Year of Palladio

Civic Architecture : Villa

Villa Pisani at Bagnol

Construction of Villa Pisani began in 1542. This was a very important commission for Palladio, for it was the largest one in “scale and patronage” he’d had thus far. The building reflects Palladio’s conflated wishes to “create a country residence to reflect the refined taste of the Pisani brothers” and to realize a building that would also “provid[e] a rational solution organizing the entire complex of agricultural outhouses.” (Beltramini, p. 116)

The style of the work itself was an early break from the medieval tendencies of the architecture of the Veneto. Reed, views the building as influenced by a mixture of ancient Rome and by Palladio’s contemporary Giulio Romano, the master of rustification. He goes on to comment that the “adoption of the pediment, although without columns, was a nod to the temple of the ancients.” (p. 3)

Additional Reading

Andrea Palladio by Stephen R. Wassell

Additional Villas