Andrea Palladio | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

1508-1580

Italian Architect

Italian architect Andrea Palladio is one of the most important figures in the history of Western architecture. He initially gained fame for his design of palaces and villas and theories linking current thinking about architecture with classical Roman style. These ideas have been imitated again and again for more than 400 years. Palladio's influence was seen most notably in eighteenth-century America, England, and Italy. While the architect's work stands as a lasting tribute, Palladio's four-volume treatise, I Quattro Libri dell'Architecttura (1570), or Four Books of Architecture, established his enduring reputation worldwide. The collected work was an international bestseller for more than two centuries.

Born Andrea di Pietro in 1508, Palladio was the son of a grain mill worker in Padua, a major city in the Venetian Republic. He apprenticed to a stonemason at 13, but broke his contract three years later and moved to his adopted hometown of Vicenza in northern Italy. Palladio joined the mason's guild and joined the workshop of Giacomo da Porlezza, the city's most important architect at that point.

In his late twenties, Palladio met Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550), the city's leading intellectual and humanist. Trissino was rebuilding a villa in nearby Cricoli in classical ancient Roman style and set up an academy there to provide young aristocrats with a traditional education. Through his association with Porlezza, Palladio worked on the renovation project, and his natural design skills led Trissino to invite him to join the academy. Trissino then directed the young man's initial forays into architecture and renamed him Palladio, a frequent occurrence in humanist study at the time.

Palladio's focused architectural education was unusual in this period; most students were steered toward a general course of study. Under Trissino's guidance, Palladio adopted his mentor's ideas regarding symmetrical layout, with a large central room and flanking towers. Trissino also introduced his student to the works of Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), whose five books on architecture were the first to deal with the subject visually as well as in theory. Serlio's treatise served as a blueprint for Palladio's later publications. Palladio studied ancient Roman architect and theorist Vitruvius, who he labeled as his master and guide.

In 1540 Palladio designed his first villa and first palace. These works incorporated the teachings of Trissino with Palladio's own innovations based on his study of ancient Roman buildings. Over the next several decades Palladio made many trips to Rome, which greatly enhanced and solidified his theories about architecture. He applied these ideas as he set out creating palaces for Vicenza's elite, including many of his fellow students from Trissino's academy.

While in Rome from 1554-56, Palladio published Le Antichita di Roma (The Antiquities of Rome), which remained the standard guidebook to Rome for 200 years. He also collaborated with a classical scholar in reconstructing Roman buildings for a new edition of Vitruvius's De Architectura, or On Architecture. Over a 20-year period of intense construction, Palladio became the first architect to systematize the plan of a house and use the Greco-Roman temple front as a roofed porch.

More important, in 1570 Palladio published his four-volume treatise I Quattro. The work was a summary of his lifelong study of classical architecture. The first two books outline Palladio's principles of building materials and his designs for town and country villas. The third volume illustrates his thinking about bridges, town planning, and basilicas, which were oblong public halls. The final book deals with reconstruction of ancient Roman temples.

I Quattro cemented Palladio's place in architectural history. The treatise popularized classical design and his innovative style, subsequently became a veritable blueprint for design worldwide, reaching its zenith in the eighteenth century. In the eyes of many scholars, the work stands as the clearest and best-organized textbook on architecture ever produced.

This is the complete article, containing 634 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).