PALLADIO: PALLADIO. THE VILLAS

This volume celebrates a particular aspect of the work of Andrea Palladio on the occasion of the five-hundredth anniversary of the great architect's birth: the villas built for the aristocrats of the period in the Veneto countryside.
By identifying some of the most significant buildings, it is intended to illustrate the historical and cultural context which led, at the time, to the development of what is known as the "culture of the Veneto villas", of which Palladio was unquestionably the supreme and most refined interpreter.
Thanks to its wealth of high-quality photographs which present the villas from a fresh viewpoint, the volume aims above all to highlight the significance of villa life for Cinquecento aristocrats. Along with countless interiors of Palladian buildings, the book illustrates the frescos which portray the nobility of the time intent on carrying out their recreational, physical and intellectual activities, those to which Palladio himself alludes in his writings. It is specifically for this reason that the book dwells on the quite particular attention the architect dedicated to studying the relationship between his buildings and the surrounding environment: an intense dialogue between architecture and nature, between man and the environment, which often emerges from Palladio's own words when describing his projects so masterfully in the Quattro Libri (Venice 1570).
Finally, the volume intends to restore the purity and rigour of Palladio's language both through the architect's own texts and drawings, and by the meticulous reading of his architectural works: formal aspects which, once again, can be grasped with extreme immediacy in the photographic illustrations.