Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time [Hardcover]

Bruce Boucher (Author), Paolo Marton (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1994

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.

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Abbeville Pr; 1st edition (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558593810
• ISBN-13: 978-1558593817
• Product Dimensions: 13 x 11.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,560,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Architecture is all around us, but few ever pay attention to the men behind these constructions, July 12, 2008

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time (Paperback)

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.