Aureli Pier Vittorio - The Geopolitics of the Ideal VIla - AA Files 59

8/17/2019 Aureli Pier Vittorio - The Geopolitics of the Ideal VIla - AA Files 59

1/10

v i l l a

T hiene at Cicogna

Vi l l a Badoer at Fratta Polesine

Vi l l a Pisani at Monat agnana

Vi l l a

Pisani at

Bagnolo

Vi l l a Sarego at

Meiga

Vi l l a Zeno at Cessalto

Vi l l a

E mo

atFanzolo

Vi l l a Rotond a near

Vicenza

Vi l l a Poiana at Poiana

Maggiore

Vil la Co rnaro at

Piombino

Dese

Vil la Malcontenta a t M i r a

Geometrical

pa ttern of Palladio's

villas


2/10

n 1944

Rudolf

Wittkower published

two

essays on Palladio s architectu re.

The essays, later included

i n

his book,

Architectural Principles

in

the ge of Humanism

featured

i i

schematic drawings o f Palladio s vi l -

las which Wittkower used to reinfor ce his argu-

ment

f or

reading R enaissance architecture in

terms

of

irreducible rules or principles. These

drawings showed that architectural artefacts

such as Palladio s

viUas

were not merely episodic

formal studies but systematic variations

of

the

same compositional logic.

Architectural princi-

ples were thus

impl i c i t ly

proposed as an

intellec-

tual framework

fo r architectural

form,

superior to

the functional, programmatic or aesthetic goals to

which architectural history was then s t i l l bound.

As

a core compon ent

of

architecture s

emerging historiography,

Wittkower s

reading

of Renaissance architecture quickly proved to

be influential far beyond academic historical

scholarship. Within postwar reconstruction in

England, f or example, his project established a

point

o f reference fo r a generation of architects

searching

fo r

formal legitimacy beyond the tech-

nocratic impetus of functionalist modernism.

I n particular , his drawings, reducing Palladian

villas to

proportional

and spatial schemes,

offered the

possibility

of

def in ing

a more pro-

fou nd rationality than cou ld be provided simply

by

technology. This comm itm ent to

seeing

and

interpreting

a contemporary

condition

through

a Renaissance

precedent

was

reinforced five

years later (and more radically s t i l l ) by Colin

Rov/e whose

he

Mathematics ofthe Ideal Villa

famously

established a compar ison between

Palladio s ViUa Foscari in

IVIalcontenta

and

Le

Corbusier s V i l l a Stein in Garches.^

hile Wittkower s imp act on a

wider,

contemporary architectural

discourse was as unsuspecting as it

was

unintentional,

Rowe s iconoclastic compar-

ison

of two

villas one f r om the sixteenth cen-

tury, the other f r om the twenti eth - seems to

have been a deliberate att empt to interfere

w i t h

the

trajectory

of postwar architectural mod -

ernism. This

desire

to

subvert

was established

no t

only by his argum ent

fo r

the comparable

nature of Renaissance and modern architec-

ture,

bu t

also

by his po in t ing to the possibility

of

a rigorous close readi ng

o f

architectural form

independent of

its

historical

circumstances.

For this reason, the villas of Palladio and Le

Corbusier v/ere deliberately extrapolated

from

their geographical and political conte xt; Rowe

even argued that the archit ects

lyrical

site

descriptions celebrating their best-known villas

- 'La Rotonda and the

V i l l a

Savoye at Poissy

offered a too easy poin t of entry

fo r

comparison.

I n

this

way,

Rowe s text reinforced

Wittkower s

radical

de nial of Palladio s

site-specificity,

apparent

i n the removal of the barchesse in his

schematic drawings

o f

t he villas. These

ad join-

in g

loggias were adapted fr om local Venetian

The Geo-Politics

of

the Ideal

Villa

Andrea Pa lladio and the

Project

of an

Anti-Ideal Ci ty

Pier

Vittono Aureli

agricultural sheds

and were an essential com po-

nent

of

Palladio s villas, providing no t only a

sense of context but a semiotic d is t inct ion that

allowed these

bui ldin gs to be classified as villas

rather than palaces. The barchesse in this

sense,

are Palladio s geo-pohtical context because they

figure as the key metonymical register f or the

whole typology.

Palladio s villas themselves were commis-

sioned at the highpo int

o f

widespread social and

econom ic refor ms advanced by the Serenissima

Republic

i n the sixteenth

centuiy,

and their

par-

ticular formal composit ion - a central palace

flanked

by two

barns - is deeply embedded in

the

pohtical,

social and formal impetus of such

reform. I f, as

James

Ackerman has argued, the

vi l la is one the mo st radically ideological archi-

tectures because in claiming

self-sufficiency

within the countryside it hides its economic

dependency

on the

city,

then Palladio s

palace

+

barchesse

compo sitio n openly signals the villa s

relation w i t h

its regional and

agricultural

eco-

nomic

context.3

This

immediately

suggests an

alternative interpretation of Palladio s architec-

ture to the

ones

advanced by

Wittkower

and

Rowe. This counter

position

does

not deflne

Palladio s relevance to contem porar y discourse

in terms of

proportion

or the mathematics of its

architectural composition, but reads the vi l la as

one e lementwithin a larger, latent project.

Rather than

taking

Palladio s ideal s a model

fo r an equally ideal urban

configuration,

it

views

the geography and politics

o f

t he vi l la as a frame-

work

f or

rethinlcing and re-theor ising the s ign i f i -

cance o f Palladio s work as a project fo r an

anti-ideal city.

First,

however, let s deal

w i t h

the

name,

Palladio,

boiubastic and

slightly ridiculous

in

its

overloaded preten tion . This was the name

conferred on Andrea della Gondola when he

was already i n his 30s,

having

completed a long

apprenticeship in a stonemason s workshop.

The man

w ho

named him - the

Renaissance

poet,

humanist and diplomat Giangiorgio Trissino

Opposite: Scliematic

plans of

11 of Palladio s vi l las,

f r o m R u d o l f Wittkower, Architectural Principles

in the ge of Humanism 1949

was

making

clear

from

the outset that Palla

was invested

w i t h

a programme. For

Trissino

this programm e was the reinvention

o f

Vicen

a model

fo r

an Imperial Roman city - that

is,

classicist terms, a new Italian civilisation fin

liberated f rom

the Goths.

According

to

Trissi

the ascendancy

of

the Goths had paralleled th

decline ofthe Roman Empire and

Italy s

desc

into

political

an d cultural chaos. Drawing ins

tion from

Trissino s classicist ur ban ideology

Palladio s early designs as an architect inc lud

a classical facade

fo r

a series of city

houses

an

proposal f or the Palazzo Civena austere, sim

and thus repeatable prototypes, ready to be d

seminated

within

the gothic fabric

of

Vicenza

The palazzo was fused w i t h the more modest

merchant house to

form

a new quasi-bourge

domus. The

centrality

of the house and thus

secular domestic l i f e , along w i t h the systema

recovery

of

Roman architecture, provided the

core

o f

Palladio s attem pt to deflne a universa

B

formal

grammar fo r the

city,

ut

Palladio s

flrst

intellectual men

was politically at odds

w i t h

the

Venetian repubhc. Trissino saw the fragme

city

as a symptom o f the larger

political,

cul

and social frag ment atio n of the nati on afte

coUapse

of

the Roman Empire. Like Dante

Monarchia he called fo r a universal civic go

ment,

identiflable

thro ugh the singular flgu

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.* This univ

government was to represent a new Roman

Empire,

a secular power free

f rom

both

feud

is m and ecclesiastical

authority.

Fundamen

these aspirations, the city and its architectu

remain ed a key priority, and set against the

gothic medieval

city,

Trissino promoted Ro

architecture as the appropriate language f o

political proj ect.7 This promotion was orga

as a Idnd

of

research program me - evidence

the series o f four fleld-trips Palladio made

Trissino

to Rome as exercises i n generating

through first-hand experience. The caref ul

of

Roman

antiquity

was the express goal

o f

research, and the dr awings Palladio made d

in g

these visits would become

the source bo

his architectural grammar. What is im por ta

to

note here is Palladio s drawing method.

Infiuenced

by Raphael s recommendations

about the d epict ion of ancient r uins, he avo

pictorial perspective and instead

uses

a

flat

orthogonal technique anticipating modern

ventions of orthogon al

projection

- a metho

that cont ribu ted enormously to his system

approach to the architecture of the

city.

Architecture was

n ot

visionary and pictures

bu t

scientific,

the product o f

carefully

defln

rules. This fundamen tal distinction enable

original form to be reconstructed ou t o f t h e

emancipating

i t

f rom it s

reality

as a frag me

and giving

i t

a new status as a comp onent

i

potential

imperial

city

i n

Vicenza,

and later

across

the Veiieto.

AA FILES

59


3/10

alladio's last t r ip to Rome i n 1557 pro-

vided the material fo r two books, one

o f the m a guide to the city's antiquit ies

that

would

rema in the standard reference for

tourists f or the next two centuries, the other

a curious guide f or

pilgrims

that do cumented

Rome's many churches.'' f Roman antiquity

offered the source for Palladio's universal archi-

tectural grammar, the mappi ng of churches -

many of them located i n what was their

typically

suburban and de-populated, fragmented

context - enabled hi m to

present

the

city

as

an archipelago of monumen ts.

These

flnite,

autonomous artefacts carried a

highly

charged

ritualisde geography, even when presented

in

isolation.

But Palladio went beyond t his by

ordering the descriptions ofth e churches

according to the

pilgrim's

peripatetic approach

to

the city. In other words, the guide

does

not

describe these churches as monumenta l forms

removed f r o m their context, but

addresses

them

w i t h i n site-speciflc patterns o f an urban itiner-

ary. I n add iti on to his study o f

antiquity,

there-

fore,

PaUadio's

interestin compiling

a

pilgrim's

guide is of exceptional interest because it

signi-

fles his

f a m i l i a r i t y w i t h

the geographic symbol-

is m of the city. An d i t is precisely this act o f

locating and marl dng that

seems

to underpin

Palladio's abihty to define the city through

its architecture.

The heroic mission

o f Trissino

and Palladio

to recast Vicenza as a latter-day

imperial

city

was prom pted, somewhat m ore prosaically, by

a fleeting celebration of religious authorit y: the

entrance o f Cardinal

R i d o l f l

to the city i n 1543.

For this occasion, Palladio designed a

sequence

of temporary

luarkers

to delineate the cardinal's

procession towards the cathedral. Two of the

most exemplary urban l andmarks o f the Roman

city - the

triumphal

arch and the obeUsk - sym-

bolised

the veritable

analogous

city

generated

by

this

circuit,

and

were considered by Palladio as

ideal

and instant devices fo r urban reinvention,

radically transfo rming the gothic f o r m o f th e city

into

a classical landscape. The theme of th e t r i -

umphal procession

also

highlights the city as a

contested held of directions to be mapped and -

manip ulated by a

series

of punctua l interven-

tions. P alladio's approac h to the city, then, as his

temporary instaUation fo r Vicenza makes clear,

is based not on an overall urban plan but on

the strong

formal continuity

and universalism

evoked by his classical references.

Yet,

in con-

trast to the Roman city model , Palladio's univer-

salism is def lned by the concrete flgure of

architecture as a clearly circums cribed artefact,

distinct f r o m the void ground o f th e city

spaces

surrounding i t .

Palladio's mapping o f Roma n church es,

therefore, and his processional install ation

fo r Vicenza, reflects his master y of the program-

ming o f

architectural

sequences.

The variety

of contexts i n

which

he operated - the city o f

Vicenza, the Veneto countryside and the Venice

Lagoon - offered a multi-scala r array o f urban sit-

uations

in which

he could test the seamlessness

of an architectural langfuage against the inex-

orably fragment ed nature o f a city. The strategic

l i n k between the two extremes - continuity and

discontinuity - is precisely the core dialectic of

Palladio's urban design methodology.

I n the sixteen th century Vicenza was one of

Italy's most

violent

cities. Inf lght ing among the

most important

families

and

political turmoil

among the populace made i t a theatre of almost

perpetual mayhem and murder. The physical

manifest ations of this violence also unfolded

w i t h i n a larger

conflict

involving the local o l i -

garchy, the colonial power o f Venice and the

adversarial relationsh ip between the church and

the Veneto (at that

time,

Vicenza was the

Italian

epicentre o f Calvinist and heretical sensibili-

ties).

Given

this context, the attempt b y Trissino

and PaUadio to

recast

Vicenza as a mod el f or an

imperial city that evoked th

Pax Romana seems

a very obvious and del iberate provo catio n - or,

conversely, not so muc h a provocati on as an

attemp t to use the unifying architectural lan-

guage o f

classicism to project a self-harmonis-

ing civic sense of calm.

For Palladio the grammar of this classicism

lay

in his impeccable use

of

the flve orders as a

way to make arch itecture intelligible as f o r m , in

contrast to the

irrational

patterns oft he medieval

city. There is in this aUegiance an int erest ing par-

allel between Palladio's systematic use of the

flve orders and Trissino's

poUtical vision, based

on the idea of a unifying secular government.

Trissi no (ever the poet and

diplomat)

was espe-

cially concerned w i t h the reform ofthe

Italian

language, as evidenced by his letter to

Pope

elemente

V II about the urgent

need

to

address

vernacular or coUoquial

Italian,

and by his trans-

lation

of

Dante s£)e VulgariEloquentia.

In many

ways, Trissino's interest i n the idea of grammar

as a meta-historical political tool can be seen

as the inspiration for Palladio's systematic

approach to architecture, where classicism is

used no t

simply

as a

means

of representation

and authori ty but also as an ordered set of

repeat-

able elements whose influe nce could extend

beyond the construction of buUdings to

embrace

the whole manifestation o f th e city

itself.

In order

to be established, however, a gram mar relies on

clear examples. I t is not by

chance

that Palladio's

debut as an independent architect, under

Trissino's mentor ship, resulted in a design

fo r

the most impor tant public monu ment i n

Vicenza:

the completion

of

the Palazzo deUa

Ragione, a vast civic hall b u i l t in the fifteenth cen-

tury,

and renamed

(significantly)

by PaUadio as

the 'Basilica'. PaUadio's intervention was noth-

in g more than a

lintel-arch-lintel

device, stacking

two serUane

orders b u i l t

i n

white stone, so that

they wrapp ed the existing hall an d shops under-

neath. The irregular structure of the existing

building

was absorbed by varying the len g

the l in te l with out altering the

arches.

The

in g

was thus conceived as a didactic displ

the orders and their abi l i ty to support, co

and mask the existing irregular gothic str

Moreover, his restructur ing o f the BasUic

classicism at the heart of the civic space o

city,

as the hegemonic and universal arch

tural

language of a long-desired

civitas.

The Basilica, l ike many other Palladio

ings,

would

not be completed du ring his

time. A

permanent state of instabUity def

by

wars, economi c crises,

disease

and, m

spectacularly, the tormented vicissitudes

the

families

fo r who m Palladio

worlced,

d

or prevented thei r construct ion. It is easy

imagine that a desire to counteract t his f

was the key impulse

behindlQuattroLibr

dell Architettura, which

sets out a ll o f his

i n order and according to his

original

des

regardless

o f alterations

made

du ring the

struction. The Four Books, in this

sense,

the emancipation of the idea o f architect

f r o m its material reaUsation. Confron ted

an unstable and complex environment , th

guage o f

building cannot

tame

the

city

i n

manifestations, but can

only

insert exem

forms

into its unstabl e body.

As w i t h

his e

ment w i t h the trium phal route f or Cardin

R i d o l f l ,

Palladio's confidence in the city i

revealed by the way he posi tion s a

buildin

if

he never proposed any ideal urba n sche

The architectural his tori an Franco

Barbi

suggested that although Palladio never p

mined

the site of his projects, the locati o

buUdings

seems

to fo l l o w the Roman stre

out that was s t i l l legib le in medieval Vice

(and that remains l egible today - the inter

t i o n o f a north-south

cardo

axis and an

ea

decumanus

is provi ded by the Corso Palla

the route that goes f r o m the ruins o f the R

Berga theatre to the Pusterla Bri dge on th

Bacchigiione).

Trissino's

Utopian vision

Vicenza as a Roma n city thus

seems

to em

f r o m Palladio's insistence on this layout a

ordering principle of his interventions.

f we fo l l o w this hypothesis diachro

we find along the decumanus the h

abstract forms ofthe Palazzo Chie

(1550),

the sophisticated facade of the

Ca

Cagollo (1559-62), and the Palazzo Pojan

(1560-61). Nearby was the site o f an unbu

project fo r the Palazzo Capra (1563-64) a

at the end of th e

decumanus, directly

opp

the

Palazzo

Chiericati, another

Palazzo

C

Following

the perpendicular

cardus,

we s

the rui ns of the Berga theatre i tself

a

stra

precedent fo r Trissino and Palladio in the

vision

ofresurr ectingVicenza's latent Ro

plan) and then

pass

the bridge

o f

San Pao

(which

in the sixtee nth centur y was believ

be another Roman structure), before

arri

the loggias of the Basilica and the del C ap

78

AA F


4/10

at the intersecti on

w i t h

the decumanus. The

cardus would th en lead us to two of Palladio's

mos t impressive buil din gs - the Palazzo

Montano

Barbarano (1569-70) and the Palazzo

Porto

(1549).

Finally, we would end up at the

Casa

Bernardo Schio (1565-66). Following the

streets

that r un parallel to the cardo, towards the

east we would find the Palazzo Da Monte (1541¬

45), Palazzo Thien e (1542-46), a project fo r a

palazzo

fo r

Giacomo Angara no (1564) and a

fra gme nt of the Palazzo Pojana

(1555).

Similarly,

f o l l ow i n g

the

streets

that ru n parallel to the

decumanus, on the nort h we would

flnd

projects

fo r the Palazzo Tr issi no (1558) and a palazzo for

Giambattista Garzadori, along

w i t h

other minor

bu t

signif icant works

such as Palladio's youthful

interventions at the Pedemuro worksho p

w i t h

the Church o f Santa

Maria

i n Foro (1531) and the

city's cathedral (1534-36). Collectively, these

interventions can be summaris ed as the media-

t i on between two opposite forces which consti-

tute the two major ingredients of

a ll

o f PaUadio's

projects: on the one hand an abstraction of the

orders, proportion and symmetry, and on the

other a

site-specificity, w i t h

each

bui ld ing

being

carefully

inserted int o the tight and complex

medieval

fabric

of the city.

he

proj

ect that m ost f u l l y articulates

this me diat ion is the Palazzo

Chiericati.

Strategically located on

the edge of the Isola (the beginning of the

decumanus and thus at the city gate approaching

f r o m Padua and

Venice),

the main facade of the

palazzo consists of

tw o

superimposed loggias

powerfully f ramed by the or ders. B ut what is

most striking about th is design is that f or the

first time i n the

Renaissance

the composition

of

th e facade is

rigorously

projected into the

interior.

The elevation thus becomes a veritable

index o f th e workings of the plan and section.

A t

th e

same

ti me, the

space

onto

which

this

Utopian archit ectural language is projected is

fa r

f r o m idea l - the loggia is

directly

at odds

w i t h

the narrow and long f o rm o f the site, derived

i n

turn

f r o m the city's complex topography.

Forcing the bui ld ing to fit into its unlikely site

generated an unprecedented compression in

the plan, which

reads

as a

k i n d

of sixteenth-cen-

tury

barcode,

w i t h

i ts

sequence o f

compressed

versions of atria, int erna l loggia and agarden.«

Moreover, w i t h i n this logic, the facade's classi-

cal f o rm may be understood as a clear political

manoeuvre. Expandi ng the buildi ng's trans-

verse section by

only

a

few

metres, the loggia

occupies a

portion

o f the Isola, not

only

creating

a noble publi c gesture i n one of the city's most

important civic spaces, but also projecting a

highly

formal grammar . The peculiariti es of the

site (the exception) and t l ie generative princi ple

of th e bui ld ing (the rule) are thus intrinsically

linked a nd

mutually

reinforced, produci ng a

paradoxical combinatio n of formal abstraction

and radical site-speciflcity.

It is precisely Palladio's mas ter ing of the

dialectic between

continuity

and discont inuity

that theatrically

emphasises

the urban role o f

his buil dings as

civic

actors

w i t h i n

Vicenza's

analogous city - a dialect ic also

perfectly

depicted by Canaletto in his own analogous

city i n the f o rm o f th e painting he made o f the

bridge of the

Rialto,

composed w i t h two other

buildings f r o m Vicenza, the Palazzo Chiericati

and the

Basilica.

Rather than the actual bridge,

Canaletto shows the bridge as designed by

Palladio and presented in his

QuattroLibri.

These for ms are interpr eted by Canaletto in all

their paradigmatic integrity

an d

yet di sposable,

to

be used and c ombin ed according to unpre-

dictable urban inventions.

More

than his bridges and palazzos, however,

it is the villas i n the Veneto region for which

PaUadio

is most

celebrated.

What is im pressive

about

these buildings

is not so much their archi-

tectural

quality

as their

quantity. W i t h

the excep-

t ion perhaps o f Frank

Lloyd

Wright, no other

architect has offered a portfolio fiUed w i t h designs

of such impressive continuity. The fashion fo r vil-

las, a patricia n

typology

of the Roman

Empire,

was

revived

i n the

fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries.'

In a

rural

economy, its reappearance marked the

transition f r om feudalism to the economic power

of the estate, and fueUed by thi s succession,

Palladio assigned the villa a

position

of excep-

tional

importance i n his Quattro Libri: flve chap-

ters o f the Second

Book

are devoted to the

architectural pr inciples o f this type, which is

treated w i t h th e same attent ion to detail as other

crucial city

types such as palaces and religious

buildings.

By the time the QuattroLibriwas pub-

lished

Palladio had already designed a large num-

ber o f villas, and the serial nature of the solutions

he developed (akin to the repeating rules he

employed in his

palaces

i n Vicenza and churches

i n

Venice) allowed h im to define a consistent

for-

mal lexicon. Although

made up o f

veiy few

pr inc i -

ples, this language was very strict i n its application

notably, a clear symmetry of plan, an abundance

of loggias in the f o rm o f belvederes and barns, the

unconventional use

of

pediments and (Palladio's

rnost

strildng typological

cross-contamination for

rural buildings)

the reinter pretat ion of the spatial

intricacy of the

imperial

Roman bath w i t h i n the

interior o f the villa's central building.

number o f historians have addressed

Palladio's mixing o f classical and

vernacular elements and his villa

typology

as both a retreat and an economically

and culturally productive rural hub.

Much,

too,

has been written about his use of the pediment

which, but fo r one exception, had previously

been confined to religious buildi ngs.

Significantly

less,

however, has been said about

ho w

the

interior space o f

Palladio's villas appro-

priated the spat iality of the

imperial

baths which

he obsessively mapped, drew and rec onstru cted

during his

field-trips

to Rome, and whose

orgaiflsation - a sequence o f monumental

spacesjuxtaposed along axes of symmetr y

his countryside villas a quintessentially me

politan

air. In many ways, the th eatri cal spa

complexity

o f the Roman bath

offered

an in

miniaturised city. I t is thus possible to spec

that Palladio's appropr iatio n of the

imperia

bath and the pediment (taken f r om the mo

of

the religious

building, w i t h

the

implied

a

ment that temples and

houses share

the

sa

o r i g i n ) , and the

conflation

of these typolog

wi t h

an agricultural context, is part

of

a stra

that goes beyond erudite references to Rom

classicism and the accommodat ion

of

the

r i a l

demands of the

estate.

Instead, it seem

have more to do

w i t h

the idea of figuring th

ground as an assemblage of metropolitan s

tures where the political and economic pow

the Venetian archipelago

u n t i l

then const

bythe sea) is projected

analogically

- that is

via the example of

imperial

Rome - towards

the Veneto countrys ide. It is precisely this c

plex of analogical appropriations that mad

Palladio's architecture so successful and

i n

ential

as an urban model.

Underlying a ll

of Palladio's architectur

output was the biggest crisis then facing th

Serenissima Republic. Founded

some

time

in g

the first

decades o f

the eighth century a

developed as a mercantile city-state, econo

transaction, i n the f o rm o f maritime comm

had been Venice's raison d être. T hroug hou

early history, this trade was bolstered not

o

the city-state's geographical position at the

of th e Adriatic and the defeat of other mari

repubhcs such as Genoa, but also bythe i n f

ence o f the Byzantine Empire, which helpe

establish Venice as a privileged economic h

l i n k i n g

the Mediterranean basin

w i t h

com

cial

routes towards the east. However, Veni

impetuous rise

carne

abruptly to an end

w i t

major events. The flrstwas the War o f the L

of C ambrai (1508-1516), when the most im

tant European superpowers - Pope Julius

1

Emperor M a x im i l i an

and

K i n g Louis

x i i o

France - united against the Serenissima in

to l im i t its land expansion. The second dec

event, whose

consequences

would

only

slo

become app arent over the

course

of the six

teen th centu ry, was the discovery

o f

the New

Wor l d and the consequent shift o f major m

itime trafflc f r om east to west.

Confronted

w i t h

thi s crisis, the oligarch

o f the Serenissima became convinced that

were about t o enter a perio d of decline. Wh

interesting about their

response,

though, i

they accepted the prosp ect

of their diminis

fortune and, rather than seeking to reverse

seemed inevitable, they did somethi ng po l i

cally and conceptually far more radical: the

attempted to slow down the decline, so that

instead

of precipitating

a sudden collapse,

republic's wani ng influence could be tame

AA

FILES 59


5/10

Andrea Palladio,

Vi l la

Emo, Fanzolo, 1556,

from

I

Quattro Libfi dell Architettura,

1570


6/10

and governed as a utop ian condition of 'dura-

t i o n .

Their

response

consisted of

a

complex

series

of strategic manoeuvres, all of them pr edi-

cated on a

shift

of Venice's economic

basis

f r o m

the sea to the land; f r o m mariti me commerce

to agriculture. W i t h i n

this transfer, the ground

or terra firina

suddenly took on the

status

of

a

territorial

projec t - one that inclu ded land

recla-

madon, cartographic mapping and the hydro-

logical

control

o f

the netw ork of rivers that

descended

down into Venice f r o m

high

i n the

Alps. '7 An d

so, rather than

projecting

i t se l f

solely

towards t he sea as

a stato del mar

Venice turned

inwards, towards its

territorial

lands - a (re)dis-

coveiy of its

more earthly

influence

that must

be

seen

as the

deflning

context

f or

PaUadio's

unprecedented succession of countryside

viUas, each

commi ssioned by patricians

o f

the

Serenissmaregiine,

and

which would ultimately

give Venice's projec t of durat ion its most endur-

in g historical f o r m .

O

ffering some k i n d of theoretical legiti-

macy to this

shift

f r o m sea to land were

the

ideas

of the theorist and pa tron of

the

arts

Alvise

Cornaro

(1484-1566),

who argued,

in

particular,

fo r

the

promotion

of agriculture as

an alternative to Venice's existing mercantUist

economy. Author

o f l a Vita

Soin'cz,

a treatise on

the

virtue o f l i v i n g i n

the countryside, Cornaro

was one

of

the most active political thinkers dur-

in g the Veneto's economic crisis. His ideas largely

concerned the reclamat ion

o f land,

and the pro-

motion of

ag ricultu re over trade as the

basis fo r

a

more

solid

rel ationship between power and t e rr i -

tory.

Before Cornaro, country

l i fe

(ofwhich

the

viUa

was the most id ealised

form)

was

typically

understood as radically

anti-political

because it

turned

its back on the

political

space

p r excel-

lence,

t he city. After Cornaro, however, this image

was subverted: rather than being predicated on

the

fundamentally apolitical ideas

of disinterest

and denial, the countryside

became highly po l i t i -

cised

by

its promot ion

o f

a new

formal

model and

its

explicit

rejection o f the existing one - Venice.

To represent

his

vision of

a

civic l i fe ,

Cornaro

buUthis own analogous city

in

the countryside

nearPadua, PaUadio's birthplace.

In

the 1520s,

he commissioned the

Paduan

painter

Giovanni

Battista

Falconetto

to produce a garden loggia,

and a year later an o deon was b u i l t next to it to

host the performances

of

a famous

local

dialect

actor

Angelo

Beolco (better kn ow

by

his pseudo-

nym, Ruzzante). In Cornaro's garden, therefo re,

it

is possible to see an a ttem pt to elevate the ru stic

countryside to the

level o f

a new, cultiva ted

civic

condition

- one tha t lay beyond the city's mon u-

mental

spaces

but had a competi ng

measure of

cultural

and social charisma. Falconetto's loggia

-

the flrst example in the Veneto

o f

architecture

a

la Rotnana-was

clearly b u i l t as a

highly

symbolic

prototype, an exam ple. Its key feature is the

for-

ma l

theme of the loggia

itself, w i t h

i ts

generous

openings, didactic exposition of the orders as a

new

linguafranca

of

civic l i fe ,

and theatrical

framing

of the garden

which made

the loggia

both the scenery and the

spectator's

tribune.

This

comp ositional dialectic between subject

and objec t, between a

poin

t

of view

and a

space

framed w i t h i n it ,

would

be the

basis

of Palladio's

ow n

unique approach to

landscape.

In

all

of his

work,

the encircUng

territory

is not a

passive

ground to be activated by the

imposition

of

a flg-

ure, but a speciflc site

made

of existing natural

and a r t i f lc ia l elements

ofwhich

the object

the

vil la

-

becomes

a theatncal frame. In this

sense,

PaUadio's

villas

are not simply objects enclosed

w i t h i n

a reconstructed context

(think

ofthe

Medici

villas

i n the Florenti ne hiUs or Pirro

Ligorio's

VUla

d'Este), but speciflc objects that fr ame and rede-

fine

the

existing landscape

as an economic,

cultural

and political counter to the city.

Let's take a

look

at

two of

PaUadio's better

known viUas.

The

Vi l la

Em o in Fanzolo (1556) is

perhaps

the

building

that

best

shows the radical-

ism of

Palladio's approach to the relation ship

between the

viUa

and its imme diate landscape.

It is his simplest and most obviously

minimal

vil la

and yet its structure,

l ike a ll

the others, is

based

around the clear

juxtaposition o f

the

casa

dominicale

(palace) w i t h th e

flanking barchesse

(barns),

which

served as

storage

and as a covered

gallery passage

between the central body and

the symmetrical

colombare

along its two sides.

tJnlike his ot her vUlas, however, this juxta posi-

t i o n is revealed alongthe

same frontal

plane, a

device that

accentuates

the ViUa Emo's perpen-

dicularity

against the horizontality o f the sur-

rounding

Veneto plains. In its

simplicity,

the

v i l la

heightens the importance of

directing

the land-

scape, not by imposing on it a new, meticulously

regulated ground arrangement, bu t by

figuring

i t

through the si mple act

o f framing.

Palladio

does

this by developin g one side of the

v i l l a

as a con-

tinuous row

of

loggias and th e other side as a row

ofwindows,

thereby establishing, in avery pow-

erful

way,

the experience of

front

and back w i t h i n

the vastness of the building's landscape.

W i t h the

Vi l la

E mo we see, once again, the

classic Palladian paradox of a

building

that has

been designed according to its own composi-

tional

logic

(typically based

on symm etry), yet at

the same tim e is also inflected so as to react to its

speciflc site

condition.

This paradox is furth er

radicalised in Palladio's most famou s (and most

bizarre)

building,

th e

Vi l la

Capra or La Rotonda

(1567).

I n the

Quattro Libri,

this

v i l la

is incl uded

i n

the section dedicated to urban

palaces,

an

aspirational characterisation that further reveals

Palladio's attempt to transform a

building

in

the countryside i nto a veritable

civic f o r m . ' 5

The equation of city and countryside in

Palladio is already

visible

i n the

very

obvious

for-

ma l similarities

between his

rural villas

and

civic

palaces (but f or the absence of the barns, the

palaces

are the

same

as the

viUas

-

fo r

example,

the Palazzo

A n t o l i n i

i n Udine

bears

a

striking

similarity

to the

Vi l la

Pisani in Montagnana

yet

at the Rotonda the

unity

of city and coun

side is fur ther radicali sed, as if th e

building

some k i n d of

manifesto. Situated on a

hUlt

outside Vicenza, the

v i l la

was

clearly

desig n

an ideal 'observatory' towards the

landscap

conceptual and iconoclastic programme re

by

the

long

description

of

the site that

prefa

this project

in

the

Quattro Libri .

The vastne

and variety of this

landscape

is

exeiuplifled

f o r m and peculiar

composition

ofthe

v i l la

i

a rather small

building w i t h four

huge port

made

up o f colonnades, pediments and ra

As

is

we l l

documented, thi s unusual f o r m

f o

house

was inspi red by PaUadio's ow n recon

t i o n of the temple at the top o f the Sanctuar

Fortuna Primigenia in Palestrina, a mo num

complex Palladio

visited while

i n Rome.

Ye

the Rotonda, the monu mental ity and depth

viUa's

porticos

appear

as exaggerated again

scale of

the actual

building-

a contrast

whi

suggests that rather than bei ng grand entra

ways into the v i l la, they are actually orienta

outwards, towards the s urroun ding country

In

ot herwords , the porticos actmor e Uke

th

fo r

a

spectacle

that

pre-dates

the buUding:

landscape al l

around.

f

we

fo l low

this read

then the classical

view of

Palladio's Rotond

a pyramidal compositio n i n

which

the

buil

forms

the pinnacle

o f

the

h i l l

is subverted,

i

inverted, by the fact that the diagra m of the

is not about a conventional architectural re

ship

i n which

the outside is drawn towards

inside but

o f

the inside always

projecting

o

The

formal

symmetry of t he

building

is thu

index of

the Rotonda's

territorial

site-speci

Moreover, the fact that the buUding's symm

required

aU four sides

to have a

portico,

and

above them Palladio places a dome (the flrst

such a

detail

was used in a resid entia l buUd

conveys not a unidirectional

aspect

but a ro

ness that suggests an analogy w i t h th e i n f ln

of

t he

landscape

outside. The result is that

Rotonda subverts not

only

architect ural co

t i o n , w i t h its inversion of the dominance of

building

over its site, but also the con ventio

Renaissance

drama and the

rigidities of

pro

nium

front-to -backprojection. Fundament

then, the

building is

as radical

theatrically

it

is architecturally.

^ ^ W Itimately,

and to a certain exten

naturally,

i t

was

in

Venice that

Palladio

flnally seemed

able to s

his projec t of the city. His buildings constr

there, mostly churches, can al l be seen ag

the baclcdrop

o f

Venice's economic, geogr

an d political crisis, but more immediately

relate to two signiflcant proposals fo r rest

in g

and preserving the c i ty

i n

the wake of t

Serenissima demise. The flrst was a projec

initiated

by Crist oforo Sabbadino (1489-1

Venice's flrst and most

illustrious

hydraul

engineer, who began to develop the city's

A A F I L E S

59


7/10

borders i n the f o r m of a

ring

o f waterfront

fondamenta

large embanl


8/10

image of architecture entered the city in the

fo rm

of

f ini te parts,

of

points that defined the city,

w i t h -

out reduc ing it to an all-enconnpassed form'.^^

It is precisely this now characteristically

modern dialectic between the absoluteness of

architecture and the openness o f the city that

Palladio s unique architect ural approach sought

to establish. Using forms and typologies to effect

contextual relationships and political visions,

he fundam ental ly re-imagined not only the physi-

cal manifestation o f the

city

but i ts very idea.

Significantly,

however, unlike most other key the-

orists o f architecture - such as Vitruvius, Alber t i ,

Filarete or Serlio - Palladio never produced a

compreh ensive theory, plan or even a general

view

of the city. I n spite of the fact that his archi-

tecture, as we have seen, takes the f o r m o f repeat-

able prototypes, his projects are always rigorously

site-speciflc. The

effect

is to place PaUadio out-

side one of the topics throug h which architectural

culture in the fifteenth and sixteent h centuries

is repeatedly deflned - the ideal city'.

In

the popular

imagination,

ideal cities are

those

rationally

planned, perfectly harmonious

Renaissance municipalities whose structure and

image refl ected the rediscovery of huma nist

val-

ues

w i t h i n

a culture of civic coexistence. But

i n

order to

effectively

unders tand how the radical-

is m

of Palladio s project fo r the city subverted

this image, the conventional interpret ation

needs to be exposed. What is

traditionally

referr ed to as an ideal city' is in fac t a complex o f

theories, projects and actions fo r a city designed

accordingto rational

and

scientiflcally in te l l ig i -

ble

criteria.

It s o r i g i n dates back to Graeco-

Roman times and the founding of ex novo

settlements

accordingto

repeatable principles

independent f r o m the context

i n

which they were

to be appUed. These principles,

often

under the

umbrella o f a singular urba n layout, aimed to

more effectively

l ink

the int ernal social manage-

ment

of

a city

w i t h

i ts defence against outside

enemy forces.

Mediating

between the ancient

Greek oikos (household) and polis (city-state), the

idealism o f the

city

therefore inco rpora ted every-

thing

f r o m the private space of the fa m i l y house

to the militarisation o f the city-state.

W

i t h

t he fa l l of the Roman Empire

in

476

C E,

however, there ensued

i n Europe a paralysis i n the evolu-

t i o n o f the city that lasted r ight thro ugh to the

eleventh century, as settlements took the

f o r m

only

o f

small, self-sufficient

citadels or fortress

cities, diagrams almost of the

politics

o f feudal-

ism. The feudal inodel, of course, proved to be

as economica lly unsustainab le as it was archi-

tecturally

unnavigable, and it was against t his

model that the city as civitas was rediscovered

as the fundam enta l structure for human coexis-

tence f r o m the fourt eenth century onwards.

I t is precisely this rediscovery, together

w i t h

the

recovery o f the juridical implications o f being

a citiz en as opposed t o a feuda l

subditus,

that

promp ted philospophers and later architects to

retrace the legacy of antiquity as a model fo r the

new city. Vitrmius sDeArchitectura, rediscov-

ered in the fifteenth century, was an emble m of

this

historicism,

and supported not

only

an eru-

dite antiquar ianism but a treatise on city man-

agement covering al l scales o f the urban project

f r o m the design of

houses

to warfare.

I t was in this context that figures such

as A l b e r t i ,

Francesco

di Giorgio and Filarete

expanded the remit of the architect f r o m b u i l d -

ings to the design of entire cities. Subsequently,

the image o f the ideal city as one orderly con-

ceived according to a ratio nal plan,

appears

i n many fifteenth-century pain tin gs, precisely

reflecting the political immediacy o f urban

design. A n d i t is

here

that the

Renaissance

invention o f

perspective clearly

resonates

because it demonstrated the

possibility

of

reducing the space o f th e city to the m anageable

logic o f calculation and the mappin g and organ-

isation

of spatial and geographical facts. But

fo r

a ll

the perspectival idealism

exemplified

by architects l ike Sebastiano Serlio, I ta ly i n the

fifteenth and sixteent h centuries was in reality

so

pol i t i ca l ly

fragmente d and unstable that

an overall plan ning o f it s cities according to

rational criteria was quite impossible. Those

Italian cities that do appear as i deal (towns like

Pienza i n Tuscany or Vigevano i n Lombardy) are

i n fact fa i r ly restricted spaces enveloped by a

medieval urban fabric. Interestingly, this is also

the

case w i t h

Rome, a city long predicated on

a chaotic and somewhat haphazar d mod el of

urban

growth.

Al though the city s papacy in

the fifteenth and sixteent h centuries atte mpte d

to reconstruct Rome in accordance

w i t h

its

ancient splendour, such plans materialised only

i n t he f o r m of small interventions w i t h the exist-

in g infrastructure. For example, Bramante s

implementation o f

Pope

Julius

i i ' s

vision

for

Rome as an

imperial

city was (partially) realised,

not i n the f o r m o f an overall plan, but as a strate-

gic

positioni ng of

large-scale

architectural arte-

facts connected by a netw ork o f straight streets.

Given the l i m i t e d scope of these interventions,

architects l ike Bramante tended to overload the

metonymical

and microcosmic

resonances

of

individual build ings in an architectural organ-

is m

whose formal and spatial com posit ion (via

the use o f porticos,

squares,

foruins,

villas

and

basilicas) exuded the exemplary charact eristics

o f ancient cities. Consider, fo r example, his

Belvedere i n the Vatican, where the model

o f an ancient

v i l l a

- w i t h explicit

references

to the Sanctuary of Fortuna Prim igenia in

Palestrina - is translated into a massive, self-

contained courtyard bui ld ing. T hroug h overly

symbolic

structures l ike these. Renaissance

Italy s proj

ect f or the city

shifted

away f r o m the

overall

p lan a la Filarete towards analogical

representations

based

around contained, flnite

architectural compositions.

alladio, like Bramante, looked to

ancient monuments

of

Rome not

pl y as sources for the correct inte

tation of the orders, but as complex organi

that in themselves reproduced the

r i c h

arc

tural

qualities o f a city. I t was f or this reason

he so

carefully

studied t he mode l of the R o

bath , an urb an type he planne d to devote o

whole book to i n his (unfinished) architect

treatise. For Palladio the bathhouse was a

unique publ ic structure because unlike tem

or basilicas it grouped together multiple pr

grammes

an d

activities,

lending it an intric

through i ts

sequence

of

different

spaces. T

same spatia lity is oft en evoked in Palladio s

las,

palaces

and churches. Think, for exam

of

the inte rior s of the Redentore or San

Gio

Maggiore, the forms o fwh ich are the result

radically different spatial models, each dev

oped according to their own autonomous

geometries and l inked together only by the

metry and

continuity

o f the orders. Or cons

the two extraordinary proj ects fo r

palaces

i

Venice, publi shed i n the Second Book, who

plans develop around the elucidation o f a s

cession of spaces, the sequence o fwh ich is

simply reducible to the traditional tripartit

Renaissance palazzo atrium or courtyard.

The same miniaturisation of

city

space

compoun d architectural artefacts also pus

Palladio i n the Quattro Libri to reconst ruct

and La t i n squares ( f o l l o w i n g Vitruvius s de

t i o n ) , as models

fo r

a variety

of

colonnaded

indoor and outdoor spaces. Because of

t i i e

association w i t h the forums of ancient Rom

porticos made by colonnades

became

the

tive

architectural response in

f raming

open

public

civic

space.

W i t h i n this analogical c

text, as we have seen in the Palazzo Chieric

the Basili ca or the Palazzo Civena, Palladio

would

often

introduce a

ground-floor

porti

thereby instantly t ransforming the bui ld in

f r o m a simple, self-standing object to an en

that symbolically resonated wi th a l l of th e f

ma l

attributes o f the city around it . B y incor

rating public spaces, these buUdings were

simply outstanding examples of architectu

but exemplars

o f

an architectural relations

to the city. It is this explicit wU l to idealise t

made PaUadio s co llect ive series o f buildin

the absolute embodime nt of a project fo r t

city. Yet the im pact

o f these

examples sho u

not be viewed

simply

i n terms of their role i

establishing an architectural pattern b ook

subservience

to type and

f o r m

that has

mad

PaUadio one of the most copi ed architects

the history o f t h e discipUne). Instead, Palla

portfolio is more powerfully influential w i

a cultural understanding o f the

Renaissanc

city, offering speciflc architectural compos

that immediat ely evoke paradigms of city s

As Giorgio Agamben has written, the act

of

ma kin g an example is a complex business

A A

FILES 59


9/10

because i t presupposes

that in order to represent

the canon, an example has to be concep tually

disconnected f r o m the form s of its everyday

use.^''

I n

the

rhetorical

mechanisms

of

an example,

f o r m

is not

simply

an object

in i tself b ut

an object

that

operates

as a paradigm fo r some thing else.

Agamben

also reminds us that

i n La t in

culture

there was a

distinction

between an exemplar,

somethin g to be appreciated and un derstood

only

w i t h the senses - and thus somethi ng des-

tined to

be

imitated

- and an

exemplum,

a

f o r m

whose interpretation requires additional intellec-

tual

or symbolic references.

It is exactly as an exemplum that Palla dio's

architecture operates,

w i t h

its subtle references

to ancient typologies and resonances to wider

geographical and

political

contexts.

Through

Palladio,

architecture extends its

influence

on

the city precisely by being a f i n i t e and thus clearly

recognisable

thing,

a

'species'

i n the

sense

that

the

Marxist

philos opher Paolo

V i rn o

has used the

term,

consisting of a sole individual that can

only

be

pol i t i ca l ly

repr oduced and never transposed

into

an

omnivorous

general programm e.^7 The

power o f the exemplum

resides

i n its ab i l i ty to

propose a general paradigmat ic framework

rather th an a set

o f

regulations or comm ands to

be

l i terally

deployed.

As

an exemplum , Palladio's

architectural f o r m is not located on a plan, nor

even

estabUshed

as an urb an

rule, bu t is

invested

w i t h

the repr esentation of an alternative idea

o f

th e

eity

w i t h i n the very space of the existing city.

Such an i n tu i t ive ly

tactical

understating

of architecture, not

only

as a cohere nt set of

principles

but as a

mobile

element never

tied

to a n

overall

plan, seems to have it s o r i g i n i n

Palladio's passion fo r the art o f war. In the

QuattroLibrihe

notes that

i n

the successful

defence o f a

c i ty

the imperative to construct

perimeter

walls

is of l i t t i e use compared to the

t raining o f

the soldiers and a n accurate

l o iowl -

edge o f

the surroundin g

territory

a

militarised

understandi ng of landscape and civic manage-

ment so

f a i t h fu l l y

represented i n his battle

i l lus -

trations

for

the sixteenth-eentury

publication

of Polybius'sHwtones. What i t interesting about

these

troop

formation

diagrams is the

w ay

they

replicate his

villas'

o wn

f raming of

the land-

scape.

This

mentality

that fuse d the

stability

o f

architecture w i t h th e f l u i d complexity o f new

urban

spaces

and

forms seems

to have m ade

Palladio deeply sceptical abou t any overarchin g

urban plan, and pushed h i m instead to frame his

( i m p l i c i t ) project f o r

th e

c i ty in

th e

same wa y

he

understood the art

o f

w ar

- as a project tactically

open to the m u l t i p l i c i t y o f i ts territorial

circum-

stances

and yet resolute i n its

formal

strategy. I n

this

respect, Palladio's accessible geography

o f

architectures can be read as exemplars o f a city

no longer constrained

by i ts

walled

civitas,

bu t as

a

territory

whose

f o r m

lies in its attempt t o trace

and make explicit the geographical and political

conditions o f i ts existence.

This essay

will appearin PierVittorio

Aureli's forthcomin g

book in the M I T

Press

Writing

Architecture

Series,

wi th

the worldng

title,

The Possibility of

an Absolute Architecture.

1.

Rudolf

Wittkovver,

'Principles

of

Palladio's

Architecture'

(part one) in

Journalofthe WarburgandCourtauld

Institutes,vu 1944, pp 102-22;

(part

two),

ibid,vin

1944, pp 68-102.

Arciiitectural Principles

in

the A ge

of

Humanism

(London:

Warburg

Institute, 1949).

2.

Colin

Rowe, 'The Mathemades of the

Ideal

Villa:

Palladio and

Le

Corbusier

Compared in

The Architectural Review,

May

1950,

pp 289-300.

3. James S

Aekerman, T he Villa:Form

and

Ideology of Countiy Houses (London:

Thames and Hudson, 1990) , pp

10 - 14 .

4.

The name Palladio comes

from

Pallade, a nickname given to Pallas

Athena. In Greekpollax means 'young'

and Palladium was the wood statue

of

Pallas Athena.

It became

a famous

image o f ancient Graeco-Roman

mythology

and on which the safety of

a

city

was meant to depend. The name

was probably chosen

byTrissino

in ref-

erence to Angel Palladio, a character

in

his poem

'L'ltalia

Liberata dai Got '.

Trissino's choice of this name is

absolutely explicit

in

the cultural

inten-

tions he saw the young architect as

sup-

posed

to embody -

i n

Trissino militant

(and slightly

delirious)

classicism,

Palladio was the resurrec tion

of

an

ancient architect. On the sources

of

Palladio's name see Franco Barbieri,

Architetture Palladiane (Vicenza: Neri

Pozza, 1992), pp 211-12.

5. See

Flavia

Cantatore,

'Casa

Civena

e

i

primi

studi

di

Andrea Palladio per

ease

e palazzi' i n Franco Barbieri et al (eds),

Palladio 1508-1580:11 Simposio

del

Cinquecentenario

(Venezia:

Marsilio,

2008), pp 245-49.

6.

PierfilippoCastelli,Ifly/tórf/

Giovangiorgio Trissino, OratoreePoeta

(Venezia:

Giovanni Radici, 1753) ,

p

75.

See also Franco

Barbieri,

'Giangiorgio

Trissino

e

Andrea Palladio' in Neri

Po Z.za{ed),Attl

del

convegno

di

studt

su

Giangiorgio Trissino (Vicenza: Neri

Pozza, 1980).

7.

The same promotion of Roman archi-

tecture would be embraced

by

Daniele

Barbaro, another patrician and

diplo-

mat, who supported Palladio after

Trissino's death in

1550.

8.

See Francesco

Paolo

dlTeodoro,

'Andrea Palladio e

il

laseito teorieo

diRaffaello:

aleune osservazioni' in

Franco Barbieri, op cit, pp

80 - 86 .

9.

See Peter Vaughan Ha rt and P

[eds], Palladio s Rome (New

Ha

Yale University Press, 2006).

10 . GuidoBeltramini, 'Andrea Pa

1508- 1580

in

GuidoBeltrami

Howard

Burns (eds), Palladio (

Marsilio,

2008) , pp

2 - 4 .

See als

Giangiorgio Zorzi, Le

opere pub

e I palazzi di Andrea Palladio

(V

Neri Pozza, 1965), pp

167 - 69 .

11 . For an

overview

of the urban an

cal

history

of

Venice see Franc

Barbieri, Vicenza:Storia

di una

tura urbana

(Milano:

Silvana E

1982) .

See also Guido Beltram

Palladio Private

(Venice: Mars

2008), p 14.

12 .

Franco

Barbieri,

op cit, pp

54 , 6

13 .

See Andrea PaUadio,

TheFourB

onArchitecture, trans.

RobertT

and Richard Schofield (Cambr

MA

M I T

Press, 1997) , p82 .

14.

On the idea of the

villa

see

Jam

Aekerman, op cjY.

15 .

The one, infamous, exception

Giuhano da

Sangallo's

Villa M

at Poggio a Caiano (1485).

15. Stefano Ray, 'Integ rita

e Ambi

inKurtFostei:,Palladio: Ein S

(Rome: Schweiserisches Instit

Rom,

1980),

pp 53-74.

17 .

For an analysis of the

l ink

betw

Palladio's architecture and the

of

the Serenissima's Terraferm

Denis Cosgrove, ThePalladian

scape: Geographical Change

and

Cultural Representations

in

Si

Century Italy

(Philadelphia,

P A

State University Press, 1993).

18 . SeeGinoBenzoni

(ed),

Verso

la

Agricoltura:Ruzzante, ilPolesin

(Rovigo:

Associazione Cultural

Minelliana, 2004).

19 . See Andrea Palladio, op cit, pp

20 . On the Venetian projects of

Sa

and Cornaro see Man fredo

Ta

Venice

and the

Renaissance (C

M MiTPress, 1995), pp 139-

21 . Ibid, p 146.

22 .

Ibid,

p 58.

23 .

Ibid.

24 .

On the elevation

of

the Greek o

as a

principle o f city

managem

Giorgio

Agamben,//Potere

elo

(Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2007).

25 .

Andrea Palladio, op cit,

pp 149 -

25 .

Giorgio

Agamben,'Che

cosaè

Paradigma?' in

Giorgio

Agamb

Signata Rerum: Sul Metodo

(Turin:

BoUati Boringhieri,

200

27 .

VaoloVirno,Mondanita:L id

tra espertenza s ensiblle e sfera

(Rome: Manifestolibri,

1994),

28 . On Palladio's war architecture

Guido Beltramini, 'Palladio e L

tettura delta battaglia: le edizio

illustrate d i

Cesare Polibio' inP

1508-2008,

op cit

pp 217-29.

84

AA F


10/10

G i o v a n n i A n t o n i o C ana l

(Canal e t t o ) ,

Capriccio of Palladio s Design for the Bridge of Rialto,

with Buildingsfivm Vicenza, c 1759

© N a t i o n a l G a l l e r y , Parma

Aureli Pier Vittorio - The Geopolitics of the Ideal VIla - AA Files 59

Documents

Transcript of Aureli Pier Vittorio - The Geopolitics of the Ideal VIla - AA Files 59