Villa Gazzotti
| Villa Gazzotti Grimani | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Palladian |
| Town or city | Bertesina nr Vicenza |
| Country | Italy |
| Construction started | 1542 |
| Completed | c. 1550 |
| Client | Taddeo Gazzotti |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Andrea Palladio |
Coordinates: 45°33′33″N 11°36′02″E / 45.55917°N 11.60056°E
The Villa Gazzotti Grimani (1542) is a Renaissance villa, an early work of architect Andrea Palladio, located in the village of Bertesina, near Vicenza in the Veneto region of northern Italy. In 1994 UNESCO designated Villa Gazzotti Grimani as part of the "Vicenza, City of Palladio" World Heritage Site. (Two years later the World Heritage Site was expanded to include Palladian villas outside the core area and accordingly it was renamed as "City of Vicenza and Palladian Villas of the Veneto").
The villa was designed and built in the 1540s for the Venetian Taddeo Gazzotti and, like a number of Palladio's buildings, it incorporates a pre-existing structure. In 1550, before the building was completed, Gazzotti was facing financial problems and sold the villa to Girolamo Grimani. The external form of the villa shows the person who commissioned it to have been a man who wanted to make his influence clearly visible. For the first time Palladio presents the body of the building as a clearly defined cube. The three-fold arcade in the central section, which is reminiscent of Villa Godi, is crowned by a triangular gable and is the dominant shape of the facade. It is less the embodiment of an original body of thought of Palladio's - comparable examples can be found both in Villa Agostini in Cusignana and in the architecture of Giovanni Maria Falconetto - than of his endeavour to give existing forms of new expression. What is new is that the three-fold arcade takes up the entire height of the one-story building. Equally, the use of a triangular gable as a symbol of dignity has no counterpart in Venetian secular architecture of that time. A wide flight of steps was originally meant to lead up to the loggia; the narrow flight of steps which now leads up to the center arcade in the loggia is a latter addition.
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