ANDREA PALLADIO (1508-1580)

Four Books on Architecture

I quattro libri dell'architettura.• WHEN: The 16th century Italian architect Andrea Palladio, one of the great

masters of Renaissance culture, has had an enduring influence on American architecture. Of even greater significance than Palladio's buildings is his treatise I quattro libri dell'architettura (The Four Books On Architecture), the most successful architectural treatise of the Renaissance and one of the two or three most important books in the literature of architecture. First published in Italian in 1570, it has been translated into every major Western language.

• WHY: Venice had a tradition of producing high quality illustrated books and the local aristocracy provided a ready clientele of highly educated readers.

• HOW: Vitruvius (written in the 1st century BC) and Vignola (published in 1563), was a source of inspiration for Palladio’s treatise. What sets Palladio’s work apart though is the clarity and precision of both the text and the illustrations. Palladio concentrates on practical aspects of the building process while at the same time providing his readers with a set of rules and principles based on the examples of Roman antiquity.

• In his First Book he discusses building materials and techniques, as well as the five orders of architecture: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. Palladio describes the characteristics of each order and illustrates them.

MASONARY METHODS as illustrated in his treatise

TUSCAN ORDER

DORIC ORDER

IONIC ORDER

CORINTHIAN ORDER

COMPOSITE ORDER

The second book discusses private town houses and country estates, almost all designed by Palladio.

CASE STUDY OF VILLA ROTUNDA• Palladio’s woodcut engravings for the Quattro libri [1570] were

probably intended to express his architectural ideals, not the buildings as they were actually built.

• Curiously, the history of the ownership of the Rotonda’s estate is known down to the slightest detail, but little or nothing is known regarding the villa’s proportions.

• The thickness of the walls and the height of the central vault are not indicated; only the proportions of the rooms are given.

It seems thatPalladio wanted us to learn the ideals from his treatise and the reality from his works,leaving our imagination to bridge the gap between his theory and practice.(NEXUS NETWORK JOURNAL – VOL. 10, NO. 2, 2008)

Plan

The significance of “the whole” and “the parts” in Palladio’s architecture becomesclearer and more comprehensible when it is perceived in perspective allow us to visualize why the villa looks bigger than it actually is Certainly, after walking for a while in the gardens, one can perceive the buildingwithin a virtual volume, extending its dimensions beyond its walls

Deriving The Proportions Of The Openings

• A rectangular grid successively divided through its diagonals and superimposed on one of the the lateral arches of the loggia reveals the geometrical construction of all of the arch’s elements

• Thus, the opening of the arch and its pilasters, the abutment and imposts, and the lower arch at the piano terra can all be determined