Tempietto Barbaro in Maser-2012.07.18

Tempietto Barbaro

photograph showing the side arcade

The Tempietto at the Villa Barbaro in Maser was completed around 1580, and as such is considered to be Palladio’s last work (along with the Teatro Olimpico). This is the first religious structure built to be attached to a Palladian villa. The tempietto is refined, as it filled the function both of villa chapel and parish church. It is based most evidently on the Pantheon in Rome, but architecturally the plan of the building is innovative because it combines a cylinder and a Greek cross, with four massive piers buttressing the dome. From reading I learned that the idealism of the tempietto’s centralized plans were religious and philsophical in nature.

Villa Barbaro in Maser-2012.07.18

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Site plan diagram showing Villa Barbaro and Tempietto Barbaro, including the 1/4 mile radius walking distance.

Photograph of Villa Barbaro

The farm opposite to the villa barbaro across the street

Villa Barbaro, also known as the Villa di Maser, is a large villa at Maser in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It was designed and built by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio, with frescos by Paolo Veronese and sculptures by Alessandro Vittoria for Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia and ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I of England, and his brother Marcantonio an ambassador to King Charles IX of France. The villa was added to the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1996.

Architecturally, the building has a rectangular massing with perpendicular rooms on a long axis, The central block, which is designed to resemble the portico of a Roman temple, is decorated by four Ionic columns.

The central block is flanked by two symmetrical wings. The wings have two floors but are fronted by an open arcade. Usually Palladio designed the wings to provide functional accommodation for agricultural use. The Villa Barbaro is unusual in having private living quarters on the upper level of the “barchesse” (the rooms behind the arcades of the two wings). The Maser estate was a fairly small one and would not have needed as much storage space as was built at Villa Emo, for example.

The wings are terminated by pavilions which feature large sundials set beneath their pediments. The pavilions were intended to house dovecotes on the uppermost floor, while the rooms below were for wine-making, stables and domestic use. In many of Palladio’s villas similar pavilions were little more than mundane farm buildings behind a concealing facade. A typical feature of Palladio’s villa architecture, they were to be much copied and changed in the Palladian architecture inspired by Palladio’s original designs.

This is a sketch of the villa.

This is a plan diagram drawn to show the symmetrical nature of the villa.

This is a section diagram to show different layers of space on a central axis,including the villa, the street, the front yard and the working farm, thus indicating the nature of the site itself.