Finally a beautiful book about Palladio's architecture that deals only
with drawings and not photographs. I find this book extremely
interesting and absolutely beautifully produced. The format, the paper
and the quality of the reproductions give the reader a beautiful
chance to enjoy and admire the linear proportions and symmetry of
Palladio's architecture. More interesting is the fact that the author,
Giovanni Giaconi, did not concentrate only on the most famous and
well known villas by Palladio such as the Rotonda, Villa Pisani, Villa
Emo or Villa Foscari, Villa Pojana and Villa Barbaro, to name a few, but
with and obsessive research he measured and draw all the 32 existing
Villas planned by Palladio, also when some of them never came to a
conclusion.
And what's more important is that the Villas are drawn as they now
look.
Some drawings are really interesting like the one of Villa Porto at
Molina, with these ten free standing columns, or even more I wonder
how long it took to draw the very long elevation of Villa Contarini at Piazzola
in the province of Padua.
There are many books with photographs of Palladio's architectures, but this
is the only one with updated measured watercolor drawings and it's really worth a close look at.
Two thumbs up for the talented artist Giovanni Giaconi and to the
interesting and refreshing observations of architect Kim Williams.
