PALLADIO, Andrea. — Andrea di Pietro dalla Gondola, "monaro" (miller), b. 30 Nov. (P. Gualdo) 1508 (as attested by three documents dated 1524, '28 and '34), d. at Vicenza 19 Aug. 1580.
A document discovered by Erice Rigoni in 1949 attests that P. was born in Padua, as confirmed by the deposition of three witnesses made in the same city on 24 May 1563. In 1521 the thirteen-year-old boy was apprenticed in Padua to the art of the "lapicida" (stonecutter) under the sculptor Bartolomeo da Sossano. For unknown reasons, however, he fled to Vicenza with his father in 1523 and in 1524. In this city he enrolled in the guild of sculptors and stonecutters (1524) and remained there from that time onward. In Vicenza he also found the affectionate guidance of his master, Giovanni da Pedemuro, and the enlightened patronage (documented from 1538) of Giangiorgio Trissino, poet and humanist, who one day would bestow upon him the name by which he is immortalized, Palladio.
The first work of P. that can be dated with certainty (1540) is the Villa Godi-Porto, now Valmarana, at Lonedo (Vicenza). Three arches and a staircase, between two cleanly projecting rustic wings, form a villa-farm. This work (the only one certainly preceding his journeys to Rome) concludes the first phase of P.'s life.
Verona must have been the initial destination of his itineraries and his surveys of Roman monuments, which he continued in Rome, Pola, Spalato, France, etc. The second period of P.'s life opens with the journeys he made with Trissino to Rome; the first, in July-Sept. 1541 (returning via Viterbo, Bagnaia, Florence, Bologna); the second, between 1545 and 1547; the third at the end of 1549, the year in which P. won the competition for the Basilica, against major competitors such as Sansovino, Serlio, and G. Romano. The loggias of the Basilica (designed with a rigid rhythm to accommodate the windows of the pre-existing Gothic palace) stand apart from P.'s other conceptions as a unique example, for the dynamic chiaroscural sequence.
But the most authentic vein of P. is revealed in the theme of the villas, which he conceived as abstract and lightly ambered volumes, in contrast to the soft shadows of colonnades amid the greenery of nature; as new values of light and tone that have remained forever his secret. At the forefront is the Villa Angarano near Bassano; followed by the Villa Badoer at Fratta Polesine (1549), the Malcontenta (1551), and the first conception of that authentic masterpiece which is the Rotonda (1550-53; Zorzi). In 1551 the Palazzo Zorzi arose, somewhat stiff in its solid wall amid the shadows of the porticoes. The Palazzi Iseppo and Porti and Thiene (Zorzi) date to 1552; the heavy water damage made it seem a later period. This, between 1549-52, is the happiest season of P., who, after the "discovery" of Rome, in which he had assimilated the imperial art and the Bramantesque Renaissance, had succeeded in making it something new, truly original in its variety of accents and tones.
The third Palladian period begins in 1554 with the journey to Rome, undertaken with some Venetian gentlemen, and the publication of his little work *L'antichità di Roma*, which must have sold well, since it was reprinted 22 times until 1722. This is a period of more intense theoretical activity and of architecture that is sometimes less spontaneous; or that betrays in its chiaroscural treatment or in the preciosity of execution the influence of new contacts. A subtle Michelangelesque influence is present in the Palazzo Valmarana in Vicenza (1566). The following works ensue: the Palazzo Antonini in Udine (1566), unfinished; the Villa Pisani at Bagnolo (1566); the Villa Cornaro at Piombino-Dese (1566); the exquisitely decorated Villa Barbaro at Maser (1566), frescoed by Veronese; the Villa Mocenigo at Marocco, near Mestre; the Villa Pisani at Montagnana, etc. From 1570 and the following years date the Vicentine palaces: Porto-Barbaran, Porto-Breganze, and the Loggia del Capitanato, which, facing the vibrant Basilica, bears the accent of weariness of mature age, with a certain gigantism already present in the facades of Venetian churches: S. Giorgio (1566), S. Francesco della Vigna (1568), Il Redentore (1576).
P.'s drawings commenting on Vitruvius by Daniele Barbaro appeared in 1556. In 1570 his *Quattro libri dell'Architettura* were published in Venice with the collaboration of his sons: Leonida, for the drawings, and Silla, for the text; a true encyclopedia that later had many editions and included drawings of ancient works, architectural orders, streets, bridges, squares, basilicas, temples, the Bramantesque tempietto of S. Pietro in Montorio, and various Palladian buildings. In 1575 P. published the *Comentari di Giulio Cesare* with 42 drawings. Of the vast graphic output of P., about 500 drawings survive, of which 400 are in London, 80 in Vicenza, and 6 in Verona, with some (for S. Petronio) in Bologna. Thus, baths, forums, amphitheaters, theaters, shrines, temples, and building projects are revived through P.'s hand, who was an excellent draftsman as well as architect and discerning archaeologist. The artist was able to bring his inventive genius to fruition, not by imitating, but by transfiguring ancient material. Thus the Roman house returns, transfigured, in the design of some palaces (e.g., Porto Barbaran) and in the cloister of the Carità in Venice (1561). The curved layout of the imperial fora reappears in the hyperbole of the Villa Mocenigo on the Brenta (unrealized) and in the design of the Villa Trissino at Meledo (from which perhaps Bernini drew a suggestion for the colonnades of S. Pietro). The structures of S. Giorgio in Venice and of the grand Villa Thiene at Quinto seem, in some parts, inspired by the Baths; from the survey of the Teatro Berga finally arises, as a firm and sonorous song of the genius that was fading, the Teatro Olimpico (1580).
The first biographer of P. was Paolo Gualdo, his contemporary. The 17th century did not understand P. Scamozzi in Vicenza and Longhena in Venice barred his way. A revival occurred in the 18th century, fortunate for the spread of the Palladian empire, but with varying success in understanding such a genius, rare through the centuries. In 1730-32, Lord Burlington and Leoni published the *Terme*. New editions and updates of Palladian works were produced by Francesco Muttoni (1740-48) and Ottavio Bertotti-Scamozzi (1776-83). What harmed P. was the dissemination these men carried out, shifting the values of his inspired, luminous, and cordial Palladian material into the shaded rigor of copperplate engraving. Thus Neoclassical criticism (Temanza, 1762; Milizia, 1827), unable to penetrate the abstract value of relationships and tones in Palladian art, but capable only of codifying, often promoted a flourishing of presumptuous and strained academicism that invaded England, Europe, Russia, and the Americas, with only a few gracious exceptions. Fundamental remained the biography by Magrini (1846) and that by Zanella (1880), steeped in subtle poetry. A new return to P. occurred in the waning 19th century, especially through the work of German architects such as Burkhardt, Durm, Burger (1909), and more recently Pee.
BIBL.:
GUALDO, Paolo, *Vita di Andrea Palladio*, Vicenza 1580;
SCAMOZZI, Vincenzo, *Idea della architettura universale*, Venezia 1615;
LONGHENA, Baldassare, *Opere varie*, Venezia 1652;
BURTON, Richard, *The Architecture of A. Palladio*, London 1730;
LEONI, Giacomo, *The Architecture of A. Palladio*, London 1742;
MUTTONI, Francesco, *Opere di architettura di A. Palladio*, Vicenza 1740-48;
BERTOTTI-SCAMOZZI, Ottavio, *Le fabbriche e i disegni di A. Palladio*, Vicenza 1776-83;
MAGRINI, Gaetano, *Vita di Andrea Palladio*, Vicenza 1846;
ZANELLA, Adolfo, *Andrea Palladio*, Milano 1880;
BURCKHARDT, Jacob, *Der Cicerone*, Basel 1855;
DURM, Josef, *Die Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien*, Berlin 1905;
BURGER, Fritz, *Studien zur Palladio-Forschung*, München 1909;
PEE, Wolfgang, *Palladio*, München 1947.