Paradise regained

Alasdair Palmer marvels at a series of Veronese frescoes at Palladio’s Villa Barbaro

It has included repairing the roof and strengthening the walls, as well as redecorating the interior, and it has taken almost as long as it took to build the original structure — but work on Andrea Palladio’s last building, the Tempietto at Maser, is finally complete. And what a glory it is!

The building was finished in 1580, the year Palladio died, and he may never have seen it in its final form. It is the only church that he designed which isn’t in Venice. Marcantonio Barbaro, who commissioned it to be the chapel for his villa, was a long-time friend of Palladio. He was also a powerful advocate of Palladio’s architecture, and helped him get commissions from the Venetian Senate.

The deep conservatism of Venetians irritated, depressed and ultimately infuriated Palladio, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.