| My dissertation examines the critical reception and interpretation of the architectural and literary works of the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio by eighteenth-century architects and theorists of the Veneto. In the mid-eighteenth century philosophical enquiry into the origins of architecture had resulted in an ideologically charged struggle of reform. Theorists began to question the relevance of the architecture of Antiquity as the basis of modern architectural practice; instead they sought a seemingly more solid foundation through an empirical methodology in which the writing and analysis of the history of architecture provided for the elucidation of essential and uncorrupted principles. In response, Venetian theorists sought to provide a fundamental reevaluation of Palladio's oeuvre in accordance with these newly established criteria of judgment as a means of reconciling the exigencies of reason and tradition. My dissertation provides a discussion of the construction and defense of this distinctly modern interpretation of the Palladian canon within its discursive context by addressing the texts, manuscripts, designs, buildings, and polemics, which collectively forged and perpetuated the Palladian legacy in theory and practice throughout the Veneto and beyond over the course of the eighteenth century. |
