Architectural Posters of Andrea Palladio

Andrea Palladio: Villas, Palaces and Public Buildings

From his close study of Roman antiquity, Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) developed a distinctive architecture for the society of the Veneto. His urban palaces insert classical orders into medieval Vicenza, while his villas combine agricultural use with representative country life. These fourteen motifs present individual masterpieces as well as surveys in which the proportions, façade types and remarkable variety of his work can be compared.

AP 101 and AP 102 · Built Works and Projects

AP 101 gathers Palladio’s surviving buildings as precise, scale-like views; AP 102 sets planned, unbuilt or substantially altered projects beside them. Together the plates show how he varied a limited vocabulary – columnar orders, pediments, loggias, arches and clearly proportioned volumes – for very different purposes. His Four Books of Architecture, published in 1570, carried this synthesis of building experience, reconstruction of antiquity and ideal design far beyond Italy.

AP 559 and AP 388 · The Villas of the Veneto

These two survey posters arrange numerous Palladian villas as coloured façade studies. A new type of country estate emerges: the owner’s house often resembles an ancient temple with a monumental staircase, columned loggia and pediment, while lateral farm wings accommodate the management of the estate. AP 559 provides the extensive portrait-format survey, while AP 388 offers a concentrated selection in landscape format. Direct comparison reveals how Palladio repeatedly adapted symmetry and classical dignity to site, patron and agricultural function.

AP 323 and AP 352 · Villa Foscari, the “Malcontenta”

Palladio built Villa Foscari from 1560 to 1565 for the brothers Nicolò and Alvise Foscari beside the Brenta, near the Venetian lagoon. Unlike many of his working estates, it stands in the landscape as a compact, elevated block without agricultural wings. An Ionic temple portico defines the principal front facing the water, while the rear is shaped by a great thermal window and the interior arrangement. AP 323 and AP 352 document both sides, showing how differently Palladio composed the front and back of a symmetrically organised house.

AP 321 and AP 223 · Villa Rotonda

Designed in 1566 for Paolo Almerico after his return from Rome, Villa Almerico Capra is not a typical farm villa but a suburban residence on a hill outside Vicenza. Four equivalent temple porticoes open the nearly square building towards the landscape in every direction; at its centre is a circular hall beneath a dome. This union of central geometry and changing views made the Rotonda an icon of architectural history. The motif is available as AP 321 and in the smaller AP 223 edition.

AP 351 and AP 322 · Villa Emo and Villa Barbaro

Villa Emo was built from 1559 to 1565 for Leonardo Emo at Fanzolo. The raised owner’s house, long straight barchesse and terminal dovecote towers form a single rigorously ordered front in AP 351, turning farm and residence into one architectural whole. At Maser, Palladio designed a more compact complex for Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro around 1554–58. Its central house and service wings likewise share a continuous axis, while Paolo Veronese’s frescoes complement the architecture inside. AP 322 records the long façade, at once ceremonial and functional.

AP 320, AP 389 and AP 391 · Palladio’s Vicenza

With the loggias begun in 1549, Palladio enveloped the older Palazzo della Ragione and gave Vicenza’s political and commercial centre a new identity. Repeated Serlian openings – a large arch between two smaller rectangular bays – absorb irregular bay widths and create the calm rhythm of the Basilica Palladiana in AP 320. Palazzo Chiericati, built from 1551 for Girolamo Chiericati, responds to its former position at the open edge of the city with a raised podium and two storeys of loggias (AP 389). AP 391 compares several palace façades, showing how Palladio repeatedly adapted classical order to narrow plots and existing houses in the medieval city.

AP 324 and AP 390 · Teatro Olimpico and Il Redentore

Begun in 1580, the Teatro Olimpico was Palladio’s last major commission in Vicenza. For the Accademia Olimpica he translated his study of Vitruvius and ancient ruins into a permanent Renaissance theatre. After his death, his son Silla completed the building; for its 1585 inauguration Vincenzo Scamozzi created the perspective streets of Thebes behind the stage wall, memorably recorded in AP 324. Venice’s church of Il Redentore originated in a Senate vow during the plague of 1575–77. Designed by Palladio in 1576 and begun in 1577, the church brings clearly articulated liturgical spaces together inside; its façade, shown in AP 390, interweaves several ancient temple fronts into a balanced whole.