Amazon.com description: Product Description: Andrea Palladio (Padua 1508-Vicenza 1580), Italian architect of the late Renaissance period published L?Antichit? di Roma (1554). Between 1560 and 1580 he constructed several churches in Venice.including the churches of San Francesco della Vigna, San Giorgio Maggiore and Il Redentore. His last great work was the theatre in Vicenza for the Academia Olimpica. Palladio cultivated his own interpretation of Roman motifs, and combined many of the elements of the classical style. However, he shared in the Renaissance quest for harmonic proportions. Palladio was the first architect to systematize the layout of the private rooms of a house, and the first to use the ancient Greco-Roman temple front as a portico on residential buildings.