ITALY...GREECE...Only In My Dreams, But Not For Long.

Finally, finally after all these years of learning and looking from afar:

I'M GOING TO SEE IT ALL. 

RENAISSANCE: Masaccio's Trinity, 1427, Sta Maria Novella, Florence.

RENAISSANCE: Masaccio's Expulsion, 1426, Brancacci Chapel, Sta Maria del Carmine, Florence.

PROTO-RENAISSANCE! Giotto, Virgin and Child Enthroned, 14th c., The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

BRONZE AGE, MINOAN: Knossos Palace, 1800 BCE, Crete.

MINOAN: Knossos Palace, 1800 BCE, Crete.

RENAISSANCE: Alberti's Sant'Andrea, 15th c., Mantua.

Commitments have been made and for 30 days and 30 nights I will travel back in time to:

Rome...Florence...Ravenna...Mantua...Padua...Venice
Athens...Mykonos...Delos...Thera...Crete

This includes works (most in situ!) from the Bronze Age, Antiquity, Byzantium, the Medieval era, the Proto-Renaissance and of course the Renaissance and even more and more! The Vatican, the Uffizi, the monastery at San Marco, the Pantheon, the Parthenon, Knossos Palace, Palladian architecture in Venice, maybe the lady in a red coat! Ah! I hope not!

I'm putting my lists together and planning to have several Stendhal experiences. Is there medicine for that? I need a suitcase full.

RENAISSANCE: Palladio's Redentore, 16th c., Venice.

BYZANTINE: San Vitale, 6th c., Ravenna.

Mosaics! Ravenna.

I can't even express how excited and overwhelmed and thankful I am. To my homeland!

Andrea Palladio takes over...

Palladio started as a stonecutter, later in life he was trained by Giangiorgio Trissino and in Rome he was under the patronage of the Barbaro family. As an older man and a young architect Palladio had the advantage of being exposed to many influences, after he won the competition in Vincenza for the remodelling of the basilica he became the go to architect. While he was working mostly in Vincenza, neighboring Venetians heard of his great talent and soon they began commissioning Palladio for their own city. Influenced by classical antiquity, Bramante, and Michelangelo, Palladio incorporated his innovative trademarks such as: temple fronts on domestic buildings, consolidating buildings for agricultural villas, interlocking orders on churches, and above all classical proportion and harmony. In 1570 his treatise, I Quattro Libri (four books), highlighting his rules of architecture was printed.

Palazzo Thiene, Vincenza

Compare the House of Giulio Romano, another architect who influenced Palladio (1540/Mantua)...
- combination of Renaissance style with local tradition of decorating exterior, festoons
- layering on facade
- stitch like string course which follows line of pediment

...to Palladio's Palazzo Thiene (1537-42) which features:
- Bramantean 2 story type
- rough rusticated podium
- use of Roman orders, here in pilasters
- influence of Bramante's, House of Raphael
- inventive stonework design, quoining with different stone on lower level and upper level frames around windows
- alternating pediments, triangular and segmented
- doubled pilasters on ends only, otherwise single
- wrapped pilaster around corner
- Italian balustrade

Palazzo Iseppo del Porto, 1549-52

Created as a new palace (as opposed to adding or remodelling) in Vincenza, Palladio is still working with the vocabulary of other architects (here Sanmicheli), but his ideas here will become standards in modern Renaissance structures. As Sanmicheli does, Palladio merges classical concepts with Northern Italian decor, signified here with the keystone heads, alternating pediments, and winged victories in the spandrels. Palladio installs proportion, solving the problem of the attic story by using pedestals and adding statues. The termination point incorporates the order.

Palazzo Chiericati, 1550-57

Still in Vincenza, Palladio's Palazzo Chiericati should be noted for:
- its public/private relationship
- the open loggia and portico done in a classical style
- classicaly treated Doric and Ionic orders, superimposed
- expert handling of corners and note the cluster of Doric columns which seem to thrust the exterior forward
- 3 bay wings on each side, with a triumphal arch
- alternating pediments, with sculptural decor
- terminating point statues
- metope triglyph frieze

Palazzo Valmarana, 1565-66

In Palladio's Palazzo Valmarana (Vincenza), he invokes St. Peter's and Michelangelo's Capitoline Hill with the use of the Giant orders. Stretching from top to bottom and ending abruptly at the edge of the building to reveal underlying minor orders. This gives you an important view into the concept of layering planes. Also at the edge is a Mannerist type pedimented window framed with a full length statue. In keeping with the Northern love for decoration there are reliefs and balustrades.

Villa Rotunda, 1551

The Villa Rotunda, a vacation home just outside of Vicenza, illustrates several of Palladio's ideas. One is the importance of site in regards to the points of the compass as discussed in his Four Books of Architecture. Here he has placed the villa on a hilltop where it is embedded in its natural surrounding, radiating out over the land. Also demonstrated here is the application of the temple front to a secular building. The porticoes are topped with pediments and statues and the whole is topped with the dome. Before this structure personal secular buildings did not make use of elements traditionally found in religious buildings. By including the temple front and the dome, which links this to the Roman pagan temple, the Pantheon, Palladio created a new style of architecture. Even though it may have enraged some at the time, this combination of sacred and secular architecture would be copied for the rest of history, especially for civic buildings. The most prominent examples of this being the United States Capitol in Washington, DC and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia, both started in the late 18th century.

With six Ionic columns creating an open loggia on all four sides, Palladio has enhanced the absolute symmetry. As shown in the plan, the Rotunda is basically a circle in square, conceptually going back to Bramante, Brunelleschi, and of course the mathematical theories of Vitruvius.

Villa Barbaro, 1557-8

Palladio's design for agricultural villas were functional, not the typical pleasure villas of other cities. By consolidating scattered buildings into one strong and cohesive unit, the villa could reflect harmony with its environment and proportion and symmetry in its design. Details of Villa Barbaro in Maser:
- tripartite plan
- temple pediment on central facade distinguishing main building from others
- 4 Ionic columns

San Giorgio Maggiore, 1560

At S. Giorgio Maggiore, Palladio was faced with the challenge of combining a classical temple front with a Christian church and its high nave/low side aisle configuration. In 1460-70, Alberti had been the first to approach this situation with a remedy.
Palladio solved the problem by placing a large pediment with pilasters across the aisles, and a smaller pediment supported by the nave and monumental pilasters set on pedestals. It seems that there are two layers on the facade, the background horizontal lower story and the vertically ascending outer layer, complete with statues. The open portico adumbrated here may have been meant to extend out into a full portico, deviations may have been made due to the lack of space in the front. The church is on an island off of Venice, where it is flush with the Canal.
Notice:
- Palladian windows in the transept arms
- different materials used, especially in the dome
- niches with sculptures alternating with monumental columns on pedestals
- plasticity in center of facade, sense of projection
- interior transition from Renaissance to Baroque, removal of screens, allowance of equality in churchgoers

Il Redentore, 1577-92

A state commission for the annual Doge visit, Palladio's Il Redentore is also located on an island off Venice. There are many similarities to the Maggiore:
- interlocking temple fronts
- possibility of intention of portico, but again lack of space
- layering and plasticity
- niches with sculptures
- varying materials

Differences:
- campanile flanking dome
- main temple front is supported with a combination of pilasters and engaged columns
- compact structure
- triumphal arch entrance
- instead of pedestal, a wide staircase

Teatro Olimpico, 1584

The Teatro Olimpico in Vincenza follows classic Roman models, especially the principle of having a permanent backdrop. In this case Palladio, using perspectival illusion, has created an ideal cityscape. There are several entrances, which lavishly depict ancient architect.

Andrea Palladio

Born in Padua in 1508 (d. 1580), Palladio was trained as a Humanist and a stonecarver. In Vicenza, he won a competetion to remodel the old town hall (basilica), after which it became known as Basilica Palladiana (created 1549-1614). Again we have the challenge of combining an older, nonclassical structure with the sturdier and more modern Classical proportions. Palladio was able to do this by buttressing the old structure wth a double loggia, this worked in two ways: as a support and a smooth transition. Palladio might have been influenced by Sansovino and Serlio, who had some similar illustrations. Also:
- engaged Doric orders on ground floor, Ionic on top
- breaking of entablature forward over columns, creating movement in projecting and recessing
- proportion retained by stretching openings and spaces around building
- tondos and balustrade