The classical revival in architecture began in Renaissance Italy, but its wide-ranging influence can be seen everywhere, from Buckingham Palace to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, George Washington's Mt. Vernon and the White House. Among its distinguishing features: symmetry, porticoes, pediments and columns. The man largely responsible for inventing this architectural idiom was the 16th century Italian stonemason-turned-architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580).
Palladio was not the first architect to be inspired by the remains of classical Roman architecture: Brunelleschi, Alberti, Bramante and Raphael had also looked beyond the medieval Gothic style to the earlier, cleaner but in many ways more sophisticated building style of the Romans and, before them, the Greeks. But in Palladio, this style found its most complete and enduring form of expression.
The Palladian style seems easy to duplicate: Take a central hall, add an imposing pediment and some stately columns, and presto, you've got yourself a Palladian building. "In 1992," Witold Rybczynski tells us, a Yale art historian and a Microsoft software engineer "devised a computer program that was capable of generating innumerable 'Palladian' villa plans and facades according to predetermined geometrical rules." But what impresses Rybczynski about Palladio's work is its constant inventiveness. Far from rigidly adhering to a few rules and formulas, Palladio was always improvising and coming up with new solutions to the particular demands of each assignment.
By the time he was well established, Palladio was designing important buildings in the cities of Venice and Vicenza: churches, palazzos and public buildings. But like most other beginning architects through the centuries, he got his start with smaller commissions for private homes in the suburbs and countryside. Palladio built about 30 villas in the country around Venice, Vicenza and Padua.
Convinced that there's no substitute for seeing a building in person, Rybczynski made it his mission to visit 10 that are still standing and in relatively good repair. This book is his attempt not only to convey something of that firsthand experience but also to explain the historical, practical and aesthetic factors behind his designs.
