Andrea Palladio

The buildings of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) were the most refined of the Renaissance period. Through them and his book on architectural theory he became the most influential architect in the history of Western art.

Roman architecture of the early 16th century had developed a mature classicism in the work of Donato Bramante and his followers. With the sack of Rome in 1527 young architects, such as Michele Sanmicheli and Jacopo Sansovino, brought the style to northern Italy. Andrea Palladio with further study of ancient Roman architecture, refined the classical mode to produce an elegant architecture befitting the opulent culture of the Veneto in the third quarter of the century. The aristocratic, mercantile society of Venice desired a splendid and sumptuous art to express pride in its accomplishments.

Andrea di Pietro dalla Gondola, called Andrea Palladio, was born in Padua on Nov. 30, 1508. In 1521 he was apprenticed for 6 years to a local stonecutter; 3 years later he broke the contract and moved to Vicenza, where he was immediately enrolled in the guild of masons and stonecutters. His first opportunity came about 1538 while he was working as a stone carver on the reconstruction of the Villa Cricoli, near Vicenza, owned by the local humanist Giangiorgio Trissino, who had a classical school for young Vicenzan nobility. Trissino recognized Andrea's ability and took him into his home and educated him. Trissino gave Andrea his humanist name Palladio as a reference to the wisdom of the Greek goddess Pallas Athene.

Early Architecture

Probably Palladio's first independent design was the Villa Godi (ca. 1538-1542) at Lonedo. Its simplified, stripped-down style reveals very little influence of ancient architecture, but its emphasis on clean-cut cubical masses foreshadows his mature style. The Casa Civena (1540-1546) in Vicenza, with its paired Corinthian pilasters above the ground-floor arcade, is more in the Roman High Renaissance manner, perhaps inspired by the publications of Sebastiano Serlio.

In 1541 Trissino took Palladio to Rome to study the ancient monuments. At this time Palladio began a magnificent series of drawings of ancient buildings. The incomplete Palazzo Thiene (commissioned 1542, constructed ca. 1545-1550) in Vicenza is in the style of Giulio Romano, particularly in its heavy rustication of the ground floor and the massive stone blocks superimposed on the window frames of the main story. As Giulio Romano was in Vicenza in 1542, it is possible that he contributed to the design, since Palladio was still designated as a mason in the contract. The grandiose project, never completed, for the Villa Thiene (before 1550) at Quinto was influenced by Palladio's study of ancient Roman sanctuaries and baths. The only completed pavilion has a temple front facade, his first use of a temple front to decorate a villa, which became a hallmark of his style.

For many years the city of Vicenza had been considering how to refurbish its Gothic law court, the Palazzo della Ragione. In 1546 Palladio's project to surround the old building with loggias was approved, and he was commissioned to erect one bay in wood as a model. In 1547 and 1549 Palladio made further trips to Rome. In 1549 he began to construct two superimposed, arcaded loggias around the Palazzo della Ragione (completed 1617), known ever since as the Basilica Palladiana. Each bay of the loggias is composed of an arch flanked by lintels supported by columns. The motif of the arch flanked by lintels, although it was first used by Bramante and was popularized in Serlio's book, has been called in English the Palladian motif since Palladio used it on the Basilica.

Mature Style

Palladio created on the mainland around Venice a magnificent series of villas for the Venetian and Vicenzan nobility. The most renowned is the Villa Capra, or the Rotonda (1550-1551, with later revisions), near Vicenza. It is a simplified, cubelike mass capped by a dome over the central, round salon and has identical temple front porches on the four sides of the block. The absolute symmetry of the design was unusual in Palladian villas; the architect explained that it permitted equal views over the countryside around the hill on which the villa sits.

The city of Vicenza was almost completely rebuilt with edifices after Palladio's designs. The Palazzo Chiericati (now the Museo Civico) is a two-story structure facing on the square with a continuous Doric colonnade on the ground floor after the idea of an ancient Roman forum; the walled and fenestrated central section of the upper floor is flanked by Ionic colonnades. The facade of the Palazzo Iseppo Porto (ca. 1550-1552) is based on Bramante's Palazzo Caprini in Rome, but the plan is Palladio's version of an ancient Roman house with an entrance atrium and a large peristyle, or court, on the central axis behind the building block.

In 1554 Palladio made his last trip to Rome and in the same year published a fine guidebook to the antiquities of Rome, Le antichità di Roma. During the next year a group of Vicenzans, including Palladio, founded the Accademia Olimpica for the furthering of arts and sciences. In 1556 Daniele Barbaro, a Venetian humanist, published a commentary on the architectural treatise of the ancient Roman writer Vitruvius for which Palladio made the illustrations. At the same time Palladio designed for Barbaro and his brother at Maser (ca. 1555-1559) one of the loveliest of all villas. The Villa Barbaro (now Volpi) is set into a gentle hillside. The central, two-storied casino with a temple front of Ionic half-columns and pediment is flanked by single-story arcades connecting it to the service buildings, for the villa also served as a farm. In the 16th century the nobility of the Veneto attempted to improve the agricultural productivity of the land, and their villas served as residences during the periods when they supervised the farming.

Palladio's first architecture in the city of Venice was the commencement of the monastery of S. Giorgio Maggiore, whose refectory he completed (1560-1562). This was followed by the church of S. Giorgio Maggiore (1565-1610), which has a basilical plan with apsidal transept arms and a deep choir. The facade (designed 1565, executed 1607-1610), with its temple front on four giant half columns flanked by two half temple fronts on smaller pilasters, is Palladio's solution to the translation of a Christian church design into the classical mode. He applied a similar facade to the older church of S. Francesco della Vigna (ca. 1565). The Palazzo Valmarana (1565-1566) in Vicenza uses giant Corinthian pilasters, except at the ends, to emphasize the planar aspect of the facade adapted to its urban location.

Late Style

Palladio's treatise on architecture, I quattro libri dell' architettura (1570), consists of four books. The first is devoted to technical questions and the classical orders, the second to domestic architecture, the third to civic architecture, and the fourth to ecclesiastical architecture. It is illustrated by ancient architecture and the works of Bramante and Palladio himself.

The truncated Loggia del Capitaniato (1571-1572) in Vicenza has giant half columns with an arcaded loggia below. In many of its details this design reveals an unclassical spirit. The short side, however, is modeled on an ancient triumphal arch and commemorates the victory of Lepanto in October 1571, which occurred while the loggia was being executed. As the chief architect of Venice, Palladio designed the festival triumphal arch and the decorations to welcome the entry of King Henry III of France to Venice in July 1574.

To fulfill a vow of salvation from the disastrous plague of 1575-1576 the Venetian Senate commissioned Palladio to build the Church of the Redentore (1576-1592). Perhaps influenced by the Church of the Gesù in Rome, it is a wide basilica with side chapels and a trilobed crossing with deep choir. The facade, approached by monumental stairs, is a more unified version of his earlier church facades. For the Villa Barbaro at Maser he designed a separate chapel, the Tempietto (1579-1580), modeled on the ancient Roman Pantheon.

Palladio executed a theater, the Teatro Olimpico (1580), in Vicenza for the Accademia Olimpica. Based on the design of an ancient Roman theater, the auditorium is segmental in plan, facing a stage modeled on a Roman scaenae frons. The perspective stage scenery in wood and stucco was added by Vincenzo Scamozzi after Palladio's design. On Aug. 19, 1580, Palladio died in Vicenza.

His Influence

Through his treatise Palladio exerted a dominant influence on architecture for over 2 centuries, particularly in northern Europe. There were two major periods of Palladianism in England. In the first half of the 17th century Inigo Jones converted English architecture to the Italianate Renaissance by introducing Palladio's style, seen best in the Banqueting Hall, Whitehall, London, and the Queen's House, Greenwich. The second wave of Palladianism was fostered in the early 18th century by the Earl of Burlington. Palladio's treatise was published in 1715 in an English translation by Giacomo Leoni. American architecture felt the impact in the late 18th and early 19th century, as seen in Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

Further Reading

An excellent study of Palladio in English is James S. Ackerman, Palladio (1966). For a discussion of the villas see Ackerman's Palladio's Villas (1967). The fundamental study of Palladio's theory and its relation to his practice is in parts 3 and 4 in Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949; 3d ed. rev. 1962). The Centro Internazionale di Storia dell'Architettura in Vicenza is sponsoring in English a Corpus Palladianum of about 30 volumes, the first of which is Camilo Semenzato, The Rotonda of Andrea Palladio (trans. 1968).

Additional Sources

Puppi, Lionello, Andrea Palladio, Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975, 1973.

For more information on Andrea Palladio, visit Britannica.com.

One of the most gifted, professional, and intelligent of architects working in Italy in C16, whose work provided the models for the Palladian style (Palladianism) and had a profound effect on Western architectural thinking. Palladio's studies of the architectural remains of ancient Rome led him to attempt to emulate its nobility and grandeur. Interpreting the texts of Vitruvius in his architecture and theories, he further explored the potential of symmetry in design, and developed various other concerns of the Renaissance, including the theory of harmonic proportions. He also drew on precedents provided by Italian architects, notably Bramante, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Sanmicheli, and Sansovino.

Born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, Palladio began his career as a stonemason, and joined the Guild of Masons and Stonecutters of Vicenza in 1524. Around 1536 he became the protégé of Count Giangiorgio Trissino (1478–1550), the leading intellectual in Vicenza, who stimulated the young man to appreciate the arts, sciences, and Classical literature, granted him the opportunity to study Antique architecture in Rome, and called him ‘Palladio’ (from Pallas, a name for Athene, the Greek goddess associated with Wisdom).

Palladio won the competition to recase the municipal ‘Basilica’ (or Palazzo della Ragione) in Vicenza, and construction started in 1549. The design consists of a screen composed of two storeys employing a version of the arcuated theme at Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana in Venice (from 1537) and from Serlio's L'Architettura of 1537 (although ultimately originating with Bramante). Consisting of arches flanked by smaller rectangular openings beneath the entablatures from which the arches spring, the motif is in essence the serliana, also called Palladian or Venetian window. An elegant tour-de-force of Classical elements put together with verve and élan, the Basilica made Palladio's name, and from 1550 he was fully employed as a designer of churches, palazzi, and villas.

His first grand house in Vicenza was the Palazzo Thiene (commenced 1542 to designs probably by Giulio Romano), in which the Mannerism of the heavily rusticated exterior is combined with an interior plan drawing on themes from Antiquity (e.g. the sequence of rectangular rooms with an apsidal-ended hall and octagonal spaces with niches, clearly derived from the precedents of Antique Roman thermae). For the Palazzo Iseppo Porto (c.1548–52), Palladio planned two identical blocks on each side of a central court around which was to be a Giant Order of columns, evoking the atrium of a Roman house and the Capitoline palaces of Michelangelo in Rome. The symmetry and the sequence of rooms (each in proportion to the adjoining) were to become features of Palladio's work. Of the other Vicentine buildings, the Palazzo Chiericati (1550, but not completed until late in C17) deserves mention as it was designed to be a side of a great ‘forum’, with loggie as public amenities arranged as two storeys of colonnades, an unusual and highly original design for C16. The Loggia del Capitaniato (begun 1571), opposite the ‘Basilica’ in Vicenza, again employed a Giant Order, giving the impression that the building was constructed within surviving remains of a Roman temple, and there are Mannerist touches, including windows breaking into the entablature, triglyphs acting as brackets carrying balconies, and the side elevation in the form of a triumphal arch. The last, Roman Antiquity, and tricks of perspective are evoked in the Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza (begun 1580 and finished by Scamozzi), where even the painted sky of the ceiling suggested a theatre of the ancients.

In his designs for villas, Palladio devised a theme with a central symmetrically planned corps-de-logis, often embellished with a prostyle portico. Subsidiary buildings were linked to the main block by means of extended wings or curved quadrants containing ancillary accommodation (often associated with the needs of agriculture). Agreeably sited to revive the idea of the Roman love of country life and gardens, the spirit of Pliny was never far removed from the villas. One of Palladio's most enchanting designs was the Villa Barbaro at Maser (c.1560), with a temple-fronted two-storeyed centrepiece and symmetrical wings on either side consisting of five-bay arcades terminating in end-pavilions crowned with pediments, a fine example of the villa rustica. Palladio devised many permutations of his villa theme, including the powerful, almost Neo-Classical boldness of the Villa Poiana (c.1549–60); the deceptive simplicity of the Villa Foscari, Malcontenta di Mira, near Mestre (c.1558–60); and the remarkable Villa Capra (known as La Rotonda), a villa suburbana, near Vicenza (c.1566–70), with identical hexastyle Ionic porticoes (temple-fronts) on each of the four elevations and a central circular two-storey room capped with a cupola. This employment of temple-fronts or porticoes on villas was based on Palladio's erroneous belief that Antique Roman houses had them: nevertheless, the relationships of porticoes to elements of the composition, including room dimensions, were governed by the concept of harmonic proportion. The Villa Capra's only function was as a pleasure-pavilion or belvedere from where beautiful views could be enjoyed.

The façades of Palladio's Venetian Churches of San Francesco della Vigna (1562–70), San Giorgio Maggiore (1564–80), and Il Redentore (1576–80) show ingenious solutions to the problems of placing Classical temple-fronts on to the basilican arrangement of clerestoreyed nave with lean-to aisles. High, narrow temple-fronts are placed at the ends of the naves, complete with pediments, with a wider, lower, pedimented front set ‘behind’ so that its extremities provide the façades to the aisles. The interior spatial effects in San Giorgio and Il Redentore have a gravitas and complexity unlike other churches of the time.

Palladio published Le antichità di Roma (valued as a gazetteer for two centuries), and Descrizione delle chiese … di Roma (Description of the Churches of Rome) in 1554. He also provided important illustrations for Barbaro's edition of Vitruvius (1556). In 1570 he brought out I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), which publicized his own works, set out his theories, and illustrated and described various important buildings (mostly Roman, including Bramante's circular Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio). It also illustrated canonical versions of the Roman Orders of architecture and a range of his own buildings in plan, elevation, and section, with measurements and descriptive text. Thus the work put his designs on a par with the great buildings of the past, and helped to enhance his reputation. The Quattro libri, a more accurate treatise than those by Serlio or Vignola, appeared in several subsequent editions, but that of Leoni (1715–20—translated as The Architecture of A. Palladio…) appeared in English, French, and Italian, the first adequate edition since 1642, and the first to substitute large engraved plates for Palladio's woodcuts. The book was a huge success and a second edition was published in 1721, a third following, with ‘Notes and Remarks of Inigo Jones’, in 1742. Leoni's remained the standard work until Ware's more scholarly edition of 1738, and it is the latter that has found most favour, republished in facsimile in 1965 with an introduction by Adolf K. Placzek. The plates, by Ware, were a lot more accurate than Leoni's rather embellished versions, and Ware's opus came out in further editions in 1767 and 1768. Batty Langley looted these publications for his own books (notably his City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury (1740)), and a version of Palladio's First Book, augmented with other material by Muet, was published in the 1740s by Godfrey Richards. It was this Franco-English edition that seems to have introduced Palladianism to America.See also palladianism.

Plan of the Villa Capra, Vicenza

Elevation of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice

Plan of II Redentore, Venice, with chapels between the sculpted wall-piers

Plan of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, with monastic choir in the space behind the high-altar

Bibliography

• Ackerman (1966, 1967)
• Bonet (ed.) (2002)
• Boucher (1998)
• H. Burns (ed.) (1975); Holberton (1990)
• Leoni (1742)
• D. Lewis (2000)
• Palladio (1570, 1965, 1997)
• Placzek (ed.) (1982)
• Li. Puppi (1975, 1980)
• Rybczynski (2003)
• Rykwert (1999)
• Tavernor (1991)
• Jane Turner (1996)
• Wittkower (1974a, 1998)
• Zorzi (ed.) (from 1959)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) was born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, but he was given the name Palladio by an early patron and mentor. Despite his modest origins and unpromising apprenticeship as a stonemason, he went on to become one of the leading architects of the Renaissance and arguably the most influential builder of all time. By Renaissance standards, Palladio was something of an anomaly. He built nothing in Rome or Florence and comparatively little in Venice, most of his work being located in Vicenza and its surrounding countryside. Seemingly indifferent to the religious and political strife of the mid-sixteenth century as well, Palladio until the end of his life largely shunned the mannerist artifice of his contemporaries, creating designs more in tune with the idealizing principles of the High Renaissance than with the fashions of his own age. It is ironic therefore that his work so perfectly exemplifies the character of the Renaissance as a whole. His antiquarianism, his rationalism, and his secularism together constituted the essence of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanism, and these were the very ideals that would later endear him to builders of the Enlightenment.

Palladio's architectural career began around 1537 at the villa of Gian Giorgio Trissino at Cricoli. The design of the villa originated with Trissino himself, a distinguished humanist and the aspiring architect's first mentor. Trissino bestowed the classical name "Palladio" on him and, more important, accompanied him on his first trip to Rome in 1541. Palladio's attraction to Rome's classical remains led him to return on four other occasions, the last time being in 1554, when he visited Rome in the company of another influential intellectual, Daniele Barbaro. Barbaro at the time was working on a translation and commentary on Vitruvius's Ten Books of Architecture, for which Palladio furnished the woodcut illustrations. It was through his associations with both Trissino and Barbaro that Palladio learned the grammar and syntax of classical architecture, lessons he never forgot in either his work or the renowned Four Books of Architecture, published in 1570.

During the 1540s and 1550s Palladio devoted himself exclusively to the design and construction of secular buildings. With the exception of the Basilica or Town Hall in Vicenza and one or two other civic commissions, these were all private residences, for the most part villas in the Vicentine countryside. It is in these private commissions, and especially the villas, that Palladio's genius expressed itself with the greatest originality. Unlike earlier Renaissance villas like those of the Medici in Tuscany, Palladio's houses were not simply weekend retreats for the aristocracy, but rather working farms whose very existence was predicated on social and economic changes that favored the region's agricultural development.

Palladio's challenge in virtually all the villas—and there are nearly two dozen of them—was to reconcile his instinct for classical design with the practical needs of agrarian life. Only at the Villa Rotonda, his best-known but least typical country house, were the ideal demands of the structure uncompromised by utilitarian concerns. There a square, symmetrically divided ground plan is reflected in the equally regular exterior elevations. Each of the villa's four facades has the same projecting classical portico, while the roof is crowned with a cupola of the same diameter as that of the circular hall below. The formal consistency of this solution belies its audacious iconography, however, for both the portico and the cupola were forms that historically connoted sacred usage. Indeed, the Villa Rotonda appears to emulate the design of centralized churches from an earlier stage of the Renaissance. Although classical orders had occasionally embellished private dwellings since the fifteenth century, the cupola had not, and no Renaissance facade—sacred or secular—had ever employed a classical portico so boldly. Palladio was clearly conscious of these conventions of decor; despite its visual appeal, the Villa Rotonda was to remain his only residential building crowned with a dome.

Palladio's villas all tend to be blocklike with columnar porticos, but the functional demands of farming usually necessitated the addition of flanking wings at the sides. At the Villa Foscari at Malcontenta, the attached walls were so low as to hardly affect the overall prospect, but more typically, as at the Villa Barbaro at Maser, the wings are a prominent part of the exterior elevation. In nearly every instance, however, the wings and attached outbuildings confer frontality on the complex as a whole while emphasizing in their deference the grandeur of the residence itself.

Palladio's city dwellings play less dramatic roles in the urban landscape. Smaller for the most part than conventional palazzi in Venice or Florence, they are actually townhouses or palazzetti of the type popularized by Donato Bramante's Palazzo Caprini in Rome (c. 1510). Most are tucked into Vicenza's narrow side streets with facades designed to appear both monumental and at the same time sensitive to their site and surroundings. Facing on an open piazza, the Palazzo Chiericati was conceived with a bold, open columnar elevation more like that of the villas, while the exteriors of his street-facing palaces are, in turn, flatter and more densely articulated. The Palazzo Iseppo-Porto initiates the typological development beyond the Bramantesque prototype. Designed around 1550, contemporary with the Chiericati, the two-story elevation differentiates between a rusticated, arcuated lower floor and a trabeated piano nobile embellished with half columns. Like most of his more ambitious palazzi, the plan of Iseppo-Porto was designed in accordance with what Palladio believed to be the style of the ancient Roman house with an atrium entrance and peristyle courtyard. None of his courtyards were ever completed according to plan, however, and only the buildings' inventive facades, with their novel variation in the use of the classical orders, preserve his original intentions. Significantly, not one of his executed palaces has a pediment or dome, a further indication of his respect for conventional decorum.

The Basilica and the Loggia del Capitaniato, both in Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza's main square, were Palladio's most important civic commissions. Conceived in 1549 and 1571, respectively, they together represent the consistent principles and the evolutionary nature of his personal style. For the Basilica he did no more than encase an existing medieval town hall within a two-story loggia, but the irregularities of the earlier structure made the creation of a uniform exterior challenging. Palladio's solution was to envelop the building in a series of superimposed serliane, the lintel-arch-lintel device now so closely associated with his work that it is customarily called the Palladian motif. By varying the interval between the columns and piers of the nine serliane that constitute the principal facade, Palladio disguised the dimensional defect and made the elevation appear consistent. The rationality of this solution and the purity of its classical references were clearly shaped by his travels to Rome and by the knowledge of classical Vitruvian principles he gained while working on the Barbaro edition of the Ten Books of Architecture.

The three-bay ceremonial Loggia is even more monumental with its use of the giant order. But here, later in his career, Palladio's commitment to Vitruvian correctness began to wane. The architectonic purity of the structure is compromised by an extensive overlay of sculptural relief and disjunctive relationships that exist among its various parts, particularly its front and sides. Affected perhaps only now by the uncertainties of his age, Palladio began to experiment with mannerist methods of design.

It was not until the second half of his career that Palladio designed for the church. His two most ambitious commissions—SS. Giorgio Maggiore, begun in 1565, and Il Redentore, begun in 1576—are both in Venice. Although Palladio devoted the last of his Four Books of Architecture to the design of ancient temples, the dictates of the Counter-Reformation so constrained church building in his day that classicizing ideals became all but impossible. Yet SS. Giorgio and Il Redentore together offer imaginative solutions to two of the principal challenges of late Renaissance church design, their plans and facades. Palladio's introduction of a composite ground plan afforded a compromise between the aesthetically desirable, if by then outdated, centralized plan and the more functionally and symbolically appropriate cruciform plan. His cloaking of these churches' facades with superimposed engaged temple fronts was just as brilliant, if slightly more idiosyncratic.

Palladio's influence was initially limited to the Veneto region, and it was only decades after his death in 1580 that the true Palladian revival began, not in Italy but England. Inigo Jones (1573–1652) was the first to "rediscover" Palladio, visiting Vicenza and Venice during his second trip to Italy in 1613 with a copy of The Four Books in hand. Jones's subsequent designs for the Banqueting House at Whitehall, the Queen's House in Greenwich, and the facade of St. Paul's, London (destroyed by fire in 1666), pay worthy tribute to their sources. Not surprisingly, it was Palladio's secular buildings that attracted English and eventually American patrons. Colen Campbell's treatise The Vitruvius Britannicus (1715–1725) along with Campbell's own house at Mereworth (1722–1725) and Lord Burlington's at Chiswick (begun 1725) turned Palladio into an eighteenth-century icon, a circumstance substantially aided by the publication of the Four Books of Architecture in no fewer than four English editions between the years 1663–1738. American Palladianism quickly followed, the Four Books being particularly instrumental in disseminating a style of architecture throughout the southern colonies after the 1740s. Thomas Jefferson was the last important Palladian architect, his house at Monticello (1771–1809) perhaps being the true culmination of the Renaissance master's idealistic idiom. Significantly, Jefferson never visited the Veneto during his travels in Europe, but as his preparatory studies for Monticello indicate, Palladio's treatise provided all the initial inspiration he needed.

Bibliography

Primary Source

Palladio, Andrea. The Four Books of Architecture. Translation of Quattro libri dell'architettura. New York, 1965.

Secondary Sources

Ackerman, James S. Palladio. Harmondsworth, U.K., 1966.

Cosgrove, Denis E. The Palladian Landscape: Geographical Change and Its Cultural Representations in Sixteenth-Century Italy. Leicester, U.K., 1993.

Hersey, George, and Richard Freedman. Possible Palladian Villas (Plus a Few Instructively Impossible Ones). Cambridge, Mass., 1992.

Holberton, Paul. Palladio's Villas: Life in the Renaissance Countryside. London, 1990.

Tavernor, Robert. Palladio and Palladianism. London, 1991.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Palladio and English Palladianism. New York, 1974.

—JOHN VARRIANO

A sixteenth-century Italian architect. In works such as San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice and the Villa Rotonda in Vicenza, he incorporated elements of classical Roman architecture and broke sharply with the ornate Renaissance style. His treatise Four Books of Architecture was especially influential to the designs of Christopher Wren in England.

"Palladio" redirects here. For other uses, see Palladio (disambiguation).

Andrea Palladio
Portrait of Palladio from 1576.
Personal information
Name	Andrea Palladio
Nationality	Italian
Birth date	30 November 1508(1508-11-30)
Birth place	Padova, Republic of Venice
Date of death	19 August 1580 (aged 71)
Place of death	Maser, near Treviso
Work
Significant buildings	Villa Barbaro Villa Capra "La Rotonda" Basilica Palladiana San Giorgio Maggiore Il Redentore Teatro Olimpico
Significant projects	I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture)

Andrea Palladio (30 November 1508 – 19 August 1580), was a Italian Renaissance architect active in the Republic of Venice. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily by Vitruvius, is widely considered the most influential architect in the history of Western architecture. All of his buildings are located in the northern Italy, but his teachings, summarized in the architectural treatise I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), gained him wide recognition. The city of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto are UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Cultural context 3 Influence 4 Chronology of the works 4.1 Villas 4.2 Palaces 4.3 Church architecture 4.4 Other 5 References 6 External links

Biography

He was born as Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, then part of the Republic of Venice. His father Pietro called "della Gondola" was a miller. In Padua he gained his first experiences as a stonecutter in the sculpture workshop of Bartolomeo Cavazza da Sossano, who is said to have imposed particularly hard working conditions. In fact, in in April 1524, after one failed attempt, Palladio managed to run away to Vicenza. Here he became an assistant in the Pedemuro studio, a leading workshop of stonecutters and masons.

His talents were first recognized in his early thirties by Count Gian Giorgio Trissino, an influential humanist and writer. As the leading intellectual in Vicenza, Trissino stimulated the young man to appreciate the arts, sciences and Classical literature and granted him the opportunity to study Antique architecture in Rome.^[1] It was also Trissino who gave him the name by which he is now known, Palladio, an allusion to the Greek goddess of wisdom Pallas Athene and to a character of a play of Trissino itself. Indeed the word Palladio means Wise one.^[2] After Trissino's death in 1550 Palladio benefited from the patronage of the Barbaro brothers, Cardinal Daniele Barbaro, who encouraged his studies of classical architecture and brought him to Rome in 1554, and the younger brother Marcantonio Barbaro. The powerful Barbaros introduced Palladio to Venice, where he finally became "Proto della Serenissima" (chief architect of the Republic of Venice) after Jacopo Sansovino.

The Palladian style, named after him, adhered to classical Roman principles he rediscovered, applied and explained in his works ^[3]

His architectural works have "been valued for centuries as the quintessence of High Renaissance calm and harmony" (Watkin, D., A History of Western Architecture). He designed many palaces, villas and churches, but Palladio's reputation initially, and after his death, has been founded on his skill as a designer of villas^[4]. The palladian villas are located mainly in the province of Vicenza, while the palazzi are concentrated in the city of Vicenza and the churches in Venice. A number of his works are now protected as part of the World Heritage Site City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto. Other buildings by Palladio are to be found within the Venice and its Lagoon World Heritage Site.

During the second half of his life, Palladio published many books, above all I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura ("The four books of architecture", Venice, 1570).

His few portraits are largely hypothetical. Also the precise circumstances of his death are unknown. Palladio died in 1580, by tradition in Maser, near Treviso, and was buried in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza; from the 19th century his tomb is located in the Cimitero Maggiore of Vicenza.

Cultural context

Façade of Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza

Villa Foscari "La Malcontenta", 1550-60

Palladio's architecture was not dependent on expensive materials, which must have been an advantage to his more financially-pressed clients. Many of his buildings are of brick covered with stucco.

In the later part of his career, Palladio was chosen by powerful members of Venetian society for numerous important commissions. His success as an architect is based not only on the beauty of his work, but also for its harmony with the culture of his time. His success and influence was a result of the integration of extraordinary aesthetic quality with expressive characteristics that resonated with his client's social aspirations. His buildings served to visually communicate their place in the social order of their culture. This powerful integration of beauty and the physical representation of social meanings is apparent in three major building types: the urban palazzo, the agricultural villa, and the church.

In his urban structures he developed a new improved version of the typical early renaissance palazzo (exemplified by the Palazzo Strozzi). Adapting a new urban palazzo type created by Bramante in the House of Raphael, Palladio found a powerful expression of the importance of the owner and his social position. The main living quarters of the owner on the second level are now clearly distinguished in importance by use of a pedimented classical portico, centered and raised above the subsidiary and utilitarian ground level (illustrated in the Palazzo Porto and the Palazzo Valmarana Braga). The tallness of the portico is achieved by incorporating the owner's sleeping quarters on the third level, within a giant two story classical colonnade, a motif adapted from Michelangelo's Capitoline buildings in Rome. The elevated main floor level became known as the "piano nobile", and is still referred to as the "first floor" in continental Europe.

Statue of Palladio in Vicenza

Palladio also established an influential new building format for the agricultural villas of the Venetian aristocracy. He consolidated the various stand-alone farm outbuildings into a single impressive structure, arranged as a highly organized whole dominated by a strong center and symmetrical side wings, as illustrated at Villa Barbaro. The Palladian villa configuration often consists of a centralized block raised on an elevated podium, accessed by grand steps and flanked by lower service wings, as at Villa Foscari and Villa Badoer. This format, with the quarters of the owner at the elevated center of their own world, found resonance as a prototype for Italian villas and later for the country estates of the English nobility (such as Lord Burlington's Chiswick House, Vanbrugh's Blenheim, Walpole's Houghton Hall, and Adam's Kedleston Hall). The configuration was a perfect architectural expression of their worldview, clearly expressing their perceived position in the social order of the times. His influence was extended worldwide into the British colonies. The Palladian villa format was easily adapted for a democratic worldview, as can be seen at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and his arrangement for the University of Virginia; and as recently as 1940 in Pope's National Gallery in Washington DC, where the public entry to the world of high culture occupies the exalted center position. The rustication of exposed basement walls of Victorian residences is a late remnant of the Palladian format, clearly expressed as a podium for the main living space for the family.

Similarly, Palladio created a new configuration for the design of Catholic churches that established two interlocking architectural orders, each clearly articulated yet delineating a hierarchy of a larger order overriding a lesser order. This idea was in direct coincidence with the rising acceptance of the theological ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, who postulated the notion of two worlds existing simultaneously: the divine world of faith and the earthly world of man. Palladio created an architecture which made a visual statement communicating the idea of two superimposed systems, as illustrated at San Francesco della Vigna. In a time when religious dominance in Western culture was threatened by the rising power of science and secular humanists, this architecture found great favor with the Church as a clear statement of the proper relationship of the earthly and the spiritual worlds.

Influence

The front page of I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture)

Palladio's influence was far-reaching, although his buildings are all in a relatively small part of Italy. One factor in the spread of his influence was the publication in 1570 of his architectural treatise I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), which set out rules others could follow. Before this landmark publication, architectural drawings by Palladio had appeared in print as illustrations to Daniele Barbaro's "Commentary" on Vitruvius.^[5]

Interest in his style was renewed in later generations and became fashionable all over Europe, for example in parts of the Loire Valley of France. In Britain, Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren embraced the Palladian style. In his Italian Journey, Johann von Goethe describes Palladio as a genius, commending his unfinished Convent of S. Maria della Carita as the most perfect existing work of architecture. Another admirer was the architect Richard Boyle, 4th Earl of Cork, also known as Lord Burlington, who, with William Kent, designed Chiswick House. The influence of Palladio even got to America. The Capitol building is an example of slightly evolved version of Palladio's works. Thomas Jefferson loved that style of architecture. Exponents of Palladianism include the 18th century Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni who published an authoritative four-volume work on Palladio and his architectural concepts.

The Center for Palladian Studies in America, Inc., a non-profit membership organization, was founded in 1979 to research and promote understanding of Palladio’s influence in the United States.

Chronology of the works

Note: the chronology^[6] is generally referred to the project of the works, not to the construction.

Villas

See also: Palladian Villas of the Veneto

• 1534: Villa Trissino a Cricoli, Vicenza (once traditionally attributed, but probably designed by Gian Giorgio Trissino)
• 1537-1542: Villa Godi (for Girolamo, Pietro and Marcantonio Godi), Lonedo di Lugo di Vicenza
• 1539 circa: Villa Piovene, Lonedo di Lugo di Vicenza, Province of Vicenza (attributed)
• 1540-1542 circa: Palazzo Civena, Vicenza
• 1540 circa-1566 circa: Palazzo Pojana, Vicenza (attributed)
• 1542 - Villa Valmarana, Vigardolo di Monticello Conte Otto, Province of Vicenza
• 1542-1556 circa: Palazzo Thiene, Vicenza (probably on a project by Giulio Romano)
• 1542: Villa Gazzotti (for Taddeo Gazzotti), Bertesina, Vicenza
• 1542 circa: Villa Caldogno (for Losco Caldogno), Caldogno, Province of Vicenza (attributed)
• 1542: Villa Pisani (for Vettore, Marco and Daniele Pisani), Bagnolo di Lonigo, Province of Vicenza
• 1542: Villa Thiene (for Marcantonio and Adriano Thiene), Quinto Vicentino , Province of Vicenza (probably a re-elaboration of a project by Giulio Romano)
• 1543: Villa Saraceno (for Biagio Saraceno), Finale di Agugliaro, Province of Vicenza
• 1546 circa-1563 circa: Villa Pojana (for Bonifacio Pojana), Pojana Maggiore, Province of Vicenza
• 1546 circa: Villa Contarini, Piazzola sul Brenta, Province of Padua (attributed)
• 1547: Villa Arnaldi (for Vincenzo Arnaldi), Meledo di Sarego, Province of Vicenza (unfinished)
• 1548: Villa Angarano, Bassano del Grappa, Province of Vicenza (main body of the villa rebuilt later by Baldassarre Longhena; the barchesse are part of the original)
• 1550: Villa Chiericati (for Giovanni Chiericati), Vancimuglio di Grumolo delle Abbadesse, province of Vicenza (completed in 1584 by Domenico Groppino after Palladio's death)
• 1552: Villa Cornaro (for Giorgio Cornaro), Piombino Dese, Province of Padua
• 1552 circa: Villa Pisani (for Francesco Pisani), Montagnana, Province of Padua
• 1554-1563: Villa Badoer called La Badoera (for Francesco Badoer), Fratta Polesine, Province of Rovigo
• 1554: Villa Porto (for Paolo Porto), Vivaro di Dueville, province of Vicenza (attributed)
• 1554: Villa Barbaro (for Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro), Maser, Province of Treviso
• 1554 ?: Villa Zeno (for Marco Zeno), Donegal di Cessalto, Province of Treviso
• 1556: Villa Thiene, Cicogna di Villafranca Padovana (unfinished; only a barchessa remaining)
• 1557: Villa Repeta, Campiglia dei Berici (destroyed by a fire, then rebuilt in other shape)
• 1558: Villa Emo (for Leonardo Emo), Fanzolo di Vedelago, Province of Treviso
• 1558: Dome for the Cathedral of Vicenza, Vicenza (destroyed in a bombing during the II World War, then rebuilt)
• 1559: Villa Foscari called La Malcontenta, Malcontenta di Mira, Province of Venice
• 1559: Casa Cogollo (for Pietro Cogollo), traditionally known as Casa del Palladio ("Palladio's home"), Vicenza (attributed)
• 1560: Convento della Carità, Venezia (only the cloister and the atrium destroyed in 1630 in a fire)
• 1563 circa: Villa Valmarana, Lisiera di Bolzano Vicentino, Province of Vicenza
• 1565: Villa Serego (for Marcantonio Serègo), Santa Sofia di Pedemonte di San Pietro in Cariano (Province of Verona)
• 1565 circa: Villa Forni Cerato (for Girolamo Forni), Montecchio Precalcino, Province of Vicenza
• 1566: Villa Capra "La Rotonda" (for Paolo Almerico), Vicenza (completed in 1585 by Vincenzo Scamozzi after Palladio's death)
• 1567 circa: Villa Trissino, Meledo di Sarego, Province of Vicenza (only partially realized)
• 1568: Ponte Vecchio, Bassano del Grappa, Province of Vicenza (rebuilt in 1748 and after II World War)
• 1570: Villa Porto (for Iseppo Porto), Molina di Malo, Province of Vicenza

One of the first works by Palladio, Villa Godi	Villa La Rotonda, in I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, 1570	Villa La Rotonda	Villa Pisani in Bagnolo of Lonigo, from I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura
Villa Barbaro	Villa Barbaro	Villa Emo	Villa Emo

Palaces

• 1546-1549: Loggias of the Palazzo della Ragione (then called Basilica Palladiana), Vicenza (completed in 1614 after Palladio's death)
• 1544 circa-1552: Palazzo Porto (for Iseppo De' Porti), Vicenza
• 1550-1557: Palazzo Chiericati (for Girolamo Chiericati), Vicenza (completed about 1680 after Palladio's death)
• 1555 circa: Palazzo Dalla Torre, Verona (only partially realized; partially destroyed by a bombing in 1945)
• 1556 circa: Palazzo Antonini, Udine (altered by later arrangements)
• 1560: Palazzo Schio (for Bernardo Schio), Vicenza
• 1564: Palazzo Pretorio, Cividale del Friuli (province of Udine) (project, attributed)
• 1565: Palazzo del Capitaniato, Vicenza
• 1565: Palazzo Valmarana (for Isabella Nogarola Valmarana), Vicenza
• 1569-1575: Palazzo Barbaran da Porto (for Montano Barbarano), Vicenza
• 1571: Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello, Vicenza (unfinished; partially completed in 1615 by Vincenzo Scamozzi)
• 1572 ?: Palazzo Thiene Bonin Longare, Vicenza
• 1574-1577: Rooms in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice

Basilica Palladiana, Vicenza

Palazzo del Capitaniato, Vicenza

Palazzo Thiene Bonin Longare, Vicenza

Part of the frescoed ceiling in the great hall with the Fall of the Giants by Domenico Brusasorzi in Palazzo Porto.

Church architecture

• 1531: Portal for the church of Santa Maria dei Servi, Vicenza (attributed)
• 1558: Facade for the Basilica of San Pietro di Castello, Venice (completed after Palladio's death)
• 1560-1563 circa: cloister of the cipressi and refettorio of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
• 1563 circa: Side portal for the Cathedral of Vicenza
• 1564: Facade for the church of San Francesco della Vigna, Venice
• 1565: Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice (completed between 1607 and 1611 after Palladio's death, with a different facade, by Vincenzo Scamozzi)
• 1574: Facade for Basilica di San Petronio, Bologna (project)
• 1576 circa: Cappella Valmarana (for Isabella Nogarola Valmarana) in the church of Santa Corona, Vicenza
• 1577: Church of Il Redentore, Venice
• 1578: Church of Santa Maria Nova, Vicenza (project attributed; completed in 1590 after Palladio's death)
• 1579: Porta Gemona, San Daniele del Friuli, Province of Udine
• 1580: Church of Santa Lucia, Venice (drawings for the interior; demolished)
• 1580: Church (Tempietto Barbaro) of Villa Barbaro, Maser

Panorama of San Giorgio Maggiore viewed from the main island of Venice.

Other

Teatro Olimpico

• 1556: Arco Bollani, Udine, an arch over the road leading up to the Udine Castle
• 1565: Wooden theater on the yard of Convento della Carità, Venice (destroyed by a fire in 1570)
• 1569: Bridge on Tesina, Torri di Quartesolo, Province of Vicenza (attributed)
• 1580: Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza (completed after Palladio's death by his son Silla and in 1585 by Vincenzo Scamozzi for the scene)

References

1. ^ James Stevens Curl, A Dictionary of Architecture,Oxford University Press
2. ^ How I Spent A Few Days in Palladio's World, The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2009,[1]
3. ^ Palladio knew relatively little about Greek architecture, not yet rediscovered at his times, but he studied deeply the Roman remains and had a trip to Rome.
4. ^ Howard Burns, Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio
5. ^ P. Clini "Vitruvius’ Basilica at Fano: The drawings of a lost building from 'De Architectura Libri Decem'" The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. XXXIV, Part 5/W12 pp121 - 126 2002 [2]
6. ^ Source: Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Andrea Palladio

• Palladio and Britain website from the Royal Institute of British Architects (English) (Italian)
• Palladio Centre and Museum in Vicenza, Italy (English) (Italian)
• The Center for Palladian Studies in America, Inc.
• Palladio's Italian Villas website which includes material by the owners of Villa Cornaro.
• Wonders of Vicenza (English) (Italian)
• The Four Books of Architecture (French) (Italian)
• Quincentenary of Andrea Palladio's birth - Celebration Committee Describes a major exhibition touring venues in Italy, the UK and the USA. (English) (Italian)
• Official Website of the 500 Years Exhibition in Vicenza - Italy (2008) (English) (Italian)
•  "Andrea Palladio". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Andrea_Palladio. 
• Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy, at the Royal Academy, review, The Telegraph, February 2, 2009
• David Linley on the influence of Andrea Palladio (English) (Italian)
• How I Spent A Few Days in Palladio's World, The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2009
• All He Surveyed, Paul Goldberger, The New Yorker, March 30, 2009

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

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