1. Andrea Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily Vitruvius, is widely considered to be one of the most influential individuals in the history of architecture.
54 Facts About Andrea Palladio
1. 2.
Andrea Palladio's teachings, summarized in the architectural treatise, The Four Books of Architecture, gained him wide recognition.
3.
The churches of Andrea Palladio are to be found within the "Venice and its Lagoon" UNESCO World Heritage Site.
4.
Andrea Palladio's father, Pietro, called "della Gondola", was a miller.
5.
From an early age, Andrea Palladio was introduced to the work of building.
6.
Andrea Palladio became an assistant to a prominent stonecutter and stonemason, Giovanni di Giacomo da Porlezza in Pedemuro San Biagio, where he joined the guild of stonemasons and bricklayers.
7.
Andrea Palladio was employed as a stonemason to make monuments and decorative sculptures.
8.
Andrea Palladio visited and studied the Roman works in Tivoli, Palestrina and Albano.
9.
Andrea Palladio made numerous changes and additions over the years, adding lavish frescoes framed by classical columns in the Hall of the Muses of the Villa Godi in the 1550s.
10.
Andrea Palladio used Romano's idea for windows by stone corbeaux, a ladder of stone blocks, but Palladio gave the heavy facade a new lightness and grace.
11.
Several other villas of this time are attributed to Andrea Palladio, including the Villa Piovene and Villa Pisani.
12.
Andrea Palladio called it "Basilica", explaining that the functions and form of a modern city hall resembled those of an ancient Roman Basilica.
13.
Andrea Palladio did not construct the building from the ground up, but added two-story loggias to the exterior of an older building, which had been finished in 1459.
14.
The original plan of Andrea Palladio had the upper level identical to the lower level, but the owners wanted more space for ceremonies, so the central section on the piano nobile was brought forward and given windows with decorative frontons, doubling the interior space.
15.
Andrea Palladio had travelled to Rome in 1549, hoping to become a Papal architect, but the death of Pope Paul III ended that ambition.
16.
Andrea Palladio continued to compile and write his architectural studies, lavishly illustrated, which were published in full form in 1570 as I quattro libri dell'architettura, in Venice.
17.
The type of villa invented by Andrea Palladio at the Villa Cornaro, located at Piombino Dese near Padua, was a mixture of villa rustica, designed for country living, and a suburban villa, designed for entertaining and impressing.
18.
Andrea Palladio placed niches in the walls of this salon, which were later filled with full-length statues of the ancestors of the owner.
19.
Behind the villa, Andrea Palladio created a remarkable nymphaeum, or Roman fountain, with statues of the gods and goddesses of the major rivers of Italy.
20.
The most famous suburban villa constructed by Palladio was the Villa Capra "La Rotonda", not far from Vicenza, begun in 1566 for Count Paolo Almerico, the canon of Pope Pius IV and Pope Pius V The site is on a gentle wooded hilltop, with views of the countryside in all directions.
21.
Andrea Palladio's style was rather severe compared with the traditional lavishness of Venetian Renaissance architecture.
22.
Andrea Palladio achieves a perfect balance between the circle and the cross, and the horizontal and vertical elements, both on the facade and in the interior.
23.
The final work of Andrea Palladio was the Teatro Olimpico in the Piazza Matteotti in Vicenza, built for the theatrical productions of the Olympic Society of Vicenza, of which Andrea Palladio was a member.
24.
Behind the hemicycle of seats, Andrea Palladio placed a row of Corinthian columns.
25.
Andrea Palladio then made architectural drawings to illustrate a book by his patron, Daniele Barbaro, a commentary on Vitruvius.
26.
Andrea Palladio illustrated a rich variety of columns, arcades, pediments, pilasters and other details which were soon adapted and copied.
27.
Andrea Palladio's style inspired several works by Claude Nicolas Ledoux in France, including the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, begun in 1775.
28.
The German architects David Gilly and his son Friedrich Gilly were admirers of Andrea Palladio, and constructed palaces for the King of Prussia Frederick-William III in the style, including the Paretz Palace.
29.
Andrea Palladio's work was especially popular in England, where the villa style was adapted for country houses.
30.
The first English architect to adapt Andrea Palladio's work was Inigo Jones, who made a long trip to Vicenza and returned full of Palladian ideas.
31.
The influence of Andrea Palladio reached the United States, where the architecture and symbols of the Roman Republic were adapted for the architecture and institutions of the newly independent nation.
32.
Andrea Palladio's villas inspired Monticello, the residence of the third US President, Thomas Jefferson, himself an architect.
33.
Andrea Palladio is known as one of the most influential architects in Western architecture.
34.
The style of Andrea Palladio employed a classical repertoire of elements in new ways.
35.
Andrea Palladio clearly expressed the function of each part of the building by its form, particularly elevating and giving precedence to the piano nobile, the ceremonial floor, of his villas and palaces.
36.
Andrea Palladio was inspired by classical Roman architecture, but he did not slavishly imitate it.
37.
Andrea Palladio chose elements and assembled them in innovative ways appropriate to the site and function of the building.
38.
Andrea Palladio's buildings were often placed on pedestals, raising them and making them more visible, and so they could offer a view.
39.
Andrea Palladio's architecture was not dependent on expensive materials, which must have been an advantage to his more financially pressed clients.
40.
Andrea Palladio's buildings served to communicate, visually, their place in the social order of their culture.
41.
Relative to his trips to Rome, Andrea Palladio developed three main palace types by 1556.
42.
Andrea Palladio used styles of incorporating the six columns, supported by pediments, into the walls as part of the facade.
43.
Andrea Palladio experimented with the plan of the Palazzo Porto by incorporating it into the Palazzo Thiene.
44.
Andrea Palladio used Mannerist elements such as stucco surface reliefs and large columns, often extending two stories high.
45.
Andrea Palladio established an influential new building format for the agricultural villas of the Venetian aristocracy.
46.
Andrea Palladio's designs were based on practicality and employed few reliefs.
47.
Andrea Palladio consolidated the various stand-alone farm outbuildings into a single impressive structure, arranged as a highly organized whole, dominated by a strong centre and symmetrical side wings, as illustrated at Villa Barbaro.
48.
Andrea Palladio began to implement the classical temple front into his design of facades for villas.
49.
Andrea Palladio felt that to make an entry appear grand, the Roman temple front would be the most suitable style.
50.
Andrea Palladio's villas were used by a capitalist gentry who developed an interest in agriculture and land.
51.
Andrea Palladio's influence was extended worldwide into the British colonies.
52.
Andrea Palladio developed his own prototype for the plan of the villas that was flexible to moderate in scale and function.
53.
Similarly, Andrea Palladio created a new configuration for the design of Catholic churches that established two interlocking architectural orders, each clearly articulated, yet delineating a hierarchy of a larger order overriding a lesser order.
54.
Andrea Palladio created an architecture which made a visual statement communicating the idea of two superimposed systems, as illustrated at San Francesco della Vigna.