By Pennie L. Sabel
Photos courtesy of Pennie L. Sabel

Andrea Palladio is one of the most influential architects the world has produced. His system of proportions, the elegant symmetry of his projects, and the techniques of composition he used all serve to establish a relationship between each individual component and the whole, something he felt was at the very heart of classical architectural design. He has been an inspiration to countless architects throughout the Western world, including Thomas Jefferson, Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren.

Born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, Italy in 1508, he began his career as an apprentice stone mason when he was 13 years old. After several years, he broke from his apprentice contract and went to Vicenza, Italy to enroll in the Vicentine guild of stonemasons. There he began working at the Pedemuro workshop, which specialized in sculptural and architectural commissions. It was there that he learned the basics of design, as well as stone carving and house construction from the ground up. As he developed his stone carving skills on window and door frames, fireplaces and cornices, so too he developed a honed sense for architectural details.

His work soon attracted the attention of Count Giangiorgio Trissino, a wealthy intellectual and an amateur architect. They first met when he worked on a new loggia that Trissino had designed for his villa near Vicenza. Trissino became his benefactor and mentor; a lover of all things Greek, Trissino also gave Andrea the name Palladio, an allusion to the Greek goddess Pallas Athena.

Vicenza was a wealthy city, part of the Venetian Republic, and the well-educated nobility looked at architecture as the means of establishing the high cultural standards and values of the city. At the Pedemuro workshop, Palladio worked on commissions for the wealthy and well-connected aristocrats as his career as an architect began to take shape. He was in the right place at the right time.

Trissino brought Palladio into his circle of students and intellectuals, guiding Palladio's education in architecture, engineering, ancient topography and military science. They made several trips to Rome to study the structures and ruins of antiquity, and there Palladio surveyed, measured and drew theatres, arches and temples, and developed his skills in architectural draftsmanship and perspective studies. The Roman baths made the greatest impression on Palladio, and he studied them for ways to combine large and small spaces, and their variety of vaulting and spatial configurations. Trissino also introduced him to Vitruvius, the classical Roman architect whose basic principles guided the budding architect.

In 1546, the city fathers of Vicenza decided that a collection of buildings serving as the town hall and basilica — some dating to the 13th century — needed a facelift. Palladio was awarded the commission to bring a unity and cohesiveness to better reflect the status of the city. Surrounding the buildings, he designed a two-level loggia, consisting of an engaged Ionic Order on a Tuscan-Doric Order ground floor carried on smaller columns between the piers, and balustrades and oculi grouped together to give an elegant effect of light and shade. He opened it onto the Piazza dei Signori and, with the two levels of loggias behind arcades, together with the column motif, gave the buildings a completely new rhythm. It was Palladio's first major commission and it established his reputation as an architect.

Palladian Design

	Built in 1552-53 for Giorgio Cornaro, of a wealthy Venetian family, Villa Cornaro introduced the two-story projecting portico-loggia, which has influenced Western architecture ever since. Photo courtesy of Pennie Sabel

During his life, Palladio designed and built palaces, villas, bridges and churches. But he is probably best known for the many villas that he designed for the aristocracy of Venice. Up until the 15th century, Venice was a powerful and wealthy city, sitting astride the East-West trade routes, the land route to Asia and the Orient, and the Southern sea route. However, during the 15th and 16th centuries, Venice went into a decline as trade routes changed and aristocrats invested in land rather than in risky, overseas trade ventures.

As more land was acquired and vast agricultural estates were built throughout the Veneto, there was a need for housing and farm buildings. A new type of structure was needed; palace designs were ill suited for the countryside and far too expensive to build. What was needed was something comfortable and well sited for the countryside; an inexpensive complex of buildings that would serve as the functional focus of the working farm, but also reflected the grand and opulent status of the noble property owners. Palladio had the answer.

Based on his studies of Roman monuments and ruins, the writings of Vitruvius and other architects who came before him, as well as his own insights and observations, Palladio's solution was to design buildings with dramatic exterior motifs, using economical materials, which would express internal harmony and balance. The country villa was born.

He developed three types of exteriors that we have come to identify as "Palladian." The most basic is a loggia with three openings. The second is based on the Greek temple front, similar to those used by the Romans, who had in turn borrowed from the Greeks. The third is the double loggia with complete columns above and below. All three designs feature a symmetrical balance from left to right, with a main central block flanked by wings of farm buildings. He strategically placed the villas to take advantage of water sources and the views of the countryside, incorporating porticos or loggias into the villas so the owners could enjoy these views in comfort.

The interiors of the villas followed the harmony and balance of the exteriors. Rooms are all in proportion to each other, and he used squares, rectangles and circles in a variety of ratios of width to length. In keeping with the economics of the villas, he had the walls frescoed rather than hanging tapestries, since these homes were used in the summer farming months and didn't require the insulating properties of tapestries.

Divine Architecture
Palladio also was the architect for a number of churches and monasteries in Venice, the most famous and well known of which are the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore and Il Redentore. In his church designs, he merged the classical and the contemporary — much as he did with the villa designs — into a new kind of architecture.

San Giorgio Maggiore sits on its own island across the Basin from the Piazza San Marco and the Doge's Palace. The island had been the site of a Benedictine church and convent since 790, and Palladio was commissioned to rebuild the complex in 1565.

A statue of Andrea Palladio stands in the piazza next to the basilica that established his reputation as an outstanding architect. Photo courtesy of Pennie Sabel

Clad in Istrian marble, the façade consists of two temple fronts behind and above one another. The central, higher front has four, three-quarter composite columns on high pedestals and a complete triangular pediment. Behind, the lower body of the church is a smaller order of pilasters supporting two lower half-pediments on either side. The interior is in the form of the Latin cross with a transept and side aisles, and brings together the Renaissance ideal of the centralized plan, the medieval tradition of nave churches, and the requirements of the Counter-reformation for functional churches with naves for large congregations. The ceiling is a simple barrel vault with a semi-circular window that leads to the crossing, and is framed by grouped columns and arches that support the dome and lantern. Cross vaults above the side aisles and a transept with apsidal chapels intersect the nave, and beyond the crossing is the monk's choir and presbytery.

Il Redentore (The Redeemer) was built as a votive church, an expression of gratitude for saving Venice from the plague of 1575-76, and is a demonstration of Palladio's ability to tailor his style to the building site and the structure's functions. When the city officials agreed to build the church, they also decreed that an annual pilgrimage by the doge and the government would be held on the Feast of the Redeemer. This tradition continues today.

Construction of the church on Guidecca Island began in 1577, and it was consecrated 15 years later. The design of the façade is interlocking pedimented temple fronts with engaged columns and pilasters. Composite pilasters support a pediment set into the attic, and the illusion of a portico continues above the attic, where the triangular form of the hipped roof repeats the lines of the pediment and rises toward the dome and bell towers. A balustraded flight of steps leads up to the church, and sculpture niches with small, round gables stand on either side of the entrance.

In the interior, the nave is wide and chapels replace the aisles. The first section is a rectangular block with pairs of engaged Corinthian columns flanking the side chapels. The walls between the chapels serve as piers and rise to form buttresses for the nave vault. The transept is the same width as the nave and is curved so that the altar is visible from every angle. Half-columns, pilasters and a cornice of the Corinthian Order articulate the internal walls and visually link the nave, transept and choir.

The Four Books of Architecture
In 1570, toward the end of his career, Palladio compiled his vast knowledge of architecture into "I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura" ("The Four Books of Architecture") in which he describes the process of building from the foundations up. It is considered one of the most important books in architectural literature, and has been translated into every major Western language.

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