![]() ![]() ![]() Still, the man who wrote that “often the architect has to follow the wishes of those who are spending rather than what one really ought to do” clearly had a certain sympathy for architects who have to accommodate the questionable tastes of rich clients. His book shows that making good new buildings is a matter not of just copying old ones but of learning their lessons. If modern developers have used his treatise “The Four Books of Architecture” as a mere catalogue of columns and cupolas for the upwardly mobile, Palladio isn’t to blame. Without Palladio, who was Thomas Jefferson’s favorite architect, Monticello would not have looked the way it did nor, for that matter, would Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara. Our idea of grandeur comes predominantly from him. Palladio was the most influential architect in Western history. Palladio studied the architecture of ancient Rome, codified its elements in a famous treatise, and started putting porticoes and pediments and domes on the houses of the landed gentry, conferring on them a feeling of classical pedigree. Before Palladio, serious architecture was for churches, public buildings, and the palaces of the richest nobles. It is probably fair to say that Andrea Palladio, who died in 1580, is the patron saint of every McMansion that has ever cluttered the American landscape, because it was he who brought architectural aspiration to the houses of the moderately wealthy. ![]()
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