Palladian Days Read online

  My first and overwhelming impression is the immensity of the spaces—not just the floor space of the rooms, but their volume, the vast space over our heads before the ceiling caps us more than twenty-four feet above the floor in the central salone and almost as high elsewhere. This, I think, is not a place where mortals live. I begin to feel disoriented, to feel that I have lost track of which room I have left or which I have entered. I should have trailed a string behind me, like Theseus in the Labyrinth, so that I will know my way out and can tell whether I have been in a certain room before.

  The grand salon—lower piano nobile

  The windows of the villa have a height and width to match the scale of the rooms. As a result, the rooms are awash with noonday light spilling in from all sides. From the south the sun bakes the terrazzo of the upstairs floor to a warmth that I can feel through the thin soles of my sandals. Antique furniture on a modest scale is placed sparingly but attractively throughout the villa—large marble tables, painted armadi, handsome but uninviting chairs, and one beautiful wrought-iron bed so perfect as to date and place that it could have been something that Giorgio Cornaro himself brought when he and his new bride, Elena, took possession of the villa in 1554.

  Carl tells me later that for him the strongest impression came from the pastel and earth tones of the 104 frescos that blanket the walls of all the principal rooms except the central salone itself. Stucco frames enclose the frescos, and lively stucco putti—angelic cherubs—cluster in three dimensions above the tall doorways. The original terra-cotta and terrazzo floors that cover most of the villa extend beneath our feet the warm tones of the frescos.

  Up great looping brick stairs, down tight twisted wooden ones, we stream along in the Marullis’ wake. We ooh and ah reflexively at everything, mesmerized. Carl and I simply fall in love with Villa Cornaro. Ci siamo innamorati della villa.

  3

  Cup and Lip

  Amore is one thing; buying a Palladian villa is another. Buying a Palladian villa is serious business under any circumstances, but especially for people with distinctly circumscribed resources such as ours. Fortunately, Carl has good experience for the task. He began his career with twenty years as a lawyer in private practice; international business was one of his specialties. Now that he has moved into the business world himself, a smaller but significant part of his work is still overseas.

  We begin by flying to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with the owners, Dick and Julie Rush, and their real estate agent from Greenwich, Connecticut. The Rushes reside in Greenwich but spend time regularly in Washington, where they lived previously. We have two objectives: One is to know the couple with whom we are dealing and to let them know us, and the other is to learn more about the realities of everyday life as expatriate property owners in the Veneto. The first objective is quickly achieved. Dick, a tall, slim gentleman, and Julie, his attractive and talkative wife, are charming, yet clearly apprehensive about who might buy the villa in which they have invested eighteen years of difficult restoration.

  Their genuine love for Villa Cornaro is patent. Why are they selling it? we soon ask. Because Dick, at seventy-two—ten or so years older than Julie—is trying to simplify his estate and make it easier for Julie to administer as he becomes less active. Carl and I also quickly perceive that we are way out of our league financially. One indicator: By way of illustrating his efforts to simplify his estate, Dick points out that he will soon be auctioning one of his paintings, a Magdalene by Titian, in a forthcoming Sotheby's sale.

  Dick and Julie assure us about everything relating to villa life, although some of the assurances are less calming than they imagine. The currency-control laws that limit the ability to repatriate money invested in Italy may not apply to the sale of a villa, but in any event Italy is expected to remove the restriction within the next few years. The Red Guard is now a thing of the past in Italy; Dick has even dropped the kidnap insurance that he once carried.

  “Kidnappers?” I interject.

  “Don't worry about that, Sally,” Carl responds. “We'll just post our balance sheet on the front gate, and they won't come near us.” Dick Rush is even less amused than I am.

  With only a brief pause Dick continues his list of dubious assurances. Upon closing and recording the sale of a historic structure such as the villa, he explains, there begins a sixty-day period in which the Italian government can elect to purchase the property at the same price that the buyer has paid, but the government never has any funds budgeted for this purpose, so it's not a worry.

  Finally, Dick has concluded that Carl's legal background is perfect for dealing with the local authorities of Piombino Dese in case a problem “like the last one” arises in the future. Now, some might dwell on the implied compliment in Dick's remark, but Carl springs to the question that is on my lips as well: “What was the last problem?”

  Thus we learn of the ancient villa's near-death experience just three years earlier. The sindaco—mayor—of Piombino Dese decided that the town required a new and grander soccer field, or campo sportivo; that the fields adjacent to the south gate of the villa—which have been farmed continuously for more than five hundred years, first as part of the villa and now as property of the half-dozen farmers who till them—were the perfect spot for it; and that, to provide a touch of grandeur, the approach to the campo sportivo should pass through the grounds of Villa Cornaro itself and across the settecento (1700s) bridge to its south gate, with the crowds of soccer fans flowing past each side of the villa as a river might divide to flow around an inconvenient boulder in the middle of its stream.

  In later years, I discuss the soccer field affair with dozens of Piombino Dese residents. More than fifteen years after the event, it still looms large in the civic memory. The sindaco, it seems, understood Piombino Dese politics but seriously underestimated Dick Rush.

  Patrician Dick Rush made common cause with the farmers, led by Ilario Mariotto, whose land would have been expropriated for the project at derisory prices; the farmers in turn attracted support from the local Communist Party. Nonetheless, Dick soon determined that he and his band of farmer and Communist allies would be unable to prevail politically against the sindaco. He turned to Rome for a new ally in the national Ministero di Belle Arti, which, with the agreement of the farmers concerned, issued a binding decree that the fields lying south of the villa and its former farm building may be used solely for agricultural purposes in order to preserve the historical integrity of the Palladian villa. The sindaco had been trumped.

  Because of the decree, known as a vincolo, the peaceful enjoyment of the villa is assured, Dick tells us. Carl and I, of course, remain concerned about the episode and its implications for the future. Carl asks for a copy of the vincolo so we can review its terms ourselves.

  We return home to Atlanta and within a few weeks send the Rushes a proposed contract. Perhaps our meeting tempered our enthusiasm too much. Price is never a big issue because, candidly, we think the asking price is reasonable. But we are cautious on other points. Carl wants an engineering inspection of the villa before closing, a mechanism for addressing the government's “right of first refusal,” and only a modest earnest-money requirement.

  One problem, Carl and I are aware, is that we don't have the cash to make the purchase! To obtain the cash, we will have to sell a lot of our stock in the public company that Carl is associated with. As Carl points out, selling the stock will result in a big capital gains tax, which is perfectly acceptable if we end up owning the villa. But if the Italian government elects to exercise its right of first refusal and buy the property away from us, we will have sold the stock and paid the tax for no purpose.

  The negotiations quickly tangle in unexpected and sometimes unexplained ways. Carl concludes that Julie, who seems to have taken over the communications, may not be as resigned to selling Villa Cornaro as Dick is. For whatever reasons, the talks collapse. Carl and I are left with a somewhat empty sense of what might have been.

 
Yet I find that the villa has already changed me. A home in New Hampshire is too small a canvas, I've decided. A German friend in Frankfurt, a lawyer whom we first met through Carl's work, once told me that he felt entirely alive only when he was in Manhattan. Now I realize that I have begun to feel that way about Italy.

  Of course, Carl and I begin at once to plan a new vacation trip to Italy for the summer of 1988, returning to places we have seen and loved in the past, such as Lucca and Orvieto. With Carl's encouragement, in the months before our trip I consult what I now consider my real-estate bible, The New York Times Magazine. Che sorpresa! (What a surprise!) There's an ad for a restored medieval tower in Umbria near Orvieto.

  Alas, when we arrive the reality proves to be but a shadow of the fantasy that our rampant imaginations have painted for us. The restoration is, to put it generously, a work in progress, with more cement being poured than it took to build Hoover Dam. The entrepreneur himself, Gianni, is a charming young man who quickly perceives that we are not to be buyers. Nonetheless, he graciously invites us back to his own home for a prosecco and a chance to meet his business partner, who is an American sculptor. Gianni assures us that his real profession is executing his partner's sculpture constructions, with real estate development only an occasional sideline. In twenty minutes he pulls his car to a stop in the parking area beside an impeccably restored thirteenth-century tower standing tall and square in the plain of Orvieto. The perfect restoration of the umber tower brings our first gasp of the afternoon.

  Entering the tower, we find that the interior has been completely gutted and reconfigured in open, light, conjoined spaces of starkly modern design. Elegant and unusual contemporary furniture rests sparsely about like pieces of sculpture. Carl joins me in our second gasp. “Richard designed this,” Gianni tells us, referring to his sculptor-partner. It is obvious that the tower we are now in has inspired Gianni's ungainly development efforts at the concrete bunker we have just left. Gianni leads us up narrow, gently curving steps to the ramparts of the tower, which have been transformed into a roof garden. Pots of geraniums form a necklace around the small tetragon.

  Gasp No. 3: The Umbrian sky surrounds us in the infinite distance like a lavender cyclorama. The plain lies far below our feet and flows like water to the horizon, interrupted only by the great mesa of Orvieto itself. The town clutches at its high perch just a few miles to the north, close enough, it seems, for us to lean over and—with just a little stretch—shake hands with tourists standing atop its cliffs.

  Gianni's sculptor-partner, a small gray-haired man, joins us. Gianni introduces him as Richard Lippold. Carl and I have agreed earlier, in a whispered exchange, that Lippold is not a name we know. After we've enjoyed a few relaxed moments with our prosecco, Gianni excuses himself to make a business call to the States. “Richard,” he suggests, “while I'm doing this, why don't you show Carl and Sally the photos of your work?” With a modest shrug, Richard opens the album Gianni has placed in front of him. Carl and I prepare to gush about the sincere and awkward work that we expect to see. Gasp No. 4—the loudest, longest gasp of the day.

  “That's the Tree of Life at Harvard!” Carl chokes out.

  “An early work,” Richard says.

  So how were we to know that Richard Lippold is one of the most famous sculptors of the late twentieth century? We continue to turn the pages in awe. Richard talks easily about the works as we move through the album. The sculpture for the lobby of the Pan Am building, the five for the shah of Iran, the first sculpture ever commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum, the seventeen-story-high sculpture to sit outside a Seoul, Korea, office building. “Actually,” Richard says, “that was designed as an eighteen-story sculpture, but the developer had a multifloor tenant lined up who didn't want the sculpture to block the view from his personal office on the eighteenth floor. So the developer begged me to let it be executed just seventeen floors tall. I try to be practical, so after some thought I finally agreed.”

  I can see Richard's mind thinking back over the episode as he speaks. “You know,” he adds wistfully, “it really should have been eighteen stories.”

  On our long flight home to Atlanta a few days later, Carl and I are both pensive and even moody for most of the trip. As our plane banks to enter its final approach to Hartsfield, I reach for Carl's hand. “We've got to keep Italy in our lives, Carl.”

  “I wonder if Dick Rush has sold Villa Cornaro,” he replies. “I think I will write him and ask.” Note to diary: Beware! Carl knows your thoughts.

  Whatever brought you to buy a Palladian villa in Italy?

  I haven't answered the question at all. In realistic moments, such as when I'm wide awake in bed in the first light before dawn, I can see that.

  Growth, I tell myself. I'm looking for personal growth.

  What kind of answer is that? my other, more cynical self responds. You might as well say it was a full moon. I mean, it's not as if you were some underdeveloped potted plant! You have twenty-five years of friendships in Atlanta, three wonderful children out of the nest and on the wing, three church choirs eager to respond to every twitch of your upraised hand. Most people would say that's growth enough for a lifetime.

  Maybe, I have to admit, “a search for growth” doesn't really explain it. As I turn in my bed, letting sleep engulf me again, a subversive new thought teases my mind.

  Maybe the best word is “escape.”

  4

  Destiny

  Karma is afoot. Carl learns that Dick Rush took Villa Cornaro off the market after our earlier negotiations broke off. He arranged to donate it to his undergraduate alma mater, Dartmouth College, to use as a center for Renaissance studies. The transaction had awaited only the funding of an endowment promised by another alumnus for its maintenance and operations. But, Dick explains to Carl, the other alumnus has died before arrangements could be completed, the project has collapsed, and Dick has just put the villa back on the market, listing it for sale through Sotheby's real estate arm. Other news: The price has gone up.

  Carl returns to the hunt! A new contract is drafted; clauses are hammered out. Carl retains a Venetian lawyer for advice on exchange controls, taxes, insurance issues, and the like. (Real estate conveyance itself is a matter for notaries, not lawyers, in Italy.) Gradually, most issues are resolved, generally through more risk taking on our part. Then, frustratingly points that we thought were resolved begin to arise anew. Carl suspects that Julie Rush's fine hand may have returned to create confusion and concludes that a face-to-face meeting between himself and the Rushes is required. The Rushes are in residence at the villa, so in July 1989 Carl extends one of his regular business trips to Europe in order to visit them.

  By happy coincidence, our son “young” Carl is also in Venice; he is traveling briefly through Europe after completing his summer job in Sweden. Father and son are greeted by the Rushes at the villa, treated to an elaborate lunch set in the center of the grand salon itself, and led through a meticulous tour of the villa. Carl and Dick proceed to a flurry of negotiations, punctuated by comments from Julie. Young Carl, clearly the artist among our three children, amuses himself by examining the statues, painted ceilings, chandeliers, and frescos that surround him, and by turning the pages of a newly published German book with the south facade of Villa Cornaro featured on the cover.

  Miraculously, after several hours of wordsmithing, Carl and Dick sign the contract. Within a month, Villa Cornaro is ours. Of course, whether it will remain ours depends on whether the Italian government chooses to buy it away in the ensuing sixty days.

  For the next two months my mind is filled with two fears: fear that the government will whisk our new treasure away from us, and fear that it will not. My first fear is of losing an unexplored new life in Italy; my second is of becoming saddled with a 435-year-old white elephant pastured four thousand miles away.

  The formal garden, looking north

  Sometimes my mind retrieves the image of that first time we saw Villa Cornar
o—our London friends and us parking in Piazzetta Squizzato, getting out of the car to stare across Via Roma. For us those first steps through the gate and into the boxwood garden were like those that Mary Lennox took so innocently into her own “Secret Garden.” Ordinary steps, it would seem, but life-changing. Through all the visits, conferences, false starts, demands, and concessions, each step seemed tentative and revocable. Yet in retrospect, I cannot imagine the consequences of having taken a different course at any stage. From those first steps, everything moved with an inexorable force of its own.

  5

  Villa Cornaro ora Gable

  We fly into the Treviso airport on a brilliant October morning— Carl and I and our daughter, Ashley, who is vacationing from her job as a paralegal in Washington, D.C.

  Throughout the flight, my elation at beginning our great Italian adventure has wrestled with my fears. Carl has been a disappointment: I usually rely on him as my risk assessor, but he has slept contentedly all across the Atlantic and really didn't seem all that awake when we changed planes in Frankfurt. So I'm left to handle the worrying by myself.

  What if we hate Italy? Impossible.

  What if no one in town can understand our newly tutored Italian? Possible; maybe curable with time.

  What if they understand us but don't like us? We can work on that, too, I suppose.

  What if the expense of maintaining the villa outruns our bank account? Unknown risk.

  What if we're kidnapped! I shake Carl awake. This is too much worry for me to be stuck with alone.

  But before I can alarm Carl, our plane leaves the murky cloud cover over Germany and I watch the snowy Alps rising beneath us like a vast white-spumed sea. Then the crested waves subside and we soar out over the glistening Venetan plain.

  “Buon giorno! Benarrivati!” Dick Rush, tall and thin as ever and remarkably unconcerned about his dignity, hails us excitedly as we hurry past the somnolent customs inspectors. His enthusiasm is genuine, though his Italian accent is suspect. His eagerness to emulate the renowned Italian hospitality, evident in his big grin and gesticulations, reminds me of my beloved black labrador Cleo greeting me when I've returned home. Waving his arms like a juggler, Dick chats nonstop of his pleasure in welcoming us to Italy, of how he and Julie have prepared the villa for us with fresh touch-up paint and new wax, and of the dozens of people coming to a reception in our honor on Saturday afternoon—for we are arriving at Piombino Dese as the new owners of its Palladian villa! As a newspaper of the province headlines its brief article on the event: