Palladio, Andrea

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Andrea Palladio

1508
Padua, Italy
1580
Venice, Italy

Architect

Andrea Palladio is one of the architects most closely associated with the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a cultural revolution that began in Italy in the mid-1300s. It was initiated by scholars called humanists who promoted the human-centered values of ancient Greece and Rome. Humanist ideals were soon influencing the arts, literature, philosophy, science, religion, and politics in Italy. His main contribution to architecture was the villa, or large country house, which became popular throughout Europe. Palladio was also involved in promoting the classical style developed by Italian architects in the fifteenth century. They refurbished old buildings and constructed new ones according to architectural details found in Roman ruins. Features of this style included simple but impressive building shapes, columns from the three basic classical orders (Corinthian, Doric, and Ionic), porticos (entrance porches), and loggias (roofed open galleries overlooking courtyards). Palladio adapted many of these features in his villas.

Begins career as architect

Palladio was born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, Italy, in 1508. At age thirteen he was apprenticed to (hired to learn a trade) a local stonemason, a craftsman who makes or builds objects from stone. By 1524 Palladio had moved to Vincenza and formally registered in the guild (an association of craftsmen, merchants, and professionals that trained apprentices and set standards of production or business operation) of stonemasons. Palladio joined a workshop run by Giovanni di Giacomo da Porlezza and Girolamo Pittoni da Lumignano. Porlezza specialized in architecture, and Palladio continued working with him after leaving the workshop. By 1537 Palladio had entered the circle of Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478–1550), an aristocrat who had retired to Vincenza. Trissino gathered an academy of intellectually promising young men from the area into his villa.

Trissino had an important impact on Palladio. Through Trissino he was first exposed to humanist education (the study of literary masterpieces of ancient Greece and Rome) and learned Latin. He was also introduced to the treatise on architecture by Marcellus Vitruvius Pollio (called Vitruvius; first century b.c.), the ancient Roman architect and engineer. Through Trissino he became acquainted with many important intellectuals. The name Palladio, which he adopted in about 1545, came from Trissino's circle. In the 1540s Palladio visited Rome at least five times, often in the company of Trissino. During a trip taken between 1546 and 1547 he met the great sculptor and painter Michelangelo (1475–1564; see entry). Preserved drawings show that Palladio spent much of his time in Rome studying and surveying the Roman ruins.

Palladio's study of Roman ruins led him to pursue a career as an architect in the late 1530s. The breakthrough in his career came toward the end of the 1540s, when the city council of Vicenza commissioned him to complete the facade, or front, of the Basilica—the city's public palace. The Basilica is actually a complex of medieval buildings that were reorganized into a single structure during the fifteenth century. It had been surrounded by arcades (arched passageways with roofs) in a medieval style called Gothic. The arcades collapsed soon after they were completed in 1496. During the next fifty years city leaders looked for an architect to design a new facade in the Renaissance style. In 1546 Palladio submitted as plan in which he resolved the structural problems by redesigning the facade in the simple style used by the ancient Romans and by Italian architects in the fifteenth century.

Develops distinctive villa style

It took three years for the city council to approve Palladio's plans for the Basilica. Since the building was so large, work proceeded slowly and the entire project was not completed until 1614, nearly twenty-five years after Palladio's death. However, this work provided important contacts for Palladio and gained him a considerable reputation. He designed palazzos, or palaces, in Vincenza and began developing the villa type that later became identified with his name. A series of villas built during the 1550s and 1560s represent the model that is associated with Palladio. All of these villas have a vaulted sala, or central hall, that can be square, rectangular, or in the shape of a cross or the letter "T." A row of rooms lines each side of the sala, and the facade has a Greco-Roman (a Roman style influenced by the Greeks) temple portico (a type of porch with a roof supported by columns). A few villas have an upper story, in which the same design is repeated.

The popularity of the villa resulted from changes in the Venetian economy and an increasing trend toward agriculture. Villas functioned as homes for noblemen on agricultural estates. Palladio's most famous structure was the Villa Rotonda, known also as Villa Capra, which was built in the late 1560s for the retired papal secretary Paolo Almerico. Located on a hill near Vicenza, the villa had a dome-covered central hall with four big rooms in the corners and four smaller rooms next to them. Four identical porticoes open on all four facades. Over the centuries, the Rotonda became the prime example of Palladio's architecture and has been copied many times in various parts of the world.

Publishes important book

Throughout his career Palladio maintained contacts with humanists. Among them was Daniele Barbaro (1513–1570), a scholar and member of the Venetian high nobility. The patron (financial supporter) of several artists, Barbaro helped Palladio establish his reputation and introduced him to prospective Venetian clients. Palladio also designed a villa for Barbaro and Barbaro's brother Marcantonio. By the mid-1550s Palladio was working on Four Books on Architecture, which he published in 1570. Book One of this work discusses elements of architecture and the theory of the classical orders. Book Two presents plans for residential buildings Palladio designed. Book Three describes a number of bridges Palladio designed and

Filippo Brunelleschi: First Renaissance Architect

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) is considered the first Renaissance architect. His refined classical style was inspired by twelfth-century Tuscan architecture and by the buildings of ancient Rome. Brunelleschi is also credited with developing the concept of linear perspective, also called one-point perspective, which influenced the depiction of space in painting and sculpture until the late nineteenth century. Linear perspective is a system derived from mathematics in which all elements of a composition are measured and arranged from a single point of view, or perspective.

Brunelleschi was born in Florence and began his career as a goldsmith. In 1401 he entered the competition for designing a new set of doors for the Baptistery (building used for baptism) of Florence Cathedral, but the commission was awarded to Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1378–1455). In 1417 he and other master goldsmiths presented opinions on the design and construction of the great dome that was to be built atop Florence Cathedral. It was perhaps at this time that Brunelleschi devised the method of linear perspective, which he illustrated in two panels that are now lost. One panel depicted the Baptistery as viewed from the cathedral entrance, and the other illustrated the Palazzo Vecchio (the Medicis' palace).

Beginning in 1418 Brunelleschi concentrated on architecture. The following year he designed the loggia (an open, roofed porchlike structure with arches that overlooks a courtyard) of the Ospedale degli Innocenti (a hospital for orphans), which is usually considered the first Renaissance building. In 1420 Brunelleschi began to erect the Florence Cathedral dome in collaboration with Ghiberti, who eventually withdrew from the project. After returning to Florence in 1434 Brunelleschi worked on central-plan churches. Considered the ideal design during the Renaissance, this type of church is in the shape of a Greek cross, with four equal wings extending from a central circle. Brunelleschi died at Florence in 1446 and received the unusual honor of being buried in Florence Cathedral. Brunelleschi's architecture remained influential in Florence through the sixteenth century.

gives an account of his work on the Basilica in Vicenza. Book Four contains Palladio's surveys of Roman temples.

During the latter part of his career he began working on churches. His greatest ecclesiastical, or religious, building was the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, which was started in 1566. In 1570 Palladio succeeded Jacopo Sansovino (1486–1570) as the main architectural adviser for the Republic of Venice. The ten years from this appointment until his death in 1580 were marked by one grand project, the church of Redentore in Venice. Many scholars consider Palladio to be the foremost Renaissance architect. The influence of his Four Books on Architecture is second only to that of Regola delli cinque ordini d'architttura (Canon of the five orders of architecture; 1563) by the architectural theorist Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (1507–1573). Vignola's work was a detailed description of classical architecture and served as a manual for the education of Renaissance architects. Palladio's book shifted the focus from theory to practice by showing how classical ideas were used in Renaissance buildings.

Palladio's designs were often copied, and his innovative use of classical architecture became common practice. Palladio had an immense influence on architects in Italy. By the seventeenth century his ideas had also arrived in England through the efforts of the English designer Inigo Jones (1573–1652). Soon Palladio's style was spreading across Europe, and it reached the American colonies in the eighteenth century. Interest in Palladio's work did not wane even in the twentieth century, when architects were again focusing on his use of classical details.