帕拉第奧式建築

The Baroque style, popular in continental Europe, was never truly to the English taste and was considered excessively flamboyant, Catholic and 'florid'. It was quickly superseded when, in the first quarter of the 18th century, four books were published in Britain which highlighted the simplicity and purity of classical architecture. These were:

1. Vitruvius Britannicus, published by Colen Campbell in 1715 (of which supplemental volumes appeared through the century),
2. Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura, translated by Giacomo Leoni and published from 1715 onwards,
3. Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria, translated by Giacomo Leoni and published 1726,
4. The Designs of Inigo Jones... with Some Additional Designs, published by William Kent, 2 vols., 1727 (A further volume, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent was published in 1744 by the architect John Vardy, an associate of Kent.)

English Palladianism: Stourhead House, East facade, based on Palladio's Villa Emo. Image is from Colen Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus

The most favoured of these among the wealthy patrons of the day was the four-volume Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell. Campbell was both an architect and a publisher. It was essentially a book of design containing architectural prints of British buildings, which had been inspired by the great architects from Vitruvius to Palladio; at first mainly those of Inigo Jones, but the later works contained drawings and plans by Campbell and other 18th-century architects. These four books greatly contributed to Palladian architecture becoming established in 18th-century Britain. Their authors became the most fashionable and sought after architects of the era. Due to his book Vitruvius Britannicus, Colen Campbell was chosen as the architect for banker Henry Hoare I's Stourhead house, a masterpiece that became the inspiration for dozens of similar houses across England.

At the forefront of the new school of design was the aristocratic "architect earl", Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. In 1729, he and William Kent, designed Chiswick House. This House was a reinterpretation of Palladio's Villa Capra, but purified of 16th century elements and ornament. This severe lack of ornamentation was to be a feature of the English Palladianism. In 1734 William Kent and Lord Burlington designed one of England's finest examples of Palladian architecture with Holkham Hall in Norfolk. The main block of this house followed Palladio's dictates quite closely, but Palladio's low, often detached, wings of farm buildings were elevated in significance. Kent attached them to the design, banished the farm animals, and elevated the wings to almost the same importance as the house itself. These wings were often adorned with porticos and pediments, often resembling, as at the much later Kedleston Hall, small country houses in their own right. It was the development of the flanking wings that was to cause English Palladianism to evolve from being a pastiche of Palladio's original work.

English Palladianism. Woburn Abbey, designed by Burlington's student Henry Flitcroft in 1746. Palladio's central temple is no longer free standing, the wings are now elevated to near equal importance, and the cattle sheds terminating Palladio's design are now clearly part of the façade.

Architectural styles evolve and change to suit the requirements of each individual client. When in 1746 the Duke of Bedford decided to rebuild Woburn Abbey, he chose the Palladian style for the design, as this was now the most fashionable of the era. He selected architect Henry Flitcroft, a protégé of Burlington. Flitcroft's designs, while Palladian in nature, would not be recognised by Palladio himself. The central block is small, only three bays, the temple-like portico is merely suggested, and it is closed. Two great flanking wings containing a vast suite of state rooms replace the walls or colonnades which should have connected to the farm buildings; the farm buildings terminating the structure are elevated in height to match the central block and given Palladian windows, to ensure they are seen as of Palladian design. This development of the style was to be repeated in countless houses and town halls in Britain over one hundred years. Falling from favour during the Victorian era, it was revived by Sir Aston Webb for his refacing of Buckingham Palace in 1913. Often the terminating blocks would have blind porticos and pilasters themselves, competing for attention with, or complementing the central block. This was all very far removed from the designs of Palladio two hundred years earlier.

English Palladian houses were now no longer the small but exquisite weekend retreats from which their Italian counterparts were conceived. They were no longer villas but "power houses" in Sir John Summerson's term, the symbolic centres of power of the Whig "squirearchy" that ruled Britain. As the Palladian style swept Britain, all thoughts of mathematical proportion were swept away. Rather than square houses with supporting wings, these buildings had the length of the façade as their major consideration: long houses often only one room deep were deliberately deceitful in giving a false impression of size.

During the Palladian revival period in Ireland, even quite modest mansions were cast in a neo-Palladian mould. Palladian architecture in Ireland subtly differs from that in England. While adhering as in other countries to the basic ideals of Palladio, it is often truer to them – perhaps because it was often designed by architects who had come directly from mainland Europe, and therefore were not influenced by the evolution that Palladianism was undergoing in Britain. Whatever the reason, Palladianism still had to be adapted for the wetter, colder weather.

Russborough, Co. Wicklow: a notable example of Irish Palladianism[23]

One of the most pioneering Irish architects was Sir Edward Lovett Pearce (1699–1733), who became one of the leading advocates of Palladianism in Ireland. A cousin of Sir John Vanbrugh, he was originally one of his pupils, but rejecting the Baroque style, he spent three years studying architecture in France and Italy, before returning home to Ireland. His most important Palladian work is the former Irish Houses of Parliament in Dublin. He was a prolific architect who also designed the south façade of Drumcondra House in 1725 and Summerhill House in 1731, which was completed after Pearce's death by Richard Cassels.[24]

Pearce oversaw the building of Castletown House, near Dublin, designed by the Italian architect Alessandro Galilei (1691–1737). It is perhaps the only Palladian house in Ireland to have been built with Palladio's mathematical ratios, and one of the three Irish mansions which claim to have inspired the design of the White House in Washington.

Other examples include Russborough, designed by Cassels, who also designed the Palladian Rotunda Hospital in Dublin and Florence Court in County Fermanagh. Irish Palladian country houses often feature robust Rococo plasterwork, frequently executed by the Lafranchini brothers, an Irish specialty, which is far more flamboyant than the interiors of their contemporaries in England. So much of Dublin was built in the 18th century that it set a Georgian stamp on the city; however arising out of bad planning and poverty, until recently Dublin was one of the few cities where fine 18th-century housing could be seen in ruinous condition. Elsewhere in Ireland after 1922, the lead was removed from the roofs of unoccupied Palladian houses for its value as scrap, with the houses often abandoned owing to excessive roof-rate based taxes. Some roofless Palladian houses can still be found in the depopulated Irish countryside.

American Palladianism: The Rotunda at the University of Virginia, designed in the Palladian manner by Thomas Jefferson.

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Palladio's influence in North America[25] is evident almost from the beginning of architect-designed building there, though the Irish philosopher George Berkeley may have been America's pioneering Palladian. Acquiring a large farmhouse in Middletown, near Newport in the late 1720s, Berkeley dubbed it "Whitehall" and improved it with a Palladian doorcase derived from William Kent's Designs of Inigo Jones (1727), which he may have brought with him from London.[26] Palladio's work was included in the library of a thousand volumes he amassed for the purpose and sent to Yale College.[27] In 1749, Peter Harrison adopted the design of his Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, more directly from Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura, while his Brick Market, also in Newport, of a decade later is also Palladian in conception.[28]

The Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis, Maryland (illustration) is an example of Palladian architecture in the United States. It is the only existing work of colonial academic architecture that was principally designed from a plate in Palladio's Quattro libri. The house was designed by the architect William Buckland in 1773–74 for wealthy farmer Matthias Hammond of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. It was modeled on the design of the Villa Pisani in Montagnana, Italy in Book II, Chapter XIV of I quattro libri dell’achitettura.

The politician and architect Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) once referred to Palladio's Quattro libri as his bible. Jefferson acquired an intense appreciation of Palladio's architectural concepts, and his designs for his own beloved Monticello,[29] the James Barbour Barboursville estate, Virginia State Capitol, and the University of Virginia were based on drawings from Palladio's book.[30] Realizing the powerful political significance pertaining to ancient Roman buildings, Jefferson designed his civic buildings in the Palladian style. Monticello (remodelled between 1796 and 1808) is quite clearly based on Palladio's Villa Capra, however, with modifications, in a style which is described in America today as Colonial Georgian. Jefferson's Pantheon or Rotunda at the University of Virginia is undeniably Palladian in concept and style.[31]

The Hammond-Harwood House was modeled after the Villa Pisani at Montagnana from The Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio

In Virginia and Carolina, the Palladian manner is epitomised in numerous Tidewater plantation houses, such as Stratford Hall or Westover Plantation, or Drayton Hall near Charleston. These examples are all classic American colonial examples of a Palladian taste that was transmitted through engravings, for the benefit of masons—and patrons, too—who had no first-hand experience of European building practice. A feature of American Palladianism was the re-emergence of the great portico which, again, as in Italy, fulfilled the need of protection from the sun; the portico in various forms and size became a dominant feature of American colonial architecture. In the north European countries the portico had become a mere symbol, often closed, or merely hinted at in the design by pilasters, and sometimes in very late examples of English Palladianism adapted to become a porte-cochère; in America, the Palladian portico regained its full glory.

One house which clearly shows this Palladian-Gibbs influence is Mount Airy, in Richmond County, Virginia, built in 1758–62.[32]

At Westover the north and south entrances, made of imported Portland stone, were patterned after a plate in William Salmon's Palladio Londinensis (1734).[33]

The distinctive feature of Drayton Hall, its two-storey portico, was derived directly from Palladio.[34]

The neoclassical presidential mansion, the White House in Washington, was inspired by Irish Palladianism. Both Castle Coole and Richard Cassel's Leinster House in Dublin claim to have inspired the architect James Hoban, who designed the executive mansion, built between 1792 and 1800. Hoban, born in Callan, County Kilkenny, in 1762, studied architecture in Dublin, where Leinster House (built c. 1747) was one of the finest buildings at the time. The White House is more neoclassical than Palladian, particularly the South façade, which closely resembles James Wyatt's 1790 design for Castle Coole, also in Ireland. Castle Coole is, in the words of the architectural commentator Gervase Jackson-Stops, "A culmination of the Palladian traditions, yet strictly neoclassical in its chaste ornament and noble austerity."[35]

One of the adaptations made to Palladianism in America was that the piano nobile, now tended to be placed on the ground floor rather than above a service floor, as was the tradition in Europe. This service floor, if it existed at all, was now a discreet semi-basement. This negated the need for an ornate external staircase leading to the main entrance as in the more original Palladian designs. This would also be a feature of the neoclassical style that followed Palladianism.

Nova Scotia Legislature Building, sandstone, 1819

The only two houses in the United States from the English colonial period (1607–1776) that can be definitively attributed to designs from I quattro libri dell'architettura are architect William Buckland's Hammond-Harwood House (1774) in Annapolis, Maryland and Thomas Jefferson's first Monticello. The design source for the Hammond-Harwood House is Villa Pisani, Montagnana (Book II, Chapter XIV), and for the first Monticello (1770) the design source is Villa Cornaro at Piombino Dese (Book II, Chapter XIV). Thomas Jefferson later covered this façade with additions so that the Hammond-Harwood House remains the only pure and pristine example of direct modeling in America today.[36]

Because of its later development, Palladian architecture in Canada is rare. One notable example is the Nova Scotia Legislature building, completed in 1819. Another example is Government House in St. John's, Newfoundland.

The Center for Palladian Studies in America, Inc., a non-profit membership organization, was founded in 1979 to research and promote understanding of Palladio's influence in the United States.[37]