Andrea Palladio. You may not know his name, but you have definitely seen the High Renaissance architect’s influence on the traditional architecture of Western Europe and indeed America.
Palladio built with beauty and honored his ancient peers.
“As one of the last great architects of the High Renaissance, Palladio translated the language of classical antiquity into a flexible and distinctive vocabulary that was used internationally by architects well into the nineteenth century,” according to The Metropolitan Museum of Art website.
Ancient Architecture
Before “meeting” Palladio properly, it’s good to note the general development and characteristics of ancient Greek and Roman architecture, as often the two styles are merged as “classical architecture.”The ancient Greeks cut large blocks of marble into beams that echoed their traditional timber beam-and-pillar buildings. They used three different regional styles of columns: “Doric” from mainland and western Greece, “Ionic” from eastern Greece, and “Corinthian” from Corinth. Each column had a specific proportion and decorative scheme, consisting of a base, a capital (marble block at the top), and an entablature (a horizontal beam that sits atop the capital). Together these elements form an “order.”
“Through centuries of trial and error the Greeks had evolved proportions for the various parts of their buildings designed exactly to satisfy their very highly developed aesthetic sensibilities. They made all their straight lines delicately curved to allow for optical illusions, and built their temples—their principal building type—to within an accuracy of a minute fraction of an inch,” wrote John Penoyre and Michael Ryan in “The Observer’s Book of Architecture.”
When Rome conquered and then colonized Greece, Roman architects adopted and adapted the country’s beam-and-pillar building motifs. The most notable additions that they made were the dome and arch. Romans required larger, roofed buildings, so their architects added semicircular arches for structural support instead of columns.
The ancient Romans also added two orders, the “Tuscan” and “Composite,” increasing the classical orders to five. These columns mostly took on a decorative function, sometimes almost disappearing into the fabric of the building as pilasters (flattened columns).
Experts universally agree that the Parthenon in Athens stands as the finest surviving example of ancient Greek architecture, and that the Pantheon in Rome stands as a perfect reflection of ancient Roman architecture.
Palladio’s Ode to His Ancient Peers
Palladio, perhaps more than any other architect before him, made ancient architecture available in an easily understood format. Born Andrea di Pietro in Padua, then part of the Republic of Venice, he lived (1508–1580) at a defining moment for classical architecture. The Italians’ interest in classical teachings and reviving the classical arts was at its height, aided by an influx of scholars taking refuge from the Turks’ recent (1453) sack of Constantinople. Those scholars brought ancient manuscripts and classical knowledge with them to Western Europe and Italy in particular.Having trained as a builder and then as a stonecutter, apprenticing with noted sculptor Bartolomeo Cavazza da Sossano in Padua, Andrea then moved to Vicenza and worked for the renowned stonecutter and stonemason Giovanni di Giacomo da Porlezza. It was here that he met the humanist Giangiorgio Trissino, a nobleman and amateur architect who forever changed Palladio’s life course—and his name.
Trissino gave Andrea the name “Palladio” after the Greek goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athene.
In Palladio, Trissino saw brilliant promise: “a very spirited young man with an inclination to mathematics.” He took him under his wing, educating him in the classics and introducing him to the only surviving ancient treatise on architecture, Marcus Vitruvius’s “De architectura,” written around 30–20 B.C. Vitruvius believed that nature held the blueprint for beauty. He cited that scholars had found similarities in the proportions and symmetry of “well-shaped men” and that this mathematical formula for natural harmony and beauty could be applied to architecture.
In 1556, Palladio illustrated classical scholar Daniele Barbaro’s translation of Vitruvius’s work. Trissino first took Palladio to Rome in the 1540s, where he learned directly from drawing the ancient ruins of Rome.
Of ancient Rome’s architecture, Palladio wrote: “As grandiose ruins, the ancient buildings still give a clear and fine indication of the virtue and grandeur of the Roman nation, to such an extent that the study of these qualities of virtue have repeatedly fascinated and enthused me; I directed all my thoughts to them with the greatest of expectations.”
He shared these thoughts in his 1570 treatise “I quattro libri dell'architettura” (“The Four Books of Architecture”). It’s a treatise that spoke to Palladio’s contemporaries—artisans and his architect peers—and guided their practical work. He included woodcut illustrations of plans, elevations, and cross-sections, along with architectural details.
In the first book, Palladio describes building materials, techniques, and the five classical orders. In the second book, he covers mostly his own designs for private houses, villas, and mansions, something unique from treatises before his. In the third, he mainly focuses on ancient Roman streets, buildings, and basilicas, and in book four he details ancient Roman temples, including sketches of the Pantheon.
“Among all the temples that are to be seen in Rome, none is more celebrated than the Pantheon, now called the Ritonda, nor that remains more entire; since it is to be seen almost in its first state as to the fabric, but stript [sic] of the statues, and other ornaments,” wrote Palladio in Chapter XX of “The Four Books of Architecture.”
Ancient Architecture and Contemporary Design
Along with his treatise, Palladio’s renown came from his private and public buildings in Italy. We only have to look to the Italian countryside, first to the Veneto region where Palladio lived, to see just how his architecture spread across the Italian landscape.In Palladio’s day, the Republic of Venice was in constant conflict. Rather than relying on imported produce, noblemen moved to the surrounding countryside where they bought and developed agricultural land. These noblemen needed countryside homes. Palladio met that demand, defining the Italian villa thereafter.
Palladio saw the villa as a small town under one roof, where Veneto’s nobility could reflect their humanistic sensibilities for rest, study of the classics, and surveying their agricultural lands without leaving the building. Each villa had central living quarters flanked by outbuildings, such as stables, concealed behind a series of classically inspired arcades (a row of columns, called a colonnade, supporting a series of arches) creating one harmonious whole.
Palladio put the sacred temple structure of elegant orders on the central building block of his villa designs. He mistakenly believed, as most of his peers did at the time, that ancient Roman villas echoed the temple design.
In 1540, Palladio completed his first villa, Villa Godi, at Lonedo. His Villa Godi design contains elements that defined his later works. The villa consists of a central block flanked by two symmetrical side blocks. The central block is set back from the side blocks so that one façade projects forward while the other recedes an equal distance.
Scholars, however, agree that the best example of Palladio’s villa designs is Villa Emo in Vedelago, in northeast Italy, designed in the 1550s. With its raised portico and agricultural buildings set behind arcades, its grandeur extends even to the humble farm buildings.
In Villa Emo, Palladio put into practice what Vitruvius wrote in his treatise: that architects should design buildings of “firmitas” (strength), “utilitas” (functionality), and “venustas” (beauty).
Of Villa Emo, Palladio wrote: “The cellars, granaries, and stables, and other farm buildings are on either side of the owner’s house, and at the ends there are dovecots [dove houses] that are useful for the owner and add beauty to the place; one can move under cover throughout it.”
According to The Metropolitan Museum of Art website, “Villa Rotunda [Villa La Rotonda] demonstrates Palladio’s mastery in crystallizing classical ideals of geometric form, absolute symmetry, and harmonic proportion in plain, dignified designs.” Palladio built the villa on a hillock in Vicenza, in northeast Italy, and noted that the site was “one of the most agreeable and delightful that may be found, on a hillock with gentle approaches and surrounded by other charming hills, all cultivated, that give the effect of a huge theater.”
Vitruvius and Palladio died centuries ago, but the heart of their classical works lives on. Their direct influence can be seen in architect Inigo Jones’s works in England, such as the Queen’s House in Greenwich (the country’s first classical building), and in Thomas Jefferson’s works in America, such as Monticello and the academic village he created in Charlottesville, Virginia, especially The Rotunda, to name a few. But their influence can also be seen in the fabric of American life, in traditional church architecture, and even in the cornices, baseboards, and ceiling moldings of homes.
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