The great figures who have left their mark on the Villa
Villa Valmarana ai Nani has been, since the birth of its frescoes (1757), the subject of visits and writings due to its extraordinariness and the generosity of its owners, who have always opened their doors to those who asked to enter.
The Villa in literature
Many people have wanted to share their impressions of the villa, its frescoes, atmosphere, and the owners.
General Francisco de Miranda, one of the fathers of South American independence, praises its owners: “Between the Rotonda and the city is the garden and the house of Count Valmarana, where I saw some fine frescoes by Tiepolo and the hostess (Elena Garzadori) who, with various guests, was about to dine in the Loggia or Casino, an interesting piece of architecture. Realizing that it was my intention to leave so as not to disturb, she had all the doors opened so I could admire the frescoes in peace—oh! What an example of generosity and courtesy.” (November 24, 1785 from “Viajes del General Miranda”)
The following year (September 1786), JW Goethe visits the villa and writes: “Today I visited Villa Valmarana, which Tiepolo decorated, giving free rein to all his virtues and weaknesses. The sublime style succeeded less well than the natural one, but there are delightful things in it: overall, the decoration is very sumptuous and skillful.”
He writes these thoughts in his Tagebuch, sensing that the artwork appears in two different styles, as would later be confirmed a century later, when Giambattista was credited with the Palazzina (and therefore the sublime style), and his son Giandomenico was credited with the Foresteria (the natural style).
A special mention goes to the writer Antonio Fogazzaro, who, as the husband of Rita Valmarana, loved the villa dearly and knew it well. He made the rooms of the Palazzina the backdrop of his novel Piccolo Mondo Moderno:
“The flames of electric light shone in the great hall and the four smaller ones that surround it, all also frescoed by Tiepolo in honor of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, and Tasso…”
“Italian Villas and their Gardens” (1903) is a beautiful illustrated book by Maxwell Parrish with writings by Edith Wharton: “Villa Valmarana at Monte Berico, near the Rotonda, has a deep charm that the other lacks. The house, low and in simple style, is notable only for the charming frescoes with which Tiepolo has adorned its rooms; but the beautiful loggia (now the Foresteria) is attributed to Palladio, and this, along with the ancient hornbeam avenues, the enchanting frescoed fountain, and the surrounding walls crowned with grotesque dwarfs, forms an exceptionally evocative composition.”
In the words of Albert Camus, we find a hymn to Vicenza and the Villa: “I will speak only of the six days spent on one of the hills near Vicenza… what did it matter to me to revive my soul, but without eyes to see Vicenza, without hands to touch the grapes of Vicenza, without being able to feel on my skin the caress of the night while walking the road from Monte Berico to Villa Valmarana?” (L’envers et l’endroit – La mort dans l’âme – 1937)
In the extraordinary writing The Metaphysics of the Senses – an introduction to the complete work on Tiepolo – Guido Piovene, son of Stefania Valmarana, through the paintings of the Villa, conducts a sociological analysis of how it breathes an 18th century moving forward, combining the aristocratic fabric with bourgeois civilization: the villa was painted just thirty years before the French Revolution, and Giandomenico (1727-1804), with his portraits of Venetian peasants and scenes from life, was defined as “a son of the revolution.”
“… but Giambattista, in Villa Valmarana, with his son Domenico, adapts the subjects and the style to the new task of embellishing the rooms of a suburban gentleman’s residence in Vicenza. Now, the precept is different: elegant familiarity… Here the frescoes are close to those entering the rooms, divine and human figures stand next to them almost at the same height, and their action unfolds on planes parallel to the walls… The 18th century is never as attractive as when it leaves churches and palaces and inserts, in an aristocratic fabric, the premonitions of bourgeois civilization with its taste for art as a journey in one’s own room, an invitation to escape, an instrument of tonal dreams, and an object of ‘immediate consumption of the heart’.” (The Metaphysics of the Senses, 1968)
Distinguished Visitors
And not only that: in the last century, the great noble families of all Europe wanted to admire the work of the two Tiepolo on official visits.
In the signatures and photos collected in the Villa, there are royals, great industrialists, politicians, intellectuals, and artists such as the Queen Mother of England, the King of Belgium, and the royals of the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, Paul Morand, Truman Capote, Salvador Dalí, Peggy Guggenheim, Cesare Pavese, Ignazio Silone, Frank Sinatra, Cesare Zavattini, and Luchino Visconti.
The Scholars
The frescoes by the Tiepolo in Villa Valmarana have been the subject of numerous studies over the years by art historians such as P. Molmenti (1881), H. Modern (1902), E. Sack (1910), G. Fiocco (1926), W. Arslan (1936), H. W. Hagelmann (1940), M. Goering (1942), R. Pallucchini (1944).
A special mention must go to the critic Antonio Morassi, who in 1941 officially and definitively recognized the authorship of the frescoes, starting from the profound difference between the subjects of the different parts of the complex. He noticed that the date on the cartouche of the “Mondo Novo” fresco in the Foresteria was 1757, not 1737, as had been believed until then. And if in 1737, Giandomenico, born in 1727, could not have assisted his father, in 1757, at 30 years old, he was certainly able to create what is universally considered the masterpiece of his life.
