Palladio’s drawing of a Roman temple with its decorations. Like a fairy godmother Tissino transforms Andrea Della Gondola into Palladio. What does Palladio mean? The name actually refers to the epithet of the goddess Athena, protector of the art: Pallade. He also invents the sophisticated classical name Palladio. Trissino provides young Andrea with the theoretical base making him read the treatises of ancient Roman architect Vitruvius and Leon Battista Alberti. As skillful and intelligent as a craftsman, he lacks in fact the culture and intellectual formation indispensable for a complete architect. The Vicenza nobleman takes Andrea Della Gondola under his wing and help him in his training. We do not know exactly what Andrea said or made to impress Trissino, but the latter is definitely struck by the figure of the skilled stonemason, and understands his potential yet unexpressed. He is a nobleman from Vicenza, a typical Renaissance man with a passion for literature, architecture and classical antiquities, who has been in the cultural circle of Pope Leo X and met Raffaello. While working on the construction of a villa in Cricoli, just outside Vicenza, Andrea meets the owner, Gian Giorgio Trissino. In 1535 the stonemason meets the person who will change his life and transform his name into Andrea Palladio. Gian Giorgio Trissino in a portrait by painter Vincenzo Catena (1510). In 1534 Andrea marries Allegradonna, also of humble origins. In doing so they needed buildings to host operations and villas where they could to live up to their social status when they visited their properties. Rich families from Venice that created their fortunes with trade, had started to invest in land and agricultural production. He has the chance to work in the construction sites of some of the early Venetian villas, an architectural phenomenon that has begun to spread in the territories of the Serenissima.
Still the age of a boy, he starts working as a stonemason in charge of the production of stone decorations: portals, columns, capitals, corbels. His real name is Andrea Della Gondola, and his family is of humble origins. Palladio was born in 1508 in Padua, one of the major cities of the Republic of Venice. The families of merchants accumulated Immense wealth and invest their money in the creation of a lavish lifestyle, that includes elegant urban buildings and country residences: the so-called Venetian villas. In the 16th century, Veneto is a powerful regional state that has Venice as its capital.
He understood the potential of the young stonemason who was working on the rebuilding of his villa and took him under his wing, giving him the possibility of studying and thus expressing his natural talent.ĭuring his career Palladio designed and built, in whole or in part, more than 30 villas, more than 15 urban houses, a theater, a dozen churches or it’s important parts, a dozen public buildings and 2 bridges. His fortune owes to Gian Giorgio Trissino, a nobleman from Vicenza, very well introduced in the aristocratic society of Venetian Veneto. Like many of the greatest architects, Andrea Palladio did not have a traditional academic education. Architecture is codified in precise rules that transform it into a real language, with its grammar and vocabulary. Palladio is furthermore extraordinary for having theorized his modus operandi in the “ Quattro libri“, a compendium of his projects and the theoretical system that underlies them. They are designed to be comfortable to live in, and to be suitable for all the operations they were designed for, whether destined to agricultural activities or Sunday masses. His palazzos and villas are also functional. The works of Palladio are above all extraordinarily beautiful, to a point, that even today, after five centuries, they are able to astonish visitors from all over the world. All the architectural works which were to follow could in fact be evaluated to the degree in which they followed the path that Palladio traced, or diverged from it. Why is Palladio so famous? Andrea Palladio is so important and influential for the history of art that one can almost consider architecture in terms of “pre- and post- Palladian”.