Palladio (Architect and Society) [Paperback]

James S. Ackerman (Author), Phyllis Dearborn Massar (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 1974 | ISBN-10: 0140135006 | ISBN-13: 978-0140135008

Palladio (1508-80) combined classical restraint with constant inventiveness. In this study, Professor Ackerman sets Palladio in the context of his age - the Humanist era of Michelangelo and Raphael, Titian and Veronese - and examines each of the villas, churches and palaces in turn and tries to penetrate to the heart of the Palladian miracle. Palladio's theoretical writings are important and illuminating, he suggests, yet they never do justice to the intense intuitive skills of "a magician of light and colour". Indeed, as the photographs in this book reveal, Palladio was "as sensual, as skilled in visual alchemy as any Venetian painter of his time", and his countless imitators have usually captured the details, but not the essence of his style. There are buildings all the way from Philadelphia to Leningrad which bear witness to Palladio's "permanent place in the making of architecture", yet he also deserves to be seen on his own terms.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James S. Ackerman, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus at Harvard University and a Fellow and former Trustee of the American Academy in Rome, was born in San Francisco in 1919 and studied at Yale and New York University. He is a former editor of the Art Bulletin, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding member of the British Academy, the Accademia Olimpica (Vicenza), the Ateneo Veneto and the Royal Academy of Uppsala. He gave the Slade Lectures at Cambridge in 1969-70.

Professor Ackerman has lived several years in Italy, beginning with service during the last war, and is the author of many studies on Italian architecture, including The Cortile del Belvedere (1954), a history of the Renaissance portion of the Vatican Palace, and The Architecture of Michelangelo (1961), which received the Charles Rufus Morey Award of the College Art Association of America and the Alice David Hitchcock Award of the Society of Architectural Historians. Recently, he has published The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses (1990); a volume of collected essays, Distance Points, is in press. He is co-author of a volume on historical practice and theory, Art and Archaeology (1963). He has conceived an narrated the films Looking for Renaissance Rome (1975, with Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt) and Palladio the Architet and His Influence in America (1980).

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (May 30, 1974)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140135006
• ISBN-13: 978-0140135008
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #902,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Palladio synosis, April 14, 2010

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James A. Madura (Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Palladio (Architect and Society) (Paperback)

This is a small paperback, which reviews Palladio's life and work. I have other more extensive and better illustrated works, but this is adequate for an introduction to his work

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A little too basic, December 15, 2010

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P. Strayer (Oakland CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Palladio (Architect and Society) (Kindle Edition)

I read and listened to this on a recent trip in Italy - on the train ride from Venice to Vicenza to see Palladio's Teatro Olympico. It was helpful it was available in portable formats (i.e. Kindle and audio on iTunes). So I did arrive in an hour, knowing Something about Palladio. It's certainly not in depth. I think it could have said more. I did not feel sufficiently informed about Palladio and geometry. It's perhaps a little too basic of a book on the architect.