Palladian Architecture

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Palladian architecture did break new ground as seen in the Villa Rotonda outside Vicenza, but others working in a more fluid tradition brought residential architecture to a level of sophistication now known as Palladian architecture. The author points out that Inigo Jones, court architect to Britain's Stuart Kings, James I and Charles I, familiar with Palladio's ideas, created and completed almost 50 buildings in and around London; the Queen's House at Greenwich, taking nearly 20 years to complete, is a Palladian masterpiece, exceeding the Villa Rotonda in almost every way. The paper relates that Thomas Jefferson, founding father and President of the United States, was the architect who best expressed Palladian ideas, as seen by his own plans for the University of Virginia and his own home Monticello.

Table of Contents
A Beginning
Making Palladio's Ideas into Palladian Architecture
An American Genius Expresses Palladio's Ideas

From the Paper:

"Palladio was at home with such clients. Born in Padua in 1508, Palladio was an assistant stonecutter and mason in the Vicenza guild before meeting an amateur architect, Giangiorgio Trissino, who tutored him. Palladio executed some commissions for the aristocracy in the Classic tradition, arguably an unbroken line from Ancient Rome until the Renaissance. It wasn't until later in his career, the 1560s, that he moved into religious buildings. In 1570, ten years before his death, he published "I Quattro Libre del'Architettura". So it was in hindsight, in any case, that he made claim to his mathematically precise systems of design, and to the principles gained from visual arts as well a his principle of relating his buildings to nature. Palladio's works are said to lack the grandeur of the works of many other Renaissance architects. Perhaps. But if so, they do not lack for at least lip service to the embellishments that help establish that grandeur. On the peaks of the loggia roofs and on the wings of the loggia steps, Palladio places monumental, classical statuary figures."

More papers on Palladian Architecture:

• Term Paper # 141194 : "Chinese Architecture"
• Term Paper # 149508 : "Architecture and its Environment"
• Research Paper # 95914 : "The Impact of Robert Adam"

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