This edition also features the original woodcut illustrations, which are not as pristine as the engravings produced for Ware's edition but are carefully interleaved with the text. The list of illustrations from the 1570 edition, glossary, and bibliography all enrich the value of this treatise immeasurably. The organization of the volume is immaculate: in addition to the informative introduction which serves as a bibliographic essay on the various editions of the work. This new translation in English, the first since Isaac Ware's of 1738, is simultaneously elegant and readable. From building materials to residences to Roman temples, Palladio covered an incredible breadth of topics in his four volumes. Abundant frescoes create an atmosphere that is more reminiscent of a cathedral than a country house’s main salon.His theoretical and promotional treatise, I Quattro Libri dell' Architecttura, was first published in Venice in 1570 and sets forth a grammar of architecture.
#ANDREA PALLADIO FOUR BOOKS OF ARCHITECTURE FULL#
The main space is the central, circular hall, surrounded by a balcony and covered by the domed ceiling it soars the main house’s full height up to the dome, with walls decorated in trompe l’oeil. All principal rooms were on the second floor or piano mobile.Īlessandro and Giovanni Battista Maganza and Anselmo Canera were commissioned to paint frescoes in the leading salons for the interiors. The pediments were each supported by six Ionic columns. Each of the four porticos has pediments graced by statues of classical deities. For each room to have some sun, the plan was rotated 45 degrees from each compass’s cardinal point.
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The design reflected the humanist values of Renaissance architecture. If you look carefully at the villa’s perspective, you will notice that the noble floor and the attic each cave in a few centimeters compared to the floor below, acting as a sort of “step pyramid” on three levels, making the whole structure stable. La Rotonda has no foundations: it is self-sustaining thanks to the arches and the brick cross-vaults on the ground floor, which constitutes the structural grid of the perpendicular axes on which the upper floors rest on. Works spaces for the villa’s servants are hidden in a low level underneath the first floor, accessed via staircases hidden inside the central hall walls. This and all other rooms were proportioned with mathematical precision according to Palladio’s own architecture rules, which he published in I Quattro Libri dell ‘Architettura. Each portico has steps leading up to it and opens via a small cabinet or corridor to the circular domed central hall. To describe the villa, as a whole, as a rotunda is technically incorrect, as the building is not circular but rather the intersection of a square with a cross. The name La Rotonda refers to the central circular hall with its dome. The whole is contained within an imaginary circle that touches each corner of the porticos’ building and centers.
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La Rotonda is a symmetrical building having a square plan with four facades, each of which has a projecting portico. This sophisticated building was designed for a site that was, in modern terminology, “suburban.” Palladio classed the building as a “palazzo” rather than a villa.
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Unlike some other Palladian villas of the Veneto, the building was not designed from the start to accommodate a working farm. The villa’s square plan was rotated 45 degrees, its four corners facing the four cardinal points to mitigate sun exposure and winds. The choice of the location was fundamental: just about a quarter of a mile from the city walls, the hill on which la Rotonda stands on was guaranteed to offer the clean air all Veneto nobility members desired at the time. Along with other works by Palladio, the building is conserved as part of the World Heritage Site “The City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.” The villa’s correct name is Villa Almerico Capra Valmarana, but it is also known as “La Rotonda,” “Villa Rotonda,” “Villa Capra,” and “Villa Almerico Capra.” The name Capra derives from the Capra brothers, who completed the building after it was ceded to them in 1592.
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Villa La Rotonda is a Neoclassical villa just outside Vicenza in northern Italy designed by Andrea Palladio.