Born in Padua in 1508, Andrea di
Pietro (or della Gondola) began
his career as an apprentice
stonemason in Vicenza. At thirty
he became the protégé of a local
nobleman, Count Giangiorgio
Trissino, the leading light of the
humanist Accademia Olimpico - a
learned society which still meets
in Vicenza. Trissino gave the
architect his classicized name,
Palladio
, directed his architectural
training, brought him into contact
with the dominant class of Vicenza
and, perhaps most crucially, took
him to Rome - the first of many
trips he made through Italy,
sketching Imperial Roman remains.
Between 1540 and his death in
1580, Palladio created around a
dozen palaces and public buildings
in Vicenza, nearly twenty villas
in the countryside of the Veneto
and two important religious
buildings in Venice. But unlike
the pioneers of Renaissance
Classicism - architects such as
Alberti, Brunelleschi and Bramante
- Palladio's reputation does not
rest on a particular
transformation of architectural
style. Instead, his fame - and he
is arguably the most influential
architect in the world - rests on
the way he is considered to have
perfected existing values of
harmony and proportion.
In particular, his lasting
influence stems from I Quattro
Libri dell'Architettura or
"The Four Books of
Architecture", a treatise he
published in 1570, towards the end
of his career. Other architects
had written important works of
theory, but Palladio's is unique
in its practical applicability,
serving almost as a text book for
Classical architecture. As the
style spread into the rest of
Europe and beyond, it was to
Palladio's book that architects
like Inigo Jones (and later,
Thomas Jefferson) turned, finding
both inspiration and guidance in
his examples.
Today, Palladio has perhaps
become the victim of his own
success. The ubiquity of
neo-Classicism in second-rate
churches and third-rate bank
buildings can make it hard to
sense the freshness and brilliance
of his designs, though it still
shines through in masterpieces
like the Basilica in Vicenza, the
Villa Barbaro near Ásolo and the
churches of the Redentore and San
Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Even
if you're inclined to agree with
Herbert Read's opinion that
"in the back of every dying
civilization there sticks a bloody
Doric column", you might
leave the region converted.
