RENAISSANCE HARMONY: THE VILLA BARBARO AT MASER (ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, PALLADIO; VERONESE)

Surprisingly, the Villa Barbaro has never been the subject of a scholarly publication. The purpose of this thesis is to correct that omission of Venetian Renaissance studies and provide an examination of the creative process, both practical and theoretical, that produced this monument so highly esteemed for its architectural and decorative beauty and originality. That process was a collaborative one in which the ideas and aesthetic biases of the artists and patrons, Andrea Palladio, Paolo Veronese, and the brothers Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro, united to serve a common objective. Their goal was to create a villa all'antica, dependent on classical forms and literary descriptions but wholly modern in its interpretation of antiquity. Daniele Barbaro's and Palladio's previous collaboration on a new edition of Vitruvius and the patron's prior experience as iconographer of a classical program in the Ducal Palace visualized by Veronese confirm the communality of approach to the classical past shared by the creators of the villa at Maser.;Beyond the special interpretation of the ancient villa ethic and aesthetic and concomitant modification of earlier Renaissance villa designs and decorations all'antica, the creators of the Villa Barbaro produced a uniquely unified iconography. Guided by their understanding of the practical and philosophical applicability of Pythagorean notions of cosmological harmony, their conception for Maser demonstrates how, in a humanist villa complex the harmonic proportions of the ground plan of the structure may resound in pictorial rejoinders which develop themes of microcosmic and macrocosmic harmony ranging from the Barbaro household to the theatrum mundi.