Event Item: 00151

Andrea Palladio: His life and legacy

Exhibition: 31st Jan 2009 to 13th Apr 2009

Source: http://www.royalacademy.org.uk

The Royal Academy of Arts presents the first exhibition devoted to Andrea Palladio (1508 - 1580) to be held in London for over 30 years; it celebrates the quincentenary of his birth. Palladio was not only one of the greatest Italian architects; he was also a practitioner whose work has continued to resonate down five centuries. Active in Vicenza, Venice and the Veneto region, he crafted a new architectural language derived from classical sources yet shaped to fulfil the functional demands and aesthetic aspirations of his own age. His impressive oeuvre includes public buildings and churches; however, it was his town palaces and country villas that influenced subsequent generations of European and American architects. Large-scale models, computer animations, original drawings, books and paintings display the full range of this exceptional architect's output and his legacy, demonstrating why Palladio's name has been synonymous with architecture for 500 years.

The exhibition follows Palladio's career, from the earlier palazzi in Vicenza, the Basilica and his innovative solutions to rural buildings such as the Villa Poiana and the Villa Barbaro at Maser to his great Venetian churches and the Villa Rotonda. Palladio's fame and influence rested not only on his executed buildings but also on his Four Books of Architecture (1570), in which he illustrated the basic grammar and vocabulary of architecture, his reconstructions of classical buildings, and his built and un-built projects. His language answered the practical and social needs of his time and those of later centuries. The treatise helped to spread his fame, their designs becoming models for new constructions throughout Europe and North America.

Moreover, the presence of many of his drawings in England (from 1614, when Inigo Jones brought them back with him from Vicenza) had a considerable impact on British architecture. In the early eighteenth century, the 3rd Earl of Burlington, himself the owner of a very significant number of Palladio's drawings, initiated the Palladian Revival with his remodeling of the 17th Century Burlington House, the current home of the Royal Academy of Arts, in the Palladian style. To present the extent of Palladio's influence the exhibition concentrates on a selection of pertinent examples. These show how Palladio's system of architecture was transposed and adapted within the Veneto region, and after his death, further a field. The architects presented here included the two great masters of the 'Vicenza School'; Palladio's jealous Vicentine follower, the brilliant Vincenzo Scamozzi and his inventive admirer Inigo Jones.

This major exhibition explores new aspects of Palladio's work. Drawing upon recent scholarship, it exploits the survival of a large number of Palladio's exceptional drawings, and a number of recently created large scale models of his major buildings. These are complemented by an especially commissioned computer animation, which provides a "fly through" experience of visiting a Palladian building. To contextualise his work, paintings by Titian, Veronese and El Greco will establish his circle of friends and patrons and testify to the close collaboration between architect and artist during his lifetime, while works by such artists as Canaletto help demonstrate the popularity of his buildings for 18thCentury 'men of taste'.

Palladio has been called the 'architects' architect'. As a unique counterpart to this exhibition the Royal Academy of Arts Architecture Programme has commissioned a selection of contemporary architects to give their personal responses to Palladio in The Architecture Space. These architects were challenged to create a narrative which is presented through interviews, images and documentation. A dynamic dialogue is created between the architectural minds of today and their relationship to this architectural heritage.

The Royal Academy of Arts, London: 31 January 2009 - 13 April 2009. Late night openings: Fridays until 10pm (last admission 9.30pm). Saturdays until 9pm (last admission 8.30pm)

Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J OBD