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The drive to Villa Barbaro took less than fifteen minutes. On the way there, Jack Upton explained that only a portion of the sixteenth-century villa was open to the public.

“The present owners—the Volpe-Buschetti family, I believe—reside there and do not open up their private quarters to visitors. But what is open is magnificent.” This was his second visit to the villa, he said.

“Have you been to the villa before?” I asked Mrs. Spenser.

“Not inside. But we have driven by and, I must say, the façade is quite breathtaking. But it’s the Veronese frescoes I’m longing to see.”

Suddenly, the Villa Barbaro appeared through the car window. None of the photographs of the villa had prepared me for the real thing. Set on a slope, the graceful building stood at the end of a long gravel pathway surrounded by manicured lawns. The perfect symmetry of its long arcaded façade and pillared entrances, so pure and simple, made the villa one of the most beautiful structures I had ever seen.

Across the road was another glorious sight: a rounded building with three cupolas protruding from its dome. I asked Jack about it.

“That is the round temple,” Jack said, “also designed by Palladio.”

We drove off the main road and into a parking lot adjacent to the villa. From there we walked across gravel pathways to the front of the building, where we purchased tickets and put felt scuffs on over our shoes to protect the highly polished floors.

Inside the villa we climbed to the top of a staircase and were met by a young woman leaning through an open door. She was dressed in a green silk gown, her blond hair pulled back from her fresh-scrubbed, cherubic face. It took me a second to realize I was seeing not a real woman but one of Veronese’s witty trompe l’oeil frescoes. We were in fact surrounded by such painted women: courtiers dressed in taffeta peered down from a balcony; women flirted from behind fans; naughty winged Cupids teased a love-struck woman.

Across the room I saw Jack and Mrs. Spenser standing before a large painting, engaged in animated conversation. They seemed to have forgotten me. Which was fine. I liked wandering about on my own.

I was about to take a stroll outside when I came across an out-of-the-way alcove. Looking in, I saw it was empty except for a trompe l’oeil of an elegant room as seen through a glass door. I stepped in and walked over to the painted door, which this time turned out to be the real thing: a real door leading into a real room. Reverting to my reporter’s habits, I tried to open the door. It was locked.

I peered through the glass. Inside was an elegant, comfortable room, furnished with large, soft chairs and antique rugs. Glass vases filled with flowers and silver-framed photographs sat on top of gleaming wooden tables. A soft light fell from tall floor lamps, revealing an upturned book left behind on the arm of a chair. Beyond the room was a hallway; I could see umbrellas protruding from a stand carved in the shape of an exotic bird.

I decided I liked the people who lived here. The Bolpe-Vuschetti or Volpe-Buschetti—or whoever they were—seemed to have made a home out of what easily could have become a museum. Signs of real life were everywhere: in the books and flowers and pictures and umbrellas and lamps that someone forgot to turn off.

As I was thinking this, a woman appeared in the hallway beyond the glass door. She seemed to see me. Embarrassed, I turned and quickly retreated to one of the public rooms. Then, after checking to see that Jack and Mrs. Spenser hadn’t left, I turned in my felt scuffs and went outside to take a walk.

I stood on the front veranda and looked down the long formal walkway and across the Veneto plains that ran off into the distance. How beautiful this is, I thought. This view, this house, the ravishing frescoes inside.

But a part of me already knew that my most vivid memory of Villa Barbaro would not be the vanishing perspective of the Veneto plains or the trompe l’oeil or any other “trick of the eye.” No, what I would remember most would