Classical order
An order in architecture is a certain assemblage of parts subject to uniform established proportions, regulated by the office that each part has to perform. Coming down to the present from Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman civilization, the architectural orders are the styles of classical architecture, each distinguished by its proportions and characteristic profiles and details, most recognizable by the type of column employed; the three orders of architecture—the Doric and Corinthian—originated in Greece. To these the Romans added, in practice if not in name, the Tuscan, which they made simpler than Doric, the Composite, more ornamental than the Corinthian; the architectural order of a classical building is akin to the key of classical music. It is established by certain modules like the intervals of music, it raises certain expectations in an audience attuned to its language. Whereas the orders were structural in Ancient Greek architecture, which made little use of the arch until its late period, in Roman architecture where the arch was dominant, the orders became decorative elements except in porticos and similar uses.
Columns turned into pilasters. This treatment continued after the conscious and "correct" use of the orders following Roman models, returned in the Italian Renaissance. Greek Revival architecture, inspired by increasing knowledge of Greek originals, returned to more authentic models, including ones from early periods; each style has distinctive capitals at the top of columns and horizontal entablatures which it supports, while the rest of the building does not in itself vary between the orders. The column shaft and base varies with the order, is sometimes articulated with vertical hollow grooves known as fluting; the shaft is wider at the bottom than at the top, because its entasis, beginning a third of the way up, imperceptibly makes the column more slender at the top, although some Doric columns early Greek ones, are visibly "flared", with straight profiles that narrow going up the shaft. The capital rests on the shaft, it has a load-bearing function, which concentrates the weight of the entablature on the supportive column, but it serves an aesthetic purpose.
The necking is visually separated by one or many grooves. The echinus lies atop the necking, it is a circular block that bulges outwards towards the top to support the abacus, a square or shaped block that in turn supports the entablature. The entablature consists of three horizontal layers, all of which are visually separated from each other using moldings or bands. In Roman and post-Renaissance work, the entablature may be carried from column to column in the form of an arch that springs from the column that bears its weight, retaining its divisions and sculptural enrichment, if any. There are names for all the many parts of the orders; the height of columns are calculated in terms of a ratio between the diameter of the shaft at its base and the height of the column. A Doric column can be described as seven diameters high, an Ionic column as eight diameters high and a Corinthian column nine diameters high, although the actual ratios used vary in both ancient and revived examples, but keeping to the trend of increasing slimness between the orders.
Sometimes this is phrased as "lower diameters high", to establish which part of the shaft has been measured. There are three distinct orders in Ancient Greek architecture: Doric and Corinthian; these three were adopted by the Romans. The Roman adoption of the Greek orders took place in the 1st century BC; the three Ancient Greek orders have since been used in neo-classical European architecture. Sometimes the Doric order is considered the earliest order, but there is no evidence to support this. Rather, the Doric and Ionic orders seem to have appeared at around the same time, the Ionic in eastern Greece and the Doric in the west and mainland. Both the Doric and the Ionic order appear to have originated in wood; the Temple of Hera in Olympia is the oldest well-preserved temple of Doric architecture. It was built just after 600 BC; the Doric order spread across Greece and into Sicily where it was the chief order for monumental architecture for 800 years. Early Greeks were no doubt aware of the use of stone columns with bases and capitals in Ancient Egyptian architecture, that of other Near Eastern cultures, although there they were used in interiors, rather than as a dominant feature of all or part of exteriors, in the Greek style.
The Doric order originated on western Greece. It is the simplest of the orders, characterized by short, heavy columns with plain, round capitals and no base. With a height, only four to eight times its diameter, the columns are the most squat of all orders; the shaft of the Doric order is channeled with 16 flutes. The capital consists of a necking or Annulet, a simple ring; the echinus is convex, or circular cushion like stone, the abacus is square slab of stone. Above the capital is a square abacus connecting the capital to the entablature; the Entablature is divided into three horizontal registers, the lower part of, either smooth or divided by horizontal lines. The upper half is distinctive for the Doric order; the frieze of the Doric entablature is divided into metopes. A triglyph is a unit consisting of three vertical bands. Metopes are the carved reliefs between two triglyphs; the Greek forms of the Doric order come without an individual
Masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are laid in and bound together by mortar. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, building stone such as marble and limestone, cast stone, concrete block, glass block, adobe. Masonry is a durable form of construction. However, the materials used, the quality of the mortar and workmanship, the pattern in which the units are assembled can affect the durability of the overall masonry construction. A person who constructs masonry is called a bricklayer; these are both classified as construction trades. Masonry is used for walls and buildings. Brick and concrete block are the most common types of masonry in use in industrialized nations and may be either weight-bearing or a veneer. Concrete blocks those with hollow cores, offer various possibilities in masonry construction, they provide great compressive strength, are best suited to structures with light transverse loading when the cores remain unfilled. Filling some or all of the cores with concrete or concrete with steel reinforcement offers much greater tensile and lateral strength to structures.
The use of material such as bricks and stones can increase the thermal mass of a building. Masonry can protect the building from fire. Masonry walls are more resistant to projectiles, such as debris from tornadoes. Extreme weather, under certain circumstances, can cause degradation of masonry due to expansion and contractions forces associated with freeze-thaw cycles. Masonry tends to be heavy and must be built upon a strong foundation, such as reinforced concrete, to avoid settling and cracking. Other than concrete, masonry construction does not lend itself well to mechanization, requires more skilled labor than stick-framing. Masonry consists of loose components and has a low tolerance to oscillation as compared to other materials such as reinforced concrete, wood, or metals. Masonry has high compressive strength under vertical loads but has low tensile strength unless reinforced; the tensile strength of masonry walls can be increased by thickening the wall, or by building masonry piers at intervals.
Where practical, steel reinforcements such as windposts can be added. A masonry veneer wall consists of masonry units clay-based bricks, installed on one or both sides of a structurally independent wall constructed of wood or masonry. In this context the brick masonry is decorative, not structural; the brick veneer is connected to the structural wall by brick ties. There is an air gap between the brick veneer and the structural wall; as clay-based brick is not waterproof, the structural wall will have a water-resistant surface and weep holes can be left at the base of the brick veneer to drain moisture that accumulates inside the air gap. Concrete blocks and cultured stones, veneer adobe are sometimes used in a similar veneer fashion. Most insulated buildings that utilize concrete block, adobe, veneers or some combination thereof feature interior insulation in the form of fiberglass batts between wooden wall studs or in the form of rigid insulation boards covered with plaster or drywall. In most climates this insulation is much more effective on the exterior of the wall, allowing the building interior to take advantage of the aforementioned thermal mass of the masonry.
This technique does, require some sort of weather-resistant exterior surface over the insulation and is more expensive. The strength of a masonry wall is not dependent on the bond between the building material and the mortar; the blocks sometimes have grooves or other surface features added to enhance this interlocking, some dry set masonry structures forgo mortar altogether. Solid brickwork is made of two or more wythes of bricks with the units running horizontally bound together with bricks running transverse to the wall; each row of bricks is known as a course. The pattern of headers and stretchers employed gives rise to different'bonds' such as the common bond, the English bond, the Flemish bond. Bonds can differ in insulating ability. Vertically staggered bonds tend to be somewhat stronger and less prone to major cracking than a non-staggered bond; the wide selection of brick styles and types available in industrialized nations allow much variety in the appearance of the final product. In buildings built during the 1950s-1970s, a high degree of uniformity of brick and accuracy in masonry was typical.
In the period since this style was thought to be too sterile, so attempts were made to emulate older, rougher work. Some brick surfaces are made to look rustic by including burnt bricks, which have a darker color or an irregular shape. Others may use antique salvage bricks, or new bricks may be artificially aged by applying various surface treatments, such as tumbling; the attempts at rusticity of the late 20th century have been carried forward by masons specializing in a free, artistic style, where the courses are intentionally not straight, instead weaving to form more organic impressions. A crinkle-crankl
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,084 inhabitants in 2013, over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area. Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era, it is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages". A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the established Kingdom of Italy; the Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini. The city attracts millions of tourists each year, the Historic Centre of Florence was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982; the city is noted for Renaissance art and architecture and monuments.
The city contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, still exerts an influence in the fields of art and politics. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Florence is an important city in Italian fashion, being ranked in the top 15 fashion capitals of the world. In 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, after a long period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune, it was the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe and the world from the 14th to 16th centuries; the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, still is, accepted as the Italian language. All the writers and poets in Italian literature of the golden age are in some way connected with Florence, leading to the adoption of the Florentine dialect, above all the local dialects, as a literary language of choice.
Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of industry all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon and Hungary. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War, they financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European history's most important noble families. Lorenzo de' Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century: Leo X and Clement VII. Catherine de Medici married King Henry II of France and, after his death in, reigned as regent in France. Marie de' Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future King Louis XIII; the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de' Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici in 1737.
The Etruscans formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole, destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 80 BC in reprisal for supporting the populares faction in Rome. The present city of Florence was established by Julius Caesar in 59 BC as a settlement for his veteran soldiers and was named Fluentia, owing to the fact that it was built between two rivers, changed to Florentia, it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the main route between Rome and the north, within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement became an important commercial centre. In centuries to come, the city experienced turbulent periods of Ostrogothic rule, during which the city was troubled by warfare between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines, which may have caused the population to fall to as few as 1,000 people. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century. Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital.
The population began to grow again and commerce prospered. In 854, Florence and Fiesole were united in one county. Margrave Hugo chose Florence as his residency instead of Lucca at about 1000 AD; the Golden Age of Florentine art began around this time. In 1013, construction began on the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte; the exterior of the church was reworked in Romanesque style between 1059 and 1128. In 1100, Florence was a "Commune"; the city's primary resource was the Arno river, providing power and access for the industry, access to the Mediterranean sea for international trade. Another great source of strength was its industrious merchant community; the Florentine merchant banking skills became recognised in Europe after they brought decisive financial innovation to medieval fairs. This period saw the eclipse of Florence's powerful rival Pisa, the exercise of power by the mercantile elite following an anti-aristocratic movement, led by Giano della Bella, that resulted in a set of laws called the Ordinances of Justice.
Of a population estimated at 94,00
Renaissance architecture
Renaissance architecture is the European architecture of the period between the early 14th and early 16th centuries in different regions, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance architecture followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture. Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators, the Renaissance style spread to other Italian cities; the style was carried to France, England and other parts of Europe at different dates and with varying degrees of impact. Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry, proportion and the regularity of parts, as they are demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture, of which many examples remained. Orderly arrangements of columns and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes and aedicula replaced the more complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of medieval buildings.
The word "Renaissance" derived from the term "la rinascita", which means rebirth, first appeared in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani The Lives of the Artists, 1550–60. Although the term Renaissance was used first by the French historian Jules Michelet, it was given its more lasting definition from the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, whose book, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien 1860, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860, English translation, by SGC Middlemore, in 2 vols. London, 1878) was influential in the development of the modern interpretation of the Italian Renaissance; the folio of measured drawings Édifices de Rome moderne. Erwin Panofsky and Renascences in Western Art, The Renaissance style was recognized by contemporaries in the term "all'antica", or "in the ancient manner". Italy of the 15th century, the city of Florence in particular, was home to the Renaissance, it is in Florence that the new architectural style had its beginning, not evolving in the way that Gothic grew out of Romanesque, but consciously brought to being by particular architects who sought to revive the order of a past "Golden Age".
The scholarly approach to the architecture of the ancient coincided with the general revival of learning. A number of factors were influential in bringing this about. Italian architects had always preferred forms that were defined and structural members that expressed their purpose. Many Tuscan Romanesque buildings demonstrate these characteristics, as seen in the Florence Baptistery and Pisa Cathedral. Italy had never adopted the Gothic style of architecture. Apart from the Cathedral of Milan, few Italian churches show the emphasis on vertical, the clustered shafts, ornate tracery and complex ribbed vaulting that characterise Gothic in other parts of Europe; the presence in Rome, of ancient architectural remains showing the ordered Classical style provided an inspiration to artists at a time when philosophy was turning towards the Classical. In the 15th century, Florence and Naples extended their power through much of the area that surrounded them, making the movement of artists possible; this enabled Florence to have significant artistic influence in Milan, through Milan, France.
In 1377, the return of the Pope from the Avignon Papacy and the re-establishment of the Papal court in Rome, brought wealth and importance to that city, as well as a renewal in the importance of the Pope in Italy, further strengthened by the Council of Constance in 1417. Successive Popes Julius II, 1503–13, sought to extend the Pope’s temporal power throughout Italy. In the early Renaissance, Venice controlled sea trade over goods from the East; the large towns of Northern Italy were prosperous through trade with the rest of Europe, Genoa providing a seaport for the goods of France and Spain. Trade brought wool from England to Florence, ideally located on the river for the production of fine cloth, the industry on which its wealth was founded. By dominating Pisa, Florence gained a seaport, maintained dominance of Genoa. In this commercial climate, one family in particular turned their attention from trade to the lucrative business of money-lending; the Medici became the chief bankers to the princes of Europe, becoming princes themselves as they did so, by reason of both wealth and influence.
Along the trade routes, thus offered some protection by commercial interest, moved not only goods but artists and philosophers. The return of the Pope Gregory XI from Avignon in September 1377 and the resultant new emphasis on Rome as the center of Christian spirituality, brought about a boom in the building of churches in Rome such as had not taken place for nearly a thousand years; this commenced in the mid 15th century and gained momentum in the 16th century, reaching its peak in the Baroque period. The construction of the Sistine Chapel with its uniquely important decorations and the entire rebuilding of St Peter's, one of Christendom's most significant churches, were part of this process. In wealthy republican Florence, the impetus for church-building was more civic than spiritual; the unfinished state of the enormous cathedral dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary did no honour to the city und
Banqueting House, Whitehall
The Banqueting House, Whitehall, is the grandest and best known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house. It is the only remaining component of the Palace of Whitehall, the residence of English monarchs from 1530 to 1698; the building is important in the history of English architecture as the first structure to be completed in the neo-classical style, to transform English architecture. Begun in 1619 and designed by Inigo Jones in a style influenced by Andrea Palladio, the Banqueting House was completed in 1622 at a cost of £15,618, 27 years before King Charles I of England was beheaded on a scaffold in front of it in January 1649; the building was controversially re-faced in Portland stone in the 19th century, though the details of the original façade were faithfully preserved. Today, the Banqueting House is a national monument, open to the public and preserved as a Grade I listed building, it is cared for by an independent charity—Historic Royal Palaces—which receives no funding from the British Government or the Crown.
The Palace of Whitehall was the creation of King Henry VIII, expanding an earlier mansion that had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, known as York Place. The King was determined that his new palace should be the "biggest palace in Christendom", a place befitting his newly created status as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. All evidence of the disgraced Wolsey was eliminated and the building rechristened the Palace of Whitehall. During Henry's reign, the palace had no designated banqueting house, the King preferring to banquet in a temporary structure purpose-built in the gardens; the Keeper of the Banqueting House was a position enhanced by Queen Mary I by designating it in relation to a building of the same name at Nonsuch Palace, near the south edge of Greater London, which has since been demolished and instead marks the site of a footpath junction of the London Loop. This house was used to entertain the French agent in London and ambassador Gilles de Noailles and his wife in 1556; the first permanent banqueting house at Whitehall had a short life.
It was built for King James I, but was destroyed by fire in January 1619, when workmen, clearing up after New Year's festivities, decided to incinerate the rubbish inside the building. An immediate replacement was commissioned from the fashionable architect Inigo Jones. Jones had spent time in Italy studying the architecture evolving from the Renaissance and that of Andrea Palladio, returned to England with what were, at the time, revolutionary ideas: to replace the complicated and confused style of the Jacobean English Renaissance with a simpler, classically inspired design, his new banqueting house at Whitehall was to be a prime example. Jones made no attempt to harmonise his design with the Tudor palace; the design of the Banqueting House is classical in concept. It introduced a refined Italianate Renaissance style, unparalleled in the free and picturesque Jacobean architecture of England, where Renaissance motifs were still filtered through the engravings of Flemish Mannerist designers; the roof is flat and the roofline is defined by a balustrade.
On the street façade, the engaged columns, of the Corinthian and Ionic orders, the former above the latter, stand atop a high, rusticated basement and divide the seven bays of windows. The building is on three floors: The ground floor, a warren of cellars and store rooms, is low; the lower windows of the hall are surmounted by alternating triangular and segmental pediments, while the upper windows are unadorned casements. Beneath the entablature, which projects to emphasize the central three bays, the capitals of the pilasters are linked by swags in relief, above which the entablature is supported by dental corbel table. Under the upper frieze and masks suggest the feasting and revelry associated with the concept of a royal banqueting hall. Much of the work on the Banqueting House was overseen by Nicholas Stone, a Devonshire mason who had trained in Holland, it has been said that, until this time, English sculpture resembled that described by the Duchess of Malfi: "the figure cut in alabaster kneels at my husband's tomb."
Like Inigo Jones, Stone was well aware of Florentine art and introduced to England a more delicate classical form of sculpture inspired by Michelangelo's Medici tombs. This is evident in his swags on the street façade of the Banqueting House, similar to that which adorns the plinth of his Francis Holles memorial. In 1638, Jones drew the designs for a new and massive palace at Whitehall in which his banqueting house was to be incorporated as one wing enclosing a series of seven courtyards, visible on the monumental main façade as only a small flanking wing; these revealed the ideas behind Jones' concept of Palladianism. However, King Charles I, who commissioned the plans, never amassed the resources to execute them. In January 1698, the Tudor Palace was razed by fire. All that remained was the Banqueting House, Whitehall Gate, Holbein Gate. Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor were asked to design a new palace, but nothing came of the scheme, it has been said that the widowed King William III never cared for the area, had his wife, Mary II, been alive, with her appreciation of the historical significance of Whitehall, he would have insisted on the rebuilding.
The term Banqueting House was something of a misnomer. The hall within the house was, in fact, used not only for banqueti
Renaissance
The Renaissance is a period in European history, covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the middle ages; the intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its version of humanism, derived from the concept of Roman Humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of Protagoras, who said that "Man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art, politics and literature. Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe: the first traces appear in Italy as early as the late 13th century, in particular with the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto.
As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man"; the Renaissance began in the 14th century in Italy. Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time: its political structure, the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici, the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.
Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Milan and Rome during the Renaissance Papacy. The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and, in line with general scepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual culture heroes as "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a historical delineation; the art historian Erwin Panofsky observed of this resistance to the concept of "Renaissance": It is no accident that the factuality of the Italian Renaissance has been most vigorously questioned by those who are not obliged to take a professional interest in the aesthetic aspects of civilization – historians of economic and social developments and religious situations, most natural science – but only exceptionally by students of literature and hardly by historians of Art. Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity, while social and economic historians of the longue durée, have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras, which are linked, as Panofsky observed, "by a thousand ties".
The word Renaissance meaning "Rebirth", first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word occurs in Jules Michelet's 1855 work, Histoire de France; the word Renaissance has been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, art, politics, science and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, searched for realism and human emotion in art. Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West.
It is in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts. In the revival of neo-Platonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion, reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity; this new engagement with Greek Christian works, the return to the original Greek of the Ne
Palladian architecture
Palladian architecture is a European style of architecture derived from and inspired by the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. What is recognised as Palladian architecture today is an evolution of Palladio's original concepts. Palladio's work was based on the symmetry and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. From the 17th century Palladio's interpretation of this classical architecture was adapted as the style known as Palladianism, it continued to develop until the end of the 18th century. Palladianism became popular in Britain during the mid-17th century, but its flowering was cut short by the onset of the English Civil War and the imposition of austerity which followed. In the early 18th century it returned to fashion, not only in England but directly influenced from Britain, in Prussia. Count Francesco Algarotti may have written to Lord Burlington from Berlin that he was recommending to Frederick the Great the adoption in Prussia of the architectural style Burlington had introduced in England but Knobelsdorff's opera house on the Unter den Linden, based on Campbell's Wanstead House, had been constructed from 1741.
In the century, when the style was falling from favour in Europe, it had a surge in popularity throughout the British colonies in North America, highlighted by examples such as Drayton Hall in South Carolina, the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, the Morris-Jumel Mansion in New York City, the Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and Poplar Forest in Virginia. The style continued to be popular in Europe throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, where it was employed in the design of public and municipal buildings. From the latter half of the 19th century it was rivalled by the Gothic revival in the English-speaking world, whose champions, such as Augustus Pugin, remembering the origins of Palladianism in ancient temples, deemed it too pagan for Anglican and Anglo-Catholic worship. However, as an architectural style it has continued to evolve. Buildings designed by Palladio are all in Venice and the Veneto, with an rich grouping of palazzi in Vicenza.
They include villas, churches such as Redentore in Venice. In Palladio's architectural treatises he followed the principles defined by the Roman architect Vitruvius and his 15th-century disciple Leon Battista Alberti, who adhered to principles of classical Roman architecture based on mathematical proportions rather than the rich ornamental style characteristic of the Renaissance. Palladio always designed his villas with reference to their setting. If on a hill, such as Villa Capra, facades were designed to be of equal value so that occupants could have fine views in all directions. In such cases, porticos were built on all sides so that occupants could appreciate the countryside while being protected from the sun, similar to many American-style porches of today. Palladio sometimes used a loggia as an alternative to the portico; this can most be described as a recessed portico, or an internal single storey room, with pierced walls that are open to the elements. A loggia would be placed at second floor level over the top of a loggia below, creating what was known as a double loggia.
Loggias were sometimes given significance in a facade by being surmounted by a pediment. Villa Godi has as its focal point a loggia rather than a portico, plus loggias terminating each end of the main building. Palladio would model his villa elevations on Roman temple facades; the temple influence in a cruciform design became a trademark of his work. Palladian villas are built with three floors: a rusticated basement or ground floor, containing the service and minor rooms. Above this, the piano nobile accessed through a portico reached by a flight of external steps, containing the principal reception and bedrooms, above it is a low mezzanine floor with secondary bedrooms and accommodation; the proportions of each room within the villa were calculated on simple mathematical ratios like 3:4 and 4:5, the different rooms within the house were interrelated by these ratios. Earlier architects had used these formulas for balancing a single symmetrical facade. Palladio considered the dual purpose of his villas as both farmhouses and palatial weekend retreats for wealthy merchant owners.
These symmetrical temple-like houses have symmetrical, but low, wings sweeping away from them to accommodate horses, farm animals, agricultural stores. The wings, sometimes detached and connected to the villa by colonnades, were designed not only to be functional but to complement and accentuate the villa, they were, however, in no way intended to be part of the main house, it is the design and use of these wings that Palladio's followers in the 18th century adapted to become an integral part of the building. Palladio's Four Books of Architecture was first published in 1570, This architectural treatise contains descriptions and illustrations of his own architecture along with the Roman building that inspired him to create the style. Palladio reinterpreted Rome's ancient architecture and applied it to all kinds of buildings from grand villas and public buildings to humble houses and farm sheds; the Palladian, Serlian, or Venetian window features in Palladio's work and is a trademark of his early career.
There are two different versions of the motif.
.JPG)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
