La facciata di Villa Soranzo, detta "La Soranza", a Flesso d’Artico = The facade of Villa Soranzo also known as "La Soranza", in Fiesso d'Artico

The complex of Villa Soranzo, also known as “la Soranza”, is situated in the municipality of Fiesso d'Artico and belongs to the group of luxurious residences built between the 15th and 18th centuries on the strip of land crossed by the Naviglio del Brenta waterway, an old trade route connecting the Venetian Lagoon to Padua. Surrounded by a wide garden and park with some rather valuable tree species, this residence appears as a solid cubic building erected between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th. The plan shows the classical tripartite scheme typical of Palladian villas, with a central T-shaped, passing-through hall, and side rooms. The plain and rigid architectural structure, with the rectangular front part showing a marked symmetry, is set against a range of 16th-century frescoes decorating its façade, further enriching and completing the ‘full elements’ of it, thus articulating the architectural and pictorial elements with rhythm and elegance. The illusion created is able to break through the masonry structure and reveal the presence of several red plastered rooms, whose pillars are decorated with Ionic pilasters, supporting round arches that end up in a valuable coffered ceiling. Real and trompe-l’œil windows alternate, with reality and illusion masterly mingling with each other, among the talking or gestures of depicted characters, thus satisfying a precise iconographic plan focused on enhancing and raising the moral standards of the public functions of the commissioner. Following a detailed photographic survey with about 400 photographs delivered, a high-resolution orthophoto was processed with the Photoscan program, which was the kickoff phase for the study and analysis of the façade, with special attention drawn to the wide pictorial scene divided into four walls. The comparison between the built half of the façade showing the actual holes and the geometrical matrixes, and the corresponding half of it, whose architectural layout is enriched with the pictorial decorations, immediately leads to understand the painter’s intention, i.e. enhancing the plain, simple wall by means of classical language easy to read and recognize through its stylistic elements. Although fictitiously, the façade no longer uses the two-dimensional limit of traditional plastered walls and expands through space, virtually acquiring a refined, winning complexity and depth. The external presence of a fresco of this size is not common, albeit in the main façade; however, the geographical position of the villa, especially of the perfectly visible wall at a close distance from the road and the canal, accounts for this pictorial effort. The presence of mythological figures being the mouthpieces of specific iconographic messages, and the strategic position of the fresco overlooking the canal, lead to the assumption that the typical skené of a theatre performance is being depicted. From its origin as a mobile theatre background, to its transformation into a fixed wall support, it evokes painting of scenic elements similar to those that can still be seen in Pompeii and associated with the so-called ‘façades on parade’ described by Vitruvius. In this villa, the presence of atriums with columns draws inspiration from the Second Pompeian style, with the architectural theme prevailing over the ornamental geometrical motifs of the First style. Moreover, the massive presence of the red plaster inevitably draws attention to the Third Pompeian style and to the deeply-rooted tradition of creating monochrome deep red backgrounds as a setting for the characters. The display of openings, friezes, balustrades, half-columns, niches and architraves thus uses an accurate and timely figurative vocabulary of Roman Hellenistic influence, aiming at changing the perception of domestic space by means of a stage space exhibited and narrated to an external observer. Real life and ideal life run after the owners, surrounded by gods and heroes, statues and theatre masks conferring prestige to the family. This ancient narrative is framed within a virtual Classical Renaissance structure of extraordinary value projecting to the outside, though stylistically connected to the internal architectural framework, and extremely precise in its architectural elements (basement, ashlar finish with cylindrical-spherical niches, giant order and crowning). Ancient theatre performance perfectly interacts with the Renaissance architectural building through the timeless presence of allegorical figures purposefully placed on the edge of the stage, with some body parts within the ‘ancient world’, and other parts trying to cross the wall / border between the two ages. The second link that joins the two worlds is, indeed, the use of perspective, the painting technique that makes the whole painting illusion truthful and uniform. Considering the large façade, the main difficulty lies in the attempt to find a single viewpoint. Initially the analysis led to multiple viewpoints, however they were too weak to assume a diversified dramatization or a local perspective reference. All parts contain perfectly similar architectural elements and colours that can be ascribed to the painter’s attempt to create a coherent space communicating along the whole length of the villa. The missed convergence is probably due to the use of multiple cardboard layers, probably used several times in different time sequences, or even to mistakes while carrying out the plan or wrong approximations in progress. Once a reliable point of convergence of lines was identified, the restitution of perspective on the whole image was outlined. By considering half of the façade while monitoring coherence for both parts, the multitude of lines has been brought back to a main point traceable on the symmetrical axis of the façade. Painted architecture has been restored by accepting as a starting assumption the single main point situated outside the perspective picture of the theatre performance, at human height on the central axis of the main entrance of the villa. The larger and clearer frescoed surface is the third one; once the internal orientation of perspective was defined, the homological method made it possible to reconstruct the original plan of painted surfaces, thus retrieving the position and height of basements, square pilasters on corners, Ionic capitals, round arches, trabeations and, finally, roofing. The 3-D digital model considers the restitution of perspective and the rhythmic alternation of full and empty spaces on the surface, thus highlighting the metric difference between the two frescoed portions. The side one, fourth in sequence, is narrower: although this does not pose a problem on the front part as the architrave perfectly adapts to the different lengths, on the contrary, the arch placed at the bottom in the internal scene undergoes deformation in order to be in line with the height of the ceiling and to preserve a homogeneous space. In the orthogonal projection of the plan, the restored virtual space is set out on a square matrix, thus rectifying the wrong rectangular structure of the last painted surface. Partially visible arches do not let assume a curvature difference at all. After all, any difference between the scenes is annulled in the two-dimensional support exactly by the chromatic coherence and by the sequence of mouldings. With the development of the 3D model, the assumed position of the viewpoint was restored and the optical correctness of perspective was checked. By comparing the two images, i.e. the orthophoto and the picture generated by the observer whose eye coincides with the viewpoint on the symmetrical axis, the outstanding resemblance accounts for the good quality of the performed analysis despite problems related to the different convergence of a few corners.