Earlier this year I put out a video about fun shenanigans in Italian art and architecture,
during which I said the following: “I had written up this whole side-tangent about how
Andrea Palladio essentially codified the genre of Neoclassicism, buuuut I cut it because
it was long and probably only interesting to me.”
I said this partly in jest but also partly to not obliterate the finely-tuned pacing
of these videos with a 12-minute mega-tangent about Neoclassicism.
But as it turns out, Neoclassical architecture is not “only interesting to me”, because
a lot of the comments were asking to hear more.
And that brings us to today, where I’ve sequestered the full runtime of a video to
gush about How Goddamn Cool Neoclassicism is, and the straight-up genius of Andrea Palladio
for solidifying this style.
Now Let’s Do Some Architecture.
One key difference between studying narrative history and studying culture is that states
and people and events are fundamentally dynamic — there’s a constant forward progression
from one thing to the next, and no matter how hard I shut my eyes and focus I can’t
just open them 600 years in the past.
That all happened, it’s gone now, no matter how much I cry about it.
But the way we interact with cultural artistry and especially Architecture is fundamentally
different, because those creations continue to exist for centuries after the fact, sometimes
surviving just as they were originally designed.
And this results in something approximating an architectural fossil record, which lets
us peer vividly into the past by simply existing in that space.
All this isn’t just to say “wow, old stuff is old, splendid insight, give the man a prize”,
but the point is that even when historical moments are displaced by, say, over a millennium,
the survival of that architectural fossil allows a later observer to look backward into
time and take some notes that might have been lost in the intervening years.
And that takes us to Italy at the turn of the 1400s, where Gothic architecture had
been the standard style for centuries.
The main features of Gothic were pointed arches, high vaults, and schmancy windows, but as
with all movements in architecture, precise styles varied by time and place.
French Gothic, for instance, loved their flying buttresses and had a generally spikey appearance,
while Italian Gothic was drenched in patterned marble.
In these early 1400s, Florence and Venice were picture-perfect gothic cities, but Rome
was… out of shape.
Sure it was the height of ancient imperial glory way back in the day, but those days
were way back, and after having just spent a century Popeless (long story), lots of Rome
was old and busted.
To the Romans, that was just kinda How It Was, because why overanalyze a perfectly usable
structure somebody else already did the work for hundreds of lifetimes ago?
Well, in 1401 a diva by the name of Brunelleschi stormed out of Florence after losing a sculpting
competition and went to Rome to brood about it, and the otherwise unremarkable Roman ruins
astonished Brunelleschi’s Florentine-Gothic sensibilities.
Of course, the Roman Empire was a known quantity, and it wasn’t like everyone collectively
forgot that it happened, but it was distant and vague, and it had been a hot millennium
since anyone last took a good look at the architecture to study the design philosophy
and figure out how these structures worked.
Little surprise that Brunelleschi’s grand return to Florence saw him wielding his rediscoveries
of linear perspective and classical architecture like they were secret ancient magic, from
classic proportions to columns to arches to, and you knew this was coming, THE DOME.
Brunelleschi stayed firmly within his hometown Gothic aesthetic throughout his career (and
the place looks like a dream, so, job well done), but his spectacular reintroduction
of ancient methods kicked off a ferocious study of classical ruins and treatises that
would soon overhaul the architectural landscape of Europe.
If Florence rediscovered the engineering of classical Rome, its aesthetics were rediscovered
in Venice.
While various cities like Florence, Rome, and Mantua got increasingly daring with their
classical compositions, they still struggled to break away from their gothic tendencies.
Venice, however, was uniquely well-positioned to go big on Neoclassical.
It was a gothic city through and through, to the point that their local flavor of Venetian-Gothic
is its own entire sub-style, but in the early 1500s that bothersome roadblock of “pre-existing
stuff” would be overcome with terrifying speed.
Firstly, in 1514 the city center burned to the ground, and the century-long rebuilding
effort let architects play around with those shiny new designs they had been reading so
much about.
As part of this Urban Renewal project, the Doge commissioned Jacopo Sansovino to build
a grand library in Saint Mark’s square.
Starting in 1537 it took… a good long while, suffering budget constraints, partial structural
collapses, and Sansovino’s subsequent imprisonment for the failure, but by 1588 it was finally
done and people loved it.
Sansovino had essentially taken the round outer wall of the Roman colosseum and smushed
it into a flat façade.
This was just one part of Piazza San Marco’s conversion from a medieval market-square to
a re-imagined Roman Forum, and the 1500s saw all kinds of neoclassicizing projects like
this.
Of course, by this point in time, the Venetian Republic stretched far beyond just Venice.
During the 1400s the republic pushed deep into the Italian mainland and brought several
new cities under its wing.
And this is where our second rapid disassembly comes into play, because 1509 saw the War
of the League of Cambrai, where a rotating cast of France, Germany, Venice and the Pope
took their turns beating the pants off each other, mostly to the detriment of mainland
Venice, where constant fighting, sackings, and occupations left the cities a mess.
So while Venetians across the republic had a miserable start to the century with plenty
to rebuild, the architects were smelling cash and glory.
And it’s these mainland renovations that had by far the biggest effect on the architecture
of the republic as a whole.
Even after the fire, Venice itself spent decades tiptoeing towards neoclassicism, but cities
like Padova Verona Vicenza and others may as well have been clean slates, so they were
zooming.
No Venetian glowup was quite as impressive as Vicenza.
It was already one of the poorest cities in the Republic, and after a partial building
collapse in the 1490s, the city hall was in desperate need of some help.
By the 1540s, the commission went to a young Padovan named Andrea Palladio, who had spent
the past decade studying roman architecture and building classically-themed villas around
Vicenza.
This town hall was a pretty big job, but his design amazed his fellow Venetians, even when
it was just on paper.
Long before the building’s completion in 1614, Italians were positively stoked by Palladio’s
reimagining of the Gothic Palazzo Della Ragione into a Roman Basilica.
Palladio did this by using roman-style arches, a statuary balcony, an ancient frieze running
along the façade, plus nestled colonnades in the classical order of ascending Doric
to Ionic up to Corinthian, and all of this outer façade was unified in a white marble
aesthetic.
Put those pieces together and the effect is just stunning.
From there, Palladio was Vicenza’s number one boy, and their civic buildings and villas
became his architectural playground.
Of course, Vicenza was still small, and these buildings took time to throw together, but
Palladio’s reputation and architectural vision proceeded him because of his extensive
publications.
In 1565 he published a survey of ancient Roman architecture that remained one of the city’s
most popular guidebooks for another two centuries, and 1570 saw his Quattro Libri Dell’Architectura,
a four-part study that examined building materials and design techniques, country villas, civic
design and urban planning, and ended with deep dives into ancient roman temples.
To help show his points, the book was packed with Palladio’s reconstructed illustrations
of ancient buildings as well as examples from his own original designs.
Palladio did the same thing when he illustrated a new edition of Vitruvius’ De Architectura,
using his artwork to demonstrate Vitruvian principles.
His buildings in and around Vicenza made Palladio a local hero, but these publications gave
his ideas far broader reach.
Had Palladio only designed his buildings or only published his analyses, he still would
have been a huge influence in the evolution of architecture, much as Brunelleschi was,
but in doing both the practical and the theoretical he turned his particular interpretation of
classical architecture into the definitive vision of the genre.
Naturally, time passed and tastes changed, so later architects continued embellishing
the neoclassical style with so many frills it became Baroque and eventually the indecipherable
mess that is Rococo, but that original Palladian neoclassicism remained a prevalent style in
the centuries after, in part because of how thematically useful it was for channeling
distinctly-classical ideas.
Washington DC is a prime example: It’s not covered in white marble just for funsies,
that emulation of the Roman Republican style was a political statement about what the American
Republic should strive toward, and that’s expressed through Palladian visual language.
No surprise that most European parliaments later repeat that idea in their choices of
architecture.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, because our boy Andrea was a true Renaissance workaholic
who still had plenty more to do.
Through the 1550s he had been making civic buildings and villas in mainland Venetian
towns, but from the 1560s he was in the big leagues: designing churches, in Venice.
His first project was the façade of San Francesco Della Vigna, and we should not be surprised
that even his very first attempt at church design was an absolute swish.
It was, however, quite hard to make it actually work.
Palladian architecture borrowed heavily from ancient ideas of proportion and ratio that
are… frankly, way too much math for me to get into — but the core problem was how
to consolidate church proportions with ancient pagan temple proportions, to say nothing of
the delicate theological quandary that results from smushing the two together.
Palladio’s solution, as ever, was deceptively simple: to accommodate a high nave and short
aisles, you set a triangular pediment across the whole structure, then you rip it in half,
yank out the middle, and slap a higher pediment on top of that.
And just like that problemo solved.
He did the same trick on the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, which began construction
in 1565.
This time the stakes were considerably higher, as San Giorgio Maggiore looked out to Saint
Mark’s Square and the Doge’s Palace.
Being a rather severe departure from traditional Venetian Gothic, citizens were shocked, but
they absolutely loved it — and of course they did, look at it!
It’s pretty! — so by 1570 Palladio was appointed Chief Architect of the Republic,
whereupon he designed the votive church of Il Redentore on Giudecca island.
However, amid these towering accomplishments of white marble fance, there is one design
that got away.
Venice, being a city on water, relied on bridges, and by 1551 the wooden Ponte Rialto clearly
needed a replacement, so the city hosted a design contest that got submissions from Michelangelo,
Sansovino, and Palladio, among many others giants of the day.
The quality of the entries was so high that the judges simply could not choose, for decades.
They eventually just gave up and handed the project to the architect in charge of tidying
up the Doge’s palace after a fire.
Antonio Da Ponte was certainly no slouch, and the main feature of his bridge is the
ease of crossing it during large processions, but as a pure piece of design, it’s… it
looks really top-heavy, it’s weird!
Proportion is one of the most important facets of neoclassical architecture!
How does this look So Unbalanced!
Now, Palladio’s design (as recorded in his books) had asked the fascinating question
of what if a bridge was also an ancient temple, AND a Roman Forum?
And sure it wasn’t ideal for parades, but it’s gorgeous.
If Venice ever goes for a 5th bridge across the Grand Canal, they really oughtta do this
one.
So, that’s the two-century story of how Italians rediscovered the beauty of ancient
architecture and subsequently codified Neoclassicism as more than just a bank of engineering tricks,
but as an entire genre of design.
As with many developments in culture in general and architecture in particular, it came from
a creative solution to both unique constraints and new opportunities.
And, in this specific instance, that solution was “drench it in marble”.
What can I say, I’m a man of simple taste.
Thank you for watching!
This is a new flavor of historical deep-dive for me, not a History-Maker, not really a
Hijinks, but nonetheless very fun!
If you Do actually want to hear more of these kinds of things, please do let me know in
the comments — because the longer I do this job the more I realize just how many thoughts
I have about buildings.
In any case, I’ll see you all next time.