Coordinated by the regional committee, the exhibition is one of the initiatives promoted and sponsored by Regione Veneto to celebrate Palladio’s 500th Anniversary. Organized in collaboration with Marciana Library, the exhibition gives an account of Palladio’s activities in Venice by looking at his relationships with the ruling class, main intellectuals, clergy, religious orders and publishers. More than 300 works – printed editions, manuscripts, documents and drawings – are gathered to portray Palladio’s Venice and his activities in town (his theoretical oeuvre and the architectures planned realized and now disappeared). Prominent attention is given to Palladio’s interventions in the most peculiar and symbolic area for the definition of the city’s structure, San Marco Basin. He designed San Giorgio Maggiore’s façade, as well as Redentore church and Zitelle on Giudecca island, giving an incredibly innovative drive to the city. Even if one could think that all was already seen and said, archives and libraries still conceal a great deal of information, influences, suggestions and data able to expand our knowledge of Andrea Palladio’s personality and activity, of his environment and acquaintances, his torment and triumphs, his doubts, crisis, uncertainty as well as his perilous Venetian adventures.

The documents displayed in this six-part exhibition come from Correr and Marciana libraries, Querini Stampalia in Venice, Bertoliana library in Vicenza as well as Treviso’s civic library. The show documents Palladio’s relation with Venice, started since the 50’s thanks to the intervention of some cultivated and enlightened aristocrats taking part in the “Serenissima” government – Marcantonio and Daniele Barbaro in particular. The Barbaro brothers supported more or less directly all of Palladio’s architectural enterprises. Even if Palladio was extremely involved on the main land in the realization of patrician villas, he was never able to do so in Venice, where he mainly built religious buildings.

The exhibition also shows his important role as intellectual, Palladio published in Venice philological and archaeological studies as well as the renowned “I Quattro libri dell’architettura” treatise published in 1570. Even if he was extremely integrated in the cities social, cultural and political spheres he never became an “official citizen”: maybe because of the profound incompatibility between his ties to the patrician families of the mainland and the strong Venetian lobbies; maybe because of his incapability to reach compromise and his audacious strictness. Or simply because Andrea loved experimentation much more than what an undeniably cultivated ruling class could afford or wanted.

The exhibition in Venice sheds light on all of this issues. Thanks to the collaboration with the IUAV University of Venice- Sistema dei Laboratori, for the first time one section of the show presents new photogrammetric observations comparing various facades designed by Palladio. Using advanced multimedia systems this section provides a large body of technical, scientific and historical information. This specific approach enables viewers to acquire and compare information before not available, as well as to understand the shift occurred in the representation of Palladio’s oeuvre.