O1508-1580

Andrea Palladio1508-1580

ANDREAPALLADIO

1508-1580

A N D R E A PA L L A D I O 1 5 0 8 - 1 5 8 0First published in 2010 by The Embassy of Italy.

Designed by: David Hayes.Typeface: Optima.

Photographer: Pino Guidolotti.Photographer Lucan House: Dave Cullen.

© The Embassy of Italy 2011.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, broadcast or transmitted in any form or byany means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwisewithout prior permission of the copyright owners and the publishers.

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Lucan House, Co. Dublin

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Palladianism and Ireland

AN D R E A P A L L A D I O G A V E H I S N A M E to a styleof architecture, Palladianism, whose most obviousfeatures – simple lines, satisfying symmetry and

mathematical proportions – were derived from the architectureof antiquity and particularly that of Rome. From the seventeenthcentury onwards Palladianism spread across Europe, with laterexamples to be found as far afield as America, India andAustralia. Irish Palladianism has long been recognised as adistinctive version of the style. Editions of Palladio’s QuattroLibri dell’Architettura were second in popularity only to editionsof Vitruvius amongst the Irish architects and dilettanti of theeighteenth century but, fittingly, it was another Italian,Alessandro Galilei, who may be said to have introduced thestyle to Ireland at Castletown, Co. Kildare (under constructionfrom 1722). Thus began a rich tradition of Palladianism in Irishcountry house architecture, with notable examples at BellamontForest, Co. Cavan (c.1730), Russborough, Co. Wicklow (1742),and Lucan House, Co. Dublin (1773), now the Residence of theAmbassador of Italy. Ireland can also boast, in the facade of theProvost’s House, Trinity College Dublin, the only survivingexample of a building erected to a design by Palladio outside hisnative Italy. The facade is closely derived from an unexecuteddesign by the master, previously used by Lord Burlington for thenow demolished London house of General Wade. John Smyth,the architect of the Provost’s House (see page 28), also directlymodelled his St. Thomas’s Church, Marlborough Street, Dublin(destroyed 1922), on Palladio's church of the Redentore,Venice. However, it was through the native genius of Sir EdwardLovett Pearce that Palladianism received perhaps its mostdistinctive Irish manifestation. A discerning critic of Palladio,Pearce had toured the Veneto in 1724 with the Quattro Libri ashis guide. In the advanced European classicism of hisParliament House (now Bank of Ireland), College Green, Dublin(1729), Pearce created a distinctive and superb interpretation ofthe style. Pearce’s Parliament House was in turn admired andimitated through the years, with echoes and reflections of hisPalladian inspired classicism to be found in a range of buildingsfrom Thomas Cooley’s Royal Exchange (now City Hall), Dublin(1769), to James Gandon’s Four Courts, Dublin (1785), and onto Sir Aston Webb’s florid Government Buildings, UpperMerrion Street, Dublin (1904). It is the very richness of the veinof Palladianism in Ireland that makes this Irish exhibition of theoriginal source material – the buildings of Palladio himself – sorelevant and exciting.

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Biography of Andrea Palladio

AN D R E A P A L L A D I O ( 1 5 0 8 - 1 5 8 0 ) W A S O N E of the most influential architects inrecent centuries. He was a central figure in architectural history who linked ancientarchitecture to the building skills of the late Middle Ages and to the growing demand

for residential buildings representative of the modern age. Palladio looked at the Hellenisticand Roman worlds in his studies of ruins and ancient writings on architecture. But in his ownbuildings he transformed what he had learnt from antiquity into forms and types – such as thevilla – that were capable of satisfying the needs of his own times and of the centuries to come.Palladio conferred a new dignity on domestic architecture, even on relatively economicaltown and country homes. He rationalized and refined his projects from a functional point ofview. But he did more. His buildings changed the way their owners lived and representedthemselves. The importance of his architecture and of his treatise, I Quattro Libridell’Architettura (Venice 1570), was comparable to Baldassarre Castiglione's Il Cortigiano indefining a ‘gentleman’, a very different figure from the feudal landowner concernedessentially with feats on the battlefield or with hunting. With Palladio, the house, whether inthe city or country, became the building in which the architect could best display his skill,not least by satisfying the owner's personal needs without neglecting the rules of goodarchitecture.

Palladio’s work constituted a broadening of the architectural compass both from the socialpoint of view and in terms of building types. His architecture reached out towards richmerchants and untitled landowners, anticipating the later expansion of an architecturallyaware middle class in England and Holland. Palladio drew up plans for buildings withapartments in Venice and for farm outbuildings in the country. He was not a court architectand his living did not depend on one single patron unlike his immediate predecessors andcontemporaries (Bramante, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Michelangelo and Vignola) who mainlyworked for popes and rulers. He designed buildings at the client’s request, especiallychurches and patrician homes. Palladio was an excellent designer of churches and of publicbuildings, but his day to day activity was always associated with designing houses.

Palladio’s fame and influence do not depend only on his built works but also on the QuattroLibri in which he explains and illustrates the essential grammar and language of hisarchitecture, and in which he published many of his own works and commented on them.The presence of many of his drawings in England (since 1614 when Inigo Jones brought themwith him from Vicenza), including plans for buildings that were never realized, had aprofound impact on British architecture.

The expansion of the middle class in Europe and North America in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries led to great demand for functional, comfortable and elegant houses.Palladio’s architecture – summarized in his book – offered guidelines and specific models forthe new architecture.

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Palladio in the Veneto

PPaallaazzzzoo TThhiieennee - Vicenza

In October 1542, Marcantonio and Adriano Thiene began therenovation of the fifteenth-century family palazzo, with agrandiose project which was to cover an entire block measuring54 x 62 metres, facing onto Vicenza’s main artery (today’s CorsoPalladio). Rich and powerful, the sophisticated Thiene brotherswere members of the Italian nobility and were at home in themain European courts: they therefore required an appropriatesetting for their cosmopolitan status and for the nobility of theirguests. At the same time, they wanted to underline their role inthe city with a princely palazzo, a sign of indisputable patricianpower. In 1614, during a visit to the building, the Englisharchitect, Inigo Jones, noted a piece of information given to himdirectly by Vincenzo Scamozzi and Palma il Giovane: ‘theseplans were by Giulio Romano and executed by Palladio’. It isquite possible that the design of Palazzo Thiene can be attributedto the mature and expert Giulio Romano (who had been inMantua since 1523 at the Gonzago court with which the Thienefamily maintained very close relations) and that the youngPalladio was probably responsible for overseeing the erection ofthe building, especially after Giulio’s death in 1546. The elementsof the building referable to Giulio and alien to Palladio’s languageare clearly recognizable: the four-column atrium is substantiallyidentical to the one in Palazzo del Te (even if the vault system wasdefinitely modified by Palladio). So too are the windows and thelower part of the façade on the road and in the courtyard, whilethe trabeations and capitals of the piano nobile were certainly byPalladio. Work on the building began in 1542. Giulio Romanowas in Vicenza for two weeks in December in that same year fora consultation on the Loggias of the Basilica, and it was probablyon that occasion that he provided his outline drawings forPalazzo Thiene. The work proceeded slowly: the date 1556 iscarved on the outside façade while the date 1558 appears in thecourtyard. Adriano Thiene died in France in 1552 and shortlyafterwards, when Marcantonio’s son Ottavio became Marquis ofScandiano, the family’s interests moved to the Ferrara area. Onlya small part of the grandiose project was therefore completed, butit is probable that neither the Venetians nor the other Vicentinenobles would have accepted a private palace on this scale in theheart of the town.

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VViillllaa PPoojjaannaa - Pojana Maggiore, Vicenza

This villa was commissioned from Palladio by the Vicentine,Bonifacio Pojana. The project probably dates from the end of the1540s and the work was finished by 1563 when the internaldecoration by the painters, Bernardino India and Anselmo Caneraand by the sculptor Bartolomeo Ridolfi had been completed. Bothin the Quattro Libri and in Palladio’s autograph drawings, the villais always treated as part of a global project for the reorganizationand regularization of the surrounding area with its extensive yards.The only part of this project to be built, however, was the longbarchessa on the left of the villa, with Doric capitals but Tuscanintercolumns. It seems that here Palladio was seeking theutilitarian logic of the architecture of ancient baths, with anextraordinarily concise language in its forms, abstract and almostmetaphysical. The absence of orders and worked stone (with theexception of the portals of the loggia) must have made the workas a whole quite economical to build.

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LLooggggiiaass ooff PPaallaazzzzoo ddeellllaa RRaaggiioonnee -known at the Basilica Palladiana, Vicenza

In 1546 the town council approved Palladio’s project for theloggias of the Palazzo della Ragione. The solution proposed is astructure which may be called elastic, capable of taking accountof the necessary alignments with the openings and passages of thepre-existing fifteenth century building. The system is based on therepetition of the ‘Serlian’ window, i.e. a structure composed of anarch with a constant span flanked by two lateral rectangularopenings with a variable width and therefore capable of absorbingthe difference in the widths of the bays: the way they work is clearin the corner arches where the openings with their architraves arealmost reduced to zero. Palladio himself, using a certain rhetoricalemphasis, defined the Palazzo della Ragione surrounded by thenew stone loggias as a ‘basilica’, in homage to the structures ofancient Rome in which political affairs were discussed andbusiness negotiated. The work proceeded slowly: the first order ofarches on the north and west was completed in 1561 while thesecond level, begun in 1564, was completed in 1597 and thefaçade overlooking the Piazza delle Erbe in 1614.

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VViillllaa PPiissaannii - Montagnana, Padova

Starting from 1552, in the neighbourhood of the medieval townof Montagnana, Palladio designed a building for his friend,Francesco Pisani, which is both a city palazzo and a villa at thesame time. A powerful and influential Venetian patrician, Pisaniwas the patron and friend of artists and men of letters, fromVeronese to Giambattista Maganza, to Alessandro Vittoria and toPalladio himself, these last two involved in the construction anddecoration of his house at Montagnana. The works werecertainly in progress in September 1553 and were completed in1555, including the interior stucco decoration. With no partsintended for farming activities and with the abstract beauty of itsvirtually cubical volume, Villa Pisani well reflects its owner'ssophisticated tastes. A double order of demi-columns and adouble gallery crowned by tympana – already encountered inPalazzo Chiericati – make their first appearance here in a villa.The whole is bordered by an uninterrupted and elegant Doricfrieze on white plaster and ashlar. The bi-dimensionality of thewall on the garden side is animated by the recess of the porticoand upper loggia. While there are no autograph drawings of thebuilding by Palladio, it is possible to state that the plate with thedescription of the villa in the Quattro Libri is the result of an aposteriori re-elaboration of the structure. A rare case inPalladio’s oeuvre, the villa has two storeys: the upper one for thefamily apartments and the lower one for the everyday activitiessuch as business dealings and receiving tenants, and not just inthe summer as can be seen from the number of fireplaces. Thelayout of the internal spaces is identical on both floors. Theceilings are different, however: those on the ground floor arevaulted, starting from the extraordinary room with the demi-columns, halfway between an atrium and a reception room. Thisis clearly the most important room in the house with sculpturesof the Four Seasons by Alessandro Vittoria, who had been atwork a little earlier in the Palazzo Thiene. The verticalconnections are provided by symmetrical oval spiral staircasesat the sides of the loggia towards the garden.

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VViillllaa CCoorrnnaarroo - Piombino Dese, Padova

Along with the virtually contemporary Villa Pisani atMontagnana, the residence built at Piombino Dese for anotherVenetian potentate, Giorgio Cornaro, marks a clear leap of scalein the prestige and spending capacity of Palladio’s clientele whountil this point had been essentially Vicentine. Work was alreadyin progress in 1553, and in April the following year the building– though incomplete – was sufficiently habitable for Palladio tomention ‘the evening at dinner’ there with the master of thehouse. In June that same year, the latter, with his new wife Elena,took formal possession of the villa, or rather of the building site:in fact on that date only the central block had been completedwithout the wings or the second order of loggias. These would beerected in two subsequent stages, in 1569 and in 1588, thesecond directed by Vincenzo Scamozzi who was probably alsoresponsible for the involvement of Camillo Mariani in therealization of the statues in the reception room. The Pisani andCornaro villas are linked by much more than a simplechronological coincidence and by the high status of the client.Villa Cornaro, in fact, has a structure and decoration which isvery similar to a palazzo and it is more a residence than a villa.Isolated from the farm estate and outbuildings, its pre-eminentposition on the public road highlights its ambivalent character.Moreover, the presence of fireplaces in all the rooms shows thatit was not just for summer use, and it is no coincidence that quitea similar structure would be replicated a few years later forFloriano Antonini's ‘suburban’ palazzo at Udine. As in the caseof Villa Pisani, the plan of Villa Cornaro is organized around alarge room with four free-standing columns, placed here furtherto the centre of the house, however, so as to effectively constitutethe main reception room accessed through the loggia and anarrow hall. The two levels of the villa are connected by twoelegant twin staircases which clearly separate the ground floor,for receiving guests and customers, from the two apartmentsabove, reserved for the Cornaro family. The extraordinaryprojecting pronaos with its double order reflects Palladio’ssolution for the loggia of the Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza,completed during the same years, with the lateral curtainingwhich gives the structure rigidity, as in the Portico of Ottavia inRome. It should also be borne in mind that the double loggia onthe façade is to be found in Gothic architecture in Venice as arefree columns supporting the halls in the great Venetian Scuole:what we get, therefore, is a sort of ‘Latin translation’ of traditionalVenetian themes.

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VViillllaa BBaarrbbaarroo - Maser, Treviso

The realization of the villa for the Barbaro brothers at Maser atthe beginning of the 1550s constitutes an important point ofarrival in the definition of a new type of country building. For thefirst time (even if there are precedents for the solution in fifteenthcentury buildings), the main house and the barchesse werealigned in a compact architectural unit. This is probably due atMaser to the particular location of the villa on the slopes of a hill:the linear arrangement guaranteed greater visibility from the roadbelow, while the lie of the land would have imposed expensiveterracing if the barchesse had been arranged in the direction ofthe slope. If it is true that in many ways the villa reveals markeddifferences compared with other Palladian works, this isunquestionably the fruit of the interaction between the architectand his exceptional clients. Daniele Barbaro was a refined man,a profound scholar of ancient architecture and mentor of Palladioafter Trissino’s death in 1550. They were together in Rome in1554 to complete the preparation of the first translation andcritical treatise of Vitruvius, edited by Barbaro and illustrated byPalladio, which was published in Venice in 1556. MarcantonioBarbaro, an energetic politician and administrator, played a keyrole in many of the Republic’s architectural decisions and, alongwith his brother, Daniele, was a tireless promoter of theintroduction of Palladio into the Venetian environment. Anarchitectural official himself, he received an explicit tribute fromPalladio in the Quattro Libri for the design of an oval staircase.Palladio intervened skillfully in the construction of the villa,managing to transform a pre-existing house and connect it to therectilinear barchesse. He also excavated a nymphaeum in theside of the hill with a fish pond from which, thanks to asophisticated hydraulic system, the water was transported to theservice areas and then reached the gardens. In the caption on thepage of the Quattro Libri regarding the villa, Palladio expresslyhighlights this technological exploit which recalls ancient Romanhydraulics. It is evident that, rather than the villa-farms in theVeneto, the model for the Villa Barbaro came from the greatRoman residences such as the Villa Julia or the villa that PirroLigorio designed at Tivoli for Cardinal d’Este (to whom, Barbarodedicated his Vitruvius). Inside the villa, Paolo Veronese paintedwhat is considered to be one of the most extraordinary cycles offrescos in the sixteenth-century Veneto. The power and thequality of the painting superimposed on Palladio’s space gaverise to the perception of a conflict between the painter and thearchitect, to the point that Veronese is not mentioned in thecaption of the plate in the Quattro Libri dedicated to this villa.Besides, it is probable that Palladio, evidently influenced (andprobably intimidated) by the taste and personality of the Barbarobrothers, reserved a technical and general coordination role forhimself and left his clients – if not indeed Veronese, according tosome – plenty of space for invention: proof of this is the fancifuldesign of the façade which it is difficult to attribute to him.

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VViillllaa BBaaddooeerr - Fratta Polesine, Rovigo

Palladio designed a villa for the Venetian nobleman, FrancescoBadoer, in 1554. Completed and occupied in 1556, it had to besuitable for managing the farm while also being a visible sign ofthe Badoer family’s ‘feudal’ presence on the land, Palladio usedthe Tuscan order in the barchesse. The visual focus of thecomplex is the axis dominated by the great triangular pedimentsupported by Ionic columns, as the sides and rear of the villa areabsolutely featureless. The distributive structure of the main blockis organized on a vertical axis in the usual Palladian manner, withthe basement floor for the service areas, the piano nobile for theowner’s residence and finally the granary. All the rooms have flatceilings while, on the walls, Giallo Fiorentino designed complexwebs of allegorical figures, the meanings of some of which arestill obscure.

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VViillllaa EEmmoo - Fanzolo di Vedelago, Treviso

The definitive point of arrival of the Palladian villa as aconsummately new architype, in which the practical needs of thefarming life are translated into original forms and into a newlanguage inspired by ancient architecture, can certainly be foundin Villa Emo. The functional buildings for managing the land,which in the fifteenth-century villa were arranged randomlyaround the farmyard, achieved an architectural synthesis in theVilla Emo that had never been seen before, one that united themanor house, barchesse, and dovecotes in a linear unit. Thedating of the building is disputed, but was probably 1558, afterthe Villas Barbaro and Badoer with which it shares the generallayout. By now accepted by the great aristocratic families,Palladio built the villa for Leonardo Emo, whose family hadowned property at Fanzolo from the middle of the Quattrocento.The area was crossed by the ancient Via Postumia, and the layoutof the fields followed the grid of Roman centuriation. The villa isoriented in accordance with this ancient grid, as can easily beseen from the building entrances, aligned in a very longperspective. The composition of the complex is hierarchical,dominated by the prominence of the manor house, which israised on a basement and linked to the ground by a long stoneramp; the two rectilinear and symmetrical wings of the barchesseat the sides terminate with dovecote towers. The purity of thedesign is as surprising as it is measured: it is sufficient to note howone quarter of the diameter of the end columns of the loggia isabsorbed by the wall and moderates the passage from the cavityin the shade to the walls in full light. The order chosen was theDoric one, the simplest, and even the windows have no cornices.Corresponding to the stereometric logic of the exteriors is theextraordinary internal decoration by Battista Zelotti, who hadalready worked in Palladio’s Villa Godi and the Malcontenta.

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VViillllaa FFoossccaarrii -known as the Malcontenta, Venezia

The villa Palladio designed for the brothers Nicolò and AlviseFoscari around the end of the 1550s rose as an isolated blockwithout farm outbuildings at the edges of the Lagoon, along theRiver Brenta. Rather than as a villa-farm, it is therefore configuredas a suburban residence which could be reached quickly by boatfrom the centre of Venice. The clients’ family was one of the mostpowerful in the city so that the residence has a majestic, almostregal character, unknown in all the other Palladian villas, towhich the splendid internal decoration, the work of BattistaFranco and Gian Battista Zelotti, contributes. Recent studies havedocumented an intervention by the Foscaris on Palladio's behalffor the design of an altar for the church of San Pantalon in 1555which reveals that their relationship predates the design of thevilla. The building rises on a high basement which separates thepiano nobile from the damp ground and confers magnificence tothe villa, raised on a podium like an ancient temple. Many motifsderived from the building tradition of the Lagoon coexist withelements of ancient architecture: as in Venice, the principalfacade faces the water but the pronaos and the great flight ofsteps are modelled on the temple at the mouth of the Clitumno,which Palladio knew well. The majestic twin access rampsimposed a sort of ceremonial path on visiting guests: after landingin front of the building, they ascended towards the proprietorwho waited for then at the centre of the pronaos. The traditionalPalladian solution of stiffening the sides of the projecting pronaosusing sections of wall is sacrificed specifically to make it possibleto connect the steps. The villa is a particularly effectivedemonstration of Palladio's skill in obtaining monumental effectsusing poor materials, essentially bricks and plaster. As can beseen because of the deterioration of its surfaces, the whole villais made of brick, including the columns (except for the bases andcapitals which are created more easily by cutting stone), withmarbled plaster which imitates a smooth rusticated stone face assometimes appears in the cellae of ancient temples. The rearfaçade is one of the highest achievements among Palladio’sworks with a system of apertures which makes the internal layoutreadable; an example is the wall of the great vaulted central roomrendered virtually transparent by the Diocletian window aboveanother window with three lights. The reference to theperspective of Raphael's Villa Madama is extremely clear in thelatter, documenting a debt of knowledge which Palladio wouldnever admit directly.

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CCoonnvveennttoo ddeellllaa CCaarriittàà - Venezia

Three years after his unfortunate debut at San Pietro di Castelloand a few months after starting the building work for the refectoryof San Giorgio Maggiore, Palladio got another opportunity towork with a Venetian ecclesiastical client. This was in March1561 when he was paid for a model for the convent of theLateran Canons. Palladio invented a grandiose plan for themonks with an atrium of monumental composite columns andtwo courtyards separated by a refectory, clearly inspired by hisstudies of ancient Roman homes. After 1569, however, thebuilding work languished following the completion of the cloisterand atrium, the latter destroyed by a fire in 1630. In order tounderstand this magnificent fragment it is necessary – with somecaution – to rely on the illustrations in the Quattro Libri. Thepoints of reference for the Carità convent project – whichprofoundly affected Giorgio Vasari when he visited Venice in1566 – were Palladio’s reflections on the baths and, especially,on the homes of the ancient Romans, studied and reconstructedfor the 1556 edition of Vitruvius. As conceived by Palladio, thehome of the ancients could only be recreated in terms of a largeorganized structure (such as a monastic complex) or, in a lessermanner, in a private home such as the Palazzo Porto in Vicenza:something that was effectively very far from the disorganizedreality of ancient Roman homes. Three architectural featuresfrom this extraordinary project survive substantially today: theoval staircase hollow in the middle, the sacristy of the churchmodelled like the tablinum in ancient houses and the largecloister wall with three superimposed orders. The tablinum isunquestionably one of the purest examples of Palladianclassicism: the free columns and the apsed ends were probablyinspired by the remains of similar rooms located around thefrigidarium in the Baths of Caracalla and used by Palladio in thereconstruction of other baths. The chromatic contrast betweenthe elements of the order is unusual: the frieze along the wall,coloured red, is grafted onto a white stone trabeation sectorwhich, in turn, is supported by a red marble column. The sameaccentuated double-colouring can be found again in thepowerful cloister wall with superimposed orders which owes agreat deal to the courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Themasonry work was carried out using shaped bricks designed tobe left visible, protected by red paint, while the capitals, basesand arch keystones were made of white stone. This expressivefreedom is one of the characteristics of Palladio’s mature periodwhen his assimilation of ancient Roman architecture was such asto allow him the liberty to seek unusual effects, for examplesuperimposing a Corinthian frieze with bucrania and festoons (onthe model of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli) on the Doric first orderof the courtyard.

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VViillllaa SSaarreeggoo - Santa Sofia di Pedemonte, Verona

Isolated at the western limit of ‘Palladian geography’ in theVeneto and one of the last buildings designed by Palladio, VillaSarego at Santa Sofia is exceptional in many ways. Unlike thetypical Palladian villa, generally an extremely hierarchicalcomposition dominated by the solidity of the main house itself,here Palladio prefers to break up the space around the great‘vacuum’ of the central courtyard, probably taking his ownreconstructions of the ancient Roman villa as his model. Insteadof bricks and plaster, the great Ionic columns are made withblocks of limestone, superimposed to create irregular piers: thetype of material used (from the Sarego family quarries not faraway) and the gigantic dimension of the columns contribute tothe generation of a sensation of power never achieved in anyother villa he built. The client was Marcantonio Sarego fromVerona who came into possession of the Santa Sofia property in1552 but only decided in 1565 to radically renovate the buildingcomplex he had inherited from his father. Unfortunately theinformation regarding the construction of the complex is scarceand fragmentary, and only a small part of it was completedcompared with the great scheme drawn by Palladio in theQuattro Libri: less than a half of the rectangular courtyard and itsnorthern section in particular. In 1740, Francesco Muttoni wasable to see the trace of the entire courtyard marked by the basesfor the columns which were to have completed it. It is thereforequite plausible that the work was definitively interrupted by thedeath of Marcantonio in the 1580s, even if it seems certain thatthere was a desire to complete at least the part of the complexreserved for the family apartments. The building was considerablychanged by the architect Luigi Trezza in the middle of thenineteenth century: new living spaces were added along thewestern side of the building, grafted on to the sixteenth-centuryoriginal while an appearance of completion was given to thecourtyard by the continuation of the trabeation and balustrade.

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CChhiieessaa ddii SSaann GGiioorrggiioo MMaaggggiioorree - Venezia

In essential continuity with the design of the refectory, a few yearslater Palladio tackled the construction of the convent’s greatchurch, without doubt his most complex and difficult buildingproject since the Loggias of the Basilica in Vicenza. The greatwealth of the monastery and of the powerful Congregation of St.Justina dictated the scale of the operation; the precise liturgicalindications and the Order's traditions determined the choice ofthe longitudinal plan, as well as the presence of the choir,presbytery, cross, nave and dome. Between November 1565 andMarch 1566, Palladio's project was transposed into a model thatmade a profound impression on Giorgio Vasari during a visit toVenice. In January the following year, contracts were signed withthe stone-cutters and masons who were to follow the profiles andmeasurements indicated by Palladio. The general structure wasfinished in 1576. The current façade was erected many yearslater, between 1607 and 1611, though recent studies reveal it tobe far from Palladio’s original intentions. Like Leon BattistaAlberti one hundred years earlier, Palladio took the great edificesof the ancient Roman baths as his model. The floor plan clearlyshows the four spatial entities Palladio used to compose the bodyof the building. The main nave with its barrel vault and threecross vaults – just like the frigidarium in Roman baths – isfollowed by the sudden lateral expansion of the apses and thevertical thrust of the great dome on a drum. Alongside this,Palladio placed the extremely studied space of the presbyteryfrom which can be seen, through a transenna of columns, thechoir with the transenna acting as the pronaos of a villa throughwhich the landscape could be observed. The sequence of spacesruns along a very marked central axis which provides continuityas one passes from one part of the church to another. Palladiosought the maximum variety in the details of the order andrejected easy and predictable solutions. He gave great emphasisto the power of the individual elements: the half-columns areswollen beyond their diameter and the pilasters projectconsiderably. The result is a grandiose building which allows usto experience the spatial feeling of ancient Roman complexes.

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VViillllaa AAllmmeerriiccoo CCaapprraa - known as the Rotonda, Vicenza

The universal icon of Palladian villas, in reality its ownerconsidered the Rotonda to be an urban, or more accurately,suburban residence. Paolo Almerico actually sold his palazzo inthe town to move just outside the walls, and in the Quattro LibriPalladio included the Rotonda among the palazzi and not amongthe villas. Moreover it is isolated on the summit of a little hill andoriginally had no farm buildings. The canon, Paolo Almerico, forwhom Palladio designed the villa in 1566, was a man ofalternating fortunes who finally returned to Vicenza after abrilliant career in the Papal court. The villa was already habitable,though incomplete, in 1569, and in 1591, two years afterAlmerico's death it was sold to the brothers Odorico and MarioCapra who completed the building works. Taking over fromPalladio after 1580, Scamozzi essentially completed the projectwith some changes that recent studies suggest were very limited.Certainly not a villa-farm, the Rotonda is rather a villa-temple, anabstraction, the mirror of a superior order and harmony. Orientedwith its corners facing the four cardinal points, it is intended to beread as a volume, cube and sphere, almost as if recalling thebasic figures of the Platonic universe. There can be no doubt thatthere are different sources for a residential building on a centralplan but the fact remains that the Rotonda is unique in thearchitecture of all time as if, by constructing a villa perfectlycorresponding to its own self, Palladio wished to erect an idealmodel of his own architecture. The decoration of the building issumptuous, with works by Lorenzo Rubini and GiambattistaAlbanese (statues), Agostino Rubini, Ottavio Ridolfi, Bascapè,Fontana and perhaps Alessandro Vittoria (the stucco decorationof the ceilings and fireplaces), and Anselmo Canera, BernardinoIndia, Alessandro Maganza and, later Ludovico Dorigny(paintings).

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BBrriiddggee aatt BBaassssaannoo - Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza

A powerful flood on the River Brenta in October 1567overwhelmed the historical bridge, a wooden structure on piersand covered by a roof, which was a crucial means ofcommunication between Bassano and Vicenza. Involved in itsreconstruction right from the months immediately after thecollapse, Palladio initially proposed a bridge that was completelydifferent from the previous one, with stone arches in the style ofold Roman bridges. But the town council turned the project downand ordered the architect not to deviate too much from thetraditional structure. In the summer of 1569 Palladio presentedthe definitive project for a bridge which effectively recalled theprevious structure, though radically renewed in terms of thetechnical and structural solutions, and with great visual impact.The sole reference to an architectural language is the use ofTuscan columns as supports for the architrave that bears the roof.Confirming the technological efficiency of the Palladianstructure, the bridge survived for almost two hundred years; it wasrebuilt in accordance with Palladio’s design after a destructiveflood in 1748 and once again after its demolition by Germantroops during the Second World War.

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BBrriiddggee oonn tthhee TTeessiinnaa - Torri di Quartesolo, Vicenza

The beautiful stone bridge which crosses the Tesina at Torri diQuartesolo is very probably the fruit of a 1569 idea of Palladio’s,but only realized eleven years later when the works were carriedout under the direction of Domenico Groppino, one of thearchitect's regular collaborators. The model is clearly that of theBridge of Tiberius in Rimini, particularly appreciated by Palladio,from which the elegant niches against the pilasters derive.Though considerably modified later, the crossing of the Tesinaremains the only masonry bridge by Palladio which has survivedto the present day.

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PPaallaazzzzoo BBaarrbbaarraann ddaa PPoorrttoo - Vicenza

This splendid residence, erected between 1570 and 1575 for theVicentine nobleman Montano Barbarano, is the only great citypalazzo which Andrea Palladio managed to complete in itsentirety. At least three hand-drawn plans (conserved in London)exist and document alternative proposals for the building'slayout. Quite different from the solution actually built, they testifyto the complexity of the planning procedure. Barbarano hadasked Palladio to take account of the various houses belonging tohis family already present on the area of the new palazzo and,when the plan had already been drawn up, he acquired anotheradjacent house with the result that the position of the entrancedoor became asymmetrical. In any case, the constraints imposedby the site and by a demanding client provided an opportunity forcourageous and refined solutions: Palladio’s intervention ismasterful with the drafting of a sophisticated ‘renovation’ projectwhich merges the various pre-existing buildings into a single unit.A magnificent four-column atrium on the ground floor links thetwo pre-existing buildings together. Palladio was required to solvetwo problems when creating it: the structural one of supportingthe floor of the great reception room on the piano nobile, and thecompositional one of restoring a symmetrical appearance to aspace compromised by the oblique course of the perimeter wallsof the pre-existing houses. On the basis of the model of the wingsof the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome, Palladio divided the spaceinto three naves, arranging four Ionic columns in the centre: thisallowed him to reduce the width of the opening of the centralcrosses, braced by lateral barrel vaults. In this way he erected asystem that is structurally very efficient, capable of supporting thefloor of the room above without difficulty. The central columnsare then linked to the perimeter walls by fragments of rectilinearbeams which absorb the irregular plan of the atrium: the result isa sort of ‘Serlian’ system, a stratagem which is conceptuallysimilar to the one on the loggias of the Basilica. The unusual typeof Ionic capital – deriving from the temple of Saturn in the RomanForum – was also used because it made it possible to mask theslight but significant rotations necessary for aligning the columnsand demi-columns. Montano involved some of the great artists ofthe time for the decoration of the palazzo in several stages:Battista Zelotti, who had already worked in the Palladian spacesin Villa Emo at Fanzolo, Anselmo Canera and Andrea Vicentino;the stuccoes were entrusted to Lorenzo Rubini who had producedthe external decoration of the Loggia del Capitanio that same yearand, after his death in 1574, to his son Agostino. The outcome isa sumptuous palazzo capable of rivalling the homes of theThiene, Porto and Valmarana families, which permitted its ownerto represent himself in the city as a leading member of Vicenza’scultural elite. In his Historia di Vicenza published in 1591, IacopoMarzari recalls Montano Barbarano as ‘well read and anexcellent musician’. The 1592 inventory includes several flutes,confirming the existence of intense musical activity in thebuilding.

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PPaallaazzzzoo PPoorrttoo iinn PPiiaazzzzaa CCaasstteelllloo - Vicenza

The striking fragment of palazzo which provides the backdrop inPiazza del Castello provides manifest evidence of theunsuccessful conclusion of a Palladian project. Clearly visible onthe left of the fragment is the old fifteenth-century housebelonging to the Porto family, intended to be demolishedprogressively with the progress of the work on the new building:having seen the results, one can only appreciate thefarsightedness of the client, Alessandro Porto. Its dating isuncertain, but undoubtedly after 1570, both because the palazzois not included in the Quattro Libri (published in Venice that sameyear) and because Alessandro inherited the family property inPiazza Castello following the death of his father, Benedetto, whenthe family assets were divided up with his brothers Orazio andPompeo in 1571. Francesco Thiene, owner of the Palladianpalazzo of the same name at the other end of the square, marriedAlessandro's sister, Isabella Porto, and as had already been thecase with Iseppo Porto and his brothers-in-law, Marcantonio andAdriano Thiene, it was perhaps the competition between the twofamilies that gave rise to the unusual dimensions of Palazzo Porto.In any case, the very position of the palazzo, the backcloth for thesquare, made it necessary to create accentuated monumentality,capable of dominating the great open space in front of it: thesame logic attempted just a few years earlier with the Loggia delCapitaniato in Piazza dei Signori. It is quite probable that thebuilding was intended to have seven bays and a courtyardbounded by an exedra as revealed by an analysis of the survivingmasonry. It is not clear why the work was stopped, and VincenzoScamozzi stated in 1615 that he was personally responsible forcompleting it as it is today.

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CChhiieessaa ddeell RReeddeennttoorree - Venezia

A terrible plague struck Venice in the summer of 1575 andcaused 50,000 deaths in two years, almost one Venetian in three.In September 1576, when the disease seemed invincible, theSenate called for divine help and promised to build a newchurch, the Redentore, or Church of the Most Holy Redeemer.Sorting quickly through various options as regards the form,location and designer, the first stone of the Palladian project waslaid in May 1577. On the following 20 July the end of the plaguewas celebrated with a procession which reached the church bymeans of a bridge of boats, giving rise to a tradition that stillcontinues today. The church was assigned to the CapuchinFathers who determined both the floor plan based on the modelused by the Franciscans (of which the Capuchins are a branch)and the decision to reject the use of marble and costly materials,preferring bricks and terracotta even for the splendid interiorcapitals. Respecting the Capuchin’s functional scheme for thefloor plan, Palladio reflected deeply on ancient bath structures asthe source for the sequences of spaces which harmoniouslysucceed each other. (It is possible to find many of thecharacteristic elements of the plan in a drawing of the Baths ofAgrippa.) The plan in fact derives from the composition of fourperfectly defined spatial cells which differ from one another: therectangle of the nave, the side chapels which recall the form ofthe narthex, the tri-lobed chamber composed of two apses andthe screen of curved columns, and the choir. Once these figureshad been defined with precision, Palladio studied refinedsolutions to accompany the passage of one into the other, seekingthe harmonic fusion of the whole. The trabeation of the mainorder, for example, runs around the entire internal perimeter ofthe church, and is particularly effective when passing thepilasters of the dome diagonally. The result is the fruit ofconsummate compositional skill and a particular sensibility fordramatic effects. The façade of the Redentore constitutes the mostmature achievement of Palladio’s reflections on church frontswith intersected orders, derived from San Francesco della Vigna.Inspiration for this type of façade ranges from the VitruvianBasilica in Fano to Bramante at the beginning of the century. Inthe specific case of the Redentore, Palladio assembles severalsolutions, also found in the Quatrro Libri, such as the Temple ofPeace or the Temple of the Sun and of the Moon.

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TTeeaattrroo OOlliimmppiiccoo - Vicenza

Founded in 1556, the Accademia Olimpica had to wait for overtwenty years before it managed to provide itself with a permanenttheatre structure that could host the performances previouslystaged in ephemeral wooden structures in the courtyards of thepalazzi or in the great hall of the Palazzo della Ragione. It wasonly in 1580, in fact, that the Accademia started to build thetheatre to a plan by its own academician, Andrea Palladio, on apiece of land provided by the Commune of Vicenza. Thearchitect died in August that same year without seeing theconclusion of the works which were completed by his son, Silla.After Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi was employed on the theatreand not only created the stage but also the scenery for theinaugural performance in 1585, with the seven streets of Thebes,destined to become an integral part of the building. Recentstudies have revealed that the original Palladian project onlyenvisaged a single perspective developed in correspondencewith the middle door of the stage, while painted backdrops wereintended to be placed in the two side openings. At the same time,the aperture provided by the two wing walls and the ‘ducal’ceiling above the proscenium can be traced to the Palladianplan. The dream of generations of Renaissance humanists andarchitects, until then unrealized, became true with the TeatroOlimpico: the erection of one of the symbolic buildings of theclassical cultural tradition in a stable form. The Palladian projectreconstructs the Roman theatre with an archaeological precisionfounded on the painstaking study of Vitruvius and of the ruins ofancient theatre complexes. As such, it constitutes a sort ofspiritual testament of the great Vicentine architect. The theatre ofthe Ancients was reborn with the Olimpico, and in designing itPalladio achieved absolute consonance with the language of thegreat classical architecture in which he had sought for his wholelife to rediscover the laws of secret harmony ‘with a considerableeffort and great diligence and love’.

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Index of Buildings

Basilica Palladiana - Vicenza 11

Bridge on the Tesina - Torri di Quartesolo,Vicenza 23

Bridge at Bassano - Bassano del Grappa, Vicenza 22

Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore - Venezia 20

Chiesa del Redentore - Venezia 26

Convento della Carità - Venezia 18

Loggias of Palazzo della Ragione - Vicenza 11

Lucan House - Co. Dublin, Ireland 4

Malcontenta - Malcontenta di Mira, Venezia 17

Palazzo Barbaran da Porto - Vicenza 24

Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello - Vicenza 25

Palazzo Thiene - Vicenza 9

Provost’s House - Dublin, Ireland 28

Rotonda - Vicenza 21

Teatro Olimpico - Vicenza 27

Villa Almerico Capra - Vicenza 21

Villa Badoer - Fratta Polesine, Rovigo 15

Villa Barbaro - Maser, Treviso 14

Villa Cornaro - Piombino Dese, Padova 13

Villa Emo - Fanzolo di Vedelago, Treviso 16

Villa Foscari Malcontenta di Mira, Venezia 17

Villa Pisani - Montagnana, Padova 12

Villa Pojana - Pojana Maggiore, Vicenza 10

Villa Sarego - Santa Sofia di Pedemonte, Verona 19

Provost’s House, Dublin, engraving from Walter Harris, History of Dublin, 1766.