Architecture · Classical & Renaissance

Andrea Palladio

1508–1580 · Italian (Venetian)

High Renaissance classicism; Palladianism

Palladio, born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, became the architect of the Venetian mainland and the most imitated architect in history. His villas for the Veneto gentry and his Venetian churches apply the temple front and the classical orders to farmhouses and basilicas alike. His Four Books of Architecture, published in 1570 and full of his own measured plates, carried the style to England, Ireland, Russia and the American colonies.

How to spot them

▸A temple portico stuck on the front of a country house; symmetrical plans built on musical ratios
▸The 'Palladian' or Serlian window: a round-headed opening flanked by two flat-topped lights
▸White stuccoed brick dressed to look like stone; giant orders overlapping smaller ones on church fronts
▸The Four Books (1570), and the followers it produced — Inigo Jones, Lord Burlington, Colen Campbell, Thomas Jefferson

Key buildings

A hilltop villa near Vicenza, square in plan with a domed centre and an identical columned portico on each of its four faces (begun 1566)

Vicenza, Italy

Villa Almerico Capra, 'La Rotonda' — copied at Chiswick House and at Mereworth.

The world's oldest surviving indoor theatre, its stage backed by streets in forced perspective that seem to run away for miles (1580–1585)

Vicenza, Italy

His last design, finished by Vincenzo Scamozzi, who built the perspective streets of Thebes.

A medieval town hall wrapped in a two-storey white marble loggia of arches flanked by square-headed lights (1549–1614)

Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza

The Basilica Palladiana — the commission that made his name, and the showcase of the Serlian motif.

A white votive church on the Giudecca, promised by the Senate in thanks for the end of a plague and visited each July across a bridge of boats (1577–1592)

Giudecca, Venice

Il Redentore, built after the plague of 1575–77; the Festa del Redentore is still held there.

A white church on its own island facing the Doge's Palace across the water, with Tintoretto's Last Supper in the chancel (begun 1566)

Venice, Italy

San Giorgio Maggiore, the view Monet and Turner both painted.

A villa at Maser frescoed throughout by Veronese with trompe-l'oeil doors, balconies and figures (c. 1557–1558)

Maser, Veneto, Italy

Villa Barbaro, built for Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro; the frescoes are Veronese's masterpiece in the genre.

A brick villa on a high podium beside the Brenta canal, known as 'the malcontent' (c. 1559)

Mira, Veneto, Italy

Villa Foscari, nicknamed La Malcontenta.

Four books of rules and plates, published in Venice in 1570, that taught Europe and America how to build with columns (1570)

Venice, Italy

I quattro libri dell'architettura, translated by Giacomo Leoni and Isaac Ware and worshipped by Lord Burlington.

Key ideas

The temple front belongs on a house: he believed, wrongly, that ancient houses had porticoes
Room proportions should follow harmonic ratios — 1:1, 2:3, 3:4, 3:5 and so on
Two interlocking temple fronts, one giant and one small, can resolve the problem of a basilica's high nave and low aisles

Quick-fire facts

•Born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua; the name Palladio was given him by his patron, the humanist Gian Giorgio Trissino, after Pallas Athena
•He trained as a stonemason and was in his thirties before he became an architect
•He published I quattro libri dell'architettura in 1570, and also illustrated an edition of Caesar's Commentaries
•Inigo Jones bought his drawings; most are now in the RIBA collection in London
•Thomas Jefferson called the Four Books his bible and used them at Monticello and the University of Virginia
•In 2010 the United States Congress passed a resolution naming him 'the Father of American Architecture'
•The city of Vicenza and 24 Palladian villas of the Veneto are a UNESCO World Heritage Site
•He is buried in Vicenza; his Teatro Olimpico was completed after his death by Vincenzo Scamozzi

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources

UNESCO World Heritage Centre — City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto
James S. Ackerman — Palladio