Product Description

Andrea Palladio (1509-1589) won great fame in his lifetime, working extensively in Northern Italy (mainly in Venice and around Vicenza), building a series of palaces, villas and churches in a classical style. He gave his name to the Palladian style which, from Holkham and Chiswick, as far afield as Germany and the USA, has influenced architecture over the centuries. This illustrated book sets the architect's life and work in the context of one of the most dramatic and eventful periods in history - the Renaissance. It features newly-commissioned photographs, plans and drawings. The author discusses Palladio's buildings in terms of their importance in art history, and his career is put into perspective against the backdrop of events and personalities of the age.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2895833 in Books
• Published on: 1994-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Amazon.com Review
This comprehensive volume on the most influential architects in Western history is meant to be, in the words of its author, "user-friendly." Bruce Boucher suggests that Andrea Palladio might "fit comfortably into a suitcase or a backpack for a trip to Vicenza," the city west of Venice where the 16th-century architect Palladio lived and where most of his villas stand.

For art historians and architects, Boucher effectively synthesizes the more than 30 years of research that has been accomplished since James Ackerman's seminal 1966 work on Palladio. Boucher's style is balanced and highly readable. In discussing the architect's bridges, he paraphrases Palladio's advice that "an even number of piers should be used because nature endows every creature with an even number of legs to support its weight." "This last observation," Boucher writes, "is typically Palladian in its appeal to the natural world as a justification of what was simply an aesthetic preference."

Thanks to the extraordinary photographs of Paolo Marton, you will find yourself dreaming of an Italian vacation even before you begin reading Boucher's text. Marton's pictures make the exteriors of Palladio's villas, churches, bridges, and palaces look as if they were appearing before us, bathed in fresh spring light and set against a startlingly blue sky. His interior exposures are minutely sensitive to shadow as well as to light, and Marton precisely captures the soaring, airy volumes of Palladio's incomparable spaces.

This perfectly designed book also includes photographs of the original floor plans and elevations, as well as several helpful addenda, such as maps showing the locations of Palladio's buildings, a glossary, and a chronology.

From Publishers Weekly
Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), supremely empirical in his reformulation of classical style, built villas, palaces and churches whose influence echoes in Jefferson's Monticello and the contemporary renewal of classical forms. In this careful, comprehensive, stunningly illustrated survey, Boucher, an art history professor at the University of London, capably illuminates Palladio's stylistic evolution, though he is less successful in placing this elusive, extremely private man in the cultural milieu of the High Renaissance. Among the 300 plates are more than 100 newly commissioned photographs of building interiors and exteriors, which superbly capture Palladio's distincitve blend of simplicity and grandeur. Chapters cover Palladio's elegant wood and stone bridges, his influential treatise Four Books on Architecture and his mature fusion of the monumental and domestic.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Choosing from a field shaped by Raphael, Michelangelo, Bramante, Alberti, et al., Boucher (The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, Yale Univ. Pr., 1991) focuses on Palladio as one of the earliest modern architects. Not since James Ackerman's Palladio (1967) has this Renaissance master been covered so comprehensively. Heavily laden with stunning original photographs, Boucher's work transports the reader to the reassuring symmetrical classics of an architect who clarified, codified, and influenced architectural form in his own time with his Quattro Libri, which has endured through the centuries into the postmodern era. His early commissions in Vicenza and the succeeding bridges, mature villas, basilicas, and religious works are chronicled here with an attention to detail and careful scholarship that includes an extensive bibliography and glossary; yet architects and students of architecture and Renaissance art will find it both readable and enjoyable. Highly recommended.
Ellen Bates, New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A must-read for students of architecture and the Renaissance
Architecture, no matter how interesting, can be a rather dry topic to read about. For that reason alone this book is worth having, since the writer Boucher deftly handles the material in an engaging and fluid style. However, the real strength of this tome is the way Boucher is able to get into the head of Palladio without ever resorting to speculation. This is accomplished through analysis not only of Palladio's as-built works, but also early versions of the plans and designs, rejected proposals, and a study of the architect's own vastly influential book, the Quatro Libri. Boucher chooses to discuss his structures by type (religious, villa, palazzi, civic) rather than chronologically, which requires frequent checking of the chronology section in the back to follow along. Although this format requires a bit more mental investment on the part of the reader, in the end it is a more illuminating way to understand Palladio's creative genius.

My only complaint about the book is the lack of modern ground plans. Boucher relies on Palladio's own woodcuts but few of these accurately reflect the actual buildings. Ground plans are usually the least colorful part of an architectural discussion, so having to rely solely on one's mental images for these passages is too abstract. The illustrations are good, especially considering the difficulty of photographing architecture in the cramped quarters of certain northern Italian cities, but I didn't find them to be as spectacular as did those who wrote the editorial reviews above. Nothing wrong with the quality of the photos, it's just that they are often printed small or taken from (necessarily) oblique angles. It is also recommended that one has at least a rudimentary understanding of classical architecture to get full value from this book. Scholars and informed fans of classical and Renaissance architecture are sure to benefit the most.

Architecture is all around us, but few ever pay attention to the men behind these constructions
Architecture is all around us, but few ever pay attention to the men behind these constructions. Now in a newly updated and expanded second edition, "Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time" looks at the man who revolutionized western architecture during his long life in the sixteenth century (he was a master of the arts and a true Renaissance man). "Andra Palladio: The Architect in His Time" covers his life and the inspirations for his craft, enhanced with photographs of Palladio's work. A seminal coverage, "Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time" is highly recommended for community library Biography and Architectural Studies collections.