PALLADIO, Andrea (1518-1580), a native of Vicenza in the north of Italy, one of the chief architects of his century. Palladio’s early student life was spent in Rome, where he learned the practical part of his profession, and spent several years in making drawings of the buildings of ancient Rome. In 1547 he returned to his native city Vicenza, where he designed a very large number of fine buildings—among the chief being the Barbarano, Porti, and Chieregati palaces, as well as many others for various nobles of Vicenza and the neighbourhood. Perhaps his finest work in Vicenza itself was the Palazzo della Ragione, with two stories of open arcades of the Tuscan and Ionic orders. Most of these buildings, however, look better on paper than in reality, as they are mainly built of brick, covered with stucco, now in a very dilapidated condition. This does not affect the merit of their design, as Palladio intended them to have been executed in stone. His fame extended widely throughout Italy, and Pope Paul III. sent for him to Rome to report upon the state of St Peter’s. In Venice, too, Palladio built many stately churches and palaces, such as S. Giorgio Maggiore, the Capuchin church, and some large palaces on the Grand Canal. His last great work was the Teatro Olimpico at Vicenza, designed after a classical model; he died before its completion, and it was finished, though not altogether after the original design, by his pupil and fellow-citizen Scamc zzi....
In addition to his town buildings, Palladio designed many country villas in various parts of northern Italy. The villa of Capra is perhaps the finest of these, and has frequently been imitated. Palladio was a great student of classical literature, and was much influenced by Vitruvius’s great work on architecture. He also published in 1575 an edition with notes of Caesar’s Commentaries.
His great literary work was I quattro libri dell' Architettura, first published at Venice in 1570, which has passed into countless editions, and been translated into every European language. The original edition is a small folio, richly illustrated with well-executed full-page woodcuts of plans, elevations, and details of buildings,—chiefly either ancient Roman temples or else palaces designed and built by himself. The influence of this book on the architecture of Europe has been enormous. Among many others, an edition with notes was published in England by Inigo Jones, most of whose works, and especially the palace of Whitehall, of which only the banqueting room remains, owed much to Palladio’s inspiration. Though other Italian architects in the 16th century worked out and developed the same style, yet, in England at least, the term Palladian has been used to include all the results of this revival of classicalism. Vignola, Scamozzi, and Serlio were among the chief of Palladio’s contemporaries. The style adopted and partially invented by Palladio expressed a kind of revolt against the extreme licence both of composition and ornament into which the architecture of his time had fallen. Though often noble, dignified, and full of the most harmonious proportions, Palladio’s style is dull and lifeless, dominated by scholasticism, and regardless of considerations of utility and convenience.
He was fascinated by the stateliness and beauty of proportion which are the chief charms of the buildings of ancient Rome, and did not stop to reflect that reproductions of these, however great their archaeological accuracy, could not but be lifeless and unsuited to the wants of the 16th century. Palladio’s carefully measured drawings of ancient buildings are now of great value, as in many cases the buildings have altogether or in part ceased to exist.
The following is a short abstract of the contents of Palladio’s great work on architecture :—
Book I. Materials; construction; the five orders (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite); the proportions of various parts of buildings; construction of stairs.
Book II. Plans and elevations of city and country houses designed by Palladio; restoration of Greek and Roman houses; sites; Palladio’s designs for palaces for certain Venetian and other noblemen, in Venice, Vicenza, Verona, and elsewhere.
Book III. Roads; bridges; piazze; piazze of Greeks and Romans; ancient basilica; modern basilica at Vicenza; baths and xysti of the Greeks.
Book IV. Temples of ancient Rome; Bramante ’ s “Tempietto” (S. Pietro in Montorio); Roman temples in Italy, outside Rome; Roman temples (such as those at Nîmes) outside Italy.
See Montanari, Γt7α di Andrea Palladio, 1749; Rigato, Osservazioni sopra Andrea Palladio, 1811; Magrini, Aiemorie intorno la vita di Andrea Palladio, 1845; Milιzia, A!enιorie degli Archiletti, 1781, ii. pp. 35-54; Symonds, Renaissance in Italy—Fine Arts, pp. 94-99.
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