ARTH 414
Palladio: His World and His Interpreters Spring 2013
Division I
This is not the current course catalog

Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) has come to be regarded as the most influential architect in western history, but he began his career as a stonemason in a provincial Italian city. This seminar will trace the contours of his career and his complex legacy. As we study his works in their physical and socio-political contexts, we will consider his humble origins in the stoneyard and later humanist education, his early success in his native city of Vicenza and difficult entry into Venice, and the 1570 publication of The Four Books of Architecture. The seminar will also seek to define the protean term “Palladianism” as we examine the reception, interpretation, and appropriation of Palladio’s work by architects and theorists of subsequent centuries, especially in Britain and America. We will use Palladio as a lens to discuss key issues of his day and later periods such as: patronage, politics, and civic identity; ritual and reform in religious architecture; architectural theory and print culture; the villa and the “Palladian landscape”; and the interpretation of antiquity.