The Perfect House: A Journey with Renaissance Master Andrea Palladio
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Hemicycle: Semicircular columned structure. A freestanding hemicycle is the focus of the rear garden of the Villa Barbaro.
Impost: Block-shaped headpiece at the top of a pier from which an arch springs. Usually stone, but in Palladio villas often plastered brick.
Intercolumniation: The distance, measured in column diameters, between two columns. Columns can be spaced closer or farther apart. Vitruvius described five different intercolumniations: pynostyle (11/2 diameters); systyle (2 diameters); eustyle (21/4 diameters); diastyle (3 diameters); and araeostyle (4 diameters). Palladio favored eustyle for villa porticoes, but used wider spacing such as araeostyle for flanking loggias and arcades.
Ionic order: Said to have originated in Ionia, today western Turkey. The chief distinguishing feature of the Ionic capital is a pair of decorative spirals, or volutes, that resemble ram’s horns. Ionic was Palladio’s favorite order and he used it in most of his villas, including the four porticoes of the Villa Rotonda.
Mascherone: Grotesque mask, used to adorn the keystone of arches—a common Renaissance motif. It appears in Palladio’s Basilica and also in the arcades of the Villa Barbaro.
Modillions: Decorative rows of small, closely spaced brackets just below the eaves that are part of the cornice. The ancient Romans generally used modillions in conjunction with the Ionic and Corinthian orders. Palladio incorporated stylized block modillions in almost all his villas, regardless of the order, because it was a simple and inexpensive way to incorporate a classical reference.
Oculus: A circular window (literally, eye). Also a round opening in the top of a dome, such as that of the Villa Rotonda.
Order: The entire assembly of columns and beams that forms the basis of classical Roman architecture. The five orders recognized by Palladio are Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. They are distinguished by the capitals, the slenderness of the column, and the precise design of the beamlike entablature. The orders can be used individually or in combination. In the three-story cloister of the Carità convent, for example, Palladio used Doric on the lowest level, Ionic above, and Corinthian on the top floor.
Pediment: Triangular gable end of a temple, adapted by Palladio, who used it at a smaller scale over porches, porticoes, doors, and windows.
Portico: Originally a columned and pedimented projection in front of a temple. Adapted by Palladio to the porches and loggias of villas, it was probably the most copied of his architectural inventions.
Pulvinated molding: Decorative horizontal molding that is not flat but softly rounded (from the Latin pulvinus, or cushion).
Quoins: Stone blocks, sometimes rusticated, used to emphasize the corners of a building. Not commonly used by Palladio, but quoins do appear in the basement of the Villa Pisani, and on the ground floor of the Palazzo Antonini.
Rustication: Artificially roughened masonry laid with exaggerated joints to create a dramatic texture. In Palladio villas, it may be stone or plastered brick. Palladio commonly used rustication in palazzos, and sometimes in villas. The loggia of the Villa Pisani and the columns of the Villa Serego are heavily rusticated.
Serliana: A tall central arch flanked by two lower rectangular openings. First used by Bramante but later popularized by Serlio in his treatise. Sometimes called a Venetian window, it is widely known as a Palladian window, since Palladio used it so often, especially in the Basilica.
Thermal window: Semicircular window divided vertically into three equal parts. First found in Roman baths, or therma, it was widely used by Palladio, not only in villas but also in the naves of San Giorgio Maggiore and Il Redentore.
Torus: Convex molding, usually at the base of a column.
Tuscan order: Simplest of the five orders, said to be derived from ancient Etruscan temples. Tuscan columns are massive and widely spaced, and are sometimes difficult to distinguish from Roman Doric. Palladio reserved the Tuscan order for colonnades and farm buildings.
Tympanum: The flat triangular surface of a pediment. Often the place where Palladio displayed the armorial crest of the villa owner.
Vault: Curved ceiling or roof; a barrel vault is semicircular in cross section. Palladio used vaulted ceilings of different shapes to enliven the interiors of his villas.
Voussoir: Wedge-shaped stone or brick that forms part of an arch or a vault. Palladio often made stylized voussoirs of plastered brick.
Water table: A horizontal molding on the lower part of a building wall, designed to throw rainwater away from the foundations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I should like to acknowledge the generous advice and personal insights of Douglas Lewis, a distinguished Palladio scholar and curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the friendly assistance of Deborah Howard of Cambridge University, and Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey of Queen’s University. I relied on the published research of many Palladio scholars (mentioned in the notes), but I would like to single out the published work of James S. Ackerman, Bruce Boucher, Howard Burns, Douglas Lewis, and Lionello Puppi. I used the marvelous new translation of Quattro libri by Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield. Charles W. Hind, head of special collections and curator, and Philippa Martin, of the Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection in London, an invaluable repository of several hundred Palladio drawings, offered efficient and helpful assistance. John Blatteau shared his extensive knowledge of classical architecture. Allen Freeman contributed a CD-ROM version of Quattro libri. Richard and Susan Wyatt offered me the hospitality of their Pennsylvania Rotonda, and Alvin Holm provided architectural information about the house. Eva Loeb and David Burns shared the Villa Saraceno—and much more. The Landmark Trust deserves great credit for rescuing the Villa Saraceno, and for accomplishing a sterling restoration. Colleagues and friends at the University of Pennsylvania contributed advice and conversation: Joseph Farrell, Gino Segre, Liliane Weissberg, David De Long, and Julia Moore Converse, director of the Architectural Archives. The staff of the Fisher Fine Arts Library, the Van Pelt Library, and Interlibrary Loans were helpful as always. Throughout much of the writing of this book, Acalya Kiyak served as a diligent research assistant. Jane Herman did a sterling job of copy editing, and Erich Hobbing produced a masterful book design. My longtime editor, Nan Graham, provided encouragement, criticism, and wise advice; Susan Moldow, publisher of Scribner, was equally supportive, as usual. Thanks to Andrew Wylie, my agent. Thanks, also, to the University of Pennsylvania, which granted me the sabbatical that gave me a chance to see the buildings with my own eyes.
March 2000–December 2001
Hotel Palladio, Vicenza
Villa Saraceno, Finale di Agugliaro
The Icehouse, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia
Witold Rybczynski is the bestselling author of ten books, including Home, City Life, and A Clearing in the Distance, for which he won a Christopher Award and J. Anthony Lukas Prize. A regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Review of Books, he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Looking Around
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NOTES
FOREWORD
1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey, trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982), 47.
2. Reprinted in Witold Rybczynski, Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture (New York: Viking, 1992), 209–19.
3. James S. Ackerman, Palladio (New York: Penguin Books, 1966), 185.
4. Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 7.
5. Ibid., 66.
6. Paolo Gualdo, “Life of Palladio” (1616) in Douglas Lewis, The Drawings of Andrea Palladio (New Orleans: Martin & St. Martin, 2000), 12.
CHAPTER 1: GODI
1. Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 143.
2. Ibid.
3. Kurt W. Forster, “Back to the Farm: Vernacular Architecture and the Development of the Renaissance Villa,” Architectura 1 (1974): 6–8.
4. Lionello Puppi, Andrea Palladio, trans. Pearl Sanders (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975), 239.
5. “Andrea Palladio,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 17 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1949), 149.
6. Palladio, Four Books, 57.
7. Quoted in Kurt W. Forster, “Travelers in Search of Palladio,” Palladio and Northern Europe: Books, Travelers, Architects, eds. Guido Beltramini et al. (Milan: Skira Editore, 1999), 224.
8. Banister F. Fletcher, Andrea Palladio: His Life and Works (London: George Bell and Sons, 1902), 75.
9. Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London: Academy Editions, 1998), 67.
10. See Michelangelo Muraro, Venetian Villas: The History and Culture, trans. Peter Lauritzen et al. (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 146–47; Rudolf Wittkower, “The Influence of Palladio’s Villas,” Country Life, February 25, 1954, 516; Forster, “Back to the Farm,” 6–8.
11. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston Du C. de Vere, vol. 3 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979), 2016.
12. Puppi, Andrea Palladio, 5–6.
13. Robert Tavernor, Palladio and Palladianism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 5.
14. Palladio, Four Books, 5.
15. Howard Burns, Andrea Palladio, 1508–1580: The portico and the farmyard (London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1975), 69.
16. Paolo Gualdo, “Life of Palladio” (1616) in Douglas Lewis, The Drawings of Andrea Palladio (New Orleans: Martin & St. Martin, 2000), 11.
17. Ibid.
18. Quoted by Puppi, Andrea Palladio, 12.
19. Ibid.
20. Quoted by T. S. R. Boase, Giorgio Vasari: The Man and the Book (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 13.
21. Douglas Lewis, “Palladio, Andrea,” Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, ed. Adolf K. Placzek (London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1982), 351–52.
22. Vasari, Lives, 1574.
23. See Ross King, Brunelleschi’s Dome: The Story of the Great Cathedral in Florence (London: Pimlico, 2001), 33–34.
24. Douglas Lewis, The Drawings of Andrea Palladio (New Orleans: Martin & St. Martin, 2000), 12.
25. Ibid., 115.
26. Fletcher, Andrea Palladio, 18.
27. See Bruce Boucher, Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time (New York: Abbeville Press, 1998), 69; Paul Holberton, Palladio’s Villas: Life in the Renaissance Countryside (London: John Murray, 1990), 205.
28. Lewis, Drawings, 199–201.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 199.
31. Palladio, Four Books, 143.
CHAPTER 2: CHE BELLA CASA
1. Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 121.
2. Howard Burns, Andrea Palladio, 1508–1580: The portico and the farmyard (London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1975), 187.
3. Palladio, Four Books, 124.
4. Douglas Lewis, The Drawings of Andrea Palladio (New Orleans: Martin & St. Martin, 2000), 115.
5. S. J. Woolf, “Venice and the Terraferma: Problems of the Change from Commercial to Landed Activities,” in Crisis and Change in the Venetian Economy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Brian Pullan (London: Methuen & Co., 1968), 175–203.
6. Palladio, Four Books, 5.
7. Ibid., 163.
8. Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London: Academy Editions, 1998), 63.
9. James S. Ackerman, Palladio (New York: Penguin Books, 1966), 177.
10. Palladio, Four Books, 273.
11. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston Du C. de Vere, vol. 3 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979), 2016.
12. See Lewis, Drawings, 112.
13. Henry Petroski, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 36–40.
14. The Palladio Drawings: Palladio. Smythson. Adam (London: Royal Institute of British Architects, undated), 1.
15. RIBA Palladio XI/22, verso. See Lewis, Drawings, 226–27.
16. RIBA Palladio XVII/2, verso. See Lewis, Drawings, 108–9.
17. Palladio, Four Books, 57.
18. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 310.
19. Palladio, Four Books, 77.
20. RIBA Palladio XVII/18, verso. See Lewis, Drawings, 108–9.
21. Vincenzo Scamozzi quoted in Lionello Puppi, Palladio Drawings, trans. Jeremy Scott (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 22.
22. RIBA Palladio XVI/7. See Lewis, Drawings, 109–12.
23. RIBA XVII/17. See Lewis, Drawings, 113–15.
24. Lionello Puppi, Andrea Palladio, trans. Pearl Sanders (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975), 255.
25. Paul Holberton, Palladio’s Villas: Life in the Renaissance Countryside (London: John Murray, 1990), 215–19.
26. Andrea Palladio, I quattro libri dell’architettura (reprint, Milan: Ulrico Hoepli Editore Libraio, 1980), Book IV, 37.
27. Palladio, Four Books, 147.
28. Ibid.
29. Alberti, On the Art of Building, 301.
30. Palladio, Four Books, 78.
31. Deborah Howard, Jacopo Sansovino: Architecture and Patronage in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975),125.
32. Ibid., 124.
CHAPTER 3: THE ARCHED DEVICE
1. Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover Publications, 1960), 80.
2. Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor and Richard Schofield (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 233.
3. Caroline Constant, The Palladio Guide (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993), 58.
4. RIBA Palladio XVI/3. See Douglas Lewis, The Drawings of Andrea Palladio (New Orleans: Martin & St. Martin, 2000), 132.
5. See Lewis, Drawings, 133.
6. RIBA Palladio XVI/4.
7. RIBA Palladio, XVI/4 verso.
8. See Lewis, Drawings.
9. Palladio, Four Books, 136.
10. For background on the Palazzo della Ragione, see Franco Barbieri, The Basilica of Andrea Palladio, Corpus Palladianum, vol. 2 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970).
11. For currency conversion, see James S. Ackerman, Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 381, fn. 25.
12. Palladio, Four Books, 17.
13. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston Du C. de Vere, vol. 3 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979), 2015.
14. Palladio, Four Books, 203.
15. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian
Journey, trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982), 47.
16. Lionello Puppi, Andrea Palladio, trans. Pearl Sanders (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975), 269.
17. Paolo Gualdo, “Life of Palladio” (1616), in Lewis, Drawings, 3.
18. Georgina Masson, “Palladian Villas as Rural Centres,” Architectural Review, July 1955, 20.
19. Palladio, Four Books, 114.
20. Ibid., 136.
21. Denis Cosgrove, The Palladian Landscape: Geographical Change and Its Cultural Representations in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), 149.
22. Palladio, Four Books, 6.
23. George Hersey and Richard Freedman, Possible Palladian Villas (Plus a Few Instructively Impossible Ones) (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992).
24. Palladio, Four Books, 56.
CHAPTER 4: ON THE BRENTA
1. Quoted by Lionello Puppi, Andrea Palladio, trans. Pearl Sanders (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975), 281.
2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey, trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982), 47.
3. See Douglas Lewis, The Drawings of Andrea Palladio (New Orleans: Martin & St. Martin, 2000), 196–99.
4. A. C. Landsberg, “An Historic Italian Villa; Malcontenta, Part I,” Country Life 82 (October 16, 1937): 400.
5. John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, vol. 1 (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1979), 344.
6. Quoted by Erik Forssman, Visible Harmony: Palladio’s Villa Foscari at Malcontenta, trans. Gordon Irons (Stockholm: Sveriges Arkitekturmuseum and Konsthögskolans Arkitekturskla, 1973), 12.
7. Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 151.
8. Ibid., 295.
9. Michelangelo Muraro, Venetian Villas: The History and Culture, trans. Peter Lauritzen et al. (New York: Rizzoli, 1986), 120.
10. Alberti, On the Art of Building.