Andrea Palladio

Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), Italian architect whose significance rests on his refined and harmonic use of Classical motifs, and on his profound influence on the classical tradition in architecture both in Europe and in the United States.

Andrea Palladio was born (as Andrea di Petro della Gondola) in Padua in 1508 and trained initially as a stonemason. He moved to Vicenza while in his teens and was taken up by the scholar and amateur architect Giangiorgio Trissino, who encouraged him to study the writings of Vitruvius. (It was Trissino who gave him the name “Palladio”.) By 1540 he was working on several buildings, including a palace in Vicenza for the Civena family. Palladio first visited Rome in 1541; there he studied and measured the proportions of Roman ruins. His Antiquities of Rome (1554) served as the principal guidebook to Roman ruins for the next two centuries.

The project for rebuilding the 15th-century Palace of Justice in Vincenza provided Palladio with a major opportunity, and work on the building began to his designs in 1546. The old building was encased in a massive but elegant arched stone screen of Classical form. Many commissions in and around Vicenza followed. The Palazzo Chiericati was begun in 1550. The Villa Barbaro at Maser was started in the same year. His concern with the plan of the ideal villa linked such superficially diverse projects as the austere Villa Malcotenta (1560) and the Villa Rotonda (1566-1570), which, based on the square, the circle, and the rectangle, is absolutely symmetrical. Whereas the Villa Rotonda has a distinctive grace and purity, Palladio’s work could also be assertively imposing. The “giant order” of the Palazzo Valmarana in Vicenza (1565-1571), for example, makes an overwhelming impact on the narrow street on which the building stands.

During the 1550s, Palladio’s attention was shifting steadily from Vicenza to nearby Venice. Although his proposals for the rebuilding of the Doges’ Palace were not adopted, he was responsible for three churches in the city: San Francesco della Vigna (1562-1570), San Giorgio Maggiore (1564-1580), and Il Redentore (1576-1580), all of which reflect his close study of the architecture of ancient temples and his interest in achieving harmonious proportions.

Although the historical antecedents of Palladio’s style lie in the works of such architects of the High Renaissance as Donato Bramante (which were in turn inspired by the Classical architecture of ancient Rome), Palladio’s own use of Classical motifs came through his direct, extensive study of Roman architecture. He freely recombined elements of Roman buildings to suit individual projects and meet contemporary needs. At the same time he shared the Renaissance concern for harmonious proportion, and his façades have a noteworthy simplicity—bordering on austerity—and repose.

Palladio was the first architect to develop a systematic organization of the rooms in a house. He was also the first to apply to houses the pedimented porticos of Roman temples—formal porches defined by a shallow triangular gable supported by a row of columns. Both these features are exemplified in the Villa Rotonda.

Palladio’s buildings were highly functional, often ingeniously so. In the façade of the Palace of Justice, for example, the arches are supported on slender columns; between the columns and the vertical piers that separate the arches are narrow rectangular spaces. The arrangement allows the piers between the arches to be narrow, rather than wide and massive, and it allows more light to pass into the main building while giving the façade an open, harmonious appearance.

Palladio was also the author of I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (The Four Books on Architecture), an important scientific treatise on architecture, which appeared in 1570 and again, in a second edition, in 1580. It was widely translated (appearing in English in 1571); with its precise rules and formulas, it was adopted as a pattern book, becoming a standard text for architects working in the Classical tradition not only in Italy, but elsewhere in Europe.

The Palladian style was particularly influential in England during the 18th century, and subsequently in the United States. It was adopted most notably by Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, and presaged the Neo-Classicism of Georgian architecture. With its strong emphasis on correctness and the virtues of order, Palladianism, as it is known, was a persuasive creed, but its spirit was not entirely in tune with that of Palladio himself. Where much 18th-century Palladian design has a light and airy quality, Palladio’s own work could be massive and imposing; and while the English Palladian country house is detached from the land that financed it, Palladio’s villas of the Veneto typically have a working farm attached, its barns integrated into the composition.