Villa Godi Malinverni Historical Timeline

Origins

The Godi were a Vicentine family with land at Lonedo. They commissioned the villa around 1537, and it was substantially complete by about 1542 — early enough that Palladio was still signing himself by his given name, Andrea di Pietro.

Turning points

Palladio published the design in the Quattro Libri dell'Architettura of 1570, more than thirty years after building it, which tells you he still thought it worth showing at the height of his career.

Influential people

The interior was frescoed in the 1550s by three painters in succession — Gualtiero Padovano, Battista del Moro and Giovanni Battista Zelotti — with Zelotti responsible for the largest and best-known cycle. Zelotti went on to work at Villa Emo and elsewhere in the Veneto.

Cultural evolution

The house passed through several owners and was acquired in the twentieth century by the Malinverni family, whose name it now carries alongside the original one.

Present-day significance

It was inscribed by UNESCO in 1996, when the listing for the city of Vicenza was extended to take in Palladio's villas across the Veneto. It is open to visitors and houses a fossil museum and a collection of nineteenth-century painting.