Villa Mosconi Bertani
The Villa Mosconi Bertani (also known as Villa Novare) is a neo-classical, Venetian villa and winery from the 18th century. The villa is located in the municipality of Negrar di Valpolicella in the Novare Valley (province of Verona). The villa and winery are known for their long history of producing Amarone Classico , a well-known type of wine from the Valpolicella growing area. The property was originally built as an extension of an earlier complex from the 16th century and today consists of a summer residence, a monumental cellar, a 22-hectare vineyard and other vineyards.
During the Romantic era, Villa Mosconi Bertani was known both as an important meeting place for famous poets and writers and as the birthplace of the Amarone grape variety. Originally the villa was the production site for the “Amarone della Cave” wine. GB Bertani ". The “Tenuta Santa Maria” brand reserve wines have been pressed here by the Gaetano Bertani family since 2012. Villa, park, winery and vineyards are open for guided tours as well as for cultural and private events.
history
Construction of the villa began under the Fattori family around 1735, based on a 16th century winery. At the same place an ancient settlement of the Etruscan Arusnati tribe had already existed, which also survived under the Romans. The unfinished villa building was sold to the Mosconi family in 1769, under which a romantic park of eight hectares in the English style was attached and the complex was expanded into one of the largest wineries in northern Italy at the time. Under the aegis of the Mosconi, the villa was also an important literary salon, which u. a. also frequented the poet and scholar Ippolito Pindemonte . The villa, abandoned since the first half of the twentieth century, fell victim to vandalism. Among other things, the park and some rooms were affected. In 1953, the Bertani family bought the area, restructured it and expanded it into the representative seat of the winery of the same name. It has been owned by the Gaetano Bertani family since 2012.
architecture
The complex is a typical example of Palladio's interpretation of a Villa Veneta. His concept envisaged the integration of the wine-making and manorial building parts in the form of a kind of neoclassical temple in the middle of the valley. This should also serve as a central point of attraction for the community of 35 families who lived on the property.
The building consists of a main part with two low wings in front that end in two symmetrical facades. The bell tower of the Chapel of San Gaetano rises above the east wing, while two gates on both sides give access to buildings and cellars.
The central building of the villa with chapel and wine cellar was built in the first half of the 18th century by the architect Adriano Cristofali on behalf of the first landlord, Giacomo Fattori.
The building work of the Fattori family, which began in 1710, aimed to give the existing building an aristocratic appearance, as the family had received the title of count. The project was initially entrusted to the architect Lodovico Perini, who, however, died before work began. His successor Cristofoli redesigned the central body and the two right-angled wings in a classical style. At the same time, he created the garden in front and also managed to hide the view of the outbuildings. The area devoted to idleness was separated from the less representative, agricultural area.
The main building has three floors and follows an architectural framework that is characterized by a double order: Tuscan on the ground floor and Ionic on the upper floor. The main facade ends in a tympanum with five statues of mythological deities and the coat of arms of the Trezza family. The statues in the garden are attributed to the sculptor Lorenzo Muttoni .
Frescoes
The frescoed Room of the Muses, in which the two coats of arms of the Mosconi family can also be seen, covers the height of all three floors of the villa. The space is divided into two horizontal and overlapping sections by a painted wood balustrade.
In the lower part the use of painted ashlar dominates. The niches, also painted, contain monochrome statues depicting the muses of art: architecture, sculpture, painting, geometry, astronomy and music.
The trompe l'œil frescoes placed in the upper section give the ensemble a perspective. The monochrome side images represent symbolic statues for abundance and justice, while the satyrs painted over the doors are reminiscent of the four seasons.
The four seasons and thus the passage of time are the main theme of the ceiling fresco, with a clear reference to an agricultural context. In the middle, sitting between brightly colored flowers, the flora stands out, to the left of the ground are spring and summer, painted in warm and brilliant tones. On the opposite side, autumn and winter are shown as dark storm clouds in a clear color contrast. The fresco also shows a zephyr floating in the air, followed by festive angels. In the background, Apollo is shown on his chariot.
Verona-based artists from Emilia-Romagna have been identified as fresco painters. The decorative cycle of the two horizontal fresco sections is ascribed to the quadrature painter Prospero Pesce from the school of Filippo Maccari, while the central ceiling fresco is believed to be by Giuseppe Valliani, known as "il Pistoiese".
Garden and parks
At the end of the 18th century, in line with the beginning of Romanticism, landscape gardens in the English style began to prevail in Verona, replacing the predominantly green and regular Italian gardens. In the course of this, the brothers Giacomo and Guglielmo Mosconi opened up the land behind the villa and redesigned it in a double function as a garden and forest. The small lake, which is fed by the springs of the property, was created. On an island in its center there is a high taxodium, which is reached by a wooden bridge, and a coffee house in northern European style. The design of the park was conceived by Ippolito Pindemonte, who illustrated the English influences in an essay "Dissertazione su i giardini inglesi" published by the Academy of Sciences in Padua in 1792:
"Un giardino, scrive Bacone di Verulamio, è il più puro de 'nostri piaceri, e il ristoro maggiore de' nostri spiriti, e senza esso le fabbriche ed i palagi altro non sono, che rozze opere manuali: di fatto si vede semper, che ove il secolo perviene al ripulimento ed all'eleganza, gli uomini si danno prima a fabbricare sontuosamente, e poi a disegnar giardini garbatamente, come se quest'arte fosse ciò che havvi [p. 220] di più perfetto. Così Bacone [1 ]. L'Italia, al risorgere delle lettere e delle belle arti, fu la prima a coltivare, come gli altri studj, quello ancora delle amenità villerecce: ma convien confessare, che ora molte nazioni nell'amore ci vincono e nella cura di queste tranquille, ed erudite delizie, e che l'Inghilterra è nelle medesime la maestra delle nazioni tutte. Non è so facile il dare un'idea veramente giusta ed esatta de 'giardini Inglesi, perché quest'arte venne perfezionata di [p. 221] fresco, anzi si va tuttora perfezionando, non trovandosi forse giardino, che no n abbia qualche difetto grave, il che non toglie, che se ne conoscan bene le regole, stante che sappiamo anche come debba farsi un poema, benché poema perfetto non sia mai stato fatto…. "
The tree population consists of native species, with the exception of the exotic trees on the island, as well as cedars from Lebanon. In 1820 “Il Persico” described a “garden enriched with exotic plants”, which also inspired the Veronese painter Angelo Dall'Oca Bianca.
On one side of the lake there is a chalet designed based on the travel experience of Ippolito Pindemonte . As a former holiday guest of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his friends, he was strongly influenced by French prairie and spring landscapes.
In the afternoon the chalet was used as a retreat for reading, while in the evening it was used for board games such as chess. It was also intended for the countess's daughters' harp concerts. There is also a refrigerator in the park, which was also built in the late eighteenth century and was used until the first half of the last century.
Inside the garden there are still statues and chairs, as well as a small fountain. The large area behind the villa, surrounded by a wall, not only encloses the garden, but also the associated vineyard. This is intended to give the landscape complex the character of a landscape garden. A fence with a gate, interrupted by ashlar stones with humps and decorative vases, surrounds the courtyard in front of the villa and delimits the front garden. This has a regular floor plan with a central, circular flowerbed with a pond, which not only fulfills aesthetic purposes, but also regulates the access to the villa. Due to its historical and ecological value, the park of Villa Mosconi Bertani is one of the eighty parks on the list of the Great Italian Gardens.
Villa and Ippolito Pindemonte
The dramaturge Ippolito Pindemonte lived in the villa for ten years as the guest of Countess Elisabetta Mosconi. In one of his "letters in verse", which he wrote to Countess Mosconi in 1800, he said the following about the house: "Nell'ameno tuo Novare io vivea teco, Elisa gentil, giorni felici".
A pleasant place for a holiday, also thanks to the presence of the garden, of which Pindemonte writes: “Io vidi l'ombre del tuo giardin che mi parean più belle…”
But the motives that persuaded Pindemonte to stay permanently in the Novare Valley from 1797 until the Countess' death in 1807 were not only cultural. For the author, the town of Negrar was not just a resort. Between Ippolito and Elisabetta - says Messedaglia - there was a "state of tenderness", and it is the poet himself who reveals this in a letter from 1800 to the Countess:
"E pur settembre sedea sulla collina, amabil mese, allor che Febo dall'etereo calle men caldo vibra e più gradito il raggio: come spogliata di que 'raicocenti, cui troppo arsi una volta, in questo, Elisa, vago settembre tuo mi sei più cara. "
In addition, there is viticulture and the production of wines, which Pindemonte always mentions with undisguised admiration:
"Ma lo sguardo io con più duolo ancor volsi a que 'vasti nobili tini, che nel sen di quercia stavan già per accor quelle vendemmie."
During his stay, Pindemonte also completed his translation of Homer's Odyssey. Probably in June 1806 Ugo Foscolo met Pindemonte in the villa and the first idea of Carme Dei sepolcri arose on the basis of their conversations. Foscolo wrote Carme Dei sepolcri between August 1806 and April 1807, which was published in the same year in Brescia by the publisher Niccolò Bettoni. Pindemonte responded by composing a song of the same name based on Foscolo's work. The publisher Gamberetti from Verona published both "letters" in 1807 under the title "I Sepolcri - versi di Ugo Foscolo e d'Ippolito Pindemonte". Part of Pindemonte's version reads:
Prospetti vaghi, inaspettati incontri, at sentieri, antri freschi opachi seggi, lente acque e mute all'erba e ai fiori in mezzo, precipitanti da 'alto acque tonanti, dirupi di sublime orror dipinti ...
Viticulture and winery
The villa is located in the Valpolicella Valley, the traditional growing area of Valpolicella Classico DOC and Amarone Classico DOCG. Villa Mosconi's large, continuously operated wine cellar is one of the oldest of its kind in Italy. The valley was probably the site of wine production as early as Roman times. The first written records speak of a production cellar from the 10th century. Wine production experienced a significant expansion during the ownership of the Mosconi family at the end of the 18th century. Significant production capacity was achieved under the Trezza family in the 19th century. As one of the largest Italian wineries of the time, the villa produced more than a million bottles and employs 26 families, as the photo book and the report by M. Lotze show.
This photo report and an accompanying agronomic report are of remarkable artistic and historical importance.
It is the only document of its kind in Verona that illustrates in detail the innovations first implemented at the villa's winery. Already in the 19th century the production boasted the introduction of the method of high-density cultivation of the "Guyot" vine and a great specialization of the cellar in the production and export of fine wines. The report was commissioned around 1882 and is still kept today by the Academy of Agriculture, Science and Writing in Verona. The name " Amarone ", which refers to the typical Valpolicella wine, was coined here later in 1936, when the method of fermentation of the dried grapes was introduced, which makes the wine fine and dry.
Since 1953, the winery has continued to develop after being acquired by the Bertani family. Since mid-2012, the complex has been home to Gaetano Bertani's Santa Maria winery, which continues the family's centuries-old winemaking tradition with the production of Valpolicella wines such as Amarone Classico.
Individual evidence
- ^ Ippolito Pindemonte: Dissertazione su i giardini inglesi. dalla Societa tipografica Verona 1817. ( Digitized - Internet Archive )
- M. Luciolli - Ville della Valpolicella 2008 Jago edizioni Verona
- Pierpaolo Brugnoli e Arturo Sandrini (a cura di), L'architettura a Verona nell'età della Serenissima , Verona, 1988.
- Pierpaolo Brugnoli e Arturo Sandrini (a cura di), L'architettura a Verona dal periodo napoleonico all'età contemporanea , Verona, 1994.
- R.Dal Negro - Novare Storia e Notie di un'antica comunità Valpolicellese 2007 edizioni Damolgraf Negrar Verona
- Giuseppe Conforti, Villa Fattori-Mosconi-Bertani detta "Villa Novare" , in Centootto Ville della Valpolicella , testo di Giuseppe Conforti, photo di Lou Embo e Fulvio Roiter, Verona, 2016, pp. 262-277.
Web links
Coordinates: 45 ° 30 ′ 12.1 ″ N , 10 ° 56 ′ 47.6 ″ E