How Vitruvius Influenced Palladio Treaties and Architecture

Document Type:Thesis

Subject Area:Architecture

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Palladio in his first publication of I Quattro Libri dell’ Architetturra repeatedly mentions Vitruvius (Tavernor, 58). But just like other Renaissance architects, Palladio was also a scholar in the study of the existing roman architecture remains. For Palladio, the remains were more significant in relevance than Vitruvius’s written works. Nonetheless, Palladio often regarded the Roman architectural works of Vitruvius as his “guide and master” despite the fact that he would ignore Vitruvian rules on finding the roman architectural remains to be more convincing. Palladio termed Vitruvian rules as alterable and only offered a guide to which architecture could be modified. Palladio also paraphrases Vitruvius’s account on the origins of buildings whereby wood was gradually supplanted by stone and extents this statement with columns and trees analogy, claiming that both of them tapper as they rise up.

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This analogy is credited to Vitruvius’ recommendations in regard to the overlaid guidelines on the forum in the Fifth Book. In the following passage, Vitruvius compares a column and a tapering tree which its roots are thicker. In this statement, Palladio argues that architecture follows nature and basing on Vitruvius’ assumptions, no one should build an image of something which does not exists in reality. Indeed, Vitruvius had a suggestion that the members of classical architecture could trace their roots on primitive carpentry and wooden Old Stone Age dwellings (Vitruvius, 72). Vitruvius presented various distance specifications between columns in the temple porticoes in column diameter forms such as the araeostyle, the diastyle, the eustyle, the systyle and the picnostyle – a vocabulary attributed to Vitruvian Greco-Roman, which is used by Palladio in the 4th book of the Quatro Libri (Palladio, 64).

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Palladio is influenced by Vitruvius through the statement that the eustyle of two and the quarter diameters produces the most elegant and best form of intercolumniation. According to Vitruvius, intercolumniation is a different issue from the columns’ heights, but the issue which he looks in to is the use of column diameters which in this context leads to the assumption of the link on the part of his Renaissance audience. Palladio was however informed of the difference between the two issues and introduced his own account of suitable distance between the order types as the only illustrations of what was in Vitruvius’ mind. In conclusion, the relation between Palladio leaves a margin which is wide enough to allow for the former to lift the ancient treatise to an authority level and choosing Vitruvius as the guide and master while at the same time giving him space to be independent and not simply rigid to a Roman art author.

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