

Massachusetts,
1881, H H Richardson
28
Villa Medici, Cafaggiolo,
Italy, ca1450

27

28
28

The Villa as Sign

The villa inevitablyexpresses the mythology thatcauses it to be built: the attraction

to nature,whetherstated in engagementor
in cool distance;the dialectic natureand
cultureor artifice;the prerogativesof privilege and power;and national, regional or
class pride. The signifiers range from the
sitingand form of the building(s) as a
whole to individualdetails and characteristics. Since signs and symbols convey
meaningonly to those who know what they
signify,they are usually chosen from past
architecturalusage or, as occasionally happens, are importedfrom other types of
construction,like the ship railings of Le
Corbusier.
Intimateengagementwith natureis signifiedby a site and design that permitthe
villa to nestle and to extend out into its
surroundings,by assymmetricaland open
design, colors reflectingthe setting, and
naturaland varied textures. Distancing from
the setting, on the other hand, is signified
by an overall compact, cubic form (often
with a podiumor similar device to elevate
the living quartersfrom the earth), studied
proportions,and emphasison plane surfaces
of whiteor of a light color thatdisguise the

natureof the materials.Ambiguitytoward

these two poles can also be expressed, as
occurs in FrankLloyd Wright'sKaufmann
house at Bear Run (fig. 25), which poses
a dialogue between the nature-affirming
effects of fieldstone hearth, chimneys, and
floors laid in irregularslabs linking the interior and exterior, and the contrasting
coolness of the carefully formed white
concrete balconies. The comparablecombination of wood and stucco of Aalto's
Villa Mairea serves the same purpose.
The dialectic natureand artifice is expressed in the paradoxicalimitationof
naturalforms in man-madeelements. Rustication, adopted from a small numberof
Roman buildings of the firstcentury,was a
Renaissance device that aimed to give building blocks the appearanceof "living" stone
as distinct from ashlarmasonryof finely
finished surfaces. While late medieval and
early Renaissance rusticationimplied a
military and public function, the symbolization evolved in the sixteenth centuryto
conform with the rustic implicationsof the
term, and rustic gates, walls, and portals,
often with the rusticity created in terracotta,
were increasingly used for villas. Sebastiano Serlio, taking up the idea from Giulio
Romano, made much of combining rustic
and smooth treatmentsas a way of dramatizing the antithesis of the naturaland the
artificial (fig. 26). The fountain-grottoof

villa gardens was a companionmotif, in

which such irregularnaturalphenomenaas
stalactites were reproducedin a variety
of plastic materialsto which naturalobjects-such as shells and fossils-were
added. H H Richardsonused rusticationof
a vigorous new kind, not intendingparticularly to refer to the Renaissance;this is
most vividly evident in the Ames Gate
Lodge at North Easton (fig. 27) and the
Payne house in Waltham.He was also one
of the many proponentsof shingles as a
nature-invokingsurface.
The expression of power and class aspiration
is evident in the firstvillas of the Renaissance, which took over the vocabularyof
the medieval feudal castle-towers, irregular blocks, battlements, and crenellations.
One such is the Medici villa at Cafaggiolo
(fig. 28). Even a villa as modernas Lorenzo
de'Medici's Poggio a Caiano (fig. 14) has a
walled enceinte with four cornertowers.
The equally avant-gardeearly-sixteenthcentury Villa Giustinianat Roncade, near
Venice, was given a moat and drawbridge.
Castles returnedto favor in the eighteenth
century in the work of Vanbrughand the
early Scottish designs of RobertAdam.

29

Conclusion

30

While the adoptionof Georgianarchitectural symbols in southernplantationhouses

affirmedthe link of the colonists with their
homeland, Jefferson'staste for pre-Imperial
Roman and Palladianreferenceswas intended to express republicanas againstaristocraticideals. In nineteenth-centuryNewport the villas of the excessively rich again
assumed aristocratic,even regal pretensions.
Regionalism informs the symbolism of the
Florentinevillas of the Medici dukedomin
the sixteenth century;of the British villas
of Scott, Voysey, and Lutyens;and more
recently of the Californiaschool.
Palladio was extraordinarilyprolific in devising and combining villa messages. While
his geometric and axial forms and white
surfaces express a sophisticatedcontrastto
the organic world, the compositionoften
reaches out into the surroundings.Though
his domes and temple-frontfacades are urbane and calculatedto imply the patrons'
exalted social statusby bringingthe auraof
classical learning and religious traditionto
the villa, he could join them to common

barnyardelements. At the villas Barbaroat

Maser, Emo at Fanzolo (fig. 29), and elsewhere, he adaptedthe loggias flankingthe
temple-frontfrom barchesse, traditionalagriculturalsheds of the Venetianmainland
designed to store farm machineryand implements, produce, and cattle. Theirrole
in the Palladianvillas was probablynot
fully utilitarian;the patronswould not have
supportedthe odors and the noise. Barchesse do not appearat the Villa Rotonda
near Vicenza because it is a suburbanvilla
with no farm functions;here Palladioplaced
the temple-fronton all four faces of a
domed cube to underscorethe focal position
of the hilltop site in relationto the surroundingviews.
Signification has become problematicin
contemporaryvilla design because of the
absence of clear purposeand confidencein
privilege on the part of the exceptionally
wealthy individualswho can affordto build
them. This circumstanceleaves the designer
free to devise an expressionthat will best
serve the maker'simage as an artistand best
define a position in the dialectic of modernism versus antimodernism.The semantic
function of the returnof elements of the
vocabularyof antiquityin this dialectic is
less to evoke the classical traditionand its
historical implicationthan to underscorethe
antimodernistposition.

The paradigmof the villa poses a cultural

paradox. If the farmhouseresists change
because agricultureand farm cultureevolve
slowly, we should expect the villa to remain
even more convention-bound.It is supremely conservativesocially, being a
luxury commodity availableonly to persons
of privilege and power, and the ideology
that sustains the type has stayedunchanged
over millennia. Yet the mythicalnatureof
villa ideology liberatesthe type from concrete restraintsof utility and productivity
and makes it ideally suited to the creative
aspirationsof patronand architect.This
creativity,however, is essentiallylimited to
the sphere of taste. In this respectthe
design of villas parallelsthatof fashions
in apparel, which has been similarlymotivated by an unchangingmythology since
surplus wealth first offered its temptations.

LrJ

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29
29
Villa Emo, Fanzolo, Italy,
1564, Andrea Palladio

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31