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Walking along a lane flanked by high walls where the tops of cypress trees can be spied you arrive at Villa Valmarana ai Nani, which Fogazzaro called “Villa Diedo”, residence of the Desalles in Fogazzaro’s novel Piccolo mondo moderno (The Man of the World), and the setting for society parties and a passionate encounter between Piero Maironi and Jeanne.

The name actually derives from the statues of dwarves in eighteenth-century costume, attributed to Bendazzoli, which line the top of the perimeter walls of the building which were built by a modest master mason around 1669.
Only when the villa came into the hands of the counts of Valmarana, in the eighteenth century, adding the new entrance, the stables and the “foresteria” or guest quarters, did the villa acquire the imposing appearance which can be still be admired today. The villa owes its fame to its decoration, which was undertaken in 1757 by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his son Gian Domenico.
As the salons and rooms were only modestly sized, Tiepolo resorted to the help of the “quadratura” painter Mengozzi Colonna who employed optical illusions to make the ceilings appear higher and the rooms wider. The theme of the paintings is the hero led astray by love and its dire consequences; Tiepolo’s interpretation is rather melodramatic, in a Metastasian sense. In the central salon the sacrifice of Iphigenia is depicted as a consequence of Paris falling in love with Helen, as is the Trojan War. Their vivid colours and the melodramatic pathos which animates each figure make them some of Tiepolo’s most celebrated frescoes. Fogazzaro describes them thus in Piccolo mondo moderno:

[…] the rectangular hall, whose two longest walls are covered by paintings by Tiepolo and show, on one side, Iphigenia between her executioners and the sorrowful princes, and on the other, the Greek crews turning towards the ships in which they are about to embark. The room was but dimly lighted and held an odour of heliotrope and of Cuban cigarettes.

As you enter, the first room on the right is dedicated to Achilles, a range of light colours, recalling a chilly autumn, depicting the light of the sky and wind-tossed sea. The second room on the right relates the tale of the love between Angelica and Medoro, while the second room on the left depicts the loves of Helena and Dido. Finally, in the first room on the left, surrounded by the countryside of the nearby Valletta del Silenzio (Valley of Silence), we find the loves of Rinaldo and Armida and their farewell scene, renowned for its penetrating psychological insight into the characters.

Leaving the villa we come upon the “foresteria” or guest quarters. The Chinese room displays episodes from Turandot, the room of country folk depicts rural scenes, followed by scenes of summer entertainment, the Olympus room, the Carnival room, architectural fantasies and finally the room of the putti, In The Man of the World these rooms are also painted by Tiepolo but are imaginatively renamed by Carlino as, the China of Monsters, the Room of the Georgics, the Hall of Gallantry, Olympus, the Hall of Darwin and the chamber of Anacreon.

The famous writer from Vicenza and great admirer of Fogazzaro, Guido Piovene, brilliantly describes Tiepolo’s work and the scenery around the villa:

In these rooms the onlooker comes face to face with the frescoes, almost on a level with these human and godly figures […] The eighteenth century is never more appealing than when it hints at a future bourgeoisie within an aristocratic fabric, a bourgeoisie with its taste for art as if it were an armchair journey, an invitation to escape, a way of honing your dreams and “for immediate consumption by the heart”. […] lyrical, sensual, magnificent, fantastical, illusionary, theatrical, all these words are suited to Tiepolo. His art presses in on us […] forcing us to feel something: religious fervour, admiration for a principle, for a Nation, for a lavish family, […]. Tiepolo wants to astonish us, disturb us or seduce us. In his paintings he overlays his own vision of nature, bringing new light to it and suggesting new interpretations. Take, for example, his backgrounds, or the small figures in the distance, which glimmer with such tremulous grace. Compared to the figures which stand out so vividly in the foreground, these figures are weightless, they are airy, diaphanous forms which fade into a greyish light. Just as a stage director uses lighting, the artist is deliberately communicating an unreal, pathetic, dream-like quality. […] This is the Tiepolo that gets under our skin. It’s like the memory of a past love. […] in Villa Valmarana I rediscovered the Tiepolo who speaks to me privately. Anyone choosing to contemplate his paintings in a quiet corner, letting his imagination run freely, will feel very comfortable with him. The villa looks over a valley which is quintessential Veneto countryside, no matter how broad or narrow the vista may be, because the whole is subsumed without purporting to sensualise. Through the windows, the meadows and vineyards roll away to the hill-crest. The landscape teased me in the same way as his frescoes, it was both simple and mythological. Tiepolo’s sensuality is all-encompassing, it seeps from every pore, it appears from every quarter, it characterises his world, either real or imaginary. It creeps discreetly, piercingly, neither coarse, nor opinionated, cloaked in many disguises. The characters of the poems, be they warriors or women, young or old, all have the same sensual quality; and so they insinuate their way inside us, becoming our own blood-ghosts, a memory from a time before birth. […] Tiepolo is a painter of skies, or more exactly, he reinvented countless variations of that unique face that is the heavenly vault above us. His painting alone can transport us to a place within the sky […]. He conveys to the spectator a trace of sensual satisfaction with life, the viewer senses that his fantasies and memories are bound to it, there is a proud feeling of personal immortality linked to the flesh.

The entrance and stables are reminiscent of F. Muttoni‘s style, reconciling his Baroque training with Vicenza Palladian style. The stables, in particular, with their three naves and groin vaults on corbel supports, highlight how the architect was able to exploit the hill slope, which drops down sharply from the road towards the valley.

Leaving Montegalda and heading towards Vicenza, just outside the city lies the most famous and original of all Palladio‘s villas, which went unmentioned in Fogazzaro’s novels: it is the Villa Almerico Capra Valmarana, otherwise known as “La Rotonda”, an iconic landmark. This jewel is worthy of note, both due to its proximity to Villa Valmarana ai Nani, (“Villa Diedo” in Piccolo mondo moderno – The Man of the World), and because it clearly demonstrates the affinity between Fogazzaro and Palladio’s idea of what it meant to sojourn in a villa.

Older historical documents dated this villa between 1550 and 1553, placing it within Palladio’s early period and which explains that sense of primitive beauty which emanates from it; recent studies, however, have shown that it was built towards the 1570s. La Rotonda is not the first villa-temple of the celebrated architect but it is the only one to have its four façades facing the four compass points, surrounded as it is by gentle hills “giving it the appearance of a vast theatre”.

The villa was commissioned by the wealthy cleric Paolo Almerico when he retired from his career in Rome. After Palladio’s death, in 1580, alterations were carried out by Vincenzo Scamozzi, while in the eighteenth century Francesco Muttoni turned the upper floors, which Palladio had designed as a belvedere loggia, into residential quarters, and which had been used as a granary. When Goethe visited the Rotonda (1786) he praised Palladio for having converted the Greek temple into a residence for mortals.

The entrance had been designed to face the river where the villa dominates the landscape and the abandoned terreplein is, in fact, evidence of the original patron’s intentions. Entrance is usually from Via della Rotonda and this too is charming in its own way. The building is best seen, or rather absorbed, from the telescopic-like view provided by the two high walls, crowned with statues, which end abruptly, allowing the villa to stand out over the green lawn stretching out before it with its portico projecting onto the surrounding space.

The plan is based on three concentric circles: the first embraces the four porticoes, the second encompasses the external walls, which face the four compass points, and the third produces the central hall, which gives the building its name. The splendid staircases are flanked by massive abutments, and lead up to graceful, hexastyle ionic porticoes which are connected to the inner cube of the building by two beautiful arches, letting in light and softening the whole which is crowned by the pediment and statues by G. B. Albanese. Each of the four doors opens onto a small passage which leads into the central Rotonda: the passing of daylight hours could be seen through the central opening (or oculus) in the ceiling, similar to the one in the Pantheon in Rome, while the ever-changing seasons could be contemplated beyond the porticoes. The dome is decorated with frescoes by A. Maganza and stuccoes by L. Rubini. The oculus was closed up to accommodate decorative work rendering obsolete the perforated stone drain in the centre of the floor, or mascherone, in the shape of a laughing faun’s face, which served as an impluvium.

The ground floor is of particular interest as it is here that we get a real sense of Palladian architecture, which perfectly blends functional requirements with an exquisite sense of beauty. Daylight comes from the mascherone on the floor of the piano nobile in the rotunda hall, illuminating a square central space and then spreading upwards through rudimentary serliana windows into the circular spaces, creating spectacular effects on the walls.

The garden is mainly meadow and woods, as a sixteenth-century villa would require it to be, and the statues along the driveway are attributed to O. Marinali. The barchesse, or outhouses, are detached from the main residential building, with splendid arcades in rusticated ashlar built by V. Scamozzi, and overlook the open countryside all the way up to Monte Berico. The baroque chapel is by the architect G. Albanese, and features sculptural decoration from the studio of O. Marinali and the coat of arms displaying a rampant goat.

The Villa Fogazzaro-Roi, now known as “Colbachini”, is in Montegalda. In Fogazzaro’s novel Piccolo mondo moderno (The Man of the World) it is the residence of Don Giuseppe Flores, Piero Maironi and the Marchessa Nene Scremin’s confessor. The villa dates back to the seventeenth century and belonged to Giovanni Antonio Fogazzaro, the novelist’s grandfather. The famous architect and patriot Antonio Caregaro Negrin was commissioned to renovate and redesign the building in 1846 and under the watchful eye of Don Giuseppe Fogazzaro, the writer’s uncle (a botany scholar), he designed the lake, “that yellowish, microbe-breeding, restless pond” the English Garden and the Italian Garden, described in Piccolo mondo moderno as follows:

[…] yellow-tinged clouds […] shone upon the damp steps of the villa, where Don Giuseppe was standing with a sad smile upon his face, and calling Maironi’s attention to the picture presented by the plain, that faded away on one side towards the bluish, cone-shaped Euganeian Hills, on the other towards the thin wall of the Berici; and he was also telling him of the garden he had planned, designed and created upon this uncultivated plain and this wild hillside […]

The main body of the villa is divided into three sections: the central section is on three floors while the wings extend outwards on only two floors. Regular ashlar work covers the ground floor and the corners and the windows are decorated with triangular pediments, while the central balcony with stone balustrade has an architrave, three-mullioned window. The cymatium or crown moulding is decorated in the centre with a coat of arms and cornucopia. The small chapel dates back to the fifteenth century. Today the villa houses the Museo Veneto delle Campane (The Veneto Bell Museum) which brings together historical examples, curiosities and traditional working techniques which can be seen in the reconstruction of a static casting foundry.

Fogazzaro was keenly aware of the landscape surrounding him and his novels enable us to explore the local treasures in this area which require proper management and conservation. In Piccolo mondo moderno (The Man of the World), Fogazzaro himself, through the character of Carlino Dessalle, demonstrates a very modern approach when he passes severe judgement on the inability of heritage bodies tasked with the conservation of a noteworthy artistic site, namely the Abbey of Praglia:

[…] the Government with its Council of Fine Arts, with its list of national monuments, with its useless and bothering conservative commissions, with its cataracts of ministerial rhetoric, left such a jewel to rot and die […]

There are a host of good reasons to walk the Cammino Fogazzaro-Roi, seeking out the places in the area as described by Fogazzaro in the novels Daniele Cortis, Piccolo mondo moderno and Leila; first and foremost so as not to forget the beauty of our surroundings, but rather to revel in it as we savour the artist’s vision of nature and the scenes he depicts in his works.

Fogazzaro appreciated walking and it was how he measured out the space in his world, its rhythm accompanying some of the most compelling scenes in his novels. Today that same activity has been endorsed as a way of expressing freedom by David Le Breton, one of the leading experts on the anthropology of the body:

Finding relief when we walk along the streets, or trails, or in the woods does not exempt us from taking responsibility for the chaos that exists in the world, but it lets us catch our breath, sharpen our senses and re-awaken our curiosity. In a world where humans spend most of their time sitting down, either in a car, or on the underground, or in the office, enslaved by our computers and mobile phones, walking is becoming a noble form of resistance, or rebellion even, against speed, productivity, and efficiency: it is a cry for freedom.

The Cammino Fogazzaro lures us away from the frenetic pace of everyday life, it encourages us to rediscover our own natural rhythms in complete freedom, to get back in touch with our roots and commune with nature and to culturally enrich ourselves as we trace the literary connections, admire the artistic beauty of the villas and monuments and bask in the glorious scenery around us. It is an emotional experience, building an almost symbiotic relationship with our environment. The philosopher Fréderic Gros has also written on this subject:

[…] to try to give some meaning back to our body in an age when its has been decreed useless, as we attempt to rid ourselves of every kind of effort. This is the paradox since it is also true that, today more than ever before, there exists the myth of physical fitness. And this re-engagement is connected to one of the most fundamental aspects of walking: slowness. Step by step, the landscape ceases to be a mere display for our eyes but it takes root in our body, it is transcribed within us.

Reading Fogazzaro’s novels and walking can help cultivate a sensitivity towards our surroundings, we will be able to admire the landscape as it tells its story, we will explore and rediscover its forms, we will learn not to remain indifferent, but rather, to stand in awe, and people will be drawn to an experience which is both invigorating and culturally enriching. As we succumb to the influences of literature and the landscape, our eye will be more perceptive to Beauty.

Antonio Fogazzaro was born in Vicenza in 1842 into a wealthy family who was actively involved in the struggle against the Austrian Empire. He was taught by the poet Don Giacomo Zanella, an eminent literary figure in Vicenza. In 1864, he graduated in Law at Turin and then lived in Milan where he practised as a lawyer. He married Margherita Valmarana in 1866 and three years later he moved back to Vicenza to dedicate himself to his literary career. He was a member of the Congregazione della Carità (a state-run charitable association) and of the Provincial Board of Education, and he held political positions as a local councillor and Italian senator. He was the chief Arbitrator for the Banca Popolare di Vicenza and was Chairman of the Società del Quartetto and the Accademia Olimpica.

Following his short poem Miranda and his collection of verse entitled Valsolda, his first novel, Malombra was published in 1881. However he found fame and success with his later novels, Daniele Cortis (1885), Il mistero del poeta (The Mystery of the Poet, 1888), Piccolo mondo antico (The Little World of the Past, 1896), Piccolo mondo moderno (The Man of the World, 1901). His last two novels, Il santo (The Saint, 1905), and Leila (1910), were banned by the church and put on the Index.

We can begin to build a portrait of Fogazzaro with two powerful pictures. The first is as “Cavaliere dello Spirito” (Knight of the Spirit), as he is depicted in letters to Matilde Serao, describing Fogazzaro as a writer who dealt with issues such as the crisis of the family, the need for reform in the Catholic Church, and the relation between faith, science, eros, and morality. The second is how Giovanni Papini described him, a deep-sea diver, plumbing the murky, monster-filled depths that is the human soul, given that Fogazzaro is most concerned to describe the complexities and ambiguities of the modern soul. To these pictures can be added that of the gentleman writer, a man accustomed to living in elegantly furnished, aristocratic villas, wealthy, unencumbered by the cares of a practical life, skilled in the art of observing things and souls, with a graceful hint of poetry.

My vision of the world is different from the one my fellow artists see, different from the real world. I do not see the great men that others see, but I see great women that nobody knows about. In all souls I see reflected the glow of an unknown light, a sovereign idea. I neither sell, nor break my spectacles, but rather I keep them, I have them gold-plated as a reminder of the warm and generous fire in my heart when it was deluded, but happily so, into thinking that I could use them to penetrate the universe, to glean from it, as my own idea of art told me, phantoms of eternal souls or living shadows of beings, as a reminder of some faithful, burning spirit.

And again Fogazzaro wrote about himself and his experience as a writer:

My books are drawn in part from other books, in part from the truth in things, and in part from the depths of my own soul; because my soul, too, is a sky filled with shadows and stars which rise and set and rise again without rest, and therein lies an abyss so deep that not even the inner eye can penetrate it.

Here, Fogazzaro provides us with the sources for his works: other authors’ books, the “truth” in his surroundings, his experience, and contemporary religious and political characters, but especially the “truth” in his exploration of feelings and our destiny as humans. Fogazzaro explores his own soul, fraught by the tensions between virtue and passion, but also driven by Christian evolutionary theory, by his own political commitment and by spiritual pantheism.

Other aspects of Fogazzaro’s personality can be gleaned from the comments of another writer from Vicenza: in an article written in 1942, Guido Piovene cleverly draws remarkable analogies between Fogazzaro’s character and the contours of his landscape:

He shied away from things which were too well-defined, from the harsh lines of residential areas; Vicenza and its surrounding landscape, so softly nuanced, so fleeting and elusive, made up of so many individual elements which nevertheless defied an overall definition, was perfectly suited to his temperament. The landscape is a collage where the languor of Venice or blessed skies across the plains, laden with the scent of the sea, perhaps even the East, lie within close range of the crested Dolomites and the vast valleys beneath them. All this pleased Fogazzaro, it suited his uncertain spirit, always aspiring to something higher, swaying between a host of often conflicting fantasies, and for each of them he would seek out the soothing embrace of both the meadows,and the woods, and the mountains. Yet he also enjoyed life in the villas, as nowhere else had the art of sojourning in villas reached such unparalleled levels of perfection. One of the most frequently occurring landscape images in his art is the joy that could be felt before a bare peak, sheer rock, soaring upwards like a cry renting the silence, yet bursting forth from the lush greenery, the sensual and blossoming life in the woods and meadows. One might say that he disdained the conquered heights of the mountains preferring to view them from below, when they still appeared to him as something to aspire to, a fairytale, a fantastical place, in a sense the ideal of an unfulfilled spiritual life.

In Fogazzaro’s novels the landscape is not a static element but behaves as though it were alive, underlining the shifting feelings of the characters, it makes its entrance like an “actor” and reacts with “prompts”.

We can add further colour to the portrait of the novelist with fragments relating to Fogazzaro the “geographer” and  “botanist”. These aspects may well draw readers to his novels as Fogazzaro was not only a careful observer of the human soul, but a lover of Nature.

From the great slopes of our mountains to our poetic sea shores, nature has lavished on us so many scenes of incomparable beauty that we may imagine any kind of scene set there, from the most grim to the most hilarious! […] only a very few observe our natural surroundings.

Fogazzaro was a “geographer” and “botanist” because he expressed that love for the landscape, for plants and flowers, which is bound to everyday experience and charged with memories. The places he described were not merely a backdrop but places he knew and loved, a collection of clearly identifiable places in Montegalda, Vicenza and Val d’Astico, and like all good geographers he measured space in a very simple way – by walking. It is a recurring theme in his novels and the moment when the characters reveal their deepest emotions, be it curiosity, fear, enthusiasm or even passion.

Fogazzaro the geographer discovers that “little” world of serenity embedded in his native land, not by means of a quiet life, but through familiar gestures, through sacrifice and pain. However, his little world is riven by the anxiety of the soul and the precarious nature of human relationships.

Fogazzaro’s originality lies in his interpretation: in his novels the landscape is not cold and impersonal but a living being who is transformed and alive, it interacts with the anguished events surrounding the characters, it is both mirror and interlocutor, it conveys messages and approval, it is the confidante of the hidden truths in the characters’ souls. Lovingly, Fogazzaro re-evokes the places of his trembling and suffering soul, his refined gaze lingers there tenderly, and the reader is invited to inhabit this space and partake in his “little” world. However, while the city is a place of mystery and solitude in this world, the ideal place to live is the countryside where one can aspire to live peacefully, sheltered from all care and worry in an enchanted place (suited, as Piovene said, to Fogazzaro’s “uncertain” soul “aspirating to something higher”).
There is still another element to help discover Fogazzaro’s soul and his geography, and this is nature. The author uses the same sentiments to bring his characters to life as he does to bring nature to life. Its evocative presence takes on a multitude of forms – voices, sound, light, shade – its world comes alive, unleashing a transformation where it becomes, to all intents and purposes, an extension of the characters’ state of mind.
There is a cast of voices and sounds acting on that blurred area that lies between the soul and the senses: they come from the mountains in moments of solitude or meditation, the sounds of the lake accompany grave or mysterious thoughts, the river rumbles its presence, the rain cries, and the wind moans in anxiety or symbolises the purity of the landscape; but also a well-tended garden, the flowers, chastely pure or sensuously intoxicating and certain types of trees add a climate of intimacy and mirror the characters’ inner world.

For those interested in reading Fogazzaro’s novels and discovering the connections between his works and the places they are set in the Vicenza area, there follow selected excerpts from Daniele Cortis, Piccolo mondo moderno (The Man of the World) and Leila, which show how the characters’ moods are mirrored in the landscape.