Andrea Palladio was born in Padua, Italy in 1508. He worked as an assistant in a Vicenza guild of masons and stone-cutters before he met the amateur architect, Giangiorgio Trissino, who took him under his wing and renamed him Andrea Palladio. After a series of commissions executed in the Classic tradition, Palladio worked with Daniele Barbaro on a new edition of Vitruvius.
His early commissions consisted primarily of palaces and villas for the aristocracy, but he began to design religious buildings in the 1560s. In 1570 he published his theoretical work I Quattro Libri dell 'Architettura.. In the same year, he was appointed architectural adviser to the Venetian Republic.
Although influenced by a number of Renaissance thinkers and architects, Palladio's ideas resulted independently of most contemporary ideas. Creatively linked to the artistic traditions of Alberti and Bramante, Palladio used principles that related to art and forms that related to nature to generate his architecture.
Palladio's architecture and theories embodied Renaissance architectural thought in the second half of the sixteenth century. Although Palladio's works lack some of the grandeur of other Renaissance architects, he established a successful and lasting way of recreating ancient classicism.
Palladio died in Vicenza, Rome in 1580.

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