Building

This detailed folio engraving is from Andrea Palladio & Isaac Ware’s The Architecture of A. Palladio; In Four Books. Containing A Short Treatise of the Five Orders, and the most necessary Observations concerning all Sorts of Building…. The work was published in London in 1742 and was translated from the original Italian edition.

This is the third edition in English of Palladio’s seminal work on architecture. It was the first to appear with Inigo Jones’s notes and commentary. The republication of Palladio’s work in English first in 1715 and again here in 1742 influenced architecture in England and the American colonies. Thomas Jefferson owned the third edition and referenced it in designing Monticello.

“The career and book of Andrea Palladio summarize well the goal of the Renaissance architect—the creation of ordered and balanced architecture that might serve as an example for subsequent architects… His Quattro Libri presented plans and elevations of his best work around Vicenza, as well as restorations of some of the major Roman ruins. Of all architectural books except that of Vitruvius, Palladio’s has had the greatest continuing impact” (Elements of Architecture, 113). “In spite of the vogue for the baroque… Palladio’s book exerted a powerful influence on contemporary architecture and classical ideals until the end of the 18th century. In England this was due in the first place to his enthusiastic follower Inigo Jones” (PMM, 55-57).