Royal Academy of Arts presents Andrea Palladio ~ His Life & Legacy Exhibition |
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| Sunday, 01 February 2009 01:16 |
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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 will present 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 will follow Palladio’s career, from the Basilica, the earlier palaces in Vicenza and his innovative solutions to rural buildings such as the Villa Poiana and the Villa Barbaro at Maser to his great Venetian churches, culminating with the Villa Rotonda. However, 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 the world. 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 in the Palladian style. The architects who will be 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 will explore new aspects of Palladio’s work. Drawing upon recent scholarship, it will exploit 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 will be complemented by specially commissioned computer animations, which will provide 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 will 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 is commissioning a selection of contemporary architects to give their personal responses to Palladio in The Architecture Space. These architects will be challenged to create a narrative which will be presented through interviews, images and documentation. A dynamic dialogue is created between the architectural minds of today and their relationship to this architectural heritage. Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza in collaboration with the Royal Institute of British Architects. The exhibition has been curated by Guido Beltramini, Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza, and Howard Burns, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa with Charles Hind and Irena Murray from the Royal Institute of British Architects and MaryAnne Stevens, Royal Academy of Arts, London. Exhibition Tour: Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza: 20 September 2008 - 6 January 2009; Fundació "la Caixa", Caixaforum, Barcelona: 19 May - 6 September 2009; Caixaforum, Madrid: 6 October 2009 - 17 January, 2010. Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue edited by Guido Beltramini and Howard Burns, with contributions form leading scholars in the field. Visit the Royal Academy of Art at : www.royalacademy.org.uk/ Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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