August 25, 2015
My next villa visit was to Villa Emo, which was owned by Leonardo di Alvise Emo, the grandson of the Venetian nobleman Leonardo Emo. Grandfather Emo had retired from his service to the state and acquired 80 Trevisan fields from Andrea Barbarigo. He was focused on devoting himself to reclaiming and cultivating the land to raise livestock, crops and to establish a flour and silk mill. In the 1550s, after grandfather Emos death in 1539, Leonardo di Alvise Emo commissioned Andrea Palladio to build the current villa.
The villa has a simple facade with the "temple front" containing a Doric loggia topped by a triangular tympanum containing the family coat of arms, as well as two porticoed service buildings with columns in the Tuscan order. There is a "perfect harmony between the architectural form, the functions to which it is linked, and the surrounding landscape". [1] The great ramp leads to the temple front loggia and emphasizes the rural building tradition, making it easy to roll up barrels, drag up sacks, or lay out hay to dry.
The interior contains many frescoes, and once again, photos were not allowed. The frescoes were painted by Giovanni Battista Zelotti and they depict mythology, agricultural life and family/domestic virtues.
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