IELTS READING – Andrea Palladio: Italian architect

B. _Q2 The exhibition has the special advantage of being held in one of Palladio’s buildings, Palazzo Barbaran da Porto. Its bold facadeis a mixture of rustication and decoration set between two rows of elegant columns. On the second floor the pediments are alternately curved or pointed, a Palladian trademark. The harmonious proportions of the atrium at the entrance lead through to a dramatic interior of fine fireplaces and painted ceilings. Palladio’s design is simple, clear and not over-crowded. The show has been organised on the same principles, according to Howard Burns, the architectural historian who co-curated it.

C. _Q3 Palladio’s father was a miller who settled in Vicenza, where the young Andrea was apprenticed to a skilled _Q8 stonemason. How did a humble miller’s son become a world renowned architect? The answer in the exhibition is that, as a young man, Palladio excelled at carving decorative stonework on columns, doorways and fireplaces. He was plainly intelligent, and lucky enough to come across a rich patron, _Q9 Gian Giorgio Trissino, a landowner and scholar, who organised his education, taking him to Rome in the 1540s, where he studied the masterpieces of classical Roman and Greek architecture and the work of other influential architects of the time, such as Donato Bramante and Raphael.

D. Burns argues that social mobility was also important. Entrepreneurs, prosperous from agriculture in _Q6 the Veneto, commissioned the promising local architect to design their country villas and their urban mansions. In Venice the aristocracy were anxious to co-opt talented artists, and _Q7 Palladio was given the chance to design the buildings that have made him famous— the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore, both easy to admire because they can be seen from the city’s historical centre across a stretch of water.

E. He tried his hand at bridges—his unbuilt version of the Rialto Bridge was decorated with the large pediment and columns of a _Q11 temple —and, after a fire at the Ducal Palace, he offered an alternative design which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Banqueting House in Whitehall in London. Since it was designed by _Q10 Inigo Jones, Palladio’s first foreign disciple, this is not as surprising as it sounds.

-ARUSHI THAPA