During the Renaissance, the contest to decide the order of rank among the fine arts, architecture, painting, and sculpture was an issue that also occupied the famous architect Andrea Palladio. He was convinced that architecture spoke for itself and did not require any ornamentation through painting. Nevertheless, frescos adorn the walls and ceilings of many of his villas. At the Villa Malcontenta, for example, one of Venice's best-known fresco painters of the day, Giovanni Battista Zelotti, was commissioned to design the interior. In Frescos, Antonio Foscari analyzes this fresco cycle, one that not only represents an outstanding example of trompe l'oeil based on architectural structures-and which is closely modeled on Palladio's ideals-but also sheds light on formative events within the family that commissioned Palladio. This publication contains a wealth of historical documents as well as photographs of the frescos by Matthias Schaller.

A glamorous and unprecedented exploration of Palladio's work in one of the most beautiful of all cities

Palladio (1508-80) combined classical restraint with constant inventiveness. In this study, Professor Ackerman sets Palladio in the context of his age - the Humanist era of Michelangelo and Raphael, Titian and Veronese - and examines each of the villas, churches and palaces in turn and tries to penetrate to the heart of the Palladian miracle. Palladio's theoretical writings are important and illuminating, he suggests, yet they never do justice to the intense intuitive skills of "a magician of light and colour". Indeed, as the photographs in this book reveal, Palladio was "as sensual, as skilled in visual alchemy as any Venetian painter of his time", and his countless imitators have usually captured the details, but not the essence of his style. There are buildings all the way from Philadelphia to Leningrad which bear witness to Palladio's "permanent place in the making of architecture", yet he also deserves to be seen on his own terms.

Sir Kenneth Clark wrote in the Architectural Review, that the first result of this book was "to dispose, once and for all, of the hedonist, or purely aesthetic, theory of Renaissance architecture, ' and this defines Wittkower's intention in a nutshell.

Visiting the villas built by Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), one inevitably asks oneself how people lived there in the sixteenth century. Palladio articulated the villas as "small towns" (piccole città) that formed a unit with adjacent service buildings and farm fields. Within their walls lived a multitude of people of all ages, social backgrounds and various skills. They were the venue for significant moments of public life. In these houses, the principles of hygiene, privacy and comfort, which we consider essential today, did not apply; furniture as such, did not exist. Living with Palladio in the Sixteenth Century investigates how Palladio's houses, their floors, rooms and measurements are designed to structure the life of such a heterogeneous family of people. It analyzes their hierarchical structure with the owner (padrone) at the top and everyone involved in the everyday running of the household (famiglia minuta) at the bottom. This book fills a decisive gap in research literature on the famous Italian architect by looking at how Palladio prioritized the domestic functions of his private buildings.

Designed for anyone with an interest in touring major architectural works, the Guidebooks contain historical and descriptive information on key buildings, and practical information including maps, directions, addresses, and references for further reading.

A "romp through the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him became an act of blasphemy--and who the Bard might really be"--