God’s architect

Somewhat magnificently, I made the notes for this article sitting in the back of a Rolls-Royce travelling between London and Goodwood. It’s a journey that provides ample evidence of how the classical language of architecture, at least in Palladio’s version, has infiltrated our imaginations and informed our concept of grandeur.

I find Palladio’s spirit in the stately shell of the Rolls-Royce’s radiator, which apes a classical portico, in the famous Sussex country house itself, and in a bottle of Château Margaux: this finest of wines is made in a property of Palladian design. You can see it on the label.

Palladio was the finest classical architect of them all, but he was much more than a slavish classicist. He was an imaginative editor of architectural history, a synthesiser of genius, a self-publicist and a building designer who could create divine proportions and serene spaces without neglecting the question of the leaking roof. His buildings are quietly beautiful: a Palladian villa appears to be how the Almighty, in his role as Great Architect of the Universe, wanted things ordered.

A new exhibition, whose design by the architects Caruso St John was inspired by Palladian interiors and whose colourways reflect the frescoes of the Villa Caldogno, makes even more ambitious claims about its subject. It says, for example, that Palladio is the only architect to have an entire movement named after him. This is not quite justified. José Benito de Churriguera, for one example, gave his name to the Churrigueresque, the elaborate Hispanic baroque.

And surely nowadays Corbusian and Miesian are as loaded with meaning as a groaning lintel. What is certainly true is that, like Le Corbusier and Mies, Palladio was easy to copy, so spread like an infection.