RENAISSANCE AND MANNERISM C. I&O-C. I6OO
which he published them and bis theory of architecture. Palladio's
Archtettura superseded SerEo's, especiaUy after its revival in England
early in the i8th century. His style appealed to the civilised taste and
the polite learning of the Georgian gentry more than that of any
other architect. Palladio is never dry or demonstratively scholarly.
He combines the gravity of Rome with the sunny breadth of
Northern Italy and an entirely personal ease not achieved by any of
his contemporaries. In his Palazzo Chiericati (pi. Lvn), begun in
1550, the Tuscan Doric and correct Ionic order of the Bramante
tradition with their straight entablatures are unmistakable. But the
freedom in placing what had been confined to the courtyards of
Roman palaces into the facade, thus opening up most of the facade
and retaining only one solid piece in the centre of the first floor
surrounded on all sides by air, is all Palladio's. He was especially fond
of colonnades in his country houses, where he used them to connect
a square main block with far out-reaching wings (fig. 58).
The contrast between solid and diffused had a great fascination for
him. In one of his most complete schemes, the Villa Trissino at
Meledo on the Venetian mainland (fig. 58), the house is almo&t-eCWP
pletely symmetrical. The most extreme case, still existent and well
preserved, of such extreme symmetry is the Vilk Capra, or Rotonda,
just outside Vicenza (pi. Lvra, begun c. 1567), an academic
achievement of high perfection and one specially admired by Pope's
England. As a house to live in it has nothing of the informal snugness
of the Northern manor-house, but it has nobility and, with its slen-
der Ionic porticoes, its pediments, its carefully pkced fewpedimented
windows and its central dome, it appears stately without being pom-
pous. Now to get the totality of a Palkdian countryside composition
one has to add to such a nucleus the curved colonnades and low out-
buildings by which the villa takes in the land around. This embrac-
ing attitude proved of the greatest historical consequence. For here
for the first time in "Western architecture landscape and building
were conceived as belonging to each other, as dependent on each
other. Here for the first time the chief axes of a house are continued
into nature; or, alternatively, the spectator standing outside sees the
house spread out like a picture closing his vista. It is worth mention-
ing that in Rome at about the same time Michelangelo planned a
comparable vista for the Palazzo Farnese which he had been com-
missioned to finish, across the Tiber with the Farnese gardens on the
other side of the river.
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