Andrea Palladio

Andrea Palladio
Portrait of Palladio from 1576
Born	(1508-11-30)30 November 1508 Padova, Republic of Venice
Died	19 August 1580(1580-08-19) (aged 71) Maser, near Treviso
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	Villa Barbaro Villa Capra "La Rotonda" Basilica Palladiana Church of San Giorgio Maggiore Il Redentore Teatro Olimpico
Projects	I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture)

Andrea Palladio (Italian pronunciation: [anˈdrɛːa palˈlaːdjo]; 30 November 1508 – 19 August 1580) was an Italian architect active in the Republic of Venice. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily by Vitruvius, is widely considered to be the most influential individual in the history of architecture. All of his buildings are located in what was the Venetian Republic, but his teachings, summarized in the architectural treatise, The Four Books of Architecture, gained him wide recognition. The city of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Palladio was born on 30 November 1508 in Padua and was given the name, Andrea Di Pietro della Gondola. His father, Pietro, called "Della Gondola", was a miller. From early on, Andrea Palladio was introduced into the work of building. In Padua he gained his first experiences as a stonecutter in the sculpture workshop of Bartolomeo Cavazza da Sossano, who is said to have imposed particularly hard working conditions. At the age of sixteen he moved to Vicenza where he would reside for most of his life. Here he became an assistant in the Pedemuro studio, a leading workshop of stonecutters and masons. He joined a guild of stonemasons and bricklayers. He was employed as a stonemason to make monuments and decorative sculptures. These sculptures reflected the Mannerist style of the architect Michele Sanmicheli.

Perhaps the key moment that sparked Palladio's career was being employed by the Humanist poet and scholar, Gian Giorgio Trissino, from 1538 to 1539. While Trissino was reconstructing the Villa Cricoli, he took interest in Palladio's work. Trissino was heavily influenced by the studies of Vitruvius, who later influenced Palladio's own ideals and attitudes toward classical architecture. As the leading intellectual in Vicenza, Trissino stimulated the young man to appreciate the arts, sciences, and Classical literature and he granted him the opportunity to study Ancient architecture in Rome. It was also Trissino who gave him the name by which he became known, Palladio, an allusion to the Greek goddess of wisdom Pallas Athene and to a character of a play by Trissino. Indeed, the word Palladio means Wise one. After Trissino's death in 1550, Palladio benefited from the patronage of the Barbaro brothers, Cardinal Daniele Barbaro, who encouraged his studies of classical architecture and brought him to Rome in 1554, and his younger brother Marcantonio Barbaro. The powerful Barbaros introduced Palladio to Venice, where he finally became "Proto della Serenissima" (chief architect of the Republic of Venice) after Jacopo Sansovino. In addition to the Barbaros, the Corner, Foscari, and Pisani families supported Palladio's career.