,“It’s not what we
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― canadia
, Passage 1 Andrea Palladio. Italian architect
SECTION 1
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.
Andrea Palladio. Italian architect
A new exhibition celebrates Palladio’s architecture 500 years on
A
Vicenza is a pleasant, prosperous city in the Veneto, 60km west of Venice. Its grand
families settled and farmed the area from the 16th century. But its principal claim to
fame is Andrea Palladio, who is such an influential architect that a neoclassical style is
known as Palladian. The city is a permanent exhibition of some of his finest buildings,
and as he was born – in Padua, to be precise – 500 years ago, the International Centre
for the Study of Palladio’s Architecture has an excellent excuse for mounting la grande
mostra, the big show
B
The exhibition has the special advantage of being held in one of Palladio’s buildings,
Palazzo Barbaran da Porto. Its bold façade is 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
Palladio’s father was a miller who settled in Vicenza, where the young Andrea was
apprenticed to a skilled 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, 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
1
1
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