Palladian Style

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully illustrated, beautifully written
Review: If nothing else this would make one of those fabulous coffee-table books - gorgeous to just to look at and stacked to the gunnels with a huge variety of photographs of interiors, stunning old masters reproduced, and pretty architectural line drawings. However I hope people will get this and read it for more than that for Parissen has done a thorough job on a detailed and thoughtful text .

This is the history of the Palladian style, its growth in England in the early eighteenth century and mostly looking at the typical Palladian style homes and how they developed over a 40 year period from 1715-1755. The book takes us inside the home, as well as outside looking at all the elements from the structural, and architectural to the decorative such as fittings and wallpapers. I have just finished reading Spencer-Churchills "Georgian Style" which takes a much broader time span of the whole Georgian period and looks far more at the style rather than the substance. With a more focused subject and a shorter period Parissien takes us far deeper into the development of style and the people who influenced it. He also shows how it filtered through from the grand mansions to the villas and homes of the less well-off both in England and America. There is a reasonable glossary in the back, along with some good potted biographies of the main people mentioned in his text. He has also provided a page of additional reading on the style if this book sparks your interest further.