When he was thirteen, his father arranged for him to be an apprentice stonecutter for a period of six years in the workshop of Bartolomeo Cavazza da Sossano, a noted sculptor, whose projects included the altar in the Basilica del Carmine in Padua.

[6] Bartolomeo Cavazza is said to have imposed particularly hard working conditions: Palladio fled the workshop in April 1523 and went to Vicenza, but was forced to return to fulfil his contract.

Palladio made numerous changes and additions over the years, adding lavish frescoes framed by classical columns in the Hall of the Muses of the Villa Godi in the 1550s.

For the facade, Palladio made use of two levels of arcades with rounded arches and columns, which opened the exterior of the building to the interior courtyard.

The four brick half-columns on the facade give a strong element of verticality, carefully balanced by the horizontal balustrades on the piano nobile, and on the projecting cornice at the top.

His patron, Gian Giorgio Trissino, died in 1550, but in the same year Palladio gained a new supporter, the powerful Venetian aristocrat Daniele Barbaro.

The rear facade facing the garden has a spacious loggia, or covered terrace, supported by independent columns, on both the ground level and above on the piano nobile.

[22] The villa also has a series of remarkable frescos and ceiling paintings by Paolo Veronese combining mythical themes with scenes of everyday life.

Daniele Barbaro and his younger brother Marcantonio introduced Palladio to Venice, where he developed his own style of religious architecture, distinct from and equally original as that of his villas.

His first project in Venice was the cloister of the church of Santa Maria della Carità (1560–1561), followed by the refectory and then the interior of the San Giorgio Monastery (1560–1562).

The facade features a particularly imposing classical portico, like that of the Pantheon in Rome, placed before two tall bell towers, before an even higher cupola, which covers the church itself.

[29] Palladio's style inspired several works by Claude Nicolas Ledoux in France, including the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, begun in 1775.

In Germany, Johann von Goethe in his Italian Journey described Palladio as a genius, declaring that his unfinished Convent of Santa Maria della Carità was the most perfect existing work of architecture.

The first English architect to adapt Palladio's work was Inigo Jones, who made a long trip to Vicenza and returned full of Palladian ideas.

Another English admirer was the architect, Richard Boyle, 4th Earl of Cork, also known as Lord Burlington, who, with William Kent, designed Chiswick House.

[34] The Center for Palladian Studies in America, Inc., a nonprofit membership organization, was founded in 1979 to research and promote understanding of Palladio's influence in the architecture of the United States.

[35] The basic elements of Italian Renaissance architecture, including Doric columns, lintels, cornices, loggias, pediments and domes had already been used in the 15th century or earlier, before Palladio.

At the beginning of the High Renaissance in the early 16th century, Bramante used these elements together in the Tempietto in Rome (1502), which combined a dome and a central plan based on a Greek Cross.

He clearly expressed the function of each part of the building by its form, particularly elevating and giving precedence to the piano nobile, the ceremonial floor, of his villas and palaces.

As much as possible he simplified the forms, as he did at Villa Capra "La Rotonda", surrounding a circular dome and interior with perfectly square facades, and placing the building pedestal to be more visible and more dramatic.

These particular features originally appeared in the triumphal arches of Rome, and had been used in the earlier Renaissance by Bramante, but Palladio used them in novel ways, particularly in the facade of the Basilica Palladiana and in the Villa Pojana.

This powerful integration of beauty and the physical representation of social meanings is apparent in three major building types: the urban palazzo, the agricultural villa, and the church.

Adapting a new urban palazzo type created by Bramante in the House of Raphael, Palladio found a powerful expression of the importance of the owner and his social position.

The tallness of the portico was achieved by incorporating the owner's sleeping quarters on the third level, within a giant two-story classical colonnade, a motif adapted from Michelangelo's Capitoline buildings in Rome.

He consolidated the various stand-alone farm outbuildings into a single impressive structure, arranged as a highly organized whole, dominated by a strong centre and symmetrical side wings, as illustrated at Villa Barbaro.

Alongside the painter Paolo Veronese, he invented the complex and sophisticated illusionistic landscape paintings that cover the walls of various rooms.

It also may be seen applied as recently as 1940 in Pope's National Gallery in Washington D.C., where the public entry to the world of high culture occupies the exalted centre position.

The rustication of exposed basement walls of Victorian residences is a late remnant of the Palladian format, clearly expressed as a podium for the main living space for the family.

Palladio created an architecture which made a visual statement communicating the idea of two superimposed systems, as illustrated at San Francesco della Vigna.

In a time when religious dominance in Western culture was threatened by the rising power of science and secular humanists, this architecture found great favor with the Catholic Church as a clear statement of the proper relationship of the earthly and the spiritual worlds.