Palladio, Andrea (1508–80). 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.
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)
