La rotonda di Andrea Palladio. Image source: MoseViero.it
ANDREA PALLADIO: WHO HE WAS AND WHAT HE DID
Andrea Palladio was born in Padua in 1508 into a family of humble origins. At the age of almost 13 he began his apprenticeship as a stone cutter in Padua, and then he attended the workshop of the most important sculptors in Vicenza, Giovanni di Giacomo da Porlezza and Girolamo Pittoni da Lumignano.
Between 1535 and 1538 he met Giangiorgio Trissino, humanist poet and scholar who took Palladio under his wing.
This encounter and this friendship changed completely the life of Andrea Palladio, allowing him to receive a cultural training based on classical studies.
Thanks to Trissino, Andrea Palladio visited Rome several times, and there for the first time he came in contact with architectures he had seen only in reproductions and drawings.
Those trips to Rome allowed Palladio to observe the buildings and to study the materials, but also to meet the greatest artists of his time, such as Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, Bramante and Sebastiano Serlio.
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