Daniele Barbaro, Prudence Andtime:Towards a Logos Of

chapter 2 Daniele Barbaro, Prudence and Time: Towards a Logos of Architecture at the Villa Barbaro at Maser

FromVia Cornuda, which runs between the towns of Maser and Cornuda in the northern Veneto, the view to the Villa Barbaro provides some overt signs about the program Daniele Barbaro had in mind when he and his brother Marc’Anto- nio commissioned the restoration of the family estate (Figure 16). Looking down the main lane leading to the structure, one is faced with a central façade decorated with four columns with Ionic capitals, capped with a large pediment furnished with the heraldic symbols of the Barbaro family. The central structure is flanked by two symmetrical colonnades, each termi- nated with large pavilions topped in turn with functioning sundials, features taken directly from the Ninth book of Daniele’s Dieci libri (Figure 17).1 While the present-day examples are the result of restorations in 1932, the original ver- sions were detectable beneath a layer of fresco paint, even if different in their design.2 Though these sundials are, aside from the central façade, perhaps the most prominent, they have not been discussed in relation to the rest of the villa. We will recall from the Introduction that Daniele made the correlation between logos opticos and perspective explicit in the second edition of the Dieci libri. Though he may not have been as clear in the 1556 edition, the relationship is still recognizable in the early stages of his thinking about the topic.

1 Although Daniele’s commentaries were preceeded by Fra Giovanni Giacondo in 1511 and Cesare Ceriano in 1521, it is the 1556 edition that would have been first and foremost in the mind of Daniele when restorations began on his country home in Maser. For an in-depth description of the differences between the two editions, see Manuela Moressi, “Le due edi- zioni dei commenti di Daniele Barbaro 1556–1567,” in I dieci libri dell’architettura tradotti e commentati da Daniele Barbaro, (Milan, 1987), XLI–LVIII. See also Margaret Muther D’Evelyn, Venice and Vitruvius: reading Venice with Daniele Barbaro and Andrea Palladio (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). Unless otherwise stated, for the remainder of this chapter I will refer to Daniele Barbaro, I dieci libri dell’architettura di M. Vitruvio, tradotto e commentato da Daniele Barbaro, (In Venegia: Per Francesco Marcolino, 1556). The later edition will be indi- cated by Dieci libri (1567). 2 See Maria Losito, “La gnomonica, il IX libro dei Commentari vitruviani di Daniele Barbaro e gli studi analemmatici di Federico Commandino,” Studi Veneziani, n. s. XVIII, (1989), (177– 237), 186. Losito’s study provides images of the frescoed-over originals and a discussion of the restorations. See Also note 25, on the same page.