Palladio, Andrea (redirected from Andrea di Pietro della Gondola)

Palladio, Andrea (ändrĕ`ä päl-lä`dēō), 1508–80, Italian architect of the Renaissance. He studied in Vicenza, and later in Rome he examined the remains of Roman architecture. The measured drawings he made of these were published with compositions of his own and, based on the treatise of Vitruvius, a description of practical systems of design and proportioning. This famous work, I quattro libri dell'architectura (1570, tr. The Four Books of Architecture, 1716), was reissued many times.

His buildings, chiefly town palaces and villas, were executed mostly in Vicenza and its vicinity. Usually they were made of humble materials that contrasted with their formal classicism. Palladio's first important work (begun 1549) was to rebuild the medieval town hall, the basilica at Vicenza. He designed arches supported on minor columns and framed between larger engaged columns. Each of these arch-and-column compositions formed what is termed a "Palladian motif" and was much imitated. The characteristic facade of many of Palladio's country houses displayed the classic temple front—superimposed pilasters or columns or often a colossal order two stories in height and supported by a rusticated ground story. Generally in his buildings he systematized the ground plan, designing a central hall around which other rooms were grouped in absolute symmetry. Among his best-known houses (built in the 1550s and 1560s) are the Villa Rotonda (overlooking Vicenza), the Chiericati Palace and the Valmarana Palace (both: Vicenza), and the Villa Barbaro (Maser). At Venice he adapted the classical motif to three church facades, in his designs for San Francesco della Vigna, San Giorgio Maggiore, and Il Redentore. Just before his death Palladio planned the Teatro Olimpico, in which he incorporated a permanent scenic background, built in architectural perspective.

Reviving and redesigning the ancient Roman villa for a new humanist age, Palladio set the vocabulary of architectural pattern, proportion, and ornament for much of Western domestic architecture for centuries to come. His books and buildings exerted an unparalleled influence on European and American architecture. In the 17th cent., Inigo Jones imported Palladio's classic grandeur of design into England and profoundly influenced the course of English architecture. Subsequently, William Kent, Colin Campbell, Sir Christopher Wren, Sir William Chambers, and others created a great body of works termed Palladian. In the United States his influence can be seen in the manor houses of southern plantations, e.g., Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

Bibliography

See R. Wittkower, Palladio and Palladianism (1974); J. Ackerman, Palladio (2d ed. 1977); W. Rybczynski, The Perfect House (2002).

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Palladio, Andrea

 orig. Andrea di Pietro della Gondola

(born Nov. 30, 1508, Padua, Republic of Venice—died August 1580, Vicenza) Italian architect. While a young mason, he was noticed by an Italian scholar and soon found himself studying mathematics, music, philosophy, and Classical authors. From 1541 he made several trips to Rome to study ancient ruins. His first palace design, the Palazzo Civena (1540–46), was innovative for its use of an arcaded area behind the main elevation, in imitation of a Roman forum. In his villas, Palladio tried to re-create the Roman villa based on ancient descriptions. His first, Villa Godi at Lonedo (c. 1540–42), contained elements for which he is famous, including symmetrical wings and a walled court. His most widely copied villa was the Villa Rotonda (1550–51), near Vicenza. Palladio was the first to systematize the plan of a house and to use the ancient Greco-Roman temple front as a portico. His reconstruction of the Basilica (town hall) in Vicenza (begun 1549) employs a two-story arcade with a motif that came to be known as Palladian: rounded arches flanked by rectangular openings. His facades for San Francesco della Vigna (c. 1565), San Giorgio Maggiore (begun 1566), and Il Redentore (begun 1576), all in Venice, became prototypes for attaching Classical temple fronts to basilican churches. Though Palladio absorbed contemporary Mannerist motifs, his plans and elevations always retained a repose and order not associated with Mannerist architecture. His Four Books of Architecture was possibly the most influential architectural pattern book ever printed. His influence climaxed during the 18th-century Classical Revival; the resulting Palladianism spread through Europe and the U.S.

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Palladio, Andrea 

(real surname di Pietro). Born Nov. 30, 1508, in Padua (?); died Aug. 19, 1580, in Vicenza. Italian architect. Son of a stonemason.

In 1524, Palladio moved to Vicenza, where he worked as a stonemason. He was noticed by the humanist G. G. Trissino, while taking part in the construction of the latter’s villa in Cricoli (near Veneto). Trissino encouraged Palladio to study architecture and to receive a humanistic education. Palladio traveled to Verona, Rome, Split (Croatia), and Nîmes (France) to take measurements of ancient Greek and Roman monuments.

Palladio’s structures, based on a thorough understanding of ancient architecture and influenced by Venetian Renaissance architecture, represent some of the crowning achievements of the Late Renaissance. The reconstruction of the basilica of Vicenza, also known as the Palazzo della Ragione, was Palladio’s first major work. He added to the 13th-century palace a two-story marble arcade (begun 1549) that combines Roman grandeur with Venetian freedom and rhythmic richness. Palladio also built several palaces in Vicenza, including the Thiene palace (begun 1550), the Chiericati palace (begun 1550), the Valmarana palace (begun 1566), and the Loggia del Capitanio (1571). Most of the palaces are brick structures with plastered facades embellished with classical columns.

Palladio did not view the classical orders as inflexible norms of architectural form but rather as elements with which to produce the most diversified effects. His flexibility in reckoning with the practical problems of construction was unprecedented. Relying on the organizing principle of the classical orders, Palladio thought of a wall as being not an amorphous mass but as a body having a foundation, middle supporting element, and top. In order to maintain this relationship in multistory buildings, he frequently used the colossal order, which encompasses several floors.

Palladio developed new types of palaces and provided new variations for almost all previously existing types. He achieved a natural relationship between the facade and the building’s layout, overcoming the contrast between the facade and interior courtyard characteristic of High Renaissance palaces. His palaces were well integrated in their urban surroundings, but his conception of an open architecture that blended harmoniously with its surroundings was most strongly reflected in his villas, which are imbued with a light, elegiac feeling for nature. Palladio’s villas include the Villa Rotunda near Vicenza (1551–67; completed 1580–91, architect V. Scamozzi) and the Villa Barbaro-Volpi in Moser (near Treviso, 1560–70).

In his church buildings, which belong to the late period of his career (San Giorgio Maggiore, 1565–80; the Redentore, completed 1592—both in Venice), Palladio combined the colossal and conventional orders on the facade and succeeded in reconciling the motif of a classical temple portico with the interior space and serene tranquility of a basilica. In the Olympic Theater in Vicenza (1580–85, completed by Scamozzi), which is one of the first theater buildings of the modern period, Palladio used an optical illusion to create an impression of great depth on the stage (five radiating streets behind the stage come together in an artificially intensified perspective).

Palladio is well known for his treatise The Four Books of Architecture (1570), in which he described his completed and unrealized projects, and set forth the system of classical orders and provisions for reconstructing ancient monuments (interpreting them in the Renaissance spirit of Vitruvius). He also published The Antiquities of Rome (1554) and Julius Caesar’s Commentaries (1575). Palladio greatly influenced the subsequent development of European architecture, resulting in the emergence of an individual trend in 17th- and 18th-century classicism.

WORKS

Chetyre knigi ob arkhitekture, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1938.

REFERENCES

Arkin, D. E. “Palladio v Vichentse.” In his Obrazy arkhitektury. Moscow, 1941.
Vseobshchaia istoriia arkhitektury, vol. 5. Moscow, 1967. Pages 290–308. Bolletino del Centro di studi d’architettura “Andrea Palladio.” (1958—.)
Pane, R. Andrea Palladio. … Turin, 1961.
Ackermann, J. Palladio. … Harmondsworth, 1966.

M. N. SOKOLOV