Built in 1524, the Loggia was designed as a fixed theatrical backdrop (such as one sees in the theatres of Classical Antiquity). Built of Vicenza stone, it is divided by arches that echo the structure of a Roman triumphal archway. In the niches of the upper level of the facade are stucco statues by the sculptor Jacopo Colonna, who worked with Jacopo Sansovino. The interior of the loggia is decorated in the Roman style with alternating frescoes and stucco work; the subject matter of this decoration includes allegories of the Four Seasons and of the gods after whom the planets are named.
The Odeo [Odeon] was to be a place for listening to music and engaging in intellectual pastimes, as well as being the meeting-place of the Accademia degli Infiammati. Comprising a distinctive octagonal atrium giving on to symmetrically laid out side rooms, it would become a model for sixteenth-century villas throughout the Veneto region, both for its spatial layout and its delightful combination of decoration and architecture. The vault of the central room has splendid grotesque decoration; this is the first example in Padua of a motif that had become widespread in Rome and Mantua in the first half of the sixteenth century after the rediscovery of Nero’s Domus Aurea. In the rooms alongside are spacious depictions of idealised landscapes; the work is attributed to Lambert Sustris, an Amsterdam-born artist who in the 1520s worked in Rome, Venice (he was a pupil of Titian’s) and Padua. It is possible that the stucco work was by Falconetto’s sons or, more probably, by Tiziano Minio, a Paduan sculptor who is known to have worked on the Odeo in the years 1534-37.
