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8/17/2019 Aureli Pier Vittorio - The Geopolitics of the Ideal VIla - AA Files 59
1/10
v i l l a
T hiene at Cicogna
Vi l l a Badoer at Fratta Polesine
Vi l l a Pisani at Monat agnana
Vi l l a
Pisani at
Bagnolo
Vi l l a Sarego at
Meiga
Vi l l a Zeno at Cessalto
Vi l l a
E mo
atFanzolo
Vi l l a Rotond a near
Vicenza
Vi l l a Poiana at Poiana
Maggiore
Vil la Co rnaro at
Piombino
Dese
Vil la Malcontenta a t M i r a
Geometrical
pa ttern of Palladio's
villas
8/17/2019 Aureli Pier Vittorio - The Geopolitics of the Ideal VIla - AA Files 59
2/10
n 1944
Rudolf
Wittkower published
two
essays on Palladio s architectu re.
The essays, later included
i n
his book,
Architectural Principles
in
the ge of Humanism
featured
i i
schematic drawings o f Palladio s vi l -
las which Wittkower used to reinfor ce his argu-
ment
f or
reading R enaissance architecture in
terms
of
irreducible rules or principles. These
drawings showed that architectural artefacts
such as Palladio s
viUas
were not merely episodic
formal studies but systematic variations
of
the
same compositional logic.
Architectural princi-
ples were thus
impl i c i t ly
proposed as an
intellec-
tual framework
fo r architectural
form,
superior to
the functional, programmatic or aesthetic goals to
which architectural history was then s t i l l bound.
As
a core compon ent
of
architecture s
emerging historiography,
Wittkower s
reading
of Renaissance architecture quickly proved to
be influential far beyond academic historical
scholarship. Within postwar reconstruction in
England, f or example, his project established a
point
o f reference fo r a generation of architects
searching
fo r
formal legitimacy beyond the tech-
nocratic impetus of functionalist modernism.
I n particular , his drawings, reducing Palladian
villas to
proportional
and spatial schemes,
offered the
possibility
of
def in ing
a more pro-
fou nd rationality than cou ld be provided simply
by
technology. This comm itm ent to
seeing
and
interpreting
a contemporary
condition
through
a Renaissance
precedent
was
reinforced five
years later (and more radically s t i l l ) by Colin
Rov/e whose
he
Mathematics ofthe Ideal Villa
famously
established a compar ison between
Palladio s ViUa Foscari in
IVIalcontenta
and
Le
Corbusier s V i l l a Stein in Garches.^
hile Wittkower s imp act on a
wider,
contemporary architectural
discourse was as unsuspecting as it
was
unintentional,
Rowe s iconoclastic compar-
ison
of two
villas one f r om the sixteenth cen-
tury, the other f r om the twenti eth - seems to
have been a deliberate att empt to interfere
w i t h
the
trajectory
of postwar architectural mod -
ernism. This
desire
to
subvert
was established
no t
only by his argum ent
fo r
the comparable
nature of Renaissance and modern architec-
ture,
bu t
also
by his po in t ing to the possibility
of
a rigorous close readi ng
o f
architectural form
independent of
its
historical
circumstances.
For this reason, the villas of Palladio and Le
Corbusier v/ere deliberately extrapolated
from
their geographical and political conte xt; Rowe
even argued that the archit ects
lyrical
site
descriptions celebrating their best-known villas
- 'La Rotonda and the
V i l l a
Savoye at Poissy
offered a too easy poin t of entry
fo r
comparison.
I n
this
way,
Rowe s text reinforced
Wittkower s
radical
de nial of Palladio s
site-specificity,
apparent
i n the removal of the barchesse in his
schematic drawings
o f
t he villas. These
ad join-
in g
loggias were adapted fr om local Venetian
The Geo-Politics
of
the Ideal
Villa
Andrea Pa lladio and the
Project
of an
Anti-Ideal Ci ty
Pier
Vittono Aureli
agricultural sheds
and were an essential com po-
nent
of
Palladio s villas, providing no t only a
sense of context but a semiotic d is t inct ion that
allowed these
bui ldin gs to be classified as villas
rather than palaces. The barchesse in this
sense,
are Palladio s geo-pohtical context because they
figure as the key metonymical register f or the
whole typology.
Palladio s villas themselves were commis-
sioned at the highpo int
o f
widespread social and
econom ic refor ms advanced by the Serenissima
Republic
i n the sixteenth
centuiy,
and their
par-
ticular formal composit ion - a central palace
flanked
by two
barns - is deeply embedded in
the
pohtical,
social and formal impetus of such
reform. I f, as
James
Ackerman has argued, the
vi l la is one the mo st radically ideological archi-
tectures because in claiming
self-sufficiency
within the countryside it hides its economic
dependency
on the
city,
then Palladio s
palace
+
barchesse
compo sitio n openly signals the villa s
relation w i t h
its regional and
agricultural
eco-
nomic
context.3
This
immediately
suggests an
alternative interpretation of Palladio s architec-
ture to the
ones
advanced by
Wittkower
and
Rowe. This counter
position
does
not deflne
Palladio s relevance to contem porar y discourse
in terms of
proportion
or the mathematics of its
architectural composition, but reads the vi l la as
one e lementwithin a larger, latent project.
Rather than
taking
Palladio s ideal s a model
fo r an equally ideal urban
configuration,
it
views
the geography and politics
o f
t he vi l la as a frame-
work
f or
rethinlcing and re-theor ising the s ign i f i -
cance o f Palladio s work as a project fo r an
anti-ideal city.
First,
however, let s deal
w i t h
the
name,
Palladio,
boiubastic and
slightly ridiculous
in
its
overloaded preten tion . This was the name
conferred on Andrea della Gondola when he
was already i n his 30s,
having
completed a long
apprenticeship in a stonemason s workshop.
The man
w ho
named him - the
Renaissance
poet,
humanist and diplomat Giangiorgio Trissino
Opposite: Scliematic
plans of
11 of Palladio s vi l las,
f r o m R u d o l f Wittkower, Architectural Principles
in the ge of Humanism 1949
was
making
clear
from
the outset that Palla
was invested
w i t h
a programme. For
Trissino
this programm e was the reinvention
o f
Vicen
a model
fo r
an Imperial Roman city - that
is,
classicist terms, a new Italian civilisation fin
liberated f rom
the Goths.
According
to
Trissi
the ascendancy
of
the Goths had paralleled th
decline ofthe Roman Empire and
Italy s
desc
into
political
an d cultural chaos. Drawing ins
tion from
Trissino s classicist ur ban ideology
Palladio s early designs as an architect inc lud
a classical facade
fo r
a series of city
houses
an
proposal f or the Palazzo Civena austere, sim
and thus repeatable prototypes, ready to be d
seminated
within
the gothic fabric
of
Vicenza
The palazzo was fused w i t h the more modest
merchant house to
form
a new quasi-bourge
domus. The
centrality
of the house and thus
secular domestic l i f e , along w i t h the systema
recovery
of
Roman architecture, provided the
core
o f
Palladio s attem pt to deflne a universa
B
formal
grammar fo r the
city,
ut
Palladio s
flrst
intellectual men
was politically at odds
w i t h
the
Venetian repubhc. Trissino saw the fragme
city
as a symptom o f the larger
political,
cul
and social frag ment atio n of the nati on afte
coUapse
of
the Roman Empire. Like Dante
Monarchia he called fo r a universal civic go
ment,
identiflable
thro ugh the singular flgu
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.* This univ
government was to represent a new Roman
Empire,
a secular power free
f rom
both
feud
is m and ecclesiastical
authority.
Fundamen
these aspirations, the city and its architectu
remain ed a key priority, and set against the
gothic medieval
city,
Trissino promoted Ro
architecture as the appropriate language f o
political proj ect.7 This promotion was orga
as a Idnd
of
research program me - evidence
the series o f four fleld-trips Palladio made
Trissino
to Rome as exercises i n generating
through first-hand experience. The caref ul
of
Roman
antiquity
was the express goal
o f
research, and the dr awings Palladio made d
in g
these visits would become
the source bo
his architectural grammar. What is im por ta
to
note here is Palladio s drawing method.
Infiuenced
by Raphael s recommendations
about the d epict ion of ancient r uins, he avo
pictorial perspective and instead
uses
a
flat
orthogonal technique anticipating modern
ventions of orthogon al
projection
- a metho
that cont ribu ted enormously to his system
approach to the architecture of the
city.
Architecture was
n ot
visionary and pictures
bu t
scientific,
the product o f
carefully
defln
rules. This fundamen tal distinction enable
original form to be reconstructed ou t o f t h e
emancipating
i t
f rom it s
reality
as a frag me
and giving
i t
a new status as a comp onent
i
potential
imperial
city
i n
Vicenza,
and later
across
the Veiieto.
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alladio's last t r ip to Rome i n 1557 pro-
vided the material fo r two books, one
o f the m a guide to the city's antiquit ies
that
would
rema in the standard reference for
tourists f or the next two centuries, the other
a curious guide f or
pilgrims
that do cumented
Rome's many churches.'' f Roman antiquity
offered the source for Palladio's universal archi-
tectural grammar, the mappi ng of churches -
many of them located i n what was their
typically
suburban and de-populated, fragmented
context - enabled hi m to
present
the
city
as
an archipelago of monumen ts.
These
flnite,
autonomous artefacts carried a
highly
charged
ritualisde geography, even when presented
in
isolation.
But Palladio went beyond t his by
ordering the descriptions ofth e churches
according to the
pilgrim's
peripatetic approach
to
the city. In other words, the guide
does
not
describe these churches as monumenta l forms
removed f r o m their context, but
addresses
them
w i t h i n site-speciflc patterns o f an urban itiner-
ary. I n add iti on to his study o f
antiquity,
there-
fore,
PaUadio's
interestin compiling
a
pilgrim's
guide is of exceptional interest because it
signi-
fles his
f a m i l i a r i t y w i t h
the geographic symbol-
is m of the city. An d i t is precisely this act o f
locating and marl dng that
seems
to underpin
Palladio's abihty to define the city through
its architecture.
The heroic mission
o f Trissino
and Palladio
to recast Vicenza as a latter-day
imperial
city
was prom pted, somewhat m ore prosaically, by
a fleeting celebration of religious authorit y: the
entrance o f Cardinal
R i d o l f l
to the city i n 1543.
For this occasion, Palladio designed a
sequence
of temporary
luarkers
to delineate the cardinal's
procession towards the cathedral. Two of the
most exemplary urban l andmarks o f the Roman
city - the
triumphal
arch and the obeUsk - sym-
bolised
the veritable
analogous
city
generated
by
this
circuit,
and
were considered by Palladio as
ideal
and instant devices fo r urban reinvention,
radically transfo rming the gothic f o r m o f th e city
into
a classical landscape. The theme of th e t r i -
umphal procession
also
highlights the city as a
contested held of directions to be mapped and -
manip ulated by a
series
of punctua l interven-
tions. P alladio's approac h to the city, then, as his
temporary instaUation fo r Vicenza makes clear,
is based not on an overall urban plan but on
the strong
formal continuity
and universalism
evoked by his classical references.
Yet,
in con-
trast to the Roman city model , Palladio's univer-
salism is def lned by the concrete flgure of
architecture as a clearly circums cribed artefact,
distinct f r o m the void ground o f th e city
spaces
surrounding i t .
Palladio's mapping o f Roma n church es,
therefore, and his processional install ation
fo r Vicenza, reflects his master y of the program-
ming o f
architectural
sequences.
The variety
of contexts i n
which
he operated - the city o f
Vicenza, the Veneto countryside and the Venice
Lagoon - offered a multi-scala r array o f urban sit-
uations
in which
he could test the seamlessness
of an architectural langfuage against the inex-
orably fragment ed nature o f a city. The strategic
l i n k between the two extremes - continuity and
discontinuity - is precisely the core dialectic of
Palladio's urban design methodology.
I n the sixteen th century Vicenza was one of
Italy's most
violent
cities. Inf lght ing among the
most important
families
and
political turmoil
among the populace made i t a theatre of almost
perpetual mayhem and murder. The physical
manifest ations of this violence also unfolded
w i t h i n a larger
conflict
involving the local o l i -
garchy, the colonial power o f Venice and the
adversarial relationsh ip between the church and
the Veneto (at that
time,
Vicenza was the
Italian
epicentre o f Calvinist and heretical sensibili-
ties).
Given
this context, the attempt b y Trissino
and PaUadio to
recast
Vicenza as a mod el f or an
imperial city that evoked th
Pax Romana seems
a very obvious and del iberate provo catio n - or,
conversely, not so muc h a provocati on as an
attemp t to use the unifying architectural lan-
guage o f
classicism to project a self-harmonis-
ing civic sense of calm.
For Palladio the grammar of this classicism
lay
in his impeccable use
of
the flve orders as a
way to make arch itecture intelligible as f o r m , in
contrast to the
irrational
patterns oft he medieval
city. There is in this aUegiance an int erest ing par-
allel between Palladio's systematic use of the
flve orders and Trissino's
poUtical vision, based
on the idea of a unifying secular government.
Trissi no (ever the poet and
diplomat)
was espe-
cially concerned w i t h the reform ofthe
Italian
language, as evidenced by his letter to
Pope
elemente
V II about the urgent
need
to
address
vernacular or coUoquial
Italian,
and by his trans-
lation
of
Dante s£)e VulgariEloquentia.
In many
ways, Trissino's interest i n the idea of grammar
as a meta-historical political tool can be seen
as the inspiration for Palladio's systematic
approach to architecture, where classicism is
used no t
simply
as a
means
of representation
and authori ty but also as an ordered set of
repeat-
able elements whose influe nce could extend
beyond the construction of buUdings to
embrace
the whole manifestation o f th e city
itself.
In order
to be established, however, a gram mar relies on
clear examples. I t is not by
chance
that Palladio's
debut as an independent architect, under
Trissino's mentor ship, resulted in a design
fo r
the most impor tant public monu ment i n
Vicenza:
the completion
of
the Palazzo deUa
Ragione, a vast civic hall b u i l t in the fifteenth cen-
tury,
and renamed
(significantly)
by PaUadio as
the 'Basilica'. PaUadio's intervention was noth-
in g more than a
lintel-arch-lintel
device, stacking
two serUane
orders b u i l t
i n
white stone, so that
they wrapp ed the existing hall an d shops under-
neath. The irregular structure of the existing
building
was absorbed by varying the len g
the l in te l with out altering the
arches.
The
in g
was thus conceived as a didactic displ
the orders and their abi l i ty to support, co
and mask the existing irregular gothic str
Moreover, his restructur ing o f the BasUic
classicism at the heart of the civic space o
city,
as the hegemonic and universal arch
tural
language of a long-desired
civitas.
The Basilica, l ike many other Palladio
ings,
would
not be completed du ring his
time. A
permanent state of instabUity def
by
wars, economi c crises,
disease
and, m
spectacularly, the tormented vicissitudes
the
families
fo r who m Palladio
worlced,
d
or prevented thei r construct ion. It is easy
imagine that a desire to counteract t his f
was the key impulse
behindlQuattroLibr
dell Architettura, which
sets out a ll o f his
i n order and according to his
original
des
regardless
o f alterations
made
du ring the
struction. The Four Books, in this
sense,
the emancipation of the idea o f architect
f r o m its material reaUsation. Confron ted
an unstable and complex environment , th
guage o f
building cannot
tame
the
city
i n
manifestations, but can
only
insert exem
forms
into its unstabl e body.
As w i t h
his e
ment w i t h the trium phal route f or Cardin
R i d o l f l ,
Palladio's confidence in the city i
revealed by the way he posi tion s a
buildin
if
he never proposed any ideal urba n sche
The architectural his tori an Franco
Barbi
suggested that although Palladio never p
mined
the site of his projects, the locati o
buUdings
seems
to fo l l o w the Roman stre
out that was s t i l l legib le in medieval Vice
(and that remains l egible today - the inter
t i o n o f a north-south
cardo
axis and an
ea
decumanus
is provi ded by the Corso Palla
the route that goes f r o m the ruins o f the R
Berga theatre to the Pusterla Bri dge on th
Bacchigiione).
Trissino's
Utopian vision
Vicenza as a Roma n city thus
seems
to em
f r o m Palladio's insistence on this layout a
ordering principle of his interventions.
f we fo l l o w this hypothesis diachro
we find along the decumanus the h
abstract forms ofthe Palazzo Chie
(1550),
the sophisticated facade of the
Ca
Cagollo (1559-62), and the Palazzo Pojan
(1560-61). Nearby was the site o f an unbu
project fo r the Palazzo Capra (1563-64) a
at the end of th e
decumanus, directly
opp
the
Palazzo
Chiericati, another
Palazzo
C
Following
the perpendicular
cardus,
we s
the rui ns of the Berga theatre i tself
a
stra
precedent fo r Trissino and Palladio in the
vision
ofresurr ectingVicenza's latent Ro
plan) and then
pass
the bridge
o f
San Pao
(which
in the sixtee nth centur y was believ
be another Roman structure), before
arri
the loggias of the Basilica and the del C ap
78
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at the intersecti on
w i t h
the decumanus. The
cardus would th en lead us to two of Palladio's
mos t impressive buil din gs - the Palazzo
Montano
Barbarano (1569-70) and the Palazzo
Porto
(1549).
Finally, we would end up at the
Casa
Bernardo Schio (1565-66). Following the
streets
that r un parallel to the cardo, towards the
east we would find the Palazzo Da Monte (1541¬
45), Palazzo Thien e (1542-46), a project fo r a
palazzo
fo r
Giacomo Angara no (1564) and a
fra gme nt of the Palazzo Pojana
(1555).
Similarly,
f o l l ow i n g
the
streets
that ru n parallel to the
decumanus, on the nort h we would
flnd
projects
fo r the Palazzo Tr issi no (1558) and a palazzo for
Giambattista Garzadori, along
w i t h
other minor
bu t
signif icant works
such as Palladio's youthful
interventions at the Pedemuro worksho p
w i t h
the Church o f Santa
Maria
i n Foro (1531) and the
city's cathedral (1534-36). Collectively, these
interventions can be summaris ed as the media-
t i on between two opposite forces which consti-
tute the two major ingredients of
a ll
o f PaUadio's
projects: on the one hand an abstraction of the
orders, proportion and symmetry, and on the
other a
site-specificity, w i t h
each
bui ld ing
being
carefully
inserted int o the tight and complex
medieval
fabric
of the city.
he
proj
ect that m ost f u l l y articulates
this me diat ion is the Palazzo
Chiericati.
Strategically located on
the edge of the Isola (the beginning of the
decumanus and thus at the city gate approaching
f r o m Padua and
Venice),
the main facade of the
palazzo consists of
tw o
superimposed loggias
powerfully f ramed by the or ders. B ut what is
most striking about th is design is that f or the
first time i n the
Renaissance
the composition
of
th e facade is
rigorously
projected into the
interior.
The elevation thus becomes a veritable
index o f th e workings of the plan and section.
A t
th e
same
ti me, the
space
onto
which
this
Utopian archit ectural language is projected is
fa r
f r o m idea l - the loggia is
directly
at odds
w i t h
the narrow and long f o rm o f the site, derived
i n
turn
f r o m the city's complex topography.
Forcing the bui ld ing to fit into its unlikely site
generated an unprecedented compression in
the plan, which
reads
as a
k i n d
of sixteenth-cen-
tury
barcode,
w i t h
i ts
sequence o f
compressed
versions of atria, int erna l loggia and agarden.«
Moreover, w i t h i n this logic, the facade's classi-
cal f o rm may be understood as a clear political
manoeuvre. Expandi ng the buildi ng's trans-
verse section by
only
a
few
metres, the loggia
occupies a
portion
o f the Isola, not
only
creating
a noble publi c gesture i n one of the city's most
important civic spaces, but also projecting a
highly
formal grammar . The peculiariti es of the
site (the exception) and t l ie generative princi ple
of th e bui ld ing (the rule) are thus intrinsically
linked a nd
mutually
reinforced, produci ng a
paradoxical combinatio n of formal abstraction
and radical site-speciflcity.
It is precisely Palladio's mas ter ing of the
dialectic between
continuity
and discont inuity
that theatrically
emphasises
the urban role o f
his buil dings as
civic
actors
w i t h i n
Vicenza's
analogous city - a dialect ic also
perfectly
depicted by Canaletto in his own analogous
city i n the f o rm o f th e painting he made o f the
bridge of the
Rialto,
composed w i t h two other
buildings f r o m Vicenza, the Palazzo Chiericati
and the
Basilica.
Rather than the actual bridge,
Canaletto shows the bridge as designed by
Palladio and presented in his
QuattroLibri.
These for ms are interpr eted by Canaletto in all
their paradigmatic integrity
an d
yet di sposable,
to
be used and c ombin ed according to unpre-
dictable urban inventions.
More
than his bridges and palazzos, however,
it is the villas i n the Veneto region for which
PaUadio
is most
celebrated.
What is im pressive
about
these buildings
is not so much their archi-
tectural
quality
as their
quantity. W i t h
the excep-
t ion perhaps o f Frank
Lloyd
Wright, no other
architect has offered a portfolio fiUed w i t h designs
of such impressive continuity. The fashion fo r vil-
las, a patricia n
typology
of the Roman
Empire,
was
revived
i n the
fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries.'
In a
rural
economy, its reappearance marked the
transition f r om feudalism to the economic power
of the estate, and fueUed by thi s succession,
Palladio assigned the villa a
position
of excep-
tional
importance i n his Quattro Libri: flve chap-
ters o f the Second
Book
are devoted to the
architectural pr inciples o f this type, which is
treated w i t h th e same attent ion to detail as other
crucial city
types such as palaces and religious
buildings.
By the time the QuattroLibriwas pub-
lished
Palladio had already designed a large num-
ber o f villas, and the serial nature of the solutions
he developed (akin to the repeating rules he
employed in his
palaces
i n Vicenza and churches
i n
Venice) allowed h im to define a consistent
for-
mal lexicon. Although
made up o f
veiy few
pr inc i -
ples, this language was very strict i n its application
notably, a clear symmetry of plan, an abundance
of loggias in the f o rm o f belvederes and barns, the
unconventional use
of
pediments and (Palladio's
rnost
strildng typological
cross-contamination for
rural buildings)
the reinter pretat ion of the spatial
intricacy of the
imperial
Roman bath w i t h i n the
interior o f the villa's central building.
number o f historians have addressed
Palladio's mixing o f classical and
vernacular elements and his villa
typology
as both a retreat and an economically
and culturally productive rural hub.
Much,
too,
has been written about his use of the pediment
which, but fo r one exception, had previously
been confined to religious buildi ngs.
Significantly
less,
however, has been said about
ho w
the
interior space o f
Palladio's villas appro-
priated the spat iality of the
imperial
baths which
he obsessively mapped, drew and rec onstru cted
during his
field-trips
to Rome, and whose
orgaiflsation - a sequence o f monumental
spacesjuxtaposed along axes of symmetr y
his countryside villas a quintessentially me
politan
air. In many ways, the th eatri cal spa
complexity
o f the Roman bath
offered
an in
miniaturised city. I t is thus possible to spec
that Palladio's appropr iatio n of the
imperia
bath and the pediment (taken f r om the mo
of
the religious
building, w i t h
the
implied
a
ment that temples and
houses share
the
sa
o r i g i n ) , and the
conflation
of these typolog
wi t h
an agricultural context, is part
of
a stra
that goes beyond erudite references to Rom
classicism and the accommodat ion
of
the
r i a l
demands of the
estate.
Instead, it seem
have more to do
w i t h
the idea of figuring th
ground as an assemblage of metropolitan s
tures where the political and economic pow
the Venetian archipelago
u n t i l
then const
bythe sea) is projected
analogically
- that is
via the example of
imperial
Rome - towards
the Veneto countrys ide. It is precisely this c
plex of analogical appropriations that mad
Palladio's architecture so successful and
i n
ential
as an urban model.
Underlying a ll
of Palladio's architectur
output was the biggest crisis then facing th
Serenissima Republic. Founded
some
time
in g
the first
decades o f
the eighth century a
developed as a mercantile city-state, econo
transaction, i n the f o rm o f maritime comm
had been Venice's raison d être. T hroug hou
early history, this trade was bolstered not
o
the city-state's geographical position at the
of th e Adriatic and the defeat of other mari
repubhcs such as Genoa, but also bythe i n f
ence o f the Byzantine Empire, which helpe
establish Venice as a privileged economic h
l i n k i n g
the Mediterranean basin
w i t h
com
cial
routes towards the east. However, Veni
impetuous rise
carne
abruptly to an end
w i t
major events. The flrstwas the War o f the L
of C ambrai (1508-1516), when the most im
tant European superpowers - Pope Julius
1
Emperor M a x im i l i an
and
K i n g Louis
x i i o
France - united against the Serenissima in
to l im i t its land expansion. The second dec
event, whose
consequences
would
only
slo
become app arent over the
course
of the six
teen th centu ry, was the discovery
o f
the New
Wor l d and the consequent shift o f major m
itime trafflc f r om east to west.
Confronted
w i t h
thi s crisis, the oligarch
o f the Serenissima became convinced that
were about t o enter a perio d of decline. Wh
interesting about their
response,
though, i
they accepted the prosp ect
of their diminis
fortune and, rather than seeking to reverse
seemed inevitable, they did somethi ng po l i
cally and conceptually far more radical: the
attempted to slow down the decline, so that
instead
of precipitating
a sudden collapse,
republic's wani ng influence could be tame
AA
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Andrea Palladio,
Vi l la
Emo, Fanzolo, 1556,
from
I
Quattro Libfi dell Architettura,
1570
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and governed as a utop ian condition of 'dura-
t i o n .
Their
response
consisted of
a
complex
series
of strategic manoeuvres, all of them pr edi-
cated on a
shift
of Venice's economic
basis
f r o m
the sea to the land; f r o m mariti me commerce
to agriculture. W i t h i n
this transfer, the ground
or terra firina
suddenly took on the
status
of
a
territorial
projec t - one that inclu ded land
recla-
madon, cartographic mapping and the hydro-
logical
control
o f
the netw ork of rivers that
descended
down into Venice f r o m
high
i n the
Alps. '7 An d
so, rather than
projecting
i t se l f
solely
towards t he sea as
a stato del mar
Venice turned
inwards, towards its
territorial
lands - a (re)dis-
coveiy of its
more earthly
influence
that must
be
seen
as the
deflning
context
f or
PaUadio's
unprecedented succession of countryside
viUas, each
commi ssioned by patricians
o f
the
Serenissmaregiine,
and
which would ultimately
give Venice's projec t of durat ion its most endur-
in g historical f o r m .
O
ffering some k i n d of theoretical legiti-
macy to this
shift
f r o m sea to land were
the
ideas
of the theorist and pa tron of
the
arts
Alvise
Cornaro
(1484-1566),
who argued,
in
particular,
fo r
the
promotion
of agriculture as
an alternative to Venice's existing mercantUist
economy. Author
o f l a Vita
Soin'cz,
a treatise on
the
virtue o f l i v i n g i n
the countryside, Cornaro
was one
of
the most active political thinkers dur-
in g the Veneto's economic crisis. His ideas largely
concerned the reclamat ion
o f land,
and the pro-
motion of
ag ricultu re over trade as the
basis fo r
a
more
solid
rel ationship between power and t e rr i -
tory.
Before Cornaro, country
l i fe
(ofwhich
the
viUa
was the most id ealised
form)
was
typically
understood as radically
anti-political
because it
turned
its back on the
political
space
p r excel-
lence,
t he city. After Cornaro, however, this image
was subverted: rather than being predicated on
the
fundamentally apolitical ideas
of disinterest
and denial, the countryside
became highly po l i t i -
cised
by
its promot ion
o f
a new
formal
model and
its
explicit
rejection o f the existing one - Venice.
To represent
his
vision of
a
civic l i fe ,
Cornaro
buUthis own analogous city
in
the countryside
nearPadua, PaUadio's birthplace.
In
the 1520s,
he commissioned the
Paduan
painter
Giovanni
Battista
Falconetto
to produce a garden loggia,
and a year later an o deon was b u i l t next to it to
host the performances
of
a famous
local
dialect
actor
Angelo
Beolco (better kn ow
by
his pseudo-
nym, Ruzzante). In Cornaro's garden, therefo re,
it
is possible to see an a ttem pt to elevate the ru stic
countryside to the
level o f
a new, cultiva ted
civic
condition
- one tha t lay beyond the city's mon u-
mental
spaces
but had a competi ng
measure of
cultural
and social charisma. Falconetto's loggia
-
the flrst example in the Veneto
o f
architecture
a
la Rotnana-was
clearly b u i l t as a
highly
symbolic
prototype, an exam ple. Its key feature is the
for-
ma l
theme of the loggia
itself, w i t h
i ts
generous
openings, didactic exposition of the orders as a
new
linguafranca
of
civic l i fe ,
and theatrical
framing
of the garden
which made
the loggia
both the scenery and the
spectator's
tribune.
This
comp ositional dialectic between subject
and objec t, between a
poin
t
of view
and a
space
framed w i t h i n it ,
would
be the
basis
of Palladio's
ow n
unique approach to
landscape.
In
all
of his
work,
the encircUng
territory
is not a
passive
ground to be activated by the
imposition
of
a flg-
ure, but a speciflc site
made
of existing natural
and a r t i f lc ia l elements
ofwhich
the object
the
vil la
-
becomes
a theatncal frame. In this
sense,
PaUadio's
villas
are not simply objects enclosed
w i t h i n
a reconstructed context
(think
ofthe
Medici
villas
i n the Florenti ne hiUs or Pirro
Ligorio's
VUla
d'Este), but speciflc objects that fr ame and rede-
fine
the
existing landscape
as an economic,
cultural
and political counter to the city.
Let's take a
look
at
two of
PaUadio's better
known viUas.
The
Vi l la
Em o in Fanzolo (1556) is
perhaps
the
building
that
best
shows the radical-
ism of
Palladio's approach to the relation ship
between the
viUa
and its imme diate landscape.
It is his simplest and most obviously
minimal
vil la
and yet its structure,
l ike a ll
the others, is
based
around the clear
juxtaposition o f
the
casa
dominicale
(palace) w i t h th e
flanking barchesse
(barns),
which
served as
storage
and as a covered
gallery passage
between the central body and
the symmetrical
colombare
along its two sides.
tJnlike his ot her vUlas, however, this juxta posi-
t i o n is revealed alongthe
same frontal
plane, a
device that
accentuates
the ViUa Emo's perpen-
dicularity
against the horizontality o f the sur-
rounding
Veneto plains. In its
simplicity,
the
v i l la
heightens the importance of
directing
the land-
scape, not by imposing on it a new, meticulously
regulated ground arrangement, bu t by
figuring
i t
through the si mple act
o f framing.
Palladio
does
this by developin g one side of the
v i l l a
as a con-
tinuous row
of
loggias and th e other side as a row
ofwindows,
thereby establishing, in avery pow-
erful
way,
the experience of
front
and back w i t h i n
the vastness of the building's landscape.
W i t h the
Vi l la
E mo we see, once again, the
classic Palladian paradox of a
building
that has
been designed according to its own composi-
tional
logic
(typically based
on symm etry), yet at
the same tim e is also inflected so as to react to its
speciflc site
condition.
This paradox is furth er
radicalised in Palladio's most famou s (and most
bizarre)
building,
th e
Vi l la
Capra or La Rotonda
(1567).
I n the
Quattro Libri,
this
v i l la
is incl uded
i n
the section dedicated to urban
palaces,
an
aspirational characterisation that further reveals
Palladio's attempt to transform a
building
in
the countryside i nto a veritable
civic f o r m . ' 5
The equation of city and countryside in
Palladio is already
visible
i n the
very
obvious
for-
ma l similarities
between his
rural villas
and
civic
palaces (but f or the absence of the barns, the
palaces
are the
same
as the
viUas
-
fo r
example,
the Palazzo
A n t o l i n i
i n Udine
bears
a
striking
similarity
to the
Vi l la
Pisani in Montagnana
yet
at the Rotonda the
unity
of city and coun
side is fur ther radicali sed, as if th e
building
some k i n d of
manifesto. Situated on a
hUlt
outside Vicenza, the
v i l la
was
clearly
desig n
an ideal 'observatory' towards the
landscap
conceptual and iconoclastic programme re
by
the
long
description
of
the site that
prefa
this project
in
the
Quattro Libri .
The vastne
and variety of this
landscape
is
exeiuplifled
f o r m and peculiar
composition
ofthe
v i l la
i
a rather small
building w i t h four
huge port
made
up o f colonnades, pediments and ra
As
is
we l l
documented, thi s unusual f o r m
f o
house
was inspi red by PaUadio's ow n recon
t i o n of the temple at the top o f the Sanctuar
Fortuna Primigenia in Palestrina, a mo num
complex Palladio
visited while
i n Rome.
Ye
the Rotonda, the monu mental ity and depth
viUa's
porticos
appear
as exaggerated again
scale of
the actual
building-
a contrast
whi
suggests that rather than bei ng grand entra
ways into the v i l la, they are actually orienta
outwards, towards the s urroun ding country
In
ot herwords , the porticos actmor e Uke
th
fo r
a
spectacle
that
pre-dates
the buUding:
landscape al l
around.
f
we
fo l low
this read
then the classical
view of
Palladio's Rotond
a pyramidal compositio n i n
which
the
buil
forms
the pinnacle
o f
the
h i l l
is subverted,
i
inverted, by the fact that the diagra m of the
is not about a conventional architectural re
ship
i n which
the outside is drawn towards
inside but
o f
the inside always
projecting
o
The
formal
symmetry of t he
building
is thu
index of
the Rotonda's
territorial
site-speci
Moreover, the fact that the buUding's symm
required
aU four sides
to have a
portico,
and
above them Palladio places a dome (the flrst
such a
detail
was used in a resid entia l buUd
conveys not a unidirectional
aspect
but a ro
ness that suggests an analogy w i t h th e i n f ln
of
t he
landscape
outside. The result is that
Rotonda subverts not
only
architect ural co
t i o n , w i t h its inversion of the dominance of
building
over its site, but also the con ventio
Renaissance
drama and the
rigidities of
pro
nium
front-to -backprojection. Fundament
then, the
building is
as radical
theatrically
it
is architecturally.
^ ^ W Itimately,
and to a certain exten
naturally,
i t
was
in
Venice that
Palladio
flnally seemed
able to s
his projec t of the city. His buildings constr
there, mostly churches, can al l be seen ag
the baclcdrop
o f
Venice's economic, geogr
an d political crisis, but more immediately
relate to two signiflcant proposals fo r rest
in g
and preserving the c i ty
i n
the wake of t
Serenissima demise. The flrst was a projec
initiated
by Crist oforo Sabbadino (1489-1
Venice's flrst and most
illustrious
hydraul
engineer, who began to develop the city's
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borders i n the f o r m of a
ring
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fondamenta
large embanl
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image of architecture entered the city in the
fo rm
of
f ini te parts,
of
points that defined the city,
w i t h -
out reduc ing it to an all-enconnpassed form'.^^
It is precisely this now characteristically
modern dialectic between the absoluteness of
architecture and the openness o f the city that
Palladio s unique architect ural approach sought
to establish. Using forms and typologies to effect
contextual relationships and political visions,
he fundam ental ly re-imagined not only the physi-
cal manifestation o f the
city
but i ts very idea.
Significantly,
however, unlike most other key the-
orists o f architecture - such as Vitruvius, Alber t i ,
Filarete or Serlio - Palladio never produced a
compreh ensive theory, plan or even a general
view
of the city. I n spite of the fact that his archi-
tecture, as we have seen, takes the f o r m o f repeat-
able prototypes, his projects are always rigorously
site-speciflc. The
effect
is to place PaUadio out-
side one of the topics throug h which architectural
culture in the fifteenth and sixteent h centuries
is repeatedly deflned - the ideal city'.
In
the popular
imagination,
ideal cities are
those
rationally
planned, perfectly harmonious
Renaissance municipalities whose structure and
image refl ected the rediscovery of huma nist
val-
ues
w i t h i n
a culture of civic coexistence. But
i n
order to
effectively
unders tand how the radical-
is m
of Palladio s project fo r the city subverted
this image, the conventional interpret ation
needs to be exposed. What is
traditionally
referr ed to as an ideal city' is in fac t a complex o f
theories, projects and actions fo r a city designed
accordingto rational
and
scientiflcally in te l l ig i -
ble
criteria.
It s o r i g i n dates back to Graeco-
Roman times and the founding of ex novo
settlements
accordingto
repeatable principles
independent f r o m the context
i n
which they were
to be appUed. These principles,
often
under the
umbrella o f a singular urba n layout, aimed to
more effectively
l ink
the int ernal social manage-
ment
of
a city
w i t h
i ts defence against outside
enemy forces.
Mediating
between the ancient
Greek oikos (household) and polis (city-state), the
idealism o f the
city
therefore inco rpora ted every-
thing
f r o m the private space of the fa m i l y house
to the militarisation o f the city-state.
W
i t h
t he fa l l of the Roman Empire
in
476
C E,
however, there ensued
i n Europe a paralysis i n the evolu-
t i o n o f the city that lasted r ight thro ugh to the
eleventh century, as settlements took the
f o r m
only
o f
small, self-sufficient
citadels or fortress
cities, diagrams almost of the
politics
o f feudal-
ism. The feudal inodel, of course, proved to be
as economica lly unsustainab le as it was archi-
tecturally
unnavigable, and it was against t his
model that the city as civitas was rediscovered
as the fundam enta l structure for human coexis-
tence f r o m the fourt eenth century onwards.
I t is precisely this rediscovery, together
w i t h
the
recovery o f the juridical implications o f being
a citiz en as opposed t o a feuda l
subditus,
that
promp ted philospophers and later architects to
retrace the legacy of antiquity as a model fo r the
new city. Vitrmius sDeArchitectura, rediscov-
ered in the fifteenth century, was an emble m of
this
historicism,
and supported not
only
an eru-
dite antiquar ianism but a treatise on city man-
agement covering al l scales o f the urban project
f r o m the design of
houses
to warfare.
I t was in this context that figures such
as A l b e r t i ,
Francesco
di Giorgio and Filarete
expanded the remit of the architect f r o m b u i l d -
ings to the design of entire cities. Subsequently,
the image o f the ideal city as one orderly con-
ceived according to a ratio nal plan,
appears
i n many fifteenth-century pain tin gs, precisely
reflecting the political immediacy o f urban
design. A n d i t is
here
that the
Renaissance
invention o f
perspective clearly
resonates
because it demonstrated the
possibility
of
reducing the space o f th e city to the m anageable
logic o f calculation and the mappin g and organ-
isation
of spatial and geographical facts. But
fo r
a ll
the perspectival idealism
exemplified
by architects l ike Sebastiano Serlio, I ta ly i n the
fifteenth and sixteent h centuries was in reality
so
pol i t i ca l ly
fragmente d and unstable that
an overall plan ning o f it s cities according to
rational criteria was quite impossible. Those
Italian cities that do appear as i deal (towns like
Pienza i n Tuscany or Vigevano i n Lombardy) are
i n fact fa i r ly restricted spaces enveloped by a
medieval urban fabric. Interestingly, this is also
the
case w i t h
Rome, a city long predicated on
a chaotic and somewhat haphazar d mod el of
urban
growth.
Al though the city s papacy in
the fifteenth and sixteent h centuries atte mpte d
to reconstruct Rome in accordance
w i t h
its
ancient splendour, such plans materialised only
i n t he f o r m of small interventions w i t h the exist-
in g infrastructure. For example, Bramante s
implementation o f
Pope
Julius
i i ' s
vision
for
Rome as an
imperial
city was (partially) realised,
not i n the f o r m o f an overall plan, but as a strate-
gic
positioni ng of
large-scale
architectural arte-
facts connected by a netw ork o f straight streets.
Given the l i m i t e d scope of these interventions,
architects l ike Bramante tended to overload the
metonymical
and microcosmic
resonances
of
individual build ings in an architectural organ-
is m
whose formal and spatial com posit ion (via
the use o f porticos,
squares,
foruins,
villas
and
basilicas) exuded the exemplary charact eristics
o f ancient cities. Consider, fo r example, his
Belvedere i n the Vatican, where the model
o f an ancient
v i l l a
- w i t h explicit
references
to the Sanctuary of Fortuna Prim igenia in
Palestrina - is translated into a massive, self-
contained courtyard bui ld ing. T hroug h overly
symbolic
structures l ike these. Renaissance
Italy s proj
ect f or the city
shifted
away f r o m the
overall
p lan a la Filarete towards analogical
representations
based
around contained, flnite
architectural compositions.
alladio, like Bramante, looked to
ancient monuments
of
Rome not
pl y as sources for the correct inte
tation of the orders, but as complex organi
that in themselves reproduced the
r i c h
arc
tural
qualities o f a city. I t was f or this reason
he so
carefully
studied t he mode l of the R o
bath , an urb an type he planne d to devote o
whole book to i n his (unfinished) architect
treatise. For Palladio the bathhouse was a
unique publ ic structure because unlike tem
or basilicas it grouped together multiple pr
grammes
an d
activities,
lending it an intric
through i ts
sequence
of
different
spaces. T
same spatia lity is oft en evoked in Palladio s
las,
palaces
and churches. Think, for exam
of
the inte rior s of the Redentore or San
Gio
Maggiore, the forms o fwh ich are the result
radically different spatial models, each dev
oped according to their own autonomous
geometries and l inked together only by the
metry and
continuity
o f the orders. Or cons
the two extraordinary proj ects fo r
palaces
i
Venice, publi shed i n the Second Book, who
plans develop around the elucidation o f a s
cession of spaces, the sequence o fwh ich is
simply reducible to the traditional tripartit
Renaissance palazzo atrium or courtyard.
The same miniaturisation of
city
space
compoun d architectural artefacts also pus
Palladio i n the Quattro Libri to reconst ruct
and La t i n squares ( f o l l o w i n g Vitruvius s de
t i o n ) , as models
fo r
a variety
of
colonnaded
indoor and outdoor spaces. Because of
t i i e
association w i t h the forums of ancient Rom
porticos made by colonnades
became
the
tive
architectural response in
f raming
open
public
civic
space.
W i t h i n this analogical c
text, as we have seen in the Palazzo Chieric
the Basili ca or the Palazzo Civena, Palladio
would
often
introduce a
ground-floor
porti
thereby instantly t ransforming the bui ld in
f r o m a simple, self-standing object to an en
that symbolically resonated wi th a l l of th e f
ma l
attributes o f the city around it . B y incor
rating public spaces, these buUdings were
simply outstanding examples of architectu
but exemplars
o f
an architectural relations
to the city. It is this explicit wU l to idealise t
made PaUadio s co llect ive series o f buildin
the absolute embodime nt of a project fo r t
city. Yet the im pact
o f these
examples sho u
not be viewed
simply
i n terms of their role i
establishing an architectural pattern b ook
subservience
to type and
f o r m
that has
mad
PaUadio one of the most copi ed architects
the history o f t h e discipUne). Instead, Palla
portfolio is more powerfully influential w i
a cultural understanding o f the
Renaissanc
city, offering speciflc architectural compos
that immediat ely evoke paradigms of city s
As Giorgio Agamben has written, the act
of
ma kin g an example is a complex business
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because i t presupposes
that in order to represent
the canon, an example has to be concep tually
disconnected f r o m the form s of its everyday
use.^''
I n
the
rhetorical
mechanisms
of
an example,
f o r m
is not
simply
an object
in i tself b ut
an object
that
operates
as a paradigm fo r some thing else.
Agamben
also reminds us that
i n La t in
culture
there was a
distinction
between an exemplar,
somethin g to be appreciated and un derstood
only
w i t h the senses - and thus somethi ng des-
tined to
be
imitated
- and an
exemplum,
a
f o r m
whose interpretation requires additional intellec-
tual
or symbolic references.
It is exactly as an exemplum that Palla dio's
architecture operates,
w i t h
its subtle references
to ancient typologies and resonances to wider
geographical and
political
contexts.
Through
Palladio,
architecture extends its
influence
on
the city precisely by being a f i n i t e and thus clearly
recognisable
thing,
a
'species'
i n the
sense
that
the
Marxist
philos opher Paolo
V i rn o
has used the
term,
consisting of a sole individual that can
only
be
pol i t i ca l ly
repr oduced and never transposed
into
an
omnivorous
general programm e.^7 The
power o f the exemplum
resides
i n its ab i l i ty to
propose a general paradigmat ic framework
rather th an a set
o f
regulations or comm ands to
be
l i terally
deployed.
As
an exemplum , Palladio's
architectural f o r m is not located on a plan, nor
even
estabUshed
as an urb an
rule, bu t is
invested
w i t h
the repr esentation of an alternative idea
o f
th e
eity
w i t h i n the very space of the existing city.
Such an i n tu i t ive ly
tactical
understating
of architecture, not
only
as a cohere nt set of
principles
but as a
mobile
element never
tied
to a n
overall
plan, seems to have it s o r i g i n i n
Palladio's passion fo r the art o f war. In the
QuattroLibrihe
notes that
i n
the successful
defence o f a
c i ty
the imperative to construct
perimeter
walls
is of l i t t i e use compared to the
t raining o f
the soldiers and a n accurate
l o iowl -
edge o f
the surroundin g
territory
a
militarised
understandi ng of landscape and civic manage-
ment so
f a i t h fu l l y
represented i n his battle
i l lus -
trations
for
the sixteenth-eentury
publication
of Polybius'sHwtones. What i t interesting about
these
troop
formation
diagrams is the
w ay
they
replicate his
villas'
o wn
f raming of
the land-
scape.
This
mentality
that fuse d the
stability
o f
architecture w i t h th e f l u i d complexity o f new
urban
spaces
and
forms seems
to have m ade
Palladio deeply sceptical abou t any overarchin g
urban plan, and pushed h i m instead to frame his
( i m p l i c i t ) project f o r
th e
c i ty in
th e
same wa y
he
understood the art
o f
w ar
- as a project tactically
open to the m u l t i p l i c i t y o f i ts territorial
circum-
stances
and yet resolute i n its
formal
strategy. I n
this
respect, Palladio's accessible geography
o f
architectures can be read as exemplars o f a city
no longer constrained
by i ts
walled
civitas,
bu t as
a
territory
whose
f o r m
lies in its attempt t o trace
and make explicit the geographical and political
conditions o f i ts existence.
This essay
will appearin PierVittorio
Aureli's forthcomin g
book in the M I T
Press
Writing
Architecture
Series,
wi th
the worldng
title,
The Possibility of
an Absolute Architecture.
1.
Rudolf
Wittkovver,
'Principles
of
Palladio's
Architecture'
(part one) in
Journalofthe WarburgandCourtauld
Institutes,vu 1944, pp 102-22;
(part
two),
ibid,vin
1944, pp 68-102.
Arciiitectural Principles
in
the A ge
of
Humanism
(London:
Warburg
Institute, 1949).
2.
Colin
Rowe, 'The Mathemades of the
Ideal
Villa:
Palladio and
Le
Corbusier
Compared in
The Architectural Review,
May
1950,
pp 289-300.
3. James S
Aekerman, T he Villa:Form
and
Ideology of Countiy Houses (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1990) , pp
10 - 14 .
4.
The name Palladio comes
from
Pallade, a nickname given to Pallas
Athena. In Greekpollax means 'young'
and Palladium was the wood statue
of
Pallas Athena.
It became
a famous
image o f ancient Graeco-Roman
mythology
and on which the safety of
a
city
was meant to depend. The name
was probably chosen
byTrissino
in ref-
erence to Angel Palladio, a character
in
his poem
'L'ltalia
Liberata dai Got '.
Trissino's choice of this name is
absolutely explicit
in
the cultural
inten-
tions he saw the young architect as
sup-
posed
to embody -
i n
Trissino militant
(and slightly
delirious)
classicism,
Palladio was the resurrec tion
of
an
ancient architect. On the sources
of
Palladio's name see Franco Barbieri,
Architetture Palladiane (Vicenza: Neri
Pozza, 1992), pp 211-12.
5. See
Flavia
Cantatore,
'Casa
Civena
e
i
primi
studi
di
Andrea Palladio per
ease
e palazzi' i n Franco Barbieri et al (eds),
Palladio 1508-1580:11 Simposio
del
Cinquecentenario
(Venezia:
Marsilio,
2008), pp 245-49.
6.
PierfilippoCastelli,Ifly/tórf/
Giovangiorgio Trissino, OratoreePoeta
(Venezia:
Giovanni Radici, 1753) ,
p
75.
See also Franco
Barbieri,
'Giangiorgio
Trissino
e
Andrea Palladio' in Neri
Po Z.za{ed),Attl
del
convegno
di
studt
su
Giangiorgio Trissino (Vicenza: Neri
Pozza, 1980).
7.
The same promotion of Roman archi-
tecture would be embraced
by
Daniele
Barbaro, another patrician and
diplo-
mat, who supported Palladio after
Trissino's death in
1550.
8.
See Francesco
Paolo
dlTeodoro,
'Andrea Palladio e
il
laseito teorieo
diRaffaello:
aleune osservazioni' in
Franco Barbieri, op cit, pp
80 - 86 .
9.
See Peter Vaughan Ha rt and P
[eds], Palladio s Rome (New
Ha
Yale University Press, 2006).
10 . GuidoBeltramini, 'Andrea Pa
1508- 1580
in
GuidoBeltrami
Howard
Burns (eds), Palladio (
Marsilio,
2008) , pp
2 - 4 .
See als
Giangiorgio Zorzi, Le
opere pub
e I palazzi di Andrea Palladio
(V
Neri Pozza, 1965), pp
167 - 69 .
11 . For an
overview
of the urban an
cal
history
of
Venice see Franc
Barbieri, Vicenza:Storia
di una
tura urbana
(Milano:
Silvana E
1982) .
See also Guido Beltram
Palladio Private
(Venice: Mars
2008), p 14.
12 .
Franco
Barbieri,
op cit, pp
54 , 6
13 .
See Andrea PaUadio,
TheFourB
onArchitecture, trans.
RobertT
and Richard Schofield (Cambr
MA
M I T
Press, 1997) , p82 .
14.
On the idea of the
villa
see
Jam
Aekerman, op cjY.
15 .
The one, infamous, exception
Giuhano da
Sangallo's
Villa M
at Poggio a Caiano (1485).
15. Stefano Ray, 'Integ rita
e Ambi
inKurtFostei:,Palladio: Ein S
(Rome: Schweiserisches Instit
Rom,
1980),
pp 53-74.
17 .
For an analysis of the
l ink
betw
Palladio's architecture and the
of
the Serenissima's Terraferm
Denis Cosgrove, ThePalladian
scape: Geographical Change
and
Cultural Representations
in
Si
Century Italy
(Philadelphia,
P A
State University Press, 1993).
18 . SeeGinoBenzoni
(ed),
Verso
la
Agricoltura:Ruzzante, ilPolesin
(Rovigo:
Associazione Cultural
Minelliana, 2004).
19 . See Andrea Palladio, op cit, pp
20 . On the Venetian projects of
Sa
and Cornaro see Man fredo
Ta
Venice
and the
Renaissance (C
M MiTPress, 1995), pp 139-
21 . Ibid, p 146.
22 .
Ibid,
p 58.
23 .
Ibid.
24 .
On the elevation
of
the Greek o
as a
principle o f city
managem
Giorgio
Agamben,//Potere
elo
(Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2007).
25 .
Andrea Palladio, op cit,
pp 149 -
25 .
Giorgio
Agamben,'Che
cosaè
Paradigma?' in
Giorgio
Agamb
Signata Rerum: Sul Metodo
(Turin:
BoUati Boringhieri,
200
27 .
VaoloVirno,Mondanita:L id
tra espertenza s ensiblle e sfera
(Rome: Manifestolibri,
1994),
28 . On Palladio's war architecture
Guido Beltramini, 'Palladio e L
tettura delta battaglia: le edizio
illustrate d i
Cesare Polibio' inP
1508-2008,
op cit
pp 217-29.
84
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G i o v a n n i A n t o n i o C ana l
(Canal e t t o ) ,
Capriccio of Palladio s Design for the Bridge of Rialto,
with Buildingsfivm Vicenza, c 1759
© N a t i o n a l G a l l e r y , Parma